The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder

by Thornton Wilder

  67 Latin: a period of time.

  68 This one-act play has not survived.

  69 TNW’s brother was now attending Oberlin College.

  70 Marshall Darrach, a noted English solo performer of Shakespeare, was in San Francisco for six weeks in the fall of 1913 and gave a Shakespeare recital on September 27.

  71 TNW’s father was now in Berkeley with his family.

  72 TNW was spending the summer working on the farm of Ellwood Varney, Jr., as arranged by TNW’s father.

  73 There appears to be no question that TNW’s father wanted both his sons to graduate from Yale; it was his plan that, after two years at Oberlin, his son Amos would transfer to Yale for the last two years of his college education.

  74 German: and so forth.

  75 The present New Haven railroad station was not built until 1918.

  76 After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, the world was preparing for war.

  77 French: severe criticism of the family.

  78 TNW was scheduled to enter Oberlin in the fall of 1915.

  79 German painter Heinrich Hofmann (1824-1911), famous for his religious works depicting the life of Jesus.

  80 Amos N. Wilder’s nickname.

  81 English actor Johnston Forbes-Robertson (1853-1937) performed Hamlet, Jerome K. Jerome’s The Passing of the Third Floor Back, George Fleming’s The Light That Failed, and G. B. Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra at Oakland’s Cort Theatre in December 1914 and early January 1915.

  82 Nocturne: Blue and Gold—Old Battersea Bridge, painting by James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

  83 The Panama-Pacific International Exposition opened in February 1915 and ran until December 1915.

  84 German: dispute.

  85 George Pierce Baker conducted the famous 47 Workshop, begun in 1905 in the English Department at Harvard University. It was an undergraduate course on playwriting techniques and a laboratory for experimental productions.

  86 Wilhelm Tell (1804), a play by Friedrich von Schiller.

  87 “Stabat Mater Dolorosa,” a thirteenth-century Roman Catholic hymn attributed to Jacopone da Todi. The Berkeley Oratorio Society performed Italian composer Giocchino Antonio Rossini’s version in the Greek Theatre on April 2 and repeated it on April 4 and 25 at Festival Hall in San Francisco.

  88 Grainger (1882-1961) settled permanently in the United States in 1914.

  89 Italian violinist Serato (1877-1948); Russian-American violinist Zimbalist (1889-1985); Rumanian-born American classical soprano Gluck (1884—1938), Zimbalist’s wife; and Dutch mezzosoprano Culp (1880-1970).

  90 TNW’s sister Charlotte would be attending Mount Holyoke College in the fall of 1915.

  91 Art and antiques dealer Frederic C. Torrey was a Berkeley neighbor.

  92 English actor, producer, director, dramatist, and scholar Harley Granville-Barker (1877—1946), whose innovative productions of new translations of such classical works as Iphigenia in Taurus and The Trojan Women by Euripides, starring his wife, English actress Lillah McCarthy (1875—1960), played in outdoor venues at American colleges and universities.

  93 Amos P. Wilder arranged for his son’s train fare east so TNW could visit him in New Haven; he would then provide TNW with a plan for his summer activity.

  94 Roman general, statesman, and writer Gaius Julius Caesar; Roman historian Cornelius Nepos, whose major work is a collection of biographies of Roman and non-Roman leaders.

  95 Roman orator, statesman, political theorist, and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero; Roman historian Gaius Sallustius Crispus, known as Sallust.

  96 TNW ultimately spent two years at Oberlin, then repeated his sophomore year at Yale, from which he graduated in 1920. Jeptha (Judges 11) impetuously promises God that if he is victorious in battle, he will sacrifice the first person he meets on his return: That person is his daughter Iphis.

  97 Rauschenbusch was a noted Baptist preacher and a leading spokesman for the Social Gospel movement.

  98 Raymond C. Brooks served as minister of the First Congregational Church of Berkeley from 1913 to 1921.

  99 TNW’s brother was a nationally ranked amateur tennis player.

  100 TNW and his brother spent a portion of the summer working on the Dutton farm in the southeastern corner of Vermont.

  101 Charles H. A. Wager, professor of English and head of the Oberlin English Department for thirty-five years, became one of TNW’s most important mentors.

  102 TNW spent his Christmas vacation in 1915 at Oberlin.

  103 Many of the items TNW mentions in this letter were completed; some were published, while others can be found in parts or fragments in the Beinecke Library at Yale University. An undated manuscript notebook contains act 1 of “The Graves Family,” as well as undated holograph manuscript fragments. There is a holograph manuscript of “The Last Word About Burglars” and a program for the production of this play with “A Fable for Those Who Plague,” for May 9, 1916. Nothing remains of any work titled “Ventures Joyous,” or “The New Belinda.” TNW’s Shakespeare essay was published as “The Language of Emotion in Shakespeare” in the Oberlin Literary Magazine for March 1916. The following month, his short story “Sealing Wax” was published in the Oberlin Literary Magazine, as was “Brother Fire: A Comedy for Saints,” in the May 1916 Oberlin Literary Magazine. Another of his “Three Minute Playlets for Three Persons,” No. 6, may have been “Solus Inter Deos Protens: No. 6,” which was never published but exists in an undated manuscript notebook at Yale. There is no record of the projected “Archangel’s Fires,” although there is the possibility it could have been reworked and retitled.

  104 French actress and singer (1881-1920), notorious in France, England, and the United States for her daring on and off the stage; reference may be to a poem TNW wrote about her that has not survived.

  105 Comedy (1751) by Italian dramatist Carlo Goldoni (1707—1793) about how a woman treats four suitors, each of whom personifies a different attitude toward her sex. Again, the reference may be to a poem by TNW that has not survived.

  106 Harry Ernest Peabody (1865—1940) was a Congregational clergyman who was related through marriage to TNW’s father.

  107 Marion E. Knight (1891-1941) was at this time a graduate student at Oberlin after attending Mount Holyoke College.

  108 Mary Emma Woolley, president of Mount Holyoke College from 1901 to 1937.

  109 Mrs. Charles Gammon (Mary Stanley Gammon), Theodore Wilder’s maternal aunt, whom he called “Aunt Mame.”

  110 Edwin DeWitt Hotchkiss was at this time a student in Oberlin’s Conservatory of Music.

  111 Jeanne Françoise Récamier (1777—1849), French socialite well-known for her beauty, whose salon was a gathering place for the leading political and literary figures of her day; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), English writer known primarily for her letters, which were first published in 1763 and which revealed her to be a highly intelligent woman in a male-dominated society.

  112 The play variously called “Ventures Joyous” and “The New Belinda” (see letter number 27) became “The Rocket: An American Comedy in Four Acts,” which can be found as an undated corrected typescript in the Beinecke Library at Yale University. It is not known whether or not TNW sent “The Rocket” to American actress, producer, and director Grace George (see letter number 36).

  113 French: Eh?

  114 In 1916, May 6 was a Saturday; TNW probably misdated this letter.

  115 Giorgione’s painting Pastoral Concert.

  116 Painter George Bellows.

  117 TNW is probably referring to “The Rocket: An American Comedy in Four Acts.”

  118 Apparently a formal contract for the farm labor TNW was scheduled to do during the summer of 1916 at the Mount Hermon School in Gill, Massachusetts.

  119 Dwight Lyman Moody (1837—1899) was an evangelist who founded the Mount Hermon School for Boys (1881) and its sister institution, the Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies (1879), both designed to serve studen
ts with limited means.

  120 Lac Léman, the French name for Lake Geneva.

  121 TWN is referring to the Chautauqua Institution. Founded in western New York State in 1874 to provide religious and secular instruction to Methodist Episcopal Sunday school teachers during the summer, Chautauqua later offered summer courses in the arts, sciences, and humanities, as well as lectures and performances by musicians, artists, and well-known political figures.

  122 TNW originally wrote “Dear Family” but crossed out “Family” and substituted “Mother only.”

  123 Miss Hanna and Miss Day were Berkeley friends of the Wilder family.

  124 After graduating from Oberlin in June 1916, Ruth Keller (1894—1973) taught school for two years in her hometown, worked for the U.S. government in Washington, D.C., married, and had six children (one son’s middle name was Thornton).

  125 TNW is referring to Portia in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice; disguised as a lawyer, Portia cleverly and fairly wins the case in which Shylock has demanded a pound of flesh owed to him by her husband’s friend Antonio.

