by Thomas Wolfe
And one would turn to stare in stupefaction at that angelic head, that snub nose, that boyish eager face—as one who, in this bewildering guise, might know that he was looking at the dread Medusa, or that, couched here in this pleasant counterfeit of youthful eagerness and naiveté, he was really looking at some ageless creature, some enchantress of Circean cunning whose life was older than the ages and whose heart was old as Hell.
What was the truth of it or what the true image of that sun-headed, golden counterfeit of youth and joy no one could say. It baffled time, it turned reality to phantasmal shapes. One could, and had, as here and now, beheld this golden head, this tilted nose, this freckled, laughing, eager face, here at its very noon of happy innocence. And before ten days had made their round, one had come on it again in the corruptest gatherings of Paris, drugged fathoms deep in opium, foul bodied and filth spattered, cloying to the embraces of a gutter rat, so deeply rooted in the cesspool that it seemed its very life was nothing but a tainted plant, whose roots had grown out of sewage and who had never known any life but that.
And then one would remember the laughing boyish, eager, and hoarse-throated girl with the snub nose, the freckles and the golden head that one had seen four-thousand miles away just seven days before. And time would turn into a dusty ash, the whole substantial structure of the world would reel in witches’ dance, and melt away before one’s eyes like fumes of smoke.
And she?—the cause, or agent of this evil miracle—Medusa, Circe or unhappy child—whatever was the truth—to tell her story!—Oh, it was impossible! That story could be told no more than one could chronicle the wind, put halters on a hurricane, saddle Mercury, or harness with a breded skein of words the mapless raging of tempestuous seas.
Chronology?—Well, for birth, she had the golden spoon; she was a child of Pittsburgh steel, the heiress of enfabled wealth, of parentage half—perhaps the fatal half—of Irish blood; she had been born O’Neill.
And youth? It was the youth and childhood of a dollar princess, kept, costly, cabined, pruned, confined; a daughter of “Society”:—and of a woman, twice divorced and three times married. Her girlhood had been spent in travel and rich schools, in Europe, Newport, New York and Palm Beach. By eighteen she was “out”—a famous beauty; by nineteen she was married. And by twenty her name was tainted and divorced.
And, since then? There were not words to tell the story, and although there were warm apologists who tried to find the reason for it, or to make for it excuse, there was not enough logic in the Universe to find a reason or to shape a plan, to phrase an argument for that maelstrom of a life.
“The facts speak for themselves”? The very facts were unspeakable; could one have spoken them there would not be space enough for a full record, and no one credulous enough for their belief; one could not quote the simple and accepted truths, which were that she had been three times married and that one marriage had been annulled and had lasted only twenty hours; and that a third had ended tragically when her husband, a young French writer of great talent, but a hopeless addict of cocaine, had shot himself.
And before and after that, and in between, and in and out, and during it and later on, and now and then, and here and there, and at home and abroad, and on the seven seas, and across the length and breadth of the five continents, and yesterday and tomorrow and forever—could it be said of her that she had been “promiscuous”? No, that could not be said of her. For she had been as free as air, and one does not qualify the general atmosphere of the sidereal universe with such a paltry adjective as “promiscuous.”
She had just slept with everybody, with white, black, yellow, pink or green or purple—but she had never been promiscuous.
It was, in romantic letters, a period that celebrated the lady who was lost, the lovely creature in the green hat who was “never let off anything.” The story of this poor lady was a familiar one: she was the ill-starred heroine of fate, a kind of martyr to calamitous mischance, whose ruin had been brought about through tragic circumstance which she could not control, and for which she was not responsible.
Amy had her own apologists who tried to cast her in this martyred role. The stories told about her ruin—her “start upon the downward path” were numerous: there was even one touching conte which dated the beginning of the end from the moment when, an innocent, happy and fun-loving girl of nineteen years, she had, in a moment of desperation, in an effort to enliven the gloom, inject a flash of youth, of daring, or of happy spontaneity into the dismal scene, lighted a cigarette at a dinner party in Newport, attended by a large number of eminent Society Dowagers; the girl’s downfall, according to this moving tale, had been brought about by this thoughtless and harmless little act. From this moment on—so the story went—the verdict of the dowagers was “thumbs down” on the unhappy Amy: the evil tongues began to wag, scandal began to grow, her reputation was torn to shreds, then, in desperation, the unhappy child did go astray; she took to drink, from drink to lovers, from lovers to opium, from opium to—everything.
