Meanwhile There Are Letters

by Suzanne Marrs

  “Poor Rachel,” he said.7

  The flashback ends at this point, and in a partial draft labeled “Spring ’84 Pulled out to be of use in Henry story,” the narrative returns to the present. Stella, a.k.a. Rachel, finds her visit with Henry and memories of their relationship called to a halt when Donna reappears.

  Daylight struck the room. The front door had opened. Donna stood there, as if she’d come in by a flash. . . . The front door, left open behind her, was drifting farther ajar. Still more daylight was escaping into the room, running over the carpet like an overflow of water. Donna came a step further and then stopped trying. She sank to the floor, and sat with her back to the wall and her legs out in front of her.

  “Baby’s home,” she said.8

  Part 3

  Among the thirty pieces of “Spring ’84” text, there is one scene focused on Stella’s return trip to her home.

  I left my seat and walked off the plane during the twenty-five-minute stop in Birmingham. I had not yet telephoned Dr. Fields; I must do it here; not at home. It was a quarter past three on Saturday afternoon in the Birmingham airport.

  The concourse was empty. I found myself the single walker on the long silent expanse of carpet; at every gate, it was the same, the chairs in their rows empty; no one attended the check-in counters; the bulletin boards had not a flight or arrival posted. Le Snac was shuttered down. The newspaper vending stands stood emptied.

  I paced along, and then the thought reached me as if a stone in flight had struck at my forehead: here is the picture of what has happened to Henry’s mind. It has been deserted. In the corridor I saw no face: for him there was no expectation of a face to know. No place, no destination, no time is posted where he no longer reads. In his mind, no one is coming, and everyone has gone. I was not there either. Where I’m walking, everyone is gone and there is no one meeting me. I am seeing everywhere around me his mind that I love emptied of all it held, all that packed it, pressed it, lighted it up—memory.1

  What seems to be a closing scene is grouped in “Part 1 Affinities,” along with the story’s opening scene. In this passage, Eudora had not yet decided upon a name for the narrator’s hometown; at one point it is called Inverness and at another Cedar Springs.

  This is not a story about me, unless except inasmuch as the story of Henry has now become mine as well. All I record here is that I managed to lose myself in my own home town of Inverness while driving home from the tiny airport.

  It was as if, on my painful journey away from Henry, I was everywhere being conducted through Henry’s mind, but nowhere did this come closer to me than when I disembarked in my home town. I found myself lost. I was born in Cedar Springs, in the house I live in now (the Presbyterian Rectory) but I could not get there.

  For a moment, there at the wheel of my car, I was terrified. But I saw that there was nothing—that there never would be anything—to be terrified about. In trying to enter Henry’s mind where I could still be with him, I’d found that it was everywhere I went. It was all around me when I walked through the deserted airport, and now, as I was lost for the moment, in my home town. I was remaining close to Henry, as if I still had my arm around him.

  Then I made my way safely home, into the Rectory. And I felt very close to Henry. When I could have let myself drop to the floor in the airport, I felt a kinship with Donna too.2

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS volume might never have been compiled had not Tom Nolan greeted me at the 2006 Virginia Festival of the Book with the suggestion that we collaborate on just this project. I embraced Tom’s suggestion as did my book club in Jackson, Mississippi. Eventually, Tom and I managed to clear the decks and begin.

  Mary Alice Welty White, Eudora Welty LLC and the Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82 granted us permission to transcribe and reproduce all the letters collected here. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History has been a good home to the letters and steward of their use. To these individuals, corporations, trusts, and institutions, we are deeply in debt.

  We are honored that Mary Alice Welty White, Eudora Welty LLC, and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History consented to the transcription and publication of Welty’s unfinished story “Henry.”

