Thomas Wolfe, page 527
Old Man Rivers had got back to his office by this time. He went in, sat down at his desk, tilted back in his swivel chair for a moment, and with his veinous old hands resting on the armrests, stared reflectively for a moment at his desk. He felt tired, exhausted by his effort, by the excitement of his latest discovery, by his efforts to persuade and impress Edwards. Also he felt a little lonely. He looked at his watch. It was only eleven-thirty in the morning—still too early to go to lunch—and he had finished all he had to do. He had answered all the letters that he had to answer: the neatly typed replies lay in a clean sheaf before him. All he had to do was sign them, and Miss Dorgan would do the rest. So what to do?—How to kill the time?—How to look busy between now and lunch? And after lunch? He could spend three hours comfortably at lunch—from twelve to three with some of his cronies at the University Club: a good meal, good drinks, brandy, and a good cigar. But, then, the rest of the afternoon, from three to five, stretched out before him. He ought to come back to his office if only for the sake of keeping up appearances, but what was there to do? To sit there in that office staring at the fresh green blotter on his tidy desk—the prospect left him desolate.
He straightened with a jerk, dropped pen in ink-well, and began to sign the letters. When he had finished, he wheezed out: “Oh, Miss Dorgan.”
“Yes, Mr. Rivers?”—she came at once, a pleasant red-cheeked, friendly-looking girl, who had her typist’s desk outside his office.
“Now these letters here,” he wheezed and waved toward them—“they’re all signed and ready to be mailed. So you can take them when you’re ready.”
“Yes, Mr. Rivers. And will that be all?”
“Well, now,” he wheezed, “was that all the mail there was?”
“Yes, that was all, Mr. Rivers.”
“Well, then,” he said, “I guess that’s all then for the present. . . . There’s no one waiting out there to see me?” he demanded, with a flare of hope.
“No, Mr. Rivers. There’s been no one today.”
“Well, then,” he mumbled, “I guess that’s all for the present. . . . Oh, I don’t suppose there was any more mail?”—hopefully.
“I don’t think so, Mr. Rivers. If you’ll just wait a moment, I’ll see if anything came in the second delivery.”
“Well, now,” the old man mumbled, “maybe you’d better do that.”
She left him, and in a moment returned with a single letter. Mr. Rivers snatched it almost greedily.
“This just came, Mr. Rivers.” She hesitated a little. “Do you think it’s anything that needs to be tended to right away? It—it looks as if it might be an advertising folder.”
“Well, now, I don’t know,” said Mr. Rivers, and shook his head dubiously. “You can’t tell about these things—you never know what’s in ’em. For all I know, it might be something important, something I ought to attend to right away—”
Meanwhile, he was examining the envelope with palsied hands: suddenly the inscription Who’s Who In America caught his weary eyes, and fixed them with the sudden spark of interest.
“By George, yes,” Mr. Rivers wheezed, and began to run a trembling finger under the flap—“Just as I thought—this looks as if it might be something I ought to attend to right away.”
“Then you’ll call me if you need me?” said Miss Dorgan.
Mr. Rivers wagged his goatish head with solemn affirmation:—
“You go right on out there and sit down,” he kindly wheezed—“If it’s something we’ve got to do, why—” solemnly he wagged his goatish head again—“I’ll let you know.”
12
Left alone, Mr. Rivers opened the letter and observed the contents. A brief note informed him that a proof of his biography, as recorded in the last edition of Who’s Who, was enclosed, and requested him to make any necessary changes or additions, and return the proof for the forthcoming edition as soon as possible.
This was something! It just went to show that a fellow never could be too careful—something important that ought to be attended to right away might turn up at any moment! Well, he’d just look into this right now, and see what needed to be done.
Mr. Rivers adjusted his spectacles and began to read the proof of his biography—two-thirds of a column of fine dense type. As he went on, the last trace of weariness, boredom, and dejection vanished. The old man’s eyes began to sparkle, his cheeks flushed with a glow of ruddy color, he had begun to read with an air of editorial alertness, but this shortly vanished, was supplanted almost instantly by a look of growing fascination, the rapt absorption of the artist enchanted by the contemplation of his own creation.
