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Оглавление2. The Recognitions, 1947–1955
To Edith Gaddis
[In the spring of 1947, WG left New York for several years of traveling as he worked on The Recognitions, which began as an early effort entitled Blague. He began by heading south for Mexico in a Cord convertible with a friend named Bill Davison.]
New Orleans, Louisiana
[6 March 1947]
dear Mother—
after much fortune and misfortune we are off to Mexico, I hope this afternoon. I trust that you got my wire, so that when we reach Laredo I shall have birth certificate and be able to get visa. It must be a student’s visa, however, which disclaims any attentions on my part to get a job while there, since they have a sort of protective immigration. The point being that it will take a little while after I get to Mexico City to arrange through any contacts I may have to get a job, a little to one side of authority, as it were. I hope that you will be able to send me some money there—can you conveniently? We are leaving here with next to nothing, as you may imagine, and are taking on a passenger, the fellow who has been our host, and who I gather will be able to finance a good part of the trip from here on. You may gather from my letters the state that things have been in. But I just feel that once we get to Mexico city, and if you can send me some money there, that things will start to shape up well. The address is c/o Wells Fargo Express Company, Mexico D. F., Mexico, and to be marked Please Hold.
Also to add a touch of trouble, my leather suitcase stolen from the car last night, therewith all of my shirts, neckties, and all of the work I was taking with me. As for the work, it is too bad, but perhaps for the best since I plan to start rather freshly with writing when I get down there, and now will not have these things which I have written over the last year or two to distract me. The business of the shirts and ties, of course—infuriating. and the bag.
I want of course to write you a real letter, describing the pleasant parts of the trip, and what this city is like—certainly how much you would like it. But one minute we are to stay; the next, to leave; the next, to leave with a passenger. And now suddenly when it looks like we may get off in about an hour things are rather flurried. Health, and such things that may be worrying you, are all all right.
My love,
W
To Edith Gaddis
Rhodes Apartment Hotel
611 La Branch St.
Houston, Texas
9 March 1947
dear Mother—
Here we are, our plans made for us this time by a pretty ghastly breakdown of the car. and so I can take the opportunity to write you rather more of a letter than I have been able to manage in some time. And perhaps modify a few things which have perhaps troubled you; coming as they have in peacemeal sentences as bulletins on a consistent state of calamity.
Still I know what you are feeling under it all: even if there are occasional concerns (I imagine that the story of the suitcase gave you rather a turn) it is much better because things are happening, and moving, and alive, and not in one corner of Greenwich Vill. —and as long as I am eating and sleeping & everything is all right. Good. I feel just that way.
Washington, as you could gather, was a pretty messy business, chiefly because of the cold. So windy and cold, and the blizzard, and sleeping on Mike’s floor, chiefly difficult because we were both so discouraged at being stuck so near to NewYork, as if we might never get further. And so when we could leave we streaked out for South Carolina, and stopped at Chapel Hill. There a man of about 40 named Noel Houston teaches, and I have read a few of his pieces in the New Yorker, quite good. Well over a year ago a girl named Alice Adams who was at Radcliffe whom I knew quite well, mostly through Jean and later (and in New York) through Mike &c had told me that she wanted me to meet him. At any rate, we got there in the middle of the afternoon, drove out to his house and introduced ourselves, and spent until almost 7pm having a couple of drinks, and he talking at length about the NYer and its stories, the business of writing, &c&c, all in all very pleasant. We had, having heard of how affable he was, hoped that he might put us up somewhere for the night, but on arrival discovered that his wife and two children were ill, and so could hardly presume. Decided that the only thing to do was drive straight through to Atlanta and warm weather, Chapel Hill being similarly cold to everyplace we had left. Well, the drive that night was about the coldest thing I have ever managed. Oil being eaten up by the car, so that we must stop and try to pound holes in oil cans with nails and a rock, dark, and our hands and fingers like sticks. The only thing that saved it was good humour and a little profanity, for Davison is good in both. Finally, after one of those nights we always remember because they defy ever coming to an end, we got to Atlanta for breakfast, about eight. And never again mention Peachtree Street to me. It may have been magnificent after the War Between the States, but now the most tumblesome hurly-burly of trollycars, pedestrians, idiot drivers, and unattractive storefronts I have ever seen. We escaped about an hour later. The most infuriating thing, of course, was the weather—Georgia was quite as cold as Washington had been. And then at a town called Newnan, the radiator, which had to be flushed out, boiled, dipped, and all manner of endless treatments. The only thing was 2$ worth of room for the night. Which we needed. And so found it, and there a bath, shave, and suddenly nothing to do at 6pm. Odd dismal supper, and now 6.45—what but the movies? Two or three glasses of beer might have passed a pleasant hour, but no beer in Newnan. And so we sat through (and I am afraid almost enjoyed) a monstrosity called The Strange Woman, as Hedy Lamarr preached against such sins as Newnan probably never dreamt. Out on the street (in the courthouse square, needless to say), the clock struck—one could know the number of tolls before they were over—it was 9pm. Not a soul stirring, and a beautiful night. Stars, and not a sound. And so, after a brief walk, back to our home, where we collapsed.
The next day was another dedicated to the search for warmth, consisting of thundering out of Newnan and arriving in Mobile late in the evening. There we drank much coffee, ate many doughnuts, and finally drove down a long sideroad to sleep, for the first time on this ‘camping trip’, out-of-doors in our sleeping bags. Of course you know what happened. About 1am we were aroused by the gentle southern rain, teeming down upon our bland upturned faces. After what passed for sleep in the car, the road which he had driven down in the dark hours earlier proved one magnificent bank of mud, and I still marvel that we managed to reach the highway; obviously there was reason, for any fate which was attending us had more gruesome circumstances than a mere Alabama mudhole to address us to.
For just about cocktail time (I use it only as a figure of speech, to indicate the hour, for no one thought of such an amenity) we arrived in New Orleans. There the fun started. And it was so consistently folly that I cannot take it from day to day. Enough to say that we slept in the car for a few nights (I have not thought it necessary to mention that it was raining—rain such as Malay gets once in a generation), being low enough on funds to consider selling the car and sailing across the Gulf (until we were told that sailboats bring around 1500$), and other similarly unfelicitous notions. We spent one night in a great house belonging to friends of Bill’s family, who apparently had not been posted on his standing (though one look at either of us should have told them that we were not exactly eligible bachelors). The living room was so big that a grand piano was passed quite unnoticed in one corner; there were, as a matter of fact, two kitchens, abreast of one another for no reason that my modest eating interests could resolve, and a dining room which should have been roped off and ogled at. By this time we had become rather legendary mendicants, with a good part of the city crossing the street when we approached. Fortunately New Orleans has a French Quarter. I was pulling at what was becoming a rather eager mustache and waiting for the time-honoured greeting: “Hello, friend/ Where are you from?”, this being the first step to any southern or western jail on a vagrancy charge, when we were introduced to a young man by a girl who had not the sense to see the desperation in our characters, and pictured us fondly as Bohem . . . This southern gentleman (for he is, or rather was before he became involved with us) found something in us which prompted him to offer an apartment which was kicking around in his hands. And therewith another resolve: sell the automobile, live for a little time in New Orleans, perhaps even work, and then go to Mexico in somewhat less sportive fashion than a Cord car. Oh, the gladsome effect of plans and resolution. We moved out of the car, into the apartment, had the lights and gas turned on, bargained with a passerby to sell the Cord for 300$, I wrote you a letter giving my address and settled state of mind, clothes were taken to be laundered and cleaned, and we drank a quiet glass of absinthe in what was once Jean Lafitte’s blacksmithshop and went ‘home’. As was well to be expected, dawn broke the following morning and so did everything else. The real-estate company appeared with legal forms which practically made us candidates for the penitentiary for our brief tenancy. The man who had made arrangements to buy the car had talked with some evil companion who convinced him that nothing could ruin him so quickly as a Cord (which is something I cannot quite deny flatly at the moment), and once more we were free to blow our brains out in the streets. But even New Orleans has laws against that, so what could we do but take miserable pennies to Lafitte’s and invest them, this time in defeatingly tiny glasses of beer?
The proprietor of Lafitte’s is a man whose name has passed me without ever leaving a mark. He is quiet, pleasant, 42, and believes that everyone should have a quiet little pub of his own, at least fifty yards from his. I approached him modestly simply to ask if he had any sporting friends who thought life had come to such a pass that they would enjoy sporting about the Quarter in a long low and very moderately priced automobile. From there we went on to the intellectual world, bogged through its vagaries for a little while, and after I had proved my metal by reciting a few lines from T S Eliot, he encouraged us with tasteful portions of absinthe and loaned me 10$.
Mr Hays, introduced earlier in the letter simply as a ‘southern gentleman’, being about our age, took it upon himself at this point to be our host, until some stroke of God, like an earthquake or tidal wave, could waft us out of his city (have I mentioned that it was still raining?). His mother, a true southern lady who proved herself so b[y] retaining her sanity throughout the whole thing, was at first reasonably horrified to see us appear with our natty sleeping bags and recline in what were to us perfectly familiar contortions on her living room floor. Two days later, when she was beginning to manage to breathe again, I picked up a cold which dissolved the forepart of my face to such an extent that even an ourangatang (spelling, you see, is again a distant world)’s mother instinct would have leapt with succour. From then until we disappeared, carrying her son with us, she was splendid.
Her son, familiarly known as Sam, paints. In fact, he is doing that just at the moment. He is facing one of the most terrible architectural monstrosities that the Catholic Church ever erected, for some cabalistic reason, behind our hotel. Houston, in what I trust was a surge of civic pity, displays the thing on coloured picture postals, and I shall send you one so that you, too, may marvel.
As I have intimated, Sam, being at what we like to call ‘loose ends’, decided to throw in his lot with us, and, he having a small but at this time of the world provident allowance, we decided that it would be all for the best. And so the next morning (I say loosely, having no idea just what it was next after) we went down to the car. Since one of my suitcases had been stolen, there was more room for his luggage, and at this point it matters very little whether I appear shirtless and tieless in any of the capitols of the world. We fled. Have I said that it was still raining? If so, it was stark understatement. Driving through the bayous of Louisiana was like an experimental dive with William Beebe, and, except for the shimmering streams that poured through the crevices around the ‘convertible’ top, into our huddled laps, the Cord might have been a Bathysphere. Lonely cows on the highway appeared as splendid Baracuda, and the dismally soaked Spanish moss luxuriant submarine vetch. Across one Huey Long bridge after another, until we stopped in a town called Houma, having taken a wrong turn so that we were headed blithely for the Gulf of Mexico. We ate, considered, reconsidered, and started again west, stopping at a gas station for water (as, I have neglected to say, we have been doing every score of miles since we left). There was a small dog, the black spots of his coat blending gently into the white with the aid of the automobile grease in which he slept, and eyebrows which curled distantly away from his unreasonable cheerful face. He joined the caravan, which set forth again into a downpour which would have made Sadie Thomson play the Wabash Blues until Pago Pago slid into the sea.
There is a town in Texas called Orange, for reasons which only a native could know. Here came the scene of the final depredation. The Cord began to make the most terrifying, and, to one so much attached, sickening noises, that the only thing to do was motor down a sideroad, pretend that there simply was no top on the car, and be lulled into a delicious and thoroughly sodden unconsciousness. When we awoke, the one watch in the company indicated that the morning was well along. The amount of water that was cascading down between us and any hope of heaven made the time a compleatly negligible factor. There was nothing to do but drive down the road and get stuck in someone’s driveway. That is what we did. It was cold, and the rain so near to being one mass of moving water that we stood like three creatures in different worlds, shouting to each other as one might from inside an incandescent lamp.
We eventually recovered the car, now powered only in first and fourth gears, and limped into Houston. We had such a stroke of luck here as to convince me that we are being fitted out for the most violent end—something like driving unexpectedly into a live volcano-mouth in that country to the south, for here in Houston we have found one of the only Cord mechanics in the southwest. The Cord is now hanging in his establishment, where the most amazing array of toothless gears are exhibited on the floor. The whole thing is under the constant surveillence of Houma, the folly-ridden animal who remains, in spite of his new lot, our friend, looking up from his bed of transmission grease with the ingenuous faith which I have been mistakenly looking for in human beings.
Our apartment in Houston has a living room, bedroom, bath, kitchen, and breakfast nook. Last night we prepared a magnificent dinner (hamburger-with-onion, pan-fried-potatoes-with-onion, spinach-with-onions), and are now looking forward to this evening’s culinary adventure. During the day we saunter through the streets and stare at the citizens, or stand in our parlour and stare at the atrocity which I mentioned earlier. We smoke a brand of aptly-named little cigars Between-The-Acts, and blow ponderous rings. We discuss only earth-shaking topics, such as whether or not there really is a sun, or were we brought up with a heat- and light-emanating mirage. We smile stupidly at one another, drink coffee, and nod our heads in answer to nothing at all.
While the world of fact drowns us, that of probability supplies an occasional bubble of life, and we plan (I use the world plan as an indication of my vocabulary weakness) to arrive gloriously in Laredo sometime toward the end of the week, Friday sounding as likely as any day I can call to mind at the moment. In these ensuing days I hope to work (there is another word) on something which has been on my mind (and another) for a couple of weeks, and since all of the deathless prose which I had expected to work on was purloined with the gay vestments of my formal existence, perhaps I shall be able to make a fresh start in the world of art.
Living in a world of my own, I have no notion of the US mails. This is undoubtedly Sunday, because the steepled monstrosity across the street has been breathing a regular stream of Texan Catholics in and out of its gabled nostrils all day—and you may get this message near the middle of the week. And so I cannot say whether you will find me at the Rhodes Apartment Hotel by mail, for the moment that the auto is able to stand by itself it is in for a fast drumming south. I trust that you got my frantic wire, asking for a means of proving my identity (the only other thing I had was a Harvard Bursar’s card, in the stolen suitcase, which I suppose might not have got me a visa), and even that the birth certificate is now filed under general delivery at Laredo. The picture of $ still confounds me—it continues to leak in somewhere, and until it stops no appeals will be made. I do think, as I mentioned in another letter, that once in Mexico DF, with no job immediate, that I shall have to hold out an open and empty palm. Until then, here are the probable addresses—Wells Fargo, Monteray (you might check on what county of Mexico that’s in, and also make certain that they have an agency there), and then, in perhaps a couple of weeks, W—F—, Mexico D.F., Mexico.
I hope, trust that everything is well, you, and the things around you. I shall think of NewYork tonight as I wash my socks and underpants, articles which have seen considerable service.
My love,
Bill
Mike: Mike Gladstone (see headnote to 26 June 1952), who was staying at his sister’s apartment then.
Noel Houston: an Oklahoma native (d. 1957), author of the novel The Great Promise (1946).
Alice Adams: prominent fiction writer (1926–99), raised in Chapel Hill.
The Strange Woman: 1946 film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, about a scheming woman’s affairs with three men.
Jean Lafitte: a pirate who worked out of New Orleans in the early nineteenth century.
William Beebe: American naturalist and deep-sea explorer (1877–1962).
Sadie Thomson [...] Pago Pago: a prostitute in W. Somerset Maugham’s early story “Miss Thompson” (later retitled “Rain”), best known in its movie adaptations (Sadie Thompson, 1928; Rain, 1932). Sadie works the South Pacific island of Pago Pago, and “Wabash Blues” is a popular song from the early 1920s that she plays on her phonograph.
To Edith Gaddis
Houston, Texas
[16 March 1947]
Dear Mother—
You, I know, have spent much time in lesser cities of the United States—but never let fate hold anything for you like Houston, Texas. It is really pretty ridiculous, pretty dull, pretty bad. But we are leaving tomorrow—Monday—having had quite a “rest”. I have written one story here, whose merits I find less each time I think of it, and at the moment have no idea of what to do with it. That, however, is hardly a major worry just now.
To explain the wire—and many thanks for sending the 35—they require much identification here to cash a money order, and, since my wallet was in the stolen suitcase, I have absolutely none—living in constant fear of being picked up for vagrancy before we reach Laredo, since I do not look like a leading citizen in my present attire.
Heaven knows, now, whether we shall make it or not—but we are again starting off. I only hope that the border will not present too many foolish difficulties, since one look will convince any official that we are not young American tourists with untold financial resources—but once across the border I shall feel much better about all sorts of things, including the hopeful sproutings of a mustache, which at the moment is as unedifying as it is rigorous in its growth.
Love—Bill
wire: on 15 March WG wired a Western Union cable that reads: “VAGUE INSANITY PREVAILS. 35 DOLLARS WOULD SUSTAIN THIS HOUSTON IDYLL. SEN[D] TO ROBERT DAVISON CARE OF WESTERN UNION HOUSTON EXPLANATION FOLLOWS MY BEST INTENTIONED LOVE= BILL”
To Edith Gaddis
Hotel Casa Blanca
Mexico City
[7 April 1947]
Dear Mother—
Well—Finally Wells-Fargo opened—Mexico, you see, has been enjoying a four-day holiday for Santo Semana—Thursday through Sunday, everything closed. And so we have been living on about 2 pesos a day—borrowed, and now repaid as is our hotel bill.
Will I continue to disappoint you, cause you wonder? Because no big long talks with an American magazine editor here who gives the same story as all—no money to Americans in Mexico, unless they are “in on something.” The Mexico City Herald finally told me to come back in 2 or 3 weeks—and I finally understood that the best I could do there was about 10 pesos a day, for 8 hrs. proofreading.
But do not be disappointed immediately—for here is something heartening I hope. I have been working very hard. Many days. On a novel. It is something I have had in mind for about a year—had done some on it in fact, and the notes were stolen in New Orleans. But now I am on it, and like it, and believe it may have a chance. Right now the title is Blague, French for “kidding” as it were. But it is really no kidding. Silly for me to write about it here, though it is practically the only thing I think about. Now: Davison’s father is attorney for Little Brown & Co., the Boston publishers. And so I can be assured that if I can do it to my satisfaction, it will be read and if anyone will publish it, it will stand best chance there, since he has some “influence.” The really momentary problem is whether to do the first part, and an outline (which I have done) and try to get an advance—or to finish it now if I can.
What we hope to do—is sell the car, buy some minor equippage, including two horses, and set out and live in the less populous area of Mexico. And there I hope to finish this thing, while Davison lives outdoor life which he seems to desire, and I am not averse to as you know.
Could you then do this?: Send, as soon as it is conveniently possible, to me at Wells-Fargo:
My high-heeled black boots.
My spurs.
a pair of “levis”—those blue denim pants, if you can find a whole pair
the good machete, with bone handle and wide blade—and scabbard—if
this doesn’t distend package too much.
Bible, and paper-bound Great Pyramid book from H—Street.
those two rather worn gabardine shirts, maroon and green.
Incidentally I hope you got my watch pawn ticket, so that won’t be lost.
PS My mustache is so white and successful I am starting a beard.
Santo Semana: i.e., Semana Santa (Holy Week), which culminated on Sunday, 6 April 1947.
Davison’s father: at the top of the page, WG adds this note: “He is R. H. Davison—15 State Street—Boston, if you want to communicate with him for any reason.”
Blague: in a later letter (7 April 1948) WG describes this as “an allegory, and Good and Evil were two apparently always drunk fellows who gave driving lessons in a dual-control car,” but this is only a frame-tale enclosing stories of the lives of New Yorkers similar to the Greenwich Village sections of R.
Great Pyramid book: Worth Smith’s Miracle of the Ages: The Great Pyramid (Holyoke, MA: Elizabeth Towne, 1934), a cranky book that translates apocalyptic messages from the Great Pyramid of Geza (predicting Armageddon in 1953), which WG surprisingly took seriously and cites a few times in R.
H — Street: WG lived at 79 Horatio Street in Greenwich Village while working at the New Yorker.
To Barney Emmart
[A lifelong Harvard friend who worked in marketing in the 1950s, taught English for a year at the University of Massachusetts (1967), and died 1989.]
Mexico City
April, 1947
dear Barney,
Just a note of greeting. And to say that I earnestly wish you were here, because I am working like every other half-baked Harvard boy who never learned a trade—on a novel. Dear heaven, I need your inventive store of knowledge. Because of course it is rather a moral book, and concerns itself with good and evil, or rather, as Mr. Forster taught us, good-and-evil. You see, I call out your name, because other bits of life proving too burdensome, I have taken to the philosophers—having been pleasantly involved with Epictetus for about a year, and now taking him more slowly and seriously. And of course I come upon Pyrrho, and see much that you hold dear, and why. Also David Hume, whose style I find quite delightful.
