Chapter 14
Greenwich, Connecticut
Summer 1911
“It’s just like my daddy always says: channel the power of the mind. If you want to change your circumstances, then you have to change your attitude.”
My younger girl, Eleanor, looked at me, and I could see in the wide blue of her eyes that she had no idea of what her mother spoke. No matter, I reasoned. I was saying it aloud for myself. I knew that I wished to change my circumstances, and I knew I would try my best to do so with a change of my attitude. If I was going to sit in my beautiful Greenwich mansion and feel melancholy, I would channel Papa’s philosophies to overcome my doldrums, and I would do so by pouring myself into helping those who were less fortunate than I was. Like Papa, I would not abide self-pity, not when there was a world full of people who truly had cause for complaints.
I befriended a kindly Greenwich neighbor named Elsie Rockefeller, a woman about a decade my senior and well regarded in town, who invited me to join the leadership committee for the gala to support the United Workers of Greenwich. I was lonely a lot of the time, what with Eddie staying in Manhattan during the week and cavorting with lifelong Greenwich friends on the weekends, so I would keep busy by working on behalf of others. I joined the effort to raise money to save historic buildings from being torn down. I donated to local hospitals and schools. There was more to life in Greenwich, I decided, than just cocktail parties and country clubs, and I’d infiltrate the community by finding out those causes.
And I could do more than change my attitude, I decided—I could change my location as well. True, we had made our family’s home in Greenwich, but there was no reason, now that the girls were old enough, that we couldn’t travel. Many in Eddie’s set traveled—to Newport, Long Island, Saratoga Springs, London, and Paris. Why couldn’t we do the same?
So the next winter found us waiting out the coldest months wrapped in the balmy warmth of Florida. Plenty of Eddie’s colleagues and friends had fixed their interest on a wild stretch of the Atlantic coast where the railroad tycoon Henry Flagler had recently built a magnificent hotel on the barrier island called Palm Beach. He’d named his hotel The Breakers, and his first seasons attracted patrons like the Astors and the Belmonts, the Vanderbilts and the Fricks, and so, suddenly, it was the fashion to winter in Palm Beach. When I proposed we make a visit ourselves, Eddie lit up at the idea. It was the first thing we’d agreed on so easily in years.
Palm Beach was still only just developing, an outpost of chic luxury surrounded by thick jungle and untamed, mangrove-lined beaches. The shopping was still scant, the dirt roads ribbed and potholed, and that was precisely why I loved it. While Eddie visited with friends, sipping cocktails on the lawn of the luxurious Breakers or hitting golf balls off the terrace of our rented villa, I biked around the island, admiring the clusters of plump fruit trees and the tall, stately palms. Eddie and I loved to bask in the winter sun while the girls splashed with Pearcie in the surf. At night, after long dinners enjoyed outdoors against the background of the jungle noises, Eddie would knock on my bedroom door, and I’d welcome him with a warmth I hadn’t felt since the earliest days of our marriage. Within weeks I felt contented and strong, my limbs golden from the sun and firm from my daily swims and beach walks.
Late in the winter, as our return to Greenwich approached, a knot of dread began to settle in my gut. I didn’t miss Greenwich, and I did not feel ready to return to our staid, fixed life there. I liked it in Palm Beach, where the days were relaxed and so was my husband. Where the trees hung ripe with fruit and the tropical sun meant color and flowers all winter long. Society here was not codified; our hours were not allotted to the same sequence of monotonous and required activities. “What about building a home here?” I suggested one evening. Pearcie had taken the girls on an evening walk to look for sea turtles on the beach, and Eddie and I sat on the lawn overlooking the moonlit surf, its ceaseless procession of waves throwing a shimmering dance of reflected starlight across the horizon. “A winter getaway,” I added, my voice filled with yearning as I rolled out my best pitch. “The girls love it here, and so do we. We could afford it, Eddie.”
A cacophony of tree frogs filled the night air. And then I heard the ice clinking in Eddie’s glass as he sloshed his drink, considering his response in thoughtful silence. Eventually he answered, “This is fine for a brief winter jaunt, Marjorie. But Palm Beach is not going to take off as any real destination. At least, not for our sort.”