CHAPTER 3
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CHARLOTTE:
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LUCIA AND I WERE THE products of a privileged New York upbringing. If we had not been made acquainted with what this meant practically from our cradles, certainly we were conscious of it from the time we received our first admonishments that such and such was not the done thing for a proper young lady. It almost seems just as long ago that we were both, in one way or another, in revolt against our birthrights.
Lucia’s father, Victor Cabot Bernhardt, was in banking. He was a ruthless but genial man with a fine address and an impressive set of whiskers, who enjoyed the universal admiration, fear, power and envy conferred by an exemplary lineage, affluence and a formidable reputation unimpeded by post-war social unrest, labor struggles, or the Wall
