A few days after the election, Louis Brandeis celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday. If he had felt introspective that day—an unusual sentiment for him—he might have taken a great deal of satisfaction from what he had so far accomplished in life. He had built up one of the most successful law practices in the country, and his large income gave him the freedom he had always wanted to engage in public service. He had revolutionized the way lawyers presented reform legislation to the courts in what would afterward be known as the “Brandeis brief.” He had been involved in important reforms at the local, state, and national levels, and savings bank life insurance would remain a testament to him and his vision. He had taken on J. P. Morgan and even the president of the United States. He had been happily married for nearly twenty-two years, and Alice’s recurring illness had only deepened the bond between them. His two daughters, Susan in college and Elizabeth about to go, had grown into intelligent and strong-willed young women. And, not incidentally, he had just helped elect Woodrow Wilson to the White House.
Before we embark on a tour of the frenetic three and a half years to follow, let us take a look not at the nationally known reformer but at the man who lived at 6 Otis Place.
DURING THE FIRST DECADE of the twentieth century, even as Louis devoted more of his time to reform work, his law practice thrived. In 1905 he claimed that he had “so devolved my work that I have little to do, save meditate like an East Indian,” but three years later he reported to Alfred, “My office is pretty busy now, and even ‘Father’ must work. This interrupts considerably my Savings Bank Insurance campaign.” As much as possible he delegated work to others in his office, but some clients and matters required his personal attention, and so he stayed in touch with his partners and remained available when they needed his advice on difficult cases. In 1911 he jokingly complained to Alice that Ned McClennen had come down to New York to consult with him about a case, and the two of them had been discussing it most of the day, even though “it isn’t nearly as interesting as antitrust, or Shoe Machinery, Wage-Earners Insurance or the like.” Two days later, still working on the same case, he noted rather proudly that “the old man has been able to show the Junior that there are points not thought of in his philosophy…. It is some satisfaction for the arduous labor on private business to find out that there is some use in grubbing up the case.”
He utilized the office from time to time for help in his reform work, and in some instances paid out a considerable amount of money to his partners so that they would not lose income from his absence. When he came back to Boston from his increasingly frequent absences, Miss Grady would give him the accumulated mail, and he would go through it with her, answering correspondents, an increasing number of whom wanted him to work on their pet reforms. He remained the senior partner, directing the division of income using a formula that, while never spelled out, always struck his colleagues as fair. The proceeds from his law practice had made him a millionaire by 1907, and he accumulated another million before he went on the Court in 1916.
He saved money because he and Alice lived out the pledge they had made to each other before their wedding—to live well but simply. Although some commentators later described Brandeis as “ascetic,” neither he nor his family ever denied themselves what they needed or on occasion wanted. Alice shopped at the better Boston stores, such as Sloan’s, S. S. Pierce, and Jordan Marsh. Brandeis spent freely on two of his passions, canoes and equipment for his horses. He did not have an extensive wardrobe, but he bought quality garments in basic styles that would last him for a long time; when a suit wore out, he replaced it with one nearly the same. (In 1913 he paid $100 for a suit, the equivalent of $2,100 in current dollars.) Alice bought more clothes than he did, but not extravagantly, and she, too, bought well. When they rented summer homes, they shipped their piano there, but an examination of the accounts for this period finds many more bills for books than for household furnishings. They kept and used their wedding presents for years, even though they could easily have replaced them. The estate inventory at the time of Brandeis’s death listed a painting, two Oriental rugs, one cashmere rug, and assorted silver service, all of which had been given to the young couple fifty years earlier. The large grandfather clock presented by his client William D. Ellis still works and can be found in his grandson’s home in suburban Washington. Ascetics also do not employ servants, and the Brandeises hired a cook when they married, as well as a housemaid, and after the births of the girls added a nurse.
Alice Brandeis with Susan, left, and Elizabeth, right,
ca. 1908
In 1912, Louis did not look fifty-six, and in fact until his eighties always seemed younger than his age. Throughout his life he appeared tall and trim, although slightly stooped, and his regimen of daily walking, riding, or canoeing kept him fit. He had a high brow topped by a thick head of hair, which, despite his best efforts, always seemed a bit unruly. He wore glasses for reading, and a somewhat formal picture taken by Harris & Ewing shows him with a pince-nez perched on his nose. Another picture has him standing on the banks of the Charles next to a canoe, with a paddle in one hand and wearing a straw boater. A newspaper account of the time described him as follows: “His smooth face is square and strong, but irregular, and expresses a lively sense of humor…. Brandeis has a large frame, but sparingly filled out. His voice is soft and drawling, but it can snap like a whip on occasion.” Many interviewers detected a strong resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. Ray Stannard Baker said that while still, Brandeis “recalls almost startlingly one of the portraits of Abraham Lincoln.” He has a “large head with the stubborn black hair streaked with iron-gray,” and “sensitive hands—he has the hand of a musician.”
