1963 to 1965
Slemluch “I’m not the young writer of promise any more.”
1963 Made Cultural Exchange trip behind the Iron Curtain.
To Harald Grieg STEINBECK’S NORWEGIAN PUBLISHER
New York
January 16, 1963
Dear Harald:
It was a purple time, I think you will agree. Now I will have to go quickly to work to get the heady taste of it out of my mouth. I was awfully glad that you were there. It wouldn’t have been the same if you had not been.
Now at home and we are shortly selling this house, and moving into a very high apartment in a new building that is going up near here. This four-storey house has just too many stairs for us. We will be up thirty-four floors in the new apartment and will have a look out at all of Manhattan. I hope you will come and see it. It is most spectacular.
There has been something I have wanted to ask you for some time and I have been shy about it. As you can believe, I have never been one for medals or decorations. They seem a kind of vanity that doesn’t touch me. But there was one that meant very much to me—that was the Haakon VII cross. I liked that very much. [It had been awarded by the Norwegian government for The Moon is Down.]
A number of years ago when my oldest boy was much smaller, he became fond of the cross and one day asked if he could wear it to school. I saw nothing against it and told him he could. Well, he was six. He wore it to school all right and somewhere along the line he lost it. I couldn’t be too rough with him. After all I have lost plenty of things and I still do. Of course I have the citation and everything else, but here is my question. Do you think I, meaning you, could find a duplication of it? I would be very pleased to have it. It was a reminder of the old hard true days when men were better and braver than they could be. I believe I remember that when I got it, Norway was so poor that I had to pay for the cross, I mean the cost of it. And I would be awfully glad to do that again.
Yours,
John
At the suggestion of President Kennedy, Leslie Brady, with the title in Russia of Cultural Attaché to the American Embassy in Moscow and later the Deputy Commissioner of the United States Information Agency, invited Steinbeck to visit the Soviet Union under the auspices of the Cultural Exchange Program.
To Leslie Brady
New York
May 13, 1963
Dear Lee:
That was a very good session we had last week, although we covered lightly a very un-light situation. The subject, of course, is the possibility of my going to Russia in the fall.
Incidentally, although this is a personal letter to you, you may show all or any part of it to Ed, if you wish [Edward R. Murrow, Director of the United States Information Agency].
In the light of the Birmingham episodes [of racial violence] it seemed to me that I couldn’t, or would be reluctant to, try to explain that situation to people whose minds would be automatically closed to explanation. Then too, K’s [Khrushchev] apparent switch back to the old party line might well make me “persona non grata.” Maybe I am getting old, too. A kind of grey weariness creeps over me.
And yet, I want to go. I should go. And at least now the young and the experimenters are not as cowed as they once were. This is only one of many changes since 1947. Another would be the re-building and a new generation coming along who will not remember the war, nor the deep blight of Stalin. For my own sake, I should go.
My thinking continued this way. We have always been a shy and apologetic people. Sure we have Birmingham, but we are doing something about it. Now is the time to go—not to apologize nor to beat our breasts, but to bring some fierceness into it—the kind of fierceness the Negroes are using. I don’t know that I could do it, but I could try.
Very well—if I could go—would there be any way for Elaine to go with me? She is a much better ambassador than I am and the two of us work together very well. I hope it might be arranged.
You remember that when we discussed this quite a time ago, we thought it might be good if Kazan went along. I have telephoned him, but can’t get him. He is very busy on the new theatre project.
Then, I had another idea, I wish you would take in mind. Edward Albee, our newest and perhaps most promising young playwright came to see me last week. I have known him for some time. I told him of this discussion, and he showed great enthusiasm for going. He might be a better choice. He is another generation—under 35. I think he would have an enormous impact on the younger Russians. He would be very happy to go with us, and between us we might be more effective than either one alone. He is coming on while I am leaving the scene—at least, so it is thought. His problem is that he opens a new play in early autumn—an adaptation of The Ballad of the Sad Café, but he would be free to go when he gets it opened. As for me, I have no time limitation and could make my time match his. Does this seem like a good idea? Think it over and let us discuss it.
In considering this, think also of Poland, where I have never been and Finland, where I have. My work is well known in both places.
I hope you would remember that I will not speak, but will discuss anything with anyone or any number. That’s always better for me, since it is an exchange, rather than a telling.
That’s all, except that it was a darned good dinner and a good evening. And we love the new Mrs. Brady. She and Elaine are very much alike in many ways.
I hope to hear from you soon.
Yours,
John
One morning in June at Sag Harbor, Steinbeck awoke without sight in one eye: a detached retina. Surgery was performed at Southampton Hospital. During his long convalescence, when he was blindfolded and immobilized between sandbags, his old friend John O‘Hara visited and read to him.
To John O’Hara
[Sag Harbor]
[July 1963]
Dear John:
My eye is doing fine. I get prisms the end of the week. Of course I’ll use it for a long time when I feel the need to be pitiful. Our dog Charley taught me that. When he was a pup he got hit by a car and had his hip broken. All the rest of his life, if I scolded him or he had a bad conscience, he would limp.
Part of my pitifulness is that I got well before we got enough talking done. So many things I want to discuss with you—the general things that turn out to be personal and vice versa. If I pretended great pain—couldn’t you come once again? I really can’t drive yet.
I wish you would. There are a number of things I can’t discuss with anyone else but you.
Yours,
John
love to Sister.
As far back as September 1962, Steinbeck had written of Charley the poodle to his Danish publisher, Otto Lindhardt:
“Charley is well but he is getting old. The hip he had broken as a pup gives him considerable trouble now, particularly when the weather changes. But in the morning he still thinks of himself as Youth.”
His condition deteriorated through the following year, and toward the end of April, Steinbeck wrote:
“Last week was one of sadness. Charley dog died full of years but leaving a jagged hole nevertheless. He died of what would probably be called cirrhosis in a human. This degeneration is usually ascribed to indulgence in alcohol. But Charley did not drink, or if he did he was very secret about it.”
The recipient of that letter and the one that follows was Dr. E. S. Montgomery of Tarentum, Pennsylvania, a well-known authority and breeder of bull terriers. Steinbeck had been in correspondence with him for some time.
To Dr. E. S. Montgomery
Sag Harbor
July 23, 1963
Dear Dr. Montgomery:
You have not heard from me because a detached retina and surgery therefor have rendered me hors du voir. Even now I have those pinpoint goggles that make one feel like a stalk-eyed crab or a good trotting horse with blinders.
A little later in the summer when the rules against vibration are removed I can probably get about. The eye was saved anyway by good Dr. Paton of Southampton.
Some years ago you wrote me that you had some fine dogs you want me to see. At that time Charley was in his dotage or dogage (forgive it).
But now Charley is dead and only recently I don’t hear him in the night.
And I wonder whether you now have some dogs for me to see. May I hear from you?
Yours,
John Steinbeck
To Adlai Stevenson
Sag Harbor
[August 1963]
Dear Adlai:
Thanks for your note. The eye is going to be all right. But even if it weren’t I still have one and Lord Nelson did all right not only at Trafalgar but at Lady Hamilton with only one (eye, I mean).
