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 Pan
ama 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 reopen
ing 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.