The Grand Surprise

by Leo Lerman

  JANUARY 17, 1951 • LONDON

  TO GRAY FOY • NEW YORK CITY

  I have had a beautiful evening with Elizabeth Bowen in her genuinely lovely house.31 It is the corner house on Clarence Terrace, which is a great terrace and crescent of early Regency houses actually erected in Regent's Park. So it stands heartbreakingly Palladian and utterly detached from this world, like architecture in an old colored engraving—mysterious, remote, frozen in its own time. She and her husband [Alan Cameron] (who is usually too ill to see people) live there and—because of conditions now—Philip Harding has their top floor, but this is a very large house, and he is wonderfully charming (the only one of Alice [Astor]'s husbands for whom I can see any reason whatsoever, and I suspect that he still loves her. I must say that watching him I did begin to think that she is a pretty shabby woman).32 Elizabeth has a wonderful cook, a deaf Frenchman, her only servant. The house is spotless. All of the plaster, which she says was original and exquisite, was shattered by bombing. But the great windows from floor to ceiling with vistas of porticos and lake and piedmonts (all classical, like in illustrations for early nineteenth-century Russian tales)—most of them are intact. And she has the most beautiful china and glass I have yet seen. She genuinely lives with grace—even her broken chairs are lovely. We talked and talked—about Virginia Woolf and novels and her work and one another. I do love her dearly. All the time, the shadows of branches and lamplight from outside (when she drew the heavy, mossy green curtains aside to show me the park stretching away).

  Before this the Greens gave a lovely festivity. I met [novelist] William San-som who is very neat and well-tailored and soft, but precisely spoken—and it was fun. Penelope [Reed] is flying back to see me before I go—so that is a joy— and Dame Edith [Evans] called to say she was giving a small dinner for me, Alec Guinness, and his wife [Merula Salaman], etc., on Thursday. She lives in Albany, a place I have always wanted to see.33 So I have two old, old wishes come true—to go into a house in Clarence Terrace and to see inside Albany. All those dreams when I read novels long ago and wondered. If only you were here to share it.

  JANUARY 17, 1951 • LONDON

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • NEW YORK CITY

  Just a quick good night scrawl to say that this is the loveliest experience. London is cold (always), rainy, monotonous, and sparse in food, dirty … everything you hear, but it is lovely. I adore it.

  I just wanted to tell you this—and to say that I try very hard here not to be unhappy. We should be fulfilling these dreams of our youth together. You see, my dear, I do love you very much, and I will always. I am desperately sorry for what life has done to us—but at the core of all my joy here is our joint young ghosts—and sometimes it is too much. I can never even have the somewhat dubious solace of saying, “Why did this happen to us?” for I know. Well, now I feel better—but it was too awful for a moment jumping out of a taxi in Clarence Terrace right into a July fourteen years ago. I can even remember what you wore. Good night, my darling, sweet, pig-headed boy. Maybe in our next lives we will be wiser.

  AN END When I was flying home from London that January it took almost three days for some reason, and I, who can so frequently know when “something” will happen, did not even feel a hint. But when Richard and Gray looked at me, as I came toward them in the airport, I knew—but to whom and what? They did not tell me until we were going into my downstairs, through the gate. “It's in the papers.” Gray's voice was hidden. Then I knew: “Eleonora …” (1993)

  JOURNAL • JANUARY 30, 1951 • NEW YORK CITY Constantly I question how can she be dead? And I do not believe it—not at all. In the vestibule of the church, her friends clutched one another, pressed cheeks to one another's. Laci's coffin had been small, green, dark, and compact. It rode on a wagon.34 Ela's was large, lighter green, womanly—it rode on the shoulders of eight men. When the coffin came up the aisle, I thought that the organ had burst into the Mendelssohn “Wedding March.” I heard it distinctly. In the gutter, two bright scarlet roses twined together with wire, some of their petals scattered.

  The bad people got her in the end. (Laci got himself—his past, his sickness got him.) How can it be that I can't ring her up—her clutter still there in her room?

  FEBRUARY 1, 1951 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RUTH YORCK • MUNICH

  I am still in bed with the flu aftermath and the bottom falling out of our world. As you now know, darling, I do love you very much. You are in my blood. You know, of course, that Ela did not kill herself. At first, at two in the morning, when I finally got into this house and was exhausted from coming home by way of Iceland and Gander [Newfoundland] and they told me, I believed that she had killed herself, but then I was too incredulous to think of anything save believing. The next morning (and I still wait for her to call up), I knew as I looked at a photograph of her, which I saw accidentally, next to my bed where I have always had it, that she did not kill herself, and that either this was an accident or she was murdered. For a long time I thought: What is the lesson to learn from this? Then, last night, I realized how the pure and the good will always be done in by the bad and the weak and the corrupt, if they (the pure) do not take care always….

  This is worse for Hellmut [Roder], in many ways, and for others than for us. We have lives so totally ours and such capacity for living, and they do not have our resources—although sometimes we do not want our strength and would wish to be weak with the weak, and to lean upon and not be the ones to support.

  One never, never believes in death, but that is strange because it is so definite. Did she not die as she had lived? Turbulently. Mysteriously. Did she kill herself? Did she die by an accident of a pillow falling as she drowsed into love? Did that horrible man [Kosleck] murder her? Without you it is almost impossible to separate anything….35

  When Cesco came to the coffin, he saw the Maestro medal on her and he took it, but then he was made to give it back. How like in life this was—taking from her everything … and of course she also took—always. Now the wrangles with Twardowski persuading Kosleck to hire a lawyer on his own to get money from the estate, saying that if Koz needs three nurses a day, not to hire them, because he will take care of Koz, if they give him the money. This is so murky.36 When she lived, her life was surrounded with dirty, shabby, shoddy people, and because she was pure—above this muck—it inevitably came out good. Written in a newspaper, her life would not read with the beauty we know it to have had, with the sporadic generosity and the vast energy of love. It would be ugly, with the bare so-called details of her everyday living set down by a reporter. But she rose above this, making it a richness and a vitality and a dazzling thing—invigorating all who genuinely loved her. If only we had a recording of the little sounds in that room that morning, we should then know what happened. All summer, neighbors heard them fighting. Frequently, she would scream that he would kill her. The most incredible part is that we did not expect her to die before we did.

  I asked Touche to read the first Rilke elegy, and some Beethoven and Bach were well sung … but only the greatest music and the most magnificent production could have touched its central figure. The world having fallen on poor days, we did not have this, and without you to feed such tributes they do not happen.

  Darling … do you know whether Ela and [Rudolf] Forster were ever actually divorced? This could now be important. I have their marriage license here among some of her papers that she sent to me to keep some months ago….

  JOURNAL • FEBRUARY 11, 1951 Ela seems to be fading. I look at her only with delight, a sweet delight, and see her always in one of those wispy sheer nightgowns, her hair flying and that smile, that one-third shy, one-third imp, one-third womanly-wisdom smile.

  FEBRUARY 16, 1951 Faulkner didn't want to go to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize. The State Department called him and said because of the delicate international situation wouldn't he go. He said no. His daughter (in the local high school) said she would want to go. He said yes. Called Random House
, his wife did, and said Bill was ill in bed with a cold, would Random get him a cutaway and trousers? What size, they asked. She didn't know. She asked Bill. He didn't know. Random then had to know. She said couldn't they take a chance. No. She said Bill said to go to a place named Brooks. So finally they said they'd chance it, decided why be extravagant, and hired it for him. He went off to Sweden with it. Came back, said they'd let him down in only one way. The king of Sweden's trousers had two stripes, Bill's only one. He wanted to keep the suit, he liked it so much. But would they please have another stripe added? They have. They think he wants it to save to be buried in. Recently they sent him $10,000 for a tractor. He gets any money he wants.

  Yesterday [publicist] Leonard Myers told me that the day Maestro heard about Ela he wouldn't let anyone near him. He was in a rage. Now he plays his farewell concert abruptly—tomorrow.

  FEBRUARY 18, 1951 It came to me at Maestro's farewell that Ela was everywhere in the hall, because her existence was now entirely in the hearts and minds of those who knew her. Maestro is at last an old, old man, grasping with his left hand a rail (set around the podium for this purpose) to support him. He is erect and rigid with age, conducting with his baton hand (right), until he cannot control himself and breaks out with his left hand. The audience, very small and nondescript, wept. No applause at any time. He stepped off the podium and stood a moment as though to make up his mind, as though to resume some other more prosaic self. Unsettled. Then he walked away among the musicians, slowly, a lonely, sick, dying old man. The silence roared. Ela would have been heartbroken. He will probably conduct no more. But she sat there shaking her head incredulously, soaring with the tumult, deflated, less than vapor when he finished.

  FEBRUARY 26, 1951 A strange illness seems to have purged me of a wave of eating. For me eating is so much what drinking is to others. I become an eato-maniac, as Peter [Lindamood] becomes a dipsomaniac. Only a shock makes me pause. All cravings which are satisfied to excess are maniac and must be treated by the same general curative: Shock alleviates it for a time.

  MARCH 13, 1951 Last night at the Olivia de Havilland Romeo & Juliet, I realized that the Nurse was a wicked, genuinely immoral, lazy woman, and that she is, actually, the Mrs. Danvers who permits Juliet to undo herself, and even abets her, in what the Nurse must know is a fatal act. This Nurse lives in the moment, is spoiled, lewd. In the park, even today, nurses and chauffeurs of this astonishing irresponsibility are to be found. Edith Evans came close to playing her, but I have never seen a production which has been staged to present her this way. Perhaps it would be anticapitalist.

  MAY 3, 1951 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • ATHENS

  Remember about the hideous poison pen letters Park East [magazine] has been getting from some maniac? We turned them over to the postal authorities, and they haven't been able to do anything about them yet. Today, one of them, on an open penny postcard, came addressed to me. It is a most unpleasant one—making references to sex, etc. Of course, I am very upset. It is quite frightening to feel—and know—that some crazy or malevolent person is interested in one. Also, what if they or she or he sends these things to Mademoiselle or the Times?

  MAY 15, 1951 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • ATHENS

  We went to a screening at the Modern Art—an awful movie, but we came early, and pretty soon a big dark-haired woman came in and spoke to me and it was Nita Naldi. Then a blonde, very pretty, came in and bounced up, and it was Gilda Gray. Almost at once Carmel Myers, Patsy Ruth Miller, Lila Lee, and Leatrice Joy joined our circle … and it was like old-home week and all the girls back for class reunion. Gray and I loved it, because they all fell on one another with refined shrieks of enchantment and gave us glamorous looks and were so genuinely glamorous and good-looking and more fun than these twerps today. They all said wasn't it wonderful about Gloria [Swanson]? And had anyone heard from Aileen Pringle? Nita Naldi said she'd had a letter from Betty Compson and Aileen was just grand.37 Then she turned to Gilda, pointed at Gray, and said she didn't know this child's name … and Gray sat there round-eyed and blushing. Then Luise [Rainer] and Josephine Hull [of the movie Harvey] came in and none of these ladies paid them any mind at all.

  MAY 31

  Miss [Elizabeth] Bowen came to dinner on Monday and Allene and Mary Lou and Maggie Cousins (the Good Housekeeping [managing editor] woman) and later Louis and Emmy Lou [Kronenberger]38 and Alice and Touche, and it was loads of fun. Miss Bowen told somebody that this is her favorite house in New York, and she loves best to come here. I was pleased because something like this is still unreal to me and it's a long way from Momma's.

  So I had a tea on my birthday [May 23]. It was a nice tea, which Gray and Eugenia [Halbmeier] provided. I contributed the cake, one of those big strawberry ones from Long's, and twenty-five people, including us, came and I didn't get many presents because I didn't tell anyone it was my birthday, but I didn't mind, mostly I minded that you and Eleonora weren't here. Those horrors had her secretly cremated. She was terrified of that, and they knew it. I wonder whether they wanted to destroy some sort of evidence. But what's the good of worrying now. It can't bring her back.

  JUNE 11, 1951 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • ATHENS

  So now I've seen all the remaining great country houses in [New York's] Dutchess and Columbia counties, and I've had the perfect weekend at Alice's. It's like the dream prewar English country houses—endless nannies, dogs, friendly servants, flowers everywhere, wonderful food “created” by a great chef, such privacy, space, and fun—and so many books and beautiful things and your shoes and clothes all cleaned and pressed every day and breakfast in bed or on the terrace, which looks out over the Hudson—and scones for tea and elevenses (but nobody is down that early save I). Did you know that Mr. Astor wrote bad Jules Verne stories for a hobby?

  My deep anguish over Eleonora has been transmuted to an acceptance now. Marlene did this by telling me that had she lived it would have been dreadful for her. The narcotic squad was about to put her away. It's a bizarre story—and such a Lily Bart end.39

  JOURNAL • JUNE 13, 1951 Yesterday I was fired from Park East. “You set the magazine up and did very well for us. Now we feel we can go on without you.” I gave a party and everyone had a lovely time, even the day was beautiful.

  JUNE 17, 1951 Early this morning, at about 1:45, I went to lock the iron garden door, as we always do before taking to our bed. I looked out into our garden. To the right—halfway or so out, I know the exact spot—a man stood. He was in a pale-colored (perhaps white) summer suit. I saw distinctly (all in a moment) how it was cut—with the jacket corners rounded instead of square. His hands and arms were hanging down straight at his sides. He wore black shoes. He stood dreadfully still. I looked straight at him—but suddenly screamed—such an almost strangled sound: “Gray! Gray!” As he came running from the closet and latched the door, I ran through the bedroom to the refrigerator, here I hid my face and wept and shivered. All the time, I repeated, “A man in the garden—standing in pale summer clothes—” I did run before I saw this man's face. I was terrified. I sat on the bed and wept. I had a feeling that this had something to do with Richard. I did not tell Gray, but I have had little flashes of uneasiness about Richard these last two or three days. This was a small, neat, slender man standing silently, diagonally in the garden. When we looked later—as I knew—he was gone. It gave some sort of solid comfort to stand on the same stone where he had stood. Gray and I were both shattered by this experience. I told him I would tell him next week with whom the man was connected. I will not say now because saying frequently makes a suspicion—all too true.

  JUNE 18, 1951 Today, almost all day—or rather yesterday now—I was so close to tears. I suppose that this is what is known as “a highly unsettled state.” Now this morning, after Gray lowered the bedroom blind, I was forced to raise it, so the poor ghost—whoever he is—and oh please, please that he isn't who—but I
wanted him to know that he is welcome here, and that I love him, and that yesterday morning I ran away because it was so unexpected and sudden. Not even in a private notebook can I write what is deep within me. When Gray asked what would make me certain of what I don't know completely, “Time,” I said, “time.”

  11:50 P.M. The weight seems to have lifted a bit, almost as though Richard were now coming out of danger—or free of it.