Letty Fox (37 page)

I listened to this, lying on my back, with my eyes on the ceiling. I could not let Edie see my feelings. I was puzzled, too. I knew now Edie was a liar. She must have forgotten that I had once been with Grandmother to the place she lived in, in London. It was in a black street, one block long, off Wardour Street. On one side was a brick wall, enclosing a yard. On the other were narrow tenement houses in very bad condition. It was one of those slums, rich in returns to ducal owners. In the basement of one of these, completely below groundlevel, was a two-room flat running back and front. In the front room, Edie's respectable and honorable family had attempted to arrange a friendly sitting room. It was clean; a fire was generally necessary in the grate on account of the damp and cold; and two little china vases stood on the mantelpiece. The sisters grouped themselves round the mantelpiece and people looked at the vases. On a bookstand were the usual English classics: Bunyan, Shakespeare, the Bible, one volume from the
International Scientific Series
(this was
Hummingbirds
), something on the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, a novel about the Indian Mutiny, some Dickens, and some socialist classics. On the mantelpiece were communist pamphlets and standard works. A red cloth covered the table. Apart from tables and chairs this was all they owned.

The father was dying of tuberculosis, and one of the daughters had it. The mother was dead. The girls filled the room with life and one was quite plump, but Edie had sat mournfully to one side, dark, slender, and dissatisfied with everything; ashamed, as I now knew. As for me, I despised them all. I never could stand anything poor, wretched and ugly. If I am a socialist, it is just because of that.

I came home to tell my mother about all these would-be boarders. We both wrote very indignant letters to my father. Why should Grandma live in this misery? Where was her money? He must come back and get her a better apartment.

H
ere is the last letter I received from Jacky before she rejoined us. She had now left the aunt and come home to Green Acres to live with Grandma Morgan. Grandma was holding another pow-wow there, because she had received a marriage proposal, by air mail, from an aged physician in California. My belief is that Grandma never intended to marry, at her age, but used these romances as a means of keeping her by now middle-aged and married family round her in her declining years. Jacky's letter ran:

GREEN ACRES INN, NEW CANAAN
OCT. 20, 1936

D
EAR
L
ETTY
,

Here I am! Merry Hallowe'en! I am sending you a parcel (an Indian doll) and wish you the best, as, to become the secretary of an American Stalin. If I haven't written to you, here's the reason. Aunt Phyllis and her latest husband, Bob, were here at our place, Green Acres, for the week end. When your letter came, everyone wanted to read it. “Letty is so cute.” If you recall the text—it wasn't showable! Pretending to hand it to Aunt Phyllis, I dropped it in the frog pond by accident—only, by the same accident, the letter became quite smeary and I forgot where you would be for Hallowe'en, and Mother only just got here. Here is the rea son for my silence. Mother's visit is dull and of course they discuss family affairs. They ask, “How are we to live?” Grandma paid up at Santa Fe! We only have the money Papa sends us and he is not a moneymaker. Mother has money from Grandfather's estate, but cannot get it from Grandma Morgan's brothers, as they want it for the business. We have so many expenses and poor Mother, as you know, spends up to the hilt. And yet we do not live like princes and do not throw it around and Mother just dresses in that black and white and is absolutely white-haired. I myself don't see why she doesn't dye it, as they all say, but she thinks it would look as if she wished to marry again, which, of course, would be shocking. They say she had a dreadful life; Grandma and Grandpa were so busy making money they had not a mo ment and Grandma lived twenty-three hours a day, only not for the children. Mother says when she wanted money for a new dress, at eight years old, she used to go to the pinochle room and pull Grandma's dress: Grandma always just an swered, “I meld,” or something. We are supposed to be going to Mexico with Dora and Uncle Philip next year in spring. It is very high (Mexico City). Philip chose this because we will all be rich with the exchanges. Mamma says it is be cause the girls are so pretty. Philip says he wants to help Papa; he is fond of Papa and says Papa is a very good, kind man. He told me privately he knows
Die Konkubine
! He has known her since the beginning, but Mamma does not know this! Philip says she (D.K.) is nice! But I know now he sees everything from the standpoint of his own moral weakness. Consider this!

