Steinbeck (40 page)

I'm trying to shake the first gloom. There's no good in being sad. I must be careful about not going out with any women until after the settlement is signed. Have been singularly unguilty in this and I don't want to spoil it now. You probably know about our crazy divorce laws. They don't make any sense.

Now it is the next day and this is a dawdling letter. Today my son Thom visited me and in the afternoon we went toy shopping and it was fine. I shall miss him very much because now he is becoming good company. Am more cheerful today. Went to look at rehearsals of a new musical comedy. Did some work and went out to dinner with a very pretty girl. And found I could be interested—which is fine. I'm fairly definitely decided on California now. I think it will be good. Life Magazine has a large coverage in pictures of Sweden in midsummer and it reminded me so of the summer—long ago—when Carol and I were there.

And then I remembered that Carol was always angry at me too. I think now I will try to have no more wives. I'm not good for them and they are not good for me. If I marry again I will be really asking for trouble. The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with. We'll yet have some fun with our lives. I'm just now beginning to believe that for the first time in many months—even years. It's like a little tingle up the spine. I think I didn't know how heavy the weight was. And the possibility of its being lifted is just now apparent.

There's the end of a long dull letter.

Affectionately,
John

[New York]
August 22, 1948

Dear Toby:

No answer from you yet and there is no reason for writing this except that for the first time in years I have time for writing letters and for thinking and for reading. It is rather remarkable. I had almost forgotten. My plans haven't changed. I'll call you when I get in.

I am more relaxed than I have been in a very long time. I've been fighting off this separation for a long time, holding it back with all my strength. And now that I have lost—I have the first sense of rest for a very long time. Even some energy and some fierceness coming back. That is all to the good I think. Maybe a new start. I must admit I am a little along into middle age for new starts but I don't feel so. It will be good to be absolutely alone for a while. I'll get things sorted out and back to sources again.

Maybe you and I will have some good times again. There's no reason why not. This city has never been good for me. I have been doing a routine that is foreign to me. That doesn't mean I won't come back and enjoy it but I won't be living here. I think I won't live anywhere—really. You know six months has usually been the limit before I get restless. And now there is no reason why I shouldn't move when I get restless. And I darn well will.

I imagine the separation agreement will be signed next week. Gwyn will get most everything of course. And I will be pretty broke for a while but in a few years I imagine I can build up some kind of reserve again. And I really do not need much money. It has only done bad things for me. My tastes have not become more complicated than they were. Transportation, food, shelter and sex. And all of them can be very simple.

Of course you know I am just writing to see the ink run out. Except for work I am going to live from day to day if I can. And I think I can. There isn't any other way for me.

I'll be seeing you.

John

[New York]
[August 27, 1948]

Dear Toby:

Yesterday we signed the separation agreement and as usual my wife gets about everything I have. My nerves are pretty good. In the thick of this they got pretty bad. We will think quite a bit about this Fallen Leaf [at Lake Tahoe] business. It sounds mighty good. Can very possibly do it.

Neale, my fine man, is driving my car out. He will get there about the 11th. He is a good man and will keep me fed and washed and clean. I've had him quite a long time. Ex-navy C.P.O., colored and very intelligent, excellent driver, cook, valet and damn good friend. He will stay with me as long as he wants to.

There is only one thing that makes Gwyn unhappy. She has nothing to blame me for so she can feel superior. If I were any kind of gentleman I would give her some public thing to hate so she could feel justified in doing what she has done. I'm son of a bitch enough not to do it.

I am very anxious to get to the cool coast. This god damned climate drives me crazy. The utter insanity of living in a place like this doesn't occur to the 9,000,000 people who inhabit New York. Except for visits I think I shall not be here any more as a resident. But one should do everything I guess. And I've done nearly everything except contentment. I'm really looking forward to quiet and some peace. I want to walk some, particularly at night.

So long. See you soon.

John

Steinbeck
“If one finds it - there is no need for words.”

1948
Elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters. Divorced from Gwyndolyn Steinbeck.

 

Film of
The Red Pony
released. Returned to the East Coast.

Pacific Grove
[September 1948]

Dear Pat—

The thing makes a full circle with 20 years inside of it. Amazing, isn't it? And what wonderful years and sad ending ones. I am back in the little house. It hasn't changed and I wonder how much I have. For two days I have been cutting the lower limbs off the pine trees to let some light into the garden so that I can raise some flowers. Lots of red geraniums and fuchsias. The fireplace still bums. I will be painting the house for a long time I guess. And all of it seems good.

There are moments of panic but those are natural I suppose. And then sometimes it seems to me that nothing whatever has happened. As though it was the time even before CaroL Tonight the damp fog is down and you can feel it on your face. I can hear the bell buoy off the point. The only proof of course will be whether I can work—whether there is any life in me. I think there is but that doesn't mean anything until it gets rolling. Women I will have to have of course, only I wonder if I have learned to keep them in their place. They have a way of sprawling all over and that I can't have any more. I haven't enough time and I couldn't take another sequence like the last two.

Anyway this is just a note to tell you I'm in a new shell or an old one, like a hermit crab and the ink is now out of two of my pens and this is the last one. I have no more ink in the house tonight. I'll keep you posted.

Affectionately
(and write to me)
John

Pacific Grove
September 12 [1948]

Dear Pat:

It is night and the low fog is down and the buoy is bellowing off the reef and it is very fine. I have a good fire going and no one is likely to come over tonight. I'm getting rested and working hard outside too. This whole place is a mess but in two weeks you won't know it. Garden will be cleaned and replanted and the house will be painted inside and out. And during that time I do not intend to touch a pen to manuscript. My hands are getting calluses already. I don't know many people here any more and that is a good thing. It will be more time for working and reading. Oddly enough I do not feel lonely at all yet. I know I will soon enough. I know it will come like little fingers of ice but not so far except once or twice a kind of blind panic. However, that is perfectly natural and would happen to anyone.

This house is also almost completely without furniture. Various non-rent paying tenants have seen to that. I don't need very much but some I guess I must have. I have a bed (new) my old work chairs and a card table to write on and that is all I actually need. It will cost something to paint this house but that will be all right too. I have to buy everything for it—even pots and pans and knives and forks but Wool-worth still lives, thank God. I remember how Carol used to be afraid I would get loose in Woolworth's with five hot dollars in my pocket. It was a nightmare thought to her. She never got used to it.

This garden needs peat moss and fertilizer and needs it badly and it is going to get it too. It is going to be a very pretty garden if I can make it so. It is getting late now. I've kind of nodded away the evening. And I have to get up early tomorrow because then the work starts. But I wanted to get a note off to you.

bye
John

Pacific Grove
September 19, 1948

Dear Bo:

I am sorry I have not answered your two letters before. This is the little town I came out of and it is very good to be back in it. The ocean is only two hundred yards away and it is very fine. Even though the house is torn up with repairs and paint I have a sense of peace here and the horrors of the last few years seem (for the moment at least) remote. How long it will last I do not know, but it is like a strong curative medicine now. I have trimmed the trees and replanted the garden and the house is to be repainted inside and out and a new matting laid down. Very good. I think maybe like your place in the south of Sweden. I know I have to go back to Mexico in a little over a month but it will be here that I will return.

One of the best things is being alone. I had almost forgotten how nice that can be. And there is a thing of fixing over a house, not for someone else but for myself. I haven't done that since before I married Carol. There is almost an aching selfishness about that. I even have a small sense of sin about it. The picture placed is the one I want. The colors are the ones I want, the chairs are for me to be comfortable. I eat at any time of day or night and never chicken which I detest and learned to eat because both of my wives liked it. When my pants are hot, I go out and get a girl
when
I want her and if that one is not available another one is. This may seem sad to you that I discover such things as though they were new in the world but so they seem to me.

There will be only one test of this and that is whether any good work comes out of it. I am not going to touch paper for several weeks yet. I want this damp sea fog to get deeply into me and the fine wind over the kelp on the rocks. It is only now after a rest that I see how I have been used but it is all right now that it is over. I don't care if I never have any money again. It didn't ever give me any peace or satisfaction. And I need very little here.

But it will all boil down to work. If I can write again then I can be happy again. I know I will put off doing it for fear it has all been drained out of me, although I don't for a moment believe that. Indeed, I feel the stirring of some power.

This is going to be my home from now on. I do not mean I will not go away from it because I know my restlessness, but there has to be a seed-center, an anlage from which other things grow. It is a little shingled house of three rooms with a little rock garden. It has very little money value and that is the way I want to keep it.

Gwyn has gone to Reno to get a divorce (her freedom she calls it). She gets everything because I don't want anything. I can have the children in the summers and I do want them. And I think I will get them. She will have worked out a perfect justification. She will never be to blame for anything in her life. I think I knew this all along but I would not let myself know it. Only now do I permit it to be seen. This is a long letter, completely taken up with myself. I will write another soon which will not be so egocentric. But I am a little amazed at myself and I am trying to set it down. I will write soon and do you also.
I would love to see your new windows. And I will before too long.

Affectionately,
John

[Pacific Grove]
[September 19, 1948]

Dear Pat:

You are right—I do get the horrors every now and then. Comes on like a cold wind. There it is, just a matter of weathering it. Alcohol doesn't help that a bit. I usually go into the garden and work hard.

At that moment Ritch and Tal Lovejoy came in for a cup of coffee and then I watered the garden and here it is dusk. A very quiet Sunday and I've enjoyed it. My hands are literally tired from moving rocks. And it is a fine feeling.

It has been one of the dark days that I like very well—overcast and almost cold except that flowers like it and seem to be on fire in such a light. I think flowers' colors are brighter here than any place on earth and I don't know whether it is the light that makes them seem so or whether they really are.