Thornton Wilder (111 page)

47.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, December 6, 1934, YCAL.

48.
See Lois Palken Rudnick,
Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 49–51.

49.
TNW to Gertrude Stein, [February 16, 1935?], YCAL.

50.
TNW, “Gertrude Stein's NARRATION,” introduction to
Narration: Four Lectures by Gertrude Stein
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935); reprinted in Gallup,
American Characteristics
, 183.

51.
Stein,
Everybody's Autobiography
, 270. For other accounts of Stein's lectures in the United States in 1934–35, see Mortimer J. Adler,
Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Biography
(
New York: Macmillan, 1977); Ashmore,
Unseasonable Truths
; Burns, Dydo, and Rice,
The Letters of Gertrude Stein & Thornton Wilder
; Butcher,
Many Lives, One Love
; and James R. Mellow,
Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company
(New York: Praeger, 1974).

52.
TNW to Les Glenn, [March 1935?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

53.
Butcher,
Many Lives, One Love,
422–23.

54.
Stein,
Everybody's Autobiography,
269.

55.
TNW to Gertrude Stein, April 2, 1935, YCAL.

56.
TNW to Sarah Frantz, October 13, 1934,
SL
, 287–88.

57.
TNW to Les Glenn, [March 1935?]
SL
, 291–93.

58.
TNW to Amy Wertheimer, May 1, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL.

59.
TNW to Gertrude Stein, January 15, [1935?]; YCAL. (TNW misdated this letter 1934.) See also TNW to Gertrude Stein, December 14, 1935.

60.
J. Dwight Dana to Albert Boni, April 13, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL.

61.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, May 26, 1935, YCAL.

62.
Ibid.

63.
Ibid.

64.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, June 28, [1935?], attached to letter written June 16, 1935, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. TNW mistakenly dated this letter July 28, but it was written aboard ship en route to Europe. The two letters were connected and mailed as one.

65.
Ibid.

66.
TNW, “M Marries N,” July 2, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL.

67.
TNW to Gertrude Stein, [February 16, 1935?], YCAL.

68.
TNW to Amy Wertheimer, May 1, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL.

69.
TNW to Gertrude Stein, April 6, 1935, YCAL.

70.
TNW to Dwight Dana, April 9, 1935, Private Collection.

71.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, September 13, [1935?],
SL
, 297–98.

72.
TNW to Hilda Doolittle [H.D.], October 2, 1935,
SL
, 300–301.

73.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, June 28, [1935?], Huntington Library. (TNW mistakenly dated this letter July 28.)

 

24: OUR LIVING AND OUR DYING (1930S)

1.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, May 26, 1935, YCAL.

2.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, August 30, 1935, YCAL.

3.
Ibid.

4.
Ibid.

5.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, August 20, 1935, YCAL.

6.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, August 6, 1935, YCAL.

7.
TNW to Gertrude Stein, August 10, 1935, YCAL.

8.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, [September 27, 1935?], YCAL.

9.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, August 10, 1935, YCAL.

10.
TNW to Amos Niven and Catharine Wilder, September 22, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL.

11.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, August 10, 1935, YCAL.

12.
TNW to Amos Niven and Catharine Wilder, September 22, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL.

13.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, [September 1935?], YCAL. Stein speculated about what would have happened if Grant had been a religious leader who became a saint, or if the Wrights had been painters, or if James had been a general and Washington a novelist.

14.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, September 23, 1935, YCAL.

15.
TNW, introduction to Gertrude Stein,
The Geographical History of America or The Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind
(New York: Random House, Inc., 1936); reprinted in Gallup,
American Characteristics
, 187–92.

16.
See Howard Teichmann,
Smart Aleck: The Wit, World, and Life of Alexander Woollcott
(New York: William Morrow, 1976), 10–14.

17.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, December 1, 1935,
SL
, 304–6.

18.
TNW, introduction to Gertrude Stein,
Four in America
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947), xi. TNW, “James Joyce, 1882–1941,”
Poetry,
March 1941; reprinted in Gallup,
American Characteristics,
168.

19.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, December 31, 1936, YCAL.

20.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, October 14, 1935,
SL
, 302–4.

21.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, October 23, 1935, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1772), HLH.

22.
Ibid.

23.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, October 14, 1935,
SL
, 302–4.

24.
Ibid.

25.
Ibid.

26.
Ibid.

27.
For background on Anna Freud, see www.annafreudcentre.org. and the extensive writings of Anna Freud. I appreciate the research of my former editor at Scribner's, Robert Stewart (
Carl Sandburg: A Biography
and
James Earl Jones: Voices and Silences
), an authority on Anna Freud, who kindly checked the archives of Anna Freud and Sigmund Freud for letters or other documents pertaining to TNW.

28.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, October 23, 1935, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1772), HLH. TNW wrote to Woollcott on this date, “I come back with tons to tell you. Specially about my calls on Prof. Freud. Splendid matter. He's 79. I see him again tonight.”

