The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder

by Thornton Wilder

  The Bridge of San Luis Rey was published in the United States on November 3, 1927 (the English edition had appeared the previous month), to rave reviews and stunning sales on both sides of the Atlantic. By the time Wilder traveled to Miami, Florida, over the Christmas holidays to recuperate from his surgery, it had become clear that his second novel was already a huge success. The implications of this became apparent when he returned to Lawrenceville for the spring term: His dormitory home was deluged with telegrams and letters requesting interviews and speaking engagements, and packages of books to be signed were delivered daily. Most gratifying, perhaps, were invitations to meet notable authors whom Wilder, hitherto, had admired only from afar. In May, his novel won the Pulitzer Prize. Wilder had suddenly become an acclaimed author with a popular following and a great deal of money in his pocket.

  In June 1928, Wilder resigned his position at Lawrenceville, but his association with the school was not entirely severed. At the beginning of July, he sailed for Europe with three Lawrenceville boys he had agreed to chaperone for a few weeks in England. After some travel, they joined Wilder’s mother and two younger sisters in a large house in Surrey he had rented for his family. Wilder stayed on in Europe for the rest of the year. During his recuperation in Miami the previous December he had made a new friend, someone just his age, and had planned a walking trip in the Alps with him for September. His companion was the book-loving heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Gene Tunney, an acclaimed athlete and international celebrity. Because Wilder’s recent success had turned him into a literary lion, it was not surprising that this seemingly disparate pair attracted widespread press attention, which continually interrupted their trip. The press surveillance ended only when the two men were able to slip down to Rome for Tunney’s private wedding.

  With that furor behind him, Wilder retreated to the south of France, where he spent a month writing, exercising, and socializing before meeting his sister Isabel for a round of theatergoing, concerts, and visits to museums in Munich and Vienna. After spending Christmas with their aunt Charlotte in Switzerland, Wilder and Isabel returned home at the end of January 1929. No longer could he pursue his vocation as a writer in relative anonymity. From this point until the end of his life, forty-six years later, Thornton Wilder was to live the life of an internationally renowned and acclaimed literary figure. In this climate, the privacy and seclusion he needed to pursue his vocation became increasingly difficult to find.

  63. TO AMOS P., ISABELLA N., ISABEL, AND JANET F. WILDER. ALS 4 pp. Yale

  Oct. 14 <1920>

  Roma

  Dear Family:

  I have this minute arrived in Rome, and am waiting up in my room at half-past ten for some supper. The train was two-and-a-half hours late, and I know no more of Rome than can be gained on rainy evenings crossing the street that separates the station from the Hotel Continentale (the last room left for 22 lire). I had resolved not to write you until I had received your letters forwarded, but they failed day by day to come so I have hurried up to Rome to get them. French Lemon1 may have decided not to forward to Cocumella on the Wagers’ casual advice, or they may be found at the Boston. Tomorrow will straighten out.

