1943
Money is the sinews of love, and of war.
—George Farquhar
WHEN GRACE FRICK’S FRIEND MARY Marshall learned of her dismissal in June of 1943, she called it “stupid and cruel and irresponsible—and I think so highly of you that it enraged me.” Having heard about Frick and Yourcenar’s island in Maine, Marshall added, “It sounds like a most beautiful spot, and my heart yearneth toward it and you.”1 The women would soon be enjoying that haven from the storm for the whole summer. But recent events had brought home to them the strength and importance of their bond. Before they left Hartford, there were pressing matters to tend to.
First and foremost it was time for Frick to revise her will. Not only did she wish to remove Hartford Junior College as a beneficiary, but her financial situation had changed quite dramatically when George “Unk” LaRue died. Unk had set down the terms of his own last will and testament on March 4, 1937, while his niece was in Paris settling the affairs of her cousin, Sister Marie Yann. According to the probate documents associated with LaRue’s will, the estate was valued at just under $177,000 (almost $2.5 million in 2018).2 LaRue made only two specific bequests: the first, in the amount of fifteen thousand dollars, to Grace Frick, and the second, in the amount of ten thousand dollars, to his brother John in Los Angeles. Uncle George thought of Grace as a daughter, and this was his way of providing for her. Fred and Gage were both actively involved in the LaRue Printing Company; their inheritance was joint ownership, along with George’s wife, Dolly, of the ongoing business.
Straightaway Frick set up a trust to provide for Yourcenar in the event of her death. On May 10, 1943, Yourcenar asked her New York lawyer, Margaret Smith, to draw up a will making Frick her own sole beneficiary. Yourcenar’s previous will, deposited at Lausanne, Switzerland, had assigned her estate to Christine Brown-Hovelt de Crayencour. By this time her stepmother was seventy-two years old, in poor health, and living in the southwestern French city of Pau. Marguerite knew that Grace would “do everything in her power to help Mme de Crayencour in case of my decease, if help from this country can again reach her.”3
Yourcenar’s letter provides significant information, in the author’s original English, about her personal assets. It clearly shows that the young Frenchwoman was not destitute when she came to the United States, a claim always associated with the implication—if not the outright assertion—that she formed a couple with Grace Frick only because she had nowhere else to turn. Item a on Yourcenar’s list relates to the same real property for which she finally received a partial settlement after a ten-year legal battle—not in 1939, as she remembers, but in April of 1938:
a) a mortgage on a property (hotel and grounds) at Knocke-Zoute (on the Dutch-Belgian border, though I think that the grounds are all situated in Belgium). The mortgage (of which half was repaid to me in 1939) is now worth 350,000 Belgian francs. The deeds and papers are in possession of Mr. Rene Peyralbe, notaire, at Bruxelles, Belgium, rue du Gouvernement Provisoire, 48. Naturally, the original deed is in the office of the Recorder of deeds in Zoute, Belgium (called in French “Registre des Hypothèques”).
b) The royalties on 9 books (list attached) published in Paris by two publishers 1) Mr. Bernard Grasset, 61 rue des Sts-Pères, Paris, VI. 2) Mr. Gallimard, Les Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Française, 43 rue de Beaune, Paris, VI. My two best friends on the staff of these two publishing companies were Mr. André Fraigneau, at Bernard Grasset, and Mr. Emmanuel Boudot-Lamotte at Gallimard’s.4
She chose the quinquagenarian Edmond Jaloux of the Académie française to execute her literary estate, to be helped—or replaced, if necessary—by Constantine Dimaras and her Swiss friend Jacques de Saussure. With overseas communication cut off on account of the war, she was doing her best to foresee all possible eventualities. Yourcenar’s letter continues:
c) My step-mother, Mme Christine de Crayencour . . . left me by will made in 1938 her estate in England. . . . Mme de Crayencour confirmed that will by many of her letters addressed to me in 1942 from France, letters now in my possession. These letters mention also that some of her personal possessions, furs, jewelry, pictures, silver, and so forth, have been left at Hotel Meurice, Lausanne, under the care of Mr. Hepp, the landlord, and are to come to me after her death.
d) I have myself left some of my silver, papers, household goods, and 6 or 7 trunks of books, packed in trunks and baskets and ready for shipping, with Mr. Hepp, in the store-room of the Hotel Meurice, Lausanne. Some of the most valuable baskets of books have perhaps now been removed to the cellars of a friend’s house, Miss Berthe Vuillemin, who offered to take care of them, so as to divide the risk in case of fire, or other war eventualities. . . .
