The leave-taking was good — it was kind of those various people to come and attend at the rail for so long. Sorry of course that you could not see it sail — but when you have this letter will know for certain that it did, and with much palpitation managed Gibraltar at least, and that I am in the country that lies “like a dead mackerel stinking and glittering in the moonlight”—and that, because of ill-management, you may not have my letters immediately.
And just now I call to mind that the whole “holiday season” is nigh, and that very possibly I shall not reach you again before it is passed. And so, all of the customary greetings to those customarily greeted — and best of course to you, trusting that things and people will arrange themselves for you happily — not including the ritual hour of orisons spent over the sink at 1837 East 15th street.
My sense of humour is somewhat in suspension — also other senses, and so my apologies for the dullness of this note. I find the Atlantic ocean very big, life very long, and thoughts far away and sentimental, as not to bear repeating. But Madrid and I will purge one another, and soon enough I shall be able to write to your pleasure and edification.
Meanwhile, best wishes, love, gratitude to you.
W.
Mulberry street: runs through Little Italy in lower Manhattan. dolce Napoli: “sweet Naples.”
Baedeker: WG took with him Karl Baedeker’s Spain and Portugaclass="underline" Handbook for Travellers, 4th ed. (Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1913), which is quoted a few times in R.
Mr. Halclass="underline" Charles Hall.
“like a dead mackeral […] in the moonlight”: Virginian congressman John Randolph (1773–1833) famously said of a political rival, “He shines and stinks like a rotten mackerel by moonlight” (variously reported).
1837 East 15th street: apparently Mrs. Gaddis’s city address.
To Edith Gaddis
[c/o United States Embassy
Miguel Angel, 8
Madrid, Spain]
[21 December 1948]
Querida Mamacita (which means Dear Mother:) Aqui es una carta (a letter
And what to say? (CRY cry what shall I cry, says Mr Eliot. .) except that apparently I am really in MADRID; and that I have had the very good fortune to meet a fellow whom I had met in NewYork about two years ago. . and he very kind, pleasant; I cannot say how good to come on such a one, after a rather distasteful mess at Gibraltar with British Customs (something about money, the more fool I) and a 26hr train-ride from Algeciras to Madrid, and the consequent exhaustion.
Let me say: you know what is odd (odd to me, though Emerson makes a great point of this, and I suppose that I shall understand it one day) is this notion of cities’ similarity, the perpetual RITZ, or Greenwich Village, anywhere ones goes. That is the foolery, of writing you from SPAIN with Spanish stamps & Legend incumbent: when all the capitals are the same, the cities. . and that ultimately there is no Romanticism about it anywhere. That travel as one wilclass="underline" to see the cork trees of southern Spain, the groves of olive trees: you know, the olive trees look quite exactly as our little willow (not weeping); or Gibraltar, fabulous creature that I knew (from the Prudential Life Insurance ads) was simply a great pile of shale, and, while not a “disappointment”, not the Thrill that the American demands when he has paid a passage to Africa? to Europe? to Asia? (Life is very long. . .)
Eh bien. (that’s French) — enough of these wanderings into things which engage my attention. . (indeed, my whole being, whenever I can abstract that ephemeral disaster) and down to the facts that one usually “writes home” about. .:
Here is an address, since I have not as yet got anything which might be considered ‘permanent’—and instead have met (God forbid, but He did not) met a young lady (Life is very long) from the American consulate: [… (see above)] And this address only if you have a letter; because for the moment I am well-enough “fixed” (to tell the truth, compleatly mixed-up with this wad of innominate bills in my pockets, but I am so tired of trying to think about MONEY $$$ £££ Pesetas &&&&&.) that the purpose of all of this note is simply greeting; that I can well imagine that you worry, or wonder, &c. Because I have been here for 2 or 3 days & not written, even to say I am in Spain (Well now I am in Avon, the more fool I./ When I was at home I was in a better place/ But travellers must be content. .)
Anyhow there is neither light nor water in Madrid until 6pm (no rain here for many months) and so this shaving in darkness and attempting to bathe is a mummery; in fact the whole thing is a mummery; and They don’t know it but I must find it out or the whole expedition will be wasted (although the two people who Do know it are Sherry & Jacob Bean, & look at them!). .
Really! To be introduced as the AMERican friend, here to study philosophy (here meaning Spanish mysticism of the 16th century is preposterous. But then (unless you point at the youth who studies thermodynamics (V. J Osbourne) what end study? I don’t know; John Woodburn almost knows, but almost and in that qualification lies defeat.
No, withall, it is better to have the imposition of aloneness come from the Outside, and so be insisted on the internal sense of disaster, than to brood over it in surroundings which in their cardboard familiarity say, Yes. All of these words to say that I am simply in another City; where there are mostly a bunch of foreigners (Spic) and must and shall learn their language for the ordinary commerce of life; while I can be left alone with my own language which needs a lot of explaining and apology before it can be used Cleanly and with positiveness (even though this is only used to say No)
Eh bien. I am looking for a pension, or, better, a large room where I can be Left Alone.
And when I find it, shall send its address (for the moment having enough clean shirts to call at the AMERICAN Embassy); and plan to stay here for a couple of months (because on the level it offers itself to me Madrid is not Spain but simply a Great City) until I have the language enough to go into the country — to Sevilla, to Granada, Malaga. . I don’t know; anyhow that for now I am all right: and that should any of the usual American troubles come up this fellow Taylor will tell me the right direction in which to decamp. For Money, I shall write soon enough to make the arrangements about legal & illegal demonstrations, on ‘our’ part. So don’t worry about That.
And for Christmas, don’t worry about That as far as I am concerned. I plan to be wandering through the streets of a city, trying to figure out Christmas as opposed to Xmas, and as ‘happy’ as one may be in the natural state of aloneness. (BUT Mother, don’t take my seriousness about myself as seriously as I take it; because you know well enough that any day now you may have a letter shouting with glee about some fool thing or other which makes about as much difference in the Scheme as forebodings. .)
And so: “A merry Christmas &c &c to all” and otherwise best greetings to Granga, to the Woodburns, to pretty in-New-York Nancy A. — and rest assured, I shall write better soon.
with love,
W.
cry what shall I cry: the opening line of “Difficulties of a Statesman” (part 2 of Eliot’s unfinished Coriolan).
Emerson […] cities’ similarity: unidentified (Well now I am in Avon […]: slightly misquoted (Arden for Avon) from Touchstone’s observation in As You Like It (2.4.12–14), WG’s favorite Shakespeare play.
Sherry: Sheri Martinelli; see headnote to letter of Summer 1953.
John Woodburn: an editor at Little, Brown, best known for snatching up Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951) after Harcourt, Brace turned it down.