Funny Letters From Famous People

by Charles Osgood

  Truly yours,

  S. L. Clemens

  In 1900, when Twain lived on West Tenth Street in Manhattan, he had occasion to write the following letter to a neighbor there:

  Dear Madam,

  I know I ought to respect my duty and perform it, but I am weak and faithless where boys are concerned, and I can’t help secretly approving pretty bad and noisy ones, though I do object to the kind that ring doorbells. My family try to get me to stop the boys from holding conventions on the front steps, but I basely shirk out of it because I think the boys enjoy it.

  My wife has been complaining to me this evening about the boys on the front steps and under compulsion I have made some promises. But I am very forgetful, now that I am old, and my sense of duty is getting spongy.

  Very truly yours,

  S. L. Clemens

  William Dean Howells and Mark Twain

  TWAIN AND AUTHOR William Dean Howells were longtime friends. When Twain invited Howells and several other friends to join “The Modest Club,” of which he was founder—and sole member—Twain got this reply from Howells:

  My dear Clemens:

  The only reason I have for not joining the Modest Club is that I am too modest: that is, I am afraid that I am not modest enough. If I could ever get over this difficulty, I should like to join, for I approve highly of the club and its objects: it is calculated to do a great deal of good, and it ought to be given an annual dinner at the public expense. If you think I am not too modest, you may put my name down, and I will try to think the same of you. Mrs. Howells applauded the notion of the Club from the very first. She said that she knew one thing: that she was modest enough, anyway. Her manner of saying it implied that the other persons you had named were not, and created a painful impression in my mind. I have sent your letter and the rules to Hay. But I doubt his modesty; he will think he has a right to belong as much as you or I.…

  When Howells was nearly felled by scarlet fever in 1884, Twain wrote his friend the following:

  My dear Howells,

  “O my goodn’s” as Jean says. You have now encountered at last the heaviest calamity that can befall an author. The scarlet fever, once domesticated, is a permanent member of the family. Money may desert you, friends forsake you, enemies grow indifferent to you, but the scarlet fever will be true to you, through thick and thin, till you be all saved or damned, down to the last one. I say these things to cheer you.… You folks have our most sincere sympathy.

  In 1907, Twain sent the following to Howells, at that time considered a leading man of letters in America.

  To the Editor,

  Sir to you, I would like to know what kind of a goddam govment this is that discriminates between two economic carriers & makes a goddam railroad charge everybody equal & lets a goddam man charge any goddam price he wants to for his goddam opera box.

  W. D. Howells

  Tuxedo Park Oct. 4

  (goddam it)

  Howells, it is an outrage the way the govment is acting so I sent this complaint to the N.Y. Times with your name signed because it would have more weight.

  Mark

  Oscar Wilde and James Abbott McNeill Whistler

  IT COULD BE SAID that both Oscar Wilde and James Abbott McNeill Whistler hoisted egomania to an art form. In 1883, when Punch magazine described them as gossiping in public about Sarah Bernhardt, Wilde fired off this telegram to Whistler:

  Punch too ridiculous. When you and I are together, we never talk about anything but ourselves.

  Whistler cabled back later that day:

  No, no Oscar, you forget. When you and I are together, we never talk about anything except me.

  Oscar Wilde

  IN THE DIFFICULT LAST YEAR of his convoluted life, Wilde wrote the following letter to his friend Frances Forbes-Robertson:

  My dear, sweet, beautiful friend,

  Eric has just sent me your charming letter, and I am delighted to have a chance of sending you my congratulations on your marriage, and all the good wishes of one who has always loved and admired you. I met Eric by chance, and he told me he had been over to the marriage. He was as picturesque and sweet as usual, but more than usually vague. I was quite furious with him. He could not quite remember who it was you had married, or whether he was fair or dark, young or old, tall or small. He could not remember where you were married, or what you wore, or whether you looked more than usually beautiful. He said there were a great many people at the wedding, but could not remember their names. He remembered, however, Johnston being present. He spoke of the whole thing as a sort of landscape in a morning mist. Your husband’s name he could not for the moment recall: but said he thought he had it written down at home. He went dreamily away down the Boulevard followed by violent reproaches from me, but they were no more to him than the sound of flutes: he wore the sweet smile of those who are always looking for the moon at midday.

  So, dear Frankie, you are married, and your husband is a “king of men”! That is as it should be: those who wed the daughters of the gods are kings, or become so.… Like dear St. Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success: I hate the Bride that has been given to me: I see no beauty in her hunger and her rags. I have not the soul of St. Francis: my thirst is for the beauty of life: my desire is for its joy. But it was dear of you to ask me [to come and visit], and do tell the “king of men” how touched and grateful I am by the invitation you and he have sent me.

  And, also, sometime send me a line to tell me of the beauty you have found in life. I live now on echoes, as I have little music of my own.

  Your old friend,

  Oscar

  Editors

  MASTERPIECES AREN’T always appreciated from the outset. After examining Remembrance of Things Past, an editor at Ollendorf wrote Marcel Proust:

  My dear fellow,

  I may perhaps be dead from the neck up, but rack my brains as I may I can’t see why a chap should need thirty pages to describe how he turns over in bed before going to sleep.

  For that matter, one Herbert R. Mayes, editor of the old Pictorial Review, turned down what would have been one of the hottest serializations of the decade: a prepublication offer to serialize Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. He wrote to Mitchell’s publisher in 1936:

  A period novel! About the Civil War! Who needs the Civil War now—who cares?

  Sherwood Anderson

  OBVIOUSLY LESS than enchanted with his work situation, Sherwood Anderson wrote this letter to his employer, Bayard Barton, in 1918:

  Dear Barton:

  You have a man in your employ that I have thought for a long time should be fired. I refer to Sherwood Anderson. He is a fellow of a good deal of ability but for a long time I have been convinced that his heart is not in his work. There is no question but that this man Anderson has in some ways been an ornament to our organization. His hair, for one thing, being long and mussy gives an artistic carelessness to his personal appearance that somewhat impresses such men as Frank Lloyd Wright and Mr. Curtiniez of Kalamazoo when they come into the office. But Anderson is not really productive, as I have said, his heart is not in his work. I think he should be fired, and if you will not do the job, I should like permission to fire him myself. I, therefore, suggest that Anderson be asked to sever his connections with the company [on the first of next week]. He is a nice fellow. We will let him down easy, but let’s can him.

  Respectfully submitted,

  Sherwood Anderson

  James Joyce

  WE OFTEN FORGET that the enigmatic James Joyce was also quite witty. In his reply to a letter from Harriet Shaw Weaver, Joyce humorously described at length some of the conflicting myths which surrounded him.

  71 rue du Cardinal Lemoine

  Paris V

  24 June 1921

  Dear Miss Weaver:

  … A nice collection could be made of legends about me. Here are some. My family in Dublin believe that I enriched myself in Switzerland during the wa
r by espionage work for one or both combatants. Triestines, seeing me emerge from my relative’s house occupied by my furniture for about twenty minutes every day and walk to the same point, the G.P.O., and back (I was writing Nausikaa and The Oxen of the Sun [for Ulysses] in a dreadful atmosphere) circulated the rumour, now firmly believed, that I am a cocaine victim. The general rumour in Dublin was (till the prospectus of Ulysses stopped it) that I could write no more, had broken down, and was dying in New York. A man from Liverpool told me he had heard that I was the owner of several cinema theatres all over Switzerland. In America there appear to be or have been two versions: one that I was an austere mixture of the Dalai Lama and sir Rabindranath Tagore. Mr. Pound described me as a dour Aberdeen minister. Mr. Lewis [Wyndham Lewis] told me he was told that I was a crazy fellow who always carried four watches and rarely spoke except to ask my neighbor what o’clock it was. Mr. Yeats seemed to have described me to Mr. Pound as a kind of Dick Swiveller. What the numerous (and useless) people to whom I have been introduced here think I don’t know. My habit of addressing people I have just met for the first time as “Monsieur” earned for me the reputation of a tout petit bourgeois while others consider what I intend for politeness as most offensive.… One woman here originated the rumour that I am extremely lazy and will never do or finish anything. (I calculate that I must have spent nearly 20,000 hours in writing Ulysses.) A batch of people in Zurich persuaded themselves that I was gradually going mad and actually endeavoured to induce me to enter a sanitorium where a certain Doctor Jung (the Swiss Tweedledum who is not to be confused with the Viennese Twiddledee, Dr. Freud) amuses himself at the expense (in every sense of the word) of ladies and gentlemen who are troubled with bees in their bonnets.