In his younger days Brandeis, according to one source, dressed “fastidiously,” and certainly appeared in appropriate garb when in court or testifying before a legislative hearing or giving a speech. But in his time off, even though he often wore a tie (as that was the custom in those days), he took little interest in his appearance, often walking around in old pants, a sweater, and worn shoes. He never owned a car, and continued to ride for recreation well into the 1920s, when the growing traffic as well as his own age finally led him to give up his horses. When he traveled, he usually stayed at the Harvard Club in New York and either at the Cosmos Club or at a decent but not expensive hotel, such as the Gordon, in Washington. Louis and Alice spent money on what mattered to them, but that did not include ostentation in any form.
Brandeis nonetheless had a teasing streak, so that he could write to his daughter Susan, “Talking of things sartorial—please note that I wore my gray spring suit [and] had the black suit you love so pressed.” To Alice he wrote from Washington that at the suggestion of his friend Walter Child, he had begun a series of chest exercises. “You may be prepared for a real chest development which will overcome even your incredulity. The first two or three days I felt as much exercised as if I had been off on an all day paddle. You shall have an exhibition on my return.” Such examples of jest, however, could be found only within the family and with one or two close friends; in his public persona Brandeis almost always appeared stern. His partner George Nutter believed that Brandeis had no sense of humor at all.
The Brandeises donated generously not only to the causes they believed in but to friends and family as well. Brandeis gave away nearly $1.5 million in his lifetime. He helped to support a number of relatives, and in a typical letter he wrote to Alfred, “It occurs to me that Emily’s illness may put Aunt Minna into money straights in spite of my $50 a month. If this is so let me know & I will increase her allowance or what perhaps would be wiser, make an extraordinary appropriation.” Alfred also shouldered some of this responsibility, but Louis insisted that he be allowed to give more than his brother, since after all Alfred had four daughters to raise while he had only two.
Louis also insisted on making a substantial gift to Alfred on the latter’s fifty-second birthday. Alfred had purchased a small farm east of Louisville, initially as a summer house, but eventually he renovated the place and moved in full-time. “I want to have some part in the creation of your farm which you love so much,” Louis told him, “and I want therefore to make you a birthday present, either of such part of Walter’s [a neighbor’s] land as you think you need to give you a scientific frontier, if you can buy it at any price you think reasonable—or to put your house into condition for winter use—or anything else for the place you want.” Alfred and his wife, Jennie, lived on the farm, which they called Ladless Hill, until their deaths; it is owned today by the Brown family, which has restored and expanded it beautifully.
Elizabeth, 1911
Next to Alice and his daughters, Alfred remained the most important person in Louis’s life. The two brothers wrote to each other almost daily, talking about what they had done, sending each other books, and recalling their great adventure on the European tour. In the same letter in which Louis offered his gift, he also noted that he had read a book Alfred had sent him and passed it on to a friend, and reminded him that they had “arrived in Trieste 33 years ago today.”
Because of Alice’s illness, she rarely went to Louisville, but Louis visited regularly. Whenever one of his speaking or court engagements took him anywhere into the Ohio valley, either he would take a day or two and run down to Louisville, or Alfred would take the train up to meet him. He worried about Alfred’s health, which, like his, seems to have been affected by periodic spells of exhaustion. On one occasion Louis lectured his brother on working too hard. “I have been thinking over your tired feeling and am convinced that you ought, for a while, to end your day’s work at two (2) p.m. and spend the rest of the day in the open—every week day.” Alfred should follow his advice, Louis urged, because “I have made a study of mental tire[dness] for a quarter of a century & know more about it than I do of law or insurance.” When Alfred suffered a serious illness, such as gallstone attacks, Louis would drop everything and run down to see him.
Alfred and his family often came to the Northeast for their summer vacations, just as Adolph and Frederika had done, and the two families often shared adjoining cottages on Cape Cod or in the mountains. But Brandeis would always love Louisville, and when the girls were older, he would sometimes take one or both of them with him on a trip to visit Uncle Alfred, Aunt Jennie, and their four cousins. From Alfred, in addition to books, also came good Kentucky bourbon, later to be replaced by whole hams, products of Ladless Hill. Louis served the hams to his dinner guests and would send Alfred the names of the people who had enjoyed the feast.
