H. M. Pulham, Esquire

by John P. Marquand

  “What’s that you said, Bo-jo?” I asked.

  “Are you shell-shocked?” Bo-jo inquired again. “I said I’d see a lot of you now you’re back.”

  It was the first time I had had to face it, and I cleared my throat. The train was coming near to New London. I could see the white houses and stone walls and old apple trees and glimpses of the Sound.

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I’ll be working in New York. I’m going into the advertising business.”

  “The advertising business!” From the way Bo-jo Brown looked at me I could tell what he was thinking.

  “Suppose you start advertising a cake of soap or a diaper pin!” Bo-jo laughed so that everyone in the car stopped talking. “My God,” he said, “wait till I tell the boys! You can’t do that.” I was not at all sure that I could either.

  I had an idea that something tremendous was about to happen to me when I left the train, although everything was just the same, the smell of everything and the way the lights shone through the dusk, and the shape of the houses and the faces on the street. It all caught me by the throat and left me shattered. There is not much use in going over it. There was a time when I used to think that all my mental struggles and emotions were unique, that such problems had never been faced by any other person. Now that I am older I know there is nothing that is new.

  “Darling,” Mother said, “how thin you look and what a dirty uniform!”

  Father, I remember, was almost shy. He kept looking at me curiously and half respectfully, as though I were a stranger. He seemed very anxious to know if I had been in any fighting. I could not see why it was important to him whether I had been at the front or not, until I found that other fathers were telling anecdotes about their sons. Father and Mother looked older and smaller, but Mary was entirely grown up—tall, dark and quite pretty.

  “Harry,” she asked me, “did you kill any Germans?”

  “Yes,” I said, and I think it was the first and almost the only time that Mary was really proud of me. “As a matter of fact, I got the D.S.C.”

  I was rather ashamed of myself when I alluded to it, and I only did so because I wanted them to be pleased. I went upstairs and found the medal and the citation in my bedding roll, wrapped up in a pair of dirty socks, and I gave the medal and the paper to Mother.

  “I want you to understand,” I said, “that it doesn’t really mean anything. I thought I ought to tell you about it in case you found out some other way.” I had to go on now that I had started. “It wasn’t anything,” I said. “If you get me a pencil and paper I’ll show you. We were just out there.” It made me feel sick inside to tell about it and it reminded me of Bo-jo on the train. “We were in here, across the river, like this, and they were over there and over there.”

  There was one thing that I did not want—to be thinking about it always, building it up in my mind, repeating it. I did not want my life to stop with just that moment. I only spoke of it so that the family might have some satisfaction, since it seemed to me that it was about all that I could do for them. If it had not been for that medal I do not believe that I should have got back to New York, or that I should ever have seen Marvin Myles again.

  The thing to do was to tell them and get it over with. It would have been easier if I had not understood exactly the way they would feel, particularly Father. I remember exactly where I was standing and where he was standing. If you were to give me a pencil and a paper I could show you. It was upstairs in the library, and he was standing there and I was standing there. He had just poured me out a pony of Napoleon brandy.

  “I guess you’re old enough to drink brandy now,” he said.

  “Father,” I said, “I think I ought to tell you something. I’m going to New York on Monday. I have a job there in the advertising business.”

  XV

  I Make My Letter

  Once Marvin Myles asked me when I first loved her, which I imagine is a question that a good many people have asked each other, and I told her that I had loved her from the first minute that I had seen her. I was in a state that makes you believe such things. As a matter of fact, it must have been quite a while before I even noticed Marvin Myles. When I worked down there at J. T. Bullard’s, probably I was in exactly the right condition to get myself emotionally involved with almost anyone. Certainly she was not my type, for when I was twenty-four I had no liking for girls who were aggressive or for girls who knew too much. Marvin was not my type, but there was something in her character which I grew to depend on. I do not think this means that I was a weakling. Certainly I have never admired men who are too dependent on women. The truth was that I was in a mental fog during my first few weeks in the J. T. Bullard agency—even more maladjusted than I had been in the Army.

