Well. There will be time.
Priscilla Boughton Friedrich writes of her expectancy of a baby, and I plan to return fairly soon here from London and go straight through to Spain. To Seville. I’m really a small-town boy, Seville is more my size. Any old tree will do for me, Any old isle is just my style.
Honestly, I’m sorry to write you such a fool letter as this, I’ll do better in the next few days. For the moment, you’ll be glad to know that I received the check (180$), and have fully escaped from the Palais d’Antin without bloodshed.
with my love,
W.
Gemütlich: Ger., jolly, cheerful.
In den alten Zeiten, wo der Wünschen noch geholfen hatt: “In olden days, when wishes still availed . . .”—the opening line of the Grimm Brothers’ tale “The Frog King” (collected 1812). Both the German original and its translation appear in R (273, where it correctly reads “hat” rather than “hatt”).
Dear dead women [...] grown old: from the final stanza of Browning’s “A Toccata of Galuppi’s,” quoted in R (193).
Swing Low Sweet Chariot: popular gospel song, written by Wallace Willis sometime before 1862.
Any old tree [...] just my style: from a song in Eliot’s “Fragment of an Agon” (1927): “Any old tree will do for me / Any old wood is just as good / Any old isle is just my style.”
To Edith Gaddis
Chantry Mill
Storrington, Sussex
27 december 1950
dear Mother—
I feel troubled for fear that you may very well wonder what suddenly became of me at Christmas time—but I did manage to cross the channel on Friday night, and spent Christmas quietly enough in London—no high time whatsoever, but I still like London so much that I’ve enjoyed it.
Then yesterday the 26th—Boxing Day, another holiday, I came down here, in Sussex, to visit the painter I met in Spain this summer—John Napper and his wife. I’ve thought of you often here, how much you would like this house—an old mill house, parts of it 700 years old! and fireplaces in almost every room, much of it though enough like the studio, and a similar way of life. It is proving to be one of the most pleasant Christmas holidays I’ve ever spent.
I expect to go back to London around the end of the week, and shall hope to hear from you there—I called at American Express Saturday (the 23rd), found only Margaret’s Christmas gifts, which I was touched and delighted with. I suppose it must be my fault that I didn’t let you know I’d definitely be in London the 23rd, that I’ve not heard from you—but I do so hope that you have had a happy Christmas—and I am most curious to know if you received my gift, and if you liked it.
with love,
W.
To Edith Gaddis
[In a letter to me dated 25 July 1996, John Napper wrote that during WG’s visit “we took him to London where, one morning, we had a drink in what was then the Six Bells pub in Chelsea. A friend of ours, an antique dealer named John Hewett, came in and showed us a wonderful pair of heavy Byzantine gold ear-rings. My wife Pauline, who had just had her ears pierced, fell in love with them immediately to which John H. replied ‘If you can wear them . . . you can have them.’ My wife went away to the washroom to return some moments later, blood down her white shirt but the ear-rings in her ears. Willie was very struck by this event and made use of it in the first chapter of The Recognitions [p. 14]. Some of the book was actually written during his stay with us, we have been friends ever since. My wife still wears the ear-rings.”]
18 Granville Place,
London W 1
4th january 1951
Dear Mother,
What a fine holiday this is turning out to be. And a most splendid part certainly was returning from Sussex to find all of your bounty waiting for me here. As ever, I cannot thank you enough for such gifts which are making this possible, this visit to what I believe is the Best city I’ve ever seen. Even though I’ve not been leading a gay Mayfair and Park Lane high life (though my telephone number is a Mayfair exchange, a small room Barney got me), every bit of London excites me, it is as marvelous as I’d remembered, even when I’m not living in St James’s, and I’ve thought of you often, with great regret for your not having been able to see more of it. Though somehow, looking back, you did get an extraordinary amount into those two days out, and beyond the things you saw, what I am enjoying is simply walking through the city, no landmarks but the people whom I like immensely. I can imagine no better life than one divided between England and Spain.
