One Life For Two

Marilyn Aronberg Lavin
One Life for Two
The Autobiography of Irving and Marilyn Lavin

ISBN 978‐3‐422‐80301‐5
e-ISBN (PDF) 978‐3‐422‐80302‐2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025937281
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2025 Deutscher Kunstverlag
An Imprint of Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin / Boston, Genthiner Straße 13, 10785 Berlin
Cover illustration: IL and MAL visiting the Château de Chantilly, 1954. Lavin Archive
Cover design: Stefanie Kruszyk
Image editing, layout and typesetting: LVD GmbH, Berlin
Printing and binding: Beltz Grafische Betriebe, Bad Langensalza
www.deutscherkunstverlag.de
www.degruyterbrill.com
Questions about General Product Safety Regulation:
productsafety@degruyterbrill.com

Table of contents
Preface 9
The Reason: A Box of ‘Bs’ 11
From There to Here 17
In The Beginning 21
Romance, Greek, and Bertrand Russell 37
New York, Rome, Harvard, St. Louis 45
The Married Couple, Rome, and the Army 63
NYU, MOMA, DO, and VASSAR 83
Grown-ups in Italy: Bernini, the Barberini, and the Flagellation 101
One Year at a Time 113
The Real Story 129
AT&T, PhD, and IAS 157
Spreading of Wings 181
The Question, Computers, and History of Art 215
The Celebrity Life 235
A Breather 271
First Computers then Love 277
Upheaval in Paradise 305
Renaissance Emeritus 321
Turning Tides 351
The Last Hurrah 375
Excursus 397
Addendum 415
Abbreviations 427
Index 429
Acknowledgements 445
Image Credits 447

Oh! l'amour!.....C'est être deux et n'être qu'un.
Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, 2,7
This book is dedicated to our daughter Amelia Lavin,
whose idea it was.

Preface
What do you do when your husband gets the best job in the country in a field he stole
from you? Well, that’s what happened to me, and that’s what this book is about. I
started studying art history in high school, majored in it at college, and went on to be
the first woman on campus to get a master’s degree in the history of art. It was the
1940s; heaven knows where I thought I was going. My future husband studied nothing
in high school, majored in Engineering at college and, before he graduated, ran
away to England to study philosophy with Bertrand Russell. When he realized he
couldn’t afford to be a philosopher, he decided to go into something “more practical.”
He took advantage of all my academic connections and stole the history of art right
out from under me. Twenty years later he was appointed Professor of Art History at
the Institute for Advanced Study, the think tank for research with no teaching
required, where Einstein held forth. Irving was only the third person, after Erwin
Panofsky and Millard Meiss, to hold that chair. For almost thirty years, he would wield
intellectual and political power over the field of Art History. He enlarged its restricted
scope from European art to cover art produced all over the world, from concentration
on painting and sculpture to research on all media and all genres. He encouraged
young people to come to the Institute, not just sign off on repeated appointments of
cronies. He bruised some egos; he exalted many unknowns. He was treated with obsequious
respect; he was loved by students; he was hated by competitors. He was
knighted by the government of Italy.
Through this transformation, I wasn’t just along for the ride. The Institute’s
opulent salary freed me to become an “independent scholar” and I exulted in making
my own mark. My art history books and articles were deemed fundamental, as were
my contributions to using computers, databases, and digital images for art historical
analysis. I too was the focus of petty jealousies as well as admiration. The thief hit his
mark all right, but the victim got spoils of her own.
Even as I was carving my path, I did everything in my power to nurture my
gifted husband personally, to enhance his professional domain, and to keep him relatively
sane. He often helped me define my projects and, with his mastery of multiple
languages, came to my rescue whenever necessary. We had our highs and our lows, of
course, but we formed a partnership that was ahead of its time. We never actually

10 Preface
wrote together. Rather we edited each other’s work and shared each other’s glory. We
traveled the world building relationships and making friendships that endured. We
were “The Lavins,” Marilyn and Irving, whose marriage, like-mindedness, and common
goals turned us into a single persona.
When I began this opus a couple of years after Irving’s death (2019), because I
had only written scholarly prose and needed guidance, I asked ChatGPT to tell me the
difference between memoir and autobiography and got the following cautionary
response: “ …the line between memoir and autobiography can sometimes blur, and
there may be instances where a work can be considered both.” And both is what you
get here. I chronicle the development of art history in its most important phase. It is my
voice, but the memories are ours. Like the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude
Stein (1933), I tell the story of two people who spent a lifetime together in gratitude for
their “One Life for Two.”
N. B. Irving’s bibliography is available online: Albert.ias.edu, mostly download able.
My bibliography can be found on academia.edu.

The Reason: A Box of ‘Bs’
1966
About one o’clock on a Saturday in September of 1966, my husband Irving, who hated
his name and longed to be called Max, strode breathlessly into our apartment in
Rome and, without saying hello, asked me for a date. Since we had been married for
fourteen years, his invitation seemed rather abnormal and I knew something was up.
He continued, “Please come with me two weeks from today and watch me discover
some marble busts by Gianlorenzo Bernini.”1
My mouth dropped open. Bernini was the most important artist in seventeenth-century
Rome and famous for, among many other things, his sculptured portraits.
To uncover any unknown work by him would be a major event. Irving explained
that the date two weeks hence was to meet the archivist of the Roman church of San
Giovanni dei Fiorentini (St. John the Baptist of the Florentines). This man volunteered
his time to manage the church archive which was open, in true Roman fashion, only
every other Saturday from 11:00 a. m. to noon.
Our work as art historians had brought us to Italy for many years running. My
field was thirteenth- to fifteenth-century Tuscan painting; Irving worked on many
aspects of Italian art, but primarily on Bernini. And now he was telling me that he
was tantalizingly close to a new discovery. At this time, he was preparing a study of
Bernini’s huge Baldacchino, the towering bronze architectural canopy that stands
above the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica. Among the many architects and sculptors
who worked for Bernini was the architect Francesco Borromini, who provided some
remarkable perspective drawings for the project. The two became rivals and Irving
was interested in knowing more about their competition.
The current mystery had begun just that morning during Irving’s first visit to
San Giovanni’s church archive. Borromini had close ties to this church. He had
designed the apse area in his extravagant architectural style and was, in fact, later
buried beneath it. Irving’s visit was to consult the nineteenth-century handwritten
card catalog seeking possible further information on Borromini and the church. As he
1 Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). I will be using this form of his name because, having
seen many letters and other documents signed by him, I prefer to follow his choice rather
than the form Gian Lorenzo Bernini in frequent use today.

