They would fix this for their guests, really wonderful food, the most
wonderful cooks, or they had a cook, I think. But they would be telling
you the same time about the fact that it was all going to kill you. It
was absolutely deadly cooked food . . . But, you see, nobody thought
they were odd either; they were just taken as a matter of fact, too,
they were [UNCLEAR] everybody just accepted the fact that
they thought. . . .They would tell you these terrible tales about old
cousin Annie who came to visit them and she was eighty-nine years old
and she still seemed to be healthy. But you know that woman is killing
herself. We took her out and do you know what she had for dinner? She
ordered and ate a dead lobster. She was 89 years old and she was killing
herself because she ordered and ate a dead lobster. But you know it was
all taken for granted, if you know what I mean. Well, one of the reasons
that people were so nice to us was that they had "placed" us, as they
say in Virginia, or in the South. And the way they had placed us was
this. We had no Virginia connection, and if you told them that your
family had come from Virginia way back in 1797 or
even 18 . . . My grandfather came down during the Revolutionary War from
South Boston. But if you told anybody in Virginia who was a native and
lived there all their lives, and their ancestors, that you came from
Virginia, they always rather looked down on you because you moved away,
and they couldn't imagine anybody ever leaving Virginia unless the
sheriff was after them or some scandal had erupted because Virginia, you
know, is a beautiful State. The old families who clustered around
Seminary Hill and the Virginia Episcopal Theological Seminary, they knew
everybody.
Well, the reason what we were accepted to the degree that we were, and we
really were accepted, was because the Dean of the Seminary had been a
Dr. Crawford, and he had had two, several, beautiful daughters. One of
them particularly beautiful name Alice Crawford. And she came down to
Birmingham as the wife of an Episcopal minister. And my mother and she
were friendly and I had known her, so they vouched for us, if you know
what I mean. They had come back to Virginia and he was teaching in a
Episcopal school somewhere in Virginia. His name was Randolph. And they
were the bluest blood of the bluest blood of Virginia. And they had
known my mother, and Mrs. Randolph was one of the most beautiful women
I've ever seen. I have seen many pretty women, but she was an absolute
beauty. She had perfect features, masses of black hair. You very rarely
see black hair that's wavy and curly and very shiney. And then she had
lovely white skin and slender figure. She had been proposed to, we
always understood, by every millionaire in the country, but she married
Dr. Randolph, who was an Episcopal minister with whom she fell in love.
She was a devoted wife to him because we got to know them quite well. He
finally . . . He was the head of this Episcopal school somewhere in
South Virginia, and he failed the son of the Bishop or he failed the son
of some big contributor or he failed the sons of some very prominent
people in the Episcopal Church. He wouldn't pass them. And there was a
great to-do about it because he'd just fail them
or expel them if they didn't do right. And so they told him that he was
losing money for the school and losing money for the Episcopal Church,
irritating the Board of Trustees. You know, he was a man of total
integrity and honesty and so he kept on failing them. So they fired him.
So he came up and lived in the little house next to us after we'd bought
a house on Seminary Hill. And during the War he got a job in the torpedo
factory. He'd go off in the mornings with a bucket, you know, a lunch
basket in his hands. But I'm trying to give you a flavor of Seminary
Hill. And Mrs. Randolph, who was this great beauty and who had been
admired by all and . . . she would come out and empty the garbage. And I
never will forget—she always wore gloves and always looked like, you
know, her hair was fixed, beautifully dressed. She stuck by her husband
very loyally. And Dr. Randolph was one of the loveliest men I ever knew,
I've ever known. There is a strain in Virginia among all the Virginians
that I met. There are lot of Virginians that I didn't like at all. But
there is a strain in Virginia of men of integrity, you know, like Cliff,
who're going to do right in spite of hell and high water. And he was one
of them. And he did it in such a matter of fact way, if you know what I
mean. And I would like to add that after the War was over and he got a
job as the director of the church in Rome, Italy. And Mrs. Randolph went
with him. And as I understand their latter years were, you know, they
were very comfortable, and happy, in Rome, Italy. But she was, they were
lovely people.
But I was trying to contrast some of the odd people. There was a lovely
old man over at the Virginia Episcopal High School that, Mr. Reid, he
was an Englishman. And I was devoted to him, and I would go over real
often in the afternoons and have tea with him, because, being English,
he made delicious tea and he loved to have people drop in for tea. And
when the war started he was very concerned because of course we weren't
in it yet—that was when the Second World War started— So I said to him
one day, Mr. Reid, goodness, they were bombing
England, you know, and he was terribly disturbed about his relatives.
And he was a man then in his eighties, nearly eighty. And I said, I
declare, what do you think is the cause of all the trouble in the world.
He said it was very simple, it was on account of the gasoline engine. He
said as soon as we got away from horses the world began to go to hell.
Well, he was absolutely convinced that everything was due to the
gasoline engine. And, you know, he had rather old-fashioned ideas, and
that's what he stuck to. All on account of the gasoline engine. But, you
see, coming from Birmingham, which had been such a bustling place where
everybody was striving to get ahead and get money, you know, and give
big parties and impress people. The people in Virginia were so sure that
they were the absolute top of the heap; they never doubted it, you know.
If they were poor, they were still absolutely Virginian. And the
atmosphere I'm trying to create was of people who were genteel,
extremely genteel, and not rich, but beautiful manners and absolutely
secure in the knowledge that they were Virginian. That nobody in the
world could look down on a Virginian. They were just at the top of the
heap.
And I remember there was a woman that I went to see one time, whom
somebody in Birmingham had asked me to go see, who was a cousin. This
was Tinsley Harrison's relatives, you don't know who he is, you know the
great doctor. Well, this is his mother asked me to go see the cousin. So
I went there, and my heavens, here was this handsome woman with all this
brood of handsome children. The windows were out, and it all looked like
it was just a wreck. Some of the windows were out, and her poor old
mother, or something, was huddling over a little wire. And she greeted
me with perfect grace. So when I came back on a visit, I told Mrs.
Harrison about her cousin and what a desperate time she was having. And
she said that was on account of the fact that her grandfather'd been a
gambler, or maybe it was her father, anyway she laid it all to the fact
that there was a streak of gambling in the family and they'd lost alll
their money. She said, you know, this cousin of
mine has all the family silver—came from Virginia—and if she's in such a
desperate condition—it must be worth several thousand dollars—when you
go back, you ask her if I can buy the silver from her. Because that will
give her . . . And they really were in a bad fix. So I went out there
one cold, after Christmas, cold as it could be, and their house was
freezing, and the old lady was crouched over the fire. They never had
but the panes in the windows, you know they had wood in the windows. And
I told the lady as nice as I could that her cousin in Alabama, Mrs.
Harrison, would like to buy the family silver. I think Mrs. Harrison's
name was Ella. She said, dear Ella wants that silver? Why it had never
occurred to me that she'd like that silver. If she feels that way about
it, I'll send it to her tomorrow. I said, but she wants to buy it from
you. Oh, she said, I couldn't think of selling the family silver. She
said, but I'll certainly share it with her, and give it to her if she
feels strongly about it. You know, what could you do about that? She was
not going to accept any money for the family silver, that was something
that was sacred. Well, Virginia was a fascinating place to me because it
provided a haven, if you know what I mean.