Honorable Men

by Louis Auchincloss

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. T.R. started with many disadvantages—asthma for one—which he overcame. Grace Vanderbilt was older than her husband and despised by his family, who disinherited him on their marriage. But she conceived of herself as a great hostess, spent whatever she could lay her hands on, and more that she couldn’t, and made the world—or enough of it—see her as she saw herself!”

  “But surely you can’t compare a great President with an addled old party-giver!”

  “Why can’t I? I value the hand one is dealt and the bid one calls. What do I care whether it’s for the White House or for social supremacy in Newport?”

  “You mean they’re equally vulgar?”

  He shrugged. “Or equally valid.”

  “Very well, then. What bid shall I call?”

  “Why don’t you become the most famous debutante in America? You have the pale slinky looks that are coming into fashion. You’re a New Yorker, which is essential. And your family can be made to look as grand as we choose.”

  “And what do we do for money?”

  “It’ll take less than you think. You’ll need a party, of course, but I think Grandma Struthers will come through.”

  “Grandma? You’re dreaming, Gus!”

  “Leave her to me.”

  “And suppose it worked. What would I get out of it?”

  “Fun! You’ll see. I promise.”

  And that was how my fantastic debutante year began.

  2. ALIDA

  FOR SOME WEEKS I could not believe that Gus was really serious, but he obliged me in the end, with an almost legalistic formality, to accept or decline his proffered service. Of course I accepted. Even if it was only a game, why should I have denied myself the fun of it? He and I agreed to lunch together every Monday at his favorite restaurant, the Chenonceaux, review what had happened during the past week and make plans for the ensuing one. Our business was largely with the press.

  The first and great commandment, Gus taught me, was never to pretend to a reporter that I was not earnestly seeking publicity. Obviously, they knew I was, or I wouldn’t be talking to them, and they had only contempt for the hypocrisy of socialites who affected to have been surprised or tricked into obviously intentional indiscretions.

  “Put your cards on the table,” he told me, “and you’ll find, on the whole, that you’re treated fairly. Not always, of course, for the society reporter is likely to be someone who’s failed to make it on the other pages. A man who’s a sorehead or a woman who feels she’s been discriminated against. Sometimes they’re out to get their revenge on the silly asses whose inane parties they have to cover. But don’t worry. The basic quality of this type of journalist is laziness. And on that laziness hangs my deepest purpose.”

  Gus paused to look inscrutable until I obligingly responded to my cue. “Which is?”

  “Which is precisely to save him his labor. What I propose to get across to the evening press and to the fashion magazines is that if they all agree to cover one debutante, and make her the news of the day, they will save themselves the trouble of covering fifty. And you and I, my dear, have chosen that debutante!”

  The funny thing was that his crazy scheme worked. It all started with a few modest social notes, slipped by Gus into news and gossip columns in the form of discreet releases. “Miss Alida Struthers is far from the usual type of debutante; she has written a novel, hopes to do a screenplay and prefers the public sands and buffeting breakers of Jones Beach to the exclusive waters of the Creek Club Pool.” Or: “Everyone was at Newport last Saturday for the Frazer debut, except Alida Struthers, who was simply unable to forgo a morning sail to Block Island. ‘It was the one perfect day we’ve had all June!’ she cried.” Or: “It is not true that Miss Struthers smokes hashish; she inhales a rare and harmless form of…” Or: “Alida Struthers keeps a pet macaw in her bedroom.”

  Accompanying these handouts were beautiful photographs, including one by Gus’s friend Cecil Beaton. It did not take long for my publicity to accelerate until by Christmas it had become a minor avalanche. I was already on all the debutante invitation lists, but now I received bids from every socially ambitious mother in the Greater New York Area. Gus scrutinized these carefully and selected some surprising ones for me to accept.

  “We can’t stay just with the Knickerbocker families. We have to branch out. I’m picking the people whose parties will make news. No matter how sensational!”

  I soon found that I was getting boxes of lovely things from fashionable stores and free tickets to popular shows, and I even, rather daringly for those days, endorsed a cold cream in an advertisement that was widely distributed. I was, of course, well paid for it. When I suggested to Gus that this sort of thing was bound in time to depreciate my social value, he cheerfully agreed.

