The Grand Surprise

by Leo Lerman

  I went to visit Peter [Lindamood], because I didn't feel like coming home. There were several marchese and marquises there, and the painter Mangini. I fell fast asleep for about ten minutes. Now I feel wide awake. I guess not eating, not having any sex, not looking at one's beloved—and only being half here— makes me fall asleep in company and be wide awake this moment talking to you.

  I always sound so busy; you must wonder when I have time to be lonely. I am always lonely—when I wake, when I sleep—but this is only a temporary thing, for one day the door will open and there will be a Tibis. I sort of feel like those old-fashioned heroines who lived all their lives in one place, never changing a thing, because they eternally awaited their heroes who had gone off, and of course never returned. Please do not permit me to join their ranks. I would like to live some other place one day.

  JOURNAL • JANUARY 9, 1948 Truman went to address the [publisher's] salesmen. They squabbled over what he should wear. They treat Truman like a thing rather than a person: The exterior looks like an act and the interior isn't.

  JANUARY 9, 1948 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • HAVANA

  I must go out now, and just as well—it's cold here, and I have to find some money. I've asked Ruth Stephan for the few dollars she still owes me. I need some desperately. Oh me—it's my own fault. If I hadn't been such a pig all those years, I would never have become so huge, and I would never have needed to diet, and I would never have impaired my enormous vitality, and I never would have not had enough strength to will myself to work. Money never seems to materialize as I see it. But it was fun to spend it as I did—and it will be fun again.

  JOURNAL • JANUARY 12, 1948 Aunt Pauline in her great grief—when I was holding her—realizing that her hat was disarranged, even while she wept, “Do you know what happened to my Charlie?”78 arranged her hat very precisely, almost coquettishly. This was not a cynical gesture, only a reflex one. When people—no matter how old—are being comforted, they instantly assume the pliability and trustingness of children. Their bodies become childlike.

  JANUARY 12, 1948 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI

  Lots of people had been reading Truman's little piece about me in Vogue and saying how lovely but wasn't the last paragraph horrifying, and even if it were true why did he have to print it. It's the one where he says that I can be easily destroyed if one day somebody shows me that all the people who seem to love me really don't—and that I'm like a child playing in a playground and believing that the audiences love me but there is really no audience at all. I guess that's upsetting. And I guess I really became quite fed up with his little-girl act during his predeparture days—especially with his complete inability to take any criticism.79

  I went to a party with Phoebe [Pierce of Bazaar] for a girl going to England (her name is Joan au Cour—it really is), and there were all the Bizarres. Pearl [Kazin] spoke only Yiddish—so I saw she was drunk. Then she played “Für Elise” and she fell on her stomach—so everybody saw she was drunk. I discovered that everyone had been upset by T's little-girl act this last week and that, although we all love him, we are all pleased for him and us that he has gone. He behaves somewhat stupidly, but he always will. Andrew [Lyndon] is going home, and perhaps that is over—I wonder.80 My, how people's lives evolve and evolve and no one knows on which corner he will next find himself—and with whom. I'll tell you what really upset me—for him. Truman told Robert [Davison]81 that he thought I was wonderful but that he would outgrow me. Now, that is really outrageous. He will never, never be capable of feeling what I feel, which ultimately is the thing that will debase anything he does. I guess it upset me because I hope that he will not be limited, but it seems that he may be. If he really thinks this way, I am sure that he will be. You are not to discuss this with him, because he is utterly incapable of understanding any of it. I feel better for having told you. Phoebe says he's blatantly cast her aside many times, but he always comes back for more. He's really a selfish little beast—but who isn't? I am, too.

  JANUARY 14, 1948 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • PORT-AU-PRINCE

  My first book came to review from the Times—Marya Mannes's [novel] Message from a Stranger, which I like. But if you were here it would be easier to review, for I trust your sense about what I write much more than mine. I think that I get $25 for this. I'm not sure. I'm reading a novel, The Left Hand Is the Dreamer [by Nancy Wilson Ross], which is pleasant while placing no strain on either my mind or my heart—such a relief. I completely upset The Saturday Review by a big intrigue against their stupid, malignant review of Little T's book [Other Voices, Other Rooms]. It worked so well that they have withdrawn the review! And they did that after the lousy magazine was in print! But it wasn't out yet. It was really a most irresponsible review, and I felt that it and the people who write things like it are a menace to all of us. So I waged an afternoon's war and thus far it's a victory.