12 The Reason: A Box of ‘Bs’
1 Gianlorenzo Bernini, Bust of Antonio Coppola, Carrara
marble, 67 cm, 1614. Rome, San Giovanni dei Fiorentino,
basement. Moment of discovery, September, 1966.
shuffled through the cards in one of the ‘B’ boxes, he was thunderstruck to find cards
carrying not the name of Borromini, but that of Bernini. It was strange to find cards
with Bernini’s name because Bernini had no previously known connection with this
particular building. There were two cards with Bernini’s name at the top, and they
each recorded a marble portrait bust. The annotations said that one portrait was of a
doctor named Antonio Coppola dating to 1612, the year the gentleman died (fig. 1).
The second card referred to a man named Antonio Cepparelli, profession not cited,
dated ten years later, to 1622. The cards noted that the two men were supporters of a
hospital then under construction adjacent to the church of the Florentines.
At the moment Irving found the Bernini cards, the mid-day bells began to
sound, and the archive was closing. The best he could do was make an appointment to
return two weeks later when the archivist would be on duty again.2 Forced to quit the
2 Although anxious to proceed, the wait was tolerable since we were established in Rome in
an apartment in Monteverde Vecchio that we had rented since 1961 any time we had a grant
or fellowship. This year Irving was on a senior fellowship from the American Council of
Learned Societies, and I was engaged in finishing an important article on Piero della Francesca’s
painting of the Flagellation of Christ.

The Reason: A Box of ‘Bs’ 13
archive, he went out into the church proper in search of the sacristan. This person
turned out to be the usual, somewhat lowly, fellow whose job was to clean the church,
straighten the wooden pews, keep visitors quiet, and open and close the building
according to a rigid schedule. Ordinarily, such a man was a long-time employee who
knew more than anyone about the physical plant. By this time in his Roman career,
Irving spoke amazingly idiomatic Italian, and he engaged the sacristan in chit-chat,
finally slipping in a question about whether he had ever “seen any busts that were not
on display.” Upon seeing the man form the words “Forse … visto… alcun’ busti… di
sotto” (perhaps…I saw…some busts… below), Irving knew he was on to something. And
so, he rushed home and made the date with me to return to the archive, meet with the
archivist, and request a visit to the church’s subterranean level.
With Kodak Brownie camera in hand, off we went on that auspicious Saturday
morning. We descended the Gianicolo hill, followed the Tiber River to the Ponte Principe
(Bridge of the Prince, Amedeo Savoia Aosta), and crossed over to the Via Acciaioli.
We climbed the steps at No. 2 to the side door of San Giovanni and entered the sacristy
which housed the archive. After a brief explanation of the nature of our visit, the
archivist grabbed his flashlight and, joined by the sacristan, we descended a long,
internal flight of steps to the basement level of the church.
Expecting to see tombs, private chapels, and storage chambers, we were disheartened
when first greeted by a mound of broken white plaster bits and pieces, the
remains of a much-decorated but destroyed eighteenth-century chapel. But we continued
along a corridor. And then, turning to the left, we saw in the distance next to a pile
of bricks covered with grit and plaster a sculptured bust. We all rushed down the hall.
Snap, snap, snap went my camera. In an instant, Irving was on his knees, feverishly
dusting off the bust, blowing off the dirt, and feeling around the base. Amazingly, what
became visible under streaked plaster was a name written in pencil. Gently prying off
the covering daub, Irving read: D.tt Antonio Coppola, the name identified in the card
catalog, dating the bust to 1612. The sculpture was in good condition except for some
minor damage to the left ear. The carving was immaculate, the face the likeness of an
old man but abstract and simplified. The torso was severe and immobile. The pose
came from ancient Roman prototypes, with one bony hand protruding from the drape
of a toga. The document named Bernini (without a first name) as the maker; he was
fourteen years old at the time.
Irving and I looked at each other, wide-eyed and ecstatic. A long-forgotten
Bernini bust sitting amid the rubble. Simply astonishing. He had found and identified
a previously unknown sculpture by Bernini, a work that did not appear in any list or
inventory. My heart swelled with pride for his success. But there was more to come.
Like sleuths hot on the trail, we continued. Turning right into another corridor,
we saw about ten meters ahead another portrait bust again resting on the ground. We
approached and found it was equally dirty and plaster-speckled but also intact. Snap,
snap, snap went my Brownie. This sculpture was more graceful than the first, and
more detailed in likeness. The sitter was dressed as a lawyer with a cape thrown over

14 The Reason: A Box of ‘Bs’
2 IL and MAL, with busts of Antonio Coppola and Antonio Cepparelli.
one shoulder and a slashed sleeve on the other. Knowing the identity of the Coppola
bust meant that the second sculpture must be Antonio Cepparelli, documented ten
years later (1622) and carved in Bernini’s full-blown mature style.3 Now Irving was
the discoverer of two new Bernini sculptures. My admiration for him grew even
larger (fig. 2).
The question before us was why were these precious busts abandoned on
the ground in the basement of the church. They had been somewhere else where
they must have been identified with the usual marble inscriptions. Just as clearly,
they had been removed from their original locale and transported to what seemed
like a safer place. In removing them, their rescuer had realized that separation
from the inscriptions meant loss of identity and therefore, in a stroke of genius, at
least in the case of the Coppola, had scribbled the name on the base. Later Irving
learned that the move occurred between 1936 and 1942 when Mussolini completed
the bridge, the Ponte Principe, and destroyed the church hospital while cutting the
Via Acciaioli through to meet the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, one of the major thoroughfares
of Rome.
After we had returned to our apartment, elated but exhausted, Irving began
thinking of how he would alert the authorities of his find. The person he tracked down
3 Our search continued, and we found other busts of later periods and by lesser hands. They
were later taken to the Church Museum.

