I
“Ne raillons pas les fous; leur folie dure plus longtemps que la
nôtre.... Voila toute la différence.”
Toward the end of the year 1920 the Government of the United States had
practically completed the programme, adopted during the last months
of President Winthrop’s administration. The country was apparently
tranquil. Everybody knows how the Tariff and Labour questions were
settled. The war with Germany, incident on that country’s seizure of
the Samoan Islands, had left no visible scars upon the republic, and
the temporary occupation of Norfolk by the invading army had been
forgotten in the joy over repeated naval victories, and the subsequent
ridiculous plight of General Von Gartenlaube’s forces in the State of
New Jersey. The Cuban and Hawaiian investments had paid one hundred per
cent and the territory of Samoa was well worth its cost as a coaling
station. The country was in a superb state of defence. Every coast
city had been well supplied with land fortifications; the army under
the parental eye of the General Staff, organized according to the
Prussian system, had been increased to 300,000 men, with a territorial
reserve of a million; and six magnificent squadrons of cruisers and
battle-ships patrolled the six stations of the navigable seas, leaving
a steam reserve amply fitted to control home waters. The gentlemen from
the West had at last been constrained to acknowledge that a college
for the training of diplomats was as necessary as law schools are for
the training of barristers; consequently we were no longer represented
abroad by incompetent patriots. The nation was prosperous; Chicago, for
a moment paralyzed after a second great fire, had risen from its ruins,
white and imperial, and more beautiful than the white city which had
been built for its plaything in 1893. Everywhere good architecture was
replacing bad, and even in New York, a sudden craving for decency had
swept away a great portion of the existing horrors. Streets had been
widened, properly paved and lighted, trees had been planted, squares
laid out, elevated structures demolished and underground roads built to
replace them. The new government buildings and barracks were fine bits
of architecture, and the long system of stone quays which completely
surrounded the island had been turned into parks which proved a
god-send to the population. The subsidizing of the state theatre and
state opera brought its own reward. The United States National Academy
of Design was much like European institutions of the same kind. Nobody
envied the Secretary of Fine Arts, either his cabinet position or his
portfolio. The Secretary of Forestry and Game Preservation had a much
easier time, thanks to the new system of National Mounted Police. We
had profited well by the latest treaties with France and England; the
exclusion of foreign-born Jews as a measure of self-preservation, the
settlement of the new independent negro state of Suanee, the checking
of immigration, the new laws concerning naturalization, and the gradual
centralization of power in the executive all contributed to national
calm and prosperity. When the Government solved the Indian problem and
squadrons of Indian cavalry scouts in native costume were substituted
for the pitiable organizations tacked on to the tail of skeletonized
regiments by a former Secretary of War, the nation drew a long sigh of
relief. When, after the colossal Congress of Religions, bigotry and
intolerance were laid in their graves and kindness and charity began to
draw warring sects together, many thought the millennium had arrived,
at least in the new world which after all is a world by itself.
But self-preservation is the first law, and the United States had to
look on in helpless sorrow as Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium writhed
in the throes of Anarchy, while Russia, watching from the Caucasus,
stooped and bound them one by one.
In the city of New York the summer of 1899 was signalized by the
dismantling of the Elevated Railroads. The summer of 1900 will live in
the memories of New York people for many a cycle; the Dodge Statue was
removed in that year. In the following winter began that agitation for
the repeal of the laws prohibiting suicide which bore its final fruit
in the month of April, 1920, when the first Government Lethal Chamber
was opened on Washington Square.
I had walked down that day from Dr. Archer’s house on Madison Avenue,
where I had been as a mere formality. Ever since that fall from my
horse, four years before, I had been troubled at times with pains in
the back of my head and neck, but now for months they had been absent,
and the doctor sent me away that day saying there was nothing more to
be cured in me. It was hardly worth his fee to be told that; I knew
it myself. Still I did not grudge him the money. What I minded was
the mistake which he made at first. When they picked me up from the
pavement where I lay unconscious, and somebody had mercifully sent a
bullet through my horse’s head, I was carried to Dr. Archer, and he,
pronouncing my brain affected, placed me in his private asylum where I
was obliged to endure treatment for insanity. At last he decided that I
was well, and I, knowing that my mind had always been as sound as his,
if not sounder, “paid my tuition” as he jokingly called it, and left.
