—I find you very, very Centennial, Laura.
At the Centennial Ball that night in one of Philadelphia’s biggest hotels, John Shawnessy and Laura Golden and a few hundred other celebrants danced away the declining hours of the first day of America’s second century. There was a good deal of champagne flowing, and the Perfessor and Phoebe left the party early. Around midnight, Mr. Cassius Carney turned up and absentmindedly revolved twice around the floor with Miss Laura Golden and then disappeared as abruptly as he came, consulting a watch. Mr. John Shawnessy escorted Miss Laura Golden to the door of her room. There was a languid condescension in her manner.
—Don’t worry, dear, she said. Mr. Stiles and I will take good care of you in the City. You come around and see me at the theatre and I’ll introduce you to some little actresses.
—Thank you so much, dear.
—And when you get a hundred thousand dollars, you can come and see me at my place, dear.
In the halflight of the hall, she leaned back against the door, cruelly conscious of her beauty. She seemed indeed to be couched like a great cat on beautifully muscled haunches. He was angry with her for this cynical, unmeant invitation.
—My dear Miss Golden, he said, not every man is trying to find his way into your famous bedroom.
—Famous? she said, bending her face proudly to one side on the slender neck. Pray—why famous?
Just then she gave a little shriek of surprise as the door opened and she almost fell inside. Professor Jerusalem Webster Stiles, indifferently put together, appeared with his arm around Phoebe.
—I trust you all perceive, he said, the object which I hold in my hand.
He disappeared in the corridor.
—I suppose Mr. Stiles has been telling stories about me, she said. Don’t believe anything he says. I’m a very ladylike unlady. Good night, Johnny dear.
She had said his name like a caress from deep in her throat, but the lovely disdainful mouth gave the last word a tinge of mockery all the same.
—Good night, Laura dear.
—You know, I love the way you say that, she said, stepping back out unexpectedly. You give it such a courteous sound in your precious Hoosier accent. Say it again, dear.
—Laura dear.
As he said her name the second time, she watched his mouth, much amused, moving her lips with his. Tilting her chin, half-shutting her eyes, tipping her head sideways, she invited him to kiss her good night. Slowly, he approached the painted mouth in the moonpale, powdered face and barely touched its sultry outline with his lips, thinking of the scar. Even then, he was surprised by the softness and warmth of the mouth. But without responding, it withdrew into the darkness of the room, and silently the door closed. It had been a very imperfect kiss.
Lying in his lonely bed, John Shawnessy totted up the scattered statistics of the Centennial Day. A muggy dawn was breaking. The Republic had completed its first century of progress toward the goal of Social and Moral Perfection envisaged by her founders.
As for him, he had gone to the Centennial Exhibition, but he had not seen the most exciting of the Centennial Exhibits. He had, however, touched its mystery, couched and strange, a mystery of lives and years. He tried to imagine the face of a girl named Daphne Fountain, perhaps unscarred, as it might have been on that far-off April night when it waited for him in the wings of a theatre in the City of Washington, but instead there came to him the memory of another face in the wings of a theatre, the face of a girl who stood against unused sceneshifts of woodland and river scenery in an old Opera House.
I came to the City, a vagrant day,
In the bloom of my blithesome youth,
And I sought in the City great and gray
The beautiful bird of Truth.
I sought her along the wide, wide streets,
The glimmering parks and lawns,
Through all of the City’s dim retreats
And under its lonely dawns.
Then he tried to remember Miss Laura Golden’s face, as he had just seen it, but he couldn’t do it. It had become as featureless as a sensual summer moon, nodding languidly upon his fevered meditations—a Centennial Summer moon.
So then it was a hundred years since America had begun. Yes, he would start all over and discover America again.
America was a city by a river, a city of gloomily eclectic buildings, confused unhappy domes and spires of buildings that were trying to be the most beautiful buildings that ever were but couldn’t be because they hadn’t any souls. America was faces in the Avenue of the Republic, eager, excited faces with mobile eyes. America was the place where all the world sent its third-rate art and gaudiest claptrap and where it was all piled up together and then became something hushed, exciting, wonderful because it was in America.
