Jim had spent the previous week in Yosemite with his father and had changed when he came back, having acquired a bit of the pride and certitude of adolescence. He beat me at checkers, twice in a row, and learned to handle his surfboard. It is such a pleasure to see him come along, and gently too. Last year when I was visiting an old friend—indeed my oldest friend, we met when we were five, lived three doors from each other in Kitchener, Ontario, where he still lives—last year Clay [Hall] showed me a camping picture of a group of boys taken when I was eleven. One of them looked like Jimmie. I realized that it was me, then, and that he somewhat resembled me in appearance. But the inside of his head is quite different: mine swarmed with words and stories, his with technical information like his engineer father’s: I think you and I were very lucky to be brought up in cultures where the language was paramount, don’t you? The physical world is a thankless and even dangerous god which we are consuming in a giant grotesque parody of Mass. For Jim the structure is alleviated, I believe, by the fact that he is a Roman Catholic and will have access to a more traditional Mass. But for me, and probably for you, the English language is the repository of nearly everything good.
I’ve probably long since told you that Margaret is writing again, morning noon and night, with an obvious gusto she hasn’t felt in years. About Baja California, where she has never been; but then Santa Barbara is thirty percent Spanish-speaking and its real heart is Mexican. I think your visit and your influence had a good deal to do with bringing Margaret back to her work—just one of many many people whom you inspired here. I hope Santa Barbara is reciprocating in a way.
I’m in a kind of limbo at the moment, waiting for a first reaction on my book, and waiting also to be taken up by my travel plans which haven’t quite seized me yet; they don’t seem to be quite real. But I have a reservation to fly from L.A. to London on Oct. 1 for the International Crime Writers’ Conference, where I’ll be on a panel with Eric Ambler, Dick Francis, and Stanley Ellin, which should be fun. Before the Congress I hope to get down into the west country, as far as Cornwall, where my friend Ping Ferry and his wife will be castle-looking in early October and I may be able to join them. I haven’t been in Cornwall for 31 years. Love, Ken
P.S.—I gather you sort of liked the dramatization of The Robber Bridegroom, will look forward to it. K.
Ken had had and would continue to have an unusual amount of difficulty finishing and revising the manuscript of what would prove to be the final Lew Archer novel. When he showed his work to Robert Easton to critique in advance, as was their custom, Millar’s friend was shocked to find uncharacteristic lapses in tone and diction; he suggested various revisions in word choice and even structure—changes Ken made (again uncharacteristically) without complaint.
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, September 12, 1975
Dear Eudora:
I’m sorry I caused you anxiety and should have explained earlier that I was rather completely absorbed in getting my book finished. I was afraid it might get away. The last six weeks or so I was rewriting ahead of the typist in the daytime and preparing final pages for her in my spare time. Well, the whole thing got done and went off to Knopf this week, and I am retracing my steps back into civilization. It’s the longest book and it took the longest time of any of mine; over twelve years in the planning, also twelve months in the writing. I hope it turns out to have been worth the effort. You know, on a larger scale, how hard it is to keep a book alive and going over a long period of time with so many interruptions. But somehow, when a book survives such delays (as Losing Battles triumphantly does) there’s special reason for thanksgiving. I’m celebrating my own small private thanksgiving (enhanced by the fact that Margaret is writing again as you know—and you really did help with this, too. We’re creatures of emulation who love company.)
Next month when I’m in England after the Crime Writers’ Conference in London I hope to get down to Cornwall with Ping Ferry and his wife, am starting to reread Women in Love by way of preparation. Suddenly I’m moseying around in a vast acreage of time. There’s no fun comparable with getting a book in, is there?
