LETTER: Typed letter signed to Mr. and Mrs. George Stevens.
Anecdotes from “Maycomb”
and commentary on race
Lee, Harper. Typed letter signed, “Nelle,” to “Dearest Both” (Mr. and Mrs. George Stevens), letter dated “Monday,” accompanying envelope postmarked February 28, 1967; three leaves, rectos only; folded in thirds and creased for mailing.
An extraordinary letter recounting an anecdote capturing the life of Monroeville, Alabama – the town she was raised in and the setting for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), in which she renamed it Maycomb, Alabama.
Lee writes to her Lippincott editor George Stevens and his wife – in story form, with plenty of colorful dialogue – about an exasperating, yet humorously-told encounter with a “Carpet Man” who fails to follow through correctly in all – or indeed, in any – of the stages of re-carpeting Lee's home. In one of many pithy lines about the injustices done to her on this day, Lee recalls, “While waiting, I plied his helpers with ashtrays. They continued to use the floor.” She turns the experience into a paean to her home-town, in words that could have come from Atticus Finch:
…I do recall making the observation that it was a good thing for him that he does business in Monroeville, because he’d starve to death anywhere else, that this shows him Monroeville people are the best, kindest, and most patient people in the world…
Although the ostensible purpose of the letter is to tell the tale of the carpet fiasco, it is saturated in commentary on the social issues in the South that she described so well in the book that made her name: She opens, “very little happens here besides the routine rapes, incests, lynchings that are so much a part of Southern life.” As the story unfolds, she writes,
“Hapily for all of us, at that moment I heard the soft voices of Niggers in the front yard. They were our ancient Mary and her Albert, who had come to get the old carpets for their little house.”
“ ‘Miss Nelle, why are you so white?’ she asked, no referring to the status conferred upon me by a merciful God.”
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