Last night I almost did sail to Portugal . . . was sitting in the captain’s cabin on a boat tied up at a London Dock, which sailed at 8pm, having come earlier from the opening of a new show at an art gallery in Whitechapel (in London’s unsavoury East End), where I met Sir Gerald Kelly, head of the Royal Academy . . .
Nor can I tell you how good my holiday in Sussex has been. The English countryside is often enough indistinguishable from Connecticut, and some of the newer small towns are centred about fake half-timbered buildings which look enough like Garden City, or Massapequa’s Shopping Centre. But the Napper’s house, of which I’d hoped to send you a picture but we couldn’t find one, is ancient as I said, and it was fire-place heating every morning, quite cold. How fortunate I was to meet them, and how much they have done for me. Very few people recently with whom I’ve got on so well and liked so much.
Arturo is here, not in especially good shape, but two evenings ago we, with two others, went to a very jolly pantomime, and afterwards a few glasses of brown ale until the pubs closed, at 11pm. Yesterday was terrible as far as weather was concerned, slush and snow and cold and wet, but I didn’t care at all, walking from one place to another with little of importance to take care of. Barney, though ill with a cold as almost everyone seems to be, has been awfully good about seeing to occasional practical details. This afternoon I may go to the Cocktail Party.
I’ve just heard from Wheatland, who is worse off than expected and cannot return to Europe for some time, offers me his flat &c until March, in Paris! But I’m turning it down. I cannot work well there, and I’ve work which must be done before spring. And so I plan to return to Paris the 10th, stay there for 3–5 days and take care of a few details of my own as well as whatever I can do to straighten up Wheatland’s affairs, and then to Spain, Madrid briefly and through to Seville. I find, with these plans, that I’m unable to buy all the things I see on all hands here, the £s fly away, but all is working out well really. I am, however, going to take some of your Christmas present down to Charing Cross Road right now . . . that is where numerous book stores are, and you cannot imagine the excitement of being in an English bookstore after 2yrs of Spanish and French. [...]
(never tell anyone you have caught me writing on both sides of the paper; and I apologise to you for it.) [...]
with love,
W.
Sir Gerald Kelly: British painter (1879–1972), president of the Royal Academy from 1949 to 1954.
Arturo: Arturo de la Guardia, a Harvard classmate and friend from WG’s Canal Zone days. He was the son of Ernesto de la Guardia (1904–83), president of Panama later in the 1950s.
Cocktail Party: T. S. Eliot’s 1949 play.
To Edith Gaddis
Paris, France
15 january 1951
dear Mother,
I’m tired of love; I’m still more tired of rhyme,
But money gives me pleasure all the time . . .
So it was that I was very pleased to find two-hundred howling dollars at the G window in American Express. They are being subtly translated into Spanish currency—a subtlety which I hope will not prove too subtle for me when I appear at the house of a Very Old Family in Madrid, mendicant-like. And thank you for your accompanying letter. No don’t be crushed because I didn’t have your Christmas letter Christmas. As I said, I had a marvelous week in the country, and was extremely happy to have it when I returned.
Nor have I heard from Charley Morton. Will he prove a wraith
too? oh Lord, if he does . . . I’ll write him immediately. (What do you mean, ‘Emmy has some suggestions’?)
As I try to assemble myself this evening, I have a German radio programme, and such a beautiful language. Ech. And I am going back to that burlesque, Spain. But better to finish one thing before commencing another, and I’ve that feeling about returning, making a whole of it, a full circle. Possibly my next European trip will be an assault on Gemütlicheit to the north. Or Sussex. Especially if Nappers leave their place: the rent of it is 75pounds, 210$, a year! [...]
And I had a beautiful and heart-breaking letter from Margaret, she is so sweet, I can only hope I’m doing the right thing now, going back under the Pyrenees, to work, and still planning to return in the spring. I hope to heaven that won’t be too late for us. Because there’s not another like her for me I believe. And I’m much older now. Oh dear yes. How she would love living in Sussex, I believe. When I’ve some money again, I want to ask you to send a large splendid fruit-cake to the Nappers (their address is Chantry Hill, Sullington, near Pulborough, Sussex, England). They were so kind, and besides that showed me such a good example in a right way of living.
