Decca, p.106
Decca, page 106
120. Aunt Woman, in French.
121. Decca appears here to be confusing two separate occasions, judging by her contemporaneous accounts. In one instance, during her 1959 trip to Europe, she and her son went to see Compulsion in Paris but wandered into the wrong movie house and instead saw Les Amants, which she described as “a long, pointless and fearfully improper French movie” that “showed actual sex.” (She said she told her son to “shut his eyes, but I don’t think he did.”) The incident recounted here, in London and also in 1959, apparently involved a different film, which Decca described at the time as “pretty good, we thought.” She told the ticket taker her son was American, “thinking they wouldn’t care if an American kid saw it.”
122. Emma the Good, the duchess’s daughter.
123. Belfrage had died March 14 of cancer, and Decca went to London within days to say a few words at the funeral.
124. Pledge of Allegiance (Dutton/William Abrahams, 1991). Lapin was the son of the Treuhafts’ good friends Adam and Eva Lapin. Decca was a big booster of Mark Lapin’s book about growing up in a Communist family in the 1950s. She told one correspondent that Mark Lapin had a lot to “exorcise” because he didn’t know his father, the editor of the Daily Worker and an underground member of the Party, until he was a teenager, at which point “Mark thought he was an imposter pretending to be his father.”
125. The reference is to Sally Belfrage’s Un-American Activities: A Memoir of the Fifties (HarperCollins, 1994), which Decca had apparently been discussing in a previous letter to Durr.
126. The documentary, Over My Dead Body, focused on the increasing commercialization and Americanization of British funeral practices and featured Decca in a number of scenes.
127. Charlotte and Alexander Mosley.
128. The Duchess of Devonshire was Nancy Mitford’s literary executor and therefore had final say on the letters Charlotte Mosley published in her collection.
129. A reference to Senator Kennedy’s 1969 car accident on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts that killed Mary Jo Kopechne.
130. Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, a friend of the duke and duchess.
131. Decca had broken her ankle on the last day of a visit with her daughter and son-in-law in New York. She was hospitalized on her return home, and Constancia Romilly flew to Oakland, spending a week-as Decca later told the duchess—“bossing the hosp. nurses & Drs, absolutely invaluable. Don’t you think DAUGHTERS are best asset in the world?”; Decca returned to her house in a wheelchair and then walker.
132. The falls that led to the broken bones.
133. James Forman had graduated from Yale Law School in i992. “He’ll be needing some grandmotherly advice on how to handle murder cases, parking tickets etc.,” Decca wrote another friend.
134. The bitingly funny, progressive syndicated newspaper columnist from Texas.
135. Karen Leonard had recently become Decca’s research assistant for American Way of Death Revisited. She had previously been a consumer advocate on funeral issues and had been widely quoted in the press. Leonard says what really caught Decca’s eye was a reference to Leonard in a funeral trade magazine that identified her as the “Jessica Mitford of the Nineties.”
136. Decca ultimately went to the museum, accompanied by Ivins and her assistant. As recounted byKarenLeonard, theywere treated to a video of The History of Funeral Service, one section of which was devoted to “The History of Embalming,” including scenes of the monumental funeral tombs ofancient Egypt. At that point, Decca is reported to have leaned overto Ivins and said, “Now THERE is a culture whose funeral directors REALLY got out of hand!” Leonard said they were laughing so hard that she had to usherIvins from the room until theycould collect themselves.
137. Two of Decca’s favorite songs that she loved to sing full-throttle at parties and had performed and recorded at the behest of Kathi Kamen Goldmark on Goldmark’s boutique label, “Don’t Quit Your Day Job” Records. Some of the proceeds from the sale of this first recording, called Decca and the Dectones (a rotating group of pickup kazoo players), went to Benjamin Treuhaft’s Send a Piana to Havana campaign. On May 1, 1995, the ragtag group performed at Town Hall in New York.
138. Tout court means “simply” or “merely” in French.
139. Cerf, son of Bennett Cerf, whose Famous Writers School Decca had helped drive into bankruptcy, had hosted a party at his home on April 27 to celebrate release of the recording of Decca singing, which was billed as “featuring her incomparable rendition of ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.’” Proceeds from the CD were to benefit the Right to Rock Network and other First Amendment groups. According to Decca, when Goldmark asked Christopher Cerf before the party if he knew about Decca’s role in exposing his father’s school, he replied, “My father was a wonderful man-but that school was a terrible racket.”
140. A friend of Barbara Kahn (then Barbara Allen) since their days together at Vassar College.
141. Barbara Kahn’s daughter.
142. The duchess’s granddaughter, model Stella Tennant.
143. Benjamin Treuhaft had written his parents after cleaning out his in-box and discovering their March 1993 letter about his brother Nicky. In his belated reply, he told his parents that “finally, two and-a-half years after your letter, I cried over how sad it was for everyone that Nicky died.” He told them that, like Nicky’s childhood friend, he vaguely recalled fighting with Nicky “as usual” the night before his fatal accident and believed it had something to do with Nicky’s paper route (he had been delivering newspapers when struck by a bus). Ben went on to say, “the worst was my feeling, which mildly haunted me for years afterwards, of inability to feel the horror and grief that wracked 574-6ist St. I don’t know what was wrong with me, I guess I was too scared.”
144. Former football star and celebrity O. J. Simpson had been found not guilty the previous day of murdering his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
145. In another letter, Decca wrote that she and her husband “agreed that a) he’s guilty, b) we welcomed the verdict as Benj did, serves the cops right. A thought: sort of an Affirmative Action type of vote? Redressing centuries of injustice in our law courts?”;
146. Decca’s literary agent at the time. In a letter to a friend, Decca referred to this letter saying, “it’s what’s called in the trade a ‘query letter,’ hoping he can flog the idea to some mag. for an article.”
147. Elliott, editor of the Albion Monitor online newspaper, had interviewed Decca extensively for a 33,000-word profile of her that is still available at www.albionmonitor.com/decca.
148. The question Decca was answering here concerned Esmond Romilly’s knowledge about Decca’s interest in him before their first meeting at a country-house weekend, in the course of which they hatched the plan for Decca to run away to Spain with Romilly.
149. Elliott had asked about the racist riot in progress when Decca and Walter (Buddy) Green arrived at the besieged Wilbur Gary house in the Rollingwood development in San Pablo, California, in 1952. Among other things, Elliott wanted to know if Decca had stopped or argued with the mob before heading into the house to offer assistance. He also asked if Decca had been the only white in the house.
150. In the 1960s, the Treuhafts had hosted a dinner to introduce Harry Bridges and University of California Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio. They had hoped to link the Old Left with the New, but the two guests of honor were said to have taken an instant dislike to each other, souring an event the Treuhafts had anticipated with excitement. Elliott, in his list of questions, had asked Decca to elaborate on the nature of Bridges’s objections to Savio and the student protesters.
151. E. Franklin Frazier’s 1957 book Black Bourgeoisie: The Rise of a New Middle Class in the United States has been reissued over the years, most recently in 1997 by the Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster.
152. Walker had asked Decca if she could list her as a reference among “others who are personally familiar with my legal experience and editing skill,” saying that she was faxing her instead of telephoning “to enable you to decline without embarrassment.”
153. Stermer had been a close friend of Decca since her Ramparts days. He is a San Francisco illustrator who decades earlier had designed and written the Ramparts magazine back-page ads for Inch Kenneth, an ad campaign dreamed up by their mutual friend Howard Gossage. In addition to four books that he wrote and illustrated, Stermer’s work has included the design for the 1984 Olympic medals, campaigns for Levi’s, Nike, Jaguar, and the San Diego Zoo, and illustrations for many top American newspapers and magazines.
154. Stermer’s new book was Birds & Bees: A Sexual Study (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995).
155. On Writing Well by William Knowlton Zinsser (Harper & Row, 1976, and republished in a number of new editions over the years).
156. Conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
157. Decca was referring to the visit by two FBI agents to inform her department head that she was “under surveillance as a suspected Communist.”
158. For more background on this program that made an indelible impression on Decca, see the letter of May I, 1980, to Maya Angelou.
159. An attorney with McDade & Fogler in Houston, which represented Service Corporation International. Decca was responding to a fax from McDade in which he said he had heard from people who attended Decca’s presentation at the Mortuary Management Seminar in October 1995 that she had made “some rather disparaging remarks about SCI and its Chairman, Robert L. Waltrip.” Without “suggesting that we are going to sue you or any such thing,” McDade noted that “we have had considerable experience with libel and slander cases.” He noted that her seminar comments “appear to evidence an intentional pattern to cast SCI in a bad light clothed in wit and humor” and instructed: “You cannot be mean or cute; you only need to tell the truth. We know you can do it.”
160. A quotation, of course, from McDade’s letter, as is the next quoted comment in her letter.
161. Bill Barrett, SCI Management’s director of corporate communications.
162. Bob Boetticher of SCI would later gain some measure of renown when, as director of special projects for SCI, he handled funeral arrangements for President Ronald Reagan.
163. In The American Way of Death Revisited, Decca recounted the canceling of her scheduled interview with Waltrip in the spring of 1995. She quoted from an in-house SCI publication sent her by a “disaffected former SCI employee.” The article said: “An interview with the media is serious business. The image and reputation of your business is at stake. If the preparation leads you to conclude it is not in your best interest to do the interview, don’t.”
164. McDade’s letter had noted that Decca’s husband was “a former labor union attorney, Robert Truehaft.”
165. Chaka Forman explains his behavior: “The letter references my roles on ‘NYPD Blue’ and the ABC miniseries ‘Innocent Victims.’ Grandec was always a big supporter of my acting career.”
166. Terry Weber was teaching at New York’s Urban Academy Laboratory High School. As part of a special, schoolwide project on “what’s good for kids,” one subgroup was looking at whether religion was good for kids. Constancia Romilly had been invited to speak with those students about growing up as, and being, an atheist.
167. At the time, the editor of The New Yorker.
168. Comedian, actress, and general-purpose celebrity entertainer Roseanne Barr.
169. Helena Kennedy and her husband, Dr. Iain Hutchison. Kennedy, the British left-wing lawyer (now Baroness Kennedy and a Labour member of the House of Lords), was a good friend of the Treuhafts. She is the author of Eve Was Framed: Women and British Justice (Chatto & Windus, 1995) and Just Law: The Changing Face of Justice-and Why It Matters to Us All (Chatto & Windus, 2004).
170. Jelinek, a Berkeley attorney and progressive politician and, for a time, Robert Treuhaft’s law partner. He had written a demand letter to the New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association, Inc., informing the organization that he was representing Decca in the matter. The charge was that the association had reneged on a written contract for an appearance by Decca at its convention, for $4,000 plus specified expenses. Jelinek claimed that the invitation was revoked “apparently after your Executive Director told Ms. Mitford that he ‘hadn’t realized how controversial you are, even 30 years since the American Way of Death came out; that I must seek a center path for the organization.’”
171. The prime minister.
172. A combative British Member of Parliament who was at one time a key ally of Tony Blair and is credited with “modernizing” the British Labour Party.
173. In another letter, Decca commented, “From her letters, I gather that [my Hen is] constantly off to funerals, her main form of social life these days, so she’s in prime position to do a spot of research.”
174. Church of England.
175. Roman Catholic.
176. Inese Civkulis had succeeded the Treuhafts’ longtime housekeeper, Rita Wiggins, and become equally indispensable. She also catered their parties and helped to care for each of them when they became ill and infirm.
177. Professional musician Lisa Pollard was first recommended by Decca’s physical therapist as a walking companion when Decca was under orders to walk more in the recovery from her broken ankle. Pollard became a caretaker and friend in Decca’s declining months and on through her husband’s final years.
