Selected Letters of William Styron (20 page)

—Bill

T
O
D
OROTHY
P
ARKER

March 19, 1952 London, England

Dearest little crumpet

I saw T.S. Eliot in the subway this morning. Imagine coming all the way to England and running into the Bard, not at a Cocktail Party, but under Piccadilly Circus. I didn’t talk to him—I was too bashful, I guess—but there he was, as large as life (bigger, in fact, than I’d imagined him) with a kindly, sad face and a sort of melancholy stoop. Odd thing was that no one else except myself, and friend Bryan Forbes who was with me, seemed to recognize him at all. Or maybe it isn’t odd.

Monday night there was a drunken dinner party at Hamish Hamilton’s. Present were the Hamiltons (he has an attractive, vivacious Italian
wife), a man called Leonard Russell, editor of the
Times Literary Supplement
, and his wife Dilys Powell who is a film critic. Also a rather voracious woman novelist, Emma Laird by name (“Of Former Love”) who invited me to her house in Sussex weekend after next, if I’m still here. I detected a carnal gleam in her eye but if I go—which I doubt, since I think I’ll be in France—I don’t think I’ll have any trouble holding her at arm’s length, since I’m bigger than she is. Hamilton is a sort of whimsical, nervous fellow—even more nervous than I am—and the austerity doesn’t seem to have had any marked effect on him, since he turned out a marvelous meal, complete with butlers and footmen, and the hangover I had the next day testified to the size of his supply of Scotch.

Last night Roger Machell had a small party complete with Eric Ambler, who seems to me frankly to be one of the less disagreeable brands of jackass. His wife is from Nutley, New Jersey and he has a really terrible propensity for talk and for getting drunk, and we had a long pointless argument about who won the American Civil War, and was McClellan really the bad general everyone made him out to be. The party broke up at 2:00 A.M. and every one was fairly polluted, except myself, of course, who held my liquor like a Virginian. Today had lunch with Roger and Mollie Parker-Downes, who is very likeable except that she, like practically all the London literati, puts terrible emphasis on the value of
The New Yorker
as a journal of opinion …

Bill

T
O
R
OBERT
L
OOMIS AND
J
OHN
J. M
ALONEY

March 26, 1952
^†s
Cornwall, England

Dear John + Bob. The Austin really rolls. We’ve been to Cambridge and all the way up to Lincolnshire in the north of England, back down to London and then Cornwall, where I am now, in four days. The scenery here is marvelous and I’m staying with a vicar, his insane wife and 90-year-old
Aunt. Made a horrifying trek at 3: 00 A.M. night before last across Dartmoor, but was neither accosted by escaped convicts nor Baskerville hounds.
^†t
Saw Stonehenge, which is disappointing, being very small + surrounded by wax paper + apple peels, but saw the Cambridge chapel, Ely Cathedral and a 10
^th
century castle, called Tottenhall, on the Lincoln trip and all are magnificent in their various ways. Tomorrow I’ll see Daphne du Maurier’s in Devon. God!

T
O
E
LIZABETH
M
C
K
EE

March 27, 1952 London, England

Dear Lizzie:

I haven’t received any communication from you regarding the money I asked for, but I expect it will come in today’s or Monday’s mail.

We got in from our grand tour last night. Stopped over in Par, Cornwall—which is near the village where we were staying, Porthleven—and were well fed by Daphne de Maurier, who is really quite charming, I guess, and put out a wonderful meal but who makes a terrific fuss about being impoverished, this being all highly incongruous considering the fact that she lives in the most enormous house I’ve ever seen (about the size of the old Raskob mansion on Riverside Drive, only larger) and that she’s #1 on the current list.
^†u
Oh to hell with it; life is a mystery. The stay in the vicarage in Cornwall, something straight out of Evelyn Waugh, was hilarious; I’m writing Dorothy all about it and I guess she’ll tell you about it.
^†v
But Cornwall really is lovely: with tremendous, breathtaking seas.

I had lunch with Walter Baxter today, and you may tell Ted that he’s really a most likeable chap, rather nervous, quite tall and much older in appearance
than his picture, with slightly graying hair and a small limp, both of which were a result of the war.
^†w
I don’t think he’s queer, at least there’s not a hint of the fag in his manner, and my total impression was extremely favorable. I hope he does sell, because I really think his book is quite fine.

