Letty Fox (47 page)

There is a strange tenseness in the air in America, it seems to me! Families parade along the streets on Sunday in their new suits; discussions go on as usual, but, maybe it's just because I live in a big city, but everyone seems to have a feeling, conscious or otherwise, that something big is going to happen, something startling—I don't know what. A lot of the pseudo-intellectuals, the dilettantes, have been wandering about lately in a high fervor of seething excitement, because of the profusion of lectures by Thomas Mann, Harold J. Laski, etc. There is a general meeting of each other at meetings, at the New School, at dinners, at Mecca Temple, and a cheerful feeling that a lot is wrong with the universe; and it's marvelous to be able to discuss it all over a Martini; just as the intellectuals of fifty years ago discussed it in the
Closerie des Lilas
, or something, over Pernods. Life at school, as a consequence (consequent by comparison), is becoming more babyish and disgusting, as life outside of it is getting richer and more full-blooded. One gets a sense of waste, of foolish indulgence, of “why am I here,” every morning when contemplating the mature faces of eighteen-year-old cherubs who wouldn't know a serious discussion, except on boys, if they were listening to one! And a feeling of the broadness and wealth of material in life all around, except for the class one is attending.

And is
this
growing-up? Each change, I say that to myself. But it's usually some awful symptom—but if
This is It
, then it isn't so bad. If this letter, into which I have put my real thoughts, seems weak and adolescent to you still, well, tell me and I'll weep suitably; but if it isn't, show it to others and say, my girl,

L
ETTY
F
OX
F
ECIT
.

P.S.Author's swelled-head already!

