The Sunday Gentleman Page 7

  I waited, bracing myself for Aida, the unknown, and suddenly, a voice much younger than Minna’s, a voice soft-spoken and well-modulated and faintly Southern addressed me. This was Aida Everleigh, and she was charming. After an introductory exchange, I mentioned the play I hoped to write. Aida said that her sister, Minna, usually took care of business matters. She wondered how I was enjoying my winter in New York, and she listened with interest as I related my reaction to the city.

  When I was through, Aida gave me her own impressions of New York. “We’ve been in New York for twenty-five years, and we’ve seen it change. It’s far too crowded now. I’m sure that’s all right for the young. They like crowds. But it’s difficult for us. I’ve been out to your Los Angeles many times. I love that climate. The last time I was there I went to see my brother. He died right after, in 1935.”

  Minna, who had been listening to us on the other telephone, now entered into our conversation. She did not like Los Angeles because Hollywood was in Los Angeles and Hollywood was full of actors. “I don’t like actors, as a rule,” said Minna. “You’re not one, are you?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Well—actors—they all have a little of Jack Barrymore in them, you know, all of them assuming a hundred different guises. I was something of an actress myself in my youth. But now I’m writing, and I hope someone will publish what I write. Irving, you will become known with your own writing. I suppose—I suppose we all want to leave something behind… Anyway, I have a feeling that a new literature is going to grow out of this war. You know, just as Hemingway and the rest came out of World War I, this second war will produce something completely new.”

  After a while, it was Aida Everleigh who closed the conversation. She said, “You have a lovely voice, Irving. Do you have a snapshot of yourself? If you have, please send it to us. It’s wonderful to see people you’ve never met, people you’ve just spoken to or corresponded with…Be sure to have a merry Christmas, and the main thing to watch out for in the new year is your health. We’ve managed quite well with ours. You look after yours.”

  Christmas Day, of that year, fell on a Tuesday. Many of us in the army were given a leave, and I had decided to spend my holiday in my hotel room, resting and reading and catching up on correspondence. At one o’clock in the afternoon, my telephone rang, and as I went to answer it, I hoped that it would be Minna Everleigh. My wish was granted. She was cheerful, and she spoke to me for more than thirty minutes, and it was mostly a monologue.

  “I’ve just finished breakfast with Aida,” said Minna. “We only had coffee. We don’t eat on sacred days, not even between meals, which is perhaps why I feel so good today. But on December twenty-ninth we begin to celebrate New Year’s. I have a bottle of wonderful 1926 champagne, and we open it and drink it…I was reading at breakfast when we received your two Christmas presents—Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. By God, sweetheart, I’m wild about those editions. I really must apologize for the books I sent you because they’re only Little Blue Books. That Haldeman who publishes them is a queer, eccentric old man. He’s published one million books, and I’ve bought at least one thousand of them…Aida came to me at breakfast, after I opened your gifts, and I said I must call you, and she said, ‘Minna, you’re not going to bother that Sergeant Wallace on Christmas Day.’ I said that I wouldn’t promise not to. But I just don’t talk to anyone. I talk to you, I give you my time, Irving, because I like you. Anyway, thank you again for the books. They’re cast in such a beautiful dye. I’ll treasure these books until the last day of my life.”

  I asked her if she was going to call on anyone or have visitors this Christmas Day.

  “No,” said Minna, “I won’t see anyone. I determined that until my own damnable book is finished and published I would live in a castle of silence Have you reread the Jesus Christmas story? You know, I believe that the two thieves that were hanging from crosses beside Jesus were really his followers who wanted to steal from the rich to help the poor…I do not mind mankind’s crimes, but I do mind its hypocrisy…Have you been following what is going on in Europe? Anarchy is one thing, revolution is another thing, but nihilism is too much. And when people are starving and frozen—”

