Overdrive Read online

  OVERDRIVE

  A PERSONAL DOCUMENTARY

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York 1983

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint their copyrighted material:

  Excerpt from "In Memory of W. B. Yeats," from The English Auden: Poems, Essays & Dramatic Writings, 1927-1939, by W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson, reprinted by kind permission of Random House, Inc.

  Excerpt from "God and Boys at Millbrook" by William F. Buckley from October 4, 1981, New York Times Magazine, copyright © 1981 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

  Lyrics excerpt from "Hair," copyright © 1966, 1967, 1968 James Rado, Gerome Ragni, Gald MacDermot, Nat Shapiro, United Artists Music Co., Inc. All rights controlled and administered by UNITED ARTIST MUSIC. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Buckley, William F. (William Frank), 1925-

  Overdrive: a personal documentary.

  1. Buckley, William F. ( William Frank), 1925—

  2. Journalists—United States—Biography. I. Title.

  PN4874.B796A36 1983 070'.92'4. [B]

  ISBN 0-385-18269-4

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 82-45349

  Copyright © 1981, 1983 by N. R. Resources, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  FIRST EDITION

  FOR Shirley kins

  A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

  A portion of the book was first published in The New Yorker. The reminiscence on Millbrook School was first published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Kate Medina of Doubleday, with whom I had not previously worked, helped me enormously with suggestions major and minor. So did Samuel Vaughan, as ever with that distinctive touch, light and substantive. Anyone inclined to blame them for the shortcomings of this book can have copies of their criticism. Sophie Wilkins read the manuscript, and returned me a cornucopia of wonderful suggestions. My brother Reid made comments extraordinarily useful, as did my son Christopher, who in his marginal notes did not even fight back about his mustache. I am grateful also to Charles Wallen, Thomas Wendel, and Steve Umin. Dorothy McCartney, head of research for National Review, has, as usual, made an honest man of me. I should add that David Green of The New Yorker is the most thoroughgoing and resourceful researcher in history. I cannot imagine why those who wonder what is the meaning of the Aztec calendar stone don't simply ask Mr. Green? Susan Stark did the manuscript with the help of our Z-89 word processor (using hdos's pie and text, as per the instructions of Hugh Kenner). Frances Bronson did the general editorial supervision. Chaucy Bennetts did a superb job of copy editing, among other things reminding me that "irradiates" is a transitive verb. Inasmuch as I belong to Mr. Theodore Bernstein's school, which favors dropping the accusative form of the pronoun "who" (except after a preposition), the liberties I take in this matter are my own responsibility. Joseph Isola did his fine job of proofreading. To them all, my thanks.

  overdrive n [over + drive]: an automotive transmission gear which transmits to the propeller shaft a speed greater than engine speed.

  One

  MONDAY

  Gloria brought in my lunch on a tray—two pieces of whole wheat toast each with tuna fish covered with some cheese-something my wife Pat had read about somewhere, a salad, a half bottle of Cote Rotie (I remember the wine's name only because it's the one I have in half bottles) and coffee. I leaned back in the big desk chair that reaches to my withers, tucked the napkin under my chin in case bits of tuna oozed out, and looked out at the lawn as I ate. I was looking through two huge windowed doors that had served as garage doors before we bought the house in 1952, converting the number four garage into my own office, and the number three into an office for a secretary. Pat had been prowling about the area for seven or eight weeks, and one day telephoned to the office of the American Mercury, where I was working, to tell me she had found just what she was looking for, I must hurry out with her to see it, but I was to ignore the furnishings when I did see it, as they might distract me.

  We met at the Stamford railroad station, and the real estate agents, a couple in their late sixties, drove us to the little headland, through the private gateway, turn right, second driveway on the left. They explained to us chattily the circumstances of the house's availability.