May 8, 1937

D
EAREST
C
LAYS
(
NOT SIR
),

You can't imagine how thrilled I was to get your letter. Though I think I am getting less sentimental and childish every day, yet I have such a longing to go back to Europe, though it is so changed now, that it is incredible. I have been living for the past two months, as if in a daze, all sorts of things happening to me, a very
mouvementé
period, and yet I don't quite feel as if I were all here and (don't snicker) as if I were going to get married. All I know is that I am dying to go back where you came from. This is not the influence of books, nor, strictly, of you. All the books, for instance, about Europe that I have read lately, except for Erich Maria Remarque's
Three Comrades
, have, on the contrary, made me want to stay in America. And yet, I want to go. However, there is an obstacle and that is Mother. Not that she is opposed to the idea of my going so much, as that she wants to know many things more. First and foremost, she wants letters to her from you, not to me, telling about it, and with more details. She is hurt, really, at the idea of your having written so much to me, when she does not know your exact
status (this is so ironbound but it is natural), and she would have to be consulted anyway. She wants more details and she wants to know who is to supervise me and be responsible for me, not a person always actually with me. But you travel around so much, and now you want to fight for Spain which is so splendid, but which is so much anxiety for me and her. And she wonders if I would not be better off with her. I don't think so; I'd rather be there, even in Spain, and you know I mean that. Oh, what an end to my life if even I died in Spain! This is not all romance to me, as you cruelly put it one evening when we were walking down Eighth Street. I am a young girl, but every young person lives so much in these years of change. School doesn't match up to life, and if your eyes are open you see it. And then, parents separate, and you aren't nursed in those old illusions; and far from being a dreamer, it's impossible for one to “come a cropper,” as you always put it, for one knows everything. I don't mind dying, if I die gloriously, I mean this. “One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name.” And more than that, I shall have been your wife—at seventeen; and I shall have been a student at the Sorbonne (I adore this suggestion); or a worker with you at Madrid. I can hardly write, the pen is falling out of my hands as I think of it. Oh, really to do something! I have done all I could, but it has been committees, conventions, articles—I sound like,
blood, fire and the sword
, a fire-eater. Don't pull your cold, superior Oxford airs on me, Clays; I am just a fiery, gallant person, given a chance, and, I suppose, the Hectors and Achilles-es, were like me, only more so. You won't “be settled and in charge of me,” Mother says. It sounds as if I'm feebleminded; and to her I'm a child. Also, what is to become of her? She would like to go to Europe and take Jacky to give her a chance, but Andrea? My father will have to give me the $2,500 if I marry you (when, I mean), and Mother will persuade him, if she can, to give Jacky hers; or part of it, to get an European education; as for Andrea, she was posthumous maritally and financially speaking. It's a shame to deprive her of it; but we need it too. Jacky wants a different career from me. She wants to go to art schools and wind up at the Beaux-Arts. She's only just fifteen, not old enough to go with you and me, and she is rather young in some ways, younger than I was; and I know now, I was fairly young for fifteen at fifteen, though I didn't think so then. If you would write to Mother quickly! She has got up all sorts of fantasies since last night when I got your letter; that (for example), when once I am over there, Jacky will want to go; and Father and Persia will want to go; and she will be left all alone with only a baby and a poker-playing and alimony-racketeering bunch to fall back on. She's dreadfully afraid of them, and has tried all her life to be a fine, cultivated woman. So, it is, of course, rather hard on her. At the same time, I don't intend to stay here and let you go to Spain; and I wouldn't think of trying to persuade you against Spain. It is a wonderful opportunity for both of us. Then, stupid things. I can't go right away. My orthodontist (brace-doctor to you, you vulgarian, and we have specialized even braces in the U.S.A. I'm just doing your sneering for you, at the glorious old stars and stripes, not stars and bars as you say, probably only to annoy, I started out to say, my orthodontist) has not yet completed his work. I can't go with you with hoops on my kisser, and I have oodles of work to be done. But I would follow you in September. Oh, heck, you hear the voice of maternal authority. I am under-age, and all the foregoing, or most, is what Mamma says. What are we to do? Perhaps a pension; but when you could get away—and you say you could sometimes, at least to get to the French border. I'd have to travel. If I went to college there, I'd either have to be in a kind of Latin quarter which Mother is dreadfully against, or in
externat surveillé
—why, that's simply impossible. And do you realize they have passports and
cartes d'identité
and they'd all know I was a married woman? I could pass as a young girl, so they'd expect me for decorum's sake to live with a respectable old dragon. What am I to do? Do you really think I should like Montpellier? I do object to having my freedom curtailed. Why, this is one of Mother's objections to marriage at my age for me—I'd have no girlhood. And it is true! Isn't that your real objection to my studying in Paris. But, of all evils, we must choose the least. And then, perhaps I could persuade Mother to let Jacky stay with me—though since the now hush-hush episode of Aunt Phyllis, I doubt if the Morgans will like this. And I must know more. First (you know, you have been there), what are the subjects one studies in
Philosophie
? Second, must one go to the Sorbonne afterwards, to study and get one's
licenciat
? You know I'd like to go to a co-ed school, or I'd feel so shut away from the world. This world nowadays is really a bisexual world, both sexes are fighting, both political, both social. I'm going to become a hell of a prissy, blue-stockingish prude if I live segregated. And why? It was all very well to segregate the girls before. Now, they have all kinds of people to segregate; so I don't want to live in an internment camp when I'm not (yet) any of the proscribed races, religions, politicals, and so on. You know I couldn't be sex-avid now, but I still feel a kind of restraint when I'm out with men, although no one would believe it of me. And I blame this on the American system of “dates,” etc., etc., where everything is prescribed, hairdo, con versation, baby-talk from the girls, yessing the men; and second of all (as they say locally), I don't get along with girls, so very well. I don't gossip. Perhaps I'm a cat, as you say! But I don't gossip and can't bear giggling over boys, and, What did he mean when he halted at the door? And this is girl stuff. The prospect of being very respectable, in a ladies' college with girls growing moldy and getting that iron-gray complexion that means hope is dying, while they concentrate on Greek roots, fills me with horror. So I'd like maybe, my son, to live in Paris, where there is some maturity and people can let loose via the intellect and the arts. I don't mind
La Vie de Bohème
, but not local sex; for the only way they let loose here is in sex alone, and that's what they live for; sex in every form, in stories, thought, action, innuendoes; and every darn word in the American language has come to cause a hyena laugh because of its double meaning (that is, they don't care for the real meaning). This is a tirade and I'm being humorless. I know. But think, just the same, what it must be to be a relatively young person with everything ahead, in some place where there's a hope in society (not just in types of automobiles) for a better kind of life all round, intellectual as well; and where people think it's all right to be brainy; and that the brainy aren't loony and that the brainy aren't bad sports; and that sex isn't some variety or other of “feelthy pictures.” I am tired of a place where instead of getting out the old family album, they now get out the old Oedipus complex that made them what they are today! It's the same, but not in such good taste! Wow! I am not in my best parlor fit. There is something wrong, when I begin to yell,
What is Truth
and
Up the Labor Republic
, as I am now doing. So, you see, you must write to Mother and Father, and everyone else you can think of, in your most sporty style—for, let me tell you a secret, you bowl them over when you get going on all fourteen cylinders—and help me out of it … I will leave out all my usual gossip about May Day, Madison Square Garden, and other society notes. I presume by this you know what happens on May Day … I took your advice about my girl friends. My best friend at present is Isabel Cartwright; she does awfully in school, but writes real poems. She seems dull and yet you can go out with her every day and talk and talk—and I am very much tempted to tell her all. She is ugly, long horsy face—and she suffers! But she is an adult at seventeen, just like I am; and I don't have to behave like a Mexican jumping bean or talk itsy-bitsy, to prove I'm not a pain in the neck, which is a relief.

Y
OUR
L
ETTY
.

I blushed for this letter when sent off and fancied Clays would give me up; but he came at once to New York, getting special leave, and visited my mother and father—two separate visits of course, for these warring powers could not meet, except by special arrangement.

Now came the letters and papers from Clay's ex-wife. What joy! But she warned him his marriage would not be legal in New York or in England. She had no money to come to New York State to get a proper divorce. The present trip had been paid for by her family, who were very angry with Clays. They had always had great hopes for their beautiful daughter, expected her to make a career in the movies, or with some rich man.

Clays's residence was both Washington and New York, mine New York; but I was under-age.

“Be careful of bigamy,” wrote his ex-wife.

“A figamy for bigamy,” said Clays.

I cried. My mother and father were very anxious indeed. Aunt Dora who came in, of course, having a great nose for smut and trouble, said, “I suspect her motives,” meaning those of the ex-wife.

“No, no,” said Clays; “she's a fine woman.”

“Go and live with her then,” I sobbed.

“Must I live with every wonderful woman?” asked Clays.

At this moment, Clays received a message that he must be ready to leave for Spain at any moment. Since he had decided to go there he had got himself a job as special correspondent, and “they expected things to break at any moment.”

Clays now plunged, and asked, Would my mother and I come to France, and wait for him; or would we risk the separation? I did not like this idea, though Mother did. He would have to be on the spot (Madrid or any designated place) for ever so long, and there was, after all, only a faint likelihood of trips to France or England. Once there, our movements would be uncertain; for all his friends in embassies, foreign offices, and points to windward and leeward of the world, couldn't assure us, or him, papers when they were wanted. And all because he was an avowed radical!

My mother was in the dumps. She was in no mood to go and sit in cannon mouths, or under the red flag or under the skull and crossbones (for that's what it all seemed to her). She was sick of ill-starred im-matrimonies. A stormy time! I said, “What is all the trouble about? We'll live together and I'll go over unmarried and go to the Sorbonne while waiting for him.”

This was the first time I felt an overwhelming desire for him. I had thought of marriage and knew what it was, naturally, but at the thought of losing him I felt something different, a jealous fire. Then, he had made his promise to me before so many people, and before my family; he could not let me down. This publicity has a wonderful effect, in itself causes passion. This is age-old, just an auxiliary to true passion—but how powerful! I never thought of his defrauding me, though others did, and said so. I felt that sureness that Persia must have felt all the time. Marriage bonds and guarantees mean little when you feel that. No sooner did I feel this, than I forgot all the innumerable not-impossible she's and he's that might cross our paths, and fell into the Great Illusion; which was that Clays alone would suit me and I must have him at any cost. I stormed, turned into a shrew. “I must and will go with Clays to Ultima Thule,” I said.