THE SPIRIT OF TERRE HAUTE
Aside from these perfervid memories in connection with it, Terre Haute
was not so different from Fort Wayne, or even Sandusky, minus the lake.
It had the usual main street (Wabash Avenue) lighted with many lamps,
the city hall, postoffice, principal hotel, and theatres; but I will say
this for it, it seemed more vital than most of these other places—more
like Wilkes-Barré or Binghamton. I asked Franklin about this, and he
said that he felt it had exceptional vitality—something different.
“I can’t tell you what it is,” he said. “I have heard boys up in Carmel
and Indianapolis who have been down here say it was a ‘hot town.’ I can
understand now something of what they mean. It has a young, hopeful,
seeking atmosphere. I like it.”
That was just how it seemed to me, after he had expressed it—"a seeking
atmosphere." Although it claimed a population of only sixtyseven
thousand or thereabouts, it had the tang and go of a much larger place.
That something which I have always noticed about American cities and
missed abroad, more or less, unless it was in Rome, Paris and Berlin,
was here,—a crude, sweet illusion about the importance of all things
material. What lesser god, under the high arch of life itself, weaves
this spell? What is it man is seeking, that he is so hungry, so lustful?
These little girls and boys, these half-developed men and women with
their white faces and their seeking hands—oh, the pathos of it all!
Before going to an hotel for dinner, we drove across the Wabash River on
a long, partially covered bridge, to what I thought was the Illinois
side, but which was only a trans-Wabash extension of Vigo County. Coming
back, the night view of the city was so fine—tall chimneys and factories
darkling along the upper and lower shores with a glow of gold in the
center—that Franklin insisted he must make a memory note, something to
help him do a better thing later, so we paused on the bridge while he
sketched the lovely scene by arc light. Then we came back to the Terre
Haute House (or the Terrible Hot House, as my brother Paul used to call
it), where, for sentimental reasons, I preferred to stop, though there
was a newer and better hotel, the Deming, farther up the street. For
here, once upon a time, my brother Rome, at that time a seeking boy like
any of those we now saw pouring up and down this well lighted street—(up
and down, up and down, day after day, like those poor moths we see about
the lamp)—was in the habit of coming, and, as my father described it, in
his best suit of clothes and his best shoes, a toothpick in his mouth,
standing in or near the doorway of the hotel, to give the impression
that he had just dined there.
“Loafers! Idle, good-for-nothings!” I can hear my father exclaiming even
now.
Yet he was not a loafer by any means—just a hungry, thirsty, curious
boy, all too eager for the little life his limited experience or skill
would buy. He was the one who finally took to drink and disappeared into
the maelstrom of death—or is it life?
And here, once in her worst days, my mother came to look for work, and
got it. In later years, Paul came here to be tendered a banquet by
friends in the city because of his song about this river—"a tribute to
the state"—as one admirer expressed it.
Not that I cared at all, really. I didn’t. It wouldn’t have made any
vast difference if we had gone to the other hotel—only it would have,
too! We arranged our belongings in our adjoining rooms and then went out
for a stroll, examining the central court and the low halls and the
lobby as we passed. I thought of my mother—and Rome, outside on the
corner—and Paul at his sentimental banquet, and then—well, then I felt
“very sad like,” as we would say in Indiana.
Up the street from our hotel was the Deming, the principal hotel of this
city—"our largest," as the average American would say—just like every
other hotel in America which at this day and date aspires to be “our
largest” and to provide the native with that something which he thinks
is at once _recherché_ (curse that word!) and “grand,” or “gorgeous.”
Thus, there must be (1) a group of flamboyantly uniformed hall boys and
porters, all braids and buttons, whose chief, if not sole duty, is to
exact gratuities from the unwilling and yet ecstatic visitor; (2) an
hotel clerk, or three or five, who will make him feel that he is a mere
upstart or intruder, and that it is only by the generosity of a watchful
and yet kindly management (which does not really approve of him) that he
is permitted to enter at all; (3) maids, manicuresses, and newsstand
salesladies, who are present solely to make him understand what he has
missed by marrying, and how little his wife knows about dress, or taste,
or life; (4) a lobby, lounging room, shoeshining parlor and barber shop,
done entirely in imitation onyx; (5) a diningroom in imitation of one of
the principal chambers of the Palace of Vairsigh; (6) a grill or men’s
restaurant, made to look exactly like a western architect’s dream of a
Burgundian baronial hall; (7) a head waiter who can be friends only with
millionaires or their equivalent, the local richest men; (9) a taxi
service which can charge as much if not more than any other city’s. This
last is absolutely indispensable, as showing the importance of the city.
But nevertheless we went here, after prowling about the city for some
time, to enjoy a later supper—or rather to see if there were any people
here who were worth observing at this favorite American midnight
pastime. There were—in their way.
Those that we saw here—in the grill—suggested at once the aspirations
and the limitations of a city of this size and its commercial and social
predilections. For here, between eleven and one, came many that might be
called “our largest” or “our most successful” men, of a solid, resonant,
generative materiality. The flare of the cloth of their suits! The blaze
of their skins and eyes! The hardy, animal implication of their eyes!
[Illustration: FRANKLIN'S IMPRESSION OF MY BIRTHPLACE]
And the women—elder and younger! wives and daughters of those men who
have only recently begun to make money in easy sums and so to enjoy
life. They reminded me of those I had seen in the Kittatinny at Delaware
Water Gap. What breweries, what wagon works, what automobile factories
may not have been grinding day and night for their benefit! Here they
were, most circumspect, most quiescent, a gaudy and yet reserved
company; but as I looked at some of them I could not help thinking of
some of the places I had seen abroad, more especially the Abbaye Thélème
in Paris and the Carlton at Monte Carlo, where, freed from the prying
eyes of Terre Haute or Columbus or Peoria in summer or winter, the eager
American abroad is free to dance and carouse and make up, in part, for
some of the shortcomings of his or her situation here. Yes, you may see
them there, the sons and daughters of these factory builders and paint
manufacturers, a feverish hunger in their faces, making up for what
Indiana or Illinois or Iowa would never permit them to do. Blood will
tell, and the brooding earth forces weaving these things must have
tremendous moods and yearnings which require expression thus.
But what interested me more, and this was sad too, were the tribes and
shoals of the incomplete, the botched, the semi-articulate, all hungry
and helpless, who never get to come to a place like this at all—who
yearn for a taste of this show and flare and never attain to the least
taste of it. Somehow the streets of this city suggested them to me. I
know the moralists will not agree with me as to this, but what of it?
Haven’t you seen them of a morning—very early morning and late evening,
in their shabby skirts, their shapeless waists, their messes of hats,
their worn shoes, trudging to and from one wretched task and another,
through the great streets and the splendid places? And are you content
always to dismiss them as just dull, or weak, or incapable of
understanding those finer things which you think you understand so well?
Are there not some possibly who are different? Oh, you brash thinkers
who dismiss them all so lightly—Not so fast, pray! Do not lean too
heavily upon the significance of your present state. Tonight, tomorrow,
may begin the fierce blasts that will sweep away the last vestige of
what was strength, or pride, or beauty, or power, or understanding. Even
now the winds of disaster may be whining under your door. A good body is
something, a brain is more. Taste, beauty, these are great gifts, not
achievements. And that which gave so generously can as certainly take
away again. When you see them trudging so hopelessly, so painfully,
their eyes riveted by the flashing wonders of life, let it be not all
contempt or all pride with which you view them. Hold to your strength if
you will, or your subtlety; but this night, in your heart, on your
knees, make obeisance. These are tremendous forces among which we walk.
With their powers and their results we may have neither part nor lot.
What, slave, do you strut and stare and make light of your fellow? This
night may you be with them, not in paradise, but in eternal
nothingness—voiceless, dreamless, not even so much as a memory of
anything elsewhere. Nothing!
Even so! Even so!