Silences (45 page)

*
“Evening over Sussex: Reflections in a Motor-car,”
Collected Essays.

▴
ONE OUT OF TWELVE, P
. 34

To My Wife, Without Whom
. . .

            
My portion was to see to it that he [Thomas Mann] had the best circumstances for his work.

—Katia Mann, of her husband

            
All Gertrude had to do was be a genius.

—Alice B. Toklas, of her services to Gertrude Stein

Few have been the writer-women who have had George Eliot’s luck of “the perfect
happiness of living with a being who protects and stimulates in me the health of highest productivity,”—but the writer-men in like circumstances are and have been many. And not only wives: mothers, sisters, daughters, lovers, helper women, secretaries, housekeepers, watchers and warders.

Not here the place to list the myriad women whose contribution was significant, sometimes decisive, to the
development and productivity of writers.
^*
But how many were of the silenced in the possible twelve?

Remember the young women writers, their aspirant lives clogged in Love’s ambuscade—those who let their work go (his gifts are more important than mine
^**
) in the belief that they would become of the tradition-hallowed “inspirer-beloved”; and
those who had every intention of going on writing—and
tried; both usually subsumed into the server-enablers; wives; mothers of children.
^*
Mothers alone (in my not-exhaustive knowledge) who wrote seriously when girls, young women (or late in life) would fill a page.
^**

Think too of the helper women, the famous enablers: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, Harriet Monroe, Sylvia Beach, who—if only in autobiography or occasional pieces—disclosed a writing
self of capacity. Yes, and Edith Mirrielees (founder of the Stanford Creative Writing Center) and nameless other magnificent teachers, way openers. And Martha Foley (of the
Best American Short Story
Annuals) who, more than any other single individual in my lifetime, has nurtured the story. “All I ever wanted to do was write.” In earlier years she did. But (common circumstance) there was a child
and herself to support.

I am haunted by the writer-wives (or long-time wives) of notable literary men: Eleanor Clark, Janet Lewis, Caroline Gordon, Jane Bowles,
†
Elizabeth Hardwick, Mary Ellmann, Diana Trilling, Hope Hale Davis, Ann Birstein, Helen Yglesias.
‡
Nearly every one, in their own distinguished way, evidencing quality, vision, capacity to contribute to literature, greater or as great
as that of their men—but with marked contrast in productivity, influence, recognition.

Wives, Mothers, Enablers: As with Her Flesh and Bone

Melville’s
Pierre
again:

            
. . . Delly brings still another hot brick to put under his inkstand, to prevent the ink from thickening. Then Isabel drags the camp-bedstead nearer to him, on which are the two or three books he may possibly have occasion
to refer to that day, with a biscuit or two, and some water, and a clean towel, and a basin. Then she leans against the plank by the elbow of Pierre, a crook-ended stick. . . .—Pierre, if in his solitude, he should chance to need anything beyond the reach of his arm, then the crook-ended cane drags it to his immediate vicinity.

                  
Pierre glances slowly all round him; everything
seems to be right; he looks up with a grateful, melancholy satisfaction at Isabel; a tear gathers in her eye; but she conceals it from him by coming very close to him, stooping over, and kissing his brow. ’Tis her lips that leave the warm moisture there; not her tears; she says.

                  
“I suppose I must go now, Pierre. Now don’t, don’t be so long to-day. I will call thee at half-past
four. Thou shalt not strain thine eyes in the twilight.”

Jorge Luis Borges:

            
. . . My mother has always had a hospitable mind. She translated Saroyan, Hawthorne, [Herbert] Read, Melville, Woolf, Faulkner. She has always been a companion to me and an understanding and forgiving friend. For years she handled all my secretarial work, answering letters, reading to me, taking down my dictation
and also traveling with me. . . . It was she who quietly and effectively fostered my literary career. . . .

