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By Root 1602 0

of their parents, the world in which Peggy and Matthew were raised was a simple one. There was no Cornish equivalent of a Park Avenue residence or a summer home in Italy,* and the last thing the Salingers wanted was for their children to feel superior to their peers. However, Peggy and Matthew were raised with strong connections to their prosperous roots. They did not have lives of ease and privilege, as they could have, but Salinger made sure they would be able to move comfortably in upper-class circles if they ever chose to do so. Vacations in Florida became an annual February ritual for the family, with or without the author. By the mid-1960s, these trips were usually followed by long stays in Europe or the Caribbean. There were tennis and riding lessons and private school for Matthew, and Peggy learned proper table etiquette in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel.† The Salinger children were never spoiled, but their lives differed greatly from those of the children of Cornish farmers.

When royalties from Franny and Zooey began to fatten his income, Salinger decided to use some of them to renovate and expand the cottage. An extra room was added for Matthew, who had been quartered with his sister until age two. Peggy’s room was renovated, the myriad leaks that had plagued the children’s lives finally fixed. Salinger owned both a jeep and a car, which he had always stored in the Hands’ garage during the winter. With the judge now gone, he needed a garage of his own and had one built with an underground passage to the house as an added comfort.

For a time these domestic renovations consumed Claire’s attention. The contractors created a miniature model of the cottage for her, complete with attachable additions that she could rearrange for review. Though Salinger hated the tumult of construction, Claire was pleased and involved herself to an extent that raises an interesting question. A small apartment was erected over the new garage, complete with a kitchen and bathroom.3 Exactly whose idea it was to add the apartment is unclear. It may have been that Claire hopefully envisioned the space to accommodate guests. But once it was completed, Salinger began to use it, signaling his increasing shift toward solitude as well as the growing strain in his marriage.

In 1966, Salinger made the most expensive addition to his property. When the neighboring farm had gone up for sale the year before, Salinger, more than satisfied with the 90 acres he already possessed, had initially shown no interest. But when he learned that a trailer park was to be built on the land, he was appalled and quickly mortgaged his own holdings in order to purchase the adjoining acreage and preserve it. The purchase devoured most of his savings. It also endeared him to the residents of Cornish, who were loath to see their village spoiled by the presence of a trailer park but lacked the means to counter the developer’s bid. The event would have far-reaching results. The townspeople never forgot the rescue and quickly developed a tenacious loyalty to their most famous resident. Just as Salinger had once built a fence to protect him from his neighbors, those same neighbors now rallied around him, defending his privacy from intrusion by the outside world.

Salinger’s prosperity during the opening years of the 1960s mirrored that of the nation. The static years of the 1950s, a decade of conformity and chauvinism, had given way to a social vibrancy fueled by an unprecedented economic affluence. Attitudes of self-exploration and a new questioning of traditions insinuated themselves into the American character. As they did, color and romance began to reenter American life. So did diversity and a new open-mindedness. The United States was a confident nation in 1963 when Salinger attended the centennial banquet at the Warwick Hotel. It was a nation convinced of its place in the world and secure in its vision of the future.

No symbol better represented the optimism of the era than the first family of the United States. Young, cultured, wealthy, and fashionable, the Kennedys