Caresse Crosby Page 11

  Sometime that summer, from an unidentified military base, Bert scribbled a hasty note:

  Dear Carress:

  You were wrong about my not writting [sic] as you are wrong about the way I feel towards you—you know that I’m a little odd [emphasis added]—but you to me are the one thing in this strange life that I belive [sic] in—and always will. You can understand that I’m not overly fond of the way females of the species treat the ones they profess to love.

  Meanwhile, back at the Manor near Bowling Green, the summer doldrums were setting in. “When I departed for my eight weeks sojourn in Reno, I already suspected a house divided among my guests,” Caresse surmised.

  Dali still rose early and painted until the light gave out, whistling and singing while he worked. But the meals were deadlocked by undercurrents of hostility. Henry resorted to his favorite weapons, contrariness and contradiction. Everything Dali said was wrong—even his preference for lamb. Anaïs said of Henry, “He has no need of wine, he is a man whom life intoxicates . . . who is floating in self-created euphoria.” According to Henry, “When [Dali] finished working, he was nothing—not even a dishrag you could squeeze a drop of water from.”

  In late July, Henry wrote to Reno:

  So far everything is fine, birds, trees, animals, swamps and fens and pine forest included. Yes, we are all working, though not full steam, owing to the heat. Dudley is breaking the ice, dictating to Flo, who seems like a wonderful helpmate for him. He’s got a great story inside him, if he can deliver it.

  I am fascinated by the immobility of the trees in the fierce blaze . . . remind me a little of Gainsborough, no? But back of the landscaping, it’s America, all right—that furze, that unshaved countryside, so antipodal to Greece where all was as bald as a knob and tingling and crackling with fragrant electrical herbs.

  Last evening, back of the house, where once must have been a beautiful mall, I could see the ancestral swarm doing the pavanne with iron-stringed instruments twanging away like mad crickets. I walk around now and then in the nude, towards the cool of the evening . . . that’s a real sensation . . . the air is like a Turkish bath. The young bull stares at me quizzically!

  No, Bert hasn’t appeared yet. We are on the lookout for him, and not a little perplexed as to what his attitude will be. [Over the phone], he spoke of seeing his place, and we had visions of his coming in the middle of the night with a bunch of Virginia cronies armed with shotguns to sweep us out. He gave the impression of being astounded and injured, and then, bango, he hung up. Will telephone or telegraph if anything unusual occurs.

  I expect Anaïs back tomorrow . . . and fierce showers. Perhaps we’ll be seeing you towards August? I hope so. You ought to anchor here—it’s a shame to leave this place idle.

  Calm yourself and come back as soon as possible.

  Henry

  Anaïs returned and recorded the drive through the soft rolling hills in her Diary; “. . . distant roads looked wet—a mirage produced by the relentless sun. The trees [were] heavily draped with moss, a profusion of flowers, ferns, and trailing vines . . . the branches of trees, wrapped in cocoons, spider webs, dried leaves and dried insects.” Hers was a romantic European’s vision of life in the Deep South.

  In the morning, everyone worked. It was the freshest moment of the day. The hypnotic heat would come in the afternoons, when all of us took siestas. In late afternoon, it was wonderful to walk through the fields and woods. Around the big manor house, in the small cabins inhabited by Negro farmers and their families, the children were shy, and hid behind the trees. Now and then, one would come upon them playing naked by the side of the pond. The little girls’ hair was braided in “cornrows” tied by bright ribbons. Their eyes were soft, rounded, startled . . . they stared at us and grinned. Night was the best time. I walked in bare feet or sandals, felt the moist grass tickling my feet . . . From a distance, the lighted rooms in the manor house looked like Chirico paintings . . . the ponds, like Max Ernst’s scenes of stagnant pools. The nights lie around us like an abyss of unusual warmth, awakening the senses. [It’s] almost palpable, the pulse of nature sets our pulse beating. Tropical nights are [like] hammocks for lovers . . .

  Henry’s version was less romantic.

  At noon the next day, it would be 110 degrees in the shade, as usual. We would have to sit in our drawers and drink Coca Colas while Dali worked. We would look at the lawn, the dragon flies, at the big trees, the Negroes working, the flies droning. We had Count Basie for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Toward dusk, we had gin fizzes or a Scotch and soda. More languor and idleness. The universe again. We took it apart, like a Swiss watch.

  The nights we had nothing to do except take a stroll to the end of the road and back. I talked it all over with Dudley. I mean, about the universe and how the cogs mesh . . . Sometimes, in order not to let stagnation soak in too deeply, we went over to Fredericksburg and ate an Italian meal. Nothing ever happened. We just ate and talked.

  Dudley had broken his writer’s block. “[He] was an artist to the fingertips . . . everything filled him with wonder and curiosity,” Henry observed. “Little by little, he put it all down. ‘Dear Lafayette, . . .’ he began. I know that will be the best letter one man ever wrote to another, even better than Nijinsky’s letter to Diaghilev.” It became “A Letter to Lafayette,” later included in The Air-conditioned Nightmare. Caresse once again had become the muse of genius.

  For his part, Dali complained bitterly about Virginia insect life. “I’m still tremendously afraid of grasshoppers. The grasshopper is the only animal I’m afraid of,” he told a reporter, with a shrug of his Catalan shoulders. “I suppose it’s a sexual complex.”

  With a few early-dawn breezes, offering relief, the long hot summer came to an end. September arrived and with it the long-predicted storm. Henry wrote to Caresse: “Bert arrived in the middle of the night. We have all decided to leave. The Dalis also. They are off to Washington.”

  •

  This time, Bert had done the unthinkable. He had threatened to destroy all of Dali’s paintings, the entire summer’s work. Alarmed, the Dalis dressed hurriedly, packing their belongings and paintings, and left.

  The Young vs. Young divorce was granted on grounds of “incompatibility.” The time had come for Caresse to pack up the pieces of her life in Reno and head East again.

  Once back in Hampton Manor, fall and winter raced by. The Dalis were persuaded to return, and when Life heard the news, they dispatched photographers for what might be called a “photo opportunity.” They got more than they bargained for. The handsome double parlor was no longer a traditional setting for family portraits, antimacassars, and aspidistra plants. Caresse posed in front of the elegant 18th-century fireplace, dressed to kill, with “Hampton’s Pride,” a prize Hereford, by her side. (The Pride of the herd had been pulled and tugged, in a sitting position, up the front steps.) Dali had created a surrealist fantasy with the “coffin box” square grand piano from the parlor, hauled by steel cables to the branches of a majestic magnolia. Below, a gossamer-clad effigy, a ghostly crew of one, stroked a scull in the lily pond.

  “This gracious and venerable estate is currently undergoing a sea change at the hands of Salvador Dali,” Life reported. Dali was photographed in the De Jarnette general store, on a marketing expedition with Caresse, drinking cokes, talking with the bewildered and fascinated citizens of this small, drab backwater town, populated mostly by blacks who had never been outside Caroline county. The photographers poked and probed and followed Dali about. “He arises at 7:30, puts on dark trousers, a black velvet jacket and a red vest,” Life informed its readers. “During the day, he is busy painting and ‘enchanting’ the garden with floating pianos, multicolored rabbits, and spiders with the faces of girls . . . a bare-breasted windowdresser’s manikin is ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ waist deep in the frog pond.”

  While the Life team photographed, Dali worked on a
black-and-white composition in the snow: “Effet de sept nègres, un piano noir, et deux cochons noir,” he called it. “In the evening, he settles down for a cup of coffee and a game of chess with his wife.” (“Three sugars; Gala always wins.”) Unaccustomedly in the background, “Mrs. Crosby was editing and typing his autobiography, The Secret Life. . . .”

  “Personally, I think [Dali is] the most stimulating, vital and charming and friendly man. He’s all things nice,” said Caresse, the Muse, who never said anything unkind about anybody. “I think he did his best work before coming to America . . . but he has endless possibilities,” she added.

