The Institute

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I first met Hortense Garrett at her home in Wilmington, Delaware on a spring morning last year. I wasn’t calling on her but on her husband, Richard Garrett, the financier, to make a pitch for money — a lot of money, twenty million or so. It was for a project I had in mind, an institute of biography which I hoped he would endow — and, incidentally, name me as director.

Promptly at ten, as my appointment called for, I went up to the top deck of the Newcastle Arms, the apartment house where he lived, first by express to the fifteenth floor and then in a private elevator to the twentieth. I rang the bell marked GARRETT and was let in by a Swedish maid who first asked my name through a peephole. After taking my hat and coat she showed me into the living room — or drawing room, I suppose one would call it, that was big going on gigantic.

“I tell Mr. Garrett you here,” she said and left, while I started looking around. And there was plenty to look at. First, there was a view of the Delaware River and what looked like half the state of New Jersey, which was nothing short of breathtaking. Next, there were furnishings of an unusual kind: a big, rich, overstuffed sofa and chairs, all in a uniform light beige; tables, cabinets, and knickknacks in dark mahogany; and two oriental rugs placed edge to edge, which carpeted the floor comfortably, yet left some hardwood showing. Around the walls were pictures, all by the same artist, apparently. There were woodland scenes with streams running through and sunlit roads with trees shading them.

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