Wilder family, Thanksgiving 1970, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Private collection.
320. TO GENE TUNNEY. TL (Copy)170 3 pp. (Heading 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden, Connecticut 06517) Private
December 4, 1970
Dear Gene:
There are certain long-time deeply valued friends whom I find it strangely difficult to write letters to. One of them is Bob Hutchins (President of “my” freshman class in Oberlin, 1915; my boss when he was President of the University of Chicago). Another, Bob Shaw, now director of the Atlanta Symphony. Another is your so-much-admired self. I think the difficulty is that I have to write so many letters on the relatively superficial discursive level—, that I shrink from the danger of falling into mere chatter with these friends. I notice that those two “Bobs” seem to understand this “bloc” (and perhaps suffer from it, too), because when we do meet—so seldom—we behave as though no lapse of time had taken place at all.
Just the same, it is not right; I think of you and dear Polly often.171 I think of you often with the most affectionate laughter—the fun we had at the training camp in The Adirondacks; or with delighted surprise, as when I was trotting beside you and you turned to me (after stepping on a caterpillar) and quoted solemnly:
“The humblest beetle that we tread upon in corporal sufferance feels a pang as great as when a giant dies.”172
(Scientists tell me that Shakespeare wasn’t quite right about that.)
Or I think of you with quiet joy, as in that beautiful wedding in the Hotel de Russie at Rome; or with apprehension, as when you felt indisposed in Aix-les-Bains.
Recently I have heard that you have been suffering considerable pain. Day before yesterday I met Mary Jackson173 in the train going to New York; she was on her way to see Polly. I sent my love and we talked of you both with much admiration and love.
No one lives to my time of life without experience of pain—of body and of spirit. My trials of body have not been as extensive or as racking as yours, but I have known them. Each person meets these demands in a different way. I am not a religious man in the conventional sense and cannot claim that consolation that is conveyed in the word “trial” (“God has sent me this ordeal as a test of my confidence in Him and in His ordering of the world”); nor am I willing to endure pain in that spirit that so many noble men and women have done—merely stoically. My strategy—if I may call it so—is to attempt to associate myself to persons I love and honor in the past or to multitudes unknown to fame and barely alluded to in history. At three in the morning carried through the streets with a bursting appendix I murmured “This is nothing to what Dr. Johnson endured when he was “cut for the stone” (gall stones); ever after he took to dating his life from that experience. In 1951 while teaching at Harvard I was “struck down,” as they say, by a sacroiliac dislocation. I was barbarously tended at the Harvard Infirmary (where they thought it was some kind of laughable charley horse). I was finally transferred to Massachusetts General. From time to time I could “lose myself” in an attempt to join those who had suffered ten times what I was undergoing—political
Very certainly I shall have to face such hours again—I shall think of you; I shall “telegraph” you.
The doctors have just “sprung” me after months of treatment—deterioration of eyesight and hypertension—and next week Isabel and I are taking a slow, slow ship, the Christoforo Colombo, to Europe: New York, Dec. 10—Venice, Dec. 23. Soon after Isabel returns here to look after the house; I stay on somewhere over there to resume work after this long interruption.
In the meantime I send you affectionate wishes for improved well being, memories of many happy hours in your company and in Polly’s and my hope that you can understand and forgive my foolish immature difficulty about writing letters.
Love to Polly.
Ever,
(Signed) THORNTON
Mailed Dec. 11
321. TO EILEEN AND ROLAND LE GRAND ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden, Connecticut 06517) Private
April 25 1971
Dear Roland; dear Eileen:
Many thanks for your letter.
Yes, we know Julian’s news.
We have met Damaris and found her most attractive and likeable.
No doubt you were much surprised at their decision to be married in Philadelphia when they were also planning to go to England so soon after to see you there (“To see the relatives” he wrote us.)
It would be hard to make clear to you what a thorough revolution has taken place in the mentality of young people during these last years. You are certainly aware of it—it is world-wide—without however grasping the extent.
They wish to do things their own way. No fussing, no interference, not even counsel. There are very few families that have not been confronted by this “independence,” often to a heart-breaking extent. The root of it seems to be a shrinking from any claims that may be made upon them—emotional claims, approval or disapproval. This isolation often makes them unhappy but they will it.
I have watched this increasing for more than ten years and have seen it in my own near-kin.
You may have noticed that in all the years that Julian has been here I have never called on him in his rooms in Philadelphia.174 Nor—though a very concerned godfather—have I intruded with a word of advice (unless asked, and I was never asked on any matter of importance) until about two months ago, on the delayed appearance of a thesis.
What kind of wedding do they want? Do they really want us to be present? Julian has never mentioned any church affiliation. I think it very likely that they want what in England you know as a visit to the Registry Office.
I love Julian and am ready to love Damaris,—may they long be happy—AND I am prepared to let them make all the conditions in this matter. Are Damaris’s parents planning to cross the sea? In Our Town the congregaters and especially the mothers weep copiously. Those days are completely over.
I have been “poorly” as they say in the American language—eye-doctors, ear-doctors—respiration-doctors. Now at 74 I don’t bustle about easily. I would like to propose that I give the young people a dinner in New York on the eve of their flight to England and let them go to the Registry Office with their co-evals.
In the meantime I await clearer instructions as to what the young people want. Do share with us how you feel about all this.
love
Thornton
322. TO ENID BAGNOLD.175 ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed Post Office Box 862 / Edgartown, Massachusetts 02539) Yale
It’s June 29th, they say; anyway its 1972 and I’m 75 years old, so I’m just in condition for a little epistolary flirtation.
Dear Enid:
So you’re posting memory tests!
Well, you flunked right off: I’ve never worn a bowler hat or “growler” 176 in my life.
What did you wear? You wore a sort of land-girls uniform, just short of farmer’s trouser overalls, because you took me around and showed me the cows you’d milked, the cabbages you’d hoed, and you were adorable; and two weeks later, you were just as adorable, very ladified, when you had dinner with me at Boulestins (where Paula177 used to meet her gentlemen friends before she married into the Tan-querays.)
But I have forgotten the third way to open a play.
In the intervening 30 years, I’ve changed my mind often.
For a time I loved opening in silence. Feed the audience’s eye with the stage-setting, if you have one to offer. Then a bit of pantomime in silence, to capture their curiosity. (Hamlet: nothing.—then a sentry—go—Gruff exchanges. Then a bull’s eye: “Tis bitter cold and I am sick at heart”). The greatest living dramatist-actor-regisseur, whom you’ve just been seeing in London<,> Eduardo di Filippo178 has wonderful silent openings. But I’ve totally forgotten my third recommendation of 30 year
s ago. Did you notice that after calling my first the “Figaro” opening, you gave as my second “Sir, you have raped my daughter!”—which is precisely the opening of Don Giovanni. I have never doubted that Mozart had a large share in the libretti of his operas—pace Da Ponte who is now resting in the cemetery of Trinity Church in Wall Street, New York.179
You are quite right that Ruth Gordon played in a play of mine—just over a thousand showings and she never missed a performance!180—but far from having quarrelled she is my dearest friend and she and Garson are have
Oh, I wish you were dining with us tonight: I cannot yet give you the menu, but here are some items on the conversational agenda:
Simone de Beauvoir’s La Vieillesse. (As Mrs Fiske181 said of a rival actress’s performance “She played all evening with her hand firmly on the wrong note.”<)> She seems to have no organ for the perception of innerness … but then that’s very French … apart from Pascal (who is apart from everyone) the only great French authors who had that gift were Montaigne and Proust—and both their mothers were Jewesses … Gertrude Stein told me that Picasso’s mother said (another Jewess!): “The only time that I realize that I am the mother of a grownup son is when I look in the mirror.”
Your dear self—an account of your first play produced I believe in Santa Barbara—with that redheaded girl (Fitzgerald?) about an understudy who did away with the star. I wasn’t there but I read about it avidly.182
A stern injunction not to neglect HANDEL—the manly nobility of his pathos, the buoyancy of his fugues (the twelve concerti grossi: he had suffered a stroke a year and a half before composing them), the sunburst splendor of his choruses in praise of God (Israel in Egypt, Theodora, and passim.<)> Be not ungrateful of the gifts of Heaven.
Dear Katharine Cornell with whom I am invited to lunch next Saturday, fragile but with an increasing etherial beauty and spiritual radiance.
The weather. The locust-crowds of tourists; etc, etc.
As this letter is not without its flirtatious aggression I must add (to make you jealous, I hope) that although I am 75 years old I received this week two letters, not without notes of tendresse, from two actresses: one very old, Miss Mia Farrow and one, very young, from Miss Irene Worth a-tiptoe for Corsica. Do you know Goethe’s poem to himself at eighty:
Du…….
Munter Geist…..
……
”Du auch sollst lieben“183
There is no age limit to creativity, but there are two required conditions: EROS at your right hand, Praise of life at your left.
Much love to the lady of Rottingdean184
devotedly
Thornton
323. TO MIA FARROW. ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed Post Office Box 862 / Edgartown, Massachusetts 02539) Yale
Oct 4. 1972
Mia Mia Carissima:
Loved your letter.
Loved your photos.
Loved your postscript (from André).
There is no news here except heavenly weather
Your brother John and his co-worker Alden and a very nice girl came to dinner with us at the BLACK Dog. We had a very pleasant time and I think they did; but I must confess with chagrin that although I taught (and had conferences) for twelve years with boys and young men and young women between the ages of 15 and 25 (Law renceville School, University of Chicago, and Harvard) I find it very hard to reach the center of young persons of this generation,—the center of their interest. The center of their curiosités—the word has a richer and more dignified sense in French than in English. Whatever those centers are they keep them locked up from us older persons. But I like them and wish them enormously well.
