Katherine Anne Porter Remembered

Marcella Com

23 / Marcella Comès winslow marcella rodange comès Winslow (1925–2000) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania , and attended the carnegie school of fine Arts before studying painting in europe. A portrait painter, she settled in Washington, dc, with her two young children during World War ii while her husband, colonel William randolph Winslow, was stationed in england. notable persons in addition to Katherine Anne Porter who sat for their portraits and were frequent guests at her Georgetown home on P street include robert Penn Warren, Allen tate, caroline Gordon , robert frost, and eudora Welty. Porter boarded with her for six months in 1944, when she was serving as fellow in regional Literature at the Library of congress. Winslow’s book, Brushes with the Literary, is a collection of letters by her and to her from 1943 to 1959. All the letters quoted below were written by marcella comès Winslow to her mother-in-law, the writer Anne (tat) Goodwin Winslow. source: marcella comès Winslow, Brushes with the Literary: Letters of a Washington Artist, 1943–1959 (baton rouge: Louisiana state UP, 1993), 42–45, 50–55, 56–57, 59–61, 63–64, 66–69, 71–76. January 21, 1944 dear tat, [. . .] do you know who will be here for dinner next saturday and whom you will meet if you come? none other than the great Katherine Anne Porter. she is supposed to be just out of what thetates call “the nesting period ,” and all ready for something or someone new. she is taking John Peale bishop’s place at the Library of congress,1 as JPb almost died of heart disease and has been away since before christmas. do come. february 12, 1944 [. . .] i have met Katherine Anne. she is more attractive and interesting than i expected—which was a lot. she strikes me first of all as being a very sincere artist, and then a very attractive woman. rare combination. 106 / Katherine Anne Porter remembered i have already gone out to the tates’ to make sketches for the portrait i am going to do of her.2 they all came over here last sunday. A most memorable evening. she is pleased with the idea of a portrait and will probably make a good model though, perhaps, a bit difficult to catch for sittings. KAP has pure white hair, short, curly. she is short, about your height [five feet, 2 inches],3 thin, and has lovely gray-blue eyes, a youthful unlined face, high forehead, pointed chin. she is animated in a very ladylike way, and fascinating to talk with. no airs or mannerisms, a good sense of humor and the ability to say devastating things in a charming way, like Allen. i will find out more about her while i paint her. february 22, 1944 [. . .]the very night J got sick,4 Katherine Anne came down with Pneumonitis . she is recovering rapidly, i hear. that morning i had gone to the Library of congress to make some sketches of her, taking her a valentine box of the cookies which i had made for the children. [. . .] did you hear KAP on “invitation to Learning” last sunday? this was her 13th time on the program, the only woman so consistently invited. April 1, 1944 [. . .] by the way, Allen thinks your conversation is far more scintillating than Katherine Anne’s. she talks a bit much, and apparently tries them some with her vanity. she is the Prima donna—but fascinating. vamps all the young men who come to see nancy.5 they just fall for her and ask, “Why isn’t she married?” KAP may rent my house this summer with two other women. no one reckoned with the jealousies that could flare between two southern women writers struggling for recognition in the literary world. A fight erupted between Katherine Anne Porter and caroline Gordontate over some spilled perfume , which i gather was the reason Allen phoned me to ask if Katherine Anne could rent my third-floor room. i was not only glad to have the extra sixty dollars a month she paid for the room and board but flattered that someone whom my mother-in-law had always said she would rather write like than anyone else was willing to share my old bathroom with the clawfoot tub on the second-floor landing—and share my life as well.6 April 5, 1944 [. . .] Katherine Anne Porter moved in to take my spare room and had a fever of...