The End of Innocence (26 page)

She said nothing.

He sat up, his eyes lighting. “I'm not saying it's wrong, Miss Brooks. I love our students too. President Lowell loves them as well. We're trying to make them immortal by writing their names in gold and marble in a monument. And we're encountering the same problem as you. We're trying to mix the sacred and the mortal. We can't make these men immortal any more than you can make your love for your husband immortal.”

“I can love my husband as long as I wish to.”

“Not without injury to yourself if you let it govern your life. And we can't make men immortal on this campus without injury to our community—you see it in the way the protests are so angry about whether to include the Germans in the church memorial. Such love”—he sighed—“becomes its own form of idolatry. I've seen it not under a hundred times in books and poems.”

“I beg your pardon,” she said, bristling at the thought. “Religion urges us to love as God loves.”

“But you are not God.”

“I didn't say I was.”

“Then when you try to love as God loves—or when we do,” he said, leaning toward her, “you forget your duty. I think you'd use your time more wisely if you make use of the opportunities that present themselves instead of continuing to fret about something that makes you timid, and cowardly, and doesn't help anyone else. As that seems fairly useless to me, and I hate useless things, I shall put you to work.”

“Sir, my father counseled me to reject political debate or protest. And it stood him well—”

“My dear friend Jonathan Brooks. Oh yes, I remember him quite well. Doted on and coddled his daughter. You would have been better off following your mother's lead.”

“You don't know me.”

He sighed, sitting back in his chair. He looked out the window. “You have come to my door a thousand times in other forms, Miss Brooks. I know what a dead dream looks like. You may fool others, but you can't fool me. I saw your face after the unsinkable ship sank, and after the war, and now after the crash. We have had some dark days around here, and I know because I wasn't too timid to talk to students who came to my door and exhort them to find new dreams.”

Helen caught her breath, unable to reply. “I thought you might have a letter,” she finally said, her throat dry.

“You know, Miss Brooks,” he continued, ignoring her. “I am glad you will be on my side in this matter. I've been barking like a seal about the memorial, so you must have heard of it, yet you never managed to come by before. But I'm glad you did today. Your mother would be proud. She'd not let a golden opportunity to help others learn the meaning of ‘equal before God' pass her by. That's not like any Windship woman to do. Ever. Your family would be appalled at your lack of resolve and curiosity.”

“My mother was arrested many times for her work.”

“Those arrests pleased her immensely.”

“Harvard's church is not my cause.”

“What would be, then? Finding letters of nearly twenty years ago? How is that worthy of your entitled heritage?”

“I've never been talked to like this—”

“What would you say to Wils if you could see him?”

“What?”

“What would you tell him? That you were sorry he died? My guess is that he is too. How would that help? My point is, put this misguided sense of love that is really just hurt, away. I've seen enough of your type, Miss Brooks, to know that there is nothing that the Boston woman cannot accomplish. You possess these mythical qualities of tenacity for social justice through your family, yet when I ask you, you can give me no example of what you do with your time other than look for letters. Am I incorrect to suppose then that you may have spent too much time in sentimental grief? What happened to Thoreau's admonition, ‘One world at a time, brother, one world at a time'?”

“Thoreau is not my philosopher anymore.”

Copeland's eyes widened. “Things are bad, I see. You should have come to me before. You must pick up a pen and write to the president.”

She gave him a fierce look. “I know my duty.”

“Then do it. I want you to go write—no, talk—on behalf of your dead husband, to President Lowell and change the nature of this memorial he's got it in his head to build. He needs to hear from people other than angry students and ancient professors.”

“It won't do any good,” she said, exasperated.

“How do you know that? You're a Brooks. And I guess you were a Brandl once too. Why did you not change your name to his?”

“I had no signed wedding certificate,” she said.

He nodded. “Then let this be your tribute to your marriage. It's at least some use of your life beyond that of your own edification, which doesn't seem to be going anywhere quickly.”

As he stood up she opened her mouth to protest.

“No, please, say no more. I know your brother, Peter, and what you've had to overcome. But I liked your husband, Wils, and thought him talented. Tell me what President Lowell says, and then,” he said, ushering her to the door, “perhaps you'll join us among the living.”

She bristled as she walked out the door.

* * *

She walked the long way to her office in the library, by the new church.

The sun was much brighter than her mood and the October air chill and crisp. Workmen were stringing paper lanterns across mature trees that had burst into their autumn color. Students ambled along the broad sidewalks, their dogs and friends in tow. At the base of the unfinished Memorial Church building, electricians wired spotlights to the four spare pillars of its south porch. A delegation assembled not far from them, pointing in different directions. They were most likely preparing for Sunday's service to raise money for the church's completion. It was a service she would not attend.

It was no secret that President Lowell had wished to tear down Appleton Chapel from the minute he had become president. He was said to have cringed every time he was forced to walk by the pile of light-colored sandstone bricks. He found it neither Gothic nor Roman, but Byzantine in both concept and execution.

President Lowell had taken years to raise funds for the new church, and now it was near completion. Its white steeple stretched high above a redbrick stem. Arched windows had been set in its walls. Sheets hung in their hollows until the glass could be purchased to put in their place. Tarpaulins covered portions of the church roof, and the stocky column legs of the west portico were rolled and tied into a neat bundle by University Hall.

The project had been immersed in controversy from its start. The Congregationalists and Unitarians tried to convince themselves it was just going to be a fancy meetinghouse for social work. The architects and alumni worried that it would be a lump of limestone, compounding the architectural mistakes that led to “the oppressive mass” of Widener Library. Catholics objected to a Protestant church.

But the central problem was the war memorial. Students protested that the war dead would have preferred free beer. Those who'd funded the John Singer Sargent murals in Widener Library were irate that their memorial would get second billing to Lowell's church. Lowell clashed with faculty and students over the idea of including the German students in the church.

And this was the reason Helen had closed her eyes to the debate and turned her attention away from the building across the Yard. Until today.

Copeland's faith surprised her. He actually believed she could move this mountain. Perhaps she'd consider it.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

On one early workday morning, two weeks later, Helen heard a car's horn blare from in front of her window. She looked out from the heavy white curtains in her parlor. It was Peter, in his dark topcoat with a wool hat, waving to her from the driver's seat of his car. She frowned, opened her door, and called to him.

“Civilized people knock.”

“Get your coat!” he called over the noise of the car's engine. “We've an appointment.”

“With whom?”

“No time to discuss. Can't you see I'm in the middle of the road? Get in!” She grabbed her coat and dashed out, locking the brass door behind her as a car pulled up behind Peter, unable to maneuver around him on the narrow street. The driver put his head out the car window and gave her a look of moral opprobrium as she walked to Peter's car. She hurried.

When she got in, she noticed Peter's cheeks were flushed. He looked almost happy, as she hadn't seen him in years.

“Peter, where are we going?” she asked, closing the car door.

“We have an eight o'clock appointment this morning with President Lowell.”

“What?”

“Indeed!” he said, smiling triumphantly. He gingerly inched out into the Beacon Street traffic. A full grin came to her brother's lips, one she'd not seen for quite some time.

“Yes, Helen. I ran into Professor Copeland last week in the Yard when taking Ann to one of those interminable Phillips Brooks House advisory meetings. He asked how you were doing.”

“He didn't—”

“Oh, but he did,” said Peter. “And he and I decided, dear sister, that it was time for you to make peace with your past. And so I'm driving you today to a meeting with President Lowell that Ann arranged so that you might make a case for your husband to be included in Memorial Church.”

“Merciful heavens!”

“That's exactly the point you'll make to the president: forgiveness, not judgment.” He nodded. “Now I realize I've not been the most supportive brother—”

“You had no right! I'm not prepared.”

He looked over at her as he turned onto the Massachusetts Avenue bridge. “You look fine. Your hair is neat and your dress appropriate.

“Now in the backseat you will find a dossier the Reverend Willard Sperry and I compiled on the lives of the Germans who are to be excluded. They all have references of good character and they all—now this is important—died
before
America entered the war. In other words, they did not fight our men.”

“Reverend Sperry?”

“Yes, he said to wish you well and that he and the faculty of the Divinity School would lift you up at a prayer service this morning.”

“The Divinity School faculty? You talked with Reverend Sperry?” Helen spluttered.

“Oh, we did more than talk. The group of us—Ann invited some of the more fair-minded donors—”

“What? Who?”

“I don't recall. A few members of the Harvard Corporation and, you know, donors. There was a group from the library as well. They are very concerned about you over there.”

“Why?”

He pulled along Quincy Street to the Yard's wrought iron gate and idled the engine.

“I know I've made fun of your marriage to Wils, but in between losing so many friends in the war and then the death of Mother and Father, and selling Merrimack Hill recently, I—well, Ann has helped me see that even though I don't understand your grief, I do want you to smile again. I want us to be happy. Perhaps if you laugh, then I finally will be able to as well.”

She saw in his eyes the same pain that she had seen in her own mirror. But before her stoic reserve could melt, he turned to the backseat and picked up a folder.

“It's time for you to breathe fresh air,” he said. “Take this research and know that your many friends are pulling for you.”

“I've many friends?” she said, blinking back tears. “I thought I was alone.”

“More friends than you'd ever know. So does Wils.”

She shook her head. “I didn't know anyone knew.”

“Everyone knows.”

“I'm mortified.”

“Don't be. Even though we're all a bit afraid of who you've become these days, we do love you.”

She looked down at her lap.

“Now, Helen, remember Mother. She'd have President Lowell in tears. You don't need tears, just acknowledgment that your husband should be commemorated as well if the soldiers of World War I are to be honored. Forgiveness in a church is preferred to judgment. You'll do fine and I will catch up with you after work today.”

She nodded, took the folder, and got out of the car. She watched from the sidewalk as her brother drove off.

The sheaf of papers was labeled clearly and annotated in his handwriting. It must have taken him hours. And he knew she never would have allowed this to happen with advance notice. She smiled.

Such was the face of kindness that day that touched her as she walked under the elm trees to the cold gray stone building that was University Hall.

* * *

The trees under which Helen walked were of particular significance to her conversation that morning with President Lowell.

The trees were the subject of a bitter fight and loss of power for President Lowell in the early years of his tenure. There were those who said it was good the university had gotten him while he was young, as his neck had only become stiffer with age.

In 1909 the leopard moth had attacked the American elms, its larvae laid in the branches destroying trees more than 300 years old. While the Harvard arborists hacked away at the branches trying to prevent the larvae's spread, President Lowell ordered the planting of oaks among the elms in the Yard.

It was a fine solution, he believed, planting a different variety of trees, so no one moth or beetle could destroy the Yard. Plus, the red oak grew fast and its canopy was high enough to provide an unimpeded view across the Yard. And that should have been that.

But he'd not reckoned with the pull of sentimental precedent among the older generation or the desire of those among the faculty and administration to trip him up. When the venerable Class Day Elm fell in 1911, the replanting issue ignited into a firestorm.

President Lowell deigned to convene a committee, but assumed that the replanting would continue. Powerful alumni had other ideas. If King Lowell sought to replace their elms with anything other than large, live American elms, the alumni decreed, they would repot him.

President Lowell responded that the plan made no sense. The moths would eat the new trees just as they had the last ones. It didn't matter. They offered to fund the replanting, and they asked President Lowell not to meddle further with the heart and soul of Harvard. In 1914, President Lowell begrudgingly ordered the planting of large American elms to replace the lost elms in the Yard, negotiating only the inclusion of a few English elms—variety for the leopard moth's diet, he grumbled. It didn't matter that a half century later history would prove him right, when Dutch elm disease would invade the campus, killing more than four hundred of the seven hundred elms.

It was the first fight he'd lost, and it taught him a great deal about working with Harvard's factions. He vowed that though he would lose again in the future, such losses would be rare and they would not be splashed across the pages of the
Crimson
.

* * *

President Lowell's suite of offices sat at the top of the steps of the suspended granite staircase on the south side of University Hall. Helen gave her name to the gray-haired, gray-suited secretary and was told to take a seat in the waiting room. She sat under a large oil painting of an American elm. The brass plate read “With High Regards from the Harvard Alumni Association.”

At eight, a clock chimed. The secretary returned to the waiting room and ushered her through a tall arched door into the president's office.

The room was spacious, as befitted a man whose employees called its occupant “Mr. President.” Tall windows on two sides allowed full morning light to filter through the room, creating a warmth not found in the waiting room of the upper hall. Priceless portraits hung on the walls; below some, university treasures beamed from antique cabinets framing a sitting area to one side. The other portion of the office was devoted to a large walnut desk. It was uncluttered, save for a fountain pen, a fat folder, and two scrolls of architectural blueprints secured with a length of black ribbon. The Persian carpet on which she was standing was rumored to be worth more than the entire Divinity School.

President Lowell had held his office since 1909, and now, in the twenty-third year of his presidency, he'd heard complaints about everything from students' marks to the backbiting faculty, the flow of the Charles River, and many other issues in which it was clear that not all parties could ever be pleased with any outcome. For a university president in his twenty-third year, nothing was new.