  “But by then you’ll have got what you want.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Anything!” he exclaimed, throwing up his arms. “It’ll be time enough to choose when we get there.”

  He thought it desirable that I should have a team to back me up, and I selected two classmates from Miss Herron’s Classes, Amanda Bayne and Dolly Hotchkiss, to whom I confided my project. Both were delighted to go along, hanging, so to speak, on my coattails. Amanda had dowdy old parents with very little money who were afraid of their beautiful daughter and gave her no trouble. Dolly, on the other hand, had a conservative banker-father who objected vociferously and who had to be (and usually was) got around, with the help of a mother who lived vicariously in Dolly. And we soon formed a squadron of some half-dozen college men who were intrigued at the idea of becoming nationally known and would cut any class at Yale, Princeton or Harvard to attend a dance or house party when I commanded. One of these was Chessy Bogart, an Eli who became a kind of protégé of Gus. Gus described him as one of the few members of the younger generation who had penetrated the falseness of every “ism” of our era, from the farthest right to the most extreme left. In time I was to realize that Chessy was just as bright as Gus perceived, if not brighter. But in those days I tended to regard him as a clown, my court jester.

  How did my parents take it all? Very complacently indeed. Mother attributed the old guard’s dislike of publicity entirely to its jealousy of new and more colorful arrivals, and as she had always pored over the social columns, she liked them the more for making a feature of her daughter. After all, a good deal of the glory redounded on herself. People were constantly telling her what they had read about me, and she almost purred. Daddy’s reaction was less enthusiastic but still accepting. The male company that he so largely kept did not read the social columns, and my new fame was not so frequently flung in his face, but when his attention was called to a news item about me, his complete literalness and lack of imagination made him champion me against the shrieks of Granny Struthers and her old maid daughter, Aunt Fanny. For if I was described as “brilliant” or “beautiful” in print, Daddy assumed I must be. He tended to see the world in the same colors as did such reporters. Besides, he was delighted that it all cost him so little.

  The one expense that could not be avoided was a coming-out party. I did not have to have a big one, but I had to have one, and my parents were far too broke even to think of it. Grandma Struthers was the only hope, and Gus had pledged himself to bring her round.

  Granny and Aunt Fanny occupied a brownstone on East Thirty-third Street stuffed to bursting with the eclectic collection of the crooked judge, who had had a rather florid taste for huge German porcelains, academic historical scenes and Turkish bazaars, hung one over the other on dark walls. Yet if one looked carefully one could spot a fine medieval reliquary glinting in a Turkish corner, or a “right” Corot above the door, or even a Roman scene by Alma-Tadema. Had we only waited until now before selling the collection, we would have made a fortune. But, alas, Daddy let it all go for a song when Granny died in 1940.

  She belonged to a generation that did nothing to resist age or hid
e the double chin and gnarled neck. She wore a pince-nez that made her look severe, a black choker and large yellow diamonds. She said “poyel” for pearl and “goyel” for girl, in the manner of old Manhattan, and would ask young people who had been to a ball if they had seen many attractive “toilets,” so that ignorant people thought her vulgar. She affected to be spunky about her ailments and afflictions, but she was in fact an utterly self-centered valetudinarian. Aunt Fanny, endowed with a decayed, sexless prettiness, fluttered about her, fussed over her, asked people constantly whether they did not agree that she was “marvelous” and hated her. When Granny died, she left Aunt Fanny almost penniless.

  But we didn’t realize then that Granny was romping through her capital. We assumed that she was still rich and had to be cultivated for favors. Gus, however, did know it—how he discovered such things I never knew—and he used this useful piece of intelligence to crowbar the cost of my coming-out party out of her. It helped a good deal that he had known her since his childhood, his mother having been a flower girl at her wedding.

  Much later he told me how he had done it. He called on Granny on an afternoon when he knew that Aunt Fanny was at her exercise class, and the conversation went something like this:

  GUS: I hope you will forgive me, Mrs. Struthers, if I talk rather personally about your granddaughter. You might say it’s none of my business, but didn’t the ghost of Jacob Marley learn too late that mankind was his business?

