B007RT1UH4 EBOK (18 page)

And Mexico City looks good. I arrived to find quite a sheaf of mail from you, and shall try herewith to answer and straighten things out as they come. I gather from the tone of them that you have been having it rather rough, and I can imagine, and wish I were there to help you along instead of here, to keep you in a state of such running about.

First, immediate plans. We have just returned from the ‘shopping district’, carrying (picture this) two saddles, bits,—all the equipment for the equestrian. Bill has got himself a pair of boots, and we are ready to be off immediately for some sort of rustic nowhere. I cannot quite make out when you sent the boots and spurs. They are all that count really; the gabardine shirts would be fine, but don’t really
need
them; hope you did not bother to send clean white shirt, no use for it; also the watch, which I didn’t mean for you to try to send, but if you have don’t worry about it; the machete doesn’t matter, very cheap here; don’t for heaven’s sake worry about small-pox, no mention of it in our circles here; many thanks for NCB, but I don’t see that you needed to bother, I never have enough money to carry on with banks, and as you shall see in the future don’t plan to need a checking acc’t; Look, many many thanks for sending the money (25$ WU April 10
^th
, and just rec’d on return from Veracruz Thursday 25$ WU) But please don’t send more money, it only leads us to confusion, and trouble for you. I don’t need it now at all. We have plenty to get off from here for the sticks for a while. Honestly, I will let you know when I need it. I hate to sound excited about it, but when I need it I can let you know and you can always wire it just in care of the Western Union I wire from. OK? I am just tired of envisioning things like NCB machinations, that’s what I came off to Mexico to get away from. So let’s just leave it, I’ll let you know if and when. OK?

The apartment: I really hope to not want it this fall. Here’s what my hope is. To get out of here as soon as possible on horses to compleatly uninhabited country, for about two months, keeping in touch with Wells Fargo here or giving you an address so that we may correspond, but
away
from city machinations, all this business. Then, get back across Mexico to an eastern port town like Veracruz, Tampico, &c., end of May or early June or middle of June. From that port, start home, either working my way on a boat (talked to sailors on freighters in Veracruz, who say such things are still done), or (this is the only time I may need money) getting some sort of passage, and hoping to get back to NY late in June. Then coming to Long Island and working on the novel there this summer. How does that sound? At that point, of course, much depends on how the book comes along. But in the fall, especially if I have got any sort of money out of the book as a start, to leave NY again and go heaven knows somewhere. I cannot plan for that of course. And so don’t want to say, dump the apartment. But feel sure enough about it to say, if there is anything brought up involving business about a new lease before I get back, to let the place go. I don’t see great future for me in that old place, do you? Good if I could get back in late June and get books &c. together, so don’t worry about such things until then. Many thanks for the addresses, we’ll use them if there is any occasion.

Now. I hope that all of this, instead of unnerving you, has given a clear and rather bright picture. Honestly, I can see from your letters what a time you have been having, and feel like a fool having added such things as a machete for you to worry about. Needless to say how good I feel about the Halls, Mary, &c., all they have done. And pray, as they do I believe, for the day you can relax. Just relax. Anyhow you can about me now for a while. Or if you would rather get excited than relax, take a look at the enclosed pictures. In the large cabinet portrait, meet Mr Robert Ten Broeck (Bill) Davison. We are walking a main street in Mexico in the morning after coffee, not, as you might believe, discussing the missionary problem in Bengal or proofs of God. He is saying something rather violent about the cigarette he is holding, which has just gone out. I am reacting to his language. The beards, as you see, are not too exciting as yet. We do look ratty, but both are delighted with the picture. Also, a blurred indication of how we slept on the way down, unfortunately double-exposed, but if you look, I am in a sleeping bag, on my back looking up, with a cigarette-to-mouth, and above my head is the little dog we got in Louisiana (and lost eventually in Mexico). Me sitting down is me sitting down on the roof of the hotel Casablanca, where we call home, looking rather small-headed. The dog (named, fondly enough, ‘Old Grunter’) appears again in picture taken on the highway on the way down, cradled lackadaisacally (spelling!) in my arms. Great shot of the car. To top things off, a rather dull shot of a river from highway miles above. [...]

Off we go, into the hills. Davison for the first time on a horse. The wh[o]le thing should be fine, and whether the novel prospers (believe me I am going to try to help it do so) it will be healthful. I shall write, and get mail from W—F—until I let you know differently, though obviously for the next few weeks or two months letters farther apart. Believe me, we are fine, see no reason why things should not go off as planned, at least until I see you in the summer. My love to Granga, hoping to see her too.

Love—

Bill

PS Remind me sometime to tell you about the fox we had in Veracruz. Now there was a pet!

NCB: National City Bank.

Halls, Mary: Charles Hall, an antiques dealer, and Mary Woodburn, John Woodburn’s wife and a close friend of Edith.

Old Grunter: a name WG used for family dogs.