I’m quite busy here catching up Dick Wheatland’s loose ends (I wrote you he’d had to have an operation, couldn’t return until March possibly), and my own. Having this time resolved not to be caught book-less in Spain, I’ve assembled a small library which I’m trying to get into a box, this evening. Impossible. Though I couldn’t get some things I selfishly wanted in England, like cloth, a flat small suitcase (the kind you said would make me look like a Fuller Brush man), I did get books I wanted, including even a copy of the Golden Bough, all my own now! I should leave tomorrow or Wednesday, that nightmare 26-hour trip, 3rd class in France, 1st class in Spain. Only two or three days in Madrid, then, as it all started: a/c Consulado de los EE.UU. Paseo de las Delicias, SEVILLA . . . home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill, but me, call me Ishmael. It all started a long time ago.
with my love,
W.
such a beautiful language. Ech: in FHO, Oscar compares the sound of German to “a cow backing into a stall” (346).
Gemütlicheit: ie., Gemütlichkeit, kindliness—a joke, not a city.
home is the sailor [...] home from the hill: from Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Requiem” (1887; ODQ).
call me Ishmael: the opening sentence of Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851).
To Edith Gaddis
calle San Roque, 15
Sevilla, Spain
23 january 1951
dear Mother,
For 3¢, a glass of wine and a pajarito, who is a small bird, about what a sparrow would be if plucked I suppose, done in deep fat; and disconcerting enough to lift it spread and find it shapen enough like a man (done in deep fat). Or the recognition and liking in faces of some who counted small enough on one’s calendar of hope and redemption, but here they are: Isabel, an old and ugly woman at this place who welcomed me with all her gums exposed in joy, and I am back in this dormitory room, hospital-like enough since it’s got four white beds, two wash-stands (with pitchers), a white table and a couch which looks enough like an analyst’s couch to alarm . . . to alarm me, not a Spaniard. Or in the bar Capi, nearbyenough, and the welcome there; and immediately incumbent, again, the feeling of acute isolation in the midst of professors of friendship. Or Eulalio, my Sevillano ‘friend’, who tempts me to homicide often enough, and the welcome there; Salud, his wife, and Rosita, his child, and the adventure my return seemed to be, they were so excited, and is it to my inverted-ness, or to my other devotions, that all of it embarrasses me, and again come the insistences of anonymity.
‘Don Guillermo’ again. It is cold and wet here.
Back.
Well, you forget the dirt and the poverty; and still the absolutely implicit insistence on salvation everywhere; bare walls and boarded windows; no ashtray nor waste-basket, so ashes and orange-peels alike go on the floor, easier for everyone that way.
Last night, having a glass of wine, beside me assembled a family (you may see that it was not a fashionable retreat). Father and mother blind, he heavily marked with syphillis (and she I gather similarly so), and a healthy appearing daughter of about 13, come in to pour out days’ gatherings, these leaden coins whose value would be be meaningless in Massapequa, to have it redeemed in currency (they sell lottery tickets, you see, and receive ‘tips’ of about .02¢ to .05¢). And so, I overheard the man say to the daughter, screwing his face upward as though he would look for himself, as though he has not lost the motion years ago, —And this Englishman, how do you know? Is he wearing elegant clothes . . .? And that was I. So, do you see, I am wealthy in that comparison; warm in comparison to those who are still now on the streets. But still one passes the houses of Sevilla, looking through leather brass-studded doors large enough to admit a coach, to a patio resplendent in tiles and green luxury growing from brass pots; or these people pass in their coaches . . .
I ’phoned Margaret from Madrid on Sunday. And of course I cannot tell you, how wonderful it was to hear her, nor how sad eventually, the conversation. Oh I tell you, I tell you (you know) what a magnificent, and splendidly brave person she is. I know now that she is having, and has had consistently a ghastly time of the whole thing, paid and paid and paid. Again: I don’t know. You may imagine, it looks enough to me now as though I should be there, with her, to do something, anything. And here I am, settled it looks with my work, and having made all financial arrangements to stay for two more months, at the least. Oh, you know I don’t mean to face you with all this; simply to say that things are in this state. And here I am with 45 books and 20 pounds of my own work, and impossible to know what it will come to.
