Early readers included the indispensable Eileen Keller, Prudence Tippins, and Janie W. Tippins. Joel Block, Marjorie Braman, John E. Elder, Joe Holley, Tara Holley, Carla Jablonski, Geeta Kothari, Rankin Tippins, Evelyne Worthington, and Mary Yznaga provided invaluable advice and encouragement. Vincent Polidoro and Sophia Nagornaya took the bus back to college so I could write. And without the loving companionship of Bob and Dash Mecoy there would be no point in writing anything.
Finally, I would like to thank Judy Willig and the staff of the Heights and Hill Community Center, which oversees the Brooklyn Heights Meals on Heels program, for introducing me to the wonderful people who first told me of the house on Middagh Street.
Notes
Abbreviations for frequently cited sources:
Berg
The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
BPL
The Britten-Pears Library, Aldeburgh, England
BRC
Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
HL
The Christopher Isherwood Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, California
HRHRC
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin
MAY
Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University
MTR
The Museum of Television and Radio, New York
PD
Peter Davis archives (George Davis)
WLRC
Weill-Lenya Research Center, The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, New York
Part I. The House on the Hill
1 “All genuine poetry”: Auden, Preface to Oxford Poetry 1927, in Complete Works, Prose and Travel Books, 4.
Chapter 1
3 “In the town”: McCullers, Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, 3.
5 “sit-up-and-take-notice”: Clifton Fadiman, “Books: Pretty Good for Twenty-two,” New Yorker, June 8, 1940, 77.
“Maturity does not”: Rose Feld, “A Remarkable First Novel of Lonely Lives,” New York Times Book Review, June 16, 1940, 6.
6 “we had no”: McCullers, Illumination, 19.
“we would just look”: Ibid.
photographs of Carson’s: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 97.
daughter was a genius: Ibid., 3.
7 “It was a shock”: McCullers, Illumination, 16.
with a book: McCullers to Oliver Evans, July 20, 1963, HRHRC.
freelance dog walker: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 45.
“bizarre” changes: Ibid., 89.
a year longer: McCullers to Hardwick Moseley, n.d., HRHRC (Series II, b24, f8).
shunned by her neighbors: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 86.
8 “prominent and empty”: Norman Mailer, in Caleb Crain, “Stormin’ Norman,” New York Times Book Review, December 19, 1999.
“a power”: Crain, ibid.
written to a number: McCullers, Illumination, 20.
“their faces shrill”: McCullers, “The Cripple,” HRHRC (Series II, b8, f5).
9 “A woman stood”: Ibid.
Davis’s office had rejected: Geraldine Mavor to Carson McCullers, November 10, 1939, HRHRC (Series III, b25, ft).
10 babies delivered: G. Gordon Davis, “Funeral Stones,” 2003.
abandoned urchin: George Davis, “Dutchy Schmidt,” Harper’s Magazine (September 1935): 465.
father had helped treat: Davis, “Funeral Stones.”
“coffee houses”: George Davis, “A Letter in Passing: A Perverse Coloring of Greektown Byplay,” PD.
“mysterious apparitions”: Ibid.
French sister-in-law: Peter Davis interview, August 23, 2003.
Hôtel Saint-Germain-des-Prés: Wineapple, Genêt, 61–63.
11 “the whole comedy of the bar”: George Davis, “Death of an Artist: A Memoir of Christian Bérard,” WLRC (Series 37, b3, f33).
“convoluted quiets”: George Davis, “Memories of Christian Bérard in Paris,” Spring 1949, WLRC (Series 37, b3, f31).
12 spent the night: Boyle and McAlmon, Being Geniuses Together, 359.
“Like Brown’s Cows”: Flanner, Paris Was Yesterday, xviii.
“Mere Oblivion”: Harper & Brothers publishing contract, April 1, 1929, WLRC (Series 37, b4, f180).
“The most important fact”: Clifton Fadiman, “A Finished First Novel,” Nation, 133 (October 14, 1931): 12.
“might bring back”: In “Noted Novelist Visiting Parental Home in City” (Luding-ton, Mich., 1931), PD.
“They included me”: Davis, “Memories of Christian Bérard in Paris.”
13 “the early hurts”: Ibid.
read My Life: McCullers, Illumination, 54.
adult acquaintance: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 71.
photographs of carnival performers: Ibid., 127.
pair of pinheads: Davis, “Notes,” WLRC (Series 37, b3, £42).
