There Is a River

by Thomas Sugrue

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Brown said. “Starting a university is expensive.”

  “Would $50,000 take care of it the first year?” Morton said.

  Dr. Brown hesitated.

  “$100,000?” Morton said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Brown said. “I’m sure it could be started on less than that. Of course it depends on what you want—how extensive a curriculum, how experienced a faculty . . .”

  “We want the best,” Morton said.

  They didn’t discuss details, since it was necessary, for the sake of good manners, to pretend that Dr. Brown was to be the next governor of Virginia. They left with an understanding, however, and when Dr. Brown was soundly beaten at the polls a few weeks later both got busy. Morton authorized the laying of foundations for two buildings—one for classrooms, one for a dormitory—and Dr. Brown started rounding up a faculty.

  Meanwhile, on October 12th, Dr. House died. He had been sick a long time, following a serious illness and years of overwork at the hospital in Hopkinsville. The readings had outlined treatments which kept him active, but offered no hope for anything but alleviation, since his entire system was affected. Late in the summer of 1929 they suggested a trip to Dayton, for treatments by Dr. Lyman A. Lydic, an osteopath who had become interested in the readings and worked with them while Edgar was in Dayton. The treatments were given, and Dr. House responded at first, but suddenly took a turn for the worse and died. He was buried in Hopkinsville, in the Salter family plot. Carrie did not return to the beach. Tommy left Washington and Lee and joined her in Hopkinsville.

  The hospital experimented with several osteopaths during the fall. It was impossible at the moment to get a man with both a medical degree and osteopathic training. Ordinary medical doctors were out of the question; they either laughed at the readings or condemned them as quackery. It was an osteopath or nothing.

  In January of 1930, Dr. Lydic was induced to abandon his practice and take charge of the hospital. Miss Annie Cayce, Edgar’s only unmarried sister, took Carrie’s place as housekeeper, and things were on an even keel again. At the beginning of March, Dr. Lydic’s chart showed patients receiving treatment for congenital incoordination of mental and physical faculties, ulcers of the stomach, acute gastritis, general pruritis, mucous colitis, spastic paraplegia, tabes dorsalis, optic neuritis with partial blindness, shell shock with its typical manifestations, hysteria, acute osteomyelitis, and several types of gynecological trouble. All were responding in what Dr. Lydic described as “an encouraging manner.”

  His report was printed in the quarterly magazine of the Association, The New Tomorrow. In the same issue—dated April, 1930—the first yearbook of the Association was announced, and subscriptions were offered at one dollar each. In the “News and Views” section of the forty-page periodical it was reported that 210 check readings had been given during the first three months of the year and the calendar was filled until June 1st. It was also reported that President Morton H. Blumenthal, Mrs. Blumenthal, and their son, Morton, Jr., had returned from a six weeks’ vacation in southern France. At the hospital the hydrotherapy room had been enlarged, the electrotherapy room had been removed to “more suitable quarters,” and a recreation room had been opened in the basement. Headway was being made by the datastician on the job of setting up a system for cross-indexing the readings and extracting from them information on various subjects and specific ailments.

  In the spring Dr. Brown moved to the beach, and plans for the university crystallized. It was to open in the fall, without waiting for the erection of buildings. An office was opened in Norfolk to handle inquiries and to register students. Dr. Brown, from the basement of the hospital, sent out catalogues and announced the purpose of the new institution:

  “The founders of the university have in mind the establishment of an institution which will eventually be second to none among educational institutions in this country. We are well aware of the fact that it will require some years and a considerable financial outlay to attain to this ideal. At the same time, however, we have definitely determined upon this objective and we shall make every effort to realize it as rapidly as possible. Naturally, we do not expect the institution ever to reach a stage of completion, but we do hope to make it a center of learning, culture, and research in which all branches of human knowledge and scientific research will sooner or later be represented. In a sense, we shall endeavor to make our own application of the statement of Ezra Cornell, the founder of Cornell University, who expressed his aim thus: ‘I would found an institution where any person may obtain instruction in any study.’ Similarly, we shall strive to coordinate within the scope of Atlantic University, so far as may be humanly possible, all the branches of knowledge and scientific endeavor which offer any contribution to what has been called ‘the amenities of living’ and to the worthwhileness of human life.

  “We are well aware of the fact that there will be many difficulties in the way of accomplishing our objective. There will doubtless even be those who will openly declare that we are attempting to overshoot the mark. We only bespeak for our plan the open-mindedness which should characterize any enlightened individual, and such cooperation as each interested person feels inclined to give in a sympathetic endeavor to bring to pass the purposes which we have in mind. We do not intend to rival or supplant any existing institution of learning. We desire, on the other hand, to cooperate in every way possible with all existing institutions and agencies of educational and altruistic character, and we invite the same degree of cooperation from them.”

  The Association announced the university as a supplement to the hospital, “a parallel service for the mind and spirit.” Actually there was to be no connection between the Association and the university. Dr. Brown’s theory was that scholastic respectability should first be won, after which the subject of psychic phenomena could be taken up in a proper, respectable manner. The university, in fact, was to dwarf the Association and its hospital; it was to be a modern institution of higher learning with a faculty second to none and a complete and elaborate curriculum, especially in the arts.

  This was not Morton’s original intention. The Association needed a small school where philosophy, metaphysics, psychic phenomena, psychology, and occultism could be studied in an intelligent manner, with facilities for the proper research and laboratory experiments. No such program was in Dr. Brown’s outline. He wanted a university like other universities, only a little better. Apparently he sold Morton on this idea, at least temporarily.

  Edgar looked askance at the whole project. If a university were to grow from the work it should do so, he thought, as a logical outgrowth of the research program, not as an institution superimposed on the structure of the Association and dwarfing it. According to the plan of Dr. Brown, it was to be just another college, no different from the hundreds of colleges already existing in the country. The idea of a small group of students applying themselves to the study of the readings, and then gradually gathering around them students interested in metaphysics and philosophy, was lost in the grandiose scheme of a big-time school with a high-class faculty and a winning football team.

  “What do you make of it?” Edgar asked Hugh Lynn.

  “It’s not what I expected,” Hugh Lynn answered. He had been graduated from Washington and Lee in June and was to be the university’s librarian.

  Edgar shook his head. He was not so worried about the development of the university itself as he was concerned with its effect on the hospital. Already checks from New York were arriving late. Morton was making remarks about economy and the need for lowering the hospital’s budget. Of course, there was a depression abroad—the whole country was in a slough of economic despond. But Morton had stoutly maintained that he was better off than he had been before the stock market crash of the preceding October.

  “He can’t be,” the squire said bluntly. “Nobody else is. I look for trouble, Edgar; especially with the u
niversity costing him so much.”

  “I hope not,” Edgar said fervently. “I hope not.”

  A new building was finished in the hospital grounds that summer, a home for the nurses. Across the boulevard, foundations were laid for the buildings of the university.

  The school was to open on September 22nd, in two of the ocean-front hotels which closed after Labor Day. The Old Waverly served as the boys’ dormitory; the girls were housed in the New Waverly. The buildings stood side by side at Twenty-second Street. Classes were to be held in office buildings all over the beach; assemblies were scheduled for the Presbyterian church. On the ground floor of the boys’ dormitory Hugh Lynn was housed in a temporary library. As opening day approached there were two hundred students enrolled—a remarkable beginning.

  Meanwhile members of the board of directors of the Association received notice of a meeting to be held on September 16th, in the Nurses’ Home.

  “This is it,” the squire said. “Something is going to happen.”

  Edgar was glum. He set out for the meeting with Gertrude and Hugh Lynn.

  “Maybe he’s going to ditch the university and put all his interest in the hospital,” Gertrude said. “I hear he’s been having lots of trouble with Dr. Brown.”

  “Everybody’s talking about it,” Hugh Lynn said. “Nobody knows what happened, but they think Morton pledged $5,000 a month and Dr. Brown’s faculty is going to cost about twice that.”

  “He has some good men,” Gertrude said. “He didn’t get them to leave the jobs they had without offering them more money.”

  Edgar reached for a cigarette to hide his nervousness.

  “It’s what we don’t know that makes it certain we’re in for trouble,” he said. “Morton used to confide in us. He used to tell us all his plans and thoughts. He’s been drifting away from us ever since this university began to take shape.”

  He held a match to the cigarette.

  “If only the school could have waited a few years, until we had an endowment for the hospital,” he said.

  Morton and Edwin were waiting at the Nurses’ Home. As always they were quiet, smiling, immaculately dressed. When the meeting was called to order Morton began to speak. He sketched the history of the hospital in terms of money—his money. When it was opened, it cost him $3,000 a month. Gradually this had been cut down by income from patients. During one month the income from patients had matched the overhead.

  Now, however, the hospital owed nearly $10,000 for items of overhead. Obviously there had been waste and extravagance.

  Though it was a place of healing, it ought to be run on a more businesslike basis.

  Therefore, it was his suggestion that the Association turn the hospital back to him and his brother, with the understanding that the bills would be paid and everything kept running as usual. Would the board vote on this suggestion?

  A vote was taken. The members, stunned by the proposal, automatically voted against it. It was defeated. Morton was irritated. He said something about withdrawing all funds and forcing the hospital to close. Edwin spoke about the “seriousness” of the situation and suggested another vote.

  Edgar got up to speak.

  He looked over the heads of Morton, Edwin, and the other members of the board, as if he were addressing someone who stood beyond them.

  “I have every confidence in Mr. Blumenthal,” he said. “He built the hospital; he has maintained it. He understands the work I do better than almost anyone else. I am sure he is desirous of continuing the efforts we have so well begun. It would mean very little to me to have the hospital without his cooperation and interest. I suggest the board accede to his request.”

  Another vote was taken. The proposal won. The meeting adjourned. All the members except Morton and Edwin went to Thirty-fifth Street to ask Edgar what had happened.

  “I don’t know,” he told them. “Maybe Morton is right; maybe we’ve been inefficient in handling the money. If he thinks so, he has a right to handle it himself. It’s his.”

  “He’s in trouble,” the squire said. “The depression is getting him.”

  Edgar didn’t answer. He had been aware from the beginning that the hospital and Association were heavy structures to erect on the foundation of one man’s whim. Morton had not possessed the money to endow the hospital; he had paid for it out of his winnings in the market, and as these went, so went everything he had built at the beach. The hospital, with its income from patients, might have got by with what help he could offer. The university was apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back. Unless the readings themselves were responsible: physical readings had so crowded the calendar that Morton’s requests for philosophical guidance had been postponed time and again. He had grown used to this help and seemed at a loss without it. When even the Sunday periods were taken by emergency physical readings, he was cut off from a source of mental food which had become necessary to him. He had become fascinated by the subconscious and was attempting to fathom its language by having his dreams interpreted. He was also delving deeper and deeper into the metaphysical structure of the universe. To be stopped in all this must have irritated him.

  One thing was certain. The readings had repeatedly told Morton that knowledge of philosophical truths meant nothing in itself. The truths had to become part of his life to mean anything. Morton had ignored this. He had plunged into water that was over his head, without learning to swim.

  “For to know, and not to do, becomes sin,” the readings had said. “Hence in such an approach each should weigh well—whether there are ulterior motives, or just wonderment, with little thought or idea of what such information might put upon him as an individual.” Morton had learned a lot, and he had done something about it in an external way; but there had apparently been little change within himself. When he couldn’t get what he wanted for himself from the readings, he wasn’t enthusiastic about helping others get what they needed.

  “Maybe everything will be all right,” Edgar said. “Maybe things will swing upward on the market. Maybe the hospital can make enough to meet its overhead.”

  But the depression deepened.

  Atlantic University opened, and for the first semester Morton met all the bills. Then he ceased his support. The hospital continued to run; the outstanding bills were paid, the staff was cut, and the budget reduced. After January, Dr. Brown endeavored to keep the university going by his own efforts. He cut all salaries in half, started a movement among Norfolk people to support the school as a local project, and solicited donations wherever possible. Some of the professors were paid by Morton, because they had letters from him which confirmed their contracts. For a time it was rumored that Morton only wanted Dr. Brown’s resignation, after which he would reorganize the school along different lines, resuming his support.

  “He’s strapped,” the squire kept saying. “That’s what’s the matter. He can’t be the only one in Wall Street making money. He must be losing, too.”

  On February 26, 1931, a meeting of the board of trustees of the Association was held in New York in the offices of the Blumenthal Brothers, at 71 Broadway. Hugh Lynn and Edgar drove up from the beach to attend it. Morton moved that all activities of the Association cease. Hugh Lynn and Edgar didn’t vote. The others present—Morton, Edwin, and T. B. Brown—voted yes. The motion was declared carried, though there wasn’t a quorum.

  Patients at the hospital had already been notified that they would have to leave. On February 28th the staff was paid off and the doors closed.

  Morton had told Edgar he could remove any personal items from the building. The first thing he did was arrange to have the files of the readings taken from the basement. When these were safely on their way to Thirty-fifth Street he wandered through the rooms, looking from the windows of each at the sea. Finally he left, carrying with him three things: his mother’s picture, Dr. House’s picture, and an oil painting of
himself which had been presented by the father of one of the patients.

  As he walked along the porch to the steps he recalled the words attributed to Talleyrand: “It is worse than a crime—it is a blunder.” He could not feel that way about the hospital. In two years it had demonstrated its worth; in the office was a list of patients asking for entrance. Those who received treatment had been helped or cured. The files bulged with affidavits and letters of thanks. A tragedy it might be: conceived in impracticality, executed in haste, abandoned in its hour of victory; but not a mistake.

  Gertrude was waiting for him in the car.

  “I should never have allowed it to open without being sure it would be kept open,” he said when they were out of the driveway and on the boulevard. “If I had held out for that, we’d have won.”

  “We’ll get it back,” Gertrude said. “There are lots of people willing to put up money. We can raise a fund and buy it from Morton.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Edgar said.

  He was silent until they were nearly home. Then he said, “I’ve been tested, and I’ve failed.”

  It rained that night.

  It had to rain. Edgar’s tears were not enough to drain the misery in his soul. He needed help from heaven.

  TWENTY

  The meeting was held in the living room of the house on Thirty-fifth Street, on the afternoon of June 6, 1931. Sixty-one people attended, overflowing to the porch and up the stairs. Most of them were from Norfolk or Virginia Beach. None was wealthy, or even influential. Dave Kahn was present, and Dr. Brown, whose university had staggered to the end of its first year.

  Edgar opened the meeting and explained its purpose.

  “Last winter, when the hospital closed and the Association was dissolved,” he said, “I sent a letter to everyone on my mailing list. Each of you received one. In it I asked a question: whether in your opinion another organization should be formed. If this work of mine is worthwhile, I asked you, tell me so. Tell me what, in your opinion, is its value. I don’t want to fool myself or anyone else. If it has all been a mistake, I want to quit now, before any more damage is done.