A Heaven of Words

by Glenway Wescott

  SEPTEMBER 26

  Paris, with Barbara: Despite the shopping and art-dealing, telephoning and telegraphing, we did get to the Louvre and saw its Rembrandt self-portrait and the Claude Lorrain and the Poussins in a better light.

  OCTOBER

  [After the London, Paris, and Amsterdam museum trip with Barbara.]

  Monroe has fallen in love with Italy, whereas I, in consequence of having traveled with Barbara, want to go to Berlin, Dresden and Leningrad.

  OCTOBER 10

  Oh the sad lunatics in our country. In the Trenton railway station this morning a young woman, not without physical distinction but starved-looking, wearing a black cardigan, an improvised skirt of unhemmed white cotton, and broken white sneakers, pacing up and down, hugging herself tight with her thin arms, singing softly, tunelessly.

  OCTOBER 26

  A journal is really the best of the literary forms for this day and age, for those of us who cannot or will not fabricate pastime-reading-matter for the trade. I feel like old Moses looking down in the Promised Land, with Aaron/Robert Phelps holding me up for my vicarious look.

  It was cold last night. We turned the clocks back but my inner clock followed its summer habits. I went outdoors and stood between the morning star and the full moon; fantastic brightness. The barns and the outbuildings stood around me like palaces. I thought of taking a walk, but felt afraid to do so alone. Afraid of what? Of the beauty, imagining that it might lure me to my death—nune dimmetus—or at least over-awe and benumb and downgrade my poor creative faculty. Perhaps when confronted with really great subject matter, it is best just to dip one’s mind in it—and then to recall it with pen in hand.

  OCTOBER 30

  Norman Mailer: Certain critics have now declared him to be the highest-ranking American author; no one else, it must be admitted, has his facility. By insinuating intelligence, which is a better trick than his applause-getting figures of speech, he must be influential—if only people really read him. Do they? He isn’t easy to read.

  NOVEMBER 28

  Amplified Music—The Rolling Stones: Nine seats in the front row of Madison Square Garden, African drumming, the kids three or four tiers over us, the crowd noise like the sound of the sea, the tidal wave of dancers down the center aisle … the beauty of Jagger.

  DECEMBER 5

  Tea with [artist] Clement Hurd, a good respected friend with whom I had a brief episode of love in 1935.

  DECEMBER 13

  [To Philippe de Rothschild.]

  I had to hasten to town to hear Borges the blind prose-poet, at the Poetry Center, because I have proposed our inviting him to give the Blashfield address at the Academy and must be certain that he can be heard and understood by my old confreres. Borges said, “All literature is one book, all authors are one author.”

  DECEMBER 26

  Mouton Rothschild, Pauillac. We are in the so-called Italian apartment on the ground floor, under the staircase, with portes-fenetres opening out into the great vineyard, now just visible in veiled moonlight. But only for one night, Pauline has decreed, although my favorite maid Olga had already unpacked and put away all my belongings. Why? To remind me of my joyous first visit, I guess. Her caprices are, as a rule, well thought out. Back in the green room with Chinese furniture and green wallpaper and green orchids, with music of the extremely amorous white doves above and below the windows.

  Our dear hostess’s heart condition has worsened; at last the French doctors have passed the buck back to our American specialists, where surely it belongs. She is going to the Leahey Clinic in Boston [after the holidays], for all the tests and presumably for surgery. She doesn’t want Philippe to go along, he tells me; they are too emotional together, I dare say. I impulsively offered to escort her, but I don’t think she will want that either. As is often the case for women, a great deal of her courage and strength is keeping up appearances.

  I was more anxious last year, when I thought she was afraid to know the truth and might settle for a shortened life.

  DECEMBER 31

  [Mouton Rothschild, a gift inscription to Monroe.]

  To my nearest and dearest, this volume (an anthology of poetry, Pound’s latest), now that our life together has got to be a sort of poem in itself.

  At this time of my life I despair of facts; for my part, in terms of my own endeavors and potential, I believe only in language.

  “A Heaven of Words.” This is my presumptive title for the final volume of my journals: the time of my life when I hope to enjoy writing more than ever before.

  1970–1974

  DURING THE 1960s WESCOTT still had some periods of public celebrity—on the television, on the radio, and in mainstream publications. By the 1970s he is beyond that, though he sometimes appears in gossip columnist Liz Smith’s society page, or in a New York Times photo of a literary event. Nevertheless, throughout the entire decade Wescott is still one of the most brilliant and spellbinding public speakers anywhere. He is a frequent speaker at the Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters and at many other literary and social events. As always, it is a special experience to hear him read, whether other writers’ work or his own.

  Meanwhile, Wheeler continues his worldwide travel for MoMA. Their exchange of letters continues, with Glenway at Haymeadows and Monroe in Europe, the Far East, and Latin America. At Monroe’s New York City apartment they keep up their tradition of dinner parties for their famous friends. While it’s a shame that Wescott didn’t experience European travel in his middle years (except for a short trip in 1952), now their winter holiday trips to Mouton Rothschild allow for side trips to Paris, London, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, to see the great museums as well as friends. Perhaps conscious of their place in the art world and as a storied couple, they seldom fly on the same plane, so that there would be a survivor in the event of a tragedy.

  In the final phase of his writing career, Wescott’s interest is clear: personal essays and journals. Time is too precious for literary reviews, or for the tar baby of fiction. The very last time he attempts fiction, trying to revive the unfinished “The Stallions,” he frustrates and upsets himself. But fortunately, Wescott is contacted by a man named Coburn Britton, a poet with a city apartment and a country home near Haymeadows. The publisher of a handsome quarterly called Prose, Britton offers Wescott a thousand dollars for any piece he chooses to write. Three beautiful essays follow. “The Odor of Rosemary” is Wescott at his lyrical best, as he recalls his 1935 ocean voyage to Spain. Leaving honeymooning Lloyd and Barbara alone, he befriends a tragic young man. The essay ends on a note of compassion as a breeze carries the scent of rosemary from the coast of Spain out to sea. “The Emperor Concerto” recalls his relationship with Wheeler in 1928, 1933, and up to the present day. “Memories and Opinions” recalls the 1920s in London and Paris. Another piece, a humorous self-portrait called “The Breath of Bulls,” appears in the anthology Works in Progress, Number 6. The idea of a book of essays with the title “The Odor of Rosemary” comes to him—and Harpers is interested—but he lets it go.

  As for journals, once Robert Phelps secures a contract with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 1972 Wescott really begins to see his journals and his career retrospectively. He produces less material for current journals and devotes more time to organizing papers, photocopying old manuscripts, tape recording interviews, and reading Phelps’s selections for private gatherings. (He comments on this endless task in his last entry of 1972.) The rest of his time is absorbed by family, the Academy-Institute, and social events.

  When their friend E. M. Forster dies, Wescott and Christopher Isher-wood see to the publication of his long-suppressed novel Maurice, written in 1913–14, with proceeds going to writers’ awards. Another great loss is Marianne Moore at eighty-four. Elderly Janet Flanner is now living in New York and Glenway visits her at Natalia Danesi Murray’s city apartment and Fire Island house. Pauline de Rothschild’s frail health and visits to Boston hospitals become an issue. Glenway himself begins to have
circulatory problems in 1973, but his health remains fair to good for another decade.

  Aside from literary politics, Wescott despises the politics of Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Vietnam, and police suppression of gay rights. He is still in communication with the Kinsey Institute. Privately, he enjoys the new era of gay erotic films at Manhattan theaters like the David, Adonis, and the Jewel. He especially enjoys the sentimental, romantic films of Toby Ross.

  He turns a page in his private life in late August 1974 when friend Earl Butler brings along John Stevenson for a weekend at Haymeadows. A success in advertising in his twenties and a serious photographer, Stevenson immediately finds a soul mate in Glenway. John Connolly is still Wescott’s longtime companion—aside from Monroe—but most of Connolly’s time is devoted to his television studio work and to his life with Ivan Ashby at their city apartment. With Monroe usually in New York or traveling, loneliness can often be sensed in these journals, along with short bouts of depression. In Stevenson, Glenway has the joy of a handsome, bright, and charming escort for the ballet, concerts, dinners, and some weekends, and a welcome phone call in the night. Likewise, Monroe, nearly three years earlier, met Anatole Pohorilenko from Philadelphia, a sophisticated young art student and teacher who proves an invaluable support. Over the decades, Glenway and Monroe had a succession of younger companions who later remained friends. Now they both find younger partners for their late years.

  1970

  JANUARY 4

  Mouton. I did not get around to New Year’s resolutions on New Year’s Eve which is also Pauline’s birthday and in French tradition the equivalent of Christmas, with great fond commotion, gift-giving and extra eating and drinking, even extra kissing! At midnight, the solemn sound of a melodious, dark-toned gong. I managed not to kiss anyone unappealing. Philippine ordered the young Alain Chastagnal, one of her pulchritudinous protégés, to be kissed by me. I did it in the French way, very slowly twice, that is twice doubly, first on the right, then on the left, and very slowly, in order to taste his skin and to distinguish between his body odor and his expensive scent.

  I talked about Isadora Duncan which somehow disappointed them. Someone prompted me by asking for more stories of the Hotel Welcome and Cocteau, Jeannot and Jeanne, and Jean Desbordes, which enchanted the youngsters. In the end they called me “Uncle Glenway.”

  Paris. In the bourdon of Notre-Dame, the “flawless” exquisite F-sharp bell is named Emmanuèle. When it was cast or re-cast in the seventeenth century, Parisian women contributed gold and silver ornaments and jewels “to gladden and perfect his timbre.”

  JANUARY 20

  Poetry moves the heart and the senses; fiction leads the imagination on a merry chase, or on a stations of the cross.

  A factor in our campus disorders that we are apt to forget: the underlying pessimism, no wonder! Said a Harvard student leader named Samuel Bonder: “Youth today must decide how to face the end of the world.”

  Said Ghandi (quoted by Malraux): “It is better to fight than to be afraid.”

  JANUARY 27

  I observe this about my aging, shrinking mind: whereas I seem not to have been put off by ideas when I was young, now I don’t like to be made to think about things that are (for me) untrue or odious. No more Sade, no more Dostoyevsky, no more Faulkner. Although I quibble. I bracket Proust with Balzac and Tolstoy. Now our youngsters read Hesse—a million dollar business for Farrar, Straus. This weekend I had a weird conversation with Yale graduates, one of Baba’s nephews and a couple of friends, and they said that Hesse was “relevant”—they used the word!— and Proust wasn’t.

  [To Raymond Mortimer.]

  Pauline entered the hospital in Boston on Sunday, and had test after test all week. They had found what was feared: a serious leakiness of the mitral valve. Now for a fortnight of treatments in preparation for surgery.

  FEBRUARY 3

  Boston, Logan Airport. A great pity: Philippe hurt Pauline’s feelings before dinner last night, and she fought him in two or three long telephone sessions before he went to bed and again this morning. Some of it I discount as a kind of exhaustion and danger, disguising her fear as drama. I have been tempted to tell the great cardiologist to curtail her visiting hours and to ration her long-distance telephoning. This last would serve a double purpose; Philippe’s comment on her hundred dollar phone chat with Elsa in Paris was the point of departure for last night’s unhappiness. She is a great wife, but in her defiant extravagances often behaves like one of the great courtesans, Lora Pearl or Lena Casaliers. He loves her profoundly and who knows which of them spoils the other the more thoughtlessly. Perhaps he is richer than he admits; in any event, sometimes he rebels against her inability to add or subtract. Upon which she reproaches him for overworking her with his translations, and not leaving her time or peace of mind enough to write the books she has her heart set on writing before she dies.

  While waiting for the bus I telephoned him and heard his pitiful report of all this. Eurodice about to descend into the netherworld, trying to make Orpheus promise her a different life, first this, second that, and then the other thing; threatening not to come back to life unless he can guarantee these essential changes.

  FEBRUARY 7

  Secretary of State Dean Acheson quotes General Marshall as having said, “There are two kinds of men: those who deal with action and those who deal with disruption.” Isn’t there a third kind: those whose thoughts and utterances are prophetic somehow? This further question: haven’t we had disastrous secretaries of state as far back as I can remember, some too weak, one or two too strong, sometimes inflexible, sometimes changeable? (Hill, Marshall himself, Dulles, Acheson himself, Rusk.)

  MARCH 13

  This is Friday-thirteenth, traditionally unlucky; not so in the traditions of my life. My oldest, closest friend, who rescued me from poverty and illness and ignorance, and more important still, from having to keep everything about myself secret from everyone, and from not having the slightest idea of a lifework or a livelihood, was born on a Friday-thirteenth. It was one of the first things he told me about himself.

  That was in Chicago, in the early spring of 1919. I was ill most of that year, at home in Wisconsin; and then I went to New Mexico where he visited me in the summer of 1920. That in itself was a kind of rescue, as I was in trouble, in a slight scandal, with all the people I knew out there quarreling with me or about me. Back in Chicago in the autumn of 1920, Monroe took me to live with him and his parents, which his mother disapproved; and our intimacy began. …

  Poor Monroe! On Sunday at Haymeadows he got up awkwardly out of his folding chair at the back door and hurt his arthritic back; and now he is suffering from sciatica, just able to walk—but of course walking, business and pleasure as usual. His stoicism and exceeding strength of character naturally make him willful and proud. He is the most generous man in the world, and the most flattering, but with sometimes a streak of unkindness. He was unkind to me yesterday, and I shed tears, which was perhaps harder on him than me.

  A propos of Monroe’s threatening to retire to a nursing home because, in my concern for his health, I try to exercise authority over him—which made him weep bitterly—I remember something he said to me in the railway station in Nice in the early summer of 1928. His relationship with George [Platt Lynes] was well under way, and he had asked him to spend the summer with us. But relations between George and me were then tense, though with good will on both our parts. Monroe got tired of this, and decided to travel back to New York and Evanston, leaving old love and new love to work things out and to make peace. That day on the platform in Nice, reproving me for my hot temper and bad tongue, he said, “I’d rather earn my living in a brothel in Constantinople than live with you when you behave so badly.”

  Strange as it may seem now, I was the breadwinner in those several years.

  MARCH 14

  Two new hit songs: one by the Beatles … one by Simon and Garfunkle. The first absurd in its specific Roman Catholicism, wit
h an excellent melody: “Let It Be.” The second, written by Simon, sung by his halo-headed blond Garfunkle: “Bridge Over Troubled Waters.” Both of them in a new fashion, accompanied by the piano, with Brahms-like chords.

  MARCH 18

  The body of a teenage youth was found this morning in the branches of a tree in mid-Manhattan.

  MARCH 21

  Said Juan Ramón Jiménez in his letter of acceptance of the Nobel Prize: “My wife Zenobia is the true winner of this prize. Her companionship, her help, her inspiration, made my work possible for 40 years. Today, without her, I am desolate and helpless.”

  For very old people love is ineluctably tragic, even when the beloved has gone before.

  MARCH 24

  I have never loved Haymeadows as ardently as I did Stone-blossom. Perhaps because I am older, more preoccupied with my own shortcomings, shifting the onus upon realities around me.