A Voice From Old New York: A Memoir of My Youth Page 9

  She took an early and unfortunate interest in my writing. She decided not only that I had no outstanding talent but that my efforts showed a worldly streak that if published would make me look vulgar and hurt me with serious people in any career that I adopted. She believed that the world needed second- and even third-rate lawyers, doctors, dentists, etc., but that it had no need of artists and writers except the very best, of whom I would certainly not be one. She had no doubt that I would do perfectly well in a nonartistic career, and she sincerely, even passionately, believed that she was sparing me misery in aborting any literary choice on my part.

  She was so upset by the decision of Prentice-Hall to publish The Indifferent Children that she brought all her heat on me to use a pen name, and I weakly succumbed. She was convinced it would hurt me in the eyes of the partners of Sullivan & Cromwell. But, of course they didn't give a damn. Yet Mother was never convinced that I might make a go of writing as a career, even after I had brought out several books that sold quite well and were favorably reviewed. When I married she was afraid my wife's family would disapprove of the novel I published at the time. They didn't.

  When she came around at last to my side it was much later with the appearance of the one novel I would have thought she would have most feared. In The Embezzler, published in 1966, many years after I was established as a novelist, I described in exact detail the crime of Richard Whitney, once head of the New York Stock Exchange and brother of the senior partner of J. P. Morgan & Co. I even read the text of his trial to get it right.

  But the characters in the novel were not even remotely based on members of the Whitney Family. Nonetheless, Mrs. George Whitney, wife of the head of Morgan, and herself the daughter of a Morgan partner, a formidable social presence in New York and a friend of Mother's, got wind of what I was doing and asked me to kill the book, as yet unprinted. I told her that her brother-in-law's crime was an integral part of American financial history and available to all. She said yes, but people had stopped talking about it and that my book would be a bestseller and start them up again. This turned out to be true, but I could hardly give in and didn't.

  Why wasn't The Embezzler Mother's nightmare? Both her family and Father's were tightly linked to the House of Morgan. She used to say that she was relieved of her concerns by Martha Whitney whom she apparently fancied looking over her shoulder when she read anything of mine. When Mrs. Whitney requested that my novel not be published, Mother snorted: "Who does Martha think she is that she can demand the suppression of Louis' book?" And she came down solidly on my side where she remained for the rest of her life, reading everything I wrote in manuscript and giving me wonderful advice.

  At Yale, as far as preparing myself to write, there had been nothing for me to aim at. I had no interest in the Daily News or any fraternity or senior society. It was not until law school that the concept of competition entered my life. Admission to Yale had been easy and in those days cost my parents little. Like most of my friends I took the whole college business for granted. None of us really went to work until professional school or a first job. Then we did.

  15. Sea Duty

  DURING ALMOST ALL of 1941 we were still at peace, although it was beginning to seem inevitable that we should enter the war. England, which had seemed fated to go under in 1940, had survived thanks to the heroism of the Royal Air Force, and most of my friends were either applying for military commissions or actually in training for them.

  Much earlier I had applied for a commission as an ensign in naval intelligence on the theory (not yet wholly discounted) that we might never get into the war and that this would be the most comfortable way to avoid the draft. It was, however, widely regarded as a way of seeking a noncombat position, and I'm afraid this was a factor in my thinking. Mother was active in "America First" antiwar activity—anything to spare her sons the risk of gunfire—and I had tried to persuade myself that the best way to end the European conflict was by a stalemate. It would also be the safest and easiest solution for myself.

  As the war clouds darkened the skies at home, I began to feel ashamed. A weekend spent with Bill Scranton in Scranton, Pennsylvania, convinced me that shame, indeed, was what I should be feeling. Bill's mother, a remarkable woman and a great Republican leader in her state, made no secret, although never offensively, of her poor opinion of men who in any way sought to avoid combat in the coming conflict.

  Mrs. Scranton to me was a kind of saint. All the servants in her large household were ex-convicts for whom, when she deemed them ready to return to society, she used her considerable political power to get jobs fitting their skills. But her old butler refused to go, telling her, "When I leave your service, Ma'am, it will be feet first."

  Returning home I put in an application to the navy to change the commission sought from IVS (Intelligence Volunteer Special) to DVG (Deck Volunteer General), which meant that I should be sent for sea training, with so many of my friends, to the old battleship Prairie State, moored up the Hudson. Its graduates were ensigns known as "ninety-day wonders," and I slept easier at night now that I thought I had removed a blot on my character.

  But the imps of comedy, who are always on the watch, were not going to let me get away with anything as easily as that. Sea duty I should have, a couple of oceans of it, but I should pay first with a year of misery. Pearl Harbor struck, and with it came the unwelcome intelligence commission and orders to proceed to the Panama Canal Zone. To protest that I was waiting for a different commission would look like avoiding an overseas assignment and was impossible.

  ***

  Before actually leaving for the Canal Zone I was briefly on duty at 50 Church Street interviewing persons who had endorsed applicants for intelligence commissions. Were such endorsements based on a true knowledge of the candidate or were they simply family or business favors? Often the endorsers were men or women of public importance whom we interviewers were anxious to meet, and there was a good deal of swapping of names behind the scenes.

