I _Peter_
II _A Doer of the Word_
III _My Brother Paul_
IV _The Country Doctor_
V _Culhane, the Solid Man_
VI _A True Patriarch_
VII _De Maupassant, Jr._
VIII _The Village Feudists_
IX _Vanity, Vanity_
X _The Mighty Rourke_
XI _A Mayor and His People_
XII _W.L.S._
_Peter_
In any group of men I have ever known, speaking from the point of view
of character and not that of physical appearance, Peter would stand out
as deliciously and irrefutably different. In the great waste of American
intellectual dreariness he was an oasis, a veritable spring in the
desert. He understood life. He knew men. He was free--spiritually,
morally, in a thousand ways, it seemed to me.
As one drags along through this inexplicable existence one realizes how
such qualities stand out; not the pseudo freedom of strong men,
financially or physically, but the real, internal, spiritual freedom,
where the mind, as it were, stands up and looks at itself, faces Nature
unafraid, is aware of its own weaknesses, its strengths; examines its
own and the creative impulses of the universe and of men with a kindly
and non-dogmatic eye, in fact kicks dogma out of doors, and yet
deliberately and of choice holds fast to many, many simple and human
things, and rounds out life, or would, in a natural, normal, courageous,
healthy way.
The first time I ever saw Peter was in St. Louis in 1892; I had come
down from Chicago to work on the St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_, and he was
a part of the art department force of that paper. At that time--and he
never seemed to change later even so much as a hair's worth until he
died in 1908--he was short, stocky and yet quick and even jerky in his
manner, with a bushy, tramp-like "get-up" of hair and beard, most
swiftly and astonishingly disposed of at times only to be regrown at
others, and always, and intentionally, I am sure, most amusing to
contemplate. In addition to all this he had an air of well-being, force
and alertness which belied the other surface characteristics as anything
more than a genial pose or bit of idle gayety.
Plainly he took himself seriously and yet lightly, usually with an air
of suppressed gayety, as though saying, "This whole business of living
is a great joke." He always wore good and yet exceedingly mussy clothes,
at times bespattered with ink or, worse yet, even soup--an amazing
grotesquery that was the dismay of all who knew him, friends and
relatives especially. In addition he was nearly always liberally
besprinkled with tobacco dust, the source of which he used in all forms:
in pipe, cigar and plug, even cigarettes when he could obtain nothing
more substantial. One of the things about him which most impressed me at
that time and later was this love of the ridiculous or the grotesque, in
himself or others, which would not let him take anything in a dull or
conventional mood, would not even permit him to appear normal at times
but urged him on to all sorts of nonsense, in an effort, I suppose, to
entertain himself and make life seem less commonplace.
And yet he loved life, in all its multiform and multiplex aspects and
with no desire or tendency to sniff, reform or improve anything. It was
good just as he found it, excellent. Life to Peter was indeed so
splendid that he was always very much wrought up about it, eager to
live, to study, to do a thousand things. For him it was a workshop for
the artist, the thinker, as well as the mere grubber, and without really
criticizing any one he was "for" the individual who is able to
understand, to portray or to create life, either feelingly and
artistically or with accuracy and discrimination. To him, as I saw then
and see even more clearly now, there was no high and no low. All things
were only relatively so. A thief was a thief, but he had his place.
Ditto the murderer. Ditto the saint. Not man but Nature was planning, or
at least doing, something which man could not understand, of which very
likely he was a mere tool. Peter was as much thrilled and entendered by
the brawling strumpet in the street or the bagnio as by the virgin with
her starry crown. The rich were rich and the poor poor, but all were in
the grip of imperial forces whose ruthless purposes or lack of them made
all men ridiculous, pathetic or magnificent, as you choose. He pitied
ignorance and necessity, and despised vanity and cruelty for cruelty's
sake, and the miserly hoarding of anything. He was liberal, material,
sensual and yet spiritual; and although he never had more than a little
money, out of the richness and fullness of his own temperament he seemed
able to generate a kind of atmosphere and texture in his daily life
which was rich and warm, splendid really in thought (the true reality)
if not in fact, and most grateful to all. Yet also, as I have said,
always he wished to _seem_ the clown, the scapegrace, the wanton and
the loon even, mouthing idle impossibilities at times and declaring his
profoundest faith in the most fantastic things.
Do I seem to rave? I am dealing with a most significant person.
In so far as I knew he was born into a mid-Western family of Irish
extraction whose habitat was southwest Missouri. In the town in which he
was reared there was not even a railroad until he was fairly well
grown--a fact which amused but never impressed him very much. Apropos of
this he once told me of a yokel who, never having seen a railroad,
entered the station with his wife and children long before train time,
bought his ticket and waited a while, looking out of the various
windows, then finally returned to the ticket-seller and asked, "When
does this thing start?" He meant the station building itself. At the
time Peter had entered upon art work he had scarcely prosecuted his
studies beyond, if so far as, the conventional high or grammar school,
and yet he was most amazingly informed and but little interested in what
any school or college had to offer. His father, curiously enough, was an
educated Irish-American, a lawyer by profession, and a Catholic. His
mother was an American Catholic, rather strict and narrow. His brothers
and sisters, of whom there were four, were, as I learned later,
astonishingly virile and interesting Americans of a rather wild,
unsettled type. They were all, in so far as I could judge from chance
meetings, agnostic, tense, quick-moving--so vital that they weighed on
one a little, as very intense temperaments are apt to do. One of the
brothers, K----, who seemed to seek me out ever so often for Peter's
sake, was so intense, nervous, rapid-talking, rapid-living, that he
frightened me a little. He loved noisy, garish places. He liked to play
the piano, stay up very late; he was a high liver, a "good dresser," as
the denizens of the Tenderloin would say, an excellent example of the
flashy, clever promoter. He was always representing a new company,
introducing something--a table or laxative water, a shaving soap, a
chewing gum, a safety razor, a bicycle, an automobile tire or the
machine itself. He was here, there, everywhere--in Waukesha, Wisconsin;
San Francisco; New York; New Orleans. "My, my! This is certainly
interesting!" he would exclaim, with an air which would have done credit
to a comedian and extending both hands. "Peter's pet friend, Dreiser!
Well, well, well! Let's have a drink. Let's have something to eat. I'm
only in town for a day. Maybe you'd like to go to a show--or hit the
high places? Would you? Well, well, well! Let's make a night of it! What
do you say?" and he would fix me with a glistening, nervous and what was
intended no doubt to be a reassuring eye, but which unsettled me as
thoroughly as the imminence of an earthquake. But I was talking of
Peter.
The day I first saw him he was bent over a drawing-board illustrating a
snake story for one of the Sunday issues of the _Globe-Democrat_, which
apparently delighted in regaling its readers with most astounding
concoctions of this kind, and the snake he was drawing was most
disturbingly vital and reptilian, beady-eyed, with distended jaws,
extended tongue, most fatefully coiled.
"My," I commented in passing, for I was in to see him about another
matter, "what a glorious snake!"
"Yes, you can't make 'em too snaky for the snake-editor up front," he
returned, rising and dusting tobacco from his lap and shirtfront, for he
was in his shirt-sleeves. Then he expectorated not in but to one side of
a handsome polished brass cuspidor which contained not the least
evidence of use, the rubber mat upon which it stood being instead most
disturbingly "decorated." I was most impressed by this latter fact
although at the time I said nothing, being too new. Later, I may as well
say here, I discovered why. This was a bit of his clowning humor, a
purely manufactured and as it were mechanical joke or ebullience of
soul. If any one inadvertently or through unfamiliarity attempted to
expectorate in his "golden cuspidor," as he described it, he was always
quick to rise and interpose in the most solemn, almost sepulchral
manner, at the same time raising a hand. "Hold! Out--not in--to one
side, on the mat! That cost me seven dollars!" Then he would solemnly
seat himself and begin to draw again. I saw him do this to all but the
chiefest of the authorities of the paper. And all, even the dullest,
seemed to be amused, quite fascinated by the utter trumpery folly of it.
But I am getting ahead of my tale. In so far as the snake was
concerned, he was referring to the assistant who had these snake stories
in charge. "The fatter and more venomous and more scaly they are," he
went on, "the better. I'd like it if we could use a little color in this
paper--red for eyes and tongue, and blue and green for scales. The
farmers upstate would love that. They like good but poisonous snakes."
Then he grinned, stood back and, cocking his head to one side in a most
examining and yet approving manner, ran his hand through his hair and
beard and added, "A snake can't be too vital, you know, for this paper.
We have to draw 'em strong, plenty of vitality, plenty of go." He
grinned most engagingly.
I could not help laughing, of course. The impertinent air! The grand,
almost condescending manner!
We soon became fast friends.
In the same office in close contact with him was another person, one
D---- W----, also a newspaper artist, who, while being exceedingly
interesting and special in himself, still as a character never seems to
have served any greater purpose in my own mind than to have illustrated
how emphatic and important Peter was. He had a thin, pale, Dantesque
face, coal black, almost Indian-like hair most carefully parted in the
middle and oiled and slicked down at the sides and back until it looked
as though it had been glued. His eyes were small and black and querulous
but not mean--petted eyes they were--and the mouth had little lines at
each corner which seemed to say he had endured much, much pain, which of
course he had not, but which nevertheless seemed to ask for, and I
suppose earned him some, sympathy. Dick in his way was an actor, a
tragedian of sorts, but with an element of humor, cynicism and insight
which saved him from being utterly ridiculous. Like most actors, he was
a great poseur. He invariably affected the long, loose flowing tie with
a soft white or blue or green or brown linen shirt (would any American
imitation of the "Quartier Latin" denizen have been without one at that
date?), yellow or black gloves, a round, soft crush hat, very soft and
limp and very _different_, patent leather pumps, betimes a capecoat, a
slender cane, a boutonnière--all this in hard, smoky, noisy, commercial
St. Louis, full of middle-West business men and farmers!
I would not mention this particular person save that for a time he,
Peter and myself were most intimately associated. We temporarily
constituted in our way a "soldiers three" of the newspaper world. For
some years after we were more or less definitely in touch as a group,
although later Peter and myself having drifted Eastward and hob-nobbing
as a pair had been finding more and more in common and had more and more
come to view Dick for what he was: a character of Dickensian, or perhaps
still better, Cruikshankian, proportions and qualities. But in those
days the three of us were all but inseparable; eating, working, playing,
all but sleeping together. I had a studio of sorts in a more or less
dilapidated factory section of St. Louis (Tenth near Market; now I
suppose briskly commercial), Dick had one at Broadway and Locust,
directly opposite the then famous Southern Hotel. Peter lived with his
family on the South Side, a most respectable and homey-home
neighborhood.
It has been one of my commonest experiences, and one of the most
interesting to me, to note that nearly all of my keenest experiences
intellectually, my most gorgeous _rapprochements_ and swiftest
developments mentally, have been by, to, and through men, not women,
although there have been several exceptions to this. Nearly every
turning point in my career has been signalized by my meeting some man of
great force, to whom I owe some of the most ecstatic intellectual hours
of my life, hours in which life seemed to bloom forth into new aspects,
glowed as with the radiance of a gorgeous tropic day.
