Max Eastman

by Christoph Irmscher

  Florence was now without Max and also without Charlie, about whose complicated affairs—involving a seventeen-year-old aspiring actress named May Collins, much in love with Chaplin, though he wasn’t with her—she continued to report in letters to Max.125 Croton was deserted. There were strangers living in Crystal’s and Floyd’s houses on Mount Airy Road, and no one seemed interested in challenging Max on the tennis court. Andreytchine had escaped to Russia, and Jane Burr, the proprietor of the once-hip Drowsy Saint Inn, living by herself in the house above Max’s, puttered around the neighborhood like a parody of Croton’s glory days: “She is not going to turn that house into an inn,” joked Max.126

  In Hollywood Florence was doing some acting on the stage. She was also reading Van Wyck Brooks’s new book, The Ordeal of Mark Twain, and was bothered by the author’s apparent misogyny. Nevertheless, some of Brooks’s observations on humor she felt could be useful to Max.127 Was she trying to move their relationship to a new level, that of colleagues sharing ideas? Max, at any rate, was pleased by Florence’s newfound interest in his work. With her as an audience his book had come to life again, a “beautiful thing.” Most notably, Florence saved Max and his readers from the very awkward title Max had been contemplating, “What and Why Is Humor?”128

  It was just at that time that the proof sheets for the most recent portraits of Florence and Max taken by Mather arrived in Max’s mailbox. The images, as Max realized, fictionalized their identities, lifting onto the higher plane of art what in life had remained stubbornly imperfect and difficult. “It is fine modeling,” quipped Max. He thought the photographs of him against the infinite dunes, taken likely on Redondo Beach, outside the home of Weston’s friend Ramiel McGehee, highlighted his best features—his nose and his raincoat.129 But that is not really true: in one of the best shots from that series (fig. 27), the most clearly defined thing is not Max or his coat but the wooden railing that divides the image diagonally. The relatively shallow depth of field keeps the dunes in the upper half of the picture in soft focus, with sand filling its lower half. In the middle ground, the post to which the slats are attached (we discern even the heads of the nails that were used) appears to slightly lift the railing so that it almost buckles. That this occurs close to what normally would be considered the compositional center of the photograph is evidence of Mather’s genius. Obviously, this is not intended to be a photograph of a wooden structure in the sand. But, then, Max is not where he should be in this portrait, a feeling reinforced by the two or three indentations in the sand in the foreground. Was that where he had been sitting earlier? Mather’s decision to have Max perch on a railing and then to push him away from the center is perhaps a commentary on something she had experienced firsthand in his volatile relationship with the woman she loved, too, a relationship in which he had done a lot of fence sitting. But she also might have intended her portrait as a more political reflection on the forever unpredictable Max, someone who always wanted to belong and never quite did, who was as little in agreement with his environment as a guy wearing a suit and tie was equipped for a walk on the beach. Max, in this photograph, recedes from us and our attempts to understand him.

  Figure 27. Max Eastman. 1921. Photograph by Margrethe Mather and Edward Weston, Museum of Modern Art. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA /Art Resource, NY; © 2016 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

  In Mather’s eyes Florence (fig. 28) was also turning away into a space to be inhabited only by herself, although she remains close to us, so close we feel we can touch her. Mather’s series included one of the most remarkable portraits of Florence ever taken, quite unlike the earlier images Max had objected to. It’s a startlingly effective and erotic photograph, utterly devoted to capturing Florence’s beauty, as the light, which seems to be coming from the right, travels over her face, sculpting her features, emphasizing the cheekbones, her chin, her right shoulder. Florence is turning away from us, yet not quite: her head is somewhat tilted toward the left, as her dark eyes seem to be pulling her into the dark background. While on the right Florence’s bobbed hair is still distinguishable from the background, the left half of her face is fading into blackness.

  Figure 28. Florence Deshon, 1921. Photograph by Margrethe Mather. EMII.

