2 The Great Gatsby: My family have been prominent

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Midwestern city for three generations. The Carraways are somewhat of a clan, and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch. But the actual founder of my lineage was my grandfather's brother, who came here in 1851, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father runs today.

I never saw this great-uncle, but I'm supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather stern painting that hangs in my father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just twenty-five years after my father.

A little later, I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world, the Midwest now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles discussed it as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why, yes,” with very grave, hesitant faces. My father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of 1922.

I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge car and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.