Confessions of an Art Addict Read online

  Another uncle lived on charcoal, which he had been eating for many years, and as a result his teeth were black. In a zinc-lined pocket he carried pieces of cracked ice which he sucked all the time. He drank whisky before breakfast and ate almost no food. He gambled heavily, as did most of my aunts and uncles, and when he was without funds he threatened to commit suicide to get more money out of my grandfather. He had a mistress whom he concealed in his room. No one was allowed to visit him until he finally shot himself, and then he could no longer keep the family out. At the funeral my grandfather greatly shocked his children by walking up the aisle with his dead son’s mistress on his arm. They all said, ‘How can Pa do that?’

  There was one miserly uncle who never spent a cent. He arrived in the middle of meals saying he didn’t want a thing, and then ate everything in sight. After dinner he put on a frightening act for his nieces. It was called ‘the snake’. It terrified and delighted us. By placing lots of chairs together in a row and then wriggling along them on his stomach he really produced the illusion. The other two uncles were nearly normal. One of them spent all his time washing himself and the other one wrote plays that were never produced. The latter was a darling and my favourite.

  My other grandfather, Meyer Guggenheim, lived happily with his step-sister, to whom he was married. They brought up an even larger, if less eccentric, family than the Seligmans. There were seven brothers and three sisters. They produced twenty-three grandchildren. My one recollection of this gentleman is of his driving around New York in a sleigh with horses. He was unaccompanied and wore a coat with a sealskin collar and a cap to match. He died when I was very young.

  I was born in New York City on East 69th Street. I don’t remember anything about this. My mother told me that while the nurse was filling her hot water bottle, I rushed into the world with my usual speed and screamed like a cat. I was preceded by one sister, Benita, who was almost three years older than I. She was the great love of my early life, in fact of my entire immature life. We soon moved to a house on East 72nd Street, near the entrance to the Park. Here my second sister Hazel was born when I was almost five. I was fiendishly jealous of her.

  My childhood was excessively unhappy: I have no pleasant memories of any kind. It seems to me now that it was one long protracted agony. When I was very young I had no friends. I didn’t go to school until I was fifteen. Instead I studied under private tutors at home. My father insisted that his children be well-educated and saw to it that we acquired ‘good taste’. He himself was keen on art and bought a lot of paintings. Almost the only toys I can remember are a rocking horse with an enormous rump and a doll’s house containing bearskin rugs and beautiful crystal chandeliers. I also had a glass cabinet filled with tiny hand-carved ivory and silver furniture, which had an old-fashioned sculptured brass key. I kept the cabinet locked and allowed no one to touch my treasures.

  My strongest memories are of Central Park. When I was very young my mother used to take me driving there in an electric brougham. Later I rode in the Park in a little foot-pedalled automobile. In the winter I was forced to go ice skating, which caused me to suffer agonies. My ankles were too weak and my circulation much too bad. I shall never forget the excruciating pain I felt from the thawing of my toes, when, after returning from the lake, I clung to a stove which was in a little cabin intended for skaters.

  Not only was my childhood excessively lonely and sad, it was also filled with torments. I once had a nurse who threatened to cut out my tongue if I dared to repeat to my mother the foul things she said to me. In desperation and fear I told my mother, and the nurse was dismissed at once. Also I was not at all strong and my parents were perpetually fussing about my health. They imagined I had all sorts of illnesses and were forever taking me to doctors. When I was about ten I got an attack of acute appendicitis and was rushed off to the hospital at midnight and operated on.