Of Edmund Wilson:

            
You would have loved the Wilson
ménage.
Elena has really effected a tremendous change in Edmund’s way of living. She really
loves
him, moreover! The little girl, Helen, is delightful; I must send her
an
Orlando
book. The house couldn’t be more attractive;
and Elena has evidently put real elbow grease into decorating it; scraping floors and walls and making curtains. There is a “parlor” with a good deal of Federal mahogany (E.’s mother’s) upholstered in yellow; a dining room with more mahogany against blue walls, plus lovely blue Staffordshire and silver; a “middle room” with more blue walls and blue chintz and linen; and Ed.’s magnificent study, with
a bathroom attached, and a stairway to an attic, filled with overflow books. For the first time poor E. has attention, space and effectively arranged paraphernalia of all kinds.—Mary never really helped in the more practical ways; and E. has had a v. scrappy kind of life, down the years. Now all moves smoothly: tea on a tray for his “elevenses”; absolute silence in his working hours, and good meals
at appropriate intervals. —Elena was v. hospitable, and fed me enormous luncheons (one of lobster), with highballs at tea-time. . . . They have a tiny sun-trap of a garden by the side-door, and Elena has a little vegetable garden, v. European, with lettuces and beans mixed with herbs and the zinnias.

—The peerless poet, Louise Bogan (who had none of these things—except a daughter to raise, alone).

(From a letter to May Sarton, 1954, in
What the Woman Lived)

                  
INTERVIEWER
: Was he writing very much when you were first engaged?

                  
MRS. WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
: No; once in a while he would send me a poem. But he was busy building up his practice. After we were married he wrote more. I saw to it that he had time.

John Gardner:

            
. . . If I have any
doubts about what a character would say or what a room would look like, I ask my wife. She has the ability to go into a room where she doesn’t know anyone and tell you the first names of several people because they seem the Raymond type or the Sheila type. My writing involves these two imaginations in a very deep way, page after page after page. My own imagination is poetic and philosophical. I’m
concerned with the rhythms of sentences and paragraphs and chapters, and with ideas as they are embodied in characters and actions. Joan’s imagination is a very close psychological and sociological one. It informs everything I do. Perhaps I should have used “John and Joan Gardner” on the titles all along; I may do this in the future. But in modern times such a work is
regarded as not really art.
The notion that art is an individual and unique vision is a very unmedieval and unclassical view. In the Middle Ages it was very common to have several people work on one thing; the thirteenth-century Vulgate cycle of Arthurian romances had hundreds of writers. I feel comfortable with this approach, but I haven’t felt comfortable telling people it’s what I do. As I get more and more into the medieval
mode, I’ll probably admit how many writers I have.

                  
BELLAMY
: You leave it sounding as if your wife is a collaborator. Has she actually written parts of your books?

                  
GARDNER
: . . . I use a lot of people, Joan in particular. She hasn’t actually written any lines, because Joan’s too lazy for that. But she’s willing to answer questions. The extent of her contribution
doesn’t quite approach collaboration in the modern sense.
^*

—from
The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative American Writers,
1974

We Who Write Are Survivors—Only’s; One Out of Twelve . . . and must tell our chancy luck, our special circumstances
^▴

Fortunate are those of us who are daughters born into knowledgeable, ambitious families where no sons were born; fortunate are
those in economic circumstance beyond the basic imperatives, thus affording some choice; fortunate are those in whose lives is another human being “protecting and stimulating the health of highest productivity”;
^**
fortunate are those of us to whom encouragement,
approval, grants, publication, come at the foundering time before it is too late; fortunate as has been indicated here, are those born
into the better climates, when a movement has created a special interest in one’s sex, or in one’s special subject; fortunate are those who live where relationships, opportunities, not everywhere available are.

The rule is simple: whenever anyone of that sex, and/or class, and/or color, generally denied enabling circumstances, comes to recognized individual achievement, it is not by virtue of
special capacity, courage, determination, will (common qualities) but because of chancy luck, combining with those qualities.

*
As any discerning reading of biographies discloses.

**
—their sense of their own potentialities, their self-confidence already so robbed: not recognizing everyday enabling differences in circumstances for males, let alone superior advantages since birth.