by Leo Lerman
While I think death and disappearance, I think of columns and stories to write, plan next week's luncheon with [The Saturday Review's] Norman Cousins (how adroitly I must try to lure him into promising me a page every two weeks titled “The Midnight Reader”—people, books, trivia; how I must get $200 for it—or even $150), and he will doubtlessly cancel luncheon. So I must get out of bed, go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, dress, think how my shoes are shabby, how fat I've again grown, how my hair grows grayer, how it is not easy to admit to forty (I always thought this would be heaven) and all my books unwritten, my essays, my stories—none of them written, for writing has not been the center of my life—loving someone has. But the bliss of scribbling like this—quite like being a secret drinker. Isn't every writer a secret drinker?
I put a foot tentatively out into the cold morning air. I see that dappled, min-nowed stream, crystalline, icy, far away above Kingston [New York], all those long, brief years ago, with Grandpa cooking messes in his bedroom beyond the wood, and an old man from Union City synagogue singing heartbreaking Yiddish songs. We wept, [Cousin] Rosalie and I, not quite understanding (we were only ten years old) but tearful and heartbroken at the pathos in his ancient crooning voice. He sat at the end of a nasty oilcloth-covered table and sang from his heart. We wept, and Momma and the other women looked at us proudly and lovingly through their tears. We were all mothers and children and grown-ups together.
FEBRUARY 15, 1954 Ruth Draper [the monologuist] is the most fascinating phenomenon in the theater this season. I can find no explanation for her prodigious impact. She is a lady, essentially a lady of old New York family (the Danas on one side) and so Jewish[-seeming] (the Drapers on the other—were they Jewish?). She has a rigid middle, as such gently-reared ladies always had. She is almost nondescript in coloring, pale, aristocratic, would be unnoticed in a crowd, and yet she peoples her stage with myriads. She is by turns, almost in the same moment, a girl of sixteen, an old woman of ninety, and no makeup, no excessive costuming, the basic straight up and down long brown dress, shawls, a jacket, some period hats, accessories, a twentyish evening coat, and her indefinable genius. It is impossible to pin down the genius of her magic. Only the greatest have this: Toscanini, Raquel Meller, Argentina,20 Margot Fonteyn, Yvette Guilbert—but not an actor in my experience—yes, Duse. These transcend the art in which they are supreme, transporting all beholders beyond this art and its mechanics, transporting them out of themselves. Stark and Wales say that Miss Draper does not read, wears good quiet clothes, lives quite elegantly. But when she went on a journey to Istanbul (I think they said Istanbul), a friend reported that always Miss Draper seemed to be the well-known Miss Draper's maid. She met Lauro de Bosis and fell instantly in love with him. He seems to have been typical jeunesse dorée. Later, he flew his plane out over the ocean and fell to his death, having opposed Mussolini. Miss D was inconsolable.21 Meeting Stark, she reproached him with not having written her a condolence. But all of her friends believe her to be a virgin. And they said of her long ago: Ruth is a genius, but watch her love scenes. She doesn't know a thing about love. She's never had any. She had wired from Paris to a friend that at last, with Lauro de Bosis, she had love. No one believed this.
The sound heard as one climbs to the party22; the lesbians in hordes; Carol Channing in the briefest of white, diamantéd dresses, murmuring, “I feel so overdressed.” Carlo [Van Vechten] bellowing and squeaking, rushing through the densely packed rooms, tossing aside little faggots. The lesbians in white cable-stitch sweaters, even on their heads! Ruth Elizabeth [Ford]'s shrieking about how utterly loathsome [T. S. Eliot's play] The Confidential Clerk was and turning to a quiet, big man lurking near her. “Don't you agree?” she demanded. “Well,” said he apologetically, “I produced it.” Farley Granger, minty [effeminate]. The female bartenders from the Flanders looked like girls at a Yiddish wedding. Judith Anderson playing Herodias23 and Jane [Bowles] yearning at her. Nora [Kaye] to Oliver [Smith], as she swept out: “I thought at your parties, Oliver, I would always be safe.” Janet Flanner saying that it all reminded her of Paris in the twenties.24 Oliver furious, because he had planned this as a small party. “Just thirty of my best friends to meet the cast.” (!) Touche mystical. Jerry Robbins like the older boy who had worked hard on the prom committee. And the noise! And the breaking glasses. And the little queens screeching: “That's [actress] Ona Munson. She's married to Eugene Berman who makes the gorgeous designs.” [Jeweler] Maria Volk, suddenly tragic, murmuring “Angelica …” Jack Dunphy quiet. Mary Lou [Aswell] quiet. They were the only ones quiet.
