Volume 54, Number 3 · March 1, 2007
At the Feet of Ezra Pound
By Eliot Weinberger
The Way It Wasn't: From the Files of James Laughlin
edited by Barbara Epler and Daniel Javitch
New Directions, 342 pp., $25.00 (paper)
Heir to a steel fortune, James Laughlin IV grew up in a mansion in Pittsburgh where the 'inside' servants were Irish and the 'outside' servants black, where, in the summer, the windows were fitted with frames of cheesecloth that had to be washed of soot every day. The Mellons lived across the street; the Carnegies nearby. Henry Clay Frick, who brought in the militia against the striking Homestead coal miners, was a great-uncle. Strict Presbyterians, Irish who pretended to be Scottish, they were religious provincials who had found sudden wealth, much like today's oil sheikhs. 'At one house,' Laughlin wrote, 'the butler passed chewing gum on a silver salver after coffee.' There were daily prayers and Bible readings, with the servants standing in attendance. (The Catholics were excused.) The Sunday comic strips could not be read until Monday. 'Books were used for decoration in the living room. The only person who ever took them off the shelves was the parlor maid who dusted them.' The family traveled in its own private Pullman car.
Review, 3704 words
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