2. TNW to Charlotte Wilder, [Spring 1919?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
3. A story about Charlotte Niven’s plans for YWCA work in Italy was carried nationally, as in the Clearfield (Pennsylvania) Progress, February 27, 1919.
4. Charlotte Wilder to APW and Isabella Niven Wilder, August 15, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
5. ANW, 1919, ANW, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL.
6. William Lyon Phelps, Autobiography with Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), 661. Phelps had been a freshman at Yale when APW was a senior and “even then known outside of academic walls for his brilliance as an orator.”
7. APW to ANW, April 25, 1919, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
8. TNW, foreword to The Angel That Troubled the Waters, 3–7. Again, page references are to A. Tappan Wilder, The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, vol. 2.
9. Ibid.
10. TNW, “New Haven,” unpublished semiautobiographical manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
11. Ibid.
12. Fenton, Stephen Vincent Benét, 83–85.
13. Memories differ about what TNW worked on in this class. Wilmarth “Lefty” Lewis conjectured that it may have been the beginning of his novel The Cabala, which would be published in 1926, but Lewis apparently telescoped time and events, for TNW had not yet journeyed to Rome. See Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis, “Thornton Wilder,” unpublished manuscript, 1947, written at the request of Clifton Fadiman, ed., ’47: The Magazine of the Year, November 14, 1947, TNW Collection, YCAL. Lewis, who had known TNW and ANW at the Thacher School, adapted this article as a tribute to TNW and read it at his memorial service. Lewis also referred to the Canby class in his autobiography, One Man’s Education (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 143.
14. Donald Haberman to Isabel Wilder, August 17, 1961, TNW Collection, YCAL.
15. Fenton, Stephen Vincent Benét, 85.
16. Norman Fitts, S4N 21 (Summer 1922): 24.
17. Patterson, History of the Class of Nineteen Hundred Twenty, 49.
18. TNW, “SS Independenza,” unpublished semiautobiographical manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
19. APW to TNW, [Summer 1918 or 1919?], TNW Collection, YCAL
20. ANW, “Vita Notes with Special Reference to Literary Interests,” November 1971, ANW, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. TNW to Charlotte Wilder, [Spring 1919?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
24. Ibid.
25. Isabella Niven Wilder to Bruce Simonds, August 15, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
26. TNW, “SS Independenza,” unpublished semiautobiographical manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
27. Ibid.
28. Isabella Niven Wilder to Bruce Simonds, August 15, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL. In this letter Isabella Wilder identified the SS Providence as the ship that took TNW to Italy. In his semiautobiographical manuscript, he called the ship the SS Independenza.
29. Ibid.
30. APW to ANW, April 25, 1919, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
31. TNW, “SS Independenza,” unpublished semiautobiographical manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Certain passages narrating the Rome experience also appear in my foreword to TNW, The Cabala and The Woman of Andros (New York: HarperPerennial, 2006), xi–xxv.
35. TNW, “SS Independenza,” unpublished semiautobiographical manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
36. TNW to Family from the Hotel Cocumella in Sorrento, September 25, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
37. TNW, “SS Independenza,” unpublished semiautobiographical manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
38. Ibid.
39. TNW to Amos P., Isabella N., Isabel, and Janet F. Wilder, October 14, [1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
40. TNW to Family, September 25, 1920, [from Sorrento], TNW Collection, YCAL.
41. TNW to Family, October 4, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
42. TNW to Amos P., Isabella N., Isabel, and Janet F. Wilder, October 14, [1920], TNW Collection, YCAL.
43. TNW to ANW from Sorrento, October 14, [1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
44. TNW to Family, October 4, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
45. TNW, Villa Rhabani: Play in Four Acts, unpublished manuscript, TNW Collection, YCAL.
46. TNW to Family, September 25, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
47. TNW to Amos P., Isabella N., Isabel, and Janet F. Wilder, October 14, [1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
48. TNW to Family, October 21, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
49. Ibid.
50. TNW, “James Joyce and the Modern Novel,” in Gallup, American Characteristics, 174–75.
51. TNW to Family, October 21, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
52. TNW to Family, November 16, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
53. TNW to Family, November 20, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
54. TNW to Family, [October 15, 1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
55. TNW to Family, October 21, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
56. TNW to Family, October 14, [1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL. (In a typescript copy of this letter, it is noted that TNW’s self-description seemed to be a postscript added to the October 14 letter. TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.)
