For years, there has been speculation in the LGBT press and elsewhere that Harper Lee, the To Kill a Mockingbird author, was gay. She never answered the question, at least not publicly, and may not have been directly asked �" except once. In a never-before published one-sentence response, the 89-year-old author who was buried last weekend, told me in 2009 she is "not even remotely gay."
Lee dated her response, September 21, 2009, less than a week after I wrote to her to ask whether she was openly gay in connection with a LGBT travel article I was writing. Lee's response, "Dear Mr. Walsh: I am not even remotely gay. Harper Lee."
The genesis of my request and her response began in July 2009 when the Bay Area Reporter published an article I wrote on gay travel to southern Alabama. The story included Monroeville, a small town about 90 minutes north of Mobile. Lee grew up in Monroeville and eventually retired there until her death Friday, February 19.
Monroeville's biggest attraction is the Old Courthouse Museum. The courtroom scenes from the movie To Kill a Mockingbird were not filmed there but the main courtroom in the film was patterned after the one in Monroeville. It was painstakingly recreated on a Hollywood sound stage. The building in Monroeville was converted into a museum that includes a wing to celebrate the town's two famous authors, Lee and Truman Capote. The acclaimed writers grew up together. The Mockingbird character, Dill, was based on Capote. Dill's friend, the tomboy character, Scout, was thought to be based on Lee. The novel's hero, Atticus Finch, was inspired by Lee's father, Amasa Coleman Lee.
Like Scout, Lee was a tomboy who often stepped up to protect Capote from the neighborhood bullies. The pair stayed friends as adults for many years. Lee helped Capote research his most famous book, In Cold Blood . But they dealt with fame very differently. Capote relished his celebrity status and was a regular on the talk show circuit, but Lee lived a quiet, reclusive life, spending her extended retirement years living in Monroeville with her older sister, Alice Lee, who died in 2014 at 103. Capote died in 1984, at the age of 59, of liver failure brought on by years of substance abuse.
I had planned to rewrite the Alabama travel story for other LGBT publications. I thought since my original article mentioned that Capote was openly gay and being celebrated in a small town in the Deep South, that I should at least ask Lee if she was also openly gay. I couldn't find any references online on whether she was ever asked the question.
I sent the author a copy of the B.A.R. Alabama article. The story did not include any speculation on whether she was gay but did mention how proud people in town were of their native son, Capote, who also happened to be a flamboyant gay man. I figured that in that context it was okay to ask her if she were also openly gay. I think she probably thought my question was appropriate given the context of the story and that I was writing for the gay press. But since it was only one sentence, it is difficult to say why she decided to respond.
I sent the letter to Lee without a street address, just her name and Monroeville, Alabama. It got to her and I was surprised to get an answer. Lee scrawled her handwritten response at the bottom of my letter to her. The envelope was also handwritten, with the return address name as "H. Lee" and her P.O. Box in Monroeville.
I mentioned her denial of being gay in a rewritten version of my LGBT Alabama travel story that was published in the Dallas Voice gay newspaper but in the context of a travel article, it went virtually unnoticed.
I wrote Lee to thank her for her reply.
"I know that even non-gay people can be good writers," I chided, ending the sentence with a smiley face. I said how much I enjoyed visiting her town and partially in a joke to myself, I told her to look me up if she ever got to San Francisco and I would give her a good tour. She never showed up at my door to cash in her free tour.