Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? by Marion Meade
Authors: Marion Meade
Tags: United States, Fiction, Literary, General, Historical, History, Biography & Autobiography, Literary Criticism, 20th Century, Women Authors, Authors, American, Biography, Women, Women and Literature, American - 20th century - Biography, Parker, Dorothy, Women and literature - United States - History - 20th century
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Rags
from Dorothy.
In practically every one of the three dozen letters and cards to him, she wondered “how is Rags?” and assured her father that she felt “well” and was enjoying “a good time,” but there was nothing to suggest she was. The exuberance of the previous year was missing. Left to her own devices, she moped around and spent many solitary afternoons on the Wyandotte’s cool verandah, reading and thinking. Her father expected her to have “a good time.” Clearly she had no wish to disappoint him. But just as clearly, 1906 was Helen’s big summer.
By the fall of 1907, the Rothschilds were scattered. Helen was married, and Bert and Tiny were occupied with their baby son. Dorothy, now fourteen, was eager for adventures of her own. In September, she enrolled in a boarding school, Miss Dana’s, thirty miles away in Morristown, New Jersey. One of George Droste’s younger sisters was a student at Miss Dana’s.
The overwhelming majority of Dana students were Episcopalians and Presbyterians, a few were Roman Catholics, but none were Jews. Henry solved the problem of admissions with a decisive lie. Dorothy’s records indicate that her parents attended the Episcopal church.
In a blitzkrieg preparation, Mary and Annie were set to rounding up the required articles, including a golf cape and a hot-water bottle, and laboriously marking each item with Dorothy’s full name. Despite an admirable curriculum, the school did nothing to contradict Dorothy’s secret belief that she was an outsider. The typical Dana girl, Dorothy was to write, “was congenitally equipped with a restfully uninquiring mind,” and in years to come she claimed to be able to spot a Dana graduate a block away by her “general air, no matter how glorious the weather, of being dressed in expectation of heavy rains.” Dorothy took courses in algebra, Greek and American history, French, Latin, physiology, and advanced English. Her best marks were in Bible study and piano, her worst in gym. The fact that she received A’s in deportment provides the only clue to the Teutonic principles of discipline practiced at the school.
At the end of the following March, she stopped attending classes. Whether this was due to illness or to some other cause, the records give no clue. She failed to return to Miss Dana’s in the fall of 1908, nor did she matriculate in any other school. At age fourteen her education ended, abruptly and inexplicably. As an adult, upon request only, she would list her educational credits as Blessed Sacrament and Miss Dana’s, careful not to specify that she had graduated from neither. In the company of close friends she was quick to bury the subject with a joke and say that she had “carried the daisy chain in the college of hard knocks.” It was her best camouflaged deprivation. The sole time she publicly alluded to the fact that she never finished high school was when she remarked to a newspaper reporter while a visiting professor at California State College, “Because of circumstances, I didn’t finish high school. But, by God, I read.”
Dorothy and her father migrated from the luxurious Red House on Riverside Drive to Amsterdam Avenue and then to a somewhat less distinguished building on West Eightieth Street. Of all the Rothschild children, she alone remained with Henry and provided the companionship he required. To Dorothy at fourteen, this cloistral arrangement must have seemed natural, but by the age of twenty it had grown exceptionally deadening. There was not a sign of the personal autonomy that became her trademark. She found herself in the unenviable position of a caretaker who is totally dependent on her charge.
In the summers, she and Henry visited Helen at Bellport, but more often they spent endless, boring weeks at resort hotels in Connecticut, which Henry seemed to enjoy. Retired by 1910, he fussed over his investments, some of which would prove to be unwise. He suffered from heart
from Dorothy.
In practically every one of the three dozen letters and cards to him, she wondered “how is Rags?” and assured her father that she felt “well” and was enjoying “a good time,” but there was nothing to suggest she was. The exuberance of the previous year was missing. Left to her own devices, she moped around and spent many solitary afternoons on the Wyandotte’s cool verandah, reading and thinking. Her father expected her to have “a good time.” Clearly she had no wish to disappoint him. But just as clearly, 1906 was Helen’s big summer.
By the fall of 1907, the Rothschilds were scattered. Helen was married, and Bert and Tiny were occupied with their baby son. Dorothy, now fourteen, was eager for adventures of her own. In September, she enrolled in a boarding school, Miss Dana’s, thirty miles away in Morristown, New Jersey. One of George Droste’s younger sisters was a student at Miss Dana’s.
The overwhelming majority of Dana students were Episcopalians and Presbyterians, a few were Roman Catholics, but none were Jews. Henry solved the problem of admissions with a decisive lie. Dorothy’s records indicate that her parents attended the Episcopal church.
In a blitzkrieg preparation, Mary and Annie were set to rounding up the required articles, including a golf cape and a hot-water bottle, and laboriously marking each item with Dorothy’s full name. Despite an admirable curriculum, the school did nothing to contradict Dorothy’s secret belief that she was an outsider. The typical Dana girl, Dorothy was to write, “was congenitally equipped with a restfully uninquiring mind,” and in years to come she claimed to be able to spot a Dana graduate a block away by her “general air, no matter how glorious the weather, of being dressed in expectation of heavy rains.” Dorothy took courses in algebra, Greek and American history, French, Latin, physiology, and advanced English. Her best marks were in Bible study and piano, her worst in gym. The fact that she received A’s in deportment provides the only clue to the Teutonic principles of discipline practiced at the school.
At the end of the following March, she stopped attending classes. Whether this was due to illness or to some other cause, the records give no clue. She failed to return to Miss Dana’s in the fall of 1908, nor did she matriculate in any other school. At age fourteen her education ended, abruptly and inexplicably. As an adult, upon request only, she would list her educational credits as Blessed Sacrament and Miss Dana’s, careful not to specify that she had graduated from neither. In the company of close friends she was quick to bury the subject with a joke and say that she had “carried the daisy chain in the college of hard knocks.” It was her best camouflaged deprivation. The sole time she publicly alluded to the fact that she never finished high school was when she remarked to a newspaper reporter while a visiting professor at California State College, “Because of circumstances, I didn’t finish high school. But, by God, I read.”
Dorothy and her father migrated from the luxurious Red House on Riverside Drive to Amsterdam Avenue and then to a somewhat less distinguished building on West Eightieth Street. Of all the Rothschild children, she alone remained with Henry and provided the companionship he required. To Dorothy at fourteen, this cloistral arrangement must have seemed natural, but by the age of twenty it had grown exceptionally deadening. There was not a sign of the personal autonomy that became her trademark. She found herself in the unenviable position of a caretaker who is totally dependent on her charge.
In the summers, she and Henry visited Helen at Bellport, but more often they spent endless, boring weeks at resort hotels in Connecticut, which Henry seemed to enjoy. Retired by 1910, he fussed over his investments, some of which would prove to be unwise. He suffered from heart
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