Shall I describe Mexico City to you? It is very pleasant, and warm, and colourful of course—and we are here, and cannot get jobs because we are tourists, and live on about 30¢ worth of native food a day. And I’m sure you would like it. Also, we grow hair on our faces. And plan, as soon as we can manage to sell the Cord—beautiful auto—to purchase two horses, and the requisite impedimenta, and go off and live in the woods, or desert, or whatever they have down here. There I shall finish Blague—that is the novel. And have George Grosz illustrate it—he has the same preoccupation with nates that I do—grounds enough to ask him.
Well old man, this is just to let you know dum spiro spero—I haven’t learned Spanish yet—a noodle language if I ever heard one. Please give John Snow my very best greeting, tell him I shall write, would give anything for a drink and talk with you all. But must work. A dumb letter, but I am very tired.
Anyhow, my best—
Bill
Forster [...] good-and-evil: in The Longest Journey (1907), E. M. Forster writes, “For Rickie suffered from the Primal Curse, which is not—as the Authorized Version suggests—the knowledge of good and evil, but the knowledge of good-and-evil” (part 2, chap. 18).
Epictetus: Greek Stoic philosopher of the first century. WG owned George Long’s translation of The Discourses of Epictetus.
Pyrrho: Greek skeptic philosopher (c. 360–c.270 BCE). Otto relates an anecdote about him in R (130).
David Hume: Scottish skeptic philosopher (1711–76).
George Grosz: see postscript to the letter of 3–4 May 1947.
dum spiro spero: Latin, “While I breathe, I hope,” attributed to Cicero, and the motto of many families and organizations.
To Edith Gaddis
Mexico City
[April 1947]
Dear Mother—
I do hope this will be the last time I shall have to put upon you so. And just now am in a sort of confident spirit because I believe Blague has something to say, if I can write it. If not, believe me, there is little else that interests me, but I shall do something which will take care of me, and I shall not have to keep you living in this perpetual state of waiting to hear that I need something. And so I add, could you within another week or so send 25$ more? And that will be all. Believe me, if Blague is done it will be worth it—you will like it. And if I can get an advance things will be rosy. As I say, I have the outline done, just what I want to take place from beginning to end. And each scene clear in my mind. I have only written about 5,000 words, and plan 50,000, comparatively short—ap. 200 pages.
We want to leave as soon as we can sell the car &c, out where living will be cheap.
Believe me, it will be worth it—I have never felt so single-purposed about a thing in my life. The novel will be the best I can write. And as I say, if it doesn’t do, you won’t have to put up with this foolishness any longer. Davison likes it much, and is very helpful. Am getting sun, and even on 20¢ a day enough food, eating in the marketplace. A grand city, but without a job or tourist money, no place to stay. So have faith for just a little longer—it will work out. Thanks, and love—
Bill
To Edith Gaddis
Mexico City
15 April ’47
Dear Mother—
[...] You—and anyone—can usually be pretty certain, if you receive a letter of any length from me, that I am for the moment fed up with the novel. No offense—but, except for time we spend going marketwards for food—usually about 5 pm, the daily meal—or in the morning, for café-con-leche—I am here working on Blague. Of ap. 50000 words planned, I have 10000 fairly done—though now—tonight—must go carefully over all I have done, add wherever I can, clear up as much as possible—and even cut, wherever I use too many words—which is often. When I finish this part, am going to send it to Little Brown, where Davison’s father will see that it gets read &c. And with any encouragement from them perhaps I can finish it in a couple of months.
The newspapers down here—very anti-communist &c, are practically fomenting war—at the moment much about Mr. Wallace. And so I have the idea—which as you know I have had for some time—that war comes soon. And Blague must be done before that, concerning itself with Armageddon &c. So we go. [...]
I have just discovered a new brand of cigarettes—Fragantes, which cost 4¢—and here we have been paying 5¢! Wasting our $. Great cigarettes, though they are inclined to come apart or go out—and are quite startling first thing in the morning. Someday—I look forward to Players again.
We have been to just one film since here—Ninotchka, with Spanish subtitles. A wonderful, delightful film. Admission is about the same as in the States, around 60–70¢, so we are debating about seeing Comrade X now playing.
I had a silly letter from Chandler Brossard, who wants particulars on living here. We may get him down here yet! Also letters from others, keeping me up on NYC, which sounds absolutely dull. But a safe distance off!
If the novel goes, I have thought of coming up in August. Possibly July. I cannot think of the Studio being so alone, and we might have a good piece of summer.
As for living here—anything you are curious about? I have given you most of it, I think. And it does not vary. My mustache seems to have stopped growing, now hanging down the corners of my mouth. To work.
Love, Bill
PS—We are leaving for Veracruz this evening (Wednesday). Everything fine. Will still get mail from W.F. And probably be back here soon enough.
Mr. Wallace: Alfred A. Wallace (1888–1965) denounced Truman’s foreign policy in the New Republic (where he was editor in 1947), arguing it would lead to further warfare.
Ninotchka: 1939 film directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Greta Garbo.
Comrade X: a 1940 film derivative of Ninotchka.
Chandler Brossard: novelist and journalist (1922–93), WG’s roommate in Greenwich Village for a period. Brossard based a character on WG in his first novel, Who Walk in Darkness (1952).
Studio: a converted barn next to Mrs. Gaddis’s house in Massapequa, which WG (like Edward Bast in J R) used as a work space.
To Edith Gaddis
Mexico City
24 April”47
dear Mother—
A week in Veracruz. I could describe it to you now, here, in many pages—the incidents, &c., the changes in plans. But I must mention the trip. We were told before leaving that if we took one road we should go over the ‘biggest god damn’ mountain in the world’. I believe we did. At night. Do you remember driving from Hicksville home one night after the movies, fog so thick and we going 15mph, and did not speak for two days after? Imagine it like that, except a cloud instead of fog, heavy rain, roads of such incredible twists I shall have to draw them for you, and hills so steep that the heavy Cord, even in gear and with brakes, wouldn’t stop. Honestly, it was wild. We went with what later turned out to be some sort of young confidence man, I believe, with a number of angles to work on us. The car finally sold, and at a pretty low price, but glad to get it done—after that ride, it really isn’t worth much. The young man, Ricardo, was working so many deals that we finally escaped quickly. I wax to be captain of the boat his father owned, which sounded jolly, but never saw the boat. He had a good place with one pleasant enough room bed &c., and behind it a shanty affair with mud floor where we slept. Down in the rather crowded residential section, near the market—residential for chickens, pigs, dogs, unnumbered barefoot children, radios, people. The noise at night!—cocks crowing, then burros and jackasses he-hawing, turkeys, dogs and dogs; and when eventually the sunrise put an end to the fracas, everyone leapt from bed and turned his radio to a different station. It never stopped. It is probably going on right now. I shall tell you, someday when I have more breath, of how I entertained hordes of tiny ninos (that is their charming word for children) by reading bible lessons in Spanish, putting lighted cigarettes in my mouth, swinging them about on my fingers. Or of how I entertained the (sic) adult population, after meeting the man who owned the entire market—a remarkably tremendous place—and he almost as much so, proportionately, we sat across the table from each other, and after proving myself able to mouth bits of his language, a 5-gallon jug of pulque was brought out. We drank a glass (Salud!), then he poured me another, &c., until soon he was pouring me glasses and then drinking with me from the jug. When that was gone (a litre is about a quart) we had some tequilla, to keep spirits up, and beer to make it a real comradeship. Entertained the populace, as I say, finally by falling off a rather vigourous streetcar. Huge joke. I think if I had actually split my head they would have died of laughter, but I can’t go that far with them. They had enough fun as it was. Believe me, I am fine now.
And Mexico City looks good. I arrived to find quite a sheaf of mail from you, and shall try herewith to answer and straighten things out as they come. I gather from the tone of them that you have been having it rather rough, and I can imagine, and wish I were there to help you along instead of here, to keep you in a state of such running about.
First, immediate plans. We have just returned from the ‘shopping district’, carrying (picture this) two saddles, bits,—all the equipment for the equestrian. Bill has got himself a pair of boots, and we are ready to be off immediately for some sort of rustic nowhere. I cannot quite make out when you sent the boots and spurs. They are all that count really; the gabardine shirts would be fine, but don’t really need them; hope you did not bother to send clean white shirt, no use for it; also the watch, which I didn’t mean for you to try to send, but if you have don’t worry about it; the machete doesn’t matter, very cheap here; don’t for heaven’s sake worry about small-pox, no mention of it in our circles here; many thanks for NCB, but I don’t see that you needed to bother, I never have enough money to carry on with banks, and as you shall see in the future don’t plan to need a checking acc’t; Look, many many thanks for sending the money (25$ WU April 10th, and just rec’d on return from Veracruz Thursday 25$ WU) But please don’t send more money, it only leads us to confusion, and trouble for you. I don’t need it now at all. We have plenty to get off from here for the sticks for a while. Honestly, I will let you know when I need it. I hate to sound excited about it, but when I need it I can let you know and you can always wire it just in care of the Western Union I wire from. OK? I am just tired of envisioning things like NCB machinations, that’s what I came off to Mexico to get away from. So let’s just leave it, I’ll let you know if and when. OK?
The apartment: I really hope to not want it this fall. Here’s what my hope is. To get out of here as soon as possible on horses to compleatly uninhabited country, for about two months, keeping in touch with Wells Fargo here or giving you an address so that we may correspond, but away from city machinations, all this business. Then, get back across Mexico to an eastern port town like Veracruz, Tampico, &c., end of May or early June or middle of June. From that port, start home, either working my way on a boat (talked to sailors on freighters in Veracruz, who say such things are still done), or (this is the only time I may need money) getting some sort of passage, and hoping to get back to NY late in June. Then coming to Long Island and working on the novel there this summer. How does that sound? At that point, of course, much depends on how the book comes along. But in the fall, especially if I have got any sort of money out of the book as a start, to leave NY again and go heaven knows somewhere. I cannot plan for that of course. And so don’t want to say, dump the apartment. But feel sure enough about it to say, if there is anything brought up involving business about a new lease before I get back, to let the place go. I don’t see great future for me in that old place, do you? Good if I could get back in late June and get books &c. together, so don’t worry about such things until then. Many thanks for the addresses, we’ll use them if there is any occasion.
Now. I hope that all of this, instead of unnerving you, has given a clear and rather bright picture. Honestly, I can see from your letters what a time you have been having, and feel like a fool having added such things as a machete for you to worry about. Needless to say how good I feel about the Halls, Mary, &c., all they have done. And pray, as they do I believe, for the day you can relax. Just relax. Anyhow you can about me now for a while. Or if you would rather get excited than relax, take a look at the enclosed pictures. In the large cabinet portrait, meet Mr Robert Ten Broeck (Bill) Davison. We are walking a main street in Mexico in the morning after coffee, not, as you might believe, discussing the missionary problem in Bengal or proofs of God. He is saying something rather violent about the cigarette he is holding, which has just gone out. I am reacting to his language. The beards, as you see, are not too exciting as yet. We do look ratty, but both are delighted with the picture. Also, a blurred indication of how we slept on the way down, unfortunately double-exposed, but if you look, I am in a sleeping bag, on my back looking up, with a cigarette-to-mouth, and above my head is the little dog we got in Louisiana (and lost eventually in Mexico). Me sitting down is me sitting down on the roof of the hotel Casablanca, where we call home, looking rather small-headed. The dog (named, fondly enough, ‘Old Grunter’) appears again in picture taken on the highway on the way down, cradled lackadaisacally (spelling!) in my arms. Great shot of the car. To top things off, a rather dull shot of a river from highway miles above. [...]
Off we go, into the hills. Davison for the first time on a horse. The wh[o]le thing should be fine, and whether the novel prospers (believe me I am going to try to help it do so) it will be healthful. I shall write, and get mail from W—F—until I let you know differently, though obviously for the next few weeks or two months letters farther apart. Believe me, we are fine, see no reason why things should not go off as planned, at least until I see you in the summer. My love to Granga, hoping to see her too.
Love—
Bill
PS Remind me sometime to tell you about the fox we had in Veracruz. Now there was a pet!
NCB: National City Bank.
Halls, Mary: Charles Hall, an antiques dealer, and Mary Woodburn, John Woodburn’s wife and a close friend of Edith.
Old Grunter: a name WG used for family dogs.
To Edith Gaddis
Mexico City
[29 April 1947]
dear Mother—
I never do a thing, or if I do it immediately, it is wrong. So after that lengthy piece I mailed you this am concerning three suitcases being sent you, most of it is wrong, as I foolishly sent it before the bags. [...] If a sloppy package should arrive for you from Houston, Texas, it will be my handsome treasured Brooks Bros hat, being sent by the garage mechanic, since it was in a restaurant which was closed the night we left, and I couldn’t retrieve it. I hope he gets around to sending it; if so, could you rescue it, and have it cleaned and blocked?
Then there are some books I shd appreciate your getting, sometime between now and June or July:
A Study of History by A. J. Toynbee Oxford Press 1 volume abridgement.
Aspects of the Novel by EM Forster Harcourt Brace $2.50
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse Henry Holt $2.75
The above are recent, in print. This below have no full information on, but may be available.
The Golden Bough by Frazer (well known book) or Frazier—a book on anthropology.
These are little paper-bound things, should be available, perhaps at Brentano’s, or some college textbook place; published by The Open Court Publishing Company, La Salle, Ill.
The Vocation of Man by Johann Gottlieb Fichte 50¢
St Anselm: Proslogium, Monologium, an Appendix on Behalf of the Fool by Gaunilon; and Cur Deus Homo. (this is all one)—60¢
The first two are most important to me, should be readily available (though the Forster is reprint, may be sold out quickly, and I would like to go over it carefully—for obvious reasons). So thank you, hopefully in advance.
We are now (29april) on the eve of leaving for life in the woods. Can[n]ot imagine what will turn out, but don’t fear: we have dysentary pills, all sorts of things, including horse equipage, blankets &c. So don’t for a moment worry. It may last a week or two months, we hope to reach Tampico eventually.
Have had no word from you on how my spending the summer in Massapequa sounds. Because though I am working on my novel, and will these coming weeks, I know I can do best out there, quiet summer—regularly tasty food (how I dream of it!). It has taken me all this trip and time to figure it out, now it needs writing, and not the sort I can manage sitting on the edge of a bed or a pile or rock. I hope the idea suits you—I picture it as being a good regular well spent couple of months, and we could have a good summer out of it.
Think of nothing else now, will instruct Wells Fargo to follow me about, and certainly don’t worry if you don’t hear for a week or two—simply mean we are not near a PO. Mexico is a pretty raggedy land.
Love, Bill
A Study of History: D. C. Somervell’s 600-page abridgement of the first six volumes of Arnold J. Toynbee’s classic study was published by Oxford University Press in 1947.
Aspects of the Novel: first published in 1927.
Steppenwolf: Hesse’s 1927 novel about the outsider nature of the artist was translated into English in 1929.
The Golden Bough: Sir James George Frazer’s multivolume survey of magic and religion was published in abridged form in 1922, the edition WG used for several passages in R.
The Vocation of Man: a philosophical work first published in 1800; in R Otto quotes “Fichte saying that we have to act because that’s the only way we can know we’re real, and that it has to be moral action because that’s the only way we can know other people are. Real I mean” (120).
St Anselm: Piedmont-born English theologian (1033–1109); WG named a major character in R after him, and quotes him a few times in the novel (382, 535). The edition WG asks for was published in 1939.
To Edith Gaddis
Mexico City
[3–4 May 1947]
dear Mother—
Just a few words to let you know the change of plans. The horse business in Mexico didn’t work out, simply because it seems impossible to buy horses. One was offered, at 120$! Twice the price. So D—, still hell-bent on riding, has the fancy of going somewhere in the Southwest US. I care little at this point, having had a grand Mexico, which is to be topped off Sunday by a bullfight. D. doesn’t care about it, but I have persuaded him it is a spectacle worth seeing. So we stay over and leave Monday for Laredo, thence I know not where, care less, so long as there is a place for me to lie down in my wretched bolster at night and sit up at this machine by day. All of which really alters nothing, I still plan on returning in June, we can set the studio in order, and I hope for a well-regulated summer in which Blague will either be done or collapse. With all of our bumping around recently I have had no chance to get at it, and feel guilty, limiting myself to scraps of notes on paper. Anyhow I shall see you in June, and meanwhile write you when we get some sort of flavourfully-western address, if we chance to settle near a stage line. [...]
Little more of note. My beard looks at the point where it will not be very edifying, even in another month, and need a haircut, the last having been what seems months ago in New Orleans. Everything fine and in order, life is great, will keep you posted. I have been on the roof, my usual quiet refuge for working on the novel; but today, impossible. It is la Dia de las Cruces—Day of the Crosses—and like a battlefield. The air absolutely full of explosions, natives sending up fireworks. Became downright dangerous, as well as disconcerting—felt like a foreign correspondent reporting a Black and Tan fracas so am back in the room.
My only Mexican expenditure, souvenir, and that through the munificence of D., a beautiful little pair of silver cufflinks with my old design which I am so fond of, and so neatly done. I am quite content, happy. Hope you are similarly so, and will write.
PS —In view of past mixups, I have have held this letter over until Sunday night, just before we leave simply to tell you that I have had two (2) wonderful steaks—filets—today, and the bullfight was grand.
Here is another book:—Being by Balzac, it may not be readily come on in modern book stores. But if so, if you should be able to come on it, how much appreciated. It is Zeraphitus by Honoré de Balzac. If not, don’t trouble about it.
Love, Bill
PS
It is very late, I have been lying awake for some time, as I often do, thinking about—or rather being persecuted by this novel. With D—asleep I cannot make lights and notes, or work. At this point things usually get pretty wonderful, as you know about such possession. Anyhow, do you know of a German artist-illustrator named George Grosz? I know this is pretty excessive—he is well-known, brilliant &c (so this is rather between us, if it comes to naught, as it probably will)—but I have long liked his work, serious painting and cartooning—(he has done much satirical drawing on recent Germany)—but I want to try to get him to illustrate Blague. If only it could be done. His drawings would be exactly what I want for it—really want to complete it, as it were, besides obvious commercial advantages. He has written a book called A Little Yes and a Big No. It costs $7.50. If it could be managed, I should love to have it when I get back—and you would get a kick out of looking it over I know. If possible I want to show him my manuscript this summer (I think he lives in N.Y. now)—and try. Meanwhile, if it can be done not to[o] strainingly, how I should appreciate his book.
PS If you can and do get any of these books—not to be sent—I want to read them this summer in Massapequa. And thanks.
Love,
Bill
Black and Tan fracas: a British-supplied police force (named after the colors of their uniform) sent to Ireland in 1920 to help the Irish constabulary quell uprisings.
Zeraphitus: that is, Seraphita (1835), a metaphysical story by the French novelist.
George Grosz: German artist (1893–1959) who emigrated to the U.S. in 1933. His autobiography, A Little Yes and a Big No, was published by the Dial Press in 1946.
Ormonde de Kay and WG at Donn Pennebaker’s apartment in Greenwich Village, late 1940s. (Photo courtesy D. A. Pennebaker)
To Edith Gaddis
[WG returned to New York, but five months later he decided to leave again (the night of 28 November), this time for Panama “to launch my international news career” at El Panamá América, a bilingual newspaper, as he wrote thirty years later in his brief memoir “In the Zone” (New York Times, 13 March 1978, reprinted in RSP 33–37). It didn’t work out. From this point on, WG begins sometimes signing his letters W (for Willie) rather than Bill. But he lapsed to neglecting to date his letters, so most are supplied from postmarks.]
Hotel Central
Plaza de la Catedral
Panama City, Panama
[late November 1947]
dear Mother—I had intended to write you a goodly letter about the fantastic business of being in 6 countries in one day, but by now the fantasy has got out of hand. I was met at the airport by four white-coated young gentlemen, escorted to a waiting Lincoln, and driven to my hotel, an establishment where I have a room about the size of Madison Sq Garden and a private balcony overlooking the park. Then off for a few drinks and courtly conversation. Apparently I shall have a job, and no kidding, on this paper at 350$ a month; I am to have breakfast with the owner in the morning.
Fantastic.
That’s all.
This is simply a note to let you know we are all alive, and I am breathing heavily, acting sophisticated and trying to carry on.
It is splendidly hot, and so am I, inside and out. When breathing begins to come more naturally again, I shall write.
Love,
W.
To Edith Gaddis
[The new novel WG mentions below, initially called Ducdame, eventually became The Recognitions.]
Panama City
[December 1947]
Dear Mother—
Here is one of those letters which makes it worth your while to have me 3000 miles from home. Perhaps not. I don’t know. I am quite confused.
