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Portrait in Brownstone
The matriarch of the wealthy Denison family reflects upon her childhood jealousies, her marriage, and the fortunes of her daughter and son
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
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About the author
Louis Auchincloss
134 books97 followersLouis Stanton Auchincloss was an American novelist, historian, and essayist.
Among Auchincloss's best-known books are the multi-generational sagas The House of Five Talents, Portrait in Brownstone, and East Side Story. Other well-known novels include The Rector of Justin, the tale of a renowned headmaster of a school like Groton trying to deal with changing times, and The Embezzler, a look at white-collar crime. Auchincloss is known for his closely observed portraits of old New York and New England society.
Among Auchincloss's best-known books are the multi-generational sagas The House of Five Talents, Portrait in Brownstone, and East Side Story. Other well-known novels include The Rector of Justin, the tale of a renowned headmaster of a school like Groton trying to deal with changing times, and The Embezzler, a look at white-collar crime. Auchincloss is known for his closely observed portraits of old New York and New England society.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 2, 2013
The Story
Family saga about three (in reality two and a half) generations of a blue-blooded New York family.
The Good
Auchincloss is a smooth and facile writer, so the story flows pretty easily. He also has an eye for the soap-operaish detail and throws in enough family skeletons to keep things lively.
The Bad
Auchincloss's idol, Edith Wharton, drew a clear distinction between her 'respectable' and not-so-respectable characters, like the van der Luydens and the Leffertses in 'The Age of Innocence.' One set was the epitome of discretion, benevolence, good manners and unimpeachable morals, while the others were more louche, lively and picturesque.
Reading Auchincloss, I realized just how important such a distinction is to this type of novel of manners. For all his admiration of Wharton, Auchincloss runs aground here because he tries to pass his flamboyantly amoral and ruthless characters as the essence of old money class and discretion. The attempt to pass various acts of sociopathic behaviour as admirable and high-minded gives this book an overall jarring note.
December 14, 2012
This is a novel my mother owned, and I remember reading it very eagerly one summer when I was in high school. It's one of those multi-generational sagas that has something for everyone. The part I remember being fascinated with as a teenager was the competition between two female cousins over a new and handsome employee at the family firm. I also remember that Auchincloss had a special gift for dropping humorous anecdotes into the story from time to time.
February 11, 2019
I discovered this book in a bag of books that I bought from the library. It is a multi -generational book about a NYC family of wealth and high society. I read it with my phone next to me to look up some the references the author used (mostly mythology references). It was enjoyable and I would probably read another book written by Louis Auchincloss if I run across him again.
May 16, 2022
The novel deals with the personal relationships, especially clashes, manoeuvring, difficult feelings, over courtship and marriage of two generations of an extended high-society New York banking family between 1905 and 1951. The story that transpires is the 'emergence' of Ida, a mild and bookish cousin of the real power-brokers when a young person in the early years of the century, as a formidable personage in her own right in her sixties, able to dignify the shabby behaviour of her hucksterish husband, and secure the impeccable society marriage for her caustic, beloved son that will fulfil him.
For much of the novel, the main motivations of the characters are amour-propre and the desire not to be worsted in uncomfortable, truth-telling intra-family conversations. Ida's husband, Derrick, is a brute whose assiduity and assurance lead to his displacing Uncle Linn, the family figurehead, as the senior partner of their firm of Wall St. brokers; callously he drops the family name of the 'inactive' partner from the name of the firm, replacing it with his son. At twenty-seven, poised to make a marriage of convenience to Ida, whom he judges sufficiently well-connected and intelligent, if a bit insipid, he has his head turned by her brilliant cousin Geraldine, far more knowing, adventurous and narcissistic. The family--Aunt Dagmar, other women dining almost every day at the Park Club--intervene on the grounds that the interloper is good enough for the drab cousin, but not good enough for the other. Twenty years later, Derrick and Geraldine have an affair, vindictive and unapologetically lustful on his part, which ends when it becomes clear that he has no intention of leaving Ida. In one conception of the story, Ida starts to attain genuine moral stature in seeing his reparative attentions to her as contemptible, while still holding the family together--though it is unclear whether the novel's mode is purely satire, and Ida merely exemplifies a successful form of the will-to-power, or Auchincloss is serious in offering her as a paragon. An inset story, a short story almost, towards the end about Ida's son Hugo's romances, modelled on Proust's 'In Amour de Swann', also has more emotional heft. (The arch aesthete Hugo, a successful auctioneer, interrupts his delightful affair with Kitty Tyson, who is married, for an infatuation with a twenty-one year-old cousin without distinction of mind but of fanatical ambition and self-belief; Ida exerts herself to bring about this marriage, buying a controlling interest in the U.S.-Austrian valuer Adler-Denison so Hugo can run it--he can't marry an 'old bag of second goods').
