Cheever's Letters

In 1933 Yaddo, the artists’ colony, beckoned the young John Cheever like some luxurious literary Shangri-la. A recently discovered cache of letters to its guiding spirit, Elizabeth Ames, mirrors his progress from struggling aspirant to award-winning writer

In 1933, in the depths of the Depression, a penniless but hopeful young man named John Cheever wrote to Elizabeth Ames, the formidable director of Yaddo, asking for admission to the famous artists’ colony. Thus began an engaging correspondence that continued long after Cheever won renown as one of America’s finest short-story writers and novelists. Here is a selection from Cheever’s letters, which, from the very first, reveal his distinctive and ebullient voice.

1933

Boston April 24, 1933

My Dear Mrs. Ames,

Malcolm Cowley suggested that there might be a possibility of my being one of your guests for a short while this summer so that I could continue under more comfortable circumstances the work that I have in hand.

Other than Malcolm’s word and a few published stories, I have little to recommend me. Iam planning to be a writer and have been working for the last year on apprenticeship prose. At present I am trying to write a handful of good short stories.

It is unnecessary to say that, after eight months in the city, a short time in the country (and it is splendid country I understand) would be pleasant.

Sincerely yours,

John Cheever

Boston

Dear Mrs. Ames,

Thank you for your reply. I am of course very sorry that there is no room at Yaddo but if there were a vacancy in the late summer or fall I would appreciate it as much or even more.

I will be at this address until September.

And thank you again.

Sincerely yours,

John Cheever

1934

Boston

Dear Mrs. Ames,

Last year at about this same time I wrote you, at Malcolm Cowley’s suggestion, asking about coming to Yaddo. The letter was pretty late in the season and there was no room, and Mr. Cowley suggested that I write again this year.

He wrote you, I think, about my work. What or how much he said I don’t know. The facts in the case are simple enough. I am twenty-two years old and have been writing for a number of years although I haven’t published anything since 1932. I can vouch for the quantity if not for the quality and promise of the work I would do if there were a vacancy at Yaddo.

Everyone is, I imagine, reluctant to refer to the work in hand. I have lived all of my life within view of, and nearly every day of the last two years within, Boston. The city is old, out of step with the century, but age only seems to have quickened its elements. The Communists are clubbed in front of a staid, Georgian facade. Relics from the past continually pierce the present. Some dream of love survives the sandstone apartment houses. A paranoid ruins the Public Library. And within a half an hour’s ride is the New England country where occasionally an abandoned house or a view surviving the hoardings and the hot-dog stands gives the memory an unexpected twist. The work in hand I think would deal with the horror and glory of this particular brick horizon.

The idea of leaving the city for a short while, after two uninterrupted years, has never been so distant or so desirable.

Sincerely yours,

John Cheever

East Weymouth, Massachusetts

Dear Mrs. Ames,

This is a late letter and it seems a long time since Lebanon Mountain came between us. Much longer than three weeks. Since then I’ve been living with my brother and his wife, trying to finish up some things that were started at Yaddo. I’ve been putting off the bus-ride to New York day after day until it can’t be put off any longer. And so tonight I’ll be rattling through Worcester, Hartford, etc.

A couple of editors are holding stories and there seems to be a chance of selling something soon. If I can get one printed I feel confident that the others will loosen up and the confidence and the money will be handy. It’s been so long since I’ve printed anything and my work, through rejection, has grown so special that a consideration for readers will be a fine thing, I think.

Where I will be living and what I will do in New York is still up in the air but as soon as I find an address I’ll write and if you should be in the city it would be fine to see you again.

