The Tragedy

Excerpt from “The Opening”

November 1963 — The police said the state-owned automobile went out of control in the eastbound lane of the New York Thruway, crossed the median and was struck by the oncoming car before spinning into a third car. The man in the first car, Albert Corey, returning from a visit to a historic site further upstate, was thrown to the pavement. The next day the headline read, “Historian to Millions, Dead at Age 64.”

Almost a year had passed since then, and Edith Cole was still trying to turn the page. Albert had argued so strongly for her old family home to be preserved intact – drawing up detailed estimates, working through the power brokers – just as he had successfully done for the birthplace of the great American writer Walt Whitman and many others. And the Cole House was, he argued, a truly exceptional opportunity. For inside Edith’s Hudson Valley home there were still over 40 original oil paintings, half of which were by her great grandfather, Thomas Cole, and all of which were included in her offer to New York State to take the place for $89,000.

“I wish to assure you,” wrote Governor Nelson Rockefeller, “of my keen personal interest in plans to acquire the Cole Estate. In view of a rather tight budgetary situation in the State this year, however, I feel that action on this matter must be deferred.”

Within a few decades, the paintings alone would be worth millions of dollars.

But it was still 1964, and 19th-century American art was not even mentioned in survey courses of art history. The great volumes of scholarship, blockbuster exhibitions, and astronomical auction prices were all in the future. For Edith, any hope of convincing the government to take on her great-grandfather’s legacy, as well as the man leading the charge, were both dead. Edith recalled Albert’s earnest brown eyes, thick white eyebrows, high forehead and slightly protruding ears. Some called him formal and old-fashioned; others called him cold as a fish. He had a penchant for antique silver, a weakness for buildings that creaked, and a tweed jacket for every occasion. The Greene County Legislature thought that his death might convince the governor to reconsider, and perhaps make the Thomas Cole home into a memorial acquisition to honor the man who was so vigorously in favor of making it a state historic site, but even that bill had failed, stalled in the Budget Committee. Really now, Edith reassured herself, it was time to move on with her life.

“Of course, the whole subject of things I sold makes me rather ill,” wrote Edith forty years later, “but my hopes of a museum were shattered, and I needed the money…”

COLE'S PAINTINGS TO BE SOLD TODAY, blared The New York Times on September 26, 1964. “Auction Will Take Place in Artist's Home Upstate.”

By all accounts, the place was packed. The advance crew erected a large, striped, open-sided tent on the lawn, which by 10 am was overflowing with more than 700 hopefuls, including museum directors authorized to spend tens of thousands as well as curious neighbors out for a souvenir. Mr. O. Rundle Gilbert was in his element. A sturdy table was his stage, and the country auction was his art. His dark hair came to a point in the middle of his forehead, and his 3-piece suit gave him the necessary seriousness. A crew man held up A Woodland Scene.

“…and I’ll start the bidding at one hundred dollars, one hundred, one hundred, who will bid one hundred for a piece of history, an original oil on canvas, an American original by Thomas Cole himself, anyone, how about fifty dollars, fifty now, yes fifty now in the fourth row, thank you, now looking for seventy-five …”

Edith’s look was pure 1955, with her pleated skirt past the knee and her hair fresh out of hot rollers. She beamed at all of the attention her predecessor was getting at last. It had been so depressing getting nowhere with either the state or the feds. The star reporter Bill Kennedy was there from the Albany Times Union. The actress Helen Hayes was bidding with glee. Cameras flashed and money was promised. By noon, even the Ladies Auxiliary from St. Luke’s Church was flush with cash and completely sold out of hot dogs and pumpkin pie.

“…going…going…are you all done?” said the auctioneer, and by the late afternoon, everything was gone.

Late Bloomer

Memoir Excerpt - 1970s New York City

Art was forever and always my favorite subject, but if you were to pry open my ribs and peer into my childhood soul, my dearest desire was to bloom. 

“You’re a late bloomer,” said my mother.

I’m a defective bud, I thought.

The thing that didn’t sit right with me was that the bloomers were doing all the things I was told not to do. They were pouring salt into the sugar bowl and sugar into the saltshaker. They put plastic doo-doo on the teacher’s chair. They were sneaking off somewhere when they said they had to go to the bathroom. I had no idea what they were doing but it couldn’t be good. When they whispered in class I told them to stop it. Didn’t they know they might miss something important?

In our home zone there were kindly doormen in blue uniforms standing under every awning. One block west was the pet store where we bought our parakeets, and on the York Avenue corner was the Mansion Diner where I ordered spaghetti and meatballs. Just west of that was Woolworth’s with one of the O’s in “WOOL” listing sideways, where my brother and I would ogle the games and tools and packages of socks. A little further along was Schaller & Weber, a holdover from the era when East 86th Street was German Broadway. My mother would buy white sausages while we coveted fruit-shaped marzipan displayed like jewels.

A few doors the other way was Carl Schurz Park, which all the kids called Carl “Shurks” Park. From nineteen floors up, I would lean on our long broad windowsill for what felt like half a day and study its curved paths and oval lawns. An ice cream truck the size of a half a stick of butter parked there in summer, and in wintertime a Christmas tree cast blurry colored lights onto the snow.

On Saturdays, we raced up the curved granite steps that were so wide and flat we had to take two extra steps at each level before stepping up again. The avenue’s honking of horns was quieter at the top, and we breathed in the smells of cut grass, trampled soil and dog poop. Another flight of wide granite stairs led to the boardwalk – a mile-long balcony high up over the East River. A wrought iron railing was all that separated us from the dark and salty waves below, churning like boiling oil. Directly below our feet, an endless stream of cars hurried unseen through the East River Drive. Across the river were gloomy brown buildings that showed no sign of life, day or night. 

Starting in kindergarten, I held my mother’s hand for three blocks down East End Avenue on our walk to school, I in my navy blue tunic and she in her cotton print skirt, allowing her arm to be pulled up and down while I jumped and skipped. When we crossed 85th, 84th and 83rd, I glimpsed the narrower streets where old people came and went from four-story Brownstones, unchanged since the time of an Edward Hopper painting. On 85th it was a bent woman carrying a stack of wide-brimmed feathered hats down the front steps while four workmen stood by eating jelly donuts, and on 84th it was an old man in a three-piece suit eating peperoni pizza on a piece of wax paper while a delivery man whizzed by with a dozen orchids bobbing their heads. When we reached 83rd Street, I squirmed out of my mother’s hand so that I could run the last hundred feet on my own. 

The Brearley School was a girl-empowerment zone, designed to maximize our gumption so that we could take charge of the male-dominated field of our choice. Accordingly, when we needed worms to dissect, we marched to the park to hunt them down. The parallel bars were a freedom machine, where the curve of my body carried me around and launched me into the air. In History we probed the unfamiliar practices of foreign civilizations. We asked why and why not. School rules were not royal edicts from on high; they were respectfully explained. We didn’t just learn the Greek Myths; we impersonated a God. 

Of course I chose Aphrodite. For me there was no other choice. D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths said “she was so lovely to behold that the wind almost lost his breath,” and I instinctively felt it. That is the power I need. Although I could not have put it into words at the time, I knew that men were the keepers of many things that I wanted: recognition, access, professional success. Men were in charge of things. I liked that Aphrodite rendered them helpless.