Late one afternoon in the fall of 1955, on the eve of the appearance of the first issue of national review, something people more loftily situated would have called a “summit conference” was set in New York City, for which purpose a tiny suite in the Commodore Hotel was engaged. Tensions—ideological and personal—had arisen, and the fleeting presence in New York of Whittaker Chambers, who had dangled before us in an altogether self-effacing way the prospect that he might come out of retirement to join the fledgling enterprise, prompted me to bring the principals together for a meeting which had no specific agenda, being designed primarily to reaffirm the common purpose.
As I think back on it, two of the five people present at the outset were born troublemakers. To say this about someone is not to dismiss him as merely that: Socrates was a troublemaker, so was Thomas Edison. But troublemaking was not what was primarily needed to distill unity, and so things were not going smoothly, one half hour after the meeting began. And then, when it was nearly six o’clock and I thought I detected in Chambers a look of terminal exasperation, John Chamberlain came in, a briefcase in one hand, a pair of figure skates in the other. He mumbled (he usually mumbles) his apology . . . He had booked the practice time at the ice rink for himself and his daughters . . . The early afternoon editorial meeting had been protracted . . . the traffic difficult . . . No thanks, he didn’t want anything to drink—was there any iced tea? He stole a second or two to catch up on Whittaker’s family, and then sat back to participate in a conference—which had been transformed by his presence at it. When a few days later Chambers wrote, he remarked the sheer “goodness” of John Chamberlain, a quality in him that no man or woman, living or dead, has ever to my knowledge disputed.
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