I see no room for argument against this debt, except possibly that it is outlawed, and I do not intend to swallow that. Fleischmann and his group have made millions and Jane Grant has made not one cent. All she has ever got from The New Yorker she got from me personally, and I could ill afford it because I, too, had been robbed.…
It certainly is to Jane’s interest to make such an arrangement. It certainly is to my interest to do so, and rid my mind and nervous system of my terrifying obligation. And it would seem to me that it is just a dandy opportunity for the corporation to clear its conscience by recognition of this claim, however tardily, and thereby contribute to Jane’s self-respect and to my peace of mind.
As Jane was angling for a consultant’s position anyway, she supported Ross’s proposal, and negotiations resumed. More suggestions were floated and refined. At last, in November 1945, Ross agreed to a new contract that raised his pay to fifty thousand dollars, retained his generous expense account, offered him more stock options, and gave him the right to retire at any time, with three months’ notice, as “editor emeritus,” at half pay. Soon thereafter the other dominoes dropped. By the end of the year, Jane Grant had a contract as a permanent consultant to Fleischmann, worth $7,500 a year and renewable by her for life. At the same time, in an apparent quid pro quo, the anti-Fleischmann bloc from the 1942 civil war rescinded its demand that the publisher vote his shares with the board, a major step toward his regaining control of the company. Lastly, in February 1946, Jane legally absolved Ross of any further financial obligation to her.
Ross’s new contract had one other important provision, which required him to “use his best efforts” to train a successor. Certainly he had no philosophical objection to this idea; from The New Yorker’s infancy he had preached to subeditors that a manager wasn’t “worth his salt” until he had trained an assistant who could step in for him. He had tried to practice what he preached, and Shawn, Lobrano and Geraghty had clearly demonstrated they could keep the magazine humming when he was away on vacations or in the hospital. Indeed, already there were whispers in publishing circles that the mysterious Shawn was looking like an heir apparent. No one had a higher opinion of him than Ross, who considered him “the hardest-working and most self-sacrificing man I have ever done business with,” but he wasn’t ready to anoint him just yet. Apparently Ross still considered himself the indispensable man. As he was mulling over his new contract offer, Ross told his personal attorney and friend Julius Baer that “the whole editor emeritus proposition … is worthless, because it assumes the continuity of The New Yorker pretty much and The New Yorker will blow up like a firecracker if I leave. I am so sure of that that I wouldn’t gamble five cents against it, or an hour’s time.”
Even had Ross been ready to designate his heir then and there, Shawn nearly deprived him of the chance. Toward the end of 1946, having done his bit for the war effort, he too was entertaining plans to leave The New Yorker. According to his wife, Shawn wasn’t dissatisfied; he simply figured that if he was ever going to indulge his lifelong desire to be a writer, this was the time. Not exactly overjoyed at this decision, Ross nonetheless acceded to it, and for both their sakes he arranged for Shawn to do some freelance editing for the magazine. In the meantime Shawn’s assistant, Sanderson Vanderbilt, would take over Fact. Everyone knew Vanderbilt was a genial fellow and a capable editor, but some writers wondered whether he—or anyone else, for that matter—could step in and do all the things that his boss seemed to do so effortlessly. Yet no one better understood Shawn’s itch to write than the writers themselves, so they sent him off in style with an expensive silver tray from Tiffany’s that was engraved with the signatures of all his reporters. But in January 1947, not long after the formal presentation of the tray, Vanderbilt, in a bizarre accident, badly scalded himself in the bathtub, and it appeared he would be incapacitated indefinitely. A desperate Ross asked Shawn to stay on, and that was the end of his writing career.
Ross was privately relieved to have Shawn back in command, for there had never been so much work to be done. Manpower was no longer the bugaboo; now it was prosperity, which was swelling the size of the issues. Not long after the Shawn-Vanderbilt flurry, The New Yorker reported to its shareholders that 1946 had been another banner year, with profits of six hundred thousand dollars on revenues in excess of six million. At times the magazine had more advertising business than it could handle, since it still couldn’t get all the paper it needed. That April the magazine raised its cover price from fifteen to twenty cents, the first newsstand increase in its twenty-two-year history.
