The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Berbnard DeVoto

by Wallace Stegner

  8. BDV to Edward Ely Curtis, June 10, 1944. SUL.

  9. Across the Wide Missouri, p. 363.

  10. BDV to Catherine Drinker Bowen, February 21, 1945. SUL. The letter is reprinted in Mrs. Bowen’s Biography: The Craft and the Calling, Little, Brown, 1969, pp. 106–7.

  11. Across the Wide Missouri, pp. xi–xii.

  12. Houghton Mifflin’s records indicate a sale, up to the third quarter of 1971, of just under thirty-three thousand copies.

  Chapter 6 ·

  1. Not counting the Collier’s serial Life Begins So Soon, never published in book form.

  2. BDV to Kate Sterne, March 7, 1944.

  3. BDV to Mattingly, February 5, 1945. SUL.

  4. BDV to Clifton Fadiman, March 8, 1945. SUL.

  5. BDV to Marshall Best, December 22, 1945. At the time of this letter, DeVoto still had a week’s work to do on the introduction. This was his last Mark Twain book, since he resigned from the curatorship before completing the projected volume of letters.

  6. In two consecutive Easy Chairs, February and March 1946. These essays, starting as a review of J. G. Randall’s Lincoln the President, took issue with what DeVoto called the “revisionist” position: that the Civil War was avoidable, that the radicals, reformers, and northern extremists were responsible for it, that Stephen A. Douglas was its tragic hero in that his ideas failed to persuade the hotheads, and that compromise ought to have settled the issues. At the same time, the revisionists upheld the principle of secession. The correspondence contains some acrid exchanges, after publication of these Easy Chairs, between DeVoto and (especially) Avery Craven, author of The Coming of the Civil War.

  7. BDV to Catherine Drinker Bowen, January 13, 1947. SUL.

  8. BDV to Mattingly, January 31, 1947. SUL.

  9. BDV to Madeline McQuown, January 3, 1947. SUL.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Mountain Time, Little, Brown, 1947, p. 347.

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

  13. In this manuscript, given the weak title Assorted Canapés, the Frost figure appears as an egomaniacal Harvard professor, so self-obsessed and self-pitying that no one unaware of DeVoto’s intentions would ever recognize him as drawn partly from Frost.

  VII FULL CAREER

  Chapter 1 ·

  1. The Easy Chairs from No. 87 (January 1943) through No. 167 (September 1949) did not carry titles, though some of them may be titled from DeVoto’s notes and all were given identifying titles in Robert Edson Lee’s “The Easy Chair Essays of Bernard DeVoto: A Finding List,” Bulletin of Bibliography, Vol. 23, No. 3 (September–December 1960), pp. 64–69.

  2. BDV to Mattingly, June 4, 1946. SUL.

  3. The itinerary was laid out in advance for Robert Coughlan of Life, April 29, 1946, and reviewed in retrospect for Mattingly, July 4, 1946. SUL.

  4. In the issue for August 1947. “From the heart,” Avis says of that article, and is a little unhappy that I use it as evidence of DeVoto’s greenness about some aspects of the West. But his very excitement about the desert crossing is the best evidence of how new it was. In fact, he had left the West before the automobile was nearly as common as it later became. His family was neither well enough off to travel for pleasure, nor inclined to be footloose. What is at least as important, DeVoto’s imagination during his early years did not reach westward; it reached eastward. If any of those three conditions had been reversed, he would probably have crossed the desert, by night and by day, at least a half dozen times in his boyhood, instead of discovering it for the first time at the age of forty-nine.

  5. BDV to Mattingly, August 1, 1946, SUL, recapitulates the itinerary after Portland. BDV to Robeson Bailey, August 11, 1946, from Boise, is full of the euphoria of “great experiences.”

  6. The Easy Chairs for August, September, October, and November 1946 and January 1947; “The Anxious West,” Harper’s CXCIII (December 1946), pp. 481–91; “The West Against Itself,” Harper’s CXCIV (January 1947), pp. 231–56; “Historian on Tour,” Woman’s Day (June 1947), pp. 38–39 plus; “Roadside Meeting,” Woman’s Day (July 1947), pp. 34–35 plus; “Night Crossing,” Woman’s Day (August 1947), pp. 28–29 plus; and “The National Parks,” Fortune XXXV (June 1947), pp. 120–35.

  7. For example, his letters are full of the excellence of the steaks at Dempsey’s, in Great Falls; and he made such friends there that the proprietors airmailed him some Montana beef after his return. Nevertheless, though DeVoto always commented on the food along his routes of travel, he was no such gourmet as Alfred Knopf. His lusts stopped with steak, salad, and honest varieties of cheese.

