28 July (1949): John Steinbeck to Elaine Scott

A stage manager from Texas, Elaine Scott was still married to actor Zachary Scott when she started an affair with John Steinbeck. They met only about a month before the time of this letter’s writing. The two were married just a week after Scott finalized her divorce in 1950, and remained together until Steinbeck’s death in 1968. She was his third wife.

July 28 [1949]

[Thursday afternoon]

My pretty quadroon—

Kids are bedded for the moment and I use the word advisedly. What a strange night was last night. I could not sleep, the kids had nightmares and today they are looking far inside and they are far away. I thought it might be a change of pressure because the air is strange and the sea is unusual but the barometer has not changed. Maybe an earthquake coming. I’ve felt them before. Animals are a little nuts too. Something about to happen. I wonder what. I have the excited feeling of a storm. Something has changed of course—something I didn’t think ever could again and I am a little terrified but I surely would not have it any other way.

I watched the postman with gleaming eyes this morning. Once long ago when a letter with a tiny check meant the difference between dinner and not, there was a long desert time and the postman got so ashamed that he walked on the other side of the street. Finally I got to cursing him as he went by and at last I accused him of deliberately stealing mail. He drew himself up with pitiable dignity and said, “When they write them—I bring them.” Poor fellow. He still works in the postoffice but they only let him cancel three-cent stamps for his spirit is broken and his armor is split and rusted.

I am going to make my world-shaking macaroni for dinner and the kids are wild with joy because it means there will be tomato sauce all over the kitchen and all over me. My dinners are not only food. They are decorations also.

[Thursday night]

Now a kind of ennui, darling. I wish you would call Annie Laurie Williams [in New York] and perhaps have tea with her. She’s really family. I know you’ll get along. Another Texan and after many years in the theater she is still starry-eyed about it. She loves me quite a lot. Also is my dramatic agent. I will writer her that you may call her. Of course you need not but I would like it if you did. And I don’t even know why. But it seems a right thing.

I’ve had a number of years of frustration and sterility. And I have work that has to be done and it should be done with violence and gaiety. And I think, God damn it, that such can be. Don’t you?

I have a great humming in my ears from clenching my jaws. Isn’t it odd the physical symbols we use?

The bird will have a new flower in his box for you. I should have given him to you but he might have been found and there would be no way in the world to explain him. But I hope you had the chain fixed and that you will wear the wood sometimes when you think of it. And the time will go very quickly (that’s a goddamned lie of course but it’s the thing one says). The time will crawl like a blind snail on soft sand. And the dogs will bark pretty much too.

Do you know, I am putting off ending this letter as though the end would be the end of something I want to hold on to. That’s not true of course—just a feeling like the quick one of hexing your trip so you couldn’t go. The mind is capable of any selfishness and it thinks unworthy things whether you want to or not. Best to admit it is a bad child rather than to pretend it is always a good one. Because a bad child can improve but a good one is a liar and nothing can improve a liar.

A good trip, dear, with fun. And come back after—come back. I can’t write any more. But of course I will. I shall think of you.

Altoona V. Eldredge*

How I hate to stop

I really feel the earthquake thing still. Or some tremendous change.

*Steinbeck was known for signing his letters with humorous monikers.

From Steinbeck: A Life in Letters. New York: Penguin Books, 1976.

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