Less Than Merry at Merrywood

On a high, leafy bluff overlooking the Potomac in McLean, Va., just northwest of Washington, is a broad, lovely, 46-acre estate called Merrywood. There, from the time she was 13, Jacqueline Bouvier swam, played tennis, rode her pony and gamboled about. Merrywood is owned by Jackie Kennedy's stepfather, Hugh Dudley Auchincloss, who bought it in 1934 for $135,000. and who put $100,000 or more into such extras as a greenhouse and an indoor badminton court. But last week there was little merriment at Merrywood. Sighed its master, a gentle man who is known to friends and family as "Hughdee." and who acts more like an absent-minded professor than the wealthy investment broker that he is: "It's all very unpleasant."

The unpleasantness arose because Hughdee signed a contract to sell Merrywood, for about $750,000, to a syndicate that wants to build three 17-story apartment buildings on the property--which, with its environs, has been described by a local newspaper as a place of "verdant grandeur." The prospect of hundreds of apartment dwellers despoiling McLean has aroused residents of the area to an outburst of verdant vituperation.

True. Bobby Kennedy, who lives just a short piece down the road from Merrywood, discreetly avoided taking public sides. But Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. another McLean resident, was on record with: "Since the time of our first President, we as a nation have recognized the Potomac Palisades as a great scenic resource, and over the years considerable effort has been expended to preserve its beauty." Others have been more outspoken, and quiet McLean has been alive with protest meetings and petitions. Griped Radio Commentator Edward P. Morgan, whose nightly spiel is paid for by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. ("Thirteen and a half million Americans bring you Edward P. Morgan"): "I don't want my own property to be menaced by 1,200 families moving in next to me." The Washington Post sounded as if it were going to cross the river and fight. "No stone should be left unturned." it said.

Hughdee's representative in the sale is Lytton Gibson, a tax attorney notable for wearing rubber bands to hold up his socks. The buyers are led by a developer named Sheldon Magazine. Says Gibson: "Nothing but a bunch of longhairs and eggheads are causing all the trouble." Says Magazine: "What do they think we are building--a couple of garages or something?" Says old Hughdee, who keeps protesting his belief in free enterprise and the fact that a man should be allowed to sell to the highest bidder: "It's extraordinary, their making this fuss."

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