And say at your first opportunity could you send me that dirty bedraggled copy of the Johnson Smith catalog which is probably on the hayloft bookcase. I want to try a story from those old fashioned amusement books they advertise—a Rediscover the American Home affair. I did write one and Mac told me to take that part and build it up. [...]
Things are coming along well—so far. I have been giving a good deal of time to the Lampoon, and am beginning to realize what this psychology course is! No kidding—the reading is incredible! Trying to explain and form theories for personality—which I have decided is quite futile. I don’t known why the devil I ever got involved with it.
But otherwise things are quite grand, tho the heat does discourage sitting down to study for very long at a time. On the whole tho I am afraid I am quite exuberant—the room is fine (tho I can hear it every time someone dives down in the pool, and some fool is learning to play ‘As Time Goes By’ across the court on a trumpet.)
If it weren’t for the $ end, I was thinking it would be nice if you could come up some weekend—after all I was a green freshman last time you saw the place. The Coop bill may be sizeable this month—books, a pair of pants and shirt etc.—and I don’t know when the $65 from the ‘Poon will be due—
Well I have 30 lines of Romeo and Juliet to learn for tomorrow.
Love
Bill
story of mine: perhaps “Suffer the Little Children,” which didn’t appear in the next issue (1 April) but the one after that (15 May). Or WG could be referring to one of the short fables he was publishing at the time.
‘As Time Goes By’: 1931 song by Herman Hupfeld (1931) popularized in the movie Casablanca (1942).
To Edith Gaddis
The Harvard Lampoon, Inc.
Cambridge 28, Massachusetts
[27 February 1944]
Dear Mother—
Sunday—and the first chance I have had to write—really it has been quite a week!
Exams all last week of course—only two—but they lasted all week—and after being up for four nights it was quite a feeling Thursday with the ‘press’ lifted and really nothing to worry about.
The Poon had its final tremendous affair for the season—and really for all time, since so many are leaving. A very pleasant dinner at the Pudding and then the dance—of course I got mixed up and went to a punch and forgot to get my black shoes from the shoemaker whom I’d taken them to be shined—so I ended with tuxedo and those dirty white buckskins.
Peter Jenks—don’t know whether I’ve mentioned him—he did the drawings for my poem—has left, and everything looks sort of blue—and then that woman being in Florida—if only she might have been up for the Poon dance—because it was the last of the neat ones. [...]
Everyone it seems is going to New York—all I hear is ‘See you in Larue’ (a 58th St. spot!) and I’ll probably get pretty fed up with this. I would like to get home before it goes(!)—and if it will be easier for you I certainly think it’s the only thing to do. Perhaps next weekend? I don’t know. I do want to get a pair of shoes—and the ballet is so important—as she is. Don’t know about scholarship—but I might as well get the beneficiary business—and perhaps borrow something from them. Will write again when I get a little further with $ matters. [...]
Love
Bill
Peter Jenks [...] my poem: Jenks illustrated WG’s poem beginning “Once came upon a quiet college town” in the 11 February issue of the Lampoon.
this job: WG had just picked up a part-time job “taking attendance.”
Larue: one of the most fashionable restaurants of the time.
To Edith Gaddis
Cambridge, Massachusetts
[5 April 1944]
dear Mother
well it never seems to end. it is just like being seasick. after one bit of running excitement you don’t see how it can keep on, but it does. [...] this elementary spanish is insidious; the abnormal psyc is good but a great amount of reading which as yet remains only touched, and an exam imminent; the social psyc is terrible—can you imagine, it seems to be a never ending discussion on politics, for which i see no reason and am beginning to dislike cordially. the short story course is the only thing that seems to be going evenly, but the fool wants the long (5000 word) story in about two weeks, right when hour exams come and the Lampoon deadline, which is really going to be bad and take time, since i seem to be the only one that holds it together and gets it moving. and must go down and read proofs for this issue very soon. [...] well such are things now, if any of it has been clear. the only thing i am sure about at the moment is the way i am getting along with Her, which is singularly well.