  Mather has the camera making love to Florence’s face, caressing it as if she wanted to remember its beauty. The intimacy of that gesture is enhanced by the stray lock of hair on Florence’s forehead that seems to be touching her left eyebrow, as if to encourage us to appreciate even more the strong, bold contours of her face. This is a portrait not so much of Florence Deshon as of our desire to possess what we cannot own.

  Yet another portrait from Mather’s series, Nude Study, also known as Nude with Shawl (fig. 29), features Florence naked, with her back toward the viewer. Her head is tilted to the right, with one side of her hair, bobbed but thick, falling down into the empty space created by Mather’s decision to have Florence pose in the left half of the picture. The shawl she is holding is an elaborate, clever joke. Since Florence is turned away from us, it covers the body precisely where there is no need for cover, or not so much need for it—as if Mather had wanted to highlight the voyeuristic aspect of the photograph. And yet, since the cloth does conceal part of Florence’s left buttock, something of a barrier remains between us, the viewers, and the sitter, allowing Florence a modicum of privacy even in the act of exposing herself to us. Normally, one would place a shawl around one’s shoulders. That Florence doesn’t draws our attention to her upper torso and makes it seem stronger, broader than it would normally appear. And the simple trick of having her lift her right foot adds a sort of balletic intensity to the image, emphasizing the lightness with which Florence carries herself. This is a portrait of someone who, even when naked, reveals little to us, a gesture of farewell performed by a woman turned inward and with no place to go: she is facing a wall.

  Florence never read the letter in which Max held forth about his beautiful nose and favorite raincoat in Mather’s photograph. On July 25, 1921, she sent it back to him, unopened. In a separate note she blasted him for his “neurotic selfishness.”130 The end had come: the “Black Panther” inside Florence had arisen, despite the attempts Florence and Max had made to move on with their respective lives.131 Florence had moved back to New York by then, but not to be with Max. By all accounts she was spiraling further and further downward. She had, as her friend Marie Howe described it, “no work, no hope of work, nothing but discouragement.” Instead of success, there was blackness around her, the blackness her friend and likely lover Margrethe had identified in her photographs of her. After Hollywood and Chaplin there was nothing but the prospect of a job somewhere in an office. “She was falling down down down until she struck bottom,” said Howe. And though Florence occasionally saw Max, she never confided her sense of despair to him.132 One of the last surviving notes from Florence to him, written in ink on speckled blue paper, acknowledges the appearance of The Sense of Humor and the dedication of the book to her: “Nothing ever made me so deeply happy as my name in your book.”133

  Figure 29. Nude with Shawl, 1921. Photograph by

  Margrethe Mather. Courtesy of the

  George Eastman Museum.

  The end came ingloriously for Florence on February 4, 1922, in a third-floor apartment she had subleased from Dudley Field Malone and Doris Stevens at the Rhinelander Gardens complex on West Eleventh Street. A neighbor, Minnie Morris, found her lying on the bed, with the gas turned on, even though the apartment had recently been electrified. The window was wide open. She had last been seen the night before, returning home at around midnight.134 Max was at a theater when he learned what had happened. He rushed to St. Vincent’s Hospital to give blood, but it was too late. In a terrible parody of their life together, Max lay next to Florence’s lifeless body on a stretcher. At 11 p.m. that night she died. She was twenty-eight years old. The assistant medical e
xaminer of the Borough of Manhattan found no evidence that Florence had taken her life, giving “illuminant gas poisoning (accidental)” as the cause of death.135 But questions lingered, especially after word got out that Florence had had a male visitor the day before and that a quarrel had taken place. Confronted by a Times reporter, Max adamantly denied there had been a rift between him and Florence and asked that he be left alone.136 But her friends did not doubt that she had killed herself and that Max was at least partly responsible. “Florence made a suicide,” McKay observed. Amid the “silly rumor flying across the Village,” a worried Crystal sent Claude to console Max, but there was nothing for him to do except keep his mouth shut: “What else could I do before such a big trouble.”137

