Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey (20 page)

Another aspect of the permissive society was the matter of bringing up children. It was, and is, a European commonplace that the American child is not brought up at all, but is allowed to do whatever he likes, and that this system produces the most spoiled, ill-mannered, selfish and slovenly youth in the world.

Observing our neighbours, we thought that the basic fact was reasonably true; American parents, at least in our area, did allow their children considerable licence. In some cases we thought that this was a deliberate policy, of letting each kid find his own way to his own maturity; in other cases that it was the result of the parents' lack of confidence in their ability to guide their children. We were supported in this latter opinion by the number of articles in newspapers and magazines in which child doctors, psychologists, religious leaders, and assorted quacks of every kind told parents how to raise their young. In the rest of the world these articles would have been considered interfering impertinence.

The results, however, were not as the European myth had them. The early teenage girl was apt to be awkward, unkempt, and rude. A few years later, at sixteen or seventeen, she was suddenly a young woman with a poise and sense that her English contemporaries would not gain for another three or four years. We did not know how this came about; we only observed that it was so. The boys seemed to start better but end worse. Up to about sixteen the American boy was basically in closer contact with the earth and sky than his European contemporary, freer in his enthusiasms and wider in his outlook. At about seventeen and eighteen his development seemed to be arrested. We knew it was foolish to try and pin down an exact cause of something so vaguely felt, so soon after our arrival in the United States, but we thought that the boys had to turn their minds to making a living, and that the school system had not equipped them with the means to develop the life they would live out of working hours. As a result, from eighteen on their business of professional stature grew fast, but their 'personal' stature grew much more slowly, if at all.

We ourselves could not abandon our belief that it was our duty and pleasure — not Dr Spock's — to bring up our children in the light of our own experience, love and intelligence.

Television came into our world about this time not in our house, but at friends' nearby — and after much talk we could not think it was good for children to watch it for long periods each day. The programmes were harmless enough, but even if they had been magnificent, we thought it was wrong to teach children to rely on a means of learning or entertainment that came from outside themselves. In childhood they ought to learn the value of solitary confrontation, oneself against the fact; and television was a constantly present escape alley. We therefore laid down a limit of one hour a day for TV viewing, to be reconsidered in a couple of years when the children, and TV, would have grown up a bit.

Holt rejected
Nightrunners;
no comment.

Still in the context of the children, we thought about citizenship. For ourselves, we could wait. A majority of British immigrants to America never became citizens. Our own mental attachment, at the moment, was to Rockland County, not to the United States. The question of the children was more urgent, but in a way simpler. Assuming that I would somehow win my war against the Immigration authorities, we intended to live in America.

For the children it would be the only country they would ever have known. The idea of raising them as Englishmen Abroad, though tenable in India or even Chile, where differences in religion, culture, and language between the parents and the neighbours could be used as reasons to preserve the distant patriotism, was untenable here. We told them therefore, that though we were still English, and might remain so, they were Americans. We acted so early — Susan was five-and-a-half Martin three — because we had already noticed a built-in hostility between other first-generation immigrants who had made the big step and came to the United States, and their children who had been born here. All around us were examples of children refusing to acknowledge the language, culture, and habits of their foreign heritage. The process of Americanization, which could produce changes in build and colouring in a single generation, also involved the rejection of, for example, spaghetti, the Italian language, respect for elders, and whatever ancient customs the parents held dear. The situation of English immigrants was not quite the same, owing to the greater weight of the British heritage in American tradition, and also owing to the snobbishness of many Americans who would croon over 'a delightful English accent', while sneering heartily at an Italian or Polish-Jewish accent; but the problem was there, merely lessened, and we thought we must face it.

Our plan worked with good success, and the children did not seem to despise us, although we had no idea why they wanted to put on masks and hollow out pumpkins on October 31 (this festival of Hallowe'en was replaced in England some 300 years ago by Guy Fawkes Day, November 5); or why we should eat turkey on some Thursday in November; or give presents to our mothers in May (I give my mother a present on her birthday, if I feel like it). They began to carve up their food with the knife and fork, and then transfer the fork to their right hands to eat, while we continued to eat with the fork in the left; and they reasonably agreed that we were too old to change our funny habits. And to save them embarrassment, we learned to pronounce
ate
as
eight;
the English usage is, of course,
et,
but Susan told us that was very uneducated.

Susan began to rehearse the ceremony of swearing allegiance to the flag. We, also in the process of learning, saw how unnecessary, even obscene, were the national exclusions which for too many were the only substance of patriotism. The children were going to be Americans. So had been Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, and these had brought a heritage from England, which did not make them any less American. This our children could do. They would take to the schoolroom something of a household where Chaucer and Shakespeare, Galahad and Nelson were the stuff of beauty and bravery, and there barter those gems for the wisdom of the Talmud, the genius of Goethe and Tchekov, Homer and Leonardo: but in that marvellous exchange no one would lose what he had given. We were proud to be contributing to this noble experiment. What was lacking here, on South Mountain Road, was the inheritances from the Chinese emperors, from Asoka, Akbar, and the kings of Niger.

We knew that the absence of Negroes and Chinese from our local school was due to the fact that almost none lived in the school district, though we had plenty of poor whites. Why this was so was a problem then beyond us. It should not have been racial prejudice, although it was already obvious that many who fought anti-Semitism did not seem to think the same rules applied to anti-Negroism.

On South Mountain Road we did not for a long time get to know which of our neighbours were Jewish and which were not, or, for that matter, which were rich and which not. Where there was a community of interest, intimacy grew; where there was not, we had friendship and tolerance.
Gentlemen's Agreement
had recently been published and people were bending over backward not to be caught saying 'Some of my best friends are Jews'. (It seemed a valid statement to me, and I never did find out what I was supposed to say: 'None of my best friends are Jews'?) It was at this time that I was talking to Dave Itkin, whom I knew to be a Jew, in his store in Haverstraw. He held up a small musical instrument and said, 'What would you call this, Jack?'

