B007RT1UH4 EBOK (40 page)

WG and Margaret Williams in Paris, July 1950

The coast of Italy is beautiful, with a long beach and the mountains rising up behind the town. And the Italian people, the whole Mediterranean way of life, so humanly good, warm and kind after the Parisian French. I’ll be back in Paris in about a week, but right now am simply eating 3 good meals a day, getting the sun and sleeping. I’ve thought of you often, these days of the beach ahead of me, and hope you are enjoying the same wonderful things there.

I hope you can read all of this—pardon the abominable ball-point pen, it’s all I have with me.

Love,

Bill

St Martins-in-the-Fields: well known church in London’s Trafalgar Square.

To Edith Gaddis

Paris

6 july 1950

dear Mother,

Finally back in Paris, where, as in all the grand cities, little has changed. Now of course feeling the unwiseness of the Italian junket, though on the other hand it was wise, health being considered, and now restored, I believe. At any rate, I do have some colour in my face, unlike a good year past.

Of course we’re running into all the complications I’d thought of, and a few more. Margaret is having all the customary difficulty getting a passage, and we don’t at all know yet whether it will be managable. I can imagine not, though she still hopes on it. Of course I came back to Paris to find not only no payments through for work done, but also the fact that since their Florence conference Unesco is drastically cutting down on outside contract work; and there are quite absolutely no jobs to be had there now. I don’t know, I really don’t know. But whatever plans are managed, I’ll need money, of course. And so enclose these two checks (I wrote 100 and 200 dollars because I thought 300 might be too much for a single special-account check). Could you withdraw the money, and send me as quickly as possible 300$, a draft of some sort, care of American Express? It might be easiest to do it all through American Express there in New York. I’d thought of asking you to wire it, but think that would probably be too expensive. As I said in my other letter, I’d hoped to spend the rest of the summer here in France working and at least managing to earn enough to live on while the other [bank account] waited and grew in New York, and Margaret got there and back. But of course it is collapsing. And just to complicate everything, I’ve been offered an apartment here in Paris which I had briefly last summer, it’s a small house really, two stories, though only two rooms, with a large kitchen, bath &c., and exactly the place I’d choose and want if I should live in Paris, especially with a job, and especially if married. But the rent is 50$ a month, which seems very foolish right now, with everything else in prospect. But Paris is like enough to NewYork in the renting business, impossible to find a place, and you must take them when you see them. I couldn’t at all afford it without work, and no work seems to be forthcoming anywhere. And also with the prospect I mentioned earlier, of going to Spain to live and work on writing for a while, a fairly long while, in the fall if there’s nothing here in the way of work, —you can see the complications. Sometimes it looks as though just putting everything into one bag that would fit and going back to Spain would be the easiest and by far the most sensible thing. But too late now for such vagabonding notions. I’ve thought of going to Spain, where I could live very cheaply, and waiting there until Margaret gets back (if she goes), and she joining me there. But there’s that fine apartment here in Paris. And we couldn’t get married in Spain, being infidels. Well. I’ll let you know as anything comes up definite. [...]

with love,

W.

To Edith Gaddis

Barcelona, Spain

29 july 1950

dear Mother,

Certainly about the hottest place I’ve been in many a bachelor year, air almost impossible to breathe, just the weight of it. But Barcelona is a fine city: I believe a port is necessary to make a city fine, why Barcelona and New York and London have style, and Paris and Madrid begin to bore (me at any rate). Going to Madrid was a waste of time I suppose; but there we were in a yellow MG, and once you’ve started off in one direction down here you can’t very well change, or roads suddenly turn into foot-paths.

It was marvelous to find your letters waiting here yesterday when I came up from Madrid—I’d spent about four days there, saw Haygood who asked about John, was delighted to hear that John is respected member of respectable firm, Haygood I don’t think is awfully pleased with his Madrid life, even asked me what I thought of his going to Paris for an opening in Unesco’s library there; I warned wildly against that. I watched Wheatland buy 80$ worth of shirts (he’s the boy I drove down with), put him on his way back to Paris after showing him a bullfight, the old square and the national palace and similar small junk Madrid has to offer (though I don’t call the Prado so), and came on here.

Of your three letters of course the third was the exciting one, starting off with, —Margaret called me five minutes ago . . . Lord, how far away from it I feel here; and I suppose I envy you all some of these next weeks you’re going to pass together. Is it a strong mark in my disfavour, that I’m not on the spot asking mother for daughter’s hand? I suppose; but I really couldn’t see any better way to manage it. If I’d come certainly we’d have a grand summer together; but in September there we’d be, Margaret and I trying to raise the fare to cross the sea again, ending up postponing the marriage and finally managing it two years hence in a little church around (some) corner. Some Massapequa corner, —with the baby preacher, and George Wiebel drinking too much cider. I still favour this London notion; but had a letter from Margaret, written on shipboard in full discomfort saying she didn’t want to make another ocean voyage for some time. Well
I’m
not going to make one. So you must encourage her return, put her in a box if you have to. [...]

What I’d hoped might be managed—and Margaret and I talked [about] this briefly, she’s enchanted by the idea—is that I get to London a fortnight before her return, she come there, we manage a most modest wedding (with possibly one or two guest-witnesses, if they’re there, and required), and then go to Scotland or to Wales for a week or two before returning to Paris or where-ever to take up again with the dastardly currents of making a living. Doesn’t that sound reasonable? I think it sounds magnificent, even possible. What will follow heaven knows. Unesco in Paris looks ready to collapse. Perhaps writing, somewhere like Mallorca. Or even—in Madrid I met the head of the AP office there, very nice old fellow of about 60, who wants to write a book about Spain, a sort of anecdotal history, but his English isn’t very good. We sat over coñacs in his living-room one morning while he talked about it, I suddenly realised he was proposing collaboration. I said I’d write John about such a thing, certainly there are few or no good books on Spain now, current ones mostly written by American newsmen with some bone to pick, or some emotional unbalance to air. Well . . .

Tonight I plan to get on the small boat that runs over to Mallorca, and see there whether I can find a modest place to sit down and work until called back (though I think I mayn’t get as much work done as I’d hoped, the time and money short, the uncertainty, and mostly preöccupation over the wedding plans, because I so want them to work out right, —to tell the truth I never thought any wedding, even mine, would be so important.) But of course I’ve made another mistake; I’d thought Mallorca, or the coast here would be so hot nobody but myself would be fool enough to go. Now it turns up that this is the ‘season’, crowded, prices up, &c. dear heaven, all I want is a large quiet room to work in. I’m going over deck-passage, since cabins on the boat are too dear; I saw the mob buying tickets this morning, hundreds, all to sit out on the open deck of a small boat leaving this evening until 7am tomorrow. That’s the way the Spanish like to do things, it’s no fun unless 30 people are sitting in your lap, eating and tending babies. [...]

with love,

W.

Wheatland: Richard Wheatland II (1923–2009), Harvard class of ’45, from a wealthy Bangor, Maine, family. He was in Paris (1950–53) helping to administer the Marshall Plan.

To Edith Gaddis