As ever,

John Cheever

633 Hudson Street New York City

Dear Mrs. Ames,

Hudson Street is a far cry from anything in Boston and so far the difference stands in favor of Hudson Street. I arrived here on Wednesday and found some work at once. The income is still pretty precarious, the landlady worries and worries but I think it will hold out for another couple of weeks at least. I’m reading novels for M-G-M and some book reviewing may turn up next week. The income is barely enough to live on but enough if you go carefully. My only objection is that staying here and doing this work precludes all chances of doing work of my own. The work in itself doesn’t take a great deal of time but during the hot weather Mrs. Lewton, the woman who rations out the work, keeps irregular and unpredictable hours and you spend more time waiting around for books and worrying about the next day’s finances than you do in actual work. So it goes.

Giving up my own work, even temporarily, makes me impatient and discouraged. I still have the bundle of stories from Yaddo that are not completed and I would like to try a novel. I get tired of my own ways, tired of refinement, discretion, excessive detail, lack of action. Even while working there is a certain amount of impatience and when the work is suspended altogether the impatience increases. And it is almost impossible, after working over other people’s books all day in this small room, to start up after supper and write a book of your own. If there should be a vacancy in Yaddo during September or October I would deeply appreciate it....

And hoping to see you soon.

As ever,

John Cheever

23 Bethune Street, N.Y.C.

Dear Mrs. Ames,

... So far it’s been a lean strange winter. I have been able to make an irregular living off Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. When they fail a check from some unexpected source usually falls like manna. The New Republic has taken a story and Story magazine is printing one in April. They have been recently printing dubious stuff but I’m satisfied with the story and that’s what counts I guess. Also Harrison Smith shows signs of giving out an advance for a novel, something that I’m anxious to write.

... If you would like to read the story in Story I’ll send up a copy. And if you are in New York and have the time, be sure and look me up.

As ever,

John Cheever

c/o Walker Evans

20 Bethune Street, New York City

Dear Mrs. Ames,

.. .Two days in Boston were two days too many. It was pretty and the weather was clear and the crowds around Dock Square and Faneuil Hall were allright but the minute you go towards Pemberton Square and the Barrister’s offices and Ashburton Place you begin to run into those pale, contrite faces....

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been working as a photographer’s assistant. And the New Republic and Story both took other stories so that was a little money. And I may be able to get a department store job for Christmas.

And if you are in the city be sure, if you have the time, to get in touch with me and we can have dinner together or something.

And as ever,

John Cheever

1935

East Weymouth, Massachusetts April 22, 1935

Dear Mrs. Ames,

.. .The winter hasn’t exactly held any conquests, any literary conquests anyrate. I’ve sold stories to the New Republic and the New Yorker. Story magazine has evidently decided to postpone the publication of my thing indefinitely. They are losing money and anxious to get newsstand circulation and the title (“Homage to Shakespeare”) won’t tempt anyone taking a train to Baltimore to buy a copy. I get worried sometimes about my inability to sell. It’s about time I did. I got an agent a few days ago and this may help but I think the fault so far is mostly my own. When an editor hits an extraordinary story they know it and so far my stories haven’t been good enough to jolt them. And in the meantime I’ve started a book which, I’m confident, will be very good. I’ve kept off a sustained thing for a long time, feeling that the novel (and its only definition seems to be negative) was created largely by and for the growth and decline of a middle-class that men of my generation are strangers to. Our lives have not been sustained or constant or ordered. Our characters don’t die in bed. The powerful sense of passed and passing time that seems to be the one definable and commendable quality of the novel is not our property. Our lives are not long and well-told stories. But then these are not limitations. They seem, in the course of work, to be exciting discoveries.

...I’m still anxious to hear from you about Yaddo or Triuna. There seems to be a lot to do, everything to do in my case, and I would be very grateful for a chance to write during the summer and I know that there is no better place. If it would make it more possible I would be glad to work for the chance. I can drive, swim well enough to be entrusted with a boat, handle an axe; nothing spectacular but generally useful. And a job could probably be fitted in with working hours.

... I hope this finds you well and that you enjoyed your vacation and the holiday. It was quite an event down here. It didn’t rain. The man in the next place stood out in the fields, looking up at the sun, saying: “Where have I seen that before?” And I hope to see you soon.