On his visits he and Alfred would sometimes go out to the nearby horse farms that bred some of the nation’s finest racing horses. On one of these trips he wrote home almost rhapsodically to Elizabeth about the “wonderful” collection of thoroughbreds and colts they had seen, and how the colts would come right up to them as they walked in the pasture. To Alice he declared that the stallions he saw had been a “revelation” to him, and his visit “revolutionized my ideas of race-horses. I supposed them to be lank, thin, and to the uneducated mind unbeautiful. Quite the contrary is the fact. They are the most beautiful living creatures I have ever seen. The only fit comparison seems to me the marbles of Praxiteles; and for the wonderful Greek marbles I know no fitter comparison than these horses.”
The entire Brandeis clan read constantly, but probably no member of the family had such catholic tastes as Louis. He read the classics of Greek, Roman, and German culture, as well as works by English and American authors such as Rudyard Kipling and Richard Henry Dana. Perhaps because they could not travel as much as they would have liked, he and Alice enjoyed travel books. And, perhaps not surprisingly, he liked the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In one interview he compared his methods to that of the world’s first consulting detective. “I use practically the same method,” Louis told a reporter. “It’s a matter of having special knowledge and being able to draw the only possible conclusion.” He admitted that often he could figure out the solution before finishing the tale, although sometimes the author would conceal important clues so as to surprise the reader. “In the case of Sherlock Holmes he possessed much special knowledge, knowing various cigar ashes, etc. Without that knowledge no one could solve the mystery in advance.” In response to a question, he admitted that he had never solved a real crime, but “I think I should like to try to catch a murderer sometime.”
BRANDEIS’S REFERENCE TO PRAXITELES indicated a familiarity with the ancient Greeks, their culture, and their philosophy; if Heine was his favorite German poet, Euripides was his favorite Greek. He could quote whole stanzas of poetry, and one reporter, after listening to Brandeis do so, commented that it seemed Euripides had the last word on virtually anything. During a particularly trying time at the beginning of the New Haven fight, Sam Warren sent him some words from Euripides’ Bacchae, suggesting he might want to put the passage on his desk to keep up his spirits:
Thou hast heard men scorn thy city, call her wild
Of counsel, mad; thou has seen the fire of morn
Flash from her eyes in answer to their scorn!
Come toil on toil, ‘tis this that makes her grand,
Peril on peril! And common states that stand
In caution, twilight cities, dimly wise.
Ye know them; for no light is in their eyes!
Go forth, my son, and help.
Louis came to appreciate above all the Greek notion of the golden mean, of maintaining a balance in life. This did not mean that he sought compromise in his reform campaigns—quite the contrary. As he told Alice in regard to monopoly, “I am dead against the middle of the road.” Rather, in everyday life one should seek the balance between action and rest, between work and play. In addition, the Greek city-states represented the ideal type of society, small, democratic, and totally lacking the curse of bigness. Although he read many of Gilbert Murray’s works on ancient Greece, there is no question that he prized Alfred E. Zimmern’s Greek Commonwealth above all others.
It is not certain exactly when Louis first picked up this book. He knew Zimmern by reputation, having read through his translation of Guglielmo Ferrero’s history of Rome. In July 1914, after a particularly difficult day in Washington, he wrote to Alice that after he got back to his room, he read the Boston Evening Transcript, “and to take the taste out of my mouth, some of the Greek Commonwealth.” By then Brandeis had already forged much of his philosophy about what an ideal America would look like. He harked back to Jefferson’s faith in a small-farm, small-business economy and society serving as the bedrock of a democratic republic. He did not share Jefferson’s antipathy to cities and never considered setting up practice in some small town. Zimmern’s portrait of ancient Greece fit in perfectly with the Jeffersonian ideals Brandeis espoused.
For Zimmern, Periclean Athens marked the closest mankind had ever come to social perfection in reconciling individual autonomy and communal life. “Politics and Morality,” he wrote, “the deepest and strongest forces of national and of individual life, had moved forward hand in hand toward a common ideal, the perfect citizen in the perfect state.” The genius of the Athenian city-state lay in its ability to further the common good by, on the one hand, instilling a deep patriotism in its citizens while, on the other, ensuring that individuals used their intellect independently. Adopting a creed of balance, fifth-century Athens promoted the ability of its citizens to cherish a primordial (and irrational) love of family, the seat of morality, and a rational, civil love of community, politics. The true glory of Greece, Zimmern believed, lay not in a static moment but rather in the process. Hellenism, as he saw it, constantly evolved, reinventing itself with each new generation, and this worldview required that citizens always challenge the status quo, always ask how things could be made better, whether in the political or in the cultural sphere. Progressive politics that challenged fixed prejudices constituted a modern manifestation of the Hellenistic spirit.