Love
Bill
To Edith Gaddis
Cambridge, Massachusetts
[20 April 1944]
dear Mother
am slowly getting there—though i am not sure of the destination. i spent most of last week and up for two nights studying for a spanish and then a psychology hour exam, and up until after 5 this a m writing my long story for english a 4.
and over it hangs this Lampoon—supposedly a deadline this week but hardly any one is coming around or doing anything, and so tonight i plan to spend trying to put it partially together and filling in prose, though i hardly feel like writing anything clever and witty. [...]
affairs with the Campbell girl are coming along very well. that is all i am certain of.
Love
WG at Harvard, sitting center of the first row, 1944. (Photo by Chester T. Holbrook)
this Lampoon: the 15 May issue has nine contributions by WG: an editorial, two stories, two poems, two drawings, an essay, and a facetious crossword puzzle.
To Edith Gaddis
Cambridge, Massachusetts
[28 November 1944]
dear Mother
you must not bandy that term ‘free and gay’ about so unadvisably. i am on probation, and have lost my room permission among other things BUT (well this deserves a new paragraph):
Olsen and Jonson have a show in Boston, and they and their company of chorines etc. came out to the ’Poon Sunday afternoon at the invitation of one of our old (class of ’01) members. we entertained them to the best of our abilities and i came out quite well. Olsen (Jonson didn’t show up) talked with me or rather to me for some time. and finally ended by asking me to come to the show as his guest, take notes on it, and write him a report of my reactions! critic! haha. and (This deserves a new one too):
one of the young ladies showed a rather abnormal rate of intelligence and we talked at length; she intends to leave and go onto Life magazine one of her ‘dearest friends’ is foreign editor of Life etc. at any rate she is very nice and wants to come out and look Harvard over seriously and so forth. so i am left little choice. she has been a torch singer too. do i sound 18 yrs old? i guess. but do not be concerned. as you have no doubt guessed she is a bit taller than your son, and i feel pretty self conscious with her. i went back stage last night and was very impressed, or intrigued at least.
it is the biggest thing that has happened to the ’Poon in some time.
thanx for the $. what with probation and three papers to write (and Jean expects to come down in December) i am not going to make Vermont [for Thanksgiving]. anyhow do not be concerned—this is all harmless and quite exciting. of course old ’Poonsters are saying ‘while the cat’s away . . .’ but that is very silly.
Much Love
B
Olsen and Jonson: Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, a vaudeville act best known for their Hellzapoppin’ satiric revue. In 1976, William H. Gass praised J R for its Hellzapoppin’ energy when giving it the National Book Award.
To Edith Gaddis
Cambridge, Massachusetts
[7 December 1944]
dear Mother—
not having heard from you for some time—specifically, not since i wrote you about having met this dancer, Miss Henderson. i am not worried, and ascribe it to your probably having a pre
tty difficult time getting settled in town etc. but i hope there is a letter tomorrow condoning, not mentioning, or even mild censure. Where are you living? and what arrangements? i hope it’s all all right.
matter of fact, things have turned out much better than i ever could have expected. she is very nice and seems to know everything and everybody. and last evening i had dinner with her and Mr Olsen. this may sound like i am getting like Jan and preparing to run off with the Tom show; it is not a Tom show (though i did see it and was not at all as much intrigued as hellzapoppin or sons o fun) and the idea of going backstage at Minskys or Barnum and Baileys. something very funny and flattering—my being prex of the Lampoon seems to carry some weight! and the stage manager etc are are especially nice to me. the whole thing is pretty new and eye opening.
i finally put the Christmas issue of Lampoon together at 9 this morning—that is certainly a load off. but in light of recent developments it looks like it’s worth the work.
i have only got one mark this term so far, and it was B plus, and have two papers to do this week. then Christmas. Jean expects to come down here right after Christmas, but there are no plans, except that i get out the 22nd.
must make an eleven oclock class.
Love,
B
PS—Jean ‘knows about’ Miss Henderson and is quite approving about it, if that has been troubling you.
Jan: WG’s uncle Jan Williams (1884–1981), a clarinetist who began playing with the John Philips Sousa Band when still a teenager, and eventually played for the New York Symphony and other orchestras. He became musical director of the Ernest Williams School of Music in Brooklyn, NY, in 1947, founded by his brother (1881–1947), a cornetist.
Tom show: a blackface minstrel revue, based loosely on Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
sons o fun: another Olsen/Johnson revue (1941–43).
Minskys: notorious burlesque show in New York City.
To Edith Gaddis
[In January 1945, after an incident involving the Cambridge police (causing a public disturbance while drunk), WG was asked to leave Harvard. He returned to New York and was hired by the New Yorker as a fact-checker, where he worked from late February 1945 to April 1946. In the summer of 1945 he went on vacation to Canada.]
Mount Royal Hotel
Montreal, 2, P.Q.
[1 August 1945]
Dear Mother—
Frankly the more I move along the more I find that every city is quite like the last one. Perhaps there are sights in Montreal which I have missed (I have not visited the Wax Museum). But I feel little like gaping at anything.
At any rate tonight the boat leaves for Quebec and I expect to be on it.
Jacob did not arrive—and though I felt he might not when he did not show up I found myself vaguely disappointed. Really, in the little kicking about I have done I think I have had enough of wandering around cities alone. And shall probably be home before very long—
Love
Bill
Jacob: Jake Bean (1924–92), a Harvard friend who later became a connoisseur of Italian and French drawings; he was the curator of drawings at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for thirty-one years.
To Edith Gaddis
Hotel Louis XIV
3 Place Royale
Quebec
[4 August 1945]
Dear Mother—
Coincident with yr. letter came news from Beth that Je—plans to be married as soon as possible, to this fellow.
Oh—the thoughts that run through you as you read this—they are similar to mine, I know. Consequently I shall try to say little.
Yes, it is very difficult, but there is finality, and therefore something on which to build. I have nothing more to add—I shall leave here soon and see you the earlier part of the week, both of us a little stronger people, I think.
Again thanks, and love
B
To Edith Gaddis
[Final surviving page of undated letter on New Yorker stationery.]
The New Yorker
No. 25 West 43rd Street
[late 1945 or 1946]
[...] received notice from draft board concerning occupational reclassification[.] needless to say at this point in my career I am rather terrified—how I hate to be manipulated.
meanwhile job goes awfully well—worked until 8 tonight
B
2. The Recognitions, 1947–1955
To Edith Gaddis
[In the spring of 1947, WG left New York for several years of traveling as he worked on The Recognitions, which began as an early effort entitled Blague. He began by heading south for Mexico in a Cord convertible with a friend named Bill Davison.]
New Orleans, Louisiana
[6 March 1947]
dear Mother—
after much fortune and misfortune we are off to Mexico, I hope this afternoon. I trust that you got my wire, so that when we reach Laredo I shall have birth certificate and be able to get visa. It must be a student’s visa, however, which disclaims any attentions on my part to get a job while there, since they have a sort of protective immigration. The point being that it will take a little while after I get to Mexico City to arrange through any contacts I may have to get a job, a little to one side of authority, as it were. I hope that you will be able to send me some money there—can you conveniently? We are leaving here with next to nothing, as you may imagine, and are taking on a passenger, the fellow who has been our host, and who I gather will be able to finance a good part of the trip from here on. You may gather from my letters the state that things have been in. But I just feel that once we get to Mexico city, and if you can send me some money there, that things will start to shape up well. The address is c/o Wells Fargo Express Company, Mexico D. F., Mexico, and to be marked Please Hold.