  For two weeks I could not seem to get anything through my mind in any proper proportion and Bill did not have much time to help me, because he was generally in conference over the Coza account. That was the term they used when they referred to the advertising business of the soap company—a contract which Mr. Bullard had just landed. There were Coza Flakes and also several grades of toilet soap. Bill and Mr. Kaufman were working on one of these, trying to make it into a soap which would appeal to men.

  “There’s no reason for you to understand it,” Bill said. “It will come over you in time in a great flash of light.” Bill shrugged his shoulders. “Now, here’s what you are going to do,” he went on. “Here’s a field report of the washrooms in the hotels and men’s clubs of five key cities. It tells whether they use liquid soap or soap powder or soap cakes, and the brands. You’re to tabulate the survey on this big sheet. Just sit here and keep tabulating.”

  It was more or less a clerical job, one at which I was conscientious and industrious, and I found myself at lunch hour and in the evening becoming interested in hotel lavatories and in the types of soap-containers tacked near the washbowls. After two weeks the thing became such an obsession with me that my mind was loaded with interesting facts about the soap they used in the Elks’ Club in Davenport, Iowa, and the soap they used at the Commercial Hotel at Baton Rouge.

  I used to start in with the soap tabulation every morning, right there next to Marvin Myles. I used to say good morning to her and that was about all. Bill was usually away, so that we sat for hours alone in that office, hardly ever speaking. I did not have much time to be curious about her, with more and more sheets of the soap survey coming in.

  It must have been sometime in May, after I had been in New York about three weeks, that I was sent out for a day with Marvin Myles. I had just hung up my hat and started on the soap chart when Bill called me.

  “Kaufman wants to see you,” Bill said. Since the day I had met him I had hardly laid eyes on Mr. Kaufman, or on Mr. Bullard either.

  “Is he going to fire me, Bill?” I asked.

  “He just wants to see you,” Bill said. “Act as though you were in a hurry.”

  Mr. Kaufman was sitting behind his neat, bare desk. Marvin Myles was sitting near the wall, listening while Mr. Kaufman interviewed an artist and a man from the Art Department. They had propped up a pen-and-ink drawing on the table in front of Mr. Kaufman, a full-length figure of a young man in a heavy ulster, who must have been watching some sporting event, since he carried a pair of field glasses and a Yale banner. Mr. Kaufman had set his elbows on his desk and his chin into the palms of his pudgy hands. The artist was a bald-headed, prosperous, middle-aged man. When I came in Mr. Kaufman was scowling at the picture and the artist was scowling at Mr. Kaufman.

  “I can’t tell you what’s the matter with it, Mr. Elsmere,” Mr. Kaufman was saying. “It simply doesn’t convey the idea. For one thing you don’t see the buttons and the stitching.”

  Mr. Elsmere looked annoyed.

  “May I ask you,” he inquired, “if you can ever see the details of buttons on a coat at such a distance?”

  “What do I care about distance?” Mr. Kaufman said. “I’m not paying you for distance.”


  Then he saw me and scowled at me too.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “I was told you’d sent for me, Mr. Kaufman,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Mr. Kaufman, “yes. You’re Pulham, aren’t you? Well, sit over there by Miss Myles. No, don’t sit there. Come over here beside me and look at that picture. Here’s a completely new reaction, Mr. Elsmere. What do you think of when you see that picture, Pulham?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” I said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Mr. Kaufman thumped his fist down on the desk.

  “There, you have it,” he said, “that answers it, doesn’t it? He sees your picture, that you’re charging us a thousand dollars for, and he doesn’t know what it means.”

  Mr. Elsmere looked at me and the top of his bald head grew red.

  “Perhaps he hasn’t any brains,” he said.

  Mr. Kaufman pointed his finger at Mr. Elsmere.

  “Do you think for one moment that the average person who sees this is going to have any brains? My God, Mr. Elsmere, we’re not trying to be intellectual. Now, look at that picture again, Pulham. Which is more important in it, the man or the coat?”

