Digby Dent

Hello, shipmates! Digby here, back ashore, back at my desk, bunking in Vermont for the holidays with a shapely ski bunny and a seabag stuffed full of sailing stories of harrowing feats on the high seas. Well, few of them are particularly harrowing, save for a midsummer horror when a bespectacled crewmate, his face fogged with mask mist, misplaced a pair of Pol Roger bottles that now sleep with the fishes. Champagne donated to Davy Jones aside, it’s been a good year. I spent the summer in Newport, of course. It’s a fine town, and though I feared it would feel a bit dead on account of the persistent plague, the pandemic was no match for the nautically minded.

New York Hello friends, and a merry Christmas to you all. I suspect we are all eager to see the back of this year. But the season brings on my sentimentality, and I wonder what waits on the other side of this particular solar circumnavigation. We will welcome spring and, hopefully, with it, the lifting of lockdown. Walking around the dreary streets of the city, I worry what we’ll leave behind us in this annus horribilis. Crowds are thin, sidewalks spare. Eyes are downcast. Has the virus won the War on Christmas? I pray not. When I was a boy, Christmas in the Dent household was a New York affair. The city was near its nadir, yet the Yuletide charm brought out its best, and ours.

New York Hullo, readers. Many thanks for the kind notes and well-wishes. I’ve fully recovered from my bout with the plague and am only a little worse for wear. I’m desperate for a bit more time on the water, but I’m convinced my palate hasn’t yet recovered. I’ve been reduced to taking brandy in the evenings. Still, though far from splendid, isolation hasn’t been all bad. I’ve spent a great deal of time on the phone with my brother Richard. We’re not naturally expressive people, and I’m more than a bit embarrassed about the state of my marriage. But our respective sheltering-in-place, his in Boston and mine in New York, has turned us into talkers. Like the rest of the family, I’ve always called him Dickie.

Florida Hullo, readers. I’m down Florida way for a bit of warm weather. The Bermuda Race Organizing Committee has been commandeered by a coterie of crapulous ingrates, leaving your correspondent on the outs. Nothing a little R&R can’t cure, but I’m sour. I hate trekking up to Newport for nothing. I’m in no mood for correspondence, but an interested reader inquired some days ago how I fell into journalism. I shall endeavor to answer. Stick me on a psychiatrist’s sofa and I’ll happily discuss my lifelong love of loquacity. It maddened Mother, who labeled me an ‘ecstatic’ child. She would be equal parts unsurprised and appalled by this hobby. Fortunately she doesn’t read this magazine.

This article is in The Spectator’s February 2020 US edition. Subscribe here.Putney, Vermont Ahoy, polloi. While I am a fan of the Reformation, I take a circumspect view of change. This old salt has a soft spot for tradition, yes, but he was taught from an early age that the vagaries of life are best met by suppressing doubt and feeling with industriousness and booze. Mostly booze. Mine not to reason why. Nevertheless, I persisted. Things change, of course. For instance, I’ve taken up residence in Vermont for a few weeks with a gal pal I dated between wife number two and wife number three (who is also wife number one, but that’s a story for another time).

New Haven, Connecticut Greetings friends. Old Digby Dent (BR ’89) here. I’ve been press-ganged by the good folks at The Spectator into sharing a few reflections on living well as the fiery splendor of autumn gives way to the dour cold of winter. The leaves are gone, the days grow short and it’s dark by four in the afternoon in Boston. Worse still, the obvious recreations of warmer days having given way to the inconstancy of the third season, we find ourselves waiting for enough snow to ski, cross-country or alpine. What is to be done in the unsteady interregnum from now until The Game? Sailing is no damned good if you can’t guess how cold it’ll be on the water.