B007RT1UH4 EBOK (39 page)

To Edith Gaddis

Paris

14 september 49

dear Mother.

First things first. sic, the Loan, & Mr Haygood. I didn’t mean, as I fear you interpreted, that I was trying to squeeze something out of Bill Haygood in the way of a private penny. No. I meant that the United States (hats off!) aid loan to Spain didn’t go through. If it had, I was hoping to be able to manage something in the way of a job in Madrid, where I’d very much like to live, work, think, marry, drink, what-have-you. The loan didn’t go through. That is because Spain is Fascist, but Italy, Germany, and Greece are not. That is because a lot of things. I shan’t start political opinions here. Oh dear no. Suffice to say it is very difficult to get a job in Europe unless you have a permit, which is impossible to get—unless you work for a US gov’t agency. So . . . nothing in Spain. Paris? well . . . I have spent the morning writing two radio scripts, one about soybeans and one about a mechanical brain, later I’m going to write one on cosmic rays, to try to sell to a US CULTURAL agency here (UNESCO) (. . . for heaven’s sake don’t tell my mother . . . She thinks I’m playing the piano in a whore-house . . .) I don’t know how it will come out, but with the present prospect of plans &c work is necessary. (No, don’t mention this radio-script business; I’ll tell you if it works out, or becomes mentionable).

What I should say, is that (1) I got the regular remittance (2) I also got a pair of shoes. They are French, I don’t dare wear them in the rain and it’s raining today so I’ve not gone out, they cost about 10$ even so I believe they’re made of paper, but nice paper . . .

You will certainly hear of any developments. The one in prospect now involves that perennial miasma, the notion of marriage. For that I think more than enough money to outfit a Left-Bank Bohemian set-up is called for—I’ve pretty well got over the idea that not-enough-to-eat and being bitten at night is Romantic. —Hence my passing interest in Soybeans and Mechanical Brains. Of course this isn’t a new idea, as you must know, though I guess the first time I’ve managed to mention it in a letter. No; it’s really that I want to get some kind of working in line before I actually try to marry this Miss Margaret, who feels rather the same way. This talk could go on for pages without saying more. But meanwhile, how welcome the remittance, & the extras! Hotel & apartment life here is hard to get & expensive, now looking for some sort of an apartment because it’s a nicer & better life, one can eat better cooking in, & cheaper, and also get some work done—which I haven’t in some time.

When you say things for you have been ‘hectic’, I trust you mean happily so? That’s the way I usually see you being hectic. What do you mean. Dinners at the Versailles & Passy? Or the water-line between the pink house & the studio exploding? Oh dear.

Things are hectic here. I think we all ought to enter Trappist monasteries.

with all love,

W

don’t tell my mother: cf. the old self-deprecating advertising joke: “Don’t tell my mother I work in an advertising agency—she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.”

the Versailles & Passy: French restaurants in Manhattan.

To Ida Williams Way

[Siena, Italy]

[29 December 1949]

Dear Granga—I hope you and mother have had as wonderful a holiday as we have. Your gift helped make possible a splendid trip to northern Italy in a friend’s car, and though a very brief trip it’s most exciting and rewarding, and cities like Sienna beautiful. I hope the Christmas envelop I sent got to you in time, and that Florida is as nice as you had hoped it would be.

with love,

Bill

To Edith Gaddis

[
Few letters by WG survive from the first half of 1950, and those few concern a trip Mrs. Gaddis made to France in April, and a short visit they both made to London. WG was still unemployed, still involved with Margaret Williams (though she left for Florence in May). In a letter to his mother postmarked 27 May 1950, WG requested a copy of a new book entitled
Friar Felix at Large
, an account by medievalist H. F. M. Prescott of a pilgrimage by Friar Felix Fabri to the Holy Land in the 1480s. Many of the letters that follow concern an essay on the player piano WG wrote in 1946–47 entitled “You’re a Dog-gone Daisy Girl—Presto” intended for the
New Yorker
, which rejected it; a short section was published as “‘Stop Player. Joke No. 4’” in the July 1951 issue of the
Atlantic Monthly
(pp. 92–93; rpt. in
RSP
2–5). For more on WG’s lifelong obsession with this topic, see
RSP
6–13, 141–72, and my essay “The Secret History of
Agapé Agape
” in
Paper Empire
:
William Gaddis and the World System
, ed. Joseph Tabbi and Rone Shavers (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007), 256–66.
]

Paris

Monday, 29 May 1950

dear Mother.

