H. M. Pulham, Esquire

by John P. Marquand

  “Mother,” I asked her, “do you love me better than Mary?”

  “Why, darling,” she said, “I love both my dear little children equally. No matter how many children I might have I would love them all equally.”

  “Mother,” I asked her, “were you and Daddy surprised when I was born?”

  “No, dear,” she said, “because we knew that you were coming.”

  “How did you know?”

  “There are ways of telling, dear,” Mother said.

  “Were you glad when I came?” I asked. “What was the first thing that you and Daddy did when I came?”

  “The first thing?” Mother said. “Let me think. I believe that the first thing that Daddy and I did was to send Hugh down to the telegraph office with a message to enter you at St. Swithin’s School.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “So that they would surely have room for you, dear. It’s hard for some boys to get into St. Swithin’s.”

  “Did Father go there?” I asked.

  “No, dear,” Mother said. “You see, your father came from Methuen and I came from Hingham.”

  “But why didn’t Grandpapa send him?” I asked.

  Mother sighed and put a few drops of cologne on her handkerchief.

  “I don’t think your grandpapa knew how important it was, dear. You see, Methuen is a long way from Boston, and Father did not come to Boston until he was all grown up and in Harvard, and Father and I want you to have a happier time than he did, although a great many people at Harvard liked him because he was very strong.”

  “Why did Grandpapa live in Methuen?” I asked.

  “Why, he worked there, dear,” Mother said. “He made things in Methuen.”

  “What sort of things?”

  Mother put some more cologne on her handkerchief.

  “Grandpapa Pulham made hooks and eyes in Methuen for ladies’ dresses, darling,” Mother said, “and you must never be ashamed that he made such useful things. That’s why Grandmama gave the big stained glass window to the Unitarian Church in memory of him.”

  I stood beside the chaise longue and she threw her arms around me and held me very tight for a minute. Her cheek, very white and soft, was against my cheek. Even when she was old Mother’s skin was clear and beautiful.

  “Harry, dear, we want you to be happy,” she said, “a happy little boy and then a happy man, and you must always tell Mother if you aren’t happy and tell Mother just what you think about everything, because mothers want to know. You are happy, aren’t you, dear?”

  I like to think that my own generation is more sensible and that we do not bring our children up to be snobs and that we are pretty well over worrying about such things. For my part, I always like fresh points of view. Bill King, for instance, came from New Jersey and went to some unknown preparatory school and did not know anyone when he went to Harvard, and yet I still maintain that he is the most brilliant member of our Class. Sometimes I think that I shall not mind if my son George does not make a Club at Harvard.

  A conversation comes back to me which I carried on at about this time with Jack Purcell, but which would never take place at present. The family used to be very pleased when we were asked to play with Jack and Joy Purcell. Jack and I used to make spiders out of pieces of cork with legs made from his mother’s hairpins. We had learned how to do it out of the American Boy’s Handybook. We also learned a good many other things from that volume, such as the capture, care and feeding of field mice.

  We were making spiders when the subject of our parents came up.

  “Your father isn’t much,” Jack said.

  “Oh, twenty-three,” I said, “twenty-three, skidoo.”

  “He’s a mere adventurer.”

  “Who said he was?” I asked.

  “My mother said so,” Jack said, “last night. She said your mother and father are nouveau and mere adventurers.”

  “Twenty-three, skidoo,” I said again, but I have always liked Jack Purcell. He is one of my oldest friends, and two years ago the Purcells asked Kay and me to dinner at Magnolia.

  VI

  I Consider Mr. Chips

  Three years ago I started to read The Education of Henry Adams. In fact, I have worked on it ever since I purchased a special reading light which would not keep Kay awake. It was my idea to read a worth-while book fifteen minutes every night before I went to sleep, since reading in the daytime hardly ever seems to be possible. But there were difficulties, for Kay developed a habit of calling across from her bed to mine, usually when I was in the middle of a very hard sentence, and if she did not, I would find myself growing sleepy. My mind would suddenly grow blank and I would discover that I had read a great many pages without absorbing their meaning, and then I would be obliged to go all over them again.

  The last thing which I propose is to compare myself to Henry Adams, or indeed to any other member of the Adams family, who still continue to be the most brilliant family in America. Mr. Adams has given me a great deal of food for thought, although I do not like his cynicism. With all due respect to him, I think it is best to take life with a smile and to look up, not down, and to look forward, not back, although that is just what I am doing now, but I am looking backward with the idea of looking forward. However, what impressed me most about that book was how little Mr. Adams’ surroundings changed from the beginning to the end of his life, for he ended just where he started—in the horse-and-buggy age, without the addition of very much plumbing. Yet here in my own life, which is not entirely over, I am already in an entirely different world. I was thinking of it the other evening, after I had put Henry Adams down and switched off the light.

  “Harry,” Kay called to me, “are you awake?”

  “Get a horse,” I said. I was thinking of our first automobile, a Rochet Schneider, which had a canopy top with tassels on it.

  “Get a horse,” the boys were shouting, as Father drove through Brookline village. “Get a horse!”

  “Harry,” Kay asked me, “are you talking in your sleep?”

  “No,” I answered. “What is it, Kay?”

  “Did you remember to fix the thermostat?”

  “Yes, I fixed it,” I said.

  “I should think it would be worth while to get a thermostat with an electric clock, so that we wouldn’t need ever to bother about it, and I don’t see why we need a choreman any more. There aren’t any ashes.”

  “There’s the garbage,” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” Kay said. “I forgot about the garbage.”

  “Get a horse,” the boys were shouting, and the Rochet Schneider snorted and palpitated beneath us, so that the single brass lamp on its dashboard scintillated in the sunlight.

  The strange thing was that we all knew the boys were right. There was no way of telling that we as human beings were entering another epoch, as definitely different as the glacial period was from the age of the dinosaurs. All at once everything happened. Everything changed, before we knew it had changed.

  There are certain things, however, in human contacts which have not changed. A good deal of life as I know it really began when I went to boarding school. When I left Westwood one September afternoon, home grew smaller and faded into the clouds, like the land when you leave for Europe. After that I was always going away and always coming back, but whenever I came back part of me did not belong there.

  “Father’s going to take you in the Winton,” Mary said.

  My trunk was on the floor of my room with all the things I needed, such as a blue suit and stiff white collars and two laundry bags and a shoe bag and blankets and a comforter and sheets and pillow slips and a Bible and stockings and corduroy knickerbockers.

  “Father told Patrick this afternoon,” Mary said, “and Patrick has been working on the engine all day.”

  Then Hugh came in. He opened the door without knocking.

  “Now, now, now,” Hugh said. “What would Madam say if she knew you were in here, Miss Mary?”

  “Oh,
go bunch,” Mary said.

  “Such a way for a little lady to talk,” said Hugh, and he smiled at me. “They will beat the living daylights out of you, Master Harry. I know what they did to Master Alfred Frothingham, who was a much nicer-spoken young gentleman than you. Master Alfred walked lame when he came back for the Christmas holidays.”

  Hugh liked to talk of the Frothinghams, a much better place than his present one.

  “Oh, go chase yourself,” I said.

  “Now, now,” said Hugh, “such a way to talk, such language. The young gentlemen tied Master Alfred up by his thumbs. Master Alfred told me so himself. And then they put weights on his feet, and they stuck red-hot needles in Master Alfred, so that his flesh all burned and smoked and sizzled like a steak over coals, and then they beat Master Alfred with cricket bats.”

  “Oh, go soak your head,” I said. “They don’t have cricket bats in America.”

  “That’s right, Harry,” Mary said. “Hugh is nothing but a great big nasty liar. They don’t have cricket bats in America.”

  “Excuse me, miss,” Hugh said. “Baseball bats, I should have said. Master Alfred still had lumps on him when I left the place, horrible big welts all over him, and holes where they inserted the needles. Master Alfred was covered with running sores.”

  “Ach,” I heard Fräulein say to her, “Mrs. Pulham, you are so brave!”

  “Fräulein, dear,” my mother answered, “I’m only doing what anyone ought to do.”

  I know only too well that there is nothing like a mother, and a man, I think, understands this better than a woman. That is why the best tributes to motherhood come from men. I recall particularly Whistler’s portrait of his mother, which always gives me a burning feeling in my throat when I see it, and that poem of Kipling’s about “Mother o’ Mine.” I have been told that it is sentimental, but I think that it is very true.

  Those nervous headaches of hers, which grew worse as she grew older, were particularly severe that September. I remember being struck by my father’s expression when he thought she did not see him. He looked puzzled and not entirely sympathetic, and once when I was walking down the hall, their door was open and I heard Father say:

  “Now, Mary, he’s only going to school.”

  The morning before I left I was sent to say good-by to everyone on the place, to Patrick and then to Charley and Joe in the garden, and to the two Italians who came in by the day to help, and then to Mr. and Mrs. Roland, who lived in the cottage by the gate. I had been aware for some time that my status with all of them was altering, and I was embarrassed when the men wiped their hands before they shook hands with me. I even felt constrained with Bob Roland. Bob was the superintendent’s son and just about my age.

  “Well,” I said, “so long.”

  I saw Bob looking at my new clothes. We stood there, eying each other like strangers, although we were very good friends.

  “So long,” Bob said.

  “I’ll see you at Christmas,” I told him.

  It was a fine September day. The sunlight was soft, and a breeze was blowing through the elm trees.

  “We’ll all miss Master Harry, madam,” Hugh was saying.

  Patrick was cranking the Winton. It would cough and then it would stop, and he would run over to the steering wheel and move the spark and the gas, and then he would crank it again and run back to the steering wheel. Finally the engine responded, and he crawled into the tonneau in back. Father pulled his cap over his eyes and pulled on his leather gauntlets.

  “All right,” he called. We had to speak very loudly, and Mother waved. I had a queer feeling in the pit of my stomach—but there is no use describing what everyone has felt.

  “Don’t fall out,” Mother called. “Hold on tight, darling.”

