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Kyra Markham: Letters to Louis Sheaffer (1962–63)

2022; Penn State University Press; Volume: 43; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/eugeoneirevi.43.2.0126

2161-4318

Annotated by Jeffery Kennedy, Edited by Alexander Pettit,

Translation Studies and Practices

Kyra Markham’s skill as a raconteur was not matched by her typing or by her spelling, but her misadventures at the keyboard help create a lively persona. Markham’s jest in letter 2, below, about her struggles with spelling “Charlemagne” indicates an unembarrassed awareness of a common deficiency, and her remarks about drinking in letters 5 and 8 suggest a situational clumsiness that seems to merit recognition in an edition of increasingly casual letters.The following texts attempt to reconcile Markham’s persona and the reader’s convenience. To this end I have retained orthographical eccentricities but silently emended presumed errors of typography. The distinction is chimerical but, I think, defensible: a diplomatic transcription would frustrate readers, and a text based on principles of correctness and regularity would misrepresent a writer interested in neither. So, for example, “effotr” becomes “effort,” but, twice, the phonetically credible “excellant” remains, as do “rythm,” “catilepsy,” “one actor” (for one-acter), and other modest misprisions. “Madethem” and analogous indicators of an unpressed space bar are rectified, but the author’s habit of amalgamating compound adjectives (e.g., “overimpressed” and “openair”) is honored. Markham’s acceptance of “Charleghmaine” and “Charlegmaine” has encouraged the retention of, for example, “O’Niell,” “Fitzi”/“Fitzie,” and “Emperor”/“Emporer.” Permutations of “[Kenneth] Macgowan” and “[Gustav] von Seyyfertitz” survive, none, like the Charlemagne variations, correct. On several occasions, I have posited intended readings within square brackets.I have edited punctuation conservatively. For example, Markham’s reluctance to use commas does not invite editorial attention, nor does her inconsistent placement of periods relative to closing quotation marks. A need for clarity, however, has prompted me silently to add several dropped units of punctuation. In a passage on Susan Glaspell’s The Verge, I have silently rectified a tangle of opening and closing quotation marks.Autograph marginal and intralineal corrections and addenda are entered silently; passages marked for deletions are omitted—except one instance, where a deletion seems to clarify Markham’s meaning.The letters are held in the Louis Sheaffer Collection of Eugene O’Neill, Linda Lear Center for Special Collections and Archives, Connecticut College, New London. The Center’s director of special collections, Benjamin Panciera, generously provided scans and contextual information; Brian Miller of robertstrongwoodword.com provided genealogical guidance. Gratitude is due as well to Markham’s grandchildren and next of kin, with whose permission the letters are published: Abby Cole, Anabel Cole, Barbara Cole, Maggie Cole, Peter Cole, Lisa Ruddick, and Margie Ruddick.Letter 1 (TLS, 1 p.). March 22nd, ’62, | Box 953, | Port-au-Prince, | Haiti. [To:] Mr. Louis Sheaffer, | 5 Montague Terrace, | Brooklyn Heights, N.Y.Dear Mr. Sheaffer —I have neither the desire nor the intent to return to New York in the near future, but doubt if I could be any real help to you on your life of Eugene O’Neill. I never know Gene too well, not as well as I knew other people you mention in your letter, but what I remember of any of them is the sketchy, incidental stuff that, to me, makes life interesting, but not the material for such a document as a biography of a man sponsored by anything sounding so formidable as “American Council of Learned Societies”. The very title, the presumption and arrogance of it, curdles my blood.Several years ago a young pendant named Elias came to interview me in Connecticut about Dreiser.1 I read his book and am glad many of the phony statements in it cannot be traced to me. That anyone could think Dreiser ever took a Ouigi board seriously is too funny for words. Dreiser made copious notes on everything that touched his life; it did not mean that he accepted all of it. For a while our crowd had a lot of fun playing with the thing and I suspect that John Cowper Powys’ witch like and charming sister, Marian, took her fortune-telling quite seriously, but that was all there was to our playing with the Ouigi board, just fun.2If one must live in New York you have, to me, the most charming location available, that is if you overlook the harbor. All success to you.SincerelyKyra MarkhamP.S. I am returning to you your international stamp certificate. For some reason, probably just plain ignorance, they are not accepted in Haiti.Letter 2 (TLS with autograph postscript, 2 pp.). July 23rd, ’62, | 21 Rue Nerette, | Petionville, Haiti. [To:] Mr. Louis Sheaffer, | 5 Montague Terrace, | Brooklyn Heights, N.Y.Dear Mr. Sheaffer:It is strange, receiving your letter