My friends knew I was writing a book. The chief reason for doing it was to impress them. Always when we met they would say, “How is the book coming along?” As time passed, they wanted to know when it would be published. To retain their admiration, I gave a date of publication even before I submitted Shadow Leaves to the first publisher. It was winter, then spring, then summer, then winter and spring and summer again. I imagined they were beginning to doubt whether I really had written a book, especially as I always had time for tennis, squash, and weekends in the country. Finally, it was finished.
“The grammar will have to be corrected,” said Johnny. “Otherwise it’s brilliant. I just wish I could have been a better husband, and then Buchanan”—my name for him in the book; there was Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby—“would not have been so dreadful.” I assured Johnny that he was not like Buchanan.
A dozen publishers refused the book and now I avoided my friends, who had thought I was a “clever puss.” And then, as always in my life, it seems, I was saved from exposure. Mr. Cowan, of the new publishing house of Rich and Cowan, wrote asking to see me. Johnny and I were wild with excitement when his letter came. Obviously he was planning to publish Shadow Leaves.
I trembled, sitting across the desk from the pleasantly plump, balding man who was tapping the table with my manuscript. His first words deflated the balloon. “Your book shows promise, but …”
How I always dread the “but.” I cannot bear suspense; I always had to read the last page of a book first until Scott cured me. Rushing to the dreaded point, I asked, “Are you going to publish it?”
“No,” he replied, “but I think you have a talent for writing.” What good would it do me? I thought. Some good, it seemed. “Shadow Leaves,” he continued, “is obviously the story of your life.”
I had written of the orphanage, the stage, society. “Oh, no,” I lied.
“Every author’s first book is an autobiography,” he told me flatly. “I doubt whether this book would sell six copies.”
“What does sell?” I asked him miserably.
“Mystery stories, murder stories, detective stories,” he replied. “Why don’t you write one for us?”
I agreed reluctantly. I had to produce a book. Rich and Cowan advanced me twenty-five pounds, and I used the money to rent an office overlooking Trafalgar Square, where I could write twelve hours a day without interruption. I called the book Gentleman Crook. It was finished in two months, and, oh, the relief when it was accepted by Mr. Cowan. I still have the postcard with my photograph used by the publisher to advertise the book. The text, in tiny print:
If the nineteenth-century Haddingtons had not been heavy gamblers and drinkers, David Haddington might have lived a peaceful existence at Stonehurst, the home of his ancestors for the past four hundred years. When, as the result of an aeroplane crash, his mother is killed, and David is thrown on the world, he determines to seek adventure and a fortune by any means legitimate or otherwise.
His search leads him to the homes of an international financier, a crooked millionaire newspaper owner, and the casino at Monte Carlo. How he eventually finds happiness is told in a manner that makes this first novel by a well-known journalist, an entertaining and exciting story.
The “Excerpts [also printed on the postcard] from some of the many Press reviews received” were just as deceptively optimistic:
“The author has no opinion of high so-called finance, and her book should make a big appeal to those who like revelations of this kind.” Morning Post.
“A thriller that is always entertaining.” L’p’l Evening Express.
“A very adroit piece of journeyman work.” Glasgow Herald.
It was early 1933. Gentleman Crook would be published in August. The expected elation was absent. Again I wondered why it had been necessary to impress a handful of people who would not have cared whether I wrote a book or not.
It was Johnny who advised me to go to New York again. “This time you will go as the author of a book,” he said proudly. Nothing had come of my signed letter from the North American Newspaper Alliance. My Catholic admirer had died, and Johnny had lost his job. “John Wheeler will sell your articles when he knows you are having a book published,” he was sure. Johnny was positive it would be a best-seller. I was not. In actual fact, the twenty-five pounds’ advance was all I received.
I decided to go to New York before the book was published. I could be more confident as an author with a book about to appear than as one whose novel had failed. I sailed on the Aquitania in June. “I’ll send for you when I get settled” I promised Johnny. But we both knew the marriage was over. He loved me and he told me years afterward he had prayed for my happiness in America.
