Be to her Persephone, All the things I might not be;
Take her head upon your knee,
My dear, my dear, It’s not so dreadful here
One wonders where to fit Leda and the Swan into all this.
Unless the lava flows northward, or Margaret eastward, I hope to be in London by mid-December. More of that, though, in December. Meanwhile I also stand and wait.
love from your son,
W.
dogma of the Assumption: on 1 November 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed as dogma the belief that the Catholic goddess Mary ascended bodily into heaven upon dying (discussed in R, 922–23).
lampshades [...] human bones: such atrocities were committed by the Nazis in their concentration camps.
crucifix at Burgos [...] codfish: repeated almost verbatim on p. 16 of R.
Freddie’s Football Dogs [...] The Deserter : in her rambling letter to Dr. Weisgall in R, Agnes Deigh writes, “I remember The Deserter, a drama acted by dogs and a monkey at Sadlers Wells in 1785, and I could weep. I remember Freddies Football Dogs, and I could weep. [...] Somewhere in Africa I believe they made a mermaid from a monkey and a codfish, I have seen its photograph” (760). The Deserter is a 1773 opera by Charles Dibdin (1745–1814), based on Le deserteur (1779) by Monsigny and Sedaine. Freddie’s Football Dogs was presumably a novelty act, otherwise unidentified.
Love Me Sailor: Close’s novel, about the adventures of the only woman aboard a rough ship, was first published in Australia in 1945—and became the subject of an obscenity suit—then in United States in 1950, and often reprinted. Early in the novel, the protagonist has “bent against the table to eat,” and the narrator comments, “I knew her breasts would feel like two warm duck eggs” (10), a line Jack Gibbs recalls in J R (281).
Mathilde [...] Clements: Mathilda Campbell (1925–97), the American-born 4th Duchess of Argyll, whom WG had known since Harvard when she attended Radcliffe. She married Clemens Heller in 1945.
William B Hart: an editor at the American Magazine.
HG Wells [...] it doesn’t happen: untraced.
LIRR: Long Island Railroad.
Greensleeves: traditional English folk song.
Scott of the Antarctic: title of a 1948 film about Robert Scott’s failed attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole (1910–12).
St Barthemew being skinned alive: perhaps The Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew by the Flemish-influenced German painter Stefan Lochner (1400–1452).
Be to her Persephone: from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Prayer to Persephone” (1921).
I also stand and wait: from a line in Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness”: “They also serve who only stand and wait” (ODQ).
To Helen Parker
Paris
1 December 1950
dear Helen.
You know there’s no excuse for the weeks I’ve let go by without answering the letter I was so pleased to find here when I came back from Barcelona. Except the constant round of monkey-business, which never ends here. Enough like New York, except that getting in and out of trouble is less expensive, and any variety these days only brings wide eyes, or the hand that shakes slightly reaching out in greeting. Lord, lord. And poor weather.
First I must tell you how glad I was to hear that you’ve got a house, and far from the Underground. I’ve asked many enough people about you, in these last two years, but any reports were vague and random. But how I have wondered what you were doing, and where, and with whom. And how happy to learn, at least, that you’re in the country. Or was that only in the summer? And have you got this letter forwarded, reading it in that New York now?
(Yes, you say, —We will go to Key West after an R. F--------- Christmas. and I can’t read that one word in your letter, Frosting? what is it.) Anyhow, and then Cuba. (But it says, —and will take little nibbles out of my Cuba. OH I see now. Until this reading, I thought it meant you were going to take Tommy and Bruce (‘little nibbles’) to Cuba! Well, you see the state I’m in.
But this line of yours has occurred to me so often in the past weeks, —How can you live in Paris after Spain? And I wonder. Except that everything’s here; the way everything was in New York. And after months in Spain, with never a conversation of any proportions except simplicity and repitition, then the lust to come back to Paris and talk and carry on. I hadn’t expected to stay on here so long this fall. I went back to Spain last summer, stayed and worked, writing, in a marvelous small town on the coast about 60 miles north of Barcelona. But toward late fall I got excited again, came thundering up here, and have since managed one mild collapse after another. Now I may manage to get over to London again, briefly, for the holidays, and then I think back to Sevilla, which of course has grown all out of proportion in my mind, —though my God the days were longer there, there was time to sleep, to eat, hours to work, a nap, and still much of the day and the night left to walk, or stand in inconspicuous idleness and drink mild things, and listen to that wild music which still sets something off in me. I want to go back; I’m really a country boy I’m afraid, and Paris high-life is beyond me.
