Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (96 page)

41

“he is humble and affectionate”:

, “Grand,” p. 379.

41

handed over most of his wife’s savings: Leverich,

, p. 152. See

, “Grand.”

41

“She said ‘Why, Walter?’”:

, “Grand,” p. 384.

42

“The Bird told me”: Vidal, “Tennessee Williams,” p. 52.

42

“I want to go to Key West”: Dennis Brown, “Miss Edwina under Glass,”

, Mar. 1977, p. 62.

42

“You’d think”: Ibid.

42

“like a ghost”: Williams to Donald Windham, Nov. 23, 1943,

, p. 121. As Williams grew increasingly a stranger to himself, the notion of being a ghost increased. To his pen pal–turned–house sitter, the poet David Lobdell, Williams signed off in one letter, “I offer you a ghostly hand, David, on your hand, your face, your hair.” (Williams to David Lobdell, Sept. 14, 1968, LLC.)

42

“ineluctably smiling”: LOA1, p. 400.

43

“gross lack of sensitivity”:

, Nov. 20, 1941, p. 257.

43

when he met Edwina: “My mother’s marriage ceremony in Columbus, Miss. came as a complete surprise to nearly all her friends in the town,” Williams wrote to Audrey Wood. “It was performed in the church but privately and was a shocking surprise to the congregation as my father was considered ‘too fast’ for a minister’s daughter.” (Williams to Audrey Wood, Nov. 26, 1946, HRC.)

43

“One thing your father had plenty of”: LOA1, p. 410.

43

“Before we arrived in St. Louis”:

, p. 34.

43

“I never could understand”: Leverich,

, p. 70.

43

“Edwina can’t sew”:

, p. 186.

43

“Baucis and Philemon”:

, p. 87.

44

“the house as though he were entering it”:

, “The Man in the Overstuffed Chair,” p. vii.

44

“It was as though a thunderclap”: Leverich,

, p. 34.

44

“We don’t think much of that new baby”: Ibid., p. 36.

44

“Then it isn’t mine”: Ibid., p. 48.

44

“was eager to get as much as he could”: Dakin Williams interview with Robert Bray,

, vol. 48 (Fall 1995), p. 777.

44

“great but confused vitality”: LOA1, p. 394.

44

“turbulence”: Leverich,

, p. 520.

45

“Most of the time, life with him”:

, p. 39.

45

“Come out of there”: Ibid., p. 63.

45

“You wanted to shrink”: Ibid., p. 26.

46

“I made the mistake of protesting”: Leverich,

, p. 138.

46

“And I—I had to endure him!”: LOA1, p. 266.

46

“two breathing things”:

, p. 35.

46

“Just like a moo-cow”: Ibid., p. 56.

46

“designed for insanity”: Harold Bloom, ed.,

(Broomall, Penn.: Chelsea House, 2003), p. 24.

46

“a whole lot more than he was worth”: Durant Da Ponte, “Tennessee’s Tennessee Williams,” Tennessee Studies in Literature, University of Tennessee Studies in the Humanities, 1956, p. 14.

46

“Dad resented any money”: Dakin Williams to Lyle Leverich, Aug. 16, 1984, LLC.

48

“Off and on he would make abortive efforts”: Williams to Kenneth Tynan, July 26, 1955,

, p. 302.

48

“I think he loved me”:

, p. 258.

48

“[Tom] did not defy his father”:

, p. 62.

48

“I had begun to regard Dad’s edicts”: Ibid., p. 69.

48

“It was like walking on eggs”: Ibid., p. 35.

48

“Cold, cold, cold”:

, “Cortege,” p. 30.

48

“The old man has just now”: Williams to Donald Windham, Apr. 1943,

, p. 58.

48

Another sign of his internal alliance: LLI with Dakin Williams, 1985, LLC.

48

“My father—how to meet him again”:

, Aug. 23, 1942, p. 323.

48

“We made talk alone”: Williams to Donald Windham, Apr. 1943,

, p. 56.

49

“What a dark and bewildering thing”: Ibid., p. 57.

49

“Does nothing but stay home and drink”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Jan. 15, 1946, HRC.

49

“Any excuse just to get away”: Williams to James Laughlin, Mar. 11, 1945,

, p. 554.

49

“He could recite poetry by the yard”:

, p. 167.

49

“Pitch now your tents toward Heaven”: Papers of the Rev. Walter Dakin, Sewanee.

51

“Is my mother a lung lady?”:

, p. 15.

51

“She was always talking”: JLI with Dakin Williams, 2001, JLC.

51

“she was trying to gain the stage”: JLI with Dakin Williams, 2004, JLC.

51

“Miss Edwina will still be talking”: Tennessee Williams, “Let It All Hang Out,”

, p. 174.

51

“rarely if ever bested”:

, p. 202.

51

“It wasn’t enough for a girl”: LOA1, p. 403.

51

“I always like to forget”:

, p. 14.

51

“I often pretended to feel gay”: Ibid., pp. 254–55.

52

“TOM: I know what’s coming!”: LOA1, p. 403.

52

“You couldn’t sit with Edwina”: JLI with Gore Vidal, 2000, JLC.

52

“was exceptionally observant as a child”:

, p. 15.