I have just come back from coffee with a man named Scott, who is managing editor of the paper. He is very kind, and about to ship me off to a banana plantation. Roberto Arias—whose father and uncle are currently running against one another for the presidency—owns the paper. But the de la Guardia faction, my guardians, have rather put it upon his shoulders for my employment. He too is very kind, I had a pleasant lunch with him and his wife in their penthouse a day or so ago, and Roberto tells Juan Dias that I can have a job as a feature writer on the paper. Mr Scott, the kind NewZealander, finds the paper quite to his liking as it is. We go around and around in circles, there also being a matter of 225$ to be paid the P—government if I hang on and take such a job. Eh bien. With all of the Latin fooling around, bananaland sounds like the best bet. Everything here, in the city, is high; I have moved from the apartmento overlooking the park to a smaller, more airless cubicle, at 2$ the day. They give me no ashtray or (my favourite) cuspidor, so I must toss cigarette stubs on the floor. Not very pretty, but home.
At the moment I am waiting for a cable from somewhere to see if the Chiriqui Land Company wants an overseer. Imagine! Stalking through the jungle (of course all of my clothes for such a life are safely in Massapequa, as usual), and Me, who as moments go by takes a dimmer and dimmer view of bananas, telling hundreds of natives what ones to cut for shipment. The whole thing as fantastic as it seems always to turn out. But I am quite pleased.
The city is all one could ask, teeming with people and hot as it can be. There are occasional nice places where one could sit down and work, but I think that even with a comparatively substantial salary (Roberto mentions 350$ a month) the money and time would be gone as soon as it came, and I have honestly had enough of high life and sophistication for one season. From descriptions of bananaland, there is only the heat of the jungle, work to be done during the day, and the evenings and nights free. You can see, it sounds like a good place to work. The salary is pitifully small, but I gather one’s needs are taken care of, and it is possible to save something each month.
I have started the plans for another novel. It all sounds so very possible, to spend a stretch on the old plantation, healthful outdoor life drenched with sun, and work on a book. And if the book does not work out, at least I should be able to escape with my life and leathery skin and enough money to get back to the states and figure out another immediate future. I hope that all this does not distress you. It shouldn’t; at least for myself it looks good.
A good deal of my time is spent walking. I walk miles around the city alone, just looking and thinking. Then back to this palace to take off a wet shirt. I have still as little sympathy for the spanish language, and know just enough to be able to struggle through meals and get directions when I get lost, which is often.
You remember Davey Abad, the ex-prize fighter whose nightmares I shared on the ss West Portal some 6 years ago. I stopped in at a cantina a few evenings ago for a bottle of cervesa negra, fine dark beer, and there was Davey collapsed in a corner. He is taking cards at the gambling casino in the hotel Nacional, very ritzy, and I spent a pleasant hour or so recalling old times with him. Then I went into the casino and watched one man lose 100$ betting on the black on the roulette wheel—just like that, in two minutes, five spins, every number came up red, he with 20$ each time on the black—and a sad shattered American woman writing out 50$ travellers cheques like crazy to keep up with her losses. Fascinating, of course. The number 17 came up five times in twenty minutes, and I was fearfully tempted—but escaped quietly.
Everyone is kind. Strange to think that I have been here less than a week; I feel that the winter must be past in NY, and spring opening on LongIsland, that I have been away that long. But I gather that if the Chiriqui Land Company needs honest and competent (!) work done that it will seem years before I can manage to stroll into Brooks Brothers next fall and give them 47$ for one of their attache cases, and end this business of carrying papers and soap and a shaving brush in my pockets.
Again, thanks for so many things. I am getting on well, eating far more regularly than I ever managed in NY, &c &c. This address will reach me, I shall tell them to forward if the jungle calls.
Love
W
Roberto Arias: Panamanian lawyer (1918–99); his younger brother Tony was at Harvard with WG. Arnulfo Arias was first declared the loser in the 1948 presidential election, then declared the winner and held office from 1949 to 1951.
Juan Dias: spelled Diaz in a later letter, otherwise unidentified.
Chiriqui Land Company: a Panamanian fruit and vegetable vendor, a holding of Chiquita Brands, and still in business today.
To Edith Gaddis
Panama City
Thursday [December 1947]
Dear Mother—
Just a note to say I have your letter, and thank you. Honestly, it seems months since I left.
Also, best to call father and thank him for the Christmas present sentiment, but I think it somewhat dangerous to send anything here, with my plans as they are. This place will certainly forward mail, but you know the inter-American trouble that can happen with packages! Tell him I shall write.
Plans still uncertain—I hope the bananaland deal works out; it is the sort of exile I need. Am working hard at new novel—it is to concern vanity. I think I can write with some authority!
Well, you certainly sound like you are leading New York high life! Good—I do want you to have a good winter. No need to worry about sending me money—unless I have to pay my way out of bondage from the Chiriqui Land company!
Love to Granga, and you.
W.
To Edith Gaddis
Panama City
[28 December 1947]
dear Mother.
Another bulletin from the front. This one says that the Chiriqui Land Co doesn’t need the services of this old banana man. This old bananaman was pretty discouraged until today, now he is no longer discouraged but a bit alarmed. He has got a job with the canal, doing some kind of out-door work, something like helping overhaul a lock, whatever that is. I hope that you are not concerned that the fine education you gave me is producing nothing but a hemispherical bum, (let’s say vagabond, sounds nicer), and one who even in his better moments can at best push a wheelbarrow. (I must interrupt here and say that I would rather push a w-b- and have my mind to myself and be able to laugh when I want to or spit or quit than be standing agued and wet-footed in a 40$ a week publishing-house in my favourite city, wasting the only treasure I have, the English language, constantly being angry with things which are wasteful to be angry at, &c &c, you know.) [...] More often each day I am taken for something left here by a boat, which has cannily gone on without an undesirable member of its crew. Eventually I hope to send you my measurements and a portion of my earnings so that at your pleasure you can go to Brooks (I don’t believe that they do have my measurements, they may) and have them send me one of those natural-colour linen suits they are hoarding on the 2nd or 5th floor. They are around 35$, and I find I would have to pay at least that here, without even getting the Brooks Brothers label, instead a suavely pinched-in waist which passes for fashion among these vain people but isn’t quite what I have in mind as chic. And one might as well be chic if it is all the same price. Also it advances the chances of free meals, refreshments, and similar necessary vanities among the ‘set’ which I enter on occasion (occasion being the slightest hint of an invitation).
The two young gentlemen, Juan Diaz (a judge) and Guiellmo de Roux (an architect) continue to bear with me, and Sunday we motored again to the 50-mile-away beach and plundered the Pacific for all it was worth. I have a fine letter from Jake, whose plans for departure are practically realised, and I’m delighted; also one from Gard[i]ner, whose talents will never fail to arouse something akin to jealous envy in me. [...]
Love, W.
PS I have written to Father, a letter of news, greeting, and warning that perhaps it wouldnt be wise to try to send a gift right now.
Guiellmo de Roux: that is, Guillermo de Roux, a prominent American-educated architect.
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[9 January 1948]
dear Mother.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could write a good novel? Well, that is what I have been trying to do all morning. Now it is near time for lunch, and then my presence and talents are required at the Miraflores lock until 11 pm, to take up with my crane. And coming in near midnight after that leaves me not wanting very much to jump out of bed in the morning for the great prose epic that is daily escaping from under my hand.
This is to thank you for the attaché case attempt—and to say that it’s hardly a necessity. Because for the writing, I don’t think I have anything really worthwhile carrying in one yet. I think the attachécase will just always be one of those distant beautiful images that lure us through this life and keep us believing that our intelligence is worthy. Meanwhile don’t trouble about it. Perhaps, if in the summer I can get up there with something worth showing a publisher, one of the objects of (instant) beauty will be mine, and I shall have something worth carrying in it. As you may gather, I am not in very high nor triumphal spirits.
I enquired at the post office. There is no duty on anything sent for the recipient’s personal use. If you get in touch with Bernie (PL81299) I’d like to know if he’s in NY. or what. Also he has a small alarm clock, a little green one—and I need an alarm. Could you find where he got it? And if you could get and send me one like it?
Also badly need a haircut. I borrowed 10$ from Juan Diaz, my kind friend, so am seeing through quite well. Sorry about the trouble over the ’phone call. I don’t understand about the 30th of Dec. call—I was at the ’phone station from 850 until 930. They’re all insane down here anyhow. But I’ll call in a few weeks, after I get paid, just for the fun of it.
Love,
Bill
Bernie: poet, critic, and artist Bernard Winebaum (1922–89), a Harvard/Village friend of WG, worked briefly in the advertising business (and wrote book reviews for Time, Alan Ansen told me), then spent most of his later life in Athens, where he owned a restaurant.
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[12 January 1948]
dear Mother.
Well. I have been thinking about Mrs —, whatever the numberscope lady is—with something like horror. She has been rather remarkably right on the whole. But, she says January 6th to start new work which will carry through until September 19th. Does she mean spending 8 hours a day in the bottom of the Panama Canal?
The difficult part of such an existence is that having done a day’s work of this nature, one is very tempted to do as the other men, who, with perfect right, feel that they have earned their place for the day, and relax. But I cannot. Infrequently the library here keeps me in good reading. Yesterday I had 2 plays and one novel, much for thought. And continue at work on my novel. I cannot work on it as I would—to sit down at the typewriter when I wish and write—because the machine makes so much noise as to disturb resting neighbors. So I try to write it in longhand, and to make continuous notes far in advance.
And then suddenly realise, in the midst of all this thought, here I am 25 and my education is just beginning. Honestly I wonder what I “studied” at Harvard.
I do hope to save enough here to be able to afford to go back—not necessarily to Harvard, preferably abroad—and study. And if I can do that and finish a credible novel by the fall it will be splendid. Oddly the things I want to study are not things I did at Harvard. Philosophy, comparative religions, history, and language. Well God knows often my hands are so tired from handling cables &c. that I do not do very well with this pen.
This is just an outburst—and regard it as such; suddenly like the whole bourgeois soul being terrified at time’s passing, most especially furious to watch any of it wasted, as often the Canal seems to do. So much to learn and to think, no time for indulgences. I feel possessed. Soon will write a better letter.
Love,
W.
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[15 January 1948]
dear Mother.
Many thanks for your letter. I can’t do anything else now—purely nervous temper—so shall try to write you. I mean I can’t work. It is 1030 in the morning, I am to go out to work at 230—and somehow can’t write. Largely this restriction on the typewriter and not being able to feel free and unrestrained—difficult anyway in the morning—and I can’t work. I don’t know what the right conditions are or even will be. Now I have the novel outlined, quite definitely (and continuously) in my mind. But for writing it that is the work. I am continuously upset, short tempered with most of the people I run into. I think what I shall do is work on here for about 3 more months, meanwhile reading, note-taking, trying to write. By then I should have saved around 300$. Then get a job on a boat going out of here for a couple of months. Then with a little money be able to do just as I wish. I don’t know. I can’t work unless it is in a place where I can come in at any hour of night put on lights and use the typewriter. We shall see. Meanwhile time is not being wasted I think because I am reading and thinking—sometimes with febrile excitement as a few days ago a play by Sartre called Les Mouches and also am making the money necessary to human dignity or at least solitary existence which is promised.
Of course letters from N.Y. excite me. I had a good one from Connie yesterday—and yours today with mention of Bernie &c. &c. You know he is rather simple, not a great mind—or at least not a good creative one (I am afraid, and he wants to be a good novelist, that is his tragedy, the more so since no one will see it as tragedy—can’t take him seriously for long)—and I know it is simply indulgence to myself that makes me like to be with him, but I do miss him he is so kind, and there are few of those.
The only New Orleans person I can think of is Fischer Hayes. God knows what he is doing with a magazine—it couldn’t be a very brilliant one. I heard he had married. Anyhow whatever the circumstances I should like to publish that story almost anywhere. So here is the next of the endless string of favours I ask of you. The name of the story—considerably rewritten since Hayes saw it—is “The Myth Remains.” You may remember reading it. It is in Massapequa, and in a manila envelop with other stories, God knows where. But probably either on or in my desk or on the balcony. Not among the envelops on the landing, those are Chandler’s (things I wouldn’t be caught dead writing!). If you could pick it up next time you are out there, and meanwhile I shall hope to hear from whoever this New O—person is and write you.
Just before picking up your letter this morning I sent one off to father—brief cheery I think newsy bit. The prospect of publishing anything excites me as always. Bad business.
Now I remember the name of Bernie’s clock is Thrill. And I should appreciate your sending me one very much. Yes the place is Tourneau—Madison at about 49th. (Lord how I miss New York!—You see what I am occupied with now is this whole business of the myth—tradition—where one belongs. And while disciplining myself to behave according as my intellect teaches me—that we are alone, and all of these vanities and seekings (the church, a wife, father &c.) are seekings for some myth by the use of which we can escape the truth of aloneness. Poor Bernie, he won’t accept it, nor Jake that more successfully. But that is the whole idea (message) of my novel. I’d rather talk with you about it, the letter is so unsatisfactory but I have to write it down. I am afraid my letters are getting worse, also handwriting.
Again many thanks for the check. And so happy to know you are having the pleasant (pleasant hell it sounds hilarious) winter you deserve.
Love,
Bill
Les Mouches: 1943 adaptation of the classical myth of Orestes and Electra avenging the death of their father; published in English translation by Stuart Gilbert in 1946 as The Flies.
Connie: probably Constance Smith: see note to 4 May 1948.
Fischer Hayes: called S. F. Hays in the next letter, apparently the painter “Sam Hays” mentioned earlier (9 March 1947).
Chandler’s: Brossard’s stories were however being published in little magazines at this time.
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[19 January 1948]
dear Mother—
Just a note to say I have heard from S. F. Hays, with a prospectus of the new magazine, which looks highly creditible. And to entreat you, on your first trip to Massapequa, to pick up that M.S.—“The Myth Remains”. Now it must be in a large envelop with other stories, paper clipped. Not loose in a drawer—such might be an earlier version, and not to be shown. One of the other stories is “In Dreams I Kiss Your Hand, Madame.” Don’t bother with the other stories. I think the envelop has a large number 1 or I on the outside, and addressed to me from Harper’s Bazaar—almost certain it is on top of the desk. Will you please send it to:
Miss Cornelia P. Claiborne
153 East 48th Street, N.Y.C.—and meanwhile I have written her a note asking her to return it to you if she doesn’t want it.
Please pardon the outbursts I’ve been sending you. Now things are getting settled, I have a better system of time for myself. Coming in at midnight, I work on my novel until about 4 am—then sleep late. Tell G. S. B. to keep his shirt on. I am working hard, hope to have some money too when I show up there in the summer.
I am even drinking hot-water “lemon” juice when I get up! And have many good books from the library, and two new pairs of pants (not Chipp). The job isn’t bad, except for the often hours of inactivity which madden me, any wasting of time now does. But the new novel, with incredible slowness, pieces itself together. And worthwhile thought is rampant. If I can stay with this life for a few months, perhaps I can show up with first novel draft, but not dependent on its success—so if it doesn’t go I’ll have money next fall to go abroad and study and continue to write.
Now it is past noon—I must make my little lunch (ham sandwich, peanut-butter sandw., and onion sandwich) (I keep the food in a drawer of my dresser) and be off for the breadwinning.
Love to you,
Will
PS. Another favour, if this incarceration is to last. If you could put aside the book review sections of the Sunday Times, and send them to me every 3 or 4 weeks, I should appreciate it greatly. Haven’t seen it for so long, and get curious about current state of “literature”.
“In Dreams I Kiss Your Hand, Madame”: an early version of Recktall Brown’s Christmas party in R (II.8). It was posthumously published in Ninth Letter 4.2 (Fall/Winter 2007): 113–17, and reprinted in Harper’s, August 2008, 29–32.
G. S. B.: unidentified.
Chipp: a men’s clothing store in Harvard Square and later in Manhattan.
To Katherine Anne Porter
[American short-story writer and novelist (1890–1980). WG wrote to praise her essay “Gertrude Stein: A Self-Portrait” in the December 1947 issue of Harper’s. (It was retitled “The Wooden Umbrella” in her Collected Essays.) He would write two more letters to her in April and May of 1948.]
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
21 january, 48
My dear Miss Porter.
A friend at Harper’s was kind enough to send me your address—I hope you don’t mind—when I wrote him asking for it, in order that I might be able to tell you how much your piece on Gertrude Stein provoked and cleared up and articulated for me.
To get this out of the way, I am one of the thousands of Harvard boys who never learned a trade, and are writing novels furiously with both hands. In order to avoid the mental waste (conversation &c.) that staying in New York imposes, I am here working on a crane on the canal and writing the inevitable novel at night.
I have never written such a letter as this—never felt impelled to (but once, in college, an outburst which I fortunately did not mail to Markova, after seeing her ‘Giselle’) —But your piece on Gertrude Stein—and your letter that accompanied it—kept me occupied for three days. And since I have no one here to talk with about it—thank heavens—I presume to write you. Having read very little of your work—remember being greatly impressed by ‘Pale Horse’—so none of that comes in.
How you have put the finger on Miss Stein. Because she has worried me—not for as long nor as intelligently as she has you certainly, but since I have come on so many acclamations of her work, read and been excited and cons[t]ernated, and not realised that emptiness until you told me about it. I read your piece just nodding ignorantly throughout, agreeing, failing to understand the failure in her which you were accounting. Expecting it to be simply another laudatory article like so many that explain and analyse an artist away, into senseless admiration (the kind Mr. Maugham is managing now in Atlantic). Toward the end of your piece I was seriously troubled—how far can a writers’ writer go? (V. “She and Alice B. Toklas enjoyed both the wars—”) —until I found your letter in the front of the magasine. Then I began to understand, and started the investigation with you again. Thank God someone has found her defeat, and accused her of it. And it was a great thing because it should teach us afterward places where the answer is not.
Certainly she did it with a monumental thoroughness. Now “Everything being equal, unimportant in itself, important because it happened to her and she was writing about it”—was a great trick. And: “her judgements were neither moral nor intellectual, and least of all aesthetic, indeed they were not even judgements—” which in this time of people judging people is in a way admirable. But that her nihilism was, eventually, culpable—and that her rewards did finally reach her, “struggling to unfold” as she did, all wrong somehow and almost knowing it. Her absolute denial of responsibility—and this is what always troubled me most—made so much possible. And how your clearly-accounted accusation shows the result.
It must have been a fantastically big talent—and I feel that we are fortunate that she used it as she did, teaching by that example (when understood, as your piece helped me to do)—for in our time if we do not understand and recognise the responsibility of freedom we are lost.
I should look forward to a piece on Waugh; though mine is the accepted blithe opinion of “a very clever one who knew he was writing for a very sick time.”
Thank you again, for writing what you did, and for allowing this letter.
Sincerely,
William Gaddis
Markova [...] ‘Giselle’: Alicia Markova (1910–2004), English ballerina, known for her starring role in Adolphe Adam’s ballet standard Giselle (1841).
‘Pale Horse’: in Porter’s short-story collection Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939).
V.: an old scholarly abbreviation (vide: see) that WG occasionally uses.
Mr. Maugham: W. Somerset Maugham: English novelist and playwright (1874–1965). In 1947 Maugham began publishing a series of appreciative essays on classic authors like Flaubert, Fielding, Balzac, et al.
your letter: Porter explains that she has read virtually all of Stein’s books and that Stein “has had, I realize, a horrid fascination for me, really horrid, for I have a horror of her kind of mind and being; she was one of the blights and symptoms of her very sick times.”
Waugh: Evelyn Waugh (1903–66), English novelist (see letter of January 1949). Porter writes in the aforementioned letter in Harper’s that long ago she read Waugh’s Black Mischief (1932) and felt “that he was either a very sick man or a very clever one who knew he was writing for a very sick time.”
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[23 January 1948]
dear Mother—
Thanks, thanks again. And for having been so good as to take care of June Kingsbury. I must write them a letter. But can’t think of them at the moment, somehow makes me nervous to do so.
If your letter sounded lecturish certainly it was warranted by the outbursts I’ve been sending you. For which I apologise. I think I am getting hold now: the job, though still at times maddening when I am unoccupied, goes on with a minimum of difficulty. And the novel (in the most excruciating handwriting you have ever seen) is now two unfinished chapters, but I think good, and am comparatively happy about it—when it goes well I am fine, when not; unbearable. A black girl in the place where I eat occasionally accuses me of looking “vexed”—which in this West-Indian dialect means angry. So I tell her I’m vexed at the small portion she has put on my plate, and she tries to make up for it.
Two good letters from John Snow, to which I sent a rather excited answer—he probably thinks me insane by now. Also Eric Larrabee at Harper’s sent me the address of Katherine Anne Porter, a modern writer of some repute, and I have written her to say how much I enjoyed her piece on Gertrude Stein in the recent Harpers. Never done such a thing before, but that article certainly warranted it. Correspondence a good thing, though even it often seems a waste to me.