This attitude with which the Greek citizen approached politics made him both a conservative and a radical. He was a conservative because “he reverenced tradition and recognized the power and value of custom,” yet a radical in his readiness “to apply his reason to public affairs without fear or prejudice.” The brilliance of classical Greek thought, Zimmern believed, lay in this constant process of evaluation, of applying intellect to problems while at the same time holding fast to traditional values. “How to use the intellect,” Zimmern once argued in a lecture, “is what we still have to learn from the Greeks and from the Greeks alone.”
Naturally, this would appeal to Brandeis, who had from the time he had been a boy valued ancient Greece and its ideas. He said that his uncle Lewis “reminded one of the Athenians,” and would later compare the Framers of the Constitution to the Athenians in his great defense of free speech in Whitney v. California, where he paraphrased Pericles’ Funeral Oration. All of the things that Brandeis treasured in civilized life and that he feared in the modern industrial era had their parallels in the values of fifth-century-B.C. Athens, which he found so eloquently described in The Greek Commonwealth. He hoped to re-instill this Hellenistic balance in American life, what Learned Hand called Brandeis’s vision of the “Good Life,” but recognized that it might be too late. Athenian ideals, however, played a critical role in his efforts to rebuild a Jewish state in Palestine, and when he visited that country in 1919, he took along as one of his two traveling companions Alfred Zimmern.
DURING THESE YEARS the Brandeis routine at home underwent rather severe dislocations occasioned by Louis’s extensive absences, but he tried, with varying success, to continue familiar patterns, weekends at the Dedham house and summers on Cape Cod. “This, dearest,” he wrote in the midst of the Pinchot-Ballinger work, “is to establish that I remember (as you desire) that I have a family.” Several weeks later, although still in Washington, he suggested that since Susan seemed content with their place in South Yarmouth, they should rent it again for the coming summer. And, of course, as he constantly told Alice, he cherished the time they had together when he was home.
His frequent absences from the city led him to pay less attention than he had previously to Boston matters. When the city debated a new charter in 1911 and Norman Hapgood wrote asking him about it, he confessed, “I know very little about the Boston situation owing to my frequent absences from the Commonwealth during the last fifteen months.” Even personal tasks, such as going to a dentist, had to be taken care of while on the road, and he wrote to Alice from Washington, “I am the possessor of several additional teeth purchased at the cost of considerable time & an as yet unknown number of dollars.”
When home, he rose early, ate a hearty breakfast, and read the morning papers before walking to his office. When away in New York or Washington, he tried to get in at least one lengthy and brisk walk each day and complained when unable to do so. He also was fond of the dog they had gotten at the children’s insistence, and whom they named Frolic. The dog, however, like all members of the Brandeis family, seemed to have a mind of its own, and after taking Frolic for a long walk in Dedham, he told Alice that while the dog had behaved reasonably well, he “has occasional lapses from virtue which convince me he should be muzzled. He does bite sometimes & we shall have claims made against us if we don’t act soon.”
His growing involvement in national affairs also cut into one of the great joys of his life, travel. Because Alice understood how much he loved to see new places, she had early in their marriage insisted that he go off when he could, often with his friend Herbert White. Occasionally, he would take one of his daughters along on a short business trip, such as when he went to Ohio to argue a case there. “Susan is a good traveler,” he reported, and the sixteen-year-old “responds to all suggestions with a smile.” Later, after he had gone onto the Court, he would take camping trips with his daughters. But wherever he went, he wrote long, detailed letters to Alice about what he had seen, often expressing the (vain) hope that when she felt better, she would join him. White, an older brother of Louis’s frequent ally in Massachusetts reform, had none of his brother Norman’s inclination for public service, aside from sitting on numerous boards of various charities. Louis often went sailing with Herbert on board one of his several yachts and, according to his daughter Elizabeth, greatly enjoyed his company, probably as a break from his own austere habits and the pressures of law practice and reform. Moreover, he developed a close friendship with White, who came over to be with him when Louis’s mother died.
In the summer of 1899, for example, Louis joined White on board his yacht for a three-week trip and sailed up the coast from Boston toward Nova Scotia and back. Midway through the trip Louis wrote that they had spent the last two days trout fishing, “at which I made very poor success in spite of my new rod bought at North East Maguire. Indeed I am quite over-whelmed by the number of things I can’t do and don’t know and am filled with admiration for the skill and learning White has acquired in his aquatic and country pursuits. He is ready for every emergency—ever full of resources and knowledge.”
Louis and Herbert went on fishing and camping trips to Maine, the Adirondacks, and Canada, and in 1909 took an extended trip across the country to California, on which the two men mixed business and plea sure. Louis had work to do in Chicago for some clients, and wherever he went, he met with reformers, some of whom he knew earlier and some who made it a point to come see him. But his letters to Alice concentrated on descriptions of what he saw. “We are West of Omaha, really West,” he told her, and “the broad prairies, well harvested, are stretching out endlessly in their rich colors under beauteous, grateful sunshine and cloudless sky. Before night we should have passed the longitude of Salt Lake City, and then the Rocky Mountains. I feel almost as if it were a trip around the world.” The next day “we have been running through Wyoming the last twelve hours or more at an altitude of 6000 to 8000 feet. Glorious air and weather in an equally glorious expanse over endless miles of country. Herbert says it is almost exactly like the Sahara…. It is a delight to think that there is still so much out of doors; and in the face of it N.Y. and the eastern cities with their congestion seem the more inexcusable.”
He awoke one morning just as the sun rose over the Nevada desert and then watched as the train went through the mountain pass and descended into the fertile valleys of California. “The day is bright and clear and the coloring would do honor to Monet.” On the way he met some interesting people, an American mining engineer who had worked for an English firm in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, as well as a Berlin judge taking a two-month tour of the United States. “He is obviously not a socialist,” Louis noted, “but says the only way for Germany to avoid socialism is to persevere in adopting Socialist measures.” Someday, he added wistfully, “I want to introduce you and the children to this other world, so unlike our Eastern fringe.” To his brother he also urged travel. “Do arrange to take your family west soon,” he told Alfred, “and widen your American horizon.” As it turned out, he and Alfred traveled only around Kentucky, while Alice went on just one trip, sailing to England with him for the Zionist conference in the summer of 1920.
ALICE APPARENTLY SUFFERED most from her illness in the first ten to fifteen years after the birth of Susan, and although she would continue to have bouts of debilitating depression into the 1920s, she seemed to have gotten better in the first decade of the new century. In the summer of 1905, however, she entered a sanitarium in Bethel, Maine, and after one weekend visit Louis wrote, “I wish you would tell your esteemed doctor that he must do a hurry-up job, as we don’t propose to leave you with him much longer. Indeed I felt quite like carrying you off with us in his absence,” a phrase reminiscent of their courting days. Even when Alice was at home, Louis would sometimes take the girls out to Dedham for the weekend to give her some time by herself. When Alfred invited him to come to Louisville in July 1908, Louis had to decline. “It seems to me clear that I ought not to leave Alice this summer. She is gaining steadily but it would be more of a strain than is advisable to leave her alone with the children at So. Yarmouth.”
It would be a mistake, however, to think of Alice Brandeis as an invalid, with her only access to the outside world the daily letters of her devoted husband. It is true that had she been more robust, she would have traveled with Louis on many of these trips, and no doubt he would have passed up some jaunts with Herbert White to travel to places that interested her. During these years, especially as the intervals between episodes lengthened, Alice created her own areas of interest, helped along in part by her best friend, Bess Evans. Some of her activities involved local charities and welfare agencies, the type of “do good” work often associated with upper-middle-class women of the time. Then she discovered a cause that would keep her interested and active for over a decade, the fight for women’s suffrage.
Her husband had originally not favored the right of women to vote, believing suffrage to be a privilege earned through the types of duties imposed only upon men, such as military service. This, of course, reflected the prevailing masculine mind-set of the late nineteenth century. Brandeis was, at least in some ways, a product of his times, and in almost any area he started out with the assumptions that he would have heard in his parents’ household, at law school, or from his clients. Like the Greeks, he valued tradition, but also like them, he stood ready to learn from experience, and there is no question that having an intelligent and articulate wife as well as two bright daughters helped him to change his mind.
Alice met strong independent women through Bess Evans and also had the example of her sister Josephine, who introduced her to women like Florence Kelley at the National Consumers League. Sometime by the spring of 1911, Alice had come to support women’s suffrage and, screwing up her courage, began to appear at public meetings urging the right of women to vote. “I am delighted to know of your success as a public speaker,” her husband wrote. “As I am about retiring from the platform, there won’t be undue rivalry.” The cause meant so much to Alice that in early 1913 she broke a long-standing rule about granting interviews and invited John Whitman, a reporter for the Boston American, to their house. When he asked why women should have the vote, she said the reason could be given “in a very few words.”
“The social philosophy of the past has been a failure; the laissez-faire notion that things will come out all right if not interfered with is nonsense,” she said. “Women have been for years the constructive philanthropists, and now that governments are taking up the social side of economics, the women must, as the only logical conclusion, be made a part of the government. When political parties are putting in their platform a program for social and industrial justice, it is certainly true that women can no longer be left out.” Giving women the vote would not, as some advocates of the suffrage claimed, bring in the millennium. Just because women voted did not mean that the world would change overnight for the better. Women, just as men, would make mistakes. Alice rejected out of hand the notion of a “straw ballot,” in which women would express their preferences but only men’s votes would actually count. She and other suffragettes stood ready to fight against a straw ballot with all means available, and she pointedly reminded Whitman that in England the government had to call out a thousand soldiers and a hundred mounted police to control the women protesting in front of Parliament.
