Rock Gate |
Me, Jack, and Daddy |
Dana Hall School |
Teen at Dana |
NOTE: If the following account of my years at various boarding schools seems confusing, . . . it was! I changed schools four times . . . or was it five?
The next few years were not happy ones. I attended New England boarding schools, the first of which was Rock Gate, in Washington, Connecticut. It was a country day school, in a beautiful old estate, and I was the only boarder. Dad thought that at ten years old, I would feel more at home, but the only thing that made it bearable was that they allowed me to bring my beloved dog, Jack. The next year, they decided that he was too much trouble, and he went to live with one of the school teachers. He refused to eat and howled day and night. He "died of a broken heart," and I almost did too.
When I was old enough, I went to Tenacre, the junior school (equivalent to "middle school") of Dana Hall in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Dana Hall was a girls' boarding school which my mother had attended, and she wanted me to go there too.
At Tenacre, there were lots of girls my age and a sweet young art teacher who encouraged me to work hard at my drawing. She said that I could be a much better artist than she ever could be! I couldn't believe that. Tenacre was a much happier school for me than Rock Gate had been.
Tenacre and Dana Hall were both big on music appreciation, and we were often taken to concerts in Boston. Our chaperone on these occasions was a tall spinster lady, who always wore a hat with a huge blue plume. She told us to look for that blue feather waving above the crowd after the performance, and that way, we would never get lost. . . . We never did!
I wasn't the least bit musical, but the inspiring sounds, directed by Arthur Fiedler, sent my imagination soaring, and after the concert, I would hurry back to my room to draw pictures of knights on prancing stallions, instead of doing my homework.
After a year or two, Mother learned that she had cancer. I was not told, but she decided to move to a "rest home" near Madison, where she would be near her friends, and she wanted me to be nearby too. So Dad enrolled me in a private school named Kent Place, in Summit, New Jersey. It was a day school, so Dad got a little house in Madison, and persuaded his old Princeton buddy, "Uncle Andrew," and his wife, "Aunt Alice," to take care of me.
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Rock Gate |
Me, Jack, and Daddy |
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Dana Hall School |
Teen at Dana |
Brother Yeaman stayed there as well during his vacations from Exeter Academy, and Daddy came from New York whenever he could. It was a makeshift arrangement, but Dad was doing everything he could to make Mother happy.
It was during that time that my brother entered Princeton. Dad had always dreamed of sending his son to Princeton, his beloved alma mater. He would give Yeaman all the advantages that Dad couldn't afford when he was a law student there. Dad used to drive us to Princeton frequently, and I'd see him stand, with tears in his eyes, gazing at those ivy-covered buildings. He was very sentimental about his college days. But Yeaman hated Princeton! He was a real misfit; a strange, argumentative fellow, although he had been voted "the most likely to succeed" at Exeter. He flatly refused to return to Princeton after his freshman year. This caused a tremendous argument, and our father vowed that if Yeaman didn't to Princeton, Dad would never pay his tuition to any other university. That rift never healed, and the two never had much to do with each other after that. (Eventually, my brother did get a degree, by working his way through Antioch.)
When my mother became too ill to have me visit her, I returned for my final year at Tenacre. Mother died while I was there, when I was fifteen. A teacher took me aside to tell me the news, and when I started to cry, she said, "Now Virginia, you knew she was going to pass away.
So I did. My mother had nev er been a close part of my life. Her illness always came between us. So I dried my tears, and the teacher helped me pack for the trip back to Madison for the funeral.
Two years before her death, when my mother knew her illness was terminal, she had written a letter to me, with instructions that it be given to me after I doed. It is so beautiful in penmanship as well as faith and philosophy, that I have included it below.
The following year I entered the big senior high school of Dana Hall. No longer was I in a little girl's school, and finding friends wasn't easy. Many of the students came from broken homes, and their unhappiness was expressed by bitterness and sarcasm, which sent me further into my shell of insecurity. I longed to be popular, but I was sure nobody liked me. The many changes of schools and lack of a normal home life had made me withdrawn and self-conscious.
The event that finally gave me some confidence came about when I was asked to make a poster for some school event. The poster board they gave me was so enormous that I had to paint it on my bedroom floor, on my hands and knees. My back ached dreadfully, but I loved doing it! The poster was hung above the impressive entrance to the dining hall, and as we started down the wide staircase, students were smiling and patting me on the back. The president of the Student Council pushed through the crowd of blue serge uniforms to congratulate me!ΚΚ Then I was asked to take charge of decorating the school gym for all the big parties. At last I was "somebody." Suddenly I felt like a success . . . almost a celebrity!
That was the beginning of feeling accepted, and my ambition to become an artist-designer grew all the stronger.
