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16 Friday, April 6, 1919
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Aline': Focus of Thomas Wolfe's Love, Bias
NEW YORK — Thomas
Wolfe loved one uncommon
woman in his short, chaotic
life — Aline Bernstein. She
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reS.,
1“stinlirlf •—a
was 44 when they met and
he was 25. She was a hugely
talented theatrical de-
signer, well-married, a
sophisticate in all the best
senses of that word. He was
brilliarit, wild, undisci-
plined and as yet an un-
known figure in the literary
world.
"Aline" (I-Irper and Row)
by Carole Klein, is the biog-
raphy of their ecstatic, tern-
pestuous and finally tragic
eight-year love affair.
On the surface, nothing
would have indicated the
likelihood of a liaison be-
tween Torn and Aline.
Brought up in Asheville,
N.C., Wolfe came from a
family with a genius for
self-destruction. He was
tortured by his inherited
prejudices, including a
deep-seated streak of anti-
Semitism, and imbued with
suspicion of anything that
suggested levity or urban-
ity.
Aline, on the other
hand, was a city girl to
her very core and the
daughter of an actor.
Like her father she was a
romantic, who glorified
in the sensual, but like
her mother she took
pride in ordering her in-
stincts. Orphaned at 16,
she quickly learned the
discipline of4leprivation
but never relinquished
the joy of a full, rich imag-
inative life.
Aline met Wolfe in 1925
on board the ship Olympic
as it steamed toward New
York from Europe. She had
spent the summer doing ar-
chitectural research on a
new play and was returning
home to her banker hus-
band, Theo Berh-Stein, and
her two children.
Her reaction to the
strange and intense young
Wolfe was immediate, elec-
tric and overwhelming.
From the moment of their
first conversation, which
lasted until. dawn, Aline
knew that somehow every-
thing in her well-ordered
life had shifted its focus.
A few weeks later, back in
New York their affair began
in earnest. While Aline -
tried alWays to protect her
family she did establish a
studio for herself where
Wolfe lived. Throughout the
entire affair Aline's re-
markable husband and fam-
ily stood by her, a tribute to
the uniqueness of her char-
acter and his understand-
ing. During and, most im-
portantly, after the affair,
she kept her career going.
At first Wolfe reveled in
the intensity and joy of
the relationship, but
gradually- his desperate
need for independence
and the demons which
had haunted him all his
life began to overtake
him. He was both drawn
to and disgusted by the
opulence of Aline's life —
the comfort in which she
lived, the artistic circles
in which she moved so
easily — and while he
took advantage of many
of the opportunities she
pendent on her.
Aline cherished the rich-
ness other heritage and said
she felt her Jewishness ran
through her "like a vein of
gold." Wolfe's anti-
Semitism coursed through
him "like a dank-, festering
stream," in the words of
Carole Klein. As their rela-
tionship became more tur-
bulent, as joy turned to
furor and despair, Wolfe
saw the theater, success,
money and elegance as
Jewish things, false and
corrupting and arrogantly
denied to people like him-
self.
Wolfe's anti-Semitism . is
described with agony in this
passage:
"Feeling so impassioned
about the world's injustice
and, in particular, about the
plight of Europe's Jews,
Aline was acutely shaken
by a visit from Tom one
winter evening in early
1937.
"She had by now ac-
cepted that 'he hates us
all like poison,' and as she
reflected on their rela-
tionship in her writing,'
she could no longer avoid
confronting that ,`twist in
him' which was his anti-
Semitism. But she had
not expected to be hurt
by it again.
"However, she reported in
an early-morning letter to
Bella .Spewack that near,
midnight the previous eve-
ning, Tom had stormed into
the Gotham Hotel demand-
ing to see her. He was so
driink he could barely
stand, and the deskman,
anxious to avoid a scene,
summoned Aline to the
lobby.
"As soon as she stepped
off the elevator, 'he- started
the most awful row about
the Jews.' Shrilly he 'de-
nounced the entire race .. .
they should be wiped off the
-face of the earth.' Suddenly
the shouting stopped as he
angrily peered down at her.
Aline had remained silent
all this time, hoping to quiet
him, but her silence seemed
to have inflamed him more.
"As if he could not stop
until he had struck a re-
sponse from her, he waved
his hands wildly in the air
and, teetering precariously,
began to yell: 'Three cheers
for Hitler! Three cheers for
Hitler!"
"The porter and the
desk clerk, who had been
discreetly
looking
wheeled
elsewhere,
around to face them.
And, Aline reported to
Bella, it was as if a geyser
of rage and humiliation
erupted inside her.
" 'Bella . . . do you know
what I did? I landed out and
punched Tom in the nose!'
To her astonishment, • be-
cause he was so drunk, he
tumbled to the floor. But she
did not feel triumphant as
she stood over his sprawled
body, nor when she asked
the men to put him out of
the building.
" 'It was the most sicken-
ing experience of my life, so
far,' she wrote, as dawn
.offee r,est him, it enraged- brightened outside her win-
him that he was so de- dow. 'I think everyone who
admires him so much
should know about the Jew
attitude . . . I have always
protected him so far as I
could, because of that cer-
tain greatness I have felt
about him, but this was fi-
nally too much . . . It was a
sample of what must be
happening all over the
world, only fortunately I
was so placed that I co
strike out.' "
In another incident,
Wolfe, in his passion of
hatred, revealed his bias:
"That Aline was
Jewish had always de-
lighted Tom; it was
glamorous, exotic, excit-
ing. But she knew that he
also had brought to New
York from his Southern
town and his bigoted
mother a view of Jews as
repellent, avaricious and
even dangerous.
"Aline had managed to
deal with this ambivalence.
When he tenderly called her
`my Jew,' as he so often did,
she tried to hear only the
affection and not the hint of
insult. But too often, in the
last days in London, as his
panic about her going home
increased, insult was ines-
capably there. He shouted
that she was going home
only because of the money
that was to be found there.
`You are a Jew and like suc-
cess . . . and success and I
are strangers.'
"Tom Wolfe loved Aline's
elegance and lavishness; he
even'praised the perfection
of Theo's haberdashery:
Jews knew how to 'enjoy
money,' and to someone -
bred in Julia Wolfe's atmos-
phere of arid miserliness,
that flair was captivating
and enviable.
"But nonetheless he still
feared and was contemptu-
ous of Jews as people. And if
it was some kind of victory
to have taken an exotic,
sensual woman from one of
New .York's princes, he
could not help but wonder,
particularly when he was
upset and alone, what fear-
ful damage she would do to
him 'in the name of her
race.'
In later years, after
Wolfe's untimely death
from tuberculosis at 37,
Aline was to say that they
had loved each other
with the best that was in
them — that for a fejik
years they had shared,
all-consuming and per-
fect love, and that she \
had loved him in "both
his . horror and beauty,"
until the day he died.
Wolfe, for his part, im-
mortalized Aline Bernstein
as Esther Jack in the last
two of his posthumously-
published novels, "Of Time
and the River" and "You
Can't Go Home Again."
New Assignment
NEW YORK — Uriel
Lynn, director for North
America of the Government
of Israel Investment
Authority, is returning to
Israel. Lynn was called to
Israel to assume the posi-
tion of. governor_ of. ptat?.
revenue.
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