Letty Fox

by Christina Stead

  “I’ll tell Mother what you said.”

  We were both sent to bed. We rushed off. I described exhaustively my short visit, but left out the piece of mischief I had done. This great deed I kept to myself. Jacky must have lain awake a long time with her eyes shining. She murmured, “I wish I could see her.”

  “You’ll never see her,” I said. “You can’t tell lies and you would tell everyone and so you will never know anything.”

  “I would never tell,” said Jacky sadly; “she must be glamorous.”

  “She’s just nothing. She’s stupid. She doesn’t know anything. Nuts to her,” I said jealously.

  “I hope when I grow up I can entrap men. What must it feel like? I think I could feel like that! If with one glance from my enchanting black eyes—”

  “You’ve got blue eyes. I’ve got black eyes.”

  “My witching blue eyes. I, Letty! I wish I was Cleopatra. And walk along sinuously, with cloth of gold, covered with flashing gems, and I would come up to King Solomon—”

  “You’re mad! That’s the Queen of Sheba.”

  “What was her name?”

  Although I was the infant wonder of our family, I did not yet know Balkis, so I ripped out, Phylloxera, which my father had been talking about, “Phylloxera was her name “

  “No,” shouted Jacky, “Cleopatra—in a barge—yes—with cloth of gold trailing in the water and gems. She was in a barge, I remember. Solomon had a temple.”

  We had stood for hours in the Art Museum at home studying the painted queens. After a moment, Jacky said dreamily, “But you know what I like best? The burial of Alaric! They turned the river and now it flows over him. The river Busento. I don’t know where it is,” said Jacky sadly, “is it a real river?”

  “Yes,” said the infant wonder.

  Through the high window, that high window that looked out over half London, I could see late evening coming, and in the light, Jacky’s smiling face turned toward me. The dark made her eyes seem very large. She looked at me burning with passion, “It is a real river!”

  She loved me, because I made some of her dreams come true, I suppose. And that was the hold my father had over us both. He knew. And isn’t that why we adore men; in four words, We think they know!

  14

  Jacky and I, with me for guide, would go downtown to the office in which my father worked with Joseph Montrose and watch the workings of this simple, large, empty machine. My father seemed happy, young, and even foolish. He dictated rambling letters to Persia in order to show off to us. He wrote to everyone I had ever heard of in America. He wrote long letters weekly to his mother. She must have been surprised at all the mail she was getting. She, too, began to write her stiff, disconnected notes. Now, having been egged on by all, she began also to beg a little, to hint that everyone went abroad, but not she; that though the Europeans are mad, of course, with their gilded coaches and feathered hats, like Cinderella and cockatoos, still an old woman might get a good laugh out of it all; though what an old woman wanted it for, she could not tell, an old woman was perhaps an old fool; she was not such an old fool as to want to go to London to see the King! A cat may look at a king. Yet, it seemed strange that poor people went over to Paris nowadays, stenographers, shoeblacks, really everyone, girls in Woolworth’s. They became rich on their shares and started talking about the Rue de la Paix, and had their anecdotes, quarrels, bargains, lovers. All but herself; and Lily, of course. But Lily was an idiot. It was no pleasure to be in Lily’s company all the time, no joke at all. Lily, of course, was a good girl, but what was a niece to a son? To her sweetest little honeys, Toots and Jacky? Well, she would probably die without seeing any of them again, and she had been so ill recently, with the heat, dust, the choking all the night—though that poor Lily had done her best, one had to say that for her—that she feared she would never see her darlings, her blessings, again. All this came, of course, not in the letter, but was doled out. September came, ended; my father was remorsefully writing fervent letters to his mother, begging her to take the next boat, “You write yes, and I’ll cable you the money.”

  This was madness, if we were going back to New York; but at present my mother had made no move and everyone advised her to stay. She did not welcome old Mrs. Fox’s coming

  “She lives only for herself,” said Mathilde, “a woman with a son does not care for other women.”

  But Lily Spontini knew a boy who had gone to London, and encouraged her old aunt too.

  We had moved away from the hotel and were back in lodgings. My mother was now very much alone. Grandmother Morgan, after going to Paris and getting some new ideas for menus and clothes, had returned to New York to look into her affairs. Pauline and Phyllis had little time for her. Phyllis was dissatisfied with Joseph Montrose, believed no longer that he would marry her, and was now going out with a blond American gentleman called Dave, who had run up a large expensive apartment house near Hyde Park, which was now full of modern couples, well-kept mistresses, and girls on the make, brave enough or businesslike enough to speculate on a high rent. The huge building was called, on brass plates, Chippendale Mansions, but popularly the first word was affectionately shortened. This was not Dave’s only venture. Dave now came to visit Pauline and Phyllis at times arranged by them. He didn’t seem to mind this at all. He listened to Phyllis play and sing, and said the girls should go to Paris or Berlin. He suggested an act for them. He knew something about that business. Strangely enough, when Mathilde heard about this, she was pleased. She was sick of the shabby Montrose entanglement. Joseph Montrose, also, seemed pleased about the new idea. Dave, who had never met Montrose, agreed to put up some money, so that the girls could live cheaply for a few months in Paris, to study singing and dramatics and learn enough French for an act. Phyllis was to get money from Grandmother Morgan to study at a well-known Paris school of music run for Americans in the Place des Vosges, a delightful old square, where everyone would be very happy.

  My mother became unusually animated. She said to Solander that there was no point in her staying here. He neglected her, she wasn’t comfortable, and she was humiliated. Pauline said the children would do better to go to a French school, pick up a foreign language, and go back to America next year. Then poor Mathilde would have doubts and say, How would the children adjust themselves to American life, after they had lived abroad? Perhaps their parents’ selfishness would ruin them. The next morning she would get up quite cheerful and argue that in Paris she would look after her sister. For Pauline seemed a little flighty. In fact, Mathilde was sure Pauline had slept with Joseph Montrose on the occasions when she pretended to go and consult with him about Phyllis’s career and Mathilde’s troubles. Mathilde knew Montrose—“He held my knee and showed me his wallet,” she said, with a faint sparkling smile and provocative flush, to her husband one day. Solander looked gloomy. “What is one to do? Ignore it or split with him forever?” Mother was softly flattered, “Oh, never tell him I mentioned it.” After a silence, she continued.

  “Let’s meet in Paris in the spring,” said Mathilde, in a rare, lyric moment. “Perhaps, Sol, you’ll have got over this obsession by then and we’ll see how to start over again; and if not, my mother’s coming back in the spring to Paris, and she can take me back, and we’ll shake hands on it.”

  “I agree,” said my father thankfully, and seemed quite to love her.

  At this moment, he got a cable to say that not only was Grandmother Fox coming over in answer to his repeated pleadings, but that it had become possible for Lily Spontini also to come because of a small amount of money received from a relative dead in Canada: “Only enough to come over and go back, but she can find something to do in England, I suppose. She isn’t very smart, but she can do jobs that other people would be too proud to do. That kind of girl can always find something.”

  Grandmother Fox named the boat and asked for the money. My father looked harassed. I don’t think he had thought Grandmother Fox would come. His letters to
her had been romantic outpourings.

  Grandmother Fox and Lily Spontini were on the sea, only two days out from England, when the October stock market crash came. Millions of toy balloons burst with a loud noise and a number of people who had taken a trip overseas found themselves stranded. The anecdotes began very soon after, about those who were saved by a miracle, a day, two months, before. Grandmother Morgan was again ruined; Phyllis’s protectors had no chance of being repaid and Pauline and Phyllis at once set about getting an engagement in a private club or night club somewhere on the Continent or elsewhere. Grandmother Fox and Lily Spontini had no stocks or bonds but had a real daily earner, Solander Fox, to depend on, and so were neither richer nor poorer. We were in the same situation. Everyone else, who did not commit suicide and had no wage-earner, began to live on debts. The Americans left London and Paris, and the U.S.A. came in for the first knock-out blow in living memory, one which soured it forever. But some managed to live in the old carefree way and we were among the survivors. My mother put us to a cheap Catholic school in Paris recommended by Pauline. By Christmas we had rosaries with crucifixes under our pillows and started praying at night, not because we were taught to, but as a new play; and Jacky had another romantic variation. She wanted to be a Greek Orthodox. We were now sopping up Dostoevsky, and Aunt Pauline took us one day to a wedding of some White Russian friends, and we saw the onion-shaped towers of the Russian Cathedral. “It’s the Queen of Sheba idea in Church work,” I thought. We then played “Christ is Risen!” “Letty, verily He is Risen!” This accompanied by kissings and preceded by a procession; “Christ is Risen!” (Kiss, kiss.) “He is indeed, Mother.” This was a play that could go on for hours. Everyone played it, adults too. It was absorbing. We double-kissed everyone.

  Mother was glad to be in Paris. In France, even at that time, the position of the married woman was still such a sure thing that “Madame this and that” had a condescending voice and was superior to “Mademoiselle this and that.”

  Mother had become languid, temperamental, and had put on weight. Pauline kissed her repeatedly and told us not to bother her.

  We were scarcely installed in Paris in a hotel near the War Ministry, a quiet and respectable quarter, when we received a letter from Uncle Philip saying that things were very bad in the U.S.A.; that he had been again pursued for debt and back alimony; that Grandmother Morgan had given up the idea of her White Mountains hotel; that there was a back-to-the-land movement and Perce Hogg had taken advantage of it by establishing a community, called Parity, N.Y., where men could go who were hunted by their ex-wives, the whole idea having been suggested by the farm-prison he had seen at Farmington (and that Philip would just as soon be in jail for good); and last, that Dora Dunn, that most reasonable of women, had suffered from the panic. The man who had been supplying her with money had thrown himself out of a window upon finding that his secretary had stolen his money to play in Wall Street. Dora had closed her shop for a few months till the world got on its feet again. She had first gone to Parity, N.Y., to organize things for Uncle Hogg but found it hard going. Uncle Perce had no job, didn’t care, was living on vegetables, letting various poor relatives clean the house for him free (as, Mrs. Dr. Goodsir), advocated free love without practicing any kind of love, and thundered about the suppression of the businessman and the merchant. Dora could not take it. She thought she had better come abroad and see how things were, since no one else was coming abroad now and everything would be cheap. The American buyers had all fled home; she would be the first one for the new goods. At the end of his letter, Philip said that he was running away with this splendid girl, who was not a Greenwich Villager, like so many of his friends, but had a mind of her own, made a fine living, was a sensible radical, did not believe in tying a man down, would live just as he, Philip, chose, and had her own plans for the future. “You can’t get bored with a woman like that.” This fugue to France was a sort of trial marriage, which they both thought suitable. Nothing might come of it. Happiness might. She admired Philip, thought he had an excellent business head, though she did not understand his poetry (Thank God, said Philip). She admired his genius and she had a general sensitivity which enabled her to understand him, in fact, quite well. Besides that, she was not the woman to lean on him; and even if he left her, would not crumble, but would keep on being the same woman. “The wonderful thing about Dora is that I cannot influence her; at last I have found a woman who is herself! I don’t compare her with anyone who has passed out of my life. I have a loyalty to anyone I ever loved, but here is a woman who hasn’t even a velléité for the past attitudes of women. She engages life in a fraternal combat.”

  This was Philip’s ordinary style. He added a postscriptum to say that Dora’s friends, some liberal and farsighted Jewish people, had given Dora the money for the trip, but that Mother had given him his fare and he would have to pay her back. As far as he could see, he would marry Dora. It looked like a reasonably good future and he was tired of being a Greenwich Village esthetic bum. “And it’s good for any man’s soul to get away from the U.S.A. now! First, they were on top of the heap and now that the crash of material goods has come, the dreadful vacuum in their souls— their hearts! They had nothing but the Elk-accepted, and Love as Permissible in the Oranges.” My uncle further asked Mother to find a lodging for himself and his new love, “Say it is for Mr. and Mrs. Morgan.”

  However, my mother would not agree to this. She found two small lodgings, one for her brother and one for Dora Dunn.

