Letty Fox (46 page)

Mother felt she had not acted well toward me in letting me run wild all over the world in free-love schools, and in not insisting upon my going to Hunter, too, where I might have thought of studies for a few years at least, and seen that all the girls in the world, of my age, were not engrossed with dances and sex.

At this, I spoke up and remarked that I did about twice as well as Jacky in studies; that I also had a social life, and was all that a young girl should be, pretty, agreeable, safe with men, and not wasting my time over the poetry of a strange vegetable like Peter Varick, the professor with whom all the girls at Jacky's college were involved. Involved by hate or love, what difference did it make? What sort of a man is a man who gives lessons to young ladies, said I, mimicking young ladies. Peter wore pants, but he was a vegetable, a yam or clam, or something; quite close to the vegetable kingdom, at any rate.

My mother stretched out her hand! A fog came over her fine, blue eyes with their clear blue-whites. She cried, “What can I do if the father is so negligent?”

I would cut up as a wanton, end up living with the man, she knew—with my father's encouragement, I would certainly do that.

“And apparently your father approves of this semi-vagabond?”

I jumped up, and threw my arms round her neck; “Oh, Mother, thank you ever so much. I'll never forget it,” for this was Mathilde's peculiar way of saying yes.

“I think I have some rights,” said my mother, at once, “and that is that your marriage must be secret, or nearly so. If you knew what you're letting yourself in for. Going to college next fall, a married woman. They'll laugh at you; you'll be out of everything. There isn't a mother alive will let you talk to her daughters.”

I stared at her.

“I know, I know—too much,” said Mother in the exact words of poor Grandmother Fox.

“All right. We'll only tell a few friends.”

My mother said sarcastically: “You forget he's not divorced yet.”

This was so. My father and Clays, very much the same in ideas, of course, thought it quite simple that I should marry, and I was mad with enthusiasm at having this side of my life so neatly settled.

I threw myself into my work with such energy that I bewildered teachers and secretaries of societies. I sprang to the top in everything, realizing that I could not keep Clays unless I showed a great ardor in politico-social life (I say this now, but at that time I did not know there were any other kinds), and determined to make a splash, if possible, later on, on the Continent, or in England; nothing was too much for me.

There were many nights when I slept only three hours—homework, meetings, chewing the rag after meetings, accidental conversations on street corners, restaurants, bars, and Greenwich Village cellars where young people lived; giving out leaflets and rushing to bookshops to get new publications; work on the school magazine, selling the
Daily Worker
, or leaflets, organizing rallies. I had time for it all, and school, too. That was the effect of love and expectation upon me. I suppose it would be upon everyone. Fulfillment is the secret of energy, not self-sacrifice; at least for my type.

Clays and I had seen, as in a vision, Clays an attaché, or secretary to some embassy abroad. I started out, not to fit myself for this so much, as to already take part in it.

I turned out to be the most brilliant girl in the class in economics according to the teacher, but did not get the very highest marks, alas, on account of these outside activities—but I did not regret that then, and I do not now. I then felt for the first time (with Clays, and my marks not so bad) that I had something to do, what some people would call a destiny. That was not my view then, and if it is now, it is because I have become more sentimental, because older. At twenty-four I have noticed people start to become sentimental; they forget all they have learned and congeal, not into any essence of themselves, but into some requisite atom of the social group.

Last year I was at a reunion with some alumnae of the high school, and after, we went to a bar, all in red plush, to have a talk. Some of the girls were married, two already divorced, and all sorry.

“Are you beat?” they asked me.

“Not yet.”

“You will be soon,” they said. “We've given in. You've got to live the way people do. You can't hold out.”

I did hold out; I will hold out. But why shouldn't those who are weak hold out, too? That's the question. This world is made of ex-chimpanzees, not ex-champs, after all! What is the plural of Joe Louis? There isn't any. That just shows.

I wrote about this to my darling Clays, then in Washington. As well as my other works, I had time to write him every two days, at least. My letters were full of my active life and indignation—for the most part, indignation. Why? I was a hotpot, forever bubbling, said Clays. But this fever and ferment was my life at its best. Fever to others, life to me. Never did I wish to be past this fitful fever. I lived for the day, for the hour, only to enjoy it better. For thinking back (like my mother) or ahead (like the philosophers) makes you languid and lazy.

Of course, perhaps, I was just a pocket edition of Grandmother Morgan, with some higher education! This was how she lived. In her later years she picked men younger and younger; in their mirror she saw that she had more years to go. How clear it is!

I wrote to Clays (whom, for fun, I called Sir Clays, he was the parfit knight),

M
Y
D
ARLING
S
IR
C
LAYS
,

… We had a debate in economics on the legality and ethics of the sit-down strike, and I was on the affirmative; that is to say, they are both legal and ethical. As you predicted some time ago, oh, seer (by courtesy of Marx), the wave of strikes is hitting the United States, and the workers all over are becoming more and more labor-conscious, and realizing that they have rights too, and are setting out to get them. Labor is marching on and growing very fast, despite the opposition of the typical bourgeois “mistaken liberals” who claim that sit-downs will lead to Fascism, because the middle-class will be aroused by this “destruction of property rights” (ha, ha, ha!). This feeling is echoed by my dear Republican history teachers, who point out with sadistic pleasure the rise of a group of all of 50 vigilantes, as if every new thing in history, as if every new force of progress and democracy (yes, in our supposedly free land) had not always been attacked by the forces of reaction. Our teacher said that the vigilantes are a national institution. This must embrace a very small scope of the nation and even if it were true, who encouraged the vigilantes, dear lady! who started them? My Eco-teacher is Trotsky-ite, not mistaken, but a real one! It's too much to always give them the break and call them Trotsky-mistakenites. She infilters the duckiest notions into the class; as the class is special, and supposedly for the bright girls, they have taken care to include very few members of the real working class in it (we have plenty here), so that the snug, comfortable brats are all too willing to receive the bad idea. The working-class girls may not have had all that leisure to read Marx (they generally have to wash the floors in between times), but oh, boy, they know what is so and what isn't, when it comes to the wage scale, ticklish proposition, for example. I have the biggest arguments, and go up afterwards and discuss Marx (I know nothing of him, as you state, but she knows still less), and so life goes on …

My darling Clays, I am not sighing and pining for you. This is an unusual love letter. I would, though, if I had the time, so don't take offense. I can't see you pining for me, either, but I hope you do. You have more experience than me in pining—I know your record—so I hope you pine somewhat from mere habit. What a shame that I can't tell everyone! But what fun, too. I love to look at all those simpering brats and think—oh, baloney, what do you know about that thing they pronounce in the movies LERV? I'm getting sticky, my boy, and I move on.

I am taking Art-ah-Art. We have been studying, in one week, what should take at least a year. We are now supposed to be able to identify romanesque, byzantine, babylonian, greek, gothic, renaissance, neo-classical, and such forms of architecture—the truth, we cannot. Also, now we are going to Painting. I like this better. I have to make special reports on Leonardo da Vinci and Jan van Eyck—that's all. I know you'll laugh at me, but “it's the custom of the town.” I am taking J. van E. because I saw the
Adoration of the Lamb
myself, with mine own eyes, and she doesn't usually have reports on him She reminds me of a person who builds a house without foundations; because he is the true founder of the Dutch school. Of course, I'm dying to take El Greco, but she said I had enough.

I am going crazy. The Y.C.L. is being reorganized (again)—I approve of the idea that communists should be human beings; that in their relations with others they should be tolerant and broadminded; that they should do as the world does because they can thus convince more people of the efficacy of another world (not the preacher's, the Marxist's)—but I am sick and tired of the idea that people join the League, not to be told anything about communist theory, or to be trained in any way for the struggle later on, or to make them better Party members when they grow up. Oh, no! You must not scare them by doing anything but having meaningless discussions. You must forget that you were a communist and make the League a “mass organization” with NO PURPOSE (essential)! with little or no chance for Marxist education, and with the already established leaders remaining the already established leaders; the Leadership—God Bless 'em, over the water! Still 'n all, I am trying to educate myself—I should love, love to go to France, Spain, England—with you—learn something— how little a girl knows. When we see men conforming, how worse than bad! For we are supposed to regard men as the tigers, the outlaws, the “beloved bandits”; but, actually, are they? Very few mavericks, in my experience. But the theory still goes, among these (soon-to-be) horned heads, that the maverick, the leader is what women admire and choose, in order to carry forward the best of the species, or something of that sort; actually most of my classmates, female, have their eye out for the willingest, not the best. It's a tattletale gray world, my masters. Well, there'll be no sense in sexual theories until women start telling their minds; and, of course, until they have some; that'll be when they abolish the ads, for all the kids I know get their ideas from the ads; but even at that, what they choose men for ain't at all what the boys think. But don't start asking me why I choose you. You know why! I couldn't resist you. That's terrible. I don't want to think about it.

