Furious Hours

by Casey Cep

  “Now, a cold-blooded murderer”: Phyllis Wesley, “Trial Unfolds Like Film,” Montgomery Advertiser, Sept. 29, 1977, 2.

  “In a way…killing Willie Maxwell”: Gleick, “Getting Away with Murder,” 22–28.

  “The first requirement”: Holmes, Common Law, 41–42.

  | 15 | DISAPPEARING ACT

  For the account of Nelle Harper Lee’s life, I benefited from the work of earlier biographers, reporters, and researchers, most especially Keith, “Afternoon with Harper Lee”; Dannye Romine Powell, “Capote and Friend: More than a Gap in the Hedge?,” Odessa American, Sept. 4, 1977, 5D; Drew Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird: The Search for Harper Lee,” Dallas Times Herald, Feb. 5, 1984; Kathy Kemp, “Mockingbird Won’t Sing,” Raleigh News and Observer, Nov. 12, 1997; Hazel Rowley, “Mockingbird Country,” Australian’s Review of Books, April 1999; Shields, Mockingbird; Madden, Harper Lee; Mills, Mockingbird Next Door; and Crespino, Atticus Finch. For information in this chapter and throughout this section, I am grateful for the additional assistance and encouragement of Marja Mills, Drew Jubera, Dannye Romine Powell, Kerry Madden, Jane Kansas, Sue Cohen, Beth Ahearn Fisher, Della Rowley, Peter McIlroy, Allen Mendenhall, Rodney H. W. Cooper, Sharlyn Carter, Chip Cooper, and others who do not wish to be named. I’m grateful to the late Maryon Pittman Allen for recounting her conversation with Harper Lee so precisely and enlivening their shared history. Thank you to Youlanda Logan at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library for locating the inscribed book.

  “John…do you know where Nelle Lee is”: Maryon Pittman Allen, interview by author, Feb. 19, 2017.

  “What in the world”: Ibid.

  “It was like she was hiding”: Ibid.

  “To Rosalynn Carter”: Inscription courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.

  “We are bound”: Patricia Burstein, “Tiny Yes, but a Terror? Do Not Be Fooled by Truman Capote in Repose,” People, May 10, 1976, 16.

  | 16 | SOME KIND OF SOUL

  There is a great deal of misinformation about Harper Lee’s life, and I have tried not to reproduce any of it here. She and her family expressed frustration with almost every written account of her childhood, but except for challenging the depiction of their mother’s mental health in Clarke’s Capote, they did not correct the record. I benefited from the interviews with Alice Lee conducted by Marja Mills and Mary McDonough Murphy, along with letters written by Louise Conner and an interview she gave to The Sunday Ledger-Enquirer Magazine not long after To Kill a Mockingbird was published. Beyond those, I relied mainly on the archives of The Monroe Journal and benefited greatly from an unpublished oral history of a neighbor of the Lee family, Marie Hubbird, who knew Nelle from age six until after she published To Kill a Mockingbird. I made use of Lee’s college writings and the recollections of those who knew her during those years, and I am grateful to Eric Kidwell of the Houghton Memorial Library at Huntingdon College and the W. S. Hoole Library at the University of Alabama. There are too many current and former Monroevillians and Monroe Countians to thank, but I want to acknowledge Jane Busby, Susan Ward, Stephanie Rogers, Kathy McCoy, Marty Pickett, the Reverend Eddie Marzett, the Reverend Thomas Lane Butts, the Croft family, Dawn Hare, Tim McKenzie, and Janet Sawyer. Thank you to James Fishwick and Oliver Mahony of Lady Margaret Hall for their help looking into Lee’s time at the University of Oxford, and Tom McCutchon of the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library for his help with the Annie Laurie Williams Papers.

  “We must confer”: Harper Lee to Annie Laurie Williams, June 4, 1959, Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

  “nervous disorder”: Marja Mills, “A Life Apart: Harper Lee, the Complex Woman Behind a ‘Delicious Mystery,’ ” Chicago Tribune, Sept. 13, 2002, 1.

