All We Know: Three Lives
Page 37
“I have really…difficult”: Teddy Chanler to EM, July 5, n.d., AFP. “(I wonder, by the way, if in future years, providing we’re both famous, the history of Our Relationship won’t constitute a separate course at Columbia.)” Teddy Chanler to EM, September 3, n.d., AFP.
“a very usual occurrence”: Teddy Chanler to EM, April 25, n.d., AFP.
Esther would pass out: She later told Sybille Bedford that she woke in their apartment one morning to see an enormous portrait of Queen Victoria over the bed, inscribed by the queen: TO MY DARLING GODDAUGHTER OLIVIA. Sybille Bedford to author, conversation, London, March 30, 2000.
“the long-roofed…ship”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night (New York: Scribner’s, 1995 [1934]), 205.
for whom she…“admiration”: EM to Gertrude Stein, Tuesday, n.d. [circa 1929–30], Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
“upbraid[ed]” her for…“Barney”: Teddy Chandler to EM, August 6, [1926], AFP.
“outlet for sensibility”: EM to Gerald Murphy, November 21, 1916, GSMP.
“could not be…themselves”: Wilson, The Sixties, 289.
“Her behavior…rebuke”: Vaill, Everybody Was So Young, 348.
“a process of…realities”: Gerald Murphy to Archibald MacLeish, January 22, 1931, Archibald Mac Leish Papers, Library of Congress.
“full of homage…sure”: William Carlos Williams, The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (New York: New Directions, 1967), 228–29. Barney, Williams went on, “could tell a pickle from a clam any day in the week.”
“her strongest desire”: Quoted in George Wickes, The Amazon of Letters: The Life and Loves of Natalie Barney (New York: Popular Library, 1978), 284.
“entirely selfish…compass”: Sybille Bedford to author, conversation, London, June 30, 2001.
“vegetable-placid…really”: EM to Muriel Draper, April 27, 1933, MDP.
“Above all don’t…novelist”: Teddy Chandler to EM, April 25, n.d., AFP.
“Natalie Barney lay…bed”: Esther Murphy, untitled story, ms., 1926, MDP. The piece ends: “Get out the scarves[?] from my armoire and give them to me. Then take off your clothes and give yourself thirty lashes on the”
“copiously”: Esther Murphy, ms., n.d. [circa 1926], MDP.
“We talked again…earth”: Max Ewing to parents, Monday, March 7, 1927, MEP.
“and by crazy…cuckoo”: Max Ewing to parents, n.d. [circa May 1927], MEP.
“‘She is not’…by”: Barnes, Ladies Almanack, 33.
“ON WAY TO CAPRICE”: EM to Muriel Draper, June 2, 1927, MDP.
“Miss Barney directs…troops”: Max Ewing to parents, n.d. [August 1927], MEP.
“Fancy Esther being”…long: Dorothy Wilde to Natalie Barney, July 27, 1927, quoted in Joan Schenkar, Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde, Oscar’s Unusual Niece (New York: Basic, 2000), 353.
“strange stay with”: EM to Sybille Bedford, February 10, [1949], SBP.
“in a state of frenzy”: Max Ewing to parents, “Sunday,” n.d. [circa May 1928], MEP.
“I suppose you’re…wife”: Hugh Thomas, John Strachey (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973), 70.
“It was characteristic…all”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Echoes of the Jazz Age” in ed. Edmund Wilson, The Crack-Up (New York: New Directions, 1993 [1945]), 14.
“inabilities to act”: John Strachey to EM, Tuesday, n.d. [circa winter–spring 1928–29], AFP.
“startling and revelatory…ascertained?”: Natalie Barney to EM, “late February” [1929], AFP.
“She dreamed of being appreciated”: Sybille Bedford to author, interview, London, March 29, 2000.
“a sort of…purchase”: John Strachey to EM, December 25, 1928, AFP.
“You are truly…satisfying”: John Strachey to EM, Tuesday, n.d. [circa 1928–29], AFP.
“I’m going to…so”: John Strachey to Yvette Fouque, February 22, 1929, quoted in Thomas, Strachey, 71–72.
“Last night…elsewhere”: Max Ewing, n.d. Thursday [postmarked March 7, 1929], MEP.
“You would think…winter!”: Max Ewing, n.d., Wednesday [postmarked March 13, 1929], MEP.
“THINKING OF YOU CONSTANTLY”: EM to Muriel Draper, March 28, 1929, April 4, 1929, April 23, 1929, MDP.
“plunged into the…1929”: EM to Sybille Bedford, September 30, 1959, SBP.
“To the Woman…Britain”: Leaflet, “Parliamentary General Election, To the Woman Elector of Aston,” signed Esther Strachey, MDP.
“the swift ‘transformation…Commonwealth’”: Thomas, Strachey, 75.
“the most important…hand”: EM to Leonie Sterner, November 11, 1930, MDP.
“second place…‘her’”: Thomas, Strachey, 78, 71.
“Remember, every upper…guilty”: Ibid. 69.
“Congratulations, John!”…“you”: Sybille Bedford to author, interview, London, March 29, 2000.
“It is not…them!”: John Strachey to Yvette Fouque, August 13, 1929, quoted in Thomas, Strachey, 78–79.
“Darling, darling Muriel…strange”: EM to Muriel Draper, April 23, [circa 1930], MDP.
“unbutton[ing] his fly”: Mary McCarthy, “Fellow Workers,” Granta 27 (Summer 1989): 107–23, 111.
“forth on the…world”: Max Ewing to parents, Tuesday, n.d. [postmark September 15, 1931], MEP.
“The whole thing…money”: Sybille Bedford to author, interview, London, March 29, 2000.
“a living corpse”: EM to Chester Arthur, June 10 [1936], AFP. Over thirty years after Anna Murphy’s death Olivia Wyndham recalled “what [Esther] went through when her Mother was begging to die for months and Esther could do nothing about it.” Olivia Wyndham to Sybille Bedford, July 26, 1964, SBP.
“became ill with”: Celia Strachey, unpublished memoir ms., JSP.
“sympathy and understanding”: EM to Muriel Draper, n.d., MDP.
“does love you…this”: Muriel Draper to John Strachey, April 6 and 15, 1932, JSP.
“She is a…being”: Amabel Williams-Ellis to John Strachey, n.d., AFP.
“like a Victorian…her”: Celia Strachey, unpublished memoir ms., JSP.
“My heart quite…of”: Amy Strachey to Gerald Murphy, November 23 [circa 1932], GSMP.
“charming,—almost worthy…quite”: Amy Strachey to EM, August 9, 1937, AFP.
Left Book Club: See Paul Laity, “The Left’s Ace of Clubs,” The Guardian, July 6, 2001. “It was ‘the unorthodox political education of the Left Book Club,’ Aneurin Bevan said, which ‘prepared the way’ for the Labour victory of 1945…. LBC monthly book choices helped to make full employment, proper housing, socialised medicine and civilised town planning axioms of general expectation, not only for an increasingly politicised working class, but for residents in middle-class and suburban constituencies which had seemed beyond the reach of Labour in 1935.”
“dotty…eccentric will”: EM to Chester Arthur, 23 September 1945, AFP. The will also left control of the company to Murphy’s mistress and secretary, who proceeded to run it into the ground.
singer Spivy LeVoe: LeVoe performed at the nightclub and restaurant Tony’s and later ran her own boîte, Spivy’s Roof. She was “famous in the elite gay world.” George Chauncy, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (London, Flamingo/HarperCollins, 1995), 349.
“Never have I…depressing”: EM to Muriel Draper, 27 April 1933, MDP.
“I feel the…me”: John Strachey to Joseph Brewer, April 27, 1932, quoted in Thomas, Strachey, 119.
THE RUMBLE OF THE TUMBRELS
“saying, ‘The Duke’…etc.”: Edmund Wilson, ed. Leon Edel, The Twenties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975), 192.
“celebrated for her…history”: Esther Arthur, “Have You Heard About Roosevelt…?,” 15.
“tall, gaunt, in…within”: Powell, Diaries, 249.
“or at any…self-destruction”: EM to Janet Flanner, April 25, 1938, AFP.
“To focus…her”: Max Ewing to parents, n.d., [postmarked August 2, 1932], MEP.
“At the close…them”: Esther Strachey, “Godfather to American Corruption,” American Mercury 32, no. 126 (June 1934): 170–79, 179.
“were actually more…conspiracy”: Esther Arthur, “The Politicos, 1865–1896, by Matthew Josephson,” Common Sense (May 1938): 24–25, 25.
“Grant’s particular kind…America”: EM, “Godfather,” 170–71.
“like the religious…Europe”: EM to Janet Flanner, April 25, 1938, AFP.
“I have just…them”: EM to John Strachey, October 31, 1938, AFP.
“Well,” she wrote…“consequences”: EM to Amabel Williams-Ellis, April 17, 1939, AFP.
“the great prototype…failure”: EM to Cliff McCarthy, May 4, 1938, AFP.
“The Slippery Sam…History”: EM to Sybille Bedford, n.d., SBP.
“the uncertified lunatics…live”: EM to Muriel Draper, September 1, 1938, MDP.
“when she got…tell”: Sybille Bedford to author, conversation, London, June 30, 2001.
“I used to…Mary”: James Douglas to author, interview, Paris, September 20, 2002.
“flirted with me…party”: EM to Sybille Bedford, April 4, 1950, SBP.
“resembled nothing so…guns”: EM to Gerald Murphy, June 20, 1958, GSMP.
“that she traveled…‘illuminating’”: Wilson, The Fifties, 377. Of this friend, Lorna Lindsley, Esther also noted, only partly in jest: “She went to the coronation [of Elizabeth II] where of course she caused the bad weather.” EM to Sybille Bedford, June 14, n.d., circa 1953, SBP.
“talking, her devouring…reality”: Wilson, The Fifties, 254–55.
“The Barney or…Nun”: EM to Muriel Draper, Sunday, n.d.
“animated by rhetoric…evidence”: Jill Lepore, “Just the Facts, Ma’am: Fake Memoirs, Factual Fictions, and the History of History,” The New Yorker, March 24, 2008, 80.
“a landed proprietor…solicitude”: EM to Muriel Draper, December 16, 1929, MDP.
“the liberal…anachronism”: EM to Muriel Draper, April 27, 1933, MDP.
“that insidious charm…Gamp”: EM to Chester Arthur, May 20, 1936, AFP.
“whispering campaign…survive”: Esther Arthur, “Have You Heard About Roosevelt…?,” 15, 16.
“incalculable influence…own”: EM to John Strachey, October 31, 1938, AFP.
Esther’s use of…to come: I am grateful to Regina Kunzel for this insight.
“a sort of…scene”: EM to Carmel Snow, January 3, 1938, AFP.
“curious and ambitious…so”: Esther Arthur, “Mrs. Luhan and Rousseau,” The New Mexico Sentinel, n.d. [1937], 6–7, MDP.
“You live on…extirpated!”: Quoted in Martin Duberman, The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein (New York: Knopf, 2007), 234. Draper told Kirstein about this incident the next day, and he recorded it in his diary. Kirstein had been initially put off by Esther, “but before long,” writes Duberman, he “grew to appreciate her tenderheartedness, intelligence, and loyalty”; when they were in Europe at the same time in 1933, Esther was “a generous source of contacts and introductions” for him (151).
“as far as…years”: EM to John Strachey, October 31, 1938, AFP. She noted that Wharton had also sent $5,000 to the cause of the Spanish government.
“As the late…‘way’”: EM to Muriel Draper, October 25 [1935], MDP.
“one is forced…done”: EM to Muriel Draper, December 1, 1938, MDP.
“As one grows…‘sorrow’”: EM to Chester Arthur, September 12, 1936, AFP.
ALL VERY QUEER AND A LITTLE DEPRESSING
“You are too…me”: EM to Muriel Draper, March 6, 1935, MDP.
“the only two…South”: Wilson, The Fifties, 252.
“It is curious…Guermantes”: Ibid.
“a man whose…presidency”: EM to Muriel Draper, September 11, [1935], MDP.
“a marvelous character…selfish”: Ibid.
“almost died of…handicaps”: Chester Authur to Morse Erskine, “‘Have the Sexes Achieved the Equilibrium of True Equality?’ A Question Illustrated by a True Story,” n.d. [May 1950], AFP.
“sued him for…‘work’”: Time, January 22, 1934.
“a collective endeavor…Age”: Norm Hammond, The Dunites (South County Historical Society, 1992), 31. A decade earlier, Cecil B. DeMille, filming the first version of The Ten Commandments, had built the set for the City of the Pharaoh nearby, making the area the staging ground for another kind of fantasy. This was a “a 720-foot-wide, 120-foot-tall set that required 1,500 workers, 500 tons of statuary, a half million feet of lumber and 75 miles of reinforcing cable…Over time, DeMille’s Egyptian masterpiece became known as the ‘Lost City,’ buried by the shifting sands and forgotten by nearly everyone—except for the residents of Guadalupe who worked as extras on the film and knew all along that it had not been dismantled. To locals, it was simply ‘the dune that never moved.’” “Do the Dunes,” Santa Maria Valley press release, April 28, 2004.
“a series of…society”: John Marshall, “Passports to Utopia—II,” New International 1, no. 5 (December 1934): 145–47. John Marshall was a pseudonym of George Novack. Accessed at www.marxists.org/archive/novack/1934/12/utopia2.htm.
“full of a…idealism”: Wilson, The Thirties, 508.
“high-class old…crowd”: Edmund Wilson to John Dos Passos, April 27, 1935, in Letters on Literature and Politics, 263.
“The bride and…so”: Wilson, The Thirties, 509.
“ten days of…suffering”: EM to Muriel Draper, April 17, 1935.
“They are apparently…match”: Gerald Murphy to Sara Murphy, February 15, 1935, in Linda Patterson, ed., Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sara Murphy and Friends (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 114.
“promised to be…heterosexually”: Chester Arthur to EM, August 16, 1961, AFP.
“lonely, and…separately”: Chester Arthur to Morse Erskine, “Part Two,” January 1, 1948, AFP.
“I feel that…physically”: EM to Chester Arthur, Sunday, May 17 [circa 1936], AFP.
“Are you disciplining…angel”: Chester Arthur to EM, November 4, 1942, AFP.
“more intimate than…anticipated”: Havelock Ellis to Chester Arthur, May 2, 1935, AFP.
“I know I…day”: EM to Chester Arthur, Sunday, May 17 [circa 1936], AFP.
“an enormous zig-zag…all”: EM to Muriel Draper, September 11, 1935, AFP.
“a slight nervous…kinds”: Chester Arthur to Frank Palmer, September 4, 1935, AFP.
“the most brilliant…York”: Chester Arthur to Morse Erskine, n.d., AFP.
“Do write me…man?”: EM to Chester Arthur, May 17 [circa 1936], AFP.
“various congressmen and…favorites”: Chester Arthur to Rowena Dashwood Arthur, June 8, 1938, AFP.
A Time to be Born (New York: Yarrow Press, 1991 [1942]), 279.
“one of the…1893”: Esther Murphy, “Hetty Green,” labeled “Esther’s tryout for radio” by Chester Arthur, n.d., AFP.
“a corrective biography”: Chester Arthur to May Jackson, February 2, 1940, AFP. He did not write this book. Instead, several decades later, he produced a quasi-mystical study called “The Wavelength of History,” which was mystifying to those who read it.
“scenario for Pompadour…was!”: Chester Arthur to Rowena Dashwood, January 26, 1940, AFP.
“full of issues…radicalism”: EM to John Strachey, October 31, 1938, AFP.
“The Republican Party…ideas”: Murphy, “Democracy in Action.” Esther was working with Helen Gahagan Douglas, then vice chair of the state committee and chair of its women’s division.
“a superb political speaker”: Chester Arthur to Morse Erskine, “Part III,” May 1950, AFP.
“You really might…it”: Harry Howard to EM, April 22, 1942, AFP.
“betrayed far more…it”: EM to Muriel Draper, Decem
ber 1 [1938], MDP.
“the most charitable…world”: EM to Amy Strachey, December 7, 1938, AFP.
“Each new disaster…shock”: EM to Janet Flanner, April 17, 1939, AFP.
“a book on…‘Men’”: Brenda Wineapple, Genêt: A Biography of Janet Flanner (Lincoln: Nebraska University Press, 1992 [1989]), 123. “I would give anything to have one book as my epitaph that I had written which was not concocted from other writings in newspapers…It makes me regret my entire life, work & so called career.” Janet Flanner to Sybille Bedford, June 8, n.d., SBP.
“The ‘recession’…it”: EM to Janet Flanner, April 25, 1938, AFP.
“the incorrigible optimism…voice”: EM to Janet Flanner, April 17, 1939, AFP.
“one of the…perpetrated”: EM to Janet Flanner, April 25, 1938, AFP.
“We are not…it”: “Speech by Esther [1941],” AFP.
“On the side…succeed”: EM to Chester Arthur, January 19, 1943, AFP.
“that poltergeist…undoing”: EM to Muriel Draper, April 17, 1935, MDP.
“all the fights…years”: EM to Chester Arthur, January 30, 1943, AFP.
“as close to…life”: EM to Chester Arthur, n.d., AFP.
“insatiable curiosity…acquaintances”: EM to Muriel Draper, September 11, 1935, MDP.
“The lonely eager…night”: Chester Arthur to EM, n.d., AFP.
“so bound by inertia”: Chester Arthur to EM, February 26, 1943, AFP.
“a huge & rather…work”: Chester Arthur to EM, n.d. [circa 1939–1941], AFP.
“You must really…talker”: Chester Arthur to EM, February 26, 1943, AFP.
“have confidence in…handicap”: EM to Chester Arthur, December 10, 1942, AFP.
“take heart and…failures”: EM to Chester Arthur, Friday, n.d., AFP.
“fundamental trouble…are”: EM to Chester Arthur, June 17, 1943, AFP.
“than to anyone…happens”: EM to Chester Arthur, December 10, 1942, AFP.
“She has seen…(Mexico!)”: EM to Chester Arthur, December 23, 1942, AFP.
“very kind and gracious letter”: EM to Chester Arthur, Monday, n.d., AFP.
“Some of the…country”: EM to Chester Arthur, November 6, 1942, AFP.
“A perfect memory…thought”: Sybille Bedford to author, conversation, London, March 19, 1998.