I would work hard, I vowed, as the ship slid into the dock, guided by the busy tugboats. I too would find a secure harbor. It was 96 degrees, the sun was blazing, and I sweated in my dark green velvet suit with its glimpse of an orange silk blouse. I barely noticed the heat, with too much else to worry about. There could be no turning back. There was no one and nowhere to turn back to.
Mr. Wheeler did not sell my articles, but I landed a reporting job on the New York Mirror, then overlapped it with another job on the New York Journal. I was charged with determination and a flood of energy, writing a column for the women’s page, interviewing convicted murderers, the mother of President Roosevelt (she was full of anecdotes about “my son Franklin”), movie stars who came to New York (Carole Lombard, Merle Oberon, Leslie Howard, Claudette Colbert), the chief executioner at Sing Sing. I covered the Hauptmann trial, a murder trial in Massachusetts of three students from MIT, and Mrs. Gloria Vanderbilt’s fight for the custody of her daughter. I wrote for magazines—Vogue, The Delineator. I earned between three and five hundred dollars a week. I could afford to be generous to Johnny.
There were new friends and acquaintances: Quentin Reynolds, Steve Hannagan, Deems Taylor, Ruth Hale, Heywood Broun, the Gene Tunneys, Clare Boothe, who was not yet Mrs. Henry Luce, A. C. Blumenthal, the promoter, and Mario Braggiotti, the pianist, who lived in my apartment house, the Beaux Arts. Mario and his family, I was told, had been the inspiration for the book and play The Constant Nymph.
I had vowed I would not feel inferior to anyone again. But Americans were not like the British. They delighted in talking about what they knew, whether it was politics, poetry, painting, books, or music. They were always having discussions, and I would sit silent and strained, not knowing quite what to say, where to look. I remember a conversation introduced by Clare Boothe at John Wheeler’s apartment: Which of these celebrities would get the most newspaper coverage if all of them died on the same day: the Pope, President Roosevelt, the Prince of Wales, or Charlie Chaplin? John thought the President; Mrs. Boothe, Charlie Chaplin. Everyone but me had an opinion.
World affairs and education in America were in the open. The Americans did not know more than the British, I was sure, but they discussed more. If only I had not wasted those years with the charming society people in England, but had employed someone to teach me about these things. Who was Einstein? And was it Froude or Freud and what was the difference?
Mario Braggiotti asked me with a small group of his friends to hear him play. When it was my turn for a favorite piece, I was embarrassed until I remembered a song I had learned at the orphanage. I hummed it to Mario and it turned out to be Brahms’ “Cradle Song.” An intellectual-sounding composer. I was pleased. I sang it for them rather quaveringly.
Angels whisper good night in silvery light,
To watch over you, the whole night through,
And to bear you above, to the dreamland of love,
And to bear you above, to the dreamland of love.
The lullaby was always my “favorite piece.” I met Mario again recently, but he had forgotten. I can never forget my discomfort and anxiousness as I watched his fingers flying up and down the keyboard, careful to avoid his face, hoping he would not ask for another piece.
When
John Wheeler offered me the N.A.N.A. column in Hollywood, I jumped at the chance. Hollywood was notorious even in London for the ignorance of the people who made the films. I would be comfortable there. No one could embarrass me with erudite conversation. Most of the men who ran the film industry had not gone to college, but had sold newspapers, or had been furriers or glove salesmen before becoming movie tycoons. Irving Thalberg, still called the boy genius, had dropped out of high school and taken a business course. He had worked as a secretary for Carl Laemmle, Sr., who brought him to Hollywood. If a boy without much education was regarded as a genius, I knew I could interview him without embarrassment. I would be comfortable with the uneducated people in Hollywood.
But it was in Hollywood, unexpectedly, that my ignorance on most subjects was most noticeable. Mr. Wheeler had given me a letter of introduction to Robert Benchley, who was then acting in the numerous shorts he wrote for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio. Through Bob, who was sophisticated and looked like a happy walrus, I met Marc Connelly, the playwright of Green Pastures; John O’Hara, who had been acclaimed in 1934 for his first novel, Appointment in Samarra; Dorothy Parker, who always called Bob Mr. Benchley; Edwin Justus Mayer, whose play on Cellini, The Firebrand, had resulted in a Hollywood contract to write screenplays for Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper; Sam Behrman; John Huston; millionaire Jock Whitney; John Barrymore; Roland Young; Donald Ogden Stewart; Charlie Butterworth, Bob’s close drinking companion. And Scott Fitzgerald.
They had known each other casually in New York during the early days of the Smart Set and Vanity Fair. Bob, who was not particularly fond of Scott, told me of the incident in the South of France when Scott, tipsy, had taken a flying football kick at an old woman vender’s tray and sent the sweetmeats flying. He had paid for the candy, but it was dreadful. Scott told me later that he believed Bob was jealous of his early fame. There had been a cocktail party for Scott in New York. “Everyone was struggling to talk to me. I saw Bob on the fringe of the crowd watching me, and there was real animosity on his face.”
Writers were almost outcasts in Hollywood. They clung together even when they did not like each other. Learning from Miss Parker that Scott was living in one of the bungalows at the Garden of Allah where writers from the East stayed to save themselves the bother of a long lease and housekeeping, Benchley asked him to stop by for the party he was giving to celebrate my engagement to the Marquess of Donegall. In The Last Tycoon, Scott transposed our first encounter to have Kathleen and her friend Edna float onto the back lot of the studio on top of the huge detached head of the god Siva during an earthquake. The hero, Stahr, believed Kathleen was wearing a belt with cut-out stars. It was the other woman who wore the belt, he discovered after finding her. When Bob realized that Scott had left the party, he called asking him to come back. “Who is still there?” Scott asked cautiously. He was not drinking, and he found the merrymakers hard to take when he was sober. There were not many left, but among others Bob described Tala Birell, a blond actress. The name and description seemed to fit the girl Scott had observed sitting quietly amid the noise and the swirling gaiety. He had noticed her belt with small stars cut in the leather. She was the only person besides himself who was not drinking. He returned but excused himself quickly when he realized his mistake. Miss Birell was wearing the belt, but she was not the girl.
I had been aware of him, wondering about the man under the lamp in shades of palest blue who was so detached from everyone there—a face emerging from the smoke of his cigarette. When I looked again, the chair was empty. I saw him a few evenings later at the Anti-Nazi League dinner at the Cocoanut Grove chaired by Dorothy Parker. Scott was one of her guests at the long table facing mine, at which Marc Connelly was host. Everyone else was dancing. We smiled as we recognized each other. Before going off with Donegall, I had asked Bob who the man was who had vanished so abruptly. When he replied, “F. Scott Fitzgerald,” I was interested. I had heard of him; he was the man who wrote of the flaming youth of the twenties. I was sorry he had gone. He would have been worth a paragraph for my column. And now here he was, seeming so pleased to see me.
“I like you,” he said.
“I like you,” I replied. I was flirting and should have felt guilty, but did not. That very day Don had flown back to London to tell his mother, the Marchioness of Donegall, of our engagement. “Let’s dance,” I suggested.
But the people were coming back through the looking glass, as Scott described this encounter between Kathleen and Stahr in The Last Tycoon, and we had to meet a third time before we danced and fell in love.
