It is common when writing a biography to become fascinated, even obsessed, by certain figures in the subject’s life who take on an independent existence and seem worthy of a full-length study. The attempt to find out about the various phases of Jane’s life, to understand her intriguing character and to gather evidence to prove she was Conrad’s mistress was the most interesting and complicated part of my research. It led to several fortunate breakthroughs and to the discovery of some primary sources of information: the papers of Kitty Crawford, the papers of Deems Taylor and the 446-page FBI file on Jane.
While spending the summer of 1989 in Berkeley, re-reading Conrad’s works and the biographical books about him while seated on a balcony overlooking San Francisco Bay, I interviewed Ian Watt, a former teacher and leading Conrad scholar. Professor Watt gave me several valuable leads. He told me that during the war Jane had been involved with Sir Leo Money, who “had something odd about him”; that she had been the mistress of Gilbert Seldes; that she had been a friend of Katherine Anne Porter and had been discussed in Joan Givner’s biography. Ian Watt also said that he and another former student John Halverson had written a long-contemplated essay on Jane and that as soon as it was accepted for publication, he would send me the typescript. The Halverson-Watt essay cited John Edwards’ important article; it also quoted a letter from Deems Taylor, Jane’s long description of her first meeting with Conrad, Rebecca West’s perceptive analysis of Jane’s character and W. N. Ewer’s recollections of Jane in the 1930s.
Lord Desmond Harmsworth, whom I had known when writing about Wyndham Lewis, could not enlighten me about Jane’s relation with his uncle Lord Northcliffe. But while searching through my books on modern English history I came across a reference to Sir Leo Money’s scandals in A. J. P. Taylor’s English History, 1914–1945, which led me to the accounts of the two incidents in The Times. While looking through the index, I also found two war reports by Jane published in The Times.
Gilbert Seldes’ son Timothy, a literary agent, knew nothing about Jane. But John Edwards sent a memoir by Gilbert. I had interviewed Gilbert’s brother George Seldes when writing my life of Hemingway. I phoned the sprightly ninety-nine-year-old George Seldes in Vermont, he gave me his clear recollections of Jane and I read more about her in his autobiography, Witness to a Century. Simon & Schuster did not forward my letter to Joan Givner, but when I phoned her in Regina, Saskatchewan, she was extremely helpful. She sent me many pages of biographical material and the beautiful photograph of Jane that is reproduced in this book, and gave me the address of Kitty Crawford’s daughter, Jane Anderson Jenkins. After several phone conversations with Mrs. Jenkins and her daughter, they generously agreed to send me copies of Kitty’s papers, which contained photographs, newspaper clippings, the Kidd-Key Journal, letters from Jane to Kitty and Kitty’s memoirs of Jane.
I had once sat next to the lively nonagenarian composer Virgil Thomson during the first performance of his early work in Berkeley and questioned him about Hemingway’s relations with Gertrude Stein. I now hoped that Thomson might be able to put me in touch with Deems Taylor’s daughter, and in one of his last letters he suggested I write to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, of which Taylor had been president. They forwarded my letter to Joan Kennedy Taylor, who answered my questions about her father and Jane, and traveled from New York to her summer house in western Massachusetts to show me his papers.
I requested Jane’s FBI file (as I had requested Hemingway’s) through the Freedom of Information Act in August 1989, but had still not received it in January 1990. After I wrote to Senator Timothy Wirth about the long delay, the FBI files as well as the Department of the Army reports were sent immediately. They described the Marqués, traced Jane’s propaganda career in America, Spain and Germany, and threw considerable light on her personality.
The greatest potential discovery would be Conrad’s letters to Jane. In order to find them and learn when and where she died, I made strenuous efforts to get in touch with her husband’s descendants. A friend in Málaga and the Spanish Embassy in Washington both said that the woman who had inherited the title was the Marquesa Doña Isabel Pertierra y González, who lived in the Hotel España in Oviedo, Spain. I wrote two letters to the hotel in Oviedo, received no answer and then tried to telephone. But the operator who gave telephone information for Spain did not answer for an entire week—and seemed as if she never would. I finally obtained the number of the Gran Hotel España (there was no Hotel España) from a travel agent. But when I called the hotel I was told that they had never heard of the Marquesa and that she certainly did not live there. When I asked the desk clerk to look up her address in the local telephone book, she replied: “There are too many Cienfuegos in Oviedo!” By the time I learned that the Marquesa had moved to the Hotel Principal in Oviedo, it was too late: the spinster had died without issue in 1989.
Hugh Thomas, author of The Spanish Civil War, had helped with my research on Hemingway. He suggested I write to the ministry in Madrid that was responsible for titles. But the Jefe del Area of the Subsecretaria of the Asuntos de Gracia of the Ministerio de Justicia said that the Guía Oficial de Grandezas y Títulos merely listed the address of the Marquesa as “Hotel España, Oviedo.” Back where I started but still desperate to find the Marquesa’s descendants, I wrote to Dr. Ian Gibson, who lived in Madrid and whose biography of García Lorca I had just reviewed for the American Scholar. Intrigued by my quest, Ian Gibson sent information that proved, when compared to the facts in the FBI file, that Jane’s husband was a bogus marqués.
Though I had achieved most of my major goals, there were still several other trails to follow. The Georgia Department of Vital Records said they had no birth records before 1919, so Jane’s birthdate could not be verified. The Arizona Historical Society told me when “Red” Anderson had been Town Marshal, but the Yuma Historical Society, the Yuma Sheriff’s Department and the Yuma County Law Enforcement historian did not answer my letters. There were no references to “Red” Anderson in books on George Goethals and Buffalo Bill Cody, and, apart from a reference in a book on Arizona history, I could not find out any more about him. No references to Jane appeared in Rebecca West’s papers at Yale; Retinger’s daughter Marya (born in 1927) did not answer my letter and was no longer listed in the London telephone directory; and his editor, John Pomian, who did not know where his daughters Malina and Stasia were, closed another circle by suggesting I contact Ian Watt “as he knows far more than I do.” But the New York Public Library sent copies of Jane’s telegrams to Conrad. And the archivist Mary Lane provided fascinating new material about Jane’s family background, the murder trial and her year at Piedmont College. Finally, I tried to track down records of Jane’s wartime activity in Germany. I wrote to the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, the Politische Archiv des Auswärtiges Amt in Bonn, the Zentrales Staatsarchiv in Potsdam and the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv in Frankfurt. They all had excellent catalogues and responded promptly, but found almost no trace of Jane. A biographer is an investigative reporter of the spirit who makes discoveries by following every lead, by thoroughness and dogged persistence, by experience and luck, by a passion for detection and by the generosity of many people who value his work and are willing to help.