Carson McCullers

by Carson McCullers

  Another writer who was particularly dear to me is Richard Wright. Nothing could be more of a contrast than Tanya and Dick were. I met him in the house in Brooklyn when he moved in with his wife and baby. As usual there were no decent places for Negroes to live. Later, we resumed our friendship in Paris where he lived until his sudden death. His death always gives me a sense of the great fragility of human life. Dick, apparently perfectly well, had just gone to the doctor for a routine check-up. The doctor saw nothing alarming, but that very afternoon he died of heart failure. Dick and I often discussed the South, and his book, Black Boy, is one of the finest books by a Southern Negro. He said of my work that I was the one Southern writer who was able to treat Negroes and white people with the same ease. I was so appalled by the humiliation that being a Negro in the South automatically entailed that I lost sight of the gradations of respectability and prestige within the Negro race.

  When Reeves and I were living in a terribly run-down apartment in Paris, without a private toilet and no conveniences, Dick, who was moving from his own apartment and had paid for the clef of an elegant apartment also in Paris suggested that we move into his fine duplex. The woman who owned and lived in the other apartment was a dope addict, and he didn’t want his child exposed to the sight of addiction even at second hand. Of course we moved in and the place was indeed charming; an open fireplace in the living room and the luxury of a complete dining room. There was a splendid garden with a fountain. When the toilets broke down, the landlord fixed the fountain first.

  When I suffered the stroke that paralyzed me on the left side, Dick was in Nice and he chartered a plane to visit me at the American Hospital and to comfort me there. His mother, he told me, had suffered a similar stroke and brought up a number of children in spite of it.

  Before our friendship in Brooklyn, Dick had become entangled with the Communist Party. A native Negro, intensely verbal, and an intellectual, was just their meat. They did not understand Dick’s complete absorption in his art, nor his independence either, and when the Party started to dictate to him what to write, like school assignments, he was furious and quit the Party.

  As everybody knows it is not easy to leave the Communist Party once you’re involved, and Dick had many uneasy nights and fearful days; it is easier to join the Party than to get out.

  I never had any inclination to join the Communists. For one thing, I’m just not a natural-born joiner. The only club I belong to is the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Most of the people are older than I, but they are all extremely distinguished. There is not too much formality and when I’m able I enjoy going to their meetings. My sympathies at first were all with Marx and Engels, and when I think about the current riots I feel it’s a pure application of Marxism. The Communists have learned very well to exploit, expose and socially enfeeble areas to their own ends. Personally, I would not be surprised if the riots were not communist inspired. Granted, the ghettos must be abolished and decent housing built in their stead. Adequate jobs, good jobs must be found for all who are capable of fulfilling them. This takes education and the Negro becomes more and more aware of this, but this unfortunately will take years of effort and I along with millions of Negroes feel time is running out. My house is fully integrated and I try my best to live according to the teaching of Jesus Christ.

  Among the great friends I always welcome are Janet Flanner and Natalia Murray, who is the head of an Italian firm that publishes my books. As a matter of fact, my books have been published all over the world.

  Janet is “Genêt” in The New Yorker magazine, and she is one of the most knowledgeable of all journalists, and Natalia, a voluble Italian, is a good counterpart to Janet. I enjoy their visits and superb conversation whenever they come out to Nyack. Many visitors come to Nyack who have read my books in their own language: a Japanese professor came not long ago; a Swedish film director; English people, Finnish people, and people from wherever my books are published. I am always delighted to welcome them and Ida serves drinks and sandwiches. Newspaper people often come and I try to ask questions of them while they’re trying to interview me. Tomorrow a man from the Atlanta Constitution is arriving, and I will question him about the riots which have troubled me so much. People come bringing their own paintings, and they write to me asking my opinions on all sorts of matters. Sometimes I wonder if they don’t confuse me with Dorothy Dix. But most of the mail is intelligent and perceptive.

  Tennessee Williams visits me whenever he is in New York City, and to my great delight I’ve found a real friend in John Huston, the director of the film of Reflections in a Golden Eye.

  When Ray Stark, the producer of Reflections in a Golden Eye, called in Mr. Huston to direct it, John said, “This film could be done in two ways; one, it could be a low-budget art film; two, it could be a film using the best talent available. I’m not interested in a shoe-string art film, and I don’t think Mrs. McCullers is either. I can only direct it with the finest actors.” Ray Stark agreed and the contracts were drawn up. John meant what he said when he said the best talent available: Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Elizabeth Taylor, Brian Keith, and Zorro David. Then John came to see me, and immediately I felt his seriousness, and charm and wit. I gave him carte blanche and never felt the least hesitancy. He was in control and I was glad.

  The more he discussed his conception of Reflections the surer I was that he was the right man for the job. He not only was the director; he, Gladys Hill and Chapman Mortimer had written an excellent script in which they followed the novel very faithfully.

  Also at our first meeting John said, “Why don’t you come to Ireland to visit me?”

  Since I’ve been in bed for three years, it seemed a little fantastic, but I said, “Are you serious?”

  “As serious as I can get. You know there are always airplanes.”

  So at Christmas John sent Ida and me round-trip first-class tickets to Ireland, via Irish Airlines.

  Before I was to be allowed to go to Ireland the doctor made the stipulation that I had to go someplace for a week-end to see how I might stand the trip. So Ida and I decided to go to the Plaza. This was quite a production. The community service ambulance had to be alerted and a stretcher readied for me for the trip. At first the freight elevator at the Plaza seemed to be a problem, but they eased the stretcher around and finally got me into the specially ordered hospital bed.

  I saw old friends, arranged business deals, gave interviews and the Plaza food was up to its usual fine standards. I peruse menus like other people study a work of art. Anyway, I passed the Plaza test and had the doctor’s permission to go to Ireland.

  John lives in Galway. He loves hunting and is master of the local hunt. That is how he found his house when he was out fox hunting. (The farmers consider foxes as vermin and poison them, for they are very destructive.) Anyway, John saw this beautiful mansion which was just a shell of a country house. Eventually he bought it and began the work of building this shell into a magnificent country estate. There is plenty of livestock in the pastures. John’s horses are magnificent, and he follows all the races. We bet together and he called me last week to say that our horse, “Busted,” had come in first and we won fifty pounds.

  There was a constant stream of visitors and John is a “Grand Señor.” If a parlor maid is not in sight, John opens the door himself to welcome guests. It was in April of 1967 when we were there—still oyster season—and we ate oysters from the Irish channel only forty miles away. Mrs. Craigh served magnificent meals. Her bread is the most delicious I ever tasted.

  Since my leg was jutting out, I had to stay in bed all the time, but visitors came constantly to my room. There was another guest staying at the house. The weather was a bit chilly and in spite of a well heated room, the fireplace in my bedroom was kept burning all the time.

  In the evening everyone would come in to have brandy and coffee with me. There was talk of fox hunting, of art, of politics and of course, Reflections in a Golden Eye.

  S
everal newspapers interviewed me, and the Irish Times came out with a picture of John giving me a great big Irish hug.

  My bedroom had a beautiful head by Epstein. There was a view of the cattle grazing. Sometimes little lambs who looked almost too fragile to stand on their legs walked past the window with their mother in charge.

  There are beautiful moldings on the walls of John’s house. When I wanted to have some fancy moldings for my bedroom at home, I was told by the local people that carved moldings were a lost art.

  The bed I was in was a handsomely carved one that John had brought from Mexico. There also was in my room a lovely Japanese screen which he had brought back from Japan.

  I will be glad when my operation is over and I can visit again John’s house, and in my wheelchair go from room to room like folks. There are always plenty of men servants at John’s estate, and he himself is very strong. Ida always pushes me in my chair and with the leg off she won’t have to be so careful about hurting me.

  I have thought many times about Bernhardt, and other people who have lost their legs, but a friend told me about a young man who in a fit of despair, jumped under a train. He lost a leg and an arm. I am not despairing, and don’t like to dwell on that story, but rather think of Bernhardt who in World War One visited the trenches and encouraged the soldiers to such a point that the German High Command put an enormously high reward for her capture. Finally she was drawn back from points of danger by the Allied Command who also feared her capture.

  Peter Freuchen lost his leg and has lived a full life since. He wrote a beautiful book out of his vast knowledge of the Eskimos.

  John Huston is a great authority on Aztec art, and he gave me a beautiful Aztec head as a going-away gift.

  Cole Porter lost a leg and kept on writing his charming music. I believe “Night and Day” was written in Harkness Pavilion where four times I was a patient, at least the nurses heard him singing it over and over.

  Naturally, I expect to go on with my work as always, and look forward to being able to travel and move about with more ease.

  I have not written enough about Marielle. She designs all my nightgowns and dressing robes, besides being one of my most cherished friends. She works half the year in Paris and half the year in New York. When she is working in Paris I miss her enormously. She also works in the cotton-mill factories in the South, where her designs are printed.

  New York is about thirty miles from Nyack and the only way of transportation to the city is by bus. It was on the bus that I met Marielle. She is one of my most charming and enduring friends, French, born of Rumanian parents who went to France after their marriage. She combines the wild extravagance of the Rumanians with the good sense and good cooking of the French. But she was too shy to meet me head on. She sat in the back of the bus and only after I was trying to leave the bus did she offer to help me, as I was lame. Then we asked each other where we were going. It was in the old Square Root days and I was going to Saint Subber’s. She was going further downtown in the heart of the garm’ent district. She told me we lived next door and I invited her to drink or whatever the next afternoon. Some inspiration told me she drank only wine, and fortunately there was a bottle of rosé in the refrigerator. Our friendship flourished and there was hardly a day that we didn’t visit each other.

  Then there was a terrible night. I was sleeping when Marielle came in and jerked me awake. Still half asleep I looked down and she was in her bare feet which were cut by the sharp ice.

  “Wake up and look,” she said.

  I looked out of the window and the Gray Court apartments were in flames. We went to the kitchen window to have a clearer view and I tried to make her go in the living room to get away from the sight. Meanwhile the refugees from the fire were coming in my house and Marielle made them coffee and sandwiches. Then the policemen came calling out all the names. There were three names called over and over but there was no response. Three people had perished in the fire. I pleaded with Marielle to lie down on the studio couch and I would lie down near her and hold her in my arms, but she had seen her house burn, her house with the beautiful paintings, the art collection of books. I had just returned a five-hundred-dollar copy of Baudelaire that very day, and I had also returned the diamond cross she had lent me. Little things like that kept going over and over in my mind. If I had not returned the book and the cross they would have been saved. Meanwhile the firemen were wetting down my house so it wouldn’t catch fire, and we were ordered into the dining room. What caused the fire nobody ever knew but everything was lost. Marielle stayed with me until she was able to find a house of her own.

  I’ve never known people so generous about clothing as were the people in this town. Everybody brought clothes down to pocket books with handkerchiefs in them. But plainly, Marielle was thinking about the paintings and her lovely limited editions of Verlaine, Baudelaire, and her poets that she had lost. Since André Girard had illustrated them they were, in a sense, irreplaceable.

  Marielle was stoical, but even so at times she wept. The two of us hunted through the cinders of the fire hoping to find her diamond cross, but nothing, nothing remained, just ashes.

  In the early spring she found an apartment in New York. When she moved away I missed her terribly, but she still managed to come for Sunday supper. Nobody could put together left-overs better than she, or serve them with such élan. She would tell me all about her work as a fabric designer and show me her lovely prints.

  Marielle was soon the president of her company which operates both in America and France. The fire didn’t finish her or even slow her down very much. Gracious, and with the beauty of spirit I’ve seldom encountered, funny, witty and profound, she’s my oldest and along with Mary Mercer my best friend.

  Edwin Peacock and John Ziegler remain two of my closest friends, and they go to Europe every summer, and always stop off at Nyack coming and going.

  I used to visit Charleston often when I was well. Edwin and John have “The Book Basement,” a wonderful store where almost every book can be found. They give beautiful parties, and once at a garden party (garden parties are very fashionable in Charleston), I met Robert and Hilda Marks. For me, the first of that party was a disaster. My shoes felt queer, and standing in line to greet the guests they felt queerer and hurt. It was at that time, with my feet hurting very badly, that I met the Markses. My face was all screwed up with pain, and my graciousness at that moment was quite false. Hilda had a very bad impression of me. Then when that endless party was over, and I could lie down in a long chair, John suddenly said, “Oh! my dear! Your shoes are on backwards.”

  Later I met the Markses at another party with my shoes on the right feet, and it was a very happy occasion. Hilda, Robert and I have been friends ever since.

  In Charleston, Edwin and John also took me to the Swamp sections with the eerie swamp birds hovering overhead, and to the magnificent azalea gardens.

  I met many friends with Edwin and John. One of whom, the adopted son of Isabel Whitney, gave me one of her robes, a beautiful Japanese garment which I wear often. I love Japanese and Chinese robes and wear them on all state occasions. I have one, given to me by my cousin Jordan Massee, which is two thousand years old. It was worn in the old days only on protocol visits to the dowager empress, and handed down from one generation to the next. It eventually wound up in San Francisco where Jordan bought it. John Huston has extremely handsome ancient robes bought on his travels throughout the world.

  It irks me terribly to know that I can no longer travel with anonymity and ease. When you have to get from one place to another by ambulance and stretcher, it takes a lot of doing. My friends usually have to come and see me, but after the amputation I hope I will be more mobile.

  This week I’ve been rereading Dubliners. How such a spasm of poetry could have come out of the grimy Dublin streets of that time is miraculous to me.

  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man I also read every year or so.

  Ulysses is tougher go
ing, and not my meat, although he has influenced so many writers.

  Finnegans Wake is way beyond me, and I only enjoy the “Anna Livia Plurabelle” section, for its rhythm and strange poetry.

  James Joyce had a psychotic child, and they spoke the same language when they were together. Joyce, who had been partially blind during most of his life, died on the operating table. At the funeral his daughter watched narrowly while her father was lowered into the grave and covered up.

  Then she said, “There he is all covered up in the ground, and listening to what everybody is saying. Cunning, isn’t he?”

  Whenever I think of artists having a hard time I think of James Joyce. He had one hell of a time to earn a living for himself and his family. Dubliners was suppressed, and at one time burnt, I believe. Ulysses was suppressed and pirated all over the world, and of course, James Joyce did not receive any of the pirated money. He earned only the fame and the grandeur of a noble spirit.

  A friend of my sister, who is a Catholic priest, came to see me and, noticing that I was reading Joyce, said that the ban against his work had been lifted by the Church. Since he was my guest, I couldn’t observe the Johnny-come-lately feeling that was in my heart.

  Sylvia Beach of Paris published Joyce, and softened his hard life. He and his children were able to live in comfort.

  I wish I could say the same for another lesser writer who is also dear to me. Scott Fitzgerald, always in debt to his agent, with a wife that was mad and confined to institutions. Scott, extravagant, lovable, playful and impossible. His genius flourished, and he wrote Tender Is the Night in the most appalling psychological situation.

  I have been reading Papa Hemingway. I turn from one book to another. The build-up of Hemingway’s psychological problems was indeed complicated, but lucidly analyzed by A. E. Hotchner. I’m not a Hemingway admirer, but for the first time I really realize him as a man, as an alive and suffering person. Fundamentally, he had been joyful, fun-loving, generous and a precious friend. I want to go over Hemingway again now after the Hotchner book. He also was a language path-finder. His short, terse sentences are a heritage to the American prose writer. But what I deplore is his sentimentality, and fake toughness.