The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder

by Thornton Wilder

  Thornton N. Wilder

  35. TO AMOS P. WILDER. ALS 4 pp. Yale

  Sunday Morning July 16 <1916>

  Mt. Hermon School.

  Dear Papa,

  I have begun to take an unusual pleasure in writing letters. I suppose that in spite of my fatigue I have found time to write as many letters in my short time here as in months of Oberlin time. You must confess that you have received many, besides which I have written several and divided them among Mother, Amos, Mr. Spore, Prof Wager and Ruth Keller, my classical friend. But it might grow to a danger to talk about letters as such, so I will stop.

  The grounds today are covered by a thousand plus of old Hermonites. Last night they held a faculty reception on the lawn and afterwards until late into the night they tramped around like a herd of cattle, giving yells and spelling words to the tramp of their feet: H-E-R-M-O-N, D-L-M-O-O-D-Y. They all show that the prep school can leave a tremendous impression but they are a dissappointing crowd. Their faces are heavy and they stand and walk hideously. A great many are oily, repressed and apologetic, some are stout and have pockets showing a battery of sausage-like cigars, and give the picture of a Senator from Kansas. Their wives are unusually secondary because they are visiting a men’s school and a men’s reunion. The whole crowd has cheapened itself by wearing huge blue circular tags with their names on. I cannot but remember the more enlightened masquerade on the New Haven campus, altho’ I suspected there that the cheer and life of the occasion owed something to translucent bottles and a barrel swishing as it was lifted onto the table. At the dining-hall during supper last night I discovered these alumni to be of the kind who strike their plates with their knives when supper is delayed; and signify applause by beating on the table cloth with the handles of their forks. Nevertheless I have seen much better stuff in the present graduating class and conjecture that the religious pressure in this school finds out the best students & sends them to the foreign field while the rest—who are considered as corn that did not pop, a necessary surplus—return to their farms unlighted.

  My friend Sibley from Chefoo, a fine boy, hopes to go to China soon, is in this graduating class of eighty boys. I forgot to mention altho you probably guessed it that this is a reunion of Ford cars as well. The banquet—workers invited too—is Monday evening—do but picture the enthusiasm!—I see the toastmaster is a Wilfred Fry of Philadelphia. Isn’t there a famous Chinese art-connaiseur of Philad. named Fry, too?—I hope not Wilfred, tho!

  All these Captains & Kings depart Tues. night and leave the wearied worker to take up his regular meal hours and routine.

  Now that I’ve vented my spleen I’ll sign my name. This crew has turned my stomach more than the food and the dirty room and the cheap attempts at disgustingness of my would-be sophisticated fellow workers.

  Ugh!

  Thornton.

  P.S. I honestly thot I was going to write a nice letter but the cat got out of the bag.

  36. TO RUDOLF KOMMER.130 ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed Monhegan Maine!131). Princeton

  Men’s Building

  Oberlin, Ohio.

  Sept. 15—<19>16

  Dear Mr. Kommer,

  I am back at College and about to start in work again. Two of the courses that all Sophomores are required to take I will find very hard. These are Economics and Chemistry. I am not afraid of the rest, though: Exposition and Essay-Writing, “Classics in Translation”, and a short history course in English Institutions and the Reformation. My father is having me add to this a little work with the organ in the Conservatory of Music. In all I have tried to see to it that I have plenty of time to myself outside. During the service in which the new Senior class was inaugurated yesterday afternoon the Parsifal music was played. I was reminded of the last time I heard the Motif of the Holy Graal, at the close of that great evening.132

  I thought for a while that the picture you drew of living in a city and mixing in with the “newest thought” would make little old Oberlin look mild for me. But I think I am too much of an American, and a middle-westerner—to ever really go in for the Continental Method in earnest. Perhaps you can explain my mind in the matter to me?

