Marianne Moore never knew her father; this letter home was to her mother and older brother, John. Moore was very close with her family, even attending high school at the all-girls’ institution where her mother was a teacher. Her letters to her mother and brother began when John left for Yale, and continued until her death. While she and her brother were both away at college, they would send the same letter in a circle between them and their mother, adding to it as it went along. This letter was written when Moore was in her junior year at Bryn Mawr.
To Mary Warner Moore and John Warner Moore
24 October 1907
Dearest Family,
I was cheered at dinner last night by the reading of a Fawn and a “fisshle” letter. (The mail sometimes comes at 6:30 instead of 7). am much touched Mouse that you planned the story for me and of course I shall do it. I can hardly wait to. Between lectures I scratch it, in the hope that every “little bit helps”—and I have written, what I like better than anything I have ever writ before, a thing called “The Nature of a Literary Man.” Perhaps, “Pym.” It expresses nothing but a series of individual impressions in “my latest style” and is crystal-clear. If it doesn’t come out, I shall not know what to think. It is what James calls the record of a “generation of nervous moods” but has a satisfactory solution.
I shall send my wash home on Friday.
Peggy [James] is a “darling” pure and simple. I never have made the acquaintance of such a sweet child, in my life. I can never reconcile her fearfully intellectual appearance, and Vernon Whitford eyes with her perfect lack of artifice and experience. I went to Ruth Babcock’s tea yesterday and had a nice time. And it’s great to have Frances back. She came up last night and laughed at my pedantic books and the scatterment of papers and note books on the desk end of my couch. Speaking of Peggy, a bit of very characteristic diction on her part is “are you feeling all right today, honestly? Well if you don’t go to bed, I shall come and put you to bed.”
4:30—
Mary Worthington was not well today and cut laboratory. She asked me to tell Miss R[ansome]. I did some of her work and went to tell her about it afterward. Peggy came in from Psychology all frosty with excitement. “I am the biggest goat,” she said. “That ever was. I promised Dr. Feree to do original research work in psychology and he says we will report and have our reports printed with our names at the end. Hee! I can’t do anything in Science,” Peggy explained to me “but he thinks I can on account of my Dad.”
Well—good by— Fangs
I go to hockey—
From Marianne Moore: Selected Letters. Edited by Bonnie Costello. New York: Penguin, 1997. pp. 597.
FURTHER READING
Moore was a prolific writer of letters; she wrote to Allen Ginsberg, “I write too many letters, then am too tired to do my work” (Selected Letters, 501). Some of her letters to other celebrated authors are available at the Academy of American Poets website.
The Paris Review republished an interview with Moore on her writing process, available here.