by Jane Brown
London at war had a nightmare quality for her. She found her stepsister Addie Lambart with her husband and her brother Bertie Randolph in uniform, she found her sister Polly frailer than ever but working for the war effort, and heard that her dear Gladys Szechenyi was rescuing refugee children with the Red Cross in Switzerland. Gertrude was also in London as she and Harry were sending a fully equipped field hospital to France, and it was her sacred mission to break through the red tape on both sides of the Channel so that the hospital was established in a boys’ school at Juilly, near Compiègne. For some inexplicable reason, perhaps to convince herself that it wasn’t just a nightmare, Dorothy went with Ethel and Richard Derby to Scarborough and the Hartlepools to see the damage from the bombardment by German destroyers, when more than one hundred people were killed.92
Back in London the zeal for the fight screaming from the headlines pained her, and then she detected the dreaded word ‘profiteering’; Willard explained that he had said to Harry Davison, ‘If I were running [Morgan’s Bank] and wanted to help the Allies I would suggest that... they co-operate on a joint financial policy just as they were doing in a military and naval way.’ Apparently Davison said nothing but went straight to 10 Downing Street where the suggestion was promptly adopted.93 Willard grumbled that he didn’t get any credit; Dorothy suspected that Morgan’s role as purchasing agent for supplies from America was going to look like profiteering. The New Republic of 5th December had published a letter warning America of exploitation ‘to promote its own business and trade’, fairly swiftly followed by the Wilson administration’s infamous note to the effect that the British blockade of German ports was harming America’s trade. It was a bitter taste of the hatefulness of war. Dorothy left on the Lusitania with Gertrude and Ethel and Dick Derby, leaving Willard behind. The crossing was bad. ‘Captain Dow says the ship is “under water” part of the time,’ noted Gertrude. In New York Dorothy shopped hastily for presents and spent a quiet Christmas with her children, Ethel Derby, whose husband was working, and Daisy Harriman who was recently widowed.
The first weeks of 1915 are silent, an indication of troubled times, or simply that the winter weather had prevented her from shopping for a new diary? Her silence extended to Willard who cabled, ‘Please cable me Dorothy about yourself and the kids,’ and adding ‘whether she regarded him as too costly a plaything?’ He returned at the end of January but was gone again after a month. They had talked things out and love’s banner flew in the face of the world once more. Willard sent a letter to Whitney Straight Esquire, aged two and a half, ‘We went through all the heart yearnings of those who part before action... she didn’t sleep much [and] showed it in the morning but there was no word, no tear, only smiles and cheerfulness. If you ever amount to anything it will be because of your mother.’94
The German Embassy’s warning to passengers travelling ‘at their own risk’ was on everyone’s mind. The Cunarder Lusitania was flying the Stars and Stripes when Willard looked over her rail and watched Dorothy as she ‘walked cheerily down the dock as the big ship slipped along out into the stream’. He continued to Whitney, ‘This I shall never forget... this and the time we went through in Peking before you were born. These are the things that knit you close, for all the fluff is stripped away and you realize how much you care.’
From on board he wrote even more introspectively to Dorothy, ‘But are we going on like this? Are we going to continue as privates in Wall Street – when we might be captains of our own ship?’ He watched the turquoise water ‘glistening, foaming under the bows and swirling alongside – purpling under the shadows of the clouds that tumbled overhead’. He was reading The New Republic about America’s role, echoing their beliefs of ‘a certain mission in the world’ and the need for showing how things had been done so differently from Imperial Britain, and how ‘from the old days we may gather inspiration to face the modern task’. In London he was sociable, dining with John Maynard Keynes, who contributed to The New Republic, and also meeting Colonel Edward House, President Wilson’s envoy whose job was ‘to knock heads together’ and bring peace; the colonel hinted at a job for Willard in the peace negotiations and asked him to deliver a message to the French Foreign Minister. In Paris, after his visit to Morgan Harjes, Willard came to his decision to leave the bank. He was at home with Dorothy in April.95
On 7th May the Germans sank the Lusitania as she neared the end of her eastward crossing off southern Ireland. The New York Times of the following day howled in thick black headlines:
Lusitania sunk by a submarine, probably 1,260 dead; twice torpedoed – sinks in 15 minutes; Captain Turner saved, Frohman and Vanderbilt missing; Washington believes that a grave crisis is at hand.
It was Gertrude’s and Gladys’s brother Alfred who was missing, and drowned. ‘I feel,’ wrote Gertrude, ‘that if the loss of the Lusitania brought this country to a realization of its responsibilities and roused our apathetic citizens to action, it would be some consolation.’ She was laid low by grief, exhaustion and an operation for appendicitis. Dorothy, haunted by her father’s fate, was consoling and kind.Willard committed himself to a civilian training camp at Plattsburg with Dick Derby and two young Roosevelts, Theodore junior and Quentin. After a brief brush with international law he was appointed a vice-president of the American International Corporation, a bankers’ consortium promoting overseas trade, and he was back on the dining and speaking circuit.
For the world in general, 1916 was hardly an inviting prospect, but Dorothy challenged it with her new diary, a large, sleek volume bound in black leather with a silver edging and purple plush lining. She entered the phone number of Miss Anna Bogue, who became her secretary and the stalwart of her life. Willard arranged a surprise party for her birthday on 23rd January, her twenty-ninth, and she realised that she was pregnant, the baby due in late August. Willard went to Europe in mid-March and was gone for ten weeks, writing long essays home for little Whitney to read some day. He learned that Bertie Randolph was killed, and he found the Pagets in Eastbourne, where the guns in France could be heard thundering all the time, and Polly was devoting her last energies to caring for wounded soldiers. Like Nancy Astor she had discovered Christian Science.
Willard had a warm welcome home, and they gave summer parties in their Chinese garden. A cottage at Southampton suited their holiday, which began with a party for Beatrice’s second birthday on 2nd August, instituting a happy tradition. Dorothy did very little; she had to refuse their invitation to her niece Flora’s coming-out at Newport, but then she never really liked Newport. She waited impatiently doodling in her diary until Michael Whitney Straight was born on 1st September. He had ‘fair hair & blue eyes & a real nose’ and was most like his father. Whitney was four on 6th November, and the following day President Wilson was elected to serve his second term. Dorothy was reading H.G. Wells’ latest novel, Mr Britling Sees It Through, in which Mr Direck from Massachusetts visits his ancestral village Matching’s Easy in Essex in wartime. Then on 23rd November she noted, ‘News came this morning of Pauline’s death in England.’ Polly was forty-two.96
Events had meant that Dorothy and Willard were perhaps less attentive to The New Republic than they had hoped, though they read it assiduously; a Vassar graduate Charlotte Rudyard was appointed as an editorial assistant, and Dorothy had suggested that Walter Lippmann should interview Jane Addams at Hull-House in Chicago for her opinion on the election. Sadly the paper had veered away from Roosevelt, and Lippmann’s star-column ‘Washington Notes’ was ushering its stance towards President Wilson, both inching towards American intervention into the war on the moral high ground of procuring the peace. By the start of 1917 the paper found itself with friends in high places; Herbert Croly and Lippmann ‘were known’ to make weekly visits to Colonel House’s New York apartment and they were deemed to be in his confidence. The circulation doubled, rising to twenty thousand copies a week.97
Soldiers three – Willard, baby Michael and Dorothy with Beatrice and Whi
tney in uniform. A hasty snap, 1917.
Dorothy and Willard went to Washington to stay with Daisy Harriman – the vivacious and politically astute Daisy was a democratic insider whom Dorothy saw as her ally in the cause of getting Willard into the State Department. There was a vacancy, he applied, and they went house-hunting in Virginia, but events moved too fast, and prompted by the start of revolution in Russia and German attacks on American merchant shipping the president told Congress that ‘right is more precious than peace’ and America would enter the war for democracy’s sake.98 This happened on 6th April. When Daisy approached Colonel House he said she was ‘too late’, the vacant post would not have suited Willard, but ‘I have a very high regard for him and at the first opportunity I shall suggest his name for service’. Later he added that ‘he was most anxious for the sake of the administration that Willard be drawn in’ rather than joining the army ‘as he threatens to do’.99
It might seem that Dorothy had another ploy because her friend, the young reformist Mayor of New York John Purroy Mitchel, appointed Willard as chairman of his Committee on National Defense; Dorothy was on the Women’s Committee. However, Willard took his army exams, and in late May he was commissioned as a major in the reserve corps. Dorothy threw herself into the war effort, juggling her resources, fundraising for the Red Cross, and turning their home at 1130 Fifth Avenue into a hostel for war workers. On 25th July Beatrice Bend and Prather Fletcher were married in Dorothy’s sitting room at Old Westbury and given a warm send-off on their journey to Mexico City where he was appointed ambassador. August and part of September were spent at Southampton with the children, this time making jams and preserves and digging vegetables.
Returned to the fray, she was immersed in City Food Conferences, Consumers’ League and child welfare committees and The New Republic. Willard was sent to training camp at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where she was present at his passing-out parade in late October; she was the toast of the officers’ mess, who gave her the film-star treatment. It was Herbert Croly who delivered a message from Colonel House saying that there would be an assignment in London or Paris for Willard, at the peace conference which would come soon now that America was involved. This would be a coup for The New Republic. In reality Willard was made organiser of the War Risk Insurance Bureau as serving men were now offered low-cost policies; with a company of sixty men, and his valet George Bennett who had enlisted as his batman, he left on 11th December. He and Dorothy had a few quiet days as a family, in part fitting Whitney and little Beatrice out in soldier suits, and having their photograph taken. Dorothy knew that his ship had to keep radio silence but even so she burst into tears when Louisa wished her a ‘Happy Christmas’; the next day Willard cabled to say they had arrived in Liverpool – she felt ‘as if the world had suddenly burst into song’. Typically Willard’s men were noted as the smartest and most cheerful, he had not wasted the voyage and, equally typically, when he saw Nancy Astor in London he bought her a soda fountain to comfort the American boys at her Cliveden hospital, and left the order and wherewithal at Fortnum & Mason’s to keep it stocked.
Dorothy was immersed in endless committees and her vigorous support for Mayor Mitchel’s re-election, which failed. She was observed as she presided over a war work meeting at City Hall:
Mrs Straight called the meeting to order, and in an easy manner explained the object of the gathering – the hope to establish a clearing house for the different charities. Every syllable was heard even by those standing near the door. She is far too slender now, and very tired and pale, but she has gained much in manner and self-possession.100
Her New Year’s Eve was at Harry and Gertrude’s with:
many young aviators from Mineola and hydro-fliers from I don’t know where – and of course dozens of officers from Upton. When midnight struck and we all formed a big circle and sang Auld Lang Syne, one tried not to think of what the New Year would bring forth to the majority of the people in the room! I think it best to have no imagination these days.
The war closed around her. Gertrude and Flora left for Texas to be near Sonny Whitney training at Fort Worth; Flora was secretly engaged to Quentin Roosevelt who was on flying duties in France, one of four Roosevelt brothers in uniform. New York suffered in a bitterly cold winter with fuel shortages, and schools, shops and offices closed. The pipes were all frozen at 1130 Fifth Avenue so Dorothy stayed at Old Westbury; she discovered a stock of twenty tons of coal and sent out enough for dozens of families. She told Willard that she was ‘amused’ that her rich neighbours were stock-piling – ‘I wonder why there are not more Socialists in the world!’
In Paris, Willard, pleased with a high rate of take-up on the soldiers’ insurance, was playing (and paying) as host for a wedding breakfast at the Ritz for Daisy Harriman’s daughter, and Cole Porter played the piano for them. The party was followed by an air raid into the morning of Willard’s thirty-eighth birthday, 31st January. Some of Dorothy’s friends felt, but did not say, that he should not have left her alone for a young man’s war. He confessed that he had paid Daisy’s bills and Dorothy agreed that Daisy was ‘a luxury’. Daisy sent her a lovely sepia postcard of the tables laid on the Ritz terrace: ‘I will tell you all news of Willard, he looks so well and has been such an angel to me.’
On George Washington’s Birthday in late February she took Whitney and Beatrice to watch the huge tickertape parade for the 77th Division from Camp Upton marching to their embarkation. They were ‘her boys’ – for weeks she had been taking (sensible) Junior Leaguers dressed in neat blue overalls to the bleak camp, the huge wooden sheds hastily erected on the Long Island sands at Yaphank. They had served teas and handed out books, finding that the soldiers were eager simply to talk to a woman and ‘not a single man was fresh’. She was convinced of the importance of some ‘home comforts’ to the thousands of young men, culled from the cities and backwoods all over America and destined for they knew not where. One of them was Irving Berlin, who composed ‘Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning’ for an Upton concert party. Dorothy was appointed chairman of Camp Work Committees for the whole country, ‘An enormous job but I can’t help doing it – we women have to play a part worthy of you,’ she told Willard.
Having completed his insurance selling to everyone’s satisfaction Willard was now at the American Expeditionary Force Staff College at Langres in the Haute-Marne, billeted with Major Grayson Murphy, who also had a wife and family on Long Island and shared Willard’s taste for Chaucer and Kipling. As part of the course they were taken up the line to Toul, west of Nancy, to the brigade commanded by Douglas MacArthur. Willard thought MacArthur, who was about his age, ‘a corker – the best in the business’, but confessed to his diary that the experience terrified him, especially the gas, and he was scared to death.101 To Dorothy he wrote, ‘I took off my glasses and we splashed along – shells sang overhead, and next four German planes – & it seemed as if everything had broken loose – the sky was speckled with bursting shells.’ She replied, ‘I love you for saying you were scared all the time – my love must help protect you.’ His letters become full of his conviction that he is ready for action, that he could handle a regiment, or a brigade or even a division: ‘I’d rather have you mourn me and have [Whitney] say that I died fighting over here than to come back and feel that I had shirked.’ It was not to be, it was Major Murphy who was posted to MacArthur’s 42nd Division, and Willard was sent to the 3rd Army Staff at Remiremont, to the east in the Vosges. On liaison duties he found himself travelling across country to Reims, in a position to watch the Marines of the 2nd Division in action defending Belleau Wood, a defence they converted into attacks on the German positions and then to an advance. The courage and determination of the young Marines – in the presence of the demoralised French – impressed him deeply; these were the Americans he desperately wanted to lead, and lead them safely home.102
At home Dorothy was still playing her part, now canvassing 82nd and 83rd Streets on foot for the Liberty L
oan schemes. She was deeply shocked at the news of the death of John Purroy Mitchel on 6th July. He had joined the Air Service and was in training at Lake Charles in Louisiana, and mysteriously fell out of an aircraft. He was the same age as Willard. Dorothy sent all her summer flowers from Old Westbury to be strewn on the cortège on its journey from Washington Square to St Patrick’s Cathedral. Worse was to come; Quentin Roosevelt was killed flying in France at the end of July. The family were devastated and Dorothy’s adored T.R. was never to get over his loss. She comforted her niece Flora, who, in her twenty-first year, was so pathetically young for such a blow – she found herself having long talks with both Flora and Olive Mitchel. Later in August at Southampton she would gaze out into the Atlantic and imagine herself with Willard. She sent him a small gold-covered notebook as she had read the story of a gold cigarette case stopping a bullet. His letters concerned her: in ever smaller writing, which becomes almost impossible to read, he theorises at length about command techniques – she pleads, ‘Please Best Beloved it wouldn’t be right – I wish you would heed the words of your friends and remain in the work for which you have been specifically trained and not fly off into line service – really Willard, it isn’t sense is it?’ In return he chides her for overworking and worries about her radicalism, being ‘a little restive and uncertain about some of these forward looking people – so many of them aren’t honest’. He tells her not to give away everything, ‘remember you have a husband in the army to support’ as well as costly magazines.103 He finishes, ‘I’m becoming a filthy conservative,’ he is afraid, ‘don’t go too far my Dorothy.’