Chapter Six: the Private Frank Altschul

CHAPTER SIX THE PRIVATE FRANK ALTSCHUL TO 1940 During the 1920s, Frank Altschul’s major preoccupation was to establish himself in control of the American house of Lazard Frères, steering a sometimes fraught course among the conflicting demands of his New York, British, and French colleagues. Yet business was far from his only preoccupation. By 1920 he was the father of two boys and two girls: Charles, born in 1913, named for his grandfather and the cynosure of many of his father’s hopes for the future; two daughters, Margaret, born in 1915, and Edith, born in 1917; and a second son, Arthur, born in 1920 and named for Helen’s younger brother. Altschul was also developing a range of interests and hobbies, and during the 1920s began to reveal aspirations to be something more than just a banker, and to play a role in public life. For a while, the Altschuls lived at the Orvista Apartments on West Eighty-first Street, “for the most part a way station for Jewish families with ideas of better places to be.” They took over the entire twelfth, top floor, which had been “the love nest of a notorious playboy,” where the flamboyant décor included a huge bed decorated with carved dragons.” When they moved on to the East Side, at 550 Park Avenue, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and his wife Elinor, Helen Altschul’s cousin, inherited the Altschul penthouse apartment.1 In the late 1920s Frank Altschul and his wife also acquired a country estate in Stamford, Connecticut. Although he always kept their large apartment as a base in New York, for the rest of his life Overbrook Farm would be very much the center of Frank Altschul’s existence, a personal kingdom of four hundred and fifty acres where he kept a stable of hunters, with a “spacious training field where he graciously permits his neighbors to put their horses over the jumps,” a printing press, and a photography studio.2 So important was the place to him that, when he and his wife eventually set up a foundation, that too took the Overbrook name. Throughout his life, Altschul generally eschewed publicity. During the 1930s, however, when he involved himself in first Democratic and then Republican politics, there were occasional glimpses of him in the press. In September 1933, Forrest Davis of the New York World Telegram published a lengthy interview with Altschul, in which he discussed economic reform. The journalist described his subject, then forty-six, as “lean, incisive, a fox-hunting type, an internationally known bibliophile, a scholar and patron of learning.”3 Five years later, in October 1938, the New York Mirror interviewed Altschul in his office, seated beneath a vivid picture of a whaling crew harpooning their prey. On the walls of the room were photographs of his children, and it also contained a bookcase of works on economics and another full of volumes on public 1 Henry Morgenthau III, Mostly Morgenthaus: A Family History (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1991), 235. 2 Quotation from Richard R. Smith, ed., History of the Class of 1908 Yale College, Vol. III Quarter Century Record 1914-1939 (New York: n.p., 1940), 137. 3 Forrest Davis, “Can Capitalism Survive?”, New York World-Telegram, September 27, 1933, Clippings File, Frank Altschul Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. 1 relations. In an effort to suggest that overly ambitious government plans to improve the world or individual lives might be counterproductive, Altschul quoted from a poem by Robert Browning the words: “It is dangerous to play with souls . and trouble enough to save your own.”4 In April 1941, when Altschul published a short book, Let No Wave Engulf Us, he granted a third interview, again in “his comfortable, picture-lined office at 120 Broadway.” The interviewer described him as “tall, dark, quiet-spoken,” and an accompanying photograph showed him relaxed in an armchair and smoking a pipe.5 Such public glimpses of Altschul were, however, rather rare. For the most part, he disliked courting attention, and preferred to operate quietly behind the scenes. Frank and Helen Altschul enjoyed a lifestyle that mingled affluence and great comfort with hard work and a sense of social obligation, a combination not uncommon among the Jewish haute bourgeoisie of New York’s “Our Crowd.” The expectations placed on them were high. Their milieu was also one in which family ties remained very important, and much of their social life centered upon their two families. Helen Altschul’s mother was notoriously possessive and demanding, and family legend had it that her younger brother Arthur Goodhart, one of Frank Altschul’s best friends, chose to move to Britain in 1920 and make his career there as a way “to put the Atlantic between him and his mother,” thereby escaping almost intolerable maternal pressures.6 Frank Altschul’s youthful social