The Lady with the Borzoi

by Laura Claridge

  Her flight back to Frankfurt was nominally better than the earlier one to Berlin: “I took off next morning after finding a plane with parachutes. The plane had dumped coal dust, the most combustible and the worst kind of empty plane to fly, so they swept it out the best they could.” Bad visibility, with ice on the wings and windshield, added to their problems. “Co-pilot brought us in by opening his port and hanging out. We were the last plane into Frankfurt that day.”

  In the end, despite his preliminary agreement with Blanche, Clay published with Greenwood, an independent press whose offer was four times that of Knopf. Greenwood also approved taking Clay’s story “as is,” no editing required—something, the soldier knew, that would never fly with Blanche.

  20

  THE SECOND SEX

  BACK IN NEW YORK, eager to give credit to the rank-and-file American soldiers she had found unfailingly helpful, Blanche sent several politicians her observations of the ongoing airlift. Then she turned to the January launch of Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day. Set in the years after the London Blitz, its story revolves around the relationship of two lovers, Stella and Robert. A British intelligence agent, convinced that Robert is a spy, worries that Stella is as well. The novel emphasized the “inextricable knitting together of the individual and the national, the personal and the political.” It had been the hardest of Bowen’s novels for her to finish, and she worried that it might be a “point-blank failure.”1 Released in England with Jonathan Cape a year earlier, in 1948, selling well at forty-five thousand copies, it moved the British novelist Rosamond Lehmann to call it a great tragedy. In the United States, Bowen’s novel, replete with espionage and free love, proved harder for some readers to accept, and The Heat of the Day received respectful if cautious reviews. In The New York Times, Orville Prescott (father of the writer Peter Prescott) lamented that Bowen’s prose was simply too steely for American tastes. To Blanche’s relief, the book was a selection of the Literary Guild.2

  Blanche had grown to love Elizabeth, and she felt protective of The Heat of the Day as Bowen’s American publisher. Its heroine, who sleeps indiscriminately with men and women—though rarely doubting that she loves her husband—could almost have been based on Blanche, who did find both sexes attractive. Even the novel’s subplot, with its protagonist secretly working as an intelligence agent, seemed to echo Blanche’s wartime accounts of her trip to South America.

  In a subsequent interview for House Beautiful, Blanche claimed that her satisfaction in life came from her involvement in the world of books. “I would not change it for any other, but to pretend that publishing is anything but a constant round of overcoming obstacles and frustrating difficulties would be untrue.”3 Knopf was releasing Kenneth Millar’s first book under the pseudonym Ross Macdonald (except for the first edition, which would read “John Macdonald”). The Moving Target features Lew Archer, who would become a seminal character in the gumshoe world. In The Moving Target, Archer is hired by the wife of a missing eccentric oil baron, who is the focus of the detective’s long list of Los Angeles criminals as he tries to solve the mystery. Critics immediately placed Macdonald among the front ranks of his genre, where he was considered the heir apparent of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. To Blanche’s relief, Macdonald was easier and rewarding to work with, his prose more psychologically nuanced than her other mystery writers. (Macdonald would tell the philanthropist and Knopf friend W. H. “Ping” Ferry that he thought “Alfred never read” one of his books, all of which, from now until the writer’s death, were published by Knopf.)4

  But the detective genre was still second to readers’ fascination with books about sex, and Blanche kept waiting to be the target of the day’s aggressive vice squad, which would have been costly for the firm. The Knopfs were particularly nervous about the chance of being prosecuted over Harold Robbins’s Never Love a Stranger (which even Blanche and Alfred thought sleazy). They were right: in Pennsylvania on March 18, an obscenity court case was filed against various publishers for producing nine obscene works, including Faulkner’s Sanctuary and James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan trilogy, as well as Robbins’s novel. The Knopfs’ friend Judge Curtis Bok ended the trial by citing earlier rulings on Ulysses (and other books), in which another friend, U.S. Federal Judge John Woolsey, had ruled in favor of Joyce. At that time, at the appeals level, New York’s Judge Learned Hand had affirmed that Ulysses was not obscene, on grounds that Joyce was “loyal to his technique.” In time, Woolsey’s earlier decision would be considered the keystone of American law on obscenity, clearly maintaining that “indictable obscenity must be ‘dirt for dirt’s sake.’”5

