Once inside the courthouse for the start of the second act, the audience settled into the pewlike benches. Up in the “colored” gallery, members of a local black church sat and watched, a poignant reminder of how things once were. In the jury box, a dozen white men prepared to hear the case.
Everyone knew the trial’s outcome, although in the stuffy courtroom built in 1903, with one ceiling fan turning tiredly high above, there was a sense that the sins of history could be reversed if only the jury would find Tom Robinson not guilty. When the foreman led the jury back into the courtroom, Robinson was again convicted for a crime he hadn’t committed.
The play was such a success—both in attendance and for the boost it gave civic pride—that the following year, 1991, the Monroe County Heritage Museums hired a director to capitalize further on Monroeville’s link with To Kill a Mockingbird. In light of such a tribute to the novel and its creator, few could have anticipated that it would be the start of an uneasy relationship between Nelle and the town.
* * *
As the annual performances of To Kill a Mockingbird in Monroeville became more popular, and the Monroe County Heritage Museums tended to put more emphasis on Monroeville’s link to Harper Lee, the author was not pleased to see that her birthplace was getting on the Mockingbird bandwagon, so to speak. For her, this meant more requests for autographs, more fan mail, and more occasions when strangers would quiz her about the book. At a Christmas party one year in Monroeville, an out-of-towner began chatting her up about To Kill a Mockingbird. She turned and walked out.16
By now Nelle was in her 70s and weary of the attention connected with her novel. She had put that far behind her, along with the film. She rebuffed attempts by Mary Badham, the child actor who played Scout, to communicate with her. “Mary acts like that book is the Bible,” Nelle mentioned to Kathy McCoy, the former director of the Monroe County Heritage Museums.17 According to a terse note in the museums’ archives, “G.P. [Gregory Peck] told M.B. not to try to contact N.L.” Not even invitations to receive honors could induce Nelle to depart from her well-worn path. Twice, Huntingdon College in the 1990s asked her to attend graduation. She never replied.18 The University of Alabama succeeded in awarding her an honorary degree in 1993 (perhaps the appeal for Nelle was closure after never having graduated), but all she would say to the audience was “Thank you.”
The distance she felt from her only novel was unmistakable in a foreword to the 35th anniversary edition in 1993. “Please spare Mockingbird an Introduction,” she wrote.
As a reader I loathe Introductions. To novels, I associate Introductions with long-gone authors and works that are being brought back into print after decades of internment. Although Mockingbird will be 35 this year, it has never been out of print and I am still alive, although very quiet. Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity. The only good thing about Introductions is that in some cases they delay the dose to come. Mockingbird still says what it has to say; it has managed to survive without preamble.
With dismay, she watched the transformation of Monroeville into the “Literary Capital of Alabama.” After volunteers had finished painting 12-foot-high outdoor murals of scenes from the novel, Nelle pronounced them “graffiti.” When a television crew asked to film portions of the play and interview the actors, she responded through her agent, “Not just no, but hell no.”19
According to Reverend Thomas Butts, one of her closest friends and the retired minister for Monroeville’s First Methodist Church, “She isn’t too happy about any of it.” Apparently her friend and counselor was referring to the rise of Mockingbird tourism in Monroeville, which as of 2005 brings in about 25,000 visitors annually. Said Reverend Butts, her attitude is a combination of wanting privacy and resenting people looking to profit, without permission, from her or her book.
“She would give you the shirt off her back,” added the reverend’s wife, “but do not try to take it without permission.”20
Going ahead without permission caused the most serious showdown between Nelle and the Monroe County Heritage Museums. It was over a cookbook.
Calpurnia’s Cookbook, named for the Finches’ cook and housekeeper, was the typical kind of recipe collection assembled by churches to raise money. Only, in this case, the idea was that profits from the sale would support the museums. When Nelle got wind that one of her characters’ names would soon be appearing beside To Kill a Mockingbird pens, coffee mugs, and T-shirts in the courthouse museum gift shop, she threatened to sue. The entire printing of the cookbook, several thousand copies, had to be pulped.
