by Leslie Brody
Decca treated Binnie, a sagacious nineteen-year-old (whom her friends agreed looked like Alice in Wonderland) like a younger sister. She alternately teased and counseled Binnie, particularly regarding the subject of money. Decca was careful to preserve every dime of her own savings (a necessity, thrift was now also a game at which she excelled), but she had countless opinions about causes to which Binnie might tithe her fortune. Both Straights agreed that Decca had quite a “fine satirical mind.” Binnie admired her new friend’s independence, nonchalance, and ambition to become a journalist. The younger woman was intrigued by the way Decca coped with her unpredictable husband—this took another kind of bravery. He could be sweet and flirtatious when he turned on the charm, but he would sometimes stomp around the house disturbing the help (whom he nonetheless always wished to befriend). It was maddening to have the Romillys for houseguests. They were sloppy and disrespectful of people’s things but if they broke an ornament or tore a curtain, they would fall all over themselves to apologize, promising to repair or replace whatever it was. Even Esmond—no matter how he scowled or snarled—couldn’t suppress a certain imprinted courtesy. He was unquestionably gallant, and Decca was marvelously sympathetic.
It was at one cause party that they met Virginia and Clifford Durr, who in 1933 moved from Alabama, following Virginia’s sister Josephine (called “Sister” in the Southern style) and her husband, Hugo Black (then a senator from Alabama and soon to become a Supreme Court justice), into the heart of the Roosevelt administration. Cliff was chief counsel for the Reconstruction Finance Commission. Virginia was active in the Women’s Division of the National Democratic Committee and was devoted to overthrowing the poll tax: a prohibitive fee imposed at various locations across the South to keep nonwhites and white women from exercising their right to vote. The poll tax, an entirely unconstitutional custom sustained by segregationists and male supremacists, was maintained through threats and intimidation.
The Durrs’ home in the graceful suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, was one of the unofficial New Deal salons. An invitation to an evening there might include sharing a home-cooked Southern meal with government workers, labor activists, and musicologists. At their first encounter, Decca had felt “outnumbered” by Virginia’s conversational style and wasn’t eager to repeat the experience. Nevertheless, at Virginia’s invitation, the Romillys and Straights arrived for a dinner date, the women dressed in hats and heels.
Virginia ushered them in. “Why, I’m so absolutely delighted that you-all could come!” she cooed. Her house was in a state of controlled chaos, the drawing room occupied by a “tangled mass of small children.” Virginia, an irresistible hostess and raconteur extraordinaire, launched at once into a set of stories to enthrall her new audience. Cliff, ever the gracious host, poured drinks amid the persistent din.
Between those colossi Esmond and Virginia, it wouldn’t have been easy to get a word in edgewise. Virginia had a loud voice, but she was always perfectly polite, correct, and hospitable. She was big-boned with quick reactions. Though sometimes brash, Virginia also had an open and vulnerable side—an appealing way of suddenly cracking a smile. If Decca had been any less confident, she might have felt jealous.
Virginia and Esmond almost instantly developed a strong rapport. Before her acquaintance with the Romillys, Virginia had never met an English person. She was “very much engrossed with him.” His impressions of American politics seemed exotic, an “aristocratic . . . upperclass . . . point-of-view.” But his assessment of the unsophisticated and his contempt for American politicians (though not Roosevelt) made her laugh. Esmond had a realpolitik view of the Hitler-Stalin pact. He “knew it wasn’t a real pact, just buying time” for the Russians to build an army to fight the Nazis. To Virginia, “he was a man, not a boy.” He felt a similar attraction of like minds. Her age, experience, and breadth of interest gave him the confidence to take a wild gamble. He’d have to leave for Ontario, Canada, in a matter of days, and he was sure Virginia would be the best person to protect Decca in his absence.
He went to be alone with Virginia in the kitchen, where she was cooking dinner. A few comments were made on the savory fragrance, the comfortable feel of home. He had already given her the nickname “Old Virginny” (after the song starting “Carry Me Back to . . .”). Then, as Virginia Durr recollected later, he asked her to look after his wife. “Don’t you think you could keep dear Decca while I’m gone? You know the Straights are going up to New York for the weekend and she will be all alone. I’m sure that she will be so lonely. If you will just keep her for the weekend, I can’t tell you how much I would appreciate it.”
That was what he had wanted? If Virginia had thought his advances were intended otherwise, she quickly recovered. She told him, in case he hadn’t heard, that the Durrs had already agreed to house some English refugees, a mother and child who would be arriving soon. The house would be full with the Durrs, their four children, and Virginia’s mother living with them: “We’re already cramped.”
That didn’t faze Esmond. “Just keep her until your refugees arrive,” he replied. Anything might happen—their transport ship might be bombed, for instance.
Virginia didn’t know Decca and didn’t want her, but the American hostess could not say this to her guest. He was a very appealing young soldier, but Virginia was no pushover. She had years of hard-earned experience in saying no gracefully. “Well, Esmond,” she said. She would have to make this very clear. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m going to the Democratic Convention in Chicago. I’m leaving almost immediately.”
“That will be wonderful. Just take Decca with you,” he said.
ESMOND DROVE OFF to Canada, leaving Virginia and Decca just a few days to take one another’s measure before they set forth together to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Virginia had impressive energy, stamina, concentration, and curiosity, but she was not happy about the added work Decca’s company entailed: “I didn’t want to take her a bit.” Why, she wondered, would Decca even want to attend this inimitably American event? People wore funny hats, drank themselves silly, and took every public opportunity to swell up and boast about their wonderful states, counties, and towns. Virginia didn’t plan to be a tour guide; she had a mission, the abolition of the poll tax.
She was planning to drive out with two young New Dealers, a man and a woman. With all their luggage and a two-day drive ahead, Decca would crowd the car. But Virginia couldn’t in the end deny a hero of the Spanish Civil War his request, especially not after he had recapped Decca’s last year. He told Virginia they had “come to the U.S. to get Decca out of the sorrow she was in over the loss of the dead baby.” Since then, her favorite sister—infatuated with Hitler—had tried to commit suicide; another sister had been imprisoned by Britain for Nazi sympathies; another had married in her absence (so she was missing the good things, too); her father had declared he wouldn’t see her again; her brother-in-law had been captured by Nazis; her father-in-law had just died of cancer; and her brother was a British officer somewhere in Africa. Now her husband was on his way to become a pilot in the Canadian Air Force, and neither he nor she had ever been to Canada. Virginia agreed. How could she not? That didn’t mean she was happy with the situation.
Decca, meanwhile, was just barreling forward. Nobody could say she didn’t have grit. She hadn’t yet figured out Virginia, whose personal intensity approached Esmond’s on the tectonic scale, but she proceeded apace as she had early on with her husband by watching, listening, making herself useful, and being amusing. Traveling to the Democratic Convention sounded like fun—she would hear Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt give speeches, and she would get to go west, which she and Esmond had often discussed doing together. When she returned to Washington, she might go stay with the Straights or the Meyers, whoever would have her until she got on her feet. She’d find a job. One more factor to add to the mix—she was about three months pregnant. This was the real rea
son Esmond was determined to see her settled.
As it happened, Decca’s pregnancy became the theme of the drive out. She hadn’t told Virginia she was pregnant, and Decca knew she was there on sufferance. And though she was good-humored and an enthusiastic traveling companion, almost immediately after they hit the open road, she asked to stop at a restroom. “Thereafter,” Virginia said, “every fifteen minutes she wanted us to stop again.” Virginia suspected that Decca was coping with something apart from a weak bladder and, at the next rest stop, found Decca throwing up: It was morning sickness. Once the secret was out, it was easier for everyone to enjoy the ride.
Along the way, Decca came to see another America. The Midwest was almost as foreign to Virginia as it was to the Englishwoman. The little towns were waking after the long decade of the Depression. The travelers would have seen abandoned homes along the roadside, the occasional hobo looking for a lift (there wasn’t room for a mouse in their crowded car), and miles of fallow fields. But there were also neat little houses, high stalks of corn stretching forever, crowded baseball diamonds, and unexpected swarms of fireflies. Their trip took them from Maryland to West Virginia, into Ohio then Indiana and Illinois. At night, they slumped on one another’s shoulders to sleep. Decca sang some bawdy music hall tunes and amused her companions with her talent for nicknaming. The baby she was carrying kicked like a donkey, and since the donkey was the Democratic Party symbol, she started calling her unborn child “dinky-donk” or “little donkey,” “Dink” for short.
In Chicago, the other two passengers went their own way, while Decca followed Virginia to the Sheraton, where many of the delegations were staying and where there would be meetings and conferences—fish in a barrel for Virginia to buttonhole regarding the poll tax legislation. The two women’s friendship had been accelerated by the compressed nature of the road trip. They had discovered, despite their first impressions, that they were kindred intellectual spirits. Decca, Virginia learned, had a great deal of curiosity and was well informed about the U.S. political scene. Virginia, Decca saw, had a soft center; she was protective and maternal, and if anything, she might be too attentive and worry too much. Decca was suddenly on her own for the first time in her adult life, without husband, parents, or sisters, and she liked the feeling. Chicago was strange, but she had Virginia Durr’s guidance.
The first person Virginia recognized in the Chicago throng was her old friend Lyndon Johnson. Since neither Decca nor Virginia had delegate badges, Johnson made them honorary delegates of the Texas contingent. That gave them a base and seats in the sweltering and smelly throng. Virginia worried on Decca’s behalf about their distance from the ladies’ lavatories in the vast Chicago Stadium. When she confided to Maury Maverick (a congressman and delegate) that Decca was expecting and prone to throwing up, Maverick bowed and chivalrously offered his sombrero, “Madame, use my hat if you need it.”
The second day, Decca decided not to risk having to employ the congressman’s hat. She fell easily into her trickster mode, in which mild deceptions were second nature. It didn’t hurt that “by this time Decca was looking very glamorous and beautiful.” She used her accent and appeal to get closer to the floor, and the ladies’ lounge, as she later explained to Esmond in a letter: “I went up to an official looking man & told him I was lost & my friends were in a box & the policeman wouldn’t let me in; so he said I could sit in his box, & he turned out to be the Secretary of State for Illinois & I sat right behind Mrs. Woodrow Wilson in the best place of all!”
With the convention under way, Decca the Democratic functionary-in-training scouted out seats to observe the resolutions committee meeting. She found a good perch at a table in the center of the room, which confused the pages, who had to ask her to move out of the committee members’ seat. The platform plank, Decca learned, had already been hammered out in smoke-filled rooms and this meeting was more like a public performance, but she was still caught up in the atmosphere of intrigue and consequence. She felt that with the New Deal faithful, she was on the winning side. She was for Roosevelt, and her guy was unopposed.
Roosevelt had strategized that the only way to accept the nomination for an unprecedented third term would be if he were to be seen drafted “spontaneously and with unanimous support.” Just to make sure the president got what he wanted, Chicago’s Mayor Edward Joseph Kelly patched a microphone into the public address system. Decca enjoyed the display of some mild, Chicago-style chicanery when Thomas D. Garry, Chicago’s superintendent of sewers, interrupted a message from the president urging the convention to feel free to nominate any candidate. Garry burst out with an emphatic, “No, no, we want Roosevelt!” The convention went on to nominate Roosevelt on the first ballot and Henry Wallace, secretary of agriculture, as his vice presidential candidate.
