by Alice Arlen
After they came down from the Annam Mountains, the Khmer peeled off and were replaced by a cortege of Moi tribesmen, even more primitive than the Khmer, who now led the little expedition on the most challenging part of the trip. “More dugouts, more river,” wrote Alicia. “We first went up the Kongquo River, then the Kongannam, to a district known to the French as Bunnethout, where more Moi appeared and took us over the Cardamom Mountains, supposed home of many tigers….We saw plenty of tiger sign, more than enough to know they were in the area, and sighted extraordinary birds, a kind of Asian lynx, small black bear, but never an actual visible or huntable tiger.” On the next-to-last day, before having to turn back, Lieutenant Thierry spotted a sladang, the enormous Asian water buffalo, and by many accounts the most dangerous of all Asian forest animals. Thierry took a shot at the sladang, but only wounded it, “panicking the Moi,” as Alicia wrote, “who had reason to fear the violence of a wounded sladang.” The injured animal escaped into the forest, but that afternoon Alicia spotted a still-larger one and brought it down with a single bullet from her Mauser rifle, on loan from the French army. “The animal was coal-black with a white face and white feet, and its horns measured four feet from tip to tip,” Alicia wrote. The admiring Moi held a feast over the carcass and staged a drum ceremony, marking a cross on Alicia’s forehead with blood. As the expedition returned down the several rivers toward Saigon, the news of her exploit traveled ahead of her, so that the young female sladang hunter found herself “unexpectedly greeted by drums and cheers from villages along the way.”
After the hunt, with Moi tribespeople and sladang horns, 1931.
—
SOON ON HER WAY HOME, without Libby but with the horns of the sladang, suitably crated, traveling in the ship’s hold, Alicia made an impromptu detour, stopping in Singapore for a week’s layover. There was no acknowledged reason for the stop; perhaps the charms of colonial Singapore were enough. But there was some cause to believe as attested to by Libby Chase that roughly one month earlier, when the Carnarvon had made harbor at Jakarta, on the Dutch-controlled island of Java, Alicia had met and been charmed by a fellow visitor, handsome, aristocratic young Dutchman Hans Hooft (whose family owned Amstel breweries), and had hopes for a reunion in Singapore. Apparently there was no reunion, at least not this time; although if she were even thinking of one it would show a young woman whose mind was not entirely made up about her future. Instead of Hooft, however, she found two other newcomers to her life: one not romantic, at least not from her point of view; the other definitely intriguing from many angles. More friend than suitor was Maj. Eugene Tempersley, one of the numerous British army officers who had dispersed to the colonies after the Great War and was now presumably being well paid in the role of military adviser to an Indian maharaja. Tempersley had already read of Alicia’s hunting adventures in the Singapore Times, and showed up at her hotel, offering his help in arranging a proper tiger hunt in Bengal. He also introduced her to the attractive, Oxford-educated, twenty-eight-year-old son of the sultan of Johor, Abu Bakar, known as ‘Bu, apparently a direct descendant of the first Muslim caliph, currently managing his father’s rubber plantations across the causeway from Singapore. There’s no doubt that Alicia was much taken with the beguiling and articulate ‘Bu, and he with her; she left Singapore with many valuable mementos from him, including a platinum cigarette case and a portrait photo showing the heir to the sultanate in full sultanlike regalia; also with plans to write and promises to meet. Then, back aboard another ship, the Orient Princess, Alicia made her slow way westward across the Pacific, thinking what thoughts we do not know, though whatever they were, it’s doubtful they could have prepared her for the news that greeted her on her arrival at San Francisco. It seemed that a day or so before she landed, newspapers had first carried a report that Mr. Joseph W. Brooks had crashed in Ohio in a plane, actually belonging to Miss Alicia Patterson, though with no injuries to himself; this was followed soon after by a more substantial story, with Mr. Joseph M. Patterson, the editor of New York’s Daily News, announcing the engagement of his daughter, Miss Alicia Patterson, to Mr. Joseph W. Brooks.
HRH Ibrahim Abu Bakar, or ‘Bu, son of the sultan of Johor, AP’s new friend in Singapore, with his Airedales.
