Parisian Lives Page 17

  Monday was supposed to be my last full day in Dublin. I planned to leave Tuesday afternoon for London, where I had a nonstop schedule of appointments, so there was no way I could extend my stay. I was both frantic and frazzled, because it did seem that I would get my chance, but at significant logistical—and financial—cost. I would obviously have to return to Dublin and stay until I finished reading the letters, and to do so left going on to Paris to be decided.

  The elder McGreevy niece came to Buswells the next morning, and by this time, after so many previous meetings with her, I could tell from her distressed face that all uncertainty had yet to be banished. She told me again how she and her sister had spent most of the previous weekend trying to decide what to do, until finally “we threw up our hands and decided to let you read them before we changed our minds.” When she said this, the rush of relief made me light-headed. But the euphoria was short-lived, for once again she began to equivocate about whether it was the right thing to do. As she sat there literally wringing her hands, something in me snapped, and for the first time in all the years I had made polite conversation with her and her sister, I lost control of myself.

  Fortunately, my blowup was not a loud and angry one but rather a cold, quiet, and reasoned speech. I think she was mesmerized by such a soft voice as I launched into an explanation of my personal circumstances. I leaned on the slightly overblown version, speaking of the book as a mission, a gift to the world of scholarship (an overinflated assertion that still makes me blush). But I also wove in the practicalities—how I was funding the book through whatever jobs or grants-in-aid I could scrounge; how I resented having to live under such financial stress; how I regretted that it took me away from my “real life,” my husband and children, and how we all suffered because of the strain it put them under. I went off on an impassioned emotional monologue, telling her how I worried that I would not do justice to the life of this great man by producing the book I felt he deserved if I were not allowed to include the all-important McGreevy letters.

  By the time I finished this diatribe, I was exhausted, slightly nauseated, and utterly resigned to never seeing the letters. This back-and-forth had gone on for so long and I was so tired that I almost didn’t care anymore. I concluded by telling her that this was the last time I could come to Dublin, that I was almost finished with the full draft of the biography, and that I had to go home and finish it before the publisher became fed up with my delays and canceled my contract. It was now or never.

  I think my frankness stunned her. We both sat there quietly, probably because neither of us knew how to bring the meeting to a congenial close. Suddenly I had an idea: we should ask Beckett if he would let me read the letters. I thought our newfound détente might extend to whatever new archival material I found, because after the fuss over the Ussher letters, Beckett had ultimately agreed to let me use them, and he had also told Mollie Roe to give me material he had originally refused. It was at least worth asking. I suggested that the niece and her sister should write to Beckett. She thought it was a fine idea and went to the hotel’s phone booth to ask her sister what she thought of it. When she returned, she was smiling. A letter would be fine, but they did not consider themselves eloquent enough to write it, so they wanted me to write it for them.

  And so I did. I went to my room to get the tiny Smith Corona typewriter I traveled with, and we sat in Buswells’ lobby composing a letter to Beckett. There was a postal strike in France and no mail was being delivered from Ireland or England. This offered at least one possible resolution of my constantly changing plans: if he was still in Paris, I would probably have to find the time and money to go there and deliver the letter; if he was already in London for theater rehearsals, I could deliver it there and would not have to go to Paris. One way or another, my main problem concerning the book’s content would be resolved: either I would have to finish writing it based on the information I already had, which meant I could probably give it to my publisher as early as the following spring, 1975, or I could tell him of this important new addition and beg for more time.

  * * *

  —

  Beckett was not in London when I arrived, and my time there was the whirlwind I expected it to be, highlighted by tea at the Ritz with Harold Pinter (Beckett had told him I was “an engaging charming woman” whom he should “definitely see”). I was so engrossed as Pinter talked of his indebtedness to the clarity of Beckett’s vision and the freedom it gave him to exercise his own that I left the scrumptious goodies untouched. We both let our tea grow cold as Pinter recounted some of the adventurous evenings he and Beckett had spent after they forged a deep friendship.

  There were certain logistics to take care of as soon as I arrived, starting with picking up mail sent by my family to Mark Hamilton’s office. He also kept a record of my friends and people in publishing who wanted to see me. At Jonathan Cape, the genius publisher Tom Maschler took me for drinks while probing, not entirely gently, about when I was going to deliver the manuscript. Editor Anne Chisholm, then writing the biography of Nancy Cunard, soothed us both. Anne’s husband, the distinguished journalist Michael Davie, took great delight in regaling me with Beckett’s cricket statistics even as he despaired of making me understand the game. My friends Jimmy and Tania Stern took me to dinner to meet V. S. Pritchett, and my head flew back and forth as if at a tennis match while conversation sparkled around me. Tony Johnson convened a group for dinner at Wheeler’s that included the political journalist Patrick Seale and his young wife, Lamorna.

  In and around these meetings and on a hunch, I went to Somerset House to pick up a copy of Samuel Beckett’s marriage license. I still remember the joy when a clerk told me it was there but would not be ready for several days. I was so buoyed to find that my hunch was correct, that like James Joyce, Beckett had married quietly in London late in his life so that Suzanne could inherit his estate in France. I walked all the way across London to Paultons Square and Gertrude Street, the World’s End district where Beckett had lived while writing Murphy. I had to sit on the curb until my breathlessness subsided and I could favor my blisters as I walked to the nearest bus stop.

  The next day was devoted to people Beckett worked with in the theater, including the actors Billie Whitelaw and Siobhan O’Casey and the stage designer Jocelyn Herbert. I also phoned Kenneth Tynan, who told me he gave only paid interviews and asked how much I was offering. I said I was a journalist who did not pay, to which he replied that he commanded serious sums of money and thus had nothing to tell me. And then he hung up. As I was walking out the door, he called back and told me what he thought I should know about how Oh! Calcutta! came to be. And then he hung up once more, never to call again.

  The next adventure was with the writers who called themselves “the Merlin gang,” who had been affiliated with the magazine in Paris during the publication of Watt. Most of them were now living in London, and Christopher Logue had given me vague warnings of what I would find when I saw Alexander Trocchi and Jane Lougee. I wish he had been more direct. That night I recapped it in the DD: “Jane was so high she was incoherent, flaked out. House a shambles. Hopheads lying around all over it. Alex had runny nose and shaky hands. Tried to foist several tired and worn copies of Merlin on me for $38 because he needed a fix. Had a hard time getting out of there and hailing cab for quick getaway.”

  Bettina Jonic Calder was next on my list. The ex-wife of John Calder, she requested an interview to tell me of the “flaming affair” she had had with Beckett. I listened politely but filed away almost all that she told me under “unreliable sources.”

  My next stop was the office of Calder & Boyars, because the French postal strike was still on and I wanted to see if I could leave the letter from the McGreevy sisters there for Beckett. John Calder said I was welcome to leave it but he had no idea when Beckett would be in London. Phone calls to his Paris apartment were unanswered and the likelihood was that he was still in Ta
ngier, where phone service was spotty and he often did not respond to messages. I did not want to create any situation that might reveal the existence of the McGreevy letters, so I told Calder I would keep the letter, as I would probably have to go to Paris, where I would leave it directly in Beckett’s mailbox.

  The undelivered letter continued to plague me. Would I really have to go to Paris if I could not find anyone who was going there? I was running out of money and I was exhausted. I felt so removed from what I called my “real” (as opposed to my “work”) self that I just wanted to go home and hug my cats, pet my dogs, and most of all sit at the dinner table laughing and joking with my husband and children. Still, there was the urgency of access to the McGreevy letters, and everything else would have to wait.

  Urgency became an imperative after an interview with the literary critic A. Alvarez. I sensed it would be a dramatic event, because I knew that his wife was a respected psychotherapist who knew a lot about Beckett’s therapeutic history and I wanted to talk to her as well. I had learned about her during one of my earlier interviews with Beckett’s friend Dr. Geoffrey Thompson, the psychiatrist who had granted Beckett access to the mental hospital where he worked when Beckett was writing Murphy. Thompson had hinted broadly about Beckett’s psychoanalysis by W. R. Bion, but even after I asked him directly if Beckett had been analyzed and by whom, he refused to confirm or deny. I knew I needed to write about it if it was true, and with the tantalizing McGreevy letters still out of reach, I needed other sources.

  Al Alvarez and I were having a pleasant enough conversation that afternoon, mostly about his interest in Sylvia Plath, when his wife, Anne, walked into his office. She barely acknowledged me when he introduced us, but turned to her husband and said, “Did you tell her, Al?” He replied that he was just about to, and then told me the story of Beckett’s analysis with W. R. Bion. At last I had the corroboration I needed. We three spent a very long afternoon, with me writing madly as I took detailed notes about people in the analytic professions I should see, books I should read, articles I should consult. They also told me about places where Bion took Beckett, particularly the Tavistock Clinic to hear C. G. Jung. They stressed that this encounter was important for Beckett’s development as a writer and that I should study what Jung said on that occasion.

  It was good to have the corroboration of Al and Anne Alvarez to support my contention that Beckett had been in analysis. In a later meeting with Dr. Thompson, the moment after we said hello I asked him straight out if what they had told me was true, and he confirmed it, to my great relief. Then he provided further confirmation when he showed me the letters he had earlier dangled. So far, so good: I had three reliable sources. But this was too important to write about without finding others. I was certain that the most important source and the firm foundation for what the others had told me would be Beckett’s letters to McGreevy, and I had to do whatever was needed to read them.

  19

  After my meeting with the Alvarezes, I phoned the elder McGreevy niece to tell her that I would not go to Paris because Beckett was not there, and because no one in London knew his precise whereabouts, the letter could not be delivered. I was almost sobbing as I blurted out my difficulties with both time and money; fearing that I might never be able to return to Europe again, I begged them to let me see the letters if I returned to Dublin. Once I stopped talking, she said very quietly that I should come as soon as I could get there.

  It was Thursday and Aer Lingus had one seat on a Friday afternoon flight, and after that none was available until late Sunday. I pulled myself together and arrived at Heathrow for the Friday flight, dripping with perspiration and starving, only to find a huge altercation at check-in and a long wait on the tarmac before takeoff. It was not a propitious beginning. The flight was so late that I arrived at Buswells Hotel only minutes before the elder McGreevy niece’s husband came to pick me up and drive me deep into the darkened suburbs to their home.

  There, in an unheated hallway closet under the stairs, his wife revealed a breathtaking collection of shoeboxes full of letters and photos. I looked them over swiftly, because the two sisters had decided that I would not read them there but would go to the younger one’s house starting the next morning. She lived closer to Dublin, and getting there would require only a short train ride and a fairly long walk. The elder one’s strongly disapproving husband drove me back to Buswells, and I barely made it to my room before I began projectile vomiting. Cryptic notes in the DD described “a terrible night. Fever and chills, partly physical I am sure, from exhaustion and head cold caught in London, but psychological, too, mostly mental from seeing the letters and what is in them.” My instincts had been well founded, as a cursory overview of the one or two I had read convinced me that the real truth about so many events in Beckett’s life would be found only in these letters.

  The next morning I woke up so weak I could barely function: “I am physically sick and grow mentally sicker at the thought of the falsity I might have published without these letters. It would have been a monstrosity of untrue information.” I was in a panic that I would not get them all read and get myself out of Dublin before Beckett got the nieces’ letter, for fear that he would not let me use them. I still had the letter, and the nieces (and I, to a lesser degree now) were still searching for someone to take it to Paris. I feared they could find such a traveler and take it from me at any time.

  In my previous drafts of the biography, I had written and discarded two different versions of how and why Beckett left Ireland to live in Paris permanently. The first did not ring true even as I wrote it, and I discarded it soon after. It depended on letters that he wrote to several professors at Trinity College and to members of the Irish literary intelligentsia, trying to ingratiate himself and saying that he hoped to survive on writing assignments they might give him while he tried to write novels. In the second version, I learned from his cousins Ann and John Beckett that Beckett’s mother had reluctantly accepted that he would never adjust to living in Ireland, so she had agreed to let him go to Paris and to support him financially until he could find his footing as a writer. They showed me some of Beckett’s letters—vague, to be sure, yet hinting that he and his mother had arrived at an understanding and that he would “probably” be leaving sometime soon. The benign portrait of Mae Beckett as kind, caring, and wanting only what was best for her beloved son simply did not ring true, but as I had no other information, that was what I wrote.

  As I did further research, the Arland Ussher and George Reavey letters presented a different picture. This correspondence, coupled with my interviews with persons who had known Beckett during his years in Joyce’s Paris circle (among them Maria Jolas, Stephen Joyce, his uncle Robert Kastor, Kay Boyle, and the poet/journalist Walter Lowenfels), showed a brilliant, troubled, and conflicted young man still strongly under the influence of his upper-class Anglo-Irish Protestant upbringing. They showed Beckett as incapable of throwing off the constraints of his social class and unable to embrace the bohemian writer’s life that, it was obvious to everyone but him, he was destined to lead.

  In the Reavey and Ussher letters, he wrote that he was resigned to living in Dublin because he had no money to live anywhere else. He planned to survive on the small allowance his mother doled out as long as he lived in her house, and to keep himself in booze and cigarettes by giving French lessons to Irish schoolgirls who had no interest in learning the language. When he had no pupils, he took some of his personal book collection to the stalls on the River Liffey and sold them for little more than the price of a good drunken evening. Wary of telling the entire truth to his two friends because his situation was so embarrassing, he concluded semi-optimistically by saying that he had set up a work table in a small room at the top of the office building that housed his late father’s quantity-surveying business (now run by his brother, Frank). He assured Reavey that he would be able to finish Murphy there, and he told Ussher that he intended t
o write reviews and essays for various Irish periodicals. Frequently he concluded with remarks meant to be reassuring, about how he intended to make a happy go of his circumstances, but more often he ended bitterly, not sure that he could earn a living through either plan and with no idea of what to do if they didn’t work out.

  The explanation I kept because it was his most truthful (even though I thought it did not ring entirely true) was that Mae Beckett could not stand to see her beloved son suffer, so she chose to do the suffering by granting him the freedom to leave Ireland and the financial support to live while he made his way in Paris. And that was where I had left things, as it seemed the most truthful explanation of his circumstances considering the available evidence. But the McGreevy letters confirmed my suspicions about the falsity of the narrative of a saintly mother’s sacrifice. These letters were truly the most important finding for an honest account of Samuel Beckett’s life.