  “entertained”: “Misses Faulk and Lee Delightfully Entertain,” Monroe Journal, Feb. 13, 1930.

  “What Is the Cause of This Confusion?”: “League Program for Next Sunday Night,” Monroe Journal, Jan. 26, 1939.

  “World’s Foremost Man of Mystery”: Clarke, Capote, 9.

  they were both “apart” people: Gloria Steinem, “Go Right Ahead and Ask Me Anything (and So She Did): An Interview with Truman Capote,” McCall’s, Nov. 1967, 150.

  “Master Truman Capote”: Monroe Journal, June 13, 1935.

  “She is one of the few teachers”: “The Enduring Power of To Kill a Mockingbird,” 47.

  “What’s that?”: Plimpton, Truman Capote, 38.

  “is something of a relief”: Nelle Lee, “Idealistic Editor-Author Has Head in Clouds, Feet on Ground,” Huntress, Jan. 17, 1945, 2.

  “a place where diligent law students”: Mary Williams, “ ‘Little Nelle’ Heads Ram, Maps Lee’s Strategy,” Crimson-White, Oct. 8, 1946, 1.

  “Honey, I’m thuck”: Nelle Lee, “Some Writers of Our Time: A Very Informal Essay,” Rammer-Jammer 21, no. 3 (Nov. 1945): 14.

  “A. C. Lee and Daughters, Lawyers”: Elizabeth Otts, “Lady Lawyers Prepare Homecoming Costumes,” Crimson-White, Nov. 26, 1946, 14.

  | 17 | THE GIFT

  For the account of Harper Lee’s early years in New York, including the writing, editing, and publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, I relied on contemporary interviews with and correspondence from Harper Lee, Maurice Crain, and Tay Hohoff; the materials in the Annie Laurie Williams Papers at Columbia University; Harper Lee’s autobiographical essay “Christmas to Me”; the commentary offered by Tay Hohoff in J. B. Lippincott Company, Author and His Audience and The Literary Guild Review; Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird”; Walter, Milking the Moon; and later interviews with Joy and Michael Brown. Thank you to Charles Whaley and Petter Buttenheim for their remembrances of The School Executive and to Heather Thomas for locating all of the issues with Harper Lee on the masthead. I am grateful to Jonathan Burnham for allowing me to review the materials in the HarperCollins Collection and to Kathleen Shoemaker and Kira Tucker for their help at the Emory University Rose Library. I’m grateful also for the assistance of Jane Kansas, Steve Cuthrell, Louise Sims, Rachel McDavid, Clarissa Atkinson, and Justin Caldwell of Sotheby’s.

  “Nelle and I were instant friends”: Brown, as quoted in Murphy, Hey, Boo.

  “a mess”: Nelle Lee to P. J. Cuthrell, n.d. (This letter is on stationery from Sabena Airlines, where Cuthrell worked with Lee until 1954.)

  “Daddy is practical”: Louise Conner, quoted in Tom Sellers, “Writing Giants from Small Beginnings Grow,” Sunday Ledger-Enquirer Magazine, Dec. 4, 1960, 4.

  “I am more of a rewriter”: Hal Boyle, “Harper Lee Still Prefers Robert E. and Tom Jefferson,” Alabama Journal, March 15, 1963, 11.

  “no substitute”: Harper Lee, quoted in Newquist, Counterpoint, 409.

  “the gloomiest guy on this side”: Michael Brown, “A Woman’s New York,” Poughkeepsie Journal, Dec. 5, 1951, 6.

  “I’ve done things for him”: Lee to Harold Caufield, June 16, 1956, Rose Library, Emory University.

  “Francesca da Rimini”: Lee to Harold Caufield, dated “Sunday,” Rose Library.

  “The Prisoner of Zenda”: Lee to “Dears,” dated “Sunday,” Rose Library.

  “Sitting & listening to people”: Ibid.

