Six weeks later, on his last day in Long Key, he penned a long entry in another of his journals that records an aspect of his life left out of the Success profile. His long description of a final beach walk reveals the potentially explosive disparity between his public persona and his covert private life:
It was my privilege to walk through this grove and along the shore with D—. Picture indeed she made, suitable for a Spanish romance of Campeche shores. She wore a white plissé shirtwaist [dress] that answered to the winds. Her hair blew back across her brown face, and her eyes shone dark as night. Neck and arms and hands showed golden brown with tan, and when we waded in the shallow water feet bursting crabs, her shapely feet and ankles shone as brown as her arms. Wind and sun had kissed warm tropic color into her flesh. Watching her was a constant delight for me. And walking with her under the palms and along the lovely shore was the unfolding of new stories … at times my heart swelled with the harvest of my riches. All this was mine, by right of heart, labor, and understanding.31
The “D—” to whom Grey refers was, of course, not Dolly, but Dorothy Ackerman. Since 1917, when Grey withdrew from Claire and focused upon Dorothy, Dolly had been well aware of what was happening. After years of pain and anger over these relationships, she had resigned herself to them and to Zane’s insistence that they were necessary “inspiration.” His productivity and success validated these claims. Though his outings were longer and more frequent, he always returned and reassured her of his commitment to their marriage. His continuous displays of need and gratitude for her unique understanding nourished and sustained her love. As late as October 26, 1920, the thirty-seven-year-old mother of his three children was still able to write to him in Arizona:
I could not help being happy that you were homesick for me, but the unhappiness your letter expressed made me long passionately to put my arms around you and comfort you, to teach you what was real in life, and what would bring you peace. Often I feel as if you were like a child that needed me most, that I had to protect and shelter from the world. I do believe you need me more than even the youngsters do, and that is one of the sources of my perennial love for you. After all, the filling of a definite need is a very important thing in a woman’s sense of happiness.32
During the early months of 1921, Grey fell in love with Louise Anderson, and his affair with this teenager toppled the quixotic balance of his life and sorely strained his marriage. Exactly where and when Grey met this attractive young woman is unclear, but she was the person who inspired this February 3, 1921, entry in his personal journal:
It seems that I ought not to put off longer the great task of trying to record what a marvelous thing happened to me in New York, during the days Jan. 5 to 8. Even now I shall never be able to catch a thousandth part of the strength and strangeness and passion and splendor of my emotions … it is not possible even to estimate the magnitude or permanence of the emotions. But I must try now before the memory crystallizes into a less sharp unforgettable simplification of fact. I should have written it all out at the time. That however was impossible.…
This girl seemed a creature born of my imagination—a composite of Mescal [The Heritage of the Desert], Lucy [The Spirit of the Border], Fay Larkin [Riders of the Purple Sage], Allie Lee [The U. P. Trail], & Columbine [The Mysterious Rider], yet infinitely stronger and sweeter, and closer to me, than all of them. It seemed something long unconsciously waited for. Anyway, it came and life and sentiment was transformed, revived, intensified, beautiful beyond all words for me … the vision I see in my mind is one of loveliness—a slender, infinitely graceful girl, whose every line was beautiful—whose eyes were dark and eloquent, smoldering with latent fire—whose mouth was strangely sweet and sad, small, full-lipped, imperfect of contour—whose face was pale olive-dark, oval in shape, haunting with a beauty of youth, fire, discontent and melancholy—whose bonny head was small and sleek, covered with many tresses. … Whatever it was that happened was only a star on my horizon when I was lost in vague gloom. Whatever the folly of it, the pity of it, the strangeness and terror of it—it is true. By these things I know myself. And surely a little of my real nature dare appear in these records. Sometimes love and inspiration are synonymous in any faculty of creative labor. I began that way. So I must end. Then I have the boy’s romance linked with the watered passion and wisdom of the years. What I needed I have found. How many years have these notebooks recorded my agonies!
It does not matter about the fortunes of this last and crowning love of youth, beauty, life, nature, mystery as presented by this girl. I may never see her again or I may never have her affections. Or I may lose them and her. No matter what! A white living flame has come into my heart.33
Zane Grey and Louise Anderson, summer 1922. (Courtesy of Loren Grey.)
Grey does not mention Louise by name here or in his other journal references to her, but following his visit to Zanesville, he did write in his secret code:
[I went there to meet Louise Anderson; never was there a sweeter or more fateful meeting.]34
A month after his February 3 journal entry, Zane left Altadena for New York City. The ostensible reason for this quick return was a grand celebration that had been scheduled for him in Zanesville.35 As he conferred with editors and readied himself for this first return to his hometown since the promotion of his first novel, Grey informed Dolly of his plan to bring Louise back with him to California for an extended visit. In her response, Dolly wrote, “Don’t know that I can say much as regards your decision of bringing Miss A. back. It hit Dot pretty hard and I don’t like it a bit.” Dorothy was with Dolly at the Altadena residence, and both immediately comprehended the significance Zane’s request that Dorothy be relocated into Ida’s bedroom so that Louise could have a private room of her own. After cheerfully informing Zane she and Dorothy were having a good time together, Dolly admitted her disappointment that Zane had not taken her with him to the Zanesville celebration, and her suppressed anger came spilling out. Referencing a $10,000 check that accompanied his request that she “say a few calm, soothing words to Dot,” she wrote, “Glad you place such value on my services. However, the things I’ve done for you can’t be paid for in cash.”36
During his Zanesville visit, Grey stayed with the Andersons, Louise’s parents, and Mrs. Anderson hosted a reception for him and fifty former classmates.37 In his journal, Grey wrote, “I was met at the station by an old friend—an old sweetheart (on my side, if not on hers)” and was taken to Maple Lawn Avenue where the Andersons lived.38 Mrs. Anderson’s death certificate reveals that she was born in Zanesville in 1873 (a year after Zane), that her given name was Nelly Dennis, and that she had a brother named Ralph.39 In all likelihood, she was the Nelly from Grey’s autobiography, whose brother Ralph circulated the lie that got him expelled from the dancing club. Angered by this injustice, Zane had given Ralph a thorough beating, and then unsuccessfully tried to win Nelly back by claiming that he “cared terribly” for her.40 She is undoubtedly the one who mailed him a letter in November 1920 and was described in Grey’s journal entry as “an old sweetheart, who in the tumultuous days of my youth, 30 years ago, turned cold eyes upon me when I needed friends, and encouragement and sympathy.”41 When they reconnected, whenever and wherever that was, Mrs. Anderson deployed her considerable charm to rekindle his adolescent feelings. When Zane did not respond, and she noticed his attraction to her precociously attractive daughter, she conspired to get them together.42 For his Zanesville visit, she arranged for Louise to give a dramatic reading of a piece entitled “Gold” at a dinner party and for a newspaper announcement that Louise was going to California to “study literature under the direction of the noted author, Zane Grey.”43
Zane’s escalating involvement with Louise and her animated enthusiasm for everything he did quickly earned her the inauspicious nickname “Calamity” (as in “Calamity Jane”). She traveled with him back to California and remained there for the summer. During 1922, she accompanied Zane on his Long
Key visit, went with him on a spring return to the Rainbow Bridge, and again spent the summer in Avalon. These adventures provoked a widening estrangement between Zane and Dolly. In May 1921, two months after Zane’s return with Louise, Dolly left for her first significant trip without Zane. She took Betty and Loren with her for a cross-country drive, a summer stay in Lackawaxen, and a leisurely return. This trip included a stop in Zanesville during which she introduced herself as Mrs. Grey, and boldly corrected Zane’s earlier exclusion of her. That fall, she wrote Zane, “But this—I beg of you—if you take the trip to N.Y., please go very soon after you get here. It is too hard for me—it’s a situation to which I have never yet been able to callous myself—that of not seeing you for a long time & then when you come back, to have a snob around. It’s requiring something almost superhuman of me! I can get away with the situation, but I suffer too much.”44
