I spent the early afternoon doing errands in Locust Valley, then stopped at McGlade's, the local pub, for a beer. The usual Saturday crowd was there, including the pub's Softball team, back from trouncing the florist's ten pathetic sissies, who were there also and had a different version of the game. There were a few self-employed building-trade contractors who needed a drink after giving estimates to homeowners all morning, and there were the weekend joggers who all seemed to have a suspicious amount of tread left on their hundred-dollar running shoes hooked around the bar rails. And then there were the minor gentry in their Land's End and L. L. Bean uniforms, and the major gentry whose attire is difficult to describe, except to say you've never seen it in a store or catalogue. The old gentleman beside me, for instance, had on a pink tweed shooting jacket with a green leather gun patch, and his trousers were baggy green wool embroidered with dozens of little ducks. I was wearing the L. L. Bean uniform: Docksides, tan poplin trousers, button-down plaid shirt, and blue windbreaker. Many of us were perusing wife-authored 'to do' lists as we sipped our beer, and our wallets, when opened for cash, revealed pink dry-cleaning slips. On the restaurant side, well-dressed women with shopping bags were chatting over cottage cheese and lettuce. It was definitely Saturday. Good pubs, like churches, are great equalizers of social distinctions; more so, perhaps, because when you approach the rail in a pub, you do so with the full knowledge that talking is not only permitted but often required. In fact, as I was having my second beer, I saw in the bar mirror my plumber, leaning against the wall behind me. I went over to him and we talked about my plumbing problems. To wit: I have a cracked cast-iron waste pipe, and he wants to replace it with PVC pipe, at some expense. I think it can be soldered instead. He asked me about the procedure for adopting his second wife's son, and I gave him an estimate. I think we were too expensive for each other, and the conversation turned to the Mets. You can talk baseball here. I chatted with a few other acquaintances, then with the bartender and with the old gentleman with the pink tweed jacket, who turned out not to be major gentry but a retired butler from the Phipps' estate who was wearing the boss's cast-offs. You used to get a lot of that around here, but I see less of it in recent years.
It was too nice a day to spend more than an hour in the pub, so I left, but before I did, I gave my plumber the name of an adoption attorney whose fees are moderate. He gave me the name of a handyman who could try a weld on the pipe. The wheels of American commerce spin, spin, spin.
I got into my Bronco and headed home. On the way back, I passed my office and assured myself it was still there. I thought about the ten million in stocks stashed in the vault. It would not be a problem to have Mrs Lauderbach – that's my client's name – sign the necessary papers for me to liquidate the stocks, and for me to hop on down to Rio for a very long vacation. And I didn't need Lester Remsen's help in this at all. But I've never violated a trust or stolen a nickel, and I never will. I felt very pious. What a day I was having. My mood stayed bright until I approached the gates of Stanhope Hall, when my brow, as they say, darkened. I'd never really noticed it before, but this place was getting me down. The truth, once it grabs hold of you, makes you take notice of the little buzzings in your head. This was not your garden-variety midlife crisis. This was no crisis at all. This was Revelation, Epiphany, Truth. Unfortunately, like most middle-aged men, I had no idea what to do with the truth. But I was open to suggestions.
I stopped at the gatehouse and looked in on the Allards, who were listening to the radio and reading. Ethel was engrossed in a copy of The New Republic, which may have been the only copy in Lattingtown, and George was perusing the Locust Valley Sentinel, which he's been reading for sixty years to keep abreast of who died, got married, had children, owed taxes, wanted zoning variances, or had a gripe they wanted to see in print.
I picked up Susan's and my mail, which is delivered to the gatehouse, and riffled through it on my way out. Ethel called after me, "There was a gentleman here to see you. He didn't leave his name."
Sometimes, as when the phone rings, you just know who's calling. And Ethel's stress on the word gentleman told me that this was no gentleman. I asked, "A dark-haired man driving a black Cadillac?"
"Yes."
Ethel never says 'sir', so George chimed in, "Yes, sir. I told him you were not receiving visitors today. I hope that was all right." He added, "I didn't know him, and I didn't think you did."
Or wanted to, George. I smiled at the image of Frank Bellarosa being told that Mr Sutter was not receiving today. I wondered if he knew that meant 'get lost'. George asked, "What shall I say if he calls again, sir?" I replied as if I'd already thought this out, and I guess I must have. "If I'm at home, show him in."
"Yes, sir," George replied with that smooth combination of professional disinterest and personal disagreement with the master. I left the gatehouse and climbed back into the Bronco.
I drove past the turnoff for my house and continued on toward the main house. Between my house and the main house, on Stanhope land, is the tennis court, whose upkeep Susan had taken on as her responsibility. Beyond the tennis court, the tree-lined lane rises, and I stopped the Bronco at the top of the rise and got out. Across a field of emerging wildflowers and mixed grasses, where the great lawn once stretched, stood Stanhope Hall.
The design of the mansion, according to Susan and as described in various architectural books that mention Stanhope Hall, was based on French and Italian Renaissance prototypes. However, the exterior is not European marble, but is built of good Yankee granite. Spaced along the front are attached columns or wall pilasters with Ionic capitals, and in the centre of the house is a high, open portico with freestanding classical columns. The roof is flat, with a balustraded parapet running around the perimeter of the mansion's three massive wings. The place looks a bit like the White House, actually, but better built. There were once formal gardens, of course, and they were planted on the descending terraces that surround the great house. Each year at this time the gardens still burst into bloom, wild with roses and laurel, yellow forsythia and multicoloured azaleas, the survival of the fittest, a celebration of nature's independence from man.
For all the European detail, there are distinctly American features to the house, including large picture windows in the rear, a greenhouse-style breakfast room to capture the rising sun, a solarium on the roof, and an American infrastructure of steel beams, heating ducts, good plumbing, and safe electricity.
But to answer Lester Remsen's question, there is nothing architecturally significant or unique about this misplaced European palace. Had McKim, Mead, or White designed a truly new American house, whatever that might have been in 1906, then the landmark people and all the rest of the preservationists would say, "There is nothing like this in the whole country." But the architects and their American clients of this period were not looking into the future, or even trying to create the present; they were looking back over their shoulders into a European past that had flowered and died even before the first block of granite arrived on this site. What these people were trying to create or re-create here in this new world is beyond me. I can't put myself in their minds or their hearts, but I can sympathize with their struggle for an identity, with their puzzlement which has troubled Americans from the very beginning – Who are we, where do we fit, where are we going? It occurred to me that these estates are not only architectural shams, but they are shams in a more profound way. Unlike their European models, these estates never produced a profitable stalk of wheat, a bucket of milk, or a bottle of wine. There was some hobby farming, to be sure, but the crops certainly didn't support the house and the servants and the Rolls-Royces. And no one who was hired to work the land here could have felt the sense of wonder and excitement that comes with the harvest and the assurance that the earth and the Lord, not the stock market, has provided.