Merricourt
Jan. 23rd, 1932
Dear Mother.
[...] We just came back from the library but I didn’t get any books.
I finished Bomba the Jungle Boy and I have started Bomba the Jungle Boy at the Moving Mountain. I wrote a poem and it went like this
Easter
Easter is on Sunday
But today is Monday
And Easter is 11 weeks away
At Easter the bunny hides eggs all over,
Some in the grass, some in the clover.
Did you like it
With love
Billy
Bomba the Jungle Boy [...] Moving Mountain: the first two (both published 1926) in a series of boys’ adventure novels by the pseudonymous Roy Rockwood.
To Edith Gaddis
[Most of WG’s early letters home are brief, cheerful bulletins about school activities, but the following one about the three-hour train-ride between New York City and Berlin conveys some of the anxiety that Jack Gibbs recalls of his boarding-school days in J R: “—End of the day alone on that train, lights coming on in those little Connecticut towns stop and stare out at an empty street corner dry cheese sandwich charge you a dollar wouldn’t even put butter on it, finally pull into that desolate station scared to get off scared to stay on [...] school car waiting there like a, black Reo touring car waiting there like a God damned open hearse think anybody expect to grow up . . .” (119).]
Merricourt
Oct. 24, 1933
Dear Mother.
I got here safely, but got mixed up because it was dark and didn’t think [it] was Berlin. Carl, Warren, and David were there to meet me and we enjoyed the rest of the Oh-Henry. The darn train stopped up over the bridge to let another one pass it and I was wondering where the station was when we started up and rode by the station (nearly) and the boys had to race with the train. [...]
With love Billy
To Edith Gaddis
[After Merricourt, WG attended public school on Long Island from seventh through twelfth grades. In the summer of 1940, he sailed to the Caribbean on the SS Bacchus, the first of many voyages he would make throughout the Western hemisphere over the next dozen years.]
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
[24 August 1940]
Dear Mother.
Well everything is coming along fine. I was pretty under the weather the first 2 days out but after that fine. The other passengers are fine especially 4 of the men who are swell. And the crew are too. I have become the bos’n’s “apprentice.” He has taught me to splice rope etc. and is a corker. A good part of the crew are colored but they’re OK too.
As I write this it is 5 AM and we are lying in at Port-au-Price. I slept on the bridge last nite and this morning got up early and am watching the sunrise over the mountains to the east of the town. Last nite 3 of the men (passengers) and I went ashore and saw a little of Haitian nite-life, of which we saw very little. All the stores were closed as they didn’t expect the ship ’til this morning so the town was almost dead. Mr Romondi’s prophecy, however, has come true. There are a good many palm trees on the island and I was under one last nite.
The town is quite beautiful with the mountain behind it and all the white buildings and a flaming cloud to the right and the sun rising to the left.
We go ashore this morning to the souvenir shops etc. Oh boy!
We lift anchor at 10 AM for Aruba or La Guiara—I forget which.
I read Black Majesty—a fellow on the boat has it.
Hope I don’t get stuck in a record store in Port-au-Prince and miss the boat—
Love
Bill
Mr Romondi: unidentified.
La Guiara: on the coast of Venezuela, WG’s next port-of-call.
Black Majesty: a biography of Henri Christophe, king of Haiti (1767–1820), by John W. Vandercook (1928).
Left: WG piloting the SS Bacchus, 1940.
Right: Edith Gaddis, 1941 (Times Wide World).
To Edith Gaddis
[WG entered Harvard in September 1941, but almost immediately began experiencing medical problems. (Thirty years later he recalled it as mononucleosis.) As a result, he left after the first term and headed west for his health.]
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
[10 September 1941]
Dear Mother.
First the business before I forget and then the news. As you can see a typewriter ribbon will be welcome at the first opportunity, and then there is the problem of the desk lamp. They have nice ones like my room mate’s at the Coop for $5.98, but if you can get one and send it all right; any how I think it must be settled soon as classes start today and they are starting assignments off with a bang. Also I understand that note books seem to be required to some extent in many of the courses, so if you happen on one it will be welcome up here. I have been spending to a fair extent, having gotten all of my books and other little things such as writing paper, joining the Coop, etc., and so the latest contribution was very welcome. And speaking of contributions, have you heard anything from the Christy affair?
I’ve had two classes: in English and French, and you should see the assignments. Boy, they aren’t waiting for anything. The food is good so far, and with classes starting we are beginning to get settled down to a more regular life. Boy it is really some life, and promises to become more so to the nth degree. We are beginning to realize just about what the courses are going to be, how much work connected with them, etc. Although my course is not a stiff one, and the courses aren’t as hard as they are dry, uninteresting, and only requirements, I am looking forward very apprehensively to the Latin course, in which my classes start tomorrow. V (my room mate just did this—for Victory—in the November hour exams I guess).
I
