Much of all this was not clear to him, and more he realized without understanding, but he knew that the instinct which guided him to turn upstream had not been a false one—that something human and alien in him had been a talisman to lead his staggering feet back toward the source of his destroyer. And he knew that with the breaking up of the symbol that was a curse, the curse ceased to be, and the warm, sweet, life-giving air that humanity breathes swept in a flood across the barrens, blowing away all the shadowy, unclean creatures to whom it had been haven for so long. He knew—he knew . . ,
Greyness swooped round him, and all knowledge faded from his mind and the wind roared mightily in his ears. Somewhere in that roaring flight oblivion overtook him.
When he opened his eyes again he could not for an instant imagine where he lay or what had happened. Weight pressed upon his entire body suffocatingly, pain shot through it in jagged flashes. His shoulder ached deeply. And the night was dark, dark about him. Something muffling and heavy had closed over his senses, for no longer could he hear the tiny, sharp sounds of the plain or scent those tingling odors that once blew along the wind. Even the chattering overhead had fallen still. The place did not even smell the same. He thought he could catch from afar the odor of smoke, and somehow the air, as nearly as he could tell with his deadened senses, no longer breathed of desolation and loneliness. The smell of life was in the wind, very faintly. Little pleasant odors of flower-scent and kitchen smoke seemed to tinge it.
“—wolves must have gone,” someone was saying above him. “They stopped howling a few minutes ago—notice?—first time since we came into this damned place. Listen.”
With a painful effort Smith rolled his head sideways and stared. A little group of men was gathered around him, their eyes lifted just now to the dark horizon. In the new density of the night he could not see them clearly, and he blinked in irritation, striving to regain that old, keen, clarity he had lost. But they looked familiar. One wore a white fur cap on his head. Someone said, indicating something beyond Smith’s limited range of vision, “Fellow here must have had quite a tussle. See the dead she-wolf with her throat torn out? And look—all the wolf-tracks everywhere in the dust. Hundreds of them. I wonder . . .”
“Bad luck to talk about them,” broke in the fur-capped leader. “Werewolves, I tell you—I’ve been in this place before, and I know. But I never saw or heard tell of a thing like what we saw tonight—that big white-eyed one running with the she-wolves. God! I’ll never forget those eyes.”
Smith moved his head and groaned. The men turned quickly. “Look, he’s coming to,” said someone, and Smith was vaguely conscious of an arm under his head and some liquid, hot and strong, forced between his lips. He opened his eyes and looked up. The fur-capped man was bending over him. Their eyes met. In the starlight, Smith’s were colorless as pale steel.
The man choked something inarticulate and leaped back so suddenly that the flask spilled its contents half over Smith’s chest. He crossed himself frankly with a hand that shook.
“Who—who are you?” he demanded unsteadily.
Smith grinned wearily and closed his eyes.
* * *
FROM HAND TO MOUTH by Fitz-James O’Brien
* * *
“No more electric and versatile genius had ever appeared among American authors,” stated Fred Lewis Pattee in The Development of the American Short Story, in describing the work and activities of Fitz-James O’Brien, doyen of the American Bohemian movement in the years prior to the Civil War. O’Brien’s work was popular during his day in journals of poetry, on the stage, in the columns of newspapers, or almost anywhere because he had the feel of the contemporary public pulse and could improvise to order. Of his voluminous contributions, his most remarkable and influential works have been his fantasies, the most famous of which is “The Diamond Lens,” and close behind in popularity, “The Wondersmith” and “What Was It?” In science fiction, supernatural, and fantasy, his imagination was exotic as well as original, and all the more effective since the locale was frequently the realistic setting of the New York City of his time.
It seems almost inexplicable that one of his most extraordinary novelettes, a story which may very well prove the single most striking example of surrealistic fiction to precede Alice in Wonderland, should have remained unreprinted for over ninety years! That story is “From Hand to Mouth,” first published in the weekly New York Picayune in eight installments from the issues of March 27, 1858, to May 15, 1858.
The New York Picayune was co-published by an artist who was a carousing buddy of O’Brien’s, named Frank H. Bellow. The paper had originally been started in 1847 by Dr. Richard B. Hutchings and Joseph Woodward to promote a patent medicine called Hutchings Dyspepsia Bitters, but the humorous fillers intended to attract readers to the advertisements so adequately fulfilled their purpose that the paper was continued as a regular comic weekly. Bellow was its last editor, seeing it through to its demise in 1860.
Securing the O’Brien story was quite a coup for Bellow, because “The Diamond Lens” had only a short time previously created a minor sensation and established a following for its author. Each weekly chapter was written to meet the deadline. At the seventh installment O’Brien didn’t come through and after skipping one issue, Frank Bellow wrote the final chapter, ending it with a few hundred words titled “How It All Happened.” It is believed that O’Brien had fabricated so wild a situation that he could not think of any way to conclude the story.
For one who knows the history of the period, any of the names and places in “From Hand to Mouth” are inside jokes which O’Brien’s friends must have chuckled over at the time. Today, all of the names and the double meanings are forgotten or missed, but that “loss” is overwhelmingly eclipsed by the manner in which the story anticipates many of the elements of the surrealistic movement to emerge after World War I, and in fact is one of the most successful surrealistic fantasies ever written. Despite the “wildness” of situations, the reader is able to follow every situation without confusion and with perfect clarity. It is not an experiment at writing surrealism—it is a success. Had O’Brien been able to properly end the story with the ingenuity he displayed in “What Was It?” or “The Diamond Lens” he might have had a masterpiece of considerable stature.
Its value was recognized at the time and it was collected in Good Stories Part IV, Boston, 1868, with a frontispiece which portrayed Fitz-James O’Brien as the lead character in the story as drawn by his friend S. Eytinge, Jr. It was reprinted for the last time in the anthology Famous Stories, published by R. Worthington, New York, in 1880 and the frontispiece was again used.
Its republication here is an event, for the work is absolutely original, its like having never been seen before or since. Should there be a future collection of O’Brien’s fantasies, it will undoubtedly be included among them.
FROM HAND
TO MOUTH
* * *
by
FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN
I / HOW I FELL IN WITH COUNT GOLOPTIONS.
The evening of the 8th of November, in the present year, was distinguished by the occurrence of two sufficiently remarkable events. On that evening Mr. Ullman produced Meyerbeer’s opera of “The Huguenots,” for the first time in this country, and we were unexpectedly visited by a snowstorm. Winter and the great lyrical dramatist made their debut together. Winter opened with a slow movement of heavy snowflakes,—an andante, soft and melancholy, and breathing of polar drowsiness. The echoing streets were muffled, and the racket and din of thoroughfares sounded like the roar of a far-off ocean. The large flakes fell sleepily through the dim blue air, like soft white birds that had been stricken with cold in the upper skies, and were sinking benumbed to earth. The trees and lamp-posts, decorated with snowy powder, gave the city the air of being laid out for a grand supper-party, with ornamental confectionery embellishing the long white table. Through the hoar drifts that lay along the streets peeped the black tips of buildin
g-stones and mud-piles in front of half-finished houses, until Broadway looked as if it was enveloped in an ermine robe, dotted with the black tails with which cunning furriers ornament that skin.
Despite the snow, I sallied forth with my friend Cobra, the musical critic of the New. York Daily Cockchafer, to hear Meyerbeer’s masterpiece. We entered a mute omnibus with a frozen driver, whose congealed hands could scarcely close upon our faces—which accounted perhaps for a slight error in the change he gave us—and so rolled up silently to Union Square, whence we floundered into the Academy. I listened to that wonderful picture of one of France’s anniversaries of massacre, with bloody copies of which that “God-protected country” (vide speech from the throne on any public occasion) is continually furnishing the civilized world. The roar of Catholic cannon—the whistle of Huguenot bullets—the stealthy tread of conspiring priests—the mournful wailing of women whose hearts foretell evil before it comes—the sudden outburst of the treacherous, bloodthirsty Romish tiger—the flight and shrieks of men and women about to die—the valiant, despairing fighting of the stern Protestants—the voice of the devilish French king, shouting from his balcony to his assassins the remorseless command, “Tuez! tuez!”—the ominous trickling of the red streams that sprung from cloven Lutheran hearts, and rolled slowly through the kennels:—all this arose before me vital and real, as the music of that somber opera smote the air. Cobra, whose business it was—being a critic—not to attend to the performance, languidly surveyed the house, or availed himself of the intermission between the acts to fortify himself with certain refreshing but stimulating beverages.