America was cities—cities that changed and faded overnight, pushed down and trampled under by other cities that had the same names, preposterous and arrogant cities, shooting from the fecund soil like the most fulsome flowers the world had ever seen. America was hotels filled with Centennial thousands; it was the saturnalia of the night-time city, the bodies of persuaded blondes bounding on beds with Centennial abandon. America was a thin bright rocket rising in the purple sky, a streak of force that hadn’t yet arrived at its gentle, gradual curve and handsome fall. It was the biggest rocket of them all, obedient to the pressure in its tail. And it was much desire, young dreams, unshakable conviction, clenched hands in darkness beating upon pillows and reaching out for other hands and finding—
America was John Wickliff Shawnessy, and how he left Raintree County, and in the summer of the Republic’s rededication to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, began to seek his fortune in the City of New York, where he was confident there awaited him the greatness and wisdom he had long been seeking, the consummation of a magic poem, and the vouchsafing of a love that was wholly of the City. But whether it would be like the City, sensual and self-indulgent,
OR, LIKE THE ClTY, PASSIONATE AND REAL,
HE HAD YET TO DISCOVER
IN
—LITTLE OLD NEW YORK, the Perfessor was saying, has changed a lot since you were there in 76, John. You’d feel like Rip Van Winkle if you came back today.
—‘HOT BOX ON EASTBOUND,’ the telegraph key was clicking. DELAY FEW MORE MINUTES AT ROIVILLE.
—John, we stand on the threshold of immense changes, the Perfessor went on, gesticulating in his best classroom manner. America—our old America—is gone. The War killed it. The City killed it. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution never foresaw the Modern City. If Tom Jefferson were to come back today and walk through the sunlight and shadow of New York, he’d say, Good God, what’s happened to the Republic?
Mr. Shawnessy got up and nervously smoothed his hair in the glass of the station window. He sat down and listened for the train.
—When you stand on a high roof, the Perfessor was saying, and look down at the canyons of one of our great modern cities, how can you resist the impression that you are looking into the welter and stench of the Great Swamp itself! The people look like frantic bugs going in and out of holes, the sharp angles of the City are softened, whole streets sink back into shadow while others shimmer with a hot radiance. Listen to the dungbed of it seething with a dirtiness called human life! Can you resist the feeling that this is the place where all souls are extinguished? Can any wisdom or love or beauty come out of the City?
Mr. Shawnessy felt an old feeling of revulsion mixed with a taste of bitter passion.
I came to the City a vagrant day in the bloom of my blithesome youth. And I sought in the City what all men seek, and I was lost in the City like one who wandered in a dream.
—Here in the City, the Perfessor was saying, Raintree County is utterly destroyed. The City destroys all the ancient values, prides, loyalties, convictions. The City has no everlasting values, being itself the creature of endless change.
—‘SHE’S LEAVING ROIVILLE,’ the telegraph key was saying.
&n
bsp; And I sought in the City, great and gray, the beautiful bird of truth. I sought her among the wide, wide streets, the glimmering parks and lawns, through all of the City’s vague retreats, and under her lonely, under her lonely, under her lonely dawns.
—The supreme irony of it all, the Perfessor was saying, is that the creators of the Machine, believing it the fairest flower of human progress, have really made it the noxious weed that chokes out everything else and finally begins to choke itself out of room and means of sustenance. Thus with the Machine, his last brilliant contrivance, the Heir of all the Ages succeeds in hurling himself back into the Swamp and destroys all the beautiful, insubstantial dreams that made him think he had a home forever on this earth.
Listen! I hear a voice of prophecy in Raintree County. I hear the thunder of the hurrying wheels. Broad roads are built through Raintree County, and the ancient boundaries will dissolve. There is a banner of progress fast and far across the land. And who shall be the Hero of the County and who shall have the golden fruit?
—Gangway for the new man, the new American, John! the Perfessor was saying. You and I are nothing to him. He has dispensed with conscience and morality, those articles of excess baggage on the road to fame and riches. Gangway for Progress and Unlimited Expansion.
