George, Being George

by Nelson W. Aldrich

  TIM SELDES It was horrible to be thrown out of Exeter. It is probably best that if it had to happen to someone, it happen to George, because he could handle it. The rest of us would have been just horrified at the idea of going back home and saying we flunked out—especially as wartime came, because if you did get kicked out, you pretty much went straight into the ranks.

  GORE VIDAL We were all surprised when he was expelled. The Plimpton playing fields, we thought, carried more weight. The last time I saw George, we talked about his expulsion. (Actually, he always talked about it.) One day he wasn’t there anymore. I only noticed because I knew what seat in chapel he was in.

  SARAH DUDLEY PLIMPTON After George died, I found the correspondence with his father and his report cards. I guess that the real reason was that he was failing. He’d been a naughty boy, certainly, and he had tweaked the lapels of some very self-important people, but the bottom line was he was failing. The Bull Clark thing was the last straw. So it was just a way of the school making a point, setting him up as an example. Not that he saw it that way. For him it was a hugely significant event in his life. He told me his father didn’t speak to him for a year after his expulsion, which devastated him. I think it was at the heart of much of what he did in his career. I think it was a prime motivator—“I’ll show the world—I’ll prove to the world that I can succeed and that they were wrong. I am good.”

  OAKES PLIMPTON It happened right before he was going to graduate, in April or something. So he had to spend the months of April, May, and June with our Ames grandmother in Ormond Beach at Sea Breeze High School, and that’s where he graduated. Then he went to Harvard. Of course, it was a little easier to get into Harvard in those days than it is now.

  HARVARD I

  FARWELL SMITH None of us did very much work the first year at Harvard. Nobody would have thought of working on Saturday or Sunday, except right before exams. We arrived in the fall of ’44 and would be going off to war in the spring. There was a feeling of maybe we’ll be dead in six months. You didn’t dwell on it, but there was a certain sense that we weren’t going to complete Harvard anyway. We had friends from Exeter who were immediately used for cannon fodder in the Battle of the Bulge and got killed. So there was a very pervasive feeling to not take it all very seriously. There was a mix of people. There were some who were working very hard to stay at Harvard, some of whom had come back from the war and perhaps been wounded there. Then there were a lot of people working very hard to not stay at Harvard. There was a lot of drinking. Maybe part of our friendship was that we were all in the same pickle, we were all kind of waiting.

  Dear Daddy,

  As I think I told you over the telephone, I was initiated into Pi Eta. Perhaps I have made a mistake, but there was something about the pleasure of being asked to join a club, that I just couldn’t seem to think properly. But the boys there are a wonderful bunch, as far as I can make out from my two visits to the club. . . .

  PS: I’ve been asked to join the Phoenix SK Club, Daddy—I’ll follow your advice this time. If you disapprove, let me know quickly, because I have a good mind to join. . . . [Fall 1944]

  MICHAEL THOMAS George was mad for clubs. I think it was sheer gregariousness with a bit of Tom Sawyer thrown in. But don’t forget, once upon a time a man was measured by the number of clubs that were in his obituary in The New York Times. You also tended to join clubs that your father was a member of. Certainly Francis T. P. Plimpton was a member of the Century for about a hundred and thirty-two years. Uncle Cal, I’m sure, was a member of the Century. There are things you do that run in families. Of course, George’s father didn’t go to Harvard. Still, I imagine there were multitudes of Ameses in the Porcellian Club, so why he joined the Pi Eta (a jock club, I’m told), and the infra dig Phoenix, I can’t imagine, unless it was something to do with wartime—the Porcellian not taking any new members for the duration, some such thing.

  BRONSON CHANLER The Porcellian Club is the oldest club in continuous existence in the United States, founded in 1791. It is a purely social club, nothing like Skull and Bones and that kind of club, which have to do with virtue of some sort, or accomplishment. It’s based entirely on friendship and sociability, and George became a devoted member after the war. The Latin motto of the club is Dum vivimus, vivamus, or “While we live, let us live.”

  WALTER SOHIER To join the PC he had to renounce the Phoenix, which put him under a little bit of a cloud. I think joining the PC was indicative of the importance he attached to his social position and acceptability at the highest level. He saw an opportunity there and he took it, and I wouldn’t argue with him about that.

  JAMES RIGHTER It’s true that there’s a sort of club hierarchy at Harvard, with the PC being the most prestigious. But what George is supposed to have done—joining the Pi Eta and the Phoenix SK and then, after the war, the Porcellian—was nothing shameful. I’m not sure the PC was taking freshman members in 1944; sophomore year was the rule. And he didn’t have to snub the two other clubs when he did join the PC. Neither of them was a “final club”; in fact, my father joined the Phoenix SK and then the Porcellian, with no sorry consequences at all.

  Dear Daddy,

  I had a good smashing talk with Gordon and we pulled all the stops out. I would look for the best in the future. I have pledged myself to finishing this term up with a bang—in character, honesty, financial problems, and study.

  I’m afraid I’ve fallen into Goethe’s pit for a time, in this question of honesty. That is to be no more.

  I’m going to do my best with finance and my checkbook. The statements have come in, and I shall look them over and let you know how in Hell I ever came to rock bottom.

  I’ve fallen into that rut of self-complacence and no sense of responsibility. I’ve pulled out once—I’ll do it again.

  I’ve sent the Lampoon down and hope you will enjoy it. The next issue looks better by far, but the one here is a start, and I hope carries great significance. . . . [May 4, 1945]

  FARWELL SMITH I’ll never forget going out into the suburbs of Boston toward the end of freshman year and swinging birches. It’s kind of a Robert Frost thing. You climb a young birch and get up quite high off the ground, maybe about twenty feet, until it bends over slowly, slowly, till your feet finally touch the ground. It’s the damnedest thing, especially the sight of George, this long, hanging object, finally touching the ground. It’s just one of these visions I have of George—the whole grace of doing it, but also the hilarity. We were rolling on the ground. It was a beautiful spring day, the wildflowers, the grasses were up, the birches were just beginning to turn, to leaf out. It was a wonderful time of life, the spring before we all went into the Army or the Merchant Marine or whatever. There was a gaiety to it, and George fit into it perfectly.

  ARMY

  Dear Mummy and Daddy,

  Well, I’m safely situated in the Army now, and I must say it isn’t half as bad as I expected it would be. After the softness and late hours at Harvard, it is hard at first to find yourself in a chow line at 5:30 in the morning, and it is hard to work at physical jobs all day, but the life is beginning to become second nature to me and thus, very enjoyable indeed.

  My comrades in arms are pretty nice fellows. They’re a little slow and a little uncouth, but they’re good men and we all get along wonderfully. One of the funniest people I’ve ever met is a huge Negro who sleeps in the same barracks and convulses the rest of us thoroughly. He calls me Long John! My other names are “Slim,” “Stretch” and “Harvard.” No one has called me George yet. The sergeants call me Plimpton and very loudly, and ten minutes later I find myself in a warehouse.

  I found the German pin in the warehouse yesterday, and am sending it along as my first trophy of war. . . . [no date]

  TED LAMONT It was late in the fall of ’45. George was in the Army, and I was still a midshipman in the Navy. We were both in uniform, attending a holiday dance in New York. George was at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, where his regiment
was temporarily stationed before going overseas, indeed the following morning. The dance was at the Plaza Hotel, and everybody was dancing and the wine was flowing. It was getting pretty late, and you know George, let’s face it, had had a fair amount to drink and wasn’t alert in watching the time. We said, “George, you’ve really got to get back to Camp Kilmer because your regiment is leaving to go overseas in the morning.” Phil Potter [another St. Bernard’s boy] and I took him outside the Plaza, and the only way to get to Camp Kilmer we could figure out was to get a taxi. It was snowing. And it was the middle of the night. Taxis were extremely hard to come by. Lo and behold, a taxi drove up and we jumped in and the driver said, “Sure, I’ll take you to Camp Kilmer”—I think the fact that we were in uniform helped. So we drove along; and at length we realized that the taxi driver was dressed in a tuxedo and that he had a lovely girl sitting beside him in a white evening dress. And we said, “What’s the story here?” He said, “Well, my girlfriend and I were at a party uptown earlier, and I wanted to take her home, so we jumped into a cab; but the cabdriver said he was off duty and he was going to the taxi garage. We stayed in the cab all the way to the taxi garage, and when the cabdriver left we borrowed the cab so I could take my girl home, which was the only gentlemanly thing to do.” Off we drove, into the night. We always remembered crossing the George Washington Bridge—the strange look the guy who collected the fare gave us as he looked at the incongruous crew of people assembled in this cab. The snow was coming down onto the highways of New Jersey, and finally the cab ran out of gas, but we were close enough—maybe ten miles or so—from Camp Kilmer. George found another cab, just his luck, and we hitchhiked back to New York. A couple of days later, when I was back at the naval base, there was a little article in The New York Times—cab stolen, garage police investigating.

  ANDREW LEGGATT He was fond of declaring that he had arrived in Europe two weeks after the cessation of hostilities, and then the story went that he was put to work clearing mines; but then they had the better idea of making the German and Italian prisoners clear them. So he transferred to tanks, I think. I believe that’s what happened. And after his tank duty he had the stupefying good luck, even for George, to be assigned to teach social graces and military techniques to his fellow soldiers at a caserna on the Lido, if you can believe it, in Venice.

  Dear Sarah,

  I haven’t had much chance to go birding and I’m pretty sure the Army would frown on such practices and I’m not sure one’s officers would feel very happy about the whole thing if a G.I. began raving about having seen a White-Throated Sparrow. Everybody’s a little too keyed up around here for that sort of thing.

  I have had, though, trouble with two species of birds, the barn swallow and a screech owl. I used to hold my public speaking classes out underneath a huge maple tree just outside the walls of the Caserna. It was a terrible place to hold a class. Italian curiosity is enormous and I usually found that I had more Italians listening than soldiers. There was a pair of goats that was tethered right behind my class and they were prone to making noises at the drop of a hat. A flock of geese held forth in the class area, and the Lido airport was to the rear and on the main channel to the front of my class. It was pretty hard to concentrate. But the worst trouble of all came from the barn swallows. You’ve seen them; they love to skim along the ground, twisting and dodging in search of insects. In Italy, they are the bravest birds you ever saw. They actually would dodge in and out among the students at incredible speeds and many a time they’d grab an insect two or three inches off your nose. What with the geese, the goats, and a herd of cows that I forgot to mention, that class was almost a joke. . . . [Venice, July 4, 1946]

  BERNARD CONNERS I served with George on the Lido. His relationship with his parents was a little unusual, I thought. It was this huggy-kissy stuff and, you know, this guy is nineteen. “Dear Mummy and Daddy”? This is not wartime, but close to war, right after the war. I never understood them. They were very endearing letters to a mother and father, but I can’t help but think that the troops would not have liked it if they read these letters. They were written like they were coming from a fourteen-year-old kid who had just gone away to school. But that’s not a very nice thing to say. He loved his mother and father so much, and he had such respect; it all came out in the letters of his that I read.

  Dear George,

  The Lido Training Center sounds like West Point itself! But don’t, in the flush of discovering the great merits of discipline and neatness and obedience, forget that they are somewhat minor virtues. Virtues, yes, and important ones, but not nearly as important as character and awareness of the dignity of man and intellectual curiosity and independence of mind and judgment—the very things that do, and I hope always will—distinguish Americans from Nazis and Fascists and Communists. They are the things that count more than inculcating discipline, important as discipline is. Much love from us all—

  Affectionately, Daddy

  George with fellow officers, the Lido, Venice, 1946.

  From the collection of Bernard F. Conners.

  BERNARD CONNERS We were young male animals. We had all of the drives, but we were in leadership roles on the Lido, with a visibility that I think mandated that we act like total gentlemen at all times. But I remember these two women we met during the summer of ’46 or whenever it was, and they were deliriously handsome, these two girls. George and I fell in love with them, but they were from very nice families in Italy, and they always had some kind of a chaperone, an aunt or someone, disappointingly. But we spent a great deal of time on the beach with them. We always conducted ourselves with great propriety, but there were moments when we were boys. One night, I came home, and it was very dark in my quarters. I began groping around for my bed, and my hand landed on a leg. It was not George’s leg. Somewhere he had found this woman and had brought her home and put her in my bunk as a joke on me. I don’t know what her profession was, but she was a very elderly woman for me at the time.

  HARVARD II

  FARWELL SMITH We happened to come back to Harvard at exactly the same time, the fall of ’47, and we roomed together in Eliot House. We were in the class of ’48 but graduated in 1950. We had another roommate, Josiah, called Mickey, Child, a Bostonian with a very cultivated accent. I think he went to St. Paul’s School. George was the same old George. None of us had been through anything close to combat or seen a bullet or heard a big noise. What happened is we matured two years, which was probably a positive thing. I’d say that we were not running around getting drunk all the time or going to parties as much. We took our homework a bit more seriously, and we were a bit more cultivated. We drank sherry instead of gin, I suppose. We might have had music in our room. But life had not radically changed.

  BLAIR FULLER Eliot House had a somewhat posh reputation. There was a rather snobbish professor named John Finley who was the housemaster, and he liked to tell you about the glamour of the boys in his house.

  CLEM DESPARD My last year, John Finley called me into his study and said, “I wonder if you wouldn’t mind relinquishing your apartment to a very unusual group of three who want to come into the house. They need a ground-floor apartment.” I didn’t ask him why. It turned out that one was Stephen Joyce, grandson of James, and the others were Paul Matisse, grandson of Henri, and Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, as Finley put it, “the grandson of God.” Finley said he thought it was the perfect union of arts and money. So I had to move up to a fourth-floor room, having been in a first-floor apartment. Sadri Khan couldn’t quite make it to move his trunks down to the basement storage area, so I was asked by his mother’s lovely assistant to do it for him. Sadri had been spending the summer in Ireland working at his brother’s horse farm to get a recommendation to allow him back into college, because he failed everything in his second year. He got all A’s in his first year and all F’s in his second year. The dean said that if he got a good recommendation from some employer, he would consider allowing him back in.

 
George’s calling cards, Harvard, 1948.

  From the collection of George Plimpton.

  WILLIAM BECKER In those days—it’s all changed now and, I think, very much for the worse—the houses all had an individual character. Eliot House, while John Finley was its master, was the literary house and also, to some degree, the social house. George was the ideal Eliot House resident, because he was socially prominent on the one hand and had all the serious literary inclinations on the other. He was bright, and charming, and he played squash and tennis. In those days, the literary faculty at Harvard was mind-boggling: F. O. Matthiessen, I. A. Richards, Douglas Bush, Harry Levin, Theodore Spencer, and Archibald MacLeish, whose famously selective creative writing course George took. Most of those people were connected with Eliot House. Oh, and Jackson Bate, the great eighteenth-century scholar—we mustn’t forget Jack Bate. He lived in the house. It was a heady place, Eliot House, in those days.