The Sunday Gentleman (9 page)

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 paralyzed 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 damnable 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…

After that, except for exchanges of greeting cards on various holidays, this was the last communication I was to have from the Everleigh sisters. I was fully occupied in my efforts to make a living as a free-lance writer, and I neglected to continue my correspondence with Aida and Minna. I was unable to visit New York, as I had promised Minna I would, and so I had no opportunity to speak to them on the telephone.

I kept meaning to write, and postponing it, and then, a year and a month after Minna Everleigh’s last letter to me, I learned that she was dead.

I sent my heartfelt condolences to Aida. I added a written obituary to a number of others that had been published. Even though I had been born in Chicago after the Everleigh Club had closed its doors forever, and the sisters had left that city, I felt that I had been a part of their time and a small part of their lives. My father, my uncle, my closest male relatives had been, in their youth, in Chicago when the Everleigh sisters had also been young and renowned. These members of my family had seen or at least known of the celebrated millionaires’ bagnio when princes and senators, prizefight champions and authors had enjoyed the scaled-down gold piano and fancy cuspidors, the rich library and boudoirs, the thirty beautiful girls and the sisters themselves.

I liked to believe that all of that glory and wonder had not been for our fathers and grandfathers alone. I had been one of the lucky ones to share a part of it. For I had known the Everleighs, too. True, I had known them four decades late, when they seemed to have become two characters out of
Arsenic and Old Lace
, when they had become pretenders named Lester, when they had become respectable clubwomen who belonged to ten women’s societies and lived in lonely dignity off Central Park in New York City. Yet, through them, by mail, by telephone, I had become intimate with their enemies, the “plotters of the South Side Levee,” with their affection for Byron and Shelley and de Maupassant, with their attitudes about women and race, with their genteel distaste for the bawdy, with their old Virginia background and family.