60. As noted, Wilder never finished the adaptation of The Beaux’ Stratagem. After his literary executor, Tappan Wilder, discovered the unfinished manuscript among his papers at the Beinecke Library, he persuaded the playwright Ken Ludwig to complete the adaptation. The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., gave the world premiere performance of the Farquhar-Wilder-Ludwig script on November 7, 2006. “Practical entertainment”: TNW to Wilson Lehr, November 26, 1939, SL, 370–71.
61. TNW to Huntington T. Day [Dwight Dana’s law partner], September 8, 1939, Private Collection.
62. Ibid.
63. TNW to Wilson Lehr, September 29, 1939, TNW Collection, YCAL.
64. Readers interested in the making of the script and the film may read much of the Wilder-Lesser correspondence in “Our Town—From Stage to Screen: A Correspondence Between Thornton Wilder and Sol Lesser,” in McClatchy, Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater, 663–81.
65. TNW to Sol Lesser, October 7, 1939, in McClatchy, Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater, 663–65.
66. TNW to Sol Lesser, October 9, 1939, SL, 368–70.
67. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, October 20, 1939, YCAL.
68. “In solitary confinement”: TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, September 11, 1939, YCAL; “Hope and dread”: TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, October 29, 1939, YCAL.
69. TNW to Wilson Lehr, November 26, 1939, SL, 370–71.
70. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, [November 18, 1939?], YCAL.
71. Charlotte Wilder to ANW, [March 11, 1940?], TNW collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
72. TNW to Edmund Wilson, January 13, 1940, YCAL.
73. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, January 28, 1940, YCAL.
74. TNW to Edmund Wilson, February 23, 1940, YCAL.
75. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, January 28, 1940, YCAL.
76. TNW to Sol Lesser, November 12, 1939, in McClatchy, Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater, 671–72.
77. Sol Lesser to TNW, March 21, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
78. TNW to Sol Lesser, [Easter Night 1940?], SL, 374–76.
79. Sol Lesser to Isabel Wilder, December 4, 1939, TNW Collection, YCAL; Isabel Wilder to Sol Lesser, December 5, 1939, in McClatchy, Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater, 672.
80. TNW to Sol Lesser, December 26, 1939, in McClatchy, Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater, 672.
81. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, January 28, 1940, SL, 371–74.
82. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, “Middle of March” [1940?], YCAL.
83. Charlotte Wilder’s share of the 1936 Shelley Memorial Award was $425. P. A. Scott, Trust Officer, Mary P. Sears Trust, to Charlotte Wilder, January 5, 1937, Private Collection.
84. In his later books e. e. cummings became E. E. Cummings. Hugh Van Dusen to PEN, May 19, 2010.
85. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, January 28, 1940, YCAL.
86. TNW, February 21, 1939, 1939–1941 Journal, TNW Collection, YCAL. Many passages from this journal and other TNW journals are published in Donald Gallup, ed., The Journals of Thornton Wilder 1939–1961 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), but many key passages, especially from 1940 onward, remain unpublished as of this writing.
87. TNW, February 21, 1939, 1939–1941 Journal, TNW Collection, YCAL.
88. Ibid.
89. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, “Middle of March” 1940, YCAL.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid.
92. Isabel Wilder to Dwight Dana, June 16, 1931, private collection.
93. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, March 29, [1940], AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781), HLH.
94. Ibid.
95. TNW, 1939–1941 Journal, May 2, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
96. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, May 3, 1940, YCAL.
97. “Boston Welcomes Our Town After All Nation Has,” New Haven Register, May 24, 1940.
98. Bosley Crowther, “The Screen: ‘Our Town’ a Beautiful and Tender Picture, at the Music Hall . . . ,” New York Times, June 14, 1940, 25. Frank Craven played the Stage Manager on-screen as he had onstage. Martha Scott was Emily, receiving an Academy Award nomination as best actress. (Ginger Rogers won for Kitty Foyle, one of her few movies that didn’t involve dancing.) The young William Holden, at the beginning of his film career, played George Gibbs, and the cast included Beulah Bondi, Fay Bainter, and Thomas Mitchell. Aaron Copland was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Score (which went to the music for Walt Disney’s Pinocchio).
99. “Vast and terrible events”: TNW to Richard Beer-Hofmann, August 6, 1940, SL, 377–78; “More in crisis than the last”: TNW to Sibyl Colefax, June 14, 1940, SL, 376–77.
28: “SEEING, KNOWING AND TELLING” (1940S)
1. TNW to Edmund Wilson, June 3, 1940, YCAL. Wilson wrote several articles on Joyce, including a two-part article on Finnegans Wake that appeared in the New Republic in 1939.
2. TNW to Edmund Wilson, June 15, 1940, YCAL.
3. Ibid. “The Figure in the Carpet” is the title of a short story by Henry James in which a novelist observes that literary critics often miss his themes and intentions because they must be detected and deciphered like a subtle “figure” in a Persian carpet.
4. Edmund Wilson to TNW, June 20, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
5. TNW to Edmund Wilson, June 26, 1940, YCAL.
6. Edmund Wilson to TNW, June 20, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
7. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, July 6, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
8. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, July 31, 1940, YCAL.
9. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, May 23, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL. As previously noted, while many entries from TNW’s journals are published in Gallup, The Journals of Thornton Wilder, 1939–1961, many other entries, including this one, are unpublished at this writing.
10. Ibid.
11. TNW to Richard Beer-Hofmann, August 6, 1940, SL, 377–78.
12. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, October 26, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL. Later, in the final text of the play, Wilder changed the length of the Antrobus marriage to five thousand years.
13. TNW to Max Reinhardt, December 17, 1940, Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.
14. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, October 26, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, November 1, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
19. TNW to Richard Beer-Hofmann, August 6, 1940, SL, 377–78.
20. TNW to Rosemary Ames, December 6, 1940, YCAL.
21. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, October 1940, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781B), HLH.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. TNW to Rosemary Ames, December 6, 1940, YCAL.
25. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, July 31, 1940, YCAL.
26. “Unknown Subjects: Austrian Refugee Camp,” Federal Bureau of Investigation File 65–1146, September 25, 1940, regarding July 19, 1940, Period. Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
27. “Thornton Niven Wilder, Unknown Subjects: Austrian Refugee Camp [Redacted] Estate Near Keene, New Hampshire,” Federal Bureau of Investigation File 65–265, January 9, 1941, regarding November 25, 26, 1940, to December 8, 1940/January 7, 1941, Period. Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
28. Ibid.
29. “Re: Thornton Wilder,” Federal Bureau of Investigation File 65–1146, December 15, 1949. Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
30. These associations are listed in Wilder’s FBI file. By 1954 all of these organizations had been declared suspect and/or subversive by the attorney general of the United States.
31. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, January 28, 1940, SL, 371–74. TNW also helped the Austrian author Hermann Broch; the Austrian dramatist and poet Richard
Beer-Hofmann (writing the introduction of an English translation of Beer-Hofmann’s play, Jakobs Traum, in 1946); and the Austrian critic and teacher Frederick (Friedrich) Lehner and his wife, among others.
32. Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarks and TNW remarks, “Prominent Writers’ Statements of Why They Are for Franklin D. Roosevelt, Made on the Radio Program Presented Under the Auspices of The Women’s Division of the Democratic National Committee, Friday, September 27, 1940,” Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, 2.
33. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, October 2, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
34. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, September 26, 1940, New York University.
35. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, October 26, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
36. Ibid.
37. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, October 29, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
38. Ibid.
39. TNW, Theophilus North, 4.
40. An allusion to Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera, The Daughter of the Regiment (1840).
41. TNW, The Skin of Our Teeth (New York: HarperPerennial, 2003), 14–15. Page references for The Skin of Our Teeth are from this edition. The reference to the rape in the Sabine Hills alludes to the legend that Roman soldiers kidnapped and raped Sabine women in order to increase the population of Rome. George Antrobus’s alleged participation in these transgressions occurred in his youth, thousands of years in the distant past; of course, that is no excuse, as far as Maggie Antrobus is concerned.