Peter was one such. About my own age at this time, he was blessed with a
natural understanding which was simply Godlike. Although, like myself,
he was raised a Catholic and still pretending in a boisterous,
Rabelaisian way to have some reverence for that faith, he was amusingly
sympathetic to everything good, bad, indifferent--"in case there might
be something in it; you never can tell." Still he hadn't the least
interest in conforming to the tenets of the church and laughed at its
pretensions, preferring his own theories to any other. Apparently
nothing amused him so much as the thought of confession and communion,
of being shrived by some stout, healthy priest as worldly as himself,
and preferably Irish, like himself. At the same time he had a hearty
admiration for the Germans, all their ways, conservatisms, their
breweries, food and such things, and finally wound up by marrying a
German girl.
As far as I could make out, Peter had no faith in anything except Nature
itself, and very little in that except in those aspects of beauty and
accident and reward and terrors with which it is filled and for which he
had an awe if not a reverence and in every manifestation of which he
took the greatest delight. Life was a delicious, brilliant mystery to
him, horrible in some respects, beautiful in others; a great adventure.
Unlike myself at the time, he had not the slightest trace of any
lingering Puritanism, and wished to live in a lush, vigorous, healthy,
free, at times almost barbaric, way. The negroes, the ancient Romans,
the Egyptians, tales of the Orient and the grotesque Dark Ages, our own
vile slums and evil quarters--how he reveled in these! He was for nights
of wandering, endless investigation, reading, singing, dancing, playing!
Apropos of this I should like to relate here that one of his seemingly
gross but really innocent diversions was occasionally visiting a certain
black house of prostitution, of which there were many in St. Louis. Here
while he played a flute and some one else a tambourine or small drum, he
would have two or three of the inmates dance in some weird savage way
that took one instanter to the wilds of Central Africa. There was, so
far as I know, no payment of any kind made in connection with this. He
was a friend, in some crude, artistic or barbaric way. He satisfied, I
am positive, some love of color, sound and the dance in these queer
revels.
Nor do I know how he achieved these friendships, such as they were. I
was never with him when he did. But aside from the satiation they
afforded his taste for the strange and picturesque, I am sure they
reflected no gross or sensual appetite. But I wish to attest in passing
that the mere witnessing of these free scenes had a tonic as well as
toxic effect on me. As I view myself now, I was a poor, spindling,
prying fish, anxious to know life, and yet because of my very narrow
training very fearsome of it, of what it might do to me, what dreadful
contagion of thought or deed it might open me to! Peter was not so. To
him all, positively _all_, life was good. It was a fascinating
spectacle, to be studied or observed and rejoiced in as a spectacle.
When I look back now on the shabby, poorly-lighted, low-ceiled room to
which he led me "for fun," the absolutely black or brown girls with
their white teeth and shiny eyes, the unexplainable, unintelligible love
of rhythm and the dance displayed, the beating of a drum, the sinuous,
winding motions of the body, I am grateful to him. He released my mind,
broadened my view, lengthened my perspective. For as I sat with him,
watching him beat his drum or play his flute, noted the gayety, his love
of color and effect, and feeling myself _low_, a criminal, disgraced,
the while I was staring with all my sight and enjoying it intensely, I
realized that I was dealing with a man who was "bigger" than I was in
many respects, saner, really more wholesome. I was a moral coward, and
he was not losing his life and desires through fear--which the majority
of us do. He was strong, vital, unafraid, and he made me so.
But, lest I seem to make him low or impossible to those who
instinctively cannot accept life beyond the range of their own little
routine world, let me hasten to his other aspects. He was not low but
simple, brilliant and varied in his tastes. America and its point of
view, religious and otherwise, was simply amusing to him, not to be
taken seriously. He loved to contemplate man at his mysteries, rituals,
secret schools. He loved better yet ancient history, medieval inanities
and atrocities--a most singular, curious and wonderful mind. Already at
this age he knew many historians and scientists (their work), a most
astonishing and illuminating list to me--Maspero, Froude, Huxley,
Darwin, Wallace, Rawlinson, Froissart, Hallam, Taine, Avebury! The list
of painters, sculptors and architects with whose work he was familiar
and books about whom or illustrated by whom he knew, is too long to be
given here. His chief interest, in so far as I could make out, in these
opening days, was Egyptology and the study of things natural and
primeval--all the wonders of a natural, groping, savage world.
"Dreiser," he exclaimed once with gusto, his bright beady eyes gleaming
with an immense human warmth, "you haven't the slightest idea of the
fascination of some of the old beliefs. Do you know the significance of
a scarab in Egyptian religious worship, for instance?"
"A scarab? What's a scarab? I never heard of one," I answered.
"A beetle, of course. An Egyptian beetle. You know what a beetle is,
don't you? Well, those things burrowed in the earth, the mud of the
Nile, at a certain period of their season to lay their eggs, and the
next spring, or whenever it was, the eggs would hatch and the beetles
would come up. Then the Egyptians imagined that the beetle hadn't died
at all, or if it had that it also had the power of restoring itself to
life, possessed immortality. So they thought it must be a god and began
to worship it," and he would pause and survey me with those amazing
eyes, bright as glass beads, to see if I were properly impressed.
"You don't say!"
"Sure. That's where the worship came from," and then he might go on and
add a bit about monkey-worship, the Zoroastrians and the Parsees, the
sacred bull of Egypt, its sex power as a reason for its religious
elevation, and of sex worship in general; the fantastic orgies at Sidon
and Tyre, where enormous images of the male and female sex organs were
carried aloft before the multitude.
Being totally ignorant of these matters at the time, not a rumor of them
having reached me as yet in my meagre reading, I knew that it must be
so. It fired me with a keen desire to read--not the old orthodox
emasculated histories of the schools but those other books and pamphlets
to which I fancied he must have access. Eagerly I inquired of him where,
how. He told me that in some cases they were outlawed, banned or not
translated wholly or fully, owing to the puritanism and religiosity of
the day, but he gave me titles and authors to whom I might have access,
and the address of an old book-dealer or two who could get them for me.
In addition he was interested in ethnology and geology, as well as
astronomy (the outstanding phases at least), and many, many phases of
applied art: pottery, rugs, pictures, engraving, wood-carving,
jewel-cutting and designing, and I know not what else, yet there was
always room even in his most serious studies for humor of the bizarre
and eccentric type, amounting to all but an obsession. He wanted to
laugh, and he found occasion for doing so under the most serious, or at
least semi-serious, circumstances. Thus I recall that one of the butts
of his extreme humor was this same Dick, whom he studied with the
greatest care for points worthy his humorous appreciation. Dick, in
addition to his genuinely lively mental interests, was a most romantic
person on one side, a most puling and complaining soul on the other. As
a newspaper artist I believe he was only a fairly respectable craftsman,
if so much, whereas Peter was much better, although he deferred to Dick
in the most persuasive manner and seemed to believe at times, though I
knew he did not, that Dick represented all there was to know in matters
artistic.
Among other things at this time, the latter was, or pretended to be,
immensely interested in all things pertaining to the Chinese and to know
not only something of their language, which he had studied a little
somewhere, but also their history--a vague matter, as we all know--and
the spirit and significance of their art and customs. He sometimes
condescended to take us about with him to one or two Chinese restaurants
of the most beggarly description, and--as he wished to believe, because
of the romantic titillation involved--the hang-outs of crooks and
thieves and disreputable Tenderloin characters generally. (Of such was
the beginning of the Chinese restaurant in America.) He would introduce
us to a few of his Celestial friends, whose acquaintance apparently he
had been most assiduously cultivating for some time past and with whom
he was now on the best of terms. He had, as Peter pointed out to me, the
happy knack of persuading himself that there was something vastly
mysterious and superior about the whole Chinese race, that there was
some Chinese organization known as the Six Companions, which, so far as
I could make out from him, was ruling very nearly (and secretly, of
course) the entire habitable globe. For one thing it had some governing
connection with great constructive ventures of one kind and another in
all parts of the world, supplying, as he said, thousands of Chinese
laborers to any one who desired them, anywhere, and although they were
employed by others, ruling them with a rod of iron, cutting their
throats when they failed to perform their bounden duties and burying
them head down in a basket of rice, then transferring their remains
quietly to China in coffins made in China and brought for that purpose
to the country in which they were. The Chinese who had worked for the
builders of the Union Pacific had been supplied by this company, as I
understood from Dick. In regard to all this Peter used to analyze and
dispose of Dick's self-generated romance with the greatest gusto,
laughing the while and yet pretending to accept it all.
But there was one phase of all this which interested Peter immensely.
Were there on sale in St. Louis any bits of jade, silks, needlework,
porcelains, basketry or figurines of true Chinese origin? He was far
more interested in this than in the social and economic sides of the
lives of the Chinese, and was constantly urging Dick to take him here,
there and everywhere in order that he might see for himself what of
these amazing wonders were locally extant, leading Dick in the process a
merry chase and a dog's life. Dick was compelled to persuade nearly all
of his boasted friends to produce all they had to show. Once, I recall,
a collection of rare Chinese porcelains being shown at the local museum
of art, there was nothing for it but that Dick must get one or more of
his Oriental friends to interpret this, that and the other symbol in
connection with this, that and the other vase--things which put him to
no end of trouble and which led to nothing, for among all the local
Chinese there was not one who knew anything about it, although they,
Dick included, were not honest enough to admit it.
"You know, Dreiser," Peter said to me one day with the most delicious
gleam of semi-malicious, semi-tender humor, "I am really doing all this
just to torture Dick. He doesn't know a damned thing about it and
neither do these Chinese, but it's fun to haul 'em out there and make
'em sweat. The museum sells an illustrated monograph covering all this,
you know, with pictures of the genuinely historic pieces and
explanations of the various symbols in so far as they are known, but
Dick doesn't know that, and he's lying awake nights trying to find out
what they're all about. I like to see his expression and that of those
chinks when they examine those things." He subsided with a low chuckle
all the more disturbing because it was so obviously the product of
well-grounded knowledge.
Another phase of this same humor related to the grand artistic, social
and other forms of life to which Dick was hoping to ascend via marriage
and which led him, because of a kind of anticipatory eagerness, into all
sorts of exaggerations of dress, manners, speech, style in writing or
drawing, and I know not what else. He had, as I have said, a "studio" in
Broadway, an ordinary large, square upper chamber of an old residence
turned commercial but which Dick had decorated in the most, to him,
recherché or _different_ manner possible. In Dick's gilding imagination
it was packed with the rarest and most carefully selected things, odd
bits of furniture, objects of art, pictures, books--things which the
ordinary antique shop provides in plenty but which to Dick, having been
reared in Bloomington, Illinois, were of the utmost artistic import. He
had vaulting ambitions and pretensions, literary and otherwise, having
by now composed various rondeaus, triolets, quatrains, sonnets, in
addition to a number of short stories over which he had literally slaved
and which, being rejected by many editors, were kept lying idly and
inconsequentially and seemingly inconspicuously about his place--the
more to astonish the poor unsophisticated "outsider." Besides it gave
him the opportunity of posing as misunderstood, neglected, depressed, as
becomes all great artists, poets, and thinkers.
