Authors: William Gaddis
B007RT1UH4 EBOK (47 page)
Mostly, I say again, I look forward to seeing you both, and possibly in conversation recover something which seems to have collapsed in this city. Surely enough Paris is handsome, (I don’t think the French deserve it), but I just go in circles here. All nervous energy which ought to go into work goes instead into missing buses, losing telephone numbers, carrying the trash downstairs. By now I picture a small tastelessly-furnished room, but heated somehow, in a small village, something like Little Gaddesdon, or even Great Gaddesdon. To tell the truth I’ve really wasted a month here, and I haven’t a month to waste. Well, all of that when I see you. (Even Jung’s
Integration of the Personality
hasn’t helped me integrate; the minute I get my anima in place something else collapses.) [...]
To tell the truth, I’m quite excited about the prospect of London and England, though I hope to escape any manifestations of the Festival of Britain . . . I’m in no festival mood, though I might be able to take something Spanish like Valencia’s, where the sky-rockets are aimed at the crowd. Something heroic. Otherwise I’m getting into form by learning sayings of Great Englishmen, v.:
Uxbridge: I have lost my leg, by God!
Wellington: By God, and have you!
or
Wellington: Publish and be damned.
or,
Edward the Confessor
Slept in the dresser.
When that began to pall He slept in the hall.
I look forward so to seeing you,
best wishes to you both,
W. Gaddis
Little Gaddesdon, or even Great Gaddesdon: towns in Hertfordshire (though spelled Gaddesden), northwest of London.
Jung’s
Integration of the Personality
: the Swiss psychologist’s study of the process of “individuation” by way of dream analysis and alchemical symbolism. The English translation (by Stanley M. Dell, 1939) was WG’s principal source for alchemy in
R.
sayings of Great Englishmen: all taken from
ODQ
; the last stanza is by E. C. Bentley (1875–1956). WG would continue to cite the Duke of Wellington’s “Publish and be damned,” his riposte to a woman who threatened to expose some compromising letters of his.
Festival of Britain: a national exhibition that opened in London in May 1951.
To Edith Gaddis
Paris
Sunday, 17 December 1950
dear Mother.
My, we do live in an exciting world, don’t we. Someone has even offered me a flat in Vienna for the holidays. Grand? Gemütlich? or just plain Ghastly.
Temptation.
—In den alten Zeiten, wo der Wünschen noch geholfen hatt . . .
Otherwise, it has been snowing today in Paris, a messy expression of nature’s temper which I’ve lost sentimental feelings for I believe. Out of those leaded
Lampoon
panes, snowfall on Bow Street was something to stir the impatient heart. Nowadays, wet feet. Dear dead women, with their hair too, what’s become of all the gold/ Used to hang and brush their bosoms. I feel chilly, and grown old.
Though I still expect to escape to London briefly. On the other hand, all the other idlers are appearing in Paris. Jacob (no slight intended) just came in from the Deep South, looking very well. Mail to London American Express from now on though, I think. I’ll get it one way or another. I really do expect to go, though I feel a little foolish this Christmas-tide.
I trust you’ll get the gift I sent you by Bill Taylor, who flew over a few days ago and hoped to see Margaret, and I told him to hand it over to her. And fortunately I finally got her gift, a pair of things whose original purpose I cannot imagine, spoked semi-circles with irregular baroque pearls at the ends which I made into ear-rings. Somebody named Mr Fitzpatrick was flying over on Saturday, so I gave them to him to cart along, and he said he’d leave them at his hotel for her to pick up, and send her a wire notifying her. Mr Fitzpatick is from Kansas City.
Otherwise I’m in suspension, but a warm one to be sure. I’m afraid I’m going to have to Pay, when Mr Wheatland the proprietor returns, pay and pay and pay. His radio is now playing Swing Low Sweet Chariot, which I can’t thank it for.
I got a very nice letter from Congdon, saying sell the player and keep the ‘dough’, remembering that it was written with ‘considerable charm’. Refering to another piece I suggested, he knows ‘it could be a splendid piece, knowing your capabilities . . .’ wanting to see a (the) novel, ‘in part or whole’ . . . . . .
Well. There will be time.
Priscilla Boughton Friedrich writes of her expectancy of a baby, and I plan to return fairly soon here from London and go straight through to Spain. To Seville. I’m really a small-town boy, Seville is more my size. Any old tree will do for me, Any old isle is just my style.
Honestly, I’m sorry to write you such a fool letter as this, I’ll do better in the next few days. For the moment, you’ll be glad to know that I received the check (180$), and have fully escaped from the Palais d’Antin without bloodshed.
with my love,
W.
Gemütlich: Ger., jolly, cheerful.
