You Can't Go Home Again

by Thomas Wolfe

  "Why you--why you monkeyfied--why you monkeyfied bastard, you! Just look at him!" he cried suddenly in a high-pitched voice, half-turning to his companions. "Why you--who the hell ever told you you could write, anyway?" Then cordially: "George, how are you? Come on in, come on over here!"

  And, still holding Webber's hand in his bony grip, and taking his arm with his other hand, he led him across the room towards his other guests. Then, suddenly releasing him, and striking a pompous oratorical attitude, he began to declaim in the florid accents of an after-dinner speaker:

  "Ladies and gentlemen, it is my peculiar privilege, and I may even say my distinguished honour, to present to the members of the Hog Head Hollow Ladies Leeterary, Arteestic, and Mutual Culshural Society our esteemed guest of honour--a man who writes books that are so God-damned long that few people can even pick 'em up. A man whose leeterary style is distinguished by such a command of beautiful English as she is wrote that he has rarely been known to use less than twenty-one adjectives where four would do."

  He changed abruptly, dropped his oratorical attitude, and laughed a sudden, nervous, dry, falsetto laugh, at the same time mauling Webber in the ribs with a bony finger. "How do you like that, George?" he said with immediate friendly warmth. "Does that get 'em? Is that the way they do it? Not bad, eh?" He was obviously pleased with his effort.

  "George," he now continued in a natural tone of voice, "I want you to meet two friends of mine. Mr. Bendien, of Amsterdam," he said, presenting Webber to a heavy-set, red-faced, elderly Dutchman, who sat by the table within easy reaching distance of a tall brown crock of Holland gin, of which, to judge from his complexion, he had already consumed a considerable quantity.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," cried McHarg, striking another attitude, "allow me to introduce that stupendous, that death-defying, that thrill-packed wonder of the ages, that hair-raising and spine-tingling act which has thrilled most of the crowned heads of Europe and all of the deadheads of Amsterdam. Now appearing absolutely for the first time under the big tent. Ladies and gentlemen, I now take pleasure in introducing Mynheer Cornelius Bendien, the Dutch maestro, who will perform for you his celebrated act of balancing an eel on the end of his nose while he swallows in rapid succession, without pausing for breath, three--count 'em--three brown jugs of the finest imported Holland gin. Mr. Bendien, Mr. Webber...How was that, boy, how was that?" said McHarg, laughing his shrill falsetto, and turning and prodding Webber again with an eager finger.

  Then, somewhat more curtly, he said: "You may have met Mr. Donald Stoat before. He tells me that he knows you."

  The other man looked out from underneath his heavy eyebrows and inclined his head pompously. "I believe," he said, "I have had the honour of Mr. Webber's acquaintance."

  George remembered him, although he had seen him only once or twice, and that some years before. Mr. Stoat was not the kind of man one easily forgets.

  It was plain to see that McHarg was on edge, terribly nervous, and also irritated by Stoat's presence. He turned away abruptly, muttering: "Too--too--too--much--too much." And then, wheeling about suddenly: "All right, George. Have a drink. What's it going to be?"

  "My own experience," said Mr. Stoat with unctuous pomposity, "is that the best drink in the morning"--he leered significantly with his bushy eyebrows--"a gentleman's drink, if I may say so--is a glawss of dry sherry." He had a "glawss" of this beverage in his hand at the moment, and, lifting it with an air of delicate connoisseurship, at the same time working his eyebrows appraisingly, he sniffed it--an action which seemed to irritate McHarg no end. "Allow me," continued Mr. Stoat, with rotund deliberation, "to recommend it to your consideration."

  McHarg began to pace rapidly up and down. "Too much--too much," he muttered. "All right, George," he said irritably, "what'll you have to drink--Scotch?"

  Mynheer Bendien put in his oar at this point. Holding up his glass and leaning forward with a hand on one fat knee, he said with guttural solemnity: "You should trink chin. Vy don't you try a trink of Holland chin?"

