Genius in Disguise Read online

  The next day Ross rampaged into the office. “I’m not going to work myself to death so we can lose money in a magazine that competes with us,” Ross told Shuman. “I’m going to tell Fleischmann he has to get The New Yorker out of Stage.”

  The editor sat down, pulled his typewriter close, and started banging. When he was through he gave the one-page document to Shuman to read, then to ferry personally to Fleischmann. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and the memo was an ultimatum.

  Said Ross, “Unless, before 5 p.m. Friday of this week, I have your written promise that you will stop the financial contributions to Stage … I shall terminate my services with the F-R Publishing Corporation with the closing of the present issue of The New Yorker. You are requested to consider this communication as notice to that effect.”

  Ross’s threat to quit was nothing new. He employed the tactic so often, over transgressions large and small, that it became a kind of intramural New Yorker sport. McKelway recalled that after his first year as managing editor, he was hoping for an increase in pay; Ross sprang into action, dashing off a note to Fleischmann insisting on a three-thousand-dollar raise for McKelway. “If this demand is not met, I quit,” Ross wrote. He showed the note to McKelway and said with a grin, “How will that do?” McKelway replied that as touched as he was by the gesture, the matter certainly wasn’t important enough for Ross to quit over. “Ah, nuts to them,” Ross said. McKelway got the raise.

  The difference this time was that Ross’s threat was in deadly earnest.

  There was no word from Fleischmann that Wednesday, or on Thursday morning. At this point, with Ross looking grim and the atmosphere growing more ominous by the hour, Shuman took it on himself to intervene. He rode over to Fleischmann’s Park Avenue apartment, where he found the publisher nursing a cold but otherwise sanguine. Shuman asked him what he intended to do. The publisher replied that this time he had decided to accept Ross’s resignation. He even had a successor in mind, Arthur Krock of The New York Times.

  Shuman was not altogether surprised. Tactfully he tried to point out that as capable as Krock was, bringing in any new editor amounted to taking a huge risk with The New Yorker, whereas Ross, for all his aggravations, was a proven success.

  Fleischmann frowned. “Ross is so bad mannered,” he said.

  This was scarcely news to Shuman, who arguably endured more tongue-lashings from Ross than any other person in his employ. Still, for the sake of The New Yorker he pressed Ross’s case, and in time the logic of his argument carried the day. Swallowing hard, Fleischmann relented: he would withdraw from Stage immediately. “Tell Harold he’s won again,” Fleischmann said. The note to Ross came the next day.

  Even taking into account Hanrahan’s stock, which reverted to The New Yorker, the Stage debacle cost the magazine about $750,000. There was never a full airing to the stockholders, and Fleischmann, while conceding and regretting the “unsound investment,” never really explained it. The fallout from this unhappy episode did have a profound effect on the onetime gambler, however, as it transformed him into one of the most conservative publishers in New York. In later years, when The New Yorker was awash in cash, Fleischmann would be teased about his stodgy accounting practices and his preference for Treasury notes over acquisitions and other glitzy investments. The lesson of Stage had been a sobering one.

  A few weeks later, perhaps emboldened by his successful ultimatum, and having lost what shred of confidence he still had in the magazine’s management, Ross once again raised the specter of resignation. He told Fleischmann that his financial picture had become so clouded that he would have to leave The New Yorker unless his compensation was improved substantially. He blamed Fleischmann’s business decisions, which he said had weakened The New Yorker and thereby substantially enhanced Ross’s indebtedness to his first wife. “I … find myself in what I must candidly call my late forties with my finances depleted to a point where I have no confidence in keeping up with my obligations,” he said. “Hence, something must be done.” He added helpfully that he was considering other “opportunities,” which no doubt referred to his proposed detective magazine; unknown to Fleischmann, he was exploring its feasibility and costs more seriously now than at any other time.

  Apparently Fleischmann’s first reaction was to approach Andy and Katharine White about replacing Ross as coeditors. They thought it over for a few days but then told Fleischmann that because of their loyalty to Ross the idea was out of the question.