  In the meantime (while my hunger resounds in my stomach like a great bell) I must tell you some of the news of the last week and a half in Sorrento. One day for instance when I had been walking enraptured for hours among the bronzes and marbles of the Museo Nazionale I returned at 3:30 to the Immaculata to take the Sorrento boat. I bought my ticket, went aboard; it was expected by three guards. We started and I settled down to read my Paris Temps and Berliner Tageblatt.2 I fell into conversation with an Italian sailor who had had a fruit store on upper Broadway. Suddenly I found I was on the wrong boat: I was bound for Procida and Ischia, and there was no return that night. Seaman Esposito embarrassedly offered to take me into his home at Procida but I laughed it off, saying that I would go on to the Ischia that had been good enough for Vittoria Collonna and Lamartine.3 Then I fell into conversation with a handsome middle-aged Anglo Italian who is employed between London and Rome in the wheat business. There are half a dozen exceedingly beautiful villas on Ischia because the bathing is so perfect for children, there being no cliffs as at Sorrento. This gentleman tried to be as helpful to me as possible, but with a touch of caution. I was hatless, in an eccentric-looking baggy grey-suit, and with a strange air of being at my ease that suggested arriére-pensée.4 We drove up towards his villa, whereupon he extricated himself, telling the coachman to carry me on to the Floridiana Hotel (“the best one” on the Island, but not very good.) In the glass of my Italian, darkly, I found the Floridiana closed for the season, and was waved on to the second best which was full. Then I was sent to the Albergo del’ belli guiardini which turned out to be a rather ambitious kitchen-in-the-wall, peopled by several suspicious old women in black dresses who discussed things in whispers among themselves. I feared I was going to sleep in Vittoria Collonna’s castle, now a house of correction, but one of the women emerged and beckoned to me ungraciously to follow her. We passed to an outdoor court (the beautiful gardens perhaps of the title) and on the second story through four spacious dark funereal bedrooms, there being no hall, and no light, and no privacy. The last was offered to me, to my simulated delight, and I gazed at the great shapeless shabby bed where so soon (I foresaw) my throat would be cut. I wanted to keep my relations with my hosts as sweet as possible and so refrained from bargaining until the morning. I slept very well; I was awakened only once by a dog under my bed eating the Paris Temps, the Berliner Tageblatt having been used in a more humble and not inappropriate way elsewhere. The return boat for Naples left at six the next morning and I had told them to call me at five, so I lazily replied to a knocking in the dark. It seemed to me, as always on waking, that I was happily back at 72 Conn. or on Whitney Avenue.5 Soon the truth came to me that I was in a dubious situation on the island of Ischia. I threw some cold water at my face from a washstand in the corner, dressed and descended. There was a yellow streak in a dark sky visible above the narrow blanching street. By lamplight my padrona made me a cup of coffee and presented her conto.6 Twenty-two lire for that wretched room, a supper and a breakfast! It was too late to argue. I paid it and threw myself on circumstance. Except for my Express checks which were uncashable until late in the morning I had only three lire left, and the fare to Naples was five lire. I asked the woman if she’d give me two more, and I’d mail her five, but she concealed her obduracy under a flow of rapid Neapolitan dialetta.7 I left quickly without mancia8 and reaching the ticket-kiosk explained myself to the official. Suddenly it occurred to me that 3 lire would at least buy me a 3rdClass passage, and so it did with a lire to spare. So at ten o’clock I reached Naples and going to beloved piazza dei Martiri cashed another Express at 25 lire to the dollar! Suddenly I passed an American soldier (as I thought) in the street. I ran back and spoke to him, inviting him to have an ice-cream with me. He turned out to be a Princeton boy of imposing New York family who ran away from bank servitude to join the Near Eastern Relief. He was actually in the Wall Street Explosion.9 The J. P. Morgan skylight fell on him, and he’s got the scars! He came over and spent two days with me at the Cocumella, and we went to Pompeii and climbed Vesuvius together. (I keep going to the window. Outside in wonderful Rome, it is drizzling. Carriages and trams pass. Not far away the Pope and forty cardinals are sleeping, the coliseum and the forum are lying dampish, and silent and locked up but with one burning light at least, the Sistine chapel is glimmering, and somewhere further off, in the struggling starlight, your graves, John Keats and Percy Shelley, lie, succeeding to establish, if anyone can, that it is better to be in a moist hell with glory, than live in an elegant hotel with stupidity.) When we got quarter way up Vesuvius, at a hotel where are horses were supposed to be waiting saddled for us, there were suddenly no horses. So we cut the price of our agents in half and agreed to walk. It’s a wicked mountain, half of every step you take
is lost in the sliding blue-black dust, yet so steep that every step for two hours and a half is palpably lift. I suddenly got anxious about Charley White; he has been shut up in a bank for a year and a half and was unprepared for this. He insisted on going on, though he was on the verge of palpitions and heaves and blood-coughing the whole way. Yet Father and I had wisely let pass the call of the Near Eastern Relief because of my constitution: I who talked Italian all the way up with our guide, Nicola!

  (Now it is morning and Stupidity is impatiently waiting for café-au-lait. A busy modern city with only a hint of romance is riding the tide under my window. In a few moments I am going to dash over to French-Lemons; then to the Londres-Cargill, an almost unheard of hotel with a room at about eight lire! Then this afternoon to the Academia.)

  Love to you all. I’m dying to know about you.

  Will write again tonight

  Thornton

  Looking in the cheval-glass I see a young man of about twenty-one who implicitly, or by his reason of his large shell glasses, presents an expectant eager face to the view. His shoes and clothes are in travelstate, but he is carefully shaved and brushed. On his pink cheeks and almost infantile mouth lies a young innocence that is not native to Italy and has to be imported in hollow ships, and about the eyes there is the same strong naivete, mercifully mitigated by a sort of frightened humor. He is very likely more intelligent than he looks, and less charming. Alone in Italy? To study archaeology! Why each single tooth in that engaging upper row is an appeal in the name of Froebel and in the name of Wordsworth to let childhood enjoy its rainbow skies and imagined gardens while it may.10 A delicious little breakfast has come, with a marmalade of orange and pineapple, and though I want you all here all the time, for this particular meal I choose Isabel.

  TNW’s Yale graduation photograph, 1920.

  TNW’s Yale graduation photograph, 1920. Courtesy of Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

  64. TO AMOS P. WILDER. ALS 2 pp. Yale

  Am. Acad. At Rome

  Dec. 4, 1920

  Dear Papa:

  I have received the remittance and acknowledge statim.11 I was told it was coming the latter half of November and had planned things down to a science. Its delay by so much as a week (to say the least) compelled me to ask the Secretary here to forward one hundred and fifty lire, as you will see on the bill enclosed. I was also told that you were sending me eighty dollars, which on the day of your mailing would have been at last Lire 2160 and more likely £2300. I presume of course that you got full exchange (otherwise you would have left the exchanging to me as the advantage lies here) and that your remittance was $55. about.

  If this means that your method of conducting my arrangement has changed it deserved explanation before it was put in practice. I gratefully accept anything, but like to know the worst. If I am to paid with you getting the benefit of the exchange, I shan’t be able to go with the Classical School for three weeks to Pompeii; I shan’t be able even to buy the pocket microscope we must have for the numismatics study in the course on Roman Private Life. I shan’t be able to go to the Opera, which definitely narrows my visit to Europe as being purely Classical Study.

  Out of the 1500 I have already paid:

  The bill for November Lire 709.45

  10 Italian lessons 70.00

  A pair of gloves 45.00

  I’ve immediately stopped Italian lessons.

  Is the idea for me to stay in Italy as long as I can for $900, or is it to stay for one year under as pinched conditions as possible? We parted on the first agreement.

  On a generous amount of money I could make quite a little agitation on this Roman scene that recognizes extraordinary eccentric sharp young men, as it did when Emperors adopted them! Enclose yesterday’s cards received.

  On a discreet amount I could still do the name Wilder modest credit and gain entrance to regions incomputably valuable to a younger writer who misses nothing, as far as observation goes.

  On an adequate student allowance I can walk about and see things and meet rather complacent Americans at the hotels, and do a little work without worries, and with an extraordinary amount of pleasure.

  At present, as a shabby repressed soul, I can breathe and go into museums (not too often) and get a great deal of pleasure in a denied, envious sort of way with all my capabilities still in the cocoon.

  love

  Thornton

 

  On my margin I couldn’t by any Xmas presents on time. Photos later,—

  65. TO AMOS N. WILDER. ALS 4 pp. Yale

  Porta San Pancrazio

  Roma Italia

  Dec 13, 1920

  Dear Amos:

  I’m so ashamed at not writing before, especially in view of your closely-written and -observed letters, that I don’t know what to say. I have certainly be idler than you, too, full though my days have been with sightseeing and lectures. I think I must unconsciously have postponed writing you from pique at your intimation that I was probably on the point of borrowing money from you, a terror which Charlotte also experiences, and gratuitously reminds me from time to time that she hasn’t enough to live on herself. Hug your avarice as closely as you please; it never occurred to me to borrow from either of you! Though, since both of you got the idea simultaneously I suppose penury and dependance are as conspicuous as two red flags in my temperament, or else father, whose idée fixe about borrowing is perfectly Freudian, has been warning you about what he calls the Leech of Rome. I have every intention of being parasitic all my life, but always on those who can easily afford so expensive an encumbrance and who take a special delight in subsidizing those talents to which I make so modest a claim. I have at last found in Italy a mecca for just such patrons, and am myself presenting myself as a sort of objet-d’art of a most singular and quaint charm, rentable for teas, dinner-parties and dances; will read MSS plays to adoring ladies; will sit in their palaces and talk to them about their own uniqueness; will — and so on, in a catalogue that you blue-nosed Flemings can only envy and disapprove of.