Only within these last two or three weeks I’ve come to like Paris a great deal. I hadn’t, during a year here, but suddenly I find it a wonderful place. —Though this changes no plans about leaving it. Because the barren-ness of Spain, its refusal to include one, draws me back there, every bit. Never coy.
But this should entertain you. Do you remember the player piano? Well, a few weeks ago I got it out again and looked at it, and liked it, oh yes, and sent it to Atlantic Monthly, who have offered to take an excerpt from it, or possibly the whole. Isn’t that wild? and absurd? Otherwise writing gets written by the pound-weight, but is kept hidden and gone over, exhaustively enough to rob it of any quality of spontaneity, and put aside, waiting to be incorporated into a pretentious whole. Though weeks go by, in Paris, with nothing but monkey-business.
Enough of the wrong-size people showed up and draggled the terraces of left-bank cafes summer before last, skulking between tables and looking around every corner for the San Remo, to send me over the Pyrenees last summer. But by now it seems they have all faded away, the nice ones and the pitiful ones, back to New York.
And the weather here, mostly over-cast, or rain, and the newspapers, and all of it seems to point to an end, The End in sight. Waiting for something to Happen. And now someone has lent me his car, apartment, and Indo-chinese house-boy, to fill me with a tonic of absurdity in private circumstances which often enough centre about such problems as a laundry bill. Well, something is going to Happen.
I wish I hadn’t broke that dish,
I wish I was a movie star,
I wish a lot of things,
I wish That life was like the movies are . . .
But I have seen that friend of yours Robin Roberts, of whom you wrote so brightly years ago. She’s singing here, in a small place which I find thoroughly offensive because you have to sit in a reverent silence while the fey young man who runs the place sings, and cannot applaud, must only snap the fingers. So coy I can’t get in the door. I had lunch with her about three months ago, and I hope to see her again, but I only think to look for her in the evening, then she’s in that place. But she’s doing well I think, and happy.
What about those boys? Someone, I can’t think who, had run into Tommy on a New York street, and he was apparently pretty rousing, without a shadow of doubt about anything. Which is fine. For now. And the old captain? with a bloody nose first day of school, that is splendid I think. He is growing Up. Oh it’s fearful, and I feel foolish enough asking you, here, to give them my love.
It wouldn’t mean something to them would it. It shouldn’t either I suppose, because they must be fully occupied in growing up. But what a picture I have in mind, when you say Bruce fights too much. How I’ve always loved (with enough occasional burst of real fury) his truculence, his absolute Refusals, his moments then when he seemed older than any of us.
And Christmas
? I hope it is wonderful for all three of you. I can’t quite picture it any more, the last one spent on the road on a trip to Florence, the one before that walking the streets of Madrid, the one before that walking the streets of Panama, the one before that preposterous to remember, those realities most vivid in unreality. But there are a few idlers in London. I don’t want to be here, for ‘parties’.
Please write me again, fuller, about what happened, happens, what is going to happen.
my love to you, and to Tommy, and to Bruce
W.
Spain: cf. R: “—Spain . . . , Gwyon said, —the self-continence, [...] to outsiders, it seems to return their love at the moment, but once outside they find themselves shut out forever, their emptiness facing a void, a ragged surface that refuses to admit . . .” (p. 16; cf. also 429).
San Remo: the Greenwich Village bar (formerly on the northwest corner of Bleecker and MacDougal) called the Viareggio in R. In the novel, it is described as being filled with “people all mentally and physically the wrong size” (305).
I wish [...] That life was like the movies are: the first stanza of “It May Be Life—” (1926) by A. P. Herbert (1890–1971), British humorist, novelist, and Member of Parliament.
