Six Lives, Two Centuries

By Mayo Mohs, Melvin Maddocks, Paul Gray

The stories of Ulysses Grant, P.G. Wodehouse and the Beatles

To Emerson there was "properly no history, only biography." Three new books illustrate his view. Well told, the epic of a life may also be the life of an epoch.

GRANT by William S. McFeely Norton; 592 pages; $19.95

War, observes Biographer William McFeely with mordant pragmatism, "is a way out of a leather store." Certainly it was that for Ulysses S. Grant, who was clerking in a family shop in Galena, Ill., when the Civil War ignited the U.S. Grant was 38 when the rebels fired on Fort Sumter, and he had distinguished himself only briefly as a soldier: in combat, as an eager young West Pointer in the Mexican War, and as an enterprising peacetime quartermaster who led a hapless party of California-bound travelers across the Isthmus of Panama.

His enterprise seemed to stop there. As a boy on the frontier of Ohio, he had been instructed by his father in how to bargain for a colt--then told the owner the highest price he could offer. He remained ingenuous; amid the bonanzas of the West, he panned only fool's gold. In San Francisco, a friend from the East talked him out of $1,500 for a partnership, gulled him into destroying the notes and soon absconded. On Army duty in the Pacific Northwest, he sought to make some side money raising potatoes for hungry settlers; the Columbia River flooded his fields. Posted to bleak Fort Humboldt on the California coast, Captain Grant pined for his wife Julia, the daughter of a Missouri country gentleman, and their two small boys. Depression led to drink, but it was the loneliness, not liquor, that prompted him to resign his commission. Working his father-in-law's land near St. Louis, he failed as a farmer; moving to town, he came to grief as a rent collector.

All this striving and failing is central to McFeely's analysis of the extraordinary life of an ordinary man. Later some would hail Grant as "the Liberator," but in fact conflict liberated him. The veteran officer was a brigadier general by August 1861, a major general the following February after winning the unconditional surrender of Fort Donelson in Tennessee. Grant soon perceived that the war meant annihilation. He pursued that vision personally in bloody battles at Vicksburg, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, and more remotely when he commanded Philip Sheridan to leave the Shenandoah Valley "a barren waste."

Yet, as McFeely takes pains to show, Grant was no war lover. At Cold Harbor, it was Robert E. Lee who used his sharpshooters to pin down any movement on the battlefield, and Grant who pleaded with him for a chance to collect the wounded. Eleven years later, in 1875, when a new rebellion threatened to break out in Mississippi, Grant refused to commit federal troops lest a new war begin.

The national hero could scarcely avoid the presidency. He was boomed as a possible candidate in 1863, and in the wake of Lincoln's assassination, he was unbeatable. In his 1869 Inaugural Address, President Grant was the embodiment of American promise: he endorsed ratification of the 15th Amendment, granting voting rights to blacks, and pledged to bring "civilization and ultimate citizenship" to "the original occupants of this land." But the speaker's will was not as good as his word: he failed to block the stampede of gold hunters into the Black Hills Sioux country, and George Custer paid the price at Little Bighorn.

The commitment to blacks faltered, too, as the White House backed down on enforcing civil rights against a rising tide of white terrorism in the South. McFeely faults Grant most sharply for failing to use his clout at West Point, where even Grant's son Fred joined in a harassment campaign against the academy's first black cadet. Closer to home, the Administration was muddied by scandal, notably the whisky tax swindle that bilked the Treasury of millions. Despite evidence gleaned by his own private detective, Grant refused to admit that a close adviser was one of the culprits.

Out of office in 1877, Ulysses and Julia embarked on a two-year world tour. Grant dined with Queen Victoria, discussed war with Bismarck, and noted, with eerie precognition, the sorry history of colonial rule in Southeast Asia. The triumphal trip was not enough to catapult him back into office for the third term he sought in 1880. Still, his peculiar luck held. James Garfield, who won, was assassinated just months after Inauguration.

Grant was to die in 1885, of throat cancer, but in the agonizing process mustered his old soldier's strength and clarity of vision to produce his classic Memoirs. Mark Twain published them, and provided Julia Grant, finally, with security for life. True to Grant's own estimate of his accomplishment, the Memoirs do not mention the White House years. McFeely's own masterly work does, however, making those years and all the others in this stubborn striver's life a microcosm of the 19th century republic. Within it the biographer succeeds in making his flawed hero a man whom modern Americans "would recognize if they met him in a crowd."

--By Mayo Mohs

Excerpt

"He had learned--or had somehow always known--how simple war is. The truth was uncongenial to American ears, and Grant was too kind and gentle a man ever to come out with it directly. But his whole life was focused on his mastery of the fact and his Memoirs was its record: war is an act; to make war is to kill.

Ulysses Grant in his throwaway lines--in his throwaway life--kept trying to get people to see the colossal sick joke. All you do is take the nicest guy on the block, and knowing he is not good for much else, let him act on the bald fact that war means killing the guy on the other side . . . Then, all this man has to do is keep the fact in mind all the way to Appomattox."

P.G. WODEHOUSE by David A. Jasen Continuum; 298 pages; $17.50

When P.G. Wodehouse, a shy man, was persuaded for once to give a public reading, he became so absorbed in his own story that he quite forgot his audience. "By Jove, that's good! I'd no idea," he muttered. "Devilish funny." Millions agreed with him. Bertrand Russell could hardly wait for the next Bertie Wooster novel. Bix Beiderbecke quoted Psmith by the page. Evelyn Waugh, scarcely noted for charitable overstatement, called his colleague "preeminent and undisputed."

