Pages from a Cold Island (23 page)

Wilson
’
s lightly sardonic view of awards and grants was consistent with his Auden letter, a view that must appear blasphemous to most writers with their scrambling and backbiting to get anywhe
re near A Prize: unless the com
pensation was commensurate with the amount of work expended Wilson consid
ered awards little more than pa
tronizing pats on the back, and even if the remuneration were substantial he was amused and touched by the
“
prizelonging
”
he saw among his peers and obviously viewed it as a facetious waste of energies that might better be put to another
“
piece of work.
”
On being awarded President John F. Kennedy
’
s Freedom Medal in 1963 he wrote this two-sentence missive (and one cannot conceive another writer in America answering in the same way, certainly not one in trouble with the IRS) to the President of the United States:

“
I am of course extremely appreciative of the award of the Freedom Medal. I am sorry that I shall be in Europe in September so that I shall not be able to be present at the ceremony.
”

Wilson was apparently happily unaware that without him there could be no ceremony. As a result President Kennedy sent an envoy to Italy and presented Wilson the award at our embassy in Rome. In 1966 a committee of the National Book Awards gave him $5,000 and a National Medal for Literature for his
“
total contribution to American Literature,
”
but he did not attend the ceremony (where some of his peers were undoubtedly calling
“
press con
ferences
”
to damn the other judges
’
choices) and the com
mittee was forced to send the check and the medal to the Fort Schuyler Club in Utica where with food and wine he accepted them among his friends and relatives, including Mary Pcolar and his daughter Rosalind. Wilson received awards from both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters but in
Upstate
he seemed vagu
e as to what precisely these in
stitutions were. In 1968 h
e received from the Aspen Insti
tute of Humanistic Studies the $30,000 Aspen Award.

Because the altitude of Aspen was eight thousand feet and Wilson
’
s doctor deemed the thin air risky for Wilson
’
s heart, and because the $30,000 was tax-free (a fact which would not go unremarked in Wilson
’
s acceptance speech), Wilson could not go to Aspen but did agree to a small dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City where, by William A. Stevenson, President of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, the award was given to Wilson as a
“
man of profound erudition
”
who
“
has effectively demon
strated that for a humanist, literature is an art as well as a medium for the uplift of mankind.
”

Novelist-historian Paul Horgan was present at the ceremony and tells me that
“
attached to it were details of such hilarity and temperament, fumble and grumble
”
that he wishes he could tell me about it, but that he one day plans to put it down in his own inimitable way. Mr. Horgan spoke at the ceremony. Citing Wilson
’
s
“
hatred of humbug,
”
and quoting the
“
terrible Samuel Johnson
”
to the effect that the
“
reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.
”
Mr. Horgan, happily, and save for remarking a lifelong addiction to Wilson
’
s books, chose not to embarrass Wilson with maudlin or fatuous praise and instead related his personal relationship with Wilson. In the Sixties Mr. Horgan had left his beloved New Mexico and come East to be Director
of the Center for Advanced Stud
ies at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, where one of his chores was luring the distinguished men and women who would come there as yearly Fellows. Mr. Horgan immediately, and with that trepidation inspired by the reputation
“
the world
’
s great have for being personally formidable,
”
set out to
“
ensnare
”
Wilson and was unsettled
b
y the
“
almost dream-like ease
”
with which he managed it, the agreement being struck over drinks and dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Wilson one Sunday evening at the Ritz in Boston.

During Wilson
’
s year in Middletown the other Fellows remarked his extreme professionalism (he was at his desk all day every day) and also his courtesy, warmth, humor and gaiety—Wilson occasionally entertaining his peers with his much-remarked abilities as a prestidigitator with playing cards. On completing his day at his desk, Wilson took to drinking in a
“
crummy spot
”
on Middletown
’
s Main Street, where he sat at a
“
banquette
”
behind the cash register and where he often invited his colleagues to join him at what he had promptly dubbed
“
The Ritz Bar.
”

In President Stevenson
’
s remarks I recognize possible sources of
“
fumble and grumble.
”
I don
’
t know the extent of Mr. Stevenson
’
s intimacy with Wilson but he twice refers to him as
“
Bunny,
”
a sobriquet I
’
ve read, and also have had verified by Mary Pcolar, Wilson brooked from nobody save long-time intimates and such long-ago friends as F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Peal
e Bishop, a nickname whose deri
vation is even uncertain, one story having it that it was given him by his mother because of his early interest in magic (pulling bunnies out of hats?), another that he picked it up at the Hill Prep School in his teens, and a third that it was acquired at Princeton; a fourth version, no doubt apocryphal, was that it made humorous and indecorous reference to his youthful sexual capacities. Too, unless the program contains a typographical error, Mr. Stevenson calls Wilson
’
s
A Piece of
My Mind
, to me the most confes
sional of all his works, and in which Wilson documents his father
’
s pathological chr
onic depressiveness and even im
plies that had his father not had the stone house to which he could retreat, and to which later in his life Wilson would also
“
retreat,
”
his father wouldn
’
t have endured as long as he did—Mr. Stevenson calls this book
Piece of Mind
, which save for the spelling might have been something written by Doctor Norman Vincent Peale.

In his acceptance speech Wilson is wonderfully brief and apposite to what precisely this
“
humanist
”
has been
“
up to
”
with his life. He admits right off to being
“
no good at making speeches of any kind.
”
Hardly pausing for breath, he says that he is
“
immensely gratified that not a penny of the money that this Institute is awarding me will have to be contributed to the eight billion nine hundred million which are going for this horrible war
”
—Vietnam, of course. Wil
son then says, as he has said elsewhere, that, despite readers who insist Wilson
’
s main influence was Sainte-Beuve, it was Taine
’
s
History of English Literature
, which as a mere boy of
“
about fifteen
”
he read for the first time in H. van Laun
’
s translation.
“
He [Taine
] had created the creators them
selves as characters in a larger drama of cultural and social history, and writing about literature, for me, has always meant narrative and drama as well as the discussion of comparative values.
”
Certainly no sentence could more succinctly, forcibly or subtly sum up Wilson
’
s two undis
puted classics,
To the Finland Station
and
Patriotic Gore
.

Wilson never won a Pulitzer, he never won an NBA for any single volume, he never won the Nobel (an award given to Sinclair Lewis and Pearl Buck!), and though for the amounts of money accompanying the latter he surely would have made the trip to Stockholm, it is also certain he never fretted about not having received it. In
Upstate
he touchingly relates that the last time he saw his friend James Thurber at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City, Thurber had become
“
haunted
”
by the Nobel Prize; and with the exiled Russian novelist Aldanov, Wilson felt he could see the Nobel hovering before Aldanov
’
s eyes
“
as if it were the Holy Grail.
”
And Wilson leaves us no doubt as to his droll contempt for the fatuousness of this kind of yearning. Wilson took his philosophy of awards from the aging sculptor who in his seventies suddenly found himself ac claimed and being rewarded accordingly.

When asked to account for this abrupt acclaim the old sculptor said,
“
The thing is to outlive the sons of bitches.
”

On Monday Wilson was returning to Wellfleet. His daughter Rosalind was driving him first to Northampton, Massachusetts, and he was looking forward to spending a few hours with his friend Helen Muchnic, the distinguished critic of Russian literature. Mrs. Wilson was meeting him there, driving him on to the Cape, and he was returning to Talcottville later in the summer. Upon his return he planned to have Mary drive him to Potsdam to visit some academic friends who were to be at the State University College there. When Mary finished the Auden letter and assured herself she needn
’
t prepare Wilson
’
s
“
hamburger steak
”
(Rosalind was coming to fix it), Wilson and Mary made their last goodbyes. Wilson meant to tell Mary the date he
’
d return for his trip to Potsdam but the date eluded him. He hesitated for a long time before adding
“
until
”
to the only words that Mary would afterwards remember:

“
I shan
’
t see you again
…
”

Nothing of Edmund Wilson save his ashes ever got back to Cape Cod. He died
in the stone house of his moth
er
’
s forebears a few minutes past six-thirty on the morning he was slated to return. Sunday he
’
d spent a happy day with his Lyons Falls friend,
Glyn Morris, an ordained Presby
terian minister who hadn
’
t for years practiced his calling, having forsaken it for a federal job bringing culture to the hinterlands. They had gone on a long drive through the Lewis County countryside Wilson so loved; they had joked and they had laughed. The following morning Wilson had wakened just before six and had just been asked by Mrs. Stabb whether he first wanted his bed bath or his breakfast when he began to convulse. By phone Mrs. Stabb summoned Rosalind from down the street.
“
Your father is having a bad spell, come over.
”
When Rosalind arrived in her night clothes, Wilson was in his chair (ready to do
“
a piece of work
”
?) and Mrs. Stabb was administering him oxygen from one of the green bottles. Rosalind then called Dr. Smith in Boonville. Wilson was unconscious when Dr. Smith arrived just before six-t
hirty and he never regained con
sciousness.

At three Mrs. Wilson arrived from Cape Cod. As Wilson had specified in his will, a brief service was held at six that evening. Only a few
Talcottville friends and neigh
bors were invited, his dentist Ned Miller and his wife Anne, his nurse Mrs. Stabb and her husband, his housekeeper Mable Hutchins and her daughter Beverly, Mary and George Pcolar, and a few others. The only
“
literary
”
figure present was the historical novelist and neighbor Walter D. Edmonds, accompanied by Mrs. Edmonds. A few minutes past six Rosalind Baker Wilson opened the doors to the
“
long room
”
and said to the mourners: