1963
In Rome collaborates with writer Abby Mann on the screenplay for Ship of Fools. Receives $1,000 prize from the Texas Institute of Letters. Buys lavish furnishings in Europe. Returns home in November to the shock of the Kennedy assassination. Inducted into the University of Maryland’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. Attends luncheon at White House hosted by President and Mrs. Johnson.
1964
After reneging on offer to purchase house in Georgetown, becomes mired in legal morass. Continues to accept speaking engagements at colleges and universities. Leases large house at 3601 49th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. Lectures at the Instituto Cultural Norteamericano in Mexico City.
1965
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, comprising the three earlier collections and four fugitive stories, published by Harcourt, Brace. Follows Seymour Lawrence to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and then to Delacorte Press. Signs contracts with Lawrence for “The Devil and Cotton Mather” and her collected essays and occasional writings. Film version of Ship of Fools, directed by Stanley Kramer and starring Vivien Leigh, Lee Marvin, Simone Signoret, and others, is box-office success.
1966
The Collected Stories wins National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. Receives honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Maryland, College Park, and announces eventual donation of papers to university library. Inducted into the 50-member American Academy of Arts and Letters. Begins personal and professional association with attorney E. Barrett Prettyman Jr.
1967
Presides over first meeting of The Katherine Anne Porter Foundation, established to provide financial support to younger writers. Accepts Gold Medal in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
1968
Spends first week of January hospitalized with influenza. At home, receives numerous visitors, whom she entertains with lavish meals and fine wine.
1969
Moves to townhouse at 5910 Westchester Park Drive, College Park. Becomes member of usage panel for The American Heritage Dictionary. Begins choosing and revising pieces for her collected essays. Spends four weeks in Washington Hospital Center after falling down stairs. Editing of essay collection completed by Lawrence and literary friends. Sister Gay dies, December 28.
1970
The Collected Essays and Occasional Writings of Katherine Anne Porter published by Seymour Lawrence–Delacorte. Falls and breaks hip; spends two months in convalescent home. Moves to double apartment on top floor of 6100 Westchester Park Drive. Meets Clark Dobson and John David (Jack) Horner, young men who escort her to area social events. Meets Kathleen Feeley and Maura Eichner, sisters of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, who will guide her to a rite of reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church on December 8.
1971
“The Spivvleton Mystery,” a comic story written in 1926, published in The Ladies’ Home Journal. Undergoes cataract surgery. Delivers keynote speech at “The Year of the Woman,” a seminar at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.
1972
Receives Creative Arts Award for lifetime achievement in literature from Brandeis University. Returns Emerson-Thoreau Medal to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences when she learns that the Academy, for political reasons, has refused to consider Ezra Pound for the same award. Heart condition worsens. On assignment from Playboy, takes cruise ship to Florida to write eyewitness account of Apollo 17 moon shot; the launch is “glorious” but the article never completed. Gives inaugural lecture at the newly opened Katherine Anne Porter Room of McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland.
1973
Sister Baby dies, May 21. Dissolves The Katherine Anne Porter Foundation.
1974
Names Isabel Bayley her literary trustee. In private ceremony at home, receives honorary degree from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. Revises “The Land That Is Nowhere,” a fragment of autobiography written decades earlier, for publication in Vogue.
1975
“Notes on the Texas I Remember” appears in The Atlantic Monthly. Receives a rubbing of mother’s Indian Creek gravestone from Roger Brooks, president of Howard Payne University, in her native Brown County, Texas. Hires retired naval commander William R. Wilkins as personal assistant.
1976
Delivers Frances Steloff lecture at Skidmore College. In May, travels to Brownwood, Texas, to receive honorary degree from Howard Payne University and attend county-wide 86th-birthday celebration. Visits mother’s grave at Indian Creek. Gives final public reading, at the 92nd Street Y. Feeling unwell at year’s end, enters Johns Hopkins Medical Center for comprehensive tests.
1977
While in hospital suffers two major strokes. Returns home in early spring to round-the-clock nursing care. “The Never-Ending Wrong,” a memoir of the Sacco-Vanzetti case, published in The Atlantic Monthly and then as a short book by Atlantic–Little, Brown. Mental abilities deteriorate. When judged incompetent by psychiatrist, court appoints nephew Paul Porter her legal guardian.
1978
Experiences severe seizure in December. Graduate student Jane DeMouy becomes her friend and visits her regularly.
1979
Meets Ted Wojtasik, a young college graduate who helps organize her letters for eventual publication, a project later realized by Isabel Bayley. Receives visitors Monroe Wheeler, Robert Penn Warren, and Eleanor Clark, and calls, cards, and gifts from Isabel Bayley, Eudora Welty, Barbara Thompson, and other devoted friends.
