They are both in his room, and it's better that way because Tom can't talk, though one has the feeling that he can understand. His eyes are luminous with his extraordinary intelligence, and every now and again he essays a phrase, but it usually reduces, smiling, merely to "shit," a word for some reason he can utter with abandon and security. His right arm is lifeless and he has been practicing pencil strokes with his left hand. I dumped on him last week a supply of oils, brushes, and crayons. He is extremely artistic, but I note he hasn't broken them out— probably trouble concentrating. His ambition, Tulita tells me, is to go from the therapeutic center, to which he will be taken in several weeks, right to his desk at the office— say in six months. Let us pray. I told him I had done just that at church, and he didn't say shit, because he is himself a believer (his uncle founded Canterbury School; his cousin is head of St. David's in New York). In fact, it was he who told me about St. Catherine's, many years ago.
By the time I arrived home, Jamie Niven, David's son, had arrived at the house, with wife Fernanda and two little daughters, and there is general conversational levity. Jamie is larger than his father, heavier, and more opinionated. He is in business, doing well, and has become a wonderfully well-informed conservative, traveling a nice distance from back when he wasn't eating grapes for Chavez, but I don't like to tease him about that because I once did, and I hurt his feelings. Pat and I were at their wedding and they are both sprightly and companionable people. At lunch, I forget why exactly, the subject of accents came up, and we succeeded in getting David to go right down the line, and he was successively a Cockney, a Yorkshireman, a Scotsman, a Dubliner, Gary Cooper, Johnny Carson—I have never known anyone with superior mimetic skills. He has to fight a little against whatever it is that is bothering him in the throat, and he tells us this, but manages, and with evident pleasure. The little girls are enthralled.
The great surprise came immediately after lunch. Christopher arrives—unannounced, unexpected. He had come up the night before for some function or other in New York, and now he was here with Leslie Dach, who had been his first roommate, during freshman year at Yale, in 1970. Christopher is a little overweight, is still wearing that cursed little mustache (why is it that it would never occur to one to refer to David Niven's "cursed little mustache"? or Clark Gable's?). He brings into the room freshness, affection, and informality. His mother forces food and drink on both of them, and we go for coffee and the kind of hopscotch conversation by which, in most social exchanges, you find out about things. It is quickly established that Christopher needs to return to Washington that afternoon, and in a sense that is a relief, because I would hate it if he could stay and I could not, which I cannot. In midcoffee I get the same idea as yesterday, which had proved so pleasant. I approach him out of earshot of the others and whisper:
"Sail?"
He looks at his watch. He has not been to Mass, and four o'clock is the last service. I guarantee him that I'll get him back in time. I dash to the telephone and contact Danny, and of course he is raring to go—we'll pick him up. So, with Jamie, we set out, and for the fun of it I have activated my stopwatch—eight minutes from the moment we switched on the starter in the car to when the Patito's lines were cast off. We were under power for fifty yards before reaching the channel. Then—no fooling crowd here, with Danny and Christopher so thoroughly familiar with the boat—three minutes later we were under full sail, blasting out of the channel at full speed.
It is as bright as it had been early in the morning, cold and fresh. There are only two other vessels visible in a harbor crowded with sail and powerboats during the summer, and we feel the keenness I felt yesterday, though today the boat is more maneuverable; indeed, with a crew conversant with its paraphernalia, there is little you can't do quickly. In my schooner Cyrano it required fifty-five seconds at full motor power (the sails furled) to return to where you were, and during those fifty-five seconds a passenger aboard Cyrano drowned in the Hudson River ten years ago. Patito, under power, can jump through hoops, this because the rudder is broad and juts back well away from the keel center. We stay out for only twenty minutes, during which Christopher catches me up on this and that. I am highly excited over his forthcoming book, having now read the manuscript and marveled at the skill of the book's conception and execution. I dislike its title (Steaming to Bamboola) as much as Christopher does, but the publisher is absolutely stuck on it, and for once, Christopher's defenses are worn down. He enjoys being the speechwriter for the Vice-President, but tells me that unlike those speechwriters who complain that their material is severely edited, he complains that his is virtually unedited. Christopher has become extremely fond of George Bush, and his only complaint is that some days he reaches such a pitch of exhaustion that on getting home he can't even summon the energy to eat, so achingly tired is he. That's the kind of life that leads to lots of junk food, he volunteers, advising me that he is going on a diet (he is about five pounds overweight).
We get back by a quarter to four and, reaching the house, I embrace my son, because I won't be here when he returns from church, and he speeds off. There are two large cars in the driveway. One will take the Nivens and Pat to New York, Jerry will take me to Kent, Connecticut, for Jim Burnham's seventy-sixth birthday. I called Marcia this morning and told her that there simply wasn't any way that Pat could come, as she would be working all evening at Seventy-third Street preparing the lunch tomorrow for George Bush, with twenty corporation heads invited. Marcia said how sorry she was, but that she understood.
I had brought up a dozen different wines from the cellar, and Pat had wrapped each one festively in different-colored paper, and the lot of them were now in a big basket, together with the video games I bought yesterday. I said goodbye to Jamie and Fernanda and the girls, and for David a bear hug—I would see him next in Switzerland. I'd see Pat "before midnight if I'm lucky," I said as we kissed. I walked then to the study, and Jerry helped me stash my papers into the car.
More correspondence. Gus Renson, a retired mechanic-engineer of vast erudition, Belgian, opinionated, and a compulsive correspondent whose letters are charming and informative, wishes to quarrel over the portrayal in National Review of the battle of Yorktown. I thought it entirely reasonable to refer him to Professor Thomas Wendel, who wrote the piece, but now he tells me that I share with Wendel a "common francophobia," which is the first I've heard about that phobia of mine. But I'm glad Gus got into the subject because I subsequently discovered an interesting linguistic anomaly. Webster's Third defines francophilia as being "markedly friendly or attracted toward France or French culture or customs," whereas anglophilia is given as "particular unreasoned admiration of or partiality for England or English ways." This would suggest that Webster's Third suffers from a little francophilic-anglophobia.
Harvey Shapiro of the New York Times Book Review has asked me to write a hundred words about "the book I wish I had written." I almost always agree to do anything Harvey asks, for reasons obvious and not so obvious, and I go along with this, but with mental reservations, because what the hell, I mean, how do you handle such a subject? I resolve to do it by taking liberties, so I write, "When I consider how my light is spent, ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, I lament that I did not compose the message by which John L. Lewis advised the American Federation of Labor of the direction in which he elected to take the UMW. We disaffiliate.' To make it all the more beautiful, it was written in pencil, on wrapping paper. Aaargh! as Swinburne would say." (Harvey called Frances later, apologized, said my contribution was too offbeat—everybody else had actually mentioned entire books—and would I understand if he didn't run my contribution, which I did.)
Lewis Feuer sends me an account of the odd association of the Frankfurt Marxists with Columbia (University) Liberals, an association effected, incredibly, by no less than President Nicholas Murray Butler, back in 1932. I speculate that perhaps it was the pronounced conservatism of Butler that led him to tender the Marxists the bizarre invitation to set up sh
op at Columbia.
Playboy has a new mag called Playboy's Fashion for Men (I learn), and it apparently intends to go for the non-skin-flick-fashion-general-interest types, and the proposal is that I submit to the "main interview" for their Spring 1982 edition. "I realize that you rarely comment on this subject as a rule, but as you can see from the enclosed interview, we try not to limit our conversations only to fashion. Our first interview subject, Cary Grant, discussed his own perception of style and changes in films, among other areas; in the enclosed issue, pitcher Jim Palmer talks about his experiences with Madison Avenue and in the major leagues in addition to personal style. Since you exhibit quite a distinctive style, going back to your reminiscences of prep school and Yale, we'd like to use your personal tastes and observations as a basis for discussion and go on to the changes in Washington over the last administrations. . . ."
