Thomas Wolfe, page 514
That is joy—joy solemn and triumphant; stern, lonely, everlasting joy, which has in it the full depth and humility of man’s wonder, his sense of glory, and his feeling of awe before the mystery of the universe. An exultant cry is torn from our lips as we read the lines about that glorious horse, and the joy we feel is wild and strange, lonely and dark like death, and grander than the delicate and lovely joy that men like Herrick and Theocritus described, great poets though they were.
III
Just as the Book of Job and the sermon of Ecclesiastes are, each in its own way, supreme histories of man’s loneliness, so do all the books of the Old Testament, in their entirety, provide the most final and profound literature of human loneliness that the world has known. It is astonishing with what a coherent unity of spirit and belief the life of loneliness is recorded in those many books—how it finds its full expression in the chants, songs, prophecies, and chronicles of so many men, all so various, and each so individual, each revealing some new image of man’s secret and most lonely heart, and all combining to produce a single image of his loneliness that is matchless in its grandeur and magnificence.
The total, all-contributory unity of this conception of man’s loneliness in the books of the Old Testament becomes even more astonishing when we begin to read the New. For, just as the Old Testament becomes the chronicle of the life of loneliness, the gospels of the New Testament, with the same miraculous and unswerving unity, become the chronicle of the life of love. What Christ is always saying, what he never swerves from saying, what he says a thousand times in a thousand different ways, but always with a central unity of belief, is this: “I am my Father’s son, and you are my brothers.” And the unity that binds us all together, that makes this earth a family, and all men brothers and the sons of God, is love.
The central purpose of Christ’s life, therefore, is to destroy the life of loneliness and to establish here on earth the life of love. It should be obvious to everyone that when Christ says: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted,” “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy,”—Christ is not here extolling the qualities of humility, sorrow, and mercy as virtues sufficient in themselves, but he promises to men who have these virtues the richest reward that men were ever offered—a reward that promises not only the inheritance of the earth, but the kingdom of heaven, as well.
Such was the final intention of Christ’s life, the purpose of his teaching. And its total import was that the life of loneliness could be destroyed forever by the life of love. Or such, at least, has been the meaning which I read into his life. For in these recent years when I have lived alone so much, and known loneliness so well, I have gone back many times and read the story of this man’s words and life to see if I could find in them a meaning for myself, a way of life that would be better than the one I had. I read what he said, not in a mood of piety or holiness, not from a sense of sin, a feeling of contrition, or because his promise of a heavenly reward meant much to me. But I tried to read his bare words nakedly and simply, as it seems to me he must have uttered them, and as I have read the words of other men—of Homer, Donne, and Whitman, and the writer of Ecclesiastes—and if the meaning I have put upon his words seems foolish or extravagant, childishly simple or banal, mine alone are no different from what ten million other men have thought; I have only set it down here as I saw it, felt it, found it for myself, and have tried to add, subtract, and alter nothing.
And now I know that though the way and meaning of Christ’s life is a far, far better way and meaning than my own, yet I can never make it mine; and I think that this is true of all the other lonely men that I have seen or known about—the nameless, voiceless, faceless atoms of this earth as well as Job and Everyman and Swift. And Christ himself, who preached the life of love, was yet as lonely as any man that ever lived. Yet I could not say that he was mistaken because he preached the life of love and fellowship, and lived and died in loneliness; nor would I dare assert his way was wrong because a billion men have since professed his way and never followed it.
I can only say that I could not make his way my own. For I have found the constant, everlasting weather of man’s life to be, not love, but loneliness. Love itself is not the weather of our lives. It is the rare, the precious flower. Sometimes it is the flower that gives us life, that breaches the dark walls of all our loneliness and restores us to the fellowship of life, the family of the earth, the brotherhood of man. But sometimes love is the flower that brings us death; and from it we get pain and darkness; and the mutilations of the soul, the maddening of the brain, may be in it.