42. Ibid., 81–83.
43. Ibid., 54.
44. Ibid., 102–3.
45. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, October 26, 1940, YCAL.
46. Ibid.
47. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, October 2, 1940, YCAL.
48. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, November 3, 1940, YCAL.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. TNW to Amy Wertheimer, November 13, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
53. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, November 3, 1940, YCAL.
54. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, November 6, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, November 8, 1940, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781B), HLH.
58. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, December 27, 1940, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781B), HLH.
59. Ibid.
60. Alexander Woollcott to Lynn Fontanne, February 21, 1941, in Kaufman and Hennessey, The Letters of Alexander Woollcott, 271.
61. “Protracted conversations”: TNW to “Agatha” [Elizabeth Artzybasheff], January 26, [1941?], YCAL; “Brotherhood of Man”: TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, January 21, [1941?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
62. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, February 20, 1941, New York University.
63. TNW to “Agatha” [Elizabeth Artzybasheff], January 26, [1941?], YCAL.
64. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, November 8, 1940, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781B), HLH.
65. TNW to Charlotte Wilder, calling card, [February 1941?], Private Collection.
66. TNW to Charlotte Wilder, [February 27, 1941?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
67. TNW to Robert Hutchins, February [no day] 1941, University of Chicago Library.
29: “THE ETERNAL FAMILY” (1940S)
1. The Santa Lucia was one of the Grace Line ships regularly making the voyage from New York to South America. In 1942 the U.S. Navy took over the ship and renamed it the USS Leedstown. The ship was sunk in the North African invasion.
2. Isabella Niven Wilder to ANW, March 1, 1941, ANW, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers.
3. Ibid. “Frightened and exhausted”: ANW handwritten notes on Charlotte’s illness, n.d., Private Collection. The details of Charlotte’s breakdown are drawn from letters, documents, and medical records of the period. Many years after the 1941 event Isabel Wilder gave interviews about it, but her later accounts diverge in some matters from the accounts she, her mother, and others gave in 1941.
4. The Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic of New York–Presbyterian Hospital and the Cornell University Medical College (now known as Weill Cornell Medical College) were founded in 1932.
5. During his tenure at the New York Hospital and Departments of Medicine, Cornell University Medical College, New York, Dr. Lincoln Rahman (1904–56) was already publishing his research. He moved from New York to Los Angeles, where he worked until his death in 1956 in an automobile accident. He was associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Southern California Medical School, director of the Clinic of the Los Angeles Institute for Psychoanalysis, and an officer of the Southern California Psychiatric Society.
6. Isabella Niven Wilder to Dwight Dana, March 3, 1941, Private Collection.
7. Ibid.
8. Dwight Dana to Isabella Niven Wilder, March 5, 1941, carbon copy, Private Collection.
9. Isabel Wilder to Dwight Dana, March 31, 1941, Private Collection.
10. TNW to Toby Dakin, March 21, 1941, TNW Collection, YCAL.
11. Isabel Wilder to Dwight Dana, March 5, 1941, Private Collection.
12. Isabel Wilder to Dwight Dana, March 8, 1941, Private Collection.
13. Isabel Wilder to Dwight Dana, March 13, 1941, Private Collection.
14. TNW, The Skin of Our Teeth, 45.
15. Ibid., 45–46.
16. Ibid., 25.
17. Charlotte Wilder to Isabella Niven Wilder, n.d. [from 102 Greenwich Avenue, New York], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
18. Charlotte Wilder to ANW, October 11, 1939, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
19. Charlotte Wilder to Rollo Brown, October 15, [1939?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
20. Charlotte Wilder to ANW, [1938 or 1939?], ANW, Wilder Family Record, Private Collection.
21. ANW, The Spiritual Aspects of the New Poetry (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940), 90–94.
22. Charlotte Wilder, “(For the Two),” Phases of the Moon, 90.
23. Charlotte Wilder, “Monologue of Repression, ii. The Virginal Inference, iv,” Phases of the Moon, 88.
24. Isabel Wilder to Dwight Dana, March 5, 1941, Private Collection.
25. Isabella Niven Wilder to ANW, March 23, 1941, discussed by ANW, Wilder Family Record, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers.
