That Summer in Paris

by Callaghan, Morley;

  We are born, we live a while, and we die, and along the way the artist keeps looking at the appearance of things, call it concrete reality, the stuff of experience, or simply “what is out there.” Now I think that for intellectuals, writers and artists, the Paris of those days had become like a giant crystal; like a crystal with many facets, and the French had a genius for turning and ever turning the crystal so the light would fall on a new facet, and then from the cafés would come the announcement, “This is the way it is being looked at now.” Naturally the writer or painter in far-off cities is charmed and interested. And yet, when you think about it, the question arises, “Were any of those French writers of the time, aside from the intellectual gowns they were wearing, as good as the strangers in town? Cocteau, Breton, Aragon and Co.? In a sense they were in the millinery business. And the great Gide? He was a moralist, he sounded the moral tone, or rather the tone of no morality at all beyond the aesthetic approach to life. His great strength was in his stylish comment on life, not in the creation of it. But Joyce and Hemingway, the foreigners, were to have a world influence. And just as in the nineteenth century the world capital for the novelist turns out to have been Moscow, well, where was it in twenty-nine?

  The capital did seem to be in Paris, sitting at the café with the young businessman. The marks of the quick and wonderful French intelligence seemed to be all around one in this city with its open beauty, its elegance, and that splendid indifference of the French citizen at the next table to your private life. And above all, in every corner of this lovely Babylonian capital was stuck the national symbol, the shrewd-eyed watchful madame at the cash register. I could see her there in black near the café door, reminding me of the eternal verities.

  By ten in the evening the whole corner would take on the fullness of its own life with the terraces crowded and the well-known drunken poets or painters, celebrated for their stupor rather than their art, wandering across the road from café to café, making the taxis dodge them. A tourist bus would pass, the tourists gawking, and Flossie Martin, the ex-Follies girl, plump, but still golden-haired and pink-and-white complexioned, who refused to go home to the States, would stand up and yell out an obscenity at the staring tourists in their bus. Or a visiting movie star, like Adolph Menjou, would be sitting at the Coupole with his new wife. While people lined up and moved slowly by his table where he sat, incredibly impassive, we, watching him from across the road, would snicker patronizingly. In the neighborhood was an American Jewish writer named Ludwig Lewisohn, who had written a successful book Upstream and had gone on to do novels. He looked like an important elderly professor. His friends, so I heard, had persuaded him to “show himself to the people,” so now he would come slowly along the street. The others? Hundreds of others!

  Lawrence Vail, so blond and so sunburned; Kay Boyle, Michael Arlen, then rich and famous, having written The Green Hat, would be there with his beautiful wife, the Grecian countess. I liked Arlen. A shrewd, cynical, dapper dark man, he knew exactly what he was doing. For him, D. H. Lawrence was the only writer in the world and not to be compared with other writers. “The man is willing to live in a mud hut so he can write,” he would say. Disdainful of this opinion, I argued with him. “You need a haircut,” he said, looking at me quizzically. “You’d better get it cut or you’ll think it’s a halo.”

  We had got used to the night street cries, too. Cheerful little old women, selling newspapers, would cry out, “Ami du Peuple.” A male newspaper vendor hurrying by would be muttering in a deep hoarse voice, “Intransigeant, Paris Soir, Paris Soir. ” Another vendor in a high falsetto voice, “Chocolat, fruits glacés, cacahouettes, messieurs, dames.” Walking home at two in the morning we would pass that crowded little dance hall, the Jockey, with the jazz blowing from the open door. One night three little girls came skipping out, giggling and pushing each other. They were trying to sing the American popular song, “Constantinople.” On the street, just ahead of us, they would shout out, “Constantinople,” and as the song required, try to spell it out – “C-O-N-S-T-” and get no further. Shoving each other, they screamed with laughter.

