by Leo Lerman
SEPTEMBER 17, 1952 • NEW YORK CITY
TO GRAY FOY • PARIS
I went to the Balinese [musicians and dancers] and it was ravishing—the most beautiful and gay theater since the very first time I saw [sitarist Ravi] Shankar on a rain-blotted Sunday afternoon many, many years ago. This was such rapture—almost mesmeristic—obliterating theater and audience. Oh, the beauty and the humor of it—and the love without any debasement. Now, as though to complete it all, someone (perhaps on a record) is tootling a pipe down at the far end of the gardens. I sit here quite naked (a mountain—or a series of rolling hills at least—of flesh). Only the thin, serene, restful tootling— and the hurtling cars on the avenue—and the almost imperceptible breeze intimating autumn among the ailanthus leaves. It is sometimes solemnly beautiful here, and the house seems disposed to friendliness. I hope it means to be.
SEPTEMBER 27, 1952 • NEW YORK CITY
TO GRAY FOY • PARIS
The ballet has been so dreary save for Markova,64 and she does not have her former brilliance, but she does have something to take its place. She somehow manages to create the most marvelous period atmosphere, so that when she dances Giselle, you feel immediately that this is how Taglioni did it. She projects an almost lithographic representation of this. What a clumsy way to say it…. And then, of course, she dances with the greatest delicacy—almost tact. And her feet are more akin to swans' feet, trailing through reedy waters, than any other dancer's.
Oh, dear, darling, well-meaning little Foy Boy, why ever did you tell Eugenia [Halbmeier] that she was to watch after me? Don't say anything to her, for she also means well, but she now insists that I give her a key so she can come in whenever she has time to tidy. She says that she has to have one so she won't have to make arrangements with me, and also then she can come in and stay over. Ugh. It's no fun to be alone, but being alone is much pleasanter than having to cope with this new, emancipated career girl. It is nice of her to want to tidy, but when I come home exhausted I don't want to have to talk to her or anyone except you, and this I do by letter. I can't bear thinking about invasions of privacy. I like trudging about our happy home without clothes and so forth. Well, I will have to think up ruses.
OCTOBER 4, 1952 • NEW YORK CITY
TO GRAY FOY • ROME
You would love it here right now, for this is your favorite weather—snappy, crystalline—all blue and gold and autumn hazy with flottilas of leaves moving through the air—leaf smoke … Oh my baby … Well, I guess seeing the treasures of the ages is important, too.
Yesterday I dined with the Liebersons and then I took Brigitta [Lieberson] to Bea Lillie. She, Bobby Clark, and Charlie Chaplin are the three greatest funny people I have ever seen. She is marvelous. Something (life, I suppose) has happened to her. Now she is sweet, touching, and so miraculously, effortlessly funny.
Marlene moved into another apartment while waiting for still another—all at 410 Park. Her nemesis [Yul Brynner] is off to Hollywood for a week—with wife. She even bought him luggage to go—what a sucker.
The other night we had a citywide “real” practice air raid. All up Forty-second Street to the Hudson, fire trucks stood steely-crimson, spraying huge jets of blue-sequin water high into the air, the whole floodlit by the sort of light one sees when good moonlight is used on a stage—endless flourishing fountains, stories high, pluming Forty-second—fantastically beautiful. [Theatrical director] Mary Hunter and I were late for the ballet—it was so beautiful.
OCTOBER 9, 1952 • NEW YORK CITY
TO GRAY FOY • ROME
This has been a most upsetting day…. But first I must tell you some wonderful news, and you must think how Richard should know about it without his being upset. You are in the Met [museum's] show! They will be hanging your drawing in December!65 But Richard's wasn't accepted, and that makes it awful for him. He wrote me such a sad letter. I am so delighted about you.
About today—I went to a lunch for the Italians (who are here having their film festival), and I sat down with Dorothy Wheelock [Bazaar's theater editor], who said I had to meet the woman who owns the Obelisco [modern art gallery] in Rome. Dorothy looked up, said, “There she is,” and I practically fainted dead away. My heart actually stopped for a moment… and then I realized that Dorothy was looking at me with alarm. You know, my love, it was Eleonora! Madame Brin, in some moments, looks exactly—but exactly—like Eleonora, and since I never quite believe that she is dead, it was easy for me to believe that it had all been a dreadful fantasy … but then I studied her closely and I saw that she wasn't Eleonora, only very like at times (her very trick of peering at writing closely, for she is just as nearsighted). This was all a great shock.66
Then I went to see [De Sica's film] Umberto D, and I haven't wept so much in years. Even now, typing here in this office, I am beginning to tear. It's a very simple movie about what happens to old men with little or no money, whose friends have all died. I was on my way to a party (for it is evening now), and I walked toward it, two streets, and then I came right back here because I had to talk to you. I guess when we have finished this junket, we will begin to save for our old age. I couldn't bear it if you ever, ever had to want. Do you know what you mean to me? Do you know how grateful I am that you came to me at a time when you were most needed? Do you know how very much I love you and kiss your little shirt, which hangs, smelling of you, in your cupboard? Oh, my darling, usage has hackneyed words—and even gestures—but the heart's tongue is never time-worn. I will send this to you now, there among fountains and monuments and antiquity…. Please take care…. I love you.
OCTOBER 10, 1952 • NEW YORK CITY
TO RICHARD HUNTER • ROME
Sweet rabbit: Please, please do something to guard against being a lonely, penniless old man. When I think of you alone and lonely … ah, me. You should make up with Howard, no matter how depressing he is, because at least he fills your days. And you must sit and work. I guess you should come home sooner because here are people who love you. Today I see that life is a bitter, bitter thing, and the sorry days are longer than the happy ones, as death is inevitably longer than any living. Oh, Richard, please don't go on being such an obstinate fool. You have so much to give. I have tried not to talk about Eleonora, but I guess you knew what a blow her death was. But do you realize how much more devastating would be anything happening to you? You have been so reckless with those who have loved you. Please don't be anymore. It gets later and later. Today I am genuinely frightened about life, and this is so strange for me. I am quite naked—terrified—seeing everyone grow older, friends dying, becoming time-worn, oppressed by life and fear…. I think you must come home to those who love you and not go solitarily and obstinately by yourself. Life is a lonely business anyway, so please be with those who love you while it is still possible. You know, that day when you came from Buffalo and I was delirious, you hurt me more than in all the years I've known you. I had been waiting for you all that day, even in my delirium, then you went away—but this doesn't matter because think how long we have been growing up together.67
Truman and Jack have an apartment in Rome where you are, and Carson is there, writing a movie [Stazione Termini] for De Sica. Doesn't all this thrill you? Thank you endlessly for caring for Gray. See, you are good, not wicked like you always try to make out—a genuine rabbit, not a fox. Do you need money or anything?
OCTOBER 10, 1952 • NEW YORK CITY
TO GRAY FOY • ROME
I took Hurd [Hatfield] to Goosey's party for his sister Mina (the Proust female), and she told me many interesting tales of Proust and Montesquiou.68 Especially I liked one about the Whistler portrait in the Frick. Remember that Montesquiou is carrying a cloak in that? Well, this cloak is one he borrowed from the Comtesse de Greffulhe (just died), because [Whistler] felt that he needed something “light” there. She loved her cloak, but she doted on him, so she loaned it to him. After a year, she thought that it would be nice to have it again, so she asked him for it. H
e was amazed, and said he had had his friend (Yturri—the original of the boy [in Proust] who had all the men turn up at his funeral) return it, but of course that one never had, for he was a crook of sorts. Whenever he and Montesquiou went to visit friends and Montesquiou admired some bibelot, he was sure to get it in a day or so, with the boy saying that that friend, learning that Montesquiou loved it, wanted him to have it. Of course, the boy had just taken it, but M never discovered this—until the cloak. M is buried next to the boy. The comtesse said to Mina C: “Isn't it awful that Robert is buried next to that crook!” That's how Mina C heard this saga.69
OCTOBER 29, 1952 • NEW YORK CITY
TO GRAY FOY • ROME
This morning, in the Fifty-ninth Street station, I came up and ran right into Brigitta. I think that this neighborhood is her wyck. She was dressed in a little blue Valentina suit (very nice), Ferragamo shoes (beautiful and simple), a sweet sweater from Lanvin, a little hat from Mr. John, gloves from Basle, and carrying a package wrapped in Mark Cross. These contained binoculars as a going-away present for the Gunthers (off tomorrow to darkest Africa—with accoutrements by Valentina).
OCTOBER 30
I am off to see Marlene's new apartment, and then to Dial M for Murder (Maurice Evans), and am Brigittaing, and then we go to supper with Gielgud. Oh, I am tired … but everyone says how wonderful I look. Today I flew off to lunch at Kay [Silver's with the Tamayos. Such simple delicious food and interesting talk about Mexico. I love Olga Tamayo. She is fascinating-looking in that Spanish way—tight-wound, knotted black hair (the Cézanne woman has it this way), beautiful matte white skin, a red fruit of a ripe mouth, and such restrained, clear, chic color in her dress…. Also she has the charm of the genuinely mad.
Yesterday, at Alice [Astor]'s mysterious large festivity in the library of the St. Regis, that [lawyer Lillian] Rock at least talked to me, and she announced that Kosleck has stated that among Eleonora's papers sent to me were valuable Beethoven manuscripts. I laughed merrily and said that there weren't. She said that he and the estate would sue me to get them. I said that they could, and that furthermore they would have to sue the N.Y. Public Library to which I was giving them.70… Also that these things were mine because I possessed them, they were given me. I was in a pet. I have rarely been as autocratic (a Howard word) and I think she was amazed to find me so angry, because she tried to smooth everything over and blame Jakob Goldschmidt [Eleonora's financial agent]. I said if he were interested he could discuss it with me, but that this junk was mine to do with as I pleased. They are dreadful people, and she is even worse than we thought. Marlene says that I should have said I had burned everything … but I think I was right.
OCTOBER 31, 1952 • NEW YORK CITY
TO GRAY FOY • ROME
Marlene's apartment is indeed all blond and the bedroom (the only complete room, naturally) is extremely handsome—save one cocotte kitsch touch: When all the lights are doused, light filters into the room from under the enormous bed, outlining it. I queried, “When you put the nickel in, does it play ‘Too Old to Cut the Mustard?'71 She beat on me and threw me down on her beautiful blond carpet and we just lay there laughing…. Then she turned on her side toward me and said, “Gray will like this room?” I said yes you would, because I could only think how very beautiful you would make it by being in it.
MARLENE There was always a high time with Marlene, whether times were good or bad…. I discovered that to love Marlene meant that you sort of gave up part of your life. You could not open your mouth and say, “I really don't feel quite well,” because she became an instant infirmary. She practically killed you with affection. She anticipated your every want. She pampered you with too much food, which, of course, she cooked herself. But best of all she made you laugh always when you needed to laugh. She always had humor—gallows humor, outright street humor, late late night humor. She could laugh at herself and tell you about how she had been a plump girl, and part of her mystique came from being hidden behind furniture, so moviegoers couldn't see how plump she was. And she was wonderful at takeoffs of other actors and actresses. But I think she was best at takeoffs of herself: Marlene the insolent, the impossible, the spoiled greatest beauty in the world. Marlene the supplicant. Marlene the loving heart. To hear her murmur “mon amour“ on the phone to some anonymity (male? female? octogenarian? child?) was to believe you were hearing Marlene in love—love all abiding, forever, igniting, pealing. Adoration nourished her the way health food sustains others. Marlene so needing money—not able to stop lavishing … family, lovers, friends, self. So to Marlene the giver… Marlene the sexual symbol.
I think of a midnight discourse during which she matter-offactly observed, “Men want it. I'm not interested in it, but if men want it, why should I refuse?” Marlene, overcome by admiration, devastated by charm, undone by enthusiasm, felt she had only one tribute to offer: the remarkable gift of her beauty. She gave it unstintingly. The “great” were her “peer group.” What did her conquests mean to her? She thought that she was giving. She was taking care of all of them.(VOGUE, JULY 1992)
NOVEMBER 1, 1952 • NEW YORK CITY
TO GRAY FOY • ROME
Baby dear, sweet darling, I do love you so much. So, Marlene just called. She is very happy (fool's-paradise kind) these days because Mr. Y. B. seems to be deeply in love with her (she says), and his wife's new analyst has told him that he must leave his wife soon. I wonder whether Marlene would actually marry him. If only she would get a movie to do, one which would take her far away, she would be saved from all this.
