A Year to Remember

by Alec Waugh

  Evelyn’s Scoop was published in 1938.1 wondered whether he had had Mary at all in mind, when he created the character of Katchen. She has something of Mary’s insouciance, amorality, friendliness, sense of a good time, a basic incapacity to come to terms with the ‘establishment’. I reread it before I wrote this section. The resemblance did not seem so strong. But he may well have thought of her; most of his characters are blendings. Basil Seal in so many ways the late Peter Rodd was in many ways Evelyn himself. Evelyn did not see very much of Mary at the Welcome; he saw even less of Binks. Yet Binks, who was to achieve a very respected position as a painter, told me many years later that it was a conversation he had had with Evelyn that started his own conversion to Roman Catholicism. I was also reminded of Mary by Isherwood’s Sally Bowles and Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly. She had great loyalty to her friends, and she kept her friends. She could say very cruel things. She was often in ill health and expressed herself in flashes of ill temper. At the Welcome on her last day when she was settling her account at the desk, I said something that annoyed her. She swung round and kicked me on the shin. She was wearing a sharp pointed heel. It was very painful. ‘I hate you,’ she said. ‘I’ve slept with you, but I hated it.’ We were to laugh over that incident in later days.

  She had a good critical brain, and she was a perceptive critic. She was someone with whom one could discuss one’s work. She was a help to Binks with his painting. In 1938 she married a Time-Life correspondent. She was creatively interested in his work. Her comments were always helpful. Her promiscuity rarely hurt anybody’s feelings. She was funny about it. In the middle 50s when she had a house in Milbrook, she came up to New York for an amorous siesta. The man concerned asked her when she had made love last. ‘At six thirty this morning,’ she informed him. Her comment to me later was, ‘He thought he was offering me a treat.’

  She was as outspoken as any woman I have ever known. She was completely uninhibited about herself. In the same way that she had suddenly dug her nails into my palm she would make unexpected passes at men, and women. ‘But Eddie Wasserman,’ I expostulated, ‘what could you see in him?’ ‘He had some lovely records,’ she replied. After I had left for London she spent a night at the Villa Marina. I could understand her finding Eldred attractive. ‘I liked his shoes,’ she said. In that respect she was not unlike Moravia’s Woman of Rome who said that a courtesan who knew her métier would search for one attractive feature in a man who was attracted to her, then concentrate on that. It might be the way he moved his hands. ‘I love his hands; therefore I love him.’ Mary was like that, except that she did not look for a special feature. But when she found one she was prepared to consider herself attracted. ‘Of course I wanted to make love with him. He had lovely records.’

  After her break with Binks she was on her own in New York, maintaining a very pleasant flat. She never seemed short of money. She had a succession of beaux. For a time she worked at Polly Adler’s, * though worked is not the word. She was not short of money and whenever she had made some at Polly’s she would take a couple of the girls up to Harlem and spend it on them. ‘I couldn’t keep her on,’ said Polly, ‘she was disrupting my entire business.’

  Mary introduced me to Polly in 1934; by then the great days of the establishment had passed. When the stockmarket was booming and prohibition was in flower, the police could very easily be suborned. The right sum to the right man, and all was well. But in the bright brave days of the N.R.A. with Jimmie Walker no longer at the city’s helm, people like Polly Adler had to walk warily. By 1936 she preferred to be known as Polly Davies, but even so it was a very cosy club when Mary took me there. It really was a club; there was no solicitation. You sat around; you danced; you ordered drinks; no pressure was put upon you if you did not want to play. You took leave of your hostess just as you would at a cocktail party, and at the door a tall handsome dark girl would hand you a bill. It was usually less than you expected. Finance was never mentioned. Single drinks were a dollar a piece. I once asked Polly if she had any champagne. She shook her head. ‘No Alec, there’s no need for you to start ordering champagne here.’ If she knew the ship that you were sailing by, there would be an ‘au-revoir’ cable signed by her and the particular girl whom you had cherished. Every year there was a Christmas card, with a parrot perched upon a ring. During the war, in far-off Baghdad it was nostalgic but reassuring to get that card each January.