  On the way home we might pass Ford Madox Ford, the plump and portly president of a whole group of writers, who would be taking the night air all by himself, his hands linked behind his back. Old Ford, as Hemingway called him. Why did I always feel a little ashamed of my lack of sympathy for him; the friend of Henry James, the collaborator of Joseph Conrad? I had called him “Ford of many models.” I hadn’t felt drawn to him that time I had met him in New York; maybe it was his portly and heavy-mustached aloofness, his whispering voice. Yet I knew no man loved good contemporary writing more than he did. And one night at a dinner I heard him make a remark I have never forgotten: “No writer can go on living in a vacuum.” It took me some years to discover how true this was; not just of writers, but of all men who would stay alone in their hearts. There must be someone somewhere you count on for approval, someone whose praise would be dear to you. When finally there is no one, you might as well hand in your ticket.

  My resistance to Ford, I think, came from seeing that he was a confessed literary man. On the theme of Ford and “the literary life,” I remember one night when Loretto and I went to Ford’s place for an evening with Allen Tate, his wife, Caroline Gordon, and the poet Leonie Adams. We were there, I imagined, for some talk and drinking. But to my astonishment Ford brought out a cake with white icing. “Since we’re all literary people,” he whispered, “we’ll compete for this cake with sonnets. It goes to the one who writes the best sonnet.” Allen Tate and Leonie Adams, accom-plished poets, could dash off an acceptable sonnet at the drop of a hat. But as I began my sonnet my eyes were not on the paper but on Ford, who was scribbling away busily. My ballplaying days were only five years away. What would those tough ballplayers think, seeing me here in a sonnet competition for a stale cake? What was there to do but clown? “With Ford beside me groping in the dark, Oh, would that I were strolling in the park,” I wrote with some malice. The sonnets having been finished, Ford read them aloud solemnly, including my ridiculous effort, which brought no smile to his face. We agreed that Leonie Adams had performed most elegantly.

  But Ford was no fool. Those pale eyes of his were always on someone. And later, when we were out eating in a restaurant, he took a dig at me. “I’m sure Mr. Callaghan would have appreciated it more if we had had a story contest.” I snorted scornfully. We were all snobs, of course. But if he had proposed a story contest I would have fled. When I think of this man now, I hear voices. On the street, the voice of the pretty young woman from New York who had sat beside Ford at dinner, and she was half crying, “What’s the matter with being an interior decorator? Why should Ford be insulting to me about it?” And my own voice saying to Hemingway, “Being gassed in the war gave Ford a great advantage. We have to lean forward attentively when he whispers.” And Hemingway’s derisive voice, “Gassed in the war? Don’t let him kid you. He was never gassed in the war.” Yet Ford had his coterie. Someone was always saying he was one of the great modern masters of English prose. A scholarship student named Bandy said belligerently, “Will you argue this matter of Ford’s prose with a man I’ll name?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Who’s your man?”

  “Allen Tate,” he said. “I’ll show up with Tate at the Coupole tomorrow afternoon. Be there.”

  I remember saying to my wife, “I don’t know how I can train for this bout. This Tate is very scholarly and intelligent and no doubt very fast on his feet, and I don’t know whether I should keep moving around him or get in close and hang on.”

  At the appointed hour at the café there was Tate, sitting with Bandy. In New York I had met the Southern poet with the great domed head and the tapering chin. When we had had a drink, we gingerly got to the question: was Ford a great prose writer? Rather mildly, and with a complete lack of passion, Tate suggested that The Good Soldier was a pretty good book. Now this book has for an opening sentence, “This is the sad
dest story I have ever heard.” Was it the saddest story Tate had ever heard? I wondered aloud. No, it wasn’t, he said. Could we agree then on a writer who had a great prose style? Yes, Swift. We agreed on Swift. As I recall it, Ford was somehow quickly forgotten, and the promoter of the bout, Bandy, remained silent and crestfallen as if the light had gone out suddenly on his main event.

  But at parties where Ford was, there was usually a crowd; people always meeting and parting. At one big party an Australian woman was either saying goodbye to Ford or meeting him once more, but I remember only that she was crying. At this party that important, middle-aged and humorless writer Ludwig Lewisohn came over to me. It was time we knew each other, he said. We should have a talk. A great idea, I agreed. I would be sitting at the Coupole at two the following afternoon. And indeed, I was there.

  Before Lewisohn’s arrival, the young American named Whidney, from Chicago, who lived with his wife in an opulent apartment a few blocks away from the café, came and sat down beside me. “Do you mind if I sit in on this?” he said. “I heard you and Lewisohn talking last night. I’ve read his book Upstream. I’d like to listen in on your conversation, if you don’t mind. I promise I’ll just sit here and listen.”

  Then Lewisohn came slowly along the street, looking very dignified, very professorial, his hat severely straight on his head. When I waved to him, he came and sat down with us. The conversation went like this: “Well, now, how is your book doing, Mr. Callaghan?”

  “All right, I think,” I said.

  “How long has it been out?”

  “Just a few months.”

  “Don’t they let you know how it’s doing?”

  “It’s had a good reception. But it’s a book of stories, you know. With some luck, I think it’ll reach five thousand.”

  “Five thousand,” he said, looking distressed. “With all the publicity you’ve had? Five thousand?”

  “It’s a book of stories. How’s your novel doing?”

  “Why, it’s already done thirty thousand.”

  “Splendid,” I said, feeling like a nobody.

  “But I expect to do much better than thirty thousand,” he said importantly. We began an earnest discussion about sales promotion, and kept it up till my friend Whidney suddenly cut in. “Excuse me. Will you excuse me?” he said firmly. “I have something to say.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I was present when you two met last night. Well, I was a businessman myself. I wanted to be here when you great artists talked. I thought it would be intellectually stimulating. You know what you sound like? A couple of businessmen.”

  Giving Whidney one long appraising glance, Mr. Lewisohn then finished his drink, left Whidney hanging there, reached out, patted me on the arm and said he had an appointment. As he walked away briskly, I, who had been told that he had always been of two minds about sitting at cafés, knew we wouldn’t see him on the terrace again.

  The terrace. A whole life went on there, a life in the open, the talented and the useless, living in each other’s pockets, living on each other’s dreams, and living in comical backbiting rather than love. Men and women from all over Europe mingled with the Americans, most of them splendidly unknown. A position of dignity and importance was held by “the greatest unknown writer.” And publishers and agents passing through would try to get word of the mysterious champion, whoever he was. But Joyce never came to the cafés. I used to wonder if Fitzgerald, on his return, would avoid the corner, too. As for Hemingway, as I said, all that summer he only came to the corner to have a drink with Loretto and me after boxing.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ernest and his boxing! After the events I’m relating had occurred, Ernest back in the States could say to Josephine Herbst, “But my writing is nothing. My boxing is everything.” When Miss Herbst told this to me I laughed, but was full of wonder. That a great artist like Ernest could have such a view of himself seemed incredible. Yet in the strange dark depths of his being he had to pretend to believe it. For the sake of the peace of their own souls most men live by pretending to believe in something they secretly know isn’t true. It seems to be a dreadful necessity. It keeps life going on. We agree especially to pretend to believe in things that can never be known. Each civilization seems to have derived some creative energy from an agreement upon the necessity of a general pretending. Why it was necessary for Ernest to pretend to believe that his boxing was the root of his whole life, I don’t know. It is true some men are much better at pretending than others. It’s a built-in gift. The game for them takes on a reality that shapes their whole lives.

  I had discovered that Ernest’s attitude to his boxing was related to the source of his power as an imaginative writer. His imaginative work had such a literal touch that a whole generation came to believe he was only telling what he, himself, had seen happen, or what had actually happened to him. His readers made him his own hero. As he grew older it must have had tragic disadvantages for him. Now it seems to me that he shared with Sherwood Anderson, at least in this matter of his boxing, a matter of vital importance to his whole view of himself, a strange trick of the imagination – the built-in gift.

