34. TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, June 11, 1913, TNW Collection, YCAL.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. TNW to APW, [June 1913?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
38. US Department of State Inspection Report, Shanghai, China, June 1913 [covers 1912 and 1913], General Records of the Department of State 1906–1939, NARA (RG59/250/48/13/2), Inspection Report of the American Consulate General, Shanghai, made by George M. Murphy.
39. Ibid.
40. TNW to APW, [September 1913?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
41. US Department of State Inspection Report, Shanghai, China, June 1913 [covers 1912 and 1913], General Records of the Department of State 1906–1939, NARA (RG59/250/48/13/2), Inspection Report of the American Consulate General, Shanghai, made by George M. Murphy.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
6: “ALL ASPIRATION” (1913–1915)
1. Olla Podrida, December 1913, 46. Private Collection.
2. TNW to APW, September 21, [19]13, TNW Collection, YCAL.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. TNW to APW, [1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
7. TNW to APW, [July 1913?], TNW Collection, YCAL. Also see Galveston County (Texas) Daily News, August 5, 1913.
8. APW, 1914 Shanghai Diary, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers.
9. TNW to APW, December 14, 1913, TNW Collection, YCAL.
10. TNW to APW, [late 1913 or early 1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
11. Ibid.
12. APW, 1914 Shanghai Diary, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers.
13. “Dr. A. P. Wilder. Farewell Receptions. Brilliant Speech to Young China.” Unidentified, undated news clipping, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL.
14. Olla Podrida, June 1914, 75. Private Collection. A printed program for TNW’s 1914 playlet,“Successful Failure,” is contained in the TNW, YCAL, uncataloged papers.
15. APW to ANW, [March 21?], 1914, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
16. APW to ANW, April 12, [1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
17. APW to ANW, May 25, [1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
18. Ibid.
19. APW to ANW, April 27, [1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
20. APW to ANW, [Summer 1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
21. TNW to “Familie,” [p.m. June 15, 1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
22. Ibid.
23. ANW, “1914 Summer,” ANW, Wilder Family Record, Private Collection.
24. APW to ANW, May 18, [1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
25. APW to ANW, July 31, [1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
26. APW to ANW, June 30, [1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
27. For detailed background on Yale-in-China, see Nancy E. Chapman with Jessica C. Plumb, The Yale-China Association: A Centennial History (Chinese University Press, 2001), and Reuben Holden, Yale in China: The Mainland/1907–1951 (New Haven: Yale-in-China Association, 1964).
28. APW to ANW, June 3, 1915, TNW Collection, YCAL uncataloged letters.
29. TNW to APW, June 27 and 28, [19]14, TNW Collection, YCAL.
30. TNW to APW, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
31. TNW to APW, [Fall 1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
32. TNW to APW, October 1, [1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
33. Isabel Wilder to APW, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
34. TNW to ANW, November 18, [19]14, TNW Collection, YCAL.
35. TNW to APW, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.
36. TNW to ANW, November 18, [19]14, TNW Collection, YCAL.
37. TNW to APW, [May 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
38. TNW to Percy MacKaye, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL. In this undated letter, written when TNW was an adult, he confessed to MacKaye that as pleased as he had been as a boy to receive MacKaye’s letter, he was “too shy” to respond but had always dreamed of writing “scenarios for Percy MacKaye.”
39. TNW to ANW, April 7, [19]15, TNW Collection, YCAL.
40. TNW to APW, [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
41. Ibid.
42. The painting was later sold—at a fine profit—to the art collectors Louise and Walter Arensberg, and eventually wound up in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. See also Daniella Thompson, “East Bay Then and Now: Berkeleyan Torrey Owned Duchamp’s Most Famous Painting,” Berkeley Daily Planet, February 4, 2009.
43. TNW to APW, [1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL. Actually, Robert Louis Stevenson dedicated the 1879 edition of his The Silverado Squatters to his cousin, Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson, known as Bob. Mrs. Williams’s memory may have been faulty, or TNW may not have gotten the correct title from their conversations, but it is a fact that Dora Norton Williams and her husband were close friends of Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife. See, for instance, Frank McLynn, Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography (London: Hutchinson, 1993); and Ernest Mehew, ed., Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
44. Talcott Williamson, Interview, “Biography in Sound,” NBC Radio, March 27, 1956.
45. TNW to ANW, November 18, [19]14, TNW Collection, YCAL.
46. TNW to APW, [April 16, 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
47. APW to Isabella Niven Wilder, January 2, [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
48. Ibid.
49. TNW to APW, [April 16, 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
50. APW to ANW, [Summer 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
51. TNW to APW, [May 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
52. TNW to Elizabeth Lewis Niven, January 7, [19]15, TNW Collection, YCAL.
53. TNW to APW, April 16, [19]15, TNW Collection, YCAL.
54. TNW to APW, May 9, [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
55. TNW describes this table of contents in the foreword to the collection of his three-minute playlets, The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1928). Page references for the three-minute playlets in this collection are to A. Tappan Wilder, ed. The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1998), vol. 2.
56. TNW, foreword to The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays.
57. TNW to ANW, April 7, [19]15, TNW Collection, YCAL.
58. TNW to APW, n.d. [May ? 1915], TNW Collection, YCAL.
59. TNW to APW, May 30, 1915, TNW Collection, YCAL.
60. APW to ANW, June 3, 1915, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters. The “Seven Sisters,” prestigious colleges for women, originally included Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley. Vassar is now coeducational, and Radcliffe merged with Harvard.
61. Ibid.
62. TNW to APW, [May 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
63. TNW to APW, [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
64. TNW to APW, May 25, [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
65. TNW to APW, June 20, [19]15, TNW Collection, YCAL.
66. TNW to APW, [Summer 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
67. APW to ANW and TNW, August 2, 1915, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
68. TNW to APW, July [13?], [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
69. TNW to APW, July [13?], [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL, and TNW to APW, [Summer 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
7: “LITERARY DEVELOPMENT” (1915–1916)
1. APW to President Henry C. King, April 11, 1913, Oberlin College Archives.
2. Quoted in Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery, 129–30.
3. TNW to APW, [Fall 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
4. Ibid. The Psychology Department was officially established at Oberlin in 1909, and by 1915, psychology courses were so popular that Professor Raymond Herbert Stetson, chairman of the department, appealed for additional teachers and better facilities and equipment to keep up with the demand. D
r. Stetson was an Oberlin graduate with a doctorate from Harvard, and would teach at Oberlin for thirty years.
5. ANW, quoted by Krister Stendahl, “ ‘Imagining the Real,’ a ‘Memorial Minute,’ ” Harvard Divinity Bulletin 23, no. 1 (1994): 13.
6. TNW to Mother, [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
7. TNW to Family, [Fall 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL. (Letter begins “. . . have not called?”; pages 1 and 2 are missing.)
8. Isabel Wilder, untitled typescript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged manuscript.
9. TNW to Family, [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
10. 1915–1916 Annual Report of the President and Treasurer, Oberlin College. In the nineteenth century this house had been the home of Oberlin’s first physician, James Dascomb, a science professor at the college, whose wife, Marianne, was head of the Oberlin Women’s Department.
11. TNW to Mother, [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
12. TNW to Family, [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
13. APW to Isabella Niven Wilder, January 2, [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
14. Charlotte Wilder to APW, May 30, 1915, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
15. APW to ANW, December 8, [1914?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
16. ANW, quoted by Stendahl, “ ‘Imagining the Real,’ a ‘Memorial Minute,’ ” 13.
17. TNW to Family, [Fall 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
18. Hubert Jay Stowitts to TNW, November 16, 1915, TNW Collection, YCAL.
19. Ibid.
20. TNW to Family, [Fall 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
21. Ibid.
22. TNW to Papa, December 20, [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
23. TNW to Charlotte Wilder, [March 1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL. Printed program, May 9, 1916, TNW Collection, YCAL.
24. Ibid.
25. TNW to Papa, February 6, 1916, TNW Collection, YCAL.
26. Ibid.
27. TNW, foreword to The Angel That Troubled the Waters. This volume is also published in A. Tappan Wilder, ed., The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, vol. 2, 1–86; and J. D. McClatchy, ed., Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater (New York: Library of America, 2007), 5–60.
28. Ibid.
29. TNW to ANW, April 8, 1916, TNW Collection, YCAL.
30. TNW, “The Language of Emotion in Shakespeare,” Oberlin Literary Magazine, March 1916, 140–41.
31. TNW to Family, [Fall or Winter 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
32. TNW to Mother, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL. (Letter is headed “Family,” which is crossed out and supplanted by “Mother only—.”)
33. Robin G. Wilder to PEN, August 3, 2008.
34. TNW to Charlotte Wilder, [March 1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
35. TNW to Family, May 6, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
36. TNW to Family, [Fall or Winter 1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
37. TNW, “The Last Word About Burglars: A Disordered Fancy in One Act,” unpublished holograph manuscript, TNW Collection, YCAL. (In addition to the eight-page script, there is a three-page draft of the final pages, apparently an earlier draft.)
38. TNW to Papa, April 4, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. TNW to Mother, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL. (Letter begins, “I hope your splendid long letter . . .”)
43. TNW to Papa, May 8, 1916, TNW Collection, YCAL.
44. Isabel Wilder, transcript of taped interview, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged manuscript.
45. TNW to Isabel Wilder, May 18, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
46. ANW, 1916, Wilder Family Record.
47. TNW to Papa, May 14, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
48. TNW to Papa, July 12, 1916, TNW Collection, YCAL.
49. TNW to Mother, July 2, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL. The Northfield Seminary was located in Northfield, Massachusetts. The Mount Hermon School for Boys is located nearby in Gill, Massachusetts. The two schools became a single corporation in 1912 and were consolidated in 1971. In September 2005, the Northfield program was moved to the Mount Hermon campus in Gill. The Northfield Mount Hermon School’s official address is Mount Hermon, Massachusetts.
