The Collected Works of Mrs. Peter Willoughby

WHEN new people said to Mrs. Peter Willoughby of Sutton Place South, ‘Mrs. Willoughby, you are a writer, aren’t you?’ she always colored faintly with pleasure and said, ‘Well — yes,’ because she did have several works in progress.

Ever since she had attained a degree of success with her first short story in a private school at Holton-on-Hudson, Mrs. Willoughby, then Janet Tucker, had assumed that she would write. She saw with her mind’s eye her novels ranged on a shelf, a string of titles ‘By Janet Willoughby.’ One of them was Tamotua. She had got the idea while coming across 57th Street with her husband one night, seeing the neon sign of the Automat reflected backwards in the plate-glass window of Steinway’s. This was to be a really good novel about New York—quite unusual — because, as one of Mrs. Willoughby’s male friends once said (probably quoting), ‘There are very few good novels about New York. A novel has to have bushes in it.’

Another of Mrs. Willoughby’s books was a regional novel, full of poverty and chicken feed. She had written the first four pages.

On some days Mrs. Willoughby saw her collected writing as a rather compact body of work, stylistically superb, but small; but on most days the line of books was about three fourths the length of the Balzac shelf in the Willoughby library.

As the years since private school had come on, bringing marriage to James Peter Willoughby and, in time, three charming children, she always compared herself, in her mind, with writers who started at her age — and now she was forty.

All her feminine friends, who were younglooking and chic, felt, at least in some vague way, that they too were creative. They uphold her hands in the belief that she was going to write some day. When an author came to their cocktail parties, they steered him promptly over to Janie — because ‘Janie writes.’ Sometimes, at their parties, you would see Janie sitting reflectively a little apart, with her fine chin uplifted, and her friends would murmur that Janie’s mind was stirring with a plot — ‘she’s a writer, you know.’

Jim Willoughby was very patient and encouraging about the literary projects that had bothered the pretty fair head of his wife for twenty years. He would come home from his office and stand in the softly carpeted taupe living room overlooking the East River and jangle the cocktail shaker, and say to Mrs. Willoughby, ‘How’s it coming, dear?’

‘Mot à mot,’ she would reply evasively.

Then Jim would turn to whoever else was there and say that Janie was writing something but didn’t want to show it to anyone yet (which certainly was true, inasmuch as the first draft wasn’t really written).

Jim had got her a separate room in which she could write her works, a typewriter, and various source materials. For several years now she had given her mornings over to writing. She would go resolutely to the room set aside for her in the apartment and warm up by reading the work of another author. After that she would dip briefly into some writer’s memoirs, which she always found quite helpful, or glance into the backs of books to see how many pages long they were. Then she would examine her notes or add to them. Soon it was time for lunch. At that time, and in the afternoon, it was necessary to see her friends, in order not to develop the habit of living in an ivory tower.

Because she admired literature so much and was such a wide reader, Mrs. Willoughby used quotations aptly. Never too many — just two or three in the course of an evening, and never the same one twice at dinner parties.

Once the conversation had been about the casual male habit of kissing other men’s wives when greeting them, and Mrs. Willoughby, in pastel chiffon, had quoted at the perfect moment, ‘ La femme qui donne sa bouche donne tout.’

She also could quote aptly from Rimbaud and from all three Sitwells. The only old saw she liked was ‘Nulla dies sine linea.’

She thought of herself as an extremely gifted but normal woman, which made her talent all the rarer and the more valuable. And if she wasn’t writing just now — well, these were her years for living.

It also had occurred to Mrs. Willoughby that her literary output was spare because she was such a perfectionist. In this slipshod age it was so important to be a perfectionist — to have really well-chosen clothes and interesting food, and play games well, and rear one’s children to be discriminating, and have a house that was a proper background, and intelligent dinner parties.

All this took thought, and it also took time to guard one’s figure by careful exercise and see that one didn’t really fall to pieces.

