Meanwhile There Are Letters

by Suzanne Marrs

The weather was very bright and warm today, typical for December, indeed for no other month. We often think of you, in your beautiful life, and wish you a happy holiday with your dear friends and nieces.

  Love, Ken and M.

  Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, December 10, 1973

  Dear Ken,

  Every day—this is true—I start out meaning to write letters, and then the whole day turns into an interruption. I think it’s making me pretty neurotic, I can’t get to sleep for thinking how I have failed. It’s because it means a lot to me to keep in touch with them (my good friends)—and they’re not all that many—and I miss writing and miss hearing. But I had such a good letter from you when I got back from New York, and I do want to write, no matter how poorly.

  I was sorry to hear about Brandy—ever since I’ve been hearing from you I’ve heard about him. You must both miss him like fury, and I hope by now you have a new pup to take up some of the empty space, even though not that same space. His end sounds like a soldier’s or a hero’s, though, and coming properly at home, with you and Margaret by him.

  Have you got the Patrick White story you were hoping for?58 I hope all the permissions and such come through without too much load of letters and work (I remember Diarmuid telling me what a headache his anthology permissions were—nobody answers, etc.). I must say that from the idea you’ve given me of the contents it sounds full of interest and variety and vitality—very much a personal collection, which is what will make it worth the effort, and will make me want most to read it. I’m sure the publishers are insisting on your putting you in—it would be like Gershwin having a party and having everybody else play but not playing himself, if you didn’t. You really ought to make it in 2 volumes, maybe—then you could be in one and Margaret could be in one, and the guests could be divided spaciously—like two rooms for the party. I’m glad Dick Francis is probably coming in—his work I like very much indeed. (He always has so much pain in his novels, though, real damage and suffering—which I guess he should know all about, from all the falls and bone-cracks he’s had to take in his life. Isn’t it a remarkable life, too—the two gifts, both excellent, and quite unrelated, you would think.) I wondered about Joan’s anthology and yours, coming not too far apart—that’s amusing, you both picked out F. O’C, and the same F. O’C. story. Who was ever better? I remember your talking about her stories, first time I saw you. I’m pleased you think well of “The Walker,” enough to want to include it. Did you happen to notice a short review of a new novel by Patrick O’Brian in this week’s NYTBR? It’s so sad to think that he’s never realized his powers, apparently—just writes run-of-the-mill historical or adventure books, or according to the reviews that’s what they are.59 Did you hear from him yourself, I wonder, and I wonder what sort of man he sounds like to you.

  Yes, I did get to see Diarmuid. The Sunday before I left NY Monday, I went out to spend the day. He was about the same, in Rosie’s estimation. He was of course in command as always, and it was good to be with him. I worry some about the heating oil shortage, because it gets so cold up there, and he is just not able now to be cold too.

  Donald Alexander II is a laugher, even laughs out loud (at his parents). They were pleased to get your good wishes.

  Have a fine time in Chicago. It does sound as if anything might be expected out of those four scholars firing remarks and questions at you, but (all aside from being a PhD like them) you are used enough to the academic world to take such in stride. (I’m not.) Watch out because when I was in Chicago, a young woman (who for all I know will turn out to be one of the scholars) was asking me questions about you, and she was trying to hitch you onto Nabokov by some flick of the wrist. Not being a reader of him as I am of you I didn’t follow. But it is fine that they are going to give you an award, and the first of its kind, and that sounds as if from now on the award will be one with prestige attached because your name was on it. I’ll be in touch again before it’s Christmas. This is when I should say Happy Birthday! You’re a 13ther like me. Many happy returns,

  Love,

  from Eudora

  Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, December 17, 1973

  Dear Ken,

  It saddens me to tell you, but I thought you’d want to be told, that Diarmuid died yesterday afternoon—Will, his son, phoned and told me last night. I do feel glad for him that it is over. He was valiant—The word you used—noble—that was right. Your card that said a contribution in my name had been given by you to the Cancer Society did something good for me, that’s present now. Thank you.

  Transportation and weather problems make me not sure I’ll get to go to Katonah in time for memorial services on Thursday—What matters to me is that I did get there to see him when I did. And it was wonderful, wasn’t it, that he came here in May.