The Reason: A Box of ‘Bs’ 15
was Professor Italo Faldi (fig. 50) of the Soprintendenza alle Gallerie of Rome, himself
an important Bernini scholar.4 Faldi turned out to be a very approachable man with
an edgy sense of humor and endless energy. He had spent time in a German prisonerof-war
camp in Greece, where the index finger of his left hand had been blown off. He
was genuinely thrilled with Irving’s discovery and was quick to give every assistance
he could in mapping out a program for recovery, restoration, announcement, and ultimate
display of the new busts. The Faldis and the Lavins became life-long friends in
the process. Both busts were taken to the Istituto Centrale del Restauro, the laboratory
and state institute for teaching the art and science of restoration. At the time, Irving
was an Associate Professor of Art History at New York University, Washington Square
Campus. The Chairman of the Department, H. W. Janson,5 was so impressed with the
discoveries that he persuaded the Dean of the College to get the university to finance
the cost of the busts’ cleaning and restoration.
By December, Irving had uncovered more information about the busts, their
commissions and purpose and their original location. The sculptures were in the final
stages of cleaning and would soon be ready for public presentation. A date was chosen
for early January; both busts would be transported to the beautiful Villa Aurelia
of the American Academy in Rome on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) near the Porta
San Pancrazio. All of Rome was invited: the Italian and English press, fellows and staff
of the American Academy and all the foreign academies in Rome, members of the
Accademia Nationale dei Lincei, faculty of the three sections of the University of
Rome, foreign universities with branches in Rome, art dealers, booksellers, publishers
and on and on. To a huge audience, standing between the two busts mounted on
covered stands, Irving told the story of the discovery. It was picked up by all of the
Italian newspapers and the Rome Daily American. Notices appeared in the New York
Times, featured in Life Magazine, Time, and even Look magazines. All the agents
flocked around him and continued to do so for the next few weeks, sending their best
reporters for interviews, most of whom barely knew who Bernini was. The Roman
scholarly world, on the other hand, certainly knew. The most dedicated scholars were
delighted with the discovery. The envious ones immediately voiced reasons why there
was nothing exceptional about the finds, contending that they found things all the
time, and the story probably wasn’t true anyway. It was a heady, crazy period, full of
high drama that quite naturally changed our lives.
How did we get to this high point? And more fundamentally, what were we
doing living in Rome? How did we both get to be art historians? How did we become
4 Officially Faldi was a part of the Soprintendenza per l’Arte moderna e contemporanea di
Roma, Monumenti del Lazio and the Gallerie e Opere d’arte del Lazio. He was director of the
Galleria Spada and the Galleria nazionale di Arte antica, Palazzo Barberini, among other
posts.
5 Horst Woldemar Janson (1913–1982), of The History of Art fame. We will hear a great deal
more about Janson as we go along.

16 The Reason: A Box of ‘Bs’
itinerant teachers and scholars periodically dragging our kids to Europe, placing
them in different schools every year, living on miserable academic salaries or fellowships
or grants? For the answers, I leave the late 1960s and start at the beginning.
Since Irving, two years my junior, is no longer with us, it is I who gets to tell
the story.

From There to Here
1904–1910
Thank You, Mr. Edison:
The 1904 World’s Fair, held in St. Louis, Missouri, brought millions of visitors from
all over the world to my hometown. Officially called the Louisiana Purchase, the
Fair featured over fifteen hundred vast and highly decorated buildings housing
displays of agriculture, history, art, and technology. One of those buildings was
called the Palace of Electricity, and on display were the many inventions of Thomas
Alva Edison. A very popular item just gaining national attention was the phonograph,
invented in 1877, using metal cylinders wrapped in wax. After a series of
complicated improvements, the technology reached a level of mass production and
wide distribution. It was in this context that I found the first worldly reference to
my mother.
I was told more than once that my Polish-born grandmother, whom I never
knew, had eloped by running across a bridge in high heels. She was Mary Alterman
thereby viewed by her family as both rebellious and adventurous. Her young man was
Isaac Silverstone (or probably Silberstein, b. 1849-before 1920), already trained as a
watchmaker, and thus ready to take on marriage. No one remembered what city they
came from, perhaps a village south of Gdańsk, Poland. Only later, as I learned some
geography, I imagined the river that my grandmother crossed was the Vistula, somewhere
in Pomerania, where the border between Poland and Germany often changed.
At one point Isaac and Mary, along with other Silverstone family members, fled Poland
and immigrated to Manchester, England. After a time, the family moved again, leaving
England by boat and landing in the United States at Hampton Roads, Virginia. Isaac,
Mary and their children settled in the small town of West Point/King William, Virginia
where they lived quite comfortably owing to Isaac’s watchmaking skill.
The Silverstones already had several children when they arrived in the US and
had still more in West Point. My mother, named Blanche (fig. 3), was the last in line
and was doted upon by all. One of her many brothers, Mark, studied engineering and
in the 1890s went north and found a job in the shop of Thomas Edison, located in
Menlo Park, New Jersey. When preparations for the World’s Fair were complete, the
company sent Mark to St. Louis, to the Palace of Electricity to handle the phono-

18 From There to Here
3 Blanche Silverstone Aronberg
(mother of MAL), c. 1920
graphic sales booth. His job was to market phonographs and to teach people how to
operate the still-complex cylinder and wax contraption. By the time the Fair ended,
the phonograph had become all the rage.
Mark remained in St. Louis and was granted a franchise by the now-national
company developed under the name of Victor. The company produced a monthly
magazine called The Talking Machine World, published in its plant on Madison Avenue
in New York. The publication reported on company activity, dividing the country
into sections, then by cities alphabetically. Primarily an advertising vehicle, it also
reported on individual stores in the franchise, giving retail advice, encouraging salesmanship,
and reporting on successes. In Vol. VI, no. 6, Spring of 1910, under the
St. Louis rubric, “Mr. Mark Silverstone” was singled out for his business accomplishments
as the owner of the “Silverstone Talking Machine Co.” The report continues,
“Mr. Mark has a sister, Miss Blanche, who is his associate.” Blanche had come west to
St. Louis to see the Fair with her brother, and she had stayed. The document indicates
she earned her keep at the store and had integrated into St. Louis society, for the magazine
goes on to say that Blanche “had just married Charles Aronberg (fig. 4), a successful
young jeweler.”
How and where Charlie and Blanche met and the length of their courtship, I
do not know. But one thing is sure: If it hadn’t been for Mr. Edison and his phonograph,
I would not be here.