——
On weekends, when Ross often had custody of Patty, he would tell her mother, Frances, that he was taking her to a nice restaurant for lunch. Then father and daughter would head off instead to the Bowery or the Brooklyn docks, or perhaps even a Harlem honky-tonk—to some of those same “dark, mysterious, malodorous stretches” of New York that he had written about in alarm to Governor Hurley.
Ross’s purpose in showing his young daughter the city’s underside was to make sure that she acquired the kind of education she wouldn’t get at boarding school or in the Hamptons. His gravest admonition to her, often repeated, was that she not turn out “snobby,” Patricia Ross recalled. “He thought I ought to know what life was really all about.” If he was feeling particularly righteous they might even stroll along Wall Street, where he would hold forth about venal people in expensive suits who made lots of money without making any thing except perhaps trouble. (Wall Street was merely a convenient and nicely symbolic backdrop; Ross’s disdain for this business “type” transcended stockbrokers to include lawyers, accountants, and a certain magazine publisher whose name began with F.)
Patricia Ross remembers those excursions as exhilarating adventures. She had no apprehension about the dirty-ankle venues because her father seemed to know virtually everyone they came across. Even allowing for the tricks of memory, this probably wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Like notable New Yorkers from Peter Minuit on, Ross wasn’t so much a product of the city as he was the outsider trying to take its measure, awestruck and suspicious simultaneously. In three decades he had traversed it often and met countless of its characters. These were drunks, club owners, waiters, and cops on the beat, and Patty met them all. Her father saw to it that they were part of her upbringing the way the colorful characters of turn-of-the-century Aspen and Salt Lake had been part of his.
Ross was devoted to his daughter, and she to him. The most poignant photograph in her dog-eared scrapbook is a formal portrait of Ross, in silk dressing gown, cradling her as a newborn in his arms. He is beaming intently at her, and across the bottom of the photo he has scribbled, “Buckwheats to you, Patricia Ross.”
Though she lived with her mother and Tim Wilkinson, Patty saw her father often, especially in Stamford. Ross and Frances had an informal and civilized arrangement about Patty’s custody, and Ross took her whenever he could—usually on weekends and holidays, and for much of the summer. She prized her time in the country. The big, airy house and parklike setting made for countless hiding places and vivid reveries. For all her father’s money problems, he managed over the years to add adjacent parcels to his property, much of it purchased from his neighbor Mrs. Borglum, and in time the estate would grow to 157 acres, most of which would be subdivided after his death.
At Stamford, Ross and Ariane maintained separate bedrooms. His was really a combination bedroom, study, and porch. The room was usually a shambles, furniture piled high with detective magazines, newspapers, and New Yorker galleys, floor littered with cigarette butts and wadded-up correspondence—there being no Mrs. Walden there to retrieve what needed saving. His bed was more like a military-style cot, low and extra wide. It was a creation of his own design, friends said, because he was prone to nightmares and thrashed about frightfully.
When in the country, Ross frequently worked in this room until two or three in the morning. He was someone who had to really force himself to c
oncentrate when he read, so the privacy of this room and its general absence of interruptions made it one of his favorite places to work. Patty often would slip in late at night to watch him in silence until she drifted off to sleep on the couch.
Whenever Patty stayed at Stamford, Ross made a point of seeing her off to bed, the time he reserved for their most serious father-daughter talks. Often these were mystifying conversations, like the night he explained to her that she should be “careful” about men. At the time Patty thought he was admonishing her to be nice to her elders, but later on she figured out that it was Ross’s way of warning her about the male of the species. At other times he might discuss the merits of hard work, or caution her not to value things more than people. He also gave her frequent bedtime pep talks, trying to keep her from becoming discouraged over the bad grades that resulted from her dyslexia; he would remind his daughter that there were two kinds of intelligence, academic and common sense, and that they were equally important.