14 “all life is theatre”: Davis, “Memories of Christian Bérard in Paris.”
“magnificent kind of courtesy”: Ibid.
gestures and expressions: Peter Davis interview, August 23, 2003.
burlesque dancers: Drutman, Good Company, 103.
Bucket of Blood: Ibid., 104.
“At least I have”: Ibid., 92.
“Shouldn’t you have”: Ibid., 100.
15 film star Marion Davies: Ibid.
hard-nosed, hard-drinking: Vreeland, D.V., 15.
dancing at the St. Regis: Ibid., 88–89.
“violet velvet mittens”: Vreeland, Why Don’t You?, 36.
“an enormous white”: Ibid., 35.
“the feelings and problems”: “Meet the Magazine Editor,” Writer’s Journal (September 1947): 4.
16 more willing than: Clarke, Capote, 81–82.
“as pleasing as it was”: Auden [Essays (6)], Berg.
“We ought”: Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind, 313.
17 “We shot up”: Isherwood, Diaries, 4.
performance staged especially: Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind, 313.
“All right”: Ibid., 314.
“was a marvelous”: Isherwood to Peter Davis, September 26, 1959, PD.
18 Bilious Margaret: brochure, George Davis Papers, WLRC (Series 37, b5, f308).
encounter with Greta Garbo: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 100.
“wearing out”: Bertolt Brecht, “Yes, I Live in a Dark Age,” Decision (October 1941): 75.
19 spent part of the $25 payment: McCullers, “Lecture,” HRHRC (Series I, b9, f1).
listened to the news: McCullers to Emma DeLong Mills, 1939, Berg.
its own list: Marino, Quiet American, 45.
“warn an unaware”: Mann, Turning Point, 271.
20 “very arresting”: Ibid., 330.
“a strange mixture”: Mann, June 26, 1941, in Savigneau, Carson McCullers, 67–68.
“She had a face”: McCullers, Illumination, 21.
“like a boy”: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 103.
spiritual twin: Carson McCullers to Reeves McCullers, September 21, 1951, HRHRC (Series II, b24, f9).
21 rather alarming: Savigneau, Carson McCullers, 74.
“It was going to be”: McCullers, Illumination, 6.
“There is one thing”: McCullers, “Sucker,” Mortgaged Heart, 10.
Jewish refugee: Mann, Turning Point, 331.
22 their wedding night: McCullers to Emma DeLong Mills, September 29, 1937, Berg.
an entire novella: McCullers, broadcast interview of Carson McCullers and Tennessee Williams, 1945, HRHRC (Series 1, b2, f11).
“An army post”: McCullers, Reflections, 3.
contract for $500: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 83.
23 “unslakable love of words”: Moulton, “Remembering George Davis,” 292.
“slick nuttiness”: Drutman, Good Company, 107.
“indelibly entwined”: Gwen Randolph Franklin interview, March 19, 2004.
named Frankie Abbe:
Kathryn Abbe interview, March 16, 2004.
“How Young People Live”: Moulton, “Remembering George Davis,” 291.
“We all need a splash”: Vreeland, D.V., 122.
24 Edouard to America: Edouard de Bays to George Davis, January 30, 1939, WLRC (Series 37, b3, f99).
sailor in Montmartre: Clarke, Capote, 89.
24 mahogany fixtures: article on Georgia, McCullers, HRHRC (Series 1, b8, f5).
25 porcelain vases: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 126.
fun to gossip: Spoto, Lenya, 146.
“sipped their way”: Ibid.
“energy of affection”: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 123.
“face facts”: Ibid., 171.
26 “astonishing humanity”: Richard Wright, “Inner Landscape,” New Republic (August 5, 1940): 195.
playing German lieder: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 114.
swiped Stegner’s only bottle: Ibid., 113.
27 “Everything was weakening”: Vreeland, D.V., 95.
“larky” to depressed: Moulton, “Remembering George Davis,” 287.
as the hot months: George Davis to Georgina Davis, n.d., PD.
28 cut it by half: Rosco, Glenway Wescott Personally, 94.
“Big Money magazines”: Katherine Anne Porter to Glenway Wescott, January 23, 1941, in Porter, Letters, 188–89.
“Mrs. Cold Caramel”: Phelps, Continual Lessons, 74.
cut the manuscript: Rosco, Glenway Wescott Personally, 94.
29 Carmel Snow’s instruction: Dorothy Wheelock Edson interview, March 18, 2004.
even slapped Carson: McCullers, Illumination, 22.
Annemarie had met: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 107.
Carson lived: Savigneau, Carson McCullers, 74.
reading Louis Untermeyer’s: Carr, Lonely Hunter, 115.
“It is our faith”: Untermeyer, From Another World, 84.
30 if it was raining: Moulton, “Remembering George Davis,” 286–87.
31 “The Call to Color”: Harper’s Bazaar, September 15, 1940.
“like ghosts shod”: Edward R. Murrow, “A Reporter Remembers, Part 1,” CBS Radio broadcast (February 24, 1946; original broadcast, August 24, 1940), R85055, MTR.
“Like brother and sister”: McCullers, Illumination, 23.
32 “All of us here”: McCullers, Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, 193.
Chapter 2
33 “Summer was worse”: Auden, “The Dark Years,” Collected Poems, 283.
not the first time: E.A.W., “Treffpunkt Hamburg: George Davis” (“Meeting in Hamburg: George Davis”), newspaper interview of George Davis (October 1956), WLRC (Series 37, b4, f262).
34 George telephoned Carson: McCullers, Illumination, 23.
35 experiment with himself: Davis to Gypsy Rose Lee, December 26, 1940, BRC (Series I, Sub-series, b3, f2).
Carson’s spirit: Reeves McCullers to Carson McCullers, September 14, 1944, HRHRC (Series III, b28, f3).
36 long-term lease: Lease renewal for 7 Middagh street, Brooklyn, 1946, WLRC (Series 37, b4, f220).
37 “just one word”: Kirstein, “From an Early Diary,” in Jenkins, By With To & From, 153.
37 Gulliver surrounded: Isherwood, Diaries, Vol. I, 12.
“Fuck! Stop that!”: Norse, Memoirs, 65–66.
wrote a check: Paul Bowles to Peter Davis, August 25, 1959, PD.
38 wittiest person: Drutman, Good Company, 95.
39 might move in: Britten to Beth, Kit, and Sebastian Welford, September 18, 1940. In Britten, Letters, 862.
intrusive landlady: Auden to Mina Stein Kirstein Curtiss, September 18, 1940, Berg.
“largely dictated”: Auden to Caroline Newton, February 2, 1942, Berg.
40 passenger liners: Frank Reil, “Brooklyn Waterfront,” Brooklyn Eagle (November 4, 1940): 25.
hardly cracked: Auden, “Yale Daily News Banquet Address,” March 6, 1941. In Auden, Complete Works: Prose, 2:119.
“Berlin meant Boys”: Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind, 2.
“promised libido-land”: In Seebohm, “Conscripts to an Age,” 1.
“a city with no virgins”: In Page, Auden and Isherwood, 8.
relax sexually: Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind, 3.
41 “complete freedom”: In Carpenter, W. H. Auden, 86.
“You may throw”: MacNeice, Strings Are False, 140.
“The attraction of buggery”: Auden, journal, 1929, Berg.
“white slave traffic”: Auden to Spender [1928]. In Davenport-Hines, Auden, 87.
“a middle-class rabbit”: Ibid., 104.
42 “All this time”: Auden, “1929, II,” Collected Poems, 46.
“Before this loved one”: Auden, “XV,” English Auden, 31.
“Whispering neighbours”: Auden, “XXVIII” (later “Autumn Song”), English Auden, 159.
“It is time”: Auden, “1929, IV,” Collected Poems, 49.
43 “this country”: Auden, “The Orators,” English Auden, 62.
“Lay your sleeping head”: Auden, “Lullaby,” Collected Poems, 157.
“The mortality”: Jack Kroll, “W. H. Auden: Mapping the Twentieth Century,” Newsweek, October 8, 1973, 117.
“O plunge your hands”: Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening,” Collected Poems, 134.
“Young men”: MacNeice, Strings Are False, 146.
too bourgeois by nature: Auden to Rupert Doone, 1932, Berg.
44 “I shall probably”: Auden to E. R. Dodds. In Carpenter, W. H. Auden, 207.
“No one I know”: Auden, “The Prolific and the Devourer,” Complete Works, Prose, 2:411–58.
“P.S.—Congratulations”: Dylan Thomas, “Twelve Comments on Auden,” New Verse, nos. 26–27 (November 1937): 23–30. In Haffenden, Auden, 270.
45 “extremely embarrassing”: In “Poet of Disenchantment,” BBC Television, broadcast November 25, 1965, HL.
“a tourist’s”: Auden, New Republic, December 6, 1939, 208.
“dull, punching”: Auden and Isherwood, Journey to a War, 71.
“War is bombing”: Ibid., 202.
“The bottom”: Ibid., 58.
“of course”: Ibid., 58–59.
46 “clearly no national”: Anthony Heibut, Exiled in Paradise. In Marino, Quiet American, 31.
“successful like”: Auden, “In Time of War, XXIII,” English Auden, 260.
“Behind each sociable”: Auden, “In Time of War, XIV,” English Auden, 257.
Daily Worker crowd: “Bubble Reputation,” Observer, September 11, 1983.
a great poet: Davenport-Hines, Auden, 71.
“more aware”: In Fenton, “Auden at Home,” New York Review of Books, April 27, 2000, 12.
47 “That English life”: “Poet of Disenchantment.”
“I love my family”: In Plimpton, Poets at Work, 288.
“dumb, chattering terror”: MacNeice, Strings Are False, 174.
“sat in the Café Royal”: Ibid.
“About suffering”: Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts,” Collected Poems, 179.
48 “no past”: Benjamin Appel, “Exiled Writers,” Saturday Review of Literature, October 19, 1940, 5.
“penniless as before”: Isherwood to George Davis, December 21, 1938, WLRC.
“a lonely”: In MacNeice, Horizon 1/7 (July 1940).
49 “the leaders”: Harper’s Bazaar, October 1, 1938, 34.
“chemical life”: Isherwood, Diaries, Vol. I, 10.
being subsidized: Carpenter, W. H. Auden, 372.
“The Americans”: Isherwood to Kathleen Bradshaw-Isherwood, February 28, 1939, HL (CI 178).
50 college students: Farnan, Auden in Love, 18.
“Miss Mess”: Norse, Memoirs, 62.
51 “It’s the wrong blond!”: Ibid., 64.
“I believed”: Auden, “Heavy Date,” Collected Poems, 262.
“I am mad with happiness”: Auden to Britten, [ca. pre-June], 1939, Berg.
52 “wanted to get away”: Isherwood, Diaries, Vol. 1,14.
“squat spruce body”: Aude
n, “Poems 1931–1936,” English Auden, 156.
scribbling poems: Farnan, Auden in Love, 23.
wore a wedding ring: Carpenter, W. H. Auden, 262.
53 accidentally walked off: Auden to Dr. Edward Kallman, July 5, 1939, Berg.
when Chester flirted: Norse, Memoirs, 75.
“unspeakable juke boxes”: Auden, Dyer’s Hand, 323.
“dotted with the houses”: Auden to Mrs. E. R. Dodds, July 11, 1939. In Davenport-Hines, W. H. Auden, 196.
54 “The trouble”: Auden, “The Prolific and the Devourer,” Complete Works, Prose, 454.
“You keep evading”: Ibid.
“For the first time”: Auden to Margaret Mardiner, November 19, 1939, Berg.
55 “every hour or so”: Auden to Mrs. E. R. Dodds, August 19, 1939. In Carpenter, W. H. Auden, 271.
“If you live”: Edward R. Murrow, “A Reporter Remembers, Parts 1 & 2, 1941–1945,” original broadcast August 31, 1939, R85056, MTR.
“I sit in”: Auden, “September 1, 1939,” Berg.
55 “The dive was”: Norse, Memoirs, 79.
56 “I’m sure we are”: Forster to Isherwood, October 31, 1939, HL.
57 false emotion: Plimpton, Poets at Work, 295. Interview by Michael Newman, 1973.
“infected with an incurable”: In Mendelson, Early Auden, 201.
“every value”: Auden to Nevill Coghill, January 19, [?1970], Berg. In Mendelson, Later Auden, 89.
“the brutal honesty:” [Spender], “The Dog Beneath the Gown,” New Statesman, June 9, 1956, 656–57. In Mendelson, Later Auden, 89.
58 “While those whom”: Auden, “Romantic or Free?” Smith Alumnae Quarterly (August 1940): 353–58. In Auden, Complete Works, Prose, 63.
“we must always hold”: Ibid., 71.
These terrible powers: Fenton, “Auden at Home,” 11.
“Hitler” in all of us: Ibid.
“I have tried”: Adolf Hitler, in Salmaggi and Pallavisini, 2194 Days of War, 73.
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