Memoir offers glimpse into the old New York
Special to the Gazette, Lynn Bonney
Friday, February 6, 2009
In his declining years, a man sets about creating a word portrait of his law partner, a complex man, and the years that were marked by his formidable presence. He will, he promises the reader, impart information that was not included in his earlier work, a lengthy history of their law firm.
Author Louis Auchincloss again draws upon his vast knowledge of old New York to create “Last of the Old Guard,” another genealogically themed portrait of the ruling class. His own blueblood pedigree and his experience as a trusts and estates lawyer help shape the story of Adrian Suydam and Ernest Saunders and a world that has vanished, or perhaps has slipped into the obscurity its inhabitants craved.
Suydam begins with his own story, reporting that he learned early to “live comfortably with things I didn’t believe.”
When his first love, the beautiful Pauline, elopes to Paris with a black musician, his father reminds him, over a glass of port, “I have learned in life that it is a sacred principle in most people to believe that their feelings of love and grief are a good deal deeper than they actually are.”
One of the keys of the law firm’s success is Saunders’ keen mind, which enables him to analyze a situation and devise an appropriate legal strategy to meet the client’s needs. He operates strictly within the law, but he believes, “The remedying of social injustice is hardly our province.” Suydam is more suited to being the firm’s public face and smoothing relationships with their younger associates. No gadfly, he is a sharp observer whose skills neatly dovetail with his partner’s and the firm becomes essential to captains of industry in the early years of the 20th century.
Both men marry, although Saunders’ marriage is less a matter of love — he does not expect to love or to be loved — than it is a business contract. Each marries well, choosing women that fit their temperament and desires. Suydam, is a loving father, but Saunders, perhaps because of his relationship with his own father, is unable to show love to his son, whose dreams are in conflict with his own. But after the boy dies in the War to End All Wars, Saunders’ grief is so deep that he can never bear a mention of his son’s name.
Suydam records Saunders’ early labors to circumvent antitrust regulations and undermine trade unions, his later efforts to bring down the changes effected by the New Deal. Although skeptical of many of Saunders’ causes, he admires his friend’s dedication to fulfill a mission.
Auchincloss has packed this small book with a variety of themes: professional morality, history, human relationships and comments on the changing world. He leaves it to the reader to decide which of the partners is the real subject of the book — is Suydam writing a biography of Saunders or is he exploring his own life through the mirror of a friend?
Also left unspoken is the final question: What was the Old Guard guarding and was it worth protecting?
• Emporia Public Library staff and volunteers write “On the Shelf.”