12 November (1951): Dashiell Hammett to Jo Hammett

Dashiell Hammett, America’s original hardboiled-detective writer, wrote this letter to his daughter Josephine while awaiting trial. Hammett refused to rat out Communist colleagues during the McCarthy hearings in 1951 and was blacklisted as a result. He spent six months in a Kentucky penitentiary, where, according to his lover Lillian Hellman, he was assigned to scrubbing toilets. Here, he makes light of the terrible situation. He describes the pleasant weather in the “yard” (i.e. the prison work area) and stolidly accepts his slim chances of a shortened sentence. Sure enough, the Supreme Court denied him bail and forced him to serve several more months in jail. While incarcerated, his books were taken out of print, his radio program was cancelled, and his name lost all the caché it once carried. He lost much of his money in government fines and spent the rest of his short life in a friend’s cottage, where he died six years later.

Dashiell Hammett to Josephine Hammett Marshall

12 November 1951, Ashland, Kentucky

Dear Jo,

Thanks, honey, for the information about what we call business and stuff: with what dope I got from Haydon I think it fills me in pretty well and — unless, of course, something unexpected turns up (if anything turns up it will be unexpected) — I’ll be OK until I get out of here in what seems like a very few short weeks… The weather this long weekend has been quite wonderful and I’ve spent a bunch of both mornings and afternoons out in the yard, even though it’s sometimes better to pretend I don’t hear the sounds of somebody in the nearby woods with a shotgun — Our lawyers had their chat with Supreme Court Justice Jackson Friday, and Jackson, in turn, promised to repeat the chat to other members of the Supreme Court the next day to find out whether they wanted to hear us out – and that’s how it stands now. We should hear how it comes out on Tuesday or Wednesday. I’ve half a notion – with not much to base it on – that Fred may get out on bail while they listen to his tale of woe, and I may not. But we’ll see – It doesn’t make a great deal of difference to me whether I finish out my time now or go out on bail for a while and most likely have to come back and give ‘em the three or four weeks I’ll owe – Bed now and Gogol’s Dead Souls, a very funny book –

Much of the nicest kind of love to you, sweetheart, and give my love to everybody, especially, of course, L and A –

Pop

Note: “L and A” are Lillian Hellman, his lover, and Ann, a nickname for Josephine Dolan, his first wife and Jo’s mother. The “Fred” Hammett refers to is Frederick Vanderbilt Field, one of the three trustees of the Civil Rights Congress bailfund.

From Dashiell Hammett: Selected Letters. Edited by Richard Layman, Julie M. Rivett, and Josephine Hammett Marshall. New York: Counterpoint Press, 2002.