The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Berbnard DeVoto

by Wallace Stegner

  25. J. L. Lowes to BDV, May 2, 1936. SUL.

  26. J. B. Conant to BDV, May 6, 1936. SUL. But note that in accepting BDV’s resignation (J. B. Conant to BDV, May 25, 1936, SUL), President Conant specifically regretted his inability to offer a permanent position, and thanked BDV again for his “distinguished service.”

  27. BDV to Mattingly, June 4, 1936; BDV to Kate Sterne, January 7, 1937.

  28. The consultations with his friends are reported in BDV to Kate Sterne, May 1, 1936.

  29. Ibid. He was in error about Stevens’ plans. Stevens says he had no intention of leaving the Saturday Review, unless for a better job, in book publishing. This move he finally made, to Lippincott, after two years as editor of the Saturday Review. Stevens to WS, March 6, 1972.

  30. Thompson, Robert Frost, the Years of Triumph, pp. 448–49.

  Chapter 13 ·

  1. The expanded version was published in Minority Report.

  2. BDV to Kate Sterne, June (no day), 1936. His version is subject to some discount, being part of his confident front at a most unconfident time. Harvard seems to have been less at fault than DeVoto suggested. As Thompson points out, Frost reneged on his agreement with the university, which called for publication of the six Norton Lectures. Frost, who never wrote out his talks, first procrastinated, and then apparently destroyed the notes that John Livingston Lowes had had made. The lectures were never published. Thompson, Frost, the Years of Triumph, pp. 434–35, 674–75.

  3. BDV to Kate Sterne, June (no day), 1936.

  4. Thompson, Selected Letters of Robert Frost, p. 164, Frost to Hamlin Garland, February 4, 1921.

  5. In Criticism and Fiction.

  6. “On Moving to New York,” Easy Chair, Harper’s CLXXIII (November 1936), pp. 669–72. The piece became a favorite dramatic reading by Don Born, one of DeVoto’s fervent admirers.

  7. Ibid.

  IV THE MANHATTAN CAPTIVITY

  Chapter 1 ·

  1. George Stevens to WS, June 16, 1971 (tape).

  2. “A Sagebrush Bookshelf,” Harper’s CLXXV (October 1937), pp. 488–96.

  3. BDV’s hope was that he could first lure good reviewers with the opportunity to speak their full minds and pull no punches, and that he could work out the problem of adequate payment later. BDV to Kate Sterne, June (no day), 1936.

  4. Elmer Davis to BDV, October 4, 1936. SUL.

  5. Edmund Wilson, “Complaints, II. Bernard DeVoto,” New Republic LXXXIX (February 3, 1937), pp. 405–8.

  6. Scalp hunting was, in fact, one principal temptation of the job. See BDV to Kate Sterne, February 11, 1936.

  7. “Notes on the Red Parnassus,” Easy Chair, Harper’s CLXXIII (July 1936), pp. 221–24.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Summarized in two letters, BDV to Kate Sterne, September 8, 1936, and September (no day), 1936. Some of the difficulty was with John Farrar, who, according to BDV, “arrived in a pet.” Since Farrar did not get along with Frost—there had been a running dispute between them over domination of the Bread Loaf Conference—DeVoto’s bad relations with Farrar may be put down partly to protectiveness. Any antagonist of Frost’s was at that time his natural enemy.

  10. “A Puritan Tercentenary,” Easy Chair, Harper’s CLXXIII (September 1936), pp. 445–48. Characteristically, DeVoto stressed the Puritan origins and survivals. He was in alliance with Frost, an “announced” Puritan, and in opposition to Brooks, Waldo Frank, and the rest of the Young Intellectuals, who found Puritanism responsible for every American ill.

  11. The move, in grisly and exaggerated detail, was described to Kate Sterne on September 11, 1936. Much earlier, announcing his resignation from Harvard, he had written, “I feel pretty low, Kate.… I’m being kicked out of the way of life that means most to me.” BDV to Kate Sterne, May 13, 1936.

  12. BDV to Kate Sterne, September 21 and September 28, 1936.

  13. “A Generation Beside the Limpopo,” Saturday Review of Literature XIV (September 26, 1936), pp. 3–4.

  14. BDV to Kate Sterne, September 21, 1936.

  15. To Kate Sterne he confessed that, of the English Department, he had respected and been able to work with only Murdock, Miller, and Munn, but that the historians were all his pals. BDV to Kate Sterne, May 13, 1936.

  Chapter 2 ·

  1. “One Man’s Guess,” Easy Chair, Harper’s CLXXIII (October 1936), pp. 557–60.

