The Headmasters Papers (6 page)

My perspective is perhaps not right just now, but isn't this an odd piece for Lewis? I have always liked his voice very much. He has always represented to me the hearty, thinking, man's-world Englishman with his pipe. But the voice in
A Grief Observed
is not only muted and bereft, it never picks up. He still seems lost at the end. I suppose I read the piece thinking he is going to put the Event in a framework that makes everything mean something, and through that meaning, more comfortable. But he doesn't. Maybe he does, but I am too numb and lazy these days to work through any theology, even his. In spite of my deep, unworked-through conviction that our skeletal religious services at school add something important to school life, I have never managed to bring myself face to face with proper religion. I let my childhood church-going habits erode away, without regret, in college, and that pretty much has been that. Occasionally a good writer will puff something numinous into an old ember, but I don't let it come to much. I suppose I know that to take the Western faith seriously, I would have to reorder my relationship to everything, and I feel too old and too weak for that—but not too wise. Moreover, I think that to seek heaven's comfort at this particular moment, given my sustained lack of interest during good times, would be rather too much like the grasshopper and the ants. I know I would feel as pitiful and wretched as I am sure that pack of grasshoppers feel who ran out from under Nixon when he was finally turned over. I don't think I want to be Born Again. I only want to live properly.

Actually, honestly, the only thing I am really committed to now is seeing Meg through this thing. After that, I have no ambitions. Doesn't sound as if Lewis had any, either. Incidentally, she is hanging in there nobly, although it is depressing to be enervated and ill for such a long time. She has been without real energy for several months now. Still no eating, her weight is in the nineties, and there's some real discomfort in her guts and lower back. I know she is still sustained by reading and corresponding. A Levin letter ranks highest in her postal intake.

We still cannot find Brian, which is her major (unstated) worry and disappointment. For my part, I move in and out of cycles of paternal worry and depthless anger—which is possibly why he is continents apart. I think I still love Brian, at least love my composite recollection of him. I do not love his generation, its style, any of its novelties and contributions to the culture. I don't even know, for instance, if his prodigality is based on family tensions, or on unknowable archetypal rites of passage, or on drugs. Of course it lets me off the hook to believe it is in large measure the latter, but I really think that is the case. I do. Meg and I have of course been guilty of parental excesses, mainly excesses of ambition for Brian, but surely these have been excesses within the normal range. After all, we're not freaks. Everybody agrees we are pretty nice. My nephew Hugh, an exact contemporary of Brian, thinks I am infallible. I half expected Brian's acting out in school, even urged him not to attend Wells, and urged him several times to leave it, but he was adamant. I have never minded anger much, or open rebellion, or even looniness from him, but what has paralyzed both of us has been his fuzzy-headed, hip passivity. Baxter, our school shrink, says its Passive Aggression. I think it's passive aggression extended chemically by his damned pot and God knows what else. As a young man, Brian is a poorer reasoner— simpler—than he was as a twelve-year-old. Whatever part drugs have played in Brian's development, they haven't helped. And although I haven't mentioned this to Meg, I am sure he has found his narcotic heart's desire in North Africa. If drugs had been around (perhaps they were), I wonder if the real prodigal son, or Absalom, or any of them would have come back.

What a long, irritating, self-centered letter I've written. Sorry, but thanks.

Tell me what you are reading, and send me some poems. I am working on a long, slightly shapeless piece I want you to see. It's about
having
cancer, interior view. I'll send it along as soon as there are any contours. It is still O.K. not to pull any punches. I'll write and tell you when I'm too tender for that.

Best,

J.

5 October

Mr. Frederick Maitland

Headmaster, St. Ives Academy

Derby, Connecticut

Dear Fred,

Thanks for your letter.

Having said as much as I have already said on the subject, I cannot see the point of going over the situation again. I can't determine whether you don't see my point or whether you merely don't agree with it. I think I have stated our position clearly.

Dewey Porter has called me to say he will be glad to put a uniform code of athletic conduct at the top of the Seven Schools agenda in November. As I indicated to you earlier, I think such a discussion should be promising and is somewhat overdue.

You are mistaken, I think, to assume that it is a Seven Schools decision whether we drop St. Ives from our athletic schedule. While that prospect may well be a Seven Schools concern, it is a Wells School decision. It is a decision, moreover, that we have already, reluctantly, made. We have made arrangements to play St. Francis Priory both home and away next fall, instead of just once, and that fills our fall program. Although you have every right to protest this at the Seven Schools meeting, I assure you our decision is firm. You may want to cover your own schedule for September as soon as possible, as I am sure you know how frustrating it is trying to drum up fall contests, especially football games, after the season has passed.

I am sorry the Wells-St. Ives rivalry has had to be interrupted in this manner. Doing so is unsatisfactory in many respects. But I still maintain the principles at issue warrant the decision, and it is one I will be glad to justify to any and all concerned.

As a courtesy to you, I am informing you of our decision to cancel, for an indefinite period, our athletic contests with St. Ives before announcing it to our student body and larger school community. I think it would be a shame for you somehow to “hear” what we have done.

Again, I regret that this course of action is necessary. The athletic staff and I will be glad to meet with you at your convenience, before or after the Seven School meeting, to discuss the future of the athletic relationship.

My good wishes,

John

6 October

Mr. William Truax

President, The Fiduciary Trust Co.

P.O. Box 121

New Haven, Connecticut

Dear Bill,

Thanks for your note. Three things:

(1) I will prepare for Friday's finance meeting several potential budgets for next year, showing implications of greater and smaller enrollments, also showing the implications of reducing staff. Capital and maintenance figures have to project estimated inflation rates, so I can't see trimming there. Agree?