  It had been constructed in 1907 by a doctor, who with his wife brought up their children and, pursuing his passion for horticulture, lived in the house and tended its lawns and gardens until the early forties when both the doctor and his wife died. The house had then been picked up by a wealthy Stamford industrialist. He had a mistress; in due course he decided to replace her with tenderer flesh, but being a man of stout conscience he resolved to give the retiree a substantial farewell gift, and so bought this house for her. Here she, with her rather distracted husband, lived for a few years, but their economic fortunes had waned. So, in order to save on that winter's heating bills, they had moved out of the main dwelling into the top floor of the garage in one of whose converted cubicles I now sat.

  We were shown the house by the proprietress. In the living room alone I counted twenty-two chairs—the room would have made an excellent workshop for those social critics who remark every now and then America's obsession with chairs. The walls were papered in a purple print, out of which every here and there plastic flowers protruded. The other rooms were decorated congruently.

  The following Sunday, Pat and I traveled back to the house to take a more exact inventory of the rooms, and one of us (memory chivalrously forgets which) forgot the key the owner had given us (she and her husband would be out of town, but we must make the house our own—we had agreed to buy it). So I broke a windowpane in the kitchen door to gain entry, wrote out an explanatory note for eventual perusal by the returning owner, and we wandered about.

  That was the very first conscious experience I had with the reality that books don't necessarily figure in everyone's life. There wasn't a single volume in any of the eleven rooms, though in the garage apartment there were four neatly standing editions of Reader's Digest Condensed Books. (Do these count? I asked the question seriously of Mortimer Smith, whom I came to know slightly, soon after he had published And Madly Teach and The Diminished Mind and founded the Council for Basic Education, devoting his life to the reclamation of phonics as the basis for learning how to read. "Marginally," he answered.)

  I remembered taking Whittaker Chambers to my office here one day in 1955, with lighthearted trepidation. Not because of the mess (he wouldn't mind messy offices—he'd mind people who minded messy offices), but because I had had fixed windows installed in the top half of the garage doors, giving me a copious view of the lawn and garden, though not the eastern view, into Long Island Sound. (That had been the mandate to the real estate people. We desired a house a) close enough to New York to permit commuting, but b) by the sea, because I wanted to live by the sea and didn't see any particular reason why, if the whole southern tier of Connecticut squats down on the sea, I shouldn't be among those who squatted down in that part of Connecticut however sadly remote from the beautiful but isolated northwest corner of the state where I grew up, and where most of my siblings dwell.) Whittaker had once told me, on taking me down to his own cellar office in Pipe Creek Farm, which had no windows at all, that an engaging view was distracting to a writer; but his discipline was always self-directed—I never knew a less censorious man about others' ways. And he did not say anything about the seductive view to the left of my desk. Chambers had told me that a scenic view from one's desk is the great enemy of productivity.

  I shook myself free of rem
iniscence, and observed for the thousandth time the great cock pheasant that makes this point his own preserve. He was picking his way confidently across the semifrozen yellow-green grass. I reflected on the curiosity that the pheasant, full-grown, had apparently always been full-grown. For thirty years now I had seen what I call "him," though it must have been "they," since it is my impression that pheasants do not live for thirty years, let alone forever. It occurred to me that thirty years hence "the" pheasant might well be strolling by, viewed by different eyes. And perhaps halfway between now and then I will still be seeing him. From a wheelchair? 1 hope not; though it is so for most people who grow old, my father among them, and the geriatric imperative suggests it will be so even more in the years ahead. The thought is glum, but not so much as its complement, that fifteen years hence I should magically find myself fifteen years younger. The only quality of youth I covet is their health, not their age; life is wonderful, but the thought of reliving it is altogether repelling; spiritually, and even biologically, exhausting. When the character in Catch 22 said he intended to live forever or die trying, I sensed an exalted fatalism, nicely captured by the easy superficiality of the biological paradox.

  In any case, no matter how long I live, certainly I'd never willingly live elsewhere. My wife and I know what it is to learn to love a piece of property wholly; defiantly; truculently, even. I have lived in (two) beautiful homes (my father's specialty) and been blasphemously happy in them. This by all objective standards is by far the least of the three, although it is not (I do not pretend any such thing) Tobacco Road. For a while my private nightmare was that the eight houses along the point here would one day be taken over by the city of Stamford to provide more public beaches and swimming space, but presently a huge swimming area just a little way north was developed by the city (which already disposed of a huge beach area southeast), and neither of the two outdoor areas is heavily patronized. It seems unlikely, then, that the twenty-four acres on this point will be violated. We'll always be here, then, in the warm summers when the leaves make invisible the houses of our neighbors to the south and north; in the spiky fall season, days like today with the little chill that makes one feel freshly laundered; and in the truly cold cold of the cold days, although we haven't spent a February or a March here since 1959, when we took to going to Switzerland.

  I looked over at the telephones. There are two. One is an extension of my son's line—his official home is above where I sit, the garage apartment upstairs. He occupied it the whole of this last year, completing his first book, Steaming to Bamboola. He then returned to Esquire magazine, and on that Monday his boss gave him a welcome-back party. On Wednesday he was asked by a man he had never seen or heard of before (nor had I, when told the name) to go down to Washington to discuss some urgent business in the Vice-President's office. There and then he was offered (based on his past writings for Esquire) the job of speechwriter. On Thursday he told me he had accepted the offer but was mortified by the thought of having to tell his Esquire boss, who had been so cordial in welcoming him back after a year's leave of absence. I suggested he broach the subject by saying that on Friday he was available, in the event Esquire wanted to give him a goodbye party. Christopher's laugh is wonderful.

  Well, Christo is in Washington now, and so I pick up his telephone when it rings. Half the time I serve as his social secretary ("No, Christopher isn't here, he is in Washington; would you like his telephone number?"). The rest of the time I find myself responding to commercial calls, because Christopher's number is listed, mine isn't. Those conversations go, typically:

  "Mr. Buckley?"

  "Yes."

  "Mr. Buckley, we have a special offer of Time magazine, for thirteen weeks, for only seven dollars and twenty-five cents."

  Calls such as these are difficult because the process of self-extrication is complicated. I can't now say, "I'm not Mr. Buckley." And to say, "I am Mr. Buckley's father" invites informality. Unlike Waugh, who wrote that he understands formality and understands intimacy, but can't stand informality, I like informality; but not when it is conducive to conversation I wish to avoid. I can't say I already have two subscriptions to Time magazine, which is the truth, because that invites the questioner to ask how is it that her records show me delinquent? So I say something about having a subscription that goes to the office, thanks very much, and hang up. They are trained not to be too persevering. I know, because Jim McFadden, keeper of all the secrets at National Review, once told me he uses the system; for all I know, the same girls.

  The second telephone has three lines. One of them I think of as my wife's telephone. The light is regularly lit, as her friends have in common not only their kindness, but their loquacity. A second line we call "Eudosia's phone" after our Cuban cook, retired after twenty-five years with us. The third is a tie line to my office in New York, and when that indicator is depressed, the telephone operator at my office answers, and puts me through to whomever.

  The desk itself is decrepit in appearance, but superbly shaped. Back in 1951 everything in Mexico was cheap, and I had this huge, indulgent desk constructed for a few hundred dollars. It resembles in shape a bow, and I sit where the arrow would cock, with plenty of room to my right, and to my left, enough room for as many as three people to occupy it simultaneously. When I went to Mexico, it was for the CIA. The rules are that if you resign your post in less than one year, you must reimburse the government the cost of having shipped your household goods abroad. If you stay one year, you need not reimburse the outbound shipping costs, but you must pay the cost of returning your goods to the United States. If you stay two years or more, you can claim the cost of shipping your household goods both ways.

  I stayed less than one year, as it happened; but I made an elementary deduction, namely that the customs charge on the furniture I acquired in Mexico was legally subtractable from the total sum due. Why? Because while in Mexico I was (however secretly) working for the government of the United States, and household goods purchased in connection with government duty performed abroad are not taxed on returning home. But as a deep-cover agent I could not reveal to the customs official that I was properly immune from customs duties. So I paid customs. I then took the figure—it was approximately five hundred dollars —and subtracted it from the total owed to the CIA, making out (as instructed to do) a personal check to an anonymous person residing at some address or other in Washington. I thought this not only just, but resourceful.