Please excuse my haste—my “lunch” (a munificent affair—one ham-cheese, one onion-cheese, one peanut-butter-marmalade sandw., all made by my busy hands) hangs from the light cord, so the ants won’t get it—and I must pull it down and be off.
Love
Bill
June Kingsbury: wife of WG’s Merricourt’s headmaster.
Eric Larrabee: (1922–90), managing editor of Harper’s from 1946 to 1958; WG met him at Harvard.
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[29 January 1948]
dear Mother.
I have got the clock. What a charming little thing it is! to have the onerous duty of rousing me from good sleep or a good book—and I am finding so many—to send me out to the enclosed scene. And many thanks for sending off that story. Yes, it is supposed to end as you quote it—heaven knows if it should or not—but I can’t tell now, it is none of my concern now the thing is written I am through with it.
The lemon juice is me trying to see if there is anything in this world or the next that will make or let my face be itself without those horrible ‘things’—and at the moment it seems to be working! though it may be simply that the life I lead is one of exemplary dullness and regularity. But I shall continue the experiment—Lord, if it is as simple as that, a lemon a day. I can hardly think so.
Each of my letters, you know by now, asks some favour of you. This one is less involved than many—a book which I can’t get down here. In fact you may not be able to in N.Y.—it being only recently out in France. The author is named Rousset; the title La Vie Concentrationaire or Le Monde Concentrationaire. You might try a store called Coin de France on 48th St, or Brentano; and there’s a good French book store on that Radio City promenade. Don’t give too much effort to it, it may well not be available. [...]
A splendid letter from Jacob—after so many of the talks, the scenes I have been through with him, what I have seen him go through, you may imagine how happy I am that he can write: “When I’m alone I’m more content than I’ve been in years . . .” not that I don’t watch him with some element of unChristian jealousy!
Your mention of my “plans” sounding “glorious” is somewhat disconcerting. I must confess, they do not at all hold consistent, even from day to day. The illusion of studying again—at Oxford or Zurich or Neuchatel—something which I allow myself to indulge occasionally. If when the time comes I can manage it, all the better. But hardly ‘plans’! At least I am (1) earning and saving (2) thinking reading and writing—which is not time wasted dreaming. The novel harrows me all the time, sometimes it looks all right, at others impossible. (The latter at the moment). It must take time and quiet writing: there is so much of desperation in it, that it cannot be written in desperation, if you follow me.
One thing though: to keep away from America. Except for New York and Long Island, but America I have such pity for, fury at, why are Americans so awful, their voices, everything. You can’t imagine Pedro Miguel, what the Americans have done in “civilising” this strip called Canal Zone, how they have sterilized it. And why do they feel it incumbent upon them to behave with rudeness everywhere away from home? Barren ignorance is most horrible when it is in power—the picture of the American soldier abroad will never cease to make me shudder. And the prospect of another war, wanting to fight the good fight and not finding it in my country’s side, worst of all.
Sorry to end on a dismal note—end of paper.
Love,
W.
Rousset: L’Univers concentrationnaire (1946) by French political activist David Rousset (1912–97) is about the concentration camp at Buchenwald, where he was imprisoned. It was published in English translation as A World Apart in 1951.
To Ida Williams Way
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
18 February 1948
dear Granga.
Many thanks for the Keystone View offer. I have been sitting over 3pm breakfast (I worked until 7 this morning) trying to think it out clearly. But first let me give you an idea of my present circumstances. I am, you know, spending all of my free time working on this novel; some times it looks good to me—as though it deserves all my time—and some times quite worthless. So clearly I am in no position to judge, and the only thing to do is to continue to work on it. Except for the fact that I lead a compleatly lonely life here, this life isn’t too conducive to writing and clear thinking. Living in a large building where I can’t use my typewriter because of other men resting &c. is one thing; then the Canal Zone, which is a sterile American monstrosity; and the job, which takes a good deal out of me. I am hoping now to hang on for about 8 more weeks, until early in April. And since I am living very close to the wall, spending as little as possible, by then I should have around 500$ put by, enough to travel down here, settle somewhere for a little while and write unhindered. Plan to be back in N.Y. around the middle of June.
Do you think it would be worthwhile? the photographing? And would it cost me, to get around here and take pictures? When I leave I’m going up into the interior—toward the Costa Rica border (and probably on to Costa Rica) to see what this jungle country really looks like. Certainly an opportunity for photography. But you will understand, I shan’t have the money to spend traveling for that—for taking the pictures I mean. You see, I have a pretty vague picture of the set-up. It is awful to be this way, to have both time and money mean so much. But that’s the corner I’m in. Also I must mention, no cameras allowed on the canal, if they should want some pictures here. Anyhow, if I had some better idea of how extensive a tour they wanted, and who would foot the bill, and what sort of remuneration, &c. And if, after all of this whining, it sounds feasible, you might let me know.
I wrote Uncle Oscar, and enclosed a picture card which may please him—and am half expecting, any day, to get an undecipherable answer.
And news from New York is good, although I am just as glad to be here for this winter.
Thanks for your letters—and the Valentine—and now I must get back down to business.
Love,
W.
Keystone View: a Pennsylvania company that produced stereoscopic images.
Uncle Oscar: Oscar Rhodes (1862–19??). The protagonist of A Frolic of His Own is named Oscar.
To Charles Socarides
[A Harvard friend; see note to letter of late February 1943. This is the earliest letter to explain the essential idea and plot of R.]
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[February or March 1948]
dear Charles.
First—please don’t be alarmed by the weight of a correspondence which I may seem to be thrusting on you. But when you write a letter like this that I have just received, honestly I go quite off my head with excitement. Am fearfully nervous now.
All because I have been away for 3 days, on a neighboring island, working frantically on this novel. Which looks so bad. But here: you see, what you say in these letters—most specifically this last—upset me because the pictures you draw, the facts you offer, are just as this novel is growing. It is a good novel, terrific, the whole thread of the story, the happenings, the franticness. The man who (metaphorically) sells himself to the devil, the young man hunting so for father figure, chasing the older to his (younger’s) death. And the “girl”—who finally compleatly loses her identity, she who has tried to make an original myth is lost because her last witness (a fellow who takes heroin) is sent to jail—the young man (‘hero’) the informer. Here the frantic point: that it all happened. Not really, maybe, but with the facts in recent life and my running, it happened. All the time, every minute the thing grows in me, I “think of” (or remember) new facts of the novel—the Truth About the Past (alternate title). (The title is Ducdame, called ‘some people who were naked’). But this growing fiction fits so insanely well with facts of life that sometimes I can not stand it, must burst (as I am doing here). And then I ruin it by bad writing. Like trying to be clever—this perhaps because I am afraid to be sincere? But I watch myself ruin it. And then—because when I was writing in college I went so over board, now it must be reserved, understated, intimated. Or bad bits of writing just run on. Look: “There are few instances when we are not trying to control time; either frantically urging it on, or fearfully watching its winged chariot ragging by, spattering us with the mud that we call memory.” Isn’t that awful. You see, it just happened, was out of my control until the sentence reached the period. To be facile can kill what must be alive.
That’s why I hated Wolfe—that he cried out so. Because my point is, no crying out, no pity. We are alone, naked—and nakedness must choose between vulgarity and reason. Every one of us, responsible. Still those lines you quote (Wolfe) excite me horribly. Not to have Forster’s understatement. No room for Lawrence’s lust. Perhaps Flaubert, or Gide. But I am not good enough as they. It is sickening this killing the best-loved—work.
Now I should like to see you, if you could look at this thing, flatly condense (parts of) it—the writing, exposition. God I know all this fear, but have no sympathy with it. Fools. I can not afford to be one.
As though your letter anticipated what I am just putting down as fiction.
I can’t come home before June. Because of money. Always that. After June I can live on Long Island, not before summer though, you see? Must work on this goddamned canal until April, hope to save around 600$, enough to live on until June and get home. I hate it, paid 12$ a day—or night—to waste. Now it is 10:15pm—and I must be at the canal at 11, “work” until 7am. But I have to because of money. Perhaps good I don’t have money, crazy in love with the daughter of this local island’s governor—not Mex, Panamanian, but Spanish. Splendid nose. Good Werther love, doesn’t trouble her. It is hell not to have either the time nor the money to live.
Then there is a man here with a sail boat going to Sweden. And if the novel suddenly looks too bad I may go, he needs someone to work, a very small boat, sail boat.
God the running, running. You understand it, don’t you? I almost do. But if I can’t make a good novel then I must keep running, until I know all through me—not just as a philosophical fact, as truth which I “believe” and am trying to sell—but can sit down and know without having to try to sell it (writing) to everybody.
Thanks. I shall write you.
W.
Ducdame, called ‘some people who were naked’: “Ducdame” is a nonsense word from Jaques’s song in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, which he facetiously defines as “a Greek invocation to call fools into a circle” (5.2.53). “Some people who were naked” probably derives from Pirandello’s play Naked (see 7 April 1948).
time [...] its winged chariot: an image from Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress” (c. 1650).
Wolfe [...] those lines you quote: perhaps Socarides quoted those lines near the end of Look Homeward, Angel (1929): “Inevitable catharsis by the threads of chaos. Unswerving punctuality of chance. Apexical summation, from the billion deaths of possibility, of things done.” WG was so struck by the phrase “unswerving punctuality of chance” that he used it in all five of his novels (R 9, J R 486, CG 223, FHO 50, 258, AA 63).
Werther: the suicidal hero of Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[late Feb/early March? 1948]
dear Mother—
An outburst. But I have to burst out somewhere. Having just spent 50$—but on what. Two magnificent suitcases. All English made, beautiful leather, locks, &c. Like Brooks sells for 45$ (the small one, I paid 18) and 87$ (big one I paid 23.50$)——Well. So now I have my little suitcase to carry about manuscripts in and look like the Fuller Brush man. I should have been a fool to miss it—and since it looks like I am going to spend a rather peripatetic (that means doing things while moving about) youth, all the better.
I have your letter—and hope you do get to Virginia this weekend—I am off to work now, go to Taboga at 6 am tomorrow. Hot spit. With typewriter. This novel, dear God. If only I could stop living for a little and do it. But you may imagine the sort of life I lead if packing 2 cans of beans, six of sardines, a loaf of bread and a box of cinnamon buns, and going off to an island for 3 days alone excites me so that my handwriting gets like this. Got to write a novel, got to work and save, got to go to Costa Rica, to Haiti, to Jamaica, got to know people, write letters, got to read, study, think, learn—got (at the moment) to go to the dentist — — — Isn’t it fantastic? Wonderful? I am going off my trolley—so much. But most of all I have got to finish a good novel, don’t I. Because that’s what I’ve set myself to do. And when one forces one’s self to rise above the idiotic futility of it all, the vanity of human wishes, the acquisition of “things” (vis. luggage)—then it is splendid.
I had wondered about you and the Harvard Club—and am so glad it is as good as you write it.
I don’t think I could stand Crime & Punishment on the stage. Who was this Dolly Hass—Sonia? What an opportunity that part would be for a young actress. She could probably never play a part again.
Main reason for this, I have so many ideas, for writing. But they must be written mustn’t they? You see I suddenly find myself to engulfed with new thoughts, interpretations, impressions, Revelations, that I can’t sit still to finish one. Well, you know. I’ll get over this. (In psychology we call it Euphoria).
And many thanks. I await the civilised cigarettes and reading matter (if that book doesn’t sober me up, nothing will).
So did you go to Williamsburg? And be reckless enough (how you and I give ourselves gifts, with such guilty pleasure) to take a sleeper. I hope so.
Love,
W.
Fuller Brush man: archetypal door-to-door salesman of the early twentieth century. the vanity of human wishes: title of a pessimistic poem (1749) by Samuel Johnson.
Crime Punishment on the stage: opened in New York in January 1948, starring John Gielgud as Raskolnikov and German-born actress Dolly Haas as Sonia.
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[10 March 1948]
dear Mother.
You were so good to have sent this divination book right off. I have just got it; and of course it is in a way preposterous, and foolishness. But quite exactly what I wanted, and thank you.
Sometimes this life gets so horrid; but then, the time I have set myself runs out in 5 weeks! Dear God, to be ‘free’ again briefly. But then, the reading I have been doing recently (except for the New Testament, such a wonder)—has not been of a high character—Dostoevski’s House of the Dead—an account of his Siberian imprisonment, and one cannot help but find analogies to the sterile barbarity of the Zone. Incidentally, we haven’t had an extended talk about Americans. I am so glad you managed Virginia. When things are exceptionally woeful, I go in to Panama and simply walk. Such colours, and unarranged humanity, and rest. A lime-green building with brown trim, or another brown with blue, and pink, and so much wonderful white. Tomorrow night I am going in, and Juancho—this kind fellow who is a judge, and could ‘write’, so nice to me, humanly so—is going to play for me the Messiah, 35 sides to its recording! How I look forward to it, music is so badly missed.
A very distracting letter from John Snow. I shall show it you; he thinks he is well-off, but you may read it and may understand why I don’t see going back to Harvard, where he is. Very sad.
And Granga and I seem to have got up a regular correspondence! Glad of course that you are passing such a jolly and busy winter. I trust you still attend your ceramic classes in the midst of all that gaiety! Eh?
Since I am on very bad terms with myself—writing going badly, so I have no sympathy here—I shall cut short, before I begin railing at something.
Love,
Bill
divination book: probably The Book of Fate, ascribed to Napoleon, first published in 1822, reprinted often thereafter, and quoted a few times in R (137, 754).
Dostoevski’s House of the Dead: documentary novel first published in 1861–62. 35 sides: 78 rpm phonograph records held only about four or five minutes of music per side.
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[13 March 1948]
dear Mother.
One thing I do not understand. You know, I left N.Y. with comparatively little luggage. And now this room is littered. Junk all over the place, and all over the walls, &c. Apparently I am a real candidate for the studio; but I cannot understand how these things just accummulate.
This morning I rode into Balboa with the foreman on our job—he says he thinks it will last for 3 or 4 more weeks. And then I find that I cannot get the reduced rate back to the U.S.—that is 40$, the regular rate being 180$! So I guess I shall go up to Costa Rica as tenatively planned. Have recently been reading about Eugene O’Neill—and am furious that one can no longer live as he did—just wandering about, one job, one ship to another. No. To travel now—and this most especially for the woeful American—one must have money, and be ready to pay at every turn. [...]
Well—that little business can wait another couple of weeks—since I am just now getting no writing done at all, only making voluminous notes, and a few sketches for what should be splendid stage sets. (How one wanders, wanders, from one creative world to another—) (And this morning I got from the library a book on plays and two books of plays—perhaps the childhood influence of the ever-beautiful Frances Henderson—). [...]
Love,
W.
Frances Henderson: unidentified.
To Katherine Anne Porter
Panama, R.P.
7 April, 1948.
My dear Miss Porter.
Perhaps you can understand how well your letter was received, how many times read; and how much I want to repay your kindness by trying very hard to write you an honest letter. I find it difficult always (or rather of course make it difficult for myself) to write an honest letter because I am not clear yet about writing a letter, and especially as now when this writing I do is not going well then to write a letter is more strange still because it becomes an outlet which it should not be but the writing should be. Not that the writing is an outlet, but as though the outlet is the purpose. Well when the writing is consistently unsatisfactory then the purpose is all confused, and one may run to letter-writing saying, —Here is what I have to say, you will see how important it is, and what a worthy one I am . . . no, I haven’t quite finished the story, the novel, the play, but meanwhile you must appreciate . . . Well you understand, that it can be like that morass of conversation. And so now often in the middle of a letter I must stop and say, —What filthy little vanity is this, Willie, that you are relishing so. And stop, furious with myself and also the person who does not get the letter. Still it is all wrong, absolutely, to then turn and revel in the idea of not being able to write a letter. You know, I have so many letters from NY that start out, —I started to write you a letter last week, but it turned out to be . . . , and —I have written you twice, and the letters are here unmailed. Well those people are writing to themselves, and would do better to not bother using someone else’s name at the head of the sheet as an excuse. But the vanity of letter-writing, of shouting out for witnesses. I have thought a great deal about this whole insistence on a witness that we all make, that is certainly one reason why so many bad novels are so bad. Much of it seems to be a very American thing too, I see the American with the camera everywhere, that filthy silent witness; and to jump off of the aeroplane when it lands in one country after another: no time to look at the volcano or feel the air except to say to another how hot it is, but (because the ’plane will only be in Guatemala, in Nicaragua, in Costa Rica, for fifteen minutes) that one must get to the counter and send off postal cards with a picture of the volcano he did not see, to witnesses. I have recently finished reading the New Testament, which makes much of witnesses. Now what did Jesus mean, (this is Matthew 9:30, 31, after he has healed a blind man) And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man know it. But they, when they were departed, spread abroad his fame in all that country. Now certainly the largest reason he carried on these miracles was simply for witnesses, later he charges the apostles as witnesses. No; but getting back, everyone running about insisting on having them. (And that often splendid comedian Jimmy Durante’s —Everybody wants to get into the act. Well.) Certainly a prophet needs witnesses, otherwise the whole thing is to little avail. But the instant a piece of writing takes on the note of, —See what I have done, where I have been, what I have read; but do not forget that these things cannot happen to you but through me . . . well then the whole thing is vile, will not do. And the other side of that dirty coin is all of the snivelling confessionals, they are the most infuriating and it seems to be the way the coin is falling now. Oh, these soft-handed little boys who suffer so with themselves and their boys and ‘men’, I am intolerant. Or of the loneliness of our lot, without a poet of stature that sensibility snivels. But Goethe’s (I do not read German, I have learned some by rote—I am trying to be honest) Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt weiss was Ich leide, Allein und abgetrennt von alle Freude—that that stands up in suffering; or Rilke’s Who if I cried would hear me in the angelic orders. This distinction between loneliness and alone-ness. But to start this bad arguement at its beginning: Did you have trouble with people anticipating you? that an idea which you had discovered and formulated for yourself and then were working to deliver it, find it was not yours (in the mean sense) but (if you thought further, with courage and (if you were not mean) gratitude) eventually yours most because given to all, because perhaps one may have the brass to say it is a truth? Well, and so when you said in your letter of distinguishing loneliness and solitude, I was immediately troubled, even (witness this meanness) offended. Do you understand? As though, what business had you, to offer in some fifteen words, what I discovered finally some six or eight months ago, discovered with such triumph! And really what meaner more unchristian thing than one who would try to covet a truth. And these months past I have been running around pounding the board for recognition of aloneness and (this above all) the incumbent responsibility. Discovery indeed! And then to read Sartre’s Les Mouches. This, if ever was, a time to find joy and triumph when truth is shared, and to tear out meanness where it grows, to be Christian. (The only poetry I have been reading here—after the tiresome disappointment of Auden’s The Age of Anxiety—is Eliot; and I say this because a line suddenly comes up, —I am no prophet, but here’s no great matter; I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter &c.)
This business of owning an idea, a line, an image. For instance, I remember finding the notion that some people are ‘not big enough for tragedy’, and believe me I have worked it out in a wonderful number of useless words: and then found it in Forster, in one sentence. (That was four or five years ago, I was in college.) But even now it has happened again, this time not a notion but a line, the title I had settled on for this work I am at now is Some people who were naked, that is what I want, it is the whole idea. And then I have just had recommended to read, and finally had the courage to read, a play by Pirandello, the title of course is Vestire gl’ignudi, Clothing the Naked. That was a start. Then, his heroine, Ersilia, says (with infinite sadness, but with a smile nevertheless) In that case, I shall not be the woman I was, nor the woman I am, but still another! (My Esme (even the name, you see) was one who was uncertain as to her identity, finally could not stand to be alone (knowing though that aloneness is essential) because without a witness she could not know if she had really done things, and finally loses all concept of being anyone at all) (Ersilia finishes the P—play with, —that I am dead . . . yes, and that I died naked!) My elder protagonist to be one who (exactly in the same manner of Faust, paraphrasus of the circumstances, dog and all) sells himself to the devil (a publisher, entrepreneur) to forge paintings. And to find P—’s protagonist sending the letter to Ersilia signed Faust. Well.
But you will see the whole thing clearly enough to understand that it cannot be simply this disconcerting discovery and relinquishing of ideas. Because there they are anyhow, and not new. And so one is forced to say ‘style’? That word! And what ridiculous arguements, wasteful discussions it brings forth. I remember one, in which I had commented on what a fine style in David Hume; my antogonist started immediately with saying that Hume did not try to write in a style, but the style came about as he wrote writing to say what he had to say. You see where this arguement is going. Two people without style arguing on the same side against eachother; still I would try to say that, now that Hume is through, one reads him and sees an excellent style, after the fact. Glenway Wescott a fine stylist; and Rebecca West extraordinary: (so extraordinary, that once during the most recent war I was working on the New Yorker, and one of her pieces, a report on a trial for treason, described with such wondrous style a room in Lords, &c &c, that we could not eventually make out which room she meant: she did not once say, the fact simply wasn’t there in all of that style.) And a preoccupation with style for itself is admittedly ruinous.
