27 September (1963): E.B. White to Stanley Hart White

E.B. White, that quintessential New York writer, reaches out to his old pal Stanley Hart White (inventor of the ‘Green Wall’) with some good-natured gripes about the city’s changing architecture. In the letter, he refers to K—his wife Katherine, who was a writer in her own right, as well as an editor at The New Yorker, where she began work only six months after it’s inception.

27 West 43
September 27th 1963

Dear Stan:

Sometimes I get letters written here just because there is nothing else for me to do in this office anymore except sit around and think about all the things I’ve ever known. I feel better if I make the sound of a typewriter.

We came to town last week so K could settle a few matters with the clowns at the Medical Center. Her first interview elicited the fact that no surgery is called for at the moment, and this is a relief….

Your life, as reported in your letter written in Santa Fe, sounds relatively spirited and adventurous compared with mine, and I’m glad you are moving around with such vigor. I’ll gladly give you the Southwest though – I don’t believe I would ever develop a taste for it, however spectacular it is. (Once I saw it from a train window and was surprised that I felt no desire to get off the train.) I would like to see Seattle again, even though I suspect it would be unrecognizable. Nineteen twenty-three was my experience of Seattle.

New York is becoming lost among the the enormous glass boxes that are its new buildings. With one or two exceptions there is nothing intrinsically good looking about them, and in clusters they are overpowering and debilitating. I suppose they look quite splashy if you are on the deck of an incoming liner, but I’m not. There’s something about these immaculate stone and glass surfaces that destroys all the street-level detail that used to be so much fun. I feel like a spider in a bathtub—can’t get my dragline anchored to anything. (I also walk into glass doors, and take the bruises.)

The Moscow Circus is in town and I saw it the other night. It is one-ring affair, utterly different in tone from Ringling’s extravaganza, very precise and beautiful almost like ballet. See it if comes to Denver. The ring curb is bolted to the floor, which enables the fiery little horses of the Cossacks to build up tremendous speed and zing. They do so fast they become almost horizontal, with their feet on the curb instead of on the ground. The bears are great and the clowning is as stylish as you’ll ever see. The whole business lacks the smell and the dust and the dung that we associate with out circuses (and that I’m fond of, too) but this is an entirely different medium. Even when they put a bantam rooster into orbit it’s different.

We’ll probably start back home around the first, which is next week, to dig our potatoes and store the squashes in the attic among the bats. Then we’ll try to figure out how to get to Florida, where K’s troubles are somewhat modified by warm air and where her doctor thinks it’s necessary now, for her to be. Neither of us is nuts about Florida, but it was helpful last winter. I hope to see Lil before I leave town. Tell me about Clara, when you get the chance. And give my love to Blanche and Janice.

Yrs,

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