Robin Roberts: a folksinger who later recorded a few albums.
To Edith Gaddis
Paris
3 December 1950
dear Mother,
It seems, as usual, that Christmas is going to appear wild-eyed around the corner, like a drunken old grandfather whom everyone is fond of, but no one quite prepared for ever, in spite of the messages he has sent announcing his imminent arrival.
The newspapers give no hope of spring.
I wrote you, didn’t I? about Dick Wheatland’s poison which has turned temporarily into my meat; that he went home for a medical examination and has been detained, necessitating an executor of sorts (me) here, so that for the moment I’m a lord and master, with a heated apartment, an indo-chinese house-boy, and a yellow sports-car, none of which largess I’m quite prepared to live up to.
And so it may sound slightly lunatic to say that I still plan to get to London for the holidays (because Dick very possibly won’t return until the end of December). I’m now trying to clean up things in the palais d’Antin, seeing what I can do with the accummulation of a year all stacked in this room. I hope to solve them, one way or another, and stay over at Dick’s house within a week, getting myself together to get to London, I’d think still around the 15th though I may stay on here a few days longer, what with a house to live in. Then, still vaguely, I’d hope to stay in England for a month or less, return here and go back to Spain. There to finish my ‘work’, and come on home in May or June. That’s some time off though.
I’ve written Congdon (from whom I had a tepid note), saying I don’t know just what’s going on, offering two ideas for pieces (including that book with the head of AP in Madrid) which he’ll be afraid to take up, and saying that if I sell any part of Player piano he can’t come in and ask for some money. Even 7$50.
Needless perhaps to say, I scramble to the mailbox here daily, hoping to hear something through you from Mr Morton. Something happy. ($$$$ $$$) My teeth are all fixed, and thank you. Now. Have you still the check I sent you? I don’t remember if it was blank, or for 80$; but I’d like to ask if you could cash it for that sum, and include it with the December remittance when you send that to Paris. Because, also needless to say I guess, that end of life has got fairly complicated here recently. And what with clearing up affairs here, getting to London, and Christmas, I’ll need it. Heaven knows what will happen there. (Instead of return to Spain in January, I might stay on in England in the country to work, if such a plan seems feasible.) It’s a strange spot to be in, not able to believe really that Atlantic will come through, but still in a fearful way half-counting on it, half-expecting a check, and working along on that deceptive basis. Lord, lord, where’s the dollar.
Yesterday we drove out to Malmaison, the summer ‘cottage’ of Napoleon and Josephine, and found it to be a lovely small chateau, and all sorts of embalmed glories of Empire. In the morning I’d bought a ticket and gone to a rehearsal concert of a boy named Sigi Weissenberg, whom I’d met in Panama, now 22yrs old and giving concerts everywhere (a pianist); I saw him later, and as a reward I must meet him now for lunch, and receive—two tickets to the same concert this afternoon. That’s life. I hope to hear from you in a day or two, and then shall write you more at length. Also will let you know when I can hope to ask you to use the London address again.
I saw a lovely pair of ear-rings for Margaret, 17th century, gold, with irregular pearls and emerald quartz stones, when I went back to ask her to hold them for me, they’d been sold. To a Swede. That’s life?
with love, W.
Sigi Weissenberg: Alexis Sigismund Weissenberg (1929–2012) Bulgarian-born Jewish pianist who achieved some fame in the late 1940s, took an extended leave from the stage, then resumed his career in 1966.
To John Napper
Paris
[mid December 1950]
dear John,
I plan to arrive in England around the end of the week, or the beginning of next (20th). I’m not doing very well here in Paris; in fact I’m not getting anywhere at all (words slip slide perish business) (I too). And most of all I look forward to being able to talk with you at length. You’ve been awfully kind to renew your invitation, and I should certainly be delighted to see your mill-pond next week, but only if it remains convenient for you, —at least in the scattter world I live in things which are delightfully convenient one week are ridiculously impossible the next, and so if anything has come up don’t put yourselves to any added difficulty. I hope to be in England for a number of weeks, and we could put any such visit off.
