Musician

· American

Beatrice Wickens

Pianist and music teacher, Henry Miller's first wife, and mother of his first daughter — the marriage behind his earliest surviving novel, Moloch.

Details

Birthplace: Rochester, New York (her foster family's home)
Nationality: American
Married: Henry Miller · 1917–1924
Roles: Musician
Also known as: Beatrice Sylvas Wickens · Beatrice Wickens Miller Sandford

About Beatrice Wickens

Beatrice Sylvas Wickens was raised by foster parents — Fred and Elizabeth Sylvas of Rochester, New York — and schooled in a convent; her mother, Catherine Wickens, gave her the second surname. She made her living at the piano, as a performer and a music teacher, and it was the piano that caught Henry Miller: in October 1915, by his own account, he fell in love with a woman who had the 'unpatriotic habit of playing the rhapsodies of Liszt.' They married on 15 June 1917 — Beatrice given away by her foster parents, her mother standing witness — when he was an unsettled twenty-five-year-old shuttling between jobs; their daughter Barbara was born in 1919. The household ran on her lessons and his wages from Western Union, where he managed messengers and accumulated the misery he would spend a career describing.

The marriage ended when Miller met June Mansfield, a dancer at a Times Square dance hall, in 1923: the divorce decree came that December, though the parting is usually dated 1924, the year he remarried within weeks of being free. What the marriage left behind in print is Moloch, the autobiographical novel Miller drafted in 1927–28 and abandoned — its telegraph-company drudgery and curdled domestic life drawn from these years — unpublished until 1992, twelve years after his death.

Beatrice later remarried, becoming Beatrice Wickens Miller Sandford, and outlived the marriage's notoriety by decades. She kept the record: her copies of Miller's published books, annotated in her hand, her correspondence with him from before, during, and after the marriage, and her own written memories of those years are preserved with her daughter's papers at the Harry Ransom Center in Texas — the counter-archive to the version the novels tell.

Life events

1915
Henry Miller falls in love with her playing — the 'unpatriotic habit,' he wrote, 'of playing the rhapsodies of Liszt.'
1917
Marries Henry Miller on 15 June, given away by her foster parents, Fred and Elizabeth Sylvas of Rochester.
1919
Their daughter Barbara is born.
1923
Miller meets June Mansfield; the divorce decree is granted in December.
1924
Miller remarries; 1924 is the year usually given for the parting.
1928
Moloch, the novel drawn from the marriage, is finished and abandoned.
1992
Moloch is published, twelve years after Miller's death.

Featured in these books

Sexus

by Henry Miller

How Beatrice appears in its pages: The narrator's first wife — the marriage the book dismantles on its way to Mona, down to the staged divorce evidence and the alimony hearing. Beatrice Wickens, renamed.

The full portrait — Maude in Sexus

The narrator's first wife — the marriage the book dismantles on its way to Mona, down to the staged divorce evidence and the alimony hearing. Beatrice Wickens, renamed.

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Maude is the wife of the Cosmodemonic years: the household the narrator comes home to between telegraph crises and nights with Mona, shared with Melanie, the aging boarder whose room 'was always exactly the same' wherever they lived. The marriage the book depicts is a war of nerves the narrator prosecutes and finally escapes, and through it Sexus stages the entire machinery of a 1920s divorce — the confession speech, the witness ushered into the bedroom to see Mara under a sheet, and at the end a court asking whether he will pay alimony for the rest of his days.

The book flinches at its own portrait exactly once. Imagining Maude's inner picture of herself — prissy on a green lawn, holding a red parasol, doves at her shoes — the narration interrupts itself: this is how Maude would appear 'if the author were God and not her husband.' It is Miller's own admission that what the trilogy gives her is a husband's version. She is Beatrice Wickens, whose answer to the version was the counter-archive of letters and annotated books she left to the Harry Ransom Center. This profile is drawn from the Grove Press text, read in the Internet Archive's scan.

How the book draws them

'If the author were God and not her husband'The book's one moment of fairness: picturing how Maude sees herself — a green lawn, a beautiful red parasol, gray doves at her shoes — the narrator concedes that his portrait of her is a husband's, not God's.
The cruel speech'Maude, it's cruel what I'm going to say, but I have to say it' — the confession that meeting the other woman taught him 'how to treat a woman,' delivered to her face, with fate offered as a co-defendant.
The witness at the bedroom doorFor the divorce, Maude brings a witness to look at Mara holding a sheet over her bosom — the staged adultery evidence a 1920s decree required, arranged with everyone's cooperation.
The alimony'She'll live pretty comfortably on the alimony you'll have to pay her,' a friend reports; the book's last stretch puts the narrator in front of a court asking if he will pay it for the rest of his days.
Melanie's roomThe household includes Melanie, the melancholy old boarder whose room Maude selects in every flat they occupy — the book's image of the marriage as a fixed arrangement that travels intact from address to address.
Stanley's silent curseThe narrator's oldest friend Stanley detests her and she him — his look at her table, the book says, is a wordless sentence. The marriage is judged nightly by the company it keeps.
Life at the CosmodemonicThe marriage runs alongside the telegraph company's permanent emergency — messengers on strike, the phone ringing at home — the same double life of office and household that Tropic of Capricorn rages through.

At a glance

In the book: The narrator's first wife, in the years before and during Mona
Household: A Brooklyn flat shared with the boarder Melanie, whose room never changes
The arc: From the confession speech to the staged evidence and the alimony hearing
The real person: Beatrice Sylvas Wickens · Rochester, New York (her foster family's home)

More people from Sexus

Mona

Moloch

by Henry Miller

How Beatrice appears in its pages: Moloch's wife, holding the household together through its daily warfare — drawn from Miller's first marriage, to the pianist Beatrice Wickens.

Read the character guide

People they knew

Documented connections — every one carries its source.

Henry Miller

Author

Married to · 1917–1924

Miller's first marriage; their daughter Barbara was born in 1919. The decree came in December 1923, though the parting is usually dated 1924, the year he remarried. The household of Moloch is drawn from these years.

— Mary V. Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller (1991); Beatrice Wickens Miller Sandford and Barbara Miller Sandford Collection of Henry Miller: A Preliminary Inventory

Sourced claims

Every connection the graph holds for Beatrice, with the evidence behind it.

Married to · 1917–1924

Henry Miller

— Mary V. Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller (1991); Beatrice Wickens Miller Sandford and Barbara Miller Sandford Collection of Henry Miller: A Preliminary Inventory

Depicted in

Moloch

Blanche, the wife of the novel's bitter household, is drawn from Miller's first marriage — Grove's account ties the book directly to the misery of the Western Union years and the marriage to Beatrice.

— Moloch: or, This Gentile World — publisher's edition record

Depicted in

Sexus

Maude, the first wife the narrator leaves for Mona — through the staged divorce evidence and the alimony hearing — retells the end of the Miller–Wickens marriage; both biographies read the trilogy as Miller's account of 1923–24.

— Mary V. Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller (1991); Robert Ferguson, Henry Miller: A Life (1991)