Scenes from Stamford: Ross looks over the morning newspaper with Patty, and tries to overcome the family dog’s indifference. (Courtesy of Patricia Ross Honcoop)
On the whole, Patty had a cordial relationship with Ariane, and when the child crossed her stepmother, Ariane relied on Ross to discipline her. Like so many divorced fathers, however, Ross was the softest of soft touches, and his halfhearted attempts at correction—“Please do what your father tells you, Patty dear”—were resolutely ignored. He could be firm on some matters, like insisting she not swim in a nearby pond for fear of polio, and he was apoplectic whenever he caught Patty and her friends skittering along the roof of the tall house, which they often did. Mostly, though, she did as she pleased and got what she wanted.
Fishing was one of Ross’s few recreational pursuits. Here he is on a trip to Colorado. (Courtesy of Mrs. Milton Greenstein)
When not closeted in his room working, Ross liked to use his time in the country to relax. He enjoyed playing solitaire, or simply walking around the grounds, shooting at crows. He made a point of listening to the news on the radio several times a day but seldom turned it on for music or entertainment programs.
There were always a few servants—a cook, a butler, a handyman-groundskeeper. These faces were constantly changing, but generally they were as eccentric a bunch as those at the magazine. For a while during the war their butler was a dour German named Franz. Patty liked to sneak into his room now and then, especially after she noticed that Franz had tacked up a huge portrait of Hitler on his wall. She doesn’t think her father ever made it up to the servants’ quarters to see this, though he must have had his suspicions about the butler’s sympathies because he used to joke, “Patty, try not to annoy Franz. He’s in a bad mood; Germany is losing the war.”
Eventually Franz was sent packing, but his employer had no more stomach for firing the hired help than for firing people at The New Yorker. Anytime this necessity arose, he became overwhelmed by guilt. Patricia especially remembered the time he decided he had to let go their cook, a man named Jerry, and was feeling even guiltier than usual because the man was a fellow veteran, a former Army cook. Prior to 1942, Ross’s cooks needed no special culinary talent because his diet was so bland that all the joy had gone out of this important part of his life. Nothing fried, nothing raw, nothing spicy, no shellfish, no rich sauces. Stewed was good. Dining at “21” one evening with Ross and Frank Sullivan, Corey Ford watched as Ross surveyed the menu in vain for something healthful to order. Trying to be helpful, the waiter said, “How about a nice vegetable dinner?” Ross snapped back, “That is a contradiction in terms.” However, once Dr. Sara Jordan took over Ross’s care and feeding, she reintroduced many of his favorite foods to his diet—if they were precisely, expertly prepared, and this, sadly, was beyond Jerry’s mess-hall skills. Hence he would have to go, and that morning, as Patty came to breakfast, her father was already pacing. “When I came in he said, ‘I’m sorry, darling, but I have to fire Jerry.’ ” Then he looked at her, wrinkling his face hopefully. “You don’t think you could go in there and casually mention that he might be fired?” Even at her tender age Patty didn’t fall for this.
Presiding somehow over this loopy establishment was Ariane. With the war over, she and Ross divided their time between the country house and their apartment at 375 Park Avenue (which they took after spending the first three years of their marriage at the Ritz-Carlton). Ross wasn’t exactly wealthy, but with two fashionable addresses and a modicum of servants Ariane found the situation more than comfortable. Two days before they wed, she and Ross entered into a prenuptial agreement, part of which established a trust to provide Ariane a standing expense account. This amounted to five hundred dollars a month, which she could use for personal expenses. She received another two thousand dollars a month to administer the households.
By all accounts Ariane enjoyed spending the money—Ross sometimes referred to her as “my purchasing agent”—and a good bit of it went into interior decoration. Her tastes gravitated strongly to the frilly and white-on-white. At Stamford this impulse was pretty much restricted to her bedroom; otherwise the house was done in early American, the work of a previous decorator. But in the Park Avenue apartment this aesthetic ran riot. There were plush white carpets, walls of mirrored glass, even a white bearskin. People who called there seldom failed to remark on it: The apartment was beautiful, but it was so … white. If Ross came into the living room wearing his ancient bathrobe, as he sometimes did in casual company, he looked like a walking stain. After seeing him in this bleached environment, S. J. Perelman said that Ross seemed to him “mired like a wounded bird.”
