Mary McCarthy

by Thomas Mallon

  Led upstairs by Domna, to the larger bedroom, the lady poet tried the bed, approved it, asked for a medicine glass, a saucer, an extra pillow and a shoelace; she loosened her corset, looked out the window, inquired the age of the house, the local agricultural product, remarked that she had been born on a farm, and that she would like to press out a skirt—if it were not too much trouble—before the evening session. She then took off the skirt she was wearing, revealing a pair of long pink bloomers, and allowed Domna to persuade her to take a nap while her evening apparel was being ironed. Domna being a slow ironer, and the evening skirt being long and wide, they arrived at the President’s house at seven-fifteen, just as the last poet was leaving; Esther Hoar hastily telephoned commons to save some hot food and a table for four, and to Switchboard to post a notice that the lecture would be fifteen minutes late. The President in his dinner-jacket appeared somewhat distrait, but the guest politely ignored this; she was accustomed to find small colleges on her arrival in a state of tension and disorder, like some small mountainous country on the verge of a revolution. Over the remains of the Christian Brothers’, they leisuredly discussed train schedules, botany, Mennonite customs, agricultural patterns, the Pullman Company, a conversation which tortured the President with the idea that he was being patronized, as though by some stately fellow-passenger in a parlor-car, as they glided into the alien West. It was a peculiarity of this woman poet that she turned her whole body slowly from the waist when addressed by a new interlocutor, as though she were an obliging ear-trumpet maneuvering into position to take account of some strange new noise reaching her from afar; and her discourse also had something of this measured adjustment or focusing. As one of her old friends took pains to assure a group of students later, this was not really a sign of condescension on Harriette’s part, but only a trick of her corseting. Nevertheless, the President, early in the conference, had developed feelings of inferiority; as he sat there, glancing at his wrist-watch, the terrible sensation that he was something infinitely small, at the other end of a telescope, or a very faint, pre-verbal noise assailed him.

  What troubled him even more, however, was the fact that the poets, as he observed them gathered together this first night in commons, showed no inclination to discuss poetry. He had imagined something very different—a two-day Platonic banquet of the mind, from which the students might garner the crumbs at the public sessions—but all he could pick up, when he and his party finally took their places in the dining room, was a clamor of personal allusions that made him fear for his eardrums, a good deal of profanity from the younger members, and several unflattering references to members of his own faculty. The only similarity he could detect to Plato’s banquet was that some of the poets seemed to be tipsy, or “high,” as he preferred to call it, genially, and this, despite the fact that acting on Furness’ advice he had decided to serve only sherry, which had elicited, according to Esther, several very rude comments from the corduroy-clad youth element. It occurred to him that some of the poets must have a bottle in their rooms.

  Yet, in spite of his apprehensions, which he tried to mute even to himself, believing, as he did, in every man’s right to regulate his own behavior, once he reached the age of discretion, that is, when he graduated from college—so long, he silently stipulated, as the other fellow was not injured—the first or Friday night session went off on the whole pretty well. Alma Fortune was mistress of ceremonies; she wore a low-necked black beaded dress and black jet earrings that served to bring out more worldly gleams in her twinkling personality than the college generally saw. Under her sharp eye, a contingent of youths from Ellison’s Verse-writing who were lounging against one wall slowly took seats toward the rear, where their comments, at any rate, were inaudible, thanks to the overhang of the gallery. In Alma’s introduction, she showed to great advantage, thought the President, that gift for the local allusion that was her strong point as a teacher. A light reference to the mishaps of the afternoon, to the saga of missed connections, led her back to the early history of the college, to the frontier, and thence to the Epic, the topic around which the poets had been asked to frame their remarks. She hoped—with a side-twinkle for the students, to whom this was a twice-told tale—that the hex signs on the neighboring barns would serve to ward off all evil influences from the vicinity and not, as the ignorant sometimes thought, to attract them or indicate their presence. With a glancing hint at the dual function of poetry—as black and white magic—, at the role of the daemonic in art (the Mann students pricked up their ears), and at the witchery of Miss Harriette Mansell’s verse, she gaily sat down, tucked her skirt under her and turned her bright, wizened face, dancing with a thousand expectations, up to Miss Mansell, who strode toward the podium. Miss Mansell was wearing a very high-necked black heavy crêpe blouse encrusted with sequins and a long black crêpe skirt. There was a patter of applause from the poets, who were seated on benches that gave the effect of choir-stalls on the right-hand side of what had once been an altar and now served as a stage. Several of the poets leaned over to tap a shoulder or whisper in an ear and receive a quick nod in reply, as though in confirmation—it was apparent that Mrs. Fortune’s speech had given satisfaction. The poets, in fact, indicated that they were agreeably surprised by it, a thing which they made no attempt to hide from the audience: they would not, they rudely pantomimed, have expected to find such tactful literacy here. Having thus consulted with each other, like birds on a telephone wire, they unanimously folded their arms and settled down to listen to Miss Mansell’s talk, which proved to be on Virgil.

  A faint sigh rustled through the faculty. From the point of view of the student-body, the choice was not a happy one. The majority of the students present had never heard of the person being alluded to as the Mantuan; they supposed he was a modern poet whom their faculty had not yet caught up with—a supposition correct in a sense, as Howard Furness, maliciously grinning, remarked in his slippery voice afterwards. A few scowling scholarship students who had not had the good fortune to be educated progressively moved restlessly in their seats, as though fighting being awakened from a dream to the realities of their old Latin teacher and the abhorrent learning-by-rote. There were stifled cries of “Let me out of here,” “This is where I came in,” and boisterous pummelings and punchings, quieted by a glare from a bright Austrian girl named Lise, who was doing her major project on Hermann Broch and The Death of Virgil. Lise’s major project, as the news of it spread around the room, evoked instant respect and attention; heads turned to nod at her approvingly, as though some member of her family had just been mentioned from the dais, and Lise sat blushing joyfully, like a bride. Unfortunately, this dark pretty girl did not understand Latin, which was Miss Mansell’s forte; nevertheless, she strained forward, not wishing to miss a word.

  Miss Mansell did indeed read beautifully; she made a majestic Dido, and from her flashing orb and classic bust something of passion and tragic nobility did communicate itself even to those who were unable to appreciate her control of the hexameter. At a whispered request from Mulcahy, who darted up to the podium, she read aloud her own recent translation of the Prince-of-peace eclogue and followed this with a free sight translation of Dido’s speech, a real virtuoso performance, which she finished with streaming locks, moistened eye, and flushed cheek, to a salvo of applause from the poets, which informed even the soundest sleeper in the audience that something stirring had taken place. Even to students who had never seen her published photograph, it was suddenly manifest that she had once been very handsome and had loved in the heroic style, just as they felt something of the Augustan amplitude in the tidal swell of the dactyl breaking on the shoal of the caesura. To Maynard and his wife, the reading had been “a rare treat,” as they exclaimed, coming up to Miss Mansell afterwards; they knew, however, that they would have to pay for it later, at the bench of progressive judgment, for they could see, two rows in front of them, the head of the Social Sciences division vigorously conferring with the head of N
atural Sciences—to these two Robespierres there could be no question of the President’s connivance in this reactionary coup of the Literature department; and it was a mark of Maynard’s moral courage, therefore, that he went up, publicly, to shake the hand of the victorious Calliope.

  Fortunately for the President, there was an irregularity in the solid front of the Social and Natural Sciences. Dr. Muller, the historian, one of the pillars of the college, had listened to the lecture with the greatest approval. “Fine stuff,” he called out to the President, patently holding him responsible also. Dr. Muller, like many historians, had certain regressive tendencies arising from the nature of his subject, which called forth a tolerance for the past, in the same way that some occupations, like sandhogging, give rise to their own occupational diseases. He had just been reading an article in a learned journal which strove to show, by quotation, that Virgil, far from upholding the centralized tyranny of Augustus, had been secretly a republican oppositionist, giving his poetic sympathy, not to Aeneas, but to the conquered and unfortunate, exemplified by Dido. Hence, he had been in the throes of scholarly anticipation from the very first moment of the lecture, so much so that he had paid little heed to the stated theme—the problems of a heightened language raised by the epic form—and had concentrated all his powers of attention on the moment when, after the lecture, he would sequester the handsome Miss Mansell and put to her the question that was throbbing through his brain: Could the Prince-of-peace eclogue, in the light of these discoveries, be now considered spurious or was it to be read, rather, as a powerful example of irony? When in due course, after the lecture, he did have the opportunity of laying the problem before her, he met with a set-back. Perhaps he had spoken too fast, being, like a boy, so full of his spermy question that he crammed it all into one sentence, without consideration for the lady’s slower pace. But either Miss Mansell did not hear him correctly, as she leaned slowly sideward, like a tronometer, to apprehend his presence, or she did not perceive the cogency of his question for the understanding of the phenomenon of imperialism in our own times. Arrested, no doubt, in an historical phase of the development of language, like a magnificent fly in amber, she took him to be offering some new and purely verbal definition of irony and directed him to somebody named Empson—if he caught the name rightly—and his treatment of the pastoral mode. And her answer was so richly complete in itself, so rounded and duly meditated, that he did not have the heart or the temerity to put the question again. He forgave her, very shortly, from the brisk egoism of his nature, as he had learned to forgive other provocative lecturers and fine students who failed to live up to their promise. Indeed, at the next week’s meeting of the Social Science division, he administered a rebuke to his colleagues; granting, as he said, a certain bias in the handling of the poetry conference, an exception had to be made in the case of Miss Mansell, who had shown, he thought, a fine understanding of the vital relation between democratic principles and sanity in art.

  The second and final speaker of the evening was a very old poet, clean and fresh as a rose, a bank president in private life, very mild and courteous, with a gentle quavering voice and a tight set of the long soft lips, like a Presbyterian pew-holder. He had a style of old-fashioned, elaborate compliment, in which there could be detected the flourishes of an antique penmanship and the scratching of a bookkeeper’s quill. He began his address with a series of tributes, to Mrs. Fortune, “our gracious Janeite,” to the President, the student-body, the college as a whole, and to each of the poets on the platform, individually, with a special gallantry toward the two ladies; as his keen powder-blue eye passed over the audience, he did not omit favorable mention of “our audacious friend, Dr. Mulcahy,” or of “our young friend, Mr. Herbert Ellison,” or of Miss Domna Rejnev, “whose verses we have been reading with astonishment.” These compliments, under which some of the recipients could be seen to bridle, amazed the student-body, which was given the illusion of having been inducted, personally, into some venerable temple of commerce, treading, like new depositors, reverently behind the soft, padding footfalls of the manager of this very old and reliable firm, which kept nevertheless a spry pace with the times and for which, as the slogan had it, no account was too small. The President, however, shifting uncomfortably on his haunches on the cushionless bench and smiling an appreciative smile, felt a country boy’s wariness of this old party, who reminded him of the original John D. Rockefeller dipped in attar of roses; he made a jovial note to watch his mental pocketbook in the transactions to follow.

  The lecturer, pinkly smiling, announced that he would speak on Lucretius, which caused a flurry of interest among the poets on the platform: was this the long-awaited beginning of a new phase? They leaned forward tensely, alit with professional excitement. In the audience, the President frowned; the faculty was uneasy. Had the poets conspired among themselves to make game of the students? Feeling the President’s eye on him, Furness turned and flung out his hands in a gesture that pleaded his innocence. He, like many of his colleagues, was recalling, with some disquiet, the old poet’s bland question at the sherry party—“Is this the fabled college where everything is run backward?”—and the air of gentle disappointment with which he bore the news that no, indeed, it was not, that the courses ran normally from the immediate past to the present, Mrs. Fortune interjecting, proudly, that her modern novel course, as distinguished from Mr. Van Tour’s and Mr. Furness’, began with Jane Austen and stopped with Henry James. Yet the idea that Jocelyn was being “had” subsided in all minds but the President’s as the lecturer proceeded to block out his subject with the greatest care for the students’ understanding. He read his speech from a prepared manuscript, looking up from time to time to insert a date or an historical footnote, and making no sorties into the original text. Indeed, he admitted to an “otiose” preference for reading the philosophers in translation, a side-remark that made the President long to tell him to take his tongue out of his cheek and put it where it belonged, into his utterance. For the truth was that, contrary to all expectations, which were based on the notorious “difficulty” of his verse, the poet’s essay had an innocuous and guileless character, like a schoolboy’s précis or a junior-encyclopedia article on its subject—there was nothing new in it, as the Literature department began to murmur among itself, with puzzlement. His talk was, in fact, so clear that the best disposal the Literature faculty could make of it was to assume that they had not understood it, that of the proverbial four levels of meaning that they so stringently enforced on their classes they themselves had seized only on the literal and had failed of the moral, the allegorical, and the anagogical. Or had Consy Van Tour seen something of the second in the allusion to Democritus and the atom? Was the poet, as Consy divined, suggesting that the atomic bomb represented today’s most promising theme for a philosophical epic? Like Dr. Muller with Miss Mansell, Consy could hardly wait for the speech to end in order to tell the speaker of the interesting work being done in his radio verse drama seminar on the hydrogen bomb, bacillic warfare, interplanetary rockets; he turned full around in his seat and nodded triumphantly at his friend, Ivy Legendre, of the Theatre, who had been trying to persuade him that science fantasy was hick.

  To the Natural Science Division the talk was not, per se, objectionable. Lucretius, Democritus, Pliny—these were names of honor with them; and they sat back contentedly, once they had made sure that the speaker was not going to use Lucretius to attack modern science, something always to be feared when the names of the ancients were invoked. They were glad, moreover, to be able to give their tolerance to at least one part of the conference, for they found themselves in a peculiar position vis-à-vis their best students, who were enthusiastic about literature and rated very high in it on the achievement sheets. This strange morganatic alliance between the Literature faculty and the top science majors, most of whom were boy prodigies, was always upsetting to the professional scientists, and at no time more than now when to their discomposure, as they appl
auded, they heard their young physicists and chemists pronouncing the talk elementary. But this was a minority judgment. The majority, hearing the poets’ applause, more prolonged and respectful than what had been given Miss Mansell, concluded, like their teachers, that something must have been lacking in their own understanding.

  This led to an unfortunate incident during the question period. A very literal-minded girl, the terror of her instructors, with pink snub nose and flaxen braids, dressed in a laced bodice like a peasant in an operetta, got up and boldly asked the poet whether he was a primitive. “A primitive, my dear young lady?” pondered that Mr. Turveydrop. “What can you mean?” He looked quizzically around him, as though for assistance. “Do you wish to know whether I am an aboriginal or a savage?” The poets laughed. “Or do you mean to imply that I am primordial, that is, ancient?” The President ground his teeth, but the girl, blushing in great red disks, stood her ground, as she had stood it in a whole series of Sophomore Orals. “No,” she said firmly. “I meant that your lecture was very simplified, like a primitive painting. And I thought you might like to tell us whether this was deliberate.” In the front row, Furness groaned. “Touché!” exulted Domna Rejnev, beside him. Mulcahy caught her eye and winked. Across the whole short front row that was the department passed a sudden smile of pride: one of their worst students had just voiced the question that no critic, for twenty years, had dared voice even to himself. A red-faced, white-haired poet on the platform unexpectedly slapped his knee, but the majority looked frostily disapproving. “Deliberate?” repeated the poet, rather angrily. “I’m afraid I cannot tell you. But there is nothing in art which is not studied.” The girl opened her mouth again and struck a rather “cute” pose, putting one finger to her open mouth and scuffing her ballet-slipper along the floor, a pose which the department sadly recognized as the sign that she had outlived her moment. Alma Fortune rose from her chair on the platform. “Sit down, Gertrude,” she ordered, but kindly. “We mustn’t tire our speaker.”