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(Seated
left to right)
Veteran TV Journalist
Roger Mudd, host
Gene Edwards,
former Mississippi
governor William
Winter, and Welty
scholar Suzanne
Marrs share an
intimate discussion
of Eudora Welty
in the Mississippi
Public Broadcasting
series "Writers." |
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“She
was the kindest, most
gentle person any of us
ever knew,” says
host Gene Edwards of Eudora
Welty. “To facilitate
telling stories about
her in her own living
room is a dream come true.”
Mississippi
Public Broadcasting crew
carried the Writers round
table directly into Eudora
Welty’s book-filled
living room. Then Welty
friends Roger Mudd, William
Winter, and Suzanne Marrs
joined Edwards for an
hour of memories and anecdotes.
“Miss
Welty’s contribution
to literature has been
well documented,”
according to Edie Greene,
the series producer. “Her
house and its contents
are being catalogued for
the future museum. This
program gives us the opportunity
to preserve the intangible
side of Miss Welty. The
guests were full of stories
about her humanity and
her humor and her style.”
Roger
Mudd met Eudora Welty
for the first time at
a reception in Washington
DC. On camera and behind
the scenes, he commented
on her perceptiveness.
“I’ve never
come across an eye like
the Welty eye. She never
missed anything.”
Suzanne
Marrs, an English professor
at Millsaps College, has
written several books
about Eudora Welty. She’s
currently at work on a
biography. A neighbor
and a friend as well as
a Welty scholar, Marrs
stopped by every evening
to visit with the author.
They’d have a little
drink, maybe some dinner,
and watch the news together.
Former
Mississippi Governor William
Winter had known Eudora
Welty the longest. Along
with Charlotte Capers,
Winter was instrumental
in persuading Welty to
leave her house to the
state as a literary museum.
And
quite a house it is! The
Tudor style home was built
by her father in 1925,
on what was then a gravel
road north of Jackson.
Eudora Welty moved in
as a teenager, with her
family, and lived there
until she died in July,
2001. If all goes as planned,
the house should be opening
as a literary museum in
2005.
“The
home will be emptied and
renovation work will begin,”
says Mary Alice White,
Eudora Welty’s niece
and now Director of the
Welty House Museum. “The
house has 1925 electrical
wiring. It does not have
central air. There is
foundation work that needs
to be done. So that has
to be completed and then
we will have documented
everything, and it will
be put back in place as
it was when Eudora lived
here.”
Most
things will be in place.
The Pulitzer Prize, which
White found in a corrugated
box in the closet along
with other awards and degrees
from various universities,
will go on display in a
visitor center on adjacent
property.
In
the upstairs bedroom in
the modest brown house
sit a simple desk and
typewriter. This is where
Eudora Welty wrote most
of the books and short
stories that hold a lasting
place in American literature.
Eudora
Welty practiced the best
of the southern storytelling
tradition. “She
had such a compassion
for people. She observed
people. She understood
human relationships,”
White says. “She
had such insight and was
so interesting to talk
to, just the stories and
listening to her talk,
her beautiful voice and
her way with words.”
Her
friends reminisce about
her love of language,
her joy in simply playing
with words. Roger Mudd
recalls, “Till the
day she died, she went
by every morning to the
Jitney Jungle, I think,
because she love the sound
of Jitney and Jungle.”
Her
ear for perfect Southern
dialect shines in her
work as do her sense of
humor and her range as
a writer. Her observations
of the world turn into
a celebration of ourselves,
our interior lives as
well as the things and
events that make our lives
happy and sad, wondrous
and deep.
“She
looked at the world with
a compassionate understanding
that hardly anyone I can
think of has had,”
remembers Timothy Seldes,
Welty’s friend and
literary agent. “I
miss her a lot.”
(News
Release: Mississippi Public
Broadcasting’s ‘Writers’
Profiles Eudora Welty)
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