You Can't Go Home Again

by Thomas Wolfe

  The older man was not merely friend but father to the younger. Webber, the hot-blooded Southerner, with his large capacity for sentiment and affection, had lost his own father many years before and now had found a substitute in Edwards. And Edwards, the reserved New Englander, with his deep sense of family and inheritance, had always wanted a son but had had five daughters, and as time went on he made of George a kind of foster son. Thus each, without quite knowing that he did it, performed an act of spiritual adoption.

  So it was to Foxhall Edwards that George now turned whenever his loneliness became unbearable. When his inner turmoil, confusion, and self-doubts overwhelmed him, as they often did, and his life went dead and stale and empty till it sometimes seemed that all the barren desolation of the Brooklyn streets had soaked into his very blood and marrow--then he would seek out Edwards. And he never went to him in vain. Edwards, busy though he always was, would drop whatever he was doing and would take George out to lunch or dinner, and in his quiet, casual, oblique, and understanding way would talk to him and draw him out until he found out what it was that troubled him. And always in the end, because of Edward's faith in him, George would be healed and find himself miraculously restored to self-belief.

  What manner of man was this great editor and father-confessor and true friend--he of the quiet, shy, sensitive, and courageous heart who often seemed to those who did not know him well an eccentric, cold, indifferent fellow--he who, grandly christened Foxhall, preferred to be the simple, unassuming Fox?

  The Fox asleep was a breathing portrait of guileless innocence. He slept on his right side, legs doubled up a little, hands folded together underneath the ear, his hat beside him on the pillow. Seen so, the sleeping figure of the Fox was touching--for all his five and forty years, it was so plainly boylike. By no stretch of fancy the old hat beside him on the pillow might have been a childish toy brought to bed with him the night before--and this, in fact, it was!

  It was as if, in sleep, no other part of Fox was left except the boy. Sleep seemed to have resumed into itself this kernel of his life, to have excluded all transitions, to have brought the man back to his acorn, keeping thus inviolate that which the man, indeed, had never lost, but which had passed through change and time and all the accretions of experience--and now had been restored, unwoven back into the single oneness of itself.

  And yet it was a guileful Fox, withal. Oh, guileful Fox, how innocent in guilefulness and in innocence how full of guile! How straight in cunning, and how cunning-straight, in all directions how strange-devious, in all strange-deviousness how direct! Too straight for crookedness, and for envy too serene, too fair for blind intolerance, too just and seeing and too strong for hate, too honest for base dealing, too high for low suspiciousness, too innocent for all the scheming tricks of swarming villainy--yet never had been taken in a horse trade yet!

  So, then, life's boy is he, life's trustful child; life's guileful-guileless Fox is he, but not life's angel, not life's fool. Will get at all things like a fox--not full-tilt at the fences, not head-on, but through coverts peering, running at fringes of the wood, or by the wall; will swing round on the pack and get behind the hounds, cross them up and be away and gone when they are looking for him where he's not--he will not mean to fox them, but he will.

  Gets round the edges of all things the way a fox does. Never takes the main route or the worn handle. Sees the worn handle, what it is, says: "Oh," but knows it's not right handle though most used: gets right handle right away and uses it. No one knows how it is done, neither knows the Fox, but does it instantly. It seems so easy when Fox does it, easy as a shoe, because he has had it from his birth. It is a genius.

  Our Fox is never hard or fancy, always plain. He makes all plays look easy, never brilliant; it seems that anyone can do it when Fox does it. He covers more ground than any other player in the game, yet does not seem to do so. His style is never mannered, seems no style at all; the thrilled populace never holds its breath in hard suspense when he takes aim, because no one ever saw the Fox take aim, and yet he never misses. Others spend their lives in learning to take aim: they wear just the proper uniform for taking aim, they advance in good order, they signal to the breathless world for silence--"We are taking aim!" they say, and then with faultless style and form, with flawless execution, they bring up their pieces, take aim--and miss! The great Fox never seems to take aim, and never misses. Why? He was just born that way--fortunate, a child of genius, innocent and simple--and a Fox!

