Part 7

At this election I was one of a group of Columbia students who volunteered as watchers in the interests of the reform ticket. I was assigned to a polling place over on the East Side, a strong Tammany district; all day I watched to prevent the stuffing of the ballot box, and after the closing hour I saw to an honest count of the votes that had been cast. I had against me a whole set of Tammany officials, one or two Tammany policemen, and several volunteers who joined in as the quarrel grew hot. I remember especially a red-faced old police magistrate, apparently summoned for the purpose of overawing this presumptuous kid who was delaying the count. But the great man failed of his effort, because I knew the law and he didn’t; my headquarters had provided me with a little book of instructions, and I would read out the text of the law and insist upon my right to forbid the counting of improperly marked ballots.

I was probably never in greater danger in my life, for it was a common enough thing for an election watcher to be knocked over the head and dumped into the gutter. What saved me was the fact that the returns coming in from the rest of the city convinced the Tammany heelers that they had lost the fight anyhow, so a few extra votes did not matter. The ballots to which I objected were held for the decision of an election board, as the law required, and everybody went home. The Tammany police magistrate, to my great surprise, shook hands with me and offered me a cigar, telling me I would be all right when I had learned about practical politics.

I learned very quickly, for my hero-knight, Jerome, was elected triumphantly and did absolutely nothing, and all forms of graft in New York City went on just as they always had. They still went on when the speakeasy was substituted for the saloon, and the night club for the brothel. The naked women are now on the stage instead of in private rooms; and the drinking is out in the open.

There is one story connected with this campaign that I ought to tell, as it came home to me in a peculiar way. It was known during the campaign as “Jerome’s lemon story.” Said the candidate on the stump to his cheering audience: “Now, just to show you what chances there are for graft in a city like New York, let us suppose that there is a shortage of lemons in the city, and two ships loaded with lemons come into port. Whichever ship can get its cargo first to the market can make a fortune. Under the law, the city fruit inspectors are required to examine every box of lemons. But suppose that one of them accepts a bribe, and lets one cargo be landed ahead of the other--you can see what graft there would be for somebody.” Such was the example, made up out of his head, so Jerome declared; the story appeared in the morning papers, and during the day Jerome chanced to meet a city inspector of fruit whom he knew intimately. “Say, Bill,” demanded this official, “how the hell did you find out about those lemons?”

The story impressed me especially for the reason that I happened to know this particular inspector of fruit; he was the brother of an intimate friend of my mother’s. We knew all the family gossip about “Jonesy,” as we called him; we heard not merely the lemon story but many others, and knew that Jonesy was keeping a wife in one expensive apartment and a mistress in another--all on a salary of two thousand dollars a year. Bear this gentleman in mind, for when we come to the days of _The Jungle_, I shall tell a still funnier story. In a serious emergency I had to get Jonesy on the telephone late at night, before the morning papers went to press; the only way this could be managed was to call up his wife and ask her for the telephone number of his mistress. Let no one say that romance is dead in the modern world!

X

It was at this time that I was writing the half-dime novels, or killing Spaniards. I spent the summer in the home of an old sea captain, in the little town of Gananoque, Ontario, on the St. Lawrence River. The old captain was ill of tuberculosis, and his wife fed me doughnuts for breakfast and ice cream left over from the night before, and whenever I caught a big pike, we had cold baked fish for three days.

I did my writing late at night, when everything was quiet; and one night I was writing a vivid description of a fire, in which the hero was to rescue the heroine. I went into detail about the starting of the fire, portraying a mouse chewing on a box of matches. Just why a mouse should chew matches I do not know; I had heard of it somehow, and no guarantee went with my stories in those days. I described the tongues of flame starting in the box and spreading to some papers, and then licking their way up a stairway. I described the flames bursting from a window; then I laid down my pencil--and suddenly the silence of the night outside was broken by a yell of “Fire!”