A February 23, 1922, letter from Dolly to Zane in Long Key reveals other ways that this affair was unraveling their fragile accord. With a cheery opening to “Ducky Darling,” she responds to a trip proposal in his previous letter: “Well, I’m glad you have so much enthusiasm. Whether it’s good sense is another matter. It’s nice of you to want to include me, but I don’t think I could do it. In the first place, after being away from the kiddies so long, I’d be wild to get back to them.” She voices concern that this trip could adversely affect his work schedule, and she urges him to keep that his top priority. “All your life,” she advises, “you have pandered to your own desire. Pander now, for a little to your work. It will repay you so infinitely more so.” To her closing protestation of love and longing for him, she adds more than a slight qualification: “The wildness is gone, the sex perhaps, the qualities in it that caused me bitterness and agony, (not altogether tho).”45
The waning of sexual relations between Dolly and Zane warranted only a passing comment here,46 but over the next year, Dolly’s uneasiness about the termination of their intimacy escalated into a fear that their much-tested marriage might be ending too. In the late spring of 1922, when Zane took Louise to the Rainbow Bridge, both Zane and Dolly were delinquent with their usual letters and when Dolly finally wrote on April 28, she charged Zane with distance and neglect:
The fact of your having failed to write me from Kayenta as you had promised had a pretty bad effect on me—for of course I know the cause of your negligence. I’d climbed a long way up the hill to peace and happiness between us; but this thing caused me to take a tumble that hurt pretty badly. And it was some time before I could gather myself together to start climbing again. In my fury and resentment, I want to go tobogganing clear down to h—!47
When Zane characterized Louise as “young and innocent” in a letter to Dolly, his thirty-nine-year-old wife shot back, “Bunk! I’m younger and innocenter than anyone you know, old dear! Do you remember the morning (in bed) when you said to me, ‘Dolly, you’re the youngest thing I know.’ It’s true absolutely. I know it, too. But don’t fall in love with me again. I couldn’t stand the shock!”48 The ensuing fall, Dolly observed, “In the last seven months we’ve seen each other less than seven days—and the future doesn’t promise much more.” She then added, “I’m wondering whether we ought to keep up the physical during the negligible periods when we are together. I can’t conceive how you can have any such emotion for me any more.”49
Dolly’s complaints had little effect upon Zane, and by the spring of 1923, she plunged into a Zane-like depression and decided that she now needed a trip to recover. On May 6, she informed him that she had played golf “to drive away some of the congestion from my brain,” and she added that she had “been so seriously depressed that I saw a doctor about it.”50 This brief mention of her condition presumed that Zane knew about her dejection, and that these developments would not surprise him.51 She also did not mention her hastily formulated trip plans. A week later, Dolly departed for a leisurely drive across the United States, a monthlong stay in Lackawaxen, a summer tour of Europe, and an automobile return that kept her away until the middle of October. By January 1923, Zane was sufficiently aware of this deepening rift to remark, “I fear my dear old Penelope is at last finding me not worth writing to or loving me any more.”52
Zane’s involvement with Louise produced other cracks in his base of support. Up to this point, Zane’s paramours were limited to Dolly’s relatives and kindred spirits. The surprising friendship that existed between Dolly and these women derived from their shared admiration for Zane’s artistry and their commitment to doing all they could to alleviate his dark moods and to keep him productive. Likewise, their loyalty was sustained by his confessions of need and displays of gratitude for their help. However, Zane’s defection to this much younger outsider left them feeling alienated, unappreciated, and resentful. Since her marriage to Westbrooke Robertson in November 1917, Lillian had remained close friends with Zane. He arranged a variety of art assignments for her in order to augment Robertson’s meager salary from his administrative position with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. She prepared a series of colorful posters for the 1921 promotion of his novels. She also painted ornamental Indian figures on the walls of his Lackawaxen, Altadena, and Payson residences, and she was working on the library in Altadena when Zane first returned with Louise. She wrote to Claire, “Good ’ol Doc—I wonder if he remembers how lonely it was before poor Cal[amity] appeared on the scene. That’s the worst of this old world, isn’t it honey?—nothing lasts.”53 Though her own marriage to Robertson was disintegrating by this point, Lillian withheld her problems and kept a safe distance away from Zane. Lillian accompanied Zane on the 1922 trip to the Rainbow Bridge and another one a year later, but her handling of some business matters angered him and strained their relationship.54
Unlike Lillian, Claire opted to act upon her estrangement from Zane. Back in 1918, when Zane’s attention had shifted to Dorothy, Claire was pained, but she accepted her displacement. She also remained a close friend of Dorothy, whom she considered a kindred spirit. Meanwhile, she met and fell in love with Phillips Carlin. By 1920, they were discussing marriage, but Carlin’s shaky job delayed the actual wedding until June 1921. Since Claire did not have a job and always enjoyed Zane’s outings, Phillips encouraged her to accept Zane’s invitation to come to his new cabin near Payson for the fall 1921 hunting trip. However, Zane was unhappy over her marriage and made little effort to get along. Claire grew increasingly resentful of this slighting and of Zane’s ongoing mistreatment of Dorothy, and she decided to exact revenge. Well aware of his intense dislike of flirting, she struck with devastating effectiveness. “The reason I busted camp,” Zane wrote to Dolly, “was C’s monkey-business with my hired men. I was disgusted. She is nuts where men are concerned, like her sister. That writes Finis for the Wilhelms for me.”55 A year later, after he learned that Dolly had allowed Claire the use of Lackawaxen while she was in Europe, Zane curtly informed Dolly, “I do not want Claire and her outfit in my house.”56
When Zane brought Louise back to Altadena from the Zanesville celebration, Dorothy bolted for the East and left Zane with a big hole in his emotional life. During his winter visit to Long Key, he missed her enough that he enlisted Dolly to repair the breach. Since Dorothy and Elma were skilled typists and adept at transcribing his handwritten manuscripts, their alienation created a problem for Dolly as well. Her own trips would be jeopardized if she did not have reliable help for Zane. Nonetheless, she realized that a negotiated peace would be problematic at best, and she responded:
Can’t quite get my responsibility in the matter of making up to Elma and Dot what you impose on them in the case of Louise. … Darling, how do you get that way? In all seriousness, you put it to me. Well I don’t know whether I want to bring them back with me. Of course, I know what’s happened. You’ve told them and from now on, they’ll plague you. They’d rather do that than go anywhere with you. But this is info to me. And I’ll have to think real hard and lots of other things before I make a decision like th
at.57
Reluctantly, she persuaded Elma and Dot to return with her on the car trip back from the East. As she anticipated, Zane was offended by their altered responses to him, and Dolly turned a deaf ear to his complaints. His efforts to mollify them with extravagant accommodations and fancy clothes accomplished little, and then backfired when Dolly noticed the bills and dispatched an angry letter.58 Wary of his adverse response to Claire’s marriage, Elma intentionally kept him in the dark about her budding involvement with Fred Nagle, and quietly she prepared her own subversion for a later date.
Because Dorothy was “wistful and sad” over the Christmas holidays, Zane bought her an expensive brooch.59 Initially she was overcome and became cheerful and animated again, but then restricted her availability. The week before his fall 1921 blowup with Claire, Zane wrote to Dolly from Arizona, “I’ve been having hell with the girls. E—has been hard to get along with. I have just about reached the end of my rope with her. And she has had a bad effect on D—. I might have to let D—go too. I refuse to be dictated to.”60
* * *
Grey’s women problems were matched by distress with his writing. His anguished state of mind generated corrosive doubts about his ability to sustain his phenomenal literary success and the writing schedule required by his contracts. In 1924, Bookman published an article entitled “Getting Into Six Figures” about Grey and several other best-selling authors. Its author, Arnold Patrick, provides unintended insight into the drift of Grey’s tortured thinking. Most of the information in this broad-stroke portrait of Grey was gleaned from publisher promotions and convenient newspaper files, but Patrick justifies his recycling with an introductory reflection on Grey’s popularity. “Of the work of all living novelists,” he asserts,”Mr. Grey’s books taken as a whole probably have the widest sale and the greatest reading public.” This causes him to ponder how few writers ever make the best-seller list, and among those who do, the even fewer who manage a repeat appearance. As he explains:
Zane Grey Page 24