By Women Possessed

by Arthur Gelb

a fully realized script. WD, 5/16/24.

  wanted to “express what they felt subconsciously.” Brentano’s Book Chat, July/Aug. 1926, “Eugene O’Neill: Writer of Synthetic Drama” by Malcolm Cowley.

  part of a freezing January and February in 1909. A/BG interviews with EK. He and Bellows turned out forty paintings between them and O’Neill wrote a series of sonnets (later deriding them as “bad imitations of Dante Gabriel Rosetti”) during their five-week stay. (Also see LWMC.) Reminiscing about the farm more than thirty years later to his son Shane, O’Neill wrote, “My father took it over in payment of debt he couldn’t collect. Bellows and EK and I did our own cooking and everything, and damned near froze to death.” (letter, 1/18/40, University of Virginia, SL.)

  was “a tragedy of the possessive—the pitiful longing of man to build his own heaven here on earth by glutting his sense of power with ownership of land, people, money—but principally the land.” EO to Grace Dupree Hills, 3/21/25, Berg Collection, NY Public Library, SL.

  where farming was less of a struggle. A/BG interview with Bernard Simon.

  attempted to “give an epic tinge to New England’s life-lust, to make its inexpressiveness poetically expressive, to release it,” EO to GJN, 3/26/25, Cornell, As Ever, Gene.

  “The proprietor confessed to her that Gene had sat in the back room and drunk himself into a coma.” A/BG interview with Cowley, and his article in The Reporter magazine, 9/5/57.

  “And,” she added, “this would almost always be when he had come to a stopping point in his work.” Part of a Long Story.

  and “might almost be given in the list of characters.” Brentano’s Book Chat, July/Aug. 1926, “Eugene O’Neill: Writer of Synthetic Drama” by Malcolm Cowley.

  he’d been “a sucker ever to go in for playwriting, mating and begetting sons, houses and lots, and all similar snares of the property game.” EO to KM, 8/19/24, Yale, SL.

  Wilbur Daniel Steele, in Nantucket. WD.

  “From the real critics I have always had a feeling that they saw what I was trying to do and whether they praised or blamed, they caught the point.” New York Sun, 1/12/28.

  he was “acutely conscious of the Force behind—(Fate, God, our biological past creating our present, whatever one calls it—Mystery, certainly)—and of the one eternal tragedy of Man in his glorious, self-destructive struggle to make the Force express him instead of being, as an animal is, an infinitesimal incident in its expression.” EO to Quinn, 4/3/25, University of Pennsylvania, SL. Quinn’s article appeared in Scribner’s, Oct. 1926: “Eugene O’Neill: Poet and Mystic.”

  would like “ten walled acres in Siberia with a flock of Siberian wolfhounds to guard them, and broken glass on the walls.” A/BG interviews with KM.

  Arthur Hopkins, John Barrymore, and Mabel Dodge. A/BG interviews with Belinda Jelliffe.

  therapeutic help for “a variety of specific problems.” Ibid.

  “At the hotel, we scratched around in bureau drawers and I guess we found the tickets, because I remember later saying good-bye to them all as they left for the pier.” Ibid.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  a truly singular document, The 1925 Scribbling Diary would never have come to light if not for a series of events beyond O’Neill’s control. Shortly before eloping with Carlotta in 1928, O’Neill had sent his attorney, Harry Weinberger, to Bermuda to retrieve all of his playscripts, notes, and diaries. The Scribbling Diary for 1925 was not among the papers Agnes surrendered and O’Neill believed she had hidden it. Carlotta, soon after marrying O’Neill, browsing through his diaries (with his permission), grew perturbed by the many intimate references to his life with Agnes. Aware that O’Neill intended eventually to place these records, along with his other papers, in the archives of a university, she asked him to expunge the offending entries.

  Accordingly, to oblige his beloved new wife, he sanitized all the diaries he had in hand and—for the missing 1925 diary—he created, from memory and scattered notes, a cursory substitute in which no reference was made to his life with Agnes or his struggles with alcohol. At Carlotta’s urging, he then transcribed all the sanitized diaries into the handsomely bound notebooks she provided, renaming the material Work Diaries, after which he destroyed the originals.

  When illness ended his writing career, O’Neill deposited his Work Diaries from 1924 through 1943 into his vast collection of papers at Yale’s Beinecke Library; he appended a curt introduction stating the original 1925 diary had “been stolen and sold by former wife.”

