Eudora Welty was born in 1909, in Jackson Mississippi. She attended most of her schooling there, but did receive a degree in Wisconsin as well as in New York from Columbia University1. She returned to Jackson in 19312. While she is often identified and associated with the vague literary diaspora that is “Southern Literature”, she, like many other writers, does not accept the label “regionalist”3. Her mother was from West Virginia, and her father Ohio, meaning some people would not even view her as “southern” despite being born and raised in Mississippi4. She even once remarked to an editor that the only thing that made her suffer as a child was being born to a Yankee father5. However, her own belief and philosophy is apparent when Eudora Welty wrote to the New Yorker, protesting observations made by Edmund Wilson’s review of William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust6. He described Faulkner as provincial, and stated that his remoteness from large cities“ to acquire complete expertness in an art that demands of the artists the closest attention and care,”7. Welty objected to this rendering, and asserted that this was like criticizing Cézanne because he lived in Aix instead of Paris, stating, “Such critical irrelevance, favorable or unfavorable, the South has long been used to, but now Mr. Wilson fancies it up and it will resound a little louder. Mr. Faulkner all the while continues to be capable of passion, of love, of wisdom, perhaps prophecy, toward his material. Isn’t that enough? Such qualities can identify themselves anywhere in the world and in any century without furnishing an address or reference?”8. While it seemed she was defending Faulkner, she was also defending herself, someone who had spent most of her life in the same place, and felt that was enough to satiate any need for inspiration for her writing. She also gained an established relationship with Faulkner, leading to years of correspondence9 starting in 1943, when he wrote a letter to her unsolicited praising her work The Robber Bridegroom10. They maintained their relationship until the end of his life in 196211. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1942, a Pulitzer Prize for The Optimist’s Daughter in 1972, the National Medal for Literature in 1979, and the Medal of Freedom in 1980, presented to her by President Jimmy Carter. As visible from archival evidence, she conversed with, and had a friendship with Floyd C. Watkins, who was a professor of English at Emory University. The letters present in the archive span the early to mid 1980s, and include letters between the two of them, as well as letters to and from Floyd C. Watkins and Eudora Welty pertaining to the letters between each other.
The letter in concern is written in flowing, small handwriting in bright blue ink across proper stationary. The stark white paper has, in bright red, all-capital print, “MISS EUDORA WELTY, 1119 PINEHURST ST. JACKSON MISSISSIPPI 39202”12. She wrote the date of February 4th, 1984 in the upper right hand of the paper. Her handwriting is small, but the spaces between the lines are large. But this space shrinks as the papers carry on, trying to fit all that she has to say. She even turns the paper to the side and writes two lines in the margin of the page. She titles the letter “Dear Floyd”, establishing the relationship between her and Professor Watkins was a casual one. She thanks him for his letter and his book that he sent her, as well as the company he and his wife gave her when they came to visit in Jackson. Previous letters in the Rose Archives detail their plans to meet for this visit13. She talks about their grandchildren and the work that she does. She writes a little bit about the book he had given her to read, and what she likes about it. She responds to his invitation to visit West Virginia, saying she is unable to go, and talks about her family there and her use of it as inspiration in The Optimist’s Daughter. She writes, “While it will always be a beautiful country, I really feel happier, and closer to it, from a distance. I’m sure you understand. But this has nothing to do with how kind it was of you to propose seeing it together, and I do thank you,”14. It is interesting that she declines to leave Mississippi and visit West Virginia in her letter, especially with the context of her “regionalism” She did not travel much, but she was able to prove that the deeper you transcend into a region, the more meaning you can gather that transcends location all together. She then writes a postscript saying she has included poems from a young Georgia poet she ment in Samford. Attached in the letter were the poems; “After the Wilderness: May 3, 1863” by Andrew Hudgins, “Mary Magdalen’s Left Foot”, by Andrew Hudgins and the beginning of “Urlied” by Fred Chappell. The poems looked like they had been cut out of a book, and the Urlied was only accidently included because it was the backside of another poem. These poems and the letter were put into an envelope that matched the stationary the letter was written on. The same blue cursive handwriting addressed the letter to Dr. Floyd C Watkins at the Emory University Department of English with a stamp of Martin Luther in the corner.
The poems attached to the letter show what kind of poetry caught Eudora’s interest in 1984. It is especially interesting because she herself never wrote poetry. The poems were by poet Andrew Hudgins, who she writes that she met in Samford. Andrew Hudgins was born in 1951 in Killeen Texas, and studied in the south at the University of Alabama and Huntington College15. His first book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1986, two years after this interaction with Eudora Welty. He is known for being a southern gothic writer, which is interesting considering Eudora Welty rejected the label of Southern Gothic16. The two poems of his were “After the Wilderness: May 3, 1863”, and “Mary Magdalen’s Left Foot”. The first poem is in first person, seemingly about the violence of the Civil War. The poem narrates wandering bodies until a man “Cliff” is found trying to revive the body of a dead squirrel. The narrator goes and helps him gather all the bodies of dead squirrels and bury them, and kill any injured and suffering squirrels. On May 3rd, 1863 was the Battle of Chancellorsville17. The battle occurred over the first four days of may, and over 21,000 men were killed in it. It was known as Robert E. Lee’s “Perfect Battle”, which led to a Confederate victory18. The other poem, “Mary Magdalen’s Left Foot”, is about religion and women’s bodies. The speaker sees photos in a newspaper of statues of Mary Magdalene and other women, and compares the imagery of gold and stone to flesh and blood. It is interesting and telling that Eudora Welty selected these poems to send in her letter to Dr. Watkins.
The same year these letters were written between Floyd C. Watkins and Eudora Welty, she won the Nation Book Critics Circle award19. Just two years after these letters were written, the library in Jackson she grew up reading at was re-named the Eudora Welty Library. In the same decade, Robert Penn Warren wrote about Eudora Welty, “It is easy to praise Eudora Welty, but it is not so easy to analyze the elements in her work that make it so easy — and such a deep pleasure — to praise. To say that may, indeed, be the highest praise, for it implies that the work, at its best, is so fully created, so deeply realized, and formed with such apparent innocence that it offers only itself, in shining unity.” In 1996, She was inducted into France’s Legion D’Honneur. Eudora Welty Died in 2001 at the age of 9220. For many years she was pigeon-holed as a “southern writer’ and her writing be considered apolitical and regional prevented her from receiving a Nobel Prize. Eudora Welty’s writing was able to stretch and transcend her writing, to be more than a great southern writer, to be a great writer from the south.
Bibliography:
“Andrew Hudgins.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed October 31, 2023. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/andrew-hudgins.
Bryant, J. A. “Eudora Welty.” In Eudora Welty – American Writers 66: University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers, NED-New edition., 5–46. University of Minnesota Press, 1968. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.cttttxpf.2.
Burt, John. “EUDORA WELTY (1909– ).” In The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story, edited by Blanche H. Gelfant and Lawrence Graver, 560–69. Columbia University Press, 2000. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/gelf11098.119.
Hicks, Granville. “Eudora Welty.” The English Journal 41, no. 9 (1952): 461–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/809470.
Krebs, Albin. “Author Eudora Welty Dies at 92.” The New York Times, July 23, 2001. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/arts/author-eudora-welty-dies-at-92.html.
Rhodes, James Ford. “The Battle of Gettysburg.” The American Historical Review 4, no. 4 (1899): 665–77. https://doi.org/10.2307/1833783.
St. C. Crane, JOAN. “William Faulkner to Eudora Welty: A Letter.” The Mississippi Quarterly 42, no. 3 (1989): 223–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26475181.
Welty, Eudora. Eudora Welty/ Floyd Watkins correspondence. 1984. Box 29, Folder 12. MSS 534. Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. 23 October 2023.
Welty, Eudora. Alice Walker and Rebecca interview with Eudora Welty/Walker reading “Revenge of Hannah Kemhuff” and “In Search of Mother’s Garden”. 1973. digital 1061: Alice Walker papers, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. 23 October 2023.
- Bryant, “Eudora Welty.” 6 ↩︎
- Burt, “EUDORA WELTY (1909– ).” ↩︎
- Bryant, “Eudora Welty.” 6 ↩︎
- Bryant, “Eudora Welty.” 6
↩︎ - Bryant, “Eudora Welty.” 7
↩︎ - Hicks, Eudora Welty.” 461 ↩︎
- Hicks, Eudora Welty.” 461 ↩︎
- Hicks, Eudora Welty.” 461-462 ↩︎
- St. C. Crane “William Faulkner to Eudora Welty: A Letter.” 224 ↩︎
- Krebs “Author Eudora Welty Dies at 92.” ↩︎
- St. C. Crane “William Faulkner to Eudora Welty: A Letter.” 224 ↩︎
- Eudora Welty, Eudora Welty/ Floyd Watkins correspondence. ↩︎
- Eudora Welty, Eudora Welty/ Floyd Watkins correspondence. ↩︎
- Eudora Welty, Eudora Welty/ Floyd Watkins correspondence. ↩︎
- “Andrew Hudgins.” Poetry Foundation. ↩︎
- Eudora Welty,. Alice Walker and Rebecca interview with Eudora Welty/Walker reading “Revenge of Hannah Kemhuff” and “In Search of Mother’s Garden” ↩︎
- Rhodes, “The Battle of Gettysburg.” ↩︎
- Rhodes, “The Battle of Gettysburg.” ↩︎
- Burt, “EUDORA WELTY (1909– ).” ↩︎
- Krebs “Author Eudora Welty Dies at 92.” ↩︎