B007RT1UH4 EBOK (36 page)

I’m tired of love [...]: a couplet from English writer Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953).

dono nobis pacem: Latin: “give us peace,” from the
Agnus Dei
portion of the Catholic Mass.

I have seen my head [...]: from Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

old play of Pirandello’s: probably
Naked
: see 7 April 1948 letter to Porter.

To Edith Gaddis

Sevilla

[5 May 1949]

dear lady,

this will not be a frantic letter, in spite of the way that catastrophes seem to have conspired to keep our correspondence from anything vaguely resembling correspondence, but instead a wild series of posting messages of distress back and forth across the sea.

And so first, these things; while I sit over a bucket in which soaks what looks to be enough linen for a caravanserai of many tents, bought in a recently faded flush of prosperity and soon, I trust, to be magic-ed into a suit by a clever local fellow; and wearing alpargatas, which are hempen-soled cloth sandals and the footwear of all of Spain’s poor people.

Let me say at the outset that I am well, and not in desperate straights at all. (I even go so far as to say that it would be difficult to be desperate in Andalucia.) [...]

Our correspondence should never be published.

I think it so possible that we have both spent much time saying, —Oh dear,
I
’m all right, but what a terrible time (s)he is having . . . that is the way I feel now. Because heaven knows I’m all right, but do feel that what may seem to you niggling at my end is driving you to despair and exasperation. You probably think me as obtuse as anyone could be, or (to use a nice coupling of words from Mr Eliot) exhibiting ‘deliberate hebetude’ . . .

Well. With that many words nearer King’s Park, let me try to at least end on a note of real correspondence.

On Sunday I am going down to Jerez, where they are having their spring fair, and hope to see a good bullfight there. Also I met here in Sevilla a Britisher who is with a big bodega, or distillery there (it is, you know, the source of the world’s sherry wine, sherry being a corruption of the word Jerez) and has told me if in town to stop and see him for a tour of the bodega, which means tasting the stuff, but in abundant quantity.

And then in a few weeks here there is a great annual procession to the shrine of some Virgin about 50miles away—the people get together in cars, on horseback, anything, and set out, taking three or four days on the way, all of which I understand is spent in singing, dancing, and such pagan pastimes. It is to a large extent a family affair; and I may go, to the town nearest the Virgin’s mountainous retreat by bus & thence a few miles a-foot . . . but what I should love to do is rent a little burro (they are not much bigger than Old Grunter) and set off on his back. Such a plan is greeted here with crys of amazement & then derision, 50miles burro-back being quite a chore apparently. It probably won’t come out at all—especially since they say there are no accommodations and little water betwen here and There (and the question of getting hold of a burro . . .) but—

I have a good letter from Bernie, who is weathering it all on some Italian island, in the transient company of Wystand Auden, Capote, and a few other emiment 9$-bills (including, to use his words, the ‘odious and idiotic Tenn. Williams’) . . . well Bernie is happy, he can have it. I’ll take the gypsies (though more usually they take me). Also word from Margaret Williams, who says she has turned into a Mediterranean vegetable, and as you know I don’t get much steam up for vegetables. And an excellent letter from Barney, whose descriptions of walks in Cornwall and Wales sound magnificent and edifying, not vegetable at all, and I believe we are getting nearer to working something out for the summer.

And aside from all that, life in Andulucia is quiet and good; I can manage fairly badly now in the language, and have made the acquaintance of a man of about 40 who has an eighth-grader’s light in his eyes when it comes to the Lust for Learning, English being for him the keys to the kingdom, and Spanish for me to more practical purposes, we spend occasional hours together teaching one and the other, he mightily serious about the whole project and so we do get somewhere.

And so; another letter finished—as if we could finish anything . . . another step toward wherever we are going. And I think now is a good time to recommend ‘patience’, after seeing how little good my wild dash to Madrid did. Let us move slowly and with sobre purpose?

The enclosure shows me with local friend named Eulalio, atop a mighty tower.

Love,

W.

‘deliberate hebetude’: from “East Coker,” section 2 (“hebetude” = lethargy, dullness).

King’s Park: the Kings Park Psychiatric Center on Long Island?

Capote: Truman Capote (1924–84), American novelist and journalist, had recently achieved fame with his novel
Other Voices, Other Rooms
(1948).