—Gangway for the Eastbound Express! Mr. Shawnessy said. Here it comes!
Just then the train broke small and far and fast from the realm of faith into the realm of fact. The black shape of it had been preceded by the sound of its panting breath. And now the whistle wailed.
And many a year I spent at last in the City’s swallowing void, till I thought that my youthful dream was past and its delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate form destroyed. Till I thought . . . till I thought . . . till I thought
1876—1877
HOW HE CAME TO THE CITY OF NEW YORK
in the Centennial Summer, how he lived in the City from a summer to a summer, how he became lost in the City like one wandering in a dream.
He came to the City because he was always meant to come. It was as if a voice had spoken from the sky above his home in Raintree County, saying:
My child, you shall go to the City, because without the City you are incomplete. You shall go to the City and be sad, because you haven’t yet been sad enough. You shall go to the City and know a love unlike any other, because you haven’t yet loved enough. You shall go to the City, and the City will drench you in its liquorcolored lights, ravish you with its enormous beauty, wound you with its hard surfaces and pointed towers, and reject you from its million doors. Then perhaps some day if you are lucky, having tasted its red forbidden fruit, you will come back from the City to your home again.
What was the City to John Shawnessy?
The City was a street, any street taken at random in summer between the dense fronts of the buildings or valleying to distant parks. It was the dense tide of the faces in the street. For like a tide in those gilded years, the immigrant faces surged through the channels of the City. Surflike, they beat on the island stillness of the brownstone mansions of the rich in parklike yards.
The City was the meeting of the trains in marshalling yards, the changing of the cars, incessant arrivals and departures.
Often in his time within the City, the young man from Raintree County would go down and stand in one of the terminals and watch the ventricles expanding and contracting, the pale tide of the faces streaming in and out. Why did they come, the people of the City, the eager self-appointed heroes, the bewildered children of humanity? He saw their faces looking from the windows of the hollow, gaslit cars, their million faces, tender, delicate, obtuse, deformed, eager, illusioned, cynical, depraved, desirous, a hundred thousand vagrant seeds blown down into this heaving swamp, the City. What other faces did they meet while they swam on the blind nocturnal tides? What faces yet unborn were imminent from faces that he saw? What millions of Americans were being spawned from the muck of seeding faces that lost themselves in chambers of the City? Good-by, they said, and waving left the City, or descending from the cars at evening rushed into waiting arms, were carried by cabs, walked with tired eyes into the shells of old hotels. Good-by! Hello! Hail and Farewell! The City was the place of all departure and arrival, meeting and farewell.
The City was perhaps, most of all, a place where people came to see the City.
The City was the place where the great newsstories were manufactured out of ink and blood. The young man from Raintree County was amazed to see how blindly the people of the City ingurgitated print. The City was the newsboy on the corner. (O, little shaghaired shouter of headlines! O, little seedling of the asphalt!) The hoarse cry of the newsboy on the corner was the voice of Providence addressing Mankind.
The City was A Great Calamity, Sensational Fire, Terrific Loss of Life (Git Yuh Papuh Heah), Custuh Massacree, Centennial Exposition Closes (Git Yuh Papuh Heah), Great Train Wreck in Ohio, Terrific Loss of Life, Election in Dispute (Git Yuh Papuh Heah), Southerners Massacree Negroes, Terrific Loss of Life, Negro Lady Names Attackers, Hayes Elected (Git Yuh Papuh Heah). The City was the Great American Newsstory.
The epic of the City in the Centennial Year was the epic of the Custers, roaring with their boots on hell-for-leather out of the smoke of the Great War and across the plains, driving a lot of savages from their own land with the utmost dash and dare. But the West kept its secret from the City, and the City didn’t really understand or care that on the sunbaked Western plain, which was America, the body of the Civil War was lying, with brave boots on and an anachronistic arrow in its guts.
