When I was a little girl, my mother had a marvelous interior decorator, Anna Della Winslow, who not only had furnished my grandparents’ magnificent duplex at 44 West 77th Street in New York City, opposite the Museum of Natural History, but she’d also redone their summer home, Thorncroft, in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts. And then she helped my mother put her lovely things in our home in Belle Haven, Greenwich, Connecticut.
Annie, as we children called her, was born in Sweden, but was as American as apple pie. She loved doing for others, had great taste, adored the theater, and knew everyone who was anyone in or out of the theater and art worlds.
Annie kept an office in a boutique on the ground floor of the Great Northern Hotel on 57th Street, close to the famous Russian Tea Room, near Carnegie Hall. I’d always go along when Mother had an appointment with her. Inevitably, we’d have lunch at that famous tearoom, where Annie would hold court. I could hardly eat, it was so exciting to meet so many great artists from the concert and opera world . . . and they all loved Annie.
In 1924, when I was eleven years old, Stravinsky stopped at our table, kissed Annie’s hand, and wouldn’t let go. Another time, the great contralto Marguerite d’Alvarez, all two hundred pounds of her, swept in and, after embracing Annie, Mother, and me, promptly sat down and ordered a luncheon large enough for two . . . completely forgetting those waiting for her at the next table. Once, the beautiful soprano Marguerite Namara came by for a moment, swathed in furs and Chanel, looking so romantic; every man in the restaurant was staring at her. Dear God, I thought, I hope when I grow up, I can be as fascinating. Of course, I hadn’t realized that not only was she a great beauty, but she also had a voice that enthralled everyone.
I had a voice, too, even as a child, and loved to sing. But I was far from beautiful or glamorous. In fact, I felt ugly. I figured I had a lot of work ahead of me if I ever expected to sing on any stage and be like Namara. But this was my dream.
I was still young when my parents divorced, which meant that I never really knew my father, Walter Morris Lytton. After the divorce, he stayed in Chicago, where he was an architect, so I didn’t see him often enough to know him. My mother met Frank J. Lynch, who’d been a friend of my father’s, when I was five. I knew him first as Uncle Frank. He was handsome, with blue eyes and great charm. When he married Mother, he became my stepfather, but I called him Dad, and he adopted Ware and me. The two of us took his last name. We moved back east and settled in Greenwich, Connecticut. Henry, our oldest brother, remained Henry Lytton. He was always very serious and straitlaced. He didn’t approve of the divorce, but then again, Henry didn’t approve of a lot of things. A lot of the time, that included me.
While waiting for the Belle Haven house to be finished, our family moved into a suite at the Greenwich Country Club. Saturday nights, when they held dinner dances, I would gulp down my supper and ask to be excused. Then I would stand near the orchestra and sing along with them, while Mother and Dad danced by. Sometimes couples would stop just to listen to me. That’s when I knew in my heart I could, if I tried, have a career. That was so very important in my mind.
When we moved into the Belle Haven house, Ware went to Brunswick High, Henry was off to Yale, and I went to the Greenwich Academy. By this time, I had two younger sisters, Nancy and Barbara (Bobby). I was not quite a teenager when they were born. They were adorable . . . blond, blue-eyed, and bewitching. I loved them as babies, and still do. They were and still are my whole, not half, sisters.
I practiced singing every chance I could. Many nights Mother would play the piano after dinner, and Ware and I would stand beside her and sing. Sometimes my little sisters would tiptoe down the stairs and peek at us through the rails of the banister, until their nanny scooted them off to bed.
This should have been the perfect life for Mom and Dad. They had it all—good friends, a great social life, and five fairly well-behaved children. But something was wrong. I couldn’t tell my mom, because it was about Dad. For years, my situation at home had been difficult. I figured his drinking made him do what he did to me, and like most abused children of that era, I remained silent. Singing wasn’t just a career ambition for me. It was something to look forward to, a way out of a bad situation.
Often, I’d wake up to hear the crashing of furniture, doors slamming, and Mother crying, “Frank . . . NO!” In seconds, I’d be out of bed and down those stairs to defend her! It was horrifying to see him looking quite out of his mind and Mother standing there, terrified. I never really knew what they were fighting about, but he was definitely very drunk and demanding the keys to the car, which she refused to give him. When he threatened her, I’d get between them, but I was small and he’d throw me aside. After that, he would plunge down the stairs and storm out the front door. Eventually, he’d come back, and finally fall asleep. In the morning, I’d go to school, unable to function, but I’d go.
