(C) Common Dreams
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The Conscience of Bret Stephens [1]
['David Klion', 'Illustration Edel Rodriguez']
Date: 2019-09-24
Stephens, born Louis Ehrlich in Kishinev (then tsarist Russia, now Moldova) in 1901, fled with his family in the wake of an especially vicious pogrom. In New York, where he adopted the surname of the Irish poet James Stephens, he worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and found success in the textile industry. Eventually he made his way to Mexico City, where he founded a chemical company called General Products and built his fortune. In 1935, connected by a mutual acquaintance, he showed Annette and her husband around his adopted hometown. Annette was smitten, both with Mexico and with Louis. Annette soon arranged a return visit to Mexico, “to test our physical compatibility,” as she later put it in a letter to a German academic in 1991. Upon arrival in the port of Veracruz, she and her sister were attacked by—I swear I’m not making this up—bedbugs (at least, according to one colorful online biography).
“Katy” and “Stevie,” as Annette and Louis called each other, had an intensely passionate affair. “My life with Stevie was very exciting,” Annette later wrote. “We had an ardent relationship; he exceeded my wildest dreams as his inexhaustible energy and variations on the mating theme.” Before long, Annette had divorced her husband—not so easy in the 1930s, and at the cost of being separated from her daughter—and settled in Mexico City, where she and Louis enjoyed what sound like some extremely fun years. They raised two sons, Charles and Luis, painted, designed jewelry, played jai alai, and attended bullfights. They socialized with Rivera (who painted a muscular Louis shirtless) and Kahlo (a devoted fan of Annette’s art, which shows the clear influence of Picasso, Gauguin, and the Mexican muralists) and Trotsky (albeit only briefly). They entertained these and other notable guests at their magnificent home in Tlacopac, which is now an international artist residency. Annette would later recall dressing up in traditional Mexican costumes and hats with Rivera and Kahlo and “hamming it up.”
But their bliss was not to last. After Pearl Harbor, 41-year-old Louis insisted on returning to Brooklyn to enlist in the U.S. Navy and left an enraged Annette in Mexico City with the kids. Louis was a patriot, an avowed fan of Winston Churchill, and a conservative to his core, and there was no way he was going to wait out World War II with a bunch of artists in Tlacopac.
[END]
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[1] Url:
https://newrepublic.com/article/155144/conscience-bret-stephens
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