The Pat Conroy Cookbook (40 page)

Parking the car by the house, I took the letter to the end of the dock and sat there staring at it. For fifteen minutes I studied the name of the Julian Bach agency, but I was paralyzed by fear of what it might say. Looking at the river, then back at the small white house where I would one day house the Wingo family in
The Prince of Tides
, I opened the letter and began reading it. Today, that letter hangs on my den wall in Fripp Island. Here is what it says:

I skittered around the floating dock like a water bug and I war-whooped and screamed out my divine relief and rush of pleasure at the moment a New York agent told me I was a natural writer. I yelled, I screamed, I danced from one end of the dock to the other, and then topped off my performance by falling on my back, pumping my arms and legs toward the sunlight, doing the “dying cockroach,” which I could do with blithe expertise after days as a Citadel cadet. I swore to the river and to the sun and to the God who made me that I would be a client of Julian Bach’s for the rest of my life, no matter what happened.

The rest of the letter was strategic and businesslike until Julian got to the very last paragraph, where he expressed his belief that this was the first of many books I would write, both fiction and nonfiction, adding that he thought there would be movie deals, magazine assignments, and
anything else I might want to do. He welcomed me to his agency and said he would be proud to serve as my agent. There was a party at the Conroy house that night and everyone came, with my heroic typists as the guests of honor.

Two months later Julian Bach called me from New York. “Pat, are you sitting down? I have some great news for you.”

“What is it?”

“Houghton Mifflin—the publisher of Thoreau, Emerson, Henry James, and Emily Dickinson—wants very much to publish
The Water Is Wide
. But here is the really great news, Pat,” he said, enjoying a long silence. “Seventy-five hundred dollars.”

I frowned, shook my head, and then said a line Julian Bach has never let me forget: “But, Julian, I can get it done a lot cheaper down here.”

There was what I can only call a stunned silence when I heard Julian clear his throat to say, “Pat, you do realize that it is
they
who
pay you
to publish and not the other way around? My God, people must be naïve in Beaufort, South Carolina.”

So my life began with Julian Bach as my literary agent, and he became my portal to and illuminator of the great city of New York. He loved all facets of New York life and introduced me to grand opera, to theater, and to all the great restaurants of Midtown, where Julian was most comfortable. On my first trip to Manhattan he took me to his favorite, L’Argenteuil, an exquisite French restaurant. Although I’d never had asparagus before, L’Argenteuil was where I first tasted the white asparagus for which the restaurant was named. Julian threw the first New York literary party for me and Barbara, held in the garden of his Turtle Bay home. When Julian pointed out his neighbor, Katharine Hepburn, coming down the back steps, I felt like a figure in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, and the feeling has never quite left me. My pledge to stay forever with Julian Bach held true. We were together almost thirty years, never having had a single argument or raising our voices to each other. When I think of the word “gentleman,” a word of great sanctity to me, I think of Julian Bach. He is elegant, mannerly, and precise. I can think of only one flaw that has caused me any irritation in the long years we’ve been
together. Julian has a strange habit of never saying goodbye on the telephone. One minute you are talking to Julian and the next minute you are not. At first it was maddening, but then endearing when I found out he treated every other human being the same way.

When Julian retired in 1999 I gave the keynote address and tried to make it a good one. The night was an emotional one for both of us as I traced our careers together from a dock in Beaufort to a writing career in New York publishing, through publication parties and movie openings and long celebratory meals at the Four Seasons. What a grand time we had, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.

As we walked out of the IMG building on Seventy-first Street, Julian and I walked behind our pretty wives, Hope and Sandra. Then Julian told me of a provision in his will where, upon his death, I was to be flown first-class to New York City, put up in the finest hotel, and fed at the finest restaurants if I would do him the honor of delivering his eulogy. “It would be the highest honor,” I told Julian Bach. I squeezed his arm before he entered his car, and I said, “Thanks so much for taking that phone call thirty years ago.”

“Don’t think about it, old boy” Julian said. “Thanks for making it.”

I will try to deliver a wonderful and joyous eulogy to Julian Bach one day. But I will promise everyone who ever knew him—I will never, never tell him goodbye.