From There to Here 19
4 Charles Aronberg (father of
MAL), at Westwood Country Club,
ca. 1930.
Thank you, Baron de Hirsch:
In the same year of 1910, the eighteen-year-old Isidore Lachovitz, Irving’s father, left
his home in the Crimea under duress and arrived in the United States. Consideration
for the plight of Middle Eastern Jewry was uppermost in the mind of Baron Maurice
de Hirsch (1831–1896), builder of the Orient Express Railroad, as he poured money
into the Jewish Colonization Association in the late nineteenth century. The result was
a massive relocation of Jews mainly to South but also to North America, their transportation
underwritten and their destinations prescribed.1 This process is most likely
the one that brought Isidore to St. Louis, Missouri. On his boat ticket, which he saved,
the Estonia is listed as the ship he traveled on, and his port of departure is marked as
Liepāja in Latvia. To catch the boat, he must surely have traveled a great distance
across the Ukraine, Belarus, and southern Latvia. An address in St. Lous is also
marked on the ticket, as is his trip there by train. Before arriving at his final destination,
he landed on Ellis Island, where he was confronted by an Irish immigration officer
who told him that the name Lachovitz was undesirable in the U. S. and gave him a
1 See Matthias B. Lehmann, The Baron Maurice de Hirsch and the Jewish 19th Century, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2022.

20 From There to Here
5 Isadore Lavin Family before 1927 birth
of IL.
new one. Henceforth he would be Isidore Lavin, a common Irish/Gaelic/Swiss/Spanish
surname, pronounced with a short “a”.
Once in St. Louis, Isidore went to work in a clothing factory (read: sweatshop),
carrying pieces of men’s trousers from the cutting boards to the sewing area. There,
working at a sewing machine, he found Jennie Shuff, age 16, who herself had also
recently arrived. She had traveled from the Crimea with another family to join relatives
in St. Louis, her mother and father having remained in Russia.2 The two became
a couple and soon married. After some years on the factory floor, the very enterprising
Isidore was able to mortgage a four-family building in a Jewish community in
North St. Louis. He and his family lived in one apartment, while he redecorated and
rented out the other three. In the process, he became a skilled worker, in particular as
a paperhanger, a very physical and exacting profession, whose services were sought
outside his own property. Over the years, he repeated this profit-making real estate
venture several times as the family moved westward toward a wealthier part of the
city. The couple had four children, the last of whom was Irving (fig. 5).
2 Jennie’s father, who was a miller and matzos maker, was noted in the local newspaper
when he visited another son who lived in Concord, New Hampshire. He returned to Russia
because, as he claimed, America was traif, or not clean enough, as he described it.

In The Beginning
1925–1949
MAL
My first recollection as a child was sitting on the floor in the kitchen near a stove with
cast iron bent legs, watching a baby chick run around. It was probably around Easter
1927; I was about eighteen months old. My next remembrance, maybe the following
fall, was peeing in my pants when my mother took me to a dancing school and
expected me to enter the classroom without her. All the mothers rushed around me to
wash and dry me off. Later that year I was fitted with a pair of double-runner ice
skates and taken onto the ice by someone who was very big; he held me, with my legs
out in front, and pushed me around the rink. My last ‘baby’ recollection was having
my tonsils and adenoids taken out. I remember being driven under an archway into
the St. Louis Children’s Hospital and wondering why we were there. The next thing I
recall was being given vanilla ice cream to soothe my sore throat. I was also given a
toy, a stiff rectangle covered with felt. It came with a small bag of many-colored felt
shapes — circles, squares, triangles, and strips — that I could stick into the felt background
in a variety of patterns. I treasured it because it was fun to play with. I learned
much later it was fashioned to copy paintings being done at the time by Vassily Kandinsky
(1866–1944).
It was the middle of the Roaring Twenties and the Aronberg Jewelry Company
was at its height. My father, Charlie, who was a fabulous dresser and dancer, carried a
solid gold pen and pencil with his name inscribed in his own handwriting. He was
friends with Artie Bulova (of wristwatch fame), who begged him to move to New York.
My mother, Blanche, was a tiny woman who, growing up in Virginia, spoke with a
southern drawl. I came to view her as eccentric, spoiled and pretentious. She conducted
seances in the living room and was an early health food advocate under the
guidance of Rasmus L. Alsaker, M. D. I was never allowed to eat bratwurst or white
bread and was given stewed prunes and figs every morning at breakfast. I hated the
routine but now thank God for it since it made me so healthy. Taking her first airplane
ride, Blanche was told by a fortune teller she would be safe if she dropped the ‘e’ from
the end of her first name. She henceforth called herself Blanch. We had a live‐in maid
named Hattie (Hedwig Alfermann), who had already been with us four years when I

22 In The Beginning
was born (and stayed until the day I was married). She was tall and heavy, a great,
chain-smoking cook who put a lot of black pepper on her own food. I loved Hattie and
spent more time with her than with my mother. By the time I was three, we lived in an
eight-room, ground-floor apartment on Parkdale Avenue in the new suburb of St.
Louis called Clayton,
Three events stand out to me from that time. Hattie did the washing and ironing
in the basement. When I was playing outside, I could see her there through a groundlevel
window. I was unaware that in one corner of that window was a big wasp’s nest,
and I put my head right in it. The sting on my forehead was huge and painful. Another
time I put my little play iron up against Hattie’s big hot one and burned the side of my
hand. Another lesson for a four-year-old. The third memory was the most dramatic:
Charlie had bought Blanch a grand Packard sedan and she had a driver named Cash.
One day Cash parked the car in front of the house, turned off the motor, and got out,
leaving the door open. A little friend of mine and I jumped in the front seat, and I
played at driving. I turned the wheel this way and that, and moved the shift stick from
up to down, and low and behold, the car began to move. Cash had not pulled on the
brake but left the car in gear and I had taken it out. My friend immediately leaped out
and I tried to follow but got only as far as the passenger seat with my legs dangling out
of the open door. The car was rolling down the hill. Hattie came running out shouting
and waving her arms. In her frantic rush, she slipped in some mud, and I saw her white
uniform turn to chocolate brown. Everyone was screaming and the car kept going. By
good fortune (and we’ll never know why), the wheels turned to the left, jumped the
curb, and the car went up a little hill on a nearby lawn and stopped. Hattie caught up,
took me in her arms, and carried me home. No serious damage was done, but you can
imagine the number of scoldings I endured later that afternoon.
By 1930 we had moved back into town and into the freshly finished Park Royal
Apartments at 4605 Lindell Boulevard, one of the first high-rise apartment buildings in
St. Louis. It was an elevator ride up to Apartment 701, on the building’s southeast front
corner. There we found a whole new way of living, looking down on one of the main
arteries of the city, a straight shot to downtown, with lots of traffic and lots of action.
The living room was big enough to hold a grand piano and to allow my father, a golfer,
a perfect position to swing a driver under the small crystal chandelier. My sister Ina
Mae and I shared a room (fig. 6). Hattie had her own room and bath behind the kitchen
and butler’s pantry. The building had a huge lobby with a marble fountain in the center
and gated reception rooms in period styles on either side. There was a parterre backyard
with another central fountain and two white wooden pavilions raised on steps at
the back. The yard was big enough to roller skate and ride a bike. The two-floor garage
under the building held Blanch’s Packard and Charlie’s convertible roadster (complete
with a rumble seat and a horizontal compartment for golf clubs).
My parents had continued to move up the ladder of wealth and were still riding
high. The shock of the 1929 Stock Market Crash had not yet interrupted their lifestyle.
Ina, who was six years older than I, was already in the sixth grade at Mary Institute

In The Beginning 23
6 MAL and sister Ina Mae, Siebken Hotel, Elkhart Lake, WI.
(MI), the snazziest all-girls school in the Midwest. Despite its name, this school was not
Catholic. It was established by William Greenleaf Eliot, a unitarian minister, educational
pioneer, and grandfather of T. S. Eliot. The older Eliot co‐founded Washington
University in 1859 and the twelve-grade school for girls soon after, named for his
daughter, Mary Rhodes Eliot, who died at age 16. Aside from my mother’s snobbery,
one of the real reasons we were sent to a private school was that my father — eccentric,
dapper, Jewish — Charlie, was a devout Christian Scientist (First Church of Christ,
Scientist, on Kingshighway near Temple Israel). He would not allow us to be vaccinated
for anything. Smallpox being a prerequisite for public school, we could not go there.
Mary Institute, (MI) being private, had no such requirement. I began first grade in
1931. The white pillared colonial building on Warson and Ladue Roads was a long bus
ride outside the city limits. I was one of five Jews in a student body of 569. We all were
required to go to the weekly Chapel. I still know many of the hymns I learned. I never
felt any direct discrimination, although there was a clear upper crust of girls who completely
ignored me. They were all blonds, and all asked to join “The Cotillion,” the club
for girls and boys to learn demeanor and ballroom dancing in preparation for their
debutant days. The club was directly across Lindell Boulevard from our apartment,
and I watched from my window on Friday nights as the couples in formal attire were
let off by their parents and chauffeurs.

24 In The Beginning
On the other hand, the education I received was nothing short of superb. We
had a French teacher from Paris, Latin classes from the eighth grade on, English
Grammar and Literature, History, Math through Algebra and Geometry, Science with
a lab, Painting and Sculpture, Penmanship, and Home Economics. We dressed for
Phys. Ed. twice a day, playing soccer, baseball, basketball, tennis, and field hockey, as
well as a turn at horseback riding, and archery. I excelled in them all. I was the smallest
girl in my class, and my name began with A. Therefore, I was at the head of every
line. I soloed in dance recitals, sang in the choir, and joined the Girl Scouts. Best of
all — art history was taught on the senior level, already one of my great interests. We
were told by the head of the Upper School (eighth to twelfth grade) that wherever we
went to college (or university) to expect at least a letter grade higher than other students
our age.
What no one told me concerned my parent’s financial straits. As the 1930s
wore on, the Great Depression leveled my father’s retail jewelry business. Poor man,
he had to steal, beg, and borrow to keep paying my tuition. One time I was called to
the administrative office where the secretary gave me an envelope to take home.
Unbeknownst to me, it contained a letter saying that if the money wasn’t paid in
twenty-four hours, I wouldn’t be allowed to return to school. Somehow, he rustled up
the funds and naively I took a check to the office the next day. I learned later that the
stockbroker father of my best friend, Billie Jean Lawton, suffered the same kind of
financial loss. The difference was that her family had to sell a fifteen-acre estate in the
suburbs and move to an apartment building on Lindell Boulevard a few steps from
my house.
I proved to be an outgoing student and a natural performer at school. I did not
match my sister’s classroom achievements; her all As report card was framed on my
father’s desk — a feat she repeated every year. But I discovered the stage — and I liked
it. My first public performance was reciting a poem in French in the Chapel before the
whole student body, and that set a pattern for the many stage (and lecture) appearances
I have made throughout my life with a complete “sang-froid” attitude. I wrote a
murder mystery in the fifth grade that was read to the entire Lower School (grades
one through six) to great acclaim. That is, until one nasty girl raised her hand and
announced that the story started with “a shot rang out” and ended with someone
dying from a knife wound. Details, details. I never wrote fiction again. I had the lead
in the Junior Operetta, an annual tradition at MI. The performance included me acting,
singing, and dancing the Mexican Hat Dance. I was my usual energetic self, but
the rest of the performance was so unbelievably boring that the tradition came to an
end. In the twelve years I attended Mary Institute I was absent exactly two days. On
both of the days, I was too sick to go out. The rest of the time, no matter how I was
feeling, I would rather be at school than stay at home and be bossed around by my
mother. When I was thirteen my favorite cousin, Mike Goldberg, taught me to drive a
stick shift car and other skills that made me an excellent driver. He studied dentistry
and later pulled all four of my wisdom teeth.

