The Grand Surprise

by Leo Lerman

  For a long time I stopped praying because, although I believed in godliness, I knew that prayers were inevitably requests. One always asked for something, like “Bless Momma and Poppa” or “Make Inky well.” Now I pray again, because I realize that one only asks from the great force of loving (of giving) in the world to give, and that one gets nothing but that giving is miraculous. So I ask that although my heart is whole again—and loving—that the bestower and creator of this be as safe there as here in my heart—the heart which has been made whole by the one who lives within that heart.

  AUGUST 29, 1953 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO GRAY FOY • burbank

  Today I called up Bill Inge to break a date with him and was astonished to hear him say, against a background of jazz (it was like opening a little secret window on a fever-bright concentrated vista): “I'm drunk, Leo—I've been drunk for three days—I'm gonna clear out now—I'll call you next week—So long, pal—” I worried a bit, but decided that I had troubles of my own. So he should cope with his. I guess he's put himself away. I hope so.10

  NOTE: In October 1953, Leo made the first of three autumn visits to Chicago. The first was a trip promoting Mademoiselle in various department stores. Then, in 1954, he would attend Maria Callas's American debut at the Lyric Theatre of Chicago. He returned again for her performances there in 1955.

  OCTOBER 8, 1953 • CHICAGO

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • paris

  Here I am in Chicago where I have been for four days. I have a huge room looking over that barbaric lake. What a curious city—the last genuine frontier town. So much wealth and very like Buffalo in a way. I've been seeing it on all levels—and oh, the rich are rich. Everybody gets into expensive cars at evening and runs home to the North Shore. In all the expensive restaurants are many Mary Bolands11 drinking champagne cocktails and acting like they had gold nuggets for teeth. Art galleries here are incredibly awful—junk jewelry, ceramics, and “abstract” paintings (almost all bad). I have been to all the “best” houses (called homes, as in New York)—the McCormacks, Piries, Bordens, Scotts, Carsons, and Epsteins have fêted me. The food is marvelous, and this week I have not dieted. On Saturday, I go home via the Commodore Vanderbilt [train] and that is even a better thing.

  Oh, how I lust to be in Paris: It is incredibly beautiful—a poem. Venice is a dream; Rome a succession of sonnets; Florence a bouquet of pale flowers— spring flowers; Copenhagen a box of wooden toys, a jar of hard candies; London the books one has read—where will this end?—But Paris—those full moons, one after the other, in the arches of the rue de Rivoli, in the dusk … I'll just be sick and have a fit if I think about it more.

  NOVEMBER 3, 1953 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • paris

  We had a little Halloween do on Saturday night last, and Martha Spider [sic, Speiser] arrived looking like an elderly Carmen, complete with a huge, light green, heavily embroidered in colored wools Venetian shawl—also with a young nephew from Philadelphia. He interested various creatures, but she intrigued even more.12 We also had a regular rash of blondes (as someone said: “Blondes from the Cradle to the Grave”). These included Angela Lansbury (so English cockney and nice) and her aged mother [Moyna MacGill] (she was the very funny drunken woman in [Minnelli's film] The Clock), Stella [Adler], Carol Channing, Brigitta, Marlene, and a girl yclept Missy Watson (brought by [lyricist] Adolph Green—he was not blond). We had cakes from Café Geiger and coffee and red wine and grapes. The house looked fine, with pumpkin faces carved by Mr. Foy everywhere, and autumn leaves decorating the fireplaces.

  NOTE: In late November 1953, a very rare form of conjunctivitis blinded Leo for weeks. The schedule of drops and compresses that ensued marked the beginning of many eye troubles. During his temporary blindness, Leo dictated some personal correspondence. The following is one of only two letters to Capote from Leo that this editor found.

  DECEMBER 7, 1953 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO TRUMAN CAPOTE • paris

  I cannot write this with the usual flummery. I am having eye trouble and currently cannot see, so I am lying fatly in the hospital and dictating. Gray says it has been like being on a two-week party here. Everyone descends on me and it is exhaustingly fun. Mostly you would think that I operate a goodies ring. I think I am holding a perpetual cake sale. Do not worry about me because I am getting better. I have a room in this hospital, which I am told has a fireplace and a real fake fire in it. This room feels like London. Also there seem to be quantities of attractive nurses. They smell nice anyway. As you can tell I am inhabiting and enjoying a new world. I think the ancient creature in the next room is not enjoying my world as much as I do. Among the events: a complete Chinese banquet brought in by [artist and historian] Mai-mai Sze; an elaborate multilingual get-well song recital by Jennie Tourel; Hurd Hatfield reading me three acts of a play about a decrepit toreador; Julie Harris and Edna Best calling up and Colombing at me13 … In my old age I am turning out to be a regular Ned Sheldon. I always suspected that he got up in the middle of the night and jumped about his room and saw everything. What a wicked wise heart I had.14

  DECEMBER 20, 1953 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • málaga, spain

  Poor Gray has an infected wisdom tooth and it will have to come out. He is in pain. That is why, what with having to give me five treatments a day—and all— and cooking and Christmas, for which we have little relish or money this year, Gray has not been able to write. He has headaches.

  I write so very big! That's because I can see this size—sort of. Oh, Reezl, I can't get your Christmas present, the check, into the bank until later in January, and Gray planned to give you a check, but I've used all the money up, and I am so sorry. If you were here or I was sure where you are, I would send you products or some things from stores where I have credit. This is the first time in almost twenty years I haven't given you anything, and I can't even cry about it because it hurts—the salt, I guess. Anyway, in two weeks, I should be able to do things, and I have much to do, unfortunately, with lots of research. Oh—it's lovely to write words. These are the first I have written. It was good and awful to hear from you [by telephone]—and so clear. I loved it and it made me weep. I was lying there utterly in the dark and there you were in Spain!

  JOURNAL • DECEMBER 20, 1953 Peter [Lindamood] came and read about Mrs. Lydig out of Cecil [Beaton]'s ill-written “new” book [The Glass of Fashion]. It is always intensified, reading or being read to, out of a book about people one knows. Now Gray asks, flinging open the bathroom door, “Is he writing? He's a busy one! I caught him writing!” So, I must stop and have drops and salve. But—oh—I can read better with my sick eyes today!

  This morning the Times published my Misia Sert review, and some ghostly hand had deftly added two paragraphs!15 I resent a takeoff in the use of “quaintly” in the second of these paragraphs, and I loathe having my name on work which is not even in one word or punctuation point mine, but where else to review? I enjoy writing about books. I must make so much money, to pay all the debts I have incurred, because of sickness and extravagance and the passionate desire to live pretty. I just told Gray I was putting on my house socks. “You must be a centipede,” he says.

  DECEMBER 21, 1953 Monday—But just then I had to stop, because of drop time and eye cleaning and ice cottons, all of which Gray does angelically and with painstaking delicacy. These are such darning-needle notes. I mean like those gleaming, darting, summer-winged creatures, precisely the sweep and the in-this-moment time of them as they shot brilliantly through sunlight, a green sunlight, skimming the dark pool, beneath the little waterfall, long ago at Grandpa's in Englishtown [New Jersey], at the end of the white-dust road.

  Yesterday Marlene called from Las Vegas. She said that making $90,000 was a lonely business, and she was amazed that her dress was considered immodest.

  DECEMBER 22, 1953 Lincoln called, rattling along in his voice with its perpetual echo of amazement and delight, a sort of perpetual res
onance of naughty wonder. He wanted to bring Christopher Isherwood here. Christopher has with him the youngest boy ever. “Twelve!” says Lincoln with that wonder and delight at the naughtiness of the world.

  DECEMBER 24, 1953 Last night to dine at the Berliners16 and Alicia Markova to take in, with Jeanette MacDonald to sit in my lap later (her chair having broken). She's Penelope-like, and, of course, to a small boy (now bearded and aging) blissful dreams come true. How she amused us all those years. I had a proposal of marriage from [press representative] Helen Deutsch! All she wants is a man to talk to, someone who sees that she eats and who will take her to the movies twice a week. I told her the story of Carmel Snow and the sailor whose cab she tried to hijack. “But lady,” he said, “I have a girl.”