  126 The Greek philosopher Heraclitus was often referred to as “the weeping philosopher.”

  127 Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder, plays by Henrik Ibsen; Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson L.L.D.; and Religio Medici, a prose work by English author and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682).

  128 American journalist and novelist Ernest Poole (1880—1950), whose essay appeared in The Century Magazine.

  129 Max Wilder (1894-1962), TNW’s cousin, the son of TNW’s father’s older brother Julian Wilder (1860-1938).

  130 TNW met Kommer, a Viennese drama critic (1885—1943) and assistant to Austrian theatrical producer and director Max Reinhardt, during his summer vacation in 1916 at Monhegan Island, Maine, after he finished his work at the Mount Hermon School. The island had long been the site of an artists’ colony.

  131 TNW added this exclamation point after “Maine” on the letterhead of the stationery.

  132 Richard Wagner’s opera Parsifal tells the story of a Knight Templar and his search for the Holy Grail. The Wilder family possesses a completed undated typescript of a three-minute playlet, “The Lost Miracle of the Graal,” which may have been written at this time.

  133 American actress Mary Shaw (1854-1929) portrayed Mrs. Alving in Henrik Ibsen’s play Ghosts in numerous productions, most notably in New York in 1916-1917. The Melody of Youth, a play by Irish-born American dramatist, actor, and director Brandon Tynan (1875-1967), also played in New York in 1916, although Mary Shaw was not in the cast.

  134 Hit-the-Trail Holiday, a play by George M. Cohan.

  135 German poet, dramatist, and prose writer Herbert Eulenberg (1876—1949) does not seem to have a published work called Schattenphantasie, but his Schattenbilder: Eine Fibel für Kulturbedürtige in Deutschland was published in 1910. TNW mentions this book in his foreword to The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays (1928).

  136 In a July 12, 1916, letter to his mother, TNW mentions that he has written a three-minute playlet for three persons, “Mr. Bozzy,” which is about Johnson, Mrs. Thrale, and Boswell. It survives as an undated typescript in the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

  137 Possibly, TNW is referring to Russian-born American humorist and journalist Simeon Strunsky (1879-1948).

  138 TNW may be referring to his story “Two Miracles of Doma Y Venuzias,” which appeared in the November 1916 issue of the Oberlin Literary Magazine. Charlotte Wilder’s article “Of the Class of ’52” was a humorous comparison of her era and the Mount Holyoke class of 1852; it appeared in the October 1916 issue of The Mount Holyoke.

  139 Latin: Unbelievable judge, how long will you abuse our patience. This line is TNW’s play on Cicero’s line “Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?” from the Orations Against Catiline.

  140 On September 26, 1916, eight days after his twenty-first birthday, TNW’s brother enlisted as a volunteer ambulance driver. He sailed for France on October 21 to begin a three-month assignment with the American Field Service (AFS) in Paris.

  141 The Baglioni family dominated political life in the Italian city of Perugia from the fifteenth century through the early sixteenth century. In 1520, Gian Paolo Baglioni was lured to Rome and beheaded by Leo X.

  142 American stage and film actress Ferguson (1883-1961) appeared in the stage production of The Outcast (1914), by English dramatist Hubert Henry Davies, and repeated her role in the film version (1922).

  143 Leonard Clough Peabody, a member of the Oberlin class of 1920 and son of “Uncle Harry” Peabody (see letter number 27).

  144 Probably “Prosperina and the Devil: A Play for Marionettes,” which appeared in the December 1916 issue of the Oberlin Literary Magazine.

  145 English actress and mistress of King Charles II, Eleanor Gwyn (known as “Nell”) died on November 14, 1687; Robert Louis Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850.

  146 The comedy Menaechmi, by Roman dramatist Titus Maccius Plautus; it was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.

  147 TNW’s story is “Two Miracles of Doma Y Venuzias”; Watson’s story is “A Pessimist’s Perspective of Life” Both appeared in the November 1916 issue of the Oberlin Literary Magazine. TNW befriended Watson and introduced him to a wider musical repertoire for voice. Ade (1866-1944) was an American humorist and dramatist.

  148 Agnes Gammon, Theodore Wilder’s first cousin and Mrs. Gammon’s daughter.

  149 English novelist Ethel Sidgwick (1877—1970), author of A Lady of Leisure (1914), Duke Jones (1914), and The Accolade (1915).