  Carlotta had once again triumphed over Agnes—or so it seemed at the time. In fact, her victory was trumped by Agnes (albeit after her death), when the original 1925 Scribbling Diary (with all its intimate details of her relationship with O’Neill) was found among her papers in 1968.

  The unexpurgated 1925 Scribbling Diary was purchased from her estate by Yale in 1970 and was published along with the ersatz diary by the Yale Library in 1981. Just one more irony for O’Neill’s ghost to chuckle over.

  shaky stretch of sobriety. SD.

  side by side for almost a third of a mile. Ibid.

  a moonlight walk on the beach. Ibid.

  “You, the sun, & sea, Trinity! Sweet spirit, pass on / Keep the dream / Beauty / Into infinity.”) Eugene O’Neill Poems 1912–1944, DG ed. (Ticknor & Fields, New Haven, CT, and New York. 1980).

  at the next was barely aware of her presence. It’s true that Agnes, with O’Neill’s encouragement, had at one point written a play, The Guilty One, based on a lame scenario of his own called “The Reckoning,” which he’d abandoned in 1917. O’Neill had even helped her “reconstruct” it, but it was never produced.

  O’Neill wrote in his diary. WD.

  “he is thus more willing than the chronic alcoholist to accept treatment for his malady.” “Alcohol and the Nervous System” published Oct. 1924 in the British medical journal, the Practitioner. Found among O’Neill’s papers at Yale.

  “There is so much of the secret me in it.” 12/10/26, Yale, SL.

  believed people “did recognize, from their knowledge of the new psychology, that everyone wears a mask—I don’t mean only one, but thousands of them.” interview with Ernest K. Lindley, New York Herald Tribune, 5/22/31.

  O’Neill once crowed to Dr. Bisch. A/BG interview with Bisch.

  his “pet of all the published plays.” letter, 12/10/26, Yale, SL.

  gratefully noted in his Work Diary. 2/25/25.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  long-delayed liquidation of Jamie’s estate. It was not until two months later that the estate was finally liquidated, according to an item in the NYT, 4/2/25.

  Shane (nearly five and a half years earlier) was born. 2/18/25.

  William A. Brady’s A Good Bad Woman. The first and second were, respectively, by Milton Herbert Gropper & Avery Hopwood; the third was a revival of a 1919 play based on a book by William J. McNally.

  “Fancy that, with infanticide,” he quipped to Macgowan. A/BG interview with KM.

  “to get ‘my back up’ really—it isn’t so much being out of touch as the fact that I’m so chuck full of Brown that Desire seems out of my range of worry.” letter, 3/1/25, “TTWWF.”

  appearing daily until nearly the end of April. SD, 4/3 to 4/25/25.

  a similar hurt on his own child. interviews with KJP.

  experiencing “couvade,” he joked to Macgowan. EO to KM, 5/1/25, “TTWWF.”

  “Agnes and baby all serene.” EO to KM, 5/14/25; copied from KM’s personal collection.

  “We suggested Oona, the Irish translation of Agnes,” Colum later recalled. A/BG interview with Padraic Colum.

  O’Neill’s problem with drinking (among other concerns) SD, 6/6/25.

  “I asked why he didn’t just ignore those letters; he said he couldn’t, that he just had to answer his mail.” A/BG interviews with Bisch.

  “mostly
in bed reading.”1925 Scribbling Diary.

  “You were as kind as you could be and I shall never forget it.” EO to KM and his wife, 7/31/25, “TTWWF.”

  he was “very much on the old cart again, and feel as well now as I ever did, what with swimming, boating and the rest of it.” EO to KM, 7/31/25, “TTWWF.”

  “But not serious.” SD, 8/2/25.

  “The sun was coming up as they headed in to shore.” A/BG interview with EK.

  check for her daughter’s expenses. letter, 9/8/25, Hammerman, eOneill.com.

  give Shane “an hour’s lesson every day, take him for a walk, see to dressing & undressing him (which is not so much, as he does it himself now) and in fact, do what a governess does.” Ibid.

  “Gene thinks this would work out very well, too.” Ibid.

  and recording, “Fight with Agnes.” SD, 1925.

  he remained “disorganized mentally.” SD, 10/12/25.

  “Bisch came out—much talk about divorce.” SD, 10/16/25.

  began “to feel fine again.” SD, 10/22/25.

  death from old age several years later. A/BG interviews with KJP.

  looked “wobbly.” SD, 11/2/25.