I’m delighted that you are “reading” passages from the Midsummer’s Night’s Dream with MENDELSSOHN’S music under Erich Leinsdorff
Do you know the Quaker use of the word “concern”? “I have a real concern for thee,” they say. It means a sympathetic participation at a deep level,—not pathos, not anxiety, not mere wish “for every happiness” but a sharing in friendship of the recognition that basic existence is hard for everyone and can be sustained in Quaker quiet and reverence and innerness. My concern for thee comes from my knowledge that you carry so many concerns for others, and so well and so bravely.
Please have a concern for me. As my book185—I have been working very hard—approaches it’s end more and more earnest notes about suffering in life insist on coming to the surface—and I want to “get them right” and then the book will end in a blaze of fun and glamor and happy marriages (at the annual “Servants’ Ball” at Newport!); and you know what author I am trying to emulate.
What a lovely coronet of flowers you wear in the “wedding picture” —with a dress of a lighter color that’s just what you should wear while reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream—a mixture of Titania, without a royal crown, and of the dancers on the green when England was “Merrie England”—Perdita in A Winter’s Tale. Lovely.
What a sad thing for us that we can’t stay here into November and have some more happy hours at “your place” and at “our place.” But Isabel’s been under some strict regimen and has to see her doctor, and I have to interrupt my surprisingly happy “working vein” and attend to postponed matters in New Haven and New York.
We have changed our plans. We are not going abroad until early January. We have “escaped” too often the “family reunions” of Thanksgiving and Christmas—I far oftener than Isabel. My brother has just turned 77 (and is in buoyant health) and my great-nephew is two months younger than your boys—so we have a wide range at those celebrations! We sail on “our old friend” the “Cristoforo Columbo” and disembark at Genoa—maybe a few weeks at Rapallo and then back to our favorite hotel in Zürich—moderately good opera and often very good theater—rooms over the lake—an unexciting but congenial city. Isabel will return to Hamden (having missed the worst of the New Haven-Hamden man-high snowdrifts, breakdown of public services and facilities: because of the “miracles” of technology, winter in a medium-size city is getting to be worse than winter on a remote North Dakota farm.<)>
I wish I could sit beside you at André’s concerts. (When Larry came over for the first time I used to sit beside Vivien at each “first performance”—Oedipus, The Critic, Henry IV Parts I and II—on his second trip she was playing with him, the two Cleopatras and The School for Scandal)<.>186 And—there’s no law against dreaming—I’d order the programs: Bach’s seconde suite; Bruckner’s V, VI or VII, Berlioz Romeo (again), Mozart G-minor, any Rossini Overture, Vaughn-Williams Pastorale, and Haydn, Sinfonia Concertante; Oh, yes, and I’d order André to direct a Mozart concerto from the piano and improvise the cadenzas on the spot. Did you ever imagine I could be so presumptuous?
My lo
ve to Matthew and Sascha. My love to Alicia. My love to Tina.187 My love to the Maestro.
My love to the dear Lady who joins us all like the diamond on a necklace of the choicest emeralds.
In which Isabel also cries AMEN.
Thornt’
324. TO RUTH GORDON AND GARSON KANIN. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden, Connecticut 06517) Private
April 20 1973
Dear Kind Kanins:
I’ve held this enclosure for weeks. Où est ma tête.. ?188
x
So I finished the plaguéd book. I’m accustomed to turn my back on a piece of work once it’s finished—but it’s something new for me to feel empty-handed and deflated,—to wake up each morning without that sense of the task waiting for me on my desk. Daily writing is a habit—and a crutch and a support; and for the first time I feel cast adrift and roofless without it. I hate this and am going to get back into a harness as soon as I can.
x
Received a composite letter from Mia/Irene Worth written from Mia’s dressing room at the Three Sisters<.>189 Irene’s full
The papers announce that Mia is to film The Great Gatsby at Newport.190 I wonder which place they have selected for setting.
x
I’m jolly well, thanks to Garson’s tirelessly acquired wisdom and his firmness with me. I take all my medecines.
April 29.
Another time-lapse.
This house is in constant muddle. The book was finished but portions come and go to agents, typists, proofreader (la Talma) all in a muddle of missing pages, crossed letters, incorrect pagination, etc.
But I don’t let this bother me much.
I was suddenly stung with an idea for a play and can’t wait to get to the island and get back in harness. I must find a chauffeur—either a divinity school student who’s glad of the job or O’Neil,191 if he can get away from the Royalton Hotel (he could only do that on a weekend when maybe it would be impossible—I hear—to get a ferry boat reservation.)
The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder Page 62