  I mention all these views not to speak about myself but to show you how conflicting they all are. The truth probably is that I am a quite commonplace person undeserving of so much imaginative painting.…

  George Bernard Shaw

  GEORGE BERNARD SHAW was as prolific a letter writer as he was a playwright, essayist, and critic. Here Shaw describes “a most fearful tragedy” to his friend Janet Achurch:

  29 Fitzroy Square W.

  14th January 1896

  Dear Janet:

  … A most fearful tragedy has happened to me. It is impossible that I should see you for a month at least; so all idea of your coming back to town or my going down to St. Leonards must be abandoned. Today I went to get my hair cut. The man asked whether I wanted it short. I said “Yes,” and was about to add certain reservations when he suddenly produced an instrument like a lawnmower. All in an instant my golden locks fell like withered grass to the floor and left my head like the back of a Japanese pug dog. Nothing escaped except a little wiglike oasis on the top. I say wiglike; for the climax of the horror was that, unknown to me, these auburn tresses with which you are familiar, concealed a grey—nay, a white—undergrowth, which is now an overgrowth. People ask me now what fearful shock I have experienced to turn my hair white in a single night. There must be some frightful mistake about my age:

  I am not in my fortieth year, but in my sixtieth. For God’s sake, tell me that you believe that it will grow red again—at least that you hope so.…

  G.B.S.

  Indeed, Shaw was well known as a wag. He CABLED the following invitation to Sir Winston Churchill:

  Have reserved two tickets for my first night. Come and bring a friend, if you have one.

  G Shaw

  But Churchill was certainly no less witty. His reply:

  Impossible to come first night. Will come second night, if you have one.

  Churchill

  After a speaking engagement at Magdalen College at Oxford University in 1892, Shaw wrote the following letter to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. A man of strong opinions and a nearly lifelong socialist, Shaw was a controversial figure, an image he fostered. At the time of his lecture, he was labeled by many a “revolutionist,” and a large group of Oxford students vigorously objected to his very appearance at the university. Once the lecture was under way, that group actually locked the doors of the filled lecture hall and then banded together in an adjoining room, where they tried to drown out Shaw’s speech with their own racket. Here, with withering sarcasm, Shaw wittily describes the lengths to which those students went to declare their objections.

  Occurred on Saturday, February 20th, 1892, at Oxford “Revolutionary Progress at Oxford”

  Sir,

  Will you be so good as to allow me to use your columns to thank the members of Magdalen College, Oxford, for the very enthusiastic welcome which they have just accorded to the first Socialist who has ever lectured within their walls?

  The greatest difficulty with which a public speaker has to struggle is the tendency of the audience to leave before the close of his remarks. I therefore desire especially to thank the thoughtful and self-sacrificing body of undergraduates who voluntarily suffered exclusion from the room in order that they might secure the door on the outside and so retain my audience screwbound to the last syllable of the vote of thanks. I desire to explain, however, that I do not advocate the indiscriminate destruction of property as a first step towards Socialism, and that their action in entirely wrecking the adjoining chamber by a vigorous bombardment of coals, buckets of water and asafoetida, though well meant, was not precisely on the lines which I was laying down inside. Nor, though I expressed myself as in favor of a considerable extension of Communism in the future, did I contemplate the immediate throwing of all the portable property in the lobby into a common stock, beginning with my own hat, gloves, and umbrella. Not that I grudge these articles to Magdalen College, but that I wish them to be regarded as an involuntary donation from myself to the present holders rather than as having been scientifically communized.