  I had two days in Boston on my way back. My mother always told me how great an actress Mary Shaw was in “Ghosts” and so I thought a play in which she appeared could not be altogether lost. Such awful stuff as “The Melody of Youth” I never saw, and as for Miss Shaw, all she did was to lift her hand and make her points, and then stare at the audience.133 How much better it would have been to have gone to “Hit-the-Trail-Holliday” which was my only other choice.134

  I couldn’t find Eulenberg’s “Schattenphantasie”135 in the great Boston Public Library itself. I’ll have our local library send to Washington for it.

  I am overhauling the Dr. Johnson-Boswell affair.136 When I re-read the thing it struck me hard how excellent your suggestions were. I hope I can follow them appropriately.

  As for the assault on Grace George—“The Rocket; an American Comedy in Four Acts”—my father says he’ll send it to me in a week. He’s been making marginal comments on it that it’ll take me a week to erase. His point-of-view is “antipodal” to yours.

  I am very interested in Mr. Strunsky’s play.137 Please let me know if it reaches anywhere. Could you let me know the name and mold of it? “Young writers live with most enthusiasm on books they have not read; pictures they have not seen; scores they have not heard.”

  Wish me well with my Chemistry, as I do for your piece. I am bound to you for much encouragement and many new ideas—difficult to assimilate!—

  Sincerely yours

  Thornton N. Wilder

  P.S. Do you want to see my book-plate?

  Funny, Hien?

  37. TO CHARLOTTE E. WILDER. ALS 2 pp. Yale

 

  Use Spacing and Deep Margin’s Elegantly.

  October 16—<19>16

  Men’s Bldg Oberlin.

  Great Scott, Charlotte

  I never saw such impudence in my whole life. Just because a person pretends to show you a little deference, you feel you have to write your own obituary, and open shop as a patron of belles-lettres. When I read your gentle strictures my eyes popped out of my sockets, and when I came to your favorable comments I felt as tho I were being stabbed from behind. As I read my manuscript I began to miss some of my cherished phrases; every now and then I saw that someone had inserted perfunctory bridges over which the timid mind might step—with petticoat lifted = when the art of writing is a matter of alpine climbing—peak to peak, and let the chasms snatch the fearful.

  However the mistake was mine to attempt expository prose in which I wasn’t over-interested. Now, Madam, I am sending something, if you touch a curl of which you shall surely die. The very rhythm of the sentence is important and if you supply a polite “over which” or “wherefore” the web will fall. I trust that you are in a better position to enter into the confusion of mythologies in the Revival of Learning, than improvisation.

  Send me your magazine; and I will send you mine. My contribution is not an article and so your search for signs of illiteracy are entirely beside the point. A sweet pale girl on the magazine staff came to me and said: “After we read your story for the magazine we sat there perfectly silent, it was so beautiful.”138 I won’t expect any such effect upon you until you are “educated in reverence” but you shall eat your words someday!

  Lovingly Thornton.

  P.S.I Why don’t you go to France as a nurse or a hay-maker or streetcar conductor?

  P.S.II My hair is still white and curled from reading your letter. Why the idea! I hope you have removed all the poison from your system. Oh, most incredible venom, Judicatrix incredibilis, quouseque tandem abutere nostra patientia!139

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

  Men’s Buildg. Oberlin, Ohio.

  Oct. 22—<19>16.

  PRIVATE

  Dear Mother,

  I suppose I ha
ve to be very tactful in my letters these days. Amos’ going away has intoxicated you and Papa so with swelling emotions that letters from oberlin will surprise you by their thinness. Soon letters will be coming to you from Red Cross hospitals with censor-stamps on the back and Papa will feel that at last he has a son in the foreign field; how relentlessly I am shown up by it all—a minor who doesn’t study hard and who needs money from time to time.140

  So read my letters with charity. Few other mothers have sons where your’s is but many have sons where your other is!

  I told you that while I was at Hermon Mr. Wager wrote me that he had a subject to treat if I could. Well, its il gran tradimente ([The Great Betrayel” (?)] of the Baglioni family of Perugia.141<)> It’s a superb affair but would be too ambitious for me. Did you know anything of it?

  I went to see Elsie Ferguson.142 It was a most lovely performance. The play is light but not negligable. Her peculiar voice and walk brought back the Outcast continually but throughout this play she is for the most part happy And such acting in the graceful or tender moments.

