George S. Kaufman

George S. Kaufman
George Simon Kaufman was born in Pittsburgh on 16th November, 1889. His father, Joseph Kaufman, was an unsuccessful businessman. His mother, Henrietta Meyers Kaufman came from a wealthy family. They were married and had their first child, Helen, in 1884. A son, Richard, born two years later, only lived for seven months. As a result of the death of her eldest son, Henrietta was very protective towards George. His sister, Helen, said that "he was the kind of baby who was never taken out when it rained or when the wind blew or when the clouds were low or when the sun was hot."

Howard Teichmann, the author of George S. Kaufman: An Intimate Portrait (1972) has pointed out: "From the beginning of his life, every consideration was taken for George's well-being. The family tried to make him physically perfect in every way. To no avail. At the age of four, he had to have eyeglasses. And, since he was urged to protect himself at all costs, he learned to shun athletics. As his mother told him constantly that he was delicate, he considered himself to be just that all his life." George S. Kaufman: An Intimate Portrait

When he was still at school he submitted several stories to Argosy Magazine but they were all rejected. After leaving college he worked as a surveyor and as a stenographer for the Pttsburgh Coal Company. In 1908 he found work selling ribbons to wholesalers. Kaufman also submitted material to Franklin Pierce Adams for his New York Evening Mail column. Adams published some of these snippets.

Adams arranged to meet Kaufman. Howard Teichmann points out: "When they met it was as if everything in Adams was exaggerated in Kaufman. Adams was thin, Kaufman was skinny. Adams' complexion was pale, Kaufman's was sallow. Kaufman's nose was bigger than Adams', his eyeglasses were thicker, his hair blacker and bushier. Adams was five feet eight inches in height; Kaufman stood over six feet... Adams was a man. Kaufman was an eighteen-year-old boy."

Adams was impressed with Kaufman and arranged for him to obtain a job with the Washington Times writing a column, "This & That". It included jokes, puns, light verse, poetry, and an appeal for material from his readers. During this period he developed his own style of writing. According to one observor, "in a day of fat and flowery language, Kaufman kept his writing as thin as himself." He was also influenced by the work of Mark Twain. He sent a note to his sister Helen, "Not Twain yet but doing my damnedest."

One day in 1913, Frank Munsey, the owner of the newspaper, walked into the office and looked at the faces behind the typewriters. When he saw Kaufman, shouted out to the editor, "What is that Jew doing in my city room." Within minutes Kaufman had been fired from his $30 a week job. Once again Franklin Pierce Adams came to his rescue and arranged for him to work for the New York Evening Mail. For the first few months he was just an ordinary reporter but in 1914 he was made drama editor.

Kaufman met Beatrice Bakrow in 1916, at the wedding of a mutual friend, Allan Friedlich. Howard Teichmann, the author of George S. Kaufman: An Intimate Portrait (1972), claimed that "Beatrice had developed into one of those large, unattractive girls who compensate for their lack of beauty by being bright, warm, ambitious, stylish, and charming. There was enough charm, enough style, enough ambition, enough warmth, and enough brightness within her to keep him at her side for the entire evening. Like her father, Bea had a full, slow, and rather lazy way of speaking. She did all the talking, and, characteristically, George listened - with interest."

The following day George and Beatrice drove by motor car to Niagara Falls. On her arrival home, Beatrice told her parents that she was going to marry Kaufman. Julius Bakrow objected to her choice when he discovered he was a journalist. "A vehement argument followed, but Bea stood firm and emerged victorious... Her friends in Rochester were astounded. Not only who was George Kaufman but who were his family, what were they, where did they come from, what business were they in, what did he do for a living, and, of course, the ultimate question: how did his future prospects look?"

Kaufman approached his friend, Franklin Pierce Adams, and told him: "Keep the middle of next March open, will you, Frank? I've found a kid upstate who's a peach." Adams, who had observed that the young journalist had never had a girlfriend before, asked: "Are you telling me you're getting married?" Kaufman replied: "Unless it's declared unconstitutional, I am." Adams agreed to be Kaufman's best man at the wedding.

Julius Tannen, Beatrice Kaufman and George S. Kaufman.
Julius Tannen, Beatrice Kaufman and George S. Kaufman.

