Theodore Dreiser 16 страница

evidence of eccentricity.

"What is it, Mr. White?" he inquired.

"Your Honor," returned the latter in his most earnest and oratorical

manner, "this man here, as you may or may not know, is an old and

honorable citizen of this county. He has been here nearly all the days

of his life, and every day of that time he has earned an honest living.

These people here," he said, gazing about upon the interested

spectators, "can witness whether or not he was one of the best tobacco

pickers this county ever saw. Mayhew," he interrupted himself to call to

a spectator on one of the benches, "you know whether Uncle Bobby always

earned an honest living. Speak up. Tell the Court, did he?"

"Yes, Mr. White," said Mayhew quickly, "he did."

"Morrison," he called, turning in another direction, where an aged

farmer sat, "what do you know of this man?"

Mr. Morrison was about to reply, when the Court interfered.

"The Court knows, Mr. White, that he is an honest man. Now what would

you have it do?"

"Well, your Honor," resumed the speaker, indifferently following his own

oratorical bent, the while the company surveyed him, amused and smiling,

"this man has always earned an honest living until he injured his hand

here in some way a number of years ago, and since then it has been

difficult for him to make his way and he has been cobbling for a living.

However, he is getting so old now that he can't even earn much at that,

except in the spring and summer, and so I brought him here to have him

assigned a place in the county infirmary. I want you to make out an

order admitting him to that institution, so that I can take it and go

with him and see that he is comfortably placed."

"All right, Mr. White," replied the judge, surveying the two figures in

mid-aisle, "I so order."

"But, your Honor," he went on, "there's an exception I want made in this

case. Mr. Moore has a few friends that he likes to visit in the summer,

and who like to have him visit them. I want him to have the privilege of

coming out in the summer to see these people and to see me."

"All right, Mr. White," said the judge, "he shall have that privilege.

Now, what else?"

Satisfied in these particulars, the aged citizen led his charge away,

and then went with him to the infirmary, where he presented the order of

the Court and then left him.

Things went very well with his humble client for a certain time, and

Uncle Bobby was thought to be well disposed of, when one day he came to

his friend again. It appeared that only recently he had been changed

about in his quarters at the infirmary and put into a room with a

slightly demented individual, whose nocturnal wanderings greatly

disturbed his very necessary sleep.

"I want to know if you won't have them put me by myself, Mr. White," he

concluded. "I need my sleep. But they say they can't do it without an

order."

Once more the old patriarch led his charge before the Court, then

sitting, as it happened, and breaking in upon the general proceedings as

before, began:

"Your Honor, this man here, Mr. Moore, whom I brought before you some

time ago, has been comfortably housed by your order, and he's deeply

grateful for it, as he will tell you, and as I can, but he's an old man,

your Honor, and, above all things, needs his rest. Now, of late they've

been quartering him with a poor, demented sufferer down there who walks

a good deal in his sleep, and it wears upon him. I've come here with him

to ask you to allow him to have a room by himself, where he will be

alone and rest undisturbed."

"Very well, Mr. White," said the Court, "it shall be as you request."

Without replying, the old gentleman turned and led the supplicant away.

Everything went peacefully now for a number of years, until finally

Uncle Bobby, having grown so feeble with age that he feared he was soon

to die, came to his friend and asked him to promise him one thing.

"What is it?" asked the latter.

By way of replying, the supplicant described an old oak tree which grew

in the yard of the Baptist Church some miles from Danville, and said:

"I want you to promise that when I am dead, wherever I happen to be at

the time, that you will see that I am buried under that tree." He gave

no particular reason save that he had always liked the tree and the view

it commanded, but made his request a very secret matter and begged to be

assured that Mr. White would come and get his body and carry it to the

old oak.

The latter, always a respecter of the peculiarities and crotchets of his

friends, promised. After a few years went by, suddenly one day he

learned that Uncle Bobby was not only dead but buried, a thing which

astonished him greatly. No one locally being supposed to know that he

was to have had any special form of burial, the old patriarch at once

recalled his promise.

"Where is his body?" he asked.

"Why, they buried it under the old white oak over at Mt. Horeb Church,"

was the answer.

"What!" he exclaimed, too astonished to think of anything save his lost

privilege of mercy, "who told them to bury him there?"

"Why, _he_ did," said the friend. "It was his last wish, I believe."

"The confounded villain," he shouted, amusingly enough. "He led me to

believe that I was the only one he told. I alone was to have looked

after his burial, and now look at him--going and having himself buried

without a word. The scoundrel! Would you believe that an old friend like

Uncle Bobby would do anything like that? However," he added after a

time, "I think I know how it was. He got so old and feeble here of late

that he must have lost his mind--otherwise he would never have done

anything like that to me."

And with this he was satisfied to rest and let bygones be bygones.

_De Maupassant, Junior_

He dawned on me in the spring of 1906, a stocky, sturdy, penetrative

temperament of not more than twenty-four or -five years of age, steady of

eye, rather aloof and yet pervasive and bristling; a devouring type.

Without saying much, and seeming to take anything I had to say with a

grain of salt, he managed to impress himself on me at once. Frankly, I

liked him very much, although I could see at a glance that he was not so

very much impressed with me. I was an older man than he by, say, ten

years, an editor of an unimportant magazine, newly brought in (which he

did not know) to turn it into something better. In order to earn a few

dollars he had undertaken to prepare for the previous editor a most

ridiculous article, some silly thing about newspaper writing as a career

for women. It had been ordered or encouraged, and I felt that it was but

just that it should be paid for.

"Why do you waste your time on a thing like that?" I inquired, smiling

and trying to criticize and yet encourage him at one and the same time,

for I had been annoyed by many similar assignments given out by the old

management which could not now be used. "You look to me to have too much

force and sense for that. Why not undertake something worth your time?"

"My time, hell!" he bristled, like a fighting sledge-dog, of which by

the way he reminded me. "You show me a magazine in this town that would

buy anything that I thought worthy of my time! You're like all the rest

of them: you talk big, but you really don't want anything very

important. You want little things probably, written to a theory or down

to 'our policy.' I know. Give me the stuff. You don't have to take it.

It was ordered, but I'll throw it in the waste basket."

"Not so fast! Not so fast!" I replied, admiring his courage and moved by

his contempt of the editorial and book publishing conditions in America.

He was so young and raw and savage in his way, quite animal, and yet how

interesting! There was something as fresh and clean about him as a newly

plowed field or the virgin prairies. He typified for me all the young

unsophisticated strength of my country, but with more "punch" than it

usually manifests, in matters intellectual at least. "Now, don't get

excited, and don't snarl," I cooed. "I know what you say is true. They

don't really want much of what you have to offer. I don't. Working for

some one else, as most of us do, for the dear circulation department,

it's not possible for us to get very far above crowd needs and tastes.

I've been in your position exactly. I am now. Where do you come from?"

He told me--Missouri--and some very few years before from its state

university.

"And what is it you want to do?"

"What's that to you?" he replied irritatingly, with an ingrowing and

obvious self-conviction of superiority and withdrawing as though he

highly resented my question as condescending and intrusive. "You

probably wouldn't understand if I told you. Just now I want to write

enough magazine stuff to make a living, that's all."

"Dear, dear!" I said, laughing at the slap. "What a bravo we are!

Really, you're interesting. But suppose now you and I get down to brass

tacks. You want to do something interesting, if you can, and get paid

for it. I rather like you, and anyhow you look to me as though you might

do the things I want, or some of them. Now, you want to do the least

silly thing you can--something better than this. I want the least silly

stuff I can get away with in this magazine--genuine color out of the

life of New York, if such a thing can be published in an ordinary

magazine. Roughly, here's the kind of thing I want," and I outlined to

him the probable policy of the magazine under my direction. I had taken

an anaemic "white-light" monthly known as _The Broadway_ (!) and was

attempting to recast it into a national or international metropolitan

picture. He thawed slightly.

"Well, maybe with that sort of idea behind it, it might come to

something. I don't know. It's _possible_ that you may be the one to do

it." He emphasized the "possible." "At any rate, it's worth trying.

Judging by the snide editors and publications in this town, no one in

America wants anything decent." His lip curled. "I have ambitions of my

own, but I don't expect to work them out through the magazines of this

town; maybe not of this country. I didn't know that any change was

under way here."

"Well, it is," I said. "Still, you can't expect much from this either,

remember. After all, it seeks to be a popular magazine. We'll see how

far we can go with really interesting material. And now if you know of

any others like yourself, bring them in here. I need them. I'll pay you

for that article, only I'll include it in a better price I'll give you

for something else later, see?"

I smiled and he smiled. His was a warmth which was infectious when he

chose to yield, but it was always a repressed warmth, cynical, a bit

hard; heat chained to a purpose, I thought. He went away and I saw him

no more until about a week later when he brought me his first attempt to

give me what I wanted.

In the meantime I was busy organizing a staff which should if possible,

I decided after seeing him, include him. I could probably use him as a

salaried "special" writer, provided he could be trained to write

"specials." He looked so intelligent and ambitious that he promised

much. Besides, the little article which he had left when he came again,

while not well organized or arranged as to its ideas or best points, was

exceedingly well written from the point of mere expression.

And the next thing I had given him to attempt was even better. It was,

if I recall correctly, a stirring picture of the East Side, intended to

appeal to readers elsewhere than in the city, but while in the matter of

color and definiteness of expression as well as choice of words it was

exceptional, it was lacking in, quite as the first one had been, the

arrangement of its best points. This I explained to him, and also made

it clear to him that I could show him how if he would let me. He seemed

willing enough, quite anxious, although always with an air of reserve,

as if he were accommodating himself to me in this much but no more. He

grasped the idea of order swiftly, and in a little while, having worked

at a table in an outer room, brought me the rearranged material, almost

if not quite satisfactory. During a number of weeks and months

thereafter, working on one "special" and another in this way with me, he

seemed finally to grasp the theory I had, or at least to develop a

method of his own which was quite as satisfactory to me, and I was very

much pleased. A little later I employed him at a regular salary.

It was pathetic, as I look at it now, the things we were trying to do

and the conditions under which we were trying to do them--the raw

commercial force and theory which underlay the whole thing, the

necessity of explaining and fighting for so much that one should not, as

I saw it then, have to argue over at all. We were in new rooms, in a new

building, filled with lumber not yet placed and awaiting the completion

of partitions which, as some one remarked, "would divide us up." Our

publisher and owner was a small, energetic, vibrant and colorful soul,

all egotism and middle-class conviction as to the need of "push,"

ambition, "closeness to life," "punch," and what not else, American to

the core, and descending on us, or me rather, hourly as it were,

demanding the "hows" and the "whyfors" of the dream which the little

group I was swiftly gathering about me was seeking to make real.

It was essential to me, therefore, that something different should be

done, some new fresh note concerning metropolitan life and action be

struck; the old, slow and somewhat grandiose methods of reporting and

describing things dispensed with, at least in this instance, and here

was a youth who seemed able to help me do it. He was so vigorous, so

avid of life, so anxious to picture the very atmosphere which this

magazine was now seeking to portray. I felt stronger, better for having

him around. The growth of the city, the character and atmosphere of a

given neighborhood, the facts concerning some great social fortune,

event, condition, crime interested him intensely; on the other hand he

was so very easy to teach, quick to sense what was wanted and the order

in which it must be presented. A few brief technical explanations from

me, and he had the art of writing a "special" at his fingertips, and

thereafter gave me no real difficulty.

But what was more interesting to me than his success in grasping my

theory of "special" writing was his own character, as it was revealed to

me from day to day in intimate working contact with him under these

conditions. Here, as I soon learned, and was glad to learn, was no

namby-pamby scribbler of the old happy-ending, pretty-nothing school of

literary composition. On the contrary he sounded, for the first time in

my dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane,

penetrating, non-sentimental note so common to the best writers of the

Continent, a note entirely free from mush, bravado and cant. He had a

style as clear as water, as simple as rain; color, romance, humor; and

if a little too much of vanity and self-importance, still one could

forgive him for they were rather well-based. Already used to dealing

with literary and artistic aspirants of different kinds in connection

with the publications of which I had been a part, this one appealed to

me as being the best of them all and a very refreshing change.

