Letty Fox (23 page)

Aunt Phyllis and Pauline had no time for this philosophy. Aunt Pauline said, “Believe me, you have to be a Machiavelli to keep a man once you've got him; that's no time for getting gooey”; but, as in this case, any philosophy they had was tactical, and arose in moments of defeat, or in those pleasant relaxed hours when active people summarize their experience, but only to fill in time, because they use physical not mental philosophy. Of course, if we had to act on our findings (for I'm one of them), life would be dull. But no, our motto is that of Napoleon, “Go into it and then see;
On s'engage et puis on voit
.”

I don't know how Pauline had got the three months' rent which was payable in advance, but she had taken an apartment in a side street in La Muette near the Avenue Mozart, a
garçonnière
, composed of two rooms with kitchen and bathroom, well-lighted, gay, with two entrance doors. Both sides of the flat looked into alleys. The rent was rather high, since
garçonnières
(flats for bachelors) are sought after, in Paris, by broad-minded mothers and aunts, for their sons and nephews not yet in a situation to attract solid fathers to marriage. One could often see a plump aunt and plump mother in their best afternoon clothes and Rue Royale hats, with sly maternal smiles, invading these little furnished flats on an inside court. Pauline and Phyllis had good taste; and, since their furnishing was not yet complete, they engaged Dora Dunn to help them with bargains in modern interior decoration. I do not know at all where they got the money for this decoration. We had none. Dora had none. Pauline had none. Phyllis only got a small allowance from her mother, and a little from Montrose and Dave. Naturally, there are all kinds of guarantees one can give for furniture got in advance of payment. Furniture companies even propose these plans as a social act and a kind of saving in retrospect; so I say nothing more.

Phyllis knew she must learn her business, for she was too young and innocent. She knew she could be trapped; and under Pauline's tuition she worked quite hard to learn to manage men without herself being got. She did her best to become a flirt, a coquette, a heartbreaker, a woman on the make. It is hard to do this; one has to be cool and brittle. I know now, from experience, how hard. Many men make money and spend it all on their passions. Some are able to keep it and have dime and nickel passions, a kind of safeguard. Some women are able to have greater and more frequent passions, it is not all dollars and cents, and this capacity is their capital when they make love their career; Pauline could love, Phyllis not.

My mother sent back a letter to Grandmother Morgan about Phyllis's progress, and although Grandmother had plenty of troubles at home, she hadn't lost her head so far as to forget her marriageable daughter. She evidently was not pleased with Phyllis's affairs. Phyllis was too young. Grandmother approved of Pauline's management:

Phyl needs a stage manager. If she were in Hollywood she'd have an agent, and she'd have to go out and meet men, wouldn't she? We are strangers in Paris and Phyllis can't get any notices in the paper. Maybe Paris is no good for Phyllis. Ask Pauline yourself. I am asking her too, when I send her the check she asks for, whether she doesn't know any journalists. Why can't Dave do what Pauline suggests and get Phyllis on for a turn in a musical? You must invite him to tea, Mathilde. It is all a question of business risk, after all, and then he likes her. My God! You got to market peaches in the season. Why the Society people don't put their girls up for more than two-three seasons, and then they put their pictures in the paper with Chesterfield and Pond's. Even Miss America has to be put over with personal appearances, Hollywood contracts, and a slap-up Atlantic City advertising-men's pow-wow. Then what do they get? Well, some get a man the same as you and me. It isn't easy to get a girl to meet the right man You got my word, I won't forget anyone who does a little teamwork. She's all that's left to me, Mattie. I love my little Queen. My God, Mattie, you want your sister to let her chance slip by? A woman's only got one.

