Customer Reviews

We Used to Own the Bronx: Memoirs of a Former Debutante (Excelsior Editions)

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Ms. Pell begins the first chapter of her book by observing: "I come from a family in love with itself." That sums up what's wrong with the book, the author and the family.

Actually, I know something about the family myself, since some of my ancestors were Pells. I tell people that the fortune zigged and my branch of the family zagged, but in truth, they swam in that pond until my great-grandmother married an Irish Catholic (a worse sin than marrying a Jew) and was disowned by the family. That my great-grandfather converted to Anglicanism didn't change anything.

If anything, Ms. Pell underemphasizes the family's egoism. The family used to house its archives in a townhouse in midtown Manhattan. They published a quarterly magazine about themselves. They published books about the family, such as one called something like "War Heroes of the Pell Family," listing page after page of able bodied men who avoided combat by snagging billets at supply depots and training commands.

The author's rare note of moderation is all the more unusual since the highs (and presumably the lows - they are, or were until this book came along, more private) are largely exaggerated. You can start with the title. The Pells never "owned The Bronx," the Morris family, older and far more accomplished than the Pells, owned most of it. The Pells owned a narrow, 9000 acre strip along the east coast of what is now The Bronx and Westchester County.

The truth of the matter is that the family has been in decline for 300 years, staying afloat by strategic, gold digging marriages with robber barons they had only distaste for. This seems to have had the effect of breeding all of the love and human emotion out of their family relationships.

To the younger members of such families, the Sixties must have seemed like a breath of fresh air. An enormous percentage of the leadership of the counterculture were people like Ms. Pell. It was a way of bringing down mummy and daddy while also feeling superior to the great unwashed with whom they associated in the Movement. And if things got out of hand, there was always daddy to send you lawyers, guns and money.

In truth, it was the family names that mattered to their fellow revolutionaries - just as it was the family name at the charity luncheons that mattered - but in the process, the Silver Spoon Radicals substituted an excessive love of their geneology with an excessive love of themselves.

This comes out most clearly in Ms. Pell's account of her days as a radical in San Francisco. She claims to have had qualms as the Black Panthers she supported killed fellow prisoners and guards, but she doesn't give a moment's thought to the victims' widows and orphans and grieving families. That changes when an upper class colleague of hers is crippled in an assassination attempt because of perceived disloyalty to the Black Panther cause. Then her eyes are opened - "I could be hurt!" - and she calls the police whom she previously considered "pigs." I would really have a lot more admiration for her character if she had behaved like the revolutionaries of Stalin's purges and prepared herself to die for her beliefs, even at the hands of her fellow conspirators. All we see here is that same Pell arrogance singling itself out as special.

The book itself reads like a long monologue with the author's psychiatrist, so much so that the reader wants to send her a bill for professional services rendered. She devotes an entire page to a single incident where her mother chastises a maid for shattering a family heirloom. Okay, okay, you want to shout, your mother had the grace of a fish wife. Get on with it.

And she seems only dimly aware that her father's coldness and distance may have had something to do with the fact that he had been cuckolded and abandoned by her mother only a few years into their marriage. He never ceased to love his wife and his whole life seems to have been ruined by her infidelity. There is a moving story there, but the author lacks the empathy to tell it.

None of this, by the way, is a WASP thing. It is an Old Money thing, especially Old Money which has become impotent. You can see the same thing in virtually every ethnic group from Indian maharajahs to Russian nobility. It must be a false gods/golden idols phenomenon. Just as greyhounds lose their character when they catch the mechanical rabbit at a race, so does being born into privilege strip one of something fundamental. They are rare individuals who inherit a fortune and use it to do something worthwhile.

Still, it is hard to dislike Ms. Pell. One tends to side with her mother's Irish maid, who, when she would see Ms. Pell would mutter "poor, poor thing." Ms. Pell started life's race miles behind normal people who have learned that the secret to life in America is flexibility, enterprise and a good heart, qualities her parents' prestige and money worked against. She had a lot of catching up to do, and if she made some wrong turns along the way, it was because her mediocre education and lack of family values made her grossly unprepared for modern life.

The best part of the book is her reconciliation with her mother and the support her sons show her (although true to form, we learn almost nothing about her boys: where did they go to school? what is significant in their lives? where is Ms. Pell's motherly pride?).

She portrays herself as a sort of Candide, which is a refreshing change from Cinderella, but I don't buy it quite. It's all about that ego. Maybe she can work on that as her next project.

We used to be neighbors, but I've only met Eve Pell a few times. After reading her `We Used to Own the Bronx' I feel that I've know her for ever. Her story is illuminating exposé of one of the most prominent early families in the country: wealthy as Croesus, but with all that privilege there was an unhealthy dose of tension. Eve takes us on her compelling journey from a life of servants and horses to elite schools to life as a socialite to radical activist and award winning journalist. Along the way, she found time to become a first-rate, long-distance runner. We get `skinny' on the Edwardian era leisure class with its obscure rules and prejudices that tend to insulate them from the real World but which can backfire causing angst, divorce, alcoholism and suicide. Couldn't put it down...

It is said that if you want the emotional truth of an era, read a novel, not a history book. In this day and time, a great memoir is a combination the two. In Eve Pell's "We Used to Own the Bronx: Memoirs of a Former Debutante," there is deep emotional truth that shatters the myths of the frivolous fifties, as well as the radical idealism of the sixties. An award-winning journalist, Pell is an intelligent, insightful, and courageous woman who fought hard for reality in the world around her and in her personal life. We, as readers, are lucky she was willing to share her journey.

I could not put it down. What a fascinating memoir, and what courage to have written it! The author apparently worked on it for years, and it certainly has the depth of an effort thoroughly rationalized and complete. For several days after finishing it, I was haunted by the book's characters--especially Eve's mother.They all left an indelible imprint on me, as they certainly had on Eve who has the skill and insight to recreate them for us.

I grieved, as Eve does, over the appalling treatment her brother received--although his parents, tragically, apparently meant to do well by this difficult boy, but they had no instinct for parenting. That they felt the need to follow a very, very mis-guided parenting manual makes for pitiable reading.

As for Eve's descriptions of the nearly vanished debutante traditions, it was fun to read and remember. Being a product of a boarding school myself who "came out" at the Boston Cotillion before going on to Radcliffe, I was charmed by Eve's description of how we dressed, how we behaved and those crazy parties we went to--although she went to far more (and far more glamorous ones) than we Cambridge girls did. My own wonderful brother, a Groton graduate who went on to Harvard, was far busier than I trucking back and forth to New York for the parties. I wonder if Eve knew him...All the same, Boston was not exactly bereft of debutante gaiety....oh, such a long time ago.

I suspect, and Eve hints, that her stunningly beautiful mother vaguely understood that she was not doing the job required for her children---and when Eve finally summoned the courage to tell her so, she spent the next day in bed weeping. That says a lot. At some level, her mother knew she had failed yet as Eve makes clear, her mother was just as much a victim of an austere upbringing as she and earlier generations of the family had been. Which is why the author of this compelling book was so determined to break with those destructive patterns. Eve's resilience, her ability to survive an emotionally barren childhood, seek a life devoted to more serious things than parties and pleasures, and raise and truly nurture children of her own, is a story well-told by a smart, independent, and very courageous woman.

There is so much more that one could say about this heroic memoir. The adults of Eve's childhood were clearly wounded themselves yet she does not condemn them. She frees herself by understanding them. So brava! and let us hope that Eve Pell will go on to write more.

Most of us of will never see inside the world into which Eve Pell was born, as described elsewhere in these reviews. The story of her gradual personal evolution from a privileged upbringing among three of the wealthiest enclaves in America through radical journalist to suburban housewife sounds like a film script (note to Ed Pressman: sign up Jane Fonda now!), but few could write this better.

This is a primarily a story about relationships and the realities of life for women of Eve's generation (born just before World War II) with the added complexity of the effects, both positive and negative, of her family's wealth and social position. You cannot help but have great empathy for someone who is so honest about herself, sharing her most intimate experiences, aspirations, fears and feelings. Her struggle to assert her independence coincided with '60s radicalism; her insulated background seemed to have left her naive regarding the motives of those she became involved with during her personal transition. She paid a price, but seems to have found strength in living independently at last. Winning the Dipsea race (if you are unfamiliar with it, you might Google it) certainly gives credibility to her personal strength and tenacity.

She tells the story so well that the book is very difficult book to put down. Highly recommended.

In 1654, when Thomas Pell bought land in what is now the Bronx and Westchester County, the British crown gave him a title: Lord of the Manor of Pelham.

A revolution and three hundred years later, the Pell family still believed in privilege --- Eve Pell describes herself as "a snobbish fox-hunting debutante" who was educated only because girls have to do something until their husbands appear.

Her husband showed up, right on time. Three children followed. And then something happened that wasn't in the script --- Eve Pell divorced, befriended the Black Panthers, made documentary films that explored the nasty side of American politics and, in her 60th year, became a world-class runner.

She tells that before-and-after story, briskly and with considerable flair, in We Used to Own the Bronx: Memoirs of a Former Debutante. If you've ever pressed your nose to the chintz-covered window of Old Money and wished you were born into a great American family, this is the book you need --- Pell will take you inside the mansion and share every glorious and terrible secret of the aristocracy.

Her mother was so self-involved she never told Eve she loved her until she was 68 and failing. Her father was so cheap he went to a dentist in Queens. Her stepfather's solution to her brother's bed-wetting: take him to the basement, spank him with a dog collar. Such was life in the mansions of her youth. "Books and servants," she writes. "They were the consolations."

How cruel is exclusivity? Try this:

"A boarding school classmate of mine told me about the childhood game called "Club" that she played at private school in first grade. "The point of Club was that two or three girls would belong and gather under the sliding board at recess. Then another one would ask, `Can I belong?' The girls would say `No.' The rejected child would have to go away. That game of Club was a metaphor for the way we lived our whole upper-class lives."

But they had manners. Lord, they had manners. Her brother got a Wellesley girl pregnant, so he married her. At his second marriage, which he also didn't feel he could avoid, he was so drunk he couldn't walk down the aisle. There was no third marriage --- he shot himself. Any why not, really? His future was to drink and clip the coupons of the bonds he inherited.

A job for Eve? "Prostitutes earn money," her stepfather sneered. Still, she got one at CBS, where she listed CEO William S. Paley --- her aunt's husband --- as a reference. Then her husband came along and she became the cigarette he routinely crushed under his heel.

But as the 1970s dawned, she was living in San Francisco, and she started asking the same questions as less privileged women. Like: "Why were men always in charge?" As many women have learned, that question can lead to a new life --- it certainly did for Eve Pell.

And now? First, a second career as a long-distance runner:

"After turning 60 in 1997, I had my best year ever. I won the over-60 age group at the Boston Marathon, finishing in 3:25, a personal best, and went on to win two gold medals in international competition in South Africa. After that, I broke the age-group world record for 10,000 meters on the track and at the end of the year was ranked #1 woman U.S. road racer in the 60-64 age group."

And then, more wisdom than you'd expect in a "society" memoir:

"Some fortunate people are born knowing just what they want to do: They make hard choices, keep their goals in mind, work very hard, and succeed. Maybe one has to do that to succeed in important ways --- like becoming Secretary of State, running a Fortune 500 company or winning gold medals in Olympic competition. But for those of us content with smaller triumphs, sometimes adventures come unbidden and unexpected. The only choices we must make are whether to let an opportunity go by, or to take it up and follow where it leads."

Eve Pell makes me want to lace up my running shoes --- real and metaphorical --- and get going.

