Never mind the release, there was no language in the settlement that prevented Rachel from teaching Leonora about the Communists, who had now inherited all of Poland and much of the rest of Eastern Europe.
Rachel had emerged with Leonora from the passport office, breathing easily for the first time in days: no questions had been raised about the legitimacy of Lee’s birth certificate. A month later, back from her tour, Leonora returned to her studies. Though still just a senior in high school, she was advanced enough to enroll in a class at Hunter College. She gave more than formal attention to her father’s legacy and her mother’s undeviating opposition to the Communists. But she went much further than Rachel. She had rather confused her mother when, a year ago, she put it to her that “the genus, not the species” was the cause for proper concern. Communism was simply the most virulent expression of what her father had fought against. The evil was socialism. Now, in 1956, just weeks after starting her class at Hunter, she came home one day to tell her mother that the college’s undergraduate political organization was “a socialist front.”
“What do you mean?”
Leonora explained. The majority of the students, though most of them were not yet of voting age, were backing Adlai Stevenson in the fall election.
“That isn’t socialism, Lee. That’s the Democratic Party.”
Leonora explained that although it was correct that the Democratic Party had opposed people who were formally Communist, like Earl Browder, the policies of Roosevelt-Truman-Stevenson were welfarist, a form of socialism, “even though it is diluted.”
Rachel listened, and remembered the intensity of her own and Leo’s political opinions when they were seventeen years old. She had in times past described the life of the young Goldsteins in Poland, but Leonora was a better debater than her mother, who had less to say when Leonora insisted that the special privations her parents had suffered in Poland were because they were Jewish. “That burden prevailed,” she argued. “But the burden in Poland now isn’t just for Jews. It’s for everybody, because the state is king. Socialism is taking over all of Europe. Remember, on my summer trip I was there when socialist governments were elected.”
“Well, the same thing will certainly happen in America, if that’s the case,” Rachel observed.
As a high school junior, Lee had won two prizes, one for her studies, a second for the debate team. She began her comment oracularly, but when her mother looked over wistfully at the television set—she didn’t like to miss the Ed Sullivan program—Leonora caught herself. Her humor usually rescued her from solemnity. “Momma, you shouldn’t listen to Ed Sullivan.”
“Is he a socialist?” Rachel looked up with alarm.
Leonora laughed and blew a kiss, aborting her lecture.
While her mother fiddled with the controls, Leonora sat on the kitchen stool and called Josiah. She had promised she’d take his advice. And of course she knew—Josiah didn’t advertise it, but two or three students at Hunter knew it—that Josiah had met the author and philosopher Ayn Rand. Josiah had signed up for the new course in objectivism taught by Nathaniel Branden, and Miss Rand was often physically present, taking questions.
The very thought of laying eyes on Miss Rand caused Leonora to tighten her hands in excitement.
“Folks,” Ed Sullivan came on, “we’re going to enjoy ourselves tonight, but there’s sadness tonight, I’m telling you, because the Soviet army has struck out against the freedom people—the young people in Budapest—who were trying to give freedom and democracy a chance. So let’s have a moment of silence, before we roll up our sleeves and welcome—well, I won’t mention his name until after our moment of silence.”
Leonora, speaking on the phone, her voice lowered, could see over to the television screen in the living room. She said to Josiah that she would absolutely follow his advice and learn about Miss Rand’s philosophy. “But right now I’m going to tune in on Elvis Presley.”
“Me too. We didn’t have much of a moment of silence, you and me, Lee.”
“We’ll do more than that to commemorate the Hungarian freedom fighters. Let’s start right now, and make . . . a silent pledge.”
5
AYN RAND TAPPED THE ASH from her cigarette into the saucer. She sat, as usual, at the desk in her sparely decorated apartment at Thirty-sixth Street and Park Avenue. It would soon be the shortest day of the year. She looked forward to longer light, when spring and summer would let her read at her desk later into the day. But now she needed to turn on the overhead lamp. There were manuscripts on the desk to be read, awaiting her judgment on whether they were fit for publication in the Objectivist newsletter she contemplated.
She didn’t feel lively. She closed her eyes and reminded herself that, by her canon, there had to be a reason for feeling under the weather, and that it was her responsibility to exercise her faculties to identify that reason. It would be immature and slovenly to put off such an inquiry inasmuch as, of course, a finding would explain her unusual torpor.
. . . A finding, not the finding. A finding would be true, the fruit of epistemological fidelity in reasoning. The finding could be whatever nudged a public opinion poll or the jury in this way or that, toward popularity or unpopularity, guilt or innocence. A jury could of course reach the correct verdict—a true “finding”—provided a jury could be got to think!
And why should Americans not think correctly? They were perfectly free to think. It wasn’t, in America today, nearing 1958, the way it had been in Russia in 1921, when Alissa Rosenbaum had enrolled at the University of Leningrad. Leningrad! she snorted. She would think of it as Petrograd. That was better than “St. Petersburg,” as the Anglo world had called the city of Peter the Great for 221 years until Lenin renamed it. To say “Saint Petersburg” you had to utter the word “Saint.” She did not like words that paid implicit deference to religious convention. She had demonstrated in her teachings that religion was nothing more than the “mysticism of the mind.”
Why do not Americans think rationally? Because they do not know how to think at all. This is not so about every American. It is so about most Americans. The girl in the objectivism class this morning had asked a stupid question. What do you do when asked a stupid question? You say it is a stupid question.
She thought of Barbara Branden, her assistant. Dear Barbara. Barbara was the wife of Nathaniel Branden, her closest associate, the true apostle of objectivism, very nearly on a par with me in his mastery of the subject. I saw Barbara wince when I rebuked that stupid student. Will she reproach me tomorrow? I can tell when she is offended. She doesn’t have to say so. My eyes are all-seeing, my ears all-hearing.
Rand snuffed out her cigarette and let a half smile come to her face. Only God could reproach Ayn Rand, and He does not exist. Aristotle might have tried it, but it would have been presumptuous, because Aristotle didn’t get it all correct, wandering off into cosmology, inquiring into prime movers, etc., etc. Several members of my Collective were in attendance at class; they usually are. I think it was Nathaniel who first termed my inner circle the “Collective.” I was amused at the use of one of the most despicable terms by which politics is corrupted brought into use in any association with my philosophy. In objectivism, there is no place—zero place!—for collectivism. My Collective is generally there, at my own classes especially, and at those classes that Nathaniel teaches when I am due to appear at the question period. Of course Nathan and dear Barbara are always there and, most of the time, Frank. Her thoughts turned to her husband of thirty-eight years. Nobody calls me Mrs. O’Connor. And nobody would call him Mr. Rand, though he doesn’t mind people knowing who his wife is. The world will not gather to celebrate the work of Frank O’Connor, artist, though his paintings are pleasant and figurative. I must get back soon to my paper on the philosophical bases of art. But there are other things that take precedence. The whole world, Bennett tells me, wants me to appear to defend my novel. He doesn’t put it that way, “defend” my novel. He was concerne
d, in the first few weeks after Atlas was published, because so many critics were negative—or so they told me: I don’t read criticisms of my work. What on earth is to be gained from doing so? Reinforced knowledge of the arrant ignorance of so many reviewers? I don’t need to do further epistemological work on that matter.
Again she smiled, just a little, pulling out from her neat folder marked RANDOM HOUSE yesterday’s letter from Bennett Cerf, the publisher. He told her that Atlas Shrugged would go into yet another printing, the third. Ayn Rand was not unaccustomed to success. The Fountainhead, published in 1943, had been an enormous success, and the movie based on it, featuring Gary Cooper, had made her the preeminent novelist celebrating the independent will. In the case of The Fountainhead, the will of the architect who, rather than accept unwelcome modifications on his new building, simply tore it down.
But it had been a decade and a half since her great success, and Bennett Cerf wanted to generate as much steam as possible to keep selling Atlas. It would help, his letter said, if she would accept just a few of the invitations to appear on television to talk about her book.
She would not reply to the letter. Bennett would know what that meant. It meant no.
Raising her head, she saw the silent girl standing just inside the open door. “Who are you?” Quickly she remembered. “Yes. You are”—she looked down at her memo pad—“Leonora Goldstein.”
“Yes, ma’am. Barbara—Mrs. Branden—told me you said it would be all right to come by just to . . . meet you.”
“Yes. I have it down here. You may sit down. Over there. Now. You have read The Fountainhead, and of course Atlas Shrugged. Have you read We the Living?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Anthem?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where were you born?”
“Brooklyn, ma’am.”
“When?”
“Nineteen thirty-nine.”
“Where did your mother come from?”
“Poland.”
“How did she get out of Poland?”
“My father’s savings. They bought a ticket on a Polish liner.”
“What did your father do?”
“He was a shipping clerk. He is dead. He died fighting the union Communists in 1940.”
“What does your mother do?”
“She is a janitor. At the courthouse in Brooklyn.”
“Barbara says you are attending college at Hunter. And that you want to work for us as a file clerk and assistant researcher. We have a very small budget.”
“I know that. Mrs. Branden told me. I said I didn’t care—”
“What do you mean you don’t care! Does that mean that money is without meaning to you? Does that mean that the money that you pay to the store where you buy meat and potatoes and the store where you buy books and pencils and notepaper should mean nothing to the people who produce those things? The people who express their freedoms by choosing to produce for others and to live in a capitalist society that encourages trade and exchange and industry? Does all of that mean nothing to you?”
“Oh, yes it does, ma’am. It means a lot—individualism and capitalism and free exchange. I know because of what you have written on the subject—it’s what makes me so eager to work for the Objectivist enterprise. I can’t work for nothing, I didn’t mean that, Miss Rand. I meant that I was willing to work for the least wages just to learn, to be in the company of Mr. Branden and Mrs. Branden, to hope to become a qualified Objectivist.”
“There are only two Objectivists. Me and Nathaniel Branden. Others are called students of objectivism.”
“Well, that is what I want to be.”
Ayn Rand looked at the nineteen-year-old critically. The girl wore a wool skirt and a striped blue shirt and sweater over ample bosoms. Her dark brown hair was neatly tucked back behind her ears. She wore a trace of lipstick on full lips. Her brown eyes looked out directly, her nose and well-shaped cheeks were winter white. Her posture was that of an aspirant. Ayn Rand was familiar with the aspirant class.
“I will tell Barbara I have no objection to your taking the vacant position.”
“Thank you, Miss Rand.”
“You do not need to thank me for looking after my own interests as I see them. You have much to learn. To look after my own interests does not prohibit me from looking after yours. You should change your name.”
“Change my. . . first name? Last name?”
“You can think about changing your first name, though there is no reason for it. Change Goldstein. You are aware that I was born Alissa Rosenbaum. Everybody is aware of it. Now, thirty years later, we have as common terms ‘Randian,’ ‘Rand-like,’ even ‘Rand-worthy.’” She let out a mini-chuckle. “It would not have been convenient to speak of a ‘Rosenbaumite.’ You no doubt have seen somewhere that Nathaniel Branden was born Nathan Blumenthal? It is hardly accidental that his last name incorporates my own. BRand -en.” She looked penetratingly at her visitor.
“I would not want to disguise that my father was Jewish.”
“You need disguise nothing. And I—have nothing further to say to you. You may report to Barbara, as directed.”
“Thank you—” Leonora corrected herself. “I am very pleased to be in the company of—to be a student of—your order.”
Ayn Rand nodded and put a cigarette into her long holder.
