We arrived at Farnam Hall where eight or ten students were waiting for us. I looked about anxiously. No whiskey, no coffee, no beer, no Coca-Cola, no ginger ale, no cider, no pretzels; just Hunt, smiling his welcome. I made a choking sound. Oh, said Hunt; yes. He asks around, does anybody have anything to drink in his room? Everyone looks around inquiringly, one or two fan out into adjacent rooms, and from somewhere somebody produces a bottle of Old Crow with a downtrodden jigger left in it. The bottle is ceremoniously handed to me by Hunt, in the glass he brings in from the bathroom, from which glass he has just now plucked his toothbrush, which he continues to hold in his hand, until one of his roommates casually lifts it from him, and deposits it on Hunt’s bed, a mattress that lies, for reasons unexplained, across the floor of the same living room where we are gathered; which reasons, from a long knowledge of Hunt, I do not now probe.
After a while, after much social-philosophical badinage I said I was hungry and thirsty, and half a dozen of us went out to forage for refreshment. I suggested we go to the Fence Club, my old fraternity. I wanted, among other things, to greet the resident manager of it, a large, retiring, authoritative figure, who was there even before my brothers John and Jim became members. I had written him a note two years ago, on reading that his son had been killed in Los Angeles at a closed meeting of militant blacks; and, now, his widowed daughter-in-law is being tried, along with Bobby Seale, for complicity in the murder of Alex Rackley. But Fence was closed (at ten o’clock!); and so were the adjacent fraternities, which like Fence are far gone in desuetude, for reasons nobody entirely understands, though everybody agrees they have something to do with the affluence-cum-egalitarianism paradox. We walked on in search of what I now had crystallized as absolutely essential to my immediate wellbeing, namely a beer and a hamburger. Over there at a joint on Chapel Street you can buy sandwiches. It is called The Normandy . . . We used to refer to it as Charley’s, when I was at Yale, Charley being the owner-operator. We became very good friends, and when Charley was busy I used to punch the cash register myself and make my own change, until Charley’s Greek brother-in-law, who was the cook and co-owner, flatly objected on the grounds that such an honor-system could easily be abused by others who, taking note of my habits, might insist on the same lackadaisical privileges. I remember Charley serving me the proscription shamefacedly, but he made up for it a few weeks later when he resolutely declined to press charges against the Yale Daily News, notwithstanding his brother-in-law’s quite understandable insistence that he should do so in protest against the public impression, created by the News, that Charley’s was a restaurant to go to if you wanted to be poisoned.
The tradition at the News is to get the “heelers” quite drunk before announcing to them, at the end of their grueling eight-week apprenticeship, which of their number have been elected to the Board. The ceremony reaches cyclical heights of debauchery every few years as the management struggles, asymptotically, towards the goal of fully anesthetizing the losers’ pain; after which climaxes unsmiling deans tranquilize the next few celebrations, which however begin in due course to rise towards the old objectionable peaks, as the memory of the deans’ warnings recedes. I remember when I was a first-term freshman, too junior yet to heel, walking leisurely down York Street late at night with a friend. Suddenly a young man, stark naked, ran rapidly by us from the opposite direction, followed at sprint-speed by another young man holding a raincoat in front of him, said raincoat obviously intended to overwhelm the nakedness of the young heeler, who in his exuberance (if indeed he had just learned of his election to the Board) had clearly gone too far; even as, in dejection (if he had not been elected), he had likewise gone too far. I was not altogether surprised to recognize the pursuing party, with the raincoat cocked, as my brother, the future senator from New York, who, because of the post-war scarcity of qualified News personnel, had volunteered his services as senior editor once-a-week, while studying at the Law School. This particular week his duties evidently involved (he was either the nearest man around at the party, or else the quickest on the draw, when the heeler stripped and bolted) clothing the nakedness of the heeler-gone-wild; and on they ran, closely followed by a posse of News personnel and policemen.
Two years later, another peak of irresponsibility. I was the chairman. We gave the heelers’ party in my suite at Davenport College, and the Managing Editor, my former roommate Tom Guinzburg, exercising the traditional duties of his office mixed the drinks: which is easy enough to do if you merely dump, as Tom did for the 27 heelers (only 11 of them would be elected), 27 bottles of gin into a barrel, and then, ceremoniously (Tom is a purist), one bottle of Vermouth. After a half-hour of chug-a-lugging, a great raucous was born, and presently the telephone rang. The College Master—demanding the immediate evacuation of my quarters. I called Charley and asked him please instantly to prepare 54 hamburgers, which, unquestioning, he proceeded to do. Then I attempted to bring the elatedly distraught heelers to attention, so that we might file out to Charley’s, a block away. A cherubic 18-year-old finally volunteered to lead the procession, stepped outside my door, and collapsed astride the hallway, resplendently unrevivable, a plastic smile smeared over his angelic face. Bad enough under any circumstances, especially bad tonight because at that precise moment the weekly, full-dress Fellows’ parade, issuing regally from the Master’s Suite next door, routed inexorably down our corridor to the dining room below; and, perforce, the gentlemen had to pass, nay one by one had to step over, the corpse of our immobilized heeler, the personification of Innocence Traduced at Yale. I remember it was Thornton Wilder, as Senior Fellow, who had first to step over the body; he smiled urbanely at me and Tom, as if he had negotiated a mud-puddle. The Master’s smile was less complaisant. We got to Charley’s, and there, as if on signal, all 27 of the freshmen were sick; a few of them taking instant relief on Charley’s counter, others—the chivalrous majority—rushing outside to the sidewalk, giving passersby, however, the indelible impression that Charley’s was a ptomaine-poison-joint; which was the complaint that Charley’s poor brother-in-law struggled to press, but which Charley grandly waived, on kids-will-be-kids grounds. Back at the News, Tom read out the election results to 24 comatose and three semi-conscious bodies, which the senior staff then wheelbarrowed to their rooms over the next two hours, the lucky ones (among them my brother Reid) not discovering until dawn their good fortune; the unlucky ones facing, the next day, the aggravated pain of paralyzing hangovers and rejection by the News. I thereupon modified the election party procedures, having endured a tongue-lashing from the College Master, which was okay; just so Charley wasn’t sore at me ...
Across the way from Charley’s you can buy a beer, but there is no place in sight where you can do both—in a community of ten thousand students! So we sat down at a bar, and one of the boys went out and brought back hamburgers, and then we left to return to the News Building, where Jerry and Rowley were waiting. I said goodnight to my escorts, sank into the back seat, looking forward gratefully to Silence, and dutifully to the pile of manuscripts Priscilla has approved for National Review, on which my own decision is overdue. I am waving goodbye and the car begins to pull out, when one of the boys opens the door, and asks, “Mr. Buckley, are you driving to New York?” Yes, I said. “Can I ride with you?” One has to react immediately in such circumstances. The slightest hesitation is emotionally lethal. “Of course,” I said; and move the papers and briefcases to make room for him, pressing the lever to raise the glass partition.
I recognize him from Hunt’s party. He is eighteen or nineteen, blond, shy of manner. He begins to recount his misgivings about American society, the war, the draft, the profit system, the educational establishment. He is charming, and entirely sincere, but I am very nearly exhausted, and I wish that I had such staying power as Allard Lowenstein, who has never been known to take the initiative in terminating a conversation with any student. My answers are diffuse, banal, and repetitious; and then, passing Darien, I think to int
errupt for long enough to ask where in New York City is he headed. He replies that in fact he is not headed anywhere, that if I will simply leave him any old place in Manhattan, he will go to Grand Central and take the next train back to New Haven. Great God, I said, is he aware that it is past midnight, and trains don’t run after midnight to New Haven? No bother at all he says: absolutely none; he will sleep at Grand Central, and take any old morning train in plenty of time to get back to class. So I bop the lever and tell Jerry to drive to my house in Stamford.
I approach it warily because my beloved Eudosia, who is Cuban, very large, quite old, altogether superstitious, and speaks only a word or two of English (even though she has been with us for 19 years), is quite certain that the gentleman who raped the 16-year-old girl in New Caanan three years ago and escaped has successfully eluded the police only because of his resourceful determination to ravage Eudosia before he dies. Accordingly she demanded, and I gave her, a shotgun, into which I have inserted two empty shells. Still, Eudosia with blank cartridges is more formidable than Eugene McCarthy with The Bomb. Only a month ago a telephone repairman, achieving his DMZ astride a tree-top, was forced to tap the telephone line, so as to ring my sister Priscilla at the office in New York, to report that Eudosia was at ground level, shotgun cocked, and would Priscilla please call her to explain over the telephone in Spanish, the innocence of his intentions? I stop at my garage-study, and ring Eudosia on the house phone, announcing our approach; and she opens the door. I take Scott to my son’s bedroom, fish out a fresh toothbrush from Pat’s larder, leave word with Eudosia to please give him breakfast, and head on to New York.
Now, in the mail, a letter. He writes, “Dear Mr. Buckley: My first reaction to my own presumptuousness last night [a little wooden] should probably be a questioning of my own sanity [graceful], I don’t really know why I found it necessary to take advantage of your kindness in burdening you with my hang-ups; but I’m glad now that you accepted my company, and I think I profited greatly from our discussion [polite], I guess all young people have some difficulty relating to the seemingly gigantic and inhuman American institutions, so sitting in the back seat of a car with someone whom I’ve always considered an institution in himself was, for me, an invaluable experience [as much could be said about sharing the back seat with a bald eagle]. Actually, I’m still having a bit of trouble realizing the reality of last night’s experience—it seems like something out of a ridiculously romantic novel [charming]. Anyway, I’ll always remember your kindness and understanding [perfunctory], and you will always have my respect [unguarded]—not only for being an intellectual institution, but also for being a friend. Thanks, [Dylan].”
I reply, “I like spontaneity, and yours was a wonderfully spontaneous thing to do, in particular since you did not know where you would be spending the night. I only regret that the awful fatigue [self-pitying] that overtakes me after a public performance [self-serving] left me unequal to the challenges you put to me. As an Institution, I have a great deal to learn. Anyway, I am sending you a copy of my recent book [Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?] which, if you will give it a chance, will do much better by you, I promise, than I was able to do riding between New Haven and Stamford. Come by any time. And if my nephew across the hall runs out of toothpaste, think kindly of him.”
I do not know exactly why, but there is no doubting that many students are attracted not so much to public figures (I speak about the opinion-mongers) whose principles are fixed, but to public figures who are willing to take exposed positions that logically extend from theoretical commitments, and, for the most part, in the polemical world, these are: the conservatives—who, accordingly, arouse a special curiosity.
Exactly a year earlier I encountered another student, less worldly by far than my Yale friend. I wrote about him, called him my ideological Pygmalion, even though the bright young editors in my office told me I should call him my “Galatea,” reproaching me for making the Frankenstein-error. No matter.
He is 19 years old, a second-year student at the University of Pittsburgh, all beard and beads from the chest up, and below that, scruffy gabardine. I cannot describe his face, never having penetrated the beard. He sat next to me one evening in the car that took me to the airport after my lecture, another student driving, three more in the back seat, one of them entirely blind, brandishing a tape-recorder and asking such questions as “What do you and your son talk about?” My Pygmalion was interested in grander themes. To say that he comes to politics with tabula rasa would cause the founding of a Tabulae Anti-Defamation League. My Pygmalion said things like, “Like, I jus’ don’t figure how you come and give a speech and say you’re for Vietnam and collect your fee and then jus’ go away, like man, you don’t know what it means, you make war sound cool. I’m not going to Vietnam and have my face blown off or my arms or something, why should I?” I looked at him and wondered (once again from the depths of a post-performance fatigue) just where to start, where to start. I tried the usual analysis. Look, I said, wars are not beloved of the war-makers, at least not as a general rule. Look, I said, wars are because there is something worse than wars, like life in Russia or in China or in North Vietnam. Look, I said, if you don’t want to live in America because you think America is diseased and because America makes decisions that involve other people’s heads and limbs being blown off, you can do lots of things about it, even including leave America. “If I’m going to split, I’m going to think about it first.” I didn’t say that that experience might prove more painful even than going to Vietnam. “I went to the Iron Curtain countries this summer,” he said, “like even to Albania, and they weren’t so bad. On th’other hand”—he speaks gently, like St. Francis to the birds—“I know they didn’t show me what they didn’t want to show me.” He smiled.
We reached the airport in time to have a drink or a coffee before the flight. The others ordered a daiquiri or a whiskey sour or a beer, but Pygmalion ordered a Coke; he doesn’t drink booze. At the gate he said he wanted to tell me “something private.” I leaned over, and what he said was, “Look, if you want, I’ll go on the plane with you to New York and you can explain all those things. Don’t worry about the money; I’ll use my student pass.” No, I told him—abruptly I fear—it’s too late at night. But I sensed that he felt the shock of rejection, so I said, Look, call me up tomorrow, here’s my private telephone number. “When?” “Between two-thirty and three-thirty in the afternoon.” I got to my office at two thirty-five. He had already called, and was told I wasn’t in. He did not leave his number, or call again, and I knew he thought that I had put him on, like the military-industrial complex.
But a week went by and then his easy-soft voice came over, like he was coming to New York to work for Lindsay before the election, and would I visit with him? Of course. He got to the office a little early and slipped into my secretary’s office wearing a weatherbeaten coat, which he took off and plopped smack in the middle of the floor, and then he leaned on the filing cases and made some gentle-talk. Miss Bronson gave him a book of mine and he slipped it between his back and his belt where, I suppose, it rested comfortably; and in due course he came in and we chatted. Mostly about marijuana, because it was on his mind. What’s the matter with grass? Well, I said, nobody knows exactly, but just to take one specific thing, you can’t tell if someone’s had grass, but people who have, lose control and, for instance, they can run over kids while driving cars. Grass doesn’t affect a driver’s control, said my Pygmalion assertively. Yes, it does, I contradicted him, because I know a doctor who says so and who writes for the New York Times, and nobody who writes for the New York Times and is a doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about, right? He smiled his shy smile, and I felt terribly inadequate. We went down to the street and drove off. I took him to the subway to catch his train to Brooklyn, where he was to poll-watch for John, and presently I received a letter from him: “Dear Mr. Buckley: During our discussion on pot you said something to the effect of one of the result
s of legalizing pot would be an increase of auto accidents due to stoned drivers. I must confess that during the time we visited I was completely stoned. The reasons that I smoked pot before I came to see you were several and one was not because I thought it would be cool to see ‘Mr. Buckley’ from a stoned vantage point. But rather a) a complete stranger gave me a few joints, b) I was afraid to carry joints on my trip to see you, c) I met a groovy cop who wanted to turn on so naturally I turned on. I hope that during the time we met I conducted myself in a fitting manner (whatever that may have been) and if so I present proof that a person can control himself while being stoned. Therefore I hope I have dismissed your fears that legalizing pot will increase the rate of irresponsible acts committed by heads. Sincerely [signature]—I thank you most gratefully for meeting me.”
I didn’t hear from him again. Dylan, on the other hand, wants a summer job at National Review.
Enough. It is time for lunch. Pat hasn’t been to Maxwell’s Plum, and it is Peter Glenville’s current enthusiasm, so we have agreed to go there. We set out, walking (the taxis are on strike) in the bitter-bright cold. Peter is always the (most engaging) conversationalist, and, chatting along, we trail behind Pat, who addresses the cold wind like a dogged serf, leaning against it silently, resignedly, her head muffled in a shawl, looking neither right nor left. There, at Maxwell’s, is Rosalyn’s painter-friend waiting for us, and we while away a contented hour in the crazy-attractive Victorian-modern stained-glass decor. Then we walk to Peter’s, on 64th, to look at his New York Times, because we have decided to go to the movies, and to invite to join us Peter’s friend Bill Smith.
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