Chapter twenty-three: classic symptoms

“I’m a bit troubled and confused”: ST to AB, October 16, 1958, SSF.

He said it needed further breaking in: In WMAA, p. 242, ST writes that he went by bus and rented car. Undated letters from HS refer to his driving the Jaguar.

“the ancestors of the Americans”: WMAA, p. 242.

“Here’s where they ought to”: ST to AB, July 30, 1958, SSF.

“I hear you are rich”: ST to HS, “Sat Apr 12” [1958], AAA. The annual Whitney exhibition of sculpture, paintings, and watercolors was November 20, 1957 to January 12, 1958.

She had four new shows: For full details, see chronology in Eckhardt, Uninterupted Flux, p. 123.

Such excessive delight: HS to ST, n.d. but internal evidence suggests late 1958, YCAL, microfilm letters. Alexander Stille, interview, January 6, 2009, said, “I think he [ST] was infatuated with Elizabeth’s kids. I think there was the fantasy of having a family, plus a ménage à cinq with Hedda. Hedda was very taken with Elizabeth’s kids. There was something very strange about this.”

plunked his “ass on the chair”: ST to AB, June 1, 1958, SSF.

Deep down, however, he knew: ST to AB, July 30, 1958, SSF.

“life … seen here”: WMAA, p. 243.

“easily found, not easily selected”: Brian Appel, “Beauty and ‘the Beats’—Robert Frank’s “The Americans” (1955–56): Poised for New Highs in the Age of Bush?,” p. 5, http://artcritical.com/appel/BAFrank.htm.

Delpire, aware of Steinberg’s enormous popularity: In 2009, rare first editions of the 1959 Delpire publication were being offered over the Internet for upward of $50,000. Delpire recalled telling Frank, “ ‘You can use a photo for the American edition’…but when I reprinted the book in 1986, I used a photograph because I had discovered, basically, that he was right.” See “Dream Team,” July 7, 2009, http://doublemoine.com/2009/07/dream-team/.

He filled a sketchbook: YCAL, Sketchbook 4891.

He brought home numerous souvenirs: WMAA, p. 242.

He arrived in Copenhagen: ST to HS, December 3, 1958, AAA.

His hosts pulled out all the stops: ST to HS, December 5, 1958, AAA.

“interesting insane Dane-painter”: ST to HS, “Monday morning” (December 7, 1958), AAA.

“another normality”: WMAA, p. 243.

“Raskolnikoff quarters”: ST to HS, December 10, 1958.

The children were happy in school: ST to HS, “Thursday” (December, 1958), AAA.

“Dear Sauly”: Ilie Roman to ST, November 15, 1958, Romanian letters, YCAL.

“the usual. I see too many people”: ST to AB, January 8, 1959.

The magazine was not yet ready: Reproduced in Smith, Steinberg at The New Yorker, p. 65.

Stanley Marcus bought the original: Stanley Marcus to ST, February 4, 1959, YCAL, Box 6.

A housewife in Berkeley: This letter and those cited below are in ST’s fan mail, YCAL, Box 6.

It helped that his work: One example of many: WMAA acquired “Railroad Station” through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Carl L. Seldon, YCAL, Box 6.

He did continue to work: Smith, Steinberg at The New Yorker, p. 6, notes that he contributed 89 covers, more than 600 independent cartoons and drawings, and nearly 500 that appeared within multipage features. There were also still-uncounted “spots” and “spot fillers.”

“very particular about his drawings”: HS insisted this was true, but others, all connected to the magazine, denied it: Roger Angell, interview, May 6, 2008; Lee Lorenz, interview, September 12, 2007; Frank Modell, interview, September 24, 2007.

“noise and confusion”: Lee Lorenz, interview, September 12, 2007.

“a perfect fit”: Roger Angell, interview, May 6, 2008.

The latter concerned a promotion booklet: Information that follows is from correspondence in YCAL, Box 6, between Gene Walz, art buyer for FCB; ST’s lawyer, Alexander Lindey; and ST’s letter of April 17, 1959 to Walz via Lindey.

