Thomas Wolfe, page 365
It makes me sick, here they’ve got this magnificent thing around them and none of them will look at it, they’re all so fancy; and then there’s Mr. Joyce and he’s almost blind and God he was glad to get that money, he said he was very hard up, and look what he’s able to see: there was something so delicate about his face and when I told him I was deaf he looked awfully interested and asked me a lot of questions about it—he wanted to know what it was like being deaf, he said he was writing something about deafness in his new book, I wonder what it’s going to be like. God! there was some good writing in Ulysses, it was just as if you had got off suddenly into another dimension, and I thought all that about the man looking for his son was magnificent, and then you have this Burke running around with both his eyes and seeing nothing but X147. It makes me tired! “I don’t know if you can do it,” he says to me, “it’s got to be something cr-r-ude”—gee! I had to laugh at him, the spittle sort of dribbled out of the side of his mouth when he said “crude.” But isn’t that just like them! They sit around on their back-ends and look bitter and think they’re being crude. I’d like to tell them a few things! The nerve of that fellow! “Look here, Burke,” I said, “I’m designing this show, and you’ve got to let me do it my own way.” “Yes,” he said, “but I want to be sure that you really feel the thing” (Feel it! My God, I felt like telling him it was like a case of chronic neuralgia). “In a play of this sort,” he said, “getting the right scenery is most important.” “Vell!” I said, “take avay the scenery and vot have you got?” It was an awfully mean thing to say, but it was so funny I couldn’t help it: it just sort of popped out of my mouth before I knew it, usually you think of something like that when it’s too late, you never think of it at the moment—I was so proud of myself for thinking of it like that, I think it was awfully smart of me, I don’t think he liked it very much, I felt awfully good about it.
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But God! the things I’d like to tell these people if I could: I see the most marvelous things every day, and nobody seems to do anything about it. What a shame to let all this richness and beauty go to waste! It seems to get richer and more beautiful all the time, I see the most marvelous colors and shapes of things now that I used not to notice. God, I wish I could write, what a wonderful power it must be to express yourself in words that way, and to be able to tell what you feel and see. Nobody ever asked me what goes on in my mind when I design, nobody ever tries to find out anything about it, but it is the most exciting and beautiful thing. I should like to write a book and tell people all about it, I should like to tell them about the thing that happens inside me and about all the things I see: O it would be a wonderful book! It would have all kinds of things in it that people know nothing about.
First, I should tell them all about the clothes people wear. O yes! everyone thinks he knows all about clothes, especially these rich Christian women who go into Edith’s shop but they know nothing about it. I know more about clothes than anyone I have ever seen, and Edith comes next—I should tell them all the things I see on the street every day and how you cannot know what a person is like until you have seen what he is wearing. People are like the clothes they wear, they may think it’s all an accident but it’s not. The reason they wear the kind of clothes they do is because they are what they are: when you see one of the men with tight lips and a long thin coldlooking nose he will wear a certain kind of clothes, and when you see all these young fellows nowadays with side pockets that slant and pleat at the waist of the trousers, it is because of something in them, there is something sad about it, and then there is the way that actors and preachers and politicians and quack doctors and psychologists dress: everything they wear sort of goes forward, they are turning everything in them out for the world to see. That was the trouble with Atwater when they did the Hamlet: Hamlet turns inward and Atwater turns outward, it is hard to make actors understand that—it is their whole life to turn outward and to be seen and observed, they are always putting themselves forward, it simply kills them if this doesn’t happen, they have got to have people talk about them and notice them.
You can tell if people turn inward or outward by the clothes they wear, by their shoes, neckties, shirts, socks and hats. People who wear loose clothes and people who wear tight clothes are not the same, and then there are all the colors they wear: this is simply fascinating. The most wonderful people are the old women you see who wear about a million little things: there are a lot of them in England, they live in all those horrible little hotels up in Bloomsbury and places like that, there are also a lot of them in Boston; they have strange faces, they are lost.