  They both seemed to be hanging on my reply.

  “The man is more important,” I said.

  “There you are,” said Mr. Kaufman. “That settles it. The coat is showing off the man. Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Jack, that there is no thought behind that picture?”

  The Art Department man cleared his throat.

  “It’s very beautiful work,” he said. “There’s nothing like Mr. Elsmere’s pen-and-ink, but thought—no, perhaps there isn’t thought.”

  “All right,” said Mr. Kaufman. “Then we’ll have to put thought in it. Put a girl beside him. Have her looking at that coat. Have the breeze blowing back the bottom of it, showing the inner lining. Take that flag out of his hand and put his hand in the big roomy pocket. Have the extra-size collar turned up around his ears. Have it snowing. It’s the coat, not the man. The girl wishes to God she had the coat. She can see him luxuriate in the warm fleecy lining. If you want to do business with us, Mr. Elsmere, you’ll have to think. Get it back as soon as you can and don’t try too hard with the girl. It isn’t the girl—it’s the coat. All right. You can take it away now.”

  Mr. Kaufman turned toward me unsmilingly.

  “Now, draw up a chair. Miss Myles, draw up a chair. You understand, don’t you, Miss Myles—a quick cross-section of reaction, something warm, something human, something I can read aloud? Just explain it to Mr. Pulham. Then I’ll know if you have my idea.”

  Marvin Myles turned in her chair to look at me and Mr. Kaufman folded his hands. “It’s on the survey for Coza Flakes,” she said. “Mr. Kaufman said you could come with me.”

  “It will be more apt to make them talk,” Mr. Kaufman said. “Now, what are going to do, Miss Myles?”

  “I’m going to knock on the door or ring the bell,” Marvin said.

  “And when the door is opened Mr. Pulham is going to put down the suitcase so it will be hard to close the door,” Mr. Kaufman said. “Now, explain your approach, Miss Myles.”

  “Well,” Marvin Myles answered, “I’m simply going to say, ‘Good morning. We haven’t come here to sell anything. We wonder if you would mind giving us a few moments to talk about your cleaning problem. We have a remarkable new soap. We want to give you some, to try.’”

  “And when she says that,” Mr. Kaufman said, “you pull a sample box out of your pocket, Pulham, and hand it to the lady. Go ahead, Miss Myles.”

  “Then I say,” Marvin continued, “‘I wonder, if you have a moment, if you could give me something soiled to wash?’ Do I have to do that, Mr. Kaufman?”

  “It will be a great experience for you,” Mr. Kaufman said. “You have the question form there with you?”

  “Yes,” said Marvin.

  “Well, try to make it informal, a great big party, a lot of fun,” Mr. Kaufman said. “But keep your mind on the consumer reaction. First the suds, then the quickness, and while she’s talking you ask her, Pulham, what sort of soap her husband uses; but it’s the home atmosphere I want. You follow me, don’t you, Pulham?”

  “You mean we’re going to knock on somebody’s door and ask if we can wash something?” I said. Marvin Myles glanced at me.

  “I’ll tell him all about it,” she said. “If the suitcase and the packages are ready we’ll start right away.”

  “Try to get twenty-five reactions,” Mr. Kaufman said, “and make up the report tonight. The office will be open. I’ll be here working on footwear.”

  “All right,” Marvin told me. “Get your hat and I’ll meet you at the elevator.”

  I got an impression that she was angry.

  “Come on,” she said. “Come on.”

  We began to walk toward Forty-second Street and the Grand Central Station. She walked fast, staring straight ahead of her, chin up and shoulders back.

  “God-damn fool,” she said.

  She said it between her teeth while she still stared straight in front of her. It surprised me to hear her swear, because I had never heard a nice girl use such language.

  “So I can ask for the dirtiest thing in the house to wash, can I?”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “You and I,” she said, “are going to the Bronx. We’re not going to accomplish anything except to make Mr. Kaufman happy. He thought I wouldn’t do it. I’ll do it all right.”

