Thomas Wolfe, page 364
I know it was pretty late in the season, but we started off with oysters and champagne: I don’t think the young fellow was used to drinking. Daddy kept filling up his glass, and he got quite drunk. He was awfully funny, he kept talking about his responsibility:
“It’s a terrible responsibility to know that all these lives are dependent on you,” he said, then Daddy would fill up his glass again.
“A moment’s hesitation in a crisis,” he said, “and all is lost.”
“A truer word was never spoken,” said Daddy, and he filled his glass up again.
“A man must have a clear brain and a steady hand,” he said.
“Right you are,” said Daddy. “This will make you so steady, son, that you will get practically paralyzed”
Mr. Gates and Father Dolan laughed so much that the tears began to trickle down their cheeks, O we had an awfully good time in those days, there was something so innocent about everything.
Then we all got up to go, and I was really quite nervous: the poor kid could hardly stand up, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. Daddy was so happy and excited, there was something so wild about him, his eyes danced like devils, and he threw back his head and laughed, and you could hear him all over the place.
Father Chris O’Rourke had to hold Mass the next morning, and he left us, but Father Dolan came along. We all went outside with the young man being helped along by Daddy and Mr. Gates, and everyone in the restaurant followed us outside, and Mr. Gates told me to sit up front beside the driver. God! I was proud! And Daddy and Mr. Gates and Father Dolan got in behind, how they ever did it I don’t know, it must have been awfully small, I think Daddy must have sat on Father Dolan’s lap. O yes! I know he did.
And everybody cheered as we started off; the actors followed us out of the restaurant, and stood looking after us as we drove off into the lilac and velvet darkness, and I can still remember how I looked back and saw their smiling and unnatural faces, their bright masks, their lonely and haunted eyes. They kept shouting funny things at Daddy and asking if he had any last messages, and De Wolfe Hopper was there and he ran around pretending to be a horse and neighing, and trying to climb up a lamp post. O, it was thrilling!
So Mr. Gates said, “Whither away, Joe?”
And Daddy said, “To the Golden Gate and may she never stop!”
Then Daddy said to the young fellow who was driving: “How fast can she go, son?” and the young fellow said, “She can do twenty miles an hour without any trouble.”
“Downhill, you mean,” said Daddy just to tease him, so we started to go and God! I was thrilled! It seemed to me we were flying, I suppose he did go twenty miles an hour, but it seemed like a hundred would now and we passed a policeman on a horse and the horse got frightened and tried to run away and God! the cop was so mad: he came galloping after us and shouted for us to stop, and Daddy laughed just like a crazy man, and said, “Go on! son! Go on! There’s not a horse in the world can catch you!”
But the young fellow was scared and he slowed down and then the cop came up and said what did we mean, and where did we think we were, and he’d a good mind to put us all under arrest for disturbing the peace at that hour of night with “that thing”; he kept calling it “that thing” in such a scornful way, and I got so angry at him, I thought it was so beautiful, it was painted the richest kind of winey red, it looked good enough to eat, and I was so mad to think the man should talk that way.
I don’t know why it made me mad, but I think the reason must have been that the car didn’t seem to me like a thing at all. It’s hard to tell you how it was, but it was almost as if the car was some strange and beautiful and living creature which we had never known before but which now gave to all our lives a kind of added joy and warmth and wonder. And I believe that was the way it was with those first motor cars we ever saw. Somehow each one of them seemed different from all the others, each one seemed to have a different name, a separate life and personality, and although now I know they would look crude and funny and old-fashioned, it was all different then. We had never seen or known them in the world before, we had only dreamed or heard they could exist, and now that I was riding in one, it all seemed incredible and unbelievable, and yet gloriously real and strange, as every beautiful thing is when it first happens to you. The car was magical to me as if it had come out of some other world like Mars, and yet the very moment that I saw it I seemed to have known about it always, and it seemed to belong to that day, that hour, that year, somehow to be a part of all that happened that night, and to belong to Daddy and the priests and Mr. Gates, the young mechanic and all the haunted faces of the actors, and to all the songs we sang that year, the things we did and said, and something strange and innocent and lost and long ago. I can remember now the way that old car looked so well that I could close my eyes and draw it for you. I can remember its rich wine color, its great polished lamps of brass, the door that opened in its round, fat back, and all its wonderful and exciting smells—the strong and comforting smell of its deep leather, and the smells of gasoline and oil and grease that were so strong and warm and pungent that they seemed to give a kind of thrilling life and ecstasy to everything in the whole world. They seemed to hold the unknown promise of something wonderful and strange that was about to happen and that belonged to the night, and to the mystery and joy of life, the ecstasy of the lilac dark, as [if] all the smells of flowers and leaf and grass and earth belonged to them.
So I guess that was the reason that I got so mad when I heard the policeman call the car “that thing,” although I did not know the reason then. It looked as if the cop was going to run us in, but then Daddy got up off Father Dolan’s lap, and the cop saw Father Dolan and of course he got very nice to us: you know nearly all the cops are Catholic; and Mr. Gates talked to him and gave him some money, and Daddy joked with him and made him laugh, and then Daddy showed him his police badge and asked him if he knew Big Jake Dietz at police headquarters, and then I was so proud to see the way the cop came round.
And the cop said for us all to go into Central Park and we could ride all we damn pleased for all he cared, but you wouldn’t catch him in one of those things, they’d blow up on you at any moment and then where’d you all be? And Daddy said he hoped we’d all be in Heaven, and what’s more we’d take our own priest with us, so there’d be no hitch in any of the formalities, and we all got so tickled and began to laugh and the cop did too, and then he began to brag about his horse and God! it was a beautiful horse and he said give him a horse always, that they’d never make one of those things that could go faster than a horse. The poor fellow! I wonder what he’d say now!
And Daddy teased him and said the time would come when you’d have to go to the zoo to see a horse and the policeman said by that time you’d have to go to a junkshop to see a motor car, and Daddy said, “The trouble with us is that we’re anachronisms.” And the policeman said well, he didn’t know about that, but he wished us luck, and hoped we all got out of it alive.
So he rode off and we drove into Central Park and started off as hard as we could go and began to climb a hill when sure enough, we broke down just as the policeman said we would. I never knew just what did happen, I guess the young fellow may have had too much to drink, he seemed wild and excited, but anyway we saw a hansom halfway up the hill in front of us, and he cried out, “Watch me pass them,” and did something to the car, and just as we got up even with them and were trying to go by, the car coughed and spluttered and stood still. Well, we could hear the people in the hansom laughing, and one of them shouted something back to us about the tortoise and the hare. And I felt so mad at them and so humiliated and so sorry for our driver, and Daddy said, “Never mind, son, the race may not always be to the swift, but even the hare will sometimes have his day.”
But our young fellow felt so bad he couldn’t say a word. He got out of the car and walked round and round it, and finally he began to explain to us the way it happened and how it could never happen again in a hundred years. And well you see it was this way, and well you see it was that. And we didn’t understand a word of what he was saying, but we felt so sorry for him that we told him he was right. So he began to poke around inside of it, and then he would turn something here and twist something there, and grab the crank and whirl it round and round until I was afraid he was going to wring his arm off. Then he would get down on his back and crawl in under it and bang and hammer at something underneath. And nothing happened. Then he would walk round and round the car again and mutter to himself. Finally he gave up and said he was afraid we’d have to get out of the car and take a hansom if we wanted to get home without walking. So we started to get out, and the mechanic was so mad and so embarrassed at the way his car had acted that he grabbed it and shook it as if it were a brat. And nothing happened.
He gave it one last try. He grabbed the crank like a crazy man and began to whirl it round and round until he was exhausted. And when nothing happened he suddenly shouted out “O damn that thing,” kicked it in the tire as hard as he could, and collapsed across the radiator, sobbing as if his heart would break. And I don’t know what that did to it or how it happened, but suddenly the car began to chug and wheeze again, and there we were ready to go, and the young fellow with a grin upon his face that stretched from ear to ear. So we went on up that hill and coasted down the next, and now we really seemed to fly.
It was like soaring through the air, or finding wings you never knew you had before. It was like something we had always known about and dreamed of finding, and now we had it like a dream come true. And I suppose we must have gone the whole way round the park from one end to another, but none of us really knew how far we went or where we were going. It was like that kind of flight you make in dreams, and sure enough, just like something you are waiting for in a dream, we came tearing around a curve in the road and there before us we could see the same hansom we had tried to pass upon the hill. And the minute that I saw it I knew that it was bound to happen, it seemed too good to be true, and yet I had felt sure all the time that it was going to turn out just this way. And that was the way it was with all of us, we threw back our heads and roared with laughter, we yelled and waved our hands at all the people in the cab, we went tearing by them as if they were rooted to the earth, and as we passed them Daddy turned and shouted back at them: “Cheer up, my friends, they also serve who only stand and wait.”
So we passed them by and left them far behind us and they were lost. And now there was nothing all around us but the night, the blazing stars, the lilac darkness in the park and God but it was beautiful. It was just the beginning of May and all the leaves and buds were coming out, they had that tender feathery look, and there was just a little delicate shaving of moon in the sky, and it was so cool and lovely, with the smell of the leaves, and the new grass, and all the flowers bursting from the earth till you could hear them grow: it seemed to me the loveliest thing that I had ever known, and when I looked at my father, his eyes were full of tears and he cried out “Glory! O glory! Glory!” and then he began in his magnificent voice: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a God!”
And the words were so lovely, the music was so grand that somehow it made me want to cry, and when he had finished he cried out “Glory!” once again, and I saw his wild and beautiful brow there in the darkness, and I turned my eyes up toward the sky and there were the tragic and magnificent stars, and a kind of fate was on his wild and beautiful head and in his eyes, and the story of all his wandering, his exile, his loneliness was on his brow; and suddenly as I looked at him I knew that he was going to die.
And he cried “Glory! Glory!” and we rode all through the night, and round and round the Park, and then dawn came and all of the birds began to sing. Now broke the birdsong in first light, and suddenly I heard each sound the birdsong made: like a flight of shot, the sharp fast scarps of sound arose. With chitterling bicker, fast-fluttering skirrs of sound the palmy honied birdcries came. Smooth drops and nuggets of bright gold they were. Now sang the birdtree filled with lutings in bright air: the thrum, the lark’s wing, and tongue-trilling chirrs arose now. The little brainless cries arose and fell with liquorous liquefied lutings, with lirruping chirp, plumbellied smoothness, sweet lucidity. And now there was the rapid kweet kweet kweet kweet kweet of homely birds, and then their pwee-pwee-pwee: others with thin metallic tongues, a sharp cricketing stitch, a mosquito buzz, while some with rusty creakings, high shrew’s caws, with eery rasp, with harsh far calls—all birds that are awoke in the park’s woodland tangles; and above them passed [a] whirr of hidden wings, the strange lost cry of the unknown birds in full light now in the park, the sweet confusion of their cries was mingled.
“Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet with charm of earliest birds.” And it was just like that and the sun came up, and it was like the first day of the world, and that was the year before he died and I think we were staying at Bella’s then, but maybe we were staying at the old hotel, or perhaps we had already moved to Auntie Kate’s: we moved around so much, we lived so many places, it seems so long ago that when I try to think of it now it gets confused, and I cannot remember.
—
That year I was living with Bella, no I wasn’t. I guess we were living with Auntie Kate—well maybe we were staying with Bella: I don’t know, we moved around so much and it’s so long ago. It gets all confused in my mind now, Daddy was always on the go, he couldn’t be still a minute: sometimes he was playing in New York, and sometimes he went off on a tour with Mansfield or somebody and was gone for months. O you would have loved Daddy! He was so wild and beautiful, everybody adored him. That was the trouble: things came too easy for him, he never had to work for anything. I think that must have been the year before he died; I was about sixteen. God, I was a beauty. I was like peaches and cream, I don’t think I’ve changed much. Don’t you think I have a nice face? I think it’s a nice face; it’s the same as it always was, people don’t change much. . . . Daddy was playing in New York that year. Did you ever hear of a play called Polonius Potts, Philanthropist? O, it was a wonderful play: Daddy was so good in it—he took the part of Professor McGilligrew Mumps, of Memphis, D.D.: people began to roar as soon as he came on the stage. I have some pictures of him in his make-up: he had a gold wig and long side-whiskers that stuck out like hay, he had on a long frock coat, and he carried a big floppy umbrella that kept coming open whenever he leaned on it. “Mumps is my name, McGilligrew Mumps of Memphis”—then he would pull out a big red handkerchief from his side pocket and blow his nose like a trumpet; he had only to do that to stop the show, the audience would howl for five minutes.
