DIANA TRILLING
365
sponsible for all the woes of mankind, from stuttering to sexual impo–
tence.
I was singing so badly that summer that it embarrassed me to think
that
I
might be overheard while
I
practiced.
I
had no place to spend my
time except in my workroom and, to pass the hours in which
I
had
nothing to do, I wrote another play. This time my lone venture in play–
writing was called
The
Young Wives' Tale.
It
dealt with marital infidelity -
what else? Not suprisingly, it had little action and much talk.
The Young
Wives'
Tale
never reached an agent; I have a copy still but cannot bring
myself to read it. There was actually little reason for me to feel as lost and
lonely as
I
felt at Yaddo. Although Mrs. Ames was not pleasant to me, all
the guests were friendly. Malcolm Cowley and Marc Blitztein and Max
Lerner were so kind to me that summer that
I
was never afterward to
hold them wholly to account for what I took to be their political trans–
gressions. But what place could be better suited to the ripening of neurosis
than an artists' colony where fifteen people have been taken out of their
accustomed world, mandated to be creative, and put under the rule of a
woman as seemingly sympathetic as Mrs. Ames, yet in reality so willful
and manipulative? The directress of Yaddo was conspicuously cordial to
Lionel: despite her impaired hearing, she heard everything he said, even
when he mumbled. She heard nothing
I
said, but she did hear that
I
had
visited another guest at a forbidden hour, and she expelled me from
Yaddo like a delinquent schoolgirl. It was humiliating and frightening.
We had no money; our apartment in New York was tenanted, and I had
to
stay with my father. Three weeks later, she relented and asked me
back.