I am coaxing Mother into giving me, for my birthday, the collected works of a gentleman of the Bourgeoisie known to fame as Lenin. Then, maybe I can start catching up on you. This IS a hint.)

You will probably think I am just a loony kid gone intellectual, but I just felt like writing to you. You are the only one to whom I can tell my whole life. What a pleasure that is, what a relief! Don't let me down. I am giving myself away. Every book on etiquette, not to mention on
How to Attract Men
, tells you to do the opposite. Meanwhile, I am listening to the dances from Prince Igor; my taste is crazy, but it and you make me feel freer and less nervous than I have in months and months—and years. I think I grew up fast. Jacky is still at the idolized-professor-of-English stage.His name is Peter “Varnish”! Poor kid! She thinks men are gods.

Yours
L
ETTY
-S
CHLAGOBERS
(easy to whip into shape).

Clays wrote back, among other things:

I'll throw you out if you say
all over
which is German, instead of
everywhere
… and a friend of mine (in the Foreign Office, so many of them are; it's the old school tie operating) explained the Nazis to me this way: “It's you communists that brought it on, it's the reaction.” Don't ask me, dear Letty, why I go to see him. Gilbert (that's him) always knows when war is going to be declared; and it always arrives on time. I don't even need Marxism when I know Gilbert. I don't make any inferences.

Lovingly, Clays.

P.S. Why
Sir
Clays? Do you think that a handkerchief and a tourney were love? That was adventure! This, that
we
have, is LOVE.

We spoke of our marriage, but we waited for the double divorce, which Jean, his wife, the crime writer, had not managed to get. This was not malice. We had asked ourselves if we ought to wait so long. While we were asking this, a letter came from the wife, saying that she expected us all to be free very soon, as her parents were paying for a Mexican divorce and she was even then in Mexico City. I could hardly believe it. It was like hearing that Europe was free. Do these things really happen? Underneath the excitement and joy, I had felt down in the mouth—marriage was really too hazardous these days, I sometimes thought, and I thought of poor Mother. I now wrote to Clays:

I have had a new, different kind of feeling in the last few days, which I hope will be permanent. At last, I have lifted myself out of the tenseness, general apathy, and self-consciousness, the occasional rising into periods of hysterical work, and the general feeling of
malaise
, which I've had for months now, and is what I most have, that resembles the kind of young girls they write about. I feel like a different person. The only thing is that too many people around jar on my nerves, which is new; and that I like to be alone. However, don't think that's too bad, I feel a strange kind of peace; though I'm still so young, a feeling that I'm not as immature as I was, in order to convince myself that I can really accomplish something, I am making plans for a book. Don't laugh! I know it'll never get anywhere as a work of art, but if I can complete it, I'll feel that perhaps I have potentialities as an author. I mapped out a plan a few days ago, and I've just been working on preliminary notes, haven't got down to work on the actual thing and won't for some time. What is the right way to begin? It's a story of a group I know very well; a group of girls in high school with some fancy flourishes of my own. The most I've done is writing a pagelong character sketch of each girl and her family, ten in all, and in working out a fantastic theory about the riddle of the universe which one of the boys is supposed to hold. I have a kind of knowledge that young men of twenty or so indulge in theories about riddles of the universe; tacked on is a conversation where he says he can't believe in God; and he goes about telling every girl the awful news. This one's name is Bobby—but there is more than one. I know it sounds crazy, but if I can get it done by the end of the summer—that is if we're not married—I'll feel happy.