I wish you’d do the following for me sometime soon: write to the Director of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress and ask him if there’s any way I can get ahold of a copy they have of “The Southampton Insurrection” by William S. Drewry (Washington, D.C., 1900). It’s the only full account I know of the Nat Turner rebellion, and I’d like to read it.
^†x
The reason I mentioned the MS Division director is because he’s a friend of Mr. Chambers and he wrote me once asking for the MS of
LDID
.
^†y
I forgot his name but Hiram can tell you, and I think that perhaps this fellow—Mears or something like that, I think it is—could get the book, while perhaps it couldn’t be gotten through ordinary channels. Also, I’d like one book which might describe life and customs in Virginia in 1830–31. If this involves too much research or trouble on your part, let me know, but I think it can be done pretty easily. I’m really pretty desperate to get started on something and I want to do the Turner thing, in spite of what Hiram says. I’d appreciate it if you could get these two books for me and mail them over before say, sometime in June. I’ll have a Paris address by then.

The weekend I’m temporarily staying at the Cavendish Hotel on Jermyn street, which is draughty and unbelievably cold, a great sordid hulk of a building whose only claim to actual eminence is that it is run by an old hag, still living but totally immobile in a wheelchair; the ex-mistress of Edward VII, who gave it to her as propitiation or pay; or perhaps both.

Love

—Bill

T
O
R
OBERT
L
OOMIS

March 31, 1952 London, England

Dear Bob

Just a short note in reply to your nice letter of the 25
^th
, in which you encouraged me to get over my initial disappointment about England. I guess I sounded more than intentionally gloomy; actually I’m having an awfully good time over here, or as good as the austerity will permit. I suppose you + John got my letter (or card, rather) from Cornwall; that was sent at the tail-end of a really first-rate trip through parts of England with this actor-fellow I met, Brian Forbes, in a new Austin. We were in Cambridge first, then Lincolnshire looking at really magnificent castles + cathedrals. Stayed with a well-to-do farmer and his family who live in the Fen Country (like Holland, dikes [not the Village brand] and canals) on a little river which is the loveliest I’ve ever seen. They were very gentil and most hospitable.
^†z
Then down to Cornwall by way of the moors, where we stayed at an absolutely insane vicarage with the vicar and his wife who looks like Laurette Taylor in
The Glass Menagerie
(she asked me, “Do they have many flowers in America?” and stoutly maintained that Stalin was a “Jew-boy” and couldn’t be over 40), and with their 90-year-old aunt, deaf as a post, who is in favor of Taft. But they were all almost pathetically nice (one has to strain to avoid sounding patronizing about the British these days) and put out some wonderful food and showed us the Cornish coast, which is rocky and bleak and absolutely marvelous, putting either Maine or Point Lobos to shame. On the way back we stopped at Daphne du Maurier’s, a friend of Brian’s; she seems very nice, would still, I think, be good for a fair-to-middling roll in the hay, and lives in a house that is precisely twice as big as S. Klein’s On the Square, which, among other things, makes all her talk to me about being impoverished something of a bore, to say the least. Back in London I almost came down with something, but propped up my hypochondria and went to see Mr. Baxter, who looked down at me in mercy, and seems all in all a most sensitive, excellent fellow, not a bit a fag, and an extremely interesting talker, in a shy, nervous way. Friday, I’ve been invited to Hamish Hamilton’s to
meet T.S. Eliot’s roommate, John Hayward, but I think I’ll be out of England by then; besides, I’ve already
seen
the Bard himself, in the Piccadilly subway, of all places! I think Calder Willingham,
^†A
who’s here briefly, and I will take off for Denmark on Friday; why, exactly, I don’t know, except that I’ll probably never go to Denmark if I don’t go now.

I was sorry to hear about your father, but certainly hope he’s better now. However, if it’ll put you at ease, my father had something of the same thing and is now back at work; they do miracles these days.

How’s Bishop’s book doing; well, I hope. Haven’t gotten Mandel’s proofs yet, but I expect them any day.
^†B
Best to John + keep me informed. Hamilton will forward any mail. Ever yours, Bill

P.S
.:
LDID
seems to be doing fine, with three lead reviews so far which don’t say it’s the greatest thing since Tolstoy, but that it’s got “something.”

