⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩
F
March 17, 1941.
Dear Alexander
Woollcott:
I am always just three years behind in my correspondence. This is not an
affectation, but a frailty. Since Woollcott's SECOND READER appeared three years ago, it follows
automatically that I should now thank you not only for the kind words which
you said about me, but for the pleasure you gave me by reprinting Kenneth Grahame's GOLDEN AGE. I loved that book many years ago,
but my own copy disappeared in the course of many movings. With your book it
came back to me as if I had never read it before.
I am even more indebted to you for introducing me to Pottle's paper on the other side of Boswell. The well-known
side of
Bosell
Boswell
, odious as his self importance may be, does, after all, give us a
convincing picture of town life in the eighteenth century. But I do urge you
to read a new book published by Alfred
Knopf, called JOHNSON
WITHOUT BOSWELL. The letters and diaries of Mrs. Thrale make a much more human figure
than all Mr. Boswell's scrupulous annotations. When Alfred Knopf brought the
book over to me, I groaned and told him that I had read my little six volume
Dent edition of Boswell's Johnson
through at least four times. But when I began to read this book by a man who is a scholar, but not without a
sense of humor, I got a very much more striking portrait of Dr. Johnson.
And here you are, back on the stage again! Or is it some double who is
playing the
man
who
came
to
dinner?
Ethel Barrymore's play (to my mind it's all her's) is the only one I have seen since I came back from
Canada. In the latter part of
November I had a serious accident to my [right hand](000157). It had to be immobilized, and is still
tied up in [splints](010769) - about as
much use to me as if it were locked away in a drawer. I spent the Christmas
Holidays and a part of January at the [French Hospital](000808). I mention this only to urge you to go to that
⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ hospital, if you ever have to
go to any hospital. The rooms have glorious light and sun, and none of the
ugly furniture that I always find in other hospitals. You hear the pleasant
French language about you all day. All of the service staff are French, and
the two cooks (thank God!) are both French. They gave me the only hospital
food I have been able to eat - and gave it to me hot. It is a wonderful
place to know about if you ever need a hospital. And the roof gardens are
real roof gardens, and look out over an interesting part of the town. It is a Catholic hospital, of
course. But none of the nurses are nuns. You don't have black robes
fluttering around your bed there, but young girls - some of them very pretty
and all jolly. My very special nurse was Olympia
Fumagalli, who was chosen by the medical staff to accompany
the wife of the ex-President of Chile, when Roosevelt sent her, in a bomber, back to
Santiago. After her vacation,
she came back in the same bomber. That's a nice situation for your next play
- a handsome and very intelligent Italian girl coming back over the Andes
with eight American boys of the finest kind. If it weren't for the airmen,
there wouldn't be much to live for in these days, when the Communists seem
to have got us pretty well by the throat from coast to coast.
I don't know when I have dictated a letter so long as this, but I won't have
another return of communicativeness for three years, so be hopeful!
Faithfully yours,
Willa Cather
Excuse left hand!