And all because a happy laughter-loving girl had smoked a cigarette! All because an innocent child had flaunted prejudice, defied convention! All because the evil tongues had wagged, because the old and evil minds had whispered! All of this of course, was just romantic foolishness. She was the ill-starred child of fate indeed, but the fate was in her, not outside of her. She was the victim of a tragic doom, but she herself had fashioned it: with her the fault, as with dear Brutus, lay not in her stars but in herself—for having been endowed with so many rare and precious things that most men lack—wealth, beauty, charm, intelligence and vital energy—she lacked the will to do, the toughness to resist, the power to shape her life to mastery: so, having almost all, she was the slave to her own wealth—an underling.
It is true, she was the child of her own time, the unhappy incarnation of a sickness of her time. She let her own time kill her. Her life expressed itself in terms of speed, sensational change and violent movement, in a feverish tempo that never drew from its own energies exhaustion or surcease, and that mounted constantly to insane excess. The only end of this could be destruction. Her life then was already sealed with doom. The mark of her destruction was already apparent upon her.
People had once said, “What on earth is Amy going to do next?” But now they said, “What on earth is there left for her to do?” And really if life is to be expressed solely in terms of velocity and sensation, it seemed that there was very little left for her to do. She had been everywhere, she had “seen everything” in the way in which such a person sees things, as one might see them from the windows of an express train traveling eighty miles an hour.
And having so quickly exhausted the conventional kaleidoscope of things to be seen in the usual itineraries of travel she had long since turned to an investigation of things much more bizarre and sinister and hidden, which her great wealth, her powerful connections, and her own driving energies opened to her, but which were closed to other people.
She had possessed for years an intimate and extensive acquaintance among the most sophisticated and decadent groups in society, in the great cities of the world. And this intimacy matured swiftly into familiarity with even more sinister border lines of life. She had an acquaintanceship among the underworld of New York, London, Paris and Berlin which the police might have envied and which few criminals achieve. It was rumored that she had taken part in a holdup “just for the fun of the thing.” And the police and some of her friends knew that she had been present at a drinking party at which one of the chieftains of the underworld had been killed.
But even with the police her wealth and power had secured for her dangerous privileges. Although she was nearsighted—in fact her eye sight was myopic, seriously affected—she drove a yellow racing car through city traffic at murderous speed. This great yellow car was well known in the seething highways of Manhattan and always brought the courtesy of a police salute. In some way, known only to persons of wealth, privilege, or politic
al influence she possessed a police card and was privileged to a reckless license in violation of the laws in the operation of her car. Although, a year or two before, she had demolished this car, and killed a young dramatist who had been driving with her, this privilege had never been revoked.
And it was the same everywhere she went. It seemed that her wealth and power and feverish energy could get her anything she wanted in any country in the world. And the answer to it all? Well, speed, change, violence and sensation was the only answer—and then more speed, more change, more violence, and more sensation—until the end. And the end? The end was already in sight; it was written in her eyes—in her tormented splintered, and exploded vision. She had sowed the wind and now there was nothing left for her to reap except the whirlwind.
People now said: “What on earth is there left for her to do?” Nothing. There was nothing. She had tried everything in life—except living. And she could never try that now because she had so long ago, so irrecoverably lost the way. And having tried everything in life save living, and having lost the way to live, there was nothing left for her to do except to die.
And yet that golden, that angelic head; the snubbed nose and the freckled face—“I mean!—You know!”—the quick excited laugh, the hoarse and thrilling tones, the eager animation of a boy—were all so beautiful, so appealing, and somehow, one felt in this hard mystery, so good,—“If only—” people would think regretfully as Mrs. Jack now thought as she looked at that sunny head—“Oh, if only things had turned out differently for her!—” and then would seek back desperately through the labyrinthine scheme to find the clue to her disorder—saying, “Here—or here—or here—it happened here, you see—if only!—If only men were so much clay, as they are blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling!—if they only were!”
“I mean!—You know!—” at these familiar words, so indicative of her inchoate thought, her splintered energies, her undefined enthusiasm, Amy jerked the cigarette away from her lips with a quick and feverish movement, laughed hoarsely and eagerly, and turned to her companions as if fairly burning with an excited desire to communicate something to them that filled her with a conviction of exuberant elation—“I mean!” she cried hoarsely again,—“When you compare it with the stuff they’re doing nowadays!—I mean! There’s simply no comparison!”—and laughing jubilantly as if the meaning of these splintered phrases was perfectly clear to everyone, she drew furiously upon her cigarette again and jerked it from her lips.
During the course of this exuberant and feverish monologue, the group of young people, of which Amy was the golden centre and which included besides Alma and Ernest Jack, Roy Farley and his two young male companions, the young Japanese sculptor and the rich young Jew who had accompanied Amy to the party, had moved over toward the portrait of Mrs. Jack above the mantle, and were looking up at it.
The famous portrait, which was now the subject of Amy’s jubilant admiration, was deserving of its reputation and of the enthusiastic praise that was now being heaped upon it. It was one of the best examples of Henry Mallows’ early work and it had also been created with the passion, the tenderness, the simplicity of a man in love.
“I mean!” cried Amy jubilantly again, pausing below the portrait, and gesturing at it with rapid movement of her impatient cigarette, “When you look at it and think how long ago that was!—and how beautiful she was then!—and how beautiful she is now!” cried Amy exultantly, laughed hoarsely, then cast her lovely grey green eyes so full of splintered torment around her in a glance of almost feverish exasperation—“I mean!” she cried again and drew impatiently on her cigarette—“There’s simply no comparison!”—without saying what it was there was simply no comparison to or for or with, and certainly not saying what she wanted to say—“Oh, I mean!” she cried with a tone and gesture of desperate impatience, jerked her golden head and tossed her cigarette angrily and impatiently away into the blazing fire—“The whole thing’s obvious,” she muttered leaving everyone more bewildered than ever. Then, turning toward Hook with a sudden and impulsive movement, she demanded; “How long has it been, Steve? It’s been twenty years ago, hasn’t it?”
“Oh, quite all of that,” Hook answered in a cold bored tone. In his agitation and embarrassment he turned still farther away from her with an air of fatigued indifference, until he almost had his fat back turned upon the whole group. “It’s been nearer thirty, I should think,” he tossed back indifferently over his fat shoulder and then with an air of bored casualness, he gave them the exact date which he knew precisely as he knew all such dates, “I should think it was done in nineteen one or two,—wasn’t it, Esther?”—he drawled in a bored tone, turning to Mrs. Jack, who, rosily beaming, and with a jolly and rather bewildered look upon her face, had now approached the group, “Around nineteen one, wasn’t it?”—he said more loudly in answer to her sharply lifted little hand cupped at the ear and her eager and inquiring “Hah?”
“Hah? What?” cried Mrs. Jack in an eager rather bewildered tone, then went on immediately, “Oh, the picture! No, Steve—it was done in nineteen—” She checked herself so swiftly that it was not apparent to anyone but Hook that she was not telling the truth—“In nineteen-four.” She saw just the momentary trace of a smile upon the pale bored features as he turned away and gave him a quick warning little look, but he just murmured in a casual and disinterested tone: “Oh … I had forgotten it was as late as that.”
As a matter of fact, he knew the exact date, even to the month and day it had been finished—which had been October, 1902. And still musing on the vagaries of the sex, he thought: “Why will they be so stupid! She must know that to anyone who knows the least thing about Mallows’ life, the date is as familiar as the Fourth of July—”
“Of course,” Mrs. Jack was saying rapidly, “I was just a child when it was made, I couldn’t have been more than eighteen at the time—if I was that—”
“Which would make you not more than forty-three at the present time,” thought Hook cynically—“if you are that! Well, my dear, you were twenty when he painted you—and you had been married for two years and had a child and you had been Henry Mallows’ mistress for a year. … Why do they do it!”—he thought impatiently, and turned away with a feeling of sharp annoyance—“Does she take me for a fool!”
He turned toward her almost impatiently and looked at her and saw her quick glance, an expression startled, almost pleading in her eye. He followed it, and saw the hot eye, the fierce packed features of ungainly youth: he caught it in a flash: “Ah! It’s this boy! She’s told him then that—” and suddenly remembering the startled pleading of that look—so much of child, of folly, even in their guile—was touched with pity: “Oh! I see!”
Aloud, however, he merely turned away and murmured indifferently, with no expression in his heavy eyes: “Oh, yes, you couldn’t have been very old.”
“And God!” cried Mrs. Jack. “But I was beautiful!” She spoke these words with such gleeful conviction, with such a jolly and good-humored face, with such innocent delight that they lost any trace of objectionable vanity they might have had, and people smiled at her affectionately, as one might smile at a child, and Amy Van Leer, with a quick hasty little laugh, said impulsively,
“Oh, Esther! Honestly you’re the most—But I mean!” She cried impatiently, with a quick toss of her golden head, as if answering some invisible antagonist—“She is!”
“In all your days,” cried Mrs. Jack, her tender little face suffusing with laughter and good-humor like a flower, “You never saw the like of me! I was just like peaches and cream,” she said; then with her rich plain humor, simply “I’d have knocked your eye out!”
“But darling! You do now!” cried Amy—“What I mean to say is, darling you’re the most—isn’t she, Steve?” She laughed hoarsely, uncertainly, turning to Hook with a kind of feverish eagerness in her tone.
And he, seeing the ruin, the loss, the desperation in her splintered eyes was sick with horror and with pi
ty. He looked at her disdainfully, with weary lidded eyes, and a haughtily pursy face, like a gentleman who has just been accosted in his club by a drunken sot who has clutched him by the sleeve, and after looking at her for a moment in this way, with this disdainful hauteur, he said, “What?” quite freezingly, and then turned pompously away, saying in a bored and weary tone: “Oh …”
He saw the rosy smiling face of Mrs. Jack beside him, and above, the portrait of the lovely girl that she had been. And the anguish and the majesty of time stabbed through him like a knife.
“My God, here she is!” he thought. “Still featured like a child, still beautiful, still loving someone—another boy!—Almost as lovely now as she was then when Mallows was a boy, and she had just begun to sleep with him in—in—”
1902! Ah! Time! The figures reeled in drunken dance before his eyes. He rubbed his hand before his eyes, and turned wearily away. No figures these—but symbols in a witches’ dance, a dance of evil and enchanted time. In 1902!—How many centuries ago was that?—How many lives and deaths and floods, how many million days and nights of love, of hate, of anguish and of fear, of guilt, of hope, of disillusion and defeat here in the geologic aeons of this monstrous catacomb, this riddled isle!—in 1902! Good God! It was the very Prehistoric Age of man!—the Neolithic Era of this swarming Rock! Why, all that had happened several million years ago—so much had happened after that, so much had begun and ended, been forgotten, so many, many million lives of truth, of youth, of old age, death, and new beginning, so much blood and sweat and agony had gone below the bridge—why he himself had lived through at least ten million years of it! Had lived and died a million births and lives and deaths and dark oblivions of it, had striven, fought, and hoped and been destroyed through so many centuries of it that even memory had failed—the sense of time had been wiped out—and all of it had seemed to happen in a timeless dream; a kind of Grand Canyon of the human nerves and bones and blood and brain and flesh and words and thought, all timeless now, all congealed, all there solidified in a kind of timeless and unchanging stratum, there impossibly below, mixed into a general geologic layer with all the bonnets, bustles and old songs, the straw hats and the derbies, the clatter of forgotten hooves, the thunder of forgotten wheels upon forgotten cobbles, together with lost words, lost music and lost songs, the skeletons of lost thought and lost ideas—merged together now there in a geologic stratum of the sunken world—while she
