Under Cover

by Jeremy Robson

  * * *

  The staff at our hotel in Herzliya must have wondered about us, what with phone calls from B-G, the President’s office and Professor Moshe Brawer, who would call for us and drive us to different parts of the country, including the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, where amidst the lunar landscape we had a memorable dip in the deepest hypersaline lake in the world, in which it is hardly possible to swim and impossible to sink (Moshe added a touch of comedy by hiring a black bathing costume that turned out to be several sizes too big and made him look like Charlie Chaplin). We also received calls from another Moshe – Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first Foreign Minister and Ben-Gurion’s successor as Prime Minister. Sharett and his wife Zipporah were long-standing friends of my parents and grandparents – in fact, we all felt he had a rather soft spot for my mother Charlotte (and she for him). An intellectual with a lawyer’s mind, he too had played a crucial role in the state’s creation, and had been deeply involved in all the behind-the-scenes negotiations with the various diplomats whose support was vital. Those talks were often acrimonious in the extreme, particularly with Ernest Bevin, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, who was no lover of Jews, and Moshe would arrive for Shabbat lunch at my grandparents’ house, where he always came when in London, still white with anger. My father also looked after him medically from time to time, calling to see him at the ambassador’s residence where he stayed.

  Carole enjoys lunch with Moshe and Zipporah Sharett.

  Thus the Sharetts, wanting to celebrate our wedding, invited us to lunch at the Acadia Hotel by the sea, and later to tea at their home, and while I don’t have any photos with Ben-Gurion at Sde Boker, I do have a rather grainy one of Carole and the Sharetts at lunch. In later years, Moshe Sharett sent me kind comments about poems of mine he’d read, and often asked us to talks he was giving when in London. One letter I cherish was written much earlier, in September 1947, when I was about eight and Sharett was flying back from the United Nations. Imagine the importance of the meetings he’d been attending at this key moment in the diplomatic struggle for a Jewish state, and yet he still had time to write an encouraging letter to a young boy. The handwritten note starts:

  I am writing you this letter from over the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the night. The moon shines very brightly so I can see through the window the vast area of dark water and the little white clouds floating over it and beneath our plane. I am sorry I cannot stop in London. I am flying home for one week only and then will fly back to New York where I still have much work to do.

  I remember an occasion some years later at my parents’ home when he was asked how things were in Israel and, ever the diplomat, he replied, ‘It all depends on whether you want the optimistic or pessimistic answer. The pessimist would say, “They are good, but very, very hard,” while the optimist would say, “They are hard, but very, very good.”’

  Sharett and Ben-Gurion could not have been more opposite in character or approach – B-G the firebrand leader, Sharett more cerebral, more cautious – and it is not surprising that they eventually fell out. Yet in all the key years they were a team, both fighting – along with Chaim Weizmann and others – to create a state out of the ashes of the Holocaust, and in many of the photos of those times they are side by side, as at the United Nations when the vote for statehood was taken, and again at the Tel Aviv Museum on 14 May 1948 when the Declaration of Independence was signed and proclaimed, and the state was born.

  The remarkable land of Israel has produced many miracles, but for me, returning home with Ben-Gurion’s signed-off proofs and President Shazar’s foreword counts as one of them, and the fact that Foges had cabled to say he was impressed was perhaps equally remarkable. It certainly never happened again in my seven-year stay at Aldus!

  * * *

  That was not quite the end of the Ben-Gurion saga, and I was to meet him again – twice in London, and a couple of years later in Israel. The first of these meetings, the year before the book was published, was at the Savoy Hotel in 1965, when B-G came to London with President Shazar to attend Winston Churchill’s state funeral on 30 January at St Paul’s Cathedral. Since this fell on a Saturday, both men felt that as representatives of their country they should follow Orthodox Jewish observance and refrain from taking transport on the Sabbath, so despite their age they walked from their hotel to St Paul’s, determined to pay their respects to a man they had admired and who had proved a true friend of Israel. I recently saw a film of the funeral, and there on the steps of St Paul’s was a very lively Ben-Gurion, and behind him the haughty and aloof figure of General de Gaulle – two proud men who, like the man they were honouring, knew what it meant to fight for their country.

