Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin by Marion Meade

Author:Marion Meade [Meade, Marion]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-53301-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2004-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

“OH KING,” Gene wrote in a telegram to Art and Gladys Ficke, “we accept your royal invitation with servile brow in the dust but elated legs in the air. Oh Queen, let your royal horses kick our plebeian posterior that we may know if we are really awake.” The Fickes had invited him and Vincent to New Mexico, all expenses paid. The minute he got a haircut, he said, they would hop the next train.

Once Gene sold his importing company, the family businesses had become poetry and agriculture, neither of which was exactly booming. Meanwhile, Artie was rolling in money after amassing $200,000 ($2 million in today’s currency) in Wall Street. He and his wife had made a comfortable life for themselves in Santa Fe, although of course it was an invalid’s existence. Gladys painted and kept a horse named Loraine. For Artie’s hobby—photographing landscapes, flowers, and nude models—they rigged up a darkroom.

The arrival of the “Darling Kids,” their first visit together in a year, turned out to be a bright spot in Art’s dull routine. “Were there ever four such happy, darling gods as we are?” Gene wondered. Art could think of nobody “who more sincerely and creatively worshiped the act of being alive” than Gene Boissevain.

During their almost two-month visit, Vincent made an expedition to the Grand Canyon and shopped for souvenirs and beads. At a place called Zuni she watched a “thrilling” Hopi Indian dance, she wrote her mother, and loaded up on trinkets. Once they paid a call on Artie’s friend Witter Bynner, the infamous prankster who had left her waiting at the church and who now lived nearby with his companion. Otherwise, everybody was content to stay home on Canyon Road, snapping pictures of each other in the garden, dining on the delicious meals prepared by the cook, Mercedes, and guzzling Artie’s special “pinkey-pink cocktails.” His usual attire was pajamas and dressing gown, and sometimes Vincent slipped into the same.

In an article titled “Wooing the Muse in a Santa Fe Garden,” the New York Times printed a snapshot of her and Artie in robes and slippers and reported that Vincent was completing the libretto of a new opera. The fact was that the Metropolitan Opera had already begun rehearsing The King’s Henchman, whose premiere was scheduled for February. To coincide with the opening, Vincent’s publisher planned to release a reading version that would be considerably longer and slightly different from the libretto. Now she continued to make final revisions, and when Artie offered suggestions for changes, she frequently accepted them. He was one of the very few people from whom she would tolerate correction.

In Santa Fe a favorite pastime of theirs was posing for nude pictures in the garden. All his life Artie had disliked his penis, which was circumcised and “too long,” but he felt no embarrassment around the Boissevains because they knew each other so well. One day, while standing between Vincent and Gladys, he was alarmed to see an erection and ran inside, “to the amusement of the girls.

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