by Irene Hunt
When I came home that night I found my manuscript encased in a neat manila folder and propped against my door. The outside of the folder was covered with Uncle Haskell’s beautifully flowing handwriting; at the bottom of his comments he had given me a B minus.
Seated at my desk, I read his criticism:Dear Julie:
If I didn’t feel that there is some good in your story, I wouldn’t take the time to write a criticism of it. But there is some good in it, some points that make me feel that if you expend the effort (Look who’s talking about expending effort, I couldn’t help thinking) you may well achieve your very worthy ambition.
First of all, you have an ear for cadence. Your sentences flow rather smoothly, and the continuity of your paragraphs is quite good.
Secondly, your imagery is sharp and clear-cut. I could smell that dank, rat-infested attic, and I was more than a little in love with your pretty heroine by the time she emerged from her third paragraph. Furthermore, you occasionally achieve poetic effects which are pleasing.
But, my darling niece, your villains have nothing but venom in their souls, and your sympathetic characters are ready to step right off into Paradise without one spot to tarnish their purity. People aren’t like that, Julie. Take a look around you.
Again, all your colors, your moods, your nuances, are essentially feminine, and it just doesn’t ring true to be told that a man is responsible for them. No, Julie, it will be a long time before you speak and think and feel like an anguished old German musician of eighty! And, after all, what do you know about the problems of musical composition, or the life of an impoverished German laborer such as the landlord in his nineteenth-century environment? And how much do you know about sadism and brutality?
I must talk to you about any number of points. When you get home from school tomorrow, I shall have some recommendations to make; also some assignments. I am quite excited. It well may be that I have the making of a future writer in my hands.
Uncle Haskell
I laid the manila folder aside thoughtfully. If I hadn’t done anything else, I had given him something to get excited about. I felt very tender toward Uncle Haskell that night.
We had long talks about my writing in the days that followed. “Write of things you know about, Julie; familiar, simple things that you have experienced; things that have touched you deeply.”
“But nothing’s ever happened to me. I’ve just lived here with Aunt Cordelia and you most of my life, I’ve gone to school, visited Father—oh, sure, I’m in love with Danny, but that’s something we’ve grown into—very wonderful for us, but not very exciting for the rest of the world. How can a person who has lived as quiet a life as I have find anything to write about?”
“Then you do have a problem. If you haven’t lived long enough to have felt anything deeply, then you are in the same position I—as many would-be writers are. You’ve nothing to say. So take up crocheting.”
I thought about that business of remembering an experience which had caused me to feel deeply, and finally as I thought, there emerged in my mind, three little figures standing at a gate in the bright October sunlight; I heard a small girl saying, “You aren’t going to live here anymore, are you?” I saw a picture of sheets on the line being wrinkled into malicious faces as the wind blew them about; I heard Laura’s voice begging me to stop crying, and I heard Mrs. Peters saying, “. . . and now our pretty petticoat . . .” As I remembered these things, the old feeling of desperation seemed to climb down into my throat, and I saw the closet under the stairs, felt Aunt Cordelia’s arms drawing me into her lap.
That evening I went to my room and wrote for many hours, neglecting some of my schoolwork because this paper for Uncle Haskell seemed to demand precedence.
I left it with him before I went to school the next morning, and when I came home in the evening I hurried out to discuss it with him. His face was grave as he turned the paper in his hands. “Is this the way it was, Julie? Did you really experience all this?”
I nodded, and he reread a paragraph thoughtfully. “I never knew,” he said after a while. “I didn’t know that children felt that deeply.”
He said no more about the story, but he did not hand it back to me. “I’d like to look this over a little more,” he said without explanation, and laid it aside on a pile of papers.
He was as hard a taskmaster as if he had known only long hours of toil himself, and was unable to understand others who could not live up to his rigid standards. He would make me do a paper over, pointing out a hackneyed phrase, a contrived situation, a paragraph of strained dialogue. He wanted more and more copy, and he was very stern about my failure to turn it in as he demanded it.
“But I have my schoolwork to do, Uncle Haskell. I can’t take a chance of getting low grades. High marks are very important to me this year.”
“Any writer who really has the fire within him will find time to write, Julie,” said Uncle Haskell with the air of a man who knew that fire well. “What about Cole-ridge and Stevenson, what about dozens of others, sick in body and mind, suffering acute pain, but still finding the energy and time to write?”
“They weren’t finishing high school,” I muttered. But I worked as hard as I was able, and Uncle Haskell went over each of my offerings with meticulous care. He would strike out clichés with impatient little crosses, brand paragraphs with such words as “Awkward,” “Illogical,” “Saccharine”; now and then he would reward me with a benevolent “Good!” or “Big Improvement!” My spelling annoyed him occasionally. “Good Heavens, Julie, didn’t Cordelia teach you anything? ” he would inquire via his blue pencil. And at the end of the paper, he would spell out the major faults of my work and the qualities he found commendable. He usually placed a letter grade below his criticism; I received several C’s; nothing ever higher than a B.
“Young writers get false ideas from indiscreet praise,” he explained. “When I tell you that your work is good, I’m not suggesting that you’re Madame de Sévigné.”
Uncle Haskell must have been in pain often during those months; his face showed the effects of suffering, but he never mentioned it. Aunt Cordelia and Father talked with the doctors, and all that could be done for him was done. It was not much; temporary relief from pain, Aunt Cordelia’s devotion.
“Your writing is helping him more than any medicine, Julia,” Aunt Cordelia told me, for we had found it necessary to include her in our secret. “In all the years, he has had no more than a flash of satisfaction out of his strange, twisted thinking. Now, I believe he feels that finally he is making some small contribution to a society he has always ignored.” She watched him as he waved to us and walked away for his evening stroll. “He might have been a very good teacher—a fine man if something terribly wrong hadn’t distorted him.”
Uncle Haskell suggested once or twice that I send out one or two of my best things. “See how they’re received, Julie. The experience can’t hurt you. Anyway, every young author must commence collecting his pile of rejection slips. You had just as well make a beginning.”
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It seemed too audacious on my part; I had a feeling that I might not only receive a rejection slip but that some outraged editor might give me a sound scolding for presuming to take up his time.
Then one week in April I had a telephone call from Father. “Julie, your story is in the College Quarterly,” he said in an excited voice. “Darling, why didn’t you tell us?”
It was a day of considerable rejoicing by those who loved me most. Father called Laura and Chris; within a few hours Chris responded with a silly but very proud telegram, while Laura and Bill put through a long-distance telephone call which was still considered an extravagance, and their congratulations extended for a period far beyond the three minutes to which Aunt Cordelia and I carefully restricted ourselves when making such calls. Jonathan Eltwing felt that I had created and sustained a mood in a way that showed promise; Aunt Cordelia and Alicia were pleased. Father, who sho
uld have known better, being familiar with the best in literature, rather lost control of his enthusiasm that day. He kept finding another point in my work to praise until I became uncomfortable; I feared that it sounded a little like Grandmother Bishop praising something Uncle Haskell had written. Everyone laughed indulgently, and I felt much relieved when Father finally achieved insight into his overreaction and said quietly, “Well, after all, I remember her from a little vegetable on up. If what she writes gets into print, it seems great stuff to me.”
Only Uncle Haskell remained aloof that day. I ran over to his place early that morning, sure that he was responsible for submitting my manuscript, and anxious to talk about it. There was, however, no response to my knock, and all during the day we saw nothing of him. It was not until late evening when I was getting ready to drive into town with Danny that I saw Uncle Haskell turning into the path that led to the creek, his beret perched jauntily on his head, the golf bag without clubs slung across his shoulder.
I ran down the lane to overtake him. “When did you send my story to the Quarterly, Uncle Haskell? Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked breathlessly.
“My dear child,” he said with mock loftiness, “I had completely forgotten your little yarn. Did they publish it, really?”
“You know very well that they published it. Oh, Uncle Haskell, I’ve been walking on clouds today. And how I’ve missed you; why didn’t you answer my knock?”
“I felt no desire to join the throng. I’d sooner discuss your work when we’re alone.” He smiled at me, but I noticed that his face looked ashen in the twilight. “Yes, I’ll admit that I submitted your story. It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? You see, my judgment of work was accurate.”
“I never could have done it without your help. Never.”
“I like to think that, but I’m not fully convinced.” He looked out toward the misty woods and sighed. “We’ll talk about it—sometime later. You run along. You’re going out with young Trevort, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but I’ll have time to walk down to the creek with you.” The look of suffering on his face hurt me. “Don’t you want me to come along just this once?”
He made an effort to regain his old gaiety. “I do not. I reserve the right to invite guests to accompany me on my evening strolls. Tonight, you are not invited.” He kissed me lightly on the forehead. “Congratulations, my sweet; your name looked very fine in print. I have felt quite proud of you all day.” I stood watching him as he went down the winding path through the woods. He turned and waved just before he disappeared among the trees.
It was rather late when I came in that night. I had thought that if Uncle Haskell’s light were still on, I might run over and see him for a few minutes. But his place was dark and so I prepared for the night, setting my alarm a few minutes early so that I would have time to see him before I went to school the next morning. The white suffering in his face had bothered me from time to time all evening.
My bed felt warm and safe that night as I listened to the rain falling steadily on the roof and splashing in little puddles below my window. It had been a beautiful day, full of love and encouragement. I smiled as I thought of Dr. Adam Trelling, behaving like any foolish father over a very simple story; I thought again of Danny’s good-night kiss and his whisper of how happy he was at my success. Just before I slept I thought of Uncle Haskell.
Our telephone rang very early the next morning. There are people who say that what I am about to tell must be in error; that I have imagined it this way. But I know. I know very well that when the ringing of the telephone awakened me, I lay stiffly in my bed and thought: “Aunt Cordelia will answer that ring. Then there will be a time of silence. After that, she will come up the stairs, knock at my door, and she will say, ‘Julia, Uncle Haskell is dead.’”
And it happened almost that way. Aunt Cordelia knocked at my door after the short silence, and she said, “Julia, wake up, dear. Some men have found Uncle Haskell’s body in the creek. They think he fell from the old bridge last night.”
For several days I wouldn’t go near the old carriage-house apartment, but there finally came an afternoon when Aunt Cordelia and I had to face the task of going through Uncle Haskell’s few possessions, discarding what we must, putting away for no particular reason the things we could not bear to discard.
I folded the old velvet smoking jacket and the white silk shirt which he had worn the afternoon that he became the “good golden-haired man” for little Katy Eltwing. We packed his books and with them two unopened packages containing bottles such as the one that had once reminded me of bowling pins. We found a few papers with the opening paragraphs of a story or an article neatly typed, but never completed. The College Quarterly was lying on his desk, opened at the page where my story began. In the margin I read, “Sharp imagery; good plot; some tendency toward overwriting. B+.”
We worked in silence for a long time, but at last I sat down at the desk and turned toward my aunt. “What happened, Aunt Cordelia? What distorted him?”
She pressed both hands against her temples for a minute; then she sat down at the desk and looked at me without seeming to see me.
“I’m not sure, Julia; no one can ever be sure of the forces that have shaped a character. I think, though, that our parents—” She paused, frowning, and then went on. “I’m not one of the school that holds parents responsible for all the weaknesses of their children, but I must say this: we had an odd pair of parents. I loved one of them, but not the other; Haskell loved neither of them.”
“I thought that Grandmother Bishop adored him.”
“She did. She smothered him with adoration and turned his father against him. Haskell resented her bitterly.”
“You loved your father?”
“Yes. Father always seemed old to me. He was nearly twenty years older than Mama, a stern, undemonstrative man, but kind. Kind, that is, to most people, not to Haskell, nor to Mama in his later years. I think he felt that she had robbed him of his first child, his only boy. When he saw Haskell overindulged and spoiled by Mama, he rejected him completely. He loved your mother and me; he had no use whatever for his son. With Mama, it was the reverse.
“There are plenty of children who could have risen above such a situation. Not Haskell. Whether there was some basic weakness of character or whether he was, as you say, distorted, we can’t know. In my heart I hold my parents responsible.”
We sat there thinking. I ran my hand across the smooth velvet of Uncle Haskell’s jacket; I remembered his hair. There was, indeed, something of velvet and gold about him, something that Katy Eltwing’s troubled mind had glimpsed. It was shoddy velvet and tarnished gold, and there lay the tragedy, for the shoddiness and the tarnish might have been prevented.
We set things to rights and packed and stored all that had value; the rest, we burned. Before we left, we drew the shades; then Aunt Cordelia locked the door and for a long time we tried to avoid looking at the place.
11
“I think, Julia,” Aunt Cordelia said one morning as we stood at the kitchen table cleaning silver, “that it’s time you were pushed out of the nest. I think you had better plan to attend the state university next winter.”
“But I don’t want to leave here, Aunt Cordelia. I want to stay with you for the next four years. Danny and I have it all planned. I don’t think that I could bear to leave.”
“Four more years with me and you’ll be as dogmatic and opinionated as I am.” She actually grinned at me. I was amazed; Aunt Cordelia often smiled primly, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing her grin as though she were sharing a joke with me. “Spinster aunts serve a need, but they should know when the time comes to push young nieces out on their own.”
“But you would be all alone if I left you; anyway, this is my home.”
She shook her head. “You must have new experiences, be exposed to new ideas, Julia. You’ve fallen into a pattern here; if you stay on, you’ll be another Cordelia Bishop. I won’t have
it.”
“I don’t want to leave Danny,” I said, near tears.
“It would be a good thing if Danny were pushed out of his comfortable little niche too. Jonathan agrees with me. I may even speak to Helen and Charles Trevort about it.”
It seemed to me that she was disposing of other people on a grand scale that morning. “I thought that you were happy about Danny and me. Now, it seems you really want to see us separated.”
“I am happy, Julia. However,” she stressed the word strongly, “both you and Danny need to get out into life and give your love a test.”
I felt weak inside. “If Danny would ‘get out into life’ as you put it, and find that he loved someone else, I would die. I know it. I would just give up and die.”
“No, you wouldn’t, dear. You’d go on living. It would be hard, but if your interests were wide and your life full, you would get over the pain and find a new life.” She laid her hand on my arm. “Don’t look so tragic. I have great confidence that four years from now I’ll be getting this old place ready for your wedding—yours and Danny’s.”
“It’s beginning to sound like an awful gamble.” We finished the silver without saying anything more; when we were through I went away to walk in the woods. It was a cool day, and Aunt Cordelia made me wear a woolen stole that Jonathan had given her for Christmas; it was the color of ripe strawberries, and I couldn’t help but be cheered by its beauty.
I was still reeling from Aunt Cordelia’s firm line when word came that Danny had received a scholarship from the eastern university that Chris was attending. The professors in Danny’s department were pleased; so were both our fathers and Aunt Cordelia. They seemed pretty callous to us during those first weeks; then we pulled ourselves together and commenced making our plans all over again.
