But the Fair is coming. Not, I believe, that there is not always the Fair here. Right now, we locals are busy stringing canvas up over narrow streets, telling the ugly tourists that it is protection against the sun, but really it is simply to give the place the atmosphere of a large circus tent interior. And it never ends, the singing and the dancing and the handsome people, though the Fair will augment it, 8 excellent bullfights and hundreds of casetas, those small canvas rooms where drink is served, —served, drunk, spilled, offered, hurled, . . . menaced by monsters, risking enchantment, and afterwards piles of broken glass, and that is the kind of carnage testament to Living, not 1000 lost golf balls. (Do not let me hear of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly . . .)
And then on the metalled ways that point back. Oh, I feel such a fool trying to write this; saying and believing the absurdity of this transatlantic direction, and taking it. And so the Fair will be a final debauch and farewell, final only in a sense of finality of this trip which has lasted almost 3years, final in that it will I hope to God only be a point of returning and that you will see me sitting in a state of senile collapse at the portside in Santa Maria when you come there with your canvas and your brushes and your cooking utensils. God it must be that way.
Or you see, they would think, he is now involved in something calculatedly riotous and degeneratedly insane, the Feria at Sevilla, but he returns to sobre living. When I know that this is living, and what they have is insane, is the highest level of calculated insanity ever achieved. I have seen the ruins of Leptis Magna, marble at odd angles; and Sevilla’s fair, broken glass piled high; and now New York, already in ruins though they do not know it. Aie . . .
I shall write you soon again now, but at the moment . . . well, I did want to thank you for your letter, to explain those girls and camels, to note my absurd news and congratulate you on your good news, and now another cart passing shakes the whole house, and I’ll go down. I won’t say I’m going down on business, on work, on something pressing, that I have to answer 14 letters, that they are waiting for me to open the Cortes, or lay a cornerstone, cut a ribbon to open another concrete way toward Progress (and a future which, like the past, is likely to have no destination . . .) —No, I am going downstairs, through the patio and out the iron gate and up past the charcoal-seller’s shop, down a narrow street and turn right into a narrower one, past the old woman selling lottery (cinquenta iguales para h-o-y . . . cinquenta iguales me quedan . . .) and out into the sunlight, through the orange trees in the Plaza de la Magdalena, past the fountain, toward a sparkling glass,
and all best wishes—wait for the early owl
W.
—Well, I just came back in from that pre-prandial tour, to find Isabelle has washed my whole floor again. And I cannot tell you, I cannot tell you what Sevilla is—if you are lazy, no-good, hopeful of miracles (of a minor nature certainly in the sight of God) as I am.
the girl with the safety-pin [...] Leptis Magna: cf. R 877–78 and 895, where WG used many of these details.
P. Sta Maria: El Puerto de Santa Maria, a little northeast of Cádiz.
distracted from distraction by distraction: a line from part 3 of Eliot’s “Burnt Norton.”
Idealis [...] Bastos Flor Fina: Spanish cigarettes.
shoulder the sky [...] God’s ways to man: a mashup of lines from A. E. Housman’s “The Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux” (1922) and “Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff” (1896).
Do not let me hear [...] their folly: from part 2 of Eliot’s “East Coker.”
the metalled ways: part 3 of Eliot’s “Burnt Norton” concludes: “while then world moves / In appetency, on its metalled ways / Of time past and time future.”
a future [...] no destination: from part 3 of Eliot’s “Dry Salvages”: “We cannot think [...] of a future that is not liable / Like the past, to have no destination.” (cinquenta [...] me quedan): “Fifty tickets today, I’ve got fifty tickets.” wait for the early owl: a line from “East Coker,” part 1.
To Edith Gaddis
Sevilla
19 April 1951
dear Mother,
Probably by the time you have this—well, heaven knows: we’ll likely have been through all sorts of cabled confusion, even telephonic. But I write this to confirm plans in the cable I sent you last evening [...] I’ve found a modest Norwegian motor-boat which is due here the 22nd from Genoa, and due to sail to New York the 24th. I’ve taken passage but the complication is, of course, payment, after the way American Express has arranged things for me. [...] If this has not worked out, don’t be concerned over this letter; I shall try to make some arrangement here, or wait until another boat shows up. But if it has worked out, the agents (Boise Griffin Streamship Co, 90 Broad street, NYC 4) can keep you posted on when the Nyhaug is due in, should be the 4th–6th of May. And what pier. [...]