tonight, for only this morning I finished reading Elizabeth Nowell’s magnificent life of Tom Wolfe for the second time.1 In all my seventy years I cannot remember rereading more than three books, unless it was a beloved classic on which I had gone stale.Your second letter sounds so much more human than the first that I would be pleased to be of help if I could, but actually I have very few memories of Gene. I never knew him well. I wrote to the Gelbs about everything I did remember and am interested to learn that they quote me. I saw only the review in the Sunday Times Book Review section and was inclined to resent all the people who rush into print about someone newly dead. A biography of Charleghmaine or Voltaire, even, requires a little work, but too many authors with nothing to write about and only an urge to consider themselves writers rather than the white collar workers they should be eagerly pick the brains of anyone who once had a drink in some waterfront bar with an O’Niell or a Wolfe. Miss Nowell’s beautiful selectivity in quoting from Wolfe’s letters has made me want to read his books, something I could not do before. They were too egocentric. (I love my spelling of Charlegmaine, and I still do not have it right!)People have been after me for years to write my own memoirs and I have made copious notes but never had the courage to get down to work. Either you tell all or you write something so false as to be valueless. God knows where all those notes are now! I thought I had brought them with me but only yesterday I went through my papers and they are not there. If I help you in the small way I can on the people you ask about, — God what memories you bring me with just the mention of their names, — I am giving you my thunder.That is all right, too, for I think I have been hurt too much to write a good book, sufficiently objectively. Dreiser used to lam into me that I had been brought up too soft but I don’t know what I could have done about it! If seeing that I got a certain amount of buffeting was his programme he certainly succeeded. All the names you mention bring up terrific memories, most of them of hurts. If there had not been certain incidents that made me laugh and the tears stop flowing I would have been dead long ago. In a story about me Dreiser actually wrote that I died of a broken heart when I left him.2 A great deal of me died then but it was not because of him, but because of those best parts of me that had died in having to give up a dream.When you say people just say of Fitzi that she was wonderful you are virtually quoting right out of my mouth.3 That is my memory of Fitzi. It was she that kept the steady keel under Provincetown Players. When Bobbie Jones and Kenneth Magowan came in with their alien ideas of revivals of Fashion and Moliere’s George Dandin she made no attempt to stop it, although the whole idea of the organization had been to produce, to discover new talents.4 I remember once, in a rage, declaring to her “The whole trouble with Provincetown Players is that our overhead is so low that we can’t afford to die!” Of course, that was after the great days of the group were over.The whole idea of producing Strindberg’s “Spook Sonata” had been Gene O’Neill’s, but it was to be like no other production.5 Gene wanted a blare of trumpets to follow every cliche, such as “It is always in the kitchen that the embryo is destroyed if it has not already occurred in the bedroom.” (That quote is not correct, but it is a long time!) Then was to follow a Taaa-taa! As we all did any job that had to be done at Provincetown that month I was costuming I scarcely saw a rehearsal until the end and discovered that Bobbie, who was directing, had wrecked the play. Gene’s idea was totally lost. At the end of the rehearsal I blurted out “Every truly Strindbergian line has been cut!” Kenneth rushed over and tried to soothe me by passing his hand over my face. Bobbie turned white as a sheet and grabbed his hat and coat and rushed into the street. Kenneth, Jimmie Light, Walter Abel, every male concerned tore after him and shortly he came back with outstretched arms, shouting “It’s all right, Kyra, I love you just the same.”6 I didn’t want his love! I wanted to see the production that was planned and of which all of them had lost sight in Gene’s absence.I am glad to learn that you have been in touch with Jimmie Light. I found him and Patty just before I left for Haiti two years ago and have been afraid to write because he was, after one telephone conversation that was a joy to me, terribly ill. I was so afraid he might have died and I never knew Patty very well. Lived with him and Susie for a short period at one time that was riotous.7I cannot imagine having enough to write to you that would justify a bank draft for mailing charges but if you wish to send the stuff from the Gelb book so that I may know what has already been stated I will try to help.Yours SincerelyKyra MarkhamP.S. Wish I had been present when you and Norma met!8Letter 3 (TLS, 2 pp.). Aug. 17th ’62, | 21 Nerette, | Petionville, | Haiti.Dear Mr Sheaffer:I started to write to you of the many people of whom you asked when your letter came, so many memories came flooding back to me. Then I decided that I should wait until the stuff you are sending me arrived and I could read it through. It still has not come but I decided I should at least acknowledge your letter. No, I am not offended by your sending me the money for the postage. One of my reasons for living in Haiti is that I can afford to live at all.I am surprised that you did not mention Mary Blair.1 If one was to judge by the attitude of Gene and Jig and Jimmy Light, all the men of our crowd in fact, she was another Duse. I never quite got it, excepting that she drank huskily with them all. She was a homely woman with a badly pock-marked face. I once saw her do a performance, I think it was in “All God’s Chillun,” that moved me, but the next night she had been drinking and she was appalling. At the time I got to know her she was just splitting up with Edmund Wilson.2 I had one happy evening with her during which she divided her time between me and the baby in another room. Bunny [Wilson] came in as though he was not at all a part of the household and left immediately. After that she married a Connie Aiken, a handsome, wealthy man and I never saw either of them excepting drunk.3 I suppose you already know that she became a hopeless alcoholic and died in an institution.Mary Pyne was something else, one of the loveliest people I ever knew, with a strange, eerie philosophy. Whether or not Belasco, when he became enamored of her, could have made her into a real actress I would not know; he was content to give his women an adequate setting whether they had talent or not.4 She was so very beautiful, with her camelia-like skin and masses of red hair, affecting always long, beltless black robes. Belasco used to give her piles of books to study, but that was at the end. I don’t think most of us realized how ill she was.There was a tea party at Frank Harris’s one Sunday afternoon in the days when we really drank tea, to meet that revolting-looking white grub, Alastair Crowley.5 As we left the old studio building on North Washington Square, long gone, Mary stood at the top of the high flight of steps with the light of a street-lamp flooding over her. It was just dusk. She closed her own orchid-tinted eyelids and said softly “Who took the pennies off that dead man’s eyes?” I shall never forget the picture she made.I was too innocent in those days to even have heard of Lesbianism. I think Mary’s relationship with Djuna Barnes was quite innocent.6 When she was dying and I would take her hot soups to the unheated room where she lay, the while Harry, objecting to doctors, was smashing all bottles of medicine on the cold hearth, and Hutch Hapgood was sitting by her bedside urging her to believe that life was unimportant, in so far as I can gather, she asked me not to come to her any more. She said “It upsets Djuna and I know you will understand.” I never saw her again.I never knew Djuna very well, did not understand her and she frightened me a little. I have never been able to put up any armour against people who delight in saying cutting things. I am too vulnerable and have no choice but to avoid them. When Howard Scott and I started living together she attacked me viciously for having taken him away from Helen Westley.7 She might just as well have said from all the women we knew! I knew nothing of his relations with other women, had a job at Fox Film in those days and was working hard, so that I saw the people I knew only in the evenings. I hardly knew Helen and she was always so filthy I could not imagine any man wanting to go to bed with her. Djuna’s attack only made my life with him one more agony.When her strange play, I think it was called “Three From Earth,” was put on I am afraid that I took a malicious delight in one thing that happened. The play ended with a woman’s sons kissing her lewdly and one saying, at the final curtain, “That was how you bore us.” One critic, dashing up the aisle, saw Djuna standing there and said “Oh Miss Barnes, how clever of you! That was how you bored us!”8I don’t know if memories such as these will be of any value to you. The business I told you of her attacking me in defense of Helen Westley is only to give an idea of the strange, twisted way her mind worked.Until the section of the book comes I will hold off, now. I wish my memories of many of these people were happier ones. I start to write them down and sound as though I were complaining. Let the dead rest in peace and by that I do not mean the people; I mean my memories.Yours SincerelyKyra MarkhamLetter 4 (TLS, 6 pp.). Sept. 6th, ’62 | 21 Nerette, | Petionville, | Haiti.Dear Mr Sheaffer:I have sort of hoped for word from you, whether or not my portrait of Mary Pyne was of any help. It is very difficult, in writing of people one has known, to know where scandalmongering leaves off and true biography begins. I’m afraid too much that