by Arthur Gelb
Two weeks after O’Neill’s return to Carlotta, he inscribes a set of uncorrected proofs of A Moon for the Misbegotten, which Random House is preparing for publication:
“To Carlotta, my beloved wife, whose love I could not possibly live without, in a spirit of the humblest gratitude for her love which has forgiven my recent shameful conduct toward her.”
But he will never convince Carlotta he is sincerely penitent, nor can she refrain from periodically confronting him with his horrendous betrayal; how, she persists, can he have been so beastly to her? Didn’t he realize that Langner was interested only in retaining control of Gene’s plays? Didn’t he see that Langner—still hoping to revive A Moon for the Misbegotten and produce A Touch of the Poet—perceived Carlotta as a huge stumbling block in her role as O’Neill’s executor, and wanted her out of the way?
And couldn’t he see that Aronberg was a “crook” who had abetted Langner in persuading Gene to change his will? As for his willingness to accept the monster Merrill Moore’s judgment of her “insanity”—how could Carlotta ever forgive O’Neill for that?
O’Neill has already agreed with Carlotta’s assessment of Aronberg and she is pleased, on May 27, to take her husband’s dictation for a letter notifying Bennett Cerf that Aronberg is no longer O’Neill’s attorney, and enjoining Cerf to give Aronberg no data as to his “business plans or money involved,” nor any data “as formerly” about his income for tax returns.
When Aronberg is requested by Carlotta’s lawyer (now also acting for O’Neill) to give up his files of O’Neill’s papers, he demands he first be paid a back fee of $3,000—but finally settles for $2,500. Although she and O’Neill are “very hard up,” Carlotta concedes it “is better psychologically to get rid of Aronberg and get Gene’s papers! Farewell to crooks!”
A more anxiety-provoking problem, which Carlotta has been dealing with since early June, is O’Neill’s craving for narcotic medication. Dr. Kozol has prescribed a variety of drugs, among them Luminal, to subdue his tremor; Nembutal, to relieve his anxiety; and an additional sedative, hydrocodone bitartrate—“Elixir”—which he takes in a liquid form. Dr. Kozol doubtless is aware of O’Neill’s past addiction to alcohol, and it’s probable he has been informed that O’Neill’s mother became addicted to morphine while she was breast-feeding him. (In fact, O’Neill later gives Kozol Long Day’s Journey Into Night to read, and he and O’Neill discuss the play.) In any event, Kozol has taken the precaution of putting Carlotta in charge of her husband’s medications, with strict instructions about administering them.
It’s not always clear from Carlotta’s diary entries which drug O’Neill is taking or when, but it is clear he craves (and sometimes sneaks) more than he is allowed.
On June 14, for example, Carlotta notes: “Gene deeply disturbed he can’t have another dose of Nembutal after his six grain allowance for 12 hours. Has to wait for his bedtime dose. It makes my heart ache for him—but must follow doctor’s orders.” A week later, Dr. Kozol has a long talk with O’Neill about the danger of overdosing (as if the son of an addicted mother and a brother who drank himself to death needed any such instruction).
Along with all their other difficulties, O’Neill’s prostate condition flares up again in late June. A urologist assures them the condition is “tied up with tremor” and is not, as they first feared, cancerous.
There is, however, another medical and/or emotional problem connected to O’Neill’s condition, to which Carlotta refers on the following day; she notes that both she and O’Neill are “very nervous” when Dr. Kozol comes to them “to discuss a situation that has caused [her] no end of worry and unhappiness.” The three “talk it over from all points of view and understand what must be done for health’s sake & any chance of happiness.” That’s all Carlotta chooses to tell the future readers of her diary, leaving us to wonder why she mentions the “situation” at all. (It’s notable, however, that there have been no pussycat drawings since July 1948, nor will there be any in the future.)
July is not a good month for the O’Neills. On July 3, the day after they move across the hall to a quieter suite, they are readying themselves for sleep when O’Neill asks Carlotta (in her words) to “help him regain his self-respect!” Carlotta tells him he alone can do that, and solemnly lists the attributes he must acquire: conquer bad habits and learn the meaning of “honesty, decency and loyalty”; she will help him do so, she says, in every way possible.