By George, this was something now! When a fellow was feeling blue or depressed, all he had to do was take a look at this! There he was, in black and white, the sum of him, the dense chronicle of his accomplishment! And if he did say so himself, it was pretty good! Pretty good for the son of a country doctor! Why (Old Man Rivers thumbed rapidly through the pages of Who’s Who before him on the desk—)—there weren’t over a half-dozen fellows in the whole book who had as much as he had (Barr—Barrett—Burroughs—Butler)—Nick Butler, now, he had more, of course, all of those learned societies and honors he had received abroad, and things he belonged to in France and England, they ran the score up, but there weren’t many like that. And having satisfied himself that this was true, Mr. Rivers returned to a contemplation of his own score, which ran as follows:
Rivers, Edward Schroeder; Publicist and Editor. B. Hamburg Falls, Pa., May 2, 1857, s. of the late Dr. Joseph C. and Augusta (Schroeder) R. Ed. at public schools and at the Lawrenceville Academy, A.B. Princeton University, 1879:
Student at Heidelberg and the University of Berlin, 1879–1880. Associated with the publishing house of James Rodney & Co. since 1881. Unmarried. Presbyt’n. Associate Editor Rodney’s Magazine 1886–1902; Editor-in-Chief Rodney’s Magazine, 1902–1930; Advisory Editor James Rodney & Co. since 1930.
Member following societies, organizations, honorary fellowships and institutions: Sons of the American Revolution; Sons and Daughters of the Tribe of Pocahontas; National Affiliation of Colonial Families (Regional Sec. 1919–1924); Children of William Penn; and President Hamburg Falls Historical Ass’n. (since 1894).
Also, Friends of The Pilgrim Fathers; International Union of the Society of Hands Across the Sea; English Speaking Union; National Association of Descendants of Early Huguenots; National Association of the Friends of Lafayette; The Steuben Society; National Preparedness Guild; American League Against War and Fascism; Society of the Friends of the American Constitution; also Friends of the Russian People; Friends of Poland; Friends of Norway; Spanish-American Fellowship for the Promotion of Friendly Relations Between the Republics of the North and South American Continents; American Liberty League; and Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Also, Member International Writers Guild For the Promotion of An International Point of View Among the Writers of All Nations (Founder, and Honorary President since 1913); the International Society for the Dissemination of Good Manners and Standards of Culture; the League for Social Democracy; the League of National Magazine Editors (Affiliated with the International League of Magazine Editors); the League for the Promotion of Friendlier Relations Between Publishers and Authors; the League for the Control of a Wise and Wholesome Censorship; the National League for the Protection of National Ideals, Morals, and Standards of Purity; and the P.E.N. Club.
Also, author of the following books of verse, fiction, essays, travel, biography, autobiography, and criticism: A Yankee Pilgrim on the Rhine (1881); Eternal Values (1884); Literature and Morals (1885); Leadership and Letters (1888); Literature and the Good Life (1891); Rondels for Rita (1894); Maypoles for Margaret (1896); When Prue and I Were Young, Maggie (1897); A Sheaf of Sonnets (1898); A Bouquet of Ballads (1899); Lyrics for Louise (1900); Jed Stone’s Conversion (1902); The Ordeal of Abner Ames (1904); Enid’s Enigma (1905); Their Golden Wedding (1907); Mrs. Coke’s Confession (1909); An Editor’s Edifications (1910); Confessions of an Incomplete Angler (1911); My Sabine Farm (1913); Kinsmen Once and Brothers Yet (1914); France and Freedom (1915); Shall England Perish? (1916); The Hun and Hatred (1918); Friendship’s Folly (1920); Ted and Tom: A Memoir (1922); and A Greybeard’s Garland (1926).
Clubs: The Ivy, University, Princeton, Century, Players, Lotos, Coffee House, Dutch Treat, Collectors, Scriveners, Rod and Gun, Cuff and Link, Hound and Horn, and the Hamburg Falls (Pa.) Country.
Address: The University Club, New York City.
By George, now! This was something! Mr. Rivers leaned back in his swivel chair, and rocked gently back and forth for a moment, staring at the column of dense print before him with an air of profound and contemplative satisfaction. The weary, sad, dejected old man of a few minutes ago had been transformed. Gone was his dejection, vanished his boredom, flown away on wings of hope the last vestiges of self-doubt, loneliness, and depression. When a fellow was feeling low—when he had doubts—when he wondered if the whole thing had been worth all the trouble, let him look at that! And let the others look at it, too. There he was, there was the whole story down in black and white, if they wanted to know who he was, what he had done, just let them look at that.
For a moment longer he rocked back and forth reflectively. Then, clearing his throat, and raising his head, he wheezed out in a high and foggy tone:—
“Miss Dorgan.”
“Yes, Mr. Rivers.” Smiling, the girl appeared at once.
“Now,” Mr. Rivers wheezed, clearing his throat again. “Hem!” he wheezed, and rocked back and forth reflectively a moment. “Well, now—” he fumbled at the inside pocket of his coat with shaking fingers, took out the letter he had put there that morning, and again inspected it. “Well, now, Miss Dorgan,” Mr. Rivers said, “—down there where it says ‘Clubs’—do you see where I mean?”
“Yes, Mr. Rivers.”
“Well, put in down there, member of the Editors and Authors Club—put down ‘Charter Member’.”
“Yes, Mr. Rivers. But are you a member yet?”
“Well, now,” said Mr. Rivers, a trifle testily, “—no! Not exactly! But I’m going to be—” In response to the faintly amused question in the girl’s eyes, the old man wagged his head defensively, and said: “—Well, now, I know I said I wasn’t going to join any more—and I’m not—only this is something I’ve got to do! They said they wouldn’t feel right calling it an Editors and Authors Club unless they had me in there.—But that’s the last one: I’m through after this. But you put that in there where it says ‘Clubs’.”
“Yes, Mr. Rivers, Member of the Editors and Authors Club.”
“—Hem! Yes. . . . Charter member: don’t forget to put that in.”
“Yes, Mr. Rivers. Will that be all?”
“—Hem! Yes, I think so! . . . Now, you’d better get that right off as soon as you can, Miss Dorgan,” he wheezed admonishingly. “They say the time is short, and for all we know, we may hold up the whole edition if we’re late.”
“Yes, Mr. Rivers. I’ll mail it right away.”
When she had gone, the old man rocked back and forth a moment longer. There was a little smile of pleased reflection around his mouth. It was funny what a thing like that could do. It made him feel good, set him right up! He’d been down in the dumps just half an hour ago, with no interest in anything—and now!—Mr. Rivers looked at his watch and jumped up briskly. It was twelve o’clock. He’d go to the Club, get Tom to fix him an Old Fashioned, and order a whacking good lunch. He felt in the mood for it, by George he did!
The old man picked up his hat and left the office. A moment later he was in the street, walking briskly along among the thronging crowds, in the direction of the Club.
[¬]
JUSTICE IS BLIND
[The Enigma of Thomas Wolfe, by Richard Walser, Harvard University Press, 1953]
There used to be—perhaps there still exists—a purveyor of belles lettres in the older, gentler vein who wrote a weekly essay in one of the nation’s genteeler literary publications, under the whimsical nom de plume of Old Sir Kenelm. Old Sir Kenelm, who had quite a devoted literary following that esteemed him as a perfect master of delightful letters, was a leisurely essayist of the Lambsian school. He was always prowling around in out-of-the-way corners and turning up with something quaint and unexpected that made his readers gasp and say, “Why, I’ve passed that place a thousand times and I never dreamed of anything like that!”
In the rush, the glare, the fury of modern life many curious things, alas, get overlooked by most of us; but leave it to Old Sir Kenelm, he would always smell them out. He had a nose for it. He was a kind of enthusiastic rubber-up of tarnished brasses, and assiduous ferreter-out of grimy cornerstones. The elevated might roar above him, and the subway underneath him, and a hurricane of machinery all about him, while ten thousand strident tones passed and swarmed and dinned in his ears—above all this raucous tumult Old Sir Kenelm rose serene: if there was a battered inscription anywhere about, caked over with some fifty years of city dirt, he would be sure to find it, and no amount of paint or scaly rust could deceive his falcon eye for Revolutionary brick.
The result of it was, Old Sir Kenelm wandered all around through the highways and byways of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx discovering Dickens everywhere; moreover, as he assured his readers constantly, anyone with half an eye could do the same. Whimsical characters in the vein of Pickwick simply abounded in the most unexpected places—in filling stations, automats, and the corner stores of the United Cigar Company. More than this, seen properly, the automat was just as delightful and quaint a place as an old inn, and a corner cigar store as delightfully musty and redolent of good cheer as a tavern in Cheapside. Old Sir Kenelm was at his best when describing the customs and whimsical waterfront life of Hoboken, which he immortalized in a delightful little essay as “Old Hobie”; but he really reached the heights when he applied his talents to the noontime rush hour at the soda counter of the corner pharmacy. His description of the quaint shopgirls who foregathered at the counter, the swift repartee and the Elizabethan jesting of the soda jerkers, together with his mouthwatering descriptions of such Lucullan delicacies as steamed spaghetti and sandwiches of pimento cheese, were enough to make the ghosts of the late William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb roll over in their shrouds and weep for joy.
It is therefore a great pity that Old Sir Kenelm never got a chance to apply his elfin talent to a description of the celebrated partnership that bore the name of Paget and Page. Here, assuredly if ever, was grist for his mill, or in somewhat more modern phrase, here was a subject right down his alley. Since this yearning subject has somehow escaped the Master’s hand, we are left to supply the lack as best we can by the exercise of our own modest talents.
The offices of the celebrated firm of Paget and Page were on the thirty-seventh floor of one of the loftier skyscrapers, a building that differed in no considerable respect from a hundred others: unpromising enough, it would seem, for purposes of Dickensian exploration and discovery. But one who has been brought up in the hardy disciplines of Old Sir Kenelm’s school is not easily dismayed. If one can find Charles Lamb at soda fountains, why should one not find Charles Dickens on the thirty-seventh floor?
One’s introduction to this celebrated firm was swift, and from an eighteenth century point of view perhaps a bit unpromising. One entered the great marble corridor of the building from Manhattan’s swarming streets, advanced through marble halls and passed the newspaper and tobacco stand, and halted before a double row of shining elevators. As one entered and to the charioteer spoke the magic syllables, “Paget and Page,” the doors slid to and one was imprisoned in a cage of shining splendor; a lever was pulled back, there was a rushing sound, punctuated now and then by small clicking noises—the whole thing was done quite hermetically, and with no sense of movement save for a slight numbness in the ears, very much, no doubt, as a trip to the moon in a projectile would be—until at length, with the same magic instancy, the cage halted, the doors slid open, and one stepped out upon the polished marble of the thirty-seventh floor feeling dazed, bewildered, and very much alone, and wondering how one got there. One turned right along the corridor, and then left, past rows of glazed-glass offices, formidable names, and the clattering cachinnations of a regiment of typewriters, and almost before one knew it, there squarely to the front, at the very dead end of the hall, one stood before another glazed-glass door in all respects identical with the others except for these words:
PAGET AND PAGE
Counselors at Law
This was all—these simple functions of the alphabet in orderly arrangement—but to anyone who has ever broached that portal, what memories they convey!
Within, the immediate signs of things to come were also unremarkable. There was an outer office, some filing cases, a safe, a desk, a small telephone switchboard, and two reasonably young ladies seated busily at typewriters. Opening from this general vestibule were the other offices of the suite. First one passed a rather small office with a flat desk, behind which sat a quiet and timid-looking little gentleman of some sixty years, with a white mustache, and a habit of peering shyly and quickly at each new visitor over the edges of the papers with which he was usually involved, and a general facial resemblance to the little man who has become well known in the drawings of a newspaper cartoonist as Caspar Milquetoast. This was the senior clerk, a sort of good man Friday to this celebrated firm. Beyond his cubicle a corridor led to the private offices of the senior members of the firm.
