And now—running after the fire engine, laughing, and shivering in the night air—Carson experienced the moment of illumination for which she had been praying. The key to her novel, the image that would allow her to continue, had emerged at last. “I caught Gypsy’s arm,” she would recall, “and out of breath said, ‘Frankie is in love with her brother and his bride and wants to become a member of the wedding!’
“Gypsy looked at me as though I had gone insane,” she added. For Carson, however, months of confusion had ended in an instant. She burst into tears, leaning on the taller Gypsy in the near-freezing air. It all made sense now. Like Chester Kallman and his aunt Sadie, Frankie wanted to marry her brother and his bride—to become a member of their wedding and thereby, in a larger sense, an accepted and fully loved member of the world. The twelve-year-old girl, so unhappy and vulnerable in Carson’s developing story, longed only for the same kind of connection with others that Carson herself was trying to achieve, a connection with people who saw her as she really was rather than as who she was assumed to be. A world of people like those who occupied the parlor inside.
By midmorning, a thin dusting of snow covered New York. Winter was coming. It was November 29, the day that MacNeice was to depart for England, and he had already packed his bag and put on the wolf collar coat that Auden had given him. MacNeice had little desire to join the war in Britain—no more than Auden did, in fact. After months of soul-searching in America, however, he had decided that returning to England was, for him, the lesser evil. Nevertheless, he grumbled, “it is hard to risk your life for a Lesser Evil on the off-chance of some entirely problematical betterment for most likely a mere minority in a dubious and dirty future.” He was returning, he wrote, “to a past which is not there . . . somewhere without tenses,” a place that was changing so fast that if he stayed away for even one more year, he felt, he would have to stay away for good. Still, he had loved his time in America and did not judge those who chose to stay.
At 7 Middagh Street the residents slept in, lulled by the low moan of the ships’ horns in the harbor and the plaintive call of seagulls. The house was full to bursting with exhausted revelers, oblivious to the early movement up and down the block. In the top-floor room facing the Manhattan skyline, a new poem lay among the litter of manuscripts and books on Auden’s desk. “In Sickness and in Health” was an ode in praise of married love, a meditation on the sacred quality of a committed relationship between two people—evidence of a new direction in Auden’s thinking. But the poem could have been addressed, too, to all who had laughed and talked and danced and celebrated the night before:
Beloved, we are always in the wrong,
Handling so clumsily our stupid lives,
Suffering too little or too long,
Too careful even in our selfish loves:
The decorative manias we obey
Die in grimaces round us every day,
Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice
Which utters an absurd command—Rejoice.
Part II
The Bawdy House
DECEMBER 1940–FEBRUARY 1941
Here, I’m afraid, one is inclined
to speak of Europe in the past tense.
—Benjamin Britten
5
Every day America’s destroyed and re-created
America is what you do,
America is I and you
America is what we choose to make it.
—W. H. Auden, Paul Bunyan, 1939–41
By December 1940, 7 Middagh Street had been opened to guests and the house filled with them almost instantly. Poets and publishers shared taxis to Brooklyn to spend time with Auden, McCullers, and Davis; composers and conductors arrived to exchange news with Britten; and everyone from the theatrical, film, literary, and art worlds wanted to share a cocktail with Gypsy Rose Lee. It became fashionable in Manhattan to mention that one had been out to Davis’s house to partake of one of Eva’s hearty meals or to spend an evening in the parlor with Kirstein and Balanchine, George Dangerfield and Flanner. Entertaining, too, was Davis’s assortment of colorful new friends from Sands Street, including Snaggle-Tooth, a pimp who handed over all his ill-gained profits to his old Italian mother, and Ginger-Ale, a piano player so called “because he sparkles, but it’s not champagne.”
Louis Untermeyer, Carson’s guest, was bemused by her attempt to construct a life based on the artistic values he had celebrated in his recent book. Carson clearly relished the role of cohost of the city’s newest salon, even if George’s guest lists and decorating scheme gave it a rather bizarre slant. She appeared euphoric in this setting—more energized and voluble than at Bread Loaf, sufficiently confident to join conversations with such heavy hitters as the playwright William Saroyan and the producer Cheryl Crawford, a cofounder of the left-wing Group Theatre.
It was always a pleasure to share a meal with Auden, who frequently recited his poetry-in-progress at the table, soliciting comments and suggestions from his companions, many of which would be incorporated into his work the next day. George, too, was clearly in his element as he picked and chose from his seemingly infinite number of contacts to spice up an evening en famille. But it was Gypsy who provided the greatest heat at the center of those early winter nights, dropping in for meals “like a whirlwind of laughter and sex” and working the parlor with professional skill, perching on the arms of chairs, leaning close to whisper a confidential word into tweedy professors’ ears, and letting loose a rich, throaty laugh that thrilled everyone. Guests who had heard that she was sharing an atelier with the likes of Auden may have come to laugh, but they were often surprised to find her remarks on books, theater, and art not only well informed but original and perceptive. Gone were the painful days of mispronouncing the names of famous authors and blurting out mid-party, “You son-of-a-bitch!” Thanks in large part to George, who had been tutoring her for years before she ever set foot on Middagh Street, Gypsy was becoming a legitimate “brain.”