“I think it is an attempt to keep the characters from being exploited, as well as herself,” Reverend Butts said. “When people start using the characters from the book, it sort of fragments the book. They’re using it to promote their hamburgers or their automobiles or their own [things]. She wants the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird to stay back in the ’30s where they belong. To drag them by the hair on their head into the 21st Century is to do the characters an injustice.”21
In the town’s defense, the late-20th century hadn’t been kind to Monroeville. The only major industry, Vanity Fair, a lingerie factory, shut down some years ago, laying off hundreds of workers and pulling the plug on one of Monroe County’s main sources of tax revenue. Today, in many ways, Monroeville fits Nelle’s description of its alter ego, Maycomb, in the 1930s. It’s “a tired old town,” except for the money spent by tourists on meals, gas, trinkets in the museum gift shop, and tickets to the annual play. Monroeville’s hope for a better day partly depends on promoting its most famous resident, Harper Lee—the “golden goose,” some residents call her.22
* * *
Yet Nelle’s secluded life and decades-long anonymity continue to exert a fascination for newspaper editors and other media people looking for a good story. Feature stories headlined “What Ever Happened to Harper Lee?” crop up several times a year. As Reverend Butts rightly observed, “Whether she intended to or not, she created a mystique when she withdrew from the public eye like that.”23
Mostly the reporters who visit Monroeville get a feel for the town and interview a handful of people who knew Nelle. Phone interviews with her are impossible because Alice, still in the role of her sister’s manager, politely turns down requests.
On the other hand, some encounters with Nelle have been memorable when pilgrims to Monroeville have behaved with a modicum of respect. Reporter Kathy Kemp took a chance one evening in 1997 and rang the doorbell of the Lees’ home.24 Nelle opened the door.
She was not expecting company. Barefoot, white hair uncombed, the 71-year-old woman answered the doorbell wearing a long white pajama top and a scowl.
“What is it?” Harper Lee wanted to know.
Staring at her through the storm door were a reporter and a photographer from Birmingham. Miss Lee has a famous dislike for reporters and photographers. We’d been warned, repeatedly, by folks all over town, “Don’t even think of trying to do an interview.”
Instead, we thrust forth a copy of “To Kill A Mockingbird” and asked for her autograph.
“Good gosh,” Miss Lee exclaimed, a look of disgust on her face. “It’s a little late for this sort of thing, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t yet 6 p.m. on a balmy Tuesday. Folks on her street in the small southwestern Alabama town of Monroeville were just coming home from work. Televisions blared through open windows. Schoolchildren played in front yards.
We apologized.
“Just a minute then,” she snapped before disappearing into the house. Seconds later, she was back with her fine-point pen and an even more pointed lecture. “I hope you’re more polite to other people,” she said as she opened the book to the title page.
“Best wishes, Harper Lee,” she wrote in a neat, modest script.
She handed back the volume. “Next time try to be more thoughtful.”
“Thank you,” we said, frankly terrified. And for the first time
since opening the door, Harper Lee smiled. In a voice full of warmth and good cheer, she replied, “You’re quite welcome.”
The best kind of interaction tends to occur when Nelle is free to be spontaneous. Then her warmth and generosity, known mainly to close friends and family, become evident.
Nelle applauds as the winner of a To Kill a Mockingbird high school essay contest is announced on January 23, 2004, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (AP Photo)
At the May 2006 University of Notre Dame commencement, Nelle received an honorary degree. Students held up copies of To Kill a Mockingbird provided by the university. (AP Photo)
“One day many years ago when she was signing books at The Magnolia Cottage, a specialty shop in Monroeville,” said Mary Tomlinson,
I was walking in as she was walking out. I told her who I was and that I played volleyball with her at Huntingdon. I told her my name, knowing that she would probably not remember this fledgling freshman. I told her I hoped I could get an autographed copy of her book for my granddaughter. She smiled, patted my hand and said, “Mary, I’m sorry, I actually do not remember you.” Then she added, “But I’ll be happy to sign your granddaughter’s book.” She waited until I could go inside and purchase it for her signature and a short note. She couldn’t have been more tactful or genuine.25
And she evinces a special affection for young readers, sometimes responding positively to requests to visit local high schools for book-signings or unpublicized appearances. “I was in the National Honor Society at Monroe County High School,” said student Amanda McMillan,
and every year we induct an honorary member at our induction ceremony. My sophomore year it was Alice, Harper Lee’s sister, because she’s the oldest practicing female attorney in Alabama.
[The adviser] didn’t tell us because they didn’t think she would say yes. But since she went to high school there, she thought it was super-cool and agreed to it. Our president was there, but he had a leg cast, so I had to hand her the plaque. I was sitting next to Miss Alice, and Harper Lee was on the other side of her.
I heard her talking to Miss Alice (who is partially deaf, so she was talking pretty loudly), and she said, “I don’t get nervous at these things anymore. You want to know why?” Miss Alice asked why, and Harper Lee said, “’Cause you and I are the oldest ones here!”26
According to Don Collins, a former Methodist minister in Alabama, Nelle has funded scholarships over the years. “Many have attended college without knowing she was their benefactor.”27
* * *
In 2006, Nelle turned 80; Alice was 95. They both wear hearing aids that go Wheeee! in diners at times and then they argue about whose is making noise. They often debate whose turn it is to get the check, too, a discussion that usually ends with “I’ll get it this time, and you next time.” Nelle dotes on her older sister, whom she calls “Atticus in a skirt” because of Alice’s achievements in law, particularly with regard to integrating the Methodist Church over the years.
For Alice’s birthday a few years ago, some friends pulled up to the Lees’ home early in the morning. The two sisters followed in their Buick, with Nelle at the wheel, until they reached Vanity Fair Park. Robert Sims, the city superintendent, was there waiting. While Nelle and Alice watched, two workers lifted a large box from the bed of a pickup truck and opened it. Out waddled two large geese, who headed for the edge of the pond a few yards away. From a second small box issued three baby mallards. The ducklings were gently steered into a safe, penned-in area in shallow water. The event, which brought children on the run to see what was going on, was part of the park’s effort to replenish the supply of waterfowl, which hawks and foxes had decimated. Alice was charmed by it all. “These new park residents should continue to bring pleasure to people from 92 down,” she wrote to family gaily.28
While in Monroeville, Nelle spends most of her time at home reading. Inside the entryway of the Lees’ one-story brick ranch are photographs of family members. But everywhere else are books: in a bookcase that takes up half the entrance hallway; in Alice’s bedroom, off the kitchen; and in Nelle’s blue bedroom, at the end of the hallway. In her room, the walls are devoted to built-in white bookshelves, floor to ceiling. A third bedroom, for guests, has bookshelves, too. As in Nelle’s apartment in New York, there are no expensive furnishings that would indicate she is the author of the bestselling novel of the 20th century. On the contrary, the Lees’ home is unremarkable in every way.
“Those things have no meaning for Nelle Harper,” Alice said. “All she needs is a good bed, a bathroom and a typewriter.… Books are the things she cares about.”29
In 60 years, Nelle has never attended a reunion of the sisters of the Chi Omega house at the University of Alabama. “I’ve written to her many times,” said a Chi O member, “and she’s never acknowledged receipt of my letter.”30 But a street on campus is named Harper Lee Drive.
An anecdote floating around on the Internet in 2005 said that a waiter at a party in New York recognized Harper Lee sitting by herself at a table. Unable to resist the temptation to express his admiration, he struck up a friendly conversation with her and asked the inevitable, “Why didn’t you write another book?”31
She reportedly had every intention of writing many novels, but never could have imagined the success To Kill a Mockingbird would enjoy. She became overwhelmed. Every waking hour seemed devoted to the promotion and publicity surrounding the book. Time passed, she said, and she retreated from the spotlight. She claimed to be inherently shy and was never comfortable with too much attention. Fame had never meant anything to her, and she was not prepared for what To Kill a Mockingbird achieved.
