The Publisher by Alan Brinkley Read Free Book Online Page A

part because the university had not recovered from its wartime disruptions. Many faculty members had yet to return from military service; the campus was crowded with returning veterans, some of whom had been awayfor two, even three years, and others—like Harry—for only a few months. But Harry was also commenting on what he considered, despite Yale’s many efforts at modernization, a narrow and inadequate curriculum. Henry Seidel Canby later described it as “the college of the catalogue…. One of the most irrational and confusing educational institutions the world has ever seen … [whose] handicap was the lack of a real education.” “I suppose it is natural,” Harry once commented, “that by junior year one begins to realize that the importance of American college life lies in its possibilities for friendship.” He expressed high regard for the celebrated honors course he took with the historian Max Farrand. On the whole, however, he did his academic work dutifully, without great excitement, complaining occasionally about the “monotony” but determined to excel nevertheless. Late in the semester he was rewarded with election to Phi Beta Kappa. 40
    Nothing, however, was remotely as important to him by now as “going Bones,” the one mark of success that almost everyone at Yale recognized—the one sure sign of having, in Owen Johnson’s words, “won out at the end.” The chairmanship of the
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might have meant more to him a year before, but once he had failed to win that prize the possibility of Skull and Bones came to seem all the more important—and thus, as with all his other goals, a subject of almost obsessive contemplation and calculation. Everything he did, he assumed, would be watched by those who would judge his worthiness. When he flirted with taking the chairmanship of the literary magazine, he conferred with a member of the faculty about the possible implications of such a move on his prospects for Skull and Bones. His enthusiasm for the contest diminished considerably when the professor warned him that the
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chairmanship would likely disqualify him from consideration, that the post was considered too remote from the “grand old Yale” of the senior societies to impress the Bones men.
    At the Yale prom in February 1919, the great social event of the year, Harry—still without any significant experience with women—was accompanied by his sister Emmavail and preoccupied about the impression he would make. “The Prom affair, you know, is where social aristocracy does its best to rule,” he wrote his mother, “and it’s all an outsider can do to maintain his status quo.” But even maintaining his status quo as a respected but not socially eminent member of his class required great vigilance. As a result he carefully scrutinized the invitations he received and the names on his dance card, trying to judge what they said about his standing and what they would convey about his taste. He wasincensed when one of the campus fraternities failed to invite him to its preprom tea (even though all seven of the others did); and for the prom itself, he took care to see that he would be seen dancing only with prestigious guests. “My Prom dance card is absolutely ‘O.K.,’” he tried to assure himself. “There are about three undesirables on the program, but I have secured the services of stags to ‘cut in’ before the undesirables get very far.” His preoccupation with Skull and Bones seemed to have blinded him to his own unkindness. 41
    In the weeks leading up to Tap Day—the great spring event when the senior societies chose their new members—Harry alternated between hope and despair. At one point he concluded that “I shall not make ‘Bones.’ … I have felt all along that somehow I was not typical enough of Yale to ‘come through’ at that point.” It surely did not help his spirits that Brit Hadden took him out for a walk one day—“Brit, my rival since early Hotchkiss