Oral History Interview with Edward F. Prichard, Jr., June 13, 1984

Hellard: Testing, testing, one two three four testing. I’m not certain of the tape of—number on this tape so I have to check it next week. This is Edward F. Prichard interview, June the—what?—13th, 1984. Mr. Prichard, let’s talk about something today that we haven’t—we haven’t—haven’t even touched on yet to any great extent at all. That’s Lucy [Marshall Elliott Prichard]. Where’d you meet Lucy?

: I met her in front of the Lafayette Hotel [in ], a spring morning in nineteen hundred and forty-six. I had never met her before, though she had been in Washington [D.C.] all during the war and I’d been in during most of the war, except for that brief time I was in the army. I—Robert Houlihan was with me and introduced me to her. Bob was at that time practicing in my office. When he first got out of the—of the army, or the [Office of Strategic Services], he came in my office and stayed there till he went with Stoll, Keenan and Parr. And we have been, Bob Houlihan and I have been intimate friends ever since, one of my closest friends. And Patty Field, his wife, Patty Field VanMeter, I had known since we were teenagers and, you know, we—we were kind of in the same social set. She grew up in and I in Bourbon. And so she and Lucy had lived together in , or been together in during the war, all worked for the same agency, which was the New Zealand Purchasing Commission, and they were very, very close. So I — evinced some interest in her and began to take her out, and we were engaged the following fall. I met her in, I’d say, roughly March. She’d been to . Because I had heard Houlihan talk a lot about her and with great enthusiasm, and he—he, you know, kept saying to me this was somebody I ought to date, somebody I ought to know, and somebody that I would really like, and he—he described her with great enthusiasm. Well, she had just come back from , —and I don’t know where she was headed for, the beauty shop or shopping or something—but she had on, she had on an old coat, lightweight, it was spring by that time. I think she was probably getting ready to go to the hairdresser. And she had picked up a somewhat leathery tan in and looked a bit windblown or, or weather-beaten, sort of. And Lucy claims that what I said to Bob after we were met, “Well, is this sort of leathery, weather-beaten looking girl the one you’ve been talking to me [Hellard laughs] about in such superlatives?” Now, whether I really said that, I don’t know. Lucy claims that I said it. Well anyway, I, I believe it was the next month, the races came at Keeneland, and I had a date with her to go to the races on the closing, on the closing day, and from then on I—it was just pretty constant. We went out, we went out, oh, it finally got to where we were going out two, three times a week. And we went to parties together, and I became very much enamored of her. And she—she had really been sort of half engaged to another fellow who was not from around, who—who really came from Chicago, but his family came from over at Paris, named Sweeney. And I don’t know whether he was out of the service then or not, but I think she had really all during the war had had a strong attachment to him, although she dated other people, I don’t mean that. And so we—we just began to see more and more. And there were several couples that would go out with us—Walt and Francie Hillenmeyer, Bob and Patty Field, a few others. I had known her, her brother, Nathan, I guess really, since we were boys, not intimately, but I’d known him. And I had met her father. I don’t know that I’d met her mother. But then of course when I’d go to see her, why—they were living over in—at Heartland where live now—and, you know, they had me over to dinner there a few times. She says the first time they invited me to dinner over there they had a black cook—maid—named Nellie Crabtree, and they were talking about what to have for dinner, and Mrs. Elliott told her, well said, “Just have hot biscuit.” And she said, “No indeed, Mrs. Elliott, not for that fine man, nothing but light rolls will do.” [Hellard laughs] Lucy’s repeated that to me many times. And during all that period, you know, I—I was—I never learned to drive a car—all my life—never till after Lucy and I were married. And I used to say that she refused to have a child until I learned to have—to have—learned to drive a car. Now that I don’t think ever literally happened, but I think it was kind of half the truth. And so I had a black boy that had just gotten out of the service that was a son of my mother’s maid, who worked ultimately worked for my mother and our family for, oh, close to fifty years, and this boy’s name was Leroy Trotha. And Lucy used to call him “Roy Tan,” and he drove me. And so he would drive me over, and then we’d go out somewhere. And one of our great places to go, I don’t know whether you remember it or not, it’s over on the old Winchester Pike, the old 60, just at the intersection with the road that takes you to Avon and ultimately to Paris, and it was called the Sombrero. And they had awfully good steaks, and they let you bring your bottle and served you with set-ups, totally illegal, and it was very popular, and a lot of people in we used to see out there. I can remember we’d see Smith Hayes and John Hodgkin and just a lot of people, as well as people from and , and it was a very good restaurant, and we’d often go there for dinner—although we went other places too. And so toward the latter part of the summer, we got engaged. I guess it was really the early fall, I’m not sure, but it was—it was almost signed and sealed by late summer. And the Elliotts had party over there on Thanksgiving Day, which was the day it was announced, that the engagement was announced, and we set our wedding for the 15th of the following February 1:00. Which I believe was right toward the end of Lent, no, I mean toward the end of the period just before Lent, because we ended up going to the Mardi Gras as part of our honeymoon. And we had a—we were married at Christ Church and had the reception, breakfast, wedding breakfast, out at Heartland after the ceremony and went to Cincinnati that night. The Houlihan’s drove us up there and we stayed at the, I believe, the , I don’t believe the had been built yet. And left at some ungodly hour to take—what was the train to then, or Crescent Limited or something like that. So we were in for our—first part of our honeymoon. And then I remember we encountered one of Lucy’s old boyfriends, a boy named John Goff, from here in . He took us out and bought us a couple of Sazeracs or something, and we went to all the restaurants and had a good time. Then we went to , went to , and we stayed on our honeymoon about a month, little over. We went to—went to and stayed about a week in . Then we went to the most beautiful beach I was ever at, Baradero Beach, about forty miles from Havana, but you flew there in one of those old tin lizzie planes and it was about a half-hour flight—scared me to death. And we stayed there at a sort of—it wasn’t a hotel—they had, oh I don’t know whether you’d call it a pensionne or what—but they had a be-—of course it was a big beach, and then they had the central place which was where you ate, and then they, you know, put you in little things that were almost like dormitories where you stayed, places that—where three or four people would have rooms or suites. And it was a beautiful beach, and the food was marvelous, and we made some friends there, and had a very—had a very good time. Stayed there I’d say about three weeks, then got home in March. And we hadn’t been home very long and we’d begun to—to renovate our house where we intended to live, over on the Clintonville Pike in . But it was going to take several months to do that, so we stayed over at Heartland at that time and I commuted to with, usually with Mr. Elliott, and I guess we were there several months. Indeed we were there until February of nineteen hundred and forty-eight, because it was—when we moved in, it was one of those warm, premature February springs, and the night, virtually the night we moved, which was some day in February, the rains came down with absolutely unprecedented force, and about a half a dozen wet weather springs broke open in our new basement, which was the old basement that, you know, stone walls, and we had not plastered it or done anything. But we had a sump pump in the basement, and the sump pump couldn’t pump the water out. We had to call our plumber to come out from , and he brought another sump pump and put it down there, plus a gasoline-powered pump, and it took all those three pumps to keep the water from coming in. It got up in the furnace, but I don’t think it did any really deep damage to the furnace. But you could see these—these wet weather springs coming out between these rocks on the basement wall, you know, water coming in—in a—in a stream as big around as your thumb. And so we soon had a plasterer come out there and plaster that with the water proof cement, and from then on we never had any serious problems in that basement. But we did a lot of work on that house. It was a very old house, built in 1796, and a log house, but it was what we always called weather-boarded over, some people say clapboard now. And so Lucy had a lot of ideas about it, and she was fortunate enough to engage Warfield Gratz, the architect, to take care of the architect that worked for her, because although he worked on a commission, he spent his client’s money just like it was his own. He was tighter than the bark on a tree. He’s always alleged, you know, the Gratzes to have a little Jew blood in them, and by god if he had any it showed in that. And he did a marvelous job for us, and the house was very attractive and we—we loved it, and it’s still over there. Belongs to the man that runs the Bour-, the Bourbon Heights Nursing Home. And of course, my father had had a farm out there and—did have—and he operated the farm, I didn’t do that, and he had another farm across the road from it. And so I—I commuted to—we hired a black couple to work for us out there who came from , Luke and Christine Buckner, you remember the Buckners out at Huntertown?

Hellard:Very well.