The City was the story of closing up the Centennial Exposition in the autumn of the year. The little city of strange domes beside the river was instantly old, naked, forlorn, as time rushed on, panting and wailing down the rails, burning out boxes on the Western plain, and spawning cities, cities, cities, cities, all in the image of the City.
The City was words, it was brown days and months and years of words that flowed across the face of time.
The City was a lonely, desirous young man from Raintree County reading to late hours in a great municipal library endowed by a multimillionaire who made his money out of railroads that bled the farmers back in Raintree County. One of the saddest images of the City was the young man from the West reading in one of the hundred million books, feeling the brevity of his time within the City and the eternity of the City’s spawning of ideas, images, and words. And even as he plowed a puny path through the mounded lore of ages, the City went on with gushing presses, drowning him with words. The magazines were printing poems, stories, novels, the City was a waste of books and words in which a man might sink from sight and never be heard of again. Brown bindings stamped with gilded words turned beneath his hands. In the late hours, he left the echoing building and stepped out again into the stale valleys and caverns of the City, and the City roared around him, multitudinous, unsubdued, uncaring. There were so many books. A hundred lives would not suffice to read the City’s own outpouring.
What was the poem that would tell the City—its vastness, richness, cruelty, the beauty of its women, the pathos of its crammed, explosive life, the victories, joys, defeats, frustrations of its days!
When John Shawnessy listened for the voices of famous poets then living, to see whether they were reaching to express this thing, the City, he was disappointed. The laureate voices of the City were singers of poor small songs, sentimental lyrics in the columns of the newspapers, the fancy doggerel of Stedman, the watered nightingale notes of Aldrich. Whitman, though not stilled, had sung his greatest songs, had never made the epic of his people. Emerson was an old man who couldn’t remember faces of his youth. Hawthorne, Thoreau were dead. The great voices were all in one way or another casualties of the Great War. The epic of America, her youth, her martial vigor, her innocent dedications, her great crusades, were back in the years when a divided people fought, each side for its dream of human freedom, when a race had been emancipated, when the face of Abraham
Lincoln brooded above the wartorn nation. The City and the Nation had fallen on degenerate days.
He sought the secret of the City also in the theatres. Here he saw the foppish posturings, the sentimental attitudes of a Gilded Age. To express its turbulence and passion, its laughter and tears, the City required a Shakespeare; it had to be satisfied with Boucicault.
When at last shyly he had revealed some of his own unfinished work to certain literary persons of the City, he was coldly rejected. All at once he knew the sinister selfishness of mankind, the infinite gap between his own vision of himself and the brief, indifferent viewing of other people. He knew then all at once how lucky and rare it is for anyone to make his world acceptable to anyone else. He knew then how vain he had been to suppose that the City would be eager to receive him, caress him, lionize him, make him her poet. His manuscripts came back to him devoid of comment, scarcely read.
Meanwhile the City had an insatiable appetite for words and drugged itself with the thin music of a billion clichés.
There were nights when he lay in his room in one of the crammed apartment regions of the City and felt a sick despair rising up around him in the night. The City was this despair, it was the steady pounding of his heart, his face on the pillow, the brown shadows of the room, the winking jungle of the walls, the sound of time ebbing on the shelved and shadowy ramparts of the City in the night.
So like that other gifted young poet, Mr. William Shakespeare, Mr. John Shawnessy had left the little rural water where he had spent his youth and had come (if somewhat belatedly) to the Great City. And to fulfill an ancient dream of his he began to write a play. The epic that he had meant to finish in the City was set aside, for into it had crept the City’s own moral and artistic confusion. The play on which he worked ceaselessly now was itself an image of the City. He called it by a somber, glittering phrase that had lodged in his memory and turned to stone, Sphinx Recumbent. A verse-drama gorgeous with rich words and violent scenes, it had for its heroine a woman sensual, proud, enigmatic. He set her in the gilded world of the City like an idol blazing with a stony light, against which men beat themselves to death. But there was one, a poet lost for a time in the chambers of the City, between whom and this woman a contest rose, each seeking to find and possess the other’s soul—she through cruel conquest, and he through virile identity.
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