e) I have left in Paris, in the cellars of the Hotel Wagram, 206 [sic] rue de Rivoli, Paris, II, 4 trunks and about ten pieces of furniture, under the care of the night porter. This was done hastily in the last moments of my leaving Paris in 1939, after the beginning of the war, and I have no papers of any sort proving ownership in case of changed management. The hotel has been transformed into a French, and after that, to a German war office, and therefore there is, I am afraid, little hope that these things have been respected. The three trunks contain rare books, lace, and family papers.
f) On this continent, my bonds are deposited at the Bank of Montreal, 117 St.-James Street, Montreal, whence my dividends are sent, not only the dividends from the bonds deposited in their bank, but also of those left in the Westminster Bank, England, for which they act as agents. I also own some shares in General Electric, General Edison, General Motors, Shell Union, the certificates of which are with me in Hartford, the total value of which does not exceed $2000 and 750 pounds in British War Loan, likewise with me here in Hartford and which I intend next winter to place in a safe in New-York.
I have a savings account at New-York City Bank, 111th and Broadway, containing at this date $450.
Except Mme de Crayencour, my step mother, I have no other “next of kin” than a half-brother, Mr. Michel de Crayencour, . . . . . . . . . Bruxelles, Belgium. Mr. M. de C. is married to a Belgian woman and is now a Belgian citizen. We are not on good terms, and have not written to each other for nearly ten years. . . .
[Handwritten:] I should add that I am a French citizen, but that I have now my first American papers, received in February, 1942.5
In early July Margaret Smith addressed to Yourcenar, by then on Mount Desert Island, a draft copy of the latter’s new will. From Smith’s cover letter we learn that the author had chosen to leave the bulk of her estate to the Museum of Modern Art if Grace Frick should predecease her.6 Even at this early stage of her American odyssey, Yourcenar felt strongly enough about the country in which she had found refuge to wish to benefit one of its premier art museums. It is also worth noting that she chose not to endow an institution to which she had closer ties but that had just suspended its creatively daring director: the Wadsworth Atheneum.
Frick and Yourcenar’s friendship with Chick Austin was still going strong, and one of his disciples wrote to Yourcenar in Maine. Thomas “Tommy” Hughes was a sergeant in the Guard and in training at Camp Hood in central Texas. He had heard about the furor over ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore at the Wadsworth: “I hated to miss but I know it was every bit as wonderful as you say.”7 A year later, Hughes was in Normandy taking part in the Allied liberation of France.8
The war brought with it all kinds of changes on the home front, one of which was the rationing of everyday items such as sugar, coffee, and gasoline. Another, for the Fricks and LaRues, was the fact that Grace’s older brother Gage, unmarried and childless, had been drafted. He shipped off to England in the spring of 1943.9 Not only was Gage a principal in the LaRue Printing Company; he was also in control of the family trust. And therein lies a tale.
The LaRue Printing Company was a thriving concern that had made George LaRue a rich man. When his health began to fail, steps were taken to protect as much as possible of his fortune from what Grace’s friend and legal adviser Ruth Hall called in early May 1943 “a system of taxing personal property which would be ruinous if it were literally applied.”10 Hall had left New York and was working now at Warrick, Koontz and Hazard back in Kansas City. As she went on to explain,
All taxpayers that I have known who have substantial assets take some steps to minimize these taxes. Some people call it tax avoidance, some people call it evasion but each and every person that I have ever known that has anything of any substantial value does something to cut down the tax that would otherwise be due. The system that Gage described in the letters which I refer to in my memorandum is one such possible system.11
In accordance with that system, and over the course of several years, George LaRue had placed significant shares of his wealth in securities and bonds in the names of his wife, his nephews, and his niece. Grace had transferred the assets she received to the First National Bank of Kansas City as trustee.