  A vacation from dalliance comes to me with the visit of Harry Luce and Bill Whitney over Xmas.12 I have just trod the via dolorosa of Roman pensions (unprecedentedly overcrowded) and finally found them a room-and-pension for 25 lire a day—less than a dollar in present exchange: Within stones-throw of the house where Keats died (little as that will mean to them!) and the College of the Propeganda of the Faith13 (little distinguished in your mind, you Calvin, from the Inquisition and other practices of the Whore of Rome,14 about which you have only the vaguest and most superstitious of ideas). This last thought of mine is so important that I am going to drag it out of brackets and continue it, by belaboring you for your ignorance and prejudice before the most beautiful religious system that ever eased the heart of man; centering about a liturgy built like Thebes, by poets, four-square, on the desert of man’s need. You and I will never be Roman Catholics, but I tell you now, you will never be saved until you lower your impious superiority toward this magnificent and eternal institution, and humbly sit down to learn from her the secret by which she held great men, a thing the modern church cannot do; and a church without its contemporary great men is merely pathetic.

  ¶ Charlotte is spending Xmas with the Blakes15 in Florence, I hear, then coming on to me. I receive this indirectly. ¶ Don’t acquire a barbarous lowland accent to your French. ¶ I’ll try and pick you up something for Xmas, though I must borrow to buy it. ¶ Tell me any intimate dope you may get from America on our parents; Mother’s letters are delightful quiet dining-room table affairs, and Father’s are trenchant homiletic. It’s foolish to expect other people to write as revelatory letters as I do, but I wish that they’d at least intimate the alternations of climate in their minds and hearts. ¶ I’m not at all sympathetic with your shockedness over fellow-students conduct: you haven’t learned Morals, you’ve learned the Code of Morals. Politenes
s and Celibacy are a matter of indifference to God. Go deeper. If possible, sin yourself and discover the innocence of it.

  love

  Thornton

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

  Accademia Americana

  Porta San Pancrazio, Roma

  Feb 1, 1921

  Dear Papa:

  I have been shamefacedly conscious all these last few weeks that you were just about to receive, or had received, an ugly-toned letter from me. I would give the world to recall it, especially now that your beautiful grave reply has come. Now I am conscious that you are receiving two more “financial” letters, not bad-spirited I hope, but violent and despairing. You see the date on my letter and will be glad to hear that I have payed my January bill with a little help from a discreet unexpected source, and can now live weeks and weeks without raising my voice. The whole original trouble lay in the fact that I did not realize my monthly Academy bill was £500 (now £600) and that my original Express checks gave out soon after I arrived in Rome and could no longer eke out the transoceanic remittances. I think I have now learnt how not to spend lire; and am out of the danger of ever exhibiting myself in such a disgusting uncontrolled state as you’ve had to look at lately.

  Just the same I’d like to go away from this crowd about Easter time. My two courses in Epigraphy and Roman Private Life will be finished by then, and I think the new one, Numismatics. They are full Post-Graduate School courses, and although I have groped, and scrambled and lagged behind the PhD fellow-students I think I can get the professors to sign a little document to the effect that I passed the courses. Teas and dinners increase, and I hope it can be said I have improved those opportunities too, but I would be glad to leave that. There is only one friend I shall greatly miss. The dim churches, the pines, the yellow sunlight you will see in my eyes for years—it doesn’t matter when I leave them. I should like to leave for a week or two in Florence and the hill towns about the middle of April—then up to Paris until sailing home in late June,—either by the Fabre Line again from Marseilles or if I can find one cheaper from northern France.