Rodin's Debutante

by Ward Just

  My mother took to the North Shore at once. She volunteered at the public library and in the course of her duties there she met many women whose advice she solicited regarding boys' schools in the vicinity. She made a list and we went calling, one school after another on the North Shore and beyond. By July our living room coffee table was piled high with brochures, all promising excellence of one sort or another, excellence of supervision, excellence of ends, excellence of means, with acceptance at a fine university as the payoff. Then commenced what my mother called "the winnowing," with three finalists. At my father's suggestion, she left the choice to me. So that September after we moved I left public education for good and enrolled as a sophomore at a private boarding school, the Ogden Hall School for Boys.

  THE MARVELOUS APPROACH to Ogden Hall had not changed in thirty years, the long, winding drive past the railroad trestle through flat fields and the stand of firs to the great mansion house itself, most welcoming in its Georgian symmetry. On a bright autumn day the visitor almost expected to see women in long skirts carrying parasols and top-hatted men in spats, a tableau vivant; surely this could not be a boys' school. The solemn look of the house and its surroundings was reassuring, a coherent world well distant from the disorder and menace of the Cold War and the petty tyrannies and corruption of the Truman administration, not to mention the sordid depredations of the Chicago machine. Time enough for a boy to become acquainted with all that, adult responsibilities in the nuclear age and the mess in Washington; that time was not now. Meanwhile, the beautiful house and its grounds, the outbuildings and playing fields, offered a wholesome parenthesis in the rush and bother of events. All in all the placid yet fertile Illinois countryside was the ideal location for a school. So few distractions.

  The headmaster, in his exploratory talks with parents, stressed the values of an earlier time. His favorite word was "straightforward." Ogden Hall proposed a straightforward approach to studies and sports, a straightforward approach to life itself, courtesy, honesty, and self-reliance, always giving one hundred percent. We allow our boys a certain latitude, the headmaster said. Ogden Hall is not a monastery. We have boys here who have seen quite a lot of life already, the consequence of irregular family arrangements, residence abroad, a broken home. Some of our boys have had difficulties in previous schools. Our aim is not to break their spirit but to channel it, working patiently to bring discipline from anarchy. Other boys have led sheltered lives of hearth-bound introspection, perhaps too hearth-bound and circumspect for the noisy modern world. Our object with them is to open things up, in the classroom and on the playing field. We at Ogden Hall believe in varieties of experience. One size does not fit all. Discipline in our school is straightforward: Keep faith with us and we will keep faith with you. We will never abandon a boy.

  This talk, well honed over years of experience, was by turns inspirational and contradictory, high-minded and obscure. Its thrust was not to every parent's taste, and indeed more than a few of them departed the campus before the obligatory walk-around to inspect the dormitories, athletic buildings, classrooms, and scientific laboratories, always commencing in the formidable library with its leather-bound volumes of Balzac, Stevenson, and Dickens, a room that served also as an introduction to the school's benefactor, Mr. Tommy Ogden, not himself a scholar but a sportsman, civic-minded, now a gentleman of great age, an occasional visitor, always arriving incognito. Mr. Ogden never sought to cause a fuss. He never interfered with the school's operations except from time to time to make funds available for this project or that. The group's attention was then directed to an alcove on the west wall next to the fireplace, a bust of a lovely young girl whose deep-set eyes suggested turbulent emotions or high amusement, depending on the acuity of the viewer. She was Mr. Ogden's late beloved wife, Marie. The sculptor was the great Auguste Rodin, the bust carved from life at the atelier in Paris. It was said to be the last bust from Rodin's hand, as he died not long after. Marie had braved the howling winds of the U-boat-infested North Atlantic to present herself at the master's bench in the winter of the second year of the wretched war. Legend had it that it was Marie who insisted on the establishment of Ogden Hall. Let no expense be spared.

  Alas, none of that was true. Marie did not journey to France until much later, and by then Rodin had passed on. The bust was of the Chicago girl who had gone with her sister and her mother to Rodin's atelier years earlier. In 1919 the girl died in the influenza epidemic and her heartbroken parents put the bust in a closet. They could not bear to look upon it. They thought it cruel and somehow contemptible to sell the piece and yet they did not want to conceal it in a closet, either. Herr Mackel learned of the family's dilemma and mentioned it to Tommy Ogden. Perhaps, Herr Mackel said—perhaps if you offered a donation to the Art Institute they would give it to you. Do it, Tommy said, do it at once, and he offered a price much less than he could afford but suitable enough. The Art Institute was delighted and some time later the bust appeared in the little alcove on the west wall of the library at Ogden Hall. Tommy was entranced by it, a superb example of the sculptor's art; the girl was even more alluring in marble than she had been in life. Absent any reliable information the legend had grown, accumulating details over the years. Tommy Ogden did nothing to disturb it, electing to regard the false story as his revenge on Marie. Besides, boys liked legends.