Otherwise, the only thing I think of is would you reserve a room for me at the Harvard club, or the Algonquin (whichever is less expensive), planning to stay in town for 2 or three days, then out to frigid studio . . . where I’d think to go alone and have things in some order for you when the weather signals you to come out. I’ll probably need a couple of weeks there alone to collect myself. I’m quite nervous about the whole thing, to tell the truth.
And that seems to be all. I know you’re probably in a stew right now over what is happening to me; I’ve put off writing you these last few days expecting some definite word to send you. But be assured that I’m fine, here, the fair in full flowery swing, excellent bullfights, (there are 5 more) and invitation to two fancy casetas (the drinking tents of familys) on the fair grounds, where I’m going this afternoon. Otherwise, handsome men and handsome girls riding pillion on handsome horses, handsome carriages, gallons of Manzanilla, singing and dancing.
with love,
W.
To Edith Gaddis
Sevilla
[24 April 1951]
dear Mother,
Last minute wildness-es; [...] I’m afraid you’re going to have to come to the Erie Basin, Brooklyn’s shade, to find the Nyhaug, but there we will be, modest and without shame. I trust. And I’m afraid I’m going to arrive not as neatly as I set out, rather with an assortment of boxes, quite gipsy and not stylish; and don’t know what to suggest in the way of meeting, if you’ve a car there or what. Your new car? Oh dear. As I said, I’d plan to spend 2 or 3 days in town, if you’ve made reservation at Harvard club or the Algonquin, the latter might be best since there you could ‘visit’. But modest, and with out bath, I hope to be clean on arrival.
As for the boat, I’ve been down to look at it; and for all its smallness (slightly larger than the banana boat from central America), my cabin is really good, I hope you’ll see it; and I am the only passenger . . . SO. Honestly, such a much more excellent way to travel than the balloon dining room of tourist boats. I talked with the captain[,] very pleasant fellow, suppose I’ll be dining with him, quietly & well.
Finally thanks for your letter just received, and for all that, for the return &c, I’m quite nervous. Well, we’ll see about that. Present plans to sail tomorrow 25th, arrival about the 5 May, that can be affirmed with the agent.
nervously, love,
W.
To John Napper
still at sea
4 May, 1951
dear John,
First, don’t be down-hearted at the post-mark (if it is, as I trust it will be, New-York). I’ll try to explain it to you, as I have to myself.
Meanwhile, ten days at sea proves a very long time, though thank God for it: opportunity to lose Spain little by little, and prepare myself (as though anyone could, ever) for the slaughter. But honestly, it did take a few days to recover from that departure. Though repeating to myself, as to others, that it was not for more than a period of months; though there is inevitably a ring of finality about setting sail for a place which in grotesque pretension calls itself your ‘home’ . . . home is where one starts from, it was, and wi
ll be.
As you may have heard, the city of Sevilla held an extensive going-away party for me, —it lasted for five days and five nights, fifty bulls killed, some artistically and some in acute discomfort; girls, singing, dancing, horses, mules, blood and sand and broken glass, tears and abrazos. Honestly, leaving that pension, with five elderly ladies all weeping, and they gave me an intricately stitched Lady of Carmen (Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory . . .), and a lunch to take along, a journey of ten days with nothing but sea and sky incomprehensible. Or leaving the bar Capi, pledges of friendship eternal, and also that they were going to close the place the minute after I left: there is devotion! Or Pastora . . . but perhaps David Tudor-Pole has mentioned her to you—and so in these days (And on the deck of the drumming liner Watching the furrow that widens behind you You shall not think ‘the past is finished’ Or ‘the future is before us’) one recovers slowly and privately the shell of empty laughter, laughter which recalls nothing and words and gestures without past or future, except insomuch as they exist in the minds of those on the dock, on the pierhead, waiting for the recognition which they feel implicit in the circumstances, —one recovers this shell, prepares to inhabit it, present it in rooms to those who spend their lives in rooms; prepares experiences, taken however seriously then, we missed the meaning, for expenditure in conversation which dies on the dead smoke exhaled, stagnant, the experience tossed off that easily and the meaning never again questioned . . . so one comes ‘home’.
