Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?
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The struggle with Eleanor had evolved into trench warfare. Dorothy found further reasons to resent her and to wish the woman dead. Her weapons were the time-honored methods of sulfurous stares, extended silences, and responses that were at best grudging. These tactics drove Eleanor into a tizzy, but they provided a kind of stability to Dorothy’s life. After three years of hostilities, there came an unexpected cease-fire. She was trying to dream up more imaginative tortures when one morning in April 1903, she woke to learn that Eleanor had just fallen dead of an acute cerebral hemorrhage.
Now Dorothy had two murders on her conscience. The sudden deaths of Eliza and Eleanor became the twin traumas of her early life, her ticket to self-pity, a passe-partout to self-hatred and an unalterable conviction that she deserved punishment—the source of the negativity with which she grappled so unhappily—and so happily—thereafter. Reaffirmed was her perception of the world as a horrible place where people keeled over and died without warning. Nature had no right to be so mean. Therefore, she decided,There’s little in taking or giving,
There’s little in water or wine;
This living, this living, this living
Was never a project of mine.
Eleanor willed various amounts to her own family and gave fifty dollars apiece to Harry. Bert, and Helen. As a final gesture to lucky little Dorothy, she left “such articles of jewelry as have been given me by my husband since my marriage to my step-daughter Dorothy Rothschild,” in the value of three hundred dollars.
After Eleanor’s untimely death, the house was empty of mothers. Next came the dogs.
Chapter 2
PALIMPSEST
1903-1914
The Rothschilds were determined to enjoy good times. Henry, fifty-two, abandoned his lifework in the garment industry, which was changing irrevocably bit by bit. The sweatshop system slowly was expiring under the spotlight of exposes and public indignation. Increasing boldness by the cloakmakers’ union threatened to send wages soaring. Henry heartily denounced these omens as violations of God’s plan. When Meyer Jonasson & Company faltered, he briefly entered partnership with another cloakmaking giant, then threw up his hands altogether and switched to the comparatively sedate cigar business.
The family now lived in a large brownstone around the corner from Blessed Sacrament, everyone being haphazardly cared for by two housemaids, Annie and Mary. Dorothy’s most passionate interest in life at this period was collecting pictures of Maude Adams. Once she sent the actress a letter that began “Dearest Peter,” and received one of the much-coveted silver thimbles inscribed A kiss from Peter Pan. Then came a minor but memorable change: The Rothschilds acquired an assortment of what would become the most aggressively spoiled dogs in New York. It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of these mixed French bulldogs and Boston terriers named Rags, Nogi, and Bunk, who would be reincarnated in countless hounds throughout Dorothy’s life. From the first, the family regarded this trio of equivocal breeds as humans disguised as animals, endowing them with a full complement of neuroses and then grumbling accordingly.
By this time, Dorothy’s brothers and sister were almost adults. Harry and Bert worked in wholesale garment houses. Bert was engaged to a long-legged colt of a girl named Mate (nicknamed “Tiny” because of her height). As a wedding gift, Henry offered them the choice of five hundred dollars in cash or a flat; Bert and Tiny chose the apartment. Helen, too, was busily preparing to move forward into the great world. Henry’s expectations for his daughters were at once conventional and reflective of his personal conception of women. Despite the tradition of female professionalism in the family, if his marrying two educated women can be called a tradition, he was certainly no believer in vocations for women. He preferred to marry superior women, which for him meant primarily Christian and only secondarily a woman with sufficient intelligence to earn a living as a teacher. (The family success story in this respect was Martin Rothschild, who had wed Elizabeth Barrett of the Great Bear Springs Water family.) For all Henry’s acceptance of Eliza and Eleanor as working women, he saw himself as a kind of knight who had rescued them from the misfortunes of spinsterhood. For his daughters, he invested in first-class Catholic educations, which, he hoped, would ensure a predictable outcome: marriage into wealthy Christian families.
A sensible young woman like Helen needed no parental instructions. She zipped around on a merry-go-round of dances, picnics, and golfing parties, happily pursuing young men of suitable families, preferrably those better off than the Rothschilds. To follow any other course would have been considered self-destructive. Especially high on her list of prospects was the scion of a well-known New York baking company, whom she had met at a skating party. George Droste, Jr., did not happen to be Jewish (although he was German), but then convent-educated Helen did not really think of herself as Jewish either.
Dorothy, a bedazzled spectator, found these rites of passage spellbinding. Describing her sister a long while later, she said, “She was a real beauty, my sister; sweet, lovely, but silly.” What she meant by silly she didn’t bother to explain, but certainly this was not her opinion as a girl. On the contrary, she adored, admired, and envied Helen, whose undisputed good looks and popularity seemed to embody ideal womanhood, a model that Dorothy aspired to copy but secretly feared a useless endeavor.
If Helen Rothschild was exceptionally glamorous, it was, alas, all too obvious to Dorothy that her own pubescent plainness was going to remain a permanent condition. In a photograph taken at age twelve, she appears to be nine or ten. She was short for her age and thin. She achieved a final growth of four feet eleven inches and remained underweight into her twenties. To make matters worse, she had hollows under her eyes, stringy hair, poor eyesight, and the kind of listless appetite that elicited constant admonitions to eat up. Since she had a heart murmur, the Rothschilds took care to cosset her in a manner befitting a child of delicate constitution.
As early as 1905, she seems to have found a place of her own in the family: She was the artistic member. Later she liked to define herself negatively as “one of those awful children who wrote verses,” but she neglected to mention that her efforts were encouraged and rewarded with enthusiastic praise. “Wonderful to say the least,” Helen called the verses. Nor was the writing of poetry viewed as a charming, not very noteworthy accomplishment appropriate for a sickly female child—not at all. Henry himself loved to compose verses that he referred to as his “pomes.” His favorite theme was the antics of the dogs, and even though the verses sound childish, they also are charming. His lovingly amused descriptions suggest a sort of Thurberian view of the species:This morning Rags near’ got
a “licking”
’Cause, he “kicked” at meat
& wanted “chicking”
But Mary pleased him
with chicken hash
And begged me to do nothing
rash
So once more His Lordship
is all right
And got the better of the
fight
He looks at me as much
to say
When Dora gets back I’ll
have my way
Not the least self-conscious, he struck off this doggerel at his office desk on the backs of sheets of Royal Company stationery and, no doubt, felt pleased with his handiwork.
The paternal portrait reflected in his verses is so greatly at variance with Dorothy’s descriptions that they might be two different men. Both in his verse and in the letters exchanged between him and his daughters, he exudes warmth, humor, and generosity, and his affection for Dorothy cuts like a warm stream across the middle of her childhood. His idea of child-rearing owed little to his second wife, little perhaps to his first either. He was far from being a disciplinarian. In his household, children were indulged—in return he expected them to “get ahead.” Feelings, negative as well as positive, could be spoken of openly. Eccentricities, too, appear to have been tolerated, even appreciated if they were amusin
g. Expression of needs was encouraged. He told them that if they ever needed money, “do not fail to ask for it,” and they did not fail. He was lavish with the word love, fond of playful teasing, an admirer of peppery behavior, and tolerant of scenes, because he himself was given to emotional extravagance. His was, above all, a house of much laughter.
In contrast, there is Dorothy’s version of reality. Her lugubrious account of a deprived childhood has a plot that plods along like a gothic novel—innocent heroine victimized by heartless father, malevolent stepmother, and a Greek chorus of batty nuns—and is largely false. This romance was doubtless a therapeutic invention that enabled her to settle old scores. Underneath lay concealed another fiction, never articulated but internalized so completely that it became an implant in her deepest self—an unloved orphan, which was how she experienced herself, must be clever and amusing in order to ensure survival in the world. Therefore, behaviors ordinarily frowned upon might very well be excused, or considered virtuous, if a person happened to be an orphan. The poor orphan from whom she learned these rules of the game was William Thackeray’s antiheroine Becky Sharp.
On the verge of adolescence, acutely self-conscious, she felt there was something wrong with her, and so it was necessary to create a Dorothy Rothschild she liked better. She started by changing her handwriting, a spiky scrawl that wandered uphill and down. There began to emerge glimpses of the beautiful rounded script that would be her adult hand. Similarly, her search for a better Dorothy Rothschild made her intent on erasing everything in her makeup that she considered ugly. Her method of elimination was to write over the original by reshaping herself in the form of a fictional character whom she admired. Since the psychic wounds she had suffered as a young child could never be rubbed out, she was stuck with both images, her psyche a palimpsest of two drafts, original Dorothy and final Dorothy, the new standing shakily atop the old.
When she was eleven, she first read Vanity Fair and felt inspired for life: In her sixties, she claimed that she still reread Thackeray’s novel “for comfort,” but the only example of comfort she could cite was thrilling to the line about George Osborne “lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart.” Thackeray’s subtitle for Vanity Fair was A Novel without a Hero, but for Dorothy it was a novel with a heroine, the exact sort of person she wanted to be. She fell upon the character of Rebecca Sharp like a long-lost alter ego. Not that Becky can be called a completely healthy model; she was in every respect an outlaw, female insubordination personified, and even Thackeray disapproved of her. Antisocial as she was, Becky proved to be an extremely healthy blueprint for Dorothy. Courageous Becky, thumb glued to her nose, was able to confront and defy adversity head-on. Her fictional experiences seemed metaphors for Dorothy’s emotional experiences and, perhaps following Becky’s example, Dorothy might triumph too. In effect, her identification with Becky Sharp urged her beyond those early traumas.
“They say when your writing goes up hill, you have a hopeful disposition. Guess I have,” she wrote to her father in 1906, when she was yet unsure whether there was anything about which to feel hopeful. Unlike Becky, who seemed naturally built for landing on her feet, Dorothy had to struggle with crippling handicaps in developing ego strength. She was forced to learn mental toughness. Taking her own inventory at the age of thirty, she listed the three things she could count on having until she died: laughter, hope and—there was always a palimpsest memory—“a sock in the eye.”