  With all my new clothes I feel like a new person and I can hardly go back to wearing my old overcoat. I’ve had it ever since Chefoo days in and out. Its a perfect give-away in texture and shape. However I could recall St. Francis’ vow of Poverty and wear it another year if necessary. You write me privately your own secret and inner opinion of father’s money state and tell me whether it would be adding the last straw to an impossible load if I presented the question to him. He himself recognized the fact that it was a “wierd” garment when he was last here but has probably forgotten it. Don’t feel any hesitation will crush me. I am quite often surprised by evidences that I have a little pleasant “prestige”; it can help me “live down” lots.

  This afternoon I saw Leonard Peabody143 and called on Latin Professor Lord. Mrs. Lord is a wealthy and very beautiful lady. They have a handsome home. Mr. Lord has been to Europe about twelve times and their rooms are full of old furniture and beautiful painting reproductions.

  Often I’m dissatisfied and unhappy; I want to leave college and live on a Desert Island. Would it cost much?—Everything beautiful I read or hear reminds me that I ought to be finished with all this and be at it. But I have finished a beautiful new 3-minute that Charlotte’s typewriting for me.144

  Lots of love to Isabel; I have more fellow-feeling for her with her Algebra than with Father and his Gratified Wish

  Love Thornton—.

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

  Men’s Bldg, Oberlin Ohio

  Nov 13—<19>16

  On this day the exquisite Nell Gwyn died and R.L.S. was born—or vice versa.145

  Dear Mama,

  There is considerable to tell you (and all interested) today. I recognize with a rueful smile that it is some time since I last wrote. I shall bind up my thoughts into sheaves as usual in order to conceal the lack of unity. This letter will be a little more cheerful than usual because it is Monday morning and during the weekends I have time to take long walks and forget how far behind in Laboratory work and in the Major Prophets I am. Besides I am met on every hand with congratulation on—

  Saturday night the Latin Department presented a metrical translation of Plautus’ “Menaechmi.”146 I had the role of Peniculus, the Sponge, the Parasite. I had a light beard the color of fried apples and a red nose. We acted in front of a picturesque Roman street and the play was happily over-flowing with the customs and manners of Ancient Roman Bourgouisie.

  The Oberlin Magazine has at last appeared with my Saint’s Story. I hope Papa will like it. The whole issue is I think better than any last year. The George Ade affair is by Robert Watson my little tenor boy. It has three acute moments, but is swamped in the banal147

  My new overcoat is thick and warm and only seventeen dollars. Both Mrs. Gammon and Agnes148 felt obliged to come down and see the launching. The only real joys and fears are those I experience in Whitney and Hill’s.

  Mr. Rudolf Kommer, to whom I sent “the Rocket” put himself out to write me a long letter. Most of the letter was analysis of the play for my own good but he said many nice things too. My letter had followed him to c/o The German Consulate, Los Angeles. Altho “I was very excited over the proclamation of the new Kingdom of Poland, which would not mean much to you, I sat right down and read your play.” So I am tangled among the intrigues of german diplomatists. He thinks that Oberlin is on his way back and wants to get a glimpse, “a real glimpse,” of such a college. I welcomed him to Oberlin with reserved gladness—I don’t know what on earth would attract so perfect a flower of Vienna—but he can come if he likes. I added tactfully enough, to give me good warning so that I could put my cell in to unwonted Monastery neatness, and arrange with the Dean to throw off the unvarnished harness, and to meet him at the cross-roads.

  It will be curious. I shall insist on his going to Church and Chapel to hear the choirs.

  Prof. Wager couldn’t meet his classes on Sat. because of hoarseness and he didn’t come down to the doorbell on Sunday. I hope he isn’t worse. I am a correspondent of Mrs. Wager’s—who is away at the bedside of her father who is failing of Bright’s Disease in New Jersey—and I feel responsible! Oh, he’s the most wonderful man.