  2. “The 42nd Parallel,” Saturday Review of Literature XIV (October 3, 1936), p. 8.

  3. “Civilization in the USA,” Saturday Review of Literature XIV (October 3, 1936), p. 7.

  4. He expected the O’Neill piece to cost the Review some subscribers. “But there is always the perfect retort. I can quote from some of the plays.” BDV to Kate Sterne, November 17, 1936. Later he noted that the article had proved surprisingly popular. BDV to Kate Sterne, December 7, 1936.

  5. As George Stevens relates the story, Doubleday, for reasons it never divulged, had issued the book on terms calculated to foreclose the possibility of reviews. But Stevens remembered that two copies of every book published in the United States had by law to be deposited in the Library of Congress, which was open to use by any citizen or any editor. He sent Canby to Washington to read and review The Mint. It was the only review the book got. Doubleday, Stevens said, was dismayed and annoyed to have its plan, whatever it was, blown up, but could do nothing to block publication of the review. When it was later published in an edition meant to be read, The Mint fell quietly dead. Stevens to WS, June 16, 1971 (tape). DeVoto told the story in “For the Record,” Easy Chair, Harper’s CCX (June 1955), pp. 12–13 plus.

  6. “Passage to India,” Saturday Review of Literature XV (December 5, 1936), pp. 3–4.

  7. Stevens remembers that essay as an editorial mistake. If it was, it was one that the editor did not acknowledge. In BDV to Kate Sterne, December 14, 1936, he remarked on the number of letters from subscribers that came in asking for “more articles by the editor.”

  8. BDV to Kate Sterne, January 25, 1937.

  9. “Vardis Fisher in Salt Lake City,” Saturday Review of Literature XV (December 12, 1936), p. 8.

  10. Edmund Wilson, “Complaints, II. Bernard DeVoto,” New Republic LXXXIX (February 3, 1937), pp. 405–8.

  11. “My Dear Edmund Wilson,” Saturday Review of Literature XV (February 13, 1937), p. 8. This important statement of his intellectual position DeVoto reprinted in considerably amplified form as “Autobiography: or, as Some Call It, Literary Criticism,” in Minority Report, Little, Brown, 1940, pp. 163–89.

  12. He wrote Kate that Wilson “leaned over backward” and that he could agree with more than half of what Wilson said, but that the challenge had made him think, and now he understood that his divided Mormon-Catholic youth really did explain his antipathy to dogma. BDV to Kate Sterne, February 1, 1937. He was writing, of course, before he had completed his answer, and when he had seen only a preprint of Wilson’s challenge.

  13. Van Wyck Brooks On Literature Today, New York, E. P. Dutton, 1941.

  14. In The Irresponsibles; a Declaration, Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1940.

  15. “About Face of Mr. Stearns,” Saturday Review of Literature XV (February 20, 1937), p. 8.

  16. “Magistrate Curran’s Opinion,” Saturday Review of Literature XV (February 20, 1937), p. 8. DeVoto’s favorable review of A World I Never Made had been quoted in defense of the book by its publishers, Vanguard Press, who had been denied advertising space for it in the New York Times.

  Chapter 3 ·

  1. “Complaints, II: Bernard DeVoto.”

  2. Frost referred obliquely and ambiguously to this in a letter to BDV in May 1937. Thompson, Selected Letters of Robert Frost, p. 444. See also Robert Frost, the Years of Triumph, p. 481.

  3. The whole campaign is summarized by Thompson in Robert Frost, the Years of Triumph, in Chapter 33, “Strike That Blow for Me.” Key letters from Frost are in Selected Letters of Robert Frost, pp. 452–53 and 455–56.

  4. Selected Letters of Rober
t Frost, pp. 443–45.

  5. Robert Hillyer, “A Letter to Robert Frost,” Atlantic CLVIII (August 1936), pp. 158–63.

  6. Robert Hillyer, “A Letter to the Editor,” Saturday Review of Literature XIV (October 10, 1936), pp. 14–15.

  7. For a blow-by-blow account of the squabble, see Hillyer to BDV, September 8, September 15, September 29, October 1, October 10, October 19, and November 23, 1936; and BDV to Hillyer, September 28, October 7, October 14, and November 13, 1936. SUL. Thompson discusses it in Robert Frost, the Years of Triumph, pp. 478–79, but he errs in saying that the Hicks parody was written in answer to “A Letter to Robert Frost,” in the Atlantic. It was written to ridicule “A Letter to the Editor,” the poem Hillyer wrote originally with DeVoto’s name attached. DeVoto sent the parody on to Hillyer on November 13, indicating that he would not publish it unless it was cut, and then only on the Letters page. It did not appear in New Republic until almost a year later, when Hillyer’s book came out.

