The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder by Thornton Wilder

  The important thing is that The Bridge is getting along fast and is just filling up with beautiful passages that take your breath away. The whole last week Andy has been sleeping all day and prowling around all night with his brother in dress-suits. (Brother Chick, not Douglas who couldn’t come after all.) and I’ve stayed up in the old room and worked. I’m awful lonesome. I know a good many people in town, but none (except Ernest) that I really want to park around with. I go and sit and have good long talks with Sylvia Beach when I’m extra blue. Jack Kirkpatrick of Lawrenceville and Princeton I see everynow and then; and a certain Atkinson a phd grind at the Biblioteque nationale, and some girls; but for the most part, I write: all morning, take a late lunch somewhere (a dollar in American money, but dazzling to the French) drift forlornly into churches or louvres or buy a Berlin paper and read it through. (Oh, how I love Berlin compared to this dump.)

  Andy and I are at last on pretty strained terms, but I have nothing to reproach myself with and don’t think twice about it.

  I feel awfully remote from the news about The Trumpet, though of course its exciting. I was horrified at a telegram from Boly saying that Dabney was going to read the Lord’s prayer. I sent back one of the frankest telegrams ever committed to the wires: Please no prayer<.> I think he’ll find he’s made a mistake in telescoping the 3 & 4th acts, but I don’t care. Its all sort of remote to me. If its well-done or ill done, or successful or unsuccessful, it’s all one to me: its there on paper and someday when I’m older I’ll revise it and get the ideas sound. It’s scenario is too pretentious. If Dante had gone into the theatre he couldn’t have carved himself a more ambitious subject. On the eve of performance I shall telegraph the company my thanks and go to bed.119

  The English weeklies I see havent shown the C-b-la on the Longman’s lists yet; but I haven’t seen any for quite a while. Aunt Charlotte’s keeping an eye out for me.120

  Are you all well? Isabel’s a saint for doing all these chores for me in addition to all her work. Your all saints, and like all saints—far away. Now I’m all in a stew about how to get some little Xmas trifles over to you. Andy’s being sunk on me is pretty nice because it leaves me so much free time, but it prevents my asking him to carry home some items in his trunk. Mrs. Hemingway (she’s a brick and we all secretly hope he’ll go back to her: there’s the most beautiful little 3-year old baby you’ve ever seen:121 Ernest is just a Middle Western kid whose genius and health and good looks and success have gone to his head a little and I think the new wife is a mess) well, Mrs. Hemingway says that your bundles arrived in U.S. torn to ribbons and your friends are made to pay fantastic duties. However I’ll get Sylvia Beach’s advice and Rosemary Carr Benét’s advice and a couple of others.

  Every now and then I go to a concert. Tell Bruce122 when you see him that I went to a concert at the Schola and it was terrible. And every concert I’ve been to in Paris is terrible. Everywhere they try and make charm take the place of rehearsals, and I don’t get their charm.

  The only thing that could take away the curse from Paris for me would be to live in it with my dear Mama.

  Otherwise the only nice things about Paris are:

  Morgan Harjes on mail days

  The silly little franc and its troubles.

  Ernest Hemingway.

  Russians and their restaurants with Borsch.

  The tombs of Racine and Pascal. St. Etienne du Mont123

  The El Grecos in the louvre

  The memories of the XVII and XVIII centuries (first decade), especially Mme de Sevigné’s salon.

  Memories of Stendhal

  Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier.124

  I really can’t think of a tenth

  love in dejection

  Thornton

 

  PS. If I stay a month in Paris I shall rent a typewriter and do the glowing Bridge myself. Otherwise very soon I shall get hold of a good person going to America and entrust the two unique cahiers to him or her to give to Bonis and Bonis or Mrs. Wertheimer can have them typed. P.S. I haven’t mentioned Father in this letter. Give him my love. And he’s to read all letters if he wants to, though most of them are just trivial gabble like this one.

  94. TO ISABELLA N. WILDER. ALS 4 pp. Yale

  Closerie des Lilas125

  Blds Montparnasse et de l’ observatoire.

  To be found there every morning from 9:30 to 10:30.