  Oh yes—I have a new beau. You'll never guess who—[novelist] Glenway Wescott! Little T, who says he and I are really Myrt and Marge, says that I have more beaux than anyone else he knows.82 It's pleasant having Mr. Wescott come to fetch me for dinner. I hope you get this—and that you are keeping your nubbin clean in them islands.

  JANUARY 21, 1948 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • PORT-AU-PRINCE

  Glenway Wescott came to make friends with me last night. He is an extremely lonely creature who exists in the most complicated surroundings. I like him, and so he seems to have become one of my children. He guessed my age right off, so I didn't say no I wasn't thirty-three. My, he's a troubled man. I think you will like him, too—not wholly—nor do I like him wholly.83

  JANUARY 22

  Now I am riding in a cab—the first I've taken in weeks—to meet Allene, and I am of course late, but I warned her. I continue to be gay. The Times apparently liked the [Mannes] review, because this morning they asked whether I would review the new John Moore [novel, Brensham Village]. I am so pleased. I reviewed his last, The Fair Field for SRL [The Saturday Review of Literature]. Maybe they will pay me $25! If only this could be a long-lasting literary relationship.

  I am very tired of having to live up to my apparent age—anywhere from forty to fifty. I want to be thirty-three—and no more for a time. It would be such a relief. This does not mean that I am frightened of growing old, but that I am tired of being old.

  JANUARY 24

  I am here—writing and reading and leading my indulgent wealthy man's life. It's fun turning into a new shape and a thin man. I love it. I am having this quite enormous vogue right now, wherein everyone wants me to come to parties or to come here—literally everyone. This is fun—and exhausting enough to make me sleep—and food for my future work—and I go out extravagantly.

  JANUARY 25

  I went to a little gathering at Libby Holman's84—and that is one ugly mess I can do without. I became depressed the moment I entered her apartment. I think because she is so vulgarly, sordidly ugly—but it was all so awful feeling. Well, it was good to see. I hope she doesn't come here. Now I must sleep, for I must work in the morning and go to Momma's and then Eugenia [Halb-meier]'s85 and then broadcast and then my soir. [Elisabeth] Bergner and Luise [Rainer] and Stella Adler and Wendy Hiller and Eleonora are all coming.

  I've finished Gore [Vidal]'s book. I loathe it, for it makes all things dirty. The meretricious—soap operas, slick fiction—always blacken whole areas—like locusts—and this is because in these works there are always some echoes of truth. If they were totally false, they would have no effect on anyone, but their partial truths make them so monstrous, so insidious.86

  JANUARY 30

  A missive just came from you in Haiti. But please tell me more details—all about the interiors of the brothels and what you did and saw there, about the routine of the Haitian day—what they eat and all that. Oh, I am so pleased that you are there. I am not really so please
d that Little T is there, because he will, without even wanting to, try to usurp your day. You mustn't let him—and remember he loves to stay up all night.

  JOURNAL • JANUARY 23, 1948 The writers who give us only chaos can lead only to vaster chaos—unless they, like Faulkner or Dostoyevsky, make a moral comment—elevate us. To present horror is insufficient—but to present an organized vision of evil, which is also a comment, is probably the most important work an artist can do. The little boys in Dickens all had sordid childhoods but evolved into splendid men—they had a moral structure—a social structure to palliate, to use as a yardstick, but the little children in today's novels will remain forever misfits and figures in a pathologist's report.

  Last night, after the Far Harbour opening, Lincoln Kirstein was at the Ever-ard baths, a place where he could lose himself in sex and in no one knowing him—anonymity after a $25,000 disaster—and he, married and situated at the center of a species of Ring One.87

  Most of our friends fuck Negroes and say it's social consciousness.

