May 30, 2023

Adam Entous in the The New Yorker of August 15, 2022 wrote with dispassionate detail the travails of four generations of Bidens — President Biden’s grandfather and father, Joe himself, his brother Jim, and his son Hunter. Most of the article provides information on the President’s father, Joe Sr., and his grandfather, Joseph Harry.

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The family’s relentless pursuit of money to bring them superior social status would make a great F. Scott Fitzgerald novel or perhaps a play by Arthur Miller like his Death of a Salesman. The stresses and strains of that quest betray the desperation of Captain Ahab and his need to kill the White Whale at all costs.

But the story is, at heart, an American Irish one. It is the social climbing ambition of “shanty” Irish immigrants to become “lace curtain” Irish living in style like the Protestant Ascendency in Ireland or their WASP cousins in the United States.

It is the story of Joseph P. Kennedy. It has its counterpart in the ambition of some White trailer trash southerners to become gentry and live in a “Big” house. Think of Slick Willy Clinton.

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At one point Joe Sr. had a lot of money. He also went fox-hunting in Maryland with gentry “swells.” Joe Jr. wrote about opening a closet and finding his father’s polo mallet, riding boots and breeches, and red hunting jackets made by the Pink company in London.

I can relate to this because my Great Uncle, Wilbur Ross Hubbard, was a Master of Foxhounds in Chestertown, Maryland. I remember as a boy visiting the family’s house Widehall, seeing Uncle Wib in his red coat (made by Pink and so called a “Pink” coat) dressed in riding boots and jodhpurs leaving early in the morning for a hunt.  Our Hubbard line had started with one Humphrey Hubbard who had arrived in Maryland in 1670.  Uncle Wib was Maryland gentry through and through.

But then Joe Sr.’s money vanished and he found work as a car salesman but one who went to work attired in a sport coat with ascot. He would also show up at work wearing “a suit, a silk tie, and a pocket square — folded to four crisp points.” 

Joe and Jimmy’s grandfather — Joseph Henry — had worked for AMOCO. It seems Joseph Henry’s first job for the company was driving a wagon dispensing kerosene from a steel tank. He made a success of himself and in 1930 bought a house. But then in 1934 he failed to pay his property taxes and the house was sold at public auction.  That year he was demoted by AMOCO and sent to its branch in Scranton.

Joe Sr. would later tell his son that “…a job is a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about your place in your community.”

Joe Sr. then hitched his wagon to the fortunes of a maternal uncle-in-law, Bill Sheene, Sr. who had married the sister of Joe Sr.’s Mother. Joe Sr.’s “country squire” tastes, and access to horses, airplanes, and yachts, were financed by his uncle.  He bought Joe Sr. a Buick roadster.