I told him, smiling, that I would get even with him for his mistake,
and he laughed heartily, and asked me to call once in a while. I did
so, hoping for a chance to even up accounts, but he gave me none, and I
told him I would wait.
The fall from my horse had fortunately left no evil results; on the
contrary it had changed my whole character for the better. From a lazy
young man about town, I had become active, energetic, temperate, and
above all—oh, above all else—ambitious. There was only one thing
which troubled me, I laughed at my own uneasiness, and yet it troubled
me.
During my convalescence I had bought and read for the first time, _The
King in Yellow_. I remember after finishing the first act that it
occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and flung the book
into the fireplace; the volume struck the barred grate and fell open
on the hearth in the firelight. If I had not caught a glimpse of the
opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but
as I stooped to pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page,
and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that
I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and
crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept
and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet.
This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where
black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts
lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of
Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask.
I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world
with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity,
irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King
in Yellow. When the French Government seized the translated copies
which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to
read it. It is well known how the book spread like an infectious
disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out
here, confiscated there, denounced by Press and pulpit, censured even
by the most advanced of literary anarchists. No definite principles
had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no
convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard,
yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been
struck in _The King in Yellow_, all felt that human nature could not
bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest
poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only
allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.
It was, I remember, the 13th day of April, 1920, that the first
Government Lethal Chamber was established on the south side of
Washington Square, between Wooster Street and South Fifth Avenue. The
block which had formerly consisted of a lot of shabby old buildings,
used as cafés and restaurants for foreigners, had been acquired by
the Government in the winter of 1898. The French and Italian cafés
and restaurants were torn down; the whole block was enclosed by a
gilded iron railing, and converted into a lovely garden with lawns,
flowers and fountains. In the centre of the garden stood a small,
white building, severely classical in architecture, and surrounded by
thickets of flowers. Six Ionic columns supported the roof, and the
single door was of bronze. A splendid marble group of the “Fates” stood
before the door, the work of a young American sculptor, Boris Yvain,
who had died in Paris when only twenty-three years old.
The inauguration ceremonies were in progress as I crossed University
Place and entered the square. I threaded my way through the silent
throng of spectators, but was stopped at Fourth Street by a cordon of
police. A regiment of United States lancers were drawn up in a hollow
square round the Lethal Chamber. On a raised tribune facing Washington
Park stood the Governor of New York, and behind him were grouped the
Mayor of New York and Brooklyn, the Inspector-General of Police, the
Commandant of the state troops, Colonel Livingston, military aid to
the President of the United States, General Blount, commanding at
Governor’s Island, Major-General Hamilton, commanding the garrison of
New York and Brooklyn, Admiral Buffby of the fleet in the North River,
Surgeon-General Lanceford, the staff of the National Free Hospital,
Senators Wyse and Franklin of New York, and the Commissioner of Public
Works. The tribune was surrounded by a squadron of hussars of the
National Guard.
The Governor was finishing his reply to the short speech of the
Surgeon-General. I heard him say: “The laws prohibiting suicide and
providing punishment for any attempt at self-destruction have been
repealed. The Government has seen fit to acknowledge the right of man
to end an existence which may have become intolerable to him, through
physical suffering or mental despair. It is believed that the community
will be benefited by the removal of such people from their midst. Since
the passage of this law, the number of suicides in the United States
has not increased. Now the Government has determined to establish a
Lethal Chamber in every city, town and village in the country, it
remains to be seen whether or not that class of human creatures from
whose desponding ranks new victims of self-destruction fall daily
will accept the relief thus provided.” He paused, and turned to the
white Lethal Chamber. The silence in the street was absolute. “There a
painless death awaits him who can no longer bear the sorrows of this
life. If death is welcome let him seek it there.” Then quickly turning
to the military aid of the President’s household, he said, “I declare
the Lethal Chamber open,” and again facing the vast crowd he cried in a
clear voice: “Citizens of New York and of the United States of America,
through me the Government declares the Lethal Chamber to be open.”
The solemn hush was broken by a sharp cry of command, the squadron of
hussars filed after the Governor’s carriage, the lancers wheeled and
formed along Fifth Avenue to wait for the commandant of the garrison,
and the mounted police followed them. I left the crowd to gape and
stare at the white marble Death Chamber, and, crossing South Fifth
Avenue, walked along the western side of that thoroughfare to Bleecker
Street. Then I turned to the right and stopped before a dingy shop
which bore the sign: