They are actually lovely shots, bright with whimsy, and they probably accomplished more for Jack’s image than anything since the 1915 shooting. Between the portly businessman and the ringleted midget on his knee, there was an electric chemistry. While Graf steadied herself, Jack watched with fascinated amusement; he was tender with the midget and resembled a proud grandfather. For a generation of Americans, this would be their indelible image of Jack Morgan. The pictures were widely credited with starting a new age in financial public relations.
When his testimony was over, Jack dozed through the appearances of the other Morgan partners. At one point, he awoke abruptly to ask what year it was. In the sultry hearing room, a senator suggested they take off their coats. The old-fashioned Jack balked prudishly, then slipped off his light gray jacket, showing his white suspenders. He laughed and joked with guards and asked one if he needed his gun as protection against the senators. He showed reporters the famous bloodstone Pier-pont had worn. Yet he was not nearly as calm or relaxed as he appeared. When a newsman told him he hadn’t seen such hoopla since the Lindbergh kidnapping, Jack said privately that he “felt quite sick” at the comment.65 His seeming aplomb contrasted with his deep mortification at being held up to public scrutiny.
Jack could have used the episode with Lya Graf to capitalize on goodwill. Instead, he was embittered by the hearings and sulked over the incident. His New England pride wouldn’t let him admit what the photographs suggest—that he had enjoyed the impromptu encounter. He didn’t want to be made human in such a sordid way and said the incident had been “very unusual and somewhat unpleasant.”66 With the press, he tried to react to the episode with faint sarcasm. When asked why he hadn’t removed the woman from his lap, he replied, “Well, you see, I didn’t know but what she might be a member of the Brain Trust or one of the Cabinet.”67
Everyone noted the uncanny parallels between the Pujo and Pecora hearings. Newspaper commentary favorably contrasted Jack’s cooperation with Pierpont’s truculence and Will Rogers even forecast a brilliant career for Jack. In milder moments, Jack conceded that Pecora hadn’t been as taxing as Untermyer. But he was still unforgiving in his general appraisal. “Pecora has the manners of a prosecuting attorney who is trying to convict a horse thief. Some of these senators remind me of sex suppressed old maids who think everybody is trying to seduce them.”68 For someone as bashful as lack, a public grilling was a gruesome affair. He declared, “To have stood before a crowd of people and attempt by straight answers to crooked questions, to convince the world that one is honest, is a form of insult that I do not think would be possible in any civilized country.”69
Sometimes Jack could laugh about the experience. One day on the golf fairway, he was lining up a shot when his caddy, Frank Colby, said he should think of the ball as Pecora’s head. When Jack hit a splendid shot, they both laughed appreciatively.70 But most of the time, Jack brooded about the hearings, which ended up alienating him from the New Deal. Afterward, he got a visit from William Jay Schieffelin, son-in-law of Dr. Markoe, who was trying to win support for a scheme enabling poor people to buy life insurance from savings banks. Jack not only refused to help, but made a revealing comment: “I only wish I had the capacity you have, a capacity for indignation at outrages. I’ve been so outraged that it leaves me cold when I hear of somebody else being outraged.”71 This sense of his own victimization would close Jack’s mind toward the Roosevelt programs. More and more, he would feel a revulsion from America, a sense of being abandoned by his own country, and profound anger at the tarnishing of his bank’s reputation.
The story of Lya Graf ends sadly. As sensitive as Jack, she was traumatized by the endless jokes about the episode—so much so that in 1935 she decided to return to her native Germany, even though she was half Jewish: her real name was Lia Schwarz. Two years later, she was arrested by the Nazis as a “useless person” and sent to Auschwitz, where she died in the gas chambers. All this was learned only after the war when Nate Eagle, the Ringling Brothers manager who cared for the midgets, traced her history. Jack Morgan