  Never one to miss an opportunity, Foges arranged to see B-G at the Savoy, and Felix Gluck and I were to go with him. Even more agitated than usual on such occasions, Foges seemed in no hurry to leave his office, bellowing at Felix when he bravely ventured in to remind him of the time: ‘Felix, this is not a coffee shop!’ followed by words I have long cherished: ‘He is only the author.’

  Only the author or not, Foges was certainly respectful when we did finally arrive at the Savoy, but he seemed to get nowhere in his attempts to interest B-G in writing a book about the Prophets, even though he excitedly said he planned to get Kokoschka to illustrate it. Perhaps his muddled English muddled B-G’s understanding of what he was proposing, or perhaps B-G had not heard of the great Austrian artist who was to illustrate whatever book Foges was trying to persuade him to write. ‘I know Marks,’ a bewildered Ben-Gurion finally declared, ‘but show me Spencer.’ And that was the end of that little encounter.

  Ben-Gurion did return, however, the following April for the launch of his book at a reception at the Aldus office, arriving with the Israeli ambassador, staying for a couple of hours and talking affably to the various journalists we’d invited. This was followed by lunch in a private room at the White Tower. Although I wasn’t privy to the figures, and given the complexity of Foges’s international dealings would probably not have made head nor tail of them anyway, it was obvious that he had spent a king’s ransom on the book – on one loud occasion he was heard in the Aldus lobby complaining bitterly about it to George Weidenfeld (who in turn responded volubly about his Ben-Gurion book). Nevertheless, the book was published by Doubleday in America and in many languages and editions throughout the world, so appeared to be a success.

  At the press launch for his epic book, B-G signs my copy… finally.

  But whatever the bottom line, it didn’t stop Foges sending me to Israel again in August 1968 to try to get the rights to a two-volume history of the Jews he’d heard B-G was working on with the Israeli publisher Am Oved. After being given the run-around for a few days, I finally tracked down a still-friendly B-G to a hotel in Haifa, where he told me he had hidden himself away to write in peace. I had three meetings with him there, trying to get some kind of outline for Foges to take to the Frankfurt Book Fair. Ben-Gurion was not proving as easy to pin down on this occasion (he was, after all, a master politician) and Foges, straining at the leash in London, began bombarding us both with telexes, which didn’t really help. The last one ended: ‘If no outline exists in English, if you spend an hour with Robson going through the Hebrew text with him he will be able to write the paper for me.’

  What a nightmare scenario that would have been, but fortunately for me it never came to that, as I had a sudden breakthrough at our final meeting, which I managed to get his Israeli editor to attend. The upshot was that Ben-Gurion finally said he was willing to let Aldus have all rights for an illustrated edition of the book, subject to the same conditions (whatever they were) as for The Jews in Their Land, and he even proposed drawing up a contract there and then with the help of a lawyer so that all the formalities could be completed before I left Israel.

  Now it was my turn to prevaricate, since of course I wasn’t in a position to agree, let alone sign a contract, and I explained that only Foges could do this and that I
really needed a full outline of the book to take back to London. Suddenly seeing the sense of this, B-G asked the Am Oved editor to prepare it for me and I received a copy in Hebrew just a few hours before leaving.

  After all that, Aldus never published the book, perhaps because Foges failed to get the international support and underwriting he hoped for at Frankfurt, or because something else had excited his interest – a pity, since B-G liked and had confidence in him, more so than in any of his other British publishers, he told me. That was perhaps a misjudgement, because in 1972, some three years after I’d left Aldus, Foges got in touch in his usual urgent way and said he wanted me to update Ben-Gurion’s own final chapter in The Jews in Their Land, taking in the Six Day War of 1967. Of course, it wasn’t as straightforward as that (with Foges things never were), as became clear when Frame-Smith wrote to me explaining that Doubleday wanted a special, cheaper edition of the book for the American gift market, and that to make the costings work they needed to cut forty pages from the book (after taking in the new material). What made it difficult was that they wanted all the cuts to come from the end of the book so as to avoid as much re-setting and re-designing as possible.

  In short, they were looking to me to ‘telescope’ B-G’s 100-page chapter while at the same time adding – and all in his name. Ben-Gurion’s ghost! That made me uneasy, and I hesitated, since I felt Foges should get B-G’s permission or at least show him the revised text. I was given an undertaking that he would (I had it in writing, along with an assurance that my name would not be mentioned), and on that basis I went ahead with what turned out to be an extremely tricky and time-consuming assignment. One particular section really needed to be cut for reasons of space but I felt B-G might well be unhappy about it. I flagged it and left it to the in-house Aldus editor to decide. Rather amusingly, he wrote in his report, ‘So, do we let a conscientious and sensitive editor override an honoured elder statesman, or vice versa?’ I’m ashamed to say the editor got the vote.

  In the light of this, I was relieved my name was being kept out of it, for I’ve always wondered whether, despite all his promises and assurances, Foges ever sought Ben-Gurion’s approval, or even let him know what was happening. I have my doubts. But then, after all, B-G was only the author.

  12

  SEPTEMBER COHEN

  I knew that Douglas Hill had been thinking of leaving Aldus Books, but waiting for us when we got home from Israel was a letter saying that he’d done the deed – a characteristically wry missive. Aldus would not be the same without Douglas, so I didn’t have much of a spring in my step that first Monday morning back as I squeezed onto the crowded Northern Line train to Warren Street, the heat and mystery of the Negev desert and the spectacular beauty of Galilee a fading myth. Stepping out of the station there were

  Two ways to choose

  and today I go left –

  past the confectioners,

  skirting the roadworks,

  quick quick slow past the Tower,

  nodding to the newspaperman

  clutching his dailies.

  Today I take The Times…

  Returning hero I might have been for a few days, but after putting the final touches to the Ben-Gurion text I was quickly thrown into two new projects. First, though, while the iron was hot, I had my own negotiations to pursue, and these resulted in a raise of £400 per annum and my promotion to a fully fledged editor. Instead of Douglas I would be working with the dry-witted Roy Gasson, who in addition to his editorial skills did a spot-on imitation of Foges.

  Towards the end of 1964, the poetry and jazz concerts began again in earnest and so did Foges, with a major project. I was charged with editing, and Felix with the art direction and design. The World of Marc Chagall was indeed a huge undertaking and once again money was no object, for it was to show the celebrated Russian artist as never before through a spectacular combination of specially commissioned photographs of him at work, an in-depth analysis of his work by the American author and critic Roy McMullen and, throughout, reproductions of some of Chagall’s finest paintings. The chosen photographer, Izis Bidermanas, was considered one of Europe’s best and most poetic. A member of the French Resistance, Izis had become Chagall’s Boswell ever since he’d met him on an assignment for Paris Match in 1950. Some of his stunning photographic sequences for the book showed Chagall in the process of creating the murals for the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, the ceiling of the Paris Opera House, the tapestries for Israel’s Parliament and the scenery for the ballet Daphnis and Chloé.

  Without Chagall’s cooperation the project would not have been possible, and his only concern was that the reproduction of his work should be of the highest quality, a challenge Foges responded to by going to the most expensive printer in Switzerland. No problem there. Although Felix and I were in charge of the design and text, the overall editor was the head of the Doubleday office in Paris, Beverly Gordey. A chic, savvy, highly cultured lady, Beverly was married to Michel Gordey, one of France’s most distinguished foreign correspondents. Like Chagall, he was born in Russia and there were evidently family ties which had helped bring the book about. Beverly’s involvement (and no doubt Doubleday’s) was crucial as she seemed to have a hotline to Chagall. She was one of the few people to whose judgement Foges would generally defer. We became good friends, and her son Serge worked for a few months in the Robson Books office when we first opened our doors.