To Edith Gaddis

Mexico City

[29 April 1947]

dear Mother—

I never do a thing, or if I do it immediately, it is wrong. So after that lengthy piece I mailed you this am concerning three suitcases being sent you, most of it is wrong, as I foolishly sent it before the bags. [...] If a sloppy package should arrive for you from Houston, Texas, it will be my handsome treasured Brooks Bros hat, being sent by the garage mechanic, since it was in a restaurant which was closed the night we left, and I couldn’t retrieve it. I hope he gets around to sending it; if so, could you rescue it, and have it cleaned and blocked?

Then there are some books I shd appreciate your getting, sometime between now and June or July:

A Study of History
by A. J. Toynbee Oxford Press 1 volume abridgement.

Aspects of the Novel
by EM Forster Harcourt Brace $2.50

Steppenwolf
by Hermann Hesse Henry Holt $2.75

The above are recent, in print. This below have no full information on, but may be available.

The Golden Bough
by Frazer (well known book) or Frazier—a book on anthropology.

These are little paper-bound things, should be available, perhaps at Brentano’s, or some college textbook place; published by The Open Court Publishing Company, La Salle, Ill.

The Vocation of Man
by Johann Gottlieb Fichte 50¢

St Anselm:
Proslogium, Monologium, an Appendix on Behalf of the Fool by Gaunilon
; and
Cur Deus Homo.
(this is all one)—60¢

The first two are most important to me, should be readily available (though the Forster is reprint, may be sold out quickly, and I would like to go over it carefully—for obvious reasons). So thank you, hopefully in advance.

We are now (29april) on the eve of leaving for life in the woods. Can[n]ot imagine what will turn out, but don’t fear: we have dysentary pills, all sorts of things, including horse equipage, blankets &c. So don’t for a moment worry. It may last a week or two months, we hope to reach Tampico eventually.

Have had no word from you on how my spending the summer in Massapequa sounds. Because though I am working on my novel, and will these coming weeks, I know I can do best out there, quiet summer—regularly tasty food (how I dream of it!). It has taken me all this trip and time to figure it out, now it needs writing, and not the sort I can manage sitting on the edge of a bed or a pile or rock. I hope the idea suits you—I picture it as being a good regular well spent couple of months, and we could have a good summer out of it.

Think of nothing else now, will instruct Wells Fargo to follow me about, and certainly don’t worry if you don’t hear for a week or two—simply mean we are not near a PO. Mexico is a pretty raggedy land.

Love, Bill

A Study of History
: D. C. Somervell’s 600-page abridgement of the first six volumes of Arnold J. Toynbee’s classic study was published by Oxford University Press in 1947.

Aspects of the Novel
: first published in 1927.

Steppenwolf
: Hesse’s 1927 novel about the outsider nature of the artist was translated into English in 1929.

The Golden Bough
: Sir James George Frazer’s multivolume survey of magic and religion was published in abridged form in 1922, the edition WG used for several passages in
R.

The Vocation of Man
: a philosophical work first published in 1800; in
R
Otto quotes “Fichte saying that we have to act because that’s the only way we can know we’re real, and that it has to be moral action because that’s the only way we can know other people are. Real I mean” (120).

St Anselm: Piedmont-born English theologian (1033–1109); WG named a major character in
R
after him, and quotes him a few times in the novel (382, 535). The edition WG asks for was published in 1939.

To Edith Gaddis

Mexico City

[3–4 May 1947]

dear Mother—

Just a few words to let you know the change of plans. The horse business in Mexico didn’t work out, simply because it seems impossible to buy horses. One was offered, at 120$! Twice the price. So D—, still hell-bent on riding, has the fancy of going somewhere in the Southwest US. I care little at this point, having had a grand Mexico, which is to be topped off Sunday by a bullfight. D. doesn’t care about it, but I have persuaded him it is a spectacle worth seeing. So we stay over and leave Monday for Laredo, thence I know not where, care less, so long as there is a place for me to lie down in my wretched bolster at night and sit up at this machine by day. All of which really alters nothing, I still plan on returning in June, we can set the studio in order, and I hope for a well-regulated summer in which
Blague
will either be done or collapse. With all of our bumping around recently I have had no chance to get at it, and feel guilty, limiting myself to scraps of notes on paper. Anyhow I shall see you in June, and meanwhile write you when we get some sort of flavourfully-western address, if we chance to settle near a stage line. [...]

Little more of note. My beard looks at the point where it will not be very edifying, even in another month, and need a haircut, the last having been what seems months ago in New Orleans. Everything fine and in order, life is great, will keep you posted. I have been on the roof, my usual quiet refuge for working on the novel; but today, impossible. It is la Dia de las Cruces—Day of the Crosses—and like a battlefield. The air absolutely full of explosions, natives sending up fireworks. Became downright dangerous, as well as disconcerting—felt like a foreign correspondent reporting a Black and Tan fracas so am back in the room.