  This discourse to parents and the tour that followed was made convincing by the presence of Headmaster Augustus Allprice, forty years old, six feet two inches tall with an athlete's build and an actor's self-assurance. In fact he had been an actor in his youth, playing summer stock on Cape Cod. The headmaster was also an accomplished yachtsman who had drifted into teaching by accident, a stint at Bennington followed by five years at a nearby prep school, where he had become a popular dean of students. A hitch in the navy early in the war was cut short by an inner-ear infection that affected his balance, a condition that recurred throughout his life. Augustus Allprice's one caveat on accepting the headmaster's post was that he be allowed to continue teaching his seminar on the novels of Herman Melville. Melville was essential to the moral and spiritual health of boys. Melville understood the world, its heartbreak and fatefulness, its obsessions, its fundamental enigma. Melville had seen a good part of it himself as a seaman. The headmaster's lecture on Omoo was open to any student who wished to attend, and at the conclusion he was always given a raucous ovation and the affectionate chant Gus Gus Gus. Augustus Allprice was careful to mention this lecture to parents, helpfully explaining—in case one or two of them had forgotten the text—that Omoo was the story of the aged vessel Julia, whose life below decks was reminiscent of a rowdy boys' school, practical jokes, high jinks, erratic behavior, tall tales, bad language, frustration. The Julia was bound from the Marquesas southwest to the vicinity of Tahiti—no one knew the precise destination because the navigator kept his reckonings to himself. He was suspicious of the crew; the crew was suspicious of him. The feckless captain is incapacitated by a mysterious fever, a mutiny ensues...

  The headmaster's exegesis of Omoo—the word means "wanderer" in Tahitian—did not appeal to every parent. What had Omoo to say about the spiritual and moral health of boys? Some parents found a celebration of anarchy and a subversive political undertow, one tainted by a collectivist mentality. The captain of the vessel was a fool and a coward. The navigator was secretive and sly. Was this Melville a Red? The headmaster seemed condescending when he denied that Herman Melville was in any way a Red. Instead, he was a novelist, one of the greatest of the nineteenth century, one of the glories of American literature. He was a humanist. He was endlessly curious, something of an amateur botanist, a student of language, a close observer of art and architecture, an even closer observer of human nature in all its forms, a sensualist in his own way. The entire Pacific Ocean was not sufficient to quench his thirst for experience and the knowledge that came with it. There was always something fresh beyond the horizon line and a vessel at sea was a world unto itself.
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  Questioned on the suitability, indeed the relevance, of Melville's sea stories for teenage boys, the headmaster admitted he ran a risk. He could as easily read them Treasure Island or Great Expectations, great novels surely, but not on the same shelf as Omoo. Omoo mixed fact and fiction, memoir and history, and everything in between. He believed he had to take chances, roll the dice, because he felt it necessary to cut Ogden Hall from the common herd of midwestern boys' schools, not to mention the unspeakable citadels of New England—snobbish and cramped by tradition. We cannot compete on their terms because we are the skunk at the garden party. We are the nouveau riche among the aristocrats. Therefore we must set our own terms. We must wear our own hat, the headmaster said. He believed it essential to set Ogden Hall apart, assert an ambiance of adventure and risk-taking, something beyond the routine. An ambiance of tolerance together with an engagement with the world as it existed with the world that could be. Tomorrow will not be identical to today, at least I hope not.

  Yes, the director of admissions allowed. Of course I see your point. Try to see mine. Our parents like the world they know as opposed to the world they don't know. The world they know has been good to them. They want affirmation, Gus. They want a positive pitch on things. Life for them is good, don't you see? And it will be good for their children as long as it stays the same. Our parents do not respond well to threatening atmospheres. You're driving them away, Gus. You're driving them pell-mell into the arms of the opposition. Your message isn't selling.

  The tide may be turning, the headmaster said.

  It's not turning, Gus. It's at flood. Why, we're about to get President Dewey, for crissakes. And that's why your message isn't selling.

  The boys like Omoo.

  Some do. Most don't. Most boys don't understand your Omoo, Gus. They don't see the point of a life lived below decks. Why would anyone want to live in steerage? They're topside boys, don't you see? They're in the wheelhouse. They're the ones wearing the blazer with a crest on the pocket and the little billed cap.

  It's good for them, the headmaster said.

  We're beggars, Gus. Beggars can't be choosers.

  This was Augustus Allprice's fourth year as headmaster, and each year had caused erosion of his idealism, a word he himself never used. He preferred "sanity." There were moments when he thought he was losing his mind, poised as he was between his dual roles of jailer and prisoner. He lived in a rose-colored cottage that had been the gardener's. The wages were good. He was vested in the pension plan. Omoo never lost its allure and each year he found a fresh facet of the book to stress and stress again. But he found the boys disconcerting, each year more arrogant and adolescent; they did not grow, they regressed. They seemed to want to emulate their fathers. They listened to the same music and went to the same films. They played golf. They dressed the way their fathers dressed. If they were allowed to vote, they would vote Republican. That was one more reason why Melville's life and work had meaning. The sea was life itself, both blessing and curse, never tamed. Gus wondered about Herman Melville's politics. There was every indication that he was a socialist. Certainly his sympathies lay with the crew; and yet Ahab, more obsessed even than Lenin, was his greatest creation. And Ahab had brought the Pequod to great grief. What would Melville do if he were master of Ogden Hall? Probably he would shoot himself in the head with a gun.

