I Am Scout (26 page)

I heard her talking to Miss Alice (who is partially deaf, so she was talking pretty loudly), and she said, “I don't get nervous at these things anymore. You want to know why?” Miss Alice asked why, and Harper Lee said, “'Cause you and I are the oldest ones here!”
26

According to Don Collins, a former Methodist minister in Alabama, Nelle has funded scholarships over the years. “Many have attended college without knowing she was their benefactor.”
27

*   *   *

In
2006
, Nelle turned
80
; Alice was
95
. They both wear hearing aids that go
Wheeee!
in diners at times and then they argue about whose is making noise. They often debate whose turn it is to get the check, too, a discussion that usually ends with “I'll get it this time, and you next time.” Nelle dotes on her older sister, whom she calls “Atticus in a skirt” because of Alice's achievements in law, particularly with regard to integrating the Methodist Church over the years.

For Alice's birthday a few years ago, some friends pulled up to the Lees' home early in the morning. The two sisters followed in their Buick, with Nelle at the wheel, until they reached Vanity Fair Park. Robert Sims, the city superintendent, was there waiting. While Nelle and Alice watched, two workers lifted a large box from the bed of a pickup truck and opened it. Out waddled two large geese, who headed for the edge of the pond a few yards away. From a second small box issued three baby mallards. The ducklings were gently steered into a safe, penned-in area in shallow water. The event, which brought children on the run to see what was going on, was part of the park's effort to replenish the supply of waterfowl, which hawks and foxes had decimated. Alice was charmed by it all. “These new park residents should continue to bring pleasure to people from
92
down,” she wrote to family gaily.
28

While in Monroeville, Nelle spends most of her time at home reading. Inside the entryway of the Lees' one-story brick ranch are photographs of family members. But everywhere else are books: in a bookcase that takes up half the entrance hallway; in Alice's bedroom, off the kitchen; and in Nelle's blue bedroom, at the end of the hallway. In her room, the walls are devoted to built-in white bookshelves, floor to ceiling. A third bedroom, for guests, has bookshelves, too. As in Nelle's apartment in New York, there are no expensive furnishings that would indicate she is the author of the bestselling novel of the
20
th century. On the contrary, the Lees' home is unremarkable in every way.

“Those things have no meaning for Nelle Harper,” Alice said. “All she needs is a good bed, a bathroom and a typewriter.… Books are the things she cares about.”
29

In
60
years, Nelle has never attended a reunion of the sisters of the Chi Omega house at the University of Alabama. “I've written to her many times,” said a Chi O member, “and she's never acknowledged receipt of my letter.”
30
But a street on campus is named Harper Lee Drive.

An anecdote floating around on the Internet in
2005
said that a waiter at a party in New York recognized Harper Lee sitting by herself at a table. Unable to resist the temptation to express his admiration, he struck up a friendly conversation with her and asked the inevitable, “Why didn't you write another book?”
31

She reportedly had every intention of writing many novels, but never could have imagined the success
To Kill a Mockingbird
would enjoy. She became overwhelmed. Every waking hour seemed devoted to the promotion and publicity surrounding the book. Time passed, she said, and she retreated from the spotlight. She claimed to be inherently shy and was never comfortable with too much attention. Fame had never meant anything to her, and she was not prepared for what
To Kill a Mockingbird
achieved.

Then before she knew it, nearly a decade had passed and she was nowhere near finishing a new book. Rather than allow herself to be eternally frustrated, she simply “forgave herself” and lifted the burden from her shoulders of living up to her first book. And she refused to pressure herself into writing another novel unless the muse came to her naturally.

A little more than a year after
To Kill a Mockingbird
was published, Nelle wrote to a friend in Mobile, “People who have made peace with themselves are the people I most admire in the world.”
32

From all indications, she seems to have done that.

Notes

Page numbers are given wherever possible.

Chapter 1: “Ellen” Spelled Backward

1
. George Thomas Jones, “Young Harper Lee's Affinity for Fighting,” letter to EducETH “Teaching and Learning,”
http://educeth.ethz.ch/
,
7
December
1999
, accessed
17
January
2002
.

2
. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to author,
18
September
2002
.

3
. Truman Capote, “The Thanksgiving Visitor,” in
A Christmas Memory, One Christmas, & The Thanksgiving Visitor
(New York: Modern Library,
1996
).

4
. Drew Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird,”
Dallas Times Herald,
1984
.

5
. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to author,
18
September
2002
.

6
. “‘Luckiest Person in the World,' Says Pulitzer Winner,”
Birmingham News,
2
May
1961
.

7
.
National Archives and Records Service,
College Park, Md.,
15
th Alabama Infantry files. Harper Lee's family can be traced back to John Lee, Esq., born in
1695
in Nansemond, Virginia, but her family and General Lee's are separate.

8
. A. C. Lee,
Monroe Journal
(editorial),
19
December
1929
,
2
.

9
. Harper Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird
(New York: Warner Books,
1982
),
4
.

10
.
Ninth Annual Catalogue of the Alabama Girls' Industrial School,
Montevallo, Alabama, 1904–1905 (Montgomery, Ala.: Brown Printing Co.), 20.

11
. Ibid., 38.

12
. Kathy Painter McCoy,
Letters from the Civil War: Monroe County Remembers Her Rebel Sons
(Monroeville, Ala.: Monroe County Heritage Museums, 1992).

13
. “Old Monroe County Courthouse,” (flyer, no date) Monroe County Heritage Museums.

14
. Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird,
131.

15
. Marie Faulk Rudisill, with James C. Simmons.
Truman Capote: The Story of His Bizarre and Exotic Childhood by an Aunt Who Helped Raise Him
(New York: William Morrow, 1983), 190.

16
. Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird.”

17
. Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird,
89.

18
. Joseph Blass, letter to author, 10 September 2002.

19
. Ibid.

20
. Charles Ray Skinner, interview with author, 22 December 2002.

21
. Joseph Blass, letter to author, 10 September 2002.

22
. George Thomas Jones, “Courthouse Lawn Was Once Kids' Playground,” in
Happenings in Old Monroeville,
vol. 2 (Monroeville, Ala.: Bolton Newspapers, 2003), 163.

23
. Lawrence Grobel,
Conversations with Capote
(New York: New American Library, 1985), 53.

24
. Rudisill, with Simmons,
Capote,
191.

25
. Betty Martin, interview with author, 5 November 2005. Mrs. Martin, who lived on the outskirts of Monroeville, knew Hattie Clausell.

26
. Roberta Steiner, “My Cousin Carson McCullers,” Carson McCullers Society Newsletter, no. 3, University of West Florida, Pensacola, Fla., 2000.

27
. Thomas Daniel Young, Introduction to Part III in
A History of Southern Literature,
ed. Louis D. Rubin, Jr., et al. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 262.

28
. Marie Faulk Rudisill, interview with author, 21 December 2005.

29
. Mary Tucker, interview with Monroe County Heritage Museums, Monroeville, Ala., 7 July 1998.

30
. Rudisill, interview with author, 21 December 2005.

31
. Grobel,
Conversations with Capote,
53.

32
. Truman Capote, “Christmas Vacation” (1935–36), in Bradford Morrow, ed.,
Conjunctions: 31: Radical Shadows: Previously Untranslated and Unpublished Works by 19th and 20th Century Writers
(New York: Bard College, 1998), 142.

33
. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to author, 18 September 2002.

34
. Rudisill, interview with author, 21 December 2005.

35
. Taylor Faircloth, interview with author, 17 March 2003.

36
. Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird,
81.

37
. Gerald Clarke,
Capote: A Biography
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 22.

38
. “Story of Attempted Drowning Called False, Angers Harper Lee,”
Tuscaloosa News,
25 September 1997.

39
. Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird,
6.

40
. Ibid., 77.

Chapter 2: “Apart People”

1
. Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird,
144.

2
.
Monroeville: The Search for Harper Lee's Maycomb
(Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 1999), 26.

3
. Ibid., 23.

4
. Molly Haskell, “Unmourned Losses, Unsettled Claims” (book review),
The New York Times,
12 June 1988, 1.

5
. Clarke,
Capote: A Biography,
14.

6
. Skinner, interview with author, 22 December 2002.

7
. George Thomas Jones,
Happenings in Old Monroeville
(Monroeville, Ala.: Bolton Newspapers, 1999), 126.

8
. Rudisill, with Simmons,
Capote,
193.

9
. Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird.”

10
. Anne Taylor Fleming, “The Private World of Truman Capote,
New York Times,
16 July 1978.

11
. Patricia Burstein, “Tiny, Yes, but a Terror? Do Not Be Fooled by Truman Capote in Repose,”
People,
10 May 1976, 12–17.

12
. Rudisill, with Simmons,
Capote,
241–42.

13
. Eugene Walter (as told to Katherine Clark),
Milking the Moon
(New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), 40.

14
. Gloria Steinem, “‘Go Right Ahead and Ask Me Anything' (And So She Did): An Interview with Truman Capote,”
McCall's,
November 1967, 76–77, 148–52, 154.

15
.
Monroeville: The Search for Harper Lee's Maycomb,
70.

16
. Burstein, “Tiny, Yes, but a Terror?” 12–17.

17
. Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird,
18.

18
. Roy Newquist,
Counterpoint
(Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), 407.

19
. Marianne M. Moates,
A Bridge of Childhood: Truman Capote's Southern Years
(New York: Henry Holt, 1989), 116.

20
. Harper Lee, “A Letter from Harper Lee,”
O Magazine,
July 2006, 152.

21
. Truman Capote papers, Box 7, folders 11–14, New York Public Library. Nelle begins her notes on the research for Capote's
In Cold Blood
: “These Notes Are Dedicated to the Author of The Fire and the Flame.…”

22
. Newquist,
Counterpoint,
407.

23
. 1930
United States Federal Census,
National Archives and Records Administration, T626, 2,667 rolls, Washington, D.C.; also, George Thomas Jones, letter to author, 16 March 2004.

24
. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to the author, 18 September 2002; also, Jones, letter to the author, 8 October 2002.

25
. Skinner, interview with author.

26
. Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird,
12.

27
. George Plimpton,
Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career
(New York: Nan A. Talese, 1997), 14.

28
. Truman Capote,
Other Voices, Other Rooms
(1948; reprint, New York: Vintage/Random House, 1994), 132.

Chapter 3: First Hints of
To Kill a Mockingbird

1
. Moates,
A Bridge of Childhood,
169.

2
. Claude Nunnelly, interview with author, 7 December 2003.

3
. Jones, “Courthouse Lawn,” 140.

4
. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to author, 25 April 2003.

5
. Sue Philipp, interview with author, 9 March 2004.

6
. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to author, 25 April 2003.

7
. Ibid.

8
. Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird.”

9
. Freda Roberson Noble, letter to author, 25 April 2003.

10
. Ibid.; also,
Monroeville: The Search for Harper Lee's Maycomb,
41.

11
. Harper Lee, “Springtime,”
Monroe Journal,
1 April 1937.