I also missed very much my brother who is one of the most tenderhearted of all people. He has a great love for nature and the beautiful. I can remember when we had scarlet fever and he was forever escaping from our nurse so he could sit on his potty and look out at the beautiful trees. When we were older I used to follow him to “First Woods and Second Woods,” a wooded place near our home. I also, when I was quite young, composed songs for him, and he would always dance to them for me. Without self-consciousness he would just dance as I played the piano. I also wrote plays or imitations from movies when I was young. I remember especially copying Rasputin. The line that strikes my memory now is the line that Ethel Barrymore quoted, “You’re a very cruel man, Igor.” My brother, sister and I put on this particular play together. My sister was supposed to faint, and since she was a chubby child, my mother always gasped when she fainted too realistically on the fragile chaise lounge.
When I was fourteen years old, the great love of my life, which influenced the whole family, was Isadora Duncan. I read My Life, not only read it but preached it. My daddy, who believed with my mother, that a child should read without censorship, could not help but be amazed by my preaching of “free love” to the family at large, and anyone else who would listen. One nosy neighbor criticized my parents for letting me speak so precociously about Isadora Duncan and her love life. I can only guess what the other neighbors thought. I begged my father to let me run away to Paris, and I told him I would dance there for the family’s living. Running away to Paris—and worse still, me, awkward as I was, supporting the family by dancing—was beyond my father’s wildest imagination.
But he only said mildly, “Honey, when you’re older you’ll understand better.”
Although I was awkward, I was the best roller skater for all the blocks around. I was always coming home with scabbed knees or hurt arms.
My brother took the prize for being accident-prone. He would climb out the window and BAM! break his arm. We were forever climbing trees and sometimes the fire department had to be called to get one of us back on the ground again. Brother’s tenderness never left him as sometimes tenderness leaves a child when he grows up. I remember one time during the Depression when there were ten-cent taxis. Our maid Lucille, who was one of the kindest and youngest of our nurses, she was only fourteen and a marvelous cook, had called a cab to go home. Brother and I were watching as she left, and the taxi refused to drive her.
“I’m not driving no damn nigger,” he bawled.
Seeing Lucille’s embarrassment, and feeling the ugliness of the whole injustice, Lamar ran under the house (I must explain here that under the house is almost like a separate room that goes from the front door to the middle of the house. There’s a special smell to under the house. The dirt is blacker, and the smell is acrid and bitter). Brother was weeping under the house, but I was torn with fury and I screamed to the taxi man, “You bad, bad man!” Then I went to join my brother, and we held hands in order to comfort ourselves, because there was nothing, nothing else we could do. Lucille had to walk a good mile home.
Black and white people in those days rooting in garbage cans. People, kind, sweet people who had nursed us so tenderly, humiliated because of their color. I do not wonder now, as my father used to wonder, why I was a great believer of the Communist Party when I was seventeen, although I never joined it, and eventually I became disenchanted with the workings of the Communists also.
We were exposed so much to the sight of humiliation and brutality, not physical brutality, but the brutal humiliation of human dignity which is even worse. Lucille comes back to me over and over; gay, charming Lucille. She would stand at the window and sing a current tune which went “tip toe to the window.” Blues tunes were not her taste as she was much too gay for them. She was a great one for arranging little impromptu picnics of cocoa and dainties for my brother and me. It did not seem strange to her to fill up the basket that we would draw up to our tree house. All she would say and even this in a gay voice was, “Lord! Chillun! You’re gonna break your necks one of these days.”
