A dear friend, Boschka Layton, who left us far
too soon—is being discovered in Canada. I can't say "re-discovered," because she was largely ignored during her lifetime—especially during her Canada years with her husband, Canadian Poet Laureate and Nobel Prize nominee, Irving Layton. (Wiki) They had two children Max, and Naomi.
Boschka (nee Betty Sutherland), half-sister of actor Donald Sutherland, and second wife of Irving Layton, left Canada to raise her daughter in California—in an anarchist commune on the bohemian shores of Big Sur during the 1960s. Then she moved to the
Russian River in the 1970s. (I think). Somewhere along the way, she made a pilgrimage to India and got hepatitis.
When Betty left Irving for good, she had previously changed her name from Bashka (the Rusisan-Jewish equivalent to Elizabeth—as she had converted to Judaism when she married Irving). But when she left Irving, shechanged the spelling to Boschka—after the painter, Hieronymus Bosch.
After what she described as the sheer hell of living in Montreál with Irving Layton, a formidable debater, who bombastically described himself as "a quiet madman, never far from tears", for Boschka, her escape to California was the promised land—a garden of earthly delights. She never let us call her anything but Boschka. Betty/Baschka was dead and buried in Montreál.
Boschka suffered from an enlarged heart, a result of having had rheumatic fever as a child in Nova Scotia, and when she gave birth to her daughter Naomi in 1950 in Montreál, she had heart trouble, the valves of her heart were damaged—followed by a bacterial infection, or virus (when? ca. 1970s?), which left her stricken with Bell's Palsy.
Boschka had a funny poem,
Is There Hope for the Future, Cry the Loud Bells of Palsy? in her first, and only book of poems, stories, and drawings,
The Prodigal Sun (1982), about scaring all the small children half to death whenever she smiled at them.
If I don't survive the next San Francisco earthquake
don't live to see the second coming of Christ in two thousand and twenty
I may be remembered for a line in Layton's poem to this third wife…
—Boschka Layton, The Prodigal Sun, from Is There Hope for the Future, Cry the Loud Bells of Palsy?
It was almost impossible to find any information on Betty-Boschka on the internet. In the notoriety of Irving's wake, she's been reduced to a footmark, a modernist muse, a second wife.
Someone described Betty as statuesque—she wasn't tall. Irivng's sister-in-law Eckie, who worked with Betty at Gallagher's Grill in Montreál, and introduced her to Irving in November of 1942, described Betty as crazy as a loon, always drawing, and having movie star looks: "a cross between Ingrid Bergman and Greer Garson." Maybe, but I never saw photos of her when she was young. She had great cheekbones. But most people only saw how Bell's Palsy had ravaged her looks.
Boschka was a gentle, kind person, both quiet and unassuming. She moved carefully, almost shuffling to conserve energy because she had heart trouble. But she had a razor sharp intellect—and wit—to match.
Naomi came to California with Boschka, Max stayed with his father. Naomi was a brilliant guitarist, and like her older brother Max, she learned chords at the knee of Leonard Cohen, and she later studied with Segovia. We kept in touch for a few years after Boschka died. But we lost touch. Naomi was a fragile being. I know Boshcka worried about her. I would also love to know how she is as well.
Boschka lived in Guerneville, CA, in a basement flat/studio by the PeeWee Golfcourse sign. Just before she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she moved to an amazing cabin at Goat Rock, near Jenner-by-the-Sea, a lifelong dream, but she didn't live there long. Several of us took turns caring for her in a hospice situation in Santa Rosa. She kept insisting that her jaundice was a relapse of hepatitis. At any rate, she was very orange—which made her grey-green eyes startling to see. Like an orange Celtic Krishna come alive.
A misdiagnosis—but from what I understand of pancreatic cancer, it's swift. Steve Jobs managed to live several years with his diagnosis. Boschka was gone within two months. On Valentines Day, I had strange prophetic dreams with metaphors of horses, and hearts beating like a drum just before she died—as if I was with her on the journey to that country from which no traveler returns. I also was running a high fever—bronchitis. She died of a heart attack.
We all said Boschka died of a big heart. And her heart was big, she was an amazing, generous, witty multi-talented woman.
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| I hand-calligraphed posters—cheaper than typesetting. 1980 |
Boschka was a poet-painter, like me and we were great friends. I produced many events at Sonoma State, and curated gallery shows there for the Student Union and the InterCultural Center. Her art show was the first time she had a retrospective with sculptures, paintings, drawings, poetry reading, etc., together—Naomi played guitar. It was a wonderful event.
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| Pre-desktop publishing, black mimeograph 8.5 x12" 11/1980 |
We belonged to a weekly writing group, the Russian River Women Writers. But I was kicked out of the group because I hand-calligraphed Margaret Ellingson's very long name on one line for a poetry poster for the Russian RIver Writers' Guild, so it was smaller than the other names. This was during the pre-desktop publishing days, hand-calligraphed because no one could afford typesetting. I was the default (free) calligrapher because no one else wanted to do it. I was a sitting duck.
Barbara Baer and Peggy Ellingson were the ringleaders, they were bullies out for blood, the others were sheep: with Mary Ellen O'Banion, Laura del Fuego—even my friend Marianne Ware—taking sides. Grown women acting like a gang of vicious schoolgirls. I was devastated. Only Boschka stood up for me. But that was later. I was supposed to accompany Boschka to Nova Scotia to visit her father, their petty brouhaha nearly cost us our friendship.