Then I’ve heard now news of increased taxes. I’m concerned, especially after your letter saying that my check had saved things for the moment, over you. Are you all right, really? And this 100$ a month, it is a difficult drain? You must tell me.
$ $$$ $$$$$$ $$$ $$$ $$$ $$ $$$$$$$$$ $$ $$$$$ $
Could you, then, put my next (february) remittance in my bank account there please? Also, I’ve wondered a number of things. What, for instance, is the price of a ticket (LIRR) Massapequa to NY? and commutation?
I’ve written Charles Morton (Atlantic), asking what.
This (below) address should do, unless it’s something of great importance which might be endangered in loss, then the consulate.
with all love,
W
To John and Pauline Napper
Sevilla, Spain
Saturday, 27 january 1951
dear John and Pauline,
[...] A month now, since I found myself trapped in the 1st-class carriage in Storington station, and the Honourable Miss Something released me to your magnificent week waiting. I suppose (an analyst could figure this out) it’s because it was so wonderful that I’ve taken this long in writing, wanting to be able to thank you sufficiently, which I cannot of course even now, nor see how I can ever. I might even plead that selfish rudeness with a Purpose, but can’t even that for not writing, since it’s only in the last couple of days that I’ve got back to work again.
Paris of course was the roundabout I thought it might be, and took some eight days of hopping, losing telephone numbers, missing buses, shaking hands, —but as you can see I finally did escape the warm-house-with-oriental-retainer, and the dashing sports car (which I didn’t even take out of the garage while there). But now, no telephones, no gramaphones, no Citröen, no Rolls Royce . . . And the welcome back. People I hadn’t seen in almost two years, and almost all of them servants or bar tenders &c, but glowing welcome, [...] It is wonderful, and heart-breaking, this lavishness with nothing, and such friendship isolates me in embarrassment even more, somehow, than London’s civilised indulgence or Paris’s hard, dull, dreary, absurd, pretentious, stupid, tiresome, indifference. Oh yes and unalive, also. And again " Well.
I don’t know what it is Madrid has,
to make it handsome to me. But it was the two days I stayed there on the way down. Brisk clear weather, and everything seemed white, like Cadiz, though I hadn’t thought of it as a white city before. But the Prado. And the Retiro Park on Sunday afternoon. And there is, as many enough have said before, this apparently innate quality of happiness in south-Europeans, which Paris, with all its glittering old junk, never manages. And again the contrast to England, which shows in favour of both countries, the means of externalizing everything immediately here, sense of style, place for everything.
And nothing has changed; except they’ve finished the bank they were building on one corner of the Plaza Nueva, and started another across the street. Still the barrel organs, which bring every sentimental bit of me crying out, and like Odysseus must be tied to the mast as we pass the rock where the sirens sing, or I should follow them. (I did once, in Palamos, did I tell you? follow one out of the town, up the hill toward the cemetery, it was drawn by a pony.) But I ask them to play La Tani, and it is gone, no longer ‘popular’ but always popular because I asked an old and blind accordianist to play it in a bar a couple of evenings ago (he was playing that old rag La Cumparsita), and soon enough five gypsy girls and women, handsome and dirty, oiled, seams split and heels run down, were clapping in the corner, which excites me as it did when I first heard it. (Now I have to avoid the blind accordianist because he breaks into La Tani when his assistant sees me and it costs a peseta. Got to watch these things.)
I’ve thought about you a great deal these last weeks; but nothing has brought Chantry Mill so abruptly to my mind as the food, which Isabelle serves me in the sort of dim light usually kept for deception. (Though that is the first thing one notes in Spain, right across the border, the dim lights everywhere.) (No Paris neon.) Wretched fish, done to death by fire; plate of beans-and-rice; oak-leaf proportioned slices of beef and potatoes, fried in oil. Oil. Cold potatoes, floating in oil. But there is wine.