  8. Granville Hicks, “A Letter to Robert Hillyer,” New Republic XC (October 22, 1937), p. 308.

  9. Frost acknowledged the galleys on December 29. “I sat and let Elinor pour it over me,” he wrote DeVoto. “I took the whole thing. I thought it couldn’t do me any harm to listen unabashed to my full praise for once in a way.” Selected Letters of Robert Frost, pp. 452–53. The essay was published as scheduled, as “The Critics and Robert Frost,” Saturday Review of Literature XVII (January 1, 1938), pp. 3–4.

  10. Robert Frost, the Years of Triumph, pp. 477–81.

  11. F. O. Matthiessen, letter to the editor, Saturday Review of Literature XVII (February 5, 1938), p. 9. See also Robert Frost, the Years of Triumph, p. 489.

  Chapter 4 ·

  1. He told Kate Sterne he had (BDV to Kate Sterne, September 6, 1937). Stevens remembers no such offer.

  2. See Section III, Chapter 5, note 31.

  3. James Bryant Conant to BDV, June 18, 1937. SUL.

  4. BDV to Kate Sterne, July 5, 1937.

  5. Kate Sterne to BDV, between July 5 and July 16, 1937.

  6. BDV to Kate Sterne, July 16, 1937.

  7. BDV to Kate Sterne, September 6, 1937.

  8. The Kate Sterne correspondence, one of the best indexes of DeVoto’s state of emotional health, is fairly ebullient from September until December 5, when he reported a series of migraines. It was only later, when he was summarizing the whole Saturday Review experience for Kate, that he recalled the fall of 1937 as a time of failure. It is possible that he did not realize at the time how far down the morale of the staff had gone. George Stevens corroborates the decline in morale but does not precisely date it.

  9. In a long letter to Kenneth Murdock, February 13, 1938, SUL, DeVoto made a statement of his side of the case.

  10. George Stevens to WS, June 16, 1971 (tape).

  11. Canby, American Memoir, p. 403.

  12. BDV to Kenneth Murdock, February 13, 1938. SUL.

  13. According to DeVoto (BDV to Kate Sterne, February 7, 1937), Davis actually accepted what he thought an offer to become editor, only to find that there was nothing to accept.

  14. The effort was led by Kenneth Murdock. See Murdock to Thomas Lamont, February 14, 1938, and Murdock to L. J. Henderson, same date, SUL. Letters from Murdock to BDV, the last dated March 12, 1938, record the progress of the effort and its dimming hope.

  15. BDV to Kate Sterne, December 15, 1937, and January 5, 1938.

  16. DeVoto’s version of the arrangement is expressed in BDV to Kate Sterne, January 17, January 24, and February 7, 1938. George Stevens’ recollections of the same events are contained in Stevens to WS, June 16, 1971 (tape), and March 6, 1972.

  Chapter 5 ·

  1. BDV to Charles Townsend Copeland, January 21, 1938. SUL.

  2. BDV to Crane Brinton, March 2, 1938. SUL.

  3. BDV to Kenneth Murdock, February 1, 1938. SUL.

  4. “Enlightened Research,” Saturday Review of Literature XV (April 10, 1937), p. 8.

  5. Murdock’s letters are the principal source. See Chapter 4, note 14, above.

  6. “A Puritan Tercentenary.”

  7. BDV to Murdock, February 26, 1938. SUL.

  8. Hillyer to BDV, no date. SUL.

  9. They are listed in Thompson, Robert Frost, the Years of Triumph, p. 699. The reunion with Wilbert Snow seems to have been purely accidental. I find no correspondence between them, and no mention of Snow in DeVoto’s letters.

  10. BDV to Kate Sterne, March 27, 1937, says that Charles Lark has swung the balance against Clara and the rest of the Estate and that DeVoto is finally at work on the papers.

  11. A copy of the agreement is among the DeVoto Papers at SUL.

  12. “On Moving from New York,” Easy Chair, Harper’s CLXXVII (August 1938), pp. 333–36.

  13. May Davison Rhodes, The Hired Man on Horseback. My Story of Eugene Manlove Rhodes. Introduction by Bernard DeVoto. Houghton Mifflin, 1938.

  Chapter 6 ·

  1. See Thompson, Robert Frost, the Years of Triumph, pp. 682–86, where Frost’s relations with Bread Loaf are recapitulated.

