Ronald • Things He Said

articles he wrote about his son:

"Biography of an Anglo-American Child," Vanity Fair, September, 1927

things he said about his son:

On the occasion of Winkie’s first and only spanking when he was just five and a half years old for “taking down the knickers of a young lady who lived next door:”

“Today (Friday, of course) is rather a sad day for some of our illusions about our little boy...strange human instincts which we had hoped would be postponed a great deal longer. Our fury, born principally of disappointment and unhappiness, is vented upon him. So we are strangers all day and he sits alone in his shame. Out walking I experience the unusual sensation of being afraid to meet my own child. But there is a terrible hypocrisy in my righteousness. Most grown-ups are very much worse. There is no hypocrisy in a child. I shall make it up with him very quickly.” Trivial Fond Records, pg. 39

Leslie Howard's diary entries concerning his son:

Sunday, 6th January: Very cold weather. Leave Washington one o'clock, arriving Pennsylvania (station) N.Y., 6 p.m. In Great Neck at 7. Find family all well and Christmas decorations left for my inspection. My Wink delighted with electric train. We proceed to test it. With Ruth to (Scott and Zelda) Fitzgeralds [the Fitzgeralds lived at 6 Gateway Drive, Great Neck, just one block over from Leslie Howard]. Home slightly inebriated to pass night in ice-bound chamber.

Tuesday, 8th January: No rehearsal—strange! Actually have time to breathe. First day with my Wink for five weeks. Remarkable sport with Roller Coaster (child's hand-steering cart on rubber wheels). Second night audience one better than first.

Thursday, 10th January: Spend half the day with Wink constructing electric railroad—with unfortunately high casualty rate owing to excess of power. Another big house at theatre.

Sunday, 20th January: Slumbered till after noon. Lunched in bed nursing unpleasant throat. Ruth indulged in marathon walk with two escorts. Went with my Wink for a stroll over golf links during which he expressed great curiosity over his origin. Find great difficulty in answering as I don't really know myself. After all where the dickens do we come from? Nobody knows—any more than were we go to. A mother at one end, a grave at the other—but there must be more than that. In the evening with Ruth and Hahn [Ray Hahn] to local movie to see The Slave of Desire. My God! Poor Balzac!

Thursday, 24th January: A little skating today with Wink. Ice very good. Wink very comic figure—his first experience on the ice. Rather like Mr Pickwick.

Monday, 11th February: Today is an auspicious day in the life of our Winkie. First day of School. What a terrible word. Instinctively he recoils from it at the last moment with a nameless dread which I can so well understand, having never got over it myself. Thus must the young bird feel on the day its parents tell it it must fly for the first time. Hated letting him go. Society has laid its first grasp upon him and it will never let him go. Some snow still so after school we buy a sleigh and go forth winter sporting.

Sunday, 17th February: Dwight Franklin comes today to work on model of Wink. It seems very promising. Wink and I for a little sleighing in snow. On our way over golf course in dusk Wink asks me two questions: 'Daddy, does one have to die?' and 'Why are we born if we have to die?' Why, indeed. Even to a child's mind the futility of it all is obvious.

Tuesday, 26th February: Today Wink struts forth in inspiring panoply of new coat, hat, gloves, etc.—of very sporting and unmistakably English design. He begins to spread his wings—the male peacock in all his glory. The older garments were, however, put on for a little sport in the melting snow.

Sunday, 9th March: Dwight Franklin and his mother to lunch. My Wink perfectly delightful all day. He insists on giving me a rose presented to him by Mrs. Franklin [Mary C. McCall, Jr.]. He stands it in water by my bed.

Monday, 24th March: Pathetic little incident with Teddy Bears [Winkie had been teased for taking his teddy bears to school.]. The world is fastening its grip on my little Wink. He must not let the world think he is sentimental. He must be hard and manly, reserving the soft things for the privacy of home. Please, little Wink, don't lose your sweetness.

Thursday, 27th March: Drive to town with Ruth and Wink to see Fairbanks picture The Thief of Baghdad. Wink in ecstasies over magic carpet, invisible cloak and other manifestations of the supernatural. How we love the impossible.

Sunday, 11th May: Drive home to lunch in pouring rain. Wink says sometimes when he dreams he has a comedy as well as a feature dream.

Trivial Fond Records, pgs. 41-48 

things he said to his son:

Regarding why he got the part of Ashley Wilkes: ”Well, Wink, I suppose it must have been because I could sit on a horse. The other actors they tested fell off!" In Search of My Father, pg. 19

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