The next night, Mom would forgive him. He’d tell her he wanted to have a talk with me, to say how sorry he was. As soon as I heard him coming up the stairs, I’d turn off my light and pretend to be asleep, but he’d still come in, very quietly. I’d hold my breath and freeze, hoping I wouldn’t feel him if he touched me. He did.
“Babe,” he’d whisper as his hands reached under the covers. “I’m sorry about last night . . . I don’t want to hurt your mother—or you. I just wanted to come up and kiss you good night.”
“Don’t touch me, Dad, or I’ll scream,” I’d say, and suddenly he’d be gone.
Looking back, I can’t remember just when it began, but when I was a very little girl, about five or six years old, he used to make me sit on his lap. When I was eleven, Mother started making me go with him in the car whenever he’d say he was “out of cigarettes” and had to drive into Greenwich to buy more. Mother thought this was his excuse to buy liquor instead, and she thought I’d prevent him.
One rainy night, alone in the car with him, driving through the dark, wet, empty streets of Belle Haven, he told me how grown up I was getting to be, and what a nice, strong body I had for such a young girl. As he was speaking, he put his hand on my knee and slowly moved it up my leg. I tried to get away, but he gripped my thigh. “Be still!” he said as his fingers reached up between my legs. “I just want to feel you!”
“Stop, Dad!” I cried. “Are you drunk or something?”
“No, babe, I’m not!” he said, lowering his voice. “Be still . . . or I’ll slam on the brakes and the car will skid and turn over.” With that he laughed, enjoying how frightened I was.
“You wouldn’t dare . . . you might kill us. I’ll tell Mom.”
“If you do, I’ll tell her you asked me to touch you.” His fingers found their mark . . . “There!”
“That’s not true!” I screamed. I attempted to push him away, but his hand stayed put. Then I started to cry.
“Your mother will believe me, not you,” he said, his breath hot on my face. “After all, you’re very mature for your age, and girls who do things like this could be put away in an institution.”
His threat stopped my tears. Terrified by his words, I pulled away from him. I grabbed the door handle on my side of the car, and held on tight. When we got home, I ran upstairs to my room, threw myself on my bed, and cried myself to sleep.
I never told my mother, not then, not ever. She would have been devastated. She loved Frank, they had those two adorable daughters, and I couldn’t bear to hurt her. Besides, I was afraid that maybe, just like Dad said, she might not have believed me. From that night on, however, I avoided Dad, except when the whole family was together. I also started locking my bedroom door.
At the Greenwich Academy I studied singing, wrote poetry, and was on the field hockey, basketball, and riding teams. History, my favorite subject, made up for math, which I never conquered. I loved movies and Saturday afternoon football games. Actually, I loved one of the players much more than the game itself. His name was Tim Crowley, he was a member of the Brunswick High football team. Once I left a junior dance at the Field Club to take a ride with Tim on his motorcycle, ending up in his arms on a couch in his mother’s living room. My brothers burst through the door just in time to stop me from what I longed to do and brought me home. Henry told Mom, who promptly cried. Dad stormed up and down the hall and called me a whore. “We didn’t do anything bad,” I said, defending myself. “We just kissed!” Years later I figured out what really bothered him: he didn’t want anyone else to touch me.
That night my parents decided to send me away to school in Europe. Less than two weeks later, Mom, Dad, and I were aboard the SS Paris en route to France. The memory of that trip has never left me. We had bad weather all the way across the Atlantic. Even worse than rough seas and high winds, however, was Dad’s drinking. He and Mom returned to our suite very late after a party. I awoke to hear them arguing—again. When Mom cried out, I ran to help her, but Dad just threw me across the cabin. I hit my head on the edge of the bunk, and stayed there stunned and bleeding. There was a sudden knock on the door and two officers called out in French, “Is something wrong?”
“Merci . . . c’est rien,” Mom replied. Moments later, she dissolved in tears as Dad staggered out, heading for the bar.
They took me to Marymount Convent, 72 Boulevard de la Saussaye, Neuilly-sur-Seine, just outside of Paris, one block from the American Hospital. I stayed there for the next year and a half. On entering Marymount, one had to sign a paper promising not to speak English . . . ever. I learned French in a hurry—I had to, if I was going to eat. Even so, Marymount was a wonderful experience. I was the youngest student; most of the other girls were of college age. I went with them to the Sorbonne for classes in literature and history. Even better, I studied singing with Maestro Maugiere of the Opera Comique, who taught me a duet, the barcarole “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour,” from Offenbach’s opera Les contes d’Hoffmann.
I think that is when I really fell in love with opera. The seductive melodies, the stories, the passions enchanted me, transporting me into another world. When I finished my term at Marymount, Mother, Dad, my sisters, and my brother Ware came over on the SS Majestic, bringing a brand-new Packard touring car with them. After Mother hired a governess, a chauffeur, and a cook, we spent the next four months at the Villa Lalo in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, just south of Biarritz on the west coast of France. I was so happy to again be with my whole family that I never once thought about why I’d been sent to Marymount in the first place, nor did I think back on what Dad had done to me. I forgave him and forgot about it. It just seemed like a bad dream, something that happened long ago, and I pushed it out of my mind.
We came home on the SS Berengaria. It was another terrible crossing, with monstrous waves so high and frightening that no one was allowed on deck. We were a day late getting into New York. Still, it was great being back in America, and as a teenager I was allowed to choose my next school. I chose Harcum in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, because it was widely acclaimed for its music department. Ware went off to Roxbury; Henry was still at Yale.
Along with my singing, French, Latin, math, English, and history classes, I played on the hockey, tennis, basketball, and riding teams. Not having enough to do, I also decided to take ballet with Mikhail Mordkin, Anna Pavlova’s last partner. I made a lifelong friend in Jean Donnelly from Scranton, who introduced me to the entire University of Pennsylvania football team. None of them were good dancers, so at proms I depended on Ware’s friends from Roxbury as dancing partners.
I loved Harcum; I felt free and happy there—until the weekend when Dad drove down from Greenwich and took me into Philadelphia for a special outing. It was supposed to be a treat—he had reserved a suite for us at the Ritz. We dined, went to a movie, and called Mother to say good night. After thanking him for our time together, I went to my room, undressed, climbed into bed, and fell asleep.
I was awakened by the sound of the door opening. I heard him coming toward me. I was so frightened that I didn’t dare move. I could tell by his breath he’d been drinking, but how could that be? He’d only had one cocktail at dinner. He pulled back the covers and crawled into my bed. I could feel his body; it was burning. We lay there, kind of in spoon fashion, for what seemed like hours. I was very scared, and when he touched my breasts, I started to tremble. “Dad, don’t!” I pleaded.
This only made him angry. He yanked down my pajamas. His legs forced mine apart, and he moved on top of me. I tried to fight him off, but he was too strong. I cried out, but he covered my mouth. “Shush, babe, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to put it between your legs.”
“No, Dad, you can’t do this to me. It’s wrong!”
But he was doing it . . . He was having an orgasm, and it happened so fast—and then he lay still. He had not penetrated me, but it was sickening, and I died a thousand deaths.
“I hate you, I hate you!” I sobbed . . . and then I slapped him as hard as I could.
He looked at me, then slapped me back. The blow was quick and stinging. There was contempt in his voice when he said, “I haven’t hurt you, babe. It’s what you deserve, because you’re nothing but a dirty little Jew! Like your father!”
And with that, he got up and left.
For a moment, I lay there in the dark, stunned, not realizing what he meant, thinking he must be crazy. Afraid he might return and try again, I ran to the bathroom, washed myself, dressed, and packed my bag. I dashed out the door and took the first train back to Bryn Mawr, reaching Harcum just as the night watchmen were making their rounds. They let me in and I tiptoed up the stairs to my room and to bed, filled with shame and confusion.
Everything I “knew” about Jews was bad—that the Jews killed Jesus, that Jews were miserly, that Jews gypped and cheated everyone. Me, a Jew? I didn’t want to be like that. I felt dirty enough after he molested me, and when Dad called me a “dirty little Jew,” he took away what was left of my self-esteem. I hated myself . . . I wished I was anybody but me!
I never told Mom what Dad did to me that night, but when I went home for Christmas vacation I asked her, “Why did you marry my father? Why didn’t you tell me he was Jewish?”
“I loved him,” she answered, “and you must be as proud of his family as I am of the Ware family.”
My mother had met my tall, dark, and handsome father, Walter Lytton, when they were both in college, he at Cornell and she at Smith. His father, Henry Charles Lytton, had put himself through college before joining the Union Army. After the Civil War, he opened a dry goods store in Chicago. The business prospered and expanded, eventually becoming a department store called the Hub, later known as Lytton’s, which rivaled Marshall Field’s in prestige. It was there that my father created the “bargain basement” and the “working man’s suit.” That’s the suit with two pairs of pants, one to wear to your job, and one to go to church in. My grandfather was now well known in Chicago as the dean of State Street merchants. His wife, my grandmother, Rose Eva Lytton, was the daughter of the legendary Sailing Wolfe, the seventh generation of her family in America, and president of the Chicago chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Isobelle, her sister (my great aunt) was the mother of Bernard Baruch.
Dirty little Jew indeed. I decided that if Ware, Henry, and I were Jews, we’d be the best Jews in the world.