“could authorize anyone”: Robert H. Busler of Hallmark, April 17, 1959; ST to Hallmark, n.d. but shortly after; both YCAL, Box 6.

He went so far as to promise: Kepes to ST, August 6, 1959, YCAL, Box 6. Kepes was also professor of visual design at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning.

“I find it impossible to write”: ST to AB, April 23, 1959.

In early spring, Ruth and Tino: Springs, East Hampton, and Amagansett have been used interchangeably to describe the location in various articles and interviews. Springs is a section within the Township of East Hampton, as is the village of Amagansett. ST’s property is 433 Old Stone Highway, in the Springs section.

The Nivolas had been in Springs: Information that follows is from Ruth Nivola, interviews and conversations throughout 2007, and Claire Nivola, interviews, conversations, and private correspondence, 2007–10.

In the decade since: The size of the property is sometimes given as more than thirty acres; Claire Nivola confirmed that “quite a bit later,” her parents bought an additional six acres.

Inside the house: LeCorbusier painted the mural in September–October 1950.

The Nivola household had become: For an engaging account, see Alastair Gordon, Weekend Utopia: Modern Living in the Hamptons (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001), particularly pp. 43–57.

He did, and several days later: Henry Adler McCarthy, attorney and counselor at law, East Hampton, April 23, 1959, re: proposed contract from Jonathan A. Miller and Maude I. Miller to Saul Steinberg.

Steinberg paid $12,500 cash: Steinberg agreed to pay $12,500 for the house and seven acres. He originally planned to finance $5,000 with a GI Bill mortgage, but securing it was a protracted process involving mountains of paperwork and he wanted the house right away. A letter from the Chemical Corn Exchange Bank, where he had banked since 1942, attested that he was a “long and favorably known” client with accounts that averaged “in the medium five figures.” Chemical Corn Exchange Bank to ST, May 21, 1959, YCAL Box 6; deed of sale is in YCAL, Box 39.

“We’re neighbors now”: ST to AB, January 8, 1960.

And besides, he was used to: ST, National Diary datebook, May 26, 1959, YCAL, Box 4.

“Too bad it’s full of children”: ST to AB, May 23, 1959.

In August 1959, he was beset: Information that follows is from his datebook, YCAL, Box 3, and from ST to HS, “Monday, August 16, 1959 from Tropicana, Las Vegas Nevada,” AAA.

“Traveling has been for me”: ST to AB, January 8, 1960.

The major cause of his anxiety: Alexander Stille, interview, January 6, 2009: “I am not sure what happened. My mother fell in love with him, or thought she did.”

But when Saul returned: ST’s datebook for November–December 1959 is filled with initials, times, and places; YCAL, Box 3.

It created a tremendous personal crisis: Alexander Stille, interview, January 6, 2009, and HS, interview, March 29, 2007: “He went to a Freudian, but he deprecated it and always spoke scathingly of Freudian analysis. In the last year or two he was with me, he drank too much. He had terrible hangovers and wanted to get rid of them and he said Freudian analysis freed him of them. He never admitted the main reason he went [to analysis], Elizabeth.” In 2010, Claire Nivola consulted her mother’s diary to see what she had written about her role in the affair and found that Ruth Nivola had torn those pages out and destroyed them.

Ugo Stille seems not to have known: Alexander Stille had a series of conversations with his mother during her final illness (she died in 1993). “I found out [about ST] because she told me, she talked about it. She was a pretty direct kind of person and the relationship mattered to her. She had none other like this one.” Of his father: “I never talked to him about the [ST] relationship. He was not the kind of man who would discuss personal issues.”

Apparently they did not end the affair: Throughout my interviews and conversations with HS, she made it clear that her lack of forgiveness was for this single incident and that she and Ruth Nivola remained friends for the rest of their lives.

“She calls out to me”: ST, spiral notebook that begins April 29, 1984, YCAL, Box 95.

“for some time I’ve been”: ST to AB, January 8, 1960, SSF.

“I haven’t written you”: ST to AB, August 7, 1960, SSF.

“kicked him out”: HS, interviews and conversations, 2008.

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