Steinbeck makes amends for filching a friend’s story
51 STEINBECK, John.
Autograph letter signed to Edith Wagner; [together with] How Edith McGillicuddy Met R.L.S.; [and] Harper’s Magazine, August 1941. [c.1941–43] £17,500 [ 159459 ] Together 3 items: 1) One sheet autograph letter signed. Light creases, two from being folded twice, else in excellent condition. 2 ) How Edith McGillcuddy Met R.L.S. Cleveland: The Rowfant Club , 1943. Quarto. Original brown cloth-backed floral patterned pink paper boards, red paper labels on spine and front cover lettered and tooled in gilt, fore and lower edges untrimmed. Title page, first page, and headers printed in blue and pink, facsimile letter on p. 19. Extremities rubbed, spine ends and corners worn, boards sunned, light offsetting to front endpapers, a touch of foxing to contents, small loss to lower outer corner of pp. 9–10, not affecting text. A good, sound copy. 3) Harper’s Magazine , August 1941. Large octavo. Original orange wrappers lettered in black and white, rear wrapper with colour advertisement. Black and white illustrations throughout, one page printed in colour on yellow card. Spine and corners a little creased, spine ends worn, rubbing to extremities and front wrapper, small loss to fore edge of rear wrapper, edges a little foxed and marked. A very good copy indeed, bright and internally fresh. ¶ Goldstone & Payne A20. Elaine Steinbeck & Robert Wallsten, Steinbeck, A Life in Letters , 1975; John H. Timmerman, The Dramatic Landscape of Steinbeck’s Short Stories , 1990.
An autograph letter signed from Steinbeck to Edith Wagner regarding the story “How Edith McGillicuddy Met R.L.S. [Robert Louis Stevenson]”, initially suppressed by Steinbeck at Edith’s request. The letter is accompanied by the story’s first appearance in print (in Harper’s Magazine ) and its first edition in book form, inscribed by Steinbeck to Edith’s son after her death, “A Jack Wagner, en ausencita de su madre, John Steinbeck”. This is a remarkably poignant group, demonstrating the importance of Edith Wagner and her family to Steinbeck, and his desire to do right by an old family friend. Edith Wagner was the mother of five boys who numbered among Steinbeck’s closest childhood friends. Jack (1891–1963), to whom the book is inscribed, became a significant screenwriter and cinematographer, and he and Steinbeck co-wrote two scripts together: A Medal for Benny (1945), and The Pearl (1947). The Wagner family lived just a few doors down from the Steinbecks in Salinas, having moved from Mexico in the early 1890s after the death of Edith’s husband. Edith was an early champion of Steinbeck’s stories, and he “particularly liked to visit the Wagner kitchen, where [she] would spin stories of her youth in Salinas – a delight to Steinbeck, who already felt the storytelling impulse in himself” (Timmerman, p. 153). One of these yarns was an early memory Edith had of playing truant and crossing paths with a precocious Robert Louis Stevenson. In February 1934 Steinbeck, already a fledgling author, wrote to Edith about several short stories he had sent to his agent, “some of them I think you yourself told me”. Steinbeck was rebuked by Edith for using her anecdote about Stevenson without permission: she had already written the story herself, and submitted it unsuccessfully to Reader’s Digest . “I didn’t know you had done a version”, he replied in June 1934, “I’m terribly sorry if I have filched one of your stories. I’m a shameless magpie . . . if I had had any idea, I shouldn’t have taken it. I’ll do anything you like about it”. Steinbeck was true to his word, and suppressed the publication of the story at Edith’s behest. Seven years later, Edith was in poor health and struggling financially. She had never published the story, and released it to Steinbeck’s care. On 7 February
1941, he wrote to his agent, Elizabeth Otis, asking her if she remembered the story, and entreating her to use his name to get it published. “Remember I had to withdraw it? Well, she is very old and crippled now and quite poor. I am sending you the story. Do you think you can sell it? . . . get as much as you can for it and I will turn the money over to her . . . It would make her feel good and would ease the little time she has left if you could do this”. Steinbeck secured the story’s publication in Harper’s Magazine , and sent the $225 it paid to Edith. This letter, undated, is Steinbeck’s response to a letter from Edith in which she noted the artistic licence he had taken with her tale. Her remarks are reproduced in the book, in a facsimile of Steinbeck’s written account of them. Her main complaints were that her tights were stripy, not black, and that there was no “all-day sucker”. In the letter, Steinbeck’s acknowledges that “This is your story, not mine, and I hope you will forgive me for setting it down”, and explains the changes he made, “Edith in long black stockings and wearing a red all-day sucker may be not memory but a part of eternal structure – as real and endless as granite. I hope so. But as matter may be broken to its elements and the elements recombined, so the memory of little Edith might be broken up and reassembled. I wanted to make a compound that would last for a little while. At least as long as paper lasts”. The book, number 144 from a limited issue of 152 copies printed for members of the Rowfant bibliophile society, acts as a memorial to Edith, inscribed to her son “in the absence of his mother” (our translation).
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