A Complicated Marriage

by Janice Van Horne

  At last there was some murmuring about dinner. My stomach rumbled. At least, until I heard David in his mountain-man way going on at length about the deer he recently shot. It had been hanging from a tree and now, suitably bloodless and hacked up, it was to be on tonight’s menu. He reminded me of my brother, a hunter of a different sort, who as a small boy with a BB gun quickly graduated to more lethal weapons and bloodier venues than Westchester County. Norden would shoot his way through North America, Africa, and the mountainous reaches of Nepal and Russia, decking the walls of his conservative suburban Denver house with his glassy-eyed trophies. Even before I was a teenager, our freezer was often filled with suspicious hunks of this and that. But, though teased unmercifully for being a sissy, I succeeded in never swallowing a bite.

  As David threw the slabs of venison over the fire, I asked if I could help. He gave me some onions and garlic to chop. As I started to peel the garlic, he grabbed the cloves and with a loud thwack of his massive fist decimated them and shoveled them into a frying pan of sizzling butter. He suggested I might set the table. Humbled, I beat a retreat, wondering if this time I would be able to avoid swallowing and, more important, whether there would be any bread, a more comforting sop for my hunger. Somehow I did manage, and there was bread. The Scotch helped. And I was grateful to that deer. I had heard the stories about David’s pies that he would concoct for guests out of chipmunks, groundhogs, and any other furry critter that might get in the crosshairs of his rifle.

  Later, as the men settled in for more talk and cigars, my real job became clear—I was to play the woman’s part and clean up. At least I knew how to do that. I was at the sink, washing the dishes, when David suddenly appeared behind me. He startled me with his closeness and anger. That graveled voice boomed: “Where do you think you are? Have you ever heard of a well? Do you think the world is made of water?” I heard the unspoken message: You good-for-nothing stupid bitch! He pushed me aside, turned off the water, grabbed a dishpan out of thin air, slammed it into the sink, and started doing the dishes as he and God intended. He flung me a dishtowel. I wanted to scream, punch him, hang him from a tree. I didn’t. I wanted Clem to punch him. He didn’t.

  David was silent, intent and efficient at his task. I meekly started drying. Soon after, I went to bed. It would be hours before Clem turned in. I curled up in the corner of the bed, facing the concrete blocks. I counted them. I memorized the grainy map of them and stroked their coarse cold surface.

  Most of the next day was spent in David’s studio, a large structure down the drive from the house. Clem said David could build a complement of tanks there; it was that big and that filled with steel and hoists and welding equipment. I liked the feel of it. It was what a sculpture factory should be like. The possibilities—anything could materialize. The men were so happy there, and now and then we went out into the fields to look at the finished pieces mounted on their concrete slabs.

  Everything was warmed and softened with the sunlight. I was at ease. I now knew that we would be leaving today. I also knew that plans didn’t always count for much. I saw those steel pieces, some delicately filigreed and soaring, some as hefty as David, soldiering as they caught the sun and threw their shadows across that large field that sloped away from the cinder block house. This morning there were no wolves and even the house looked almost inviting. Could concrete look pink in the sun? This morning I liked where I was.

  When we finally left the compound, it was dark again. I never did see the town or the lake. Maybe we stopped at a diner along the way, maybe I ordered the soul food of childhood, meat loaf and mashed potatoes.

  The feelings evoked by that visit to David were not unique. During those early years, I invariably felt at a loss when visiting Clem’s friends out of town. If I found artists difficult, artists without wives or girlfriends were my nadir. Writers were easier; they enjoyed batting the conversational ball, had a wider curiosity and laughed more, and enjoyed their creature comforts. But writers were a rarity in Clem’s life. And the women? Well, they softened my landings, softened the edges. Sometimes, not always.

  Not that I hadn’t any experience being in a man’s place. After all, Clem had been living alone at Bank Street for some ten years when we met. But there was an important difference between David’s or any other artist’s place, and Clem’s: I was wanted at Clem’s. With the others, it wasn’t that I was not wanted; it was simply that they were indifferent to my presence. Though I was certainly aware that my feelings of inadequacy and unease contributed to the problem, I was as yet unable to resolve them. I also knew that my interactions would have been eased if I had been able to merge the artists with their work that gave me so much pleasure. That would be harder for me to do. The indelible imprint of the men themselves—the sound, smell, feel of them—remained separate from the mastery of their art.

  Biographies and documentaries were routinely based on the assumption that the sum of the artist’s character lies in his work. Many artists would have agreed. After all, wasn’t art the through-line of their life? Some might have even agreed that they had been fated to play out the Faustian drama: The greater their renown, the more difficult their lives. David must have agreed. He was quoted as saying, “Art is a luxury for which the artist pays.” He might well have added that those around the artist pay as well.

  After that first visit to Bolton Landing, I became familiar with the many facets of David. He was often kind and generous and well-mannered. He adored his little girls. He could also be angry and blusteringly full of himself. At times he was depressed and sad. And he could drink a lot. In other words, he was human. For my part, even though I grew up a bit and gained confidence, I nonetheless knew that David and I weren’t a good fit. And though he played an intimate part in our lives and we saw him often both in Bolton and in New York, I kept my emotional distance.

  My relationship with David, as well as with other artists, would soon become more relaxed. I stopped asking myself the questions of an insecure child. Will they accept me, maybe even like me? Will they make me cry, or just bore me to tears? Or will they not notice me at all? And I came to accept that, in their insular world, I would have little conversational entrée, at least while Clem was in the room. And I always remained open to the art. Art was everywhere I went. And at home I was surrounded by it, literally tripped over it in the kitchen. It was simply there, the stock in the soup of my life.

  As my perceptions slowly expanded, it was inevitable that I would develop preferences between this artist and that, this picture and that. And more and more, I warmed to sculpture. Particularly the living with it. I enjoyed the way it never stopped exerting its presence, unlike paintings, which my eye could in time skim over, unseeing. A piece of sculpture commanded interaction; I would walk around it, bark my shins on it, dust it, and creatively find space for it. And since my first morning at Bolton, I had delighted in the way sculptures hurled their shadows, arrogantly enlarging their turf. I would always place sculptures near windows, and I became convinced that the images cast by David’s pieces had been endowed with a spirit of their own. In my heart, David finally did merge with his glorious art. I came to love him for having created those pieces and then for allowing them to become part of my life. But that was later. By then he had died in 1965 as a result of an accident in his truck.

  EUROPE 1959

  I AM ABLE to be precise about the details of this trip because, starting in 1950, Clem recorded his activities in a pocket-size daybook. Every night, at his desk, with the last drink of the day, he would fill in the day’s entry. Scrupulously noting the names of people and places, he would cram those small blue pages with his perversely broad-nibbed Montblanc. He chronicled the facts—no editorializing, ever. What a gift. Order out of the chaos of memory.

  I offer an example of a day during our trip to Europe in 1959, this from June 12. We are in Paris:Up at 10:30 bkfst in.

  Walked to Cafe Flore. Met Allanah Harper & Amy Smart; then (Adolph) Gottliebs and (Robert)
Goldwaters—w. them to lunch at Petit St. Benoit.

  To galleries w. Gottliebs and Trapp of Amherst.

  Spanish show at Museum of Arts Decoratifs.

  To tea on R. Rivoli.

  6-Jenkins’ opening at Galerie Stadler.

  Drinks w. crowd at the Palette on R. Callot off and on till 9. 9:30-dinner party by Stadler on R. Gueregaux till 12. To Dome with Paul & Alice, Kimber Smith.

  To bed at 2.

  I always thought that because we hadn’t gotten divorced after our trip to Europe in 1959, we never would. That I was along on the European journey at all was a fluke. Two years earlier Clem had come home early from Commentary one day and announced, “I’ve been fired.” No surprise, the situation between Elliot Cohen, the editor, and Clem had been oil and water for some time. Clem was jubilant; at last he was free to do whatever he pleased or nothing at all, and he skipped off to the liquor store. My heart shrank as the last picture-book image of married life—where the “little woman” kisses her “hubby” good-bye as he whistles off to work—turned to ashes. Clem returned with the usual bottle of Tanqueray. When I murmured, “Shouldn’t we be switching to Seagram?” I learned yet another valuable Clem lesson. “If you expect less, you’ll get less. You never pull back, the money will be there.”

  Of course, the notion that I might get a job never, or hardly ever, crossed my mind. The iconic “breadwinner husband” still hovered over the ashes. And Clem was right. Though we were stretched thin over the next two years, and though my mother’s diamond bracelet made several trips to the Century Pawn shop—that Bergdorf Goodman of pawnshops on Eighth Avenue—we scraped through.

  Then, in 1959, Clem was hired by the venerable gallery French & Company as an advisor for its new venture into contemporary art. He had already lined up local talent that included Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, David Smith, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Friedel Dzubas for the 1959–60 opening season. The directors were interested in adding a few Europeans to the mix. The gallery would of course be paying Clem’s expenses. However, even though his $100-a-week fee had restored us to solvency, it would never cover a trip for two.

  That’s when the fluke came our way: The Saturday Evening Post asked Clem to write a piece about abstract expressionism for the heart-stopping fee of $1,500, an unheard-of amount for an art writer at that time. It was an amount that would allow me to tag along, as well as allow Clem to extend the trip and see as many treasures from the past as he could possibly see. But the price he paid was high. I watched him struggle with that piece, which would be his first and last for a mainstream magazine. It was also the first time he had to consider the needs of his audience, not explaining too much or too little, all the while staying true to himself. He finally hammered out a middle ground he could live with, but I always thought he would just as soon have seen that article disappear.

  We made plans. We would travel by ship, Cunard’s Mauritania, to our first stop, England. May 15 was the big send-off. An astonishing number of people jammed the stateroom, spilling into the corridor, everyone from Clem’s family to artists to the far-fetched. Perhaps ocean crossings were passé enough to be new again. Maybe they just felt like champagne at noon.

  And then we were at sea. A romantic dream. A week of deck chairs, Ping-Pong, “elevenses,” teas, dancing, being cosseted. When he wasn’t reading or writing, Clem was staring for what seemed hours at the sea, searching the horizon for any storm that would slake his thirst for adventure.

  Too soon, we were in South Hampton in our rental car, map in hand, heading west, we hoped, to Cornwall. Clem, clutching the wheel, assuring me that driving on the left could be mastered easily. While I, after a few close calls with bicyclists, leaned half out of the window, yelling, “Watch out! Americans!” Miraculously in one piece, we arrived at Patrick and Delia Heron’s house, Eagles Nest, a rambling old pile on a rise commanding views of fields and sea, in Zennor. Patrick had spent his boyhood there and now his daughters ran on that hill, their English blond hair streaming behind them.

  The Herons were the nucleus of an enclave of young contemporary artists living in Cornwall, among them Terry Frost, Roger Hilton, John Wells, Peter Lanyon, Adrian Heath, and, perhaps most memorable to me, Bryan Wynter. Memorable because he lived atop Zennor Cairn, a steep hill accessible only by foot, in a house he had built himself, with a generator fueled by the wind, heat supplied by the sun, and, of course, his own well and garden for nourishment. Bryan also happened to be handsome and dashing and, like Lanyon, a glider pilot. Irresistible. The evening we went there for dinner, we stayed until three. It was like that in Zennor. Four days of parties, dancing, sightseeing in Penzance, Lands End, St. Ives, always with long afternoons in studios. And very long nights.