FEBRUARY 17, 1954 Harold Arlen and the two who wrote Finian's Rainbow went with Marlene to see The Blue Angel and made funny jokes, such as, “I've got an angle on the Angel.” German pronunciation (Engel) making it funnier. This infuriated her, for they were not taking it all seriously. They went to look at it because she hopes a musical can be made from it. Tovarich would be better for her—but I should hate to be the producer. Arlen does sit and think only of himself, knowing almost nothing about anything, save the writing of popular music. That he does brilliantly.25
Brigitta's filing system at the Ritz. Under W she had all the letters from Orson [Welles]—also many other men.26 Brigitta always made Nora [Kaye] sleep in her room (twin beds) when Nora went to stay out on Long Island. She would say: “I don't want that man [Balanchine] in here with me.” When [director Otto] Preminger asked Brigitta, at the ballet or theater, did she want to meet [Elisabeth] Bergner, Brigitta turned to Nora and said, “You take George to Sardi's.” Balanchine said, “But I would like to meet Bergner also….” Brigitta: “Go to Sardi's with Nora.” He did.
Now Nora is at the apogee of her power. A great artist in what she can do. The portrayal in dance of drama-haunted women. This tremendously disciplined artist has no place actually where she can show her art. Nothing much with the City Ballet. She can return to Ballet Theatre, but “facing Lucia [Chase, its director], every day” would be hateful (there is a character that must be written). Where can she go? If I were producing, I should arrange “Nora Kaye and Her Company in an Evening of Dramatic Ballets.” This would make money. Not a big company, but a beautiful one, with beautiful decor, and a small orchestra. Even this could be prohibitive.27
Marlene talked on this telephone from midnight until two, consuming my reading and writing time. She went on and on about Harold Arlen's egomania, but never once did she realize that she is just as great an egomaniac in talking about him in relation to her for two hours. She does concern herself with the exterior world. Harold, of course, is sunk in himself, is a deep neurotic, and apparently quite uninterested in reading—in anything which has not to do with himself.
FEBRUARY 2 i, 1954 Truman said, “You're the kindest unkind person I know.”
FEBRUARY 24, 1954 I lunched with Lincoln, who was vituperative and “honest fellers” about almost everyone. Mina, his sister, came up with a fistful of Offenbach memorabilia. “Nora's finished,” he said. “Diana [Adams] is the comer. Balanchine adores her. Her arms get better, says Balanchine. It takes a long time to get over [Antony] Tudor arms.28 Jerry [Robbins] is a shit—a mean-spirited, opportunist little bastard. Gore [Vidal]'s horrible….” So he went on, gaily demolishing.
Marlene rang up, crying how depressed she is because of reading Virginia Woolf's diary, and how she longs for the cut-out parts. Still I am amazed at Marlene and her reading. She heartily agreed with Virginia Woolf on Kather-ine Mansfield.29 I feel that [Woolf's novel] Between the Acts must be a good book, but resent the pageant rushing off with it. I want more of the people. Always, in Mrs. Woolf's novels, ambivalents creep in. She is most sympathetic to them. Why, I wonder? “I hope that you are not going to make me look ugly in those notes,” says Gray, settling back with Peepshow into Paradise.
Truman called. He is alone at 1060 [Park, his late mother's apartment], and ill (flu), and says Bunker [Blue, his bulldog] grows rigid, glaring into the dark of the adjoining room where Truman can hear
someone moving about, but he knows that no one could be there, for he is utterly alone in this apartment. I wonder whether Nina haunts it. Quite possibly. T also wonders. Jack is off dining with Todd [Bolender]. “They are very old friends,” explains T, trying to make us forget that he met Todd right here in this house on Carmel's red satin sofa.
Truman said that he wished Marlene would go away. She interferes in his House of Flowers, through Arlen, of course, who is a shmegegge, a dope, a man of limited inference.30 But why expect a man, because he writes beautiful tunes, to be a great literate? Why expect any refinement? This is a common mistake, to expect persons of background to be literate, to expect masters in one form to be cognizant or informed in others.
I read Mrs. Woolf s On Being Ill. In this she deplores the curious lack of illness as a main literary theme. I feel more than competent to utilize illness as a major theme—as a sole theme—but this is because my back actually aches with the day's labors.
FEBRUARY 25, 1954 Reading Colette, My Mother's House. Feel as though I've walked in a summer garden rich with roses and strawberries (Royal Sovereigns and Early Scarlets), and then rolled in the herb garden. Oh, most savory, most country-sweet of writers. She is France's greatest living writer, and of women who write, the truest woman. More robust than Mrs. Woolf; more intelligently female than George Eliot; Elizabeth Bowen is a writer for big women's slicks, when one considers her against Colette; Isak Dinesen, in herself, has it, and in Out of Africa she reveals it, but not as richly, as savorily as Colette does. What other woman has the deep humanity, the very stuff of women's existence? Hers is the richness of life itself—and nowhere desiccation.
FEBRUARY 28, 1954 I continue to buy things—the disease of acquisition, with its attendant pleasures and despairs. I never have regrets, only pleasure and worry. This does make me somewhat inhuman, I feel.
MARCH 3, 1954 I finished off my Tynan-Beaton review for the Times, saying sometimes what I really meant.31 Oh, the difficulty of actually writing what is in the mind—and the easy way of writing just for ornament. I found a word today—”brankie.” Scottish—gaudy, spruce. I used it to describe Tynan prose. But never once did I say that he was a smart aleck, and that is what he tends increasingly to be. And I did not say that he cribs continually and ever increasingly from himself. But he does say some sparkling things. Anyway, it's done. I trust that I have earned $50 or even $65, which we need desperately.
I rang up Madame Lynn [dressmaker at Hattie Carnegie] and Ken Elms-lie,32 asking them to give Rut some money. This was difficult for me to do, but I did it and, actually, asking Dorothy Norman yesterday was more difficult. I wonder whether I could ask for money for me? Ironic that I need money so desperately right now. But at least I have an earning capacity.
MARCH 6, 1954 Reading Christopher [Isherwood]'s new novel The World in the Evening (a lovely title), I wonder: Do loyal people necessarily have to have a big dollop of masochism? To take (using this verb colloquially) what one's beloveds give—or how they give—does necessitate being hurt in myriad intangible ways (the big hurts have drama, so they are easier to endure). Here, Chris has a man very like Laci. I think love must be strong in masochism, but loving one person over the years is loneliness so much of the time—the need to be needed even stronger than the need to need. Chris is right: In the deeps, love is total, whole, only the surface ruffles, muddles, ambiguates. Chris has written quite a good novel, actually much better than most, and the homosexuality he handled very well indeed—candidly, as a part of life, not as something special—but the book lacks in the central character. The focal, first-person-singular character is a hollow man. He's spoiled, self-indulgent, always running off to please his own little egocentric self—reminding me somewhat of Richard—and Chris makes no definite comment on him, actually never takes a stand. So, the book remains good, but not more than that.
MARCH 16, 1954 In the evening, a Maxfield Parrish sky—cerulean dusted, glittering stars, and a plump moon. We went to the Kochs'.33 At the lift gate, Gray suddenly made a scene saying he was not going out anymore; why did I want a house if I was never in it? I felt almost as “gone” as I did Christmas Day, resolving then never again to ask anyone to visit us, which resolution I have kept. There I stood at the lift gate, wildly wondering how I could go up and be gay and fool the Kochs. Now I know that I shall never again accept an invitation for Gray, nor shall I ask him to go. This could make a serious difference in our lives, but I cannot cope with scenes of this intensity, and while I do this work, on which we live, I must continue to see people. It is a serious handicap, not being able to entertain. I cannot go on about it. He must surely realize how stupid he is being. He does not have to go out every night, nor should I have to go out every night, but he must, living in this world, know that he cannot be a hermit. He will not answer the telephone; he does not want people to come in; now he will not go out—that is his life.
MARCH 17, 1954 Because of having lunched with [Count Lanfranco] Rasponi some weeks ago a “new” world opens. With no effort at all I could enter it. Two days ago, at Mrs. [Nathan] Milstein's party, the countesses, etc., were delighted with me. I knew that I looked shabby, so I enjoyed myself to make up for this, and oozed charm. It was heavenly, being admired and being made much of. Now an invitation comes from Rasponi to meet Prince Henry of Hesse. This interests me—but I cannot begin to enter this world, for I would have even less peace here. I try to learn to look before I leap—at least to look and leap anyway. The upsets in my life have all come from impetuosity. I have been the most self-indulgent of creatures. Now I must pay. It is not important for me to enter that world—but the richness of my book would be benefited by this last, ten-years-later look.34
MARCH 2 i, 1954 Fania [Marinoff]'s birthday party was fun and did lift me out of myself, doing for me what dope or drink does for others.35 The Lin Yutangs [of UNESCO] and other U.N. types sat together. Ruth [Ford] had on a costume more suited to the Mardi Gras, but her face is pretty. Zachary [Scott] is so bien élevé and made it his business to talk to the U.N.36 Irene [Sharaff] had a beautiful Basque coat which [costume designer] Karinska had given her. Nora Kaye continues undecided and wants to go to a fortune-teller (I am tempted, but I should so implicitly believe every word). Alvin [Colt, costume designer] is somehow sexier in this early middle-aged look. Donald [Saddler] has been made even more of a person by his [choreographic] rigors on By the Beautiful Sea. Judith Anderson was paunchy-faced, serpent-eyed, musty-dusty on an epic scale. Lillian Gish in a big pale woolly coat, very Eleonora in some mysterious way—her mouth? Very aqueous. Dorothy [Gish] very medieval in a flat, crown-ish, black hat held on by a black scarf tied under the chin, and with her Rover, most pouting and dearest of Pekes. “He's so dirty,” she cried, as they, these orphans of many storms, went away.37 Dear Fania in a great, heavy gold skirt and some sort of sweatery greenish top, a sumptuous Yiddish lady in a big house, her face Ariel-young. She is such a love. Carlo much benefited by the awful spectacle of Stark prone and peeing at Ruth and Zack's, now seems to have blossomed unalcoholically, and speaks of it always. Aileen [Pringle] thin-nish, thoughtful, slangy, withal a lady. I had fun and was admired and petted (which was needed) and flirted and laughed and felt better for all of it, taking it for what it was worth.
MARCH 22, 1954 In the evening to Prince and Princess Gourielli's to hear Aaron Copland's opera The Tender Land, as dated as selling apples in 1930 and WPA projects. Aaron talked and talked and said much nonsense, such as: No contemporary work has a real love scene. He asked Gian Carlo [Menotti, composer], he told us, whether in any of his works a real love scene occurred, and Gian Carlo thought this over and said no. What rubbish. The princess [Helena Rubinstein], a squat, bejeweled Jewess (she fits this designation more than anyone I have ever seen) is dark, smooth, pummeled, shrewd-faced. She has seen everything, knows everyone is rotten, wants to be amused, but does not think that she can be—withal is nice! And so professional. Her much-praised apartments are full of miscellaneous beauty a
nd banality mixed. “I'll take a hundred of those,” she surely has said, whether it be French Impressionists, Mexican or African Primitives, blue Bristol glass. She looks as though she said: “Prinsk, com inta da kitzen, and I'll cook us up a tup uh borscht.” When I asked did she have any hamantaschen, she acted out that she didn't know what I meant, but always affable with power. The Prinsk [Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia] is a sexy, compact, younger-than-the-Prinskess man. She could be hawking fish in Orchard Street and relishing their heads like Momma and Poppa do.
Patrick O'Higgins, the Prinskess's factotum, showed us the apartments, deploring her bad taste and frugality in enhancing the beautiful things she had. Examples: magnificent silver Venetian “shell” furniture and in the same room a “fixture” like an office; on a French (I think) Empire table a huge bowl of glass grapes, such as my aunt Minnie had years ago on her dining room table. Minnie's were lit from beneath by electric bulbs and when we went to visit her in her Bronx, Jerome Avenue, apartment (“Just off the Concourse, so convenient,” she always pointed out), we thought that dish of electric-lit grapes the last word in beauty and chic. They were Die Elegante Welt.
