In the days following Emily Hahn’s death at age ninety-two, obituaries were published in the New York Times, the London Times, The New Yorker, and many other prominent publications around the world. The news was even carried in Chinese newspapers, and Sinmay’s daughter wrote a tribute to Mickey that appeared in a Chinese-language literary journal in Shanghai called Archives and History. In addition, novelist Hortense Calisher, a friend of Mickey’s, read a glowing tribute to her at the 1997 spring meeting of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
In England, word of Mickey’s death was delivered to Charles by Jim McDonald, a man hired to help out at Ringshall End. This was a particularly difficult task because Mickey’s body was cremated the same day that she died, and so there was no funeral. For Charles, ninety-three and himself in failing health, that meant there was no real sense of closure to his fifty-six-year relationship with Mickey. In his mind, she had gone away as she had so often in the past. But this time, Mickey was not coming back. Jimmy Cummins talked with Charles about the circumstances of Mickey’s death. “He asked me repeatedly if Mickey had been in any pain when she died,” Cummins said. “I assured him that no, she was not in pain. That seemed to provide him with a measure of relief.”1
Charles was unable to travel to New York on March 1, 1997, when a group of Mickey’s family, friends, and New Yorker colleagues gathered in a salon at the Algonquin Hotel for a memorial service. The setting was appropriate, given the hotel’s legendary association with The New Yorker, especially in the old days when editor Harold Ross and his celebrated Round Table had gathered there to take meals, have drinks, play cards, and share good times. There were laughs and some tears at the Algonquin on that cool, rainy Saturday afternoon as one by one the invited speakers shared their memories of Mickey. Veteran New Yorker staff writer Roger Angell read from a splendid obituary of Mickey that he wrote for the March 10, 1997, edition of the magazine. Other speakers that afternoon included Mickey’s daughters Carola and Amanda, nephew Greg Dawson, niece Hilary Schlessiger, New Yorker staffer Charles McGrath (who read a reminiscence on behalf of Mickey’s former editor William Maxwell, himself too old and frail to attend), and Mickey’s dear friend Sheila McGrath. Carola read two moving eulogies written by her daughters Sofia Vecchio and Alfia Vecchio Wallace, which touched on the personal side of their grandmother’s sometimes very public life.
“When I was little, I knew my grandmother was special,” wrote Sofia. “And as a child, I perceived this specialness as a strong presence upon which I could rely. I knew she was a successful writer, but as a child, I never felt pressured to be as grand as she was. To me, she was fun, and funny, and always there.”
Alfia echoed those sentiments. “Chances are that your grandmother didn’t smoke cigars and let you hold wild role-playing parties in her apartment. Chances are that she didn’t teach you Swahili obscenities. Chances are that when she took you to the zoo, she didn’t start whooping passionately at the top of her lungs as you passed the gibbon cage. Sadly for you … your grandmother was not Emily Hahn.”
Afterward, the invited guests stayed for drinks and they talked about Mickey. There was a lot to talk about. The quiet little girl from St. Louis—who had never intended to become a writer—had left behind an impressive literary legacy of fifty-two books, hundreds of articles, short stories, and poems. In the process, she had thumbed her nose at convention and was one of those who had helped blaze a feminist trail that other free-spirited women who came after her have followed. Mickey herself was born and raised in an era when women were expected to, and did, marry and stay home, raise children, and cook for a husband. Mickey steadfastly refused to do what society expected of her. The durability and success of her long-distance “open marriage” confounded many people at a time when such things simply “weren’t done”; the two-career family is today nothing unusual.
There was, of course, a price to be paid for such independence of spirit: Mickey was vilified by those who were scandalized that she dared to assert her own sexuality. Her relations with her own family were certainly not always as warm as they might have been had she led a more conventional life. Then, too, she never achieved the degree of fame or credit that she so richly deserved either as a writer or as a pioneer in the struggle for women’s rights.
“Mickey was a truly liberated human being. She always lived life as she wanted,” said her nephew Greg Dawson. “But what was especially important was that she lived without hurting other people. It’s a rare thing to do that. Mickey showed us how to live life on one’s own terms. That’s her legacy to us.”2