'A Jew's harp,' I said promptly; then caught myself up, and began to think how to apologize.

'So would I,' Dave said. 'Do you know what they're trying to call it now? A Bruce harp. This damned discrimination's driving me nuts!'

Frank Laskier was killed in a car crash. The driver and only other occupant, who ran the car into a tree, was the pretty young blonde wife of a New York dentist.

Physically almost unhurt, she was put to bed with acute shock and her husband was urgently telephoned for from the city. He came out hotfoot, to shout at her, 'My God, the insurance!' Later that night he called Marian Hill and said a warming pad was needed urgently. Marian didn't have one. Up and down the Road lights went on as the ever widening ripples of the search for a pad woke up more and more sympathetic people. A couple of hours later one was located and Marian drove off to get it.

Near 4 a.m., dog-tired but triumphant, she took the pad to the stricken girl. 'Thanks,' the husband said grouchily at the door. 'My back's been killing me.'

Frank's wife was away and the only people who thought what she would feel like, coming back to his last dirty cup and unwashed plate, were the Young Boys. They went and cleaned the cottage from top to bottom. I felt a boor to have been worrying about the boiler and the safeguarding of his manuscripts. A few days later we attended the funeral. As we entered the funeral parlour Barbara stiffened and muttered, 'Good God, he's on show.' Frank lay in the open coffin with a sardonic half smile under his moustache. 'I bet he'd like me to do the knife-in-the-foot trick,' I muttered back, 'but now I could stick it in his heart. He's the only one who'd laugh, though.' It was the first time we had ever met the American custom of displaying the corpse, dressed and made up, before burial. We did not think it added any dignity to the proceedings, only an unbearable pain to those who had loved the dead.

John Day turned down
Nightrunners,
with an explanation:
It falls to me in the absence of Mr Erikson to tell you that we cannot take on John Masters' THE NIGHT-RUNNERS OF BENGAL. We already have a number of books on Indian subjects, published or in prospect. And our interest is not very strong in books about past history there, written from the point of view of the British soldier — not promising for American readers I should think. (Signed) T. J. Walsh.

Our good friends at Immigration redoubled their efforts to keep us from getting bored. Barbara had chest X-rays made and was then told to be out of the country by September 20. (The X-rays showed no disease.) I had blood tests and went twice to the State police barracks in Hawthorn, N.Y., to make more fingerprints. The lawyers advised that although I was determined to fight on it would still be wise to get a legal American domicile for those of us for whom it could be done. This meant that Barbara must go out to Canada with the children and return as an immigrant on the British quota (she was born in England). To prepare the way we sent to the U.S. Consul General in Montreal the documents he had demanded: her passport, birth certificate, marriage certificate, police good-conduct certificates in duplicate, fingerprints, photographs, evidence of support (this from Vyvyan), proof of termination of previous marriage, birth certificates in duplicate for the children, and military service certificate in duplicate. (That last was a teaser, but Barbara found her W.A.C.(I) discharge and sent that.)

Immigration denied her further brief extension of stay, though the consulate had not processed the papers we had sent up. I wrote to Hanson Baldwin, (military correspondent of the
New York
Times),
Field-Marshal Slim (Chief of the Imperial General Staff), and General Morgan (head of the British Military Mission in Washington), asking each to let the U.S. Army know that they had in me a potentially valuable reserve officer with special qualifications. If they once got that message, I thought, they might be persuaded to pull some strings on my behalf.

An impassioned letter about the Montreal situation (copies to Senator Kilgore and Representative St George) persuaded Immigration to let Barbara stay until Montreal was ready for her.

On September 18, having sworn on their honour that they had no intention of devaluating the pound sterling, the British government devalued it by 30 per cent, from $4,03 to $2.80. In the same instant that part of my loss of career gratuity, which they had not yet sent to me, shrank by the same proportion. It was going to be a close race between our dwindling money and the arrival of the next instalment from England in February 1950. We surveyed what we could do to lessen the odds against us. Barbara said, 'We can try to sell my wedding veil.' It was Limerick lace, about 1840. 'And the furniture my grandfather left me.' This was magnificent early Victoria walnut. 'And the George I soup spoons.' Here I interjected, 'Over my dead body.' But it might come to that.

'You could start darning socks again,' I said.

She responded briskly, 'Change a light bulb.'

In the end we cut down on drinking and entertainment generally, sold the furniture for $500, tried to sell the lace but couldn't, and kept the spoons. I sold no more stories because I was writing none; I was plotting another novel, about the ritual murder cult known as Thuggee, which had flourished in India for several centuries, claiming about a million victims, before it was uncovered and destroyed by the British in the 1820s. Otherwise we kept on much as we had been, having decided that we would live American to the end, and, if it came to it, die American, with colours flying. My remark about darning socks was a sort of code word between us and it meant, let us keep our sense of proportion: think American; don't decide how much money you have and then spend less decide how much money you need and then go and get it. No one darned socks, because it was cheaper in time and not much different in money to throw them away and buy new ones. We had also noted that Americans saved themselves a great deal of money by do-it-yourself methods about the house. Very few Englishmen indeed, and only those of a specially mechanical turn, could build sheds, tile roofs, adjust plumbing, and make cabinets, the way our artists and pianists and actors thought nothing of. But this way to save money was unfortunately closed to us: I am the world's most unhandyman; if I don't call in the help of professional electricians before changing a light bulb I will certainly have to do so afterwards.

Scribner's turned down
Nightrunners;
no comment.