Then in the middle of the Depression, Mother thought she could do her own work and cooking, and so let Lucille go with every fine recommendation. She should have looked into the family Lucille was going to work for because they were abnormal, and accused Lucille of poisoning them. Lucille, with her good cooking! On their word she was sent to the penitentiary. There she was a cook and she also learned to sew and practice reading and writing. I think she got a pretty good liberal education there, and the experience did not harm her. Mother and Daddy testified as to her character and cooking ability, but the other people were so insistent and as he was an alderman, she had to remain there for almost a year. But she sewed and cooked and got on with her reading and writing. She wrote us several letters, and Daddy sent money for the prison canteen. When she was released she went to Chicago and met and married a fine, upstanding brick mason who made a good salary. Not too long ago Lucille visited me. She had found out my Nyack address. Although it was an August afternoon she had over her arm a beautiful fox fur, and was lavishly dressed. We embraced each other and talked about the old days and her new prosperity. I, too, had become a little prosperous, in that I was making a living with my writing which was a great pride to Lucille. Since we were grown up I did not serve her cocoa, but gin and tonic, which she enjoyed.
When Lucille was fourteen she had one child, Johnny Mary, who was as big as a minute. This child had an illegitimate baby as a teenager, both of whom died at the birth.
I will never forget that funeral. The preacher was so awful, I could have hit him. He referred to Johnny Mary as the sinner, and the text for the funeral oration was apparently “the wages of sin is death.” Lucille and her family were hysterical. The coffin was open so the preacher was gazing down into Johnny Mary’s face, then we all filed past the coffin with the little baby in its mother’s arms, and Lucille got more hysterical.
She screamed, “God! You take care of her, I’ve done the best I could, and it’s up to you now.”
It was a hot July afternoon and the fanners had to work overtime. (Fanners are the people who fan the bereaved.) Then Lucille with a spurt of her own vigor screamed, “Lord God they are now yours.”
Lucille went on with her life and finally met the brick mason in Chicago, who earned a fine and regular living, and is so good to her.
About once a month or perhaps less frequently Daddy and Mother took us children to visit Sis Laura, who had been our grandmother’s cook. Mother didn’t like her too much because she’d been mean to her as a child, but we visited her anyway when she was feeble and old. She lived in her minister’s backyard house, and before she was so feeble, she was a great prayer and shouter, and pillar of the Methodist Church. I dreaded those visits to Sis Laura. There was always an open chamber pot in the room with urine in it, which gave the room a bad smell. Daddy always brought money, peaches, pears or tangerines, and the old eyes would glitter greedily. Sis Laura was very old and she died one night in her sleep.
Vannie was Lucille’s sister and she cooked for the people next door to us. Once, on my father’s birthday I arranged a surprise for him. I arranged that at six o’clock in the morning, before Daddy went to work, he would have a fried chicken breakfast. Vannie cooked the chicken while Lucille made the biscuits. I gave my father what I knew he wanted most in the world: an ebony walking stick with a curved silver handle. The three of us wrapped it very carefully in tissue paper, and at six A.M., which was my daddy’s hour to leave for work, the fried chicken and birthday cake, which Lucille had cooked the night before, was served with great pomp to my daddy’s complete surprise. We all sang happy birthday, and he was enchanted with his walking cane and tears came to his eyes.
He had completely forgotten it was his birthday. He had a small quickie and offered some to Lucille and Vannie before he tackled this great repast. He carried his walking stick all of his life, and when he died I gave it to his brother. Eventually it came ba
ck to me, and it is now in the umbrella stand in my hall.
When I was two to six years old I had a nurse called Nursey, and she married and went to live on a farm with her husband. Mother was in tears. Called my father at his store for consolation and was so hysterical about this loss that Daddy closed shop and came home. After congratulating Nursey on her marriage he said something to mother that I will never forget.
“Nothing and nobody is indispensable.”
Echoes of that come back to me when I remember Tolstoy’s dying words to his daughter. “I just want to advise you to remember that there are in the world many people besides Lev Tolstoy, and you are looking only at this one Lev.”