  But suddenly, she was in an autobiographical mood. “Irving, did you know my father was a lawyer who spoke seven languages? It’s true. And as for myself, I was able to read before I was five years old. When I was very young, I got married, before I was seventeen. I married a wealthy devil of a man, but then we were divorced. Nevertheless, I have always felt that all men are my brothers, and you are one of my younger brothers…Aida and I come from Virginia, you know, way back, and I consider you a brother. I lost one real brother. Aida told you, didn’t she?…In 1679, after the Restoration in England, Charles II granted fifty-nine acres of land in Virginia to two brothers, and these two migrated to the New World. That was the beginning of our family. Those ancestors of mine, they all died of drink, insanity, and the Civil War. My grandmother was Welsh. She had a couple hundred slaves, but she loved Negroes. Yet, she would say to her Negro overseer, ‘I don’t believe in shipping niggers down the river, selling them off, but if I ever catch you mistreating your fellows, I’ll ship you off!’…The last one of our family was born while my mother was dying.”

  In another abrupt transition, Minna began to discuss books, motion pictures, and censorship.

  “I like Eldridge because, even though he is risque, he does not use dirty language like so many of the writers after World War I. I don’t believe in using coarse words, do you?…Still, I suppose the big fault of Hollywood is censorship. You can’t censor literature and you can’t censor ideas. But you can censor bawdy words, and I believe that the stage will come into its own yet and the creative artist can do more on the stage than in Hollywood…Now, Irving, I’m going to do something for you that I would never do for any other man. I’m going to send you a copy of a book called The World’s Oldest Profession. I’m going to place it at the bottom of the package. Read it—read it carefully. It’ll help make you an even more tolerant and understanding person.”

  The following day, I was still on holiday leave and working in my hotel room when Minna Everleigh telephoned again. She and Aida were busy, she said, because they had received over one hundred Christmas cards from relatives and friends, and these had to be answered. But she was delaying this task because she still had books and writing on her mind, and she wanted to discuss the subject at greater length.

  “Did you read Lillian Smith’s Strange Fruit?” she asked me. “It’s all wrong, just as that play, Deep Are the Roots, is wrong. I know colored women, and they would kill white women who took their men. Have you read the Amsterdam News? It’s a paper for colored folks. There’s fire there, Irving, and a new day’s a-coming. I can tell you something plainly, and I know it for a fact. In his heart, every colored man hates white men. That’s a reality. I don’t believe in illusions…I remember reading a recent novel published by Harper and Brothers. In it, the man enters the woman’s room, strips off his clothes, pats his stomach, and says to the woman what you’d expect him to say. The very words, and in a Harper book! When I showed it to my typist Clara, she said, ‘Good heavens, mercy, that word!’ But, when you think of it, what’s wrong with that word?…The newspapers I read and recommend are the New York Herald Tribune for the morning, and the Journal-American for the evening. That Cholly Knickerbocker is pretty bold. Every evening, for one hour, I read aloud to Aida. Reading reviews, I notice that Hollywood is shallow. What we want today is realism. Remember de Maupassant’s line, ‘Oh, how pale thou art compared to life.’…Do you know I’m related to Edgar Allan Poe? I am. You’ll laugh like hell, but it’s true. On my mother’s side, we’re the same breed as Poe’s mother.”

  Her mention of her mother brought Minna’s mind to memories of other members of her family.

  “I had a sister, Lula, who played the violin. Her arm became par
alyzed at nineteen, and later, she died. I was fifteen then. I wanted to kill myself, but Aida wouldn’t let me. When I was fifteen and Aida was seventeen, Lula was nineteen, back in Virginia, and Lula started playing her violin at midnight, and she played until morning, and after that, she was paralyzed. In the hotel, a Negro had burned to death, and across the street in the church the white children and people laughed at his charred bones the next day. Since that time, I have never been in a church, and when I die, I won’t allow my body to be taken to a church. I tell this story in a part of my book called ‘Realm of Dreams,’ only I call Lula by the name of Lucy. Each chapter of my book ends with someone’s favorable criticism of Shelley. The best is Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s quotation…But I was speaking of not going to church. When people tell me I ought to go to church, I say to them, ‘I’ve read the Testaments, Old and New—but I’ve also read the Inquisition!’…Aida and I have wonderful relatives, and through them we sort of have grandchildren, too. Some we try to help financially, even though we have so little. I have one sister-in-law who is a French-Mexican girl in Los Angeles, and when she gets our allowance, she always writes me, ‘You have come to me on a magic carpet again.’ Someday, if I no longer have any money, if I’m broke, rather than let them put us in some Old Ladies’ Home, I’ll turn on the gas in this house.”

