The Grand Surprise

by Leo Lerman

  The singers, who were impersonating farm types, sang “Give me your ha-and,” always giving us that phoney “A” singers dote on. Aaron has the voice of a seventeen- year-old, and at this time in his long and heartily overpraised career has written an adolescent's talented opera. From the first note we are back getting the apples out, the Depression is here, and so is that tenth-rate talent Agnes de Mille (who did write a delightful book). Touche sat thinking up puns. Ken [Elmslie], a Pulitzer Prize given only to Touche, looked askance.38 Harold Arlen went into the WC and remained there one half hour, piling up a line of resentful females, who wanted only to comb their hair, they said. Finally he emerged, folding some paper. “I always get ideas in the bathroom,” he told us.

  So we went off to the [New York City] Ballet's closing-night party on the fifth floor of the City Center, and was that a surprise. A real orphanage, settlement-house blowout. Very funny. Lines of rigidly smiling ballet mothers, rats dancing together,39 a band from the local boys' high school (surely), balloons and crêpe-paper festoons, and disheveled trestles of salami and corned beef and kegs of beer and a general atmosphere of mustard by the ton. And wild noise and disorder. Women saying: “I must shake your hand, Mr. Balanchine, and tell you how much I admire …” while other women stood gimlet-eyed and jealous-headed. “My Susie should be the next,” you could see them insisting. We went to the Andros [coffee shop] where Peter [Lindamood] fell asleep and I ate Westerns. So that was Sunday night. I told Gray about it, rocking with laughter, and fell into bed at two, read Su Hua Ling Chen [Ancient Melodies], and was asleep soon.

  I must remember Lennie Bernstein's brown-velvet little suit with the Edwardian cuffs; [soprano] Pat Neway's frontier gauntness; Jessie Daves's gentile-woman-who-lives-next-door-and-is-so-nice-but-so-shy—and so distrustful and dowdy—shockingly.40 When Peter told the Prinskess that he had beautiful things for sale, she immediately asked: “You got many things? How much?” And, oh, the depraved, corrupt faces mounting that stair. Peter said that the women all looked as though they had to have rich viands all day. One of them sat making chewing faces constantly. I said she was receiving messages from pheasants and grouse who had passed on. You knew that the roar of stomachs would drown out the opera. Tommy Schippers played the piano brilliantly, and everyone sat on hired gold folding chairs in a pleated (ceiling and walls) picture gallery hung with genuine horrors—or really immaterials.

  MARCH 28, 1954 Yesterday Osbert [Sitwell] came to lunch, shaking more than ever, but, somehow, looking healthier.41 He has been in Hawaii, but I did not gather that he adored it. He becomes so difficult to understand. And when going through the streets, he runs. He has to run. Poor, poor man—and so lovable. We went to Knoedler [art dealer] where Lelia [Wittler] showed us a Poussin, Creation of Adam—very softly blue and green and liverish in color, beautiful and fantastic; a great Rubens of Christ and the thieves on the cross, so unlike the fleshpot Rubens; a Fra Angelico prelate as carnation-colored as the day it was born. Gray wanted the Angelico for the beautifully painted lower skirt and the color; I wanted the Poussin for its fantasy and Leonardesque color; Osbert wanted it also—$8,500. She also showed us a friar—very Zurbarán—but it was not—and a dear, little, whiskered, blue-green backgrounded Corneille de Lyon. None of these are wanted by museums, yet each is a great treasure.

  MARCH 30, 1954 This morning Marlene called, in her voice of sorrow at passion gone: Yul had been with her and was now gone with no plans for the future, and she was lonely and footloose. I read La Princesse de Clèves all day.42 How immediate, vital, and alive it is. “So many lovely women and handsome men have never been gathered together at one court; it seemed as if nature herself had taken a particular delight in bestowing her most coveted prizes upon the most exalted personages.” Fireworks, understated and utterly alive. She had a story to tell. She told it.

  I want to write “Emily and Lizzie” (Dickinson and Borden), a study of their two childhoods, because they represent “good” and “evil,” how a person can take one path or the other despite similar backgrounds. I always think of them as identical, actually as one woman. They represent to me the two schools, as do Duse and Bernhardt, of the same art.