  "And ah!--a cunning Fox!" the Aimers and the Missers say. "A damned subtle, devilish, and most cunning Fox!" they cry, and grind their teeth. "Be not deceived by his appearance--'tis a cunning Fox! Put not your faith in Foxes, put not your faith in this one, he will look so shy, and seem so guileless and so bewildered--but he will never miss!"

  "But how"--the Aimers and the Missers plead with one another in exasperation--"how does he do it? What has the fellow got? He's nothing much to look at--nothing much to talk to. He makes no appearance! He never goes out in the world--you never see him at receptions, parties, splendid entertainments--he makes no effort to meet people--no, or to talk to them! He hardly talks at all!...What has he got? Where does it come from? Is it chance or luck? There is some mystery----"

  "Well, now," says one, "I'll tell you what my theory is----"

  Their heads come close, they whisper craftily together until----

  "No!" another cries. "It is not that. I tell you what he does, it's----"

  And again they whisper close, argue and deny, get more confused than ever, and finally are reduced to furious impotence:

  "Bah!" cries one. "How does the fellow do it, anyway? How does he get away with it? He seems to have no sense, no knowledge, no experience. He doesn't get round the way we do, lay snares and traps. He doesn't seem to know what's going on, or what the whole thing's all about--and yet----"

  "He's just a snob!" another snarls. "When you try to be a good fellow, he high-hats you! You try to kid him, he just looks at you! He never offers to shake hands with you, he never slaps you on the back the way real fellows do! You go out of your way to be nice to him--to show him you're a real guy and that you think he is, too--and what does he do? He just looks at you with that funny little grin and turns away--and wears that damned hat in the office all day long--I think he sleeps with it! He never asks you to sit down--and gets up while you're talking to him--leaves you cold--begins to wander up and down outside, staring at everyone he sees--his own associates--as if he were some half-wit idiot boy--and wanders back into his office twenty minutes later--stares at you as if he never saw your face before--and jams that damned hat farther down round his ears, and turns away--takes hold of his lapels--looks out the window with that crazy grin--then looks at you again, looks you up and down, stares at your face until you wonder if you've changed suddenly into a baboon--and turns back to the window without a word--then stares at you again--finally pretends to recognise you, and says: 'Oh, it's you!'...I tell you he's a snob, and that's his way of letting you know you don't belong! Oh, I know about him--I know what he is! He's an old New Englander--older than God, by God! Too good for anyone but God, by God!--and even God's a little doubtful! An aristocrat--a rich man's son--a Groton-Harvard boy--too fine for the likes of us, by God!--too good for the 'low bounders' who make up this profession! He thinks we're a bunch of business men and Babbitts--and that's the reason that he looks at us the way he does--that's the reason that he grins his grin, and turns away, and catches at his coat lapels, and doesn't answer when you speak to him--"

  "Oh, no," another quickly interrupts. "You're wrong there! The reason that he grins that grin and turns away is that he's trying hard to hear--the reason that he doesn't answer when you speak to him is that he's deaf----"

  "Ah, deaf!" says still another in derision. "Deaf, hell! Deaf as a Fox, he is! That deafness is a stall--a trick--a gag! He hears you when he wants to hear you! If it's anything he wants to hear, he'll hear you though you're forty yards aw
ay and talking in a whisper! He's a Fox, I tell you!"

  "Yes, a Fox, a Fox!" they chorus in agreement. "That much is certain--the man's a Fox!"

  So the Aimers and the Missers whisper, argue, and deduce. They lay siege to intimates and friends of Fox, ply them with flattery and strong drink, trying thus to pluck out the heart of Fox's mystery. They find out nothing, because there's nothing to find out, nothing anyone can tell them. They are reduced at length to exasperated bafflement and finish where they started. They advance to their positions, take aim--and miss!

  And so, in all their ways, they lay cunning snares throughout the coverts of the city. They lay siege to life. They think out tactics, crafty stratagems. They devise deep plans to bag the game. They complete masterly flanking operations in the night-time (while the great Fox sleeps), get in behind the enemy when he isn't looking, are sure that victory is within their grasp, take aim magnificently--and fire--and shoot one another painfully in the seats of their expensive pants!

  Meanwhile, the Fox is sleeping soundly through the night, as sweetly as a child.

  Night passes, dawn comes, eight o'clock arrives. How to describe him now as he awakes?

