Mockingbird (37 page)

*   *   *

Though she wasn't by nature a joiner, Lee would do favors for friends such as Peck, provided there was no fanfare about it. Students at Monroe County High School became accustomed to seeing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author making an annual visit to Marjorie Nichols's English class to discuss
To Kill a Mockingbird.
They were often so awed by her that they didn't know what to say.

She “was very frazzled,” said one, “she was matronly, she was kind of disheveled. She was a person who didn't seem to care about appearances. She wore a beige skirt with the blouse tucked in unevenly. She dressed like a woman who seemed much older, not like a woman who spent time in New York. She had a loud voice and she was rather brusque. She just took over the class. After talking a little bit about the writing of the book, she asked if there were any questions, but of course there weren't any because we were too intimidated. So, with a remark like, ‘See you next week at bridge, Marj!' she left.”
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Interestingly, the novel was not taught throughout the Monroe County school system, despite the story being set in Monroeville. Although it was on the approved reading list, few teachers used it in their classrooms. A resident and former teacher said there was a “certain reluctance to get into the controversial issues of race relations, rape accusations, and so on. Some also felt that perhaps some local folks did not at that time regard the book as great literature. Plus, there may have been more people in the 1960s and '70s who would have thought they recognized their family members as characters in the novel and been offended.”
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In addition to her annual visits to the local high school, Lee also accepted an invitation from another close friend, Anne Gary Pannell, president of Sweet Briar College, to speak to Professor William Smart's creative writing classes. Smart had only recently joined the faculty as a young instructor, and was nervous about squiring Nelle around the campus for several days. When the train pulled into the station with Lee aboard in late October, Smart studied the passengers as they descended to the platform.

“Are you Harper Lee?” he said cautiously to a stout woman with salt-and-pepper hair.

“I sure am!” she said and handed him her suitcase.
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The eighty students who attended her talks received never-to-be-repeated insights into her experience about the craft of writing.

“It's absolutely essential that a writer know himself,” Lee began, “for until he knows his abilities and limitations, his talents and problems, he will be unable to produce anything of real value. Secondly, you must be able to look coldly at what you do. The writer must know for whom he writes, why he writes, and if his writing says what he means for it to say. Writing is, in a way, a contest of knowing, of seeing the dream, of getting there, and of achieving what you set out to do. The simplest way to reach this goal is to simply say what you mean as clearly and precisely as you know how.”

In answer to a student's question about her typical workday, Nelle described a regime that must have made some of the young listeners quail. She said that when she was writing
To Kill a Mockingbird
, she had stayed at her desk six to twelve hours a day and ended up with, perhaps, one page of finished manuscript. “To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It's sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it in you or not. Everyday. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour to writing. In fact, it's heartbreak most of the time.”

And to disabuse the novice writers listening to her of the notion that merely completing a novel would guarantee its publication, she added, “it's just as hard to write a bad novel as it is to write a good one. And if a writer does come up with a manuscript worthy of publication, it is assured that many pages of unpublished material have preceded it.”
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Given the tone of her remarks, and her description of the demands of authorship, perhaps she was venting her frustration over failing to complete the second novel. Annie Laurie Williams had been alternately encouraging, unctuous, bantering, optimistic, quick to come to her defense, and confident that Harper Lee would deliver. But she didn't.

Lee's retreat and predictions about when the novel would be done became background noise. In 1962, when Williams and Crain were pressing her for a quick follow-up to
To Kill a Mockingbird
, another young woman had come to Williams, eager to do whatever was necessary to become a bestselling author. On the day of the appointment, she kept changing outfits over and over, trying to look like what she thought a high-powered literary agent would expect. She was a former television actress and she knew the importance of dressing the part.

The meeting went well, and afterwards she wrote excitedly in her diary that Williams had agreed to take her as a client. “As an actress,” Williams reminded her, “when you're up for a part, if the producer says no—that's it. But with a book, if a publisher says no—you send it to another publisher.… It only takes one yes to make a hit.”

The young woman was Jacqueline Susann. Her first novel,
Valley of the Dolls
(1966), became one of the most popular in American publishing history, with thirty million copies sold. She followed it up with
The Love Machine
(1969) and
Once Is Not Enough
(1972), becoming the first author to have three consecutive novels ranked first on the
New York Times
bestseller list. Critics dismissed her books as trash; some libraries refused to carry them; but she produced, and by the time she died at fifty-six of lung cancer, she had made herself and Annie Laurie Williams very, very rich.

*   *   *

On November 28, 1966, all of New York society was agog at Truman Capote's Black and White Ball, held at the Plaza Hotel. It was, Truman told the press, a “little masked ball for Kay Graham [president of the
Washington Post
and
Newsweek
magazine] and all my friends.”
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Five hundred and forty of his friends had received invitations, but the red-and-white admission tickets were printed only the week before, to prevent forgeries. Stairways and elevators were blocked, except for one elevator going up to the ballroom. From its doors emerged the glitterati of the times: politicians, scientists, painters, writers, composers, actors, producers, dress designers, social figures, and tycoons. Truman invited ten guests from Kansas, too, including Alvin and Marie Dewey and the widow of Judge Roland Tate. Secret Service agents made a mental note of everyone getting off the elevator, and the guests were announced as they entered the ballroom.

Nelle received an invitation, but she didn't attend. Perhaps her absence was an indication of how much she wanted to distance herself from
In Cold Blood
and everything associated with it, or maybe the crush of glamorous people was more than she could bear.

*   *   *

By January 1968, Maurice Crain's cancer had progressed to a point that “I have been urged by my doctors to curtail my activities somewhat in the future,” he wrote to a writer who had submitted a manuscript for review. “I do not feel it would be fair to you or to my present clients to undertake any new projects at this time.”
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Nelle was in limbo about what to do. Her novel was still unfinished, and Crain, who was not only her agent but also one of her dearest friends, was ill. He had been her bulwark against pressure from Lippincott to hurry up. He was the first one she saw when she opened her eyes after the surgery on her hand, and now he needed that kind of support. Naturally, however, Annie Laurie Williams wanted to spend more private time with her husband, and the two went for long weekends alone to the Old Stone House as often as they could.

Turning to another old friend to ease her worries, Lee temporarily patched up things with Capote, and the two of them went on a sentimental trip through Alabama.
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Despite the pleasure excursion, thoughts of death weren't far from Nelle's mind. A colleague on the National Council of the Arts, René D'Harnoncourt, director of the Museum of Modern Art, was hit while walking and killed by a drunk driver. “The news of René's death has no doubt reached you,” she wrote to fellow council member Paul Engle, director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. “A sad cruel thing. I for one shall miss him sorely. There is nothing of the slightest interest to report from Alabama.”
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In spite of his illness, Crain continued to go into the office. He enjoyed his work and wouldn't hear of taking it easy. Characteristically, he put up a front of gruffness, even as his cancer treatments took their toll on his energy. An agent sent him a proposal for a book about deserters from the war in Vietnam. Crain, a former War World II bomber crewman and prisoner of war, sent back a reply that crackled with contempt: “It would be hard to find a subject which would interest me less or which I think less deserving of treatment at book length than the confused and bewildered Army deserters who have inflicted themselves upon the Swiss. Has it occurred to you that the younger generation has produced an extraordinarily high proportion of jerks—a much higher proportion than our own? The material is returned herewith.”
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Six months later, Maurice was too ill to go into the office any longer. Because there were still commitments with authors and publishers that had to be shepherded to completion, Annie Laurie ran both her dramatic rights agency and Maurice's literary agency by herself. While she did that, Nelle took care of Maurice. There were hospital visits to make, errands to run, and appointments to keep with doctors. “Nelle was there for him,” said his niece, Joy Hafner-Bailey. “There was no choice—Annie Laurie had to keep the business running.”
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When he became bedridden, Lee stayed with him most of the day until Annie Laurie could return in the evening.

On April 23, 1970, he died at age sixty-eight.

“I don't know whether you know my sad news. My husband died last April of cancer, so I have been ‘going it alone' now for the past sad months,” Williams wrote to a friend in barely decipherable handwriting that suggests she was still emotionally distraught.
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Lee disappeared from view. The death of her older friend had robbed her of her most valuable advocate and upset the balance of her relationship with Williams. The two women stopped seeing each other very often, probably because being together conjured up too many painful memories. Not long after Crain's death, Williams received a request asking if Horton Foote's screenplay of
To Kill a Mockingbird
could be adapted for the professional theater market. After not receiving an answer from Nelle for months, Williams wrote her a testy note, “Will you please tell me what I should say to Lucy Kroll? I hope that sometime soon you will have dinner with me.”
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It's conceivable that the relationship between Nelle and Crain was something more than deep friendship. Because although Crain was a considerate man, it's hard to limit his role to agent in light of what he did for Nelle. Not only was he the first person she saw when she awoke from surgery; he was the one who cared for her at home while she was recuperating; he made a special trip out to Fire Island for the purpose of paying her a visit; he called her regularly, perhaps as often as once a week; he waved her off on the
Queen Elizabeth
for her celebratory trip to Britain; and, finally, he went to Alabama to meet her extended family. Despite all this, among his papers at Columbia University, there is not a single piece of correspondence from Nelle. It's as if the collection was scoured clean of the relationship. Yet, in the papers of Fred Gipson, another of Crain's clients, there are half a dozen letters from Crain, a few of which have Harper Lee as their main subject. The clues about the relationship are suggestive, but inconclusive. Even Capote was intrigued. In December 1961, he wrote to Alvin and Marie Dewey, “About Nelle. I am rather worried about her.
Just between us
, I have good reason to believe that she is unhappily in love with a man impossible to marry etc.”
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Annie Laurie began to suffer health problems, and she lost interest in the agency. In September 1971, her sister Pamela Barnes informed Erskine Caldwell's wife, Virginia, “Annie Laurie intended writing you a personal letter but unfortunately she fell and fractured a rib and has been in the hospital. However, she asked me to write you and tell you that we are giving up our office … and have been trying to return books and scripts to authors.”
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Lee's surrogate family, the community that had sustained her through the creation of her first novel and whom she had relied upon for guidance when she was a beginning writer, was growing smaller. She continued to see the Browns regularly whenever she was in New York, but their friendship was unrelated—except for the unforgettable Christmas loan she repaid—to her career as a writer. Maurice Crain had passed away and Annie Laurie Williams was living with relatives, having turned over care of the Old Stone House to her sister Fern. Truman's place in Nelle's life was uncertain because he was drinking and using drugs heavily, a result of strain caused by
In Cold Blood
, he said. Nelle was prepared to stand by him, but he was difficult, even to people who genuinely cared about him.

Getting a finished manuscript to Tay Hohoff no longer mattered, either, because Hohoff had retired from Lippincott in the early 1970s. Besides, the bloom was off the rose as far as bringing out another novel from Nelle Harper Lee was concerned. It had been more than ten years since
To Kill a Mockingbird.