After giving him his bedtime medicines, she locks them up, as Dr. Kozol has ordered. “Loathe doing this,” she notes, “but must for Gene’s sake.”
Somehow, on July 6, O’Neill finds a way to break into the drug supply and Carlotta notes, “Find Gene taking Elixir—again—it is hopeless!” O’Neill’s wish to regain his self-respect appears to have evaporated. “Catch him after lunch trying to steal sedative!” laments Carlotta on July 21, adding, “He now tells me with pride that he has been an addict for years!”
That evening, Kozol again lectures O’Neill about the danger of overdosing. O’Neill feigns penitence and persuades Kozol to put him on his honor, but before long, he is again sneaking Elixir (and childishly watering down the medicine bottle’s contents).
O’Neill is still overdosing three months later. “Admits he took Elixir out of new bottle in my bag,” notes Carlotta on October 12, at a time when O’Neill is undergoing a “ghastly” all-day tremor; Kozol prescribes Mesantoin (an anticonvulsant commonly given for epileptic seizures) and O’Neill’s tremor temporarily abates.
The day before O’Neill’s sixty-third birthday, Carlotta notes that she fears he has become “more neurotic than ever & can induce the tremor so well—that he, himself, cannot separate the self-induced from the disease.”
During O’Neill’s bouts of physical and emotional pain, accompanied by Carlotta’s arthritis-ridden and often dispirited nursing, the two are confronted with a string of problems concerning the rights to O’Neill’s plays. For one thing, it appears that Aronberg earlier misinterpreted O’Neill’s contractual instructions. “This may be serious,” worries Carlotta, noting that a contract to televise Anna Christie might have to be canceled because the play is “so tied up, we can’t let it go” and “will lose the money which we need.”
For another, there is now open hostility between both the O’Neills and Lawrence Langner, who evidently is unwilling to give up his rights to A Moon for the Misbegotten; according to Carlotta, he has sent a “rude reply” to O’Neill’s literary agent, Jane Rubin (Richard Madden’s successor), in response to a request to return the script of that play: “Langner who spoiled my marriage to Gene,” storms Carlotta, “Langner, Aronberg & Commins—but now Gene has learned (very unpleasantly) what they really are & what they always were to him!”
• • •
O’NEILL FALLS SERIOUSLY ILL in late November 1951, and W. Richard Ohler, a Boston internist, orders him into Faulkner Hospital. Dr. Ohler has been paying house calls at the Shelton since July 12, 1951, at the behest of Dr. Kozol. “There was nothing specifically wrong,” recalled Ohler, “but Dr. Kozol thought O’Neill should have on call a doctor who was familiar with his condition.” Like all his medical predecessors, Dr. Ohler is much taken with O’Neill.
“He was a pliable, lovable patient,” said Ohler:
But he struck me as a man in whom the flame had died. His wife would complain to me about him, and I had the feeling that they argued a lot.
When I visited, I would usually find him sitting by the window, watching the sailboats on the river or the cars on the road along the riverbank. He was usually fully dressed—when he couldn’t dress himself, his wife dressed him.
One of my big problems was trying to get him to eat. I thought if I could interest him in something, his appetite might improve. I was a detective story fan, and I urged him to read some. He did, and we used to discuss them. O’Neill spoke slowly and was slow in his movements, but his m
ind was alert. What he lacked was spirit.
We kept him on barbiturates to ease his tremor, but none of the drugs we had could help him fundamentally. He was unsteady on his feet. He had one or two falls getting out of bed, and joked about them to me.
Dr. Ohler is unaware that O’Neill has always enjoyed detective stories, along with his other vast reading, and innocently attributes O’Neill’s improved appetite to his advice. In fact, O’Neill has never ceased to read avidly and eclectically; during his final years at the Shelton, according to Carlotta, he rereads Kipling’s poetry, Mark Twain’s collected works, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. With most of his books in storage, he asks Carlotta to buy him James Whitcomb Riley’s collected poetry “to be able to read ‘An Old Sweetheart of Mine.’”