29.
TNW recalled this meeting and conversation with Freud in marginal notes written in a copy of
The Eighth Day
that he presented to Otto Klemperer in August 1967; quoted in Tappan Wilder, afterword to TNW,
The Eighth Day
, 469.

30.
Stein,
Everybody's Autobiography
, 18–19,

31.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, October 7, [1935?], YCAL.

32.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, October 23, 1935, AWC MS Am 1449 (1772), HLH.

33.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, October 14, 1935,
SL
, 302–4.

34.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, December 1, 1935,
SL
, 304–6.

35.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, November 22, 1935, YCAL.

36.
TNW to Charlotte Wilder, March 23, 1936, TNW Collection, YCAL.

37.
Charlotte Wilder,
Phases of the Moon
(New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1936), 87. “do [
sic
] you love me? Let me hear it . . . if I could feel it,” she wrote in “Monologue of Repression.” “am [
sic
] I loved? O what—is it nothing?—will pierce through/the ice-benumbed texture of an inward-bound psyche. . . .”

38.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, December 1, 1935,
SL
, 304–6.

39.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, December 14, 1935, YCAL.

40.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, January 23, 1936,
SL
, 307–10.

41.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, March 6, 1936, YCAL.

42.
Lee Keedick was responsive over the years to TNW's requests for adjustments in his contract, reducing the number of originally stipulated required lectures, and on occasion counting two lectures as one, according to Lee Keedick to J. Dwight Dana, September 12, 1930, and Lee Keedick to J. Dwight Dana, May 6, 1935, Private Collection.

43.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, April 8, 1936, YCAL.

44.
TNW to Leslie Glenn, April 7, 1936, TNW Collection, YCAL.

45.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, May 25, 1936, TNW Collection, YCAL.

46.
Ibid.

47.
Kirsty McLeod,
A Passion for Friendship: Sibyl Colefax & Her Circle
(London: Michael Joseph, 1991), 153–55.

48.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, July 1, 1936, YCAL.

49.
Wisconsin State Journal,
July 2, 1936.

50.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, August 14, 1936, YCAL.

51.
TNW to Grace Foresman, October 6, 1935, TNW Collection, YCAL.

52.
TNW to John K. Tibby, Jr., May 5, 1967, TNW Collection, YCAL.

53.
TNW,
The Eighth Day,
148.

54.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, November 24, 1935, YCAL.

55.
TNW to Janet Wilder, November 16, 1936, TNW Collection, YCAL.

56.
Ibid.

57.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, October 2, 1936, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1774), HLH.

58.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, November 17, 1936, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1774), HLH.

59.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, December 20, 1936, YCAL.

60.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, November 17, 1936, AWC, MS Am 1449 (1774), HLH.

61.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, December 20, 1936, YCAL.

62.
Ibid.

63.
TNW to Bobsy Goodspeed, [December 25?] 1936, TNW Collection, YCAL.

64.
TNW to Grace Foresman, [December 20, 1937?],
SL
, 326–27.

65.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, January 23, 1936,
SL
, 307–10.

66.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, January 25, 1936, YCAL.

67.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, February 20, 1936, YCAL.

68.
Ibid.

69.
Jones Harris, among others, thought that TNW was in love with Ruth Gordon, Jones's mother.

70.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, January 23, 1936,
SL
, 307–10.

71.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, January 17, 1937, YCAL. Samuel French published an acting edition of the play in England in 1932—its only acting edition to date.

72.
TNW, preface to
Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), vii.

73.
TNW to Leslie Glenn, April 7, 1936, TNW Collection, YCAL.

74.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, March 14, 1936, YCAL.

75.
TNW to Mabel Dodge Luhan, January 17, 1937, YCAL.

76.
TNW to ANW, April 9, 1937, TNW Collection, YCAL.

77.
Ibid.

78.
TNW to ANW, [April or May 1937?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

79.
TNW to Amy Wertheimer, May 5, 1937, TNW Collection, YCAL.

80.
TNW to ANW, n.d. [April or May 1937], TNW Collection, YCAL.

81.
He wrote to his family September 15 or 16, 1937, that
The Prince of Baghdad
was “the best of em all.” TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, “Sept 15th or 16th, 1937,” TNW Collection, YCAL. An incomplete manuscript draft of
The Hell of the Vizier Kabäar
(one of the variations TNW used when spelling the title) survives among his papers at the Beinecke Library.

82.
TNW to ANW, [April or May 1937?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

83.
TNW to Amy Wertheimer, May 5, 1937, TNW Collection, YCAL.

84.
TNW interview with Lucius Beebe,
New York Herald Tribune,
May 29, 1938; reprinted in Bryer,
Conversations with Thornton Wilder,
18–21.

85.
TNW, dedication to
The Ides of March
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948.)

86.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, [April 30, 1937], AWC, MS Am 1449 (1775), HLH.

87.
TNW to Alexander Woollcott, Memorial Day 1937 [May 31], AWC, MS Am 1449 (1775), HLH.