Confessions of an Art Addict Read Online Free PDF Page B

home in the midst of Bohemia, I sat on his lap most of the evening. Later I received a proposal (I can hardly say of marriage) from a girl who got down onher knees in front of me. Strange things were happening everywhere. Laurence’s father was at home and was very annoyed by the confusion the party caused. In desperation he retired to the toilet, where he found two delicate young men weeping. He retired to the bathroom where he disturbed two giggling girls.
    One day Laurence took me to the top of the Eiffel Tower and when we were gazing at Paris he asked me if I would like to marry him. I said ‘Yes’ at once. I thought it was a fine idea. As soon as he had asked me, he regretted it. In fact, from then on he kept changing his mind. Every time I saw him look as though he were trying to swallow his Adam’s apple I knew he was regretting his proposal. He got more and more nervous about our future and one day he ran away to Rouen to think matters over. But soon he wired that he still wanted to marry me.
    After the banns were posted I began to think we might really marry, but suddenly Laurence decided to go to Capri and postpone the wedding. I was to return to New York, where he would join me in May if we still felt like marrying. One afternoon, when he was all packed, he went to buy the tickets for his trip. His mother, my mother and I sat in the Plaza-Athénée, each with her private feelings about the future. Suddenly Laurence appeared in the doorway, looking as pale as a ghost and said, ‘Peggy, will you marry me?’ Of course I said, ‘Yes’. After that I was still not at all sure that Laurence would not run away, so I decided not to buy a dress for the wedding. I bought ahat instead.
    The morning of the wedding Laurence’s mother phoned me to say, ‘He’s off.’ I thought she meant Laurence had run away again. He hadn’t. She merely meant that he was on his way to fetch me. We went in a tramcar to the Mairie of the Seizième Arrondissement at Avenue Henri-Martin, where the ceremony was to take place.
    We had all invited lots of friends. There were four distinct elements among the guests. First of all, Laurence had invited all his Bohemian friends, but as he was rather ashamed of marrying me, he had written them petit bleu notes briefly asking them to be present, as though he were asking them to a party, and he did not even mention who the bride was to be. My mother invited all her French Seligman cousins who lived in Paris, and all her bourgeois friends. Laurence’s mother invited the American colony, of which she herself was a well-known hostess. I invited all my friends. They were very mixed at that time. They were writers and painters, mostly from a very respectable milieu, and there was Boris, a Russian friend of mine, who came to the wedding and wept because I wasn’t marrying him. Helen Fleischman was my witness and Laurence’s sister was his. After the ceremony my mother gave us a big party at the Plaza-Athénée.
    As soon as I found myself married, I felt extremely let down. Then, for the first time, I had a moment to think about whether or not I really desired the marriage. Up tothe last minute Laurence had been in such a state of uncertainty that I had been kept in suspense and never questioned my own feelings. Now that I had achieved what I thought so desirable, I no longer valued it so much.
    This marriage to Laurence Vail, which was extremely stormy, in fact, often much too much so, lasted for seven years. It brought me into the intellectual world of the ’twenties, which was terribly exciting. It also liberated me completely from my early Jewish bourgeois upbringing. The only permanent things I got out of it were my two children, Sinbad and Pegeen, and a lifelong friendship with Laurence. But then I have always found husbands much more satisfactory after marriage than during.
    My second husband, to whom I was never legally married, was