Frances had mentioned this letter over the telephone when it came in (I was out of town) and I told her I smelled a repeat of my situation with the conventional Playboy interview of ten years ago, when, upon being propositioned, I asked the managing editor how much I would be paid for submitting to a Playboy interview, and he practically fainted: we don't pay people we interview— to which the obvious response was, But you want to interview me, I'm not asking you to interview me; and finally we settled on three thousand dollars, which was by no means excessive, because one of those interviews takes hours upon hours upon hours, and leaves you with thousands of words to edit. The notion that I would be qualified to say anything at all interesting about fashions, even in a conversation en route to Reagan's deficits (where I knew the interrogation would soon lead), amused me. My wife is marvelously dressed, and I love it so—in fact she is in one of those permanent international best-dressed women categories—but I more or less wear more or less the same thing.
My father-in-law, who was a great big gruff no-nonsense tycoon with a nice, but generally inaccessible, sense of humor, went down for his breakfast one morning in Vancouver in his vast house to find the paper laid out for him as usual and his picture on the front page under the headline that he had been voted among the ten best-dressed men in Canada. That was bad enough, but what really did it was the caption: "Austin C. Taylor—Sartorial Gem!" It was, Pat says, two weeks before he would consent to go downtown. I answered Playboy with a single sentence, "To proceed with the planned interview I would need an idea of the questions you propose to ask, and the fee you propose to pay." I am in favor of philanthropy, but feel no impulse to exercise that imperative for the benefit of Hugh Hefner.
A woman writes in a) to ask my opinion of the Ulster problem, and b) to complain about Frances Bronson. She had telephoned to get a quick fix on a) above. "In your absence, I spoke to your Executive Secretary, Frances Bronson. I believe I broached a sensitive subject with this person who went on to give me her personal opinion, one I did not ask for. She was insolent and rude. Her final insult was to pull the plug on our conversation." On the bottom of the note Frances had scrawled, "Bill— My [English] accent offended her: I was not insolent—just said a very complicated issue, etc.—f." "Dear Mrs. O'Connor: It is conceivable that you know more than I or my colleagues about the public issues involved in the crisis over Northern Ireland, utterly inconceivable that you should know more than I after thirteen years of professional intimacy concerning the manners of my secretary Miss Bronson. I can only conclude that the sensitivity in the case of the first issue leads to bad judgment in the second. . . . With all good wishes."
A woman is writing a book to be called How You First Heard the News: The Reaction of Others Around You. She desires my memories of where I was and what I did when JFK was assassinated, and tells me she already has responses from Arthur Miller, Ralph Bellamy, General Westmoreland, Henry Cabot Lodge, Isaac Asimov, and so on, and while I think free-lancers should be encouraged I tell her I'll comply when she tells me she has a book contract. That disposes of eighty percent of requests.
Dick Wheeler, back in the early sixties, was the proximate cause of a recurrent professional nightmare. He had graduated, achieving singular distinction as a columnist in the undergraduate paper, from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and at the time was employed as an editorial writer on the Oakland Tribune, working for William Knowland. I was scheduled to debate at Berkeley in a large auditorium at eight with a professor of politics on the general subject of congressional investigations, and Dick and his wife had me up to their apartment for dinner with a few guests. As the clock approached the hour I kept making gestures, wondering whether we shouldn't leave. Don't worry about a thing, Dick kept repeating—"it's only a few blocks."
Well of course, it happened. Traffic jam. And at twenty minutes after The Hour I dashed out of the car and started to run in the general direction of where I assumed the stage was—hard to reach because the external passageways were like those in bullfight arenas, or Madison Square Garden. When I arrived I was breathless, and the speaker, although scheduled to speak second, was already well embarked on his speech (the assumption was that I had taken ill, or whatever, and would not be turning up). Everything got progressively worse. I simply couldn't hear the speaker from where I was seated, and so began to edge my chair away from what I assumed was a dead acoustical spot. The effect must have been Buster Keaton-droll, because the audience clearly thought I was attempting to ham things up. By the time my opponent had finished, I didn't have the least idea what it was he had said, and in the scheduled colloquy, from which I hoped to reconstruct his line of analysis, he grandly waived his right of examination, leaving me with nothing at all to react to. The nightmare is of running through endless hallways, making the wrong turns, even as I try desperately to find the stage door.
