SOURCE: “Poor Pilgrim, Poor Stranger,” in The Saturday Review, New York, Vol. XXXVII, No. 29, July 17, 1954, pp. 9, 33-4.

There was a sheet of paper in his typewriter. At the top of it he had typed the heading “Poor Pilgrim. Poor Stranger,” and beneath it he had written this paragraph:

The time comes in the life of each of us when we realize that death awaits us as it awaits others, that we will receive at the end neither preference nor exemption. It is then, in that disturbed moment, that we know life is an adventure with an ending, not a succession of bright days that go on forever. Sometimes the knowledge comes with repudiation and quick revolt that such injustice awaits us, sometimes with fear that dries the mouth and closes the eyes for an instant sometimes with servile weariness, an acquiescence more dreadful than fear. The knowledge that my own end was near came with pain, and afterwards astonishment; with the conventional heart attack, from which, I've been told, I've made an excellent recovery.

So did William March describe, probably as well as any man can, his reactions to his own death. For he did not make that excellent recovery. Early in the morning of May 15, 1954, presumably within the same day's cycle during which, a writer to the end, he put down the words above, another heart attack occurred.

Hours before Robert Clark, an artist friend, who occupied an apartment in the same house found the paper in the typewriter he found Bill March. Sleeping in a room directly above March's bedroom, Clark awoke at five-thirty and heard Bill turn over in his bed. At eight O'clock he came downstairs and went into Bill's room. Bill lay with his face buried in his pillow. Afterwards it was decided that he had been dead about an hour. Within a short time after that there was excitement in Dumaine Street in the New Orleans Vieux Carre. First doctors came, then police sirens whined through the narrow street, and at last came the coroner's men. The curious neighbors crowded in front of the cottage as Bill March was carried out, a naked white foot protruding from beneath the white sheet with which the rest of his body was covered.

To many people it seemed a good way to die, quietly in bed, in all probability in his sleep. To many people who knew Bill March it seemed a good time to die. His last book, The Bad Seed, was a success as novels go, perhaps more successful than any book he had written. It had received glowing reviews; it was on the Herald Tribune best-seller list it was listed in the “And Bear in Mind” department of The New York Times Sunday book section. A few critics had even called The Bad Seed an American classic of its kind. Alistair Cooke had said that William March “… is the unrecognized genius of our time.” Moreover, Bill had known all this and it had made him happy. It did not matter that in private conversation he had been heard to say that he thought The Bad Seed was the worst book he had ever written. What seemed most important to him was that within the last few years he had accomplished what might be called a writing comeback after a decade of writing almost nothing.

Also it seemed to many persons that Bill March's life had been both full and successful. At sixty years of age he was wealthy. He had not made his money as an author, to be sure, but his writing had brought him fame in critical circles, with readers of the sort whose approval mattered most to him, and among other writers. There is even a possibility that it may be an enduring fame. His admirers have remained persistent. They recall short stories he wrote twenty-five years ago. He knew that this was so. For instance, when Martha Foley included none of his work in her Best of the Best there were protests to this omission. Within the past year he was still receiving letters from persons who had read his novels and short stories of years ago. It was the kind of applause every really creative writer wants. So he had money and literary recognition of a high caliber. What more could a man want? In addition to these advantages, he looked ten years younger than his age; when he chose to be he was an engaging and amusing racounteur; he appeared to possess unusual energy and stamina; he was sought after by people constantly, not that he wanted to be, for often he wanted to be alone and unnoticed. Yet to those who did not know him well this, too, appeared an advantage to be envied. So they said he had already had everything, and that he died on the rise of his new book's success, and that it was a good time to die.

But the last time I saw Bill March he was enraged at the idea that his end might be near. It was about two weeks after his first heart attack, and I went to see him at the hospital. He talked of a new book he was planning. First he had decided to call it Poor Pilgrim, Poor Stranger, then he had changed his mind he was going to call it The Gift. He kept saying that he could not die now. All he wanted, he said, was ten more years. He had five books in his head, and it would take him that long to complete them. The idea of his heart going bad was ridiculous. He had always worried about his blood pressure and his eyes, he told me, as he had told me many times before, and once he had suspected he had cancer, which had been proven fear and nothing more, for he knew he was a hypochondriac. He believed all his ailments, including this heart attack, were psychosomatic. I agreed with him and went away, and I did not see him again within the five more weeks he lived.

In a sense two men died that morning in Dumaine Street, for few men have lived so completely two lives as did the one I usually called “Bill March.” He was born in Mobile, and his full and real name was William Edward March Campbell; he was “William March” in some circles and to some friends, “William E. Campbell” to other circles and other friends, yet both among still others. This dual identity was always confusing when it was necessary to introduce him to people.

William E. Campbell was a founder, former vice-president, and major stockholder of the Waterman Steamship Line. After a year or more in the Marine Corps during World War I, and the acquisition of a distinguished record which won him the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Croix de Guerre, he went to work for Waterman. Within a short time he became traffic manager, then vice president. He acquired stock and it increased in value. From 1932 to 1937 he represented Waterman in Germany and in England. Then he returned to New York, where he lived for the next decade.

William March was born in about 1928, when William E. Campbell decided to use that name as a writer. Yet he had done some writing even before that. During his war service overseas he had written the book and lyrics for a musical comedy, which he called Getting Too-Loose. It was staged at the University of Toulouse, and was, he always declared, a magnificent success. But his serious writing began with the 1928 publication of a short story. “The Little Wife,” and the completion of a novel, Flight to Confusion. He destroyed, the latter without submitting it to any publisher. “The Little Wife,” however, has never been forgotten; it was broadcast as a television play this year.

Company K, a novel about his own company of Marines during World War I, was called by some reviewers the best novel written about that war, and it sold well when it appeared in 1933. This was followed in 1934 by Come in at the Door, in 1936 by The Tallons, and in 1943 by The Looking Glass. But during these years he was becoming better known for his short stories than for his novels. His stories were appearing steadily in all the better magazines, and few writers of our time have been more widely anthologized in the O'Brien and O. Henry annuals, in many others, finally in his own collections of his own short stories, which included The Little Wife and Other Stories. Some Like Them Short and Trial Balance. Trial Balance, he often said, contained all that was “worth preserving” of his enormous short-story output. There are fifty-five stories in the book. One of his ambitions was to write and publish forty-five more, thus rounding out a hundred worth preserving. He had, also, he said, a hundred fables he wanted to see in book form. I never saw them.

After fifteen years of being his fan I first met William March four years ago. He had taken a furnished apartment in the French Quarter in New Orleans. When a friend offered to take me to see him I was excited at the prospect of meeting him. I suppose most writers have certain literary gods. For years he had been one of mine. I had read and reread everything of his I could get my hands on. I had collected him. I did not even know he was also William E. Campbell. I knew nothing about his personal life at all. When I asked David Mynders Smythe, the writer friend who was taking me to call on him, and who had known him in New York, what he looked like, David replied that he looked like a preacher with wicked eyes.

It was a rather neat description. I met a man of medium height, of slim physique and erect carriage, with a thick crop of wavy, graying hair. He looked much younger than what I knew his age to be, and his whole appearance was mild; his voice was soft: his manner gentle. Only his eyes were different. They gleamed from behind his glasses, probing, studying everyone in the room, and, as I came to know later, analyzing everyone. Then, as I became conscious of what the quiet voice was saying. I discovered it was a highly barbed monologue that was pouring out at us, witty, mischievous, brilliant.

For Bill March loved to talk, and he talked a great deal about himself, curiously perhaps as if he were another person. He dug deeply into others, too, but mostly, and I think preferably, into himself. As I came to know him better I heard bit by bit the entire story of his life, and nothing was omitted. I believe he had total recall. He would talk of something that had happened when he was three years of age as if it had taken place yesterday. He talked of his childhood, of his parents, of his brothers and sisters (he was one of eleven children, of whom seven survived him), of his service in World War I, of his years with Waterman, of his writing, even of the time when his emotional life got the best of him for a while and suspended his writing, suspended his life. He would tell all this to nearly anyone. During an evening he would also tell the entire story of a novel he was planning to write, and because he was a gifted raconteur this was never a dull experience.

During the first few years after I came to know him he did not live in New Orleans all the time. He rented furnished apartments, but he called Mobile home, and he came and went, sometimes vanishing for weeks at a time, but always reappearing in New Orleans. At last he decided the French Quarter suited him, and about a year ago he bought the house in Dumaine Street and moved all his possessions from Mobile, although he still retained a legal residence in that city.

Among his other things Bill brought his pictures to the small creole cottage, as its type is called in New Orleans, and which was the first home he had ever owned in his life. This collection of pictures was considered by many authorities to be one of the finest of its sort in the United States. Mostly French moderns, it contained Rouaults, Soutines, Modiglianis, Picassos, a fine Utrillo, and others. He had begun the collection during the decade when his life was in a period of greatest turmoil, and when he was not writing. He had taught himself about paintings simply by reading about them and by visiting galleries and dealers. By the time he reached New Orleans he was willing to match his knowledge of the schools in which he was interested against anyone, and he valued his collection at a half-million dollars. He was positive in his judgment of his paintings' worth. Soutine was his favorite, and he thought Soutine would one day be recognized to be as great as anyone who ever painted, as Titian, as Rembrandt.

In comparison to his pictures he had little else of great value. His furniture was pleasant, but of the commonplace, store-bought variety. Unlike most writers, he did not even have many books. He did not even own copies of his own books. Those he had once had he had given away. Once when we were having a drink in the patio of the house he had just acquired he said, “Do you know I don't have a single old manuscript? I have no files, or anything of that sort. I had stopped writing. I was through with it.”

Somehow New Orleans seemed to start him writing again. Here he wrote October Island, which was published in 1953. It was an expansion of a short story that was published in Good Housekeeping years ago. Immediately he began the writing of The Bad Seed.

It seems to me he had begun to live again. Suddenly he was talking of the other five novels he was carrying about in his mind, of the forty-five more good short stories he wanted to write, of the hundred fables he wanted to see published. Formerly he had made frequent trips to New York; now he ceased going. It was a waste of time, he said. He had never cared much for social life; he loathed cocktail parties. Now he eliminated his social activities almost completely. He saw comparatively few people, usually only some who lived in the neighborhood of whom he was fond.

Every night promptly at ten O'clock he walked a few blocks to his favorite bar, a place called Café Lafitte in Exile, and had two drinks. During the past year he claimed this was his only recreation. He might sit for several hours talking to people he knew who happened to be there or to Tom Caplinger, the proprietor, but he kept to his ration of two drinks. Friends learned that this was the place they could find him, and if they wanted to see him enough they could go there any night at ten O'clock.

On the night of his death, when his body was already gone to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for burial, I went to Café Lafitte in Exile. It is one of those bars that is virtually a club, where everyone knows everyone else, and if by chance a stranger appears he soon knows everyone there, too. That night everyone was talking about Bill March. They both discussed him and argued about him. Someone would say it was a good way to die and a good time to die, and someone else would say it was not. They talked of his writing and things he had said, and why certain ways of his had been as they were, and why others were not so. Accounts of his passing were clipped from the newspapers and tacked on the walls. At least two people wept. In a way this was his wake. I think it all would have pleased Bill, poor pilgrim, poor stranger.