  “That's no little boy—or if he is a little boy, he's dangerous!” A woman looking at a picture of Little T in Doubleday.

  FEBRUARY 2, 1948 Truman cannot help betrayal. It is in him and something he cannot control. I guess I'm hurt at what he told Robert [Davison] (that I was wonderful but that he would outgrow me). I doubt that he will—but he will think that he has. T is the most totally selfish one—but I know this, therefore it cannot scar me.

  FEBRUARY 4, 1948 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • PORT-AU-PRINCE

  Robert [Davison]'s landlord asked him did he want to buy the house (a good brownstone) for $4,000. The two top floors are rented to [fashion model] Dorian Leigh (with whom I went to [high] school). It is situated on Lexington Avenue, between Ninety-fourth and Ninety-fifth; its back windows look out onto a series of terraced gardens, which are enchanting. It is really on the summit of Goat's Hill and will be valuable. It has oil heat and has recently been fixed up. I wish that I could have it.

  FEBRUARY 5

  It does sound lovely in Haiti—save for the mosquitoes and the squalor. Haven't you been to the other side of the island—and the Toussaint-Louverture part—and the Christophe Citadel? I wish you would go and tell me all about it. What do you do about sex—or don't you want to talk about that? I am so wicked with myself—and so very-very rarely with anyone else—only three times since you went away, and what transpired was not exactly my idea of release at all. I guess I really don't need as much sex when I am really dieting—ho-ho. Your room sounds horrible—but that doesn't matter really, as long as you paint and are as contented as possible. Even drinking doesn't matter as long as you don't make a fool of yourself. This is a time for you to get a perspective. At least we know that the only happiness is acceptance.

  FEBRUARY 5, 1948 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • PORT-AU-PRINCE

  Yesterday a girl came from [the newspaper] PM to interview Mary Lou [Aswell] and Pearl [Kazin] on Truman. She is profiling him, and she said what a wonderful journal T kept. So Mary Lou and Pearl couldn't believe their ears and kept straight faces, because we must all protect one another—that's class solidarity. The girl (one Selma Robinson) asked had Mary Lou read any of it, and ML said no she hadn't. Selma said T had shown her, and she had copied out of it such a brilliant analysis of Sartre and Gide and wasn't T a brilliant intellectual. Pearl left the room, ML looked stunned, and Selma went away. Of course we wonder from whom T cribbed it, and is he really silly enough to think that ultimately he can be less than a laughingstock if he continues. When she comes here, I will tell her about his love for quartets and how he's a dreamy cook—and that should delight him, because he knows just as little about music and cooking. I hate this part of T because it reminds me of Touche. It's so unnecessary—he has so much without it. He has a success—a big one— commercially. That and the knowledge that he has written what he wanted to write should be enough. Ah, well, he's excessively immature and selfish and very like the U.S.A. in his adolescence. He needs to be hit on the head, and I guess this time none of us will prevent this being hit on the head because if we do it will mean that we value ourselves more than we value him.

  Little T has written me a beautiful letter about how wonderful you look and are, and I am so pleased.88 The little displeasure with T is subsiding—leaving a deep scar in most of his friends—because they love without looking. You must always know the most awful part of anyone you love. Then if you go on loving that person you can possibly help yourself and help him. T's friends, some of them, will not go on and so they, perhaps, were only more intensely interested in themselves than in T. This is in a degree a definition of friendship.

  JOURNAL • FEBRUARY 14, 1948 What is there in leaving Richard completely (this relationship) and going to live with Robert [Davison]? There are many good things: Among them would be his decided loyalty. Most of all, I love him—quite uncomplicatedly by sex or anything impetuous—maturely, with a great element of paternity. I could go on with my life, having assumed a new suit, realizing that all suits are basically identical. One must not be whimsical in purchasing a suit, unless one can afford to have many. I can afford to have only one. I wish to return to a life uncomplicated by any sundering love, in which love is an integral part and not a galloping consumption. I want a strict monogamy—in work, in living, in loving. I feel that [in] reassuming my life with Richard, I would be assuming an old suit—somewhat refurbished albeit, but an old suit, and since it has been mended, it must wear out sooner and must be split again. I feel that Richard would be tired. Also, I feel that it would be better for him if I went. He could then truly be on his own.

  CA. FEBRUARY 21, 1948 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO ROBERT DAVISON • SARASOTA, FLORIDA

  The town is somewhat amazed and scandalized by Noël's curtain speech after his [Tonight at 8:30] opening last night. He preached to the most hard-boiled and ambivalent audience anywhere that his new love (also the lead [Graham Payn]) was and is the world's best actor. Since he is merely a somewhat charming boy, the audience was rather bewildered. How could a man of Noël's experience be so silly? It's such a pseudo-Wilde gesture. And since he really loves this boy, why didn't he consider how awful it would be for him if he did this?

  JOURNAL • FEBRUARY 28, 1948 I became instantly depressed when Eleonora said didn't I think she should go immediately to Vienna, before the Russians got there. It seems to start all over again—the dangerous journeys, the midnight talks and terrors, the world closing into a small pregnable space—and this time all is dilemma—everything.

  MARCH 2, 1948 Ruth [Yorck], when she was seventeen (in 1921), made a film with Murnau.89 She was walking home from school with her governess. A man stopped her and talked to her governess, and the governess didn't tell him to go away. That night, he rang up Ruth's mother and said he was Murnau, and so Ruth became a film actress in this version of Dracula—in her mother's best Irish lace nightgown! Yesterday, after all these years, she saw it in its entirety for the first time. (She was not old enough to go to the premiere; you had to be eighteen to go at night.) It had meanwhile been a success with the Surrealists in Paris. This she never knew. How much has happened to her—from that moment of walking home on her jazz-baby legs with her governess to this moment in her thrift-shop coat in the Museum of Modern Art.

  “The faggots' Huckleberry Finn.” George Davis on Truman's book.90

  CA. MARCH 10, 1948 All my time is consumed with trying to arrange this house [with Robert]. The leasing of it. I want it very much.

  MARCH 17, 1948 This morning I have been very much upset by a letter from Richard. In it he says that he is coming home, giving specified hours, and that he has missed me very much, especially when he saw things that I would have loved. This is cruel because it is tactless. Tactlessness is always cruel. I could have seen them. I could have loved them. But he did not want me. Writing dramatizes despite even the most sincere attempts to suppress all
emotion. Nothing is factual, not even numbers. Rage is instantly born when illusion is threatened. Richard has threatened my illusion and destroyed some part of it.

  1. Eddie Goldwasser was one of Leo's scores of cousins. Samuel Lerman (1886?–1958), Leo's father, was one of eight siblings to survive childhood; his mother, Ida Goldwasser Lerman (1888-1980), had five brothers.

  2. Jerome Bernard Lerman (1921-2002), Leo's brother, was seven years younger and his only sibling. After returning from army service in World War II, he would become a plastics entrepreneur who often worked with toy manufacturers.

  3. Hungarian-born costume designer Ladislas “Laci” Czettel (1894?–1949) worked in Europe until 1938, then in New York at the Metropolitan Opera and on Broadway (in Rosalinda). In the mid-forties, Leo helped him begin designing women's clothes for New York department stores.

  4. Ilse Bois (d. 1961) had been a comic actress in German silent films. Ruth Landshoff-Yorck (1904-66) was a novelist and playwright, a quintessential Berliner of the Weimar Republic. A 1930 marriage to Count David Yorck von Wartenburg (1905-85) had afforded her, a Jew, some protection from the Nazis, but eventually she immigrated to Paris, and then in March 1937 to New York. Leo and she disliked each other at first meeting, but they grew very close, and she became Leo's most trusted critic.

  5. John Latouche (1914-56) was a lyricist (Cabin in the Sky), librettist, and poet (Ballad for Americans).

  6. In La Voix Humaine, a one-act play by Cocteau, actress Eleonora “Ela” von Mendelssohn (1900-1951) played a woman pleading on the telephone with her disenchanted lover. “She played La Voix Humaine in her own bed linens, on furniture with which she had grown up. The telephone was an erotic instrument for Ela.” Journal, February 2, 1971.