Elaine says when you come out she will give you lunch if you will give her enough notice to have a salmon flown over from Somerset.
Anyway, I want to talk to you. I think we’re going to Moscow etc. in Oct. Could use some advice.
Regarding Barry Goldwater—He promises to lead us out of Egypt and I believe he could do it, too. Trouble is, we’re not in Egypt.
Anyway, we want to see you. If anyone could bugger up Averill Harriman’s good work in Russia—I can.
Yours,
John
To William A. Gilfry
A TOTAL STRANGER FROM WINSTON SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA
Sag Harbor
August 13, 1963
Dear Mr. Gilfry:
Please forgive this writing method. I am wearing prism glasses following eye surgery and have some difficulty seeing the page.
Only a few days before he had written to Elizabeth Otis:
“I am trying hard to read and sometimes it seems a losing battle. They keep changing the prisms to make it hard and they sure succeed. Reading is like peering through a knothole full of cobwebs.”
Thank you for your kind letter of August 8. It’s not the interest of letters—No, it’s the sheer weight that finally drives a writer to cover. You ask about the amount. It varies. This last year for various reasons it must have been thirty to forty thousand. Now it has settled down to between twenty-five and fifty letters a day. Nearly all of these should be answered because they are kindly and are written in good faith. But it is simply physically impossible. If I spent every waking hour answering I could not keep up and this is leaving no time for my own work. When I came out of the hospital there were over a thousand letters to answer. How would you handle it?
Writing is not easy for me. It takes every bit of strength and concentration I can muster, and interruptions have a feeling like that of being hit with a stick of stove wood.
I am answering your interesting letter at length perhaps to take the place of all those I am going to have to eliminate. And I hope all of this does not sound like complaint. It isn’t. This is something that happened which I didn’t expect, and I can’t cope with it. I didn’t expect the Nobel Prize either and receiving it shocked me rather deeply. And I am still far from knowing whether I approve of it.
I was interested in your speculation about money and poets. I didn’t know Robert Frost had $240,000 and I wonder whether he knew it. I didn’t know him so I have no idea. My own financial image is equally obscure to me. For many years I lived a few days’ rations from nothing but I did manage to stay out of debt. The books that are selling now did not sell then, although they are the same books. I presume money is coming in. It goes to a pool out of which taxes, charities, families, dependent requests are paid. Out of this pool a kind of salary is deposited to my account monthly for me to live on. I live well but not wealthily. I eat one meal a day, have a four-room cottage with a bunk house for my sons and a second-hand twenty-foot fishing boat. I drive a Ford Falcon station wagon which is getting pretty ratty. Also I have an apartment in New York because it is more handy and cheaper than going to hotels. I travel quite a lot but always as a matter of work and research. Please don’t think I am shouting “poor mouth.” I’m not. I live this way because I like to live this way. I don’t know how Frost felt about money but I know I have utterly no interest in it as long as there is some. I know from the poverty years that when you have no money your interest in it quickens.
You say, “How could a poet permit himself to accumulate $240,000?” What should he have done? Throw it away, refuse royalties on his books which people wanted to buy? During the war I gave a book to the Air Force Aid Society, proceeds to be given to families of casualties. It cost me well over a thousand dollars in lawyers’ fees to get permission of the tax division to give it away and everyone—even the Air Force—thought I was nuts. You can’t give money to friends without losing them. No, the pool is right for me. I never know what is there or who gets it. It also protects one from feeling bountiful which is as ugly an emotion as I know.
When Charley died we planted a willow tree over him; sentimental, but who isn’t? Then I had to go to town and when I came back someone had planted flowers all around the tree. I don’t know who did it. I don’t want to know.
I haven’t got another dog yet. I am torn between a white English bull terrier and my first loves which were Airedales. I will want a very young dog to raise and train with care so that independence survives obedience. I should not want to remove the ability to fight from a white terrier but I would try to make it unnecessary. I never knew a truly good fighter who picked quarrels. That is for the unsure.
I know the Bostons you speak of. I had one when I was a boy and he was a fine dog with a great deal of humor. What has happened to the breed is what I detest. They are small, pop-eyed, asthmatic, with weak stomachs and an inability to find their way home.
All of the dogs I have had have been natural dogs. I could learn from them as much or more than I could teach them.
I must be coming to an end. I shall not speak of your poems. Poetry is as private and personal as nerves.
Now I have used you as a scapegoat. The next twenty-five letters I shall not answer and my guilt will be on you. Perhaps this might be a solution to the whole problem.
I am glad you like the Sea of Cortez. It was little noticed when it appeared but it seems to grow on people. Such a book can’t be sold. It has to creep by itself.
Now I am done. Except for one thing. What you call Great Basin in Santa Cruz County, California, is really called Big Basin, unless they have changed the name recently. I grew up among the sequoia semper virens on the coast. Big Basin was my first and very deep experiment with gigantia. And I was seven years old at the time and we went in a buckboard with feed and food and a tent in the box. No one was there and it was wonderful with hazelnuts and ferns in the dimpsy. That’s a Somerset word for the twilight under trees.
So long, Scapegoat—
John Steinbeck
To Elaine Steinbeck ON HER BIRTHDAY
Sag Harbor
PRIVATE August 14 [1963]
Darling—
This is a private letter to you and not for the rest of the company.
In past years, when I used to give you money presents I found myself getting angry that you got very little of it for yourself.
Second—In the last couple of years we have taken on and rightly so, added outlay. That’s not important. What is important is that I think you have been under a burden of having to tell me about it. Even knowing I would agree didn’t change anything. You were in effect asking for money.
Now, therefore, this is your birthday present. It is the amount the government permits without tax. It is deposited to your private account in the Sag Harbor Bank. The reason for it is that you may do what you want to do or help whom you want without asking anyone. But it is also for you to buy some pretty things for yourself.
You have been so wonderful about the boys. If I don’t say it often, I think it often. And this present is in no sense a reward. Rather it is a celebration. Happy Birthday—darling, and many of them. You make a good life for everyone around you.
Love,
John
To Carlton A. Sheffield
New York
September 27, 1963
Dear Dook:
As usual I start running in circles. This next journey has up and pounced at us. My eye seems to have recovered nicely. We have to go to Washington Friday to be briefed (what is that?). Next Monday we fly to London. Then to Helsinki and to Moscow the 15th of Oct. Home about Christmas.
I think maybe I’m too old for this kind of thing. But, hell, I’m a little wiser than I was and not nearly so sure of things.
Anyway, I wanted to get a note off to you before we leave the country. I always feel that it is final and that is stupid but I do. Been doing it for years. And it doesn’t change. But we are pretty seasoned travellers. Some years ago when we had been driving around France with a different stopping place each night, Elaine said that when I said “Good morning,” she got up and started packing in her sleep. But her pride is that if I say in London, “Hand me a pair of pliers,” she can do it.