52

reenacted by Amanda: “Dakin said that the characterization was so accurate, Edwina could have sued Tom. ‘Her fainting act and her “suffering Jesus” facial expressions were the most lethal (and unendurable) bits of her repertoire.’ ” (Leverich,

, p. 567.)

52

“looked like a horse eating briars”: Leverich,

, p. 560.

53

“Well, Mrs. Williams”: Ibid.

53

“a moderately controlled hysteric”:

, p. 116.

53

trouble with her body: In 1920, Edwina miscarried; in 1922, her persistent illness was diagnosed as incipient tuberculosis; in 1926 she had a hysterectomy from which she nearly died.

53

“She used to scream every time”:

, p. 327.

53

“president of the anti-sex league”: Leverich,

, p. 61.

53

“She didn’t believe in sex”: JLI with Dakin Williams, 2001, JLC.

53

“She just didn’t touch you”: JLI with Dakin Williams, 2004, JLC. Edwina claimed that her own mother, Williams’s beloved “Grand,” was “never very demonstrative, the least demonstrative person I’ve known, but she felt things deeply.” (

, p. 162.)

53

“Don’t quote instinct to me!”: LOA1, p. 421.

53

“an almost criminally foolish woman”:

, pp. 326–27.

53

“monolithic Puritanism”:

, p. 119.

53

“all the errors and mistakes”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Jan. 15, 1946, HRC.

53

“Achievement, of whatever kind”: The typing exercise is filed in the Rose Williams folder at HRC.

54

martyred look: Leverich,

, p. 567.

54

“She fixes on him her look”:

, “Man in the Overstuffed Chair,” p. x.

54

“maniacal fury”: Ibid.

54

“imposed”:

, p. 751.

54

Dakin remained sexually inexperienced: “I knew next to nothing about sex and was a ‘virgin’ when I married Joyce in 1955 at the age of thirty-seven.” (Dakin Williams to Lyle Leverich, July 15, 1987, LLC.)

54

“reaction to delusions”: “Psychiatric Summary”: Farmington State Hospital, Dr. CC Ault, Dec. 16, 1937, LLC.

54

“and then not with my hands”:

, pp. 751–53.

54

“highly sexed”:

, p. 119.

54

“She made no positive motion”:

, “Portrait of a Girl in Glass,” p. 110.

54

“to associate the sensual”: Leverich,

, p. 63.

54

“almost entirely impossible”:

, p. 23.

54

“Almost without remission”: Ibid., p. 17.

55

“What taunts me worst”:

, Sept. 23, 1942, p. 325.

55

“the only psychiatrist in whom I believe”:

, p. 244.

55

“essentially more psychotic”:

, p. 327. Edwina herself was committed for a time; at the end of her life, she dropped the “a” from her name and signed herself “Edwin Williams.”

55

“Like a force of nature”: Williams to Elia Kazan, July 5, 1980, Harvard.

55

“You’re my right-hand bower!”: LOA1, p. 419.

55

“Resume your seat, little sister”: Ibid., p. 402.

55

“Nonsense! Laura”: Ibid., p. 410.

55

“AMANDA: It’s almost time”: Ibid., p. 404.

56

“My mother was extremely”: LLI with Dakin Williams, Apr. 15, 1985, LLC.

56

“Her husband had deserted her”: Tennessee Williams, “Stairs to the Roof” (unpublished story), HRC.

56

“mah writin’ son”: Leverich,

, p. 65.

56

“Within a few months”: Williams to Elia Kazan, undated, WUCA.

56

“thought writers were complete zeroes”: Dakin Williams to Lyle Leverich, Aug. 16, 1984, LLC.

56

“I feel uncomfortable”:

, Oct. 7, 1938, p. 125.

56

“doubled her support”: Leverich,

, p. 65.

56

storytelling became a kind of collusion:

, p. 15.

57

“I was a sweet child”:

, Oct. 10, 1943, p. 395.

57

“the same precarious balance of nerves”: Williams to Audrey Wood, Sept. 4, 1942, HRC.

58

“all of the family were mentally deranged”: Leverich,

, p. 247.

58

“like a somnambulist””:

, p. 119.

58

“Rose is liable to go down”:

, p. 85.

58

“Tragedy. I write that word”:

, Jan. 25, 1937, p. 73.

58

“Insight was entirely absent”: “Psychiatric Summary.”

58

“Mother chose to have Rose’s lobotomy done”:

, p. 327.

58

“now lived in a world”:

, p. 14.

58

“outer oblivion and inner violence”:

, p. 76.

59

“reclaiming dead bodies”: Leverich,

, p. 65.

59

“somatic delusions”: “Psychiatric Summary.”

59

That ghostliness: To Williams, playwriting was a sort of haunting. “A play just seems to materialize, like an apparition it gets clearer and clearer and clearer,” he said. (

, p. 330.) He would later write to Elia Kazan about “the detached eye of art” and its ability to see human character in all its contradictoriness, “as if a ghost sat over the affairs of men and made a true recording of them.” (Williams to Elia Kazan Apr. 19, 1947, WUCA.)

59

CC’s abandonment: On seeing

for the first time, CC’s only comment was, “Well, I never deserted the family.”

59

“interior storms”: Williams to Donald Windham, July 28, 1943,