Here, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, known for her depictions of the Florida wild, writes to editor Maxwell E. Perkins about John Thomason, a U.S. lieutenant, author, and illustrator, and his activities in Paris, as recounted by their mutual acquaintance, Major Otto F. Lange. She goes on to describe her own shenanigans with the Major at dinner parties featuring respectably humdrum guests.
Hawthorne, Fla.
Feb. 11, 1935
Dear Max Perkins:
(We agreed that if you liked the next novel I would call you “Max.”)
A thousand thanks for “The Adventures of General Marbot”—it’s magnificent. The pictures are the best Thomason has done. The style, increasingly firm and stirring.
Having read it and delighted in it, I’m doing a possibly ungracious thing—I’m giving it away, to a good friend, Major Otto F. Lange. I’ve hunted with the Major this winter, duck, dove, and quail, and shivering in a duck blind one winter day in the middle one of Orange Lake, when the ducks had stopped coming over, somehow or other I happened to mention Thomason, and recommend him. And he said he had known him in France! He told me of a night when he and and other chap were with Thomason in a café in Paris. Thomason drove the waiters and proprietors absolutely insane by drawing pictures with the burnt end of matches on the table cloths ——. Thomason’s leave was up, and along with his companions, he was agreeably high. He was all for telling the whole war to go to Hell, but responsibility rode sternly on the other two—probably because their leave was not up—and they called a taxi and ordered the driver to deposit Thomason safely on his train. Thomason balked again and they bundled him head first through the taxi window. The taxi drove off and they returned to the cafe feeling nobly like enfants de la patrie etc. They were nicely settled with their drinks when Thomason appeared beside them—still indifferent to the war—still hell-bent on drawing pictures on the table cloth.
Major Lange’s sense of responsibility has not been so high in relation to me. I was at his home in Gainesville for cocktails last Friday, before going on to a dinner party at the house of Dr. Tigert, president of the University of Florida. Dr. Tigert is a prig and a fanatical dry, and the Major deliberately set in to get me high, saying that his ambition was to deposit me on the Tigert door-step and say, “Here’s your guest.” Then, he said, if Dr. Tigert asked me where I had been, I was to say, “I’ve been out with the Army.” He accomplished his purpose. My dinner partner was an inoffensive preacher, and I disgraced myself thoroughly by asking my hostess what the devil she meant by putting me next to a parson, and announcing in a clear voice “The hell with all preachers.”
So on the handsome yellow frontispiece of “General Marbot,” I have inscribed:
Pour Otto F. Lange—
Bon soldat, sans doute, mais homme méchant—
Meilleur ami de Thomason, soldat, que de moi, femme——
If I get my bear material together for the boys’ book, do you think Thomason really would condescend to do the sketches? How much longer is his Washington hitch to last? If not long, do suggest to him that he run down here and make sketches on the ground—my old hunter living in the scrub can’t live much longer. Major Lange (I don’t know whether he was Captain then or Major) said Thomason might not remember him and our hunting season is over this week, but if Thomason likes fishing, we could give him deep-sea fishing or inland bass fishing and give him a swell time. Do suggest it, anyway.
Cosmopolitan is running me ragged on the shortening for them (the original 130,000 will have to come to 80,000 for them) but they’re very considerate and aren’t asking anything terrible. Shall I send you on the first quarter to third to get into proof? I can get you that at any time. I am trying to get the second installment off to them today…
I’ll write again when I get a breathing spell.
And again, many thanks for the new Thomason.
MKR
From Selected Letters of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan, Gordon E. Bigelow, and Laura Virginia Monti. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1983.