  Stymied again, Fleischmann put together an attractive package for Ross that, at least for the time being, placated his demanding counterpart. His salary was set at thirty thousand dollars, but he was given a fifteen-thousand-dollar annual expense account. He and his wife would get at least two company-paid trips a year “to Florida, California or Europe or to such other places … where the type of subscribers, to which The New Yorker caters, or writes about, are accustomed to congregate.” He was also free to work out of his new home in north Stamford, Connecticut, rather than the office, as often as he wished.

  With this amelioration Fleischmann ducked another Ross bullet, but he would face yet one more serious consequence from the Stage episode—an all-out New Yorker civil war.

  The Stage loss had decimated The New Yorker’s cash position just as war was breaking out in Europe. Advertising for European travel, as well as luxury items generally, eroded quickly. The magazine’s revenues flattened and profits shrank. In 1942, which would prove to be its worst financial year of the war, The New Yorker made only $107,000 on sales of $2.5 million, the thinnest margin since it had started making money back in 1927.

  Such were the glum realities when the company’s board met early in 1942. The F-R dividend had been moribund at $1.50 per share for several years, but now the directors, pessimistic about the immediate future, voted to pass it altogether. For increasingly disgruntled secondary shareholders, this act was the final straw. For all his affability, in their view Fleischmann had been far too cavalier with the company’s money; more to the point, he wasn’t moving aggressively enough to find new revenue or to cut expenses. A number of the stockholders banded together to take aim at the publisher’s handsome head. The insurgents were led by Jane Grant and Fleischmann’s now ex-wife, Ruth, who held the second-largest block of shares. (Upon hearing that Ruth Fleischmann had married Country Life editor and publisher Peter Vischer in 1937, Ross dryly reported to E. B. White that he was working harder than ever since “we have another little mouth to feed.”)

  Jane and the Vischers lined up another shareholder, lawyer Lloyd Paul Stryker, to lead an informal investigation into Fleischmann’s management and to pursue any subsequent legal action or negotiations. Truax, Stryker’s brother-in-law, joined in, as did several other small shareholders. A few demurred, however; Katharine and E. B. White especially were offended by the revolt and feared it would undermine the magazine.

  Ross initially stayed out of the fight, pointing out that he had only a few shares left; besides, the interests of the editor and the shareholders “weren’t exactly parallel.” Nonetheless, he made it clear that he sympathized completely with the Grant-Vischer faction. And the more Ross heard of Stryker’s findings, the angrier he got; finally, in May, he bluntly informed Fleischmann that he was throwing in with the other side.

  Sportsmen: Raoul Fleischmann, left, and older brother Charles. Ross once said that he would sooner see New Yorker profits go to the writers than to the publisher, “who would just lose it at the races.” (Bettmann Archive)

  The rebellious shareholders threatened to sue Fleischmann for past malfeasance in running The New Yorker if he refused to relinquish the chairmanship and otherwise agree to a serious change in the magazine’s management. They made a special point of their intention to hold him and Hanrahan personally liable for the Stage losses.

  It was all very exasperating to the proud Fleischmann, and his initial impulse was to fight. He believed he could beat the malfeasance charge, and so did his lawyers. Yet he also u
nderstood that a high-profile court fight would sully him personally and might well devastate The New Yorker. In the end he determined that compromise would be best, and in June the two sides commenced what would be painful, protracted negotiations.

  During an especially difficult four-hour session in Stryker’s Wall Street office, Fleischmann deliberately reviewed, point by point, the opposition’s bill of particulars. For a few moments he mulled over their proposed new board of directors. “As I get it, this new board is to be a kind of jury to pass upon the management,” Fleischmann said, a defendant’s air of resignation in his voice.

  That’s what this board, or any board, should be, Stryker concurred.

  “Well,” replied Fleischmann, “let’s look over [it] and see whether I am getting a fair jury.”