He was so beautiful: the corners of his mouth bent up as if they were trying to smile all the time: when he smiled his whole face seemed to light up. There was something so delicate about it: it was just as if someone had turned on a light. They don’t have plays like that any more, I suppose people would think them too simple and foolish. I thought they were wonderful—I don’t know, it seems to me people were more simple in those days. Most people are such Smarties nowadays: everyone thinks he has to be saying or doing something smart all the time. They’re all so Fancy, they make me tired. Most of the young fellows are such trash: they’re all sickbed over with the pale cast of someone else—a little false this and a little not quite that, it’s all like imitation shredded wheat. Good heavens, what’s the use of trying to be something you’re not and throwing away whatever quality you have? God! I wish I could do something else! I’m too good for it! I’m sorry I gave up my painting. The theatre ought to be the richest and most magnificent thing in the world but most of the people in it are such trash. “As for me I am noted for muh torso!” Imagine giving the words and thoughts of a great poet to a fellow like that! Calling himself Atwater when his real name is Weiss! Atwater, my eye! You can’t fool me, young fellow, with that Atwater gaff: I’m one of the chosen myself, you know. Atwater! God! The names they give themselves! Reginald Atwater, when you only have to take one look at his nose to hear the ducks quack: you could hang the complete works of Rubens on one side of it, it looks like the front end of the Leviathan coming into the dock. The nerve of him! Yes, I said, but it doesn’t matter at all, Mr. Atwater, what looks best on you: the only thing that matters is what looks best on Hamlet (“Aye, in my heart of hearts, Horatio”), and you have got to understand that. God, the conceit of him: it didn’t even make a dent in him: “I know, I know,” he says, “but we must consider the Physique of the actor playing the part.” “Yes, but what part are you playing?” I said, “You are not playing Atwater, you are playing Hamlet (which is a big lie, of course, he’s playing Atwater: He never played anything but Atwater in his life; he couldn’t play anything but Atwater), and you must wear a costume that fits the character.” “Yes,” he says, “but we all have our Points.” (Points! God, that fellow has nothing but Points, he’s one complete mass of Elbows and Sore Thumbs so far as I’m concerned, he makes me sick!)—“We all have our Points,” he says, “and we must try to make the most of them. As for me,” he says, slapping himself on the breast like a big piece of Ham, God, it just didn’t seem possible—“As for me I am noted for muh torso!” “What!” I cried. “What! O what did you say, Mr. Atwater!” I didn’t know what to do, it didn’t seem real, I just couldn’t believe it: I had to get off the stage as fast as I could; when I told Roberta about it I thought she was going to have a fit—it’s become a regular saying now, when we’ve got some terrible ham we say he is noted for his torso.
You just can’t believe it’s true until you see them: I think Robert and Gwen at the League are about the best of the lot, they work awfully hard—she’s a nice woman but if you mentioned Mussolini she’d ask you what did he ever play in. That’s about as much as they know about anything. . . . I hope I get some good plays to do this year. God, how I hate this thing the League has given me: it’s just like a fake masterpiece, you can smell the ham a mile off, all about Mr. X297, and Mr. Z346 and all of them sitting on their rumps in a row wearing masks and working adding machines and saying the same thing; and all the people in the subway wearing masks and chewing gum, and they’ve got something hidden up in the garret, an idiot boy, or something, that no one can bear to look at and they try to hide it: I don’t know what the hell that’s supposed to represent, but it’s symbolical and significant and you hear screams from time to time. And then everybody goes to Heaven and God and all the angels are wearing masks and they all sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” together and say: “To hell with Russia, to hell with the Jews, to hell with the Niggers,” etc.—Good God! Nobody has ever been like that. Mr. X297! It’s ridiculous! He read it in a book somewhere, no, I know where he got it: he went to Germany last year and now he’s going to write German plays about America, and I suppose next year he’ll be writing Russian plays about Peru, and then he’ll read another book and write a Siamese play about Chicago.
