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Scarcely had I caught my breath after the second grade in Leb Missouri, when I was face to face with an entirely new cast of char in a totally new venue, New York City. Queen of the players on dazzling stage was a willowy woman with weightless flaxen hair moved in sudden nervous starts but once in motion floated effortles creating for me the image of a grand, highly visible, Tinker Bell. Dr in our 1939 Plymouth from Missouri to New York, my mother prepared me for Great Aunt Ethel in exalted prose; yet, in her own she was stunningly greater than my imagination's best productions. spoke with a soft crooning voice accenting syllables in a novel way that I often grasped the word only after a delay. Oh, she meant decent when she said desant'*. The word game added to the numerous pleasures listening to her.
Ethel Morningstar Goodman, born Eva Morgenstern in Jerusale Palestine on the last day of 1899, was the wife of a wealthy New Yo impresario and had been surrogate mother to her orphaned niece, my mother, Liz. Ethel was a talented and accomplished sculptress as well a frustrated novelist. I had never looked carefully at a sculpture until 1 first visited their Park Avenue apartment. A pedestaled marble female torso greeted me in the foyer. Going around to view the other side of the statue, I was disappointed to find that she was un-sculpted and shapeless.
Aunt Ethel and my Great Uncle Merton had lived in Paris in the twenties and she remained a Francophile. At work she emulated Henry Moore but in conversation she preferred to talk about music and ballet. She had met Stravinsky and Diaghilev and told me about them with an adoration that came through as heartfelt but grounded in objective reality.
She was forty-seven when we arrived in New York. I am now twenty-one years older than she was then - a mind boggling consideration. I looked up to her as a refined goddess. She dressed in her negligee and slippers until the day was half over entertaining me in her bedroom and dressing room as if in her living room. I decided that this was because of my age since she did not open the bedroom door for adults like the chauffeur or the butler.
One day she read a passage to me from a literary journal - from the Southern U.S., I think. It was a young man's story about his beautiful art teacher and included the words, "Her long legs were so appealing I could hardly control my excitement and folded my hands over my lap." She put down the journal. "Do you know who that was - in the story." I didn't now, although I knew it had to have some connection. "I am the teacher in the story. He worked for me in my studio and fell in love with me. It's the only time - at least that I know of - that someone has written fiction about me. He's one person who admired everything about me.
As she said this I looked at her legs, which impressed me as unusually slender and lacking in musculature. I was old enough to see that according to standards they were most beautiful. She was a tall person with broad shoulders and what I would now describe as a model's curvaceous figure.
I was eight but had derived from many lengthy conversations with my mother a superficial knowledge about people's natures. My mother often talked about sincere people and pretentious people, self-reliant people and envious people, erudite people and boors.
Aunt Ethel offered a refreshing contrast to my mother. She was as open as a child. I felt I could understand her. When she read me the passage by her young admirer I understood that she was touched by his love and that it nurtured some living part of her self that still needed his affection.
I felt very fortunate indeed to be allowed to view both my aunt's intimate physical self and her intimate emotional side. I realized that she was not so closely attached to my uncle. This was clear even to an eight year old from the fact that they slept in separate rooms-without even a connecting door. It was clear also from the somewhat belittling tone that Uncle Mert used at the dinner table. He referred to Ethel's "artistic friends" in a derisive tone. implying that they were phonies ar ne'er do wells - unlike the highly successful virtuosos, playwrights and actors he sponsored or managed. Similarly, he satirized her political leanings with new words for me, like "pinko" that I didn't comprehend but knew were uncomplimentary. I loved Uncle Mert, who was warmly affectionate toward me, but it saddened me that he wasn't nicer to his wife.
Ethel and Mert had no children. Ethel behaved toward me as if I were her son, but a special kind of son for whom she had no parenting responsibility. She went out infrequently but delighted in taking me shopping for clothes or toys, attending matinee concerts, plays and openings of museum shows. She smiled at the doorman, ticket takers, people sitting next to us, "This is my great nephew, Edward. He's just come to New York." They would follow with an easy question, such as, what I was learning in school, that I answered readily. Ethel beamed while D I talked. It was evident I was a source of great pleasure for her.
I don't remember Ethel being cross with me. I could tell when she was in a bad mood-she would be withdrawn and preoccupied, but she didn't make me the object of her ill feeling.
Dressing was important to her. She particularly liked to talk to me when she was dressing. I didn't have the sense that she was being seductive. I had had some experience with that. She seemed to feel lonely and dressing was a time that she felt most comfortable. She was discreet, turning her back to put on her bra and panties or stepping behind a screen. She didn't invite me into the part of the bathroom with the toilet and shower, although I sometimes sat in the dressing room outside the shower. Once she had on a slip and underwear she would walk freely about me. She liked to put on her stockings while sitting directly in front of me. She rolled the stockings slowly up her legs until she reached her thighs, and then stood up to fasten them. She didn't wear a girdle. She didn't need to. When I commented on this (that she didn't need to) she protested that her behind was flabby and she really should wear a girdle but didn't like to.
It was thoroughly enjoyable taking part in her dressing. Not so with my mother. My mother was proud, but not proud of her looks. She was short and severe looking, with rather bulging eyes. She had a habit of hiking up her skirt to check her stockings. She seemed to have no modesty at all and revealed her girdle when she fixed her stockings. I dreaded her ritual performance but usually stayed put. It was revolting but, in an odd way, fascinating.
Aunt Ethel's most cherished sculpture was of Leopold Stokowski's hands. She kept them in her dressing room. His fingers were very long and poised in a way that suggested the climax of a Beethoven symphony. I went to hear him at Carnegie Hall. He conducted with great feeling and moved his body and hands in a way that seemed to fit the music. She had known him for many years, even when he conducted in Philadelphia.
She asked to sculpt his hands out of clay. He was very pleased with the outcome. She had a special, private, feeling about their relationship. Hence she did not show the sculpture of his hands to the public.
Uncle Mert respected Stokowski but had no tech writing dealings th Aa with him and did not talk about him.
I heard from Uncle Mert about George and Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein - both father and son - Irving Berlin, Lena Horne, Oscar Levant and many others whose names meant little to me. Aunt Ethel took me to see a young conductor in Central Park who - to my way of seeing it did gymnastics as he conducted and thus seemed to me ridiculous. This was the young Leonard Bernstein. I was not a name dropper then nor impressed by celebrities. My aunt liked the young conductor from Harvard and laughed when I disapproved, agreeing that he was terribly athletic.
There was a great deal I didn't understand about adults. For example, why they laughed so much during the Thin Man movies. In The Thin Man Goes Home the audience laughed most loudly when a jitterbugging sailor steals Myrna Loy onto the dance floor and spins her over her back, rolls her across his knees and, in general, throws her this way and that. It didn't occur to me that most of the people depicted in the movie were supposed to be dignified types. I had little appreciation for social boundaries or satire thereof. References to German Jews and Russian Jews went past me. I heard that there must be something that distinguished them, but whatever that might be escaped me.
Bunny Weinberg was my Uncle Mert's private secretary. She sat at a miniature desk in his bedroom taking dictation in magical shorthand. When we had gotten to know one another she showed me the strokes for a few sounds so that the process became less magical; however, her dictationist speed continued to amaze me. Unlike a magician's art her craft was practical. She was a pragmatic person through and through. She saw in all the niches of reality around her opportunities to make useful fit ond clarifications and suggestions.
My Uncle Mert liked to sit propped up in bed with his business papers arranged before him. From this comfortable throne he dictated letters, memos and occasional memoirs. Miss Weinberg was always ahead, pausing when he would collect his thoughts. Watching her expression while she was awaiting his next words, I saw that she was never impatient. Perhaps she was using the time to think something that would come up in the future. She did not frown, bite her lips, scratch her head or squirm in the chair. She was not a nervous type.
I talked to her about the day's events, such as, going to an art with my mother and aunt to look at a painting Ethel was gallery considering. I could count on her making comments which showed that she was truly listening to me - not being politely attentive. Once she said, "Going places with your mother and your aunt is interesting for you. You learn about a world you've never known. But you're not their little vassal. Their ways aren't the only ways. Boys your age have quite different views about what they see."
I understood what she meant about boys my age. When they looked at a long flight of rounded stone steps they saw the alternatives for throwing a rubber ball in stoop-ball. Hitting a lower step on the upper part of the lip would create a high pop-up. A few steps above-if you got it on the facing edge-would make a line drive. The upper steps were likely to be grounders. Boys saw much more than brownstone leading up to the formal front door. The part about being their little vassal was obscure. I did know what a vassal was. I didn't know that she meant I was trying to be their slave.
I wanted to do the kinds of things my aunt admired. I thought that was quite natural.