5: Labor Pains
1 “there were no proven”: HR to EBW, 5/7/35.
2 “I threw it across the room”: Grant, p. 136.
3 “Well, Margaret, I think”: Harriman, Vicious Circle, p. 187.
4 “too frothy for my liking”: Franklin P. Adams, Pepys, Vol. 1, p. 505.
5 “I, and my associates”: Time, 2/25/25.
6 “My personal opinion”: Current Biography, 1943; pp. 635–36.
7 “I am free to admit”: The New York Times, 5/12/69.
8 “This feat slightly stunned”: Philip Wylie to JT, 1/3/58.
9 “I told Ross to cut it”: Interview with Marc Connelly in the Oral History Project, Columbia University.
10 “He never told me anything”: Interview with Charles Baskerville, 2/18/93.
11 “Ross had a map in his mind”: Interview with William Maxwell, 8/9/91.
12 “rubbed most of the uncouthness”: Wylie to JT, 1/3/58.
13 “Irvin always knew what”: RI to JT, 8/1/59.
14 “Have to dig up a thousand”: Dale Kramer, p. 70.
15 “This added debt gave me”: Grant, p. 188.
16 “I can’t blame Raoul”: The New York Times, 5/12/69.
17 “It is a pretty good chance”: Raoul Fleischmann, “The History of the Fleischmanns,” a private, unpublished family history, August 1963.
18 “ ‘Tilley’ was the name”: Ford, p. 120.
19 “doing everything—as we all”: Linda H. Davis, Onward and Upward: A Biography of Katharine S. White, p. 60.
20 “You look a little vague”: This and subsequent passages are from Ralph Ingersoll’s 1925 diary.
21 “The cast of characters”: E. B. White, Letters of E. B. White, p. 73.
22 “Ingersoll, the typewriter”: HR to RI, undated.
23 “Memorandum from McGuinness”: James Kevin McGuinness to HR, undated.
24 “was actually removed”: RI note in his collected papers, undated.
25 “Done right, the whole”: RI to JT, 8/1/59.
26 “Certainly you know your Paris”: JG to Janet Flanner, [June 1925].
27 “I don’t want to know”: Grant, p. 7.
28 “to his eyes and ears”: Ibid., p. 9.
29 “Write exactly what you see”: Dale Kramer, p. 88.
30 “The only thing I had a talent”: Ibid., p. 89.
31 “We do not particularly like”: TNY, 11/28/25.
32 “Modern girls … marry whom”: TNY, 12/12/25.
33 “Say it’s terrible”: Dale Kramer, p. 84.
34 “Peck & Peck has broken”: TNY, 10/24/25.
6: Cavalry
1 “I note what you say”: H. L. Mencken to William Saroyan, 1/25/36.
2 “A magazine written and edited”: TNY, 9/12/25.
3 “the chargings-about of a man”: From “The Thursdays with Ross,” an unpublished monograph by Robert M. Coates, 1958.
4 “I think the organization”: Fillmore Hyde to RI, [1926].
5 “her own mother [had] objected”: TNY, 5/15/26.
6 “I must get back to the office”: Thurber, Years with Ross, p. 33.
7 “He was very earthy”: Interview with Emily Hahn, 11/5/91.
8 “One day nearer the grave”: Thurber, Years with Ross, p. 141.
9 “I’ll have no mythological”: TNY, 5/2/42.
10 “Ingersoll was a great man”: Ibid.
11 “I had no right to take”: Ralph Ingersoll, Point of Departure, p. 221.
12 “If I have been cranky”: HR to RI, [1926].
13 “a nervous breakdown the likes”: Ingersoll, p. 166.
14 “When he was unsure”: TNY, 8/1/77.
15 “the highest personal comment”: Scott Elledge, E. B. White: A Biography, p. 118.
16 “Station WJAX”: TNY, 4/23/27.
17 “as impractical as Jesus Christ”: Janet Flanner to KSW, 12/13 [1951].
18 “We noted that the Spirit”: TNY, 5/28/27.
19 “the lilting name of”: Thurber, Years with Ross, p. 34.
20 “All right then, if you’re”: Ibid., p. 17.
21 “The precision and clarity”: Burton Bernstein, Thurber, p. 164.
22 “though the magazine was his”: Brendan Gill, Here at The New Yorker, p. 288.
23 “Are you the son of a bitch”: Bernstein, p. 181.
24 “I don’t give a damn”: Wolcott Gibbs, Season in the Sun (and Other Pleasures), pp. vii, viii.
25 “The little shindig”: TNY, 5/7/27.
26 “We thought nothing of working”: Marcia Davenport, Too Strong for Fantasy, p. 119.
27 “When one of my writers”: Carl R. Dolmetsch, The Smart Set, p. xxiii.