Boschka took a perverse delight hearing of my tales of love gone bad, it cemented our friendship. She likened her relationship with Irving Layton to that of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. For both of us, at one point or another, the siren call of a (dirty) oven beckoned. What probably saved us was that we were both casual housekeepers. Was Sylvia's oven spotlessly clean, I wonder?
“WHERE IS SYLVIA?”
Sticking your head
in the oven
you thought you were terribly clever—
guest editor from Mademoiselle
brilliant author of first novel
up to your neck in poems
In my dream you rolled
all over the bed with me.
Put one long dark
cloth red leg over mine.
We flashed together
under yellow silk
of sari, red
dotted
If you didn’t make it
how can i?
You outwrote me
ten times over
before thirty
In the long evening
I piece together
a novel
like crocheting
or knitting twenty rows
before bed-time.
Boschka Layton, The Prodigal Sun
Boschka spent the remainder of her years processing that once-in-a-lifetime relationship that gave her joy, two children, whom she loved deeply—and ended with a lifetime of pain. Boschka's stories of day-to-day living with Irving for 15 years, left me shaken—I never could read his work, except with a jaundiced eye. After all that he had done to her. Left her to starve. Literally.
But when I finally met him after hearing horror stories for five years, I understood the attraction, his leonine charisma was still evident—even after all those years.
A poem I remember Boschka reading at one of our poetry workshops:
BRIEF TO IRVING
I open your latest book
of eighty-two poems
another blitzkreig
and see you're taking up the cudgels
against another wife:
I wonder how she's taking it?
I see. She's leaking headaches
trembling in corners
already
and she's only had two years of you.
The reason, perhaps, appears on page 75
you squirm over your neighbour's crotch. . . .
After twenty years I am still angry
I will say it for us all
Faye, Aviva, Harriet, myself:
We're not, Irving, merely strumpets
for your pleasure;
we're almost numerous enough
your wives
to unionize, vote you out
if you think that makes poetry
you've got another wife coming....
Boschka Layton, ca 1983
The irony is, that Irving had cast Boschka aside for Aviva, Wife No. 3, but when Boschka had an affair with one of their friends, Irving instinctively knew of her infidelity. Boschka said he reached up under her dress, felt her wetness, and began to beat his head against the wall, raging and crying. The old double standard. The cock at half-mast. And yet, decades later, Irving sent Boschka a copy of his latest book. I think this poem was in response to
The Gucci Bag. The publication date's right—1983. I remember the cover. And I clearly remember her outrage.
In Waiting for the Messiah, Irving Layton wrote:
I was attracted to Betty, but not only physically. There was something about her personality that I knew with certainty fated me to know her beyond this brief moment…her light brown hair blowing wildly in all directions. Now a strange thing impelled me. I stepped over to her and took her in my arms as if we were going to start a dance. We did in fact do a few steps, then I embraced her more closely. "Betty," I said softly, "you and I are going to have beautiful children."
That part was at least true. I hear Boschka repeat it more than once.
Layton remained legally married to Betty during his 20-year relationship with Aviva. Layton finally divorced Boschka to marry a former student, Harriet Bernstein, only to divorce her too. But Boschka kept his name to the very end.
We held Boschka's wake and memorial at her snug house overlooking Goat Rock. Irving, Naomi, Max and Donny—that's what Boschka called her famous actor brother—all came to the event. Plus the poetry community of Sonoma County.
At her memorial service at Goat Rock, I remember Irving read:
BOSCHKA LAYTON: 1921*-1984
Because each act of creation is a miracle
that happens again and again
until it becomes familiar as an autumn leaf
or a ripening apple tree in full sail
I shall remember you not as charred bone and ash
to be given to earth's mad alchemy
but as the full-bosomed women whose lips
mouthed my awed whisper "We shall make handsome children."
Your heart's vital joy in the eyes of friends,
in children's smiles and the smiles of old women,
it is presumptuous to speak now of your crazy defiance
idlde to praise the harsh devotions of your life
Ordinary miracles to pry open the eyes of the blind
happen every day. Yet my deep faith holds:
sun, wind, rain, and the dark nights will change
my Boschka's cinders to deathless apples and poems.
Irving Layton
Santa Rosa,
Feb 17, 1984
"Everything except writing poems and making love ends up by finally boring me." Irving said goodbye to one love of his life, the muse that brought him to the knees of poetry, and then, like Diana, escaped the ruthless hunter.
And yes, we did spread Boschka's ashes under apple trees in a Sebastopol orchard. And yes, we did eat them in the form of pies the following fall. Only I wasn't invited.
*Differing birthdates 1919, 1920, 1921—Irving wasn't beyond changing facts.
A drawing I made of Boschka as she lay dying.
In Memoriam Boschka Layton, Valentine's Day, 1984
Hard to believe that it's been 30 years since Boschka died on Valentine's Day, and harder still to believe that I never wrote a blog about her. Even after three decades, her passing is still raw, I can remember snippets, but no stories. It's as if I hermetically sealed it all away, never to return.
And then there was the family to consider, but Irving is dead (2006), and I found Max's website online—I had no idea Max could sing. Boschka would be so proud to hear his CD. A first CD at the age of 60, when he found his eyesight failing. Max's candor about the relationship was liberating. Maybe now, thirty years after her death, I can finally write about her.
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Boschka Layton (Betty Sutherland) 14 May 1921 - 14 Feb. 1984 ©Maureen Hurley
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