His great scheme or dream, however, was that of marriage to an heiress,
one of those very material and bovine daughters of the new rich in the
West end, and to this end he was bending all his artistic thought,
writing, dressing, dreaming the thing he wished. I myself had a marked
tendency in this direction, although from another point of view, and
speaking from mine purely, there was this difference between us: Dick
being an artist, rather remote and disdainful in manner and decidedly
handsome as well as poetic and better positioned than I, as I fancied,
was certain to achieve this gilded and crystal state, whereas I, not
being handsome nor an artist nor sufficiently poetic perhaps, could
scarcely aspire to so gorgeous a goal. Often, as around dinnertime he
ambled from the office arrayed in the latest mode--dark blue suit,
patent leather boots, a dark, round soft felt hat, loose tie blowing
idly about his neck, a thin cane in his hand--I was already almost
convinced that the anticipated end was at hand, this very evening
perhaps, and that I should never see him more except as the husband of a
very rich girl, never be permitted even to speak to him save as an
almost forgotten friend, and in passing! Even now perhaps he was on his
way to her, whereas I, poor oaf that I was, was moiling here over some
trucky work. Would my ship never come in? my great day never arrive? my
turn? Unkind heaven!
As for Peter he was the sort of person who could swiftly detect,
understand and even sympathize with a point of view of this kind the
while he must laugh at it and his mind be busy with some plan of making
a fol-de-rol use of it. One day he came into the city-room where I was
working and bending over my desk fairly bursting with suppressed humor
announced, "Gee, Dreiser, I've just thought of a delicious trick to play
on Dick! Oh, Lord!" and he stopped and surveyed me with beady eyes the
while his round little body seemed to fairly swell with pent-up
laughter. "It's too rich! Oh, if it just works out Dick'll be sore!
Wait'll I tell you," he went on. "You know how crazy he is about rich
young heiresses? You know how he's always 'dressing up' and talking and
writing about marrying one of those girls in the West end?" (Dick was
forever composing a short story in which some lorn but perfect and great
artist was thus being received via love, the story being read to us
nights in his studio.) "That's all bluff, that talk of his of visiting
in those big houses out there. All he does is to dress up every night as
though he were going to a ball, and walk out that way and moon around.
Well, listen. Here's the idea. We'll go over to Mermod & Jaccards
to-morrow and get a few sheets of their best monogrammed paper, sample
sheets. Then we'll get up a letter and sign it with the most romantic
name we can think of--Juanita or Cyrene or Doris--and explain who she
is, the daughter of a millionaire living out there, and that she's been
strictly brought up but that in spite of all that she's seen his name in
the paper at the bottom of his pictures and wants to meet him, see? Then
we'll have her suggest that he come out to the west gate of, say,
Portland Place at seven o'clock and meet her. We'll have her describe
herself, see, young and beautiful, and some attractive costume she's to
wear, and we'll kill him. He'll fall hard. Then we'll happen by there at
the exact time when he's waiting, and detain him, urge him to come into
the park with us or to dinner. We'll look our worst so he'll be ashamed
of us. He'll squirm and get wild, but we'll hang on and spoil the date
for him, see? We'll insist in the letter that he must be alone, see,
because she's timid and afraid of being recognized. My God, he'll be
crazy! He'll think we've ruined his life--oh, ho, ho!" and he fairly
writhed with inward joy.
The thing worked. It was cruel in its way, but when has man ever grieved
over the humorous ills of others? The paper was secured, the letter
written by a friend of Peter's in a nearby real estate office, after the
most careful deliberation as to wording on our part. Extreme youth,
beauty and a great mansion were all hinted at. The fascination of Dick
as a romantic figure was touched upon. He would know her by a green silk
scarf about her waist, for it was spring, the ideal season. Seven
o'clock was the hour. She could give him only a moment or two then--but
later--and she gave no address!
The letter was mailed in the West end, as was meet and proper, and in
due season arrived at the office. Peter, working at the next easel,
observed him, as he told me, out of the corner of his eye.
"You should have seen him, Dreiser," he exclaimed, hunting me up about
an hour after the letter arrived. "Oh, ho! Say, you know I believe he
thinks it's the real thing. It seemed to make him a little sick. He
tried to appear nonchalant, but a little later he got his hat and went
out, over to Deck's," a nearby saloon, "for a drink, for I followed him.
He's all fussed up. Wait'll we heave into view that night! I'm going to
get myself up like a joke, a hobo. I'll disgrace him. Oh, Lord, he'll be
crazy! He'll think we've ruined his life, scared her off. There's no
address. He can't do a thing. Oh, ho, ho, ho!"
On the appointed day--and it was a delicious afternoon and evening,
aflame with sun and in May--Dick left off his work at three p.m., as
Peter came and told me, and departed, and then we went to make our
toilets. At six we met, took a car and stepped down not more than a
short block from the point of meeting. I shall never forget the
sweetness of the air, the something of sadness in the thought of love,
even in this form. The sun was singing its evensong, as were the birds.
But Peter--blessings or curses upon him!--was arrayed as only he could
array himself when he wished to look absolutely disconcerting--more like
an unwashed, uncombed tramp who had been sleeping out for weeks, than
anything else. His hair was over his eyes and ears, his face and hands
dirty, his shoes ditto. He had even blackened one tooth slightly. He had
on a collarless shirt, and yet he was jaunty withal and carried a cane,
if you please, assuming, as he always could and in the most aggravating
way, to be totally unconscious of the figure he cut. At one angle of his
multiplex character the man must have been a born actor.
We waited a block away, concealed by a few trees, and at the exact hour
Dick appeared, hopeful and eager no doubt, and walking and looking
almost all that he hoped--delicate, pale, artistic. The new straw hat!
The pale green "artists'" shirt! His black, wide-buckled belt! The cane!
The dark-brown low shoes! The boutonnière! He was plainly ready for any
fate, his great moment.
And then, before he could get the feeling that his admirer might not be
coming, we descended upon him in all our wretched nonchalance and
unworthiness--out of hell, as it were. We were most brisk, familiar,
affectionate. It was so fortunate to meet him so, so accidentally and
peradventure. The night was so fine. We were out for a stroll in the
park, to eat afterward. He must come along.
I saw him look at Peter in that hat and no collar, and wilt. It was too
much. Such a friend--such friends (for on Peter's advice I was looking
as ill as I might, an easy matter)! No, he couldn't come. He was waiting
for some friends. We must excuse him.
But Peter was not to be so easily shaken off. He launched into the most
brisk and serious conversation. He began his badger game by asking about
some work upon which Dick had been engaged before he left the office,
some order, how he was getting along with it, when it would be done;
and, when Dick evaded and then attempted to dismiss the subject, took
up another and began to expatiate on it, some work he himself was doing,
something that had developed in connection with it. He asked inane
questions, complimented Dick on his looks, began to tease him about some
girl. And poor Dick--his nervousness, his despair almost, the sense of
the waning of his opportunity! It was cruel. He was becoming more and
more restless, looking about more and more wearily and anxiously and
wishing to go or for us to go. He was horribly unhappy. Finally, after
ten or fifteen minutes had gone and various girls had crossed the plaza
in various directions, as well as carriages and saddle-horses--each one
carrying his heiress, no doubt!--he seemed to summon all his courage and
did his best to dispose of us. "You two'll have to excuse me," he
exclaimed almost wildly. "I can't wait." Those golden moments! She could
not approach! "My people aren't coming, I guess. I'll have to be going
on."
He smiled weakly and made off, Peter half following and urging him to
come back. Then, since he would not, we stood there on the exact spot of
the rendezvous gazing smirkily after him. Then we went into the park a
few paces and sat on a bench in full view, talking--or Peter was--most
volubly. He was really choking with laughter. A little later, at
seven-thirty, we went cackling into the park, only to return in five
minutes as though we had changed our minds and were coming out--and saw
Dick bustling off at our approach. It was sad really. There was an
element of the tragic in it. But not to Peter. He was all laughter, all
but apoplectic gayety. "Oh, by George!" he choked. "This is too much!
Oh, ho! This is great! his poor heiress! And he came back! Har! Har!
Har!"
"Peter, you dog," I said, "aren't you ashamed of yourself, to rub it in
this way?"
"Not a bit, not a bit!" he insisted most enthusiastically. "Do him good.
Why shouldn't he suffer? He'll get over it. He's always bluffing about
his heiresses. Now he's lost a real one. Har! Har! Har!" and he fairly
choked, and for days and weeks and months he laughed, but he never told.
He merely chortled at his desk, and if any one asked him what he was
laughing about, even Dick, he would reply, "Oh, something--a joke I
played on a fellow once."
If Dick ever guessed he never indicated as much. But that lost romance!
That faded dream!
Not so long after this, the following winter, I left St. Louis and did
not see Peter for several years, during which time I drifted through
various cities to New York. We kept up a more or less desultory
correspondence which resulted eventually in his contributing to a paper
of which I had charge in New York, and later, in part at least I am
sure, in his coming there. I noticed one thing, that although Peter had
no fixed idea as to what he wished to be--being able to draw, write,
engrave, carve and what not--he was in no way troubled about it. "I
don't see just what it is that I am to do best," he said to me once. "It
may be that I will wind up as a painter or writer or collector--I can't
tell yet. I want to study, and meantime I'm making a living--that's all
I want now. I want to live, and I am living, in my way."
Some men are masters of cities, or perhaps better, of all the elements
which enter into the making of them, and Peter was one. I think
sometimes that he was born a writer of great force and charm, only as
yet he had not found himself. I have known many writers, many geniuses
even, but not one his superior in intellect and romantic response to
life. He was a poet, thinker, artist, philosopher and master of prose,
as a posthumous volume ("Wolf, the Autobiography of a Cave Dweller")
amply proves, but he was not ready then to fully express himself, and it
troubled him not at all. He loved life's every facet, was gay and
helpful to himself and others, and yet always with an eye for the
undercurrent of human misery, error and tragedy as well as comedy.
Immediately upon coming to New York he began to examine and grasp it in
a large way, its museums, public buildings, geography, politics, but
after a very little while decided suddenly that he did not belong there
and without a by-your-leave, although once more we had fallen into each
other's ways, he departed without a word, and I did not hear from him
for months. Temporarily at least he felt that he had to obtain more
experience in a lesser field, and lost no time in so doing. The next I
knew he was connected, at a comfortable salary, with the then dominant
paper of Philadelphia.
It was after he had established himself very firmly in Philadelphia that
we two finally began to understand each other fully, to sympathize
really with each other's point of view as opposed to the more or less
gay and casual nature of our earlier friendship. Also here perhaps, more
than before, we felt the binding influence of having worked together in
the West. It was here that I first noticed the ease with which he took
hold of a city, the many-sidedness of his peculiar character which led
him to reflect so many angles of it, which a less varied temperament
would never have touched upon. For, first of all, wherever he happened
to be, he was intensely interested in the age and history of his city,
its buildings and graveyards and tombstones which pointed to its past
life, then its present physical appearance, the chief characteristics of
the region in which it lay, its rivers, lakes, parks and adjacent places
and spots of interest (what rambles we took!), as well as its newest and
finest things architecturally. Nor did any one ever take a keener
interest in the current intellectual resources of a city--any city in
which he happened to be--its museums, libraries, old bookstores,
newspapers, magazines, and I know not what else. It was he who first
took me into Leary's bookstore in Philadelphia, descanting with his
usual gusto on its merits. Then and lastly he was keenly and wisely
interested in various currents of local politics, society and finance,
although he always considered the first a low mess, an arrangement or
adjustment of many necessary things among the lower orders. He seemed to
know or sense in some occult way everything that was going on in those
various realms. His mind was so full and rich that merely to be with him
was a delight. He gushed like a fountain, and yet not polemically, of
all he knew, heard, felt, suspected. His thoughts were so rich at times
that to me they were more like a mosaic of variegated and richly colored
stones and jewels. I felt always as though I were in the presence of a
great personage, not one who was reserved or pompous but a loose
bubbling temperament, wise beyond his years or day, and so truly great
that perhaps because of the intensity and immense variety of his
interests he would never shine in a world in which the most intensive
specialization, and that of a purely commercial character, was the grand
rôle.
And yet I always felt that perhaps he might. He attracted people of all
grades so easily and warmly. His mind leaped from one interest to
another almost too swiftly, and yet the average man understood and liked
him. While in a way he contemned their mental states as limited or
bigoted, he enjoyed the conditions under which they lived, seemed to
wish to immerse himself in them. And yet nearly all his thoughts were,
from their point of view perhaps, dangerous. Among his friends he was
always talking freely, honestly, of things which the average man could
not or would not discuss, dismissing as trash illusion, lies or the
cunning work of self-seeking propagandists, most of the things currently
accepted as true.
He was constantly commenting on the amazing dullness of man, his
prejudices, the astonishing manner in which he seized upon and clung
savagely or pathetically to the most ridiculous interpretations of life.
He was also forever noting that crass chance which wrecks so many of our
dreams and lives,--its fierce brutalities, its seemingly inane
indifference to wondrous things,--but never in a depressed or morbid
spirit; merely as a matter of the curious, as it were. But if any one
chanced to contradict him he was likely to prove liquid fire. At the
same time he was forever reading, reading, reading--history, archæology,
ethnology, geology, travel, medicine, biography, and descanting on the
wonders and idiosyncrasies of man and nature which they revealed. He was
never tired of talking of the intellectual and social conditions that
ruled in Greece and Rome from 600 B.C. on, the philosophies, the
travels, the art, the simple, natural pagan view of things, and
regretting that they were no more. He grieved at times, I think, that he
had not been of that world, might not have seen it, or, failing that,
might not see all the shards of those extinct civilizations. There was
something loving and sad in the manner in which at times, in one museum
and another, he would examine ancient art designs, those of the
Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, their public and private house plans,
their statues, book rolls, inscriptions, flambeaux, boats, swords,
chariots. Carthage, Rome, Greece, Phoenicia--their colonies, art and
trade stuffs, their foods, pleasures and worships--how he raved! A book
like Thaïs, Salammbo, Sonica, Quo Vadis, touched him to the quick.
At the same time, and odd as it may seem, he was seemingly in intimate
contact with a circle of friends that rather astonished me by its
catholicity. It included, for instance, and quite naïvely, real estate
dealers, clerks, a bank cashier or two, some man who had a leather shop
or cigar factory in the downtown section, a drummer, a printer, two or
three newspaper artists and reporters--a list too long to catalogue here
and seemingly not interesting, at least not inspiring to look at or live
in contact with. Yet his relations with all of these were of a warm,
genial, helpful, homely character, quite intimate. He used them as one
might a mulch in which to grow things, or in other words he took them on
their own ground; a thing which I could never quite understand, being
more or less aloof myself and yet wishing always to be able so to do, to
take life, as he did.
For he desired, and secured, their good will and drew them to him. He
took a simple, natural pleasure in the kinds of things they were able to
do, as well as the kinds of things he could do. With these, then, and a
type of girl who might not be classed above the clerk or manicure class,
he and they managed to eke out a social life, the outstanding phases of
which were dances, "parties," dinners at one simple home and another,
flirting, boating, and fishing expeditions in season, evenings out at
restaurants or the theater, and I know not what else. He could sing (a
very fair baritone), play the piano, cornet, flute, banjo, mandolin and
guitar, but always insisted that his favorite instruments were the
jews'-harp, the French harp (mouth organ) and a comb with a piece of
paper over it, against which he would blow with fierce energy, making
the most outrageous sounds, until stopped. At any "party" he was always
talking, jumping about, dancing, cooking something--fudge, taffy, a
rarebit, and insisting in the most mock-serious manner that all the
details be left strictly to him. "Now just cut out of this, all of you,
and leave this to your Uncle Dudley. Who's doing this? All I want is
sugar, chocolate, a pot, a big spoon, and I'll show you the best fudge
you ever ate." Then he would don an apron or towel and go to work in a
manner which would rob any gathering of a sense of stiffness and induce
a naturalness most intriguing, calculated to enhance the general
pleasure an hundredfold.
Yes, Peter woke people up. He could convey or spread a sense of ease and
good nature and give and take among all. Wise as he was and not so
good-looking, he was still attractive to girls, very much so, and by no
means unconscious of their beauty. He could always, and easily, break
down their reserve, and was soon apparently on terms of absolute
friendship, exchanging all sorts of small gossip and news with them
about this, that and the other person about whom they knew. Indeed he
was such a general favorite and so seemingly impartial that it was hard
to say how he came close to any, and yet he did. At odd tête-à-tête
moments he was always making confessions as to "nights" or "afternoons."
"My God, Dreiser, I've found a peach! I can't tell you--but oh,
wonderful! Just what I need. This world's a healthy old place, eh? Let's
have another drink, what?" and he would order a stein or a half-schoppen
of light German beer and pour it down, grinning like a gargoyle.
It was while he was in Philadelphia that he told me the beginnings of
the love affair which eventually ended in his marrying and settling down
into the homiest of home men I have ever seen and which for sheer
naïveté and charm is one of the best love stories I know anything about.
It appears that he was walking in some out-of-the-way factory realm of
North Philadelphia one Saturday afternoon about the first or second year
of his stay there, when, playing in the street with some other children,
he saw a girl of not more than thirteen or fourteen who, as he expressed
it to me, "came damned near being the prettiest thing I ever saw. She
had yellow hair and a short blue dress and pink bows in her hair--and
say, Dreiser, when I saw her I stopped flat and said 'me for that' if I
have to wait fifteen years! Dutchy--you never saw the beat! And poor!
Her shoes were clogs. She couldn't even talk English yet. Neither could
the other kids. They were all sausage--a regular German neighborhood.
"But, say, I watched her a while and then I went over and said, 'Come
here, kid. Where do you live?' She didn't understand, and one of the
other kids translated for her, and then she said, 'Ich sprech nicht
English,'" and he mocked her. "That fixed her for me. One of the others
finally told me who she was and where she lived--and, say, I went right
home and began studying German. In three months I could make myself
understood, but before that, in two weeks, I hunted up her old man and
made him understand that I wanted to be friends with the family, to
learn German. I went out Sundays when they were all at home. There are
six children and I made friends with 'em all. For a long time I couldn't
make Madchen (that's what they call her) understand what it was all
about, but finally I did, and she knows now all right. And I'm crazy
about her and I'm going to marry her as soon as she's old enough."
"How do you know that she'll have you?" I inquired.
"Oh, she'll have me. I always tell her I'm going to marry her when she's
eighteen, and she says all right. And I really believe she does like me.
I'm crazy about her."
Five years later, if I may anticipate a bit, after he had moved to
Newark and placed himself rather well in the journalistic field and was
able to carry out his plans in regard to himself, he suddenly returned
to Philadelphia and married, preparing beforehand an apartment which he
fancied would please her. It was a fortunate marriage in so far as love
and home pleasures were concerned. I never encountered a more delightful
atmosphere.
All along in writing this I feel as though I were giving but the
thinnest portrait of Peter; he was so full and varied in his moods and
interests. To me he illustrated the joy that exists, on the one hand, in
the common, the so-called homely and what some might think ugly side of
life, certainly the very simple and ordinarily human aspect of things;
on the other, in the sheer comfort and satisfaction that might be taken
in things truly intellectual and artistic, but to which no great expense
attached--old books, prints, things connected with history and science
in their various forms, skill in matters relating to the applied arts
and what not, such as the coloring and firing of pottery and glass, the
making of baskets, hammocks and rugs, the carving of wood, the
collection and imitation of Japanese and Chinese prints, the art of
embalming as applied by the Egyptians (which, in connection with an
undertaker to whom he had attached himself, he attempted to revive or at
least play with, testing his skill for instance by embalming a dead cat
or two after the Egyptian manner). In all of these lines he trained
himself after a fashion and worked with skill, although invariably he
insisted that he was little more than a bungler, a poor follower after
the art of some one else. But most of all, at this time and later, he
was interested in collecting things Japanese and Chinese: netsukes,
inros, censors, images of jade and porcelain, teajars, vases, prints;
and it was while he was in Philadelphia and seemingly trifling about
with the group I have mentioned and making love to his little German
girl that he was running here and there to this museum and that and
laying the foundations of some of those interesting collections which
later he was fond of showing his friends or interested collectors. By
the time he had reached Newark, as chief cartoonist of the leading paper
there, he was in possession of a complete Tokaido (the forty views on
the road between Tokio and Kyoto), various prints by Hokusai, Sesshiu,
Sojo; a collection of one hundred inros, all of fifty netsukes, all of
thirty censers, lacquered boxes and teajars, and various other
exceedingly beautiful and valuable things--Mandarin skirts and coats,
among other things--which subsequently he sold or traded around among
one collector friend and another for things which they had. I recall his
selling his completed Tokaido, a labor which had extended over four
years, for over a thousand dollars. Just before he died he was trading
netsukes for inros and getting ready to sell all these latter to a man,
who in turn was going to sell his collection to a museum.
But in between was this other, this ultra-human side, which ran to such
commonplaces as bowling, tennis-playing, golf, billiards, cards and
gambling with the dice--a thing which always struck me as having an odd
turn to it in connection with Peter, since he could be interested in so
many other things, and yet he pursued these commonplaces with as much
gusto at times as one possessed of a mania. At others he seemed not to
miss or think of them. Indeed, you could be sure of him and all his
interests, whatever they were, feeling that he had himself well in hand,
knew exactly how far he was going, and that when the time came he could
and would stop. Yet during the process of his momentary relaxation or
satiation, in whatever field it might be, he would give you a sense of
abandon, even ungovernable appetite, which to one who had not known him
long might have indicated a mania.
