Memory, Grief, Three O'clock in the Morning: My Mavis Gallant Centennial Diary, 37, Part One
take another frog and do the same
May 31, 4.15 a.m.
No store in store for me. Sick day. Headache. Scratchy throat. Fatigue. Amorphous twinge of creeping foreboding. Probably nothing more than a mild case of Incipient Ennui. Lying low, though. Abundance of caution, etc. Look in mirror, tongue extruded, mouth wide open, checking the oral cavity for signs of infection, none discerned. All the same, consult my cherished copy of Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects, by John Aubrey (5th Edition, London: Reeves and Turner, 1890) for advice on a prophylaxis, should one be required. Here is his recipe for curing thrush in children; I assume it would work just as well for the elderly:
“Take a living frog, and hold it in a cloth, that it does not go down into the child’s mouth; and put the head into the child’s mouth ’till it is dead; and then take another frog, and do the same.”
Origin of “frog in throat?” Prob not.
End of May. The crows, like clockwork, with probable caws, have started their morning barking. This is how it will be for the next six weeks as their families begin to grow. The sentinels will be hard at work, no sleeping at the guard posts. Passersby will be scrutinized, threatened, dive-bombed. One or two babies will fall too early from the nest. It always happens, boughs break, cradles fall, a clamour in the murder. Heartbreak out of nowhere, which is where heartbreak tends to originate, appearing uninvited at the horizon point, assuming form, slowly riding into Dodge.
Warm, moist morning, dawn coming on. Woke as the sun became symptomatic. It’s the opposite season to the one Sylvia Plath describes in her poem “Winter Trees,” but the effect is the same, the damp watercolour play of the light. I knew it once by heart, that poem. Do I still? Strange what hangs around, what takes a powder. I can still remember my frequent flyer number, which I’ve not had cause to reference in years and years, but my Social Security identifier, often required, doesn’t necessarily come when bidden. Can the synapses still connect the dots, clear a path to Plath? Here. I’ll try to write it down, “Winter Trees,” without reference to text, minus the line breaks. It will give the fact checkers something to gnaw on.
The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve. Against their blotter of fog, the trees seem a botanical drawing, memories growing ring on ring, a series of weddings. Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery, truer than women, they seed so effortlessly, tasting the winds that are footless, waist-deep in history. Full of wings, otherworldliness, in this they are Ledas. Oh, mother of leaves and sweetness, who are these Pietas? The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but easing nothing.
I think that’s right. Close enough. A pleasure to put down those words in that order. Sylvia. What a genius. She would be 89, if only. Boughs break. Cradles fall. The morning brought her to mind and so, for self-evident reasons, did this New York Times news report I had reason to find.
To be clear, lest you think I’m floundering in the deep end, not waving but drowning, there is a connection here to our raison d’etre. It was via Mavis Gallant (MG) that I read about the sad end of Henry A. Bull, former editor of Town and Country, who died with his dinner in the oven, perhaps accidentally. I’ll require your patience as we get there, the road’s twisty, but scenic. The clipping pasted above was from December 11, 1954 — which stirs in me a speculative impulse re: his death as accident. Most men will go to extraordinary lengths to sidestep Christmas.
For timeline context, it was a week later, December 18, that this classic MG story appeared in The New Yorker.
(I note just now, owing to distraction and page turning, that Adrienne Rich had a poem, “The Insomniacs”, in that same issue; this gives me what used to be called a queer turn. When the just-referenced Sylvia Plath, a few years younger and similarly ambitious, sought her out, Rich, already a mother of three, advised her not to have children. Also a bit chill-making, given what I’ve just written about cradles, boughs, and breaking is her last stanza:
The moral of the story is — it’s all about me.)
Where was I?
Oh, yes. What I’m writing now owes its origins to yesterday’s posting that touched on the 1984 MG story “Overhead in a Balloon.” In it, she mentions Mozart’s Concerto in C Major for Flute and Harp; I provided a recording of the first movement performed by an idol of my flute-playing teenage years, Elaine Shaffer, and Marilyn Costello. By the time Costello began her harp lessons, age 14, 1939, the most celebrated harpist in America, arguably in the world, was Mildred Dilling.
Dilling was an indefatigable superstar, traveled all over the world, played everywhere for everyone, command performances wherever performances could be commanded, six visits to the White House, and so on. Famously, she was the teacher of Harpo Marx, and she was also called upon to administer industry-related primers to Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and (be still my fevered heart) Deanna Durbin. Dilling’s career flourished at a time when there was considerable crossover between popular and classical music, when players like Horowitz or Heifetz could as easily turn up at the Hollywood Canteen as at Carnegie Hall. She was, at her peak, a household name, and was surely the lodestar for many young harpists, most of them little girls from families of means. (No doubt there are harpists who came from disadvantaged circumstances, but they are few and far between; the same is true, I think, of orchestral players in general. There’s a reason why “classical” starts with “class.”)
Mildred’s closest companion was her sister, a violinist with whom she often traveled and performed. She was far along in the game, secure and mature, almost 50, by the time she married, October 9, 1943.
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Time now 8.33 a.m. here in Woozyville. The store’s open, haven’t heard any explosions, apparently it can get along without me. Hate that. I’m just back from a 90-minute research break, of which anyone left standing will now be the beneficiary. It had not been my intention make more than passing mention of Mildred Dilling on the way back to MG, certainly wasn’t interested in her marriage, which was brief, as late-life unions sometimes are when the principals realize the event doesn't live up to its billing; rhymes with Dilling. A few things, though, about that NYTimes announcement, the screenshot facsimile of which is pasted above, piqued my curiosity, and pressed for — if not exactly cried out for — investigation.
First, we can suppose that Mildred, a celebrity, wouldn’t want just any old officiant to oversee her late-life nuptials. Who, then, was the Rev. William Rainey Bennett of Marion, Indiana, and who was he to her? There was a hometown connection. Marion was Mildred’s birthplace — James Dean also came to light there, and it was in Marion, in 1993, that Julia Roberts married Lyle Lovett, a union that lasted half as long as that of Mr. and Mrs. Parker. Bennett seems to have been a kind of Norman Vincent Peale type. He traveled on a preaching circuit, was known as “the man who can,” and advocated a sort of “the mind can overcome the body” philosophy of being.
It’s a pity the wedding was intimate, as W R Bennett was plainly someone better suited to a stadium than to a drawing room.
Mildred was a Christian Scientist — as was Ginger Rogers, if memory serves, perhaps they crossed paths now and again in one Reading Room or another — and Dr. Bennett’s mind over matter teaching would, I suppose, have held some appeal. Clinton Woodbridge Parker, born a baptist, became a Christian Scientist when he was a teenager. This we know because a small cache of his papers, dating from the end years of the First World War, are housed in the Clements Library at the University of Michigan. (see here if you want to look further into them, Parker Papers) They are mostly letters to his mother, describing his life as an enlisted man. Camp life was hard but interesting, not without its rewards. He was able to tout the virtues of his faith. I felt a twinge of kinship with Clinton when I read of how he would write to his Ma about how his social life involved private houses and hotels, but that he never named his associates, or spoke of how they met. The vibe grew more intense when I thought of him being identified as a banker and artist, when I considered that he was marrying for the first time at 55, and that his bride to be was a kind of fantasy figure: a harpist, and a world renowned one, at that. Someone with fabulous gowns of a certain size and an instrument at which he demonstrate his particular pluck. Look, I have no way of knowing, but this is something I’ve seen before and the human capacity for delusion is bottomless. If Clinton Woodbridge Parker, banker and artist, had simply been waiting for the right girl to come along, I’d be very very very surprised.
Not much remains of him, other than the papers at the Clements Library. He turns up here, in 1930 —
— as a patron —
— cozied up to the ladies, and peeking over the heads of Miss Maak, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Hopkins to catch eye of William “the D stands for Discreet” Camp. There’s this clipping from a Brooklyn paper, April 3, 1946.
And then, poignantly and tragically, July 31,1948.
Unlike Henry A. Bull, with whom this began, this last act was unequivocal. Why? Always the question, impossible to answer, impossible not to theorize. Which here, I won’t. For Clinton — for Mildred, too, for whom this would have been terrible beyond telling, but who, to take nothing away from the trauma, was worldly, tough at the core, a survivor with a vast network of resources and possibilities — I have many feelings. About Clinton, I have the strange, unwarranted sense that I can clutch at his reasons. I have known Clintons, heard tell of more. But enough. Too sad. Tomorrow, I’ll finish up the story, and bring this back to Henry Bull, to another Mildred, one we’ve met before, and to Daphne Hellman, pictured above, who also had bad luck with husbands, three of them, and then, at last, to MG.
Mildred Dilling died in 1982. About her final resting place, if there is one, I can find nothing. Anyone? Her huge harp collection was bequeathed to the University of Indiana —a fitting memorial. Clinton W Parker was buried, or is memorialized, in the Artists Cemetery in Woodstock, NY. The monument is beautiful, untended, enigmatic. His name is inscribed, the dates. No “beloved husband of,” no mention made of Mildred, at whose behest it was surely installed. If ever you visit and find it, you will know a little of who he was. Say hello for me. If you put your ear to the shell, you’ll hear, perhaps, what he has to tell. Let me know if I’ve got it right. 9.55 a.m. Have to sleep. Hope to wake. Thanks for reading, xo, B