Penned in, in your letter (of writing): but it is fun, isn’t it . . . well that was compleatly disconcerting, effacing, happy, infuriating. I don’t know, when it begins to be fun then I know myself badly enough to immediately hold it suspect. You know, the temptations? Well, to be clever, for one. That is one of the worst, and how it kills. Then to preach and prophesy (Remember, it was I who told you this . . .); the tangent of going off and having fun for its own sake, no matter that it contributes nothing (though some do it infuriatingly well); and then the absolute necessity of making a characters’s experience his and not one’s own, and that is certainly one of the most difficult requisites. To discriminate, perhaps that is the most important. Here is a line of Katherine Mansfield’s, you may recognise it, from a book review of about 25years back: —These are moments that set the soul yearning to be taken suddenly, snatched out of the very heart of some fearful joy, and set before its Maker, hatless, dishevelled and gay, with its spirit unbroken. (Now allow this presumption, simply for the sake of the hypothesis) That if I had written that I can imagine being very doubtful about it; but here I found it (the collection of reviews called Novels and Novelists) with fantastic pleasure, could not put it down, was troubled that it should be buried in an old book review. Or if I had been sure of it, should have wanted it published prominently, as mine, perhaps a little edition by itself. You see how ‘lamentable’ this is, will not do.
It is enthusiasm that I mistrust.
Presumption may not be the worst of sins (though it is when I think of it) but it is pretty bad. So there is the worry of pretentious and presumptious work. But I could no more sit down and write When the mountain fell (Ramuz) than . . . well, the usual things people say, ‘fly’ for instance. Do you know the trouble I am in, right now, that any part of this letter may sound pretentious? I started a novel in Mexico last winter, it was an allegory, and Good and Evil were two apparently always drunk fellows who gave driving lessons in a dual-control car. Well, writing that was fun, so damn’ much fun that it took me five months to realise how pretentious it was, and there is a kind fellow at an agency in NY (Harold Matson’s) who wanted me to finish it, he wanted to sell it. Thank God a couple of publishers said no thanks &c and I came to Panama, to write an honest novel. Right now that is what he thinks I am doing. Oh dear.
In the Canal Zone I have done a great deal of ‘thinking’ (I want it to be) about our country, which depresses me but must not to the point of simply saying oh dear. (And then I came on this, in James, 1:23,24) For if any be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. And Paul to the Corinthians, 8:11 Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to will, so there may be a performance also out of that which ye have.) At any rate, this Zone is all wrong, a transgression because of its sterility. Now (for a while) I am free of the concrete-buster and the air-hammers shaking me to pieces, and the crane, though all of that was good, to do work, it was the enforced idleness that was bad, being paid to be idle was horrible. It is terrifying that people can live here and for years, they bring up their children here and the children are empty boxes too, they usually stay, and so many of them are pale and I cannot love pale people in a sun country. Bloodless somehow, the Panamanians have blood, and the west indians who are niggers and are held off with disapproval and low wages but the Americans have radios, you can walk up a street past the house after house the same colour (that is the regulation, they are grey) and hear every radio playing the same programme, the mechanical-laugh programme from the States, the movies do well also new cars running around like crazy with the wives who are also some of them the young pretty ones pretty slick articles, but not when they stay and stay, then they are dumpy and sad and all the same colour but no one has told them they are sad so they do not know they are but talk to eachother instead. And no one goes into Panama except he is a man and then for the reasons that any sailor is glad to make a port, and as wearily ready to leave it.
To get to the war. Two years ago I wrote (badly) a story of a man who is devastated by a dream of Armageddon—with no idea that H. G. Wells had written a (bad) story called “A Dream of Armageddon”—and I have been worrying it since. Reading the prophesies in the Great Pyramid, or Nostradamus, and in Ezekial and Revelation. And have been obsessed with the idea of Armageddon coming in 1949. That we will live to see Good & Evil defined in battle? And then to have followed (with the lazy layman’s eye, I confess) the developments in political geography since, and now. This thing (it is still just a thing) that I am trying to work on now ends with that; and so I have put myself under this insane press of time, that it must be done before, just before, this final violence comes. That we must choose, there is the trouble. And how are we equipped? All of the thesis of despair in “That is not what I meant at all” (and the Kaiser, after the other war—as Lawrence quotes him in Women in Love—This is not what I meant, this is not how I meant it to come out at all . . .) That intentions are most wasteful of the energies we spend, I believe. Except perhaps bitterness, somehow bitterness is the worst, the least pardonable, the most culpably wasteful.
When there was a civil war in Spain, the young Americans who wanted to fight the Good Fight went to fight Fascism, beside the Communists. And now see us. What is it? that in these countries without a middle class there is material only for the extremes, and that only the extremes war? Here is Costa Rica. Where does one fight? Or is it two evils, which will not abide one another? These are not precious thoughts, and the precious will have to think them and choose. And after there will not be one small voice saying, That is not what I meant.
There is such an accumulation. Did you have the feeling, early when you were writing, a novel, say, that you must get everything in? Everything. And where will this fit? . . . and this? Idea, and incident, and image. It is as though (I thought last night, thinking how should I say to you what it is like) one were in deep water, and this accumulation bobbing all around, as far as can be seen but all within reach; and that one may grab at any of them to present, to say Look, does this not prove me worthy? and another to swim firmly past them, through the water, while another still (and this somehow a woman) not for a moment recognising the water, but at intelligent leisure take this, and that, perfectly chosen, while further on one may float among it all on his back and the eyes closed, while his considerate (civilised) neighbor drowns with silent dignity. And as though I were in the middle of mine, beating the water into a foam but not waves, shouting Whoopee, Look! Look! at all these things of mine, they are mine, take any that you want. (They are mine.) And then, with Mr Eliot, the moment of silence, I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing for me.
I have tried to write you honestly. And have justified the lengthiness by believing that you will read it all, if you were good enough to spend the time for me that you did in the letter you sent to me. Of course, there are other things, of vulgarity and reason, and Salvation wearing a political face (mostly stolen from Mann). And if it has seemed upset, I have quit the Canal Zone and if I can get papers and this money together am going to fly to Costa Rica in the morning. I have not put down an address (and even that has come to seem presumptuous, to put a return on a letter, presuming an answer) because I intend to have none for a while. Because I do not wish to say here why I am going to San Jose, because anything I should say would be intentions, and those I will not trust.
With it all, if things go as I ‘intend’, I hope to be back in New York June or July, and if I could meet you, and talk, not chatter, perhaps you would talk.
Cordially, and sincerely,
William Gaddis
Jimmy Durante: (1893–1980), American comic actor and songwriter.
Goethe’s [...] Freude: “Only one who yearns knows what I suffer, alone and separate from all joy”—the opening lines from a once-famous song in Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795–96).
Rilke’s Who if I cried: the opening line of the first of his Duino Elegies (1923), quoted a few times in R.
Auden’s The Age of Anxiety: book-length poem published in 1947.
I am no prophet [...] upon a platter: from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), though lines reversed.
‘not big enough for tragedy’ [...] Forster: in his Aspects of the Novel, Forster writes: “For we must admit that flat people are not in themselves as big achievements as round ones, and also that they are best when they are comic. A serious or tragic flat character is apt to be a bore” (Harcourt Brace, 1957, 111).
Pirandello [...] Clothing the Naked: Vestire gli ignudi, a 1923 play by the Italian playwright and novelist Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) about a young woman named Ersilia Drei and five men who try to “strip” her of the romantic fantasies she has created about herself as well as “clothe” her in their own fantasies about her. WG read Arthur Livingston’s translation of Naked (as he titled it) in Each In His Own Way and Two Other Plays (Dutton, 1926).
Glenway Wescott: American novelist and journalist (1901–87).
Rebecca West: English novelist and journalist (1892–1983); she reported on the Nuremberg Trials (1945–46) for the New Yorker.
Katherine Mansfield’s [...] spirit unbroken: New Zealand short-story writer (1888–1923). As WG notes, the quotation is from her collection Novels and Novelists (1930); a favorite line of his, it is mentioned thrice in R (125, 304, 716) and once in J R (486).
When the mountain fell (Ramuz): English title (1947) of the 1937 novel Derborence by Swiss writer C. F. Ramuz (1878–1947).
kind fellow at an agency: Don Congdon (1918–2009), a well-known literary agent.
H. G. Wells [...] “A Dream of Armageddon”: a 1901 story about a man who has premonitory dreams about the destruction new advances in technology will enable in the future.
prophesies in the Great Pyramid: in Worth Smith’s Miracle of the Ages: The Great Pyramid, mentioned earlier (7 April 1947). Smith predicted, “The final ‘woe’ will begin August 20, 1953. That will be a period during which the whole earth is to be ‘cleansed of its pollutions,’ and which will prepare the people of earth for the actual beginning of Christ’s Millennial Rule” (chap. 9).
“That is not what I meant at all”: another sentence from Eliot’s “Prufrock.”
Women in Love: in the final chapter of D. H. Lawrence’s 1921 novel, Gerald cries, “‘I didn’t want it to be like this—I didn’t want it to be like this,’ he cried to himself. Ursula could but think of the Kaiser’s: ‘Ich habe as nicht gewollt’” (I didn’t intend this [World War I] to happen).
I have heard the mermaids singing: the finest couplet in Eliot’s “Prufrock.”
Mann: the German novelist and essayist Thomas Mann (1875–1955).
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[7 April 1948]
dear Mother.
I am sorry that this will be just a note, to say that I am going up to San Jose tomorrow, and sorry that I haven’t managed to reach you on the telephone. [...]
Now. Do you remember when we talked about Seabrook, the one who involved himself with the Arabs and travelled where there were no PostOffices? And your saying that you could picture me wanting to do just those things. No Arabs here, but my point is simply that I am going to Costa Rica, where they are having some disruption, and there may be postal problems, or I may get out of San Jose—because I do want to look at the country after being shut up in this sink—and may not have a mail-box at hand. That I shall try to write, and Please don’t be concerned (I know from my psychology books that this is idle pleading) if there are not many letters. Of course we both know that I shall probably be shipped out of the country the moment I appear. And then again I may not. One must prepare for eventualities. There.
And I am an American, I know that. It is a damn’ lot of work being one. And grave responsibility? I had a splendid and long letter from Katherine Anne Porter, she the writer. I have filled her cup for her though, sent her five pages of my vagaries to ponder. I feel fine, am healthy, teeth and bones and eyes, shoes shined, slightly nervous (you see I am being honest), full of food. Also (also indeed! Eminently:) I have a little money and when I have to go there you’ll have to take me in.
Will write—and love,
W.
Seabrook: William Seabrook (1884–1945), author of Adventures in Arabia (1927).
some disruption: The Costa Rican legislature’s annulment of the results of the 1948 presidential election resulted in the 44-day Costa Rican Civil War (12 March–24 April 1948), in which rebel forces led by José Figueres defeated government forces (with the tacit approval of the U.S.) and took control of the capital, San José. About 2,000 people died in the conflict.
when I have to go there you’ll have to take me in: from Robert Frost’s memorable definition: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in” (“The Death of the Hired Man,” 1914).
To Edith Gaddis
Gran Hotel Costa Rica
San José, Costa Rica
8 April, 1948
Dear Mother.
Just to say that San Jose is quiet, and cool—about like NY in September—and the only signs of trouble here in the city are truckloads of soldiers who seem to me to be smiling and waving at the girls most of the time. It is a comparatively new city, and so there is none of the temptation to stand about gawking at ancient cathedrals &c, and the mountains around it fine and still not especially alarming as mountains so often are (I can imagine looking out of a window in Interlocken and seeing the Jungfrau!); simply a cool quiet city, with a great sense of dignity about it.
And I have just come in (it is 7:30am) from three cups of splendid cafe-conleche, so rich that one hardly needs sugar. The exchange is around 5 to 1, which sounds fine except that everything seems quite 5 times its price for this foolish American, though of course things are always so on arrival. Am glad to have got out of Panama, still as fond of it, but there is something hurley-burley and hot about that city which was beginning to set me a little on edge. Made my plane here with 7minutes to spare (one is suppose to arrive 1hour early) and of course managed to lose a notebook on a bus, those are the sickening things. But Juan Diaz was such a friend, such a kind fellow; he writes (is 32, the lawyer I have mentioned) and I so hope that there will be some way I can repay his kindness.
Anyhow don’t write to this address; I am paying 6$ a day (without meals) and don’t plan to hang around this lobby much longer. Today hope to go out into the country for a further look at Costa Rica, and shall probably soon enough send you an address. If my letters have sounded distraught about coming up here, you know how one gets all kinds of disturbing word about a country in such a state as this one is; but they seem to regard the little war as simply another piece of necessary business which is being negociated by the proper authorities, and with, as I say, a nice dignity about it.
Love,
Bill
To Edith Gaddis
Western Union Cablegram
Cartago, Costa Rica
17 April 1948
SORRY LETTERLESS NO POST COLD WET UNWASHED
UNSHAVED BAREFOOT BUSY HAPPY LOVE=
W.
To Edith Gaddis
[From “In the Zone”: “The fighting was out around Cartago, where I was handed over to a young captain named Madero and issued a banged-up Springfield that was stolen from me the same day. We leveled an airstrip out there for arms coming in from Guatemala. Life magazine showed up and rearranged the cartridge belt for an old French Hotchkiss over the blond sergeant’s shoulders before they took his picture beside it, and when the arms came in we celebrated with a bottle of raw cane liquor and the sergeant took us home for dinner where I met the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen and passed out at the table” (RSP 37).]
Hotel Pan American
San José, Costa Rica
[26 April 1948]
dear Mother.
Have been for the two weeks past with the army of Figueres, outside in the now pretty battered town of Cartago. Now the revolution is over. And probably when I see you will have much to tell you about it, but right now don’t feel awfully like chattering, have a slight return of the I suppose it is dysentary from Mexico, also painful business with a dentist here, and finally am lying on my back trying to explain the whole thing out to myself. Except for the internal ‘disorder’ and the tooth am in good health.
Let me tell you about the tooth; it is a small subject. In the Canalzone I had some aching in the one next to the excavation of last summer, it is a molar. And so was very pleased with myself when I went to the dentist there without prodding and had him fix it and fill it &c. But the idiot had no Xray machine, and sent me out with all assurances and what I—and I must suppose he—thought was a finished job. Of course a few days ago it started badly again, I got in to San Jose as soon as possible and to a fine young bright well-equipped dentist, whom I left about two hours ago. His Xray showed that the CZ practitioner hadn’t done the whole job, and was ready to extract. Anyhow he says that I may let it go for another 6 or 8 weeks and by then if in NY go to a root canal (that word) specialist who might save it. Or we may take it out here. This business of going through life losing things. I lost my raincoat in the revolution.
Anyhow the Costa Ricans are a splendid people, are handsome, and they don’t dislike Americans as so many Latins do and have reason to. The country here is high and cool, and this city a model of order and organisation.
Forgive me if I don’t go on. This will assure you of my for the moment quiet humourless condition, and give you an address—the one above—where I shall be I think on and off for the next 5 or 6 weeks.
Love,
Bill
To Edith Gaddis
San José, Costa Rica
4 May 1948
dear Mother.
Many thanks for your letter(s), which I had this morning. And pleasant reading on my bed of pain. Yes, I must tell you. Finally, after a rousing night—nothing equals a toothache—I went to call on Dr Saturnino Medal (University Loyola, Honduras, &c) and told him I realised that the foolishness had to stop. (Now remember the NewTestament: (or maybe it is the Old One) —plucking out offending members in order to be whole) Or AE Housman: ‘If it chance your eye offend you, Pluck it out lad, and be whole. But play the man, stand up and end you, When the sickness is your soul.’ At any rate, we plucked out the offending member. Dear heaven, how we worked. And sure enough, the damn’ thing was absessed, and no wonder that my pain had not been simply toothache but usurping other realms as well. To tell the truth, for this past two months I haven’t been feeling great, and (awful truth) have done such painfully little writing that there is that guilt too. Though I have been fairly consistent in taking notes on thought and happening, and now have a horrid accumulation of that. And to assure myself that I not waste all this time given me, have been steadily toiling through AJ Toynbee’s Study of History; losing much of course, it being an abridgement of the original 6 volumes and so many of the references have little meaning to me, with my vacuous background in history. But many revelations too, it is a magnificent book; and of course I want to settle down now and go through the whole 6. Because that brilliant man has somehow the meaning of meaning, and never in a smart way, you know, like so many of the books now: how to be free from nervous strain, how to write, how to read, how to be a Chinaman like Lin Yutang, &c &c. No this man is very humble before knowledge, never pedagogic.
Well. I think it was rather dim of Chandler and (I suppose it was Constance Smith) to not call you, but go busting into the house. Not angry about it of course, it was Chandler’s work and I had told him he could leave it there until anytime he wanted to take it. But that manner of conduct seems to me presumptuous, and above all I cannot abide that. And thoughtless, which makes it all a little sad.
Certainly Hartley Cross had a better life than most men; but I do now wish that I had managed to see him again, or reply to his and his wife’s kindnesses. (But even here I must add that a memorial fund sounds a bit thick to me; and even so far as the subject of the preceeding paragraph.) I have been thinking
To Edith Gaddis recently about Robert L Stevenson. You know, I used to think he was a healthy cultivated and rather satisfied Englishman; and only recently have learned or rather realised, what a wanderer. And in bad health; but still a tramp, vagamundo. Romantic, incorrigably so. And his lines which I think ended up on his stone: These be the lines you wrote (grave?) for me: Here he lies where he longed to be. Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill. I like him. (No memorial fund.)
Now I gather you are enjoying the perennial wonder of spring. And I immediately feel that I should be there, helping you to ‘set the house in order’ and doing all of the things that a man should do and I seem to have avoided since I was six. (Good age.) All of it is thoroughly strange. First, let me say, I have found in this country one of the best societies I hope ever to encounter. And the climate, the countryside itself. The people is of course Catholic, thoroughly. And the way to see it now is not as Granga does with shudders of ignorant horror but you see it here as the foundation of a traditional society. The family is very important, and so unlike our country eminently successful. This is the sort of thing that has happened to most young Americans. That they are profoundly impressed by a self-sufficient society. It is the reason that the people have been so wonderfully hospitable to me: because they could afford it. Then comes the problem that foolish Chandler thought to solve in going to Italy, whose culture he admired from a distance for just these reasons. But he went in a time of troubles, and in addition immediately after the American (soldiery) had got done (or more miserably has not yet finished) setting a thoroughly bad example of Americans. And so (I gather from letters to others) Chandler who had intended to become integrated in that society instead met in Rome some Bulgarians and some French and some somethingelses and saw Lucky Luciano in a bar and—with the inestimable help of the language barrier—was defeated. It is always so.
And now you may understand the great temptation that has come to me. I have told you about the people here, who though thoroughly Westernized still have a culture competent enough to resist the corrupting influence of the American dollar, as, necessarily with the Canal, has happened in Panama. At any rate, since I came up here in the spirit I did, and offered my services to them in their first revolution (because you must understand that this has not been just another banana-republic war, not a Pancho Villa affair either; and the history of CostaRica is remarkably different from Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua &c); that they appreciate that, and there is the sudden strange opportunity of entering this society. I mean, I have been offered jobs, on the strength of my earlier offer of my services to them—because Mother (though I thought it unnecessary to shout about it to you then I did come up with a note from a friend in Panama to one here who was on the staff of the opposition army, and was with that army at Cartago, a town you may have read about.)—And so you see the temptation. Even (de facto) the most really loveliest young lady, with whom I have exchanged about 8 words of miserable Spanish. Imagine a girl called Maria Eugenia (Mar′ya-Ūhenia) Domien. Well.
And you see that it will not do. In a way it is too good. And I do not say that I would refuse it all because of a fear of suddenly being unhappy, feeling that I had had lost, later. No; on the other hand, in fact, it is too good. Because I am an American, and my whole problem lies in American society; that is, in thinking it out, in understanding where that country has gone all wrong, and perhaps eventually being able to contribute something on the way to right it. About 90% of USA needs to be rescued from vulgarity, and it is the responsibility of them—us—all. Doubtless the most critical time in history. It would not do to stay in this good land.
And then of course this wandering, this ‘sense of drift’ Mr. Toynbee calls it. And so within the next few days I plan to go to Puntarenas, a hot port town on the Pacific coast, and live there briefly and try to work; and soon enough go broke, expecting in all confidence and obstinate optimism to be able to pick up a boat when that happens and set out for native shore. Mr Toynbee tells me things that I have only suspected, have been trying desperately to articulate for myself. In this time of social disintegration there is the solution of abandon and that of self-control; of drifting, truancy, and of reason and contribution. All of this time I am between the two: drifting and trying to contribute; living a truant life and coldly insisting that the only thing that will save us from the crushing results of our current vulgarity and abandon is the rational realisation of freedom and its very essence as self-control. And so I still am unsure, for myself, how long the drift will continue. Only I feel that it must end for others, that USA must quit its truancy—all of this with the shadow of a war ahead so horrible and so final. But even that war, like death, is only a possibility and not a fact.
Well you see, I am trying to think. The whole thing has been going on, this disintegration, for over 200 years, when the Christian Church started to lose. Believe me, it is strange to find myself anticipated by a writer of the 18th century. I had written something like this to myself: That today everyone takes it for granted that honesty (Being a Christian) is entirely possible, requires no ingenuity or effort; in other words, is too despicably easy to permit others to see one doing. And far more creditable to show one’s self as clever, as smart, as worldly, and (if you investigate the meaning of the word) sophisticated. And here is what Bishop Butler wrote in 1736: “It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And they treat it accordingly as if in the present age this were an agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world.” And at first I am angry that the things I have had as revelation are very old and well-thought out—and by someone with such style as Bishop Butler too—and am now gradually beginning to realise that it will be better to work with the side which needs support now. That I will afford to share—for imagine the presumption of one who would try to covet a truth!
As for health, I believe that this morning’s excavation will help a lot, clear up the blood. And my intestines have apparently decided that insurrection is to no avail, and have settled down again to the right and reasonable acquittal of their duties. Thank you for the offer of the raincoat. I miss it simply because I am so accustomed to have one as a sort of portmanteau. But heaven knows if it will ever rain. It is now almost 5 months since I have seen rain, and that is rather a nerve-wracking business. If it does not rain soon I shall start for NY if only for that familiar and comforting experience.
I have the sudden premonition that yr. next letter will contain questions (or reprimands) concerning what I sit down to at table these days. And therefore hasten to dispatch this random menu. Otherwise life is better daily, though I must confess that this is no city to work in, my kind of work; too endlessly-pleasantly distracting, if only to walk endlessly through, and many small places for prolonged drinking of coffee. Now am trying to get back to work, also to learn Spanish (still) with splendidly incomprehensible books I buy. Aside from that there is nothing new, thank God. I shall write you soon.
Love,
W.
plucking out offending members: advice offered in Matt. 5:29.
AE Housman: British poet (1859–1936); WG quotes from poem #45 of A Shropshire Lad.
how to be a Chinaman like Lin Yutang: WG is quoting from Cyril Connolly’s (1903–74) “Blueprint for a Silver Age” in the same issue of Harper’s that contained Porter’s essay on Stein (December 1947, 537–44). The visiting British essayist noted that New Yorkers suffered from anxiety, and hence “books on how to be happy, how to attain peace of mind, how to win friends and influence people, how to breathe, how to achieve a cheap sentimental humanism at other people’s expense, how to become a Chinaman like Lin Yutang and make a lot of money, how to be a B’hai or breed chickens (The Ego and I) all sell in millions” (541). WG liked this observation so much he used it again in both J R (477) and in “The Rush for Second Place” (RSP 41). Lin Yutang (1895–1976) was a Chinese philologist, inventor, and writer; Connolly probably had in mind his best-selling Importance of Living (1937).
Constance Smith: a Greenwich Village girlfriend—Sheri Martinelli said WG was “madly in love with her”—who later became head of acquisitions at the Pius XII Memorial Library at Saint Louis University, where she met WG again when he visited St. Louis in 1979.
Hartley Cross: unidentified.
Robert L Stevenson: the British writer (1850–94) is cited several times in R; he traveled widely for his health and settled on the island of Samoa near the end of his life. as Granga does with shudders of ignorant horror: this is how R’s Aunt May regards Catholicism, suggesting WG’s grandmother was partly a model for her.
Lucky Luciano: Sicilian-born American gangster (1897–1962), deported to Italy in 1946.
Pancho Villa: Mexican revolutionary general (1878–1923).
‘sense of drift’: Toynbee writes: “The sense of drift, which is the passive way of feeling the loss of the élan of growth, is one of the most painful of the tribulations that afflict the souls of men and women who are called upon to live their lives in an age of social disintegration” (444).
abandon [...] self-control [...] truancy: all terms from Toynbee: see A Study of History, 440–42.
meaning of the word) sophisticated: that is, practicing sophistry: cleverly deceptive reasoning or behavior.
Bishop Butler [...] pleasures of the world”: quoted by Toynbee (486) from Joseph Butler’s Analogy of Religion.
menu: an Hotel Pan American menu offering a lunch consisting of spam on tostadas (“really a large salad,” WG indicates), pea soup Dutch style, porterhouse steak with creamed cauliflower and French fries, fruit (“pineapple very fresh”), and coffee.
To Edith Gaddis
Puerto Limón, Costa Rica
[11 May 1948]
dear Mother.
I have your note here, forwarded from San Jose, as any others will be if you have written more, but I advise to not write more after now because apparently it takes letters a good time to get down here and I am vaguely on my way out. And may not write again, recently don’t feel much like writing letters, unless something importunate occurs, then I shall.
What is to be said about the Music sch. fire? Somehow the whole affair has been wrapped in disaster since I was 5, all of it has always seemed to me hopelessly sad and waiting for just. As for the loss of valuable MSS, well that is what happens when you own things; and if you will own I suppose that insurance is a part of responsible ownership, &c &c. The prospect of the place reopening is abyssmal.
Here in Puerto Limón. With a room in a fairly ramshackle building and the sea under the window endlessly smashing against the seawall that surrounds the town. Very hot, most of the people black, very quiet. I like it quite well, for this raggle-taggle sort of living. I came down here hoping to get a boat back to the states. Tried UnitedFruit, no; of course, these American monopolies I have a cruel feeling about, the devil with them. (But so funny to see, all of the White unitedfruit colony lives behind a barbed-wire fence next the sea. Ech.) Anyhow through the agency of Costa Rican friends I meet one person and then another and think it may well be possible to get work-for-passage on one of their small banana boats; there are some here who have little boats that struggle upto Tampa and Miami loaded with bananas, and since they are all Figueristas (with the oppositionist govt) and since I did what little I could I believe that I shall be able to manage something. Cannot tell how long it will be, probably a week or more, until I can start from Florida. If that business doesn’t work out I may have to take a small boat back to Panama and try to get out from there, we shall see. But if I can make Tampa, I shall either call or wire you (not for $) and fly from there to NY, hoping that you may find it possible to meet me at LaGuardia—with a block-long limousine with chauffer to carry my luggage of course. Unless I find another tampa–NY way, like a car, then will call you when I make NY. There. Like I say, it may be a week (the little boats take 4 or 5 days) or two or three (or four), so don’t be on tenterhooks (whatever they are).
Meanwhile I look at books, at Mr Toynbee’s in particular, try to think & make notes for heaven-knows-what; and subconsciously prepare for recieving NY back into my—well, what? Heart? Perhaps. Afraid I am a rather tatterdemalion affair, somehow my clothes seem all to have worn out at once. If I look woeful when you see me do not be alarmed, it is not because I am woeful (though I am) but getting a little delapidated, and will probably need a haircut.
Love,
Music sch. fire: perhaps a reference to his uncle Ernest’s music school in Brooklyn.
Puerto Limón: large city on the Caribbean Ocean, 75 miles east of San José. It appears to be the model for the Central American town where Otto stays (R I.4).
To Katherine Anne Porter
Pto Limón, CR
May 1948
My dear Miss Porter.
Now I presume to write you again; and I say presume because I cannot tell but that after my last letter you may have wearily shaken your head and said, —There must be some way to put an end to this. But it is a rather unfair game I have been playing with people recently, to write a letter and then finish it saying, —I am sorry but can give no address . . . Well; and if the letter asks questions they have no way of answering, and know I am somewhere making the answers—the wrong ones, but better ones—myself. Or they cannot return argument about some wrong assumption; or they cannot say, —Please stop bothering yourself writing these things to me. No: the postman always rings twice and there is the letter, he must read it and be futilely provoked, or bored without recourse. Or is it instead presumption to assume that the people want to answer the letter? (That business of ‘owing someone a letter’ is horrible.)
Anyhow there are some things I have tried to think about recently, or been provoked over, and wanted to communicate them to you. I am in an Atlantic port waiting for some kind of boat that I can work back to the states on, and fortunately I suppose have not much to read and so I read what I have read and also get a little work done. It has been raining for four days, it rains outside and in one corner of my room, but the bed is in the other corner; but they cannot load bananas and so the days go. It is a place like that lazy man WS Maugham wrote about all the time, where the days dissolve into each other and one is suddenly surprised that it is Tuesday, or Sunday, though there is no reason to be surprised, it does not matter. I have thought about Maugham of course right from the word ‘rain’, and Sadie Thompson was a good story. But do you know what I mean about lazy? Like in that Razor Edge book (a story he has told so many times) we finish with the revelation that the hero was ‘good’. Well good, what good. All I could make out was that he was a rootless American, a life I know well enough. But good? Because he was disinterested; that is fine, but I don’t remember his doing any acts of disinterested goodness; he wanted to marry the girl who had turned up a whore—that saintly complex, but it has been done so many times and better explained as such than simply shown as a picture of goodness. And what girl who has gone that far wants to be ‘saved’ by being married, none that I have known, they usually have their futility pretty well in hand. Certainly the picture of the whore and salvation is one of the most tempting, excitingly symbolic to play with (and Maugham did it well that once, when Sadie Thompson said —Men, they’re all alike. Pigs, all of them.) But it has been done with such maudlin stature by the Russians, I don’t think anyone could out-do Sonia and Raskolnikov.
But here is something, in this picture of goodness as an attribute of ‘simplicity’. And this falls in with what you said in your letter, the business of —Yes, but he was smart, &c. And also with the ruction I was (am) in over being ‘anticipated’. I had made a note, perhaps with your words subconsciously in mind, that today the general attitude is that anyone can be Christian, it is ridiculously easy and rather foolish—I think of that word ‘sucker’ which is such a worldly condemnation—and that the only way to gain respect is to be worldly, sophisticated (in acts not just words or cigarette-smoking) ‘smart’. Well, after that revelation I came on this, written by a Bishop Butler in 1736 (quoted in Toynbee’s (abridged) Study of History):
It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if in the present age this were an agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world.
Well; to not only be anticipated by 200years, but by one with such style as Bishop Butler! It was very disconcerting. And one goes back to the attempts that have been made to show the Christian goodness personified in an ‘idiot’, Dostoevski’s greatest attempt, and the foolish father of the young man in Tolstoy’s Power of Darkness. Still there seems to be a great rift between them and Bunyan’s Pilgrim. Now there is a man called Silone, I think you must have read his Bread & Wine and And He Hid Himself, who fascinates me, because I do not make out where he stands with himself, as regards the problem of Communism and Christian practice. Did he disown the former in Bread & Wine? I believed so, and certainly even in the Communist preaching he did do there he contradicts himself. And where that may have been vague, there was nothing vague about the finish of one character as a (the) Crucifixion. And one remembers Nathaniel West throwing away the political hope of Communism (in A Cool Million) and embracing the Crucifixion (—Each of us is Christ, and each of us is crucified. Miss Lonelihearts (?))
For reading, I must say again all of my allegiance to this work of Toynbee; if it is it not the most triumphant work of reason in our time. I have finally finished the abridgement, which I think is magnificent, and am wondering if I have the nerve to start the original work, or rather to start and finish it. Such perception is to my confused accumulation of mind fantastic; for instance, that he can find Spengler as quickly and cleverly (but never cleverness for its own sake) as this: [“]Spengler, whose method is to set up a metaphor and then proceed to argue from it as if it were a law based on observed phenomena . . .[”] And since I feel the verge of fatal enthusiasm, I do not want to say more of this work, it has been so busy teaching me, articulating so many things that I have been suspecting and almost thought.
Your saying that you are investigating writing among young people and students brings a question to my mind: I am exceedingly curious about how much of the influence of the NewYorker you are finding. You know, there are a lot of people in NewYork who have a war with that magasine finally that they simply live on the bitterness their experiences with it has engendered. They are older ones, but I know so many younger who have lived under its shadow for years; and I speak for myself, because from my college work on it was there. And since I do not want to waste any of my energy in bitterness, what greater waste, I have drawn a line through it. But I do think about it, remember how much time I spent assaulting it. After college I worked there for something over a year, and when I quit it was with the sole idea of selling them something written. Starting with a tragedy of youth, an exhaustive history of the Player Piano, which I still have and treasure as I am told mothers do their strangely-shaped children which the world derides. But the influence on those trying to write fiction. One thing: certainly the NewYorker does not ask it of anyone; simply there it is and if anyone wants to waste his life trying to sell them something he may, that is not their concern. Is it because there are so few places that publish good fiction and pay well? I wonder that I have never seen anything of yours in that magasine, I wonder if it is simply by chance or if you have dark reasons too. The point is that their influence seems so horribly disproportionate; have you found it so?
For magasines, I see your name on the prospectus of something called the Hudson Review. I gather that the magasine itself is out by now, someone sent me this prospectus months ago, and I sent them a story which was returned with a very kind letter, I don’t care it was a good story, it will be re-written.
But is the magasine as good as it sounds it could be? “. . . will not open its pages to those whose only merits lie in their anguish, their fervour, and their experimentation,” how wonderful to read that. (And I find the comments highly entertaining: yours is fine, Mr Blackmur’s ‘It looks like the place where one can put one’s work’ makes me burst out in laughter: who is this ‘one’? I love that.) It sounds like a very positive step for our side.
The revolution here has been over for some time. I got up here in time to get out to Cartago, and be there fighting in the fighting. There is too much to say to chatter here. But of the disinterestedness of all of the people, the almost entire absence of grasping, of self-promotion. It was a real people’s revolution; and now I have a great admiration for the CostaRicans; you cannot imagine the kindness they have showed me. But still the self-sufficience: that they were pleased that I should come and volunteer with them, but you know still they did not need me, and in the kindest most genuine ways they showed this. Because CostaRica is still traditional—and largely I suppose due to the hold of the Church—and the family is still family, and it is splendid and interesting to see the hospitality that such a traditional society can afford, as to one rootless, which our (eastern) society cannot because it is rootless itself. And it brings more and more of questions: is it presumptuous to fight in other people’s revolutions? &c &c.
And so I wait for a boat; it is a very peaceful feeling. I cannot work on US boats because I am not Union, God knows how one gets into the Union, it is very strong; and so hope to get a CostaRican, they run small banana boats up to Tampa and I think it can be managed. Meanwhile the girl who has been cleaning my floor with half a cocoanut has finished telling me a long story, it was highly adventuresome but I am not sure what about since it was in Spanish, I think it was about a flood, it started out with the news that once recently it rained here day and night for a month; she is very cheering. And from Mr Eliot, —It won’t be minutes but hours, it won’t be hours but . . . days? years? I don’t remember.
Sincerely, my best regards to you,
William Gaddis
the postman always rings twice: title of the crime novel by James M. Cain (1934), as well as its first English-language screen adaptation (1946), dating from the days when mailmen rang one’s doorbell when making a delivery.
Maugham [...] Sadie Thompson: see 9 March 1947.
Razor Edge: Maugham’s philosophical novel The Razor’s Edge (1944) concerns a young World War I aviator who rejects Western values and travels to India to search for new ones. It’s mentioned in passing in R (638).
Sonia and Raskolnikov: in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
‘idiot’, Dostoevski’s greatest attempt: The Idiot (1868–69) is quoted on pp. 937–38 of R.
Tolstoy’s Power of Darkness: an 1886 play, quoted on p. 640 of R.
Bunyan’s Pilgrim: the protagonist of the English preacher’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678).
Silone: Ignazio Silone (1900–78); Bread and Wine (1937) is his most best-known novel, and And He Hid Himself (1945) is a play about a leftist agitator who rediscovers his religious belief and dies like a Christ figure. It is mentioned on pp. 590–91 of R.
West [...] Miss Lonelihearts: Nathanael West (1903–40); A Cool Million (1934) is a parody of the Horatio Alger paradigm, and Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) is about a desperate advice columnist. Although the quotation sounds like something from the Christ-ridden novella, it doesn’t appear there. Perhaps WG was thinking of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919): “everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified” (end of “The Philosopher”).
Spengler: Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), whose Decline of the West (1918–22) argues that every culture grows, peaks, then declines like a living organism, and that the West had reached the point of decline. WG quotes from p. 248 of Toynbee’s book.
history of the Player Piano: see headnote to 29 May 1950.
Blackmur: R. P. Blackmur (1904–65), American critic and poet.
It won’t be minutes: “For it won’t be minutes but hours / For it won’t be hours but years”—from the “Fragment of an Agon” portion of Sweeney Agonistes.
To Edith Gaddis
Puerto Limón, Costa Rica
[May 1948—same day as previous letter]
dear Mother.
[...] In about 8days another boat is due here, a boat to take a load of of wood for plywood to Charleston SC, I have met the plywood man here who is cheerfully drunk most of the time, consequently amiable and says I can probably get on his wood boat if I can’t get a banana boat, the sea outside is furious and the prospect of wandering 1500miles out on it is rather disconcerting.
The morning I blew 30¢ at a peluqueria, that is a barber shop, I think it was well-spent. I eat regularly though the fare here recalls a poem I never learned which starts —Nothing to do but work, nothing to eat but food; Nothing to wear but clothes to keep from going nude. [...]
You may gather this is not an intellectual centre, and so there is no problem about what book to read because there just aren’t any unless you have some you are carting around yourself, I am still carting around Mr Toynbee, and perhaps this happens for good reason because when I want to read I read Mr Toynbee again and it is a worthy task. Or if I do not read then I have bundles of papers which I have maligned all over with my own words, and they must be gone over and are being gone over; best though I have got to working again, I mean writing, it is not good yet but it is writing again and that is the only good feeling that makes any position tenable.
And that I recovered my raincoat, my friend-of-the-revolution Captain Madero recovered it in Cartago and since he is now running things at the airport at SanJose put the raincoat on a plane coming here and sure enough here it is, dirty and faithful.
Rumour has it that we are pretty deep in May, like I say the days run all together and you lose them to eachother, if I write again it will probably be a letter not much better than this one, I mean no newer than this one, or to tell you that I am sure that what I have are fleas, or that [if] they are not fleas they may be something a-kin (A little more of kin, and less than kind. —Hamlet. Heavens, I wish I had that here). If you write simply to Poste Restante, Limón C R it will reach me and probably be returned to you if I have gone if you put a return on it; or if pressing horror arrives cable via ALLAMERICA, the man who runs that office is a friend; otherwise I shall see you soon, here like Goethe’s Manto (Faust II ii) —I wait, time circles me.
Love,
W.
Nothing to do but work: the opening stanza of “The Pessimist‘ by American humorist Ben King (1857–94), included in some anthologies of nonsense verse.
Captain Madero: described as a “young captain” in WG’s “In the Zone” who later, “flying one of the army’s new planes, was killed when he hit a mountain” (RSP 37).
A little more of kin: “A little more than kin, and less than kind”; Hamlet 1.2.65.
Goethe’s Manto: daughter of the healing god Asclepius, Manto attempts to heal Faust’s frenzy by recommending stillness. WG quotes Anna Swanwick’s translation (1882), and used the quotation in R (61).
WG sailing for Spain, 6 December 1948.
To Edith Gaddis
[In “In the Zone,” WG indicates he “finally came home on a Honduran banana boat” (RSP 37), looking very sickly, according to his friend Vincent Livelli. During the summer of 1948 WG wrote an unpublished account of the Costa Rican war entitled “Cartago: Sobró con Quien,” and in September applied to Harvard for readmission. Unwilling to live in a dorm as required, he decided to go abroad again, this time to Spain. The letter below is written on stationery imprinted M/S Sobieski—the Polish passenger ship on which WG sailed—next to which he wrote “very much like Outward Bound,” a 1930 movie about an otherworldly ocean liner.]
Gibraltar
16 December 1948
dear Mother.
Well, here is the whole thing starting again—this time on a boat populated by Italians—often as though all of Mulberry street had set out for home, dolce Napoli. And it resolves itself into little beyond a very long 9 days of eating, & sleeping, staring at the Atlantic ocean, talking little; being somewhat melancholic—New York was such a magnificence when we finally sailed and left it there in the sun. Keep it for me.
