EATON & CROMWELL, INC.
Executive Offices
February 4, 1983
Mrs. Joan A. McAllister
161 East 68th Street
New York, N.Y. 10021
Mrs. Joseph Klein
1089 South Ocean Boulevard
Palm Beach, Florida 33480
Mr. Martin R. Auerbach
4 Beekman Place
New York, N.Y. 10022
Dear Joan, Babette and Mogie:
Thank you for sending me a copy of the booklet which you prepared in Mother’s memory. I read it with interest.
As you know, I declined to participate in this project, not out of any lack of love or respect for Mother, but because I was opposed to the booklet as an idea, and felt that a collection of views of Mother was somehow unfair to her, could not do her justice and that, finally, Mother deserved her privacy—and deserved to leave us with her mystery intact.
Each of you has tried to explain Mother, and I respect your sentiments. But in the end it was the unexplained about her that I treasure most and will carry about with me throughout my life. There are answers to questions about her, in other words, that I do not want to know, explanations about her that I do not want to have.
For instance, one fact about Mother came to light here only recently. In the process of going through old company records, I discovered that in the early days of Eaton & Cromwell Mother made an important financial contribution to the company. This fact has been overlooked in various corporate histories which the company has put out, but it seems that, without Mother’s help, Jacob Auerbach might not have been able to get his enterprise off the ground—might not even have become involved with it. What was her role? I don’t know, and I don’t wish to know, beyond knowing that she chose never to mention it to any of us. Why did she keep this secret? Was it modesty? Or was it the Talmudic tradition which decrees that twice blessed is he who gives in secret? These are more mysteries which I would prefer left unsolved, because if Mother wished to keep a secret from us she would have had a reason.
Then there was the mystery of our oldest brother, Jacob Auerbach, Jr., who was called Prince, who died young, several years before I was born. Mother never spoke of him and, because I knew that Prince was Mother’s secret, I never asked about him.
Prince’s journey on this earth created a mystery about myself which, again, I do not want explained. Joan has said that it seemed to her at times as though she and I had two different sets of parents. My feelings about myself and Mother was that I had two separate selves—my own, and that of Prince, whose spiritual guardian I somehow was.
Somehow I had the impression from Mother that my mission was to replace Prince in her heart—that I was needed also to care for Prince, to see that he did the right thing, to see that he never got into trouble, and so on. Where did these feelings come from? I don’t—and don’t want to—know.
And so, throughout Mother’s long life, this was what I tried to do. While she was trying to raise us children as best she could, this was what I tried to do to help her. Why I tried, I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Whether I succeeded, I don’t know. Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn’t. But it’s not a bad mission—trying to replace a loved one you never knew in the heart of someone you love, but will never really know—if you ask me.
Love,
Josh
*See Gold, Irving L., M.D., “Maternal Influences Affecting Latent Ego Lacunae in Sexually Dysfunctioning Males.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 1973, 35, 639-652.
About the Author
Stephen Birmingham is an American author of more than thirty books. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1932, he graduated from Williams College in 1953 and taught writing at the University of Cincinnati. Birmingham’s work focuses on the upper class in America. He’s written about the African American elite in Certain People and prominent Jewish society in Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York, The Grandees: The Story of America’s Sephardic Elite, and The Rest of Us: The Rise of America’s Eastern European Jews. His work also encompasses several novels including The Auerbach Will, The LeBaron Secret, Shades of Fortune, and The Rothman Scandal, and other nonfiction titles such as California Rich, The Grandes Dames, and Life at the Dakota: New York’s Most Unusual Address. Birmingham lives in southwest Ohio.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
The Macmillan Company for the letters of Otto Kahn which appeared in The Many Lives of Otto Kahn by Mary Jane Mate, copyright © 1963 by Margaret D. Ryan.
The translation of the lines in Yiddish on pages 56 and 404 is by I. J. Schwartz (Foverts Publication, New York, 1918), and was kindly supplied by Dr. Herbert H. Paper, Dean of the School of Graduate Studies at Hebrew Union College.
Copyright © 1983 by Stephen Birmingham
Cover design by Angela Goddard
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2635-2
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The Auerbach Will Page 45
