Theophilus North (54 page)
Box 282, Newport, R.I.
August 12, 1922
Dear Trixina:
You should know that Mr. and Mrs. Max Oser have taken the Millais Cottage and have already appeared several times at Bailey's beach. All the world is dying to know if it is a
ménage qui marche
. Large bets were laid at Mrs. Raynam's garden fête, both for and against. Mrs. Ogden Kindred was so eager to hear that she sent her gardener, borrowing over the hedge, Ohio-fashion, to find out the opinion of the servants' table. Apparently the answer was favorable. Fortunately they have not had the presumption to issue invitations; there are in town not a few ladies who took riding-lessons at Geneva, and came through it with family conclaves and red eyes.
I dined with Mrs. Forrest Friday where it was asserted that Mrs. Mannie had given over her gallantries and had decided even to let the choice of her chauffeurs to the disposition of her husband. It will be almost a pity if there is not another Restoration lady left in the colony. Unfortunately she has never served as an object-lesson to younger lasses; her health is all but insolent, and her beauty, in spite of a certain
éclat emprunté
Dont elle a soin de peindre et d'orner son visage
Pour reparer des ans l'irreparable outrage
.
However one cannot regret these week-ends where the humours in an exchange of garters and pinch-her-ankle while ascending stairs were too highly rated.
The Princess Antoine Bibesco has been staying with Mrs. Fogg at Shingles. She is even less liked by the New York flock than her mother, though the Washington and Philadelphia parties cannot see too much of her. While Mrs. Asquith was here Mrs. Fogg gave an immense dinner for mother and dinner. There were many refusals, several of which were not formally worded. What was the astonishment of the guests on arriving to discover a great legend pasted over the door; it was an impious perversion of what is to be found over the entrance to all Roman churches. The butlers hustled it down you may be sure, but not before a good dozen guests had read the words IMPUDENTIA PLENARIA. No one has the remotest notion who had it put there; though Edward Sandys is continually being censored for having too mordant a wit. Mrs. Asquith has brazened the thing out, as you would have expected, and tells the story herself with a wealth of assumed lightness. . . .
Sources: A Sketch and, a Preface
A Sketch
The figure of Theophilus North emerges out of a series of sketches Wilder began writing in 1968 about events and places in his life, of which this extract from “S.S. Independenza” is an example. The story recalls Wilder's departure for a year-in-residence (1920â1921) at the American Academy in Rome, an actual event in his life, as was his friendship with Gertrude Stein. Theophilus appears here in both the original sketch and the paragraph affixed to it (see illustration on page 388). The affixed paragraph is written in a different ink and appears to be the handwriting of a still-older author.
“S.S. Independenza”
Fathers and Sons is a painful subject, even in a country of distinct ethos. (China coped with it draconically; a son is totally obedient and subservient to his father and father's father until death and after.)
Gertrude Stein and I were once discussing a friend who had recently lost a father. “Well, you know,” she said laughing, “I've often noticed that when a man's father dies his son tends to feel and behave ten years younger.” Gertrude's laughter was never (in my hearing) malicious, destructive, savage; even on a subject as painful as this it had the buoyancy of that kind of release from cant that is expressed in the phrase “Let's tell the truth.” It contained no indictment against any specific father, against any category of malevolent tyrants. Her idea was that that was the way the world was and always had been. . . .
During my years in New Haven my father was a stone's throw [from] my successive rooms in the dormitories. I was much under his eye. . . .
From the moment I embarqued on the
Independenza
I breathed an emancipated air. I was deracinated and on the ship and later at the Academy in Rome I was largely in the company of young men who had
left their father at home
. Very exciting it was. Theophilus, who had been quiescent . . .
Now Theophilus had been dormant for some time. During the years in New Haven he had been very much under his father's eye. . . . Though he had (“through sheer military genius,” as he put it) [risen] to the rank of corporal, had been very much under his sergeant's eye. But from the moment the ship
Independenza
pulled out from the dock at Hoboken he began to revive. There was no one over him.
A piece of “S.S. Independenza,” in the author's handwriting.
A Preface
Among Wilder's papers is a document titled “Preface,” from which this extract is taken. While it is unclear why Wilder chose not to complete and use the Preface, it is likely that this piece of the
Theophilus
puzzle served him, as did his journal, as a method for testing ideas. Spaces are left blank and words are missing; this is, after all, a writer at work.
The opening lines of Wilder's draft of a Preface for
Theophilus North
, the text of which appears below.
Throughout a long lifetime every man acquires a certain number of generalized ideas about human experience that he feels to be peculiarly his own. They are his own not necessarily because they are original with him but because he has lived with themâapplied them, modified them, tested them, rejected them then readopted them. The sign that they are not merely notions is that they have the capability of growthâobservation confirms themâand of consolidation, they are like snowflakes on a window pane; they form clusters and patterns. Some he received as a child from tradition (and from among these he rejected many); some from reading; some from chance remarks overheard. Some long latent within him were clarified by crisis and distilled by reflection. Some, though considerably developed, were discarded as the result of an enlightenment.
He has given to them a nameâa private and absurdly pretentious name: they are “deposits of radium.”
This book is constantly informed by a number of these “clusters of energy.”
Here are some of them:
All men aspire to excellence. All men strive to incorporate elements of the Absolute into their lives. These efforts are doomed to failure. Every man is an archer whose arrow is aimed to the center of the target; but our arrows are leaden, their feathers are ill [ââ] our eyesight is imperfect; our education has failed to distinguish the true from the false targets; the strength in our arm is insufficiently developed. All men aspire to incorporate elements of the Absolute into their lives.
To the impassioned will all things be possible. The founder of the Christian faith is reported to have said, “If you have faith [ââ] mustard seed, you shall say unto this mountain, be removed, and it will [ââ] and [ââ] and it shall be open to you. And all things are possible to those who love God.” That is, of course, absurd. Something must be the matter with all “the terms of reference.” As I have often amused myself by saying, “Hope never changed tomorrow's weather.” Yet. . . yet. . . history abounds with achievements that fill us with wonder.
All men aspire to excellence. The very crimes against the human race are derived from the “dream” of establishing an orderly existence. War itself is the “dream” of eliminating bad men and bad societies. All energy is the corruption of an aspiration to excellence. Gold is exhausted radium and lead is exhausted gold.
It is a basic condition of the human mind to wish to be free. The desire is noble and wreaks a large part of the harm in public and private life.
What does a man do with his despair?
Greek myth tells us that a direct view of Medusa's head turned a man to stone. Perseus gazed only at her reflection in his shield, cut off her head and rescued Andromeda.
Pascal said: “Neither the sun nor death permit themselves to be looked at fixedly.”
At the margin of every man's consciousness is the knowledge that he must die and that the universe must have an end; i.e. the possibility that all the efforts to achieve an orderly world are doomedâthat existence is an absurdity and a farce.
What does a man do with his despair, his rage, his frustration?
There is a wide variety of things he does with it.
One or other of them is pictured in each of the chapters of this book. . . .
Envoi: Two Voices
An Enthusiast
In this excerpt from an interview with a
Los Angeles Times
reporter in October 1973, an ebullient Wilder speaks his mind about the age he is living in and his own age.
NEW YORK
â“In a nutshell,” said Thornton Wilder, the 76- year-old Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and playwright, “this is an age of transition.
“An age of transition is difficult for everybodyâdifficult for parents, difficult for children, difficult for you in the journalistic world. But it is an exciting age. Something is straining to be born.”
If this is cause for pessimism, it has been lost on the author of such works as
Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth
, and
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
, and the friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein.
“I am of an optimistic natureâa grasshopper,” he said in an interview the other day. “I enjoy hoppiting around. I'm happy every day. I don't view with alarm every day. Having lived so long, I have seen many things. All history has been troubled, but when you are in the kind of transition we are in now, the trouble is more apparent than at other times.”
We met in the lounge of the Algonquin. Wilder, his eyes twinkling through horn-rimmed glasses, sat down gingerly, rather than with the abandon of a grasshopper. He had recently come from a spell in the hospital for treatment of a bad back.
“Sacroiliac,” he explained. “It's called slipped disk now. It used to be called lumbago. It changes its name every 30 years.”
Wilder's first published writing appeared half a century ago in the literary magazine of Oberlin College in Ohio, where he studied for a couple of years before going on to Yale. His latest work, a novel called
Theophilus North
, a partly autobiographical story set in Newport, R.I., is being published by Harper & Row this month.
“I worked on the book for one yearâmy 75thâApril to April, after I thought I had laid down my pen,” he said.
“Is creative work difficult in the mid-70s?” I asked.
“If you get a concentrated idea,” he replied, “all your writing blocks disappear. Writing at this age is not hard, not if you have the right ideaâan idea deeply relative to yourself. Verdi wrote
Othello
at 78 and
Falstaff
at 79. Picasso was a beaver until his death in his 90s. He kept his paintings in a back corridor because if he put all his workâthree a dayâon the market, it would reduce the price. He was getting $25,000 a sketch.
“Sophocles at 90 was hauled into court by his grandchildren, saying the old man was non compos and might will his estate to somebody else. When he went before the court the judge said, âWhat do you have to say for yourself?' âI'll tell you something,' Sophocles replied. âI wrote this morning the great chorus from
Oedipus at Colonus
.' This work is a treasure. âEither I am crazy or you,' the judge said. âCase dismissed.'
“This is an attractive story for us old men. . . .”
A Friend
Robert Hutchins (1899-1977), Thornton Wilder's oldest and closest friend, to whom
Theophilus North
is dedicated, spoke at Wilder's memorial service in New Haven on January 18, 1976, as did the actress Ruth Gordon. (Her husband, Garson Kanin, was an usher.) Hutchins's tribute is printed in its entirety. Amos (1895â1993) and Isabel (1900-1995) are Wilder's brother and sister.