  Last night [press agent] Phil Bloom picked me up and, all black-tie and pleated shirts, we went off to the Players Club “Pipe Night” [tribute] for Mary Garden. She is astonishing. What a marvelous time she has—black sequins, black-net adjustable voluminous sleeves, a little black hat with a rolled-up brim (sort of thirties), great quantities of diamonds on wrists and flat at the base of her still beautiful columnar throat and on her fingers (so clever to wear all these magnificent diamonds; [jeweler] Harry Winston lends them to her, I hear). For they distract from her (still beautiful) face. And what magnificent eyes! Honest, straight-to-the-heart eyes. With this fabulous getup, a leather strapped, ordinary, man's wristwatch! But she is fabulously fascinating. Great blue-violet eyes, hooded and wise, a fresh complexion. Peerless, constant gestures. A voice which hypnotizes, and a body the instrument of her thoughts. A small, vibrant woman who speaks her mind, having always spoken her mind. She began a star; she continues a star. Her hands are cool and smooth, and she clings to one a long time. Her interest is constant. Her vitality astonishing. She demolished Sarah Bernhardt and Mrs. Pat Campbell. Debussy and Mary (as the old and venerable gentleman called her) went to London to view Pelléas and Mélisande.43 “It was awful,” Mary says. Mrs. Pat throwing masses of dirty black hair down over Sarah Bernhardt. “Those two old women wouldn't know what they are talking about,” said Debussy. “Is there a train back to Paris?” Mary Garden speaks with wonderment and passion and amusement. She seems a Druid witch, and in her gestures one can see whole generations of movie vamps and wicked women.

  MARY GARDEN I was the most fortunate young person in that I got to hear opera early on. In Uncle Maxl [Goldwasser]'s house at High Bridge,44 there was a wireless set of the kind that had earphones to clamp over my ears, and which poured into those ears opera from Chicago. That is how I heard Mary Garden. I did not realize then how this would set me apart many years later when almost nobody was left who had heard her. Mary Garden was, of course, Debussy's great Mélisande and Charpentier's first Louise. Mary Garden was also one of the scandals of the early part of this century. She attracted scandal the way fragrant flowers attract bees, and, as bees carry pollen, her scandals were carried, long before the days of quick transmission, from opera capital to opera capital of the world. When, in the mid-forties, I contrived a series at Harper's Bazaar titled “Living Legends,” Mary Garden was among the first living legends I had photographed. She was then living modestly in Aberdeen, Scotland, and she still was the mysterious, deep-throated, woodsy-voiced heroine, a Morgan le Fay who turned you into a part of her legend. (1993)

  JOURNAL • April 12, 1954 Marlene read me a letter from Hemingway. In this one he was his usual he-man, cussing self, telling of his sickness (sphincter muscle), and how even when both he and she were broke, she helped him, and now she receives $90,000 for three nightclub weeks, and he's got the Nobel Prize. Hemingway seems to adore her. But why must he always be such a “he-man”—the foul language and cock strutting?

  APRIL 20, 1954 Marlene called to tell me what a marvelous, unexpected day she had had with Yul. Then she fell to discussing Mrs. Woolf, insisting, as Gray does, that Mrs. W wrote this journal seriously, but to be published, and that because we have only these portions, Mr. Woolf seems a Narcissus, and it all becomes too one-sided.

  APRIL 22, 1954 Lunch with [editor] Bob Linscott, where—surprise—was Faulkner—minute, silent, grinning shyly and secretly at odd times, wracked by back pains. He said that he did not like to put things down, but that he went to his typewriter when a job had to be done and did it. He had just been working three months in Europe with [director] Howard Hawks on a film [Land of the Pharaohs] about the building of the pyramids. “The same story he always does,” Faulkner explained. But he never goes to the movies. He did not know who Marilyn Monroe was,
but he remembered Garbo as beautiful. Faulkner is one of the most withdrawn of men, coming into our world only when I talked about dogs. He has some twenty. His eyes seem hazel. He ate scrambled eggs, coffee, one martini, and sat silent for endless minutes—this silence making our talk seem utterly superfluous. He doesn't seem to read. He exists—drinks— writes. I could not say that he was happy to see me. Later Bob called and said: “Bill was very pleased to see you again.”

  MAY 10, 1954 Today Rut rang up and said that Lucien [Vogel] had died—a stroke. So all of her people are gone and only Cesco [von Mendelssohn] remains, in his sanatorium. I went to her, her face mottled and in tears. I had no consolation to offer, for she is beyond consolation. Now she has no future. She gave him her whole heart…. But we ate. Lali Horstmann came in, and Max and Nina Jacobson, and Gray brought food.45 I felt that this must be done, and I left ten dollars by the telephone, but what consolation could this be? Poor, poor Rut. She is all alone and no one can comfort her. Lucien made my fashion magazine career. He took me by my hand to Vogue. I remember as though it happened today. I think of Ela welcoming him — in heaven, of course. So they have gone, Rut's protectors—the Comtesse de Noailles, Peter Vollmoeller, Ela, Luli [Kollsman], Louise Salm, now Lucien.46 She has nothing, nothing left. I must somehow help her.

  Carson's monstrous exhibition at the Y last night with Tennessee. Carson said: “Poetry must make sense; prose must make poetry.” Ugh. This was all so humiliating and the packed house loved it. A dreadful exhibition on both sides of the footlights. Carson witchlike with a silver-headed stick—disjointed, her depravity open, again proving that the best crooks show their hand all the time and charm their victims into applause.

  MAY 13, 1954 My afternoon with Cary Grant: the gentleness of him, the deep charm and flirtatiousness. His admiration for Noël Coward. He has eight Boudins [French seascapes] in a ramshackle whitewashed house. And he seems to have a definite philosophy of being contented.

  MAY 26, 1954 Poppa had two strokes yesterday. This, selfishly, panics me, but I must hold on optimistically and know that if I need money, somehow money will come.

  MAY 28, 1954 A sullen day and the leaves suddenly enormous, midsummer size. Poppa's speech seemed, last night, a bit thick, but his appearance was rosy, rested, and childishly belligerent.

  Richard came to gather the things which he wished to store. He seems very hurt at putting these things away, but all I wanted him to do is store the huge packing case, which was blocking up the entrance on the basement floor. He was so hurt that he wanted to buy back the Tempest painting [by him]. Also he intends to take away the portrait of me with all the books. I am very fond of this.47 He will lodge it in his mother's attic. But this was all in vengeance. I think that, without even knowing it, he is hurt by the apparent harmony here. Richard's behavior is the most predictable in the world. He is a genuinely depressed person—basically—and then he has a certain childlike joy and delight, but inevitably he is depressed.

  JUNE 2, 1954 I spent the evening with Marlene and Maria [Riva].48 I became so upset over viewing the McCarthy [anti-Communist] proceedings that I drank a glass of brandy. I felt claustrophobic, like being in a jammed lift.

  JUNE 11, 1954 This evening was the first I have actually been at home with Gray and Maebelle [Hughes, his mother]. Gray never keeps his hands off her. This is touching and upsetting. That she permits it is astonishing. I almost rang up Eugenia to ask was this procedure normal among young men, but I do not think that it is. Fin de race [last of a line]: Gray has this. But their life together was surely a horror and a delight. I wonder whether her husband was as much to blame as I was told. If Gray's behavior distresses me, surely Mr. Hughes was in a state all the time. But perhaps Gray didn't behave this way at that time and now does it only because he is sad for her and wishes to comfort her? I do not know any answers to this. I am not sufficiently wise.

  JUNE 15, 1954 I am alone for a brief moment and sit here pleasantly, in the basement, on the old sofa. A sullen green fragment of the yard is visible through the glass of the door. Rain falls—a secret, afterthought rain. As I scribble, the gay, lid-off me comes out to jounce about again.

  Lunching with Glenway [Wescott], he described how he spent his father's last six days in the hospital, beside him, holding him in his arms as he died, and how a flame seemed to burn in his father's body, and the wound made by the operation upon him was all healed—beautifully, neatly—while the black blood oozed from his mouth. How angry Glenway became when I said that Louis [Kronenberger] and Lionel [Trilling] referred to the [American] Academy as the Sewing Circle.

  Glenway told me how Katherine Anne [Porter], [novelist James] Farrell, [Allen] Tate, and he all stood waiting for Faulkner to talk to them, in Paris where they all represented America at an international arts conference, and he never even looked at them, but stood accepting the applause of the adoring French. Then he went away. Monroe is apparently intensely jealous of Glen-way's escapades, although they haven't slept together since 1929. He is so very unfriendly, Monroe, Glenway says.

  I feel alive and slightly ashamed for being so happy.

  JUNE 25, 1954 Monday night last [June 21], I was in agony—howling, groaning agony such as I have not experienced since I woke during that operation. Gray fetched a “new” doctor, who jabbed needles and diagnosed a kidney stone. So, I have been here [at home] all this torrid week, and still the stone remains mine. Today I had pain, but I will not drug myself against it. Ela started that way. I read Proust and more clearly realized that what the Guer-mantes and the Faubourg Saint-Germain were to Proust, Europe was to generations of Americans.