1980
Moves to Carriage Hill Nursing Home in Silver Spring, Maryland. Friends gather for 90th birthday party. Sister Maura Eichner and Sister Kathleen Feeley visit regularly, accompanied by Father Joseph Gallagher, who hears confession and administers Eucharist (“I’m busy dying. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done”). Dies September 18, with Jane DeMouy by her side. Ashes buried the following spring in a plot adjacent to her mother’s grave in Indian Creek Cemetery.
Note on the Texts
This e-book contains Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter. The text is taken from the first printing of The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter published by Harcourt, Brace & World in September 1965.
Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Short Novels was published by Harcourt, Brace & Co. in 1939. It contained “Old Mortality,” “Noon Wine,” and “Pale Horse, Pale Rider.” Porter dedicated the collection to her father, Harrison Boone Porter.
The contents of Pale Horse, Pale Rider first appeared in periodicals as follows:
Pale Horse, Pale Rider: “Old Mortality,” The Southern Review (Spring 1937); “Noon Wine,” Signatures (as a work-in-progress, Spring 1936) and Story (in completed form, June 1937); “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” The Southern Review (Winter 1938).
This volume presents the texts of the printings chosen for inclusion here but does not attempt to reproduce nontextual features of their typographic design. The texts are printed without change, except for the correction of typographical errors. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are often expressive features, and they are not altered, even when inconsistent or irregular. Except for clear typographical errors, the spelling and usage of foreign words and phrases are left as they appear in the original texts. The following is a list of typographical errors corrected, cited by page and line number: 186.17, Eve; 190.35, me. He; 205.4, jocky; 209.36, exactly if; 235.18, Swede.”; 243.7, “You’re; 258.26, an he; 291.29, strait jacket; 307.16, ouf.
Notes
In the notes below, the reference numbers denote page and line of this volume (the line count includes headings). No note is made for material found in standard desk-reference books. Biblical quotations are keyed to the King James Version. For references to other studies, and further biographical background than is contained in the Chronology, see Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations, edited by Joan Givner (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987); Katherine Anne Porters Poetry, edited by Darlene Harbour Unrue (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 1996); Letters of Katherine Anne Porter, edited by Isabel Bayley (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990); Mae Franking’s “My Chinese Marriage,” by Katherine Anne Porter: An Annotated Edition, edited by Holly Franking (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991); “This Strange, Old World” and Other Book Reviews by Katherine Anne Porter, edited by Darlene Harbour Unrue (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991); Uncollected Early Prose of Katherine Anne Porter, edited by Ruth M. Alvarez and Thomas F. Walsh (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr., Katherine Anne Porters Artistic Development: Primitivism, Traditionalism, and Totalitarianism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993); Jane Krause DeMouy, Katherine Anne Porters Women: The Eye of Her Fiction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983); Joan Givner, Katherine Anne Porter: A Life, revised edition (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991); George and Willene Hendrick, Katherine Anne Porter (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988); Kathryn Hilt and Ruth M. Alvarez, Katherine Anne Porter: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1990); Enrique Hank Lopez, Conversations with Katherine Anne Porter, Refugee from Indian Creek (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981); Janis Stout, Katherine Anne Porter: A Sense of the Times (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995); Mary Titus, The Ambivalent Art of Katherine Anne Porter (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005); Darlene Harbour Unrue, Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porters Fiction (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985), Understanding Katherine Anne Porter (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), and Katherine Anne Porter: The Life of an Artist (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005); Thomas F. Walsh, Katherine Anne Porter and Mexico: The Illusion of Eden (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992).
1 And the greatest . . . charity.] 1 Corinthians 13:13.
2 Ruin hath taught . . . away.] See Shakespeare’s Sonnet 64 (“When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced. . .”).
3 Vita Nuova] La Vita Nuova (“The New Life,” 1295) by Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), collection of poems with prose commentary centered on Beatrice Portinari, the idealized object of Dante’s unrequited love.
4 Wedding Song of Spenser] “Epithalamion” (1595) by Edmund Spenser (1552–1599).
5 Her tantalized spirit. . . roses. . .”] Cf. “For Annie” (1849) by Edgar Allan Poe.
6 Mother of God. . . Child;] Madonna and Child on a Grassy Bench (1505–7), woodcut by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528).
7 Death. . . knight;] The Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), engraving by Dürer.
8 Sir Thomas More’s household,] Painting (1593) by Rowland Lockey (1565–1616) in the style of Hans Holbein the Younger.
9 play with Mary. . . in it] Maria Stuart (1800) by Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805).
10 Sic semper tyrannis,”] Latin: “Thus always to tyrants,” motto of the state of Virginia.
11 melancholy farewell. . . Granada] “La Golondrina” (“The Swallow”), Mexican song of farewell by Narciso Serradel Sevilla (1843–1910).
12 Proteus Ball] The Krewe of Proteus, a New Orleans social club that parades during Mardi Gras, sponsors an annual masquerade ball.