T
O
E
RNEST
L
EHMAN
^†C

April 20, 1952
^†D
Paris, France

Dear Mr. Lehmann,

Thank you very much for your letter, which I received a few days after my arrival in Paris. I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any short pieces for you at the moment, but I’d be proud to have you consider one for your program, and I’ll certainly send you something as soon as I work up enough energy and will-power to write again. Actually at the moment I’m planning another novel, but I expect to do some short pieces to fill the gaps and I’m flattered to think that I may be able to keep you in mind.
The party was great fun and I enjoyed meeting you, along with all the other nice people.

Sincerely,

Wm Styron

1. What do you believe to be Joseph Conrad’s permanent place and rank in English letters? When Conrad died, some critics were uncertain of his final position and Virginia Woolf, in particular, doubted whether any of his later novels would survive. On the publication of a new edition of his collected writings, Mr. Richard Curle wrote in “Time and Tide” that Conrad’s works now rank among the great classics of the English novel. Which of these views in your opinion, is correct?

Both, in a way. I think that Conrad’s earlier great works—
Youth
,
Heart of Darkness
,
Lord Jim
, etc.—do rate with the finest novels written in English (certainly a work like
Heart of Darkness
is one of the few supreme masterpieces in English prose fiction), but I must agree with Mrs. Woolf in her feeling that much of his later work was thin, that when away from the sea Conrad seemed to be on uncertain ground, that his treatment of sex and society reflected in the main unfelt experience.

2. Do you detect in Conrad’s work any oddity, exoticism and strangeness (against the background of the English literary tradition, of course) and if so, do you attribute it to his Polish origin?

No.

3. Has Conrad had any influence on American literature?

Among the comparatively few American writers for whom the forging of a prose style—an individual prose style, that is, in which words sing and weep and celebrate, and are not merely bloodless ciphers—has been a central factor in their writing, Conrad has been, I think, one of the important influences. If I’m not mistaken, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Wolfe have all declared their debt to Conrad.

4. Do you feel that you owe him anything in your development as a writer?

Yes. What writer, what young man is there who has read
Youth
or
Heart of Darkness
who has not come away feeling that this is English prose as it should be written, and who—when the lazy desire to go slack or to shun his true emotions sneaks up—has not remembered Conrad’s own dark struggle, his faithfulness, and his unremitting honesty—and has then not given his best.

William Styron

T
O
W
ILLIAM
C. S
TYRON
, S
R
.

May 1, 1952 Paris, France

Dear Pop,

May-Day in Paris is the day when
everything
is closed—buses, subways, stores, even the police, and the only people who transact business (outside of the bars) are the vendors of lily-of-the-valley, which seems to have some sort of May Day symbolic significance.
^†E
It’s a perfect day, then, to write you a letter and tell you briefly what I’ve been doing since Denmark. I arrived here a couple of weeks ago, after having taken the night train from Copenhagen—a twenty-two hour trip made longer than it ordinarily would have to be because of the number of island channels in Denmark that the train has to traverse—by railroad ferry. The route goes through Germany and Belgium and since most of it’s at night I didn’t see a whole lot, though I did get a pretty good twilight look at both Hamburg and Bremen. From where I sat both cities looked rich and thriving, but I gather that both are still pretty well smashed up behind view of the railroad tracks.

Paris is just about all they say it is, a beautiful, incomparable place, made more lovely by the springtime. I must say that the atmosphere here, however, is treacherous—so lulling and lazy that one is content to sit for
hours and hours drinking a beer in a café, and to do nothing more, no work, just sit. My French is still pretty sketchy (I should have applied myself more at Davidson and Duke) but already is showing improvement, and I no longer am afraid as I was at first to go into a “Tabac” and order a pack of cigarettes. Through friends in New York and London I’ve met a lot of very nice and interesting people and so my days and nights are well-filled. Through one of these people, a young writer named Peter Matthiessen
^†F
from Connecticut, I got a very large, sunny, comfortable hotel room in a hotel called the Liberia in Montparnasse. It costs only 10,000 francs a month (less than $40) and I’ve contracted to stay there until around the middle of June, after which time I think I will have had my share of Paris and will head on somewhere else. I also plan to buy this Mr. Matthiessen’s 3-year old Fiat car for $500, and this will solve my transportation problems during my Rome stay, although nice as the car is, it doesn’t sound nearly as jazzy as the new Pontiac you described, which indeed must be a beauty.