ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR.
15
comments shifted my whole perspective on the text. I withdrew the
manuscript from the publisher and spent a month going over it sentence by
sentence and purging it of its flourishes and excesses.
This was typical of Mary - both of her generosity in giving time to her
friends and her absolute fidelity to her own exacting standards. As her mar–
velous essays in autobiography show, she saw her own earlier selves with
that same scrupulous objectivity. Of course she changed course from time to
time in a vitally engaged life. "Conscience doth make cowards of us all, " she
once wrote. " ... If you start an argument with yourself, that makes two
people at least, and when you have two people, one of them starts appeasing
the other."
There used to be a fine phrase, now banned, I supposed, in this super–
sensitive age - "man ofletters." "Woman of letters" doesn't sound right;
"person of letters" is wholly unacceptable. Whatever the contemporary
equivalent of the old phrase, it applied vividly to Mary. She wrote with ana–
lytical power, startling clarity, keen human insight, silken wit, dispassionate
ruthlessness, on an enviable diversity of subjects: the novel, painting, archi–
tecture, opera, theater, politics, manners, tastes, religion, language, museums,
universities, Vassar, Venice, Florence, France, America, Vietnam. Her novels,
stories and essays constitute a brilliant commentary, interpretation, panorama
ofour disordered age.
From early childhood, Mary had more than her share of troubles in life.
She triumphed over them almost to the end by sheer force of an exceedingly
strong will, allied to drastic intelligence, boundless courage and ajoyous in–
stinct for living. She faced down the various illnesses that harassed her in re–
cent years with a quite extraordinary absence of complaint and self-pity.
Nothing rejoiced her friends more than the singular felicity of her last
marriage.
In
Jim West she found a perfect companion. I can claim some small
credit for bringing them together. After I returned from a trip to the Soviet
Union and Poland in 1959, the U.S. I.A. asked me which American writers
might be usefully sent to Poland. I urged them to send Mary, and she soon
met Jim in the Warsaw Embassy. It was one of the best things I have ever
done.
Mary was a sublime mixture of astringency and tenderness. For an
intensely liberated woman, she luxuriated in housewifely detail. She was a
superb cook, kept an immaculate house and loved being Jim's wife; she gen–
erally referred to herself as "Mary West" rather than "Mary McCarthy."
She may have cast a cold eye, but she had the warmest of hearts. She was
the dearest of friends and the best of company. We will all miss her to the
end ofour days.