Thus I remember once running over to Philadelphia to spend a Saturday
and Sunday with him, visits of this kind, in either direction, being of
the commonest occurrence. At that time he was living in some
quiet-looking boarding-house in South Fourth Street, but in which dwelt
or visited the group above-mentioned, and whenever I came there, at
least, there was always an atmosphere of intense gaming or playing in
some form, which conveyed to me nothing so much as a glorious sense of
life and pleasure. A dozen or more men might be seated at or standing
about a poker or dice table, in summer (often in winter) with their
coats off, their sleeves rolled up, Peter always conspicuous among them.
On the table or to one side would be money, a pitcher or a tin pail of
beer, boxes of cigarettes or cigars, and there would be Peter among the
players, flushed with excitement, his collar off, his hair awry, his
little figure stirring about here and there or gesticulating or lighting
a cigar or pouring down a glass of beer, shouting at the top of his
voice, his eyes aglow, "That's mine!" "I say it's not!" "Two on the
sixes!" "Three!" "Four!" "Ah, roll the bones! Roll the bones!" "Get off!
Get off! Come on now, Spikes--cough up! You've got the money now. Pay
back. No more loans if you don't." "Once on the fours--the fives--the
aces!" "Roll the bones! Roll the bones! Come on!" Or, if he saw me,
softening and saying, "Gee, Dreiser, I'm ahead twenty-eight so far!" or
"I've lost thirty all told. I'll stick this out, though, to win or lose
five more, and then I'll quit. I give notice, you fellows, five more,
one way or the other, and then I'm through. See? Say, these damned
sharks are always trying to turn a trick. And when they lose they don't
want to pay. I'm offa this for life unless I get a better deal."
In the room there might be three or four girls--sisters, sweethearts,
pals of one or other of the players--some dancing, some playing the
piano or singing, and in addition the landlord and his wife, a slattern
pair usually, about whose past and present lives Peter seemed always to
know much. He had seduced them all apparently into a kind of rakish
camaraderie which was literally amazing to behold. It thrilled,
fascinated, at times frightened me, so thin and inadequate and
inefficient seemed my own point of view and appetite for life. He was
vigorous, charitable, pagan, gay, full of health and strength. He would
play at something, anything, indoors or out as occasion offered, until
he was fairly perspiring, when, throwing down whatever implement he had
in hand--be it cards, a tennis-racket, a golf club--would declare,
"That's enough! That's enough! I'm done now. I've licked-cha," or "I'm
licked. No more. Not another round. Come on, Dreiser, I know just the
place for us--" and then descanting on a steak or fish planked, or some
new method of serving corn or sweet potatoes or tomatoes, he would lead
the way somewhere to a favorite "rat's killer," as he used to say, or
grill or Chinese den, and order enough for four or five, unless stopped.
As he walked, and he always preferred to walk, the latest political row
or scandal, the latest discovery, tragedy or art topic would get his
keen attention. In his presence the whole world used to look different
to me, more colorful, more hopeful, more gay. Doors seemed to open; in
imagination I saw the interiors of a thousand realms--homes, factories,
laboratories, dens, resorts of pleasure. During his day such figures as
McKinley, Roosevelt, Hanna, Rockefeller, Rogers, Morgan, Peary, Harriman
were abroad and active, and their mental states and points of view and
interests--and sincerities and insincerities--were the subject of his
wholly brilliant analysis. He rather admired the clever opportunist, I
think, so long as he was not mean in view or petty, yet he scorned and
even despised the commercial viewpoint or trade reactions of a man like
McKinley. Rulers ought to be above mere commercialism. Once when I asked
him why he disliked McKinley so much he replied laconically, "The voice
is the voice of McKinley, but the hands--are the hands of Hanna."
Roosevelt seemed to amuse him always, to be a delightful if ridiculous
and self-interested "grandstander," as he always said, "always looking
out for Teddy, you bet," but good for the country, inspiring it with
visions. Rockefeller was wholly admirable as a force driving the country
on to autocracy, oligarchy, possibly revolution. Ditto Hanna, ditto
Morgan, ditto Harriman, ditto Rogers, unless checked. Peary might have,
and again might not have, discovered the North Pole. He refused to
judge. Old "Doc" Cook, the pseudo discoverer, who appeared very shortly
before he died, only drew forth chuckles of delight. "My God, the gall,
the nerve! And that wreath of roses the Danes put around his neck! It's
colossal, Dreiser. It's grand. Munchausen, Cook, Gulliver, Marco
Polo--they'll live forever, or ought to!"
Some Saturday afternoons or Sundays, if he came to me or I to him in
time, we indulged in long idle rambles, anywhere, either going first by
streetcar, boat or train somewhere and then walking, or, if the mood was
not so, just walking on and on somewhere and talking. On such occasions
Peter was at his best and I could have listened forever, quite as the
disciples of Plato and Aristotle must have to them, to his discourses on
life, his broad and broadening conceptions of Nature--her cruelty,
beauty, mystery. Once, far out somewhere beyond Camden, we were idling
about an inlet where were boats and some fishermen and a trestle which
crossed it. Just as we were crossing it some men in a boat below
discovered the body of a possible suicide, in the water, days old and
discolored, but still intact and with the clothes of a man of at least
middle-class means. I was for leaving, being made a little sick by the
mere sight. Not so Peter. He was for joining in the effort which brought
the body to shore, and in a moment was back with the small group of
watermen, speculating and arguing as to the condition and character of
the dead man, making himself really one of the group. Finally he was
urging the men to search the pockets while some one went for the police.
But more than anything, with a hard and yet in its way humane realism
which put any courage of mine in that direction to the blush, he was all
for meditating on the state and nature of man, his chemical
components--chlorine, sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, potassium,
sodium, calcium, magnesium, oxygen--and speculating as to which
particular chemicals in combination gave the strange metallic blues,
greens, yellows and browns to the decaying flesh! He had a great stomach
for life. The fact that insects were at work shocked him not at all. He
speculated as to _these_, their duties and functions! He asserted
boldly that man was merely a chemical formula at best, that something
much wiser than he had prepared him, for some not very brilliant purpose
of his or its own perhaps, and that he or it, whoever or whatever he or
it was, was neither good nor bad, as we imagined such things, but both.
He at once went off into the mysteries--where, when with me at least, he
seemed to prefer to dwell--talked of the divinations of the Chaldeans,
how they studied the positions of the stars and the entrails of dead
animals before going to war, talked of the horrible fetiches of the
Africans, the tricks and speculations of the priests of Greek and Roman
temples, finally telling me the story of the ambitious eel-seller who
anchored the dead horse in the stream in order to have plenty of eels
every morning for market. I revolted. I declared he was sickening.
"My boy," he assured me, "you are too thin-skinned. You can't take life
that way. It's all good to me, whatever happens. We're here. We're not
running it. Why be afraid to look at it? The chemistry of a man's body
isn't any worse than the chemistry of anything else, and we're eating
the dead things we've killed all the time. A little more or a little
less in any direction--what difference?"
Apropos of this same a little later--to shock me, of course, as he well
knew he could--he assured me that in eating a dish of chop suey in a
Chinese restaurant, a very low one, he had found and eaten a part of the
little finger of a child, and that "it was very good--very good,
indeed."
"Dog!" I protested. "Swine! Thou ghoula!" but he merely chuckled
heartily and stuck to his tale!
But if I paint this side of him it is to round out his wonderful, to me
almost incredible, figure. Insisting on such things, he was still and
always warm and human, sympathetic, diplomatic and cautious, according
to his company, so that he was really acceptable anywhere. Peter would
never shock those who did not want to be shocked. A minute or two or
five after such a discourse as the above he might be describing some
marvelously beautiful process of pollination among the flowers, the
history of some medieval trade guild or gazing at a beautiful scene and
conveying to one by his very attitude his unspoken emotion.
After spending about two or three years in Philadelphia--which city
came to reflect for me the color of Peter's interests and mood--he
suddenly removed to Newark, having been nursing an arrangement with its
principal paper for some time. Some quarrel or dissatisfaction with the
director of his department caused him, without other notice, to paste
some crisp quotation from one of the poets on his desk and depart! In
Newark, a city to which before this I had paid not the slightest
attention, he found himself most happy; and I, living in New York close
at hand, felt that I possessed in it and him an earthly paradise.
Although it contained no more than 300,000 people and seemed, or had, a
drear factory realm only, he soon revealed it to me in quite another
light, because he was there. Very swiftly he found a wondrous canal
running right through it, under its market even, and we went walking
along its banks, out into the woods and fields. He found or created out
of an existing boardinghouse in a back street so colorful and gay a
thing that after a time it seemed to me to outdo that one of
Philadelphia. He joined a country club near Passaic, on the river of
that name, on the veranda of which we often dined. He found a Chinese
quarter with a restaurant or two; an amazing Italian section with a
restaurant; a man who had a $40,000 collection of rare Japanese and
Chinese curios, all in his rooms at the Essex County Insane Asylum, for
he was the chemist there; a man who was a playwright and manager in New
York; another who owned a newspaper syndicate; another who directed a
singing society; another who was president of a gun club; another who
owned and made or rather fired pottery for others. Peter was so restless
and vital that he was always branching out in a new direction. To my
astonishment he now took up the making and firing of pottery for
himself, being interested in reproducing various Chinese dishes and
vases of great beauty, the originals of which were in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. His plan was first to copy the design, then buy, shape or
bake the clay at some pottery, then paint or decorate with liquid
porcelain at his own home, and fire. In the course of six or eight
months, working in his rooms Saturdays and Sundays and some mornings
before going to the office, he managed to produce three or four which
satisfied him and which he kept plates of real beauty. The others he
gave away.
A little later, if you please, it was Turkish rug-making on a small
scale, the frame and materials for which he slowly accumulated, and then
providing himself with a pillow, Turkish-fashion, he crossed his legs
before it and began slowly but surely to produce a rug, the colors and
design of which were entirely satisfactory to me. As may be imagined, it
was slow and tedious work, undertaken at odd moments and when there was
nothing else for him to do, always when the light was good and never at
night, for he maintained that the coloring required the best of light.
Before this odd, homely, wooden machine, a combination of unpainted rods
and cords, he would sit, cross-legged or on a bench at times, and pound
and pick and tie and unravel--a most wearisome-looking task to me.
"For heaven's sake," I once observed, "couldn't you think of anything
more interestingly insane to do than this? It's the slowest, most
painstaking work I ever saw."
"That's just it, and that's just why I like it," he replied, never
looking at me but proceeding with his weaving in the most industrious
fashion. "You have just one outstanding fault, Dreiser. You don't know
how to make anything out of the little things of life. You want to
remember that this is an art, not a job. I'm discovering whether I can
make a Turkish carpet or not, and it gives me pleasure. If I can get so
much as one good spot of color worked out, one small portion of the
design, I'll be satisfied. I'll know then that I can do it, the whole
thing, don't you see? Some of these things have been the work of a
lifetime of one man. You call that a small thing? I don't. The pleasure
is in doing it, proving that you can, not in the rug itself." He clacked
and tied, congratulating himself vastly. In due course of time three or
four inches were finished, a soft and yet firm silky fabric, and he was
in great glee over it, showing it to all and insisting that in time (how
long? I often wondered) he would complete it and would then own a
splendid carpet.
It was at this time that he built about him in Newark a structure of
friendships and interests which, it seemed to me, promised to be for
life. He interested himself intensely in the paper with which he was
connected and although he was only the cartoonist, still it was not long
before various departments and elements in connection with it seemed to
reflect his presence and to be alive with his own good will and
enthusiasm. Publisher, editor, art director, managing editor and
business manager, were all in friendly contact with him. He took out
life insurance for the benefit of the wife and children he was later to
have! With the manager of the engraving department he was working out
problems in connection with copperplate engraving and printing; with the
official photographer, art photography; with the art director, some
scheme for enlarging the local museum in some way. With his enduring
love of the fantastic and ridiculous it was not long before he had
successfully planned and executed a hoax of the most ridiculous
character, a piece of idle drollery almost too foolish to think of, and
yet which eventually succeeded in exciting the natives of at least four
States and was telegraphed to and talked about in a Sunday feature way,
by newspapers all over the country, and finally involved Peter as an
actor and stage manager of the most vivid type imaginable. And yet it
was all done really to amuse himself, to see if he could do it, as he
often told me.
This particular hoax related to that silly old bugaboo of our boyhood
days, the escaped and wandering wild man, ferocious, blood-loving,
terrible. I knew nothing of it until Peter, one Sunday afternoon when we
were off for a walk a year or two after he had arrived in Newark,
suddenly announced apropos of nothing at all, "Dreiser, I've just hit
upon a great idea which I am working out with some of the boys down on
our paper. It's a dusty old fake, but it will do as well as any other,
better than if it were a really decent idea. I'm inventing a wild man.
You know how crazy the average dub is over anything strange,
different,'terrible.' Barnum was right, you know. There's one born every
minute. Well, I'm just getting this thing up now. It's as good as the
sacred white elephant or the blood-sweating hippopotamus. And what's
more, I'm going to stage it right here in little old Newark--and they'll
all fall for it, and don't you think they won't," and he chuckled most
ecstatically.
"For heaven's sake, what's coming now?" I sighed.
"Oh, very well. But I have it all worked out just the same. We're
beginning to run the preliminary telegrams every three or four days--one
from Ramblersville, South Jersey, let us say, another from Hohokus,
twenty-five miles farther on, four or five days later. By degrees as
spring comes on I'll bring him north--right up here into Essex County--a
genuine wild man, see, something fierce and terrible. We're giving him
long hair like a bison, red eyes, fangs, big hands and feet. He's
entirely naked--or will be when he gets here. He's eight feet tall. He
kills and eats horses, dogs, cattle, pigs, chickens. He frightens men
and women and children. I'm having him bound across lonely roads, look
in windows at night, stampede cattle and drive tramps and peddlers out
of the country. But say, wait and see. As summer comes on we'll make a
regular headliner of it. We'll give it pages on Sunday. We'll get the
rubes to looking for him in posses, offer rewards. Maybe some one will
actually capture and bring in some poor lunatic, a real wild man. You
can do anything if you just stir up the natives enough."
I laughed. "You're crazy," I said. "What a low comedian you really are,
Peter!"
Well, the weeks passed, and to mark progress he occasionally sent me
clippings of telegrams, cut not from his pages, if you please, but from
such austere journals as the _Sun_ and _World_ of New York, the _North
American_ of Philadelphia, the _Courant_ of Hartford, recording the
antics of his imaginary thing of the woods. Longish articles actually
began to appear here and there, in Eastern papers especially, describing
the exploits of this very elusive and moving demon. He had been seen in
a dozen fairly widely distributed places within the month, but always
coming northward. In one place he had killed three cows at once, in
another two, and eaten portions of them raw! Old Mrs. Gorswitch of
Dutchers Run, Pennsylvania, returning from a visit to her
daughter-in-law, Annie A. Gorswitch, and ambling along a lonely road in
Osgoroola County, was suddenly descended upon by a most horrific figure,
half man, half beast, very tall and with long hair and red, all but
bloody eyes who, looking at her with avid glance, made as if to seize
her, but a wagon approaching along the road from another direction, he
had desisted and fled, leaving old Mrs. Gorswitch in a faint upon the
ground. Barns and haystacks had been fired here and there, lonely widows
in distant cotes been made to abandon their homes through fear.... I
marveled at the assiduity and patience of the man.
One day in June or July following, being in Newark and asking Peter
quite idly about his wild man, he replied, "Oh, it's great, great!
Couldn't be better! He'll soon be here now. We've got the whole thing
arranged now for next Sunday or Saturday--depends on which day I can get
off. We're going to photograph him. Wanto come over?"
"What rot!" I said. "Who's going to pose? Where?"
"Well," he chuckled, "come along and see. You'll find out fast enough.
We've got an actual wild man. I got him. I'll have him out here in the
woods. If you don't believe it, come over. You wouldn't believe me when
I said I could get the natives worked up. Well, they are. Look at
these," and he produced clippings from rival papers. The wild man was
actually being seen in Essex County, not twenty-five miles from Newark.
He had ravaged the property of people in five different States. It was
assumed that he was a lunatic turned savage, or that he had escaped from
a circus or trading-ship wrecked on the Jersey coast (suggestions made
by Peter himself). His depredations, all told, had by now run into
thousands, speaking financially. Staid residents were excited. Rewards
for his capture were being offered in different places. Posses of irate
citizens were, and would continue to be, after him, armed to the teeth,
until he was captured. Quite remarkable developments might be expected
at any time ... I stared. It seemed too ridiculous, and it was, and back
of it all was smirking, chuckling Peter, the center and fountain of it!
"You dog!" I protested. "You clown!" He merely grinned.
Not to miss so interesting a dénouement as the actual capture of this
prodigy of the wilds, I was up early and off the following Sunday to
Newark, where in Peter's apartment in due time I found him, his rooms in
a turmoil, he himself busy stuffing things into a bag, outside an
automobile waiting and within it the staff photographer as well as
several others, all grinning, and all of whom, as he informed me, were
to assist in the great work of tracking, ambushing and, if possible,
photographing the dread peril.
"Yes, well, who's going to be him?" I insisted.
"Never mind! Never mind! Don't be so inquisitive," chortled Peter. "A
wild man has his rights and privileges, as well as any other. Remember,
I caution all of you to be respectful in his presence. He's very
sensitive, and he doesn't like newspapermen anyhow. He'll be
photographed, and he'll be wild. That's all you need to know."
In due time we arrived at as comfortable an abode for a wild man as well
might be. It was near the old Essex and Morris Canal, not far from
Boonton. A charming clump of brush and rock was selected, and here a
snapshot of a posse hunting, men peering cautiously from behind trees in
groups and looking as though they were most eager to discover something,
was made. Then Peter, slipping away--I suddenly saw him ambling toward
us, hair upstanding, body smeared with black muck, daubs of white about
the eyes, little tufts of wool about wrists and ankles and loins--as
good a figure of a wild man as one might wish, only not eight feet tall.
"Peter!" I said. "How ridiculous! You loon!"
"Have a care how you address me," he replied with solemn dignity. "A
wild man is a wild man. Our punctilio is not to be trifled with. I am of
the oldest, the most famous line of wild men extant. Touch me not." He
strode the grass with the air of a popular movie star, while he
discussed with the art director and photographer the most terrifying and
convincing attitudes of a wild man seen by accident and unconscious of
his pursuers.
"But you're not eight feet tall!" I interjected at one point.
"A small matter. A small matter," he replied airily. "I will be in the
picture. Nothing easier. We wild men, you know--"
Some of the views were excellent, most striking. He leered most terribly
from arras of leaves or indicated fright or cunning. The man was a good
actor. For years I retained and may still have somewhere a full set of
the pictures as well as the double-page spread which followed the next
week.
Well, the thing was appropriately discussed, as it should have been,
but the wild man got away, as was feared. He went into the nearby canal
and washed away all his terror, or rather he vanished into the dim
recesses of Peter's memory. He was only heard of a few times more in the
papers, his supposed body being found in some town in northeast
Pennsylvania--or in the small item that was "telegraphed" from there. As
for Peter, he emerged from the canal, or from its banks, a cleaner if
not a better man. He was grinning, combing his hair, adjusting his tie.
"What a scamp!" I insisted lovingly. "What an incorrigible trickster!"
"Dreiser, Dreiser," he chortled, "there's nothing like it. You should
not scoff. I am a public benefactor. I am really a creator. I have
created a being as distinct as any that ever lived. He is in many
minds--mine, yours. You know that you believe in him really. There he
was peeking out from between those bushes only fifteen minutes ago. And
he has made, and will make, thousands of people happy, thrill them, give
them a new interest. If Stevenson can create a Jekyll and Hyde, why
can't I create a wild man? I have. We have his picture to prove it. What
more do you wish?"
I acquiesced. All told, it was a delightful bit of foolery and art, and
Peter was what he was first and foremost, an artist in the grotesque and
the ridiculous.
For some time thereafter peace seemed to reign in his mind, only now it
was that the marriage and home and children idea began to grow. From
much of the foregoing it may have been assumed that Peter was out of
sympathy with the ordinary routine of life, despised the commonplace,
the purely practical. As a matter of fact it was just the other way
about. I never knew a man so radical in some of his viewpoints, so
versatile and yet so wholly, intentionally and cravingly, immersed in
the usual as Peter. He was all for creating, developing, brightening
life along simple rather than outré lines, in so far as he himself was
concerned. Nearly all of his arts and pleasures were decorative and
homey. A good grocer, a good barber, a good saloon-keeper, a good
tailor, a shoe maker, was just as interesting in his way to Peter as any
one or anything else, if not a little more so. He respected their lines,
their arts, their professions, and above all, where they had it, their
industry, sobriety and desire for fair dealing. He believed that
millions of men, especially those about him were doing the best they
could under the very severe conditions which life offered. He objected
to the idle, the too dull the swindlers and thieves as well as the
officiously puritanic or dogmatic. He resented, for himself at least,
solemn pomp and show. Little houses, little gardens, little porches,
simple cleanly neighborhoods with their air of routine, industry,
convention and order, fascinated him as apparently nothing else could.
He insisted that they were enough. A man did not need a great house
unless he was a public character with official duties.
"Dreiser," he would say in Philadelphia and Newark, if not before, "it's
in just such a neighborhood as this that some day I'm going to live. I'm
going to have my little _frau_, my seven children, my chickens, dog,
cat, canary, best German style, my garden, my birdbox, my pipe; and
Sundays, by God, I'll march 'em all off to church, wife and seven kids,
as regular as clockwork, shined shoes, pigtails and all, and I'll lead
the procession."
"Yes, yes," I said. "You talk."
"Well, wait and see. Nothing in this world means so much to me as the
good old orderly home stuff. One ought to live and die in a family. It's
the right way. I'm cutting up now, sowing my wild oats, but that's
nothing. I'm just getting ready to eventually settle down and live, just
as I tell you, and be an ideal orderly citizen. It's the only way. It's
the way nature intends us to do. All this early kid stuff is passing, a
sorting-out process. We get over it. Every fellow does, or ought to be
able to, if he's worth anything, find some one woman that he can live
with and stick by her. That makes the world that you and I like to live
in, and you know it. There's a psychic call in all of us to it, I think.
It's the genius of our civilization, to marry one woman and settle down.
And when I do, no more of this all-night stuff with this, that and the
other lady. I'll be a model husband and father, sure as you're standing
there. Don't you think I won't. Smile if you want to--it's so. I'll have
my garden. I'll be friendly with my neighbors. You can come over then
and help us put the kids to bed."
"Oh, Lord! This is a new bug now! We'll have the vine-covered cot idea
for a while, anyhow."
"Oh, all right. Scoff if you want to. You'll see."
Time went by. He was doing all the things I have indicated, living in a
kind of whirl of life. At the same time, from time to time, he would
come back to this thought. Once, it is true, I thought it was all over
with the little yellow-haired girl in Philadelphia. He talked of her
occasionally, but less and less. Out on the golf links near Passaic he
met another girl, one of a group that flourished there. I met her. She
was not unpleasing, a bit sensuous, rather attractive in dress and
manners, not very well informed, but gay, clever, up-to-date; such a
girl as would pass among other women as fairly satisfactory.
For a time Peter seemed greatly attracted to her. She danced, played a
little, was fair at golf and tennis, and she was, or pretended to be,
intensely interested in him. He confessed at last that he believed he
was in love with her.
"So it's all day with Philadelphia, is it?" I asked.
"It's a shame," he replied, "but I'm afraid so. I'm having a hell of a
time with myself, my alleged conscience, I tell you."
I heard little more about it. He had a fad for collecting rings at this
time, a whole casket full, like a Hindu prince, and he told me once he
was giving her her choice of them.
Suddenly he announced that it was "all off" and that he was going to
marry the maid of Philadelphia. He had thrown the solitaire engagement
ring he had given her down a sewer! At first he would confess nothing as
to the reason or the details, but being so close to me it eventually
came out. Apparently, to the others as to myself, he had talked much of
his simple home plans, his future children--the good citizen idea. He
had talked it to his new love also, and she had sympathized and agreed.
Yet one day, after he had endowed her with the engagement ring, some
one, a member of the golf club, came and revealed a tale. The girl was
not "straight." She had been, mayhap was even then, "intimate" with
other men--one anyhow. She was in love with Peter well enough, as she
insisted afterward, and willing to undertake the life he suggested, but
she had not broken with the old atmosphere completely, or if she had it
was still not believed that she had. There were those who could not
only charge, but prove. A compromising note of some kind sent to some
one was involved, turned over to Peter.
"Dreiser," he growled as he related the case to me, "it serves me right.
I ought to know better. I know the kind of woman I need. This one has
handed me a damned good wallop, and I deserve it. I might have guessed
that she wasn't suited to me. She was really too free--a life-lover more
than a wife. That home stuff! She was just stringing me because she
liked me. She isn't really my sort, not simple enough."
"But you loved her, I thought?"
"I did, or thought I did. Still, I used to wonder too. There were many
ways about her that troubled me. You think I'm kidding about this home
and family idea, but I'm not. It suits me, however flat it looks to you.
I want to do that, live that way, go through the normal routine
experience, and I'm going to do it."
"But how did you break it off with her so swiftly?" I asked curiously.
"Well, when I heard this I went direct to her and put it up to her. If
you'll believe me she never even denied it. Said it was all true, but
that she was in love with me all right, and would change and be all that
I wanted her to be."
"Well, that's fair enough," I said, "if she loves you. You're no saint
yourself, you know. If you'd encourage her, maybe she'd make good."
"Well, maybe, but I don't think so really," he returned, shaking his
head. "She likes me, but not enough, I'm afraid. She wouldn't run
straight, now that she's had this other. She'd mean to maybe, but she
wouldn't. I feel it about her. And anyhow I don't want to take any
chances. I like her--I'm crazy about her really, but I'm through. I'm
going to marry little Dutchy if she'll have me, and cut out this
old-line stuff. You'll have to stand up with me when I do."
In three months more the new arrangement was consummated and little
Dutchy--or Zuleika, as he subsequently named her--was duly brought to
Newark and installed, at first in a charming apartment in a
conventionally respectable and cleanly neighborhood, later in a small
house with a "yard," lawn front and back, in one of the homiest of home
neighborhoods in Newark. It was positively entertaining to observe
Peter not only attempting to assume but assuming the rôle of the
conventional husband, and exactly nine months after he had been married,
to the hour, a father in this humble and yet, in so far as his
particular home was concerned, comfortable world. I have no space here
for more than the barest outline. I have already indicated his views,
most emphatically expressed and forecasted. He fulfilled them all to the
letter, up to the day of his death. In so far as I could make out, he
made about as satisfactory a husband and father and citizen as I have
ever seen. He did it deliberately, in cold reason, and yet with a warmth
and flare which puzzled me all the more since it _was_ based on reason
and forethought. I misdoubted. I was not quite willing to believe that
it would work out, and yet if ever a home was delightful, with a
charming and genuinely "happy" atmosphere, it was Peter's.
"Here she is," he observed the day he married her, "me _frau_--Zuleika.
Isn't she a peach? Ever see any nicer hair than that? And these here,
now, pink cheeks? What? Look at 'em! And her little Dutchy nose! Isn't
it cute? Oh, Dutchy! And right here in me vest pocket is the golden band
wherewith I am to be chained to the floor, the domestic hearth. And
right there on her finger is my badge of prospective serfdom." Then, in
a loud aside to me, "In six months I'll be beating her. Come now,
Zuleika. We have to go through with this. You have to swear to be my
slave."
And so they were married.
And in the home afterward he was as busy and helpful and noisy as any
man about the house could ever hope to be. He was always fussing about
after hours "putting up" something or arranging his collections or
helping Zuleika wash and dry the dishes, or showing her how to cook
something if she didn't know how. He was running to the store or
bringing home things from the downtown market. Months before the first
child was born he was declaring most shamelessly, "In a few months now,
Dreiser, Zuleika and I are going to have our first calf. The bones roll
for a boy, but you never can tell. I'm offering up prayers and
oblations--both of us are. I make Zuleika pray every night. And say,
when it comes, no spoiling-the-kid stuff. No bawling or rocking it to
sleep nights permitted. Here's one kid that's going to be raised right.
I've worked out all the rules. No trashy baby-foods. Good old specially
brewed Culmbacher for the mother, and the kid afterwards if it wants it.
This is one family in which law and order are going to prevail--good old
'dichtig, wichtig' law and order."
I used to chuckle the while I verbally denounced him for his coarse,
plebeian point of view and tastes.
In a little while the child came, and to his immense satisfaction it was
a boy. I never saw a man "carry on" so, make over it, take such a
whole-souled interest in all those little things which supposedly made
for its health and well-being. For the first few weeks he still talked
of not having it petted or spoiled, but at the same time he was surely
and swiftly changing, and by the end of that time had become the most
doting, almost ridiculously fond papa that I ever saw. Always the child
must be in his lap at the most unseemly hours, when his wife would
permit it. When he went anywhere, or they, although they kept a maid the
child must be carried along by him on his shoulder. He liked nothing
better than to sit and hold it close, rocking in a rocking-chair
American style and singing, or come tramping into my home in New York,
the child looking like a woolen ball. At night if it stirred or
whimpered he was up and looking. And the baby-clothes!--and the
cradle!--and the toys!--colored rubber balls and soldiers the first or
second or third week!
"What about that stern discipline that was to be put in force here--no
rocking, no getting up at night to coddle a weeping infant?"
"Yes, I know. That's all good stuff before you get one. I've got one of
my own now, and I've got a new light on this. Say, Dreiser, take my
advice. Go through the routine. Don't try to escape. Have a kid or two
or three. There's a psychic punch to it you can't get any other way.
It's nature's way. It's a great scheme. You and your girl and your kid."
As he talked he rocked, holding the baby boy to his breast. It was
wonderful.
And Mrs. Peter--how happy she seemed. There was light in that house,
flowers, laughter, good fellowship. As in his old rooms so in this new
home he gathered a few of his old friends around him and some new ones,
friends of this region. In the course of a year or two he was on the
very best terms of friendship with his barber around the corner, his
grocer, some man who had a saloon and bowling alley in the neighborhood,
his tailor, and then just neighbors. The milkman, the coal man, the
druggist and cigar man at the next corner--all could tell you where
Peter lived. His little front "yard" had two beds of flowers all summer
long, his lot in the back was a garden--lettuce, onions, peas, beans.
Peter was always happiest when he could be home working, playing with
the baby, pushing him about in a go-cart, working in his garden, or
lying on the floor making something--an engraving or print or a box
which he was carving, the infant in some simple gingham romper crawling
about. He was always busy, but never too much so for a glance or a
mock-threatening, "Now say, not so much industry there. You leave my
things alone," to the child. Of a Sunday he sat out on the front porch
smoking, reading the Sunday paper, congratulating himself on his happy
married life, and most of the time holding the infant. Afternoons he
would carry it somewhere, anywhere, in his arms to his friends, the
Park, New York, to see me. At breakfast, dinner, supper the heir
presumptive was in a high-chair beside him.
"Ah, now, here's a rubber spoon. Beat with that. It's less destructive
and less painful physically."
"How about a nice prust" (crust) "dipped in bravery" (gravy) "--heh? Do
you suppose that would cut any of your teeth?"
"Zuleika, this son of yours seems to think a spoonful of beer or two
might not hurt him. What do you say?"
Occasionally, especially of a Saturday evening, he wanted to go bowling
and yet he wanted his heir. The problem was solved by fitting the latter
into a tight little sweater and cap and carrying him along on his
shoulder, into the bar for a beer, thence to the bowling alley, where
young hopeful was fastened into a chair on the side lines while Peter
and myself or some of his friends bowled. At ten or ten-thirty or
eleven, as the case might be, he was ready to leave, but before that
hour les ongfong might be sound asleep, hanging against Peter's scarf,
his interest in his toes or thumbs having given out.
"Peter, look at that," I observed once. "Don't you think we'd better
take him home?"
"Home nothing! Let him sleep. He can sleep here as well as anywhere, and
besides I like to look at him." And in the room would be a great crowd,
cigars, beers, laughter, and Peter's various friends as used to the
child's presence and as charmed by it as he was. He was just the man who
could do such things. His manner and point of view carried conviction.
He believed in doing all that he wanted to do simply and naturally, and
more and more as he went along people not only respected, I think they
adored him, especially the simple homely souls among whom he chose to
move and have his being.
About this time there developed among those in his immediate
neighborhood a desire to elect him to some political position, that of
councilman, or State assemblyman, in the hope or thought that he would
rise to something higher. But he would none of it--not then anyhow.
Instead, about this time or a very little later, after the birth of his
second child (a girl), he devoted himself to the composition of a
brilliant piece of prose poetry ("Wolf"), which, coming from him, did
not surprise me in the least. If he had designed or constructed a great
building, painted a great picture, entered politics and been elected
governor or senator, I would have taken it all as a matter of course. He
could have. The material from which anything may rise was there. I asked
him to let me offer it to the publishing house with which I was
connected, and I recall with interest the comment of the oldest and most
experienced of the bookmen and salesmen among us. "You'll never make
much, if anything, on this book. It's too good, too poetic. But whether
it pays or not, I vote yes. I'd rather lose money on something like this
than make it on some of the trash we do make it on."
Amen. I agreed then, and I agree now.
The last phase of Peter was as interesting and dramatic as any of the
others. His married life was going forward about as he had planned. His
devotion to his home and children, his loving wife, his multiplex
interests, his various friends, was always a curiosity to me,
especially in view of his olden days. One day he was over in New York
visiting one of his favorite Chinese importing companies, through which
he had secured and was still securing occasional objects of art. He had
come down to me in my office at the Butterick Building to see if I would
not come over the following Saturday as usual and stay until Monday. He
had secured something, was planning something. I should see. At the
elevator he waved me a gay "so long--see you Saturday!"
But on Friday, as I was talking with some one at my desk, a telegram was
handed me. It was from Mrs. Peter and read: "Peter died today at two of
pneumonia. Please come."
I could scarcely believe it. I did not know that he had even been sick.
His little yellow-haired wife! The two children! His future! His
interests! I dropped everything and hurried to the nearest station. En
route I speculated on the mysteries on which he had so often
speculated--death, dissolution, uncertainty, the crude indifference or
cruelty of Nature. What would become of Mrs. Peter? His children?
I arrived only to find a home atmosphere destroyed as by a wind that
puts out a light. There was Peter, stiff and cold, and in the other
rooms his babies, quite unconscious of what had happened, prattling as
usual, and Mrs. Peter practically numb and speechless. It had come so
suddenly, so out of a clear sky, that she could not realize, could not
even tell me at first. The doctor was there--also a friend of his, the
nearest barber! Also two or three representatives from his paper, the
owner of the bowling alley, the man who had the $40,000 collection of
curios. All were stunned, as I was. As his closest friend, I took
charge: wired his relatives, went to an undertaker who knew him to
arrange for his burial, in Newark or Philadelphia, as his wife should
wish, she having no connection with Newark other than Peter.
It was most distressing, the sense of dull despair and unwarranted
disaster which hung over the place. It was as though impish and pagan
forces, or malign ones outside life, had committed a crime of the
ugliest character. On Monday, the day he saw me, he was well. On Tuesday
morning he had a slight cold but insisted on running out somewhere
without his overcoat, against which his wife protested. Tuesday night
he had a fever and took quinine and aspirin and a hot whiskey.
Wednesday morning he was worse and a doctor was called, but it was not
deemed serious. Wednesday night he was still worse and pneumonia had set
in. Thursday he was lower still, and by noon a metal syphon of oxygen
was sent for, to relieve the sense of suffocation setting in. Thursday
night he was weak and sinking, but expected to come round--and still, so
unexpected was the attack, so uncertain the probability of anything
fatal, that no word was sent, even to me. Friday morning he was no worse
and no better. "If he was no worse by night he might pull through." At
noon he was seized with a sudden sinking spell. Oxygen was applied by
his wife and a nurse, and the doctor sent for. By one-thirty he was
lower still, very low. "His face was blue, his lips ashen," his wife
told me. "We put the oxygen tube to his mouth and I said 'Can you speak,
Peter?' I was so nervous and frightened. He moved his head a little to
indicate 'no.' 'Peter,' I said, 'you mustn't let go! You must fight!
Think of me! Think of the babies!' I was a little crazy, I think, with
fear. He looked at me very fixedly. He stiffened and gritted his teeth
in a great effort. Then suddenly he collapsed and lay still. He was
dead."
I could not help thinking of the force and energy--able at the last
minute, when he could not speak--to "grit his teeth" and "fight," a
minute before his death. What is the human spirit, or mind, that it can
fight so, to the very last? I felt as though some one, something, had
ruthlessly killed him, committed plain, unpunished murder--nothing more
and nothing less.
And there were his cases of curios, his rug, his prints, his dishes, his
many, many schemes, his book to come out soon. I gazed and marveled. I
looked at his wife and babies, but could say nothing. It spelled, what
such things always spell, in the face of all our dreams, crass chance or
the willful, brutal indifference of Nature to all that relates to man.
If he is to prosper he must do so without her aid.
That same night, sleeping in the room adjoining that in which was the
body, a pale candle burning near it, I felt as though Peter were walking
to and fro, to and fro, past me and into the room of his wife beyond,
thinking and grieving. His imagined wraith seemed horribly depressed
and distressed. Once he came over and moved his hand (something) over my
face. I felt him walking into the room where were his wife and kiddies,
but he could make no one see, hear, understand. I got up and looked at
his _cadaver_ a long time, then went to bed again.
The next day and the next and the next were filled with many things. His
mother and sister came on from the West as well as the mother and
brother of his wife. I had to look after his affairs, adjusting the
matter of insurance which he left, his art objects, the burial of his
body "in consecrated ground" in Philadelphia, with the consent and aid
of the local Catholic parish rector, else no burial. His mother desired
it, but he had never been a good Catholic and there was trouble. The
local parish assistant refused me, even the rector. Finally I threatened
the good father with an appeal to the diocesan bishop on the ground of
plain common sense and courtesy to a Catholic family, if not charity to
a tortured mother and wife--and obtained consent. All along I felt as if
a great crime had been committed by some one, foul murder. I could not
get it out of my mind, and it made me angry, not sad.
Two, three, five, seven years later, I visited the little family in
Philadelphia. The wife was with her mother and father in a simple little
home street in a factory district, secretary and stenographer to an
architect. She was little changed--a little stouter, not so carefree,
industrious, patient. His boy, the petted F----, could not even recall
his father, the girl not at all of course. And in the place were a few
of his prints, two or three Chinese dishes, pottered by himself, his
loom with the unfinished rug. I remained for dinner and dreamed old
dreams, but I was uncomfortable and left early. And Mrs. Peter,
accompanying me to the steps, looked after me as though I, alone, was
all that was left of the old life.
_A Doer of the Word_
Noank is a little played-out fishing town on the southeastern coast of
Connecticut, lying half-way between New London and Stonington. Once it
was a profitable port for mackerel and cod fishing. Today its wharves
are deserted of all save a few lobster smacks. There is a shipyard,
employing three hundred and fifty men, a yacht-building establishment,
with two or three hired hands; a sail-loft, and some dozen or so shops
or sheds, where the odds and ends of fishing life are made and sold.
Everything is peaceful. The sound of the shipyard axes and hammers can
be heard for miles over the quiet waters of the bay. In the sunny lane
which follows the line of the shore, and along which a few shops
struggle in happy-go-lucky disorder, may be heard the voices and noises
of the workers at their work. Water gurgling about the stanchions of the
docks, the whistle of some fisherman as he dawdles over his nets, or
puts his fish ashore, the whirr of the single high-power sewing machine
in the sail-loft, often mingle in a pleasant harmony, and invite the
mind to repose and speculation.
I was in a most examining and critical mood that summer, looking into
the nature and significance of many things, and was sitting one day in
the shed of the maker of sailboats, where a half-dozen characters of the
village were gathered, when some turn in the conversation brought up the
nature of man. He is queer, he is restless; life is not so very much
when you come to look upon many phases of it.
"Did any of you ever know a contented man?" I inquired idly, merely for
the sake of something to say.
There was silence for a moment, and one after another met my roving
glance with a thoughtful, self-involved and retrospective eye.
Old Mr. Main was the first to answer.
"Yes, I did. One."
"So did I," put in the sailboat maker, as he stopped in his work to
think about it.
"Yes, and I did," said a dark, squat, sunny, little old fisherman, who
sold cunners for bait in a little hut next door.
"Maybe you and me are thinking of the same one, Jacob," said old Mr.
Main, looking inquisitively at the boat-builder.
"I think we've all got the same man in mind, likely," returned the
builder.
"Who is he?" I asked.
"Charlie Potter," said the builder.
"That's the man!" exclaimed Mr. Main.
"Yes, I reckon Charlie Potter is contented, if anybody be," said an old
fisherman who had hitherto been silent.
Such unanimity of opinion struck me forcibly. Charlie Potter--what a
humble name; not very remarkable, to say the least. And to hear him so
spoken of in this restless, religious, quibbling community made it all
the more interesting.
"So you really think he is contented, do you?" I asked.
"Yes, sir! Charlie Potter is a contented man," replied Mr. Main, with
convincing emphasis.
"Well," I returned, "that's rather interesting. What sort of a man is
he?"
"Oh, he's just an ordinary man, not much of anybody. Fishes and builds
boats occasionally," put in the boat-builder.
"Is that all? Nothing else?"
"He preaches now and then--not regularly," said Mr. Main.
A-ha! I thought. A religionist!
"A preacher is expected to set a good example," I said.
"He ain't a regular preacher," said Mr. Main, rather quickly. "He's just
kind of around in religious work."
"What do you mean?" I asked curiously, not quite catching the import of
this "around."
"Well," answered the boat builder, "he don't take any money for what he
does. He ain't got anything."
"What does he live on then?" I persisted, still wondering at the
significance of "around in religious work."
"I don't know. He used to fish for a living. Fishes yet once in a while,
I believe."
"He makes models of yachts," put in one of the bystanders. "He sold the
New Haven Road one for two hundred dollars here not long ago."
A vision of a happy-go-lucky Jack-of-all-trades arose before me. A
visionary--a theorist.
"What else?" I asked, hoping to draw them out. "What makes you all
think he is contented? What does he do that makes him so contented?"
"Well," said Mr. Main, after a considerable pause and with much of
sympathetic emphasis in his voice, "Charlie Potter is just a good man,
that's all. That's why he's contented. He does as near as he can what he
thinks he ought to by other people--poor people."
"You won't find anybody with a kinder heart than Charlie Potter," put in
the boat-builder. "That's the trouble with him, really. He's too good.
He don't look after himself right, I say. A fellow has to look out for
himself some in this world. If he don't, no one else will."
"Right you are, Henry," echoed a truculent sea voice from somewhere.