John [Snow] is still the same — and the old crowd — same bunch — you know I feel like an upper classman — all upper classmen around me etc. — it’s wonderful.
Say when you get a chance could you start the following things on their way up here to make our room more habitable[: ] the leopard skin on the lodge closet door — the spurs on the floor nearby — both of Smokey’s pictures — the small rug — both machetes and the little Mexican knife & sheath & chain to the right of the east hayloft windows (one machete is over hayloft door — the other on edge of balcony) — also any thing else you think might look intriguing on our wall — oh yes the steers’ horns—
Thanks
Bill
Smokey: WG’s labrador; spelled Smoky below.
To Edith Gaddis
Eliot House D-31
Cambridge, Mass.
[4 October 1942]
Dear Mom—
Back again into this wonderful old life — but for how long? Gee, it’s got me — not worried, but thinking, and wondering sometimes it seems so futile, but this is so good I wish it might last.
Thanks for the letters — and it’s so swell that the raise worked out, probably to buy me a sea chest a sailor sent or something! The package came too.
Am trying to keep work up, and to the best of my knowledge am up in it all — am recovering now from a film we had today in psychology of a dog with half a brain!! boy they have everything here.
Also have made a new discovery — the music room here, with fine record player and all kinds of classics—Afternoon of a Faun and the Bolero, Porgy & Bess, Scheherazade—everything.
I saw Cliff Mon. evening — lent him $25 to buy a little cocker spaniel which is very cute — don’t be alarmed tho — I have his check and am going to cash it tomorrow — I left him and went down to 42nd St. — up to 500 to a place Eddie South was supposed to be playing but he wasn’t there — then Café Society uptown — saw Hazel Scott — wonderful — and got a late train up — slept all the way—
Must get back to my English—
Love
Bill
Eddie South: African-American jazz violinist (1904–62).
Hazel Scott: African-American pianist (1920–81). The Café Society was a nightclub on 58th Street between Lexington and Park Avenue (an offshoot of the better known one down in Greenwich Village).
To Edith Gaddis
Cambridge, Massachusetts
[5 October 1942]
Dear Mom—
Thanks so much for the letter and bond — gee it will save things — I need three books for French (must read Tovaritch — in French—isn’t that awful?!!). We are also waiting to get some slip covers for our couch ($4!).
And thanks for sending the stuff — it will look swell up here. It’s all right about Smoky’s pictures — will get ’em later — And then thanks for the pen — it will be swell I know—
Don’t know about the rug but there’s time for that—And thanks for Bacchus—it will look handsome too. I know.
And now I have a bit of bad news — you remember the raincoat I was so proud of — and saw me thru from Panama to L.A. — and Arizona and everything — any how I lost it — registered at Memorial Hall for school — went out and walked half a block — remembered I’d left it in the chair — ran back — practically immediately — and it was gone—checked with janitor and lost-found — no sign — somebody picked it up so apparently it’s gone — we were thinking of a new topcoat — they have water repellant topcoats — sort of combinations — might get one of them — what’s your word? — keep present coat for winter cold.
Saw the Penn game here Saturday — we lost but good game — have been seeing John and company recently too — everything swell so far except French C — but can’t have everything — excuse hurry but must read some Middle English Drama and psychology for tomorrow — will write again soon—
Love
Bill
Tovaritch: stage comedy (1933) by Jacques Deval, adapted as a film (1935).
Middle English Drama: undoubtedly Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas, ed. Joseph Quincy Adams (Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin, 1924), which WG used for R and retained all his life.
To Edith Gaddis
[A rare typewritten letter, which is what WG is referring to in the opening phrase.]
Cambridge, Massachusetts
[12 November 1942]
Dear Mom
This may seem like a queer way to write but am in the midst of another one of those D — themes for English which is unimportant anyhow, and am taking a breather.
Say I have only got one hour mark back: an 83 in English which is about a B which suits me fine! It is the only course I really care about — I mean really like and want to get the most of out. The psyc is good but getting tough — we’re getting into physics which I hadn’t expected but it is still interesting. The French is of course still all right, and am trying to get a good basic knowledge of it; the exam is tomorrow. Sometimes I get disgusted with it but something always comes — this time it was the French film of Crime and Punishment that we saw down in Boston — to make me realize what a beautiful language it is and what fun it would be to know it well and all of the gates that would be open to one who did understand it.
English A is still as inane as ever — I write the themes, work on them, but that’s all — I didn’t take the inconsequential hour exam in it; you see that was one good reason I went up to Stillman. It wasn’t a stomach ache, but ‘uncontrollable nausea,’ which finally came up to get me after celebrating that game we won last Saturday (Princeton) and then studying hard for the hour exams during the week. I was just upset that day but got right over it and now am back at it again.
I’m beginning to wish I had been able to squeeze Philosophy A in somewhere this year. I was over in John’s room late last nite and we ‘got into it,’ and it was really fun. Have been reading Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and got a book of Kant’s out of the library today. Incidentally, we have the most wonderful house library in Eliot: all kinds of books, but an accent on classics and such, and big leather covered chairs etc. Gee it’s all really wonderful.
Glad to hear about that $5 for that coat; everything here seems to come in 5’s; for the radio which I just got out of ‘hock’ 5 for the student council, 5 for our venetian blinds, which is about all our rooms has, aside from the $4 couch!
Yale next week! Boy it’s going to be something; John is taking some woman from locally here, a swell girl a bit on the ‘debby’ side, you know, that way of talking etc., but nice; we went over and had tea at their home about a week and a half ago. And my amazing Puritan room mate with a girl coming from Cleveland; he never fails to amaze me with something new like this!
And how the time passes; it seems like November just started, and here it is almost half done, and I owe a theme for December in one course already! It is snowing just a little today, and I saw the handsomest Christmas cards down at the Coop with pictures of the Eliot House gate in colour; gee it’s all as good as it ever could be, except for one detail, spelled A-r-t-h-u-r-M-u-r-r-a-y. Ware and I were hashing it over this afternoon, and I guess I’ll have to do something one of these days.