 

  Dear Mom:

  If I wrote you every day for hours I wouldn’t get out of my system all the things I want to tell you. That means that we ought to meeting daily. When last I wrote you that seemed imminent. Since then a little flurry of things have happened and I have decided to try and stay over here until my March allowance comes and then go home on that from Italy. The events that have made me change my mind are: one, just when I thought I was frozen over and the Bridge would never be finished, for lack of notions, suddenly I went to a performance of the Ninth Symphony (one thousandth as good as the Berlin one, but good enough) and was all broke up. I came home and wrote the pages you will someday know as the death of Manuel; and the next morning I wrote Doña Maria’s visit to Cluxambuqua and I’ve been writing evenly ever since. Then came event no. two—letters from England. First Richard Blaker,126 the novelist, whom I have never met but who writes me often invited me to his home from Xmas. Roy Bower, vice-consul at Southhampton, through whom I knew him, has just passed through Paris and told me a lot about him. For instance he is married to his uncle’s wife, a bond not permitted in the prayerbook but offering no difficulties to commonsense. They had to travel about the world hunting for a country that would absolve them of their sin and presently both Holland and the U.S. Roy says they are both perfectly delightful. Well, I was on the point of spending Xmas with Dick and his aunt, or rather with Mayme and her nephew, when another letter came from Coleman Walker (football star, U. of V. and ex. Lawrenceville master, and Rhodes scholar) announcing that since I was on the Riviera I should at once engage him a room near me, for he was going to spend Xmas with me, willy-nilly, and right thereafter a whole horde of Oxonians would descend on us. Thirdly, I began to know the motley crowd in my house, the Polish pianists whose money doesn’t come and another Polish pianist who is rich and famous and charming and trying to hide from the Princesse de Polignac, and other menaces. There’s suddenly developed in our dreadful pension a thickness of local color that would stagger Balzac. The successful pianist is taking me to a tough dance tomorrow; and Sunday I am to go to a farewell party among the impecunious Russian composers and painters. And a French law student urges me to come and try the company of his cafe circle.

  Ernest Hemingway remains the hot sketch of all time. He bursts with self confidence and a sort of little-boy impudence. The other day Mrs. Vanderbilt (she who is going through procedures to get her divorce that make my Mrs. Roy episode sound tame) asked him to dinner and he accepted addressing her in his note as Mrs. Vanderbuilt, “just to keep her in her place.”127 He’s now at work on a play about Mussolini. Ernest claims to have dabbled in secret service and plots, and to have access to highly secret dossiers. He swears that of the attempts against Mussolini’s life all except that of the mad Irish woman, were intentionally planted by Mussolini to create a martyr-legend. This last shot was not fired by the boy who was stamped to death by the crowd, but by someone else who escaped as planned.128 The little boy was a sturdy Fascist Junior and made the mistake of turning to run when the shot was fired. You can judge by that how full of astonishments Ernest’s conversation is.

  I haven’t the slightest idea whether the play has been produced yet or not. Isabel said about the 5th. I tried to read it the other night but I couldn’t ‘see’ it, it was unreadable. But if I knew when the performance was I c’ld send a telegram of good wishes to the Lab. Perhaps there will be letters from somebody tonight.129 Mail arrives here at 8:30 AM and PM and at those t
imes I am like a lion at feeding hour. The more I think about all you treasure the more I pine to come home perhaps I shall go to Nice for Xmas with Coleman then hop a boat back after that.

  Tonight I’m taking the almost-ex Mrs. Hemingway to a concert. She is a nice brave little soul, looks very like Mae Marsh and therefore a little like Mrs. Lincoln and no one knows how she feels about Ernest’s cut-ups. I think she has ceased to be particularly in love with Ernest, but dreads being alone and divorced and back in America. Fortunately she has the most beautiful little boy in the world and all the royalties of The Sun also rises. ¶ I have sent Amos a book; now I must find Charlotte something. Mansfield St. must be content with the Century. Oh, honey, I forget to tell you that I filed an application for the Guggenheim—only I was as usual a little too high hat. I asked for residence in Munich & Salzburg (though I meant Vienna) in order to learn the theatre from the inside out etc through friends on Reinhardt’s staff—(Rudolf Kommer). They want you to claim a definite piece of work even if you are one of the “Creative” fellowships (Steve pretended something in Old French History) and they must learn better. I’ll probably not get it, so don’t worry.130 Do you realize that the Bridge is going to be a riot. Every twenty pages there’s a tremendous emotional situation and between times it’s as lyrical and beautifully written as……. …….. It will help you build the most adorable little Engl. house and put a maid in it too. And then I’ll never travel to Europe again but will sit reading aloud to you while you punch rugs. Sweetest lady in the world, au revoir

  Thornt.

  95. TO WILLIAM I. NICHOLS.131 ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed Alpha Delta Phi Club / 136 West 44th Street / New York) LofC

  Feb 4 1927

  Dear Bill:

  Excuse me for not having sent a letter for you the minute I got off the boat (Tuesday noon.) The nearest I came to it was this idiocy which I enclose and which was put through by the determination of the young lady. I like her only pretty well; and the last-day of the trip I surprised her in a not-very-nice action. However she’s not so bad, and if it turns out that you liked her especially well, I can be brought around to a kind of acquiescence.

  The trip was very long and pretty rough. The ship’s company was below the average except for two astonishing friends I made—two beautiful examples of a high-class Hungarian and a high-class Swede. I projected a letter to you in which I would paint their full-length portraits a la Cabala, but I see now that they would take up four closely written pages and wld be out of proportion with the things I want to say to you.

  The impetus you gave me to whip myself into publicity survived the voyage. I have paid amiable calls right and left. I wrote a letter to Eva Le Gallienne asking for an appointment. I called on Aswell,132 whom I like very much (though fancy your trying to give me the impression that he was a sort of Nichols!) and who assured me that serial opportunities must be sought six months ahead of the first instalment. Bonis were full of deferense and good news. The Cxbxla continues to sell with quiet obstinacy. The review in Punch had just reached them and so on.133 Then I went to see a performance of my play. There are lots of beautiful things in the production and the great technical virtuosity of Boleslavsky discovers lots of good things but there are some pretty distressing moments. The last ten minutes aren’t mine at all—they are sentimental and preachy beyond words. I am permitted, nay begged, to rewrite all the last part and it will go into rehearsal at once. I don’t like the play. It’s remote from me. If I came upon it as the work of someone else I doubt whether I would see a grain of talent in it. But the actors love it, are fairly revérent about it, especially the heavenly sweet face that plays Flora. She’s an emotional little angel, doesn’t know her lines yet even. I gave her a copy of The Cxbxla, inscribed with all my admiration and gratitude “as a Valentine” and she cried and cried.134 I took Ray Bridgman135 out to dinner last night, and he haranged me for four hours about the stars, and the fourth dimension, and idealism and universalism. It’s quite true: he almost lives in a trance;—his extraordinary mad eyes do not see any human being. I think there are no brains there: just yearning and escape from life. He is as thin as a pole, thin arms and hands, and a desolate face that won’t give in. I think he regards himself as having been trapped into marriage (by nature) and all he wants for the rest of his life is to take an endlessly long walk about Staten Island reciting Adonaïs to himself.

  I saw a splendid rich meaty performance of The Brothers Karama-zoff and another of Tchekov’s The Three Sisters.136 There are dozens of glorious new skyscrapers. The faces on Fifth Avenue this morning—eleven o’clock and sharp wintry sunshine—were 3 times as interesting as any European parade outside Germany.

  Your letter doesn’t say anything about your rooming problem and I assume that you have had to resign yourself to staying where you are. I keep thinking about crossing the ocean again just to see you. Nothing has given me so much quiet pleasure as being liked by you. Life is short, and has so little congeniality at best that I keep wanting to throw everything else aside and rejoice in the share that has been given me. I have been feared for my sharp tongue; I have been admired with a sort of distaste; only lately have I simplified out enough to be worthy of being liked (by men that is.) I don’t dare say that my silly egotism is entirely buried yet, but it is with you.

  Hurry on, hurry over, Letter. I was shy of writing you at once for fear I would give the impression of presenting you with mail (so unready am I to believe that I am welcome). I do not like the thought that a whole month will have elapsed before you will have heard from me again.

