Good Things out of Nazareth
Page 34
As for me you see I am at the electric typewriter, but only to write you a letter. I’m not in for business yet. I don’t need any surgical instruments, just a shovel and a spoon and a pile of dirt and not to be tired. I can see pretty well when I’m tired but I can’t think. I have a cold so tear up this letter when you read it and go wash your hands. You can get colds through letters. I read hit [it].
Caroline [Gordon] called me up from Purdue last week. She was in high gear, sounded like something sixteen—talking to her grandmother. And two weeks ago the Mabrys [Mr. and Mrs. Thomas] were through here and called me up. I was in bed with fever so they didn’t come out, though I would have very much liked to have had them come. The Cheneys [Lon and Fannie] wrote me they had been to see Andrew [Lytle] and he was in a big old fashioned bed and in some pain.
10 APRIL 64
Cut off the bottom of that one and was going to write you some more as this is another day and I have some more energy but Miss Regina hollers in “You know what he (doctor) told you. Get away from that typewriter.” All he told me was to take it easy. I was going to say something about Miracles but I guess it involves too much use of the brain at the moment. I thought you might like a book I’ve got called On the Theology of Death, by Karl Rahner—he’s about the best of those German theologians. It’s one of those books I didn’t understand but it makes you bolder. Let me know if you’d like it. German theologians may bore you. He don’t write good like Lewis [C. S.].
I hope you are feeling fitter.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO JANET MCKANE
O’Connor sends a card with a beautiful drawing of the original executive mansion in Milledgeville where the governors of Georgia resided until 1868, when Atlanta became the state capital.
4-11-1964
Somebody sent me this paper so I thought you might like to see what our old Governor’s mansion looks like—now used as the home of the President of the college [Georgia College and State University]. Our house in town is next to it and was used as the Governor’s mansion while this one was being built. All this in the 1800’s of course but its still in good shape.
I don’t think I could stand to read the thing in Renascence [Marquette University]. Sounds horrible. That is a terrible combination—nun, musician and Yankee. Any of them alone would be supportable but the combination! Fathers above. Poet to the outcast! What rot. I have a suspicion that a good portion of the outcast are outcast for good reason.
My aunt continues to hold her own.
Cheers,
F
* * *
O’Connor recounts different details of religious observances. She also thanks her friend for enrolling her in the prayer ministry of the Cenacle Sisters.7
18 APRIL 64
M’VILLE
Dear Janet,
Thanks for the Metro. Bulletins & the cenocle pictures of Sisters Sumot & O’Connor. What I want to know is how they manage to endure those starched white head-cuffs cutting into their faces. I have a friend who is a Daughter of Charity. She calls her habit “the iron lung.”
I feel better but the reason I write so bad is that my hands swell. The steroids make you retain water in the tissues. Right now I have about ten pounds of excess water in mine…
I hope you survived your British guests.
My aunt received the last rites Monday after which she took a decided turn for the better. She can’t sit up yet but we believe she’s going to make it.
Our pastor is a victim of clerical taste. He has just done over our church, consulting nobody but himself—PINK. It looks like a nursery.
Cheers,
Flannery
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO WARD ALLISON DORRANCE
Writing on Easter Sunday, O’Connor works assiduously on stories for the second collection. The writings of C. S. Lewis lead to a recollection of parochial school staffed by Irish religious. Lewis’s presentation of “supernaturalism” may have influenced the dramatic endings of stories such as “The Enduring Chill” and “Revelation,” which appear in O’Connor’s second collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge.
EASTER 1964
MILLEDGEVILLE
I was in the middle of Miracles [C. S. Lewis] when the Letters to Malcolm [Lewis] arrived so I put up Miracles and read the other, as being probably what I need more personally. I do need it and am grateful to you for sending it. I went 6 years to a parochial school as a child and I’ve been unlearning those six years the rest of my life. Not that it didn’t have its virtues too, but in those days most of the sisters were either just off the boat from Ireland (and says Miss Regina should have been in the kitchen and not in any class room) or they were genteel Victorian ladies. They taught you a very measuring religion…
To keep that [lupus] under control you have to take the steroid drugs. I took them constantly from 1951–61. They eat your bones up but it’s a matter of being dead with good bones or alive with bad ones. So now I am on the steroids and if you want to do any specific requesting, as you pray for me, pray I don’t have to stay on them long. They fill you full of nervous energy but its not the kind of energy you can do much work on.
The other day Tom Mabry [The White Hound: Stories by Dorrance & Mabry] called me up. They were passing through…Anyway it’s a great pleasure to be reading C.S. Lewis on the subject. And I was liking the one on miracles too. That stuff is right up my alley. I couldn’t close the book and make anybody believe in miracles but what his kind of a book does is something for the imagination. I read a lot of theology because it makes my writing bolder. I’d like to read it twice if you don’t want it back at once. I guess where we both want to locate our characters is right on the border of the natural and the supernatural—so that the reader don’t know which is which at the moment…
I hope you can read this such as it is. I can really only think on the typewriter.
Cheers
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO WARD ALLISON DORRANCE
The scenario in the letter perhaps influenced “The Enduring Chill,” featuring a sickly writer confined to a rural farmhouse. Asbury Fox in his insipid whining, however, should not be confused with the cheerful, long-suffering O’Connor. She also is thankful for the unstinting care Regina O’Connor provides.
MILLEDGEVILLE
8 MAY 64
I’ve been thinking about you and hoping you haven’t got yourself in the hospital again. Which is exactly what I did for ten days. My aunt grandly survived. She was in the hospital a month and I was on the floor above her and we both got to go home the same day. She had to come out here with us because she’s not well enough to go to the house in town. So Miss R. [Regina] has all her worries under one roof and I think that is easier for her.
The lupus has got me and I am slowed down considerably. No work for the next month or two, but I think I have a story in the head and maybe if I calculate about it these two months, it’ll be ready to come out when I get rolling again. Which I finally aim to get d. v.
My aunt has never been one for the country but she seems pretty content. We were afraid these 30 peafowl would disturb her but she is just deaf enough that they sound pretty good to her. She has announced that they don’t holler as loud as they used to.
Cheers, and let me hear how you do.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO JANET MCKANE
O’Connor revisits the perspective of children that occurs in a memorable story, “The River.” She discusses farm animals in which her friend’s young students might be interested.
12 MAY 64
MILLEDGEVILLE
Dear Janet,
I’m delighted with the mugs and as soon as my mother had opened them for me, I proceeded to have some coffee in the one with two holes for fingers—very much
intrigued by those two holes for fingers. However I am pleased with all of them and will have my coffee in a different one every day. Thank you so much…
Thank the children for me for their letters and tell them that Equinox is learning to bray. He just started this about a week ago and he sounds almost like Ernest, his pa. He is separated from his parents now and is in a plot with a pony (Shetland) by the name of Tommy Traveler. Tommy Traveler is a baby pony, in spite of that name. I watch them out of my window.
Your French friend’s trouble sounds grim—very European and somewhat medieval. I hope she gets over it.
Cheers to you and much appreciation.
Flannery
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO LOUISE AND THOMAS GOSSETT
In the midst of trying circumstances O’Connor shows good humor and once again praises her mother’s care. O’Connor would use her own repeated visits to the doctor in a funny story, “Revelation.”
MILLEDGEVILLE
12 MAY 64
Well our state has changed considerably since you least heard from me. I have been in the hospital again and now am in bed full-time. That operation started up the old trouble (disseminated lupus) and I am back on the cortesone and doing none too well—though I feel no pain, only weakness. Yesterday I had a blood transfusion (you get up and go after it) so today I got the energy to write some letters. In addition to me here, we have my aunt Mary. She grandly survived her heart attack and is out here with us. So my parent is running the Creaking Hill Nursing Home instead of the Andalusia Cow Plantation. Or rather she is running both.
If my trouble runs its predictable course, I reckon I will be in bed all summer. I haven’t had it active since 1951 and it is something renewing acquaintance with it. I am not supposed to have company or go anywhere but to the doctor, which I do once a week. Maybe you all will be coming back this way in the fall. I sure hope for better things then. It’s a good thing I cancelled that trip to Texas in May. Let us hear from you anyhow.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO WARD ALLISON DORRANCE
Perhaps sensing her student’s days are numbered, Caroline Gordon and the abbot from the Trappist monastery in Conyers, Georgia visit O’Connor. She is determined to finish her second collection of stories. O’Connor is thankful for her mother defending her rights as a patient.
PIEDMONT HOSPITAL
ATLANTA, GA. 6/2/64
Dear Cudden Ward,
I am as cheered about that house as if I could come down the chimney of it and pay you a visit. But you see by the above where I am paying a visit at right now. I’ve been in this one ten days and am like to be ten more. Miss Regina is staying with her sister Cleo and stays here at the hosp. in the day time and demands my rights for me.
The other day who should blow in to the hospital to pay me a call but Caroline [Gordon], together with the Trappist Abbot and another monk friend of hers. She was in high spirits. Her next book on creative writing, she says, is going to be called Craft Ebbing.
Nothing fits in a hospital. The bed table is too high so you can’t write on it without breaking your arm. I just wanted you to know I was thinking of you in your new house.
Cheers,
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO CAROLINE GORDON
O’Connor is thankful for the vigilance of Regina O’Connor in facilitating continued writing. O’Connor seeks counsel from her beloved tutor for one of her last stories as she did years earlier for her first novel, Wise Blood.
MILLEDGEVILLE
11 JULY 64
I finally got out of Piedmont after one month there. An old lady here wrote me that anyone who could survive a month at Piedmont had nothing to worry about as far as health was concerned. I’ve been home three weeks today, confined to two rooms, am not supposed to walk around, something about they want all the blood to go to the kidneys, but my momma arranged the table so I can get out of the bed right into the electric typewriter. Enclosed* the result. Would you mind looking at it and letting me know what ails it or if you think it’s fit for my collection? It’ll be the usual great favor.
Did you find out how old swans have to be to lay? Mine do nothing but sit in their tub or on the grass.
Never ride with the clergy if you are not immediately ready to meet your maker. They kindly offered to bring me home from the hospital but I declined even before your description of your ride to the airport. I hope Florida is doing Fr. Charles some good.
Love,
Flannery
*Parker’s Back
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO JANET MCKANE
MILLEDGEVILLE
20 JULY 64
Dear Janet,
Thank you so much for having the mass said at the cenocle and please thank your friend for her note (Sr. Sumort). My blood count has dropped again and I just don’t have the energy to answer any letters. I’ll appreciate the book you are sending when I am better. My mother appreciates your thought of her and that is enough. She doesn’t really have time to look at anything.
These pictures were taken in April but just got developed.
Cheers,
F
Going to hosp for another transfusion etc
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO CAROLINE GORDON
O’Connor appreciates her friend’s scrutiny of her story as health problems continue to impede completion of the second collection. O’Connor deflects from her own suffering to the well-being of others.
MILLEDGEVILLE
21 JULY 64
I do thank you for the remarks. I read both versions and hope to do a little something about it all but I don’t know how much as the lid has been put back on me. I go to the hospital tomorrow for another transfusion. The blood count just won’t hold. Anyway maybe I’ll learn something for the next set of stories. You were good to take the time.
One of the sisters at the Cancer Home wrote me that the Rev. Fr. (I presume she meant the Abbot) had had a siege of being in the hospital. She said he had some torn ligaments in his arm but didn’t say what happened to him. I’m glad Fr. Charles is better. Cheers to you and pray for me.
Love,
Flannery
REGINA O’CONNOR TO JANET MCKANE
Janet received notification of O’Connor’s passing. O’Connor’s funeral Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Milledgeville took place the next day.
WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM 1964 AUG 3 PM 4 59
FPA111 AC310
A MLA036 RX PD MILLEDGEVILLE GA 3 328P EST
MISS JANET MCKANE
2767 MARION AVE NYK
FLANNERY O’CONNOR PASSED AWAY EARLY THIS AM. THANKS FOR ALL YOUR KINDNESS
REGINA CLINE O’CONNOR
FATHER JAMES MCCOWN TO LOUISE AND THOMAS GOSSETT
Father McCown and the Gossetts learned of O’Connor’s death a few days after her passing. Writing from the retreat house of his own formation, Father McCown provides counsel about the loss of a dear friend. As a graduate student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop O’Connor wrote in her Prayer Journal, “The nearness [to God] I mean comes after death perhaps. It is what we are struggling for and if I found it, either I would be dead or I would have seen it for a second and life would be intolerable.”8 Father McCown is assured that his friend experiences God’s holy presence.
OUR LADY OF THE OAKS (MY ASSIGNMENT FOR THE YEAR)
RETREAT HOUSE
GRAND COTEAU, LA.
AUGUST 24, 1964
Louise, you write the most graceful newsiest letter! Yes, I did receive your letter ’way down in Mexico (more later about that), and had all sorts of good intentions about answering. Then when I got home I became overwhelmed with all I had to do, so I really did nothing. Like the mountain flowers and the Heidi
atmosphere, this climate and place has its own “relaxing” effects.
The first news I got at home was about Flannery. But since she had died a week before I arrived, I was sure you had heard. I was prepared for the news mainly by your letter. Like you, I had assumed that she was not mending. But then your letter and a letter from her young friend Miss Barnes, teaching in Chile, gave me much concern. Sure enough, there were two letters from Macon with clippings about her death. A letter from me in Mexico must have reached her too late, I wrote her mother, of course, but haven’t heard from her. Poor woman. What has she to live for now? Well, I know how you feel about our precious Flannery, and you know how I feel. God has His own reasons for removing from our needful world such choice souls so soon. But it is an exercise in Faith to accept it. That faith tells me that the souls in Heaven can by their prayer achieve more good among us wayfarers than they ever could by their efforts on earth no matter how skillful they may be. And I believe this. But it is not easy to adjust my human feelings to it. I am especially sorry that my brother Bob [Robert McCown, S.J.] never met her. I know he will feel bad because I urged him to take a day out of his trip recently to visit her. But he was in such a hurry he decided to see her “on the way back.” He is in England taking his last jot of training as a Jesuit. We call it “tertianship,” and it is a final spiritual discipline that has in it a minimum of scholarship and a maximum of affective training. He will be back in May to go to work in college teaching…