Then before she knew it, nearly a decade had passed and she was nowhere near finishing a new book. Rather than allow herself to be eternally frustrated, she simply “forgave herself” and lifted the burden from her shoulders of living up to her first book. And she refused to pressure herself into writing another novel unless the muse came to her naturally.
A little more than a year after To Kill a Mockingbird was published, Nelle wrote to a friend in Mobile, “People who have made peace with themselves are the people I most admire in the world.”32
From all indications, she seems to have done that.
Notes
Page numbers are given wherever possible.
Chapter 1: “Ellen” Spelled Backward
1. George Thomas Jones, “Young Harper Lee’s Affinity for Fighting,” letter to EducETH “Teaching and Learning,” http://educeth.ethz.ch/, 7 December 1999, accessed 17 January 2002.
2. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to author, 18 September 2002.
3. Truman Capote, “The Thanksgiving Visitor,” in A Christmas Memory, One Christmas, & The Thanksgiving Visitor (New York: Modern Library, 1996).
4. Drew Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird,” Dallas Times Herald, 1984.
5. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to author, 18 September 2002.
6. “‘Luckiest Person in the World,’ Says Pulitzer Winner,” Birmingham News, 2 May 1961.
7. National Archives and Records Service, College Park, Md., 15th Alabama Infantry files. Harper Lee’s family can be traced back to John Lee, Esq., born in 1695 in Nansemond, Virginia, but her family and General Lee’s are separate.
8. A. C. Lee, Monroe Journal (editorial), 19 December 1929, 2.
9. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (New York: Warner Books, 1982), 4.
10. Ninth Annual Catalogue of the Alabama Girls’ Industrial School, Montevallo, Alabama, 1904–1905 (Montgomery, Ala.: Brown Printing Co.), 20.
11. Ibid., 38.
12. Kathy Painter McCoy, Letters from the Civil War: Monroe County Remembers Her Rebel Sons (Monroeville, Ala.: Monroe County Heritage Museums, 1992).
13. “Old Monroe County Courthouse,” (flyer, no date) Monroe County Heritage Museums.
14. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 131.
15. Marie Faulk Rudisill, with James C. Simmons. Truman Capote: The Story of His Bizarre and Exotic Childho
od by an Aunt Who Helped Raise Him (New York: William Morrow, 1983), 190.
16. Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird.”
17. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 89.
18. Joseph Blass, letter to author, 10 September 2002.
19. Ibid.
20. Charles Ray Skinner, interview with author, 22 December 2002.
21. Joseph Blass, letter to author, 10 September 2002.
22. George Thomas Jones, “Courthouse Lawn Was Once Kids’ Playground,” in Happenings in Old Monroeville, vol. 2 (Monroeville, Ala.: Bolton Newspapers, 2003), 163.
23. Lawrence Grobel, Conversations with Capote (New York: New American Library, 1985), 53.
24. Rudisill, with Simmons, Capote, 191.
25. Betty Martin, interview with author, 5 November 2005. Mrs. Martin, who lived on the outskirts of Monroeville, knew Hattie Clausell.
26. Roberta Steiner, “My Cousin Carson McCullers,” Carson McCullers Society Newsletter, no. 3, University of West Florida, Pensacola, Fla., 2000.
27. Thomas Daniel Young, Introduction to Part III in A History of Southern Literature, ed. Louis D. Rubin, Jr., et al. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 262.
28. Marie Faulk Rudisill, interview with author, 21 December 2005.
29. Mary Tucker, interview with Monroe County Heritage Museums, Monroeville, Ala., 7 July 1998.
30. Rudisill, interview with author, 21 December 2005.
31. Grobel, Conversations with Capote, 53.
32. Truman Capote, “Christmas Vacation” (1935–36), in Bradford Morrow, ed., Conjunctions: 31: Radical Shadows: Previously Untranslated and Unpublished Works by 19th and 20th Century Writers (New York: Bard College, 1998), 142.
33. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to author, 18 September 2002.
34. Rudisill, interview with author, 21 December 2005.
I Am Scout Page 17