[To Bernice Baumgarten]
October 19 [1956]
Dear Bernice,
On the strength of your telephone call I called and told the man at the electric company that yes, he should bring over the new vacuum cleaner. I had not quite made up my mind but if I am going to have to get the house clean I had better have something to do it with.
Here is the letter from Mr. Margulies,*3 which I would be grateful for having back to show my grandchildren.
I would greatly enjoy doing a story for the NY Times Drama Section, and will even guarantee to like the movie enormously, which I am already prepared to do, since I like Mr. Dinelli’s first draft. It would be exciting to come to New York (not Los Angeles, I think; my mother in San Francisco would be angry), for a showing of the movie.
You know as well as I do my singular gracelessness and idiot paralysis with regard to interviews, radio and—I have no doubt—TV. This I would think is absolutely out, categorically. I do not believe that I am photogenic, natty or self-possessed, and the children all have Vermont accents. On the other hand, I am extremely interested in the movie and everything about it, and anything I can do in writing I will be happy to do.
Incidentally, one of the contributing items in my fascinating ailment of the past few days was a brew of nervous tension and (reminiscent of my father!) high blood pressure. Result is a strict diet, no more cocktails before dinner (that was unkind) and a setup of what the doctor optimistically calls “tranquillizing” drugs. So I am changing my way of life. My future writing will be waspish, tending to dwell on descriptions of luscious foods, and at times hypnotically tranquil. I am enchanted. I will feel like Huysmans.*4
Best,
S.
• • •
[To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]
monday [November 1956]
dearest mother and pop,
i was very glad to get your letter and particularly your new address.
i am glad the apples arrived, and also glad you liked the witchcraft book. i have no idea how it is selling; they are not very thoughtful of their authors, and don’t give out much information. will know next march when the royalties come in, i suppose. it should be on sale in all children’s book departments, but again, the publishers are quite slow, and our local bookshop only got delivery a few days ago. there will be a story in the december companion, which should make pop homesick for the christmas tree lights; in january the companion is running a feature page on me and the kids, to correspond with the publication of demons, and they sent a photographer and an interviewer up here and the kids and i spent a pleasant morning being photographed and interviewed, except of course the photograph will be terrible. of me, anyway.
the movie will be released about march. the publicity department of the movie company wrote me asking what i could do to publicize it; would i be on the murrow person-to-person television show?*5 how about a series of radio and television appearances? or a feature article in the new york times drama section? would i come to a private showing in new york, or would i prefer los angeles? since they said nothing about paying expenses i said that i would come to a private showing in new york, and i would write them any articles they wanted, but would not under any circumstances consent to appear on any television or radio programs. the kids are all sore at me for turning down edward murrow. they are making some kind of arrangements for local publicity, which means that the entire thousand people in north bennington will probably go to the movie when it shows locally. he wanted me to write an article on whether it was possible to “go hollywood” in north bennington, but since i am not sure what going hollywood is i am very hesitant.
my own big news is that i have changed my way of life, or, rather, had it changed for me. i am having a wonderful time. about three weeks ago i had the flu and one evening was apparently very sick; stanley said i was raving wildly about not being able to go to bed until i had set the alarm clock, and it frightened him (i don’t remember it at all, and i think he is making it up, but i know i felt just awful) and by the time he got the doctor over here i was not feeling well at all. i had a high fever and he gave me a shot that put me out cold and then went into the living room and told stanley that my blood pressure had gone way up and that i had always promised him that if i ever felt bad enough i would go to work on it, and he thought i finally felt bad enough, which i did. so he came the next day and we planned out my new way of life, which, as i said, i am enjoying enormously. i am on a very lenient diet, keeping track of everything i have to eat, and taking fancy pills; in the three weeks since i have lost four pounds and my blood pressure is back to normal, but i am committed to keeping it up for a year. i have the whole kitchen wall covered with calorie listings. my big problem of course is liquor; i am trying hard to cut down on drinking but it is very hard, so i figure i will just have to get the food down to fewer calories to make room for the cocktails. oliver said definitely plan to include some drinks in each day’s count, since the intention was to make me feel better, not worse. i have no trouble doing without desserts and sweets in general, but i do mind potatoes and bread. i am fascinated with all the calculating and figuring. my pills also include one of these relaxing dopes, which does take the edge off that jumpy feeling you get when everyone else is eating mashed potatoes. i can still go out with stanley for our weekly dinner at the fancy restaurant, and have steak, and out for lunch each saturday with helen and have a lamb chop or something. and everyone is watching me all the time. the waitress in the restaurant where helen and i go every saturday takes a deep interest in me, and suggests things like having lettuce and tomato instead of the cabbage salad, and she pointedly gives helen butter and leaves me out. stanley figured out that if i stopped drinking entirely i would have to eat an extra piece of bread and butter and a potato to bring my calories up to what oliver wants them to be.
i must go and make myself a cup of consome. fifty calories. write me soon again, and lots and lots of love from all of us.
s.
