From Jean and Gene Elliott, October 1948-- "everyone here talks French"

Once out of the army, Gene Elliott moved to Paris with Jean (known to their circle of friends as she-Jean) for graduate study at the Sorbonne.

Dear Rosa and Murray—everyone here talks French and we stumble after with our pitiful little burden of simple sentences which we try to feed into gaps in conversations but usually our opportunities have swung way behind us while we are still sorting out pronouns, subject-verb agreement, etc. We sit at the table of our pension nodding and smiling from time to time and sometimes getting a chance to say yes or no or thank you or the soup is very good tonight. It’s pretty maddening—we’ve discovered how really addicted we are to conversation. To correct our ineptitude as quickly as possible, we are taking an 8 to 10 AM daily class in French taught entirely in French at L’institut Panthéon, a class that is a little too hard for us so that we have to study about six hours each night. I think it’s helping.

Jean Elliott at the Lake Union houseboat, 1945

We have been homesick for people and animals but not for home so the obvious solution is to import les gens et les animaux, n’est-ce pas? And we’d like to start with you. Paris is a marvelous place to be in spite of some lack of comfort. We live in a fairly large room on the fourth floor; our windows are on the street and we have a fireplace which we will be able to use at some vague future date after the chimney is swept (we shall not have coal but maybe wood although it’s high because of the coal strike). There’s a washbasin behind a screen but no hot water at all, a toilet down the hall and not a bathtub in the house. We bathe at the public bains et douches in a private room for the two of us: we each have, for about forty cents altogether, two big European tubs, chin high, in which we sit for half an hour in all the hot water we want and chat as we wash. We both think it’s a very fine, unboring way to bathe. Our meals, included in bill here, are good. A maid brings us café au lait, which is neither coffee nor stimulating but good, and the dark Paris bread (without butter) at seven-thirty. We gagged on the bread at first but have, fortunately, developed a taste for it.  

 

Bread was rationed in France into 1948; the loaves that were available were made from the sourdough starter and unrefined “gray flour” now used to make the priciest of pain de campagne loaves. 

 

At noon we have a big meal with a vegetable hors d’oeuvre and fruit or cheese or yogurt for dessert and at seven we have another dinner (dîner—I think it means supper) with soup to begin with, salad and same kinds of desserts. We always have meat at noon, often at both meals. And always vegetables. This is costing us a little over $60 a month including tipping. 

Heat and light are something else. One night the electrician of the house came into our room, asked if we had warmth in our radiator. We said no, and he put his hand on it and said oui, oui, you have the heat. It was a little warmer than body temperature. That was a week ago and apparently just an experiment with the heating system because we haven’t had heat since and the days are getting quite cold (they’re like Seattle’s cold, frosty days only a little damper). The lights in the hall are so dim that often we’ve reached for the button before we realized that they were on. … The bathroom light is not automatic but is so unfunctional that we have to take a flashlight in to see what we’re doing. Our  reading lamps are slightly better, but only if we are huddled under them. But these few discomforts are nothing compared to the joys of being here. You know how incomparably beautiful it is (didn’t you once hang from the netting of the Eiffel Tower?). We’ve been doing some organized sightseeing, that is—organized by us, such as going to a famous place outside the city each Sunday: Versailles, Chartres, Chantilly, Senlis, St. Germaine en laye. And then, of course, we wander the streets constantly. If we don't watch ourselves, we spend two hours getting

Bee [Lucille] Shepherd, Puget Sound, 1948: Rosa Morgan photo

from our school ten blocks away back to our house. Books and art books are everywhere and we covet nearly every one we see. Also decanters, pottery, hand-woven material—almost everything. We have also become addicted to pastries of which there 486,000 varieties, each one better than the one before and all very inexpensive. We’ve had some meals in restaurants and they’ve been wonderful. The French say that food, wine, pastries are below pre-war standards and if that is true it is impossible for me to imagine what they were like because all of it now is almost the best we’ve ever had. You should come for next year or sooner.

