Last of the Cold War Spies (3 page)

They contrived to meet, and her attraction to him strengthened. By late 1910 their love epistles were again peppered with coded words known only to them. During this time, Willard felt the pressures over the loan. Although it was unsaid, his chances of marrying Dorothy were contingent on the Chinese signing. His standing would be immense for one so young—the elevation would overcome his outsider status in New York and lack of means.

Finally, on April 15, 1911, the Chinese signed the loan agreement. Willard’s self-confidence and prestige were boosted as never before. His success gave him the platform for his acceptability. He and Dorothy became engaged on July 20 and married on September 7 in a morning civil ceremony in Geneva, followed at noon by an Episcopal service. They later traveled by train across Siberia to Manchuria and China, arriving in Beijing on October 11, the day that the Sun Yat-sen rebellion broke out. The Straights endured the fall of the Manchu dynasty over the next few dangerous months, in which they were trapped during looting riots and attempts to burn Beijing. They were forced to stay inside the U.S. legation compound protected by marines.

When peace was restored, they left Beijing via the Trans-Siberian railway in March 1912 to a send off by about eighty of the foreign elite in China.

The trip was arduous for Dorothy. She was pregnant.

T
he Straights returned to the United States, and Willard, practically a stranger to New York society, took up a Wall Street position with J. P. Morgan on an increased salary of $20,000. They bought a Packard car, leased a five-story townhouse at 22 East 67th Street, and spent leisure time at the Whitney home in Old Westbury, Long Island. Willard could not keep up the lifestyle expected of the family on his respectable salary. He found himself in the position of William Whitney when expenses were subsidized by the $250,000 a year earned from the investment of Dorothy’s fortune, which had increased to more than $10 million.

Their first child, Whitney Willard, was born in November 1912. After three months of Dorothy’s attention, he was assigned to a governess for most of the day. It was similar to her own early days, except she made sure that her quality time with young Whitney was filled with attention and caressing, which she had lacked. The employment of an English nanny allowed the Straights to go as a couple to the theater and opera as before and to attend the usual rounds of tennis, polo, and golf.

While Willard worked, Dorothy took up her liberal enterprises with a vengeance. She stood up for women’s suffrage, the State Charities Aid,
and the YWCA. If she wasn’t supporting a Democratic candidate somewhere, she was doing something for a committee to care for poor children and women of the district. At night, she might be at a book club reading, or listening to lectures at the Economics Club, which was taken up with novel ideas concerning socialism and the single tax. Then there were Women’s Trade Union meetings about the unemployed, as well as Bible classes. Dorothy was quietly, determinedly spiritual.

She was going far beyond the public obligations of the New York social set and into the realms of self-sacrifice in paying for the sins of the father. Yet while William Whitney’s failings may have been a subconscious motivation, she was of such a mind that even without them she would have taken the same path.

Two years after securing the loan for China, Willard saw his triumph collapse. The loan was delayed by the Chinese revolution, then thwarted by President Woodrow Wilson and the American Group of bankers itself. Wilson thought the loan “obnoxious” because it threatened China’s independence. The bankers fretted over the turbulent country’s capacity to repay loans. The blow caused Willard anguish, but, bursting with ideas, he moved on.

He was concerned with the United States’ direction, and he longed for it to be inspired with a long-term plan, particularly his. His schemes were similar to those of his friend and hero Theodore Roosevelt and to ideas honed by writer Herbert Croly. His book
The Promise of American Life
had bemoaned the lack of a blueprint for an American renaissance. Croly wanted the United States to move away from disorganized individualism to develop a sense of national purpose and good. Known for his honesty and idealism, he didn’t want the rampant big corporations broken up but rather made more accountable and beneficial to the whole population. Willard felt much the same way and was a patriot despite his liking for imperialist ways. He had enjoyed his elitist experience in China and wanted the United States to exploit it more benevolently than he thought the British had, or the Japanese or Russians would.

Willard was in accord with Croly’s thinking, even if they were coming from different directions. The writer was urging stronger leadership and
national reform at home. Willard thought this would make the United States stronger abroad. He yearned to own a daily paper of influence but would settle, for the moment, for a magazine.

Dorothy was busy having their second child, Beatrice, early in August 1914, but she still made time to consider the dreams of others. The Straights, Croly, Judge Learned Hand, and Felix Frankfurter met at Westbury to discuss the birth of
The New Republic
. Dorothy subsidized the magazine, which began after the fall elections of 1914. Croly was appointed to the staff, and Roosevelt became contributing editor. Soon journalists Walter Lippmann and Walter Weyl were on board having weekly editorial meetings with the Straights. Willard and Roosevelt saw it as a vehicle for their muscular view of U.S. foreign policy and international corporate adventures. Croly viewed it as a radical journal for espousing his developing ideas for change in the United States. They were all, despite their personal ambitions, constructive in their ideas about their nation. A common denominator was a better, more socially responsible United States.

Meanwhile, war broke out in Europe, with Imperial Germany declaring its intentions against Russia, then France. Straight could hear those distant drums. They had first beat for him at military college, then in the Russo-Japanese conflict, and more recently in the Chinese revolution. He was dissatisfied with his lot at the House of Morgan and bored with international banking. He had his club, polo, golf, tennis, politics, and the new magazine, which he was not supposed to attempt to influence, although he tried, particularly over policy concerning the United States’ preparedness for war. The machinations of dealing with other people’s money was no fun compared to the rest of his activities.

Dorothy, who kept control of the purse strings, would not indulge his craving for a newspaper. She urged him to stick with the Morgan job. She liked its security, and she knew her man to be impatient and lacking in perseverance.

The last straw at Morgan for Willard came when he spent much time speaking to business groups about the trade opportunities presented by the war. He and Dorothy had entertained the heads of the Anglo-French commission at Westbury when they visited the United States. Willard had created the market by working hard at inspiring both the sellers and buyers to deal. Then he found himself left out of the bank’s plans to furnish the Allies with money to continue their purchases from the groups he had encouraged.

Willard resigned September 18, 1915, soon after the Straights had moved into their newly built Georgian red brick at Fifth Avenue and 94th Street. He announced he would study international law at Columbia. Inside three months of beginning law, he again proved his incapacity to stay the course and accepted the position of third vice-president to the new American International Corporation, beginning early in 1916.

Willard was still at AIC on September 1, 1916, when Dorothy gave birth to their third child, Michael Whitney, the biggest arrival at nearly 10 pounds. The new arrival inspired his father to paint a serene seascape the next day during a contented period in the short life of the Straight family.

Six months later Willard changed course yet again. After failing to land a State Department job in Washington, he was commissioned into the army as a major in the adjutant general’s reserve corps and assigned to Governor’s Island, just fifteen minutes by boat from lower Manhattan. The lure of the military had snared Willard after several flirtations. He left the AIC while keeping a few financial projects going and attempted to pull strings for a position on the General Staff. When sent to Europe, he again failed to get himself frontline duty in command of a battalion or on the staff of a division. In France he had the unglamorous post in charge of the War Risk Insurance Bureau for the U.S. Army. Yet it carried responsibility. He arranged for countless U.S. servicemen to insure their lives in an operation that would have rivaled the biggest insurance company.

Dorothy was uneasy about his rush to the military and the subsequent distance between them. Typically in times of stress, she increased her activity by joining the Mayor’s Committee on National Defense and the Red Cross. She worked in a YMCA canteen, continued to push for the suffragettes, and made time for the New School for Social Research. She made herself far busier than Willard. When the Insurance Bureau work was completed, he wandered around the U.S. military in Paris as a sort of itinerant staff officer. It left him low. He summoned the spirit to write to Dorothy, whom he delighted in calling “Miss Chairman of all things,” telling her to inform each of their boys:

After the war, Willard, still in Paris, supported President Wilson in his push for a League of Nations and managed to get on the staff of the president’s chief assistant—Colonel House—at the Peace Conference. Willard was involved in final negotiations when he contracted influenza. It developed into pneumonia. He died on December 1, 1918, at age 38, leaving Dorothy a widow at 31.

She had been planning to come to Paris to be part of the Conference at the president’s request, but instead she stood at Willard’s grave in the war cemetery at Suresne. Later she went to Langres Cathedral seeking some communication with her dead husband. They had once had a telepathic experience when he was there and she was in the United States. On returning home, she turned more to Christian Science and her own spirituality, even going to séances held by a Maryland medium. Her notes show that she believed that she made contact with Willard through the medium. He told her he had been “there” with her on several occasions.

Dorothy asked him for guidance on raising and educating the children. His responses, via the medium, appeared reassuring.
²

Whitney, he told Dorothy, would stand out as a good character and businessman, who would work and play tirelessly; so, he should be encouraged along those paths. Beatrice, on the other hand, would be more challenging for her parents and would develop later in life, probably in some creative area because she had “artistic talent.” Michael would be more intellectual and would need instruction on overcoming hurdles. He would have a literary bent; so, he should be guided into social and economic education and work.

The response from Willard through the medium proved to be prescient for the three children, then only six, four, and two years.