The Grand Surprise

by Leo Lerman

  Mina made a list of her lovers, by categories.

  Maria, in her gray dress (very Colette schoolgirl, her work clothes) and hair down, was delightful, absolutely in command, treated the large audience [at Juilliard for her answers to questions] as a single, quite intimate friend tête- à-tête. She has a great gift for intimacy. Her public is her friend … and she has the assurance of being the greatest. Mary Garden had this superb authority. Maria said that she didn't like Puccini; thought Turandot an operetta; loved Traviata and Norma best; solfeggio music was the basis of all opera education; ornamentation was not merely that but always expressed emotion. At the reception, she was surrounded by worshipping young people. I was somewhat heartbroken to hear them exhort, “Come back to the stage. We are too young to have seen you and heard you….” Maria seemed almost as young as they: I felt old. In the lift going up to the reception, I accidentally touched her bosom and she murmured, “Oh, oh, you're exciting me….”

  FEBRUARY 4, 1971 Gray says that, basically all that Maria told the questioners was, “You must work hard, practice always, learn music first.” I think that she gave them many insights, but, most of all, a glimpse of the starriness and the truth that, beneath the glamour is an indefatigable musical-theatrical intelligence working constantly. She also showed them that she has humor and a louche sense of the ridiculous. When a big black man in a flaming-blue jumpsuit asked, “Miss Callas, why are there no longer roles for countertenors and castrati?” Maria promptly answered, “Thank God! Do you know what castrati means?” The audience was wild with hilarity at her look of horror—not entirely feigned.

  FEBRUARY 5, 1971 I did not realize that so many of those who sat beneath the gaslit chandelier (a shimmering circle of blazing lilies aglow over rapt heads) listening to Paquita Anderson playing her piano and singing her songs, listening to Yul play his Russian instrument and singing his exotic songs, listening to Touche and his supper-club songs—I did not realize that so many of them were on some sort of dope. Only when Ela came home to her flat above the carpenter shop after she had been in the Gladstone, staying there while [Max] Rein-hardt died. He died, directly, because Ela opened his windows, letting in a wind, she having been warned that he could not survive this and having the strength to do it for him because she had loved him so intensely. Also, now he would be hers entirely. So she gave him his death—or his rebirth.

  Reinhardt had gotten her with child when she was twenty-four, in Vienna, and because he did not want that child, she had had an abortion. That abortion had been so badly done that she had gone raving mad with fear and pain and had been given dope (heroin? morphine?) and so had become hooked. Sometimes her ass festered from badly executed injections of her dope. When she hoped to capture the object of her passion, she would go off to a sanitarium, ostensibly for help with her poisoned ass, but really for a cure. She would return worn but radiant, and the cycle began again. But this late morning when she sent for me, she was rigid with terror in her bed, torment and lack of dope making her into a raving, lost maenad or a gigantically grieving mother-earth woman. Her essence was her deep womanliness. She had lost, beautiful, tear-washed eyes sometimes made ugly from drink or dope or from the intensity of her living. Only when Ela came home and sat wild-eyed and distracted, kneading her hands, and I saw these beautifully shaped hands transformed into clutching claws, talons, did I at last know that she was an addict.14 I loved her so very much that I was not horrified but enraged. Soon after, I went to Dr. [Arnold] Hutschnecker (then Ela's doctor, later Nixon's adviser) and demanded that he stop giving her this dope. He has always hated me since, and I loathe him.

  FEBRUARY 6, 1971 Howard Rothschild, the great-grandson of a German Jewish peddler, helps support Kchessinska, the morganatic wife of a Russian grand duke. She is almost one hundred. He also helps support Karsavina and other remnants of the Diaghilev Ballets Russes, also Ray Papineau (the son of a drunk and a madwoman) and Lolotte [Lowenstein, Howard's cousin], relatives of very haute bourgeoisie French Jews, and he pays for many of Richard's outings (Richard the son of a farm-boy, printer's-devil Methodist minister and the grandson of a Scottish miner who became wealthy in Canadian lumber and upstate New York real estate).

  FEBRUARY 7, 1971 Lennie Bernstein, standing in the middle of his sitting room, encased in a dark blue, lavishly embroidered in off-white, Hungarian shepherd's coat. He stood there, clasping Adolph [Green] and repeating, loudly, “I've had affairs with every man in this room, well at least mentally, but not Adolph….” Adolph had prompted this outburst by sadly saying, “I'm the only one who never gets kissed”—by the boys, he meant. And, of course, this was true about both Lennie and Adolph. Lennie to his littlest daughter: “Isn't Mr. Lerman sexier? Isn't he? He's the sexiest man.” The child—not even ten—looked bewildered and then agreed, while Lennie pinched my ass a lot.

  Larry Kelly rang from the Plaza on Friday. While I was at Lennie's, he was dining Maria, who was in dreadful humor because she had just fought with Onassis. She is now using witchcraft—of her own devising—to get him back. Mrs. Onassis had best not accept any present of hot pants, no matter how enchanting, those could be the hot pants of Nessus.15 And she'd best not take or buy anything from endearing crones lurking next to her door.

  Maria on the blower: “A great love affair is baloney. That sounds common … but it's all baloney…. I can't have sex with anyone unless I love with both my head and my heart…. That's a sad thing, but that's how I am…. I want to give what I know to young people. On the good side is… I haven't sung in five, six years but look how they come….” Peter Mennin will see Maria today and ask her to take over the dramatic department—opera acting.16

  FEBRUARY 13, 1971 Strangers stop in the streets to look at Gray. The bolder ones, or those who must express their sudden infatuations, tell him how astonishing or beautiful he looks. This is the equivalent of people standing on their chairs to see the Edwardian beauties pass.

  FEBRUARY 14, 1971 A long, hilarious evening and early morning at Remi Saunder's. The saga of Natasha de Wolfe (née Grischa Gregory's sister [Fanya]) as related with amazement and amusement by Remi:

  Grischa and Lydia Gregory were sorry for Natasha (“Fanya” she never liked—”common”). They lent her their East Hampton house for two weeks, in season, and went off. When they returned, the driveway was filled with Rolls-Royces and Cadillacs. Natasha had become a princess who had been forced to take to the stage in the old country. All of the WASP Long Island old-guard society was thronging to meet her. She was the delight of the Meadowbrook Club, from which her very rich brother and sister-in-law had been barred. She fed her new friends blintzes and hot chocolate—a combination none of them had ever before experienced. Not one of them knew a blintz from a crepe. Princess Natasha dazzled them. Lydia's sweet little dog, hated by Lydia, had been “rescued” by the princess, and was part of her decor. This dog ate only the juicy ends of carrots, and Lydia's only reaction to the princess's high place in society was that the dog was ruining her house—liberally strewn with chewed carrot ends.

  The princess told Grischa that he really must not push his connection with her and that he really must not try to get into her set. Soon she married de Wolfe, who was, most everyone knew, virtually of the French blood royal—at least 350 years ago—and so the princess became the connection by marriage of one of America's “royal” families. Even Julia Ward Howe, were she alive, could be called cousin by this Jewish, lowborn woman. Mrs. de Wolfe and husband moved to Paris where she reigns in the midst of the remains of Proust's Faubourg Saint-Germain, she having, according to Mr. de Wolfe, bravely renounced her Russian title for his not uncommon, not far from royal, but definitely American name. When the Gregorys come to Paris, they are not invited to Mrs. de Wolfe's soigné dinners and teas, but she does see them—sort of boudoir, side-door visitations—and her house is always strewn with the chewed carrot ends of the sweet little dog.17

  Ultimately, levels of society are teeter-totters, and the bottom can become
, at least in the public eye and finally in the eyes of the young, borne into the upper level. Finally, people like Natasha-Fanya can be seen as the pinnacle of society—irrefutably leaders. That happened with Madame Verdurin [in Proust] who became the Princess-Duchess Guermantes, calling [Baron de] Charlus cousin, and he became nothing, a leftover anonymity. Increasingly, people I have never met believe me to have been part of a world in which they were supreme and to which I aspired—sometimes moving on its fringes. If I am here long enough, I will be looked on as a former ornament of that world. Yet, in the current sense, I have never “made it,” although I have been in and around it. The Grand Surprise is, partly, that none of this matters.