Shep (Charles) Shepherd, Port Ludlow, 1948: Rosa Morgan photo

The Shepherds overwhelmed us with kindnesses. In the first place, they met our train [in Chicago] at some awful morning hour, eight-thirty I think. Then they brought us presents, beautiful billfolds wrapped up in tissue and ribbons. We had coffee in the station, took a taxi to the art museum and looked for Bill’s [Bill Fett] watercolor but it wasn't on the wall ... so we went through other rooms. Then we went back to the station a little early to try to reach Bill's family on the telephone. 

B’s family was not at home. We had a drink, bought a copy of the NR looking for the answer to your article (wasn’t in it) and then we caught our train with deep regret at having to leave. They are truly lovely people. You should bring them here when you come. They also gave us prints of their pictures of the weekend at Ludlow including a very fine one of the bottom of your feet, Murray. Objet d’art.

Howard Daniel was not home at all. Nor Howard Lewis—at the paper we were told that he was in Paris but flying back to NY the 26^th; we sailed the 24^th. We looked for a plane overhead Sunday afternoon and Monday morning but didn’t even see a wing-tip to wave at. We talked to Ann [Ann Elmo, Murray’s agent] about how she was (she had a strained back) and how we were (we were fine) and how you were (you were fine too) and how Agony was (Agony  was not fine but she said that she’d like us to try rewriting the last chapter). One nice piece of news we had for her was that we had seen, the first day we were in the city, a fairly prominent display of Dixie Raider on one of the tables at Brentano’s. (How is DR going?) …
 

 

If the house caught on fire, we would first save each other and the toss to decide whether to grab the typewriters or the Baedeker next. I can’t find words, French or English, to tell you how much we’ve needed it, relied on it, enjoyed places because of it, used it to find things or to keep from getting lost or to get unlost, loved having it and read ourselves to sleep with it. I shudder to think how different our lives here would have been if you had believed us when we were protesting that we really couldn’t accept it from you. God.

This 1948 image of the Republican Members of the House Un-American Activities Committee included, from left to right, Representative Richard B. Vail of Illinois, Chairman John Parnell Thomas of New Jersey, Representative John McDowell of Pennsylvania, Robert Stripling (chief counsel), and Representative Richard M. Nixon of California.

 

 

 

 

Our ballots came just as we were about to give up and so we voted Monday, mailed them back. Liquor for the State of Washington, Wallace for president: the perfect life. Please, please, please write us about the Canwell Committee’s fate (and that of their victims). As far as the letters we’ve received are concerned, the whole business never happened. Harry and Jo Fugl told us on their arrival that two of the committee-men had been defeated in the primaries which is excellent but we’d like to know more about all of it. [Harry Fugl, director of the activist Pacific Northwest Labor School in the late 1940s, was called before the Canwell Committee.]

Monday’s Le Monde carried a short paragraph about M. Parnell Thomas, among the loveliest French we’ve ever read. Maybe it is just a Democratic Party move and maybe he does get a closed session in contrast to all the public reputation-feasts he’s officiated over, still it’s good. [Thomas, head of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, was convicted of fraud for putting friends into phantom jobs on the Congressional payroll in exchange for kickbacks.] We’d like to know more about that, too, if you have time.

 

Gene wants space. We miss you deeply. Send a note as soon as you can and seriously think about how happy you’d be here. 

Love, Jean

…

Dear Water-dwellers: we have not yet found the Keplers or Kepples (choose one) [it’s Kleppers] but will give you all the dope soon. In the meantime we are constantly reminded by seeing the boaters on the Seine, some with those double-bladed paddles and some with sails, having what is apparently the time of their lives. Jealousy gnaws at our vitals, or would if it were not for the fact that there are so many land-borne pleasures at every hand that we don’t stand still long enough to be gnawed. Harry and Jo arrived (as implied above) and are settled near the Boulevard Saint Michele, very happy. Better come over. Study threatens. Much more soon. Love to you both.    g 

                                                                                                                                                          

For more on Parnell Thomas:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAparnell.htm

For more on the Canwell Committee hearings at UW:   

http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/dec97/red1.html

Canwell biography:   
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=9887

Attu -- 12 April 1945 -- "It sounded like he said Roosevelt is dead"

My delectable darling...

This is how it was -- The day was dirty grey. Dishwater clouds hung low over the slate sea and steam rose from the soggy snow. The men who were getting ready to go to second chow pulled on their gloves without bothering to button their field jackets; two wore their snow goggles high on the foreheads, just in case the sun broke through while they were walking down to the mess hall. 

