Rodin's Debutante

by Ward Just

  At last, admitting defeat, Bert Marks turned Ogden Hall over to his son and law partner, Bert Jr., with instructions to solve the headmaster problem once and for all. The need was urgent, for the school was on probation vis-à-vis its accreditation. Morale was low. Its reputation among other schools was rock bottom, a joke; the word Bert Jr. used was contamination. The North Shore boys set the tone—studied indifference, frequent references to the plebes among them, a mocking, supercilious attitude that spoke a kind of class warfare from the top down. Supercilious it certainly was, as Bert Jr. explained to his father, but also alluring. These boys were the canaries in the mineshaft of the modern world, the one that has brought Taft-Hartley and will bring Dewey. The North Shore and Chicago boys seemed much older in their three-button sports jackets and loafers—never was a shoe better named!—and a Lucky Strike in their mouths; the red and white bull's-eye logo had some mysterious erotic significance. Bert Jr. had the idea that the North Shore was a matriarchy, hence the boys' obsession with clothing—the shabbier the better during the day, but at night, out and about at roadhouses, they paid meticulous attention to what was on their backs. J. Press trumped Brooks Brothers and Tripp trumped both. They had strange relations with their parents, intimate with their mothers and distant from their fathers—unhealthy, Bert Jr. thought, a situation resembling some nineteenth-century Scandinavian melodrama. On weekends the boys drove to Chicago to listen to jazz music and drink cocktails, the fake draft cards certifying legal age supplied by an English instructor at fifty dollars a card.

  That's one thing I've discovered, Bert Jr. said. And the other is that many of the instructors give private tutoring at seven dollars an hour. A boy isn't doing well because he's not completing his homework or is failing his examinations, usually both, and so he's tutored to bring himself up to snuff, and guess what, his mark at the end of the year is a respectable B-plus. Do you see the conflict of interest here? It's outrageous. I've stopped the fees. Not the tutoring. But do you know what? The instructors aren't tutoring anymore and this has caused hysteria among the parents because they are determined that their offspring receive any advantage on offer. Any conceivable advantage inside the rules or outside them. They'll force any issue. It's what they're brought up to do. Otherwise, what's the point of being rich? Ogden Hall is a bordello.

  Bert Sr. was only dimly aware of class divisions. Class divisions were of no interest to him. He did wish his boy were a bit more worldly. All in all, Harvard was a mistake for any young man who wanted to make a living in Chicago. You had a client, and you served the client, and each case had its own ambiguities. No wonder they called law a practice. Bert Sr. did not think Bert Jr. an astute judge of human nature. If he was cut out for the law, it was as a judge, preferably on a supreme court somewhere, Illinois for example. You could tell in the wink of an eye how determined a client was. You could tell by his voice and his manner how far he was willing to go, and that, in turn, affected your advice to him. Class divisions didn't have anything to do with anything. It was idle chatter. He knew lawyers who lived on the North Shore and some were able and some were not. Very few of the North Shore lawyers were Jewish because of the wretched restrictive covenants concerning real estate, but that had nothing to do with class except in the broadest sense. It had to do with tribe. Fear was at the heart of prejudice, and fear was primal and not easily swept aside. It was hard for Bert Sr. to get his mind around the customs of the North Shore. Why would anyone want to live on the North Shore when you could live on the Near North Side? One train in the morning and another in the evening, a bored wife and arrogant children, golf scores.

  Bert was in his empty LaSalle Street office, his feet up, the time late afternoon, Saturday. He often spent Saturdays at the office, a quiet time to think and plan the week ahead. That meant worrying about Ogden Hall, which was slipping slowly out of control. Once or twice a week Bert had cause to wonder how different his life would have been had Tommy Ogden not stepped into it. An unlikely alliance surely, Bert an orphan boy deposited on the steps of Hull House when he was five years old, a note pinned to his jacket pocket written in Polish: This is a Jewish child. Take care of him. In due course Bert was placed in a home with other Jewish children and began to make his way in the world, finding himself at twenty a law clerk in a small West Side firm. At thirty he was managing partner. LaSalle Street was years away.

