Letters of E. B. White Read online

  It’s pretty lucky we brought the boy in when we did. He’s been delirious ever since we got back (forty-eight hours). One of my jobs is to sit with him down in the little isolation tent, and listen to him ramble. . . .

  Gosh I envy you if you got to New York. I don’t know where I’ll be headed from here. Guess I’ll go wherever there is a job—and from the things I hear there aren’t any of them. . . .

  Must close before the pen runs dry. Do I hear a sigh of relief? My letters are full of ego, I know, but that’s the only thing I can write from here, except philosophical ruminations—which of course would be worse.

  For the cookies, thanks.

  Yours,

  Andy

  • When camp closed in the fall of 1921, White went to New York to find work. Like all job hunters, he looked up his afriends—in this case three Cornellians who were journalists in the big city: Frank Sullivan, Henry F. Pringle, and Peter Vischer.

  To ALICE BURCHFIELD

  [Mount Vernon, New York]

  [September 15, 1921]

  Wednesday

  Dear Alice:

  Gosh, it’s good to write again. That flip remark I made in parting about writing “when I got a job” certainly saved me a lot of stationery. But it gives me great pleasure to report that at 3:32 on the afternoon of the sixth day I secured a position. At 4:32 I had a date to jump off Brooklyn bridge, so it came in plenty of time.

  Taking it all in all, this has been the gol darndest week I ever put in. When I arrived in the city last Wednesday, I parked my suitcase and Corona, shaved, and started pounding the pavements before even going out to greet the family. I took lunch with Frank Sullivan, Pete Vischer, and Hank Pringle—who are all on the [New York] Sun—and that afternoon I interviewed the managing editor of the Post and the city editor of the Sun. They both said that they were carrying about six men more than they needed on their staff. Which didn’t leave much room for argument. And which didn’t increase my appetite for dinner any. Going out to Mount Vernon on the train, the first article I chanced upon in the paper was

  ALL SIGNS POINT

  TO HARD WINTER

  and after reading it grimly through to the end I turned to the Post and read

  Who’s Who Among

  The Unemployed

  Where They Came From

  And Why They’re Here

  This was also in a bright and cheerful vein, recounting that there were approximately four hundred thousand persons in the city unable to find a job. I had visions of writing you a letter to say hello along about 1924. It did me a lot of good, though, to turn back to the Sun and see

  WHY MEN DISLIKE BOBBED HAIR

  Shorn Locks Make Wives More Efficient Than

  Their Husbands

  Well, anyway, I’ve been at it for a week, and I now have a speaking acquaintance with every stenographer in lower New York, I call all the elevator boys by their first name, I buy subway tickets in three foot lengths, I feel perfectly at home in all the benches along Park Row, and I haven’t given a single managing editor a moment’s rest. It’s been very gruesome and somber—New York was naturally a bit grey and inhospitable after a day in Ithaca, not to mention an evening at Percy Field—but it was, I suppose, what is technically known as “good experience.” You must have often looked in a dictionary and been directed to “see such and such” and when you looked there you were again directed to see such-and-such. And so on. That’s what I’ve been doing the past week—I go to one person and he says hello and shoots me on to another.

  The job I took today is with the United Press—an organization similar to and rivalling the Associated Press. I start feeding wires in the New York bureau Saturday morning. Doubtless I’ll dive right into the middle of the Arbuckle case. The offices are in the Pulitzer building on Park Row—right in the newspaper district so I’ll be within lunching distance of my friends.

  I could have had a job with the N. Y. Edison Company, editing their house organ, if I had wanted to. I was seriously tempted, too, but my conscience (damn it) troubled me. It was almost too soft—all I would have had to do would have been to sit in a beautifully upholstered private office with a stenographer who reads the Saturday Evening Post all day, and edit a small paper once a week. They actually wanted to pay me to do that. I’ll probably wish I were doing it, along about Saturday morning at 11:30 when I am dizzy from the wheels going round.

  Your idea, that memorable evening, about walking up with me while I got my suitcase proved to be a good one, as usual, because I didn’t any more than catch the train as it was. Good old Tommy1 had got there in plenty of time and had secured my reservation for me. Say, do you remember that sprightly trolley car that I so gracefully boarded when I left you? Well at the foot of the hill, after I had regained consciousness, the conductor broke down and confessed to me that that car was headed for the barns, and that the station car wasn’t due for ten minutes. Think of the number of things we could have said, or left unsaid, during those ten minutes! Such is the Ithaca Traction Corp!

  . . .The crickets are playing a melancholy accompaniment—and this is the end of my story. But I am

  Yours very truly,

  Andy

  To ALICE BURCHFIELD

  48 Mersereau Avenue

  Mount Vernon, New York

  [September 1921]

  Monday

  Dear Alice:

  . . .I have an awfully good opportunity to observe the stars these mornings. I arise as the milk and Times are being delivered, and, as soon as I am able to distinguish the one from the other, I drink the one and read the other. Thence to the train—which is always on time, darn it: 6:58. I finish my night’s rest on the way in. Noons I can usually be found at Bunn’s cafeteria. There for 25 cents I buy a ham sandwich and a bowl of soup. Without extra charge I am given the use of a napkin, a knife, a fork, three spoons, and a small dish of soup crackers. Of the latter I make prodigious use.

  . . .I’m feeding wires for the United Press and two tickers: New England, New Jersey, New York City, New York State, and Penna. My job is to edit copy continually and keep the right stuff going out on the right wires at the right time and in the right quantity. If you get what I mean. It’s a pretty good job except that at 5 o’clock you’re physically incapable of anything except “home and bed.” When the sport stuff is going through in the afternoon, it is fierce. Last Saturday I worked from 8 a.m. straight through to 9:20 p.m.—30 minutes out for lunch. There were twenty-two football games, eight major league baseball games, and two golf matches, all going on at the same time. For my own personal amusement I afterwards figured out that between 3:30 and 6:00, I had handled 1,270 separate and distinct bulletins. Now that shouldn’t be. The job is pretty good, notwithstanding. According to the dope, they either advance you, or fire you, or you pass out. As yet I’m in that uncertain stage. My sister’s [Lillian’s] boss gave her the air today—and I have had a wonderful evening rubbing it in. It wasn’t her fault—she had an awfully good job, but the place went broke. Now she’s all up in the air.

  . . .It’s long past my bedtime. But writing letters is my chief dissipation at present, writing ’em to you being the chiefest and most dissipated. I’m falling back on the family stationery from necessity. It will at least teach you to spell Mersereau—if you should ever write me another letter.

  . . .If you should ever see Cush by any chance, give him my love and tell him he owes me a letter and $11.50.

  Yours

  Andy

  To ALICE BURCHFIELD

  New York

  October 16, 1921

  Sunday

  Dear Alice:

  Thanks for that letter—you done noble. It came after the proverbial “hard day at the office”—which I had partially sweetened by going on a party with Pete [Vischer], Ed Howard,1 and Frank Sullivan. We had dinner and went to Irving Berlin’s Music Box. . . .

  And as for the Dartmouth game—why bring up these painful subjects. The only way I could get there would be t
o just go without notice, and get fired the following Monday. I’m supposed to work twelve hours on Saturdays. I varied it a little yesterday: the boss [Hugh Baillie] sent me flying to Valley Forge with the instructions to phone a story of the [Senator] Knox funeral to the Philadelphia bureau. I got there just in time to see the box being lowered into a hole in the ground while a band of relentless camera men ground noisily away at their machines and a group of seedy looking Senators in high hats stood by, bored by the curious gaze of about a thousand hangers-on who crowded in toward the grave. Afterwards I took dinner with the Philadelphia bureau manager and I saw the lead sentence he had written: “Valley Forge, Oct. 15 (United Press)—With simple ceremony, Philander C. Knox was consigned to the earth from which he sprang here this afternoon.”

