Stravinsky

by Stephen Walsh

  Soulima was correct in his observation that a move to New York was being planned. Europe had not worked out; Los Angeles, quite apart from its social and cultural desolation, was impossibly remote from the first-rate doctoring the composer needed. In fact they had only returned there at all, Craft told Nabokov, in order to pack up the house and conclude various business transactions. They would be heading back to Paris in September and “camping at the Ritz.”17 On the 15th of that month, they drove in two separate cars to Los Angeles airport and took a midday flight to Newark, New Jersey. Milène, who drove one of the cars, kissed her father good-bye in the departure lounge, scarcely knowing if she would ever see him again. She did not. Edwin Allen, the other driver, then set off for New York in the Stravinskys’ Lincoln sedan, which was packed to the gunwales. The house in North Wetherly Drive was closed up. For twenty-nine years Los Angeles had been the composer’s home—the longest he had ever lived in one place; and now, though he had come to dislike the West Coast, and having said in Zurich that he did not want to go back there, at the last minute he announced that he did not want to leave it.18 In his mind he may have echoed Othello’s “here is my journey’s end.” In his body, whether he liked it or not, he had yet to find that end.

  * * *

  IN THE EVENT, they got no farther than the New York Plaza Hotel, overlooking Central Park on Fifth Avenue. Here Stravinsky’s New York doctors performed their first office and refused him permission to cross the Atlantic. So Vera set off in search of an affordable apartment in Manhattan—a contradiction in terms, perhaps, but less so when one learns that at the Hotel Pierre in June the monthly bill, including meals and accommodation for nurses and secretaries, had amounted to three thousand dollars.19 Craft, in any case, had told Kirstein that money was no object and that the only problem was “psychic.”20 He might, more kindly, have defined it as a question of suitability, so complex and intractable were Stravinsky’s needs and those of his various attendants. In the end, no apartment was found, and instead they settled for a three-bedroom suite in the Essex House, a luxury establishment on Central Park South, which combined the virtues of a self-contained apartment (including a kitchenette and three bathrooms) with the facilities of a five-star hotel. Vera optimistically signed a two-year lease, and they moved in on 14 October 1969.

  On the same day, Montapert’s power of attorney was transferred to the Stravinskys’ New York attorney, Arnold Weissberger. A lawyer who, in his spare time, liked to photograph his famous clients, Weissberger was a longstanding Stravinsky groupie who for years had acted as an unpaid agent and adviser on such matters as the placing of the premiere of The Rake’s Progress and the negotiations over a commission for the Santa Fe Opera.21 As a matter of fact, Weissberger’s activities on Stravinsky’s behalf had seldom if ever borne fruit, but his loyalty, unlike Montapert’s, was beyond question, and he was to prove by far the shrewdest, most devoted, and most professional of all the composer’s many legal advisers.22 One of his first actions as Stravinsky’s attorney was to draft a letter to André Marion requesting the dispatch of the composer’s musical manuscripts, which had been left in a bank in Hollywood in André’s name.23 Weissberger was advising the formation, for tax purposes, of a freestanding corporation (Trapezoid) which would become the legal owner of the manuscripts, with shares held in appropriate proportions by the beneficiaries under Stravinsky’s will. At the same time, the question of the publication of the archives had again come up. The day after the move to Essex House, Rufina Ampenoff arrived from London with a new contract appointing Craft and Souvtchinsky as co-editors.24 It looks as if the arrival in New York and the appointment of a new lawyer were prompting an attempt to regularize the composer’s possessions, material as well as artistic. The minute Weissberger heard about the Basle account, which Stravinsky had been shy of mentioning to him, he arranged for the money to be fully repatriated, regardless of the tax risk.25

