Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [7]
Stegner had gotten to know Janet Micoleau, one of Mary Hallock Foote’s three granddaughters, in Grass Valley through the husband of his secretary, Alf Heller. He visited the Micoleaus on several occasions while he was thinking about using the papers, and Janet encouraged him to do something with them, since her grandmother had been largely forgotten. She hoped that through Stegner’s work, interest in her grandmother’s life and work would be revived. When Stegner decided to go ahead with a novel based in part on the papers, Janet told him to use the papers in whatever way he wished. Stegner assumed that she, who had had custody of the papers, spoke for the family.
There probably would not have been any trouble if the whole Foote family had been willing to become involved in dealing with the novelist and if Stegner and the Foote family had agreed on what they meant by “novel.” What the Footes meant was explained by Janet’s sister, Evelyn Foote Gardiner, when she stated in an interview: “I thought he would write something like Irving Stone’s biographical novels. That he would invent conversations and all of that, but that he would pretty much stick to the facts of their lives.” Although he changed and added in order to create a plot which gave the novel its central drama and which would bring together the past with the present, he did stick to the broad outline of their lives. However, Mrs. Gardiner and those who have taken up her cause have complained that he used too much of Mary’s life and too many of her letters, accusing him of “stealing” Mary’s material in order to write a prizewinning book.
The Foote family, understandably perhaps but inaccurately, has expressed the view that Mary’s letters constitute a major portion of the novel. Stegner does quote (with some changes) from many of the letters (roughly thirty-five letters out of a total of five hundred). There are thirty-eight instances of letter quotation, of various lengths, for a total of approximately 61 pages in a book with 555 pages of text—that is, slightly more than 10 percent of the whole. As small as the percentage may be, however, there is no doubt that the letters are an invaluable part of the novel, borrowing the actual words of a real correspondence to give, as they do, a feeling of depth and authenticity to Susan Burling Ward’s character. It was a brilliant tactic, but one that had ramifications that Stegner did not foresee.
When Janet asked him not to use real names, since he was writing a novel, Stegner used fictitious ones, and went further in protecting the identity of his sources in his acknowledgments: “My thanks to J.M. and her sister for the loan of their ancestors.” In addition, in his acknowledgments he included the disclaimer “This is a novel which utilizes selected facts from their real lives. It is in no sense a family history.” But Mrs. Gardiner has insisted that since he did not give specific credit to Mary Hallock Foote, as she felt he should have, what he had taken from her was an unethical act, close to plagiarism. Since he was following the family’s instructions in keeping the source of his material secret, this is a very harsh and, it would seem, unfair judgment.
The situation became more complicated when Rodman Paul got in touch with Stegner, while he was working on the novel manuscript, to tell him that he had obtained backing by the Huntington Library to publish Mary Hallock Foote’s reminiscences. Wallace agreed to read Paul’s introduction and offered to show him the letters. But the whole idea of protecting the Foote name through anonymity was in trouble.