Gotham Diary:
Restrictions
8 May 2015
I had forgotten about people like Charles Runyon.
Charles Runyon is a recurring character in a chain of Maeve Brennan stories that is centered on an exclusive, “restricted” cluster of houses on the east bank of the Hudson River, about thirty miles from New York. This fictional enclave, called “Herbert’s Retreat,” is said to comprise thirty-nine houses, all built two hundred years ago. Two hundred years ago is highly implausible; in the middle of the Eighteenth Century, people built towns and isolated farmhouses, not suburban lanes. And nobody would have thought, in those distant days, about imposing “restrictions.” Restrictions are a relatively modern invention, introduced around the turn of the last century, when places like Herbert’s Retreat began to pop up on the outskirts of most American cities. The restrictions were clauses in the deed that bound the homeowner not to keep chickens (generally), and not to sell the house to Jews or to colored people. Such restrictions as to human beings became unenforceable in the middle of the last century, but they linger on in countless deeds, because it costs money to erase them. Two hundred years ago sounds like puffery that the denizens of Herbert’s Retreat would tell themselves.
Men like Charles Runyon flourished during the era of restrictions, and at the social and economic levels where restrictions applied. In a way, they were the product of similar restrictions. If they were not gay, it was usually because they could not afford to know it. Their difference from ordinary men was marked instead by their association with culture, and by their overegged way of speaking. They were often professional critics, or museum curators. To get by in the world, men like Charles Runyon had to cultivate a ferocious authority. They must praise this and denounce that with operatic fearlessness. They kept their cruel wits sharpened, and they danced like matadors — only their effect on potential bullies was not to attract but to deflect attention.
The women who clustered around men like Charles Runyon led monstrously restricted lives. There were very few jobs that a bright and curious woman would find truly satisfying (as well as available, that is), and a lot of jobs that were soul-crushing. A woman who was married to a reasonably prosperous man, moreover, was not supposed to work. If she must, she could run a shop that sold clothing of the kind that she herself wore or antiques with which she might furnish her house. In these restricted circumstances, men like Charles Runyon were dazzlingly colorful. They made exciting pets, capable as they were of human speech but dangerous for that very reason. They could never be reliably domesticated; they might well tire of one mistress and take up with another. (If they themselves became tiresome, if their colors faded, they could not, alas, be put down; they became awkward blots on their sponsors’ consciences.)
The struggle for status, authority, and ownership consumed the lives of the Charles Runyons and the women around them. There was nothing left for thought or reflection; everything was poured into performance. What might have been debonair and enlightening was hollow and brittle instead.
I don’t know why I’ve written all this; I could simply have said the name, Waldo Lydecker. The character played by Clifton Webb in Laura, the still-compelling but oddly off-center murder mystery produced and directed by Otto Preminger in 1944, is a kind of Charles Runyon. But the movie sets Lydecker in alien circumstances. He is assertive but unconvincing as a heterosexual, and his professional success as a broadcast columnist has made him financially independent. Being nasty has become an unnecessary bad habit. He’s missing something — a drinking problem, probably. Charles Runyons in full fig are too desperately busy staying afloat to have time for drinking problems, but all Lydecker wants is to control Laura’s life, as if he were Dr Coppélius.
The disappearance of Charles Runyons is one bit of proof that the world has not gone to the dogs since I was a young man. I never knew an examplar very well, but I learned that there was no point to trying to have a conversation with the type. At the first sign of intelligence in an interlocutor, they became overtly competitive, and I was such a careless doofus that I showered them with opportunities to ridicule me. Sometimes the ridicule stung, but mostly it seemed pointless, because I didn’t see what it was that we were supposed to be competing for. Once they found this out — that I was not competing — their eyes went dead and I ceased to exist.
In that, they were like most men. Here is the game that we are playing, and if you can’t play it well, or don’t want to play at all, then please go away. No wonder discoveries and inventions are made by crackpot loners. No wonder the advance of society, as a web of tiny conventions that assure our safety, comfort, and convenience in the world, has been so largely the work of women. The ordinary men have all been swallowed up by teams. Even the Charles Runyons, in their day.
***
I went to the Museum yesterday, to take advantage of a members’ preview of the new costume show, but it was packed with other members, and in my linen jacket I was dripping. So I didn’t stay very long. I’ll go back, of course, probably a few times, but I’ll be wearing light clothes, probably shorts, and feeling remiss for having abandoned the standards of dress with which the outfits on display were designed to comply. The world would be so much lovelier if women wore dresses — except, of course, it wasn’t; I can remember. Better to say: the world would be so much lovelier if we were all rich and trim. Admiring outfits by Jeanne Lanvin and Cristobal Balenciaga, I neglected to remember that they were produced in the era of restrictions.
I discovered a new name: Guo Pei. There are at least two remarkable gowns by this Shanghai designer. One of them imagines an enormous plate of blue and white porcelain, transformed into textile and massed in exuberant folds about the body of a new-age geisha. The other is a vast gold-embroidery number that puts Grace Kelly’s gold lamé in the shade — although I can’t imagine how anyone wearing it could manage to advance or retreat. The lucky princess would have to be dressed on a platform that could be wheeled about by lackeys. She could be honored and obeyed but not touched. Still, it looks like a ball gown, and not like an explosion of fabrics or the inside of a locker room.
For the exhibit, the Museum has covered the pavement of the Astor Court with a gleaming black material that creates the illusion of a pool. Overhead, and reflected in the dry water, is a huge image of the moon. Droplet-like distortions complete the enchantment (but only if you are looking down). The scene is spectacular, and it completely upstages the dresses that float here and there. I can only imagine what Charles Runyon would make of it. Oh, what am I saying? The response of the Charles Runyons of the world is political and competitive, determined by alliances and enmities. Like Bunthorne, they’re aesthetic shams.