Coriolanus, Shakespeare. The Silver Spoon
George Herbert Walker Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, on June 12, 1924. During the next
year the family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, and established their permanent residency.
Prescott and Dorothy Walker Bush had had a son, Prescott, Jr., before George. Later there was a
little sister, Nancy, and another brother, Jonathan; a fourth son, William (`` Bucky ''), was born 14
years after George, in 1939.
George was named after his grandfather, George Herbert Walker. Since George's mother calledGrandfather Walker Pop, '' she began calling her son, his namesake, little Pop, '' or Poppy. '' (^) Hence, Poppy Bush is the name the President's family friends have called him since his youth. Prescott, Sr. joined W.A. Harriman & Co. May 1, 1926. With his family's lucrative totalitarian projects, George Bush's childhood beelegance. gan in comfort and advanced dramatically to luxury and The Bushes had a large, dark-shingled house with broad verandas and a portecochere '' (originally
a roofed structure extending out to the driveway to protect the gentry who arrived in coaches) on
Grove Lane in the Deer Park section of Greenwich.@s1
Here they were attended by four servants--three maids (one of whom cooked) and a chauffeur.
The U.S.A. was plunged into the Great Depression beginning with the 1929-31 financial collapse.
But George Bush and his family were totally insulated from this crisis. Before and after the crash,their lives were a frolic, sealed off from the concerns of the population at large.
During the summers, the Bushes stayed in a second home on the family's ten-acre spread at
Walker's Point at Kennebunkport, Maine. Flush from the Soviet oil deals and the Thyssen-Nazi
Party arrangements, Grandfather Walker had built a house there for Prescott and Dorothy. They andother well-to-do summer colonists used Kennebunkport's River Club for tennis and yachting. In the
winter season, they took the train to Grandfather Walker's plantation, called Duncannon, '' near Barnwell, South Carolina. The novices were instructed in skeet shooting, then went out on horseback, following the hounds in pursuit of quail and dove. George's sister Nancy recalled the
care taken '' by the servants over the slightest things, like the trimmed edges of the grapefruit. Wewere waited on by the most wonderful black servants who would come into the bedrooms early in the morning and light those crackling pine-wood fires.... ''@s2 The money poured in from the Hamburg-Amerika steamship line, its workforce crisply regulated by the Nazi Labor Front. The family took yet another house at Aiken, South Carolina. There the Bushchildren had socially acceptable tennis and riding partners. Aiken was a Southern capital of polo (^)
in those days, a winter resort of considerable distinction and serenity that attracted many
Northerners, especially the equestrian oriented. The Bush children naturally rode there, too.... ''@s3
Averell Harriman, a world-class polo player, also frequented Aiken.
Poppy Bush's father and mother anxiously promoted the family's distinguished lineage, and its
growing importance in the world. Prescott Bush claimed that he `` could trace his family's roots
back to England's King Henry III, making George a thirteenth cousin, twice removed of Queen
Elizabeth. ''@s4