The Irregulars (20 page)

This still left Marsh with the difficult dilemma of how to arrange a shotgun marriage to the respectable daughter of a highly respectable country banker, a man of good standing who was known to many of his friends. This was Texas, after all, and the family honor was at stake. The elaborate escapade that Marsh planned to finesse this problem, Ingersoll recalled, showed the publisher at his most “ingenious and mischievous:

To have the baby Alice was sent on holiday to London. From there she wrote at once to her family that she had fallen in love with a wonderful Englishman, Major Manners. She had married him on the spur, because he was an officer in a regiment which was suddenly posted to India. She was to join him after he was settled. But he was hardly gone when Alice’s family heard from their surprising daughter the happy news that she would be presenting him with a baby. She would stay in London, watched over by his country family, until the child came. Alas and alack, her doctors told her she was not up to a voyage home. But Major Manners got himself one leave and gallantly gave it up to journey all the way from the Himalayas to South Texas to present himself, in person, to his American bride’s family and friends.

 

Alice’s baby was born in England and duly christened Diana Manners. Shortly thereafter Alice wrote to her parents, informing them that her husband had been killed in a border battle, during “a skirmish with bandits.” Four months later the widow Manners returned to America with her fatherless infant. As for the British character actor who played the part of the hapless major, Marsh himself hired and rehearsed him after spotting his mug in an advertisement for Arrow dress shirts in
The Saturday Evening Post
. The eye-catching, full-page ad featured the handsome young man modeling a new collared shirt called “Manners.”

At Longlea, Charles’ attempt to establish a new life with Alice was fraught with problems, and the Virginia estate quickly became her principal residence—family members always referred to it as “Alice’s place”—while he seemed more like one of the guests. Alice had designed separate bedroom suites for herself and Charles and began to keep more and more to her own quarters. It did not help matters between them that when she gave birth to a son, Michael, two years after Diana, Charles knew the father was de Terrey, the charming decorator who had become her constant companion. Although he publicly acknowledged the boy as his own, he privately complained about her infidelity to close friends like Ingersoll and Dahl. (The baby had been conceived while Marsh was away on a long trip to California.) Alice, who was at best an indifferent mother, entrusted her children’s care to the ever-efficient Rudolf and his wife, Margaret, who over time became devoted surrogate parents.

Alice held court at Longlea much the same way Marsh did in Washington, gathering her own salon and inviting the sort of gay, lively crowd she preferred. She loved to dance, knew all the steps, and liked partners like Lyndon Johnson, who were tall and good on their feet. Alice had a taste for champagne, which she freely indulged. A great deal of alcohol was consumed at Longlea, a disproportionate amount by its owners. Drinks accompanied every meal, beginning with breakfast, and punctuated every activity, from an afternoon ride to a dip in the pool, setting a hardworking pace for guests. Charles kept up his end, despite having been diagnosed with diabetes, which he controlled with medication, but the result was that he sometimes crashed early. Alice’s parties tended to go well into the night and could get pretty wild. Long after Charles had retired to his bed, she would still be playing Gershwin tunes on the phonograph and looking for trouble. “She took on the privileges of a great beauty, and was very self-serving and demanding,” said Antoinette. “She was a real courtesan. She knew what she was doing.”

Inevitably, more than one man in Marsh’s close circle of friends would become entangled with Alice. It was hardly surprising that among them was Lyndon Johnson, the brash, big-eared up-and-comer from the hill country outside Austin. Johnson was twenty-one years younger than Marsh and had a boundless enthusiasm and confident swagger that left little doubt that he was going far. He was a kid on the make, and his drive, ambition, and sense of mission were such that he could electrify a room with his presence. He was also an unabashed womanizer, given to crassly bragging about his masculinity and sexual prowess—the kind of man for whom Alice must have been an irresistible challenge. The strong physical attraction between Lyndon and Alice was undeniable, though they were so discreet in public that not even their closest friends could pinpoint exactly when in the late 1930s their relationship blossomed into a full affair.