Decca and Virginia were whisked around on a tour of labor-proud Chicago. Richard Wright, one of the contributors to the WPA Guide to Illinois, had just published Native Son, which Decca would later read and recommend to her sister Nancy. There were also many amazing Works Progress Administration murals, painted on the walls of schools and field houses all over Chicago, to visit. Everywhere Decca went, her Britishness became a part of the conversation. Virginia Durr was not alone in her fascination. Most Americans had never met an English person. Should the United States enter the war or not? Her husband was an airman? Brave girl! Intended or not, Decca’s presence was a case for intervention.
CHAPTER 7
THE HEADLINE ON the Washington Post society page of July 27, 1940, read: “War Means Separation for Esmond Romillys.” Under the caption “Husband fights for Britain,” Decca smiles gamely. Her miniature white straw hat perched fashionably front and forward, its narrow brim tilting toward one darkly painted brow. Her hair is down, midlength—no pompadour—and the shoulders of her short-sleeved, navy blue summer frock are tailored but not overly padded. A white ruffle flounces about her jugular. For this photo, she’s buttoned up, stylish but demure, not the look of a girl who would run away to the Spanish Civil War, but more like a tourist available for a delicious cup of tea and a gossip with a congressman, or a debate with his wife at the local library on the folly of American isolationism. Twenty-three years old, so beautiful and plucky, she represented all her sisters—not just the celebrated biological ones, but all the Brits, who were just then enduring the terrible bombing in the Battle of Britain and resisting so superbly.
The rest of that day’s society page reported on bridal trips, dinners attended by generals and judges, vacation plans of senators and Egyptian ministers, and the maiden voyage of a new ocean liner christened America, which has “among other new features, upholstery and curtains of fireproof material. All the furniture is metal.”
On its face, this distillation of prewartime domestic celebrity was awfully sedate. The prewar city that Gore Vidal imagined in his novel Washington, D.C. is a wicked landscape of leathery and nostalgic mothers, beautiful and glittering social-climbing daughters, and power-hungry fathers and sons. It’s a land of insult and injury, scandal, ambition, deceit, and illusion. In the society pages, quality (or tone) is the watchword, which explains why Decca was such a catch. Her history was already well known. Let other papers seek their celebrities in New York and Hollywood. That day, the Washington Post crowed, it had Jessica Mitford.
Not just anybody got this treatment. This photograph and the accompanying article composed a deluxe job advertisement (courtesy of Eugene Meyer) announcing Decca’s intention to find work in the nation’s capital. Her requirements: respectable work at satisfactory pay. Her résumé included keeping the books in Miami’s Roma Italian Restaurant, according to the “‘Decca Method,’ which she invented herself.”
Of all the millionaires and socialites she’d encountered, Decca considered Eugene Meyer the most interesting. He was a big-shot financier, a mover and shaker, and a solicitous and affectionate father to his children. He was paternal in his dealings with the Romillys, but not excessively patronizing. Thoug
h she heartily disagreed with him politically (he and his wife opposed Roosevelt), he was both “colossally useful” and considerably more amusing than anyone she had met in the Durr crowd (who deplored Meyer and his powerful Republican cohorts). Since Meyer had arranged for Decca to pose for the deluxe job ad in the society pages, she couldn’t very well refuse when he invited her to their New York estate in Mount Kisco. She’d have to sing for her supper, but who knew what doors a visit might open.
Mount Kisco indeed proved to be “an absolute riot of anti-New Dealism.” It was also a very pleasant atmosphere, full of good food and privacy. Decca was by then an old hand at negotiating varieties of experience. She and Esmond thrived on contrasts. In their first few weeks apart, their letters were one long, rolling repartee. An exchange from Mount Kisco began as Decca described (in menu-worthy prose) a luxurious summer morning, during which she wokeabout 9:30 . . . reached out & pressed the button M (for Maid) . . . directed her to press my dress, clean my white shoes & serve breakfast. Shortly was served with ice-cold California orange juice, 1 strictly fresh egg, 4 strips young prime bacon, steaming coffee (special brew) with thick sweet country cream, & jumbo raspberries . . . then lay back relaxing among the pillows while bath was running.
