Word: pulham
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...challenge to Babe Ruth, who hits a long ball at golf, too: "I have been hankering to take a shot at the Babe ever since I started playing golf. Anywhere, any time, and for any charity." - Having read Novelist John P. Marquand's best-selling H. M. Pulham, Esquire, which pokes chuckle-humored satire at a Beacon Hill Boston now all but dead, William Cardinal O'Connell, Archbishop of Boston, complained: "Of course my experience is limited, but I sincerely hope that Bostonians, especially the women, have not degenerated into the type he describes." A few days later...
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS from now the members of the Class of 1941 will be writing their biographies for their reunion reports, just as the class of 1915 (and Harry Pulham) was writing its life history for its reunion-last year. The chances are that the present crop of Seniors will look back in 1966 upon careers remarkably like that of H. M. Pulham '15. But at the same time it is probably that they will never tell that story as convincingly or as interestingly as does John P. Marquand in his latest book...
...Harry Pulham is as Bostonian as the proverbial bean and the cod. He went to an exclusive private school, and, after his four years at Harvard, entered the investment business. He owns a summer house on the Maine coast and a winter house "in town." He sums up his whole political philosophy in one sentence: "I do not believe that either Mr. Roosevelt or Germany can hold out much longer and I confidently look forward to seeing a sensible Republican in the White House." On the whole his life is hardly distinguishable from those of his classmates...
...does not read "H. M. Pulham, Esquire" for its story. Rather, one reads it for its light satire, its facile style, and, above all, its characters. Bo-Jo Brown, the college athlete, who is imbued with "the Class" and its reunion, is as unforgettable as Bill King, the rugged individualist, who is bored with the whole idea of the twenty-fifth and thinks Bo-Jo is "just a long cool drink of water." Marvin Myles, the girl (sic) with whom Harry first falls in love, is as intriguing a personality as Kay Motford, the girl he eventually marries, is conventional...
Reading The Education of Henry Adams, Harry Pulham was impressed with "how little Mr. Adams' surroundings changed from the beginning to the end of his life, for he ended just where he started -in the horse-&-buggy age, without the addition of very much plumbing. Yet here in my own life, which is not entirely over, I am already in an entirely different world." A well-to-do upbringing full of Tennysonian sentiments, St. Swithin's prep school ("Play up-and play the game"), Harvard clubs, Boston society and Maine coast summers equipped Harry Pulham with snobberies...