The Big Reveal
Laddie, in his own words
Hello readers, and happy 2025!
When I last posted about Laddie, I was feverishly transcribing a year’s worth of my grandfather’s correspondence from his time working at the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune. The idea of publishing the letters had been only an occasional daydream to that point. With the encouragement of family, though, I began working toward creating a more sharable format.
I am incredibly proud to share with you that Letters from Laddie: Paris 1935-1936 is now available to all via Barnes & Noble Press.
Bundled into this volume with Laddie’s correspondence are a brief memoir of his childhood and some short stories he wrote in Paris. For people who love a deep dive, the appendix includes some reading lists and a glossary that offers context about those mentioned in the letters.
Working on this project has been both a privilege and an education. My grandfather’s descriptions of pre-War Paris are extremely personal, and often hilarious. Here are a few of the observations he sent to his parents via steamship correspondence:
On interviewing actress Marlene Dietrich:
“While hubby hovered in silence behind a nearby chair, our goddess in yellow sat in silent repose, so busy being aloof that she forgot to act human and say hello.”
On editing legendary journalist Sparrow Robinson:
“His […] is the only column in the world that’s good because it’s so bad. When I read his copy, sometimes I used to almost reach the depths of despair over some of his sentences. They run on for half a page with no beginning, no end, and sometimes it seems no middle.”
On offending General Pershing:
“I got fed up and lost my temper in the middle of a telephone conversation with General Pershing, and hung up on him. I didn’t feel very sorry about hanging up on him because he was acting like a crotchety old ass, but I felt ashamed to think I had let him push me into a point where I lost my temper.”
Laddie is only 22 years old as he writes these letters, with all of the self-involvement and naivete that his age implies. In the course of his year as a rookie journalist, however, he begins to realize that transformative change is on the horizon:
“There doesn’t seem to be a square foot of stability in all Europe, unless it lies in Great Britain. Everybody is frantically aligning themselves with someone else, all rushing together to lean on each other in pacts and treaties, and trying to seek comfort in high-flying words. And every time a country speaks a word of friendship, it has to take the knife out of its teeth to do it. They keep on priming themselves with armaments by the minute. We shall certainly have an explosion, and then pfft for Europe. The little light of civilization they have been nursing along for the past 400 years will go out.”
The dark parallels of that era with our own time become clearer with every name and event mentioned; Laddie’s experiences absolutely resonate with the political and cultural shifts happening all around us today. It is therefore reassuring, as his granddaughter, to sense his disgust with the increasing racism and fascism in France:
“A Royalist or extreme right-wing deputy got to his feet and delivered a long diatribe on M. Leon Blum’s (the new head of government) Jewish blood, stating that he would vote against anything or everything just because Blum had Jewish blood in his veins. He was loudly applauded by the right of the Chambre. It was the most despicable performance I have ever heard of.”
Even while facing up to a coming storm, Laddie continues to seek meaning and joy from what is within his own control. It is a coming-of-age story for our times, and as such, I find it hopeful. I hope you will, too.
With Laddie’s Paris letters gathered together and accessible to everyone, going forward I’ll occasionally use this space to reflect on the stories and themes that resonated with me during the editing process. There’s a lot to dig into.
I’m glad you’re along for the ride!
