And you are a source of strength to me—
A longer letter soon—I’m fine, and send you my love, and I felt such good heart in your letter—
Yours as always,
Eudora
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, December 14, 1977
Dear Eudora:
I wonder if you saw on television this evening the excellent film covering the extreme northwestern shoreline of Vancouver Island, and the following one about Southern Alberta. I realized more strongly than I ever had before—I suppose this circular motion is one of the narrowing completions of age—and I felt for the moment as if I were happily rounding out my life and going home. Home to the island where my father threw his strength away on the sea, as I suppose, then home again to Alberta where, having been born seven miles apart in Ontario, my parents finally met, and fifty years later or so I went to high school. My cousin Mary Carr who taught school all her life in Medicine Hat (Alberta) has bought a car and opened her house to an Indian student (from India). Her father’s beetle collection is in the University of Alberta (where Herb Harker’s son teaches) collection in Edmonton, and two of the beetles are named after him: “Carri.” These are some of the things my mind has been dwelling on tonight. With the subsidence of depression I find myself getting interested in a number of things, particularly the peculiarities of my own history, which had more space than it needed to move around in. But I must say I’m grateful to be alive, and for your letter, and for your good health. Love, Ken
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, December 18, 1977
Dear Ken,
I’m hoping every day is going more surely better—Will Jim be coming for Christmas now? I hope pleasure comes with him and with everything.
Ann Arbor, where I’ve just come back from, is as you can imagine all under snow, but the extreme cold they’d been having had yielded a little, for which I was glad. My job was to give a reading and see some students in connection with the Avery Hopwood Awards—Joe Blotner and his family took me under their wing, and we had two good evenings in their house, around the fire—where I stayed was in the Inglis House—does that mean anything to you? Formerly the home of a big industrialist & benefactor of that name, now used by the University for entertaining etc. I loved the house—high up on one of those Ann Arbor hills, with gardens all around it somewhere under the snow—Inside it was early 1900’s Gothic—oak paneling, spacious, solid—casement windows opening on the distant view—It made me think of the kind of house some Scott Fitzgerald girl might have had behind her—I lay in bed and waited for them to fix me my breakfast—It was really a restful trip—and my last work trip this year.
Now I’m reading galley pages in the non-fiction book, which will probably take me through Christmas week—I don’t mind. The book will come out about February, I believe. I hope they send some sort of bound copy beforehand, so I can send it to you.
I think of you and send my love, you know that. And I hope the New Year will be really new, and all good—with the work and joy you want and in full measure—I hope this has already started! Take good care, and in Christmas be happy, dear Ken. With love, Eudora
P.S. Monday
I just got your letter—I wish I had seen the films of Vancouver Island and of Alberta—where you went to high school. But that was the night I was at the University of Michigan, where you went later. How glad I am that you have got the depression behind you and are finding interest again in things that can well prove fruitful—Thank you for writing. I am thankful to know things are better, dear.
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, December 22, 1977
Dear Eudora:
I was so happy to get your warm letter, which came on a cold day—literally not figuratively cold. I tell how cold the season is by taking the temperature of my pool, which today went down to 53°. I stop swimming in it when it’s fifty. I think I enjoy cold water, as I certainly do, in memory of the north; also because it feels so good when you come out.
Speaking of extremes of temperature, I believe I passed a couple of nights in the same guest house as you on the Michigan campus. It was terribly overheated, as you might expect, for my taste, and I couldn’t figure any way to turn the heat off. Trapped in hospitality. You wouldn’t have run that risk with the Blotners, though, whom I remember as gentle and considerate people.
I may go north in the summer, having been invited by Nolan Miller to sit in at Antioch on a week-long session about mystery fiction. But first I have to write some. I’m now in the latter stages of revision on the Instant Enemy movie treatment, which I agreed to do reluctantly, but find myself enjoying. It’s really fun to be working again, and the fact that the work is rather simple, difficult though, suits the state of my mind. Something to wrestle with and make sense out of. We have to change position from time to time in order to realize how warmly the sun shines on our various surfaces. And you have to take a novel apart at least once in order to realize the complexity of its inner parts.
These are pleasant weeks, with Jim in and around the house during the long Christmas holiday, Margaret happily working on a sequel to her last book, and Santa Claus crying his wares less stridently than usual.
Christmas greetings and love from Margaret and Jim and,
As always,
Ken
Joy to the world, Eudora, and happiness in the work!
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Our friendship blesses my life and I wish life could be longer for it.”
1978
DURING 1978, Ken’s failing memory was more and more evident to his friends, but he found himself, one might say heroically, unable to acquiesce in this decline or to abandon his futile efforts to turn his novel The Instant Enemy into a viable screenplay. Eudora’s memory was as sound as ever, but her ability to write languished. She continued as a speaker on the academic circuit, making at least eight such trips in 1978, though the need to supplement her income was less pressing and though speaking engagements prevented her from “getting back to blessed stories.” Still, these patterns of avoidance not withstanding, Ken and Eudora more and more openly expressed what had been implicit from the start of their correspondence: the importance each held for the other.
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, January 8, 1978
Dear Eudora:
I had a deliriously happy phone call from a young man whom you will remember from our writers’ conference, Fred Zackel. Fred phoned to tell me that he was in a position to move ashore from his houseboat, turn in his cabdriver’s badge, and become a full-time novelist at last. His novel Cocaine and Blue Eyes had sold to Coward-McCann via Dorothy Olding. Fred has been writing for about a decade and this is his first sale. I think the book will make a name for him.
I’ve been busy for the last couple of months, as you know, trying to rebuild the structure of my Instant Enemy screenplay. I gradually got interested, and I hope learned enough to justify my agreeing to write the final screenplay. This doesn’t mean I’ve gone Hollywood; I’m working at home as usual, and see my producer once a week or so. Under these circumstances it’s rather fun, a fairly easy warmup for more demanding work.
All seems to be well with us, especially since the great spell of rain we’ve had in the last week—five or six inches, which is close to half of a normal year’s rainfall. Our grass and other plantings are already greening, and the air is fresh again. This may be interpreted symbolically too—I feel fine. LOVE, Ken
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, [January 16, 1978]
Dear Ken,
You lifted my heart when you wrote those words “I feel fine.”—And you sounded fine—What happy news from Zack, and how happy he must have been to tell you. (I meant after all that you’d given him.)—Not only your guidance but your understanding of what he was working toward & trying so desperately for, and when his life must have been so lacking in that—understanding. I wish him the very best of success on the book’s appearance—and a much easier and safer life.
How is “Instant
Enemy” going? The technical things you’re finding out might have some interesting results, perhaps in oblique ways, in some piece of fiction some day, do you suppose? (I’ve always had a feeling of the kinship—or affinity—between the forms of film and fiction, have you? Both of them can escape from the confinements of chronological time & immovable place, for one thing, go fast or slow when they need to. And dreams can be entered into the account, and memories revived & honored, and predictions proved or justified—& Truth has a force—) I hope your going treatment serves its present purpose, the very best way, that is, giving you pleasure in the doing. And what a second pleasure the public would have, aside from all that, to be presented with one of your novels done right by in a film version—Here’s our best chance! I’ve been infuriated by what others have done to you, the TV things, and I really thought the reason was that the film writers couldn’t read—
Barnaby Conrad called. I told him I couldn’t work at the Conference this June—you and I felt the same when we talked, and I held to that. I told Barney simply that I was very tired from a year of that, which is true, but more than that my reason is that I sensed as you did that they’d gotten into a way of using people, and of not treating the young writers seriously. I’m not going to believe that this will prevent me from seeing you, because surely we are going to meet, some better way.
(more later)
Later—
That’s interesting that you may be going to Antioch in the summer? I go to Oberlin College, in Ohio too, but I think in April—
The traveling last year & work attached were a little too much for me, I guess, but I at least have learned that I don’t get over difficult things as well as I used to—Still a good many dates to keep before the end of the college year this summer—All the same, I live in the hope of getting back to blessed stories—In fact I am determined, & swear I am.
I’ve been reading old mysteries—“The Mystery of the Yellow Room” which I’d never got hold of till Dover reprinted—Isn’t it insouciant? And Armadale by Wilkie Collins, which you doubtless have read—in which there’s not just one busy character named Alan Armadale—1
I’m glad you got your rain (after that wind?) We got some snow and I’m not so glad—but I’m snug, feeding the birds—Work has been keeping me busy—proofreading on the essay book, getting a new essay underway—This one’s on E. P. O’Donnell’s The Great Big Doorstep, a novel of the ’40’s I’d loved and asked Ralph Sipper to find for me again—When Matthew Bruccoli asked me to suggest a title for his “Lost American Fiction” I suggested it and he’s taking it and asked me to do the afterword. (Everybody in that little story is a friend of yours—except O’Donnell, who died young, & before any of us knew him, but after you read The Great Big Doorstep I believe you will claim him.) It’s about the Cajuns—you know, the Arcadians from Nova Scotia who found a place to go in Louisiana after the British threw them out—Evangeline and those—But this is a modern & comic novel, and I don’t know any other like it.
I am sorry for the poor letter—The real main thing I wrote for was to say I’m happy in thinking of you being fine again—Love as always— Eudora
P.S. I’ve just had a phone call from Reynolds—He thinks of coming down here in February, weekend of the 24th—Wouldn’t it be nice if you could come too? Maybe if you’ve finished “Instant Enemy” the change would do you good. We’d probably laugh a lot, play records—I could ride you around in my old Ford—Reynolds will have to tape a short interview with me for the NYTBR for when my essay book comes out, but that won’t take long—(Anyway you should be here as its dedicatee.) We could all stop work for a few days and take it easy—
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, [January 19, 1978]
Dear Eudora:
Barnaby Conrad told me at the writers’ lunch today that you were definitely not coming to Santa Barbara this summer. Although we are going to miss you, I can understand and indeed share your desire to stay home and work at something entirely your own. For similar reasons, plus the fact of Margaret’s vulnerability, I’ve just regretfully decided to turn down an invitation for this summer at Antioch College from an old friend, Nolan Miller, whom you may know. He and I first met close to thirty years ago at the Midwestern Writers Congress in Chicago. Well, so much for writers’ conferences. I always seem to have more than enough manuscripts to read as it is. This film work I’m doing (on Instant Enemy) is turning out to be more fun than I’d dared hope, and I think I’m beginning to understand the rudiments. One of which is that, at least in my kind of movie, the language has to be the popular language of the mass culture. The fun is seeing how much you can say in it, in language that anyone can understand. Well, I was halfway over to that in my fiction already.