  GRANNY: Is womankind yours, Augustus? Are you a candidate for Alida’s hand? If so, it’s her father you should be addressing yourself to. Not that I mean to discourage you, dear boy.

  GUS: Boy of almost forty! You needn’t be that anxious to get rid of her. The poor child’s going to do a lot better than a jaded old creature like me.

  GRANNY: She’s not a parti, you know.

  GUS: How could she be, in these dark days, when we’re all put to it to make ends meet? I sometimes think you must be a bit of a genius to maintain the style of living that you do maintain.

  GRANNY: Well, of course, it’s not easy. One has to keep a sharp lookout.

  GUS: Just that? I know so many people who nibble on their capital.

  GRANNY: But we were brought up not to do that!

  GUS: We’re not all saints, are we? Oh, come, Mrs. Struthers, don’t tell me you’ve never sneaked a bond out of the tin box and sold it when no one was looking? Have you never been naughty? Never once?

  GRANNY: Well, maybe just once in a blue moon. Things are so very dear!

  GUS: Exactly! And I’m sure your son and daughter-in-law have, too.

  GRANNY: Oh, them—for sure!

  GUS: And between you all, I wonder whether poor Alida won’t have to learn a trade.

  GRANNY: I don’t think I quite follow that, Augustus.

  GUS: It’s simple. How is a young woman brought up to believe that meals and bathrooms cook and clean themselves supposed to support herself when her immediate progenitors have gone to their reward—if reward, indeed, it be?

  GRANNY: That’s her progenitors’ lookout.

  GUS: But if they don’t look? Isn’t a grandmother a kind of surety on the bond?

  GRANNY: What are you driving at? Why can’t Alida marry some sensible young fellow and be a good wife to him?

  GUS: Because she’s been brought up to be perfectly useless. And to fall in love with youths who will either be after the money she hasn’t got or afraid she’s after theirs!

  GRANNY: Am I responsible for the low moral tone of my daughter-in-law’s house?

  GUS: No! But you’re responsible for not saving Alida if you can.

  GRANNY: Can I? How?

  Gus proceeded to tell her. And he actually got the party out of the old girl. She did the bare minimum, but that proved enough. We rented the Aquamarine Room at the Hotel Stafford, not the best place by a good deal but adequate, and Gus secured a number of concessions in the way of music and liquor when the merchants discovered what the press coverage was to be. It was an April party, late in the season, and it constituted its climax. Alida Struthers the next week was on the cover of Life

  When Gus came to our house one morning with an advance copy, he kissed me and murmured, “Now I can chant my Nunc Dimittis.”

  “Well, you’ve had your fun.” I gazed at the large photograph almost with incredulity. “When does mine start?”

  I did not mean to be ungrateful. But in sober truth, what had I really got out of the whole thing? I had learned nothing that had not confirmed my low opinion of the games played by New York society; I had exhausted my body with late hours, smoking and drinking; I had made mincemeat of my self-respect; I had added nothing to my knowledge of the arts and literature; and I had not even fallen in love! When I looked back over those months of futile activity, I had only a sense of hundreds of bland young faces, of lips forming inane compliments or feeble jokes, and of laughs, smiles, giggles, an endless bray of pointless jocosity. Where was the heart of fools? Of course, in the House of Mirth!

  Once, after a long lunch at the Chenonceaux with Gus, reluctant to go out to the rainy street, I gazed glumly over the emptying tables and sipped a second cognac.

  “What are you doing it for, Augustus? Are you like the guardian in The School for Wives rearing an innocent ward to be the perfect spouse? If so, you’re taking rather a new tack, aren’t you? For instead of walling me up to preserve my purity, you’ve exposed me to every contamination on earth! But maybe that’s just your perversity. Maybe you’re the ultimate decadent. To want a spouse like Salome, a virgin who is totally corrupt!”

  “No, I don’t fly so high.” Gus always took in his stride one’s extremest flights of fancy. Did I attract him at all? It was hard to tell what lurked behind those dark, damp eyes, sometimes so scornful, sometimes so sad, sometimes simply so bored, so horribly bored. When he shut out the world, was he shutting out clamorous, intrusive females? Or perhaps grinning, leering boys who knew what he really wanted? Or did he simply want to be alone with his intensely intelligent self? “No, I don’t aspire to the hand of my Galatea. She is too fine a property for the likes of me. But that needn’t mean I can’t have a candidate.”