For a moment I wasn’t sure whether I was still in my story or outside it. I looked out of the window and sure enough, there was a cottage in flames. I helped to rouse the people in it, and watched, with the amused superiority of a New Yorker, the efforts of village firemen to put out the blaze. I remember how they squirted the hose in at one window, and the jet came out at the opposite window. I will leave it for specialists in the occult to explain whether the fire was caused by the excessive vividness of my writing, or whether it was a case of clairvoyance, or possibly telepathy from the mind of a mouse. (Perhaps I ought to explain that the above is meant as humor, lest someone cite it as one more example of my credulity.)

Early that spring I had taken a fishing trip to the far north of Ontario, traveling on several railroads and then on a bicycle, and staying in a pioneer cabin near a tiny jewel of a lake. I did not get many fish, for the reason that I absent-mindedly left my tackle behind in a railroad station along the way, and it did not arrive until the day I departed; but I saw wild geese and a bear, which was a grand thrill; also I saw mosquitoes in clouds that darkened the sky and made me run through the swamps for my very life. On my way back to the railroad I came upon that field of deep clover in the twilight, and experienced the ecstasy I have described.

It was a good thing for a youth to see how our pioneer ancestors lived on this continent. The family with which I stayed lived on flour and bacon; they didn’t even have a cow. Once or twice a year, when they traveled to a store, they traded skins for salt and cartridges. Later that summer, on a canoe trip, I stayed with some old people who had a cow, and lived on skimmed milk and potatoes, trading butter at the store for tea and sugar. On another trip I met a French-Canadian settler, with a swarm of half-nourished babies, who did not even have a rifle to keep the bears out of his pigsty.

XI

Having arranged to meet my mother and some friends at Charleston Lake, which lies at the head of the little Gananoque River, I bought a canoe, bundled my stuff into the bow, and set off--so eager for the adventure that I couldn’t wait until morning. I paddled most of the night up the misty river, with bullfrogs and muskrats for company, and now and then a deer--all delightfully mysterious and thrilling to a city youth. I got lost in the marshes--but the mosquitoes found me, rest assured. After midnight I came to a dam, roused the miller, and went to sleep in his garret--until the miller’s bedbugs found me! Then I got out, watched the sunrise up the river gorge, and stood on the dam and threw flies for black bass that jumped half a dozen at a time.

I paddled all that day, and stayed a while at a lonely farmhouse, and asked a hundred questions about how pioneer farmers lived. I remember coming out onto Charleston Lake, very tired from paddling and from carrying my canoe over the dams; the wind was blowing up the lake, so after getting the canoe started, I lay down and fell asleep. When I woke, my frail craft was grating on the rocks at the far end of the long lake. I paddled to the hotel; there was a dock, and summer guests watching the new arrival. I had made the whole journey without mishap; but now I put out my hand to touch the dock, a sudden gust of wind carried me out of reach--and over I went into the water with everything I owned!

This lake was a famous fishing resort, and there were rich men from the cities amusing themselves with deep-water trolling for large lake trout. They had expensive tackle, and reclined at ease while guides at four dollars a day rowed them about. I paddled my own canoe, so I did not catch so many trout, but I got the muscular development, which was more important. Doubtless it was my Christian duty to love all the rich persons I watched at this and other pleasure resorts; but here is one incident that speaks for itself. The son of a wealthy merchant from Syracuse, New York, borrowed a shotgun from me, stuck the muzzle into the sand, and then fired the gun and blew off the end of the barrel. I had rented this gun in the village and now had to pay for the damage out of my slender earnings; the wealthy father refused to reimburse me, saying that his son had had no authority to borrow the gun.

You may notice that here again I was meeting rich and poor; going back and forth between French-Canadian settlers and city sportsmen.

XII

By the beginning of the year 1900, the burden of my spirit had become greater than I could carry. The vision of life that had come to me must be made known to the rest of the world, in order that men and women might be won from their stupid and wasteful ways of life. It is easy to smile over the “messianic delusion”; but in spite of all smiles, I still have it. Long ago my friend Mike Gold wrote me a letter, scolding me severely for what he called my “Jesus complex”; I answered, as humbly as I could, that the world needs a Jesus more than it needs anything else, and volunteers should be called for daily.

I was no longer any good at potboiling and could not endure the work. I had a couple of hundred dollars saved, and it was my purpose to write the much talked-of “great American novel.” I counted the days until spring would be far enough advanced so that I could go to the country. I had in mind Lake Massawippi in Quebec, just over the New York border; I was so impatient that I set out in the middle of April, and when I emerged upon the platform of the sleeping car and looked at the lake, I found it covered with ice and snow; the train was creeping along at three or four miles an hour, over tracks a foot under water.

My one desire was to be alone; far away, somewhere in a forest, where the winds of ecstasy might sweep through my spirit. I made inquiries of real-estate agents, who had no poetry in their souls and showed me ordinary cottages. At last I set out in a snowstorm, and walked many miles down the lake shore, and discovered a little slab-sided cabin--a dream cottage all alone in a place called Fairy Glen. It belonged to a woman in Baltimore and could be rented for May, June, and July for twenty-five dollars. With the snow still falling, I moved in my belongings. The place had one large room, a tiny bedroom, and a kitchen, everything a would-be poet could desire.

I built a fire in the open fireplace, and warmed my face while my back stayed cold; that first night I fiddled vigorously to keep my courage up, while creatures unknown made noises in the forest outside and smelled at my bacon hanging on the back porch. Next day I walked to town to do some purchasing. Snow was still falling. I met a farmer driving a load of straw or something to town, and he pulled up his horses and stared at the unexpected stranger. “Hello! Be you a summer boarder?” “Yes,” I confessed. “Well”--and the old fellow looked about at the snowflakes in the air--“which summer?”

I had fires of the heart to warm me, and I began to write my wonderful novel--the story of a woman’s soul redeemed by high and noble love. _Springtime and Harvest_ I called it, and it was made out of the life story of a woman I had known, a girl of great beauty who had married a crippled man for his money, and had come to understand his really fine mind. At least that is what I imagined had happened; I didn’t really know either the woman or the man--I didn’t know anything in those days except music and books and my own emotions.

I would, I fear, be embarrassed to read _Springtime and Harvest_ now; not even loyalty to this present task has caused me to open its pages. But at that time I was sure it was the most wonderful novel ever written. I always do think that about every book I write; the blurb the publisher puts on the jacket--“This is Upton Sinclair’s best work”--is perfectly sincere so far as the author is concerned. I write in a fine glow, expecting to convert my last hostile critic; and when I fail, the shock of disappointment is always as severe as ever.

XIII

Springtime came at last, and the Fairy Glen was carpeted with flowers. The little brook in front of the door sang songs to me, and I to it:

I ask you where in your journey You see so fair a sight, That you have joy and singing All through the winter night.

The sunrise over the lake was a daily miracle, and the great winds that lashed the forest trees were brothers to my soul. Again and again that ecstasy came to me--no one to interfere with it now--and I labored days and nights on end to catch it and imprison it in words.

There were comical incidents in my hermithood, of course. Wild things came to steal the butter that I kept in the spring; I set a trap, and behold, it was nothing more romantic than a skunk. The little devil ruined a pair of trousers for me--I not knowing his ways. I left the trousers to soak in the stream for a week, but all in vain. Worse yet, my drinking place was ruined for the entire summer.

Also, I must mention the French-Canadian family that lived up on the mountain side and sent me fresh milk and eggs and butter by a little ragged boy. I tried out my homemade French on them, and the _mère_ of the household paid me a high compliment. “Oh, you speak _French_ French!” Now and then she would write me notes, in homemade spelling, and one of these deserves a wider audience. She explained that she would not be able to send milk on the morrow because she was going to the town--“_il me faut faire arracher dedans_.” The vision of the poor woman having herself “pulled out inside” disturbed me greatly, until I realized that she meant _some teeth_ (_des dents_).