  I hope all goes fine with you—I’m glad about your great huge puppy—Write soon.

  Love,

  Eudora

  The loss of Diarmuid Russell was a devastating blow for Eudora. Four times during 1973 she had visited him in New York, and he in an incredible effort of will and in the face of intense suffering had managed to come to Jackson for Eudora Welty Day. But on December 16 he succumbed to lung cancer. Ken’s words of comfort in his next letter—“certain souls live on intensely in their work and in the minds of people who knew them”—would be resonant ones for Eudora. She would echo them in her autobiographical Harvard lectures, given shortly before Ken died in 1983, and in the 1984 published version of those lectures, One Writer’s Beginnings: “The memory is a living thing—” Eudora said and later wrote, “it too is in transit. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives—the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead.”60 Ken was destined to lose his memory, its comforts, and his life to Alzheimer’s disease; Eudora’s recollections of him would be needed to sustain her in the wake of those losses. But for now they found sustenance in letters from each other.

  Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, December 20, 1973

  Dear Eudora:

  I hope you will have been able to get to New York for Diarmuid’s memorial service. It helps to share these losses, doesn’t it, and you are good at sharing everything. I don’t know of anyone who has given more than you have to other people, or has more love resurging back to her. Such considerations are not terribly comforting, I know, when you have been bereaved. But that long friendship and creative partnership with Diarmuid is the living truth of the matter, and won’t die. While I don’t believe in the immortality of the soul—neither, I doubt, does my friend Bishop Corrigan (Right-Way Corrigan)—there are certain souls that live on intensely in their work and in the minds of people who knew them. Diarmuid’s is certainly one of them. And he will live on, as he would have wished, in the work of you and other writers which he helped to bring to birth. There is a great deal, too, to be said for an end to suffering. I hope your own suffering won’t be too hard to bear. You’ve had a difficult season. But you’ve had long joyful seasons—you’ve left a full record of them; you’re the most irrepressibly joyous person I know—and you’ll have other good seasons and know what to do with them, too.

  Here we’re having what I consider a pretty good season, de-emphasizing the Christmas spirit but trying to make the most of every day, including Christmas. Jim and his father will be with us for four or five days, and I hope the good weather holds. As in some other years, we’re having a week or two of bright December weather—shirtsleeve weather—and I’ve been walking on the beach every day with my pup. Yesterday I sent you a picture of him (together with Margaret and me) but the picture was taken a couple of weeks ago and no longer represents him adequately. He is now a teenager. I measured his neck today, and it’s size 14 (mine is 16 ½) and at three months he weighs forty pounds. He actually grows and changes in twenty-four hours, like a flower.—We had our Christmas bird count last Saturday but it was a comparative failure—some 15 or 20 species fewer than usual—so for the first time in some years
we won’t be in national contention. We had one unusual bird over Santa Barbara, though—a California Condor which ordinarily doesn’t leave the mountain fastnesses. The deep sea birds, the murrelets and murres, were missing from the coast, either because the wrong observers went to see or the oil in the channel has been getting to them. Margaret rescued an oil-trapped murre on the beach a couple of weeks ago and sent it back out to sea again. Which is a good image to end on. I wish you voyaging; not necessarily away from home.

  My love (and Margaret’s)

  Ken

  P.S. A parcel came from you. I haven’t opened it, but I suspect it’s a record. You are too generous. K

  Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, Friday night [December 21, 1973]

  Dear Ken,

  That was such a sweet thing to do, to send me the picture. It was like having all of you appear tonight, all swiftly, cheering like a visit. I was glad to see you, glad to see Margaret, a little better than I did in other pictures, and glad to see Duffy—ready to jump right out of everybody’s hands and the picture the next second—he’s a huge pup, all right, and hugely appealing. I have the picture propped up on my mantle shelf up here in my room, where I’m looking at it now, and where it’ll be a bright spot in the morning.

  Thank you for it, and my love to you both. I hope Christmas is good—and Chicago not too cold—We have had snow too. A beautiful Baltimore oriole came his first and only time to my feeder while I happened to be watching.