Her twelfth summer was the most carefree of her later childhood.
In June 1905, Helen took her to the Wyandotte Hotel in the resort town of Bellport on the south shore of Long Island, where George Droste’s family had a year-round house. While not wishing to deny his daughters a summer at the shore, Henry Rothschild felt badly about the two-month separation and made them promise to alternate writing every day. They faithfully complied, Helen with fairly lengthy letters and Dorothy, more often than not, with postcards that fulfilled the letter of the agreement if not the substance. She went bathing in the cold surf, played a lot of croquet, and made excursions to East Quogue on the train and to Patchogue in the Drostes’ pony cart. Nearly every day there was sailing, and once a young man from Helen’s crowd who owned an automobile took Dorothy on a spin along the country roads.
Her chief anxiety was about the dogs. There was no danger of a chowhound like Rags starving himself in her absence, but she feared he might pine away and be gone when she returned. She sent him loving messages, read St. Nicholas magazine from cover to cover, and compiled lists of gifts she wanted for her birthday. At eight-thirty she went to bed, whispers of the dark ocean coming in through the open windows. Helen reported to their father: “The kid is fine and enjoying herself greatly—she looks well and eats a lot.” Some of Helen’s girlfriends were having “a horrid time” because “there are hardly any fellows here,” and Helen too found Bellport “pretty slow.” But Dorothy was having a splendid time.
Dear Papa,
We are all well and having a good time. When you send my things down, will you please send my pink and green beads. They are in my dressing-table in a “Home, sweet home” box. I hope the animals are well.
With love,
Dorothy
Dear Papa,
I received your poetic effusion about Nogi and the snowballs, and will try to see if I can do any better.
I am having a lot of fun,
Tho’ my neck and arms
are burned by the sun.
Doesn’t “tho’ ” look poetic?
Dorothy
Dear Rags,
Hope you are well and having a fine time.
Dorothy
Dear Nogi,
Ditto.
Dorothy
Dear Papa,
Bert and Tiny arrived last night. They brought me some Cailler’s chocolate, which was very nice of them, only I hate it. But they didn’t know I hated it, so it was very nice of them, after all.
I hope that Nogi and Rags are well. Please remember me to Harry, Mary and Annie.
With love,
Dorothy
Her father wrote to her:Say, Miss Dorothy, will you kindly tell
If the “Push” at Bellport are all well
All well here—but a little sad
Your coming home will make all glad
Rags and Bunk have got the blues
As they seek in vain for your little (2) shoes
All day, too, nothing but rain
Enough to give everybody a pain
We are all saving for to pay
For beautiful things for your birthday
A Postscript—for I forgot
To send my love to the whole lot
Rags is fine, he is all right
His behavior is “out of sight”
And as he walks along the floor
He too wishes the summer o’er
Mary now is his only chum
But what he wants is Dora “the Bum”
You seem always able to please him
And unlike Helen do not tease him
I scolded him for calling you “Bum”
But he winked his eye
As he ate his pie
And he said—“I wish she were ‘hum’ ”
For her twelfth birthday Helen threw a party on the Wyandotte lawn and invited fifteen young ladies. By Dorothy’s exact account of the affair, they played croquet, then had their pictures taken. There is a faded photograph of the group posing under enormous trees. Dorothy, skinny, is dressed in white blouse and dark tie, her hair pulled back and tied at the base of her neck, and she looks solemn. After the cake and ice cream, they played Blindman’s Buff and Cops and Robbers for the rest of the afternoon. She was extremely pleased with the light blue beads Henry had sent, also with the books and the bead loom. She politely thanked Bert for his dollar and poem. “One came in handy, and the other was very good,” she wrote to her father.
The next summer, she and Helen were back at Bellport, at the
white hotel with its tall gateway that spelled out WYANDOTTE in wrought-iron filigree. This time, though, the days seemed endless and sultry—“It’s terribly hot here,” she complained. The boats still bobbed like toys at the end of the Wyandotte dock, the plumy oaks still arched a dark canopy over Rector Avenue, the corn fritters and chicken sandwiches still tasted better than at home, but she mentioned no playmates, no parties.
Her sister was madly in love and sometime during the summer became engaged to George Droste. He was twenty-three years old, conspicuously good-looking, and determined to enjoy life. (Their daughter Lel, putting the matter kindly, would describe him as a professional playboy, who never worked at much of anything but once broke his leg doing a legendary high kick at a party.)
Helen owned a camera. In her photo album unfold page after page of laughing young women in long white dresses and slim, elegant youths in knickerbockers and straw boaters tilted gaily on their heads. After eighty years, the browning snapshots do not dull the brightness of those summer vistas, the weedy meadows and the sand bleached white against the black water. Dorothy, who naturally was excluded from the romantic outings and from the polkas at the Saturday night dances, had other activities to keep her occupied. Entering a dress-up contest for the best advertisement lookalike, she won a vase that she described to her father as “awfully pretty,” but because her tone suggests that it was hideous, she saw no point mentioning the costume that had merited it. From the first, her letters sounded a bit homesick and more than a bit wistful.