28 “Constant Reader, in the early”: HR to EBW, Monday [Fall 1938?].
29 “Aw, Harold, I’ve been”: Roy Hoopes, Cain, p. 205.
30 Benchley in Philadelphia: Nathaniel Benchley, Robert Benchley, p. 11.
31 “Fleischmann frankly said”: JG to Ida Ross, [4/17/28].
32 “That was one of the factors”: Ibid.
33 “I’m married to this magazine”: Thurber, Years with Ross, p. 16.
34 “Jane just doesn’t understand”: Marc Connelly to JG, Monday [1928].
35 “Of course, I don’t know”: Ibid.
36 “We have different tastes”: HR to JG, [1928].
37 “I have worried ever since”: Ida Ross to JG, 4/12/28.
38 “I did not know how you would feel”: JG to Ida Ross, 4/17/28.
39 “My heart ached”: Ida Ross to JG, 5/16/28.
40 “The reason I left”: HR to S. H. Adams, Thursday [1945].
41 “Never for a moment”: Grant, p. 246.
42 “a small harem”: Hecht, p. 139.
43 “there would be no New Yorker”: HR to Lloyd Paul Stryker, 10/29/45.
44 “Go back and put your clothes on”: Davis, p. 75.
45 “Occasionally she would”: Marcia Davenport to author, 4/14/92.
46 “I never should have left”: KSW to Geoffrey Hellman, 10/3/75.
47 “an escape from the life”: Katharine Angell to EBW, [1929].
48 “On account of the fact”: EBW to HR, Friday [July? 1929].
49 “I have an anguished letter”: EBW to Katharine Angell, Tuesday [August 1929].
7: A Cesspool of Loyalties
1 Ross-Schindler practical jokes: Allen Churchill, “Ross of The New Yorker,” American Mercury, August 1948.
2 “Harold, of all the men”: Interview with Clifton Fadiman, 11/12/93.
3 “Just as he gained”: Nunnally Johnson to JT, 9/3/57.
4 “He had a wonderful kind”: Interview with Edith Oliver, 1/16/92.
5 “He was bluff and funny”: Interview with Daphne Hellman Shih, 9/30/91.
6 “Oh, I don’t know”: Grant, p. 260.
7 “Ross sent me a thing”: Sally Benson to JT, 5/5/58.
8 “They ought to have covers”: St. Clair McKelway to JT, 4/11/58.
9 “Her instincts, as usual”: Ginger Rogers, Ginger: My Story, p. 84.
10 “You know, Ginger is also”: Ibid., p. 95.
11 “People in California”: HR to RW, 7/24/47.
12 “We had quite a long session”: Harpo Marx to Groucho Marx, 5/7/58.
13 “Nobody is going to leave”: Thurber, Years with Ross, p. 225.
14 “Instantly he was on the alert”: Stanley Walker to JT, 8/14/57.
15 “There was a slight benefit”: TNY, 11/9/29.
16 “was simple and, theoretically”: Russell Maloney, “Tilley the Toiler,” The Saturday Review of Literature, 8/30/47.
17 “In our inattention”: Women’s Wear Daily, 7/1/68.
18 “We walked over to Union”: TNY, 3/5/32.
19 “In the class war”: Dwight Macdonald, “Laugh and Lie Down,” Partisan Review, December 1937.
20 “The New Yorker was, of course”: EBW to Charles Morton, 5/6/63.
21 “I was chattering away”: This and entire Charles Morton segment is from Morton’s It Has Its C
harms …, pp. 206–20.
22 “They droop off his wrists”: James M. Cain to Allen Churchill, 8/16/47.
23 “The New Yorker is a cesspool”: JT to HR, August 1947.
24 “It built him up”: Grant, p. 219.
25 “We got to Park Avenue”: WG to JT, Monday [1957].
26 “The day at the office”: Ogden Nash to Frances Leonard, 1/5/31.
27 “was about as miserable”: Hoopes, Cain, p. 213.
28 “O’Hara’s in us for three hundred”: Bernard A. Bergman, “O’Hara and Me,” John O’Hara Journal, Winter 1978–79.
29 “You, I believe, had warned me”: Bergman to JT, 9/4 [1957].
30 “In the beginning, he kept on”: WG to JT, 8/12/57.
31 “We laughed about which one”: St. Clair McKelway to JT, 5/31/58.
32 “the most succinct and accurate”: RI memo in his collected papers, 6/6/66.
33 “Well, I am as bitter”: HR to Eugene Spaulding, 3/12/30.
34 “The front office boys”: Cain to Allen Churchill, 8/16/47.
35 “Hell, Ingersoll, Fortune was invented”: RI to JT, 8/1/59.
8: Fleischmann
1 “We never went to Sunday school”: This and subsequent passages are from the Raoul Fleischmann family history.
2 “because then the Jewish clientele”: Variety, 12/12/51.
3 “a hatred which is almost”: Fleischmann to EBW, 7/2/45.
4 “Fleischmann et al.”: HR to Lloyd Paul Stryker, 10/29/45.
5 “My father used to say”: Interview with Peter Fleischmann, 1/15/92.
6 “The publisher was to have”: William Shawn to TNY staff, 11/11/76.
7 “I did a thing no decent”: Dale Kramer, p. 170.
8 “I was sorry not to come”: Edmund Wilson to JT, 3/22/58.
9 “Harold just had a great distaste”: Fleischmann to JT, 3/28/58.
10 “ring of stupid fumblers”: HR to Stryker, 7/4/45.
11 “I got onto the Stage thing”: HR to KSW, [1942].
12 “his resentment was almost”: Fleischmann to JT, 3/28/58.
13 “I could understand your spending”: HR to Fleischmann, 4/5/38.
14 “I’m not going to work myself”: Ik Shuman to JT, 8/22/58.
15 “Unless, before 5 p.m.”: HR to Fleischmann, 4/5/38.
16 “If this demand is not met”: St. Clair McKelway to JT, 4/2/58.
17 The account of Shuman’s meeting with Fleischmann is from Shuman’s letter to JT, 8/22/58.
18 “I … find myself in what”: HR to Fleischmann, 5/24/38.
19 “to Florida, California”: F-R Publishing Corporation to HR, 11/17/38.
20 “we have another little mouth”: HR to EBW, [Fall 1937].
21 “weren’t exactly parallel”: HR to KSW, [1942].
22 “As I get it, this new board”: Stryker to Peter Vischer, 7/3/42.
23 “Ross was a constant irritation”: Interview with Peter Fleischmann, 1/15/92.
24 “It makes [your] place look like”: Howard Teichmann, Smart Aleck, p. 156.
25 “She was a simple, beautiful”: KSW note in her collected papers, [1973?].
26 “the primary purpose of baseball”: WG to JT, Monday [1957].
27 “Conceived in an absent-minded”: Allen Churchill, “Ross of The New Yorker,” American Mercury, August 1948.
28 “As I reached to do so”: FS to JT, 10/5 [1957].
29 “Ross didn’t want me to come”: Interview with Peggy Day, 9/15/92.
30 “He is a man of substance”: HR to RW, 8/24/48.
31 “The second they got into”: FS to the Whites, [10/19/38].
32 “I was hit on the head”: Dale Kramer, p. 265.
33 “As I have said,” HR to Stryker, 7/25/44.
34 “The little bastard”: FS to JT, 10/5 [1957].
35 “The poor son of a bitch”: McKelway to JT, 5/25/58.
36 “which recently allowed me to be forged”: HR to Alexander Woollcott, Tuesday [April 1942].
37 “Any American can be taken”: Thurber, Years with Ross, p. 250.
38 “the king of England”: Hoopes, Cain, p. 211.
9: Life on a Limb
1 Sunset Boulevard story is from an interview with Philip Hamburger, 8/8/91.
2 “Magazines are about eighty-five”: HR to George Jean Nathan, 12/27/49.
3 “diligence in looking at”: EBW in personal notes on TNY, in his collected papers, undated.
4 “By being hospitable”: Gill, p. 391.
5 “I wish I were a writer”: HR to Geoffrey Hellman, July 1949.
6 “I … think he thought”: “The Art of Fiction: William Maxwell,” Paris Review, Fall 1982.
7 “When publishers wrote”: Edmund Wilson to JT, 3/22/58.
8 “who looks at them with a bleary”: HR to Mencken, 3/19/45.
9 “I think the attraction”: Interview with John Bainbridge, 9/29/91.
10 “I didn’t read [it]”: HR to S. H. Adams, 4/5 [1943].
11 “Several of you writers”: HR to Arthur Kober, 12/9/46.
12 “For instance, what in God’s”: Margaret Case Harriman, Blessed Are the Debonair, p. 150.
13 “I could have asked Joe Mitchell”: HR to Nunnally Johnson, 6/17/47.
14 “I am enormously relieved”: HR to William Maxwell, 9/3/47.
15 “I am not God”: HR to EBW, Monday [September 1938].
16 “stop writing letters to me”: FS to Charles Morton, 10/19/57.
17 “Long life to the legal”: HR to Messrs. Chadbourne, Wallace, Parke & Whiteside, 9/17/43.
18 “He didn’t like his facts”: Thurber, Years with Ross, p. 98.
19 “What about this Hemingway”: Interview with Roger Angell, 1/16/92.
20 “What kind of writer”: WG to JT, 8/12/57.
21 “America’s great contribution”: Peter De Vries to JT, 10/31/57.
22 “What do the voices say”: EBW, personal notes on TNY, undated.
23 “Oh, are you still there”: Interview with Patricia Ross Honcoop, 2/21/92.
24 “I’m surrounded by a bunch”: James Geraghty’s notes on TNY, undated.
25 “With what, for God’s sakes?”: John Hersey, Life Sketches, p. x.
26 “I think Ross is wonderful”: Mary McCarthy to KSW, 1/10/51.
27 The Liebling “WHO HE” story is from Joseph Mitchell’s letter to JT, 8/24/57.
28 “Which side of the fireplace?”: Interview with Emily Hahn, 11/5/91.
29 “Write me a cold piece”: S. N. Behrman, The Suspended Drawing Room, pp. 14–15.
30 “You know, this is kind of like”: Interview with Berton Roueché, 4/21/93.
31 “I herewith pass the idea”: HR to Joseph Mitchell, 2/13/45.
32 “I’m getting sick and tired”: Interview with Roueché, 4/21/93.
33 “I could explain that one”: Thurber, Years with Ross, p. 267.
34 “the lightest of light”: The New York Times, 1/11/80.
35 “Be more debonair”: Interview with John Bainbridge, 9/29/91.
36 “Gibbs, you’re fucking my story”: Interview with Louis Forster, 9/13/92.
37 “Commas in The New Yorker”: “The Art of the Essay: E. B. White,” Paris Review, Fall 1969.
38 “what [we] do is query”: HR to Mrs. Norton Baskin (Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings), 11/30/45.
39 “I am gradually starving”: James M. Cain to WG, 8/18/34.
40 “the editors are so afraid”: Edmund Wilson to KSW, 11/12/47.
41 “something that deserves high”: Mencken to KSW, 4/27 [1934].
42 The Eisenhower-Columbia story is from an interview with William Mangold, 3/11/92.
43 “Ross didn’t mean he didn’t”: McKelway to JT, 5/29/58.
44 “is just inviting Harlem”: HR to Governor Robert A. Hurley, 11/5/41.
45 “There are thousands of those”: The New York Times, 6/21/42.
46 “The New Yorker … if you’ll”: HR to James J. Lyons, 6/23/42.
47 “I was certainly indiscree
t”: HR to FS, Friday [1942].
48 “I meet many modern Abraham Lincolns”: HR to Emily Hahn, 1/5/48.
49 The Letter from Washington story is from Rovere, Arrivals and Departures, pp. 68–70.
50 “I think probably your piece”: HR to RW, 1/7/48.
51 “He was a man following”: EBW to JG, 4/6/67.
10: Skirmishes
1 “built like the first joint”: JT to McKelway, 4/14/58.
2 “You know, I was Aleck’s”: Teichmann, Smart Aleck, p. 316.
3 “He was a friend who demanded”: HR to S. H. Adams, 2/4/43.
4 “All the time [Woollcott] wrote”: Ibid.
5 “With certain reservations”: S. H. Adams, p. 221.
6 “Nothing would happen”: HR to Alexander Woollcott, Tuesday [April 1942].
7 “To me you are no longer”: S. H. Adams, p. 222.
8 “He was rebuffed as man”: FS to EBW, 5/16 [1939].
9 “I’ve tried by tender”: Woollcott to HR, 4/18/42.
10 “You’re a flatfoot”: Interview with Phyllis Cerf Wagner, 4/12/94.
11 “In the interests of avoiding”: HR to TNY staff, 9/6/40.
12 “Dear Bennett”: Gill, p. 273.
13 “I herewith swear”: HR to Marshall Best, 11/20/42.
14 “They have a selection”: JT to Edward Aswell, 3/16/45.
15 “This is the first time”: This and subsequent citations are from a letter from Shuman to JT, 9/22/57.
16 “You are a man who should not”: HR to EBW, 5/7 [1943].
17 “It’s not true”: McKelway to JT, 5/25/58. There have been various accounts of the Luce-Ross meeting, published and unpublished. This draws mainly from McKelway’s letter to Thurber, from an Ingersoll letter to Thurber (8/1/59), and from W. A. Swanberg’s book Luce and His Empire.
18 “I assume it is up”: HR to Henry Luce, 11/23/36.
19 “Nobody over there”: McKelway to JT, 5/25/58.
20 “Life does story on the placid”: HR to EBW, [1951].
21 “Ross was so furious”: Interview with Al Hirschfeld, 12/7/92.
22 “Is this thing going to be”: Robert T. Elson, Time Inc.: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise, 1923–1941, p. 268.
11: Words and Pictures
1 “As to your sharpshooting”: HR to KSW, [1939].
2 “I think it’s a crime”: WG to EBW, [September 1937].
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