I have to tell tales on the quality of the former. That is one of the reasons I do not want to do a book myself. Also I do not understand the amount of malice in the world. When I had signed and sealed that last letter to you I found myself shaking. I’m not too happy about bringing up these old memories and you may find that you do not want to be bothered with them. They will be in no organized, correctly circumscribed order; they will have to flow just as they come or I cannot spare the time. Why, oh why, did you not ask this of me six months ago when I was in a do-less state and would have enjoyed occupation? Now you have caught me just as a painting I have been thinking about for a year has jelled and I am working on it eight and nine hours a day.Biography can be an art just as much as an essay or a novel, can’t it? I waded through the three hundred pages of the Gelb book, utterly stunned that material that scarcely had a page without mention of someone I knew could be so dull. I was most intrigued by their first mention of me, something like “an attractive young woman from Chicago who wanted to act.” The only reasoning that I was no more involved in that season at Provincetown was that I was under contract to Frohman to play opposite Otis Skinner the following season and was expecting a wire calling me for rehearsals every day.1 The contract fell through partly because I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown from having felt it necessary to leave Theo, but partly because of Mr. Skinner’s director, which brings me to one point in the Gelb book with which I disagree entirely, their generalizations about directors.They said that a director did not matter in those days. That is quite erroneous. Directors got full credit. Perhaps they were not so much featured in reviews but critics did not matter so much then either. That old bastard, Percy Hammond was both kind and cruel to me at different times and rarely gave credit to anything that was important in a production.2 When Frohman let me out, or rather, just before, Mr. Skinner took me into his dressing room for a talk one day and I shall never forget his saying “Please try to do whatever Mr. Von Seifertitz asks of you. He has saved my life many times.3 Not artistically, mind, but from the box office point of view.” But I had never been yelled at before. When I rehearsed my directors had discussed the psychology of the woman I was playing, but always in a private conversation. When I was supposed to make my first entrance screaming and Von Seiftertitz yelled louder than I, I was finished. I left for the West coast immediately to try to do high-brow drama for the California audience which was not ready for it, if it is now. Richard Ordynski, who had been Reinhardt’s stage manager, was played up more than any one else in the organization as the director.4 Perhaps in Shakespeare’s time the director did not matter but within my experience they have always done so.To begin now to answer direct questions. No, I am not aware that Gene and Terry ever lived in the hull of a wrecked ship. Gene was ensconsed quite comfortably in the sailmaker’s loft next door to Mr. Francis.5 My apartment was with that nice fat man. It was in that door I used to see Gene standing leaning against the door above the ramp on which they dragged boats up for reconditioning, hours on end, gazing out to sea. The Gelbs have described it badly. He would look and look and then, ever so slowly, wade out into the water until it was deep enough to swim and then continue swimming until he was lost to sight.I knew Jack Reed and Louis Bryant quite well but in my innocence never knew that Gene had an affair with her.6 I remember one afternoon in their funny little apartment, no bigger than a minute, in Milligan Place.7 Jack was in Russia and Louis was riding high, with a pedicure and a hair dresser both in attendance. I sat beside her while the work went on and she suddenly asked me “Kyra, do you think I shall rate as one of the great women of the world today?” The next time I saw her she had again just returned from Europe and was in Romany Marie’s, drunk as drunk. She still recognized me and threw her arms around my neck and clung so that I, revolted by the smell of stale liquor, had to be rescued by several men and my wonderful Marie.8If anyone is due credit in that world for what they did for artists of all types it is Romany Marie. She fed so many who have since become prominent and I wonder if, after success came, they ever did anything for her? She was one of the most warm-hearted, generous human beings I ever knew. Did Gene ever send her fifty dollars after he was successful? She almost made the painter, Mark Tobey, who avoided all old contacts after he hit a sinecure with a rich woman in Seattle. Did he ever send her anything? I could go on about Romany for ages! She, according to her income, did more for artists than Otto Kahn.9 She was wonderful.It is strange, but your marked passages in the main drew a blank. I discovered through the