The opera being concluded, we proceeded to Pilgarlik’s——Pilgarlik keeps a charming private restaurant at the upper end of Broadway—and there, over a few reed-birds and a bottle of Burgundy, Cobra concocted his criticism on “The Huguenots,”—in which he talked learnedly of dominants, subdominants, ascending by thirds, and descending by twenty-thirds, and such like, while I, with nothing more weighty on my mind than paying for the supper, smoked my cigar and sipped my concluding cup of black coffee in a state of divine repose.
The snow was deep, when, at about one o’clock, a.m., Cobra and myself parted at the corner of Eight Street and Broadway, each bound for his respective home. Cobra lived on Fourth Avenue—I live, or lived, on Bleecker Street. The snow was deep, and the city quite still, as I half ran, half floundered down the sidewalk, thinking what a nice hot brandy-toddy I would make myself when I got home, and the pleasure I would have in boiling the water over my gas-light on a lately invented apparatus which I had acquired, and in which I took much pride; I also recollected with a thrill of pleasure that I had purchased a fresh supply of lemons that morning, so that nothing was needed for the scientific concoction of a nightcap. I turned down Bleecker Street and reached my door. I was singing a snatch of Pierre Dupont’s song of La Vigne as I pulled out my night-key and inserted it in that orifice so perplexing to young men who have been to a late supper. One vigorous twist, and I was at home. The half-uttered triumphal chant of the Frenchman, who dilates with metrical malice on the fact that the vine does not flourish in England, died on my lips. They key turned, but the door, usually so yielding to the members of our family, obstinately refused to open. A horrible thought flashed across my mind. They had locked me out! A new servant had perhaps arrived, and cautiously barricaded the entrance; or the landlady—to whom, at the moment, I was under some slight pecuniary responsibility—had taken this cruel means of recalling me to a sense of my position. But it could not be. There was some mistake. There was fluff in my key—yes, that was it—there was fluff in the barrel of my night-key. I instantly proceeded to make a Pandean pipe of that instrument, and blew into the tube until my face resembled that queer picture of the wind in Aesop’s fables, as it is represented in the act of endeavoring to make the traveller take off his cloak. A hopelessly shrill sound responded to my efforts. The key was clear as a flute. Was it the wrong key? 1 felt in every pocket, vaguely expecting a supernumerary one to turn up, but in vain. While thus occupied, the conviction forced itself on my mind that I had no money.
Locked out, with a foot of snow on the ground, and nothing but a three-cent piece and two new cents—so painfully bright that they presented illusory resemblances to half-eagles—in my pocket!
I knew well that an appeal to the bell was hopeless. I had tried it once before for three hours at a stretch, without the slightest avail. It is my private conviction that every member of that household, who slept at all within hearing of the bell, carefully stuffed his or her ears with cotton before retiring for the night, so as to be out of the reach of temptation to answer it. Every inmate of that establishment, after a certain hour, determinedly rehearsed the part of Ulysses when he was passing the Sirens. They were deaf to the melody of the bell. I once knew a physician who, to keep up appearances, had a night-bell affixed to his door. The initiated alone knew that he regularly took the tongue out before he went to bed. His conscience was satisfied, and he slept calmly. I might just as well have been pulling his bell.