· 24 ·
“FURIOUS NOT CONSULTED” Alicia cabled her father, also Brooks; a three-word message, which all things considered surely represented a bare minimum of her thoughts and feelings on the matter. She took the next train back to New York, where she learned that her father was away in Canada, inspecting newsprint timberlands with Uncle Bert. But waiting for her in the apartment was a lengthy, at least for him, overwrought letter from Joe Brooks: “Dearest Alicia, Things have been happening so fast lately….I know how proud you were of your little ship, and you trusted me with it, and then to lose it seems unbelievable….I took off Tuesday morning, fair skies but bucking a terrific headwind, 50 mph. Landed in Cleveland, then again South Bend. Next morning, on takeoff the motor cut out about 75 ft, straight ahead were houses, trees, etc. On my right was a small field which I tried for but didn’t make. Plane crashed through top of a tree, dove into the ground, landing on its back, caught fire on impact tho I managed to get away….” Brooks then concluded: “I can’t tell you how grand your father was about it all. Of course, when reporting it I had to say it was yr plane I was flying, which made him think it was right to announce our engagement. Most of my clothes were burned in the crash, but I’m arranging everything so don’t worry….Love, yr Boojums.”
Almost immediately a second letter arrived from Brooks, written after receiving her angry cable: “Dearest Boojums, I am so shocked by your cable. You are my entire life, and my only interest in living is because of my deep love for you….I am prepared to go on the block under any circumstances, but when you are mad at me I am the most unhappy person in the world….I know the way the accident happened was a tough break for both of us, but don’t forget the person who loves you most, next to me, is your dad who’s trying to protect your reputation, announcing what most people assumed anyway. I am counting the days till I can take my beloved in my arms.” And signed, inevitably, “Love, Boojums.”
The screwiness of the situation was surely inconceivable. And yet how, in what ways, inconceivable? Scarcely a couple of years earlier, it was her fierce, distant little mother who had roped her into a marriage with Jim Simpson, with her father (who was supposed to be her special friend) nodding his approval from the sidelines. This time around it was her father holding the lasso, her father with his Catholic mistress, and baby Jimmy, protecting her reputation by cornering her into marrying his old buddy Brooks. She wrote her mother in Chicago, hopeful that her mother’s growing fury, at her still-married husband’s domestication with his alternate or parallel family, would trump her usual impulses for correctness at any cost. But she was wrong. Her mother figuratively gave a little sigh by mail, and allowed that, given the obvious closeness of her daughter’s friendship with Mr. Brooks, as indicated by her letting him use her property, marriage was certainly the outcome to be wished for. Most disappointingly, sister Josephine, whom Alicia was lately accustomed to seeing as an ally, announced herself thrilled by the engagement, wished it was herself and Joe, and so on. And then of course Boojums himself, all six feet four of him, in his insurance salesman’s suit, with his Williams College tie, varyingly endearing, confident, abashed, and so apologetic for the crash, as if that was the problem between them (though come to think of it, she had really loved that plane), was pretty much instantly on her doorstep, at her arm so to speak, her escort, her more-or-less fiancé. And besides, in the flesh he was undeniably such a stolid presence, such a good guy, loving her so much, and of course everybody else loving him.
Her father came back from buying up timberland in Quebec, returning to the Daily News though not to the apartment; he was apparently now living up in Ossining, commuting in and out every day. She met him at a restaurant for lunch, determined to straighten out the engageme
nt misunderstanding, debacle, whatever it was. But when she showed up, Joe Brooks was there too, both men so happy together, talking naturally about fishing, fishing in the great rivers of Quebec. Not a word about her amazing trip, flying around the sheep country of Australia, shooting a mighty sladang. Poppa (as she remembered it later) took her hand in his, as if he was about to say something personal, special, but what came out was about Canadian timberlands, his new favorite subject. Afterward Joe told her, in his big-guy-to-little-lady manner, that they should really come to a decision about a date. She said it was too soon. As it happened her mother was due to make one of her transatlantic trips, to inspect lacework and antiques on the Rive Droite in Paris, and Alicia tagged along. She also arranged for her Dutch friend from Java, Hans Hooft, to be at a nearby hotel. “We make a perfect match, mentally and physically,” Hooft wrote her on a card when he sent her flowers. They went out shopping together, and, both being dog lovers, he bought her three Irish setter puppies, which she took back with her on the boat, leaving him with the understanding, if not her promise, that she wouldn’t let herself be railroaded a second time into marriage. But with the Dutchman back in Holland, and she once more in New York, an aviatrix to be sure, a sportswoman, a hunter of big game in the forests of Southeast Asia, and oh, yes, a journalist too; but all the same only twenty-five years old, not very old, on her own, with an allowance from Poppa, and the use of his strange apartment, and with big, friendly, protective, faithful Boojums hovering, pressing, waiting….One afternoon she took what she knew to be the coward’s way out and wrote Brooks a letter, saying in effect that she was too confused, not yet ready to take the final step. Brooks wrote her back a long, rambling, miserable, obviously heartfelt scrawl in his boyish hand, saying that he was going to kill himself.
