0472
PARTISAN REVIEW
Mother, however, smiled mildly. "Billy," she would say, "my
cousin, Admiral Ledyard Atkinson, always has a twinkle
in
his eye
when he asks after your
vers de societe."
" 'Tommy' Atkins!" snorted Commander Billy. "I know Tommy
better than my own mother. He's the first chapter in a book I'm
secretly writing and leaving to the archives called
Wild Admirals I
Have Known.
And now my bodily presence may no longer grace
the inner sanctum of the Somerset Club, for fear Admiral Tommy'll
assault me with five new chapters of his
Who Won the Battle of
Jutland?"
After the heat and push of Commander Billy, it was pleasant
to sit in the shade of the Atkinsons. Cousin Ledyard wasn't exactly
an admiral: he had been promoted to this rank during the World
War and had soon reverted back to his old rank of captain. In
1926 he was approaching the retiring age and was still a captain.
He was in charge of a big, stately, comfortable, but anomalous
warship, whi ch seldom sailed further than hailing distance from its
Charlestown drydock. He was himself stately and anomalous. Serene,
silver-maned, and Spanish-looking, Cousin Ledyard liked full-dress
receptions and crowed like the cock of the walk in his cabin crowded
with liveried Filipinos, Cuban trophies, and racks of experimental
firearms, such as pepper-box pistols and a machine gun worked by
electric batteries. He rattled off Spanish phrases, told first-hand
adventure stories about service with Admiral Schley, and reminded
one of some landsman and diplomat commanding a galleon in Philip
II's Armada. With his wife's money he had bought a motor launch
which had a teak deck and a newfangled diesel engine. While his
warship perpetually rode at anchor, Cousin Ledyard was forever
hurrying about the harbor in his launch. "Oh, Led Atkinson has
dash and his own speedboat!" This was about the best my father
could bring himself to say for his relative. Commander Billy, himself
a man of action, was more sympathetic : "Tommy's about a hundred
horse and buggy power." Such a dinosaur, however, had little to offer
an '07 Annapolis graduate. Billy's final judgment was that Cousin
Ledyard knew less
trig
than a schoolgirl, had been promoted through
mistaken identity or merely as "window-dressing," and "was really
plotting to put airplane carriers in square sails to stem the tide of
our declining Yankee seamanship." Mother lost her enthusiasm for
