Real Lace (25 page)

From then on, his letters home were full of the doings of his new and enormously rich friends. “Yesterday was Monsignor Bernardini's feast day, the feast of St. Philip,” he wrote. “Mrs. Brady gave a dinner in his honor. Cardinal Gasparri, Monsignor Borgongini, Monsignor Pizzardo, Monsignor Bernardini and I were the guests.” He was in heady company. A few months later, he wrote, “Yesterday Cardinal Gasparri, Monsignor Borgongini, Monsignor Pizzardo and Mr. Brady and I had a one hundred and fifty mile ride in the country. We brought our lunch and had it in the old Monastery of Subiaco.…” There were other pleasant picnics and excursions with the Bradys and their high-placed Vatican friends, and after saying morning Mass for the family Father Spellman enjoyed tennis games with Mr. Brady on the private courts of Casa del Sole. While helping, and being helped by, the Bradys, Father Spellman was also able to help the Brady money help the Vatican. He suggested to Mr. Brady that Cardinal Gasparri needed a new automobile, and particularly admired the new Chrysler Limousine 82. Mr. Brady said, “Sure.” The Cardinal was delighted with his new car. Through the Bradys, Father Spellman quickly got to know virtually everyone of importance in Rome, including the most important Cardinal of all, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli. In 1928, Father Spellman noted in his diary, “October 19: Heard indirectly that I am to be made a Monsignor.” And a few days later, “October 30: Monsignor Borgongini told me I was made a Monsignor on October the fourth.”

His next elevation, to the rank of domestic prelate, was not long
in coming and, in 1931, Monsignor Spellman was named Auxiliary Bishop of Boston and, seven years later, he was appointed Archbishop of New York. In the process, he was able to reward his friends and sponsors, the Bradys. In 1927, through his offices, Mr. Brady was given the Grand Cross of St. Gregory, and Mrs. Brady and Mrs. James A. Farrell were named two of the three Dames of Malta in the entire United States. Thus Genevieve Garvan Brady became the Duchess Brady.

The Bradys also maintained a huge estate called “Inisfada” on the North Shore of Long Island near Manhasset. The road on which “Inisfada” was situated had been nicknamed “The Irish Channel” because so many wealthy Irishmen had large estates along its length. In addition to “Inisfada,” there was the big place belonging to Nicholas F. Brady's nephew, James Cox Brady, Jr. James Cox Brady had inherited $25 million and directorships in fifty corporations from his father, though he had started out “shoveling coal by the side of Polish and Italian immigrants” at the Consolidated Gas Company in the Bronx—which his uncle happened to own, so his rise was not too slow. It was James Cox Brady who “bailed out” Walter Chrysler when his company was in difficulties. James Cox Brady put substantial money into the Chrysler Corporation, and went on its board. In addition to his place on the Channel, James Cox Brady owned a racing stable in Ireland and the lovely old Cashel Palace Hotel.

Next door to “Inisfada” was the Joseph P. Grace estate. Joseph Grace was one of the sons of the Irish-born William Russell Grace who, with his brother Michael, founded W. R. Grace & Company, the Grace Steamship Line, and the Grace National Bank. W. R. Grace & Company was founded in Peru in the 1850's, and old William R. had married a Yankee skipper's daughter and, in the 1860's moved to New York, where he built up a substantial business and became the first Irish-born Mayor of New York. His son, Joseph P. Grace, divided his time comfortably between the Long
Island place, a grouse-shooting moor in Scotland, a big house in Northeast Harbor, Maine, and another big place in Aiken, South Carolina. On the other side of “Inisfada” was the estate of Cornelius F. Kelly, the Anaconda Copper king.

But “Inisfada” was the greatest showplace on the Channel, even though, after Nicholas Brady's death in 1930, the Duchess rarely visited it, and the estate was looked after by gardeners and caretakers. Late in the summer of 1936, however, the Duchess arrived in New York from Rome and confided to a few close friends what she described as her “secret.” The secret was that her friend Cardinal Pacelli was coming to America in October to spend his vacation with her “in seclusion” at “Inisfada,” which she would open for the occasion. One of the first people she told was Bishop Spellman.

The Bishop was not entirely pleased with the news. A visit from the Cardinal Secretary of State, who had already been mentioned as a leading candidate for the Papacy (Pacelli would become Pope Pius XII three years later), was an event of international importance, with vast religious and political implications. Franklin D. Roosevelt was just concluding his first term as President, and, as part of his appeal to combined minority groups in the country, he had already suggested the need for United States diplomatic representation at the Vatican, where there had never before been an American ambassador. Discreet feelers on the subject had gone out from the White House to Rome, and the right moment for some sort of agreement seemed close at hand. But, at this delicate stage, and to the President's distinct annoyance, a Catholic priest from Detroit, Charles E. Coughlin, had stepped into the proceedings and was thoroughly muddying the diplomatic waters. Father Coughlin had, in addition to his parish, a highly popular and controversial radio program—a single Coughlin broadcast once drew as many as 350,000 letters—and, earlier that year, Coughlin had entered the Presidential campaign, concentrating his attack
on Roosevelt. On the air, he had referred to “Franklin Double-Crossing Roosevelt,” and he had called the President “a liar.” He had also referred to him as “a scab President,” “anti-God,” and “an upstart dictator,” and said that Roosevelt's chief supporters were Communists. He had publicly recommended the use of bullets “when any upstart dictator in the White House succeeds in making a one-party Government and when the ballot is useless.” The situation had, of course, been noted in Rome, and the
Osservatore Romano
had called Coughlin's statements “improper.” But Coughlin's Archbishop, Michael James Gallagher, who supported him, had announced to the Associated Press that “The Vatican never interfered in the Coughlin matter.” In light of all this, the Duchess Brady's notion of having Cardinal Pacelli spend three weeks “in seclusion” at “Inisfada” struck Bishop Spellman as grotesque, and even impossible to carry out. The press would make much of the visit, and there would be endless speculation about its true nature—particularly if His Eminence were to be kept in mysterious, even ominous, sequestration in Manhasset. Spellman, on the other hand, owed much to the Duchess and knew her to be a woman of fierce determination and will. His notation in his diary the day he received her news was understandably terse: “Had telephone call from Mrs. Brady in Paris about proposed visit to America.”

A month later—with the visit still a month off—the Spellman diary noted: “Labor Day. Luncheon with Mrs. Brady … We spent the whole afternoon talking. I did not contradict her, but I shall have to oppose some of her plans.…”

Following this luncheon, Spellman sent off four lengthy dispatches to Rome, explaining the situation. He received a cable a few days later, saying that his suggestions would be followed. Mrs. Brady was not at all happy when Bishop Spellman showed her the cable, but, since it was a directive from the Vatican, there was nothing she could do. She had had her heart set, she said, on
“seclusion” for His Eminence, for a very private visit during which she and he would while away their days discussing high ecclesiastical matters.

On September 30 the news was released from the Vatican that Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli would sail for New York the following day on the
Conte di Savoia
. A statement was issued from the Cardinal which said, “I am going to America simply on a vacation. I have a great longing to see the United States. There is no political aspect to my trip whatever.” But these words did not satisfy the American press, and immediately there were stories claiming that the real reason for the Cardinal's visit was the Pope's concern over Roosevelt's Communist supporters; or that he was coming to try to establish diplomatic relations between the United States and the Holy City. All the newspapers brought in the Coughlin matter.

The Church, meanwhile—the three American Cardinals, the Apostolic Delegate, and the hierarchy below—was thrown into a frantic state of worry over how to treat and handle, and how to interpret, the signal honor that the Duchess Brady had arranged to have paid to the United States. A plan to have the Cardinal taken off the liner by tug before it entered the harbor was abandoned when it was remembered that Queen Victoria of Spain had taken the same short cut with unpleasant consequences. While the ship was still twenty hours away from New York, Bishop Spellman telephoned the Cardinal in his stateroom to prepare him for his first American press conference. Managing the Cardinal's visit had naturally become Francis Spellman's job.

On his arrival in New York, Cardinal Pacelli handled the throng of reporters waiting to interview him with considerable agility, wittily fielding their questions without, in the process, really saying anything at all. He read a short prepared statement which said, in part, “Despite the private character of my visit I know well that I am expected to make my little contribution to the representatives of the press as a sort of ‘journalistic tax of
entry' into the United States.” The press was charmed by the Cardinal and, from then on, would see to it that his visit was hardly “private,” and his every move about the country was enthusiastically chronicled.

After a few days' rest at “Inisfada,” there began a heavy schedule of public and semipublic appearances. There was a motor trip to Boston, with a stop en route to visit the Knights of Columbus headquarters in New Haven, and a visit to Bishop Spellman's parish in Newton Center, where the Cardinal said Mass twice. There were trips to Philadelphia and Washington, which included numerous stops at various Catholic churches, schools, colleges, and orphanages, and endless lunches, dinners, and speeches, and honorary degrees conferred. There was an extended trip to the West Coast, with stops along the way in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, and South Bend, during which the Cardinal's plane made detours so that His Eminence could have aerial views of such sights as Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, and Boulder Dam. There were only a few tense moments, such as one in Washington where it turned out that Bishop Spellman had not received an invitation for a Press Club luncheon at which the Cardinal was to speak. The Cardinal insisted on the Bishop's being included. In Philadelphia, the Bishop and the Duchess crossed swords briefly over a businessmen's luncheon which the Duchess wanted the Cardinal to attend, and which the Bishop did not (the Bishop prevailed). In Washington, Joseph P. Kennedy had arranged a lunch with Roosevelt at Hyde Park, but Spellman insisted that the invitation come directly from the President, and not through Kennedy as an intermediary.

The glittering capstone to the future Pontiff's visit was the huge reception, on October 24, which the Duchess Brady gave at “Inisfada.” As the guests arrived at twilight, the long and winding driveways of the estate were lined with thousands of tallow lights like those used for solemn illumination in the Vatican. Inside, the
great house was filled with flowers, with vases of long-stemmed roses banked in every corner, and lighted candles everywhere, and the leaders of American society in furs and feathers and jewels mingled with the beribboned dignitaries of the government and Church—the Cardinals and Bishops in their brilliant cinctures and silk
ferraiuoli
. While Pietro Yon played softly in the background on “Inisfada's” famous pipe organ, the Duchess Brady and her guest of honor received in the great hall in front of a blazing fire. For pomp and sumptuousness, it was said, the Duchess's mid-Depression party had been matched in American social history only by the famous dinner and ball given in 1924 by Clarence Mackay at “Harbor Hill” for the Prince of Wales. As for privacy and seclusion with her guest, however, the Duchess complained that the only way she had been able to have any conversation with Pacelli at all had been to get him into “Inisfada's” private elevator with her, and have the car stopped between floors.

It would be the last great party in the lavish house Nicholas Brady had built for his wife twenty years earlier. The Duchess had already completed arrangements to sell its furnishings, and to turn “Inisfada” over to the Jesuits for use as a Catholic retreat. (Her neighbor, Michael Grace, was less gracious when his family sold the Grace estate on the Irish Channel to a local country club; something of an eccentric, he regarded the house as still his and refused to move out, and, when the country club moved in, he enjoyed annoying the golfers by walking around the golf course in bathing trunks, swinging at members with a golf club.)

It had been deemed improper to have the Cardinal meet with the President during the election campaign, but when, in November, Roosevelt was re-elected by an overwhelming majority, the Hyde Park luncheon was quickly set up. The Cardinal was received by both the President and Mrs. Roosevelt, and those Roosevelt servants who were Catholics received His Eminence's blessing. Mrs. Roosevelt, though not a Catholic, knelt with her servants
during it. In the conversation that followed, the subject of a United States minister to the Vatican came up, and the President virtually promised that the Vatican would receive such recognition. In the negotiations toward this end that followed, Bishop Spellman—the future Cardinal Spellman—would act as the chief liaison between the White House and the Vatican. But the true heroine behind the establishment of such a mission was, of course, the Duchess Brady.

When Anthony N. Brady died, he had left an estate of over $100 million—the largest of its day. Grandpa Murray had been the estate's executor. When Brady's son Nicholas died in 1930, his widow inherited some $60 million. Not long after her great party at “Inisfada” the Duchess met in Rome a man named William Babbington Macauley. Macauley was the son of an Irish trawler captain, and was serving as Minister to the Vatican from the Irish Free State. In 1937 the Duchess married Mr. Macauley in a small private ceremony at St. Ignatius Loyola Church in Manhattan. One of the few witnesses was Bishop Spellman. Bishop Spellman was also at the pier to see the couple off on their wedding trip on the
Conte di Savoia
. Relations between the Duchess and the Bishop had become somewhat strained, however, because Mr. Macauley was not as enamored of the Jesuits as his bride was, and had privately vowed to terminate the Duchess's long romance with them. For several months, the Bishop and the Duchess—who still liked to be known as “the Duchess Brady,” though she was sometimes referred to as “the widow Brady”—were out of touch.