Gene and I hate to stand in the chow line: we make a point of starting late and sneaking in at the last minute. So, not needing to make the mess hall before a quarter past, we stayed to listen to the start of the San Francisco shortwave news, rebroadcast at noon by our local station.

I was busy at the desk logging a couple of messages and Gene was collecting some money for a cigaret issue -- one of his jobs as hut chief -- so we missed the start of the show. When we went into the maintenance room Bob Hart was working slowly on a loudspeaker. "Anything popping?" I asked. "It sounded like he said Roosevelt is dead," Hart answered. The voice came in stronger over the radio...Mrs. Roosevelt said...the nation...Harry Hopkins...Warm Springs...all the world...

"Jesus Christ!" someone said.        

I stuck my head into the operating room and said, "Roosevelt is dead." Someone said, "Yeah, I'll bet." But everyone started for the door. No one spoke for the rest of the newscast, which was quite incoherent and ended without repetition of the opening statement. We still weren't sure if it wasn't one of the Roosevelt sons. Hart fiddled with the dial and picked up San Francisco direct, another show. The announcer was talking about Roosevelt's re-election to a fourth term. 

Gene said, "Why now?"

I said, "Let's go eat."

We walked slowly down the hill. There did not seem to be many fellows going to lunch. The clouds were lifting and the tops of the mountains showed through on either side; they looked very high, cut off from their bases, and I felt depressed. "Well, he doesn't have to worry about the peace," I said. Gene didn't say anything for a while and then, "There might be this about it...there won't be any pretense of it being run right now." 

We went on and where two paths came together met another pair of censors. They were arguing about whether Betty Grable was pregnant when the movie Pin-Up Girls was filmed. Gene said, "Did you hear the news?" "Germany surrender?" "No. Roosevelt's dead." "Jesus Christ...Truman."

The messhall line had just started to move. It still reached back through the corridor and outside the building. We could hear the radio going inside, but only the name Roosevelt came through. The fellows immediately in front of us were arguing about St. Louis and Boston in the American League. Most of the talk was about Roosevelt. "His place in history is clinched now"..."Dewey was right about that...Only thing Dewey was right about though."..."Oh I donno about that."..."Jesus Christ. Truman." ..."Who else died in office?"..."Lincoln. Johnson came after him"..."Nothing to do but give him a chance." ... "Of course, but San Francisco." ... "I'll bet Henry Wallace feels sick."

I felt pretty sick myself. Lunch did not taste good.

                                                       ...

... Your question, after looking at the picture of our hut, about how we find the door reminds me of a story I forgot to tell you earlier. We have big barrels of sea water sitting outside each hut. They are, of course, for fires. Earlier in the winter, when the snow was just about to the rim of each, they were quite a hazard, especially when approaching an unfamiliar hut. One of our officers, Lieutenant Blood, had the particular misfortune of stepping into two of them in one day. So, the next day, when someone was trying to locate him, the searcher was told, "Oh, he's probably out in the area, standing in a barrel." ... It seemed funny at the time. Maybe I told it wrong. 

The ACE has two basketball teams which play in local leagues. One of them is quite good but the other, The Sparks, is terrible. I am always kidding Chuck Heustis, the center, about the demerits of his club. The other day they won a game from a good team, a tremendous upset. There was a great deal of razzing back and forth about it. I told Chuck that it worried me, for if the Sparks could win a game then Germany could still win the war. But he came up with the best one. I passed him on the way to the hut and he called me back and, paraphrasing the warcry of the unsaluted second lieutenant, demanded, "Hey, soldier, what do you do when you see a Spark?"

[Chuck Huestis, a Seattle native who was later vice president for business and finance at Duke University, was also a longtime mountaineer. He combined his climbing experience with his financial expertise by serving as the director, president and treasurer of the first American ascent of Mount Everest in 1963.]

Only two weeks and three days now, my darling. I guess I can wait, but even that seems a terribly long time. There are no words which can say how much you are loved. 

Your adoring,

M

Umnak Island, 5 August 1944 -- "the parody saved the day"

Hello Lover…

I had a nice letter from Phyllis today. Actually it was from Phyllis and Otto but since Otto didn’t write any of it and it bears the mark of Gallup I think of it as Phyllis.

She was properly appreciative of the type of literature that Adventure Magazine is carrying these days. She also promised to send me the previously pledged socks as soon as she bakes the cookies to go with them. But most important she talked about a house that could be bought very cheap in Mason County. It is on the waterfront (Hood Canal, I presume), seems to be somewhere that can be reached by car because she drove one of her clients to it one day, and has a brook. She did not go into details but I suggest that you write to her and find out if there is any possibility. More and more it seems a swell idea to me to have some little place like that to fall back on in case the dollar does a few flipflops a year or so after the war. And far above the idea of an investment, I want some place where we can get away from people. 

I could have used such a place this morning. A pair of the guys in the hut rolled in at 8 a.m. stunk to the gills. How they do it on 3.2 beer I don’t know but they manage to get shakier than this bloody typewriter. One of them was my Irish pal from the YMCA, Minneapolis and way points which include Spokane and assorted guardhouses. They were very talkative and very determined to give me a bad time. For more than an hour they were either sitting on my bed and mussing my hair or carrying on a surprisingly accurate parody of the type of bullsessions Jack and I have been having. The parody saved the day. I had read until very late and was sleepy. Being mauled had me seeing red and I was set to climb out and step a few slow rounds, but every time I reached the boiling point they would go into the amateur intellectual act and I’d blow off my steam laughing. 

In the afternoon I had my revenge. I played the radio, pounded the typewriter, sang and joyfully packed and unpacked the barracks bag which had just arrived from APO 980. This gave me many an opportunity to prop my many pairs of boots. I timed each thump to match the start of a snore and in that way kept the celebrants from getting any rest. They suffered through the swing shift and I helped matters all I could by managing to find two pieces of metal I could scrape, causing a sound like a giant’s fingernail on a super blackboard. By midnight I was so pleased with myself that I even helped the Irishman on his KP shift. He was really hung over and felt quite bad. We talked boxing, which he knows. He is an old admirer of Billy Petrolle, the Fargo Express, who was once Frank’s Number Two idol. We had a picture of him in the Kincaid apartment. He saw that famous fight in which Jack Kracken, the Northwest heavy, had his win streak stopped at 23 straight Kayoes by the colored kid just out of the amateurs—Joe Louis. 

When not warding off the drunks or revenging myself on them, I read Raymond Chandler’s “The High Window” cover to cover, like a good Time fan. The boy writes good, solid corn. His plotting was exceptionally tight, his characterization both pulpy and solid (which is possible), and his dialogue good. He has a weakness for extravagance in metaphor, but at times it can be good. For instance, of a guy somewhat like our Pete [Antoncich].

“A great long gallows of a man with a ravaged face and a haggard frozen right eye that had a clotted iris and a steady look of blindness. He was so tall that he had to stoop to put his hand on the back the chair across the table from me.”

Also I liked this little passage: “I looked at the ornaments on the desk. Everything standard and all copper, a copper lamp, pen set and pencil stray, a glass and copper ashtray with a copper elephant on the rim, a copper letter opener, a copper thermos bottle on a copper tray, copper corners on the blotter holder. There was a spray of almost copper-colored sweet peas in a copper vase. 

 

“It seemed like a lot of copper.”

I wrote some more on Day of the Dead and almost have the present draft up to where you saw the first draft. The plotting is not changed much but the action, and especially the dialogue, seems more convincing to me. I am writing with less effort on it and it feels rather good again. Manic-depressive stuff, I guess.

I enjoyed the clipping you sent in the last letter, although Grafton’s excessive praise of Wallace almost turned me against our Henry. Wallace is, after all, a man and his feet touch ground and he probably eats and digests food. Personally I’d hate to think I had tried to root St. Peter into the White House. He’s still needed at the Pearly Gates. Seriously, I think it is stupid to put halos on your political heroes. Wallace probably lost more support by his reputations for unworldly good than by his support for Negroes. Too many people were afraid that if through some accident he were elevated to the top and put at a peace conference, Churchill and Stalin would talk him out the Mississippi, the Empire State Building and three dozen Idaho potatoes. Personally I don’t think anyone who is not a shrewd politician can get 400 votes for anything at any time at a national nominating convention—even though he loses them later….PM had a Democratic campaign slogan the other day that amused me: Chaos comes quicker with Dewey and Bricker.