  No one more ardently desired for Meanwhile There Are Letters to be published than did Bettye Jolly, Martha Blount, Lynn Evans, Susan Shands Jones, Linda Lane, Judy Parker, Sister Simmons, Julianne Summerford, Katherine Wiener, and Rebecca Youngblood. This group read and discussed Ross Macdonald novels, listened to me read passages from Meanwhile in manuscript form, and encouraged me every step of the way. Katie Bowen and Lee Anne Bryan, two of my star students from years past, along with my supportive friend Paula Kemp, took time away from their own careers and families to help proof the text and revise my own stylistic infelicities. Betty Uzman, Alanna Patrick, and Forrest Galey of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History provided essential and cheerful research assistance as did Jennifer Ford (another star student from the past) at the University of Mississippi Library. Ralph Sipper and Luke Lampton generously shared their private collections of Welty and Miller correspondence, and Sipper granted us permission to quote from his own letters. William Price permitted us to cite his brother Reynolds’s letters to Welty, the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University did the same for materials in the Reynolds Price Papers, and the Washington University Libraries provided access to material in the William Jay Smith Collection.

  Special thanks to Kent Wolf, Rob McQuilkin, Craig Tenney, and Loretta Weingel-Fidel, the agents who facilitated this project, to Cal Barksdale and his colleague Max Brown for their wise editorial counsel, and to Millsaps College and the Eudora Welty Foundation for their sustained support of my work.

  Longstanding and ongoing appreciation and love go to my husband, Rowan Taylor, whose wisdom and encouragement, patience and ability to call time, have been unwavering for lo these many years.

  Eudora Welty was my close friend for almost twenty years, and she graciously allowed me to write her biography. That undertaking has proved crucial to the compilation and editing of the Welty/Millar letters. As always, Eudora, one of America’s finest writers, has my deep gratitude not only for her fiction and correspondence but also for her friendship and greatness of spirit.

  Suzanne Marrs

  * * *

  Eudora Welty first told me in 1990 of the existence of her correspondence with Kenneth Millar, and Reynolds Price urged me to pursue her almost sotto voce offer to let me read it; but Miss Welty’s fragile health and other factors intervened. Years passed before the collaborative partnership of Suzanne Marrs (whom I cannot imagine ever committing “stylistic infelicities”), the caring efforts of four agents, the yeoman work of Max Brown in preparing the manuscript, and the enthusiastic commitment of editor Cal Barksdale enabled the halves of the Welty-Macdonald correspondence to be rejoined and shared.

  Thanks to the University of California, Irvine, Special Collections and Archives for access to the Millar papers, to the Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin, and Julian Symons for providing access to letters by and to Kenneth Millar, and to Scribner for the use of my interviews with William Campbell Gault, Brad Darrach, Reynolds Price, Ralph Sipper, and Eudora Welty. A special thank you to Nicholas Latimer, at Knopf.

  The formidable research done for my Ross Macdonald biography has been essential to this work. I am forever indebted to the creative commitment of the estimable Mary Rousson.

  New projects are nourished by old friendships. Among those whose good wishes I treasure are Diana Cary, Larry Dietz, Billy James, Hank Jones, Rae Lewis, Dick Lochte, Bill Ruehlmann, David Strick, Joan Long Sweeney, Dan Wakefield, and Mary Alice Wollam.

  My wife Mary makes writing possible and life worth living.

  Eternal gratitude to Margaret Millar and Eudora Welty for their generosity and trust.

  Tom Nolan

  * * *

  PERMISSIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Endpaper photographs of Eudora Welty’s and Ross Macdonald’s correspondence used courtesy of the Eudora Welty Collection–Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Eudora Welty LLC, and the Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, copyright © Eudora Welty LLC and Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, 1978.

  Millar, Kenneth, book inscriptions to Eudora Welty, reprinted by permission of the Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, copyright © 1971, 1973, 1979.

  Millar, Kenneth, excerpts from letters to W. H. Ferry, reprinted by permission of the University of California, Irvine, Special Collections and Archives and of the Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, copyright © Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, 1977.

  Millar, Kenneth, excerpts from letters to Ashbel Green reprinted by permission of the University of California, Irvine, Special Collections and Archives and of the Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, copyright © Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, 1970, 1973, 1979.