  2. Thompson, Selected Letters of Robert Frost, Frost to BDV, April 12, 1938, pp. 470–71.

  3. BDV to Kate Sterne, April 25, 1938.

  4. I report here what I remember of the evening, or what I think I remember. Thirty-four years and much subsequent rumor and discussion have been hard on certainty. Add that at the time I was green and somewhat awe-struck, and that I understood little of what was going on.

  5. My memory retrieves the discomfort and some of the aftermath of the session in Treman, but not DeVoto’s rebuke. Avis DeVoto believes there was one. BDV to Kate Sterne, September 2, 1938, describes the outburst of Frost’s “demon” and indicates that he himself was greatly upset by it, but does not specify what he said.

  6. The aftermath of the trouble in Treman is remembered by Kay Morrison, who had to cope with it, as I have repeated it here. She is not sure about the eating of the cigarette, or about the precise time when the incident was supposed to have happened, but finds it completely in character. Kay Morrison to WS, May 13, 1972.

  7. Selected Letters of Robert Frost, p. 481, headnote.

  8. BDV to Kate Sterne, September 11, 1938.

  9. Avis DeVoto to WS, March 11, 1972.

  10. Selected Letters of Robert Frost. Frost to BDV, ca. October 20, 1938, pp. 481–82.

  V “PERIODIC ASSISTANCE FROM MR. JOHN AUGUST”

  Chapter 1 ·

  1. BDV to Kenneth Murdock, February 13, 1938. SUL.

  2. Troubled Star, Collier’s CII (September 3 to November 5, 1938).

  3. His letters to Kate Sterne during this period, especially one of October 7, 1938, express dissatisfaction with the Coolidge Hill house, but profound satisfaction with the regained Cambridge life.

  4. BDV to Kate Sterne, October 25 and October 31, 1938.

  5. BDV to Kate Sterne, December 23, 1938, and no date (from context January), 1939.

  6. BDV to Kate Sterne, no date (January), 1939.

  7. Henry Reck to WS, October 2, 1970.

  8. BDV to Kate Sterne, February 20(?), 1939.

  9. BDV to Kate Sterne, October 16, 1939.

  10. The notion of fiction as a healing fantasy, a substitute not for reality but for other, more destructive fantasies, grew on DeVoto when he was analyzing the “Great Dark” manuscripts among the Mark Twain papers. His letters to Kate Sterne, especially that of January 20, 1939, report the excitement with which he and Dr. Barrett were unraveling the symbolism of these fragments. The articulated hypothesis was published as “The Symbols of Despair” in Mark Twain at Work and later in The World of Fiction.

  11. “Freud’s Influence on Literature,” Saturday Review of Literature XX (October 7, 1939), pp. 10–11.

  12. The correspondence dealing with this disagreement does not seem to have been preserved among the DeVoto Papers, but the wrangling was reported to Kate Sterne in letters of April 26, May 14, and May 23, 1939.

  13.
“Thou and the Camel,” Cosmopolitan (July 1939), pp. 58–61.

  14. Eugene Saxton to BDV, October 19, 1938. SUL.

  15. “Aftermath of a Cocktail Party,” New Republic LXXXXIX (June 28, 1939), p. 218. DeVoto told the story as a glum joke on himself. BDV to Kate Sterne, July 11, 1939. A letter from Samuel Eliot Morison to Avis, December 18, 1955, after DeVoto’s death, reveals that he was DeVoto’s source for the story.

  16. “Millennial Millions,” Saturday Review of Literature XX (August 26, 1939), pp. 3–4.

  Chapter 2 ·

  1. Again the most uninhibited account is in his letters to Kate Sterne. BDV to Kate Sterne, July 13 and July 30, 1939.

  2. The letters of November and December 1936 are much concerned with the problem of books too ponderous for the sick or frail.

  3. “The Paring Knife at the Crossroads,” Easy Chair, Harper’s CLXXVIII (April 1939), pp. 557–60. Considerably later, another article dealing in part with the same subject (“Why Professors Are Suspicious of Business,” Fortune XLIII (April 1951) brought a fan letter from an American woman resident in France, along with the gift of a carbon-steel chef’s knife. A correspondence grew up between her and Avis and eventually led to a visit by the lady and her husband. She took charge of the kitchen with such authority that Avis suggested she write a cookbook, and arranged an option contract with Houghton Mifflin. When the first installment of the cookbook came in, a year later, it turned out to be several hundred pages on fishes and sauces. Deciding that American women did not cook that way, Houghton Mifflin let the manuscript go, whereupon Avis sold it to Alfred Knopf, a notable gourmet. It was a large result to come from one small paring knife; the lady’s name was Julia Child.