Below, Eugene O’Neill apologizes to John V. A. Weaver, a writer and friend of O’Neill’s from Harvard, for not having contacted him upon visiting New York. O’Neill, who was living in Providencetown, MA at the time, explains how his Prohibition-defying activities—which he calls “anti-Volstead org[ies]”—got in the way of his plans.
Dear John Weaver:
I’ve been meaning to write to you ever since my return from New York—but always saying “tomorrow,” as I suppose most of us do where our good intentions are concerned. The arrival of your book on the p.m. mail just now threw the proper bomb into my “tomorows”; so with a million curses at my damnable laziness, here I am pen in hand.
To begin with, thank you for your book. It was very kind of you to think of me and I am darned glad to have it. I haven’t given myself a chance to look into it yet—it arrived about ten minutes ago—but I’m anticipating a real pleasure when I do get to it.
And now for the thing I’ve been going to write you about for the past month or so: Mrs. O’Neill tells me that your brother—the last time we were down—seemed to think when he talked with her that, because I had not called up, I did not want to see you. And I wouldn’t have you believe that for anything in the world because it is not so! I can say in all sincerity that there is no one I would rather renew friendship with than you, that my memory of our 47 year colleagueship is a very green one, and that I did mean to get in touch with you on each of my visits to town—but—
The explanation of how I missed out is complexly simple. On each occasion, after the ordeals of dress rehearsals were over, I have hilariously hurled my sombrero in the cuspidor and gone romancing forth upon an anti-Volstead orgy during which I exuberantly forgot every single thing I was supposed to do. It usually took about to days of the poison masquerading as whiskey to get in its good work. Upon which I was sick in bed for two days. After which I hated New York and all in it and beat it back here with the “Brooklyn Boys” sounding the full brass band of Remorse after me.
The trouble with me seems to be that I can’t get over the old sailor feeling that I am “making port” when, after several months of sober and industrious labor up here, I land ashore from the old Fall River Line. At any rate, the results of my last two relaxings have been so venomous that I have taken the holy New Year oath to remain henceforth on the wagon, N.Y. or no N.Y., as long as I am in the U.S., so help me Wheeler!
But now I hope you understand, and will pardon, my failure to get in touch with you. When one forgets everything, how can one remember anything? I might easily have run into you, I suppose, at Christine’s or someplace; but, after some years in the past of the G. Village artistic life from soup to nuts, I have conceived a great loathing for same and flee from it as from a plague—(which it is!). I know that you are not identified with it in any way; and that, take it from me, is a damn good thing, not on moral grounds but on artistic ones. However, enough of that talk! It sounds like good advice, God pity me!
I do want to see you the next time—which, let me pray, will be soon for it will mean that rehearsals of one of my long plays—(scheduled for production last fall!)—have called me down. Write to me here, will you, and let me know just how, when, and where to reach you? There are a million things I want to talk to you about. In the meantime, if you ever get a chance to spend a few days with us up here, grab your little bag, wire or write us to expect you, and come a-running. Take this seriously for I mean it! Until then.
Sincerely your friend,
Eugene O’Neill
From Selected Letters of Eugene O’Neill. O’Neill, Eugene, Travis Bogard, and Jackson R. Bryer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.