matter of fact, things have turned out much better than i ever could have expected. she is very nice and seems to know everything and everybody. and last evening i had dinner with her and Mr Olsen. this may sound like i am getting like Jan and preparing to run off with the Tom show; it is not a Tom show (though i did see it and was not at all as much intrigued as hellzapoppin or sons o fun) and the idea of going backstage at Minskys or Barnum and Baileys. something very funny and flattering — my being prex of the Lampoon seems to carry some weight! and the stage manager etc are are especially nice to me. the whole thing is pretty new and eye opening.
i finally put the Christmas issue of Lampoon together at 9 this morning — that is certainly a load off. but in light of recent developments it looks like it’s worth the work.
i have only got one mark this term so far, and it was B plus, and have two papers to do this week. then Christmas. Jean expects to come down here right after Christmas, but there are no plans, except that i get out the 22nd.
must make an eleven oclock class.
Love,
B
PS — Jean ‘knows about’ Miss Henderson and is quite approving about it, if that has been troubling you.
Jan: WG’s uncle Jan Williams (1884–1981), a clarinetist who began playing with the John Philips Sousa Band when still a teenager, and eventually played for the New York Symphony and other orchestras. He became musical director of the Ernest Williams School of Music in Brooklyn, NY, in 1947, founded by his brother (1881–1947), a cornetist.
Tom show: a blackface minstrel revue, based loosely on Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
sons o fun: another Olsen/Johnson revue (1941–43).
Minskys: notorious burlesque show in New York City.
To Edith Gaddis
[In January 1945, after an incident involving the Cambridge police (causing a public disturbance while drunk), WG was asked to leave Harvard. He returned to New York and was hired by the New Yorker as a fact-checker, where he worked from late February 1945 to April 1946. In the summer of 1945 he went on vacation to Canada.]
Mount Royal Hotel
Montreal, 2, P.Q.
[1 August 1945]
Dear Mother—
Frankly the more I move along the more I find that every city is quite like the last one. Perhaps there are sights in Montreal which I have missed (I have not visited the Wax Museum). But I feel little like gaping at anything.
At any rate tonight the boat leaves for Quebec and I expect to be on it.
Jacob did not arrive — and though I felt he might not when he did not show up I found myself vaguely disappointed. Really, in the little kicking about I have done I think I have had enough of wandering around cities alone. And shall probably be home before very long—
Love
Bill
Jacob: Jake Bean (1924–92), a Harvard friend who later became a connoisseur of Italian and French drawings; he was the curator of drawings at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for thirty-one years.
To Edith Gaddis
Hotel Louis XIV
3 Place Royale
Quebec
[4 August 1945]
Dear Mother—
Coincident with yr. letter came news from Beth that Je — plans to be married as soon as possible, to this fellow.
Oh — the thoughts that run through you as you read this — they are similar to mine, I know. Consequently I shall try to say little.
Yes, it is very difficult, but there is finality, and therefore something on which to build. I have nothing more to add — I shall leave here soon and see you the earlier part of the week, both of us a little stronger people, I think.
Again thanks, and love
B
To Edith Gaddis
[Final surviving page of undated letter on New Yorker stationery.]
The New Yorker
No. 25 West 43rd Street
[late 1945 or 1946]
[…] received notice from draft board concerning occupational reclassification[.] needless to say at this point in my career I am rather terrified — how I hate to be manipulated.
meanwhile job goes awfully well — worked until 8 tonight
B
2. The Recognitions, 1947–1955
To Edith Gaddis
[In the spring of 1947, WG left New York for several years of traveling as he worked on The Recognitions, which began as an early effort entitled Blague. He began by heading south for Mexico in a Cord convertible with a friend named Bill Davison.]
New Orleans, Louisiana
[6 March 1947]
dear Mother—
after much fortune and misfortune we are off to Mexico, I hope this afternoon. I trust that you got my wire, so that when we reach Laredo I shall have birth certificate and be able to get visa. It must be a student’s visa, however, which disclaims any attentions on my part to get a job while there, since they have a sort of protective immigration. The point being that it will take a little while after I get to Mexico City to arrange through any contacts I may have to get a job, a little to one side of authority, as it were. I hope that you will be able to send me some money there — can you conveniently? We are leaving here with next to nothing, as you may imagine, and are taking on a passenger, the fellow who has been our host, and who I gather will be able to finance a good part of the trip from here on. You may gather from my letters the state that things have been in. But I just feel that once we get to Mexico city, and if you can send me some money there, that things will start to shape up well. The address is c/o Wells Fargo Express Company, Mexico D. F., Mexico, and to be marked Please Hold.
Also to add a touch of trouble, my leather suitcase stolen from the car last night, therewith all of my shirts, neckties, and all of the work I was taking with me. As for the work, it is too bad, but perhaps for the best since I plan to start rather freshly with writing when I get down there, and now will not have these things which I have written over the last year or two to distract me. The business of the shirts and ties, of course — infuriating. and the bag.
I want of course to write you a real letter, describing the pleasant parts of the trip, and what this city is like — certainly how much you would like it. But one minute we are to stay; the next, to leave; the next, to leave with a passenger. And now suddenly when it looks like we may get off in about an hour things are rather flurried. Health, and such things that may be worrying you, are all all right.
My love,
W
To Edith Gaddis
Rhodes Apartment Hotel
611 La Branch St.
Houston, Texas
9 March 1947
dear Mother—
Here we are, our plans made for us this time by a pretty ghastly breakdown of the car. and so I can take the opportunity to write you rather more of a letter than I have been able to manage in some time. And perhaps modify a few things which have perhaps troubled you; coming as they have in peacemeal sentences as bulletins on a consistent state of calamity.
Still I know what you are feeling under it alclass="underline" even if there are occasional concerns (I imagine that the story of the suitcase gave you rather a turn) it is much better because things are happening, and moving, and alive, and not in one corner of Greenwich Vill. — and as long as I am eating and sleeping & everything is all right. Good. I feel just that way.