The Letters of Shirley Jackson

by Shirley Jackson

  must stop. lots and lots of love from all.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Carol Brandt]

  October 23 [1962]

  Dear Carol,

  This does not seem much like a morning when grandchildren or contracts or books or practically anything else can possibly matter. After the President’s broadcast last night*11 my poor young Barry, who used to dream of being an astronaut, fled back to the Oz books for comfort. I feel the same way.

  As far as the Holiday magazine piece is concerned, I am most definitely interested, since my present unfortunate position is that of enormous inclination and time to write just anything at all, and not one solitary idea.

  I am continually amazed at the reviews of CASTLE; I am also a little puzzled at the weekly Viking ad in the Sunday New York Times which makes no mention of any such book; aren’t they going to advertise it any more?

  My grandchild grows; I have reached the stage where I babysit for an evening and thankfully return him to his mother. He is a very sweet boy and I am delighted that he belongs to somebody else. His mother just arrived to dump another load of diapers into the washer.

  As I say, I cannot, this morning, find any of these things very real. I will go and bake a cake; at least I know where I stand there.

  Best,

  Shirley

  • • •

  [To Joanne and Sally]

  tuesday [October 23, 1962]

  dear whatever-you-are-calling-yourselves-this-week:

  i hear from hattie fels*12 that you are both well happy and beautiful which was nice to know. i also hear that joanne took care of her and saw that she got dinner and was most efficient and charming; very good, joanne. i further hear that my food packages arrived, which surprises me a good deal, since i had only mailed them two days before.

  as far as bringing friends home goes, of course your friends are always welcome and we would be delighted to have them, but are you sure that you want them here for your birthday celebration? the weekend will be very rushed, what with visiting laurie and corinne and big mo,*13 and seeing barbara and murry, who are most anxious to see you, and i don’t know how much entertainment we could offer guests.

  sally you never gave me any word on whether it was okay to use your ten cities for a little book.

  our social life is wild these days, what with our three houses entertaining each other. laurie and corinne carry big moey around in a basket and when they both have to go somewhere they simply drop him either here or with barbara so we see a lot of the baby. ralph ellison came by on sunday so naturally we all went over to laurie and corinne’s and ralph got to hold the baby and then in the evening laurie and corinne and barbara and murry came here and laurie and ralph played trumpet duets with barbara at the piano while big moey slept sweetly on the couch with a trumpet blasting on each side of him.

  barbara and i play duets nearly every evening and quite often laurie and corinne and child drop down so laurie can use dad’s books and somehow it seems that things are going on all the time. last night we had a big (forty people) party for kenneth burke, who has just finished a series of lectures here. it was very lively and we could not invite laurie and corinne because they are students but we apparently had all laurie’s teachers and heard a lot about how well he is doing. dad has taken over the big cook’s apron one of you girls stole from camp and he wears it to tend bar and looks very professional.

  merricat is sailing along. third printing, which makes twenty-five thousand in print now, although no one knows how many sold. they are running a contest among bookshops for the best hallowe’en window featuring the book which although i think it is kind of silly will certainly get the book into bookshop windows. poor old jonas will be a hallowe’en cat.

  * * *

  —

  wednesday

  as far as your summer plans are concerned, joanne, both dad and i agree that the apartment in boston idea is out of the question. even if you could find an apartment and a job. you simply cannot spend a summer on your own. we would like to have the family together next summer, anyway, and are still talking of getting a summer place on a lake. that of course depends on money money money. merricat is working hard to get us a lake.*14

  i have been turning on the news every hour to hear about the cuban situation; i hope people up your way have not gotten as upset as some people around here. at our party monday night almost everyone came fresh from hearing the president’s speech and they were terribly depressed, but somehow the longer it goes on the less real it seems. by the time you get this i suppose we will know what is going to happen. we have a radio because dad wanted a little transistor to take to school to hear the world series so i got him one. barry’s is working again but he will not listen to it as long as the news is so scary.

  every day i drive along main street at noon time i am thankful that you two are at cambridge. i see the old north bennington girls, looking just as dull and bored and silly as usual. and the boys throwing junk at each other and everyone standing around with nothing to do.

  must go make lunch. lots and lots of love to both of you from all of us. see you soon.

  love.

  m.

  • • •

  [To Carol Brandt]

  November 6 [1962]

  Dear Carol,

  Mr. Ehrlich*15 suggests writing about superstition or witchcraft, or anything else except children, and I have two ideas. One is our little country store, which in my time here has changed from a really country store to an emporium featuring delicacies and French wine. The other is the story of the two English schoolteachers who visited Versailles and stumbled into the eighteenth century; it is a case in which I have always been interested and would love to write about. If neither of these sounds right, I will try to think of something else.

