Part 1 (1/2)
Twelve Men
by Theodore Dreiser
_Peter_
In any group offrom the point of view of character and not that of physical appearance, Peter would stand out as deliciously and irrefutably different In the great waste of American intellectual dreariness he was an oasis, a veritable spring in the desert He understood life He knew men He was free--spiritually, morally, in a thousand ways, it seeh this inexplicable existence one realizes how such qualities stand out; not the pseudo freedo men, financially or physically, but the real, internal, spiritual freedom, where the mind, as it were, stands up and looks at itself, faces Nature unafraid, is aware of its oeaknesses, its strengths; examines its own and the creative ima out of doors, and yet deliberately and of choice holds fast to s, and rounds out life, or would, in a natural, noreous, healthy way
The first time I ever saw Peter was in St Louis in 1892; I had coo to work on the St Louis _Globe-Democrat_, and he was a part of the art department force of that paper At that tie later even so much as a hair's worth until he died in 1908--he was short, stocky and yet quick and even jerky in his et-up” of hair and beard, ly disposed of at tirown at others, and always, and intentionally, I a to conte, force and alertness which belied the other surface characteristics as anything ayety
Plainly he took hihtly, usually with an air of suppressed gayety, as though saying, ”This whole business of living is a great joke” He alore good and yet exceedingly mussy clothes, at ti grotesquery that was the dismay of all who knew him, friends and relatives especially In addition he was nearly always liberally besprinkled with tobacco dust, the source of which he used in all forarettes when he could obtain nothing s about him which most impressed me at that tirotesque, in hi in a dull or conventional mood, would not even pered him on to all sorts of nonsense, in an effort, I suppose, to entertain himself and make life seem less commonplace
And yet he loved life, in all its multiform and multiplex aspects and with no desire or tendency to sniff, reforood just as he found it, excellent Life to Peter was indeed so splendid that he was always very er to live, to study, to do a thousand things For him it was a workshop for the artist, the thinker, as well as theany one he was ”for” the individual who is able to understand, to portray or to create life, either feelingly and artistically or with accuracy and discrimination To him, as I saw then and see even s were only relatively so A thief was a thief, but he had his place
Ditto the , or at least doing, so which man could not understand, of which very likely he was a mere tool Peter was asstruin with her starry crown The rich were rich and the poor poor, but all were in the grip of imperial forces whose ruthless purposes or lack of thenificent, as you choose He pitied ignorance and necessity, and despised vanity and cruelty for cruelty's sake, and theHe was liberal, h he never had more than a little money, out of the richness and fullness of his own teenerate a kind of atmosphere and texture in his daily life which was rich and warht (the true reality) if not in fact, and rateful to all Yet also, as I have said, always he wished to _seerace, the wanton and the loon even,his profoundest faith in thewith a nificant person
In so far as I kneas born into a mid-Western family of Irish extraction whose habitat was southwest Missouri In the town in which he was reared there was not even a railroad until he was fairly well grown--a fact which amused but never impressed him very much Apropos of this he once toldseen a railroad, entered the station with his wife and children long before train ti out of the various s, then finally returned to the ticket-seller and asked, ”When does this thing start?” Heitself At the time Peter had entered upon art work he had scarcely prosecuted his studies beyond, if so far as, the conventional high or graly infore had to offer His father, curiously enough, was an educated Irish-American, a lawyer by profession, and a Catholic His mother was an American Catholic, rather strict and narrow His brothers and sisters, of wholy virile and interesting Americans of a rather wild, unsettled type They were all, in so far as I could judge fro--so vital that they weighed on one a little, as very intense temperaments are apt to do One of the brothers, K----, who seemed to seek me out ever so often for Peter's sake, was so intense, nervous, rapid-talking, rapid-living, that he frightened arish places He liked to play the piano, stay up very late; he was a high liver, a ”good dresser,” as the denizens of the Tenderloin would say, an excellent example of the flashy, clever pro so gum, a safety razor, a bicycle, an automobile tire or the machine itself He was here, there, everywhere--in Waukesha, Wisconsin; San Francisco; New York; New Orleans ”My, !” he would exclaim, with an air which would have done credit to a co both hands ”Peter's pet friend, Dreiser!
Well, well, well! Let's have a drink Let's have so to eat I'o to a show--or hit the high places? Would you? Well, well, well! Let's ht of it! What do you say?” and he would fix , nervous and as intended no doubt to be a reassuring eye, but which unsettled hly as the i of Peter
The day I first saw hi a snake story for one of the Sunday issues of the _Globe-De its readers withconcoctions of this kind, and the snake he was draas ly vital and reptilian, beady-eyed, with distended jaws, extended tongue, , for I was in to see hilorious snake!”
