The Chronicle Of A Yale Man Without Principle - A Happy Life With Wealth And A Beautiful Octoroon Mistress

Hardy Crowell had a mistress thanks to Madame Alicia Porter of Washington and Sioux City.  Why Sioux City, she was often asked, but she replied only, "Indians need comfort too".  The real reason was that Alicia had grown up in Iowa, had strong roots there, and wanted to 'give back to the community'.  A call girl service such as hers had not been seen west of the Mississippi since the days of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, and her girls serviced clients throughout the Midwest. 

 

It was in Washington, however, where Hardy met Lucy, la crème de la crème of Mme. Porter's table, a beautiful octoroon from New Orleans who had been the consort of none other than Hercule Landry, long term Congressman from Bayou La Fourche and a grandson of Huey Long, until he, Hercule, died in her arms in the Mayflower Hotel. 

In New Orleans, thank God, color had never been a bar to sexual adventure, Andrew Jackson's troops in 1812 and Farragut's in 1862 had their pick of the city's Creole beauties, and the Long family had continued the legacy until the death of the last of their line.    

Now, it might have been surprising that Hardy Crowell of Boston and Nantucket, heir to a shipping fortune and Senior Vice President at Bear Brothers Stern who made millions on top of his inherited wealth would have been a client of Mme. Porter - after all his money alone should have attracted the East Coast's finest women - but there was always a bit of the 'unconventional' amidst the Chippendale highboys, Townsend chairs, and Revere silver of his Beacon Hill home.  

'Unconventional' was the way his maiden aunts called his businesses at Yale - porn king of Trumbull College, distributor of blue movies, condoms, and bourbon to his classmates defying Connecticut's blue laws and making thousands, enough for him to put a down payment on land in Truro and later, despite the objection of old weathered-shingle New England Puritans, built a housing development on the cheap, made millions, and went on to Wall Street. 

Making money came easily to Hardy. There are always men who have a sense for it, a nose for weakness and opportunity, a fearlessness and brass-balled, risk-taking chutzpah that leave others in the dust, and somehow, despite his family's rock-ribbed rectitude and his stern upbringing, he instinctively cut moral corners.  The give and take of the marketplace had more flexibility, more fungibility, than most realized.  Life on the margins was, if not the safest place to be, certainly the most profitable; and Hardy was the first in credit swaps and other innovative financial instruments, the last out before the pyramid crumbled, and a happy man with estates on Long Island and the Vineyard, 

All of which is to say life came fast and easy to Hardy Crowell, and life on the moral edge was exactly where he wanted to be, where he was most suited and most at home.

Not so for his forbears who had been among the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and then who, along with John Davenport left to establish more fundamental, conservative Puritan settlements and built the New Haven plantations before moving on the New Jersey in search of even a more religious and principled life; or the other branch of the family who had been prosecutors in the Salem witch trials. 

 

Nothing doing, thought Hardy, times change and survival of the fittest was now featured in a new algorithm of edgy opportunism.  Yes, his ancestors made money and lots of it from the Three-Cornered Trade; and ships built in New England and sailed from Newport to Africa to pick up slaves for the sugar cane plantations of the Caribbean and then back to Boston with molasses provided the family's financial legacy; but there were easier, better ways now. 

Keeping one step ahead of federal investigators was part of his choreography.  As well as a nose for money, Hardy had one for the law; and knew how to outsmart them and leave them behind and befuddled. 

And so it was that he had no second thoughts whatsoever about buying Mme. Porter's services.  Who was fooling whom?  All sex is matter of contract, people looking for something in return.  

He had been surprised at the seductive beauty of Lucy Rousseau gifted as promised as any courtesan of the Thousand and One Nights - a sexual delight, a companion as deft and subtle as she was enticing, a woman of grace and charm - and for this he paid thousands.  Yet the transaction never seemed to diminish the affection - she was an actress, a marvelously accomplished woman of many emotional colors.  She could be whatever Hardy wanted, whatever he pleased, and did it with style and elegance.

Was he falling in love? Hardly. He was a man without principle and without commitment, a man for all seasons, adaptable, changeable, without emotional or moral fetters, no spiritual harness, no reins.  Love was an unnecessary codicil to the sexual contract and never in any of his.  His various affairs were mutually satisfactory and beneficial, and when it came time to end them, no blood was spilled. 

The arrangement with Lucy Rousseau was ideal - not only were there no caveats or codicils and no lengthy 'the party of the first part' clauses, there would never ever need to be.  Marx was at his best in the bedchamber - his economic animal was most at home there.

He had in fact bought Lucy as openly and aggressively as her slave ancestors had been auctioned and bought in Charleston; but that, like everything else in Hardy's vigorously independent life, was morally irrelevant. 

Hardy was her only client, and was paid a fortune for such availability.  She had her own life, far from that in the overstuffed Victorian parlors of a New Orleans bordello.  The contract was a good, profitable, and durable one.  

 

The advantage of all this was that when Hardy did decide to marry, have children, and leave his considerable wealth to them, he had no regrets.  His marriage was simply another contract, a means to a desirable end, an agreement without irregularities.  Looking at him everyone assumed that here was another successful Yale man, Boston brahmin, man of inherited and acquired wealth, and a man of substance and principle.  Little did they know that his happiness and success came from indifference, a unique, rare quality of disassociation and moral distance. 

An Ivy League Reunion - Climate Change, DEI, And Call Girls

It was Bill Baxter's college reunion, a late one if not his last. "Getting up there", he and his classmates joked as they tried to drum up attendance.  This reunion would see fewer people, given natural attrition and a growing indifference.  What more could be said about the climate, affirmative action, and gender?

 

Yet Bill was planning to go, and had been asked for his advice about the program.  Already there had been many proposals for presentations, and he had been asked not so much for a topic he might like to present, but for his overall thoughts on the cast and tenor of the event.

 'Are we missing something?', asked the event planner, the longtime Class Secretary for whom every five-year occasion was a validation of his tenure, a show of the solidarity and spirit that he had encouraged; and for which he alone had been responsible.  

Without Lincoln Evans, editor of the Class Notes, attendee at all Board meetings, and on the road soliciting legacy donations from the wealthiest members of the class, his class would have become like any other, loyal but indistinguishable. 

Reunions under his watch had always been intellectual affairs, worthy of the premier university of which the class was a part, and even more worthy of its many nationally recognized members - a Senator, two Presidents, three Congressmen, authors, scholars, and scientists.  The presentations were never public university stuff, light fare, humorous anecdotes about grandchildren or retired life in Tucson.  No, Lincoln's class was serious and deeply concerned about the state of the world. 

Bob Lessing, an old Freedom Rider, peacenik, turned climate activist had proposed Our Dying Planet:  Earth's Last Hurrah - a rehash of what he had presented five years ago, and little more than his own last hurrah, a screed about death and destruction. 

Henry Plainfield, like Bob, a veteran of the social justice wars, hoped to present The New Sexuality - Fear and Loathing Of Trannies and Queers a piece on the reluctance of the Old Guard to recognize the legitimate claims of the new sexual order. 

Brandon Byfield would discuss The Welcome Demise of Wall Street - Crony Capitalism And The Fate of the Black Man. And so on. 

"Something is indeed missing", Bill replied to Lincoln; and here he hesitated, knowing that he was about to upset the applecart.  "We may be on our last legs", he said, "but not done for yet".  Lincoln was nonplussed, quizzical, unsure of what his classmate was getting at. 

Ah, he thought, he must be referring to one suggestion that had come out of left field - focusing not on what to do for the planet, but to prepare for death.  After all 500 white, male, wealthy, patrician cohorts had a lot in common. and sharing thoughts on what might be their final decade would be valuable.  

Lincoln had quickly dismissed this idea, a downer, a bummer when enthusiastic rhetoric about the state of the world, as dismal as that state might be, would be rousing.  After all, his classmates had spent decades in the trenches fighting for right, so their last gasps would be even more resonant than their full-throated voices of the past. 

Bill went on to talk about Anna Karenina, a book they had both read in Professor Marshall's course on Russian literature; and Bill reminded his friend about Konstantin Levin's plaint about God's greatest irony - having created Man as an intelligent, perceptive, creative, and artistic being only to consign him after only a scant three decades of life, to the cold, hard ground of the steppes.

"And....?" replied Lincoln. 

Here was the opening that Bill had hoped for.  God's real irony was far worse.  He had created men with a lifelong obsession with sex but gave them only a few short years to satisfy it.  Both men knew this was true, for along with disquisitions on pipelines, Artificial Intelligence, innovative financial instruments, and so on, they and their classmates spent hours scrolling Facebook for pictures of Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Eva Green, and Margot Robbie, a bit of a guilty pleasure, but pleasure nonetheless; and all of them without exception rued the day that their opportunities with beautiful women like this were over. 

Not exactly of course, since Cialis and Viagra had changed the sexual calculus, and men of their age could still perform.  Bill himself had benefitted from the little blue pill and had had a December-May affair which had not only rejuvenated but transformed him.  It was an epiphany, a glorious two years of rutting like a ram, all to the delight of his young partner who had never known such patience and staying power. 

"What I mean is...", and here Bill knew he was in uncharted territory, “Why not invite 'special entertainment'?  The girls could easily enter the affair as servers and chambermaids then quietly join the men at cocktails and dinner.  These women would be top of the line, no expenses spared, Catherine Deneuve Belle du Jour classic beauties, Jane Fonda Klute sensualists. 

They could be hired through the Lamont Agency in Washington.  For decades Peggy Lamont had been the Capital's madame and had run the most successful dating service in town, known for its absolute secrecy and full deniability. Any breach of privacy would mean the ruin of any girl who even whispered about her clients. 

The Lamont Agency was not only known for its reticence but for the beauty and sexual talent of the girls who worked there.  They were, despite their youth, consummate professionals who knew how to please and were unintimidated by the credentials of their clients.  They would be perfect for the reunion. 