  Now Minna’s mind darted to many subjects. She remembered the beginning of the First World War. “On August 1, 1914, in Charlottesville, Virginia, Aida and I passed a newsstand, saw the headlines, and I exclaimed, ‘My God, Europe is at war.’ Aida said, ‘Oh, it’ll be over in a couple of months.’ I said, ‘No, Aida, it’ll be over in a couple hundred years.’” Minna spoke of her devotion to music. “I prefer orchestral music to the human voice. Look what time did to Caruso’s voice, and then look what time does to a violin, improving and mellowing it. And the guitar, voice of love and passion, I worship it above all others.” She spoke of her social life. “Aida and I belong to ten women’s societies in New York, but since the war we have attended none of them.” And finally, she spoke of men. “Irving, I love men. I esteem your sex highly.”

  After that, New Year’s Day came and went, and so did my holiday leave, and soon I was deeply involved in my army activities. Two and a half weeks passed without a call from Minna Everleigh, and then, one evening in mid-January of 1946, returning to my hotel, I found a manila envelope in my box addressed in an unfamiliar hand. I opened it and read the following:

  New York

  Saturday

  Jan. 12, 1946

  To Sgt Irving Wallace…

  Greetings from Aida and Minna Lester with cordial best wishes. Since our last phone talk, I have been very ill with Influenza—with severe lung congestion! Sister Aida is taking my dictation this afternoon, as I am still in bed very ill…

  Sister Aida went to the Post Office yesterday and mailed you the promised volumes by Paul Eldridge, and the story of “the world’s oldest profession”—by “Joseph McCabe.” I am enclosing in this the Haldeman-Julius card and address…Editor and Publisher of The American Freeman…Devote your sophisticated mind to Eldridge’s books if they appeal to you—Pardon my scrawl—I am nervous!! Dear Irving Wallace—

  You can see by the above that I am no good taking dictation!! You can phone us some day when you have received the package that I mailed you yesterday, when I hope to be able to tell you that my dear sister is quite convalescent!!

  From yours

  Aida Lester

  Phone End 2-9970

  As soon as I could, I telephoned Minna Everleigh to learn if she had fully recovered (she had), and to inform her that I was leaving New York City in less than a week to be discharged from the army.

  She was pleased that I would soon be a civilian again, and only regretted that I would be leaving her city for California. She sounded weaker than usual, and when she settled into her monologue, it was clear but disjointed.

  “Even if I am a Virginian,” Minna Everleigh said, “I am not intolerant. But I do know that every colored woman hates every white woman. And as for Desdemona kissing Paul Robeson in Othello, that I don’t wish to see…I have nineteen volumes of Chinese poems in my library, and I have committed seven hundred poems to memory. My favorite poet was also the favorite of Emperor Ming…My mind often goes to the Boxer Rebellion, and the siege of the Embassy, when beautiful women were stripped naked and ravished by Mongols. Chiang Kai-shek is a miserable fiend, a demon. I have his entire record, that vile Tartar. Of course, you know that Stalin told F.D.R., ‘I do not share your esteem for Chiang.’ Hitler’s father was another devil…A woman needs a man’s guiding hand, especially in business affairs. In 1929 and 1931, we lost a fortune in mortgages. On a half-million dollars we had invested, we got back only three cents on each dollar. I took our jewels to bolster our credit, but I was scared to go up in a skyscraper, because I feared people were following me to steal the jewels…I’m glad W. Somerset Maugham is one of your favorite writers. He has a sophisticated mind. He is the grandfather of style. But I saw Rain on the stage, and I didn’t like it. His portrait of Sadie Thompson as a cheap little prostitute, that was all bunk.

  And the minister who killed himself after falling into bed with her, that was bunk, too…Well, Irving, so you’re going to be a civilian again. What can I say, except I’ll be with you in spirit next Saturday when you get your honorable discharge. Good luck, Irving, good luck.”

