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REMEMBERING
CLAIRE PERRY
by Robert G.
Cowser |
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first contacted Claire Perry, the widow of the Texas writer George
Sessions Perry, when she was living in Guilford, CT in 1963. Perry
drowned in the East River in 1956 after having wandered away from
his house on a wintry day. As a graduate student in English at Texas
Christian University, I had begun collecting information about Perry
prior to writing a doctoral thesis. In response to my inquiry Claire
informed me that she had recently sold her husband’s papers to the
University of Texas at Austin. The materials were necessary for my
research. |
| George
Sessions Perry grew up in Rockdale. He and Claire lived there for
several years during the Great Depression before they decided to move
to Connecticut in order to be nearer his publishers. From Claire,
I learned the names of several citizens in Rockdale who were well
acquainted with the Perrys. From Fort
Worth I drove to Rockdale one weekend after having scheduled interviews
with the Boswell Newtons. Mr. Newton took me to the site of the farm
Perry once owned and used as a setting for his best work of fiction,
Hold Autumn in Your Hand. I also interviewed others who had
known George Perry, among them Lena Leowenstein. |
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I learned during
the time I spent researching Perry just how instrumental Claire Perry
was in her husband’s achieving success as a writer. She not only typed
all of Perry’s manuscripts, but she edited them as well. She advised
him regarding the content of the stories he submitted to the Saturday
Evening Post and other popular magazines, since Perry was more apt
to challenge the conservative standards of the editors. She also corrected
Perry’s atrocious spelling.
After having graduated from Texas Christian, I accepted a teaching
position in the at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT. I moved there
in 1966. A few months later, another member of the Department, Mary
Ellen Duffley, and I were married.
In the summer of 1967 I called Claire Perry and informed her that
I was living in New Haven and would like to visit her in her home
in Guilford, only thirty minutes or less from where I lived. Mrs.
Perry was most gracious and set a time that would be convenient for
her to welcome Mary Ellen and me. Later in the week she called and
suggested that we meet her at her club on the shore. We could bring
our suits and swim in the Sound and have drinks afterward.
Mary Ellen and I arrived promptly at the clubhouse on the shore and
were warmly greeted. I spent a few minutes asking her about The Southerner,
a 1945 film starring Zachary Scott. The film was directed by Jean
Renoir and based on Perry’s Hold Autumn in Your Hand.
A few weeks later Claire invited Mary Ellen and me to a dinner party.
There we met several writers whom she had known for years; they had
been well acquainted with George Perry. One was Ned Lanham, another
Texan, who wrote several novels set in Texas. Another guest was the
religion editor for the Washington Post.
In the spring of 1970, before we moved to Tennessee the following
summer, Claire gave a dinner in our honor. One of the guests was a
retired U.S. Navy admiral. His wife took a seat on a bench that was
placed before the hearth where a fire was burning. The bench had no
back support or arm rests. While I was conversing with another guest,
I heard a thud. When I turned to look, the admiral’s wife had slid
off the bench and had landed very near the fire.
While others helped the embarrassed woman to her feet, Claire remarked,
“I’ll have to do something about that old bench.”
Later, in Claire’s kitchen, while she was removing the lasagna from
the oven, she asked me the name of the town in Tennessee to which
we were moving.
“You won’t have heard of it, “ I said. “It’s Martin—in the Northwest
corner of the state.”
After she deposited the hot pan on the table, she turned to me quickly.
“Oh, yes, I ‘ve heard of Martin. My good friend Holland McCombs hails
from there. He says the main drag in town—McCombs Street—is named
for his family. “
Claire went on to say that Holland McCombs was the bureau chief for
Time magazine in Dallas.
He was serving there when John Kennedy was assassinated, she said.
After we moved to Tennessee, we exchanged Christmas cards with Claire.
In 1973 she died of complications related to emphysema. She was buried
beside George Perry’s remains in the Rockdale cemetery. |
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