Beatrice and George were married in high-style at the Rochester Country Club on 15th March, 1917. George was too busy with his work at his new post at the New York Times to take a honeymoon. Glancing at the newspapers as they boarded the train that took them back to New York City, George discovered that Tsar Nicholas II had been forced to abdicate. He commented to Beatrice: "Well, it took the Russian Revolution to keep us off the front page."

Beatrice later told a friend: "We were terribly innocent. We were both virgins, which shouldn't happen to anybody." She soon found herself pregnant but unfortunately the child was deformed and stillborn. As their friend, Howard Teichmann, has pointed out: "Beatrice was as crushed as any woman would be, but George's reaction was totally unexpected and heartbreaking to both of them. Following their misfortune, George found himself physically unable to have sexual intercourse with Bea.... There were embarrassed conversations followed by empty promises. First came twin beds, then separate bedrooms, and although George remained Bea's husband, he never again was her lover."

According to Dorothy Michaels Nathan, her friend from childhood, "Beatrice started seeing men even before George started with women." Another friend, the author Alexander King, saw it differently: "Beatrice was one of those great daring women who knows that her husband is having extramarital relations and knows that everybody else knows it, and knows that this can be borne either by throwing fits in lobbies or by being Wife Number One. And she was Wife Number One."

Brian Gallagher, the author of Anything Goes: The Jazz Age of Neysa McMein and her Extravagant Circle of Friends (1987), has argued: "Their lack of sexual experience must have contributed to George's inability to have intercourse with Bea after her miscarriage early in their marriage, and so helped start him on a twenty-year sexual binge... Bea, in the meanwhile, made her own, quite full sexual life, although something of its substitute character is seen in the fact that a majority of the men in it bore a distinct resemblance to George."

In 1917 Heywood Broun was appointed as the first-string drama critic. Kaufman was disappointed at not getting the post and moved to the New York Times. The chief drama critic of the newspaper, Alexander Woollcott, was at this time, on the Western Front, reporting on the First World War. When Woollcott arrived back in New York City in 1918, he took over from Kaufman as the person who covered the first-string shows.

Brooks Atkinson worked with Kaufman at the newspaper. He later commented: "He (Kaufman) always did his work very scrupulously, but he was so organized that it was almost impossible to know when he was working and when he wasn't working. He would pop into the office at, say, eleven o'clock in the morning, and sit down at his typewriter, and for about half an hour he would work with great intensity. And then he was gone for two or three hours." Sarah Mankiewicz also worked in the department. She argued: "He (Kaufman) was the boss. He was a very hard taskmaster. He wanted the job done and he wanted it done on time." Rebecca Bernstein, who was the drama critic of the New York Tribune, pointed out that "his reviews were kind and generous, and he knew more about the theatre itself than any other critic who was writing about it."

In 1919 Kaufman began taking lunch with a group of young writers in the dining room at the Algonquin Hotel. One of the members, Murdock Pemberton, later recalled that he owner of the hotel, Frank Case, did what he could to encourage this gathering: "From then on we met there nearly every day, sitting in the south-west corner of the room. If more than four or six came, tables could be slid along to take care of the newcomers. we sat in that corner for a good many months... Frank Case, always astute, moved us over to a round table in the middle of the room and supplied free hors d'oeuvre. That, I might add, was no means cement for the gathering at any time... The table grew mainly because we then had common interests. We were all of the theatre or allied trades." Case admitted that he moved them to a central spot at a round table in the Rose Room, so others could watch them enjoy each other's company.

This group eventually became known as the Algonquin Round Table. Other regulars at these lunches included Robert E. Sherwood, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Heywood Broun, Harold Ross, Franklin Pierce Adams, Donald Ogden Stewart, Edna Ferber, Ruth Hale, Jane Grant, Neysa McMein, Alice Duer Miller, Charles MacArthur, Marc Connelly, Frank Crowninshield, John Peter Toohey, Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and Ina Claire.

Samuel Hopkins Adams, the author of Alexander Woollcott: His Life and His World (1946), has argued: "The Algonquin profited mightily by the literary atmosphere, and Frank Case evinced his gratitude by fitting out a workroom where Broun could hammer out his copy and Benchley could change into the dinner coat which he ceremonially wore to all openings. Woollcott and Franklin Pierce Adams enjoyed transient rights to these quarters. Later Case set aside a poker room for the whole membership." The poker players included Heywood Broun, Alexander Woollcott, Herbert Bayard Swope, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, Harold Ross, Deems Taylor, Laurence Stallings, Harpo Marx, Jerome Kern and Prince Antoine Bibesco. On one occasion, Woollcott lost four thousand dollars in an evening, and protested: "My doctor says it's bad for my nerves to lose so much." It was also claimed that Harpo Marx "won thirty thousand dollars between dinner and dawn". Howard Teichmann has argued that Broun, Adams, Benchley, Ross and Woollcott were all inferior poker players, Swope and Marx were rated as "pretty good" and Kaufmann was "the best honest poker player in town."

Kaufman joined up with Marc Connelly to write Dulcy. The story is based on an idea by Franklin Pierce Adams and starred Lynn Fontanne as Dulcinea Smith. It opened at the Frazee Theatre in New York City on 13th August 1921. According to Caldwell Titcomb, "Dulcinea Smith is a witless, bromidic, meddlesome but well-meaning woman with a mania for engineering other people's lives. She gives a weekend house-party, and manages to have a finger in every pie and a foot in every mouth. She tries to fix her husband's business deals and do a little matchmaking on the side. She spouts cliches and misquotations with amazing volubility."

Howard Teichmann claims that "what was revolutionary about Dulcy was that it blew up a balloon labeled business, held it up for the audience to laugh at, and then stuck the sharp pin of satire into the balloon - and when it burst the audience laughed even harder." It was considered to be a new style of comedy that Broadway audiences liked and it was a great box-office success.

Malcolm Goldstein, the author of George S. Kaufman: His Life, His Theater (1979) has argued: "To be young and talented and living in New York in the 1920s, with money to spend and the promise of more of it to come - this, the happy situation of Kaufman and Connelly after the opening of Dulcy, was the best life imaginable. Connelly thought it was as fantastic as a child's dream of pleasure in which the whole sky was filled with balloons and anyone could pull down as many as he wished."

Kaufman and Connelly enjoyed the experience of writing a hit play and decided to carry on with this experiment. They usually met at Connelly's place in the Algonquin Hotel. They would at first discuss the structure of the play and then go away and write alternative scenes. They then would meet and compare them. Kaufman would usually have the job of turning the work into a final script. This resulted in four more plays, To the Ladies (1922), Merton of the Movies (1922), The Deep Tangled Wildwood (1923) and Beggar on Horseback (1924).

Kaufman found it difficult to work with Connelly and complained that he was constantly late for work. The two men were unable to recapture the success of Dulcy and in 1924 the two men decided to end their partnership. Connelly later admitted: "When each of us decided to do a play on his own, the decision ended only our constant professional association. We never ended our friendship."

Kaufman's next writing partner was another member of the Algonquin Round Table, the novelist Edna Ferber. Kaufman's friend, Howard Teichmann , said: "In many ways she was very much like Kaufman: middle-western birthplace, same German-Jewish background, same training as a newspaper reporter, same discipline toward work. In other ways she was the direct opposite of Kaufman. She was small in physical stature, and a great believer in exercise. She had great personal courage, an overwhelming desire to travel, to seek new people, new places, new ideas. She did not have Kaufman's wit, but she did have the ability to write rich, deep love scenes."

Their first play together was Minnick . It opened at the Booth Theatre on 24th September, 1924 and ran for 141 performances. Alexander Woollcott said that the play "loosed vials of vitriol out of all proportion to the gentle little play's importance." Feber replied that she found the review "just that degree of malignant poisoning that I always find so stimulating in the works of Mr. Woollcott". This led to a long-running dispute between the two former friends. Woollcott's biographer, Samuel Hopkins Adams, claims that it started as "the inevitable bickerings which are bound to occur between two highly sensitized temperaments."

Kaufman played poker with Harpo Marx. As a result he got to know his brothers, Groucho Marx, Chico Marx and Zeppo Marx. He joined up with Morrie Ryskind to write The Cocoanuts for the Marx Brothers. With music by Irving Berlin, it opened at the Lyric Theatre on 8th December, 1925. It was a great success and ran for 276 performances. Groucho later recalled that "Kaufmann molded me. He gave me the walk and the talk." Kaufman also respected Groucho and he was the only actor who he worked with who was allowed to ad lib on stage.

Kaufman's next play with Edna Ferber, was entitled The Royal Family, was based on the lives of Ethel Barrymore, John Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore. It took eight months to write and after being cleared by the Barrymore family lawyers it opened at the Selwyn Theatre on 28th December, 1927. Produced by Jed Harris and directed by David Burton, it was a great success and ran for 345 performances. They were unable to recapture this success and eventually broke up the writing partnership. Ferber later admitted that she was always afraid of Kaufman and they had a difficult relationship. "When he needled you, it was like a cold knife that he stuck into your ribs. And he did it so fast, so quickly, you didn't even see it go in. You only felt the pain." Kaufman told his friends that he lived in mortal fear of Ferber. He disliked her temper and her love of quarrels.

Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht wrote a play, The Front Page, and sent it to Jed Harris. He liked the play but insisted that it needed editing and gave the job to Kaufman. As Howard Teichmann, the author of George S. Kaufman: An Intimate Portrait (1972), has pointed out: "The best cutter and the fastest rewriter in the theatre was George Kaufman. He took care of the gangsters. Futhermore, Hecht and MacArthur were newspapermen and so was Kaufman; the three of them spoke a common language. He finally joked and cajoled them into writing a better, tighter, funnier script." Kaufman was also recruited as director of the play.

The play was a comedy about tabloid newspaper reporters covering the execution of Earl Williams, a white man and a suspected member of the American Communist Party who had been convicted of killing a black policeman. Williams is based on the case of Tommy O'Connor, who escaped from a Chicago courthouse in 1923. It opened at the Times Square Theatre on 14th August, 1928. The play was a smash hit, running 278 performances before closing in April 1929.

Kaufman was now persuaded to write filmscripts for the Marx Brothers. His first production was a filmed version of his play, Cocoanuts (1929). This was followed by Animal Crackers (1930). He also wrote several successful plays during this period including June Moon (October 1929 - June, 1930), Strike Up the Band (January, 1930 - June, 1930), Once in a Lifetime (September 1930 - September 1931) and The Band Wagon (June, 1931 - January, 1932).

Kaufman reputation was made with comedies. Herman Mankiewicz described him as the "funniest man" he had ever met. Others agreed although they pointed out that at meetings he would remain silent for most of the time, but when he did speak, it was usually a very witty comment. Kaufman confessed that people often laughed because of his reputation. "When a comedy is a tremendous hit, the audience comes in after the first few weeks and starts laughing at the program."

Kaufman's next venture was to write a musical, Of Thee I Sing, with Morrie Ryskind, George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin. It opened at the Music Box Theatre in New York City on 26th December, 1931. According to one critic "Of Thee I Sing introduced a new form of musical comedy to the American theatre. For the first time a musical had a book with a truly comedic base." Directed by Kaufman, it received critical and box office success and ran for 441 performances. In 1932, it was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

It is claimed that Kaufman's wife, Beatrice Kaufman, was very promiscuous. Howard Teichmann tells the story of how she used to seduce young men: "At one of the larger parties that she and George gave so regularly, Beatrice spotted an attractive young man. There were several bedrooms in the Kaufman apartment, but none seemed appropriate. Stepping out, she and the young man went to the Plaza Hotel, where he signed the register. The room clerk looked over this unlikely couple with no baggage and a single intention." The clerk told the young man that there were no rooms available. When the young man told her this, Beatrice walked up to the desk and exclaimed: "See here, I am Mrs George S. Kaufman!" With this comment the clerk gave them a room.

In 1934 George Kaufman became involved in a national scandal. Franklin Thorpe, the husband of the actress Mary Astor, told the newspapers during a custody battle, that his wife's diary revealed that she had been having an affair with Kaufman. The story made the front page of the New York Times. At the time Beatrice was on holiday in London with Edna Ferber, Charles MacArthur, Helen Hayes, Irving Berlin, Margaret Leech and Raoul Fleishmann.

Leech recalled that "Beatrice was terribly upset and embarrassed. Newsman were standing around waiting for her, and she couldn't even go out to a restaurant without being mobbed by them." Fleishmann found her red-eyed from crying in her hotel room: "I'm so sorry. I'm so horribly upset that this should happen to George. I can't stand the thought of how badly he feels."

When they all arrived back in New York City there were at least forty reporters at the pier waiting for them. Beatrice went up to them and said: "I am not going to divorce Mr. Kaufman. Young actresses are an occupational hazard for any man working in the theatre." In the divorce court Mary Astor admitted that she had been having an affair with Kaufman. However, the diary was deemed as admissible and the judge ordered it be sealed and impounded.

One of their closest friends, Ruth Goetz, later recalled: "They really lived high. Beatrice liked all the goodies of life. She was a great, robustious, fat, yummy woman, bouncy as hell. She loved people and drinking and eating. And she proposed to live that way. She was driven to work by her chauffeur, in her limousine, with a lap robe across her knees. She liked funny people and she liked fellows and she liked women. She was wonderfully hospitable and dear. She wanted a good time, and George was a man who never wanted a good time in his life. I think he had many good times, but they came to him by accident. She had to fill in many a long, dreary spell, which she did. She filled it with thousands of friends and a household that she ran extremely lavishly. Beatrice and George, in a curious way, they made it with that marriage, they really did. It was totally unsuited. The things she liked, he didn't. But he would have had no friends without her. She served her end of the marriage and he his. The marriage was on the surface, although one knew that the core was out of it and had been for many years. Still she really loved him. And so it worked. If one person goes on loving, it can be managed."

Edna Ferber thought that despite her many affairs, Beatrice was a good wife: "The wonderful Beatrice was the great influence in George's life. Sustaining, warm, perceptive, enormously companionable, she could go out to the corner to mail a letter and make the errand sound more adventurous and amusing than Don Quixote's journeyings." Another friend, Esther Adams, the wife of Franklin Pierce Adams, commented "Beatrice was like putting your hands in front of a warm stove. She was so appreciative and humorous."

Kaufman also worked successfully with Moss Hart, who he considered to be his best collaborator. In 1936 they won a Pilitzer Prize for their comedy, You Can't Take It With You. He wrote to George Middleton, founder of the Dramatists Guild: "The reason I collaborate is that I have been so fortunate, in the course of the years, as to find an assortment of gifted dramatic writers who were willing to collaborate with me. In those circumstances I would have been pretty foolish not to collaborate, and pretty hungry if I hadn't."

After several years of poor health, Beatrice Kaufman died at six o'clock in the evening on 5th October, 1945. Moss Hart entered the room five minutes later and found George Kaufman beating his head against the wall. He had always consulted Beatrice when he was writing plays. Arthur Kober said: "George valued her opinion probably more than anyone else." At the funeral he told his friend Russel Crouse, "I'm finished. Through. I'll never write again."

Kaufmann always had a difficult relationship with Edna Ferber. Towards the end of his life he wrote to her. "I am an old man and not well. I have had two or three strokes already and I cannot afford another argument with you to finish my life. So I simply wish to end our friendship." After waiting a sensible amount of time, she telephoned him and they agreed to see each other again.

George S. Kaufman died on 2nd June, 1961.


Primary Sources

(1) Howard Teichmann, George S. Kaufman: An Intimate Portrait (1972)

Sometime during the rehearsals and the try-outs of The Royal Family, Jed Harris took an option on a play written by two Chicago newspapermen about two Chicago newspapermen. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur had come up with The Front Page. It was good, but in the unchallenged opinion of Harris it needed cutting and rewriting. Of equal importance was the fact that no matter how many times the play was rewritten, gangsters invariably turned up in the third act.

The best cutter and the fastest rewriter in the theatre was George Kaufman. He took care of the gangsters. Futhermore, Hecht and MacArthur were newspapermen and so was Kaufman; the three of them spoke a common language. He finally joked and cajoled them into writing a better, tighter, funnier script.

Harris then convinced him, as only Harris could, to take on the directorial assignment. According to Harris' general manager at that time, Herman Shumlin, who later became one of the theatre's most accomplished producer-directors, Kaufman had already done a few jobs of directing, but never with his name on the program. The Front Page was his first time out officially.

Stories of the wonderful wildness of Hecht and MacArthur persist in theatrical circles to this day. Kaufman, with his built-in sense of discipline, almost left the show. When he found them in a speakeasy, they would offer him a drink. Kaufman who took whiskey as though it were medicine managed to go
through a lifetime of cocktail parties by quietly pouring his drinks into convenient receptacles. "I happen to know," he once told Ben Hecht, "that rubber plant over there has been drunk four times this week on my drinks alone."