President Lowell was seated at the desk, reviewing a sheaf of papers, and didn't look up as they entered.

“President Lowell,” said his secretary in a loud voice. “Miss Helen Brooks is here to see you.”

“What? Oh, come in!” he said, his large mustache spreading over his wide face in a perfunctory smile. He pushed back his chair from his desk, stood and adjusted his wool jacket, then walked over to her, offering a large, beefy hand in greeting. He asked her to sit at a nearby table at which there were two chairs, each carved with the new Harvard crest. She sat, placing the folder Peter had given her on the table and grasping the handle of her purse in her lap.

“I'll have to ask you to speak loudly, Miss Brooks. I've become a little deaf in one ear.” He leaned toward her with a conspiratorial whisper. “Well, actually it's both ears. I never thought I should live to be a decrepit old man. And, if I had just been a decrepit young man I should be used to it by now!” he said with a chuckle.

“For all your activity, you would hardly know that age even affected you,” she said clearly. “I see you inspecting the Memorial Church each day.”

“Yes, I do. Coffee?”

“No thank you,” said Helen.

“That's all, then, Miss Pebbles.” The secretary turned, her steps muffled on the thick carpet. Helen heard the door close.

He gave a slight cough and shifted in his seat. “Miss Brooks, my secretary tells me that you have some concerns about the fate of those young German soldiers we are not going to put up in the Memorial Room of the new chapel. It's a very popular subject these days.”

“I do.” She nodded. “One was my husband.”

“Who?”

“Wilhelm Brandl.”

He swallowed. “Wils Brandl,” he repeated. He thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said nodding. “I have heard about him. A promising student, by all accounts.”

“That's true.”

He looked away and began to speak. “This isn't easy. The fate of those who died was heroic. We have to go through a life that is much more continuous and complex.” As he looked back at her, his eyes seemed tired. “Sometimes I envy them. I am not one to look for controversy and I know how to make the honorable compromise. But I must be clear. I am the caretaker of a serious legacy: the memories of hundreds of Harvard men who have died in a noble cause. It's an important matter.”

Helen straightened. “I can't agree with a decision to divide friend from friend in a church. A church is a place of reconciliation.” As she spoke, her voice became almost confident.

“Whatever a
church
is, Miss Brooks, it is definitely not a place to commemorate unworthy causes. And a war memorial without a moral is worthless. This is the exact point some members of the Brooks family made after the Civil War when they sought to exclude the rebels from Memorial Hall. I'm certain there were a number of Confederate widows with your point of view, yet the Brooks family prevailed. Are you saying that your family was wrong to do that?”

She'd not thought of that. “Perhaps it's time we reconciled.”

He gave a snort. “I don't think Harvard will ever forgive the rebels. In fact, I agree with your grandparents. We try to encourage people to do the right thing at a school and in church. We cannot, and certainly not in a church, equate dying for a cause that was right with dying for a cause that was wrong. This is a place to learn the correct code of conduct, not just any code of conduct.”

“But, sir, the German student soldiers died before the United States entered the war.” She held up her sheaf of papers.

He shook his head. “They were part of the German army that attacked a neutral country. Should we ask the Belgian orphans how they feel about this action? Yes, indeed,” he continued. “The Germans were wrong and our allies lost a generation of men for their mistakes. Our halls were emptied of men in a way that hadn't happened since the sixteen hundreds in the Indian Wars.”

“You need not lecture me on that account,” she said, her eyes flashing with anger. She put the papers back on the table. “But if you build this memorial to one side in a church where all sinners kneel, then you build a memorial to human frailty. Honoring only one side will set your judgment in stone as long as the memorial exists.”

He looked surprised that she was arguing. His face grew stern. She swallowed hard. “As I recall, Yale included the rebels in their war monument.”

“Has Yale ever been our standard?” he asked derisively.

She tried again. “Memorial Hall is a political monument to a triumph. Harvard chose not to forgive but to rejoice in its victory. If you make the hall a religious place I believe that fair-minded people would be right to say all should be included.”

“I'm building a place to show our people that we value fidelity to just causes and that we will be faithful to those who were faithful to us. I don't mean to sound callous; I'd really like to persuade you. Let the Germans create for themselves their own memorial at their own universities. Built into the room is a clear statement that this room was for the people who fought with our allies. In fact, our donors gave money such that the Allied war dead would be honored. I cannot go back now and change the terms on them.”