In the affectionate perspective of David Jasen's biography, revised for the author's centennial, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse emerges as one of the century's greatest entertainment industries. Beginning with The Pothunters in 1902, he wrote over 70 novels, more than 300 short stories, 18 plays, plus the lyrics or books of 33 musicals with such partners as Jerome Kern and George Gershwin.

Why have Americans, French, Germans and Japanese, as well as Wodehouse's fellow countrymen, bought some 30 million volumes of these comic fantasies, set in a neverland of unambiguous upper-class twits, where it is always a bright spring morning with nary a cloud of poverty, malice or lust? Analyzing Wodehouse is like trying to bisect a meringue. The whimsy of Blandings Castle and the Drones Club crumbles to the touch. Names like Freddie Threepwood, Oofy Prosser and Marmaduke Chuffnell lose by the listing.

Analyzing Wodehouse the man is no simpler. Happily married to one woman for 60 years, absolutely bonkers about Pekingese dogs, could he have been as delighted and kindly as he looked, smiling from all those dust jackets? Not quite.

Wodehouse's childhood was a model of bland British neglect-- parents absent ed in Hong Kong where father served as a magistrate while young Pelham was stashed in schools back in England. When it came time for Oxford, there was no money. The aspiring author had to clerk in a bank. When he was quarantined with mumps, the stay-at-home knocked out 19 stories in three weeks: he had taken refuge in comic art. It was to be his true home from then on.

He wrote effortlessly anywhere--floating about the moat of a stately home in Norfolk or basking in a Hollywood mansion where, in less than a month, he turned out three short stories, one act of a play and the complete dialogue for a movie. But, as Jasen shows, that facility could be ruinous. At the beginning of World War II, Wodehouse was living in Le Touquet, where he was trapped by the German Occupation. He ended up a prisoner of war in a converted lunatic asylum. Here he composed Money in the Bank, all alone in his padded cell.

Upon his release, Wodehouse committed an innocent but ghastly blunder: he made broadcasts over German radio. He said nothing to comfort the enemy, and after the war antiFascists as scrupulous as George Orwell defended him, but the British public gave him their backs. And so, in 1952, he set up writer's shop in one last improbable place: Long Island, N.Y.

In the final year of his life, as in the final scene of a well-made comedy, virtue was rewarded: Wodehouse received a knighthood. As he scribbled vigorously into his 90s, he made a rare confession: "I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write."

On St. Valentine's Day, 1975, Sir Pelham, 93, fell asleep in his chair, pipe half filled, writing materials beside him. So lived and died the character P.G. Wodehouse had labored to create: a perfect gentleman and a happy writer.

--By Melvin Maddocks

SHOUT! THE BEATLES IN THEIR GENERATION by Philip Norman Fireside; 414 pages; $9.95;paperbound

In the aftermath of John Lennon's murder last December, plenty of people rushed forward to make a quick buck off the Beatles. Author Philip Norman is not among them. His work on this biography dates back to 1968, when he began reporting on the group and their financial empire for the London Sunday Times. After years of research and writing, his project was nearly finished when Lennon was killed. Norman added a sad prologue to his manuscript: "The vigil was for John; the farewell was to all the Beatles."

But the Beatles had ceased to exist, except on records and film, ten years earlier. Hopes that the lads from Liverpool would somehow come together again fed on myths, not reality; an inability to tell one from the other was a prime symptom of Beatlemania. The Beatles themselves were not always immune. Their biographer tries to be, and largely succeeds. His detailed narrative sets forth a story that still, no matter how carefully documented, seems unbelievable.

It has been told before, but never so thoroughly. In the beginning, there was luck. A Liverpool performance attracted the interest of Brian Epstein, a wealthy young record-store owner and an agonized closet homosexual. Although drawn to what he saw onstage, Epstein sensed that the world was not waiting for four sweaty boys in leather suits. After talking himself on board as their manager, Epstein literally cleaned up their act. Next came timing. The British press and public were growing weary of the Profumo scandal and its sleazy aftershocks; what was needed was a little innocent fun. The newly fluffed and tailored Beatles stumbled into this void and instantly filled it. The same thing happened when the group made an uncertain foray into the U.S.; a nation grieving for a murdered President took four cuddly bits of good news and their bright close harmonies to its heart.

Most important, though, was talent. The Beatles became legends before their own time. Once they grew too famous to perform safely or even audibly in public concerts, they retreated to the recording studio and proved themselves artists. Norman re-creates the excitement of these sessions, when the imaginations of Lennon and McCartney met electronic technology; for a few years, the sounds that emerged from a studio on London's Abbey Road dazzled intellectuals, teeny-boppers and nearly everyone in between. At the same time, the end was nearing. Epstein was dead, an apparent suicide; the Beatles were quarreling, no longer that the whole group was big enough for its parts. Writes Norman: "Each, in the stupendous collective adoration, felt himself to be overlooked as an individual."

So they went off to be John, Paul, George and Ringo, leaving behind baffled fans, busy lawyers and a legend that continued to outgrow them. Shout! shows clearly why the breakup had to come and why that inevitability seems, especially now, so depressing.

--By Paul Gray

Editors' Choice

FICTION: Creation, Gore Vidal sb Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith Love and Freindship, Jane Austen The Men's Club, Leonard Michaels Original Sins,Lisa Alther sbThe Testament, Elie Wiesel sbThe White Hotel, D.M. Thomas

NONFICTION: Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961, edited by Carlos Baker sb The Hour of Our Death, Philippe Aries sb Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, Donald C. Johanson & Maitland A. Edey Maria Callas, Arianna Stassinopoulos sb Nam, Mark Baker Paper Money, Adam Smith sbThe Terrible Secret, Walter Laqueur

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