Rob tells us that several of the guests (they are all presidents, or board chairmen) are flying in from out of town and it was already too late to reach them. Bill injects that if half of them pulled out and Mrs. Kirkpatrick did come, the thing would be rather embarrassing, and I agree. So, I say, let's just go with it. They agree; and I can tell that Rob, who has done all the work, is pretty disappointed.
I complete the column . . . "The bishops have been very active of late. The Ordinary of Charleston having outlawed capital punishment, perhaps he will proceed to outlaw murder. But the bishops are stirring, and their involvement in public policy saddens. One recalls the late Willi Schlamm, who defined scientists as men who first build the Brooklyn Bridge, then buy it."
I start to leave, but Pat puts down the telephone to tell me I must look again at the seating. I tell her merely to substitute "X" for Bush, and leave all the others where they were. Jerry is waiting and I tell him I wish the Vice-President had relied on him, rather than Air Force Two. By the time I have got to the office, word has come in. Mrs. Kirkpatrick, with great gallantry, will cancel her lunch and attend ours. I am to brief her on what is expected of her, via her Number Two, because she has gone to the floor of the General Assembly, no doubt to give one of those brilliant speeches nobody ever listens to. I tell Number Two that she is expected, at our functions, to speak for ten minutes after lunch, and then to answer questions for fifteen, and that we guarantee the lunch will be over at 2:30.
But now we have an issue of National Review to put out.
We sit around the long black table, which has been here forever. We are in the library-conference room, about twelve of us. Everyone concerned with the editorial end of NR's operations. Each of us has in front of him a copy of last week's issue, and we turn its pages one by one, and anyone who has any comments makes them: about an editorial, cartoon, story, criticism; about the typography, the makeup. We laugh a lot at these sessions. Sometimes the laughter is—exponential!, as Mr. Woods would in this case permit me to say. I think. Jeff will make an amusing comment about somebody or something, more often than not a Democrat, Bill Rusher will see him and raise, and Joe Sobran will double the pot.
We go through the issue, and then Bill Rusher lists, with great panache, his fortnightly suggestions, complaints, whatever—distributing his document file between me and Priscilla. He speaks first because, traditionally, he then leaves the room, to attend to his own affairs.
Priscilla is next (now that Jim Burnham is no longer here), and she goes down the list of subjects that need editorial or polemical attention. I write these down, composing the master list, while others scratch Priscilla's items from theirs, where there are coincidences. Inevitably she adduces topics others had also listed to bring up, but no longer need to do so.
So it goes, with a little cross-table discussion, though not much; because, generally, the subjects are familiar, the orientation steady. The counterclockwise referendum completed, those who are not writing editorials rise and leave, I make the assignments to the writers, and we disperse to our typewriters.
Not, today, to my own typewriter, to begin the editorial work. Frances has accumulated what she calls date requests, dating back to noon Friday, since which time we have not spoken. Henry Kissinger is having a dinner for the French ambassador on January n. We look at the calendar—the day is or is not clear, depending on what time I need to leave for Dallas. She will explain to Chris Vick, Henry's Frances. The Chilean National TV wants an interview (nix). The Council on Foreign Relations asks if I will preside at a meeting at which my friend Lewis Lehrman, a candidate for governor of New York State, will talk about the gold standard (yes). Dan Shockett of something called Cigar asks if I will serve as a member of a cigar-tasting panel. All that's involved is that they will send three cigars which I can smoke at my leisure, returning comments (certainly). A Mr. Ed Cullen wants to discuss movie and TV rights for my novels. That's been going on for five years, but I refer them now to Richmond Crinkley, sometime Washington editor of National Review, now executive director of the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center, who is interested in getting a movie made out of Saving the Queen. Timothy Leary called, but didn't leave a return number (that often happens). CBS Cable TV wants an interview for their program "Signature." Frances's note says: "I said you would appear to talk about your new book, out in January, since you did not like being interviewed on the 'what do you like for breakfast basis'" (exactly). Swiss Broadcasting wants to ask me questions about Reagan's speech Wednesday (nix). Lecture requests (the usual). Betty Prashker of Doubleday says the Book-of-the-Month Club needs a date for a luncheon (we find one). The BOM has selected Marco Polo as a Dual Main Selection. (I have persuaded Doubleday, in its promotional literature, simply to refer to Marco Polo as "A Dual Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club," which is accurate, with emphasis on the indefinite article. I have always been convinced that there are people out there who believe that a "Dual" Main Selection means that the book is only half as good as a just plain "Main" Selection.) My hosts at Vail in April say if I want to arrive a day earlier than my lecture, I can ski, as their guest. Frances points out I'll be traveling away from a Tulane engagement Friday night, so I might as well accept, unless I want to go New Orleans-New York-Denver in thirty-six hours (OK). But now we do have to leave.
At noon exactly, Jerry takes Bill Rusher and me up for the luncheon, because when businessmen are invited to lunch someone always arrives early. This will be I think our twelfth such lunch, predecessors having featured Spiro Agnew, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, William Simon, James Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Frank Shakespeare, and a few other divinities. The idea is to invite very important and acute businessmen, share a lunch, let them visit with someone in the public eye, and hope that their advertising departments will get an amiable memo about National Review, which sometimes happens, usually doesn't. The guest of honor is not asked to pitch in any way for us, and seldom does, though the circuitry of bright men doesn't need many traffic switches.
And sure enough, although we get there at 12:20, two guests have already arrived. A few minutes later I greet with great pleasure Eastern Air Lines President Frank Borman, ex-astronaut moon-man, who is (along with George Bush) one of the twenty-six members of Hillbillies, our little club in the Bohemian Grove.
I cherish an experience last summer with Frank. I put in a call to him, and it went like this:
"Frank, I'm making last-minute revisions of a novel I wrote this winter. It's about the U-2. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?"
"Fire away. Only I'm not an expert on the U-2. But I know people who are."
"Well, when I read two books about the U-2 they didn't of course give the speed at which it travels, but I made some deductions based on general inferences, and I figured it traveled at Mach .9, so I made my calculations about my hero's flight from Tokyo to Alma-Ata based on that speed. Do you happen to know if my guess was correct?"
"Well, I'll need to find out 1) if it's classified. 2) What the speed is—I don't happen to know. Can I call you back? Five minutes, maybe ten?"
"Of course, and thanks loads."
Five minutes later.
"Bill? Hi, Frank. 1) It is classified. 2) The speed is Mach .7."
I thanked him hugely; and now reminded him of the wonderful context in which he had framed his answer, and we said, jocularly, the usual things about the folly of classifying material obviously known to the Russians.
Our guests were now practically all there, in the smaller red library room, most of them known to each other, and of course the word had circulated instantly that the guest of honor wouldn't be there, but there wasn't, really, any sense of resentment, because by now the radio and the early afternoon papers had made it very clear that no one was to travel anywhere, and obviously they understood: the Vice-President had to stand out as the exemplar.
Then Jeane Kirkpatrick came—handsome, composed, energetic, charming—bringing with her
, by prearrangement, Ambassador Charles Lichenstein, her assistant. I had known Chuck at Yale since even before I knew Pat, and we all exchanged greetings, and I told Jeane what a sweetheart she was, and promised to tell the Third World about her.
We were seated and, if I may say so, no chief of state or prodigal prince ate better that day than we did, thanks primarily to Pat, but also to Julian, and Gloria. And during lunch I was able to give Jeane a little additional briefing on the forthcoming drill, not that she needed it. On her right, Walter Wriston, head of Citibank, began questioning her, with his distinctive intelligence, and soon at our table she was answering everyone's questions.
After lunch we went into the living room for coffee and liqueurs (no one, I noticed, took a liqueur), and after a moment or two I introduced Mrs. Kirkpatrick, easy enough for me to do so enthusiastically, enthusiastic as I am about her.
I served a hitch (28th General Assembly, 1973) as the U.S. public member at the UN, assigned primarily to the Third Committee, which deals with human rights. When, last May, I read Jeane Kirkpatrick's speech on human rights, as delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations, I was, simply, ecstatic. I had begun my column: "In a single speech, delivered in early March ... in New York, Jeane Kirkpatrick . . . shed more light on the subject of human rights and national policy than all the candlepower of the UN Human Rights Commission has shed in a generation. Her statement has liberating force. Such is said about those few statements that cause the scales to fall from one's eyes, even as the epiphany befell St. Paul. Mrs. Kirkpatrick talked about four distinctions 'crucial' to a consideration of human rights and national policy. They are worth memorizing . . ." (The distinctions: 1) between "ideas and institutions," 2) between "rights and goals," 3) between "intention and consequence," 4) between "personal morality and political morality.")
She spoke now like a professor turned advocate; her own evolution exactly. She specified at two points that particular things she was about to say were off the record.
In the ten minutes she had, she made shrewd use of the time, dealing directly with points of interest and concluding with the (requisite) business about how, notwithstanding its frustrations, the UN was a necessary institution—which conclusion it would be very difficult for a resident ambassador at the UN not to arrive at. During the question period she sprang to life. She had been recently in the news for doing something absolutely unheard of: she had sent out several dozen letters to ambassadors ostensibly friendly to the United States, asking why they had voted against the United States in one of those virulent anti-American UN-related resolutions implying our vassalization of Puerto Rico or whatever. Apparently it had never occurred to anyone publicly to ask the jolly ambassador you see two or three times a day and who enjoys U.S. favors just why he joined in denouncing America in general terms.
How had they reacted? someone wanted to know; and she replied that, surprisingly, she had had replies to three quarters of her letters, that half had been conciliatory, only one quarter hostile. She believes very strongly that an American presence in the United Nations has got to be forthright. In this respect she is much like Moynihan, though the styles are different. One cannot imagine Mrs. Kirkpatrick, after a vote denouncing Zionism as racism, rushing across the room and embracing the Israeli ambassador; although the substitution would almost certainly be pleasing to the Israeli ambassador.
It is 2:30, and I thank her, thank my guests, and say that whatever inconvenience was suffered, it was good to be alive on the day that the government spent no money. Everyone, on the way out, shakes hands with me, Bill Rusher, Rob Sennott, and Mrs. K, thanking her most sincerely. The NR contingent gets into the car and we return to the office, whence I wire George: "I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH BOTH FOR YOUR CONCERN AND FOR YOUR FURNISHING THE U.N. COBRA. SINCE DECEMBER 11 IS TOO SOON TO PUT TOGETHER THE KIND OF PEOPLE YOU DESERVE I'LL TAKE YOU UP ON YOUR KIND OPTION TO DO IT ALL AGAIN IN THE SPRING. SO MANY THANKS AND IF YOU RUN OUT OF MONEY AGAIN WALTER WRISTON PROMISED TO HELP OUT. WARMEST REGARDS."
Back in the office, I assembled my own column for National Review, "Notes and Asides," which comprises letters received from people saying interesting things, requiring, in some cases, a published retort, which I compose. Then I pluck out the editorials that have been written, and go over them. They are in the dumbwaiter that descends to Priscilla. There is left an hour, reserved by Frances for necessary work on the sailing book, whose proposed jacket, and jacket copy, I didn't like. I designed the jacket for Airborne, and whereas I meant that it should convey to the reader that the sea is at the heart of the book, I didn't want it to be thought a "sailing book," which it is not. So is it with Atlantic High. I had subconsciously been in search for over a year now for a subtitle. For Airborne I used "A Sentimental Journey." The motives were in part preemptive. I didn't want reviewers to think to one-up me by saying, "This is pretty sentimental stuff." Actually, they were kind. I have decided in Atlantic High to append "A Celebration," and Sam, and Alex Gotfryd, Doubleday's art director, and Christopher Little, whose photographs are an integral part of the book, like the idea. Christopher, a superb young professional, is coming in for today's cover session. He has a painter friend who will attempt to transcribe our instructions. Almost an hour goes into this, and suddenly it's 6:15.
Jerry takes Priscilla and me to Sixty-eighth and Park Avenue, where Mother lives when she isn't in Connecticut or South Carolina. The heart always beats almost audibly at the prospect of seeing her when one gives the telltale buzz on the buzzer (dash dot-dash dash) and Big Mary, in her white nurse's uniform, opens the door. Mother is seated at the far end of a card table in the living room, dressed, as ever, as if to receive ambassadors. Always there are the pearls, and the touch of lace, and the familiar scent, the dress, the high-heeled shoes. She smiles that smile of fresh ardor, eyes wide open; at eighty-seven she can look like a girl, expressions to match—joy, benevolence, serenity. We kiss, and greet Mother's pizza companions, because indeed she is having a pizza dinner with three grandchildren. With her are Allie and John, siblings in their twenties, and Claude, Reid's son, who at twenty-two retains his Spanish accent, having spent his first twelve years in Madrid. Mother does not follow conversations, though she will pronounce on them, in a vaguely attenuated way, so that, though we are ostensibly addressing Mother, in fact we are conversing among ourselves. We learn from John that he is tremendously excited at the prospect of The Wall Street Journal's running one of his rock reviews, from Claude that he loves the art school he is attending, from Allie that CBS is treating her fairly. I go and check the spinet Mother used to play but, really, can't now, though every now and again we essay a duet. Mary brings Priscilla and me a glass of chablis. Mother beams, and occasionally comments on, oh, how cold it was in Paris yesterday.
A year ago, in Mexico, visiting my old retired nurse, who was with us thirty-five years, I put in a call to Mother, so that she and Felipa could speak for the first time over the telephone since Felipa's retirement in 1952. Mother was twenty-two, Felipa twenty-eight when Mother's aunt, for whom Felipa worked as laundress, so to speak "gave" Felipa to Mother for her wedding; and Felipa (and, subsequently, her two sisters) went with us everywhere. Now Felipa, whose mind at ninety-three hasn't wandered at all, was reminiscing with Mother, over the phone to New York, how Mother used to look when she came back from her New Orleans high school to visit from time to time with her aunt in the late afternoon. The conversation, by participants, was about events in the year 1910!— a strange feeling for someone not even born until a generation later. Mother regularly captured by her beneficent fantasies, had replied most distinctly over the telephone that she happened to be in Mexico, that she had in hand gifts for Felipa and her two sisters, and that she would bring them around the very next day. I had warned Felipa about Mother's absentmindedness, and now Felipa handled the problem with exemplary diplomacy: How nice, she said, it would be to see the senora again.
I winked at Pitts and we got up to go. Every time I leave her
, I wonder whether it will be for the last time. With help from Mary, Mother sees us to the elevator, and we embrace.
The editors dine at our place on Seventy-third Street the night of the fortnightly editorial meetings, the evening before we go to press. Usually we have guests, but not tonight; it is just Joe Sobran and Priscilla, Jeff Hart and Rick—Bill Rusher couldn't make it. There is great harmony at work, I feel: that graduating congruity of intellect and affection that matures when people are happily in professional and personal contact with one another. Oh, there are disturbances all right, and they reach you, and one does what one can. But National Review is a good place to work; after all, Priscilla is there. And then there is enough bite in the product to prevent the fungoid growth of tapioca, which can kill a journal. It matters that one should understand exactly what is meant by "bite." We suffer no lycanthropic compulsions at NR. We do not fancy ourselves out preying on victims preferably guilty, but if the biological appetite is not satisfied, then—however regrettably— innocent. I suppose it could be said that, like wolves, we have biological needs that require satisfaction: if there were nothing to complain about, there would be no National Review. On the other hand, if there were nothing to complain about, there would be no post-Adamite mankind. But complaint is profanation in the absence of gratitude. There is much to complain about in America, but that awful keening noise one unhappily gets so used to makes no way for the bells, and these have rung for America, are still ringing for America, and for this we are obliged to be grateful. To be otherwise is wrong reason, and a poetical invitation to true national tribulation. I must remember to pray more often, because providence has given us the means to make the struggle, and in this respect we are singularly blessed in this country, and in this room.
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