The engineer and the ballerina. Son of New England old money and daughter of a Romanian goat herder. He graduated from MIT at nineteen, she was dancing en pointe at nine. He was touring Europe studying great engineering and design, she was touring Europe in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Love at first sight. A love for the ages. As Europe marched toward war, the newlyweds took up residence at Dalriada. Henry began ascending the leadership ladder of the Argyll family businesses and Elena toured the U.S. as a prima ballerina. Then came children, and family life at Dalriada became the center of their lives.
“I met Elena and, besides falling madly in love, I learned what it meant to be an artist, to see the world as an artist sees it. Very different from the engineering mindset I had adopted at MIT. Without art we’d be less than human.”
They took turns shooting, not really putting any thought into it. Scott sent the cue ball into a pocket and nonchalantly pulled it back onto the table.
“How is it different? From being an engineer?” asked Scott.
“An engineer can’t speculate. Life is limits and loads, facts and figures. In dance, as in all the arts, there are moments when facts, reason, logic, and experience all merge into something else, something very much like wisdom.”
“But, poetry, though? Seriously. Do we really need that?”
“Have you ever read a book more than once? Liked it so much that, after some time has passed, you picked it up again?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Then you know what I’m talking about. And poetry and mathematical formulas aren’t too dissimilar underneath it all. ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’ and E=mc2 are both equating one thing with another for deeper understanding. They’re different dialects of logic, of reason.”
It would be hard to imagine the Dalriada we find in KOP without Henry and Elena Argyll. This carefully guarded, enchanted world is the life achievement of a unique couple who themselves are the product of an age gone by, before the millions of World War II casualties, the gas chambers, the madness of Naziism, the rise of communism, and the atomic bomb. Their personal grief for a loved one killed in uniform wouldn’t result from war in Europe or the Pacific, or even in Korea, but later, in Viet Nam. The Dalriada we see in KOP wasn’t the crowning achievement of old-world artistry meeting new-world dynamism but the humble life of heart-felt giving by a family in mourning.
Although we don’t meet Bobby Argyll in the novel we are constantly reminded of his spirit, his energy, his openness to walking alongside people at their point of need. The loss of Bobby changed everything for the Argylls, especially Henry who, in mid-life, completely re-evaluated everything in life.
“Bobby was sui generis, a category of one. Had a heart for people like I’ve never seen in anyone. People were just drawn to him, and he never acted like he thought he was anything special.”
“Play baseball?”
“Center field.”
“Good hitter?”
“Clutch.”
“Sweet. Continue.”
“The Argylls had always given to charity, but Bobby lived the ‘pebble in the pond’ model, making very personal contributions to the lives of individual people, one by one, at just the right time, and the effects continue to ripple toward the horizon even today. I could’ve built a children’s hospital and put his name on it, and everyone would’ve known his name, but the only way to truly keep his memory alive was to try to emulate how he lived.”
They stood in silence a moment. Scott felt the need to lighten the mood. “Do you ever smoke that thing?” he asked, indicating Henry’s pipe.
Henry smiled and turned his attention back to the table, lining up a shot. “Let me know if you find my tobacco pouch.”
Bobby was destined to take charge of the Argyll family’s philanthropic efforts. But, instead of managing the family’s charitable giving, he became its role model, the paradigm for how to live a life of giving. Once Henry realized what needed to be done to memorialize Bobby, he embraced it in every aspect of life.
Looking around Dalriada, it’s not hard to see Bobby’s vision at work. One can only imagine the people who are vital to the enchantment of Dalriada and who wouldn’t be there without Bobby’s inspiration, certainly the platoon of aspiring chefs from murky backgrounds wouldn’t be there, Prudence might not be doing her physics genius dance while investigating the mysteries of the sub-atomic world, all the Pickups and Deliveries (P.U.D.s) wouldn’t be helping people like Mrs. Bannister, there’d be no need for the nurturing presence of Beatrice in the background, and Tony would surely never have made it off the streets of Boston alive. And the grab-bag of Dalriada kids would be finding the usual ways kids got in trouble in the ’90s or struggling for ways to escape them on their own.
[Elena] pointed out all the different characteristics of a rose flower, petals, sepals, rosehips, the supporting stem and, at last, the thorns. “I suppose it’s possible to look at a rose and think ‘this is just a thorn bush,’ and, in a way, you’d be right. Think of it, all this structure, roots, canes, leaves, all of it, just for the purpose of growing thorns. You can see that, yes? What would it look like if I wanted to grow thorns?” she asked, smiling.
“You’d just hack off the flowers and let the whole thing become a scraggly mess—wait a minute.” A light bulb was starting to glow over his head. Not shine, not just yet, but glow. “You’re in on this, too, aren’t you? Even a rose can’t just be a rose at Dalriada.”
Elena laughed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Here, help me cut some roses to take into the house.”
Henry and Elena are careful to avoid telling the kids what to think, but the whole structure of the Dalriada agenda is to encourage them to learn how to think. Bobby’s Christmas Tree is a constant reminder to them, and all the Dalriada family, that giving of oneself is a true gift, that ad fontes helps us strip away artifice and lazy thinking, and that the misapprehension about walking alongside a person in need lasts only a little while and can release a wellspring of joy in the world. Henry and Elena are to thank for that.
What Then? 