Let me say, it is not as Mr Eliot said it was, as it was, “distracted from distraction by distraction,” . . . but now there is the sense of concert.
Jacob has gone off to the Loire valley for his summer. Bernie has gone off to a week-end for his week-end. Margaret has inclined to the let-us-hope brief charm of Sont-American Gold (dear one, she really deserves a full meal). The rest have all gone into the dark. And I, as I say, ponder here in a tiny room, an ayerie (I can’t spell it, it means an eagle’s nest) in respectable periphery of Paris. I believe that in another week I may go to join Jake. But cannot say. First I want to talk here to some personification of responsbility, some handmaiden to power, about the notion of returning to Spain in the fall with employment there. I have thought this summer to work at My work, to prove it one way or another, and by the fall know whether it deserves the continuance of vagabondage, or points instead to the bondage of respectable employment. If that latter I can hope to go back to that naked country which I have not finished with; it has not finished with me yet either.
There is, as you may have foreseen, may have hoped, the sudden gigantic gigantic consideration, of another person. That is Margaret. Margaret just now is about as busy and certain as a kettle-drummer, quite unhysterical, not desperate, because she knows the composer. And can you know, what a quiet good happy and pleasant time we have had here in Paris? Time, energy, and money, well and wonderfully spent. But spent, especially the last. I am, at the moment, cheerfully broke and reasonably in debt, but shall not load you with those endless considerations; because all of the expenditure, unreasonable as it may have seemed, has pointed, is pointing in better direction, in a direction of fullness, of realisation. Still the 15th looks miles away.
I wait with ill-concealed hunger, thinking that perhaps Mr Hall will appear, the consideration of a ‘very good dinner’, I believe I can even borrow a white shirt for the engagement. Oh, understand; I do not wait haggard and hungry, but in a new element of something near peace, something near happiness, something near content with a hard-boiled egg for today’s meal.
Let me say, bitterness disappears or is channeled; that the wiseness in what was called foolish expenditure becomes evident as the corners of the pattern begin to suggest themselves; that reason reached through unreason; and honesty through pretension. to ask you to indulge the fore-going miasma of metaphor, the dearth of clean lines, the plethora of pretension; to find underneath what I try vainly to dig down to; to be assured of my health in body, immanent sanity of mind, and eternal gratitude.
Now an old typewriter-ribbon has caught smouldering fire in my wastebacket. I shall return to the immediate problems of This World.
with all love,
W.
Pope Gregory: Gregory XIII established the Gregorian calendar in 1582 to correct the older Julian calendar.
Evangeline: the heroine of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s book-lenth poem (1847), who wanders through forests primeval before settling in Philadelphia.
It was roses [...] sprig of yew: from Graham Greene’s 1938 novel Brighton Rock: “Mr Prewitt quoted promptly, inaccurately, ‘Roses, roses all the way, and never a sprig of yew’” (Penguin, 1977), 167. The first half is the opening line of Robert Browning’s poem “The Patriot” (1845), and quoted in R (741); “and never a sprig of yew” is from Matthew Arnold’s “Requiescat” (1853): “Strew on her roses, roses, / And never a spray of yew!”
wolens-nolens: i.e., nolens volens, Latin: willing or unwilling (willy-nilly).
bis! bis!: encore! encore!
Well [...] at the clavichord: from Browning’s poem “A Toccata of Galuppi’s” (1855), prominently quoted in R (191).
the button-moulder: a character in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1867), an important text for R.
“distracted from distraction by distraction”: from section 3 of “Burnt Norton” (1935), the first of Eliot’s Four Quartets.
Sont-American Gold: perhaps a typo for South-American Gold.
gone into the dark: “O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,” from section 3 of Eliot’s “East Coker.”
To Edith Gaddis
American Express, Paris
25 July 49.
Well,
Remembering many months ago, saying something about the dust settling: it doesn’t. There are frying pans and fires. The desert of St Anthony or evenings with Sardanapolis, all punctured by the laundry question. A man gets tired sometimes.
