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THIRTY

In rereading and writing about the Bird I am often surprised at how much Christian imagery, Old and New Testament, kept leaking into his work. But then—his sister, Rose, to one side—his maternal grandfather, Dakin, an Episcopal clergyman, was his favorite relative. The old man often joined him in Key West where, in due course, I met him. Recently an archivist at Harvard came across a short story that I had written about the old man, based on an anecdote that Tennessee had told me. When Tennessee was in his adolescence, visiting his grandparents in Mississippi, two men came one day to see the Reverend Dakin. He was, Tennessee later discovered, being blackmailed for an adventure with a boy. Apparently, this was not their first visit but it was the last. The Reverend gave them what he had in the bank and then, when they were gone, he took all his sermons out onto the front lawn and burned them. I found this story hard to forget and it was the eighth and last of the short stories that I was to write in my first phase as a prose writer. When it came time to include it in a volume entitled A Thirsty Evil, collegiality required me to show it to the Bird who said I must not use it. Since his grandfather was nearly blind and not apt ever to come across a New Directions anthology of contemporary literature…But, the Bird stopped me right there and hissed, “There is always Edwina,” known to the world as Amanda in The Glass Menagerie. I did point out that since she had not sued her son for his portrait of her in that first play she would hardly take up arms to protect her father. But the Bird was firm even after I changed boy to girl. And so the story was obliged to wait half a century for publication by Harvard.

In the Bird’s last years I seldom saw him. The barbiturate Nembutal and vodka are a lethal combination and they did his brain no good. But the writing was often still marvelous; also, more adventurous than before. Many critics hoped, even prayed that this was a final falling off from his so unbearable to so many of them greatness. But the talent endured. Medications were only harming, for a time, his memory; he was also having hallucinations: one involved an unpleasant encounter with someone in Spain, only to discover the next day that the offending person had not been in the country. His brother put him away to dry out. “It was not so bad in the bin,” the Bird told me later. “I played a great deal of bridge and discovered that some of our best unsung actors are on the television soap operas.”

Howard and I were in Rome when the papers revealed that Tennessee Williams, a recent convert to Catholicism, had come there to obtain the Pope’s blessing. The story sounded a bit crazy to me but the Bird was always highly dramatic in his effects. We did not see him on that trip but, later, we heard all about the visit from Jesuit friends. Father Navone was an Italo-American professor at Gregorian University. Although Navone had seriously failed to attract me to the Scarlet Woman of Rome (as WASPs still sometimes refer to the original Christian Church) we had remained amiable acquaintances and through him I met many interesting Jesuits—in fact, the most interesting ones were soon to leave the church in the later backlash to the liberalism of Pope John XXIII and the reformations of the Second Vatican Council.

The Glorious Bird and his shifty-eyed dog arrive in Rome to discuss spiritual matters with the Pope.

Navone offered to be of service to the Bird who repeated that he would indeed appreciate an audience with the Pope (could it have been the arid Montini?). Navone played the Bird like some golden pre-evolutionary fish. The Pope was not possible considering the Bird’s tight Roman schedule. But the Black Pope would be happy to receive him. Tennessee was delighted, visualizing a black Pope singing “Ole Man Tiber” and looking like Paul Robeson. Actually the “Black Pope” is the name given the head of the Jesuit order, an order usually at delicate odds with whomever occupies the See of Peter. A time was ordained for this historic meeting. There would be a cocktail party where the Bird could flap about amongst his new co-religionists. Navone, a resourceful well-organized man who had noted the Bird’s tendency to vagueness about time and place and, indeed, people, promised to pick up Tennessee in time to take him to the party. The time came. The Bird was napping. He’d just had his daily swim. Drowsily he begged off. He was too exhausted. Tell the Black Pope some other time. Navone rushed to the telephone and rang the Black Pope’s secretary, a formidable Englishwoman. She got the Bird on the phone and in a voice more commanding than that of even Edwina told him that Father Navone would presently deliver him, ready or not, to the cocktail party and that he was not allowed to be one minute late.

So it was that the grandson of the Episcopal Reverend Dakin was delivered into the lair of the Black Pope where a dozen or two fascinated Jesuits were waiting for him. The Bird, need I say by now, really hammed it up. As Jesuits crowded about him he intoned, “Ever since I became a Catholic, I feel this astonishing presence all about me.” (He’d been led into this by, I think, his brother Dakin.) Now the one thing that professionally religious people most hate is listening to laypeople go on about their religious experiences as Bernadette was to discover back in Old World Lourdes. Somewhat taken aback, a Jesuit politely asked, “Is this ‘presence’ a warm presence?”

The Bird fixed him with a beady gaze: “There is no temperature.”

“How,” asked a helpful Jesuit, “do you write a play?”

“I start,” said the Bird, “with a sentence.” Presumably, during this dialogue, the Holy Father fled to Avignon.

The last time I saw Tennessee we were on the Kupcinet TV interview program in Chicago. A lady author was discussing her book. The Bird leaned back in his chair to the right of Kupcinet and shut his eyes. He remained like this for quite a while. Finally, the host nudged him. No response. “Tennessee, are you asleep?” “No,” said the Bird, “but sometimes I shut my eyes when I am bored.”

We parted in the Chicago street below. I noticed he had a rosy butterfly across the bridge of his nose, known to the bibulous French as a papillon. We never met again.