Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [9]
We touched the sides of our glasses, and, as always, muttered cheers and took simultaneous sips.
“Golly, that’s swell, DuBose. Thank you.” The man sure had a way with a cocktail.
“You’re welcome. Albert says we should repeat this exercise as often as our system demands.”
“Really? Not if you want your dinner tonight.” My husband was sure full of beans that night.
“Right you are.” DuBose looked into my eyes and smiled warmly. “Darling? Do you remember the days when we used to live in Mark Twain’s old house on Fifth and Twelfth in New York?”
“Of course I do. Why?”
“Do you think that someday, someone will live here and say that this is our old house? I mean, will they marvel to be here? Where we once were? With Gershwin? Writing grand music and having cocktails?”
He was too much! I burst into giggles then and now, just remembering. I gave him the devil, too. But good!
“Edwin DuBose Heyward! Of all the ridiculously arrogant things to suggest! Are you insane? In this modest little cottage? DuBose! Who cares about us? It’s Gershwin they’ll remember.”
It was the awful truth. George Gershwin would even be carved on our tombstones. But it had been nine years since he first contacted DuBose about turning Porgy into an opera. Gershwin stayed up all night and read the book. Woo hoo! Then he wrote DuBose to see if the operatic rights were free. They were, and for the next nine years we waited for Gershwin to fit us into his busy schedule! We’d already had the book Porgy staged as a play in 1927! (It didn’t make a fortune but it did make money and it got fabulous reviews and ran for 367 performances!)
“Yes, I imagine so but . . .”
“Any man who goes around saying things like I write the greatest music in America won’t be forgotten so easily. I’ve never known someone in all my days with such ridiculous self-assurance.” He actually said that. Gershwin was an arrogant windbag. Sorry, but there it is.
But DuBose, never one to criticize, came to Gershwin’s defense.
“Now, now, little Dorothy. Isn’t that a trifle harsh? We both know that he actually does write the greatest music in America. We should speak of our benefactor with kindness.”
“Benefactor indeed. He’s been waltzing us around the barn forever, driving us to the point of near poverty. I’m tired of soup! And, oh, now! Now he wants to write the music for Porgy? When the wolf is practically at our door? He’s the Great Menace, DuBose.”
“Ah! My dearest little Dorothy, drink up. History will decide that question, will it not?”
“I think that greatly depends on who writes the history, DuBose. I really do. I just hope the right person writes our history.”
“May I freshen up your drink?”
I remember that I took a deep breath to calm myself. Ply me with bourbon, I thought. He was right. History would decide. But Gershwin had made us wait for so long! If we didn’t poke and prod him into getting on with the musical score for Porgy and Bess, we’d be living on beans and pump water soon. I would broach the subject so many times until DuBose got after him, but on that night I didn’t.
I simply said, “By all means. Thank you, DuBose, I feel better already. You are such a dear heart and truly, you are such a gentleman.”
“And you, little Dorothy, you are my sun, my moon, and my stars!”
“And you are mine,” I said and meant it.
In fact, I loved DuBose with a passion I have never felt before in my entire life. I had become the living embodiment of the woman who went whither he went, forsaking all, tolerating not just Gershwin but the clucking suspicions of the long-tongued matrons of Charleston, who said I would never be quite the ideal wife for this handsome descendant of South Carolina’s, no, America’s true aristocrats. But! they said, she was so tiny and adorable and he was a diminutive and adorable man as well and oh my heavens, they could almost pass for twins!
Well, tut tut tut. I was smart