I haven’t really anything to say except that I am very glad we are together again. It gives me a good feeling of security. Let’s not let it lapse again.
love
John
Now preparations for the forthcoming trip behind the Iron Curtain absorbed him. As he wrote his wife while she was visiting in Texas:
“Won’t it be wonderful to be lost in the wilds of Russia—childless? The very word Siberia has a sweet sound to my ears.”
In September, he busied himself renewing contacts with Russian acquaintances made on former visits.
To Michael Sholokhov C/O UNION OF SOVIET WRITERS, MOSCOW
New York
September 19, 1963
Dear Michael Sholokhov:
I hope you will remember an afternoon we spent together in Stockholm. At that time, you promised my wife and me caviar from your own river Don. She has never been quite satisfied since.
We shall be in Moscow about October 15th for a visit of about a month, and it would give us great pleasure to anticipate meeting you again.
I’m sorry I can’t write to you in Russian, but there it is—I can’t.
Yours very sincerely,
John Steinbeck
To Konstantin Simonov C/O UNION OF SOVIET WRITERS, MOSCOW
New York
September 19, 1963
Dear Konstantin Simonov:
May I remind you that very long ago, I had the pleasure of meeting you and that you extended to me and to my late friend, Robert Capa, great courtesy and hospitality. I remember an evening of laughter near a spiral staircase in a time when laughter was a rare commodity.
My wife and I will be in Moscow about October 15th and it would give me great comfort to believe that I might see you again to renew an acquaintance I have valued.
Yours very sincerely,
John Steinbeck
To Ilya Ehrenburg C/O UNION OF SOVIET WRITERS, MOSCOW
New York
September 19, 1963
Dear Ilya Ehrenburg:
I hope that you will remember that you were my first sponsor in Russia and with some small intervals, my consistenf defender.
Quite simply, my wife and I will be in Russia about the 15th of October. It would be a great pleasure to me to see you again and to renew a valued acquaintance.
Poor Capa is dead. He stepped on a land mine in Vietnam in a war he did not want to attend. But I remember the remarkable little carvings in wood from a monastery. I still have mine.
I hope we may be able to see you.
Yours very sincerely,
John Steinbeck
To Elizabeth Otis
Moscow
October 18, 1963
Dear Elizabeth:
Very little time is left for anything except sleeping. We left London a week ago and it seems months. In Helsinki they had arranged a program which nearly killed us. Can you imagine seeing 900 booksellers at 9 o’clock on Sunday morning? Well, we did. Our ambassador there [Carl Rowan] is a fine man and we got to know him and his wife quite well. Then on to Moscow where some old friends met us including Sweet Lana [Svetlana, who had been his Moscow guide in 1947]. We go pretty hard here but I have demanded periods of rest. The paper Isvestia which printed Winter serially gave us 500 rubles yesterday. Today we go to the publishers who are to give us money. A number of books have come out. Winter, they say, was a great success and even Charley is being translated. A young man from the Embassy [Peter Bridges of the Political Section] is our interpreter and he is excellent. We go south to Kiev on Monday night and then to Tbilisi in Georgia, and he and his wife will go with us.
Moscow is greatly changed. Miles of new apartment houses stretching out almost into infinity, and, since land has no private value, each has lots of room and gardens around it. People are much better dressed than the last time and not so tired. In fact not tired at all. It is I who am tired.
People here are very kind to us. Our hotel is what they call Stalin neogothic—all grandeur and marble and a huge suite with great chandeliers, very different from the old Savoy with the stuffed bear, where Capa and I stayed. As we knew she would, Elaine makes an enormous hit and is greatly loved and courted.
I find I am not doing any writing, but must tell you the thaw is very definite. You can feel it everywhere. I am more than good now. It has come full circle. I asked a writer why Winter is so popular here and he said, perhaps because the problem is not unknown here. Please tell Annie Laurie that a play version of Winter is going into rehearsal at the Moscow Art Theatre. Might be fun to have it translated and try it in New York. That would be a switch, wouldn’t it?
The car hasn’t come for us yet so I go on with this letter until it does. One nice thing here. They don’t get moving before noon. The Finns got us up at 8. And they stayed up just as late—too.
Next day
and it should be
Saturday, the 19th.
Well, yesterday was a strange day—First to one publishing house which had printed Winter. I am told the edition was 300,000 and was sold out immediately. After quite a talk they gave me 1,000 rubles. The strange double talk that went on we will carry engraved on our hearts where it won’t do us much good either. I gave it to Elaine, new name Sonya Goldenarm, a famous Russian pickpocketess. As nearly as I can make out, payments to a foreign writer have no relation to the number of books sold. It seems that all books are sold out immediately but are not reprinted. Thus it is possible for a book of an edition of half a million to become a collector’s item within twenty-four hours of its issue.
At 2 we went to Ehrenburgs’ apartment for lunch. A fine lunch with lots of good talk. There is no question that the thaw is on—people—at least intellectuals—speak quite freely on almost any subject but of course they, from having no experience with the outside world, are fairly limited in some of their estimates.
We are trying to keep the appointments down and to have nothing early in the morning. Last night after the ballet, which ended at 10, we went to McGrady of Newsweek where we met American and Russian news people and had a very good time.
Now I am going to close this and send it by the first courier.
Love to all there,
John
To Elizabeth Otis and the McIntosh and Otis staff
Moscow
November 8, 1963
Dear Elizabeth and all:
Yesterday the big parade in the Red Square. Very impressive, even depressive. We got to our places about 8:45—five military checks of tickets and passports. The parade started at 10 sharp—the first part military troops in tight formation, then all the big weapons, tanks, artillery, rockets, then the sports club in their uniforms, also some military, then the factories with models of their products, thousands and thousands. It was cold, very, and our feet got frozen. About 12 we edged our way out and came back to the hotel where we could still see the parade. It was over about 1:30. In Stalin’s time they say it went on until 5—We were sufficiently weary, rested a while and then went to the reception in the new big theater in the Kremlin—diplomats, delegations. K. [Khrushchev] was there rattling the saber the way my Uncle Will used to on the Fourth of July. Tables in the largest hall you ever saw—Tables 200 feet long crowded with food and drink, and the delegates drinking vodka and cognac like water. He would speak a while—then stop and speak again. And people went right on talking. Once he said. “I am the Chairman and no one listens to me, and you say we are not democratic.” His second round he became a dove of peace, carrying hope to the U.S. as well as to all the other poor benighted non-socialist countries of the world. It was the same old gook. You will be interested to know that Russians have not heard of and will not believe the shoe tapping incident at the U.N. They say—the ones we have spoken to—that it is impossible.
We have met many writers now and editors, liberal and otherwise. I have been busily planting the poison of the copyright everywhere I can. Edward Albee arrived and is pitching in wonderfully well. I knew he would.
Tonight we all go to Leningrad for four days, then back here for two days. We begin to wonder whether we can hold out. The schedule is so heavy and every once in a while I begin to flag and fail. There is no time to write. I simply collapse into bed when I can. And the crack of voices goes into my dreams. And the constant translation is nerve-wracking.
And the phone keeps ringing. There is a quality of madness about it. And I seem to be joining in.
I have to go now. Lord! how I would welcome another day off. Leningrad will be mad but not nearly so mad as Warsaw.
Love to all there. When I get home I’m going to sleep for a week.
John
To Elizabeth Otis
Krakow, Poland
November 20, 1963
Dear Elizabeth:
The quaint look of this letter, together with the fact that I am writing it at all is the result of an accident. Our tour master made a mistake and found he hadn’t booked us for three things tonight and we leaped with joy. It is the first evening off since that far-off day in Moscow when we had a whole day. No one can conceive what our program has been. Thinking back, I don’t believe it. Elaine has hit the sack in flames.
When we moved up a meeting with a hundred members of the Writers’ Union to 6 P.M., our Polish guide and conscience was faced with the dreadful truth that we had no place to go but to bed. Oh! Joy, Oh! Bells. Oh! Christmas ornaments!
I hope there will be some word from you when we get back to Warsaw. Mail just seems to disappear. I don’t mind their reading it but I wish they wouldn’t keep it.
Tomorrow we drive four hours (everything takes four hours) to Breslau which is not called that anymore and I won’t even try to spell it. Then to something that sounds like Wootch [Lodz]. I must have autographed 10,000 books and the names alone are longer than the books. There is no pity. They’ve got us and they use us. But of course that’s what we came for. There are many times when we wonder whether it is worth doing. The Embassy people say yes. You see we really don’t know what is going on in the world. All I know is that my books are very popular here and here they pay.
We left Edward behind in the big red city looking a little scairt. We will meet up with him in Prague. It’s very kookie to write a letter you know is going to get the eye, just as it is strange to have any normal conversation in a hotel with bugged rooms. Everyone just takes it for granted but it’s hard to get used to. It’s even in cars. One long bit in a two-seater with a racing motor. Theory is that the distributor head will veto the bug. I don’t know. Nicest one is in your national flag on your restaurant table. You put it on another table. Isn’t this silly, to think that people will go to this length? But they do.
(Note to Big Brother—“Yes, I’m talking about you. Want to make something of it? And I’ll tell you something else. If a boob like me can catch you out so often, what do you think real smart people are doing? While your chicken-shit bureaucrats are working on saving face I have four new methods for taking the skin off your cheeks. It’s a great joy to write to you. For 40 days I have wanted to reply but I knew I could not get in touch with you except through the bug or the seeing eye letter. You’re so Godda.nned stupid.”)
Do you know, some friends, dissatisfied with their breakfast, criticised it privately and alone and the next morning the corrections were made. How stupid can you get? Elaine the Fayre has proclaimed in her ladylike stentorian whisper —“If they want tourists they’d better start with coat hangers, wastebaskets and bath mats.” And after three days these appeared without her speaking to anyone but me.
(“And another thing, darling bug. Do you know that if we want to speak privately we have a language that even the experts in that Stalin Gothic University can’t possibly work out because it is a personal language full of references you can’t know. It’s been good knowing you, dear reader. And I do think I know you. You are stupid and the job you are doing is stupid and it won’t work. Why don’t you get wise to yourself? Meanwhile it has been charming talking to you. And I wish you a thousand years! Spasiba, Bolshoi, and screw you. Yours very sincerely, J.S.”)
Elizabeth, I have wanted to get that off for a long time. Steffens came home after the October Revolution of 1917 and his headline was “I have seen the future and it works.” Well, I’ve examined it three times and I can say it doesn’t. In our democracy we give up a lot of efficiency for the safety of our principles. But here they keep working at failure. On a pig farm I asked what they were doing about importing breeding stock—nothing. The Virgin Lands fiasco is a dirty word. We learned the hard way in Arkansas and Oklahoma. We could and would have told them how to hold down the dust. Everything is blamed on a bad year—nothing on bad management. All through the south—Georgia and Armenia—I saw no evidence of contour plowing. And we would have told them. The land is eroding away.
Well, at last I got a letter written to you.
Love to all there,
Jn
What Steinbeck did not mention in his letters from behind the Iron Curtain was that—apart from all the official ceremonies and entertainments involving writers and artists approved by the government —he and his wife spent as much time as they could with dissident writers’ groups in small clandestine meetings, often late at night.
It was also late at night, on the 22nd of November, in Warsaw, when the news of President Kennedy’s assassination reached them.
To Elizabeth Otis
Warsaw
November 24, 1963
Dear Elizabeth:
The shock of the news was terrible. We asked if we could get through to you by phone and were told there isn’t a chance. Every facility is loaded. Mail takes 10 to 14 days to jump the curtain so I am going to put this in the pouch which goes on Tuesday. Tomorrow—Monday—we are flying to Vienna out of the curtain and the first thing we will do will be to put a call through to you. You can’t imagine the shock and frustration. We can’t get any news. We wanted to go home but then we thought that it would be chicken. The greatest respect we could pay would be to finish the job we were given. Yesterday was dreadful. I had to meet and talk to about 200 university students and later to have a huge press conference. It was made easier by the consideration of the Poles. They offered condolences and did not press us. Also, we were able to cancel all social things.
Coming out from behind the curtain is going to be a shock. Poland is better than Russia but if we had come here first we would have found it intolerable.
I have been fighting off fatigue for days. I didn’t think I could get through yesterday—but we did. It’s amazing what you can do if you have to. I even coined a word yesterday for what we are doing. I described us as culture-mongers. But it turns out this is impossible to translate into Polish. No matter—it’s still good. And I’ll use it again and again.
We are lonesome and homesick. Yesterday a woman came up to Elaine and said, “I have to talk to an American, I am an American.” They fell into each other’s arms and wept. It can get pretty lonely. I knew it but you can’t tell anyone—it isn’t possible.
Maybe we’ll get caught up sometime. Again love,
John
To Mrs. John F. Kennedy
Warsaw
November 24, 1963
Dear Mrs. Kennedy:
Our sorrow is for you but for us—for us—
We are in Warsaw as culture mongers at your husband’s request which to us was an order. This is Sunday after black Friday. I wish you could see our Embassy here. In the great hall is a photograph and beside it a bust made by a young Pole who asked to bring it in. Since early morning yesterday there has been a long line of people—all kinds but mostly poor people. They move slowly past the picture, place flowers (chrysanthemums are a dollar apiece), and they write their names and feelings in a book. Numbers of volumes have been filled and today the line is longer than ever. It went on all night last night, silent and slow. I have never seen anything like this respect and this reverence. And if we weep, seeing it, it is all right because they are weeping. That’s all —Our hearts are with you and we love you—all of us.
John and
Elaine Steinbeck
To Lyndon B. Johnson
Warsaw
November 24, 1963
Dear Mr. President:
May I offer my profound respect and loyalty to you in the hard days ahead. Our shock and sorrow are very great but we know the office is in strong, trained and competent hands. Our hearts are with you.
At the request of President Kennedy my wife and I have been moving about behind the Iron Curtain, talking with writers and with students. Being non-diplomatic, we have been able to observe many things not ordinarily available. And if these experiences can be of value to you, they are freely offered. Some of them are highly unorthodox.
