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ОглавлениеMY UNWANTED PRESENCE
1951
DECEMBER 1950-JANUARY 1951
New York
JANUARY 27, 1951
Arrival in Los Angeles
SIERRA MADRE, JANUARY 1951
Rupert’s wild pleasure at my arrival. I was sick for two days with bronchitis. We swam though caresses, and clung all night to each other. He took care of me, warmly and completely. In the dark he said, “Separations are painful, but they make us realize how necessary we are to each other. What a life-giving love!” After two days, I got up to clean the house that Rupert had not been able to clean. Emerging out of an electric passion, a charged night, and having gained detachment, I can face the dirty house, the economies, Reginald’s monologues, and Kay and John. Rupert, whom I have imagined wanting this life, reveals he does not want it any more than I do, but he does not know how to go about creating another. This is what he is capable of doing. So much of what one thinks, imagines, far away from the loved one, is false. How carefully one must compare it with reality, retouch it.
I found out that Rupert rebels against forestry and the dullness of the life while I am away. As soon as I return, though, he is content. I can see by the way he lives while I am away, he stops living. He eats monotonously, he does not bathe, change the sheets; he loses his brightness and energy. I saw him come to life. And now at the end of two weeks, he is playing with quartets, he sings. And he has made out of his own hands the couch-benches I planned. At times I feel I am free of my love of Rupert. I see him in another world. I see the enormous areas of our relationship created by my playing a role. It may have been true at one time that in contrast to New York I wanted nature, serenity, an easy rhythm, but now I know that the only nature I like is the tropical one: Acapulco, warmth, languor, beauty and gayety. The Sun. But not California.
It may have been true at one time, after the infernal life in New York with the Press, Gonzalo, and Bill, that I wanted to return to simplicity, to a simple life with the One. But it is no longer true. I hate this kind of simplicity, its emptiness. I hate Rupert listening to “Invitation to Learning” (moronic and vulgar) or the commentators.
But as against all this, Rupert’s face on the pillow in the morning, his sleepiness, his pathetic dutifulness, his tautness, his discomfort in the world, his rough clothes and finely chiseled body, his anxieties, his powerful, wiry embraces, his severities I no longer take seriously. Last night his face was illuminated because he was mischievously eating up the sandwiches I had prepared for his lunch the next day!
I think of all the human bondages, to a human being’s voice, touch, warmth and trustiness. I could not harm him. But could I tempt him, marry him off? Couldn’t I find the woman who would tempt him?
Days when I am happy to live out Rupert’s life as he sees it: a couple who earns $200 a month (his earnings), which means that I must take care of the house (what I “earn” in New York is for our trips or for a house of our own) so I immerse myself in:
1 hour in the kitchen—dishes, cleaning, burning garbage
1 hour of 1 room a day—thorough cleaning, sweeping rug, mopping, cleaning pipes
1 hour of errands—shopping, shoes repaired, cleaning suits, tailor, post office
1 hour sewing or mending socks and underwear
1 hour for myself, bathing, care of face, hair, etc.
A little while for letter writing, reading if I’m tired, and then another hour in the kitchen to cook dinner.
After a week or so I hate the housekeeping, feel stripped and diminished, colorless and empty. No. I cannot live this way. Monday evening a movie, Tuesday Rupert plays with the Pasadena orchestra. Wednesday a movie. Thursday evening he plays quartets with his family and I see Jim. Friday evening a movie, etc., etc.
But then a moment of passion and all the discordances are effaced. I dream of the sea within us, the astonishing levels, variations, shapes, forms of matter, forms of life. The dream of writing the final book that will break my ostracism from the world. I carry in my handbag a letter rejecting A Spy in the House of Love with insults, not politely, with condemnation of the “lie detector” character. Americans are barbarians. I am glad that my identification papers still say “Visitor”; even if I am a permanent visitor at least I am not condemned to stay here. I would like Rupert to live the artist life of Paris. I would like a life in Italy and the rest in the tropics. I want to die in the sea and in the sun.
I cling to the little things that make life so real and warm, when Rupert is sleeping and I bring him his cafécito. Tavi thinks he must defend the sleeper and he growls at me and wants to fight me off. Rupert smiles. His eyes are strange at times, not like a human being’s but like the sea looking at you, nature, something without identity. “If I had not met you I would have continued to be wary of women, be a superficial Don Juan, but not happy, oh, not happy.” When we are drunk he is lost, bewildered, tender. He smiles, his mouth is open; he could be easily possessed. His skin glows with health and ruddiness; his eyes are the sea, not personal.
And meanwhile the problem with his family deepens.
Letter from Anaïs Nin to Helen and Lloyd Wright:
Sierra Madre, 1951
Dear Helen and Lloyd: It was Rupert’s idea, not mine, that if I gave you a chance to know me I could overcome your prejudice against us. I have tried, in spite of the fact that it was very difficult for me to have a good feeling about this attempt when your first words to me were: “You are not the woman we had dreamed of for Rupert,” to which I tried justly to agree, telling you that was why we had waited to get married. However, I now discover through Kay and Reginald that your criticisms of me still continue, and when I examine them sincerely I find them so unjust that I can only conclude that the prejudice is still there, as much as before.
I gather this is what worried you: first of all I was a married woman. Well, now I am divorced.
Secondly: I was an artist and would not help Rupert stick to forestry. Well, I not only helped and took care of Rupert during his forestry studies, but encouraged and collaborated with him. He has not given up forestry for me. I have given up my artist life.
Thirdly: you keep saying I am not domestic. Well, I am not a hypocrite. I am not domestic one hundred percent. But I have been domestic and a good wife to Rupert. I have done all the housework and the garden work and whatever is expected of a Forest Service wife. I have done things I never did for anyone before, to save money.
Next: you still say I am a self-centered writer. Well, in the first place, if I were self-centered Rupert would not be the happy, content, healthy man he is now. I have continued to write because my writing means something to both of us. It adds to our life the kind of friends, atmosphere, and travel both Rupert and I need, and that is what has enabled him to concentrate on his forestry work. Without my writing, if we only lived on his salary, we could never travel or go to concerts or theatres. Rupert would have been unhappy in such a narrow life. If you can call self-centered the fact that I spent one evening at your house finishing a revision of my book, copying out a fragment for a magazine, and showing a passage to Lloyd with the human desire that you should understand my work, then you don’t understand Rupert very well, because a mere hausfrau would not have made him very happy. You would have the right to say that if I had dragged Rupert into my artist life.
I never expected you to understand me, or really love me. But I did expect you to say as parents will: Rupert is happy, healthy, content. And to at least give up expressions of your prejudice to strangers like Kay.
Whenever there is unjust criticism it only means that the prejudice is still there. Therefore I do not see why I should continue to visit you if there is no sincere acceptance of me. It is utterly impossible for me to be where I am not wanted, knowing how you really feel, the snide remarks made by Lloyd about my trips when I have suffered from these trips and made them only to earn the extra means to go on happy vacations with Rupert. I am not happy in your presence knowing all this. I know you tried, but you must be aware of the insincerity between us. For instance, when I write you affectionate or admiring letters, you say I flatter you. When I give you my true opinion about something, you say I criticize you. Everything I do you have misinterpreted.
I feel that we have now had sufficient time to discover whether we understand one another. I respect Lloyd greatly as an artist and I thought he would understand me as an artist. I respected you greatly as a wonderful mother and thought that as a mother you would recognize my love and total devotion to Rupert and be glad of that. I have never once caused Rupert any pain or anger or disappointment. I believed this would be enough to create a bond between us.
Now I feel that it would be more sincere for me to stay away and to let you enjoy your relationship with Rupert without my unwanted presence.
Anaïs
FEBRUARY 21, 1951
New York; Peggy Glanville-Hicks has surgery.
NEW YORK, MARCH 1951
A Spy in the House of Love was submitted to:
Scribner’s
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Farrar Straus and Hal Vursell
Harper Brothers
Pellegrini and Cudahy, Coley Taylor
The Bobbs Merrill Co., Hiram Haydn
Macmillan’s
Viking Press
New Directions, James Laughlin
Fragment “Donald” (from Spy) was submitted to:
Harper’s Bazaar, returned
New Story magazine, accepted
Kenyon Review, returned
New Mexico Review, returned
Books translated are:
Ladders to Fire Holland, Uitgeverij De Driehook
Under a Glass Bell, Italy, Arnoldo Mondadori
Children of the Albatross, Sweden, Wahlstrom and Widstrand
Books published in England
Under a Glass Bell, London, Editions Poetry
Harper’s Bazaar published a fragment of “Stella” from Ladders to Fire in 1947 but refused fragments from Children of the Albatross, from The Four-Chambered Heart and from A Spy in the House of Love.
Tiger’s Eye published a fragment from two novels but is now no longer in the market.
Books are being considered by other publishers in Italy through an introduction by Mrs. Murray who represents Mondadori, as a personal favor and advice because Mondadori’s list is overcrowded and will take years to catch up with my work.
Max Pfeffer is now my literary agent.
In France Serge Ouveroff is handling the books as Mr. Pfeffer’s agent, and I am writing him for a report.
Copyrights returned to me on Ladders to Fire (E. P. Dutton)
Children of the Albatross copyright belongs to me
Under a Glass Bell copyright in my name
The Four-Chambered Heart copyright in my name
Letter from Anaïs Nin to Rupert Pole:
New York, Friday, March 16, 1951
Darling Chiquito, No letter from you today.
I won’t inflict you anymore with emotional reactions to your family’s behavior as I have quietly found the reason and can now be objective, and not care. It reminded me exactly of the destructive, hopeless, incurable, bitter attitude of Miller and Gonzalo, and how I tried to help cure them with no result except harm to myself. I hate war above all things, in the world as well as in families. I want understanding and love. It was good I came away to get a grip on my feelings. One never escapes pain anyway—when you get away from it, it follows you because life is full of repetitions. I escaped with you into a different world and met the same neurotic destructiveness as in your home; that’s why I reacted as I did.
Please take my books away from your home. I don’t want them there. I don’t want their comments and opinions. Will you please humor me in this? Tell me how you feel, whether your strength has come back. Sleep a lot, darling. Our trip to Mexico won’t be restful.
Te beso fuerte
A.
Letter from Anaïs Nin to Rupert Pole:
New York, March 18, 1951
Oh darling! I didn’t mean to wake you up when I called! I calculated two hours’ difference instead of three. Also I had to call when I was alone in the apartment. So sorry, darling. Your cold is still there, I could hear. You are right about a change of clothes. I also have to leave some things I won’t need.
The most pleasant friendship I made this time was with Maxwell Geismar, the critic, and his wife. They are the best kind of intelligent Jews, very much like Ruth, but happily married and with children. She is his collaborator. We had a fine evening of book talk last night. He is engaged in a history of American literature. Lusty and humorous.
Love, I send you Ladders to Fire in Dutch, a rather pretty book they did and which is a success—why in Holland, I don’t know. Is it the love of opposites? Can you see a Dutch maiden reading me? Still no money from Mondadori in Italy. Max Pfeffer, my agent, thinks we’ll have to go and collect it.
You didn’t say whether you got the plastic whiskey bottle and whether you wanted another.
About our trip: are you bringing the grill to cook out of doors and a few cases of soup for your anti-pepper wife? A few cases of milk too. I hope we don’t go to the cold places! You need sun and softness, and I need you!
My list for Mexico with you:
Sandals (white, tan, etc.)
Walking boots
Grey raincoat
Travel suit—wide skirt, little cape, the blue grey one I wear with different skirts, with blue cotton shirt sewed to matching skirt
White Mexican shirt-waists
Black slacks if we must go on horseback, with your red woollies as mine have shrunk (if we go to the volcano). You might need a warm outfit too
White heavy wool sweater knitted by my mother, a woolen skirt you gave me
Peacock blue silk dress with black leaves design—our first dress—with matching scarf
White panties, bras, petticoats
Cotton dresses, simple ones: 1 navy blue, 1 orchid, 1 fuchsia
Purple bathing suit
Purple scarf for head with gold dots
Glasses in red leather case
Small sewing material box
Te quiero
A.
My friendship with Jim Herlihy is deepening. He is the best of all my spiritual children, the one who was temperamentally and intelligently more receptive, subtle and imaginative. At twenty-four he is productive, he talks nimbly and colorfully—his talk was more developed than his writing, but now it is infiltrating his writing. He would have been perhaps another competent, clever homosexual writer, but at Black Mountain College, where I went to read in 1947, he grasped at me, and I helped him to descend into the infernos and mines of buried treasures, to find emotion, where the gold vein lies, and he dug, he worked. But the relationship is very bold, equal, mutually dependent, and above all elating in our work world, in which we are lonely. He is my only friend-in-writing, my handsome, gallant Jim, and his moods and mine match in freedom of invention and ability for the mechanics of the modern mind. He has a mathematical, electronic, magnetic tape, jazz-of-angels mind. It has a quick beat and fulgurance; it is phosphorescent and elliptical, and full of the true relativities. No rigid absolutes. Liquefaction, not static!
He works at the Satyr Bookshop in Hollywood.
Letter from Jim Herlihy to Anaïs Nin:
Hollywood, March 22, 1951
Dear Anaïs:
I wrote your agent on Satyr stationery, telling him of my difficulty in procuring Ladders to Fire from my supplier in Pasadena, which should place you in the clear about its being out of print. Actually, I can’t remember how the idea originated. We have just received copies (and sold them immediately, by the way) and have reordered likewise Children of the Albatross. I would have sent a copy of the letter to you in NY, but thought you would have returned by then.