  Two weeks later, I was back in California, and seven months later, I was in Europe, and it was not until a year and a half later, that I found the time to get in touch with the Everleigh sisters once more. I wrote them a long letter about my trip abroad. I made no mention of the play project. I mailed the letter, and waited. Almost two weeks passed, and then there arrived the bulging manila envelope addressed in Minna’s fantastic scrawl. The letter inside read as follows:

  Monday—August 4, 1947—New York

  Dear Irving Wallace

  Your charming letter from Hollywood—dated July 24th received…Your cordial message came as a surprise…I supposed you had forgotten sister, Aida, and me…I remember you and various topics we discussed over the telephone when you were in New York in 1946…

  I read to my sister, Aida, your most interesting letter , . . We were impressed and thrilled by your eloquent recital of your adventures since last we heard from you…Summing these up briefly—after our last phone talk—you were demobilized from the army—you were sent out of New York—and in three days became a civilian again—You returned to your home on the Coast—rejoined your wife, Sylvia—you decided to take a trip to Europe…You received assignments to write stories for Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s—then you left by boat for Sweden—a long and thrilling trip…You were in Europe nine months—started in Stockholm—down by train through occupied Germany—and then to Paris—you were in Paris four months—then you went to Spain—you drove up from Madrid to the French Riviera—then drove on to Pisa and Rome…After that, you went to Switzerland—Berne and Lausanne—then back to Paris—and finally to London… Sister Aida and I appreciate history and literature—dear Irving Wallace—we have traveled in Europe and Asia—we are amazed that through such exciting adventures you could as you state write stories—for magazines…And now you have returned home to Hollywood with your wife, Sylvia!!!

  Sister Aida and I read your classic serial—on the Princess Elizabeth—presumptive heiress to the British Throne and Lieutenant Phillip Mountbatten in Collier’s Magazine—issued in March 1947…This serial’s style was superb—colossal—dear Author—congratulations!!! You have literary genius…

  We fondly prize—two snap shot photos of yourself—dear Irving—taken on your journey—one in Paris—the other beside Raphael’s painting of his mistress in Rome…We like them very much…They are handsome…The photo showing you smoking a cigarette resembles Jacob Weiss—whose picture I enclose [Weiss was a young member of the Jewish Irgun who was hanged by the British in Palestine]…

  How d
amnable the persecution and martyrdom of the Semite peoples—earth’s noblest race…It is the handwriting on the wall for this so-called Christian civilization!!! Satonic Russia Kipling termed—“The Bear that walks like a Man”—will destroy England and America…

  Forgive—dear Irving Wallace—my gloomy pessimism—I have followed the Semites through five thousand years of demoniac persecution—twenty million perished in the fiendish inquisition—if the human race cannot overcome primeval savagery—let atom bombs blot out such bestiality…Forgive my bitter mood!!!

  I meant to conceal my sadness—to answer your inspiring letter—with cheerful response—to thank you for remembering my sister and me so cordially—I felt we were forgotten—in your engrossed, absorbed life—When you visit New York again—in September or October—to consult with your various editors—you may phone me as often as you wish…

  Concerning parties referred to in your phone conversations in 1946—I counseled you then not to waste your literary gifts on plays or books about them—however, if still resolved to write magazine serials telling stories of their lives—they still reside in New York—I will let you know their attitude to publicity!!!

  Meantime—rest assured that you have our appreciation—admiration—changeless friendship…Let me know this response to your wonderful letter reached you…

  Phone me when in New York—Endicott 2-9970—May life be kind to you and to your loved…May your heart’s desire be granted in fullest measure…

  Most sincerely—

  Minna Lester

  Post script—Monday—August 4—1947

  Have you written stories for “The American Weekly”—one of the Hearst’s New York Journal American Magazines??? Very popular—great circulation!!!

  I enclose a Cholly Knickerbocker column from Hearst’s newspaper—the daily Journal American telling of Phillip Mountbatten—the Prince of Greece—of his visit here in 1938—of his infatuation for Cobina Wright Jr…Very spicy!!! Give your impressions when you write…