Letty Fox

by Christina Stead

  Your dotter, LETTY FOX.

  P.S. Mother says it is “Frieze” not Freeze; well some of them act frozen.

  The $5,000 mentioned was of great interest to us, as Grandmother had promised it to Jacky and me on her death.

  19

  My sister went out West with Grandmother Morgan not long after this. They visited Aunt Phyllis who was about to kiss the column in Reno, and after trying Albuquerque went up to Santa Fe. All this traveling about was not necessary, but Grandmother was curious about the entertainment given to visitors in the hotels there. She found some friends for Jacky to stay with in Santa Fe, left her there, and made her way to the Coast; the jaunty old belle not only hungered for new scenes, but thought she might drum up business, even establish a hotel, and might meet some presentable rich men of her own type. “I am sick of local men,” said Grandmother.

  Santa Fe is, among other things, an art colony and a little palace of American culture; under its astronomical skies are sierras and sun-bitten plains, on which old nations spilled blood and died. My sister was intoxicated with happiness there; her particular genius visited her there. She did not write to me very often; she said the fine mountain air which was curing her was hard to breathe, but she was healing. Everywhere she was taken for older than she was. She had entered her teens. She now drew away from “street-kisses, those slight touches in the dark—to me now this is banal; I know it is not love; though I don’t despise it—I don’t despise anything.” About Christmas 1934 she wrote to me:

  DEAR LETTY,

  I waited for you to write to me about the marriage of the Princess, to send my answer on that, but I can wait a long time it seems. I am getting slowly cured at Santa Fe; I cannot come to New York now. I’m under doctor’s orders which are, still, that I must take a complete rest. A single visit wears me out, as well as the least change in my routine. Of course, it is partly the altitude, which is enormous. I have been feeling funny since last September and didn’t manage to get fat and still had fever, thus I could not come home for vacations or birthdays and such. Poor me! Write to me quickly about everything that is happening in your part of the world—and even, is it always the same part? A stupid thing—some people die here. I read about burials with such interest! Do I think I am going to be buried? Probably; but it is with pleasure I read about them—and then I should like to be somebody, to be buried with ceremony. Hélène Boucher was the fastest woman in the world and beat the altitude and endurance records. The requiem mass took place in Napoleon’s chapel which you and I have seen! You know what an immense honor that is! She is the first woman buried in the Invalides! All the aviators were there, Detroyat, the handsome, the others. The Invalides was full of white flowers for this woman, she was cited on the order of the day. I feel marvelously happy. She earned this and they recognized her; she is a heroine. A film star is nothing to compare with that! If I am not famous, too, why live, why die? How splendid life is when you have such possibilities. I see to the full all the possibilities of living. Today is a wonderful day—a dry winter’s day—I long for the spring; you do not know Santa Fe, you look from the Cerro Gordo (Plump Hill!), it looks like Jerusalem, it lies in a bluish haze in which swim trees and white walls and mud cabins in a flesh-colored crease of hills, which suggests birth—somehow—and between a few streaks of cloud and these dark glittering clear trees, the sky is so blue; bloody light (the Blood of Christ) spreads down the mountain, in the fall. One wants to run about on the hills in a thin fluttering dress—but I can’t run a step. I don’t think anyone can. You are not supposed to gallop the horses. There is a lovely Mexican girl here with an Aztec face; she rides astride and looks fiercely ahead or aside as if she could see through the rocks. She never looks at me. Perhaps she is jealous; I am certainly good-looking too. I go out to see her ride by. But each step one takes is an extra burden on the shoulders, heart, and lungs; one feels like a pack mule and then how disgustingly I am writing, heart, lungs—I am ashamed to think of such things. What I said above, about the death of this woman, has made me think. Thinking about someone dead, one says, Why is he dead? You will say (materialist), “Because he doesn’t breathe, because his heart has stopped.” But why doesn’t he breathe, why did his heart stop? It went before. Perhaps, you’ll say, it was worn out, along with the other organs, the veins, the lungs, the brain. But—what now? I know the mechanism of the body is perfected; and since it stopped, it must have at one time been set in motion! There is no perpetual motion in our physics! It couldn’t have been an accident that made the first men breathe, that is, that all this immense stupefying mechanism started to move by chance. And then the whole thing—for example, not only how many roofs I see when I look at my little Jerusalem, but how many other eyes these two little pieces of me can see and with them communicate! I am staggered. I think it’s marvelous and I can’t stop myself thinking that God must exist; don’t send me jokes about this Idiot imagined by the Ironic thinkers; that he might well exist and lead a vegetable life of his own, without any more influence on us than a tree in Thibet. I know how they think, the Ironic thinkers, like Voltaire; their preoccupation (with God) perhaps shows they are sure about him— probably they’re only trying to cure us of our weak, babyish ideas about God; trying to make us think the way they think. I cannot believe such Great men do not believe; and for contempt of that Idiot God which they despise, I have it too; but the God of my eyes, I believe in. About Voltaire—if you haven’t read anything, read Candide—read it, marvelous! I read everything in the bookshelf in the dining room. I don’t think I told you that I met a prince here, Prince Wolkovski, and my first impression of him was that he is irresistible! He is staying with his family in a rented mud-palace at the end of Acequia Madre. Imagine a room covered with sabers and fencing-irons, etc., of all countries and times, old ones of the fifteenth century, above all, the saber of a Tsar, a samurai sword, a Chinese doubleedged beheading sword, daggers, a woman’s stiletto to hide in the bosom; I was enthralled. How I long to possess a pair of foils; I begged him to tell me where I could learn fencing. He laughed aloud at my astonishment and was charming to me; he gave me two records, La Tosca, “the stars are shining,” a Russian song, “All Russia is under snow,” and a Russian foxtrot. He went to a university in the U.S.A. and told me all his impressions. He is a friend of several American and French writers, but only chic, correct, and rich ones. His description of radicals made me burst out laughing, for he does not know I know one: they are people who don’t wash, don’t pay their bills, and are impossible as friends because they quarrel. We talked about Russia and I asked him if the Tsar wasn’t a coward. He smiled, saying I was awfully violent and that the profession of a Tsar is to be behind the lines and that it is for the generals, who are his aides and lieutenants, to be in front. A chief must save his life. This was a new idea for me; I do not know what to think. He lent me some books. His looks are very Russian as well as his accent. I drank some vodka with pepper in it and he was amused because I insisted on the pepper—according to him, “my throat is very Russian and I might even be a Russian young girl from my looks.” This pleased me enormously, it is only in this way that we get confidence in our charm—so I had a wonderful afternoon with a fascinating man and afterwards they told me I could brag about it (as I am now doing) because he is rarely so pleasant. His father was a high general in the Tsarina’s army and it seems this is a very great honor; his mother, whose photograph I saw, was a marvelous beauty and he has personal photographs from the Tsar and the Tsarina. I drank wine with him yesterday marked 1908! In spite of all this, I am not becoming a White Russian. But I am delighted to know him. This is really the kind of friend I want to have, at least until I know the world better; then perhaps my taste will be faultless, but it is not now. Enough gabbling for today; au revoir. Write to me. I want you to. I am at Santa Fe until further notice.

  YOUR JACKY.

  P.S. And when I came out of the house, the Aztec princess was passing by on her big bay mare, her face
as inscrutable as ever and white kid Wellingtons on, and her legs brown underneath. I have never been so happy as here.

