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Authors: Carl Bernstein
Tags: Fiction
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United Methodist that Don Jonesâs teachings were too âfreethinking,â and he was forced out. âWe were fighting for [Hillaryâs] soul and her mind,â Jones was to say years later.
Before he left, Jones gave Hillary a copy of J. D. Salingerâs
The Catcher in the Rye
to read. She did not like it. Holden Caulfield reminded her too much of her brother Hughie. Salingerâs coming-of-age novel seemed to stir up all kinds of difficult questions and feelings about family and family traits, including her own tendency toward aloofness and detachment. Over the decades some of Hillaryâs greatest admirers came to question whether she genuinely liked people, at least in the aggregate, or whether she merely preferred the company of a few and embraced the multitudes as part of her sense of Christian responsibility and political commitment.
Shortly after Jones left Park Ridge, Hillary seemed to raise the question herself, in a letter: âCan you be a misanthrope and still love or enjoy some individuals?â she wondered. She added, âHow about a
compassionate
misanthrope?â
B Y THE TIME seventeen-year-old Hillary Rodham left Park Ridge, Illinois, for Wellesley College, almost all the essential elementsâand contradictionsâof her adult character could be glimpsed: the keen intelligence and ability to stretch it, the ambition and anger, the idealism and acceptance of humiliation, the messianism and sense of entitlement, the attraction to charismatic men and indifference to conventional feminine fashion, the seriousness of purpose and quickness to judgment, the puritan sensibility and surprising vulnerability, the chronic impatience and aversion to personal confrontation, the insistence on financial independence and belief in public service, the tenacious attempts at absolute control and, perhaps above all, the balm, beacon, and refuge of religion.
2
A Young Woman on Her Own
Nineteen sixty-eight was a watershed year for the country, and for my own personal and political evolution.
âLiving History
H ILLARY D IANE R ODHAM arrived at Wellesley College in the fall of 1965 a Barry Goldwater conservative, her well-worn copy of his famous book
The Conscience of a Conservative
in her suitcase. A relatively sheltered, suburban Midwest teenager, she was suddenly in the company of formidable young women who had gone to private boarding schools, summered in Europe, spoke foreign languages with ease, and possessed sophistication of a sort that had long defined the Wellesley aura. That she had been in the top 5 percent of her class at Maine South meant little. Hillary was no longer considered brighter than most of her classmates. In fact, admission to Wellesley, even more than the other Seven Sisters colleges in the Northeast, was predicated on the assumption that, upon matriculation, you were demonstrably brilliant. Most of her fellow students had been in the top 1 or 2 percent of their high school graduating class. In 1965, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, and the other traditional Ivy League universities were still all-male bastions. Thus Wellesley had its pick of almost any girl in the country who aspired to the best possible education (and could afford it or win a scholarship).
In this rarefied environment, Hillary felt intimidated and lonely at the start, a foreigner in a strange place she had seen only in pictures. Her decision to go east to a womenâs college had been inspired by a high school teacher who had attended Wellesley; Hillary gave it preference over the other Seven Sisters schools partly on the basis of photographs of the campus: bucolic acres of rolling green, wooded horse trails, and crystal-clear ponds. Pictures of Wellesleyâs Lake Waban reminded her of Lake Winola, where she had summered in the Poconos. To this postcard scene, Hillary brought her suitcases packed full with Peter Pan blouses, box-pleat skirts, penny loafers, and knee socks. It became
Before he left, Jones gave Hillary a copy of J. D. Salingerâs
The Catcher in the Rye
to read. She did not like it. Holden Caulfield reminded her too much of her brother Hughie. Salingerâs coming-of-age novel seemed to stir up all kinds of difficult questions and feelings about family and family traits, including her own tendency toward aloofness and detachment. Over the decades some of Hillaryâs greatest admirers came to question whether she genuinely liked people, at least in the aggregate, or whether she merely preferred the company of a few and embraced the multitudes as part of her sense of Christian responsibility and political commitment.
Shortly after Jones left Park Ridge, Hillary seemed to raise the question herself, in a letter: âCan you be a misanthrope and still love or enjoy some individuals?â she wondered. She added, âHow about a
compassionate
misanthrope?â
B Y THE TIME seventeen-year-old Hillary Rodham left Park Ridge, Illinois, for Wellesley College, almost all the essential elementsâand contradictionsâof her adult character could be glimpsed: the keen intelligence and ability to stretch it, the ambition and anger, the idealism and acceptance of humiliation, the messianism and sense of entitlement, the attraction to charismatic men and indifference to conventional feminine fashion, the seriousness of purpose and quickness to judgment, the puritan sensibility and surprising vulnerability, the chronic impatience and aversion to personal confrontation, the insistence on financial independence and belief in public service, the tenacious attempts at absolute control and, perhaps above all, the balm, beacon, and refuge of religion.
2
A Young Woman on Her Own
Nineteen sixty-eight was a watershed year for the country, and for my own personal and political evolution.
âLiving History
H ILLARY D IANE R ODHAM arrived at Wellesley College in the fall of 1965 a Barry Goldwater conservative, her well-worn copy of his famous book
The Conscience of a Conservative
in her suitcase. A relatively sheltered, suburban Midwest teenager, she was suddenly in the company of formidable young women who had gone to private boarding schools, summered in Europe, spoke foreign languages with ease, and possessed sophistication of a sort that had long defined the Wellesley aura. That she had been in the top 5 percent of her class at Maine South meant little. Hillary was no longer considered brighter than most of her classmates. In fact, admission to Wellesley, even more than the other Seven Sisters colleges in the Northeast, was predicated on the assumption that, upon matriculation, you were demonstrably brilliant. Most of her fellow students had been in the top 1 or 2 percent of their high school graduating class. In 1965, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, and the other traditional Ivy League universities were still all-male bastions. Thus Wellesley had its pick of almost any girl in the country who aspired to the best possible education (and could afford it or win a scholarship).
In this rarefied environment, Hillary felt intimidated and lonely at the start, a foreigner in a strange place she had seen only in pictures. Her decision to go east to a womenâs college had been inspired by a high school teacher who had attended Wellesley; Hillary gave it preference over the other Seven Sisters schools partly on the basis of photographs of the campus: bucolic acres of rolling green, wooded horse trails, and crystal-clear ponds. Pictures of Wellesleyâs Lake Waban reminded her of Lake Winola, where she had summered in the Poconos. To this postcard scene, Hillary brought her suitcases packed full with Peter Pan blouses, box-pleat skirts, penny loafers, and knee socks. It became
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