  Gus thought often of Herman Melville, especially his last days in the customs house. He did not die a happy man. At the end of the working day Augustus Allprice retreated to his cottage and poured a glass of gin for himself and Anjelica and cursed the day he thought of schoolmaster as a profession. One glass led to another, and more often than not he and Anjelica would tumble into bed, rising only to prepare a late dinner or answer an insistent telephone call, one of the boys misbehaving, a fire in Marks dormitory or elsewhere on the campus. The Winston brat had beaten up a freshman. A girl had been discovered in a closet adjacent to the library. Would Anjelica have a word with her? Anjelica would not. Girl counseling was not in Anjelica's job description, and in fact her presence on campus was something of a scandal, though everyone agreed to look the other way. Augustus was feeling the wanderlust yet again and thought that this would be his last year at Ogden Hall. He wished to visit Patagonia and Anjelica was willing, indeed eager—anything to be quits with the school.

  Augustus thought of Patagonia while formulating an answer to his director of admissions, a man much too old for his job. He, along with so many staff and faculty, had been recruited from an eastern school. Ted Weddle wished he were back there. He missed the village green and the movies on Saturday night and the Sunday matinee of the Boston Pops. His married children lived nearby. He missed the golden New England autumn. His wife hated the Illinois prairie, featureless and sullen, baking in summer and frigid in winter, not a hill for five hundred miles. Most of the faculty agreed. The students wished they were back east too, at Andover or Deerfield or one of the others. St. Paul's. In the East there were girls' schools nearby, Ethel Walker and Westover. Miss Porter's in Connecticut. They all thought they were too good for Ogden Hall and their parents agreed. Jesper, Illinois, for God's sake, to the back of beyond. But when a boy had been expelled from Choate, Groton, St. Mark's, and Middlesex the options were limited. Word got around, yet however far it reached it never quite got to Ogden Hall, the port in the storm. Many of the late-coming boys were from Chicago or the North Shore and their parents felt it was salutary that their sons be nearby, closely supervised by master mechanics. Refitted, the boy-vessel would be safely on its way, launched to a more acceptable climate, New Haven, for example, or Princeton. But first the boy had to graduate well. That was the reason for the investment in Ogden Hall—which, while not choosy, was not cheap, either. It did seem to Gus that everyone at the school wished he were somewhere else, New England or Europe or, as in his own case, Patagonia. A shame, really, because all these discontents resulted in a school that was nervously broken down.

  Ted Weddle waited patiently for the headmaster to collect himself. He was often silent for minutes at a time, distracted by Herman Melville or the flamboyant Anjelica or his own anxiety. He was not a suitable headmaster, that was the truth of it. Gus Allprice's education was sporadic, some public high school in Maine followed by New York University and a transfer to Rutgers. He had published nothing. If he had a theory of education no one at Ogden Hall had ever heard it. He looked the part and that was that, six feet two and eyes of blue. One fact not generally known was that he was an orphan, a foundling. He had mentioned that one night when he was drunk. Ted believed that was the source of the headmaster's contempt for the parents he dealt with. Gus Allprice wished he had a father or mother who snapped fingers for him, making other people dance. No wonder he looked to Patagonia, one of the world's last frontiers.

  He said at last, Perhaps not, Ted. Many do not buy what I'm selling. For the most part they don't care what I'm selling. They're buying a diploma and with the diploma matriculation into the Ivy League.

  But Gus. Everyone's buying something—

  The headmaster shook his head, observing that the boys were spoiled, negligent, and self-possessed even by the standards of upper-class adolescents. Their folly has been without consequence. They have never been denied satisfaction of any whim that came to them, the more outrageous the better. Their daddies are rich and wish only that their sons graduate well so that they can enter the family firm, the idea all along. Strange thing is, many of the boys are highly intelligent. Intelligent enough to see behind our out-of-date second-rate façade. I'm afraid we have contributed to their cynicism and in that one sense, and that one sense only, their cynicism could be said to be earned. Still, they're awful little shits, most of them. They've never done a day's work in their sorry lives. Parental inheritance. The parents are worse because the parents should know better. And that's why I read them Omoo.

  This is not productive, Ted Weddle said. We're behind recruitment this year by thirty boys, that's a recor
d at this time of the year. We need the little shits more than they need us, that's the truth of it. All of us here depend on Ogden Hall, Gus. Ogden Hall puts food on the table. In many ways we have a sweet deal here. Class size is what? Six, seven boys a class. Individual instruction, that's what we tell the parents. It would be a hell of a thing if we went broke.

  We can't go broke, Ted. The Ogden millions.

  We'll go broke if we don't have students.

  No one will notice, the headmaster said, barking a laugh.

  It's on your head, then.

  Why did you come to Ogden Hall, Ted?

  Oh, well, it's a long story—

  I have time, the headmaster said.

  I was old. My school, the one I had taught at for thirty-five years, wanted me out as director of admissions. They wanted a younger man who could relate to the students. The prospective students and the parents also. They used a word I had never heard before, at least in that context. They said I had the wrong image.