  “The Land of Sweet Forever”: “Lee, Nelle Harper,” Author Cardfile, box 210, Williams Papers.

  “Old Woodenface”: Unsigned letter from someone in the office of Annie Laurie Williams to Harper Lee, Jan. 7, 1961, Williams Papers.

  “Why don’t you write one”: Harry Hansen, “Miracle of Manhattan—1st Novel Sweeps Board,” Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books, May 14, 1961, 6.

  “You have one year off”: Harper Lee, “Christmas to Me,” McCall’s, Dec. 1961, 63.

  “They’d saved some money”: Ibid.

  “don’t care whether anything I write”: “Alumna W
ins Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Fiction,” University of Alabama Alumni News, May–June 1961, 15.

  “The Cat’s Meow”: “Lee, Nelle Harper,” Author Cardfile.

  “an eye-opener for many northerners”: Crain to Evan Thomas, April 10, 1957, HarperCollins Collection.

  “childhood stuff”: Crain to Lynn Carrick, June 13, 1957, HarperCollins Collection.

  “the spark of the true writer”: J. B. Lippincott Company, Author and His Audience, 28.

  “dangling threads of plot”: Tay Hohoff, “We Get a New Author,” Literary Guild Book Club Magazine, Aug. 1960, 3–4.

  “more a series of anecdotes”: J. B. Lippincott Company, Author and His Audience, 28.

  “She was a writer”: Michael Brown, as quoted in Murphy, Hey, Boo.

  “We talked it out”: J. B. Lippincott Company, Author and His Audience, 29.

  “the Quaker Hitler”: Harper Lee to Doris Leapard, Aug. 25, 1990.

  “She would go home”: “The Enduring Power of To Kill a Mockingbird,” 37.

  “I was sitting here one night”: Ibid.

  | 18 | DEEP CALLING TO DEEP

  For the details of Harper Lee’s work with Truman Capote, I am indebted to Voss, Truman Capote and the Legacy of “In Cold Blood”; the University of Nebraska College of Journalism and Mass Communication’s Cold Blood: A Murder, a Book, a Legacy; Clarke, Capote; and Plimpton, Truman Capote. I am grateful for the assistance of Ralph Voss and Glenda Brumbeloe Weathers; Rosemary Hope; Paul Dewey; Ron Nye; Douglas McGrath; Lawrence Grobel; David Ebershoff; Gerald Clarke; Alan Schwartz of the Truman Capote Trust; Carly Smith of the Finney County Public Library; Laura Graham of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation; Erin Harris at the Richard Avedon Foundation; and Tal Nadan, Kyle Triplett, and Cara Dellatte of the Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room for Rare Books and Manuscripts at the New York Public Library.

  “assistant researchist”: George Plimpton, “The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel,” New York Times Book Review, Jan. 16, 1966, 2.

  “He said it would be”: “ ‘In Cold Blood’…an American Tragedy,” Newsweek, Jan. 24, 1966, 60.

  “She had been thinking”: Powell, “Capote and Friend,” 5D.

  “It was deep calling to deep”: “ ‘In Cold Blood’…an American Tragedy,” 60.

  “I was jealous”: Mills, Mockingbird Next Door, 166.

  “At first it was like”: Harper Lee, “Truman Capote,” Book-of-the-Month Club News, Jan. 1966, 6.

  “little gnome in his checkered vest”: John Barry Ryan, as quoted in Plimpton, Truman Capote, 168.

  “legitimate”: “Office Memorandum to Mr. DeLoach,” Dec. 21, 1959, Federal Bureau of Investigation file on Truman Capote.

  “Absolutely fantastic lady”: Nye, as quoted in Plimpton, Truman Capote, 170.

  “If Capote came on”: Dewey, as quoted in Dolores Hope, “The Clutter Case: 25 Years Later KBI Agent Recounts Holcomb Tragedy,” Garden City Telegram, Nov. 10, 1984.

  “Nelle sort of managed Truman”: Ed Pilkington, “In Cold Blood, Half a Century On,” Guardian, Nov. 15, 2009.

