Parisian Lives Read online

  The tenor of the times had much to do with the decisions I made about what to include and what to leave out, and content considered suitable for publication was limited to fairly discreet information. But more than that, my position as a woman biographer (and an untested one at that) placed me in some very large crosshairs. The 1970s were the early days of women writing and publishing novels and memoirs about their own lives and biographies of other women. Although feminist theory was on the upswing, women were told (mostly by men) that they could never achieve success because their subjects were not worthy of study, and besides, when they did write, they approached their topics with too much timidity to make them authoritative. They were accused of “writing differently,” and this difference meant that what they wrote was second-rate. Women largely accepted what the men decreed and excused themselves by saying they had too few role models, which perhaps did indeed result in a genuine fear of creativity.

  Some pundits called it “the anxiety of authorship,” a term I actually found soothing. I confess, I had the anxiety of authorship. I, the bold reporter who had had no fear of asking tough questions for an article, was the victim of some serious mental shaking once the biographer took over and had to decide what to do with personal information.

  * * *

  —

  My family spent the rest of that summer on wonderful excursions, to Chantilly, Versailles, Fontainbleau. Vonn Scott played chess in the Luxembourg Gardens and came home with a sketch of himself bent over the board, a gift from an artist who marveled at the skill of the skinny kid with the blooming blond Afro. Katney was thrilled when she went alone to the big shoe store on avenue du Général Leclerc and bought what became known in family lore as “the French disasters,” a pair of bilious yellow plastic shoes that hurt her feet and ended up at our local Goodwill store.

  As for me, my feet were hurting, too, as I trudged all over Paris with my heavy tape recorder and notebook, conducting daily rounds of interviews that often left me reeling. After several people spoke to me, they told me they wondered if Beckett knew what he was in for when the biography appeared. I found this a particularly curious way to describe his participation, and I tried to read between the lines of their comment. Perhaps there were negative, painful, hurtful secrets I had yet to uncover, and if so, I had no idea how I would write about them.

  Often I found myself sitting in our apartment in the late afternoon, shades drawn to keep out the summer heat, waiting for my family to come home and fill the dinner hour with stories of their adventures, stories that would delight me because of how they relieved the pressure of the unfolding drama of my daily discoveries. More than once I found myself sitting in the dark at night, holding my head in my hands, wondering what I was trying to do. That early sentence—“Oh dear, I don’t know if I’m cut out for this biography business”—came back to me over and over. But I was in the thick of it, a process in which I was inventing myself, too, as I went along. I had to follow it at least long enough to determine whether it was worthwhile, and so I continued.

  10

  Each interview I conducted was different from all others. This was true not only for those to whom I spoke only once, but also for people whose conduct differed over multiple interviews. Someone who was friendly and outgoing, informative and chatty in one conversation could turn stone-cold nasty in the next one. Jérôme Lindon was a prime example. In one of our first interviews, he let me tape for two solid hours while he imparted everything from detailed information to wild gossip about the people Beckett worked with in the theater, and he chuckled through tales about those in publishing who now regretted that they had not published his work when Suzanne Beckett approached them after the war. Lindon showed me all his correspondence with or about Beckett and gave me copies of some of it. He opened his photo archive and gave me a substantial pile, those of the first French Fin de partie (Endgame) production among them. He showed me overflowing files of clippings and told me to come back in a few days, when he would have them all ready for my perusal. He was quite different several days later when I phoned to make an appointment, saying that it would not be possible for me to see the clippings because they were “too precious.” It was a strange reversal, for they were merely a collection of articles and reviews. Reading them in his office in those pre-Internet days would have saved me a great deal of time that I could have put to better use than having to look them up in archives. When I told Geneviève Serreau, the actress-playwright wife of theater director Jean-Marie Serreau, about Lindon’s abrupt about-face, she stepped into the breach and made her own extensive clip files available. She saved me days, if not weeks, of exploring French theater history.

  Georges Belmont was another curious interviewee. He was known as a writer and translator when I met him. He first met Beckett in 1928, when he was known by his birth name, Georges Pelorson, and was the only student in his class at the École normale Supérieure studying English; Beckett was the exchange lecturer in English assigned to be his tutor. Their friendship began then and deepened over the years, but it became seriously strained after the war. Pelorson’s wartime behavior was less than circumspect but not compromised to the point that he was among those punished in the postwar purge of intellectuals who had collaborated openly. He changed his name to Belmont quietly, lived modestly, and found a minor position in publishing, where he suggested English-language books for French publication and sometimes translated them. It was a life very different from the one he led before the war, when Beckett introduced him to James Joyce and his circle, all of whom welcomed him warmly. Afterward, those who survived, Maria Jolas prime among them, would have nothing to do with him. Beckett was the only one who continued to see him and, on a few occasions, to give him personal recommendations or help him financially.

