The Leonard Bernstein Letters (55 page)

Darling,

If I seemed sad as you drove away today it was not because I felt in any way deserted but because I was left alone to face myself and this whole bloody mess
which is our “connubial” life. I've done a lot of thinking and have decided that it's not such a mess after all.

First
: we are not committed to a life sentence – nothing is really irrevocable, not even marriage (though I used to think so).

Second
: you are a homosexual and may never change – you don't admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depend on a certain sexual pattern what can you do?

Third
: I am willing to accept you as you are, without being a martyr or sacrificing myself on the L.B. altar. (I happen to love you very much – this may be a disease and if it is what better cure?) It may be difficult but no more so than the “status quo” which exists now – at the moment you are not yourself and this produces painful barriers and tensions for both of us – let's try and see what happens if you are free to do as you like, but without guilt and confession, please!

As for me – once you are rid of tensions I'm sure my own will disappear. A companionship will grow which probably no one else may be able to offer you. The feelings you have for me will be clearer and easier to express – our marriage is not based on passion but on tenderness and mutual respect. Why not have them?

I know now too that I need to work. It is a very important part of me and I feel incomplete without it. I may want to do something about it soon. I am used to an active life, and then there is that old ego problem.

We may have gotten married too soon and yet we needed to get married and we've not made a mistake. It is good for us even if we suffer now and make each other miserable – we will both grow up some day and be strong and unafraid either together or apart – after all we are both more important as individuals than a “marriage” is.

In any case my dearest darling ape, let's give it a whirl. There'll be crisis (?) from time to time but that doesn't scare me any more. And let's relax in the knowledge that neither of us is perfect and forget about being HUSBAND AND WIFE in such strained capital letters, it's not that awful!

There's a lot else I've got to say but the pill has overpowered me. I'll write again soon. My wish for the week is that you come back guiltless and happy.

F

Dear L and F,

Sitting in the kitchen with Cheryl [Crawford] and Ruth [Norman], eating raspberries for breakfast, it comes all over me what a fine time I have been having
recently. The
Regina
concert started, really sparked, the sense of well-being; then Brandeis and the
Threepenny
[
Opera
]; then Mina's;
⁵³
then Tanglewood and you-all. Not a great deal of work to show for it; maybe something just as good for me now, and for which I have apparently been hungry: well-being, that says it. It comes over me that for a long time since the Broadway
débâcle
of
Regina
I have been slowly withering on the vine. How one needs these vanity-assuagements!

You are a lovely host-and-hostess, did you know? It goes so smoothly, the guest feels he isn't in the way – that, I suppose, is the stumbling-block of most visits. And if this note betrays a contented kind of stupor, then it does. I have little guilt about it.

Will you let me know about
Trouble
[
in Tahiti
]? What you decided, how it came off, how you feel after the performance.
Reuben
calls, and I return to grappling with it. One small session with [Lotte] Lenya first; then a week-end on [Edward T.] Cone's boat at Water Island; and off to Brigantine and Jo [Davis]'s and the garage. I promise to be more cooperative in the matter of showing you the opera next time.

My love and thanks to Helen. And to you two, you chuckle-birds. Write me simply: care Davis, Brigantine, New Jersey.

Marc

Dear David,

Reports fly in from all sides that you are really happy at last, and this makes me happy. Apparently Rome has been a joy for you, work-wise and heart-wise; and I cannot resist writing to tell you how glad I am.

Felicia and I live in a constant thrilled expectancy of the child (due at the end of August or so): and it is all an experience to be cherished. Tanglewood proceeds beautifully; the same breathless six weeks. My little opera was a dud at Brandeis, due mostly to the half-baked state in which it found itself at première time; but now the revisions are almost finished, and a new (the true) ending composed; and I look forward to a more reasonable and telling production here at T'wood on 10 August. Then the baby; then a full season in New York
(imagine!) without a single conducting date: nothing but composing to my heart's content. God, I have waited long for that.

Best to you, & write of your plans and your new works.

Lenny

Your letter is full of good spirits. The modest expression of what must have been an enormous satisfaction, in the success of
Trouble in Tahiti
, does you credit. I'm hoping you have copies of the improvements, so I may snag one for my files. And I am happy to see that the Rialto-code-word for the work is not “Trouble” but “Tahiti”.