Casting a play is one of the director's most important tasks. Kaufman the newspaperman made it his business to see almost every play that opened on Broadway. Kaufman the playwright was keenly knowledgeable as to the exact talent of almost every available actor. Kaufman the director, therefore, cast The Front Page almost perfectly. Osgood Perkins and Lee Tracy headed the players. They were supported by actors whose names or faces became nationally and internationally known or recognized via stage and film for thirty years: Allen Jenkins, William Foran, Tammany Young, Joseph Spurin-Calleia, Walter Baldwin, Eduardo Cianelli, Frances Fuller, George Barbier.

As the play went into rehearsal, it soon became apparent that Kaufman's casting was found lacking in a single role. George S. Kaufman had been unable to pick a good prostitute. At the end of five days, the actress, whoever she was, was fired. For a replacement he got Dorothy Stickney. Miss Stickney, who had been married just under a year to Kaufman's friend and first director, Howard Lindsay, created the role of Molly Malloy, the Clark Street tart. Her entrance line on bursting into a roomful of drinking, smoking, and classically cursing reporters was, "I've been looking for you bastards!"

Born in Dickinson, North Dakota, educated at St. Catherine's College, and married to a man who at one time had seriously considered becoming an ordained minister, Miss Stickney at first found that line definitely objectionable. After some hassling, Kaufman took the basically timid, gentle, very ladylike lady aside and explained that "I've been looking for you bastards!" was a line inserted solely for the purpose of arousing sympathy from the audience for the character she was playing. After that, he had no trouble with her.

(2) Beatrice Kaufman, letter from Hollywood to her mother, Sarah Bakrow (June, 1935)

It's warm as toast; like a lovely summer day, and I am wishing that I had brought more lightweight clothes. It seems to be very changeable out here and a rather difficult climate to dress properly for.
It's like old home week; the Swopes arrived yesterday, and Oscar (Levant) is coming on Wednesday. I really could close my eyes and think that I was back in New York with my buddies around me, which is both pleasant and unpleasant, according to how you look at it.

The party at the (Donald Ogden) Stewarts was great fun the other night and my evening was made for me when Mr. Chaplin sat down beside me and stayed for hours. Or did I write you that: I can't remember. He is very amusing and intelligent and I enjoyed talking to him a great deal. Paulette Goddard was there too - very beautiful; everyone says they are married. Joan Bennett, Clark Gable, the Fredric Marches, Dotty Parker, Mankiewiczes, etc. A delicious buffet dinner, with talk and bridge afterwards. Their house is lovely. Saturday night's party which Kay Francis gave was swell, too. She took over the entire Vendome restaurant and had it made over like a ship -a swell job. I seemed to know almost everyone there - there were over a hundred people. A sprinkling of movie stars - James Cagney, the Marches again, June Walker, etc. I arrived home at a quarter to five completely exhausted, having danced and drunk a good deal. Before it, we went to Pasadena to have dinner at the Alvin Kingsbachers - you remember them. Mrs. K asked particularly to be remembered to you, Mother. Said she thought you were so beautiful. They had an assortment of people to meet us - not much fun really.

And last night we went to dinner at Zeppo's (Marx) and later to small party at the Samuel Goldwyns' where I played bridge. The Goldwyns are off for England in a few days. And today I am lunching with Ruth Gordon and Maggie (Swope), having my hair done afterwards, dining with Mr. K and going to the opening of Merrily We Roll Along. And so it goes. I am dated up all week, but I am thinking of going to the desert instead. There is difficulty getting a room, however. It's a little too much like New York for me here and rather exhausting. One could have luncheon dates, tea dates, and dinner dates every night here indefinitely.

(3) Ruth Goetz, interviewed by Howard Teichmann (1971)

They really lived high. Beatrice liked all the goodies of life. She was a great, robustious, fat, yummy woman, bouncy as hell. She loved people and drinking and eating. And she proposed to live that way. She was driven to work by her chauffeur, in her limousine, with a lap robe across her knees. She liked funny people and she liked fellows and she liked women. She was wonderfully hospitable and dear. She wanted a good time, and George was a man who never wanted a good time in his life. I think he had many good times, but they came to him by accident. She had to fill in many a long, dreary spell, which she did. She filled it with thousands of friends and a household that she ran extremely lavishly. Beatrice and George, in a curious way, they made it with that marriage, they really did. It was totally unsuited. The things she liked, he didn't. But he would have had no friends without her. She served her end of the marriage and he his. The marriage was on the surface, although one knew that the core was out of it and had been for many years. Still she really loved him. And so it worked. If one person goes on loving, it can be managed.

© John Simkin, March 2013