ONCE the ice was broken in this way intimacy with these twain came fast
enough, although I never became quite as intimate with Dick as I did
with Peter, largely because I could not think him as important. Wood had
some feminine characteristics; he could be very jealous of anybody’s
interest in Peter as well as Peter’s interest in anybody else. He was
big enough, at times, to see the pettiness of this and try to rise above
it, but at other times it would show. Years later McCord confided to me
in the most amused way how, when I first appeared on the scene, Dick at
once began to belittle me and to resent my obvious desire to “break in,”
as he phrased it, these two, according to Dick, having established some
excluding secret union.
But the union was not exclusive, in so far as Peter was concerned.
Shortly after my arrival young Hartung had begun running into the art
room (so Peter told me) with amazing tales of the new man, his exploits
in Chicago. I had been sent for to come to this paper—that was the great
thing. I was vouched for by no less a person than John T. McEnnis, one
of the famous newspaper men of St. Louis and a former city editor of
this same paper; also by a Mr. Somebody (the Washington correspondent of
the paper), for whom I had worked in Chicago on the World’s Fair. He had
hurried to the art department with his tales of me, wishing, I fancy, to
be on friendly and happy terms there. Dick, however, considered
Hartung’s judgment as less than nothing, himself an upstart, a mere
office rat; to have him endeavor to introduce anybody was too much. At
first he received me very coldly, then finding me perhaps better than he
thought, he hastened to make friends with me.
The halcyon hours with these two that followed. Not infrequently Peter
and Dick would dine together at some downtown restaurant; or, if a rush
of work were on and they were compelled to linger, they had a late
supper in some German saloon. It was Peter who first invited me to one
of these late séances, and later Wood did the same, but this last was
based on another development in connection with myself which I should
narrate here.
The office of the _Globe_ proved a sprouting-bed for incipient literary
talent. Hazard had, some fifteen or eighteen months before, in company
with another newspaper man of whom later I heard amazing things, written
a novel entitled _Theo_, which was plainly a bog-fire kindled by those
blazing French suns, Zola and Balzac. The scene was laid in Paris
(imagine two Western newspaper men who had never been out of America
writing a novel of French life and laying it in Paris!) and had much of
the atmosphere of Zola’s _Nana_, plus the delicious idealism of Balzac’s
_The Great Man from the Provinces_. Never having read either of these
authors at this time, I did not see the similarity, but later I saw it
plainly. One or both of these men had fed up on the French realists to
such an extent that they were able to create the illusion of France (for
me at least) and at the same time to fire me with a desire to create
something, perhaps a novel of this kind but preferably a play. It seemed
intensely beautiful to me at the time, this book, with its frank
pictures of raw, greedy, sensual human nature, and its open pictures of
self-indulgence and vice.
The way this came about was interesting but I would not relate it save
that it had such a marked effect on me. I was sitting in the city
reportorial room later one gloomy December afternoon, having returned
from a fruitless assignment, when a letter was handed me. It was
postmarked Chicago and addressed in the handwriting of Alice. Up to then
I had allowed matters to drift, having, as I have said, written but one
letter in which I apologized rather indifferently for having come away
without seeing her. But my conscience had been paining me so much that
when I saw her writing I started. I tore the letter open and read with a
sense of shame:
“Dear Theo:
“I got your letter the day you left, but then it was too late. I
know what you say is true, about your being called away, and I
don’t blame you. I’m only sorry our quarrel” (there had been
none save of my making) “didn’t let you come to see me before
you left. Still, that was my fault too, I guess. I can’t blame
you entirely for that.
“Anyhow, Theo, that isn’t what I’m writing you for. You know
that you haven’t been just the same to me as you once were. I
know how you feel. I have felt it too. I want to know if you
won’t send me back the letters I wrote you. You won’t want them
now. Please send them, Theo, and believe I am as ever your
friend,
“ALICE.”
There was a little blank space on the paper, and then:
“I stood by the window last night and looked out on the street.
The moon was shining and those dead trees over the way were
waving in the wind. I saw the moon on that little pool of water
over in the field. It looked like silver. Oh, Theo, I wish I
were dead.”
As I read this I jumped up and clutched the letter. The pathos of it cut
me to the quick. To think I should have left her so! To think I should
be here and she there! Why hadn’t I written? Why had I shilly-shallied
these many days? Of course she wished to die. And I—what of me?
I went over the situation and tried to figure out what I should do.
Should I send for her? Twenty dollars a week was very little for two. My
legitimate expenses made a total of eleven a week. I wished to keep
myself looking well, to have a decent room, to eat three fair meals a
day. And I was in no position to return to Chicago, where I had earned
less. Then my new friendships with Wood and McCord as well as with other
newspaper men, nearly all of whom liked to drink, were costing me
something extra; I could not associate with them without buying an
occasional drink. I did not see where I was to save much or how I could
support a wife. In addition, there was the newness of my position here.
I could not very well leave it now, having just come from Chicago. By
nature where things material of futurial were concerned I was timid, but
little inclined to battle for my rights or desires, and consequently not
often realizing them. I was in a trying situation, for I had, as I have
said, let it appear to Alice that money was no object. With the vanity
of youth, I had always talked of my good salary and comfortable
position, and now that this salary and comfortable position were to be
put to the test I did not know what to do about it. Honesty would have
dictated a heartfelt confession, of course.
But I made none. Instead I wavered between two horns of an
ever-recurring dilemma. Sympathizing with the pain which Alice was
suffering, and alive to my own loss of honor and happiness, still I
hesitated to pull down the fine picture of myself which I had so
artistically built up, to reveal myself as I really was, a man unable to
marry on his present salary. If I had loved her more, if I had really
respected her, if I had not looked upon her as one who might be so
easily put aside, I would have done something about it. My natural
tendency was to drift, to wait and see, suffering untold agonies in the
meanwhile. This I was preparing to do now.
These mental stresses were always sufficient, however, to throw me into
a soulful mood. And now as I looked out of the window on the “fast
widowing sky” it was with an ache that rivaled in intensity those
melancholy moods we sometimes find interpreted by music. Indeed my heart
was torn by the inextricable problems which life seemed ever to present
and I fairly wrung my hands as I looked into the face of the hurrying
world. How it was hastening away! How swiftly and insensibly my own life
was slipping by! The few sweets which I had thus far tasted were always
accompanied by such bitter repinings. No pleasure was without pain, as I
had already seen, and life offered no solution. Only silence and the
grave ended it all.
My body was racked with a fine tremor, my brain ached. I went to my desk
and took up a pencil. I sat looking into the face of the tangle as one
might into the gathering front of a storm. Words moved in my brain, then
bubbled, then marshaled themselves into curious lines and rhythms. I put
my pencil to paper and wrote line after line.
Presently I saw that I was writing a poem but that it was rough and
needed modifying and polishing. I was in a great fever to change it and
did so but more eager to go on with my idea, which was about this tangle
of life. I became so moved and interested that I almost forgot Alice in
the process. When I read it over it seemed but a poor reflection of the
thoughts I had felt, the great sad mood I was in. Then I sat there,
dissatisfied and unhappy, resolving to write Alice and tell her all.
I took a pen and wrote her that I could not marry her now, that I was in
no position to do so. Later, if I found myself in better shape
financially, I would come back. I told her that I did not want to send
back her letters, that I did not wish to think our love was at an end. I
had not meant to run away. I closed by saying that I still loved her and
that the picture she had painted of herself standing at the window in
the moonlight had torn my heart. But I could not write it as effectually
as I might have, for I was haunted by the idea that I should never keep
my word. Something kept telling me that it was not wise, that I didn’t
really want to.
While I was writing Hazard came into the room and glanced over my
shoulder to where the poem was lying. “What you doing, Dreiser? Writing
poetry?”
“Trying to,” I replied a little shamefacedly. “I don’t seem to be able
to make much of it, though.” The while I was wondering at the novelty of
being taken for a poet. It seemed such a fine thing to be.
“There’s no money in it,” he observed helpfully. “You can’t sell ’em.
I’ve written tons of ’em, but it don’t do any good. You’d better be
putting your time on a book or a play.”
A book or a play! I sat up. To be considered a writer, a dramatist—even
a possible dramatist—raised me in my own estimation. Why, at this rate I
might become one—who knows?
“I know it isn’t profitable,” I said. “Still, it might be if I wrote
them well enough. It would be a great thing to be a great poet.”
Hazard smiled sardonically. From his pinnacle of twenty-six years such
aspirations seemed ridiculous. I might be a good newspaper man (I think
he was willing to admit that), but a poet!
The discussion took the turn of book- and play-writing. He had written a
book in connection with Young, I think his name was. He had lately been
thinking of writing a play. He expatiated on the money there was to be
made out of this, the great name some playwrights achieved. Look at
Augustus Thomas now, who had once worked on the _Star_ here. One of his
pieces was then running in St. Louis. Look at Henry Blossom, once a St.
Louis society boy, one of whose books was now in the local bookstore
windows, a hit. To my excited mind the city was teeming with brilliant
examples. Eugene Field had once worked here, on this very paper; Mark
Twain had idled about here for a time, drunk and hopeless; W. C. Brann
had worked on and gone from this paper; William Marion Reedy the same.
I returned to my desk after a time, greatly stirred by this
conversation. My gloom was dissipated. Hazard had promised to let me
read this book. This world was a splendid place for talent, I thought.
It bestowed success and honor upon those who could succeed. Plays or
books, or both, were the direct entrance to every joy which the heart
could desire. Something of the rumored wonder and charm of the lives of
successful playwrights came to me, their studios, their summer homes and
the like. Here at last, then, was the equivalent of Dick’s wealthy girl!
I sat thinking about plays somewhat modified in my grief over Alice for
the nonce, but none the less aware of its tremendous sadness. I read
over my poem and thought it good, even beautiful. I must be a poet! I
copied it and put a duplicate in Alice’s letter, and folded my own copy
and put it in my pocket, close to my heart. It seemed as though I had
just forged a golden key to a world of beauty and light where sorrow and
want could never be.
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