  Florence’s mother hired Frank Campbell’s “Funeral Church” on Broadway to take care of all the arrangements. Campbell’s company had made a specialty of the funerals of actors, acquiring a reputation that continues to this day: the celebrities they have buried range from Rudolph Valentino to Lauren Bacall.138 Max nearly lost his mind during those days. He wanted to go to Campbell’s parlor, where Florence’s body was, and had to be restrained by Crystal, who also convinced him not to attend the funeral. “I lay still in my room as though paralyzed until it was over,” he wrote in his autobiography.139 At least he did not have to wait long. Florence was buried on February 6 in Mount Zion Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens, the only real acknowledgment we have of her Jewish ancestry. In fact, the speed with which the funeral took place—Florence had died during the Shabbat, on a Saturday afternoon, and was buried the following Monday—suggests at least an attempt to adhere to Jewish custom. Her grave was in the section reserved for the burial society Chevra Kadisha, also known as the Independent Order of Free Sons of Judah. According to her burial card she was interred in grave 23 on Path 10L Road 3 of Mount Zion. No care for her grave was arranged, and no map of the section has survived. The inscriptions marking the simpler graves in that section are now mostly faded. Florence’s final resting place could be anywhere under these withered stones.140

  In the days after Florence died Max received a card in the mail from the nurse who had taken care of her when she was carrying Chaplin’s dead fetus inside her. “I just read of the terrible news of my beautiful Florence Deshon’s death,” wrote Marie Alamo Thomas from Grand Junction, Colorado. “I am heart broken! It seems too tragic to think of all her beauty—gone!”141 Unbeknownst to Max, Marie Thomas had continued to live with Florence even after she had returned from Croton. But Max ought to have remembered a poem Marie Thomas had sent to Florence, care of Max Eastman, when she was recovering in Croton two years earlier: a rapturous song of praise for her that left little doubt Marie had loved Florence, too, with a simplicity of feeling that had been unavailable to Max and, it seems, other men. To Marie Thomas, RN, Florence Deshon was a dark-eyed gypsy, too, but one destined to live forever: “Beautiful girl that you are, dear. / Girl full of life and freedom and cheer, / With slender form and gypsy-like grace, / The eternal spirit of youth in your face!”142 Now, she said, the pain was greater than she could bear.143

  When Max went through Florence’s belongings after her death he found a copy, in his own hand, of the poem he had written during the first year of their tempestuous relationship, “Sweet Lovely Night.” Folded many times over, the little piece of paper would have easily fit into Florence’s purse, and maybe that’s where she had carried it during the past few years.144 He found something else, too, a poem written by Florence herself, in pencil (as she preferred)—a poem fit to dispel, once and for all, the myth of the childlike, vaguely gypsylike Florence he might have chosen to cultivate. In these lines Florence sounds like an early incarnation of Sylvia Plath, rising from the ashes of her life to eat men like air—or, in this case, to press down her high-heeled shoe on her faithless lover’s twitching throat:

  I once said I would not stand

  by and watch love dying

  I did not think

  that with burning tongue

  and brain seething with hate

  I would kill him

  I did not think

  that I would press my heel

  upon his throat

  I did not think that I would bend

  down and pick up a

  beach stone

  and put it inside my

  bosom,

  and carry it for a heart

  All the days of my life

  I did not know.

  I only said I would not stand

  By and watch love dying

  And stand by she certainly did not. Max himself believed she had killed him, or something inside him. “You do possess me, yes, you have your will,” begins a poem found among his papers, titled “To One Who Died.” He felt as if he had been put in the grave alongside her: “Your dear dark hand is on me everywhere. / My life is buried in the earth with you.” In her absence the dead Florence continued to control him: “My mind finds back the way from everything to you.” Then again, realizing that he was, after all, still alive, he was seized with guilt: “If I were brave, like you, who loved and hated me, / I would lie down beside you, whom I loved and feared.”145 In Max’s mind there was no doubt Florence had wanted to die, whether or not she had technically killed herself. Now she owned him forever.