Nursey was replaced by Cleo who was lovely, but a martinet. The back room was the play room and when brother would spit in his cocoa to make it more, as he explained, she would snatch him up and give him a good shake, “You’re not fit to eat with Lula Carson and Helen Harvey, those two sweet girls.” I was dainty if I was anything, my mother saw to that. She wanted me to be pretty and did her damnedest to make me so. I wasn’t downright homely, but I was no beauty no matter how Mother fussed over me. I would have to sit at the kitchen table and be primped. Since my hair was straight as a poker she tried to make little ringlets, and in so doing only mashed the hair of my head. Every morning before I went to school, she told me to say, “prunes or prisms,” because she said it made my mouth be set in a nice sweet way. My grandmother told her that I was the most patient child that ever lived. I hated all this fussing over me, but I knew that in spite of my grandmother’s protests Mother would have her way. I was sent to the oculist and Mother, who dreaded the fact that I might have to wear glasses, whispered the letters to me until the doctor caught her and sent her out of the room. Thank goodness I have good eyesight, in spite of all the reading I have done. My librarian cousin once remarked that I didn’t only read books, but libraries. It is true that my nose was in a book from the time I was ten until this day.
When I was about eleven my mother sent me to the grocery store and I carried a book, of course. It was by Katherine Mansfield. On the way I began reading and was so fascinated that I read under the street light and kept on reading as I asked for the supper groceries. We ate extremely well in my family, the usual chicken on Sunday, leg of lamb in the middle of the week, but for some reason we never had desserts. Perhaps that was because mother knew that every morning I would go to King’s grocery store and buy six bars of chocolate before I went to school. I would munch on these all during the day, and I cannot recall how many times I was sent out of the room for eating in class.
Thomas Wolfe is another author I love, partly because of his wonderful gusto in describing food.
The next and possibly one of the strongest influences in my reading life is Dostoevsky—Tolstoy, of course, is at the top.
As I grew older my love for Katherine Mansfield somehow was lost, and I seldom read her now, but I must add here that as a critic she is often dead right. I remember her criticism of The Idiot, especially her observations of Nastasya Filippovna. Nastasya has always been baffling to me also, and I wondered about such a strict person accepting jewels from a man she barely knew. There is a wonderful penny-novelette quality of this work. One is just swept away from one incredible scene to another incredible scene. The scene when Nastasya lights a fire to burn up the bank notes in front of Ganya is almost like a True Story fiction, but in spite of it, the emotions of the scene make it so real.
Tolstoy is considered by almost everyone as the greatest novelist that ever lived, and I can only say, me too. From his first beautiful book on war and Sebastopol, all through his long and marvelously productive life he stands alone as a writer.
It is interesting to me to think of the seeds of his stories, his “illuminations.” Anna Karenina was evolved because he had heard of a woman who had jumped in front of a moving train and died. The grandeur of War and Peace, a historical novel, which must have brought Tolstoy almost daily illuminations. He was fastidious as Proust in his realism of the styles and fashions of the times, and like Proust he was working on an immense canvas. Great canvases are not my only criterion of works of art. I like books small and fastidious as Vermeer, and while we are on the subject of painting, I must say that I deplore my lack of understanding of works of visual art. I think I get along better with the moderns. Henry Varnum Poor, who by the way, is a neighbor of mine and has painted me several times, I get along with beautifully. Also I covet certain Epsteins which I can’t afford.
Another author whom I read constantly is E. M. Forster. One of the most enjoyable times I’ve ever had was when Mary Mercer read aloud Where Angels Fear to Tread. We both went into fits of laughter. I must add here, that on the subject of E. M. Forster, Katherine Mansfield is completely blind, or for some reason she just didn’t like him.
I am completely blind about Virginia Woolf. Try as I may I can’t seem to be truly interested in her. This is strange because not only do many of my friends just adore Virginia Woolf, but personally I know many of the “Bloomsbury Set.”
Elizabeth Bowen is a dear friend of mine. I have admired her work for many years, and when we met in New York she asked me to visit her in Ireland. Bowen Court, her estate there, is not a beautiful house, but it is roomy and charming. Before her success in The Death of the Heart, she told me that she and her guests had to go to Jim Gates’, a neighbor’s house, for baths, but after the success of The Death of the Heart she was able to install bathrooms throughout her home. The bathtub I used had a little floating duck I remember in it. As well as Bowen Court, Elizabeth had a flat in London, and some years ago she sold Bowen Court because the upkeep with its very adequate staff had been too much for her.