  One such night at the Herons’, around their long, crowded table, art talk fast and furious, Roger Hilton, the bad-boy cutup of the group, started to bait Clem about this and that. Clem, as usual, took it in stride, not responding in kind. Roger, not getting the reaction he had hoped for, switched targets to the personal, saying something about Clem’s having lost his punch, gone soft, since he had married Jenny. Such a feeble jab, but the tears welled, people made a to-do, and I felt like an idiot child. I thought my skin had finally toughened up, but once again I was taken by surprise, the words quick as a viper’s tongue. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but I had been lulled by the days of kindness and inclusiveness, forgetting that where there were artists, studio visits, liquor, and Clem, all too often there was combustion.

  Two days later, on our way to London, we crossed the Salisbury Plain on the lookout for Stonehenge. There, between one unremarkable town and another, sitting off the road on a slight rise, was an eruption of stones. No warning, not even a sign, we swerved onto a side road and there we were. No cars, no one but us, the circle of stones, and the setting sun. The brutish power of them, like a vise dragging me back three thousand years. I touched their rough coldness, walked their shadows, wove my steps between them, breathing them in, shaking with awe. I bowed before the mysteries that shrouded the astonishing site. Then, the sun gone, a new moon above, it was time to find a pub and a bed for the night. Evermore I would love stone and rock and the secrets they kept.

  The next day we drove into Hyde Park Gate. Quite a different circle, this one of mansions where Virginia Woolf had spent her girlhood, where the sculptor Jacob Epstein now lived, where across the garden I could glimpse the mansard eaves that housed Winston Churchill. At the head of the circle was the grandest of all, Cleve Lodge, the house of Teddy and Nika Hulton—Sir and Lady, of course, in keeping with the neighborhood. This would be our house, too, for the next two weeks. Meyers, white gloved and august, my first butler in the flesh, would be our guide into the quirky Neverland of the superrich.

  Upstairs, no grand four-poster awaited; Clem was billeted in eight-year-old Cosmo’s bed flanked by toy soldiers, with me adjacent on a lumpy cot in the former nanny’s cell. Out of nowhere, a personal maid appeared in the makeshift room to unpack my things and reline my bureau drawers with tissue paper. Lady Diana Cooper had vacated the cell that morning, she explained. Well, who was I to be picky? For the duration of my stay, my clothes would discreetly disappear and reappear, cleaned, ironed, a button tightened, a hem repaired. Another part of our household regime was Cosmo, darting in and out of our rooms, too early, with schoolboy chatter and curiosity. Clem was grumpy but charmed. The Hultons were abroad the first few days, but Cosmo would remind us that the house was not as empty as it seemed. He introduced us to his ancient tortoise, which roamed the gardens, and he showed us the tennis court, tucked modestly behind some shrubbery. All in the heart of London.

  The drawing room awaited, at once cozy and sumptuous in the English way, the sort of room Americans aspire to and never pull off. There we would have drinks and entertain our visitors. Behind closed doors, off the entrance hall, was the formal sitting room, furnished in Louis XV, its gilded delicacy defying human touch, the pale silk walls d
otted with Nika’s renowned collection of Paul Klee. A room we rarely entered except to behold.

  The house came to life with the Hultons’ return. Teddy, a small tidy man with quiet, unassuming ways, may have been the ruler of his publishing empire, but Nika was the whirling, radiant center at Cleve Lodge. An erstwhile Russian princess, she was tall and strikingly beautiful, with a cloud of dark hair, magnificent creamy shoulders and breasts displayed in dresses made à la mode for her, all in the same style: off the shoulder, décolletage just so, tight at the waist, shoes to match, open-toed, of course. She knew what worked—why play around? She was also a businesswoman, author, jet-setter, art collector, and society figure whose photo I would trip over in the morning paper. She gave us a party and arrived late. Someone said she sometimes didn’t show up at all.

  While the hospitality at Cleve Lodge may have been extravagant and on the house, I paid nonetheless. A rare bracelet of large cat’s-eyes linked together and set in heavy gold, which my grandfather had had made in Africa for my mother, was stolen off the bureau. I had left it there, and then it was gone. It must have been tantalizing. But still, who would have thought?