Wilder’s Thanksgiving Letter to Robert Frost, 1942
The Skin of Our Teeth opened on Broadway on Nov. 18, 1942, and Robert Frost wanted to see it in a good seat. Captain Wilder, however, was living in another world, the military world of Army Air Force Intelligence and couldn’t carry out civilian obligations. But he could take a few minute on Thanksgiving Day, 1942, to write a fetching letter to a poet he greatly admired. Its P.S. features a lively report on the state of poetry among readers wearing khaki and not wearing khaki.
We wish one and all a safe and delicious Thanksgiving—and suggest devoting part of your day to reading Frost’s “West-Running Brook.”
Wilder in his khakis at the end of WW II.
As from: 50 Deepwood Drive
New Haven, Conn.
Thanksgiving Day
<November 26> 1942
Los Angeles,
Dear Robert Frost:
Had it been possible you would indeed have received some tickets for the opening of the play*. The reason why it was impossible would make a long and complicated story, briefly: on the 15th I was in California; on the 16th I was on Long Island (on a military order that had no connection with the play); your telegram of the 17th was forwarded to the wrong address, and was received on the 18th when all tickets had been disposed of. I did not go to the opening and left the next day for Spokane, Washington. As the Bible says: When they say unto a Centurion, go, he goeth.
But far more interesting to me than your seeing the play, would have been the chance of me seeing you. My days are spent in, on and about khaki. I’m starved for wider views.
But the work is fascinating. Until that order of the 15th I have been (after months of training) Intelligence Officer of the 328th Fighter Group, Hamilton Field, California; being knit into three squadrons of pursuit pilots being “activated” for combat duty. That Order pulled me out of that and put me on a committee that is preparing a certain Air Force document that requires our visiting many of the Fields in the Force in the country. Whether I go back to my Group after this 60 days of Detached Service, I don’t know. I hope so.
I look forward to our next walk and talk, cher maître
Most sincerely
Thornton.
.
P.S. Half a year ago I gave Alex. Woollcott that ardent Vermonter, a collected edition of your poems.
Alek has always said that he has a closed mind to poetry. “There’s nothing in poetry that couldn’t be said as well in prose.”
I begged him to read you “as though you were prose” and the poetry would arrive later.
He now asks me which of yours I would recommend for inclusion in an anthology he has been asked to prepare for men in the services.
I made my suggestions. I think he is consulting many persons.
Not long ago a Marine quoted to me “West-Running Brook,” but it was a more than usually literate Marine. The only reading I’ve seen in the hands of soldiers is pulp magazines.
As for officers, myself included, they don’t read at all.
T.
*The Skin of Our Teeth opened on Broadway on November 18, 1942