  Millar, Kenneth, excerpts from letters to Alfred and Helen Knopf, reprinted by permission of the Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin, and of the Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, copyright © Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, 1970, 1971.

  Millar Kenneth, excerpt from a letter to Jill Krementz, reprinted by permission of the University of California, Irvine, Special Collections and Archives and of the Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, copyright © Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, 1974.

  Millar, Kenneth, excerpt from a letter to Julian Symons, reprinted by permission of the Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, copyright © Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, 1973.

  Millar, Kenneth and Margaret, letters to Eudora Welty, reprinted by permission of the Eudora Welty Collection–Mississippi Department of Archives and History and of the Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, copyright © Margaret Millar Charitable Remainder Unitrust u/a 4/12/82, 1970–80.

  Nolan, Tom, excerpts from interviews with William Campbell Gault, Brad Darrach, Reynolds Price, Ralph Sipper, and Eudora Welty reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from Ross Macdonald: A Biography by Tom Nolan. Copyright © 1999 by Tom Nolan. All rights reserved.

  Price, Reynolds, excerpt from a letter to Eudora Welty, reprinted by permission of the Eudora Welty Collection–Mississippi Department of Archives and History and of William S. Price Jr. literary executor for Reynolds Price, copyright © Reynolds Price, 1973.

  Sipper, Ralph, excerpts from letters to Eudora Welty, reprinted by permission of the Eudora Welty Collection–Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and of Ralph Sipper, copyright © Ralph Sipper, 1980–1982.

  Welty, Eudora, excerpts from letters to Mary Louise Aswell, reprinted by permission of the Eudora Welty Collection–Mississippi Department of Archives and History and of Eudora Welty LLC, copyright © 1971, 1977, 1983.

  Welty, Eudora, excerpts from letters to Reynolds Price, reprinted by permission of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, and of Eudora Welty LLC, copyright © Eudora Welty LLC, 1982, 1984.

  Welty, Eudora, excerpt from a letter to William Jay and Sonja Smith, reprinted by permission of the Washington University Libraries’ Department of Special Collections and of Eudora Welty LLC, copyright © Eudora Welty LLC, 1983.

  Welty, Eudora, “Henry,” reprinted by permission of the Eudora Welty Collection– Mississippi Department of Archives and History and of Eudora Welty LLC, copyright © Eudora Welty LLC, 1981–1984.

  Welty, Eudora, letters to Kenneth and Margaret Millar, reprinted by permission of the Eudora Welty Collection–Mississippi Department of Archives and History and of Eudora Welty LLC, copyright © Eudora Welty LLC, 1970–1982.

  NOTES

  Introduction

  1 Kenneth Millar to Jill Krementz, typed copy of autograph letter, University of California, Irvine, Special Collections and Archives.

  2 Eudora Welty responded to Kenneth Millar’s letter on April 23, 1971.

  3 We include all but fourteen of these letters. The fourteen letters are dated: February 10, 1971; February 16, 1971; February 21, 1971; January 17, 1972; June 11, 1972; December 18, 1972; [September 1973]; May 20, 1974; July 30, 1974; October 24, 1974; May 28, 1975; October 22, 1975; March 11, 1977; and November 14, 1977. These letters reiterate information included elsewhere in the book. They are available for research in the Eudora Welty Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson, MS.

  4 Cleanth Brooks, Eudora Welty: A Tribute 13 April 1984 ([Winston-Salem]: Printed for Stuart Wright, 1984), n. page; Ann Patchett, “The Best American Short Stories 2006,” in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (New York: Harper, 2013), 209.

  5 John Leonard, “Ross Macdonald, His Lew Archer and Other Selves,” New York Times Book Review, June 1, 1969, 2; Michael Kreyling, The Novels of Ross Macdonald (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2005), 164–65. In 2012, critic Malcolm Forbes wrote that Macdonald “subverted” genre; Macdonald himself maintained that transcendent detective novels fulfilled the genre: Malcolm Forbes, “True Grit: Ross Macdonald Gets His Due,” The Daily Beast, http://www.thedailybeast.com.

  6 Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, January 2, 1977.

  7 Welty to Millar, September 25, 1973; Millar to Welty, October 10, 1974.

  8 Millar to Welty, September 18, 1972.

  9 Eudora Welty, “No Place for You, My Love,” The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other Stories (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1955), 3–4, 22. A somewhat different version of this paragraph appeared in Suzanne Marrs, One Writer’s Imagination: The Fiction of Eudora Welty (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 158.

  10 Millar to Welty, April 2, 1978; Welty to Millar, September 23, 1978.

  11 Writing to Millar on August 1, 1971, Welty worried that the use of letters in Nancy Milford’s biography of Zelda Fitzgerald had been misleading, and she told Ken “it makes you want to warn people everywhere to burn their letters.” Eudora herself had evidently at some point burned most of the letters sent to her by John Robinson, but she came to believe in the importance of preserving letters as she so eloquently indicated in her introduction to The Norton Book of Friendship (1991).

  Chapter One

  1 Walter Clemons, “Meeting Miss Welty,” New York Times Book Review, April 12, 1970, 2. “Icky” was a term of opprobrium from the Swing Era, a period Welty experienced at its height during 1930s visits to New York City, when she patronized Harlem clubs and may have attended Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall jazz concert. “Icky” meant saccharine, non-swinging, corny.

  2 This is the first of twenty Welty letters included here that were part of a collection owned by Ralph Sipper and that have become part of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History collection. The other letters are those of January 24, 1971; June 3, 1971; June 16, 1971; July 1, 1971; April 30, 1972; October 15, 1972; October 24, 1973; June 22, 1975; January 12, 1976; February 23, 1976; July 2, 1976; August 18, [1976]; [September 2, 1976]; December 29, 1976; July 3, 1977; [September 1977]; September 19, [1977]; [November 22, 1979]; and October 30, 1981.

  3 Kenneth Millar to Alfred A. Knopf, June 23, 1970, Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.

  4 Kenneth Millar to Ash Green, November 1, 1970, University of California, Irvine, Special Collections and Archives. Ashbel Green (1928–2012) was Ken’s longtime editor at Alfred A. Knopf.

  5 Eudora’s poem “A Flock of Guinea Hens Seen from a Car” had been published in the April 20, 1957, New Yorker; it received separate publication by Albondocani Press in 1970.

  6 Eudora Welty, “The Stuff That Nightmares Are Made Of,” rev. of The Undergrou
nd Man by Ross Macdonald, New York Times Book Review, February 14, 1971, 29–30. The review began on the front page, but the lines cited here are from inside pages.

  7 Welty to Millar, February 21, 1971, Eudora Welty Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

  8 John Barkham, “Where Writing Is No Mystery,” New York Post, August 21, 1971.

  9 Walter Clemons’s February 19 Times review of The Underground Man was as positive and perhaps as influential as Welty’s: “Mr. Macdonald’s career is one of the most honorable I know. His later books are better than his early ones, but I haven’t read one that I’d advise against. [. . .] You can find most of [them] in paperback. Get busy!”

  10 Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939), an English novelist, poet, critic, and editor, founded the English Review and received critical acclaim for his novels The Good Soldier and Parade’s End (a series of four books). Ford’s biographer Arthur Mizener had previously written a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Welty well remembered Mizener’s disparaging remarks about E. M. Forster, remarks made when they both attended the 1954 American Studies Conference at Cambridge University. Those comments had infuriated Welty at the time just as Mizener’s view of Ford now angered her. Her review of Mizener’s The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford appeared in the New York Times Book Review on May 2, 1971. This critique would eventually become part of The Eye of the Story (New York: Random House, 1978), a collection of her nonfiction.

  11 The artist and writer Don Freeman (1908–1978) first gained notice as a chronicler of New York City street and theater life in the 1930s and ’40s, then as the author (alone, and in collaboration with his artist wife Lydia, [1906-1998]) of a number of popular children’s books. The Freemans moved to Santa Barbara in the 1950s.