In The Beginning 25
7 MAL Figure Skating, Winter
Garden Ice Rink, St. Louis, MO, 1940.
Even though school days went from before 8 a. m. to 5 p. m. my sister and I had
plenty of other activities to keep us busy: weekly ballet classes (with Madam Cassan,
Ballet Russe) and piano lessons (with Miss Carnofsky, sister to actor Morris). Ina and I
were always expected to perform for our parents’ guests. Ina had also started with
figure skating, so of course I followed suit. Ina, however, dropped skating for tap
dancing. But I spent more and more time at the rink, called the Winter Garden (on
DeBalivier Street) (fig. 7), a building with bleachers on one lateral side, left over from
the 1904 World’s Fair. With no help from my parents, I saved my allowance money,
joined the St. Louis Skating Club, and took lessons from a coach named “Dottie,” who
liked me a lot. Within a few years, I passed five of the eight classical figure tests and
gained a silver medal in ice dancing. As a teenager, I skated solo more than once in the
annual St. Louis Silver Skates meet, held in the local public pavilion called the Arena.
My personal favorites were a fast, jazzy program to Gershwin’s “I’ve Got Rhythm” and
an artistic one to Debussy’s gorgeous, dreamy “Claire du Lune.” I never could think of
competing, however, because of a basic flaw. Most of the spins and jumps I mastered
were learned by watching other skaters as I couldn’t afford a regular coach. No one
told me that for many reasons of health and proficiency, one should do spins on one
leg, turning in that direction, while one should land jumps on the other leg, rotating
in the opposite direction. I simply did what felt natural to me, and I did both on my
right leg. The result was I never would have been able to get through the four-minute
program required in any competition, and eventually, I developed arthritis in my
right sacroiliac from all the pounding. I cut a cute figure on the ice, but I wasn’t really
that good. Besides, the main draw of the rink for me was the glamorous boys and
good-looking, young male speedskaters who hung around and with whom I longed to
spend time. My first love (when I was eleven or twelve) was Red McCarthy. He indeed
had bright red hair; I knitted him lots of sweaters. He was a terrific athlete, both in
skating and swimming. Later came Charles Miller, whom I hankered after for many

26 In The Beginning
years (and still think of fondly). Charles was four years my senior, tall and handsome,
and the owner of a car. After the nightly sessions at the rink, we would go out for
milkshakes, hamburgers, and some passionate, front-seat necking. Even through the
war years, I wrote to him every day, and he to me (Hattie used to put his letters in the
icebox, she said, to cool them down). He loved me too in his way but married someone
else.
Through all the ups and downs of the Depression and World War II, my father
found a way to remain a member of Westwood Country Club, the poshest Jewish club
in the region. Among its offerings were swimming, tennis, golf, and Saturday night
outdoor buffet dinner dances, featuring the best chef in town. As much as I skated in
the winter, that’s how much I swam in the summer. One summer, a man named Adie
Berman was the lifeguard and swimming coach. He whipped me into shape by doing
daily freestyle laps. When I was about eleven, Adie talked me into entering a municipal
swim meet held at a city pool, where I didn’t win in my class, but did make it into
the final race. I swear I met Irving (then nine years old) at that meet, although he
denied anything of the sort ever happened.
Throughout the thirties, for part of each summer, Mother, Ina, and I drove or
took the train up to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, staying in a resort hotel or renting part
of someone’s house and eating at the resort. The lake was small enough to walk
around before lunch. The water was fresh and clean. We rented a rowboat for the
time and frequented the dance hall, with its casino wing almost every night. I won
rhinestone jewelry at the roulette table.
I did a lot of singing and dancing there; The Lady in Red was my specialty. The
other girls found boyfriends; I made friends with the boys in the band. After one of
my female chums went home, I wrote her a letter saying, “Among other news, Joe is
still ‘necking’ his saxophone.” Her mother saw the letter and would not allow her to
correspond with me again.
In 1939 on our way north, we had a serious car accident near Bloomington,
Indiana. We had a blowout and swerved into a ditch. Blanch and her fancy cousin,
Rae Nachman, from Roanoke, Virginia, were in the front seats; Ina and I were in the
back. Passersby took us to the hospital. Mother’s leg was broken; Rae was unharmed.
Ina was gashed across the forehead and was heartbroken at the prospect of a permanent
scar on her face. I was lacerated on the back of my head and embarrassed by the
kerchief I had to wear to cover my stitches and shaven spot.
After that experience, our Wisconsin trips ended, and the local Westwood
Country Club became our safer daily summer destination. My dearest friend, Dolly
Michelson, and I were constant companions both in and out of the water. Our routine
involved getting rides out to Westwood and home again at the end of the day. It was
an antidote to the extreme heat of summers in St. Louis. I had constant circular rainbows
around my vision from the chlorine in the pool.
Life was carefree in my teenage mind — until Sunday, December 7, 1941. When
the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor broke, I was at the Winter Garden ice rink.

