By Women Possessed by Arthur Gelb

Author:Arthur Gelb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-10-14T16:57:46+00:00

37

After much agonizing, O’Neill and Carlotta made up their minds in July 1936 to sell Casa Genotta.

They confided their decision to their houseguests at the time, the academic Sophus Winther and his wife, Eline. Winther had published the laudatory work Eugene O’Neill: A Critical Study two years earlier, and the two men had become friends. Now the O’Neills told the Winthers of their tentative plan to go west. O’Neill wanted to absorb atmosphere for the cycle’s West Coast branch of the Harford family, and Sophus urged him to begin his trek by first renting a place near their own, on the outskirts of Seattle. The plan suited the O’Neills and they asked the Winthers to find them a furnished house.

Carlotta hadn’t the courage until nearly two months later to tell George Boll of their decision to sell, after which she fell into a fit of weeping. O’Neill had fewer regrets. In his diary, he grumbled: “Will be glad leave this place—hope we can sell it soon—climate no good for work half of year—and feel am jinxed here.”

Debilitated from stress, Carlotta and O’Neill lumbered back again to New York to be doctored. This time they checked into the Lowell Hotel, on East Sixty-third Street (perhaps because they felt embarrassed over their last stay at the Madison). After administering X-rays and blood tests, Dr. Draper told O’Neill the “whole person” was sick, but there was “no definite organ to pin it on.” He advised “absolute change—rest—forget work.”

Carlotta’s own doctor wanted to put her into the hospital, but when she demurred, insisting her husband needed her to take care of him, he compromised by administering a series of injections to bolster her weakened condition.

Both O’Neills were on edge, anticipating their imminent abandonment of Casa Genotta, and could summon little gaiety when Eugene Jr. and various friends dropped in at the Lowell on October 16 to mark O’Neill’s forty-eighth birthday.

• • •

A LATE AFTERNOON in October found O’Neill and Carlotta boarding the 20th Century Limited bound for Chicago on the first leg of their trip to Puget Sound—once again in search of their Erewhon. For the sixth time in his adult life, O’Neill was turning his back on a home that had failed to live up to his expectations. Provincetown had been too crowded, Ridgefield too close to Manhattan, Bermuda too social, Tours too rainy, Manhattan too distracting, and Sea Island too hot.

After an overnight stay at Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel, they entrained for Seattle on the Great Northern Empire Builder. Carlotta was cheered to see that O’Neill was already looking and feeling much better.

They were greeted by the Winthers as they stepped down into the Seattle railroad station at eight in the morning of November 3. Word had somehow leaked of their arrival, for there was a reporter present; he accompanied them to the rented house at 4701 Ruffner Street that was to be the O’Neill home for the next two months, and he interviewed and photographed them there.

O’Neill was pleased with their house

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