Happy Honeymoon

The bride wore a plaid sports shirt and blue jeans that were several sizes too big. The groom wore an open-necked blue shirt, faded jeans, pale boots. Astride horses, surrounded by prize Santa Gertrudis cattle, backdropped by the Andes, Governor and Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller played host last week to newsmen while honeymooning at Monte Sacro, a 14,826 acre Rockefeller ranch in Venezuela. Invited by her new husband to pick any horse in the corral as a gift, the former Margaretta ("Happy") Murphy, 36, selected a Venezuelan champion stallion named Oleaje. Beamed Rocky: "She chose the best horse in the lot." Rockefeller was less proud, but amused, when Happy walked up to one animal in the cattle herd and quipped: "This is the first time I have been face-to-face with a bull." Whispered the Governor: "That's not a bull, that's a cow." The newly weds changed (he to a light tweed jacket, tie, rust slacks; she to an orange frock) for a lunch with some 30 reporters and photographers. Rockefeller declined to talk politics. Mrs. Rockefeller said that she had been "called Happy since I was a baby--I would not answer right away if somebody called me Margaretta." She spends much of her time, she said, with her children, or listening to classical records (Wagner, Mozart) or reading (latest novel: To Kill a Mockingbird). Despite all the publicity, she insisted, "I am the wife of a public figure but not one in my own right." With that, the couple went into seclusion on the ranch, which is 125 miles southwest of Caracas and was once owned by Simon Bolivar. The Rockefellers picnicked on a 6,500-ft. mountain, relaxed in the white twelve-room hacienda. They were isolated from the rest of the world except for a single radiotelephone circuit. Critical Clergymen. Meanwhile, away from the ranch, there was continued criticism of the wedding, especially by clergymen. Declared Philadelphia's Methodist Bishop Fred Pierce Corson: "It is an appalling shock to the moral sensibilities and sense of fair play of the rank and file of Americans." Stepping out of his field, he predicted that the marriage could cost Rockefeller "three to five million votes" if he becomes the Republican nominee for President. Said Dr. Daniel A. Poling, editor of the Protestant Christian Herald: "I agree with those, and there are many, who will see him as a man who broke up a family in which there were four young children. As of here and now, I could not vote for him." Said the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Browne, president of the American Baptist Convention: "I am not sure that the standards of national life are helped very much by a public leader who, after he had broken up two families, says, "I'm very happy myself.' " In a biting editorial, Baltimore's weekly Catholic Review said: "The founder of Christianity insisted that no man should put asunder those whom God had joined together. He clearly taught that a man commits adultery when he puts away his wife and marries another. One friend of the Governor's stated that voters prefer a candidate to have a wife at his side. Our question is, 'Whose?' " Deluged by letters of protest, New York's Hudson River Presbytery initiated steps to discipline the Rev. Marshall L. Smith, who performed the wedding on the Laurance Rockefeller estate at Pocantico Hills. Smith violated the Presbyterian Church Constitution, which requires that persons divorced less than a year can be married only with special permission from the local presbytery. Happy was divorced from Dr. James Murphy in Idaho on April 1. Rocky from Mrs. Mary Todhunter Clark Rockefeller 14 months ago. Rockefeller is a Baptist; Happy, raised as an Episcopalian, recently became a Presbyterian. Both frequently attended Smith's interdenominational church in Pocantico Hills. Irrelevant? General press reaction was far less critical than that of the clergy. Many of the nation's newspaper editors seemed to agree with the New York Herald Tribune, which declared: "Governor Rockefeller's remarriage has no relevance to his qualifications for high government office." New York Times Columnist James Reston, however, argued that "newspapers are not a very reliable guide to the true feelings of the people." Wrote he: "The presidency is a model standing at the pinnacle of the nation's life. What others may do, he may not always or even ever do, but what he does in his private life lends itself to imitation throughout the land." Few politicians are yet ready to count Rocky out of the 1964 race, although they seem to agree that he no longer seems so certain to get the G.O.P. nomination. Much of the adverse reaction, they note, is based on the fact that Dr. Murphy now has possession of his and Happy's four children. While the divorce settlement does not grant exclusive custody to either parent, neither does it provide specifically for joint custody, and the precise arrangement has thus far been kept secret. In any event, Rocky's remarriage may not work entirely to his political disadvantage. For, as one Eastern politician put it: "If everyone who is divorced, or who would like to be divorced, were to vote for Rockefeller, he would be in as President."

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