An Answer for Darren's Professor, 17 Years Later

In a 1991 telephone conversation, my friend Darren, parroting one of his college professors, pointed to Mr. Buckley as an example of someone who had created his own identity by adopting a British accent even though he was "as American as we are" (and that's pretty darn American, lest you wonder). I hadn't been reading Buckley long and wasn't sure what to make of Darren's professor's judgment in this regard. If it was an act, it was certainly a good one deserving of applause and the purchase of a magazine subscription ("if you don't like it, you can buurrn your back issues!" said Mr. Buckley in the television commercials for National Review of that period). Over the years, I gathered that Mr. Buckley's accent wasn't exactly a put-on, he and his family having lived in several different countries in his youth. But I'd forgotten about that conversation with Darren until I read the definitive explanation for the mysterious accent in this book:

September 15, 1989

Mr. James Fallows
Boston, Mass.

Dear Mr. Fallows:

The Best of Business Quarterly for Summer 1989 quotes you as follows: "Americans acquire the patina of old money by pretending that they are Englishmen. William F. Buckley, Jr., has basically the same lineage as, say, Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was descended from rural Texas politicians, and so is Buckley, whose grandfather was a sheriff in south Texas. But instead of wearing a cowboy hat and leisure suit, like Johnson, Buckley made himself sound as if he were a tenth-generation Old Etonian. In a sense, he is the classic American, since he has completely invented a new identity for himself."

You should know that the invention of myself as a tenth-generation Old Etonian required a great deal of planning. I (and my four younger siblings) spoke only Spanish at home (my parents had lived in Mexico after they were married). At age 3, I went to my first school -- in Paris, where the language is French, even among the nouveaux. I was exposed to English for the first time in London, at age five, when I was enrolled in the Blessed Sir Thomas More School. From there I went to New England and, at age 12, back to England to a boarding school (St. Johns, Beaumont, six miles from Eton) (by the way, if you think I speak with an Eton accent, you don't know an Eton accent); then to boarding school in the Hudson Valley. During this period I visited Texas twice, once for three days, once for two days. But then the affinity between Lyndon Johnson and my grandfather was certainly strong: although my grandfather died in 1904, he voted for Johnson in 1948.

Having quoted you on the subject, I do hope you know more about the production of F-16s than you do about the production of Buckleys. If not, you should write about other things.

Yours truly,

Wm. F. Buckley, Jr.

--page 199. Darren, your professor stands corrected along with Mr. Fallows.