The Sunday Gentleman

by Irving Wallace

  Well, that was in 1951, when Larry Cassidy was thirty-seven years old, and his lobotomy personality was four years old—and since then we have had the long tension years under President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and President Johnson—and today, Larry Cassidy is fifty-one years old and his lobotomy personality is eighteen years old. How has the passage of time affected Larry? What is he today?

  Following the appearance of the story, I had no further personal contact with Larry. Shortly after becoming “world-famous,” he had removed himself from Los Angeles, and only occasionally, through his friend, Burt or his younger brother, Jack, did I hear what he was doing. But what I did hear, usually in the form of some singular Kafkaesque anecdote, made it clear to me that his incredible odyssey in search of peace, first from his demon mind, and then from his altered conscienceless mind—tragicomic sometimes, outrageous often, pitiful usually, and, finally today, somewhat remarkable—was continuing without respite. When I decided to include Larry’s story in a book, I also determined to find out, if I could, what had happened to him in the last fourteen years. I have now found out.

  In 1951, Larry Cassidy had already spent two years in the Brentwood Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, located in West Los Angeles. It will be remembered that twice he had attempted to run away from this institution. His weekends with his brother, Jack, whom he approached with hate and love, and his sister-in-law, Susan, were not solace enough for him. He was still a ward of the government, technically imprisoned among those whom he considered his inferiors, and he chafed against his commitment and agitated to become a free citizen of his country again. Perhaps what happened next was triggered by the appearance of my story and its effect upon him. This story gave him concrete evidence of his importance, and possibly made him even more resentful of having his unique genius caged. In any event, Larry persistently begged for freedom from the hospital, but nothing came of it. Then, one day in 1952, a shrewd fellow patient in the ward said to Larry, “You know, you’re too smart to be in here. It’s unfair. Why don’t you get out? Even though Jack put you in here, he can’t have you held. Legally, you committed yourself. You signed yourself in. Why don’t you sign yourself out? No one on earth can force you to stay here.”

  The sudden realization that he was self-committed spurred Larry into immediate action. He applied for release. And he signed away his right to government care and maintenance in return for liberty and independence. When his brother, Jack, learned of this, learned that Larry’s discharge was already being processed, he rushed to an official of the Veterans Administration. “You can’t let him out,” Jack implored. “He’s irresponsible. He can’t make a living. You’ve got to hold him here.” The official shook his head. “We can’t hold him, if he doesn’t want to be committed. We need beds for people who want to be here. He doesn’t want to be here. That’s the way he feels.” Jack replied angrily, “He’s not in a position to feel that way or any way about himself. Can’t you see that?”

  The government could not see that. It saw nothing except the law. Preparations for Larry’s release from the Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital went on. In a desperate effort to stave off what he feared would be a catastrophe. Jack made up his mind to battle the United States government. He retained an attorney, and went to court. Informed of Jack’s move, Larry spent much of his hoarded veteran’s pension to hire a lawyer of his own.

  The legal action was brief. Hie law was the law, and Larry won his case. In 1953, he received his discharge from the Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital. Harboring bitterness against the Cain who he fantasied was jealous of him, Larry left Los Angeles. In New York, he was sure, he had a better friend in Burt, his long-ago, wealthy Princeton roommate, who was now a successful magazine editor. Burt, Larry decided, understood his creative abilities, and would help him make use of them and help him make his mark in the world.

  Although apprehensive upon Larry’s arrival, Burt was sympathetic and useful. He settled Larry in the first of a series of inexpensive one-room apartments. Because he wanted to bank Larry’s monthly pension check for him, Burt allotted him a weekly allowance out of his own pocket. Perhaps it was Larry’s handling of this weekly allowance that made Burt remember his friend’s condition. Each weekly allowance evaporated in a single day. Larry’s sense of responsibility had been left in a surgery room in Boston six years before. Thereafter, Burt doled out Larry’s allowance on a daily basis, a four-dollar check every morning.

  Now began the epic of Larry Cassidy, Wage Earner. Larry’s grandiose dreams of obtaining high-salaried executive positions were quickly deflated. From that beginning in New York City, and for ten years after, and to this day, Larry’s career story has been the story of small jobs found and small jobs lost. The lobotomy had stripped him of the necessary faculties of compromise and competitiveness. In no single year has he ever earned more than $300. Largely, he has lived on Burt’s charity and his veteran’s pension. His pre-lobotomy personality, with an I.Q. of over 150, a Phi Beta Kappa key, a desire to become a professor, and a wish to commit suicide, all this that had been good and bad, had been permanently removed. Now, as a post-lobotomy product, possessing a shallow belligerence as well as freedom from anxiety, he was left with an intelligence so erratic that it could not cope with a profession. In fact, it became quickly evident to Burt that Larry could not manage even menial jobs. Variously, he was a night watchman, a delivery boy, a salesman. Yet, he was none of these for more than three or four days at a time. He was fired, most often, because he antagonized employers by flaunting his superior educational background and complaining about his demeaning work, because he appeared eccentric and unstable in his behavior, and because he lacked the ability to concentrate on a task or stay in one place for any length of time.

  Aside from his endless wanderings about Manhattan, Larry’s social and recreational activity consisted of visiting Burt and Burt’s family once a week. An hour or two before dinner, Larry would appear, disheveled and filthy, for he had no one to care for him and had no interest in caring for himself. Burt would run a tub of water, strip him, get him into the bath, then rush his clothes through the washer and dryer. While the clothes were being ironed, Burt would shampoo Larry’s hair, scrub his back, and cut his fingernails. Once Larry was clean and dressed, he would, said Burt, “wait like a Pavlov dog for the dinner bell to sound, all the while pacing up and down, talking constantly.” His best monologues were in praise of Burt, his patron, of the President of the United States, of the armed might of America that could crush any opponent on earth, of recent books he had read. Occasionally, the somnolent belligerence would awaken. Larry would suddenly halt his pacing, strike a pugilistic stance, and then chuckling, he would address his unseen enemy. If the unseen enemy was young, Larry would tell him, “I am going to hang one on you. I wouldn’t urinate on you if you were on fire.” If the unseen enemy was aged, Larry would growl, “I’ll urinate on your grave.” Who were the unseen enemies? They varied from the Veterans Administration officials to hospital patients he had known to his brother, Jack, to Dr. Goldsmith and Dr. Rogers. But the hostility lacked depth. Quickly, the pacing while waiting for dinner would be resumed, and Larry would be discoursing on the level (low) of culture in American society.

  For five years, this pattern, the briefly held jobs, the endless walks, the visits to Burt, were the confined Andorra-like boundaries of Larry’s life. Then there occurred a dramatic change. For some time, stimulated by newspaper advertisements and his own fancies, Larry Cassidy had been demanding a trip abroad. Burt turned his friend’s pleas aside as long as he could, but at last, with dire misgivings, he gave in, praying the change might give his lobotomized ward some stimulation and joy. Burt planned the first of what was to become three foreign trips with care. Using some of Larry’s pension savings, taking advantage of off-season rates, Burt went to a reliable New York travel bureau. He arranged for every step of the itinerary in advance, for every flight, hotel, meal, sightseeing trip. And then he packed Larry off with two small bag
s of clean clothes and a booklet of travelers’ checks.

  The first Grand Tour, which included Great Britain, France, and Italy, went well. There was only one misadventure. According to Jack, Larry’s belligerence landed him in a Paris jail overnight. According to Burt, it was Larry’s irresponsibility that caused the trouble, and that did not land him in jail. Rather, he had spent all his available funds, and was unable to pay his Paris hotel bill. There was an unhappy scene, but in the end, the Paris hotel merely held on to Larry’s luggage, which was sorely in need of fumigation anyway. Aside from that one incident, and some mild confusion about Larry’s destination when he took to exchanging flight tickets, both Larry and Europe survived his visit, and he returned to New York enriched and intact.

  Encouraged by the results of the first trip abroad, Burt permitted Larry a second one the following year. This sojourn was uneventful, until Larry arrived in England. Still possessed of some foxed fragments of literary knowledge, Larry joined an overnight round-trip bus tour from London to Stratford-on-Avon. On the bus, he found himself seated beside a small, shy, not unattractive, middle-aged English woman, a secretary full of romantic readings, on a holiday. Her name was Nellie. Their brief encounter in the mellow English countryside—they were travel companions no more than forty-eight hours—became love, for each of them, at first sight. For Larry, this incredible sweet bird of a woman, so reticently English, so ingrown, yet warm and sympathetic, filled the void left by his Catholic wife, Harriet, who had abandoned him as a matter of self-preservation almost a decade before. For Nellie, her vision filtered through her own neuroses, Larry was a handsome, dashing, knowledgeable visitor from the New World, interested and interesting, as unrealistically romantic and erratic as herself, and portending good prospects. When the pair returned to London, they exchanged addresses and promises. Nellie went back to her parents, to hope, and Larry returned to New York and Burt, to wage a campaign that would conquer his Maid Marian.

  Larry wooed his love by airmail correspondence. His passionate letters to Nellie poured out daily. Because lobotomy had deprived him of restraint, his letters were earthy. Nellie was not dismayed, except when her parents saw the letters and confiscated them as “pornographic.” Her own daily letters had a different tone. As a friend of theirs told me, “Her letters were on the Elizabeth Barrett Browning level of love, and his were on the men’s-room-wall level of love. Her letters savored more of a cry from the soul, his from the groin.” Yet, to them, their semantics were not so far apart, but conveyed a commonly understood yearning.

  A year of correspondence with his beloved Nellie was all that Larry could endure. He was determined to visit her in her native habitat, to show her family that he was not a lecher, and to request her hand in marriage. Without disclosing to anyone his ultimate plan, he asked Burt to help him travel to England once more. Burt agreed, and put him aboard an eastbound French liner, destination Southampton.

  On the first westbound French liner out of Southampton, Larry was back in New York City. He had neither set foot on English soil nor laid eyes on his fevered and waiting Nellie. The British immigration authority, it appeared, had refused to allow Larry to land. Had Nellie’s disapproving parents or Larry’s disapproving brothers intervened? On checking, Burt learned it was not any relative who had prevented Larry’s landing. Larry had been the cause of his own undoing. Handed a routine British entry questionnaire, before disembarking, he studied the question, “Have you ever been committed to a mental institution?”—and he answered, “Yes.” Immediately, the British immigration officials summoned him for an interview. What met their eyes was a bewildered, un-shaved, unkempt, foul-smelling passenger, who admitted to having no money and was unable to remember that all his expenses had been prepaid. Promptly, his visiting privileges were rescinded. The undesirable alien was sent home, while Nellie grieved on the dock.

  Love thwarted became love intensified. Larry confessed his plan. He must marry Nellie. Burt and Larry’s brothers, Jack and Tim, tried to dissuade him. The leucotome, the knife that had once severed Larry’s prefrontal lobes, had dulled Hamlet but not affected Romeo. He wanted Nellie, and she wanted him, and if he could not go to her, he would bring her to him.

  Horrified at the prospect of Larry and the poor, unsuspecting Nellie under one roof, as mates, Burt took the decisive step. He wrote Nellie the truth. He revealed all of Larry’s history, including the clinical facts about his prefrontal lobotomy operation, and was certain that that would end the love affair. Burt was wrong. Blandly, Nellie wrote back that she was familiar with lobotomy cases—during World War II she had volunteered to serve in a military mental institution, and had helped handle the more hopeless lobotomy patients—and now she was even more eager to join Larry and care for him. Stunned, Burt wrote more letters to her, and enlisted other old school friends and relatives of Larry’s to write to her. All of this negative propaganda failed. Nellie remained adamant: She was determined to abandon her family, her job, her country, to answer Larry’s summons and love.

  In one final effort to disenchant Nellie, Burt telephoned London—he remembers, wryly, that the toll charges came to $125—and he spoke to Nellie, spoke interminably. He played down Larry’s good points. He emphasized Larry’s hostilities, relating how he had once slapped his landlady, how he most resented people who tried to help him, how he was incapable of holding a job.

  When Burt had finished presenting his case, Nellie, choking with emotion, cried out over the transatlantic cable, “I don’t care what you say! I must be with him! I’ll commit suicide unless I can come to America to be with him!”

  For Burt, there was no more to say. After he had hung up the receiver, he was as torn about his own role in Larry’s future as Jack had been, so many years before, on the eve of the decisive prefrontal lobotomy operation. Recently, recalling that period, Burt said to me:

  “After that transatlantic call, I was forced to play God. In fact, I wasn’t playing God. I was God. I knew that Nellie was a disturbed person, and that lots of disturbed persons do commit suicide, as she had threatened. I knew further that if she could help Larry, it would be an incredible blessing. He was living alone in a filthy, filthy slum. Aside from seeing me once a week, he had almost no human contacts (though plenty of inhuman ones, with landladies and neighbors). Larry was rotting. The years ahead presented a frightening prospect. And, meanwhile, Nellie kept assuring me that love could move mountains.

  “There were enormous pressures on me from both camps. My own family and Larry’s family were outraged at the idea of my helping Nellie come over here. You see, her coming here was in my hands, for she needed letters from me promising she would never become a ward of the government. At the same time, Nellie was talking about suicide, and Larry was rotting. It was a genuine dilemma. You know how I decided, and only the real God above knows whether I decided right or wrong.”

  What Burt finally decided to do was to cooperate fully in bringing about the reunion of Nellie and Larry.

  Nellie’s troubles began the moment she walked down the gangplank in New York City. So overwhelmed and nervous was she, that she was unable to face Larry during her entire first day in the United States. Presently, the reunion was effected by Burt, and Nellie set up housekeeping in Larry’s wretched apartment. She could not be his legal wife, or even his common-law wife, because Larry still had a wife somewhere, named Harriet, who was too religious to divorce him. And, since Larry was legally incompetent, he could not sue for a divorce. From their first domesticity—as in the years after, and today—Larry and Nellie lived in gentle sin.

  A friend, who saw them in their first weeks together, told me, “It was almost as if the two of them were trying to get out of a bog, Larry using her as a stepping stone, and the higher Larry rose out of the muck, the lower Nellie went in.” Suddenly, it seemed, Larry’s story became Nellie’s story. He leaned on her, and was supported, but like her predecessor, Harriet, she slowly began to collapse under the burden.

  Nelli
e’s initial shock came when she faced the conditions of her new life on New York’s West Side. She had been catapulted from a neat, whitewashed, antiseptic, tightly efficient English atmosphere into a neighborhood crowded with impoverished and angry immigrants. She had moved into an apartment, half-furnished, primitive and dirty, crawling with bedbugs. There was not even the illusion of romantic privacy. The walls that sheltered them might have been of Japanese rice paper. In the day, the toilet sounds came through. In the night, the bed sounds tortured her. The next cause of shock was her companion, who wanted a nurse not a mistress, who was at once intelligent and unintelligible, whose habits were often as civilized as those of a roving animal.

  Yet, she loved him and he loved her, and she determined to mold what was left of Larry into an acceptable member of the human race and into a good provider. He had once dreamed of being a professor, and had confided his dream. She would, she determined, make him a teacher, at least, a respectable pedagogue, and together they would escape this hellhole. Larry applied to Long Island University, to study in the school’s education department, and he was accepted. Nellie, working on what was left of his Princeton I.Q., studying with him, for him, got him through the required classes. With her help, he managed to become an accredited teacher. This had cost them $500, but now Larry, the teacher, was ready. He applied for positions. He was interviewed. Alone, without his collaborator, he fell down every time. The keen-eyed buyers of teacher-minds saw that his was not a dependable mind. He had the credentials, but no job.

  Anguished over their defeat, Nellie insisted that at least they escape the slum. They moved to a cleaner apartment in a small New Jersey town, which was near the residence of one of Larry’s brothers. Nellie was still determined that Larry should make his own way. More of his savings were withdrawn, and he was enrolled in the Graduate School of Library Service at Rutgers University. Diligently, Nellie coached her charge, but to no avail. Larry failed his tests and was dropped by the school. Because money was needed, he obtained employment as a night manager in a movie house. Under Nellie’s soothing encouragement and guidance, he held the job for two months. Then he was dismissed.