The Eulogist
By Carol Ellingson
I was going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways of classifying minds is under the headings “Ruled by Memory” and “Disdains Memory.” Myself, I disdain memory.
“Preposterous!” you would say. “You, who can recite whole scenes of Shakespeare by heart. You, the walking encyclopedia!” No, I assure you, dear boy, I do not trust memory, never have; it is a fallible guide.
I was interrupted by a question: Had I completed my eulogy? No, I replied, sipping my tea slowly, unperturbed, though I did permit myself a slight pout to forestall further inquiry. Your mother and her sisters knew when they asked me to eulogize your grandmother Victoria that I will deliver finely crafted remarks utilizing a central metaphor based on one of the endearing traits or irritating habits of the departed, those often being one and the same, depending upon one’s point of view. Such a metaphor facilitates a touch of kind humor along with tear-provoking pathos, quite beyond the verbal doilies typically arrayed by the mere sentimentalist. Given the patina of gentility with which your grandmother always disguised her willfulness, I am considering a metaphoric comparison with the late English queen, herself the fountainhead of a large clan and also a Victoria, who survived her mate by years. I know what they want, your aunts and your mother, the daughters of Victoria, but I cannot be rushed.
Where was I?
Oh yes. Memory is fickle and corruptible. Oh, we can find our way back to the grocery store, navigate to the freezer section, where we will find that lovely double-chocolate raspberry ice cream your grandmother adores—forgive me, did adore. (I was permitted by her nurse to bring a pint once a month and she was allowed to share a spoonful with me on our visits. I suspect the nurse indulged herself in a bite or two after I left.) We can commit passages of literature to memory with training and zeal, but these are rote things—names, places, multiplication tables—they carry no burden of feeling. Emotion blurs the edges of recall. Love, hate, anger, jealousy, each corrupts our memory banks. We “vague out,” as a young person of my acquaintance recently chirped. I have always endeavored to row the boat of my life in calm waters, eschewing the memory-sapping rapids of strong feeling.
Forgive me, if my thesis gives offense. It is a tender time, “the sad day,” as your aunts and mother murmur in unison. My condolences, of course, to you. You were the apple of your grandmother’s eye; she saw in you a perpetual renewal of Bill’s boyish élan, which she treasured even more after his death.
I saw Victoria last on Independence Day, merely three weeks ago. I had engaged a taxicab for the journey, as it was hot that day, nearly 100 degrees. I knew I dare not bring my little pint of ice cream; it would have puddled all over my trousers long before I arrived, so I made do with four yellow roses. Victoria expected a fuss, but small kerfuffles pleased her well enough.
When I arrived, your family was already present—by the dozens, as it always appears to me. I should not have expected a quiet tête-à-tête, but I was disappointed nonetheless. As I walked up the path, I heard children squealing on the trampoline, adolescent music blaring from the lake. Rounding the corner, I could see adults sprawled around the screen porch. It was far too wilting for strenuous exercise, but the first words I heard were: “Who’s up for tennis?” You were standing there spinning a racket in your hands. I stopped, pretending something was stuck to the bottom of my cane, hoping to avoid the crowd a moment longer.
“Uncle Wells would’ve played you, but he had a heart attack,” someone cackled—your Aunt Kate, I believe. “Maybe you should think about that!”
You looked my way, “But here’s the very man to answer our questions. Woodrow! Come in, come in.”
I have to take my time on your walkway these days. Wood chips may be a blessing for agile young legs pounding at a run from house to tennis court to beach, but they are treacherously unstable at my age. You kindly held the door for me. “A hat, Woodrow?! Aren’t you roasting?”
“A gentleman is never without his hat,” I said. The company laughed.
“A panama if you haven’t a boater, right, Woodrow?” Foster declared. I nodded.
Your mother came out with a plate. “Woodrow, aren’t you hot in that suit? Let me get you a pair of father’s old shorts.”
Heavens, what a thought! “My dear,” I said, “I am much too small.” Again, the company laughed.