  I remember an eager young lawyer swapping the lyric soprano Geraldine Farrar for two justices of the Appellate Division. It was all mildly diverting, and I still hoped for a reprieve to the Prairie State, but no. Orders to the Canal Zone duly arrived and I found myself for wretched months in a tropical office, a bureaucratic nightmare, where my job was to check Americans passing through the zone to South America against lists of semisuspects, including people who had Japanese servants! And all the while my friends were transiting the third lock of the great canal nearest our office on their way to battle and sometimes to their death. Oh, the imps of comedy knew their job.

  Even when they finally relaxed and let me go to sea, it was for some months a touch ludicrous, for it was aboard a former luxury yacht, essentially useless to the war effort. The navy didn't know what to do with us, so we were sent, in the interest of the Good Neighbor policy, to Guayaquil to train Ecuadorian midshipmen. While there, for some unknown reason, the cruiser Concord steamed in on her way to a Far East destiny, and we fell under her jurisdiction. As senior officer afloat, I was assigned the duty, with shore patrol of four sailors, of cleaning out the Guayaquil cathouses at midnight. Of course they were full of the Concord's crew. I would be entertained by the madame with a rotten native brandy while my men roused the sailors upstairs. It was easy work, for in wartime naval discipline really operated, and when it was over I and my foursome posed for a fine photograph, which I sent to my mother without explaining what it was.

  Father had an aunt, Jane, widow of his mother's brother, Charles H. Russell. He had been somebody special to us as a founder of Stetson, Jennings, and Russell (later Davis Polk), Father's firm. Aunt Jane, a tremendous war hawk, was a great character and someone on whom it was incumbent for me to call when I came home on leave. All visitors had to view respectfully a huge cardboard hoisted on an easel in her living room, on which were pasted articles and photographs relating to the heroic deeds of her relatives and friends in the war. My photograph, taken in these som
ewhat compromising circumstances, soon appeared on Aunt Jane's easel. This led the imps, who knew the tale behind the photo, to laugh their fill, but by this time, my application for amphibious duty successful, I had more pressing concerns for I had been given a glimpse of reality on the Normandy beaches.

  16. Fear

  AT SOME, NOW HARD to place moment, I found myself in the Atlantic Ocean, part of a crew of 103, absurdly large for a vessel that was nothing but a sea truck that traveled in convoys protected by destroyers. The British LST, identical with ours, both having been made in the United States, was run with equal efficiency by a crew of twenty.

  The navy didn't choose its best personnel for amphibious vessels, and we had onboard boys from the hills of Tennessee who had inherited prejudices originating in the Revolution and who hesitated to place foot on English soil even for liberty. We had four black sailors who under the navy's Jim Crow policy had to be officers' stewards, but they loved England where, as one of them told me, they were treated like human beings.

  The oddest man I had onboard, appropriately called Valentine, informed me when we were actually under way for Normandy that his battle station had been changed to a 20 MM gun. "And I'm a conscientious objector!" was his outraged complaint. And indeed he was; some naval clerk had mixed up his papers. But he was a reasonable man and finally agreed he would not be helping the war effort if stationed in the laundry.

  The officers, except for the captain and engineer who were mustangs, temporarily commissioned chief petty officers from the regular navy, were all young college graduates and pleasantly helpful to me. One of the difficulties college men had in the war was adjusting themselves to taking orders from men of obviously inferior intelligence. This difficulty did not affect any of my friends who had been to boarding school. The one thing that had been thoroughly taught there was that orders and reason have no necessary connection.

  One of the most difficult things a man can suffer is fear. It is worse for a man than a woman, for in addition to the pain involved he is often disgraced, as a true man is supposed either to be above fear or able to keep it hidden. Courage is universally admired, and much decorated by the military, though it may be a free gift of the gods to the rare souls who are born with the luck to be fearless.

  An army psychiatrist in World War II stationed on a Pacific atoll told me of rushing to a plane that had just made a crash landing and seeing the pilot emerge unhurt from the flames. His pulse was normal! Was he a freak or a hero? Theodore Roosevelt maintained that any man can conquer fear by training his imagination, and this seems to have been true of him and his sons, who defied fear in war and in big-game hunting, but I cannot believe that it is possible for all men.

  I am not speaking of fear of misfortune, which is simple apprehension, but the dread of deadly harm to oneself. Sometimes the harm is imaginary like that of ghosts or large insects or reptiles, which can inspire unreasonable panic. But more often it is real. In World War II, I served as a naval officer and found myself in some tight spots, particularly in the English Channel where my LST operated as a kind of military ferry between the English ports and the Normandy coast. What I most feared about fear, particularly on times when we loaded in London and had to pass the Straits of Dover only eighteen miles from the bombarding German guns, was that I might black out and be unable to perform my functions. This never happened, but on one occasion I had the unpleasant experience of hearing myself say something that I was completely unconscious of having articulated. It was a simple case of hysteria.