  The Life crew departed, and in that spring of 1941, Dali’s enchanted garden became one of the special features of the Richmond Garden Club tour. Gala and Dali left for the West Coast to entrust The Secret Life to the hands of a translator, and Caresse noted: “Mother came down from New York, and I was able to enjoy her visit this time without Bert’s disruptive presence. I was writing again, and planning my new life—I had no regrets, either about marriage or a future without marriage. There was still so much to see, to learn, to tackle.”

  As the nation girded for another war, the tranquil little village of Bowling Green, with its one cinema and one café, was becoming a mecca for noisy army trainees. “When the farmhands began to appear in uniform, I knew it was time to leave. I was a lady alone . . .”

  “Actually, I sold out with hardly a qualm. I put Hampton Manor on the market, and trucked the costly Herefords over the mountain to Staunton for a much-advertised (but wholly unrewarding) sale. I spread my surplus property out on the lawn for a country auctioneer. Piling all that was left into two monstrous moving vans, I realized then how fully another chapter of my life was ended. Although I was moving on, I felt I was not losing, but gaining a lap on life. At the wheel of the leftover Ford, with Salar at my side, I headed out on Route 2 for points North.”

  Chapter VIII

  WARTIME WASHINGTON

  “A painting is not an object to frame and hang upon the wall; it is rather a weapon with which to fight the enemy.”

  —Picasso

  On a bright, Indian summer afternoon—October 1941—Caresse arrived in the nation’s capital. Astute observers agreed that it would be only a matter of months before the U.S. would be drawn into the war. The British were making a last-ditch stand, holding off Hitler’s armies invading Eastern Europe, while the U.S. offered lend-lease materials, bases, arms, and moral support. “War as a means of deciding differences between civilized people is as barbaric as throwing Christians to the lions,” said Caresse, the outspoken pacifist. But she always wanted to be “where the action is,” and at that time, Washington was the capital of the free world. She took up residence at 1533 33rd Street in a temporary rental belonging to General Carl Spaatz and his wife, recently removed to Virginia to be near the Pentagon.

  “Never have regrets” Caresse often said, but it was hard to apply when comparing the narrow, red-brick row house with the gracious neoclassic manor she left behind in Virginia. There was a small front parlor, a back parlor, and a narrow stairway to a lower level where a closet-sized kitchen and narrow dining room faced a flagstone patio.

  Only a spot of grass with a row of flowers and a picket fence were in back, and one small plane tree for shelter from the hot, humid summers. Nonetheless, a Georgetown pied-à-terre-then as now—was Washington’s most coveted and overpriced real estate.

  When the van arrived, Caresse began to fit each piece of furniture into new quarters like a jigsaw puzzle: books and bibelots and her Aunt Kate’s Sheraton desk and Victorian credenza all fitted snugly between the high, leaded windows. Her seven portraits—several by now-famous artists—stared down from the bare walls like the seven faces of Eve. In this setting, she was determined to create another exciting persona.

  It was not long before friends from her other lives caught up with her. Trains ran every hour on the Eastern seaboard, and hotel rooms in Washington were scarce. The Georgetown guest room was seldom empty. It became a temporary bivouac for friends—and friends of friends—who migrated South to aid the war effort, some in high offices.

  Her first guest was Major Howard “Pete” Powel, in town from Boston wearing his new officer’s uniform. In Black Sun Press days in Paris, Pete and his wife, Gretchen, were the Crosby’s most valued companions among the expatriate group. Caresse met Gretchen, a hazel-eyed blonde from Texas, at the atelier of her master, Antoine Bourdelle. Pete, a free spirit from a solid family of Rhode Island Powels, remained on in Paris after World War I as a freelance photographer. Harry nicknamed the Powels “The Crouchers,” because of the way Pete bent down to line up his subjects, with Gretchen inevitably crouched down beside him. That night in Georgetown, Caresse and Pete had many memories to share. But like everyone else in the city on the brink of war, Powel was up and out by eight o’clock the next morning.

  Archibald MacLeish came next. The young poet who once sat the death watch with Harry had become Undersecretary of State. He took a place directly across the street from Caresse, but after a 12-hour day at the State Department, seldom had time to visit.

