Thornton Wilder (104 page)

78.
Glenn Hunter to TNW, December 12, 1918, TNW Collection, YCAL.

79.
Glenn Hunter to TNW, December 23 and 26, 1918, TNW Collection, YCAL.

80.
History of Hamden Men in the World War from Information Collected and Compiled by the Hamden War Bureau
(New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Company, n.d.), ix–x.

 

12: “HIS OWN TUNE” (1919–1921)

1.
TNW, “Student-Life at Yale Since the War,” [1919?] TNW Collection, YCAL.

2.
TNW to Charlotte Wilder, [Spring 1919?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

3.
A story about Charlotte Niven's plans for YWCA work in Italy was carried nationally, as in the
Clearfield (Pennsylvania) Progress,
February 27, 1919.

4.
Charlotte Wilder to APW and Isabella Niven Wilder, August 15, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

5.
ANW, 1919, ANW, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL.

6.
William Lyon Phelps,
Autobiography with Letters
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), 661. Phelps had been a freshman at Yale when APW was a senior and “even then known outside of academic walls for his brilliance as an orator.”

7.
APW to ANW, April 25, 1919, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

8.
TNW, foreword to
The Angel That Troubled the Waters
, 3–7. Again, page references are to A. Tappan Wilder,
The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder,
vol. 2.

9.
Ibid.

10.
TNW, “New Haven,” unpublished semiautobiographical manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.

11.
Ibid.

12.
Fenton,
Stephen Vincent Benét
, 83–85.

13.
Memories differ about what TNW worked on in this class. Wilmarth “Lefty” Lewis conjectured that it may have been the beginning of his novel
The Cabala
, which would be published in 1926, but Lewis apparently telescoped time and events, for TNW had not yet journeyed to Rome. See Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis, “Thornton Wilder,” unpublished manuscript, 1947, written at the request of Clifton Fadiman, ed.,
'47: The Magazine of the Year,
November 14, 1947, TNW Collection, YCAL. Lewis, who had known TNW and ANW at the Thacher School, adapted this article as a tribute to TNW and read it at his memorial service. Lewis also referred to the Canby class in his autobiography,
One Man's Education
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 143.

14.
Donald Haberman to Isabel Wilder, August 17, 1961, TNW Collection, YCAL.

15.
Fenton,
Stephen Vincent Benét
, 85.

16.
Norman Fitts,
S4N
21 (Summer 1922): 24.

17.
Patterson,
History of the Class of Nineteen Hundred Twenty
, 49.

18.
TNW, “SS
Independenza
,” unpublished semiautobiographical manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.

19.
APW to TNW, [Summer 1918 or 1919?], TNW Collection, YCAL

20.
ANW, “Vita Notes with Special Reference to Literary Interests,” November 1971, ANW, Wilder Family Record, TNW Collection, YCAL.

21.
Ibid.

22.
Ibid.

23.
TNW to Charlotte Wilder, [Spring 1919?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

24.
Ibid.

25.
Isabella Niven Wilder to Bruce Simonds, August 15, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

26.
TNW, “SS
Independenza
,” unpublished semiautobiographical manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.

27.
Ibid.

28.
Isabella Niven Wilder to Bruce Simonds, August 15, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL. In this letter Isabella Wilder identified the SS
Providence
as the ship that took TNW to Italy. In his semiautobiographical manuscript, he called the ship the SS
Independenza
.

29.
Ibid.

30.
APW to ANW, April 25, 1919, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

31.
TNW, “SS
Independenza
,” unpublished semiautobiographical manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.

32.
Ibid.

33.
Ibid.

34.
Certain passages narrating the Rome experience also appear in my foreword to TNW,
The Cabala and
The Woman of Andros
(New York: HarperPerennial, 2006), xi–xxv.

35.
TNW, “SS
Independenza
,” unpublished semiautobiographical manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.

36.
TNW to Family from the Hotel Cocumella in Sorrento, September 25, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

37.
TNW, “SS
Independenza
,” unpublished semiautobiographical manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.

38.
Ibid.

39.
TNW to Amos P., Isabella N., Isabel, and Janet F. Wilder, October 14, [1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

40.
TNW to Family, September 25, 1920, [from Sorrento], TNW Collection, YCAL.

41.
TNW to Family, October 4, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

42.
TNW to Amos P., Isabella N., Isabel, and Janet F. Wilder, October 14, [1920], TNW Collection, YCAL.

43.
TNW to ANW from Sorrento, October 14, [1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

44.
TNW to Family, October 4, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

45.
TNW,
Villa Rhabani: Play in Four Acts,
unpublished manuscript, TNW Collection, YCAL.

46.
TNW to Family, September 25, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

47.
TNW to Amos P., Isabella N., Isabel, and Janet F. Wilder, October 14, [1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

48.
TNW to Family, October 21, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

49.
Ibid.

50.
TNW, “James Joyce and the Modern Novel,” in Gallup,
American Characteristics
, 174–75.

51.
TNW to Family, October 21, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

52.
TNW to Family, November 16, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

53.
TNW to Family, November 20, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

54.
TNW to Family, [October 15, 1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

55.
TNW to Family, October 21, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

56.
TNW to Family, October 14, [1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL. (In a typescript copy of this letter, it is noted that TNW's self-description seemed to be a postscript added to the October 14 letter. TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.)

