Mary McCarthy

by Mary McCarthy

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Candidly, I don’t know. Logically, you are right, of course. Maynard owes Henry nothing as a college president; yet as a man I feel that he does. There’s a certain noblesse oblige that we owe to people who criticize us and whom we have the power to harm. Strength ought to impose chivalry; we stay our hand against a disarmed opponent.” Furness smiled, recognizing an echo from his own course in the Epic. “You think it’s my feudal background?” averred Domna. “The code of the noble which is based on privilege? That is true, I think, but it is also the Christian ethic. What would you put in its place? A purely utilitarian view, which treats men as things in terms of their utility value?” Her voice had grown firmer as she moved into the field of rebuttal. “As long as we have a society of privilege, the code of the noble should restrain us against the exercise of an absolute power.

  “What you charge Henry with, is an abuse of hospitality. All very fine, as if Maynard had treated him in the style of an Arab sheik, as an honored guest of the college! Then, if this were so”—her eyes had begun to flash—“I would say yes, by all means, Henry had the obligation to repay courtesy with courtesy. But this is not the case here. Far from it. Maynard has used Henry to advertise his own reputation as a liberal; he hires him to salve his own conscience and write an article for the paper on how much better conditions are at Jocelyn than behind the iron curtain of reaction in the big rich universities. He treats him as we treat the DP’s, as a sort of testimonial to the paradise of freedom we have here, and then imposes on him all sorts of restrictions of what he can think and not think, do and not do. He is put to work at the lowest possible salary, housed in wretched conditions at an exorbitant rent, ordered to adapt his teaching methods to the progressive routine, expected to conform socially, to take advice and be grateful every day, like a refugee counting his blessings. When he shows signs of independence, it is time to get rid of him; out with him, out with the wife and children, accuse him of disloyalty to the Jocelyn way of life!”

  Furness made a motion of ducking; he smiled uneasily. Domna, roused, he thought, was rather splendid, in the manner of a classic heroine; a chaste fire glowed from her; she had the air of a dragon-killer or an acrobatic virgin bringing the serpent to heel. He allowed his admiration for her person to neutralize the effect of what she was saying; that is, he evaded the task of considering it as either true or false. “Go on, Domna,” urged Alma, sympathetically. Domna complied, but more modestly; she feared that once again she had yielded to the temptation to show off—was she herself not treating Henry as an occasion for the display of youthful virtue and high feeling? “Hospitality,” she speculated, “is a mutual affair, as the French word hôte indicates. Here in America, I think, we tend to overemphasize the obligations of the guest, as though he entered a hotel where the rules were pasted over the wash-basin. It may be that Henry has infringed the house-rules of Jocelyn by treating himself, not as a visitor, but as a member of the family, with all the prerogatives of criticism that family membership implies. But if he is wrong, and he is not a member of the family, but a stranger in the house, must we not then treat him with aidôs? Does not his special situation make gratitude less incumbent on him than aidôs on Maynard and on us?”

  Tears suddenly shone in her eyes; her voice trembled slightly; she was one of those romantic girls who are more moved and shaken by a concept, visiting their own lips, like an annunciation, than by poetry or visual art. Alma, who had a tenderness for youth and its sudden gusts of feeling, nodded quickly at her with sympathy and understanding. Furness folded his arms. “May I ask,” ventured Aristide, “for a translation? At one time, I was fortunate enough to pick up a little modern Greek in the Peloponnesus but my classic Greek is rudimentary.” “Care or ruth,” threw out Furness, negligently. “At bottom, untranslatable. The concept doesn’t exist for us. See Gilbert Murray.” “It’s another of those double words like hôte,” supplied Alma. “Aidôs is both that which inspires horror and pity, and the feeling aroused in the bystander. Aidôs applies to the wretchedness of a beggar or a suppliant and to the sentiment of concern one is obliged to show for him. A certain awe surrounds it. It is what Achilles, the killer of his son, in the end feels for Priam when he raises him up and weeps with him.” “And what the boy in the Iliad begs of Achilles,” put in Domna, “who is about to slay him. ‘Have a care for me.’ Greek logic demands that whatever is full of horror should command an appropriate response. ‘The concept doesn’t exist for us.’ ” She fixed her stern bright gaze on Furness. Aristide took out a little notebook and inscribed the word and the definition with a flourish, like one taking down the address of a pension. He snapped the notebook shut.

  “So,” inquired Alma, whimsically smiling, “are we to show aidôs for Henry?” She looked around her expectantly. Howard stroked his jaw. “Aidôs,” he remarked, “whatever it may be, and you girls can have it to play with, is not an official quantity. In strict justice, there is no aidôs, and I for one propose to deal justly. As a working member of the department, I would be guilty of misconduct if I signed a petition citing Hen for merit as a teacher. There has to be some standard in these things, in fairness to the students and the rest of us. You can do what you want unofficially, Alma; appeal to Maynard for clemency; that’s your feminine privilege. But we can’t let clemency become the official business of the department.” He lit a cigarette and deliberately leaned his head back, exhaling; he yawned. “But it’s not a question of clemency,” insisted Domna, abruptly shifting her ground. “I feel and I think we all feel—with the exception of you, of course—that Henry is a qualified teacher and more than that—as Alma says, a first-class mind. Added to that we feel that his rather desperate personal situation entitles him to more consideration than we would be entitled to ourselves and far outweighs what one might call the personality issue. Plus, to my mind, at any rate, a third factor: in the current political situation, a liberal college ought to lean over backward not to fire anybody who is suspected of Communism, just as a woman’s college ought to lean over backward to hire women when they’re discriminated against in the men’s colleges. Where discrimination exists, protection of the out-group is mandatory, even where such a policy runs the risk of creating a new set of special privileges.”

  “I’m glad to hear you acknowledge the risk, Domna,” remarked Furness on a rising note of irony. “You see where your policy would lead. To vying groups of separatist minorities organized for self-protection. We have something like this already in the Catholic and Jewish boycott groups, in the FEPC, which all you so-called liberals favor without seeing where it tends. I feel very little enthusiasm for the extension of this admirable principle to the universities. We’re not yet relief organizations, you must admit. The time may come, of course, when it will be sufficient to show need to get any kind of a job that individual vanity suggests; a wife and four hungry children will entitle the holder to teach calculus or astronomy or whatever his little heart fancies, and a college will become a mere dispensary for cripples of the social order.” He spoke roughly, with feeling, having come up the hard way himself; yet there was a certain sparring note in his voice suggestive of sport for sport’s sake; he baited Domna for the whim of it.

  “Other things being equal,” she retorted sharply. “Please don’t distort what I say.” The others sat back, with a certain sense of relief from responsibility, prepared to enjoy la boxe; none of them, including the participants, would know what they thought of this matter till the winner had been certified. “Many factors,” declared Domna, “are involved in a decision to let an employee go. Professional competence; the so-called personal equation; the employee’s need and future prospects; and finally what one might name the exemplary effects of such a decision. If Maynard lets Henry go, how many other college presidents, seeing what Maynard as a professional progressive has done, will cease to feel any qualms about proceeding against their own Communists, ex-Communists, quasi-Communists? This isn’t a permanent situa
tion in which to be a Communist will guarantee eternal carte blanche to teach and conduct oneself as one pleases, but an emergency in which any individual weakening of principle is likely to produce a landslide. Each of us knows from his own inner experience how tenuous are the restraints of conscience, how pliant to mass opinion and precedent, to the justification by numbers. If Maynard is permitted to fire Henry, without protest or challenge, fifty other heads will roll.”

  Furness made a light gesture of disparagement. “Those unfortunate cases,” he said lazily, “will have to be decided on their merits. No action would ever be undertaken if one could envision all its consequences. Is Marx responsible for Stalin or Christ for the history of the Church? Very likely so, but the thought is a deterrent to virtue. Maynard’s responsibility, I should say, began and ended here at Jocelyn. To cultivate his own garden here and maintain the teaching standard is to set a sufficient example. To debase the teaching standard—however low you may think it already—on behalf of some vague social need would be an act of malfeasance, like the watering of stock or the currency. The same principle might be extended to our students: how often have we heard the argument that a student needs to graduate?”

  “I believe I’ve heard it from your lips, Howard,” remarked Alma, smiling. Howard grinned. “Guilty,” he agreed, “guilty. You will never hear it again. It betrays a certain contempt for our diploma, as I think you yourself have argued.”

  Domna twisted her hands. “I think I would not graduate an incompetent student merely because of his need to please his family.” Aristide cleared his throat. “There have been cases, however, Domna, where we have done so, where we have taken into consideration an unfortunate family situation, a browbeating father or grandparent and a wholly dependent offspring. I believe only last term,” he pursued, in an undertone, “you and I contrived to pass a certain student who was in danger of a nervous breakdown.” Domna bit her lip. “Yes, I know,” she murmured, “but that was really a marginal case. In general, the principle of need should not be governing, unless other factors are equal. Howard is trying to push us into a position where we will admit that our support of Henry rests on his incapacity. That isn’t so, really. If he were honestly a poor teacher, we would be wrong to indorse him. We would try to find some other means of solving his family problems, help him with money or fit him into some other position, where he could use his capacities better. . . .” Her earnest voice faltered, as she saw the magnitude of the difficulty. Furness was smiling. “And if he didn’t wish, Domna, to be ‘fitted into some other position’ but wished only to teach literature under our aegis?” His voice was triumphant; he had isolated what he believed to be the crux of Hen’s position. “No teacher,” replied Domna, flushing, “who wishes to teach can be totally bad, I suppose. . . .”

  “Ah,” exclaimed Furness, “so that if Henry were only relatively bad, you would still wish us to sign a petition for him?” “Not on the same basis,” she said stoutly. “You keep distorting what I say, like a lawyer.” Yet she knew that he had not distorted, but on the contrary clarified a thing she did not care to have clear. “In any case,” she cried, “he is not relatively bad.” “Supposing,” suggested Furness, “there was no question of Cathy’s health or of Communism, would you still defend him? Would you insist that the college keep him on his merits if he would have no difficulty in getting a job elsewhere?” “Yes!” she cried, emphatically, suddenly relaxing and pushing her hair back; this, she believed, was what she really thought; Furness himself had shown her a way out of the corner he had driven her into. “Yes, I would,” she announced, “for the sake of the college, if not for his.”

  “In that case,” argued Furness, “if you really believe that, why don’t you stick to your guns? Why bring in all this stuff about Cathy and Hen’s being a prisoner of the Party, if you really think it’s a straight case of merit going unrewarded? Have the courage of your convictions; go ahead and convince me that he’s a wonderful teacher!” He looked around the room pleasantly.

  Domna gritted her teeth. “I did not bring in this stuff, as you call it, about Cathy and Communism. It is there. It has to be reckoned with. If you want, it provides additional reason for not firing Henry. Other things being equal. There is nothing strange or unusual about what I’m saying. It’s a rule we invoke every day in ordinary practice. If there are two candidates for a job, say, in a woman’s college, and both applicants are of equal or near-equal merit, we take the woman, since she lacks the man’s chance of being hired by a men’s college. Or a Jewish college, like Brandeis, will naturally hire Jewish applicants, since most other colleges discriminate against them.”

  “And is that a cure for discrimination, Domna?” asked Furness, gently.

  The friendliness of the tone troubled her. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I see what you mean. You are trying to say that a merit system, honestly applied, is a better cure for these evils. That if Vassar were to hire men without discrimination, and Fisk or Howard to hire whites, this might provide a superior example for Harvard or Columbia. That, as it is, Harvard feels no moral pressure to hire women, since they have their own colleges, and the same is true of the Negroes and the Jews.” Furness nodded. “A very profitable discussion,” said Aristide. “I often think we should keep minutes. However,” he glanced at his pocket-watch, “I believe we have strayed from the point.” “Domna doesn’t think so,” observed Howard, tenderly. “She’s been driven to see that she is really asking Maynard to keep Hen on as a charity. This is all very well for Hen, but sets a poor precedent.” He got up and stretched. “Let’s all go to Gus’s for a drink.” “But nothing is settled,” protested Van Tour. “It’s settled between Domna and me,” insisted Howard, winking, and putting an arm around her. Domna frowned and drew away. “No,” she said coldly, “it is not. You have not persuaded me at all that I regard Henry as a charity or that I am asking Maynard to discriminate in favor of him on account of his Communist past. If I were, you might be right in principle that such a policy might be bad for the progressive colleges since it amounts to a political means test in reverse.” She spoke very rapidly; her forte was not original thought but the ability to return someone else’s suggestion fully made up and labeled, like a pharmacist’s compound. “Certain colleges we could name have been subjected to a political deep-freeze by the fear of firing deserving Communists or fellow-travelers. But this is not the case here. I would argue, as I said, for Henry’s retention if the political question had never been introduced. In fact—” she hurriedly broke off, for what she had been about to say was that she, for one, would accept Furness’ challenge and narrow the issue, gladly, to one of intellectual merit.

  Yet she checked herself, thinking of Henry. There were many here, like Van Tour, she assured herself, whose support for Henry must derive from a vicarious sense of political outrage, who were not large-minded enough to defend him if they did not suspect behind the scenes a conspiracy to displace him, a conspiracy of powerful interests to which they might fall the next victims. She had no right, she stoutly argued, to narrow the issues of the case to suit her individual fastidiousness. Moreover, she had been secretly struck by the perspicuity of Howard’s analysis and was wholeheartedly amazed and grateful that the others had let themselves be diverted by her from what was technically a very telling argument: did Mulcahy, after all, have an intellectual claim on a college whose axioms he openly derided? Did she, for that matter, or Alma have the right to put themselves forward as guardians of the college’s interest, when, strictly speaking, the college’s interest, as conceived by its President and trustees, was daily contravened by the whole group of them, who quite frankly preached to their classes the necessity of intellectual discipline, order, historical background, and who, in certain cases, had gone so far as to recommend to certain bright students that they transfer to a traditional college, where they stood some chance of getting a thoroughgoing formal education?

  Humanly speaking, of course, she and Alma had the sa
me right as anybody else to interfere in what was none of their business, the duty, in fact, of the bystander to interfere between father and son, employer and employee, state and subject, to protect elementary human rights and secure fair treatment for the weaker. Yet today’s fashion was to disguise this moral feeling in an expedient garb, to show Maynard Hoar that it was to the interest of the college not to fire Mulcahy, that is, to attribute to oneself a wholly specious sentiment of concern for the college’s welfare, as certain labor leaders fondly presented themselves as capitalism’s best friend, in short, to “sell” a moral argument in terms of a higher utility.

  All this was quite repugnant to Domna, yet, having persuaded herself that it was necessary, on Henry’s behalf, to use every available means, play on every chord of sympathy, she felt Cathy’s contingent death hang over her, like a sword of judgment, if she permitted herself to reason in a matter that ought not to allow of reason but only of total adherence. And yet she no longer, she shamefacedly discovered, thought of Cathy as a person but as an opinion to be propitiated. It was only the spectacle of Furness, who stood before her, grinning, a horrid cautionary example of the consequences of cool logic and detachment, that encouraged her to push aside her doubts.

  “What I am trying to say,” she blurted out, “is that the case is complex. You can’t reduce it to a single question of merit, but merit enters into it. Can’t we agree, Howard, that Henry as a teacher has sufficient merit not to be let out when his wife may die of the shock of it?” Touching the simple verities of the case, she smiled at him, certain that he would at last give in. “Come on, Howard,” urged Van Tour, “you can’t quarrel with that. Let’s give him our vote of confidence and get it over with, for God’s sake.” He pulled on his big overshoes and stamped impatiently on the floor. “Do you want a formal vote?” asked Alma. They all looked to Furness, expectantly. He stood, tying his blue muffler, surveying them with a queer, sad, impudent expression, teetering slightly on the balls of his feet, as though to hold the group on tenterhooks. “How about it?” said Van Tour; for the first time, he divined that Furness might really vote against them. “Sorry, children,” said Furness, with a little tightening of the voice, as he adjusted the folds of the muffler, “I can’t do it. You’ll have to count me out.” The faces watching him slowly fell, in a graduated series; Domna’s was the last to give up. “Oh, Howard,” she softly remonstrated, looking him searchingly in the eyes. “Sorry to be an old fogey,” he apologized. “A matter of principle, I’m afraid.” He made a jerky half-bow.