• • •
[To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]
january 11 [1957]
dearest mother and pop,
the temperature is eleven below, so it seems like a good morning to stay indoors and write letters; my car has not started any morning this week, but who wants to go out?
i want to go out, i just decided. while i was writing those last words the furnace, which is directly under the study, started going boom boom boom like someone was pounding it with a hammer. i got to the phone so fast you couldn’t have seen me move, and got the furnace people and i was so frightened i could hardly talk. i’ve never heard anything like it; i thought the furnace was going to blow up any minute and the furnace man said calmly that he didn’t think anything would happen, they would send someone along later on, but it sounded like some of the pipes might be frozen so why didn’t i call a plumber? i said i had barely been able to dial his number and why didn’t he call a plumber and i would go and wait outside. then junior the taxi driver came up to drop off our morning papers and i said june you go down in the cellar and make that furnace stop going boom boom boom so june did. he didn’t know what was wrong, but he fussed with it for a minute. so now i am still waiting for the furnace people but at least it has stopped going boom boom boom and i don’t care if they think i am crazy if that thing goes boom once more i am going to go out to the barn and sit in my frozen car.
all this, you understand, with stanley peacefully asleep upstairs. he played poker last night and won ten dollars, which will just about pay the furnace man and the plumber. i figured if the furnace did blow up he was well out of the way of it, since he is asleep at the opposite end of the house and it might wake him although i doubt it.
i started originally to say thank you for the wonderful gifts you sent us for christmas; and of course thank you specially for th
e check, which we both appreciate so much. we cannot agree on what we want, so it is waiting in the bank. (the furnace just gave a little tiny boom. i don’t know whether to run or not.) because as usual i do not have my brother’s address, i would be grateful if you could send it to me again. they sent us a beautiful box of fruit which i would like to thank them for, and i would also like to send them a copy of demons. i hope you all had a wonderful christmas together; everybody but me drank your health in eggnog, but eggnog is 350 calories, so i used bourbon which may have as many calories but i don’t want to know about it.
i am doing fine. i slipped a little over christmas but as of yesterday i have lost eighteen pounds and am actually enjoying myself. blood pressure is fine. tonight we are going out for dinner and i am going to have filet mignon, which you could hardly call starving. the only real trouble i have is not being able to drink at all; oliver said to plan on a couple of cocktails before dinner, just for morale, but if i have two cocktails before dinner now i almost pass out. one cocktail gets me high. it makes me very sad. i keep thinking that in a few months one sip of sherry will have me dancing on the table.
we had a fine christmas. laurie, who had spent a couple of months working away at some secret projects in his room, turned out to have made for stanley a breakfront, the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. it is to go in the dining room, and has cabinets below for all the junk stanley used to keep in the buffet, and shelves above for books. and he had made me a jigsaw puzzle table, invented by himself; it opens up and holds the puzzle in a kind of shallow well, so the top can close down and keep the puzzle safe when you’re not working on it.
this is now monday, the 14th. it was twenty-five below when i came downstairs this morning, and of course my car will not start. it is supposed to go down around forty below tonight, which is cold even for vermont. barry cleverly pretended he had a cold this morning, so he wouldn’t have to go out in it.
there was a bad fire around the corner last night, and we spent all evening watching the fire engines tear back and forth. i always feel so sorry for the volunteer firemen who have to get out of a warm bed in the middle of the night and go out in this weather. i dreamed about fires all night long, and consequently feel very jumpy today. on top of that two bad reviews of demons came in, both from texas, where they apparently don’t like me (and i don’t like them, come to think of it) and in spite of the fact that they are the only bad reviews out of about thirty i’ve seen, they still make me mad.
the book is doing very well indeed. the first printing was fifteen thousand, of which nine thousand sold before publication, so there should be a second printing by the end of this month, i hope. in spite of texas. ten thousand sales pay off the advance, so we should be making money by now. the little witchcraft book is selling well (and now i think of it, that one got a bad review in texas, too; what do they do down there, tear books up to feed the pigs?) and is getting reviewed in scientific american and such, and various school library journals have recommended it. the children were enchanted at finding their pictures in the new york times and tribune.
the local radio station gave demons a plug, and both local libraries have put it on reserve so anyone who wants to read it must either wait a long time or go and buy it. except the bookstore has run out of copies and the new ones have not come in. louis scher, to whom the book is dedicated, has already bought forty copies and has ordered more.
we are having a big publication party on saturday night, about seventy people coming, and louis insisted on being responsible for the food. he is coming up for it, and saturday morning we received from him a package of about fifty pounds of pastrami, corned beef, and salami, all great rareties up here, which should make the party quite a success. all i have to supply is mustard.
we are all excited because the people who run music inn have invited laurie to work there this summer. because he is only fourteen they have a kind of semi-fulltime job he can do; he will be caretaker of the sports equipment. he will be meeting people like armstrong and other great jazz musicians, and have a chance to sit in on jam sessions with the younger kids. he is getting very good on the trumpet; he still takes lessons from a teacher who tried hard to make him learn time and notes, but fell flat when laurie discovered that his teacher is a jazz clarinet player playing at nick’s in the village during the summer; now they study jazz riffs and laurie can play anything on the trumpet and pick out any tune on the piano. he spends literally all his time listening to jazz, from the time he comes home from school (a waste of time, school; no jazz there) until he goes to bed at night.
