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The Death of Harry Crosby 66 66 6 TheDeathofHarryCrosby T he Crosbys may have worked well and played well together,but their marriage was troubled.Despite Harry’s impassioned declarations of love and commitment to Caresse, he carried on love affairs and casual sexual liaisons from the beginning of their days in Paris. Caresse took on lovers of her own perhaps to absorb some of the turmoil that Harry’s behavior stirred in her. Outwardly, these affairs with Ortiz Manolo, Lord Lymington, Count Armand de la Rochefoucauld, Cord Meier (a dashing pilot who had been wounded in the war and was known as“the Aviator”) appeared to be a declaration on Caresse’s part that, like Harry, she was liberated from the constraints of a middle-class conscience and that their open marriage satisfied them both. But behind the closed doors of their bedroom, Harry would instigate“violent fights”concerning Caresse’s affairs.1 It was a classic example of the double standard at work. Both Caresse and Harry had risked a great deal so that they could marry, but, in spite of what they had been willing to sacrifice, their commitment to one another could be construed as artificial. Harry was able to make nearly identical pronouncements of passion to Caresse and to other women. His demands on his lovers’ fealty were so intense that his very existence seemed to hinge on whether or not these demands were met. Caresse projected a different image, that of a modern s woman whose romantic liaisons had a reckless, rakish edge. She was able to articulate her emotional conflicts only in an unpublished journal,which differed decidedly from her published auto- The Death of Harry Crosby 67 biography. Harry’s infidelities emerge in an occasional passage in The Passionate Years, but in the privacy of her journal, Caresse permitted herself to voice the full force of her distress. Yet even in her solitary ruminations, she demonstrated the same depth of inner reserves that enabled her to put up a good front. She could not prevent Harry from taking on lovers, but she was not going to denigrate herself—or Harry—trying to figure out why she and Harry had not remained faithful to one another. She was worried,even anxious , but would not concede the possibility that she had agreed to live by Harry’s private code of conduct without considering its consequences. Among the multitude of Harry’s liaisons in —one with a former lover, Constance, now Comtesse de Jumilhac, and another with a new lover, Josephine Rotch Bigelow—presented dramatic challenges to Caresses’s equanimity . The Lady of the Golden Horse (as Harry was fond of calling her), Constance had broken off the affair earlier, partly in acknowledgment of a strong friendship between Caresse and Constance—Caresse had introduced Constance to Harry. However, Constance found adventure at the racetrack, the opium den, or in the arms of another’s husband, even a friend’s. She resumed what was for her a languid affair with Harry, nothing more. She had no interest in taking Harry away from Caresse since she had already experienced what she regarded as the limited advantages of matrimony. Harry’s relationship with Josephine was more volatile because Josephine thrived on the perils of winning Harry at any cost. Caresse could not avoid conceding if only to herself that Harry had been close to leaving her from the outset of their relationship. Correspondence between Harry and Constance that Caresse read while she was gathering material for The Passionate Years (first published in ) reveals that Harry began courting Constance not long after he and Caresse were married.2 In letters to Constance, Harry declares that he cannot go on with Polly any longer, that he cannot meet Polly’s demand that he“love her more than anyone else in the world.” From the beginning, Constance resisted Harry’s pleas to run away with him,but she remained a presence throughout Caresse and Harry’s life together, sometimes Harry’s lover, and, apparently, a frequent friend. “Let’s see one another often when you get back,”she wrote to Harry in a June , , letter while he was in the States. In France, Constance was staying close by the bedside of her husband, who was gravely ill. Harry had sent her orchids,which she carried from her husband’s room to her own, or to whatever room she happened to be in, because their presence made her happy.3 Keeping her...

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