Mostly, I say again, I look forward to seeing you both, and possibly in conversation recover something which seems to have collapsed in this city. Surely enough Paris is handsome, (I don’t think the French deserve it), but I just go in circles here. All nervous energy which ought to go into work goes instead into missing buses, losing telephone numbers, carrying the trash downstairs. By now I picture a small tastelessly-furnished room, but heated somehow, in a small village, something like Little Gaddesdon, or even Great Gaddesdon. To tell the truth I’ve really wasted a month here, and I haven’t a month to waste. Well, all of that when I see you. (Even Jung’s Integration of the Personality hasn’t helped me integrate; the minute I get my anima in place something else collapses.) [...]
To tell the truth, I’m quite excited about the prospect of London and England, though I hope to escape any manifestations of the Festival of Britain . . . I’m in no festival mood, though I might be able to take something Spanish like Valencia’s, where the sky-rockets are aimed at the crowd. Something heroic. Otherwise I’m getting into form by learning sayings of Great Englishmen, v.:
Uxbridge: I have lost my leg, by God!
Wellington: By God, and have you!
or
Wellington: Publish and be damned.
or,
Edward the Confessor
Slept in the dresser.
When that began to pall He slept in the hall.
I look forward so to seeing you,
best wishes to you both,
W. Gaddis
Little Gaddesdon, or even Great Gaddesdon: towns in Hertfordshire (though spelled Gaddesden), northwest of London.
Jung’s Integration of the Personality: the Swiss psychologist’s study of the process of “individuation” by way of dream analysis and alchemical symbolism. The English translation (by Stanley M. Dell, 1939) was WG’s principal source for alchemy in R. sayings of Great Englishmen: all taken from ODQ; the last stanza is by E. C. Bentley (1875–1956). WG would continue to cite the Duke of Wellington’s “Publish and be damned,” his riposte to a woman who threatened to expose some compromising letters of his.
Festival of Britain: a national exhibition that opened in London in May 19
51.
To Edith Gaddis
Paris
Sunday, 17 December 1950
dear Mother.
My, we do live in an exciting world, don’t we. Someone has even offered me a flat in Vienna for the holidays. Grand? Gemütlich? or just plain Ghastly.
Temptation.
—In den alten Zeiten, wo der Wünschen noch geholfen hatt . . .
Otherwise, it has been snowing today in Paris, a messy expression of nature’s temper which I’ve lost sentimental feelings for I believe. Out of those leaded Lampoon panes, snowfall on Bow Street was something to stir the impatient heart. Nowadays, wet feet. Dear dead women, with their hair too, what’s become of all the gold/ Used to hang and brush their bosoms. I feel chilly, and grown old.
Though I still expect to escape to London briefly. On the other hand, all the other idlers are appearing in Paris. Jacob (no slight intended) just came in from the Deep South, looking very well. Mail to London American Express from now on though, I think. I’ll get it one way or another. I really do expect to go, though I feel a little foolish this Christmas-tide.
I trust you’ll get the gift I sent you by Bill Taylor, who flew over a few days ago and hoped to see Margaret, and I told him to hand it over to her. And fortunately I finally got her gift, a pair of things whose original purpose I cannot imagine, spoked semi-circles with irregular baroque pearls at the ends which I made into ear-rings. Somebody named Mr Fitzpatrick was flying over on Saturday, so I gave them to him to cart along, and he said he’d leave them at his hotel for her to pick up, and send her a wire notifying her. Mr Fitzpatick is from Kansas City.
Otherwise I’m in suspension, but a warm one to be sure. I’m afraid I’m going to have to Pay, when Mr Wheatland the proprietor returns, pay and pay and pay. His radio is now playing Swing Low Sweet Chariot, which I can’t thank it for.
I got a very nice letter from Congdon, saying sell the player and keep the ‘dough’, remembering that it was written with ‘considerable charm’. Refering to another piece I suggested, he knows ‘it could be a splendid piece, knowing your capabilities . . .’ wanting to see a (the) novel, ‘in part or whole’ . . . . . .