Gelb pages that one of my troubles with P. P. was that I was not a drinker. Jiggie once said that the reason we had not gotten on better was that we had never had an affair, so even in a dedicated theatre a woman could not escape the producer’s office couch.10Speaking of Jig, I may as well tell all while I have just mentioned him. The first time I met him Theo took me to call on him and Susan about 1913, Jig was doing a piece of sculpture, the most pornygraphic thing I have ever seen, not because it was pornygraphic but because, lacking love or imagination it had the quality of being lewd. I do not remember seeing them again until Provincetown, 1916, nor do I remember anything outstanding of that summer. I missed the really creative years of Provincetown Players excepting as a bystander, since I was earning my living when the theatre died with the first world war as an art director in the movies. You have the dates, so I do not know when it was that Jimmie Light called me on the phone and asked me if I wanted to costume a show. I let myself in for a slavery that eventually landed me in the hospital but that is beside the point.Kenneth McGowan and Bobbie Jones had gotten their noses in the door and were about to take over. It was going to cease to be “The Playwrite’s Theatre” and become whatever amused them. Bobbie was justifiably the artist, creative on his own, but Kenneth was a light-weight, a doodler and a dabbler with no concept of the sacrifices others had made, not including me, to make that experiment go. The first production I was to costume was “Spook Sonata”. I find I am getting off the subject, so no more of that.When I was cast in a play, — I do not remember what one, — Ida Rauh quarreled with everything I did.11 Jig had to come to my rescue and tell her that I was right. That is my first memory of Jig in the theatre.Later Susan’s play “The Verge” was to be cast.12 Although I had also been playreading for the group I had never had a glimpse of this script. One morning Jog announced “Kyra, come and give a reading of ‘The Verge’”. I protested that I did not know what it was about and had never seen the script. He said that would prove how good an actress I was. In so far as I know that was the beginning of the vogue for sight-reading where an actor or actress proved how good they were by also proving they did not know what they were talking about, just “inspired”. I read the play to a small gathering, at least my part, and afterwards Jig went up to Fitzie and said “Kyra has given such a powerful reading of ‘The Verge’ that I don’t know what to do.” Fitzie hopefully replied “Then isn’t she the woman to play it?” to which Jig replied “No, she’s too kind hearted.” Nonetheless he promised that the play would not be cast until Susan had heard me in the role. The next thing I learned was that the play was in rehearsal with Margaret Wycherly in the part.13 Heart-broken, for it had moved me deeply, I telephoned Susan. She charged me with saying that Jig had lied, which, of course he had, and hung up on me. We did not speak for twenty years.My last memory of Jig is having lunch with Jig at the Golden Eagle. Throughout the lunch he was talking to an invisible confidant over his far shoulder. He occasionally addressed a brief sentence to me but, in so far as I am concerned, just before they left for Greece, he was as cuckoo as anyone could be. I never read the “Road to the Temple”. Susan’s fatuous devotion was something I never understood.14We all coddled Susan in the early days of our acquaintance because she had a leaking valve in her heart. After she had buried Jig and divorced Norman Matson I met her at a cocktail party at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.15 Before we broke up I said that I would love to have her come and see me but I lived up five flights of stairs. Susan beamed on the assembled group and said “Kyra is thinking of the days when I had heart-trouble”.One story that went the rounds years ago was that Susan erected a statue of Jig in her garden at Truro and when she had married Norman Matson he continually had Jig’s perfections to face. Came the day when Susan went out into the garden and the statue was smashed to a thousand pieces and Norman was much more of a man after that.May I say here and now that her play “Trifles” was the most satisfyingly written play in which I ever appeared, so tightly written. When she wanted me to play the Aunt in her play — Oh dear, my memory fails me, — was it “Inheritors” in which lovely Anne Harding made her debut? I dreaded it because the woman expressed everything I did not believe in, but again Susan wrote so well that I found myself engrossed in becoming that woman during the hours on stage. But the great performance of that play was Jasper Deeter. Life makes so many strange misfits! Jasper was a great artist but also he was so twisted that later in his own theatre in Rose Valley he had to be surrounded b[y] such a group of boot-lickers and satelites that he destroyed his own plans half the