B007RT1UH4 EBOK (48 page)

I’ve just heard from Wheatland, who is worse off than expected and cannot return to Europe for some time, offers me his flat &c until March, in Paris! But I’m turning it down. I cannot work well there, and I’ve work which must be done before spring. And so I plan to return to Paris the 10th, stay there for 3–5 days and take care of a few details of my own as well as whatever I can do to straighten up Wheatland’s affairs, and then to Spain, Madrid briefly and through to Seville. I find, with these plans, that I’m unable to buy all the things I see on all hands here, the £s fly away, but all is working out well really. I am, however, going to take some of your Christmas present down to Charing Cross Road right now . . . that is where numerous book stores are, and you cannot imagine the excitement of being in an English bookstore after 2yrs of Spanish and French. [...]

(never tell
anyone
you have caught me writing on both sides of the paper; and I apologise to you for it.) [...]

with love,

W.

Sir Gerald Kelly: British painter (1879–1972), president of the Royal Academy from 1949 to 1954.

Arturo: Arturo de la Guardia, a Harvard classmate and friend from WG’s Canal Zone days. He was the son of Ernesto de la Guardia (1904–83), president of Panama later in the 1950s.

Cocktail Party
: T. S. Eliot’s 1949 play.

To Edith Gaddis

Paris, France

15 january 1951

dear Mother,

I’m tired of love; I’m still more tired of rhyme,

But money gives me pleasure all the time . . .

So it was that I was very pleased to find two-hundred howling dollars at the G window in American Express. They are being subtly translated into Spanish currency—a subtlety which I hope will not prove too subtle for me when I appear at the house of a Very Old Family in Madrid, mendicant-like. And thank you for your accompanying letter. No don’t be crushed because I didn’t have your Christmas letter Christmas. As I said, I had a marvelous week in the country, and was extremely happy to have it when I returned.

Nor have I heard from Charley Morton. Will he prove a wraith too? oh Lord, if he does . . . I’ll write him immediately. (What do you mean, ‘Emmy has some suggestions’?)

As I try to assemble myself this evening, I have a German radio programme, and such a beautiful language. Ech. And I am going back to that burlesque, Spain. But better to finish one thing before commencing another, and I’ve that feeling about returning, making a whole of it, a full circle. Possibly my next European trip will be an assault on Gemütlicheit to the north. Or Sussex. Especially if Nappers leave their place: the rent of it is 75pounds, 210$, a year! [...]

And I had a beautiful and heart-breaking letter from Margaret, she is so sweet, I can only hope I’m doing the right thing now, going back under the Pyrenees, to work, and still planning to return in the spring. I hope to heaven that won’t be too late for us. Because there’s not another like her for me I believe. And I’m much older now. Oh dear yes. How she would love living in Sussex, I believe. When I’ve some money again, I want to ask you to send a large splendid fruit-cake to the Nappers (their address is Chantry Hill, Sullington, near Pulborough, Sussex, England). They were so kind, and besides that showed me such a good example in a right way of living.

I’m quite busy here catching up Dick Wheatland’s loose ends (I wrote you he’d had to have an operation, couldn’t return until March possibly), and my own. Having this time resolved not to be caught book-less in Spain, I’ve assembled a small library which I’m trying to get into a box, this evening. Impossible. Though I couldn’t get some things I selfishly wanted in England, like cloth, a flat small suitcase (the kind you said would make me look like a Fuller Brush man), I did get books I wanted, including even a copy of the
Golden Bough
, all my own now! I should leave tomorrow or Wednesday, that nightmare 26-hour trip, 3rd class in France, 1st class in Spain. Only two or three days in Madrid, then, as it all started: a/c Consulado de los EE.UU. Paseo de las Delicias, SEVILLA . . . home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill, but me, call me Ishmael. It all started a long time ago.

with my love,

W.

such a beautiful language. Ech: in
FHO
, Oscar compares the sound of German to “a cow backing into a stall” (346).

Gemütlicheit: ie.,
Gemütlichkeit
, kindliness—a joke, not a city.

home is the sailor [...] home from the hill: from Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Requiem” (1887;
ODQ
).

call me Ishmael: the opening sentence of Melville’s
Moby-Dick
(1851).

