A Portrait of WFB

...Nor does it mean his usefulness is gone when there are millions to be led...

...Some years later, in Madison, in 1961, he spoke to a meeting of the Wisconsin Conservative Club, during the summer National Student Association meeting...

...Though some may doubt how conser,/'ative he is or fault him for his failure to take the Conservative tide a t the flood ("Why doesn't he run for the Senate...

...Always working within "'the system," we pledged to flood the nation with disquieting bumper stickers, articulate decals, arch -- though provocative -- sweatshirts and petitions to the FCC...

...When, after Abbie Hoffman comes to preside over this fated Republic and Herr Doktor Marcuse is ensconced in the Justice Department and the thousands of liberated debutantes and young masters are sent out on their virtue patrols to pick through our libraries and police our cultural redoubts for fascist residue, it will be discovered that until the early 1970's the master works of Petr Illich Tchaikovsky were kept under lock and hoof...

...That is, were he to write a book specifically devoted to explaining how he has grown and does grow mentally, he would include within i t many of the episodes or similar episodes such as those that appear in Cruising Speed...

...search for your Prototypical Conservative somewhere else, and your cuckoo in a clock, not in Cruising Speed, which is not his best book (that's The Unmaking ol a Mayor) or his most tender (Odyssey ol a Friend), or his wittiest repository of reportage (The Jeweler's Eye, The Governor Listeth), or his most strident (God and Man at Yale, Up From Liberalism), or his most polemical (McCarthy and his Enemies), or well, never make lists...

...Johnson (Lyndon Baines) -- what can you expect when the dog won't hunt...

...Thomas has been wrong, and I have been right...

...Someone, in a speech, listing the distinguished Conservatives there present, has mentioned the name of William F. Buckley, Jr., and I begin ta understand what the word "pandaemonium" means: I am reminded .of a scene in Sdaramoudhe,where a political speech on stage has brought forth "a hurricane of furious appiause" and the actors stand transfixed like small boys who have set a match to a sun-scorched ha)rick...

...And am glad that I don't...

...In a recent issue we announced the formation of "The Petr Illich Tchaikovsky Society," and heaved all our considerable cultural might into bringing this repressed genius to the public's attention...

...What I mean by - - unj.erk your knee is: don't expect this man to conform to anybody's expectation of what the complete Conservative is...

...It was an informal speech and I found myself sitting, almost exactly, at the feet of Gamallel...

...If nothing else, he is still the king...

...Bill Buckley stories were part of the cocktail-party repertoire at Yale - - how, after one in a series of debates with Norman Thomas, he had been asked whether there was any consistent thread to their debates, and had answered, "Why, yes, in all our dehates there has been one consistent thread, and that is, that Mr...

...The brass either comes in l/ke a drunk at a funeral service or suddenly expires beneath a startling frenzy of strings...

...Benjamin Spock), a generous and good man, enjoying small pleasures, puzzled like any exurban father about the "generation gap" (happy at signs his son might turn out to be a Conservative after all), a public wit and privately that rare man who is a hero not only to his chauffeur but to his brothers and sisters, he is existentially the central figure of modern American Conservatism...

...And those occasional (to me) incredible suggestions, like the one in the late lamented Look a while before it became late, that Ame~'ie~ ~_bnnld go oo.t _and elect itself a Negro President 'round about 1980...

...Perhaps his exile to the back shelves was just one more egregious symptom of that Cold War madness which, seizing us at the end of World War 4I, left us abject ingrates to the heroic Red Army, the conqueror of Hitlerism and liberator of all of EaStern Europe...

...David Brudnoy David Brndnoy is an obscure gynedologist who lives in Ulan Bator, reads every book published, and is currently completing a definitive nine-volume HIStory oJ Avar~e...

...and some deplore National Review's IvyLeague background and East-Coast range of interests, he is nonetheless (though he would deny it)not just the "onelie begetter" but the main-stay of the present Conservative movement in America...

...Grim rumors spread about Mr...

...Jared Lobdell here tells us, truly, that "for philosophical guidance a conservative looks instead in to Mission Control' in Woodstock" - - to the "old man in the back of the room," to Frank S. Meyer, that is...

...Buckley in his books, it should be sought in his introduction to Edgar Smith's Brief Against Death, in his introduction to his sister's posthumous collection of stories and short pieces (Will Mrs...

...Ormandy's rendering is more authentic...

...A parade of benign Russian gestures was-rebuffed...

...Now the system responds...

...I was sitting there early one afternoon some dozen years ago when a fair-haired man in his early thirties came in, looked around briefly, poured himself a cup of tea, inspected the sandwiches (cucumber, which means it was a Tuesday afternoon), and went off into the front room...

...I could add other vignettes -- Mr...

...And if one seeks a key to Mr...

...Except that I rebelled against the hero-worship, I could have dined out for a week on the strength of the wordless encounter at the Elizabethan Club ("And did you once see Shelley plain...

