by Peter Janney
She has returned to them. And what she brings
We lose, but always keep. 27
So began Mary’s published authorship, in the New York Times no less, at the age of nineteen, during her sophomore year at Vassar. Around the same time, Amos published his own poignant tribute, “To Rosamund,” in the Herald Tribune.28
While Mary’s initial path led to journalism, she had arrived at Vassar considering a career in medicine. She was drawn to the idea of helping people, but she ultimately preferred the arts and the literary life. Unlike many of her classmates, she frequently chose solitude over the clamor of endless parties, gossip, and Ivy League college weekends. While her beauty ensured she never lacked for attention, she wasn’t attention seeking. Mary had little desire to flaunt her good looks, or her good fortune. Ego gratification wasn’t her objective; her affirmation seemed to come from within. “Mary wasn’t very gregarious,” her Vassar classmate Scottie Fitzgerald Smith told authors Ron Rosenbaum and Phillip Nobile in 1976. “She didn’t mingle about. She was an independent soul. I always thought of her as a fawn running through the forest.”29
Mary’s independence was already a well-established hallmark of her character by the time she entered college. At one point during her undergraduate years, Vassar’s administration abruptly forbade the student body to patronize the drugstore adjacent to campus. No explanation was offered. Mary, in flagrant violation of the new edict, recruited a reluctant classmate and went to the pharmacy—to learn its side of the story. According to the classmate, it appeared that someone at the store—a proprietor or an employee—might have made an unwanted advance toward a Vassar student. Mary’s former classmate had lost the specific details, but her memory of the event remained clear many years later. “Mary was a real rebel,” she recalled. “I was just a fake rebel.” Then she added, “Mary was exceptionally independent, but not a loner. She didn’t need to ‘run with the crowd,’ like the rest of us.”30
Social life at Vassar was as active as Mary wanted it to be. In addition to maintaining a relationship with Bill Attwood at Princeton, she traveled to Yale and Williams for weekend visits with other male friends—none of them flames. It appears that Mary met her future husband, Cord Meyer, during one of her visits to Yale, even though they didn’t date at the time. Cord himself wrote that he only knew Mary “slightly before the war”; in fact, he was a year behind her in college (Yale ‘43), but graduated in December 1942 due to an accelerated wartime academic schedule.31 The two did, according to one account, have several dates before Cord went to war.32 During that period, Mary also crossed paths again with Jack Kennedy, but no relationship ensued. It was a time when the patrician class stuck together. “Everybody knew everybody then,” recalled Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, and “everybody” was anybody with a similar social pedigree.33
That did, in fact, include Jack Kennedy, who according to one account, dated several members of Mary’s class at Vassar, though not Mary. However charming, Jack was decidedly a wealthy playboy and always on the make. Mary would have been bored with this kind of man. She thirsted for something deeper, a man with purpose, a partnership of allies. In one of his impromptu campus visits to Vassar, Jack in fact introduced himself to a gullible classmate of Mary’s. The two went on a date, during which Jack, eager to carve another notch, concocted a story that he had recently been stricken with leukemia and had only weeks to live. His gullible date felt so sorry for him, she took pity, and slept with him that night, unaware of the duplicity young Kennedy had employed in taking her for a ride.34 The Kennedy calling card was already in full swing.
One of the most revealing glimpses into Mary’s psyche at Vassar was a short story she authored in the spring of 1941 for the Vassar Review and Little Magazine. Published six times during the college year, the magazine enjoyed an independent circulation beyond the college community. The two-column, three-page short story, “Futility,” depicted a young woman named Ruth Selwyn, attending her friend Beatrice Barclay’s cocktail party in New York. Bored by idle chitchat, Ruth stands away from the crowd, casting a gaze around Beatrice’s recently redecorated living room. She makes a mental note of how “cold and angular” everything is: “… the furniture all chromium and corners, the women chicly cadaverous, the conversation brittle and smart and insignificant.” Ruth can’t wait to leave the party. She is on her way to an operation that will change her life forever. She has pleaded with Dr. Morrison to perform the procedure for weeks. The surgery will connect Ruth’s optical nerves to the hearing part of her brain and the auditory nerves to her visual cortex, “so that everything the patient hears she sees, and vice versa.” Commenting to his nurse, Dr. Morrison irritatingly says, “She wants something new. You know the type: bored with life, looking for excitement at any price—as though life weren’t complicated enough as it is.”