I am sitting here in my writing chair, drinking coffee (made by me on the pilot light)72 and eating shortbread, still some of that old tinned kind, very good, and reading the Sunday papers before I set to work writing a piece. It is curiously pleasant in this house. It sits here surrounding me with you. This is where I first saw you, and this is where I picked you up from that chaise and carried you into my bed, and this is where I grew to love you so very much that now I cannot conceive of a life that does not center about you, loving you, you loving me. Oh my love, I sit here, shivering with love for you, shivering on the hottest day in November. How very close deep life is to popular songs. Manhattan is fallen beneath a still sea of fog. Remotely voices blear in the fog. This is a soundless city in a soundless time.
In the autumn, all the world reveals its heartbreak side… shape of fallen curling and clutching leaf—shape of hands remembered—hands flung up and away and curling at the fingers to grasp—what? Dreams… love standing beside the love-rumpled sheets… and the wisteria vine, having persevered throughout spring, summer, foams acidly green, against the windowpane … trembling, stirring faintly. So I saw you one early morning when I stood by our bed and wondered for a moment did you still breathe…. How the heart stops, the stomach turns painfully even at remembering—but you trembled slightly and, turning from left to right, raised the lovely curtain of your exquisitely veined eyelids (What master craftsmen fashioned these. You know, my love, I sometimes play a game of wondering whether artists when they die are then employed to create in people, in nature what they did most perfectly in life. So, perhaps your eyelids were fashioned by Leonardo, for only in his boys have I ever seen eyelids so beautiful.) … first the fringe, those improbable lashes which lie in the hollow above your winged bones… and then the lids… and you looked at me and smiled. When you smile I have blinding sunlight in my heart. I can feel it tangibly, this sunlight, I can taste it and even hold it in my hand. Then I kissed you, creasing your lips with mine, inhaling you, breathing you with every pore. Sometimes you are fragrant like a sun-baked wall or biscuits freshly baked or a garden of hot summer flowers buzzing with fat black-and-gold bees. I have read that extreme cold, such as it is to be experienced only in the highest altitudes, burns like fire. When I am in your arms and you look down upon me, I am in those high places … the sweet, sure dizzying gradual obliteration of self… oneness… then the hand touching, finding of one another…. Oh my
love, it is always morning in my heart because of you … and somewhere within me a beautiful consistent sun is always rising, moving in rainbow slippers across the white walls and ceiling of our room…. Oh my love, oh my love, oh my love … in each lovemaking the entire cycle of life repeats, the cycle of the seasons, the hours of the entire day … a sun rises, a sun sets, and the moon attended by its stars and planets is here, is elsewhere … the tides of the seas return, recede … first the womb, then the death … time diminishes, time enlarges…. I sit here typewriting to you … and I am as full of secret places as a nougat—those honey-colored nougats… and in all those secret places what makes richness? You, your loving me, my loving you. I wrote two days ago, in a caption, that the Golden Gate Bridge is the longest in the world…. This is untrue…. We are. It is also, I discovered, painted red because of visibility during fogs. I know this to be true, for I also am red, crimson, burning like a beacon with love of you…. I suspect that if you are looking toward upper Lexington Avenue, you must be seeing me loving you.
NOVEMBER 3, 1952 • NEW YORK CITY
TO GRAY FOY • ROME
About Touche's Halloween film showing: He asked, and Maya [Deren] asked, and somehow I got to go to see her film there. Within was a dispirited group of dancerines [sic], but no one of any sex had ever laid even a frigid hand on any one of them. Mostly their eyes were kohl-rimmed—at least that is how it seemed. So when I saw one creature of indeterminate gender covered with milk containers (they were hooked together by string), and he said (in a squeak and cracked trill of a voice) that he was the Milky Way, I realized that maybe it was a costume showing of Maya's opus. So it transpired it was to have been, for soon Mr. Latouche arrived, streaked with what I took to be his breakfast and in a sort of space suit. He was livid because I also was not similarly arrayed. Then I waited until 3:30 a.m. to view the cause of all this horror, and when it was finally unreeled I fell fast asleep.73 Waking, I crept away before anyone could discover. It was awful. That girl [painter] the avant-garde is trying to zoom sat Groke-like,74 swathed in blue tulle and tarnished tinsel, looking as though she had swallowed Peggy Guggenheim whole and was now unable to digest her. Her name is Jane Freilicher.