It would do no good to give more extracts from Dunlevy’s manuscript,
for my object is not to lay bare his entire work. If these fragments
have afforded some insight into the character and opinions of this
otherwise unknown man, then my purpose has been fulfilled.
Here would be the place, were I equal to it, to speak of him as a
man and as a writer. After the manner of some biographers, perhaps I
ought to see him standing alone, in lofty transports of thought and
inspiring actions. On the contrary, I should much prefer to see him
doing ordinary things. I would like to bring him near to us. I would
like to make him more than a mysterious person. But both of these views
are denied us. It is not as though Dunlevy were a statue which could be
observed from any angle. I have had to take him as I found him.
In his life that has left behind it so few traces, I am at a loss for
facts upon which to base any judgment. If I may speak for myself, I own
that I have little intellectual sympathy with him in any way. I find
nothing hopeful or inspiring in his writings. Somehow, he was always
striving, and always failing, to go to the bottom of everything. He
wished to give proof of more penetration and ethical intuition than he
possessed. Are not his thoughts, after all, superficial? Does he get us
anywhere? We, in this workaday age, must _get_ somewhere. Sometimes I
think that the chief reason why certain novels have plots is to get us
to the end of the book, and that _is_ somewhere.
“He teaches nothing, because he decides nothing; it is the very
opposite of dogmatism. He is vain.--Hey! all men are, are they not? And
those who seem modest, are not they doubly vain? The _I_ and the _me_
are on every line; but how should we ever have any knowledge except
through the _I_ and the _me_?” So wrote Madame DuDeffand once in a
letter to Horace Walpole.
Yet I feel even in these few fragments of his the presence of an
earnest and attaching sensibility. They show us Dunlevy struggling
with a life-long secret, whose nature it is as difficult to read as
its influence upon the whole trend of his temperament it is impossible
to deny. Way back at the time when he wrote me his letter, in which
he confessed a weakness for drink, one can see what a despairing
glance he casts upon his life. Whatever this youthful secret was, we
can only conjecture. He never tells us. He never so far forgot his
private dignity and his instincts as a gentleman as to publish the
reason why he did not marry. Here, the reader, if he has the desire,
must go the rest of the way himself. I have referred to it now for
the last time, because by so doing it becomes easier to speak of his
manuscript. “The physiology and hygiene of a writer have become one of
the indispensable chapters in any analysis that is made of his talent.”
So says Sainte-Beuve. The result was that this effort to conceal his
trouble and yet speak openly of himself gives all of his papers their
personal note. That is why he has to walk on that delicate line between
the real and the supernatural, maintaining his balance and always
seeming to know where he is. That is why at times he sounds as though a
Theosophist were talking to his Mahatma. Hence the styles, the moods,
the visions, of this sane or insane man.
That Dunlevy spent much of his time in idleness and apparent emptiness
of mind can not be denied. He was indolent. He tells us so. He was born
under the Southern sun at a period when indolence had recently been
aristocratic and at a premium. This very inability to adapt himself to
energetic work, constitutional though it was, seemed to haunt him with
the idea that he was indeed a useless being. To call his little volume
of scattered sheets literally the memoirs of a failure was no misnomer.
And he knew it.
To be born indolent and to have also a delicate conscience is an
unhappy birth even for normally healthy mortals who have a cheery
home. But in addition to his physical inertia, to be at the mercy of
an irritable temperament, and to be a wandering recluse, was enough to
make Dunlevy go under. And I fear that he did so.
I imagine that Dunlevy kept going from one disappointment to another,
trying to repair past errors by some new effort. He must often have
asked: How is it that with intelligence and so much remorse, you are
still so little master of yourself? “The sore of his whole life is
there--unbelief and desire.”
After sending me his box, he disappeared from America and apparently
went into hiding. Stripped of the sparse details which I have been able
to gather about him, Dunlevy’s life is lacking in outward incident;
for the most part, it is a complete blank. We wonder how it is that we
know so little about a Rabelais or a Shakespeare. What do we know of
our nearest neighbor? In the present case but one thing seems certain:
tragedy seemed to follow tragedy in the life of William Wirt Dunlevy.
He lost his mother when he was a little child; he lost his father
when he was not more than a grown boy; he lost his young betrothed on
the very verge of approaching marriage; he lost his faith; he lost his
health; and he lost his ambition--all before the age when most men have
not felt even one of these sorrows.
There remain, and always will remain, many dark places in his
experience. And it has seemed to me that it would be a breach of
friendship for me to attempt to throw light upon either his family
history or his private life, aside from what he gives in his own
papers. It would savor too much of professional biography. I do not
know the man’s age. I have never sought out even the full name of his
father, nor his mother’s maiden name. It was sufficient for him to tell
me in his own letter that he had neither kith nor kin. That closed
further inquiry.
Perhaps it will not do for me to go no deeper into the meaning of
Dunlevy’s documents, if I propose to offer them for public scrutiny,
even though I personally feel that the moment one begins to analyze
their meaning, the meaning disappears. So it is with pleasure. The
moment you become conscious of pleasure and try to handle it and
to label it, the pleasure vanishes, and you pursue a flying goal.
Spontaneous happiness is never conscious. And the meaning of personal,
spontaneous writing may be felt, but not epitomized.
What, then, does Dunlevy mean?
I repeat that I am unable to state his meaning, though I believe
that the man had something to say. Perhaps if I should force myself
to phrase a hypothetical meaning, I might say that the difference
between happiness and unhappiness is the difference between positive
and negative thoughts. Positive thoughts are constructive. And Dunlevy
unconsciously illustrates by means of his own personality that he
cherished negative thoughts, and was therefore a negative man. But
Dunlevy does not allow us to dismiss him with the trite conclusion that
because sentiments are personal, they are necessarily autobiographical.
He makes us go further, and asks: “Why should I have been a failure? I
admit that it was because I had a weak will. But how did it happen that
my will was weak? Does the onus of the blame fall upon my ancestors and
myself or upon civilization?” He makes both share the responsibility,
but he brings his stronger indictment against our civilization; because
he proves that he started out with clean instincts and a desire to do
good. This is the only way that I can account for his writing two such
papers as the one in which he introduces the Strange Professor, and
the other in which he writes as a little child, side by side. In the
former, he shows himself on the very verge of acute insanity, fighting
to save the control of his reason; and in the latter, he shows that he
had it also in him to lie awake in the dark and ponder that once he
was not so, that once he was “a little brown-headed boy, unfettered
with the knowledge of evil,” and with the potentialities of goodness
and deep affection in him, and of a decent ambition to amount to some
one. Two such papers as these were actually found by me written side by
side in his manuscript book; and I noted that the calm, saner one was
written after the other.
No, no, it will not do to dismiss Dunlevy as a bitter, bad-minded
egoist. No, no, that will not do. The man was utterly dissatisfied with
the outcome of his life. You can be no more disgusted with him than
he is disgusted with himself. And if there be truth in the main drift
of his contention, what boots it whether he was sane or insane? He
believed in the Omnipotence of Truth, no matter how much we, transitory
atoms, try to cloud Truth by befogging each other and hoodwinking
ourselves.
* * * * *
One summer, not long since, I went to spend a part of my holiday at
Narragansett Pier in Rhode Island. My room overlooked the ocean, and
at night I used often to sit after the hotel went to sleep and watch
the great red August moon rise out of the horizon. Now and then the fog
would partly mask her, revealing the general outlines of her figure
like a loosely fitting night-robe. Beneath this weird atmosphere of
shifting mist over the silver column of light reflected upon the
swaying surface of the waters, a dim steamer appeared in the vaguest
shape. Her lights were all that could be distinguished, shining out
like the eyes of wild animals upon the shore of a hidden continent.
“She is a phantom ship;” I said to myself.
Soon I saw that I was mistaken, for the vessel headed toward the beach
and anchored immediately before my window. The moon sank, the wind
rose, the waves beat against the rocks, and I fell asleep.
I thought no more of this familiar occurrence when I awoke the next
day. I went down and had my swim, and when I came back, there stood my
phantom ship. But oh, what a difference! She was in full dress, flags
of all colors and designs hanging from her rigging. A noisy launch
waited near her, and I saw by the raising of her blue flag that the
owner was about to go ashore.
“What is the name of that yacht?” I asked of my hotel proprietor.
