A Voice From Old New York: A Memoir of My Youth Read Free Page B

and Priscilla moved to Stockb ridge for a year or more. When she came home, she was just the same so far as I could see, but always in the company of a disguised trained nurse.
    Mother, however, was by no means always to be put upon. She and I were once in Grand Central Station waiting for a train to take us to Stockbridge to spend a weekend with Priscilla, when whom should we see but our famous doctor, who had just detrained?
    "Oh, Mrs. Auchincloss, I'm glad to run into you. I've had an emergency call and can't be with you this weekend as planned. But you'll find everything ready for you."
    To my amazement I heard Mother's firm reply. "No, Doctor, that won't do. I'm afraid you'll have to take the train back to Stockbridge with me."
    And he did! She was supporting him.

    Mother did not hesitate to draft the family into her different projects for Priscilla. The family came first, and if one was ailing the others had to defer. Thus when Priscilla, behind as usual in her schoolwork, needed summer tutoring and Mother feared the effect on her of strange teachers, she induced my older brother to give up a trip to Europe to do the job.
    John was something of a saint, always obliging her, but I was different. When Mother asked me to have Priscilla as my guest at the annual school dance at Groton, I flatly refused. Whereas John, at party after party, refrained from dancing that he might be free to rescue Priscilla when she was "stuck" too long with some frustrated youth.
    She was not insensitive nor, by nature, ungrateful, but she never quite realized how much John did for her in these early days. People, even well brought up and thoughtful young women, are rarely inclined to acknowledge those who cover their disadvantages. Priscilla went her own way until the night (I shall never forget it!) when, one might say, she woke up. Her relief from illness must have been gradually arriving, but it was at a club dance where we spotted her, suddenly moving animatedly over the floor with a handsome young man I had never seen before. Both were smiling. I asked John if he had introduced them, and he said no, the man had just cut in. Although I have no intention of trivializing her condition or minimizing the difficulties of alleviating it, it seemed that Priscilla had, that very night, suddenly decided that life might be different. From then on she got better and better, and acquired all the friends she needed. She married happily and had three fine children. There were always to be bad times-severe recurrent depressions—but there were good ones as well.

    I have not mentioned my brother Howland as he is still living and can still speak of his experience for himself. I honor him with silence, as I have tried to recapture our siblings, their struggles and kindnesses, with understanding and fairness.
    We were united all of us in our family, but rarely deeply intimate. In the times of which I speak it seems there was more not discussed than otherwise. What was there, after all, to share at length, even among family? Loyalty and consideration—this is how it was among brothers and sisters in the world from which we came: society, as it was known, mostly by those who found themselves admiring its surfaces from the outskirts. Those of us on the inside, feeling the expectations and demands, may have felt somewhat differently. At least on occasion.

3. What Some Call "Society"
    T HERE IS NO such thing as a predominating and generally recognized Society in New York City today, but there are, indeed, many societies. The so-called Social Register has swollen to the size of a fat telephone directory, and it is just as common for people to refuse to be listed as to seek to get in. The announcement of engagements and marriages in the Sunday
New York Times
lists dozens of couples. In my youth, the social page of the daily
Times
devoted its left-hand column to a single pair with a large portrait of the bride or fiancée who were apt to be known, or at