  Speaking as a musical critic, I cannot say that the singing of the National Anthem which accompanied these modest beginnings of revolution was as sincere as that of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, which one of my friends within the room loudly supported at the general request by a pianoforte accompaniment. It is injurious to the voice, I may add, to sing in an atmosphere rendered somewhat pungent by the projection of red pepper on a heated shovel.

  I need not dwell on the friendly care which was taken not to unscrew the door until our proceedings were entirely over. I wish to say, however, that we should not have incommoded our friends by crowding the staircase had not the rope formed of two blankets, by which we were originally intended to proceed from the apartment directly into the open air, unhappily giving way under the strain of being energetically steadied at one end by the outside and at the other by the inside party. There was really no chance of the friction igniting the blankets; so that the pains of the attack posted at an upper window to keep them drenched with water was unnecessary. The gentleman who rendered me a similar attention from the landing above as I descended the stairs also wasted most of his moisture through infirmity of aim; but his hospitable desire to speed the parting guest was unmistakable.

  Although my admirers mustered in such numbers that there were at least three times as many persons outside the door as inside (including a don), I am credibly assured that if I had lectured in Brasenose my reception would have been still more overwhelming, and I quite believe it. I was the more overcome as I visited Magdalen under the impression that I was to pass a quiet hour chatting with a few friends and had no idea until I arrived that I was expected to address a meeting or that my advent had roused so deep an interest.

  George Bernard Shaw

  William Dean Howells

  AMERICAN AUTHOR William Dean Howells wrote this to one Sarah Orne Jewett in 1901:

  My Dear Miss Jewett:

  I am almost wounded more by your supposition that I could let anything in the way of work keep me from answering you than I am by the fact that I never got your letter.

  I am going home with an arrow in my breast that sticks through the back of my coat in a way that will excite universal comment. But I ho
pe to pull it before next summer, and we all hope to see you, for we expect to be back next summer, for York has done Mrs. Howells good. She joins Pilla and me in lasting affection to you and yours.

  Sincerely Yours,

  W. D. Howells

  Howells certainly waxed rhapsodic when he tendered his regrets to a Lilla C. Perry in 1913:

  Dear Mrs. Perry:

  Impossible—impossible! The shattered prose of my being could never rise to the poetry of your most hospitable, most lovable wish to have me as your guest! I must stay where I can be shy and glum when I will, or want.… But I thank you, I thank you.

  Yours Sincerely,

  W. D. Howells

  H. L. Mencken

  H. L. MENCKEN sent his good friend Theodore Dreiser the following letter, teasing him about the fact that Mencken hadn’t heard from him in a very long time:

  The Theodore Dreiser’s Widows and Orphans Relief and Aid Association.

  Rev. Henry Van Dyke, Secy.

  Stuart P. Sherman, Treas.

  Los Angeles

  September 26, 1921

  Dear Mr. Mencken:

  Your letter of inquiry in regard to the last resting place of the late Theodore Dreiser has been referred to us. Mr. Dreiser died without visible means of support of any kind and his body now lies in row eight, grave number seventeen of the present L.A. Gas Works extension of what was recently the old St. Ignaz Cemetery. Unless his remains are removed and properly marked within the next ten months they are in danger of being completely obliterated.

  In accordance with his request at the time of his death the pine board which was placed at his head was only marked with the cryptic numerals 181. There has been much speculation as to the exact meaning of these. Prof. Silas Carriagewasher of Alfalfa University and long a friend of the late author is of the opinion that they relate to the ancient Coptic [here Mencken drew and underlined three symbols] of which language Mr. Dreiser was a profound student and are equivalent to “the angels.” Freely interpreted, Prof. Carriagewalker explains, these might humorously refer to the modern phrase “gone to join the angels,” although he adds that such may not have been his intention.