"The Still-Existing Parts of Life," Part I: The Early Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Mary Louise Aswell

Abstract

"The Still-Existing Parts of Life," Part I:The Early Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Mary Louise Aswell Elizabeth Crews In the introduction to The Norton Book of Friendship, Eudora Welty wrote, "All letters, old and new, are the still-existing parts of a life. To read them now is to be present when some discovery of truth—or perhaps untruth, some flash of light—is just occurring" (37–38). For over forty years, Welty and Mary Louise Aswell, who was the fiction editor at Harper's Bazaar during the early years of Welty's career, maintained a close friendship predominantly through letters. The letters from the first fifteen years of this friendship give insight into the roles of writer and editor or reader, and they reveal the truths of a long-lasting, though primarily long-distance, friendship. The study of these letters is important for several reasons. First, Welty scholars have given a great deal of attention to the relationships and correspondence between Welty and her male friends. Michael Kreyling in Author and Agent focused on the letters between Welty and her agent, Diarmuid Russell. Suzanne Marrs published What There Is to Say We Have Said presenting the correspondence of Welty and William Maxwell, editor of The New Yorker, and with Tom Nolan Meanwhile There Are Letters, which focuses on the correspondence between Welty and Kenneth Millar, a mystery novelist who wrote under the pen name Ross Macdonald. Julia Eichelberger's Tell About Night Flowers examines the importance of gardening and flowers in Welty's 1940–1949 correspondence with Russell and John Robinson, who was Welty's friend from Jackson and longtime love interest. Welty also had many rich and meaningful friendships with women. Pearl McHaney dedicated a chapter to Welty as "letter writer" in her book-length study of Welty's nonfiction and photography, A Tyrannous Eye, in which she addressed Welty's letter writing to both male and female friends. All of these studies are interesting reads and of immense importance for Welty scholars. However, there has been no lengthy study dedicated solely to the correspondence between Welty and any of her female friends, of whom Aswell was one of the dearest. From a practical standpoint, of Welty's [End Page 33] female friendships, the largest archive is the correspondence between Welty and Aswell. The second reason why this study is important is because it highlights the relationship between writer and editor and gives insight into how each worked. After Aswell's death in 1984, her son Duncan Aswell writes Welty saying: Your suggestion of having all the correspondences between Mother and yourself assembled by the Miss. Archives in Jackson makes excellent sense to Mary and me. I don't believe it would be possible to collection [sic] a substantial enough number of Mother's letters to other writers to form a significant record all by itself. The appropriate method of studying Mother's work as editor, it seems to me, is as part of the back-and-forth correspondence with a writer, as would be possible in the arrangement you outlined to me. Someday, perhaps, I will be able to learn how Mother worked by studying the letters she wrote you. I would very much appreciate that opportunity. (Letter, 6 Mar. 1985) Duncan is correct: it is appropriate to study Aswell's work as editor by looking at her correspondence with a writer, and it is appropriate to study Welty's work as a writer in light of her correspondence with an editor. In a letter to Aswell in May 1953, Welty writes how glad she is that Aswell likes The Ponder Heart and says, "The three people whose opinions I hold highest—you, Diarmuid, and Bill Maxwell," which indicates how much Welty valued Aswell as a reader (May 1953). Aswell is the only one of Welty's trusted readers mentioned whose correspondence scholars have not fully explored. These letters show the deep friendship between the two women, but they also show the working relationship between friends serving as writer and as trusted reader. Aswell and Welty were friends from 1941 until Aswell's death in 1984. In the early 1940s when they met, Aswell was...