While my vacation times were being spent at Dad's little house in Madison with Uncle Andrew and Aunt Alice, she was obsessed with rumors she heard over the bridge tables that my father was still seeing Glad. Aunt Alice did her best to turn me against that romance, which had started back at Sunnycrest when Mother and I were both sick in bed, and the two of them worked and planned together to keep the household running. Of course Madison society had gossiped, and Mother's friends suspected the worst! I learned many years later that my mother and father had even discussed a divorce, which was a drastic step in those straight laced days. But when Mother's illness became incurable, my father declared that he could not desert her in those circumstances, and he promised to stand by her, and to pay for her care. So his romance with Glad was put on hold.
I hardly remembered Glad, not having seen her since Sunnycrest.
"You wouldn't want her for a stepmother, would you?" Aunt Alice would ask. "Why, she was just an employee in your home, . . . practically a servant!"
If Aunt Alice was aware of Glad's background and education, she didn't let that change her prejudice.
1928. By the time my father announced that he was going to marry Glad, Yeaman and I were thoroughly brainwashed and we declined to go to the wedding. Later I wished I had. The famous Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick performed the ceremony at Riverside Church in New York City. Now I wear the diamond circlet ring which he placed on her finger, and I can still make out the worn inscription: WHC - GSV0 - 6.9.28.
Dad had purchased a dignified old house in East Orange, New Jersey. It was away from Madison, but convenient to Caldwell where he had moved his real estate office. Mrs. Everest, his faithful secretary, moved too, and she continued working for him as long as he lived.
That East Orange house at 60 East Park Street was where I was to spend vacations from school, and Glad and I got off to very a rocky start. It took several weeks before I learned to love Glad all over again. Aunt Alice had done her work well, and I was determined to be as rebellious and hateful as only a teenager can be. More than once I heard my father say patiently, "Give it time."
The showdown came on a hot, humid morning after Dad had left for his office. I had gone downstairs, leaving my bedroom in a mess; bed unmade, clothes strewn everywhere. Glad came to the head of the stairs and called, "Virginia, come here!"
Silence from me.
Again,"Virginia, come here!"
Then, "Virginia, did you hear me?"
This time I did answer. I shouted, "Yes, I heard you and I don't like being ordered to come like a dog!"
"Oh, oh, oh " Glad was crying and running down the stairs with her arms reaching out to me. In a flash I realized that she was vulnerable too, and I hated the way I'd been acting. I found myself running up to meet her, crying too. We hugged, and that was the end of my rebellion.
The night after our reconciliation, Dad came home to a happy family, and Glad and I were devoted to each other from then on. Glad was seventeen years younger than my father and seventeen years older than I, so she was like a big sister, and I went to her for help and advice many times after that.
1929. I was back at Dana Hall in October of '29 when the Stock Market Crash started the "Great Depression." It did'nt affect my life at all in the insulated cocoon of boarding school. I hardly knew what the stock market was! But some of the students failed to come back to school after Christmas vacation, because their parents couldn't afford the tuition. Dad lost investments too, but he never discussed finances with me. The depression brought terrible hardship to many citizens who found themselves out of work through no fault of their own. I saw well dressed businessmen standing on street corners trying to sell apples, and block-long lines of people waiting in the cold wind for soup kitchens and employment offices to open. Some of them had soft manicured hands and expensive overcoats.
Many years later, Dad told me that he had invested quite heavily just before the October collapse. One of his friends had told him that he couldn't lose. That it was a "sure thing." Luckily, Glad, his loyal wife of just over a year, was able to cope with ups and downs, and ready to stand by him, no matter what.
Another disastrous investment had been in Florida real estate. The Florida "boom" was irresistible to my father who loved that tropical state. He told me about it years later. He had invested heavily with a "partner." The man quietly disappeared one night with their joint funds, never to be heard of again! Dad's holdings in Florida were lost to taxes.
1931. When I graduated from Dana Hall in June of 1931, my father gave me three choices: I could attend college, or go to a finishing school in Paris which a friend had recommended, or go to art school. That was easy. I answered, "art school!"
To learn to be an artist was what I had always wanted. After all, I had made up my mind to become one when I was five years old, and I wasn't going to change it now.
In 1931, commercial art and illustration was a very glamorous occupation. Magazines and movies were our entertainment, and the magazines were filled with short fiction. Every story was illustrated, not by photographs, but by artwork. The good illustrators became famous. Photography was still black and white, and didn't reproduce well on the printing presses of the day. Advertising was becoming big business as well, and the ads were full of artwork too.
Illustration was not my forte, since I didn't like realistic figure drawing. This may have been due to my youthful observation of Mother's friend, the lady portrait painter, and her struggles to please her clients. Later there were those boreing art classes, copying plaster casts of Greek statues at Dana Hall. So I decided that commercial art and design would be my specialty.