  This advice also seemed to annoy Mr. McHarg. He glared at Bendien with his flaming face, then, throwing up his bony hands with a quick, spasmodic movement, he cried: "Oh, for God's sake!" He turned and began to pace up and down again, muttering: "Too much--too much--too--too--too much." Then abruptly, in a voice shrill with irritation: "Let him drink what he wants, for Christ's sake! Go ahead, Georgie," he said roughly. "Drink what you like. Pour yourself some Scotch." And suddenly turning to Webber, his whole face lighting up with an impish smile, his lips flickering nervously above his teeth: "Isn't it wonderful, Georgie? Isn't it marvellous? K-k-k-k-k"--prodding Webber in the ribs with bony forefinger, and laughing a high, dry, feverish laugh--"Can you beat it?"

  "I confess," said Mr. Donald Stoat at this point, with rotund unction, "that I have not read our young friend's opus, which, I believe"--unction here deepening visibly into rotund sarcasm--"which, I believe, has been hailed by certain of our cognoscenti as a masterpiece. After all, there are so many masterpieces nowadays, aren't there? Scarcely a week goes by but what I pick up my copy of The Times--I refer, of course, to The Times of London, as distinguished from its younger and somewhat more immature colleague, The New York Times--to find that another of our young men has enriched English literature with another masterpiece of im--perish--able prose."

  All this was uttered in ponderous periods with leerings and twitchings of those misplaced moustaches that served the gentleman for eyebrows. McHarg was obviously becoming more and more annoyed, and kept pacing up and down, muttering to himself. Mr. Stoat, however, was too obtuse by nature, and too entranced by the rolling cadences of his own rhetoric, to observe the warning signals. After leering significantly with his eyebrows again, he went on:

  "I can only hope, however, that our young friend here is a not too enthusiastic devotee of the masters of what I shall call The School of Bad Taste."

  "What are you talking about?" said McHarg, pausing suddenly, half-turning, and glaring fiercely. "I suppose you mean Hugh Walpole, and John Galsworthy, and other dangerous radicals of that sort, eh?"

  "No, sir," said Mr. Stoat deliberately. "I was not thinking of them. I was referring to that concocter of incoherent nonsense, that purveyor of filth, the master of obscenity, who wrote that book so few people can read, and no one can understand, but which some of our young men are hailing enthusiastically as the greatest masterpiece of the century."

  "What book are you talking about anyway?" McHarg said irritably. "Its name, I believe," said Mr. Stoat pompously, "is Ulysses. Its author, I have heard, is an Irishman."

  "Oh," cried McHarg with an air of enlightenment, and with an impish gleam in his eye that was quite lost on Mr. Stoat. "You're speaking of George Moore, aren't you?"

  "That's it! That's it!" cried Mr. Stoat quickly, nodding his head with satisfaction. He was getting excited now. His eyebrows twitched more rapidly than ever. "That's the fellow! And the book"--he sputtered--"pah!" He spat out the word as though it had been brought up by an emetic, and screwed the eyebrows round across his domy forehead in an expression of nausea. "I tried to read a few pages of it once," he whispered sonorously and dramatically, "but I let it fall. I let it fall. As though I bad touched a tainted thing, I let it fall. And then," he said hoarsely, "I washed my hands, with a very--strong--soap."

  "My dear sir," cried McHarg suddenly, with an air of sincere conviction, at the same time being unable to keep his eye from gleaming more impishly than ever, "you are absolutely right. I absolutely agree with you."

  Mr. Stoat, who had been very much on his dignity up to now, thawed visibly under the seducing cajolery of this unexpected confrrmation of his literary judgment.

  "You are positively and unanswerably correct," said Knuckles, now standing in the middle of the room with his long legs spread wide apart, his bony hands hanging to the lapels of his coat. "You have hit the nail right smack--dead--square on the top of its head." As he uttered these words, he jerked his wry face fro
m side to side to give them added emphasis. "There has never been a dirtier--filthier--more putrid--and more corrupt writer than George Moore. And as for that book of his, Ulysses," McHarg shouted, "that is unquestionably the vilest----"

  "--the rottenest----" shouted Mr. Stoat----

  "--the most obscene----" shrilled McHarg----

  "--the most vicious----" panted Mr. Stoat----

  "--unadulterated----"

  "--piece of tripe----" choked Mr. Stoat with rapturous agreement----

  "--tha t has ever polluted the pages, defiled the name, and besmirched the record----"

  "--of English literature!" gasped Mr. Stoat happily, and paused, panting for breath. "Yes," he went on when he had recovered his power of speech, "and that other thing--that play of his--that rotten, vile, vicious, so-called tragedy in five acts--what was the name of that thing, anyway?"

