Meanwhile There Are Letters

by Suzanne Marrs

  A few days ago Margaret got a happily relieving letter from her editor at Random House. It suggested no changes in her new book but rather wistfully indicated that a few more conventional touches might have been gladly received. For my part I think M’s book could hardly be improved on—and certainly not by conventionalizing the plot. Much of it is comedy which is a bit reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh in that writer’s lighter moods, and I think it’s one of M’s best books. My own work is proceeding at a slower pace than I’d like, but the screenplay is getting written and I think it’s coming into its closing stages. I’m eager now to get back to fiction, which was after all the outcome I sought. It seems to be a time of change for us, one of those finishing periods when one looks around and up. Not a little of the change has been induced by Jim, who decided in this his fifteenth summer to put away childish things and, in fact, got a man’s job. He’s working as a shipping clerk in a vacuum cleaner business and evidently enjoying it. I think he’s thinking about getting a car, which he can do next year, and when that happens he can make his way to the ski slopes without having to persuade an adult to take him there. But I’m really very glad that he’s a self-starter. (His job is just a summer job, of course.)

  We’ve been entertaining our friends and ourselves (e.g. Herb Harker who is a great horseman as you might expect) by going to the horse show this week. One of the events I love has nothing to do with horses—a competitive herding of sheep by border collies—is that something that you can see in Mississippi?—Mississippi is never out of reach of my mind, dear Eudora. I can reach out and touch it, literally, in the book you inscribed to me. What pleasure that has given me in all ways, more than I deserve, but I’m just lucky, I guess. With all my love, Ken

  Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, [July 26, 1978]

  Dear Ken,

  Is everything all right there? I’m trusting so, only when the mail comes without a letter in your hand after what seems rather a long time I want to make sure all is well—But I expect you are hard at work on the movie script. Margaret is fully recovered from the shingles and feeling good about her newly completed novel I hope—and those difficult times over with.

  Here I’ve been working steadily, on a story that I’m enjoying the problems of but trying not to let it get out of the shape of a story—it threatens to. I work most of the day but do most of the typing while it’s early and not so hot—I can’t seem to concentrate in the same room with an air conditioner—It’s distracting enough to pit myself against the electric typewriter, which waits on you—as if drumming its fingers while you think. But it’s a help in not being (manually) such heavy work. In the afternoon I come down to the air conditioned guest room and go on with my pen. You asked me when did I start writing, and I’ve been trying to think—I think as early as I could write, that is, write words, I made little books, to give my mother, paper cut to make double pages, and a shirt cardboard cover, with holes punched in & threaded & tied—the book came first, then I filled it up with a story about a rabbit or something, and crayon illustrations (rabbit on the telephone). Then I wrote the usual “clever” things in school but I assure you they weren’t the least interesting, full of the cautious conventional—it was years (after college, even) before I broke through my shyness—when I first began sending stories out to magazines, and it was a far-away editor who would read them. Then I stopped being clever to be whatever I was without its protection.

  But I still love a book for itself—I would like to be able to make it from the beginning still, & illustrate it & sew it as well as write it. It would have taken me a while longer with “The Eye of the Story” (there aren’t many rabbit-characters.) You used to draw too, didn’t you?

  I’m getting you Nona’s book but everything takes such a time17—She writes from London—did you get a postcard too?—that she’s having a fine time. So do the Kahn sisters—they’ve been in London too—Mary Lou too!

  A young mocking-bird is living here this summer of extraordinary beauty—he has paler grey coloring in the head & breast than usual and very wide, very white stripes on wings and tail—when he stands on the roof of the feeder and bathes in the afternoon rainshower—like now—you never saw such flashes—He’s a dazzler—And the other day he was walking about in the grass of the front yard and he put back his head and looked up the length of our oak tree, that I guess is about 75 years old, and I tell you he contemplated it—Then decided to go back to the grass. He sings, too—

  My love to you. When you get a chance, write me—don’t feel pressed—I just want all to be well—

  Yours ever, Eudora

  Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, [August 15, 1978]

  Dear Ken,

  All of you are still all right, I hope—and didn’t get bumped and spun around too hard—how are you? I hope the house is safe & sound, & the dogs are—The cabana—And the court house tower still standing, and Ralph’s books OK—and the Botanical Gardens—and all. That big fig tree still rooted down—There’s not much news to be had on the national news, just “the most severe in 30 years”—which sounds terrible—and “nobody was killed,” which sounds good—I will seek more—

  Thank you for your lovely letter—I was glad to know all of that—I will write again soon. Have been reading & judging books & films for people, had to stop my story for a few days—My love to you—Take care & retroactively to cover that earthquake—

  Yours ever as you know,

  Eudora

  Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, August 22, 1978

  Dear Eudora:

  I’m sorry to have given you reason for concern and yet I did so knowingly because it is in the nature of our loving friendship to record the dark as well as the sunny hours. Not that my life is dark now, or ever was. But there are a few clouds across the sun, gradually lifting and dispersing as I go. The worst of them, an almost literal cloud, was the shadow on my memory and therefore on my mind. But it was never dark enough to cut me off from hope or even from pleasure in the use of my mind. The only limitation, really, was in the kind of work I could do, and its extent. Fortunately I’ve been able to be gainfully, and I might even say creatively employed in my movie venture which is drawing to a close soon, I hope successfully. At worst I’ll have supported our household and acquired (if I have) a new skill—not a high one as I practise it but a skill, and one worth knowing. A skill is not as helpful as an art but still its employment can be deeply enjoyed while leading us back to the other. The ant legions of the mind climb slowly over the mountain pass and discover that it’s only a furrow. But the furrow is there, and the ants will remember its shape when it turns into print. I hope this tentative report conveys to you that I love the subjective life in all its forms, even when they are limited. Consciousness itself is the miracle, along with its twin sun love which I suppose is the source of everything we know. All well here. Margaret fully strong again. Ken not weakening. Jim growing as we would wish. Love, K.

  (How are you? Blossoming, I think.)

  P.S. I kept this letter with the thought of rewriting it but then I decided not to. It records or at least touches on some mildly troubled experiences which seem to be dropping behind me. Or I am pushing ahead of them. Your letters are always lifting. K.

  Ken’s letter distressed Eudora, who was worried about the demands Margaret’s bouts with poor health had placed upon him. Eudora had faithfully tended her mother through eye surgery, blindness, and a series of strokes. When at last her mother had to go to a nursing home, Eudora chose the best one she could find. Though that facility was fifty miles from Jackson, Eudora drove there daily when she was not away on working trips. During a decade of such difficulties, she had been able to write only two short stories. She well knew how debilitating the role of caretaker could be.

  Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, August 29, 1978

  Dear Ken, thank you for writing, for it’s true I had been concerned—I’m glad to know that you are feeling ahead of what’s troubled you and I hope all shadows are ligh
tening—You have done so much—From time to time I can’t help think that strong as you are and being such a source of strength to all those you care for (all that “strength” implies) you must some time need a little time or a way to restore some for your own—Forgive me if I need forgiving for saying that, and poorly as I put it in words too. I guess I felt I could say it because you’ve been a source of strength to me. And because I had to learn for myself about that kind of tiredness—

  It’ll be good when the movie script is a completed thing. I should think writing one would be an invaluable way to learn new things about the writing of stories we’d be the better for knowing—perhaps oblique ways, but I always put a value on that—I am a lover of all ways of learning to make—Making a film script would be a whole new, and I can well believe hard, discipline—But where maybe you couldn’t use a great deal of what you’d learned in writing novels in writing the film, I wonder if what you learned in writing the film mightn’t give new glimpses to the imagination of use in writing novels? Oblique, that is. Actually, I think movies and short stories have a sympathetic relationship that’s fairly strong, do you?

  I want to write you something more about Pritchett, and some other things I had to tell you—Oh, one remark in our paper you might appreciate for the same reason I do—When a tornado hit at Crystal Springs, south of Jackson, a man on the scene said, “It didn’t sound like a freight train to me, or a jet either, like they always say. It just sounded to me like a bunch of wind and it looked like a sheet of water. I says to my son, ‘Hoss, we’re in the middle of a tornado.’”

  (This didn’t hit in Jackson, just went over “aloft” as they say, but the season changed, I think—Today it’s cooler, clear, and it smells of a lot of fallen pine straw, clean & shining. How the mockingbird sang! I’ll enclose one of his feathers he dropped in my backyard. (in lieu of the song)

  Is Santa Barbara mending all right?

  I think of you and send love and wishes for good days in a long line ahead, the best days of all—

  Love,

  Eudora

  I wish this were a better letter but I am sending it all the same.

  Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, September 18, 1978

  Dear Eudora:

  I shouldn’t have written you when I was feeling depressed but I did so anyway, perhaps in the thought that I would sooner be known truly than favorably; but I’m afraid with the effect of depressing you. I’m feeling much better, for reasons that seem as obscure as the causes of depression. You did spell out one danger in my life, I hope not in yours, that one can be used up in the service of pain and trouble not one’s own. Well, I’m not used up. I hope I was able to lean on your strength without abating it, and on your knowledge of trouble and its meanings without deepening your own troubles. The best thing that can happen to a man is to be known, and by a woman of your great kindness and light and depth. I think you read the situation and showed me a step towards change.

  The world itself, not only its poor denizen, seems more hopeful than it has for a while. It seems to me that the three men at the Summit have stepped back from the edge rather finally, and that the President’s good will and understanding have again justified Reynolds’ opinion of him. It seemed to me that all three men showed great skill and good will.18

  Sliding from the large to the lesser, I’m in an interesting situation. A month or so ago the Russian weekly OGONEK began to serialize my old book The Far Side of the Dollar under the title (in Russian) “Path to El Rancho”! My old school friend Bob Ford (Canadian ambassador to Russia) wrote to ask me if I’d authorized the edition. The answer was no. I don’t seriously object but I think it’s time Russia learned to go through the motions. But of course, in Russia or anywhere else, I’d rather be read unpaid than not at all. This is Ford’s last year in Russia, by the way. He speaks and writes Russian, and has become a rather central figure in contemporary Russian letters. You may remember my mentioning him when you were here. And he promises when he retires next year to go home to his flat in Paris by way of California. I hope he does. He was my dearest friend in college and though (or because) we seldom meet, nothing has really changed in our relationship, though it may change quite rapidly when we do, not necessarily for the worse.