  Of his origins Bert had no clue. He had the orphan's natural interest in the identity of his parents but was unable to learn anything about them. His past was a blank slate, even his name a gift from one of the jokers at Hull House: Marks, as in Karl. He never knew where the "Bert" came from. His life began at Hull House and when he thought of those who could trace their families back three generations and more, he was amused. He believed himself lucky to be alive, luckier still to have been able to read law and become a lawyer. In those days you didn't need a degree. Bert considered himself self-made, but even so he was happy to make a substantial contribution to Hull House each Thanksgiving Day.

  He would never have met Tommy Ogden had he not gone to a smoker at a West Side athletic club on a Friday evening in June 1903. Two middleweights from the neighborhood, a bare-knuckle affair, no referee. One of the middleweights was a friend from high school who, Bert knew from experience, had a glass jaw and so he wagered twenty dollars with confidence. The smokers were raucous and there were always a few sports from the Gold Coast who showed up, drinking heavily and gambling recklessly. The sports lost money which was why they were welcomed, supplied with a white-aproned personal waiter, offered places at ringside. Bert collected his winnings and turned to the big man standing next to him, saying something sarcastic. The line, whatever it was, must have been funny, for the big man laughed and laughed, and he did not give the appearance of one who laughed often. They met again at the next smoker and the smoker after that, finding some weird, inexplicable affinity. They had nothing whatever in common, and whether for that reason or some other reason found each other companionable, one might almost say trustworthy. Soon enough, Tommy Ogden gave Bert legal business, mostly real estate transactions, adding to his spread at Jesper, a town Bert had never heard of. One night after listening to another shooting adventure and how content Tommy was at Ogden Hall, living alone without encumbrance, Bert mentioned a place he knew about, a place Tommy might find agreeable on those nights when living alone was itself an encumbrance. Villa Siracusa. Bert wrote the address and a name on his business card and a week after that he found himself on retainer and discovered that Tommy Ogden was not an ordinary Gold Coast swell but rich, with interests all over Illinois and the Midwest. He also discovered that these interests bored Tommy, who had a lust only for shooting and, it had to be supposed, the girls at Villa Siracusa. He needed someone to look after the interests and that was a full-time job, better exercised on LaSalle Street rather than in the corner office above a hardware store on Milwaukee Avenue.

  Bert moved his family from an apartment way out Division Street to a maisonette on Pearson. He never mistook his arrangement with Tommy as anything but business, so in the evenings when he was invited to dinner at Ogden Hall he went alone, explaining to his wife, Minna, that he had a business meeting. She was happy not to be included. Minna was religious, and devoted to their son and two daughters. Every other weekend she visited her parents in Indiana, a faithful daughter. Tommy's language would have appalled her. She would not have understood his devotion to firearms. And later, when Marie came along, she would not have understood Marie. Bert's Saturday ruminations never came to a satisfactory conclusion. He never knew whether he had beaten the system or whether the system had beaten him. The conundrum was not cause for anxiety since the world was as it was. Instead, Bert Marks was amused. It did pain him to realize how much time had gone into Tommy Ogden's interests, among them his fantasy school, the endless recruitment of boys and men to teach them. His life would have been much, much different had he not spent so much of it on Tommy Ogden. But how different, in
which way different, he was unable to say.

  So four years ago Bert had told his son, Do something about Ogden Hall. And the something turned out to be Augustus Allprice, and he had worked out well. He was an adult, he listened to advice, and he worked hard. Ogden Hall regained full accreditation. The enrollment slowly grew to the point where there were even a few boarders from out of state and one forlorn lad from Canada. The faculty was still not sound but it was improving. Morale seemed on an upswing. The draft-card-supplying English instructor was denounced by a colleague, confronted, and forced to resign. This was a moment of high peril but Gus Allprice managed it all without a single line of publicity, a miracle in the circumstances, because the word had gotten out. Publicity would have killed the school—and Bert was obliged to reflect again on his ambiguous situation. The school dead, he would be a free man. But that was not the way he was raised or taught and so he took a deep breath and soldiered on, things on an even keel at last.

  Then Allprice announced his resignation and Bert was besieged by parents, including that arrogant shyster George Berry, who, sensing vulnerability, was threatening a lawsuit. Bert had never heard of such a thing, litigation because your indolent offspring refused to do his lessons. Refused to open a schoolbook. Routinely missed examinations. Was abusive to his instructors, a sarcastic little bastard with a sneer to match. A meeting with lawyer Berry in Berry's office proved to be unproductive, and in due course the suit was filed and within weeks was dismissed, summary judgment. Plaintiff to pay all costs.

  BERT MOTORED TO Ogden Hall for a final effort to salvage Gus Allprice, disappointed that Bert Jr. had failed to solve the problem and now had washed his hands of anything to do with Ogden Hall. Bert and Allprice had always gotten on, two adults trying to make the best of things, and the offer was most generous—an increase in salary, a four-figure bonus, an enhanced pension, reduced responsibilities. And it went nowhere. The headmaster was interested only in his forthcoming voyage to Patagonia.

  He did have a few words to say concerning divisions among the student body. In the future it would be wise not to have quite so many boys who had so conspicuously and spectacularly failed elsewhere and looked on Ogden Hall as a seaman might look on Singapore or Papeete, whores and rum, agreeable shore leave following a punishing voyage, something they were entitled to, a reward for mischief. I'm afraid many of these boys are brighter than our instructors. But they are ignorant. They are undisciplined. They are agents provocateurs. They are bad influences on the school because their every action implies that the world is their oyster and proles will always be on hand to do the shucking. But some of them are worth saving, Mr. Marks. Worth trying to turn around because a few of them might actually amount to something beyond the possession of an English sports car and a willing debutante. They are of the ancien régime, yet we will have to bear with them for a time. The headmaster paused there, considering what he had said. He wasn't sure that Bert Marks was listening carefully, although that was what lawyers were trained to do. He said, These boys are resistant to learning. The unknown frightens them. They believe they are men of the world in training, but they are as sheltered as nuns. They have not learned or even thought about the thin line that divides pleasure from pain. They don't know it yet but they are standing on a beach that is eroding beneath their feet. Not soon enough in my view.

  Bert Marks nodded thoughtfully. He had no idea what the headmaster was driving at. But he did know that it was often helpful to remain silent, as if he understood the situation, each nuance. However, not in this case.

  Bert said, What?

  The rich are always with us, the headmaster said.

  Yes, but so what? They are what we have. They are what we have been given and so we must do what we can. We've undertaken a charge. We take their money, we agree to educate them. That's the contract, and while we know, you and I, that some of these boys are foolish and arrogant and therefore unteachable—we must try. Why can't you shape them up?

  We are not taken seriously, the headmaster said.

  It is your job to be taken seriously.

  The headmaster smiled broadly. Yes, it is. And it is in that connection that I often think of Mr. Ogden.

  That's not the point, Bert said.

  So there we are, the headmaster said.

  So it's a failure, Bert said.

  Many of our instructors are old. They are disappointed with life. They have not aged gracefully.

  That's not convincing, Bert said.

  Nevertheless, the headmaster said.

  You are not old. From my perspective you are in the prime of life.

  It is time for me to move on.

  But the job's not finished. You undertook to do a job. Signed a contract. And you have not finished the job.

  The headmaster laughed. That's why, Mr. Marks.

  All right. Listening to you now, I'm inclined to agree.

  You should come teach here for a semester, Mr. Marks. Introduction to the Common Law, something like that. That would be an enlightening course, the rule of law as the foundation of a society. All citizens equal before the law. The headmaster watched the lawyer stir uncomfortably in his chair, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. You are well placed to conduct such a course, experienced, a man of the world. Our students would interest you. They have seen nothing of life. It is hard for many of them to see beyond the boundaries of this region. Your Middle West is a closed place. No visible horizon. I am not sure they understand the meaning of the law. The headmaster paused once more, trying to formulate one last thought. Also, this house and the grounds surrounding it are not suitable for a school. The aura's unfortunate.

