Opinion: Let Bill Buckley Eat My Cake

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More than a few years ago, I filled a chair at a swanky dinner for William F. Buckley.

I was a young student from farm country in Ohio, a state where, as Mark Twain said of Cincinnati in particular, ‘Everything that happens comes there 10 years later than anywhere else.’ So the sartorially resplendent Mr. Buckley was a novelty and a wonder to my eyes, down to footgear I’d never seen before — those gentleman’s embroidered velvet slippers you see advertised in ‘The New Yorker.’ For all I can remember, they had dollar signs sittched onto them in gold bullion thread.

Toward the end of the dinner, he rose to speak. His language was just as highly ornamented as his slippers, with its curlicues of vocabulary and metaphor, and, I listened to him transfixed as I mechanically ate my dessert — a slice of cake. My great-grandfather ate cake in a curious fashion that I had imitated from childhood, eating the cake part first and leaving the frosting for last, standing on the plate like the ruins of a chocolate fudge fort.

In our family this is perfectly normal, but at some point during his peroration, Buckley glanced down the table and saw my odd gateau fortifications. He paused, stared, arched one renowned eyebrow, lifted one thin Brahmin nostril into the slightest quiver — and resumed his remarks at the precise syllable where had left off.

Mortified, I hurriedly and furtively cleaned my plate. Buckley went to Yale but that evening, I was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club.