  FEBRUARY 18, 1971 Maria, in a pale dress, confronted by Mina in her blue cut-velvet. Mina, “We have a dear friend in common….” Maria, “That makes two of us.” “My,” said Mina, “she's tough. I remembered my rule with celebrities: lay it on thick. And I did—with a trowel, but I couldn't give her enough. I never saw Mac Lowry [of the Ford Foundation] and Goosey make over someone that much, and Walter [the chauffeur] was beside himself when he saw her going in….”

  Lincoln called to ask me would I ask Maria to do La Voix Humaine at the New York State Theater next season. I will ask her.

  FEBRUARY 19, 1971 Talk with Lincoln on the phone, first time [on the phone] in almost ten years. He very Lincoln—sort of torn up. Maria, when asked would she do La Voix Humaine: “No, no, no …”

  Maria: “I am going to Juilliard to do a little research on my own…. You have your police everywhere.” Me: “Like Scarpia.” Maria: “But you are kind and good and sweet.” Me: “That's the worst kind of Scarpia.”

  FEBRUARY 20, 1971 Maria: “I'm studying… Traviata…. There's always more to learn.” I suspect more to this than meets my ear.

  She was at the first Werther—a boring, badly done work, at which Maria had the heaviest applause. She looked young, beautiful, and determined, in floating emerald-green chiffon, on Bing's arm. The recognition of Maria began first as a stirring box to box, then an acceleration of heads toward her box (thirteen, Bing's), then a rustling on the parterre, like those little winds which herald a storm, then the winds louder and the turning and standing up and the applause and shouts of “Brava, Callas!” This started from the top of the house. The rush into the aisles—the logjam of admirers, detractors, thrill-seekers—the cascades of adulation, which torrent ever more fiercely and finally sweep everything before them as she advances to the front of the box and waves, bows, smiles, and almost weeps. Everyone played his part very well indeed. Then the repetition of this during the interval, as she glides on Bing's arm to the refreshment room. He hangs his head—smirking, sheepish, not willing to show his capitulation. There isn't any in him. He has the least generous of natures. But Maria is, of course, graciously triumphant—only the corners of her mouth betray, to those few who know her well, her deep triumph over this monster who terminated her career on the Met Opera stage but, obviously, served only as a minor factor in making her legend, and who, or so last night made it seem, will be known only because of her glory.

  The demonstration is remarkable in that she has not sung for six years, but she has been an evolving legend, greatly accelerated in these years, and is considered by the public a wronged woman, splendid in her dignity. Mrs. Onassis is, paradoxically, thought of as “the other woman,” a part tradition would have assigned, in this farce, to Maria. All of which is an indication of the morality of these times: The mistress is the wronged one, and the loyal wife the villainess.

  NOTE: After thirty-five years in charge of Vogue‘s features, Allene Talmey abruptly left the magazine in February 1971, citing health problems. Although some said that Talmey left because she found the mercurial Diana Vreeland a headache, she had been coping with Vreeland there for nine years. Leo believed Alex Liberman forced her retirement.

  FEBRUARY 26, 1971 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • johannesburg, south africa

  I must tell you the tragicomedy of Allene Talmey. Mitzi told me, in strict secrecy, that Allene's blood pressure was so high that her doctors had forbidden her to work ever again: She had to retire immediately. Then she, Mitzi, said that when Alex had heard this, he cried. Also the head of Condé Nast, Perry Ruston, had cried! Then I encountered Alex, the weeper, and he said, “Have you heard from Allene? Has she had her operation?” solemnly. So I said how sad that she had to retire because of her high blood pressure, went home, called up Allene, and there she was—her voice quite as healthy as we have always known it: “I wanted to call you right away and tell you everything,” she said. Then, after ten minutes of cheerful talk, she remembered how sick she is and her voice faded! Think how elaborate a cover-up!!! Very 39 Steps since the man with the missing part to his finger is the weeper, Alex, who several weeks ago told me that she was going to have to go soon.18 That is the saga of A. Talmey. Please tell no one, even Howard, because I could find myself without a job if this secret ever came back.

  JOURNAL • February 26, 1971 How amazing that this genuinely shrewd, seemingly hard-boiled woman would cover so stupidly. Telling that when she told Alex, he cried. Ye gods! The Little Funny Face indeed.19 Who, as she would put it, does she think she's kidding? So, almost the last of a certain breed departs, screaming all the way. I couldn't be more surprised at Allene's erecting this facade. The epitome of magazine career women and how they refuse to give up.

  FEBRUARY 27, 1971 Talk with Julie Harris on the blower. She wasn't sanguine about her play [And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little], saying that she was sure that it is doomed. The quality of her voice—sudden sunlight through miasmas of cloud. Her discretion, her strength. She reminds me of my grandmother. When I say grandmother, I always mean my Goldwasser grandmother. We called on my Lerman grandparents. They were forbidding, formal, disdainful, selfish, and lived in a small, dreadful flat that had oilcloth on the floor. Nevertheless, the tall looking glass in my bedroom, the first piece of furniture I bought, is a memory of those visits. They had a similar one, the top chopped off: I adored it. They owned a smelly, dark paint shop on Second Avenue [near 100th Street] and lived in the tenement over it, with the “El” clattering by. I can smell the chateaux stations and see the crotchety men in the change booths. I smell kerosene, urine, old food, dirt, sweat, and coal. Each one had a thriving pot-bellied stove. The cheerful clatter on the rails and wires… the stations shook and swayed. That was a very early science lesson: An uncle had told us that they had to sway in order to stick together.

  FEBRUARY 28, 1971 The boys at [playwright] Jerry Lawrence's, most of them twenty-five and under, were actors, ad-agency men, account executives, teachers on all levels, playwrights, composers, dancers. (“But I'm leaving it—there's no future. I'm going into modeling and acting. When I was in Toronto doing a television series, I found out I had a New York face.”) There were too few older men, thus the tension sagged, and the [social] “affair” was over-narcissistic. Few seemed vicious; most had the look of being out on the beach (Fire Island) or in the sun all day and dancing and fucking all night; all were slim to emaciation; almost all were dull, wore skintight pants; some shirts were open down to the pubic hair. There was not so much a feeling of goods for sale as there was an atmosphere remarkably similar to that in a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl dressing room. Few were drunk; many were stoned (Gray says). They were not on the make sexually, but in honest New York style were on the make for whatever gains (career) they could achieve. These young men are exactly what they are. They do not seem to pretend. Some of the in-between ones are hostile.

  MARCH 2, 1971 Édouard Roditi at lunch. He is larger, more sedate in an out-of-register way—cleaner looking, more pulled together —and he is becoming a mysterious-seeming old man. He is loyal, and the long ties are still tight. Édouard owns a house in Tunis. Paul [Bowles], he says, is sunk into fat, lethargy, and remorse and masochism over Jane—now, mostly a vegetable in a Málaga nunnery.20 When Paul went to visit her some months ago, s
he came alive and begged him to get her out of there. Then he returned and she was a vegetable again. Meanwhile Paul sells the writings he forces out of his untal-ented Arab-boy lovers and dopes himself. He is frightened, as is [painter and poet] Brion Gysin. Édouard, this scion of Sephardic Jews, lives in a market in Paris, in a flat he owns and occupies with two Arab-boy lovers, who work in garages and adore him but have numerous affairs with other boys. Édouard is always off to exotic places, translating, teaching, lecturing. He also sells a few art works. He has seven languages. He knows the queer bars of North Africa, the new African republics, South American cities (remote ones), Soviet Russia. Édouard goes to Sunday tea—one of New York's last—in a Gramercy Park flat. He wore a little handkerchief pulled through a ring—most discreetly with-it— and on his fingers, many unusual, quite large rings—one a black skull. Some of Édouard's rings are African, silver, barbaric, and splendid.

  MARCH 3, 1971 [Richard] Fletcher came up from Washington to talk with me about [a biography of] Mary Garden. Fletcher has a mouth that furls and unfurls like a banner in a high wind. He described her last five years. She spent them in the public insane asylum—but, since she had plenty of money in the Morgan Guaranty Trust, Paris, she had whatever she needed. And she felt no pain—at least known to those who saw her. This was because she believed herself in her prime, her heyday when she was a glorious, tempestuous star— a glamour girl. All the attendants, she believed, were her dressers, her servants, and secretaries. Those who came to call were journalists, writers, composers seeking her. “I cannot see you this afternoon,” she would say. “We are rehearsing Aphrodite. We are putting it on in a month, and it takes all of my time.”21