  I was charmed by the story in Vogue; I had completely forgotten it and you are amazing to have found it after all these years and sold it besides. It was a favorite of mine, I now remember.

  Isn’t it nice how Merricat is best-selling? Pat Covici called me to tell me, and I did not like to tell him that Bernard Malamud, now at Bennington, and a man who takes his Writing Career very seriously indeed, subscribes to the Advance Times Book Section, and calls me every Monday to let me know how I stand.

  Now. The little baby book for Collier Books. I have a lovely idea and most of it is written but about one-tenth of the words are not on their arrogant little list. I simply cannot manage to bring it down to their level, but I hate to give it up. Is it worth my finishing it and sending it along to you (and I should of course send a copy to Louis Untermeyer with a note of explanation) on the chance that they might want it for slightly older readers? My illegal words are not difficult—“share” for instance, or “wonder,” both words I am shocked that small children should not know. Please do let me know what to do.

  Shall I send you some Vermont cheese?

  Best,

  Shirley

  • • •

  [To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]

  tuesday [November 1962]

  dearest mother and pop,

  it’s high time you met the young gentleman enclosed. laurie took a lot of pictures of him but this is the best. he looks unbelievably like laurie as a baby, he is beginning to be more alert and alive now, turns his head to watch people and knows when he’s being spoken to, smiles, and eats like a horse. he’s trying to turn over, and for one wild morning corinne and i were sure he was getting a tooth, although it turned out that even this baby couldn’t produce a tooth at five weeks. he still wanders around everywhere with his parents, and no one really knows where he is going to turn up next. yesterday he was over here visiting. i made dinner carrying him around under one arm while his mother was
outside pushing laurie’s model a ford to see if they could get it started.

  they have certainly changed a lot of things about babies even since barry’s time. do you know that there is instant formula now? like instant coffee. i suppose disposal clothes are next.

  we are not finding it too difficult to be grandparents. he is a nice baby and we like having him around for an hour or so but we are always very glad to give him back to his mother and father. i find it very difficult to change him because corinne is left-handed and i have to turn him over to get the pins out of the diaper and then corinne can’t get out the right-handed pins i put in.

  things continue much as usual in our three houses. we visit back and forth constantly, and it seems as though we never see anyone except family, barbara and murry now being included as family members. last weekend june and frank came up for a couple of days and laurie and corinne invited everyone over for sunday breakfast, using their lovely silverware and we had a fine time. miles sat in the middle of the floor in his baby seat and we all sat around eating scrambled eggs and drinking orange juice with vodka. on saturday everyone went over to barbara and murry’s for cocktails and then came here for dinner. we have the only dining room that can seat nine people. miles came to dinner—he went to the cocktail party too, as did barry—and slept happily while we ate and played the piano and sang.

  the girls came home the weekend of november third, which was halfway between their two birthdays; both girls are well and happy, and we were particularly pleased with sally, who is enjoying the school and looks so much better and acts so much happier than she did in this terrible town. sally had received your nice gift, and i hope has written you, although she is not much on writing these days with her concentration on her school work. she intends to spend the money on books; she has found a little old second-hand book shop and apparently spends a good deal of time and money browsing around there. much of her wildness is going. she is still a little batty, of course, but a much nicer sally.

  joanne is of course running the school and doing it very well. she hates the idea of leaving next june, but has applied to several colleges in case she doesn’t get into bennington. she is very happy at the school, not doing her best in the work because she is so busy managing things for everyone else and arranging the seating at assembly and being president of the dorm and chairman of the recreation committee and keeping up her busy correspondence with half a dozen boys.

  neither of the girls has more than the slightest interest in the baby, which surprised everyone. both of them admired him, held him for a minute, remarked on his little hands and feet, and then forgot him completely.

  laurie is doing unbelievably well at bennington. laurie himself is full of enthusiasm, working hard, and just generally taking on anything that comes to hand. he set up a painting studio for corinne in their basement. now he is interested in photography; he bought a good camera in europe, and for his birthday we gave him photography stuff (i don’t know what it is; he named it and we bought it) and he has set up a darkroom and is developing his own pictures. now he says he needs an enlarger, so there is his christmas present. i have never seen him happier or busier. he has a job playing regularly every sunday afternoon at a student-type restaurant near williamstown, where they play modern jazz from four to eight, not at all like the roadhouse kind of job he used to have. he tried working saturday nights at his old job but found he couldn’t manage it. he gets lots of offers of odd jobs playing with various bands, and has the satisfaction of earning some of his own money and being less dependent on us; he is taking just as little from stanley as he possibly can.

