Christine McCulloch, Glimpsing Andalusia in the O'Connor-Hester Letters; Southern Spaces

Nancy Marshall, Upstairs, white bed, Andalusia

Glimpsing Andalusia in the O'Connor-Hester Letters

Christine McCulloch, Emory University

cite this page | printable version

Essay Sections:

Company at Andalusia:

These solitary hours were countered by the nearly constant arrival of "company." The O'Connor-Hester letters — most of which are dated only a few days apart — indicate how frequently Andalusia played host to a steady stream of visitors. There were the regulars: William Sessions and Betty Hester made their way to Milledgeville frequently enough. But there were also a number of relatives, acquaintances, and professional associates who enjoyed the O'Connors' hospitality. She writes: "We had quite a gathering here Monday — six sisters from the Cancer Home, the Trappist Abbot, and a Msgr. Dowdell" (23 Jul 1960). O'Connor subsequently refers to the farm as a "way-station," reassuring Hester: "If it is scandal you are worried about, you can forget it. If I investigated the past of everybody that visits us, I would have to close down the place" (20 Jul 1963; 6 Aug 1960).

Nancy Marshall, Upstairs with coffee pot, Andalusia, Spring 2007.

Nevertheless, not all of the company was welcome. O'Connor writes of an impending visit:

Later, she exclaims: "Boy are we sick of Great Lady Guests!" (12 Nov 1960). In keeping with the sentiments expressed in her collected essays, Mystery and Manners, O'Connor expects that her mother's hospitality will be received with gratitude and is disappointed (although not necessarily surprised) to find that this isn't always the case. Of another writer, she comments: "I think she is just wrapped up in herself and her own work. Most of us are. I am myself; but being a Southerner, I have the manners to counteract it, and she being a mid-westerner is almost devoid of these necessary manners" (5 Dec 1959). And later, "Again [the same houseguest and writer] spent two days eating my momma's cooking and didn't even ask to be remembered to her" (25 Jun 1960).

Nancy Marshall, O'Conner's room and writing place, Andalusia

Despite these occasional offenses, the unwelcome guest might have provided good fodder for O'Connor's fiction. "OBD [Miss Olive Bell Davis] and her mother are quite unbelievable," she writes to Hester. "If I had created them, I would have to scratch them all out. There is no combination quite like innocence and gall" (28 May 1960). Perhaps this unlikely combination of "innocence and gall" found its way into the character of Julian's mother in the 1960 short story, "Everything That Rises Must Converge." Mrs. Chestny, whose eyes "were as innocent and untouched by experience as they must have been when she was ten," lived "according to the laws of her own fantasy world, outside of which [her son] had never seen her set foot."13

Nancy Marshall, O'Connor's room and writing place, Andalusia, Spring 2007.

O'Connor's letters indicate a strong belief that fiction should be grounded in experience — in real encounters with real people. Of an unnamed book, she writes: "I read it and it held my attention about two-thirds of the way and then I began to feel I was reading a conundrum about some philosophical problem and not about folks and I got most weary" (27 Apr 1963). A shrewd pragmatist, O'Connor had little patience for "interleckshul" musings and philosophical "abstractions" (2 Sept 1961; 25 May 1963). Many of her own characters — Joy Hulga in "Good Country People," Wesley May in "Greenleaf," and Thomas in "The Comforts of Home" — are taken to task for committing what John F. McCarthy deems "the most heinous of sins — intellectual pride."14 In another letter, O'Connor praises one of Hester's own fictional forays: "This is wonderful, much better than the other stories, more natural and more concerned with what stories are concerned with — people" (6 Jun 1960). Life at Andalusia, despite its location, provided ample exposure to "the vagaries of human personality."15 Folks of all walks and talks made their way to Milledgeville, and when she wasn't actively entertaining company, O'Connor admits to observing her guests with the artist's appraising eye:

<<< Previous Section | Next Section >>>

Essay Sections: