Personal History (21 page)

No topic was taboo at Hockley. Everything from FDR and the New Deal to communism, Hitler, the rising tide of Nazism, civil rights—all issues and events were discussed in great debates that often went on for days on end. Graham Claytor recalled that in arguments they could manage to get two or three, sometimes even four sides to any issue on the table. Insults were hurled as a matter of course. It was understood that the abuse and indignities, even
ad hominem
attacks, were fair weapons in arguing for your position, but in truth there were no real feuds or solid dislikes, despite the wide variety of political opinion. John Oakes and Prich, for example, stood at opposite ends of the scale of social decorum and belief about rules of the political game. John, a journalist, believed in impartiality as the correct approach to an understanding of the issues. He was, of course, accused by the ultraliberals of seeing both or all sides of everything.

Prich and Phil, in a perverse mood of ultraliberalism, at one time during that winter defended the Russians for invading Finland, cause for very violent continuing arguments, in the course of which even their liberal housemates abandoned them. Prich and Phil were, indeed, very liberal, but they also enjoyed espousing unpopular causes. They had sympathy with the Soviet Union, but in the case of Finland they were essentially pushing the argument more for the exercise than from belief. They were in no real sense procommunist.

There were also many moments of wild hilarity at Hockley. Among his other skills, Johnson made excellent mint juleps, an art that was exercised plentifully at a party one spring. A properly made julep tastes deceptively mild, but it is more or less straight bourbon, weakened only by
mashed ice and mint. If it’s a hot day and you toss off several, you’re headed for trouble. At this party, a Harvard Law School professor, at that time an older man—by our youthful standards—of thirty-three, was a guest. He was planning to return to Boston that night and asked if someone would give him a ride to the station in time to catch the ten-thirty train. We agreed to do just that, but by eight-thirty no one could find him—he had disappeared. The professor was known to be one of those who hadn’t been adequately warned about the juleps, and it was established that he had innocently downed about six of them and had last been seen wandering around the grounds of Hockley calling “cheers” to everybody. Sometime after he came up missing, screams were heard from the parking lot and one of the young lady guests came rushing back to the house distraught. She had gotten into her car only to find a naked man in the back seat. Everyone hurried to the rescue, to find the professor, five feet six and two hundred pounds with little muscle, out cold in the back seat without a stitch on. He was revived with a bucket of water. His story was that, as time passed, he thought, “Gee, it must be time for me to be getting on the train,” so he wandered out to the parking lot, climbed into the back seat of the nearest car, decided he was in his sleeping berth, and promptly undressed and sacked out. Things like that seemed to happen all the time at Hockley.

M
Y YOUNGER SISTER
, Ruth, was being given a tea at Thanksgiving that year as part of her debut. I was trying to help her manage, because she was still somewhat young for her age and very shy, and suggested inviting all the boys from Hockley and S Street to the tea dance at my parents’ house. Bis had turned up for the event, carrying with her the glamorous aura of New York as well as her own innate spark. She was a star at the party, of course; all the boys thought she was wonderful, particularly Prich, who was captivated. In fact, he developed a crush on Bis and began rushing to New York to see her.

I viewed this development with no small measure of concern. I had considered this wonderful group of young men “my turf,” and here was Bis stepping onto it—the sister who always left me feeling inadequate and envious. In the crowd at the party, I bumped into Phil Graham, whom I hardly knew, and complained facetiously about all the excitement created by Bis. “I think I’ll begin to introduce her as, ‘This is my sister Bis, who is four years older than I am,’ ” I said.

“Yes,” he responded, “and of course you’ll add, ‘And
I’m
getting along.’ ” It was typical Phil repartee, and I thought he was pretty funny. By this time Phil had parted company with Phyllis Asher and had moved on to my friend Alice Barry. She was from an old Washington family, brought
up to take certain traditional steps in society: have a debut and get married, which she later did to the wealthy Oakley Thorne. In the meantime, there were lots of jokes about Phil and Alice, who had become a twosome and, indeed, had simultaneously developed cases of poison ivy.

Actually, through Prich’s friendship with Bis I came to know Prich better, too. After he stopped chasing my sister in New York, he and I became closer friends, and he even developed a minor and very temporary interest in me. My relationship with him always remained a great privilege, but with sad overtones. Prich was well known throughout Washington and even beyond. He was widely talked about and written about as a future governor of Kentucky, or even president, so great were his political acumen, understanding of public issues, and sense of people. In the end, he may have had too much charm and talent for his own good. Along with all his assets, he had fatal liabilities. He had no discipline or self-control. He left his work undone, his bills unpaid. His friends—and Phil was one of the closest—even finished his work for him on occasion. One weekend during the time when Prich was clerking for Frankfurter and Phil for Reed, Prich went to see Bis and overstayed his leave. Phil completed his work for him on the Court.

Prich accepted endless hospitality, seldom reciprocating. When he did take friends to a restaurant, he often found he had forgotten his wallet, and someone else had to pay the bill. Bill Sheldon once lamented that Prich’s friendship at Princeton, where they were undergraduates together, cost him about $900 a year—a large sum for those days, when few young people had any money—but, added Bill, it was worth it. Even my parents were charmed by Prich, but ultimately they, too, became impatient with his constant acceptance of their hospitality without ever writing a thank-you note or displaying normal civility.

Bis decided to give a New Year’s party at my mother’s Virginia house. She told me I could invite a few of the Hockley boys, including the “flat-faced” one, referring to Phil Graham. The party was a great success, with lots of laughter and the usual loud, raucous arguments. At one point, I found myself seated on a bench next to Phil, whom I knew probably the least of all the boys, and was startled when he turned to me, looked at my sister Bis, and asked, “Are we for her?”

This question was typical of Phil in several respects. It was instant penetration of the human armor. It cut through formalities and reached you directly. It created a sort of charmed circle, enclosing you and him in an intimate association. And it asked a central and real question. Typically, his question elicited a frank answer in which I said everything I felt about Bis, including the ambivalences—the admiration and the envy—but the bottom-line answer was, “Yes, we are for her.” Suddenly, with just one question asked and answered, Phil and I knew each other. The last of us to
leave the party piled into the remaining car, and I found myself on Phil’s lap the whole way to town, getting to know him even better.

A couple of weeks later, early in the new year of 1940, I was invited by Prich to Sunday lunch at the Ritz Carlton. There were several of us, and after we had lunched as long as we could, someone suggested driving to the scene of the happy New Year’s party, the Cabin, and we spent the afternoon there. At the end of the day, everyone except Phil and me had engagements, so he asked if I wanted to have dinner. We went to a little-known restaurant, had a long dinner, talked and laughed a lot, and drank until quite late, when he took me home. I enjoyed it, but I also realized that we had been the only two without dates, and that he had asked me for that reason. So I still felt a reserve.

Phil called me once or twice, and carried on in his usual irreverent, breezy way. I found him captivating. By then, Alice Barry and he had gone their separate ways. I’ve always thought she was too proper to have ever considered Phil seriously, but in the earliest days at Hockley she asked me if I knew him. When I said no, not really, she said, “You ought to; he’s the best here.”

The second week in February, Phil called me at work late one afternoon suggesting we have dinner with one of his college roommates, George Smathers, and his wife, Rosemary. I said I couldn’t, for several reasons. It was my night to proofread the editorial and op-ed pages, and on top of that I didn’t feel well and feared I was getting the flu. In addition, I wasn’t dressed for dinner. I looked as rotten as I felt, in a simple brown wool dress, cotton stockings, and loafers. So I was firm in my regret.

Phil was equally firm in his insistence. He pointed out that we would eat at Harvey’s, a famous old seafood restaurant next door to the Mayflower, where we could buy the early edition of the
Post
. He would help me proofread the pages and we could call in the corrections. It didn’t matter how I looked, he persisted, and no doubt this dinner would chase away all my symptoms, which, in any case, were not preventing me from working. So I gave in and joined him after making up the pages, embarrassed and discomfited when I walked in to find George and Rosemary Smathers looking incredibly handsome and impeccably dressed for the occasion. The evening, however, was fine and fun. Phil drove me home, and we talked for a long time. He told me that he loved me and said we would be married and go to Florida, if I could live with only two dresses, because I had to understand that he would never take anything from my father or be involved with him and we would live on what he made.

My breath was taken away. I was, to put it mildly, startled. This was a little ahead of where I was, but not that much ahead. I agreed that it
sounded like quite a good idea, but perhaps a bit rash, and that we should put the idea of marriage on hold for all of a month or so while we deliberated and considered. Phil agreed to the month’s delay.

It all seems so odd in retrospect. A fast month of deliberate hesitation passed, and in reality it hardly occurred. It seemed to be a given to both of us that, although we were trying to be discreet, things were moving forward. In fact, the night of the Smathers dinner, Phil, whistling happily, had returned to the room at Hockley he shared with Prich. Prich, already long in bed, turned over, looked at Phil, and in the throes of his momentary crush on me, said, “You son of a bitch, you’ve got her.” Prich went into a month-long pout—a real anger, during which he once threw his drink at us. He finally emerged as our best man.

Despite my hesitation, the fact is I was charmed and dazzled. And I was incredulous—this brilliant, charismatic, fascinating man loved me! Even in my excitement over the sudden and unexpected development, and quite apart from his magnetism, I saw at once that the combination of qualities I had hoped for in any possible man had surprisingly and actually come together in this one. Here was someone who combined for me the two parts of my life that I thought were inescapably separate. For the first time I had found a man who was that right mix of intellectual, physical, and social charm, and warm and funny on top of that. Phil was bright, issue-oriented, hardworking, witty, and, to me, amazingly good-looking, with his leanness and angularity making him much more interesting and appealing to me than classic good looks. He loved me, and I loved him. It was incredibly exciting.

The morning after our proclamations of love, my worst flu fears were realized: I had a roaring temperature and was unable to get out of bed. The doctor was called and told me to stay quiet. It was Valentine’s Day, and Phil sent a funny bouquet of yellow daffodils and red tulips with a Cupid and an arrow, followed by a phone call, asking, “Has the vet been there?” Although the vet had ordered solitary confinement, the sender arrived in the late afternoon and sat on my bed for hours as we talked and talked.

That month my mother was away with Bis in Nassau. Phil came and went, either visiting or picking me up often enough to cause my father to be suspicious about us. He and I were traveling to New York, talking about young men and what their current interests were. I told him that the young men I knew were mostly lawyers, many of them doing government work. He asked me who was the most interesting of these, and I naturally began describing Phil, without altogether considering what I was doing. I must have made quite an impression with my characterization, because my father asked, “Are you serious?” The agreed-on month was not over,
but I said yes, I thought I was. My father promptly said that in that case he would like to know Phil and asked me to invite him to dinner. I was surprised I had waded into this, but didn’t blame my father for his natural curiosity. I called Phil, confessed the conversation, and asked if he minded being looked over. With some trepidation he agreed. He made no bones about regarding my father as a wealthy ogre who might want to entangle an unsuspecting young son-in-law in his tentacles. He had never before encountered this kind of wealth and power and was darkly suspicious.

I asked two other friends to dinner also, to make things impersonal and less intense. Phil arrived, and one of the first things my father did was to show him an old cartoon by the
Post
’s talented cartoonist, Gene Elderman. It had to do with Justice Hugo Black, who in the course of his confirmation hearings had been revealed as once having been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. There was a figure of Black on the Court in Klan robes, with the title “Reform of the Judiciary.” Phil’s response was, “Well, that’s a very good drawing and a clever one, but I disagree with its message. I happen to think Justice Black is one of the ablest and hardest-working members of the Court and one of its finest minds.”

The room was almost enveloped in smoke. My heart sank as the arguments grew louder and longer, continuing most of the evening. When the guests finally left, I said morosely to my father that it seemed to have been an unfortunate occasion. “What do you mean?” my father inquired. “I had a wonderful time and liked him fine.” I breathed a sigh of relief and informed Phil that he had passed.