I had planned to go to the Hollywood Bowl with Jonah Ruddy, the Hollywood correspondent for the London Daily Mail. He was already at the house when Eddie Mayer called and invited me to dine with him and Scott Fitzgerald. Jonah grumbled at the waste of tickets but came with me. While Scott and I danced at the Clover Club, Eddie and Jonah seemed faraway murals on a wall. “We ought to go back to them,” I said after each dance, but we did not. We danced or stood waiting for the music to start again while Scott asked questions about me and my forthcoming marriage to Lord Donegall and he held me close while my “dark gold” hair tickled his chin. “Is it getting in your mouth?” I asked coquettishly. He swung me out, or walked loosely around me, then close again, and I was having a wonderful time. There was no one there with second sight to tell me, “Here is the person for whom you have been searching so desperately, who will give you comfort and love and anguish, and the education for which you have longed.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE BEGINNING OF COLLEGE OF ONE
SCOTT FITZGERALD WAS A BORN TEACHER. HE WAS happiest discussing a book he had just read or expounding on the politics of Hollywood and the world, theorizing about the battles of history—if this had not happened, this would have, and now it was all happening again in Europe. He was the first person I ever heard scorn the impregnable Maginot Line. “The Germans will bypass it with their tanks,” he was sure.
World War II was inevitable, he told me two years before it started. England, America, and France were burying their logic in a quicksand they called “Peace in our time.” In 1938 he advised Scottie to take a trip with a group of students to Europe. “It will be your last chance to see the France we know.”
During 1938 and 1939 we listened on the big old-fashioned radio in his living room at Malibu to Hitler’s rantings and the terrifying roar of “Heil Hitler,” “Heil Hitler,” against the Wagnerian thunder of waves crashing on the Malibu beach. Scott was amazed when I told him that Tom Mitford, who had met Hitler in Munich during 1932, thought he was a great man with a magnetic voice. “My God, they’re so blind,” he cried. Why couldn’t they see that Hitler was the Pied Piper who would drown the democracies? The Spanish Civil War was a rehearsal for the coming holocaust. They were all practicing for the bigger stage. He disliked Mussolini and informed me that the Italians were cowards; “They are brave when they are twenty to one.” A gang of policemen had beaten Scott in Rome and then flung him into jail. He reinforced his argument by giving me Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms to read.
The absorbing topic in Hollywood when Scott came in 1937 was the fighting in Spain. Almost as important were the maneuverings of the left and right wings of the Screen Writers Guild to gain control of the highly paid authors. I read the newspapers and knew what they were talking about but could not understand why they were so concerned. I had never bothered about these vague matters. I looked up the words “radical” and “reactionary” to see what they meant—but radical or reactionary, the result seemed to be the same, no matter who was in power. The world for me was a place where some people were confident, rich and/or of “good family,” and this entitled them to all the privileges; even Scott preferred his father, from an old Baltimore family, to his mother, whose father as a boy had migrated with his parents to America from Ireland during the potato famine of the 1840s. The larger percentage of the people were poor, worked hard to live, while the bosses took al
l the profits.
Like so many of the ignorant poor of England, I was a stanch conservative, a devout follower of tradition. Ours not to question why, ours but to work and die. Authority was always right; this had been pummeled into me at the orphanage. God Save Our Gracious King, God Save All Our Gracious Kings. Those terrible Russian anarchists. There were some in England, and as an adolescent I had prayed that I would never get in the way of their bombs. The comic papers I read in the East End of London had shown men with sprouty whiskers whose names usually ended in “vitch” or “ski,” blowing up factories and not caring that children might be working in them. Older members of my family had worked in factories when they were twelve, from six in the morning until late at night. And yet, unions were something to avoid. A relative as a young man had led an abortive strike for more pay. He had been fired. “What a fool!” they said.
And now to hear such educated writers as Donald Ogden Stewart (Yale), Eddie Mayer (Columbia), Frances Hackett, and Mary McCall (both Vassar), all of whom earned thousands of dollars a week, concerning themselves so passionately with the plight of the rank and file simply did not make sense to me. They’re fakes, I thought. Eddie told me how stingy Charlie Chaplin was; he was born poor, but now, rich and liberal, he made “comrade” speeches. Ask him for money, and he would close up like an anemone at the beach when you poked it in the middle with a stick.
College of One (Neversink) Page 5