He also asks Carlotta to buy him the Wolfville stories, a series written by Alfred Henry Lewis that he had adored as a boy. According to Carlotta, “Whenever he was fed up with writing plays, the business of living, or was not well,” he would reread those books “over and over and over again”—much as he had retreated into old copies of the Saturday Evening Post when recovering from a drinking binge during his marriage to Agnes.
“Of course I had to advertise for them and pay collector’s prices!” said Carlotta. “But he had what he wanted.” Most of all, O’Neill enjoyed Lindbergh’s The Spirit of St. Louis. “It was, to him, so well written—& had the poet’s insight. He was reading it for the second time—when he died.”
When O’Neill arrives at Faulkner Hospital on November 24, he is treated for gastroenteritis. He is released after three days, only to return almost at once, after an attack of gallstones, followed by fluctuating fever and chills, a seizure of unstoppable hiccups, and “ghastly night sweats”—all of which aggravate his tremor.
Carlotta is at O’Neill’s hospital bedside for hours every day. On his return home on December 11, he agrees to accept the service of a home nurse, at last conceding that Carlotta can no longer care for him twenty-four hours a day. The nurse she engages is Jean Welton, who cared for O’Neill at Faulkner. Both O’Neill and Carlotta grow to love and trust her, as they did Kaye Albertoni; she will help Carlotta care for O’Neill until his death and will remain close to Carlotta in her widowhood.
Two and a half weeks after O’Neill’s return to the Shelton, on Carlotta’s sixty-third birthday, O’Neill gives her the typescript of the third version of Long Day’s Journey Into Night. He inscribes it in shaky but legible handwriting: “To Carlotta, my beloved wife, this play, written in blood and tears, is dedicated.”
He acknowledges that she “did the slavery on it,” typing it and encouraging him, giving him “faith and love” and making it possible for him “to go on with work which daily broke [his] heart with poignant memory!”
He addresses her as “again wife, friend, helper and lover [in the] hope this work is worthy of her help! I have loved you for 23 years now, Darling, and now that I am old and can work no more, I love you more than ever!”
• • •
THE NEW YEAR of 1952 sees two revivals of O’Neill plays in New York—Anna Christie at the City Center and Desire Under the Elms at the ANTA Playhouse. Far from signaling that O’Neill is at last being recognized as a treasured staple of the theater, this double revival simply serves to emphasize how neglected he is in his own country.
“Desire has been played all over the world and it makes ninety-five per cent of the plays written sound like pretty weak sisters,” says Harold Clurman, who has directed the revival. “If O’Neill had written in Germany or France, his plays would be done in the national theatre. Here we neglect them.”
• • •
O’NEILL IS OBLIGED to return to Faulkner Hospital on January 12, 1952. “We had to have him somewhere for proper care,” Carlotta said. Her arthritic back is so painful, and she is so exhausted, that, even with the help of Nurse Welton, she believes she can no longer properly care for her husband at home; she anticipates it would require three nurses daily, which they cannot afford.
“We must see what is best to do,” Carlotta said. “If we go to a sanitarium (where?) could we go together?” Neither she nor O’Neill “have much to look forward to,” she conceded, “but we should stick together. We are both alone in the world.”
It is decided, after all, that O’Neill should return to the Shelton, with only Jean Welton as Carlotta’s part-time surrogate nurse. O’Neill makes Carlotta promise never again to have him hospitalized.
O’Neill spends most of his waking hours seated in an armchair in the living room, reading or gazing out the window at the river traffic on the Charles. He has few visitors apart from his doctors and lawyers and the hotel manager, Philip McBride, who is a notary public and is occasionally summoned to put his official seal on legal documents.
One such document—a further token of O’Neill’s love (or a payment for his need)—is a literary trust fund, presented to Carlotta on March 3, 1952, on which she can draw funds for their immediate needs.
The fund goes so far as to stipulate that if Carlotta should predecease her husband, ownership and control should pass, on his death, to “her estate or to such persons as she may have designated by will or otherwise by instrument executed during her lifetime.”