Summer came, and the city boarders. Halfway to town was a golf links--a new game, then coming in. I saw able-bodied men driving a little white ball about a field all day, and it seemed to me more than ever necessary that they should have a new ideal. I was impatient of every form of human vanity and stupidity, and if I have become less so with the passage of the years, it has been merely to spare my digestion.

The summer brought my mother and some friends, including the girl with whom I was to fall in love. But that is a story I’ll save for the next chapter; here, I am dealing with the book. I labored over it, sometimes five or six hours without moving from my seat, and for days at a time without seeing a soul or thinking about anything else. The human organism is not made to stand such strain, and I began to notice stomach trouble. It grew worse and plagued me for years--until I humbled my stubborn pride and learned mother nature’s lesson--to limit the number of hours of brainwork, and get some exercise and recreation every day. Many years later I came upon a saying of old John Burroughs, which came home to me as truth immortal and ultimate. “This writing is an unnatural business; it makes your head hot and your feet cold, and it stops the digestion of your food.”

On the first of August the owner of my fairy cabin took it for her own use, and I moved up to a lonely farmhouse on the mountainside, where I became the sole and solitary boarder. I would go out into the woods--sugar-maple trees they were, and for breakfast I had their juice in a thick dark syrup, freshly melted. I always have to have a place to walk up and down while I am working out my stories, and in that sugar-maple forest I wore a path six inches deep--back and forth, back and forth, for hours on end every day.

There were mosquitoes, almost as annoying to me as human beings, and when they found me, I would go out and sit in the middle of a field of clover hay and do my writing. The crickets hopped over my manuscript, and the fieldmice nibbled at my shoes; and then came the mowers to destroy my hiding place. I remember one little French-Canadian whom I engaged in conversation, and how he rolled up his sleeves and boasted of the power of his stringy muscles. “You want to mow avec me, il you faut très strong bras!” I remember also walking miles down the road in the morning to meet the mail carrier; I had sent the first part of my great novel to a publisher and was hoping for a reply, but none came. It was the beginning of an agony that lasted many weary years. My curses upon those publishers who let manuscripts pile up on their desks unread!

September came, and an invitation from my clergyman friend, Mr. Moir, who now had a camp at Lake Placid. He asked me to visit him for a couple of weeks. I was so near the end of my story, I ventured out of hiding; but I found it was a mistake, because I could do no work at all when I had to fit myself to the meal hours and other habits of the world. I tried in vain for a week or two; I remember that I read the letters of Robert Louis Stevenson in this interval--and very thin and poor they seemed in comparison with what filled my soul.

At last, in desperation, because cold weather was coming fast, I went out on one of the islands of Lake Placid and found a little “cook house”--a tiny cabin with no windows and no furniture but a stove. I rented it for the sum of five dollars, and spread a couple of blankets; and with the brown leaves falling in showers about me, and the cries of blue jays and the drumming of partridges in the air, I wrote the closing scenes of my tragedy. I later used that little cook house in _The Journal of Arthur Stirling_. Also I used the siege of the publishers that was still to come. But of that I had no vision as I bundled up my belongings and returned to New York, a conquering hero in my own fantasy. I was carrying in my suitcase the great American novel for which all the critics of those days were waiting on tiptoe!

_4_

_Marriage_

I

I believe that marriage can be studied as a science, and practiced as an art; that like every other natural phenomenon, it has its laws, psychological, moral, and economic. At present it would seem that many others hold this belief. We have seen the rise of marriage counselors, and I have heard that marriage is even the subject of courses in college. But when I was young, it was generally taken for granted that marriages had to be ill-assorted and that married couples had to quarrel and deceive each other. Here is a case record, an example of what happens when marriage is entered into in utter ignorance of all its practical problems.