  150 An undated manuscript of “The Masque of the Bright Haired” is in the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

  151 American dramatist and poet Percy MacKaye (1875-1956) assisted on the production of Sophocles’ Antigone that ran at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley during the summer of 1910; TNW also attended a performance of MacKaye’s Anti-Matrimony (1910) that same summer.

  152 “Stones at Nell Gwynn” has not survived. Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Roman lyric poet. Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) was an English poet. François Villon is considered the greatest French poet of the late Middle Ages. The Washington Square Players was founded in 1914 as an alternative to the commercial Broadway theater; when the group disbanded in 1918, its leading members went on to form the Theatre Guild in 1919.

  153 In his Pensées (1670), Blaise Pascal contended that reason was insufficient to solve man’s dilemmas and satisfy his longings.

  154 Isabel attended New Haven High School in 1916—1917, after having applied too late to be admitted to Northfield Seminary in Massachusetts.

  155 Hush!, by Violet Pearn, ran in October and November 1916; Pierrot the Prodigal, with music by André Wormser and book by Michel Carré, ran between September 1916 and January 1917; The Yellow Jacket, by George C. Hazelton and J. Harry Benrimo, ran in 1916—1917; A Kiss for Cinderella, by J. M. Barrie, ran between December 1916 and May 1917; Shirley Kaye, by Hurlbert Footner, ran between December 1916 and March 1917; Getting Married, by George Bernard Shaw, ran between November 1916 and February 1917. Russian actress Alla Nazimova (1879—1945) appeared in ’Ception Shoals, by H. Austin Adams; the play ran in early 1917.

  156 Turn to the Right, by John E. Hazzard and Winchell Smith, ran between August 1916 and September 1917; Cheating Cheaters, by Max Marcin, ran between August 1916 and April 1917; Nothing But the Truth, by James Montgomery, ran between September 1916 and July 1917.

  157 This play has not survived.

  158 TNW is probably referring to his father here.

  159 Novel (1898) by Irish writer George Moore.

  160 In his play Anatol (1893), Austrian dramatist Arthur Schnitzler depicted the amorous escapades of a Casanova-like adventurer who goes from one woman to another.

  161 Hungarian-born American actor and dramatist Leo James Dietrichstein (1864-1928).

  162 The lines are from “The Great Lover” (1914) by Rupert Bro
oke, who was killed during World War I.

  163 Oberlin, like many American colleges and universities, had begun military instruction on their campus when it became increasingly clear that the United States would enter the war in Europe.

  164 Latin: God willing certainly.

  165 On April 2, 1917, the U.S. government had signed contracts to begin construction of over three hundred torpedo boats to be used in detecting and chasing enemy submarines. Their tonnage restricted the size of the crew and necessitated the use of as much automatic equipment as possible.

  166 Trego (1893-1932) graduated from Oberlin in 1917 and was a close friend and literary confidante of TNW.

  167 Latin: It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.

  168 English churchman and author John Henry Newman (1801-1890) resigned his position in the Church of England, converted to Catholicism, and was made a cardinal in 1879.

  169 William Lyon Phelps and Chauncey Brewster Tinker were leading faculty members at Yale University at this time, while Charles Townsend Copeland and George Pierce Baker held similar positions at Harvard University.

  170 Highly respected rabbi with whom the apostle Paul studied.

  171 TNW’s father had arranged for his son to spend part of the summer of 1917 working and taking a class in typing at Berea College in Kentucky.

  172 Latin: I consider nothing human foreign to me.

  173 The New Word (1915) ran in New York between May and June 1917; it appeared on a bill with two other Barrie one-acts, Old Friends (1910) and The Old Lady Shows Her Medals (1917), the latter of which also dealt with the war.

  174 Among the honors John Donne received toward the end of his life was being named dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1621.

  175 Ik Marvel was the pen name of American essayist and novelist Donald Grant Mitchell (1822-1908); he was best known for his books of sentimental essays, Reveries of a Bachelor (1850) and Dream Life: A Fable of the Seasons (1851).

  176 Hi-O-Hi was the student yearbook at Oberlin.

  177 Play (1914) by Irish dramatist and poet Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett (1878-1957), the eighteenth baron of Dunsany.