Thornton Wilder (105 page)

35.
TNW to APW, July 30, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

36.
Ibid.

37.
APW to TNW, August 5, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

38.
Ibid.

39.
TWN to Isabella Niven Wilder, [August 1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

40.
TNW to APW, July 30, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

41.
TNW to Charles Wager, November 4, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

42.
TNW to APW, October 3, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

43.
TNW to APW, November 11, 1921, TNW Collection, YCAL.

44.
TNW to Charles Wager, November 4, 1921,
SL
, 151–52.

45.
TNW to APW, March 4, [1922?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

46.
TNW to E. C. Foresman, June 28, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

47.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, September 19, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

48.
ANW, “Vita Notes with Special Reference to Literary Interests, November 1971,” typescript, ANW Family Record, Private Collection. Also see ANW, “Albert Schweitzer and the New Testament in the Perspective of Today,” in Abraham Aaron Roback, ed.,
In Albert Schweitzer's Realms: A Symposium
(Cambridge, MA: Sci-Art, 1962), 361–62.

49.
TNW to APW, July 20, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

50.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, July 20, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

51.
TNW to Charlotte Wilder, July 21, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

52.
“Mists”: TNW to APW, July 20, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL; “wild and upthrusting”: TNW to APW, July 31, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

53.
TNW to APW, July 31, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

54.
TNW, “A House in the Country,” 1922 typescript, TNW Collection, YCAL.

55.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, March 10, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW may also have been working on
Précautions Inutiles,
another short story, during this time. This story is published in J. D. McClatchy, ed.,
Thornton Wilder: The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels 1926–1948
(New York: Library of America, 2009), 631–34.

56.
TNW to APW, July 20, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

57.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, July 20, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

58.
TNW to APW, July 20, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

59.
The Italian artist Properzia (born in 1495) had been greatly admired for her carvings, the best-known of which was a
Gloria of Saints
with more than sixty minuscule heads carved with precision on a single cherrystone. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in her
Essays on the English Poets and the Greek Christian Poets
(1889), praised the writing of Alexander Pope for its “exquisite balancing of sounds and phrases” and its “glorifying of commonplaces by antithetic processes,” summarizing his style as “this Indian jugglery and Indian carving upon—cherry-stones!” Samuel Johnson addressed his comment to Hannah More (1745–1833), a British author, critic, educator, and philanthropist, who opposed slavery and wrote evangelical tracts and good-conduct manuals.

60.
TNW, “Sentences,”
Double Dealer,
September 1922, 110. The literary magazine was established, according to the
New York Times Book Review
in July 1921, to be “a national magazine from the South,” designed to offset “a certain disquietude” in the region “over the lack of its intellectual outlets.”

61.
TNW to “The Editors of The Dial,” August 3, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL. A French writer and diplomat born in Russia, Morand (1888–1976) wrote novels, short stories, poetry, screenplays, biography, and travel narratives.

62.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, August 22, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

63.
TNW, Journal, September 8, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL. As noted above, TNW's surviving early journals are unpublished, and while the journal entries are usually dated, he did not begin numbering them until October 11, 1926.

64.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 5, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

65.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, September 19, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

66.
TNW to APW, February 17, 19[22?], TNW Collection, YCAL. (Letter is headed “Davis House, Lawrenceville, Feb. 17, 1921,” but TNW was in Paris then.)

67.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 5, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

68.
Ibid. This is the “first sighting” of TNW's plans to write the story of Julius Caesar, documenting the earliest recorded date of his concept for a novel he would bring to fruition twenty-six years later as
The Ides of March.
This is notable in and of itself, and also because, as will be seen, this date refutes and disproves an accusation that TNW stole the idea from a young novelist in the late 1930s or 1940s.

69.
Ibid.

 

14: “ALL MY FAULTS AND VIRTUES” (1922–1923)

1.
TNW to APW, February 7, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.

2.
APW to TNW, February 13 [1922?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

3.
TWN, Journal, September 12, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

4.
TNW, Journal, September 15, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

5.
TNW, Journal, September 5, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

6.
Ibid.

7.
TNW, Journal, September 11, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

8.
TNW, Journal, September 12, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

9.
TNW, Journal, September 11, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

10.
TNW, Journal, September 29, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

11.
Ibid.

12.
TNW, Journal, September 9, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

13.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, May 16, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.

