Hobey Baker, one of the finest athletes in collegiate history, died in France in a plane crash in 1918. He was not only a remarkable football player—he held the Princeton scoring record until Cosmo lacavassi broke it, under very different circumstances, in 1964—he was also a remarkable human being. “With his incredible skill and grace,” writes Arthur Mizener, “his perfect manners, his dedicated seriousness, Hobey Baker was the nearly faultless realization of the ideal of his age.”
Princeton University is not normally in my daily thoughts, but, of course, there is Scott Fitzgerald, and today, finishing a book on Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, I find myself sitting at a desk in the manuscript reading room of the Firestone Library. 1 am thrilled both intellectually and sensually by the luxury of the place. Everything Fitzgerald ever wrote is available here in about ten minutes, first drafts, everything. It is all on a computerized index, available at once from the vaults.
Comments