57.
APW to TNW, [Fall 1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

58.
Ibid.

59.
Daggett,
The Record of the Class of Eighty-Four, Yale College, 1914–1936
, 146.

60.
APW to TNW, [Fall 1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

61.
Ibid.

62.
Ibid.

63.
Charlotte Wilder to Isabella Niven Wilder, [1920?], TNW Collection, YCAL. There are several undated letters from Charlotte in Italy to her mother and father, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

64.
TNW to ANW, December 13, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

65.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, April 4, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

66.
TNW to Family, October 21, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

67.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, “Aprile” 13, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

68.
TNW to ANW, December 13, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

69.
TNW to APW, February 24, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

70.
TNW to APW, February 1, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

71.
Ibid.

72.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, March 10, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

73.
Ibid.

74.
Ibid.

75.
TNW to Family, March 3, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

76.
Ibid.

77.
TNW to ANW, December 13, 1920, TNW Collection, YCAL.

78.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, April 13, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

79.
See, for instance,
SL
, 126.

80.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, April 13, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

 

13: “CHOICE SOULS” (1921–1922)

1.
TNW to APW, February 1, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

2.
Ibid.

3.
APW to TNW, [March 16 or 26, 1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

4.
Ibid.

5.
TNW to APW, March 21, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

6.
TNW to APW, February 25, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

7.
APW to TNW, March 26, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

8.
APW to TNW, [March 16 or 26, 1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

9.
APW to TNW, March 26, [1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

10.
Ibid.

11.
APW to TNW, April 15, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

12.
TNW to APW, July 30, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

13.
TNW to APW, June 27, [1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL. (TNW mistakenly wrote 1920.)

14.
Ibid.

15.
Ibid.

16.
Tappan Wilder, “Afterword and Readings,” in
The Cabala and
The Woman of Andros
, 219. In a letter to his mother April 16, 1925, TNW confirms that in Paris in 1921, he began working on his Roman memoirs, which would evolve into his first novel,
The Cabala
(1926). See TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, April 16, 1925, LD, TNW Collection, YCAL. (During 1924–25, TNW occasionally copied outgoing letters by hand into a letter diary.)

17.
TNW, “The Memoirs of Charles Mallison: The Year in Rome,” holograph manuscript, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.

18.
TNW to APW, June 27, [1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW mistakenly wrote 1920. Whereas many people may write the number of the previous year in January, TNW seemed to make that error in June or July in several different years.

19.
Ibid.

20.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, [August 1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

21.
Quoted in Noel Riley Fitch,
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1983), 81–82. Sylvia Beach recalled erroneously that Isabel Wilder also came into her shop with TNW in 1921. Isabel's visits must have come at a later time.

22.
See Richard Ellmann,
James Joyce: New and Revised Edition
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) 502–8, for background on the trial and the eventual publication of
Ulysses.

23.
Meeting James Joyce: TNW to Bill Bissell, August 20, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL. “Self-imposed exile,” TNW, “James Joyce, 1882–1941,” in Gallup,
American Characteristics
, 167.

24.
TNW, “Joyce and the Modern Novel,” ibid., 172.

25.
Edmund Wilson (Leon Edel, ed),
The Twenties
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1975), 94.

26.
See Edmund Wilson, “Thornton Wilder,”
The Shores of Light: A Literary Chronicle of the Twenties and Thirties
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1952; reprint, Boston, Northeastern University Press, 1985), 384–91, for a discussion of Proust's influence on Wilder's fiction.

27.
TNW, Journal, September 28, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

28.
Ibid.

29.
TNW, “Some Thoughts on Playwrighting,” in Augusto Centeno, ed.,
The Intent of the Artist
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941); reprinted in Gallup,
American Characteristics
, 115, 120, 122.

30.
TNW to APW, June 8, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

31.
APW to TNW, June 22, [1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

32.
APW to TNW, June 27, [1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

33.
Ibid.

34.
APW to TNW, July 12, [1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL. Blair Academy was founded in 1848 by John Insley Blair, a railroad tycoon who endowed the school with money and hilltop land—435 acres just outside Blairstown, New Jersey. The academy educated boys and girls until 1915, when it became a boys' school only (a situation that would be reversed in 1970).