  "Oh," cried McHarg with an air of sudden recognition "you mean The Importance of Being Earnest, don't you?"

  "No, no," said Mr. Stoat impatiently. "Not that one. This one came later on."

  "Oh yes!" McHarg exclaimed, as if it had suddenly come to him. "You're speaking of Mrs. Warren's Profession, aren't you?"

  "That's it, that's it!" cried Mr. Stoat. "I took my wife to see it--I took my wife--my own wife----"

  "His own wife!" McHarg repeated, as if astounded, "Well I'll be God-damned," he said. "What do you know about that!"

  "And would you believe it, sir?" Mr. Stoat's voice again sank to a whisper of loathing and revulsion, and his eyebrows worked ominously about his face. "I was so ashamed--I was so ashamed--that I could not look at her. We got up and left, sir, before the end of the first act--before anyone could see us. I went away with head bowed, as one who had been forced to take part in some nasty thing."

  "Well what do you know about that?" said McHarg sympathetically. "Wasn't that just too damned bad? I call it perfectly damned awful!" he shouted suddenly, and turned away, his jaw muscles working convulsively as he muttered again: "Too much--too much." He halted abruptly in front of Webber with his puckered face aflame and his lips twitching nervously, and began to prod him in the ribs, laughing his high, falsetto laugh. "He's a publisher," he squeaked. "He publishes books. K-k-k-k-k--Can you beat it, Georgie?" he squeaked almost inaudibly. Then, jerking a bony thumb in the direction of the astonished Stoat, he shrieked: "In the name of Christ Almighty--a publisher!"--and resumed his infuriated pacing of the room.

  * * *

  34. The Two Visitors

  Ever since George entered the room he had been wondering about the presence of McHarg's two strangely assorted visitors. Anyone could see at a glance that Bendien and Stoat were not clever men, not men of the spirit, and that neither possessed any qualities of intellect or of perception that could interest a person like Lloyd McHarg. What, then, were they doing here in this simulation of boon companionship so early in the morning?

  Mynheer Bendien was obviously just a business man, a kind of Dutch Babbitt. He was, indeed, a hard-bargaining, shrewd importer who plied a constant traffrc between England and Holland, and was intimately familiar with the markets and business practices of both countries. His occupation had left its mark upon him, that same mark which is revealed in a coarsening of perception and a blunting of sensitivity among people of his kind the world over.

  As George observed the signs that betrayed what Bendien was beyond any mistaking, he felt confirmed in an opinion that had been growing on him of late. He had begun to see that the true races of mankind are not at all what we are told in youth that they are. They are not defined either by national frontiers or by the characteristics assigned to them by the subtle investigations of anthropologists. More and more George was coming to believe that the real divisions of humanity cut across these barriers and arise out of differences in the very souls of men.

  George had first had his attention called to this phenomenon by an observation of H. L. Mencken. In his extraordinary work on the American language, Mencken gave an example of the American sporting writers' jargon--"Babe Smacks Forty-second with Bases Loaded"--and pointed out that such a headline would be as completely meaningless to an Oxford don as the dialect of some newly discovered tribe of Eskimos. True enough; but what shocked George to attention when he read it was that Mencken drew the wrong inference from his fact. The headline would be meaningless to the Oxford don, not because it was written in the American language, but because the Oxford don had no knowledge of baseball. The same headline might be just as meaningless to a Harvard professor, and for the same reason.

