The Mortgaged Heart Page 2

  The most eloquent of the essays, "The Flowering Dream: Notes on Writing," provides an intimate glimpse into McCullers's imagination:

  Ideas grow, budding silently, and there are a thousand illuminations coming day by day as the work progresses. A seed grows in writing as in nature. The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them ... Illuminations are the grace of labor.

  In McCullers's fiction, "grace" is all pervasive.

  JOYCE CAROL OATES

  * * *

  INTRODUCTION

  OF ALL THE CHARACTERS in the work of Carson McCullers, the one who seemed to her family and friends most like the author herself was Frankie Addams: the vulnerable, exasperating and endearing adolescent of The Member of the Wedding who was looking for the "we of me." However, Carson once said that she was or became in the process of writing all the characters in her work. This is probably true of most real writers who often with pain draw from their unconscious what the rest of us would just as soon keep hidden from ourselves and others. So accept the fact that Carson was not only Frankie Addams but J. T. Malone, Miss Amelia and Captain Penderton; but familiarity with the work that she was able to finish would be only a partial clue to who and what she was. This was not simply because she had not finished what she had to say, but that she was the artist, and as she often quoted, "Nothing human is alien to me."

  Before her death, I would have said that I knew Carson better than anyone did—that I knew her very well indeed. This would have been the truth as I saw it at the time, and at times I am still tempted to think that I knew her the best. After all, I knew her for forty-five years and lived with her off and on for much of that time. We shared the same heritage, the same parents, the same brother, the same room that looked out on the same holly tree and Japanese magnolia, and for the first twelve years of my life, the same mahogany bed. But we were sisters—sometimes intimate friends, sometimes enemies and at times strangers.

  I remember very well the day that she told me—she did not ask me—that she had appointed me co-executor of her literary estate. I was annoyed. Unable to acknowledge her constant closeness to death, I resented her trying to force me to face it. Carson was there when I was born and would be there when I died. She had lived through enough close calls to prove to me that she was indestructible.

  Her papers were no concern of mine when she was living and I had no idea what she had saved. I have been just as surprised by what is there as by what is not there. I can't find any letters from our mother who wrote her every day they were separated, but all the valentines from a year were committed for keeping. So it would seem that these archives are partially due to accidental circumstance—dependent on Carson's health and the whim of any part-time secretarial help she had from time to time. Those of us concerned with her estate hope that these files will go to a library before much longer and be made available for further study. Even then, scholars will find it difficult to distinguish the truth.

  Carson saw her life one way and those intimate with her often perceived it differently. Intentionally or unintentionally, she added to the confusion about herself. An interviewer was more likely to be cannily interviewed than to extract an interview from her. Besides, she simply liked a good story and frequently embellished the more amusing ones of her life. The one person who singled out this quality in a particularly loving way was Tennessee Williams in his unpublished essay "Praise to Assenting Angels":

  The great generation of writers that emerged in the twenties, poets such as Eliot, Crane, Cummings and Wallace Stevens, prose-writers such as Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Katharine Anne Porter, has not been succeeded or supplemented by any new figures of corresponding stature with the sole exception of this prodigious young talent that first appealed in 1940 with the publication of her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. She was at that time a girl of twenty-two who had come to New York from Columbus, Georgia, to study music. According to the legends that surround her early period in the city, she first established her residence, quite unwittingly, in a house of prostitution, and she found the other tenants of the house friendly and sympathetic and had not the ghost of an idea of what illicit enterprise was going on there. One of the girls in this establishment became her particular friend and undertook to guide her about the town, which Carson McCullers found confusing quite imaginably, since even to this day she hesitates to cross an urban street unattended, preferably on both sides. However a misadventure befell her. Too much trust was confided in this mischievous guide, and while she was being shown the subway route to the Juilliard School of Music, the companion and all of her tuition money, which the companion had offered to keep for her, abruptly disappeared. Carson was abandoned penniless in the subway, and some people say it took her several weeks to find her way out, and when she did finally return to the light of day, it was in Brooklyn where she became enmeshed in a vaguely similar menage whose personnel ranged from W. H. Auden to Gypsy Rose Lee. At any rate, regardless of how much fantasy this legend may contain, the career of music was abandoned in favor of writing, and somewhere, sometime, in the dank and labytinthine mysteries of the New York subway system, possibly between some chewing-gum vendor and some weight and character analysis given by a doll Gypsy, a bronze tablet should be erected in the memory of the mischievous comrade who made away with Carson's money for the study of piano. To paraphrase a familiar cliché of screen publicity-writers, perhaps a great musician was lost but a greater writer was found...

  The original intention of this volume was to include most of Carson's previously published but uncollected work that otherwise would require assiduous research for an interested reader. But as I read through her papers, another concept for a collection evolved. Her papers included a good number of very early unpublished stories, most of them written before she was nineteen, in the late Sylvia Chatfield Bates' evening class in writing at New York University. Several of them still had the teacher's comment attached. My first reaction to this student material was that none of it should be published. After further reading I felt that all of it should eventually be published in a small edition by a university press. Now, four years after Carson's death, I believe a few selected examples belong in this volume to round out the glimpse of Carson's growth as a writer. I say "glimpse" because although the total material in this volume spans over thirty years, for the most part it was culled from her least-known work. This book does not include all of her previously uncollected or unpublished work, but rather a selection chosen to illuminate in part the creative process and development of Carson McCullers. "Wunderkind" is reprinted here, although it appeared earlier in The Ballad of the Sad Café collection, because it is her first published story—a milestone in any author's life. The other early stories have either not been previously published or have never been collected in a Carson McCullers edition. The outline of "The Mute" is included as another milestone in Carson's period of development, particularly when we know it evolved as her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. As examples of her mature work, again I have chosen lesser-known stories in order to familiarize the reader with fresh material.

  Many of the pieces in the Essays and Articles section were written on assignment or written after such promptings as unspecific as "Do you have any thoughts on Thanksgiving?" given out by an editor who knew her work. These "assignments" were welcome because Carson was in need of money and could take some quick time off from her fiction writing to take advantage of these suggestions. Although this kind of magazine journalism is not always her best work, a number of these pieces are included because they are little known and have never been collected.

  Five of Carson's poems, published in magazines or recorded, are here. Most of her unpublished poetry is in longhand, difficult to decipher accurately, and in some cases, unfinished or uncollated; therefore, none of these poems are included.

  So this book is to give some idea of the early work of a writer and to illustrate,
within the range of material chosen from her least-known work, the development of that talent. My hope is that Carson would have approved. I am plagued with doubt because I wonder why Carson did not collect some of this material while she was living since money was always a problem. Her expenses were excessive—doctors, nursing care, hospitals and an invalid's more than ordinary necessities. However, writers usually think more about their current work and their future plans than about what has already been written and she may not have had the strength or the interest to put together such a book. In fact, she may have forgotten these early stories existed.

  I have referred obliquely to Carson's precarious health and her suffering and I do not plan to go into detail here. As a child she was always delicate and intermittently sick in bed, even though she played tennis, rode horseback and swam in between bouts of illness. As a young adult she began experiencing strokes and by the age of thirty-one her entire left side was paralyzed. Subsequent strokes and operations limited her physical abilities even more. The myth of her typing novels with one finger probably started with her (in fact, it probably was true for a while), but for years before her death, she could not have sat at a desk or even typed in bed. Even so, writing was possible—sometimes in longhand, sometimes dictated in a voice that she hardly had the strength to project. It is a blessing in every way that, while very young, Carson gave up her design to be a concert pianist, a career which would have been impossible for her to pursue. (Of course, as any reader of Carson McCullers knows, she used her knowledge and love of music throughout her writing.) When we were children, she used to practice five hours a day. At the time, I did not think I was especially privileged to be awakened by a Bach fugue. The most graphic memory I have of those beautiful Bach-playing hands with long strong fingers was shortly before she died, when the sheets of her bed had to be changed and she was able with her good hand to pull herself over to one side of the bed. It was as if her last physical strength was still in that hand.

  At the age of sixteen, Carson wrote her first novel (I think she called it A Reed of Pan—the manuscript no longer exists). I remember that she earned money to come to New York—her dream—by giving a series of lectures on music appreciation to a group of Mother's friends. Once in the city she gave up music as a career and turned to her other talent—writing. She studied with Sylvia Chatfield Bates and later with Whit Burnett, who with Martha Foley edited the famous Story magazine. She continued writing up until the last and massive brain hemorrhage seven weeks before she died at fifty on September 29, 1967.

  Carson's life was tragic in so many ways that people who did not know her personally have heard of her courage but not of her ingenuousness, her folksy humor, her wit and kindness. No two of her friends can be in the same room for long before one of them begins "Remember the time that Carson..." and off they go with countless stories.

  I think now of a time when she wanted me to straighten out her library. This was many years ago but even at that period it was difficult for her to walk with a cane for more than a few steps and she wanted to be able to tell whoever happened to be taking care of her at the time exactly where to put his hands on the Rilke poems, Out of Africa, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and on and on; it soon became clear that all the books she had were essential to her. Two young girls had come to help with the physical labor of making our homemade version of a library. It was obvious that the girls had not read much and had never read Carson McCullers or heard of her. They just knew that she was a writer and one asked if she had really read all those books. I was busy trying to narrow down the absolutely essential books so that they would fit in one bookcase when I heard the same girl making more polite conversation by saying, "I never did understand why that lady let Beth die in Little Women." I didn't want to look at Sister, but the reflex was too sudden and now, thank God, I often see her expression of that moment when I think of her, rather than the way she was those last weeks. Her smile was so sweet and bemused, and she answered gently, seriously, "Yes, I cried too."

  There were sorrows and tragedies in Carson's life other than her physical illness: two stormy marriages to the same James Reeves McCullers, his death followed by that of our mother and that of a favorite aunt, and many other difficult times. But it is important to note that there were moments of joy and anticipation of joy. She had recognition from sources that pleased her and she enjoyed fame from the time she was twenty-three when The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was published. There were standing ovations for the magical Broadway production of The Member of the Wedding. There were invitations to presidential inaugurations and teas with Edith Sitwell and Marilyn Monroe, and her long and constant friendship with Tennessee Williams. Stage-struck like Frankie, she enjoyed having her picture taken with John Huston when she visited him at his castle in Ireland. She had two works in progress before her death and movies of Reflections in a Golden Eye and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter were in production. She had many-friends who loved her, but more important a few whom she really loved.

  She loved any kind of occasion, any to-do such as a party or Christmas, and she loved to plan for them. She was planning a party when she died. Other women might dread birthdays, but they were big events in her life. With her hair freshly washed, she would put on one of her best robes and wait for the telegrams, flowers, and—most important—the presents. In the South, if one had no intention of giving a birthday present or a Christmas present, a card was sent. Carson hated cards because it meant that the sender was not going to give her a present.

  Well, there is much courage in this world and most of it we never see. Probably what is important here is not that Carson wrote with such incredible handicaps, but that what she wrote was beautiful and real to those of us who are willing to go with her to explore the human heart. What matters about this collection is not that it has been difficult for me but whether readers who admire her work will find it rewarding to discover these little-known writings.

  I might like to think I knew Carson better than anyone did. But Tennessee Williams on his first meeting with her caught the real spirit of Carson and the Carson I like to remember. In the essay cited earlier, he wrote:

  I should like to mention my first meeting with Carson McCullers. It occurred during the summer that I thought I was dying. I was performing a great many acts of piety that summer. I had rented a rather lopsided frame house on the island of Nantucket and had filled it with a remarkably random assortment of creatures animal and human. There was a young gentleman of Mexican-Indian extraction who was an angel of goodness except when he had a drink. The trouble was that he usually had a drink. Then there was a young lady studying for the opera and another young lady who painted various bits of refuse washed up by the sea. I remember they gave a rather cold and wet odor to the upper floor of the house where she arranged her still-lifes which she called arrangements. If the weather had been consistently bright and warm these arrangements would not have been so hard to take. But the weather was unrelentingly bleak so that the exceedingly dank climate of the arrangements did little to dispell my reflections upon things morbid. One night there was a great wind-storm. Promptly as if they had been waiting all year to make this gesture, every window on the North side of the house crashed in, and we were at the mercy of the elements. The young lady who painted the wet arrangements, the opera singer and the naturally-good-humored Mexican all were driven South to that side of the house where I was attempting to write a play that involved the Angel of Eternity. At that time a pregnant cat came into the building and gave birth to five or six kittens on the bed in our downstairs guest-room. It was about this time, immediately after the wind-storm and the invasion of cats, that Carson McCullers arrived to pay me a visit on the island, in response to the first fan-letter that I had ever written to a writer, written after I had read her latest book, The Member of the Wedding.

  The same morning that Carson arrived the two other female visitors, if my memory serves me accurately, took their departure, the one with h
er portfolio of arias and the other with several cases of moist canvases and wet arrangements, neither of them thanking me too convincingly for the hospitality of the house and as they departed, casting glances of veiled compassion upon the brand new arrival.

  Carson was not dismayed by the state of the house. She had been in odd places before. She took an immediate fancy to the elated young Mexican and displayed considerable fondness for the cats and insisted that she would be comfortable in the downstairs bedroom where they were boarding. Almost immediately the summer weather improved. The sun came out with an air of permanence, the wind shifted to the South and it was suddenly warm enough for bathing. At the same time, almost immediately after Carson and the sun appeared on the island, I relinquished the romantic notion that I was a dying artist. My various psychosomatic symptoms were forgotten. There was warmth and light in the house, the odor of good cooking and the nearly-forgotten sight of clean dishes and silver. Also there was some coherent talk for a change. Long evening conversations over hot rum and tea, the reading of poetry aloud, bicycle rides and wanderings along moonlit dunes, and one night there was a marvelous display of the Aurora Borealis, great quivering sheets of white radiance sweeping over the island and the ghostly white fishermen's houses and fences. That night and that mysterious phenomenon of the sky will be always associated in my mind with the discovery of our friendship, or rather, more precisely, with the spirit of this new found friend, who seemed as curiously and beautifully unworldly as that night itself...