In My Father's Shadow

by Chris Welles Feder

  Granny promptly replied with a letter my father read as a scolding lecture on his failure as a parent. Although he had been reluctant to involve Skipper in this matter, he now sent him a heartrending appeal. “Virginia wants me to stop seeing Christopher,” he began,

  and she quotes “The Hills” as agreeing with her. I wrote Hortense asking her to deny—or at least hoping she’d deny this astonishing claim of my ex-wife’s. Her answer frankly horrified me. She states that it is “hard” for Chrissie to have a “part-time” father, that the “wonderful times” she had with me last Christmas and spring only made my absences more difficult. This is obviously nonsense. I am not responsible for the child having spent her summer holidays in South Africa, and I don’t suppose Hortense would say that I should have made an attempt to keep Christopher from seeing her mother. She—Hortense—then goes on to quote Christopher as saying “wistfully” that she “doesn’t know how to reach me.” This is more nonsense. The same business address which Christopher has had for almost two years will forward my mail, when I’m not in Paris, within a matter of days.

  My father urges Skipper to read the letter he wrote to Hortense “and then see if you, too, feel that ‘it would be better if I didn’t see Christopher at all.’”

  Under the heading Supplementary Information Dept., he enumerates the points in his defense. First, he has paid in full my school tuition and other expenses. Second, he has written “many more letters to Christopher than she has written to me. There is honestly no question of neglect on that matter.” (Nor was there any truth in his claims to have paid for my schooling and showered me with letters.) Third and fourth, he has never uttered a word of criticism against my mother or the way she has brought me up—quite the reverse—nor has he shown the slightest disapproval of my Swiss school or any other school. “My only conversations with Christopher regarding education have had to do with the necessary limitations of all schools.”

  He goes on to tell Skipper that after appealing to Hortense, she “has only seen fit to send me little lessons on how to be a good parent.” While he fully grants her the right to do this, he also recognizes that Hortense thinks men are usually in the wrong. “Well, God knows, I’m wrong a lot more times than I’m right—but this time there really is some justice on my side,” my father concludes.

  Christopher and I have been getting along so marvelously together . . . Well, anyway, I do think that this is a moment when “The Hills” ought to be flocking around my banner without any prior attempt to judge me, and if there are to be attempts to keep me away from my daughter, I hope “The Hills” will make it pretty strongly clear that they’re not part of the plot.

  Although she had not hesitated to chide my father for not meeting his responsibilities to me and would continue to do so as long as she was alive, Granny did not feel she could come between him and my mother. “It wasn’t any of our business,” she told me years later.

  “That’s right,” Skipper agreed, “and besides we hadn’t seen Virginia in years, and we didn’t even know that English gent she’d married … major somebody or other.”

  “Jack Pringle,” I put in.

  “Right. Well, this Pringle guy was making all the decisions where you were concerned, Chris—“

  “Like deciding you weren’t ‘college material,’ “ Granny huffed.

  “—and Virginia was going along with whatever this Pringle guy said, and we didn’t feel we could stick our oar in.”

  While I understood the Hills’ position, it hurt my father deeply at the time. He saw their refusal to come to his defense as their lack of faith in him as a parent. He had been counting on them to put matters right with my mother because, as he had confessed in his letter to Skipper, “I’m in no condition for this Christopher business.” He was going through “fairly hysterical times” with “millions of troubles and so little dough that I’m actually facing a winter without an overcoat.”

  A CHILLY RECEPTION was waiting for me in Johannesburg when I returned that summer of 1954. Although Jackie could not dispute the excellent report he had received from Madame Favre, he found constant fault with my behavior, being determined to snuff out the “unattractive conceit” he thought he had detected in my letters home. Whether we were having our afternoon tea on the veranda or were gathered around the dinner table, I could not open my mouth without being told my ideas were “half-baked,” I was “wet behind the ears,” and that at my age it was “unattractive” to put forward my opinions. What could I possibly contribute to the conversation that would be of the slightest interest or importance? I would do better to drink my tea, eat my dinner, and listen attentively to those who were older, wiser, and better informed.

  Yet learning to keep my thoughts to myself did not win approval either. “Chrissie hasn’t said a word all evening,” my mother observed to Jackie one night during dinner, speaking as though I were not in the room. “Do you think she’s sulking about something? What a bore it is having to live with a moody adolescent!”

  “Why are you so sullen, Chrissie?” Jackie demanded, staring me down across the table. “Why are you being so tiresome, and upsetting your mother?”

  Not knowing what to answer, I burst into tears.

  “There she goes, crying again,” my mother complained. “What is the matter with her, Jackie? I really can’t take too much more of this. It isn’t good for my nerves.”

  “Either you stop crying this instant, Chrissie, or go to your room!” my stepfather commanded. Then, turning to my mother with his most charming smile, “Perhaps in the future, Virginia, we should have dinner by ourselves.”

  Later that evening my mother came to my room, where I was lying facedown on my bed but no longer crying. She perched on the edge of the bed, one tentative hand smoothing my back. “I know Jackie’s being hard on you,” she began, “but it’s for your own good, darling. You’re much too full of yourself after you’ve been with Orson, and that’s why Jackie has to take you down a peg, don’t you see?”

  “Yes, Mummy,” I lied.

  Where inside this puffy-faced, dowdy British matron was the slim, glamorous American mother who had been married to Orson Welles and Charlie Lederer? Yet what upset me more than the loss of her looks was the change in her personality. There was a new hardness about her, a suspicion of everyone’s motives and particularly those of Orson Welles. Whenever I mentioned my father, which I was careful to do out of Jackie’s hearing, my mother glared at me as though I had defected to the enemy.

  I waited for a morning when my mother seemed in a better mood than usual and Jackie was safely out of the house, exercising his polo ponies. The African houseboy in his crisp, white uniform had brought us our “elevenses” on a silver tray. It seemed as good a time as any to open up the subject that had been tormenting me. “Mummy, you’ve always encouraged my visits with Daddy and told me how wonderful he is, and now, all of a sudden, you don’t want me to see him anymore. If I stay in Florissant and complete the secretarial course—“

  “What do you mean ‘if.’ You will do what Jackie and I think is best for you with no ifs, ands, or buts.”

  I waited for her to stop frowning. “What I meant was that after I finish business school and get a job as a secretary, couldn’t I see Daddy then?”

  Now she was glaring at me and barely able to control her exasperation. “Once you’re out on your own and supporting yourself, you can do anything you like, and I won’t be able to stop you, will I?” She stabbed out one cigarette while reaching for another. We sat in silence for a while, my mother drawing the smoke of her freshly lit cigarette deep into her lungs as though it were life-giving oxygen. When she spoke again, it was in the firm voice of one who has arrived at a difficult decision. “Since you will be on your own in the next year or so, I think it’s time I told you a thing or two about Orson. You’re old enough now to hear this father you adore has some serious faults. You should know who you’re dealing with, and I don’t think you do yet. That’s why I’m ending
your visits with Orson for now, until you get your head on straight about him. Do you understand what I’m saying, Chrissie, or does that awful look on your face mean you hate me?”

  I could be just as tough as she was. “What is it about Daddy that you think I don’t see?”

  “Well, for one thing, you believe he really cares about you when the truth is, and I honestly don’t want to hurt you, Chrissie, but the truth is …”

  “He does love me. I know he does!”

  “No one knows better than I how seductive Orson can be,” my mother went on as though I hadn’t spoken. “He can make you believe you’re the most important person in the world to him and he can’t live without you. Then the next thing you know, he’s fallen in love with somebody else.”

  “But he’s not in love with me,” I protested. “I’m his daughter.”

  “The trouble is that Orson has no idea how to be your father. Does he behave like a father when you’re with him?”

  “Well …” I hesitated. “Daddy treats me like an equal, but I can’t say he always behaves like a father.”

  “At least you see that much.” The houseboy stood hovering in the doorway, and with an impatient wave of her hand, my mother signaled that he was to remove the tea tray. He moved so softly that I could hear the whisper of his starched white uniform as he bore the teacups away. “I think that’s enough truth for one morning,” my mother remarked after he had left. “I’ll just say this for now: As long as you think you really matter to Orson, you’re in for a lot of heartache and disappointment. I’d hoped to get through to you, but I see I haven’t been very successful, and you’ll have to find out the hard way, like I did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll tell you some other time.”

  “Please tell me now.”

  “I said. Some other time.”

  ONE EVENING, AFTER my mother had gone to bed early complaining of a headache, I sat with Jackie in our spacious living room. Each of us occupied a comfortable armchair before the fireplace. A recording of Beethoven piano sonatas played in the background. At such moments, I was seduced by the seeming coziness of “home.” Even Jackie sounded friendly when he asked, “What’s that book you’re reading, Chrissie?”

  I showed him my copy of Anouilh’s play Antigone, and then went on to tell him I had given a dramatic recitation before the whole of Florissant, playing Antigone, and everyone, including Madame Favre, had thought I was wonderful. Then, before I could stop myself, “I want to be an actress more than anything.”

  “Do you?” It was not a question but a mocking statement. “I suppose this is Orson’s doing.”

  “No, Daddy’s tried to discourage me.”

  “Quite right, too. What on earth gave you the idea that you could be an actress?”

  “Well …”

  “So you’re ready to go on the stage, are you? Do you already see your name up in lights, Chrissie? How extraordinary!” The contempt in his laughter made my skin prickle. “I’m sorry I can’t agree with Madame Favre and your friends at Florissant, but I think I know you better than they do. After all, I’ve known you since you were a little girl of eleven, and in all that time, Chrissie, you haven’t shown the slightest talent for acting or anything else.” He paused to make sure his words were having their intended effect, but I guess I wasn’t looking crestfallen enough because he added, “You are a very ordinary person, and the sooner you accept that, the better off you will be.”

  There were furious questions to hurl at the suave man sitting opposite me, smoothing down his mustache with one finger, but I fought them down. Nothing was going to change Jack Pringle’s low opinion of me or his relentless need to put me down. The silence lengthened and deepened in a room that had lost any trace of coziness.

  “I’VE ARRANGED TO have you spend this Christmas in Paris with the de Courseulles,” my mother announced one morning while we were having our eleven o’clock tea. In less than a week, I would be flying back to Switzerland for my second and final year at Florissant. “Orson wanted you to be with him for Christmas, but that’s out of the question.”

  “Then you’ve heard from Daddy? Where is he now?”

  “As a matter of fact, he’s living in Paris with some Italian countess or other.”

  “Then couldn’t I see him?”

  “No.”

  “Not even once?”

  “Don’t be so tiresome, Chrissie. I’ve made it very plain why you are not to see your father, and if I find out you have seen him in Paris or anywhere else …” She left the threat hanging in the air.

  “But how am I going to tell Daddy?”

  “Tell him what?”

  “Why I can’t see him. He won’t understand why I’m in Paris, and he isn’t hearing from me.”

  “He’ll understand all right. Don’t you worry about that! I’ve written him a stinging letter and told him exactly what I think of him. I’m one of the few people in Orson’s life who’s never been afraid to stand up to him.”

  “But I have to call him at least once, I have to, so I can explain to him.”

  “And what are you going to explain to him, pray tell?” Her jaw was clenched.

  “That you don’t want me to see him—”

  “That’s right. Blame me! Blame me for everything!”

  “But—”

  “If you want to go on seeing Orson and let him ruin your life, I guess that’s what you’ll do, and no one is going to stop you, me least of all, apparently.” She gave her little laugh, the one that meant life was a cruel, cosmic joke beyond her control. “But there’s something you should know first.”

  All at once I began to dread that I was about to hear what she had not told me several days ago when she had said, “Some other time.” She reached for a cigarette, lighting it, inhaling, languorously blowing out the smoke. She was making me wait. Deliberately.

  “I swore I’d never tell you this,” she began, “but you’re so pigheaded about Orson, you leave me no choice. I was seven months pregnant with you, and we were living in Sneden’s Landing.” She was referring to the rambling farmhouse with a garden and swimming pool that she and my father-to-be had rented in a wooded enclave not far from Manhattan. Then she fell silent, bending her head over her sewing. The South African sun streamed into the alcove where we were sitting.

  “What happened at Sneden’s Landing, Mummy?” I prompted her.

  She looked up with a smile. “I’ll get to that in a moment. I was just remembering the summer I found out I was pregnant with you. It was one of the happiest times in our marriage. The theater season was over, and we were safely tucked away in Sneden’s Landing where none of the people clamoring for Orson could get at him, especially all those shameless women waiting at the stage door who literally threw themselves at him. You had to see it to believe it, Chrissie, how those hussies ran after him down the street, grabbing at his clothes. Of course, there was no way Orson could hide out with me indefinitely. He was already too famous and the offers were pouring in from radio stations and even Hollywood studios, although Hollywood didn’t interest him yet, thank God.” Her voice trailed off and she was bent over her sewing again, smiling to herself, while I sighed and fidgeted. After a few moments, she continued, “Orson devoted himself to me that summer. Every day we swam in the pool and lazed in the garden. We paid no attention to Doctor when he wrote us from Chicago, ‘I hear you have a lovely house with four spare bedrooms.’“ She laughed, sounding girlish. “We didn’t need any company except each other and Budget.” Budget was the cocker spaniel they had named in honor of their early days of thrift.

  The idyll lasted, she went on, until Orson’s partner arrived unannounced one sultry August evening and stayed for dinner. Known to his friends as Jack, John Houseman had teamed up with my father when he was becoming a big radio star but was still eager to work in the theater. Their first smash hit was a production of Macbeth with an all black cast. “Orson and Jack started reminiscing about the sensatio
n they’d caused in Harlem and on Broadway, and how the two of them had made theater history more than once, and suddenly Orson leaned forward and asked Jack, ‘Why don’t we start our own theater?’ And that’s how the Mercury got started, the idea of it anyway. They took the name from an old magazine I fished out of the fireplace …”

  Why was she telling me all this, I wondered? When were we going to get to the terrible thing my father had done?

  The first Mrs. Orson Welles.

  “Orson and Jack found a dilapidated theater on Forty-first and Broadway,” she continued. “They fixed it up in no time and renamed it the Mercury Theatre.” They planned to open their first season with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. “Now Orson told me he needed to go off by himself for ten weeks so he could work on adapting Julius Caesar without any distractions. Ten weeks! I could hardly bear the thought of being without him all that time and rattling around that big house on my own — I was still having morning sickness, thanks to you — but what could I say? I told him that of course he must go and not to worry about me. I’d be fine.” She gave me the plucky smile she must have given him.

  “The night before Orson left for his mountain retreat in New Hampshire, I asked him if he’d write in a part for me in Julius Caesar. I didn’t care how small it was, I told him. Well, he stared at me as though I’d lost my mind. How could I dream of staying up all night in the theater when I was going to have his child? I had to swear on his mother’s grave that I’d stay home every night, drink my milk, and be in bed by ten o’clock.” She laughed. “He was so concerned that I take proper care of myself and our unborn child and yet he was leaving me alone for ten weeks … and there you have Orson in a nutshell.” She paused, studying my face. “Shall I go on? I’m not sure I should, really.”