8: “THE ART OF WRITING” (1916)
1. Catalogue of Mount Hermon School, 1915–16 (Brattleboro, VT: Press of E. L. Hildreth & Co., 1916), 24.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 24–25.
4. TNW to Family, Monday Night, [July 1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
5. TNW to Mother, July 2, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
6. TNW to Papa, June 23, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
7. TNW to ANW, July 11, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
8. TNW to ANW, October 16, 1916, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
9. TNW to Papa, [Spring 1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
10. Sir Thomas Browne, Knt, Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend, rev. ed. (Middlesex, England: Echo Library, 2007), part 1: 1, 9.
11. Browne, Religio Medici, 10. The text transcription of this passage is incomplete in the source above; I have consulted other sources to determine the complete sentence in question. See, for instance, M. H. Abrams, ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986), vol. 1, 1718.
12. Ibid., 12.
13. Ibid., 14.
14. Ibid., 18.
15. Browne, in Hydriotaphia, 98.
16. TNW to Mother, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
17. Ibid.
18. TNW, “Brother Fire,” in The Angel That Troubled the Waters, 21–24. This playlet was first published as “Brother Fire: A Comedy for Saints” in the Oberlin Literary Magazine, May 1916, 200–202.
19. TNW to Ross Parmenter, “Novelist into Playwright,” Saturday Review of Literature, June 11, 1938, 10–11; reprinted in Bryer, Conversations with Thornton Wilder, 24.
20. TNW to Papa, June 23, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
21. APW to ANW, July 25, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.
22. Ibid.
23. TNW to Mother, July 12, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
24. Charles A. Wager to TNW, June 27, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
25. TNW to ANW, July 11, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
26. APW to TNW, March 18, [1917?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
27. TNW to Papa, [July 11 or 12, 1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
28. TNW to Papa, [August 1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
29. Ibid.
30. Vacation details are to be found in ANW, Wilder Family Record for 1916, Private Collection.
31. TNW to Papa, September 1, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
32. TNW to Mother, August 28, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. TNW to Papa, September 1, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. TNW to Rudolf Kommer, September 15, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
39. Vacation details are to be found in ANW, Wilder Family Record, 1916, Private Collection.
40. Ibid.
41. TNW to Rudolf Kommer, September 15, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
42. TNW to Papa, September 26, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
43. TNW to Charlotte Wilder, October 16, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
44. ANW, Armageddon Revisited : A World War I Journal (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 6.
45. Ibid.
46. ANW, September 1916, ANW, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL.
47. Ibid.
48. ANW, Armageddon Revisited, 2–3.
49. ANW, November 1926, 5, ANW, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL.
50. APW to ANW, November 26, [1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
51. Ralph Wentworth to APW, May 24, 1917, Mount Hermon School Archives.
52. Isabel Wilder�
��s Application for Admission to Northfield Seminary, completed by APW, October 16, 1916, Mount Hermon School Archives.
53. APW to Mr. Dickerson, June 30, 1919. Mount Hermon School Archives.
54. TNW to Mother, October 22, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
55. TNW to ANW, October 16, 1916, ANW, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL.
56. TNW to ANW, December 8, 1916, ANW, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL.
57. TNW to ANW, September 23, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
58. TNW to Mother, [1915?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
59. Geoffrey Blodgett, Oberlin Architecture, College and Town: A Guide to Its Social History (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1985), 93.
60. TNW to Mother, September 4, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
61. TNW to ANW, September 23, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
62. TNW to Mother, October 22, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
63. TNW to Papa, [Fall 1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
64. TNW to Mother, September 4, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
65. TNW to Mama, November 13, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
66. TNW to Mother, [Fall 1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
67. Ibid. The play was published in the Oberlin Literary Magazine in December 1916.
68. TNW to Mother, November 23, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL. When he was thirteen, TNW had seen the American playwright and poet Percy MacKaye’s dramas performed in the Greek Theatre at the University of California, Berkeley. MacKaye’s translation of Sophocles’ Antigone was performed there in June 1910.
69. TNW to Mother, November 23, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
70. TNW to Mother, [Fall 1916], TNW Collection, YCAL.
71. TNW to Papa, November 14, [19]16, TNW Collection, YCAL.
72. Ibid.
73. Isabella Niven Wilder to TNW, December 1, 1916, TNW Collection, YCAL.
74. Verhaeren was sixty-one that November of 1916 when he fell at Rouen Station in Paris and was crushed to death by a train. “Today suddenly—cruelly it seemed—/ Your long road turned the road long dreamed . . . ,” Isabella wrote. Her poem was not published.
75. TNW to Mother, [December 1916?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
76. TNW to ANW, September 7, [1917?], TNW Collection, YCAL.
77. Isabella Niven Wilder to ANW, November 30, 1916, ANW, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL.
78. TNW to ANW, December 8, 1916, ANW, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL.
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