“That’s it, hold your ground,” you crowed, taking my hat. “But you’re just the man we need. We were having an argument. You can settle it.” I tried to interject that arguments are endemic in your family, but you rushed on. “Could Grandpa Bill play tennis or not? Grandma said he was excellent, but her brothers always rolled their eyes.”
I felt curious to know exactly what Victoria remembered. In a quiet, but firm tone, I stated that your grandfather cheated at tennis, he was notorious and no one would play him. Perhaps I should have moderated my opinion. The crowd stared.
“Well, sit down,” someone said behind my back. “Tell us what you recall.”
“First, I will pay my respects,” I answered. “Where is Victoria?”
“In bed,” your mother said. “I think Pauline’s reading to her.”
“Go on back,” Kate motioned to the door. I must have hesitated. “I’ll take you,” your mother said, extending her arm. “Let me put those in water.”
As I entered Victoria’s room, I could see she had taken a turn for the worse. One month earlier, she had greeted me with a bright “How do you do?” Now, she lay nearly immobile, staring at the ceiling, only the fingers of her left hand slowly caressing the little white poodle stretched along her flank. Her skirt, green of course, was pulled up and rolled around her knees—the heat, I expect—but the nurse had failed to adjust her undergarments properly and I had to look away. Shameless negligence; I wanted to berate someone.
Pauline, your young cousin, the one who’s to marry soon, seemed out of sorts. She wasn’t reading; she was telling Victoria about the party going on outside. “Grandma Torry, it’s the Fourth of July. We’ll have fireworks later. Remember the fireworks last year?” Victoria would have hated the patronizing tone, but she neither moved nor responded.
I said, “Hello, my dear.” Victoria’s eyes shifted my direction for a moment, then blinked back to the ceiling.
“You have to speak louder,” Pauline notified me, then shouted to Victoria, “Grandmother, it’s your friend!”
“It’s Woodrow,” I said in my usual low tone, that she might recognize my voice. I moved closer to the bed and settled myself in the chair. Pauline left to get some lemonade.
Helpless for some useful activity, I perused the books on Victoria’s nightstand, imagining I might read to her myself. The room was crowded with books from years of collecting and on the nightstand were the most precious of all: The Lyrical Poems of Shelley; three volumes from her favorite set of Dickens, half-bound in red leather with bright gilding on the spines; Through the Looking Glass and Alice, of course, in several editions; even a Snark; and Rupert Brooke. Nearly hidden between two larger volumes was a miniature book with a dull spine of unprepossessing aspect. I pulled it out. The cover was bare except for a small ornamental rosette centered on the front board. I opened it.
It all came flooding back. I must have exclaimed involuntarily. Victoria startled on the bed.
The summer of 1921, this very house, Victoria was 17 and I, 13. She was the coddled baby sister in a houseful of college boys and I, the kid brother of their best friends. She, in her pale green summer frock, was the liveliest girl I had ever seen. Tiny, the center of all attention, she could have been an actress on the screen. The brothers fluttered around her. She chose me, though, to sit with her on the swing as the young men cavorted. We read poetry together and she tried to teach me bird calls.
It was there that my cousin Bill stomped onto the stage. I recalled, as I sat beside Victoria’s bed, that he had been staying at my father’s house and my brothers took him out to the country for a lark, expecting Victoria to cut him down to size. He was six-foot-three and towered over her with his enormous broad shoulders—and his presence. I don’t know what else to call it: his overwhelming presence. Certainly, I thought, she will give this uncouth galoot the bum’s rush, send him packing, back to Yale from whence he came.
But Victoria flushed, “He has the most beautiful manners.” She spoke coquettishly, told him she was going to Vassar that fall. Get him on the tennis court, I prayed to myself, let the men knock off his edges. Her brother Wells obligingly challenged Bill to a game. Perhaps I encouraged him to do so. Perhaps, but memory fades.