  A man of five and forty years, not really seeming younger, yet always seeming something of the boy. Rather, the boy is there within that frame of face, behind the eyes, within the tenement of flesh and bone--not imprisoned, just held there in a frame--a frame a little worn by the years, webbed with small wrinkles round the eyes--invincibly the same as it has always been. The hair, once fair and blond, no longer fair and blond now, feathered at the temples with a touch of grey, elsewhere darkened by time and weather to a kind of steel-grey--blondness really almost dark now, yet, somehow, still suggesting fair and blond. The head well set and small, boy's head still, the hair sticking thick and close to it, growing to a V in the centre of the forehead, then back straight and shapely, full of natural grace. Eyes pale blue, full of a strange misty light, a kind of far weather of the sea in them, eyes of a New England sailor long months outbound for China on a clipper ship, with something drowned, sea-sunken in them.

  The general frame and structure of the face is somewhat lean and long and narrow--face of the ancestors, a bred face, face of people who have looked the same for generations. A stern, lonely face, with the enduring fortitude of granite, face of the New England seacoast, really his grandfather's face, New England statesman's face, whose bust sits there on the mantel, looking at the bed. Yet something else has happened on Fox's face to transfigure it from the primeval nakedness of granite: in its essential framework, granite still, but a kind of radiance and warmth of life has enriched and mellowed it. A light is burning in the Fox, shining outwards through the face, through every gesture, grace, and movement of the body, 'something swift, mercurial, mutable, and tender, something buried and withheld, but passionate--something out of his mother's face, perhaps,' or out of his father's or his father's mother's--something that subdues the granite with warmth--something from poetry, intuition, genius, imagination, living, inner radiance, and beauty. This face, then, with the shapely head, the pale, far-misted vision of the eyes, held in round bony cages like a bird's, the strong, straight nose, curved at the end, a little scornful and patrician, sensitive, sniffing, swift-nostriled as a hound's--the whole face with its passionate and proud serenity might almost be the face of a great poet, or the visage of some strange and mighty bird.

  But now the sleeping figure stirs, opens its eyes and listens, rouses, starts up like a flash.

  "What?" says Fox.

  The Fox awake now.

  "FOXHALL MORTON EDWARDS."

  The great name chanted slowly through his brain--someone had surely spoken it--it filled his ears with sound--it rang down solemnly through the aisles of consciousness--it was no dream--the very walls were singing with its grave and proud sonorities as he awoke.

  "What?" cried Fox again.

  He looked about him. There was no one there. He shook his head as people do when they shake water from their ears. He inclined his good right ear and listened for the sound again. He tugged and rubbed his good right ear--yes, it was unmistakable--the good right ear was ringing with the sound.

  Fox looked bewildered, puzzled, searched round the room again with sea-pale eyes, saw nothing, saw his hat beside him on the pillow, said, "Oh," in a slightly puzzled tone, picked up the hat and jammed it on his head, half-covering the ears, swung out of bed and thrust his feet into his slippers, got up, pyjamaed and behatted, walked over to the door, opened it, looked out, and said:

  "What? Is anybody there?--Oh!"

  For there was nothing--just the hall, the quiet, narrow hall of morning, the closed door of his wife's room, and the stairs.

  He closed the door, turned back into his room, still looking puzzled, intently listening, his good right ear half-turned and searching for the sounds.

  Where had they come from then? The name--he thought he heard it still, faintly now, mixed in with many other strange, confusing noises. But where? From, what direction did they come? Or had he heard them? A long, droning sound, like an electric fan--perhaps a motor in the street? A low, retreating thunder--an elevated train, perhaps? A fly buzzing? Or a mosquito with its whining bore? No, it could not be: it was morning, spring-time, and the month of May.

  Light winds of morning fanned the curtains of his pleasant room. An old four-poster bed, a homely, gay old patch-quilt coverlet, an old chest of drawers, a little table by his bed, piled high with manuscripts, a glass of water and his eyeglasses, and a little ticking clock. Was that what he had heard? He held it to his ear and listened. On the mantel, facing him, the bust of his grandfather, Senator William Fox-hall Morton, far-seeing, sightless, stern, lean, shrewd with decision; a chair or two, and on the wall an engraving of Michelangelo's great Lorenzo Medici. Fox looked at it and smiled.

  "A man," said he in a low voice. "The way a man should look!" The figure of the young Caesar was mighty-limbed, enthroned; helmeted for war; the fine hand half-supporting the chin of the grand head, broodingly aware of great events and destiny; thought knit to action, poetry to fact, caution to boldness, reflection to decision--the Thinker, Warrior, Statesman, Ruler all conjoined in one. "And what a man should be," thought Fox.

  A little puzzled still, Fox goes to his window and looks out, pyjamaed and behatted still, the fingers of one hand back upon his hips, a movement lithe and natural as a boy's. The head goes back, swift nostrils sniff, dilate with scorn. Light winds of morning fan him, gauzy curtains are blown back.

  And outside, morning, and below him, morning, sky-shining morning all above, below, around, across from him, cool-slanting morning, gold-cool morning, and the street. Black fronts of rusty brown across from him, the flat fronts of Turtle Bay.

  Fox looks at morning and the street with sea-pale eyes, as if he never yet had seen them, then in a low and husky voice, a little hoarse, agreeable, half-touched with whisper, he says with slow recognition, quiet wonder, and--somehow, somewby--resignation:

  "Oh...I see."

  Turns now and goes into his bathroom opposite, surveys himself in the mirror with the same puzzled, grave, and sea-pale wonder, looks at his features, notes the round cages that enclose his eyes, sees Boy-Fox staring gravely out at him, bethinks him suddenly of Boy-Fox's ear, which stuck out at right angles forty years ago, getting Boy-Fox gibes at Groton--so jams hat farther down about the ear, so stick-out ear that's stick-out ear no longer won't stick out!

  So standing, he surveys himself for several moments, and finding out at length that this indeed is he, says, as before, with the same slightly puzzled, slow, and patiently resigned acceptance:

  "Oh. I see."

  Turns on the shower faucet now--the water spurts and hisses in jets of smoking steam. Fox starts to step beneath the shower, suddenly observes pyjamas on his person, mutters slowly--"Oh-h!"--and takes them off. Unpyjamaed now, and as God made him, save for hat, starts to get in under shower with hat on--and remembers hat, remembers it
in high confusion, is forced against his will to acknowledge the unwisdom of the procedure--so snaps his fingers angrily, and, in a low, disgusted tone of acquiescence, says:

  "Oh, well, then! All right!"

  So removes his hat, which is now jammed on so tightly that he has to take both hands and fairly wrench and tug his way out of it, hangs the battered hulk reluctantly within easy reaching distance on a hook upon the door, surveys it for a moment with an undecided air, as if still not willing to relinquish it--and then, still with a puzzled air, steps in beneath those hissing jets of water hot enough to boil an egg!

  Puzzled no longer, my mad masters, ye may take it, Fox comes out on the double-quick, and loudly utters: "Damn!"--and fumes and dances, snaps his fingers, loudly utters "Damn!" again--but gets his water tempered to his hide this time, and so, without more peradventure, takes his shower.

  Shower done, hair brushed at once straight back around his well-shaped head, on goes the hat at once. So brushes teeth, shaves with a safety razor, walks out naked but behatted into his room, starts to go downstairs, remembers clothing--"Oh!"--looks round, bepuzzled, sees clothing spread out neatly on a chair by womenfolks the night before--fresh socks, fresh underwear, a clean shirt, a suit, a pair of shoes. Fox never knows where they come from, wouldn't know where to look, is always slightly astonished when he finds them. Says "Oh!" again, goes back and puts clothes on, and finds to his amazement that they fit.

  They fit him beautifully. Everything fits the Fox. He never knows what he has on, but he could wear a tow-sack, or a shroud, a sail, a length of canvas--they would fit the moment that he put them on, and be as well the elegance of faultless style. His clothes just seem to grow on him: whatever he wears takes on at once the grace, the dignity, and the unconscious ease of his own person. Never exercises much, but never has to; loves to take a walk, is bored by games and plays none; has same figure that he had at twenty-one--five feet ten, one hundred and fifty pounds, no belly and no fat, the figure of a boy.