In den alten Zeiten, wo der Wünschen noch geholfen hatt: “In olden days, when wishes still availed . . .”—the opening line of the Grimm Brothers’ tale “The Frog King” (collected 1812). Both the German original and its translation appear in
R
(273, where it correctly reads “hat” rather than “hatt”).
Dear dead women [...] grown old: from the final stanza of Browning’s “A Toccata of Galuppi’s,” quoted in
R
(193).
Swing Low Sweet Chariot: popular gospel song, written by Wallace Willis sometime before 1862.
Any old tree [...] just my style: from a song in Eliot’s “Fragment of an Agon” (1927): “Any old tree will do for me / Any old wood is just as good / Any old isle is just my style.”
To Edith Gaddis
Chantry Mill
Storrington, Sussex
27 december 1950
dear Mother—
I feel troubled for fear that you may very well wonder what suddenly became of me at Christmas time—but I did manage to cross the channel on Friday night, and spent Christmas quietly enough in London—no high time whatsoever, but I still like London so much that I’ve enjoyed it.
Then yesterday the 26
th
—Boxing Day, another holiday, I came down here, in Sussex, to visit the painter I met in Spain this summer—John Napper and his wife. I’ve thought of you often here, how much you would like this house—an old mill house, parts of it 700 years old! and fireplaces in almost every room, much of it though enough like the studio, and a similar way of life. It is proving to be one of the most pleasant Christmas holidays I’ve ever spent.
I expect to go back to London around the end of the week, and shall hope to hear from you there—I called at American Express Saturday (the 23
rd
), found only Margaret’s Christmas gifts, which I was touched and delighted with. I suppose it must be my fault that I didn’t let you know I’d definitely be in London the 23
rd
, that I’ve not heard from you—but I do so hope that you have had a happy Christmas—and I am most curious to know if you received my gift, and if you liked it.
with love,
W.
To Edith Gaddis
[
In a letter to me dated 25 July 1996, John Napper wrote that during WG’s visit “we took him to London where, one morning, we had a drink in what was then the
Six Bells
pub in Chelsea. A friend of ours, an antique dealer named John Hewett, came in and showed us a wonderful pair of heavy Byzantine gold ear-rings. My wife Pauline, who had just had her ears pierced, fell in love with them immediately to which John H. replied ‘If you can wear them . . . you can have them.’ My wife went away to the washroom to return some moments later, blood down her white shirt but the ear-rings in her ears. Willie was very struck by this event and made use of it in the first chapter of
The Recognitions [
p. 14
]
. Some of the book was actually written during his stay with us, we have been friends ever since. My wife still wears the ear-rings.”
]
18 Granville Place,
London W 1
4th january 1951
Dear Mother,
What a fine holiday this is turning out to be. And a most splendid part certainly was returning from Sussex to find all of your bounty waiting for me here. As ever, I cannot thank you enough for such gifts which are making this possible, this visit to what I believe is the Best city I’ve ever seen. Even though I’ve not been leading a gay Mayfair and Park Lane high life (though my telephone number is a Mayfair exchange, a small room Barney got me), every bit of London excites me, it is as marvelous as I’d remembered, even when I’m not living in St James’s, and I’ve thought of you often, with great regret for your not having been able to see more of it. Though somehow, looking back, you did get an extraordinary amount into those two days out, and beyond the things you saw, what I am enjoying is simply walking through the city, no landmarks but the people whom I like immensely. I can imagine no better life than one divided between England and Spain.
Last night I almost did sail to Portugal . . . was sitting in the captain’s cabin on a boat tied up at a London Dock, which sailed at 8pm, having come earlier from the opening of a new show at an art gallery in Whitechapel (in London’s unsavoury East End), where I met Sir Gerald Kelly, head of the Royal Academy . . .
Nor can I tell you how good my holiday in Sussex has been. The English countryside is often enough indistinguishable from Connecticut, and some of the newer small towns are centred about fake half-timbered buildings which look enough like Garden City, or Massapequa’s Shopping Centre. But the Napper’s house, of which I’d hoped to send you a picture but we couldn’t find one, is ancient as I said, and it was fire-place heating every morning, quite cold. How fortunate I was to meet them, and how much they have done for me. Very few people recently with whom I’ve got on so well and liked so much.
Arturo is here, not in especially good shape, but two evenings ago we, with two others, went to a very jolly pantomime, and afterwards a few glasses of brown ale until the pubs closed, at 11pm. Yesterday was terrible as far as weather was concerned, slush and snow and cold and wet, but I didn’t care at all, walking from one place to another with little of importance to take care of. Barney, though ill with a cold as almost everyone seems to be, has been awfully good about seeing to occasional practical details. This afternoon I may go to the
Cocktail Party
.