178. The next day, May 29, Robert Treuhaft had a large oral abscess removed, but in the course of the day his condition deteriorated markedly. His thinking and conversation became increasingly confused. Treuhaft was admitted to a local hospital, where doctors speculated he had an infection caused by his surgery.
179. The duchess’s assistant, Helen Marchant.
180. An early syphilis test that used to be required before marriage.
181. “According to,” in French.
182. A fax from the duchess.
THE LAST WORD
Lisa Pollard directed the Green Street Mortuary Band as friends and relatives gathered for Decca’s memorial in San Francisco. On display in the horse-drawn hearse were memorabilia of Decca’s life.
Within hours of her death, the phone calls began: funeral directors from around the country competing for the right to “do Decca.” Anticipating public interest in her funeral arrangements, Decca had requested direct cremation, the simplest process, and interviewed a man her research assistant, Karen Leonard, describes as “the funeral director most hated by the industry.” Decca expressed herself pleased with his arrangements. (His final bill was $475.)
Decca had always shown a keen interest in her own funeral—“goodness I wish I cld. be there,” she once wrote—so she naturally had a few other last wishes. In her final weeks, she called a number of former students and other friends to ask them to act as “bouncers” at the funeral, giving “the bum’s rush” to anyone who praised her then added a “but”—a technique she had dreamed up years earlier, after Sonia Orwell’s funeral.*
One speaker at Decca’s memorial intentionally sprinkled a few “howevers” and “buts” into his tribute. “What would a memorial to Decca be like if we all followed the rules?”; he said later. “It felt right to raise a ruckus.” Beginning with a tentative objection from a friend in the audience who had not been certain if Decca was truly serious in her confidential request, a rising chorus of protests, hoots, and catcalls greeted each subsequent “but” in the tribute. It was a scene that doubtless had had the honoree chortling when she plotted it, pre-mortem.
Decca’s friends arranged a final joke at her expense. Their inspiration was the following passage from her obituary in the New York Times:
Late in life, she was asked what sort of funeral she wanted. An elaborate one, she replied, with “six black horses with plumes and one of those marvelous jobs of embalming that take 20 years off.” She added that she wanted “streets to be blocked off, dignitaries to declaim sobbingly over the flower-smothered bier, proclamations to be issued—that sort of thing.”
Decca’s flip description of her dream funeral had been reported in funeral journals and elsewhere. It was reprinted with such seriousness that she once said it was the one joke she regretted, but the friends planning her funeral—unbeknownst to her family—played out the joke to the hilt, arranging to have six black, plumed horses pull a glass-enclosed antique hearse through the waterfront streets near downtown San Francisco. The twelve-piece Green Street Mortuary Band, led by Decca’s saxophonist friend Lisa Pollard, followed the cortege, blaring out such rousing favorites as “When the Saints Come Marching In.”
The cost of this pomp was not announced, but Decca—in a decision telegraphed weeks earlier to the Duchess of Devonshire* —requested reimbursement for her cremation from what she considered a fitting source. Her final letter, composed by her assistant, was written at Decca’s direction and mailed the day after her death.
To Mr. Robert Waltrip, SCI Corporation
July 24, 1996
Dear sir,
I am the research assistant for Jessica Mitford’s revision of The American Way of Death. Although Jessica would have loved to have met you, and had gone to great lengths to do so last year, destiny took you and your entire staff away on business that day. Alas, we landed high and dry in Houston without even a chance to say howdy. Although we got a free tour of your funeral museum, it just wasn’t the same.
As you have probably read in The New York Times today, Ms. Mitford has “passed away.” Prior to her death, she and I discussed her final arrangements. I think you would be delighted to know that you were in her thoughts.
Ms. Mitford was not a big fan of prepaying, or “preneed” as it is termed in the industry jargon. But the bill did seem to be of concern to her. She made a final request of me that brings me to the purpose of this letter.
Ms. Mitford feels that you should pay the bill. In her own words “after all, look at all the fame I’ve brought them!”