Just this morning, I put on a hat, since I was going after a job as a contact man. Now I don’t know what a contact man is, but it sounded to me like somebody with a hat. It turned out he needed more. Or less. Less, perhaps, since it pays a 2$ commission for every many days foolish work. I decided not to be a contact man. There are all the thousands of Americans here looking for work; and re-engaging onesself in the competitive society is a caution. And with all its pleasance, Paris more often becomes a hot city, with the city’s beauties: wrong-telephone numbers, buses missed, &c.
I know this sounds more daily like a crazy game I am playing; and the more confirmative of opinions such as those of Mr GSB et allia. And honestly, how I wish I could sit down and write you a long letter of the sort I have written; but this is not the climate, not a Spanish monastery. Just, so far, a habitat of loose ends, among them at present mr Emmart, mr Winebaum, myself, Margaret, &c. Jacob the only sensible one, having gone to the less expensive and cooler country.
What are questions I must answer? First many thanks for the promised extra this month. It will save a life or two. Then thanks for the Heggen news-clip, Snow’s marriage, and news of Chas Hall (who, if he was in cantankerous spirit, just as well I guess we all didn’t encounter, I do hope for your sake, he is over it when he gets back). [...]
I don’t know; there is so much in my mind now that I can’t set it down on letter paper; but thanks always for being so good about these recent and far-between wild-eyed notes. Margaret continues to be the loveliest lady on the continent. Happy happy happy pair; none but the brave, none but the brave, not but the brave deserve the fair.
with all love,
W
St Anthony: Egyptian monk (c. 251–356) who spent most of his life in self-imposed isolation.
Sardanapolis: i.e., Sardanapalus (7th cent. BCE?), the semilegendary last king of Assyria, evocative of riotous living.
Mr GSB: mentioned in 19 January 1948 letter.
Heggen news-clip: on the suicide of Thomas Heggen (1918–49), author of the popular novel Mister Roberts (1946). He and WG fought over Helen Parker in 1946; see John Leggett’s Ross and Tom: Two American Tragedies (Simon & Schuster, 1974), 330–34, an incident that reveals WG’s belligerent side.
Happy happy [...] deserve the fair: from Dryden’s poem “Alexander’s Feast” (1697).
To Edith Gaddis
Paris
14 september 49
dear Mother.
First things first. sic, the Loan, & Mr Haygood. I didn’t mean, as I fear you interpreted, that I was trying to squeeze something out of Bill Haygood in the way of a private penny. No. I meant that the United States (hats off!) aid loan to Spain didn’t go through. If it had, I was hoping to be able to manage something in the way of a job in Madrid, where I’d very much like to live, work, think, marry, drink, what-have-you. The loan didn’t go through. That is because Spain is Fascist, but Italy, Germany, and Greece are not. That is because a lot of things. I shan’t start political opinions here. Oh dear no. Suffice to say it is very difficult to get a job in Europe unless you have a permit, which is impossible to get—unless you work for a US gov’t agency. So . . . nothing in Spain. Paris? well . . . I have spent the morning writing two radio scripts, one about soybeans and one about a mechanical brain, later I’m going to write one on cosmic rays, to try to sell to a US CULTURAL agency here (UNESCO) (. . . for heaven’s sake don’t tell my mother . . . She thinks I’m playing the piano in a whore-house . . .) I don’t know how it will come out, but with the present prospect of p
lans &c work is necessary. (No, don’t mention this radio-script business; I’ll tell you if it works out, or becomes mentionable).
What I should say, is that (1) I got the regular remittance (2) I also got a pair of shoes. They are French, I don’t dare wear them in the rain and it’s raining today so I’ve not gone out, they cost about 10$ even so I believe they’re made of paper, but nice paper . . .