Alice must have known that Marsh would see their affair as a double betrayal. He regarded Johnson as the most promising of his political protégés and, according to George Brown, another of LBJ’s early backers, “loved Lyndon like a son.” Marsh had known Johnson only since 1936, when he had phoned a mutual friend, Welly Hopkins, and asked him to arrange an introduction to the dark horse candidate from Austin’s Tenth Congressional District. Johnson, who was then twenty-nine and a former schoolteacher ridiculed by the opposition as a “young, young man,” was running for Congress on a New Deal platform. Marsh, who had a nose for talent, immediately recognized a man of destiny when he saw one and not only decided to back Johnson in the race but saw to it that Austin’s two major dailies, the
American
and the
Statesman
, also backed him. Johnson ended up winning a ten-way runoff, and the following year he headed to Washington, in no small part thanks to Marsh’s editorial support. “Marsh was effective because he put the power of his papers behind him openly,” said Hopkins, who, although married to Alice’s close friend and cousin, suspected that the high-rolling tycoon had helped Johnson only as a way of extending his own influence. “I think that Lyndon was smart enough to see through Marsh all the time. I don’t think Marsh was ever out-thinking Lyndon a damn bit.”

From then on Marsh inserted himself into Johnson’s life, generously providing funds for his campaigns, as well as cash for his private needs, and offering advice on everything from political strategy and publicity to proper health care. What may have begun as a cynical attempt to influence politics evolved into a sincere friendship, with Marsh, in his self-appointed role as political godfather, doing everything in his power to help the junior congressman achieve his ambition of one day being elected to the highest office in the land. When Johnson arrived in Washington, Marsh offered to help ease his way and introduced the unknown freshman to powerful behind-the-scenes figures, arranged meetings with wealthy financiers and publishers, and, according to Martin Anderson, publisher of the
Orlando Sentinel,
who had once been the beneficiary of the same treatment, “tutored and groomed” Johnson during his “swaddling days” in politics.

At one point, Marsh even offered to bankroll Johnson for life. In 1940, Johnson was on vacation with Marsh and George Brown at the ritzy Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia and had been worrying out loud about the difficulties of managing on an elected official’s salary. Marsh, with typical bravado, offered to solve the problem with a simple wave of his hand. He proposed a deal that would make LBJ a millionaire many times over: Marsh had some oil wells that were already operating and pumping money out of the ground, and he would work it so Johnson could buy them for next to nothing, in exchange for a share in the future profits. Marsh had already passed a real estate deal Johnson’s way, selling his wife nineteen acres on Lake Austin for $8,000, which he knew was in an area slated for development and would skyrocket in value; Lady Bird Johnson later sold the waterfront property for $330,000. This is to say nothing of the money-losing Fort Worth radio station he had talked Johnson into buying, arguing, “Some day it will be worth $3 million.” Marsh’s oil wells would eventually be worth far more than that and promised to make Johnson financially independent for the rest of his life. But looking ahead to the Senate and possibly the presidency, Johnson decided to steer clear of the oil interests, saying, “It could kill me politically.”

There was no ignoring Charles Marsh, and Johnson was careful to always humor his loyal friend, seeking his counsel and deferring to his opinions, so that Marsh felt like a member of his team. If in private Johnson often dismissed Marsh’s proposals as impractical or far-fetched, he never refused his calls or forgot the debt he owed the man who had helped launch his career. Recalling Marsh as “one of the most interesting human beings” she had ever met, Lady Bird, who was prim and painfully shy but a dedicated political spouse, wrote that “Charles had what I truly believe was an affectionate interest in enlarging Lyndon’s life:

He exuded what I can only describe as a life force—and even that is insufficient. He did a lot to educate Lyndon, and quite coincidentally me, about the breadth and strength of the rest of the world…. This was when the war clouds were gathering in Europe and we did not know how to appraise Hitler—what it meant in the long term to the American people.

 

When it came to Alice, whose Marlin, Texas, family she had known since childhood, Lady Bird held her tongue, as usual, subordinating her interests to her husband’s. Her objective, she once confided to a journalist, was to make herself the “perfect wife.” She spent many hours at Longlea in silent study of Alice, listening to her talk of music, literature, and politics, and was awed by her intellect, strong opinions, taste, and sense of style. It was a feminine confidence as foreign to her as her hostess’s glittering emeralds and satin gowns. Alice was intimidating—“She’s so tall and blonde she looks like a Valkyrie,” she once observed—but if she ever sensed that Alice was also a threat, Lady Bird was too gracious to let on, acknowledging only that “she, too, helped ‘educate’ Lyndon and me, particularly about music and a more elegant lifestyle than he and I spent our early days enjoying.”

Alice’s illicit affair with Lyndon Johnson continued for years. While her marriage to Marsh seemed halfhearted at best and encompassed many partners, her passion for Lyndon was something deeper. Alice took a keen interest in politics dating back to her days in the Texas legislature, and even Marsh’s political cronies acknowledged her instincts. Wallace liked to use her as a sounding board because she had the same kind of idealistic streak he did, and, as he put it, “seems to be the only person with enough imagination to know what I’m talking about.” She recognized Johnson’s potential early on and encouraged Marsh to use his newspapers to support his candidacy. When Johnson ran afoul of George Brown’s hard-driving brother, Herman, during his first run for Congress, it was Alice who proposed the compromise that put an end to the hostilities. Instead of knocking heads over a condemned piece of land, she suggested divvying it up, “give Herman the dam and let Lyndon have the land,” neatly avoiding a fight that could have prematurely ended Johnson’s career. As Brown later conceded, she had “quite a bit of horse sense—for a girl.”

Johnson may have won Alice’s heart when he came to the rescue of Erich Leinsdorf, her young Jewish musician from Vienna, whom she had invited to stay with her when he had finished his engagement at the Met in the spring of 1938. Leinsdorf had been at Longlea only a short time when it suddenly came to him “with a terrific shock” that he had never received a reply to his application to extend his visa, and the temporary one he had been issued was due to expire in a week. He confided his problem to his hosts, and the next morning, even though it was a Sunday, Marsh drove him directly to Washington and took him to the suite he maintained at the Mayflower Hotel. Marsh had phoned Johnson, who met them at the hotel and listened “impassively” to the musician’s problem. The young congressman, Leinsdorf observed, “treated Charles with the informal courtesy behooving a youngster toward an older man to whom he is in debt.”

Johnson was happy to be of help, not only because of what he felt he owed Marsh but because he relished the opportunity to use his influence to save the talented young man from Nazi persecution. He also knew Alice held Leinsdorf in high regard and was worried that the numbers of Jewish refugees seeking asylum from Nazism would make it difficult for him to remain in the United States. “You have a great art and genius to console, uplift and support,” Johnson told Leinsdorf, assuring him that he would do everything he could on his behalf. The next day Johnson called to say he was on the job and had made some progress: while the Immigration Department had rejected Leinsdorf’s application, it seemed that as a result of a clerical oversight the paperwork had never been put through, and Johnson was able to use his influence to have the authorities change the customary seven-day grace period to six months.

Johnson, at Alice’s urging, then set to work having Leinsdorf’s status changed to that of a permanent resident. This took some doing, as it would require Leinsdorf to make a brief foray to Cuba to obtain the proper documentation. Johnson made all the necessary arrangements and pulled all the necessary strings, including having a staffer write an impassioned letter to the consul in Havana arguing something to the effect that “the United States had a holy mission to provide a peaceful haven for musical geniuses nervously exhausted from persecution and racial bias.” Johnson, unaccompanied by Lady Bird, went to Longlea to personally deliver the young Austrian’s letter and documents. As Leinsdorf wrote in his memoir, that evening they all gathered on the terrace, and while sipping their fourth martini before dinner, listened as Johnson read aloud “his masterpiece of a letter.”

Both Alice and Johnson took great pride in rescuing such a talented young musician. Leinsdorf had opened Johnson’s eyes to the plight of refugees, and like Alice, who had been providing money to Jews fleeing Hitler, he began doing more on their behalf, eventually helping hundreds of Jewish refugees to reach safety in Texas through Cuba, Mexico, and other South American countries. Johnson also began making more solo visits to Longlea to see Alice, and not long after that they became lovers. They went to great lengths to keep their affair secret, sometimes even arranging to meet at her apartment in New York. They were almost found out one weekend when Johnson left the New York phone number with John Connolly, one of his aides, telling him not to give it out unless it was an emergency. Later, when Marsh called looking for Lyndon and insisted on speaking to him, Connolly, who was ignorant of the romantic triangle, relented and gave him the number. That Monday when Johnson saw Connolly, he reportedly told him of the narrow escape, saying, “Man, you almost ruined me.”