Thornton Wilder (108 page)

39.
TNW to Lewis Baer, July 25, 1927,
SL
, 215–16.

40.
TNW to C. Leslie Glenn, June 14, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

41.
TNW to Grace Foresman, July 25, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

42.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, July 21, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

43.
TNW to Marie Townson, August 28, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

44.
In later years Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant would write memoirs of Willa Cather and Robert Frost, and correspond with TNW about the nature and methodology of biography.

45.
TNW to Marie Townson, August 28, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

46.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, August 22, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

47.
Ibid.

48.
Ibid.

49.
Ibid.

50.
Lewis Baer to TNW, August 18, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

51.
Ibid.

52.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, August 22, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

53.
Albert Boni to TNW, August 30, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

54.
According to
Time
, March 28, 1938, the Little Leather Library, between 1923 and 1925, sold 40 million inexpensive leatherbound books through Woolworth's stores and the Whitman Candy Company.

55.
TNW to Marie Townson, August 28, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

56.
TNW to Marie Townson, December 39, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

57.
Clark Andrews, “To Us He Was Always ‘T.W.,' ”
Yankee
, September 1978, 120–25, 152–68.

58.
Ibid.

59.
Ibid.

60.
TNW to Marie Townson, [postmarked November 9, 1927], TNW Collection, YCAL.

61.
Lewis Baer to TNW, January 6, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

62.
TNW to Marie Townson, December 30, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

63.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, December 28, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

64.
TNW to Marie Townson, December 30, 1927, TNW Collection, YCAL.

65.
TNW to Chauncey B. Tinker, December 6, 1927,
SL
, 219–20.

66.
Ibid.

67.
Ibid.

68.
Ibid.

 

19: “THE FINEST BRIDGE IN ALL PERU” (1928)

1.
During an argument, it is said, the viceroy called the actress “Perra Chola”—in translation, “dog-bitch,” or “native or half-breed bitch.” Mérimée annotated his play to assert it as historical fact that Ribera called the actress “Perra-chola”—which, because of his Castilian accent and his loss of teeth, became “Perichole.”

2.
TNW,
The Bridge of San Luis Rey,
18. As noted in a previous chapter, TNW had written to Henry Luce about this. TNW to Henry R. Luce, September 9, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.

3.
TNW to John Townley, March 6, 1928, YCAL.

4.
TNW,
The Bridge of San Luis Rey,
7–8.

5.
Ibid., 8–9.

6.
Ibid., 100.

7.
Ibid.

8.
Ibid., 72.

9.
TNW, Journal, Entry 51, December 22, 1926. TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW did not number the entries in his earlier journals. When I have quoted or cited a numbered entry, I have provided the number.

10.
Captain Alvarado: TNW,
The Bridge of San Luis Rey,
58; Valéry's Captain: Paul Valéry,
Eupalinos, or The Architect, Dialogues
, William McCausland Stewart, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 135.

11.
TNW,
The Bridge of San Luis Rey,
82.

12.
TNW, 1926 Journal, Entry 22, October 11, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.

13.
TNW,
The Bridge of San Luis Rey,
7.

14.
Ibid., 101.

15.
Ibid., 32.

16.
Ibid., 35.

17.
Ibid., 49.

18.
“All onlooker . . .”: TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, [1934?], TNW Collection, YCAL; “inhabitants of the world . . .”: TNW,
The Bridge of San Luis Rey,
112.

19.
TNW,
The Bridge of San Luis Rey,
83.

20.
Ibid., 18.

21.
Malcolm Goldstein,
The Art of Thornton Wilder
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 56.

22.
TNW,
The Bridge of San Luis Rey,
45–46.

23.
Ibid., 89.

24.
Ibid., 38.

25.
Ibid., 103.

26.
Ibid., 102–3.

27.
Ibid., 27–28.

28.
Ibid., 107.

29.
See Tappan Wilder, afterword to
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
(New York: HarperPerennial, 2004), 109–31, for a comprehensive discussion of the novel's sales and reviews, as well as sources.

30.
Clifton P. Fadiman, “The Quality of Grace,”
Nation
, December 14, 1927.

31.
Arnold Bennett, “A Strange Work on Art and a ‘Dazzling' Novel,”
Evening Standard
(London), November 14, 1927, 5.

32.
Vita Sackville-West, “New Novels: Realists and Romantics,”
Observer
(London), November 20, 1927, 8.

33.
Edwin Muir, “Fiction,”
Nation and Athenaeum
(London), December 10, 1927, 404.

34.
Edmund Wilson, “Thornton Wilder,”
New Republic
, August 8, 1928, 303–5.

35.
Louis Untermeyer, “A London Letter,”
Saturday Review of Literature,
May 12, 1928, 867.

36.
Hugh Walpole, “Geniuses Are Rare in A.D. 1928,”
Daily Express
(London)
,
August 22, 1928, 8.

37.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [January 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

38.
Ibid.

39.
Harry Salpeter, “Thornton Wilder: One Young Author Not Yet Bored with His Double-Barrelled Success,” unidentified clipping, 1928, Wilder Clipping File, TNW Collection, YCAL. This article differs from another Salpeter column on Wilder, “Why Is a Best Seller?”
Outlook,
April 18, 1928.

40.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [February 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL. (Handwritten on the letter, most likely by Isabella: “Written 23 Feb.”)

41.
TNW to ANW, [early 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

42.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [February 1928?]. TNW Collection, YCAL.

43.
Ibid.

44.
Ibid.

45.
Ibid.

46.
TNW to Cass Canfield, January 16, 1928, [carbon copy], TNW Collection, YCAL.

47.
TNW to Doug and Marie Townson, February 15, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

48.
TNW to Marie Townson, June 27, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

49.
Ibid.

50.
Lee Keedick to TNW, February 4, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

51.
TNW to Lee Keedick, February 9, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

52.
TNW to Dr. —Bridges, June 31, 1929, TNW Collection, YCAL.

53.
Lee Keedick to TNW, February 21, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

54.
TNW to Lee Keedick, February 23, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

55.
Ibid.

56.
Daniel Scott Lamont (1851–1905) was secretary of war during President Grover Cleveland's second term. After he left the post, Lamont became vice president of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The Lamont lecture was endowed by an anonymous donor in 1905. Lamont was not a Yale graduate; he attended Union College in Schenectady, New York.

57.
TNW to Lee Keedick, [1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

58.
TNW, “English Letters and Letter Writers,” in
American Characteristics,
152–53. In this volume Donald Gallup titled the lecture “On Reading the Great Letter Writers.”

59.
Ibid., 157.

60.
TNW to ANW, n.d. [ca January or February 1928], TNW Collection, YCAL.

61.
Gene Tunney to TNW, January 17, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

62.
Gene Tunney to TNW, January 30, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

63.
Gene Tunney to TNW, March 6, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

64.
TNW to F. Scott Fitzgerald, January 12, 1928,
SL
, 220–21.

65.
TNW to F. Scott Fitzgerald [February 1928?], in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Margaret M. Duggan, eds.,
Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald
(New York: Random House, 1979), 217.

66.
Wilson,
Shores of Light
, 376–77.

67.
Gilbert Harrison,
The Enthusiast: A Life of Thornton Wilder
(New Haven and New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1983), 109–10.

68.
Wilson,
Shores of Light,
380–81.

69.
F Scott Fitzgerald to TNW, [March 23, 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

70.
Zelda Fitzgerald to TNW, [March or April 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

71.
Carl C. Lohman, Secretary, Yale University, to TNW, March 14, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

72.
TNW to Carl C. Lohman, [March 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL. Incomplete rough draft of a letter, with strikeovers and revisions.

73.
William Lyon Phelps,
Autobiography with Letters
(New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 793. Among other topics, Tunney explained how Shakespeare's plays helped him relax and even helped him train and plan strategy for his fights.

74.
Gene Tunney to TNW, holograph letter to “Dear Thornt.,” [June 11?], 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

75.
“Tunney and Wilder Plunge into River as Canoe Upsets,”
New York Times,
June 29, 1928, 18.

76.
Quoted in Jay R. Tunney,
The Prizefighter and the Playwright: Gene Tunney and Bernard Shaw
(Richmond Hill, ONT, and Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, Ltd, 2010), 128. TNW recounted this incident to a reporter from the
Glasgow
(New Hampshire)
Bulletin.

77.
TNW to Gene Tunney, December 4, 1970, Private Collection. Tunney was quoting a line from Shakespeare's
Measure for Measure,
act 3, scene 1: “And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, in corporal sufferance finds a pang as great / As when a giant dies.”

78.
Gene Tunney, telegram to TNW, [July 1928?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

79.
Charlotte Wilder record, Appointment Bureau of Mount Holyoke College, January 21, 1930, Mount Holyoke College Library/Archives.

80.
TNW to Ernest Hemingway, June 20, 1928,
SL
, 227–28.

81.
TNW to F. Scott Fitzgerald, [February 1928], in Bruccoli and Duggan,
Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald,
217.

 

20: PREPARATION AND CIRCUMSTANCE (1930S)

1.
TNW to Lewis Baer, August 7, 1926, TNW Collection, YCAL.

2.
TNW, foreword to
The Angel That Troubled the Waters
, xv. This book is reprinted in its entirety in Tappan Wilder,
The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder
, vol. 2, 3–7, as well as in McClatchy,
Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater
, 651–54.

3.
The two plays printed in
Harper's Magazine
in October 1928 were
The Angel on the Ship
and
Mozart and the Gray Steward,
564–67.

4.
“Thornton Wilder's Three-Minute Plays,”
New York Times Book Review,
November 18, 1928.

5.
TNW to Bill Nichols, August 17, 1928, Nichols Papers, LC.

6.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, September 24, 1928, TNW Collection, YCAL.

7.
Tunney,
The Prizefighter and the Playwright
, 129.

8.
Isabel Wilder, Interview, “1928,” unpublished transcript, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers.

9.
See Tappan Wilder, afterword to
The Cabala and The Woman of Andros
, 229.

10.
Isabel Wilder Interview, November 9,1982, unpublished transcript, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged transcript.