Alicia surrendered. Soon after, she wrote Hans Hooft, telling him of her decision to marry Brooks, asking him to wait one year for her to get free again, which was a variant of the same one-year plan she had tried when she married Simpson. But Hooft would have no part of one-year plans. “I can’t believe your father would interfere with your life a second time, and a second time you would allow it,” he wrote her angrily. “Have you thought what will happen in a year when you tell him you want a divorce? What if he threatens suicide again? What if you expect a child? What if he refuses you a divorce? And is it fair to Mr. Brooks that you marry him without his knowing all this…?” But Alicia didn’t answer Hooft for many months, and when she did she hadn’t much to say, not being one for looking backward or second-guessing. Besides, by then she was Mrs. Joseph W. Brooks.
· 25 ·
ON SEPTEMBER 12, 1931, Alicia Patterson and Joe Brooks were married in the Broadway Tabernacle, at Ninety-Third Street and Broadway, one of the few New York churches in which divorced persons were allowed to remarry. With a seating capacity of 2,500, it was a large edifice for a small, private ceremony. On Alicia’s side of the aisle were her father and her sisters, Elinor and Josephine, Aunt Florence representing her mother, and a scattering of friends. On Joe’s side there were also friends, though no family. After the wedding the couple flew off (literally, with Brooks at the controls of a two-engine Bellanca on loan from the manufacturer) for a week’s honeymoon on Sea Island, Georgia, where Alicia let her new husband teach her the finer points of shooting quail; at the end of the week they flew west to Chicago for a little teatime reception in Alice Patterson’s apartment, which didn’t go too badly, all things considered. On the way back, however, poor Joe Brooks had another of his aerial misadventures, which once again got into the papers. “Honeymooners Escape Death In Plane Crash,” the New York American announced on its front page. “Mr. and Mrs. Joseph W. Brooks narrowly escaped death today in negotiating the last leg from Chicago to New York of an extended wedding trip by air….Mrs. Brooks suffered a wrenched knee. Her husband was at the controls when the motor stalled, and he was forced to land in a hayfield where the plane struck the ground.” In fairness, despite appearances to the contrary, Brooks was an accomplished aviator; careful, experienced, not at all accident prone like his father-in-law. Flying in those days was inherently hazardous, with weather predictions being mostly guesswork and equipment giving out without warning. All the same, it was not a propitious way to start a marriage.
A flying honeymoon to Georgia, with husband Joe Brooks and hunting dogs.
In hindsight, had any of the principals known what Dr. Meeker at Doctors Hospital seems to have known, or guessed, two years earlier—when he noted on Alicia’s chart that, because of her ectopic pregnancy with Simpson she was unlikely to have children—who can tell how the story would have played out, or whether there would have been that particular story in the first place? Alicia and Joe Brooks were in so many ways such an unlikely couple, neither one of them a fully developed person, this regardless of his age and seemingly greater worldliness, her appearance of youthful savvy and confidence. Doubtless her father and mother, each in their own way, somehow assumed there would be children, family stuff, so as to give structure to the marriage, settle her down (as they were always trying to settle her down), and in the process justifying their own stage-managing of their daughter’s life. It also probably didn’t help that both Alicia and Brooks required such extensive financial propping up by Patterson, who paid the rent on a new apartment, between Madison and Park on Eighty-Fourth Street, and increasingly subsidized Brooks’s faltering insurance business with referrals from the Daily News.
