Education: Socialites’ Solomon

In the private chambers of a New York Supreme Court justice in Manhattan one day last month a thin, nervous little girl of 10 sat swinging her spindly legs from a fat leather swivel chair. She was Gloria Vanderbilt, scion of one of the great socialite families of the U.S. Gently questioning her in clipped accents was a judge whose big body filled his ample chair and whose funny little goatee waggled up and down as he talked. An oldtime Tammany politician from the East Side, Justice John Francis Carew had hitherto known Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Astors, Goulds only as so many shadowy newspaper names which, as flesh & blood, never came into his middleclass world. Now it was his duty to shape the life of this small Vanderbilt by deciding what her surroundings, friends and education should be for the next decade.

The decision had fallen to him because two high-born women were at war over the girl’s custody. One was sleek, brittle Mrs. Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, 29. the child’s mother. The other was the child’s aunt, lean-faced, determined Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, born Gertrude Vanderbilt 57 years ago. For two years Mrs. Whitney had kept her late brother’s only daughter on her 3,000-acre estate at Old Westbury, L. I. while his widow occupied herself in smart European resorts. Last September, settled in a house in Manhattan, Mrs. Vanderbilt had little Gloria brought in from the country for a visit. The child became so overwrought at separation from Mrs. Whitney that her nurse whisked her back to her aunt. Thereupon, with a disregard of privacy which shocked her in-laws, Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt practically charged her sister-in-law with kidnapping and instituted habeas corpus proceedings to obtain possession of her daughter (TIME, Oct. 8 et seq).*

When the case was brought before him eight weeks ago Justice Carew ruled at once that it was up to Mrs. Whitney to prove that Mrs. Vanderbilt could not be trusted to rear and educate her daughter properly. Mrs. Whitney promptly set out to besmirch her sister-in-law’s reputation, to show that in the years when she was gadding about Paris, Cannes, Biarritz and Deauville with her hard-drinking, hard-living friends she had paid no heed at all to Gloria’s upbringing. Mrs. Harry Hays Morgan, Mrs. Vanderbilt’s mother, turned up as one of the most damaging witnesses against her own daughter. Mrs. Morgan testified that for four and a half years Mrs. Vanderbilt had callously ignored her child, given her no schooling while she “devoted herself exclusively to her own gay pleasures…cocktail parties, dinners and night clubs.” During this period of traipsing around Europe her granddaughter was practically turned over to Mrs. Morgan. Only education Gloria got from her mother, swore the child’s garrulous Irish nurse, was in how to mix a cocktail. She might also, suggested a pert French maid, have picked up some of Mrs. Vanderbilt’s “very dirty” picture books. The nurse said she and Mrs. Morgan had peeked on Prince Gottfried zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg lying on a bed with Mrs. Vanderbilt. The maid said she had seen Mrs. Vanderbilt and the Marchioness of Milford Haven doing “something very funny.” At that, Justice Carew was so shocked that he slammed closed the doors of his courtroom to Press and public.

“Monstrous!” cried the Marchioness of Milford Haven, dispatching her solicitor from London to keep an eye on the proceedings. “Abominable!” declared dapper. Prince zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg, rushing from Germany with his wife to defend in person his own and Mrs. Vanderbilt’s reputations. Captain Jefferson Davis Cohn, wealthy British sportsman-adventurer, arrived from London to declare of Mrs. Vanderbilt, “A more loving mother I never met!” Also to Mrs. Vanderbilt’s side, along with what tabloids called “The European cocktail set,” rallied her younger sister Mrs. Benjamin Thaw Jr. from Pittsburgh, her twin sister Lady Furness from London, her brother Harry Hays Morgan Jr. from Paris. Shocked and indignant were they at their mother for siding with Mrs. Whitney. Said Mrs. Thaw, “Mother is storing up a lonely old age for herself.”*

With the hearings closed to them, newshawks kept tabs as best they could by peeping through the courtroom’s glass-paneled doors, waylaying principals, witnesses, lawyers and Justice Carew outside. Three doctors discussed Gloria’s delicate health. Alfred Cleveland (“Blumey”) Blumenthal, Broadway character known chiefly as a friend of “Jimmy” Walker, was publicly humiliated by having the fact of his friendship with Mrs. Vanderbilt offered as damaging evidence against her character. Even Mrs. Vanderbilt’s cold cream testimonials were raked up. Pale and trembling, she began appearing at the trial in the company of a nurse, was reported to have suffered a heart attack. “Heart attack, eh?” humphed her mother. “She could always dance all night.”

As proof that Gloria had been unhappy with her mother, Mrs. Whitney presented letters the child had written to Mrs. Morgan from England, Paris, Berlin, Cannes, Switzerland.† Mrs. Vanderbilt read the letters, fled the witness stand in a burst of tears, consulted with her lawyer, shrewd, hard-boiled Nathan Burkan. Then she charged that erasures, insertions and use of adult words indicated that the letters had been dictated and corrected by an older person. A handwriting expert corroborated the charge. Lawyer Burkan was inspired to recall how the 9-year-old son of Marie Antoinette had been prompted to accuse his mother of incest, thus helping to send her to the guillotine. Throbbed he: “There is more than one parallel between the beautiful, pleasure-loving Queen of France and my client.”

