Peggy Guggenheim: The Life of an Art Addict. Anton Gill
to Laurence’s father, cast adrift among all this jeunesse dorée, and completely unable to cope with it.
Soon afterwards Peggy met two of Laurence’s ex-mistresses, Djuna Barnes, recently arrived in Europe as correspondent for McCall’s magazine (thanks in part to a subsidy of $100 for her fare from Leon Fleischman, who’d borrowed the money from Peggy), and Mary Reynolds, a woman of great integrity who would become the long-time mistress of Marcel Duchamp. Both were great beauties; both had attractive noses. Neither, however, was as well off as Peggy. Djuna in particular was strapped for cash and Peggy, at Helen Fleischman’s suggestion, gave her some lingerie. This caused a row. According to Peggy, Djuna was affronted at the gift, since the underwear, from Peggy’s own wardrobe, was not even her second-best and was darned; she goes on to describe an odd scene in which she bursts in on Djuna, who was seated at her typewriter, dressed in the offending garments. In a letter to Peggy much later, in 1979, Djuna explained that the insult was in Peggy’s mind: ‘if you are “correcting” the re-issue of your book, you might remove the remark that I was “embarrassed” by being “caught” wearing the handsome (mended) Italian silk undershirt – I was not annoyed at that, (or I should not have worn it). I was annoyed, and startled, that someone had come into my room, unannounced and without knocking.’
Peggy, who clearly felt guilty about her meanness at the time, made amends by the gift of a hat and cape, and the incident did nothing to damage what turned out to be a lifelong relationship, though never quite a true friendship, since Djuna was forever financially needy, and Peggy supported her for most of her life. This aspect of their association was not helped by the fact that Djuna considered herself in every way an infinitely superior being to Peggy.
Meanwhile the affair with Laurence continued apace. In order to give themselves greater freedom of movement, Peggy persuaded her mother to take a trip to Rome; although Valerie was left behind as chaperone, she was easier to outwit than Florette. Matters came to a head soon afterwards, when Laurence took Peggy to the top of the Eiffel Tower – did she tell him that her father was responsible for the elevators? – and proposed to her. Quite how ardent the proposal was, we don’t know; but she accepted him immediately, and he promptly got cold feet.
Laurence continued to dither and Peggy continued to hang on. As soon as she got wind of the engagement, Laurence’s mother, disapproving of a liaison with a Jew, however rich, packed her son off to Rouen to think things over, sending Mary Reynolds with him (and paying her fare) in the hope that old embers might be rekindled, or at least that Mary might talk some sense into her former beau. Her plan misfired: Laurence and Mary did little but row, and Laurence sent Peggy a telegram telling her he still wanted to marry her after all.
Peggy pressed home the advantage by letting her mother in Rome know that she was engaged. This brought Florette back to Paris in a panic. She disapproved of Peggy’s ‘marrying out’, and in any case knew nothing of Laurence’s credentials. He wasn’t rich, that was for sure. Laurence was, however, able to come up with the names of one or two people who would speak on his behalf: one of them was King George II of Greece, whom Laurence, with his wide circle of acquaintances, had once met at St Moritz. Luckily, Florette didn’t follow up any of the references, but she mobilised Peggy’s relatives and friends to dissuade her.
Despite this the couple went ahead with their plans, Peggy taking care that the lawyer they engaged ensured that her money should remain in her control, and the banns were posted. Laurence promptly started to dither again, but this only strengthened Peggy’s resolve. Then, when it looked as if he might be going off to Capri with his sister, and Peggy would be bound to return to New York with Florette, he turned up at the Plaza-Athénée, where Peggy was sitting in the unlikely company of her mother and his, and asked her to marry him ‘the next day’.
Peggy accepted this new proposal, but decided only to buy a hat, not a new outfit, for the ceremony, just in case there was another hitch; and there was what looked like a final hiccup when Gertrude rang Peggy on the morning of the wedding to tell her, ‘He’s off.’ Peggy took this to mean that Laurence had done a bunk, but his mother only meant that he was on his way.
The civil ceremony took place at the town hall of the sixteenth arrondissement on 10 March 1922. Later there was a party at the Plaza-Athénée, attended by a mixed bag from four different backgrounds: Florette invited a phalanx of Seligman cousins and friends from the Right Bank; Gertrude asked members of her set, the old-established American community; Peggy asked her new friends, mainly drawn from the circle of suitors she had established with Fira Benenson – one of whom, Boris Dembo, wept at the thought that he was not marrying Peggy himself; Laurence’s guests were a motley band of poor expatriate American writers and artists along with his French friends.
After a champagne reception at the Plaza, the party moved on, collecting all manner of people as it passed various bars on the way to the Boeuf-sur-le-Toît and Prunier’s. The next morning Peggy, the worse for wear, was visited by Proust’s doctor, who gave her a ’flu injection.
She awoke to find herself disappointed in marriage. Her disaffection was reinforced at lunch with her mother. Florette asked loudly about the finer points of the wedding night, drawing attention to the smell of Lysol Peggy had about her, making the waiters prick up their ears. This caused Peggy some embarrassment, but Florette approved of her daughter’s inherited belief in the curative and disinfectant properties of Lysol, especially in getting rid of the nasty smells and risks of infection that sex involved.
Before the honeymoon, Florette brought Peggy a passport in her new name. As a married woman, Peggy was now on Laurence’s passport, but with this independent one she could run away if Laurence became too much for her. This action of Florette’s may have been prompted by Peggy herself, since Laurence had already, even before the wedding, begun to show a less attractive side. When drunk, which he often was, he could become violent. He would make scenes in restaurants, smash bottles, wreck furniture in hotel rooms and attack Peggy physically. The worst of this was yet to come. Although there is no excuse for Laurence’s extravagant behaviour, Peggy sometimes consciously taunted him into it, knowing exactly how to provoke an angry reaction. It was one way of satirising the male dominance she instinctively despised, and she deployed it often in her life, despite the violence she brought on herself. At this stage, however, no one could have accused Peggy of not indulging him. He was so depressed at the thought of being separated from Clotilde that Peggy suggested his sister should join them in Capri, where they were to spend most of their honeymoon. But when Peggy also suggested that she bring along her Russian teacher, Jacques Schiffrin, Laurence refused.
En route to Capri, the newlyweds stopped in Rome, where Peggy’s cousin Harold Loeb was running his magazine Broom. Laurence had already published one or two pieces in it, and Harold now asked him for a poem. Laurence had already taken against the Guggenheim family, specifically the brothers who controlled the family firm, and was to remark that he would happily throw them all over a cliff. His dislike was probably prompted by the fact that Peggy’s capital was carefully protected; but it found an outlet in the poem he submitted:
Old men and little birdsToo early in the morningMake squeaks.
Little birds are more brazen;Primly, they dip their feet in puddles.Old men have delicate feet.
Old men have delicate bowels,Little birds are careless,Near love of neitherIs sweet.
Little birds chirp, chirp, chirp, chirup;Old men tell stories, tell stories;Both die too late.
When the piece appeared in the September 1922 edition of Broom, it provoked a querulous reaction from Peggy’s cousin Edmond. Loeb calmed him down, but Laurence felt a flicker of grim satisfaction.
Peggy and Laurence, bare-legged and besandaled to underline their contempt for anything bourgeois, proceeded on their expensive honeymoon. Privately, Peggy continued to nurse her sexual and personal disaffection with marriage; but at least getting married had achieved one goal for both of them: independence from their families.
Capri in the early 1920s was a beautiful and still isolated place, a resort for the rich and the eccentric.