ineptitude never entirely deserted him, and he did not find it particularly easy to make close friends. He later stated that, until his father Charles Altschul’s death in 1927, when Frank was in his fortieth year, the older man was his son’s “closest companion.”7 Throughout his life, Frank remained “my dear boy” to his father. To the elder Altschuls, Frank and his wife were collectively known as Frankelen, while Herbert and Edith Lehman were Edibert. In the 1920s the Lehmans purchased an estate at White Plains, New York, and the elder and younger Altschuls and their children all spent much time there. Charles’ letters provide some glimpses of his son’s life in the 1920s, as well as the activities of his other children. In February 1923, he told his Austrian cousin, Paul Hammerschlag, that “Frank is doing very well in business and has materially solidified his position in the house.” Meanwhile: “Their four youngsters are developing splendidly, the oldest, Charles, being wild about Wireless telegraphy.”8 The Altschuls’ establishment went through the standard childhood diseases. In late 1921, Charles reported that three of the Altschul children had succumbed to chicken pox.9 In January 1924 the Altschuls’ “household” went through “all the stages of 4 Interview with Altschul, New York Mirror, October 1938, Clippings File, Altschul Papers. 5 “Wall Street Banker Convinced U.S.A. Needs Just Economic System,” newspaper clipping, April 23, 1941, Clippings File, Altschul Papers. 6 Kenneth Libo, ed., Lots of Lehmans: The Family of Mayer Lehman of Lehman Brothers Remembered by his Descendants (New York: Center of Jewish History, 2007), 78. 7 Quotation from Smith, ed., History of the Class of 1908 Yale College, Vol. III, 137. 8 Charles Altschul to Hammerchslag, February 3, 1923, File Paul Hammerschlag 1923-1924, Charles Altschul Files, Altschul Papers. 9 Charles Altschul to Hammerschlag, January 6, 1922, File Paul Hammerschlag 1920-1922, Charles Altschul Files, Altschul Papers. 2 mumps.”10 Charles attended Hotchkiss School, graduating in 1931. Margaret attended the exclusive Brearley School and Bennington College, Vermont, and Edith the Ethel Walker School. Arthur, the youngest, went to Deerfield Academy, and then on to Yale, by then an almost automatic progression for an Altschul son.11 Charles and Camilla Altschul were devoted grandparents to their seven grandchildren—four Altschuls and three Lehmans. After Camilla’s death, one nephew recalled how “[s]he used to tell me constantly of the various children & grandchildren of whom she was so proud.”12 In December 1923 Charles reported: “Our life is largely centred around the youngsters, and I try to see each one of the seven grandchildren at least every other day. When some of them come to us for dinner, it is always a special treat.” The Altschul children, unfortunately, had “already so much to do in and for school that it is difficult to arrange matters with any regularity.” The proud grandfather nonetheless rejoiced that: “They are all progressing highly satisfactorily.” His namesake, Frank’s eldest son Charles, apparently already had a mind of his own about his future. According to his grandfather: “Frank recently asked Charley – just ten years old – whether it would not be nice if some day he would join the same business, to which the boy replied, ‘Perhaps, dad; does your business do anything for humanity?’ I do not think that any of us of the older generation would have put such a question at that age; it shows how times have changed.”13 Charles, at least, would later be allowed to evade his father’s early expectations and follow his own inclinations, in a career that was tragically truncated. As his children grew older, Altschul was reasonably tolerant of youthful high spirits. In his final year at Hotchkiss school, Charles Altschul was Sports Editor of the school newspaper. One Saturday afternoon in 1932, when Charles was in his sophomore year at Yale, in the aftermath of a football game his father “dropped in unexpectedly and found to my distress that he was staging a wild party in his rooms.” Altschul “snatched him away” to Overbrook, where his apparently unrepentant son “went out dancing and arrived back at home six o’clock Sunday morning.”14 Receiving a letter from Arthur “as usual, made up of nothing but a long list of wants,” he requested that his younger son, away at boarding school, “tell us something about what you are doing, what you are learning, what kind of a horse you are riding, what kinds of friends you are making, and in general what a school week seems like.”15 Arthur, the youngest, apparently sometimes bore the brunt of paternal strictures; when he stood at 38 in a class of 44, his father 10 Altschul to Paul and Bertha Hammerschlag, January 29, 1924, File Paul Hamerschlag 1923-1924, Charles Altschul Files, Altschul Papers.

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