7. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

chapter 7. of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald, performed by Anna Butterworth

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Seven. In one particular, atleast the friends of Hildegarde Moncrief were mistaken.
The wholesale hardware business prospered amazingly inthe fifteen years between Benjamin Button's marriage
in eighteen eighty and his father's retirementin eighteen ninety five. The family fortune
was doubled, and this was duelargely to the younger member of the firm.

(00:25):
Needless to say, Baltimore eventually receivedthe couple to its bosom. Even
old General Montcrief became reconciled to hisson in law when Benjamin gave him the
money to bring out his history ofthe Civil War in twenty volumes, which
had been refused by nine prominent publishers. In Benjamin himself, fifteen years had

(00:46):
wrought many changes. It seemed tohim that the blood flowed with new vigor
through his veins. It began tobe a pleasure to rise in the morning,
to walk with an active step alongthe busy sunny street, to work
untirely with shipments of hammers and hiscargoes of nails. It was in eighteen
ninety that he executed his famous businesscoup. He brought up the suggestion that

(01:11):
all nails used in nailing up.The boxes in which nails are shipped are
the property of the ship be Aproposal which became a statute, was approved
by Chief Justice Fossil and saved RogerButton and Company wholesale hardware more than six
hundred nails every year. In addition, Benjamin discovered that he was becoming more

(01:33):
and more attracted by the gay sideof life. It was typical of his
growing enthusiasm for pleasure that he wasthe first man in the city of Baltimore
to own and run an automobile.Meeting him on the street, his contemporaries
would stare enviously at the picture hemade of health and vitality. He seems
to grow younger every year, theywould remark. And if old Roger Button,

(01:59):
now sixty five years old, hadfailed at first to give up proper
welcome to his son, he hadtoned at last by bestowing on him what
amounted to adulation. And here wecome to an unpleasant subject, which it
will be well to pass over asquickly as possible. There was only one
thing that worried Benjamin Button. Hiswife had ceased to attract him at that

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time. Hildegarde was a woman ofthirty five with a son, Roscoe,
fourteen years old. In the earlydays of their marriage, Benjamin had worshiped
her, but as the years passed, her honey colored hair became an unexciting
brown. The blue enamel of hereyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery.
Moreover, and most of all,she had become too settled in her ways,

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too placid, too content, tooanemic in her excitements, and too
sober in her taste. As abride, it had been she who had
dragged Benjamin to dances and dinners.Now conditions were reversed. She went out
socially with him, but without enthusiasm, devoured already by that eternal inertia which

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comes to live with each of usone day and stays with us to the
end. Benjamin's discontent waxed stronger atthe outbreak of the Spanish American War in
eighteen ninety eight. His home hadfor him so little charm that he decided
to join the army. With hisbusiness influence, he obtained a commission as

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captain, and proved so adaptable tothe work that he was made a major
and finally a lieutenant colonel, justin time to participate in the celebrated charge
up San Juan Hill. He wasslightly wounded and received a medal. Benjamin
had become so attached to the activityand excitement of army life that he regretted

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to give it up, but hisbusiness required attention, so he resigned his
commission and came home. He wasmet at the station by a brass band
and escorted to his house.