letters signed from the author. This is a superbly evocative collection; letters in Carson’s later hand are rare. Besides the autograph letters from Carson, the book is accompanied by a typed letter signed to Bessie from Reeves McCullers, the author’s husband; a typed photographic postcard unsigned to Bessie from Carson and Reeves; and a typed letter signed to Bessie from their mutual friend Janet Flanner (1892–1975), an author, journalist, and Parisian correspondent for the New Yorker . Bessie Poor ( née Breuer, 1893–1975) was a prolific author and close friend of Carson, who praised Bessie’s first novel, Memory of Love (1934) as “a little masterpiece” (quoted in Duberman). Bessie introduced Carson to the young Julie Harris (1925–2013) who had acted in her play Sundown Beach (1948). Carson immediately arranged for her to be cast as Frankie in the Broadway adaptation of The Member of the Wedding , and Harris reprised her role for the 1952 film adaptation. Bessie’s husband Henry Varnum Poor (1887–1970) was an artist who twice painted Carson’s portrait. The Poors helped Carson find a home in Nyack, New York, where she spent the final 20 years of her life. The letters offer multiple perspectives on one of the most tumultuous periods of Carson’s life, the year prior to her husband’s suicide. In 1941, aged 24, Carson suffered the first of a series of strokes that eventually left her partially paralysed. The same year, she and Reeves divorced, only to remarry in 1945. These letters are written against the backdrop of Carson’s deteriorating health, her first hellish, mutually destructive trip with her husband to Italy, their brief contentment in their French country home in Bachvilliers, Oise, and their stressful return to Rome to work on a film script with David Selznick. Carson and Reeves had left America to travel through Italy and France in the spring of 1952. Reeves was ill with a peptic ulcer, the result of mixing hard drink and medication, and Carson mentions his illness and her own homesickness in her letters to Bessie. Their travels through Italy were fraught: Reeves threatened to throw Carson out of a window on more than one occasion and began fixating on joint suicide. They were public with their marital
82
82 McCULLERS, Carson. The Member of the Wedding. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1946 Insight into one of the most tumultuous periods of the author’s life First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to her close friend Bessie Poor and her family, “For Bessie, Henry, Anne, and Peter, about the greatest people in this world, from your devoted Carson”, together with three autograph
82
ONLY CONNECT
64
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter maker