My friend Matt Bruccoli, MATTHEW J. BRUCCOLI, the Fitzgerald (et al) scholar, has just written a good strong solid first-biography of John O’Hara, Matt’s first.22 Having enjoyed the work, he’s looking around for another subject. He’s a Chandler scholar, too, but Chandler has been pre-empted by two other biographers working separately. Matt asked me for possible subjects. I thought of James M. Cain and Nelson Algren, but of course they’re both alive. Do you have any nominees?—recent writers who deserve but have not been given biographies. Matt teaches at the University of South Carolina and could probably handle a Southern subject. I think he’s one of the great enthusiastic scholars of our period—he’s lit more fires than any other scholar in his field, and I never knew anyone capable of such sustained cheerful work. All this just in case you think of someone interesting and deserving. Albert Erskine is Matt’s editor at Random House. It occurs to me belatedly that you may know Matt Bruccoli—I think his FS Fitzgerald collection is the largest in private hands.
All’s well here. Forgive me for alarming you. I should have at least dropped you an explanatory card. I guess I was in a writing madness like Zelda’s dancing madness, and it never occurred to me that you might be concerned. You know, Eudora, if I was really in trouble I’d get in touch with you right away. But my life seems very lucky at the moment. I hope yours is the same, and the work goes well.
Love,
Ken
P.S. The photographer, as of course I intended he should from the beginning, is making a copy of the lunch picture for you. K.
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, September 14, [1975]
Dear Ken,
I rejoiced in your letter—all that good news! (I saw it sticking out of the rest of the mail, from upstairs at the typewriter, as the postman brought it—I’m sorry I got the wind up and wrote you the note that crossed it.) It’s such happy news that the novel is finished and sent off—there’s nothing quite like that feeling, is there? Especially when a book has taken, needed, a long time and put many questions to you along the way. I’m eager to read it. I have every belief in the good of its differences, too, because it’s the writer whose control is sure and tight and tested like yours who must be able to judge with the most sensitivity when it comes to giving it leeway. I’m so glad you’ve brought this one about. And thirteen years is a long time—pressure enough on its own.
“The Tarantula Hawk” is a pretty galvanizing title. (But you won’t throw away that other one you had earlier, “Portrait of the Artist as a Dead Man”—that’s still in the bank) Your word “available”—what the tarantula is for the young wasp when he hatches—goes on being galvanic—and I can see that the symbolic possibilities there are good and strong, and rightly scarey.
It’s like a reward, to have the trip to London come right on top of finishing—all as should be. The panel you’re to be on is about the best they could have possibly gotten anywhere any time, surely—at least to this reader. It ought to be full of pleasure for you—especially seeing Eric Ambler again, after you presented him with the award in NY. I just read “Knockdown” and thought it fine, as Dick Francis always is, didn’t you like it? All the best for the trip in every way, and Cornwall sounds magical (well, that’s what it always was, isn’t it?)
One reason I was getting anxious to hear from you was that I’m getting ready to go off for a few weeks too, and while I’m away from home usually the P.O. just holds my mail, and so it would be a long time. I have to go to Washington on one of those Council on the Arts meetings, and then John Houseman was planning to open The Robber Bridegroom in NY around the first week in Oct., so if that still is on, I’ll be in NY from Sept. 27 till Oct. 8. You’ll be flying over, I guess, while I’m down below. I’ll think of you as vertically near on that day.
Mary Lou is coming this Saturday for 4 days, on her way to see her son who is living in Atlanta. We’ll
think of you here. Everybody’s well in my family, and yours sound all well and happy and busy. It’s so good that Margaret is working and enjoying the work—I know it is a lot easier to go off to London when she is having a fine time at home with her book.
Please give her my love. Thank you again for your good and happy letter and please forgive my anxious note. My mother used to chide me out of giving in to such.
Love,
Eudora
Eudora Welty, New York City, to Kenneth Millar, October 1, 1975
Dear Ken,
I was so sorry to hear from Joan Kahn tonight that Margaret had had an operation and that you were not going to England after all—Joan said she understood (from Dorothy Olding?) that Margaret was doing well, and I do hope all’s going along all right now. What a shame this had to come along—and just now.
I’d been thinking today that this was the day you were flying from L.A. to London. I’m in the city between a 4-day meeting of the Arts Council in Washington & the opening of The Robber Bridegroom here on Tuesday night. The meeting was a bit exhausting—so many people talking for so many hours about so much money, though in a good cause. Today I went to see “Ah Wilderness” at Circle-in-the-Square, mainly to enjoy the performance of Geraldine Fitzgerald—we’d got to be friends in Jackson on her visits to work with New Stage—and to go back-stage afterwards and talk. I’m reading “Middlemarch” which I’d never read—You have, I expect—I was always sure it was worthy but that hadn’t made me read it—maybe I should say and that hadn’t made me read it. And how delicious it is—I look forward all day to coming back here to it at night.
I have a feeling that all the signs point to your new novel being one of your best—The feeling you described of the last weeks of work, which I have sometimes felt too, I trust—It’s evidence, I think that something has received the best you can do at the time. I’m eager to read it, of course.
I hope Margaret can get back to hers soon. My sympathies to you both, and love,
Eudora
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, October 5, 1975
Dear Eudora:
I was supposed to be in England this weekend and ensuing weeks but a bit of an emergency came up which has been enough to keep me at home. Margaret had a cancer removed from her nose last week and it caused her some trouble both physical and emotional, so I decided to stay. I can go to England another time. Margaret is okay, you don’t have to worry.
In lieu of the trip I’d planned, I’ve been reading various things about England e.g. Lawrence’s short stories and your short essay on Jane Austen in Brief Lives, which will send me back to her. I read her novels at one fell swoop years ago, and haven’t since, I must confess. But now is the time for rereading.
The book I’ve been working on is substantially finished but runs a bit long and may need some cutting. I’ll get back to it shortly. The reactions of readers here and in New York have been good, and I think I have a good title—“The Blue Hammer,” referring to the human pulse, from a poem by Henri Coulette. Jim and his father are here this weekend and Jim is full of tales of adventures, his own, on sea in canoes, sailboats, and on his surfboard; fortunately he is equally enthusiastic about his new school. His father, after several years of quiet mourning, has at last turned outward, grown a beard, and got a new look in his eye.
We are having our normal hot later summer—over 100° last week. I rather like it.—Here at long last is the picture taken at lunch: both the photographer and I have been unconscionably slow in producing it.
Love, Ken
Eudora Welty, on a plane, to Kenneth Millar, [October 8, 1975]
Dear Ken,
A note from the middle of the air. I’m on the return trip to Jackson. And as I was checking out of the hotel whom should I see but Don Freeman standing next to me. He wasn’t staying at the Algonquin but was there to meet someone for lunch. We had time to talk for a few minutes and it was so nice to see him—10 minutes one way or the other I’d have missed him. I expect he’ll call & give you my greetings when he gets back to Santa Barbara—he hadn’t known about Margaret’s trouble or your giving up of your trip. I’m hoping all goes along satisfactorily there—and I’m very sorry about it all.
My show of “The Robber Bridegroom” opened last night, and I enclose the 2 reviews that had come out before I left. It was really a most cheerful & enjoyable evening—It had taken me from the performance I saw in Chicago till now to get used to it, somehow—The best thing about it was the quality of the performers themselves—a young, ardently devoted & accomplished group of talented kids, with the most ambitious repertory—Marlowe, Shaw, Chekhov, what have you—and the same cast in those august plays was cavorting in “The Robber” in the form of a country musical—It was different, in spirit & style from my book, but it had a valid life of its own in those terms. And I loved those kids. If Don gets his tickets as I hope, he’ll see it tonight & can give you a first-hand account—and his own impressions.
I’ve seen some of our mutual friends of N.Y. too—Joan, as I told you, & Walter Clemons (who was along last night) etc. And what did our dear Algonquin do but have a bottle of fine champagne in a bucket of ice waiting in my room when I got back? (I had already been to the cast party, so I’m taking the bottle home in a sack for some time or other.) I’m reading Middlemarch & steadying myself to fiction where I belong after the Broadway excitement. I hope all is OK in Santa Barbara, & many wishes to you both—.
