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| Stanley and Frances circa 1956 |
Mother and Daddy had a sort of guardian angel, a close family friend and neighbor who had a special affection for them both and always had their interests at heart.
Stanley Hartly was a charming, fun loving gentleman of some fortune. He was a generation older than my parents, and he always seemed extremely sophisticated to me. I thought he looked just like the white-headed bon-vivant on the masthead of The New Yorker magazine.
He once gave me his hand-me-down camel hair overcoat for which he had reportedly paid 100 dollars in 1939. That was a big amount back then, and it still sounded like a fortune when I inherited the coat in the 1950's. I cannot remember what finally happened to it, but I was still wearing it the early years in Paris.
Sixteen years separated my father from his oldest brother, and it was perhaps for that reason that they never seemed to have much in common or any special affection for one other. Linwood first worked in Virginia with a large company which mined sand and gravel. When Daddy finished high school he joined his brother in Richmond where he worked for several years before World War II called him away.
As for Stanley, he had his house on a large plot on the outskirts of town, and when my father came back from the war, he proposed turning over some of his land so that our family could build and become his neighbors.
He didn't stop there. He aspired to a better future for my father than working for the sand company in Richmond, and he eventually talked my dad and his brother into leaving their jobs, and bringing their sand business know-how to Aberdeen.
The time was ripe, there was a lot of building all over the country after the war, and Stanley proposed putting up the money --all of it-- to create the company. This became Pleasants Sand & Supply, and it turned out to be a decent investment with some fairly prosperous years for the company in the 1950's. As I said, Stanley was the silent partner, did all the financing, and few outside of the family ever knew of his connection. My father and his brother were the working partners and official owners.
The story takes a little detour here. I hadn't mentioned there was someone else involved in all this. My Aunt Frances. It wasn't common knowledge, but she was even better friends with Stanley. It was always kind of complicated, because both had responsibilities at home. Stanley had an invalid wife, at least in the early years. And Frances? Well, as the only single sibling of six brothers and sisters, she felt an unnecessarily important responsibility to her parents. And then, later, there was Rose (see Goodbye Rose). Tennessee Williams would have felt right at home.
So, Frances became another silent partner. Stanley gave her 25% of the business. It was just a gift, and quite a godsend it was, as all she had to do was cash her dividends. Frances certainly did nothing wrong; but it nearly drove my parents crazy as the decades passed by and she continued to pocket the money.
Mother thought Frances should have at some point renounced her quarter interest, but only an idiot would have contemplated such a move. Frances was not much of a businesswoman, but she certainly was no idiot.
She could be, however, indelicate. She tended to spend her money lavishly, and when there was none left, she continued to spend it anyway. There were times when my parents were trying to budget for the running of a family of five, when things might have been a little tight. It was inevitably at a time like this that Frances would appear, asking if Daddy couldn't release the quarterly dividends a few weeks early ... as she was a little low on funds that season.
It didn't help that the parents saw Frances as a bit of a snob, and Mother especially could be allergic to some of her "ways".
Frances had a soft spoken, polished manner of speaking, for instance, which Mother perceived as affected.
"Why can't she just say 'thank-you' like everyone else," I remember Mother complaining. "Why must she always say, 'thank you SOOO much'?"
The story doesn't really have an ending. The four of them continued to enjoy each other's company all their lives, despite the friction that Frances sometimes generated. Stanley became a widower in the mid-50's, but as far as I know there was never any serious talk of re-marriage. He saw Frances periodically over the years, often with Mother and Daddy, when he would invite them all out for the evening to a place called Hernando's Hideaway in a neighboring county. Or sometimes for a weekend on the coast.
Stanley died in 1975, not quite 30 years after the company had been created. He left my father his part of the "sand pits", after which Daddy bought out the shares of Linwood and Frances.
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| With Frances, Versailles 1986 |
Not too long before her death, Frances visited with me in Paris. We always had a special relationship and were still close in our way. I can't remember what provoked my question, but I recall asking her if Stanley had been the love of her life. (She was a particularly discreet person. I would like to have asked other intimate questions, but I wouldn't have dared, and at any rate I would have never received a straight answer.)
"Such an impertinent question!" she said. There was a harshness in the words, but she was smiling, and I am certain that my curiosity somehow pleased her. "It was all such a long time ago, you understand ... and much too private."
Your input is welcomed: frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr
CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings
Frances is also featured in "Goodbye Rose," Hotel Musings No. 61; and in "A Two-Dollar Hamburger Under a Silvery Dome," Hotel Musings No. 4 (to access, click on highlighted titles).
