In The Throes

The Precious Thoughts of an Author at Work

Now where’s the pencil? A person can’t be expected to write without a pencil, anybody knows that much. Never saw any thing like it—every time I turn my back, somebody takes my pencil. You’d think people would have more to do. Pencils, pencils, pencils, that’s all they care about. I bet I can use “pencil” in a sentence. Take care of the pounds, and the pencil take care of themselves. No, anybody could do that. An extra pair pencil cost you three dollars. Oh, the hell with it. I’ve got my work to do.

            Ah, where is it? Wouldn’t you think people could leave a person’s pencil alone? I should think I had just about enough to put up with, without everybody’s stealing my pencil. Here I am sitting at this rotten desk working my head off, and everybody else out having a good time. And me with a cold coming on, too. Probably I’ve got a fever. And not a clinical thermometer in this house. A person could burn up in this house and nobody would know. Not that they’d care. “No,” they’d say, “you just sit there at your desk and run a temperature, and we’ll go out and have the time of our lives.” That’s all anybody ever says to me. All I ever do is work. And these the best years of my life. Oh, don’t mind about me. I’ll stay here and work, and you all go along and have a good time. And if you could manage to choke yourselves to death while you’re doing it, I’d take it as a favor.

            It seems little enough to ask for—just a pencil, so I can get to work. Everybody that ever wrote had to have a pencil. Carlyle and everybody. Yes, and a little peach Carlyle must have been. That’s the only lucky break I ever got, that I didn’t know that boy. Throwing teacups across the breakfast table. And that thing he said about Frances Willard. When she said, “I accept the Universe,” and he said, “Gad, she’d better,” and everybody thought it was such a WOW. I never saw anything in it. I guess it was Frances Willard. I guess it was Carlyle.

            I bet Carlyle would have been in a cute temper if anybody had taken his pencil. Just because I don’t go around throwing teacups doesn’t say I’m not good and sore, myself. I’d like to know who took that pencil. Just as a matter of curiosity. It must make a nice, satisfactory noise, a teacup smashing against a head. Took my pencil, did you? Socko!

It isn’t as if it were a pencil anybody would want. Not gold or anything. I hate people that have gold pencils sticking out of their pockets. I hope they all choke. I’d take an enamel pencil, though—blue or bright red. But nobody will ever give me one. Nobody ever gives me anything. All they ever do is say they mustn’t interrupt my work. And then they steal my pencil—my poor little lousy wooden pencil, without even an eraser on it. When I make a mistake, I have to spit on my finger and rub it out that way. That’s the only thing I ever learned at school that did me any good afterwards. There’s another pretty thing— education. I ought to write something about education, some time. Good and bitter, too. Yes, but how are you going to write if you haven’t any pencil?

     There’s life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowuif and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil. I’d like to know what anybody wants to be a writer for, anyhow. And what do you do, Mrs. Parker? Oh, I write. There’s a hot job for a healthy woman. I wish I’d taken a course in interior decorating. I wish I’d gone on the stage. I wish I didn’t have to work at all. I was made for love, anyway.

     I wish I could write something that would make a lot of money. This is a fine thing to be doing, at my age, sitting here making up sissy verses about broken hearts and that tripe. A dollar a line, and like it. Fat you’ll get doing that. The way I’d like to get money is in chunks, not drips. It isn’t as if I’d make a fool of myself. Just some decent clothes, and maybe a string of pearls. Oh, God, those pearls in Cartier’s window! Silky and not quite pink. It wouldn’t matter what you had on, if you had them. A string of pearls like that would be an economy. Even that brown dress would look all right with them. That’s the worst dress anybody ever had. Maybe I could have the skirt fixed and something done to the neck. If you had money, you’d never have to have anything fixed over. Just give it to the chamber maid. Oh, that’s all right, I hope you have a good time in it. I bet chambermaids have a swell time. I wish I was a chamber-maid.

            You wouldn’t catch a chambermaid spending the best years of her life sitting at a desk working like a stevedore. They don’t write. Maybe some of them do. Maybe they write plays, nights. I wish I could write a play. I wish I had a play all written. I wish it was a good play. I wish it was the best play anybody ever wrote. Ever. Better than “Hamlet.” That’s a good play.

And a lot a person can do about writing a play, without any pencil. I’d like to see Eugene O’Neill, even, write a play with out a pencil. I wish I was Eugene O’Neill and had a pencil. I bet nobody takes his pencils. Just a common, ordinary, wooden pencil—that’s the lowest thing I ever heard of in my life, taking a thing like that. A little, cheap pencil, like blind men sell; you’d have to be pretty mean to steal that. The Meanest Thief. Meanest Thief Robs Blind Pencil-Seller. You know what a thing like that makes you? Sick at heart, that’s what it makes you. And this is civilization. Civilization, my eye.

            Taking a pencil away from a poor woman that has to make her living with it—that’s nice. Not even an eraser on it. You could buy a cord of them for a dollar and a half. Thirty-five dollars, and you could corner the market. If I had thirty-five dollars, I could have that blue hat with the cornflowers. That’s my hat. Out of all the world that’s my hat. I love that hat. I love it better than anything on earth. Probably some woman has bought it by now; some woman with nose-glasses and an interesting case of rosacea. I bet she’s wearing it right now, while I sit here slaving. I hope she chokes. I hope she’s choking this minute.

     Oh, there’s the pencil! Right there beside the pad—not even underneath. You would show up, wouldn’t you, sweetheart? Couldn’t let me have a minute off, away from this rotten desk, to go out and get a new box of pencils, could you, pet? Couldn’t let me go down to the stationer’s, and get a little bit of fresh air. Oh, no. Not you. A lot you care about my health. And all sharpened nice and pretty, too, aren’t you? Couldn’t give Mother just a moment’s respite, to find a knife and sharpen you. “No blessed leisure for hope and love, but only time for grief.” That’s “The Song of the Shirt.” I used to know the whole damn thing.

     Look at that nice sharp pencil and that nice new pad just waiting for Mother. Isn’t that dandy? All right, you snakes, I’ll show you.

     Ah, the sun’s coming out! It’s going to be a lovely day, after all. Isn’t that the meanest thing you ever saw in your life? Every body else out in God’s blessed sunlight storing up health and happiness, and here I am chained to this desk, working my fingers to the bone. Probably the only decent day we’ll have for a month, and I have to spend it like this. And I’ll never be any younger, either. I’m just about at my best, right now. And here I sit.

            All those rotten little birds, bellowing their lungs out. I wish they’d keep their yaps shut. A person can’t be expected to write, in that din. Din, Din, Din, here’s a beggar with a bullet through his spleen. Deen, you have to say. I bet Kipling doesn’t have to stay chained up to a desk a day like this. I bet he goes out whenever he wants to. I wish I was Kipling.

            I wish I was anybody but me. I have the worst life I ever heard of. Nothing but pencils and pads all day long. Oh, so you’re a writer. Oh, that must be awfully interesting. Yeah, it’s a great life. Hm—mine woister enemies shouldn’t have it! I wish I was Milt Gross. I bet he’s out in God’s wholesome sunshine.

            Nothing but work; that’s me. And no play. I’ll be a dull boy, first thing you know. Lord, what a lot of dull boys I’ve known. And more every day. They didn’t get that way from working, though. Nobody has to work but me. It’s no wonder I get blue. If I had a lot of money and didn’t have to work, I bet I’d be nice. I’d be a peach. I’d have clothes that would knock your eye out, too.

            Write, write, write. It’s a wonder I have any arm left. Tennis players have over-developed forearms. I wish I was playing tennis. But no, I have to stay here and work. That’s fine, you all just run along and enjoy yourselves, and I’ll work. I have my sweet little pencil and my cunning little pad, and I’ll just write my little curly head off. Here I go now.

            And what the hell am I going to write about?

(New York) Life, September 16, 1924