  “Oh, you have one?”

  “I think I may have.”

  “Whom I’ve met?”

  “No.”

  “And when shall I meet this paragon?”

  “Ah, but of course I’m not going to tell you. That would put your back up.”

  “Will you tell me after I’ve met him?”

  “Only if I think you like him.”

  I admit that Gus was wise to make a mystery of his project. I found myself wondering now, every time I met someone at all attractive, whether this one might be he. And in a surprisingly short time it became an amusing game. I was constantly asking men I met: “By any chance, do you know Gus Leighton? Why? Oh, no reason. I was just wondering.” But then, of course, it was always possible that Gus did not know his candidate personally. He might have made his selection merely by title: a duke or a maharajah. At any rate, as the fateful season ended and I faced the long, familiar summer of Bar Harbor with my parents and Deborah, I began to wonder if Gus’s ambition for me might not be the only thing I had salvaged from a year of folly.

  3. ALIDA

  HENRY ADAMS, who was always concerned with the dichotomy of the one and the many, not only in the twelfth and twentieth centuries, but in the eras of his own life, professed to see unity in the sober, disciplined Boston of his childhood and multiplicity in the careless freedom of the countryside at Quincy. One represented winter and school; the other, summer and license.

  With me it was just the reverse. Manhattan, with its bustle of traffic and much-touted pace of living, with its ruthless competition in social and business life, struck me as the licentious “many,” while Bar Harbor, serene between its green mountains and the sapphire blue of Frenchman’s Bay, seemed a unit that existed only for itself. Bar Harbor made sense, or nonsense if you preferred, which in the sil
ver air of its few peerless Maine days (one ignored the fog that shrouded the island for half the summer) was all that seemed to matter. For there was no world outside Bar Harbor, or really much of a one in it besides the summer community and the shops and servants and boats and glittering old limousines that made up the crazy round of its idyllic days.

  When I close my eyes I see the Swimming Club on West Street, with its terrace and lawn descending to the huge pool whose cement walls extended down the stony beach that was covered at high tide, as was the long sandy dike that connected Bar Island to Mount Desert. The club was the undoubted center of the “one,” and here at noon the leading ladies of the colony foregathered at umbrella tables while boys in scarlet jackets brought on silver trays the first cocktail of the day. I used to think of those half-dozen tables under their brightly colored shelters as a kind of senate, for surely here, by these broad-hatted, silk-gowned women, with their pearls and high heels and low throaty chuckles, all the decisions of the community were made. If their men had some voice in the distant cities, they had none here—nor did they seek any, except in the management of the golf club, carved out by them as a small, independent principality.

  My mother lived for that noon hour at the Swimming Club. Sitting with her needlework, a cigarette dangling from her always moving lips, she listened and chattered at once, missing nothing. She was the admitted historiographer of the island, even of the outlying and sometimes rebellious settlements at Northeast and Seal Harbors. I see myself coming up to her chair when it was time to go home for lunch (my generation never sat at the umbrella tables) and hovering there while she answered some such final question as “Did the John Stewart Kennedy fortune really all go to cats and dogs?” or “Florence, what was the true story about Ann Archbold’s kidnapping her children?”

  Life radiated out from the club to the “cottages” on West and Eden Streets, large shapeless shingle structures, sometimes brightly painted, with well-mowed emerald lawns, to the cozy shops on Main Street with windows invitingly full of imported luxuries, to the woods and the long blue driveways of the more distant villas concealed by spruce and pine, yet all familiar to us, including stone castles, Italian palazzos, Georgian red brick villas, but still for the most part shingle habitations, with dark proliferating turrets and porches. And then there were the “mountains,” hills really, that one could climb on trails for breathtaking views of the ocean and mainland, or, in the case of Green Mountain, drive all the way to the peak behind the limousine of some little neat old lady in black or white who spoke to her chauffeur through a voice tube and had a glass vase with an orchid attached to the wall by her seat.