  Nonsense, Bert Marks said.

  Live here a while, the headmaster said. You'll see.

  I spent many hours in this house, Bert said, many, many strange hours. He remembered Marie Ogden's laugh, a kind of shriek. Tommy at the opposite end of the table pouring whiskey as the candles guttered. The servants, Francesca and the other one, parked along the walls as the conversation droned on. More monologue than conversation, now that he thought about it. Still, the evenings did have their moments. He remembered very well the night the Great War began, Tommy Ogden holding his information until the party broke up. Late summer 1914. They said the war was the beginning of the modern world. The nineteenth century died that summer. Not that it made much difference in Chicago, boom times once again, until the casualty reports came in from Belleau Wood and Second Marne ... Bert looked up when Gus Allprice cleared his throat.

  The headmaster had one last thought, this one concerning Herman Melville, his seamanship, his endless curiosity, his sympathy, his mastery of the English language, his profound understanding of the black heart, his exemplary life with its inevitable disappointments at the end. More than anything, the great writer was drawn to the unknown. The unknown was never to be feared or despised but embraced. The unknown was life itself. The unknown made men of boys. A noble soul, Gus Allprice concluded.

  Bert quickly made his farewells, wishing the headmaster good luck in Patagonia and wherever else life took him. These sentiments were sincerely meant, but the lawyer was not certain the headmaster was all there. He had a dreamy look in his eyes, the sort of look Bert had long identified as anarchic. It was the look of a man who did not understand the world as it was. For God's sake, if what the boys and their parents wanted out of life was Yale, then get them into Yale. As for the rule of law, all men equal before the bar and so forth and so on, apparently this Allprice believed in a child's history of the world. Herman Melville might well have been a noble soul aboard his sailing vessel but this was Chicago, nobility measured in the length and width of a dollar bill.

  In his car once again, returning to his LaSalle Street office, Bert had the idea that if worst came to worst the whole shooting match—as Tommy Ogden would put it—could be sold to the University of Illinois or Northwestern as a faculty conference center or secondary campus or retreat of some kind. Perhaps the State of Illinois would
consider Ogden Hall an appropriate venue for a minimum-security prison or a mental hospital—and he would be rid of it. He knew whom to talk to and what to say and how much to promise and what would be returned to him, and at the end of the discussion the state would have a fine facility. He was too old to be chairman of the board of trustees of a damned school. Bert Marks believed he was a modern Sisyphus and Ogden Hall his stone. He had no understanding of schools or the people who ran them, Gus Allprice a case in point. Allprice was the man for the job until suddenly he wasn't, dreaming of a season in Patagonia. What was the point of it? What came after Patagonia? The man was a loon, and from the sound of him a left-wing loon, a crank. All his life Bert had sought clarity, and there was no clarity at Ogden Hall, merely an academic fog. Of course Tommy Ogden couldn't be bothered, Tommy away again shooting animals in East Africa, a cable the other day announcing that he had shot a bull elephant that his hunter had identified as a man-killer, nearly eighty years old, twelve-foot tusks. Tommy was living in a tent in the bush but from his description of the amenities it had more in common with the Ritz in Paris. He was eternally out of touch. Not that he would care if he were in touch. Tommy supplied the cash, someone else picked up the pieces.

  Bert wondered if the headmaster had a point about Ogden Hall's "aura," if there was some malign spirit that had worked its way into the very fabric of the place. Perhaps Ogden Hall's history was too vivid to overcome or reconcile. Its books did not balance. That was what happened to the criminal financiers Insull and Yerkes. They overreached and were careless with their books. It happened all the time in America, creative destruction. There was hell to pay when books were out of balance, and not only in America. The French had never reconciled their revolution. Too many ghosts, a history too laden with contradiction and emotional violence.