Williams, Capote, and Welty

Florence, 1949-50

I have often regretted that I did not write more frequently to Tennessee Williams. When I did, he responded immediately with the warmth and wit to which I was accustomed. This last letter to me I have set down just as it was when it arrived; it was addressed from the Shakespeare Motor Inn in Stratford, Connecticut, where Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was being revived before being transferred to the ANTA Theatre in New York.

July 18, 1974

Dear Bill:

AS USUAL I'VE LOST SOMETHING, THIS TIME MY READING GLASSES, SO THAT I HAVE TO WRITE IN CAPS TO MAKE OUT WHAT I'M WRITING. I'D ONLY READ ONE OF THE ESSAYS BEFORE, THE ONE ABOUT LOUISE BOGAN, AND AM DELIGHTED TO HAVE A CHANCE TO ENJOY THEM ALL. I AM SO ACCUSTOMED, BILL, TO MISQUOTATIONS, NOT TO MENTION THE ENDLESS CALUMNIES, THAT THE LINES YOU HAVE RESURRECTED FROM MY FUNNIEST PIECE OF VERSE SEEM ALMOST FAITHFUL TO THE TEXT, ALTHOUGH THEY DON'T QUITE SCAN. THEY WENT LIKE THIS. "YET, DEATH, I'LL PARDON ALL YOU TOOK AWAY / WHILE STILL YOU SPARE ME GLORIOUS MILLAY!" YOUR NEW POSITION AT COLUMBIA SOUNDS GREAT AND I HOPE IT WILL MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR US TO MEET AGAIN AFTER THIS LONG INTERVAL. YOU MENTION SONJA IN YOUR LETTER. WHEN I SAW YOU IN FLORENCE, YOU WERE MARRIED TO A GIRL NAMED BARBARA, LOVELY AND A POET. I HOPE NOTHING SAID [sic] IS INVOLVED. DO YOU EVER HEAR ANYTHING ABOUT CLARK—YOU AND HE MADE ST. LOUIS ENDURABLE TO ME IN THOSE DAYS, AND THAT TOOK A LOT OF DOING. YOU MAY REMEMBER I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A HOUSE KEY. AND THE STORIES OF GORDON SAGER AND DR. FRANK WEBSTER WERE THE SCANDAL OF OUR LIVES. WHEN IN NEW YORK I STAY AT THE HOTEL ELYSEE, 60 E. 54TH STREET, A SHRINE TO MANY OLD ACTRESSES SUCH AS ETHEL BARRYMORE, TALLULAH, DOROTHY GISH. I'M NOT SURE THAT GLORIOUS MILLAY EBER [sic] HUNG HER HARP THERE.

GOOD LUCK AND LOVE,
Tom

I had sent Tom a copy of my book The Streaks of the Tulip: Selected Criticism that had appeared in 1972. The volume included an essay on the work of Louise Bogan. I had remembered that in St. Louis Tom and I had both admired her poems in The New Yorker, where she regularly reviewed poetry. I had since then become a friend of hers and we had edited together an anthology of poetry for children, The Golden Journey. In a footnote to my essay I had quoted from memory a poem about women poets that Tom had written before we met. I had apologized for having misquoted him. Here in his response he correctly quotes the closing couplet to his sonnet, which he later published in its entirety in his Memoirs, with these words introducing it:

During the weekdays [from 1931 to 1934 when he was employed, at his father's insistence, at the Continental Shoemakers] I would work on verse: quite undistinguished, I fear, and upon one occasion, I knocked out what is probably the most awful sonnet ever composed. It strikes me, now, as comical enough to be quoted in full:

I see them lying sheeted in their graves,All of the women poets of this land,Each in her inscrutable small cave,Song reft from lip and pen purloined from hand.And no more vocal, now, than any stone,Less aureate, in fact, now, than winter weed,This thing of withered flesh and bleached boneThat patterned once beauty's immortal creed.

Rudely death seized and broke proud Sappho's lyre,Barrett and Wylie went their songless way,He does not care what hecatomb of fireIs spilt when, shattering the urn of clay.Yet, Death, I'll pardon all you took awayWhile still you spare me glorious Millay.

Although here Tom makes fun of Millay, I recall the afternoon in St. Louis when Clark, he, and I had read with great admiration the poems of Millay that had just appeared in Harper's magazine...