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In the summer of 90, Vernon took rooms at a New Rochelle theatrical boardinghouse that someone had recommended to him: the famed forty- five-minute ride got him out of the city and to a quaint town with a quiet, small-town atmosphere, congenial friends, and much cleaner air than Manhattan. It was there—at the Rowing Club—that he met seventeenyear -old Irene Foote. They were introduced by their mutual friend Gladwyn MacDougal, a middle-aged Canadian who was friendly with Dr. and Mrs. Foote (MacDougal had been treated to many a rendition of Irene’s “Yama-Yama Man”), and who knew Vernon from his work as a theatrical manager. Irene was swimming in Echo Bay, adjacent to the club. “[I] pulled myself up on the float to sit in the sun, when a tall, very thin young man pulled himself onto the opposite side of the float.” It was not love at first sight: “I could tell by looking at him that he was not my cup of tea,” Irene later wrote. She was still recovering from the broken heart given to her by the brawny, athletic Brother Whiting. Vernon showed no interest, either, and the two of them sat side by side for some time, sunbathing and ignoring each other. Then fate, in the form of Gladwyn MacDougal, took a hand. Seeing his two friends on the float,he swam over and introduced them: once Irene found out that Vernon was an actor (“the first actor I had met”), he suddenly became a lot more attractive. She bluntly admitted in later years that at first she was interested in this young man as a rung up the ladder, not as a potential boyfriend. “My heart skipped a beat. My mind immediately began to make plans and weave schemes. . . . I turned loose every ounce of charm I could muster to hold his attention.”Vernon, within a few minutes, remembered he had a friend waiting for him and ran like hell. That evening, she encountered Vernon again; he was with Kathleen “I COULD TELL BY LOOKING AT HIM THAT HE WAS NOT MY CUP OF TEA” CHAPTER FIVE  CHAPTER FIVE 31 Clifford, an actress, who sparked Irene’s jealousy. Forty years later, Irene could still recite with disgust Clifford’s vulgar getup: “a lavender wool suit with a little toque of violets on her head, and in her hand, to my utter amazement, she held a large gold-mesh bag with a huge K.C. spelled out in diamonds.Around the neck of her suit coat was lopped a gold chain that sneaked across her bosom and disappeared into her belt. I had no idea what was on the end of it. But it had a good-sized diamond every three inches, as far as I could see.” Somehow, Irene managed to wrench Vernon from the spectacle that was Kathleen Clifford, and within a couple of weeks, the two genuinely began to like each other.Young,athletic,good-humored,Vernon and Irene were able to put aside (for the time being) Irene’s theatrical ambitions and just have a good time in each other’s company. The Footes welcomed him into their home, and Vernon luxuriated in the first family he’d been with since leaving his own. Every Sunday, Mrs. Foote cooked him dinner and packed him box lunches to take back to the city.Dr.Foote took Vernon out on his boat, the Hully G. (a variant of the expression golly gee). We’ll never know what specifically attracted Vernon to Irene (although her good looks and brains must have been a start), but Irene managed to overcome her physical indifference to Vernon.“I liked his manners. He had a lovely, gentle voice and a calm disposition, which came in handy when our boat was becalmed and my father was leaning over the prow, shouting.”By the end of the summer, the two found they were a couple.“It was not long before my feelings for Vernon began to change,”wrote Irene, and she worried that he saw her only as a starstruck, ambitious kid (which, of course, she was). One night on the Footes’ front porch, Vernon kissed Irene for the first time,“and I realized he was as much in love with me as I was with him.” Vernon proposed to Irene on Christmas Day, 90. If Irene had any doubts or second thoughts, she never expressed them...

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