14.
TNW, Journal, September 4, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

15.
TNW, Journal, September 22, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

16.
Charlotte Wilder to Isabella Niven Wilder, [January 1921?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

17.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, March 26, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.

18.
APW to TNW, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.

19.
TNW to APW, May 5, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.

20.
TNW, “James Joyce, 1882–1941,” in Gallup,
American Characteristics
, 168.

21.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 19, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

22.
APW to Charlotte Wilder, May 19, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

23.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, March 10, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

24.
TNW to Gwynne [Mrs. Mather] Abbott, May 4, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL. From May 1 to December 30, 1923, TNW copied most of his outgoing letters by hand into a letter book.

25.
Isabel Wilder, “A Handfull [
sic
] of Facts,” n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.

26.
Isabel Wilder to TNW, [June 1923?], TNW Collection, YCAL. Isabel writes in the letter that she is twenty-three and a half. She would have turned twenty-three in January 1923.

27.
Ibid.

28.
TNW to Mame Gammon, May 10, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

29.
TNW to Barbara Leighton, July 9, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

30.
ANW was an outstanding tennis player for most of his life. In 1920, at Yale, as has been noted, he and Lee Wiley won the National Intercollegiate Doubles Championship in lawn tennis. In June 1922 Amos and his Oxford partner, Charles Kingsley, played Centre Court at Wimbledon, losing to the Australian team who went on to win the doubles championship. In 1977, when Wimbledon celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary, Dr. Amos Niven Wilder, at the age of ninety, was recognized as the oldest living person to have played Wimbledon's Centre Court.

31.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, March 10, 1922, TNW Collection.

32.
Ibid.

33.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, February 10, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.

34.
TNW to Charlotte Wilder, n.d., TNW Collection, YCAL.

35.
Ibid.

36.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, February 10, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.

37.
Ibid.

38.
Ibid.

39.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, April 21, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.

40.
Ibid.

41.
TNW to APW, April 18, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL.

42.
TNW to Norman Fitts, May 1, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

43.
Ibid.

44.
TNW to Norman Fitts, June 7, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

45.
TNW to Edith Isaacs, May 3, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

46.
Ibid.

47.
Ibid.

48.
TNW to ANW, June 12, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

49.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, June 5, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

50.
Ibid.

51.
Charlotte Wilder to ANW, July 5, 1923, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

52.
TNW to APW, July 9, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

53.
TNW to Jim Lane, [June 24, 1923?], LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

54.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, July 2, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

55.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, August 15, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

56.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, July 2, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

57.
TNW to Gilbert McCoy Troxell, July 10, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

58.
TNW to William I. Nichols, July 27, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

59.
TNW to Bill Bissell, August 20, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

60.
TNW to Gwynne [Mrs. Mather] Abbott, August 28, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

61.
TNW to Bill Bissell, August 20, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

62.
TNW to Gwynne [Mrs. Mather] Abbott, August 28, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

63.
TNW to Edith Isaacs, August 4, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

64.
TNW to Gwynne Abbott, August 27, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL. Gwynne Abbott was the daughter of Mrs. Mather Abbott, above.

65.
“Professional theatre-goer”: TNW to William I. “Bill” Nichols, September 19, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL. “My dear School”: TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, August 15, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

66.
TNW to Barbara Leighton, July 9, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

67.
TNW to APW, July 21, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

68.
TNW to APW, August 5, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

69.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, May 15, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

70.
TNW to Bill Bissell, August 20, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

71.
Ibid.

 

15: “MILLSTONES” (1923–1925)

1.
APW to TNW, September 25, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

2.
Ibid.

3.
TNW to ANW, October 2, 1925, TNW Collection, YCAL.

4.
ANW to Charlotte Wilder, June 29, [1923?], TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

5.
Ibid.

6.
Isabella Niven Wilder to TNW, October 26, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

7.
Jeanne-Françoise de Récamier (1777–1849) was the vivacious hostess of a literary and artistic salon in early nineteenth-century French society.

8.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, October 29, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

9.
Ibid.

10.
Isabella Niven Wilder to TNW, November 1, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

11.
TNW to Mrs. Hildegarde Donaldson, December 3, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

12.
TNW to Leslie Glenn, October 9, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

13.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 19, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

14.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, October 23, 1923, LB, TNW Collection, YCAL.

15.
Ibid.