Some of My Lives Read Online Free PDF Page A

to conduct Les Mamelles later in New York. David Hockney designed the engagingly witty sets.
    That same year, Lenny was conducting in Holland, and I was in Holland writing some features for Vogue . Lenny and his sister were staying at a nearby beach resort, Scheveningen. I was at a hotel in The Hague. I went out to join the Bernsteins for lunch.
    It was a glorious day, one of those days when the Dutch light lived up to all those marine landscapes. “Let’s go riding” was Lenny’s sudden inspiration.
    I had arrived in a town outfit; this was long before the ubiquitous blue jeans. “I’ll fix you up,” Shirley offered. We went to her room, and I got into a pair of her slacks and one of Lenny’s shirts, and we were off.
    Our rented horses responded to the great stretch of open beach and Lenny’s urging and galloped presto con fuoco . Lenny started shouting poetry into the wind, Auden mostly. “Don’t you know any poetry?” he shouted to me. I was too out of breath from holding my plunging horse to respond.
    A few days later we went to Amsterdam for a concert, at the Concertgebouw, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. “You know I’m a better conductor than von Karajan,” Lenny whispered all too audibly.
    By now it is 1950. I was living and working in Paris, and Lenny and Shirley were in town. Lenny had come to conduct the Radio Orchestra. It so happened he had a gap in his schedule and I had accumulated a month’s vacation time. We were having dinner in one
of those little upstairs rooms at Lapérouse and had finished off a diaphanous soufflé. “Let’s go somewhere, anywhere, you choose,” said Lenny. “All right, let’s make it Spain” was my contribution.
    So we went. Those were still the Franco days, and Spain was very puritanical. They were dismayed at the Ritz in Barcelona that Lenny and Shirley wanted to sleep in the same room. They were also dismayed by the dachshund puppy the two had picked up en route that was far from housebroken.
    Lenny was delighted by the sardana that was danced in the public square in front of the cathedral on Sundays. It is the most democratic dance in the world. Anyone can join in. You just step into the circle and grab the hand of your neighbor. The women place their handbags and the cake for Sunday lunch in the middle of the circle, and everything is safe.
    Lenny being Lenny, he had to be part of the action. He pulled me in, and being a músico , he immediately grasped the structure and when we should stop—the music had a way of suddenly stopping, leaving me with one foot in the air.
    He liked best the little bars of the barrio chino with its flamenco singers and children dancing outside entranced by the music. There was an old man who sang as if his heart were broken, eyes closed, stretching out his hand. We went to hear him night after night while Shirley sensibly went to bed. We loved his lament for his love who had entered a convent, “She who was most loved has become a nun” (“La Hija de Don Juan Alba,” it was called).
    From Barcelona we went to Majorca, to a little fishing village a Spanish friend had recommend, Cala d’Or. We settled down happily to the swimming routine, but Lenny missed having a piano. The hotel management owned a little shack across the road we could use, and I managed to arrange for an old upright piano to be sent out to us from Palma, the capital.
    So every day we went to what Lenny called “a mansion grand in a foreign land”—(courtesy of Auden?). Lenny played everything from musical comedy to grand opera, with Shirley a worthy singing partner, both of them remembering every word of every lyric, including numbers by our friends Adolph Green and Betty Comden—such as “I Can Cook Too.”

    Both Bernsteins were confirmed hypochondriacs and traveled with a bulging satchel of potions and remedies. Inevitably, Shirley fell ill. A