  I can remember the sun and the colors of the trees and all the country roads. There were no roadside stands or gasoline pumps and no advertising signs. I remember the yellow trees in Weston and how a horse in front of the general store reared and broke his bridle. I remember the piles of pumpkins and squashes outside the barns near Sudbury and the carts full of apple barrels. I was tired when we got to Worcester, where we stopped for the night.

  “Well,” said Father in the hotel dining room, “you’ll be there tomorrow.”

  I had never been with him for such a long time in my life, but we did not say much.

  “I wish I were going with you,” he said. “You see, I never went to boarding school. They were newfangled things in my day. Now everybody goes.”

  We did not reach school until about four the next afternoon. We were delayed by two blowouts and a puncture on the Springfield Road. All that road is paved and unfamiliar now, but when I was there last the school had not changed much. There were some new buildings, but that was all. There was the same smell of oil on the floor and the same impersonal and cleanly, but human, smell coming from the cubicles of the small boys’ dormitory.

  Parents were helping put things in bureau drawers and everyone was very cheerful. Father had taken me downstairs to shake hands with Mr. Ewing, and one of the Third Form boys had shown us where I was to live.

  “Well,” Father said, “I guess that’s about all. You’ll write me if you want anything, won’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, all right,” Father said. “Is there anything we’ve forgotten?”

  “The coat hangers,” I said.

  “I’ll send them by express,” Father said, and he blew his nose. “That’s all, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t bother to go down with me,” Father said. “You’d better go to the lavatory and wash your face and hands—in good cold water. Use a lot of good cold water. There isn’t anything else, is there?”

  “No, I guess that’s all,” I answered.

  “Well, behave yourself.” My father looked around the dormitory and blew his nose again. “And have a good time. You’re going to have a fine time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And if you don’t,” Father said, “don’t let anyone know it. Well, good-by, Harry.”

  If you have not prepared for college at one of the older and larger schools, with traditions and a recognized headmaster, you have missed a great experience. You have missed something fine in intimate companionship. You have missed that indefinable thing known as school spirit, which is more important than books or teaching, because it lasts when physics and algebra and Latin are forgotten. The other day I tried to read a page of Cicero and I could not get through a single line, although I got a B on my Latin entrance examination, but I can still remember the school hymn word for word. I am quite sure even today that I can tell, after a five minutes’ talk with anyone, whether he attended a public or private school thirty years before. I believe that I can go even further than that. I can tell whether he went to a really good boarding school or to a second-rate one. The answer is always written in his voice and manner. That is why school is so enormously important.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to my school, and I believe it was the best school then and it is the best school now. No matter what else has happened to me in the way of failure and disappointment I am glad that I went to St. Swithin’s. More than once the particular thing I learned there, which you can call manners or attitude, for want of better words, has helped me in my darkest moments, and I have Mr. Ewing to thank for it, my old headmaster.

  “In order to be a leader,” Mr. Ewing used to say in chapel, “and to take the place which is made for you, you must learn first to obey and serve.”

  This sort of thing is hard to express to anyone who has never been there. I have tried to explain it to Bill King more than once. I told him on one occasion that I was sorry that he had not gone to St. Swithin’s, that he would have been quite a different person if he had gone there.

  “You’re damned well right I would have,” Bill said, “but I like to think I couldn’t have stood it.”

  “You could have, Bill,” I told him, �
�if you had started in the First Form. The way to get the most out of school is to start at the beginning. Very few boys are taken in after that, because they don’t get the most out of it.”

  “You mean, they have minds of their own,” Bill said.

  “That isn’t what I mean at all,” I told him. “The Skipper can’t do a proper job on a boy unless he has him all the way through.”

  “Skipper!” Bill said. “Can’t you stop calling him the Skipper?”

  “That’s all right,” I told him. “The graduates of any good school have a nickname for the headmaster. I wish you really knew the Skipper, Bill. If you really knew him you wouldn’t indulge in so many half-truths.”

  “I do know him,” Bill said. “I crossed the ocean with him once.”

  “That isn’t really knowing him,” I said. “You can only know the Skipper when he’s up at school doing his job. He’s different anywhere else.”

  “Wherever that old jellyfish is,” Bill said, “he’s a conceited, pandering poop.”

  “My God, Bill,” I said, and I had to laugh. “You just don’t know the Skipper. He hadn’t been more than a few years out of Harvard when he came there. You should have seen him on the football field! The Skipper’s sixty now and he still plays games.”

  “Mr. Chips,” Bill said. “Good-bye, Mr. Chips.”

  “And what’s wrong with Mr. Chips?” I asked.

  “What’s wrong with Mr. Chips?” Bill said. “Frankly, everything was wrong with Mr. Chips.”

  “You aren’t talking sense,” I said. “I can think of nothing finer than Mr. Chips’s last remark. ‘Children?… I’ve had hundreds of them, and all of them are boys.’”

  “Don’t,” Bill said. “You’ll have to go away if you make me want to cry. Could anything be more unnatural than herding a lot of adolescent males together who ought to be with their parents and their sisters and their friends’ sisters, learning the usual amenities of life?”

  “The school wasn’t unnatural,” I said. “We were all able to see family life there, Bill, a good deal happier and more successful than what lots of us saw at home.”