13 Tod Sloan] American jockey (1874–1933) who, in the 1890s, revolutionized riding technique by leaning forward in his stirrups, out of his saddle, and onto the neck of the horse. His “forward mount,” or “monkey crouch,” is used by all jockeys today.
14 Over the River”] “(Let Us Cross) Over the River” (1876), song by Septimus Winner (1827–1902).
15 serpent’s teeth] See Shakespeare, King Lear, I.iv.287–88: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child!”
16 Whoa, you heifer] Song (1904) by New Orleans ragtime musician Al Verger (1879–1924).
17 Elysian Fields] Street in the New Orleans neighborhood of Gentilly, in the northeastern quadrant of the city.
18 St. Charles] Grand hotel on Canal Street, New Orleans, a center of the city’s social and political life from 1837 to 1974.
19 Calcasieu Parish] Parish (county) in southwestern Louisiana, on the Texas border; its seat is Lake Charles.
20 stranger. . . land] See Exodus 2:21–22.
21 roup and wryneck] In poultry, roup is a respiratory illness, wryneck a congenital deformity in which the bird’s neck is twisted at an angle to the body.
22 meeching] Cowardly, retiring.
23 hand-runnin’] In unbroken succession.
24 Halifax] A creek in Hays County, Texas.
25 gallus] Suspender.
26 Pale Horse, Pale Rider] See Revelation 6:8: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”
27 Liberty Bond] Bond issued by the U.S. Treasury during World War I to help finance the war effort.
28 Lusk Committeeman] Member of the New York State Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Seditious Activities (1919–20), headed by State Senator Clayton R. Lusk (1877–1959). For a year the so-called Lusk Committee, working with police and private investigators, raided the headquarters of suspected radical organizations in search of evidence that they advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government.
29 Belleau Wood] The four-week Battle of Belleau Wood, near Chateau-Thierry, France (June 1–26, 1918), was the first in which chiefly American forces suffered heavy casualties.
30 Boche] Derisive French slang term for the German Army.
31 sapping party] Group of combat engineers that advances with the front-line infantry and prepares the field of battle by digging trenches, building bridges, clearing mines, etc.
32 The Angel of Mons] According to a legend fabricated by the Welsh writer Arthur Machen in his tale “The Bowmen” (1914), St. George and an angelic army assisted the British Expeditionary Force at Mons, France, during its first engagement with the German Army (August 22–23, 1914).
33 Hut Service] One of many civilian support groups that provided comfort and entertainment to servicemen during World War I, establishing the model for the modern USO.
34 explosive. . . pits] Peach pits are a rich natural source of hydrogen cyanide, the gas of which, when mixed with air at concentrations over 5.6%, is a powerful explosive.
35 Stella Mayhew] American singer and comic actress (1875–1934) often paired, in blackface, with Al Jolson.
36 O the blues. . . disease] First line of “Ev’rybody’s Crazy ’bout the Doggone Blues” (1918), popular song by Turner Layton, words by Henry Creamer.
37 Over There] The European front in World War I, a usage made popular by George M. Cohan’s song “Over There” (1917).
38 Big Berthas] Series of six powerful howitzers manufactured by Krupp arms works and used by the German Army at the outset of the war. Each fired a 420-mm. shell and had a range of about eight miles.
39 In Flanders Field. . . row”] Cf. “In Flanders Fields” (1915), poem by Canadian Army surgeon Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae (1872–1918).
40 “Tipperary” or “There’s a Long, Long Trail”] Popular anthems of World War I: “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” (1912), British music-hall song by Harry Williams, words by Jack Judge; “There’s a Long, Long Trail A-winding” (1915), song by Yale undergraduates Alonzo “Zo” Elliott and Stoddard King.
41 Pack Up Your Troubles”] “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag (And Smile, Smile, Smile)” (1915), marching song by “Charles Asaf” (the English Brothers Felix and George Henry Powell).
42 Madelon”] “Quand Madelon” (1918), French popular song by Camille Robert, words by Louis Bosquet, about a Breton barmaid who refuses to kiss any one soldier because “she is true to the whole regiment.”
43 Mumm’s Extry] Mumm Carte Classique, an extra-dry white Champagne.
44 I confess. . . Paul] The Confiteor (“I confess”), spoken by the celebrant at the beginning of the Roman Rite of Mass.
45 Blessed. . . mild] Cf. “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild,” in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739) by Charles Wesley (1701–1788).
46 Armistice] On November 11
, 1918, at Compiègne, France, the Germans signed an armistice agreement prepared by the Allied powers, ending World War I.
47 Bois d’Hiver] “Winter wood,” a heavy, spicy French perfume.
48 Lazarus, come forth] See John 11:43.
Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Short Novels: A Library of America eBook Classic
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