Shattered Applause: The Lives of Eva Le Gallienne

7. Beyond Joy

7 Beyond Joy The Connecticut terrain was wild and rustic. Eva wanted nothing more than to withdraw from the public eye and to forget the agonies of recent years. The first six months of1936 were spent in the solitude of her home. During heavy snowstorms, the half-mile, ruddy old lane leading to the house from the main road was usually closed to traffic. The isolation was perfect medicine. Evaset about making improvements on her farm. Since she needed space to accommodate all of her theatre memorabilia, she decided to remodel her nearby caretaker's home and move in there. Her prized addition was her new study, the Blue Room, named for its blue Italian walls. Bookshelves were everywhere in the room, with one shelf devoted to the works of her father. On another shelf, the two-volume biography of Sarah Bernhardt that Eva had copied in longhand some thirty years earlier sat like a shrine. Eva gained strength surrounded by her memories of better times-Hedda's armchail~ a sofa from Camille, the spinet from DearJane, a favorite old ottoman used in most of the Ibsen and Chekhov plays. Positioned strategically on her desk were Juliet's dagger, L'Aiglon's riding crop, and Masha's snuff box. Large windows behind her desk overlooked her magnificent rose garden. On these wintery days of the new yeal~ Eva took her breakfast in the Blue Room. Though Gun would usually prepare a large breakfast of fluffy scrambled eggs and bacon and even serve the food, she was seldom allowed to join Eva. Eva wanted her privacy. She would lie back on her chaise for hours, reading the prayers ofSt. Thomas Aquinas or those of religious mystics such as Anchoress Juliana of Norwich. On the wall behind her hung an original Mucha poster of her idol, Sarah Bernhardt. She would gaze through her large window at all the activity- in the mornings the birds at their feeders, in the evenings dozens of raccoons and skunks scrambling for food at their wooden trough. She had fun dreaming up names for all these creatures, some took on names from parts in plays and some from real people. 159 LeG’s days in Connecticut were usually spent completely alone. Like her father before her, LeG had discovered that she felt more relaxed , comfortable, and creative in seclusion. She built a tiny, one-room cottage in a hidden, very peaceful meadow. It had a little kitchenette and combination library and sitting room. LeG called this private studio “Nuja,” a name derived from the National United Jewish Appeal, a charity she had supported. The remote hideaway was of tremendous value. Throughout the long winter, LeG trudged through high snow drifts so she could spend endless hours by herself reading, meditating, dreaming—and weeping. Gun knew that LeG was not to be interrupted when she escaped to 161 I Beyond Joy Fortified to resume her work, LeG accepted a summer theatre role- her first in nearly twenty years. Assuming the part of the wise and witty heroine in Congreve's Lovefor Love, she performed with Van Heflin and Dennis King at Lawrence Langner's Westport Country Playhouse for a week. Pleased with the experience, she cOlllmented, "1 felt audiences would be relieved to see me in somethinggay after alot of gloomy parts."3 It was a rewarding run. The local press gave her a good review, and ticket sales broke box-office records. Hundreds of disappointed patrons were turned away each night. During work on the production, Langner and Theresa Helburn asked LeG to rejoin the Theatre Guild and play Mathilde Wesendonck, Richard Wagner's passionate mistress, in a new play called Prelude to Exile. The experience of submitting to another director and management was not a pleasant one. Nazimova warned her that director Philip Moeller never preplanned his rehearsals. To LeG's dismay, she soon discovered it for herself: "He had obviously worked nothing out in his own mind, and the movements and business were left to the improvisation of the moment.... He was very self-conscious and ... more aware of himself than of the play or the actors in it."4 The entire first week was spent in reading and discussion. Not until the third week did the cast rehearse on stage, and then they discovered that the floor plan was radically different than they had expected. Following tryouts in Princeton and Philadelphia, the...