  8. Olsen continued to be a source of information on the doings of the stockmen and other enemies of the national forests. Because he feared that these enemies might retaliate politically either upon individuals or upon the service, DeVoto kept his sources completely confidential, and much of the correspondence dealing with his long effort against the stockmen was destroyed by Avis after his death.

  9. See Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “The Citizen,” in Four Portraits and One Subject: Bernard DeVoto, Houghton Mifflin, 1963, p. 56.

  Chapter 2 ·

  1. Assorted Canapés (manuscript, in several versions). SUL.

  2. Theodore Morrison to WS, October 5, 1972. After reading what was then a quite lugubrious manuscript, Mr. Morrison reminded me with complete justice, “After all, it was a pleasure—certainly exasperating at times and not unmixed—to spend an evening at 8 Berkeley Street.”

  3. “Go Ahead and Holler,” Reader’s Digest (November 1943), p. 34. See also his rebuke to Dorothy Thompson, “Wait a Minute, Dorothy,” Easy Chair, Harper’s CLXXXVI (December 1942), pp. 109–12.

  4. As he told Mina Curtiss of Smith College, who had written saying she hated to defend so bad a book as Amber. BDV to Mrs. A. T. Curtiss, October 14, 1946. SUL.

  5. BDV to Dixon Wecter, October 12, 1946, and BDV to William Briggs, October 18, 1946. SUL.

  6. A copy of the quitclaim, drawn by Curtis and dated October 25, is among the DeVoto papers. DeVoto sent it to Chamberlain on October 28. On November 8, on Curtis’ advice, DeVoto refused to sign the alternative agreement that Chamberlain had sent him. It is not clear just when Chamberlain signed the quitclaim, since several DeVoto letters both to Curtis and to Dixon Wecter are undated, though clearly written during December 1946. By the paper’s terms, the Estate acknowledged receipt of all papers, manuscripts, documents, etc., and did dismiss and discharge DeVoto forever from all debts, actions, causes of action, etc., and did express its complete satisfaction with the work of said DeVoto, and granted said DeVoto the right to quote from all manuscripts, papers, documents, etc., in books or lectures or writings generally.

  7. DeVoto took this obligation so seriously that when the initial advertising copy was sent him, and he found it feeble, cheap, and inadequate, he made a special trip to New York and rewrote the copy from scratch. Ray C. Dovell to WS, November 2, 1962.

  8. The dispersal of the judges, at first thought an advantage because of the regional differences in point of view represented, proved to be a serious handicap to prompt action, and once again DeVoto, willing to be a decision maker in times of crisis, found himself frustrated by the need to await votes from the judges or approvals from the New York office. In December 1947, in an attempt to simplify procedures and cut expenses, the History Book Club let Dobie and Holbrook go from its panel of judges. On March 30, 1948, DeVoto resigned and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., with him. (BDV to Ray C. Dovell, March 30, 1948. SUL.) There was never any serious ill feeling, and he was never disillusioned in the possibilities of the History Book Club—only with the machinery of its formative period.

  9. Mattingly to BDV, October 10, 1946, contains a four-page essay on the Mesta, with bibliography.

  10. For the Roosevelt-Pinchot years, see Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, Harcourt, Brace, 1947. For the struggle between Major Powell and the “irrigation clique,” see Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, Houghton Mifflin, 1
954, pp. 294ff.

  11. A letter from John W. Spencer, Regional Forester of the Rocky Mountain Region, January 22, 1947, expresses the half-incredulous joy of many Westerners at what DeVoto had managed to do.

  12. For this clash between private and public interest, viewed against the background of long-range land policies, see Louise Peffer, The Closing of the Public Domain, Stanford University Press, 1951.

  13. The proceedings, as DeVoto saw them, are summarized in the Easy Chair for January 1948. The correspondence with Arthur Carhart, Struthers Burt, Charles Moore, Olaus Murie, Kenneth Reid, and Lester Velie is full of rumor, strategy, and counterstrategy over a period of two years and more, particularly before the election of 1948.