Wartime had withered any real social life for husband and wife, so afterward they were both anxious to get back into circulation. Ross was especially happy to resume his poker regimen. He played in two games a week, one for low stakes and one for high. (James Gilson, the son of Ross’s friend and cousin Wesley, kibitzed the high-stakes game one evening while visiting the city, and recalled that at times there were thousands of dollars on the table.) Getting back to the West again on vacations, Ross always made a point of sniffing out a game somewhere. He regaled Rebecca West about an evening of “no-limit stud poker with the old-timers in a gambling hall in Reno, Nevada, which is an occupation that gives me more fundamental enjoyment than anything else I know.” Players in western games are all authentic and fascinating, Ross asserted, “including the one-armed men, who seem to be numerous. I played in the Reno game last year and there was always a one-armed man in the game, and the same was true this year. In fact, both years, there was a one-armed Chinaman in the game, and the one-armed Chinaman who was in the game last year was not the one who was in the game this year.” Ross said that the plethora of one-armed men apparently had to do with Reno’s being a railroad town, as losing a limb was a common railroad occupational hazard. “That is only a partial explanation, though,” he added. “It can’t include the Chinamen, for Chinamen don’t work on railroads. I’m still baffled by that one.”
Given the choice, Ross would always prefer the company of one-armed railroad men over New York society, but owing to his position and marriage he wasn’t always given the choice. Photographer Jerome Zerbe captured Ross and Ariane one evening at a fete at the St. Regis, with Ross seated next to Gertrude Lawrence and wearing a party hat that more closely resembles a dunce cap. He put in an occasional appearance at the Plaza’s swank Oak Room, where at least two New Yorker staffers, according to their own report, were on the receiving end of Ross spitballs. (On one of these occasions, his accomplice was James Cagney.) Then there was a dinner party with the Duke of Windsor, which the editor left early when he “damned well had to catch a train, although it was pointed out later that that was a ruinous social act.”
By now Ross was also spending a great deal of his spare time with New York’s affable mayor, William O’Dwyer, who took office in January 1946, and with whom Ross struck up a great friendship. This was unusual in that while he had been friendl
y with countless politicians through the years, he had been really close to only a few. Two of these were James Forrestal, an FDR aide who became Secretary of the Navy and then the first Secretary of Defense, and Robert Lovett, who was an Undersecretary of Defense. But he felt a genuine kinship with O’Dwyer. A story used to be told about them that is thought to be true, but even if it is only legend it nicely demonstrates their relationship. Ross got a parking ticket in the city, and having always wondered how these things got done, he asked his friend the mayor whether he could fix it. Certainly, O’Dwyer said. A week or so later, Ross’s curiosity got the best of him and he called up the mayor and asked if he had taken care of the ticket. “Nothing to it,” O’Dwyer said. “I just paid the fine.”
Party animal: Ross is flanked by Ariane, right, and Gertrude Lawrence at the St. Regis during the early Forties. (© Jerome Zerbe. From a private collection.)
Born in Ireland, O’Dwyer as a young man spent several years training for the priesthood at the Jesuit University of Salamanca. He dropped out and came to America, where he became a cop instead of a priest, worked his way through law school, and rose through the ranks of Brooklyn’s Democratic machine. With a little whiskey in him, O’Dwyer could match Ross story for story, and was by most accounts a decent fellow. Ross considered him “a wise and remarkable man” with a populist sense as acute as Roosevelt’s. The two men were always at ease in each other’s company. O’Dwyer would occasionally drive up to Stamford late at night, unannounced, just to talk. Likewise, Ross often came by Gracie Mansion after work, where the two lonely men would sit on the porch for hours.
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