Free The Friend of Women and Other Stories by Louis Auchincloss

Madonna by Raphael? They might secretly prefer the former, but they’re too awed by the critics to say so. Hang an old straw hat full of holes on the wall at the modern art museum and they’ll respectfully gape!”
    Letty had learned to be patient at such outbursts, which seemed to be increasing. “It’s all very well for you to be snobbish, my dear,” she replied. “But a foundation shouldn’t be, and I’m afraid I’m not going to change my mind.”
    Eliot looked at her now with an expression she had never seen, at least as directed at her. She sensed something ominous in it. Where had she noticed it before? Was it when one of the editors of the magazine had effectively criticized a too violent column of his?
    â€œDoes that mean the grant will be disallowed if your condition is not met?” he demanded.
    â€œI thought if either of us disagreed, that was enough to disallow it.”
    â€œYou mean, darling, if
you
disagreed.”
    â€œWell, if it comes to that, we can recuse ourselves and leave the decision to the rest of the board.”
    â€œKnowing they will never go against the expressed opinion of the founder’s heir and daughter!”
    â€œYou might dissuade them.”
    â€œDream on. You know the board is your rubber stamp. I’m only sorry that you make it so clear.”
    â€œYou will find, I think, Eliot, that your art scholars will do just as well with a larger public admitted to the galleries.”
    â€œYou will always find what you want to find, my dear Letty. It’s a way with heiresses.”
    The next time that Letty found an incriminating note in a pocket of one of Eliot’s jackets, she was sure that he had placed it there for her. She took it as his declaration of independence. For two years they had had separate bedrooms, as Eliot, an insomniac, had declined to bow to her objection to the reading light that he kept on till the early morning, but now he abandoned his occasional nocturnal visits to her chamber, and his demeanor, at meals and business meetings, was increasingly cool and distant.
    At last they came to a decisive clash, and in the presence of the entire editorial board of the magazine. Eliot had requested that they hire a columnist who would chronicle the social side of life in Gotham: the big charity balls, the private lives of the politically and socially great, the rumors of coming events, even the scandals of notable folk.
    â€œThe little due de Saint-Simon who was considered a minor snob and tattletale in his own day,” he explained to the group, “is now revered as the primary source of our knowledge of the age of Louis XIV What I am proposing is that we not wait a few centuries before drawing on the wealth of such a commentator but take advantage of it today. Great events often have their seed in matters that seemed trivial when they occurred. I see no reason why we should not sharpen our perceptions to avoid such misvaluations.”
    Letty had not come to the meeting unprepared. She had studied the work of the proposed columnist in another periodical and been appalled at what she had read. Her voice trembled slightly, but she was perfectly clear.
    â€œThe man is intelligent, undoubtedly,” she conceded. “And he may be sincere in thinking that he is seeking the truth in his reports. But his glee in discovering scandal, his joy in dirt, betray a mind that is bent on dramatizing every bit of filth he can sniff out. That, to me, anyway, is not a voice we need to hear in the
New Orange.
”
    â€œPardon me, Letitia. I had thought the
New Orange
was interested in facts. That a man takes pleasure in digging them out had not struck me as a disqualification. Perhaps
my
voice is the one that should not be heard in your chaste periodical.”
    Letty saw in the strained expressions of the four listening editors their concern over the bite in his tone. They all knew, as she did, that the issue was