  I’m getting along towards the end of my “Instant Enemy” screenplay, but have no way to judge it yet. It’s something that keeps changing until it finally freezes and gives off a reassuring chill, which I emit. I have spent about six months with it and kept finding things to do, without quite knowing why—a new and rather refreshing relationship with work. Margaret has sent in her new book to Random House and got a good response, as she should. It’s a wild comedy controlled by a good plot which unwinds itself finally in the last words of the last sentence. I think you’ll enjoy it, and will send you a copy when it’s made, nine months or so in the future.

  Well, I seem to be looking forward rather happily to the future, and perhaps I shall learn to keep still when I stumble and bump myself.

  Love,

  Ken

  Before she received this letter, Eudora had already written to Ken.

  Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, September 19, 1978

  Dear Ken,

  There’s a feel of the changing season in the air with us, even though it’s still hot—and I hope it’s a season of coming good with you—Good work & good plans ahead. Most of all, good spirits again—

  I’ve not much news to report—I’ve been writing some and cooking some and on Sunday will be helping (I hope) our little New Stage which has bought a new theatre (you were inside our old one once, that used to be a Seventh Day Adventist Church, but finally nothing was going to keep it any longer from falling in on us) by giving a program of readings at a benefit for it. Everybody else has been working quite hard asking people for money for New Stage, and I can’t do this, so the benefit is my rather daring substitute—It’s daring because I’m doing it in front of my home town—it’s different with an audience of strangers or students, such as I’ve been working with all year—And daring because they’ve made it the first thing to happen on our new stage. Suppose nobody comes—

  This work year has been something to physically recover from, and I think I am at last slowly making it. But I was exhausted all this summer just when I had gained the time and some money in the bank so I could carry out my hope of uninterrupted writing. I’ve done a good deal of writing, true—that rests me, in the best sense—but is it good?—I don’t know, and the lecture year wasn’t worth it if I find I need to do the writing & thinking over. (It’s a good hard piece of work, which I like.) Well, I press on—

  Talked to Reynolds not long ago, who says he’s all right. He’d had a burglar in his house, though—someone had entered while he’d gone out to eat lunch, and had gone all over things, probably looking for money, but had only carried off the stereo system—Reynolds has all kinds of other things like TV, electric typewriter, camera etc. that he might have stolen. But he pawed through everything—contents of desk, dresser drawers—This wasn’t the first time Reynolds has had a thief, his house is in the country, on a road with few neighbors—So he put in an alarm system. He feels better for it, and I hope these events will stop. (I’d go a little wild to be closed in & wired up with those alarms, which I’ve heard go off by mistake in other people’s houses, but maybe it does come down to a choice. Anyway, he feels a whole lot better.) You have your dogs!

  Mary Lou tells me her son Duncan is writing a book for Harper & Row called Disappearances—you remember disappearing is what he did, for the good part of a year. Putting aside all he’d been endowed with, education, training (he was a PhD, teacher of English, with a brilliant record) also, disdaining all his worldly goods which his mother had wanted him to have young, not wait till she was gone, and of course his family & friends, he emerged with a new name, new life, in a new part of the country—Atlanta—lived in the poorest community with a black homosexual friend, & I think started from scratch with som
e unskilled form of job, and has got back in touch with the world of thought and ideas and creative work again gradually, and now he is writing about it, in some aspect evidently. Mary Lou, always supportive, at all these stages, is thrilled for him now. I felt you would be glad to know of it, having known its beginning—I wonder if many such disappearances find a way back, or not, or resolve themselves in a comparable way—Of course you’ll have surmised there are many other conflicting factors in Duncan’s story—I hope he is coming into his own, his real own, now—A gentle, sweet, apprehensive young man—not really so young now—sensitive to all the injustices of the world, the last time I saw him (10 years ago)—

  I hope the film script is getting wound up and maybe out of your way now. Good news about this and about the other things too, I hope and trust.

  My love to you—

  Eudora

  Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, September 23, 1978

  Dear Ken,

  We do want to be known truly, and I want to know truly. I’m glad that you feel you can lean on me—it is part of trusting—you mustn’t worry or imagine that anything but good could happen to me from our knowing each other—truly—the dark times as well as the bright—for you know as I do there is nothing destructive in it, only everything that moves the other way—Depressed or happy and serene, our spirits have traveled very near to each other and I believe sustained each other—This will go on, dear Ken—Our friendship blesses my life and I wish life could be longer for it—Much love and I’m so glad you’re feeling better—