H. M. Pulham, Esquire

by John P. Marquand

  “He’s been studying a good deal,” Bill said.

  “Harry, dear,” she said, and she took my hand. “I’m sorry you lost your mother, Mr. King. Mothers mean so much. Harry and I have always been such friends.”

  I think she really meant it. I knew it was what she had always wanted. Bill King sat down carefully on one of the French chairs.

  “You don’t have to tell me what you’ve been doing all the week,” Mother said to me, “because I know. Mrs. Motford said you danced with Kay twice on Thursday night—and now I have a surprise for you. Kay’s coming to lunch.”

  “Coming to lunch?” I repeated. “Coming to lunch here?”

  “Why, you act as though you weren’t pleased, darling,” Mother said. “I don’t see what gets into boys. Do you know Kay Motford, Mr. King?”

  “No,” Bill said, “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “She’s such a dear,” Mother said, “a dear, sensible girl. She’s one of those girls who doesn’t think about herself, or think about her looks. She thinks of other people.”

  “She must be very nice,” Bill said. “That’s a beautiful Inness, Mrs. Pulham.”

  “Oh,” Mother said, “do you know about pictures, Mr. King? I’ve always loved that picture, I’ve always loved the sky.” And then she was talking to Bill King about Inness. It seemed incredible to me that Bill King should wish to talk about Inness, but from Inness he went on to Mr. Sargent, and then Father came downstairs.

  “What are we waiting for?” Father asked. “Where’s lunch? Where’s Mary?” and he walked out into the hall.

  “Mary,” he shouted. I winced slightly. I had hoped that he would not shout.

  “John,” Mother said, “this is Mr. King. We’re waiting lunch because Cornelia Motford’s coming.”

  “Oh,” said Father, “hello, King. Who in blazes is Cornelia Motford?”

  “She’s a friend of Harry’s, dear,” Mother said. “You remember Cornelia, the Cecil Motfords’ girl.”

  Father began to blow his nose loudly. I wished that he would not blow his nose.

  “She isn’t a friend of mine,” I said. “I just happen to know her, that’s all.”

  Father began to laugh knowingly.

  “She isn’t a friend of yours,” he said, “but you asked her to lunch?”

  “I didn’t know she was coming to lunch,” I said. “Kay Motford is a lemon, if you want to know.”

  “Then why is she coming to lunch?” he asked.

  “I don’t know why,” I said, “except Mother asked her.”

  “Well, I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Father said, and he blew his nose. “Where’s Hugh? Where’s the sherry?”

  “John—” Mother began.

  “I guess Harry and Mr. King are old enough to have a glass of sherry,” my father said. “All the boys at Harvard drink, don’t they, Mr. King?”

  Then Mary came downstairs. She had pigtails and a white dress halfway below her knees and her complexion was bad. She curtsied when she was introduced to Bill, and then she looked at me and grinned.

  “Harry’s girl is coming to lunch,” she said.

  “Mary,” my mother said, “Mary!”

  “Look here,” I began, “if you want to know—” I stopped because the doorbell rang, and I felt like the victim of a hideous conspiracy.

  Kay looked like an illustration of “The Little Colonel When Her Knight Came Riding.” Her hair was pulled back tight in a bun, her shirt waist was as stiffly starched as a nurse’s uniform. She was thin, too thin, but her face was pudgy, and her brown eyes were bright and her nose was shining.

  “Hello, Mrs. Pulham,” she said. “I’ve been out walking with the dogs.”

  Then Hugh came in with some glasses on his silver tray, and five minutes later we were in the dining room.

  “Well,” Father called when we sat down, “what are we waiting for?”

  “Grace, dear,” Mother said. “You forgot it.”

  “Oh, yes,” Father said. “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. For Christ’s sake. Amen.”

  It has always seemed to me that family luncheons have nothing to do with anything else in existence. We were all acting, speaking set lines all the time we were at table, and it was the same in the library upstairs. I know the way Father felt now. First he tried to talk about football and then about how different Harvard was when he was there; and then he hit upon the subject of President Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. Father was saying that Theodore Roosevelt was a social menace and that his attack upon self-respecting men, who had made the nation what it was, broke down confidence. Bill agreed, but I do not think he meant it. Bill was always looking at people and listening.

  “Now, that’s a sensible boy,” my father told me afterward, “the first sensible friend you’ve ever brought around.”

  I could not see why, because Bill had not said anything.

  “He’s such a gentleman,” Mother said. “He’s the nicest boy I’ve seen.”

  I don’t know why she thought he was nice, except that he spoke about Inness in the parlor.

  It was my definite conviction that the family had never behaved worse, that they had never been more obtuse and dull. I explained to Bill that Sunday lunch was always awful.

  “It’s like home,” Bill said, “it’s like home anywhere.”

  “Is it that way where you live?” I asked.

  “It’s that way anywhere. God Almighty, it’s sad.”

  “Why is it sad?” I asked.

  “It’s sad,” Bill said, “because they try so hard. It’s sad because we don’t like anything they do. We’re thinking about one sort of thing, and they’re thinking about something else.”

  It was the first time I realized that Bill was clever.

  “Your mother thought she could make you happy by asking that little what’s-her-name to lunch,” he went on.

  That is the way Bill referred to Kay, as a little what’s-her-name.

  “It’s sad,” Bill King said, “because your father is so fond of you that he’s shy. It’s sad because it’s all the way that everything goes.”

  Bill would actually have got on very well at Harvard, I think, if he had cared about trying. It was true that he did not have any connections, but if he had gone out for something besides the Dramatic Club, such as the Lampoon or even the Crimson, and if he had bothered with the people to whom I introduced him and who usually liked him, he would very possibly have made a Club. The trouble was that he did not seem to care to make the effort. When Kay Motford asked him to her coming-out party at the Somerset, for instance, he refused the invitation, and it was the same when he was asked to the Bradburys. At the time when everyone was worrying about Clubs he never bothered to be seen with the right people; he never bothered to do the right thing.

  That attitude of his made me very angry once shortly after Bo-jo Brown had thrown out his hip in the game with Dartmouth our junior year. Bo-jo would hobble down on his crutch to watch the football practice, but he knew that he would not be well enough to play against Yale. Everyone in our entry felt very badly for him. Bo-jo would sit in his room with his crutch beside him and watch Sam Green balancing a football in his hand while he studied for his hour examinations, and if anybody came in Bo-jo would tell exactly how it happened.

  “Listen, boys,” he would say, “I want you to get this straight. There isn’t anyone in the world, not anyone, who could wrench the ligaments in my hip if I was ready for them. That Dartmouth bastard didn’t like me. He was out to get me. He said he was. No one living can hurt me when I’m ready.”

  “That’s right, Bo-jo,” everybody said. “That’s the boy, Bo-jo.”

  “Now, listen,” Bo-jo said. “Here’s the way it happened, and if you don’t believe it, Sam Green will tell you. You saw it, Sam.”

  “That’s right,” said Sam. “I saw it, Bo-jo. We were right on the ten-yard line.”

  We were all on the ten-yard line as soon as Bo
-jo and Sam began talking.

  “And Max called the play through me. He always calls it through me if he wants first down, and I got that slob off his feet and we made five yards. We’d have made ten yards, Sam, if you’d been carrying the ball.”

  “Oh, no,” said Sam. “I don’t think so, Bo-jo.”

  “You would have. There was a hole a mile wide. Well, the whistle blew. The play was over. I was just standing up, relaxed, perfectly relaxed, and he pulled my leg and I went down on top of him.”

  “How do you mean, he pulled your leg?” I asked.

  “My God,” said Bo-jo, “don’t you understand English? I was standing up, perfectly relaxed, and I started to step over him, and he said I stamped on him. You know damn well I didn’t stamp on him, did I, Sam? I was just stepping over him to get out of his way.”

  “That’s right, Bo-jo,” said Sam. “He was laid out flat. Why should you want to stamp on him?”

  “Listen, boys,” Bo-jo said. “I was just walking over him, relaxed, and he grabbed my leg. He got me off my balance, and then the ligaments went, and I sat down on his head. I could feel the whole hip go, just because I wasn’t ready for him. And then do you know what he did?”

  “What?” I asked. Bo-jo always wanted somebody to ask him.

  “He bit me,” he said. “That’s what they do at Dartmouth.”

  “Bit you?” someone repeated, and that was what Bo-jo wanted.

  “You don’t believe it, do you? Well, his teeth marks are still there. Take my pants down if you don’t believe it. Somebody help me take down my pants.” It was an interesting exhibit. There was no doubt that someone had bitten him.

  “Well, that’s the way it is, boys,” Bo-jo said. “And I don’t know what’s going to happen now with Yale.”

  Those were the days when it was important to beat Yale, and the night before the game an unusual thing happened. Bo-jo shouted through the entry at seven in the evening.

  “Hey,” Bo-jo shouted, “everyone come in here.”

  Bill King was in my room at the time and he came too. Bo-jo was sitting in his morris chair and Sam Green was standing beside him.

  “Hello, boys,” Bo-jo said. “Hello, King. You don’t have to go away. The team is coming up. Sammy Lee’s bringing them, and I’d sort of like my friends around.”

  We all stood against the wall, looking at Bo-jo Brown. We all knew that it was an unusual honor. It was a privilege to be standing there, a privilege to be asked to witness such a scene.

  “It’s a lot of bunk, of course,” Bo-jo said, “but I’d sort of like you boys around.”

  “Maybe I’d better go,” Bill King suggested. “There’ll be a lot of people.”

  “Hell, no,” said Bo-jo. “Stay around as long as you’re here.”

  “They’re coming now,” said Sam.

  We could hear the footsteps in the entry, and the hall and Bo-jo’s room were filled with people. The assistant coach, Sammy Lee, came first, an older man who had a beefy square face and blue eyes and very short hair.

  “How’s it going, Bo-jo?” he said. “I brought the boys around to see you.” He put his hand on Bo-jo’s shoulder and turned and addressed the group.

  “Well, men,” he said, “here’s Bo-jo Brown, and I guess we all know how we feel about Bo-jo Brown. We all know that Bo-jo won’t be in there with us tomorrow, and we all know what that means. But there’s one thing that all of you men can do. I want you all to go up and shake hands with Bo-jo Brown and tell him that we’re going to beat the living hell out of Yale tomorrow, even if he isn’t there. All right, men. Shake hands.”

  I felt my breath catch and I felt a lump in my throat. It was hard not to be moved by the simple solemnity of the scene. As the team filed past him, mumbling a few broken words, Bo-jo’s face grew red.

  “Do you want to say something to them, Bo-jo?” Sam Lee asked.

  Bo-jo seized his crutch and stood up and leaned against it. It seemed hardly decent to be present, because his eyes were bright with tears.

  “All I can say is,” Bo-jo said, “give ’em hell. To hell with Yale.” And then his voice broke in a sob, and he sat down and covered his face.

  “Men,” Sam Lee said, “I guess we know how we all feel. How about it? Three times three for Brown!”

  I do not know if they have such scenes now, but I know that I was weeping and that I was not ashamed of it any more than Bo-jo. We tiptoed away, softly and reverently, and I found myself in my own room with Joe Bingham and Bill King.

  “God,” Joe Bingham said, “that’s something I’ll never forget.”

  Bill King lighted a cigarette.

  “I won’t forget it either,” he said. “It makes me want to puke.”

  “What?” I said. “What do you mean, Bill?”

  “It makes me want to puke,” Bill said.

  I was looking at Joe Bingham; his face was blank and shocked. Bill King puffed at his cigarette.

  “Now, wait a minute before you speak,” he said. “Wait and try to think what there is to cry about. Bo-jo Brown isn’t going to die, is he? What is there to cry about? Suppose we don’t beat Yale, what difference does it make? It’s only a football game.”

  Joe Bingham found his voice first.

  “I never thought,” Joe said, “that you were such a son of a bitch. And if you don’t like what I say, we can finish it off right now.”