26. Isabel Wilder to Dwight Dana, March 13, 1941, Private Collection.
27. Dwight Dana to Isabel Wilder, March 14, 1941, Private Collection.
28. Isabel Wilder to Dwight Dana, April 10, 1941, Private Collection.
29. Ibid.
30. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, April 1, 1941, YCAL.
31. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, May 8, 1941, YCAL.
32. Isabel Wilder to Dwight Dana, April 3, 1941, Private Collection.
33. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, [April 6?] 1941, SL, 385–86.
34. TNW to Ruth Gordon, May 26, 1941, Private Collection.
35. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, April 1, 1941, YCAL.
36. Ibid.
37. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, May 8, 1941, YCAL. The novel by Fernando González Ochoa was El maestro de escuela. Erico Verissimo’s book was Préto em Campo de Neve, about the United States, and included a chapter headed “Os Wilders de New Haven.”
38. TNW to Sibyl Colefax, February 20, 1941, New York University.
39. TNW to Ruth Gordon, May 26, 1941, SL, 387. A copy of TNW’s unofficial report on his South American trip may be found among his YCAL papers, a holograph “Memorandum” regarding “Some suggestions derived from a trip to Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. . . ,” May 1941.
40. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, July 28, 1941, YCAL.
41. See, for instance, TNW, 1939–41 Journal, October 2, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
42. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, May 23, 1941, TNW Collection, YCAL.
43. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, November 27, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL.
44. TNW, 1939–41 Journal, December 17, 1942, TNW Collection, YCAL.
45. Isabella Niven Wilder to ANW, in a footnote to a copy of a letter to Isabel Wilder from the Medical Director of the New York Hospital, Westchester Division, June 28, 1941, discussed by ANW, Wilder Family Record, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers.
46. Isabel Wilder to Dwight Dana, June 26, 1941, Private Collection.
47. Isabel Wilder to Dwight Dana, July 3, 1951, Private Collection.
48. Isabel Wilder, “About Charlotte Wilder,” TS, October 15, 1961, Private Collection.
49. Charlotte Wilder to Isabella Niven Wilder, [June or July 1941?], discussed by ANW, Wilder Family Record, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers.
50. Isabella Niven Wilder to ANW, in a footnote to a copy of a letter to Isabel Wilder from the Medical Director of the New York Hospital, Westchester Division, June 28, 1941, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers.
51. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, July 28, 1941, YCAL.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. TNW to Robert Hutchins, February [no day], 1941, University of Chicago Library.
55. Ibid.
56. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, November 12, 1941, YCAL.
57. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, January 28, 1940, SL, 373.
58. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, July 14, 1941, YCAL.
59. Hermon Ould, ed., Writers in Freedom: A Symposium Based on the XVII International Congress of P.E.N. Club Held in London, September 1941 (London: Hutchinson, 1942), 6.
60. TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, [September 7, 1941], YCAL.
61. TNW to Robert and Maude Hutchins, October 28, 1941, University of Chicago Library.
62. TNW to Alexander Woollcott, October 13, 1941, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1781D), HLH. The Baths of Caracalla were grand thermal baths built in Rome by the emperor Caracalla (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) in A.D. 217.
63. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, August 26, [1941?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
64. TNW, “The Strength of a Democracy Under Siege,” transcription of “Speaking of Liberty,” NBC Radio broadcast, October 30, 1941; reprinted in Bryer, Conversations with Thornton Wilder, 34–40.
65. TNW, “After a Visit to England,” Yale Review, December 1941.
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