  Caresse was determined to do her bit to help the national defense. She first thought of the Women’s Officer Corps. Her application forms listed as references important friends: Averill Harriman, Secretary of State, and James Forrestal, Secretary of Defense. But the graying matron in uniform behind the desk was not impressed. She viewed Caresse as “pas assez sérieuse for the deadly business of conducting war,” Caresse admitted. For all practical purposes, four years at Rosemary Hall—then regarded as a finishing school for the privileged daughters of the rich—did not prepare graduates with useful skills such as typing. “You’ll also have to have a physical checkup to see if you’re fit,” the matron told her. The indignity of a complete physical, of being poked and probed, was humiliating enough. And after, she was told that she failed to qualify on a technicality—she did not have four-fifths of her original teeth!

  Driving home in defeat from the Red Cross’s austere headquarters on 17th Street, Caresse’s morale reached a low point. She decided to try other branches of national defense, where she wouldn’t need 25 teeth. She called upon another old friend, David Bruce, then head of the psychological warfare division of the Navy. Bruce was charming over the telephone when he said, “Of course, my dear Caresse, I’d like very much to see you.” But Caresse noted later that she was treated like a possible enemy alien by the guard at his office building, and once inside, intimidated by forbidding stares from behind cluttered desks. When I asked David if he had a job for me, he said:

  “What can you do? Can you type?”

  “As well as you can,” I retorted.

  “What do you really think you can do?” he countered.

  “Plan strategy,” I truthfully replied. “I’ve been doing that all my life!”

  Bruce, a veteran of the old school of diplomacy, deftly turned the conversation to shared memories of Paris and ushered her out with a gallant bow. There was a vague promise to call, but he never did.

  Despite such disappointments, there were many diversions in the Capital. Word soon spread that Caresse Crosby was in town, and the usual retinue of admirers found their way to 33rd Street. Juan Cárdenas, the Spanish Ambassador, whom Caresse had known in Madrid, deposited a hamper of rare vintages on her doorstep and invited her to dine at one of Washington’s most distinguished tables. (Cárdenas was persona non grata on the diplomatic circuit because of his country’s then-Fascist government; but one’s political persuasion was not considered important among Caresse’s circle of friends.)

  Caresse also reported on a lunchtime rendezvous at the Mayflower Hotel with a grande dame of old Washington society. The Mayflower’s stately lobby swarmed with a caravanserai of crew-cut young officer-candidates waiting out their commissions, along with munitions manufacturers, lobbyists, opportunists, hangers-on, and the well-c
oifed wives of generals, admirals, and senators. A long queue always formed at the entrance to the dining room, and tables were pushed together to accommodate the carpetbaggers who swarmed into the once-sleepy Southern city. Perfume and smoke mingled with the starchy smell of newly-pressed khaki. The Mayflower was becoming a nerve center of intrigue, hope, and heartbreak.

  After lunch, when Caresse walked home to Georgetown from Connecticut Avenue, she noticed a paint-splashed canvas in a picture window. “Walk In,” a sign in the window beckoned. She entered the small corner room of a real estate office where a young man was hanging his paintings. It was a fortuitous meeting. David Porter, she could tell by his flat accent, recently had come from the Midwest; he was to take on a temporary assignment with the War Production Board. Porter and other moonlighting artists of the Chicago School rented space in the real estate office to display their work. Noting Caresse’s chic Parisian suit worn with her usual panache, Porter asked her to buy one of his canvases on the spot. “Not today,” Caresse said, remembering the paintings still stored in a warehouse by the Potomac. But she thought about the encounter on the way home, and an idea began to take shape.

  On December 7—a cheerless, frosty Sunday afternoon—Caresse was at Griffith Stadium watching the Redskins lose another game when suddenly the loudspeaker blurted out the incredible news: “The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor!” Men in uniform disappeared instantly from the boxes to report for active duty. Within hours, the supercharged, impromptu air of pre-war Washington turned to a mood of grim determination. The nation geared up to carry out President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s promise to obtain only unconditional surrender.

  Caresse knew that she would never fit into uniform, but she was determined to perform some useful function for the war effort. She thought of her friends in Europe, the artists already beginning to escape the threat of Nazi concentration camps. She would prepare a “home” for them, a place to display their work in the nation’s capital.