  I have been spending my thirty minute lunch periods looking for jobs this week. I wouldn’t mind going without the food if I could have a little luck with the jobs, but it’s damn hard to have neither success nor sandwiches at noon. I tried the Sun and the Herald; and this week I am going to concentrate on the Times. It’s a weary life, these here first ten years. . . .

  I feel bed coming on. I always end my nightly prayer with “And may the alarm clock stick during the night.” God hasn’t heard me yet.

  Yours very truly,

  Andy

  • Although White kept pestering city editors for a job, he was unsure of his ability to cope with the pace and complexity of newspaper work in the big city. Most of his attempts to land a job followed a timid routine that was bound to fail: unaccompanied by friendly sponsor or letter of introduction, White would simply walk into a newspaper city room and blurt out his request to the city editor. When he visited the Times, however, he had an interview with the publisher himself, Adolph Ochs. The meeting had been arranged—not at White’s request—by “Aunt Ruby” Smith, wife of Cornell’s much loved dean of engineering and then acting president, Albert W. (“Uncle Pete”) Smith. Mrs. Smith thought highly of White, she was acquainted with Ochs, and she took matters into her own hands. White felt he had to keep the date as a matter of courtesy, but before he was ever ushered into Ochs’ office he had decided not to ask for a job. His ambivalence about newspaper work—and sheer fright—almost certainly played a part in his decision.

  Luella Adams had been the hostess on those Monday nights at Professor Bristow Adams’ house during White’s years as an undergraduate—she made the cocoa and poured it, a small, good-looking, friendly woman well loved by all B.A.’s students.

  To LUELLA ADAMS

  [Mount Vernon, New York]

  [December 6, 1921]

  Sunday

  Dear Mrs. Adams:

  In reply to yours of September 30th. . . . Never mind, I’ve read your letter over more than once even if it has taken me two months to get down to answering it. This is the night of nights for the job because I am in the midst of a tremendous blue spell and must have relief in some fashion. I would be out in the garden eating worms only it has been snowing and the worms are moulting down where it’s too deep to find ’em.

  Well, a lot of things have happened since the last letter. I am now a dirty publicity person1: I am the person at whom the city editors shy their paper weights and other missiles. I sneak into their office when the desk-boy isn’t looking and hand them stories that they don’t like. I don’t blame them for not liking them. I am the person who furnishes the material that keeps the janitors employed. If it wasn’t for me there would be thousands of janitors out of work in New York City. I write the stories, the city editors brush ’em onto the floor, and the janitors sweep ’em up. So you see I am actually doing a very valuable work—the janitors must live. The reason I haven’t been fired is because my boss hasn’t got round to it yet. It’s one of the things he has on his desk calendar, to be done when he finds the time. I am convinced that my boss is a rascal—and I’ve only seen him three times since I’ve had the job. Such perception!

  Pete [Vischer] is going to the World next week—did you know that? And Hank Pringle has gone to the Globe. That’s nothing, I’ve gone to all of them.

  Had a good time last Thursday afternoon when Adolph Ochs and I had a date. Aunt Ruby wrote him, you know, and told him to see me. She was very modest in her letter—after I read a copy of it I wondered how it happened that Adolph hadn’t resigned in my favor long ago.

  Mr. Ochs has an office on the top floor of the Times Annex on 43 Street. It is well fortified by moats and draw-bridges and things. You have to have a letter from President Harding in order to even be allowed to speak to Mr. Ochs’ secretary. I had a letter with Adolph’s very signature, which was, of course, even better. Leaving my office earlier than usual on Thursday afternoon I proceeded uptown, conning the answers to a possible list of questions he might ask. This proved very dangerous, for twice I was almost run down at the crossings because of my deep absorption. While in the elevator on the way to the eleventh floor I arrived at the decision not to ask Mr. Ochs for a job. . . .

