I WAS NINE YEARS OLD when I began a silent but rather dangerous form of what I suppose was rebellion. Or perhaps mere but short-lived insanity. I committed a series of larcenies. I had never stolen before and would, save for this brief interlude, never do so again. It was all quite curious, even to myself. It began with toys. The children of the summer people on Breezy Way in Lawrence, Long Island, with whom I played, had ample toys, and it was a simple matter for me, on occasion, to possess myself surreptitiously of an item coveted. But crime, like vermin, has the tendency toward rapid swelling, and I soon came to desire items of greater significance, including, alas, those belonging to adults. The most valuable of these that I can first recall was a pocket comb in a gold slipcase which I took from the bureau of a family weekend guest. Its loss was not discovered. And the streak continued.
What were my feelings? Not ones of severe guilt, anyway. I knew of course that theft was wrong, even rather importantly wrong. But it didn't have any real existence to my twisted reckoning unless it was discovered; concealed it was nothing. Not the slightest communication could be risked, however, even with Tommy Curtis or Rivington Pyne, my two best and perhaps most similarly adventurous friends at Bovee. The precarious feeling of the adventure was entirely conditional; everything depended on my silence. And then, not long after the epoch-making theft of the comb, I was smitten with a new kind of violent temptation, far stronger than any I had felt for the rather junky items I had so far acquired and carefully hidden away.
Uncle Russell Auchincloss, Father's very dignified and awesome older brother, was spending a weekend with us in Lawrence, and he unwisely showed me a golden gadget on his watch chain from which you could pull a scissors, a nail file, and God knows what else. I was seized with a longing for it. It had to be mine. Going to his bedroom when he was playing tennis with Father, I found the gadget detached from its chain on the bureau, and I took it. Was I mad? How did I ever expect to get away with it? Nor did I. My uncle complained; everyone, maids and all, were questioned. The house was searched. Then came the denouement: Maggie discovered my cache and, of course, despite my pleas betrayed me to my mother.
The silence that followed was beyond chastening. At first, not a word was spoken to me, so I knew that the matter was too grave for immediate retribution. That came on Monday morning, when we were back in town, and my sister, Priscilla, and I were waiting in the front hall for Maggie to take us to school. Father, on his way to work, suddenly appeared, striding down the stairway, and addressed me in a loud stentorian voice that I had not heard before. He announced that if I were ever caught stealing again, I should be whipped. Then he charged out the front door.
I was appalled, but I sensed, even then, that this would never happen because I would never steal again. I didn't believe that Father even possessed a whip; he had never physically chastised me. I had no great sense of guilt or shame; theft was simply something that didn't work and had to be given up forever, and that was that. I don't think I could steal a loaf of bread today if I were starving. But there was a curious aftermath to the scene in the hallway.
It did not come on the part of my father. He never again mentioned this aspect of my life to me, nor did it seem to have made the slightest difference in his attitude toward me. Yet I have always strongly suspected that it had appalled him and that he had deliberately attempted to blot out of his mind the idea that a son of his could be a thief. It was simply not part of the world to which he lovingly aspired, the man's world of sports, clubs, finance. This was the realm of the noisy, numerous, neighboring, highly masculine Auchincloss cousins with whom, from childhood, he had been closely associated.
Later on in life, my father rather unexpectedly told me that, however little I shared what he considered the Auchincloss traits, which I had felt so sorely lacking, I had always been his favorite child. My siblings found him amiable but detached. They did not suspect the lonelier more sensitive side that he tended to hide, but which, perhaps because of my own temperament, I perceived and empathized with. My mother's understanding of this part of my father was what gave this all-loving wife her total power over him. To some extent I shared this with her; he was not ashamed to show me his fragility.
He was born a twin but had lost his twin brother at age two. A psychiatrist who later treated him opined that his emotional problems may have been engendered by his mother's violent grief over the loss of his brother, which might have given the survivor a false sense of guilt, but who knows? Father, through the Howland family, was a third cousin of F.D.R., whom he very faintly resembled. Without his occasional depressions he might have had a more important career as a corporate lawyer, but he did well enough.
