Meanwhile There Are Letters

by Suzanne Marrs

  I look forward so much to seeing your book—books?—& to read in the place they were written in, which really is a different experience, isn’t it?—and of course to seeing you both & all of you—I have the date down as June 18–25, is that still right? Well, we’ll find out more later—Oh it cheers me!

  Reynolds will be here this weekend, when the literary panel of the Arts Endowment meets in Jackson. I’ll attend their meetings, then jump on a plane at an hour it would give you pain to hear, to go to NY by way of Chapel Hill—N.C.9 I’ll be seeing an old Virginia cousin (she is also Bob Woodward’s aunt!) of my mother’s, now in her 80’s, & her journalist daughter—darling people, and it’s keeping in touch as my mother would & always did—her family’s way and I feel it’s mine—

  I wrote you an earlier letter but I guess it missed you before you went East. Forgive what a bad writer I’ve been—and thank you for writing to me. Love, to you both, & see you soon—

  Eudora

  Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, May 18, 1976

  Dear Eudora:

  I didn’t get to do all the things I wanted to do in the East—see Julian Symons on New England soil, for example: but I did see a lot of people, more than I needed really, like a hermit drunk on company. I especially enjoyed coming to know Nona better. It was she who set the ball rolling that tilted the map and slid me eastward, and it is she whose image, now that I am home, stays clearest and warmest in my mind. Such a steady light burns in her. I owe my knowledge of her to you.—For once I stayed in New York long enough to get some sense of what it is to live there (though I couldn’t, not any more) and I covered several hundred blocks on foot. But not one of my walks contained so much laughter (or, fortunately, such melodrama) as our Broadway walk that first night. I did get down to Freeman’s show and took great satisfaction in it—something that he had been hoping for all his life and that I had wished for him. Well, his life is rounding out. While I was in New York Don was in Budapest and Zurich, where his son is studying at the Jung institute, and, I believe, painting, too. Which leads me to the fact that M. and I are planning to go to Zurich on our own business in the Fall—

  Diogenes Verlag are reprinting some of our books—and also to England, where the new books will be coming out.

  I must hasten to explain that the Rolling Stone interview, in spite of the six or seven parts of days I spent with the putative writer of it, is still just words in the air. He plans to come out here to Santa Barbara and doubtless will, before he sets pen to paper. I don’t mind. He’s a gentle soul and can tell me things about music, which is his main subject. He went to St. Olaf’s College in Minnesota, wears a cap most of the time, and has decorated his rather nice bachelor apartment with large movie posters and tends to work at night, sometimes all night. St. Olaf’s is just a hop skip and slide across the border from Winnipeg where I went to boarding school. On this vast continent, that just about constitutes an introduction, even a shared background. Perhaps between the two of us we can understand the compulsions of popular art a little better.

  My current contribution to pop art shows signs of doing well e.g. a strong favorable review (except that it refers to the slow start, which I wasn’t able to get rid of no matter how I tried) in PW, and indications that the publisher will give it a good try. They gave me a nice party at the St. Regis on my last night, so nice that I didn’t even feel self-conscious, and Alfred and Helen came, as at that other party in their apt., but you didn’t. Well, I’ll be seeing you here in Santa Barbara in a month, and that is better. I’m looking forward keenly to your coming, and so are Margaret and your other friends here. Yes, the conference starts on June 18—I have it well-marked on my calendar.

  Love,

  Ken

  Eudora Welty, New York City, to Kenneth Millar, [May 20, 1976]. Written on postcard of Algonquin Hotel and mailed in a letterhead Algonquin envelope.

  Dear Ken,

  Hello from my own slot in the A. It’s a good visit—I was up at Rosie Russell’s in the country Sunday night10—Saw Joan—Walter—Nona—we all spoke of you, and in N.Y.C. they’d seen you, of course—

  Had an unexpected pleasure in meeting Dick Francis & his wife when Joan K. asked me to join them for a drink.11 You probably know him—Such a merry face—I liked them both—

  I’ll be home on the 20th—and then before very long, I’ll be in Santa Barbara & seeing you & Margaret, as I hope—a good & glad sight.

  Love,

  Eudora

  Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, Sunday [May 30, 1976]

  Dear Ken,

  Meet my new typewriter, which I went out and bought on my birthday, to talk back to it maybe. [Eudora has drawn an arrow from “it” to “birthday.”] The anticlimax was they had to back-order it because today nobody wants a manual typewriter. But here it is now, on my table, ready when I am.

  But what it’s to tell you is I’ll be on the plane on June 18, coming in on United flight 984 that gets in at 1:55 PM. That sounds in the middle of lunch. If you’d like to meet me, could you do it easily? Anyway, I’ll surely see you soon! This is lovely to look forward to—I want to hear all the new news of you and Margaret, and more of what you wrote me, which promises all kinds of good and rewarding things. And more about your stay in New York. I’m glad you had that visit, long enough to let you range out and make your place in it as you liked, and relax and enjoy a world that was glad to see you and would be happy to see you more—you know this. I found your traces here and there and wish we might have coincided, but I don’t complain because of Santa Barbara ahead. I continue being amazed—

  Thank you for your letter, which came just after I’d got home. There’s a lot I must do before I come so I’ll begin on the chores. It’s wonderful here now—that is, when it’s not threatening. One night 7 funnels were travelling overhead above Jackson, but forebore to touch down. Next night the trees were alive with the flashes of the first lightning bugs and everything smelled of mimosa and honeysuckle—it’s like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, when our weather’s good it’s very very good, and when it is bad it wants to take the roof off.

  I’ll write Barnaby Conrad presently but wanted to send this on. Is there anything you or Margaret would like me to bring you? I hope everything’s going the very best way with you.

  See you soon!

  Love,

  Eudora

  Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, June 3, 1976

  Dear Eudora:

  Your brand-new typewriter delivered crisp and clear the message that you will be here on June 18, and I’ll be happily waiting for you at the airport. I think you do well to exchange your native funnels for our local problems, even if they do include oil derricks. (Which for some reason reminds me of: “Milton had his daughters; I have my Dictaphone” [Wyndham Lewis].) Current horrors include a plan to put multi-storied commercial buildings on the Santa Barbara wharf. But I somehow doubt that it will ever come about. In spite of all the assaults on her integrity, Santa Barbara remains essentially unspoiled, I think; and the preservers keep increasing in numbers.

  I did enjoy New York, but not in the easy way that I think you do. However, the trip was enough of a success to persuade me to have another go at England and Switzerland—London first for the publication of Hammer on September 17, I think, and then to Zurich which we’ve never seen: Our German publishers are there; so is Roy Freeman, Don’s son, studying at the Jung institute. Mainly we hope to get out into the English countryside, and up into the Swiss mountains. Our earlier attempt was abortive, partly because we made the error of flying direct from here to Heathrow. This trip, we’ll break enroute in Canada.

  Have you ever read any of John Franklin Bardin’s (BARDIN) three mystery novels?12 Julian Symons sent them and I’m reading them now. A little nutty but highly original—not so very different from M’s earlier psychological thrillers. Speaking of which, I’ve already started to think about a new book which I hope to get some more Canada into—the last
place I’ll discover, no doubt.

  It will be such a pleasure to see you again here and soon. I can’t think of anything you should bring except your dear self, and a list of drives.

  Love,

  Ken

  Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, June 9, [1976]

  Dear Ken,

  How glad I was to get your letter and to know you’ll be there to meet me, feeling as I do that the first face I see I would so like to be yours. So, a week from Friday!

  The Times Book Review just came with its piece on The Blue Hammer—had you seen it before now?13 I was delighted that it led off as the Number 1 novel under review this issue, right where it ought to be, and that it got a lot of space, and that it yielded some satisfactory quotes, such as “the best work Macdonald has done in a number of years.” It could have been a little more knowledgeable and discerning, but it made good and strong points and was certainly roundly in favor. He’s properly calling the novel brilliant, but I resented both for you and for your readers his feeling free to give away a key part of your plot. And in doing so calling it a “flaw” which is quite the opposite to what it is. I also resented the gratuitous and unreasonable slap at Sleeping Beauty. (My book!) But anyway, he knew he had hold of a very good Macdonald indeed here, and I hope it’s only the first review of a long line of very shining ones. (The Library Journal and PW ones I would like to see and am glad they pleased you. I thought the novel’s start was paced and set forth in keeping with the larger structure it would be holding up this time.)

  It will be lovely to see you. Then I can listen and ride and see and breathe, and while it’ll be nice to hear about the European trip you and Margaret have ahead, this is the nicest thing I can think of: seeing again in the time that’s almost here that beautiful place where you are right now.

  Love,

  Eudora

  At the 1976 Santa Barbara Writers Conference, Eudora delivered a reading of “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” a story written in 1963 in horrified response to the assassination of Jackson civil rights leader Medgar Evers. “This kind of thing is not easy for me,” she later wrote to Margaret, “and the support of you and Ken and Jim all there in the audience made the difference.”14 Gratitude not withstanding, Eudora’s 1976 visit to Santa Barbara proved to be full of the same tension that had characterized the afternoon of her 1975 departure. During Eudora’s second stay, Ken regularly took her to the Millars’ home, which Maggie considered “a special island away from society” where guests were not encouraged. “She was nice to me, when she saw me there,” Welty later told Ken’s biographer. “On the other hand when she got mad, there wasn’t anywhere to go. It could be pretty explosive; [. . .] And every time, Ken would just back off, impervious in a way, and make whatever change it was she wanted. Well, what else could you do?[. . .]

  “For no reason at all once she said to me, ‘When Ken is away, of course I open your letters to him, but only to see if there’s anything in them he needs to be informed about.’ I don’t know why she told me that, but—I don’t think she’d ever have found anything in any of them to give her pause.”15

  When Eudora wrote to thank Ken for the Santa Barbara visit, she made no mention of these tensions.

  Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, July 2, 1976

  Dear Ken,

  I thought I had much of it by heart, but it was being there, not just remembering, that was marvelous all over again. It was so lovely to be riding in the mountains and along the sea, walking in the town, and all. When I think back, I see that last year and this year came to something more than the two visits added together. Did you ever look through that device called a stereopticon? You see two pictures of the same place as one, and what appears new through the combination is depth and perspective and rounding out—it brings you nearer. Anyway, I felt I had been brought nearer to where your life is, Ken. Thank you for doing so many thoughtful and generous things for me—meeting me, & seeing me off, & all in between. It was fine to see Margaret and Jim so thriving—Jim in spite of that painful spill from the skateboard, and he did look all well again when he did me the honor of coming to say goodbye at the airport. How did he like his first plane ride? I’m happy for Margaret about her new books in particular—From now on all is bound to go easier, with the new start once behind—as indeed the second new book is already evidence for. I hope for both of you that the beautifully planned trip to Zurich & the English countryside will be a celebrating one.

  I do thank you for sharing Herb Harker’s manuscript with me—& for the trouble you took to mail it to me—It safely arrived. Herb must feel good to know that all the time he’d been fortified and helped by your criticism (I got to hear a sample of it—exemplary—in that session at the Conference) has yielded the piece of work that can make him proud and you too. The 200 pages I’ve read so far showed an originality and a confidence, if that’s the word, that really won me. I’ll finish it & return to him—I have his address.

  I did so especially enjoy that impromptu visit to the Eastons, that good afternoon—the good talk—It smelled so good, too, didn’t it, arriving just after all the plants had been watered? And I was glad you took me to meet Ralph Sipper and see his fine bookshop & admirable collection and hear about his plans—and I like where it is.

  I went back to The Zebra Striped Hearse to find the beach house again that you showed me. Of course I kept on reading—I do think it’s one of your best, do you agree? I remembered as I came to them things that had struck me with such pleasure before in the writing, from the careful way your eye had looked at whatever you showed us—the baby asleep (and I guess now this was Jimmy?)—and the hawk—which was used to extraordinary effect in that scene, but was a living wild creature first. People every one are seen carefully because with care, and however the characters fulfill their parts in your complicated plot, they are understood, and treated, as human lives. It’s not the only way your work is of a different order from Chandler’s but it’s an important way. The way of seeing, the point of view, the view of life, the vision, in every writer, how can these things be separated? I should have said the act of seeing. The action, really.

  Mary Lou liked your pieces on Crime Writing so much, and they were new to her—she was writing to you at once, she said. It was a fine weekend. Mary Lou is well, though tired I think—you know this is the tourist season there and she always has company and flings herself into everything. My old friends Mary (your fan) and Aristide Mian (he’s a French sculptor) were back in their house there, and their daughter Mickey was flying in from Geneva at the same time I was flying in from Santa Barbara—so it was luck on top of luck that I could see them too.

  And when I got to Santa Fe, I accidentally received a magnificent corroboration of my belief in the sight of the polar bear running under the plane—it was from the grandson of William James. You couldn’t beat that! He was telling me about his son who is making documentary films up near the Pole—he’s photographing wolves from a plane. So I told him about the polar bear and the commercial pilot and he said oh yes, it would have been easy, because there are no mountains, just flat snow, and no plane needs to fly higher than 1000 feet and can easily dip down if it wants. And he agreed: how could it be made up? So I pass the word back in all its lovely coincidence.

  His ties to Santa Barbara belong to 1919, he said. He remembers Montecito as wild and sparsely settled. He has lived all over the world, was a painter. A few years ago he lost half the forefinger and all the middle finger of his right hand in an accident with a piece of farm machinery (he and his wife lived out in the country from Santa Fe). Now he has made himself a new life as a maker of violins. He put himself to learn this under masters and is working hard, still learning, deeply engrossed, and believes now he will be able to do it well. A whole new world has opened up, all kinds of music makers on the contemporary and popular scene have come into it. He said if he had not lost his fingers none of this would have happened, the learning of another whole art. I was seeing them for
the second time, and all this has happened since the first time. —He has That Profile. There was a portrait he had made of his daughter on the wall—it was sensitive and full of feeling.

  By now you may have been to meet another visitor at your airport, Mr. Symons. I was glad to know he is to head up Penguin, and delighted that he wanted to bring out Mr. Bardin and give him the chance at rediscovery while he’s still living. (I wonder how difficult, as well, this could be for the subject of rediscovery?) Maybe Julian Symons might know something about Kenneth Hopkins [1914-1988] of, She Died Because . . . , and Dead Against My Principles, all going back to 18 or 20 years ago for Holt, Rinehart & Winston. I’m so glad you took to him and apologise for having nothing better than a library book to show you.

  I’ll pursue the Chandler biog. [by Frank MacShane] from here, and will be interested to read the Dahlia film script.16 When it turns up and is easy, if you’ll let me see a copy of the film script of your novel, I’d like to see it, and get it straight back to you. And best wishes to the book on your own work that Twayne is to bring out, as long as you’ve kept an eye on it. The writer of the musical on my story “The Robber Bridegroom” now rehearsing in L.A. says 2 of the main characters have just been combined into one—I guess this has to be expected? But these two characters are Mike Fink and Little Harp—one a real legend and the other a real-life villain. Now how will I ever get them back? And who is that one?