57. APW to TNW, [Fall 1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
58. Ibid.
59. Daggett, The Record of the Class of Eighty-Four, Yale College, 1914–1936, 146.
60. APW to TNW, [Fall 1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. Charlotte Wilder to Isabella Niven Wilder, [1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL. There are several undated letters from Charlotte in Italy to her mother and father, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
64. TNW to ANW, December 13, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
65. TNW to Isabel Wilder, April 4, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
66. TNW to Family, October 21, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
67. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, “Aprile” 13, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
68. TNW to ANW, December 13, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
69. TNW to APW, February 24, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
70. TNW to APW, February 1, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
71. Ibid.
72. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, March 10, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid.
75. TNW to Family, March 3, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
76. Ibid.
77. TNW to ANW, December 13, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.
78. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, April 13, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
79. See, for instance, SL, 126.
80. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, April 13, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
13: “CHOICE SOULS” (1921–1922)
1. TNW to APW, February 1, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
2. Ibid.
3. APW to TNW, [March 16 or 26, 1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
4. Ibid.
5. TNW to APW, March 21, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
6. TNW to APW, February 25, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
7. APW to TNW, March 26, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
8. APW to TNW, [March 16 or 26, 1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
9. APW to TNW, March 26, [1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
10. Ibid.
11. APW to TNW, April 15, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
12. TNW to APW, July 30, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
13. TNW to APW, June 27, [1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL. (TNW mistakenly wrote 1920.)
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Tappan Wilder, “Afterword and Readings,” in The Cabala and The Woman of Andros, 219. In a letter to his mother April 16, 1925, TNW confirms that in Paris in 1921, he began working on his Roman memoirs, which would evolve into his first no
vel, The Cabala (1926). See TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, April 16, 1925, LD, TNW Collection, YCAL. (During 1924–25, TNW occasionally copied outgoing letters by hand into a letter diary.)
17. TNW, “The Memoirs of Charles Mallison: The Year in Rome,” holograph manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
18. TNW to APW, June 27, [1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW mistakenly wrote 1920. Whereas many people may write the number of the previous year in January, TNW seemed to make that error in June or July in several different years.
19. Ibid.
20. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [August 1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
21. Quoted in Noel Riley Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1983), 81–82. Sylvia Beach recalled erroneously that Isabel Wilder also came into her shop with TNW in 1921. Isabel’s visits must have come at a later time.
22. See Richard Ellmann, James Joyce: New and Revised Edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) 502–8, for background on the trial and the eventual publication of Ulysses.
23. Meeting James Joyce: TNW to Bill Bissell, August 20, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL. “Self-imposed exile,” TNW, “James Joyce, 1882–1941,” in Gallup, American Characteristics, 167.
24. TNW, “Joyce and the Modern Novel,” ibid., 172.
25. Edmund Wilson (Leon Edel, ed), The Twenties (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1975), 94.
26. See Edmund Wilson, “Thornton Wilder,” The Shores of Light: A Literary Chronicle of the Twenties and Thirties (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1952; reprint, Boston, Northeastern University Press, 1985), 384–91, for a discussion of Proust’s influence on Wilder’s fiction.
27. TNW, Journal, September 28, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
28. Ibid.
29. TNW, “Some Thoughts on Playwrighting,” in Augusto Centeno, ed., The Intent of the Artist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941); reprinted in Gallup, American Characteristics, 115, 120, 122.
30. TNW to APW, June 8, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
31. APW to TNW, June 22, [1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
32. APW to TNW, June 27, [1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
33. Ibid.
34. APW to TNW, July 12, [1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL. Blair Academy was founded in 1848 by John Insley Blair, a railroad tycoon who endowed the school with money and hilltop land—435 acres just outside Blairstown, New Jersey. The academy educated boys and girls until 1915, when it became a boys’ school only (a situation that would be reversed in 1970).
35. TNW to APW, July 30, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
36. Ibid.
37. APW to TNW, August 5, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
38. Ibid.
39. TWN to Isabella Niven Wilder, [August 1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
40. TNW to APW, July 30, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
41. TNW to Charles Wager, November 4, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
42. TNW to APW, October 3, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
43. TNW to APW, November 11, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.
44. TNW to Charles Wager, November 4, 1921, SL, 151–52.
45. TNW to APW, March 4, [1922?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
46. TNW to E. C. Foresman, June 28, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
47. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, September 19, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
48. ANW, “Vita Notes with Special Reference to Literary Interests, November 1971,” typescript, ANW Family Record, Private Collection. Also see ANW, “Albert Schweitzer and the New Testament in the Perspective of Today,” in Abraham Aaron Roback, ed., In Albert Schweitzer’s Realms: A Symposium (Cambridge, MA: Sci-Art, 1962), 361–62.
