“I think Jimmy knows that,” said Peter, and he proposed the toast. Then Peter said, “Have you sent in your acceptance yet?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m waiting to hear from the other schools I applied to.”
Peter put down his champagne glass. “Why would you do that?”
The boy shrugged. “Harvard made me wait. I’ll make them wait.”
Orson laughed. “As contrary as your father. I like that.”
“So do I,” said Peter after a moment. “But don’t forget, Jimmy, Harvard stands for something.”
“Yeah,” hooted Bernice. “Big tuition bills.”
Peter said, “A tradition of questioning conventional wisdom while swimming in a sea of it, of testing yourself against some of the smartest people in the world, of—”
“Blah, blah, blah.” Bernice took her champagne and went to answer the phone.
“But what if everyone’s better at being the best than you are?” asked Jimmy.
“You might be intimidated at first,” said Peter. “But you’ll figure out that you’re just as smart as most of them, or you’ll learn how to make it seem as if you are.”
“So that’s what makes Harvard special? Learning how to bullshit?”
“Insight already,” said Orson.
Bernice called from the other room. “Will Wedge is on the phone.”
“Tell him I’ll call him back. I’m taking my son to lunch.” Then Peter looked at the boy. “To celebrate the fact that he now has an option and can take it or not.”
Evangeline had gone back to New York.
It was time for her to sit down with an editor over lunch and see about selling a nonfiction book on the history of the Radcliffe Eight. She hoped that the restaurant had soft chairs, because she was sunburned in strange places, too.
She liked to walk from her co-op to midtown, along a route that led her past several bookstores. One of her favorites was a second-floor place called Books in the Attic, on Madison Avenue. And one of her favorite corners was the New England section. She’d already come across half a dozen interesting titles for her research there, including a reprint of the poems of Lydia Wedge from the 1920s.
She said hello to Mr. Gordon, the owner with the thick glasses, the hairpiece, and the voice that sounded like a parrot with a Bronx accent. She left her bag and briefcase at the counter, and went browsing.
A quick scan of the New England shelves showed nothing new. But her eye was drawn to a red spiral binding on the bottom shelf, among the oversize books. The binding held a thin volume of fifty-four pages, eleven by fourteen inches, with heavy cardboard covers: John Harvard’s Tercentenary 1636-1936. On the cover was a photograph of dozens of men in tall silk hats listening to President James Bryant Conant deliver a speech.
“Just got that in,” said Gordon, peering down the aisle. “Bought out the attic of an old Harvard grad in Chappaqua.”
“Interesting.” She flipped it open.
The book had been published by the Associated Harvard Clubs to commemorate the Tercentenary. It was filled with portraits of the participants and candid shots of the celebration that unfolded in the second week of September 1936.
While Mr. Gordon told her that six people had already looked the book over and that it would probably be gone by tomorrow—a line he repeated a hundred times a day—Evangeline flipped through the pictures. How different the world must have been, she thought, and yet how familiar Harvard looked.
And there he was. The same face she had seen in the portrait in Will Wedge’s office: Victor Wedge, appearing not once but twice in a two-page spread with the heading “Opening the Bicentennial Package, September 8.”
There was a large photograph of the package, wrapped in string and sealed with wax. She read the words “Letters from Alumni of Harvard College in August 1836 . . .” Beneath it was a picture of the faculty meeting room where the unveiling took place.
On the opposite page were photographs showing white-haired old President Emeritus A. Lawrence Lowell and Conant bending over the package, while four gentlemen, including Victor Wedge, ’11, secretary of the Alumni Association, looked on.
Wedge was handsome, with just a little gray around the ears and in the mustache. In the first photo, he was looking down at the package and the envelopes spilled across the table. In the second, President Lowell was preparing to sign something, while Victor held an envelope in his hand and looked at the camera.
Evangeline Carrington studied the man staring at her from out of the past, captured by chemicals and light almost seven decades before, and she wondered: Was he challenging her to figure him out, or inspiring her to finish his work? Whichever it was, she felt now that these people were talking to her, and she had to listen.
She bought the book for forty dollars, then took out her cell phone and called Peter’s office.
But Peter was already on the trail of Victor Wedge. He’d had lunch with his son, now he was walking through the slushy snow in Harvard Yard, on his way to the Archives.
And he was talking on his cell phone with Victor’s grandson. “You called me?”
“I hear you’ve met my brother,” said Will Wedge with a big laugh.
“I wanted to meet your mother.” Peter stepped over a puddle. “If you won’t let me see her, it makes me suspicious.”
“I didn’t send her away. If you’d wanted, I would have set up an appointment.” Wedge’s voice grew colder. “I thought we were working together on this.”
“Then when can I see her?”
“She’s gone to England. She goes every spring. Best time of year there, April and May. She’ll be back at commencement, but I’ll get her number for you.”
“Something’s happening at commencement,” said Peter. “What is it?”
“Just get me something definitive. By commencement. And congratulations on your boy’s admission. I hope my letter did some good.”
By the twentieth century, Harvard alumni no longer needed Mr. Sibley to memorialize them. They did it themselves in the Class Reports.
Every five years, in advance of reunions, alumni were asked to fill out forms: address, occupation, degrees, names of their spouses, birth dates of their kids, and brief narratives of their lives. These were then printed as Class Reports so that everyone could compare themselves with all those kids who had seemed so smart all those years before.
Some people would write a paragraph or two. Some wrote nothing. A few decided, on some anniversary, that it was time to define themselves for friends they hadn’t seen in years. The reports were a unique literary form. When people examined their lives, especially for public consumption, they could produce narratives that might be boastful or modest, despairing or hopeful, regretful or smug, superficial or profound, flippant or serious . . . and sometimes all of the above, all at the same time.
But whether Class Reports came from 1930, 1960, or 1990, they provided fascinating pictures of the human parade. People always remembered where they were on December 7, 1941, or November 22, 1963, or September 11, 2001. And for all the differences between generations, human nature changed little.
Old Class Reports were kept on file at the Archives. Peter ordered the reports for the Class of 1911 and started with the Fifth Reunion Report from 1916.
Victor Wedge, A.B. Home Address: Louisburg Square, Boston, Mass. Occupation: Pilot, Lafayette Escadrille. Current Address: Somewhere in France.
Peter was already impressed. He read on:
Hello to all you lucky lads warm by the hearth with your sweetheart on your arm and your pipe packed with good tobacco. I am in France, repaying Europe for the pleasures I enjoyed on my postgraduate tour from Paris to an ancestral home in the wilds of Northumberland.
Was that the house where Reverend Abraham and Lydia had posed for Copley? wondered Peter. Was it the house that the commonplace book had come from? Had Victor been there?
On the return trip I enjoyed the company of Harry Widener, so you know the name of the ship
on which I sailed.
Victor knew Widener. Did they talk about rare books? Was this the definitive answer that Will Wedge had been seeking for six months? Peter read on:
My survival was a result of dumb luck, good fortune, and the strong hands of two complete strangers, immigrants seeking a better life in America. As all who knew my grandfather can imagine, he and I engaged in many spirited discussions after that. He had been founder of the Immigration Restriction League, and up to the time of his death, I was attempting to change his mind.
I believe that we are Americans, but we are citizens of the world, too. That is why I joined the ambulance corps. Then I heard that Norman Prince, a fine aviating chap from ’08, had gotten permission from the French to form an American flying corps. Some of you may remember that I was a member of the Aeronautical Society, so it should come as no surprise that I went running, especially when I realized that the squadron contained several stout Harvard fellows. And now we fly and fight.
Chapter Twenty-five
1918-1936
VICTOR WEDGE no longer called himself the Earl of Mount Auburn. He had earned a better title: lieutenant. And he was no longer awakened by dreams of the Titanic, because other terrors had crowded out that night from his mind. And he no longer relived the moment when he survived while his friend Widener was left to die.
He had questioned his actions many times afterward. Why had he suggested that Widener go back for his books? Had he hoped to take the seat that would have been Widener’s? Why had he positioned himself as he did, before those men charged the boat? Did he hope to stop them, or go over with them? And once he was in the boat, why didn’t he demand to get off and rejoin the other gentlemen? Because he was no different from any man. He wanted to survive, and he did.
After that, a strange sense of guilt followed him for years. But if he needed redemption, he found it in war, among men who judged him by his actions, in a world where survival was often no more than a matter of chance. He came home with a fractured spine and a Purple Heart earned in a crash landing, and the doctors said he would live the rest of his life in pain, but some pains were easier to bear than others.
On a cold November afternoon in 1918, he came into the Yard by the Quincy Street gate, and before he had passed between Emerson Hall and Sever, he saw it. Where Gore Hall had raised slender Gothic spires toward heaven, twelve massive columns and a giant staircase now dominated the Yard.
Harry Widener’s mother had built a library for Harvard as a monument to her son. Some were shocked by its size and mass, but Widener Library expressed something altogether new in the way that Harvard saw itself.
President Lowell had put it best to a group of freshmen at the start of the war. “If the torch of civilization is to be carried forward, it is for the youth of America to take the place of those Europeans giving their lives. You are recruited and are now in training.”
The vision was as grandiose as the library. But in a world where every new insight into human existence was met with an advance in the science of human slaughter, a library such as Widener was important not only to scholars but to society, just as John Harvard’s books had been vital not only to a new college but to a colony planted on the edge of a wilderness.
At the dedication ceremony, Library Director Archibald Coolidge had borne a single volume up the steps, past the assembled faculty, and into the library. It was not the Bible but Downame’s Christian Warfare with the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, the only John Harvard book to have survived, the last cutting from his tree of knowledge.
Six hundred and fifty thousand volumes had sprouted from it, and Victor was about to add another.
First, he had to meet someone. He hoped that he would recognize her. But when she came up to him and said hello, he had to look twice, because she had pushed her hair under her hat, wore a black coat over a dress, and seemed years older than twenty-seven.
“Emily?” He had thought often of her smile, had seen it often in his mind’s eye.
“You look dashing.” She touched the Purple Heart on the lapel of his uniform. “It’s been years.”
“Six, to be exact. At your brother’s last baseball game.”
“He had three hits,” she said. “A week later, you left to work in your grandfather’s New York office. Next thing I knew, you were writing from France.”
“Now I’m home,” he said. “To stay.”
“I wish Jimmy was,” she said.
“Let’s go.” He offered his arm, and together they climbed the steps of Widener.
The archivist was waiting for them in the Harry Elkins Widener Room, the magnificent repository of Widener’s books, the heart of the library.
Victor glanced at the portrait of Harry looking down on his treasures. Then he placed the 1598 quarto of Love’s Labours Lost on the table.
“Are you certain about this?” asked the archivist.
“It’s in honor of Miss Callahan’s brother,” said Victor. “He died in the Argonne.”
“He’s a hero,” said the archivist. “Giving a quarto in his name is an honor.”
“Indeed,” said Victor. “The bequest should read, ‘In Memory of James Callahan, Class of 1912, May 5, 1890-September 27, 1918. He embodied the best of Harvard and performed the highest of love’s labors for family and friends, for college and country.’”
That evening, they had a dinner in Jimmy Callahan’s memory.
It was held in a private dining room in the Harvard Union and was organized by Jimmy’s old friend, Joe Kennedy.
There were a dozen men from 1912 there, a dozen more from other classes. They talked of the war, which seemed at last to be ending; of the terrifying influenza, which had swept into Massachusetts in September and was abating after killing thousands; and of old times, which seemed happier with each passing year.
Before the meal, Kennedy and Victor made wide circles around each other as they worked the crowd. Finally, they passed close enough that they had to speak.
Kennedy raised his glass and eyed Victor’s Purple Heart. “You’ve done the nation a great service.”
“So have you.” Victor eyed Kennedy’s silk cravat and expensive suit.
Kennedy had already served as a state bank examiner, as president of one of the few Boston banks not controlled by men related to Victor Wedge, and as a director of the Bethlehem Steel shipyard. He said, “Building ships to defeat Germany seemed a good use of my skills.”
“You know,” said Victor, “one night under the Porcellian Gate, Jimmy and I talked about you. I said you’d checkmate the lot of us. I think I was right.”
“Jimmy and I talked there, too,” answered Kennedy. “He said the best way to checkmate you Brahmins was to outwork you. He said we’d come to Harvard to do more than join your aristocracy. He said we’d build a meritocracy.”
“To meritocracy, then.” Victor touched his glass to Kennedy’s.
“To Jimmy,” answered Kennedy.
Victor Wedge and Joseph Kennedy did not become friends that night. That would be for their sons to do. But when Kennedy offered his hand at the end of the evening, Victor accepted, because he had decided on the Titanic that he would accept any hand offered to him, whether it came from a gentleman in first class or an Irish immigrant in a lifeboat.
After dinner, Victor asked Emily to walk with him in the Yard. It was chilly, but they had been warmed by good spirits, good stories, and sentimental speeches.
After they had gone some distance into the shadows, he thought to take her hand, but when he brushed against her, there was no yielding of her posture, no suggestion that she would welcome his touch. So he clapped his hands behind his back and listened to his bootheels clicking on the path.
“I thought there were some lovely sentiments expressed tonight,” she said. “Jimmy would have loved to be there.”
“He was there.” Victor put his arm around her.
She pulled away. “Victor . . .”
“Your brother always told me thi
s couldn’t work. But—”
“What about Barbara?”
“She married Bram Haddon while I was working in New York.” He stopped and looked into her eyes. “It’s half the reason I joined the ambulance corps.”
“Victor—”
“I’m not asking for more than a chance—”
“Victor, I’m engaged.”
He supposed that he shouldn’t have been surprised. It had been six years and they had corresponded only sporadically, but he felt his stomach shrivel at her words.
“He’s in the infantry. His name is Ed O’Hill. We’re moving to California after the wedding.” Emily stepped back and withdrew a locket from around her neck. “My grandmother gave me this before she died. But when I took out my grandfather’s picture to put in my Ed’s, I found a picture of a woman. An ancestor of yours.”
Somewhere in his head, Victor heard the voice of his late grandfather, reminding him that the help was the help. “Ancestor? How do you know?”
Emily fiddled with a tiny set of clasps, and a second compartment popped open. “I don’t think my grandmother ever had any idea this was here.” She slipped out a browned sheet of onionskin paper and gave it to Victor.
He unfolded it, and in the dim light of a gas lamp, he read:
Lydia Wedge Townsend’s small gift of majestic proportion: revealed in two gilt-edged envelopes, one in the safe at Fleming and Royce, the other in the packet to be opened at the Tercentenary. If, by 1936, Harvard has not educated women, if ignorance prevails, Douglass Wedge Warren and his assigned successors are granted access to the envelope in the Fleming and Royce safe and are authorized to deny Harvard the gift.
Victor finished reading and said, “I don’t understand. . . .”
Emily gestured for him to follow her . . . across the Yard, through the Johnson Gate, which now formed Harvard’s portal to the world, past the Unitarian Meeting House, and into the burying ground. It was dark among the headstones. But Victor knew the resting place of Lydia Wedge Townsend, the family poet.
Harvard Yard (Peter Fallon) Page 49