Still, it was her frank enthusiasm that most attracted her fellow artists. Writers and composers warmed to her interest and found, as they shared their triumphs and frustrations with her, that no one understood better than she the vicissitudes of the creative life. The visual artists, too, fell hard for the tall writer in her provocative red silk gowns. Pavel Tchelitchew made himself a permanent member of Gypsy’s inner circle. Marcel Vertes was devastated when Gypsy took offense at his attempted clever comment that she was intelligent as only ugly girls are as a rule. Blaming his poor English for the blunder, he swore that he would learn the language solely to speak to Gypsy.
Britten attended these parties with great anticipation, for they allowed him to mix with important music and theater people whom he might not otherwise see. Some of the musical guests were already friends of his—including Copland, whose American style of composition Britten much admired, and Colin McPhee, whose years spent transcribing gamelan music on the island of Bali had informed his own original work in fascinating ways. But Britten also had the opportunity to meet the young composer Leonard Bernstein, who had spent the summer working with the new Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts, Bernstein’s mentor, Marc Blitzstein, who wrote the successful and groundbreaking political opera The Cradle Will Rock, and the acid-tongued but highly influential Virgil Thomson. Knowing that Lotte Lenya was a close friend of Davis’s, there was always a chance that her husband, Kurt Weill, might drop in after the out-of-town tryouts of Lady in the Dark. Britten had met Weill the previous summer, on vacation in Maine, and had enjoyed a long talk with the émigré composer about American musical theater, a genre with which Britten hoped to experiment.
Britten was especially gratified to strengthen these connections because he had experienced a rash of professional misfortunes recently. His first symphony had been rejected (for political reasons, most likely; it had been commissioned by the now-hostile government of Japan), the premiere of his Violin Concerto at Carnegie Hall had received mixed reviews,
a winter season of performances in Britain had been canceled because of the war, and a major Chicago performance had been canceled as well when his frozen British bank account left him unable to travel to the Midwest. The former wunderkind, who had been considered by many the most promising British composer of his generation, was so short of funds that he had accepted a job as conductor for the Suffolk Friends of Music Orchestra, a small amateur group on Long Island, for $10 per rehearsal. It was not the kind of work he had expected to find in America. As he wrote to his friend the violinist Antonio Brosa, “We would not think of playing anything as high-brow as the Brandenburg Concertos. We only play Slav music which seems to suit the enthusiasm of the Long Islanders; so much so that last Tuesday I strained my back and I am now groaning whenever I move.”
Aside from the potential for professional contacts, the evenings at 7 Middagh Street were intriguing in other ways. It was astonishing for Britten to witness the carelessness with which everyone in the house exhibited his or her own particular brand of sexuality. His relationship with Pears had begun only the previous year, after the two had come to America together. It was the first serious, open love affair of Britten’s life, and while he and Pears were much more discreet by nature than Wystan Auden and Chester Kallman, they had already inadvertently caused a scandal at their former home in Amityville. A Mr. Titley, the sanatorium’s superintendent and their host’s employer, had noticed how crowded the Mayers were with their guests and had offered to put Britten and Pears up at his larger home on the grounds. Not wanting to impose on the Mayers more than necessary, the composer and singer had agreed to the plan. But Mr. Titley and his wife had not expected the two to share a single bedroom when two were available. The discomfort that resulted had led to increasing friction, and the embarrassed musicians eventually returned to the Mayers’, dragging a trail of muted but persistent gossip behind them. One could not help but wonder what the Titleys would make of a house such as 7 Middagh, where Chester performed expert impersonations of his favorite opera divas, Klaus Mann inhaled delicately on a cigarette while his sister, Erika, harangued the guests, George Davis worked his charms on a Sands Street sailor in the corner, and, as Louis Untermeyer remarked, “Gypsy did not strip, but Auden did plenty of teasing.”
Britten was long accustomed to Auden’s goading tendencies when it came to his own sexual behavior—and he didn’t always mind. Since the two had met in 1935, when creating the music and narration for a series of British documentary films, their friendship had been grounded in two basic tenets: a shared high regard for each other’s artistic abilities and the understanding that Auden knew best. At twenty-one, Britten had lived a tightly controlled existence, still very close to his mother, and was perhaps constitutionally unable to act on his secret attraction to adolescent boys. As a result, Auden, a physician’s son, and Isherwood, a former medical student, had greatly amused themselves through the latter half of the 1930s by diagnosing Britten’s condition and recommending therapeutic action.
In a poem written for Britten in 1936, Auden spelled out their general philosophy when it came to their friend, whom they affectionately called Benjy:
Underneath an abject willow,
Lover, sulk no more:
Act from thought should quickly follow.
What is thinking for?
In 1938 Auden made a more specific suggestion in a letter from Europe: “I’ve got something waiting here for you that will make you crazy. 16. . . . mother dead. Father drinks. Shall I get a photo? Such eyes. O la, la.” And when the young composer ventured a move on a boy he liked, only to be rebuffed, Auden briskly advised, “Dear Benjamin, Nothing to worry about really. As I haven’t seen him, I can only guess at what happened, but human nature runs along certain lines.
I. You oughtn’t to have given him the chance of going to the Corner House.
II. Did you play the piano. Most important.
III. I’m afraid like many people he enjoys a feminine love of power.
The correct line is
A. To appear comparatively indifferent emotionally
B. To take not the slightest notice of a refusal.
Remember he WANTS to be mastered.”
Such playful provocation was typical of Auden, but it contained a serious element as well. Auden wholeheartedly admired Britten’s work—over time the composer had, in addition to his own considerable oeuvre, set many of Auden’s poems to music, created accompaniments for plays on which Auden and Isherwood had collaborated, and periodically worked with Auden to create cabaret songs for their friend, the singer Hedli Anderson. However, as the years passed, music critics had grown increasingly impatient with Britten’s seemingly limitless adaptability at the expense of a unique musical personality of his own. His compositions were called technically brilliant but creatively unfocused, indicative of great promise but still immature. By 1938, Britten seemed to have stalled creatively, and Auden was certain that the source of the problem lay in his reluctance to come to terms with his sexuality. If it was in his power to further the cause of British music by prodding Britten, Auden considered it his duty to do so as both a friend and fellow artist.
Britten was willing enough to go along with Auden’s bullying. Considering himself intellectually inferior, he was grateful for the attention and flattered by the famous poet’s passionate belief in his work. And some of Auden’s efforts had been quite successful. It was Auden who introduced Britten to the work of the teenaged poet and street urchin Rimbaud—poems that had inspired the composer to begin a cycle of settings he called Les Illuminations. It was Auden who, after his own arrival in America, had urged Britten to follow in the hopes that the new environment would not only provide new musical influences and contacts, but would also jolt him into the freer behavior that might push him to another creative level.
Aaron Copland, who had met Britten in England at about that time, also urged him to make the trip. American audiences, he said, were less critical of young composers and more accepting of new work. With so many American communities beginning to build concert halls, it was easier there than in Britain for a composer to find work. Britten acknowledged that there was much about American music that he loved—Broadway tunes and film soundtracks especially—and that it would be fun to try to involve himself in those arenas. “I am now definitely into my ‘American’ period, & nothing can stop me,” he wrote to friends near the end of 1938. “I hum the tunes & mutter the words all day, & all my ideas now seem to be that way too.” As a result, after the death of his mother, Britten boarded a ship to America in 1939 with Peter Pears.
Again, the effect was roughly what Auden had hoped for. While Britten did not initiate an affair with a teenaged boy, he unexpectedly found himself in a relationship with Pears, who was three years older. It was a love affair that deepened daily, based on friendship and great affection, and the passion and joy that it inspired in Britten led to the completion of the Illuminations song cycle, with its glorious repeated, attention-grabbing phrase, “J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage” (“I alone have the key to this savage parade”). Next had come the moving Violin Concerto, a musical contemporary of Auden’s “September 1, 1939,” as it too was written in response to the beginning of the war, and Sinfonia da Requiem, dedicated to Britten’s deceased parents—all evidence of a great step forward in his work.
Now, in Brooklyn, Britten looked forward to a new collaboration with Auden, whom he considered his closest friend aside from Pears. The year before, at the suggestion of his American music publisher, he and Auden had begun work on an operetta for performance by high school choruses. Britten was told that such a work would help get his name known beyond the eastern cities to the rest of America and could potentially provide him with income. Having been shocked by the poor quality of music instruction in the Midwest during a visit there, and loving amateur productions of all kinds, he was eager to proceed. Besides, Britten had never before attempted an opera, and a children’s operetta seemed a good wa
y to experiment with the form. Auden saw it as an opportunity not only for another enjoyable collaboration but as a new means through which to express his evolving ideas about America.
Their first challenge was to select an appropriate story. The royal dramas and ancient myths that served as the basis for most European operas struck Auden as inappropriate for a modern nation such as this one. However, America had its own myths, which Auden believed were as profoundly connected to the collective American experience as the classic legends were to Europe. Americans, too, had had a common “enemy” to conquer—not an invading nation or dynasty but nature itself. The essential story of America was that of taming the wilderness and building a civilization from scratch. Searching among America’s folk tales for inspiration, Auden came across the legend of Paul Bunyan, the giant lumberjack who, with the magical blue ox, Babe, at his side, chopped down the trees used to build America’s towns and cities. This, he decided, was a story that would appeal to high school performers and could also serve as a vehicle for the ideas about America that he wanted to explore—ideas about what choices are necessary to develop and maintain a modern society. These issues would become more urgent once the ashes had settled on the war in Europe, and so were especially important for adolescents to consider.
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