Gee! I saw a wonderful old woman in Boston once: it was in a restaurant, she must have had about a thousand little things on, she had a long black dress on and it was all covered with beads and bangles and glittering ornaments. God! it must have weighed a ton! Then she had all sorts of lace things on over that, it all sort of dripped down from her arms, and fell over her wrists, and got into her soup; and then she had a lot of rings and loose bracelets and beads and necklaces, and a whaleboned collar with a lot more lace and ear rings, and all sorts of combs in her hair, and a hat all covered with masses of things, feathers, fruit, birds, God! that woman was a walking museum. I was so excited, it was one of the strangest things I ever saw in my life, there was something so tragic about her, these people are always sad: I got as close as I could to her and tried to hear what she was saying, but I couldn’t. I’d have given anything to know what it was: what do you suppose a woman like that can do? Isn’t it a strange thing! It comes from something inside them, something all fancy and broken up like beads, something all cluttered up that can’t bear to throw anything away and that is smothering in oceans of junk: there was another of them in Lincoln that time Irene and I were travelling together in that car—she lived in one of those old houses near the Cathedral: it was a lively little old house and when I passed by this old woman was having her tea. God, she was wearing more junk than I’ve ever seen on any one person [in] all my life, and the room where she was was just like that, there must have been a thousand little things in it—little covers for everything, and little jugs and vases and jars and pots and chairs and tables—it was simply fascinating: I forgot where I was and began to stare in through the window and all of a sudden the door opened and the most dreadful woman flew out at me: she was wearing a maid’s dress, and she was one of the most cruel and terrible looking people I have ever seen—her face was all red and hard looking, it was like an axe, you could have chopped wood with it; and she rushed at me with her arms above her head as if she were going to kill me: she cried out in the most terrible voice, “You! You!” I guess she was awfully mad because I had been staring in through the window. God! I was scared stiff; I turned and flew.
Then there are the things people wear underneath, I should like to tell about that too, there is something sad and terrible about it: there was that girl at the theatre when we were doing the Revue, she was a dancer, Jackie they called her, God, she could dance! she was just like a streak of lightning, she was an awfully nice kid, she looked like a boy and when she came in there to be fitted for her costume she was wearing man’s underwear, these loose white drawers and an athletic shirt: God, I almost had a fit, there was something awfully sad about it, and the poor kid began to cry as if her heart would break; I don’t think she knew what was the matter. And then Lou Becker came in, and she weighs three hundred pounds, she has a great behind that looks like a barrel, and she used to wear the fanciest things you ever saw: she came in once with a black cat embroidered on them in the most suggestive fashion, it was simply horrible. “O Lou!” I cried, “In heaven’s name, what are you doing?” “It’s art, darling,” she said, “this modern symbolical stuff. Let those read who can.” Gee, she was a funny girl. I wish you could have seen her great fat face with a sort of lewd leer on it when she said it: Martha Hart almost had hysterics.
But isn’t there something awfully sad about it? I don’t suppose the poor fat thing ever had a beau in her life, and she was always talking about it, she had an awfully dirty mind, but some of the things she said were really very funny. And then there’s poor old Rapp, and that time she was staying at our house last year and got bronchitis, and we thought she was going to die: she was simply burning up with fever and shivering, and Edith and I undressed her and put her to bed—Good God! would you believe it, she was wearing three pairs of those old fashioned cotton drawers?
“O Rapp!” I cried, “Rapp! In God’s name what’s the matter?”
“O don’t let them see me!” she said, “they’re after me!”
“They?” I said, “Who do you mean, Rapp? There’s no one here but us.”
The poor old thing, she was simply terrified: she told me later she’s been afraid for years that some man was going to attack her, and that’s why she wears all those things.
God! it’s sad: when I first knew her she was a young and very beautiful woman, she had just come from the hospital, and Bella was her first case. Then later, when I had my little Alma, we had her again: that was the time I almost died, she was simply wonderful, and since then she’s always come and stayed with us. Isn’t it a strange thing: I remember her when she was a very handsome woman, she had lots of beaus, and several men wanted to marry her, and she had this other terrible thing in her all the time, and now she’s old and mad, and she thinks everyone is persecuting her and that men are going to attack her; and sometimes it only seems a little while ago since she came to Bella’s and then again it seems so long ago that you can’t believe it is real.