I have never met you but I have a curious tie with you. When my wife was in college in Austin, one of her class-mates was a boy named John Connally who said, “Go on into the theatre in New York but as for me, I’m going into politics. There is a man named Lyndon Johnson and I’m going along with him. He’s going places.” I wonder whether he would remember. Her name was Elaine Andersen—later Mrs. Zachary Scott, now Mrs. John Steinbeck.
We think it best to go on with the plan laid down although our hearts are heavy, but we hasten to offer anything we have to our President.
Yours very sincerely,
John Steinbeck
Steinbeck failed to mention a closer tie between the two families. Elaine Steinbeck and Lady Bird Johnson had been together at the University of Texas. The President’s reply to Steinbeck included the words:
“Your letter was comforting to me. I am hopeful that very soon I may sit with you and talk about our country.”
From Vienna they went on to Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and West Berlin, and reached home just before Christmas. As Steinbeck had promised while behind the Curtain, he did not write publicly of his experiences there. Instead he wrote a number of letters of gratitude which he described to Leslie Brady:
“I must warn you I have written some of the purplest prose you ever heard to the Writers’ Unions of Yerevan, Tblisi and Kiev. It would sound pretty corny to us but I learned the style there.”
To Writers’ Union of Tbilisi GEORGIA, U.S.S.R.
New York
January 15, 1964
Dear Friends:
When we left you and flew away to the north, it was my noble and misguided intention to write a separate and personal letter to every man and woman who had made our visit a special memory. I feel no shame in admitting that I can’t do that. It would take the rest of my life and even then, I would leave many out, and how would I write to those whose hands I touched, whose eyes I looked into, whose health I drank and whose names I do not know? Failing in my resolve, it is with some shyness that I address this letter to all the people of Tbilisi, to the singers, the writers, the flute players, the people who served us and gave us pleasure, who listened to us and talked to us—yes—and argued with us. That was good, too.
This letter is addressed to the pretty girls swinging their skirts along the street, and to the old gentleman in his garden of the mind, to the men squeezing the heart-blood from the grapes, and to the cellar men who dug deep in the casks to dredge up for us the maturing wine. I address the good dinner companions who sang country songs in four-part harmony, and raising their glasses toasted us with such compliments that we wished we could find the heart to believe we were as good and beautiful as they said we were.
And so, I address this letter to the city itself, to the high cliffs and girdles of pines, to the chattering river which gnawed a gateway between two worlds, to the clean sharp distances dancing over foothills and up to the mountains that edge the earth surely. And this letter is addressed to the quiet and permanent wedding in Tbilisi of the ancient and the new. The people in the street look out of old, old eyes on a fresh world which they, themselves, have made. Is it any wonder then that the greatest crop in Georgia is poetry?
I know the history and the pre-history of that gate between two worlds and how it drew the wolves from everywhere, looking with steel eyes for greener lands or set to slam the gate and hold the pass.
It seems, and is to be fervently wished, that by a favor of time and processes, the wolves are caged and the gates are opening all over the world. This is my prayerful desire, and if I could choose a mission for my own, that would be it—to help cage wolves and open doors.
I have probably left out many things in this attempt of a letter—but then, I never wrote a letter to a city before.
Clinging in our memory as tight as a burr on a sheep’s belly are light and gaiety and kindness, and strength to protect them and these against a background of the sun-brown city and the talking river of the Gateway of the World. Keep it open, I pray you.
Yours,
John Steinbeck
To Writers’ Union of Kiev UKRANIA, U.S.S.R.
New York
January 15, 1964
Dear Friends:
I am addressing this letter through the Writers’ Union to all of my old and new friends in Ukrania. The tough old guard whom I knew as soldiers when Kiev lay ruined in its own streets will know in what high regard I hold them. But I want to address my thanks also to the young, strong ones who grew up as the city grew back to greatness. I want to thank them for coming to greet my wife and me and for making us welcome.
It pleased me greatly, but did not make me vain, to discover that I was remembered in Kiev. That gave me a good feeling like that of coming home.
What I want to say to my friends is that although we differed and argued and bickered over small things, in the great things, we agreed.
Lastly, I ask you to believe that when I disagreed, I did it there with you and faced your answers. For I do despise a guest who flatters his host and goes away to attack him.
What I have to remember and to tell my people of is the kindness and the courtesy and the hospitality we were offered. These alone constituted a great experience.
Yours,
John Steinbeck
To Kazimierz Piotrowski STEINBECK’S POLISH TRANSLATOR IN WARSAW
New York
March 26, 1964
Dear Casey:
I am astonished that your letter of December 27th has taken so very long to reach me. When you put it in the troika, you neglected to add enough children to throw to the wolves, so that your letter could come through quickly.
It was a good time, Casey, and we are grateful to you for all of your help. You say that you had to explain why I couldn’t see more people, when it is my opinion that I saw every living Pole at least three times.
Oddly enough, the separate container of photographs and press clippings arrived before your letter did. And I did like very much the article by Bohdan Tomaszewski. It had the advantage also of being true, whereas the man who wrote the article which said that I had small and arthritic hands must have been somewhere else.
Anyway, Casey, happy hunting.
My love to Wanda and Elaine sends her best.
Yours,
John
In February he wrote Graham Watson in London:
“We went to Washington last Thursday. There was a dinner to a highlander named Home or something, and a Hootenanny at the White House afterwards. Elaine was cut-in on five times by the President, but then they are both Texans. Friday I had a private interview with him at noon, and Mrs. Johnson asked us to come privately for a drink at five. Then at six we went to see Mrs. Kennedy—an astonishing woman and very beautiful.”
Mrs. Kennedy had asked to see him to discuss his writing a book about the dead President.
To Mrs. John F. Kennedy
New York
February 25, 1964
Dear Mrs. Kennedy:
I have your letter, which most astonishes me that we could make so many contacts of understanding in so many directions and so quickly. But such things do happen, wherefor I do wonder at those people who deny the existence of magick or try to minimize it through formulas.
I would like to do the writing we spoke of but as always, in undertaking something which moves me deeply, I am terrified of it. If I am not satisfied with its truth and beauty it will see no light. Meanwhile, as it was with those brave and humble Greeks, I shall make sacrifice to those powers which cultivate the heart and mind and punish the mean, the small, the boastful and the selfish.
You bridled, I think, when I used the word Myth. It is a warped word now carrying a connotation of untruth. Actually the Mythos as I see it and feel it is the doubly true, and more than that, it is drawn out of exact experience only when it is greatly needed.
Since I was nine years old, when my beautiful Aunt Molly gave me a copy of the Morte d‘Arthur in Middle English, I have been working and studying this recurring cycle. The 15th century and our own have so much in common—Loss of authority, loss of gods, loss of heroes, and loss of lovely pride. When such a hopeless muddled need occurs, it does seem to me that the hungry hearts of men distill their best and truest essence, and that essence becomes a man, and that man a hero so that all men can be reassured that such things are possible. The fact that all of these words—hero, myth, pride, even victory, have been muddied and sicklied by the confusion and pessimism of the times only describes the times. The words and the concepts are permanent, only they must be brought out and verified by the Hero. And this thesis is demonstrable over the ages—Buddha, Jove, Jesus, Apollo, Baldur, Arthur—these were men one time who answered a call and so became the sprits’ls of direction and hope. There was and is an Arthur as surely as there was and is a need for him. And meanwhile, all the legends say, he sleeps—waiting for the call.
I have not really wandered away from the theme. At our best we live by the legend. And when our belief gets pale and weak, there comes a man out of our need who puts on the shining armor and everyone living reflects a little of that light, yes, and stores some up against the time when he is gone—the shining stays and the light is needed—the fierce and penetrating light.
Remember? We spoke of sorrow. (So many things we spoke of.) And also anger, good healthy anger. The sorrow and the anger are a kind of remembering. I know there is a cult of dismal, Joblike acceptance, a mewing “Everything that happens is good.” Well that is not so and to say it is is to be not only stupid but hopeless. That same cult of acceptance would have left us living in trees.
You see, my dear, how huge and universal the theme is and how one might well be afraid of it. But in our time of meager souls, of mole-like burrowing into a status quo which never existed, the banner of the Legend is the great vocation.
The Western world has invented only one thing of the spirit and that is gallantry. You won’t find it in any Eastern or Oriental concept. And I guess gallantry is that quality which, when faced with overwhelming odds, fights on as though it could win and by that very token sometimes does.
I shall try to find a form for this theme. Meanwhile, if you should have a feeling for talking or reminiscing or speculating, I shall be available. I shall come to you at your request or, if you would care to think without physical reminders, please come to us. Our house is one of love and courtesy and we hope of gallantry. I am sending you a version of the Morte. Meanwhile I enclose as promised, Sir Ector’s lament over the body of Sir Launcelot, in the Maiden’s Castle in Northumberland.
Yours,
John Steinbeck
It may take a swatch of time to find the clothing for the Legend. And it is possible that I never can, but I will try my best.
J.S.
SIR ECTOR’S LAMENT
(from Eugène Vinaver’s translation of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur)
“A, Launcelot!” he sayd, “thou were hede of al Crysten knyghtes! And now I dare say,” sayd syr Ector, “thou sir Launcelot, there thou lyest, that thou were never matched of erthely knyghtes hande. And thou were the curtest knyght that ever bare shelde! And thou were the truest frende to thy lovar that ever bestrade hers, and thou were the trewest lover of a synful man that ever loved woman, and thou were the kyndest man that ever strake wyth swerde. And thou were the godelyest persone that ever cam emonge prees of knyghtes, and thou was the mekest man and the jentyllest that ever ete in halle emonge ladyes, and thou were the sternest knyght to thy mortal foo that ever put spere in the reeste.”
Mrs. John F. Kennedy
New York
February 28, 1964
Dear Mrs. Kennedy:
I have been thinking about what you said regarding lost causes. And it is such a strange subject. It seems to me that the only truly lost causes are those which win. Only then do they break up into mean little fragments. You talked of Scotland as a lost cause and that is not true. Scotland is an unwon cause. Probably the greatness of our country resides in the fact that we have not made it and are still trying. No—I do believe that strength and purity lie almost exclusively in the struggle—the becoming. That is why it is so important to me —for my own sake—to write about the President. You said you hoped he was not a lost cause. But you must see that by the terrible accident of his death he can’t be. His cause must get stronger and stronger and it cannot weaken because it is a piece of everyone’s heart. All of us carry a fragment of him. And we must have some goodness in us—else we could not perceive goodness in him.
You can see how this theme is haunting me. My Irish mother had the second sight and I picked up a little of it in her blood. It is because of this that I make the following request. I have no picture of the President nor of you. Would it be possible for you to send these to me? I want a focus of attention. You will know if there exist such pictures. I don’t want the posed state pictures but rather those with complexities. If you know such as that, perhaps I can stare deeply into the eyes and beyond into the brain; it might make it easier for me. I want to know to the best of my ability. Sometimes in moments of perplexity or pain, the eyes and face open and allow a passage through.
As we all do—I have need, and consider the New Testament many times. And it has seemed to me that Jesus lived a singularly undramatic life—a straight line life without deviation or doubt. And then we come to that heart-breaking moment on the cross when He cried “Lama sabachthani.” In that one moment of doubt we are all related to Him. And when you said you had questions to ask, please remember that terrible question Jesus asked: “My Lord, wherefor hast thou forsaken me?” In that moment He was everyone—Everyone!
I have looked for a Marcus Aurelius and the ones I have found are big and pretentious. I want one for you, small as a breviary like my father’s which he gave to me—small enough to put in your purse. I will find one for you sooner or later.
I seem to be committed but I have no idea whether or not I can do it. Please believe that if I can do it—only you and Elaine will see it until it is as perfect as I can make it.
Can you, or will you, tell me—did he at any time in his life write any poetry? Prose can be from the mind but poetry comes from the soul.
Finally, please tell me whether these letters trouble you or bother you in any way. They are a manner of thinking.
Yours,
John Steinbeck
To Carlton A. Sheffield
New York
March 2, 1964
Dear Dook:
This note is prompted by the desire to talk when one hasn’t anything to say. It’s what they call visiting in Texas.
My 62nd birthday has just come and gone—and I must say I felt older at 35—yes and wiser too. It is very strange. When we are very young, we have the feeling that we can aim and position our lives. But looking backwards, I at least seem to see that it was all a series of unforseeable accidents and that nothing we could have done would have made any difference.
I have finally worked out to my own satisfaction anyway how it can be that some people are lucky and some unlucky. For example—do you remember Ritch Lovejoy? Everything he touched turned to tragedy, in health, in economics, in his work. It was almost as if he called tragedy to him.
Then we have known those to whom everything good happens. I don’t for one moment think that there is automatic punishment for the lucky. There are runs of luck. And from this stems my theory. Theoretically if you play enough times there will be an equal number of reds and blacks. But in the events of a human life, there aren’t enough spins to make it balance. So some people win mostly, and others lose. If we lived forever, it would all balance out but we don’t. Oh! I know it’s possible to rig the game a little but not a great deal. Luck or tragedy, some people get runs. Then of course there are those who divide it even, good and bad, but we never hear of them. Such a life doesn’t demand attention. Only the people who get the good or bad runs. Now that is the only bit of speculation which seems to hold water for me. And perhaps it isn’t very interesting. 62. And I think you are the better part of a year ahead of me, aren’t you?
I think of you very often but more in one direction than in others. You see when my second wife divorced me, I had to build a new reference library and I did it very thoroughly—dictionaries and facts—and then some really complete specialties. As far as possible I wanted to be able to look up nearly everything without going to a library. For the rare things kept under guard in the great repositories I was able to gather microfilm. I hardly ever turn to my bookshelves, loaded with goodies, without thinking—“How Dook would love this!” And you would. But there is a hazard which you will recognize. Starting to look something up, I get stopped ahead of the place and quite often never get to the thing I started for.
But there is one bad thing my collection does. It holds up to me a constant mirror of my ignorance. When I am faced with what I don’t know a kind of despair sets in. And in addition to all the things about the past which I don’t know there are all of the new fields of research into which I can’t even step my toe. And these go whirling away ahead of me. It must have been a pleasant time when a philosopher could know everything. That time is long gone. But you would love the books. Of course the casual books come flowing in but the designed library is a staunch bastion. I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now—only that place where the books are kept.
Odd thing is that I wish I had learned more. I am stamping the ground trying to get started on a new book that means a lot to me. I want it to be very good and so far I have the tone of it and what it is about and that is all. I’ll have to kick it around for some time.
I have thought about writing an autobiography but a real one. Since after a passage of time I don’t know what happened and what I made up, it would be nearer the truth to set both down. I’m sure this would include persons who never existed. Goethe wrote such an account but I have not read it. Can’t find it yet. He called it Fiction and Fact. I didn’t know about this when I got to thinking about such an account. Do you know the work? I have put a search out to find it. But surely the fictionizing and day dreaming and self-aggrandizement as well as the self-attacks are as much a part of reality as far as the writing is concerned as the facts are. And even the facts have a chameleon tendency after a passage of time.
I must go today for my periodic medical check. I do it for my dear wife. And eventually they will find that internally I don’t exist. But so far they have found only that I am perfectly normal even in my degenerations. Nothing spectacular at all—only erosion.
I guess this is about the end. I have to answer the packet of letters from strangers which just came in. I wonder why I do it. Some kind of vestigial courtesy, I guess.
Anyway I’m glad to talk to you but I’d rather hear you talk back.
Yours
John
To Mrs. John F. Kennedy
(New York]
April 20, 1964
Dear Mrs. Kennedy:
Forgive please, my apparent slowness in answering your two letters. The delay arises from a kind of remorseful rethinking. I had no intention of joining the cackling flock who are pulling and pushing and nibbling at you.
You see, it was never any plan of mine to rush in while the wound is fresh and while eager memories feed on themselves. I can’t make up my mind to write of this or not to. All I can say is that I will think and feel and out of this something may emerge. A great and a brave man belongs to all of us because he activates the little greatness and bravery that sleeps in us. And unfortunately an evil man finds his signals in us also.
And you are quite right when you say a book is only a book and he was a man and he is dead. The book could only be of value if it helped to keep the essential and contributing part of him alive, and such a thing will have to wait until the agony and the poison drains away and only the surviving permanence remains.
I have had to find this in my own small measure of pain and confusion and I am sorrowful if I have contributed to yours.
I think your three letters and our conversation have told me in a large and feeling sense all I need to know. And you are quite right when you say you probably wouldn’t like what I wrote if I write it now. I don’t think I would either. No, it’s a thing to put into the half-sleeping mind, to think of in the half-dawn when the first birds sing, and in the evening; they call it the dimpsy in Somerset. These are the times for the good and the permanent thinking which is more like musing —the garden path toward dream.
I have always been at odds with those who say that reality and dream are separate entities. They are not—they merge and separate and merge again. A monster proportion of all our experience is dream, even that we think of as reality.
I wish I could help you although I know not anyone can. I’ve thought that after all of the required puppetry and titanic control that has been asked of you and given—it might be good and desirable if, like those bereft squaws I spoke of, you could go to a hill and howl out your rage and pain—yes and defiance against the cold stars, against God and the gods. If your husband loved the Greeks, he would understand this with his whole soul. I am not speaking religiously at all when I suggest that only after we have been driven to the “Lama sabachthani,” only then are we capable of the “Father, into Thy hands.” Who has not had the first cannot have the second.
Oh! Lord, I hope I am not lecturing you. I don’t want to.
I’m having a miserable copy of the Meditations bound for you. It will be along in time.
Now, I come to the end. I shall ask no more questions. But if the cloud of thought persists, one day I do hope to write what we spoke of—how this man who was the best of his people, by his life and his death gave the best back to them for their own.
Take care, and when you can, please laugh a little. I think I’ve been a bore but if so, that’s what I am.
Yours with admiration but never with pity.
John Steinbeck
When Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis turned over copies of her letters from Steinbeck for use in this book, she wrote:
“Dear Mrs. Steinbeck,
I have found the letters of your husband—
I can never express what they meant to me at the time—they helped me face what was unacceptable to me.
You will never know what it meant to me to talk with your husband in those days—I read his letters now—and I am as moved as I was then—All his wisdom, his compassion, his far-seeing view of things— I can’t remember the sort of book we were discussing then—but I am glad it wasn’t written.
His letters say more than a whole book could—I will treasure them all my life—
Most sincerely
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis”
To The President C/O JACK VALENTI, THE WHITE HOUSE
TELEGRAM
SAG HARBOR
JULY I, 1964
DEAR MR PRESIDENT I AM DEEPLY MOVED PLEASED AND PROUD TO LEARN THAT I WILL RECEIVE THE PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM. WARMEST GREETINGS
JOHN STEINBECK
This “highest civil honor conferred by the President of the United States for service in peacetime” was presented at the White House in September. Steinbeck shared it with such other distinguished civilians as T. S. Eliot, Willem de Kooning, the Lunts, Helen Keller, Leontyne Price, Edward R. Murrow, Paul Dudley White, and Aaron Copland.
To Pascal Covici
[Sag Harbor]
July 14 [1964]
Bastille Day
Elaine buzzed me to come into the house and told me you wanted to talk to me.
As for your suggestion of my inconstancy with mea culpa overtones, it seems to me that this was your late ulcer talking and I refuse to argue with an ulcer.
Let’s suppose I have an ulcer too and our ulcers get to arguing. Yours says—“You don’t love me as you used to. What have I done to deserve this?” And my ulcer says “Not so. It is you who have changed. I have remained constant.”
God damn it, Pat, that’s school-girl talk and school girl thinking—fine for my kids at 16 but not good enough for two men whose years should give them better counsel. Of course we have changed. If we hadn’t it would be either a lie or an abnormality. I know I get tired when I used to be tireless. I am short tempered where I used to be calm and calm where I used to blow my top. That’s simply age—to be accepted, not mourned over. I consider the body of my work and I do not find it good. That doesn’t mean a thing except that the impulses have changed. If I have any more work in me, which I sometimes doubt, it will have to be of a kind to match my present age. I’m not the young writer of promise any more. I’m a worked-over claim. There may be a few nuggets overlooked but the territory has been pretty thoroughly assayed. More and more, young people look at me in amazement because they had thought I was dead. Among writers it is becoming very fashionable to be dead.
Just as you did not tell me about your painful ulcer, I see no reason to burden you with the knowledge that this last year was a very difficult one for me to finish. I really didn’t know whether I would make it or not. But this is no attempt to match sorrows with you either. As you know I have been more fortunate than I have deserved and not as good as I have wished. That was inevitable of course but inevitability is none the less shocking.
I thought on starting this that I could make some kind of pattern emerge but nothing really seems to—nothing true.
You say that about three years ago something happened and you are trying to find some blame in yourself, perhaps. Well, you know damn well what happened three years ago. I collapsed and got taken to the hospital. I don’t know what it was and neither do you but I do know that something happened and that I never returned as I went in. Whatever it was made a change. Maybe maturity hit me and required an explosion to make me aware of it.
But hell, I could go on explaining for weeks and it wouldn’t mean anything. Mainly I want to rest. Somewhere I have picked up a great weariness. So come off it about my neglecting you. I’m neglecting everyone and everything. There may be some milk in this old bag yet. That’s one of the things I’m trying to find out.
affectionately,
John
In the fall of 1964, an association that had begun thirty years before, when a Chicago book dealer had brought The Pastures of Heaven to Pascal Covici’s attention—an association marked by enthusiasm, occasional bickering, and continuous affection—came to an unexpected end with Covici’s death. One of Steinbeck’s very few public speeches took place when he, along with Saul Bellow and Arthur Miller, appeared at Covici’s memorial service. As he wrote to his British publisher, Alexander Frere:
“It has not been a good year and Pat Covici’s death was a dreadful shock to us. I can’t yet go to Viking offices, not because he is not there but because he is.”
The Steinbecks visited John Huston at his house, St. Clerans, in County Galway for the Christmas holidays, and Steinbeck was attracted to a local legend. He and Huston discussed collaboration.
To John Huston
The Dorchester
London
January 5, 1965
Dear John:
It was the most memorable of all Christmases, the kind that can and will turn to folklore surely. And after a short time I won’t be sure what happened and what didn’t and that’s the real stuff of truth. Aer Lingus was four hours lingering before taking off so that we did have a good experience in Dublin Airport. And sun in England.
I took the beautiful cloth [a bolt of Sardinian velvet, a Christmas gift from Huston] to Tautz and they were pleased and cautious. Today I went for a fitting of the jacket. They were still astonished at the cloth, saying the jacket would do but that for the trousers the material put up a fight. “And so it should,” I said. “It has a lifetime of fighting against my knees and my behind. Let it start now.” It is a princely gift and I shall wear it with arrogance.
I think often of Daly. And please believe me, I don’t want to make a motion picture. But I do have still the hunger to make something beautiful and true. And I have the feeling that in this story are all the beauties and all the truths including the aching lustful ones. And so I’ll write the little tale as well as I can and we will see whether the sound and color of it will translate to the visual. It does seem to me that in the late scramble for reality, writers have somehow overlooked the real. Will you let me know what you casually feel about this?
Meanwhile—again our thanks for an improbable time—almost into a fresh dimension.
Yours,
Sean
As they were leaving Galway, Gladys Hill, Huston’s colleague and assistant, handed Elaine Steinbeck a small parcel said to contain jewels entrusted to Huston by his friend, Mr. W___, in Cairo, and asked that it be put in the vault of the Midland Bank in London. Mrs. Steinbeck undertook to smuggle the parcel through English Customs, much to her husband’s horror. Later, he entered into the intrigue with characteristic glee and reported his adventure.
To Gladys Hill
London
January 6, 1965
Dear Glades:
Your mission was carried out in a manner that would have made you proud. James Bond may be dead but I became 007 3/8 for the afternoon. It was after hours and I rang the bell and a dark and angry face looked out from the chained door. I demanded the manager and after a long wait was admitted. I asked him to identify himself, which so startled him that he complied. He then said it was not Midland’s policy to give assurance for jewels. I said I had no knowledge of any jewel, but that the package I carried must be protected. There was a small and whispered conference in another room. Then he came back and said they would seal the package in a great envelope—that I must attest this and they would then protect the package. 007 3/8 agreed. They brought a taper and enough wax to pitch an ark within and without. And I sealed every corner—7 blobs—with my flying pig ring. They played right along with the James Bond mood. Then I signed every seal, and I was escorted to the vault to see the package deposited. Then the manager asked how recently I had seen Mr. W___. I said, “I have never seen Mr. W___. I do not know Mr. W___.” The chains grated on the door and I swept out feeling fictional as all hell.
We are having a pleasant time. Last night we saw Olivier’s Othello. Probably the greatest performance I have ever seen. I am still shaken by it. We’ve not been tagged yet and the White House has forgotten me, praise God.
I think I’ll have a go at Daly as soon as I can to see whether I can get a color key.
Love and again deep thanks.
John
To Carlton A. Sheffield
[New York]
February 2, 1965
Dear Dook:
A week ago, Mary Dekker, reading in bed, took off her glasses, laid down her book and went to sleep. Just that. No struggle, no fear, no intimation. And with her medical history, she must be considered one of the lucky ones. I think I knew at Thanksgiving that I would not see her again, but that’s not really valid because I had that feeling about lots of things when it wasn’t true.
Mary was 60, Esther 74, Beth 70 and 163. That is quite a record of survival of four children.
In spite of knowing this was imminent, it has its shock. We were in Paris when the news came.
The trip to Ireland was wonderful. The west country isn’t left behind—it’s rather as though it ran concurrently but in a non-parallel time. I feel that I would like to go back there. It has a haunting kind of recognition quotient. I found a marvelous story I would like to write there.
That’s all, I guess. But I did want to tell you about Mary.
love
John
On Steinbeck’s return to New York, Thomas Guinzburg brought him a mock-up of a book of photographs of the fifty states, and asked him to write captions for them. The captions turned into essays, some of them based on observations made on his recent trip around the country.
To John Huston and Gladys Hill
New York
February 17, 1965
Dear John and Glades:
In Paris the news came that my youngest sister had died suddenly. So we ran for home. It was the first break in our family. She was the youngest and she was sixty and we were four children.
Then, since I have not worked under our capitalistic system for some time (I have given my work away for the last two years) I went to work on my book of pictures of all of the fifty states and my essay on our people. It is called America and the American. I may have to run for my life when it comes out. I am taking “the American” apart like a watch to see what makes him tick and some very curious things are emerging.
Then Elaine’s aunt, the one she adored, fell ill to death and last Saturday the calls seemed to indicate she was about finished so Elaine went to Texas to help with the recessional. And she hangs on, comatose, a vegetable and alive.
Before we went to Paris I was in Gieves in Bond Street, you know that military outfitters place? The clerk, pronounced clark, was Irish. As I finished my business, he said, “You’re from Ulster.”
I said, “No I am not, why do you say that?” He said, “Because you talk like an Ulsterman.”
Well, my grandfather was from Ulster, from Mulkearaugh on Lock Foyle. And I had great commerce with him surely when I was a child. But isn’t it interesting that this influence should hang on to my own age of sixty-three? My grandmother was not. She was, I believe from Cork and a convert, which made her a fire-eating Protestant but I don’t remember that she talked much whereas my grandfather talked all the time. If you have ever read East of Eden, Sam Hamilton was my grandfather and you’ll see the mark he put on me.
The brown velvet darling has not come yet. Do you suppose the pants are still fighting back? Give our love to all there.
Yours,
John