6
“IT’S EASY TO REMEMBER how old I am,” Robert Welch, tall, balding, animated, had begun his historic seminar in Indianapolis on December 8, 1958. “I was born minutes before the twentieth century came along.” Welch liked to make his points expansively, as his listeners had abundantly discovered by the end of the second day, when he tied it all together and said that he was founding an organization which he would call the John Birch Society.
True to form, he didn’t let it go with the simple “born minutes before the twentieth century.” He tied it down exactly: the assembly learned that it had been on the first day of December, a Friday, “and when the century actually arrived, I was all of thirty days old.” After that chronological fix, he proceeded with a little jollity, which appealed to Robert Welch and to most of his listeners.
But the levities were infrequent. Mostly there were long stretches of analysis and cadenzas of galvanizing, heroic rhetoric.
“I guess I was a prodigy of sorts.” He guarded immediately against the peril of self-praise with a qualifier: “It was my mother, Lina, who chased after me. Maybe that’s not the right word to use, chased after me. Because I was only two years old when she taught me to read. I could read at that age faster than I could walk or run!”
Twenty years ago—it was easy to do the arithmetic: in 1938, when he was thirty-eight—his pace, when he was addressing an assembly, had been different. He had become accustomed to press briefings, which he gave regularly in Washington and occasionally in other cities. After he began his public career as chairman of the education committee of the National Association of Manufacturers, typically there would be press kits to hand out at press conferences. His answers were succinct, though not his expositions. When his designation as education chairman had been announced in Washington, a press conference had been called. Three reporters showed up. A weathery lady (“Miss Greer”) had covered the NAM for the Associated Press for years and was renowned for her ability to take notes even as her eyes focused unremittingly on the speaker. She asked the first question. “Mr. Welch, what are your qualifications for serving as chairman of the NAM’s education committee?”
Welch permitted himself a smile. A very brief smile—he would not wish to appear unctuous.
“I am a graduate of the University of North Carolina.” He paused. “I was sixteen years old when I graduated.”
That revelation got raised eyebrows and a nod of appreciation. And then the question, Was that the end of his academic training?
“Actually, no. At seventeen I entered the United States Naval Academy. I was seventeen in 1917.” He used that mnemonic d
evice every time he reasonably could.
“So you graduated from Annapolis?”
“Actually, no. In 1919, after two years, I pulled out.”
“Mr. Welch, excuse me,” the first questioner said, “but we have to ask these questions. Did you fall behind in your academic work?”
“I was number four in a class of about a thousand cadets.”
“Why did you pull out?”
“The war was over. I decided to go to law school. The Harvard Law School.”
The president of the National Association of Manufacturers, the silver-haired Eliot Parsons, smiled with satisfaction at the progressive display of the credentials of his education chairman.
“So you graduated from the law school. Did you go on to practice law?”
“No. I pulled out of law school halfway through my third year—”
“I guess I’m not going to ask you whether you pulled out for academic reasons.” Louella Greer was in the inquisitorial mode.
Robert Welch took the bait. A little smile on his face, he said, “I wanted to start a company to sell fudge. I had a recipe.”
Neither of the two reporters asked what the recipe was, though one contributed, mechanically, “Yes. Your candy company.”
“No, my brother’s, actually. I folded my firm and joined his. The James O. Welch Company.”
“Successful?”
“Yes.” This time Welch’s smile was broad.
President Parsons raised his hand and said he thought it appropriate now for the new education chairman to say a word or two about what he hoped to do in the service of education.
Robert Welch started in. He spoke mostly from memory and with considerable fluency. His approach was didactic, but not pedantic. Welch had never taught school and hadn’t picked up the habit of talking like teachers on duty. He was the businessman briefing business associates, merchandisers, colleagues. He wanted to tell a story, and this required that he hold the attention of those he was addressing. There was always a great deal on Welch’s mind, and education was a foremost concern.
Getting It Right Page 4