The Boston Raphael. Belinda Rathbone
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Название: The Boston Raphael
Автор: Belinda Rathbone
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9781567925401
isbn:
Why was this little vignette, which Rathbone fondly related to an interviewer decades later in 1982, so significant? On the surface, it tells of his first visits to an art museum, but more than that, it shows a combination of paternal traits he would cherish and inherit: a curiosity and keen interest in the arts, the audacity to break rules to get closer to a sacred object to better understand it, and the personal charm to talk his way out of trouble when necessary.
Though he did not have the benefit of a higher education, Howard Rathbone had an eye. An avid photographer, he was alive to his physical environment in its every form – from antique furniture to the scenic beauty of the countryside to the distinction of a pedigreed dog. A spry little man, he knew how to strike a pose and what to wear for every occasion. He understood the quality of materials, the subtleties of color, and the value of the little details – how to stuff the handkerchief in his breast pocket just so and how to keep the carnation fresh in his buttonhole. He was also a charmer par excellence, not just with the ladies but also with children, the elderly, or anyone who appeared to be in need of a little boost. In contrast to his practical, steadfast, long-suffering wife, Beatrice, Howard had a gift for making everyone in his orbit feel like the most important person in the world.
Howard Betts Rathbone, self-portrait, undated.
If his father inspired Perry’s artistic eye, natural charm, and sartorial savoir faire, it was his Uncle Jamie who drew out his more intellectual side, and it is he who should be credited for planting the idea of Harvard so firmly in Perry’s mind. His mother’s younger brother by ten years, James Willard Connely was a dashing figure in Perry’s childhood. A graduate of Dartmouth College, he worked for some time as a journalist in New York for McClure’s Magazine and Harper’s Weekly. A handsome young man with a mop of dark brown hair, Jamie was worldly, articulate, and intimate with writers and artists, which meant that he frequented the colorful bohemian circles of Greenwich Village. As a bachelor living in a rented room, he was also happy to accept the occasional home-cooked meal (even under the critical eye of his sister, Beatrice) and to entertain his rowdy, redheaded nephews. At the time the Rathbones lived in a small apartment on 141st Street in Washington Heights.
Years later Jamie recalled the fine spring day in 1928 when the question of Perry’s academic future was more or less settled. By this time the Rathbones had moved from the city to New Rochelle, where Perry was enrolled in the public high school. It should be mentioned here that the family’s hopes had now been transferred to their younger son, after their firstborn, Westcott, had been expelled from every school in town for failing grades and misbehavior of one kind or another, winding up his high school years in a strict Catholic seminary. Weck, as he was known, had always been an antic, hyperactive child whose severe case of dyslexia, not yet widely known, went undiagnosed and whose penchant for entertaining his friends with clowning served only to aggravate his weak academic performance. Perry, conversely, had quietly worked hard at his studies and had shown signs of a higher ambition, a willingness and an ability to go the distance to reach his goals. Though somewhat shy compared with Weck, slight in build, and less talented at sports, Perry now towered over his older brother in height and in stature. For years Weck had hogged the limelight, but once in his teens it was Perry’s turn to shine.
Sharing a picnic with the Rathbones on the rocks of Long Island Sound one spring day, Uncle Jamie (as he himself recalled) was wearing his brand-new bowler hat from Bond Street, which he felt sure “heightened [his] avuncular mien.” The question of Perry’s future came up for discussion. While his performance in mathematics and science left something to be desired, he showed a keen interest in literature and a talent for acting and public speaking as well. Most of all Perry showed a talent for art, consistently contributing his pen and ink drawings to various student high school publications. But there were considerable doubts in both Perry’s and his parents’ minds that his artistic talent was “firm enough to build upon a career as an artist.” His uncle set out to strategize. He should study fine arts. At Harvard. Where else? And then seek a post in a museum. “On that path,” Jamie argued, “he could move for life in the well-remunerated circles of art, enjoying all the atmosphere and congeniality of it without being required to produce it.”4 Jamie felt quite sure that he had made an impression on the whole family. In hindsight, it seems that he had.
While in academic terms Perry’s high school record was unspectacular (he graduated 178th in his class of 235), his sixteen-year-old heart was thus set on Harvard. “I wish to go to Harvard,” he wrote in his application, “because, from what I have seen and learned of the college . . . I know that the Fine Arts course is exceptionally good.”5
Perry, Beatrice, and Westcott Rathbone, c. 1929.
The Rathbones would be stretched to meet the costs of a Harvard education – in 1929 tuition was $400, and residence costs added another $350. Westcott had already laid claim to $800 of the family’s resources for studying music (an interest that did not last), while their parents’ combined income was a modest $7,000 a year. Perry applied for financial aid with letters of support from his high school teachers. Perry was “a manly, well-bred, and splendid fellow,” said one, “who has a real capacity for exerting the right kind of influence among his fellows.” Perry came from a family of “old reliable New England stock – the kind who do the right thing.”6 His English teacher added that he was a boy of the highest moral qualities. “I notice it in particular in English class in our discussions in which he always supports the right side,” she wrote, and she made the point that this took courage in the face of “possible ridicule from the other boys.”7 Despite financial needs and fine moral character, Perry’s application for financial aid was denied, but the show of support for his case might have also been exactly the degree of extra weight his application needed to succeed. In July the letter arrived. Perry was accepted into the Harvard class of 1933. Somehow his parents pulled together the necessary funds, and he entered his freshman year in September 1929.
Once he was admitted, his father offered a candid appraisal of Perry’s strengths as well as frankly admitting his shortcomings. “[Perry] is a splendid worker in channels he is interested in,” he wrote, “but a very rank procrastinator in the things that do not interest him.” What interested him was art; he exhibited a gift for drawing and “a great craving for knowledge of both the old and new artistic worlds.”8
It was only a matter of weeks after Perry arrived in Cambridge before the stock market crashed in October 1929. But Harvard was a safe haven during those early years of what was to become the Great Depression, a highly civilized way of life and a sanctuary of learning far removed from the concerns of making a living. President Lowell, in charge since 1909, had recently completed his most far-reaching accomplishment: the house plan. New housing had been badly needed to accommodate the growing student population, which had doubled in the late nineteenth century, and Lowell had seized the chance to design an inner structure for the much larger college into which Harvard had suddenly evolved. The idea was to create smaller communities in the form of newly built residential houses, each with its own cultural, social, and athletic activities. In a fresh democratic spirit, an effort was made to diversify members of the student body in terms of their social and economic backgrounds. The house plan greatly improved the quality СКАЧАТЬ