A Heaven of Words: Last Journals, 1956–1984

1960–1964

– T he new decade is first marked by the death of Josephine Wescott on January 4, and then by the move from Stoneblossom to Haymeadows, which is completed in April. In the city, Wheeler finds a more suitable apartment, number 8M at 251 East Fifty-First Street at Second Avenue, where he andWescott will host their memorable gatherings for almost three more decades. As president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Wescott becomes increasingly involved in high-profile literary politics and in the business of awards and grants. Despite endless planning with Robert Phelps for a retrospective collection, “AWindfall,” he postpones the volume in February 1961, partly because he wants to use some material in a 1962 book of literary essays and reminiscences. Images of Truth is a wellreceived work on the art of fiction, with personal perspectives on the life and work of Katherine Anne Porter, W. Somerset Maugham, Isak Dinesen, Colette, Thornton Wilder, and Thomas Mann. This leads to book tours and television appearances, sometimes with Katherine Anne Porter, who has her great success with Ship of Fools. Wescott promises his publisher to follow up with a reshuffled “A Windfall” anthology, but when it involves finishing a long-delayed story, “The Stallions,” fiction once more becomes a stumbling block and a dead end. Still, Robert Phelps, whose own career blossoms with works on Colette and Cocteau, remains devoted to Wescott’s work and eventually will edit the first book of journals, up to 1955. 51 52 1960–1964 Among the post-1955 journals on these pages are interesting comments on the passing of such notables as Hemingway, Cocteau, Marilyn Monroe , and John F. Kennedy. Wescott’s articles in Life and Atlantic Monthly and frequent 1963–65 NewYork HeraldTribune book reviews keep him in the public eye. Also, he’s included in a July 1963 Esquire issue on the American literary scene, photographed with contemporaries such as Dawn Powell, Malcolm Cowley, Virgil Thomson, Carl Van Vechten, and Man Ray. Family and farm life, as well as the New York social world, absorb most of his time. Meanwhile, Barbara is an important patron of the arts, and LloydWescott takes on appointed positions for New Jersey’s succession of Democratic governors. As president of the State Board of Control for prisons, he sometimes finds work for released convicts from a nearby women’s prison. One colorful and permanent farmhand is Ethel “Bunny” Sohl, who dresses as a man and who, in 1938 with a girlfriendaccomplice , had robbed and murdered a bus driver. A behavioral problem at first, Ethel’s loyalty is won over by a few private pages written by Glenway. He sometimes refers to her as “our transvestite murderess.” Influenced by his younger friends, he re-visits the gay enclaves of Fire Island, where his crowd sunbathed nude in the twenties. He also becomes angered to the point of “cop hatred”by police harassment of young gays in the pre-Stonewall years. Despite his urban celebrity and his comfortable country life at Haymeadows , he remains “a bird in a golden cage.” Any income from writing is quickly claimed by needs and debt. As a cosmopolitan man who speaks French, has many British friends, and loves the museums of Europe, it is a shame how little he travels—only one European trip since 1938! His sympathy for writers down on their luck influences grants he proposes at the Institute, and he tries to interest the federal government in small pensions for retired writers in need. In the October–November 1962 Authors Guild Bulletin he writes of the indifferent reception his idea got at the Wingspread Foundation arts conference that June—where he realized he was speaking to an audience of well-salaried professors. He also states that literature is not helped by mountains of critical academic books written in academic language. 1960–1964 53  january 18 Mother’s deathbed, and the strain of not being able to help her in any way, has confused me in my relations and connections with the rest of the world. february 7 I miss her painfully, though of course I forbid myself to grieve, because her life was nothing but a heroism and a sorrow at the last. But now I am impatient to move to the new house in Rosemont. She seemed to have very little concept of a heaven, but sometimes I thought that...