At Home With a Ghost - 45

Grandpa as unserious fop

(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by clicking here.)


I married for love at age 37, bailing on my most cherished principles since the time, as a 14-year-old would-be writer, I’d vowed to remain solo, childless, and unlicensed in love. If I wed, I stood to lose my independence, starting with the TV remote. Nevertheless, by my mid-thirties I changed my mind and wanted a child – badly.

The offer was on the table: I could have a baby if I stood under a hoopah, mouthed a few platitudes, and signed some papers, thus conferring legitimacy on the child. Suddenly independence seemed like an easy trade. I’d had my fill of freedom anyway. In the dark, you could sometimes mistake it for loneliness.

My grandfather’s ghost must have nodded in recognition. When he was alive, he got married at exactly the same age, and the need for a baby had everything to do with it.

When he was 6, his father died unexpectedly. An only child, he could look forward, after the death of his mother, to a small fortune amassed from iron importation, investments, and a sugar plantation in New Orleans. In the meantime, he drew close to his mother, who encouraged him in his love of the arts and his wish to become a composer.

Thus when he embarked on a career that was unlikely to pay much, his mother contributed a hefty allowance. It wasn’t quite enough, though, for a young man about town. He had wardrobe expenses. If he didn’t find another source of income, he would have to sell his automobile and resign his memberships at the Brook Club, the Union Club, the Knickerbocker Club, the Racquet Club, the Tuxedo Club, the Lenox Club, the Century Club, the Automobile Club of America, and the Grolier and West Side Tennis Clubs. He also wanted to get married eventually. Or so he told the court.

In 1914 he presented a petition to a New York State Supreme Court justice, asking for an additional stipend from his aunt’s estate. He might have applied to her directly, except that she was insane and confined to a sanitarium. She was worth $3 million, which just sat in an account earning interest. So why shouldn’t he have it? It might further his career as a composer.

This had to be the single most humiliating event in my grandfather’s life. The case hit all the papers, even as far as Texas. It makes for amusing reading now. In short, the judge ripped him a new one. I quote from the New York Times article:

“Mr. Kernochan said he had written some songs, but that he had only earned $30 a year in this way, and that to advertise the songs cost him six times what they brought in…The Justice said, ‘the application is unusual and extraordinary…It shows a young man, 33 years of age, who has lived an idle and luxurious life, now attempting, on the plea that he desired a further taste for music, to increase his income by obtaining an allowance out of his aunt’s estate at the rate of $12,000 a year…He resides with his mother, contributes nothing to the household expenses, and derives from his own property an income of about $3,750 a year.

“‘He has followed no other occupation other than his diversion for music.’” You can practically hear the judge’s sneering contempt for songwriting. “I do not value the increase of musical renown as being the substantial reason for this application. It is a mere pretext, that this young man may have additional means to maintain or accentuate his luxurious living…It matters not that his aunt is incurable, 65 years of age, without issue, never having been married, and has been insane since 1872, that her surplus income annually amounts to $100,000. The mere fact that an incompetent has an ample fortune, that her income is large, and greatly exceeds her requirements, affords per se, no ground to give away her property.”

Grandpa’s attorneys did an end run around the justice and he got his crazy aunt’s money. But his mother must have been embarrassed by the shaming publicity, which revealed her son as, well, not serious. At the very least he should get married. As his father’s sole progeny, he had an obligation to carry on the family name, by producing a male child.

He had been engaged once, to a violinist. Then he found out that he was supposed to use his money to further her career. Exit violinist. No matter: he preferred to hang with his homeys at clubs, or with fellow artists like Stieglitz and company; he was happy to have his mother be the only woman in his life. Bachelorhood suited him, and anyway, according to my dad’s memoir, Grandpa was noticeably ill at ease with other women.

But the pressure was on. He had to start looking for a spouse. Meanwhile, as if to proclaim the age of seriousness, war broke out in Europe.

(To be continued.)