Outlaw Marriages (13 page)

Frank Leyendecker's life soon spiraled downward. Depressed by his inability to secure commissions on his own and his failure to sustain a long-term relationship with a partner, he drank heavily and took an excessive amount of drugs. Within a year after the confrontation with Beach, Frank Leyendecker died of a drug overdose, at the age of forty-five.
49

Meanwhile, the Leyendecker/Beach home in New Rochelle expanded into
the
place to be seen for business executives as well as A-list celebrities from the New York theater world and the Hollywood film community—including Clara Bow, Al Jolson, and John and Ethel Barrymore.
50

Indeed, the legendary parties that Beach organized not only helped his partner secure new clients but also, according to the authors of one Leyendecker biography, changed the American culture. “The popular gossip maven Walter Winchell, in particular, frequented the parties,” the scholars wrote. “The coverage set fashion fads, established drinking and smoking trends, even dictated which automobiles were acceptable, and forever changed the shape of journalism by exposing private lives with salacious stories.”
51

The newspapers never reported, however, that the Leyendecker/Beach relationship was a romantic one, as the men didn't want their sexuality to become public. The journalists kept this detail out of their stories because they feared that if they wrote anything the couple didn't like, they would no longer be invited to the parties.
52

Several biographers who have chronicled the grand lifestyle of J. C. Leyendecker and Charles Beach during the 1920s have compared them to the characters in the iconic novel
The Great Gatsby
that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to capture the hedonism of the decade. “Both Joe Leyendecker and Jay Gatsby
rose from impoverished Midwestern beginnings to live lives of great wealth, sophistication, and lavish spending,” the author of one book about the illustrator wrote. “Charles and Joe enjoyed entertaining and had what were considered to be ‘the best' parties. Fitzgerald's written descriptions of Gatsby's parties echo Leyendecker's visual interpretations of his guests: they included ‘businessmen, theatre people, even a prince.'”
53

Leyendecker and Beach continued to “live large” throughout the 1920s, hosting their extravagant parties while enjoying the spoils of a thriving business. A chauffeur drove them back and forth to Manhattan in a Lincoln limousine, they expanded their already spacious home by adding two large wings, and they had major work done to the nine acres of grounds surrounding the house, including adding a Japanese garden complete with gazebo, footbridge, and waterfall. The partners also furnished their home with museum-quality French antiques and tapestries.
54

Like most Americans, Leyendecker and Beach were negatively affected by the 1929 stock market crash. The big problem was that most of the companies that had hired the illustrator to create images for them no longer had money to spend on advertising. So the couple stopped hosting the grand social events that had, during the Roaring Twenties, defined their lives. Fortunately, thanks to the contracts Beach had negotiated, Leyendecker continued painting covers for the country's leading magazines. Indeed, by the end of the 1930s, he was able to boast that his artwork had appeared on the cover of the
Saturday Evening Post
more than three hundred times.
55

The 1940s were a more difficult time in Leyendecker's professional life. Changes in the public taste meant the demand for his particular style of images dwindled, and a new editor at the
Post
awarded the magazine's lucrative contracts to other artists. In 1945, Beach helped his partner secure a contract to paint the covers for a Sunday newspaper supplement titled the
American Weekly
, but the newsprint that the artwork was printed on didn't show off the illustrator's work to the degree that the slick magazines of earlier decades had.
56

Health problems also began to plague Leyendecker by this point, as he suffered from heart disease. Beach eventually became so concerned about his partner overexerting himself that he refused to allow anyone to come to the house except a courier who arrived once a week to pick up the latest image for the
American Weekly
.
57

In the summer of 1951, the man who had once been the country's leading illustrator sat in the garden of his palatial home, enjoying a glass of rum and
orange juice with his partner of half a century. When the glass slipped from Leyendecker's hand and shattered on the slate terrace, Beach raced to his side. A few minutes later, the artist died of heart failure, his head cradled in his lover's arms.
58

After burying Leyendecker in the family grave site at Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City, Beach carried out his partner's request and destroyed all their correspondence in an effort to conceal the fact that they had a romantic relationship. J. C. Leyendecker's will split his estate between Charles Beach and Mary Leyendecker, who'd continued to rely on her brother's financial support after the family dispute twenty-five years earlier.
59

Charles Beach lived in the Mount Tom Road house until he died, just a year after his partner had, in the summer of 1952.
60

Despite Leyendecker and Beach having lived in an outlaw marriage for half a century, neither their romantic relationship nor Beach's contributions to his partner's success was publicly acknowledged during their lifetimes. The Leyendecker obituary published in the
New York Times
referred to Beach as the celebrated illustrator's “associate,” while the local New Rochelle newspaper called Beach the artist's “secretary.”
61

Expanding the Dimensions of American Literature

…

The name Gertrude Stein is widely recognized today. She is remembered, in literary circles as well as in the general population, as an avant-garde author and also as a mentor to such iconic novelists as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Largely forgotten, however, is the fact that as Stein approached the age of forty and had been toiling away at her writing for two decades, she'd failed miserably in her efforts to interest anyone in publishing her work.

