7.20 P.M. W. reading an old copy of the Atlantic. Sat in his usual place under the light. Fire lively. Odor of wood in the room. "I am a prisoner," he said, smilingly, "but you are not my jailer." Then after a pause: "Indeed, far from that: you are in fact my deliverer." He said right off: "I've got a couple of old soldiers for you: I put them aside: here they are. In William's letter you will find premonitory allusions to the trouble that is killing him today." He handed me what proved to be two notes pinned (without envelopes) together—one from O'Connor and one from Burroughs. He settled in his chair and said: "Would you mind reading them to me?" Of course I didn't mind, so I unpinned the sheets and got to work. He interrupted me every now and then with some exclamation or remark.
As I paused between the two letters W. said: "If that is William at his worst what is he at his best? He's like the Mississippi pilot: if William can do such wonders asleep what couldn't he do awake?" He laughed in a gentle way. Then he added gravely: "But the fact remains that there we find the first intimations of William's deathstroke." I picked up Burroughs' letter and read.
I asked W.: "Was it Frederick the Great who said: 'Keep your bowels open and keep your powder dry'?" W. laughed. "I don't
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know: it's just as good if he didn't say it." Then he added: "John was then, is now, about right in saying the bowels are the seat of the difficulty, but he was, he is wrong, if he says the bowels are the origin of the difficulty. There's something back of all that in my history, physiology, accounting for the hole I've got myself into. I have lived along pretty conservative lines now for years, but in spite of that I'm slowly slipping to the foot of the hill: it seems as though nothing would stay, however some things might or do delay, my descent."
I returned W. the pictures. Then he talked of Symonds again. "That photograph is the very top, culmination, crest of the art: it is the crowning product of the camera: I have never seen anything to equal it." He held the picture up before him. "What does this face most suggest?" He answered his own question: "Symonds is no joker: no notion of the jolly dog could be suggested by anything in his physiognomy: to me he expresses the scholastic—the profound, the fervent, not the ephemeral, scholastic: he is a bookish man—lives with books, in books—yet I don't know but that he goes for the meat, the philosophy, the principle, in literature, regarding these, with lesser factors, as of prime importance: but bookish he is: it's in every line of his face as well as in every line that he writes." Yet he had every reason for believing that Symonds "is of that higher type of the man of culture to whom literarishness is not an obstruction to life."
Naturally turned to O'Connor. "I am greatly disappointed," he said: "I have been looking for some word all day: waiting, remembering, hoping. I wrote today: I write every day—something: but Nellie is silent. It has been four or five days since I have heard: by and by something will come: I am praying that it may be favorable—a break in the clouds—though I suppose really ameliorating news is not to be expected." He said: "Nellie must be having a bad time of it: they live alone: she has nobody to help her. William is not entirely stranded: he has a position—a good one, I imagine: I don't know what his salary is—not less than two hundred dollars a month: they continue to pay him that: they are very decent in that sort of thing in Washington." He wound up saying: "After all, there's nothing makes up for the body: when the body gives out a man's about ready to pass in his checks: whatever's to happen hereafter,
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a man minus a body is of no use here." Then again: "That's why the art preservative of all the arts of living is the conservation of the body."
W. said: "I got nothing from Bucke today: did you?" But he had had letters: "One was from my German friend, Knortz—Karl Knortz: he says the book is out—that he has not yet had or seen a copy but has come across advertisements of it in the German newspapers." I asked W. what Knortz was: had he a profession? "I hardly know what you would call his occupation: I think he makes his living by hacking for the newspapers—writing, doing odds and ends: seeing good stories—making the most of them: all that. He started out with being a Presbyterian preacher: when he came from Germany had a church—I think here in South Jersey. By and by he gave that up—he saw it would not do: that he was not built for it: then he went to jobbing it on the newspapers. He is a cute wide-awake man. You have never met him? I think Doctor has seen him, talked with him—I don't know but liked him very well."
Talked of young Emperor William. "I find I can't think of him patiently: he rubs my fur the wrong way: I had great hopes of his father: they may have been based on nothing, but I had them: but this boy only excites my distrust. I never cease wondering how a people so enlightened as the Germans can tolerate the king, emperor, business anyway. The Hohenzollerns are a diseased mess, taking them all in all: there seems to be a corrupt physical strain in the family: what does it come from? can it be syphilis?" He was silent for awhile. Resumed: "I am aware that that is often said of Frederick: it is the pet theory of doctors—their staple explanation: but the question is, is it true? how much of it can be true? I am not easily convinced in such matters: I call for absolute testimony—and that no one outside has got in this case. Doctors put all the iniquities of courts, palaces, high society, down at this one door—but do they belong there? I listen to the stories—yet am not convinced: I am not willing to contradict them or ready to acquiesce. Victoria, in England, comes in for the same muck. I know Englishmen—young, radical, republican Englishmen—(the great point being that they are very cute, intelligent, cultured, noble)—who can never allude to the Queen but with foul epithets: the Queen, who, if I accepted the estimate of these boys, I would have to set down as a low, dirty,
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sneaking, stingy drab—a sluttish drab!" But his idea of it all was wholly contrary. "Even Mrs. Gilchrist, splendid as she always was—fair, discriminating—could never speak of the Queen but with contempt—the heartiest disdain." I asked: "Weren't these scornful negations rather for the queen than for the woman?" He did not answer directly. I waited. Finally he said: "You may be right but they didn't sound as impersonal as that: as negations of the queen I would have assented to them." Had Bucke ever said anything on the subject of Frederick?—anything pathological? "I hardly think so: not to me: I have no doubt he has opinions: Bucke is slow to commit himself on professional problems. It's easy to put on an air of mystery before cases you don't understand and say 'syphilis' in a hushed voice and impress listeners with the idea that you're a big gun: but causes, effects, what was before, what comes after, heredity, such elements, are not to be so readily put together, taken apart, brushed aside in a generalization."
W. spoke of the complete W.W. "It is valuable if at all not for extraneous qualities but for something interior: something personal, having to do with me, with my past, with what is to come—if that is worth while. I would hardly expect Dave to compass that: it goes rather with the psychological, even the metaphysical, than with book-selling: we must not demand too much of people: if we demand enough—that's sufficient!"