The House of the Prophet

by Louis Auchincloss

  I think there were several reasons. First, there was the element of betrayal. People sympathized with Heyward more for being stabbed in the back by a friend than for losing a flighty wife. Second, there was the pathos of Frances’s situation. She was as popular in Seal Cove as Heyward was in Butterfield. Everybody excoriated Felix for not having had the “guts” to tell her to her face of his resolution to leave her. How could any but a fiend have so treated this plucky, generous little woman? How could any but the crudest worldling have deserted her for such a tinny social type as Gladys Satterlee?

  And with this last question, we reach, I suggest, the real crux of the matter. There was always something about Felix Leitner that aroused a bitter little hostility in the hearts of his closest friends. I think that I was the sole exception to this, which, of course, in my own opinion, uniquely qualifies me to be his biographer, though others might take a precisely opposite view. I alone accepted the fact that I could never own Felix. I even accepted the fact that I could never own the smallest part of him.

  People generally do not like a man who cannot be owned. They want him to belong to a family, to a creed, to a race, to a political party, to a dogma, to a summer community, to a team... to something. But Felix belonged to nothing but his concept of human liberty, which was in itself a kind of non-belonging. If liberals regarded his distaste for even a mild collectivism as a betrayal of his early socialist principles, conservatives deplored his continued espousal of the cause of the worker and the consumer against the giant corporation. If Jews resented the fact that he refused to call himself a Jew, Christians were not better pleased when he classified their faith as an “amiable anachronism.” If Seal Cove found him a bit too well dressed, a touch too formal, Butterfield Bay found him on occasion too free in his talk, too little reverent of important things. Frances Leitner might have compromised with the Bill of Rights to raise the standard of living in city slums; Felix would have stubbornly held high the torch of liberty even if it illumined scenes of human suffering that its darkening might have at least temporarily ameliorated.

  Yet all of this might have been permitted to Felix had he been willing to play the part of the wild-eyed anarchist or the surly curmudgeon, had he donned some respectably deviant garb that fashionable intellectual circles, left or right, could recognize. But Felix clung to the liberty of his own tastes. He liked to be well dressed and comfortably housed. He liked an ordered evening with good food, good wine, good talk. He had no use for loud voices or lost tempers. He abhorred violence. And he adopted—ah, here was the real trouble—a high moral tone in his conversation and in his writing, the tone of the civilized man who knows that he must find in himself, and not in God or in other men, the answer to the good life.

  Felix, in brief, opened himself up to the charge of claiming to be superhuman. With what glee did the old friends proceed to bespatter what they called the “self-made idol” with every handful of mud within their reach! Of course, the storm abated in time, but never entirely. There would always be a relentless few to speak of him as the man who had betrayed his best friend and tried to explain it in a beautiful letter.

  The ugliest scene that I witnessed occurred at the Lassiter Troys’ New Year’s party to welcome in what turned out to be a most unhappy year for the world: 1939. It was given at the Troys’ big brownstone in the Murray Hill section, and all of the Seal Cove friends who wintered in New York were there. Felix and Gladys had been married in Maryland the week before. He had called me up when they arrived in the city to say that old Troy had asked them and that Gladys wanted to go. I advised against it, knowing that the Troys, kindly but both now very forgetful, had little awareness of how bitter the feeling was against the Leitners. But Gladys insisted, and they came. Frances was not to be there, so there was not that confrontation to fear.

  But there was, alas, my father. When the Leitners appeared, everybody was very polite, if distant, except Dad, who immediately stomped over to the bar exclaiming loudly that he needed “a stiff drink.” He returned, however, an ominously dark whiskey in hand, to the little group in the center of which Felix was discussing the consequences of the Munich pact.

  “You think Chamberlain did right?” Dad suddenly thundered. He had not deigned to greet Felix in any way.

  “Not right, certainly, but perhaps what he had to do. If he uses the time he has gained to arm, the humiliation may turn out to have been worth it.”

  “To those, you mean, who can endure such humiliation?”

  “If the British Empire can endure it, Professor Cutter, I daresay it is endurable.” We all noted the apostrophe. Felix did not have to be reminded that he and Dad were no longer on a first name basis.

  “Empires can fall, sir, as can individuals,” my father continued irately. “An empire that grovels before a maniac does not deserve to be one. Nor will it be, long!”

  “I think you may have occasion to see that the British can still fight for what they believe in.”

  “That will be an edifying spectacle! I have come near to being convinced that there are very few men left on this globe. Real men, that is.”

  “It may sometimes take a greater courage not to fight.”

  “Have you found that so, Leitner?” Dad now roared. “I shouldn’t wonder. You were born with a yellow streak. And I miss my guess if you won’t die with one!”

  At this, poor Mother, who always kept an eye on Dad, came up to take him by the elbow and steer him to the coat closet. Very firmly, if silently, she took him home. He had had his say; he knew he had behaved outrageously, and he was now quite docile. But their departure left the party hopelessly chilled, and not all of Felix’s diplomacy could warm it up again.

  A worse scene, if possible, occurred that night when I came home. I reproached my father savagely for what he had done, and he exploded all over again. He accused me of having acted the pander throughout Felix’s affair with Gladys, and the next morning I left the paternal roof forever. Dad and I eventually made up our quarrel, at least formally, for Mother’s sake, but I never again lived at home. It was time, at any rate, for my departure. I had always essentially lived alone. In my own apartment I was able to face my isolation directly and make a virtue of it. Felix approved.

  Passages from the Paris Journal of Fiona Satterlee, April 1946

  APRIL 2. Mother and Felix arrive the day after tomorrow. They will be staying, of course, at the Ritz. They expect me for dinner on Tuesday night. There will be the usual assemblage of notables whose brains Mother will serve up to Felix to pick. He is writing a book on the future of Europe. Let us hope it has one.

  I am oddly disturbed. I put the question: what did I expect? To have Paris all to myself? Did I think Mother would never come here? I suppose I simply hoped she would not come quite so soon, that I should have a little more time for my experiment in living alone. After all, I can hardly call myself independent after only two months.

  Everything else has gone very well. I love my little studio. I love living in the Ile de la Cité. I paint in the morning. I’ve made a few nice friends. I’ve learned to drive my Ford all over Paris. And I find the French so wonderfully natural. They take my brace for granted. I feel less of a cripple that I ever did at home. I am getting to be fairly fluent in the language, too. I am a “person.” Or at least I think I may be on my way to becoming one.

  Of course, Mother has never really wanted me to be a person. She is too used to me the way I am—or the way I was. For twenty-five years I’ve been a fixture in her home, as familiar as the dining room cupboard, the unmarried and unmarriageable daughter, quiet, good-tempered, placid, yet just independent enough, just occasionally sharp enough to serve as a buffer against her loneliness when the brighter friends are not about. Oh, yes, my utility is clear enough. The great, charming lady likes to have a loyal attendant, like one of those confidantes in French classic drama who exist only to listen to the heroine’s love problems and laud her depth of feeling. The very fact that I was occasionally pri
ckly, even sometimes downright critical, gave my comments more value. Mother was far too clever to put up with a dunce.

  That, I see now, was why she was so ungracious about my legacy from Grandma Dunne, though it was really very mean of her. After all, my little trust fund was only a token compared to the two million that she got. I suppose Grandma must have observed more than we realized. She probably saw that Mother was using me and resolved to make me independent of her. God bless you, Grandma! But I mustn’t let myself become too critical of Mother. I must remember what Roger Cutter told me: people who turn themselves into carpets should expect to be trod on. And grown up children who are always beefing about their parents are the worst kind of bores.

  April 3. Here I am still stewing about the impending visit. It is not only Mother. It is Felix. I must face that. The real reason I left home was Felix. I was getting too dependent on him. I was becoming too obsessed with the business of being one of his assistants. I had almost given up my painting. I was being sucked into the vortex of that whole whirling crazy life in Washington. Of course, I loved helping with the research. But I could never kid myself that I had contributed a single word, or even a single idea, to that sacred column. No sir! It was all Felix’s genius, pure and simple! There was no room in that shiny palace for any but cleaning women. I could make telephone calls; I could verify facts; I could confirm appointments. That was all.

  Well, what was so wrong with that? Mother has made a life for herself exploiting Felix’s genius. But Mother preserves her individuality by being possessive, even, at times, by being disagreeable. I’m afraid she has lost much of her charm since she married Felix. Perhaps that is the price one pays for not being submerged by him. I was definitely going under. It is amazing how that man gets people to do things for him!

  Will he try to make me come back? Not a chance, brother!

  April 4. I met Mother and Felix at the boat train. She is more “great actressy” than ever, with too much luggage, too many porters, too much waving of arms and blowing of farewell kisses to fellow travelers. She was rather brief with me and deplored my hat. Obviously, I am still under a cloud for my defection. Felix was as charming as ever, the perfect stepfather, interested, kindly, making up for Mother’s coolness. She was her usual grabby self with him. She brushed off a reporter with a sharp: “Come to the hotel. Mr. Leitner will have a release for you there. Can’t you see he’s tired?”

  April 5. Mother and Felix gave a dinner for ten last night in a private dining room at the Ritz. I suppose it was a brilliant affair, all statesmen and diplomats, but I thought Mother rather spoiled it by calling for general conversation at table. That is her way of making Felix give a lecture. She can’t bear to have people talk when she thinks they should be listening to him. He was obviously embarrassed by her tactics and showed his usual good manners by asking everybody’s opinion on the topic of the day, which was the Nuremberg trials. But when the others learned that he disapproved of them, they wanted him to hold forth, and he had to.

  I must write down all his comments before I go to bed. Otherwise, I’ll never remember them in the morning.

  “I cannot see what laws the Nazis have broken. It’s all very well to talk about a conspiracy against mankind, but what law does such a conspiracy, assuming it to exist, violate? What it boils down to is that the court is going to make up a law and then hang the defendants for breaking it. I was taught that was something called ex post facto in my first week at law school!”

  “You’d let them go scott free, then?” This from the British chargé.

  “I think, if I’d been Harry Truman or Churchill, I’d never have let them be taken alive. I’d have simply told General Eisenhower, with a wink, how embarrassing it would be for us if they survived the surrender.”

  “But that would be murder!” This from the British charge’s wife.

  “I admit it. But it wouldn’t be judicial murder, which is something worse. Our century will be known as a lawless one, but not, God knows, for any lack of laws. We have legislated about everything under the sun, and now we’re reaching up into the sky to pluck down a law to punish the Nazis with. We seem to think we can say, ‘Let man be good,’ and he will be good.”

  The British diplomat: “But doesn’t it seem to you that Hitler and his gang went beyond anything in the past? Shouldn’t civilization express its abomination of the gas chambers in some impressive, formal fashion?”

  “What good will it do? You don’t teach cannibals to stop eating each other by preaching to them. You do something about their food supply. The Nazis have shocked the world simply because modern systems of political control have enabled them to carry slaughter to a pitch not visualized before. But the Russians did a similar job on their recalcitrant peasants in the nineteen thirties. And just wait till India, China and Africa get started! Then, as you say over here, vous men direz des nouvelles! Please don’t think me cold-hearted. I only maintain that the Germans are not generically any different from the rest of us.”

  A murmur of remonstrance around the table.

  “I may be a hopeless chauvinist, but I don’t think Buchenwald could happen in England!”

  “Gas chambers in Paris? Unthinkable!”