I have put your copy of The Four-Chambered Heart in the window along with a display of your other work and some other “new writing”—Joyce-Miller-Kafka-Stein, etc. We don’t have much of that, as you know. Am reading Maxwell Geismar and like it very much so far, even though I feel he overrates Hemingway. Lila [Rosenblum] and I listened to your records one night. I don’t like the woman [Josephine Premice] with the drums in this House of Incest. She might do a fine job in the Scenario of Henry Miller, for some background sound, but it is disturbing with your reading. Also don’t especially like Henry Miller’s Scenario, but it might be good on film. He mentions you in his new book The Waters Reglitterized. Have you seen it? Also Berzon has a copy of the Obelisk The Winter of Artifice, which I’d like to borrow.
I got all that spring yearning out of my system for the time being (of course the trouble here is that spring comes to California a dozen times a year) and am beginning to work again. Lila is having a party Friday night (but no one is wearing costumes) and I may go to that. The trouble with my masquerade is that only you and Lila and I would wear masques, and everyone would be uncomfortable.
Anaïs, Pepe [Zayas] is coming to California on his next furlough, but I have a fear something is going to happen to him. He doesn’t know how to kill and I don’t think he can learn. I wish they would only choose those who are hell-bent on destruction anyway and leave Pepe out of it. This Korean War is the most ridiculous of all wars; everyone going through the motions and no one knowing why. I like your theory on the transference of explosions. It’s the only theory that rhymes with the newspapers and the facts. Anti-Communism is only a militarist’s hypothesis designed to disguise the real confusion. I say upward and onward with the explosions you describe of imagination and passion and illumination.
Love,
Jim
MARCH 24 INTO APRIL 1951
Mexico with Rupert
MAY 10, 1951
New York
Letter from Anaïs Nin to Rupert Pole:
New York, June 1, 1951
Work, work, work and wondering how long it will take. Articles are being prepared, and each week I stay means a hundred dollars more into our travel account, but I am wondering how long I can hold out. Now it is a week I have left. No letter from you yet. When I can, I will phone you, as if one is capable of talking only three minutes; after seven o’clock it costs only $2.50, and to hear your voice means so much. I am bringing back a list of long-playing records that we can study together. The best news I have is that I am at page forty-five of the last rewriting of A Spy in the House of Love; each day I do a few pages.
But the time is long, and Doña Juana is dead and her heart is in Sierra Madre; now it is only a shadow of herself walking down Fifth Avenue. I do want you to help me, while I am away, in an examination of ourselves: I want to find out the things I must do to make you happy, and I want you, if possible, to find out what makes you irritable, because later on, alone, I realize how my self-confidence gets low, feeling I do nothing right, or that I am not right for you, and I realize I sort of dread it when you are mad all the way to the airport, wondering if I am at fault. If while I am away there are specific things you think about, realize—will you tell me? It is better to face these things rather than let them accumulate.
Anaïs
Letter from Jim Herlihy to Anaïs Nin:
Hollywood, July 28, 1951
Dear Anaïs,
I wanted to talk about your diary but it is not easy to speak in the language of the sixth sense where multitudes are assembled. The idea of making sense even in a letter like this is something of a barrier, but I am determined to try.
You said you would be willing to risk my reading the diaries, and I am mostly disturbed by the fact you could consider that a risk. I would never read them while they caused you any discomfort or embarrassment, and those feelings would not disturb me. What disturbs me is that you can think I might, even conceivably, reject you on the strength of them.
Whether or not I ever read your diaries is inconsequential to the major point I am trying to make. The woman you are is the woman I know, understand, and love. What went before could be the greatest record of prostitution and murder on any level you choose, art, love, religion or all three, but they could never destroy one segment of my present regard for you; they could only throw more illumination on the magical processes that have made you what you are.
Love,
Jim
JULY 1951
Sierra Madre
Letter from Jim Herlihy to Anaïs Nin:
Hollywood, August 13, 1951
Dearest Anaïs:
I wonder if you know that you have shown to me and given to me in every conceivable way a kind of love that I have never known before in my life, and I am completely overwhelmed by it, don’t know how to express to you how it feels and how more than grateful I am for it. It is not (as in the past with other kinds of love) that I am afraid of it, don’t want to accept it, or am thrown into a sea of self-doubt (am I worthy of this, etc.). It is not a question of any of these things. It is a kind of shock, a kind of believing yet unbelieving. I really trust you and believe in you; so I know what you are giving me is real, is felt, is what it is. Yet, at the same time, it is the kind of love I have always believed in (and tried myself to give), but the kind that I have never found anywhere and had begun to despair of. When it finally appears, and appears so completely and so brilliantly, without complications or demands, I don’t know what to do with it. I know that your love demands nothing of me except what I am; yet, of course, I love you so completely that I feel inadequate and want to give something else, something more and completely wonderful; yet I don’t know what or how. All I know to do is what I would do for myself, to go to analysis and make myself healthy, to do my work to the best of my ability, and to be true to the things in which both of us believe. Of course what I am saying, in effect, is that I feel what you ask of me is only what I ask of you: that we not destroy ourselves through neurosis, and are consistently true to what you call the “true self.”
Love,
Jim
Letter from Anaïs Nin to Rupert Pole:
Mexico, August 1951 [where Nin was vacationing with Hugh Guiler]
My darling Chiquito:
You were right (as always). When I got over the pain of leaving you with so much work on your hands, I began to feel the liberating purpose of the trip and to be happy.
I have my cousin Charlie Cárdenas’ complete collaboration; he is very clever and has handled people even more complicated than the Mexicans—the Cubans. But he has set certain conditions that I don’t tell my mother yet because of her health and that I don’t tell Thorvald because he is neurotic on the subject of divorce. He bore up ten years with his first marriage because of a prejudice born of our own parents’ separation. Also, he feels Hugo was a good balance to my “romanticism” and doesn’t believe anyone else could be. Charlie hates scenes and quarrels and wants my divorce all done. He is convinced that I am serious, and he always believed in me in spite of his business associations with Hugo. So there is no pressure or drama, just quiet activity. I couldn’t be more married to you than I am. All these legalities seem absurd.
Do write me, my darling. I feel sure it will be done twelve weeks from Monday. During the weekend nothing could be done. I believe I can stay in Mexico City.
Your Mujer
SEPTEMBER 5, 1951
Return to Sierra Madre from Mexico
OCTOBER 1951
Return to New York
OCTOBER 8, 1951
Houghton Mifflin turns down A Spy in the House of Love
Letter from Anaïs Nin to Rupert Pole:
New York, October 22, 1951
My Chiquito: Last night even after an hour dancing in Brooklyn with Lavinia Williams’ class of black girls training for a show, I could not sleep for longing for you. It sometimes hurts and is against nature. Yet, darling, you must help me not to run back to you before I have done what I must do. If I succeed in my work I won’t have to return to NY for the rest of the year. Listen carefully: the regular publishers are gradually failing because the new trend is cheap books (they were too greedy). The policy of Signet to reprint only was made when they were afraid of being cut-throated by Big Publishers, but now the Signets are so strong that they are slowly seeking ways out of this policy. I suggested to Miss Porter of Signet that she add Spy to their list. Lila (who moved here) won’t have a copy typed till Tuesday for her; I am working very hard and efficiently.
If this comes through (as you know I am not counting on this only, the manuscript is everywhere—Farrar and Houghton Mifflin and after that Viking, and others) I will get an advance of $2,000, which means no trips to NY for a long time. Help me to stick to this. As soon as you say come home, both heart and body come to life and say yes, yes, and the career and money go overboard. I will do all in my power to get back Friday, but, darling, it looks impossible if Miss Porter (who has also been reading The Four-Chambered Heart) needs Spy Tuesday. Pfeffer does not handle her. I met her through George Amberg, author of Ballet in America. At the same time Gore has been put in charge of a Signet anthology of new writing (to contain fiction, architecture, art), and will take a fragment for that.
So far I have what I earned, $500 intact, and have spent only what you gave me. We eat at Larry Maxwell’s apartment, where I am staying. I have no rent (Maxwell feels guilty). Lila types for me in the evenings. I go three nights a week to Lavinia’s dance class. I have had no parties, no theatre, no big evenings of any kind, nothing but work, except for dancing. I am working on an introduction to Spy; Geismar is working on one of his own. Friday night we compared notes; I will earn $100 for an article on Christopher Isherwood’s new play, which I have been allowed to read ahead of opening night. This is all humanly difficult.
I know you must be lonely too, and I worry about how you are eating and sleeping, Tavi and the garden. But if I return with a Signet advance, you can start our house if you prefer that to a trip. Tell me what we have in the bank now, plus the $500 I have. I decided against sending it to you in a money order because it costs $4.75 and you’d have to go to LA and then to the bank. But if I get another $100 this week I will send it, having the last $100 for emergencies.
