Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Famous Members of Their Entourages (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) (36 page)

At another London
soirée
, Gore and Tennessee met the wealthy aristocrat, Sir Henry Channon. American by birth and known as “Chips” to his friends, he had married an heiress to the Guinness fortune.

Unlike Forster, Channon praised Gore, having been enthralled by his novel,
The City and the Pillar
. He kept an elaborate diary in which he recorded his impressions of both Tennessee and Gore. He defined Tennessee as “a terrific Rodinesque character of force and vitality, and a great writer of poetic prose.”

Actually, he was more attracted to Gore. “He wears his hair like a Nazi,
en brosse;
he is very dark,” Channon later wrote.

“To look like a Nazi was to rank high in Sir Henry’s rating,” Gore later claimed. “He was a member of that pro-German set in England, the group that had been entranced by Hitler’s envoy, Joachim von Ribbentrop, when he was Berlin’s ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. I had the Nordic looks, the requisite blonde hair.”

Both Gore and Tennessee were invited to Channon’s country estate at Kelveden, near Plymouth. They were introduced to Channon’s companion, Peter Coates, although Gore suspected that Sir Henry was more sexually aroused by the British playwright Terence Rattigan.

Gore later remembered Channon’s dining room as evoking the setting within one of King Ludvig’s Bavarian castles. “He amused us by telling us about the long letters he used to receive from Marcel Proust.”

“I burned them, although I realize now I should have saved them for posterity’s sake,” Channon claimed.

Tennessee grew bored and wanted to leave the house party early. The following morning, as he and Gore were getting into a limousine to take them back to London, Channon had to break free from saying goodbye. He rushed over to greet the arriving Queen of Spain.

Back in London, Gore and Tennessee continued to be introduced to the British aristocracy, including Judy Montagu, an intimate friend of Princess Margaret. She was the daughter of Edwin Montagu, who had been a member of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith
[Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916]
.

Judy told him she was going to marry the American journalist, Joseph Alsop.

“I find that odd,” Gore told her. “I know him. “He’s in love with this ex-sailor from Brooklyn, Frank Merlo.”

[Ironically, this was the same Frank Merlo who would later become the most enduring of all of Tennessee’s love affairs.]

Both Gore and Tennessee came to realize that, “We’ve lingered too long at the party,” in Tennessee’s words. “It’s time to return to renew our careers in New York.”

Each would return separately to America.

Before his departure from London, Gore told his new admirers, “I’m going back to lead the American people into the new Sodom, out of their pillar-marked wilderness.”

Back in New York, although Tennessee and Gore pursued separate interests, their friendship continued. They met two or three times a week over drinks at The Blue Parrot on Lexington Avenue. In his memoir,
Palimpsest
, Gore referred to this meeting place as “a faggot bar.”

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, home from liberating Europe from Nazi tyranny, maintained his offices upstairs, over the bar.

One night at The Blue Parrot, Gore introduced his “stepsister-in-law,” the film actress, Ella Raines, to Tennessee.

Under contract to director Howard Hawks, and actor-producer Charles Boyer, she complained that, “I’m just playing second fiddle to male stars—nothing else.”

Raines surveyed all the military men hanging out in the gay bar, along with their dozens of male admirers. She said, “It’s just like being in an officers’ club.”

On several occasions, Tennessee and Gore were in the bar for pre-dinner drinks when the general came down from upstairs, accompanied by two or three of his aides.

Upon seeing him for the first time, Tennessee whispered to Gore, “Does the general know this is a gay bar?”

Gore told him that Eisenhower had spent much of his life having drinks in an all-male setting. “He probably doesn’t think The Blue Parrot is anything out of the ordinary. After all, every man in here but you is so very discreet.”

Tennessee was amazed at the intricate personal knowledge Gore had of American political and military figures.
[In 1996, Gore would write a very short (only 95 pages) book
, The American Presidency
, that revealed a number of secrets about American presidents, including how George Washington acquired his fortune; how Andrew Jackson broke 93 treaties with the Indians, and how Lincoln became a dictator.]

“Ike sleeps in the nude,” Gore revealed to Tennessee. “When he gets up in the morning, his personal aide actually puts his boxer shorts on him, and also his wristwatch.”

Gore also told him that during the war, when Eisenhower was stationed in England, he’d had an affair with his personal driver, Kay Summersby.

“Well, I wouldn’t call it a real affair. Kay knows my mother, Nina. She told Nina that ‘Ike’s stick didn’t shift too well.’”

“Do you mean that one of history’s most famous generals is impotent?” Tennessee asked.

“Exactly,” Gore said.

“Poor Mamie,” Tennessee said. “How dreadful.”

Because he was seen so frequently at The Blue Parrot, word got around that Eisenhower was secretly bisexual.

But when he ran for president against the Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson, it was the former governor of Illinois who would be outed as a homosexual.

Gore later told Tennessee that close friends of Stevenson referred to him as “Adeline,” and that police officers in both Illinois and Maryland had told FBI agents that Stevenson had been arrested for homosexual offenses, and that the records for those arrests had later been expunged.

Tennessee had been mistaken in thinking that Eisenhower might be gay friendly. Once he was installed as President, he became a major homophobe. When he moved into the Oval Office in 1953, to the dismay of both Gore and Tennessee, he signed an executive order listing “sexual perversion” as sufficient grounds for dismissal or exclusion from employment in any capacity by the Federal government.

Throughout his administration, ending in 1961, State Department officials appeared annually in Congress, proudly reporting the number of homosexuals they’d fired during the previous year.

During the Cold War, the State Department fired more homosexuals than communists, in spite of the Red Scare of Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who was later revealed to be a homosexual himself.

Gore was delighted to read
The Washington Post’s
comment: “Just as the ancient Aztecs or Mayans used to sacrifice virgins, annually, to propitiate the gods and to gain favors from them, the State Department sacrifices homosexuals, annually, to propitiate the House Appropriations Committee, and to gain money from them.”

One night at The Blue Parrot, Gore revealed his secret ambition to Tennessee.

“I want to become the third gay president of the United States. Eleanor Roosevelt has already promised she’ll back me.”

“The third?” asked an astonished Tennessee. “Who were the first and second?”

“You should read more American history,” Gore said. “The first was a lifelong bachelor, James Buchanan, the president before Lincoln. His lover was William Rufus King, who had been Franklin Pierce’s Vice President. Congressmen ridiculed them as ‘Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy,” or sometimes just “President and Mrs. Buchanan.’”

“The other was Abraham Lincoln. In 1837, Lincoln was 28. In Springfield, Illinois, he met 23-year-old Joshua Speed. Speed invited this tall stranger to share his bed, and Lincoln did so for the next four years until he decided he’d better get married for appearances sake. Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon, claimed that Lincoln loved Speed ‘more than anyone dead or living.’”

“Well, Gore, count on my support if you want to run for President one day, providing you don’t name Truman Capote as your vice presidential running mate,” Tennessee said.

“The country may be ready for me,” Gore said, “but not Capote. Once he speaks, and America hears that voice, the election will be lost.”

Throughout the 1960s, mired in drink and drugs, Tennessee did not see a lot of Gore. When they eventually met again in Manhattan, Tennessee confessed, “I slept through the Sixties.”

“Well, you didn’t miss a thing, baby,” Gore said. “If you missed the sixties, Bird, God knows what you’re going to do with the seventies.”

“I’ll tell you exactly what I’m going to do in this new decade,” Tennessee said. “I’m going to overcome the bitter, queenie attacks of the critics. Once again, I plan to achieve the kind of success I had in the late 40s and 50s. I feel that success is within my reach. I know it will come again.”

“You’ll defy F. Scott Fitzgerald then,” Gore said. “He said there are no second acts in American lives.”