THE INTIMATE SEX LIVES OF FAMOUS PEOPLE by Irving, Amy and Sylvia Wallace and David Wallechinsky Delacorte; 618 pages; $14.95
Birds do it, and so do bees and even educated fleas. But human beings are the only ones who make money writing about it, and it is the Wallaces of course — father, daughter, mother and son—who have reduced the practice to its final and most lucrative essence: an encyclopedia of what our celebrated betters, lessers, do between the sheets. How was Napoleon in bed? Or Victor Hugo, Eva Perón or Virginia Woolf? Just ask the Wallaces. (The short answers: terrible, terrific, often and rarely.)
With the patience of prospectors, the authors and their assistants have unearthed revealing passages from a whole library of 1,500 biographies, autobiographies and manuscripts. They are shy only about naming their sources, and wise readers will approach some of their 206 case histories with the same skepticism they would a Pulitzer prizewinning newspaper story. Most of their tales, however, have been confirmed elsewhere, and the Wallaces know at least one fact absolutely: percales are threaded with gold.
The gold is sometimes tarnished or alloyed. Virginia Woolf, who was married at 30, sadly reported that the orgasm had been immensely exaggerated. "It is a great thing being a eunuch as I am," she insisted. But she was not, and she had at least one lesbian affair, with fellow Author Vita Sackville-West.
If Woolf was a bit put off by the prospect of bedtime congress, Leo Tolstoy was positively appalled. "Man can endure earthquake, epidemic, dreadful disease, every form of spiritual torment," he said. "But the most dreadful tragedy that can befall him is and will remain the tragedy of the bedroom." Tolstoy went so far as to write a book advocating celibacy, The Kreutzer Sonata, but his wife had what she angrily called "the real postscript." Not long after publication, she became pregnant.
Fortunately, most people—at least in this list—have had more pleasure from sex. H.G. Wells could scarcely resist any woman, and at one time induced his second wife to nurse his ailing first wife while he was seeing his mistress, Author Rebecca West. Wells was not exactly a Godfearing man, and in a letter to West he explained why: "God has no thighs and no life. When one calls to him in the silence of the night he doesn't turn over and say, 'What is the trouble, dear?' "
Alexandre Dumas père was another happy satyr; women referred to him, with awe, as a "force of nature." Dumas also had a happy disposition, and since he could not be faithful himself, he did not ask fidelity from others. He once caught a friend in his wife's bedroom, and, instead of starting the usual tiresome scene, invited him to spend the night. The next morning he shook the man's hand. "Shall two old friends quarrel about a woman," he asked, "even when she's a lawful wife?" Like a good father, he gave his discarded loves to his son, but Dumas fils eventually complained about the hand-me-downs: "You know, Father, it's a great bore, you always giving me your old mistresses to sleep with and your new boots to break in!" Retorted Dad: "You should look on it as an honor. It proves you have a thick organ and a narrow foot."