  A few weeks later, my secretary told me that downstairs to see me was a gentleman who identified himself as an old friend from Yale, Robert Lounsbury. And indeed it was he.

  Lounsbury, a tall, talented student at the law school while I was an undergraduate, had, for reasons I've forgotten, learned fluent Spanish as a child, as had I. So acute had been the shortage of Spanish teachers in the fall of 1946, and so inflated the student demand for instruction in the language, that Yale had had to take three students—one law student (Lounsbury), and two undergraduates (me and an American raised in Argentina)—and admit them to the faculty. So that Bob Lounsbury, who lived with his wife and child in a little house near the law school, and I met daily in adjacent classrooms and became close friends. (I never knew a man who took more voluptuous pleasure from opera recordings.) Lounsbury, I also remembered, had caused a slight ruffle in official Yale during my junior year, because one of his students was Levi Jackson, the amiable and formidable black captain of the football team. Ten days or so before the Yale-Princeton game, Lounsbury grabbed me as we were both leaving our classrooms and gestured me to the end of the room, where he triumphantly produced from his briefcase two letters. The first, addressed to him, was written by the Director of Athletics, and said (I quote from memory): "Dear Mr. Lounsbury: I note that Mr. Levi Jackson is having difficulty with Spanish. The rules of the College automatically place on probation, forbidding extracurricular activity to, any student who fails a subject in the midterm exam. The midterm comes one week before the Yale-Princeton Game
. I trust Mr. Jackson will have no problem in this regard. Yours, (etc.)." A huge smile on his face, Lounsbury then gave me his freshly typed answer, which he was about to drop in the post office: ;'To the Director of Athletics, Yale University. Dear Mr. Kiphuth: I am sorry to say that the probability is very high that indeed Mr. Levi Jackson will have a considerable academic problem before the Yale-Princeton game. Sincerely, Robert H. Lounsbury, Princeton 1943." He howled as he licked the envelope. But Bob was good-natured; Levi played in the game. And Yale lost.

  After a few minutes Bob revealed he was here on official business—that he was an agent of the CIA, and had been instructed to arbitrate the financial differences between me and the United States Government. I was genuinely astonished that Bob was a spook (Lounsbury, I had felt sure, was headed right to a senior law firm), but even a short period in the CIA prepares you not ever to be astonished for long. I appealed to Lounsbury, honors graduate of the Yale Law School: Had not the identical government that had taken five hundred dollars from me in customs duties also immunized from customs duties all government employees stationed abroad? Hadn't I therefore forfeited that five hundred dollars only because I had kept silent, as a government agency had pledged me to do, my reason for being in Mexico? Bob agreed that the judicial poetry was all on my side, but said that the books simply made no provision for what I had done. He smiled: Would I agree to pay two hundred dollars? I agreed: provided it was put down as a gift from me to Uncle Sam, so that I could reserve the satisfaction of having won the juridical point. Again he smiled, said nothing, and I gave him a check made out to cash for two hundred dollars.

  I never, I recently explained to someone, revealed the secret of my former employment until I was blown—by William Sloane Coffin, Jr. It was Watergate-time and for some reason he and I found ourselves at opposite ends of a telephone line. At the end of the business he was calling me about he told me that while he had served as chaplain at Williams College no doubt I would be pleased to learn that he had taught ethics to Jeb Magruder, one of the White House people freshly sentenced for conspiracy to obstruct justice and defraud the United States. It was public knowledge that Coffin had himself been a member of the CIA before going to Yale, so I blurted out, "And you will no doubt be pleased to learn that my superior in the CIA was Howard Hunt." We cackled—but he indiscreetly (on the other hand, does it really matter, at this remove?) used the information at a public meeting, and my (and the government's) twenty-year-old secret was out. Poor Bob Lounsbury, who had become moderately prominent in Democratic-intellectual affairs in New York, committed suicide about ten years ago. I don't know why, but happily assume his tragedy was unrelated to any contrition felt for what he had done, or almost done, to Levi Jackson, and to the Director of Yale Athletics.