  “You mean we’re going to tenement houses to wash clothes?” I said.

  She looked at me again.

  “I wonder,” she said, “do you know why you’re coming with me, or don’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “It all sounds queer to me.”

  “All right,” she answered. “You’re coming with me to see that I go through with it. He thinks I’d cheat if I didn’t have you along—that I’d make the whole thing up.”

  When we got off the subway we walked into the dingy vestibule of a yellow-brick apartment house and examined a row of mailboxes with bells beneath them.

  “Any of them will do,” Marvin said. “We’ll try Frenkel.”

  She rang the bell and a buzzer let us into the main hallway where the air was full of confined odors.

  “Come on,” Marvin said. “Come on.”

  Down near the end of the hallway I saw a fat, dark-haired woman clad in a soiled flannel wrapper peering out of a door.

  “Good morning,” Marvin said. “I hope we are not interrupting you.”

  “What is it you want?” she asked. “Mr. Frenkel is not at home.”

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Frenkel,” Marvin said. “We’re not trying to sell anything.”

  “Then why are you here for?” Mrs. Frenkel asked. “You better get out of here or I’ll call the police. I’m telling you Mr. Frenkel isn’t home.”

  “Now, Mrs. Frenkel,” I said, “that isn’t the way to talk.”

  I was surprised that Marvin Myles stared at me and Mrs. Frenkel’s eyes grew round and her loose mouth fell open.

  “We just came to ask you,” I went on, “if we could wash the dirtiest piece of clothing that you have, Mrs. Frenkel.”

  Mrs. Frenkel made an inarticulate sound.

  “Get out of here,” she cried, “or I’ll call the police!”

  Marvin Myles pulled at my sleeve.

  “Shut up,” she whispered. “Will you please shut up?”

  “There’s no need to call the police, Mrs. Frenkel,” I said. “I’m just asking if I can’t do a little washing for you. I’m not selling anything. We have a new kind of soap.”

  Mrs. Frenkel’s face looked blank and she began stepping backward.

  “My God,” she asked, “are you crazy?”

  “I don’t blame you for asking,” I said. “I thought it sounded crazy too when I was sent out here. They want to see what people think of this new soap.”

  “My God,” said Mrs. Frenkel, “you ain
’t never washed anything.”

  “That’s perfectly true,” I said.

  “My God,” said Mrs. Frenkel, “oh, my God!” And she backed farther away from the door. I followed her into a sitting room filled with bulbous furniture, put the suitcase on a chair and took out a box of Coza Flakes. Then I took off my coat and rolled up my sleeves.

  “I’m all ready,” I said, “if you’ll show me the laundry.”

  “The laundry!” said Mrs. Frenkel. Then something made her laugh. “If you want to be crazy we can all of us go nuts. You wait here until I get the dishes out of the sink.”

  She waddled out of the sitting room and I saw Marvin staring at me.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Have I done anything wrong?”

  “No,” she said. “I just didn’t know there was anything like you and neither did Mrs. Frenkel.”

  I was only thinking of doing an unpleasant job as well as I could. We stood with Mrs. Frenkel in the kitchen, while she watched me pouring some Coza Flakes into a pan of hot water. Then I washed a pair of Mr. Frenkel’s socks, which certainly did need washing. Like most things, once you got started it was not so bad.

  “Let me do those,” Marvin said.

  “No,” I told her. “It wouldn’t look right.”

  Everything between Mrs. Frenkel and Marvin and me became quite agreeable after that, so it seemed all right to ask Mrs. Frenkel if she did not have any friends in the building who would like something washed. Mrs. Frenkel said that she did have friends—as soon as she put on her dress—and she left us in the kitchen.

  “Harry,” Marvin said, “I’m sorry I was cross.”

  I was a little confused that she called me by my first name.

  “Harry,” she said again, “we’re going to have a good time.”