time.16 But in “Inheritors” his performance of the old, half-mad father who loves growing fine corn was magnificent. When he wasn’t being worked on by his toadies he was wonderful to work with. Too few actors know that they will appear better in a scene if they give to their fellow-players. Jap had that gift; I have done scenes with him that, I am told, electrified the audience because there was always a give and take between us.Sept. 12th.The painting has kept me tied and I have been too tired at the end of my working day to return to this. Also I find I don’t even think clearly about it and wanted to destroy all I had written but have already destroyed more than I am including, so you will have to simply accept the thoughts as they come.Referring to your names and to the Gelb description of Terry Carlin, he was not tall. I am, or was, five nine and a half, and Terry was much shorter than I.Has anyone told you the story of the days when Success had begun to hit Gene and Agnes was a little overimpressed with herself. For a while, I guess it was at Fairfield, she had the house full of prominent people, Ethel Barrymore, etc. Gene could take just so much of that.17 I understood that Terry lived in the attic.18 One Sunday morning when she could not find Gene anywhere she climbed the stairs to the attic and there was Gene, having a quiet visit with Terry. When he demanded that he come down and make himself agreeable to their guests and Gene refused she said “Sometimes I think you love Terry more than you do me”. To which Gene is purported to have replied “Sometimes I think so myself”.There are darling stories of Terry with Shayne.19 I wish I could remember them! Of one time when Terry climbed a telephone pole to get a message because Shayne was worried over something and after a pretended conversation was able to reassure the child so that they continued their walk.Christine was always lovable.20 Slovenly, with her carrot colored hair always falling down, often disgusting, — like the time she claimed to have performed an abortion on herself with a nail, — she was vital and picturesque. She really seemed to go to pot when she married Pat Barnum, heir without an inheritance of P. T. Barnum, but she was always interesting. I remember one morning in her restaurant when she had poured coffee for several of us and then settled down to read her morning paper. She came on the item of Jack Barrymore and Doris Costello, whom he had recently married, having a baby.21 “Why, when were they married?” she questioned, and then, “they must have rehearsed the show before it went on.”Has anyone ever noted that the three Millay sisters were the voices singing in the distance for “Moon of the Carribees?”22 And lovely those voices were. The three sisters enjoyed doing close harmony together. Vincent wrote the words of the song, all that I remember is that in a dark garden “when black the roses are”. I was most amused by your description of Norma.23 I had a similar experience just before leaving for Haiti excepting that she was as cordial as she is capable of being. If she has not transfused her own personality into Vincent’s she has done so as nearly as possible. As heir to Vincent’s life, poetry, estate, she puts on a great lady act, not for herself but for Vincent, that I found highly amusing. I used to think she was more intelligent than that. I knew, after one afternoon after a long lapse of years, that I never wanted to go there again.24 I took a couple of lovely color-shots of Vincent’s garden and sent enlargements to her and Charlie but after receiving her thanks have let things ride. Vincent was so different; she was a gentle person.As I said before, I really began working with P. P. when I costumed “Fashion” and that was after the great days were over.25 By that time Gene and Jig had become impressed with their Broadway connections and the inclusion of McGowan and Bobbie Jones in the organization, with their alien ideas from a playwrights’ theatre, was neither a part of the original idea nor welcome by the many people who had slugged their very souls out, at the start, without salary.26 Had Edna Kenton voiced her disapproval at any open meeting I’m certain she would have found a voting following.27 Of course by that time everyone was very much impressed by Gene and it was difficult to resist him. I have always been terribly disappointed that I lost the part of the prostitute in his “Welded” because I was taller than Ben Ami.28 It was the best written part in the play and I could have wiped up the stage with it.I find no mention anywhere of Gene’s plan to dramatize the Book of Job. He loved to tease me with the idea that I wanted to play the Great Whore of Babylon.29Also no one, or at least in my reading, has ever brought out the importance of the drums at the very beginning of “The Emporer Jones.” The organization had kept fairly secret that there would be a drum-beat beginning before the rise of the curtain and continuing at a more rapid pulse-beat, through intermissions, until the Emperor