  We were anchored off the coast of Normandy waiting for the tide to go down to the point where we could beach the hefty vessel (it was 330 feet long) and unload its tanks and ammunition trucks. We were pretty much at the mercy of low-flying German planes, and one struck us with three bombs. Two went through two bulkheads and disposed of themselves harmlessly in the water. A third buried itself in the back of a truck on the tank deck filled with ammunition. It did not detonate, but if it did, it was the end of our ship.

  Where was the captain? Locked in his cabin where he was probably drinking. He was a mustang, a regular navy chief petty officer, raised only for wartime to the rank of commissioned officer. Many of these made splendid officers; he was an unhappy exception, an alcoholic and a coward. I now found myself practically in command.

  But what to do? I went down to the tank deck to examine the lethal object sticking out of the truck. Did one pull it out? Neither I nor any of the ship's officers or crew had any instruction in demolition.

  And then a calm English voice (we were carrying British troops) breathed in my ear. "I know it's your bomb, sir, but if it goes, it's all of us. I have a demolition squad onboard. Would you let me handle it?"

  Never was a request more eagerly granted. Following the helpful British officer's instructions I ordered the opening of the bow doors and got him a stretcher from sick bay and watched while his men withdrew the bomb from the truck, handling it as if it were a baby, and placed it in the water.

  After that I took him to the wardroom and got him a drink of forbidden whiskey. It was then that I heard my own voice distinctly utter words that certainly did not come from my conscious self.

  "There's another of them."

  "Jesus! Where is it? Let's go."

  "April fool."

  "Not very funny."

  I was too mortified to apologize, and anyway what I had said was unforgivable. Of course it was hysteria.

  I felt the greatest admiration for the heroes we were now bringing back from a front that was moving rapidly into Germany. Once we took onboard the survivors of a ravaged company of paratroopers. They were drinking coffee in the wardroom, which they had mildly messed up when the captain came in wearing a silk Chinese robe and called them pigs. He left the room before they could kill him, which they easily might have, for they were formidable warriors and had no idea who he was. When I explained to their irate commanding officer who reported the incident to me the identity of the man who had insulted them, he would only be satisfied by my public apology on behalf of the navy. You can imagine what this did to my relations with the captain. But I didn't care. I knew he would not dare to complain to our superiors.

  There were no repercussions to the captain's rudeness to these brave men whose valor had been vital to the liberation of France from the Nazi boot, but there had been to his yellow streak, just prior to the Normandy invasion.

  Our LST was traveling in convoy on a calm moonlit night on the channel when a British destroyer escort moved alongside of us so close that I, as officer of the deck on the bridge, could hear the British captain through his megaphone. Our captain, as usual, was asleep in his cabin.

  "Stop your engines" was the message from our escort. "Survivors ahead in the water." Indeed I could see dozens of heads bobbing on the surface. Obviously what was meant was that we should slow down just enough to glide through them and not cut them to pieces with our big screws. I gave the order, and the captain, awakened by the ship's shudder and rushing to the bridge, wanted to know what the hell was going on. I told him, and he shrieked, "We're under attack! All engines ahead full!"

  "Captain!" I protested. "It's only for a minute! And the E-boats are gone already."

  "Get off the bridge!"

  We plowed through those poor fellows. God only knows what damage we did. Was there a recourse? Against a captain defending his ship? Dream on.

  17. A Return to Society

  HAVING WITNESSED WARFARE, I returned to a more familiar battleground where young men were sent for obvious reasons and with mixed results.

  The girls whom I knew at home were mostly in their late teens or early twenties and generally belonged to the same society as my family. Most were in college and planning on a domestic career based on marriage. A brief period before the wedding as a secretary or junior magazine editor was sometimes contemplated, and there were always a few adventuresome souls who opted for law or medicine, but these were a decided minority, and the parents rarely
approved.

  Another minority, of a very different group, chose to skip college and dedicate themselves to the business of being a debutante. Among these were often found the prettiest and richest girls, and the receivers of the greatest publicity, but they also suffered from the taint of superficiality in the eyes of their more serious-minded contemporaries. One prominent debutante confessed to me that she had soon tired of what she called a season of late parties and buying hats, and taken a job at Vogue.

  For the majority who went to college and elected courses on the sole ground of enjoyment without regard to utility in a future job it was not at all a bad life. Courses in history of art were particularly popular. With the exercise of good judgment and the advice of loving and watchful parents it was not hard to pick an attractive and reliable husband from the circle in which they were raised, and many did. Divorce was the exception rather than the rule in that privileged world. Its privileges were not as commonly wasted as the unprivileged like to think.

  In the years before World War I, New York society contented itself for an evening's entertainment with the mansions of its richer members, some of which were equipped with gilded ballrooms. But even the largest of these was limited in size; Mrs. William Astor's notoriously held only four hundred, and the population growth and prosperity of the city soon required more space for the would-be hostess. The great chateaux were now being leveled on the death of their builders; few enjoyed the propriety of more than one owner, and the rich took advantage of the new and easier to run apartment, which could be ordered in almost any size.