Eulalio: Eulalio Abril Morales; see Crystal Alberts’s “Mapping William Gaddis,” p. 172n25, in
William Gaddis, “The Last of Something,”
ed. Alberts, Christopher Leise, and Birger Vanwesenbeeck (McFarland, 2009). WG named a young monk after him in
R
(859), not to be confused with an earlier Brother Eulalio who castigated himself “for unchristian pride at having all the vowels in his name” (10).

WG with Eulalio Abril Morales, Madrid, 1949

To Helen Parker

[
Helen Parker (1920–93) was part of the same Greenwich Village scene in the 1940s that WG came to know after leaving Harvard. They reportedly fell in love in 1946 and discussed marriage, but events of that summer caused her to change her mind. An older woman with two children (named in the letter below), she had a history of literary relations: she had been engaged to Dos Passos, knew Hemingway in Cuba, and relieved Allen Ginsberg of his virginity. She was the basis for Esther in
R
, which infuriated her when she read the book upon publication. In a letter to me dated 2 February 1984—by which time she was Mrs. Charles Jeremiah—she said WG hid the manuscript from her, “A bit childish since he certainly intended to publish.”
]

c/o U.S. Consulate

Paseo de las Pelicias

Sevilla

18 May 49

Dear Helen.

In spite of what is apparently popular impression—judging from the lack of letters from the US—I am not at all difficult to reach by post. And just this morning I got back from Cádiz and found your letter here, forwarded from Madrid. Well. I really thought you had gone to Cuba? and so haven’t written—that was the last word I had from you, you know—a card-in-an-envelop saying
Cuba
. And so haven’t sent you even so much as a picture postal. And I am sorry you didn’t go, if you wanted to go—though I don’t see how Cuba could last; except perhaps for Mr. Hemingway.

As for Spain—it has only become Spain since I got out of Madrid a couple of months ago. My winter there was as low as anybody’s anywhere—with little company but Mr. Eliot—who isn’t disposed to cheer one up. Then in March I went briefly to a Franciscan monastery: and though I left quite unbeatified, somehow since then everything has come along well. Not everything of course—but nearer so than it has ever been my experience.

Right now, for instance—I have just returned with less than 1¢ worth of Spanish money in my pocket. But damn it in a place like Sevilla I can’t care—into a favourite bar (there are many) where the friendly proprietor has delivered to me some fine glasses of Jerez wine—and back to my pension, where I will be fed and bedded until the sun comes up. Have encountered a young engineer, “of fine family,” who is going to the US soon to study & wants some English lessons—there a small source of income—and so it goes.

And so for immediacies I couldn’t care less somehow—such as sitting over a bucket full of linen (it is soaking—looks enough for a circus tent) which I bought in better days, and now haven’t the money to have a suit made—though with another glass or two of Jerez could make it myself; my only troubles being over work, which has lagged badly recently—though I could hardly tell where the days have gone. I don’t know—I am almost content for the first time in my life. Though heaven knows, it won’t last.

Did you ever meet Barney Emmart? He is studying at London University now—and we have been exchanging prospective plans for summer; because he is as interested in—and tremendously better posted on—the things that have been occupying me recently—most epitomized in the book of Robert Graves,
The White Goddess
, which has really got me going. And so some possibility that I go to England, if I can manage, and spend some time walking the Druid country. I don’t know yet about Jake—he and I are still in the toils of mails. Though he sounds splendidly settled with Nance. And a letter from Bernie, on some Italian island with Auden, Capote, and an assortment of 9$-bills—I still want to see and talk with Bernie, old friend—but not at that price ——And a chance that next winter I may go to Africa to work (not act) for a Spanish motion-picture company. A chance.

And if all this sounds ideal—it isn’t: but is the nearest I have known on this earth. Largely perhaps because it is so long since I have seen anyone I know—or had opportunity to speak my language—and so hopes mount up, again—for what will be a real disillusion if it comes. And the price paid in loneliness. And I suppose one day the bullfights will wear out, and the wine, and the usual shrug of casual temptations—and so I follow this hunger now.

There will be time. Life is very long.—I shall write better soon; meanwhile love to you, and Bruce, and Tommy—and do write me again, lengthier, about the things I only find hinted in your letter.

W