The novel is evidently sub-Jamesian, sub-Proustian, sub-Whartonian, especially in its style, which is more ordinary, more passably conventional, than any of those authors. There tends to be a lowering of intensity, and indulgence of cliché, when the language is figurative; and nothing could be less Jamesian. But it is equally the novel's choice to be something other than a tragedy of manners--a clever and ambivalent comedy of manners, maybe. Almost all the story is preempted on the first page, when a querulous, washed-up Geraldine commits suicide. But the telling or retelling of what has been shadowed (Geraldine's youthful flirtation with Derrick; Ida and Derrick's daughter Dorcas's marriages to a neurasthenic publisher, then a pushy lawyer) is much more interesting--more vital and engaging--than promised.
For much of the novel, the main motivations of the characters are amour-propre and the desire not to be worsted in uncomfortable, truth-telling intra-family conversations. Ida's husband, Derrick, is a brute whose assiduity and assurance lead to his displacing Uncle Linn, the family figurehead, as the senior partner of their firm of Wall St. brokers; callously he drops the family name of the 'inactive' partner from the name of the firm, replacing it with his son. At twenty-seven, poised to make a marriage of convenience to Ida, whom he judges sufficiently well-connected and intelligent, if a bit insipid, he has his head turned by her brilliant cousin Geraldine, far more knowing, adventurous and narcissistic. The family--Aunt Dagmar, other women dining almost every day at the Park Club--intervene on the grounds that the interloper is good enough for the drab cousin, but not good enough for the other. Twenty years later, Derrick and Geraldine have an affair, vindictive and unapologetically lustful on his part, which ends when it becomes clear that he has no intention of leaving Ida. In one conception of the story, Ida starts to attain genuine moral stature in seeing his reparative attentions to her as contemptible, while still holding the family together--though it is unclear whether the novel's mode is purely satire, and Ida merely exemplifies a successful form of the will-to-power, or Auchincloss is serious in offering her as a paragon. An inset story, a short story almost, towards the end about Ida's son Hugo's romances, modelled on Proust's 'In Amour de Swann', also has more emotional heft. (The arch aesthete Hugo, a successful auctioneer, interrupts his delightful affair with Kitty Tyson, who is married, for an infatuation with a twenty-one year-old cousin without distinction of mind but of fanatical ambition and self-belief; Ida exerts herself to bring about this marriage, buying a controlling interest in the U.S.-Austrian valuer Adler-Denison so Hugo can run it--he can't marry an 'old bag of second goods').
The novel is evidently sub-Jamesian, sub-Proustian, sub-Whartonian, especially in its style, which is more ordinary, more passably conventional, than any of those authors. There tends to be a lowering of intensity, and indulgence of cliché, when the language is figurative; and nothing could be less Jamesian. But it is equally the novel's choice to be something other than a tragedy of manners--a clever and ambivalent comedy of manners, maybe. Almost all the story is preempted on the first page, when a querulous, washed-up Geraldine commits suicide. But the telling or retelling of what has been shadowed (Geraldine's youthful flirtation with Derrick; Ida and Derrick's daughter Dorcas's marriages to a neurasthenic publisher, then a pushy lawyer) is much more interesting--more vital and engaging--than promised.
September 14, 2025
This is a curious one. I believe my Penguin copy of this novel has been sitting on my bookshelf for around 50 years, but I never got around to reading it. It dates from a period when I read Penguin publications almost exclusively. If a penguin logo was displayed on the cover it virtually guaranteed a good read. I have no idea why I had never opened it until a time when it, quite literally, fell apart as I was reading it. The opening chapter was perhaps the most gripping I have ever read (I read between 70 & 80 books a year). So powerfully was I dragged into this story of affluent New Yorkers during the first 50 years of the 20th century that I began to regret approaching the end. The writing, & the characterisations, are truly brilliant & the technique of jumping from 1st person (Ida, the clan matriarch) to 3rd person (everyone else) was intriguing. This book appears to have little recognition in the 21st century; there isn't even any cover art displayed above. So, it could even be out of print, which would be criminal. This is easily one of the best books I have read this year. And would feature in my top 5o of all time. Highly recommended.
June 29, 2023
Very readable and engaging. The book follows one wealthy New York family across several generations.
October 17, 2023
A superb beginning that doesn't sustain. More here: https://ahotcupofpleasureagain.wordpr...
December 3, 2007
I've begun a re-reading of novels by Mr. Auchincloss. He's a New Yorker, who writes about New York "Society", in a somewhat cynical way. In this book, how things look is all important to the members of one family, all of whom live on the same block in NYC. There is endless analysis by each character of all the other characters. It covers about fifty years, from the turn of the 1900's to 1950. All the money comes from the family's interest in a stock and bond brokerage firm, firmly controlled by a tyrant, with his wife in the background, seemingly lost....
December 28, 2013
Hard read compared with others of his and darker from the start but a beginning worth working through. While we return to Ida in the end Derrick stole the show because we knew him by each of his lovers and children more than possible for Ida who gave each of them, and us, more to work with and learn only later in life.
Reassuring read for nasty, soulless adulterers who hope for end of life care.
Reassuring read for nasty, soulless adulterers who hope for end of life care.
January 17, 2019
Book published in 1961 or 1962. About NY society and families all living close together and enmeshed. Interesting.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews