[From North Bennington, VT]
hallowe'en [October 31, 1949]
dearest mother and pop,
we are in such a state of high confusion that i dont know if i can write a coherent letter, but i'll try. stanley and i have just come back from (of all places in the world for us!) westport, connecticut, a nice fancy rich arty community which is apparently going to be our future home. we spend most of our time staring at each other saying "what are we doing?" and its a good question.
i think i told you we were hoping to move. we wrote to friends asking for agent's names, trying to find what was available. the best answers we got for our requirements came from westport, and so stanley and i went down and looked at the houses. so we found a beautiful one. we would have to rent this one with the understanding that we might buy it.
this house is almost perfect. it is two blocks from the station and a shopping district, is on the school bus line, and is at the same time almost isolated, or seems so, because it is on top of a hill with a lot of trees around it, and the other houses are similarly set back from the road, so although we have at least two next-door neighbors we can't see them. also, it has an acre of land, with a long rolling lawn in front and plenty of trees, and a sort of wilderness effect behind. the house has been empty for quite a while, because the owners hoped to sell instead of rent, but they have finally given in and decided to rent, and redecorated the house completely. it's fifty years old, and very solid and nice, and the same sort of rambling victorian mansion as the one we have now, but better made. it has a big cellar, paved and very good for a playroom and - probably what sold us on it, finally - an enormous porch in back, just outside the kitchen, and a little second-floor balcony from which to pour boiling oil down on guests.
although it is not going to be very expensive in itself, westport is an expensive town, and things like food and help are high, it makes up for all this by being seventy minutes from new york, and the wonderful facts that we are at last in a town with restaurants and even a movie, and decent stores. we are a five-minute bus ride from the sound, where there is a town beach and yacht club. the exorbitant rent for this gem is a hundred and seventy-five bucks a month, which the agent thinks will boil down to one-fifty. when we consider that we are paying fifty here, it sounds very dubious, but every time we get worried, we look at laurie, who is getting rough and vulgar, and who really ought to be gotten out of this town unless we want him to be a farmer when he grows up. the same is beginning to be true of jannie, although her school is all right. but she is beginning to talk and act like the disagreeable little girls around here. i don't know if the children in westport are any less disagreeable, but at least the schools are better. and we all unite in disliking the vermont winter. in addition to all this, we are no longer fond of the town. we will probably not ever be farmers ourselves, and associating with people who are gets tiresome. we tend to grow farther away from the college, as all out old friends are leaving, and there are now only a few people we see up here. westport is full of people from the new yorker, and advertising men, and writers, and minor editors - the major editors live in westchester - and while they do not stack up very well against an honest new england farmer, at least we will feel more at home. Continue reading from The Letters of Shirley Jackson, 142-144
[From Westport, CT]
friday [July 1950]
dear mama and papa,
you will understand clearly from the fact that i am writing that i ought to be in the kitchen making a cake for the weekend and that there are several million words of novel due next week and that i ought really to be feeding the baby and writing a story and washing the breakfast dishes, if not in town doing the shopping. as a matter of fact, it's not true at all: baby is still asleep, i ordered by phone, i am not at all sure we should have a cake this weekend at all, and i am nicely ahead on literature. i do have a mystery story i could be reading, but that's all. my children are off bothering the neighbors and stanley is off somewhere in pennsylvania, and i haven't done any dishes since he left.
my only trouble is lack of energy. i spent all morning out in the sun, watching the children play in their new wading pool and wanting to get in myself. it is nine feet across and holds four hundred gallons of water, and is just deep enough for joanne to get her stomach up off the bottom and swim. i myself do quite nicely, since i wait till the children are through and then can spend a quiet few minutes lying up to my neck in water; the only problem is that someone always turns the hose on you. we also got the children a playhouse, where they now eat all their meals. it has chairs and table and will hold four children comfortably, sitting down to eat. emboldened by this, i have invited two fresh air children*, a boy laurie's age and a girl jannie's age, to stay for two weeks. they come next wednesday and we are all very excited about it. with the whole place filled up with stuff to entertain children, it seemed so silly to confine it to our own two, and there are no neighborhood children the right age. i think if i had room i'd take a dozen.
sold two stories last week and got three thousand for my novel. there ought to be enough money there to feed five children for two weeks. even including lollipops. we'll probably be able to get our spinet now, at least, and the washing machine. perhaps even a cheap old car, one i could learn to drive without risking too much. one of the stories sold to the ladies' home journal, which has never bought one before, and they want more. also, my agent is now asking copies of my stories to be sent to hollywood. the television broadcast got them interested.
I got a real fancy doctor - he is what i would call a westport society doctor, and he was highly recommended to me. i went to him finally because i had a new siege with my familiar headache....this guy went at it just like the rest (sinus? teeth? eyes? digestion?) and gave me a thorough examination, including trying to take a bloodtest, only i yelled so he didn't dare. when he got all through, he said with pleasure that there wasn't a thing wrong with me. he was so pleased that i was a little bit surprised, and then he said happily that he was also an analyst on the side and while of course he did not ordinarily recommend a full analysis for a thing like this, still. so i said certainly not, i wasn't fool enough for that sort of thing. so he said well, i understood, didn't i, that my headache was psychological? and i said i understood it perfectly, and so since he couldn't cure it would he please give me a prescription for codeine?
there is a wild baseball game going on out front. laurie saved his allowance laboriously and bought himself a dollar softball, which is now the treasure of his life. after the baseball game they will go swimming. i am almost too lazy to move. i just went out and watched the baseball game for a minute and nearly fell asleep. Continue reading from The Letters of Shirley Jackson, 161-162
*The Fresh Air Fund is a NYC nonprofit that hosts summer camp for city kids, as well as connecting NY kids with host families in the suburbs and country.