318
PARTISAN REVIEW
When I went to bed I was kept awake by the noise, at the end of the cor·
ridor, of a typewriter and voice dictating far into the night. In the morn·
ing I asked my hostess about this industry. She replied with a smile, "It
must have been the Maurois's."
•
Lord Alfred Douglas walked into my office one day; he was as sur·
prised to see me as I was to see him. We had not seen each other since he
had visited us in my horne
in
the country in England when I was a
child. He hoped I would persuade the publisher to take a new book of his
on Wilde. Alfred Douglas is a far better poet than Wilde ever was; how·
ever, I did not attempt to persuade the publisher-more fulminations
against Wilde, I thought, surely everyone has had enough of the sordid
old Wilde story. And yet what an astonishing hold it still seems to have
on people's curiosity. Cathleen Queensberry and Dolly Wilde (niece of
Oscar) were once sitting on the sofa in my studio when a friend, Andre
Germain, carne in and, on being introduced, nearly fainted,
"It
is not pos–
sible," he cried, "Lady Queensberry and Miss Wilde together on the same
divan!"
•
Paul Eluard was once angry with
Echanges
because I printed an
article which disassociated Eluard's poetry from his radical political
ideas. Eluard wrote me a long letter, which he asked me to publish in the
following number, saying that his poetry and the international revolution
were indissolubly married. But there was no following number, because
by that time the review had died from lack of funds.
A rna
j
or scandal, from the point of view of the chief subscribers (who
had taken out many subscriptions each and lent me their address books so
that their friends could be solicited to take the review), was my book
review of Krupskaya's
Memories of Lenin.
From then on, some of these
ladies considered me a dangerous, or perhaps only a misguided, Red and
cold-shouldered me. Before doing so, Mrs. Reginald Fellowes asked me
to a dinner party, where I was put next to the British Military Attache
who, before I had swallowed my first mouthful of soup, attacked me, "I
hear that you have written an article praising Lenin, would you like to
see the British Empire become like Russia?" I realized then that I had
been put next to him so that he should find out my real intentions. Another
patron of
Echanges
did not invite me to dinner first, but practically cut me
on the next occasion she saw me. She was accompanied by Bernard Fay
who is now collaborating in Paris, and who then also ceased inviting me
to his apartment. After the issue with the Lenin review, I r.eceived charm·
ingly dedicated copies of the lastest works of the surrealists.
Soon after this, I spent a weekend in a country house with Marcel
Cachin, the communist senator and editor of
l'Humanite.
No one could
have been more gentle and humane than this frail old man (although to
these worldly ladies so fearful of losing their possessions, he probably
seemed like Moloch). We went for a walk to a farm, Cachin stopped me