I grieve over people who have had to sell their homes. Not only Elizabeth had to give up hers, but also my good friend Lillian Hellman had to sell her place, to say nothing of my L’Ancien Presbytère which I loved so much, and which is now, I hear, a dairy farm. Perhaps the most stunning loss of all these friends was the loss of Isak Dinesen’s farm in Africa, which when the coffee prices took a nose dive had to be sold. Afterwards she lived in Denmark in an L-shaped house that once belonged to the poet Ewald.
When I met the Baroness Blixen, whose pen name is Isak Dinesen, I was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and I was invited to a luncheon party in her honor. I had admired her so much that I was hesitant of meeting her; I was afraid that the reality would not match my dream, so I waited a long time before accepting the invitation. When I finally went to the Academy lunch I asked Glenway Wescott if I could be seated at the same table with her. Glenway said that she already made a request that she should be seated next to me. During lunch she said she would like to meet Marilyn Monroe, and since Arthur Miller was at the next table I said I thought it would be very simple. I asked the waiter to bring Arthur over and told him of the request. That was how a lunch party between Marilyn Monroe, Isak Dinesen, Arthur Miller and I took place. Marilyn was very timid and called me three or four times about the dress she was going to wear, and wanting to know if it should be low-cut or not. I said that anything she wore would be beautiful on her. She actually wore a dress cut very low so that it showed her lovely bosoms. Marilyn sat and listened while Karen talked, and Karen Blixen was a raconteur par excellence. She spoke of her times in Africa and Denys Finch Hatton. Karen (or Tanya as her friends called her) had black jewel-like eyes. She used lots of kohl with bright lipstick on her mouth. Her appearance was more consciously artificial than I had expected, but I soon got used to this and I was left with the impression of unself-consciousness and absolute charm. Toward the end of her life she ate only oysters and drank only champagne. When Arthur asked her what doctor put her on such a diet, she shrugged, and just said scornfully, “No doctor, I put myself on this diet. It agrees with me, and I like it.” When oysters were out of season she had to make do with asparagus. The rest of us had soufflés.
Many of my friends were quite elderly. Karen at
this time was about eighty. I received an invitation to Edith Sitwell’s birthday party which was to be held in London. Since I was going to be in Europe at that time I accepted the invitation. I was placed next to my old friend Peter Pears who used to live in Brooklyn with me. Benjamin Britten and Edith had finished a beautiful song. She had entitled it “Still Falls the Rain,” and Peter sang it before the luncheon. The luncheon was very fine indeed, and the list of people who were there to honor her was truly an international “Who’s Who” in the world of art.
I had planned to go on from Europe to Denmark and visit Tanya but as I was preparing for the journey I learned that Tanya had died. Her dear friend and secretary, Clara Svendsen, wrote me of her death and added that she was buried under a beautiful beech tree, quite near the ocean.
In some subtle way, which I cannot describe, I think that her work influenced Reflections in a Golden Eye. Perhaps it was the beauty of her writing and a certain high-handedness that gives me such a connotation.
After two years of work on The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, two years of contemplation of certain hideous aspects of the South, such as the white people’s treatment of the Negro, I was gay as a bird to be writing just for the sake of words and images. It coincided with a visit that Reeves and I had made to visit our friends Edwin Peacock and John Zeigler in Charleston, South Carolina. They insisted that I read a book called Out of Africa, and since I thought it was about big game hunting, I insisted just as firmly I didn’t want to read it. In the end they got their way, for when Reeves and I were in the car on our way to Fayetteville, they slipped two books in my lap; they were Out of Africa, and Seven Gothic Tales. I started Out of Africa in the car and read until sundown. Never had I felt such enchantment. After years of reading this book, and I have read it many times, I still have a sense of both solace and freedom whenever I start it again. I have naturally read all of her books, but these particular two are my favorites. I remember at the American Academy of Arts and Letters a friend said to me that Out of Africa was her touchstone book, and she judged new friends immediately on their reaction to it.
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