God how I wish something would make the day come quicker when I would be with your again ….

M

Umnak Island, 27 July 1944 -- "at once bored and tense"

Dearest Nunny...

A good day, this. The mail brought a letter from you, one from Sergeant Lewis of Muroc Air Base [Howard Lewis], and two copies of the New York Times and a Fortune.

 

Howard:  "I’m having pretty tough going here. Your cherished compliments always backfire when I try to answer because I feel that I have some sort of a standard to live up to. And the harder I try, the longer I sit and stare at the typewriter, searching for the right cliché. I don’t understand, either, your thrashing about in search of a style. The last judgment I passed on your writing was made to another Columbian, something to the effect that I knew no one else who could make facts so interesting in themselves. So many of the current run of news articles apologize for the facts in them by putting icing over them, as if they were trying to hide the lumps in the cake. It’s a hell of a lot easier, god knows, but it takes more than icing to make a good cake. 

Now that you’re assured of a steady income, why not ease up on writing for a market and write for yourself at least a couple months? Maybe you are trying to find a style to suit your present existence—if you are I hope to hell you can’t. It always seemed to me that the major attribute of your prose was its vitality, growing out of the extremely active life you led—I mean active in your wholehearted enjoyment of life. If you try to change your style because you don’t feel the vitality any more—because living has slumped down the day-to-day existing—I think I would personally knock the living bejesus out of you.”

…

Howard’s comments on my writing style came, I guess because I praised his and expressed dissatisfaction with my own progress in the craft of getting stuff down on paper. I probably was singing a very low bass because my last letter to him was from the old station. But though I may have begged for a bone of praise, I didn’t expect the whole damn cow and feel exceptionally flattered at all those nice things. Bake a cake for Howard, or knit him a pair of gloves. 

[About Rosa planning to quit her job] I don’t blame you at all for getting fed up, nor for pulling out, but I envy you your vacation. When you go back to work I hope practically prayerfully that it is in some form of photographic work. I am counting on you supporting us postwar while I spend a couple more years getting the next three chapters done on Day of the Dead.

Your comments on my comments about Dewey make me wish I had a copy of that letter. I remember writing it at a moment of great dissatisfaction with politics in general but surely I wasn’t as enthusiastic about Tiny Tom as you indicate. I remember something about thinking even as I wrote that letter, that most of the arguments I gave could have applied just as well to Hoover in 1928 although the comparison probably is unjust. After all, Dewey has come of age politically during a period when the climate was liberal and it must have had some effect.

Frankly, I’m pretty sick of the whole business. I know that my attitude is probably based more on disgust for my current way of life than it is on the fundamental issues of politics at home. But that is only natural. It is impossible to keep from being affected by the intellectual climate of the Army. And being at once bored and tense I find it easier to get tense than bored by election year politics. 

It seems to me we are all voting hunches, nothing more. We liberals have a hunch that Roosevelt is still a liberal although his actions no longer show it. We vote for him on the hunch that, re-elected, he will quit playing commander-in-chief and thinking like an army man and get back to looking after the forgotten man. The chief reason for thinking he will do that is that after the 1932 and 1936 elections he was much more liberal than he had indicated he would be during the campaign.

But he has been making compromises for five years now. And his biggest single compromise was his failing to back Wallace to the limit. Wallace, after all, was the last of the New Dealers. With the exception of Ickes and Larry Fly of the Federal Communications Commission there is not a New Dealer left in an important position—except on the Supreme Court where even FDR found he could not get rid of men easily. Wallace is gone, Corchoran is gone, Cohen is gone, Maverick is gone, Norris is gone, in fact try to find anyone of that frame of mind around any more. Name a New Dealer, quick. 

The habit of compromise is hard to break. It is easier to get along, as any study of the life of a Time editor will show. From the age of 57 to the age of 62 Roosevelt has been making concessions to promote harmony. All his current advisers and close associates are either the men he has made the concessions to (Jesse Jones, etc.) or those who have advised making the compromises (Hopkins, Ickes, etc.). It is going to take a lot of guts to go back and pick up where he left off in 1938.

You mention my use of the phrase “Tired Old Men.” I don’t know how tired FDR is, but it’s probably pretty. However, I wasn’t thinking of him. After all he makes up in experience and past efficient performance for at least some of the effects of age. But what about Hull? Good gray Cordell Hull, the greatest Secretary of State in a hundred years, sitting on his reciprocal trade treaties while the rest of the world hatches cartel agreements. The gallant old eagle hatched out policy of compromise with Italian Fascism and our policy of compromise with Spanish Fascism. What will he cluck up in regards to a defeated Germany? The fact that Russia also cuddles up to the House of Savoy is no justification for our doing so too. After all we don’t take our cues from the Comintern and Stalin’s doing something is not an argument for or against its being democratic.

The Secretary of Commerce is still Jesse Jones. Roosevelt gave him the friendly nod in his fight with Wallace last year. Wallace is now hat in hand at the White House door, hoping for a post-election appointment to something, anything, where he may be of some use. Jones is one of the most influential members of the government, in spite of the fact that he snafued our Latin American policy, our strategic stockpile policy and is all for turning the war plants over to the prewar monopolists. Even the British probably would have kicked him upstairs before this.

The Secretary of the Treasury is no has-been, he is a never-was. The Secretary of Labor is a national joke, too inefficient even to be important. The Attorney General is a Biddle. The Secretary of War is Stimson. Wickard is no Wallace, although he does appear to be passable. Ickes, still one of the best, nevertheless has not only gone along with all the compromises of the chief but has suggested a few of his own, the old curmudgeon. Probably the best man in the Cabinet is Forrestal, but he is an accident. Not even an insurance company would bet that the mortality rate among the rest of the oldtimers will be high enough in the next couple of years to help. And Roosevelt is not one to scuttle this secretaries, not matter how bad they become.

Nevertheless, there is no one else to vote for. Because if Roosevelt is the hunch bet of the liberals, Dewey is the hunch bet of the conservatives. They can’t be sure he will play their game. His record as governor of New York is not much more conservative than FDR’s was while he held the same job. But they are betting on his self-made smugness and the influence of the men who have been advising him—mainly Hoover. They may have something there. 

My disgust is not so much with the growing illiberalism of the administration but with the fact that although it is getting more and more complacent it can afford to. We have no one else to vote for. However I’ll fool them to a degree. I’m going to write in my own vice presidential vote and our Hank will be on the ballot.

Probably my general disgust with politics comes from the discussion we have been having recently. They are the same old sophomoric talks about ends and means, duty to society and duty to individuals, that I had ten years ago. And after ten years of little but talking I still haven’t made up my own mind. Still unresolved for me is the contradiction of my personal belief that ends do not justify means and my growing realization that only coercion, based on government power, will eradicate social evils such as race prejudice.

"Still unresolved for me is the contradiction of my personal belief that ends do not justify means and my growing realization that only coercion, based on government power, will eradicate social evils such as race prejudice."

This inability to decide whether I’m a liberal Dr. Jeckyl or a Machiavellian Mr. Hyde puts me more and more in the frame of mind that Koestler must have had when he wrote, “I felt like telling the world to go muddle through without me.” In other words, I’m ready to settle for a postwar world which will let me drift down the Mississippi.

Before leaving the subject of political attitudes, one other comment. For a while I was very pleased with the groundswell of internationalism. But more and more it seems to me that we have as many different kinds of internationalists as we have small-d democrats. And most of them are those who believe that we can be international on strictly our own terms. An internationalist who won’t make concessions at the peace table will be about as helpful as Bertie McCormick. The public has been “sold” the phrase—but not the meaning.

The hell with it.

...

I am looking forward to the picture of you in the sail boat, impatiently…also to the results of Haj’s romancing. If she has pups in the houseboat she had better make them water spaniels…remind Carmen she owes me a letter. My last one didn’t offend her for any reason, did it? …Do you like the song “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?” I do, for it reminds me of the Village Vanguard and “Knock Me Some Chops.”

Only nine more months and I have it made, Nunny. It’s a long, long time.  …

M