One day, only a few weeks after I had met him, seeing that I was alert

for fiction, poetry and short essays or prose phantasies, all

illustrative of the spirit of New York, he brought me a little poem

entitled "Neuvain," which interested me greatly. It was so brief and

forceful and yet so delicate, a double triolet of the old French order,

but with the modernity and flavor of the streets outside, the conduit

cars, hand-organs and dancing children of the pavements. The title

seemed affected, seeing that the English word "Spring" would have done

as well, but it was typical of his mood at the time, his literary

adorations. He was in leash to the French school of which de Maupassant

was the outstanding luminary, only I did not know it at the time.

"Charming," I exclaimed quite enthusiastically. "I like this. Let me see

anything else you have. Do you write short stories?"

For answer he merely stared at me for a little while in the most

examining and arrogant and contemptuous way, as much as to say, "Let me

see if you are really worth my time and trouble in this matter," or

"This sad specimen of alleged mentality is just beginning to suspect

that I might write a short story." Seeing that I merely smiled most

genially in return, he finally deigned to say, "Sure, I write short

stories. What do you think I'm in the writing game for?"

"But you might be interested in novels only or plays, or poetry."

"No," he returned after a pause and with that same air of unrelieved

condescension, "the short story is what I want to specialize in."

"Well," I said to myself, "here is a young cub who certainly has talent,

is crowded with it, and yet owing to the kind of thing he is starting

out to do and the fact that life will give him slaps and to spare before

he is many years older, he needs to be encouraged. I was like that

myself not so long ago. And besides, if I do not encourage this type of

work financially (which is the best way of all), who will?"

About a week later I was given another and still more gratifying

surprise, for one day, in his usual condescending manner, he brought to

me two short pieces of fiction and laid them most gingerly on my desk

with scarcely a word--"Here was something I might read if I chose," I

believe. The reading of these two stories gave me as much of a start as

though I had discovered a fully developed genius. They were so truly new

or different in their point of view, so very clear, incisive, brief,

with so much point in them (_The Second Motive_; _The Right Man_). For

by then having been struggling with the short-story problem in other

magazine offices before this, I had become not a little pessimistic as

to the trend of American short fiction, as well as long--the

impossibility of finding any, even supposing it publishable once we had

it. My own experience with "Sister Carrie" as well as the fierce

opposition or chilling indifference which, as I saw, overtook all those

who attempted anything even partially serious in America, was enough to

make me believe that the world took anything even slightly approximating

the truth as one of the rankest and most criminal offenses possible. One

dared not "talk out loud," one dared not report life as it was, as one

lived it. And one of the primary warnings I had received from the

president of this very organization--a most eager and ambitious and

distressing example of that American pseudo-morality which combines a

pirate-like acquisitiveness with an inward and absolute conviction of

righteousness--was that while he wanted something new in fiction,

something more virile and life-like than that "mush," as he

characterized it, to be found in the current magazines, still (1), it

must have a strong appeal for the general reader (!); and (2), be very

compelling in fact and _clean_, as the dear general reader would of

course understand that word--a solid little pair of millstones which

would unquestionably end in macerating everything vital out of any good

story.

Still I did not despair; something might be done. And though I sighed, I

hoped to be able to make my superior stretch a point in favor of the

exceptional thing, or, as the slang phrase went, "slip a few over on

him," but that of course meant nothing or something, as you choose. My

dream was really to find one or many like this youth, or a pungent kind

of realism that would be true and yet within such limits as would make

it usable. Imagine, then, my satisfaction in finding these two things,

tales that I could not only admire genuinely but that I could publish,

things that ought to have an interest for all who knew even a little

about life. True, they were ironic, cruel, but still with humor and

color, so deftly and cleanly told that they were smile-provoking. I

called him and said as much, or nearly so--a mistake, as I sometimes

think now, for art should be long--and bought them forthwith, hoping,

almost against hope, to find many more such like them.