  After months of haggling, an agreement was reached early in 1943. The board was trimmed, and only two of Fleischmann’s aides—Eugene Spaulding and Raymond Bowen—remained, a face-saving gesture to the humbled publisher. Ross rejoined the board. Fleischmann was forced to vote his shares with the board’s majority for five years, while Ross’s job was assured for the same length of time (he had the option of renewing it in one-year contracts). Fleischmann remained president, but was joined by Truax and Stryker on an executive committee that would make all the key management decisions. Truax officially joined the company as treasurer—or, more accurately, as on-site referee.

  It was a near-complete repudiation of Fleischmann, who was stripped of most of his power and all of his independence. He managed to accept it with the good grace that was his hallmark, and years later he would reassert his authority over the board and the magazine. Yet the New Yorker civil war had wrung any lingering innocence from the enterprise and unquestionably took a good bit of the joy out of the job for Fleischmann.

  There would be more haggling with Ross in the coming years—over staff pay, stock, editorial space, advertising, printing quality, paper quality, health benefits.… By now, however, the pattern of Ross and Fleischmann’s nonrelationship was firmly entrenched. They merely muddled along with each other, talking through Truax and trying to put the best face on things for the sake of The New Yorker. “Ross was a constant irritation that my father kept under control,” said Peter Fleischmann.

  Irritating as it was, the twenty-six-year standoff between Raoul Fleischmann and Harold Ross proved extraordinarily profitable, in every sense of the word. Had Fleischmann faced a less implacable adversary than Ross, he might well have been tempted to become more involved with editorial, possibly with dire results. Likewise, if Ross had been loosed on the business side, there would have been no one left to carry out his orders. In its delicate, perverse balance, their acrimony ensured that the product was editorially peerless, which the business side adroitly exploited. True enough, there was real principle behind The New Yorker’s vaunted separation of business and editorial. Yet that high wall also proved convenient for two neighbors who eventually couldn’t stand the sight of each other.

  ——

  For all the corporate intrigue, Ross was making a real effort to bring some order to his personal life, a settling down with beneficial results that carried over into the office. If he was just as nervous as ever, and certainly just as driven, he was keeping his passions under tighter control. He was much less the hysterical force of legend; now he was content to dash off a tart memo rather than dress someone down in the middle of the office. Writers and editors who came to The New Yorker in the middle to late Thirties describe a Ross with virtually none of the manic attributes that amazed and cowed their counterparts from the middle and late Twenties. There were various reasons for this sea change beyond the natural maturation that usually attends aging. Whenever Ross checked into Riggs or other clinics for rest, his doctors preached the virtues of delegating one’s problems, and thereby one’s stress, and at long last he was getting comfortable with this … sort of. (Once at Riggs, as part of the occupational therapy, Ross built a table; he was so proud of it, Frank Sullivan said, that friends didn’t have the heart to tell him that no two legs were the same length.)

  Meanwhile, Ross’s troublesome stomach was persuading him to curb his drinking. He still took in the occasional party, such as the jazz bashes that E. J. Kahn, Jr., and his roommate, Bruce Bliven, Jr., regularly hosted in the late Thirties (with William Shawn on the piano, always playing in the key of C). He could also still be found at a few favorite hangouts, like Bleeck’s and the Coffee House. But his drinking was definitely tapering off, and before long he would give it up altogether.

  By far the biggest change in Ross’s life, however, was that he became a family man. An unorthodox family man, to be sure, but a family man nevertheless.

  Shortly after their low-key wedding Ross and Frances moved into a new apartment on East Thirty-sixth Street, which they had professionally decorated, again at no small expense. Junior Treadwell, Woollcott’s valet, saw Ross’s spiffy new digs while helping out at a party there. To the unamused Aleck he reported back, “It makes [your] place look like a shit house.”

  Acquaintances recall the young Frances as charming and gracious, though clearly the pairing with Ross was an odd one. “She was a simple, beautiful, and warm-hearted person, totally unsuited to Ross,” Katharine White noted, “but she was likable, decent, and very much the lady.” Frances was still not wholly comfortable with English—for some time she had Ross read over all her correspondence before mailing it—and she was neither temperamentally nor linguistically up to his rambling, esoteric conversations. She loved to be out on the town, to shop, and to travel, but she was less at home with other of the national pastimes. As part of his effort to Americanize his French bride, Ross, accompanied by Gibbs and another friend, took her to a Dodgers game at Ebbets Field. No great baseball fan himself, Ross got them box seats right on the first-base line. Unfortunately, Gibbs reported, no fewer than five foul balls pelted their box that afternoon, and Frances decided that “the primary purpose of baseball was to kill the customers.”

  Frances became pregnant shortly after the marriage (“Conceived in an absent-minded moment, no doubt,” offered one New Yorker wag), and on March 17, 1935—St. Patrick’s Day—delivered a daughter, named Patricia in honor of the occasion. Ross acceded to Frances’s request that the girl be baptized Catholic, and a ceremony at St. Patrick’s Cathedral was arranged. The only problem was that he had already asked Woollcott to be the godfather, and now he had to take back the invitation since Aleck wasn’t of the faith. Another good friend, Frank Sullivan, gladly stood in for the disappointed Woollcott, but the Town Crier was not to be denied altogether. As Sullivan recalled it, at one point in the service the priest asked the godparents to place their hands on each branch of a Y-shaped candle. “As I reached to do so, a hand followed by an arm slid past me from the rear and the hand joined my hand on the candle,” Sullivan said.

  “Need I say that the hand was Aleck’s.… [He] got in on the baptism in spite of the Church, and I don’t suppose Patricia was any the less effectively baptized because of his alien touch.”

  That September, Ross and Frances bought an acre of land in north Stamford, a scenic, wooded parcel along the Rippowam River. The next year they bought ten adjoining acres, property abutting that of Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum and the Merritt Parkway. That fall they began constructing a large home, and in April 1937 they moved in.

  Eighteen years in New York City had made Ross thoroughly urban, and he would always maintain a residence of some kind in the city, but he loved the serene beauty of his country retreat. Here there was space enough for a man to read galley proofs in utter quiet, or to stroll about the grounds shooting at crows, offending no one save the birds. His combination bedroom-study overlooked the river, and he often worked there late into the night, the rat-tat-tat of his typewriter reverberating through the house.

  The doting father cradles newborn Patricia, 1935. (Pach Bros./Courtesy of Patricia Ross Honcoop)

  The Stamford home ha
d been designed with entertaining in mind, and it was common for Ross to have friends out for the weekend. Favorite activities included swimming, badminton, croquet, backgammon, and of course conversation. Lela and Ginger Rogers were frequent guests, and on one occasion Ross asked his friend Bennett Cerf, then still one of New York’s most eligible bachelors, to come along to help entertain Lela’s young niece, Phyllis. The two hit it off so well that a year later they were married in a service presided over by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Matchmaker and best man Ross turned up with a big rifle, the same weapon he trained on the crows, to ensure that Cerf didn’t back out.

  Astonishing as it was for many of his friends to behold, fatherhood also agreed with Ross. He doted on Patty from her first days till his last, and as the only child of an only child she developed a particularly close bond with him. If he was not as discreet with his language around his daughter as he was with other females—Patty was always told that her first spoken word was “goddammit”—he was in almost every other way a concerned and solicitous parent. He took special interest in her education and intellectual development. For instance, he knew that Patty was intelligent, but when she seemed slow to learn he had her examined by specialists. His instincts were correct, though he never learned the real reason for Patty’s classroom trouble: years later, she was diagnosed as dyslexic.

  Complete domestic happiness, alas, continued to elude Ross. There was never any fundamental rapport between him and his young wife, and it didn’t help that there were parts of his life that he apparently preferred to keep to himself. A case in point was his relationship with certain writers, such as Clarence Day. Ross was in the habit of dropping by the apartment of the bedridden writer during the last few years of his life; Day suffered from a crippling form of arthritis and died in late 1935. The two men would talk for hours, often trading stories about their colorful fathers. Ross, of course, had helped make Day’s famous by printing his many “Life with Father” stories. Day’s wife, Peg, recalls that one afternoon Ross came by, looking glum, with Frances in tow. Peg pulled the young woman aside and asked what was wrong. “Ross didn’t want me to come,” Frances said.