It’s just started to rain again tonight, and in spite of all the rain we’ve had in the last couple of weeks—almost a foot, literally, at our house, and fifteen or sixteen inches in the hills, I’m still refreshed by that pitter-patter. Some recent days, it came down so hard it sounded like the flood re-enacting itself. And our little hill creeks turned into torrents which ran together as they neared the sea, in swift brown little Mississippis inundating finally the sea itself. The sheer wetness of everything and everybody is a delight, over and above the fact that our drought is over for a year, anyway. In no more than a week we got a whole year’s rainfall. And every morning, “when I awoke, it rained.”
Coleridge and the Ancient Mariner, which I recently reread after a long lapse, seems more than ever relevant, and at the very source of modern poetry, where everything visible is furred at its edge, or lit from within by a symbolic flame and/or the eye of the beholder. All my love, ever, Ken
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, Thursday [January 26, 1978]
Dear Ken,
Your good full welcome rain was coming down when you wrote your letter—I read it in the rain here, so I might have been listening to both of them—Just to stay with it, I set down & read “The Ancient Mariner” again too—
Our letters may have crossed—I’d written to tell you about my conversation with Barny about the Writer’s Conference—I think we feel the same way about that. But I hope we are going to be able to see each other in some easy & undisrupting way for you. It is hard to think of not. But when you wrote that you weren’t going to Antioch after all I realized that I must have sounded so light-headed coming out with that wish that you and Reynolds and I could all just come together at my house—Well—Ken, I am going to trust in our good star—It’s a strong one—Life is full of hard work here too—or maybe the final script you’re doing isn’t hard by now. It’s good that it’s giving you pleasure and some interesting sidelights. It is going to be published, I hope,—your script as you write it. That good series, the one that has “The Third Man” & “Brief Encounter” etc—the classic examples.
My piece on E. P. O’Donnell is still not done for Mr. Bruccoli and I must get back to the typewriter. It’s cold here—We had it snow twice—There is a towhee in my backyard that at the sound of my kitchen window going up, for me to put seed on the windowsill, gives a whistle exactly like a boy’s with two fingers in his mouth—
My love to you. I think we stay close—I feel that we are, every day. I hope everything goes well there, getting greener all the time—
Yours,
Eudora
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, January 28, 1978
Dear Eudora:
I have been slow in answering your wonderful letter and invitation. Margaret’s one-year examination—one year after her operation—was scheduled for this week, and I have been awaiting the results. The results are as good as could be expected: Margaret is physically well, with no signs of recurrence. In spite of that, I hesitate to leave her alone for a while yet. She is still sitting in the shadow of the big scare, and I suppose I am, too. Clearly it would cause her pain for me to be gone for even a few days. So I will stay here instead, and hope that your invitation will be a re-open-able one. You know how I’d love to
come, and celebrate with you and Reynolds the publication of a book which is so important in my life, and will be in the lives of many people. No one has ever given me such a marvel. I wish I could take it from your hand. But I believe you will understand why I cannot.
Please give my love, which you always have, to Reynolds. I hope to see you both before too long.
Ever,
Ken
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, [January 28, 1978]
Dear Eudora:
I have sad news. Our dear friend Don Freeman died suddenly of a heart attack in New York, where he was seeing his latest book through the presses. Don had a severe heart attack several years ago but refused to let it slow him down. He made himself available to his friends and confreres, and was constantly appearing at schools and other gatherings for the benefit of children. It seems impossible that he should have gone, he was so warm and lively. He’s left behind him an incredible oeuvre, thousands upon thousands of drawings and paintings, and almost that many friends all over the country and the world. I’m glad you got to know him here, for both your sakes.
When I picked up the paper tonight I’d just written you a short letter explaining what made it difficult for me to leave home these months, even for a few days. It’s simply that Margaret can’t bear to be left alone, at least for a while yet. Which makes it impossible for me to travel for the present. But I trust that this will change.
Of course I thoroughly understand your feelings about the decline of our writers’ conference. You were more than patient to stay with it as long as you did. But I’ll do my little stint for them if they wish, I hope in the same spirit that R. M. Lovett used to attend the criminal trials in Chicago, in the hope of influencing the courts into a carriage of justice.
Meanwhile There Are Letters Page 41