Steinbeck (58 page)

Love to all,
John

Hotel Lancaster
Paris
May 15, 1954

Dear Elizabeth:

We got in yesterday after six days of driving and it was good to get here. But the trip was fine, the car goes magnificently and the countryside is all green and gold and red poppies. We drove with the top down and the rains parted and we got only about three drops all the way. In Blois where we stayed overnight I seem to have got a mild sun stroke with a little fever. You should see our faces, just burned to a crisp. My nose has peeled four times without interval. But it was fine and for once even the driver was able to see the country.

This morning your letter came and we were very glad to get it. It seemed to us that we were cut off for an awfully long time. I was interested in the letter from your doctor. The only symptom I seem to have is shortness of breath and I think I have always had that. That is the reason I was never a distance runner.

I think it has been good to be out of touch with the news. Nothing gives you more of a sense of not being able to help it anyway than not hearing news.

Elaine is so delighted to be in Paris that she is bubbling. I never knew anyone to love any place more. She hit the street this morning ostensibly to buy soap and Kleenex but really just to walk about.

That's all, dear. I'll be writing to you often now that I am a little more settled.

Love to you all there,
John

Hotel Lancaster
[Paris]
May 21 [1954]

Dear Fannie and Mary:

Elaine has been taking the rap on this trip. We got to Paris a week ago and I promptly hit the sack again with the bug, so she has had to do all of the house hunting. This morning she found a pretty little house right in the center of Paris and we will take it if we can get it. It is 1 Avenue Marigny—a very distinguished address right across the street from the President's palace—half a block from the Champs Elysées. If you want Paris—there you got Paris. It is very French and I think we will love it. Besides it has a courtyard you can drive a car into—a covered courtyard. The kids could even play basketball there in rainy weather.

The Covicis have been here. They are having a perfectly wonderful time. You never saw anyone have better.

The Marigny house has a terrace on the roof with lots of flower boxes so we can have geraniums and morning glories and all such things. Oh! I hope we get it. It even has a little study where I can work. What joy. And right beside it is a park with ponies and a carousel and balloon men and millions of children play and the whole thing shaded with chestnut trees.

Tell me—did the wistaria bloom—any of it? Kazans have bought the house three gardens down, the one with the gigantic wistarias. We'll be so glad to have them as neighbors. Some time I am going to put trellis against our brick wall and load it with wistaria. It is a wonderful plant for the city. So fresh and green. We'll make it nice there some time.

Tonight our French publisher is giving a whing-ding for us. I dread it but it will probably be fun. I won't understand one word in 20 and that will make it all the better.

 

Later—just got back from my reception. Must have been five hundred people and I had to do everything except tap dance—and did.

We have the house. We are very excited.

[signed] Jean
(par Helène)

1 Avenue de Marigny
Paris
May 27, 1954

Dear Elizabeth:

We are moved into our house now and very comfortable. The second day, news of Capa's death which shocked me very deeply. We had got to thinking him indestructible. Have been sitting with his people here, who are completely shattered. I shall miss Capa very much.

We have a cook named Rose. Our concierge is Spanish, which helps me a lot because I am helpless in French.

You know I have had an idea in the back of my mind for a long time. Here in France I get interviewed all the time. I spend hours with journalists helping them to make some kind of a story and then when it comes out it is garbled and slanted and lousy. I wondered why I did not write my own interviews and charge for those hours of time and have it come out my way. In other words, why should I not write 800 words a week for one French paper, simply called something like an American in Paris—observations, essay, questions, but unmistakably American. I asked some French newspaper men and they were violently enthusiastic. I said I would try some pilot pieces and see how they worked. Well I have three now and they go fine. Hoffman [Michel Hoffman, Steinbeck's French literary agent] will sell them to one of the big Paris papers, perhaps Figaro. Also I have made a good start on my first short story of the series. I told you I felt like working and I do. I want to turn out quite a swatch of work before the kids get here in two weeks.

Well, we gave Pat and Dorothy a farewell dinner at Vefour —damned expensive but they loved it.

Elaine is getting the house to running smoothly and it is very pleasant. The weather has finally turned warm and summer is coming in. I have a workroom with a window looking out over a garden. Couldn't want better. I intend to work in the morning and walk in the afternoon. And we hope to keep the social life down to a minimum.

Today is Ascension Day so all the stores are closed. Two days ago the President's daughter got married right across the street. Street was roped off and we had a box seat on our terrace. It will be a fine place to sit in the summer and watch Paris go by.

Love for now and I'll let you know what comes of the newspaper pieces.

John

[Paris]
May 31, 1954

Dear Elizabeth:

I think it is time for me to start another letter to you. I take considerable comfort in them. Haven't much of anything to say but a great verve for saying it. I have the four pieces ready for Hoffman to sell to a Paris paper. I heard today that Figaro wants it. If the pieces do well here, do you think it would be a good idea to try them in Rome and Germany? I have got well into my first little story. And I think it is going well; a little hard at first establishing how I want to tell it so made some false starts but I think it is on the way finally.

I have been thinking a great deal about you this week and I think it is just nonsense for you not to come over here this summer. I can write you a letter telling you that it is necessary to straighten out business and for that matter Sol [Sol Leibner, his friend and accountant] could probably work it out so that I could pay your air fare. You think about this, do you hear? But don't get your mind off it the way you used to. I remember once you would have said, Nonsense. But you are changed too. I really think I am more relaxed than I can ever remember being. Every once in a while I get mad as hell at Elaine, particularly when after a few drinks she takes out after me on one of my shortcomings, but I get good and honestly mad and tell the truth about why and then it goes away and is gone. I don't think I am mean about it any more, which is a very good thing.

You wouldn't think what crazy things I have become capable of doing. On June 12, 13 and 14, there is a gigantic fete in the gardens of the Tuileries—all kinds of people are going to appear, celebrities of all kinds and the purpose is to collect money for the widows and children of the dead of General Le Clerc's army, the one which liberated Paris. I am asked to go three hours each day to sit and be looked at and probably to autograph books for his charity and I have agreed to do it and I am even looking forward to it. Isn't that something? You know I couldn't have brought myself to do that before.

Tomorrow morning I am going to the flower market at the Ile de la Cité to buy red geranium plants for our terraces. We will probably do a lot of sitting out there and having tea and all such.

This sounds as though we were on the go all the time and that is not true at all. We stay home quite a bit. Last night was the anniversary of the day I met Elaine five years ago. We drank champagne and had an era of good feeling. E. has stuck to her bed today. She says it started out as a hangover and then she got to liking it.

We are the luckiest people in the world. First in getting this house and then in finding a wonderful cook, and she is wonderful, and now we have a fine maid and the whole bunch like it with us and the house is very gay. The Spanish concierge washes my shirts and makes them just beautiful. The cook, maid and concierge are all friends and they love being together, the place rings with happiness. And my work is coming well now and that makes me feel lucky also. So you see, you will just have to come over. I'll write a couple of extra stories to pay your expenses.

And one more reason for you to come over! Think of the postage I would save.

Love to all there,
John

Paris
June 13, 1954

Dear Elizabeth:

Yesterday was Cat's birthday and we celebrated good. He had his birthday dinner on the Eiffel Tower as he had requested.

I had no sleep in me later so sat up and wrote a Figaro piece and part of another. The comment on the first two has been large and favorable.

I had a good and long letter from Brenner [Gertrudis Brenner, a psychologist Steinbeck had consulted in New York the previous winter.] What a good woman she is! I kind of needed it too because I had taken a deep relapse. Got crowded by all the extra-marital facets of marriage and achieved a “what the hell” feeling that was like old times. Sometimes I do seem to pay a lot for marriage. But I suppose maybe I don't give enough—only all I have. And I'm sure I'm a thankless, ungrateful son of a bitch for even thinking this. I just don't have any place to run to, it seems sometimes. Anyway, the remarkable thing was that just when I hit bottom the letter came from Brenner telling me to be not too worried if I took a dive because it was perfectly natural. She must know by the quality of progress about when it will happen—like a drunk who falls off the wagon. Anyway, it gave me hope that the backslide was not permanent. Day before yesterday I had blood tests and a new electrocardiogram. Good man too. Said my heart seemed all right for anyone who was as old and as nervous as I am. Also said he would advise against climbing Mt. Everest and that I probably smoked too much. Said heart was fast, as everyone says. After he looks at the old cardiographs I am going to have a long talk with him. And then forget the whole damned thing. I am not likely to get less nervous. I may stop smoking perhaps but that would be largely because I am disgusted with the whole process. And again I may not. I wouldn't even try to cut down. It would have to be all or nothing. I might try stopping for a week or so, just to see how hard it might be.

I've got two more Figaro pieces but haven't got to the second short story yet. Oscar Hammerstein sent me the first three scenes of the show, complete with lyrics and just wonderful. He seems happy about it and so am I.

Don't worry about my complaining in the beginning of this letter. I guess I'm just bitching. I'm a little like an automobile. Get one flat tire and you want to throw the whole thing away. Wish to God I could learn to write as I would like to write. I fall so damn far short every time. But I'll keep plugging and damn it—one day I'll maybe turn up with something. The next story might have something in it—if I ever get it written.

So long and love,
John

Paris
June 14, 1954

Dear Elizabeth:

Last night was the big Kermesse in the Tuileries Garden for charity. There were literally hundreds of thousands of people standing and sitting in the rain. They carried our names on big cards and we had to walk down a long runway. There were actors and picture people. Then I went to a booth where with all of the French writers I autographed I guess a thousand books and more cards. People had to buy the books and that goes to the charity. I asked if Del Duca [his French publisher] gave the books without profit and they said no. As a matter of fact he unloaded just about a whole edition of La Flamme
[Burning Bright].
It was a most shocking experience and at the same time very interesting. I did it for nearly four hours yesterday and my hand nearly came off at the wrist.