Love,
Eudora
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, October 9, 1975. Written on reverse of a postcard with image of a Jane Austen letter.
Dear Ken,
Your letter & the fine picture of the lunch were here at the p.o. when I went for my mail this morning. I’m glad to know Margaret is all right and I hope she will be fine & back at her novel soon—
The picture was a lot for you to bother with at a time when you had so much on your mind. Thank you for it. I’m glad to have it from that happy time. (And here’s Don again, whom I just saw yesterday in NY).
In N.Y. I went to see the Jane Austen mss & some letters at the Morgan Library—The only p.c. was this one of her backwards letter to a little niece. There were some where she began a page this way and these ended this way [writing in a cross letter style]—I just read Persuasion again—moving and beautiful in a way all to itself among her others—It’s good to be home & hear the birds again—Love, Eudora
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, October 19, 1975
Dear Eudora:
That was a rich assortment of messages and information you sent me last week. The good reviews of “The Robber Bridegroom” were particularly cheering. (I enclose another which you’ve doubtless seen but may be able to use another copy of.) And it was such a pleasure to have your report of meeting Don Freeman at the Algonquin, soon amplified the other day at lunch by his report of meeting you. These not entirely random chimings of the lives we care for are the very essence of the enterprise, aren’t they? I know you think so, because your whole life moves to that music.—Speaking of Don reminds me of Ann Pidgeon who has just sent me a note of appreciation for the Cather book which you gave me and I lent her and she is now sharing with friends at the University. What a wonderfully evocative book, with everything in it including Mesa Verde which I hope to see one more time before I go hence—go thence before I go hence. And from Willa Cather it isn’t too great a leap to Reynolds Price. I think I’ve got my own book under sufficient control, having rewritten the start but not yet the ending, to dare to read his, and I’m well into The Surface of Earth now. I find it engrossing and liberating and am thrown back powerfully by it into my own first and last theme, the father-heart. In all its delicate and gross detail it seems to me strong and original, very much Reynolds’ own, as well as ours now. Though it was written in the unavoidable aftermath of Faulkner, no shadow falls on the page. The knowledge has been absorbed. It’s wonderful to live in a period when such books as Reynolds’ are being written and such
defenses as yours of it are being made. It is not only the South that is still fighting the Civil War—the New York reviewers, or some of them, are, too.
There are other things I have to thank you for, Eudora. Among them is the Oriental pot which now handsomely contains what Margaret tells me is a Celethea Roses Lineate; and Jane Austen’s backwards writing, so young and sweetly human. We’ve been having pleasant weather the last few days, warm enough for types like me to swim in the ocean, which is in the low sixties. Had lunch yesterday on the Conrads’ verandah with Oakley Hall who teaches half-time at UC Irvine, is head of their creative writing department. The other half of the year he lives at Squaw Valley, presumably for the skiing. Each to his taste. But he is an admirer of yours, and seems rather a nice man.23
Margaret is quite well again and working on her book, approaching what looks like the halfway mark. I think your visit inspired her, you know. We both hope (along with dozens and scores of others) that you will repeat it.
Love,
Ken
P.S.—What appears to be the final title of my book, I hope, is “The Blue Hammer” — a phrase referring to the human pulse in the wrist or temple which I stole from a new poem by Henri Coulette, with his permission.
K.
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, November 4, 1975
Dear Ken—if you’ll excuse this [lined] paper—anyway it’s a pretty sea color, and it makes me think of Santa Barbara—It was good to have your last letter—the one about Reynolds’ book among other things—which I have been wanting to thank you for and write back about. So many daily interruptions—one good one, I’m writing a new story—I’ve felt so happy to be back with a story, and have been wanting to send you a letter out of that happiness, too. I’m hoping you’re feeling the same way with the last work on your novel.
Meanwhile There Are Letters Page 30