In The Beginning 27
I had difficulty understanding the implications of what I heard. I remember Adie Berman
(a skater as well as a swimmer), who had already done a tour in the Army, wondering
if he would have to go back. And he did. He was soon sent to Fort Leonard
Wood, Missouri, to start a new tour. Most if not all of my skating buddies also went
into one or another of the armed forces. Charles Miller, the young man I thought I
was in love with, joined the Navy’s Seabees, part of the Navy, and was sent to the
Pacific theater.
I was sixteen when the United States entered the war and pretty naive about
its causes and goals. All I knew was that friends and relatives were leaving home
and that we should buy “Liberty Bonds,” save string and tin foil, and not use too
much sugar or gasoline. I felt empty and resentful. My brother‐in-law, Buddy (Lester
H.) Levy, volunteered for the Air Force and, after basic training, he was sent to
the new Officer Training School at Santa Ana Army Air Base in California.1 When
Ina Mae decided to drive out to join him, she asked if I would come with her so she
wouldn’t be alone. I said I’d go, but only if I could bring my friend, Marion, so I
would have company on the return train trip. I knew the journey would be a grand
if arduous adventure and wasn’t the least apprehensive about what difficulties it
might involve. Besides, I was eager to meet some of the other brave young men who
would be in Buddy’s class. The three of us took off in a 1940 Mercury Club Coup,
first on Highway 40 and then on Route 66 that went all the way to California.2 The
roads were always filled with truckloads of soldiers coming and going in both
directions with everyone waiving. When we got to Las Vegas, then in construction,
we knew we would be crossing the desert in a few hours and would need water.
Water was not sold in bottles in those days, and we were puzzled over what to do.
My brilliant idea was to find a swimming pool and dip our vacuum bottles into the
water to fill up. And where did we go to do the deed? Why the Sands Casino, of
course, which had the only pool in working order? And so, in front of a bunch of
half-naked swimmers, I knelt by the side of the pool and scooped the pool water
into our jugs. I don’t remember drinking the water, but it gave us confidence as we
passed over the hot roads.
The visit to Santa Ana was not as much fun as I expected. All the men were
dead serious in their work, training to fly and learning about bombing raids and
self-defense. Ina took a job at the post canteen. She found that a new liquid soap called
“detergent” was playing havoc with the skin on her hands. Marion and I, having
stayed less than a week, took a bus to Los Angeles and then boarded the cross-country
train for St. Louis. All the cars were packed with soldiers with whom we shared seats
and the little food that became available at stops along the way. The trip took three
1 Buddy flew B‐24 bombers over Germany on more than ten missions. His plane was
downed once, and he and his crew made their way back to England on foot.
2 This highway was used by the migrants pushing westward looking for jobs during the
Great Depression. Later immortalized in the Bobby Troup song “Get your Kicks on Route 66.”

28 In The Beginning
days. My mother came to pick me up at Union Station, where, in her typical fashion,
her first words to me as I descended the train were, “Your hair doesn’t look so good. I
think it needs a washing.”
My life did not slow down during the war years. By the time I graduated from
Mary Institute (1943), I had scraped together enough money to take myself to Lake
Placid, New York, for summer ice skating. Dottie, the coach from the Winter Garden,
owned part of a little camp at which all the skaters from the St. Louis Skating Club
stayed. We went to Lake Placid to take lessons from the famous Swiss coach, Gustave
Lussi. I could afford only the first half of the season. Dottie, still aware of my lack of
monetary backing, gave me room and board for half price and a part-time job guarding
the camp’s small beach during the warmest times of the day when the rink was
closed. I had just enough money for a couple of lessons with Mr. Lussi (who was a
deep-voiced, passionate flirt). He understood my spin/jump problem and instructed
me to switch my spins to my left leg. I tried diligently to make the change but, sadly I
was incapable of doing so. In one session, he talked me through doing a scary jump
known as the Axel Paulson, in which you take off going forward into one-and‐a-half
rotations in the air, and land going backward. It was a thrilling experience.
There were two highlights on that trip. I briefly became good friends with Dick
Button, the future two-time Olympic Champion and later sports commentator, who
was working on his Double Axel. ( N. B. the first “Quad” [four-and‐a-half rotations])
was performed in competition in 2023). I even tried to kiss him on his sixteenth birthday,
but he was having none of that. The other event was embarrassing. As the guard
of our little beach, I was supposed to keep nonboarders out. Even though someone
must have invited her, I made Gretchen Merrill, already the U. S. National Women’s
Champion several times, leave our beach. I didn’t know who she was and was mortified
when I found out.
With no possibility of going away to college, in the fall I began my undergraduate
years at Washington University (WU). My sister Ina had won a four-year scholarship
there; I had won nothing. Again, it felt as though I were just following in the
footsteps of my older sister. At least WU was relatively inexpensive, and it was convenient.
From our house on Lindell Boulevard., the commute was a straight westward
shot to the Olmstead-designed campus. Ina told me about an amazing professor,
H. W. Janson (fig. 8), with whom she had taken a course. He was a German born in
Russia, who had studied with the great German art historian, Erwin Panofsky in Hamburg
and then had come to the United States and stayed to get his PhD degree at Harvard
University. His doctoral dissertation on Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance was about to be published and he would go on to become the authority
on the Renaissance sculptor Donatello. Janson’s first American job had been at the
University of Iowa, and he moved to the Art and Archaeology Department at WU
when Ina was a senior. So once again I followed my sister’s lead and, having had art
history at Mary Institute, I listed art history as my major right from the very start.
Little did I know what an important role Janson would play in my life.

In The Beginning 29
8 H. W. (Peter) and Dora Jane (D. J.) Janson, ca. 1975.
In my last year of college, as an Art History major, I was allowed to take three
credits toward the B. A. in the School of Fine Arts (Bixby Hall). I took two credits in
Classical Figure Drawing (with nude models), and one in Sculpture (or modeling in
clay). For the latter, I got an A. One of my works was included in the class show held at
the St. Louis Art Museum. But for Figure Drawing, although I “learned” how to draw,
going from formless scratching to modeled figures in elaborate poses, the old fuddy-duddy
professor gave me a D. The mark on my record pulled my 3.8 average down
below 3.75 and canceled my chances for a Phi Beta Kappa key. It never crossed my
mind that I might have talked to the teacher and begged his consideration for upping
my grade, even by one letter. Aside from that rejection, my experience and appreciation
of the fine arts were blossoming. I met a lot of people who broadened my view of
the creative realm. Max Beckmann, the world-renowned German painter, who had
shunned the war by first going to Holland and then escaping to America, was teaching
fourth-year painting. He did not speak English, and when he did “crits” in class, his
wife Quappi came around with him to translate. One day she was ill and couldn’t
come to class. As a result, Beckmann painted his criticisms with a brush full of oil
paint on a big, acid-free sketchpad. When he finished painting his remarks to a student,
he tore off the sheet and dropped it in the waste basket. My dear friend, Lynton

30 In The Beginning
9 Max Beckmann, Chiastic
Profile, oil sketch (Gift from
Lynn Foersterling, 1946).
(Lynn) Foersterling, stealthily picked up two of these sheets, keeping one for himself
and giving one to me for my birthday. A cherished gift, still in my collection (fig. 9). At
a big party given by Bill Fett, a talented engraver on the faculty, with whom I had a
brief flirtation, I danced with Beckman, who loved Jazz. He was a two-step dancer. I
saw him later standing in front of the loudspeaker bleating out mercilessly Benny
Goodman’s Sing, Sing, Sing. Another student, Stanley Radulovic, asked Beckman if I
would make a good model. Beckman replied I’d be better in bed, using an obscene
gesture. Stanley took the hint, but when he made a move toward me, his girlfriend
objected. Years later Stanley turned up as the owner of a bar on First Avenue, near
James Merrill’s New York apartment that I will refer to later on.
I began to focus on what I would do after graduation. Professor George
Mylonas, my then mentor, encouraged me to stay on at WU and pursue a Master of
Arts degree. He expected me to work with him and specialize in ancient Greek art. He
even handed me a book to review for the journal Archaeology (of which he was an
editor), called The Lures of the Bronze Age. This was a subject about which I knew
nothing, but the review became my very first publication. Oddly enough, around this
time, I got an offer from the Ice Capades to join the troupe’s chorus line. I thought
about this offer for all of two minutes. Having learned just how hard a life of that sort
is — and in skating, one day off means two days of practice to return to your previous
skill level — I decided to go to graduate school and become an art historian.

In The Beginning 31
A word about my decision. I was of a generation when young ladies did not go
to college to prepare for professional life other than teaching or nursing. One of my
Mary Institute classmates went to medical school and became a doctor. The rest went
to finishing schools, after which marriage was expected in short order. So, my decision
to pursue an M. A. was a first step out of bounds. My choice of subject, I assumed,
wasn’t at all threatening. Art history was cultural and refined. It would include travel
abroad, and I might even become a museum docent where I would meet donors and
cultured art lovers. I would have no financial problems continuing my education
because Professor Mylonas assured me of a two-year grant to cover my academic
costs. My parents didn’t seem to care one way or another. I was a girl, and therefore
not expected to contribute to household expenses.
Also during this period, I suddenly became popular. I often had dates with
three or four boys in a single week. In those days, a date meant merely an evening
engagement to go out dancing or to the movies or a party. A couple of these guys were
college graduates starting their professional lives and looking for wives. One rather
clumsy fellow even proposed to me, catching me quite off guard. Not so stymied, however,
that I couldn’t give the standard response, “I’ve always thought of you as a good
friend.” At the same time, I was really good friends with a few gay men. I was drawn
to unconventional men, whether for reasons of sympathy for their plight in those
days or perhaps because they offered no threat of romantic advances. Robert (Bobby)
Isaacson was a very rich, self-taught intellectual. He was a fine pianist and collected
small paintings and drawings of nineteenth-century painters I did not know. I felt
very comfortable talking with him about the fancy life of the mind. His mother took
me on “antiquing” junkets, as she called them, awakening my appetite for costume
jewelry. (Bobby turned up later in Rome). The second was a tall boy named Jerry, who
was in many of my art history classes at WU. We had very intense conversations
about health, personalities, and issues arising from our studies. He gave me a beautiful
edition of John Rewald’s History of Impressionism when it first came out (1946),
which he could ill afford. All in all, I considered myself a well-adjusted, independent
young woman.
One Plus One
Unfortunately, I know little of Irving’s baby years except that he was blond early on,
the fourth child, and the darling of the family. Born in 1927, he was thirteen years
younger than his oldest sister, Gertrude. I know that as a young boy, he swam on the
team at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) on Union Boulevard. He appears
in a 1938 photograph of the basement-level pool filled with swimmers, standing backward
on the diving board stark naked (fig. 10). Below the board the words “Deep End”
appear in the tiles and seem prophetic of his future. He often told the story of reporting
to the coach that girls were peeking through the ground-level windows above,

32 In The Beginning
10 IL at the Swimming Pool, YMHA, St. Louis, MO, 1938.
watching the boys who all swam without bathing suits. The coach responded with the
question: “What’s the matter? Aren’t you proud of what you’ve got?” I also heard that
he had quite a bad temper and that he had thrown couch pillows out of the window of
their second-story apartment when he discovered that the rest of the family had gone
out and left him home alone.
Since I claim to have met him at the city swimming meet some years earlier, it
can be assumed he continued his aquatic activities. I know he also ice skated and
told his own story of always coming up short when he was winning a skating race
because he would look back to see where his competitors were. He went to Soldan
High School, the public school in his neighborhood, where he took no foreign languages
and no science. He did have a course in mechanical drawing in which he
excelled (fig. 11). His best friend was Tommy Krummenacker, the son of a pharmacist,
whose house he loved to visit because he could eat bacon which, of course, he never
had at home.
Always expected to help support his family, Irving was the first and only offspring
to go to college. And, like every other Jewish son, he was expected to major in
medicine, law, or dentistry, in that order. He applied to and was accepted at the University
of Chicago at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois and, rejecting his family’s expectations
but making a compromise, he agreed to major in engineering. In September of 1945 he
made the 180-mile trip north and moved in with a friend near the campus. Sadly, by
December, even with the money from a part-time job, the cost of tuition and housing
were beyond his and his family’s means. He returned to St. Louis, lived at home, and
enrolled at Washington University which, although a private school, provided reduced
rates to St. Louisans. At the end of the academic year, he announced that one more

In The Beginning 33
11 IL, Highschool Graduation Portrait,
Soldan High School, St. Louis MO, 1944.
semester in the engineering school would be torture. Finally, he rebelled completely
and, following his heart, changed his major to philosophy.
It was that summer (1947) that Irving Lavin came out of nowhere and appeared
as a lifeguard at Westwood Country Club. He was a very handsome fellow, with a
splendid torso and a magnificent crawl stroke. He was so good-looking that it never
crossed my mind that I might flirt with him. Nevertheless, he exhibited one feature
that was so out of the ordinary that it made me give it a try. When he was not cleaning
the pool or teaching children to swim, he was always reading a book. When it turned
out that what he was reading was Plato, I, the recent self-satisfied college graduate,
was properly impressed. We struck up a casual friendship and even had a couple of
dates. But at the end of the summer, we went our separate ways.