Turns out Tennessee Williams' mother Edwina Williams published her memoirs, called Remember Me to Tom, back in l963. It's a very good thing she did, for she tells a slew of great stories.
Reading her "as told to" book, it's easy to hear her speak, and easy to guess where Williams got the model for Amanda, the desperate mother character in his first great play, The Glass Menagerie.
Here's the story with which Amanda, er, Edwina, opens the book:
I recall a day when he was about two years old and we were living with my parents in Columbus, Mississippi…it was a hot summer day and I looked out of the window to make sure Tom [Tennessee] was all right as he played in a yard dotted with rocks. There he was, with his little spade, digging madly away amidst the rocks. Perspiration dripped own his chubby face and his little golden curls clung damp to his head.
"What are you doing, Tom?" I called out, wondering why all this great labor under the hot sun.
"I'm digging to de debbil," he explained as he doggedly shoveled out another spadeful of dirt.
Ozzie, his colored nurse, had probably been telling him stories in which the devil starred, and Tom, no doubt, had asked where the devil lived. Ozzie, thereupon, told him in the middle of the earth where it was dark and deep and Tom set out, the first chance he had, to find the devil's lair.
You might say Tom went on "digging to de debbil" the rest of his life, trying to discover where the devil lives inside all of us. Through his searching words, he turned the tragedy in his life to art.
[Thanks to Betsy Randle, who performed spectacularly in the version of The Glass Menagerie that played in Los Angeles this month, understudy to the great Judith Ivey, for recommending the book. And here's a family picture from the book of Tennessee, aka Tom, with Ozzie.]
Kit Stolz 