reached its destination, the seniors formed a ring of torches for wrestling matches between the sophomores and the freshmen. Afterward the freshman class gathered shoulder to shoulder on Elm Street and charged toward the sophomores, who were similarly massed at the library, in something like a medieval joust. The city trolleys had been pulled off their wires to prevent any traffic interfering with this curious rite, and if any bystanders were caught between the hurtling mobs, noblesse oblige yielded to sauve qui peut.
Gerald soon came to find such mindless, Dink Stoverish high jinks both thuggish and jejune. In later life he complained that Yale celebrated “a general tacit Philistinism. One’s studies were seldom discussed. An interest in the arts was suspect. The men in your class with the most interesting minds were submerged and you never got to know them.” Although riding, golf, and swimming were particular passions of his, he wasn’t a jock in the usual sense. One day, crossing the campus in riding clothes, he was stung to find himself the object of sneering comments from classmates who found his getup more effete than athletic. It was also increasingly obvious that Gerald wasn’t an academic star, either. He finished up his freshman year with the equivalent of gentleman’s C’s in all his subjects except for history, in which his marks hovered near failure. Although Anna offered him a rare pat on the back for being able to “go free of care into your sophomore year,” the Murphys didn’t feel his performance merited including him in the European trip upon which they and Esther embarked that summer. Gerald stayed on in New York at the Osborne, a residential hotel at 205 West 57th Street, and in a peculiar turnabout was charged with “mak[ing] Fred look after his health.”
Gerald and Fred had a formal rather than fraternal relationship. According to the actor Monty Woolley, who was a class ahead of Gerald at Yale, “They always appeared to act as members of a royal family. Their politeness to one another was formidable. They never relaxed in one another’s presence.” But by this time Fred had already started to suffer from the recurrent infections and stomach problems that would plague his later life; and Gerald, who was trying hard to live up to everyone’s expectations, took Anna’s exhortation seriously.
So Gerald sweltered in hot, empty New York City, while Patrick and Anna took Esther to Paris, Switzerland, and England, and wrote him about the fine time they were having, and what a sensation little Esther—or Tess, as they called her—was making. Esther was by then eleven, a prodigious and precocious reader with a conversational sangfroid that disarmed (and sometimes demolished) adults. She also had a noticeable case of strabismus, or a “lazy eye,” which Anna hoped could be helped by a visit to a European specialist. But despite her odd appearance and scholarly demeanor, Esther was “the belle of the ship” on the Murphys’ transatlantic crossing, and “the pet of the prominent men on board.” The Amerika’s captain had opened the ship’s ball with her, reported Anna. But Esther’s real triumph was the mock trial she got up to decide a “case” brought by one of the passengers, a man named McDonald, who complained that his wife smoked in bed. Appointing herself counsel for the defense, Esther won her case by, among other things, calling the prosecutor “a persecutor.”
“Tess is a wonder,” wrote Patrick, in a letter in which he also congratulated Gerald perfunctorily for working hard during his first year at Yale. “Never have I seen such a mind; everybody who meets her stamps her as a ‘genius.’” The contrast between Patrick’s effusions about Esther and his lukewarm praise of Gerald must have hurt. Gerald knew he would never be a scholar, nor a star athlete. And he was still nagged by the feelings of difference that had surfaced for him at Hotchkiss. When he’d
Gerald soon came to find such mindless, Dink Stoverish high jinks both thuggish and jejune. In later life he complained that Yale celebrated “a general tacit Philistinism. One’s studies were seldom discussed. An interest in the arts was suspect. The men in your class with the most interesting minds were submerged and you never got to know them.” Although riding, golf, and swimming were particular passions of his, he wasn’t a jock in the usual sense. One day, crossing the campus in riding clothes, he was stung to find himself the object of sneering comments from classmates who found his getup more effete than athletic. It was also increasingly obvious that Gerald wasn’t an academic star, either. He finished up his freshman year with the equivalent of gentleman’s C’s in all his subjects except for history, in which his marks hovered near failure. Although Anna offered him a rare pat on the back for being able to “go free of care into your sophomore year,” the Murphys didn’t feel his performance merited including him in the European trip upon which they and Esther embarked that summer. Gerald stayed on in New York at the Osborne, a residential hotel at 205 West 57th Street, and in a peculiar turnabout was charged with “mak[ing] Fred look after his health.”
Gerald and Fred had a formal rather than fraternal relationship. According to the actor Monty Woolley, who was a class ahead of Gerald at Yale, “They always appeared to act as members of a royal family. Their politeness to one another was formidable. They never relaxed in one another’s presence.” But by this time Fred had already started to suffer from the recurrent infections and stomach problems that would plague his later life; and Gerald, who was trying hard to live up to everyone’s expectations, took Anna’s exhortation seriously.
So Gerald sweltered in hot, empty New York City, while Patrick and Anna took Esther to Paris, Switzerland, and England, and wrote him about the fine time they were having, and what a sensation little Esther—or Tess, as they called her—was making. Esther was by then eleven, a prodigious and precocious reader with a conversational sangfroid that disarmed (and sometimes demolished) adults. She also had a noticeable case of strabismus, or a “lazy eye,” which Anna hoped could be helped by a visit to a European specialist. But despite her odd appearance and scholarly demeanor, Esther was “the belle of the ship” on the Murphys’ transatlantic crossing, and “the pet of the prominent men on board.” The Amerika’s captain had opened the ship’s ball with her, reported Anna. But Esther’s real triumph was the mock trial she got up to decide a “case” brought by one of the passengers, a man named McDonald, who complained that his wife smoked in bed. Appointing herself counsel for the defense, Esther won her case by, among other things, calling the prosecutor “a persecutor.”
“Tess is a wonder,” wrote Patrick, in a letter in which he also congratulated Gerald perfunctorily for working hard during his first year at Yale. “Never have I seen such a mind; everybody who meets her stamps her as a ‘genius.’” The contrast between Patrick’s effusions about Esther and his lukewarm praise of Gerald must have hurt. Gerald knew he would never be a scholar, nor a star athlete. And he was still nagged by the feelings of difference that had surfaced for him at Hotchkiss. When he’d
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