Whittaker

It was no joke, on April 1st, 1901 Jay Vivian Chambers was born in Philadelphia on a cold early morning with snow blanketing the ground; a blizzard was soon to come. Weighing 12 pounds and measuring 12 inches across the shoulders, his birth nearly killed his mother Laha. An artery was torn and baby Jay had to be removed with instruments. It was sad but fitting that Jay was born in this fashion, difficult and dangerous; his birth would serve as a type of foreboding for the remainder of his life. He was an abnormally large  newborn, and he’d grow to live an abnormally large life.

Young Jay was named after his father Jay Chambers. His middle name, Vivian was the last name of one of his mother’s lifelong friends. As a child and young adult, he despised his first and middle names and vowed to change them as soon as he was able. While he didn’t know it at the time, he would live to have multiple first and last names - most of them assigned to him. Eventually, Jay would take his mother’s maiden name for his first, and keep his father’s surname, going by who the world now knows him as, Whittaker Chambers.

Young Whittaker grew up in Lynbrook, New York State. His family moved there in 1904 just after Whittaker’s little brother Richard was born.  As Whittaker became a child and began to understand and compare his world with that of others, he became keenly aware of the dysfunction that he was continually surrounded by. Both of his parents, Jay and Laha came from the world of art as they were both thespians in their young life. They loved the stage and continued to act even after having their two boys. More so Jay - He was truly an artist and viewed himself as much. He didn’t care for the comforts of a middle class family. This was made apparent by withholding any money for his wife to beautify or to just repair their humble home. Nor did he pay any attention to his son’s overall health - Both Richard and Whittaker often suffered tooth aches to no relief from a dentist. As Jay submerged himself in his work as an artist for the local paper, and took a liking for the opera, and all things “culture”, he became completely absent from the family. He would come home in the middle hours of the night, almost always drunk. For this, and many other reasons, young Whittaker regrettably, but honestly lacked any respect for his father (p. 142).

Jay’s absence and lack of engagement made Laha become Whittaker’s favorite parent, even if it was by default. Their shared sentiments regarding Jay, drew them into a close relationship. But Laha struggled with her own demons. She became dependent upon her young boys and could be described as acting somewhat neurotic at times. For some reason she felt the need to frequently remind Whittaker of how much pain his delivery had caused her.  Understandably, he resented this. Yet, despite all of her faults and problems, Laha loved her two boys and they became her life and her world. The small family even tried attending an Episcopalian Church for a time. But without reason, the boys were suspected of passing the whooping cough to another attendant. That ended their three month trial - as such religion played no part in their home. Whittaker would later write, “What I knew as a child about religion, I did not know as the result of any instruction. I knew it as a result of something I heard by chance, or that happened to me, and that touched something that was already in me.” (p. 116).

Whittaker might not have needed religious education, but he would need all the hope and grounding he could get because the tenuous marriage of his parents rapidly dissolved when Whittaker and Richard were still young. Jay had his own life outside his family and simply solidified this by moving out. He would send the family 8 dollars a week, which at the time, Laha and her two boys managed fairly well. But Whittaker knew they were poor and would understand later that Jay could have given more in alimony, seeing as he had a steady and relatively good paying job. The good part of Whittaker’s father being gone was that their home became a much happier place. His father’s absence at home lightened the usually oppressive atmosphere.

But it wasn’t long before Jay had moved out, that Grandma Whittaker would move in. And she was anything but a calming presence in their house. With early dementia, Grandma Whittaker would lock herself into her room and light little fires “cooking” something. The family learned to disregard her insistent self ramblings as well as the smell of smoke coming from her room. There were several times when Whittaker, being the largest in the family, would have to intervene - whether it was breaking down a door to see what was aflame or wrestling scissors or knives from her clinched fists, Grandma being at the house, in addition to the old tensions, was like having a demoniac presence sitting in the heart of their home. (p. 169). Whittaker would later write, “I suppose nobody ever sleeps quite peacefully in a house where a woman sometimes wanders around with a knife.” (p. 170).

While Whittaker seemed to take the brunt of all this abnormality, the weight was surely shared by both brothers. Living under the same roof caused Whittaker and Richard to become very close even though they were growing up to be quite different men. Richard was good with his hands, and worked with them often. He ended up building a guesthouse on their property which he would soon move into as a young adult. He was more outspoken, expressed more emotion, and soon became Laha’s favorite sons’ as it was natural for him to confide in her - something she desperately craved. Yet, as he neared his late teenage years, Richard began to find solace from his pitiful life in drinking  more prohibition whiskey than he clearly ought. By the time he was twenty, he could be found drunk in the early hours of the day. Whittaker, on the other hand was more cerebral, immersing himself into books and self reflection, guarding and keeping his thoughts almost entirely to himself.

In the fall of 1920, Whittaker enrolled at Columbia College (p.164). Upon attending, he took the opportunity to finally rid himself of the name Vivian to officially take his mother’s maiden name, Whittaker. And although he was already abreast of the Communist movement, it was here that he began reading more  of its happenings and was encouraged by others to delve deeper into the social, economic, and political world of Marxism. Here, Whittaker’s skills and talent with writing, reading, and translating the languages was noticed among his peers and professors. Many thought he’d become a novelist or major poet. Indeed, Whittaker did  write - among his works was a short play entitled: A Play for Puppets. It was featured in Columbia's literary magazine. But the atheistic nature of the playlet caused controversy among the school and even spread to the New York City newspaper. Whittaker was disheartened and came to dislike Columbia - Although it wasn’t his first choice of colleges, it allowed him to live at home and save the family from paying boarding fees. Choosing to live at home rather than live at a dorm not only saved the family money, but in a sense, saved the family, or what was left of it  - if only for a short time.

In the two years Whittaker attended college, Richard found himself further down the road of self destruction - continual drinking with self absorbed unhappiness.  One night at a bar with his friends and brother, Richard became so belligerent, he began cursing for all to hear, himself and his parents for ruining not only their own lives, but his life as well. The sober Whittaker took offense at the remarks and with the bar tender’s approval, threw a tumbler of whiskey at Richard’s face. The two brothers fought in the bar and throughout the night. Whittaker, although larger but not as scrappy, finally went to bed bleeding from the bridge of his nose. The scar Richard left him would remain with Whittaker for the remainder of his life. It was a sort of going away gift as Richard was soon to leave.

Within a years time - Richard would take his life. He was found in his kitchen one morning with his head resting on a pillow inside the gas oven - his feet propped up on a pile of books with a bottle of whiskey just below his rigid fingers. Whittaker, although in shock from seeing his brother and best friend cold and lifeless, was not surprised. Richard had tried this multiple times before without success only because of his older brother’s intervention. It was only a matter of time. Not long after Whittaker removed his brother from his house and had him buried, did he receive a call from Laha informing him that his father Jay had passed away. His mother said that Jay “had simply dropped dead in the bathroom as he prepared to shave.”

Whittaker was 22 years old and his small world, as broken and fragile as it was, had mostly died - and what was left, was dying. His mother was withering away from grief and His grandmother was clinically insane. Whittaker was convinced that the death surrounding him and the many pains that preceded it was a just microcosm of the world at large. World War One had just ended three years before claiming twenty-two million lives. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia was nearing its end, having murdered tens of millions and served as Communism’s catalyst to spread across the globe. Revolutions were happening, as were epidemics. The Spanish flu was in full swing and would kill fifty million people before it ended, not to mention smallpox that would end up taking many more than that.

Much of what Whittaker intimately knew was poverty, neglect, alcoholism, and dysfunction. And at the time, the world seemed to reflect that stark reality. Yes, “The world was dying of its own vulgar