No; it is not all that easy, nor so soon done with: what brought us away takes us back; and persists to point us away again: the past is not finished nor the future before us. Though for all that, I dread the day when voyages cease to have their significance for me, when I know with my heart what I know now with Mr Eliot’s mind, that the way up and the way down are one and the same; better cultivate the infinite mind, and preserve the temporal heart, in which voyages still do have directions, fight against the weary sagacity of the seaman to whom directions are simply matters of distance and of days, and ports of climates and cost of entertainment. Never, I hope, to attain to that peak of sophistication where movement across water is simply a matter of adjusting one’s watch, where crossing the Atlantic ocean is as significant as a busride to Battersea.
So I sit, in a clutter of books, boots, bags and bottles, —these latter a more extensive cargo than planned, again enthusiasm demolished judgment and I fear altercations with New-York aduanas, but it was a case of last-minute desperation, like one setting forth on the Sahara for the first time, uncertain if he should see a drop of drink before expiring, so I seem to have carted one after another bottle (cleverly alternating coñac and Manzanilla) aboard; pretty souvenirs to bring Home to Mother after 3 years in ‘interesting’ places . . .
I’m glad David Tudor-Pole got you, and managed to hand over the bottles (speaking of bottles). I trust he gave you description of the Puerto de Santa Maria. The only thing that distracts me about that town is the flatness, persistent all down that plain, slightly broken but just enough up at Sevilla; that, and that it would be infernally hot in summer. But I think endlessly of your going there to stay; and I will not say enviously, because envy suggests impossibility of attainment on the part of the viewer; and I hope and plan it will be possible for me, thinking now that after two to four months in America to re-cross this sea, with either a wife or the Encyclopædia Britannica in tow.
Some people have paid their debt immediately they close the door behind them. And it is difficult enough to talk with you of debts, because you have proven that only in fulfilling one’s debt to one’s self can one ever repay debts to others; and we who still hop about on one foot concerned to pay these debts to others before we have the currency will be eternally bankrupt. Ecco . . . At any rate, that is what I want to straighten out on this trip, what the debts are and how best paid, and if they must be payed immediately. I am still uncertain if what work I have finished (the African trip made a decided dent in what I’d planned to have done, but well worth) will be sufficient to show for ($al) encouragement; that remains to be suffered. And the only thing which could crush me will be war, or being sucked into the hysteria of Preparedness, being dressed in an anonymous costume and spent that way.
So don’t be upset at me if things seem to collapse, or stagnate; they will only be in suspension, which I shall and (unless war) when the time comes, I trust before summer is out. This trip is necessary; and once one has such on one’s mind, it is better to go through it quickly than waste time and energies pondering it.
Thus I found this small Norwegian cargo boat (6000tons) sailing direct Sevilla–New York, and boarded. For the first days out, the sea was like the Caribbean; but now the sky fades, and the water looks colder, that indifferent colour not blue nor grey but simply Atlantic. We should shudder into New York in about 40 hours. I expect to spend 3 or 4 days there, examining possibilities, then escape to the woods, to home house which needs a good deal done to it in the way of painting &c, and settle to work again.
Il faut cultiver notre jardin, says Candide; and Doctor Pangloss, who has been hung, burned at the stake, dis-membered, maimed, agrees. So please write me there, where I shall be sitting, an old man in a dry month, being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
Love to you both—and I shall see you
before too long.
W.
home is where one starts from: a line from part 5 of “East Coker.”
blood and sand: perhaps only coincidentally the title of a popular 1941 movie about bullfighting, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth, previously adapted twice, including a 1922 version starring Rudolph Valentino; based on the 1909 novel of the same name (Sangre y arena) by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez.
