by Peter Janney
Mary’s parents were therefore the kind of role models who would encourage her to become as politically and culturally engaged as they themselves were. The Pinchot home environment fostered personal exploration of all kinds. To be sure, wealth and privilege played their parts in this—there were no worries about day-to-day survival, and Mary enjoyed more opportunities to engage her developing self than she might have under more straitened circumstances. But privilege didn’t deserve all the credit; there was something innate in Mary that made her extraordinary. Her mother, Ruth Pinchot, recognized it early on. When Mary was just a toddler playing on a Long Island beach, her mother noted the confidence and sense of self-worth that her daughter possessed. These characteristics would serve her well her entire life. In a letter that Ruth wrote to Amos, she joked that their self-possessed child “is a perfect little bully. She knows she can make Elizabeth cry easily and teases her all the time. She’s an aggressor and the devil.”11
The Pinchot family shuttled between New York City and Grey Towers, the family estate in Milford, Pennsylvania. Women in the Pinchot clan grew up surrounded by an extended “family” of some of the day’s most prominent thinkers and newsmakers: people like Max Eastman, Reinhold Niebuhr, Wisconsin populist and presidential candidate Robert La Follette, and Teddy Roosevelt. Mary was shaped and molded by all of these influences, as well as by her suffragist aunt Cornelia and her mother.
At age twelve, Mary was enrolled in the Brearley School, a posh private school for the WASP aristocracy on the Upper East Side of New York, just blocks from her family’s Park Avenue apartment. Brearley boasted rigorous academics for the daughters and granddaughters of many well-known figures, including Margaret Mead, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eugene O’Neill, and eventually John F. Kennedy. As a preparatory school for young women, it espoused well-roundedness. Self-expression and exploration were given top priority, complementing and supporting Mary’s family life.
Even as an adolescent, Mary was physically stunning to behold—a blonde nymph from an ethereal dimension, strong and beautifully proportioned, at once athletic and graceful, yet uncompromisingly feminine. In her teen years, her social life was bookended by debutante balls and New York City’s nightlife. At the Ritz-Carlton or the Waldorf-Astoria, Mary was the belle of the ball. Weekends were filled with parties at New England’s elite prep schools—St. Paul’s, Choate, and Groton among them.
At 15, Mary Pinchot was invited to the Choate School Winter Festivities Weekend in February 1936 by William (“Bill”) Attwood, whom she had met during the previous Christmas in New York. Bill Attwood would one day become President Kennedy’s ambassador to Guinea. He would also be at the heart of a Kennedy-sanctioned secret mission in the fall of 1963 to explore a rapprochement with Fidel Castro, behind the backs of the Pentagon and CIA. But in the winter of 1936, Attwood was the guy with the prettiest date at Choate.
Had destiny itself already taken the young and beautiful Mary Pinchot by the hand? Not having yet met Attwood, she had actually gone to the annual 1935 Christmas “Interscholastic Dance” in New York with one of his classmates, Geoffrey Monroe Bruère. There had been dozens of Choaties and ex-Choaties there, and Geoffrey and Bill Attwood, both fifth-formers at Choate, had competed for her attention all evening. Young Attwood’s ardor, however, was impressive, as was his disposition. Geoffrey, it appeared, was too much bluster and peacock strut for Mary’s taste. Bill Attwood, on the other hand, was respectful, though not sycophantic. He had called her the very next day. They realized they both lived on Park Avenue only several blocks apart. Boldness then inspired young Attwood on the telephone that day, for he wasted no time, and no opportunity. He asked Mary if she’d like to go dancing at the Persian Room that afternoon.
Beauty is its own light, and Mary was coming into hers. She recognized that afternoon with Bill as an invitation for exploration. She liked the way he affectionately started calling her “Pinchy.” Before the end of Christmas vacation, the pair went out on several more excursions, the entire city of New York their playground. One outing included a meeting with Bill’s parents who, Mary would learn later, “were satisfactorily impressed.” After that, he asked her to be his date at Choate in February. Mary didn’t mention the fact that Bill’s nemesis—Geoffrey Monroe Bruère—had already requested her favor, but she hadn’t accepted. “That bastard Bruère!” Bill confided to his diary. It had all worked out, though. Pinchy chose Bill, at least for the time being, and he awaited her arrival with excitement.12
By February of 1936, young Jack Kennedy, a 1935 graduate of Choate, was increasingly worried about the state of his health. He was undergoing tests for colitis and being kept for observation at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston that winter. Having already confronted death during his battle with scarlet fever as a child, along with endless chronic infirmities throughout his adolescence, Jack was already facing the possibility of an early demise. Several of Kennedy’s biographers believed this was one reason he became so obsessed, even manic, about giving himself as much sexual pleasure as possible during his adult life.
While he was recuperating in early 1936, Kennedy’s letters to his former Choate roommate Lem Billings bragged of how he was, even in precarious health, “catting about” with nurses, as well as the teenage girls he was dating. “B.D. came to see me today in the hospital and I laid her in the bathtub,” he told Billings in one letter. “The next time I take her out she is going to be presented with a great hunk of raw beef, if you know what I mean.”13 How much of this was just sheer bravado (or wishful thinking) was unknown. But when it came to women, Jack already had a role model in his father. As his sons grew into manhood, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. made clear his views on the real value of female companionship: “A day without a lay is a day wasted,” he told them. The Kennedy males were such a libidinous wolf pack on the prowl that the young wolf cubs, at father’s behest, would deliver female “companions” to the patriarch himself. “He even tried to make some of their [his sons’] conquests his own,” noted historian Ralph Martin.14 Along with their wealth and fine Irish good looks, the Kennedy boys would inherit their father’s penchant for philandering—in addition to the duplicity and chauvinism that went along with it. Womanizing would become a Kennedy trademark.
Despite Jack’s health concerns, he would leave the hospital on weekends to socialize. One event he wanted to attend was his former alma mater’s Winter Festivities Weekend, which Choate allowed to recent graduates.15 Typically, the students would invite girls for the weekend. The girls might stay in Choate’s Memorial House or even in their boyfriends’ rooms, while their dates would sleep on cots in the gym. Often, the boys left secretive, lascivious notes in their beds, hoping their girls would find and read them. The social weekend was filled with athletic events, sit-down formal dinners, and afternoon teas, culminating in a formal Saturday night dance.16
But how far could a tomcat like the young Jack Kennedy navigate the confines of a heavily chaperoned New England prep school dance? And what would a college boy, a freshman at Princeton no less, want with a parochial school function anyway? What drove Jack back to Choate that weekend remains a mystery. But he returned unaccompanied, a stag. Perhaps he thought the homecoming on familiar territory would be good for his self-confidence, which had lagged since being forced to take a medical leave from his studies at Princeton, still in the Class of 1939. Whatever the force that drew him backward (or perhaps forward) isn’t known, but something propelled him; for during the gala Winter Festivities Dance of 1936, he would encounter Mary Pinchot for the very first time, etching into his being an unforgettable moment.
The Saturday night Winter Festivities Dance could have served as backdrop for a Hollywood film portraying a bygone era: tuxedos and tails worn by the young gentlemen, couture dresses for the debutantes-to-be. It was a gala for young people who would grow up to be dubbed “the Greatest Generation” for their service during World War II. Yet in February 1936, life for this crowd was an endless party. A ful
l orchestra played the latest swing hits. Everyone danced.
Anyone could see that Mary Pinchot’s beauty was alluring, and it certainly wasn’t lost on young Bill Attwood. “God, she’s a smooth looking babe,” Attwood scribbled in his diary. “I just hope her success doesn’t go to her head.”17 As the dancing progressed, Attwood unfortunately discovered he had a rival for Mary’s attention. Jack Kennedy tapped Bill’s right shoulder and asked to cut in. It wasn’t the only cut-in he had to contend with that night, but it had to have been one of the more daunting—and it happened repeatedly. The young Kennedy was entranced by Mary’s beauty; he kept coming back. To compound matters, Attwood wasn’t feeling well that weekend. “Frequent trips upstairs to flood my throat with Listerine,”18 Attwood noted in his diary, meant leaving Mary unattended in a sea of potential suitors, and none more aggressive than Jack. Destiny, that evening, seemed to have made its first mark.
How did Mary first respond to meeting Jack? The diary that she kept during that period might offer some clues, but Mary’s descendents have opted not to disclose it, although admitting it still exists. In his 1967 memoir, however, Bill Attwood recalled the 1936 Choate dance and the rival he had in the future president of the United States. Attwood recounted on June 10, 1963, that he was talking with Mary and the president, who earlier that day had delivered his historic American University commencement address on world peace.
I ran into the President at Joe Alsop’s [house]. He didn’t know I was back and suggested I come in for a talk. I remember that we sat in the garden talking about the Profumo case and reminiscing about our school days. Mary Meyer, a Washington artist who’d been my date at a prom twenty-eight years [sic] before, was between us, and Kennedy happily recalled having cut in on her on the dance floor. It was hard, at times like that, to realize he was President of the United States. And it was impossible to imagine that, inside of a year, both of them would be murdered, he in Dallas and she in Georgetown.19
It appeared, however, that the younger Mary had not been immediately smitten with Jack, evidenced by the fact that her relationship with Attwood lasted well into their undergraduate years, his at Princeton and hers at Vassar. All through Attwood’s diary from late 1935 to 1939, he made entries about “Pinchy’s” (Mary’s) impact. “Pinch is really a damn nice babe!” he noted during his freshman year at Princeton. “I like to walk along the street with her for that reason. Makes me feel proud as hell.”20
Three years into her relationship with Attwood, Mary attended the infamous—and rambunctious—Princeton House Parties weekend in April 1939, but it wasn’t clear how deeply their romantic relationship progressed, or whether it was consummated sexually. The following month, Bill received “a very fine letter from Mary today, the kind I expected knowing how outstanding she is.” But the letter contained an update that bothered him. “She’ll be going to Williams [College] this weekend,” Bill wrote in his diary. “I hope it rains the whole time!”21
For a period, Attwood remained undeterred. His father had recently fallen ill, and his mother was afraid and upset. He noted in early June how “the Pinchots are good people and have been a great comfort to mother during this period of stress.” He seemed to find Mary more attainable as a result of her family’s kindness toward his mother. Later that month, Mary invited him to be her guest at Grey Towers. During his visit, he didn’t write about any intimate connection with Mary. Instead, he was “watching Mary and sensing her presence, imagining her to share my own life—swell thoughts couldn’t help intruding upon the present.”22
When activity coalesced around the tennis court, Bill noted that his girlfriend had a particularly aggressive game. “Refreshed, we undertook some tennis after lunch—and I surprised myself by downing Mary,” Attwood later recorded. “She was pretty peeved! Since she was playing far below her par, but I felt quite satisfied. I was at least returning a majority of her shots.” The man who had passed that game down to his daughter was also at the court that day. “We were all criticized by Mr. P who watched from the sidelines.” Attwood seemed to have come away from the weekend feeling embraced by the Pinchot clan, as he “felt so much a part of the family,” adding, “They don’t come any better than that family.”23
After the weekend, Bill, Mary, and her mother drove back to New York together. There was little conversation. In his diary, Bill recalled his experience on the trip back. “I contented myself with looking at her [Mary] as she knitted and listened to her occasional remarks—each one of which enchanted me, for I recognized them as reflecting thoughts which were identical with mine.” Attwood’s insecurity about his sweetheart, however, reared itself in his private musings that day. “Her profile—serene, wholesome, mischievous all at once—left me happy yet impatient. To be able somehow and some day to express my love to her without fear of rebuff—will that ever be possible? Or shall I, like Eliot’s Prufrock, continue to shuffle along, bewildered and dumb for fear of risking what little of her affection I possess?”24 Even in the throes of love, Bill Attwood eventually understood that he and Mary were destined for separate futures. He finally allowed himself to let go romantically, recognizing that it was ever meant to be.
In 1938, Mary’s older half-sister Rosamund committed suicide. Amos Pinchot was so undone by his daughter’s death that he lapsed into a temporary bout of hysterical blindness. It would be the start of a downward spiral into depression from which he would never recover. Rosamund had been the firstborn in his marriage to Gertrude Minturn. Like Mary, she was an exquisite classic beauty. Sixteen years older than Mary, Rosamund was a model of glamour and sophistication, endowed with an uncommon grace. At four years of age, she had learned to ride horseback. By the age of eight, she was entering equestrian competitions at New York’s Madison Square Garden. At thirteen, “she rode five jumpers in one class.”25 In her teens at Grey Towers, Rosamund was given to riding naked on horseback by moonlight. Mary had witnessed her, Godiva-like, late one night. She was in awe of her beautiful and adventurous older sister.
Rosamund was a prolific diary keeper, and by the time of her death she had filled some fifteen hundred pages with private thoughts and recollections that were eventually edited and published by Bibi Gaston, her granddaughter, in 2008. The book, The Loveliest Woman in America, took its title from a compliment lavished on the twenty-three-year-old Rosamund in 1927 by British actress and poet Iris Tree. Rosamund had also been an actress, but her fledgling acting career was largely a flop after only a few films, and the Pinchot girls didn’t take well to failure. No doubt compounding her pain had been a failed marriage, followed by a stormy affair with Broadway theater producer and Hollywood director Jed Harris. When she took her life in January 1938, she was thirty-four years old and had two young sons. The event shattered Amos, and left a scarring impression on Mary and the entire family.
Unlike many in New York’s aristocracy who were untouched by the economic hardships of the Depression of the 1930s, Amos Pinchot was not immune to the downturn. In fact, he feared for the future of his family, often secretly dulling his anxiety with copious amounts of alcohol. The effects of his drinking became known to Mary one evening when she was about to graduate from Brearley. She had returned to the Pinchot apartment with her date. Amos, drunk, became combative and criticized his daughter’s social life. Mary retorted in her own defense, and Amos slapped her across the face. Her companion that evening must have been shocked and embarrassed by the spectacle, yet already the unflappable Mary was not one to back down. It was the beginning of a break with her father.26
Perhaps inspired by Rosamund’s example, Mary became a committed diarist. Starting when she was seventeen—soon after her sister died—she would use the act of writing as a tool for self-realization and reflection, especially in times of emotional crisis, and rely on it throughout her life. As noted previously, most of her earlier diary is still in existence, but its contents are unknown outside the family. However, in 1940, on the second anniversary of her sister’s suicide, the New
York Times published Mary’s poem “Requiem,” a remarkable disclosure of verse that divulged a stirring dimension of Mary’s own persona. According to Bibi Gaston, “Requiem” had first been written in Mary’s diary.
Requiem
I saw her lying there so calm and still,
With one camellia placed beside her head.
She looked the same, and yet, her soul and will
Being gone she did not seem dead.
I thought if one so loved and beautiful
Should wish to leave, perhaps there was a voice
That called her back—and she was dutiful.
Somewhere the gods rejoice.
In some far place, where all the lovely things
Of earth are born, the gods no longer weep.