  Bill King flicked the ash from his cigarette.

  “He doesn’t really mean that, Joe,” I said. “You’re just trying to get a rise out of us, aren’t you, Bill?”

  “You know damn well I’m right,” Bill said. “What difference does it make?”

  “It makes a lot of difference if anyone goes around talking like that,” I said. “People won’t like you, Bill. You’ll get in wrong. You’ll make a fool of yourself.”

  “You know I’m right,” Bill King said. “Both of you really know it.”

  “It isn’t the right spirit,” I said.

  “To hell with it,” Bill King said. “Good night, boys.”

  Joe Bingham and I must have been glad of each other’s company after Bill King had left.

  “Harry,” Joe said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you say something?”

  “I’m thinking,” I said.

  “Do you know what I think?” Joe Bingham said. “I think he’s a sorehead.”

  “Maybe he is,” I said.

  “My God,” Joe Bingham said. “I wish we’d had him at school. I wish the Skipper could have heard him. We’d have paddled his tail off and put him under the pump.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I guess we would have.”

  “But I suppose there are a lot of radical bastards all over the place who aren’t getting anything out of college,” he added, “who just don’t know what it means. Harry, do you know I’m kind of sorry for him? He’d have been all right if he’d had hell beaten out of him in some good school.”

  X

  Boys and Girls Together

  Bill asked me to come down with him to New Jersey during the Christmas holidays, and I do not remember much about it, except that Bill lived very simply with his father and a maiden aunt. Bill’s father was an architect, a thin, gray-headed man with rheumatism, who spoke in a querulous voice. They lived in a shabby, brown-shingled house on a small suburban plot, and they had only one maid. I imagine now, though I did not notice then, that Bill’s Aunt Ellie helped with a good deal of the work, when she was not reading or playing bridge or mending. We used to play bridge every night and Aunt Ellie and Bill’s father would quarrel over the hands, and the quarrel usually was resumed at breakfast lasting until Mr. King took the 8:15 for town. Bill once told Aunt Ellie that she looked like the queen of spades, and she did have that same expression, particularly when she was dressed in black, and she never forgot a card. We seldom played cards at home, and almost never bridge, because Mother always said that bridge was a waste of time, that it was much better to hav
e interesting conversation.

  I thought the first night I stayed there that I should hate the visit, but instead I got to like it very much. I liked the things that both Miss King and Mr. King said, and I liked the way they treated us as though we were grown up. When he was not playing bridge, Bill’s father was usually reading and at table he talked rapidly. He explained that he did so because he would rather hear himself talk than listen to us. When the soup came on at dinner he would say that the Arabs were an interesting race and would continue about Arabia until dessert.

  “Bill doesn’t know anything,” he used to say. “He never reads.”

  “The old man’s hip hurts him,” Bill explained.

  I do remember particularly one thing Bill’s father said.

  “Bill’s clever. He inherits that from me. I’m almost the cleverest man I know. I can learn without working, just like Bill. I’m so facile that I know that all my associates are idiots. That’s why I’m where I am now—nowhere; because I’ve always been too clever and too contemptuous. You can wait and see, if you don’t quarrel with him, what it will do to Bill.”

  Bill and I spent several evenings in New York and there was a spirit in the city which I think was more American than it is now. It was a city undisturbed by war and income taxes—a city that ran without traffic lights. There were big private houses on Fifth Avenue, and Murray Hill was still a residential district, and there were all sorts of places where you could go to dinner, and bar-rooms where there were only men. “Peg o’ My Heart” was playing, and “The Firefly.” When I think of it I always think of music, and now the popular tunes, which still run through my thoughts, are about all that are left of it—“You Great Big Beautiful Doll,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “That Haunting Melody,” “Doing That Society Bear.” That last song was all about cuddling up close to your Vanderbilt and wrapping me up in a beautiful diamond quilt, and about Hetty Green and Rockefeller, and about how Mr. Gould began to holler “Let him spend another dollar.” There were still horses on Fifth Avenue when we sang those tunes. There was still a feeling of permanence, a serene belief that Mr. Gould would always have another dollar.