  DECEMBER 27, 1953 Christmas elaborately for days.17 Eight to lunch yesterday and visitations from the Jerry Lermans. Gray exhausted and rampageous. The tree wondrous—and such splendid presents—but, oh, the agony involved. Tomorrow I will go ask Fuller may I borrow another thousand [from the bank]. This would see me through. I could then return the borrowed money to Gray and pay some bills. Oh the happiness of being able to do that. It's too much to consider. Everyone loved the Christmas here, saying we had the most Christmassy—and it was beautiful, with a delicious luncheon. The cost is too much. I hate scenes, and it is not worth having any visitors if scenes must precede them. Better peace than parties. If I had not borrowed the money for Momma [to have a thyroidectomy], I could more easily get some to help now. I am exhausted in every bone, but not in any corner of my spirit. If only I could work again. This morning I tried to read, but my eyes pained too much. I must be patient.

  I had to stop abruptly. My nose bled—two huge handkerchiefs-full. I hid this from Gray. He is sufficiently upset—all these weeks of actual hardship, then Christmas, and tomorrow his tooth to be pulled. This nosebleed could have been the straw. In trying to fix the electric light on the landing, he received a bad shock. Now I must stop again, dress, go to Billy Inge's and then to the ballet.

  DECEMBER 30, 1953 Tonight is the music. Now to get the stollen. The little darkness is trying to get in, but I know that it will not—the moment people begin to arrive, I shall be safe again.

  NOTE: Conductor Noah Greenberg, in gratitude for a piece Leo did in Mademoiselle and to cheer him after the preceding difficult weeks, brought his Pro Musica Antiqua ensemble to a party at 1453. Later, Leo recalled that people crowded in so thickly that no one could get upstairs or down. Suddenly, during the recital, he found the repetitive medieval music on period instruments ridiculous. He pressed out to the front stoop, where he howled into his handkerchief, unable to stop his laughter. It had been a tense time.

  JOURNAL • January 1, 1954 The blackness, or actually the gray, gray melancholy left, vanished. Glorious, glorious bright day when even clouded skies seem brilliant. Not for one moment did the horror return. So, one day passed without sorrow, and this was the first day of the year, an omen, I pray.

  JANUARY 11, 1954 The house is filled, like a water glass, with the flat white light reflected from snow, for all of the pavements and the ugly wintered earth in the garden are obliterated by snow, metamorphosed. It streams—a glittering winter hair—snow, the beautifier, with a harsh kindness, and the world is still beneath the snow, even street sounds, the voices of children, the chunk-chink of shovels are stilled, fined-down to a muffled purity. Gray cleared the pavements and came in overcome by asthma.

  After a little scene on Saturday evening, just before Stark [Young] and Wales [Bowman] came, something happened to me, almost a rigidity or hardness, as if a leather skin formed. As I knew, it was a mistake to have Stark, Wales, Maimai [Sze], and Irene [Sharaff] to dinner.18 Having them caused endless drudgery for Gray, and this was wrong, but we owed them dinner. Now, if we accept dinner invitations, I must somehow repay by lunches in restaurants. This will, of necessity, limit our accepting invitations, for I cannot afford much repayment (not any right now). Saturday's dinner here cost about $15 (with wines, etc.). At the Plaza, this identical do surely would have cost about $70 or $80. But it is very wrong to expect Gray to cook and all that. I will try, really try, not to ask anyone to come here. Scenes, which I loathe, inevitably ensue, and those I cannot cope with at all. Gray does not even know what he says.

  I am difficult for someone of Gray's temperament. It is a situation that, in a normal marriage, would probably end in divorce. Since I am too settled for divorce—and too fond of Gray—that is not involved. Also, we are not married. And what would become of him? Now I will try to avoid causing scenes. I will also go to my office at least three days a week. When I am here all day, Gray cooks and fritters away the day. I must try to remove any excuses for his not working. Also, I must watch when in company, and see that I do not rattle on. Gray is absolutely right when he points out that I am always rattling on, not even waiting until the person speaking finishes, but jumping in with some trivial anecdote about me. Again, I write here, only as though I peer into my looking glass, and the glass is filled with me, but life goes on outside my glass. I am such a taker—such a greedy, avid taker.

  What we need is to live remote, in the country—on Nantucket—with the seasons eating into our bones—even to have the attic room in Middletown again—not any of the misery, but the room, with its eternal snowy vistas—and the two red lights in the gelid evening sky, and the intricacies of tree boughs—and the scrunch scrunch of tires on Highland Avenue—and the endless days for writing and reading—but then, when I had that, I wrote nothing and read War and Peace over and over and “suffered.” I would not want any of that ever again—only the room and the warmth and the time—the infinite precious moments in which to do something—nothing—to read War and Peace or Proust or V. Woolf or Dostoyevsky over and over again and to write and write.

  JANUARY 19, 1954 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • paris

  Today, New York has sunk beneath a sooty, milky sea and even people in the streets are subaqueous. Paris is beautiful in such a winter fog; New York is hideous, for all the vertical splendor—the soaring of the city—is vanished. I guess I must stop now because my eyes ache. I know that the world will seem more cheerful when my eyes are healed. You know, I seem to have lost or mislaid that happy feeling I had years ago—about waking up and finding unexpected good news (or a check or something) in the morning mail. Oh, how I used to run down those stairs to find the check or the letter asking me to write something or go to a party or… I get loads of invitations, but I know that each and every one means criticism or a wry face or a scene—and slowly a certain joy has been leaving me.

  The doctor says my eyes are acting up, and I must have treatments every day the next three days, on the hour—at least ten times a day. It may take eight months. Ah, well… Don't be alarmed. He says all will be well.

  JOURNAL • January 21, 1954 Truman's reaction to [his mother] Nina's suicide. “Life is so bitter, my darling,” he repeated and reiterated. A new view apparently for him. And after all the worldly, or actually “sophisticated,” depraved legend he had built.

  JANUARY 24, 1954 I want to write a novella, set in a party, carrying the action from person to person as one sees a party, the mass impression, then the breaking up and the horrid isolations—all of it—the ebb and flow.

  As we sat lunching, idly listening to the 2:05 news—Hemingway's death by plane-crashing into the remote Ugandan jungle, not far from Kilimanjaro. So I went instantly to Marlene. She had just been told by Tatiana [Liberman], but did not yet believe it. She drank big gulps of neat whiskey, paced, and searched for his last letter. It had come about two weeks ago, while she was in Las Vegas. It told how he had loved her more than anyone save his “Pocket Venus” by his side (Mary Hemingway). The life he has been living, he wrote, was one of casualties. This was a bitter, sad, he-man-tender, loving letter, and now the radio supposed him dead in the jungle, while off shooting beasts. But tonight the radio gives some hope, the plane having sett
led in the treetops. But the place is dreadfully dangerous, beasts and all that—inaccessibility.

  JANUARY 25, 1954 Marlene calling happily in her little, tired-but-happy girl voice—now that Hemingway is saved, and she, of course, has the letter. What a splendid finish! An exhausting day. Hemingway wrote in the letter that he hoped Marlene would consider marrying him (if his Pocket Venus died) even though he was “a fucking bore or a boring fuck.” Also he passionately desired the days again when they had lain close together during the last war. But they had never had an affair—the comradeship of those days.

  JANUARY 27, 1954 How much simpler living would be if I could ask some people in. Mary Garden is here. I have always wanted to watch her close up, to talk to her.19 [Writer] V. S. Pritchett, also. I would want Speed to bring [salonière and beauty] Mrs. Rhinelander Stewart. [Political humorist] Art Buchwald's another. So many interesting people right now, but I cannot do a thing about this save continue to lunch or tea some. I know that when the bill comes from the Plaza, I shall be wretched at not knowing how to pay it. Surely, I am sufficiently bright and inventive enough to solve this. I cannot ask anyone to lend me a place. And now the problem of Richard returning. I must ask him to stay here, until he finds a place. He hasn't any money. He has always helped me (with money), no matter how he has behaved in other situations. I know that this will make Gray wretched, but Richard is my only friend. Perhaps for this there is no solution. What with piling up debts, Richard's return, not being well, and being so far behind in work, I wonder about the easiest way out of it all. I speculate whether the little tough wall within me will not suddenly crumble like some sea wall, staunch until the unexpected moment of its destruction, crumbles abruptly. So I try to make writing, even out of this—pretty shabby writing it is, too. What to do? This morning I even wondered whether I could disappear—go away, cut off my whiskers, get a menial job, live in a room, and write. But this is adolescent and self-pity.