O yes! And then I would like to write about the way you feel when you have a child and what it was like when my little Alma came, for I had lain on the earth upon green hillsides all that summer with my child inside me, and I felt the great earth move below me and swing westward in the orbits of the sun. I knew the earth, my body was the earth, I grew into the earth, and my child was stirring in me as I lay there on the earth in that green hillside: and Rapp was there and old Dr. Roth—he was a great surgeon, and I seemed to be out of my head. And yet I knew everything that was going on around me: we were living in that house in West End Avenue then, and it was about eleven o’clock in the morning and God! it was hot! It was August and it was hot as hell, and I could feel the heat and hear the people going by in the street, I heard the clank of the iceman’s tongs there in the street and the children shouting, and all of a sudden I could hear all the birds singing in the trees outside, and I cried out “Sweet is the breath of morn her rising sweet with charm of earliest birds,” and that was the way it was. It was so lovely, God, I was mad with the pain; it is beyond anything you could ever imagine, it becomes a kind of exquisite and unbearable joy, and one part of you, the upper part, seems to be floating around way up about you, and the other part seems chained to the earth, and they are rending and stabbing you with knives, and great waves of it roll over you, and you feel yourself come and go from it, and when it came I kept crying out “For who would fardels bear? who would fardels bear? who would fardels bear?” And I could see Rapp and Dr. Roth moving about through it all, and it was all so strange because their faces bloomed and faded with the pain; and then there was Rapp with her enormous gentle hands that were everlasting and merciful, they were as big and strong as a man’s under me, and I was not afraid but I thought I was dying, I was sure I was dying and I cried, “O Rapp! Rapp! Good-bye, I am going,” and she said, “O my darling! My dear! You’re not! You will be all right!” She loved me so, and God! but I was lovely then, I was so small and lovely then. And then there was something so strange and terrible about Rapp and Dr. Roth, I had never seen them that way before, he was always so gentle, he told me later he was awfully worried but now he was bending over me and barking in my face: “Push! You’ve got to push, mother! You’re not trying hard enough! You’ve got to try harder than that, mother! Come on, mother! We can’t have it for you, you know! Push! Push hard, mother! You’re not trying!” And Rapp said, “O she is trying, too,” she got so mad at him, and they were both terribly worried, it had been so long, and then it was all over and I was floating on clouds of peace, I was floating in a lovely and undulant ocean of bliss.
And O yes! I should like to write of the times I go in swimming and of my nice toes and feet and my nice legs, and it was that glorious soft day and the water was so clean and sparkling, and they’ve got that enormous place that goes a mile or more along the shore, and there was no one there, so Lily and I went in without anything on, and I turned over on my back and floated, and God! I seemed to be right in the very middle of the universe: I could see my nice white belly floating there and my legs all short and funny looking with a strange green color on them moving back and forth like fish, and the sea was like a great bed below me, it held me up and my back and arms floated on it, and I looked up in the sky that was so deep and blue and it all seemed to be part of my body, it seemed to fill me and come from me and flow into me; I was the earth and the sea and the sky and all things were born in me and proceeded from me, it was like something that had gone on forever, it was like music, it was like a star, and I should like to tell people how it was, it was like being in love when your lover comes into you.
