When Tony Cornwell first came to the United States as a foreign student in 1951, he loved it. In stark contrast to the way he saw English society, "It seemed everyone had a right to be who they wanted to be," he says, "and there was no class system."
But since then, America has changed. "It has been taken over by people who have found weaknesses in the democratic system," he says. "We will be lucky if Bush is not the end of the American Empire."
He has studied ancient empires and the flaws that brought about their collapse, and was born in the declining British Empire. He knows an empire when he sees one.
Anthony Cornwell was born in 1929 in Parkstone, Dorset, in southwest England, the first child of Olive and Ronald Cornwell. He has one younger brother, David, now a writer whose pen name is John le Carré. Tony also has several half-siblings from his parents' second marriages.
Tony's heritage is pure English, but diversity has its orders of magnitude. "My father was from the west country," he says; "my mother, the north country."
Growing up, Tony and David were extraordinarily close, mainly because each was the only ally the other had. "There was no linear order to our lives except hopping from one damn thing to another," says Tony. "Our father was a rogue, a would-be real estate tycoon and con artist, imprisoned at least once for his business practices.
"My father's finances continually went up like a rocket and down like a stick," says Tony. When they were flush, Ronnie lived the high life. Once he threw a party for the West Indian cricket team at his mansion, "Hazel Cottage." Little Tony and David were thrilled to meet Learie Constantine, a cricket icon from Trinidad known as the Black Catapult.
Their mother left when they were 4 and 2. "I remember the biscuit tin in which we stashed sixpences and shillings," says Tony. "We were saving for bus fare to find our mother."
After that, they often stayed with their paternal grandparents. "I vividly remember the long counter where we ate breakfast and were fussed over," says Tony. Their great-grandfather lived in a cottage in back. "He had a huge collection of Toby jugs displayed along the mantelpiece," says Tony. "Toby jugs had famous peoples' faces on them," he explains, "like Gladstone or Disraeli."
Eventually Ronnie lost most of his assets, including Hazel Cottage, but somehow he finagled sending his sons to public schools (what Americans consider private schools). Their elementary boarding school was called St. Andrew's. "We never had a home after that," says Tony. "When we took holiday or summer breaks, we were quartered by one of our father's many women friends, and often he wasn't around."
At 13, Tony went to Radley Public School, a boys' school 12 miles away from St. Andrews, where David still had two years to go. The brothers met clandestinely, and Tony gave David candy and other treats. "In some ways," says Tony, "I tried to make up for his missing mother."
Two years later, David went off to a different public school.
"Unless you buy into the values of a public school," says Tony, "it's a difficult experience." He didn't, and it was. "It was prudish and religious. I didn't know a thing about girls."
Tony wrote poetry and developed a romantic view of America. "My favorite song was 'Annie Get Your Gun' by Ethel Merman," he says. "It was witty, wise and naughty."
Soon after graduating from Radley, in 1948, Tony joined the Royal Air Force to fulfill the national service that was required of all young men. He played cricket and drove bobsleds for the RAF teams in St. Moritz, Switzerland, then ran the RAF sports program there. "It was an unusually light form of national service," he quips.
He entered Pembroke College at Cambridge University in 1949, on a classics scholarship from Radley. To please his father, however, he studied law there as well as at Gray's Inn, part of England's Inns of Court.
In 1951 he received a scholarship to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. The next summer he and a student from Germany toured the United States, speaking to Rotary Clubs about their experiences as foreign students, and comparing the American educational sys- tem with those of their own countries.
"We hitchhiked 11,000 miles," says Tony. "It was wonderfully free and easy, and we encountered huge hospitality everywhere we went."
He returned to England and finished his law studies, to fulfill his promise to his father. But the day after he was "called to the bar" (passed the bar exam), in 1953, he left for Toronto. "It was easy for us Brits to emigrate to Canada," he says.
He worked a few months filling mail orders for Simpson-Sears. Then he moved to Montreal, where he worked first for Zeller's department store, then an ad agency, writing copy. Later he met Anna Christake, a Ph.D. candidate in physiological psychology. Romance blossomed and flourished, even when he took another job in Drummondville, in south Quebec.
In Montreal, Tony also met writer and fellow Englishman John Wyllie, who became a lifelong friend. "John was a fully realized human being," says Tony. "He was a hero and POW during World War II, and later did medical relief work in Africa. I admired him greatly."
Tony and Anna were married in early 1959 in Bar Harbor, Maine, and by the end of that year their first son Alex was born, in Drummondville. When Alex was a few months old, the young family went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where Tony worked on a novel. Seven months later they moved to New York, where Tony found a job in advertising. After three years of renting an apartment, they bought a house in Hastings-on-Hudson.
Son Trevor was born in 1963 (Trevor and his wife are now parents themselves, of a 1-year-old daughter). Tony settled into a job with Needham & Grohmann, an advertising agency specializing in upscale hotels and resorts, a job he would have for the rest of his advertising career.
IN 1975, TONY'S MARRIAGE to Anna ended, and Tony moved into an apartment in north Yonkers.
One day he ran into an acquaintance in Grand Central Station. With the acquaintance was Antonetta Smulders. "She was beautiful, subdued and intriguing," says Tony. "I was immediately attracted."
Nettie, although Dutch-born, worked at the Belgian Consulate. "While visiting her mother in Holland," says Tony, "she contemplated our 23-year age difference. But soon, to my great delight, she came back to me.
"It was the happiest day of my life."
Tony and Nettie were married in 1978. He continued his advertising job, and Nettie attended Fordham University. After graduating, she worked as a paralegal. During this time she and Tony became U.S. citizens.
When Tony retired in 1990, the two decided to leave New York. On a friend's recommendation, they moved to Taos, N.M. They drove there circuitously, through Seattle. They loved it, and made a mental note of that.
In Taos they built an adobe-walled house, and Nettie worked in a travel agency. "But the job, and the job market in Taos, was not for her," says Tony. In 1995 they moved to Seattle, and in 2002 bought a condominium on Queen Anne's western slope. Nettie continued her career as a paralegal, and Tony resumed writing the novel he'd started back in Puerto Vallarta.
Drawing on the myth of Icarus, it's entitled "Too Close to the Sun." "It's an attempt to show how people form themselves," he says, "how their observations of society shape their feelings, and how much they're responsible for shaping their lives."
He writes for three hours every morning. Though he writes on a computer, he doesn't like the Internet. "It debases the language," he says.
Though not born here, Tony considers himself an American patriot.
"It is my earnest and fondest hope," he says, "that America will once again deserve the regard that our founding fathers so wonderfully brought to our nation."
He pauses as he crafts the sentence, careful to say exactly what he means, so as to honor the language.
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