:All right. Well Luke was from out there, and they—they lived with us, and they raised our children as long as they were with us, and in fact even longer, because they came back to Woodford County after we’d moved over to Heartland. And they didn’t come and live with us, but they would help us, work for us some. But they got terribly bad on whiskey, and Christine died, and Luke is living in one of these housing places, married again, here in . But they—they were—they were very much a part of our family. And Luke would drive me to my office, and then I would usually ride home in the afternoons with my father, who had a business in Lexington then, a wholesale beer distributor, and he would be coming home about my quitting time, and so he would give me a ride until finally I took driving lessons, and I can tell you who they were from—whom they were from. Do you remember a boy that was kind of a basketball player around here? He was named Ishmael?

Hellard:Uh-huh.

:All right. Ishmael was—I believe he was coaching somewhere then and—and he was with, you know, doing part-time with the automobile club, and so he taught me to drive a car. And now we’re getting up into after we were married, that was, but I, you know, my office was over in the old Security Trust building on the fourth floor, and Bob Houlihan was in the office, and Funk was in the office, and I commuted every day and—

Hellard:Well did Lucy grow up in ?

:Well, that’s a—that’s a difficult question to answer unequivocally. She was born on North Broadway in , 500 and something, 514 North Broadway I believe it is, the second house from the intersection of North Broadway and . And her parents owned that house until nineteen hundred and forty, when they sold it and renovated Heartland and moved over there. But of course it wasn’t too long after that that she went to to work. But she took an active part in renovating the house, and I guess lived their for a year or eighteen months, and—but during that time they lived in . They of course had the farm. Lucy’s grandmother bought that farm in about 1902, and Lucy’s mother and father were married there, and of course we had our wedding breakfast there. And so Lucy was—but during the period when they lived on North Broadway, they sort of kept Heartland as a barracks, if you know what I mean, a kind of a camp. They didn’t have it fully furnished, but they had enough furniture there to live in it. And they would spend their summers there, and Mr. Elliott would commute by the interurban long as—well of course the interurban wasn’t going then, I guess he drove back and forth. And during the months, as I said, that I, that we, lived there with them, while we were fixing up the house, why I rode back and forth with him. But they would go out there for weekends and they would spend summers out there. And they had an old friend of Mr. Elliott’s that grew up with him in and went to school at Mr. Elliott’s father’s school, named Will Jones. And Will Jones was sort of the farm manager, and Will Jones had a room there in the house, and Lucy called him “Uncle Jones,” and he apparently was kind of a, as she said, kind of a Scattergood Baines configuration—sort of a plump, roseate man that she loved very dearly. And so they—they, you know, Heartland was always close to them, and they had these ties in . As I said, Lucy’s grandmother had lived there, and of course the settled—came to from . And she had relatives over there and there were always very close friends that they had over there, but—but was where she grew up, and was where most of her friends were. And she went to , well—well first she went to as a—as an elementary student. was down there on North Broadway, you know, right across from . I guess there’s something there now. What is there now, a dormitory—

Hellard:Hmm.

:—for ? And—and then she went to—to Henry Clay High School, well, went to University High for a while and then Henry Clay and then the University of Kentucky, and graduated there in either, I believe it was ’40. I—I—I—I’m not—I just believe it was ’40, yeah, and that was the year they moved to Heartland, sold the house on North Broadway. And—but her real growing up was , you know, was secondary. They always loved it, but, but was, was where her friends were, and where her social life was and—

Hellard:Did she spend any time at ?

:Oh yes, indeed. When they were spec—staying at the farm, she went to , and she talked love about—I’ve heard her talk about the ferry, and about the Hugheses, isn’t that right, who had the ferry—

Hellard:Uh-huh, I think that’s right.

Prichard:—out there—mom and dad Hughes, and the Clifton Club, they belonged to the Clifton Club, and they used to go out there to dance and have parties, yes. And there was a club then up, up across from the bank there, upstairs, called the Woodford Club. I never knew quite what it was, I gathered they played cards mostly, and that wasn’t Mr. Elliott’s forte, but they apparently had a few parties up there. Oh yes, she—Clifton was very—and she canoed, in fact even just a year or so before we were married there was a picture of her and—and Raley McConnell canoeing on the Kentucky River on the front page of the magazine section of the Courier-Journal. And we’ve still got that. But she loved the river, still loves it. Oh yes. And—and you know later during our marriage, she had a fourteen-foot boat that she used to take down there and take the boys and me and we’d go out in it and, hell, I can remember once or twice she’d take me to Frankfort in that boat and—when my office was in Frankfort, and I—and we’d dock right down there, you know, off Wapping Street. You know where I mean—

Hellard:Yes.

:—and—and, hell, I’d just walk up there and walk to my office and— But she loved, and still loves, that river. And she would be happy to be on any committee, or any task force, or any damn thing you wanted her to be on, on saving the locks and all those things. Oh, she loves it. And—and the boys loved it. I can remember once when Nathan was about seven years old, she was down at the river with Kitty Graddy, and Nathan got on his damn bicycle and rode it down to the river and scared her to death. Because he was only six or, about six or seven years old. And he, you know, Nathan wasn’t scared of anything when he was a child. I mean, he had no fear and— But they all used to like to do down there. And Kitty Graddy was kind of her river rat companion. Kitty Graddy, and what was the girl’s name, the girl that died mysteriously, you know who I mean?

Hellard:No.

:Worked over in the Health Department. Well, the family was from Lexington and she’s got a daughter lives over in Scott County now and that married a boy named Prather, Susanna, no it was Susan Johnston Harrod. And she lived in and Lucy found her dead in her house one morning, maybe Lucy and one of our boys. And I don’t know what—she drank a lot. But she had a job over in the state health department. She was the daughter of Mr. Pelham Johnston, a prominent lawyer in . She had a brother named Pelham, who was city manager of Lexington for awhile and practiced law and was very eccentric and—and Pelham later went out west, and I don’t know whether he’s living now or not. But Susan Harrod and her daughter was Susanna who, as I say, now lives over in Scott County, married a boy named John Prather and they have a couple of girls that must be, well, they’re not—not grown by any means, they’re—they’re pre-teenagers. Lucy was—she was always very active in the Episcopal church, less so now, but when we lived at Paris we were active, both, in St. Peter’s. I—I left—I went in the Meth-, in the Episcopal church, I’d been raised a Methodist. And I was on the vestry over at . She was president of the women’s, whatever they called that, for that diocese one time and—

Hellard:Where—where did you say Lucy went to college?

:.

Hellard:.

:Yeah.

Hellard:And she graduated with a degree in what?

:I imagine English, ’cause she went back in the ’60s and took all her credits for a doctor’s degree in English, and then never did her dissertation or took her language examination. And always accused me of being so turned off about her doing it that I discouraged her, and—and I—I’m afraid there’s something to it, although really not as much as she attributes to it. At that time, the children were—were young and they were in school and commuting and she had a terrific, you know, and we didn’t have as much help as we had once had, and what we had was kind of intermittent. And I just kept telling her it was too heavy a burden, but once she got into it, and this is what she forgets, you know, Louis—Lucy can be rough on—on somebody. Lucy’s— has very strong opinions, and doesn’t change them easily when she takes a dislike to somebody. It’s awfully hard to change her. And I don’t mean that she took a dislike to me [laughing] on account of this, but she took a great resentment. And the truth is, after she got into it, and I saw how well she was doing, she was getting As in everything, and she was really able to do it and still do all the rest of the stuff because she has such prodigious energy. And I began to try to help her, and I would occasionally, she’d read one of her papers to me, and I would make a comment or two on it. And I began to be very proud of what she’s accomplished and—and then when she finished it, I was so proud I begged her to go on and take her language examinations and—and to do—and get—get the doctorate. She could have got the master’s without the dissertation. She didn’t even get the master’s. And the truth is, if she’d done that, and of course in those days we were not financially in the most affluent situation, she could’ve gotten a good job at the university teaching. And they all respected her enormously. But she got so turned off with me because what she regarded as my hostility to it at first, that she never finished the—the thing. And even to this hour blames me for the fact she did not have that career, and attributes it to my male chauvinism. [Hellard laughs] And there may have been a little of that there. I mean, it wasn’t strictly classic male chauvinism, but I thought she had her hands full with those children and that house, and I really didn’t quite appreciate how much she could accomplish. But that was, and the children were quite young, you know, this was in the ’60s, and the early ’60s, but she finished every course and got an A in it and it was—

Hellard:Did Lucy ever work after you all were married? Outside the home I mean?

:Yes, she did in—in a few times. In nineteen hundred and fifty she worked in the census, which was a short-term thing, and she enjoyed that very much. She made a lot of friends out in the country in when she took that census, and—and it was really a source of pleasure to her—didn’t pay much money. For awhile in the ’60s, I guess it might have been, she worked here in for D. T. Davis and Company, you remember them? They were in the office equipment business, and I think she did quite well working for them, but didn’t work for terribly long. Then there was a period when perhaps we were on very more tense terms, when she worked for Charlie Kelly, out to his antique place. Those are the only things I can recall.

Hellard:How—how has Lucy handled being married to a—a quote boy genius? Has there been a sense of competitiveness there, or has she been frustrated, or—

:Well, you are getting—

Hellard:—has she ever—

:—you’re—

Hellard:—has she ever been able to come into her own?

:—you’re getting into the most complex part of our lives, and my life.

Hellard:Well Lucy—

:It is very—

Hellard:—is as you know a very, very intelligent person.

:Oh, I, I think intelligent as anybody I’ve ever known. Not only intelligent, but very gifted in many ways. She’s gifted in literary ways. She’s gifted in the arts. She’s a fine critic of, of art. As you know, she ran that little gallery up over the library for a long time and used to have shows there, of course that wasn’t for money, [Hellard laughs] that was, you know, just public service. And she’s, you know, pretty good about music, she plays the piano. She’s—she writes extremely well. Many a time when I’ve had something to write I have welcomed her assistance and criticism. She’s one of the best editors I ever knew, one of the best editors. When we had the Prichard Report, [Robert F.] Sexton and these people were, if you’ll forgive me, kind of fucking around with it, and—and they’d bring me these drafts over there for—for—for review. Hell, Lucy—Lucy put that thing in shape. She put it in shape. And she’s just a first-rate editor. She’s just talented in many ways, and I think there has been a feeling of competitiveness. But I would rather put it this way, not so much competitiveness as feeling that I have somehow, through some of the vicissitudes of my life and through some of my attitudes, put her in a position where she was never able to realize the fullness of her life in a career or in some of the facets and activities at which she was very talented. And she has a perfect right to believe some of that, because I—in the period after my troubles I, you know, left her with the burden of handling the children to a great extent. I—I was of course not financially as, as affluent as, as one might hope, and she had to do a lot of work at home keeping the house going. She had help occasionally. Luke and Christine had left us in and had gone up east to work for some fellow on , it was one of the editors or high muckety-mucks of Time Magazine. And of course I wrote him a great recommendation, I wasn’t going to stand in his way. But then they came back in the—in the summer, along in the ’60s, to . And they owned property there, had a home there. And they used to come over and help us some. And—and Christine would come and help around the house part-time, and Luke would come and help around the yard part-time. But Lucy felt that I’d left her with the burden of the children. And during many of those years I was out in political campaigns, out in, you know, I was in—I’d say during Combs’ campaign for governor, I was really tied up in that for—for, oh, fifteen months and neglected my law practice, which was a horrible thing to do. And that made our financial situation even worse. And then that gradually got better after Combs was elected, and I got to be in a more regular thing, but I was still spending an awful lot of time with Combs as an advisor, helping him. Same way with Ned Breathitt, in Ned Breathitt’s campaign, and, you know, it was a very— And then about the time of the late ’60s, I—I had problems with my income taxes, not so much—not fraud or anything like that—but just getting behind in them, and being late filing my returns, and I accumulated a lot of penalties and liabilities. And this absolutely drove her wild, as it might well have. And the truth is, we got under such a strain that there was a period of two, three years when we really just lived apart. And I lived in an apartment in , and I—it wasn’t that we didn’t speak or that—and all that sort of thing, and the children continued to, you know, associate with both of us. And we would occasionally go to some function together or go, but we were really apart there for about three years. And then, of course, in about the early ’70s, very early part, we went back—went back together, but that all had made a strain. And—and there was still some resentment there. And of course she was—she felt greatly under the burden of all those tax liabilities that I was trying to deal with. But I finally worked every dollar of them off, paid every nickel, interests, and penalties, and everything else. And—and yet for years after that, she was never confident that I didn’t have some tax, income tax liabilities that I was hiding from her. And indeed, as long ago as two, three years ago, she still had that suspicion, and it took me forever, and cost me thousands of dollars, because it wasn’t until a few years ago that she would ever file a joint return with me. And of course what, what really, you know, I’m telling you things now that are just the facts, but they’re, they’re very intimate details of my life. At one period during that time the government seized several thousand dollars in a—in a—in a savings account that she had in the First Security here, and I later paid her back for it, but it took a long time, and that embittered her very much. And so, you know, there was a strange tension in our lives. You know, I think she was very fond of me and admired me in a great many ways, but there was this residue of bitterness. Some degree of jealousy. And I think as I came to be accepted and admired by some people—I’m not trying to blow that up—I think there was a mixed feeling on her part. On the one hand, great pride in it and great happiness in it, and on the other, great resentment that here I have, have borne the heat and burden of the day and have been ground down by a lot that he’s done, or not done, and yet he is the one that’s being adulated, and—and invited to have honorary degrees, and—and speak and have dinners given for him. And I can understand it, you know, there’s a lot of validity to it. And even now it’s not something from which we’re completely free. Much different now than it once was, but every once in a while and, you know, I think she, she’s felt, and still feels, that I like to be the center of the stage. And while I’m not consciously that way, there’s something to it. And I think she feels that I like to have people wait on me and look after me and do things for me, and of course my blindness has made it worse because it has put burdens on her that weren’t there before. And I think she’s often resentful of that. And yet she does everything in the world for me, but I think there are times when it brings resentment out in her. And you know, ours has been a rather, a tempestuous marriage, and yet, you know, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. And I, I’m not sure that’s true of her.

Hellard:Well, it’s fair to say it’s been a rather remarkable marriage.

:Well, you want to say remarkable or unusual?

Hellard:Remarkable.

:Well, I mean, that’s for you to judge, I mean—

Hellard:Not many marriages could withstand the—that kind of stresses and strains.

:Well, that is right and, but of course she has the greatest strength and force of character of anybody I’ve ever known. She’s an absolute rock when she wants to be, and—and—and—and strong-willed to the point of obstinacy. And, you know, she can take a like or dislike to somebody, and in some cases there’s no way I can persuade her not jus-, not to love them necessarily, but just to tolerate them. And I’ll tell you an example, long as this thing is going to be held in confidence for some years. She, the first time she ever met him, she took a dislike to Phil Shepherd, and she’s never changed it. And there’s no more reason for it, no justification for it, but she just has an absolute scunner on Phil Shepherd. And of course to my mind, there’s no finer boy ever lived, nobody any loyal, more loyal to me, that’s been a greater friend of mine. And I think he admires Lucy. There’s not a thing in the world that he’s done or said that would ever justify her to have that feeling, but that’s an example. I’ll tell you another one. When Joe Terry—when I first knew Joe Terry, hell, he must have been eighteen years old or seventeen. He was an undergraduate at the of , had been to Hampton, for two years. He got mixed up in the constitutional convention fight and the—and the Henry Ward campaign. And I saw a lot of him and a lot of people around . That was when Lucy and I were sort of nearer apart than we were the before or after. And I had to go over, and Henry—I mean he offered to go over and pick up some of my clothes at Heartland to take to this apartment I was staying in. And that wasn’t—didn’t upset her, but during the course of it, he said to her in a fumbling way, like any kid of that age would, “Well if there’s anything I can do to be helpful or to make things better between you and Prich, I would like to do it.” She took offense at that, and it took her years before she would even speak to Joe Terry, now, said that was presumptuous of him. Well it may have been, but he was just a kid and, but she’s, she’s very civil to him now. But those things occur. I am not inclined to—to carry things that far or that much. I can usually, if she likes somebody very much, I can usually find it in my heart to learn to like them and tolerate them and usually go out of my way to be courteous to them. And I’m not really, although I’ll talk like one sometimes, I’m not really a hater, you know. Sometimes I have fun out of seeming to hate people, like [A. B. “Happy”] , but the truth is, I don’t hate him all that bad. I, I don’t have much use for him, but I, I don’t have a, I’ve had a kind of fun out of having a feud with him. But there aren’t really many people in the world that I really detest, for very long. But Lucy can take a lifelong, well, I’ll tell you one. Buzzy Nave, oh, how she detests him. And—and I—I can’t say I blame her very much, although I don’t know anything he’s ever done to her personally. But Buzzy has not to my judgment been a very good influence in the community or very high standards of ethics or anything like that. But she’s a person of just the strongest convictions you can imagine. And I think—I think, lately, probably the greatest source of tension to us is about the house and the farm and—and things like that. You know she’s tired of cooking meals. Thinks I’m too much interested in food, which I may be. Is inclined just to go pick up something and fix it, which she usually does quite well. But she doesn’t like for me to talk about a week’s menus or something of that sort. And she’s tired of spending a lot of her energy keeping house. And so I beg her to let me try to get some help out there, which we could afford to have now, and she kind of dawdles on that and says she doesn’t want to be bothered with it. And of course I argue with her and say if we’re going to keep this big house, we really ought to do something with it and entertain more and—and have some help, and—and she agrees in principle, but never really gets going on it. Although now she is of course much wrapped up now in trying to do some improvements out there and improvements—and maybe when she gets those done she’ll do it. But you know if I had my way, I’d have a party every week. I just love to have the house full of guests and—and of course when she has one it’s just lovely and—but I don’t know. What else do you want to ask me about?

Hellard:I want to ask you what—what—what—I guess, how your life is better for having married Lucy. What has she given you most of in your lifetime together?

:Well, I would say intellectual and aesthetic stimulus, high standards of taste, high standards of intellectual rigor and of aesthetic appreciation. A great deal of just joy in her company, because you know these things I’m telling you about are the worse.

Hellard:I understand that.

:I mean they—they’re not—that’s not the way we are every day. I can go for days and hours and just revel in her company. She has a marvelous sense of humor. She’s articulate. She can, you know, she’s a great conversationalist. All that has meant a great deal to me, just, I—I think that she has probably stimulated me, and lashed me into—into pulling myself together at critical times, and coming out of some of my doldrums and—and my disgrace, and then in becoming more energetic, and dependable. and—and dedicated in my profession. I think her influence and criticism and pressure has had a tremendous impact on that. And certainly I’m bound to say that one of the things she’s brought me is three wonderful sons. And we, you know, we have a wonderful relationship with each other in respect to those children. And I think the children really love us both very much. I don’t think they have any preference between us. And I don’t think we have very much preference among them. And, you know, I would have to say that that is a major, a major prize that’s come to me out of the marriage. And she’s been a marvelous, you know, a mother beyond comparison almost. And I think through her I have met many friends that I’ve learned to enjoy and love and that are—are close to me. And I think she’s probably met some through me. We both have a wide circle of friends that are very close to us and that we enjoy. And, you know, and when she’s, when she’s in a good mood, I just love to be with her, and love to be around her, and love to listen to her, love to talk to her. She has probably helped me to improve my own standards, my own ability to live up a little better to some of my principles. I think she’s, she’s witty as she can be, she’s just, you know, full, full of wit. And I certainly enjoy being with her most of the time. You know there are these occasions when there are tensions and all, but a lot of the rest of the time is just pure enjoyment. And—and I think despite the tensions, we’re in many, many ways, if not most ways, extremely close. You know I think we know each other mighty well. She used to accuse me of being distant and enigmatic, and I knew what she meant. I think I am much less so now. That was a great phrase of hers. And it is true that I was reared by parents who adored me so much and took so much pride in me that they almost reared me, or sought to rear me, without privacy, without a private life, without a private character. And I suppose that made me, in a way, distant and enigmatic, wanting to protect myself against sort of invasion, if you know what I mean. And I suppose when I married her, I quite mistakenly and unconsciously transferred a bit of that to her and my relationship, and it came between us. And she was always so open and so much the opposite, and had had such a happy, happy relationship with her parents, and for the most part with her siblings, although that’s something if we get into that’s going to, you know, that situation has become much more strained lately, primarily on account of the farm.