And Yes! I should like to tell them all about my little Alma, and how tiny she was, she was just a little scrap of a thing, and of the things that child said! Gee, she was a funny kid: we were having tea one day and she came by the door, and we had guests there, and she couldn’t have been more than four years old and I called out “O Alma, Alma, where are you going?” And she said, “I am going out, out, brief candle!” O God! I thought they’d kill themselves laughing, but there was something so wonderful about it too: wasn’t that a strange thing for a child that age to say? It popped right out of her mouth, I suppose she had heard some of us quoting Shakespeare. And then one time when Edith and I came in we found her doing her lessons: she had all her books around her in the middle of the floor and she was doing her spelling lesson, she was simply biting the word off as if she were scolding it: O-u-n-c-e, ounce! O-u-n-c-e, ounce! O-u-n-c-e, ounce! Then she changed to another one, P-u-a-r-t, quart! P-u-a-r-t, quart! P-u-a-r-t, quart! God, we had a fit! The poor kid thought the “q” was a “p,” and whenever anything went wrong after that we used to say, O-u-n-c-e, ounce!—it was like saying damn, only better. Gee, that kid’s a scream: you have never in your life heard anything like the way she goes on at the table, we get to laughing so sometimes that we can hardly eat, she says the funniest things you ever heard, I wish I could remember some of them—O yes! The other night we were talking about the house in the country and what name we would call it by and Alma said, “We will call the side that Father sleeps on the Patri-side, and the side that Mother sleeps on the Matri-side, and as for you, Stinkweed”—that’s what she calls Joe, they simply adore each other, they say the most dreadful things to each other—“we will call the side that you sleep on the Fratri-side.” God, she’s so wonderful! She is my darling and my dear, she is my little Alma, she is the most delicate and lovely thing that ever lived.
And yes! And yes! I should like to tell them how it is the mornings I go into Stein and Bamberg’s to design, and Mr. Bamberg is walking up and down on big thick carpets, and God! richness and power and goosegrease seem to be oozing out of every pore of him, and there is something so clean and lovely about the place, the workrooms are great airy places with a beautiful light everywhere, and everywhere there are great clean bolts of magnificent cloth piled upon the tables, and the wonderful smell of cloth: I should like to tell about that in the book and the wonderful feeling it gives you—there is something so generous and full of noble dignity about this cloth, it is grand and beautiful and you can do such wonderful things with it, and all the little tailors are sitting crosslegged on their tables with this magnificent cloth all around them and God! how they stink sometimes! I’m sure some of them never take a bath, sometimes it’s simply dreadful when you go in there, you could cut the stink with a knife, but it’s fascinating to watch them at work. They’re very fine workmen, some of them get paid two hundred dollars a week, they have the most delicate and skillful hands, there is something delicate and beautiful about their movements as they draw the thread through or make a knot, it is like a dance.
And yes! I should like to tell them about Rosen’s, what a wonderful place it is, with the Grand Duchess Somebody or Other selling perfume as you go in and this Princess Piccatitti selling underwear. God! I think that is the most horrible name I have ever heard, there is something obscene about it, even Edith has to laugh when she says it—if I had a name like that I’d change it to Schultz or something: imagine being called Ophelia Piccatitti, wouldn’t that be horrible? Wouldn’t it be awful to be one of the Piccatitti children and then have them call you one of the little Piccatittis. We had a girl down at the theatre once by the name of Titsworth, she was an awfully nice girl, she did the props, but God! I almost got hysterics every time I had to say her name, and what made it more awful the stage manager’s name was Mister Matchem, and I think he really got awfully fond of her, she was very pretty, there was something terribly sad about it, I am sure the poor girl suffered tortures about her name. I think she liked him, too, but she was sometimes very unkind to him, and I think that was the reason, and one time he was looking for her and asked where she was and I told him she was upstairs in the workshop, and he asked me would I call her, and I went to the stairs and called up, “Miss Titsworth, someone wants to see you,” and she called down, “Who is it?” And I said, “Mr. Matchem,” and God! they had to pick me up off the floor, I got hysterical, they carried me to a chair and Louise Morgenstern was terribly worried, she thought that I was crying, the tears were streaming down my face, and finally when I got so I could talk again, Louise asked me what the trouble was and I said, “Mr. Matchem is looking for Miss Titsworth,” and that started me off again. I think Louise was terribly shocked, she could never understand anything like that, she was so awfully pure herself, and she said, “Well, I don’t see anything funny about that.”