Lawyer Burkan found opening for counterattack in the fact that Mrs. Whitney, an able sculptress, has had a studio in Greenwich Village since 1907, that three years ago she founded Manhattan’s Whitney Museum of American Art. At the Whitney Museum, which Gloria had visited twice, he had photographed what Justice Carew described as a nude Hercules, an etching of a man and woman embracing, a mural in which nudes in opera hats were playing leapfrog.* What kind of surroundings were these, bristled Lawyer Burkan, for a child to be reared in? Mrs. Whitney’s lawyer countered by bringing to court photographs of nude statues in the staid Metropolitan Museum. The issue petered out in an argument over the purity of The Odyssey and Paradise Lost.

When Mrs. Whitney took the stand, she was seen to be fingering several small prayer books. Because Mrs. Whitney is an Episcopalian and Mrs. Vanderbilt a Roman Catholic, the question of Gloria’s religious training became a major point at issue. But so criss-crossed were the ties of family affection that Catholic Mrs. Morgan was reported to be praying before an improvised altar in her dressing room that her granddaughter might remain with Episcopalian Mrs. Whitney. Mrs. Whitney attempted to sidetrack the religious issue by declaring that if Gloria remained in her custody, she would be reared a Catholic, probably sent to a Catholic boarding school. Mrs. Vanderbilt promptly offered more personal care. She said she would send Gloria to study daytimes at a Catholic convent in The Bronx. “I want to place her with me,” said the young mother, “and enjoy her after her study hours.”

Justice Carew knew what Gloria herself wanted him to decide. Wide apart as were their worlds, he had had no trouble drawing the child out in their private heart-to-heart. He has raised three sons, two daughters of his own. A Columbia College and Law School graduate who still quotes Latin fluently, he worked up through the ranks, went to Congress in 1913, headed Tammany’s delegation in the House for years. There he was a member of the potent Ways & Means Committee, a close crony of Nicholas Longworth and John Nance Garner. A devout Catholic and devoted family man, he spent every week-end in Manhattan in his brownstone house on East 68th Street near Third Avenue. His Congressional career ended in 1929 when Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to New York’s Supreme Court.

In their three-hour chat Justice Carew found Gloria letter-perfect in both the Protestant “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” and Lord’s Prayer and in the Catholic “Hail Mary.” He also found that she decidedly wanted to stay with her Aunt Gertrude. It was not that she disliked her mother. But it had been no fun knocking around Europe with only an old nurse to play with. Her good times began at Old Westbury. She liked playing with her eight small cousins.* She liked her pony and dog. She liked going to Greenvale School every morning and told the Justice all about what she was studying. He concluded that she was a bright child.

In one of the toughest decisions of his career Justice Carew had no one to help him make up his mind because he alone had heard all the evidence with impartiality. But the doughty Justice felt equal to the task. When an East Side mother turned up with 300 signatures to “An Humble Appeal to Give This Mother to Her Child” he barked: “If she brings it to me I’ll make her eat it with catsup.”

First intimation of Justice Carew’s decision bewildered everyone concerned. It consisted of a single sentence: “Mr. Justice Carew decided that the child, Gloria Vanderbilt, is not to have for the future the life that it had from the death of its father up till June, 1932.”

Nagged by newshawks for details, Justice Carew slammed out of his chambers barking: “I never want to see you again.” The newshawks were waiting for him when he returned next day. Roared he: “I am Justice Carew of the Supreme Court. Please clear out of this corridor.”

But after a conference with opposing counsel Justice Carew allowed the outline of his decision gradually to be revealed. Details were to be worked out by the attorneys, submitted to him this week. He planned a split neater than Solomon’s. Gloria was to spend week days with her aunt, weekends with her mother. Whenever Mrs. Vanderbilt could prove that she had become a good mother the child would be all hers. Her prime proof would be the word of Gloria.

* Not at stake was the trust fund of $2,800,000 which Gloria inherited from her father and from which she and her mother have been allowed an income of $48,000 per year. Because Mrs. Vanderbilt was a minor when her husband died in 1925, Lawyers George W. Wickersham and Thomas B. Gilchrist were appointed guardians of the fund. Last July Mrs. Vanderbilt petitioned to replace them. Last week her petition was still pending in Surrogate’s Court while Justice Carew pondered the disposition of Gloria’s person.

* Last fortnight gossip writers predicted that Mrs. Morgan, who divorced her 72-year-old husband two years ago, would soon marry a “Mr. Pell.”

† Excerpt: “My mother is so bad to me. wish I could run away to New York to you. I am a unlucky girl Naney dear.”

* Director Julianna Force of the Whitney Museum denied possession of any such mural, declared, “The judge must have made that one up.”

* Asked what motive Mrs. Whitney could possibly have for seeking possession of the little girl except regard for Gloria’s welfare, since she already had eight grandchildren on her estate, Mrs. Vanderbilt flared: “She must have a mania for bringing up children.”