The Jews in America Trilogy (103 page)

Needless to say, Virginia was not happy with this state of affairs, nor were members of Uriah's family, who had looked forward to splitting up the vast and valuable acreage at Monticello, and who might have been willing to spend less on a monument to the deceased. After Uriah died, his will was contested and his estate went into litigation for several years. Finally the will was broken, and Monticello went to one of Uriah's nephews—appropriately named Jefferson Levy—who, with his family, maintained the big place until 1923, when a Jefferson Memorial Foundation purchased it from him for half a million dollars, a respectable gain on the $2,700 Uriah Levy had paid for it. Virginia Levy remarried rather soon after her husband's death, thus disqualifying herself from much more than the share of the estate she already had received. She survived Uriah by an astonishing sixty-three years, and died in 1925.
So it was that the widow of an officer of the War of 1812 lived well into the flapper era. She did not, however, live to see the launching of the destroyer U.S.S.
Levy
during World War II. At the height of the war, the
Levy
was described by the
New York Herald Tribune
as one of “the swift and deadly sub-killers.” It was an appropriate monument to Uriah—
more
appropriate than the life-size statue, which never came to be.

*
A copy of the Jefferson statue stands in the council chamber of City Hall in New York City.

16

THE JEWISH EPISCOPALIANS

Uriah Levy's death had been as well publicized as his life, and to the Jewish Old Guard it was all a little embarrassing. He had become the best-known Jew in America, with the word “Jew” emblazoned all over him, and his disputatious image—combined with his wife's flamboyant one—was not exactly the one the Jews wished to cultivate. Families such as the Nathans went to pains to explain that Commodore Levy was “not typical,” and should therefore
not
be treated—as he himself had obviously wanted to be treated—as some sort of spokesman for the race.

The Sephardim neither needed nor wanted a spokesman. They had integrated quietly into urban American life, and
had become gentlefolk. For these people, their Jewishness was something to be kept privately in the background, not to be noisily defended, or boasted or complained about, in the manner of a Uriah Levy. If they wished to be known publicly for anything, it was for their cultivation, breeding, good manners, and good works. It is perhaps ironic that, as the Jewish elite turned from mere moneymaking, almost with a disdainful dusting of their hands, to more elevated pursuits of the mind and spirit, they assured themselves of a less forceful role in America than the one they might have played.

There were, in fact, a number of Sephardic men who took pride in the fact that they did nothing at all. Mr. Alfred Tobias was one of these elegantly situated men. The Tobiases were a Sephardic family, originally from Liverpool, who had made a considerable fortune manufacturing chronometers. The first Tobias to emigrate to America, whose name was Tobias I. Tobias, secured himself rather thoroughly to the New York Sephardic elite when four of his children, Henry, Fanny, Harriet, and Alfred married four of Harmon Hendricks' children, Roselane, Uriah II, Henry, and Hermoine. Alfred Tobias' sole occupation was “handling his investments”—a task he obviously performed quite well, for he increased his own considerable inheritance as well as those of his already wealthy Hendricks wife, and his wife's two orphaned nieces.

Cousin Florian Tobias was also proud to confess that he had never worked a day in his life at anything that could be called a job, and that he never intended to. Oh, he did a few things. He was an amateur billiard champion, and he practiced every day on his full-size Collender table in the billiard room. He had a small carpenter's shop in the house, where he turned out beautiful picture frames, taborets, screens, and delicate objets d'art. He was an admitted dilettante, and his only practical chore in life
occurred when coal was being delivered for the furnaces of his father's house in Forty-eighth Street. Cousin Florian always posted himself outside the house, just beside the coal chute—in his best clothes, of course, and in his top hat—where he counted the number of truckloads that went into the cellar, to make sure that the proper tonnages were being delivered. It was not too taxing a job, or life, and Cousin Florian lived to the comfortable age of seventy-four.

The Hendrickses, meanwhile, were doing nicely. With their copper-rolling mills in New Jersey, their big country estate at Belleville, and their town house at 414 Fifth Avenue, they were among the richest of the Sephardic families. They also owned quite a bit of Manhattan real estate, including the blocks between Sixth and Seventh avenues from Twentieth to Twenty-second streets, and thirty acres along Broadway. (Had the family held on to this, the Hendrickses would be among the city's biggest landowners today.) Of course, there were some people who considered the Hendrickses to be a little on the dull side, a little stuffy.

There were also some odd Hendricks family characteristics, and an individual who was accused, in the group, of being a bit “Hendricksy” was someone who
was fussy about dirt to the point of neurosis, was obsessive about cleanliness, or repeatedly washed his hands. Several Hendrickses were complusive hand-washers, and would never touch a stranger for fear of contamination. Once, so a story went, someone said to one of the Hendrickses at the opera, “Aren't the acoustics in this opera house terrible?” Sniffing, Mr. Hendricks replied, “Really? I don't smell anything.” But when the United States government needed money to pay for the War of 1812, the Hendrickses point out, President Madison sought loans from individuals. Henry C. de Rham, of the old New York de Rhams, offered $32,300. Harmon Hendricks topped him with $42,000.

By the latter part of the nineteenth century, the
Sephardim of New York and other cities were leading lives of comfort and reassurance. If you lived on Fifth Avenue, and most “nice” families lived on or just off it—it ran, after all, along the spine of Manhattan, and one had the nicest views from there—your house probably had a small black box affixed to an inside wall, near the front door. You pulled the handle on the box, a pleasant whirring sound emerged, and presently a messenger boy in knickers and blue cap appeared at your doorstep to carry a letter uptown, or to fetch an order from the druggist's. You rang a servant's bell, it tinkled distantly from the panel in the downstairs kitchen, and within moments a servant appeared to do your bidding. Such were the amenities of those long-ago days. And yet the servants' rooms in the old brownstones were never supplied with baths. Maids, when they bathed at all, were required to use the basement laundry tubs. Wells, where fresh water was drawn, were right on Fifth Avenue.

At the same time, doorknobs were of plated silver, and satin draperies with heavy tassels hung over window curtains of thick lace. Furniture was of gilt rosewood, covered with tufted satin, and tables were of ebony, inlaid with marquetry. A card receiver stood near every entrance. It was the fashion to have, in every formal room, a center table holding ornaments—the Boyer statuettes or the Manet bronzes, or perhaps a Monte Verdi depiction of Benjamin Franklin chaining the lightning. Thanks to the magic of electricity, the house of important downtown businessmen could be supplied with private tickers from the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. Jefferson Levy, Uriah's banker nephew, who later became a congressman, rather topped everyone in the Sephardic community. He also had a ticker from the London Stock Exchange.

In the dining rooms were red Turkish carpets and family portraits. After dinner, the families repaired to parlors, or
to music rooms, where they stood about the rosewood piano for a little singing—“Under the Daisies,” “Listen to the Mockingbird,” “Hidden in the Valley,” or “The Last Rose of Summer.” An aunt might round out the evening playing the “Anvil Chorus.” Music was considered a boon to the digestive juices. It was a cozy and sentimental era, the 1880's and 1890's, and it was hard to believe that it would ever be otherwise, or that the city was changing faster than anyone knew.

Etiquette was stressed more than what went on or appeared in the newspapers. “Always eat your ice cream with a
fork,”
the little Nathan children were advised by the governess. “It's those Germans who use their spoons. Remember, while they were still peddling with packs on their backs, your family was having dinner with kings and queens.” Of course, there were mésalliances. When Rosa Content (of a pre-Revolutionary Sephardic family) married James Seligman (German, of the then international banking house), she always referred to her in-laws as “the peddlers.” As for the Jews of eastern Europe, they were elaborately ignored. Mrs. L. Napoleon Levy (wife of another of Uriah's nephews, and a Hendricks in her own right), embroidering her family tree on a sampler, put the words “from Europe” next to the name of one of her grandfathers because she could not bring herself to admit—even in such a limited public way as stitchwork—that he had come from Poland. Mrs. Levy liked to remind her children that, at her wedding in 1892, the list of guests had included not only Levys, Hendrickses, Lazaruses, Seixases, and Wolffs, but also Roosevelts, Shackelfords, Rittenhouses, Van Rensselaers, and Kings. The Alfred Tobiases (cousins of Levys) were proud to list among their neighbor and friends the Livingstons, the Barclays, and the Auchinclosses.

There were other proofs of social acceptance by
Christians. The Hendrickses belonged to and sailed at the Larchmont Yacht Club in Westchester (which Jews have difficulty joining today), and when the Sephardic families summered, they not only went to the Jersey shore—which would later become known as a Jewish resort area—but also to Newport, Saratoga, and Bar Harbor (which were not only non-Jewish but a bit anti-Jewish and becoming more so). A Hendricks granddaughter attended Miss Gayler's School in New York. Invited to a party on a Friday night, she replied that she was sorry, she couldn't attend, “Because that is our Sabbath.” There was nothing further said, but from that point on it was noticed that parties for girls at Miss Gayler's School were no longer scheduled for Friday evenings, but were given on Saturday nights instead, out of courtesy to the elegant Sephardim.

Of course, there were scandals, and cases of people who refused to fit into the mold. There was the shocking case of Aunt Agnes Hendricks Wolff, who, in the 1890's, had a notorious affair with a non-Jewish gentleman named Townsend. They went off to Paris together and traveled flagrantly through Europe as man and wife, a state of affairs the family found intolerable. The two were written up in
Town Topics,
the leading scandal sheet of the day, and it all came to a tragic end (as anyone who had read the Maria Edgeworth stories could have predicted) when, one day riding with Mr. Townsend on Long Island, Aunt Agnes was thrown from her mount and killed.

Then there was cousin Annie Lazarus, sister of the poetess Emma, one of wealthy Moses Lazarus' six daughters, who was some sort of revolutionary. She was forever crusading for immigrants' rights, and she married a non-Jewish artist named Johnny Johnston. She favored America's intervention in World War I, and when the country remained isolationist she threw up her hands, declared herself disillusioned with the United States, and she and her
husband sailed off to Italy, where they lived in a Venetian palazzo with a beautiful garden. She refused to communicate with or receive any of her American friends or relatives but, it was pointed out at the time, she seemed perfectly willing to go on receiving her considerable American income. Her picture was turned against the wall, and her name was permanently dropped from family conversations. How she and her husband fared during the Second World War, no one knows.

And of course there were quarrels. A schism involving a set of Sèvres china of museum quality has long divided the Hendricks family. Years ago, when an estate was being divided, the Sèvres was split between two cousins—a cup here, a saucer there—and its proper ownership has been in dispute ever since. Visiting Mrs. Henry Hendricks, a cousin once remarked, “Ah, I see you have the rest of the Sèvres.” “No,” said Mrs. Hendricks frostily,
“you
have.”

But in general the Sephardim of the late nineteenth century did as they were supposed to do. The men decorated the boards of directors of the proper corporations, and the correct hospitals, museums, and charities. Women engaged in daintier pastimes—painting, reading, letter writing, going to concerts, operas, and ballets. Women were not given much in the way of formal education (the educated woman, little girls were told, had a hard time finding a husband). But they were cultivated, trained in the arts of charm and wit and small talk on a wide variety of subjects. A surprising number of women—cousin Emma Lazarus is the most famous example—wrote poetry, for their own enjoyment if not for publication.

One of this delicate breed of nineteenth-century woman was Great-Aunt Amelia Barnard Tobias Lazarus, who might have stepped out of the pages of an Edith Wharton novel. Indeed, the young Mrs. Wharton was among Aunt
Amelia's circle of friends. Aunt Amelia was not only a Tobias, and therefore connected to the Hendrickses; she was also collaterally descended from Mordecai Gomez, Daniel's brother, and she was therefore connected as well to the Lopezes, Seixases, de Lucenas, and Levys, to say nothing of the Nathans and Cardozos. She was an encapsulation of the great Sephardic strains. In her house in East Ninth Street, just a few doors away from University Place, Aunt Amelia lived a life that had settled elegantly and comfortably into a pattern: congealed, precise, predictable. Her late husband, Jacob Hart Lazarus, who had died in 1891, had been one of the most popular and respected society portraitists of his day—“a nineteenth-century Copley,” he had been called. Among other great subjects, he had painted four generations of the Astor family. He left Aunt Amelia amply fixed. The Ninth Street house was a large, three-story affair of red brick where Aunt Amelia was cared for by three maids and her maiden sister, Great-Aunt Sophia Tobias, who “kept house” for Aunt Amelia. On most afternoons, Aunt Amelia could be found reclining—she suffered from angina, and did not move around much—on her long red velvet and mahogany couch in the drawing room, where she conducted what amounted to a perpetual salon.