You will certainly hear of any developments. The one in prospect now involves that perennial miasma, the notion of marriage. For that I think more than enough money to outfit a Left-Bank Bohemian set-up is called for—I’ve pretty well got over the idea that not-enough-to-eat and being bitten at night is Romantic. —Hence my passing interest in Soybeans and Mechanical Brains. Of course this isn’t a new idea, as you must know, though I guess the first time I’ve managed to mention it in a letter. No; it’s really that I want to get some kind of working in line before I actually try to marry this Miss Margaret, who feels rather the same way. This talk could go on for pages without saying more. But meanwhile, how welcome the remittance, & the extras! Hotel & apartment life here is hard to get & expensive, now looking for some sort of an apartment because it’s a nicer & better life, one can eat better cooking in, & cheaper, and also get some work done—which I haven’t in some time.
When you say things for you have been ‘hectic’, I trust you mean happily so? That’s the way I usually see you being hectic. What do you mean. Dinners at the Versailles & Passy? Or the water-line between the pink house & the studio exploding? Oh dear.
Things are hectic here. I think we all ought to enter Trappist monasteries.
with all love,
W
don’t tell my mother: cf. the old self-deprecating advertising joke: “Don’t tell my mother I work in an advertising agency—she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.”
the Versailles & Passy: French restaurants in Manhattan.
To Ida Williams Way
[Siena, Italy]
[29 December 1949]
Dear Granga—I hope you and mother have had as wonderful a holiday as we have. Your gift helped make possible a splendid trip to northern Italy in a friend’s car, and though a very brief trip it’s most exciting and rewarding, and cities like Sienna beautiful. I hope the Christmas envelop I sent got to you in time, and that Florida is as nice as you had hoped it would be.
with love,
Bill
To Edith Gaddis
[Few letters by WG survive from the first half of 1950, and those few concern a trip Mrs. Gaddis made to France in April, and a short visit they both made to London. WG was still unemployed, still involved with Margaret Williams (though she left for Florence in May). In a letter to his mother postmarked 27 May 1950, WG requested a copy of a new book entitled Friar Felix at Large, an account by medievalist H. F. M. Prescott of a pilgrimage by Friar Felix Fabri to the Holy Land in the 1480s. Many of the letters that follow concern an essay on the player piano WG wrote in 1946–47 entitled “You’re a Dog-gone Daisy Girl—Presto” intended for the New Yorker, which rejected it; a short section was published as “‘Stop Player. Joke No. 4’” in the July 1951 issue of the Atlantic Monthly (pp. 92–93; rpt. in RSP 2–5). For more on WG’s lifelong obsession with this topic, see RSP 6–13, 141–72, and my essay “The Secret History of Agapé Agape” in Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System, ed. Joseph Tabbi and Rone Shavers (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007), 256–66.]
Paris
Monday, 29 May 1950
dear Mother.
I’ve been thinking about that piece I wrote on the Player Piano. It’s in Massapequa, and I’d like to have it again to go over and see whether, three years later, I’m sufficiently improved to make a saleable piece of it. I’d appreciate it if you could send it over, the quickest way possible. You may have difficulty, since it’s probably together with many other papers and notes, and all I want is the one finished copy (should run about 16 pages, if there are two, both looking finished but one longer please send the long one, 18 pages possibly). If there’s doubt about it when you look, better to write me with questions before sending anything. And if, in going through my papers there, you come across a picture of the Duke of Windsor in a sporty jacket, could you send it too? It’s the picture of the jacket I want.
Paris continues to witness my battles with Unesco and the ECA, though I trust that within 3 weeks—before Margaret returns—I’ll have figured out whether it will be worthwhile spending the summer here or not.
And Massapequa? How often I think of it, and would love to spend a part of the summer in that large cool room, that seems to me to have so many of my thoughts waiting for me in the high corners and the dark and heavy woodwork.
I hope you’ve started going swimming, and that the weather is as good there as here. It must be strange and sad to have no summer vacation to look forward to, but then, it [her European trip] was worth it wasn’t it?
with love,
W.
