Year

2008

Text

Type

Publication

Contributors (3)

Subjects

Chronology Entries (3)

#	Year	Text	Linked Data
1	1909-1914	Amos Parker Wilder ist Generalkonsul des amerikanischen Konsulats in Shanghai.	Person: Wilder, Amos Parker
2	1910-1975	Wilder, Thornton. The selected letters of Thornton Wilder [ID D30360]. 1910 Letter to Amos P. Wilder ; [Berkeley, Calif. mid-Dec. 1910]. Tonight I am going to Rev. Browns Church to hear Handel's great Oratorio 'The Messiah', sung. Do they ever have anything like that in China ? 1911 Letter to Amos P. Wilder, [C.I.M. Schools, Chefoo, early May ? 1911]. And about Mother's picture it has been blown around the room by the Chefoo monsoons (Janet's too) until the 'fall of the house of Wilder' is complete. Now a roommate has lent me a frame of his and the swings on the wall. 1913 Letter to Amos P. Wilder, Thacher School, Dec. 13 ? [Jan. 13, 1913 ?]. None of the Thacher boys are original. They are all of the same whereas at Chefoo each boy was to any other as blue to red. 1913 Letter to Amos P. Wilder, [Berkely, Calif., Sept. 1913]. The beauty of the school is that so far it has left me entirely alone. I confess that I never expected that. I got a little of that at Chefoo, but never a drop at Thacher… Kwong Ling goes to church with us every Sunday, but we let him out, after childrens sermon. The poor boy doesn’t understand a work, I myself taught him for a while. I cant imagine what he does when the teacher asks him to read the Heading to the Paragraph or the Title of this Poem (registered in K. Lings vocabulary as song). I suppose he just gollops for a while and then says to himself in Chinese that four times three are twelve and three times – Oh well you know what hes like. [Kwong Ling (1896-1979) : Chinese orphan 'adopted' by Thornton Wilder's father in Shanghai. He was sent in 1913 to live in Berkeley with the family and attend school there. He became a minister, Reverend John K.L. Yong]. 1913 Letter to Amos P. Wilder, Berkeley, Calif. Sept. 21 [19]13. What a lot of your best friends are away from Shanghai just now. Mrs. DeGray, Mr. Hinckley, (from Kwong Ling I heard bad reports of him), Malpus, Stedmans, Kwong Ling, and Ravens. 1915 Letter to Elizabeth Lewis Niven, [Berkeley, Calif.], Jan. 7 [19]13. I guess when the fog has lifted over the 'wortwechsel' which is now on – it will be decided that I go to Oberlin next year. There is a family there, the boys of which were my room mates at the Chefoo boarding-school, and by coincidence called 'Wilder' – that will probably take me in as a boarder. 1915 Letter to Amos P. Wilder, [Berkeley, Calif., May ?, 1915]. Rowley Evans, of Shanghai, is a commissioned officer – according to Theodore Wilder and will soon be at the front. 1915 Letter to Amos P. Wilder, [Berkeley, Calif.], Tues. May 25 [1915]. We graduate next Friday night. I do not feel it as a solemn occasion. I don't think even mother can go and here it, because that will leave Isabel alone with the baby and possibly Kwong Ling… 1915 Letter to Amos P. Wilder, [Berkeley, Calif.], June 20 [19]15. Cesar-Nepos (failed when taken at Thacher ; never had him in class work because of jumping him at Chefoo !)… Sometimes I wish I were a Japanese or a Chinese in America ; it almost seems like being physically disembodied and holds humilitations of a kind I wouldn't mind so much. 1916 Letter to Amos P. Wilder, Sunday Morning July 16 [1916], Mt. Hermon School. My friend Sibley from Chefoo, a fine boy, hopes to go to China soon, is in this graduating class of eighty boys. I forgot to mention altho you probably guessed it that this is a reunion of Ford cars as well. The banquet – workers invited too – is Monday evening – do but picture the enthusiasm ! – I see the toastmaster is a Wilfred Fry of Philadelphia. Isn't there a famous Chinese art-connaiseur of Philad. named Fry, too ? 1916 Letter toIsabella N. Wilder, [Oberlin, Ohio], Nov. 23, [19]16. One of these is a cuous mystico-religious fantasy, the other, called 'Stones of Nell Gwyn' is a defense of Nell and Catullus and Earnest Dowson and Villon etc – that kind of person ! The play is for the Washington Square Players and is uni8que. It is about the China coast. 1917 Letter to Isabel Wilder, Men' Building Oberlin O Jan 11 [19]17. I want to put it to some use if I can and prevent such awful mistakes as Amos going to see 'Hush' when there were such stunning thing as 'Pierrot the Prodigal' and 'The Yellow Jacket' [by Hazelton and Benrimo ID D30346] in town. 1920 Letter to Amos P. Wilder, American Express Co. Paris, June 27, 1920, Sunday. I remember against the wall, too, long envelopes burstin with matter that I have always supposed to be your notes on the years in China. 1933 Letter to Edward Sheldon, The University [of Chicago], Aug 7, 1933. I enjoy the Fair, great silly American thing that it is ; and I enjoy the visitors. Scarcely a day goes by without a letter or phone call to the effect that some old friend of mine (or my father's, brother's, sisters') from China, California, Oberlin, Princeton, Lawrenceville, Yale, etc. is in town. 1937 Letter to Isabella N. Wilder and Isabel Wilder, Hotel Buckingham [Paris], July 20, 1937. Delightful time at our end of the table at lunch today : M. Prescu, Prof of history of art at Bukharest ; Paul Hazard of the Collège de France (a charmer), Dr. Yu Ying, of the Univ. of Peking, and a Signor Pavolini, president of the Fascist Confederati8on of Artists and Writers… 1961 Letter to Martha Niemoeller, Wisconsin, July 25, 1961. Late in life I have taken a great interest in the Noh plays – first through Fenollosa and Pound. A Japanese translator (of my work) sent me as a present a most satisfying selection with a rich annotation. It's a very great manifestation of theatre. And I wish I had known it earlier in my life. My plays may seem to reflect some elements of Chinese and Japanese theatre but – in spite of the years I spent in the Orient as a boy – I have not been aware of any influence prior to the '40s that could derive from the East. My use of a 'free' stage has other sources. (To this day I have never seen a Noh or Kabuki performance – and no Chinese theatre except that program of 'selections' which Mei Lan Fang gave in New York in the 30s). 1962 Letter to Glenway Wescott, S.S. Bremen approaching New York, March 30, 1962. The older I get the more things I find funny. I really ought to grow a pot-belly and resemble those ribald drunken old poets that are pictured sitting under cliffs and waterfalls on Chinese wall-hangings. 1962 Letter to Amos Tappan Wilder, 12th St. Douglas Arizona, Dec 19, 1962. Morning after morning I'd get up at dawn, or before, and walk to the Battery, each day by a different route – through Chinatown, Polish Town, Italian Greenwich Village, the Jewish acres around Grand Street. 1966 Letter to Cheryil Crawford, St. Augustine Fla, Maundy Thursday, [April 7], 1966. The theme of your play [musical Chu-Chem] makes me nervous. Milieu, however exotic, cannot pull us into a theatre by itself. Jews in China, Mormons in Uruguay, Yankees at King Arthur's Court. 1968 Letter to William A. Swanberg, Columbia, July 25, 1968. About 10 years ago Harry [Luce] invited me to a meeting at the Chinese Inst[it]ute (if I remember the name of the institute correctly) to honor the recently dead Dr. Hu Shih [Hu Shi]. He gave me no intimation that I was to be called on to speak. I went to this meeting in New York merely to express my regard for Harry. (I have never been sympathetic to the non-recognition of the People's Republic of China). To my surprise I discovered that I had been assigned the role of concluding speaker on the program. I heard Harry introduce me as an old friend of Dr. Huh Shi, I spoke – to the best of my knowledge – of Dr. Huh Shih's work as a scholar and reformer of the Chinese language. I did not tell the audience (nor Harry until the close of the meeting) that I had never met Dr. Huh Shi. I liked and admired much in Harry. I believe (with Charles Lamb) that 'one should keep one's friendships in repair' ; but that takes two. I shall be here a number of weeks under house arrest. If you wish to mail me the photo from the China Inland Boys' School I shall endeavor to identify Harry ; but I am still too tired to receive any callers except relatives and old friends. 1975 Letter to Dalma H. Brunauer, Hamden, Conn, November 11, 1975. I have often been reproached for not having made a more explicit declaration of commitment to the Christian faith… But I was a Protestant and I was thoroughly formed in the Protestant beliefs – my father's, my school's in China ; Oberlin !...	Person: Wilder, Thornton
3	1911-1912	Thornton Wilder besucht kurze Zeit eine deutsche Schul in Shanghai, dann die China Inland Mission School in Chefoo [Yantai, Shandong]. (Frühling 1911-Aug. 1912).	Person: Wilder, Thornton

Cited by (1)

#	Year	Bibliographical Data	Type / Abbreviation	Linked Data
1		Zentralbibliothek Zürich	Organisation / ZB