  In all Foges’s projects, it always seemed to be the text that proved troublesome. McMullen, who lived in Paris, had written several excellent biographies of major artists, but one of his chapters seemed inadequate – that on Chagall’s Hasidism (the Jewish mystical movement dating back to the eighteenth century) – and in one of his high-octave moments Foges turned to me and commanded, ‘Jeremy, get me an expert on Hasidism!’ Luckily, Carole had recently started work as a secretary in the offices of the Liberal Synagogue, so I phoned her for help, and after making enquiries she came back with the name of Rabbi Dr Albert Friedlander. There could not have been a better recommendation. Friedlander readily agreed to come to the Aldus office next day, where, erudite and articulate, he held the meeting in thrall as he delivered an impromptu lecture on the Hasidic movement, answering Foges’s provocative questions with great intellectual panache. Foges was impressed (so much so that he forgot to throw his usual ‘What is a Jew?’ question at him), and wanted to take him and me to lunch. ‘Ask him if it has to be kosher,’ he whispered to me loudly, ‘or will the White Tower be all right.’ It didn’t take the good rabbi long to decide, and off we went to the sophisticated White Tower. Friedlander’s widow Evelyn laughed when I told her the restaurant story recently – she knew only too well which her husband would have chosen! We’d become friends with them over the years. Albert was not only the highly respected rabbi of a loyal congregation, he was also a scholarly writer with strong literary interests and it was at his house one Friday night that we were privileged to meet the legendary poet Paul Celan, whose percussive poem ‘Death Fugue’ is one of the great poems of the Holocaust. Celan was a handsome, charismatic man with piercing eyes who, though born in Romania, wrote in German. It was heartbreaking to learn in April 1970, a few years after our meeting him, that having survived the Nazi camps (where both his parents died), Celan had drowned himself in the Seine. One cannot begin to imagine what demons had continued to invade him after he returned to the living. ‘There is nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing,’ he once wrote, ‘even if the language of his poems is German.’ Such haunting and inspiring words.

  Eventually, inevitably, Foges began to lose patience with Roy McMullen, who was running late and failing to deliver the goods. Beverly Gordey too was growing increasingly testy. Just as inevitably, Foges turned to me and commanded, ‘Jeremy, go to Paris and don’t come back until the text is completed.’ Well, there are worse places to be dispatched to, and I arranged for Carole, who was still working full time, to join me at the weekends, and off I we
nt to do battle with the unsuspecting author. Beverly Gordey was welcoming, and the first thing she told me was to check out of the cheap hotel I’d booked on the Left Bank where I’d stayed in my bachelor days. ‘Foges spends more on cigars in a day than you’re spending in a week, so for goodness’ sake find somewhere decent to stay!’ The meetings we had with McMullen in Beverly’s flat in the Rue de Savoie were often tense. It became clear that when riled she was not a woman to cross. Strangely, it was in Montparnasse, on my way back from one of these meetings, that I bumped into my old schoolmate Michael Kustow, who was with a group of French actors, and I joined them for a drink. At the time he was working with the French playwright and director Roger Planchon. It was a welcome interlude.

  But I had work to do and saw the author most days, getting him to pass me the text to edit almost as it came off his typewriter. Eventually I was able to return to London with a complete manuscript, to everyone’s relief. Meanwhile, Felix had been working on the photographs with Izis and gathering the pictorial material. As everything started to come together, I began creating extensive captions and to draw in quotes from Chagall to add more of his voice to the book. I had only one real problem – Madame Chagall, the artist’s second wife, Vava, who wanted all references to his first wife, Bella, removed from the index. This was preposterous, since it was Bella who hovered with the young Chagall in the dreamy blue skies above their native Vitebsk in some of the artist’s best-known early paintings. But Chagall, it seemed, was not inclined to take up arms against a sea of marital troubles, so Bella’s name had to be removed. At least Vava had not asked for her to be airbrushed out of those magical images of the two eternally youthful lovers!