  Alas, when I was back again in New York in September 1945, the club was closed, and Polly, who had given the right sum to the wrong man, had had to serve a six months’ sentence. She was then in retirement in California, planning to write her memoirs and to enrol in a university where she could get the degree that would give her the hallmark of respectability.

  I met her for the last time in December 1955 at the Madrid airport as I queued up for my luggage. It was by Spanish time after ten at night but for me it was several hours later for I had been flying from Baghdad and the clock had been going back. I heard a voice, hoarse, low, powerful but attractive, that was unmistakable. I turned and it was she: scarcely altered – small, dumpy, animated, dark. She can never have been pretty. She probably looked better at thirty-five than she had at seventeen. Cuddlesome is the word for her. We fell into each other’s arms.

  I was desperately tired. I was catching a plane to Tangier early the following morning. I was being checked into a hotel as Iberia’s guest. I longed for sleep but I could not miss the opportunity that this meeting provided of a long talk with Polly. She too was catching a plane next morning, though she was bound for Paris. ‘Are we staying at the same hotel?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m staying at the Wellington.’

  ‘So am I. Let’s dine together.’

  I had eaten on the plane. I was not hungry, but I could not miss this chance, the first I had ever had of a real talk with Polly. In her club there was always general conversation, a constant coming and going. I happened to be there once when one of my publisher’s editorial staff walked in. He was young debonair, handsome. After a little gossip, she remarked, ‘Frankie, you are so good looking. I’ve always meant to have an affair with you myself. Once I had it all planned out and then just at the wrong moment, a group came in from a deb dance. I had to see that they were taken care of.’ Frankie laughed. ‘I know, Polly. It’s just the same for me as a publisher, I never have a chance to read a book.’ I had my chance at last. What an opportunity. A diner a deux with Polly Adler.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I asked.

  ‘Not very.’

  ‘Then let’s have champagne and caviar.’

  ‘Swell. I’ve always wanted to have a real talk with you.’

  But it was not about the Club that she wanted to talk. In the old days one of her great assets as a hostess was her capacity to keep the talk light and lecherous – no dirty stories, no four-letter words, but the creation of an atmosphere which would make you think of love-making as the most reasonable occupation for human beings – a decameron atmosphere. ‘Women and wine should life employ: is there aught else on earth desirous?’

  But that kind of talk belonged to the past. She now wanted to tell me about her courses at the university. It was the most wonderful mental therapy. She had come out of prison with her nerves shattered; her self confidence destroyed. She had not dared to face her friends, but when she had a degree at Berkeley, she could look the world in the face, proudly. She told me about the courses she was reading. She recited her marks and credits. She recounted her difficulties with a particular professor. I could not have been more bored. I longed for sleep. Under the best conditions I feel drowsy if anyone talks for a quarter of an hour. A short sermon is as much as I can take. Polly went on and on. My eyelids slid over my eyes. But I must keep on, I told myself. This can’t keep on for ever. Sooner or later she must get back to the old days. Memories of Mr Benchley, that was what I was waiting for. If only I could resist my somnolence; what a rich reward would be mine for gathering; but no, it was no good. O
n and on she went. ‘French is my weak subject,’ she informed me. ‘That must surprise you, surely.’ I was past being surprised. I felt like a batsman playing out time at the end of a long day, watching the minute hand creep on. ‘I’m Russian by birth, you know that of course. You’ve read my book.’ On and on and on … Twelve, half-past twelve, one o’clock. The restaurant was empty now. All the other tables were laid for breakfast. She looked round her. ‘I suppose we shouldn’t keep them up any longer.’

  ‘I guess we shouldn’t.’

  ‘It’s been a wonderful evening, Alec dear.’

  ‘A memorable evening,’ in many ways, I added to myself.

  A winter or two later I received a Christmas card showing Polly resplendent in cap and gown, her social therapy completed.

  As often happens, the publishing crisis that had encouraged me to return to England, proved in fact not to be a crisis at all. Three minutes’ talk with Peters and the thing was settled. I did not even need to go round to Cassell’s. I found myself at a loose end, therefore. I had no writing plans. It was too late in the year to organise any cricket for myself. Moreover, the weather was appalling. On the Wednesday I had the pleasure of taking my father to Lord’s for the start of the Middlesex v. Warwick match. It was the first time that we had sat together in the pavilion. It was a sunny day. We saw Killick make 206 and G. T. S. Stevens, who had been a friend of my father’s when he was a Hampstead schoolboy, 107. The next day I went down to Broadstairs to stay with H. S. Mackintosh, who had recently become the father of a son – he already had two daughters. He was fulfilling the role of a Victorian paterfamilias, taking his family to the beach to paddle, he himself encased in a knee to elbow woollen bathing suit. Nothing would induce me fresh from the Côte d’Azur to inflict such a penance on myself. It was so cold, my father notes in his diary, that fires were lighted at Underhill. My father also notes that he read with much enjoyment the manuscript of Rupert Croft-Cooke’s novel The Cow Jumped Over the Moon, which on his recommendation Chapman and Hall accepted; a quarter of a century later I was to see a great deal of Croft-Cooke in Tangier.

  It rained steadily all the time I was in Broadstairs, but I had an enjoyable time, with two good friends, exchanging good talk and consuming much excellent wine and food. On my return to Underhill at the end of the week I took my mother to see Edgar Wallace’s ‘The Old Man’ at the Golders Green Hippodrome. On the Saturday I took my father to Lords’ to the first day of the Middlesex and Kent match. In the evening I dined with Marda Vanne, the South African actress.

  Marda for six years had been one of my dearest friends, and the news of her death four years ago, though I had not seen her for several years – she had spent much time in South Africa – was a great blow to me. The world seems a different place with her no longer in it. It is hard to describe her. She was short, neat, blonde, practical: she had one of those featureless putty faces that respond to make up. She was constantly altering her appearance to suit her hairdo. When I met her first in 1925 it was Eton cropped with a curl plastered across her ear. She was an excellent actress who never had star treatment. She was usually cast in supporting roles, Mrs Davidson, the pastor’s wife, in ‘Rain’ for instance. She herself when I first knew her – she was then twenty-six – thought that she should act comedy, Marie Tempest parts – she had a look of Marie Tempest. But I think she lacked sex-appeal, on the stage. She lacked lightness. She did not look embraceable. Moreover she had a deep nature. I pictured her in more emotional roles, as a mature woman. Though she was not indifferent to men, she was married to a prominent South African politician, and had several love affairs which the men involved found satisfactory, she was mainly interested in women. I thought she might in her forties and fifties find emotional release in the roles of aunts, mothers, schoolmistresses who could be legitimately involved with younger women. But when her forties came, she went back to South Africa for the war. She did return on occasions to England afterwards, but I do not remember seeing her in an important part. During the war she was active in the South African theatre.

  On that August evening we dined at the R.A.C. It seems a curious place to which to take an actress but the Savile was closed for the staff’s summer holiday. We were temporary members of the R.A.C., and I thought the gilt and marble, the height and width of its main dining-room would be a contrast to the speakeasies of Manhattan, and the Mediterranean bistros with which I had become over-familiar during the last ten months. We dined rather well indeed, had a refreshing bottle of champagne and danced to a reasonable band. ‘I mustn’t stay up too late,’ Marda said. ‘Gwen and I are going to Cornwall tomorrow.’

  Gwen was Gwen Frangçon Davies who had recently starred in The Barretts of Wimpole Street and with whom Marda for several years had shared a house. They were motoring down, she told me, starting next morning at eight o’clock. They were stopping the night near Exeter, in a hotel at Chagford; they were aiming to spend a week or two in Cornwall at Mousehole, a fishing village near Newlyn which had been for many years a favourite haunt of painters. ‘I envy you,’ I said.

  ‘Why don’t you come along with us? There’s a seat in the car.’

  ‘Why don’t I.’

  It was arranged like that., within five minutes. When my parents came down next morning, for their cup of tea before early service, they found me in a country suit, with a suitcase packed.

  This trip was to have historic consequences. It started the boom of the Easton Court Hotel, which was through the next twenty-five years to fill a footnote in literary memories.

  Marda Vanne had heard of it from the South African painter Edward Wolfe, who had a house in Tangier. Wolfe had made friends there with a youngish Englishman called Norman Webb who was employed by some charitable organisation for the benefit of African animals. His organisation was based on Fez. To Fez had come on a holiday a middle-aged American divorcée called Mrs Posthelthwaite Cobb. She was a member of seaboard society; at a loose end, with her two children married and no base in the United States, she formed an attachment for Norman Webb. It seemed to her that he was being wasted in Morocco, as indeed he was. It was a dead-end occupation. She had means. She wanted to do something for him. She also wanted, it may be presumed, to give some base of security to their relationship. Marriage would have been inappropriate; moreover marriage would have given Norman rights over her that she was not anxious to concede. Why not a business partnership? Why not a hotel in England? That was how the Easton Court Hotel came into being.

  Edward Wolfe, a South African, and a life-long friend of Marda, had told her about this venture. ‘Go down and have a look at it,’ he urged her. As it made a useful halfway halt on the way to Cornwall, she decided to follow his advice.

  We arrived there in the late afternoon. A grey rain-cluttered day was ending in a sunset that promised better things for the next morning. Easton Court lay two miles north of Chagford. It consisted at that time of a single two-storied fourteenth-century farm house. Its rooms were low and dark, with small windows and open beams It was built of stone, and thatched. It had an uneven staircase. It lay on the highroad to Okehampton, but a high thick stone wall protected it from the noise of traffic. It was furnished with cottage-style antiques, coffin stools and Staffordshire figures – that kind of thing. A notice recorded that the antiques were for sale. On the walls were a number of Edward Wolfe’s Moroccan pictures.

  At the Easton Court there was an attractive maid; dark, plump vivacious. I had taken no particular note of her, perhaps because she had taken no particular note of me. But she had taken note of Marda’s chauffeur. He was young, vigorous and handsome, but what had especially attracted her was his chauffeur’s cap. She had a faiblesse for ‘men in uniform’ and the chauffeur left the hotel resolved that on our return journey we should stop there so that he could further exploit that weakness.

  We planned to spend three weeks at Mousehole in a pub of which we were the only guests. We had a sitting room at our disposal. On the ground floor was
a tap room where we could challenge the fishermen to games of darts and dominoes. Marda and Gwen had friends in the neighbourhood – Laura and Harold Knight who had studios and a house there. Sir Barry Jackson was across the way in Newlyn. Scott Sunderland was his house guest. Sunderland had acted the part of Robert Browning in ‘The Barretts of Wimpole Street’. It was a perfect piece of casting. He was tall, strong, handsome, athletic. He exuded health. Yet he was in fact a complete hypochondriac. He was always fussing about his health. His dressing-room cupboard was filled with bottles and pills. He was for ever taking a new cure for some imagined ailment; spiritually and mentally no one could have been less like Robert Browning.

  I heard much good theatre talk. Gwen told me that acting with Cedric Hardwicke was a curious experience. After a play had been running for three weeks, he became a zombie. He went through his part perfectly, without knowing what he was doing. It was disconcerting, she said, to be seated on a sofa beside a man who was making you a declaration of passionate devotion, when you could tell from his eyes that he was not there at all. The reader may remember that one of the most telling scenes in the play was an expression of paternal love. When the cast was rehearsing the play, they always referred to it as ‘the incest scene’. It was then learnt that the Barrett family was meditating an injunction and a libel action against the play, and the cast was solemnly adjured that never, never anywhere were they in future to mention the word ‘incest’. The play incidentally never mentioned what may have been one of Barrett’s strongest objections to Browning as his daughter’s husband. The Barretts came from Jamaica from the white planter aristocracy. Browning came from St Kitts and very certainly had coloured blood. He was sometimes mistaken for an Italian.