Of course Evita Péron (I can't remember if the accent should fall on the “o”)
⁵⁴
can make a fine operatic subject: her end, of cancer, while young, doesn't fill the picture of tragedy, really seems senseless (except for the saw that “Death is democratic”). But she has glamor, power, evil, and a saint's façade – all qualities which, incidentally (aside from the “good works”) characterized Regina Hubbard. That makes me wonder if Lillian [Hellman] is the precisely right librettist. Once the Latin color is snagged, and the expanded picture of power-area registered, will she (L) not find herself treading well-worn paths? Then you could call the opera “The Bigger Foxes” or “The Same Old Part of Another Forest”.
⁵⁵
But I'm happy you've found a subject.
⁵⁶
Watch out for Fleur Cowles, who has a first-hand interview book on Eva; she may try to claim ownership of what is surely public material. Or, on a second thought, perhaps involve her (Cowles).

Reuben
really goes well. More later.

I shall probably be back in town after the first. How is Felicia bearing up these last weeks before the event?
⁵⁷
My love to her and Helen. And remember, we have a September date to do the records of “3d Opera”.

Helen probably told you that Mina's mother died. She might relish a short note. (Mrs. Mina K. Curtiss, Williamsburg, Mass.)

I hug you.

Marc

Dear Brasy,

I want to thank you for
both
your beautiful letters. You are a warm and good soul!

The baby is beautiful beyond works (her English name is
Jamie
), & the mother is just as beautiful. We are slowly getting settled in a new apartment, and should have a wonderful home-like year.

Best to you & your family, and a Happy New Year.

Lenny Bernstein

Dear Lenny,

What a joy it is to work with agreeable people!
⁵⁸
Next time let's put in the contract that any job writers have to submit to a psychiatric test to be sure we get a fairly congenial type. Anyhow Rodgers and Hammerstein would pass the test.

The show is beginning to take form.
⁵⁹
The scenery never quite works, but it will be when we get where there's a better crew.

Thank you for the wire. Give my love to the beautiful Felicia.

I hope next year doesn't get by without our being together on some exciting effort.

Yours for diminished sevenths.

Love,

George

Dear Lenny,

I especially appreciated your note because as it happened I was about to go in and shake up the
Crucible
production myself. It is done now. I've removed all the sets, and as much of the fakery as possible, and tried to make it look as much like my work as possible.
⁶¹
Some night soon when you are at a loss for what to do I wish you'd go in again and let me know what you think. It is my first try at “directing”, and although I could not, under the circumstances, do half of what I would had I started from the beginning, I think you'll get a weird feeling as well as a sense of horror at what production can do to a piece of writing.

I don't know what you do in the summer but if your mind ever turns North give me a call and come up with your wife and baby. We have plenty of room and eat often. I mean it.

Sincerely,

Art Miller

My dear Bernstein,

I've tried, in vain, to obtain your address in the United States. It's promised to me, but I'm still waiting. So I am sending my letter to Salabert USA (I think, after all, that Schirmer is your publisher). I want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all that you've done for my dear
Mamelles
[
de Tirésias
]! I have received some press cuttings and I know that it went very well. With you I was calm, since
you played the piece by heart, better than me. As I have a great weakness for this score, you've given me true pleasure, and you have all my gratitude.

At the moment I am composing a big opera based on the
Dialogues des Carmélites
for La Scala. I hope you'll like that too. Let me know when you are coming to France, Danton 52–23, 5 rue de Médicis, Paris.

Until then, I say again thank you, thank you, and I embrace you.

Francis Poulenc

Leonard Bernstein, being duly sworn deposes and says:

I am a citizen of the United States and was born on August 25, 1918 at Lawrence, Massachusetts.

I attended Harvard University and was graduated in 1939 with a bachelor of arts degree. While at college I majored in music. Thereafter I attended the Curtis Institute of Music from 1939 until 1941.

After these studies I became assistant to Serge Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center in 1942 and Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1943 and 1944. Commencing in 1945, I was Music Director of the New York City Symphony Orchestra for three succeeding years.

In May 1946, I was honored to be selected as the representative of American conductors at the International Festival at Prague and conducted two concerts of American music. I also conducted at Prague again in 1947 as well as in other European cities.

In addition to my work as a conductor and musician I have also composed two symphonies and other musical compositions including the score for several musical shows and two ballets.

I cite the details listed not as a record of achievement, but rather as the briefest kind of summary to indicate that my life and interest have been devoted almost exclusively to the world of music.

The practice of my profession, which is also my livelihood, necessarily entails frequent travel abroad and any restriction on such travel would be a most serious impairment of my right to engage in my chosen profession and an interference with the right to earn a living. Since travel was resumed after the war I have fulfilled engagements in Europe and elsewhere almost every year and my pending application for a passport is for the same purpose.

In connection with engagements to conduct concerts in Brazil, Italy, Israel and at other places I applied to the State Department for a renewal of my passport in April, 1953 but to date the travel document has not yet been issued. I was informally advised that the application is being considered in connection with Regulations of the Department of State having to do with the “Limitation on issuance of passports to persons supporting [the] Communist movement”.

Although I have never, to my knowledge, been accused of being a member of the Communist Party, I wish to take advantage of this opportunity to affirm under oath that I am not now nor at any time have ever been a member of the Communist Party or the Communist Political Association. I have never (to paraphrase the language of the Regulation) knowingly engaged in activities which supported the Communist movement under circumstances which would warrant the conclusion that I engaged in such activities as a result of direction, domination or control exercised over me by the Communist movement.

I have not adhered to the so-called Communist Party line or followed it “on a variety of issues and through shifts and changes of that line.”

The Regulations referred to are said to have a possible application to my case by reason of the fact that my name has been linked in various ways with a
number of organizations which have been denominated as subversive by the Attorney General in connection with the government employee program.

I wish to state generally as to all the organizations involved that my connection, if any, with them has been of a most casual and nebulous character. Almost without exception, their very names are practically unknown by me except in the vaguest kind of way. In fact, in now attempting to recall them and my connection with them, I have had to rely on the memory of my secretary and refer to old scrapbooks, clippings, etc. Needless to say I never knew their real character as they were later denominated by the Attorney General of the United States. I never could claim any exact knowledge as to their objectives or purpose except the humanitarian, benign or cultural one mentioned at the moment I was accosted by some person or scanned the letter or other sugar-coated communication soliciting funds, the use of my name or my services as a musician and conductor.

I wish to emphasize that the name and real purpose of the organizations to which my name became linked through a charitable and well intended impulse, and obviously without the probing deliberation required, are hardly more than a blur in my memory. The link, if any, was on “paper” and not a personal one. Besides my ignorance of their underlying purpose, I have no recollection or knowledge of ever having really
joined
any of them which had a membership roll in the true sense. I do not recall the address of most of them or the years or the city in which they functioned or the names of the officers or principals. I have no knowledge or recollection of ever having attended an organizational meeting of any one of them. It is my general recollection that my name or sponsorship was usually requested in connection with some public function or activity such as a banquet, benefit or concert.

The letter of enticement would frequently excuse me from any personal participation of a non-political character. I did not thereby espouse or intend to espouse the concealed and ulterior purposes of such groups. I did not possess the requisite suspicion and caution to probe the devious and subversive objectives of those by whom I and too many others were innocently exploited. And, needless to state we did not have the facilities to make the proper determination.

Like almost every other person who has achieved some prominence, I have received hundreds and perhaps thousands of letters in the past ten years soliciting my assistance in one form or another for some charitable, cultural or liberal cause which is always made to appear worthwhile and which would appeal to many good Americans. The great majority calling for my services or appearance on a particular date would have to be declined because of prior engagements in this country or abroad. Those asking for the use of my name as a sponsor would usually be accepted on the basis of the prominence of the person soliciting me or the fact that other well known persons, not known by me to be suspect, had previously agreed to the use of their own names. The fallacy of this procedure in evaluating an organization has been demonstrated in too many cases involving
others to require elaboration. In the event I did grant the use of my name to an organization, my secretary would usually advise it by telephone or in the letter of acceptance that I could not take part in its activities or undertake any responsibility as a sponsor. The letter of solicitation and my reply usually comprised the entire extent of my connection with or contribution to the organization.

The character of my sponsorship was usually of an innocuous character. In the case of the
American Committee of Yugoslav Relief
I recall it was Quentin Reynolds who asked me to lend my name to a Town Hall American folk song and jazz concert. The
National Negro Congress
asked me to serve on an audition board at a negro talent try-out at Town Hall. It is my recollection that I could not attend. The
American Youth for Democracy
tendered me a dinner and a scroll. I did not attend the dinner and received the scroll in the mail. I assume that this honor was bestowed on me because I had been designated by the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce and others at various times as one of America's “outstanding young men”. While I consented to the use of my name on the letter head of the
American Council for a Democratic Greece
, I have no present recollection that I ever attended or participated in its functions or met any of the persons active in it. I have no present recollection of the basis for linking my name with
Action Committee to Free Spain Now
or the
American Committee for Spanish Freedom
but I assume some nominal connection did exist.

I recall that I did permit the use of my name by the
Civil Rights Congress
under the mistaken impression that it was identical with the American Civil Liberties Union. In fact, I only learned of this mistake within the past few days. The only connection with the
Council on African Affairs
I can recall is a small contribution made in response to the representation it would be used to buy food for starving negroes in South Africa.

