The House of the Prophet

by Louis Auchincloss

  “You mean it’s about the philosophy of the New Deal?”

  “If you can call it a philosophy.”

  “Ah, there you are, Felix. I knew it. You’re going to pan the whole thing!”

  “It’s precisely your using a term like ‘pan’ that makes me so reluctant to talk about it. I have a very difficult thesis to work out, and I need to be clear and objective.”

  “Yet you show it to Mr. Hammond.”

  “True. But I find him extremely helpful. He has an extraordinary grasp of economics.”

  “Robber baron economics! Piracy economics!”

  “You see, Fran? You are incapable of objective judgment when it comes to politics. Your mind is too full of emotional preconceptions. Everything to you must have a direction. If the direction is left, it’s good; if it’s right, it’s bad. The whole thing is just a game of cops and robbers.”

  I do not frequently lose my temper, but I lost it then. “I’m sorry I can’t sit up there on Olympus with you and Mr. Hammond! I’m too concerned with poor people. Too little concerned with banks! My poor female mind is too full of sentiment.”

  “Don’t bring sex into it.”

  “Why shouldn’t I? You don’t think any woman has a mind equal to yours, do you?”

  “No woman that I’ve so far met. But that may be simply coincidence.”

  “Not even the great Mademoiselle de Voe?”

  “Mireille does not really have a mind. She has a mental mirror that reflects a class system.”

  “Upper class, I assume, while mine is lower!”

  Felix laughed quite cheerfully at this. “Well, I guess you’d like it to be!”

  ***

  My father was what Felix used to call a “Century Club intellectual.” By this I suppose he meant a benign old gentleman, with twinkling eyes, who thought he had become flamingly modern when he preferred Dreiser to Henry James, or Hemingway to William Dean Howells. Father was better than that, but there were certainly times, I must confess, when Felix’s mild sarcasms seemed to fit the target, and one of these would be when Father discussed his favorite theory that Francis Bacon was the author of Shakespeare’s plays. As girls, my sisters and I always knew that we had reached a dead end when this topic was introduced.

  Old Lassiter Troy, the Shakespearean actor and our neighbor in Seal Cove, was a stout champion of what Daddy scornfully called “the school of the Stratford lout,” and the two of them loved to engage in long, wordy, amiable arguments about the merits and demerits of their “candidates.” Sometimes they would become noisily denunciatory, as when Daddy would insist that the man “Shaksper” was an illiterate, drunken poacher who could not even spell his own name, and Mr. Troy would retort that anyone who knew anything about theater could at once spot the author of Hamlet as an active member of a dramatic troupe. But it was always essentially a game between them.

  When Mr. Hammond entered the discussion, it was as if a hawk had joined a couple of friendly chickadees at a bird feeder. It was not that his manners were not good. On the contrary, they were perfect. But he brought, for all his moderation of tone and for all his polite little smiles, an incisiveness and a drive that were at odds with the old spirit of the discussion. He was basically too serious.

  “Of course, I could argue,” he observed, “that there is no use attempting to rebut Mr. Ward’s interesting theory until he has first established that the ‘Stratford man’ could not have written the plays. But I prefer to argue that anyone who is familiar with the whole of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama must acknowledge its basic homogeneity. Shakespeare was not essentially different in his subject material, his plots or his characterizations from his contemporaries. From Marston or Ford or Middleton. From Marlowe or Massinger or Tourneur. From Beaumont and Fletcher. He was simply a better poet, that is all. The age produced a particular type of drama, and that drama could be written by an aristocrat like Francis Beaumont or a bricklayer like Ben Jonson. Shakespeare did not have to be either a great aristocrat or a simple actor. If we knew nothing at all about him, he could have been either.”

  This was followed by a great clatter from Daddy, but Felix, who had followed Mr. Hammond’s argument with particular attention, now abruptly changed the topic from Shakespeare to Shakespeare’s era.

  “Why do you suppose, Ridley, the age produced such great drama?”

  “Because England had emerged from a century of civil war, and Europe had emerged from the Middle Ages. Man had discovered man. It was the Renaissance—a period of such hope as we find difficult to conceive in our time.”

  “Hope?” Felix retorted. “Do you find hope in Tourneur? Or in Webster? It’s always seemed to me those tragedies flicker with the very flames of hell!”

  “Ah, but that was after the disillusionment. That was in the reign of James. The golden promises were not fulfilled. The fine hope of the Elizabethans was lost in the corruption of the court, in the divine right of kings. Man was back in chains.”

  Felix’s frown was sceptical. “And you think Cyril Tourneur and John Webster had those things in mind?”

  “Not necessarily. They simply expressed the essence of their age. As great poets do. They saw the glory of man and his hopelessness.”

  Felix seemed suddenly very interested in this. “And mightn’t that be true today? We had the hope of communism and then the horror of Soviet Russia. We had the hope of the New Deal...”

  “And now the horror of Roosevelt!” Hammond finished with a chuckle.

  “Oh, Mr. Hammond, for shame!” I protested.

  “Yet there’s something in it,” my husband went on hastily, as if in fear of losing his thread by my interruption. “What started with a burst of hope in the future of man and his superiority to the old cycle of prosperity and depression is already being crushed under a mountain of law and regulation. But where is our drama to celebrate the hope and its failure?”

  “Perhaps we don’t go in so much for plays today,” Hammond responded. “Perhaps it’s the age of a different kind of literature. Why shouldn’t you be our Webster or Tourneur, Felix?”

  “Why not our Shakespeare?” asked dear old Mr. Troy.

  “Why not our Bacon?” amended my father.

  Well, all this may sound harmless enough, but it didn’t, at the time, to me. It made me ill to think that this old pirate—for so Hammond was, lurking under his urbane exterior—should be taking over Felix’s beautiful mind. But Felix still insisted that no such thing was occurring.

  “I don’t know what’s got into you this summer,” he told me later that same evening. “You seem to have entirely lost your perspective. Why should everyone have to agree with you about your sacred New Deal? Can’t you imagine that a rational man might see it as the unwarrantable abridgment of ancient liberties?”

  “A rational man, perhaps. But old Hammond isn’t controlled by his thoughts. He’s controlled by his feeling—his feeling for his money bags!”

  But the real crisis came at a dinner party at Hammond’s, where I was given the seat of honor on my host’s right. The old man turned to me with what struck me as a leer.

  “I have a bribe to offer you, Frances.”

  “You’re very frank. Shouldn’t you call it a gift?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t equivocate with you. I’m not such an ass. Nor would I be such a fool as to offer you riches or power or position, though these might be the natural consequents of my bribe. I wouldn’t even offer you a place among the saints or a seat on the right hand of God, for you would certainly smell an appeal to your ego.”

  “You begin to intrigue me. What is this bribe that brings riches as consequents?”

  “Your husband’s happiness.”

  Something clutched at my heart as I stared into those glinting eyes. I realized that he took in the full depth of my dislike of him and did not in the least care. “What makes you think he’s unhappy now?”

  “I don’t say he’s unhappy. I merely suggest that he might find a greater happiness in m
aking the fullest possible use of what I do not scruple to call his genius,”

  “And that, I suppose, would be in your banking firm?”

  “Precisely. As a full partner, with his capital contributed by an easy loan. I thought you’d guess it.”

  I knew there was no point arguing with this man. But by sparring with him I might hope to pick up an argument to use in the coming struggle with Felix. “I don’t know that my husband’s talent is for finance,” I said guardedly, “although I’m sure he has a mind that could be turned to anything he chose. But is there really such a future in your line of work? Isn’t it all going to be regulated by Uncle Sam?”

  “No doubt the bureaucrats, like the poor, will be always with us. But don’t believe, my dear, that the age of the capitalist is over yet. Or should I say, don’t let that little red wish be father to so black a thought!” Here he placed an avuncular hand on mine. I jerked it away.

  “I’m sorry. It makes me nervous to be touched.”

  “I suppose that depends on who does it,” he retorted with a chuckle. “But to the point. Some people insist that communism is getting more capitalistic and capitalism more communistic and that one day the twain shall meet, in a benign bath of socialism. I say that’s twaddle. Communism has not changed its spots because a few Soviet bureaucrats drive around in limousines. And capitalism isn’t going to collapse because Franklin Rosevelt likes to play games. No, the only doomed system is socialism. It’s too weak, too flabby, to prevail.”

  “That hasn’t been proved.”

  “You will live to see it proved. The world will be ultimately divided between the Communist and the ‘managerial’ states. The latter will be run by cooperating teams of statesmen, business managers, and engineers.”

  “Isn’t that fascism?”

  Hammond shrugged. “Labels merely express emotion. Let me put it this way. The great corporations will not be at liberty to wreck the economy. Neither will the labor unions. Neither will the politicians.”

  “Not even the people?” He shook his head. “You don’t believe in democracy?”

  “My dear lady, I should like nothing better than to believe in it. But can we afford it? That’s the question.”

  “I think we can,” I responded firmly. “Perhaps we’d better get back to the subject of Felix. What will his role be in your managerial state?”

  “That will be up to him. But I should like to see him working with the forces that must ultimately carry this nation to its economic salvation.”

  “And that’s your bank? That’s where the archangels are? And I suppose, as an incident to his march to glory, Felix will make a fortune?”

  “I have no doubt of it.”

  “And even help add to yours?”

  “Ah, my dear, surely you don’t accuse a man of my years and means of being mercenary?”

  “No.” I looked at him now with frank dislike. “No, I’ll grant that you have no personal ax to grind. It’s worse than that. You really believe in the whole rotten business!”

  Seated at my other side was Grant Stowe, the solid, portly senior partner of the law firm that acted as general counsel to Harris, Tweed. It was to him I now abruptly turned. I had already concluded that he was just the kind of factotum that a man like Hammond would choose: loyal, efficient, and quite incapable of providing the smallest competition to the boss-client’s theatricalism.

  “I have just insulted our host,” I told him flatly.

  “Did it make you feel better?”

  “Much!”

  “Then he’d be the first to say you did the right thing.”

  “He doesn’t bear grudges?”

  “He has no time for them.” Stowe seemed perfectly serious. “Like myself, he was born poor. A young man who wants to get ahead must learn to hide his grudges. If he still has them when he gets to the top of the ladder, that’s a sign he’s picked the wrong ladder.”

  “And you lost your grudges?”

  The thick round shoulders were elevated in a slight shrug. “Oh, yes. There was one old curmudgeon of a partner in my firm whom, as a clerk, I always thought I wanted to get back at. But when I became a partner myself... well, he was a sad, sick old man, that was all. I even kept the others from forcing him to retire.”

  “Then you don’t think Mr. Hammond will push me into an oubliette after dinner? Or even get you to do it for him?”

  “I suppose at Legal Aid you learned to regard Wall Street lawyers as the slaves of their clients. But I assure you, Mrs. Leitner, I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.”

  His small eyes struck me as the eyes of a bear, friendly for the moment but dangerous. “But maybe you want to push me into an oubliette.”

  Stowe merely grunted in response to this. “What did Ridley Hammond do to deserve his insult?”

  “He has designs on my husband. Machiavellian designs.”

  “Ah, well, insults will get you nowhere, then. Hammond usually gets what he wants.”

  When Felix drove me home that night, he was angry, with a cold, hard anger. Hammond, of course, had told him of our little interchange.

  “I think you might have the courtesy—if such a term has any place in your conception of the marriage relationship—to consult me in advance, or at least to warn me, before you kick a man in the teeth who is offering me a fortune.”

  “But he’s a fascist, Felix!”

  “I reserve the right to make up my own mind about accepting or declining fortunes, even from fascists. Which, incidentally, I don’t for a minute concede that he is.”

  “You didn’t hear what he told me!”

  “No, but I can imagine it. Hammond is very free with his speculations about the future. Why should he not be? He happens to believe that our constitutional system is going to undergo certain drastic changes. He does not advocate these changes. He does not work to bring them about. He is an old man and does not even expect to live to see them. He simply likes to peer into what he deems his crystal ball. You call him a pessimist, if you wish, but you have no business calling him a fascist.”

  “A pessimist?” I grabbed wildly at this note of hope. “Then you do not advocate the managerial state?”

  “Not in the least. For what do you take me?”

  “Do you think it will come about?”

  “Not if we keep our wits about us.”

  “And you won’t become a partner in Harris, Tweed?”

  “I had already declined the offer. That was why Ridley turned to you. He wanted you to intervene.”

  “Oh, Felix! I’m so happy!”

  “But I’m not.” How I remember his tone as he said that! He was very rough with me that night. “You have chosen to muddy my friendship with a wise old man whose understanding of economics—despite an occasional wild deduction—is second to nobody’s in this country. I am sick and tired of your intrusiveness. If I have occasion in the future to alter my political views or even to change my profession, I shall make my decisions alone.”

  “Please, Felix! Don’t punish me any more!”

  “I’m sorry, Frances, but you have hurt me tonight. Deeply. Very deeply. I cannot forget it.”

  We drove the rest of the way home in silence. I tried to keep my mind on the fact, the wonderful fact, that Felix was not going to be a Wall Street banker, that he had not sold out to the forces of reaction, that he was the same bright, brave altruist I had married. But deep in my heart was a small, growing fear that even if he were all of that, I might still, by my folly, have lost him.

  ***

  Felix and my father took young Frank off on a fishing trip to a camp in the northern part of the state a few weeks later. Felix had been contributing a weekly column to Mark Truro’s New York paper, The New Dealer, and he told me to be sure to read the one that would appear on the Friday after he left. When I begged him to tell me why, he simply smiled as if it were a tremendous joke, and in that spirit I tried to accept his secrecy.

  It turned out to be a very bad joke.
I thought then, and I think now, that it was about as mean a trick as a husband could play on a wife. For the column that met my astounded eyes that Friday simply announced that Felix Leitner, the noted liberal, Felix Leitner, the drafter of some of the New Deal’s most important legislation, Felix Leitner, the seeker after world peace, the advocate of the “good life,” was going to vote for Alfred Landon!

  Oh, yes, he had his reasons: the growth of bureaucracy, the threat of too much government, the excessive deficits, the loss of “freedom.” Felix was concerned for his right to walk through the jungle and be consumed by lions!

  Was it possible that he could have come to such an inane conclusion if he had not been influenced by that old devil, Ridley Hammond? And would he have been subject to such an influence if he had not hoped to gain something from it? Was he not polishing up Wall Street, so to speak, giving it a spring cleaning, before becoming a part of it himself?

  My worst fears were confirmed when I received a letter from Felix from his camp, carried out by a guide and mailed from the nearest box. It told me of his new plans.

  I am writing you this, my dear, because my mind has been made up and my decision taken, and argument would only distress us both. Grant Stowe has offered me a partnership in his law firm in New York, and I have accepted it. My specialty will be constitutional law, and I expect that I shall very much enjoy myself. It will provide us with an income four times as large as we have ever enjoyed. The time has come to turn an eye to the children’s economic security. You will be able to return to your legal aid work in the city. I think everything will work out.”

  My head spun. How could I have so misconceived my enemy? It was the lawyer, not the client, that I should have feared! And now, was I going to have to sit by and watch Felix attack in court the very statutes that he had helped to draw? For what else had so astute a reactionary as Grant Stowe hired him? For what else, but to join the latter’s fine stable of Trojan horses? Did Felix think that I would continue to be at his side? Surely, it had become my simple duty to separate myself from the apostate, at least until he had seen the error of his ways.