All We Know: Three Lives (44 page)

“Alice De Lamar…entourage”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, July 10 [1950], SBP.

“passing through [Paris]…astronomers”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, June 14 [circa 1951–52], SBP.

Mary McCarthy and Esther
: In Carol Brightman’s biography of McCarthy,
Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her Worl
d (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1992), Esther is the “unidentified woman” in a photograph of the group waiting for the wedding couple outside the
mairie
.

“Noel brought me…books.)”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, Saturday, n.d., SBP.

“She had a…ones”
: Alice De Lamar to Gerald Murphy, November 24, 1962, GSMP.

“A whole part…memories”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, n.d. [postmarked February 3, 1954], SBP.

“under Esther’s influence…café”
: Wilson,
The Fifties
, 262.

“They came for…them”
: Hodgson, “Sublime Governess.”

“She never woke…reviews?”
: Ibid.

“Esther worries a…realities”
: Noel Murphy to Gerald Murphy, November 7, n.d., GSMP.

“put [her] foot…Esther”
: Noel Murphy to Sybille Bedford, n.d., SBP.

Gerald, who buried…headstone
: “Gerald’s posthumous sentimentality revolts me,” wrote Noel, “& the picturesque tomb, where Esther & I used to tell ghost stories—doesn’t interest me.” Noel Murphy to Sybille Bedford, n.d., SBP.

“melancholy”
: Thomas,
Strachey
, 293.

“
Do you know…friend?”
: Mercedes de Acosta to Gerald Murphy, n.d. [postmarked November 30, 1962], GSMP.

“My darling Sybille…man”
: Allanah Harper to Sybille Bedford, November 26, 1962, SBP.

“The great tragedy…distinction”
: Janet Flanner to Gerald Murphy, November 25, 1962, GSMP.

“I am sure…Documents”
: Dawn Powell to Gerald Murphy, December 13, 1962, GSMP. Gerald replied that he felt some remorse that he had not “share[d] more in her life” and worried that he had “urged her too much to write,” when “she was no doubt not meant to.” Gerald Murphy to Dawn Powell, December 17, 1962, quoted in Vaill,
Everybody Was So Young
, 348.

“a large sandy…her”
: Mosley, ed.,
The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh
, 469.

“What’s the use…sordidness”
: Sybille Bedford to author, telephone conversation, February 12, 2000.

“Finishing a book…apprehensions”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, Friday, n.d., SBP.

“facile gift for verbalization”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, n.d. [circa 1944–45], SBP.

“I have never…pity”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, Wednesday [circa 1945], SBP.

“She talks constantly…privacy”
: Powell,
Diaries
, 249.

“ruined by Prohibition…writing”
: Sybille Bedford to author, telephone conversation, February 12, 2000.

“She would talk…different”
: Allanah Harper to Sybille Bedford, September 16 [1945], SBP.

“I am not…capable”
: EM to Chester Arthur, January 19, 1943, AFP.

“Madame de Maintenon…mother”
: Murphy, Maintenon ms., GSMP.

“If any one…intelligences”
: Jane Austen,
Mansfield Park
(London: Penguin Books, 1988 [1814]), 222.

“For me, her…joyful”
: EM to SB, Thursday [circa September 1952], SBP. In the same letter, she noted that
Time
magazine’s article about Draper was “far better and less flippant than I feared it would be and underneath their essential vulgarity of style and spirit, there seems to be a vague cognizance that they are dealing with a very extraordinary being who cannot be fitted anywhere in the framework of the only values that they recognize.”

“ageing but hopeful”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, October 20, 1953, SBP.

“not historically possible”
: Esther Arthur, “The Politicos,” 25.

“the language of…businessmen”
: Scott Sandage,
Born Losers: A History of Failure in America
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 4–5.

“of a round…‘men’”
: Dabney,
Edmund Wilson
, xii.

“that the twenties…time”
: Wilson,
The Fifties
, 519.

“casualties”
: Wilson, “The Author at Sixty,” 42.

“My self-immolation…score”
: Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up,” 70.

“I talk with…again”
: Fitzgerald, “Notebooks,” in
The Crack-Up
, 181.

“After 21 years…spotlight”
: Powell,
Diaries
, 236.

“Failure frightened him…possible?”
: Dawn Powell,
A Time to be Born
(New York: Yarrow, 1991 [1942]), 130–31. In
The Happy Island
, the novel she had published four years before, Powell describes the collective reaction to one of her characters thus: “As the shabby dripping figure stalked through the lobby, people drew aside to let him pass, they snatched their skirts back, they glanced quickly away as if a look was contamination; here was Failure, the Enemy, merely to brush against him was misfortune” (S. Royalton, Vt.: Steerforth, 1998) [1938]), 91.

“confounded her friends…‘wanted!’”
: Dawn Powell to Gerald Murphy, December 13, 1962, GSMP.

“the kindness that…understood”
: Hodgson, “Sublime Governess.”

“I don’t know…appointment”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, April 26, 1953, SBP.

In 1950 she sent
: Dr. A. Whitney Griswold, “Our Tongue-Tied Democracy,”
New York Herald Tribune
, 1954, GSMP. Conversation, he wrote, “is forsaken by a technology that is so busy tending its time-saving devices that it has no time for anything else…. It is shouted down by devil’s advocates, thrown into disorder by points of order. It is subdued by soft-voiced censors who, in the name of public relations, counsel discretion and the avoidance of controversy…. It languishes in a society that spends so much time passively listening and being talked to that it has all but lost the will and the skill to speak for itself.”

“Winter is come…misfortunes”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, June 14, n.d. [circa 1953], SBP.

“As Muriel Draper’s…‘Draper’”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, Friday, n.d., July [1956], SBP.

“As a workman…‘lasse’”
: EM to Edmund Wilson, September 25, 1958, EWP.

“relieved to have…‘goût’”
: Gerald Murphy to Richard Myers, July 22, 1958, Myers Family Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

“As Jane Bowles…us”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, May 3, n.d., SBP.

“Joe Appiah wouldn’t
…apple!”: Simon Hodgson, “Sublime Governess,”
New Statesman
, February 22, 1963, 268.

“what made it…‘cherub’”
: Powell,
Diaries
, 249.

“We leave this…‘interesting’”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, October 13 [1956], SBP.

“She has a…thoughts”
: Virginia Woolf, “Madame de Sévigné,”
The Death of the Moth and Other Essays
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1974 [1940]), 52.

“Every book is…ancestors”
: Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Representative Men
(New York: Modern Library Classics, 2004 [1850]), 25.

“‘furnishes a key…superscription’”
: Susan Howe,
The Midnight
(New York: New Directions, 2003), 116.

“Here is the…Esther”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, October 22 [1955], SBP.

FANTASIA ON A THEME BY MERCEDES DE ACOSTA

“One never thinks…scene”
:
New York Times
, October 23, 1900, 6.

lead in
Chantecler: In Edmond Rostand’s
Chantecler
, the title character, a rooster, is hailed by another avian character as “My, thy, his, her, our, your, and their Cock!”

“a structure unique…lighting”
:
New York Times
, January 16, 1908, X2.

“seemed almost like…nature”
: “The Jesters,”
New York Times
, January 5, 1908, 9.

“had been technically…own”
: “Maude Adams Is Dead at 80,”
New York Times
, July 18, 1953.

“a real personal…audience”
: Issac F. Marcosson and Daniel Frohman, with an Appreciation by James M. Barrie,
Charles Frohman: Manager and Man
(New York and London: Harper and Bros., 1916), pp. 171, 170.

“theatre car…existence”
:
New York Times
, April 15, 1906, 1. This front-page article is directly under the report of a lynching (hanging and burning) of two men in Springfield, Missouri, while a mob of three thousand watched “their agony.”

“You are not…you”
: “A Time of Years,”
Time
, July 27, 1953. Accessed at
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,936102,00.html
.

“lived quietly with…McKenna”
: Ibid.

“As long as…theatre”
: “Maude Adams Is Dead at 80.”

“the almost hysterical…charms”
: “Maude Adams, Beloved ‘Peter Pan,’ Dead at 80,”
New York Herald Tribune
, July 18, 1953.

“mon grand amour”
: Marlene Dietrich to MdA, September 23, 1932, MdAP.

“I fear Janet…there”
: EM to Sybille Bedford, July 10 [1950], SBP.

“Mercedes
never
lies”
: Sybille Bedford to author, conversation, London, June 28, 1999.

“undeniable gifts…egotism”
: EM to Chester Arthur, September 12, 1936, AFP.

either uncritical homage
: One notable exception is Patricia White, “Black and White: Mercedes de Acosta’s Glorious Enthusiasms,”
Camera Obscura
15, no. 3 (2000): 226–65.

“the first celebrity stalker”
: Daniel Jeffreys,
New York Post
, April 18, 2000, 7.

“I often stood…heroic”
: Mercedes de Acosta, “Here Lies the Heart,” typescript [1938], first draft, 29, MdAP.

“the Spanish code…cloister”
: Daniel Schwarz, “Builder of the Eye Bridge,”
New York Times
, November 2, 1947.

“the most romantic…society”
: Cholly Knickerbocker, “Cholly Knickerbocker Says,”
New York American
, March 1, 1935, MdAP.

“Parents in the…convenient”
: Mercedes de Acosta,
Here Lies the Heart
(New York: Reynal, 1960), 109.

“the country”
: Ibid., 18.

“long religious essays…letters”
: Mercedes de Acosta, “Here Lies the Heart,” typescript, [1938], first draft, 8, MdAP.

“a suicidal mania”
: de Acosta, “Here Lies the Heart,” typescript [1938], first draft, 229, MdAP.

“put [her] face…moaned”
: De Acosta,
Here Lies
, 38.

“craving for death…state”
: De Acosta, “Here Lies the Heart,” typescript [1938], first draft, 231–32, MdAP.

“the frustration and…men”
: De Acosta,
Here Lies
, 117.

“without a shred…women”
: Ibid., 76.

“my hair was…collapse”
: De Acosta, “Here Lies the Heart,” typescript, [1938] first draft, 28, 30, 31, MdAP.

“I am not…life”
: Ibid., 32, MdAP.

“childhood tragedy”
: Ibid., 33, MdAP.

“Every child was…ecstasy”
: De Acosta,
Here Lies
, 17.

“like hunters out…Ethel”
: Ibid., 42.

“too shy and…migraine”
: Ibid., 42–43.

“would actually die”…room
: Ibid., 70.

“Meeting these artists…life”
: Ibid., 42.

“many celebrities other…Castellane”
: Ibid., 47.

“persistently paragraphed and…photographed”
: Knickerbocker, “Cholly Knickerbocker Says.”

“magnetic personality”
: De Acosta,
Here Lies
, 5.

“I have known…woman”
: Ibid., 5.

“her presence raised…her”
: Ibid., 46.

“a veritable museum”
: Frank Crowninshield, “The Fabulous Mrs. Lydig,”
Vanity Fair
, April, 1940, 106, MdAP.

In 1913 she
…
house
: The art dealer Joseph Duveen bought one of her Flemish tapestries for $41,000.

“The curators of…taste”
: M.L.K., “Lady of an Antique World,”
The New Yorker
, November 19, 1927, 28.

“really works of art”
: Crowninshield, “The Fabulous Mrs. Lydig,” 62.

In 1940, Mercedes
…
Museum
: Parts of both these donations were on display in the 2010 exhibitions of the Metropolitan and Brooklyn museums’ newly combined costume collections, American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity, and American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection.

“mad extravagance…opinion”
: De Acosta, “Here Lies the Heart,” typescript [1938], first draft, 197, MdAP.

“rebellion against the…prudish”
: De Acosta,
Here Lies
, 67.

“as if it…behind”
: Ibid., 85.

a “minor” talent
: Ibid., 102.

“feverishly compared notes…Duse”
: Ibid., 114.

“I was in…development”
: Ibid., 109.

Mercedes’s sartorial predilections
: If Mercedes was attracted to icons of the stage and screen, “she also made
herself
iconic,” notes Patricia White, in “Black and White.”