The day after the operation, Ruth is amazed. As she passes the florist’s window, she notices that the orchids have been replaced by a variety of other flowers, and that the display includes two framed paintings, one of which features sunflowers by Van Gogh. At the sight of it, Ruth hears Stravinsky’s “Sacre du Printemps.” The sight of baby’s breath elicits the sound of a calm sea washing up on a beach at night. Roses evoke a slow waltz. And “when her eyes moved along past them to a clear white orchid, the waltz ended in the sharp tinkle of thin glass breaking.”
One dimension of Mary’s story describes what is commonly known as synesthesia. It is, to some degree, a medical condition whereby in certain people and animals, a stimulus in one sense modality involuntarily elicits a literal sensation/experience in another sense modality. For example, the taste of a lime would visually evoke the color blue. The elicited synesthetic experience doesn’t replace the normal experience; it just enhances it. Many artists, for instance, strive to train themselves to become more synesthetic: seeing the colors of sound; hearing some visual perception they wish to communicate; or describing the “personality” of a bedroom’s doorframe.
One irony of “Futility” was that it foreshadowed a significant event in Mary’s later life. The fictional character Ruth Selwyn was having a classic hallucinogenic experience after her operation. The ultimate experience of synesthesia is easily induced under the influence of most hallucinogenic substances, including the psychedelic LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide). As an emerging artist in the late 1950s, Mary would embark on her own exploration of psychedelics, including LSD and psilocybin. This wasn’t superficial thrill seeking on her part; it was more the result of being in the vanguard of a group of people, many of whom were already established artists in quest of greater self-expression. Equally fascinating in “Futility” was Mary’s commentary on orchids: “They look as though they had been grown in damp underground caves by demons. They’re evil sickly flowers with no life of their own, living on borrowed strength.” How ironic that someone would later appear in her life who was obsessed and surrounded by orchids, someone who had presented himself as a friend, before his betrayal.
Yet at its core, “Futility” was an allegory for an issue that Mary would encounter most of her life: the divide between narrowly prescribed cultural roles for women, and her own aspirations. The “chicly cadaverous” women, who had succumbed to a life of wanting for nothing, horrified her; yet all around Mary and her contemporaries, social influence dictated the grooming for such a life. In “Futility,” Mary took aim at what she saw as the vapid existence dominated by the superficial pursuit of elegant, novel redecorating, filled with “conversation brittle and smart and insignificant.” In spite of her social and economic mobility—the plush confines of Grey Towers, a first-class education, the cultural cornucopia of New York City—without a deeper purpose, without some higher calling and sense of inspiration and passion, Mary still risked slipping into the banal, the empty, the insignificant and self-absorbed, making life itself hollow.
By 1940 all of Europe would be struggling against the warlord march of Germany and Adolf Hitler. But that spring, Mary’s life
at Vassar continued untouched. Having been selected as one of the twenty-four most beautiful women in the sophomore class to carry the chain of daisies and laurel at commencement, Mary Pinchot had worn the wreath known as the Vassar Daisy Chain, Vassar’s most famous tradition. In September, Germany began the devastating bombing of London—seventy-six consecutive nights of air strikes known as the London Blitz. Life in America was changing. While Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey pumped out music with time to dance, young men, many of Mary’s contemporaries, were disappearing late at night to enlist. It was just a matter of time. America was going to war.
By the summer of 1942, World War II had enveloped the entire country.
The sophomoric college days of endless parties and gaiety had abruptly come to a halt. With the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, an era—almost overnight—had ended. Academic calendars were curtailed; graduation ceremonies took place in December instead of June, if they took place at all. Everywhere, the preparations and demands of a world at war were becoming all consuming.
But not even war could stop love. Mary had returned to New York after her graduation from Vassar. She found a job as a feature writer for United Press International (UPI), established her own column, and enjoyed rapid success.35 On her own and away from her parents, Mary’s fierce independence and selfconfidence bloomed. Even in wartime, New York was an exciting place for a young woman just starting out on her own. And it was about to become even more so.
Robert (“Bob”) L. Schwartz was a young Naval officer and a journalist for Yank magazine. Hailing from a Midwestern Jewish background in Salem, Ohio, the handsome Schwartz was tall, lean, and intellectually articulate by any standard. One Friday night, sometime during the summer of 1942, Bob was at one of his favorite after-work watering holes, Tim Costello’s Bar in New York. That night, he noticed a woman so alluring, he felt impelled to meet her. The problem was that every other man in the bar felt the same way. Tim Costello, the bar owner, was particularly protective of Mary and operated as a kind of “guardian at the gate,” particularly if the men became obnoxious.36
Schwartz made a move on Mary that evening and Mary let Tim know it was okay. The chemistry between Bob and Mary was instantaneous and mutual. As they began talking, fireworks exploded for both of them. From the bar, they went out for dinner and stayed up into the early hours of the morning, talking about almost everything. From the start, Schwartz recalled, Mary defined herself in terms of her pacifism and hatred of all wars, including the one before them in 1942. Wars and violence were anathema to her, and she wanted Bob to know that at the outset. “Mary wanted to do right by the world and there was no place for war,” said Schwartz. “She had impeccable standards, which for me made her demanding in the sense that I had to choose to meet her at those standards, because she wasn’t interested in trivia, at any level or any sort. She was far more special than I was.” Daunted, Bob still attempted to rise to Mary’s challenge. Never had he laid eyes on such an astoundingly beautiful, complex woman.
Schwartz recalled with great fondness how he walked Mary home that night, how she talked about the nature of the humorous in life. Her sophistication impressed and excited him, and he wanted to share his own sense of humor with her. As they walked past a bookstore window, Bob pointed out a book by an author that he considered very funny. A look came over Mary’s face, Schwartz remembered, and he read from it her aversion to his taste. He might have been projecting, but he began to feel that Mary was thinking she had made a colossal mistake by choosing to spend the evening with him.
After they said good-bye that Friday evening, Bob chastised himself for pointing out the book to such an extraordinary woman. “Almost in tears,” he recalled, he returned, despondent, to his residence at the Sheldon Hotel, convinced that he would never see Mary again. “I spent the entire weekend wondering if I would ever hear from her again, wondering if she would even answer, even if I called her on the phone,” said Schwartz, as though it were yesterday, some sixty-five years later. “Mary was so special, so very special. She was incredibly multidimensional. Of course she was beautiful beyond measure, but she also had a beautiful mind with a standard of interest that defied normal boundaries.”37
That Sunday at his hotel, he received a hand-delivered package. He opened it, only to find the very book he had pointed out to Mary. Inside, the inscription read: “Enjoy !” It was signed: “Mary.” Bob believed it to be a sign. Mary was telling him: “Don’t be put off by my bullshit. I want this relationship as much as you do.” He clasped the book to his heart, and broke down and cried.
Bob Schwartz and Mary Pinchot became nearly inseparable. Mary moved in with him at his residence at the Shelton Hotel. “It was pretty magical,” reminisced Schwartz. “As romances go, it was almost flawless. There was never a day less pleasant than the day before. We had a commitment to each other from the very beginning.” Mary’s intensity was both contagious and alluring. By nature, she required him to show up, and engage. Their connection deepened Schwartz’s sensitivity and prompted them both to explore life’s biggest questions. “She was very committed to her own truths, and they were of a very high order that involved a level of morality beyond normal comprehension,” Schwartz remembered. He and Mary would spend almost three years together.
In addition to revealing more about her pacifism, Mary allowed her spiritual sensibility and the seriousness with which she approached it to be known. “Why are we really here?” Mary once asked Bob. Unable to seize the enormity of what she was asking, he attempted a joke and said, “I don’t know, I’m from Ohio.” Mary didn’t like that. She demanded that he connect on a deeper level, and in time, he learned to meet her there.38
The two shared a passion for sailing. During the war, it was easy to charter big sailboats—yawls and ketches—for sailing on Long Island Sound. Often taking weeklong cruises, both alone and with friends, sometimes exploring the Connecticut River, they found an idyllic peace during wartime on those the trips. When they weren’t sailing, they would spend time at Grey Towers, what Mary called “the country place” and what Bob called “a royal palace.” The pair swam naked in the estate’s waterfalls amid the property’s verdant idyllic acres.
“When I saw that place,” said the smiling Schwartz, “one had to be impressed. It was like meeting Mary. If you’re true royalty, you don’t have to flaunt it, and she never did. I mean, what else would Mary have, if not something like Grey Towers? She exuded royalty but never had to flaunt it.” Some Fridays, the two would ride the Wabash Railroad from Newark to Pennsylvania and Grey Towers. Excited to be together for the weekend, always enjoying a fast repartee, they played with childlike spontaneity. On one trip, they started a raucous pillow fight, chasing each other up and down the aisles. Laughing, feathers flying everywhere, they managed to draw other passengers into the fray.
But it wasn’t all pillow fights and laughter. Even as a young woman, Mary would challenge the status quo of their relationship if she perceived some inequality. Schwartz remembered one weekend at “the country place” when Mary challenged Bob on what he recalled as “a certain failure of citizenship” that bothered her. Alone one evening at Grey Towers, Mary brought up the fact that she was always left in the kitchen to do the dishes after they had dinner, while Bob would habitually retire to the living room to read the newspaper. It wasn’t right, Mary protested. At first, the issue completely eluded Schwartz, oblivious to any problem at all. After all, this was part of the culture of how men lived. “In less than a minute of reflection, I understood,” said Schwartz recalling the incident.
“Jesus, I never really thought about it,” Bob remembered saying to her at the time. “You’re absolutely right. It’s terrible!”
“It isn’t terrible,” he remembered Mary had quipped. “But it’s time you got past it.”
“I’ll get past it!” Schwartz quickly responded. The subject never came up again, because it didn’t need to.
Mary’s mother, Ruth, seemed to approve of Bob,
though he often wondered whether Ruth felt that he was worthy of her daughter. Nonetheless, his relationship with Ruth, as Bob described it, was “arms-length but with affection.” In fact, it seems that Bob might have underestimated the esteem in which Ruth held him. Mrs. Pinchot confided to Bob that her daughter’s friendship with a young woman named Liz Wheeler worried her. Liz was the daughter of John (“Jack”) Wheeler, the head of the North American Newspaper Alliance and a major force in the syndicate of independent journalism in New York City. At the time, Jack Wheeler’s stable of writers was impressive; it included Ernest Hemingway, Sheilah Graham, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Liz, along with several other women boarders, had lived for a time with the Pinchots on Park Avenue. She and Mary shared an exceptionally close, intense friendship. Too close, it seemed, and too intense, for Ruth’s taste. She worried that her daughter was having a lesbian relationship. When she confided her concern to Bob, he was stunned. The thought had never occurred to him. He assured Ruth it wasn’t possible; they were just very close friends. “There wasn’t any room for anybody else,” Schwartz remembered telling Ruth Pinchot. He let it be known that he and Mary had a “vigorous” and “fulfilling” attraction to one another. Ruth seemed reassured and the subject never came up again.39
What this anecdote may have demonstrated was that Mary was endowed with an unusual capacity for intimacy. As her life progressed, people often flocked toward her, desiring the possibility of connection she offered. As Bob Schwartz recalled, “Mary never did anything that didn’t have a sense of totality about it. If she made a commitment, she was right in your face with it. Her major dimension was the aesthetics about everything. You’d look at her and you’d see: this is a special woman.” The quality only deepened as Mary got older. Her friend Jim Truitt, who knew her well through the 1950s right up until her death, would recall, “Many of Mary’s women friends, including Cicely Angleton, regarded her as their best friend, as she was to so many.”40