A Voice From Old New York: A Memoir of My Youth (12 page)

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.

H
AVING 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.

Hotels were quick to offer their bigger ballrooms for the now colossal debutante parties, or dinners honoring distinguished citizens or celebrating important birthdays, and charities were quick to perceive how much more could be made by tying an event to a cure for cancer or the building of a new hospital wing. The conscience of the new pleasure seekers was now eased even while they danced and drank.

To become a society leader the aspiring wife of a rich newcomer in the financial world could do little better than join the board of a large and known charity (a vast contribution will sometimes do the trick—if not, double it) and volunteer to help in preparing a charity ball. Don't kid yourself; it can be real work, and the other board ladies will have a sharp eye out for cheats. But they appreciate a good job, and it will pay off. Be sure on the night of the ball to have a knockout dress.

It is fashionable for the attendees of charitable balls to downgrade them, to complain of the interminable cocktail hour, the pushing crowd, the tediousness of the speeches if there were any. Yet look for these critics at the next one you go to, and very likely you will find them. For if they love big parties and have the money, where else can they go? It is also true that people hate to feel they have spent their money for nothing, and they have bought their expensive tickets from friends whom they expect to hit for their own charities. Yet it still remains curious to me how patiently the so-called sophisticated citizens of our sophisticated city submit to hours of ennui just to see and be seen.

A surprising revival in the post-World War II years has been that of the men's clubs; the Colony and the Cosmopolitan were saved by their women, but the men had not done the same for theirs. The legend persisted that these institutions were full of ancient gentlemen who dozed in armchairs before ground-floor windows from which they could spy the comely ankles of women passing in the street below. Even the threat of federal legislation requiring them to accept woman members if any portion of their income derived from sales or services to the public failed to arouse them, and bankruptcy loomed before not a few. Yet suddenly it all turned around. Young men, it seemed, wanted clubs, and new managements began to offer the pleasures of livelier entertainment: lectures, dances, concerts, debates, movies, private theatricals. Perhaps most effective of all was the gesture made to women by clubs that had avoided the law forbidding sexual discrimination. They granted the widows of deceased members the privileges of their late husbands. To have a club was now not only to have a place to go to; it was to have something to do.

In an era where women had become almost as serious as men about their own professional careers was it possible for society to produce great social leaders like Grace Vanderbilt, Alva Belmont, and Mamie Fish? From what I have read of memoirs of the sometimes-called Golden Age of society in the 1890s and early 1900s, I should think it was very easy. I cannot see that the hostesses of that earlier era needed much but the habit of lavish spending. Mrs. Belmont said she knew of no life more taxing than that of a society leader, but I suspect that her exhaustion came from attending more parties than she had to. She certainly didn't work on making her own entertainments amusing or intellectually stimulating, nor did the other two I have mentioned. Mrs. Winthrop Chanler said of the so-called four hundred, whom she well knew, that they would have fled in a body from "a poet, a painter, a musician or a clever Frenchman." She and her closer friends formed a bore insurance society, which paid you a nice little sum of money if you dined out in New York society and found yourself seated by a listed bore.

The would-be society leader had to spend a fortune on haute couture, but this was spared the men who wore white tie and tails at parties where ladies were present or at the opera, and for bachelor affairs, a tuxedo and black tie. In time the tuxedo became the appropriate uniform for all occasions.

The leading lady of New York society at the end of the twentieth century was certainly Mrs. Vincent Astor, the former Brooke Russell, though she was married to Astor for only six years before his death. This, however, had not been altogether a social misfortune, as he was, however intelligent, a bit of a brute who had hated her friends and wanted to keep her all to himself. She was a woman of infinite charm, delightful wit, and warm affections who had been previously twice married, once briefly and unhappily at age sixteen to the wealthy but unpleasant Dryden Kuser, and then to Charles H. Marshall, the "love of her life," whose widow she became after twenty happy years.

Marshall's sister had married Marshall Field III, and his first wife had been the sister of the first Mrs. Vincent Astor, so Brooke, when she became the third and last of Vincent's wives, took on a "position" with whose duties and privileges she was well acquainted. When she inherited her new husband's wealth she decided to give the bulk of it away. She had the advantage of not being afraid of money and cheerfully willing to part with it. "I know Jayne Wrightsman could buy and sell me several times over," she told me once, "but I still live better than she does."

It was not all that easy, however. It was all very well for the evening social page to call her a queen, but that does not create loyal subjects. There were important people in society who had been permanently alienated by a marriage so crassly motivated by money, for who could marry Vincent for love? "I had to make some new friends," Brooke told me. A ladies discussion group, the Junior Fortnightly, found her not intellectual enough for membership. And the Thursday Evening Club, created to enable the social world of New York to meet professors of its great universities, welcomed Brooke as a member but rejected her nomination as president. Adlai Stevenson, when elected, asked me only half in jest, "Am I now in the true heart of New York society?" Brooke was much admired, but few in society can escape the query, on the least show of superiority, of Who do they think they are, anyway? I admired Brooke for defying this attitude and dressing her grandest and donning her finest jewels when she visited poor neighborhoods to open one of her foundation's works. "They want to see Mrs. Astor," she explained, "and I'm not going to disappoint them."

I
N
1941
I WENT TO
work in the famous Wall Street law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. At that time Sullivan, like most of the major firms, consisted of some twenty partners and perhaps sixty associates, so it was possible for all the latter to know personally with whom they were competing. This is no longer possible in the mammoth firms of today, and there is a consequent diminution of anything like the esprit de corps that used sometimes to exist.