Auchincloss - A voice from old New York: a memoir of my youth

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
Boston ||| New York ||| 2010

Copyright 2010 by Louis Auchincloss

All rights reserved

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selections from this book, write to Permissions,
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Auchincloss, Louis.
A voice from old New York : a memoir of
my youth / Louis Auchincloss.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-547-34153-8
1. Auchincloss, Louis. 2. Auchincloss,
LouisChildhood and youth. 3. Authors,
American20th centuryBiography. I. Title.
PS 3501. U 25 Z 46 2010
813'.54dc22 [B] 2010015894

Book design by Patrick Barry

Printed in the United States of America

DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

INTRODUCTION: Turning Back

Part I: How It Was

1 | Genealogy, et cetera

2 | John and Priscilla

3 | What Some Call "Society"

4 | A Few Words About Women

Part II: Education and After

5 | Teachers, Beloved and Otherwise

6 | My Life in Crime

7 | Bar Harbor

8 | Bad Sports

9 | Religion

10 | The Great Depression

11 | The Brits

12 | Cohorts

13 | A Hang-up

14 | I Begin to Write

15 | Sea Duty

16 | Fear

17 | A Return to Society

19 | Fleeing the Law

20 | A Few More Words About Women

21 | Animal Encounters

Part III: The Writing Life

22 | Writerly Types

23 | Class

24 | Burdens

25 | A Would-be Writer, Not Forgotten

Part IV: Farewells

26 | My Mother

27 | And Please Do Not Forget

EPILOGUE: Words

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern waythe children's eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

W ILLIAM B UTLER Y EATS,
Among School Children

Reading, writing, and talking about books have occupied much of my life, and so, not surprisingly, it is here where I find I must begin.

When I retired from the practice of law at age sixty-nine I had more than enough time for the writing of my novels, and I gladly accepted the offer of my friend James Tuttleton, head of the English department at New York University, to teach there. They had adopted a policy of inviting known authors, without academic qualifications, to give courses, and Tuttleton had in mind that I might give one on Henry James and Edith Wharton, as I had written books on both. Ultimately I did give such a course to a small group of graduate students, but what I had in mind was a more extensive course for undergraduates on Shakespeare and his contemporary dramatists.

I had long wanted to do something to rebut the idiotic theories that the man from Stratford couldn't have written the thirty-seven plays attributed to him. My ambitions were further aroused by a conversation with the brilliant U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia who told me that he favored the Earl of Oxford as the true author of Shakespeare's works. Hearing this from such an informed and learned man shocked me considerably. So I drew up a detailed plan for what we might cover that would illustrate my case. Each week, I envisioned, the students would read a play of Shakespeare's, along with something by a contemporary, say, Jonson, Marlowe, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, Tourneur, Middleton, or what have you.

My idea was to show that Shakespeare, with his education and background, fitted perfectly into his times; that he wrote for the theatre in much the same way as the others, using similar plots, ideas, and devices. But, in short, I wanted to demonstrate that he was simply so much better than the others that, in his hands, all the conventions seemed new, fresh, and alive. To think his plays were written by Bacon or Oxford is, in my opinion, to show a tin ear.

A man with a tin ear for music has no trouble confessing it, but one with a tin ear for poetry may be genuinely unaware of it. Especially in these, prosaic-at-best, times. Such a reader is aware of hearing the same words that a poetry lover does, and he believes that he gives them the same meaning. What is it then, he must ask himself, that sets the interpretations of experts apart from his own? When Hamlet ends his tragedy with the line "You that look pale and tremble at this chance," the less initiated reader hears only a simple sentence. Why is it experienced readers and scholars hear more and deeper meanings than the newcomer? How does one come to appreciate all these nuances?

When I, attempting to make the seriousness of a judge appear trivial, approached the dean with my project, he looked doubtful. "I know, I know," I said, responding to that look people get when their manners conflict with their purpose. "Shakespeare is sacred territory, and I don't belong to the union."

"Well, what are your qualifications then?"

"I'm a doctor of letters of NYU."

There was a moment of surprised silence before the dean recovered himself. "But that was honorary."

"You should be more careful in handing those things out."

However minimal the dean considered my chances of success, I had won a victory, of sorts. The following fall, I found myself facing some thirty young men and women, only five or six of whom had ever read a play by the bard. That many of them had no ear for poetic language became only too clear when I read their papers, into which it was distressingly common for them to insert, with the stunning confidence of Dickens's errant urchins, plagiarized passages. The fact that they didn't realize that it was impossible for me not to recognize the shift from their own clumsy prose to that of a more elevated variety spoke worlds of their difficulties with language. And perhaps with life.

Would a student deaf to poetry respond to prose? Fortunately Shakespeare wrote both, and I had some success in reading aloud Hamlet's peerless speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

"I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours."

The unrestrained emotion and humanity of the piece always stopped the class, at least for a few moments. The students' attention to something so archaically expressed pleased me. It is something I cheerfully recall when the earth to me, too, seems a "sterile promontory." I remember how Shakespeare reached across time to touch their feelings. I cannot claim to expect any comparable impact. But I believe in words, for their power to articulate what others have previously sought to communicate, along with their capacity to show us that most terrifying vantage, ourselves.

I find myself some years past my ninetieth birthday as I approach this task of remembering (or, at other times, continuing, happily, to forget) my life. I cannot say if, like Shakespeare, I am a man who fit perfectly into his times, or if I stood par. Nor can I be sure whether I have, either on the page or in my daily existence, revealed a tin ear for life or art. But I believe I can take you back to those who dominated the places of my youth, and those who shared them. I believe I may try to examine those who, for whatever reasons, never gained admittance to the places I dwelled merely by advantage of birth. This book is not for me, not just, as memoirs sometimes are, a record of my terrors or complaints. It is for those who I have passed my time with, those who showed me that there was much to admire, along with all the others who have made my life, the people I have been fortunate enough to encounter, the voices I remember and would like to introduce to you.