“She is the Festoon,” he answered, “she belongs to Commodore Crowther.”
“Crowther! What Crowther?”
“The Newport Crowther,” said he, “there is only one Crowther so far as
I ever heard of. Surely you have heard of Crowther, the pickle man?”
No, I was sorry, but I had not heard of him. I had been in the far West
a number of years and was quite ignorant.
“Well, well, that’s funny,” said he, “I thought everyone ate pickles.
Look, that’s his cottage over there on the point.”
“You mean that building that looks like a court house?”
“Well, yes, it cost more than most court-houses;” said he, “and if you
wait here long enough you may see the commodore, for that’s his oldest
son there on that polo pony. He’s J. Chester Crowther, and he must be
waiting for his father.”
And then my proprietor suddenly deserted me. I saw the reason for
his quick departure. A huge automobile, puffing the announcement
of important arrivals, had drawn up at the door. Reporters and
photographers hovered about it.
The heavens might drop at my feet and I could better believe the sight
than what now met my eyes. A portly gentleman, with the native swagger
and sure mien of a thoroughbred aristocrat, mounted the hotel steps.
A hush fell upon the surrounding chatter. And here came my shock. He
was none other than Crowther, the football player, whom I had known a
decade before at the University of Virginia. In those days of youthful
cynicism, some students used to say that Crowther played football for
money. No matter; here he was now, with a string of obsequious friends,
ladies and gentlemen, following in his wake. Reporters to the right of
him, photographers before him, lackeys behind him.
He held a levee on the porch steps for a few moments, and then came
down the veranda where I was sitting, thus cutting off every means of
escape. Not that I had the least idea that he would remember me, but
still I did not care to give him the chance to forget me. He advanced
cane in hand. From his walk, it was evident that the heavy society act
had become Crowther’s long suit.
“Why, how do you do!” he said, holding out a tightly gloved hand.
“I am glad to see you, Mr. Crowther;” I said, lying in spite of myself,
for which of us is not affected by contact with powerful wealth. He sat
down on the porch railing, and naturally I aped his example.
“You ought to be a politician;” I said, laughing.
“How’s that?”
“Because you never forget a face. You have not seen me for over ten
years.”
“Speaking of remembering faces,” said he, tapping me with his cane,
“whom do you think I once ran into four summers ago just as I have met
you here.”
“I can not imagine.”
“It may be you won’t even remember his name--that queer stick--a--why I
have forgotten it myself--oh, yes--Dun--Dunlevy, don’t you remember he
used to sit with us at college?”
“In the name of God tell me where he is.”
“Oh, that I don’t know--so you recall him? Well, I met him over in
England--down at Richmond, in Surrey. Did you ever hear of that famous
hotel there, the Star and Garter?”
“Yes,” I said, “Thackeray mentions it; and then I lived in Richmond
once.”
“Oh, did you really? Very good; then you know the spot. It was there I
saw Dunlevy, wheeled around by an old darky.”
“Wheeled about? Was he an invalid?”
“He was suffering from locomotor ataxia, so I was told. Really, the
poor chap aroused my pity, and I left my party of friends and went
over to speak to him. He had never heard of me nor I of him since we
left college. Think of that! And when I told him that I had become the
largest pickle grower in the world, what do you think he said?”
“Tell me?”
“He said, ‘Crowther, that’s why you used always to be saying, “Pass
the pickles, please.”’ Ha, ha. That was the only time I saw him. He
didn’t seem to want to talk; it seemed to tire him; and his old negro
wheeled him away into the shade. Poor chap, what a mess he has made out
of life! I don’t suppose you know that he came of one of our oldest
Virginian families. I own an estate which adjoins what was once his
father’s plantation. I hunt partridges down there every fall--you will
pardon me, but I see that I am keeping my guests waiting. I must leave
you. Be here long? Come to see me some time at my cottage. Mighty glad
to have seen you.”
As he walked down to his automobile and thence drove to his launch,
I said to myself, Crowther, a metropolitan man of affairs, a landed
proprietor, a member of our noted society, an American millionaire,
known wherever pickles are eaten; and--and--what was it he called the
obscure exile whom he met--“a mess.”
Even the mad Lear asked: Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out.
Who was William Wirt Dunlevy? Where is he? What was he? A failure?