ABSTRACT
Father looked like his portrait by Ellen Emmet Rand — grave, droopy-eyed, with a cream-colored vest, his gnarled fingers holding an open law reporter — provided the observer added the wrinkles, both on his face and in his clothes. For there were wrinkles there, just as there were prejudices in the mellifluous stream of his discourse and in the odd blind spots of his generally kindly vision. Father, by all accounts, was a fine lawyer and a powerful opponent in court; he was a strong trustee on charitable boards and had been a fearless opponent of city corruption during his term as president of the City Bar Association. He was also a devoted husband and father. But his rigid standards for inclusion in the narrow society in which he and Mother moved barred most of the New York world: Catholics, Jews, divorced persons, politicians, actors, retail business men … the list was endless.