With respect to the
Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee
I recall being tendered a dinner by the Boston chapter in the latter part of 1944 and attending one or two similar events perhaps in New York or San Francisco. I also believe I made a contribution to a hospital in Mexico City which was being sponsored or assisted by this group.

The
Jefferson School of Social Science
has asked me to lecture on music subjects on several occasions but I do not recall complying with these requests. My secretary recalls I made a small contribution to it. During the war, I recall I had some slight association with the Music Committee of the
National Council of American-Soviet Friendship
which had the support of many outstanding Americans. I recall that my teacher, Dr. Serge Koussevitzky, Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was chairman of the Music Committee at the time.

I am advised that my name appears among more than 100 others in a paid advertisement inserted in the March 3, 1945 issue of the
New York Times
advocating support for Representative John M. Coffee's Resolution H.R. 100 which recommended severance of our relations with Spain. Among the other signers
were Quentin Reynolds, James Montgomery Flagg, Franklin P. Adams, Hon. Stanley M. Isaacs and the Hon. Joseph E. Davies. The
Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
is listed as the organization sponsoring the advertisement. I recall no connection with this organization and believe that Paul Robeson communicated with me about the use of my name on this occasion. I met Mr. Robeson one time while we were both backstage during a concert.

The last occasion on which my name was probably used in what may be described as a controversial setting was in early 1949. The world famous Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich was expected to arrive in the United States. I recall the
New York Times
music critic solicited outstanding American musicians to sign a cable of greeting. According to the
New York Times
clipping this cable read as follows:

In this manner, I suspect I became, with other conductors, composers and musicians, a member of the welcoming committee. The arrival of Shostakovich and other musicians was apparently exploited as a propaganda event by means of a conference and formal dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel under the auspices of an organization, which I am informed, is not on the Attorney General's list.

In any event, I did not attend the dinner or the conference and did nothing to promote them either than second a welcome to a fellow composer who came to the United States with the permission of this government.

The controversy which followed the Waldorf Astoria conference in March, 1949 brought unfavorable publicity to myself and others and shortly thereafter my name was included among a list of “prominent people who, wittingly or not, associate themselves with a Communist-front organization and thereby lend it glamor, prestige or the respectability of American liberalism.” This article, which appeared in the April 4, 1949 issue of
Life
Magazine convinced me that my name and my good intentions were being improperly exploited by cleverly camouflaged organizations which concealed their true objectives and Communist aims behind a plausible and appealing front. Since that time I have attempted to be most circumspect about permitting the use of my name to organizations in general.

Perhaps one saving grace with respect to my response to organizational appeals is that during the very same period which found me linked to groups
later declared subversive, I was also lending my name to activities completely opposed to communism. I have been most active in the cause of Jewish philanthropy and the promotion of Israel as an independent state free from Soviet domination. I have been honored to accept invitations to preach the sermon in Jewish temples in Boston, Chicago and Houston. My religious training and belief would necessarily make me a foe of communism.

I have contributed to the American Red Cross, made radio appeals on its behalf and given concerts in hospitals under its auspices. I made contributions to the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts of America, the Riverdale Children's Camp, the Al Smith Memorial Hospital Fund, the Harvard Scholarship Fund, the Greenwich House, the National Urban League, the National Federation of Infantile Paralysis, the Irvington House, the United Jewish Appeal, the United Unitarian Appeal, B'Nai B'Rith, American Friends Services Committee, Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society, United World Federalists, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Grace Congregational Church, American Friends of Hebrew University, the Y.M.C.A., New York Guild for the Jewish Blind, the Order of the Purple Heart and many others.

I have permitted the use of my name to organizations having no possible Communist-front implications such as The Nation Association, the Planned Parenthood campaign, European Friends of ORT, the Riverside Children's Association, the American Fund for Palestinian Institutions, the Brooklyn Philanthropic League, the Exhibitions of Palestinian Art in America, the American Christian Palestine Committee, the American Red Magen David for Palestine (similar to American Red Cross), American Arts Committee for Palestine, the Hebrew Union College, the United Jewish Appeal (musicians group), Golden Anniversary of the City of New York, the National War Fund, the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation and the World Festivals of Friendship, among others.

I have donated my professional services to a number of organizations and for a number of causes. These would include War Bond drives, the National War Fund, the Music Box Canteen, the American Theatre Wing War Service, Veterans' Administration Hospitals, New York Stage Door Canteen and many others. I have participated in hundreds of benefit performances in the past ten years for worthwhile charitable and cultural purposes.