-
Joseph Gallagher
- The University of Alabama Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
49 / Joseph gallagher Joseph Gallagher, a retired priest of the baltimore diocese, is also a former editor of the Catholic Review and a frequent contributor of articles to the Baltimore Sun. He is the author of To Hell and Back with Dante: A Modern Reader’s Guide to the divine comedy (1996). Katherine Anne Porter greatly admired dante, one of many literary and spiritual subjects she found to discuss with father Gallagher. source: Joseph Gallagher, “Katherine Anne Porter:the Last candle is Out,”Baltimore Evening Sun 30 september 1980: A11. When i first visited the sickbed of Katherine Anne Porter, we both thought it would be her deathbed. Like Old nannie in her story “the Last Leaf,” the 87-year -old writer was “expecting her own death momentarily.” in person and over the phone she was to speak to me constantly about dying. “i’m going to die, and i’m going to do it as soon as i can.” “i need to die.” “i’m busy dying; it’s the hardest job i ever had.” in 1977 she had suffered a stroke which left her writing hand useless. i met her in January 1978 when she lived on the 15th floor of the Westchester Apartments near college Park. she had nurses around the clock, and during my thirty subsequent visits over the next twenty-eight months, she was always in bed, except for the two or three times i found her in a wheelchair. Last April she was transferred to a new and final bed at a nursing home in silver spring. i paid her a last visit a few days after her ninetieth birthday in mid-may. A woman friend who had written a dissertation on the role of women in miss Porter’s fiction was her sole companion at the end,8 which occurred at 4 p.m. on sept. 18. At last she had the peace she had earned. A handwritten note on the door of her Westchester suite had requested that in view of her need for rest and quiet, uninvited callers should consider themselves disinvited. some autograph hunter had clipped away her signature. inside that suite i was allowed to see the simple but gaily colored coffin that she kept in a closet. i also saw on her walls several pictures she had taken of the poet 242 / Katherine Anne Porter remembered Hart crane when she befriended him in mexico in the early 1930s. it was on his way back from mexico to the U.s. that he leaped or fell to his death from a ship. in a lighter vein she confirmed for me a legendary story: Late one night, at a writers’ colony, an overwrought poet banged on miss Porter’s door. “Katherine Anne,” she said, “i’m going to commit suicide, and you’re the only one i care to tell about it.” “Well, thank you dearie,” replied miss Porter escorting the lady to the door; “be sure to let me know how it turns out.” (there was no suicide.)9 Propped up in bed beneath a gilt-edged painting of the madonna and child, she seemed a tiny woman indeed. but hers was a face still marvelously alive, and crowned with elegant silver-white hair. you were struck at once by her engulfing smile, her ingratiating southern voice, her wit and her feistiness. When she couldn’t find some word she was looking for, she might grow mightily vexed, or she might mock herself playfully with a string of nonsense syllables. she was a softie, thistexas-born relative of daniel boone (and also of William sydney Porter alias O. Henry, and of cole Porter.)10 during a violent summer storm she recalled how as a child she loved to lie on the ground during such storms. “don’t you know that’s dangerous?” her wifeless father asked. “sure i do,” replied the youngster. “And that was that.” On another occasion she spoke about the consolation of having done your best—“Angels can do no more.”then after a slight pause, she added: “Or maybe they can. i’ll see them soon and ask them.” i mentioned W. H. Auden’s remark that life is a blessing even when we cannot bless it.11 “darn him,” she joked; “he would say that.that’s what i’ve always tried to say in my stories.” she gave me a copy of her Collected Stories, which won for her the Pulitzer Prize and...