Also to add a touch of trouble, my leather suitcase stolen from the car last night, therewith all of my shirts, neckties, and all of the work I was taking with me. As for the work, it is too bad, but perhaps for the best since I plan to start rather freshly with writing when I get down there, and now will not have these things which I have written over the last year or two to distract me. The business of the shirts and ties, of course—infuriating. and the bag.
I want of course to write you a real letter, describing the pleasant parts of the trip, and what this city is like—certainly how much you would like it. But one minute we are to stay; the next, to leave; the next, to leave with a passenger. And now suddenly when it looks like we may get off in about an hour things are rather flurried. Health, and such things that may be worrying you, are all all right.
My love,
W
To Edith Gaddis
Rhodes Apartment Hotel
611 La Branch St.
Houston, Texas
9 March 1947
dear Mother—
Here we are, our plans made for us this time by a pretty ghastly breakdown of the car. and so I can take the opportunity to write you rather more of a letter than I have been able to manage in some time. And perhaps modify a few things which have perhaps troubled you; coming as they have in peacemeal sentences as bulletins on a consistent state of calamity.
Still I know what you are feeling under it all: even if there are occasional concerns (I imagine that the story of the suitcase gave you rather a turn) it is much better because things are happening, and moving, and alive, and not in one corner of Greenwich Vill. —and as long as I am eating and sleeping & everything is all right. Good. I feel just that way.
Washington, as you could gather, was a pretty messy business, chiefly because of the cold. So windy and cold, and the blizzard, and sleeping on Mike’s floor, chiefly difficult because we were both so discouraged at being stuck so near to NewYork, as if we might never get further. And so when we could leave we streaked out for South Carolina, and stopped at Chapel Hill. There a man of about 40 named Noel Houston teaches, and I have read a few of his pieces in the New Yorker, quite good. Well over a year ago a girl named Alice
Adams who was at Radcliffe whom I knew quite well, mostly through Jean and later (and in New York) through Mike &c had told me that she wanted me to meet him. At any rate, we got there in the middle of the afternoon, drove out to his house and introduced ourselves, and spent until almost 7pm having a couple of drinks, and he talking at length about the NYer and its stories, the business of writing, &c&c, all in all very pleasant. We had, having heard of how affable he was, hoped that he might put us up somewhere for the night, but on arrival discovered that his wife and two children were ill, and so could hardly presume. Decided that the only thing to do was drive straight through to Atlanta and warm weather, Chapel Hill being similarly cold to everyplace we had left. Well, the drive that night was about the coldest thing I have ever managed. Oil being eaten up by the car, so that we must stop and try to pound holes in oil cans with nails and a rock, dark, and our hands and fingers like sticks. The only thing that saved it was good humour and a little profanity, for Davison is good in both. Finally, after one of those nights we always remember because they defy ever coming to an end, we got to Atlanta for breakfast, about eight. And never again mention Peachtree Street to me. It may have been magnificent after the War Between the States, but now the most tumblesome hurly-burly of trollycars, pedestrians, idiot drivers, and unattractive storefronts I have ever seen. We escaped about an hour later. The most infuriating thing, of course, was the weather—Georgia was quite as cold as Washington had been. And then at a town called Newnan, the radiator, which had to be flushed out, boiled, dipped, and all manner of endless treatments. The only thing was 2$ worth of room for the night. Which we needed. And so found it, and there a bath, shave, and suddenly nothing to do at 6pm. Odd dismal supper, and now 6.45—what but the movies? Two or three glasses of beer might have passed a pleasant hour, but no beer in Newnan. And so we sat through (and I am afraid almost enjoyed) a monstrosity called The Strange Woman, as Hedy Lamarr preached against such sins as Newnan probably never dreamt. Out on the street (in the courthouse square, needless to say), the clock struck—one could know the number of tolls before they were over—it was 9pm. Not a soul stirring, and a beautiful night. Stars, and not a sound. And so, after a brief walk, back to our home, where we collapsed.