Posted on 10/11/2008 3:14:03 PM PDT by Urbane_Guerilla
In either the last week of August or the first week of September, 1970, just before I arrived at college, I had the extraordinary experience of going to Sharon, Connecticut, to the home of William Buckley. With several hundred other young conservatives (I was 17), I gathered for a couple days to validate my totally-against-the-crowd perception of life, a perception inspired in large part by William Buckley, one of the giants of the 20th century.
Buckley's inspiration was not a new or different perception of life. To the contrary, his perception was an explication of life, a logical and spiritual appreciation of the mystery of life. A perception on how we all should treat each other, for our mutual benefit.
When I read Buckley and was inspired by him, inspired to open my mind, he was regarded as a freak, a demented lunatic. I remember that all too well. But he rescued the idea of America, and of Western Civilization, almost by himself.
A number of years later, I forget how many or where, his son wrote a public statement. His son, Christopher, wrote he was in the Buckley mansion when that gathering took place. Christopher said he was smoking dope (I think he said hash) and he and his buddy were laughing at us from the window in the mansion.
I was a 17 year old boy, from a single mother family, five kids, on welfare in those days (does anyone remember?) when welfare meant government peanut butter, butter, lard, flour and surprise visits to see if you had a telephone.
I remember those details as distinctly as if they happened yesterday. And I remember William Buckley just as distinctly, because the man was a true human being, a blessed soul, a man who made sense. He was a free man, not a slave to cant, to bombast, to peer pressure, to junk thinking, to bigotry or to government.
A couple years later I met him personally before a Firing Line episode. What a gracious, lovely man. I was nothing, and he treated me with an understanding and affection I will never forget. It was not special or unique. It was simply William Buckley, acting on principle, that every human being counted - - the essence of conservatism.
When I read Christopher's account of laughing at me and my comrades, while Christopher was stoned, and if I remember correctly it was not a statement of regret, I literally could not believe it was true. I was inexperienced enough to believe that fathers have something like definitive influence over sons.
Only years let me realize how little influence fathers can have.
I do not mean to be dramatic. But I remember days when the kids in my family looked for pop bottles to turn in the deposit (it was 2 cents at the time) to get money for food. It was not a big deal. We never felt like victims. It was just what needed to be done. Poverty is a state of mind.
When I went to college I literally had no conception how wealthy people were, how they took so much for granted. And when I went to college, before I met wealthy people, I was inspired by William Buckley, because what he said was so true and so human.
The bane of great wealth is spiritual poverty.
Christopher Buckley is pretty impressed with himself. A bane.
WFB Sr. was, by most accounts, very much like Daniel Plainview in “There Will Be Blood.” I doubt, however, if WFB Jr. ever helped his father with a “straw.”
Buckley was well known for his command of language. Buckley came late to formal instruction in the English language, not learning it until he was seven years old (his first language was Spanish, learned in Mexico, and his second French, learned in Paris). As a consequence, he spoke English with an idiosyncratic accent: something between an old-fashioned, upper class Mid-Atlantic accent and British Received Pronunciation. Impressionist David Frye included Buckley in his portfolio in the 1960s and 1970s, mastering Buckley's quirky mannerisms, such as his deliberate speech pattern, his use of pen or pencil as a prop, and his tendency to grin and open his eyes wide when making a self-satisfying verbal point.
Very nice story. I’m glad Buckley had that influence over you.
There are a lot of uber-rich kids like him. I believe you completely because I went to school with some of them.
The little girl with the messiest hair and most unkempt school uniform was the child of two huge Hollywood machers, both involved with other partners/spiouses, and she was all but completely neglected. She arrived in a taxi or a limo alone each day.
A bunch of the girls were always whispering about their weekend activities. It sounded at first like fun shopping trips to Saks and Neiman Marcus. Only after I was allowed in their listening circle did I find out the truth. These 12-year-olds of immense wealth and privilege were not shopping. They were shopLIFTING. They already had Daddy’s unlimited credit cards in their little Gucci purses; that would have been too easy. They were trying to rip off the department stores and boutiques for jollies. And the cool thing was that when the stores called their homes, the girls had their maids pretend to be the parents and never got more than slaps on the wrist. Ha ha ha, how very funny.
Thank you for your post, it was interesting. I have been a NR subscriber since I was in my early 20s (that’s a long time!) and it greatly inspired me. WFB was always interesting to listen to, an incredibly smart man, but he was a man, and sometimes he was wrong (occasionally he would say something and I would go...WHAT?) Of course that doesn’t negate the effect he had on the American Conservative Movement. I always took that to mean that I really was thinking for myself, if I could occasionally disagree with Buckley, clearly I was NOT a mind numbed robot. :)
Buckley's old-fashioned way of speaking wasn't too far from the British-influenced mid-Atlantic accent, which the Hollywood studios taught to actors in the 1930s and '40s. You'll pick up some of the same pronunciations and cadences from recordings of Franklin D. Roosevelt*, as well as Katharine Hepburn—who was, after all, from a wealthy Connecticut family, like Buckley.
This was most interesting because I was thinking about Hepburn when the subject of his accent came up--I always wondered why SHE talked that way. Now I know!
You’re very welcome ... both of them were interesting characters!
Absolutely!
I was shocked when I read that article of his in National Review. I believe it was one of his last articles before he died. If I remember right, he said that those that don’t protest tobacco aren’t much better than the German manufacturers of Zyklon B, which is a total leap in logic. He blamed his wife’s death on her sixty-plus year smoking habit, although she didn’t die of a smoking related illness. His grief appeared to have robbed him of his logic at the end of his life. Also, if he really wrote that in his will, than he has fallen even further in my book.
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