a shirt, just a leather jacket,” he told Wood. “I go unshaven for days and nobody says, Look at that bum, they say, That is the fellow who wrote ‘The Glass Menagerie’! Droit de Seigneur, Noblesse Oblige and Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense, all rolled into one!”
Williams grew a mustache, and he began to go out into New Orleans society. But success also meant that Williams didn’t need to go out to the world; the world came to him. Women began to set their hats at the famous author. “I am going through quite an experience with this young lady,” he wrote to James Laughlin, unnerved by the tenacity of a woman called Sylvia who had “more or less forcibly” got him on a train to Washington, D.C., for a command performance of
The Glass Menagerie
on January 27, 1946, which was part of FDR’s sixty-third birthday celebration. “She is one of these people with a passion for lost causes, is beautiful enough to have anybody she wanted but is apparently attracted only by the line of most resistance. So she came down here from New York and so far the most complete and graphic candor on my part has not convinced her that propinquity will not conquer all. I have always been more or less overlooked by good-looking women and once upon a time I sometimes suffered acutely from the fact, so the novelty of the situation makes it all the more impossible to cope with.”
To Laughlin, Williams added, “No, I don’t want to be ‘saved.’ I don’t think anyone has ever been happier with his external circumstances.” The louche byways of New Orleans were, he said, his “particular milieu.” He found the hedonistic city “more restful” than Manhattan. “If you can imagine how a cat would feel in a cream-puff factory you can imagine my joy at being back in the Quarter,” he wrote to Wood. Williams spelled out the delights of New Orleans in more specific camp detail to his friend and erstwhile cruising companion Oliver Evans, whom he addressed as “my dear Daughter.” “The streets are teeming with ambulatory vistas,” he wrote in a letter urging Evans to visit. “The small dark kind that are barely contained by their buttons and while I know you will grieve for the Sisters left behind you, I have no doubt that certain errands of piety and mercy may draw you occasionally out upon the streets.” Evans wasn’t tempted. Writing to “my sainted Mother,” he replied, “Your prolonged absence from this and other places of worship (Gregory’s Bar, Pink Elephant, 1-2-3 Club and Times Square Baths, to mention only a few) has aroused considerable comment among the more pious elite, who are beginning to fear you may have been taken in by one of those strange Southern cults.” Evans preferred, he said, to “linger yet awhile in the Holy innocence of my present chaste existence, surrounded by the pious Sisters of our beloved Order of St. Vaseline.”
There was another pleasurable difference between Williams’s life in New York and his new life in New Orleans: he had money. “I am purring with gratitude,” he wrote to Laughlin. He could afford a high-ceilinged apartment at 710 Orleans Street, with twelve-foot shuttered windows and a balcony that looked out at the back of the St. Louis Cathedral. The apartment stood, Williams said, “across the street from a Negro Convent that has the funniest cornerstone. . . . It reads ‘Convent of the Sisters of St Joseph . . . Sisters of the Holy Family Laid October 13, 1885, by Archbishop Pontiface.’ What a boy Archbishop Pontiface must have been!”
Even Williams’s hectic sexual wayfaring seemed to have reached some new and happy resolution. For the first time in his life, he found himself settled down with someone: the muscular, volatile Amado “Pancho” Rodriguez y Gonzalez whose tall Mexican good looks—“dark of skin, dark of hair, dark of eyes”—gave Williams the mistaken first impression that Pancho was a bullfighter rather than a receptionist at the Pontchartrain
Williams grew a mustache, and he began to go out into New Orleans society. But success also meant that Williams didn’t need to go out to the world; the world came to him. Women began to set their hats at the famous author. “I am going through quite an experience with this young lady,” he wrote to James Laughlin, unnerved by the tenacity of a woman called Sylvia who had “more or less forcibly” got him on a train to Washington, D.C., for a command performance of
The Glass Menagerie
on January 27, 1946, which was part of FDR’s sixty-third birthday celebration. “She is one of these people with a passion for lost causes, is beautiful enough to have anybody she wanted but is apparently attracted only by the line of most resistance. So she came down here from New York and so far the most complete and graphic candor on my part has not convinced her that propinquity will not conquer all. I have always been more or less overlooked by good-looking women and once upon a time I sometimes suffered acutely from the fact, so the novelty of the situation makes it all the more impossible to cope with.”
To Laughlin, Williams added, “No, I don’t want to be ‘saved.’ I don’t think anyone has ever been happier with his external circumstances.” The louche byways of New Orleans were, he said, his “particular milieu.” He found the hedonistic city “more restful” than Manhattan. “If you can imagine how a cat would feel in a cream-puff factory you can imagine my joy at being back in the Quarter,” he wrote to Wood. Williams spelled out the delights of New Orleans in more specific camp detail to his friend and erstwhile cruising companion Oliver Evans, whom he addressed as “my dear Daughter.” “The streets are teeming with ambulatory vistas,” he wrote in a letter urging Evans to visit. “The small dark kind that are barely contained by their buttons and while I know you will grieve for the Sisters left behind you, I have no doubt that certain errands of piety and mercy may draw you occasionally out upon the streets.” Evans wasn’t tempted. Writing to “my sainted Mother,” he replied, “Your prolonged absence from this and other places of worship (Gregory’s Bar, Pink Elephant, 1-2-3 Club and Times Square Baths, to mention only a few) has aroused considerable comment among the more pious elite, who are beginning to fear you may have been taken in by one of those strange Southern cults.” Evans preferred, he said, to “linger yet awhile in the Holy innocence of my present chaste existence, surrounded by the pious Sisters of our beloved Order of St. Vaseline.”
There was another pleasurable difference between Williams’s life in New York and his new life in New Orleans: he had money. “I am purring with gratitude,” he wrote to Laughlin. He could afford a high-ceilinged apartment at 710 Orleans Street, with twelve-foot shuttered windows and a balcony that looked out at the back of the St. Louis Cathedral. The apartment stood, Williams said, “across the street from a Negro Convent that has the funniest cornerstone. . . . It reads ‘Convent of the Sisters of St Joseph . . . Sisters of the Holy Family Laid October 13, 1885, by Archbishop Pontiface.’ What a boy Archbishop Pontiface must have been!”
Even Williams’s hectic sexual wayfaring seemed to have reached some new and happy resolution. For the first time in his life, he found himself settled down with someone: the muscular, volatile Amado “Pancho” Rodriguez y Gonzalez whose tall Mexican good looks—“dark of skin, dark of hair, dark of eyes”—gave Williams the mistaken first impression that Pancho was a bullfighter rather than a receptionist at the Pontchartrain
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