  Max’s book The Sense of Humor was officially released just a few weeks after the death of the one to whom it was dedicated. In the very first chapter Max evoked the smile that had inspired him, the smile that had filled his imagination for so long. That smile would begin, he wrote, “with a flash, because the motion of the upper lip comes first and so strongly, and yet the lip broadens a little as it rises so that while all the teeth shine the mouth is only redder than it was—the cheeks curve, and the eyes gather light and attract the brows and lashes toward them just infinitesimally, warming their vivid glitter with those radiant soft lines of good nature and good-will.” Such a hospitable smile transforms the entire face into an open invitation to feel welcome. A smile, writes Max in the same chapter, “is the path along which two selves approach.” It is finer than a good wine or a bouquet of flowers or the colors the sun paints onto the clouds in heaven. It is the source of light toward which men struggle “through so much pain and blind anxious endeavor.” Poignantly, the smile Max evokes is a smile that no longer exists, except as a memory or, now, as an object of study. It had been, of course, Florence’s smile. Describing it in such physiological detail had allowed him to detach it from its owner, whom he never names, and to forget that terrifying poem he had found. With Florence gone from his life, Max had made her, or part of her, into an artifact.146

  Given the personal impetus behind his work, the sheer range and depth of interests Max displays throughout the twenty-two chapters of the book is doubly impressive. Although he had tried to make his book enjoyable, Max said in his preface, and “keep it alive to the qualities of its subject,” his overall purpose had been scientific. Gone was the relatively narrow scope of Enjoyment of Poetry. In the book’s first, general part Max offered his views on subjects ranging from the “Laughter of Pleasure” to “Good and Bad Jokes,” while in the second part he reviewed theories of humor and human behavior ranging from the Greeks to Freud and the Harvard psychologist William McDougall. The poet Richard Le Gallienne, in a lengthy review for the New York Times, expressed his surprise at Max’s versatility and marveled that this advocate of Bolshevism had, for the purposes of this book, exchanged the red tie for the doctor’s gown.147 He remained skeptical of Max’s attempt to probe, once and for all, the mystery of laughter and to substitute science for intuitive or impressionistic explanations that had so far been offered. To him, The Sense of Humor was not science but a “fool’s errand into the unknown.” Yet it offered good fun along the way.

  As far as Le Gallienne was concerned, the most interesting passages in the book occurred when Max was writing about “poetic humor” or the capacity to see the world “in many different ways” and to choose laughter o
ver tears whenever possible. In the book Max’s primary example of that ability was an image created by Florence’s erstwhile lover and Max’s competitor for her heart, Charlie Chaplin. In the dream sequence from The Kid, the Chaplin movie Florence had loved so much, the world is briefly transformed into a paradise where even cops and dogs have wings and float freely around the set. As the Tramp, played by Chaplin, discovers his new wings, he briefly reaches back and plucks out a few feathers—a complex gesture, Max said, reminding the viewer that these wings are just a prop and dreams are nothing but dreams. The very quickness of the gesture is the essence of humor, in Max’s reading: it’s over almost as soon as it has happened. It constitutes, wrote Max, the acceptance of our failure to transform ourselves into something other than what we are.148

  Max’s theory of humor was indebted to Chaplin as much as it was to Twain, and, as was the case with both of his models, there was more than a bit of wishful thinking behind it that the world can indeed become a better place. Max saw laughter as joyful, childlike play and not the fulfilling of some dark, sinister tendency in us of which we ourselves are hardly aware. What irked him most about Freud was his repeated assertion that children have no sense of humor. To Max, this was patently wrong. “Children have,” he wrote, “a more lively though crude sense of what is comical than we have, . . . and their pleasure in nonsense is the pure evidence of this trait.” As they mature and become more self-conscious they learn to attach more positive meanings to their childish play instinct and make it palatable to their adult taste.149 But the impulse remains the same: we laugh because we want to laugh, not because we really want to have sex.

  If only it were true. In an undated note to Max Florence acutely observed that the tragedy of the relationship between Max and herself had been the sheer weight they had both attached to it. Entangled in their own neuroses, they had never been able to laugh together. “If you could laugh at the little mule in me,” she wrote, “instead of expecting it to have horse sense, I know I could laugh at you, and we could be happy friends.”150 While Charlie performed humor and Max wrote about it, neither of the two men had known or been able to teach Florence how to live it.