From the start there was an oddness to the Brooks’s marriage, a surface brightness with evidence of trouble underneath that calls to mind short stories of the period, early John O’Hara, for example, with their wry and rueful scenes of 1920s people adrift in the increasingly unforgiving atmosphere of the 1930s. Each weekday morning, wearing his Brooks Brothers suit, a leather briefcase at the end of a long arm, Joe Brooks would take the bus down to Forty-Second Street, then walk to his one-room office down the street from the new Daily News building, where he’d shuffle papers for a few hours, try to hold out into the afternoon should any calls come in from up the street, but then usually head up to the Racquet Club at Fifty-Third Street for a game of squash (another sport at which he excelled), a late lunch at the “big table,” convivial, boozy, for Joe Brooks was always a favorite, followed by a few hours of backgammon in the game room, playing for sizable stakes with the rich men who loved Joe Brooks too, and who he always hoped would throw a little business his way. For her part Alicia did her best, at least at first, to play the dutiful wife, although dutifulness was never her strong suit and her experience of wifeliness was limited. Her father thought she should get a job, and she knew he was right; he was always right except when he wasn’t. But she didn’t want to be writing advertising copy for department stores at the Lasker Advertising Agency, which was the job he found for her.
Sisters Josephine and Alicia, New York, 1930.
What Alicia probably wanted then as much as anything—what in her primal, unexamined way must have been the underlying goal in marrying Joe Brooks—Joe Patterson’s great and good friend, a man closer to her father’s age than to her own (to say nothing of what the two men shared in friends and life experiences), was not only her father’s approval, but that by doing so she might finally secure a safe harbor close to her charismatic, elusive parent. Joe Patterson, however, was rarely a safe man to be around, even when he tried to be one, which wasn’t often. Right then, as the early months of 1932 unfolded, Patterson was in the throes of a substantial struggle, trying to get his fellow Grotonian Franklin D. Roosevelt (an underclassman he hadn’t much liked at the time) elected to the Presidency. Financially he was one of the biggest backers of Governor Roosevelt’s national campaign. Editorially he had been early and enthusiastic in committing the Daily News in support of Roosevelt’s call for “a New Deal,” a stance that put him in conflict with most other newspaper publishers, and more particularly with his archconservative cousin Robert McCormick, publisher of the Daily News’s parent, the Chicago
Tribune. It wasn’t as if he had nothing to do with Alicia and her husband; as all three of them knew though rarely spoke about, he paid most of their bills; at least somebody in his office paid them, wrote the checks. But Patterson apparently didn’t see himself in a position, or perhaps in a mood, to do much fathering just then, at least not of a twenty-six-year-old married daughter. Besides, he was also now the father of a small boy, whose unmarried Catholic mother kept his feet pretty close to the fire. One weekend in April, Brooks and Alicia had driven up for dinner with Joe Patterson, in his new modernist house above the Hudson, where Alicia had been more or less quietly furious at finding Mary King holding down the distaff end of the table, with her father interested only in talking about son Jimmy’s baseball exploits.
· 26 ·
DO WE REMEMBER Maj. Eugene Tempersley, whom Alicia bumped into (though it was more likely that the eager major did the bumping) on her layover in Singapore two years before? The two of them maintained a correspondence in the interim, and now a letter arrived from the major, on the thick vellum stationery of the maharaja of Jodhpur, tendering an invitation for “some prime sport”: a round of pigsticking followed by a tiger hunt. An inopportune summons? Or a timely one? It might depend on the point of view. From Alicia’s perspective, perhaps sad to say, given her all too recent promise to love, honor, and obey Joe Brooks, it seems to have been a proverbially heaven-sent excuse for getting out of town, for shape-shifting back into a role that had lately been so congenial, sportswoman as they called it in the newspapers. As for the problem of travel expenses, Alicia appears to have figured out that, since her father didn’t have the time of day, or focus, for paying close attention to her, he wouldn’t be any different when it came to requests for money, of which he then had plenty; although just to be sure, she made a case that sister Josephine, now nineteen and beginning to make trouble, would definitely benefit from journeying abroad.