The story was told in _Love’s Pilgrimage_, with the variation of a few details. In ancient Greek pastorals, Corydon and Thyrsis were two shepherds; but the lines in Milton’s “L’Allegro” caught my fancy:

Where Corydon and Thyrsis met Are at their savory supper set, Of herbs and other country messes.

And so I said, “For purposes of this tale let Corydon be a girl.”

In writing the book, I told the story as the girl wanted it told. If it seemed to her that the manuscript failed to give a sufficiently vivid account of the hardheadedness and unreasonableness of Thyrsis, I would say, “You write it the way it ought to be.” So Corydon would write a paragraph, or maybe a page or a scene, and in it would go. I was so sorry for the fate of women that I found it hard to contend with them.

The marriage of Corydon and Thyrsis was dominated by the most pitiful ignorance. Both parties had been taught very little, and most of that was wrong. Corydon had lived the solitary life of a child of the city nomads; her father had been a newspaper reporter, then deputy clerk of a court, and she had been moved about from boardinghouses to apartments; and in the course of twenty years of life she had picked up one intimate girl friend, a poor stenographer dying of tuberculosis, and no men friends whatever. As for Thyrsis, he had, besides Corydon, one girl friend.

Let not Laura Stedman fail of her due place in this story: little Laura, golden-haired and pretty, prim and precise. She was the granddaughter of Edmund Clarence Stedman, the poet, and happened to live in the apartment house next to me for two or three years. We had our childish “scrap,” and I vaguely remember pulling her pigtail, or something brutal like that. Later, at the age of fifteen or so, I would go to call upon her, and experience tumultuous thrills; I recall one occasion when I purchased a new hat, of a seductive pearl gray, and went walking with Laura in this regalia, so excited that my knees would hardly hold me up.

We discoursed learnedly about the books we were reading, among these _Romola_, a “classic.” First there is a Greek seducer named Tito Melema, and I remarked sapiently that I considered him “magnificent.” Laura flushed and exclaimed, “I think he is a perfect beast!” I had to explain that I was speaking from the technical point of view; the character was well drawn. So then the little lady from New England consented to forgive me.

II

Between Corydon and Thyrsis the determining factor, as in nine tenths of marriages, was propinquity. Corydon came to the place where Thyrsis was writing his great novel; she visited the romantic cabin in the Fairy Glen; and since someone had to read the manuscript, she carried it off, and came back flushed with the discovery that this hateful, egotistical, self-centered youth whom she had known and disliked for ten years or more was a hothearted dreamer, engaged in pouring out a highly romantic love story destined soon to be recognized as the great American novel. “Oh, it is wonderful!” she exclaimed; and the rest of the scene tells itself. Literary feelings turned quickly into personal ones, and the solitary poet had a companion and supporter.

But, oh, the grief of the parents on both sides of this ill-assorted match! Quite literally, if a bomb had exploded in the midst of their summer vacation, it could not have discommoded them more. A clamor of horrified protests broke out. “But you are crazy! You are nothing but children! And you have no money! How can people get married without a cent in the world!” The two mothers fell to disagreeing as to which of their offspring was the more to blame, and so an old-time friendship passed into temporary eclipse. Corydon was hastily spirited away to another summer resort; but not until she had taken a solemn vow--to learn the German language more rapidly than Thyrsis had learned it!

At the end of October the poet returned to New York with an invisible crown on his brow and inaudible trumpets pealing in his ears. He and Corydon proceeded to spend all day and half the night reading Goethe’s _Iphigenia in Tauris_ and practicing Mozart’s sonatas for violin and piano. But there developed grave obstacles to this program. Corydon’s family was inconvenienced if Thyrsis arrived at the apartment before breakfast; also, the mother of Thyrsis adhered stubbornly to the idea that Corydon ought not to play the piano later than eleven in the evening, and should be taken home before her family went to bed. There was only one way in the world to escape such fetters--by means of a marriage license.