  Alfred would send out to friends, other publishers, and Knopf writers the fifty-seven-page ruling as a Christmas present. Its cover sheet said: “Five hundred copies have been printed by the Grabhorn Press for Blanche and Alfred Knopf, Christmas 1949”—for once, Blanche’s name first.6

  In late April, Alfred wrote to the Knopfs’ friend Mary Bancroft, whose Boston family had inherited The Wall Street Journal. During the war, Mary had worked in Switzerland for U.S. Intelligence, and Alfred informed her that he had become a “full-blooded” American.

  I used to alternate trips to Europe with Mrs. Knopf but since 1939, I have only gone over once and then spent but three weeks in London and came home. Somehow or other I have lost all interest in Europe since the war. I just do not, as an American, like the look of things. And I have meanwhile faced West and begun really to discover the vast riches of our own land. So, I usually make my friends laugh when I say “You can have Paris, but I’ll take Montana.”7

  Apprehensively, Blanche joined Alfred on a vacation to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where they stayed at a dude ranch for two weeks. The trip was yet another challenge for the increasingly frail woman, her eyes degenerating from the diet drug DNP, just as Mencken’s eye specialists at Johns Hopkins had warned her they would. In the office she wore dramatic, oversized glasses whose flair hid their utilitarian purpose, but at home her lenses were so thick they looked like the bottoms of Coke bottles. For the next trip west in June, Alfred would travel alone.

  * * *

  At the office, Blanche found herself phoning frequent encouragement to Camus, who was about to leave for South America, where Blanche’s own trip had given her such a lift. But Camus seemed very anxious and on the verge of a nervous collapse. He was possessed, he said, by a feeling that death was imminent. Upon arrival in South America, he felt “evil in the air”—perhaps because his play Cross Purpose had been banned in Argentina. As a result, he had refused to lecture on any topic other than censorship. Just two weeks later, after he gave a few lectures in Chile (while suffering from undiagnosed tuberculosis), he was ready to go home.8

  Blanche was already regretting that she’d not gone to South America with Camus when she was informed that she’d been awarded Brazil’s National Order of the Southern Cross. A result of her 1942 trip, the award was meant to honor foreigners or local citizens who had contributed in significant ways to Brazil’s culture. A library was being named in recognition of the publisher. Surely Blanche’s author Gilberto Freyre, who had conceived of the cultural center several years earlier, was behind the dedication: Blanche had arranged to have the great Latin American scholar’s magisterial The Masters and the Slaves translated into English. A three-part study of race and culture considered seminal to an understanding of black heritage in Brazil, The Masters and the Slaves came out in 1933, followed by The Mansions and the Shanties in 1938 and Order and Progress in 1957.

  By late August 1949, Blanche had resumed her regular fall scouting trips. Over tea at Claridge’s in London, she met with authors whose current books might be right for Knopf. She rejected Vita Sackville-West’s Nursery Rhymes but accepted Ivy Compton-Burnett’s Darkness and Day, which would prove one of the author’s weakest novels. Probably Blanche found fascinating the obvious influence of Oscar Wilde on Compton-Burnett’s book, which was written almost entirely in (arch) dialogue. Afte
r Blanche had finished her scouting, she invited writers who were already signed to Knopf for American publication to dine: the obligatory, such as V. S. Pritchett, to lunch, and her favorites, such as Eric Ambler and Elizabeth Taylor (the novelist), to dinner.