  It was at this point that certain facts relating to the most curious aspect of the Montapert affair came to light. It emerged that, although Stravinsky apparently believed that he had given the citrus grove jointly to his three children, with the Marions as trustees, the document he had signed in April had transferred the interest straightforwardly to the Marions.26 It also appeared that André and Montapert had been taking advantage of their respective powers of attorney to pay themselves management fees on the Yuma account. Admittedly our information comes almost exclusively from Craft, who was the children’s legal adversary, and from subsequent legal correspondence, which by its nature is adversarial. For example, it is incredible that the Marions can have wanted to acquire full ownership of the groves over their siblings’ heads at a time when the whole thrust of the children’s actions was to secure control of their father’s estate as his morally entitled heirs. It does nevertheless seem that, at the time of the transfer, André—possibly unbeknownst to his wife—did not inform his brothers-in-law of the gift, a fact which only began to emerge some months later, when Vera asked Milène why the children had not thanked their father.27 Montapert had a contract with Stravinsky for the management of the Swiss account, and it may be that the management fees he paid himself, as well as the fees drawn by André, were legitimate and aboveboard. All the same, it is hard to escape the feeling that Montapert was using the children’s vulnerability, the composer’s helplessness, and Vera’s trusting nature as a means of securing for himself exorbitant payments from funds which he recognized to be unstable. As we saw, the children were terrified—not without reason, as the subsequent legal record shows—that their father’s estate would effectively be appropriated by his second wife.28 Stravinsky’s will, the final version of which was drawn up by Weissberger in December 1969, left each of his children (including Mika’s daughter, Kitty) two-ninths of his estate and Craft the remaining ninth. But Vera retained a lifetime interest in the entire estate, under a trust of which Weissberger was the sole trustee. Even if Vera had been completely blameless in regard to the children’s mother, and even if Robert Craft had not existed, the family might well have felt uneasy about these arrangements. As it was, their behavior seems always to have assumed the worst possible outcome, and at times that led them into actions of a somewhat desperate appearance.

  André’s response to Weissberger’s request for the dispatch of the manuscripts was initially to draw up an inventory with Montapert, but then in effect to decline to release them except in return for a general indemnity against legal proceedings in relation to any of his activities in connection with the Stravinskys’ business affairs. Weissberger countered by withholding any such indemnity unless the manuscripts were first returned and the Yuma groves properly divided, but at the same time he put in place the necessary documents for a legal action, including a signed affidavit by the composer himself, in case André should fail to comply. There was probably an element of bluff in this otherwise heavy-handed proceeding, but if so it misfired badly. Instead of holding the affidavit pending instructions, Weissberger’s representative filed it immediately with the Los Angeles court, Stravinsky was thus publicly in litigation with his son-in-law, and the suit was duly reported in the press. André soon released the manuscripts and the action was withdrawn. But the damage was done. Milène was bound in honor to stand by her husband, and that meant that to all intents and purposes her relations with her father were severed for good.29

  Thereafter she was dependent for information about him on reports from others. In November, Theodore came from Geneva to visit his father, and from him she learnt that

  Papa’s legs are completely paralysed, he can’t walk and can’t even stand without help. He sits in a wheelchair and hardly speaks, apparently not because he can’t but out of sheer depression and gloom. His hearing is very bad, and he sleeps almost the whole day. His mind is still perfectly clear, but he can’t altogether follow a conversation, being for the most part unable to connect its separate elements. He’s well aware of this, and it causes him a lot of suffering. He’s l
osing his memory badly, and forgets things that have just happened. Last winter, Soulima came to see him, but only a few days after he’d gone, Papa had completely forgotten his son’s visit.…30

  Paul Horgan’s picture of the composer at about the same time is of a helpless but not yet senile old man. Conversation is essentially with Vera or Craft, but there are occasional interjections from Stravinsky. Nevertheless, Horgan’s great affection for the Master cannot conceal the extreme dependency of his condition. The writer notices Edwin Allen’s sensitivity in the observation of the old man’s needs. Without any words exchanged, Allen lifts Stravinsky onto the sofa or back into his wheelchair. Stravinsky speaks so quietly that his words have to be relayed by Craft. Horgan kisses the old man because Craft tells him the kiss is desired. The scene is extremely touching.31 Yet one cannot help contrasting this frail figure with the central character in Craft’s reminiscences, who is still able to sign documents, instruct lawyers, berate newspaper editors, tease interviewers, and feign sleep or illness when his children come to visit him.

  And come they still did, his sons at least. Theodore was in New York for two weeks in late November 1969, with a brief interlude to visit Soulima in Urbana. The following spring, Soulima called at the Essex House and as before had a distinctly frosty reception. Vera seemed to be angry about the visit and again made sure that she and a nurse were present throughout. “In less than a half-hour I was told to leave. I had not had a word alone with my father, not a chance for the slightest intimacy.… I left feeling that the situation was forever beyond my reach.”32 Theodore had been better received. His conversations with his father were brief, and probably onesided, but with Vera he talked more. They were still on good terms personally, perhaps because Theodore was remote from the soured family atmosphere of recent months. He had not even heard about the citrus groves, and he claimed to know nothing about his father’s will. He did know, of course, about the numbered account, and when Vera told him about their financial troubles, he raised an eyebrow and reminded her of the Basle deposit, as if unconscious of the objections to repatriating this money. Vera, for her part, was baffled by what she called her stepson’s unco-operativeness. It seems that after talking to Soulima in Urbana Theodore returned to New York in a more guarded frame of mind and above all less sympathetic to Vera’s protestations of poverty, which were beginning to sound like a pretext for the disposal of objects that were supposed, under Stravinsky’s will, to be held in trust for her and for his children.

  Whether or not Theodore and Soulima knew about Trapezoid is unclear. It was not a trust (whose purpose might have been to protect the manuscripts, paintings, and other valuables in the interests of all potential beneficiaries), but a corporation whose primary object was to permit their sale under favorable tax conditions. Within little more than three months of its formation, in October 1969, the manuscripts, which at last arrived in New York at the end of December, had been inventoried and valued by Sigmund Rothschild, whom Craft later claimed they had accepted only because they mistook him for a ballet specialist called Howard Rothschild.33 The rest of the archives arrived in New York in March in a consignment of large cartons and were stored away in the cupboard in Craft’s bedroom.34 No wonder the children were anxious about their inheritance. Inadequately inventoried, their substance and extent largely unknown to outsiders, the manuscripts and other documents could in theory be plundered more or less at will by those with access to the Essex House apartment. Meanwhile, the Hollywood house had been cleared by Lillian Libman and Marilyn Stalvey, ready for sale. According to Libman, books and furniture were stored in a garage at Craft’s family home in Kingston, New York, while the most valuable pictures and objets d’art came to the Essex House, where indeed they belonged.35 To say that such things could be disposed of while their owner slept is not to say that they were. But the composer’s heirs would have been less than human if they had not been perturbed by the dangerous possibilities of such a situation.

  Meanwhile the principal actor in this evolving melodrama pursued his ever more remote and solitary existence. Fussed over by nurses and doctors, his mood and condition fluctuating from one day to the next, he was at once the center and the periphery of the social and business life of the apartment. On some days he would be well enough to go out. He would take a slow turn in Central Park with Lillian or the Danish nurse, Rita Christiansen, or Vera would take him for a drive. At other times he would receive visitors passively in bed, or at table when he got up, as he often did, to have breakfast or lunch. Very occasionally, they would all descend together to the Essex House restaurant. Nika Nabokov came often with his young fiancée, Dominique Cibiel; Elliott Carter would look in, or Sam Dushkin, or Lucia Davidova, or Francis and Shirley Steegmuller, who lived in New York when they were not away on Capri. One evening in December Auden came to dinner with Balanchine and Kirstein, got atrociously drunk on martinis, and disgusted everybody with his unwashed appearance and unkempt manners. In search of the lavatory, he tried several doors before finding the right one, an incident exaggerated (one hopes) by Craft’s diagnosis of “a certain tactile dependency on the corridor walls.”36 The dinner was immortalized in photographs by Edwin Allen, which show Stravinsky, gaunt but reasonably alert, Balanchine turning toward Auden, the poet slumped and incapable, Vera stern and aloof. It might be the immediate aftermath of Auden’s remark, apropos of nothing in particular, that “everybody knows that Russians are mad.”37 Theodore described his father’s situation in a letter to Xenya.

  He can no longer walk at all, and he’s indescribably frail and weak. In this condition, of course, he needs constant nursing. There are four nurses on duty in turn day and night—the nursing is first-class, and for this I’m grateful to Vera. But his chief misfortune is mental. He understands everything, and even sometimes makes witty remarks or jokes in general conversation, but he no longer remembers things.… He can’t coordinate it all in his head—and he’s perfectly conscious of the fact. It’s tragic. And of course he no longer has or can have any power of decision in the daily affairs of life.38

  Yet he could still take his old pleasure in good company. One evening at supper with Horgan, Allen, and the others, he turned benignly to Horgan, “lifted his glass—weakly at an angle so that its contents were almost tipped out—and with beautiful formal manners, he said, ‘Pol, hier haben wir eine sehr gemütliche Gesellschaft.’”39

  In spite of everything, Vera and Craft were again itching to fly to Europe, the minute Igor was well enough. But there were days when his condition made such a prospect seem distant indeed. And meanwhile, the atmosphere in the apartment came increasingly to resemble something out of Dostoyevsky or the Book of Job. Craft himself, in Libman’s not-unsympathetic portrait, was driven by a fear of the future and by the belief that, day in, day out, the world (mainly in the composite person of Stravinsky’s children) was plotting his downfall. She pictures him sustained in his anxieties by the rumor-mongering of well-meaning friends of Vera’s. Vera herself, understanding nothing of the household finances, worn out by present cares and blind to any in the future, was living her life through the daily fluctuations in her husband’s mood and condition. Libman claims that it was she, and not Craft, who insisted on Vera being given a power of attorney like his, so that she could draw money if Stravinsky should suddenly die.40 For a time in early April 1970 death actually seemed imminent. On the 6th he was taken into intensive care with pneumonia and symptoms of heart failure. He recovered quickly, but a week later he was back in intensive care with uremic poisoning. Obituarists’ pens hovered. Theodore and Denise flew in from Geneva. But still the spirit would not yield. By the 29th he was back in the Essex House, listening to Schubert, Beethoven, and the lengthy, complex flute sonatina of Boulez. “Let’s hope,” the Master breathed, “he doesn’t write a sonata.”41

  Four days later, remarkably, Stravinsky’s doctor, Henry Lax, gave him permission to fly to Europe. He was perceptibly better, and as if to prove it he was throwing
things at his nurses and generally behaving like a thwarted one-year-old.42 Their first idea was to spend the summer at Ouchy, the little harbor town on the Swiss shore of Lake Geneva where Diaghilev and his company had gathered one summer more than half a century before, not far from the Stravinskys’ old home at Morges. Then instead they decided to prefer France, and booked into the Hotel Royal at Évian-les-Bains, on the southern shore of the lake directly opposite Ouchy.43 They arrived on 12 June. Not unlike the Dolder in Zurich, the Royal was and is a five-star hotel grand-luxe in flowered grounds and parkland slightly above the town and looking out across the lake toward the Jura and the low hills and vineyards of the Vaud. If Stravinsky had been more prone to nostalgia, and if his eyesight had deteriorated less, he might have scanned from his balcony almost the entire panorama of his early post-Russian life, from Lausanne to Clarens and back to Morges. Behind the hotel the ground rose steadily toward the Pays Gavot, beyond which lay in one direction Talloires and the Lac d’Annecy, where the Stravinsky family had spent three consecutive summers at the end of the twenties, and in the other direction Sancellemoz and the foothills of Mont Blanc. Along the lake toward Geneva, one arrived first at Thonon-les-Bains, where Stravinsky had come from Écharvines at the time of The Fairy’s Kiss hoping to meet Ramuz, Auberjonois, and his other former Swiss collaborators, then eventually at Annemasse and the Château de Monthoux, where the Stravinskys and Belyankins had assembled for the last time in the summer of 1937. The landscape—Vaudois or Savoyard—was a palimpsest of memories that appertained especially to the composer’s first marriage. He came to it like a ghost, frail and translucent, or like the soldier in his own tale, returning from a new world to gather up the debris of the old.