FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO SALLY AND ROBERT FITZGERALD
O’Connor’s friends were living in Italy, and she hoped to meet them while she was on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, France.
MILLEDGEVILLE
9 MARCH 58
These travel people say that they can arrange it for us to fly to Milan but before I turn over Cousin Katie’s money to them I want to find out definitely if this is going to be allright with you—to meet us in Milan on I think the 23rd and for us to spend about six days with you. You may have sick children or you may not have the room or you may not be able to meet us. Any and all of which we can perfectly understand. I don’t even know how far Milan is from you. And we can easily change the plans and meet this tour in Paris please feel free to be frank about this. If we do come to Levanto we thought you might go with us on the train to Genoa or Florence or somewhere. I would like to see St. Catherine myself. There will be an extra day at Lourdes and I thought if you went with us we might arrange to get to Vincinnes to see that Matisse chapel. I wish I had the proper pious attitude to Lourdes but it has not been cooked up yet. A letter from Billy [William Sessions] declares he wants to meet us in Lourdes too. He would be the ideal one to write up the place for the Msgr. After they leave Lourdes they seem to fly through Spain to get to Rome but it don’t look like to me they are going to do more than look out the plane door there. I see what an old sister I am. I am spending most of my time thinking how glad I will be to get back home again.
I may hear from you when I put this letter in the mail so if you have already answered it you can ignore it.
Cheers,
TUESDAY
We have the tickets and other paraphernalia in hand. The hotel in London is the Park Lane in case you fetch upon calamity and have to head us off. Otherwise we will be in Milan at 12:10 PM on Thursday the 24th.
There are only going to be twelve pilgrims. We have the list—2 Clancys, 2 Brennans, 2 O’Connors, mostly they look like retired school teachers or retired lawyers, from the list that is. My uncle who is a dentist in Savannah has made the Msgr. an extra set of teeth for the trip. My mother informs me that they arrest you if you have more money when you go out than you declared when you went in.
Tell Billy [William Sessions] his old friend Mildred English was just up from West Georgia where she heard of his meanderings.
The only thing we don’t have is the ticket they are supposed to give us saying we are to be met in Paris. I had to call the travel-woman up over the long distance to tell her it wasn’t in with the packet. So she says she will send it by the Msgr. as she don’t think it will come in time to send to me. I am sure he will have enough to do to keep up with his extra set of teeth, so I don’t expect to get it.
Cheers & we hope to see you,
FATHER JAMES McCOWN TO THOMAS F. GOSSETT
Although Father McCown cannot meet Katherine Anne Porter, he had read her story, a classic anti-Communist critique of Latin American Marxism. Abandoning her midwestern bourgeois roots, “Laura” journeys to Mexico to teach school and associate with Mexican revolutionaries. The chauvinism and unwanted advances of an older revolutionary leads to Laura’s disenchantment with Marxism. Father McCown’s familiarity with Porter’s story perhaps contributed to his anti-Communism in the late 1950s. After O’Connor’s death he would, as later letters reveal, alter his political views considerably by advocating the impeachment of President Reagan because of his policies in Central America.
PASS CHRISTIAN, MISS.
MARCH 20, 1958
And it was with something like nostalgia that I read your good letter proposing among other things a trip to Flannery’s…I am very sorry that I have to decline such an appealing invitation. At the time proposed I have to be on hand to conduct a retreat. No other arrangement was possible under the circumstances. I certainly would like to meet Katherine Anne Porter. Quite coincidentally I have just read her “Flowering Judas.” She certainly is a vivid writer, with lots of compassion in her makeup. I sure would like to know something about the background of one who could write that story. And it is her earliest listed work too! Your whole program looks most appetizing.
Flannery certainly is getting excited over her trip to Lourdes. I hear from her regularly, though not frequently, and her letters are full of the trip. I’d sure love to get her recorded reactions. Even her reactions in prospect are rich enough. You know what would be fun? For you and Louise and Flannery to come down and visit me. My mother would love to have you as her houseguests in Mobile, and a trip down the coast here would be most interesting. The best part, I think, would be visiting the fishing villages and fishing docks near here. Also of interest would be the wonderful variety of seagulls that are hereabouts. No, Flannery’s calumny is only partially true. There’s lots else.
My work is demanding, interesting, and irregular. Right now my doctor tells me to take it easy for a week or so. So I am lounging around like a retired WPA worker. Give Louise my best. I sure miss you both, and, of course, have intended writing you since I left Macon.
God bless you,
Fr. McCown
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER TO FLANNERY O’CONNOR
A coreligionist of O’Connor’s, Porter alludes to the tragedy of Good Friday evident in the appearance of Easter lilies. The observation better illuminates the title of Porter’s story “Flowering Judas.” The title specifically evokes the brief triumph of betrayal on that terrible day.
ROXBURY ROAD, SOUTHBURY CONNECTICUT
6TH APRIL EASTER SUNDAY, 1958
Dear Flannery: I’ll never forget you standing there in the new spring landscape watching your peacocks coming towards you in their kind of waving, floating amble,—such a smiling pleased look in your eyes, it did me good to see it.
It was a long trip home, stopping by way of New York to go to Martha Graham’s new show, and then to a party for her afterward. There I saw Eudora Welty, and told her I had seen you on your very own territory and how delightful it had been: and then we talked about you, your writing, a subject we enjoyed agreeing upon—we think you’re a marvel, as do a great many others.
I hope this reaches you before you set off for that European journey, for I want to tell you how glad I was to see you, and how I should like to see you again; I wish you might come to see me sometime, even if not now—later maybe!
My Easter lilies shed tears on Good Friday, just as they are supposed to. But alas, I got up early to see the sun dance, on rising, and he never showed up! It is a dull dark rainy wintry day, no Easter at all, but this is my favorite feast day, just the same, and I wish to send you my recollection and good wishes to celebrate it and to thank you and your mother again for such a pleasant time.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO THOMAS GOSSETT
O’Connor makes fun of the pilgrimage to Lourdes. She also mentions photographs of Katherine Anne Porter’s visit, including her admiration of the peacocks.
MILLEDGEVILLE
16 APRIL 58
Can’t you all come over Sunday afternoon and pay us a visit? If no calamity presents itself we are leaving Monday for our Morons Abroad Excursion. The week after the luncheon with Miss Porter and you all my mother spent in the hospital—the result of having hit herself on the edge of the kitchen sink so that she bruised her kidney. This left me unmotorized for a week and we didn’t get the slides off as soon as we expected; however the man assures us he will have them by Saturday, and I can put them in your hand.
I am thinking about filling up my leather travel diary before I go and leaving it at home, as I am supposed to be a creative writer. This strikes me as strictly sensible but I haven’t mentioned it to my mother as I don’t think she will think it is moral.
Cheers and we’ll hope to see you Sunday.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO
FATHER JAMES McCOWN
The pilgrimage takes on an apostolic dimension with the archbishop Gerald P. O’Hara (Diocese of Savannah), meeting O’Connor and her mother at Lourdes and facilitating a later general audience with the pope at the Vatican. O’Connor was “personally greeted and blessed by Pius XII.”14
11 MAY 58
I am certainly much obliged to you for your prayers for my mother. The Clines must have got an exaggerated report though. She didn’t have any operation. She hit her side on the kitchen sink and bruised her kidney and had to be in the hospital a week but apparently she is all right, but please continue to pray for her for a blow there could cause permanent damage, though they don’t think it has. This happened three weeks before we were to go to Europe but the Doctor said she was allright to go so we went and we just got home last Friday. The upshot of my trip to Europe is that my capacity for staying at home has been greatly increased. I picked up the first germ I met on the other side and was sick almost the whole time. Lourdes is a beautiful little village completely defaced by religious junk shops. I took the bath, from a conglomeration of bad motives. I doubt if anybody prays in that water. People say the miracle is that no epidemics are caused. Everybody washes in the same trough. If the one before you has running sores, you get right in after him, wearing the sack he took off. Also they pass around the cup and everybody drinks out of it. I feel sure I left as many germs as I took away however and doubtless this experience was good for my soul, though no pious feeling went with it. All I wanted was to get out of Lourdes as soon as possible. The crowds there were enormous and mostly peasants.
The arch-Bishop (O’Hara) met us at Lourdes and again at Rome and arranged for us to be in the first seats at the general audience, after which the Pope came down and we all shook his hand and kissed his ring. The Pope seemed alive to me in a way nobody else I have ever seen has. I suppose this was holiness—a kind of super-aliveness that I have not beheld before. It was worth the trip to see this. The old man fairly springs when he walks. He runs up and down the stairs to his throne.
Billy [William Sessions] met us in Lourdes and was as per usual. No change in him.
I am very glad your brother [Robert McCown, S.J.] likes those stories. The thing in the Commonweal was distressing mostly because it occurred there.15 However, this is nothing I’m not used to. Incidentally, when we were in Paris, at the airport, Regina saw a priest that she began to stare at. “Doesn’t Fr. McCown have a brother?” she says. “That priest looks exactly like him.” The priest looked to me about sixty years old and I tried to convince her it couldn’t be your brother but she was sure it was—he was a kind of glum character in a beret but there was a certain likeness or would have been if he had looked more cheerful. She was determined this was your brother and said “Fr. McCown” in a loud voice, but he didn’t bat an eye so she was finally convinced. Anyway, you have a dour aged double in a beret in Europe if you are interested.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER SCOTT WATSON
O’Connor links writing to prayer and beseeches intercessions as she struggles to finish The Violent Bear It Away. While she introduces Jesuits to the literary realism of her fiction, she also beseeches intercessions from them as a believer.
13 MAY 58
Thank you so much for your prayers for my mother. She was in the hospital a week but no operation was necessary and she is apparently fine now. We have in fact just got back from a pilgrimage to Lourdes, which was very exhausting and from which it will probably take me some time to recuperate. Pilgrimages are mighty distracting and I think my prayers are better said at home.
Please continue to pray for my mother and for me. I am at that stage in my novel when I can’t do much for myself and where some outside wisdom will have to visit me to pull it through.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
Porter led a peripatetic, bohemian life and was married several times. Realizing her friend could benefit from a pilgrimage to a shrine, O’Connor emphasizes the healing qualities of Lourdes.
MILLEDGEVILLE
GEORGIA
23 MAY 58
I had hoped to write you an I-am-here note from Lourdes but most of what I intended to do, I didn’t. I hope you’ll visit there sometime. While the village is hideously pockmarked with religious junk shops, the grotto is alive with something else entirely. The conjunction of faith and affliction speaks very well for faith. No one who isn’t in the position of Job avoids glibness on the subject.
Actually, this is to tell you how much we enjoyed your visit.
The Gossetts were over yesterday and told us you had finished your novel. Ah Lord, what a feeling that must be! I am very glad and will be gladder to read it when it is out.
The enclosed is from the head peacock with his regards. He remembers anyone who looks at him with the proper appreciation. Not long ago there was a cow-trading man here who watched him strut for some time. When the performance was over, he said, “Don’t that rascal have long ugly legs? I bet he could outrun a Greyhound bus.” The bird bore it very well.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER TO FLANNERY O’CONNOR
The reference to the peacock parallels a similar response by the priest to the bird’s sacramental presence in “The Displaced Person.” Porter affirms O’Connor’s description of Lourdes and the prospect of her own pilgrimage.
JUNE 5TH, 1958
Dear Flannery: Not often do I inflict my handwriting on any one, but I have a triple-copy page (and you know what that means) of Ship of Fools in my typewriter and almost my one working superstition is that it’s very bad luck to take an unfinished page out of the machine. Well, of course [it] doesn’t bring bad luck, it’s just a misfortune in itself not to finish! Yes I am making final copy now and feel much better about almost everything.
Maybe the head peacock will be pleased to know I have his stately feather properly displayed between two thin sheets of glass—a really ornamental object that delights me. I send you thanks, and convey to him, please, in your mysterious language to them, my admiration.
I should love to go to Lourdes, and believe I may some day, even so soon as next year…I have hesitated a long time here, looking at your straight simple words about the “conjunction of faith and affliction” and there is something I want to say, but I know now I cannot—the right words are too deeply hidden; and yes, I am sure this means I should not speak, for the danger is glibness, as you say.
The heavenly summer is here at last, full of singing birds and blooming shrubbery. This time next year I’ll still be in Virginia, and maybe you can come to visit me there!
FATHER SCOTT WATSON TO FLANNERY O’CONNOR
The letter written on the feast of the founder of the Jesuit order indicates, prophetically, that a story had reached a strategic audience. O’Connor’s story is a cautionary tale for Jesuits in its revelation of secularizing trends in the order that O’Connor perceived in the late fifties.The narcissistic protagonist in the story is attracted to a Jesuit not because of his orthodoxy but because of his literary education and aesthetic sensibility. The source of orthodoxy in the story is an elderly diocesan priest who rebukes the protagonist for feckless literary pretensions.16
JULY 31, 1958
FEAST OF ST. IGNATIUS
Father McCown lent me his copy of “The Enduring Chill.” I read it with the greatest interest, and these few words are simply to tell you how excellent I think the story is. I particularly liked its spiritual and psychological depth and its artistic unity. Father James Brodrick, S.J. one of our best known writers (he has restricted himself almost entirely to history and biography), happened to be here when I read your story, and so I took the liberty of lending it to him also. He liked particularly well, as l recall, your delineation of the one-eyed Jesuit; and while he found your story a bit gloomy (he was sick at the time, and loo
king for something in a lighter vein), he commented on its admirable style, which merely proves that he knows something good when he sees it.
Recently too I read your “A View of the Woods,” in the Partisan Review, an extraordinarily gripping piece…For heaven’s sake don’t take the time out to answer this. Far better to devote time and energy to work on your new novel, which I trust and pray, is now progressing happily…
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER SCOTT WATSON
O’Connor assigns progress on her novel to the Lourdes pilgrimage and intercessions by the Jesuits. X-rays also showed her hip “to be unexpectedly improving” and she could “walk around the house without crutches.” She also passed a driving test. O’Connor acknowledges that “the Lourdes pilgrimage may be responsible.”17
17 AUGUST 58
I must thank you for your note anyway because I appreciate it very much. I am almost too close to these stories to form any critical opinion of them so any criticism, favorable or unfavorable, is always appreciated.
My novel seems to have taken a turn for the better. We paid a visit to Lourdes this spring—my mother and I—and I prayed for my creative bones rather than the other kind. The thing about Lourdes is that you are not inclined to pray there for yourself at all as you see so many people worse off. However, perhaps my prayers were answered to some extent.
Good Things out of Nazareth Page 15
