Savage Grace - Natalie Robins (29 page)
Brooks Baekeland
I had taken another small apartment, at 1 rue Legrattier, in order to have some peace, and in 1966, when I sort of separated from Barbara, I began to more or less live there. I would host her dinner parties—at her request, so that nobody would know—and leave after the last guest. For the first time she saw that I might
really
leave her—no matter what she did to prevent it. She was trying hard to “be good,” to reform, and it was touching. The thought of this after I had left her—the irony, the pity of that effort—was one of the most painful things for me when I remembered her.
As for Tony, I was sorry for him, sorry that he was homosexual—very sorry indeed—but I do not have most people’s knee-jerk reactions to such things. It rather tends to make me think and wonder why, how, people like Tony who are not really effeminate—except, clearly, by imitation when in the company of others of their kind—become imprinted, diverged, into such channels.
In any case, in England, where he went after Avon, he met some very swishy titled young men, went to a Savile Row tailor, charged up what would now be ten thousand pounds of tailor-made clothes—he hadn’t a bean, but Daddy would pay—and said he wanted to go up to Oxford with his friends.
He and his mother made a strong case for this remarkable request. Influence was to be used through the head of All Souls, now dead, “a charming man,” etc. That the boy had not even finished high school and was essentially uneducated did not seem to them to be a reason why Oxford would not be delighted to have him.
I was finally able by various machinations plus my son’s high IQ score and the charming and civilized impression he could make—I am not being ironical here; these things still counted in certain places—to get him provisionally accepted at St. John’s College, Oxford, provided he could pass his O-levels—A-levels? I forget—after a bit of cramming, which shouldn’t take more than a few months for a person of his intelligence, everyone agreed.
I hired a young Oxford student to come to Cadaqués, where we were to spend the summer. The task was for Tony to learn enough Latin to pass the examination in that subject, which, with a foundation in French and some Spanish already learned by ear, should not have been too difficult.
But the tutor was corrupted, confessed the hopelessness of the situation to me, and left. No work had been accomplished at all.
Tearful scenes with Mama and Papa, promises of reform. So that autumn, kindness of Michael Alexander, Tony went to live in London and was put into a cramming school.
Michael Alexander
Tony stayed with me for about six months while he was studying at Davies, Laing & Dick somewhere up in Notting Hill Gate. He lived in my basement and he looked after himself. That was when the father-son relationship was at its most, how shall I put it…Brooks was trying to turn Tony into something other than a sort of layabout with homosexual inclinations. He was trying to turn him into a man—shall we put it that way? He was putting a lot of pressure on Tony, who I must say did not seem to be at that stage the ideal American boy.
Brooks Baekeland
To make a long story short, the cramming school wrote to tell me that I was wasting my money. The lad, they said, was not even coming to his tutorial appointments, much less doing any of the work assigned to him.
But he was having a fine time with his swishy friends.
About this time I received a letter from Jim Jones reproaching me for not letting my son be a writer.
Letter from Antony Baekeland to James Jones, Undated
c/o
Michael Alexander
London, W. 1
Dear Jim,
Can you look at these for me and give me some advice? I know how busy you are, but I’ve given up the idea I had of going to Oxford and I’m going to be pretty broke by the first of the month. I thought you might know where to send them, if they’re good enough to send. The one called “Snow Dream of David Lanyon” needs editing, I think. Anyway, tell me what you think, and love to Gloria and Kaylie.
Yours ever,
Tony Baekeland
P.S. Can you help me get an agent? Also (I’m out of my mind) do you think I could get “Jolyon Condemned” in
The New Yorker
?
Letter from James Jones to Antony Baekeland, December 22, 1964
10, quai d’Orléans
Paris IV°
Dear Tony,
I have read your three stories with a great deal of interest. I think you write extremely well. Really remarkably well. I enjoyed all three of them very much, simply for that reason. However, I do not think you could get any one of the three of them into
The New Yorker,
which is not only pretty much of a closed corporation, but also very severe in its dictates of and demands for the quote
New Yorker
style unquote.
With regard to an agent, I suggest you call and meet my own agent in London, whose name is Hope Leresche. Her phone is FLAxman 43.11 and her address is 11 Jubilee Place, London, S.W. 3. Hope is an agent for a lot of people among whom is Shelagh Delaney whom she helped to get started. If she likes you and your work, and I should think she would, she may be able to help you get started.
On the other hand, trying to make even a bare living out of writing short stories is next to impossible. The kind of stories you would like to write have very little commercial market value unfortunately, whatever their true value. I am only telling you this because it is the truth, because I want you to know what may be in store for you. Despite that, because I did like the stories you sent so much, I would be willing to write your Dad and Mom that I think they should support you—if not richly, at least so you can live—so that you can write. It’s a peculiar fact that most parents will support their kids in studying just about any profession except learning how to write. As a matter of fact, I told them that when they were here last time. However, I would not like to write them to this effect unless I was absolutely sure it was something you wished me to do. Also, I don’t know how to spell Cadaquez (?). In fact, I’m not even sure they’re there now.
With regard to the three stories, I think the first, untitled one comes nearest to being a short story in the old-fashioned classic sense. By that I mean something does happen, the boy does see his mother with the man, and at the end does act on it. However, I feel it is obvious that you have imposed these two scenes on the story as a whole. Each of them is dealt with almost cursorily, with much less of the interesting and affective detail which makes the rest of the story so good. I feel that the ending is therefore too abrupt, unprepared for, and happens too quickly for the reader to partake of it fully. I also think that the arising of the storm, clearly a device to promulgate the ending, could be made more natural, and perhaps more emotionally a true part of the story (as opposed to a device) by having its first signs commence earlier, when the boy is climbing on the island, so that when he sees the man kissing his mother, it is during the first beginning winds rustling the trees and grasses while he sees them. Then let it build up slowly to the rest of the story to the end. It would of course be easy to overdo this thing of the storm, but if it is done naturally without being pointed up too much, I think it would clear up all the criticisms I have and this feeling of abruptness of device laid on over the top. I would think, too, the boy would have some inkling, earlier, that his beautiful mom is not as perfect as he would like her to be. You could play this off against naive younger sister.
Neither of the other two is this close to being technically a short story, though I found them both interesting and moving. Of the two I think the “Snow Dream” is the better, although I feel the ending sort of tapers off leaving one with an unsatisfied feeling. The “Jolyon” one is the least successful, largely because in its latter half there is an undefinable adolescent-bravado quality which the other two, while written
about
adolescents, do not have. I liked the first part with the girls, though.
Please let me know if you want me to write your folks, and please look up Hope Leresche. Gloria joins me in sending all best.
Sincerely,
James Jones
Telegram from Antony Baekeland to James Jones, Undated
JUST BACK NEW YORK READ LETTER THANKS FOR ENCOURAGEMENT I NEED IT CAN YOU WRITE FATHER AT CASADEVAL CADAQUES GERONA WILL LOOK UP MRS. LERESCHE HAPPY NEW YEAR LOVE TO GLORIA TONY
Letter from James Jones to Brooks Baekeland, February 5, 1965
10, quai d’Orléans
Paris IV°
Dear Brooks,
I seem to remember that we are coming down to see you for a few days some time fairly soon, but as I am up in the office and Gloria is downstairs and the phone is busy I cannot check with her just when.
Anyway that is not what I’m writing about just now.
Shortly before we went to Klosters Tony sent me from London three stories of his which he asked me to read and comment on. I did this and I quote in part what I thought about them:
“I think you write extremely well…Really remarkably well. I enjoyed all three of them very much, simply for that reason. However, I do not think you could get any one of the three into
The New Yorker
…”
I meant every word of this, Brooks. I think Tony has the
unacquirable
trait of a writer, which is to make people see and feel things powerfully. I don’t think as yet that he has any of the technical proficiency, or the constructive sense, to utilize the talent he has. (Max Perkins once said the same thing about me, and I guess I’m more or less quoting him.) Anyway, it’s going to take him quite a while to develop his talent, but I sincerely think he does have a talent, and I think he ought to have a chance to try to develop it.
Tony mentioned in his letter only that he’s given up the idea of going to Oxford and was going to be pretty broke by the end of the month. He was hoping I could help him sell one of the three to
The New Yorker.
I of course having talked with you and Barbara knew more than Tony was saying and could read between the lines. I wrote him a detailed analysis of all three of the stories and then went on to explain that it was next to impossible to try and make a living by writing short stories. I also offered to write to you in his behalf, and tell you what I thought about his writing. I feel strongly enough that Tony has talent that I would suggest to you that you give him a chance to work at it, which would mean sending him enough money to live on (and I don’t mean luxuriously). I am aware that most American parents while willing to support their kids for eight years to become a doctor, nevertheless take a very dim view of supporting the same kids the same length of time to become a writer. But it takes just as long. What does surprise me is that you, who have worked at becoming a writer yourself and who love writing and writers, find yourself now in a moral position where you cannot give Tony a fair chance to become one himself.