...The attitude was akin to that which (I would guess) led Arlington House to entitle their recent Buckley sampter Quotations from Chairman Bill,though one doubts it had as much hmnour...

...Not that all that he learns, and says, is congenial to all who listen, even those who listen, as I listen, from a_perspective of general approval...

...He delivered at the Party banquet The Alternative December, 1971 17 that night, a toast which was in essence a serious call to a devout and holy life, a life of involvement in Conservative effort...

...But I cannot for the life of me recall one thing he said that night...

...From Mr...

...I admit to a weakness for charm in this increasingly charm-drained world...

...Or how, as an undergra_&_~Ate, in the Political Union, he had so insulted Eleanor Roosevelt that s h e had instantly :vowed never to return to Yale...

...One can never imagine someone plus Randian que La Rand, but there are many men more "conservative" than Mr...

...His tempos are erratic, and his sense of balance is that of a dipsomaniac...

...Ormandy is just not my ideal candidate to lead the crusade for Tchaikovsky...

...Lysenko...

...Buckley, glasses on, listening to Handers Messiah on the stereo and carefully following the music in the score, or arguing a grammatical point at length in a Tuesday meeting at National Review, or saying to a member of his crew "I hope you have better sense than to come out for the legalization of marijuana," or manfully (but unhappily) braving the crowds at the Traditionalist Caucus at the 1969 Y. A. F. Convention, or mixing the vinegar in the right proportions for the anchovies and peppers at his favourite luncheon restaurant, where he is (one guesses) the favourite customer...

...Were one-to search for the archtypical conservative, one would not find him-it-her regularly on 73rd Street or in Stamford, Connecticut or on Mr...

...He left after finishing his tea - - the door slammed, and then two or three of the club's more knowledgeable members came in: I heard one saying "Must be some kind of reactionary shindig in town - - that was Bill Buckley just going out...

...I noted (for Buckley imitations, like Buckley stories, were a passport to immediate acceptance in conservative gatherings) how he arched on tiptoe before making a point, how be jabbed his hands into his pockets, how he furtively mopped his brow with a large red handkerchief...

...Buckley's words, to "'Mission Control" in Woodstock...

...It was necessary, in telling the Eleanor Roosevelt story, always to refer to her as "The Great Pink Lady" - - the feeling being "that is the way BILL would want it to be told...

...Buckley's boat Cyranno...

...I would guess also that the role bothers him...

...16 The A l t e r n a t i v e December, 1971 that unwritten book...

...and in Congress, and off in the woods of Mecosta, Michigan...

...The Tchaikovsky Album, Ormandy, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Columbia M7x30830, 7 records...

...For once I was seeing not Buckley-the-subject-of-stories or Buckley-the-soureeof-imitations but the genuluce Conservative Hero...

...Ormandy I have come to expect little more than fleas...

...How will he satisfy himself tomorrow, "so imperfectly...

...I suppose by learning some more and siring a little of it through to those who listen to what he says...

...We stopped for a cup of coffee on the road - - coffee out of paper cups, an old Mercedes-Benz (his car), the Connecticut countryside in January, a conversation of which (barring his wonderment that Edgar Smith could be a likeable human being after ten years without seeing the light of day) I remember little enough...

...For the time has arrived to give this hypersensitive neurotic the stage...

...Bill Buckley was, to Yale's conservatives, a folk-hero, well on his way to becoming a solar myth...

...One finds it in Mr...

...Yet, I am afrafd that while the sound of these records is very pure and the orchestra is obviously a capital bunch, Mr...

...Had there been a look of disdain as he glanced around the room...

...Jared LobdeU graduated from Yale where he served as Chairman of the Party of the Right...

...Even many of those areas to which the Reds had brought their unique civilization suffered isolation...

...Buckley, too, certainly, but one does not find in him a neatly packaged saran-wrapped conservative's conservative...

...For he is not your Typical Conservative...

...The brass is unstructured in the F Minor symphony, and in the E Minor it is so feckless that I got the impression Mr...

...Roosevelt was planning to appear at a future Political Union meeting...

...A thousand thousand admirers are not necessarily a good bargain for those few, those happy few who started a Conservative journal of fact and opinion back in 1955...

...Buckley is neither a knee-jerk anything, nor a cuckoo...

...One knew his reputation, of course, and it was not hard to imagine, in retrospect, a kind of hauteur and instant dismissal of everyone in the room - - everyone meaning me...

...I put him down mentally as a sporting type - - sunburn, khakis, blue blazer - - possibly a sometime crew captain who had been elected:to the club on the vague grounds of good fellowship:or general likeableness...

...For in them, I think, the man is revealed apart from his role as Conservative Hero, and I do not believe the role does him justice...

...Henry V would not be at his best in leading millions: that does not mean he will turn the millions away...

...Nevertheless his performance of the B Minor symphony deserves a beer on the house, his version of the Serenade for String Orchestra comes off all right and he serves up a juicy treat, I suppose, for balletomanes...

...would indicate a reader too mundane to contemplate, o r a Buckley too predictable for one to want to read another line by, or about...

...Another three years, and I see him in my mind's eye in a box in Madison Square Garden, in t h e summer of 1964, the Goidwater rally...

...We talked, I know, of drugs and alcohol and youth culture, Churchill and Ireland and what was happening at Yale...

...Major Go To Hell...

...and especially in Whittaker Chambers' letters (Odyssey Of A Friend...

...Conservative of 73rd Sh, eet and Stamford, Conn...

...I am looking up from the stage, where I have been arranging the visiting dignitaries...

...A generally awkward situation ali around, I recall, and made more awkward by the fact that what was (and properly) a matter of high import to the guest was only ~dimly apprehended by the members of the Party...

...I talked too much: he is a good listener...

...This does not mean that what he says i s always centrally important to the development of this Conservative movement...

...But I do not think I was yet seeing the genuine Bill Buckley...

...Oh, yes, he has some-of his Things, like the Church, and the crusade contra pornography, and the like...

...Amidst some undergraduate foolishnes he was elected a member of the Party of the Right (the Party having been formed after he graduated from Yale): he stomached the foolishness rather better than I, except when an alumnus of the Party proposed a toast in a form which seemed to him a parody -- and even more, a profanation -- of the Mass...

...Far from it...

...I thank Bill for a couple hundred pages of it...

...I don't understand the logic leading to that one at all...

...Columbia Records has released The Tchaikovsky Album, a meager collection of Tchaikovsky which comes perilously close to being too little too late...

...Ormandy thought he wasdoing the Serenade for String Orchestra...

...The present collection corrects these chimerical interpretations, for Mr...

...Perhaps they round out, but they do not alter, the picture I have of him and of his importance to Conservatism...

...After doing graduate work at the University of Wisconsin at Madison he moved to Green Bay where he now teaches...

...Which is one of his distinctive characteristics, and, I'd wager, the cross that some who worship him bear...

...For philosophical guidance one looks instead in Mr...

...His essays have appeared in National Review...

...Sometimes the orchestra hums along merrily, and at other times it breaks into a rampage...

...He recalled afterwards it had reminded him of a French movie in which an unfrocked priest had in fact consecrated a flagon in a tavern, and another priest there present had heroically drained the flagon to prevent the profanation of the transubstantiated wine...

...To be able to go through the complete Buckley oeuvre and agree with it a// - - good Lord...

...True enough he is a virtuoso public relations man - - how else has he managed to convince reviewers to intone those mortifying hosannas to his puny labors -- but when he attempts to lead an orchestra in a serious piece of music like the E Minor symphony, well -- to snatch a phrase from the memorable Dr...

...Nor is he one of those cuckoos in the land, those idee lixe chaps...

...There was a chair in the corner that belonged on Satin-days to an elderly bibliographer, and the rest of the week to anyone who wanted a good view of members and guests at the Elizabethan Club pourlug themselves aftexnnon tea...

...A formidable public personality but shy and ill at ease in crowds, liking the company of family and friends and the solitude of the ocean (what crowning ironic bliss that last Christmas Eve the other boat in the anchorage should belong to Dr...

...Why we had to wait until this late hour for the liberation of Tchaikovsky cow founds me...

...At any rate, all Americans ever heard were disfigured performances of the subtle 1812 and the li!t,:ug Marche Slave -- forever emphasizing a mystifying martial strain...

...To this:day, I do not know ff the first is true: of the second, I know only that, at the time of her death, Mrs...

...and he has edited Insight and Outlook and been associate editor of Ralley...

...The Soviets' historic victories and their enlightened administration of all liberated regiom: paralyzed the American tycoons with trepidation, and they dropped a curtain of silence around all of the USSR...

...And conservatives find "philosophical guidance" in others instrumental in making National Review, and in Human Events...

...continued on page 19...

...Historians will further note that late in 1971 this famous journal of humane letters riveted together its courage hoisting the pennon of this much abused Russian master, and exhorting that he be accorded the hearing -- indeed the celebrity, his achievements warrant...

...Look in Cruising Speed for wl~at it proclaims itself to be, a documentary of a week in the life, and find also, an added bonus, quite a bonus, his most charming book by far...

...He might Beer And Beethoven well be forgiven a desire like Henry V at Agincourt to have not one man more, though I am not aware he has any such desire...

...In 1968, we met at the Newark Airport, khakis still, touch of sumburn, no blazer, hair now going pepper and salt, on his way back from visiting Edgar Smith in the Death House at Trenton, on his way up to a Party of the Right banquet at Yale...

...Stalin's penal reforms, and of course the reputation of Russian culture suffered...

...He might, I thought, have been a favourite prepschool teacher and I a returning altmmus...

...As the entire album is priced especially low, it is probably a sound purchase for acolytes...

...And Americans were not even allowed authentic translations of the esteemed Dr...

...To be able to encompass anybody totally, to know all his reasons, and his reasonings, to be able to chart anyone's mind down t o the last little tittle, is a bore...