B007RT1UH4 EBOK (31 page)

To Edith Gaddis

Madrid

[27 December 1948]

Well well; dear Mother again.

I had put this off until getting up to the Embassy, both to look for mail & to query Our Representative on the usual concerns of an innocent abroad. And so now I have been, queried & been queried, and got your letters. It is a nice feeling, a kind of re-affirmation of one’s identity after many days wandering in boats, trains, dark hotel rooms and strange cities, to see a familiar hand, read familiar words and names (in, I add vehemently, a familiar language). And many thanks for Barney’s note, a delight as always; but he of course is by now a rather continental person; and writes: —Spain sounds like a splendid thing, and it would be good to see you . . . he just off for a little time in Paris France &c. These fellow creatures of mine who have made Europe into one large madhouse, each capital a room, and they running from room-to-room, screaming & giggling (to use a phrase of Barney’s) . . . well it is all beyond me.

By now I feel settled in a way, not for life in Madrid, but I mean mentally; such things as actually getting letters here makes it seem that I am still in the same world and not barefoot in South Africa as I felt earlier (though a rather glacial South Africa to be sure). But with this good-sized room and large window, pleasant girls among the ‘help’ who applaud my Spanish, and getting used to the food which is not bad, I suppose one might say dull, but food. And having been fortunate in my choice of books & papers brought over with me, some of Eliot I had not read which is The Answer (just this fragment, listen:

“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—

Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres—

Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt

Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

Because one has only learnt to get the better of words

For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which

One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion . . .”    &c. But best his speaking of time, and just in line with Bergson, whom I was reading last summer, and all of it in line exactly with my attempts at thought and clear picturing of us all here &c &c. . . you know how this can go on, as it did many evenings before the fireplace in Massapequa, evenings I look back on with very poignant fondness; and apologise now for the rantings & ravings I subjected you to concerning The State of the Union & Mr Tennessee Williams (whose work, on reconsideration, I find: that he is not to be blamed, pilloried, spat upon (as was my attitude) because it is bad, because his work is simply a projection of the times, the degeneration of the Myth & the consequent looking from every heart for ‘a cheap sentimental humanism at someone else’s expense’—and wherebetter found than the theatre, where one does not have to leave the sticky mess with the feeling of guilt one ‘suffers’ after personal mummeries. No; the blame must go to the times which have allowed such work as his to be found good (because I gather that as far as the author was concerned these plays are ‘sincere’, ‘his best’, &c—but you see sincere on the same cardboard level as his audience. They are the ones to knock on the head. Eh bien. I am preparing something here to knock them on the head with.

oh dear. Are such letters as this entertaining or edifying for you? One may well ask, —did he go to SPAIN simply to have 3000miles of water between him and the things he polemicizes? We shall get to Spain in a moment.

I also have Dante here (in English, he admitted, cowardly) and find I am just ready for going for the first time through his magnificence. And am attending to many notes & ideas which have somehow lay dead in the hand these past months, feeling alive again. As for study; I am I do believe making some headway into the language; I can hold a passable conversation with the scullery girls or the Lady blonde (ersatz with a vengeance) who also lives in this very proper house and seems to want to go dancing . . . no I was talking about Study wasn’t I. Also reading, with great chains of ignorance, Ortega y Gasset (a contemporary Sp. philosopher, social thinker) and starting a play by Calderon de la Barca, a 17th century Sp. playwright, in Spanish, with the harried dictionary in hand. And so, as for plans. I am more fond of Madrid daily, and shall stay a few weeks more I guess, don’t know; but do have the feeling that, you know, something may happen (the feeling we all have today, heaven knows what the Something is, it never happens; I think this feeling of constant suspension laid in the Christian myth of the Last Judgement which heavy heavy hangs over our heads & imaginary souls). . . anyhow that I want to see Spain more before settling anywhere at anything. And think it may be the perfectly reasonable thing to do to leave most of my luggage with a friend here, buy a 3000kilomtre ticket (about 1800miles I believe) and go about, spend a week in Toledo, in Granada, &c., that ticket I think about 20$. As Walker Evans said when I saw him, —Don’t go over and sit in one place; move around, look at it all. He is right. I still must get papers straightened out, of which more later. [...]

For the moment I have borrowed a bit from this ‘fine fellow’ Taylor, now in Paris but should be back here any day. Don’t worry over that, it is the sort of exchange that straightens itself out, and he a good fellow (Harvard ’40) and a friend, and I very fortunate to have encountered him.

The holidays passed in order, for myself if not for the People, who raised unshirted hell for 7 or 8 days & nights, beating drums and singing in the streets. Heavens. But got through, and now 1949 discovers me 26. oh dear. Life is very long. On NewYrs day, walking through the city, I stopped in at a large church where a great ceremony was going on (I believe that it is the Feast of the Circumcision), a priest passing up and down a baby-doll which for all I could see the pious populace kissed; but all the while music: an organ & voices, a violin, & tamborines! Such splendid, happy music; & quite unlike the doleful Mrs Damon (?) in Berlin’s First Congregational.

And so, a Happy New Year, while we are on the subject, to All.

These things I wonder: Did you get a letter from Gibraltar? Has John Snow managed to get blankets, sheets, dirty shirts & Nancy’s
Idiot
up to you? (I haven’t written him, and am somewhat concerned, he was in such mortal coil when I left).