  The night my wife and I went to dine with Anderson in the Washington Mews, where he was staying, we all sat around a long table after dinner, drinking and talking till two in the morning. We talked about many things. Hemingway’s name came into the conversation. Next day I was meeting Max Perkins. As soon as he saw me he said, “I hear you had an interesting evening with Sherwood last night. I hear you made a splendid defense of Hemingway’s Catholicism.” Defend it! A look of indignant consternation must have come on my face. “Why, I never mentioned it. Why—” Taking my arm, Perkins said urgently, “Now just a minute. Before you go any further, please let me explain something to you. Don’t let this spoil Sherwood for you. It’s happened with others. You must understand Sherwood wasn’t really lying...” Surely I would understand that Anderson, a storyteller, couldn’t help going on with a story. From past experience with Anderson, Perkins knew what had happened. Last night after we had gone home, Anderson, lying awake, would have wished he had raised the subject of Hemingway’s Catholicism; in his imagination he had heard himself raise certain questions; he had heard me answer; absorbed in his dream he had supplied a brilliant defense for me. In this extension of the real conversation, the thing that should have happened, would have happened; in his imagination it would have belonged completely to the small thing that did happen, and so it had truth for him.

  Now Hemingway, in his turn, loved boxing. Every chance he got he must have boxed with someone, and he had all the lingo, he had hung around gyms, he had watched fighters at work. Something within him drove him to want to be expert at every occupation he touched. In those days he liked telling a man how to do things, but not by way of boasting or arrogance – it was almost as if he had to feel he had a sense of professionalism about every field of human behavior that interested him. To this day I know you will find some Broadway columnist, or some gym instructor in New York, who will assure the world he had seen Hemingway working out like a pro, or taking a punch at someone. The truth was that we were two amateur boxers. The difference between us was that he had given time and imagination to boxing; I had actually worked out a lot with good fast college boxers.

  In Paris there were scoffers, envious men, always belittling Ernest, who would whisper that his physical roughness was all a bluff. It was utter nonsense. He was a big rough tough clumsy unscientific man. In a small bar, or in an alley, where he could have cornered me in a rough-and-tumble brawl, he might have broken my back, he was so much bigger. But with gloves on and in a space big enough for me to move around, I could be confident. My wife remembers how, when I came home, she would complain that my shoulders were black and blue. Laughing, I would explain that she should feel thankful; the shoulder welts and bruises meant Ernest had always missed my jaw or nose or mouth. She worried about the day coming when I would walk in with welts on my jaw or cheeks
rather than my shoulders.

  One dark cloudy afternoon I had called for Ernest and when we came out to the street, a soft rain had begun to fall. It was one of those lovely soft early-summer Paris rains. I was coatless; Ernest had brought a raincoat. We could have got a taxi, but the rain was now so gentle and the air so soft he said, “Let’s walk.” Taking one arm of the raincoat, he held that side of the coat out wide like a tent over me, his arm like a tent pole, and we loafed along. We talked. No big talk. Just gossip. It was like times at home, at college, when I might have called for an old friend and decided to walk with him in the rain because I liked being with him and felt sure of him.

  That day, and for the first time, he did something that astonished me. At the American Club, we had undressed and got down to the business of boxing. By this time, knowing his style, I had worked out a routine. Moving in and out, I had to make him lead at me. He knew what I was doing. His brown eyes always on me, he waited for a chance to nail me solidly. When he finally threw his long left, I slipped it and then stepped in and caught him on the mouth with my own left. He knew by the book he should catch me with his right. It must have been exasperating to him that my left was always beating him to the punch. His mouth began to bleed. It had happened before. It wasn’t important. His tongue kept curling along his lip, wiping off blood. Again he got hit on the lip, yet his eyes held mine as he swallowed the blood. But his mouth kept on bleeding. He loudly sucked in all the blood. He waited, watching me, and took another punch on the mouth. Then as I went to slip in again, he stiffened. Suddenly he spat at me; he spat a mouthful of blood; he spat in my face. My gym shirt too was spattered with blood.