I’ve been thinking about that piece I wrote on the Player Piano. It’s in Massapequa, and I’d like to have it again to go over and see whether, three years later, I’m sufficiently improved to make a saleable piece of it. I’d appreciate it if you could send it over, the quickest way possible. You may have difficulty, since it’s probably together with many other papers and notes, and all I want is the one finished copy (should run about 16 pages, if there are two, both looking finished but one longer please send the long one, 18 pages possibly). If there’s doubt about it when you look, better to write me with questions before sending anything. And if, in going through my papers there, you come across a picture of the Duke of Windsor in a sporty jacket, could you send it too? It’s the picture of the jacket I want.

Paris continues to witness my battles with Unesco and the ECA, though I trust that within 3 weeks—before Margaret returns—I’ll have figured out whether it will be worthwhile spending the summer here or not.

And Massapequa? How often I think of it, and would love to spend a part of the summer in that large cool room, that seems to me to have so many of my thoughts waiting for me in the high corners and the dark and heavy woodwork.

I hope you’ve started going swimming, and that the weather is as good there as here. It must be strange and sad to have no summer vacation to look forward to, but then, it [her European trip] was worth it wasn’t it?

with love,

W.

ECA: the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, a U.S. government agency.

To Edith Gaddis

Forte-dei-Marmi, Italy

24 June 1950

dear Mother

Finally, after what seems a great long time—and it is really—I write you sitting at a table near the sea, my skin red and smarting from the sun which I’ve been out in most of the day.

I think I’ve done about what you did in the spring—just a sudden blow-up, and leaving the city which everyone else considers the most wonderful place to be, but which—in my case—was driving me insane, after a year of nothing but that “work” I’d been doing, and a couple of “vacations” which were pretty hectic in themselves.

Certainly there is nothing in the world like the beach and the sun, and thank God it is as good and resting as I’d remembered. My trip was quite as unsound financially as could be, too, and has cost more than I’d thought it would, as these things always do. And I left Paris having done some work, but can not tell when it will pay, and will probably return as broke as I’ve ever been, and not with money waiting there for me as I’d planned. But even so, I’m glad I did it. I had really become quite unhealthy, not sleeping &c., and the same tiresome problems over and over again—with all the city frustrations of Paris life, Barney, and getting so I never wanted to see the inside of that “apartment” again. I got to Florence to find Margaret in an almost similar state of exhaustion, and I think that, together with a case of something almost like influenza she was developing, another week of it, and the train back to Paris, would have been too much—since she’d made such a small salary at the conference she’d had to spend it all simply to live. I had no intention, when I sent to the bank in New York for 100$, that I’d use it this way. But suddenly I had it, and thank heavens I did come down. It is maddening to think that my great savings account in New York is being cut down so, but when I know what condition I was in a week ago I know it’s worth it, even though I expect to return to Paris with 5$, and difficult because Unesco now only pays when they use a piece, not when they accept it, as before.

Mainly though I want to tell you about plans that Margaret and I are trying to make. You will see why I say
trying
, because they depend on so many things. She feels she must go home and see her family and talk with them before marrying, and since it’s so important to her I guess it’s the best thing. And so she hopes to come back to the United States in August. I shall stay in France, trying again to work and put some money aside, and then in September go to England. We would meet there, she sailing in September for England, and we would get married in London toward the end of September, then come back to Paris together. If there is a job in Paris, for which I’ll be looking this summer, we’d stay here. And if not, go away for 6 or 8 months, live on the rent money while I went back to my writing, which I haven’t had opportunity to touch for just a year now.

Well. You can see how many things may not work out. First it may not be possible for Margaret to get a boat back to New York in August, with so much tourist travel, and that would throw things off quite badly. Then, heaven knows how much money I’ll have by September, whether enough to manage the marriage and all that goes with it in London—though they make it so expensive for foreigners in France, and Spain and Italy are firmly Catholic, that StMartins-in-the-Fields sounds quite sensible, if possible. In light of all this, my trip to Italy hasn’t been very sensible really—but on the score of physical and mental health I believe it has.

That is quite a plan for us—but anyhow, at last, and for the first time, we do have a plan, a definite one which we must try to work out. Of course I should love to come home with Margaret—I’d love a month in Massapequa late this summer, but it seems too impractical—much more sensible for me to stay in France and try to prepare things, especially in the way of money. But I do hope she can go back in August, see her family, and visit you in Massapequa—how wonderful that would be. And then return to find me with things arranged for our marriage. So much depends on the possibilities of getting a boat ticket that I don’t dare really plan on all this. But you see how it stands now, and I know you’ll be glad to feel that we finally are trying to make definite plans, and not just bumbling along, year after year.