Break the windows! Why not? Excellent idea; but, as I before stated, my pecuniary position scarcely allowed of such liberties. What was I to do? I could not walk up and down the city all night. I would freeze to death, and there would be a horrible paragraph in the morning papers about the sad death of a destitute author. I ran over rapidly in my mind every hotel in the city with which I was at all acquainted, in order to see if there was in any one of them a night-porter who knew me. Alas! Night-porters knew me not. Why had I not a watch or a diamond ring? I resolved on the instant to purchase both as soon as I got ten or twelve hundred dollars. I began to wonder where the newsboys’ depot was, and recollected there was a warm spot somewhere over the Herald press-room, on which I had seen ragged urchins huddling as I passed by late of night. I was ruminating gravely over the awful position in which I was placed, when a loud but somewhat buttery voice disturbed me by shouting from the sidewalk: “Ha, ha! Capital joke! Locked out, eh? You’ll never get in.”
A stranger! perhaps benevolent, thought I. If so, I am indeed saved. To rush down the steps, place my hand upon his shoulder, and gaze into his face with the most winning expression I was capable of assuming, was but the work of several minutes—which, however, included two tumbles on the stoop. “Can it—can it be,” I said, “that you have a night-key?”
“A night-key!” he answered with a jolly laugh, and speaking as if his mouth was full of turtle—“a night-key! What the deuce should I do with a night-key? I never go home until morning.”
“Sir,” said I, sadly, “do not jest with the misery of a fellow-creature. I conjure you by the sanctity of your fireside to lend me your night-key.”
“You’ve got one in your hand; why don’t you use that?”
I had. In the excitement of the moment I had quite overlooked the fact that, if I had fifty night-keys, I would still have found myself on the wrong side of the door.
“The fact is—pardon me—but I forgot that the door was locked on the inside.”
“Well, you can’t get in, and you can’t stay out,” said the stranger, chuckling over a large mouthful of turtle. “What are you going to do?”
“Heaven only knows, unless you are in a position to lend me a dollar, which, sir, I assure you, shall be returned in the morning.”
“Nonsense. I never lend money. But if you like, you shall come to my hotel and spend the night there, free of charge.”
“What hotel?”
“The Hotel de Coup d’OEil, on Broadway.”
“I never heard of such an establishment.”
“Perhaps. Nevertheless, it is what is called a first-class hotel.”
“Well, but who are you, sir?” I inquired; for, in truth, my suspicions began to be slightly excited by this time. My interlocutor was rather a singular-looking person, as well as I could make out his features in the dusk. Middle height, broad shoulders, and a square, pale face, the upper part of which seemed lit
erally covered with a pair of huge blue spectacles, while the lower portion was hidden in a frizzly beard. A small space on either cheek was all that was uncovered, and that shone white and cold as the snow that lay on the streets. “Who are you, sir?”
“I—I am Count Goloptious, Literary Man, Bon vivant, Foreign Nobleman, Linguist, Duellist, Dramatist, and Philanthropist.”
“Rather contradictory pursuits, sir,” I said, rather puzzled by the man’s manner, and wishing to say something.
“Of course. Every man is a mass of contradictions in his present social state.”
“But I never heard your name mentioned in the literary world,” I remarked. “What have you written?”
“What have I not written? Gory essays upon Kansas for the New York Tribune. Smashing personal articles for the Herald. Carefully constructed noncommittal double-reflex-action with escape-movement leaders for the Daily Times; sensation dramas for the Phantom Theatre. Boisterous practical joke comedies for Mr. Behemoth the low comedian; and so on ad infinitum.”
“Then as a bon vivant—?”
"I have been immensely distinguished. When Brillat Savarin was in this country, I invented a dish which nearly killed him. / called it Surprise des Singes avec petite verole. ”
“Linguist?”
“I speak seventeen languages, sir.”
“Duellist?”
“1 was elected a Member of Congress for South Carolina.”
“Philanthropist?”
“Am I not offering to you, a stranger, the hospitality of the Hotel de Coup d’OEil?”
“Enough, sir,” I cried; “I accept your offer. I thank you for your timely assistance.”
“Then let us go,” answered the Count Goloptious, offering me his arm.
II / THE HOTEL DE COUP D’OEIL.
The Count led me out of Bleecker Street into Broadway. We trudged a few blocks in silence, but whether towards Union Square or the Battery I could not for the life of me tell. It seemed as if I had lost all my old landmarks. The remarkable corners and signposts of the great thoroughfare seemed to have vanished.
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