pair of “levis”—those blue denim pants, if you can find a whole pair
the good machete, with bone handle and wide blade—and scabbard—if
this doesn’t distend package too much.
Bible, and paper-bound Great Pyramid book from H—Street.
those two rather worn gabardine shirts, maroon and green.
Incidentally I hope you got my watch pawn ticket, so that won’t be lost.
PS My mustache is so white and successful I am starting a beard.
Santo Semana: i.e., Semana Santa (Holy Week), which culminated on Sunday, 6 April 1947.
Davison’s father: at the top of the page, WG adds this note: “He is R. H. Davison—15 State Street—Boston, if you want to communicate with him for any reason.”
Blague: in a later letter (7 April 1948) WG describes this as “an allegory, and Good and Evil were two apparently always drunk fellows who gave driving lessons in a dual-control car,” but this is only a frame-tale enclosing stories of the lives of New Yorkers similar to the Greenwich Village sections of R.
Great Pyramid book: Worth Smith’s Miracle of the Ages: The Great Pyramid (Holyoke, MA: Elizabeth Towne, 1934), a cranky book that translates apocalyptic messages from the Great Pyramid of Geza (predicting Armageddon in 1953), which WG surprisingly took seriously and cites a few times in R.
H — Street: WG lived at 79 Horatio Street in Greenwich Village while working at the New Yorker.
To Barney Emmart
[A lifelong Harvard friend who worked in marketing in the 1950s, taught English for a year at the University of Massachusetts (1967), and died 1989.]
Mexico City
April, 1947
dear Barney,
Just a note of greeting. And to say that I earnestly wish you were here, because I am working like every other half-baked Harvard boy who never learned a trade—on a novel. Dear heaven, I need your inventive store of knowledge. Because of course it is rather a moral book, and concerns itself with good and evil, or rather, as Mr. Forster taught us, good-and-evil. You see, I call out your name, because other bits of life proving too burdensome, I have taken to the philosophers—having been pleasantly involved with Epictetus for about a year, and now taking him more slowly and seriously. And of course I come upon Pyrrho, and see much that you hold dear, and why. Also David Hume, whose style I find quite delightful.
Shall I describe Mexico City to you? It is very pleasant, and warm, and colourful of course—and we are here, and cannot get jobs because we are tourists, and live on about 30¢ worth of native food a day. And I’m sure you would like it. Also, we grow hair on our faces. And plan, as soon as we can manage to sell the Cord—beautiful auto—to purchase two horses, and the requisite impedimenta, and go off and live in the woods, or desert, or whatever they have down here. There I shall finish Blague—that is the novel. And have George Grosz illustrate it—he has the same preoccupation with nates that I do—grounds enough to ask him.
Well old man, this is just to let you know dum spiro spero—I haven’t learned Spanish yet—a noodle language if I ever heard one. Please give John Snow my very best greeting, tell him I shall write, would give anything for a drink and talk with you all. But must work. A dumb letter, but I am very tired.
Anyhow, my best—
Bill
Forster [...] good-and-evil: in The Longest Journey (1907), E. M. Forster writes, “For Rickie suffered from the Primal Curse, which is not—as the Authorized Version suggests—the knowledge of good and evil, but the knowledge of good-and-evil” (part 2, chap. 18).
Epictetus: Greek Stoic philosopher of the first century. WG owned George Long’s translation of The Discourses of Epictetus.
Pyrrho: Greek skeptic philosopher (c. 360–c.270 BCE). Otto relates an anecdote about him in R (130).
David Hume: Scottish skeptic philosopher (1711–76).
George Grosz: see postscript to the letter of 3–4 May 1947.
dum spiro spero: Latin, “While I breathe, I hope,” attributed to Cicero, and the motto of many families and organizations.
To Edith Gaddis
Mexico City
[April 1947]
Dear Mother—
I do hope this will be the last time I shall have to put upon you so. And just now am in a sort of confident spirit because I believe Blague has something to say, if I can write it. If not, believe me, there is little else that interests me, but I shall do something which will take care of me, and I shall not have to keep you living in this perpetual state of waiting to hear that I need something. And so I add, could you within another week or so send 25$ more? And that will be all. Believe me, if Blague is done it will be worth it—you will like it. And if I can get an advance things will be rosy. As I say, I have the outline done, just what I want to take place from beginning to end. And each scene clear in my mind. I have only written about 5,000 words, and plan 50,000, comparatively short—ap. 200 pages.
We want to leave as soon as we can sell the car &c, out where living will be cheap.
Believe me, it will be worth it—I have never felt so single-purposed about a thing in my life. The novel will be the best I can write. And as I say, if it doesn’t do, you won’t have to put up with this foolishness any longer. Davison likes it much, and is very helpful. Am getting sun, and even on 20¢ a day enough food, eating in the marketplace. A grand city, but without a job or tourist money, no place to stay. So have faith for just a little longer—it will work out. Thanks, and love—
Bill
To Edith Gaddis
Mexico City
15 April ’47
Dear Mother—
[...] You—and anyone—can usually be pretty certain, if you receive a letter of any length from me, that I am for the moment fed up with the novel. No offense—but, except for time we spend going marketwards for food—usually about 5 pm, the daily meal—or in the morning, for café-con-leche—I am here working on Blague. Of ap. 50000 words planned, I have 10000 fairly done—though now—tonight—must go carefully over all I have done, add wherever I can, clear up as much as possible—and even cut, wherever I use too many words—which is often. When I finish this part, am going to send it to Little Brown, where Davison’s father will see that