  Scarcely were these found when we had a telegram from Le Havre saying that they had arrived and were on their way to Paris. We went to meet them and saw a fatter Philip and Dora Dunn oddly changed; paler, plumper, and foolishly a girl. Her attachment to Philip was too public; it made us uneasy and aroused our jealousy. It was not the attachment of the young wife, or of a clever girl like Aunt Phyllis, but of the neglected woman. But she was not neglected! It was like an unpleasant discovery about someone we knew. Yet it was all a mistake, a passing phase. Uncle Philip seemed bored with her. He was anxious to get to the Left Bank. He rattled off a dozen names of painters and poets, all of which I had learned before the night was over, for I had his fatal facility for proper names. He had adopted the idea that he ought to be a painter and would go to painting school here, perhaps later to the Beaux Arts. As a painter he would not only become a connoisseur and be able to help Dora in her business (they kept this up), but he might be able to imitate, at low cost, models from Europe, learn modern design. He felt sure he had talent. “Esthetic perception is a general gift, provided you have all five senses.” Dora seemed to agree with this, but she was a lumpish thing.

  Mother said, “She can’t keep him, she’s gone soft, and she’s lost all she had. It’s quite right what they say about women, all their talent comes from the fear of being an old maid.” She sighed, and said, “I wish I’d even had the talent I deserved on that score. I’m just a failure all the way round. Personally, I don’t believe in female talent. I think we ought to be trained how to hold our men. When you come down to brass tacks, that’s the secret sigh of every woman, and it’s the only way she can be happy.”

  Aunt Phyllis and Pauline had no time for this philosophy. Aunt Pauline said, “Believe me, you have to be a Machiavelli to keep a man once you’ve got him; that’s no time for getting gooey”; but, as in this case, any philosophy they had was tactical, and arose in moments of defeat, or in those pleasant relaxed hours when active people summarize their experience, but only to fill in time, because they use physical not mental philosophy. Of course, if we had to act on our findings (for I’m one of them), life would be dull. But no, our motto is that of Napoleon, “Go into it and then see; On s’engage et puis on voit.”

  I don’t know how Pauline had got the three months’ rent which was payable in advance, but she had taken an apartment in a side street in La Muette near the Avenue Mozart, a garçonnière, composed of two rooms with kitchen and bathroom, well-lighted, gay, wi
th two entrance doors. Both sides of the flat looked into alleys. The rent was rather high, since garçonnières (flats for bachelors) are sought after, in Paris, by broad-minded mothers and aunts, for their sons and nephews not yet in a situation to attract solid fathers to marriage. One could often see a plump aunt and plump mother in their best afternoon clothes and Rue Royale hats, with sly maternal smiles, invading these little furnished flats on an inside court. Pauline and Phyllis had good taste; and, since their furnishing was not yet complete, they engaged Dora Dunn to help them with bargains in modern interior decoration. I do not know at all where they got the money for this decoration. We had none. Dora had none. Pauline had none. Phyllis only got a small allowance from her mother, and a little from Montrose and Dave. Naturally, there are all kinds of guarantees one can give for furniture got in advance of payment. Furniture companies even propose these plans as a social act and a kind of saving in retrospect; so I say nothing more.

  Phyllis knew she must learn her business, for she was too young and innocent. She knew she could be trapped; and under Pauline’s tuition she worked quite hard to learn to manage men without herself being got. She did her best to become a flirt, a coquette, a heartbreaker, a woman on the make. It is hard to do this; one has to be cool and brittle. I know now, from experience, how hard. Many men make money and spend it all on their passions. Some are able to keep it and have dime and nickel passions, a kind of safeguard. Some women are able to have greater and more frequent passions, it is not all dollars and cents, and this capacity is their capital when they make love their career; Pauline could love, Phyllis not.

  My mother sent back a letter to Grandmother Morgan about Phyllis’s progress, and although Grandmother had plenty of troubles at home, she hadn’t lost her head so far as to forget her marriageable daughter. She evidently was not pleased with Phyllis’s affairs. Phyllis was too young. Grandmother approved of Pauline’s management: