ONE
DAY IN THE LIFE OF ALFRED A. KNOPF
By Michele Wunderlick
Michele Wunderlick
It was a beautiful evening in June
1983 when I arrived in Purchase, New York. An hour from the city, the forest
enveloped the big estates. The quiet was never disturbed because the houses were
deep among the trees.
The Knopf residence was not
impressive – a three-story house with dormer windows, dark like Tudor houses are
– but it was the Alfred Knopf arboretum (a botanical tree garden) that enchanted
me. In June, the wisterias, jasmine, the pink and red
azaleas – all climbers – surrounded the front porch and door. They were lush and
fragrant, so much so that I remember feeling dizzy.
I was glad to see dear Mr. Knopf.
Some people would call him a man of dour mood, but to us – the working staff –
he was always kind. He appreciated his cook, Grace Portonova, of Italian
descent; his chauffeur, Arturo from Peru; his butler, Hans, from Vienna; Annie,
the black full-time maid; his two Italian gardeners; and little Michele from
France. We all had heard so many times about his grandmother walking from the
Ural mountains, some 800 miles east of Moscow, all the way to Hamburg, Germany
with her two brothers. She boarded a ship to New York, then married a distant
Jewish cousin who was a lawyer in Manhattan. Alfred Knopf was born in that
borough, not in New York.
That summer, Mrs. Helen Knopf
went to visit her family in Oregon. I was to try to keep him at peace during the
duration of her vacation. She was his second wife. He had published a book about
Native Americans of Oregon written by her in 1943. He married her in 1967. His
first wife and partner in publishing died in 1966.
If I may quote Alfred Knopf, he would
tell his friends, “My main thesis has always been loyalty, whether it is dealing
with authors or with plumbers.” In a New York Times interview on the
occasion of his 90th birthday, Mr. Knopf said, “We used the grandson
of the plumber to do repairs in this house that his grandfather worked on when
we built it more than half a century ago.”
Mrs. Helen Knopf and I knew that the
upkeep of the house was Helen’s department entirely, but to the journalist he
gave the impression that he participated in everything! How many times I heard
Helen sigh, “Poor Alfred can’t even tie his shoes.”
“Don’t worry, Helen, I don’t have to;
Hans will.”
He was one of the last men of his
century to be fully taken care of. His son, Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. came every
Sunday from Westport. He would scold his father for his lifestyle. Theirs was a
sad relationship. Alfred Jr. had been sent to military school at the age of 10;
neither parent had time for him.
Helen Knopf and the staff were all
devoted to Mr. Knopf. Best of all, we loved him.
So, I arrived on a Saturday evening
and ate dinner with him. He told me that Toni Morrison had come to eat lunch
with him and kept him company all afternoon. What a woman was this big black
lady – professor, author and fabulous mother to her daughters! I can still see
her coming through the kitchen door, hugging Annie and giving her sweets for her
children. She would run upstairs calling, “Alfred, it’s me,
Toni.”
Mr. Knopf had a liking for blacks and
the Italians. “You see, Michele, not long ago, we were discriminated against. I
remember going down to Florida for a vacation. All the hotels had signs, “No
blacks. No Jews.” Some of us with blue eyes and light complexions could rent a
room. We stuffed the toilets with paper. The Anglo-Saxons would not let us join
their clubs so we built fancier ones!”
By 12 o’clock, Mr. Knopf went
upstairs in his elevator. Hans was waiting for him. I went up to the third
floor, read an hour, and slept until eight in the morning. I woke in the
champagne-colored bedroom, listening to the big trees rustling against the slate
roof. The sun was up. It was going to be a fine morning, good enough to have
breakfast on the terrace. Mr. Knopf was up at six; he was a bit slow now. After
all, he was 90.
After a fast shower, I put on a white
skirt and pink blouse and tied a pink French shaded ribbon in my hair.
Downstairs I went. Mr. Knopf was drinking black brulot coffee (an ancient
method of brewing French coffee). That coffee was too strong for his heart, but
he would chuckle it off.
“Helen, I have survived four of my
heart specialists, including the infamous Dr. Tarnover – killed by his aged
mistress.” She had shot him in his bed on a stormy night.
That morning, we ate our three-minute
eggs and toast with English ginger-orange marmalade. I drank tea. I was forgiven
because Blanche Knopf (the first wife) drank tea too. Mr. Knopf dressed for
breakfast in a salmon shirt dotted with white, blue trousers and a jaunty straw
boater donned for the outdoors.
I had studied the Sunday schedule the
previous evening. I read to him what he liked from the New Republic and
part of the New York Times. He did not mind my accent. All of his life,
he had been surrounded by foreigners. I brought down a sweater and his cane. He
just smiled at me with those very intelligent blue eyes. We went for a walk to
enjoy his beloved trees, many in full bloom.
At 11 a.m., Alexis Lichine made his
grand entrance dressed impeccably, as always. That day he wore a gray striped
suit with a medium pink shirt, pearl cufflinks, a red tie and a red Russian
double-eagle on his coat lapel. He was a wine authority, had his own winery in
Burgundy, France. I learned a lot from those two men. They had the same passions
– books and photographs and wine. (By the way, the best picture of Eleanor
Roosevelt was taken by Alfred in 1940.) I descended many times into the small
but exquisite cellar below. Behind an oak door that was eight inches thick
rested the evidence of Alfred’s passion. In racks and bins were quantities of
Chateau Lafitte-Rothschild 1945 and 1959. For Alexis Lichine I decanted a bottle
of Chateau Cheval Blanc 1925.
We greeted Alexis in a comfortably
furnished glass-enclosed sun porch lined – as were all the other rooms in his
house – with bookcases. They drank wine. I excused myself and went upstairs to
change into a little black dress that I accented with a bright scarf and a
pretty pin.
Mrs. Knopf called. Hans took the
call. He looked like a distinguished and silvery diplomat dressed in his
butler’s black. Mrs. Knopf wanted to talk to me first, so I took the call in the
hall on the second floor.
"I had a good flight. My three girls are happy to have
me.” Her only son would not talk to
her since she married Alfred, a Jew.) “I am going to have three weeks of rest;
thanks you dear girl.”
“No problem. Mr. Knopf is happy with
his friends.”
“Now. Michele, don’t forget that
Wednesday Alexander and Irina Solzhenitsyn are coming for lunch. Order the
Napoleon cake from the pastry shop in White Plains. You will make the borscht
yourself.”
“Yes, Mrs. Knopf. Not to worry. And I
will not forget to give fancy flowers to Irina and the two sets of iridescent
marbles for their sons.”
“Now I will talk to dear
Alfred.”
Hans went down to hand the telephone
to Mr. Knopf. Alexis and I went into the main hall and talked about his winery
in Burgundy. “It looks like it will be a good year if we don’t get too much rain
in early September.”
During World War II, his family had
been forced to escape to England. The Nazis had confiscated his estate, and all
his beautiful bottles of his best wine went to Germany. Burgundy, after Paris,
is the richest county in France. Alexis insisted I tell Mr. Knopf my
grandmother’s story about the wolves that ran free in Burgundy, so I
did.
Wild animals learn to eat the food
that is available, so we had to guard the grapes. According to the peasants,
during the times of famine over the centuries, the rocky wine-growing regions of
France, where soil was unsuited for other sorts of agriculture, were frequent
prey to and a prime attraction for hungry wolves that survived by eating the
grapes. The people noticed something strange. The grapes had an “exhilarating
effect” on the wolves. The peasants suspected the stomachs of the wolves were so
constructed that the fermentation of the fruit juice proceeded rapidly after the
animals had eaten the grapes. During the year of 1942, a drunken pack was seen
running in a village in Burgundy. They came through the center of that little
town; the wolves were all intoxicated. That was what caused them to come into
the village in the first place, and it was also what saved the townsfolk. The
wolves were too drunk to remember that they were wolves. They howled and drooled
before collapsing in a stupor. The villagers, hunting knives in hand, stepped
cautiously out of their doors. When the wolves did not move, they killed them
all. That was the last wolf scare in Burgundy. According to rumors, the wolves
had come all the way from Poland.
“Why not,” commented Mr. Knopf, “My
grandmother walked all the way from Russia.”
Alexis added, “For me and my family,
the last wolves left in 1944. Germany compensated us for our
losses.”
By then, the three of us were
famished. Arturo brought the Burgundy-colored Mercedes by the front door. We
were to lunch at the Cremaillere in the country. Halfway there, Mr.
Knopf, who always sat in the front, ordered Arturo to stop. “Stop right
now. Michele, look at that big
tree. In June 1940, Blanche collapsed under it. France had been invaded. Blanche
had a fierce and abiding love for France and all things French.” We thanked him
for sharing that memory. Mr. Knopf seemed wrapped in some private shroud of his
own – weaving gloomy and taciturn. Yes, he could be a man of dour mood.