  P.P.S. I was going to tell you all kinds of things about the Princess, and about Carol of Rumania; I am in touch with people here who are close friends of both, of course, they are all related, by marriage. Well, about the Princess—all they say is absolutely true. And, in addition, before the marriage her relatives never paid their bills, but lived on afternoon teas and dinners and only bought evening clothes and afternoon suits and stayed in bed till midday; and they didn’t pay for any of them; they had no jewels at all, not a single automobile and they did not give one wedding present at any time! And this is the second time; but the first time the Princess married a Prince who was overthrown within six months and had no chance to send any money to the family and they feared they would never get her sister off. Also the famous Prince of ——— whom I always loved so madly, or so I thought, was very friendly, in fact, intimate with the Princess who is now married to his own cousin, in fact two depraved society types together—so depravity inbreeds, does not spread; good! I am sharp because I admire him so much and so I blame him. I am not making any more collections of photographs, with two exceptions, Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford. Andrea will be happy—tell her to take all my dozens of Boyers, Garats, Gables, Coopers, etc. A surprise for her. At one of my friends’ here, there is a Peter Paul Rubens guaranteed authentic! It is a long low mudmansion behind trees; you enter by a bridge over the ditch. You are invited to dinner and afterwards the hostess, who is very imposing, and in a white lace gown, draws back a black veil—there it is! I looked closely; I do not think it is a Rubens. I did not dare mention my suspicions to others, but I have heard whispers since— Then, there is a formidable, frowning building on the hill, it is terrifying, like that of a bloodthirsty Mexican king or chief; but a painter lives there. Oh, how delicious, noble it is to be wealthy, I get a wild exultation, some are vulgar, but there is no need to be. I look out at the slopes, the roads, the fall of the mountains, the view, and the treasures my hosts own—“the loot of centuries” you say—oh, to possess—the joy—the mad fervor—and yet I collect nothing but photographs and autographs. I am not an egotist. But, to possess beauty! I shall never have the money unless I marry a prince or an aristocrat or a wealthy artist for I could not be content with what is vulgar. I look at myself now in the looking glass and say, “I am beautiful, but am I beautiful enough for that?” I am also learning drawing from a gifted superb marvelous woman, full of raging pride, scornful, rough—you can see she has dreamed of fame and of conquering everyone. They say she was a great beauty. She is only here for the winter. I look at her and think, “I won’t admire you, Mrs. Headlong, my darling, I won’t hero-worship you, I won’t kiss your long feet, for you are a Tartar, a demon, and I do not intend to bend the neck to anyone, not even my husband the Prince.” So I don’t admire her. The woman I am drawing is naked, young, but not a girl and she is twisted with grief, horrible and yet lovely because she is a young voluptuous woman. They say I should practice more on the living model, before I can manage such things. Young people want to do tragic brutal active things, but they say, there is beauty in repose. I am impatient with repose. I am buying reproductions in color and am studying not only the modeling but the basic designs and am shocked to see the simplicity and almost vulgar force and plain meaning. I dare not point certain things out to people. I am dizzy. What is art? Jacky.

  Another Day. I had not the strength to go to the post office to get stamps and no one had any. Besides, you did not write.

  King Carol is in all sorts of involvements; cannot travel, cannot move from one country to another and it seems his wife controls him absolutely and is really very brilliant, a woman of state, like the Pompadour. Only to think of it! I regret I could not go to Rumania. I know so many people now who know Carol. I am promised an introduction if I travel there. I met a Rumanian priest who lives in an orthodox monastery at Jackson, near Detroit, and he is a remarkable, dazzling, strange and—dangerous—man; dangerous to women. I can tell now. But I cannot tell you all the people I meet; and I only speak about the interesting ones, for I am turning my back upon everyone who has not done something brilliant, extravagant, courageous, adventurous—for what is the use of living otherwise? Only I, so far, have done nothing. I go to meet them, and lose myself with them, I am charming, very bright, but when I come home the illusion is broken to pieces—there I am, just a pretty young girl, very pretty—but what of it? You do not feel this necessity, Letty, because of your exuberance. I have not exuberance but fever; is it just a physical fever? I am invited to the monastery. The cure here is absolute. I will certainly soon be well. Poor Papa. About Mme. Lupescu, I hear wonderful tales about her courage and brio. I admire her. I shall try to get a signed picture of her. This is all my life—I am very happy. I am obliged to consider only the best, finest, most brilliant men when I think of men fit to be my husband, for it must be someone to increase my happiness, not to make me miserable; and I am not looking for a husband to liberate me, or give me a home, as many miserable girls are—I am free already and my life is glorious (yes, except when I say it is wretched), and I would not shut myself up except with a superb man, a man beyond men—a prince, recognizable by anyone in the street, as a prince—or even a savant—but he must be handsome and have money too. I cannot live in a side street; I cannot be discontented, as a woman, for I must have a spotless, absolutely chaste married life and everything must be delightful. I try to reason out (but vainly) the steps by which a girl like you came to your view of the world—sameness, a geometrical pattern, women in overalls at machines and men talking about dams and cross-country trains; no traveling, no objets-d’art, no beauty, no folly, no great passions! It is incomprehensible. I am obliged to say to myself, it is a mere fad. But I am always your Jacky.

  20

  Grandmother Fox had been away from the U.S.A. for some years and feared to die abroad. She wanted to come home, buy a lot, a headstone, consult with us about the lettering, and die among us. She would be happy if she could think her female relatives, aunts, cousins, nieces, and her daughter-in-law with grandchildren, of sex female, could come to visit her when she was underground. She loved Lily Spontini like a daughter, and Mathilde because she had been betrayed by a man; she loved me because I resembled Solander and was her first grandchild, and Jacky because she was a sweet, feminine girl, and Andrea, my six-year-old sister, because she was, maritally speaking at least, posthumous; and then, because we were all female.

  I think she even liked Persia too, for I heard her say to her once, “When you have little girls of your own, my dear, you will understand; that I know.”

  Then she had strange notions, come in her old age, that they would take away her citizenship because her passport was old and her mother had been a German, and everyone now hated the Germans and, “There will be war, there will be war,” she said, as she had said since 1919.

  My father, in return for her kindness to the family, had got an immigration number and arranged financial backing for Edie, “the girl in Swan and Edgar’s”; and in the spring of 1935, Grandmother sailed with this girl to New York.

  The girl was an experienced trimmer and finisher of women’s dresses. Though Mother was displeased with Grandmother for living with Solander and Persia, we all three, and with Dora Morgan, who was then in New York, turned up at the wharf to welcome the pair. I turn aside here to say that Uncle Philip at this moment had attempted to leave Dora, but the agile-tongued shrew had so rounded up the family, that Philip had this week returned to her, who had all the appearance of being his fateful woman.

  Grandmother was pale, having lain in her berth the whole way; but Edie, a tall, brown-haired woman of twenty-eight, souring and tanning somewhat with a work-woman’s spinsterhood, looked conceited as ever; she did not so much as glance at the skyline. “I saw it in the movies,” she said disdainfully, “long ago, years ago.” Edie was lively, with quic
k speech, smiles and glances and sudden turns of humor; spiteful, wise, cynical, all in a sentence. She seemed very fond of Grandmother, who leaned on her arm, and with a liquid glance upwards of her lovely brown eyes, called Edie “nearly my daughter.” Mother took a dislike to Edie, complained of her wretched Cockney accent, which mingled rapid, vaudeville notes with a strange dragging middle-class affectation.

  Dora, again pregnant, extremely active, loved to run about everywhere, showing her belly to people, talking about her three other children, the boy in England, the girl in Mexico, and a boy, Tony, Dora’s youngest, in Green Acres (the only one anyone had actually seen), and complaining genteelly about her husband, Philip: “I am tired of his crocodile tears.”

  Philip was threatened with jail by his first wife for back alimony and seemed not to care. “I believe he would go to jail to escape me; it would relieve him of his responsibilities,” said Dora, in quite a warm tone, with pink cheeks, a jolly manner, and a dress that reminded you of Mary, Queen of Scots. She put her hand just below her waist and smiled tenderly. Though everyone in the family but Grandmother Morgan had become wary of her, because she never left any house without taking a gift with her (a cough drop, a tube of toothpaste, “merely as a token of you, dear”), it was hard to condemn her. What was she? A wife and mother; and Philip, a philanderer. She had been just lately to see Amabel, who was trying to get Philip back, with the idea of sympathizing with her over Philip’s bad ways. She was very indignant, for this powerful woman, with the aid of her two brothers, threw her down the stairs. We never knew whether this had really happened. We said, by this, Dora was a mythomaniac, the latest polite word for liar.