When I wrote to Tony I said I would not write to you unless he wished me to, and while I was in Klosters I got a wire from him here giving me your address in Cadaqués and asking me to go ahead and write you. So I am.
It’s not as if you were poor and didn’t have the money. And I am not writing you out of any sense of moral issue or empathy for the young. But I’ve been dedicated to writing all my life, and whenever I see someone who has a chance at writing well I always try to help them get that chance if I can. I think you ought to help Tony. Actually, he has made remarkable strides since those few early things of his I read two or three years ago.
Gloria joins me in sending our love to you both and I hope we’ll see you in—what is it, May?
Sincerely,
James Jones
Letter from Brooks Baekeland to James Jones, February 7, 1965
(44 today) Cadaqués
Dear Jim:
It was very kind of you to write me. You are a kind man and an understanding man and some other things too—but that’s already enough for what I want to say.
First of all I am not quite the horse’s ass that you may think, nor so conventional. The doctor writer bit I can truthfully say is unimpeachable, because it is, and has been for a long time, my own opinion. Tactics
(when)
is all I was concerned with, and (much too long a subject) that is conditioned by the mercurial changes still going on in Tony. (I am waiting for him to burst out of Davies’s, which I think he will, and then I fully intend to do what you suggest and with blessings that will mean more then than they would have 3 years ago when I had already reached your opinion and when he might have had troubles which could have finished, or broken, the impulse that is growing hard in him. I don’t know whether I can make myself clear about this in a few words.)
Secondly, as a matter of principle, although I disagreed with it in almost every aspect (and was overridden, as far as I could tell, by both B & T), I would not gratify Tony by torpedoing his mother’s late arrangements for him in England. They will collapse of their own foolishness. The harder Tony’s resolve becomes, the better as far as I am concerned—because (for one thing) I would like to see him grow out of his mother and he can only do that by an exercise of male defiance—which I soon expect.
Third—I gave him the signal, permission and money in December. (I gave a lot of thought to your counsel: I say counsel, because I have great respect for your insight. It was a relief to hear
you
say that.) But I made one condition—that he take the occupation seriously and show some signs of it. (Agent, work, etc.) He did and I was pleased. (The efforts were inefficient, but they were efforts.) In London he showed me his stories and I was pleased. I told him so. I have known for years that whatever else he did in life, he would be a writer. I never told him different when I decided that. He has never had anything but praise and encouragement from me in that. (Ask him.) O.K. The next thing I knew, he was in the USA with Mama. The next thing I knew after that was that he was going to go to a shrink and go back to Davies’s. I suggested to him that he get away from us—go into the military, get it over with, write his head off (or not if he chose) and spend some peaceful, boring, regular and
distant
years from us. Mama has so indoctrinated him with the blood-thirsty horrors and depravities of military service of any kind that he thought I was trying to punish him. I wrote him no. I also wrote him, however, that I was not going to blow up “Mum.” The next move is up to him…. He knows that I am on his side, but he also knows that I want it
straight
and as soon as he wants it straight too, he has his ticket. That’s his problem.
He’s afraid. (Again Mama—the homosexual fear.)
Nothing is ever simple, and this shrink may capture him (keep him in a kind of permanent dependent babyhood). I think not. I have a high respect for this boy who has a head as clear as anyone’s I know. He’s lucid.
The clock is ticking and I know that his little bomb is going to go off soon. If it doesn’t—I’m going to be all confused! I will never have been so wrong in my intuition (I’m not used to that either).
I am sorry to bore you with this, but I owe you something for your long, kind letter and for your interest in Tony. When you said at your house that you weren’t sure “he could put words together” (a judgment you made several years before) I decided not to say all this to you. The tactics, however, interest me. The raw meat of frustration, eaten for quite a long period now, may not have been so bad a training diet. I respect writing. I want him to respect it.
He is not likely, no one is
likely,
to be another James Jones. But even less is anyone likely to be that if he treats it like an escape or a kind of lark. When he decides to write, he will also lick Mama and everything that implies. Everything (I hope) will come together at once.
Want to see your book. When? My book I think going well. Love you both very much.
The Old Puritan