By this time, by the way, and as I should have said before, I had still

further enlarged my staff by one art director of the most flamboyant and

erratic character, a genius of sorts, volatile, restless, emotional,

colorful, a veritable Verlaine-Baudelaire-Rops soul, who, not content to

arrange and decorate the magazine each month, must needs wish to write,

paint, compose verse and music and stage plays, as well as move in an

upper social world, _entree_ to which was his by birth. Again, there was

by now an Irish-Catholic makeup editor, a graduate of some distinguished

sectarian school, who was more interested in St. Jerome and his

_Vulgate_, as an embodiment of classic Latin, than he was in getting out

the magazine. Still he had the advantage of being interesting--"and I

learned about Horace from him." Again, there was a most interesting and

youthful and pretty, if severe, example of the Wellesley-Mt.

Holyoke-Bryn Mawr school of literary art and criticism, a most

engagingly interesting intellectual maiden, who functioned as assistant

editor and reader in an adjoining room, along with the art-director, the

makeup editor and an office boy. This very valuable and in some

respects remarkable young woman, who while holding me in proper

contempt, I fear, for my rather loose and unliterary ways, was still, as

I had suspected before employing her, as keen for something new and

vital in fiction and every other phase of the scriptic art as any one

well could be. She was ever for culling, sorting, eliminating--repression

carried to the N-th power. At first L---- cordially hated her, calling

her a "simp," a "bluff," a "la-de-da," and what not. In addition to

these there was a constantly swelling band of writers, artists, poets,

critics, dreamers of reforms social, and I know not what else, who,

holding the hope of achieving their ends or aims through some really

forceful magazine, were by now beginning to make our place a center. It

fairly swarmed for a time with aspirants; an amusing, vivid, strident

world.

As for L----, all this being new to him, he was as interested,

fascinated even, as any one well might be. He responded to it almost

gayly at times, wondering whether something wonderful, international,

enduring might not be made to come of it. He rapidly developed into one

of the most pertinacious and even disconcerting youths I have ever met.

At times he seemed to have a positive genius for saying and doing

irritable and disagreeable things, not only to me but to others. Never

having heard of me before he met me here, he was convinced, I think,

that I was a mere nothing, with some slight possibilities as an editor

maybe, certainly with none as a writer or as one who could even suggest

anything to writers. I had helped him, but that was as it should be. As

for my art-director, he was at first a fool, later a genius; ditto my

makeup man.

As for Miss E----, the Wellesley-Bryn Mawr-Mt. Holyoke assistant, who

from the first had agreed with me that here indeed was a writer of

promise, a genius really, he, as I have said, at first despised her.

Later, by dint of exulting in his force, sincerity of purpose, his keen

insight and all but braggart strength, she managed, probably on account

of her looks and physical graces, to install herself in his confidence

and to convince him that she was not only an honest admirer of his skill

but one who had taste and judgment of no mean caliber. Thereafter he

was about as agreeable as a semi-caged wild animal would be about any

office.

But above all he was affronted by M----, the publisher of the paper,

concerning whom he could find no words equal to his contemptuous

thoughts of him. The publisher, as L---- made quite bold to say to me,

was little more than a "dodging, rat-like financial ferret," a

"financial stool-pigeon for some trust or other," a "shrewd, material

little shopkeeper." This because M---- was accustomed to enter and force

a conversation here and there, anxious of course to gather the full

import of all these various energies and enthusiasms. One of the things

which L---- most resented in him at the time was his air of supreme

material well-being, his obvious attempt and wish not to convey it, his

carefully-cut clothes, his car, his numerous assistants and secretaries

following him here and there from various other organizations with which

he was connected.

M----'s idea, as he always said, was to spend and to live, only it

wasn't. He merely induced others so to do. One of his customs (and it

must have impressed L---- very much, innocent newcomer that he was) was

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