  * * *

  —

  wednesday

  mother, do you still have the genealogy you once had put together for the d.a.r.? i was talking to a miss bugbee who works for the bennington library and she was most curious to know what branch of the family we were, and joanne met a girl at school who claims they are related through the field family. i would love to find out more about it; bugbee is a very common name around here.

  i discover that i never sent you the picture of corinne i had for you. the picture loses her usual lively expression, but at least you will recognize her when you see her. we are just as fond of her as ever, although i still jump when she calls me mom.

  merricat is really swinging along, still getting the most fantastic reviews, and three weeks now on the new york times best seller list; started at fifteenth and now up to thirteenth. this does not really offer much of a challenge to “ship of fools”*16 or “fail-safe,”*17 but it is right good for merricat, who is also twelfth on publishers weekly’s best seller list. this means it is selling about fifteen hundred copies a week. our local bookshop has re-ordered four times, which is about on a par with our electing a democrat governor of vermont. the new york times called me yesterday for a picture (which i do not have) to use in their christmas issue; merricat is one of their recommended books of the year. the side effects are odd, too: a paperback company has picked up “sundial”, which never made a nickel, and is reprinting it, and my agent dug up a ten-year-old story out of the files and sold it to vogue, who turned it down ten years ago. holiday has asked me to do a piece, and my agent is begging me to go into the desk drawers and find old stuff she can sell, or at least to write something new.

  * * *

  —

  thursday

  must finish this today. cannot do anything else. yesterday, after repeatedly warning everyone that the back steps were icy, i skipped blithely across the porch, hit the ice, and went down magnificently, terrifying barry, who was helping me unload the car. it knocked the breath out of me and of course barry immediately concluded that i was seriously injured and, true to cub scout training, tried very hard to persuade me not to move until he had called the doctor and improvised a stretcher, but i finally convinced him that the only injury i could locate was a twisted ankle and he let me get up and hobble into the house. i had completely forgotten that my daughter in law had been a nurse’s aid in the hospital for a year, and when she called a few minutes later i casually remarked that i had fallen and twisted my ankle and in ten minutes she was over with bandages and epsom salts and you should see me. i told her i was going to soak it in bourbon instead of epsom salts and had a great deal of difficulty persuading her to let me make dinner. this morning i am far less bruised and battered than i expected to be, but now mrs king is after me to let her make the beds and run down for the mail and what not. in all of this while they argue i walk around doing exactly as usual; my only real difficulty is in driving because it is my foot for the clutch and of course my little car has to be shifted constantly. also the only thing i can wear on my foot is a furry red bedroom slipper and i simply will not walk into the post office wearing it, so i just won’t get the mail, and the store will send up my groceries and i will spend a happy day with my foot on the hassock reading a mystery story which i had just picked up at the library before we came home and i fell.

  did you know i got a new car? another morris minor convertible, exactly like the black one, only it is a 1963 model and is white. i kept the black one, of course—joanne will be driving by spring.

  * * *

  —

  friday

  i was too optimistic yesterday about not feeling any bruises; i should have remembered that these things take a day or so. this morning i really feel it.

  we have most unexpected house guests. a friend of laurie’s, who played with him in europe, a scotsman*18 (he says i must say scotsman) who spent a good deal of time this summer questioning laurie and corinne about this country; he and his wife had very serious thoughts of immigrating here. yesterday they called corinne absolutely without warning; they had just landed in new york and were on their way to vermont. corinne was a little taken aback, but they were good friends and lovely people, so she said come ahead, and then called me frantically; could they sl
eep in our guest room, since laurie and corinne have not the luxury of even one extra bed? and of course i said sure, so corinne and laurie brought them over in the evening and stanley and i were both charmed by them. he is ken and she is gwen; she is german, an experienced secretary who speaks english and french fluently and does not anticipate much trouble finding work in the united states. he is so very scottish that she frequently has to translate what he is saying. music is only a hobby with him—he plays trombone—and his actual work was “in whisky” which we have somehow come to believe means he had a still in the back yard although he insists it was imporrrrrting. he is a country boy, from near edinburgh, and fell in love with vermont. we may very well find a new couple settling in our community. he sounds exactly like something from an english mystery story. ken swears he has a kilt in his luggage which is stored in new york. i served them pancakes for breakfast, a good old yankee custom which puzzled both of them. she was a little more equal to pancakes, since they are served in germany, but ken pointed out that pancakes were more usually served for tea, were they not?

  now i must stop. i have to fill out a form for the international who’s who, listing my clubs.

  much much love from all, and write soon. keep well. i will soon send more data on our growing international family.

  love,

  s.

  • • •

  [To Stanley Hyman]