From the political point of view! I am nearly fourteen, am very proud, have got fat, have great hopes not well defined, how could you expect me to be a communist? Isn't that for the depressed? I don't understand political views except on the part of the wretched, of snobs, or of people like you, with a vague hope of success. Think it over a bit; you think it's wonderful of you to fuss about the unfortunate, you want to give them a sovietical happiness. Put yourself in their place instead! Would you like to lead a life regulated from one end to the other, work from this hour to that on this day or that without any choice on your part? Would you be happy? Wouldn't you go mad thinking that the entire world had a life built on your design, hour for hour, day for day? To be forced to stay where you were, never to travel, to be tied to one job, one set of meals, one type of entertainment (oh, I saw some agitprop—I won't say a word of what I think), to belong to a political club, to be bored to death with political duties and the impertinence of one hundred thousand citi zen critics and commissars coming to tell you how to draw and write: and all your equals! I invent
nothing
. I met a boy whose father and mother were there. They have nothing to fear, they are rich liberals and can pay for everything; they had the best of everything; just the same, the food was terri ble, and the bedbugs (I have to write this awful word), in the hotels: and—much worse, I cannot write it. They took away their photographs for inspection! But this is not the main thing, I admit. I deny the beauty in a soviet government. Literature—art—where are they? Aren't they life? Otherwise we are ants and bees. Read—you'll realize—the poetry and prose are nothing. Of course, I put this old trickster Gorki on one side, he's a dilettante, who does not believe, who goes from place to place and is feted everywhere, has no rent to pay. When they asked Baudelaire the source of his genius, he replied—leisure, liberty—where could you find piquancy, originality in your infernal Russian paradise? Genius is not an automaton which produces, salivates, and digests at regulated hours when you press a button. How could you de scribe the world if it's unknown to you (because
the world
doesn't punch the clock)? What reasonings could a writer or artist have in Russia? False, based entirely on his imagination! Our world, he doesn't know. Their world is inhuman. And why write? All writing would be identical! What is writing? It is to see the “cases” around you and make a book about them explaining the causes of suffering and love; it is not to support political doctrines. I simply state that I don't care for the exasperating “benefits” of communism. I prefer to suffer and beg.

You foresaw this, and you said to me—Fascism would be equally intolerable to me. I am an American, in other words, quite incapable of putting up with any such systems. That's true. Now, I admire Stalin as much as Mussolini, Gorki as John Dos Passos, Leonardo da Vinci as Delacroix. I am not prejudiced. A friend of these people we know— who went to Russia—have a house in 55th Street and have Delacroix, Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Cezanne originals, also some El Grecos of dubious authenticity, but one certain Rembrandt—you see they have no ax to grind, they have everything—they have a friend in Paris who was a high official in the Veterans'
Croix de Feu
, and who knew a commu nist who had much protection in high official circles (can you imagine it?) and he spent 150,000 francs yearly on 15 casual mistresses, one queen of the harem and one legal wife, the whole regiment lived very well—and that, Letty, is a communist! Very nice. I don't doubt it appealed to him. But that is Mormonism! I don't think you'd care to be even the legal wife in such a
garrison
of women. You must look
reality
in the face. And this golden calf, which you would have adored, once elected, you can imagine, how he will fill his pockets! Well, he'll have to!

You say you know the theory and I don't know a word of it. Well, that's true, but fortunately, I know the
practice
! If the U.S.A. or England become soviet, my child, the best I can wish an enthusiast like you, is that you will be one of the ones on top. At least better for my sister Letty, just the same, to oppress, than to suffer things like that! I am getting an autograph of
James Joyce
, and will give it to you for New Year's. He is nearly blind and walks very slowly with a stick, but pretends he can see. Oh, the God of eyes, he is not a kind God. I must confess I don't like what I said to you about this last year; I do not believe any more in the God of eyes. How childish I was. Look at the paper I am using! I got it from the Green Acres desk just now; I love the gold initial, but alas, it is not mine. I read Gorki, Gide, Merejkowski, Dostoevsky, Napoleon, Goethe, Dos Passos, Dreiser—so much. I am half mad with the excitement and joy of living. You see, I could not bear for them to take it away from me and put me in a factory. I read from morning to night—I get quite breathless and pale, but don't stop. “Look out for your eyes! My eyes are wonderful!” I read Delacroix's journal. Now I am
sure
I am an artist. I got all the books I saw mentioned in the Columbia University yearbook for the first year (I mean I am getting them one by one) and I am reading them all. Oh, the thirst for knowing things! I love it, I adore my life. When I go there, I'll say, “Put me in Second Year!” Of course, they won't. Imagine I am to go to Hunter and I will know so much more. I am swallowing the classics alive; Victor Hugo,
Les Misérables
, bad art, no art, socialist art, I should say; what a sickly creature she is, and of course she marries well—pooh! Yes, and I myself a year ago was talking about princes— according to myself then, he (V.H.) is right, young girls are sickly and I was one. Then Jack London (I like animals),
Life of Talleyrand
; Spinoza, I am trying to understand and think I can, but it is the beauty of man and Spinoza's style more than his ideas, though I am now become an atheist and
understand
this. Then I am collecting gramophone records, Tetrazzini, Caruso, Geraldine Farrar, Nellie Melba, Emma Calve; and I have ninety-eight autographs. I write to them, as soon as I read a review or critique (good or bad, for some famous people have started out with
bad
reviews), but it is only if the critique, good or bad, gives me that glorious burn ing feeling of the soul that tells me, I am in the presence of genius. Oh, genius! It is my life. I am living only for it. One day I will meet a genius, or more than one, male and female. I have seen all the plays in New York this month and every new movie. (Here followed a list, with annotations upon the love relations and marriages of all the actors and actresses, as well as glowing commendations of all the roles she had seen them in.) Martha Graham, etc., etc. I am saving every penny I can to get the autographs of some of the
illustrious dead
, like Napoleon (that's impossible, unless I charm some of the possessors of unique collections, like Prince Wol kowski—but he did not give me a fencing foil, after all), Duse, Oscar Wilde, Duncan—you see how ambitious I am! Life is really maddeningly
delicious
! All this makes me mad with enthusiasm for things as they are now. I do not find life dreary, you see, and long for some other system—and I can't believe that you do. No need for any revolution. I read Paul and Virginia; how delicious it is, how true, this beautiful, pure, dazzling, innocent love like brother and sister—I could feel that; that is how we wish to feel. Look how Shelley suffered! Yet I suppose there is a great temptation to really physically love and the probing of a love to its depths, how ever bitter, must be
unlike any other human experience
. But I will be quite satisfied with a noble friendship, with some great and glorious, or noble and splendid man; I would be quite satisfied to find a man, or rather a young man, who could feel this with me, utter equality, and at the same time, rapturous love on his part, unconscious, exalted gallantry! I love, that is the secret: he loves, that must be the secret. So you see I have no time for conventions, processions, placards, meetings, reports to the secretary-general and all the dreary paper-shifting which you
ignore
, for you are just in flamed by your own speeches. You simply wish to feel the excitement of crowds as I wish to feel this grand, splendid, etc., etc., love; and will you ever feel like me? I do not know.

I will visit New York from top to bottom next week, and all by myself; they have agreed I can now go about alone! I am going to all the museums and all the art shops and visit all the shops, to know what is going on and get to know everything, but do not think I am supine; I have resolved
not to follow anyone
; I must not even admire the old masters, nor take the classics for granted. I am myself an artist, I must accept nothing. I must get to the bottom of everything. What is the basis of criticism? I have so much to talk to you about—about life, what will happen to us in a few years. We are women! That is important in our lives. I have thought about it, things one cannot write. People read your letters to me and I must warn you certain things have come out without any fault of mine. You are so dizzy, you write about “romantic contacts, emotional experience, and a casual kiss which I can't forget”—as if it were necessary to write this. Aren't we much alike on this side? I'll ask you about your work, life, friends, theater, cinemas, books, grandmas, and others but not all others, unless we are alone—and even about politics, if you must and if you don't try to convert me; above all, we will talk of the sexual life but not in pub lic. We'll have a long serious conversation about it—it's necessary, for we are beyond where grandmas and mammas can help us—and of course, it's profoundly fascinating. Don't bring up politics at our first meeting! I only saw you once in these recent months and you brought it up. It was so strange. I had a feeling we didn't get along. Terrible. Perhaps politics will separate us for life! If I saw any chance of that, I would
pretend to be on your side
; and what advantage would that be to you? I mean, I am thinking of your
political honor
. We are all well: we'll soon be together again. I am looking forward to it—and afraid. Oh, I hope our separate experiences have not separated us already. I get on well everywhere; why not with you?