Needless to say, your letters shocked me. I mean, the business about the picture-taker on the quay; oh dear, such a business, I am embarrassed at the memory of that Queen Elizabeth gesture. But Stella & Bill; she is kind, and that is just like Bill, to be an unbearable presence & then come through with the really spontaneous kind gesture, why with all the fury and sudden-ness that has passed between us, I find the attachment great; because he means so well, and has no idea of how to go about any execution except suddenly, as this, he manages. As for Miss Parke & Mr Waugh. oh dear, or gracious. Of course you know that with all the sudden cringing on my head when I read it, there was the accompanying vain Delight at being called to the attention of the Great, in any fashion. And so now, Evelyn Waugh actually knows that I exist. I had intended to accomplish this in another fashion, xx(sic) the dark day that he picked up my first novel and sat aghast with admiration—still have a hysterical intention on my part (and let me say, I have had recent thoughts on an idea which I think might even shock Him—such an ambition: to shock Evelyn Waugh. Anyhow the whole incident is jolly (I do wonder What she told him about me) and at 3000miles’ distance I relish it. She is so kind too, they all are, we all mean well.

Item) I have sent a story (the one I worked from the Costa Rica piece, at Woodburn’s last summer, and wrote here during the holidays) to Congdon; hope to heaven he gets it (dealing, as it did, with ‘controversial material’); asked him to let me know here if anything favourable, otherwise to send it on to you with an note which you might forward, and just tuck the story away somewhere & forget it.

Item) Among the books I have brought is the incomparable
South Wind
; and in the usual spirit, I should like so to give a copy to Miss Williams, who plans to sail for Italy I think on the 12th or the 20th. Could you get her a nice copy, have it sent to her before departure, such a splendid book for the boring days of ocean-travel. I wrote & told her I would try to get a copy to her. It is Miss Margaret Williams/ 439 East 86th/ NYC28. Holiday Bookstore at 49th & Lex I think had a nice copy. Would it be a good idea to call her, to see if she is still in town by the time this letter reaches you? It is TR6-4739. I should appreciate this immensely if it can be managed.

Needless, again, to say, Madrid presents many temptations to the eye of the foreigner hungry to buy Things. And so for my birthday I bought a pair of cufflinks. Of course there is the frantic American notion, of wanting to send half the city back to friends. Though I see few things, to tell the truth, as yet, that are just what anyone wants. The inevitable mantillas, &c. But for the man, oh dear, the Things. This morning I bought a pair of much-needed gloves, about 2$, but beautiful, I have never had a pair to fit like these, and soft fine leather (& such style in the glove shop: a plush cushion on which I put my elbow, while the young lady pulled the gloves down over my hand with much ceremony. . . not Brooks Bros). It is strange, some things so cheap, and some so outlandishly expensive. Imagine (don’t imagine too much; it is not a problem with me:) a pint bottle of brandy costing less than a package of cigarettes. But get this: many of the men in Spain wear capes, fine black affairs with red or green lining, and up about the lower part of the face with the red flaming over the shoulder. Well. You may picture my excitement & temptation at that! And the most recent object, looked at in the shop window with eyes like the urchin outside the pastry-shop, a walking stick, brown sort of bamboo, with a silver ferrule and topped by the carved head of an old disgruntled man. 2nd or 3rd hand certainly, but beautiful, and badly priced. But I guess it will always be there—it would take someone with imagination (sic) to carry it! And the shop is in the Calle del Disengaño, the Street of Disillusion. Isn’t that wonderful (& un-American).

And so. I walk much of the time, so that by yesterday my feet were really quite sore. I have been over most of Madrid I believe, the crooked narrow streets & the fine ones, the great & very formal park, a look at the tremendous pile which is the nacional palace, nobody lives there, and the streets, the streets. Quite chilly still, very in fact, so I keep moving, often get lost because the streets turn so. But the walking is the best cathartic, I agree with Mr Bean there. Have taken to wearing my fine Davega tennis-shoes, which call glances from passers-by, but otherwise I look quite like the people, they are not dark, as the popular conception of Spaniards, in the north here.

Well, Nancy. I can imagine the sort of disappointment you mean; and it is strange, because of the picture of her as one who Does Things—and I don’t mean Emmet Fox (who he? Another victim of Old Testament morality) because she has that aspect of being Alive, and I know, you must begin to wonder, when things continue to fail to work out for those people. (Perhaps she should settle down and practice “that Taoist art of disintegration which Yen Hui described to Confucius as ‘the art of sitting and forgetting’”. . .) Anyhow my best greetings to her, Something, must come.

As for Christmas, I didn’t know it was to be at Janice’s; just as glad I didn’t know: and your very brief description brings the whole thing into the room. But I must confess to some loneliness here, even for such atmosphere (though I can imagine how I should have felt there, thinking of Spain. . .) For the Woodburns, I haven’t written them, shall in a few days when I have more ‘material’, have thought of them often, still regretting missing them, and do greatly hope that things are going well for them each & both, I do like them each & both so much, and they have been so kind, as people, to me.

And hope that you are well, & happy, getting more from life than Mr. Fox.

with love,

W.

innocent abroad: Mark Twain’s
Innocents Abroad
(1869) is a satirical travel book about Europe.

“So here I am [...] squads of emotion”: the opening lines of part 5 of “East Coker” (1940), the second of Eliot’s
Four Quartets
.

Bergson: Henri Bergson (1859–1941), French philosopher, perhaps best known for his book
Laughter
(1901); in WG’s library there is a French edition of that book inscribed “W. Gaddis San Jose, CR 1948,” along with Bergson’s
Creative Evolution
and
Creative Mind.

Tennessee Williams: the American dramatist (1911–83) was at the height of his fame following the great success of
A Streetcar Named Desire
in 1947.

the Myth: probably a reference to Denis de Rougemont’s
Love in the Western World
(1940), one of WG’s source-books for
R.
Chapter 2 of book 1 is entitled “The Myth,” on the European celebration of passion, especially adulterous passion, over married love, despite its connection with the death instinct.