”Yes, you can't make 'em too snaky for the snake-editor up front,” he returned, rising and dusting tobacco from his lap and shi+rtfront, for he was in his shi+rt-sleeves Then he expectorated not in but to one side of a handsome polished brass cuspidor which contained not the least evidence of use, the rubber ly ”decorated” I was h at the ti too new Later, I may as well say here, I discovered why This was a bit of his clowning humor, a purely manufactured and as it were mechanical joke or ebullience of soul If any one inadvertently or through unfaolden cuspidor,” as he described it, he was always quick to rise and interpose in the most sole a hand ”Hold! Out--not in--to one side, on the mat! That cost in to draw again I saw him do this to all but the chiefest of the authorities of the paper And all, even the dullest, seemed to be amused, quite fascinated by the utter tru ahead of my tale In so far as the snake was concerned, he was referring to the assistant who had these snake stories in charge ”The fatter and more venomous and more scaly they are,” he went on, ”the better I'd like it if we could use a little color in this paper--red for eyes and tongue, and blue and green for scales The farood but poisonous snakes”
Then he grinned, stood back and, cocking his head to one side in a h his hair and beard and added, ”A snake can't be too vital, you know, for this paper
We have to draw 'erinned , of course The i manner!
We soon became fast friends
In the same office in close contact with him was another person, one D---- W----, also a newspaper artist, hile being exceedingly interesting and special in hireater purpose in my own mind than to have illustrated how emphatic and important Peter was He had a thin, pale, Dantesque face, coal black, almost Indian-like hair most carefully parted in the middle and oiled and slicked down at the sides and back until it looked as though it had been glued His eyes were small and black and querulous but not mean--petted eyes they were--and the mouth had little lines at each corner which seemed to say he had endured much, much pain, which of course he had not, but which nevertheless seemed to ask for, and I suppose earned hiedian of sorts, but with an ele utterly ridiculous Like reat poseur He invariably affected the long, loose flowing tie with a soft white or blue or green or brown linen shi+rt (would any American imitation of the ”Quartier Latin” denizen have been without one at that date?), yellow or black gloves, a round, soft crush hat, very soft and limp and very _different_, patent leather pumps, betimes a capecoat, a slender cane, a boutonniere--all this in hard, smoky, noisy, commercial St Louis, full of middle-West business men and farmers!
I would not mention this particular person save that for a time he, Peter and myself were most intimately associated We temporarily constituted in our way a ”soldiers three” of the newspaper world For soroup, although later Peter andas a pair had been finding more and more in common and had more and more come to view dick for what he was: a character of dickensian, or perhaps still better, Cruikshankian, proportions and qualities But in those days the three of us were all but inseparable; eating, working, playing, all but sleeping together I had a studio of sorts in a more or less dilapidated factory section of St Louis (Tenth near Market; now I suppose briskly commercial), dick had one at Broadway and Locust, directly opposite the then famous Southern Hotel Peter lived with his fahborhood
It has been one ofto me, to note that nearly all of eous _rapprochements_ and swiftest developh h there have been several exceptions to this Nearly every turning point in reat force, to whom I owe some of the most ecstatic intellectual hours of my life, hours in which life seelowed as with the radiance of a gorgeous tropic day
Peter was one such About e at this ti which was sih, likein a boisterous, Rabelaisian way to have soly syood, bad, indifferent--”in case therein it; you never can tell” Still he hadn't the least interest in conforhed at its pretensions, preferring his own theories to any other Apparently nothing aht of confession and co shrived by some stout, healthy priest as worldly as himself, and preferably Irish, like himself At the same time he had a hearty admiration for the Germans, all their ways, conservatiss, and finally wound up by irl
As far as I couldexcept Nature itself, and very little in that except in those aspects of beauty and accident and reward and terrors hich it is filled and for which he had an awe if not a reverence and in every ht Life was a delicious, brilliant mystery to hireat adventure
Unlike ering Puritanisorous, healthy, free, at tiroes, the ancient Rorotesque Dark Ages, our own vile sluhts of wandering, endless investigation, reading, singing, dancing, playing!
Apropos of this I should like to relate here that one of his seeross but really innocent diversions was occasionally visiting a certain black house of prostitution, of which there were many in St Louis Here while he played a flute and some one else a tambourine or small drum, he would have two or three of the ine way that took one instanter to the wilds of Central Africa There was, so far as I know, no payment of any kind made in connection with this He was a friend, in some crude, artistic or barbaric way He satisfied, I am positive, some love of color, sound and the dance in these queer revels
Nor do I kno he achieved these friendshi+ps, such as they were I was never with him when he did But aside froe and picturesque, I aross or sensual appetite But I wish to attest in passing that theof these free scenes had a tonic as well as toxic effect onfish, anxious to know life, and yet because of ht do to ht open me to! Peter was not so To hi spectacle, to be studied or observed and rejoiced in as a spectacle