Couples

By Gerald Clarke

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 Peron 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 pere 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."

What the mistresses said about Dumas and Son has gone unrecorded, but it is a fact that many of the women in this book have used sex to get what men expected by right. To Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood was an "overcrowded brothel," where actresses had to sleep their way to the screen. She dispensed her favors to Producer Joe Schenck, and then went on to affairs of the heart with Marlon Brando, Milton Berle, Yves Montand and Frank Sinatra. Later, they say, she had "secret assignations with President Kennedy," whose performance she cryptically described as "very democratic."

Eva Peron also slept her way to the top, starting at 14 with a second-rate tango singer and ending up with the dictator of Argentina. She was not above having a little fun as well, and once had a fling with Aristotle Onassis. "It is natural for a woman to give herself, to surrender herself for love," burbled Evita. "No woman's movement will be glorious and lasting . . . if it does not give itself to the cause of a man." But when it comes to sex, what is natural has many interpretations --some of them very odd indeed. Vincent Van Gogh's rather wise remark should perhaps stand as the last word on the subject: "The world seems more cheerful if, when we wake up in the morning, we find we are no longer alone and that there is another human being beside us in the half-dark."

--By Gerald Clarke

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.