But the ground was now shifting under Frick’s feet: Gage had been sent overseas, she had been fired, and Unk had died, all in the space of a few weeks. Grace needed help, and she naturally turned to her trusted childhood friend. Where did things stand with respect to the LaRue funds in Grace’s possession? Could she rely on them if need be? Attorney Hall’s response to these questions explains the crux of the matter: “The purpose of putting property in the names of your Aunt, Gage, Fred and yourself was to minimize death taxes. A completed gift is not taxed at the time of the giver’s death but if the giver retains substantial control over the gift up to the time of his death then the law treats the transfer as one subject to death taxes. It is sometimes hard to draw the line between complete and incomplete gifts.”12
Hall then proceeded to detail several factors that make the gifts look complete. Casting possible doubt on “the unconditional and final character of the gifts” made to the four recipients would primarily be “the so-called gentlemen’s agreement,” according to which the recipients would not treat the securities as their own as long as George or Dolly LaRue should be living. Further:
If you should take the position at this time that you are the unqualified owner of the securities and are entitled to use interest and principal in any way that you see fit, your Aunt might be very much upset and resentful. Her attorneys would advise her, in my opinion, that trying to enforce the gentlemen’s agreement would only lead to tax complications. Your Aunt has so much to lose by opening up any such question that I feel sure that she would be reluctant to follow that route.13
In Hall’s view, Frick should come to Missouri so that all the parties involved, along with their attorneys, could discuss the matter in person. She would leave for Kansas City in October of 1943. As usual, Grace arranged for someone to stay with Marguerite in the apartment while she was away. This time it was Bronislaw Malinowski’s wife Valetta. Yourcenar had a room at Sarah Lawrence College, where she would begin her second year of teaching, but it was no place to spend three-day weekends. When her teaching day was done, as Antoinette Hoffherr writes in an unpublished essay,
Mme Yourcenar retired into the privacy of a basement corner that the college had put at her disposal. There she kept her books, references, dictionaries, there she slept one or two nights a week rather than commuting back and forth from Hartford, Connecticut. The only other occupant from these nether regions, a coloured man, came morning and night to attend to the furnace, and prophecy [sic] the weather outside. The basement room was not light, airy or cheerful but Mme Yourcenar liked its convenience and was grateful for it.14
Over the course of the upcoming months, with LaRue’s will wending its way through probate and Gage overseas, everything went along smoothly. Frick spent the Christmas and New Year holidays touring Mexico with Aunt Dolly before returning to Hartford in January of 1944. She was even appointed to control the family trust in Gage’s absence.15
It was not until mid-June 1945 that the topic of that trust once again took center stage. With Gage Frick now home after eighteen months in England as a member of the Army Air Corps, Grace received a flurry of letters or phone calls from her brother regarding the funds being held in her name. Predictably, each contact from Gage precipitated an immediate letter from Grace to Ruth Hall in Kansas City.16 We don’t have those letters, or Hall’s responses to them. We do know, however, that the securities parceled out to Frick in the years before George LaRue’s death never did find their way back to the family trust. Grace, for once, put herself first. At forty years of age, she had lost what she thought would be her life’s work. She had not completed her doctorate. Even in the best of circumstances, she would never have the earning power in academia that her businessman brothers enjoyed. And there was Marguerite’s welfare to consider. Yourcenar’s official status in this country was still not secure, and she was definitely not getting rich as a part-time instructor at Sarah Lawrence College.17 What’s more, the couple were developing a life plan that would require an adequate, reliable income. Holding on to those investments meant financial independence.
The family was very likely shocked by Grace’s noncompliance with the LaRues’ estate strategy. Indeed, they may have gone so far as to take legal action against her. Marguerite Yourcenar later remembered this episode as an attempt on the part of Frick’s family to split the two of them up. They had engaged an attorney, she recounted, “trying to divest [Grace] of her share in the inheritance. But she too got an attorney, and she won.”18 That may not have been exactly how things happened, but Yourcenar believed herself, or the couple she had formed with Frick, to be the root of the family’s displeasure.
No one seems to have held a lasting grudge, however. In the summer of 1947 Dolly traveled to Mount Desert Island and spent almost a month being entertained by Grace and Marguerite. Gage and his children came later for shorter stays. Grace continued to visit her aunt in Kansas City well into the 1960s, by which time Dolly’s mental and physical health was in sharp decline. Communication flowed freely as well between Grace and her two brothers throughout the rest of their lives. Gage, for his part, continued to handle the LaRue family investments and eventually became a partner in the Kansas City stock brokerage firm H. O. Peet and Company. In Aunt Dolly’s last will and testament, drawn up on May 20, 1959, the first bequest, in the amount of twenty thousand dollars, was to her niece, Grace M. Frick.19
Dolly died on July 25, 1968, at the age of ninety-five. In addition to a few other bequests, only one of them equal to Grace’s, her will left the remainder of her estate to Gage C. Frick “for the purpose of establishing a charitable trust.” That entity, the George A. and Dolly F. LaRue Trust, came into being in March of 1971 with Gage as trustee. Its purposes were broadly defined as “religious, charitable, scientific, literary or educational,” but its primary focus was on helping children and young people in need.20 Before the turn of the twenty-first century, sums ranging from $40,000 to $150,000 a year were given to the Healthy Steps Fund for Young Children, the Johnson County (Kansas) Community College Metropolitan Performing Arts Series, and the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, which the LaRue Trust helped establish.21 In December of 2015, the George A. and Dolly F. LaRue Trust held assets amounting to just under $5 million. Still today, that trust bears living witness to the generosity of spirit that Unk and Aunt displayed when they opened their arms to four nieces and nephews in the early years of the twentieth century.22