  At my first meeting with Belmont in his office, he was clearly uncomfortable, and so as I always did, I chattered away to put him at his ease. I told him I had made one research trip to Ireland already, and without referring to his name change, I said I was interested in when he first met Beckett in France and then how the friendship deepened when they were both at Trinity College, Dublin. He grew animated as he told me story after story of their collegiate escapades and pranks. His face took on a healthy glow, and his entire body straightened and relaxed. It was clear that he was having a fine time, and so was I, but then it was time to move on. Everything changed when I skipped over the war years and asked simply if he remembered when he and Beckett had met the first time after it ended. Before he could answer, the door to his office opened and in came one of his colleagues, a slight, stern-faced woman who glared at me. I could see fear in Belmont’s face, for it was drained of color, and his hands, which had been so expressive, now began to tremble as he tried to light a pipe, a cigarette—I don’t remember. I remember only the shaking.

  Mary Kling, who had arranged the meeting with Belmont, had warned me of this woman, whom she called his “guard dog” and who had apparently been just outside the closed door for more than an hour, listening to everything we said. The moment I might have turned my questions from pre- to postwar, she was there to protect him.

  I told Beckett about this meeting, and my doing so strengthened another impression I was gaining about him. Although he did not like to discuss women—any women, either those he worked with professionally or those with whom he had personal relationships (whether friendly or sexual)—he never hesitated to talk about men, and often in great detail. My ultimate impression of how he felt about Pelorson/Belmont was one of sadness, that here was a man who had begun his professional life with such promise and was now merely living out his days, lonely and suffused with shame.

  * * *

  —

  John Montague presented another different encounter. He wrote from Cork, Ireland, where he was then teaching, to say that he had heard from Beckett that I was writing his biography. Montague was coming to Paris and was sure I would want to talk to him, b
ecause he was “so close to Sam.” He expected me to accommodate his schedule, and he set the date, time, and place for us to meet: in front of the large church on the avenue du Maine, Saint-Pierre-de-Montrouge, at precisely 11 a.m., after which I would go with him to the Willy shoe store across the street, where he would buy the only shoes that did not hurt his feet, of which there were none to be had in Ireland. Then we would proceed to the home of his ex-wife, Madeleine, on the rue Daguerre, where he would finally allow me to interview him. I had a habit of silently saying “Okaaaay…” when I was given such orders, and I certainly said it a time or two before the great day dawned.

  When we arrived at Madeleine Montague’s, I met a charming Frenchwoman who spoke excellent English and who cheerfully forgave her ex-husband for the philandering that had led to their divorce and his remarriage and fatherhood. She excused herself and left. Montague then directed me to a seat while he positioned himself to stand in front of me at a table where he amassed the materials he wished to present. I felt like a student in a classroom as he began a lucid, professional lecture, clearly thought-out and obviously prepared beforehand, all about how important a player he was in the life of Samuel Beckett. He stopped several times to make sure that my tape recorder was working and that I was also taking careful notes, telling me to be sure to write it exactly as he spoke it and to be sure to cite him effusively in my endnotes and acknowledgments. To reinforce his importance in Irish literature, he presented me with copies of various publications, among them the prestigious Dolman magazine.

  After several hours of lecturing and marking passages in various publications where he was mentioned, he said he was tired and had to stop for the day, but he instructed me to return to Madeleine’s at precisely 11 a.m. the following day so he could give me copies of his correspondence with Beckett. He had kept the best for last, just to make sure that he could reinforce his importance, not only in Beckett’s life but also as a major poet in his own right, and also to ensure that he could grill me the next day to see if I had recorded all that he told me. And, oh yes: that evening he was “having a drink with Sam.” He dangled another carrot before my little pony nose (for it was clear that to him I wasn’t even a mature mare): he said he would be sure to tell Beckett what a “responsible scholar” he thought I was.

  Just as suddenly as it had begun, the interview was over and I found myself ushered out onto the street. I reeled my way down the rue Daguerre and through a warren of streets until I got to rue d’Alésia and our apartment. I had to sit quietly for a long time to digest the events of my day, all the while silently saying “Okaaaay…”

  * * *

  —

  Writing about Montague made me think of other writers I interviewed who claimed close friendships with Beckett. Their attitude can be described only with the Yiddish word “chutzpah,” defined in English dictionaries as “shamelessness” or “gall.” I think of Israel Horovitz in this category. His interview took place at his home in New York after he telephoned me in the last frantic May days of 1973 as I tried to organize myself and my family for our Paris sojourn. He had heard of me through Jean and George Reavey and their New York theater grapevine, and because he, too, was “so close to Sam,” he said it was imperative that he “enlighten” me before I left. I had not heard of a Horovitz-Beckett friendship before this, but because I followed up every possibility, I dutifully showed up at his house on Eleventh Street at the time he specified. There were no social preliminaries before he ushered me into a chair. With an elaborate ceremonial flourish, he held out a file folder with a cover that he had obviously hand-decorated himself. He opened it reverently to show me a typed series of questions and answers.

  “These are the questions you must address in a biography, and to do so, you will need my answers,” he said. “You may not use any of your own words or opinions, and you will quote me exactly as I have written here, and you must reproduce this book exactly as it is here. It must be inserted into the middle of your book, so that it opens naturally to these pages, which will be the most important in it.” I was too stunned to open my mouth. I just sat there holding this object in front of me, all the while wondering how fast I could get out of there. Horovitz was undeterred, beaming as he told me, “You will not only have the biography of Beckett; you will have the authentic record of his greatest friendship with another great playwright.” It was another “okaaaay” moment, and needless to say, none of it found its way into the biography.

  * * *

  —

  The Reaveys came to Paris in early July 1973, and as usual, they created all sorts of dramatic scenarios that ended up causing trouble one way or another, but more for Beckett than for me. Because my family and I were spending the summer in Paris, the Reaveys wanted to be there, too, and they expected me to cater to their whims. At least I was not alone in bearing the burden, which I ungraciously called their “cashing in” on Beckett’s generosity. Even though Beckett had already repaid the debt many times over, all these years later, George still laid it on thick with “you owe me” because of all he had done to steer Murphy to publication. On this trip, Beckett paid for their hotel, took them to dinner repeatedly, and made an even greater personal sacrifice when, at Jean’s insistence, he introduced them to Jean-Marie Serreau and Roger Blin. Jean Reavey fancied herself a playwright and was friendly with the actors at the Mabou Mines company in New York. She had managed to set up meetings with Beckett for the founder-director, Lee Breuer, and some of the actors when they went to Paris, including David Warrilow, who became one of Beckett’s finest interpreters and one of his good friends.

  The first thing Jean did upon meeting Beckett on that trip was to hand over a huge stack of her writings. When he saw me the next day, he mimed himself staggering under the weight of her scripts and wailed plaintively, “She gifted me with a stack of plays and now what on earth am I to do with them?” I didn’t know what to say, so I just shrugged my shoulders. I changed the subject by asking him about Blin and Serreau, and he told me that Jean Reavey had come prepared to give them similar stacks but they had refused to take them, saying they could read only French so she would need to have them translated. Jean immediately looked for help to Beckett, who was embarrassed and horrified by her request but who nevertheless engaged a young translator he knew and liked. Jean’s several meetings with him got off to a rocky start, and they ended when the translator left for his August holiday two weeks early to get away from both Reaveys.

  Once my family’s happy Paris summer was over and we were all back home, the Reaveys thought nothing of phoning at inappropriate hours, whenever the whim hit them, to give me what I called my “marching orders.” These consisted mostly of my driving into New York to meet George at Dorrian’s Red Hand and buy him drinks while he ever so slowly drew out an “important” letter or two that Beckett had written in the 1930s. I usually managed to drop everything and meet him, because indeed the letters were important, and I needed them. Sometimes, when he could sense my irritation at how he upended my life, he would reach into his pockets and slowly—as if he could not bear to part with them—pull out pages of a diary he had kept during the years when he was trying to sell Murphy to publishers; other times he showed me letters with drawings on their pages that were sent to him by his and Beckett’s beloved friends Geer and Bram van Velde. George had the only copy of the rotogravure illustration of chess-playing monkeys that Beckett wanted to use for the cover of Murphy (the publisher refused, but I used it in the biography); even the newspaper that originally published it did not have one. His pack-rat apartment was loaded with materials that were historically important, not only for the life of Samuel Beckett, but also for the history of midcentury European arts and letters.

  George had been a Zelig who knew everyone in the early years of the twentieth century, and he had the goods to prove it. Getting him to part with them was like having to tear out my hair and pull my own teeth at the same time. But I was
also very sympathetic to the old and poor man, sadly neglected by the contemporary cultural scene, who felt he had gained a new lease on life by speaking with me. He expected me to put him front and center for anything related to Beckett, and I consoled myself by thinking of it as a mitzvah, my good deed. But oh, it was hard!

  Even worse than the afternoons I spent dutifully buying him drinks were the weekends when he and Jean “simply had to get out of New York” and invited themselves to my home in Woodbridge, then just a village abutting New Haven. We lived in a house my husband had designed, out in the woods on a steep hillside, with a wraparound deck that had a large oak tree growing up through it and that overlooked a stream and a pond. It was a magical house with plenty of bedrooms, and we always welcomed houseguests, but the Reaveys trampled all the boundaries. I usually found out they were inviting themselves when they phoned to tell me what time their train would arrive in New Haven so I could be there promptly to pick them up. They played the poverty card expertly, even though I had my suspicions, considering that Jean’s maiden name was Bullowa and she was of the Bulova watch family. But if I wanted the documents, I had to take care of both of them.

  While we were in Paris, my children were wildly excited about the upcoming Bastille Day, with its parade and fireworks. The Reaveys thought that would be a fine day for me to give a dinner party in their honor, and they presented me with their guest list. Beckett was at the top, but after the incident with Jean’s plays, he told me he had wisely decided to depart for Ussy and would stay there until just before the Reaveys were to fly home to New York. They wanted me to invite their old friend Bill Hayter and the charming (and sensible) Désirée Moorhead. As Bill and Désirée were once again hosting the artists Eddie Allen and Lia Rondelli, we were delighted to invite them. Con Leventhal and Marion Leigh could come only for drinks, as they had a dinner engagement. Hayter told Montague about the party, and so he phoned and invited himself. What could we say but yes? We invited Roger Blin, and he asked if he could bring Jean Martin. We were thrilled to meet him.