49. TNW to APW, July 20, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
50. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, July 20, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
51. TNW to Charlotte Wilder, July 21, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
52. “Mists”: TNW to APW, July 20, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL; “wild and upthrusting”: TNW to APW, July 31, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
53. TNW to APW, July 31, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
54. TNW, “A House in the Country,” 1922 typescript, TNW Collection, YCAL.
55. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, March 10, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW may also have been working on Précautions Inutiles, another short story, during this time. This story is published in J. D. McClatchy, ed., Thornton Wilder: The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels 1926–1948 (New York: Library of America, 2009), 631–34.
56. TNW to APW, July 20, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
57. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, July 20, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
58. TNW to APW, July 20, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
59. The Italian artist Properzia (born in 1495) had been greatly admired for her carvings, the best-known of which was a Gloria of Saints with more than sixty minuscule heads carved with precision on a single cherrystone. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in her Essays on the English Poets and the Greek Christian Poets (1889), praised the writing of Alexander Pope for its “exquisite balancing of sounds and phrases” and its “glorifying of commonplaces by antithetic processes,” summarizing his style as “this Indian jugglery and Indian carving upon—cherry-stones!” Samuel Johnson addressed his comment to Hannah More (1745–1833), a British author, critic, educator, and philanthropist, who opposed slavery and wrote evangelical tracts and good-conduct manuals.
60. TNW, “Sentences,” Double Dealer, September 1922, 110. The literary magazine was established, according to the New York Times Book Review in July 1921, to be “a national magazine from the South,” designed to offset “a certain disquietude” in the region “over the lack of its intellectual outlets.”
61. TNW to “The Editors of The Dial,” August 3, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL. A French writer and diplomat born in Russia, Morand (1888–1976) wrote novels, short stories, poetry, screenplays, biography, and travel narratives.
62. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, August 22, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
63. TNW, Journal, September 8, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL. As noted above, TNW’s surviving early journals are unpublished, and while the journal entries are usually dated, he did not begin numbering them until October 11, 1926.
64. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 5, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
65. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, September 19, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
66. TNW to APW, February 17, 19[22?], TNW Collection, YCAL. (Letter is headed “Davis House, Lawrenceville, Feb. 17, 1921,” but TNW was in Paris then.)
67. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 5, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
68. Ibid. This is the “first sighting” of TNW’s plans to write the story of Julius Caesar, documenting the earliest recorded date of his concept for a novel he would bring to fruition twenty-six years later as The Ides of March. This is notable in and of itself, and also because, as will be seen, this date refutes and disproves an accusation that TNW stole the idea from a young novelist in the late 1930s or 1940s.
69. Ibid.
14: “ALL MY FAULTS AND VIRTUES” (1922–1923)
1. TNW to APW, February 7, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.
2. APW to TNW, February 13 [1922?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
3. TWN, Journal, September 12, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
4. TNW, Journal, September 15, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
5. TNW, Journal, September 5, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
6. Ibid.
7. TNW, Journal, September 11, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
8. TNW, Journal, September 12, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
9. TNW, Journal, September 11, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
10. TNW, Journal, September 29, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
11. Ibid.
12. TNW, Journal, September 9, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
13. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, May 16, 1923, TNW Coll
ection, YCAL.
14. TNW, Journal, September 4, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
15. TNW, Journal, September 22, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
16. Charlotte Wilder to Isabella Niven Wilder, [January 1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
17. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, March 26, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.
18. APW to TNW, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
19. TNW to APW, May 5, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.
20. TNW, “James Joyce, 1882–1941,” in Gallup, American Characteristics, 168.
21. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 19, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
22. APW to Charlotte Wilder, May 19, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
23. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, March 10, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.
24. TNW to Gwynne [Mrs. Mather] Abbott, May 4, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL. From May 1 to December 30, 1923, TNW copied most of his outgoing letters by hand into a letter book.
25. Isabel Wilder, “A Handfull [sic] of Facts,” n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
26. Isabel Wilder to TNW, [June 1923?], TNW Collection, YCAL. Isabel writes in the letter that she is twenty-three and a half. She would have turned twenty-three in January 1923.
27. Ibid.
28. TNW to Mame Gammon, May 10, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.
29. TNW to Barbara Leighton, July 9, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.
30. ANW was an outstanding tennis player for most of his life. In 1920, at Yale, as has been noted, he and Lee Wiley won the National Intercollegiate Doubles Championship in lawn tennis. In June 1922 Amos and his Oxford partner, Charles Kingsley, played Centre Court at Wimbledon, losing to the Australian team who went on to win the doubles championship. In 1977, when Wimbledon celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary, Dr. Amos Niven Wilder, at the age of ninety, was recognized as the oldest living person to have played Wimbledon’s Centre Court.
31. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, March 10, 1922, TNW Collection.
32. Ibid.
33. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, February 10, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.
34. TNW to Charlotte Wilder, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
35. Ibid.
36. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, February 10, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
Penelope Niven Page 85