Stephen Birmingham - The Jews in America Trilogy: Our Crowd, The Grandees, and The Rest of Us

The Jews in America Trilogy

Our Crowd, The Grandees, and The Rest of Us

Stephen Birmingham

PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF STEPHEN BIRMINGHAM

The Auerbach Will

New York Times Bestseller

Has the magic word bestseller written all over it Birminghams narrative drive never falters and his characters are utterly convincing. John Barkham Reviews

Delicious secretsscandals, blackmail, affairs, adultery the gossipy Uptown/Downtown milieu Birmingham knows so well. Kirkus Reviews

An engrossing family saga. USA Today

Colorful, riveting, bubbling like champagne. The Philadelphia Inquirer

Poignant and engrossing Has all the ingredients for a bestseller. Publishers Weekly

The Rest of Us

New York Times Bestseller

Breezy and entertaining, full of gossip and spice! The Washington Post

Rich anecdotal and dramatic material Prime social-vaudeville entertainment. Kirkus Reviews

Wonderful stories All are interesting and many are truly inspirational. The Dallas Morning News

Entertaining from first page to last Those who read it will be better for the experience. Chattanooga Times Free Press

Birmingham writes with a deft pen and insightful researchers eye. The Cincinnati Enquirer

Mixing facts, gossip, and insight The narrative is engaging. Library Journal

Immensely readable Told with a narrative flair certain to win many readers. Publishers Weekly

The Right People

New York Times Bestseller

Platinum mounted The mind boggles. San Francisco Examiner

To those who say society is dead, Stephen Birmingham offers evidence that it is alive and well. Newsweek

The games some people play manners among the moneyed WASPs of America The best book of its kind. Look

The beautiful people of le beau monde Mrs. Adolf Spreckels with her twenty-five bathrooms Dorothy Spreckels Munns chinchilla bedspread the St. Grottle sex Set of the New England prep schools, sockless in blazers the clubs the social sports love and marriagewhich seem to be the only aspect which might get grubbier. Its all entertaining. Kirkus Reviews

It glitters and sparkles. Youll love The Right People. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A fun book about Americas snobocracy Rich in curiosa More entertaining than Our Crowd Stephen Birmingham has done a masterly job. Saturday Review

Take a look at some of his topics: the right prep schools, the coming out party, the social rankings of the various colleges, the Junior League, the ultra-exclusive clubs, the places to live, the places to play, why the rich marry the rich, how they raise their children. This is an inside book. The Washington Star

All the creamy people The taboo delight of a hidden American aristocracy with all its camouflages stripped away. Tom Wolfe, Chicago Sun-Times

The Wrong Kind of Money

Fast and wonderful. Something for everyone. The Cincinnati Enquirer

Dark doings in Manhattan castles, done with juicy excess. A titillating novel that reads like a dream. Stunning. Kirkus Reviews

Birmingham certainly keeps the pages turning. Fans will feel at home. The Baltimore Sun

Our Crowd

The Great Jewish Families of New York

Stephen Birmingham

For the children:

Mark, Harriet, Carey

Preface

It was my intention, when I undertook to write this book, not to write a book that would be simply about rich people.

To be sure, none of the families here portrayed is needy. Far from it. Butto me, at leasttheir accomplishments and their contributions to the special spirit and lan, as well as to the physical appearance, of New York City make the fact of their wealth seem secondary. It was my feeling, when I considered this book, that such names as Lehman, Lewisohn, Schiff, Loeb, Warburg, Guggenheim, Seligman, Kahn, Straus, Goldman, and Sachs are nationally, and in most cases internationally, known. They stand for banking and industrial efficiency, government service, philanthropy, and vast patronage of the arts, science, and education. And yet, due to a persistent reticence and unwillingness to boastwhich in themselves are noble attributesthe men and women who made these names celebrated are little understood as human beings. It was my hunch that behind the marble faades lived people with as much capacity for folly, and grandeur, as human beings everywhere. It should come as no surprise that this turned out to be the case.

As a novelist, my interest has always been in the romance of people, and I suppose I am always a bit more concerned with what people are than what they do. And so one question may call for an answer: What is particularly significant about these German Jewish banking families? As a reader, I am an habitual peeker-ahead at endings, and so I shall open the book with the same thought as the one I close it with: These German Jewish families are more than a collective American success story. At the point in time when they were a cohesive, knit, and recognizably distinct part of New York society, they were also the closest thing to AristocracyAristocracy in the best sensethat the city, and perhaps the country, had seen.

Obviously, it was not possible to take up each of the hundreds of people who composed, and compose, our crowd. I have tried only to write about those men and women who to me seemed either the most exceptional, or the most representative, of their day.

I want to thank a number of people who have been particularly helpful with information, guidance, and suggestions in the preparation of this book.

I am indebted to Geoffrey T. Hellman for permission to quote from his published material, for supplying me with documents, manuscripts, letters, photographs, and personal reminiscences of his family, the Seligmans, as well as for magically unearthing the unpublished autobiography of Adolph Lewisohn, which neither Mr. Lewisohns children nor grandchildren knew existed. I am grateful to Mrs. Joseph L. Seligman of New York for further material on her husbands family; to Mrs. Carola Warburg Rothschild for similarly kind and gracious assistance with memories and family papers pertaining to the Warburgs, old Loebs, and Schiffs, and for giving me access to the memoirs of her mother, the late Frieda Schiff Warburg. I also thank Mrs. Dorothy Lehman Bernhard, and her sons Robert A. and William L. Bernhard, for insights into the Lehman clan; Mrs. Phyllis Goodhart Gordan, for data concerning the Goodharts and Walters; Mr. Frank Lewisohn and Mrs. Joan Lewisohn Simon, for their help with Lewisohn recollections.

I am deeply grateful to Mrs. August Philips (Emanie Arling) for permission to quote from her novel, Red Damask (which she wrote under the name Emanie Sachs), for her spirited recollections of the days when she herself was a part of the crowd, and for her enthusiastic interest in my project. To Mr. Walter E. Sachs, I am indebted for Sachs and Goldman family and business reminiscences, as well as for access to his own unpublished autobiography. I would like to thank Messrs. Lee Klingenstein of Lehman Brothers, Carl J. White of J. & W. Seligman & Co., Benjamin Sonnenberg, James F. Egan, Norman Retchin, David L. Mitchell of S. G. Warburg & Company, Ltd., and Professor Oscar Handlin of Harvard for their suggestions and pointers during various stages of the book, and Beverley Gasner, who read the books first draft with an especially finicky eye.