It was at this point that the author's same-sex partner, Alice B. Toklas, decided it was high time for the world to learn about Stein's literary genius.

Gertrude Stein was born on the outskirts of Pittsburgh in 1874. Her father made a fortune in manufacturing, while her mother cared for the couple's five children. The family moved to Europe soon after Gertrude was born, returning to the United States four years later and settling in Oakland, California.
1

Both of Stein's parents died when their youngest daughter was still in her teens, and Gertrude's inheritance made her financially independent for the rest of her life.
2

In 1893, Stein enrolled at Radcliffe College near Boston, soon gaining a reputation as being unconventional because she wore a sailor's cap everywhere she went. At the same time, though, she was well liked because of her spirited personality.
3

After graduation, Stein entered Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore. It wasn't long until she veered away from becoming a doctor, however, as she began devoting her time and energy to exploring the connection between the written word and the human brain.
4

In 1901, Stein fell in love with a student at Bryn Mawr College. When the young woman ended the relationship, Stein plummeted into a period of depression. Partly to put the affair behind her, she relocated to Paris in 1904, moving into an apartment where her brother Leo was already living.
5

Alice Babette Toklas was born into an upper-class San Francisco family in 1877. Her father owned a dry goods store, and her mother was a full-time homemaker.
6

Because Alice was highly precocious, her parents sent her to the most academically challenging private schools in the city. When she was eight, they also took her on a trip to Europe in an effort to broaden her education.
7

Toklas enrolled in the music conservatory at the University of Washington after high school and embraced college life with great enthusiasm. She surrounded herself with a circle of artistic friends who helped her gain an appreciation for painting and sculpture. By this point, she'd also adopted a bohemian personal style, dressing in Chinese silk robes and frequenting San Francisco's various ethnic restaurants.
8

Life changed dramatically for the teenager when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Toklas then dropped out of school and began keeping house for her father and younger brother, while also caring for her ailing mother until her death in 1897.
9

A part of Toklas was content devoting her days to cooking, cleaning, and doing the laundry, but another part grew restless. As her thirtieth birthday approached, she became increasingly eager to see and experience more of the world.
10

Leo Stein's major activity in Paris was collecting modern art. The first painting to grace the walls of the Stein apartment, located near the Luxembourg Gardens, was by Paul Cézanne. That work was soon joined by the paintings of
Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
11

By 1906, anyone living in Paris who wanted to see the best in modern art was obliged to visit the Stein apartment, as no public museum yet recognized this emerging genre of creative work. The Steins established Saturday evenings as the set time each week when people could come see the paintings and join in literary discussions.
12

Gertrude Stein conferred with her brother on many of the art purchases, but her major activity was writing. The specific question that intrigued her was how the process of creating prose was linked to consciousness. This interest propelled her into becoming perhaps the single most experimental American writer of the twentieth century.
13

Experts who have studied the literary work created by Stein during this period have characterized it as being about people the author observed from afar, as well as being melancholy in tone. “It is obsessed with failure,” one scholar has written. “Its heroines—servants, downtrodden people—are all doomed.”
14

Soon after arriving in Paris, Stein hired a young American woman to type her words after she wrote them out in long hand. Stein also coerced her employee into becoming a guinea pig for her theories on character. The author probed the depths of the girl's personality by asking her intimate questions and by reading her mail.
15

The correspondence that the girl received from one friend in particular piqued Stein's interest, as the letters revealed that the writer was sexually attracted to women. Alice B. Toklas's words also described her artistic interests and her desire to move to Europe. And so, by the time Toklas came to Paris in 1907, Stein already knew a great deal about the woman.
16

Stein was so familiar with Toklas through the letters, in fact, that she purposely presented herself, when they met, as more forceful than she naturally was, believing this was the character trait that Toklas would find appealing. Stein's calculated behavior succeeded, as Toklas was so strongly drawn to her that they soon became lovers.
17

From the outset, Stein filled the role of domineering husband, while Toklas became the nurturing wife. “Pet me tenderly and save me from alarm,” Stein wrote her partner at the time. “I hear you praise me and I say thanks for yesterday and to-day.” The author also made it clear that, as in any marriage of the early twentieth century, the husband would be the power figure in the relationship. “A wife hangs on her husband,” she wrote. Toklas was fully in concert with this arrangement, telling Stein, “I am your bride.”
18

With regard to Stein's writing, Toklas assumed a proactive role. The author
wrote her words and then refused to edit them, relying on her initial creative impulse. So Toklas took it upon herself not merely to type the words but also to, as she put it, “tidy them up.” Specifically, Toklas corrected the spelling and grammar, added and deleted words to make the prose read more smoothly, and reworked sentences so they became, in her estimation, more effective.
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