  Felix: “Nothing is beyond the heart of man. In a generation the Nazi concentration camps will seem as remote as the Roman arenas. People never learn by example. The only way to keep them from slaughtering each other is to make it more profitable for them not to do so. Particularly now that the next Hitler will have an atom bomb. We shall no longer be free to destroy the ogre, or die in the attempt. No, we shall have to talk to him. We shall all have bombs, and we shall all have to talk! The United Nations may be a slim hope, but it’s the only one.”

  Our British friend disagreed. He thinks the UN will only prove a debating society. He professed a nostalgia for the “good old days.” He suggested a return to power politics.

  Mother was at her worst. “Don’t you have to have the power first?” This she considers supporting Felix!

  Her crude reflection on the diminished status of His Majesty’s empire created a strain around the table. Felix covered it as well as he could by making the conversation particular again.

  After dinner, in the sitting room, Felix to my surprise came to sit by me. When Mother darted across the room to ask him which lady he wanted, he said he had one.

  “I want to catch up with Fiona.”

  Mother, surprised, departed, but I knew she would be back. Felix gave me his whole attention in that wonderful way he has. We might have been alone in the room. This is what we said.

  “You never really told me why you went to Paris. It couldn’t have been just to paint. That you could have done at home.”

  “I’m making an experiment. I thought that if I changed everything in my life for a period—my friends, my home, my language, my habits—I might discover what there was left of the real me.”

  “But why Paris?”

  “Because I speak French. I didn’t want to take the time to learn a new language.”

  “That was your only reason? How utilitarian! Most people think of Paris as the city of light. The city of love.”

  “Im not looking for love, Felix.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know perfectly well why not.”

  “Do the French? They are far too wise to think of love as something reserved for the physically perfect.”

  “I am quite aware that a withered leg should not exclude me from those delights.” Oh, I was very direct! “That is a choice I made a long time back. I did not want to risk being pitied. You may say that is false pride. Very well. It is false pride. But there are some decisions one doesn’t go back on.”

  “I see that.” And I was sure that he did. Felix never wastes one’s time. “Of course, there’s still ninety-nine percent of life left. How do you find your mother?”

  “Tense.”

  “It does show, doesn’t it? She carries me around like a bottle of precious f
luid, not one drop of which can be spilled. It’s touching to have her care so, but it can be wearing.”

  “She always wanted a serious occupation. All those parties with Daddy were only a form of distraction. Now she’s seen the light. Or should I say the Leitner?”

  “Of course, she’s helped me greatly in many ways.” He was polite enough to ignore my sorry pun. “She’s enabled me to devote all my days to writing. But there are times when I can’t help feeling that my principal use is to be an ornament for her salon.”

  “Is that so bad? One can be a great writer and still be an ornament.”

  “I suppose one gets used to anything.”

  “Even marriage?”

  “Maybe you’re not missing so much in that state, Fiona. But this is a dangerous subject.”

  Then he asked me to be his guide and take him to a museum in the afternoon. We made an appointment to meet at the Carnavalet. Mother came over to break up our tête-à-tête.

  I did not realize until I finished this entry that Felix and I had actually had an intimate talk. He makes intimacy as easy as formality!

  April 6. Felix met me at the appointed hour of three. As always, he was on the minute. When I saw him step into the sunlight of the old courtyard of the museum, so tall and handsome, with his dark, perfectly fitting suit and walking cane, I had a sense of his great gift of making each chapter, even each paragraph, of life complete and interesting in itself.

  Is that being disloyal to Daddy? I don’t think so. I had never been “against” Felix in the famous family row. I had been sorry for Daddy, of course, but it had seemed to me that what was happening to him was a risk one took in the world of the able-bodied. To have had his two legs I should have gladly suffered what he insisted on calling his humiliation. Then, too, I was sure that Felix had been largely Mother’s victim. I had more deplored him for weakness than condemned him for home breaking. After all, should not Mother’s victims sympathize with each other? And after all, too, what did it matter? What could my loyalty or disloyalty do for Daddy now? He has snuggled down for keeps in the deep, deep bed of his own self-pity. May he enjoy it, poor man.