Terrible Virtue (10 page)

W
E BECAME INSEPARABLE.
Each morning we met outside the British Museum, made our way to neighboring desks, and got down to work. He supervised my research; he also gave me the education in the arts and sciences that fate—or perhaps only my impetuousness—had cheated me of.

At midday, one of us would lean over and place a hand on the other's arm. Then the one still working would slip bookmarks into various volumes, tidy notes, and stand. Together we left the building and walked a few blocks to our favorite tearoom.

One day as we were getting ready to leave, he whispered that he was taking me to the Monico in Piccadilly for lunch. From the black scowl the man at the next desk gave us, you would have thought Havelock had shouted.

“And tomorrow I'll take you to Claridge's for tea,” I joked as we came out of the building. I'd never been to the Monico, but I'd heard enough about it to know that it was outrageously expensive and dazzlingly vulgar. The building was a labyrinth of marble staircases, gilded ornamentation, frock-coated maître d's, and a small army of musicians wandering through a winter garden, beer cellar, and maze of private dining rooms, every foot
of which was multiplied by miles of mirrors. Even if we could have afforded it, we would not have set foot in it.

“I know,” Havelock said, “the place is dreadful, but it's Hugh de Selincourt's favorite restaurant, and we're supposed to be celebrating his finishing the third book in his trilogy. Still, I can't quite face lunch alone with him—he's so exhausting—so I'm taking you along. Besides, he wants to meet you.”

“How does he know about me?”

He patted my hand, which was tucked in his arm. “Because, dear rebel, I simply cannot stop talking about you.”

Later, when he would erase my name from his autobiography for fear of offending his wife, to whom he had talked about me incessantly—an American nurse, he called me in the book, as if I were nothing more than a nationality and a profession—that extravagance of praise would come home to wound me. But at the time I was flattered. A great man, one of the greatest of our time, was besotted with me. As I was with him, though I was beginning to put my infatuation in perspective. Havelock would always be the love of my life—he was, as I said, my intellectual touchstone, my inspiration, my ideal—but he lacked the romance I longed for.

I spotted Hugh de Selincourt halfway across the grill room, and not because he stood as he saw us coming. He was the handsomest man in the room. He was probably the handsomest man in all the rooms of the restaurant that day or any day. He had soft brown eyes set far apart, a narrow aristocratic nose, a wide sensual mouth, and wavy fair hair that begged a woman to run her fingers through it. From the way he embraced me with those eyes, I had the feeling he knew my hands were itching. His suit, stiff collar, and luxuriant silk tie screamed patrician, but beneath the well-tailored camouflage I sensed a sleek primitive animal
on the prowl. I have never known a man who lived so easily in his body.

Lunch was breathtaking. I don't mean the food, though that was more exotic than anything I was accustomed to. Hugh insisted on ordering for all of us—oysters, partridges, and of course champagne—and I couldn't help wondering where the money was coming from. Was he heir to a fabulous fortune or simply splurging every penny the publisher had paid him for the books which Havelock, the least judgmental of men in sexual matters, had made sound like pornography? On the way to the restaurant he'd said
A Child'
s Guide to Vice
would be a more accurate title for the trilogy.

But it was the conversation that really dazzled, though I couldn't remember a word of it later. The champagne didn't cloud my memory; the heady experience of sitting between those two brilliant men while they vied for my attention, competed for my smile, and preened for me shamelessly did.

As we said good-bye outside the restaurant, Hugh insisted that I must come down to Wantley, his house in Sussex, for a weekend.

“You'll bring her, won't you, Ellis?”

Havelock looked off into the distance and said that he didn't have time for weekends in the country.

“Then you must come without the King,” Hugh insisted.

Havelock turned back and stood staring down at me. The experience was eerily familiar. I had lived through it dozens of times with Bill. So even the great Havelock Ellis was not immune to jealousy, no matter what he wrote and lectured. And my reaction was the same as it had been with Bill. His possessiveness made me only more eager to go.

The following Saturday morning, I took the train to Sussex
and fell in love, not with a man but with a world. The property itself, which had once belonged to Shelley's father, though Shelley had never lived there, was a rolling patchwork of green fields, gardens, and orchards. Hugh called it the loveliest spot in England. His wife, Janet, said it was a place of childhood. I thought it was better than childhood, at least better than my childhood.

But the enchantment went beyond the verdant landscape and the old stone cottage where Hugh lived with Janet and their daughter, Bridget, Janet's lover Harold Child, and a variety of writers, painters, musicians, and like-minded souls who came and went at will. The allure lay in the poetry and music and art that filled the rooms, the love freely given, the pleasure guiltlessly taken. This was the world I'd read about in Havelock's books and argued about at Greenwich Village parties. This was where I belonged.