The restaurant was in a coniferous
forest. It was a rural place with a roaring fire in an open hearth where the
restaurateur grilled spitted chickens laced with marjoram leaves, as well as
veal steaks. A Beaujolais of the previous autumn, very light and clear,
lifted Mr. Knopf’s spirit.
“I give it a four!” roared Alexis –
the best on his scale.
While eating, we observed the
gorgeous, colorful birds outside – cedar waxwing, painted bunting, red crossbill
– the wanderers of the pine forest. During desert, Alexis compared the birds’
songs to the great operatic performers.
Back in Purchase, we said our au
revior to Alexis. Mr. Knopf answered some of his mail until half-past-five.
I went up to my suite and called my family in France and in New Mexico. I called
the fancy grocery store that delivered all the best food we needed for the week.
They came in through the kitchen door, put it away in the refridgerator, freezer
and neatly lined pantry. They left the bill on the kitchen table. I would give
it to Eleanor Carlucci, his private secretary who resided in the
city.
By six, Mr. Knopf was dressed in a
gray suit with a blue shirt that matched his eyes. Away we went to Heineman’s
down the way. He was famous in publicity on Madison Avenue. He had written a
slogan for a French perfume. “Promise her anything but give her
Arpege.”
Their house was huge with the
grandest kitchen ever. Mrs. Heineman rented it most of the week to a television
outfit that filmed soap operas in it.
“It helps us pay taxes on the place,”
said her man to Alfred.
The dinner was a little on the heavy
side, so Mr. Knopf asked me, “Do you mind watching Beverly Sills in an opera at
home with me?”
“Not at all, Mr.
Knopf.”
So we stayed up until 1 a.m. We drank
slowly a full bottle of Taitinger Champagne, just to help us sleep. For
me it was an evening of pleasures and reminiscences. He told me how much he
liked Joseph Conrad. “He was an elegant, dynamic man. His books made us plenty
of money.” Miss Willa Cather was probably his favorite author. “She was to me
the girl from Nebraska.”
Blanche took care of the fancy
foreign writers. He still had an eye for the ladies. He looked forward to the
visit of Miss Liv Ullman, an actress from Norway. She liked to sleep in purple
sheets.
I reminded myself that I had to get
up at 6 a.m. to bake a fresh chausson aux pommes – baked apples in a
slipper – for breakfast. Mr. Knopf kissed my hand and wished me a good night,
“ma petite.”
He died a year later in August 1984.
He was born in 1892.
I was to spend 10 summers in Oregon
with Helen Knopf. She was a brilliant, courageous, loving
person.
Michele was born in Alsace
Lorraine, France on the German border, and was a small child when Germany
invaded their province in June 1940. Her little sister was born then and her
mother had to hide in the basement to give birth alone. Michele said, “You know
we [France] have had three wars with Germany.”
She lived there until she was 20
years old, then moved to the USA, living here from 1957 to 1960. She was married in France in 1956 to
Kenneth Wunderlick, a man from Kansas of European heritage, and from 1960
to1972, she again lived in Europe – in France, Greece and Germany – while her
husband was in the military. With a dual citizenship, French and American, she
has lived in the USA since 1972. Between 1980 and 1984, she lived both in New
York and New Mexico, but by 1984, their home became Roswell.
For many years Michele lived off
and on with the Knopfs; she went to stay with them for extended periods of time,
including entire summers, whenever they called for her to join them.
She lives in Roswell with her
husband, Kenneth, and is a member of the Joy Writers group.
French is Michele’s native tongue,
but in addition to English, she also speaks Greek and German. She said she
practices her Greek every week when she talks by phone to relatives in
Greece.
SITTING ON A POWDER-KEG
By
Victor J. Reeves
Victor J. Reeves
I guess just about everyone
has heard that old expression, “Sitting on a powder-keg,” and most already know
it means “Caught in an extremely dangerous position.”
For this application, I will
explain. (First, I had to learn that a keg can be used for other things besides
beer or nails.) Many generations ago, when that expression was coined, farmers,
loggers, road-builders, miners and many other developers had legitimate use for
explosives. The simplest form, and the easiest to use with (relative) safety was
black powder. It was not uncommon for anyone to have one or more kegs of powder
sitting around. It was treated almost casually – too casually. Quite a few
workmen, and even some children, had missing feet, arms or eyes to prove it.
Needless to say, on a keg of powder was not a good place to sit.