As ever,

John Cheever

P.S. Remembering your interest in “miracles” I noticed in the local evening paper that a silver crown, “Property of the Holy Ghost Society Inc., of Bridgewater, Mass.” has been credited with four small cures. The crown, which is placed in the custody of the Society’s President during his term of office, is loaned for the use of anyone “who gives a qualified reason for wanting it.”

J.C.

Assinippi, Massachusetts May 4, 1935

Dear Mrs. Ames,

... I was very glad to hear your advice about putting in time at some other occupation besides writing. I have thought about it a lot and worried about it a lot. And also your remarks about the expenditure of energy in protection instead of adjustment. I can’t help but view the thing in an intensely personal light. I have thought about it continually during the past winter and during the time I have been in Massachusetts. The problem is not, I think, the evasion of occupation and adjustment but the inability to find occupation and the enforced lack of adjustment. It is not a problem peculiar to writers but the problem of an entire generation of younger men.

From the time when I took a job as a stock-boy in an abandoned subway tube when I was about fifteen, I have almost always worked. I have held the average run of jobs, driving a truck, working on a small newspaper etc. But about two years ago the possibility of holding these jobs stopped. I have no trade, no degree, no special training. Straightforward application for any kind of work from a bus-boy to an advertising copy-writer has been completely ineffectual. During the winter of ’33 I held a part time job. In the winter of ’34 I held a political job. I have supported myself this winter by writing synopses for M-G-M, not because I like to but because I can’t find work as a loom-fixer or anything else. By pulling every possible wire I may be able to get a job in a ship-building plant this fall. I would much prefer it to any other opening; an editorial position.

The matter of adjustment seems to be a matter of personal courage and talent. Some people can have a great many lovers and take airplanes and trains from state to state and country to country and still remain cowards and children. Other people remain in one town and remain faithful to one wife and grow into mature and convincing men. There is a small number of scholars and artists who, through the illusion of research and work, fail to make any but the earliest adjustments and who you find at the ages of thirty and forty, sitting in the same rooms, weighing the same, unimportant decisions with their correspondence unmailed and the dust settling on their youths. But financial and emotional independence seems to make such a condition impossible. When you have no money you live, at least, in continual anxiety.

I’ve gone into this at length, I’m afraid, more to ease my own conscience than anything else, and I hope it hasn’t been too confusing or dull. I hope to hear from you soon.

As ever,

John Cheever

1936

Washington, D.C.

Dear Elizabeth,

... Things so far have been faster and more crowded than I imagine they will be when I get settled. I’m doing what is known as editorial work now. I hope to be able to transfer in a couple of weeks to something more interesting....

You probably know Washington better than I and there’s not much I can say about its physical appearance. I really know the inside of its trolley cars better than I do the character of its boulevards. The boarding house we live in is a little alcoholic as boarding houses go and for table mates we have two secretaries from the Russian embassy, two librarians, a man from the tariff commission, a government clerk and another man from my office. There is also an old old lady who sits at the head of the table and says all W.P.A. workers are lazy and good-for-nothing and she’s finding it harder and harder to get me to pass her the lima beans.

One of the distinguishing features of this city is the rapid passage and the singular nature of its gossip_In one evening you can pick up the news that.. .the commercial secretary of the Cuban embassy has been given a mysterious dismissal... [that] His Majesty’s Government has asked His Majesty’s Ambassador to drive around in an automobile less conspicuous than his Cord, and that Count P— pays the Italian embassy for the pleasure of sitting at a desk four hours a day, cutting pictures out of the newspaper, etc. A few days ago the widow of a General of the Regular Army took me into a comer and gave me a sure-fire solution for my success in Washington. “Now John L. Lewis has a daughter,” she said. “She’s rather stout and she’s not awfully pretty but if you rush her, you’re made.”

I neglected to send you any money on my debt last pay day because of another increase in my obligations. I’m buying my father a set of teeth. That inexhaustible man went swimming a month ago. A wave picked him up, knocked him down, lifted out his teeth and swept them off into the bowels of the Atlantic.

Love,

John

1937

Yaddo

February 1, 1937

Dear Elizabeth,

.. .My editors finally came through with a small sum of money and I returned to work on Thursday. Returning was very pleasant. There’s nothing I’d rather do than work on the book. And no place where I’d rather work. The air is fine. The grounds are quiet. A man couldn’t ask for more.

Before returning I went over to New York for a week and saw a few people I’ve been wanting to see... .It was exciting to be back there for a few days and I stared like a yokel at a couple in the Lafayette, drinking champagne and playing back-gammon. Then my brother appeared in town on Friday morning and I took the four o’clock train to Boston with him. It was a crowded week and I came up the Main Street of Quincy Friday night, while the iron bell in the church where John and John Quincy and Henry Adams worshipped was ringing nine.

New England was quite an experience. I haven’t been home for as long in some years... .My father’s memory is very acute and colorful and his story is exciting. He remembers the typhoid after the Civil War that laid an already impoverished and disillusioned Newburyport even lower. He remembers his mother’s delirium and his Aunt Juliana who used to sit among the mandarin coats and ivory junks that her husband brought back from the east, and talk with an Indian “medium.” His uncle Ebenezer was an abolitionist. He ran a biscuit factory that turned out hard-tack for the sailing vessels. When the war between the states was declared he was offered a contract by the government to make hard-tack for the soldiers. He rejected the offer because he felt that his hard-tack wasn’t good enough for the Union soldiers. A competitor named Pierce then accepted the contract and made a fortune and founded a dynasty on the proceeds. Uncle Ebenezer had no regrets. He played the flute. The Pierce bakery has since grown into the National Biscuit Company while the wind whistles through Uncle Ebenezer’s abandoned flour mill.

And then my father came up to Boston.... At the turn of the century he was shooting off Roman candles on the Common with the rest of his generation. He was making a lot of money then. Then come the stories of oyster sweep-stakes in Chesapeake Bay, storms on Lake Erie, express trains to Idaho, goldrushes, horse-races, chaffard [ric] a la presse and mushrooms under glass, breakfasts in New Orleans, champagne, Shakespeare, boxing-matches, old age and failure. New England began its tragic decline. They tore down the Parker House. They closed the mills. And I saw Amoskeag last fall, looking at its own reflection in the Merrimack.

My brother is more interested in the situation than I am, I guess... .What concerns us both is some statement that the tradition is vigorous as well as reserved. Something that will disabuse the world of the idea that all New England attics are full of crazy old aunts.

It’s snowing now and it looks as though there might [be] some ski-ing tomorrow....

As ever,

John

1939

Quincy, Massachusetts December 26, 1939

Dear Elizabeth,

Here I am again in what grandmother used to call the house of plenty, sniffing the conflicting aromas of roast duck, Yardley’s bath soap and the fir balsam pillows maiden ladies distribute at Christmas. All in all it’s been a rousing holiday. A class-mate of mine had a party on Christmas eve and we sat around a kitchen in Norwell and drank egg-nog out of tennis trophies until two. Many of the kids I had been to Thayer with were there, wearing eye-glasses and escorting pregnant wives. Then back here, horse-back riding monday morning in the blue hills, dinner with mother and dad and in the late afternoon we went down to Norwell again and collected a lot of plaid socks, spotted ties, and bright yellow gloves. The house was full of people, there was a lot of champagne, three small children kept circling the living room, breaking the springs in mechanical toys and hollering at the top of their lungs, and a cable came from blacked-out Southampton announcing that auntie Dess (one of the South African aunts) had arrived safely on the blacked-out Scythia. The children played store, played house, played tea-party, the women played bridge, the men played darts, everyone stood knee deep in wrapping paper and outside the windows you could see a light in the sky that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen at the foot of New York’s crosstown streets. The local squire showed up with a jar of aspic, the children began to destroy the tree ornaments, and driving home the moon was as bright as day and people were skating on every pond. So we remember the Prince of Peace, may it please Him.

... The fact that I’ve been able to do more work in my three days down here than I did in three weeks in New York is a proof I guess of how quickly I respond to rural, or at least semi-rural surroundings and I don’t look forward to returning to the musty interiors of the Hotel Chelsea.. . .The work I did in the city is no good, the amount of money I spent was crazy, and I haven’t even got any memories. There’s a lot to be learned by me about living.

Thanks a great deal for your Christmas card. It was the most modest and appropriate reminder I’ve seen. The significance, even the ironical significance, of Christmas seems to have been forgotten for the red light in the window and the public address system in the department store caroling Peace on Earth Goodwill to Men.

Love,

John

1942

Camp Gordon Augusta, Georgia Co. “E” 22nd Infantry

Dear Elizabeth,

... I remember you telling me something about the poverty in Georgia. The irony of our training for warfare in a countryside that has been bitterly defeated is fairly obvious. I have never seen such poverty; in land, in people’s faces, and in education.

We spend a good deal of our time pursuing an imaginary force of Germans around the neighborhood. Our gas is rationed so we are not as widely traveled as we would like to be, but even within the reservation there are a good many cotton, sugar-cane, peanut, and seed-corn farms. Sometimes I think of the dilapidated countryside the 19th century Russians wrote about. Here are the idiot children, the tin-roofed farmhouses, the scrub-trees, eroded soil, religious cults, etc_

There is nothing I would like better, Elizabeth, than another letter. Mail call is still the high point in our day and I suppose it will remain this way until the end of the war.... My best to everyone....

As ever,

John

1956

Scarborough

Dear Elizabeth,

It was very good to hear from you and I’m delighted to know that I will be a member of the [Yaddo] corporation. My debt to Yaddo is immense and friendly. I saw Malcolm on Wednesday, of course—both on and off the platform—but I’m not up to any coherent account of what went on. I got stuck down-town in a rainstorm and was late getting up to the institute. The audience seemed larger than I had imagined. There was a party afterwards in which I seem to have kissed about a thousand women and drunk some gin and then I came home and gave Susie a long lecture on the unimportance of honors. “Work,” I kept shouting at her, “work is what counts!” And it took me three days to get back to work.

I think of you and Yaddo often and I wish I could spend more time there, but I seem to be coming into the last stretches of a book and perhaps this will be done by July. It may not be a very good book but at least it will be a book_When you come to New York you must come and see us. I hope to see you sooner than this, but sooner or later I remain affectionately and,

As ever,

John

Cheever was celebrating a $1,000 award, presented by Malcolm Cowley, from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1957 The Wapshot Chronicle was published, winning a National Book Award, and Cheever was elected to the Institute.

Scarborough [undated]

Dear Elizabeth,

This is a very difficult letter to write there is so much to say; so much I could say. I was very unhappy when I boarded the train on Tuesday morning and left yesterday noon, feeling like a Prince of the appletowns. How wonderful and uncomplicated old friendships are. Standing on the garage porch and looking off to Vermont it seemed to me that if there was any blue sky at all in this nature of mine much of it was let in by your kindness.

There was almost no snow south of Albany. A few scraps here and there. On a freight truck at some place like Rhinecliff I saw a large bundle of palm leaves addressed to a church. Mary was raking the leaves off the tulips when I got home. Ben was ranging through the woods with his pop-gun. Susie was at dancing school. Driving to church this morning I was able to look down my nose for a minute at the preposterous airs of ordination and finality that such suburban communities as this put on. I may take it all seriously tomorrow; but that will be tomorrow.

As ever,

John