Thank you for your love during my silence.
As always, Ken
Eudora Welty, New York City, to Kenneth Millar, [April 9, 1979]
Dear Ken,
I’m so glad of your message—Thank you for the thoughtful and swift way you relieved my mind. The operator’s note says your call was at 2:10 and at that time I was standing right there at the elevator, waiting to come up—It would have been nice to have heard your voice, but I am awfully glad anyway to know what you said.
The reason I’m up here is a meeting I was asked to come to, out at the Institute of Arts & Letters, not really a convenient time for me as I was at last getting back to work—Of course I’m enjoying seeing my old N.Y. friends—Nona by the way sends her regards to you—It’s cold, with gale-force winds—In the Park the forsythia & the willow trees are the only signs of spring—Next Tuesday I’ll be flying back to my azaleas—
It’s good news that Margaret’s new book is out, and I hope she’s pleased with it—Just before I left home, I was pleased to receive a copy myself, and have it to look forward to on my return—It’s good to see the attractive job Random did on it and also the nice ads in The New Yorker & the Times. I’m watching out for Mr. Broyard’s review column, remembering his fine review of her last novel.
Tonight Walter Clemons is taking me to see the murder musical, I guess it could be called, Sweeney Todd—Stephen Sondheim’s music—and the book by the man (forget his real name) whose pseudonyms are Q. Patrick & Patrick Quentin—I never did—did you—care too much about his mysteries, but will see how he turns out to write one for music—3
I’m happier for thinking things are all right with you tonight, and thank you for letting me know—My love to you—it’s always with you,
Eudora
On Eudora’s April 13, 1979, birthday, the Pearl River flooded Jackson, Mississippi. Eudora’s house was not hit by the flood waters, despite Ken’s assumption otherwise, and at the end of the month she felt free to join friends for a second trip to Santa Rosa Island, off the west coast of Florida.
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, April 26, 1979
Dear Eudora:
I was greatly relieved to learn that you had left the flood zone. It must have been difficult for you to be forced out of your home under such circumstances. But you have friends everywhere and I know you’ll have been well looked after. For a woman who speaks softly and doesn’t deliberately seek adventure, you do have your share of experiences. I hope and trust your home won’t have been badly damaged. But I know this must have happened to the homes of many of your friends, and how long it will take to restore the damaged ones.
You may welcome a change of subject. Yesterday I sat in on a local murder trial in which a youngish woman is alleged to have murdered her husband by firing into his body eight shots from two guns, in self defense, according to her story. And she may just possibly make it stick, so dramatic and convincing was the step-by-step account of her thoughts and movements (and her husband’s movements) provided by her defense counsel.
My fellow crime-writer on the other side of the wall, through which I can hear the television talking, received happy news today. Her first review arrived in the mail (NYTBR) and it was a dream review, the key word being “masterly.”
Take care of yourself, dear Eudora, and treat yourself with kindness.
Love,
Ken
Eudora Welty, Urbana, IL, and New York City, to Kenneth Millar [May 23 and 24, 1979]
Dear Ken,
It was so good to be able to talk to each other and the timing was just right too, for me, as the next morning I was going off on this trip. I’m cheered to know things are moving along in a good direction with you, and I hope strongly for that day to announce itself to you soon as the day a new book begins. Its coming is as sure as time, that’s how I feel about things, and your long experience must tell you the same. And wanting to tells you too. I’m speaking to myself as well as to you, because it’s been a time when I couldn’t, & still can’t, work—But one of these days.
Thank you for your concern about our flood. It was almost unbelievable—it trespassed on all likelihood—a lake appearing in front of you on your neighboring street where no water had ever been seen before—not a rampaging flood, a quiet creeping up—And in the calm clear Easter moonlight, no sound in the city, except trucks carrying dirt & sand for the levees & helicopters flying over to spot what was happening. The rebuilding is going on now. I must say people everywhere behaved well—They helped each other with might & main, and nobody looted. It was scarey about the snakes. Of course they were displaced too—People getting back in their houses found them high & low. The YMCA, when it was able to be entered, had 5 cotton-mouthed moccasins in the gym, one wound around the clock.
I’m in Urbana on a 3 night stay [May 18–20]. The University Press is getting out a little book of a
Before she completed this letter, Eudora left Urbana and headed to New York City, where she would attend the annual ceremonial of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
(cont’d on Thursday [and from New York City]) short piece I wrote, which the university magazine Accent published in 1942—they were good to me in my beginnings, & the editor & I have kept in touch over the years: Charles Shattuck—he was in my house when you were, that time, should you possibly remember among so many. Anyway, you have the article itself, “Ida M’Toy,” in Eye of the Story. I signed the edition & when it’s out I’ll send you one.4 Charles is retiring this graduation & they gave me an hon. Degree—So it’s been a pleasant time with him & his family. Green, green in Illinois now—And the corn coming up this big [illustration].
As you see, I’ve moved on to here—a few days only—Pouring rain but it’s rather nice to sit still in my little cubicle [Algonquin Hotel room] & hear the rain falling all around me—In a while I’ll go out to join more old friends, William & Emmy Maxwell.
I feel we are bound to meet too—some right time—I hold it in my mind. But we’re never out of touch. If not one way, then another.
Did you happen to see the movie “Manhattan,” Woody Allen’s? I saw it in Jackson just before I came away, and it was a marvelous essence—Funny & packed with things you will recognize—What an ear he has, and how he can use it. In some respects it was more Manhattan than Manhattan itself—Very expert, & visually a beauty—
I wrote Margaret a line to tell her how much I enjoyed her book and will send when I can find it—It’s somewhere in this big brown envelope of unanswered mail I carry around in my suitcase—As you see I am writing to you instead, just this little scrap, but will do better when the last college trip gets done—Brandeis on Sunday—My love and wishes—Eudora
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, June 1, 1979
Dear Eudora:
It was such a pleasure to have your letter, your letters, from far and near, and to know that you sailed unperturbed across the flood. I think it must be your letter bag that keeps you calm and at-home with all these changes going on around you, but with you at the still center. I was afraid you might have been upset by something striking so near, but even to the snakes your heart went out—“of course they were displaced too”—what a dear woman you are. Your letters always bring me back smiling into the real world and remind me what a good place it really is.
Yes, I did see Manhattan and intend to see it again. Woody Allen is a great comic and becoming something more, a great artist, perhaps when he feels the urge to slip out of the center of the movie and let it go on without him.
—Speaking of movies, the phone just rang (this minute!) and my Canadian friend Jerry Simon of Toronto, a philosophy teacher who just made his first movie, based on my old Three Roads—Jerry just called from Toronto after the first showing of the movie, and reports that it is a hit. Somewhat carried away by this success at forty, Jerry now wants to make two others, one by Margaret, one by me. Pleasant news, but after my recent experience making a movie, I’m not exactly c
arried away by the thought—preferring to stand by at a distance and let other people make the movies. Perhaps I’d feel differently if I were younger, but I doubt it. It’s the word that I love, more than the picture, as I think perhaps you do, too.
The books by M. that Jerry favors are Rose’s Last Summer and An Air That Kills. Of mine he’s interested in Find a Victim, Zebra Striped Hearse, Black Money, among the newer books. I have to take a look at them before he calls again.
Much love, as always,
Ken
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, June 26, 1979
Dear Ken,
I was so glad to get your last letter, and I’m sorry to be so late writing back. Some unlikely events have got in the way of things I want to do—or maybe you’d call the events mismatched. Anyway, first thing on getting home from my trip on June 1 (the date of your letter) I found the foundation of my house was going its own way under me, after all these years, and I have to have a lot of work done to get it back where it belongs—yes, under the house. So they’ve been digging holes in the yard 35 feet deep and filling them with concrete, to make pilings. A lot of bricks had to be pulled out and put back, etc. Knocking and pounding and once hammering with a big mallet thing that looked like what clowns hit the other clowns over the head with—it went all through me. I could feel the presence of my father, who thought the house was built here to STAY, telling me with tight lips “Get those people out of here.” The worst of it’s about over now. It was rather wonderful to learn what blue clay looks like—it’s the solid stuff that doesn’t move around (in Mississippi) (different from the way it moves around in California) like the clay on top—and it has small, whole seashells all through it. I knew the Gulf had once covered us here, or more than once, and that whales swam in it—their bones have been unearthed—but these were just lovely little undisturbed seashells—I’ve been sleeping over them 35 feet down under me all these years. Well, the second thing, I’d agreed to sign books for the Franklin Library for a limited edition of Optimist’s Daughter and write a preface for it—so here arrived 6,000 pages for me to go to work on. (Both these figures are right, 35 feet and 6,000 pages, it’s not just my bad typewriting.) The lucky part is, the Franklin Library will just about pay me for the foundation—so I’m not really just writing my name, I’m making bricks. All is supposed to be over on June 30, the deadline, and next Tuesday is the day I go over to start my work at Oxford. It’s been a sort of comical meeting of events, don’t you think?
Of course I’ve thought of you same as always and hope things are moving along as they should. Have you decided on the movie proposal, you and Margaret? I was delighted to know what a hit your “Three Roads” was making in Toronto. —I feel very much as you do about what I write being rightly on the page, in words—the only way it can be all your own work. And it makes me feel silently amused when after some dramatization of some story of mine in a college production, I’m asked, “Well, how does it feel to see your characters brought to life?” I thought they were brought to life already, in words—or where did the actors find or understand them? All of which is not to say that the short story and the film don’t have a great deal in common—in method, and ease of movement through time and space, etc etc. I am sure you know all that the film and the novel have in common and all that they do not and can’t be made to have, from the work you put in on your script recently. I’d like very much to know how this all turns out.
I’ve been wondering if the Writer’s Conference might be going on in Santa Barbara—it gives me a pang to think others can see you and I can’t. Well, anyway I’ve got seashells somewhere near me. I thought of your mountains lately when I read in the Smithsonian Magazine—do you subscribe? I expect you do—about the migrations of pigeons and how it may well be that pigeons can hear the infra-sound that is generated by mountains. A wonderful article, though piteously illustrated by poor pigeons in this or that apparatus being tested for knowing where they are—sober, ludicrous illustrations, but the facts and theories in the article are wonderful, the kind of things you love to keep thinking about.
If you can, please let me hear from you in England—I’ll write to you anyway, it ought to be a good place. So far, I don’t really know what I’ll be doing there, or what my duties are, or how free I’ll be but I should find out soon. The only address I know is
c/o British Studies at Oxford
University College
Oxford University
England
I fly over (from Atlanta to Gatwick) July 3, arriving early in the British morning of the Fourth of July—
My love to you always
Eudora
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, Oxford, England, July 1, [1979]
Dear Eudora:
How good to have your letter, and in time, I hope, to answer it trans-Atlantically. Recently you’ve seemed to be in almost constant flight, not from but towards, bringing the halves of the western world together. It must be exciting and satisfying. Even from the sidelines here on the other side of the continent, the continents, the thought of your movements and your mind hovering over them is catching at my throat—your flight out and your flight home.
Your sense of timing is right as usual. The writers’ conference is just over and from my point of view, turned out to be the most successful ever. Definite improvement in the quality of the students, and on the whole of the teachers, too. The fact is, the conference is still going on, to judge by the mss. left on my desk still. I tried a little more personal approach in talking to the students this time, pushing them in the direction of autobiography, and it seems to have reached some of their minds, I hope permanently.
We are well here, humans and dogs. Don’t overdo beyond the point of enjoyment, and take care. I think of you as always with love.
Ken
Eudora Welty, Oxford, England, to Kenneth Millar, August 5, 1979
Dear Ken,
I loved your letter sent to me here, and not only because it was from you, but because it was my only letter—The delay in mails from home has left most of us bereft for weeks—but your letter came like an arrow. You were so sweet to write me, and from the farthest away it proves (again) something about distance defeated. I’ve thought of you at many different times here of course—The first ride into the country, from London—into the Cotswolds—was through high meadows where they were haying—those golden summer fields—with the stacks arrayed against the sky, and the poppies still blooming at the edges in the stubble—everything sweet smelling—& I thought of the night when you came here young and slept in the fields, that you told me about, and were waked up by larks. I’ve been in the country visiting on several weekends—once in the home of English friends I’ve known since my first visit here, a dear man and his wife, who gave me a welcome back that really cheered my heart. I’ve had a difficult time in one respect—my closest friends of the 50’s visit here, Elizabeth Bowen most of all, are now gone, and I miss them so sharply—London didn’t seem the same place at all. I realize that now I’m not as able to cope with such—not as much energy or as much resilience in going on anyway as I had when I was younger. But of course the days are filled with things to do, places to see, all to me extraordinary and I supposed now or never. The young people I meet with are top-notch, the pick of their colleges, and sweet & attractive as well as smart—I enjoy the Oxford lectures—some greatly more than others (what do you think of Mr. Rouse?) and I’m delighted with my luck in being here in the summer they’re all on the Renaissance in England—so instead of Beowulf and that ilk, which was last summer, we have Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, Sir Christopher Wren, & co. A feast. I’m not attempting side trips on my own (too expensive) so I won’t get to Scotland or Ireland or even Wales close by,—but maybe after all I will get back. I hope you can and will.
One fine thing in store before I fly home is a meeting with Mr. Pritchett. He had written to me in the spring asking me to let him know if I ever came to London, so I sent him a note
and he has asked me to lunch with him and his wife as soon as I get back to London. You know how I love his work—and I never heard of anybody who knew him that didn’t love him. I’ll tell you about it afterwards. My plane flies me home (by Atlanta) on the 18th—
Ken, I hope all goes well with you, & with Margaret, & Jim—and the dogs—Deeply I hope with your work as well—It was so good to hear from you—My love always—Eudora
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, August 16, 1979
Dear Eudora:
I’m so glad to know that you are on your way home, or there by now. I think the British Isles were not as generous to you as they should have been. Perhaps they feel that they have given enough to all of us in times past. But then that still puts you ahead of them. You’ve given us all so much, and with such grace.
The news from here is not altogether good. Our grandson Jim dropped out of school, aged 16, for reasons that aren’t very clear to me but seem to have to do with the pleasures of freedom. But I’m sure that Margaret and I, with our scholastic backgrounds, must be a part of the problem. I have no doubt that Jim will come back in but he is making things difficult for himself. It will test his mettle; I must say I love him no less. What would you do?—just tell me the first idea that occurs to your mind.
It’s difficult for all of us these days, knowing what to do. Nobody seems to know. We seem to be waiting, each man to the man beside him, waiting for signals from outer, or inner space. It scares me a little, quite a bit in fact, but not so much as if everything stayed bland. Our fictions, written and unwritten, are coming true.
Love, and safe journey, Ken
This was literal truth for Ken and Margaret. Each had written books and stories over the years—of hit-and-run accidents, mental breakdowns, disappearing daughters—whose events had later been eerily paralleled in their real lives. Now maybe Ken recalled various tales of Margaret’s that had dealt with blindness—as well as that more recent book of hers, involving a husband losing his memory.
Meanwhile There Are Letters Page 46