  Love,

  Eudora

  Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, December 26, 1973

  Dear Eudora:

  I’m so glad you liked the pup picture and I hope one day you’ll come and see him in person, not to mention the rest of us. The only thing missing was Jim, who wasn’t around that day, but we’re having the pleasure of his company this week. His presence is a double joy because it’s exactly two weeks ago that he fell off a piece of playground equipment and suffered a concussion which put him in the hospital for several days, and is still being watched. But he’s coming along fine, is back in the water swimming (which he is good at) and gaining weight which he can use, being small and slender. He’s a darling boy, full of gung-ho helpfulness. His favorite study, for some reason, is very ancient cars. His father Joe P [. . .] is a computer engineer, Italian in family background, a devout Catholic, which means that Jim is, too. Our daughter Linda never joined the Church but sang in the cathedral choir in Los Angeles—we have an LP record of their voices.

  Speaking of records, it was most thoughtful of you to send me the New Orleans jazz record, which I am crazy about—such celebration of sacred and profane matters—indeed the sacred profane (which now that I think of it is one of your main subjects, at least in your comedy). It’s a most welcome addition to my little collection, much the more so that it came from your hand and generous heart. (Incidentally I’ve ordered the Smithsonian jazz album which was reviewed in the New Yorker a few weeks ago.) I almost feel that listening to jazz can renew my youth and it almost can. Not that I want to go through all that again. But I’m ineluctably drawn back and back to autobiography, what I call autobiography, anyway.

  Dick Lid the F.M. Ford scholar came up from Northridge where he teaches, for lunch today, and showed me a couple of the short educational films he’s been making for the feds, as he calls them. He gets young people, grades 10 to 12, talking—they talk better than their teachers—about such matters as “The Mystery of Poe.” Though I liked the films, they’re not as brilliant as his criticism by a long shot and I must find a way to tell him so, or not. He was a boy wonder at the U. of Chicago in Hutchins’ day, went in at sixteen and in a sense never came out, and I had to give him a late education, which never entirely takes. He’s a good and lovable man, deliberately stepped down last June as the head of his department in order to do more important work.

  Day after tomorrow I’m off to Chicago. Rubin of the Progressive had ten hours delay in traveling yesterday from Madison to here, on account of fog. I hope the fog lifts for me. I hope all is well with you.

  Love, Ken

  P.S.—Duffy is now in the King of the World stage, insufferable!

  K.

  P.P.S.—The daughter of friends in Quebec, Roberta Langford (now married to Dr. Eddie Cone) just completed at Duke her thesis on “The Comic Sense of Flannery O’Connor.” I wonder if Reynolds knows her.—Weren’t those beautiful cards Reynolds designed and translated and sent out?—he seems a many-sided perfection. K.

  Millar took pleasure in his new friendship with Reynolds Price, the forty-year-old North Carolina writer sometimes referred to as Welty’s protégé. Reynolds, having been introduced to Ross Macdonald’s work by Eudora when she gave him The Chill to read as Price kept her company during her final edit of One Time, One Place, was now a devoted Macdonald admirer—one who made his appreciation known to interviewers, listing Ross Macdonald (along with Bernard Malamud, John Updike, William Styron, Saul Bellow, and of course Eudora Welty) as being among his favorite living writers. Price had initiated a correspondence with Millar, which pleased and touched Ken. Then the two men met in person in Jackson in May, during the week of Welty celebrations.

  Price, like Millar, had been lodged at the Sun’n’Sand. On evenings when other events were not planned, Ken and Reynolds got together at the motel for whiskey and conversation. One night over drinks, Ken Millar said something to the younger writer that almost knocked Price out of his chair. As Reynolds would recall, “We were talking about Eudora and what a wonderful person she was [. . .] And Ken stopped me and said, ‘No, you don’t understand. [. . .] You love Eudora as a friend. I love her as a woman.’”61

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “If one of your letters could be rotten there’d be nothing sound left in heaven or on earth.”

  1974

  AT an event at the Palmer House, in Chicago, near the end of 1973, Ken Millar received the first Award of Merit from the Popular Culture Association, whose members were in that city for a Modern Language Association convention.