One afternoon a few weeks later I stepped down from the train into the embrace of a soft mist rising from the fields. At Wantley, even the weather was erotic. Hugh was waiting for me on the platform. We shook hands. Our little group always behaved impeccably in town. The formal gesture made us grin like naughty children. He opened the door of the roadster for me. I climbed in. As soon as we'd left the village behind, he pulled off the road.

After dinner with Janet and Harold and the other guests, he led me to the small tower bedroom that was mine when I visited, placed me in the center, and told me, no, dared me, not to move. I stood still as a statue while he unhooked and untied and unfastened me.

Later, we sent up such a racket that Janet and Harold joined us. How could so much love be called licentious?

My only disappointment was that Havelock refused to set foot on the property. His recalcitrance was inexplicable. They called him the King. His books were their bibles. But he was adamant.

HAVELOCK ELLIS

MY BOOKS WERE THEIR JUSTIFICATION. AND YOU WERE WASTING TIME YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN DEVOTING TO YOUR WORK, CAVORTING WITH A BUNCH OF SECOND-RATE POSEURS WHO PLAYED AT ART AND TURNED SERIOUS IDEAS INTO SIMPLISTIC EXCUSES TO INDULGE THEIR APPETITES. IT PAINED ME TO SEE YOU SQUANDERING YOURSELF THAT WAY. IT DISTRESSED ME TO SEE HOW THAT WORLD WAS CHANGING YOU
.

WHEN YOU CAME TO MY FLAT THAT DECEMBER AFTERNOON, I'D THOUGHT WE WERE IN PERFECT ACCORD. OH, AT FIRST I WAS NERVOUS, MORE NERVOUS THAN YOU. THAT WAS WHY THE DOOR OPENED SO QUICKLY. I WAS LURKING BEHIND IT, AS YOU GUESSED. I AM NOT A SOCIAL ANIMAL, DEAR REBEL. BY NOW YOU KNOW THAT. I'M WARY OF MEETING NEW PEOPLE. BUT EVERYONE KEPT TELLING ME THAT I HAD TO MEET THIS YOUNG AMERICAN FIREBRAND. AND THE MOMENT I DREW YOU INTO MY FLAT AND WE BEGAN TO TALK, I KNEW THEY WERE RIGHT. I WAS BESOTTED. LATER YOU TOLD ME THAT YOU WROTE IN YOUR JOURNAL THAT NIGHT, “I HAVE NEVER FELT ABOUT ANY OTHER PERSON AS I DO ABOUT HAVELOCK ELLIS.” AT THE SAME TIME, I WAS WRITING IN MY JOURNAL, “I HAVE RARELY KNOWN A MORE CHARMING AND CONGENIAL COMPANION AND I HAVE NEVER FOUND ONE SO SWIFTLY.”

MY FEELINGS DEEPENED AS WE WORKED SIDE BY SIDE IN THE MUSEUM. YOU WERE EAGER TO LEARN, QUICK TO UNDERSTAND,
DEVOTED, BUT NEVER DOCILE. I WAS TWENTY YEARS YOUR SENIOR, BUT YOU MADE ME FEEL LIKE A BOY AGAIN. AND THEN I TOOK YOU TO LUNCH WITH HUGH. I KNEW THAT HE'D SET OUT TO SEDUCE YOU AND THAT YOU'D BE TOO CURIOUS TO RESIST. I WAS PREPARED FOR YOU TO SURRENDER TO THE SEXUAL ATTRACTION—THE BODY IS NOT NEARLY SO INTIMATE AS THE MIND—BUT I THOUGHT YOU'D SEE THROUGH THE ARTISTIC AND INTELLECTUAL PRETENSIONS. I THOUGHT I'D TAUGHT YOU BETTER
.

HIS NOVELS, IF YOU CAN CALL THEM THAT, ARE TRASH.
ONE LITTLE BOY
ISN'T A PERCEPTIVE EXPLORATION OF ADOLESCENT AWAKENING, AS YOU SEEMED TO THINK OR AT LEAST AS YOU TOLD HIM, BUT A PRURIENT EXERCISE IN MASTURBATION. AS YOU KNOW, I HAVE NO PREJUDICE AGAINST THE ACT, ONLY ITS MASQUERADE AS ARTISTIC EXPRESSION. AND HOW COULD YOU TAKE SERIOUSLY A GROWN MAN WHO SPENDS HALF HIS LIFE PLAYING AND WRITING ABOUT CRICKET? YOU SAW HIM AS AN AESTHETE WITHOUT PRACTICAL OR MATERIALISTIC INTERESTS. I KNEW HIM TO BE A FOOLISH BOY WHO COMPENSATED FOR HIS BANAL MIND AND EXECRABLE WRITING WITH CHILDISH SPORTS AND COMPULSIVE FORNICATION. HE WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A SEXUAL ATHLETE. I SAID THAT ONCE, SAW THE SMILE YOU TRIED TO HIDE, AND KNEW WHAT YOU WERE THINKING. HUGH PRACTICED THE TECHNIQUES I COULD ONLY WRITE ABOUT. PERHAPS THAT WAS TRUE. I KNOW I AM NOT A GREAT LOVER. BUT YOU ALWAYS SAID I GAVE YOU PLEASURE. NONETHELESS, I WASN'T JEALOUS. YOU KNOW I DON'T BELIEVE IN JEALOUSY. I WAS DISAPPOINTED. HUGH DE SELINCOURT WASN'T WORTHY OF YOU, MARGARET. THE BETRAYAL WASN'T IN THE SEX, IT WAS IN THE MEDIOCRITY
.

