
          A Letter from Lillian Smith
          Edited by Gladney, RoseRose Gladney
          Vol. 10, No. 4, 1988, pp. 17, 19
          
          Lillian Smith's friendship with Carson McCullers and her husband
Reeves may be dated to the late 1940s. After the Broad way production
of Strange Fruit closed in 1946, Lillian kept an
apartment in Brooklyn Heights, dividing her time between New York and
Clayton, Georgia, and maintained a number of friendships in New York's
literary circles until the spring of 1953 when she discovered she had
breast cancer and returned permanently to her mountain home. Still
recuperating from a radical mastectomy, she had just completed her
second work of nonfiction, The Journey, when Carson
came to visit her November 17, 1953. Having recently left Reeves in
Paris because of his alcoholism, Carson was working on an article
about Georgia for Holiday magazine. Her visit with
Lillian ended tragically only hours after it had begun when Carson's
sister called to say that Reeves had killed himself.
          The following letter differs in tone from some of the more public
letters selected for this series of Lillian Smith's
correspondence. Yet, it is equally important to our understanding of
Smith's life and work. Her attention to physical detail and personal
feeling reveals what is most powerful about her writing. Furthermore,
Smith makes the mundane occasion of writing a thank-you note the
opportunity to express not only solace for a friend's grief but also
profound wisdom for living.
          Her advice to Carson about heeding her inner knowledge concerning
the reality of her relationship with Reeves, letting go what had ended
in order to create something new, reflects the spirit and style of
The Journey. Because of her fight with cancer, from
1953 until 1966 Lillian Smith would write very consciously under a
death sentence. At her best, she would do so by using her past to
speak and write about the future--the future of the South, of the
world, of humanity itself.
          Undated {January 1954)
          A new year has begun. I hope it will be good, very good for you.
          Dear Carson:
          It is cold and bright like glass, today. Winds have stripped the
trees clean and pale winy smoke color is drifting down on the
mountain.
          The kind of day when my tongue says "beautiful" and my heart
mourns. Always those winds blow harder on my memory than on the
mountain and I am driven back to an empty house and empty rooms that
greedily spread over my whole life, sometimes; refusing to budge. Just
taking over as if they have a right to stay. What happened on windy
days long ago, I have no faint idea; but when such a day comes, I have
to go back, like a ghost, to my childhood and wander it. Without map;
without destination.
          So, I write you from Clayton but really from a lonely corner
somewhere in the past, to say hello and thank yow and wish you
well. It would be nice to talk. I have never talked to you. Always we
begin and there are--interruptions. Small ones, most of them; and the
one big one which I pray you have somehow made your peace with. A hard
six weeks you have had. I know this. I know there have been terrors
and regrets, and sudden revelations, and grief, and a sadness that has
no name. Always, if we could name the sadness, if we could find the
word, we feel the sadness would lift. It is like stumbling across an
old grave stone with no name and no date. Sorrow is like that. One
cannot name it. If one only could...name it and find a little date in
time for it. Then we could drop a small flower, a tear, and compose
our life around it.
          All of this you have felt, I know. And more. And I have been glad
that you were compelled to work hard; to write "about Georgia"; to
meet a deadline; to "make a little money." It is harsh and right, this
having to do the practical things when the deep breaks come. It glues
us together; it drives us and pinches us back into some kind of
shape. And while we are hardening ourselves, finding order in the
chaos, we are at the same time growing within us new possibilities for
life.
          But it has been very hard. And I know this. I have thought of you,
often. Paula has. We have talked about it with a profound dense of the
pity of it, the sadness but, also, knowing a time comes when a
relationship has ended. Death did not end it. You told me that, before
you knew. It had ended before Reeves' death. You felt this; saw it
with a clarity; felt it in the honest regions of your self; and I hope
that you have not forgotten. For no circumstance, even so hard a one
as the event that occurred, can break what was already broken. To
forgive another and one's self; to accept all in another that one can
and hold on to that. I feel you have done this; will do it; will
cherish the bright moments; the gay, absurd, ridiculous and warm days;
the tragic, too; and out of it all you will weave a new pattern,
something real and Reeves will be a pert of your words; and all this
will hold that common past close and make you glad of those years. I
feel that you are wise enough to be grateful for those years; and not
to regret them.
          The flowers were lovely. And there is a funny quirk to it which
will amuse you, I hope. The florist called from Toccoa, misery loading
down her voice. She had an order from New York for an old fashioned
bouquet for me. But she did not really have the right flowers for an
old fashioned bouquet, she said. And how on earth could she get an old
fashioned bouquet to me in Clayton! Could I perhaps come over for it?
The voice was troubled. Was I going to wear it Christmas day? No, I
said. There was no special occasion. Then, she sighed in relief, would
it be all right to send me simply cut flowers? Yes, I assured her. But
how could she get them to Clayton? She thought over long distance, too
miserable to count her dimes. Finally she said while I held the silent
phone, Oh yes; the paper truck came through Toccoa and went from there
to Clayton. She'd just put those flowers on 

the paper truck and he
would leave them at the drugstore. Would that do? Yes, of course, I
assured her. So the flowers came bouncing in on the paper truck
Saturday; the drugstore call e d to say "Miss Lil, we have some
flowers for you;" Paula went to town for them and that night beautiful
red carnations and blue irises were all over my dining room and looked
very gay and very Christmasy too. Thank you for thinking of me in such
a very nice way.
          Please give my love to your dear mother, to that very nice sister
Rita, and my warm affectionate wishes for the New Year.
          My love, dear, Lillian
          
            NOTE: This letter was copied from the original in
the Carson McCullers collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research
Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
          
          
            Rose Gladney is an assistant professor of American
Studies at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
          
        