  Do start reading the last series of your Edith Sidgwick.149 Begin with A Lady of Leisure. Then there are Duke Jones and the Accolyte. Most brilliant dialogue, charming characters! all in memoriam H. J.

  Lots of Love Thornton.

  40. TO AMOS P. WILDER. ALS 4 pp. Yale

  M.B. Oberlin, Ohio.

  Nov. 14—<19>16

  Dear Papa,

  There is no reason why I should feel so comfortable and happy this evening. Heaven knows I was all at sea during Chemistry class this morning and that I handed in a paper more remarkable for substance than form to Exposition-and-Essay-Writing class this afternoon. But after that I practiced sturdily and with surprising absorption at the organ for fifty minutes, then paid a call on the lonely wretched Mr. Carr my ex-Trigrometry teacher. In a veiled way he exposes his distraught shy life and his dissatisfactions. I’m the only person he knows in the town, for all his many classes and his talkitive blind-headed aunt; and again Heaven knows that of a necessity he must be a post script in my life. This may sound very sketchy and imaginative on paper but when you come I can amass evidence—the tragi-comedy details of the poor young man’s sensitiveness. The strange thing is that with him I am clear almost curt, with a cross-examination manner, but I in turn “lean” and am drawn out—sometimes on the very same evening by the Man in the Old Brick House.

  After the heartrending interview with Mr. Carr I went to supper. I’ll make no bones of saying that I am developing into a kind of Breakfast-table Kaiser. I insist on dominating! I become educative. I call them up short when they utter bromides. I demand that one of them read a certain magazine story that throws light on herself and report to me. (And they do.) I ask them what they thought of the Chapel service and then disagree with them noisily. I insist on giving them informations I have extracted from the Encyclopoedias so that they can go to the Concert and listen intelligently. To put it short—I see you in myself and laugh, and then go on exagerating what I saw.

  So I enjoyed a fictitious importance at the supper table and then returned to the Men’s Bldg. I spend some time in visits in boys’ rooms. ¶ Not long ago I had a long talk with Mr. Wager. Usually our talks are ornamental both e- and al- lusive. But in this one he directed his fine subtlety on me and before long I had spread myself shivering all over the place. Drawing richly from his own experience he put me together again with just enough appreciative pats to start me off. The effect may seem remote from the cause but now it is observed that I can stand in the door of any boy’s room and be greeted normally and be asked to come again and be “cussed” at and joked with. And not only this but the Dissector laid it on me that I should be able to get all this but more—that by my inherited personality (that’s one for you!) and by the ass
ociations I carry in College I ought to bring out the idealler strains—

  As he put it it was transendentally beautiful and winning and I have started life over again as it were. I always thot that I was constitutionally disgusting to all men. But now I know I have four friends among the Philistines where before I had one. And I do like them more and more. There are two men on the football team itself that pass the campus gossip with me in the gentlest amiability. I will always say that Prof. Wager did half but my new coat did the other half.

  After these calls among a strange but charming nation, I drew up my rocking-chair before my murmuring radiator and read into Jeremiah for class tomorrow. At 9:30 I took up a brisk walk out in the cold (our first snow-fall today!) When I came home I drew up my chair again in my own blessed happy room, and a feeling of such contentment stole up my shoes from the steel-purring-stand that I was determined that I would write an untroubled letter to the Atlas of my sphere

  So Lots of Love

  Thornton.

  Can you forgive the ego? I’m a sophomore—but well-born.

  41. TO ISABELLA N. WILDER. ALS 2 pp. Yale

 

  Nov. 23—<19>16.

  Dear Mother I may have complained of lack of time last year but it was mere illusion compared to this year. I have almost literally no afternoons. On Monday I have Economics lecture at 3: to 4:00, Tues. a class until three and organ practice from four to five, Wednesday, laboratory from 3 to 4:30 cutting into my organ time which ends at five; Thursday like Tues. Friday, lab. from 1:30-4:30. Sat. I have to come back early from my walk to take up the organ at four. Today I was lying down when the two o’clock class bell rang and immediately through my head ran a string of excuses I might offer the Dean for absence, but I went.