Lady, whose shrine [...] promontory: the first line of part 4 of Eliot’s “Dry Salvages.”
Pastora: the name of a Spanish woman Stephen/Wyatt falls in love with in R.
And on the deck [...] before us’: from part 3 of “The Dry Salvages.”
in rooms to those who spend their lives in rooms: an Eliotic phrase used in R: “They arrived at a room full of people who spent their lives in rooms” (176).
the way up [...] the same: slightly misquoted from part 3 of “The Dry Salvages.”
aduanas: the Spanish word for customs agents.
Il faut cultiver notre jardin: “We must cultivate our garden” is the closing line of Voltaire’s novella (1759).
an old man [...] waiting for rain: the opening lines of Eliot’s “Gerontion” (1920).
To John Napper
[WG arrived back in the U.S. in early May 1951. In July, he showed up at the New York office of the U.S. Information Service “in a white linen suit, flower in his lapel, and gold watch across his vest, to see Elmer Davis, a Harvard alumnus, who was Director of the Office of War Information during the war. ‘Tell him that it is William Gaddis, a former editor of Lampoon,’ he said. That announcement gained him entrance” (Bernard J. Looks, Triumph Through Adversity [Xlibris, 2005], 64). He got a job there writing articles for America Illustrated, a cultural magazine sent to Russia and Iran to counteract anti-American propaganda, and continued to work on R, which he was then calling Vigils of the Dead and/or The Origin of Design.]
WG back from Spain in his white linen suit, 1951. (Photo by Martin Dworkin.)
WG, Margaret Williams, Charles Eagan, and Kathleen Costello, June 1951.
Box 1071
Massapequa L. Isld.
20 july 1951
dear John—
I must confess, New York is an excellent place when one can come in and feel it belongs to him. For no reason, I feel so today. —But I can always retreat to Massapequa and breathe air.
Otherwise the usual horror of time scattering by, and little done. It takes a death to stop it; and last week my grandmother died—Christian sympathy aside, it was best thing for everyone concerned, especially my mother, whose life will be much simpler and more fre
e now.
I was pleased to have your French post card—Lord, I wish enough that I had been able to answer your Paris call. But no. I work slowly, and with the usual doubts and despairs. Though I have had one publisher read the thing, and extremely encouraging word from him. Though no $ £ encouragement—though I didn’t ask it. I only hope that by end of September I’ll be qualified to do so, because, the state that everything has been in (making me glad that I did come home), the summer is really just beginning now.
I’ve joined an excellent library in New York, and am quite settled reading of forgeries, counterfeiting, faking, imposture, fraud——and trying to manufacture my forger. Very difficult. Otherwise simply sit and listen to Vaughan Williams’ transcription of Greensleeves.
A few very long letters from David Tudor Pole give me pictures of London life. —Though not such happy prospects as Derby Day, or Sussex, hushed, gin bottles & Chelsea. I guess I shall never see Barney Emmart again.
But I haven’t ever thanked you for pictures of your house? Oh dear. It all goes on. I hope to write a letter soon enough—thus just a fast nervous New York note.
You’ll be pleased to know I gave a lecture and reading on 4 Quartets to a N.Y. school teacher (she’d never heard of Him; teaches literature). Oh, the posturing. No—I shall write—accept this in lieu for the moment. But do you plan Andalusia this fall?
Love to Pauline and you,
W.G.
To John and Pauline Napper
18 East 64th Street
New York City 21
12 December 1951
dear John and Pauline—
If anything of great note had happened, I should have written you before this. But no. Life continues to be all middle. Though there are those who are pleased with the prospect of the holidays, I am little excited, for not this year will I board an aeroplane to escape hideous Paris—be in splendid London hours later—and in Sussex soon after that. I am not upset about no wild Christmas because I am working hard, and really getting on well, happy. Except of course the work takes time, endlessly more time. And I am also kept busy doing writing for a magasine the State Department publishes in Iran—good enough income and I still escape the office job. [...]