(2)     I am afraid that in the Opening-of-School Crush, the “Wells: Ten Years and After” study has been placed temporarily on a back burner. We have collected some data from faculty, though, and hope to have something concrete to report by the fall board meeting in November.

(3)     You may or may not have heard about the ruckus surrounding our football opener with St. I. A very bad show: dirty playing, punches flying, cursing (which provoked an unattractive, anarchic crowd response). We benched some players. St. I. didn't. The officials lost control over the game. (And we got thrashed.)

I wrote to Fred Maitland asking for support in addressing the problem—and was surprised not to get it. The subsequent correspondence you have seen. Unable to get even an
acknowledgement
from Fred that the opener represented a sorry spectacle, we've dropped them from our program, at least for next year. There is already some stink about this. And I suspect you'll hear some, too, mostly from older Wellsians who like the cowboy approach to sport and who remember when . . .

So be forewarned. Meg and I both appreciate your family's concern and the gorgeous flowers. She is doing remarkably well, feisty, funny, tired of being sick.

Best,

John

7 October

MEMO to Tim Shire

Master of Hallowell House

(Personal and Confidential)

Tim-

See no reason to be cautious here. Even if we overreact we will do ourselves a service, especially considering the time of year. The early indications, if true, sound horrendous.

Remember to interview the boys separately and to
keep them separate,
until you have finished. Each has no idea of what the other has said—and thus may more easily imagine he is cooked and thus may come clean sooner.

Meanwhile I'll be in touch with the police and see what counsel they offer and what our obligations are.

Come see me, with or without culprits, when you have talked to the boys. I don't mind the hour. I will be up late.

I naively hoped that this sordid phase of the era was behind us. Guess not.

J.O.G.

7 October

Mr. Frank Greeve

14 Bingham Drive

Tarrytown, New York

Dear Frank,

Thanks so much for taking the time to follow up on your English friend's tip. I will write M. Baddely at the British consulate in Tangier and see what transpires. I am surprised at the number of young American “transients” your friend estimates are billeted there. Soon I will cease to be surprised by anything.

Meanwhile, I am smack in the middle of—guess what— another suspected boy-drug ring. What a hopeless, irritating, criminal waste of time all this is. Apparently there is no end to this particular cultural development. What can your stereo do? What can your Harley-Davidson do? What can your Trans-Am do? What can your head do? How did altering feeling states by technological and chemical means
ever
get established as a good idea? What a culture.

Meg is stable, but awfully thin and awfully low. She is hurting physically but won't say much about it. I'm afraid it's a bad time ahead. She doesn't seem to be able to, or to want to,
initiate
as much talk and activity as she did even a couple of weeks ago. I don't think she has the energy.

I believe I'm learning a little bit about how life works. It is appetite: intellectual, sexual, esthetic, gastronomical. Subtract these, one by one, and life is diminished proportionately. The last thing to go, and it seems to go quickly without the rest, is a land of critical self-awareness. That's Meg; she is past wanting now. She only registers. I have heard about remissions and improvements, and I am waiting.

That will have to do. I have, as I have said, this mess in the wings. Love to Val and Hugh.

John

8 October

REMARKS TO THE SCHOOL

By now some of you have heard that there is an important disciplinary inquiry afoot. To stifle rumors and hurtful speculation, I want to tell you this morning that, yes, there is an important disciplinary inquiry afoot. As the situation stands this morning, we have learned the following:

A sixth former in Hallowell, Steve Pennington, apparently made arrangements this summer to have his brother mail him a sizable quantity of LSD to be passed on, at a price, to interested Wells boys. The shipment seems to have arrived in Monday's mail, and Steven sold some of the LSD to two other sixth formers, Charles Stone and Terry Wilcox; to a fifth former, Ed Hruska; and to a third former, Marc Slavin. Over a long afternoon yesterday and a good part of last night, the five boys just named were questioned by Mr. Shire and by me, and each has admitted to as much as I have told you. Some remaining LSD and the money paid for it have been collected by Mr. Shire. The boys have been in touch with their parents by telephone, as have I. Student-Court proceedings will begin when this assembly adjourns.

At present, we are not sure we have confiscated all the LSD that was mailed here Monday, and we are not sure that only five boys were involved. If there are others of you involved, I invite you to turn yourselves in to me or to your housemaster. Given the nature of the offense, I cannot compromise punishment, or even assure you that you will not be dismissed from the school. I can promise, however, that if what we learn about your involvement in this business comes from a voluntary admission from you, and not as a result of cross-examination or detection by us, things will go better for you than otherwise. You have my word on that.

This is somber news to start the day with, and I am sorry to have to bear it. I doubt that any of you, considering what we have written to your families and what has been said repeatedly from this stage, are in doubt about our drug policy. It's a very easy policy to remember: there is to be positively none of it here, under any circumstances. Over the past two years, every boy caught using, exchanging, or found under the influence of drugs at Wells has been dismissed. In other words, we could not be more serious about our drug policy.

Whether or not you agree with it, our policy has become what it is because of our actual experience here over the past two decades. There was, at the beginning, real confusion about drugs, confusion about
if
drugs were a problem and confusion about what sort of problem they were. We are no longer confused. We have had a good deal of experience now of students who smoked pot, took pills, inhaled cocaine, and so on, and as I say, we are no longer confused. Some of us here can remember school when there were no drugs whatsoever on the scene, except liquor which, killer and thief of human promise that it is, has at least been a familiar part of the social fabric of Western life since antiquity. As I say, some of us were working here before the drug scene, worked here through the early days of the drug scene, and are still here. The changes we have seen in drug-using boys are uniform. Let me summarize them as I see them.