could have faced the torture of a meeting
. From whatever direction he approached the Coleman house, its façade was dark; its front door felt closed to him. The panes of its parlor windows held only light reflected from afar, like the residue of liquid that is left in an emptieddish. The future statesman hesitated outside, divided between longing for a lamp of recognition to flare within Ann’s house and a certain fear of the same flare, and at last retired, his dignity and weariness intact, to his bachelor lodgings.
There you have my attempt,
Retrospect
editors, to work into the fabric of reconstruction the indeterminacy of events. As in physics, the more minutely we approach them, the stranger facts become, with leaps and contradictions of indecipherable quanta. All we have are documents, which do not agree. Was there, we might legitimately ask, ever an actual afternoon when Buchanan met Grace Hubley? We first hear of it in an article, maddeningly undated and somewhat edited in quotation by Klein, written by Blanche Nevin, a daughter of the Reverend John W. Nevin—an intimate of Buchanan’s seven years of retirement and the deliverer of the President’s funeral sermon in 1868—and of Martha Jenkins Nevin, whose father had been William Jenkins’ brother Robert. In other words, Blanche Nevin’s mother had been Mary Jenkins’ and Grace Hubley’s niece-in-law; her account has the authenticity of family lore.
Some time after the engagement had been announced, Mr. Buchanan was obliged to go out of town on a business trip. He returned in a few days and casually dropped in to see …
[ellipses not mine]
Mrs. William Jenkins, with whose husband he was on terms of intimate friendship. With her was staying her sister, Miss Grace Hubley,…
[see bracketed disclaimer above]
a pretty and charming young
[for
young
see discussion on this page ]
lady. From this innocent call the whole trouble arose. A young lady
[a different
young lady
, presumably]
told Miss Coleman of it and thereby excited her jealousy. She was indignant that he should visit anyone before coming to her. On the spur of the moment she pennedan angry note and released him from his engagement. The note was handed to him while he was in the Court House. Persons who saw him receive it remarked afterward that they noticed him turn pale when he read it. Mr. Buchanan was a proud man. The large fortune of his lady was to him only another barrier to his trying to persuade her to reconsider her rejection of himself
.
For that matter, was there ever a Ford Administration? Evidence for its existence seems to be scanty. I have been doing some sneak objective research, though you ask for memories and impressions, both subjective. The hit songs of the years 1974–76 apparently were
“Seasons in the Sun”
“The Most Beautiful Girl”
“The Streak”
“Please, Mister Postman”
“Mandy”
“Top of the World”
“Just You and Me”
“Rhinestone Cowboy”
“Fame”
“Best of My Love”
“Laughter in the Rain”
“The Hustle”
“Have You Never Been Mellow?”
“One of These Nights”
“Jive Talkin’ ”
“Silly Love Songs”
“Black Water”
“Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart”
“Play That Funky Music”
“A Fifth of Beethoven”
“Shake Your Booty”
“Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”
“Love Is Alive”
“Sara Smile”
“Get Closer”
I don’t recall hearing any of them. Whenever I turned on the radio, WADM was pouring out J. S. Bach’s merry tintinnabulations or the surging cotton candy of P. I. Tchaikovsky, the inventor of sound-track music. No, wait—“Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” rings a faint bell, I can almost hum it, and the same goes for “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” if it’s not the same song. In fact, all twenty-five titles give me the uneasy sensation of being the same song. The top non-fiction bestsellers of those years were
All the President’s Men
,
More Joy: Lovemaking Companion to the Joy of
. From whatever direction he approached the Coleman house, its façade was dark; its front door felt closed to him. The panes of its parlor windows held only light reflected from afar, like the residue of liquid that is left in an emptieddish. The future statesman hesitated outside, divided between longing for a lamp of recognition to flare within Ann’s house and a certain fear of the same flare, and at last retired, his dignity and weariness intact, to his bachelor lodgings.
There you have my attempt,
Retrospect
editors, to work into the fabric of reconstruction the indeterminacy of events. As in physics, the more minutely we approach them, the stranger facts become, with leaps and contradictions of indecipherable quanta. All we have are documents, which do not agree. Was there, we might legitimately ask, ever an actual afternoon when Buchanan met Grace Hubley? We first hear of it in an article, maddeningly undated and somewhat edited in quotation by Klein, written by Blanche Nevin, a daughter of the Reverend John W. Nevin—an intimate of Buchanan’s seven years of retirement and the deliverer of the President’s funeral sermon in 1868—and of Martha Jenkins Nevin, whose father had been William Jenkins’ brother Robert. In other words, Blanche Nevin’s mother had been Mary Jenkins’ and Grace Hubley’s niece-in-law; her account has the authenticity of family lore.
Some time after the engagement had been announced, Mr. Buchanan was obliged to go out of town on a business trip. He returned in a few days and casually dropped in to see …
[ellipses not mine]
Mrs. William Jenkins, with whose husband he was on terms of intimate friendship. With her was staying her sister, Miss Grace Hubley,…
[see bracketed disclaimer above]
a pretty and charming young
[for
young
see discussion on this page ]
lady. From this innocent call the whole trouble arose. A young lady
[a different
young lady
, presumably]
told Miss Coleman of it and thereby excited her jealousy. She was indignant that he should visit anyone before coming to her. On the spur of the moment she pennedan angry note and released him from his engagement. The note was handed to him while he was in the Court House. Persons who saw him receive it remarked afterward that they noticed him turn pale when he read it. Mr. Buchanan was a proud man. The large fortune of his lady was to him only another barrier to his trying to persuade her to reconsider her rejection of himself
.
For that matter, was there ever a Ford Administration? Evidence for its existence seems to be scanty. I have been doing some sneak objective research, though you ask for memories and impressions, both subjective. The hit songs of the years 1974–76 apparently were
“Seasons in the Sun”
“The Most Beautiful Girl”
“The Streak”
“Please, Mister Postman”
“Mandy”
“Top of the World”
“Just You and Me”
“Rhinestone Cowboy”
“Fame”
“Best of My Love”
“Laughter in the Rain”
“The Hustle”
“Have You Never Been Mellow?”
“One of These Nights”
“Jive Talkin’ ”
“Silly Love Songs”
“Black Water”
“Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart”
“Play That Funky Music”
“A Fifth of Beethoven”
“Shake Your Booty”
“Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”
“Love Is Alive”
“Sara Smile”
“Get Closer”
I don’t recall hearing any of them. Whenever I turned on the radio, WADM was pouring out J. S. Bach’s merry tintinnabulations or the surging cotton candy of P. I. Tchaikovsky, the inventor of sound-track music. No, wait—“Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” rings a faint bell, I can almost hum it, and the same goes for “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” if it’s not the same song. In fact, all twenty-five titles give me the uneasy sensation of being the same song. The top non-fiction bestsellers of those years were
All the President’s Men
,
More Joy: Lovemaking Companion to the Joy of
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