.....I stayed up late into the night to finish Ms. Pells book. I absolutley love the way she writes! She drew me into a world I'd never been, took me to places I'd never seen and then made me think, as a great writer does, about what I'd just read. Clearly, incredibly researched, Ms. Pells book is smartly written...and with clarity and wit, she's able to put her dymanic upbringing into perspective for the reader and for herself and then take us on a 'trip' through the '60's and her coming out as a young, brave and talented journalist. I could read anything that she writes!

Tracing an arc from ballroom to bohemia and finally, after a long journey, contentment. This is a well-written and honest account of two worlds which don't really exist anymore in their pure form: privileged east coast WASP-dom and radical hippie San Francisco. She ties the two together and ends poignantly with the death of her mother and her own discovery of fulfillment.

It is a very revealing book about someone who is born into privilege and how they think. It all goes back to their ancestors who are raised by nannies and servants and that they rarely see their own parents except for being presented at tea time, etc. The parents really don't want them to work but be very competitive at sports and go to many parties all the time.

I know the author as a "runner" and since her "awakening" into the middle class world and always believed her to be one of us. It was so interesting to read her story about her background and how she changed her views.

At first glance Eve Pell's memoir, We Used to Own the Bronx: Memoirs of a Former Debutante, appears to be the familiar narrative of a socialite woman born into the upper crust of society, who casts off its restrictions to strike out on her own. As I proceeded deeper into her life story I discovered this is something much more. Eve Pell has written a notable account of her life from horse farms in Pennsylvania, mansions in Tuxedo Park, New York, and estates on Long Island to associations with radical activists and efforts to reform the maximum security prisons of California. In just 225 pages, Pell describes the confines of a strict family and their impact on history, while acknowledging her penchant for adventure, her search for love, her compassion for the underdog, and her investigative instincts. And, I would add, her grit.

We learn about the lineage of her family in 17th century England. Her forefather purchased land from Native Americans comprising what is now the Bronx and parts of Westchester County, New York. Later, the British Crown granted her ancestor a "Manor of Pelham." We know some of this property as the present towns of Pelham, Pelham Manor, and New Rochelle.

Pell describes the wealth she was born into, the parade of servants, the private schools, the riding lessons, and the debutante balls. Her emotionally distant mother was more concerned with her horses and society gatherings than her children, and dispensed harsh criticism rather than affection. Of her upbringing Eve writes:

"There was a complicated hierarchy in our home, where parents were the thoroughbreds who gave the orders while nannies and servants were the commoners who obeyed. As children, we learned that parents were not to be disturbed; if we questioned the order of things, we risked humiliation; and if we wanted something, we should ask one of the staff."

Eve is educated in private schools, and marries a proper Yale graduate in spite of her mother's disapproval. The couple's move to California will become the first step in Eve's steering her life to dramatic changes. Beginning with her work as a researcher for a leftist writer, she earns the disdain of her far-reaching family.

Like a cat with nine lives, each chapter offers a new phase of Eve's life. After two unsuccessful marriages, she finds happiness in her seventieth year. She relates how she felt when her mother, wracked with dementia, passed away:

"I was sixty-eight when she told me that she loved me. But she was my mother, she loved me in her own way, and when, to my surprise, explosions of primal anguish seized me days later and I wept wildly, it was for her."

Like the award winning reporter she is, Eve Pell's account is well written. She details her leap from debutante to efforts at prison reform, to investigative reporting, and even marathon running.

She ends her memoir on this note:

"The years of contorting myself to fit the rigid bed of Procrustes took their toll. But I broke away from the seductive and crippling environment of privilege and dread in which I grew up. I have connected with a world that feels alive and real, have failed and succeeded, had adventures, made mistakes, spoken my mind, loved and been loved--with more intensity and passion than I had any right to expect.

And I'm not done yet."

by Diana Nolan

for Story Circle Book Reviews

reviewing books by, for, and about women