  “nonfiction novel”: Capote used this phrase frequently before, during, and after the publication of In Cold Blood; see, for example, Plimpton, “Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel,” 1.

  “Why they never look”: Harper Lee’s Notes, reel 7, box 7, folders 11–14, Capote Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

  “To the Author of The Fire”: Harper Lee’s full dedication reads, “These Notes Are Dedicated to the Author of The Fire and the Flame and the Small Person Who So Manfully Endured Him,” reel 7, box 7, folders 11–14, Capote Papers.

  “would probably have walked”: Voss, Truman Capote and the Legacy of “In Cold Blood,” 195.

  | 19 | DEATH AND TAXES

  For my account of the success of To Kill a Mockingbird, I relied on contemporary newspaper coverage of Harper Lee in The Monroe Journal and elsewhere, Dolores Hope’s extensive and ongoing documentation of Lee and Capote in the Garden City Telegram, the agency correspondence to and from the Lee sisters archived by Annie Laurie Williams at Columbia University, other letters that Harper Lee and Truman Capote wrote during these years, and two extensive interviews with her conducted by Roy Newquist for his radio program Counterpoint and Don Lee Keith for the New Delta Review. For their memories of Nelle Harper Lee during this time, I am grateful to George and Elizabeth Malko, Sonya Bentley Logan, Melissa Bentley, Alec Bentley, Harry Benson, Bruce Higginson, Harry Mount, Beryl Barr, Jim O’Hare, and others close to her who do not wish to be acknowledged by name. Thank you to Harry Benson for sharing his photographs of Lee and Capote, as well as recounting the day he took them. Thank you to George M. Barnett for his memories of the 1976 Democratic National Convention, including the “Oscar W. Underwood for President” party; I also relied on accounts of the party in The New York Times and the Alabama Journal. Thank you to Rachel McDavid for sharing memories of her father and some of Lee’s other friends from the University of Alabama. Thank you also to Dona Matthews, Dr. Felice Kaufmann, John Carnahan, Irene Burtis, Maisie Crowther, Ken Lopez Bookseller, Jim Baggett at the Birmingham Public Library, Margaret Harman at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Beth Davis of the Broadmoor, Toni Miller of the Pikes Peak Library District, Jay Fielden and Alex Belth of Esquire, and Jeanne Walsh of the Brooks Memorial Library.

  “this is what is known”: Dolores Hope, “The Distaff Side,” Garden City Telegram, April 4, 1960, 4.

  “Yes, Atticus was my father”: Lee to Strode, March 6, 1961, Hudson Strode Papers, Hoole Library, University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.

  “Success hasn’t spoiled”: Bob Thomas, “No Complaints by Harper Lee on Hollywood,” Corsicana Daily Sun, Feb. 9, 1962, 6.

  “We can’t stop them”: Annie Laurie Williams to Alice Lee, Sept. 1, 1964, Williams Papers.

  “If it sells more”: Lee to Hamilton, Jan. 11, 2009, File 816.11.82, Virginia Van der Veer Hamilton Papers, Department of Archives and Manuscripts, Birmingham Public Library.

  “in New York, where I became Famous”: Lee to John Darden, n.d.

  “First, catch your pig”: Harper Lee, “Crackling Bread,” in Barr and Sachs, Artists’ & Writers’ Cookbook, 251–52.

  “The Gospel According to Nelle Harper”: “Lee, Nelle Harper,” Author Cardfile.

  cycle of “reducing”: Alice Lee to Annie Laurie Williams, Sept. 9, 1963, Williams Papers.

  “Dear Nelle”: Williams and Crain to Lee, telegram, July 12, 1961, Williams Papers.

  “the second-novel doldrums”: Lee to Bell, Aug. 17, 1960, MA 5134, Morgan Library & Museum.

  “If I’d had any sense”: Lee to Bell, Sept. 13, 1961, MA 5134, Morgan Library & Museum.

  “not long ago she wrote”: Capote to Andrew Lyndon, Sept. 6, 1960, in Capote, Too Brief a Treat, 292.

  “Poor thing”: Capote to Alvin and Marie Dewey, Oct. 10, 1960, in Capote, Too Brief a Treat, 299.

  “I never dreamed”: Vernon Hendrix, “Father of Novelist: Monroeville Attorney’s Reactions Varied over Daughter’s Book,” Monroe Journal, Sept. 8, 1960.

  “a junkyard dog”: Edward Burlingame, as quoted in Jonathan Mahler, “Invisible Hand That Nurtured an Author and a Literary Classic,” New York Times, July 13, 2015, C1.

  “Dress Rehearsal”: The title is referenced in the Esquire editor Harold Hayes’s rejection letter to Lee, Oct. 27, 1961, Williams Papers.

  “some white people”: Lee to Harold Caufield, Nov. 21, 1961, Rose Library.

  “I don’t think this business”: Bob Ellison, “Three Best-Selling Authors: Conversation,” Rogue, Dec. 1963, 23.

  “My book has a universal theme”: Ramona Allison, “Nelle Harper Lee: A Proud, Tax-Paying Citizen,” Alabama Journal, Jan. 1, 1962, 13C.

  “be remembered as the one”: Inscri
ption courtesy of Morris Dees.

  “I’ve been writing as long”: Newquist, Counterpoint, 404, 408, 405, 410.

  “Sometimes I’m afraid”: Ibid., 405.

  “I told her that I thought”: Williams to Alice Lee, Oct. 8, 1965.

  “To be a serious writer requires”: Karen Schwabenton, “Harper Lee Discusses the Writer’s Attitude and Craft,” Sweet Briar News, Oct. 28, 1966.

  “I’m tired of fighting”: Lee to John Darden, Dec. 20, 1972.

  “She was drinking at that time”: George Malko, “Remembering Harper Lee,” Times Literary Supplement, May 18, 2017.

  “would drink and then tell somebody off”: Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird,” 21.

  “More tears are shed”: Capote, as quoted in Inge, Truman Capote, 301.

  “Allabhammah casts 20-foah votes”: Ray Jenkins, “Alabama Delegation Feasts upon Nostalgia,” Alabama Journal, July 12, 1976, 1.

  “Kennedy broke the religion barrier”: Alvin Benn, “Radney Sees Carter Breaking Region Barrier,” Montgomery Advertiser, July 9, 1976, 9.

  | 20 | RUMOR, FANTASY, DREAMS, CONJECTURE, AND OUTRIGHT LIES

  For the history of crime writing and the account of the New Journalists, I relied on McDade, Annals of Murder; Knox, Murder; Wolfe and Johnson, New Journalism; Weingarten, Gang That Wouldn’t Write Straight; Boynton, New New Journalism; and Priestman, Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction. For the reactions to Capote’s “nonfiction novel,” I relied on Voss, Truman Capote and the Legacy of “In Cold Blood”; Phillip K. Tompkins, “In Cold Fact,” Esquire, June 1, 1966; Harper Lee’s profile of Truman Capote for the Book-of-the-Month Club, along with her correspondence in the years after its publication. For their memories of Nelle Harper Lee in Alexander City, I am grateful to Madolyn Radney, Ellen Price, Robert Burns, Jim Earnhardt, Alvin Benn, Mary Ann Karr, Patricia Cribb, Ann Tate, Rheta Grimsley Johnson, Maryon Pittman Allen, Dr. Brooks Lamberth, Lynda Robinson, Gerald McGill, Ben Russell, and Catherine Burns. I also appreciated the remembrances offered by Ben Burford and Chevy 6 of the Stable Club and Rob “Gabby” Witherington of Stillwaters. I am also grateful for the assistance of Diane McWhorter, Madison Jones IV, Ralph Voss and Glenda Brumbeloe Weathers, Curtis Smalls at the University of Delaware Library Special Collections, and Anne Marie Menta at Yale University’s Beinecke Library.