  14. The Advisory Board for National Parks, Historical Sites, Buildings, and Monuments was created by act of Congress on August 21, 1935, to advise the Secretary of the Interior on matters relating to natural and historical areas. A part of the New Deal rescue operation, it was from the beginning conservationist in membership and sympathies, and has continued to scrutinize bureau actions and departmental policies in the light of the broad public interest. Its membership has by statute contained a proportion of naturalists, historians, architects, and publicists, and some of the most effective conservationists (though less frequently the politically embattled ones) have served on it. Traditionally, the Board has met in April and October in Washington, with occasional field trips to actual or potential national-park areas. One practical result of DeVoto’s membership was his access to early and confidential conservation information. Another was that, in his trips around the West, he could count on enthusiastic co-operation from the National Park Service as well as from his old friends of the Forest Service.

  15. At first, because of other commitments, DeVoto felt that he could not accept the invitation from President Robert Stearns to come to Boulder to receive the degree, but he indicated that he treasured the honor as the only recognition that had come to him from his native region. BDV to Robert Stearns, May 21, 1948. SUL. To Arthur Carhart, on June 3, he wrote that the honorary degree from Colorado, which he had by then found himself able to accept, “pleases me a damned sight more than the Pulitzer Prize did.” A combination of respect, liking, and gratitude led him the following October to urge Stearns as a potential Secretary of the Interior. BDV to Harold Ickes, October 12, 1948. SUL.

  16. BDV to Kenneth Reid, June 3, 1948; BDV to Olaus Murie, July 27, 1948; BDV to Arthur Carhart, December 24, 1948.

  17. The first of these, appearing in the Atlantic in July, coincided with DeVoto’s double assault in the July Harper’s; the three represented a formidable frontal attack on the stockmen’s position.

  18. Thus his proposal of Stearns as Secretary of the Interior and his preparation of resistance against potential Republican appointees. See BDV to a Mr. Ray, July 19, 1948; BDV to Senator Richard Neuberger, October 11, 1948; and BDV to Harold Ickes, October 12, 1948. SUL.

  19. DeVoto reported the stockmen’s small triumph, with rueful amusement, to Arthur Carhart. BDV to Carhart, June 3, 1948. SUL.

  20. Published as “The Desert Threat,” University of Colorado Bulletin XLVIII (July 1948), pp. 3–4, 6–10.

  21. See BDV to Jonathan Forman of The Land Letter, July 27, 1948; BDV to Farm Journal, September 28 and October 12, 1948; BDV to a Mr. Ayars, October 5, 1948; and BDV to a Mr. Schwan, October 12, 1948. SUL.

  22. As witness a letter to Lee Hartman, May 3, 1937, SUL: “If the history of magazines in America demonstrates anything, it demonstrates that the most valuable business asset a magazine can have is a reputation for editorial independence.”

  23. BDV to Frederick Lewis Allen, July 15, 1948. SUL.

  Chapter 3 ·

  1. “Restoration in the Wasatch,” The American Scholar XVIII, No. 4 (October 1949), pp. 425–32. Reprinted in Reader’s Digest, December 1949, as “The Lesson of Davis County.”

  2. BDV to Anne Ford (who wrote publicity for Houghton Mifflin), May 22, 1950. SUL.

  3. “Shall We Let Them Ruin Our National Parks?” Saturday Evening Post CCXXIII (July 22, 1950), pp. 17–19 plus. Reprinted in Reader’s Digest (November 1950).

  4. The fight over the Dinosaur dams was the first major conservation battle in the career of David Brower, then of the Sierra Club, now of Friends of the Earth. Largely through his urging, I edited for the Sierra Club to be published by Knopf the first of the Sierra Club’s “fighting books,” This Is Dinosaur. That book, published in 1955, contained the final statements of many of the arguments that DeVoto had stated energetically in 1950.

  5. BDV to Ray C. Dovell, March 30, 1948. The last straw was the club’s refusal to go along (because of price) with a unanimous choice by its judges. But that was merely the last of many frustrations, brought on by many things including his own overloaded schedule. It is not unlikely that his resignation from the History Book Club was partly conditioned by his recent appointment to the National Parks Advisory Board and his increasing involvement in the conservation wars.

  6. Fischer, a good friend of DeVoto’s and the Harper’s editor who would succeed him in the Easy Chair, expressed a similar sentiment to me when I was working in the office of Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall. Same old thing, he said of some conservation propaganda I was trying to sell him. Same thing Benny was always writing. Conservation tactics and editorial requirements are not always congruous, though DeVoto contrived to make them so very often.

  7. The most uninhibited of these letters, addressed to William Sloane but meant for discreet Bread Loaf consumption, has had to be fumigated and put away with the Kate Sterne letters.

  8. George Ball to WS, August 25, 1971.

  9. The desire is almost wistfully present in many letters through the summer and fall. See BVD to Mattingly, July 30 and October 17, 1952, and BDV to Mahonri Young, August 21, 1952.

  10. In conversation. Mr. Schlesinger kindly hunted through his campaign diary for records of DeVoto contributions, but was able to find only one: a Seattle conservation speech, drafted by DeVoto and reworked by DeVoto and David Bell.

  11. BDV to Mattingly, September 30, 1952. In this same letter he corroborates Schlesinger’s judgment. He has been writing speeches, he says, but not much remains in. “Stevenson’s prose is his own.”

  12. On the testimony of Alfred Knopf, DeVoto refused to attend when Secretary Douglas McKay invited the Board to lunch in the Secretarial dining room. Knopf, Ray Hall, Ralph Chaney, and others who served with him remember DeVoto as an informed, outspoken, and effective member of the Board.

  13. “Billion Dollar Jackpot,” in February; “The Sturdy Corporate Homesteader,” in May; “Heading for the Last Roundup,” in July; and “Let’s Close the National Parks,” in October.

  14. “Parks and Pictures,” in February; “Intramural Giveaway,” in March; and “And Fractions Drive Me Mad,” in September. The last two deal with the proposed reclamation dams in Dinosaur National Monument.

  15. “Wild West,” Holiday XVI (July 1954), pp. 34–43 plus.

  16. “Conservation—Down and on the Way Out,” Harper’s CCIX (August 1954), pp. 66–74. This had just appeared when DeVoto met Adlai Stevenson in Missoula to brief him on western problems, and formed the basis for the lesson.

  17. “One-Way Partnership Derailed,” in January, and “Current Comic Strips,” in May.

  18. “Hell’s Half Acre, Mass.,” in September, and “Outdoor Metropolis,” in October. There was another paean to his adopted country in “New England,” Holiday XVII (July 1955), pp. 34–47.

  19. Congressional Record—Senate, July 29, 1957, p. 11, 663. Neuberger proposed renaming the Clearwater National Forest for DeVoto.

  Chapter 4 ·

  1. BDV to Mattingly, May 2, 1949. SUL.

  2. Principally “English 37,” Saturday Review of Literature LXVI (June 26 to September 4, 1937); “From Dream to Fiction,” Easy Chair, Harper’s CLXXVIII (January 1939); and “The Threshold of Fiction,” Easy Chair, Harper’s CLXXX (January 194
0). Chapter V is reprinted from Mark Twain at Work.

  3. BDV to Mattingly, September 11, 1949. SUL.

  4. The World of Fiction, p. xi.

  5. Ibid., pp. 33–34.

  6. Ibid., p. 44.

  7. Ibid., p. 54.

  8. Ibid., p. 131

  9. Ibid., p. 298.

  10. See John Sutton Tuckey, Mark Twain’s “Mysterious Stranger” and the Critics, Wadsworth Publishing, 1968.

  11. Houghton Mifflin became DeVoto’s publisher after 1947. In that year Little, Brown published Mountain Time, and Houghton Mifflin “borrowed” DeVoto for Across the Wide Missouri. But DeVoto’s closest friend at Little, Brown, Alfred McIntyre, had by then retired, and his friendship with Raymond Everitt had cooled. Moreover, Paul Brooks and Lovell Thompson at Houghton Mifflin had made such a magnificent book of Across the Wide Missouri that DeVoto felt impelled to move from 34 Beacon to 2 Park. A rumor that got blown up by the yellow press later asserted that DeVoto and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., had left Little, Brown because of the increasing dominance there of Angus Cameron, who was too sympathetic with the far Left for their taste. Schlesinger did leave for precisely that reason (Schlesinger to Alfred McIntyre, December 21, 1947), but DeVoto just as specifically denied that he did. (BDV to Arthur Thornhill, November 2, 1951. SUL.)

  Chapter 5 ·

  1. John Bakeless, Lewis and Clark, Partners in Discovery, William Morrow, 1947. DeVoto reviewed it in the New York Herald Tribune Books XXIV (December 21, 1947).

  2. BDV to Mattingly, November 16, 1948. SUL.

  3. Mattingly to BDV, December 5, 1948. SUL.

  4. BDV to Mattingly, December 2, 1948. SUL.

  5. Ibid.

  6. BDV to Mattingly, September 11, 1949. SUL.

  7. “Due Notice to the FBI.,” Easy Chair, Harper’s CXCIX (October 1949), and “For the Wayward and Beguiled,” Easy Chair, Harper’s CXCIX (December 1949).