  When various sides of me come forward that you do not like—the introspective side, perhaps, as on the bottom of the previous page; or the sentimento-demonstrative side (I have not known you very long after all and cannot be sure what strains make you impatient); or the I-did-this-and-that side, as on page 2—when such things come up, be patient and realize that after a long ill-adjusted awkward age I am only just beginning to be simple. Perhaps that remark makes you mad with the others.

  I am going down to New Haven in a few minutes, to live for two months in great retirement. I shall finish The Bridge in 3 weeks. I shall be very thoughtful to my good father and mother, a sort of unexpected autumnal comfort. I shall write you often. And I shall prepare myself for writing (ten years from now) such beautiful books that all kinds of things will be forgiven me.

  Letter-writing bridges next to nothing. Goodbye my dear Bill. Is my affection some help to you when you are depressed and restless?

  Ever

  Thornt.

  96. TO WILLIAM I. NICHOLS. ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed Alpha Delta Phi Club / 136 West 44th Street / New York) LofC

  Feb. 16 1927

  Dear Bill:

  Here I am in New York again for 2 days prowling around after Advertisement. I hate to resign myself to the fact that certain of the fine arts are closed to me. A tiger can’t change his spots, and I’ve found out that I’m not much good at exploitation but I’m doing my best. For instance, there are signs that the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California want to put on my play137 At first glance that doesn’t seem much. But if you can get to be a Little-theatre-author you can make thousands. The Middle West and West are lousy with little theatres; they copy one another’s shows and they pay about twenty-five dollars a performance. So I’m trying to get the theatrical publisher French to bring it out (first wringing the permission from Bonis). Between I and you the play is almost no good, but that has Nothing to do with the Case.

  The Lab. theatre has struck a great financial and prestige success with Clemence Dane’s Granite.138 Crowded houses. This brings refreshed audiences to all the alternating plays in the repertory, too, so even mine is getting new life.

  New Haven is fun. A whole crowd in the Elizabethan Club bought a row for Abie’s Irish Rose last night and I was in before I knew it.139 We all put on wigs and dress suits with ambassadorial
ribbons and medals and beards and some dreadful gin. We put our make-ups in our pocket long enough to get by the doorman, but the police put us out in the middle of the second act. You can imagine the P-rade of fourteen flagrant Jews and Irishmen filing drunkenly out during that solemn oratorio. And again you can imagine how I enjoyed it—being mistaken for a young man, or even for a lighthearted one.

  I’ve been reading Spengler and Keyserling, and Santayana’s Character and Opinion in the United States—the devil’s own intelligence playing around the Puritans and other institutions. And the meanest deliberate effort to puncture William James and Royce,140 and a long look at HARVARD and all American education. All sorts of beautiful things wilt at the breath of that damned Spaniard.

  It seems more and more likely that I’m going off to New Mexico in the middle of March to concentrate. Get letters to Mrs Mabel Dodge and her primitivo-sumptuous colony at Taos,141 and take long walks, look at color, listen to Brahms and concentrate.

  Later.

  Bonis are thrilled with the first instalment of The Bridge. Friday I’ll give them the Twin-Brothers passage and if that doesn’t knock them cold, I’ll be.

  Just got a letter from Jerry Hart’s Marjorie, inviting me to the Chateau des Enfants.142 Also a letter from Jerry two days ago. Also a letter from Coleman saying that he had had a long walk with you. To all these people I write better letters than to you because I don’t know them as well. All I say is: Be patient, be patient with me, Benny.

  There’s a big hot article in the February American Mercury by a returned Rhodes scholar.143 I’ll send it to you as soon as I get back to New Haven. ¶ Ernest Hemingway writes from the Austrian mountains that at 2 bucks a day he’s warm and well-fed and hard at work. Also that ski-ing is a sensation like something between tearing silk and ……………………..Fill in the blanks from what you have heard of Ernest. ¶ I had tea with Muriel McCormick day before yesterday, the daughter of Harold and step of Ganna.144 She was on her way to Palm Beach and suggested that it was an ideal place for a young author to do his best work. Remind me to tell you someday all the drama behind that there tea. I’ve been butting into turgid complicated lives all this year—never again shall I dismiss a play as “mere melodrama.” Books are timid. God, how good for me to be always tangential to someone else’s whirlwind. Even though every now & then they suck you in for twenty minutes.