  Blanche was taken aback by the rationing still in effect overseas, and she immediately wrote an office assistant back at Knopf to send over packages of bacon, rice, and cheese, in addition to underclothes and soap for her English chauffeur’s wife. To her London agent, Grace Dadd, she directed “marvelous parcels [of] olive oil by the gallon, a seven pound tin of ham,” and for Grace’s children “tins of powdered milk, canned fruit, and Hawaiian pineapples—through Bloomingdales and CARE.” She brought still more nylons and beef from Paris, again with strict instruction on how to cook the meat. To other publishers in England and France and also Denmark and Norway, she sent cartons of cigarettes mailed from the States. Nor did she overlook Jenny Bradley, to whom she gave Kleenex, coffee, and soap. Blanche continued helping her European friends until 1953, when most items were no longer rationed, except in London, where butter, meat, and nylons were still coveted.9

  While in Paris she stayed at Jenny’s apartment at 18 Quai de Béthune (a building once owned by Cardinal Richelieu)—where the agent told her the talk of the city was of Simone de Beauvoir’s revolutionary book The Second Sex. The women stayed up late into the night debating whether it was right for Knopf: How would Americans regard the French philosopher’s arguments? Blanche was still unsure by the time she left Paris.

  Back in New York, she was delighted at the news already awaiting her from her French agent. “Jenny Darling,” she wrote back at once. “Yesterday morning I looked at my mail casually and there, thanks entirely to you, was the letter announcing that I was being given the Legion [award]; well, it will be fun and I well know that you are entirely responsible.” She’d been named a chevalier (knight) of the Légion d’Honneur, for developing and promoting French literature. She turned back at once to her recent trip: “You have been fabulous to me and the joy of being with you is something very special—as you describe it—and I think maybe you are right—on se comprends.”10

  Jenny, a lesbian, a stodgy, maternal woman and French agent for American literary stars, including Truman Capote, was unfailingly generous in sharing her most interesting friends with Blanche, and the two had developed an intense sororal friendship. “Jenny, a tough cookie, loved Blanche, she really did,” Pete Lemay said.11

  Still mulling over The Second Sex, Blanche was caught off guard by Alfred’s renewed determination to move the company to Purchase. Even as she wrote Jenny about a book she had bought while in France, leaving it to her to execute the deal, she made it clear that her domestic life was once again on the skids: Blanche had ordered French napkins for Alfred’s eight-foot dining table, but she now did a volte-face, telling Jenny to wait on these: “At the moment I am not very eager to [do anything] for Alfred … Things could not be more horrible than they are and I can only wish that I had stayed away longer … The trip home was all right—you know what they are like—Alfred was charming when I got in but now it is all over—the moment I assert myself there is a row.12 With Pat, Alfred, Koshland, and Lesser all promoting their views on taking the office to Purchase, there was inevitable jousting for position; all Blanche wanted was to ensure that Knopf stayed in Manhattan.

  Jenny answered in early November, focused on Beauvoir: “Darling, I seem to have responded very badly to all your sweet letters, but I am busier than ever, in spite of my honest efforts to keep some time for minor human feelings! But let us be serious.”13 Jenny thought it was time for Blanche to make her move on The Second Sex, which, mocked and reviled upon its release, was suddenly selling six to seven hundred copies a day. Especially in light of the Kinsey report on American women she’d heard was about to be published (it would in fact not come out until 1953), Blanche had taken a wait-and-see attitude. She knew that Beauvior’s book would take an unusually long time to translate for an American edition, in light of its more than eight hundred pages.

  Just as Blanche decided, however, that she wanted the two-volume work after all, Beauvoir’s agent decided to go elsewhere—unless Blanche offered $750 for each volume. With Jenny’s help, by November 9, 1949, Blanche had secured American rights. She proceeded at once to hire a friend of Mencken’s, Howard M. Parshley, to read volume one.14 Bradley agreed with Blanche that they would have to make some cuts, a specification the publisher shared with Beauvoir: The Second Sex was just too long and dense for an American audience. Indeed, sometimes the text proved too much even for the French.15

  After Thanksgiving, Blanche took another fall. For the remainder of 1949, all talk of moving to the country was delayed indefinitely, with Blanche’s increasing blindness and her brittle bones arguing against the move. Perhaps her habitual dislike of Christmas—Jenny invited her to her Antibes home for the holidays, but Blanche said the trip would be too short—gave her an excuse to stay put, especially in light of the forthcoming ceremony for her French award, to be held in Manhattan. Her subsequent buying spree, which Jenny coordinated from afar, included bills from Violette Cornille Sacs, 32, Rue de la Bois: three purses for 360 French francs (around $100 at the time) and a Dior dress billed at 500 francs, or about $140 (equivalent to $3,800 in 2015). She sent Jenny back to Balenciaga to see which way the stripes went on a dress she was interested in.16

  Ordering porcelain cups and plates from the fine tableware store Jean Luce near the Ritz, Blanche found the postwar prices amazingly low. But she waited too long for a coat she wanted and, to her irritation, it was bought by Mrs. David Bruce.

  In December, at the French award ceremony, Blanche was pinned with an elaborate brooch and ribbon honoring her as a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. She beamed with pride, as did Alfred, more than one guest observed. In an interview about Blanche after her death, the former Knopf editor and Blanche’s friend Frances Lindley said: “When she got [the honor], a dozen of us were invited to go up and see her that day. She looked absolutely terrific. She had on a sort of medium-brown Balenciaga gabardine. She stood there like a very well-brought up young girl while [the presentation was made]. I remember going up to Alfred after it was over when we were clustering around and drinking champagne. Alfred said, ‘All I need to do is bask in Blanche’s reflected glory.’ Not nasty; it was a very tender and proud statement.”17 Though husband and wife often engaged in rows even at public celebrations, now Alfred announced, “If anyone could do this, Blanche is that one.”18

  In an article in The American Scholar twenty years after her death, the film critic Stanley Kauffmann recalled Blanche during this period “as much a grand lady as her frame would permit. She was short and very thin. Her thinness was incongruous with her chic … her dyed and carefully arranged hair. Her modish dress, her bangled arms made her look like an expensively attired starveling.”19 The New Yorker’s Janet Flanner would remember that during these years she got to know Blanche better (Jenny Bradley claimed Flanner and the publisher had an affair) and said, “I liked Blanche. I thought she had a vital intelligence. She always had a toplofty attitude to herself and the House of Knopf, as indeed she should have had. She was quite elegant and at the very top of the profession in her estimation and the opinion of other people. Not modest.”20 At one point, the writer asked the publisher for a long list of books she had published, all of which Blanche was happy to provide. Flanner was especially impressed by Blanche’s acquisition of the postwar journal of André Gide, he who “never wasted a moment being wrong.”21

  * * *

  Before she went abroad for her January buying trip, Blanche resolved to take dance lessons with Pat; she’d decided to take an active role in his finding a spouse. Frances Lindley recalled that Blanche ended up treating him like her beau, not the “best relationship to have with your son.”22 Blanche was able to spend even more time with Pat when she had to cancel, suddenly, her first trip of 1950. She had already seen one of her B
altimore doctors, who prescribed exercises for her newly stiff neck, and she’d bought her Air France ticket, with Jenny arranging the room at the Ritz and the car and driver to meet her at Le Bourget Airport. She was ready to go, when everything was put on hold.

  Alfred, unbeknown to Blanche, had scheduled a board meeting about moving the company to Purchase. Quickly, her secretary ensured she made it, with Alfred pretending he’d forgotten she’d be gone. Blanche dived in: she agreed that they were pressed for office space at 501 Madison, and that “New York is getting almost impossible.” Still, she had “not made up my mind that it is wise and in fact, I think it unwise for a small business like ours to move out of the center.”23 A vote was taken within a week and the company stayed in Manhattan, where they continued publishing an average of a hundred books a year (versus, for instance, Doubleday’s four hundred).

  Much of 1950 would be spent developing Blanche’s publishing plan for The Second Sex. Excited about buying what she knew would be an important book, especially for women, Blanche wasted no time coming up with ways to promote it far in advance of publication. In the early part of the year, she suggested to Beauvoir that the author and the anthropologist Margaret Mead exchange thoughts at an interview, in Paris or New York. Having gotten no response, Blanche went to Beauvoir’s French publisher, Gallimard, when she knew Mead was abroad. An arrangement was made, but Beauvoir felt corralled, and she did everything possible to make Blanche regret the maneuver. Planning all along to cancel at the last minute, Beauvoir agreed to a luncheon with Mead, both French and English translators at the ready.