A Heaven of Words

by Glenway Wescott

  Antonio Salemme (1892–1995). Italian-American sculptor, he and wife Betty were Wescott and Wheeler’s Greenwich Village neighbors in the early 1920s.

  J. D. Salinger (1919–2010). Reclusive author whose one novel, Catcher in the Rye, remains a classic of adolescent alienation. He also published stories and novellas.

  Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1917–2007). Author, historian, and social critic. Was a special assistant to President Kennedy and a Pulitzer Prize winner.

  Zachary Scott (1914–65). Popular movie actor who turned back to the stage late in his career. His second wife was Wescott’s friend, stage actress Ruth Ford.

  William Shawn (1907–92). Longtime editor of the New Yorker who was famously indulgent with writers he believed in.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–91). Polish-born Jewish-American novelist and short story writer and 1978 Nobel Prize winner.

  Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964). A poet and critic, she had a frustrated devotion to Pavel Tchelitchev.

  Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969). Author of six volumes of autobiography, plus novels, stories, and poems.

  Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988). Prolific author on art and architecture, as well as poetry and autobiography.

  Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946). American-born essayist and critic who became a British citizen. He was a perfectionist, known for his aphorisms.

  Stephen Spender (1909–95). British poet, novelist, and essayist.

  Maureen Stapleton (1925–2006). Actress of stage, screen, and television.

  Sam Steward (1909–93). Novelist, short story writer, and a hero of sexual liberation. A friend of Gertrude Stein, he was a college instructor turned tattoo artist (under the name Phil Sparrow) and pornography writer (under the name Phil Andros). He kept records and images of his many sexual encounters and was an important volunteer for Dr. Alfred Kinsey at the Institute for Sex Research.

  James Stewart (1908–97). Famed actor of film and theater, known for his distinctive voice and manner.

  Lytton Strachey (1880–1932). British writer, critic, and founder of the Bloomsbury Group of authors. He was the subject of the 1995 film Carrington.

  Roger Straus Jr. (1917–2004). Cofounder of the literary publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Considered one of the last of the old-time quality publishers.

  Harold Strauss (1907–75). Editor who pioneered the postwar introduction of Japanese literature to America.

  Graham Sutherland (1903–80). British artist known for landscapes who also worked in tapestries and glass design.

  Bernadine Szold-Fritz (1896–1982). Journalist, screenwriter, and one of the first Paris correspondents for the New Yorker. She knew Wescott and Wheeler from the expatriate 1920s and later settled in Beverly Hills. She played herself in the Warren Beatty film Reds.

  Allen Tate (1899–1979). Southern writer, poet, and critic. Married to the writer Caroline Gordon.

  Pavel (“Pavlik”) Tchelitchev (1898–1957). Russian-born artist who was the lover of American poet and artist Charles Henri Ford. Wescott hand-delivered a large collection of Tchelitchev’s erotic drawings to Dr. Alfred Kinsey at the Institute for Sex Research.

  Dylan Thomas (1914–53). Welsh poet and short story and screenwriter. His public readings made him very popular in America.

  Virgil Thomson (1896–1989). Composer and critic who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

  James Thurber (1894–1961). Author, cartoonist, and wit. Associated with the New Yorker.

  J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973). British writer and poet. Best known for his fantasy fiction: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

  John Updike (1932–2009). Novelist, poet, short story writer, and critic.

  Paul Valéry (1871–1945). French poet, essayist, and philosopher.

  Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964).Writer and photographer. A patron of the Harlem Renaissance, and literary executor of Gertrude Stein.

  Gore Vidal (1925–2012). Novelist, essayist, playwright, critic, and political activist. Author of the controversial gay-themed The City and the Pillar in 1948.

  Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007). Novelist, essayist, and humanist. Author of the satirical works Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, and Breakfast of Champions.

  Diana Vreeland (1903–89). Fashion editor and columnist for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue.

  Sir Hugh Walpole (1884–1941). British author of thirty-six popular novels. W. Somerset Maugham mockingly caricatured him in Cakes and Ale. (Not to be confused with Horace Walpole, 1717–79.)

  Andy Warhol (1928–87). The key artist of the Pop Art movement. His unexpected death on the same day as Wescott’s (February 22) captured the headlines before the writer was well remembered as one of the last of the 1920s expatriates and for The Pilgrim Hawk.

  Peter Watson (1908–56). British art collector and benefactor who funded the magazine Horizon and was the main love interest of Cecil Beaton. Pavel Tchelitchev was also in love with him.

  Denton Welch (1915–48). British writer and painter, known for the sensitivity of novels such as In Youth Is Pleasure and A Voice Through a Cloud, and his journals.

  Rebecca West (1892–1983). British author, literary critic, journalist, and travel writer.

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947). British mathematician and philosopher.

  Paul Whiteman (1890–1967). Big band leader and orchestral director. He sold Lloyd and Barbara Wescott the New Jersey farm that included Glenway’s Haymeadows home.

  Richard Wilbur (b. 1921). Poet and translator.

  Thornton Wilder (1897–1975). Playwright and novelist who was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes. He warned Wescott during the expatriate 1920s that it was important to be mentioned on the news pages, not just in the book reviews.

  Tennessee Williams (1911–83). Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, with later movie adaptations such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire. Also a novelist, short story writer, and poet.

  Edgar Wind (1900–1971). German-born British art historian.

  Yvor Winters (1900–1968). Influential poet and critic. He and his wife Janet Lewis, a poet and novelist, were original members of the Poetry Club with Wescott at the University of Chicago.

  Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938). Major, influential novelist. Author of Look Homeward, Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again.

  Tom Wolfe (b. 1931). Popular author and journalist.

  Virginia Woolf (1882–1941). Influential British modernist writer and central figure of the Bloomsbury Group. Author of novels such as Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse.

  Herman Wouk (b. 1915). Author especially known for historical novels.

  William Butler Yeats (1865–1939). Towering figure in twentieth-century literature, an Irish poet and playwright. Awarded the 1923 Noble Prize in Literature.

  John Yeon (1910–94). Architect known for his work and influence in the Portland, Oregon, area. An intimate friend of Wescott.

  Alexander Jensen Yow (b.1926). Artist and an intimate friend of Lincoln Kirstein. When he was unsure of what career to pursue, Monroe Wheeler suggested art conservator, and he went on to become an art conservator at New York’s Morgan Library. Years later Wescott called him “the greatest cleaner of drawings and restorer of mediaeval miniatures in the country.”

  Index

  Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

  Abels, Cyrilly, 73

  Acheson, Dean, 185–186

  Addison, Joseph, 90

  Aesop, 5, 16, 202

  Albee, Edward, 87

  Alexander, Harriet (Crocker), 98

  Alsop, Joseph, 79

  American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 3, 7, 24, 40–41, 48, 49, 51, 52, 62, 63, 81, 105, 118, 127, 133–134, 139, 145, 156, 179, 181, 182, 194, 209, 210, 214, 219, 248, 265, 266, 278

  Ames, Lou, 124

  Andrews Sisters, The, 267

  Apartment in Athens (GW), 5, 43, 71, 129, 148, 177, 207, 243, 247, 279

  Apollinaire, Guillaume,
32

  Apple of the Eye, The (GW), 4, 65, 70, 71, 95, 109, 191, 254

  Aristotle, 188

  Armstrong, Louis, 165

  Ashby, Ivan, 118, 152, 153, 183, 204, 206, 213, 224, 225, 239, 255, 277, 278

  Astor, Brooke, 171, 178, 239, 273

  Auden, Wystan Hugh, 81, 96, 102, 150–151, 166, 267–268

  Audubon, John James, 36

  Auriel, Vincent, 135

  Austen, Jane, 54, 195

  Authors Guild, 52, 139

  Babe’s Bed, The (GW), 4, 72

  Bach, Johann Sebastian, 20

  Bachardy, Don, 41, 225–226

  Bacon, Francis, 85

  “Bad Han” (GW), 191

  Balanchine, George, 123, 127–128, 133, 169, 171–172, 262

  Balzac, Honorè de, 11, 54, 135, 184, 189, 194, 215

  Barber, Samuel, 119

  Baring, Maurice, 243

  Barnes, Djuna, 228

  Barrows, Marjorie. See Wescott, Marjorie

  Baudelaire, Charles, 135, 147

  Baum, L. Frank, 148

  Beatles, The, 187

  Beaton, Sir Cecil, 196–197, 265

  Beckett, Samuel, 87

  Benet, William, 219

  Bentley, Wilson Alwyn, 78

  Bergman, Ingmar, 137, 175

  Bessie, Connie, 255

  Bishop, Isabel, 210

  Blake, William, 66, 82, 210, 270

  Blixen, Baroness Karen. See Dinesen, Isak

  Bogan, Louise, 7, 24, 31, 251

  Bonnard, Pierre, 36, 99, 101, 130, 151, 169, 211

  Borges, Jorge Luis, 179

  Boswell, James, 194–195

  Bourgoint, Jean and Jeanne, 140, 184, 228

  Bousquet, Marie-Louise, 140

  Bowen, Kitty, 85

  Braake, Anna, 9–10, 11, 15, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46–47, 54, 56

  Bradbury, Walter, 72, 77, 83–84

  “Breath of Bulls, The” (GW), 182

  Britton, Coburn, 182, 192

  Brontë, Emily, 174

  Brooks, Van Wyck, 98

  Bryan, William Jennings, 218–219

  Buckley, William F., 156

  Burke, Kenneth, 69, 89

  Burns, John Horne, 125

  Burns, Robert, 226

  Burroughs, William S., 248–249

  Butler, Earl, 68, 119, 183, 213, 250

  Butts, Anthony, 9, 228

  Butts, Mary, 9

  Bynner, Witter, 228

  Byrne, Brendan T., 265

  Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 34, 167, 241

  Cadmus, Paul, 104, 115, 209, 269

  Caine, Hall, 148

  Calder, Alexander, 105

  Calendar of Saints for Unbelievers, A (GW), 4, 240, 249–250

  Callas, Maria, 41

  Campbell, Joseph, 3, 266

  Camus, Albert, 200

  Canfield, Cass, 117, 118, 166, 192, 224

  Capote, Truman, 89–90, 118, 128, 129, 130, 136–137, 154, 247

  Carter, Jimmy, 250

  Cartier Brésson, Henri, 71

  Casaliers, Lena, 185

  Casement, Roger, 86–87

  Cather, Willa, 202

  Cavafy, Constantine P., 205

  Cezanne, Paul, 24, 67

  Chagall, Marc, 16, 173

  Chandlee, Will, III, 8, 38, 63, 119, 126–127, 199

  Chanel, Coco, 220

  Charles V, Emperor, 168

  Chastagnal, Alain, 183

  Cheever, John, 57–58, 71

  Chevalier, Maurice, 9

  “Children of This World” (GW), 5, 7, 49

  Church, Senator Frank, 204

  Clark, Eleanor, 127

  Clark, Lord Kenneth, 48, 96

  Clark, Thane, 139, 240, 252, 254, 270, 271

  Cockerell, Bill, 173

  Cocteau, Jean, vii, 3, 14, 51, 52, 77, 88, 89, 93, 134, 145, 153–154, 164, 184, 228, 266

  Colette, vii, 51, 68, 73, 88, 92

  Colum, Padraic, 86–87, 142, 143, 172

  Connolly, Cyril, 39, 149

  Connolly, John, viii, 8, 35, 44, 45, 53, 54, 79, 83, 85, 97, 99, 118, 123, 127, 151, 153, 174, 183, 198, 199, 206, 213, 218, 224, 239, 247, 248, 263, 269, 277, 278

  Continual Lessons (and journal materials for) (GW), viii, 6, 7, 8, 279

  Cooper, Lady Diana, 79–80

  Corat, Jean-Baptiste-Camille, 202

  Cosby, Bill, 190

  Courbet, Gustave, 169

  Cowell, Henry, 42

  Cowley, Malcolm, 52, 71, 105

  Crane, Josephine, 63–64, 65, 73, 86, 142

  Crowley, Aleister, 9

  Cummings, E. E., 74

  Cunard, Lady Emerald, 221

  Cunard, Nancy, 222, 266

  Curtiss, Mina (Kirstein), 135

  D’Alvarez, Marguerite, 222–223

  D’Amboise, Jacques, 133

  D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 212

  Darrow, Clarence, 218–219

  David, Gerard, 197

  Davis, George, 204

  “Deadly Friend, The” (GW), 5, 49, 214

  Delaney, Samuel R., 5

  De Quincey, Thomas, 272

  Dermit, Eduoard, 134

  Dermit, Emilienne, 134

  Desbordes, Jean, 184

  Diaghilev, Sergei, 145

  Dickens, Charles, 189

  Dickinson, Emily, 174

  Diderot, Denis, 48

  Dietrich, Marlene, 18

  Dinesen, Isak (Karen Blixen), 41, 43, 51, 74, 82, 172

  Disraeli, Benjamin, 156, 221

  Dos Passos, John, 42

  Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 47, 65, 133, 172, 184, 189

  Douglas, Laurie, 54

  “Dream of Mrs. Cleveland, The” (GW), 5, 49

  Duncan, Isadora, 3, 184

  “Dust-Basket, A” (GW), 72

  Eisenhower, Milton, 158

  El Greco, 77

  Eliot, T. S., 21, 150–151

  Elizabeth, Queen, 21

  Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 203, 206, 214, 218

  “Emperor Concerto, The” (GW), 182

  Engle, Paul, 76

  Euginie, Empress, 97–98

  Farrell, Suzanne, 133

  Faulk, Andrew, 262

  Faulkner, William, 74, 172, 184

  Fauré, Gabriel, 167

  Fear and Trembling (GW), 4, 77, 189, 243

  Fears, Peggy, 54

  “Feeling about Henry James, A” (GW), 72

  Ferber, Edna, 49

  Field, Edward, 83

  “Fifteen Fables” (GW), 72

  Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 42

  Flanner, Janet, 7, 15, 25, 48, 92, 130, 131, 136, 182, 208, 239, 243, 255, 260–261, 266

  Flaubert, Gustave, 25, 135, 145, 191, 200

  Flores, Bill, 54

  Fontanne, Lynn, 171

  Ford, Alice, 36

  Ford, Charles Henri, 98, 228

  Ford, Ford Madox, 252

  Ford, Ruth, 127

  Forster, E. M., 34, 39, 172, 182, 208–209, 210, 211

  “Fortune in Jewels, A” (GW), 5, 49

  France, Anatole, 163

  Franklin, Joe, 150

  Frazier, Joe, 196

  Frederick II, Emperor, 80

  “Frenchman Six Feet Three, The” (GW), 72

  Frost, David, 174

  Frost, Robert, 40, 62, 266

  Gado, Frank, 159

  Gamwell, Jim, 59–60

  Gathorne-Hardy, Robert, 195–196

  Gauguin, Paul, 36, 151

  Gebhard, Paul, 19, 38–39, 60–61, 76

  Geffen, Felicia, 63, 71

  George, Stefan, 212

  George, Yvonne, 134

  Gerhardt, Elena, 272

  Gershwin, George, 222–223

  Gershwin, Ira, 223

  Ghandi, Mahatma, 184

  Gielgud, Sir John, 21

  Ginsberg, Allen, 248

  Ginzburg, Ralph, 82

  Giroux, Robert, 216, 255

  Goethe, 241, 243

  Goger, Dr. Pauline, 47, 56, 120

  Gogol, Nikolai, 32

  Go
ldman, Eric, 131

  Goodbye, Wisconsin (GW), 4, 84

  Goya, Francisco, 168

  Graham, Katherine, 171

  Gramont, Duchess Marie de (Marie Raspoli), 222

  Grandmothers, The (GW), 4, 71, 72, 76, 129, 148, 175, 177, 206, 247, 274, 278

  Granville-Barker, Harley, 66–67

  Guérin, Jacques, 119, 140, 240, 256

  Gunther, Jane, 254, 278

  Gunther, John, 254

  Haldeman, H. R., 224

  Hammarskjöld, Dag, 89

  Hargitay, Mickey, 58

  Harrison, Barbara. See Wescott, Barbara Harrison

  Harrison, Francis Burton, 32

  Hasse, Johann Adolph, 20

  Heaven of Words, A, 6, 180, 217

  Heintz, Jack, 171

  Hemans, Felicia, 135

  Hemingway, Ernest, 4, 14–15, 42, 52, 65, 66, 67–68, 72, 96–97, 119, 122, 132, 212, 243, 267

  Hemingway, Mary, 66, 68

  Hendrix, Jimi, 225

  Hentoff, Margot, 164

  Hersey, John, 71

  Hesse, Hermann, 174, 184

  Hiss, Alger, 58

  Hoffer, Eric, 158

  Homer, 192

  Hoover, J. Edgar, 150

  Horney, Karen, 23, 84, 213

  Hotchkiss, Bruce (nephew), 24, 72–73, 120

  Hotchkiss, Dorothy, 73, 120

  Hotchkiss, Elizabeth. See Wescott, Elizabeth

  Hotchner, A. E., 132

  Housman, A. E., 208, 209

  Howard, Chuck, 13

  Hughes, Richard, 66, 73, 81

  Hughes, Richard (governor), 99

  Hugo, Victor, 135, 174, 250

  Humphrey, Hubert, 158, 167

  “Hundred Affections, A” (GW), 48

  Hunt, Violet, 252

  Hurd, Clement, 179

  Huxley, Aldous, 41, 63, 175

  Huxley, Julian, 36

  Images of Truth (GW), 5–6, 51, 70, 73, 84, 130, 141

  Inge, William, 35, 57, 79, 118, 224

  “Isak Dinesen Tells a Tale” (GW), 43

  Isherwood, Christopher, 41, 94, 182, 210, 225

  Jagger, Mick, 179

  James, Henry, 65, 72, 75, 135, 149, 172, 272

  Jefferson, Thomas, 12

  Jenkins, Walter, 103–104

  Jiménez, Juan Ramón, 187

  Joan of Arc, 137

  Johnson, Jack, 160

  Johnson, Ladybird, 97–98

  Johnson, Lyndon B., 92, 100, 103–104, 156, 158

  Johnson, Philip, 101, 211

  Johnson, Samuel, 68

  Jones, LeRoi (Amiri Baraka), 190

  Josephson, Matthew, 71

  Joyce, James, 44, 191