The aftermath to the discovery of my theft, to which I have referred, should have come as no surprise to me. Mother asked me, reasonably and even gently, to bring her everything that I had stolen, and I proceeded to comply. But I didn't bring her them all. I feared that the whole list might disturb the air of pardon that was settling over the family. But I nonetheless felt it was my sacred duty to see that every item still withheld was returned, however secretly, to its rightful owner. Only thus could I assure myself that the whole horrid business had returned to the void in which I had originally conceived it.
The toys presented little problem. I simply added them, when unobserved, to the ravaged treasure troves of my young friends. "Oh, there it is," one of them might observe. "I was wondering where it had got to." But I was stuck with two objects: a small silver tray, shaped like a heart, with the initials C.P.D., which I knew stood for Courtland Palmer Dixon, a cousin and neighbor, parental visits to whom rarely included small and noisy boys, and a small child's drinking cup decorated with painted circles, taken from an infrequently patronized notions shop in nearby Cedarhurst, the village of our Long Island retreat. I cannot imagine what drew me to either one, but there they were, seemingly fatal hurdles to my recovered innocence.
I had to wait a long time before I had a chance to go to the Dixons. Mother was quite often a guest there, but when I asked if I might accompany her, the answer was usually "No, there's nothing for you to do there." But at last came the day when she took me along. There were Dixon cousins my age visiting and so I was included. Finally, there was the opportunity for my almost-complete restitution. There was joy in my heart as I slipped the little ashtray onto a table. Of course, it had never been missed.
The cup was another matter. And it would be the only article that would ultimately stand between myself and relief. Father commuted in summer, and I was sometimes taken to meet his train. What was my dismay to discover on one such evening that the building which had housed the fatal shop had been razed! When I got home I took the cursed cup into a grove of trees and smashed it into pieces, stamping on each shard until it was dust. And then I experienced a great lift of heart. I was free! Free forever!
***
Unfortunately there is more to disclose. Perhaps it should have come earlier, in sequence, but it slipped my mind before my previous confession unleashed it. Which, looking back, I find worrisome, the suggestion, which combined with the earlier benefits, of a kind of destructive nature. For you see, at a still earlier age, that of eight, I committed a much more serious crime: that of vandalism. Unlike my other excursion into crime, it was never discovered, and the event had neither precedent nor repetition in my whole life. It was unique and extraordinary. I cannot explain it by anything in my character or upbringing. But here it is.
For a summer in Bar Harbor, Maine, my parents had rented a house on the top of a large hill owned by a Dr. Thorndike, a rich and deeply respected old Bostonian who had built other houses on the hill for his married daughters. There had been, years before, a beloved daughter who had died young. A small, unfurnished structure where she had "played house" was preserved intact in her memory. No one ever entered it but the cleaning woman.
I broke into it, smashing every piece of china in the little place. Why this madness seized me I shall never know. Was there some sort of anger that I had not otherwise acknowledged? What on earth was I feeling? Afterward, I tried to forget it myself. I attempted to believe it had never happened, as there were no repercussions. I never went near the little house again; I began to think it had not occurred.
But it had, indeed. The repercussions for me occurred some forty years later. I was having Sunday lunch with my elderly parents when the discussion fell on a peculiarly nasty act of vandalism by a gang of youths described in the morning paper. Father was violent in his denunciation of the boys involved.
"Oh, I can understand them," I averred. "Boys can do crazy things. I was a vandal myself once."
"Really? What did you do?"
As I told them about the Thorndike playhouse, the room became strangely silent. Father was actually livid.
"You did that," he almost whispered.
He then told me that the chief of the Bar Harbor police had called on him and taken him to view the devastation. "I'm sorry, Mr. Auchincloss, but we have to investigate every child on the hill."
"You think a child of mine could have done that?"
"And the chief actually apologized!" Father almost shouted at me now. "And he didn't even interview you!"
"You can't be mad at me now!" I protested.
"I'm not so sure," he retorted. "That police chief is probably long dead by now. I can never apologize to him."