By Women Possessed

by Arthur Gelb

  Dr. Renner visits daily, and by November 15, O’Neill has recovered sufficiently to walk about his room. During the next few days, he is strong enough to do some sightseeing, but his Work Diary entry for those days says only “November 14-21 Shanghai (Palace) ‘Flu.’”

  He doesn’t mention to Carlotta that he has run into an old acquaintance from his Greenwich Village days—Alfred Batson, a twenty-eight-year-old Canadian, now a reporter on the North China Daily News; at first O’Neill is alarmed, but Batson assures him that his paper, with a circulation of only 7,500, won’t be interested in O’Neill’s presence as a tourist in China. At O’Neill’s request, Batson leads him on tours of the city. “He particularly loved the Police Museum,” Batson recalled years later, “where they had an exotic display of torture items confiscated from the Chinese.”

  On November 18, O’Neill and Carlotta attend a dog race as guests of Dr. Renner and his wife. Instead of inspiriting O’Neill, the outing, in Carlotta’s words, leaves him “exhausted and depressed,” and on the following day he is withdrawn and silent. Carlotta shudders as she recalls the Louis Kantor drinking episode. Suspicious of Batson, she thinks she recognizes the signs.

  The first glow of O’Neill’s rapturous love for Carlotta has dimmed. He has stopped writing and has too much time to brood about how he has walked out on his children and how badly he and Agnes are treating each other. Even more pressing, he is stewing about what Agnes’s thirst for revenge is likely to cost him. With large sums still accumulating from Strange Interlude, he feels he has earned the freedom to write at his own pace and to live comfortably without rushing to put a new play into production.

  He simply cannot stomach the idea of being forced to generate income for the living expenses of an ex-wife. As he’d written to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant before leaving for China, he is infuriated that Agnes’s lawyers are “trying to hold me up for an agreement that would make me her financial slave for life.”

  Carlotta has correctly read the signs of O’Neill’s sense of entrapment. He begins to drink.

  On November 21, well-started on a drunken binge, he offhandedly agrees to let Batson interview him in his suite, after which, saying nothing to Carlotta, he leaves the hotel. She waits alone in their suite, hour after hour, in a panic about her lover’s whereabouts.

  As she later records: “About 1 a.m. Gene comes in the sitting-room—sees me—& weaves over to me (filthy, Black-Irish drunk) & says, ‘What the h___ [sic] are you doing here?’

  “When I could talk I said, ‘I was waiting for you—I was frightened.’ He drew back & said, ‘No———[sic] is going to keep tabs on me!’ And he knocked me flat!” (O’Neill had called her a “God-damned whore,” she later told José Quintero, the director to whom, after O’Neill’s death, she consigned the Broadway premiere of Long Day’s Journey Into Night.)

  Carlotta manages to continue her diary account at 1:10 a.m. She notes that Tuwe—hearing O’Neill stumble out of the suite’s sitting room—comes running to help her: “I was shaking so I could hardly stand. I was terrified.” She says she “wept like a fool.”

  Tuwe washes Carlotta’s face and Carlotta calls the hotel’s night manager. She asks him to get her a room in the best hotel that will take her immediately. She changes her clothes, makes sure she has her checkbook, and, taking only some hand luggage, leaves the Palace for the Hotel Astor.

  She instructs Tuwe to keep an eye on O’Neill and to call Dr. Renner. She begins to wonder if O’Neill “knocked A. about.” And she vows, “He’d not do that to me again—drunk or sober!” In the late morning, Carlotta instructs Tuwe to pack her trunk and send it to the Hotel Astor. The next day, November 23, Carlotta notes she is ill, weak, has a sore throat, and has been ordered by Dr. Renner to stay in bed.

  According to Batson’s later account, O’Neill telephones him to come to the Palace Hotel. He says Carlotta has left him. Drunk and maudlin, he tells a rambling story about her departure: he and Carlotta had an argument when he refused to leave his room, where he was quietly and happily getting plastered. He’d become jealous because Carlotta, requiring an escort, had asked the respectably married assistant hotel manager to be her guide on a sightseeing expedition. “I hit her when she got back,” he confesses.

  Much later—at about 10:00 p.m.—O’Neill and Batson go out on the town, drinking in a dance hall until two in the morning. When they leave the dance hall, O’Neill stumbles after walking a few feet, then sits down on the curb and begins to weep. Needing an excuse for his bathetic behavior, he mumbles that he has been “a son of a bitch to Agnes, and a terrible father”; he’s not about to confess to Batson his fear that the divorce will cost him the financial security he’d recently attained, and perhaps diminish Carlotta’s worshipful love for him.

  Batson manages to get O’Neill back to his hotel at around 4:00 a.m. He’s in terrible shape, shaking and sweating. Batson, frightened, rouses Dr. Renner, who gives O’Neill something to quiet him. Batson leaves after the doctor assures him he’ll arrange for O’Neill to be admitted to the British hospital, and will notify Carlotta.

  Carlotta snappishly notes on November 24 that O’Neill drank himself into a coma “or some such!” and is in the hospital; “His newspaper friends can look after him!” As for herself, she plans to return to France—alone.

  Dr. Renner calls on Carlotta the next day at the Astor Hotel. Although still fuming, she yields to the doctor’s plea and accompanies him to the hospital. “There the beauty is,” she sneers to her diary, “turning on all the Irish charm & looks terrible!” She protests she doesn’t want to give her life “to a man that knocks women down,” and that she will never feel for him as she once did.

  “I do not trust him!” she cries. Nonetheless, messengers carry notes back and forth during O’Neill’s six-day hospital stay. “I love you—always and forever!” O’Neill writes. “Forgive me! I’ll be a good ’un in future—do my damnedest best to! A million kisses, Blessed!”

  It now occurs to Alfred Batson that while O’Neill, as a tourist, was not news, the famous and reclusive American dramatist lying ill in a Shanghai hospital bed is a scoop. Trying to accommodate both his loyalty to his paper and his friendship for O’Neill, he files a quiet story about the playwright’s hospitalization, stating (although he knows better) that O’Neill is “recuperating from a severe indisposition contracted by underestimating the force of the sun’s rays while bathing.”

  O’Neill, normally a prolific letter-writer, corresponds with barely anyone during the nearly four months of his Far Eastern voyage. When he does write to his friend and former dentist, Saxe Commins, he makes no mention of the turbulence he has been undergoing; he simply growls, “The climate is enervating—bad for work,” and adds, “Tropics wore me out.”

  Ever reticent about the episode, O’Neill, even eighteen years later, dissembled. In an interview with Elizabeth Sergeant for a proposed biography (never written), he told her: “Had a touch of sun at Singapore because did what Englishmen and mad dogs did—bathed at noon.”

  It isn’t long before correspondents for the American papers are chasing the story in Shanghai—just one more hurdle to jump for the put-upon Carlotta. “The ghastly heartache of it all!” she laments in her diary on November 27. “Serves me right.”

  Although still angry, she consents to a reconciliation after O’Neill agrees to abort their Asian tour. On December 1, O’Neill joins her at the Astor House Hotel to convalesce and she resigns herself, once again, to looking after him.

  He seems remorseful, but Carlotta, far from reassured, scribbles her bleak thoughts about the future and deplores the recent past. With scant knowledge of what triggers the alcoholic psyche, she despairs, “Why drink when you know you are not sane with alcohol in you—literally not sane!”

  After retrieving O’Neill’s luggage from the Palace Hotel, Carlotta books passage to Europe for December 12 on the S.S. Coblenz, again under a
ssumed names: “James O’Brien” for O’Neill and “Mrs. and Miss Drew” for herself and Tuwe.

  By now, the reporters are swarming. On December 9, one of them tries to make his way into Carlotta’s hotel room while she’s in her bath. “I can’t go on [in] this cheap, insane way!” she agonizes. Although O’Neill pleads with her to forget “all the hell” they’ve been through, Carlotta suspects that this is “just the beginning!”

  O’Neill cables Weinberger, instructing his lawyer to misinform the press that he is planning to sail for Honolulu and will spend the winter there. The New York Times will report this “news” on December 13, adding that O’Neill is “extremely reticent and inclined to view the public’s interest in his health with disfavor.” But the international press continues to speculate about O’Neill’s health and whereabouts.

  As prearranged, Carlotta (with her loyal Tuwe) boards the S.S. Coblenz in the early morning of December 12. She places a note in O’Neill’s empty cabin on her way to her own: “Darling, Let us try to start again—a new existence loving each other more than ourselves!” She invokes her wayward lover to throw off “the poison of an outside world that has crept into our lungs and hearts,” and find again beauty, health, rest, and happiness. “Let us be such good friends now dearest . . . I love you.”

  About an hour later, Dr. Renner ushers O’Neill to his cabin. Perhaps O’Neill reads the note, perhaps not, but shortly after the doctor leaves, O’Neill “snaps” (in Carlotta’s phrase) and swallows a large dose of his sedative. She can once again see “the danger signals”; after trying to minister to him and being rebuffed, she writes: “My illusion that all will be well smashed—things seem blacker—his brain befogged!”

  O’Neill continues to drink despite his promises. Three days out to sea, Carlotta is dismayed when, instead of joining her for lunch in the dining salon, he orders a Scotch sent to his cabin. More and more, Carlotta fears she has made a dreadful mistake in eloping with O’Neill. She determines yet again to leave him, promising herself she will depart the ship when it reaches Hong Kong. But before it does, O’Neill assures Carlotta he will regard the remainder of their trip as “a cure,” and he makes what appears to be a genuine effort, taking regular meals for a time and apparently foreswearing alcohol.

  Carlotta decides to give him another chance but again the effort is short-lived. Indeed, the voyage back to Europe is turning into a gallows farce. Their liaison has already become a boilerplate for all the notorious and salacious love affairs to be blazoned in the press in years to come.

  In Manila, on December 18, reporters board the Coblenz en masse. “Interminable interviews,” Carlotta notes. “I am nearly frantic. Newspaper men after Gene everywhere—& keep after him until the boat sails.” She is horrified to discover that some of the reporters are searching for her. The ship’s engineer comes to her rescue, locking her into her cabin and keeping the key until the reporters have left.

  O’Neill grows overwrought after receiving concerned cables from friends in New York. By now he has found a new drinking companion, an American newspaperman named F. Theo Rogers, who happens to have the cabin next to Carlotta’s.

  On Christmas day, O’Neill, somewhat perfunctorily, gives Carlotta an inscribed script of Dynamo and begins writing her a poem for her approaching fortieth birthday on the twenty-eighth—which he never finishes.

  On her birthday, she encounters a drunken O’Neill, who neglects to wish her happiness. She takes it upon herself, with Tuwe’s help, to search his cabin and, in a futile gesture, they remove the liquor they find. “Gene is off again and it won’t be pretty this time because he has found a drunk to drink with him,” Carlotta notes.

  The following day, O’Neill bursts into Carlotta’s cabin in a fury, demanding his liquor back. He is, in Carlotta’s underlined words, “Gone! Ghastly! Drunk!” All but defeated, she gasps, “If I had the guts, I’d kill myself!” By now, O’Neill’s identity is no longer a secret and many of the ship’s crew, as well as some of the passengers, are aware of the friction between the celebrated American playwright and the famously beautiful actress who is his mistress.

  On New Year’s Eve, Carlotta admits defeat. She has learned that O’Neill has abandoned his own cabin and is now drinking and sleeping in Rogers’s. “Gene has behaved abominably—& I can’t take any more,” she notes. “What a filthy mess! How this would please A. and well it might. She wins! We are what we are!” At her wit’s end, she asks the ship’s purser to assist her in leaving the Coblenz at Colombo, their next stop, on New Year’s Day.

  Early on the morning of January 1, 1929, Carlotta, with Tuwe’s aid, leaves the Coblenz in the ship’s launch. She books a room at the Grand Oriental Hotel in Colombo and then—fearing her desertion will result in ever more destructive behavior on O’Neill’s part—she sends Tuwe back to the Coblenz to look after him for the duration of his voyage.

  Numb with despair and groggy from medication given her by the ship’s doctor, she sits on her hotel veranda at dusk and watches the Coblenz, with O’Neill on board, sail out of the harbor. “I feel as if she were pulling my entrails with her,” Carlotta writes in her desolation.

  With her know-how and ready money, Carlotta has little trouble booking a spacious cabin on a liner called the President Monroe, sailing for Europe on January 2. After receiving a radiogram from Tuwe, reporting that O’Neill is “still sleeping heavily” in Rogers’s cabin, she cashes a check for $1,000—a sizable chunk of it earmarked for the generous tips with which she routinely smooths her way—and boards the President Monroe. “Again on my way!” reads her stoical diary entry.

  As she worries about O’Neill, she receives another radiogram from Tuwe, this time reporting that he is still drinking, and that he is furious with Carlotta—who calms herself with a haircut, shampoo, and massage. On January 5, in answer to a request for news of O’Neill, Tuwe reports from the Coblenz that he hasn’t stopped drinking and is still furious.

  “PLEASE DO ALL YOU CAN TO HELP HIM,” Carlotta radios back—and at last receives a somewhat reassuring answer from Tuwe: “DR. HAS VISITED HIM AND HE WILL STOP DRINKING IF YOU JOIN HIM IN EUROPE.” Carlotta responds, “IF HE STOPS DRINKING AND GETS WELL I WILL.” But she feels “shaken and weak,” asking herself what are the “wise,” the “decent,” the “fair” things to do—“What would be best for him?”

  On January 6, Carlotta receives a radiogram from the Coblenz’s doctor, reporting on a long talk he has had with O’Neill and enclosing a message from O’Neill himself:

  DEAREST FORGIVE ME BUT NEED YOUR HELP MORE THAN EVER BEFORE BECAUSE I AM HALF MAD WITH UTTER LONELINESS WITHOUT FRIENDS PLANS OR HOPES . . . I LOVE YOU.

  After adding that he had promised the doctor to stop drinking, he asked,

  HOW ARE YOU I FEEL SO TERRIBLY WORRIED ABOUT YOU.

  The next days unroll as a series of scenes from a Frank Capra comedy: Carlotta and O’Neill, both heading for Europe, separately afloat on the Red Sea, send radio messages back and forth between the Coblenz and the President Monroe. The messages on both sides are loving, but Carlotta is gnawed by doubt. Has she the strength, she asks her diary on January 8, to live with O’Neill’s unpredictable, nerve-racking foibles? And does she really love him “that unselfishly & that deeply?” She answers herself: “I’m afraid I do!”

  That same day, O’Neill radios her that there’s a good chance his ship will dock at Port Said at approximately the same time as hers—a coincidence Capra couldn’t have improved on. O’Neill begs his “DEAREST ONE” to help him arrange for the two of them to “TALK SOMEHOW IF ONLY FIVE MINUTES”; it will mean “EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD” to him. Later that day he vows, “I WILL BE THERE IF I HAVE TO SWIM.”

  Three more days elapse before Carlotta fully regains her “faith and belief in Gene.” And then, with her encouragement, O’Neill makes arrangements to hop from the Coblenz to the President Monroe, which will enable them to spend the final two
weeks of their voyage back to Europe together.

  Both ships at last drop anchor at Port Said, albeit at some distance from each other. Several suspenseful hours ensue, with messages flying between the two ocean liners. At last, at two in the morning on January 14, a police launch bearing O’Neill pulls alongside the President Monroe. He gives Carlotta a sheepish kiss and mumbles, “I’m sorry, I love you.”

  For the third time since their elopement, Carlotta’s mothering instinct gets the better of her. Recording their anticlimactic reunion, she notes, “He is the man I’ve loved—and always will love! Oh, God—oh, God.” O’Neill’s recorded reaction is no less rapturous: “Carlotta again!—and happiness!”

  Carlotta is amazed to find O’Neill “calm, sure, gentle, understanding”—and planning a solid future. “Genie has come home!” she marvels. “My dreams have come true.”

  • • •

  AT FORTY, O’NEILL is convinced he has at last locked himself securely into his suit of armor and thrown away the key. He believes himself heroically headed for a lifetime of sobriety, his faith in his own genius unshakable. But it is the rare alcoholic who never again slips.

  In any case, his bone-deep knowledge of the drunkard’s plight will not go to waste; he will compulsively revisit the alcoholic landscape he himself is trying to flee, transmuting that knowledge into art in a final quartet of autobiographical tragedies in which he will repeatedly summon the device of drunkenness as a truth serum, freeing his characters (and himself) to reveal their tormented souls.

  “I may be drunk enough to tell you the truth,” says Jamie Tyrone, the soul-dead older brother of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, poised to reveal his malevolent wish to destroy his younger brother’s future.

  “He’ll promise you anything when he’s full of whiskey,” the tragic Josie Hogan despairs to her father in A Moon for the Misbegotten, believing herself betrayed by that same Jamie Tyrone.