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Here Was One
No. 7
Grant Hodges
July 23, 2023
Wind the Clock
Dear Reader,
It was E. B. White’s (1899-1985) birthday last week. Few authors are as beloved. A true man of letters, White wrote numerous essays for The New Yorker and Harper’s, coedited what remains the preeminent style guide for aspiring writers, and of course penned Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little.
Some of my favorite bits of White’s writing come from Charlotte’s Web, including this excerpt where the humans are all speculating about how words came to appear in the spiderweb above Wilbur’s pen:
“Do you understand how there could be any writing in a spider's web?"
"Oh, no," said Dr. Dorian. "I don't understand it. But for that matter I don't understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle."
"What's miraculous about a spider's web?" said Mrs. Arable. "I don't see why you say a web is a miracle—it's just a web."
"Ever try to spin one?" asked Dr. Dorian.
White reportedly said, "All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world." And while that love is certainly present in his children’s books, I wanted to draw attention to one of his lesser-known letters for this week’s piece—a reply to a man who had written to White expressing a lack of faith in humanity:
North Brooklin, Maine
30 March 1973
Dear Mr. Nadeau:
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.
Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
Background
There’s not much that I could find about this letter, Mr. Nadeau, or the correspondence to which White is responding. Several sources describe the opening letter as seeking “White’s opinion on what [Nadeau] saw as a bleak future for the human race,” which seems like a downer. So maybe it’s for the best that we only have White’s reply.
What It Offers
I’ve read a lot of writing, but no one writes with as much attention to their craft as E. B. White. He perfected a style that is clean, direct, and understated. It’s consistent across his essays, his books, and his letters. White says what he wants to say, without missteps or superfluities. This letter is no different.
The main conceit is the winding of a clock: a lovely, homespun (in the best sense) metaphor that raises thoughts about time, routine, and, as White notes, order and steadfastness. Our perception of time is, after all, a construct. It’s just something that we fit over the chaos to give ourselves stability. But it makes sense, given White’s style, that he rests his quiet optimism on this simple daily act, rather than on some great event or historical figure.
The act of winding a clock resembles—in a way—a kind of religious ritual, where an otherwise commonplace object becomes divine. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that White references “Sunday morning” as the time he sets aside for it. But the metaphor also reminds us that this special attention need not be reserved for liturgy. It can be applied diffusely to reveal the miraculous in the everyday. Or, as Charlotte puts it:
These autumn days will shorten and grow cold. The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall. Christmas will come, then the snows of winter. You will live to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world…. Winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur—this lovely world, these precious days…
*****
What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.