To Edith Gaddis

calle San Roque, 15

Sevilla, Spain

23 january 1951

dear Mother,

For 3¢, a glass of wine and a pajarito, who is a small bird, about what a sparrow would be if plucked I suppose, done in deep fat; and disconcerting enough to lift it spread and find it shapen enough like a man (done in deep fat). Or the recognition and liking in faces of some who counted small enough on one’s calendar of hope and redemption, but here they are: Isabel, an old and ugly woman at this place who welcomed me with all her gums exposed in joy, and I am back in this dormitory room, hospital-like enough since it’s got four white beds, two wash-stands (with pitchers), a white table and a couch which looks enough like an analyst’s couch to alarm . . . to alarm me, not a Spaniard. Or in the bar Capi, nearbyenough, and the welcome there; and immediately incumbent, again, the feeling of acute isolation in the midst of professors of friendship. Or Eulalio, my Sevillano ‘friend’, who tempts me to homicide often enough, and the welcome there; Salud, his wife, and Rosita, his child, and the adventure my return seemed to be, they were so excited, and is it to my inverted-ness, or to my other devotions, that all of it embarrasses me, and again come the insistences of anonymity.

‘Don Guillermo’ again. It is cold and wet here.

Back.

Well, you forget the dirt and the poverty; and still the absolutely implicit insistence on salvation everywhere; bare walls and boarded windows; no ashtray nor waste-basket, so ashes and orange-peels alike go on the floor, easier for everyone that way.

Last night, having a glass of wine, beside me assembled a family (you may see that it was not a fashionable retreat). Father and mother blind, he heavily marked with syphillis (and she I gather similarly so), and a healthy appearing daughter of about 13, come in to pour out days’ gatherings, these leaden coins whose value would be be meaningless in Massapequa, to have it redeemed in currency (they sell lottery tickets, you see, and receive ‘tips’ of about .02¢ to .05¢). And so, I overheard the man say to the daughter, screwing his face upward as though he would look for himself, as though he has not lost the motion years ago, —And this Englishman, how do you know? Is he wearing elegant clothes . . .? And that was I. So, do you see, I am wealthy in that comparison; warm in comparison to those who are still now on the streets. But still one passes the houses of Sevilla, looking through leather brass-studded doors large enough to admit a coach, to a patio resplendent in tiles and green luxury growing from brass pots; or these people pass in their coaches . . .

I ’phoned Margaret from Madrid on Sunday. And of course I cannot tell you, how wonderful it was to hear her, nor how sad eventually, the conversation. Oh I tell you, I tell you (you know) what a magnificent, and splendidly brave person she is. I know now that she is having, and has had consistently a ghastly time of the whole thing, paid and paid and paid. Again: I don’t know. You may imagine, it looks enough to me now as though I should be there, with her, to do something, anything. And here I am, settled it looks with my work, and having made all financial arrangements to stay for two more months, at the least. Oh, you know I don’t mean to face you with all this; simply to say that things are in this state. And here I am with 45 books and 20 pounds of my own work, and impossible to know what it will come to.

Then I’ve heard now news of increased taxes. I’m concerned, especially after your letter saying that my check had saved things for the moment, over you. Are you all right, really? And this 100$ a month, it is a difficult drain? You must tell me.

$   $$$   $$$$$$   $$$   $$$   $$$   $$   $$$$$$$$$   $$   $$$$$   $

Could you, then, put my next (february) remittance in my bank account there please? Also, I’ve wondered a number of things. What, for instance, is the price of a ticket (LIRR) Massapequa to NY? and commutation?

I’ve written Charles Morton (
Atlantic
), asking
what
.

This (below) address should do, unless it’s something of great importance which might be endangered in loss, then the consulate.

with all love,

W

To John and Pauline Napper

Sevilla, Spain

Saturday, 27 january 1951

dear John and Pauline,

[...] A month now, since I found myself trapped in the 1st-class carriage in Storington station, and the Honourable Miss Something released me to your magnificent week waiting. I suppose (an analyst could figure this out) it’s because it was so wonderful that I’ve taken this long in writing, wanting to be able to thank you sufficiently, which I cannot of course even now, nor see how I can ever. I might even plead that selfish rudeness with a Purpose, but can’t even that for not writing, since it’s only in the last couple of days that I’ve got back to work again.