How or why or in what way the flower of love will come to us, whether with life or death, triumph or defeat, joy or madness, no man on this earth can say. But I know that at the end, forever at the end for us—the houseless, homeless, doorless, driven wanderers of life, the lonely men—there waits forever the dark visage of our comrade, Loneliness.
But the old refusals drop away, the old avowals stand—and we who were dead have risen, we who were lost are found again, and we who sold the talent, the passion, and belief of youth into the keeping of the fleshless dead, until our hearts were corrupted, our talent wasted, and our hope gone, have won our lives back bloodily, in solitude and darkness; and we know that things for us will be as they have been, and we see again, as we saw once, the image of the shining city. Far flung, and blazing into tiers of jeweled lights, it burns forever in our vision as we walk the Bridge, and strong tides are bound round it, and the great ships call. And we walk the Bridge, always we walk the Bridge alone with you, stern friend, the one to whom we speak, who never failed us. Hear:
“Loneliness forever and the earth again! Dark brother and stern friend, immortal face of darkness and of night, with whom the half part of my life was spent, and with whom I shall abide now till my death forever—what is there for me to fear as long as you are with me? Heroic friend, blood-brother of my life, dark face—have we not gone together down a million ways, have we not coursed together the great and furious avenues of night, have we not crossed the stormy seas alone, and known strange lands, and come again to walk the continent of night and listen to the silence of the earth? Have we not been brave and glorious when we were together, friend? Have we not known triumph, joy, and glory on this earth—and will it not be again with me as it was then, if you come back to me? Come to me, brother, in the watches of the night.
“Come to me in the secret and most silent heart of darkness. Come to me as you always came, bringing to me again the old invincible strength, the deathless hope, the triumphant joy and confidence that will storm the earth again.”
[¬]
THE LION AT MORNING
[Harper's Bazaar, October 1941]
It was morning, shining morning, bright motes of morning in the month of May, when James awoke. An old man in a big room in a great house in the East Seventies near Central Park. A little, wiry, bright-eyed man in the great master’s chamber of one of those lavish, fatly sumptuous, limestone-and-marble, mansard-roof, bastard-French-château atrocities which rich men were forever building for their wives forty or fifty years ago. But this was 1929, and shining morning in the month of May, when James awoke.
He awoke as he did everything, very cleanly, abruptly, and aggressively, with a kind of grim pugnacity. He would not fool with slumber: once he was done with sleep, he was done with it. He liked comfort and the best of everything, but he hated softness, sloth, and feeble indecision. There was a proper time and place for everything—a time for work; a time for sport, travel, pleasure, and society; a time for a good dinner, brandy, and a good cigar; and last of all, a time for sleep. James knew when the time for everything should be.
For when a thing was finished, it was finished. This applied to sleep as well as to every other useful, pleasant thing in life. He had discharged his debt to sleep and darkness for eight hours, now he was done with it. He paid sleep off as he would sign a check—cleanly, sharply, vigorously, with a final flourish of the pen—“Pay to the order of—Sleep . . . Eight—and no/ 100 hrs.—James Wyman, Sr.” There you are, sir! You are satisfied, I hope? Good! The matter’s settled! But, come now! No silly business, if you please, of yawning sleepily, stretching out luxuriously, rolling over on your other side, and mumbling some damned nonsense about “just five minutes more,” or some such stuff as that! And none of this business of pulling cobwebs from your brain, getting your eyes unglued, brushing the filaments of sleep away, trying to wake up, come out of it, remember where you are! No! Wake up at once! Come out of it cleanly! Be done with it the moment your eyes are open! Get up and go about your work—day’s beginning, night is over, sleep-time’s done!
James awoke like this. He was a small and wiry figure of a man, aged seventy-four, with a cold fighter’s face. It was not a hard face, in no respect a brutal, savage, or distempered face—no, on the whole it was a rather pleasant face, certainly a very decisive face, and just as certainly a fighting face.