  “Dull as Hell.” 12/9/25.

  “I said it would probably enhance, rather than repress, his genius.” A/BG interviews with Bisch & KM.

  “sick & melancholia.” SD.

  “Took veronal . . . very good sleep.” Beinecke, Agnes Boulton Collection of Eugene O’Neill, Box 5, Folder 1925, diary notes.

  a book called What Is Wrong With Marriage? Albert and Charles Boni, New York, 1929.

  after learning of the appointment with Hamilton. 12/27/25.

  Dr. Hamilton’s book, A Research in Marriage, published in 1929. A & C Boni, New York.

  O’Neill who checked the last? A Research in Marriage, A & C Boni, New York, 1929.

  until, hours later, he staggered to bed. A/BG interview with KM; also Agnes Boulton Collection of Eugene O’Neill, Boxes 4 and 5, Agnes’s notes and diary entries 1919 to 1925, Beinecke.

  and only one on the thirtieth. SD.

  “Must get in shape.” Ibid.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  leather couch in traditional Freudian style. A/BG interview with KM.

  suffering from an Oedipus complex. Ibid.

  “I am enormously interested to see what will emerge as science out of all these theories.”) letter, 7/15/27/, Yale, SL.

  this paralleled “discovery of Mother’s inadequacy.” diagram is at Beinecke.

  (including his “38 days not drinking [during] rehearsals Desire”). Beinecke, Agnes Boulton Collection of Eugene O’Neill, Box 4, Folder 149, labeled “Eugene’s Drinking”: “notes put down in pencil on stationary of Gilbert Van Tassel Hamilton ‘Bureau of Social Hygiene,’ at 47 East 61 St, NY,” where he was director of Psychobiological Research; & A/BG interview with KM.

  “Life since then has lacked the uproarious but I must admit I feel better.” letter to Frank Shay, 10/3/30, Dartmouth, SL.

  “He’ll probably never write a good play again.” A/BG interview with LL.

  “Christianity, once heroic in martyrs for its intense faith now pleading weakly for its intense belief in anything, even Godhead itself.” The Evening Post, 2/13/26, & NYT, 2/14/26.

  “But where an open-faced avowal by the play itself of the abstract theme underlying it is made impossible by the very nature of that hidden theme, then perhaps it is justifiable for the author to confess the mystical pattern which manifests itself as an overtone in The Great God Brown, dimly behind and beyond the words and actions of the characters.” Ibid.

  “lots of room—beautiful grounds, private beach [and] all at a big bargain price.” EO to KM, 3/12/26, Yale, “TTWWF.”

  “It really has the feeling of home to me who usually feels in most houses like a Samoan in an igloo.” copied from a letter in LK’s possession & A/BG interview with him.

  “Jesus Wept” story of the Gospel. Fire Under the Andes.

  had not yet received his first royalty check. 3/12/26, Yale, “TTWWF.”

  where he could canoe, fish, and play tennis. letter, EO to KM, 4/4/26, Yale, “TTWWF.”

  “I can least afford to play philanthropist just now when I’m making my first determined effort to get my own affairs stabilized so I can work steadily ahead for the next few years in peace.” 4/28/26, Yale, “TTWWF.”

  found a property they loved. WD.

  first draft of Lazarus Laughed on May 11. WD.

  proved to be eminently producible on Broadway. WD & letter, EO to KM, 5/14/26, Yale, “TTWWF.”

  his Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. SD, 1/21 & 3/10/25.

  served as a sounding board. A/BG interviews with KM.

  before escaping Bermuda’s summer heat. letter, EO to KM, 5/28/26, “TTWWF.”

  “I was his best known pupil,” O’Neill later told a friend, “and Yale was really honoring him through me.” letter to Saxe Commins, 2/24/43, Princeton, “Love and Admiration and Respect.”

  Agnes “was amused to discover that he became so interested in the spectacle that he did finally enjoy his own part in it, and instead of dying of stage-fright ‘took a bow’ on the applause.” Fire Under the Andes.

  unable to specify just what else it was that gnawed at him. A/BG interview with KM.

  “madly in love” with sixteen-year-old Eugene. A/BG interview with Barbara Burton.

