Steinbeck (87 page)

But we do, as you must, honor Harold with a courage approximating his own, and an integrity and honesty he could approve. There isn't any easy way, dear Alice, dear Alice. No easy way at all. You know how much we wish you could be with us or we with you. And we do love you with everything we have, and that is even more now than it has been before.

May you have some peace soon and may you accept it when it offers.

Love as always,
John

[Chollerford,
Northumberland]
[October 23, 1961]

Dear Elizabeth:

Your letter this morning. Thank you for sending the flowers. We had been in communication but had not done that. We feel very bruised about it, even though we knew it must happen. I had a short letter from Pat this morning—rather a formal one except for the last line in which he said he felt that he was waiting for Godot. Yes, this must cut the ground from under him.

Thanks for sending the obits. We wouldn't have got them. I didn't know Harold was involved with so many things.

We are loving these few days of quiet. There's a great rain and wind and the Tyne is swollen with brown peat water. Then there are splashes of blinding sunlight. There's a great Roman fort near here and a section of the wall we haven't seen so we'll probably walk there this afternoon.

Love to all,
John

Chollerford,
Northumberland
I think it is about
October 26, 1961

Dear Wallsteaux:

In this sad and mixed up time of Harold's death, we have lost track of things and time. The boys went on their own to Edinburgh while we stayed here for a few days at Chollerford-on-Tyne to lick our wounds.

Something has just occurred to me—kind of in the nature of a law. The effectiveness of a man's life can be measured by the depth of the wounds his death leaves on others.

We depended on Harold for so many things and mostly to be there. It's something like having a navigational star removed. No set of course until you find another point of reference.

So if we have been neglective, that's why. We went to Dublin. A sad place we thought. Joyce described it. The boys loved it. We are learning every day—our joys and theirs are on a seesaw. This is another law. If we love a place they are forced by a high morality to hate it.

They will come back from Edinburgh today having found it the most, the greatest, the noblest—why? Because they found it themselves. Now that's not a very complicated lesson. But we've taken a long time to learn it.

This place—“The George,” Chollerford, is one of the very most places in England. We look out on Tyne and a wide horizon and the rains and suns chase each other.

love to both
John

Nice (my ass)
I think it is
November 23, 1961

Dear Elizabeth:

We are staying at the Brice-Benford, a dismal hotel which required great genius to have everything in bad taste. To the worst of the 19th century they have added the worst of the 20th, stainless steel and plastic. We stopped so the boys could see Vence and St. Paul de Vence. I didn't go. I stayed in today and it rained. They aren't back yet. When they came to do the room I wouldn't move so they dusted my feet. I mean it. They dusted my bare feet. What service. I ache now to get out of France—The new look in girls is disgusting to me. The boys find them incredibly smart with their gray lips and charnel house complexions. I have not been drawn to the Lichen Look.

What a dreadful place this is. If Matisse hadn't stopped his wheel chair near here we might be in Portofino this moment. Now onward to Milano. The Mondadori rascals are going to remember this year. Nothing like it has happened since Attila swept in.

In some ways I am perfectly resigned. I attribute this to hitting my head on an iron bar in Avignon. It was a window and I struck right on the right temple. It has changed my whole life. If I ever even begin to get better I shall hit myself on the head again.

Everyone says, “Why didn't you
say
you didn't want to come to Nice?” And I say, “I did.” “But you didn't say it loudly enough or soon enough or often enough.” So we are in Nice. At least I am. They are at Vence and it is raining and beginning to get dark. Did any of you ever have your feet dusted? I just sat still and they dusted my toes with a feather duster.

I suppose you know it here. All the hotels have English names. The Promenade des Anglais is a bitter windswept place with old men taking their exercise. In a shop around the corner they sell vests made of alley cat skin—very pretty. That's true. I haven't priced them but they look very warm; calico cats and tiger stripes and angoras—just ordinary cats. I wonder why no one has ever done it before. Certainly there are more cats around here than anyone needs.

Tomorrow the movement starts. It takes two taxis to take us and our luggage to the station. If there are more than five pieces of luggage you must get two porters and they get pretty mad if you carry your own. I think we are down to 12 pieces with John's trumpet and Terrence's typewriter. We started with 19. But we have worked out a system when we arrive at a station. Two of us leap out and the others throw the baggage out the window. French trains have no luggage room except over your head, and for us to get eleven pieces over our heads plus coats, hats, etc. is something. One good hard lurch and everyone would be killed.

Now it's even darker and rainier. Maybe they're lost. No. That would be too simple.

Well, anyway, happy Thanksgiving. And now I think I'll go and bang my head again. I can't explain how wonderful it is.

Love to all,
John

Pensione
Tornabuoni-Beacci
Florence
December 7, 1961

Dear Elizabeth:

I'm afraid I scared Elaine and maybe she scared you. I can't explain it. My energy just seemed to run out, like pulling the plug of a bath tub. I'm perfectly all right now. And never did show anything in tests. It's just like an overpowering weariness. These ten days in Florence should pick me up.

I'm glad you got along with Tom G. I've always liked him. And as for the use or non use of the words in New Orleans, I don't really care. I think I protected the thing pretty well but I also don't think you can get a sense of the complete ugliness of the scene without the exact words. But then we have protected ourselves from this kind of experience for so long. No, I really don't care much—and that's a bad sign. You were very right not to send on the galleys of the last section. It's a thousand years behind me now.

This afternoon Elaine and I are going over to look at David. Just that one. I can only see one thing at a time but that's not new. It has always been that way. We had a card from Terrence saying Thom had decided to live his life in Venice. He fell madly in love with the city.

 

I seem to have stopped there in a kind of tiredness and now it is the 9th of December. My mind is lazy and doesn't seem to want to work for me much. Then a few minutes ago your letters came and I have to stir myself. The boys came back yesterday and I think some big change has happened. They are suddenly full of enthusiasm. It makes up for my sluggishness. They've been out all morning sniffing the city like morning dogs. The sun is bright. Elaine has rushed out to pictures. I'm perfectly all right and not weak or anything, only very lazy.

I'm going to get this off right away. Sorry we alarmed you. Everything is all right now. I'll be fine as soon as energy comes back and it always does.

Love to all there,
John

Hotel de la Ville
Rome
December 20, 1961

Dear Elizabeth:

Of course we will try to phone you on party night but I know how that comes out. “I am fine. How are you?” “Fine, but how are you?”

I will try to put down some of our adventures. Our trip to Rome was pleasant. Then we went to the hotel—the Legazione, presided over by an Ethiopian girl, a serpent of the Nile, an asp, even a half-asp. The halls were beautiful with plants and marble, oh! prince's daughter, the rooms senza heat, were such as to have given monks pause about religion. But we had a bathroom of bathrooms. Vulgar as it may sound, its technique made it beautiful. To take one's seat, one slipped sideways under the basin and rested one's elbow in the basin. This hotel had one great quality. Everybody hated everybody. The asp was the worst. Nearest I have come in years to striking a woman smartly with my bastone (walking stick). So we moved to this hotel which we know from old times and where we are loved. Elaine and I have a sitting room where we can assemble. We will put up a tree here and decorate it. The boys and Fair Terr are writing Christmas revels, I believe all in verse, and allegorical too. There will be music, poems and recitations. They have worked long and hard on it. Meanwhile, we hope you will have a very happy Christmas. We have eliminated presents mostly this year except sillies.

Now to the boring subject of my health. The professore finds that I have a fine body. He uses the most hopeful and encouraging words for saying that the organism is wearing out. I must rest—take it easy, not exert myself. If he could take command he would send me home but anyway etc. The liver—she is not diseased but she do not function with complete felicity. The circulation circulates but tends to be excitable. I must not excite myself. I must control my diet, not smoke nor drink nor do other things of an exciting nature. Thus and so, I will have many happy and contented years of life. And so I go back to think about those many happy years. And I remember the last fifteen or twenty years of John D. Rockefeller. He subsisted on human milk and predigested oatmeal. And I'm sure that he was very happy.

Nuts. I cannot conceive it on a quantitative basis. It must be qualitative. I'm not about to change. To go home just now when the project seems to be working, would be nonsense and very unhealthy. We will make fewer one night stands, will choose a center, and let the boys radiate. They are learning so much you can't believe it. After the eastern Mediterranean we will reappraise. But I will sit at Delphi and regard the sea below. And I will see whether there is any prophecy left in the Oracle there. No one has asked for a long time. And I utterly refuse to be a sick and careful old man nursing his little restricted time. It isn't worth it. I believe too deeply in Ecclesiastes: “There is a time to be born and a time to die,” etc. And that's enough of that.

The weather here is clear and sparkling. The wind is from the north blowing over the snow. But the sun makes the city a wonderful pale gold. The boys are out tumbling over the centuries like kittens. They are being very helpful. I'm afraid they will have to grow up now. The baby time is over. And it's overdue but I know now that they can do it. We are going to have a very gay and happy Christmas, and I do hope you all will.

Love to you and to you all,
John

Roma
December 20, 1961

Dear Wallsts:

And a very merry Christmas to you. I haven't written for quite a long time but I have engulfed your letters. In recent times, too much space has been taken up with “my health.” Let's forget it. I intend to ignore it.

It has been a curious and unreal time. The illness was not really an illness and yet it was. Hard to understand. We and particularly I am grateful for your concern. It may be that I will find it impossible to continue at some later date. However, the gains are so great and the rewards even greater that I cannot discontinue right now. The boys are growing by leaps. And I think their understanding is also. To stop now for any reason would be to cut the process in two.

This is a very private letter. I must tell you that next February I shall have had sixty years with more joy and more sorrow than is given to most people. I am a fortunate one. I have never been bored and I have always been curious. Therefore I cannot find any reason to complain. No one has ever had more love given nor taken than I. What other product can make this claim? You are not to take this as a giving up nor as a dalliance with the past. It is simply an evaluation. I have whomped a small talent into a large volume of work. And now I see the boys making such strides I am filled with wonder. With the very large help of Elaine and Terrence they are developing that hungry curiosity without which the human is worthless. They are gobbling up knowledge they can never lose and they are beginning to love it for itself. Beginning, I say—but that beginning is the best Christmas present a father could have. And I think you will understand how unthinkable it would be to run home now and fall back to where we started.