with love,
W.
Becky Sharp: Vanity Fair, chap. 41.
TVA: Tennessee Valley Authority, the hydroelectric power company established, like the Hoover Dam, during the Depression.
“Tote dat barge . . . Lif’ dat bale”: from the song “Ol’ Man River,” from the musical Showboat (1927).
Spain [...] you flee across: in R, Rev. Gwyon tells Wyatt: “—Spain is a land to flee across” (429). It is repeated as the opening sentence of III.3 (769).
Franco: Francisco Franco (1892–1975), dictator of Spain at the time.
Charles V: Carlos I of Spain (ruled 1516–56) became Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1519, hence sometimes erroneously called Carlos V of Spain. (There was a claimant to the throne named Carlos V in the nineteenth century, but he never ruled.)
menaced by monsters [...] Risking enchantment: from section 2 of Eliot’s “East Coker.”
To Edith Gaddis
Sevilla
11 April, 49
By heaven, if today wasn’t artichoke-day again. —Which may serve to give you notice that I am still settled in the same quarters from which I last wrote you: that is, if you had that letter. Because I have been wondering, with an element of concern, if any of the revelations I set down on paper here ever get beyond the sea. And that the reason for the lapse between this and my last: waiting for something from you, to get an idea that you have an idea of my where-abouts. For instance: did you have a letter from Valencia, mailed 22March? And one from here (Sevilla) mailed less than a week later?
I have (with slavering delight) received two from you, each forwarded from Madrid, each with its reckless enclosures (30) and each greatly appreciated both for the words and the means. The 2nd recieved today, and very well because this being, as I set forth in the letter I-don’t-know-if-you-got-it-or-not, Holy Week, the price of my modest lodging has been doubled, in accordance with no authorisation I find in the Gospel (but Gospel-readers always miss the root that Apocryphal writers set down . . .) Well. To say that all is in order, on my nullifidian end of the line, in spite of the monsters and fancy lights that menace the population.
There are a number of things that have mounted up since I last wrote you. I shall try to introduce them in some sort of order:
(Item) I called upon the recently-arrived Mr Haygood, the friend of the Woodburns, just before leaving Madrid. He is very pleasant—and I believe more than appears on the dull library-curator surface, of which more another time. But was nice, as I say, though hardly settled in the country, and I about to leave the capital we had little time to exchange more than greetings (he brought me 2 cups of coffee: the beginning of a beautiful friendship here in Sp—); and (small world:) proved to be taking the apartment of my very kind mentor (used in the modern $-world sense, not the Homeric) Bill Taylor, who has absconded to Paris Fr. And so when I get back to Madrid hope to see Mr Haygood and we shall talk and drink his wine (in all the metaphorical sense of that) Though at the moment this beggar is on horseback.
(Item) About the time you have this letter (D V) (an abbreviation I have also wondered about, having had a friend named David Vail . . .) —we may have talked by trans-Atlantic Telephone. On the other hand, we may not. The point of this is that I am going to try to put a call through to you at the Latham, but if I do not reach you, and things turn up as they did in a similar intention from Panama, I only want you to know, if you should have frantic news from the desk that you have missed a call from Mars, that it is not dark-winged news, but intended quite the other way, what with spring being a greeting in the form of natural prodigies, and Easter the myth incarnate, or re-incarnated, in most religions, Resurrections being apparently an old stock-in-trade of the most ‘pagan’ (indeed!) legitimisations of (this) life.
(Item) The enclosure is cut from one of my most pleasurable discoveries, a fearfully Tory newspaper called the (Continental) Daily Mail (the Paris edition of the London paper). You will probably be glad to know that I have found a reasonable substitute for that NewYork purveyor of current beauty, the Daily News; for the Daily Mail (a very respectable paper) tells me about such wonders as the man who swallowed 19 (open, I gather) safety-pins in a (successful) effort [to] remove himself from this valley of temptation . . . —But re the enclosure: the writer doesn’t seem awfully bright or talented or much shakes at all; but what he says of Our City has scratched a nostalgic itch in the dermis of my memory: and I wondered is it really like this? I hope so for you.
(Item) With hands shaking in anticipation, I received the book by Robert Graves. It has proved to be 4 times as wonderful, and 40times as difficult, as I had expected. But with the marvelous opportunity I have enjoyed in other lands, what with my lack of the reading I need, has proved as I hoped-against-hope to be exactly referent to the web of questions in my mind at present—as the Toynbee did when I was happily marooned on Caribbean shores. If I put down here on paper all the things I want to I would not end the letter, because that would amount to making the notes on these ideas which I am trying to make for my own nefarious purposes: so suffice only a hilarious thanks, and a sort of hysterical re-assurance that my thoughts and the slowly transmogrifying products of my imagination, whether consumately pagan products or not, are being articulated and validified.
And so we finally reach Sevilla, where I am now, a dump-heap of history “which combines the peculiarities of a harbour town with the exuberant fertility of a southern landscape, and joins a present, full of rich, sprightly and harmonious life, to an abundance of artistic monuments indicative of a brilliant past” (Baedeker). Where also one may have a glass of wine and small dish of fried octopus hide for 5¢ and, for dining out in more modest establishments, a plate of fried blood and potatoes for 15¢.
Right now we are Celebrating a series of occurences which took place some 1949 years ago, and which, as I remember the daffodilic spring of Berlin Ct., are taken for granted with quiet reverence in those cold protestant hearts; but here we must re-enact it. And so the handsome ladies and their greasy escorts step from block-long automobiles, mingle with their countrymen (halt & blind, faces scarred with pox, eyes closed by syphilis), and celebrate the beauty of eternal love, another better life, and the all-embracing bounty of Holy Church—while He Who does not miss a sparrow’s fall apparently misses a few adept sleights-of-hand among his sub-vicars locally ordained. The great images carried through the streets on these evenings are quite as prodigious as one could ask—a Virgin adorned with every richness of brocade that artifice can manage, illumined by hundreds of candles, compassionate tears on her face and fists-full of jewels, a bosom loaded with precious gems, many donated by True Believers who suddenly troubled themselves over the camel-&-the-needle parable and unloaded a few of their vain fripperies (. . . All I’ll keep are these 17 diamond pendants and that emerald-&-diamond brooch, and I better keep this emerald-&-diamond bracelet, & the earings, after all they’re a set . . .) and Our Lady is carried down the avenue—you can see the feet of her bearers underneath the brocaded velvet hangings, straw-soled cloth shoes of bearers who get remission for Sins—those who can’t pay for candles . . . —down the Avenue, with her compassionate tears, holding out ropes of pearls to the syphillis-blinded lottery-ticket seller, who holds his child up on his shoulders—though the kid can’t see much: his 4-year-old eyes are crusted and starting to close with the heritage of the sins of his father. Life is very long.
Certainly you did much better to go see The Long Voyage Home than worry over such things as Is H. really Dead? I have had similar arguements here, though ridiculous, with fasces-bound ‘friends’—I can’t see it matters if he is or isn’t dead, history is done with him.
The going-to-France-fever is down, I have less & less need or notion (though the idea of spending a month or two with Jake, getting things exchanged & re-aligned as it were, is good)—but recently I have started to get much more of what I came for here, in the way of thought- and imagination-provoking observations and circumstance.
A letter from Barney this morning; and a fine thing to have; if this does not sound pretentious (which it is, to repeat, but:) “(Spain) sounds ideally suited to your mind and the kind of work you want to do. Being the wandering Jew all over again won’t make it any better. Hang on for a year at least . . . that from what I have seen of your work I know that you have a facility with words, quantity and ingenuity, and a preposterous imagination which moreover you enjoy using, and Good Lord! in a world gone rabid, every man making faces and fists at one another, what else can be so important to you to make you move from the less disturbed Spain to the more savage (if enlightened) France. To bother yourself again with the American mecca . . . Stay where you are, don’t be tempted and lured by the violence in others . . .” &so forth. But a very good and re-assuring letter, and I do now intend to stay with a better-rewarding feeling of permanence, ie of getting what I need, which is just starting to take form in my mind with clarity.
What else? I think of nothing immediate (except the idea of mail-delivery in M[assapequa]. is horrifying: I should be inclined to burn Sunshine Shanty to the ground before it becomes situated in Zenith . . . The mailbox is a nice notion—but someone ought to drown John B Gambling. Let me know if you get this letter.
with love,
W.
Also another enclosure, your son in a Moorish town—just to prove that it is me sending these idiotic letters.
monsters and fancy lights: again, from “East Coker.”
Mr. Haygood: William Converse Haygood (1910–85), a novelist and later editor of the Wisconsin Magazine of History from 1957 to 1975.
beggar is on horseback: from the proverb, “Set a beggar on horseback and he’ll ride to the devil,” meaning someone unused to luxury will abuse it if given the opportunity.
D V: Deo volente (Latin, “God willing”).
Resurrections being apparently an old stock-in-trade: in R, Wyatt speaks of the days following Jesus’s crucifixion when “resurrections were a stock in trade” (384).
enclosure [...] Daily Mail: unidentified.
He Who does not miss a sparrow’s fall: Matt. 10:29.
camel-&-the-needle parable: Mark 19:23–27.
The Long Voyage Home: a 1940 film directed by John Ford about passengers on a ship transporting dynamite across the Atlantic during World War II. Or: the play by Eugene O’Neill on which the movie was based.
the wandering Jew: a legendary figure who taunted Jesus during the crucifixion and consequently cursed to wander the earth until his return.
John B Gambling: American radio personality (1897–1974), host of a New York City radio show called Rambling with Gambling.
To Edith Gaddis
[This follows two letters from Madrid dated 29 April and 2 May trying to entangle the mess of mailed cashier’s checks and cancellations. It is postmarked Elizabeth, NJ.]
Madrid
3 May, 1949
(and I quote),
I’m tired of love; I’m still more tired of rhyme;
But money gives me pleasure all the time.
I am also, despite this moment of confusion which may be suddenly arisen in your mind, still in Spain; but herewith take advantage of a friend who is flying to NY in a few days, where I trust he will post this letter, in which I have a few things I hazard to have in the hands of Spanish censors—not that I believe our mail is censored, but still . . .
By now, I trust, the whole cheque confusion is cleared up, and you not receiving mail behind bars (prison bars I mean) [...] I am sorry it takes such a mess to clear things up: I had tried to make it clear in other letters, this necessity for cashiers cheques, but always with the care of trying not to say too much, in the event the letter was stopped and read.
From now until I believe the middle of June I shall be at the Sevilla address, though if you mail to Madrid it will, D V, reach me. Then in June I hope to go to France. Jake and Barney and I are working out such plans, by letters, and there is some possibility that I may go to England for a little time, as Barney is there and familiar with all aspects of their life and difficulties, and has plans for something involving a walking tour to see various parts of Cornwall and ancient Druid ceremonial grounds &c, things which are interesting me immensely recently in light of Robert Graves book, which has proven immensely valuable, and also things which interest Barney greatly and on which he is much better informed than myself, he spending more time in the British Museum, and not among Spanish gypsies [...].
And also, despite the flip verse salutation of this letter, I may say how sincerely grateful I am to you for sending this string of cheques which are making possible for me an education not found in the Harvard Yard, nor among Greenwich Village intelligensia, or as a snide young editorial accountant on the New Yorker. It is just within the last two months that the whole thing has begun to take shape for me, that I have discovered what I came for, and if I can be so selfish to say, it is worth it. Especially since your recent ‘letters’ (may I send you a large box of writing paper?) indicate that your life is not a dark hall-bedroom affair—quite the other way, indeed! (that is, if you enjoy the company of war admirals, cocktail parties; dono nobis pacem . . .) [...]
I cannot think of any more secrecies to impart. Indeed, the whole business I suppose is pretty idiotic I guess: who in the world cares about our tiny phenageling . . . you are not the Queen of Roumania, nor I as yet a prophet of any great import
(I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter.
(I am no prophet, but here’s no great mattter . . .)
And so tonight I am going to a theatre, to see an old play of Pirandello’s of which I am very fond, and I think know well enough to be able to follow a gibberish Spanish version. Tomorrow I think to Cordoba for a day or two, and thence back to Sevilla. —suddenly here is someone flying to NY this afternoon; I hope to get this off immediately, you may have it before week’s end. And so, from now, the Sevilla address.
best wishes, and love,
W.
I’m tired of love [...]: a couplet from English writer Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953).
dono nobis pacem: Latin: “give us peace,” from the Agnus Dei portion of the Catholic Mass.
I have seen my head [...]: from Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
old play of Pirandello’s: probably Naked: see 7 April 1948 letter to Porter.
To Edith Gaddis
Sevilla
[5 May 1949]
dear lady,
this will not be a frantic letter, in spite of the way that catastrophes seem to have conspired to keep our correspondence from anything vaguely resembling correspondence, but instead a wild series of posting messages of distress back and forth across the sea.
And so first, these things; while I sit over a bucket in which soaks what looks to be enough linen for a caravanserai of many tents, bought in a recently faded flush of prosperity and soon, I trust, to be magic-ed into a suit by a clever local fellow; and wearing alpargatas, which are hempen-soled cloth sandals and the footwear of all of Spain’s poor people.
Let me say at the outset that I am well, and not in desperate straights at all. (I even go so far as to say that it would be difficult to be desperate in Andalucia.) [...]
Our correspondence should never be published.
I think it so possible that we have both spent much time saying, —Oh dear, I’m all right, but what a terrible time (s)he is having . . . that is the way I feel now. Because heaven knows I’m all right, but do feel that what may seem to you niggling at my end is driving you to despair and exasperation. You probably think me as obtuse as anyone could be, or (to use a nice coupling of words from Mr Eliot) exhibiting ‘deliberate hebetude’ . . .
Well. With that many words nearer King’s Park, let me try to at least end on a note of real correspondence.
On Sunday I am going down to Jerez, where they are having their spring fair, and hope to see a good bullfight there. Also I met here in Sevilla a Britisher who i
s with a big bodega, or distillery there (it is, you know, the source of the world’s sherry wine, sherry being a corruption of the word Jerez) and has told me if in town to stop and see him for a tour of the bodega, which means tasting the stuff, but in abundant quantity.
And then in a few weeks here there is a great annual procession to the shrine of some Virgin about 50miles away—the people get together in cars, on horseback, anything, and set out, taking three or four days on the way, all of which I understand is spent in singing, dancing, and such pagan pastimes. It is to a large extent a family affair; and I may go, to the town nearest the Virgin’s mountainous retreat by bus & thence a few miles a-foot . . . but what I should love to do is rent a little burro (they are not much bigger than Old Grunter) and set off on his back. Such a plan is greeted here with crys of amazement & then derision, 50miles burro-back being quite a chore apparently. It probably won’t come out at all—especially since they say there are no accommodations and little water betwen here and There (and the question of getting hold of a burro . . .) but—
I have a good letter from Bernie, who is weathering it all on some Italian island, in the transient company of Wystand Auden, Capote, and a few other emiment 9$-bills (including, to use his words, the ‘odious and idiotic Tenn. Williams’) . . . well Bernie is happy, he can have it. I’ll take the gypsies (though more usually they take me). Also word from Margaret Williams, who says she has turned into a Mediterranean vegetable, and as you know I don’t get much steam up for vegetables. And an excellent letter from Barney, whose descriptions of walks in Cornwall and Wales sound magnificent and edifying, not vegetable at all, and I believe we are getting nearer to working something out for the summer.
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