Lincoln was dumbfounded.  He hemmed and hawed, forayed and retreated, mumbled and declaimed, and finally managed a 'You've got to be kidding'; but was clearly interested. What did he or any of the other old men in the class have to lose? The days of AIDS were long past, and even if they acquired the virus something else would kill them before it did.  As importantly, no one would find out, especially the few wives who made it to these late-life events.

Classmates could hammer about the climate and the rightful place of the black man atop the cultural pyramid, bang on ad nauseam about equality and integrity, but during intermission they would have what every older man wants and has always wanted, uninhibited sex with a younger woman.  The suspension of disbelief is a piece of cake. Sexual delights however packaged will always outweigh reality.  Paid sex at this age is sex, end of story, 

And so it was that the Class Reunion was one for the ages, one talked about forever, the one reunion that would always be remembered, the only one that ever counted.  Few of the attendees could even remember what Bob Lessing had talked about and for that matter climate change was thuddingly boring anyway. Let the world burn up, they smiled, for they were changed men, satisfied men, happy men. 

Sex, Drugs, And Rock 'n' Roll - La Dolce Vita In Sight Of Doomsday

Life might not be a bowl of cherries. Dickens and the whole Dickensian thing - the poverty, the misery, the cold - were only outliers in the good life.  The nasty world of Fagin, Uriah Heep and the maggots of the East End are only sidebars to Bond Street and the City, carriages, and silk.  

Balzac's La Condition Humaine is a series of morbid tales.  French poets wrote of  la nostalgie de la boue, Orwell wrote Down and Out in Paris and London, and Dreiser, Lewis, and Dos Passos continued the dirge for a long train of miserable, unhappy lives.

 

Such were the reflections of Alden Jones, fed up with the cant of the day - the poor black man, still under the yoke of slavery, still tilling bottom land for the Massa; the gay man, too long consigned to anonymous sex in bathhouses; the Walmart greeter, the grease monkey, the car wash finisher- when he only wanted to 'celebrate' his privilege. 

Why was life supposed to be such a tedious bore?  Out of which poem in A Child's Garden of Verses or out of which of Grimm's fairy tales did these notions come?

 

Alden had grown up as a child of wealthy Boston brahmins, proud of their Northumberland roots, heirs to the storied history and fortune of the victors of the War of the Roses, Anglo-Saxon first-comers to the New World who made a fortune from the Three-Cornered Trade and its slave ships that sailed to Africa, Barbados, and Newport; and then as Wall Street investors who had made millions from the industrial revolution, advisors to Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt.  Their homes were Chippendale, Rockford, and Baccarat, the paintings on the wall priceless, and the silver tea service Revere. 

Yet it was not the rectitude of the Lodges, Porters, and Booths that held his interest, but the edges of the empire that had somehow filtered into Beacon Hill. One or another of his forbears had been a resident of Italy, a Thomas Mann figure who had not only fallen in love with his Tadzio but with the whole country for which The Decameron was the Bible, The Thousand and One Nights the epic poem. 

No one ever asked about the Italianate sconces over the Ferrara marble fireplace, a decorative excess absent from most patrician homes more accustomed to Townsend chairs, linen and lace; but they got the young Alden to thinking about a world beyond the stern brow of his  family.  

The Joneses had been members of the Massachusetts Bay colony but had moved to Salem and then to New Haven and New Jersey in search of a more classic Puritanism with no infiltration of Mediterranean heresy; and so Alden's interest in la dolce vita was surprising. 

 

Little by little Alden lost sight of his patrimony.  Although he never forgot his manners, he drifted far South.  Life might be short, nasty, and brutish for most, but not for all; and an epicurean approach to one's short life on earth trumped all else.

Which led him not surprisingly to the marvelous life of Thomas Jefferson who, despite his commitment to the new republic, built Monticello and fathered children with a beautiful mulatto slave.  There wasn't a drop of sanctimony, faux rectitude, or idealistic fantasy in the man.

Alden’s thoughts turned inevitably to the West, to rugged individualism, and the cattle rustling entrepreneurship of Nineteenth Century America, a time of industrialists and ranchers, rotgut whisky, whorehouses, and poker.  There were no victims, only people who got in the way.  The West was won thanks to Robber Barons and gunfighters . 

 

On one visit to Beacon Hill, in the sitting room of the family hotel de ville Alden's father asked what he had he made of himself, how he had supported his family and given back to the nation. 

Neither, answered the young man.  He was still a Jones of Northumberland and Boston, he told his father, but the times were too febrile and off-putting to put all of one's eggs in one patrician basket. 

How and why should anyone count on the Dickensian nobility of the poor? The only basket worth carrying was that of Little Red Riding Hood who rudely learned the law of fang and claw, survival of the fittest.

Pressured as he was to drop his suspicious notions, he never once considered the idea.  Not only would he always be heir to the kings, queens and courtiers of Europe but a legatee of Persepolis.  He had nothing in common with Ghana, Gao, or Dahomey - footnotes to history.

And so it was that Alden Jones gave himself entirely to sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, an unapologetic love of the good life, la dolce vita, and the unconcerned life of pleasure.  No one had ever made the case for commitment.