B007RT1UH4 EBOK (52 page)

To John Napper

still at sea

4 May, 1951

dear John,

First,
don’t
be down-hearted at the post-mark (if it is, as I trust it will be, New-York). I’ll try to explain it to you, as I have to myself.

Meanwhile, ten days at sea proves a very long time, though thank God for it: opportunity to lose Spain little by little, and prepare myself (as though anyone could, ever) for the slaughter. But honestly, it did take a few days to recover from that departure. Though repeating to myself, as to others, that it was not for more than a period of months; though there is inevitably a ring of finality about setting sail for a place which in grotesque pretension calls itself your ‘home’ . . . home is where one starts from, it was, and will be.

As you may have heard, the city of Sevilla held an extensive going-away party for me, —it lasted for five days and five nights, fifty bulls killed, some artistically and some in acute discomfort; girls, singing, dancing, horses, mules, blood and sand and broken glass, tears and abrazos. Honestly, leaving that pension, with five elderly ladies all weeping, and they gave me an intricately stitched Lady of Carmen (Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory . . .), and a lunch to take along, a journey of ten days with nothing but sea and sky incomprehensible. Or leaving the bar Capi, pledges of friendship eternal, and also that they were going to close the place the minute after I left: there is devotion! Or Pastora . . . but perhaps David Tudor-Pole has mentioned her to you—and so in these days (And on the deck of the drumming liner Watching the furrow that widens behind you You shall not think ‘the past is finished’ Or ‘the future is before us’) one recovers slowly and privately the shell of empty laughter, laughter which recalls nothing and words and gestures without past or future, except insomuch as they exist in the minds of those on the dock, on the pierhead, waiting for the recognition which they feel implicit in the circumstances, —one recovers this shell, prepares to inhabit it, present it in rooms to those who spend their lives in rooms; prepares experiences, taken however seriously then, we missed the meaning, for expenditure in conversation which dies on the dead smoke exhaled, stagnant, the experience tossed off that easily and the meaning never again questioned . . . so one comes ‘home’.

No; it is not all that easy, nor so soon done with: what brought us away takes us back; and persists to point us away again: the past is not finished nor the future before us. Though for all that, I dread the day when voyages cease to have their significance for me, when I know with my heart what I know now with Mr Eliot’s mind, that the way up and the way down are one and the same; better cultivate the infinite mind, and preserve the temporal heart, in which voyages still do have directions, fight against the weary sagacity of the seaman to whom directions are simply matters of distance and of days, and ports of climates and cost of entertainment. Never, I hope, to attain to that peak of sophistication where movement across water is simply a matter of adjusting one’s watch, where crossing the Atlantic ocean is as significant as a busride to Battersea.

So I sit, in a clutter of books, boots, bags and bottles, —these latter a more extensive cargo than planned, again enthusiasm demolished judgment and I fear altercations with New-York aduanas, but it was a case of last-minute desperation, like one setting forth on the Sahara for the first time, uncertain if he should see a drop of drink before expiring, so I seem to have carted one after another bottle (cleverly alternating coñac and Manzanilla) aboard; pretty souvenirs to bring Home to Mother after 3 years in ‘interesting’ places . . .

I’m glad David Tudor-Pole got you, and managed to hand over the bottles (speaking of bottles). I trust he gave you description of the Puerto de Santa Maria. The only thing that distracts me about that town is the flatness, persistent all down that plain, slightly broken but just enough up at Sevilla; that, and that it would be infernally hot in summer. But I think endlessly of your going there to stay; and I will not say enviously, because envy suggests impossibility of attainment on the part of the viewer; and I hope and plan it will be possible for me, thinking now that after two to four months in America to re-cross this sea, with either a wife or the
Encyclopædia Britannica
in tow.

Some people have paid their debt immediately they close the door behind them. And it is difficult enough to talk with you of debts, because you have proven that only in fulfilling one’s debt to one’s self can one ever repay debts to others; and we who still hop about on one foot concerned to pay these debts to others before we have the currency will be eternally bankrupt. Ecco . . . At any rate, that is what I want to straighten out on this trip, what the debts are and how best paid, and if they must be payed immediately. I am still uncertain if what work I have finished (the African trip made a decided dent in what I’d planned to have done, but well worth) will be sufficient to show for ($al) encouragement; that remains to be suffered. And the only thing which could crush me will be war, or being sucked into the hysteria of Preparedness, being dressed in an anonymous costume and spent that way.

So don’t be upset at me if things seem to collapse, or stagnate; they will only be in suspension, which I shall and (unless war) when the time comes, I trust before summer is out. This trip is necessary; and once one has such on one’s mind, it is better to go through it quickly than waste time and energies pondering it.

Thus I found this small Norwegian cargo boat (6000tons) sailing direct Sevilla–New York, and boarded. For the first days out, the sea was like the Caribbean; but now the sky fades, and the water looks colder, that indifferent colour not blue nor grey but simply Atlantic. We should shudder into New York in about 40 hours. I expect to spend 3 or 4 days there, examining possibilities, then escape to the woods, to home house which needs a good deal done to it in the way of painting &c, and settle to work again.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin, says Candide; and Doctor Pangloss, who has been hung, burned at the stake, dis-membered, maimed, agrees. So please write me there, where I shall be sitting, an old man in a dry month, being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.

Love to you both—and I
shall
see you

before too long.

W.

home is where one starts from: a line from part 5 of “East Coker.”

blood and sand: perhaps only coincidentally the title of a popular 1941 movie about bullfighting, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth, previously adapted twice, including a 1922 version starring Rudolph Valentino; based on the 1909 novel of the same name (
Sangre y arena
) by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez.

Lady, whose shrine [...] promontory: the first line of part 4 of Eliot’s “Dry Salvages.”

Pastora: the name of a Spanish woman Stephen/Wyatt falls in love with in
R.

And on the deck [...] before us’: from part 3 of “The Dry Salvages.”

in rooms to those who spend their lives in rooms: an Eliotic phrase used in
R
: “They arrived at a room full of people who spent their lives in rooms” (176).

the way up [...] the same: slightly misquoted from part 3 of “The Dry Salvages.”

aduanas: the Spanish word for customs agents.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin: “We must cultivate our garden” is the closing line of Voltaire’s novella (1759).

an old man [...] waiting for rain: the opening lines of Eliot’s “Gerontion” (1920).

To John Napper

[
WG arrived back in the U.S. in early May 1951. In July, he showed up at the New York office of the U.S. Information Service “in a white linen suit, flower in his lapel, and gold watch across his vest, to see Elmer Davis, a Harvard alumnus, who was Director of the Office of War Information during the war. ‘Tell him that it is William Gaddis, a former editor of
Lampoon
,’ he said. That announcement gained him entrance” (Bernard J. Looks,
Triumph Through Adversity
[
Xlibris, 2005
]
, 64). He got a job there writing articles for
America Illustrated
, a cultural magazine sent to Russia and Iran to counteract anti-American propaganda, and continued to work on
R
, which he was then calling
Vigils of the Dead
and/or
The Origin of Design
.
]

WG back from Spain in his white linen suit, 1951. (Photo by Martin Dworkin.)

WG, Margaret Williams, Charles Eagan, and Kathleen Costello, June 1951.

Box 1071

Massapequa L. Isld.

20 july 1951

dear John—

I must confess, New York is an excellent place when one can come in and feel it belongs to him. For no reason, I feel so today. —But I can always retreat to Massapequa and breathe air.

Otherwise the usual horror of time scattering by, and little done. It takes a death to stop it; and last week my grandmother died—Christian sympathy aside, it was best thing for everyone concerned, especially my mother, whose life will be much simpler and more free now.

I was pleased to have your French post card—Lord, I wish enough that I had been able to answer your Paris call. But no. I work slowly, and with the usual doubts and despairs. Though I have had one publisher read the thing, and extremely encouraging word from him. Though no $ £ encouragement—though I didn’t ask it. I only hope that by end of September I’ll be qualified to do so, because, the state that everything has been in (making me glad that I did come home), the summer is really just beginning now.

I’ve joined an excellent library in New York, and am quite settled reading of forgeries, counterfeiting, faking, imposture, fraud——and trying to manufacture
my
forger. Very difficult. Otherwise simply sit and listen to Vaughan Williams’ transcription of Greensleeves.

A few very long letters from David Tudor Pole give me pictures of London life. —Though not such happy prospects as Derby Day, or Sussex, hushed, gin bottles & Chelsea. I guess I shall never see Barney Emmart again.

But I haven’t ever thanked you for pictures of your house? Oh dear. It all goes on. I hope to write a letter soon enough—thus just a fast nervous New York note.