And preparing for Spain. Spain. I must say, no one could come up to Baedeker for everything accounted for—I thank Mr. Hall again for it, as I am sure I shall do many times before I am done.
I don’t know whether, before leaving, I gave you any idea of my plans—except that they were few. But now plan to go from Gibraltar straight to Madrid (as “straight” as the broken-down Spanish railways will permit)—and look forward to that trip with excitement of course but also with some trepidation, what with 10 pounds of sugar on one shoulder, 10 of coffee on the other, cumbrous luggage in hand and the language mutilated in mouth. Eh bien—it shall be managed, and I shall write you again from Madrid, with an address of some permanence, since despite its climate being less agreeable than Sevilla, it will be a better place to start my acquaintance with Spain.
The leave-taking was good—it was kind of those various people to come and attend at the rail for so long. Sorry of course that you could not see it sail—but when you have this letter will know for certain that it did, and with much palpitation managed Gibraltar at least, and that I am in the country that lies “like a dead mackerel stinking and glittering in the moonlight”—and that, because of ill-management, you may not have my letters immediately.
And just now I call to mind that the whole “holiday season” is nigh, and that very possibly I shall not reach you again before it is passed. And so, all of the customary greetings to those customarily greeted—and best of course to you, trusting that things and people will arrange themselves for you happily—not including the ritual hour of orisons spent over the sink at 1837 East 15th street.
My sense of humour is somewhat in suspension—also other senses, and so my apologies for the dullness of this note. I find the Atlantic ocean very big, life very long, and thoughts far away and sentimental, as not to bear repeating. But Madrid and I will purge one another, and soon enough I shall be able to write to your pleasure and edification.
Meanwhile, best wishes, love, gratitude to you.
W.
Mulberry street: runs through Little Italy in lower Manhattan. dolce Napoli: “sweet Naples.”
Baedeker: WG took with him Karl Baedeker’s Spain and Portugal: Handbook for Travellers, 4th ed. (Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1913), which is quoted a few times in R.
Mr. Hall: Charles Hall.
“like a dead mackeral [...] in the moonlight”: Virginian congressman John Randolph (1773–1833) famously said of a political rival, “He shines and stinks like a rotten mackerel by moonlight” (variously reported).
1837 East 15th street: apparently Mrs. Gaddis’s city address.
To Edith Gaddis
[c/o United States Embassy
Miguel Angel, 8
Madrid, Spain]
[21 December 1948]
Querida Mamacita (which means Dear Mother:) Aqui es una carta (a letter
And what to say? (CRY cry what shall I cry, says Mr Eliot . . .) except that apparently I am really in MADRID; and that I have had the very good fortune to meet a fellow whom I had met in NewYork about two years ago . . . and he very kind, pleasant; I cannot say how good to come on such a one, after a rather distasteful mess at Gibraltar with British Customs (something about money, the more fool I) and a 26hr train-ride from Algeciras to Madrid, and the consequent exhaustion.
Let me say: you know what is odd (odd to me, though Emerson makes a great point of this, and I suppose that I shall understand it one day) is this notion of cities’ similarity, the perpetual RITZ, or Greenwich Village, anywhere ones goes. That is the foolery, of writing you from SPAIN with Spanish stamps & Legend incumbent: when all the capitals are the same, the cities . . . and that ultimately there is no Romanticism about it anywhere. That travel as one will: to see the cork trees of southern Spain, the groves of olive trees: you know, the olive trees look quite exactly as our little willow (not weeping); or Gibraltar, fabulous creature that I knew (from the Prudential Life Insurance ads) was simply a great pile of shale, and, while not a “disappointment”, not the Thrill that the American demands when he has paid a passage to Africa? to Europe? to Asia? (Life is very long . . . . . .)
Eh bien. (that’s French)—enough of these wanderings into things which engage my attention . . . (indeed, my whole being, whenever I can abstract that ephemeral disaster) and down to the facts that one usually “writes home” about . . . :
Here is an address, since I have not as yet got anything which might be considered ‘permanent’—and instead have met (God forbid, but He did not) met a young lady (Life is very long) from the American consulate: [... (see above)] And this address only if you have a letter; because for the moment I am well-enough “fixed” (to tell the truth, compleatly mixed-up with this wad of innominate bills in my pockets, but I am so tired of trying to think about MONEY $$$ £££ Pesetas &&&&&.) that the purpose of all of this note is simply greeting; that I can well imagine that you worry, or wonder, &c. Because I have been here for 2 or 3 days & not written, even to say I am in Spain (Well now I am in Avon, the more fool I./ When I was at home I was in a better place/ But travellers must be content . . .)
Anyhow there is neither light nor water in Madrid until 6pm (no rain here for many months) and so this shaving in darkness and attempting to bathe is a mummery; in fact the whole thing is a mummery; and They don’t know it but I must find it out or the whole expedition will be wasted (although the two people who Do know it are Sherry & Jacob Bean, & look at them!) . . .
Really! To be introduced as the AMERican friend, here to study philosophy (here meaning Spanish mysticism of the 16th century is preposterous. But then (unless you point at the youth who studies thermodynamics (V. J Osbourne) what end study? I don’t know; John Woodburn almost knows, but almost and in that qualification lies defeat.
No, withall, it is better to have the imposition of aloneness come from the Outside, and so be insisted on the internal sense of disaster, than to brood over it in surroundings which in their cardboard familiarity say, Yes. All of these words to say that I am simply in another City; where there are mostly a bunch of foreigners (Spic) and must and shall learn their language for the ordinary commerce of life; while I can be left alone with my own language which needs a lot of explaining and apology before it can be used Cleanly and with positiveness (even though this is only used to say No)
Eh bien. I am looking for a pension, or, better, a large room where I can be Left Alone.
And when I find it, shall send its address (for the moment having enough clean shirts to call at the AMERICAN Embassy); and plan to stay here for a couple of months (because on the level it offers itself to me Madrid is not Spain but simply a Great City) until I have the language enough to go into the country—to Sevilla, to Granada, Malaga . . . I don’t know; anyhow that for now I am all right: and that should any of the usual American troubles come up this fellow Taylor will tell me the right direction in which to decamp. For Money, I shall write soon enough to make the arrangements about legal & illegal demonstrations, on ‘our’ part. So don’t worry about That.
And for Christmas, don’t worry about That as far as I am concerned. I plan to be wandering through the streets of a city, trying to figure out Christmas as opposed to Xmas, and as ‘happy’ as one may be in the natural state of aloneness. (BUT Mother, don’t take my seriousness about myself as seriously as I take it; because you know well enough that any day now you may have a letter shouting with glee about some fool thing or other which makes about as much difference in the Scheme as forebodings . . .)
And so: “A merry Christmas &c &c to all” and otherwise best greetings to Granga, to the Woodburns, to pretty in-New-York Nancy A.—and rest assured, I shall write better soon.
with love,
W.
cry what shall I cry: the opening line of “Difficulties of a Statesman” (part 2 of Eliot’s unfinished Coriolan).
Emerson [...] cities’ similarity: unidentified (Well now I am in Avon [...]: slightly misquoted (Arden for Avon) from Touchstone’s observation in As You Like It (2.4.12–14), WG’s favorite Shakespeare play.
Sherry: Sheri Martinelli; see headnote to letter of Summer 1953.
John Woodburn: an editor at Little, Brown, best known for snatching up Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951) after Harcourt, Brace turned it down.
Taylor: Bill Taylor, a Harvard alum about five years older than WG.
Nancy A.: mentioned later, otherwise unknown.
To Edith Gaddis
Madrid
25 December, 48
dear Mother.
I am glad that I have waited this long to write you at any length; because today is the first day I have felt good about the whole thing; in fact more at peace than I have ever been in some time, years perhaps; & without the cloud of Mr TS Eliot’s articulation (. . . because I do not hope to turn again &c) hanging over every thought and gesture. And so I believe that I can write you a letter, instead of posting simply another quiet communication of despair: feeling alone again: and here is now it came about:
This morning I got up early (7:30 is wee hours for Madrid) and took a train out to a place some 3miles off called El Escorial. There is situated the royal monastery which Philip II built, in the latter 16th century, and if Mr Hall has seen it he will attest to its magnificence, if only on a scale of geometrical grandeur. Here are some figures from Baedeker, first off, to give you a notion: in the entire building there are said to be 16courts, 267windows, 1200doors, 86staircases, 89fountains; total length of the corridors about 100miles! I got to the town in the earliest morning, cool, and open—that is what did it, the air, and the 1mile uphill walk, then the birds making such wondrous busy morning noise around the towers of that great weight of a building. The land is rocky, off to the east mountains snow-capped and down before the great open ragged plain toward Madrid. Throughout the day, when I was not in the monastery, I did a great deal of walking, and climbing, up behind the town to look down: the purgative effect of climbing. Often it was as I imagine the Tyrol. But the sound of a brook running, of burros braying: one suddenly realises that one’s senses have fallen into disuse in the abuses of the city, and suddenly is aware of sounds, of smell—even the delicious freshness of cow manure.
After first coffee I went into the church which is the centre of this gigantic affair, and there attended the Christmas morning mass: oh! such ritual, what a myth they have. And in this setting; imagine, the retablo behind the high altar is 98feet high, and the dome under which I attended 215feet high. And then the endless tour through the building; the burial vault of the Spanish kings under the altar, such marble, and gilt, and work: sarcophagi of black marble; rooms with paintings by El Greco, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Velasquez; a room exhibiting books & manuscripts from the 9th century on, with illuminations in colours & gold in the most fantastic meticulousness;
And so it was. & it was this sudden being outside that was so good, that showed me that I must not spend any more time than necessary in Madrid, which is simply a city. I have now got a room in a pension, and a good-sized room & comfortable, with meals for 40pesetas a day. Meals though: breakfast a small bowl of coffee & a stump of bread; lunch at 2pm: bean soup & then the body of a fish which has been done to a horrible death by fire; supper at 10pm: soup, followed by very strange croquettes, or cutlets, or ‘meat’balls, & a piece of fruit. I don’t think anyone eats with very great relish in Spain. But am having some difficulty with the cigarette business; American are impossibly expensive (& you cannot send any in) & the Spanish make their own with tobacco bought on ration. So I have about 20 left, and hoard them miserably. Eh bien.
This American fellow, Bill Taylor, has been excellent to me, but has gone to Paris for the holidays; I look forward to seeing him on his return; and otherwise am baited by a compleat idiot to whom kind Juancho recommended me (J. really wrote my introduction to the father, who is an intelligent gentleman but doesn’t speak English) and so I see occasionally this fool Luis, who is 29, & somewhere has been misinformed to the extent that he believes he can speak English. Oh it is painful, almost burlesque at times: he goes at it with heroic enthusiasm, and the results might be amusing if there were not, as there usually is, something at stake. But this sort of noodle: we plan (with Herculean effort on both parts) to dine, he to meet me at 10; I wait, miss ‘dinner’ here, & at 10:40 he calls to say ‘I can’t go.’ And such politeness, delight, good intentions. oh dear.
I cannot say much better for my own conquest of the other language; I am tampering with it to some extent successfully in conversation, but it will take much more doing. And so as for plans I have none, in the way of study. I do think that before too long, perhaps about 3weeks, I shall leave Madrid and go down to stay at Sevilla; but I shall let you know, certainly, and the US Embassy address in Madrid will get me eventually. And so: if the tenants come through, will you please send half in a draft payable, if they are to make it thus, to me at the bank of spain; & the rest just cashiers check (which, I must add, must be received by the 16th of January, as that is when my visa runs out). Life here is not at all as cheap as I had hoped, but I do believe it is working out. And how wonderful that it can really be happening. Of course I have the constant feeling of the press it must make on you, and wondering always how you are making out, how you can make out, and as I foolishly repeat, eternally grateful.
What with the holidays—and I must admit to a good dose of sentimental loneliness—I had thought of sending you a cable; but finally it was too late to send it to the Edison & I did not know what your address is now. And so I sent no cable, not even the smallest gift; but again, one day I shall make up for these ingracious silences. This experience now is certainly the biggest of my life, and it will eventually be turned profitably. And so I hope that you are having good holidays, have had a good Christmas today, and that the New Year will be a celebration for you of the sort you wish. I think of nothing more just now; shall write again soon, and my best wishes to ‘all those others’.
and love to you,
W.
because I do not hope to turn again: the opening line of “Ash Wednesday” (1930).
El Escorial: called San Zwingli in R; both Rev. Gwyon (I.1) and Wyatt (III.3) visit it.
Tyrol: the mountainous region between Italy and Austria.
sound of a brook running [...] cow manure: counterfeiter Frank Sinisterra (calling himself Mr. Yák at this point) also visits San Zwingli: “With this spring in his step he was soon up behind the town, where the sound of running water nearby, the braying of burros and the desultory tinkling of bells [...] reached him where he paused to sniff, and then stood still inhaling the pines above him and the delicious freshness of cow manure, like a man rediscovering senses long forgotten under the abuses of cities” (R 776).
tenants: WG received the rent on the house in Massapequa, his major source of income until the mid 1950s.
To Edith Gaddis
Madrid
[27 December 1948]
Well well; dear Mother again.
I had put this off until getting up to the Embassy, both to look for mail & to query Our Representative on the usual concerns of an innocent abroad. And so now I have been, queried & been queried, and got your letters. It is a nice feeling, a kind of re-affirmation of one’s identity after many days wandering in boats, trains, dark hotel rooms and strange cities, to see a familiar hand, read familiar words and names (in, I add vehemently, a familiar language). And many thanks for Barney’s note, a delight as always; but he of course is by now a rather continental person; and writes: —Spain sounds like a splendid thing, and it would be good to see you . . . he just off for a little time in Paris France &c. These fellow creatures of mine who have made Europe into one large madhouse, each capital a room, and they running from room-to-room, screaming & giggling (to use a phrase of Barney’s) . . . well it is all beyond me.
By now I feel settled in a way, not for life in Madrid, but I mean mentally; such things as actually getting letters here makes it seem that I am still in the same world and not barefoot in South Africa as I felt earlier (though a rather glacial South Africa to be sure). But with this good-sized room and large window, pleasant girls among the ‘help’ who applaud my Spanish, and getting used to the food which is not bad, I suppose one might say dull, but food. And having been fortunate in my choice of books & papers brought over with me, some of Eliot I had not read which is The Answer (just this fragment, listen:
“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres—
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion . . .” &c. But best his speaking of time, and just in line with Bergson, whom I was reading last summer, and all of it in line exactly with my attempts at thought and clear picturing of us all here &c &c. . . you know how this can go on, as it did many evenings before the fireplace in Massapequa, evenings I look back on with very poignant fondness; and apologise now for the rantings & ravings I subjected you to concerning The State of the Union & Mr Tennessee Williams (whose work, on reconsideration, I find: that he is not to be blamed, pilloried, spat upon (as was my attitude) because it is bad, because his work is simply a projection of the times, the degeneration of the Myth & the consequent looking from every heart for ‘a cheap sentimental humanism at someone else’s expense’—and wherebetter found than the theatre, where one does not have to leave the sticky mess with the feeling of guilt one ‘suffers’ after personal mummeries. No; the blame must go to the times which have allowed such work as his to be found good (because I gather that as far as the author was concerned these plays are ‘sincere’, ‘his best’, &c—but you see sincere on the same cardboard level as his audience. They are the ones to knock on the head. Eh bien. I am preparing something here to knock them on the head with.
oh dear. Are such letters as this entertaining or edifying for you? One may well ask, —did he go to SPAIN simply to have 3000miles of water between him and the things he polemicizes? We shall get to Spain in a moment.
I also have Dante here (in English, he admitted, cowardly) and find I am just ready for going for the first time through his magnificence. And am attending to many notes & ideas which have somehow lay dead in the hand these past months, feeling alive again. As for study; I am I do believe making some headway into the language; I can hold a passable conversation with the scullery girls or the Lady blonde (ersatz with a vengeance) who also lives in this very proper house and seems to want to go dancing . . . no I was talking about Study wasn’t I. Also reading, with great chains of ignorance, Ortega y Gasset (a contemporary Sp. philosopher, social thinker) and starting a play by Calderon de la Barca, a 17th century Sp. playwright, in Spanish, with the harried dictionary in hand. And so, as for plans. I am more fond of Madrid daily, and shall stay a few weeks more I guess, don’t know; but do have the feeling that, you know, something may happen (the feeling we all have today, heaven knows what the Something is, it never happens; I think this feeling of constant suspension laid in the Christian myth of the Last Judgement which heavy heavy hangs over our heads & imaginary souls). . . anyhow that I want to see Spain more before settling anywhere at anything. And think it may be the perfectly reasonable thing to do to leave most of my luggage with a friend here, buy a 3000kilomtre ticket (about 1800miles I believe) and go about, spend a week in Toledo, in Granada, &c., that ticket I think about 20$. As Walker Evans said when I saw him, —Don’t go over and sit in one place; move around, look at it all. He is right. I still must get papers straightened out, of which more later. [...]
For the moment I have borrowed a bit from this ‘fine fellow’ Taylor, now in Paris but should be back here any day. Don’t worry over that, it is the sort of exchange that straightens itself out, and he a good fellow (Harvard ’40) and a friend, and I very fortunate to have encountered him.
The holidays passed in order, for myself if not for the People, who raised unshirted hell for 7 or 8 days & nights, beating drums and singing in the streets. Heavens. But got through, and now 1949 discovers me 26. oh dear. Life is very long. On NewYrs day, walking through the city, I stopped in at a large church where a great ceremony was going on (I believe that it is the Feast of the Circumcision), a priest passing up and down a baby-doll which for all I could see the pious populace kissed; but all the while music: an organ & voices, a violin, & tamborines! Such splendid, happy music; & quite unlike the doleful Mrs Damon (?) in Berlin’s First Congregational.
And so, a Happy New Year, while we are on the subject, to All.
These things I wonder: Did you get a letter from Gibraltar? Has John Snow managed to get blankets, sheets, dirty shirts & Nancy’s Idiot up to you? (I haven’t written him, and am somewhat concerned, he was in such mortal coil when I left).
Needless to say, your letters shocked me. I mean, the business about the picture-taker on the quay; oh dear, such a business, I am embarrassed at the memory of that Queen Elizabeth gesture. But Stella & Bill; she is kind, and that is just like Bill, to be an unbearable presence & then come through with the really spontaneous kind gesture, why with all the fury and sudden-ness that has passed between us, I find the attachment great; because he means so well, and has no idea of how to go about any execution except suddenly, as this, he manages. As for Miss Parke & Mr Waugh. oh dear, or gracious. Of course you know that with all the sudden cringing on my head when I read it, there was the accompanying vain Delight at being called to the attention of the Great, in any fashion. And so now, Evelyn Waugh actually knows that I exist. I had intended to accomplish this in another fashion, xx(sic) the dark day that he picked up my first novel and sat aghast with admiration—still have a hysterical intention on my part (and let me say, I have had recent thoughts on an idea which I think might even shock Him—such an ambition: to shock Evelyn Waugh. Anyhow the whole incident is jolly (I do wonder What she told him about me) and at 3000miles’ distance I relish it. She is so kind too, they all are, we all mean well.
Item) I have sent a story (the one I worked from the Costa Rica piece, at Woodburn’s last summer, and wrote here during the holidays) to Congdon; hope to heaven he gets it (dealing, as it did, with ‘controversial material’); asked him to let me know here if anything favourable, otherwise to send it on to you with an note which you might forward, and just tuck the story away somewhere & forget it.
Item) Among the books I have brought is the incomparable South Wind; and in the usual spirit, I should like so to give a copy to Miss Williams, who plans to sail for Italy I think on the 12th or the 20th. Could you get her a nice copy, have it sent to her before departure, such a splendid book for the boring days of ocean-travel. I wrote & told her I would try to get a copy to her. It is Miss Margaret Williams/ 439 East 86th/ NYC28. Holiday Bookstore at 49th & Lex I think had a nice copy. Would it be a good idea to call her, to see if she is still in town by the time this letter reaches you? It is TR6-4739. I should appreciate this immensely if it can be managed.
Needless, again, to say, Madrid presents many temptations to the eye of the foreigner hungry to buy Things. And so for my birthday I bought a pair of cufflinks. Of course there is the frantic American notion, of wanting to send half the city back to friends. Though I see few things, to tell the truth, as yet, that are just what anyone wants. The inevitable mantillas, &c. But for the man, oh dear, the Things. This morning I bought a pair of much-needed gloves, about 2$, but beautiful, I have never had a pair to fit like these, and soft fine leather (& such style in the glove shop: a plush cushion on which I put my elbow, while the young lady pulled the gloves down over my hand with much ceremony. . . not Brooks Bros). It is strange, some things so cheap, and some so outlandishly expensive. Imagine (don’t imagine too much; it is not a problem with me:) a pint bottle of brandy costing less than a package of cigarettes. But get this: many of the men in Spain wear capes, fine black affairs with red or green lining, and up about the lower part of the face with the red flaming over the shoulder. Well. You may picture my excitement & temptation at that! And the most recent object, looked at in the shop window with eyes like the urchin outside the pastry-shop, a walking stick, brown sort of bamboo, with a silver ferrule and topped by the carved head of an old disgruntled man. 2nd or 3rd hand certainly, but beautiful, and badly priced. But I guess it will always be there—it would take someone with imagination (sic) to carry it! And the shop is in the Calle del Disengaño, the Street of Disillusion. Isn’t that wonderful (& un-American).
And so. I walk much of the time, so that by yesterday my feet were really quite sore. I have been over most of Madrid I believe, the crooked narrow streets & the fine ones, the great & very formal park, a look at the tremendous pile which is the nacional palace, nobody lives there, and the streets, the streets. Quite chilly still, very in fact, so I keep moving, often get lost because the streets turn so. But the walking is the best cathartic, I agree with Mr Bean there. Have taken to wearing my fine Davega tennis-shoes, which call glances from passers-by, but otherwise I look quite like the people, they are not dark, as the popular conception of Spaniards, in the north here.
Well, Nancy. I can imagine the sort of disappointment you mean; and it is strange, because of the picture of her as one who Does Things—and I don’t mean Emmet Fox (who he? Another victim of Old Testament morality) because she has that aspect of being Alive, and I know, you must begin to wonder, when things continue to fail to work out for those people. (Perhaps she should settle down and practice “that Taoist art of disintegration which Yen Hui described to Confucius as ‘the art of sitting and forgetting’”. . .) Anyhow my best greetings to her, Something, must come.
As for Christmas, I didn’t know it was to be at Janice’s; just as glad I didn’t know: and your very brief description brings the whole thing into the room. But I must confess to some loneliness here, even for such atmosphere (though I can imagine how I should have felt there, thinking of Spain. . .) For the Woodburns, I haven’t written them, shall in a few days when I have more ‘material’, have thought of them often, still regretting missing them, and do greatly hope that things are going well for them each & both, I do like them each & both so much, and they have been so kind, as people, to me.
And hope that you are well, & happy, getting more from life than Mr. Fox.
with love,
W.
innocent abroad: Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad (1869) is a satirical travel book about Europe.
“So here I am [...] squads of emotion”: the opening lines of part 5 of “East Coker” (1940), the second of Eliot’s Four Quartets.
Bergson: Henri Bergson (1859–1941), French philosopher, perhaps best known for his book Laughter (1901); in WG’s library there is a French edition of that book inscribed “W. Gaddis San Jose, CR 1948,” along with Bergson’s Creative Evolution and Creative Mind.
Tennessee Williams: the American dramatist (1911–83) was at the height of his fame following the great success of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947.
the Myth: probably a reference to Denis de Rougemont’s Love in the Western World (1940), one of WG’s source-books for R. Chapter 2 of book 1 is entitled “The Myth,” on the European celebration of passion, especially adulterous passion, over married love, despite its connection with the death instinct.
‘a cheap sentimental humanism [...]: Connolly’s phrase: see letter of 4 May 1948.
Lady blonde: staying at a pension in Madrid, Wyatt (renamed Stephan at this point) gets involved with a blonde “flashy piece of goods” named Marga (R 797).
Ortega y Gasset: in R WG occasionally quotes from his Revolt of the Masses (1930), a call for the benevolent rule of an intellectual elite to counter the deleterious influence of the masses on art and government.
Calderon de la Barca: one of his best-known plays, La Vida es Sueño, is quoted a few times in R, in Spanish.
heavy heavy hangs over our heads: source unknown.
Walker Evans: American photographer (1903–75), who WG later said was the physical model for Wyatt in R.
about 6$: about $57.00; in 1949, $1 had the buying power of $9.50 today.
Life is very long: a phrase from part 5 of Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” (1925) that WG will quote occasionally.
Mrs Damon [...] Berlin’s First Congregational: in R, the organist of the First Congregational Church is named “Miss Ardythe, who had attacked the organ regularly since a defrauding of her maidenhead at the turn of the century” (14).
mortal coil: a phrase from Hamlet (3.1.69; “coil” meaning “turmoil”).
Stella & Bill: unidentified.
Miss Parke & Mr Waugh: presumably a friend of WG’s who visited Waugh (who was in NYC in December 1948) and told him of WG’s work in progress.
story [...] Costa Rica piece: in the summer of 1947 WG wrote an account of the Costa Rican revolution entitled “Cartago: Sobró con Quien” and a short story entitled “A Father Is Arrested,” posthumously published in the Missouri Review 27.2 (November 2004): 109–16.
South Wind : a hedonistic novel (1917) by British novelist Norman Douglas (1868–1952), set on the Capri-like island of Nepenthe.
Miss Williams: Margaret Williams (1924–2004). In a 1993 interview with Charles Monaghan, WG’s old friend Ormonde de Kay said of her: “Margaret Williams was a really live-wire, wonderful, very pretty American girl, very bright, who is now married to Bob Ginna, who used to be editor-in-chief, I think, of Little, Brown for a while, and is now sort of a freelance. Lives in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. And she does, too. Margaret was his [Gaddis’s] great love, at that time anyway” (http://www.williamgaddis.org/reminisce/remdekaymonaghan.shtml). A graduate of Vassar, she worked in journalism and book publishing as well.
Emmet Fox: (1886–1951), Irish-born American spiritual leader and self-help author.
“that Taoist art [...] forgetting’”: from p. 79 of More Trivia (Harcourt Brace, 1921), a short book of aphoristic observations by the American-born English essayist Logan Pearsall Smith (1865– 1946). Quoted in R (925).
Janice’s: one of WG’s aunts.
To Edith Gaddis
Madrid
[January 1949]
dear Mother.
[...] It is strange; but thank heavens, every day I am more glad to have come here. Still at logger-heads with the language, but can carry on a fair conversation now (though still trouble because I don’t know too many words) and struggling through some reading; besides working on the same ideas that have preöccupied me for the last 2years. And walking until now I have stopped for a while since the feet are temporarily collapsed. More trips to the Museo del Prado, where the paintings never cease to be exciting—my new inspiration, tutelary genius &c being Heironymus Bosch (I think orig. Flemish) whom you may see at the Met. too (they have 2 of his paintings) if you want some idea of the strange lands my mind is wandering now. I have bought a fine book on him, splendid reproductions & not too difficult Spanish.
Your 2 letters with enclosures recieved; & herewith I return in kind—the photo is Escorial where I passed Christmas day; the other a concert last Sunday morning, they have them here from 11:30 to 1:30 which is splendid (camara means chamber), the Bach & Haydn wonderful (and your comment anent the Schönberg arrangement of Bach Chorale Preludes NOT appreciated here, really what is more magnificent music? Eh bien. But the case of Antheil is an interesting one, he was very brilliant in youth, great friend of Ezra Pound, wrote a thing (Ballet Mechanique) scored for a dozen or so pianos & aeroplane propellors, very exciting; but then seems to have let down, not fulfilled his great promise (except perhaps to avant-guard & intelligent musicians who ‘understand’ him, but not (including myself) for the multitude.) For the other enclosures, safely got & thanks; next time, will you please send two cashierchecks. Just now I am involved in matters with the Spanish Police, getting or trying to get a two-year resident visa (does that sound alarming) and with my linguistic equipment you may imagine there are some highly entertaining (to a disinterested observer) frustrations. We usually end up shaking hands and saying it is cold in Madrid, which everybody understands.
Of course there is always more to say, to write; a few nights ago a juerga (pron. wher′ -ga) which is half or a dozen people sitting all night in a small room while one plays guitar, one sings flamenco (the most beautiful wailing songs, of sadness & violence, gypsys, one ending sangre negra en mi corazon: black blood in my heart. Well, Spain. It is all splendid, but better promises ever to be more so. (& I must add, I bought that walking-stick.) And love to you,
W.
Heironymus Bosch: Hieronymus, Dutch painter (1450?–1516). WG was particularly taken by his tabletop painting The Seven Deadly Sins, which plays a major role in R.
Schönberg: the Austrian-born composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) published these orchestral arrangements in 1922.
Antheil: American composer George Antheil (1900–59). His Ballet Mécanique dates from 1924, and makes prominent use of the player piano.
juerga: Stephan (Wyatt) presides at a juerga on p. 802 of R.
sangre negra [...] my heart: Wyatt hears a flamenco singer utter this line on p. 110 of R.
To Edith Gaddis
Madrid
24 January 49
dear Mother.
This being not a letter but the usual perennial request for things. Some of which may sound rather odd.
I First, books. If you could get these, & send them air-express, that is apparently the only satisfactory way. & marked GIFT very plainly.
1. The White Goddess, by Robert Graves.
2. [Crossed out:] The Golden Bough, by —Frazer (Brentano had this in a good reprint for under 3$; if that is available; certainly don’t break your neck to get it, & if that reprint isn’t at hand it will be hard. [Handwritten: No—see below.] The Frazer book is too big. But could you do this: borrow your friend’s copy; turn to page 569—and from there copy what it says about a tribe that rids itself of evil spirits by driving them into a monkey, which is then put to death.
3. (Here is a horrible admission: ) Hugo’s Simplified Spanish.
You understand, these are just books I very much want but will live without; only if you can do it quietly & conveniently.
II Could you find this information (I think by calling the Mus of Natural History, they are very good about such:) On the Barbary ape (formerly native of Gibraltar)—its approximate size (male); colouring; how it survives captivity; usual longevity; diet in captivity; is it tail-less?; fierce? extinct (if so when); & any distinctive peculiarities. & also what sounds it makes (alone, in captivity).
Thank you very much. Good luck. &c.
And then, when may expect, being a remittance-man, the remittance? I count hopefully on the 10th, as last mo. Money is a problem. Life is very long.
A good letter from Barney, who has recently had clothing & typewriter stolen; good letter from Bernie, who is working with displaced persons, quite low about the whole picture; good letter from Juancho, who tells me to get out of Madrid; good letter from Jake.
Insane letter from Miss Williams. Did you lunch? Isn’t she attractive. Nice. Rather dissociated, as it were. Her trip to Paris sounds terrifying; perhaps she will meet a frog on the boat & marry? oh dear.
I shall write.
Love,
W.
The White Goddess: a wide-ranging study of mythology, tree symbolism, and Celtic poetry (1948), a major sourcebook for R. Later in 1949 WG visited the British author (1895–1985), who was living on the island of Majorca off the coast of Spain.
The Golden Bough [...] page 569: this is the block quotation that appears on page 49 of R, describing a custom of the Garos of Assam (India). WG had requested Frazer’s book earlier: see 29 April 1947.
Hugo’s Simplified Spanish: Hugo’s Spanish Simplified (David McKay, 1925, often reprinted).
Barbary ape: in the first chapter of R, Rev. Gwyon brings back a Barbary ape from Gibraltar, names it Heracles, and later sacrifices it à la the Garos to cure Wyatt’s illness.
To Edith Gaddis
Madrid
15 February 49
dear Mother.
Many thanks—for going all the way to Bronx Zoo! Heavens; I thought it would be easier accomplished than that.
For myself at the moment I am frantically making plans—any plans—to get out of Madrid; because for the time at any rate I have ceased to learn anything here. And pursuant to the usual troubles of money am trying my best to get into a monastery for a while—where I suppose some small board will be charged but it would enable me to “catch up.” The trouble being that today Spain’s monasteries are crowded, and they apparently like to take in “visitors” for only 4 or 5 days. Nevertheless I am in touch with a Franciscan order to the south, and what with the efforts of a very kind girl here at the Instituto de Culturo Hispanico I think—hope—that within a week I shall be able to go. The trouble of course started when I discovered in this fellow Bill Taylor such a ready friend, and willing to “advance” me a bit when I arrived here short. And then another “friend” of the opposite order who under the pretence—well-intentioned though it might have been—of doing me a favour (this is a young man to whose family Juancho had given me a letter) has retired with some money and is tearfully unable to repay. And now since Bill intends going to Paris I must settle with him. It has just been this business of being caught in Madrid, waiting. Pray heaven the Franciscans can lend respite. I have the remittance this morning, and many thanks. Also news of poor Old Grunter. oh dear, I think of his wistful bravery. How old he is.
The note from M—Williams was sweet. I surely hope to see her, if I can get up to Paris. A letter from Jacob suggests we spend part of his 2month summer vacation on “a remote beach somewhere in Normandy or Brittany,” which sounds splendid. As I said, the news of Th. Spenser and Jim Osborne, together, “hit me right where I live”—
I trust you have got the note concerning my request that you call Don Congdon (CI6 3457) to ask if he received what I sent him. I am still uncertain about mails. And that is very important to me.
I shall write again soon enough, to let you know how the plan for brief retirement works out, and of any address change. —Oh yes. Your questions: my skin is fine—And though recently I had the grippe am all right now.
Love
Bill
Old Grunter: their dog.
Th. Spenser and Jim Osborne: both WG’s Harvard professor and this high-school friend died in 1949.
To Edith Gaddis
Monasterio Real de Guadalupe
Estremadura
10 March 49
dear Mother.
I write you from the Franciscan monastery of Guadalupe, in the mountainous country about half way between Madrid and the Portuguese border—a fantastic thing finished in the 14th century, appearing like a great fortified castle, with the medieval village grown up outside its walls, and towers like these: [drawings] &c.—indeed, except for a very few electric lights, and one or 2 trucks and buses, it is hard to say what has changed since 1500. (This letter will probably not be mailed for another week, when I return to Madrid.) And though I came as a guest, I expected to find something resembling a cell, and a harsh life—instead it is for me rather like a large cold country inn, my room overlooking the central square, where the women come to fill jugs at the fountain, and horses, oxen, cattle come to drink. The room is large, with brick floor and the well-blanketed bed set in a curtained alcove. The food nothing splendid, but very good for Spain.
This evening a long walk into the countryside, after rain—the first rain Spain has had in some time—among the olive trees, looking back on the village and listening to the peaceful country sounds of evening—someone chopping kindling, the bells of sheep, goats, cattle, the murmur of voices; and clouds just lifting along the mountainsides—great tranquility.
Lunch with a Franciscan father, and because of the cold we sat vis-a-vis at a round table with a brazier underneath, and floor-length cloth, which kept the warmth in around our feet and legs—a wonderful idea for the studio in autumn! In fact, as I often do, when far away, I have had many thoughts of the studio—wanting to do things to it. It may all sound foolish, considering that I spent all of last summer there and did nothing—but it was a summer of discontent which I hope and believe this trip, if sufficiently extended, will dispell. But such thoughts as this—after the white-painting is done—to buy enough straw mats (in Chinatown they sell them) to cover that Navajo rug—stitch them together and stitch around the edge of the rug—it would be a much cleaner, and more plain surface, which that room needs to accentuate its proportions—it is a room that should not be littered with small unsympathetic designs. Oh, the things one sees to buy, of course. I do want to get a pair of large wrought iron candlesticks for the fireplace. And I saw a beautiful lock—locks in Spain are quite fancy—and businesslike—this one with a key like this—[drawing]—well anyhow the number ‘3’ goes into the lock, whose opening is a number 3, quite handsome. And of course the ceramic ware, everywhere—especially the antiques in places like this. And so forth.
And so often I am angry with myself at being a remittance man, and wish I had worked hard since 1945 at getting money together to do this all—but then I would not have done the things I have done, and would probably be still working in N Y, having saved 300$, and married to some girl as dull as myself. And so I am really very fortunate to be doing the things I am doing—and do not complain—it is just that I wonder if I could have done it all better, as I suppose we must always wonder about all things. So do not misunderstand—I am not complaining for an instant about lack of money, it is only to myself that I complain, or question. But you know, what I want—first I guess is to be happy with my work, and if that can be writing so much the better—but then the idea of being happily married, in the studio of a summer is the nicest. (And so your mention of houses being built on all sides is awful, nauseating—) —But never again to spend another summer of inactivity like the last one—though it was necessary. A good Franciscan here has told me a lesson—one I knew, but have never known—to do what you are doing. And so go my, and the world’s, well-intentioned resolutions. But the studio should be a warm happy place, with wine at dinner, and music—it has been, and will be.
Always wine with meals here in Spain. Though the food is dull and not seasoned—many beans, fish, innominate bits of meat, tortillas—that is an omelette, often made with potatoes, which is filling. But I must carry pepper in my pocket if I want to liven things up. And so come the dreams at night—of food—on L I in the summer. Oh dear—will it ever come out even?
I hope to have my typewriter back before another letter—it is being fixed in Madrid. Then I think, by the time you get this letter, I shall be in Valencia, and on my way south, to see more of Spain before it is all over.
with love,
W.
Franciscan monastery of Guadalupe: the Real Monasterio de Guadalupe. In R it is called the Real Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Otra Vez, which both Rev. Gwyon and Wyatt visit. central square [...] jugs at the fountain: many of these details went into R, specifically III.5. summer of discontent: a play on Shakespeare’s “winter of our discontent” (Richard III, 1.1.1).
To Edith Gaddis
Valencia, Spain
21 March 1949
dear Mother,
As you see, I have the machine back, and marvellously cleaned and refurbished, thank heavens, ready to work if its master can.
At the moment I am in Valencia, a town I like a great deal, though plan to leave it tomorrow for Sevilla, in a nightmare 29hour trainride, not first-class either. The weekend has been fine; the ‘Fallas’, which is Valencia celebrating the arrival of spring—in every plaza, and there are many, a great statue affair is erected, cardboard sort of stuff on wood frames, representing aspects of current life which the people consider untoward, high price of food, dead state of art & letters (though of course those things they feel heaviest cannot be represented . . .); these things range 30 to 40 feet high, and include figures of people, ships, houses, anything; then the great night they set off explosives and burn the whole thing; insane, and Spanish. And the bullfight on Saturday was a very good showing. Now Bill has gone back to Madrid, and I recommence my peanuts-and-bread-and-oranges-in-the-pocket existence. No, it is I who have managed badly, and quite consistently so; so that it is my own fault if I must now sit on board seats for 29hours instead of stepping onto an aeroplane. And you say, what is right? what is best? let me know . . . Lord, I sometimes think robbing a bank sounds like an entirely reasonable gesture. One does make out; but often enough making out is little different than it might be in a town in Kansas. One may say, why don’t you get a job (enough do), but working in Madrid would be working in New York in Chicago in Emporia Zenith—no, as Walker Evans said, to not stay in one place but move around. And thank God now I am out of Madrid, for better or worse but out. I do think of people who could and would manage things quietly and well in my circumstances; which is maddening; the bad thing is to fall behind, and when the remittance appears to have to pay for what is past, and not have it for what is ahead; that is where I have messed things up; how we all cry out for a fresh start, spiritually, financially, sartorically—and the promises made, the resolutions. Well, I shall have about 50$ to go on until the next, and think I can manage, as one does in any circumstance. Dammit, I do want to settle down to respectable and gainly livelihood, but not to see Spain while in Spain is preposterous.
A remarkably wonderful letter from Barney Emmart, in London, to say that in a few days he is leaving northern France and cycling down to the Spanish border, plans to be in Spain for two or three weeks! If things do not get confused I hope to meet him in Sevilla around the beginning of April; and am of course quite excited about it, seeing a friend again. One imagines the things that might go wrong, I picture us both on the same train, having missed each other at one place, and riding hundreds of kilometres but never meeting because he is in 1st class and I in a 3rd class carriage . . . well. [...]
A very nice letter from Miss Williams, who is now in Nice and liking it all very much, tells me to come up if I am still sick (which I am not) and relax with them on the Mediterranean shore. Though no; at the moment I am too disgusted with myself for any company but one like Barney, who also spends time being disgusted with himself, pretending he weighs 300 pounds, similar productive pastimes.
When I came back from the monastery I had a note to call a Baroness Borchgrasse, she sounds like a real bloody fascist on the ’phone, had had a note from a friend (I suppose Mrs Fromkes) saying you were worried; and you know I am sorry for that; I had not realised too much time had passed since writing you; and I guess the flu would have gone away sooner under a doctor. [...]
I have three grey hairs. In front.
And so, quietly,
with love,
Bill
‘Fallas’: in R, a crass American tourist “wants to see the big fair they have in Valencia [...]. They call it the Fallas, it’s all fireworks” (882).
Baroness Borchgrasse [...] Mrs Fromkes: unidentified.
