Getting It Right by William F. Buckley

Author:William F. Buckley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2013-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

After most of the Collective dispersed, at about one in the morning, Ayn tilted her head back and blew smoke up toward the ceiling.

“We have established, Nathaniel, that the pallor I spoke of is there. You and Barbara must go on a few days’ vacation.”

24

WHAT MADE IT ALL PERFECT was that Ayn, two days later, said that she would consider Nathaniel’s invitation to travel with him and Barbara to Toronto.

Joseph Blumenthal, Nathan’s father, had a men’s clothing store in Toronto. He and his wife were very proud of their son and of his national recognition as the right hand of Miss Rand’s Objectivist movement. Dinah Blumenthal had told Miss Rand nine years earlier, at the wedding of Nathaniel and Barbara in 1953, that she had read The Fountainhead with great enjoyment. Actually, she hadn’t read it, but Joe Blumenthal had done so with especial curiosity after fourteen-year-old Nathan announced to the household that The Fountainhead was the most important book he had ever read. A few years later, Nathan departed for Los Angeles. Once there, he wrote to Ayn Rand, imploring her to give him just one hour of her time. He was desperate to meet the illuminating genius who had changed his life with a single book.

The invitation extended, Nathan Blumenthal arrived at the ranch house at eight in the evening. He left at five o’clock the next morning.

At Nathaniel’s wedding in 1953, Ayn Rand served as matron of honor, Frank O’Connor as best man. The bridal party was held in White Plains, New York. Joseph Blumenthal had risen to his feet to give what proved to be an extended toast. He said he had wanted friends and family present to hear something of the nature of the letters he had received after Nathan met Miss Rand. Unfortunately, the packet of letters from his beloved, brilliant son had been lost in the fire at his establishment—“the fire that burned up enough men’s clothes to equip the Canadian army!”

But he remembered much from them. How Ayn Rand had received Nathan at the Chatsworth home in Los Angeles. How she had told him, after an hour or two, to stay on and have dinner with her and her husband—“that lovely man, Frank O’Connor. If anybody here doesn’t know it, Mr. O’Connor is embarking on his own career as an artist. He will be a renowned artist, you take my word for it. I have seen pictures of several of his oil paintings, and my knowledge is not limited to evaluating the quality of men’s clothes!” There was polite applause.

He told of Nathan’s stupefaction when Miss Rand kept him at her ranch until five o’clock in the morning. They had discussed, young Nathan had written home, “everything in the world, and all of the ideas that were . . . generated by her Fountainhead book.”

That nine-hour session—Mr. Blumenthal had extended both arms, raising his eyes skyward—had been the birth of a wonderful association, following which Nathan came to New York to live and study and Miss Rand and Frank also moved to New York from California.

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