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The Chrysler Building. 9:45 PM. Photo: JH. |
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| I bought a new TV. It arrived yesterday. I turned it on just to look at the picture. Someone was interviewing the new Governor of New York, David Paterson. They were asking him about his extra-marital affairs. When, how many, etc.? Really.
I couldn’t help wondering why then shouldn’t the questioners be asked about their affairs? I mean, fair’s fair, let’s hear it from them: How many, when? Oh come now, don’t tell me you never ... Why then shouldn’t we all tell. Tell everyone publicly how many times we’ve “fooled around” or kept a mistress or had a lover, and cheated and lied; and who, where, when, what, why?
We could start in the workplace, and begin with the CEOs. They’re first. How many affairs have you had? Com’on, don’t tell me you never had an affair? And a mistress? Or mistresses. And what about a dominatrix? Did you know that some of the most prominent, high profile names in New York — men that is — made scheduled visits to a dominatrix. Who whips them into shape so to speak. I’m reminded of the famous tycoon who liked to meet his girls (he preferred more than one at a time) about five in the morning. Then, his hulking flabby torso unclothed, he’d get down on all fours, crawl across the room, while whips would snap, and presto! he’d be back at breakfast with the Missus. by 8 a. m. with no one ever the wiser. If talkers didn’t talk, that is. When the wife finally did find out (not even the half of it), it was too late: he died. She lived; very well, and presumably happily ever after. His dominatrix, incidentally, was naturally sapphic on her off-hours, was also an heiress, and preferred hookers; especially the cheap ones that worked the streets. Shouldn’t we know this about everyone? Shouldn’t it be televised so that everyone can know it, including the children since children spend so much time in front of the TV anyway. Although, come to think of it, it is a subject that would bore a child – how many times a guy fooled around outside his marriage. A child would think: "Where’s my video game?”
Ms. Strouse’s book is one of the most compelling biographies of a man, any man, that I have ever read. Mr. Morgan was a great force in development of the great City of New York. He was a founder of museums (the American Museum of Natural History, the Met); a builder of churches, collector of fine art, manuscripts, books, autographs – all of which laid the foundation of his own museum and library. He was a hedonist, a yachtsman, a clubman; a devoted son, a father, husband, and a romantic. He was also a man who had several intense affairs with women while remaining married. These affairs were not entirely hidden as he surrounded himself with close friends whom he could trust, and in some cases also with the women’s husbands. He traveled often with the women he was involved with, while his wife remained either at home on Madison Avenue or at their country place up on the Hudson, or traveling in Europe (as per his edict), while at times, when no one else was available, he used his daughters as his “beards.” His great prominence in the community also provided impunity in the eyes of his fellow citizens. The idea of his ever discussing his “private” inamoratas publicly was beyond the imagination of any human being alive at the time, including his children (who knew) and his wife (who eventually got the message also).
Strouse wrote about its effect: “His social and professional self-confidence were too well established to be undermined by this affliction, but as he became an increasingly public figure, his brusque manner and always searching gaze took on dimensions of defiance, as if he dared people to meet his eyes squarely and not shrink from the sight asserting the force of his character over the ugliness of his face.” The famous Victorian British heiress Margot Asquith, née Tennant wrote in her diary on meeting him: that it was “a Cyrano nose of vast blue oozing glands a hideous deformity.” He asked her, she also recorded “what wd (sic) you do if you were me with all my riches yet having this terrible nose?” Her response: “I (said I did not) mind so much if I were you since you can never have been very good-looking (not true: ed’s note) .... This pleased him and he tucked me into a cosy corner of his heart and has seen me about a dozen times since.” Many years later he sent her several thousand pounds to help restore a country house she was buying with her husband (the Prime Minister).
Mr. Morgan’s “eyes” may have twinkled for Lady Sackville, and were even full of kindness, etc., but those same eyes could send a frisson of terror up the backs of someone whose work or authority or manner he might call into question. He was J. P. Morgan and he took no nonsense from anybody. He conducted his business affairs with shrewdness, canniness and no doubt in his own great self-interest. He ruled his wife and his family, albeit often with kindness and sensitivity (unless it got in the way of his own desires – i.e., the female company he liked to keep). In short, he was an enormous force of authority in his life, in his business and in his community. In 1890, not long after his father died, in his early 50s, he took up with a woman sixteen years his junior, Edith Randolph. Mrs. Randolph was a well-born young widow with children; an Edith Wharton character come to life. She traveled in his social set and Mr. Morgan took her up as if she were a friend of the family. She often accompanied him, his wife and his children, and friends, on his trips to Europe. Although he found a lot of free time for walks and rides a deux with Mrs. Randolph. The idea of a married man befriending a young widow and including her in the family activities is anathema to the modern woman. However, in the late Victorian age, the Man did what he wanted to do. Unless of course, he wasn’t a man of means.
Between 1890 and 1895, Morgan and Randolph were often together, privately, and for long periods of time, accompanied when they were by close trusted friends. Although there were occasional allusions to their relationship in the local scandal sheet, Town Topics, there was never anything along the tabloidal lines that today engage in public ridicule and abuse of a man in that position. If there had been, one can imagine Mr. Morgan would have fixed them good, or as he and his peers did from time to time, paid them off. Of course, in those days, Mr. Morgan was also a friend of James Gordon Bennett, the millionaire yachtsman/roué/publisher of the New York Herald (later the Herald-Tribune) whose sex life was legendary among his peers. The affair with Edith Randolph grew more intense over time. At one point Morgan exiled his wife to Europe for the better part of two years. By the time she returned, Edith Randolph, whom she knew and had socialized with and played hostess to, was a fixture in her husband’s life. According to Strouse’s book, there came a time when Fanny Morgan had a little talk with her husband, and shortly after that Mrs. Randolph was spirited away by William C. Whitney, the politician tycoon who was the forebear of the Whitney and Vanderbilt-Whitney families today. The rancor Whitney’s marriage (his second) in 1896 to Mrs. Randolph caused within the immediate Whitney family had a profound effect on the fortunes of Whitney heirs in succeeding generations. It also had a profound effect on the new Mrs. Whitney. Not long after their marriage she broke her neck in a riding accident and died a lingering painful death. She was in her early forties. J. P. Morgan’s relationship with Mrs. Randolph was replaced not long after it ended by a relationship with a very good friend of hers – Adelaide Townsend Douglas. Mrs. Douglas was what today we would call Best Friends with Edith Randolph. In fact both women named their children after each other’s family members and themselves. Both families, as young marrieds, lived on the Douglas estate in what is now Douglaston, Long Island.
The house, according to her grandson, was paid for by Mr. Morgan. Over the years, he also set up trust funds for her (she had her own money as well) and her children. It should be noted that J.P. Morgan was very generous in providing financial assistance and stipends to a variety of friends and professional people throughout his adult life, including at times, the husbands of women friends of his. Despite his gargantuan and potentially intimidating presence, Mr. Morgan had, according to one of his women friends, a very “feminine streak in his nature .... His tenderness and sympathy, his love for beautiful things and pretty clothes were as intense as a woman’s.” Despite his refined sense of culture and his book collecting, he loved to read romantic novels, and was greatly impressed and touched by stories of women in distress, or women of goodness and men of noble character and charity. He was a highly romantic fellow away from the office with a big tender heart for sensitive women and artists.
Although he was always financially responsible and publicly respectful, he was less sensitive, it would appear, to Fanny, the long-suffering wife who had no alternative but to assume the role of less-than-preferred to other, younger women with whom she might be expected to (or forced to) socialize with. In 1912, J. Pierpont Morgan was looked upon as one of the most powerful men in America and even the world. There was political fall-out from that perception: Morgan’s power was so great that his banking decisions ruled. That same year a Congressional subcommittee headed by a Congressman from Louisiana, Arsene Pujo began to investigate “the money trust” that Morgan allegedly controlled, and the great powerful man was called to testify. Morgan’s testimony, his being called on the carpet, so to speak, was the chink in the armor of his great and esteemed reputation; a reputation that he himself, despite his sensitivities, was not too humble to ignore. The process exposed the nature of his business monopolies, the grand finale of the Robber Barons of the Industrial Revolution. While he emerged unharmed, by the following year, he was, now in his mid-seventies, a seriously weakened man.
“He was without doubt a wonderful big man and I don’t think there’s anything fine enough we can say about him. Generous to a degree and the most public spirited man in America, I’ve heard hundreds of people say, and even if he had a great many bad points, his good ones certainly out-balance them by a great deal.” J. Pierpont Morgan left all of his family members well provided for, if not extravagantly. The foundations had been laid for what would become the Morgan Library. There were generous donations to friends and associates, to many institutions which he helped found, as well as many charities that he contributed to all his life. His estate was appraised at approximately $80 million (probably more than a billion in today’s deflating currency). It has been written that John D. Rockefeller I, the nations first billionaire (maybe trillionaire in today’s currency) was surprised to learn of the “small size” of Mr. Morgan’s final estate. Rockefeller’s surprise was based on his imagined estimate of Morgan’s power in the scheme of international business. But Mr. Morgan spent a great deal of his fortune while he lived – on his lifestyle, on his family, on his art, and on his women. In today’s terms, a fatal circumstance. However, not only was his power so great, but in his day, the civility of the community over which he had presided with perceived omnipotence for decades, was equally as powerful. The man was able to live his life as he pleased. |
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