The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter

by Katherine Anne Porter

  560.18 transition] Little magazine (1927–30) published in Paris and edited by the poet and translator Eugene Jolas (1894–1952) with his wife, Maria McDonald Jolas (1893–1987).

  564.28 Clarissa Harlowe] Clarissa (1748), epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson (1689–1761).

  565.35 Hetty Green] American financier (1834–1916) known as “The Witch of Wall Street” and legendary for her miserliness.

  565.36 Jay Laughlin] James Laughlin (1914–1997), founder of New Directions publishers; he brought out an edition of Stein’s Three Lives (1907) in 1933.

  566.3 G.A.R.] Grand Army of the Republic (1866–1956), fraternal organization for Union veterans of the Civil War.

  570.27 Santa Teresa] St. Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), Spanish mystic and Carmelite reformer.

  570.28 William Seabrook] American journalist and adventurer (1884–1945); his impressions of Stein are recorded in No Hiding Place: An Autobiography (1942).

  575.7 Pavannes and Divisions] Volume of critical essays (1918) by Ezra Pound (1885–1972).

  576.17–18 The poet is married] Pound married the English artist Dorothy Shakespear (1886–1973) in 1914.

  577.33–34 Harriet Monroe] Monroe (1860–1936), founder and editor of Poetry, a monthly magazine of poetry and criticism published in Chicago since 1912.

  580.11 Douglas. . . credit] Social credit, or “socred,” economic theory developed in the 1920s by Scottish engineer C. H. Douglas (1879–1952), who argued that money should be used to improve society.

  580.13 Ernestine Evans] American journalist and book editor (1890–1967).

  582.3–4 Friends. . . Louisiana] Herschel Brickell, a scholar of Mexico, and his wife, Norma, brought Welty to Baton Rouge to meet Porter and her husband, Albert Erskine Jr. (1911–1993), in 1938.

  585.22 Manuscript. . . John Rood] Rood (1902–1974) and his wife, Mary Lawhead, edited and published the bimonthly magazine Manuscript from their home in Athens, Ohio, in 1934–36. “Death of a Traveling Salesman” appeared in the issue for June 1936.

  585.25 Albert Erskine] Erskine (see note 582.3–4) was an editor of The Southern Review in 1935–40; he was later Welty’s editor at Random House.

  585.30 a friend] Katherine Anne Porter.

  587.5–7 a Bostonian] Edward Weeks (1898–1989), editor of The Atlantic Monthly, which began publishing Welty’s stories in 1941.

  590.15–16 Catherine Fourmentelle. . . Eliza Draper] Catherine (Kitty) Fourmentelle, a French singer; Elizabeth (Eliza) Draper (1744–1778), for whom Sterne (1713–1768) wrote the Journal to Eliza (written 1767; published in 1904).

  590.20 Skelton Castle. . . Hall-Stevenson] Eleventh-century Yorkshire castle, known in the 18th century as “Crazy Castle” for the antics of its proprietor, John Hall-Stevenson (1718–1785).

  590.22 Medmenham Monks] Pleasure-loving members of the “Hellfire Club” at the Cistercian abbey in Buckinghamshire, England.

  593.33 his wife] Sterne married Elizabeth Lumley in 1741.

  596.2–7 From Thomas Hardy. . . prayer.”] See The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892–1928 (1930) by Thomas Hardy, writing under the name of his wife, Florence Emily Hardy. This and a companion volume, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840–1891 (1928), are the sources of all quotations from Hardy and his notebooks used in this essay.

  596.27–597.18 The work. . . tremendous thing.] From After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy (1934) by T. S. Eliot, the source of all quotations from Eliot used in this essay.

  603.33 E. M. Forster has remarked] See “T. S. Eliot” (1928), in Abinger Harvest (1936).

  607.18–19 You can read about it] See “Liberty in England” (1935), in Abinger Harvest (1936).

  608.9–10 a mediocre book] Boy (1930), a novel by James Hanley, suppressed as obscene by the Lancashire police in 1934.

  609.7–8 Virginia Woolf once wrote:] See “Oliver Goldsmith,” in The Captain’s Death Bed and Other Essays (1950).

  616.21–23 Rousseau-like] In the manner of post-Impressionist painter Henri Rousseau (1844–1910).

  621.14–15 The Turn of the Screw] Novella (1898) by Henry James.

  622.37–38 Anybody who calls. . . liar.”] Lawrence, in a letter to his agent, Curtis Brown, dated March 15, 1928; published in D. H. Lawrence: Selected Letters (1950), edited by Richard Aldington.

  622.38–39 It’ll infuriate. . . decent ones.”] Lawrence, in a letter to his patron Mabel Dodge Luhan, dated March 12, 1928; published in Selected Letters (1950). In the original, Lawrence underscored the word “mean.”

  623.28 Harvet Breit] Breit (1910–1968), a staff critic for The New York Times Book Review in 1940–65, provided this blurb for the jacket of the Grove Press edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

  624.3 Edmund Wilson] Wilson (1895–1972) reviewed the privately printed first edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in The New Republic (July 3, 1929). He wrote: “It is the most inspiriting book from England that I have seen in a long time; and—in spite of Lawrence’s occasional repetitiousness and his sometimes rather overdone slapdash tone—one of the best written. . . . And this one of his books, which has been published under the most discouraging conditions. . . is one of his most vigorous and brilliant.”

  624.7 Memoirs of Hecate County] Book of linked short stories (1946) suppressed as obscene by New York State and not again published in the United States until 1959.

  624.14 Jacques Barzun] American historian and cultural critic (b. 1907); co-founder of the Readers’ Subscription book club.

  624.23 Mr. Schorer] Mark Schorer (1908–1977), American man of letters and professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1946–73.

  624.32 Mrs. Shakespear] Olivia Shakespear (1863–1938) was Yeats’s mistress in 1896–97 and remained a close friend until her death. The letter, dated May 25, 1933, was first published in The Letters of W. B. Yeats, edited by Allan Wade (1954).

  626.9 He wrote once] See “Hymns in a Man’s Life” (1928) by D. H. Lawrence, first collected in Lawrence’s Assorted Articles (1930).

  626.27 Love. . . excrement”] From “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop” by W. B. Yeats, first collected in Yeats’s Words for Music Perhaps (1932).

  627.23 Swift’s. . . woman] Cf. “Last week I saw a woman flay’d, and you will hardly believe how much it alter’d her person for the worse”: “A Tale of a Tub” (1704) by Jonathan Swift (1667–1745).

  628.7 Tolstoy once said] See Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1920) by Maxim Gorky, translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf.

  633.26–29 The leader-cum-follower. . . women.”] Letter to the poet Witter Bynner, dated March 13, 1928; published in Selected Letters (1950).

  634.27–28 The Waning of the Middle Ages] Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (1919; trans. 1924) by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872–1945), subtitled “A Study of Forms of Life, Thought, and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Dawn of the Renaissance.”

  636.18 strepitation] Noisiness, rowdiness.

  644.5 A. R. Orage] English man of letters (1873–1934) and, from 1907 to 1922, editor and publisher of The New Age, a weekly review of politics and the arts.

  652.7 Poetry Center] The Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y (Young Men’s Hebrew Association), New York City, inaugurated its series of poetry readings in 1939. John Malcom Brinnin (1916–1998) was director in 1949–56.

  653.1–4 This was not. . . everlasting.”] From “The Lemon” (1936), story by Dylan Thomas, collected posthumously in Adventures in the Skin Trade (1955).

  656.6 lyke-wake dirge] “Lyke-Wake Dirge” (or “Fire and Sleet and Candlelight”), 17th-century English song about the obstacles a soul confronts on the way to heaven.

  659.35 stage Wendy] Wendy Darling, character in J. M. Barrie’s play and novel Peter Pan (1904).

  666.16–17 Marianna Alcoforado and The Duchess] Alcoforado (1640–1753), Portuguese nun to whom the anonymous epistolary romance Letters of a Portuguese Nun (1669) has been attributed; The Duchess, see note 42
2.17–19.

  666.36–37 E. M. Butler. . . Rilke] Rainer Maria Rilke (1941), biography by Eliza Marian Butler (1885–1959).

  667.33 Princess. . . Taxis] Rilke wrote the Duino Elegies (1922) while visiting the Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis (1855–1934) and dedicated his novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910), to her.

  669.5 Olivet] Olivet College, in Olivet, Michigan, held annual Writers’ Conferences in 1936–41 at which Ford and Porter repeatedly lectured.

  669.26–27 an old man. . . writing.”] The Japanese artist Hokusai (1760–1849) called himself, in his final years, “the old man mad about drawing.”

  669.31 pride. . . humility.”] Cf. “The Devil’s Thoughts” (1835) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834): “And the devil did grin, for his darling sin / Is pride that apes humility.”

  670.14 Tietjens cycle] Parade’s End (1924–28), four novels that chronicle the life of Christopher Tietjens, a British officer on the Western Front in World War I.

  672.12–13 Eugene and Maria Jolas] See note 560.18.

  673.6 a too pained whitelwit”] See Book 1, Episode 5 of Finnegans Wake (1944).

  675.12 Bryher] Pen name of Annie Winifred Ellerman (1894–1983), English expatriate who offered financial support to Beach, Joyce, and other friends in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s.

  676.10 Hadley. . . Bumby the Baby] Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1891–1979), Hemingway’s first wife, and their son, John Hadley Niconar Hemingway (1923–2000).

  676.14 her book] Shakespeare and Company (1956).

  676.39 beau garçon] Beautiful boy.

  679.11–13 Southern. . . War] In November 1864, while on his march through Georgia, General William T. Sherman stopped in Milledgeville, then the state capital, to set up headquarters in the governor’s mansion.

  685.9 Legend and memory] The short-story sequence “The Old Order” grew from the opening section of the abandoned novel “Many Redeemers.”

  686.4 The Possessed] Novel (1872) by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881).

  686.6 Becky Sharp] The social-climbing heroine of Vanity Fair (1848).

  687.13 Julien Sorel] Hero of Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830).

  688.3 Hergesheimer] Joseph Hergesheimer (1880–1954), author of Java Head (1919) and other historical novels.

  696.38 S. Sergeev-Tzensky] Sergey Nikolaevich Sergeev-Tzensky (1878–1958), Soviet writer celebrated for novels and stories set during the Crimean War.

  697.21 Add-a-Plot” cards] In “Deal-a-Plot,” a parlor game of the 1930s, players were dealt cards in six categories (Character, Setting, Plot Problem, etc.) and challenged to improvise a story based on the cards’ suggestions.

  699.40 soluble stuff] In James’s A Small Boy and Others (1913), his father urges him and his brother William to convert experience into “Virtue”: “simply everything that should happen to us. . . were to form our soluble stuff.”

  713.1–2 Henry Allen Moe] Moe (1894–1975), chief administrator of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation from 1925, when it was founded, until 1963.

  716.8 Obregon revolution] See note 76.8.

  716.32–34 short novel. . . reasons.] Porter customarily named “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” her favorite among her works.

  735.10–11 Mayor Mary Kyle. . . Fergus Kyle] Mary Lucy Kyle Hartson (1865–1956) was elected mayor of Kyle, Texas, in 1937; Fergus Kyle (1834–1906) was for many years a member of the Texas legislature.

  738.8 Sam Bass] Bass (1851–1878), deputy sheriff in Denton County, Texas, turned outlaw and was killed during an attempted bank robbery.

  738.9 Right Bower] In the game of euchre, the knave of the trump suit.

  739.27–28 Harry. . . Ima Hogg] Governor Hogg’s only daughter, Ima Hogg (1882–1975), a philanthropist in Texas, was named for the heroine of a Civil War poem written by her uncle Thomas Elisha Hogg (1842–1880). Her three brothers were William, Michael, and Thomas; “Harry Hogg” and “Ura Hogg” are Texas myths.

  740.26 Roy Bean] Phantly Roy Bean (c.1825–1903), justice of the peace and proprietor of a saloon in which he held court, escaped a murder conviction in Mexico and comfortably lived out his life in San Diego, California.

  742.10–11 There was. . . ground”] From an anonymous cowboy ballad: “There’s blood on the saddle and blood on the ground,/ And a great, great big puddle of blood all around;/ A cowboy lay in it all covered with gore/ And he never will ride any broncos no more.”

  742.12–13 My Love. . . Starr] “My love is a rider, wild horses he breaks” is the first line of the song “Bucking Bronco,” by Myra Maybelle Shirley (Belle) Starr (1848–1889).

  743.3 Nut-Brown Maid] “The Nut-Brown Maid,” 15th-century ballad included in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), compiled by Thomas Percy (1729–1811).

  749.38–39 Birds. . . sight,”] From a children’s hymn by Isaac Watts (1674–1748): “Birds in their little nests agree;/ And ’tis a shameful sight,/ When children of one family/ Fall out, and chide, and fight.”

  751.1 A Christmas Story] In 1967, Seymour Lawrence/Delacorte Press published this story, decorated with line drawings by Ben Shahn, as a small book for holiday gift-giving. Porter’s afterword to this edition, dated May 5, 1967, reads in part:

  “This is not a fiction, but the true story of an episode in the short life of my niece, Mary Alice, a little girl who died nearly a half century ago, at the age of five and one-half years. The stories are those I told her, and those we sang together. The shopping for a present for her mother, my sister, in the last Christmas of this child’s life is set down here as clearly as I am able to tell it, with no premonitions of disaster, because we hadn’t any: life was daily and forever, for us both. I was young, too. This is, of course, a lament in the form of a joyous remembrance of that last day I spent with this most lovely, much loved being. . . .”

  Mary Alice Holloway (1912–1919) was the daughter of Porter’s older sister, Gay (Anna Gay Porter Holloway).

  752.4–5 Charles. . . baby] Adoration of the Three Magi, in Les Heures d’Etienne Chaavalier, a 15th-century illuminated manuscript by French painter Jean Fouquet (1420–1481), who substituted for one of the Magi the figure of Charles VII (1402–1461).

  757.26 Feliciana] Former parish (county) in Louisiana, divided in 1824 into East Feliciana and West Feliciana. St. Francisville, the seat of West Feliciana, is situated 30 miles northwest of Baton Rouge.

  757.32 Fulwar Skipwith] American diplomat (1765–1839) who in 1803 played a major role in the Louisiana Purchase.

  757.37 Graustarkian] In the vainglorious manner of Graustark, a fictional Central European principality continually threatened with extinction by its neighbors, the setting of six historical romances by American novelist George Barr McCutcheon (1866–1928).

  759.29–31 that a man. . . confidence.”] From A Vision (1925, 1937) by W. B. Yeats.

  760.13–14 Patrizieren. . . Amalienburg] Houses of city council members in Basel that approximate the Amalienburg, a hunting lodge built for Charles VII in the German Rococo style.

  763.34 Sully] Thomas Sully (1783–1872), American portrait painter who, after studies with Gilbert Stuart and Benjamin West, flourished in Philadelphia.

  765.2–4 Rose. . . Epitaph] Rilke (1875–1926) composed this, his epitaph, during his last months: “Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,/ Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel Lidern.”

  767.6 Raoul, Sire de Coucy] The Chatelaine de Coucy (1157–1192), whose “Chanson du Chatelain de Coucy” Porter translated for inclusion in her French Song-Book (1933).

  769.12 Laïs the Corinthian] Courtesan at the time of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.); her beauty is mentioned by Plutarch and other contemporary writers.

  769.12–13 Saint Thérèse. . . roses] St. Thérèse de Lisieux (1873–1897), a Carmelite nun known as “The Little Flower of Jesus,” is typically depicted with a bouquet of roses.

  769.22–26 A rose. . . version.)] Quatrain 116 of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
(1048–1123), from the French version (1924) by Franz Toussaint (1879–1924).

  771.35–36 rose liqueur. . . brain.”] Rosa solis, praised by Dame Suddlechop in Walter Scott’s The Fortunes of Nigel (1822): “Right Rosa Solis, as ever washed mulligrubs out of a moody brain!”

  773.38–39 metamorphosed Ass] See The Golden Ass (Asinus aureus) by Apuleius (c. A.D. 123–180).

  774.5–6 rose of fire. . . Vision] See Canto 32 of the Paradiso.

  775.3–15 For the reproductions. . . Bagatelle.] See La Rose dans art: Château de Bagatelle (1938) by Jean-Louis Vaudoyer (1883–1963).

  775.17–24 A short thick body. . . Paris.”] See Fleurs de Pois (1845), by François-Joseph Grillé (1782–1855).

  775.26–27 portraits. . . Gérard] Redouté’s portrait was painted between 1817 and 1823 by Baron François Gérard (1770–1837).

  775.27–30 In spite. . . apple.”] See The Art of Botanical Illustration (1950) by Wilfred Blunt (1901–1987).

  777.35 Mercier] Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1740–1814), French dramatist and writer who, in his Tableau de Paris (1781–88), gave a contemporary account of the French Revolution.

  778.13 David] Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), neoclassical painter sympathetic to the Revolution, sketched Marie Antoinette on the Way to the Guillotine, October 16, 1793.

  779.25 Isabey] Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767–1855).

  781.37 Yaddo] Artists’ colony, founded in 1900 by financier Spencer Trask and his wife, Katrina, in Saratoga Springs, New York.

  784.12 remark of Mr. E. M. Forster] See “My Wood” (1926), in Abinger Harvest (1936).

  785.25 Tobacco Road] Novel (1932) about Georgia sharecroppers by Erskine Caldwell (1903–1987).

  797.26–29 He preferred. . . world.”] Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mrs. James Martin, a lifelong friend, October 20 (?), 1846, from The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1897), edited by Frederic G. Kenyon.

  797.32–36 Then came. . . cheek.”] Robert Browning to Miss E. F. Haworth, a close friend, July 20, 1861, from The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (see above).

  799.35 Butcher-Arnold translation] Porter conflates the 1879 translation of the Odyssey by Samuel Henry Butcher (1850–1910) and Andrew Lang (1844–1912) with the 1861 partial translation of the Iliad by Matthew Arnold (1822–1881).