  The great Ochs shook hands with me. I noticed that his necktie and his left eye were both a little off center. This composed me to a certain extent. I could almost remember what Answer #1 was. Andy White and Adolph, I thought—a little talk. Ha, ha. Then Ochs began to strain visibly trying to place me. Mrs. Smith. That’s right. Then silence for a moment. He seemed to be straining again. I heard Broadway’s wheeze filtering through the window.

  Turning quickly, he said in loud, distinct tones: “Now just what do you want me to do for you, Mr. White?” It was as if I had told a person that my mother had died and that person had said, “What are you going to do about it?” It was a hard question to answer. I felt about to say, “Not a thing, brother,” but I gulped instead and said, “I’m looking for advice.” I couldn’t very well say, Please Mr. Ochs, I’m only a frail young college boy, lost in the naughty city.

  I stated my case. I was dumfounded to learn that he didn’t understand what publicity work meant at all. You probably won’t believe this, but it’s a fact. Mr. Ochs seemed a man wise but not keen. He is interesting but not interested.

  His advice was to get connected with a paper in a small town, in order to learn every department of journalism before attempting to get with a metropolitan sheet. He explained to me that I knew nothing about practical paper work, illustrating his point by saying, “You don’t know what a stick rule is or how a column is measured, do you?” When I said, Yes, he looked very disappointed in me. I guess I should have said, No.

  Anyway, he said good bye and good luck when I left, and also handed me a copy of the History of the New York Times, with the remark, “This may interest you.” It sounded like a vendor at the circus handing out a dodger extolling the merits of a patent medicine.

  Believe me I had a wonderful time—I had a much better time than Adolph did. . . .

  Best regards to all—yours,

  Andy

  • In January 1922, White joined the American Legion News Service, where his immediate boss was Carl Helm, an Indianapolis reporter turned PR man. The office was in a dingy loft building on West 43rd Street near Eleventh Avenue. At work in the same building, oddly enough, was Harold Ross, then editor of the comic weekly Judge. White knew who Ross was—he had first encountered the name “H. Ross” in Franklin P. Adams’ “Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys” in the Herald Tribune—but the two did not meet until some years later.

  To ALICE BURCHFIELD

  [Mount Vernon, New York]

  [February 1922]

  Dear Alice:

  . . .My job with the News Service of the Legion is very good in many respects. It gives me the opportunity to learn publicity by practising it on a very large scale—the Legion covers an awful lot of ground and the stuff I turn out reaches in the neighborhood of 15,000 papers—and there is the chance, in the spring, of my being handed the boss’s job, inasmuch as he contemplates moving west. He doesn’t like New York City. The disadvantages are chiefly that publicity work pains me most of the time—when it doe
sn’t bore me. Publicity is new, and, like other new things, it is overpaid and consequently has been exploited. That’s particularly the case around New York City. The result is it has a black eye in journalistic circles. Take this for instance—last Tuesday I had a talk with the editor of Editor and Publisher, whom I know. He offered me a job, first of all, with his publication—which I didn’t take for certain reasons. Then he asked me what I was doing—he thought I was still with the United Press—and when I told him that I was in publicity he gave me a beautiful calling down—“a man of your ideals in a tainted profession.” All that kind of stuff. That was at ten minutes to nine—nice pleasant way to start the day having a person like that inform you that you’re tainted. I had a mental picture of Mother sniffing me when I came home at night, the way she does butter to see if it is all right. . . .

  Sold a story to the N.Y. Sun last week, so I’m not entirely rancid yet. . . .

  How’s life in Ithaca? Or aren’t you in Ithaca? I’m not quite sure. Anyway, how is life?. . . .

  Andy

  • White’s restlessness and his disenchantment with publicity work continued unabated. In February his friend Howard Cushman, then a senior at Cornell, turned up unexpectedly in New York, having flunked out of the university. White was glad to see him, and together they spent several evenings exploring the night spots of Greenwich Village and discussing their common plight. Although temperamentally quite different, the two men had a number of things in common. Each was a former college editor and they shared an interest in belles lettres and in journalism. Both were men of stature recently shrunk, and they were looking for a way to escape their present condition.