By the time Alice took to the platform, Louis had changed his mind as well. He had met women like Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Mary Kenney O’Sullivan, and of course Bess Evans and his sister-in-law Josephine Goldmark, in whom he recognized strength of character as well as of intellect. In his own office he saw how two women from simple backgrounds, given the opportunity to grow and take on responsibility, had flourished. Alice Grady, his secretary, became his chief assistant on savings bank insurance, and he eventually trusted E. Louise Malloch, who began as an office clerk, to take over not only the bookkeeping responsibilities of the firm but also management of his personal investments. He also recognized that without political power, women would continue to be victimized; while protective legislation would help somewhat, he believed that women needed the power to take care of themselves, and for this the vote was essential.
Alice may well have been on the stage, and certainly in the audience, when Jane Addams came to address the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government in June 1911, a meeting over which Brandeis himself presided. Although Addams declared that women might have to “throw things” to get what they wanted, Brandeis later told a reporter he did not think that would happen. Common sense dictated that in order to get progress, society needed the efforts of the many, not the few. “We need all the people, women as much as men. The insight women have shown in problems which often men could not understand has convinced me that women not only should have the suffrage, but that we really need women in politics.”
If Alice could not go often into the world, the world came to her, and given her keen intellect, she absorbed everything, thought about it, and throughout his life gave her husband advice that he always trusted. Some of this information came from her husband; whenever he went away, he wrote to her every day, and as he grew more involved in progressive politics, he filled his letters with stories of the events he witnessed, the problems he faced, and the people he met. During the Pinchot-Ballinger hearings, for example, Alice could read in the daily papers the reports on which witnesses had been called and what they had said, and the next day a letter would arrive from Louis giving an inside view of why they had asked certain questions, which traps had been set, and, of course, his growing disillusion with and contempt for the “fat man.”
Except when she was ill, Alice loved to entertain—not lavish parties, occasions at which both she and Louis would have been uncomfortable —but small dinners with only a few guests, so that people could talk with one another. When interesting people passed through Boston, Louis would often invite them for dinner, sometimes giving Alice only an hour or so to get ready. But since the Brandeises dressed for dinner and had a cook, it meant little in terms of preparation. Lincoln Steffens came, as did Norman Hapgood; Herbert White was always welcome, as was Lincoln Filene. Lawyers, teachers, journalists, politicians, social workers, all came to the Brandeis household, where they learned not only about Alice’s graciousness as a host but also about the sharpness of her mind.
Although she loved these gatherings, sometimes even this little bit of extra effort proved too much for her, and during those periods Louis took care not to overburden her. When she felt well, though, her husband’s long absences from the hearth distressed her, and she started traveling to New York (where, of course, she still had family) and to Washington, where he would arrange adjoining rooms so she could rest when he had visitors and work to do. Since Louis rarely dined alone when in the capital, she could enjoy the pleasure of small dinner parties without any effort on her part.
Alice understood politics and had no compunction about sharing her views on political matters with Louis. After James J. Storrow lost his bid for Boston’s mayoralty, Alice sat down and wrote to Louis, then in New York, that a good part of the problem lay in the fact that although Storrow certainly had the ability to manage, he lacked the common touch that had carried John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald into office. Louis told her he thought that absolutely correct, and it should serve as a warning to the better elements of Boston society to stop and think, “if they were capable of the process.”
Neither Louis nor Alice had much sympathy for the “better” elements, especially after Louis had taken on the powers of State Street in his fights against the Boston Elevated, the New Haven, and the Morgan interests. How much the Brahmins shunned the Brandeises because of Louis’s attacking the powers that be, and how much of it might have been caused by anti-Semitism, is impossible to say. Neither of them identified actively with the Boston Jewish community; they did not belong to a synagogue, nor were they involved in the various charitable and social programs run by the Jewish community. At home they celebrated Christmas as a secular holiday for the children, complete with tree and toys. Louis did have a number of Jewish clients and had actively sought them out as a younger man. He made contributions to various charities, but considering his income, one could describe these donations more as token than as substantial. When asked, he provided legal advice to a few Jewish organizations, but no one in the Jewish community would have considered him “involved.” Historians have noted that in Boston and elsewhere, the arrival of the great tide of eastern European immigrants after 1880 triggered a new nativist movement that culminated in the immigration restriction laws of the 1920s as well as quotas for Jews and others at Ivy League schools, gentlemen’s clubs, and boardrooms. This prejudice did not bother to distinguish between committed and marginal Jews any more than it could tell the difference between Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform.
Louis and Alice never denied their heritage, and Brandeis himself rarely spoke about being the target of anti-Semitism. He saw the Brahmin attack as growing out of his opposition to the Boston money powers, and since he had little use for either the ethics or the practices of the Lees and Higginsons of the world, he felt no regret at not being invited to socialize with them. He had, of course, enjoyed the cosmopolitanism of Boston when he arrived as the exotic young man from the country, but he and Alice soon decided that they would choose their friends not for wealth or pedigree but for their brains and civic courage.
After he became a Zionist (see chapter 17), Brandeis discussed anti-Semitism both with Horace Meyer Kallen, the progressive era’s leading advocate of cultural pluralism, and later with Rabbi Solomon Goldman, and in neither instance did he mention any personal experience. The Brandeises could hardly have been unaware of the existence of prejudice—after all, Louis had not been invited to Sam Warren’s wedding—but it did not seem greatly to affect them. Neither Alice nor Louis wanted to belong to the clubs or societies that practiced exclusion; potential law clients who disliked Jews would not have come, and in any event the firm had a large base of loyal clients, Jew and non-Jew alike; the Brandeis children went to private schools where their religion did not constitute a mark against them. That Boston families who had once welcomed them no longer did must have caused some sorrow, but they also recognized that much of the antagonism had grown out of resentment against Louis’s reform activities, and for that neither one would apologize.
SUSAN AND ELIZABETH grew up in a household quite different from those of their schoolmates. They did not lack for basic comforts, such as good food, warm clothing, and comfortable shelter; they enjoyed their weekends at Dedham and their summers on Cape Cod. Their mother, however, often went away for weeks at a time, and even when home could fall into bouts of depression, while their father began to spend more and more time in New York or Washington. Moreover, few of their classmates had a father who regularly showed up on the front pages of the local newspapers, praised and damned with equal intensity.
Louis and Alice could do little about either her illness or his fame, but they did give the girls a warm, loving environment, and no matter how busy Louis might be, he always found time to spend with his daughters when home or wrote them letters while on a trip. Unlike his notes to Alice, which included political gossip and news about law cases, the playful letters to the children talked about things he knew would interest them. In an early letter to Elizabeth, then four years old and, along with Alice and Susan, visiting her Goldmark relatives in New York, he wrote, “Do you like New York? And how does your doll like to be with Grandma and all the Aunts and Uncles. I hope she has not cried much. The Christmas tree and Santa Claus are very anxious to see you and Susan again, and want to know whether they shall wait until you come back from New York. Santa Claus would like to come down from the tree and rest in Susan’s bed. Do you think I should let him?” Five years later, after Elizabeth wrote reporting on her progress in learning how to swim, her father congratulated her and added that “so great a swimmer will, doubtless, want to become also a great walker,” which in fact she did, often accompanying her father on his hikes through the woods. When he visited the Kentucky horse farms in 1906, he wrote to tell the children about what he had seen and how the yearlings and colts came up to them as they walked in the meadows.
The two girls, although both bright and strong willed, differed a great deal in personality. Susan appeared more outgoing as a child, while Elizabeth seemed shier and more reserved. As Alice told Belle La Follette in 1913, Susan’s “is a passionate nature, easily roused, capable of deepest affection & also fairly strong hatreds. Her enthusiasm for public service is great.” Periodically, Susan would do something that upset her parents, to the point that one time Louis wondered if she were indeed their daughter. Eventually, she outgrew this behavior, but not until after graduation from law school.
In 1911, the eighteen-year-old Susan stood ready to go to college, but first she had to finish all of her high-school exams and was very nervous about them. From New York her father sent her a reassuring note that he had faith in her ability. “Good courage to you,” he wrote, “and keep your good wits about you. You will then have what is called ‘good luck.’ I am sure you know enough.” Apparently, she did, for a few days later she reported that the examinations had gone well.
That fall she went off to Bryn Mawr College, much to the joy of her Goldmark aunts who had also attended the school. “I trust the first day at College has been beautiful,” her father wrote, “and full of that promise of happiness and usefulness which we wish for you. Take very good care of yourself and be full of courage.” When Alice expressed some concern about whether Susan could discipline herself and buckle down to work, Louis assured her that all would be well. “Susan will rise to the responsibility of taking care of herself,” he thought. “At all event, she must learn & the conditions are as favorable as it seems possible to create.”
Susan had trouble in college with the same subject she had had problems with in high school—English—and with her father’s approval arranged to have private tutoring in the subject. In an effort to cheer her up, he confessed that the task of composition “may continue difficult for you, as it has always been for me, but that is no terrible misfortune. The important thing is to have something to say and to learn how to say it, and I have no doubt you will, in good time, have plenty to say, and what you say will be worthwhile, because what you do is high-minded and noble.”
The Brandeises believed that Susan’s (and later Elizabeth’s) collegiate education should include learning how to manage money. Louis sent her a check for $200 (over $4,000 in 2007 currency) when she started school, so she could open her own checking account and pay her bills for tuition, room, board, and books. They also wanted her to support activities and causes. “Remember, we want you to be in a position to contribute your liberal share to all college activities you are interested in.” But having money and spending it wisely involved accounting, and Susan apparently did not share her father’s passion for keeping accurate records. In the spring of her junior year her father wrote to say how pleased they were in her development and they wanted her to have the financial independence to assume new responsibilities now that she had turned twenty-one. They intended to give her an annual allowance of $1,800, but they expected a better accounting than they had previously received. “We want you to spend the money as seems to you best, but I must ask you to prepare and send to me not later than the 8th of each month an account of the disbursements of the preceding month classified as: 1. College expenses; 2. Dress; 3. Travelling; 4. Amusements; 5. Gifts (to relations or friends); 6. Contributions to public causes; 7. Sundries (& any other subdivisions you may desire).” He also wanted her to show the balance on hand, as well as expenditures for the month and year to date, “as I showed you in the account last summer.” Apparently, Susan failed to submit her accounts on time, and there is a constant complaint from Louis to Alice that Susan had not acknowledged receipt of a check or that her monthly statement had not yet arrived.
Susan did well, but not outstandingly, in college. She had to take a foreign language and chose German, which proved difficult, so with her parents’ approval she hired a tutor for that subject as well. She really disliked the language, and Louis wrote to Alice, “I hope you can work Susan up to a desire to master her German decently. Whatever she may do with it later she ought to learn to do it because she hates it, & get the ‘lust of finishing’ instead of skimping. Can Elizabeth help in this?” As her graduation approached, Louis assured Susan that he and Alice did not view her class standing disapprovingly. “You have made good use of your years at college, and have grown most during the past year. I have no doubt but that you will give a good account of yourself after graduation.”
Much to Louis’s delight, Susan decided to go to law school, but she soon found that her two top choices, Harvard and Columbia, did not admit women at the time. Taking a leaf from her father’s history, she wrote what amounted to a brief to the deans of both schools arguing that they should admit women in general and her in particular. Both George W. Kirchwey of Columbia and Roscoe Pound of Harvard knew her father personally and felt they had to explain to him why they could not admit his otherwise well-qualified daughter to their programs. Both men personally believed women should be admitted, but told Brandeis that they did not have the power to do so. The admission of women constituted a major policy decision that could be made only by the whole faculty as well as the governing boards of the schools, and while it would eventually happen, they did not know when.
Disappointed at not getting into the schools of her choice, Susan decided to spend the year after her graduation at home and work on the suffrage cause. Alice initially thought this would be wonderful, and no doubt she and Susan enjoyed laboring for the same goal. But after her relative freedom at school, Susan seemed restless back in Boston and often wound up fighting with her mother. Louis, in Chicago to address the bar association just days before his nomination to the Court, tried to calm Alice: “Of course it is your unappreciated love that hurts in the Susan matter. But remember time and patience are the great remedies,” he told her. “She will come clamoring for your love a little later.” At the end of the year Susan went off to the University of Chicago Law School, where she managed both to please her parents by her studies and to aggravate them by her personal behavior.*
CONSIDERING HOW BUSY his life had become, Louis could indeed take a great deal of satisfaction not only from his work but from his family as well. As he, Alice, Susan, and Elizabeth enjoyed their Christmas vacation in Dedham in 1912, he no doubt looked forward to what he and other progressives hoped would be a burst of reform energy once Wilson took office in March 1913. He did not know what if any role he would play in the new administration, but could assume that he would remain as busy in reform work in the next few years as he had been in the past. He had no idea how much more hectic his life would soon become.
* Elizabeth Brandeis went to Radcliffe College, where she received her B.A. in 1918, and, after working for a few years, attended the University of Wisconsin, where she earned her doctorate in economics under John R. Commons in 1928. Unfortunately, we have no comparable correspondence between Brandeis and his younger daughter. Susan saved his letters to her, and her children deposited them, along with those to Alice, in the Brandeis library. Elizabeth also saved her letters and provided some of them for The Brandeis Letters, but because of her own views on privacy, before her death, she destroyed nearly all of the letters her father had written to her.