  JUNE 29, 1954 Danilova in her just-off-the-ground walk, sharp daintiness, and long arms recalled Karsavina and 1911 and the whole impact of Diaghilev, as she ate in the Russian Tea Room. Her gay gloves, this time red and white, her caressing accent, and general “sweetness.”

  CA. JULY 8, 1954 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO MARLENE DIETRICH • london

  Glittering glacier dear—or even Serpent of Hollywood—or by this time Dame Marlene … Your hysterical notices arrived at last. Why, dear, doesn't the government wake up and let international relations alone, and by so doing permit you to take over? Also, what incentive could you have to make you want to come home? In America that sort of reception could never happen—even if you did show as much as American papers said that you did last year. Or can it be that the English have shrewder eyes? I suspect that is it.

  I passed my stones! Isn't that wonderful? I did want to add them to your rock collection (mounted appropriately by some small-but-sure jeweler like Verdura, since these were stones not jewels), but, alas, they were taken from me because the doctors seemed to need them—maybe to add to the piles upon the graves of victims. What a painful sickness this was, and how wonderfully slender I have become. Now I am on a strict and limiting diet. This is to go on one year, and then we shall see. It seems that stones can return. So now I no longer eat the delicious unnecessaries but the delicious necessaries (ugh)…. Here all is desolation and not even actually real summer, because I no longer believe summer to be real unless the doorbell rings and there are you in an old cotton dress and little summer shoes, somehow looking cool and hot simultaneously.

  Not one word in any paper I have seen about the King [Yul Brynner] nor any King followers. The town is having a little flurry over the somewhat unexpected marriage of [fashion designer] Charles James. She [Nancy Lee Gregory] is a twenty-seven-year-old, very rich, Kansas City girl. He is, of course, a slightly-late-fortyish Chicago girl. She has money, and he some talent, I believe. (Boys can't ever help being bitchy about other boys—can they?)49

  My father is recovered. My mother says that on good days she feels worse than on bad days… always a new approach. Why doesn't she go into television and support us?

  JOURNAL • july 11, 1954 The childhood vision of glamour presented by the young people upon a pile of lumber in the street at Rockaway that long-ago summer when we went to sta
y in a rented room at Aunt Ida [Lerman]'s, in the early years of her widowhood.50 These young people in contrived fancy dress marched glamorously, self-consciously toward the beach, one of them a king in bathing dress, a great portiere—purple or deep scarlet, I think—billowing from his shoulders, this borne by his faithful. He crowned by a large straw hat and the others turbaned in towels. All this was most glamorous, a sudden vision of what I wished my life to be—carefree, regal, a composite of gaiety and regality, affability and richness.

  Summer memories: Aunt Annie's farm near Colchester, Connecticut, and various gardens in New Jersey; the empty lots upon the little cliff behind our apartment on the Boston Post Road;51 the Palisades and picnics; Aunt Ida and Uncle Joe [Lerman]'s hotel near Monticello [New York]; boat rides to Rye and Coney Island; days on the beaches of Coney Island (being lost; terrified of water) and in the water at Starlight Park; walks in Central Park and in the zoo; playing on the street and seeing scenes in the heat lightning; sudden rain and then a cart of bananas; going to a Coney Island job with Poppa in a horse-drawn wagon; trolley rides; an early auto on a ferry coming into a dock; running away at a very early age and hiding in an alley while the family looked for me … All this was before we moved out of Manhattan. After we moved summer memories were of the green world in which we lived.

  AUGUST i, 1954 During this week now passed I went to lunch with Carson in Tennessee's apartment, a disheveled, unloved, transitory place over Nicholson's [café] on East Fifty-eighth Street, where the autos on the Queensborough Bridge–approach shriek inconsolably, insensibly, incessantly. Carson, paralyzed (or is she?) in hand and apparently on one side of her somewhat malign face, sits and makes even greater disorder. She said to Rita [Smith], a loving patient sister, who seems to be supporting her, “My neurosis is as important as yours.”52 The moment she hears of something someone else has—a dress, a book, a room, a pleasure—Carson wants it. Her annoyances and jealousies are perpetual, even though they disappear, as does the sun on a day of cloudiness. “Sister needs love,” Rita explained. “She can't live without love.”