Bill played tennis with fury. Victoria’s brothers were aghast. He lunged and leaped and threw himself around the court, his long legs splaying. He had no finesse, only raw gargantuan power. And indeed he cheated. In your family this has been turned into a cute tale of romance, of brothers trying vainly to prevent the cosseted baby sister from becoming a woman. I was there. No such thing. Bill wielded a racket like a sword. If Victoria’s forebears were genteel Episcopal clergy, as they were, Bill’s had come pounding down from the Highlands, broadswords waving and blood on their kilts. For every backhand, Bill grabbed his tennis racket with both hands and whacked at the ball for all he was worth.
“Cheat!” Wells screamed the first time Bill did it, his face purple.
“Perfectly legal,” Bill blustered.
“Check the rule book, sister,” Watt ordered from the sidelines.
Victoria did. I assisted, certain that this was an infraction. “It says nothing about using both hands,” Victoria reported, smiling at Bill.
“You look like a damn girl, man,” Wells taunted.
“I won the point, didn’t I?” Bill snorted. I was embarrassed for him.
“Thirty-love,” Victoria cooed.
First Wells, then Watt, lost to Bill. They were beside themselves. They challenged him to doubles, dragooning me into the fracas. Even I could see that Bill was expected to lose with me as a partner, but Bill beat them, in truth single-handedly. I would have savored this rare sports victory, but I had watched Victoria throughout the match. I could tell, even at 13, who had won and who had lost.
During my last visit, on the Fourth of July, Victoria spoke only once. She answered no question. She expressed no desire. I doubt that she recalled anyone. But, as I stood to leave, you walked past her window, my panama on your head, swinging a tennis racket backhand like a field scythe. Victoria turned to the window. Her eyes lit up once again. In a perfectly clear voice, she said with longing, touching my arm, “Oh my! Is that boy going to play tennis? How delightful!”
I have meant to apologize previously for my rudeness that day. I know it seems that I hurried away. I was chagrined that I had expressed myself too forcefully. I have some doubts, considering the matter today, whether your grandfather cheated at all or instead simply played to win, whether my memory plays tricks on me.
I do have a small request, which perhaps you would convey to your family. There is a book among Victoria’s effects. It is entitled The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman and it is inscribed on the inside front cover “From W.A., July 4, 1921.” There was for years some controversy surrounding the authorship of this book. It is now settled from recently discovered letters that Thackeray wrote the poetry, Dickens contributed the mock scholarly commentary at the end, and Cruikshank added a few poems of his own later, after illustrating the book. In 1921 this was still unresolved. For a boy of 13, something about the mystery of the book seemed to imply more than could be articulated, something about its peculiar combination of romance and humor seemed to strike a proper tone of distance and awe and something about its smallness seemed to embody a humility appropriate for the giver. In hindsight, I wonder if more dash and less delicacy would have served me better.
If your family could bear to part with it, I would cherish it.
 | | | |  | | About the contest and its winner | Carol Ellingson (B.A. ’70, M.A. ’73) earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in theater arts from the University of Minnesota. She earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1979 and has practiced labor and employment law in St. Paul ever since, first at Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly and currently with Bend & Ellingson, P.A., with her husband, Richard Bend. They live in Afton, Minnesota.
Ellingson’s law school thesis (“The Copyright Exception for Derivative Works and the Scope of Utilization”) took first place at Harvard and placed third in a national competition. When she first took up creative writing, it was as a playwright. She earned her M.F.A. in creative writing from Hamline University in 2002 and took an interest in writing essays. She has had several published, including in The Bark (summer 2004) and Fourth Genre (spring 2005).
Ellingson began writing “The Eulogist,” her first short story published, after the death of her husband’s grandmother, who had been an avid book collector. Ellingson took up the task of cataloging the books, and among them was a set of the writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.—-the poet/doctor, not the jurist. Ellingson began reading his most famous work, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, the opening line of which suggested a voice for the protagonist Woodrow.
Minnesota magazine’s annual fiction contest is open to all University of Minnesota students and alumni. An independent judge selects the winner from a group of finalists culled by the editorial staff. The winning entry is published in the magazine and its author is awarded a cash prize. Watch Minnesota for guidelines for next year’s contest, or visit the link below.
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