  “This, after living in ‘Bellevue’ all winter, makes me suspect God is becoming a symbolist or something.” 7/9/26, Yale, SL.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  lived across the lake from the O’Neill campsite. WD.

  taking her in for the summer. A/BG interview with RC.

  “It was an awful tea.” Interview with CM by Times writer Seymour Peck on 10/2/56 (with A/BG and BA present and recorded by A/BG as part of their research); as a former actress, CM had a rehearsed repertory about many aspects of her life with O’Neill, and she often repeated the same descriptions and bits of dialogue over and over; her various descriptions to Peck were later repeated word for word in a long interview on 4/24/57 with A/BG, as were numerous other details, in many interviews with CM. Excerpts from interviews with CM that were included in the 1962 O’Neill (when CM was still alive) have now been considerably expanded.

  “He couldn’t relate that face to his mother, and he’d been terribly upset when he met me.” Ibid.

  “It was most indecent.” Ibid.

  in his diary the following week. WD, 7/23/26.

  before their next flirtatious encounter. WD, 8/17/26.

  “I am miserable and hopeless and weep.” 6/26/26, Yale, Beinecke. (If CM’s letters to RB are extant, they have not yet surfaced.)

  “I love you.” 7/14/26, Yale, Beinecke.

  he would sail home on September 15. Yale, Beinecke.

  no longer felt any urgency to reclaim her. Ibid.

  “Florence Reed [the actress] just a quarter mile away and Carlotta Monterey, the famous beauty (she played in my Hairy Ape in New York at the Plymouth Theatre) visiting not far away.” letter, EO to Dolly and Jessica Rippin, 8/18/26; letter loaned to A/BG by Dolly Rippin.

  “Marbury, by the way, was very fond of Agnes and though she liked Carlotta, too, she was distressed when she realized that Gene seemed to be interested in Carlotta.” A/BG interview with Reed.

  “Toward the very end I felt the presence of some sadness which I had never felt in the O’Neill household.” letter from BB to AG.

  remembered the summer as “wonderful and happy.” “More of a Long Story,” by SO (Shane’s daughter), published by eO’Neill.com, St. Louis, 2008.

  “Like them—” Theater Scrapbooks of Carlotta Monterey, Chamberlain and Lyman Brown Agency, Billy Rose Collection, NY Public Library for the Performing Arts.

 
could “do with more real friends to talk with.” letter, EO to KM, 8/7/26, Yale, “TTWWF.”

  asked Gaga to see her home. letter from BB to AG.

  “I hope it will be O.K.” Harley Hammerman collection.

  contentedly back at work on Strange Interlude. WD, 9/26/26.

  “we get it all fixed the way we want it.” AB to Edward Boulton, 10/7/26, Hammerman collection, eOneill.com.

  “There’s no one to confide in now.” Harvard, “Wind.”

  earnestly confiding in Carlotta Monterey. WD, 10/17/26.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “He began with his birth, with his earliest memories of babyhood.” Material taken partly from interview, “A Talk with Mrs. O’Neill,” by Seymour Peck, NYT, 11/4/56, and recorded by the authors of this biography. The interview took place at the Times shortly before the posthumous premiere of Long Day’s Journey Into Night; it was attended by Brooks Atkinson, as well as the authors, and at its conclusion BA persuaded CM to agree to an open-ended series of interviews with the authors that continued over the next four years.

  not parting from her until 2:30 a.m. WD.

  “If I could only kiss you again, Carlotta.” 11/27/26, Yale, SL.

  assuring him “everything will come out as we wish it.” Ibid.

  “Do not forget me!” Ibid.

  “This Lover of mine is also my child.” letter to Saxe Commins, 1928.

  vividly reflected in his “lady play.” WD.

  even before completing The Great God Brown WD, 3/8/25.

  “speech-thought method,” he called it. WD, 9/5 to 9/13/25 & 5/17/26.

  less easily satisfied with what he used to dash off. 8/7/26, “TTWWF.”

  the game his friend was playing. A/BG interview with KM.

  also enclosing “to get to her on Christmas a.m.” 12/7/26, “TTWWF.”

  had even offered to set him free. 12/15/26, Yale, SL.

  “After all, we’ve got to remember I’m in the ‘show business’ and a good subject to hang any rag of scandal upon.” 4/16/27, Harvard, SL.

  “When work wouldn’t come I had to escape via masks of solitude, alcoholic and otherwise, provided only they were excessive.” 12/10/26, Yale, SL.