The next entry was simply: “From an Icelandic saga: Every fate is to be overcome by bearing it.” The struggle to be writer, wife, mother, human being, was one I shared with many women. Even if it was not saga-like, it was mine.
Arthur Farmer read the manuscript and was enthusiastic, and I was encouraged, because I knew Arthur to be a severe critic who would make no bones about it if he didn’t like something. But he saw what I was trying to do in the book, and why I wanted to do it, and said he saw no reason why Knopf wouldn’t take it. Knopf had published Willa Cather. I would be more than honored to be published by Knopf. Arthur also had several perceptive criticisms, and those helped too because the early rejections had made no sense to me.
It was indeed good of Arthur to offer to show the book to Knopf. He was still deep in grief over Ruth’s death. He knew personally a great many editors and publishers but he had certainly never played literary agent before. Of course he had no way of knowing when he offered to show Camilla that it was not going to be easy to find a publisher.
One evening when Hugh was off with a play, I wrote in my journal: “I have read and read and am still wide awake. When I am in bed with Hugh I can lie close to him, my foot touching him, or my hand against him, and be able to relax. When I am alone the night is darker and the wind less friendly. Our marriage has seemed to settle and develop this year into something much warmer and deeper. It is much more quiet, and I think this is the way it is going to have to go on growing. I must continue learning to channel my waters, my wild waters, into gentler ways.”
And then, only a few days later: “So. Knopf has rejected Camilla. I haven’t even particularly wanted to cry except for a moment when Hugh was too kind in telling me on the phone and for a few minutes afterwards—and then I conquered the feeling quite easily. The only tangible reaction I had was a tremendous and utter fatigue, a need to lie down and sleep and sleep. And even that I seem to have overcome, too.
“The telephone just rang and it was Hugh—just to talk. Very sweet of him. He can be so thoughtful and wonderful. For the record: Arthur told Hugh that he would like to show the ms. to Rinehart. They’re a good house, so I said, go ahead. And it is awfully good of Arthur and I am grateful for his faith in the book.
“A sad thing: the kitchen floor was laid today and the new sink is all installed. The kitchen looks superb and glamorous. But because of poor rejected Camilla, it has lost half its glory. All is ashes, ashes …”
And: “Perhaps I am a real writer as long as I go on writing, as long as I go on trying, which I shall always do.”
But it was not easy. The editor at Rinehart “really loved” Camilla, but his salesmen didn’t think they could sell it. Arthur was planning to take it to Scribner’s, and his unshakable faith in the book kept my own faith in it going.
And at last I wrote: “Arthur called me from New York today to tell me that Simon and Schuster is publishing Camilla.” Oh, I was relieved! And Camilla ultimately has done very well: first publication as a regular trade novel, followed by two reissues as a young-adult novel, first by Crowell in the sixties, and then by Delacorte in the eighties.
I wrote: “It has been a cold, rainy day; and I still haven’t been quite able to believe that Simon and Schuster is really taking Camilla. I played Camilla’s music to try to believe, Holst’s The Planets, and Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. It is good to be able to allow Camilla to be alive and active in my mind again.”
We returned to the city in the autumn, and that was the year that Hugh and I were together for two weeks out of the fifty-two. In the early autumn he went to Boston to play the lead roles in the newly formed Boston Repertory Company. Once it was established, the plan was for me to join him with our little one, and I would play some minor roles, a lovely thought—I missed being in the theatre. But the company was slow in establishing itself; perhaps the plays were too highbrow. Each Thursday evening the closing notice would be posted; each Saturday evening it would be taken down. There was no way I could go to Boston under those circumstances. I did go up for the opening of The Road to Rome, in which Hugh was superb as Hannibal—but even glowing notices were not enough to keep the company going, and in mid-winter they gave up and Hugh came home to a wife and daughter delighted to see him—though Hugh, like all actors I have known, was convinced when any show closed that he would never again get another job. However, the second day he was home he read for Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, who were producing Sam Behrman’s I Know My Love. Hugh was signed for it, and exactly two weeks after his return from Boston he set off for a long pre-Broadway tour with the Lunts. I was a seasoned theatre wife. I rejoiced that he would be working with these great players, that we would have an assured income. But my acceptance of the way life works in the theatre did not stop loneliness. And Hugh missed me too. We began to think of alternate ways of life, of living full-time at Crosswicks.
The summer of Jo’s fourth birthday we moved up to Crosswicks, having decided that we would take no more precautions, that if I got pregnant we would not move back to New York in the winter but would find some way of earning a living in the country.
Hugh had several summer-stock jobs, and of course I was working on a new novel. We were excited and little nervous about this very major decision. Within two months I was pregnant, and we were all set to become year-round country people.
One evening toward the end of the summer, when my pregnancy was well established, as was our decision to leave the city and the precarious world of the theatre and raise our children in the country, we were asked out for dinner in neighboring Cornwall. Among the guests was a well-known artist who had a summer place in that charming village. When he learned of our decision he warned us, urgently, that it is not good for the artist of any discipline to live in isolation, away from other artists. He told us that we would love being in the country the first year, that everything would be new and exciting, the beauty of autumn, the first snowstorm. But the artist needs to be in a city where there is the stimulation not only of other artists but of all kinds of people with brilliant and inquiring minds, to be surrounded by the stimulation of the city.
I listened. I listened well enough so that all these years later I remember the conversation almost verbatim. But I didn’t, that evening, believe it. I was pregnant. I had my typewriter and records of classical music, books by great writers. Hugh and I had everything we needed. But the artist with his warning was right. The first year everything was strange and wonderful to this city girl. But ultimately Hugh and I were to experience the truth of his words.
Just as the summer season of stock was over, Hugh was asked to go with Judith Anderson to Berlin to play Aegeus, prince of Athens, in Robinson Jeffers’s Medea.
Hugh had played Aegeus on Broadway and I had been tremendously proud of him: “Hugh is with Judith Anderson and John Gielgud in Medea and very happy about it. Yesterday when they had run through the first scene, Gielgud said, ‘That was splendid, Aegeus, splendid for the first time without a book.’ And when the rehearsal was over he said to him, ‘We’re very fortunate to have you with us.’”
And later: “The opening of Medea was very exciting. Hugh looked handsome beyond belief. Noël Coward sat exactly in front of me. During Hugh’s scene he said, ‘That man’s good,’ and when it was over he said, ‘That guy gave an excellent performance.’ And Judith Anderson told Toby, ‘I think Hugh Franklin is the best man in the play—and I include John Gielgud.’ And Coward wasn’t heard to utter another word besides what he said about Hugh.” Not only was playing Aegeus in Germany an opportunity Hugh shouldn’t miss; Judith wanted him.
I was in Crosswicks while he was gone, and I remember sitting in the old white rocking chair we had found in the attic, holding Josephine and rocking and singing “Sweet and Low,” with its “Bring him again to me.”
It was a wonderful experience for Hugh, but then he came home to a pregnant wife, a beggaring house, a cold winter, and no job. He applied to the various factories in nea
rby Torrington, but he was rejected as a white-collar worker because he didn’t have a degree in engineering, and as a blue-collar worker because he came out as “genius” on the tests. For a while he had a job as a shipping clerk in a small company, but it was hard on his back and John, our doctor and friend, said, “Hugh, you are not cut out for this kind of work.”
It was a good thing he was unemployed when Bion was born because I had an even rougher time with him than I had had with Josephine, and I needed Hugh with me when I came home from the hospital.
But it was a different birthing. Instead of the impersonal treatment I had received in New York, this time I was surrounded with care. Hugh was with me, and so was one of our friends who was a nurse and who went to the hospital (the same hospital Hugh is in this summer) to special me. And our doctor was our friend.
I was very slow in dilating, but suddenly I said to our nurse friend, “I’m pushing.”
“You can’t be. You’re only two fingers dilated.”
“I’m pushing!”
She looked, shouted, “The baby’s crowned!”
And Hugh saw the head of his son emerging from his wife.
It was, for me, a beautiful birth, and it was a glorious moment when John dropped my son between my breasts.
John was aware that the placenta might give trouble, and it did. I began to hemorrhage. The placenta wouldn’t come and the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Hugh was waiting in my room, but was sent downstairs when the babies were brought out for nursing. “Stick around, Hugh,” John said, and poor Hugh spent a terrible time not knowing what was going on, but seeing doctors come running in, push the elevator button, and go up to the delivery-room floor. Finally I was brought down to the room and blood transfusions started. Hugh was called back and there was just time, once again, for us to kiss, to say “I love you,” as I was wheeled off to the operating room.
When I got home from the hospital, our friends outdid themselves in bringing in food, helping with the baby. I nursed him, although I had lost so much blood that my milk was slow in coming, and for the first few weeks it had to be supplemented. He was given a bottle at night, and Hugh took on that feeding, holding and rocking his son, so that I could sleep and regain strength. But I nursed my baby, and this intimacy had an added poignancy because I knew that I could not have another baby.
By the time I was back on my feet Hugh had a job at the local radio station, but if he was going to make a career of radio it should be in New York, not northwest Connecticut.
We loved our house. We wanted a simple life for our children, with two full-time parents. In the center of the village was a nearly defunct general store which had been there for two centuries, flourishing in the early days of the village, gradually running down as the combustion engine came in and people could go farther afield to buy their harnesses, yard goods, groceries. The store had originally been owned by the family who now had one of the local banks. They didn’t want it to go under completely, so they suggested to Hugh that he take it over, and they would finance it.
If that was a crazy suggestion for them to make to an actor with no experience whatsoever in business, it was crazy of Hugh to accept it. But I don’t think I would love a man who never dared do anything crazy. When he went back to the theatre after nine years, that was crazy, too.
We learned a lot of hard lessons during our years at Crosswicks, years of raising our children, PTA, choir. One day I wrote in my journal, spotting it with tears: “We have come very sadly to the end of a regime. Poor little Touché had a heart attack and died. About one o’clock in the morning she woke me up, panting terribly. It was stifling hot, so I gave her some water, which she drank eagerly. And she just kept getting weaker and weaker. She’s been part of my life for so long. I shall miss her in so many ways, at so many times. Even that last night when she was so sick she crawled into the baby’s room and lay on the rug beside me when I nursed him.”
We had kittens, got another dog. Animals have always been part of our lives. But Touché was special.
We learned a lot during our years on the store. I lost a good many illusions. I had thought that all that was needed for a perfect society was equal educational opportunities. In our village everybody went to the same school; I quickly learned that equal opportunity wasn’t the be-all and end-all. I had thought that all farmers lived close to the land and God and were pure and noble. I learned that farmers are, by and large, just like the rest of us.
I overcame my residual shyness; one cannot be shy behind the counter. And there is much to be learned “on the other side of the counter” that cannot be learned in any other way. I learned about snobbery, and that people who were snobs were also people with no real “quality,” as my mother would use that word. I learned a lot about human nature, and at times felt that we were running a free psychiatric clinic.
We worked very hard. But it was our store and it was honest sweat. Hugh got the idea of running off a weekly newspaper on the church mimeograph machine, with news of the village, birthdays, anniversaries, the week’s specials. We were constantly covered with purple ink, but the newsletters worked, and business built up.
We made friends, lifelong friends who have supported us through the years, and through the storm of this summer.
Seven
Stormy indeed. When I kiss Hugh good night at bedtime, I do not know what the next day is going to bring. I remember being on a long hike where for the last few miles uphill it was only sheer willpower that kept my legs moving, one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other. This summer is like that. The prognosis is still optimistic, but there is a numbness deep in my heart. The fear that preceded the China trip is still with me.
Hugh does the best he can, tries to walk, to eat, to swim. One day he hands me The New York Times and says, “Here. I want you to read this.”
“This” is a distressing article about parents in Tennessee who want to ban textbooks because they might “stimulate” the children’s imaginations, and because in history books the chapter on the Renaissance “affirms the worth and dignity of man.”
The article has come to Hugh’s attention because similar parents are attacking my work as un-Christian. This startles me each time it happens, and it hurts. Or used to. Right now my attention is so focused on Hugh that there is no space in it for these attackers, who seem, at best, mildly insane. But it is typical of Hugh that he has noticed the article because of me, and his concern is a return to normal. Perhaps it will even increase his appetite, make him walk a little farther. Anything that holds his interest is improvement, and I am deeply moved that it has been awakened because of something which touches me. Hugh says of the attackers, “They are afraid,” and I suspect that he is right.
How could I live, endure this summer, without imagination? How can anyone even begin to have an incarnational view of the universe without an incredible leap of the imagination? That God cares for us, every single one of us, so deeply that all power is willing to come to us, to be with us, takes all the imagination with which we have been endowed. And how could I get through this summer without affirming the worth and dignity of human beings? Isn’t that what the incarnation was about? It is the message for me during these long weeks of Hugh’s illness. During the interminable month of June when he was in the hospital I watched the doctors and nurses struggling with all their skill to affirm the dignity and worth of the patients. On the cancer floor this is no easy task. Hugh told of one of the nurses holding his head and the basin all through the night, while he retched and retched.
But to certain Christians it is un-Christian to affirm the dignity and worth of human beings. If that is so, then I cannot be a Christian. My husband, struggling to eat, to walk, to regain strength, sharing with me an article in the Times that caught his interest because of his concern for me, is an example of the dignity and worth of the human being in the place of excrement.
With my imagination I try to be hopeful, not unrealistically, but still hopef
ul that Hugh will get through this enough so that we will have more time together. But ultimately one of us will die before the other, unless we are killed together in an accident on one of our trips—not impossible in this age of terrorism. But if Hugh dies first, would I ever be able to stop saying “we” and say “I”? I doubt it. I do not think that death can take away the fact that Hugh and I are “we” and “us,” a new creature born at the time of our marriage vows, which has grown along with us as our marriage has grown. Even during the times, inevitable in all marriages, when I have felt angry, or alienated, the instinctive “we” remains. And most growth has come during times of trial. Trial by fire. Fire as an image of purification is found all through literature. Dante speaks of the fire of roses. George MacDonald’s Curdie has to plunge his hands deep into the burning fire of roses. In Scripture we read, “Our God is a consuming fire.” God is “like a refiner’s fire.” Moses saw God in a burning bush, a bush which was burned and was not consumed, as we are to be burned by this holy fire and yet not consumed. We are to be refined in the fire like silver. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walked through the flames. The Spirit descended and descends in tongues of fire.
Satan has tried to take fire over as his image, teasing, tormenting us with the idea of the flames of hell. Dante understood the wrongness of this in having the most terrible circle of hell be cold.
Coldness of the last circle of hell; coldness of heart; lack of compassion; treating people as objects (a reasonable definition of pornography, Hugh says); pride; setting ourselves apart from the “others”—all these are cold.
It is a terrible choice: the purifying fire of the Creator or the deathly cold fire of Satan.
It is the fire this summer, and I can only pray that it will be purifying.
I spend a week going back and forth to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, a little over an hour from Crosswicks. When I accepted the job of teaching one of the workshops at this excellent writers’ conference I had expected to be there for the full five days, but with Hugh’s illness this is impossible. I feel that I must honor my commitment, however, and kind friends are arranging daily transportation so that I can commute.
Two-Part Invention Page 12