In the autumn of 1941, Mrs. Willoughby decided that she would achieve more if she arose earlier. A writer should be at his desk by 8.30 A. M., after a brisk walk. Mrs. Willoughby did this for two mornings. No one else was out so early except a Filipino boy with two dachshunds. The second morning, walking in the fine, heady air, she acknowledged a small fear that had been lingering at the back of her mind for some years. It would have been better to have produced quietly, and then, when her friends marveled, take the casual attitude that it was a little thing she had tossed off between benefits.

She was glad that she was going to meet someone of the craft — Lolly’seousin Frank — that afternoon at Lolly’s party. She would talk over with him the impasse her characters had reached in Tamotua.

Mrs. Willoughby, in a pencil-slim gray crepe suit and a little gold-colored hat, arrived late at the party, looking fresh, despite several hours of morning work rereading her notes for Tamotua and a hundred pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Lolly’s town apartment, which had scarcely any furniture in it, — just carpets, white chrysanthemums, and Léger paintings, — was full of people. Jim had already arrived, and so had Frank Winters, author of four books and a flop on Broadway.

‘Janie darling!’ exclaimed Lolly. ‘Absolutely the prettiest author!’ Then, lowering her voice, she said, ‘I’m simply furious with Frank. I ask you, doesn’t he look dreadful? Why doesn’t he comb his hair? And he came carrying a moth-eaten brief case!’

Mrs. Willoughby looked. She saw Frank Winters peering nearsightedly at the people, and getting quietly plastered. His hair sprouted strangely from his head.

Frank ambled up to Lolly and said, ‘I’d like to meet the Mrs. Willoughby who is always going to write, and tell her, “Janie, old girl, old girl, why not face facts, and drop the idea?”’

Lolly, in a flowing chartreuse gown, stood frozen.

‘I am Mrs. Willoughby, Mr. Winters,’ said Mrs. Willoughby gently. ‘Why do you think I should give it up?’

‘“The first requisite of statesmanship is to face the facts, ” ‘ he quoted. ‘The facts are that a beautiful woman such as I see you to be, my dear, has only two duties towards the arts: one, to stay beautiful; two, to stay where people can see her. Do not isolate yourself and write.’

‘But suppose I have something to say—’ said Mrs. Willoughby.

‘Then say it, my dear lady. Don’t write it. There’s too much writing going on today — articles, reports, analyses, cycles of novels, for the most part very dreary — and too little conversational give-and-take among human beings — the kind of give-and-take that I am sure there is in your presence, Mrs. Willoughby.’

Depleted by this speech, he retreated triumphantly, having solved the problem. He turned to several men near by and inquired,

‘Isn’t that right?’ There was a cheerful echo, ‘Damn right.’

All Mrs. Willoughby’s closest friends had heard the complimentary part, and Jim had heard. He smiled at her.

It was the first time the idea had been presented to Mrs. Willoughby that she didn’t have to write, ever. She could tell her friends with perfect equanimity that she had given up her writing for other fields.

A great feeling of relief swept her soul. She would have so much free time. She could learn Portuguese. She could go to that new samba class.

Mr. Winters was right. There was such a fearful lot of writing nowadays. Everybody and his dog were writing.

And that was such a nice quotation he had used. She could almost hear herself saying it at one of her dinner parties, perhaps to one of Jim’s friends who had come up from Washington. She would lean forward, exquisite in her pearl-gray chiffon, and say thoughtfully, ‘“The first requisite of statesmanship is to face the facts.”’

As they went down in a taxi to Sutton Place, Mrs. Willoughby nestled against Jim’s shoulder and said thoughtfully, ‘You don’t mind, do you, darling, if I don’t finish the book?’

‘Which book, dear?’ said Peter Willoughby.

‘Any of them.’

‘No,’ said Peter Willoughby. ‘Certainly not.’

MARY ELIZABETH PLUMMER