Our friendship survived, and now Dick tells me he is working for a little publishing house in South Bend, and has joined an Anglican parish, one of whose ministers is Fr. Gerhart Niemeyer, age seventy-four. Gerhart became a priest a year and a half ago, and I flew to South Bend to witness what must have been the single most beautiful ceremony I ever attended. For days I was struck by the vision of my old friend, a self-exile from Hitler Germany, a devoted husband and father, a man of huge intellect and humor, who decided at age seventy-three theologically to go all the way, so to speak. I see him, dressed in white surplice, prostrate before the altar, or standing and reciting his part of the priestly colloquy with the bishop:
. . . As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to fashion your life in accordance with its precepts. You are to love and serve the people among whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. You are to preach, to declare God's forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God's blessing, to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ's Body and Blood, and to perform the other ministrations entrusted to you.
In all that you do, you are to nourish Christ's people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come.
My brother, do you believe that you are truly called by God and his Church to this priesthood?
ORDINAND: I believe I am so called.
BISHOP: Do you now in the presence of the Church commit yourself to this trust and responsibility?
ORDINAND: I do.
BISHOP: God and Father of all, we praise you for your infinite love in calling us to be a holy people in the kingdom of your Son Jesus our Lord, who is the image of your eternal and invisible glory, the firstborn among many brethren, and the head of the Church. We thank you that by his death he has overcome death, and, having ascended into heaven, has poured his gifts abundantly upon your people, making some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry and the building up of his body.
[The bishop lays hands upon the head of the ordinand . . . the priests who are present also laying on their hand.]
BISHOP:
Therefore, Father, through Jesus Christ your Son, give your Holy Spirit to GERHART; fill him with grace and power, and make him a priest in your Church.
The notion of the subordination of the mind to God continues for me to beg for recognition as the final wonder of the world. In The Constitution of Liberty, F. A. Hayek cites the Jesuit oath of St. Ignatius Loyola as the most extreme form of intellectual self-mortification, utterly inconsistent with the very idea of liberty; but of course he begs the point, which is that it is only through the ultimate exercise of the free will that one abandons it, with the faith that that act will bring on a special harmony, such as the life of Gerhart—scholar, father, husband, musician, moralist—has incarnated. I thank Dick for sending me the news of the fiftieth anniversary of the Niemeyers' wedding, and congratulate him on his new professional association.
It is dark, but although the road narrows and there are three turns to remember to make, I don't think to tell Jerry how to go because his memory of anywhere he has ever been before is indelible. James and Marcia Burnham have lived deep in the woods, three miles from the village of Kent, since forever, as far as I know, and it was here that as a supplicant I came in 1955, to ask him if he would join the editorial staff of National Review. Although by manner retiring—shy even; withdrawn and a little formal— he was an intimidating figure. Valedictorian of his class at Princeton, professor at New York University at age twenty-four, author of texts in philosophy, Trotskyite, a contributor to Partisan Review, celebrated author of The Managerial Revolution, a born-again conservative, premature anti-Communist, and then those three seminal strategy books on the struggle for the world—the strategic confrontation—ending with Suicide of the West (1964). For twenty-three years he had come in to New York every week for two days to serve National Review as senior editor, strategist, adviser, a mentor to all who experienced him. And then, returning on the airplane from the debate with Reagan on the Panama Canal, in a matter of hours he lost eighty percent of the vision of one eye, and ninety percent of the vision of the second—"macula degeneration," they call it, and there isn't anything you can do about it. This brought his resignation from National Review, but not the end of his afflictions: a year later a stroke, from which it was assumed he would not recover.
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