MAY SARTON

Dear Juliette

Letters of May Sarton to Juliette Huxley
Edited by Susan Sherman

O Juliette, I have just come home from standing in Max Gordon's office in a herd of actresses only to be told, "you're not the type," and found a nice fat letter from Julian. How wonderful letters are, how unexpected—especially across an ocean. One has no idea what time of day, what mood, what event they are going to meet. And this was a perfect spar to a drowning man!

It is curious how often in this idiotic N.Y. life my mind goes back to certain images of last spring, as if in the green underwater spaces of your room it might rest. What are you doing? Are you doing any sculpture? It was tantalizing to see only one thing and to be dragged away from that. Though I guess that you are so busy maintaining peace and the very special atmosphere you have that it must be difficult to catch time enough for anything else. Women are always being torn between their human responsibilities and other things, aren't they? It is comparatively simple, I have an idea, to be simply embarked on a career! Still I should love to know that you are one of the magical people who can do both—if you are well. Are you well? Are you really better as well as carnivorous?

I have been trying to see Dora Clarke for weeks but first I had grippe and then she had migraine. I'm hoping that if this champagne weather continues we'll finally manage both to be well next week. Autumn here is unbelievable really. It makes one think anything is possible. The air is like glass—everything sparkles. I have by a miracle found a room on a little park so there are trees instead of walls to look out on. They are very thin and sad but nice. And my room is big and gray and rather Chinese, intense and peaceful all at once. It is freedom after the claustrophobia this city gives me. What else? This afternoon I went to see a small exhibition which contained the Toulouse-Lautrec of Avril leaving the Moulin Rouge—a little self-contained sober figure slipping along and it looks cold—the very essence of the theatre—this strange fabrication of glory by strange little people who possess it so little once they have taken off their make-up. Being in the theatre is like having an endless devouring affair with a second-rate person. Ah well. Meanwhile I try to write. Here are some poems. I can't remember what I sent Julian. Tell him I'll answer his letter in a day or so and he is an angel.

It is good to think of you and to span for a minute the huge waste of ocean between us. Be well and happy—and stay exactly as you are. I'm hoping to come back in the spring and it would be awful to find anything changed!

Love to you
May

Max Gordon's office: Max Gordon (1891–1989), theatrical and film producer, owner of the Village Vanguard nightclub from 1934 on.

a drowning man: At this time Sarton was tirelessly engaged in looking for a job, trying every possible theatrical office while also hoping to persuade Paris-Soir to let her do a series of American "Letters" similar to Genet's "Paris Letters" in The New Yorker.

last spring: Having sailed to England on the SS Manhattan, Sarton disembarked in England on 26 March 1936 and spent her first night in Cornwall at the home of Dr. Charles Singer (1876–1960) and his wife Dorothea (Waley) Cohen Singer (1882–1964), historians of science and old friends of the Sartons. Julian Huxley, then secretary of the Zoological Society, was there as a guest, looking for a place to grow eucalyptus trees en masse for the koala bears at the London Zoo. On 7 May, Sarton dined at the Huxleys' London apartment, meeting Juliette for the first time. The following day she wrote to her parents: "The most exquisite atmosphere—his wife is one of the most charming people I have ever seen, like one of K.M.'s [Katherine Mansfield's] women—the apartment all pale green and she is like that—she has a slight accent—I don't know what nationality she is." Marie Juliette Baillot was born in Auvenier on Lake Neuchatel, Switzerland, 6 December 1896.

any sculpture: Juliette had been studying sculpture at the Central School with John Skeaping, a well-known British painter and sculptor.

Dora Clarke: sculptor, friend of the Huxleys; her bronze of a Kikuyu girl was reproduced as the frontispiece for Julian Huxley's Africa View (1931).

Avril: Jane Avril was a dancer and figured in several of the famous posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), French painter who became the supreme portrayer of Montmartre nightlife, with its dancers, actresses, singers, and women of the demimonde.

what I sent Julian: Sarton had sent Julian "Out of a Desolate Source," published in Time and Tide (1936); "You who ask peace" (see Inner Landscape); and "Apologia," unpublished; see Appendix. In response to this letter Juliette wrote: "Thank you for writing and for being so alive. I expect you make a definite impression on most people, but I feel the impression you made on us is a very true one, and that you couldn't possibly be different to what we think you are."

O Juliette, here I am in New Haven for a gay weekend with your letter like a secret treasure in my purse. It is going to snow (it is always just going to snow these days) and really the excitement of a snowstorm is one of the reasons for living in N.Y.—though for that matter Switzerland is superior I guess! To quote from Noel Coward who is making us all madly sentimental, "the gods must find it entrancing." This afternoon I am thinking of writing a series of poems on snow—of which the enclosed is the first.

Your letter is like a painting. I have a sort of surréalist photograph of it—the scarlet thread on Julian's face from the chin cut, yellow chrysanthemums, little cactuses, and the frog of coral wood—with Bernard Shaw's beard somewhere. What a darling you are to write me. I am freshly startled with surprise every time I wake up and think that there you and Julian are suddenly upon my horizon. It still seems preposterous. But it is true don't you think that one knows—definitely knows almost at once whether people are going to be of one's island or not? I fell in love with you both at first sight—Julian in a storm in Cornwall and you in a little white jacket in a green room where I was so frightened by being early that I would have read you the whole of "Testament of Beauty" rather than have to talk! I sometimes wonder whether the anguish of meeting is worth any possibility of further acquaintance. When I was having to raise money all the time for the theatre I had to overcome every impulse to run away so that I am able to stay rooted to the spot now but that is the most that can be said.

It is wonderful that you are working, and that you are better. I am glad!

Noel Coward . . . madly sentimental: Nine short plays by Noël Coward (1899–1973), English composer, playwright, and actor, known for his witty, sophisticated comedies about the British leisure class, under the title Tonight at 8:30, had opened in 1936.

"Testament of Beauty": the most ambitious work by English poet Robert Bridges (1844–1930), Britain's Poet Laureate 1913–1930, embodying his life's philosophy.