I WAS MAKING
great strides under Havelock's guidance, but my knowledge was still theoretical. I needed practical experience,
and for that I had to go to Holland, which was far ahead of other countries in disseminating contraceptives to the general population.

Friends warned against traveling to the Continent while the war was on, but I told them my work couldn't wait, and besides, Holland was neutral. When Havelock realized I would not be deterred, he gave me letters of introduction to Dr. Johannes Rutgers in The Hague and Dr. Aletta Jacobs in Amsterdam.

As it turned out, I'd been a bit too cavalier. The voyage took three times as long as expected because the ship kept changing course to avoid U-boats. Nonetheless, I arrived in The Hague overdue but safe.

I could not have asked for a better teacher than Dr. Rutgers. He took me under his wing and taught me about the practicalities of running a birth control clinic. After working with him for three weeks, I went off to learn what I could from Dr. Jacobs.

I arrived in Amsterdam on a blustery morning. The wind whipped up small whitecaps in the canals and rattled the signs over the shops, and a cold sun glinted off the water. I went straight to the hotel. As I signed the register, the clerk behind the desk handed me an envelope. I turned it over and saw that it was from Dr. Jacobs. How gracious of her to answer my letter telling her of my arrival, I thought, as I slit open the envelope.

The letter was written in English. I did not need a translator.

Dear Mrs. Sanger,

I will not see you and refuse to have anything to do with you or your studies. There is no room for the layman in
the clinical science of contraception. Only professionals, who have the knowledge, skill, and training, have the right and the duty to pursue this critical field.

Sincerely,

Dr. Aletta Jacobs

Sometimes I think my sex is less than generous to its own.

BACK IN LONDON,
under the aegis of women's rights groups, I visited slums, factories, and dockyards; gave lectures; and, thanks to Dr. Rutgers's training, held demonstration clinics for workers' wives. One evening I spoke at Fabian Hall. Standing before an audience of more than a hundred, I couldn't help thinking, if only my father could see me now. He had ranted radicalism in dark taverns and on open country roads. I lectured on it at the Fabian Society. He wouldn't even mind that I was doing it on English soil. George Bernard Shaw had been one of the founding Fabians.

FOG HUNG FROM
the streetlamps and steamed up from the gutters. The lights of carriages and autos cut through it for a foot or two, then died. I made my way along the street carefully, trying to think of my success at Fabian Hall a few nights earlier and not to brood about the letter from Bill I'd received that day. I had written to him that our life together was over and I wanted a separation. He had written back about Peggy.

She is disconsolate without you. She cries all the time. I believe in your cause. You know that. But I won't let you sacrifice the children to it. Come home, Peg. We need you.

I was walking with my head down, my mind worrying the problem in frustrating circles. I had to see my children. I couldn't take the chance. A forty-five-year sentence still hung over my head.

Suddenly I found myself standing in a pool of yellow light. I looked up. The glow poured out of Albert Hall, pierced the fog, and illuminated the crowd moving inside. A concert wouldn't take my mind off the children, nothing could do that, but it might soothe. Perhaps it would even make me feel closer to them. Sometimes, if I thought about Peggy with all my concentration, I felt as if I were in communication with her.

I joined the crowd flowing into the hall. A few were in evening dress, but many were not. I would not be out of place. No sign indicated the evening's program, but I didn't care what it was. Beethoven or Bach, Mozart or Vivaldi, any music would serve.

I bought a ticket, made my way into the auditorium, and took a seat. Then I saw the sign on the stage.
IF THE LOVE OF THE WORLD IS IN YOU, THE LOVE OF THE LORD IS NOT.
I had stumbled into some sort of religious meeting.

I stood and started to make my way out to the aisle, then changed my mind and sat again. I was familiar with Catholic dogma, but this was another breed of intolerance. I might as well know the enemy.

A young woman—she couldn't have been older than seventeen or eighteen—stepped onto the stage and crossed to the
podium. She had masses of red-gold hair and a corn-fed fullness of body, but she moved with feline grace. I wasn't imagining her sensuousness. I knew it from the way the man sitting beside me crossed and uncrossed his legs, then put his hand over his crotch.