The face was very bright, and had a brisk, sharp, and rather frosty look. The eyes were very blue, frosty looking, and as cold and straight as steel. The hair was white and close-cropped, likewise the mustache. The nose was long and cold and definite, the whole structure of the face slightly concave, the straight, grim mouth touched faintly at the edges with the eternal suggestion of a grin—a grin that was good-humored enough, but also straight, hard, cold, naturally truculent. It was the face of a man who hated fear and despised those who were afraid, which could respect another face that looked right back at it and told it to go to hell, and feel contempt for the face that trembled and the eye that shifted from its own cold steel; a face which could be savage, ruthless, merciless to what it hated and despised, and gravely generous, loyal, and devoted to what it liked; a face which could be intolerant, arrogant, insensitive, and occasionally unjust; but a face which could not be mean.
James lay awake for a moment with his cold blue eyes wide awake and staring at the ceiling. Then he looked at his watch. It lacked only a few minutes of eight o’clock, his invariable time for rising every morning in the city for the past fifty years. In the country, save for Sundays, he rose one hour and fifteen minutes earlier. He fumbled in the bosom of his nightshirt, and scratched himself hairily and reflectively. He had worn a nightshirt all his life, as his father had before him, and as any sensible man would do. He had enough of the discomforts of clothing during the business day. When he went to bed, he wasn’t going to put on a damned monkey suit with bright green stripes all over it, rope himself in around the belly like a sack of meal, and incase his legs in trousers. No! The place to wear pants was on the street and in the office. When he went to bed, he wanted all the free space he could get for his legs and belly.
He swung to a sitting position, worked his toes into his bedroom slippers, got up, walked across the room, and stood looking out the window at the street. For a moment he felt giddy: the clear mind reeled a little, the knees felt weak, he shook his head impatiently, and breathed deep; pushed the heavy corded curtains as far back as they could go, opened the window wider. His heart was pumping hard; the thin, grim smile around the firm mouth deepened. Seventy-four! Well, then—what? And for a moment, still holding to the heavy curtain with the veined old hand, he stood looking out into the street. Few people were about and stirring. Across the street, in a big limestone-and-marble mansion similar to his own, a housemaid on her knees was mopping marble steps. A rickety-looking wagon drawn by a shaggy little horse went rattling by. Six doors away a taxi drilled past in the early morning of Fifth Avenue; and, beyond, old James could see the trees and shrubs of Central Park just greening into May. Here in his own street, before the ugly, lavish houses, there were a few trees, all spangled with young green. Bright, shining morning slanted on the house fronts of the street, and from the tender, living green of the young trees the bird song rose.
A fine morning, then, and from nature, May, and sunlight it borrowed a too pleasant coloring, James thought, for such a damned ugly street. It was a typical street of the rich in the East Seventies—a hodgepodge of pretentious architecture. The starkly bleak and solid ugliness of brownstone fronts was interrupted here and there by lavish bastard-French châteaux like his, and in the middle of the block by the pale salmon brick facade, the fashionable flat front, and the green canopy of a new apartment house.
He turned, still smiling grimly. Out in the hall the deep-toned grandfather clock was striking eight through the morning’s quietness, and on the last stroke the handle of the great walnut door was turned; his valet entered.
The man said, “Good morning, sir,” in a quiet tone. James grunted “Morning” in reply, and without another word walked across the room into the bathroom, and after a moment flushed the toilet noisily, then washed his hands in the old streaked-marble basin, turned the tumbling water on full blast into the big old-fashioned ivory-yellow tub, and while the tub filled, surveyed himself in the mirror, craning his neck, and rubbing his hand reflectively across the wiry gray stubble of his beard. He got his shaving things out of the cabinet and set them in readiness, stropped his old straight razor vigorously, and with an air of satisfaction tested its deadly whetted blade, laid his razor down beside the other shaving things, turned off the water, stripped the nightshirt off over his head, stepped into the tub, and let himself down gingerly and with an easeful grunt into the water.
It took him four minutes to bathe and dry himself, and just six more to lather his face, crane cautiously, and shave the tough gray stubble of his beard as smooth as grained wood. By the time he had finished, cleaned his old, worn razor with tender pride, and put his shaving things away again, it was eight ten.
As he re-entered his bedroom in his dressing gown, the servant had just finished laying out his clothes. From the old walnut dresser or bureau, the man had taken socks, fresh underwear, a clean shirt, cuff-links, and a collar; and from the huge old walnut wardrobe a suit of dark clothes, a black necktie, and a pair of shoes. James would have none of “this new-fangled furniture” in his room. By this he meant that he would have neither the modern styles of recent years, nor the passionately revived colonial. His bedroom was furnished with massive Victorian pieces that had come from his father’s bedroom many years before. The high and hideous old dresser, or bureau, had a tall mirror with a carved, towering, cornice-like frame of wood, and a slab of gray-streaked marble, indented and sunk between some little boxlike drawers (God knows what these were for, but probably for collar buttons, shirt studs, cuff links, collars, and what he called “thing-ma-jigs”); below were some ponderous walnut drawers with brass knobs, which held his shirts, socks, underwear, and nightshirts. The huge walnut wardrobe was at least ten feet tall; and there was a monstrous walnut table with thick curved legs and a top of the same hideous gray-streaked marble that the bureau had.
James crossed the room to the chair beside the bed, threw off his dressing gown, and grunting a little and holding onto the man with one hand for support, thrust first one wiry shank, and then the other, into a pair of long, half-weight flannel drawers, buttoned a light flannel undershirt across his hairy chest, put on his white starched shirt and buttoned it, got the starched cuffs linked together, and looked around for his trousers, which the man was holding for him, when he changed his mind suddenly, and said:
“Wait a minute! Where’s that gray suit—the one I got last year? I think I’ll wear it today.”
The valet’s eyes were startled, his quiet voice touched just traceably with surprise.
“The gray, sir?”
“I said gray, didn’t I?” said James grimly, and looked at him with a naked challenge of the cold blue eyes.
“Very well, sir,” the man said quietly; but for a moment their eyes met, and although the face of each was grave, and that of James a trifle grim and truculent, there was also a sharp enkindled twinkle in the eyes of each, a kind of “tickled” quality that would not speak because there was no need to speak.
Gravely, imperturbably, the man went to the doors of the great walnut wardrobe, opened them, and took out a neat, double-breasted suit of light gray—a decidedly gay and skittish suit for James, whose apparel was habitually dark and sober. Still imperturbable, the man came back, laid out the coat, held out the trousers to his master, and gravely held the trouser ends as James grunted and thrust gingerly into them. The servant did not speak again until James had hitched his braces over his square shoulder and was buttoning up the neat buttons of the vest.
“And the necktie, sir?” the man inquired. “You will not be wearing the dark one now, I suppose.”
“No,” said James, hesitated for a moment, then looked the man pugnaciously in the eye and said: “Give me a light one—something that goes with this suit of clothes, something gay.”
“Yes, sir,” the man answered calmly; and again their eyes met, their faces grave and stern, but in their eyes again the sly, enkindled twinkle of their recognition.
It was not until James was carefully knotting under his wing collar a distinctly fashionable cravat of light spring gray, slashed smartly with black stripes, that the man found occasion to say smoothly:
“It’s a fine morning, isn’t it, sir?”
“It is! Yes, sir!” said James firmly and grimly, and looked at his servant truculently again; but again there was the enkindled sparkle in their eyes, and the man was smiling quietly behind his master’s back as James marched sprucely from his chamber.
Outside the master’s door the hall was dark and heavy, cushioned to the tread, still with silence, sleep, and morning, filled with walnut light and the slow ticking of the clock.
James glanced toward the door of his wife’s chamber. The huge walnut door was also eloquent with silence, deep, inviolable repose. He smiled grimly and went down lavish marble stairs. They swept down with magnificence: the ghostly feet of memory and old event thronged on them—the rustle of silk and satin and the gleam of naked shoulders, proud tiaras, bustles, dog collars of hard diamonds, ropes of pearls.