My mother wrote to Solander and asked him to approach his partner Montrose about clothes and a stage career for Phyllis, just so that she could meet the right men, and so that her beauty could be seen by as many as possible. Solander wrote back, “Montrose isn't exactly against the idea; he says, ‘The secret of success in sex is exposure.' ”

My father promised a letter from Montrose. The letter came with a small amount of money. Montrose said he, himself, would be over in a few days, also, and would help with his acquaintances in Paris; “I like Phyllis's idea of earning her own living. This is a fine thing for a young girl. Later, she knows how to take care of her husband's savings, and of course, I know she doesn't intend to go in for a music-hall career.” He wrote to my mother, “Just the same I think we ought to all put our heads together and write to Mamma, and think about little Phyllis getting married. She must at least be married a first time very soon; she is too susceptible and doesn't know how to make the best of her opportunities.”

Meanwhile her friend Dave had come to Paris in response to letters from Pauline, and was taking her around, introducing her to cabaret managers. Phyllis made many conquests, but few were willing to give her a try-out. They thought of it as a joke, and she got no engagement, except for a single night. One cabaret owner, an Armenian, forty-five, had fallen in love with Phyllis and would marry her. He had wanted her as a mistress and would have had her, but for Pauline's management (said Dave) and now was ready to do anything, go the limit for Phyllis. At any rate, Pauline and Phyllis could eat and drink every night in the cabaret, without paying, and were always to be seen at the bar. We were all very glad at this news, even my mother, who forgot her troubles and thought that some woman, her own sister, in fact, could make a success of life. She wrote a cheerful letter to my father and asked him to come to Paris to advise her, Phyllis and Pauline. My father was hard pressed for money. Montrose, naturally, expected him to pay for his traveling expenses. He had, as well, to pay for a home for Grandmother Fox and for Lily Spontini, who had not yet found a job. Lily had at once dug up a young man who would marry her if Solander Fox would advance him three hundred pounds for a toy business in Bevis Marks. He also needed a little money to clear a misunderstanding with the police in Paris. There were the expenses for Mother and ourselves. Joseph Montrose had asked him to reimburse certain extra sums that he had been obliged to pay out for Pauline and Phyllis during the establishment of their home in the
garçonnièr
e, and which Grandmother Morgan had so far refused to pay on account of the situation in the U.S.A. More than that, Uncle Philip had written him a private letter asking for money. He had gone to Brittany and was stranded there with his girl, Dora. Moreover, Dora was pregnant and had to come to Paris to see a midwife. Solander wrote:

Philip asked me not to mention this to you as he is afraid you will scold him, and I am only mentioning it so that you will realize it is almost physically impossible for me to visit you, much as I should like to do so, my dear Mathilde. You know, also, that I must live, and I live quite poorly. I am thinking what I can do to cut down my expenses, which have mounted incredibly, and in ways no one could have foreseen. It almost seems as if everyone who had nothing to do in the U.S.A. has come here and put himself on my payroll. And what do I get out of it? Very little! I haven't been to the movies in ever so long. I assure you I am wearing an old hat that someone in the office gave me. Don't think I am complaining. I just want you to know since you are still getting a large part of my salary, and we still have the children to look after (that is, I am your husband), that I am hard pressed, and I don't want you to write me a letter of blame.

My mother reread this letter many times, and let others read it. She was happy because he spoke of their relation, husband and wife, and because Solander had so much money to pay out. She foresaw that he would soon be so harassed that he would have to pack off most of his dependents and partial dependents to the U.S.A. and would have to return to us in order to make both ends meet. She wrote him a serious, short, friendly, and tender letter which she also read to Pauline (now become her confidante), in which she asked him not to worry, told him what economies we made. We were very badly dressed and quite a disgrace at school, and she herself was ashamed to sit in a café because no one believed she was an American, but a Frenchwoman, with her restricted wardrobe, and also she was the victim of improper advances; she begged him to send his mother and Lily Spontini back home. What were they doing in London? They could not enjoy Europe! She also asked him to send a check to Philip and Dora Dunn so that they could return to Paris. As soon as they did, she would ask Pauline to look after Dora Dunn and she would speak to Philip. But she felt my father himself ought to come to Paris to straighten out all this; that the money so spent would be a saving in the end. She asked my father if his trip abroad had really been worth while, for here he was saddled with these parasites, of which she admitted she herself was one; but what could a married woman do under this system? Perhaps under socialism she would not be such a burden, a ne'er-do-well, a failure and a parasite. Perhaps the best thing was for them all to return, together, or severally, to the U.S.A. However bad things were there now, she had heard that you could get an apartment for nothing, and that the landlord would paint and redecorate, even without rent, because he feared to have no tenants at all; and he was willing to wait for the rent till things should pick up.

Looked at in one way this is a bargain for us; we need little; and perhaps now you have suffered so much you have got over your obsession. At any rate, I insist upon your coming to Paris. There is much to talk over. And if you think of me at all, and I suppose you must, you owe it to me, Sol. I am so uncomfortable here. I have no one to turn to and am in the midst of all this uncertainty. I am most uncomfortable in the quarters in which I am now living. I never was any good at managing the children, who need a man, especially now, and especially Letty who is beginning to know things and realizes that her own father has abandoned her. She will probably always have a sense of inferiority about men, not only because I am such a failure and can't teach her anything, but because her Grandmother is so showy, and so Letty would tend to retreat. Also, of course, because she will say to herself that she has been abandoned by her own father. You know how the father-image is the first manimage in a girl's life. I don't know what effect this will have on the children.

In a P.S. my mother said that I was sick and needed special care; that French dentists were notoriously bad, and she had heard from her mother, Grandmother Morgan, that a dentist in New York related to the family, would treat my teeth; that is to say, put on braces and look after me in a visit once a month at only one hundred dollars a month.

Since the child is in a sense an abandoned child, I feel we ought to do all we can to improve her health and physical appearance, as well as to educate her properly so that she will not have too much feeling of inferiority. I realize I have lost out. But I am a mother, and must think of my children's health and I think you should too. You cannot be so obsessed with your personal happiness that you have not a moment for your children.

This was the essence of the letter that my poor mother wrote with much pen-nibbling, and many tears and much feminine advice, to my father. It happened that my mother was at a disadvantage all this time. She was acting almost alone, for she had only the advice of Phyllis, who did not care, and Pauline, who was always in a hurry. Meanwhile, these two girls and my Uncle Philip were writing to my father, sponging on him, usually with no mention at all of my mother or us. Yet what was their relation to him except through us?

About this time my father had an opportunity to come to Paris to work with a correspondent of J. Montrose in the international shipping business for a certain time; and he came in order to save the trips backward and forward, and to see us more. For my mother, being ill at ease, had put us both to board in a pension with an aging French woman named Gouraud, a peasant, who was very saving and very exacting. From her we learned French, manners, and in her house we became slim and neat. This was a good thing at a time when I was growing into a bouncing, successful girl, with a figure like a barrel. Pauline used to pay me a visit twice a week and became a great friend of Mme. Gouraud. She learned at once all the French recipes. Pauline had been brought up in a convent in Canada. She was an excellent housewife, not only according to French ideas, but because she was naturally so. Mme. Gouraud, when Pauline was in the house, brought to her our stockings, pinafores, and dresses. Pauline mended them, embroidered them, made new cuts in old dresses so that Jacky and I were now quite in the fashion, although poor in clothes. This was a thing my poor mother was unable to do and Mother often left Pauline as her deputy in all these things. If we were sick, Mother came, naturally, but, feeling herself to be such a failure, she thought she was doing us a greater service by putting us in more competent hands. Pauline spoke excellent French and soon had a Paris accent. She improved the accent we learned from Mme. Gouraud. She insisted upon taking us out with Phyllis and my mother, and taught us all how to order things, how to eat them, and how to drink dinner wines; how to speak to waiters, to chauffeurs and attendants in theaters, and girls in shops. She gave us rules for acquaintance and friendship. She had no knowledge at all of literature or art, but knew a good deal about what was current and fashionable, and had picked up dozens of friends already in the
lively arts
, journalism, stage, dancing, radio, cinema, publicity, agencies, and the like. She saw our different natures at once, and characterized us: