All this from my diary of that year; for, from time to time, I did keep a diary, with every intention (of course) of publishing it. It seemed to me it was a pretty easy way to write a novel about yourself. Just jot down a few notes, and later on, get it typed and give it a title. But now it is only a paragraph to me, for I had a queer sort of luck in life, which didn’t depend at all, as I thought at that time, on the Sunday columns of the New York Times book section.
Things moved fast. I saw all the movies, including The General Died at Dawn, which we all touted; for Clifford Odets was the man who was going to take the revolution to Hollywood.
In many things we saw soupçons of class-consciousness. I yearned to write for the New Masses as a literary or film editor—I tried to improve them by correspondence; “You had better step down a step,” I wrote to them, “in the ladder of understandability and unassumed sincerity.” I thought I would be there in a year or two as a junior editor.
New York was lively. There were Roosevelt and Landon to be listened to, special Y.C.L. training schools. I went to one; and upon coming back, enthusiastically explained to everybody what the communist stand was on Roosevelt, grabbing what threads I could of the floating cobwebs of political explanation.
But while a stalwart in public, I was dissatisfied when by myself. I even felt the things at school were only half-explained. A thirst for the real explanation of things took hold of me. I hardly had time to worry about this. I read The Last Puritan, saw Gielgud’s Hamlet twice, in the hope that the “let” would be in the second performance (the first was the opening), White Horse Inn, and the W.P.A. Negro theater rendering of Noah.
I wrote abroad to Mme. Gouraud (not a good choice) for copies of the Humanité to show to communist friends. I got fat, then lost sixteen pounds, spent all my monthly allowance in the first week of the month, and at length determined to ask my father for some of the famous twenty-five hundred dollars.
Everyone in the Morgan crowd became interested in this attempt; they egged me on and asked for news. Everyone doubted that the money for Jacky and me existed. I began the campaign astutely, in my usual manner, by sending Solander a poem written for the occasion.
DEAR SOL-PAPA,
You complain with all my literary efforts I never wrote one to the author of my being, the co-author, that is. I am touched, co-author, by this complaint and here is one for you:
U.O.I.
One’s one, then two and later, there are three;
Then two subtracted, leaves a count of one,
The adding was result of chemistry;
And the subtraction profit is to none.
I was not born of mathematic strain
And had to be laboriously long taught,
To solve quadratics, which makes worse the strain
Of multiplying debts when I have naught.
If it’s not clear, I’ll draw a diagram:
To wit, to buzzard, wanton, wolf and lewd
Misogynist, misanthropist, I am
Feloniously indebted; to be crude
I could pay all in kind—this would be rash;
They’d call it their per cent, and still want cash.
—Letty Vulpes.
Yours for purity, insecurity. This, I made, quite new, for you. I am even so devoted as to attach the original from which the above was on the typewriter wroted … Please, Papa! Your Letty-Marmalade hollers: let me have about one hundred dollars—(to begin with).
L. M.
Every magazine in the country was on my side. They all showed a slick, amusing Powers model gouging money out of smooth Papas for clothes, automobiles, hairdos, and society colleges.
Grandmother Morgan thought me not only cute, but became quite anxious about the money. Jacky was even activated so far as to write a note to her father, in which she enshrined the gem, “The conception of pocket money has grown for young girls.”
I was behind this letter. These five thousand dollars were an interest in life, something to live for. I must admit that at times I made it appear (to my friends) that the entire sum was for me, on my graduation, marriage, or whatever I had in mind.
Solander simply wrote back, “Letty, you are too flighty to handle big sums of money.” This was the first time I felt toward my father, not as a child, but as an adult. I was furious. I took a taxi over to his house and finding him in, with Persia, I began to abuse him for withholding my money from me and let him see how badly I was living. Girls with real homes did much better than I; I not only had no real home to ask my friends to, so that my chances of marriage were reduced, but he was actually sitting on my property. When was I ever to get it? He put me off with cold and severe words and promises—when I showed some self-control and had chosen a profession.
As to Jacky, he said he took no notice of her note. It was I who had prompted her to write it. I could not resist a grin at this. My sense of humor lost the battle. We ended by laughing together. However, I decided to use him as we used Congressmen and Senators. I began to send him postcards daily. I’m of an indolent nature; this didn’t last long; also, Solander took no notice of me. I sent him a study of the Whodunit I had prepared for school, called “Who Killed Everybody? Or, the Mystery of the Mystery; No One Cries for the Corpse.” There were three pages of speculation, ending with the plot of a detective novel I said I was writing under a pseudonym and a paragraph I intended to include, giving away my real name. The speculative work was entitled, “Economic Bases of the Whodunit,” and the pseudonym was Abernathy Evans as the last paragraph told:
All butlers end rather nastily, especially truly high-class Yankees, entirely vapid and natural simpletons, in stories, largely existing to titillate youths, vicious, untrained, lacking perspective, eternal sophomores, who have overlooked nearly every essential, dumb so-and-so’s demanding orthodox unpleasantness, gilded hangmen.
(Sigd.) Letty Vulpes.
My father telephoned me, “Well, come over, you bloody fool, and let me know what you want money for”; and he laughed.
I suppressed the joy and expectation which now kept rising in me, for Papa and I always got on well, and the interchange of our ideas, always much the same, was like the babbling of the Schubert trout stream when we were in good mood. All this because of the bursting of the money-sacks. I defended Solander three or four times in one week. I could see his point of view, entirely. Yes, he has the money, I thought. He’s a true, good man. My gracious, if a man had to rule his life by these women ankylosed in matrimony, where would he be?
Grandmother Morgan, Phyllis, has a right to kick over the traces, but not Solander? What does my mother do with her life, I asked myself. Better to be Lysistrata, Diane de Poitiers, Catherine III, than Phaedra, Mariana in the Moated Grange, Ophelia. My spirit rushed toward my father, and I understood him utterly. How we had misunderstood him all these years, in our petty way! A man fights the world, makes money for his family, and they sit at home, mope, and criticize. They think up plans for plunder, and all around, life welters. But they are not life, as the poets say; they are corpses. Yes, all except, of course, young girls who have found out the secret of living, which is, that you must live for the day, have no regrets, and take as much of life as you can get; also, not to accept old saws, old wives’ tales.
I telephoned my father the same evening, and went to the house to dinner. I got there on time, for I knew it was one of their complaints against me, my “C.P. time.” We had cocktails; it had the air of a celebration. I became excited.
“Don’t drop dead,” I told Solander. “I know I’m very nearly pretty, but really, I’ve often been told so; and I’ve already been painted by a Hungarian painter. Oh, boy! has he etchings! But real ones. By Rodin; he says it’s Rodin. I told him, they’re very moche. That hurt his feelings. He said to me, ‘I can’t pay for Felicien Rops, you know. I have to live on my work.’ I said to him, ‘Why don’t you make etchings yourself?’ He said, ‘I have no model’; and then he asked me to pose for him, on account of my inte
resting figure. I assure you, Papa, you scold me for not dieting, but I have a good figure. Well, I went to the place, he put his wife and sister out of the studio and I undressed—completely—and he made some drawings, not etchings. He says I’m unique, and in a way, beautiful. That is how I know. Don’t be shocked.”
“Well, go on, fair skunk,” said my father, laughing, “how does this entitle you to one hundred dollars?” He became serious. “Try to keep fixed in your mind how your poor old grandmother made that one hundred dollars and all that goes with it. Not by getting undressed for Hungarian worthies.”
I burst out laughing, and then became serious, for I saw he expected it of me. I said, “Oh, Papa, sooner or later I must tell you the truth; it may as well be sooner. I have met the man, I am in love, and it’s for good.”
“Not the Hungarian, I hope!”
“Oh, no, Papa! This is innocent, the real thing.”
But Persia was there, and I was really in love, so I waited till she had gone into the kitchen. To tell the truth, on this first occasion, I felt properly a young girl and embarrassed. I said, “Papa, I’ve met some people you’d really approve of, this time, not my childhood friends, Selma, Linda, Celeste, who are in jams most of the time, but some people I met at the special Y.C.L. school and a friend of theirs is an Englishman—no less—a descendant of George III. I mean, spiritually; he thinks we’re terribly inefficient over here. He has surprisingly fresh ideas about us. What’s his name? I don’t know, really. He’s always in a crowd. It’s Clays, but I don’t know whether that’s his first or his last name. He’s a lanky one, older than any of us, twenty-four or twenty-five, madly fascinating, handsome; and I am almost the only one who can understand everything he says, but he is a rapturous raconteur, Papa; he can talk by the hour and besides, he’s a wonderful kind of socialist, an Aclandite, that’s after Sir Richard Acland. They believe in giving away their estates and nationalizing everything and dividing up the land and putting in a new Domesday Book. Doesn’t it sound, Papa, like the eve of the French Revolution? What a slap in the nose for us if the British went socialist before the Great Democracy, eh? He says it can. I have never been so thrilled, and it isn’t a crush this time; it isn’t like the Duke and the English school. This man could be a duke and he’s almost blue-blooded, at least some relative of his is a relative of the Silver Stick in Waiting. I am mad with enthusiasm. Alas!—there’s always an alas with a man—he has a girl friend here, and furthermore, he’s been married and is getting a divorce. The girl who introduced me, Hilda, she seems to be living with him and expects to marry him. I regret to say, she’s not bad, but she wears flannel underwear or something. She and Clays Blank-Blank conduct themselves like husband and wife. It makes me feel so terrible—I mean, I really am in love with him, and I know—I don’t blame you for not really believing me, but you know how it is. Well, I don’t say Blank-Blank out of respect for his wife, or because I am afraid of the Gestapo; I just don’t know his name. He told me, but I didn’t get it, there were so many people there, buzzing round him; he was the lion of the party and Hilda told me she enjoyed it; her people up in White Plains think it so rude to be a radical, and here is this Clays Name-Name just the rage of New York, and if she goes with him, she meets people her parents couldn’t possibly meet. He has spots on his tie, soup spots, not polka dots, and a greasy overcoat. It’s because he’s a younger son, or something, and anyhow, that’s very British, isn’t it? I don’t mind. Well, frankly, Papa, it’s for him I need the money—I mean, to dress up for him, because this is IT. Hilda lends him money because he doesn’t get enough and anyhow what does a radical get? And, worse is to come—I wrote him a poem! You see? Don’t think I’m getting soft in the brain, but it’s serious. When you compare Clays with the silly boys, only eighteen or nineteen, who don’t know anything, but talk about the riddle of the universe and turn their heads away in the coffee pots, so that the girls have to bleat to their wilted collars, and who say, ‘Yers, yers, I suppose so,’ and can’t take a cocktail without getting rough, and sit for half an hour in a booth, and then say, ‘How about it, kid!’—well, I mean I’m just giving you a vague idea—I don’t mean this actual thing really happened to me—but it could—well, Papa, it isn’t in the same world. They are puppies. He is a man. You know English education is so different. It expects them to be men; it doesn’t tolerate puppyishness. Here is what I wrote for the Great Unknown!”
Ravishing my handbag, tossing out lighter, cigarettes, compact, letters, and all the rest of it, I produced:
TO THE GREAT UNKNOWN
I heard the guy’s wonderful chronica
And in passion wore out my veronica
(That’s a sweatrag to you)
For I’m all in a stew
(And what in the heck is his monicker)?
He’s seen villages Bessarabi’an
And he’s yachted along the Aegean;
He stopped in Epirus
Without ere a virus—
Is he Bert, Cyrus, Shamus or Ian?
Is he Spoffski or Wilson or Ehrlich?
Is it Jones, Brown, Smith, Robinson?
Rarelich I have seen a poor woman
In straits so inhuman—
Is it Murdoch? MacRoy? It’s gefährlich!
“I gave him a copy. Papa, I could spend a lifetime with him. He walked me home yesterday evening. Of course, Hilda tagged along. We talked about the Whodunit, about Clifford Odets, Studs Lonigan, the great American novel, everything. He has a new opinion on everything and so keen. He told me how I should dress. It’s a funny thing, but owing to my training, I guess, and I’m not flattering myself, at least I think, I got on much better with him than any of the others, and certainly understand him better than Hilda. But Hilda worries me. I hate to admit it, but she’s really pretty. Your offer of a Christmas gift, Papa, is greatly appreciated, but I do hope it will be a substantial one, for if it is just a box of hankies with a card, I shall make more sarcastic allusions to the deity above than all the preachers of Christmas Eve and all the society types, ‘Oh, God—My God,’ and the java-joints ‘Jeezes Christ,’ and the proletwriters, ‘F’Chrissakes—’ Because, seriously, Papa, I need some of dat doe, and I’m askin’ you, Lord, not to let me down. I’ve got a wardrobe that needs replenishing from the Louis-Kans up, and, this time, no joking, I met a man. I’m serious. I met the right man, Papa, I want you to see him, too. What does it matter if I’m only sixteen and a half; that used not to be so funny. There’s no regulation age for meeting the right man. This is it! I need some dresses. I’m coming to see you, to see you, and then again for my money. I really need it, Papa. I’ll tell you all about my secret life and Pharisees in the spring. I admit I’m discontented. A time comes when you hate school and you feel they’re just not trying to teach you about life, but filling in time till you get your graduation. Now, you asked Mamma to find out about my friends, Linda, Celeste. I could not tell Mamma the whole truth and nothing but the truth, for Mamma would think it terrible, but you will understand. You’ll be surprised to hear that I’m friendly with both of them, though I think Linda is wrong, domineering, and at times strangely stupid. She reminds me a bit of Jacky—and I don’t think Jacky is getting on so well; I never did believe in onesex colleges, but you know that. Anyhow you are right in one way, Linda is just the same and she goes to two-sex institutions. I like her, and I see her occasionally—but that’s enough. She wrote a lousy poem for this term’s magazine—boy, is it lousy, but I published it, I had the yes-no. Selma is nicer than she ever was, but she is getting in with a crowd of youthful neurotics, who’ve all turned Lesbians for the fun of it, and several of them have been foiled in attempts to commit suicide. Though Selma’s pretty strong, I don’t like that influence round her. She’s beginning to pose too, and says she could be abnormal sexually if she wanted to, too, and I’m worried for her, because she is a swell kid and I guess the one with the most talent here. None of the girls will ever be as dear to me as Celeste—by the way, h
er brother Bobby, the one the girls used to hang around, that used to hang around me, was doing party work out in Michigan and then in Alabama, and while distributing leaflets was arrested, beaten up, and sentenced to a year on the chain gang. He was released after local mass protest and is still doing work in Kansas City.
“Well, if you must know, I just received my report card for midterms; my English exam mark is ninety-six, highest in the school, Papa, and my daily mark, ninety-five, history, geometry, physics in the nineties not so hot, but the things I learned in backward old Europe helped me up the ladder. I’m editor of my unit paper and Friday we’re putting out an issue on Spain; swell—the opinion of my section Organizer. Well, I mean I am writing and I am normal sexually and meeting the right people. Well, now you know why I want to sting you for expenses, but you can count it out of Grandma’s money.”
Solander said, “Yes, it’s as clear as mud.”
Persia shouted, stolidly, “Dinner’s ready.”
I can never stand frustration. I looked at my two enemies, my eyes shining petulance. I thought, I’d like to sink them both in the sea—but how? I’m a helpless minor. And if I weren’t a helpless minor what could I do if the money didn’t exist? I didn’t even know where it was. I said angrily, “Where is it, in a safe-deposit, or a bank, or just where?”
But I was ashamed and even afraid. I ate my dinner gloomily, while my father teased me about my expenditures and my love affairs; and I at last flung at him, “I’m taking riding lessons, if you must know. Clays’s family has an estate, and he’s never even heard of a girl who can’t ride. I’ve got to have a habit. Clays wants to go riding with me. Well, I might as well be frank. He’s invited me to some relatives of his, who live at Chappaqua and I wanted to go for the week end. It’s quite all right, I assure you, they’re not the kind of people to put up with any monkey business. But I’ve simply got to have the trimmings. And I want to learn golf.”
Persia and my father burst out into good-natured laughter. This was all a lie, this story, which I had made up during dinner, outraged at my failure to get what was mine; but the exaggerated absurdity of it, I suppose, touched them, for after some conversation in the kitchen, while they were fixing up the dishes (I never helped with such things; I hated all domesticity), my father came in and said very seriously, “I’ll give you one hundred dollars and I don’t give a damn what you do with it, but let this be the last. I don’t know what you want it for; I just know you’re a crazy nut, utterly spoiled, but I’ll give it to you anyhow. But remember it comes out of your grandmother’s money.”
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