He makes these provisions, explains O’Neill, “in recognition of the loyalty and care afforded me by my said wife as well as the expenditure by her of her own substantial funds as well as funds I provided her with and which were prematurely disbursed because of compelling needs.” He points out that he is making no provision for his children, since he has “otherwise provided for them heretofore” (a reference to his having turned over the Bermuda estate to them).
That summer, attention is again briefly focused on O’Neill, when A Moon for the Misbegotten is published by Random House. In a brief foreword to the published text (dated April 1952), O’Neill writes that the play “has never been presented on the New York stage, nor are there any plans for its production,” and since he “cannot presently give it the attention required for appropriate presentation,” he has “decided to make it available in book form.”
Francis Wylie has been assigned by Time to ask O’Neill a few specific questions, as a sidebar to the magazine’s review of the book, scheduled for the week of July 20, 1952. When Wylie reaches Carlotta by phone, she scolds him for trying to bother her husband, but takes it upon herself to tell him (in answer to one of the stipulated questions) that there is no particular reason for the decision to publish the play at this time.
Wylie, however, advises his editors, off the record, that he has it “on authority” the play is being published because the O’Neills are pressed for cash, and Carlotta later confirmed this, recalling, “In 1952 we were terribly hard up. My income was getting low, Gene’s was getting low, and I was very worried.”
The published play doesn’t make much of a splash, and Carlotta expresses her concern to O’Neill. It is at this point (according to Carlotta) that O’Neill informs her the publication restrictions on Long Day’s Journey Into Night no longer apply.
In Carlotta’s verbatim account (to the authors) of her conversation with her husband, O’Neill says: “What are you worried about?”
Carlotta replies: “Money.”
O’Neill: “But you don’t have to worry, we’ve got a nest egg.”
Carlotta: “Where is it?”
O’Neill: “Why, Long Day’s Journey.”
Continuing her account, Carlotta said, “Well, I thought he had completely gone out of his mind.” It is then, she went on, that O’Neill discloses “for the first time” that it was Eugene Jr. who asked his father to withhold the play for twenty-five years because of its personal nature, and that Eugene’s death makes it possible to release the play.
O’Neill now tells Carlotta (according to her account), “If things get worse, we will publish it.” (It must be noted that this vers
ion of Carlotta’s conversation with her husband is highly suspect; it later evolves that she has other, contradictory versions up her sleeve, and after O’Neill’s death she will whip them out, offering them, ad-lib, to various publishers, directors, and producers as needed to serve her own agenda.)
Evidently, however, sufficient cash trickles in to alleviate the O’Neills’ financial straits (from sources such as foreign royalties and investments) so that the nest egg does not have to be tapped just yet.
That July (1952), on their wedding anniversary, O’Neill gives Carlotta a copy of the newly published A Moon for the Misbegotten:
To darling Carlotta, my wife, who for twenty-three years has endured with love and understanding my rotten nerves, my lack of stability, my cussedness in general—
I am old and would be sick of life, were it not that you, Sweetheart, are here, as deep and understanding in your love as ever—and I as deep in my love for you as when we stood in Paris, Premier Arrondissement on July 22, 1929, and both said faintly “Oui!”
These lines of the inscription are probably the final words O’Neill ever wrote.
• • •
ON A GRAY late-autumn afternoon in 1953, O’Neill and Carlotta sit quietly together in their living room. O’Neill, as on most days now, is pondering his impending death. In spite of what he wrote to Carlotta the previous summer, he is sick of life. Although he still speaks wistfully of suicide and/or death by euthanasia, he is waiting for death by atrophy.
Suddenly, he exclaims, “Nobody must be allowed to finish my plays.” Carlotta knows he means the cycle plays that still exist in scenario or rough draft. He asks her to fetch all the manuscripts so that he may destroy them. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you, Carlotta,” he says, “but you might get run over and I don’t want anybody else working on these plays.”
Carlotta then experienced what she described as “one of the most ghastly half-hours of my life,” during which she helped the man she called “the Master” to “destroy” four of his cycle plays. “I thought I would die—& he looked as if he had!”