I mean she and Mary Powell [Lucy’s sister] were just as close and intimate as they could be for years, and I was like another brother to Mary Powell. And Mary Powell still loves me. But Lucy will never forgive Mary Powell from some of the things she said during the time when relations were strained about the farm. Now Nathan’s Elliott, Lucy’s brother] somewhat different. She regards Nathan as just a little bit of a clod, I mean, just thinks he’s not very sensitive or—but that’s different. I mean, I li-—I get along fine with Nathan. I don’t think Nathan is all that deep or fascinating, but I can get along all right with him. And Mary Powell is very brilliant and very talented and has lived through some things that would have destroyed anybody else. You know, the death of her husband when she was young, and—and the—the awful death of her boy, David, you know, was shot when he was fourteen, fifteen years old by a playmate and— But I have been extremely loyal to Lucy on all those matters. I have never criticized her in any of her attitudes about that. I have felt that it was my—my duty to be—to be loyal to her. But I certainly have never been uncivil to Mary Powell or Nathan and she, Lucy hasn’t expected me to. And you know, they are not on a total absence of, you know, Mary Powell had a party when Molly and her chi-—was here, and we were invited, and she—that happens every year, a couple of times, so it isn’t—it’s very—it’s just more distant, but—

Hellard:Side two of the June 13th interview, Edward F. Prichard. [microphone noise] Let me ask you about the boys. Are they all very—are they all very much the same, or are they all very different?

:All very different [laughing]. Oh hell, did I burn my britches?

Hellard:Let’s see. I don’t think so, it doesn’t look like it.

:Well I felt something like a—

Hellard:Part of your match must have, yeah, part of your match fell off.

:But it didn’t burn a hole in them?

Hellard:I don’t see any hole, no.

:Well it would be right here if it did.

Hellard:Let’s see—no, it didn’t.

:Well good. No, no they’re totally different. They’re not—

Hellard:Now Nathan is the oldest?

:Uh-uh, middle one.

Hellard:Allen—Allen is the oldest then.

:Uh-huh. Yeah. Allen is the one really you probably knew the best—

Hellard:Yeah.

:—or earliest.

Hellard:Allen and I spent some good days canoeing on the river.

:Oh, Allen was a great friend and admirer of yours. He really is devoted to you, asks about you all the time. And he was also very fond of Tony Wilhoite. Allen is a, Allen probably suffered more than the others from my troubles, because he was born within two, three days after I was indicted. Began to, you know, talk and acquire some consciousness right at the time I was in prison. Grew up and became a teenager, you know, when I was still an object of gossip and talk. And I think that all played a part in the formation of his character. Made him, perhaps, have a shell in some situations, although I think he overcame that to a great extent. He was a, Allen was always very responsible, although at times when he was a teenager he, he, you know, I can remember when he—do you remember Jeff Reed?

Hellard:Oh yes [laughing].

:When he and Jeff Reed used to—fell under the tutelage of Harry Downy.

Hellard:No.

:When Harry was unreformed and—and they would get off, hell, when they were just hardly teenagers, and drink and play cards, [laughing] you know, and all that kind of thing. But they both, I mean, Jeff’s really changed a lot, hasn’t he?

Hellard:Yes he has.

:And—and now of course Allen did. And Allen was a hardworking student, very, very assiduous and responsible athlete when he went to school at Sayre, and compiled a good record there and made a lot of nice friends, and then he went off to Andover when he was prep school age, and seemed to like that, although he said, you know, it was way, way from home, something he wasn’t used to. But Allen has, has been very successful. The firm in which he’s a partner is now about to merge with another firm, and they’ll be the third largest firm in . He’s married a fine girl, as of yet they’ve had no children. And he’s—she’s a real estate broker and has been extremely successful in that. She’s—she’s—her family have been in, in the general insurance business for three or four generations in Charlotte and she’s, she and Allen met at the of at . And then they came together again when he was in in law school and she was working for Senator Irvin, and so they got married. He was—he was a law clerk for a judge in for a year and then they went back to .

Unknown:Excuse me. It’s five after—I mean ten after five, she wanted me to let you know when—

Hellard:Okay.

Unknown:—it was getting about that time so I think, that she’s already left—

:All right, well go—we’ll be ready in a minute.

Unknown:Okay.

Hellard:I’ve got to meet Ernesto at five.

:Well, Ernesto won handsomely, didn’t he?

Hellard:He sure did.

:And I don’t believe he’ll have any trouble this fall.

Hellard:The only thing that bothers me about this fall is the—

[end of interview]