Thornton Wilder (117 page)

43.
TNW to Joseph Still, November 13, [1944?], YCAL.

44.
TNW to Family, October 29, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW noted in this letter that he was free, a year and a half after the fact, to give details of his movements in North Africa.

45.
TNW to Family, December 15, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL.

46.
TNW to Charlotte Niven, April 5, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

47.
Ibid.

48.
TNW to Family, December 15, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL. Isabella Niven Wilder translated Carducci's poems, including, we can speculate, his sonnet beginning “T'amo Pio Bove,” his ode to an ox grazing in a field in Italy.

49.
TNW to Laurence Olivier, February 18, 1945, TS carbon copy,
SL
, 429–31.

50.
Hugh “Binkie” Beaumont to Harold Freedman, March 22, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

51.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder and Isabel Wilder, February 19, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL, regarding this donation in Italy. See also TNW to Philip G. Hodge, December 10, 1945, TS carbon copy, TNW Collection, regarding this donation in Yugoslavia.

52.
TNW to Amos and Catharine Wilder, February 1, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

53.
TNW to Charlotte Niven, April 5, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

54.
TNW to Amy Wertheimer, March 29, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

55.
Ibid.

56.
TNW to Family, April 14, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

57.
TNW to Harry J. Traugott, May 20, 1945, Private Collection.

58.
“Citation: Lieutenant-Colonel Thornton H. [
sic
] Wilder, U.S. Army Air Forces, Honorary Member of the Military Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire,” n.d. [1946 written on document], TNW Collection, YCAL.

59.
TNW to William Layton, August 16, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

60.
Adjutant General Owen Elliot, U. S. War Department, to TNW, August 28, 1947, TNW Collection, YCAL.

61.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, August 20, 1945,
SL
, 433–36.

62.
TNW to Charlotte Niven, April 5, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

63.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, July 20, 1945, YCAL.

64.
TNW to Alice B. Toklas, October 8, 1946,
SL
, 446–48.

65.
Isabel Wilder to Sol Lesser, October 1, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

66.
Isabel Wilder to Sibyl Colefax, TS carbon, July 23, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

67.
Ibid.

68.
Ibid.

69.
Patricia Bosworth,
Montgomery Clift: A Biography
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 99–100.

70.
Quoted ibid., 99.

71.
Isabel Wilder to Sibyl Colefax, TS carbon, July 23, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL

72.
Ibid.

73.
Isabel Wilder, foreword to TNW,
The Alcestiad or A Life in the Sun with a Satyr Play
,
The Drunken Sisters
(New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 10.

74.
TNW,
The Alcestiad,
holograph manuscript, TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW's note ends after “Dec” and gives no day or year.

75.
Isabel Wilder to Sibyl Colefax, TS carbon, July 23, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

76.
Ibid.

77.
TNW to Eliza [Elizabeth (Mrs. Boris) Artzybasheff], June 26, [1945?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

78.
TNW to Eliza [Elizabeth (Mrs. Boris) Artzybasheff], August 5, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

79.
TNW to William Layton, August 16, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW wrote: “Night before last was having dinner here with my married sister and the news broke.”

80.
Ibid.

81.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, August 20, 1945,
SL
, 433–36. “Numinous”: Sprititual belief based on ancient Roman animism.

82.
Ibid.

83.
Ibid.

84.
Ibid.

85.
Isabella Niven Wilder to TNW, May 15, 1945, TNW Collection, YCAL.

86.
Army of the United States Certificate of Service for Lt. Col. Thornton N. Wilder, issued at the Separation Center, Fort Devens, Massachusetts, September 19, 1945, Private Collection.

 

32: “POST-WAR ADJUSTMENT EXERCISE” (1940S)

1.
TNW to Eileen and Roland Le Grand, March 9, 1946,
SL
, 439–40.

2.
Ibid.

3.
TNW to June and Leonard Trolley, February 23, 1947,
SL
, 451–54. TNW had helped to make it possible for the Trolleys to marry during the war years in Caserta, where Leonard Trolley was one of TNW's clerks. As it happened, the bride was an officer and the groom was an enlisted man, complicating their plans to marry.

4.
TNW to Eileen and Roland Le Grand, March 9, 1946,
SL
, 439–40.

5.
TNW to Glenway Wescott, April 7, 1948,
SL
, 459–61.

6.
TNW's work on Lope de Vega would earn him election to the Hispanic Society of America, an honor that meant a great deal to him.

7.
TNW to Eileen and Roland Le Grand, March 9, 1946,
SL
, 439–40.

8.
TNW to Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, [March 30, 1946?],
SL
, 441–42. See also TNW to Jean-Paul Sartre, March 16, 1946, TNW Collection, YCAL.

9.
TNW to Eileen and Roland Le Grand, March 9, 1946,
SL
, 439–40.

10.
“About how Alcestis”: TNW to ANW [February 10, 1946?], TNW Collection, YCAL. “Grounded transparently in”: Walter Lowrie, trans., Søren Kierkegaard,
The Sickness unto Death by Anti-Climacus
, in Robert Bretall, ed.,
A Kierkegaard Anthology
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), 351. Kierkegaard writes of “the Despair which is Conscious of being Despair, as also it is Conscious of being a Self wherein there is after all something Eternal, and then is either in despair at not willing to be itself, or in despair at willing to be itself,” ibid., 349. This passage evokes the Stage Manager's words in act 3 of
Our Town
: “There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.”

11.
TNW to ANW, [February 10, 1946], TNW Collection, YCAL.

12.
TNW to Eileen and Roland Le Grand, March 9, 1946,
SL
, 439–40.

13.
TNW to ANW, [February 10, 1946?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

14.
Isabel Wilder to ANW, January 24, 1946, TNW Collection, YCAL.

15.
Ibid.

16.
Tappan Wilder to PEN, July 8, 2010.

17.
TNW to Robert Van Gelder, “Interview with a Best-Selling Author: Thornton Wilder,”
Cosmopolitan,
April 1948, 18, 120–23; reprinted in Bryer,
Conversations with Thornton Wilder,
41–45.

18.
Thomas Coward, Coward-McCann, Inc., to Isabel Wilder, March 11, 1940, TNW Collection, YCAL. See also Isabel Wilder to Thew Wright, January 28, 1959, Private Collection. In the 1959 letter Isabel Wilder is in error about the dates, writing 1939 instead of 1940.

19.
Thomas Coward, Coward-McCann, Inc., to Isabel Wilder, April 28, 1939, TNW Collection, YCAL.

20.
Isabel Wilder to Family, April 14, 1944, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers. Throughout this book, background on Charlotte Wilder's illness is drawn from her medical records and from numerous letters, as well as her correspondence to and from her family and friends contained in the uncataloged papers in the TNW Collection, YCAL, or in private collections.

21.
Charlotte Wilder to Evelyn Scott, October 20, 1945, quoted by ANW, “Concerning Charlotte Wilder running from 1932 to 1961,” Wilder Records, August 1969, Private Collection.

22.
Charlotte Wilder to Evelyn Scott, November 9, 1945, quoted by ANW, “Concerning Charlotte Wilder running from 1932 to 1961,” Wilder Records, August 1969. Private Collection.

23.
Charlotte Wilder to Isabella Niven Wilder, April 15, 1946, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged letters.

24.
Charlotte Wilder to ANW, February 23, 1946, quoted by ANW, “Concerning Charlotte Wilder running from 1932 to 1961,” Wilder Records, August 1969, Private Collection.

25.
Charlotte Wilder to ANW, March 9, 1946, quoted by ANW, “Concerning Charlotte Wilder running from 1932 to 1961,” Wilder Records, August 1969. Private Collection.

26.
TNW to ANW, May 31, [1946?], TNW Collection, YCAL.

27.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, January 7, 1947,
SL
, 449–50. The Dioscuri were Castor and Pollux or Polydeuces, the twin sons of Leda and Zeus. The Dioscuri were sometimes called the Heavenly Twins, part of the constellation of Gemini.

28.
TNW to Amy Wertheimer, July 4, 1946, TNW Collection, YCAL.

29.
TNW to William Rose Benét, July 17, 1946, YCAL.

30.
Isabella Niven Wilder's poem was quoted by Tappan Wilder at Isabel Wilder's Memorial Service, March 25, 1995. Private Collection.

31.
TNW to Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, July 23, 1946,
SL
, 443–46.

32.
TNW to Alice B. Toklas, October 8, 1946,
SL
, 446–48.

33.
Ibid.

34.
TNW, introduction, “Gertrude Stein's
Four in America
,” in
Four in America
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947), vii; reprinted in Gallup,
American Characteristics
, 193–222.

In this book Stein created portraits of four national figures, speculating on what each would have done if he had chosen a different profession, picturing Ulysses S. Grant as a religious leader who became a saint; the Wright brothers as painters; Henry James as a general; and George Washington as a novelist.

35.
Ibid., x, 200.

36.
TNW,
The Eighth Day
, 10.

37.
TNW to Isabel Wilder [January 30, 1947, postmarked Biloxi, Mississippi], TNW Collection, YCAL.

38.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, [March?] 5, 1947, TNW Collection, YCAL. TNW dated this letter February 5, 1947, from Mérida, Yucatán. He must have meant March, judging by his travel schedule.

39.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, [January 30, 1947], TNW Collection, YCAL.

40.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, March 11, 1947, TNW Collection, YCAL.

41.
TNW to Leonard Bacon, March 11, 1947, YCAL.

42.
TNW to Isabel Wilder, March 24, 1947, TNW Collection, YCAL.

43.
TNW to Leonard Bacon, July 22, 1947, YCAL.

44.
TNW to June and Leonard Trolley, February 23, 1947,
SL
, 451–54.

45.
TNW to Isabella Niven Wilder, November 5, 1922, TNW Collection, YCAL.

46.
TNW, 1939–41 Journal, February 8, 1939, TNW Collection, YCAL.

47.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, September 4, 1937, YCAL.

48.
TNW to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, March 25, 1942, YCAL.

49.
TNW to Maxwell Anderson, November 13, 1956,
SL
, 543–44.

50.
TNW to Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, July 23, 1946,
SL
, 443–46.

51.
TNW to Sibyl Colefax, January 7, [19]47,
SL
, 449–50.

52.
TNW, in Whit Burnett, ed.,
105 Greatest Living Authors Present the World's Best Stories, Humor, Drama, Biography, History, Essays, Poetry
(New York: Dial Press, 1950), 104–5. Wilder ranked nineteenth in the voting for the 105 greatest living authors. George Bernard Shaw was at the top of the list.

53.
TNW to Maxwell Anderson, November 13, 1956,
SL
, 543–44.

54.
Priscilla Booth Behnken, RN, and Elizabeth Good Merrill, RN, “Nursing Care Following Prefrontal Lobotomy,”
American Journal of Nursing
49, no. 7 (July 1949): 418–19.

55.
Janet Wilder Dakin, “Biographical Notes on Charlotte Wilder,” October 15, 1969, Private Collection.

56.
Isabel Wilder, “About Charlotte Wilder,” TS, October 15, 1969, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers; and ANW, “Concerning Charlotte Wilder running from 1932 to 1961,” Wilder Records, August 1969, Private Collection.

57.
Isabel Wilder, “About Charlotte Wilder,” TS, October 15, 1969, TNW Collection, YCAL, uncataloged papers. Zelda Fitzgerald was a patient of Dr. Mildred Squires, then a resident at the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital. As part of her therapy, Dr. Squires encouraged Zelda to write
Save Me a Waltz
, which was published in 1932. Dr. Squires also encouraged Charlotte Wilder to continue writing.