stanley agreed to do an article on jazz for some magazine, which immediately sent him ten new books on jazz. he then wrote to one of the big jazz record companies explaining about the article and how he uses jazz in his course on folklore and got back a letter saying that of course they knew about him, and about me (i liked getting that plug; i didn’t know jazz people could read) and would send him any of their records at two-thirds off. so he and laurie sat down with their catalogue one evening and they ended up by ordering about sixty l-p jazz records, and are now trying to play their way through them. barry and sally can sing any basic blues you name. jannie, who is a free-thinker, got her own record-player for her birthday, and records (chosen by me, because i kind of incline toward jannie’s taste) for christmas, so she stays in her room and plays elvis presley and patience and prudence. she is very partial to bing crosby and harry belafonte. me, i actually like rock and roll, particularly a gentleman named fats domino, and every evening while i am making dinner and getting plastered on my one cocktail laurie puts on my fats domino records, and everyone else goes away and shuts all doors and tries to listen to armstrong or presley, but fats domino can drown out any of them.
as you can imagine, we live in the noisiest house in town; luckily mrs welling next door is stone deaf. by the way, on christmas eve the children took her over a copy of demons which they had all autographed and inside of twenty minutes we received two dozen roses with her thanks and best wishes. i understand from our mutual doctor that she is reading the book.
spring must be here. it’s gone up to eight above. and my car is going.
stanley has been invited to lecture at brandeis college in march, which means that in addition to the three articles he meant to do this winter he must also write a speech. i’m in the middle of a new book but in no hurry to finish it, and now the companion has folded my only big magazine market is mccall’s, and they have two stories of mine already. i keep counting the wealth i haven’t got, coming in from the movie and the two books and planning to buy a new car. if i don’t get rid of this one soon i will go batty. the one morning last week it started it had a flat tire.
we are planning to see you in march, and our house will be much quieter. thanks again from all, and lots of love.
s.
• • •
“Dear, as long as you’re not busy, would you mind lighting me a cigarette?”
[To Bernice Baumgarten]
January 25 [1957]
Dear Bernice,
I am very grateful to Miss Keegan for getting in touch with McCall’s; I wanted to get down to a few solid weeks’ work on my lovely novel,*6 and didn’t want to stop to rewrite that piece so now I have done about twenty more pages of the novel and it is really moving along and I should have some few pages for you to look at soon. Did I tell you that I got my sundial inscription from Dryden, finally? All that Shakespeare wasted. I think the novel is about comparative realities. But poor Essex is turning out a cad.
Bennington College is going to need a new president. Stanley and I want Leo Durocher,*7 but I think he is already employed.
Best,
Shirley
P.S. I have written six pages since the first half of this letter. Essex is still a cad but I have hopes of reforming him. May I dedicate
the book to you or do you think you had better read it first?
• • •
[To Bernice Baumgarten]
February 20 [1957]
Dear Bernice,
Here is the first draft of the first seventy pages of Sundial. I have the rest of it sketched out and most of it written but not organized or typed to be readable. I am very anxious to know what you think of this, and whether you want to send it along to Roger. Also as I told you before, I’d like to dedicate it to you, but perhaps after you’ve read it you may regard that as a mixed compliment; it is certainly going to be an odd book.
I have had a letter from Arabel Porter*8 asking if Bird’s Nest is a fictionalization of Three Faces of Eve. I am not going to answer her until I have cooled off some.
By the way, my sundial inscription still does not please me, and will probably be changed again. If you think of any good ones let me know. And I still cannot decide when to end the world; what do you think of late August? To avoid another winter? Our wedding anniversary is August thirteenth, but Stanley feels it is unkind to end the world on that day.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Bernice Baumgarten]
February 28 [1957]
Dear Bernice,
“Lizzie” just bowled me over. I had no idea it was going to be like that—my reactions, I mean; the movie itself I thought was extremely good, and enormously improved over the first script I saw. But seeing it was an amazing experience. I am still reeling. There were about twenty people there, but only a couple of my personal friends, who could be relied on to give a less formal, perhaps more honest opinion, and both of them found it a moving and exciting picture. I don’t know if this is a usual reaction to seeing a book of your own made into a movie, but what I want to do is go over and over again. There were several places where I was just jealous at the things a camera can do and a book can’t, particularly the last scene in the museum. What actually staggered me most, though, were the two Robins. As you must know, and Stanley is never tired of pointing out to me, I am an excessively prudish writer, and prefer to go two hundred pages around to avoid writing a scene like the one on the stairs. And yet it was so perfectly right that I have been given a kind of jolting new view of myself; clearly, it was in the book and I put it there and I am delighted; I shall be more daring. Essex, perhaps?
The Letters of Shirley Jackson Page 35