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of the Middle East, where they danced on raised wooden platforms built for the occasion—with the orchestra abutting the stage, ensconced in fold-up chairs, at ground level. “If you needed to go to the loo, you had to go under the stage, squat and do your duty, staring at the orchestra members playing while over your head, the sounds of the dancers’ feet reverberated.” And ubiquitous flies. Kaye’s friend Anne, an ex-member of the corps, recounted, “I do think the worst horror was putting on your makeup. The flies were so thick, they covered the mirror. You would whisk them away with your hand, or blow with your breath to open up a clear space on the mirror, and by the time you’d put on your lipstick, the mirror was full of flies again.” I imagine that Ballet Caravan’s tour had tales to equal or outdo these.

5. Over the years, I got to know and care a great deal for Lew and Willam. Carrie, my wife, danced with and for Willam when he was director of San Francisco Ballet. Willam then formed the ballet company at the University of Utah, which evolved into Ballet West. I was a regular guest with both groups, and headed Ballet West’s first European tour. Bill always importuned me to come codirect Ballet West with him, and then take it over. He was such a creative force, constantly planning new ballets, never playing it safe, teaching every class. When in his nineties, I heard he had been moved to a nursing home, so I called him. “My time has gone!” he yelled into the phone. “It’s too late for me! I can’t move! I can’t demonstrate a dance step! I can’t teach a class! Time has passed me by.” Then, in a subdued voice, “I always loved you, Jacques, from the first time I saw you dance.” It touches such an emotional chord in me. Ironic, too, that the two brothers, unbeknownst to each other, spoke almost identical words—“My time has gone.” Lew, speaking of the end of his career as a dancer in the early fifties; Bill, speaking of the end of his career as a ballet master.

6. Rhymes of a PFC, 1964; Rhymes and More Rhymes of a PFC, 1966, first printed edition for the public. Both have the “Vaudeville” poem and one called “Patton,” in which the general takes a leak.

Inspecting cots of amputees, unshaken obviously,

Approves the stitch above the wrist,

the slice below the knee;

Hides in th’enlisted men’s latrine so he can quietly

Have one good hearty cry.

This soldier has to take a leak, finds someone sobbing there.

To my horror it’s an officer; his stars make this quite clear.

I gasp: “Oh, sir, are you all right?” Patton grumbles: “Fair.

Something’s in my eye.”

Carolyn George

1. Virgil, famous for his collaboration with Gertrude Stein on the opera Four Saints in Three Acts, was to become a good friend. He introduced me to the artist Maurice Grosser. Partners in the past, they had split but remained loving friends. “Jacques, it’s Virgil Thomson here. Could you come over for lunch? I have someone I want you to meet. Maurice Grosser. He wants to paint a portrait of you. I’m at the Chelsea Hotel on Twenty-third Street.” I answered, “Sure, I know the place. George Kleinsinger lives there. He composed the music for a Broadway show I was in, Shinbone Alley.” Virgil continued in his fey and pouty St. Louis, Missouri, voice, “Oh, George. He’s got so many tropical plants in his apartment, it’s a rain forest … he keeps a python for a pet! I don’t know how he can play his piano with a snake wrapped around the piano legs and its head on the pedals,” then coyly, “or further up.”

Virgil was ovoid and infirm, stuck in his chair like a decadent cardinal glued onto a throne. Hairless, with fat little jowls and round eyes that seemed to have no eyelashes, he stared without blinking, and his rosebud cupid’s mouth would open and close like a little fish. An ancient baby, who summoned maternal instincts—you wanted to stroke and cuddle him. Pricilla Rey, a dear friend of Virgil’s and of mine, laughingly remarked, “All those women around him, their milk flowed in his presence.”

Virgil was clever with a biting wit that somehow avoided nastiness;