r/ of jy ;<, j* Utttltled THE DIARY OF MY 72nd YEAR OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Privacy, or The Right to Be Let Alone (with Alan U, Schwartz) Touch Wood Utopia, 1976 For Better or Worse Report on the American Communist So Far So Good The First Freedom The Best Is Yet Too Big The Censor Marches On (with A. Lindey) The Ultimate Power Hold Your Tongue (with A. Lindey) America's Primer To the Pure (with William Seagle) The People Know Best (with David Loth) American Sexual Behavior and The Kinsey Report (with David Loth) Unfitted THE DIARY OF MY 72nd YEAR by MORRIS L ERNST ROBERT B. LUCE, INC. New York UNTITLED: The Diary of My 72nd Year COPYRIGHT 1962 BY MORRIS L. ERNST All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or parts thereof, in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-21200 MANUFACTURED IN THE TOOTED STATES OF AMERICA VAN REES PRESS NEW YORK Dedicated to Maggie PUBLISHER'S NOTE This is the second volume of Morris Ernst's in The first, Touch diaries to appear print. Wood, was the result of Mr. Ernst's decision, a diarist. Untitled: at the age of 70, to become covers the The Diary of My 72nd Year, year 1960. took At the author's request, his publishers for the dia- full responsibility editing complete from the wealth of ries, selecting at random Mr. Ernst ideas, reminiscences and encounters set down in his diary for the year. Any references to matters which must remain confidential between lawyer and client have, of for the balance of course, been eliminated. As the material, we have selected those portions reader with which we felt would provide the the most amusement, insight, entertainment, and information. Unfitted THE DIARY OF MY 72nd YEAR January, 1960 New Years Eve, 1959 The holidays are at an end Lord be praised. I'm always at a low when people are artificial. It's as if all women wore too much rouge and all men, no matter what their inner feelings, and wore silky stovepipe hats. Possessions ride the waves, things at this season are superior to thoughts, I envy Maggie who looks out o our Washington Square window this morning and says: "You fool, you, what are you doing on a tree when snow is on the grass?" She talked only to a Hue jay and herself. So I'm weary or blas6, or bored. Surely for the next year or decade or half century I must find new excitements. I enjoy most, and hence envy, the leaping minds the hurdling ideas, the conclusions which arrive without man's ability to made. 1 the tell in simple words how the leap was Key-wood, he laziest man I ever knew, had it, on occasion, when dropped write a into the office to borrow a typewriter to high-riding 2 the column. Russell gave me my first best chance to explore our contacts in will-o'-the-wisp known as wisdom. Although were less person or by his charmed quill-styled letter-writing for the chal- than daily, I now know that twenty-five years would R. L. the lenge in my mind was daily, "How approach issuer And so I'm low because I'm in doubt, constantly question- life. In casual fashion Ing what to do with the tail end of my I outline a book on the Law. As editor of a series 111 hit some first drafts but it's not peaks drawing up outlines, writing to to re- and has never been my dish to polish, rearrange, work material. My occupation has always been in the area of the inventing and, on rare occasions in law, discovering new and upsetting theories for clients. The lawyer is more than a propounder of law. There is a little used area, where the robes of judges glide off their shoulders, and they become semOegislators, discovering that behaviours of man are deemed to be Against Public Policy a phrase inconsistent to the immutability of the law. In the past fortnight there have been the usual series of pleasures. But these little waves on the waters have no rela- tion to the following and enduring tides that have carried me through most of my adult life. I cry out for a new tide, an exciting new persistent trade wind. 1 The late Heywood Broun, columnist and author. 2 The late former P. Russell Lefflngwell, chairman, J. Morgan, leader of the bar. Lunch with Jack Gould.** A good mind with a sense of urgency as tJ the fatal misuses of TV as the great corrupter are of our folkwavs. ! suggested a story: What restrictions or placed by the* lords of TV over the viewing hours programs of their own children and grandchildren? Tuesday, January 5 Big defeat. For years I have tried through Captain Watts, the great ship chandler of Albemarle Street, London, to buy a Welsh coracle, and today they write they can't get one even made to order. It would have been fun to get a home-made skin skiff to fit my shoulders and weighing nothing when hauled on the l>each or over rocks. On the other hand, it's good that some items of man are not made for public use- but only for the use of the builder no matter what the cost may be. On the other hand, a goodie. I read that man blushes not for shame but for love of truth. We all can blush. Dark skins get darker; fair skins go reddish. Now when a male evokes a blush it bespeaks charm formerly it spelled weakness. Women don't blush much any more in our society. But chil- dren, being truthful, don't blush until they are taught to suppress or try to conceal truth. So says, in greater detail, Dr. Feldman of Rochester Medical Center. A gusher of clients who believe they need a bit of counsel. And aU the stenogs and office boys entered my office to hear me chat about England and the debacle of the dream- less Labor Party; Sicily with its hard rocks and (hard?) atti- tude toward women a pressure toward male homosexuality; Switzerland with its amazing national ties despite four lan- guages and two potent religious groups; and Rome with its 9a The New York Times TV and Radio editor. of beauties Caesar and the Renaissance, Good questions, and I do believe everyone enjoyed it. Odd that the lawyers, even partners, never have requested such a session after one of my hegiras even when I went to Moscowor as a so-called Jew, to Egypt Maybe my reports seem more authentic to office boys than to partners. Maybe the lawyers are too busy for such nonsense. In Hansard I read a colloquy dealing with free batteries for hearing aids under the Public Health Service, How far ahead they are. And why does deafness fail to evoke even a part of the sympathy and understanding that goes with the blind who can so easily communicate with fellow men? And blind now the totally can hear ordinary print by a portable instrument. But no instrument to date can translate sound into hack into a to light and sound sufficiently precise to get the totallv deaf ear. Wednesday, January 6 Wrote Dick Nixon about the President's trip to South America and my desire to help toward literacy through radio. I hope I'm called upon because in the State Depart- ment there is no excitement, and I have a fair amount of knowledge plus a feeling of urgency. 10 Penelope says there is a study o thirty-six law peers from the era of Elizabeth and that a high percentage of these families have died out. So we discuss why and assume it is not because they were lawyers (although no assumptions should ever be disregarded). Answer is that peers married rich girls. Rich girls mean families of few children, because offspring are marriageably wealthy if the division of papa's estate is limited by number of offspring. So the inheritability 10 Friend, who must be nameless. in the heiress stem. I add, com- of infertility existed family in the male pounded by small families peer. selected the Saints Evening at Bar Association as Sinner by selections were for the annual Twelfth Night Party. Previous Medina, W. Davis Judge Hand, Harry Tweed, Judge John I I was selected and others of that 'image at the Bar. knew went off for a different purpose-as Fall Guy. So the party errors and even with barhs and skits as to my peccadilloes, " Rabbi Isaiah defects of character, Jan wrote me that when is not worried if God asks him were goes to heaven he why what if God asks were not you not Moses, but "Why you I neither Rabbi Isaiah?" So in clumsy, inept fashion was what the leaders of the Bar wanted me to be or say, nor was I in this tell about a need for a sense myself, I did, confusion, of our to have new of urgency and the demands Republic from chemists or leadership which cannot come bankers, other but from a clergy or any discipline only regenerated to the of the Bar Bar. I called for a loyal opposition leaders Association. Ben To Algonquin with owner of hostel, Bodne, and some 3 and then home to 2 Fifth Avenue with lawyers, until A.M, some of the Entertainment Committee.