  Not long after this I had a bad accident while riding in Central Park. As I passed under a bridge some boys on roller skates overhead made such a noise that my horse bolted. I lost my seat, fell to the ground and was dragged for quite a distance. I could not disengage my foot from the stirrup and my skirt caught on the pommel. Had I been riding astride this never would have occurred. I not only hurt my foot but I seriously injured my mouth. My jaw was broken in two places and I lost a front tooth. A policeman, finding the tooth in the mud, returned it to me in a letter, and the next day the dentist, after disinfecting it, pushed it up into its original position. This did not end my troubles. My jaw had to be set. During the operation a great battle took place among the attending surgeons. Finally, one of them triumphed over the other and shook my poor jaw into shape. The vanquished dentist never got over this. He felt he had superior rights over my mouth, as he had been straightening my teeth for years. The only good that came out of all this was that it put an end to the agonies I had been suffering in the process of being beautified. Now that had to end. The first danger incurred was the possibility of being blood-poisoned. When that passed, the only risk I ran was of getting hit in the mouth and losing my tooth again before it was firmly implanted. In those days my sole opponents were tennis balls, so that when I played tennis I conceived the bright idea of tying a tea strainer in front of my mouth. Anyone seeing me must have thought I had hydrophobia. When it was all over, my father received a bill for seven thousand five hundred dollars from the dentist who had never admitted his defeat. My father persuaded this gentleman reluctantly to accept two thousand.

  In spite of all the trouble I went through to preserve the tooth, I knew it could not remain with me for more than ten years, after which time its root would be completely absorbed and the tooth would have to be replaced with a porcelain one. I was prophetic in gauging its life, may I say, almost to the day. After ten years I made an appointment to have it replaced before it fell out, which it did exactly two days before the dentist expected me.

  My sister Benita was the only companion of my childhood and I therefore developed a great love for her. We were perpetually chaperoned by French governesses, but they were always changing, so that I can barely remember them. Hazel, being so much younger, had a nurse and lived a distinctly separate life. I don’t remember my mother at all at this age.

  When I was five or six my father began to have mistresses. A trained nurse lived in our house in order to massage my father’s head, since he suffered from neuralgia. According to my mother, this nurse was the cause of all her troubles in life, as she somehow influenced my father for the bad, without actually ever having been his mistress. It took my mother years to free herself of the poisonous presence of this woman in our household, for my father depended on her so much for the massage. However, we finally got rid of her, but it was too late. From then on my father had a whole series of mistresses. My mother took it as a great offence that my aunts remained friendly with this nurse and had long feuds with them for befriending her. All this affected my childhood. I was perpetually being dragged into my parents’ troubles and it made me precocious.

  My father always called me Maggie, only much later did I become Peggy. He had beautiful jewellery made for us which he designed himself. In honour of my name, Marguerite, he once presented me with a little bracelet that looked like a daisy chain, made of pearls and diamonds. My mother received more substantial presents, among them a magnificent string of pearls.

  I adored my father because he was fascinating and handsome, and because he loved me. But I suffered very much, as he made my mother unhappy, and sometimes I fought with him over it. Every summer he took us to Europe. We went to Paris and to London, where my mother visited hundreds of French and English Seligmans, and we also went to fashionable watering-places.

  My father engaged a lady called Mrs Hartman to teach us art. We brought her to Europe with us and it was her duty to make us cultured. She took us to the Louvre, the Carnavalet and to the châteaux of the Loire. She taught us French history, and also introduced us to Dickens, Thackeray, Scott and Georg
e Eliot. She also gave us a complete course in Wagner’s operas. I am sure Mrs Hartman did her best to stimulate our imaginations, but personally, at that time, I was more interested in other things. For one, I was infatuated with a friend of my father’s called Rudi. He was a typical roué and I can’t imagine now why he fascinated me. I was so much enamoured of him that I wrote mad letters about my passion, in which I said my body was nailed to the fire of the cross. When Rudi married one of my cousins, whom my mother had brought to Europe with her, and whose unfortunate marriage I fear she and my father arranged, I wept bitter tears and felt completely let down. I complained, saying he had no right to trifle with the affections of two women at once. At this time I must have been about eleven.

  One day when I was having tea with Benita and my governess at Rumpelmeyer’s in Paris, I found myself fascinated by a woman at the next table. I could not take my eyes off her. She seemed to react in the same way to us. Months later, after I had been tormenting my governess to tell me who my father’s mistress was, she finally said, ‘You know her’. Like a flash, the face of the woman at Rumpelmeyer’s came to my mind and when questioned, my governess admitted I was right.

  This woman was neither pretty nor young. I never understood my father’s infatuation for her. But she had the same agreeable quality (maybe sensuous) of his trained nurse. She was dark and resembled a monkey. She had ugly teeth which my mother used to refer to with contempt as ‘black’. We met this woman everywhere in Paris. It was most awkward. One day at the dressmaker Lanvin, my mother, accompanied by Benita and me, walked into a room where the woman was seated. My mother rushed out of the room and we followed her. The Lanvin staff, with correct French understanding, gave us another salle to ourselves.

  T.M., as we used to call her, wore the most elegant clothes. She had one suit which was made entirely of baby lamb fur. One day when we were taking our morning walk in the Bois on the Avenue des Acacias, we met her wearing this costume. My mother protested to my father regarding his extravagance. To console her he gave her money to have the same suit made for herself. Being a good business women she accepted the money, but instead she invested it in stocks and bonds.

  T.M. had been preceded by another lady. This lady, whom I never saw, nearly succeeded in marrying my father. In fact, my mother had come to the point of divorcing him. But the whole Guggenheim family came in groups and individually, begging her to reconsider her decision. We had streams of visitors all day long. Their one idea was to avoid this catastrophe. Finally my mother gave in. I don’t know when the affair ended—it did not last long—but I do know that the disappointed mistress received a large consolation prize, and to this day part of my income goes to her regularly twice a year. T.M. was followed by a young blonde singer.

  In 1911, my father had more or less freed himself from us. He had left his brothers’ business and had his own in Paris. This was a move he doubtless made to be able to live a freer life, but its consequences were more far-reaching than he ever realized. By leaving his brothers and starting his own business, he forfeited his claims to an enormous fortune. He had an apartment in Paris and was interested in or owned a concern which built the elevators for the Eiffel Tower. In the spring of 1912, he was finally to return to us after an eight months’ absence. He had a passage on some steamship which was cancelled because of a strike of the stokers. By this mere accident of fate he was to lose his life: he booked a place on the ill-fated Titanic.

  On April 15 the morning papers announced the dramatic sinking of this gigantic liner on her maiden voyage. In order to make a record trip for the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, the chairman of the company, who was on board, and the captain, ignoring the warning of icebergs, forged their way ahead, completely disregarding the dangers. The Titanic rushed to her doom. In the middle of the night she encountered an iceberg which ripped her bottom open. Within two and a half hours she sank. Unluckily the S.S. Californian, which was only ten miles away, had closed down her wireless. There were not nearly enough lifeboats, and, for reasons never explained, several of those that got away were barely filled, and passengers who were left on board when the ship sank were frozen in the icy water before Captain Rostrum, of the S.S. Carpathia, could come to their rescue. Only about 700 people were saved out of 2,200. The whole world was shaken by this disaster. Everyone waited breathlessly for the Carpathia to dock to find out who were the lucky survivors. We wired Captain Rostrum to find out if my father was on his ship. He wired back: ‘No’. For some reason I was told this, while my mother was kept in ignorance until the last minute. Then two of my cousins went down to meet the survivors. They met my father’s mistress.

  With my father there died a lovely young Egyptian, Victor Giglio, who was his secretary. He had had a hard time in the past and was happy to have been engaged by my father, thinking his troubles were ended. I was attracted to this beautiful boy, but my father did not approve of my ardour. A steward of the Titanic, a survivor, came to see us to deliver a message from my father. He said that my father and his secretary had dressed in evening clothes to meet their death. They had wanted to die as gentlemen, which they certainly did, by gallantly giving their places to women and children.

  After my father’s death I became religious. I attended the services in Temple Emanu-el regularly, and took great dramatic pleasure in standing up for the Kaddish, the service for the dead. My father’s death affected me greatly. It took me months to get over the terrible nightmare of the Titanic, and years to get over the loss of my father.

  When he died, he left his business affairs in an awful muddle. Not only had he lost a vast fortune by discontinuing his partnership with his brothers, but the money he should have had, some eight million dollars, he had lost in Paris. The small amount that was left was tied up in stocks that were yielding no interest and were at such a low ebb that they could not be sold. However, my mother did not know this and we continued living on the same scale. My uncles, the Guggenheims, very gallantly advanced us any funds we needed, keeping us in supreme ignorance. Finally, my mother discovered the truth and took drastic steps to end the false situation. To begin with, she started spending her own personal fortune. We moved to a cheaper apartment with fewer servants. She sold her paintings, her tapestries and her jewellery. She managed very well, and although we were never poor, from that time on I had a complex about no longer being a real Guggenheim. I felt like a poor relative and suffered great humiliation thinking how inferior I was to the rest of the family. My grandfather Seligman died four years after my father, and then my mother inherited a small fortune from him. We immediately reimbursed my father’s brothers. After seven years my uncles settled my father’s estate. They had finally put things into such shape by advancing their own money that my sisters and I each inherited four hundred and fifty thousand dollars and my mother slightly more. Half of what I received was placed in trust and my uncles insisted that I voluntarily do the same with the other half.

  During my sixteenth summer, while we were in England, war broke out. We returned to the United States, and eventually I was sent to school. It was a private school on the West Side for young Jewish girls, and I would walk there every day through Central Park. But after a few weeks I developed whooping-cough and bronchitis and had to spend the winter in bed. I was lonely and neglected, as it was the year of Benita’s début and my mother was very busy with her. Somehow I managed to do all my homework alone and kept up with the school course and passed all my exams. I am not at all intellectual and it was a great effort. But I did like reading, and I read constantly in those days.

  During my second school year I began to have a social life. I organized a little dance club with my schoolmates and some other girls. To cover the expenses of a monthly ball, we all contributed money. We were permitted to invite one or two boys to come and dance with us. We made a list of the desirable young men in our Jewish circles and then I held a mock auction sale and auctioned them off to the highest bidder, who then had the privilege of inviting th
em. These parties were gay and really not at all stuffy.

  During the summer of 1915, I received my first kiss. It was from a young man who took me out driving every night in my mother’s car. He invariably borrowed our automobile to drive home afterwards and would bring it back every morning at seven on his way to the station, when he went to New York to his job. My mother disapproved of my suitor because he had no money. She controlled herself until the night when he kissed me for the first and last time. We were in the garage and as he leaned over me, by mistake he put his arm on the horn. This awoke my mother. She greeted us with a storm of abuse and screamed at us, ‘Does he think my car is a taxi?’ Needless to say, I never saw the young man again. My mother felt triumphant, but several years later Fate proved her, according to her standards, entirely in the wrong, as this young man fell heir to a million dollars.

  After graduating from school I was rather at a loose end. I continued reading with my voracious appetite and studied courses in history, economics and Italian. I had one teacher called Lucile Kohn, who had a stronger influence over me than any other woman has ever had. In fact, because of her, my life took a completely new turn. It didn’t happen suddenly; it was a gradual process. She had a passion for bettering the world. I became radical and finally emerged from the stifling atmosphere in which I had been raised. It took me a long time to liberate myself, and although it was not for several years that anything occurred, the seeds that she sowed sprouted, branching out in directions that even she never dreamed of.

  In 1918, I took a war job. I sat at a desk and tried to help our newly-made officers buy uniforms and other things at a discount. I had to give advice and write out many cards of introduction. I shared this job with my friend, Ethel Frank, who had been my most intimate school companion. When she fell sick, I did all her work and mine, and the long hours proved too strenuous for me. I collapsed. It began by my not sleeping. Then I stopped eating. I got thinner and thinner and more and more nervous. I went to a psychologist and asked him if he thought I was losing my mind. He replied, ‘Are you sure you have a mind to lose?’ Funny as his reply was, I think my question was quite legitimate. I used to pick up nearly every match I found and stayed awake at night worrying about the houses that would burn because I had neglected to pick up some particular match. Let me add that all these had been lit, but I feared there might be one virgin among them. In despair my mother engaged Miss Holbrook, my dead grandfather’s nurse, to look after me. She accompanied me everywhere. I wandered around, revolving in my brain all the problems of Raskolnikov, thinking how much I resembled this hero of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Finally Miss Holbrook, by sheer force of will, made me think of other things. Little by little I became normal again. During this period I was engaged to a flying officer who was still in this country. I had several fiancés during the war as we were always entertaining soldiers and sailors.