  The PCA had pioneered academic study and acceptance of popular literature. Ross Macdonald was their heavyweight champion: a genuine artist, a PhD, a genre master, and a bestselling success. Macdonald novels were being or would soon be taught at Ivy League schools including Yale. Kenneth Millar, the born-poor but brilliant son of a Canadian sometime poet, was grateful for the praise and attention he received at the Chicago event; but it also made him uncomfortable. He was much more at ease back home in Santa Barbara, soothed and stimulated by the passing seasons as he assembled in his mind the pieces of a new book, swam in the ocean, biked with Margaret, walked his dogs, and penned letters to friends.

  The letters he wrote and received from Eudora seemed to mean the most to him, as perhaps did his to her. Often, when one of the two of them was traveling, the other would send a letter ahead to be received at their friend’s destination, from the Algonquin Hotel to Oxford University.

  Sometimes they dreamt of each other, then shared those dreams in letters. A few times they dreamt of letters written or received by each other. In waking letters, other dreams perhaps were revealed or concealed between the lines.

  Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, January 11, 1974

  Dear Ken,

  Thank you for the letter you wrote about Diarmuid, full of thought and kindness. I know you and he only got to meet for a little but there’s the gift of the short-cut (or it may be the long-cut), by which you were friends. I felt—Diarmuid told me long ago he believed that people who would like each other always eventually came together.

  How have things been going there? I hope young Jim is perfectly all right again and you no longer need to be the least uneasy. Did you have your Chicago trip, and was it interesting? The weather I know was horrible. It’s been doing the same thing in Southern California as in Mississippi, for days, I noticed—raining. But there are narcissus blooming in the yard here and at night I hear the peepers calling in Belhaven Lake across the street (invisible
from my house—really just a pond, on the campus of the little college). I hear lots of birds singing and I can’t tell you what birds, as I’d like to—(Except cardinals & white throated sparrows. The cardinals with their spring song.) Mockingbirds so far shrugging off starting to sing. (They know.)

  Did a man called Frank McShane get in touch with you? I hope it was all right—he telephoned from Columbia as a friend of Bill Smith’s (I’ve only just met him but he seems a very nice man) to ask if I’d give him your address as he’d like to consult you about Chandler.1 I guess publishers don’t give out addresses—anyway, I did and hope you didn’t mind.

  I’m so glad you enjoy the record. I’ve been to hear Sweet Emma & most of that personnel in Preservation Hall (where the picture is taken from, out front) and love them—I see the record was made up-river a piece, up in Minneapolis. Some time you and Margaret will come to New Orleans—& I’ll meet you there and we’ll go. We may need to hurry—I’m sort of afraid Slow Drag Pavageau may have already gone to his reward—A young friend of mine, Tommy Sancton, is one of the white boys they used to let sit in and play with them—He had his own band later on & when he went over to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar a few years ago he got his band (or formed a band) over there & they went all over England & Europe playing New Orleans Jazz. He’s teaching (English I think) this year in Paris, & still has his band, playing the way the Humphreys taught him—he plays clarinet.2 So it goes on, handed down person to person—I do want to come your way too. It will happen. I hope the New Year is a wonderfully good one for you—Love and wishes,

  Eudora

  I’m cheered every day by the picture. I suppose Duffy weighs 50 by now and is that much fuller of his own say-so.

  Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, January 11, 1974

  Dear Eudora:

  We loved the beautiful bird card you sent. As I may have already told you, our Christmas bird count was a bit low this year—15 or 20 regulars didn’t show up—and we weren’t in national competition, not that it matters. Perhaps the birds stayed away in expectation of the very wet and stormy weather we’ve been having for the last couple of weeks: over seven inches of rain, which is half a yearly rainfall in these dry parts, gale-force winds up to seventy miles an hour, power failures and blackouts all over town. We lost our TV antenna but we were lucky. Our neighbors lost five trees, five huge eucalyptus which were laid across the road in order as if to halt troop movements. Well, it was sort of fun living by candlelight for one night and listening to the radio. We are so spoiled. It was the first real rain I’d seen since Jackson. What an enjoyable couple of days that was with you and your friends. I’ll never forget the poignant pleasure of it, or the pride I felt for you when you stood up in the Old State Capitol and read aloud. I was particularly reminded of that week today because I received from a book dealer in England (Bertram Rota) a copy of The Ponder Heart and I can hardly wait to read it again.