ECA: the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, a U.S. government agency.
To Edith Gaddis
Forte-dei-Marmi, Italy
24 June 1950
dear Mother
Finally, after what seems a great long time—and it is really—I write you sitting at a table near the sea, my skin red and smarting from the sun which I’ve been out in most of the day.
I think I’ve done about what you did in the spring—just a sudden blow-up, and leaving the city which everyone else considers the most wonderful place to be, but which—in my case—was driving me insane, after a year of nothing but that “work” I’d been doing, and a couple of “vacations” which were pretty hectic in themselves.
Certainly there is nothing in the world like the beach and the sun, and thank God it is as good and resting as I’d remembered. My trip was quite as unsound financially as could be, too, and has cost more than I’d thought it would, as these things always do. And I left Paris having done some work, but can not tell when it will pay, and will probably return as broke as I’ve ever been, and not with money waiting there for me as I’d planned. But even so, I’m glad I did it. I had really become quite unhealthy, not sleeping &c., and the same tiresome problems over and over again—with all the city frustrations of Paris life, Barney, and getting so I never wanted to see the inside of that “apartment” again. I got to Florence to find Margaret in an almost similar state of exhaustion, and I think that, together with a case of something almost like influenza she was developing, another week of it, and the train back to Paris, would have been too much—since she’d made such a small salary at the conference she’d had to spend it all simply to live. I had no intention, when I sent to the bank in New York for 100$, that I’d use it this way. But suddenly I had it, and thank heavens I did come down. It is maddening to think that my great savings account in New York is being cut down so, but when I know what condition I was in a week ago I know it’s worth it, even though I expect to return to Paris with 5$, and difficult because Unesco now only pays when they use a piece, not when they accept it, as before.
Mainly though I want to tell you about plans that Margaret and I are trying to make. You will see why I say trying, because they depend on so many things. She feels she must go home and see her family and talk with them before marrying, and since it’s so important to her I guess it’s the best thing. And so she hopes to come back to the United States in August. I shall stay in France, trying again to work and put some money aside, and then in September go to England. We would meet there, she sailing in September for England, and we would get married in London toward the end of September, then come back to Paris together. If there is a job in Paris, for which I’ll be looking this summer, we’d stay here. And if not, go away for 6 or 8 months, live on the rent money while I went back to my writing, which I haven’t had opportunity to touch for just a year now.
Well. You can see how many things may not work out. First it may not be possible for Margaret to get a
boat back to New York in August, with so much tourist travel, and that would throw things off quite badly. Then, heaven knows how much money I’ll have by September, whether enough to manage the marriage and all that goes with it in London—though they make it so expensive for foreigners in France, and Spain and Italy are firmly Catholic, that StMartins-in-the-Fields sounds quite sensible, if possible. In light of all this, my trip to Italy hasn’t been very sensible really—but on the score of physical and mental health I believe it has.
That is quite a plan for us—but anyhow, at last, and for the first time, we do have a plan, a definite one which we must try to work out. Of course I should love to come home with Margaret—I’d love a month in Massapequa late this summer, but it seems too impractical—much more sensible for me to stay in France and try to prepare things, especially in the way of money. But I do hope she can go back in August, see her family, and visit you in Massapequa—how wonderful that would be. And then return to find me with things arranged for our marriage. So much depends on the possibilities of getting a boat ticket that I don’t dare really plan on all this. But you see how it stands now, and I know you’ll be glad to feel that we finally are trying to make definite plans, and not just bumbling along, year after year.
WG and Margaret Williams in Paris, July 1950
The coast of Italy is beautiful, with a long beach and the mountains rising up behind the town. And the Italian people, the whole Mediterranean way of life, so humanly good, warm and kind after the Parisian French. I’ll be back in Paris in about a week, but right now am simply eating 3 good meals a day, getting the sun and sleeping. I’ve thought of you often, these days of the beach ahead of me, and hope you are enjoying the same wonderful things there.