  It seemed to George that the Oxford don and the Harvard professor had far more kinship with each other--a far greater understanding of each other's ways of thinking, feeling, and living--than either would have with millions of people of his own nationality. This observation led George to realise that academic life has created its own race of men who are set apart from the rest of humanity by the affinity of their souls. This academic race, it seemed to him, had innumerable peculiar characteristics of its own, among them the fact that, like the sporting gentry, they had invented their own private languages for communication with one another. The internationalism of science was another characteristic: there is no such thing as English chemistry or American physics or (Stalin to the contrary notwithstanding) Russian biology, but only chemistry, physics and biology. So, too, it follows that one tells a good deal more about a man when one says he is a chemist than when one says he is an Englishman.

  In the same way, Babe Ruth would probably feel more closely akin to the English professional cricketer, Jack Hobbs, than to a professor of Greek at Princeton. This would be true also among prize-fighters. George thought of that whole world that is so complete within itself--the fighters, the trainers, the managers, the promoters, the touts, the pimps, the gamblers, the grafters, the hangers-on, the newspaper "experts" in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, and Buenos Aires. These men were not really Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, and Argentines. They were simply citizens of the world of prize-fighting, more at home with one another than with other men of their respective nations.

  Throughout all the years of his life, George Webber had been soaking up experience like a sponge. This process never ceased with him, but within the last few years he had noticed a change in it. Formerly, in his insatiable hunger to know everything--to see all the faces in a crowd at once, to remember every face that passed him on a city street, to hear all the voices in a room and through the vast, perplexing blur to distinguish what each was saying--he had often felt that he was drowning in some vast sea of his own sensations and impressions. But now he was no longer so overwhelmed by Amount and Number. He was growing up, and out of the very accumulation of experience he was gaining an essential perspective and detachment. Each new sensation and impression was no longer a single, unrelated thing: it took its place in a pattern and sifted down to form certain observable cycles of experience. Thus his incessantly active mind was free to a much greater degree than ever before to remember, digest, meditate, and compare, and to seek relations between all the phenomena of living. The result was an astonishing series of discoveries as his mind noted associations and resemblances, and made recognitions not only of surface similarities but of identities of concept and of essence.

  In this way he had become aware of the world of waiters, who, more than any other class of men, seemed to him to have created a special universe of their own which had almost obliterated nationality and race in the ordinary sense of those words. For some reason George had always been especially interested in waiters. Possibly it was because his own beginnings had been small-town middle class, and because he had been accustomed from birth to the friendship of working people, and because the experience of being served at table by a man in uniform had been one of such sensational novelty that its freshness had never worn off. Whatever the reason, he had known hundreds of waiters in many different countries, had talked to them for hours at a time, had observed them intimat
ely, and had gathered tremendous stores of knowledge about their lives--and out of all this had discovered that there are not really different nationalities of waiters but rather a separate race of waiters, whole and complete within itself. This seemed to be true even among the French, the most sharply defined, the most provincial, and the most unadaptive nationality George had ever known. It surprised him to observe that even in France the waiters seemed to belong to the race of waiters rather than to the race of Frenchmen.

  This universe of waiterdom has produced a type whose character is as precisely distinguished as that of the Mongolian. It has a spiritual identity that unites it as no mere feelings of patriotism could ever do. And this spiritual identity--a unity of thought, of purpose, and of conduct--has produced unmistakable physical characteristics. After George became aware of this, he got so that he could recognise a waiter no matter where he saw him, whether in the New York subway or on a Paris bus or in the streets of London. He tested his observation many times by accosting men he suspected of being waiters and engaging them in conversation, and nine times out of ten he found that his guess had been right. Something in the feet and legs gave them away, something in the way they moved and walked and stood. It was not merely that these men had spent most of their lives standing on their feet and hurrying from kitchen to table in the execution of their orders. Other classes of men, such as policemen, also lived upon their feet, and yet no one could mistake a policeman in mufti for a waiter. (The police of all countries, George discovered, formed another separate race.)

  The gait of an old waiter can best be described as gingery. It is a kind of gouty shuffle, painful, rheumatic, and yet expertly nimble, too, as if the man has learned by every process of experience to save his feet. It is the nimbleness that comes from years of "Yes, sir. Right away, sir," or of "Oui, monsieur. Je viens. Toute de suite." It is the gait of service, of despatch, of incessant haste to be about one's orders, and somehow the whole soul and mind and character of the waiter is in it.