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Lot 13
STEINBECK WRITES TO HIS SISTER AFTER A BITTER FIGHT WITH CAROL. Autograph Letter Signed ("John") to his sister Mary regarding a serious fight with his wife Carol, who has left him,
25 October 2023, 14:00 EDT
New YorkSold for US$24,320 inc. premium
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STEINBECK WRITES TO HIS SISTER AFTER A BITTER FIGHT WITH CAROL.
Autograph Letter Signed ("John") to his sister Mary regarding a serious fight with his wife Carol, who has left him, 4 pp recto and verso, 8vo (conjoining leaves), [Pacific Grove], Monday, [1932], light creasing and toning.
"I THINK SHE WANTS DESPERATELY TO COME BACK IF SHE CAN FIND THE COURAGE."
Written in 1932, this searing letter captures the fallout of Carol's brief affair with Joseph Campbell. Campbell, who would achieve fame for his work in mythology including his 1949 landmark work Hero With a Thousand Faces, came to Pacific Grove in late winter 1932, with Idell Henning, Carol Steinbeck's sister. Over dinner with the Steinbeck's, he and John hit it off, talking well into the night. Campbell stayed in Pacific Grove and, much like Steinbeck himself, fell under the spell of Ed Ricketts. Later in the spring, Campbell and Carol Steinbeck had a short, but intense, flirtation leading to a confrontation between the two men, and ultimately Campbell's leaving for Alaska with Ricketts, and never returning.
In the aftermath, Steinbeck writes to his sister, beginning: "Dear Mary: / I'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind. You prefer not to understand this situation and when you state the principal features, it does sound simple. Were I not slow and humorless, I should probably find it simple. As it stands now I have written Carol, asking her to come back. She has been on a trip to Eureka and so has not received my letter and I have not heard from her, but from letters she has written to other people, I think she wants desperately to come back if she can find the courage. I can't think of anything else I can do. But there will always be the miserable little conviction that I could have done something had I been wise enough or brave enough or tactful enough. And so I am awaiting the result of my last move. / If she does not come, I shall try to rebuild from the beginning and if she does come, I am sure she will be better. If she has ever been dishonorable or untrue or faithless it would be different. But she has not. The last three years have been very happy ones and I have done lots of work. I am sorry to be so weak. It is the uncertainty that makes me so. Once I am sure of my course, I will not be weak any more."
Steinbeck continues, revealing his dismay at the effect his domestic troubles have had on his work: "I am upset that this thing has stopped me, for I was working on a book of terrible importance to me. I was a theme as strong and true and timeless as Fremont's Peak and yet as fragile mechanics as the marble base of the Taj Mahal. And the wreckage is like that a high explosive shell would create in the Taj Mahal. For this book was the culmination of all the thinking I've ever done and all the things I've ever felt. To do it I had to remake myself and to change my insides as the insides of a building are changed by the scaffolding when a mural is being painted. It was worth it. The book would have been a beautiful thing. And that is why I'm mad. The structure has been smashed, and I'll have to build all over again and it seems a job too big for me."
Campbell, for his part, had called Steinbeck's work "immense," and the two men, along with Ricketts, spent hours talking. His unnamed book "of terrible importance" is not identified, and it seems unlikely it was To a God Unknown, which he was working on at the time. Carol did return, but the incident created a rift in their relationship, and, according to biographer Jay Parini, Steinbeck was "unable to recover his trust" afterward.
"I THINK SHE WANTS DESPERATELY TO COME BACK IF SHE CAN FIND THE COURAGE."
Written in 1932, this searing letter captures the fallout of Carol's brief affair with Joseph Campbell. Campbell, who would achieve fame for his work in mythology including his 1949 landmark work Hero With a Thousand Faces, came to Pacific Grove in late winter 1932, with Idell Henning, Carol Steinbeck's sister. Over dinner with the Steinbeck's, he and John hit it off, talking well into the night. Campbell stayed in Pacific Grove and, much like Steinbeck himself, fell under the spell of Ed Ricketts. Later in the spring, Campbell and Carol Steinbeck had a short, but intense, flirtation leading to a confrontation between the two men, and ultimately Campbell's leaving for Alaska with Ricketts, and never returning.
In the aftermath, Steinbeck writes to his sister, beginning: "Dear Mary: / I'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind. You prefer not to understand this situation and when you state the principal features, it does sound simple. Were I not slow and humorless, I should probably find it simple. As it stands now I have written Carol, asking her to come back. She has been on a trip to Eureka and so has not received my letter and I have not heard from her, but from letters she has written to other people, I think she wants desperately to come back if she can find the courage. I can't think of anything else I can do. But there will always be the miserable little conviction that I could have done something had I been wise enough or brave enough or tactful enough. And so I am awaiting the result of my last move. / If she does not come, I shall try to rebuild from the beginning and if she does come, I am sure she will be better. If she has ever been dishonorable or untrue or faithless it would be different. But she has not. The last three years have been very happy ones and I have done lots of work. I am sorry to be so weak. It is the uncertainty that makes me so. Once I am sure of my course, I will not be weak any more."
Steinbeck continues, revealing his dismay at the effect his domestic troubles have had on his work: "I am upset that this thing has stopped me, for I was working on a book of terrible importance to me. I was a theme as strong and true and timeless as Fremont's Peak and yet as fragile mechanics as the marble base of the Taj Mahal. And the wreckage is like that a high explosive shell would create in the Taj Mahal. For this book was the culmination of all the thinking I've ever done and all the things I've ever felt. To do it I had to remake myself and to change my insides as the insides of a building are changed by the scaffolding when a mural is being painted. It was worth it. The book would have been a beautiful thing. And that is why I'm mad. The structure has been smashed, and I'll have to build all over again and it seems a job too big for me."
Campbell, for his part, had called Steinbeck's work "immense," and the two men, along with Ricketts, spent hours talking. His unnamed book "of terrible importance" is not identified, and it seems unlikely it was To a God Unknown, which he was working on at the time. Carol did return, but the incident created a rift in their relationship, and, according to biographer Jay Parini, Steinbeck was "unable to recover his trust" afterward.