Thomas Wolfe - Thomas Wolfe - Of Time and the River, You Can't Go Home Again & Look Homeward, Angel

“My Shakespeare, rise!”

With red resentful face, he rose.

“Will My Shakespeare pass the biscuit?” or, “Could I trouble My Shakespeare for the butter?” said Ben, scowling at him.

“My Shakespeare! My Shakespeare! Do you want another piece of pie?” said Helen. Then, full of penitent laughter, she added: “That’s a shame! We oughtn’t to treat the poor kid like that.” Laughing, she plucked at her large straight chin, gazing out the window, and laughing absently — penitently, laughing.

But —“his art was universal. He saw life clearly and he saw it whole. He was an intellectual ocean whose waves touched every shore of thought. He was all things in one: lawyer, merchant, soldier, doctor, statesman. Men of science have been amazed by the depth of his learning. In The Merchant of Venice, he deals with the most technical questions of law with the skill of an attorney. In King Lear, he boldly prescribes sleep as a remedy for Lear’s insanity. ‘Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care.’ Thus, he has foreseen the latest researches of modern science by almost three centuries. In his sympathetic and well-rounded sense of characterization, he laughs with, not at, his characters.”

Eugene won the medal — bronze or of some other material even more enduring. The Bard’s profile murkily indented. W. S. 1616–1916. A long and useful life.

The machinery of the pageant was beautiful and simple. Its author — Dr. George B. Rockham, at one time, it was whispered, a trouper with the Ben Greet players — had seen to that. All the words had been written by Dr. George B. Rockham, and all the words, accordingly, had been written for Dr. George B. Rockham. Dr. George B. Rockham was the Voice of History. The innocent children of Altamont’s schools were the mute illustrations of that voice.

Eugene was Prince Hal. The day before the pageant his costume arrived from Philadelphia. At John Dorsey Leonard’s direction he put it on. Then he came out sheepishly before John Dorsey on the school veranda, fingering his tin sword and looking somewhat doubtfully at his pink silk hose which came three quarters up his skinny shanks, and left exposed, below his doublet, a six-inch hiatus of raw thigh.

John Dorsey Leonard looked gravely.

“Here, boy,” he said. “Let me see!”

He pulled strongly at the top of the deficient hose, with no result save to open up large runs in them. Then John Dorsey Leonard began to laugh. He slid helplessly down upon the porch rail, and bent over, palsied with silent laughter, from which a high whine, full of spittle, presently emerged.

“O-oh my Lord!” he gasped. “Egscuse me!” he panted, seeing the boy’s angry face. “It’s the funniest thing I ever —” at this moment his voice died of paralysis.

“I’ll fix you,” said Miss Amy. “I’ve got just the thing for you.”

She gave him a full baggy clown’s suit, of green linen. It was a relic of a Hallowe’en party; its wide folds were gartered about his ankles.

He turned a distressed, puzzled face toward Miss Amy.

“That’s not right, is it?” he asked. “He never wore anything like this, did he?”

Miss Amy looked. Her deep bosom heaved with full contralto laughter.

“Yes, that’s right! That’s fine!” she yelled. “He was like that, anyway. No one will ever notice, boy.” She collapsed heavily into a wicker chair which widened with a protesting creak.

“Oh, Lord!” she groaned, wet-cheeked. “I don’t believe I ever saw —”

The pageant was performed on the embowered lawns of the Manor House. Dr. George B. Rockham stood in a green hollow — a natural amphitheatre. His audience sat on the turf of the encircling banks. As the phantom cavalcade of poetry and the drama wound down to him, Dr. George B. Rockham disposed of each character neatly in descriptive pentameter verse. He was dressed in the fashion of the Restoration — a period he coveted because it understood the charms of muscular calves. His heavy legs bulged knottily below a coy fringe of drawer-ruffles.

Eugene stood waiting on the road above, behind an obscuring wall of trees. It was rich young May. “Doc” Hines (Falstaff) waited beside him. His small tough face grinned apishly over garments stuffed with yards of wadding. Grinning, he smote himself upon his swollen paunch: the blow left a dropsical depression.

He turned, with a comical squint, on Eugene:

“Hal,” said he, “you’re a hell of a looking prince.”

“You’re no beauty, Jack,” said Eugene.

Behind him, Julius Arthur (Macbeth), drew his sword with a flourish.

“I challenge you, Hal,” said he.

In the young shimmering light their tin swords clashed rapidly. Twittered with young bird-laughter, on bank and saddle sprawled, all of the Bard’s personæ. Julius Arthur thrust swiftly, was warded, then, with loose grin, buried his brand suddenly in “Doc” Hines’ receiving paunch. The company of the immortal shrieked happily.

Miss Ida Nelson, the assistant director, rushed angrily among them.

“Sh!” she hissed loudly. “Sh-h!” She was very angry. She had spent the afternoon hissing loudly.

Swinging gently in her side-saddle, Rosalind, on horseback, a ripe little beauty from the convent, smiled warmly at him. Looking, he forgot.

Below them, on the road, the crowded press loosened slowly, broke off in minute fragments, and disappeared into the hidden gulch of Dr. George Rockham’s receiving voice. With fat hammy sonority he welcomed them.

But he had not come to Shakespeare. The pageant had opened with the Voices of Past and Present — voices a trifle out of harmony with the tenor of event — but necessary to the commercial success of the enterprise. These voices now moved voicelessly past — four frightened sales-ladies from Schwartzberg’s, clad decently in cheese-cloth and sandals, who came by bearing the banner of their concern. Or, as the doctor’s more eloquent iambics had it:

“Fair Commerce, sister of the arts, thou, too,

Shalt take thy lawful place upon our stage.”

They came and passed: Ginsberg’s —“the glass of fashion and the mould of form”; Bradley the Grocer —“when first Pomona held her fruity horn”; The Buick Agency —“the chariots of Oxus and of Ind.”

Came, passed — like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

Behind them, serried ranks of cherubim, the marshalled legions of Altamont’s Sunday schools, each in white arrayed and clutching grimly in tiny hands two thousand tiny flags of freedom, God’s small angels, and surely there for God knows what far-off event, began to move into the hollow. Their teachers nursed them gently into action, with tapping feet and palms.

“One, two, THREE, four. One, two, THREE, four. Quickly, children!”

A hidden orchestra, musical in the trees, greeted them, as they approached, with holy strains: the Baptists, with the simple doctrine of “It’s the Old-time Religion”; the Methodists, with “I’ll Be Waiting at the River”; the Presbyterians, with “Rock of Ages,” the Episcopalians, with “Jesus, Lover of My Soul”; and rising to lyrical climactic passion, the little Jews, with the nobly marching music of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

They passed without laughter. There was a pause.

“Well, thank God for that!” said Ralph Rolls coarsely in a solemn quiet. The Bard’s strewn host laughed, rustled noisily into line.

“Sh-h! Sh-h!” hissed Miss Ida Nelson.

“What the hell does she think she is?” said Julius Arthur, “a steam valve?”

Eugene looked attentively at the shapely legs of the page, Viola.

“Wow!” said Ralph Rolls, with his accustomed audibility. “Look who’s here!”

She looked on them all with a pert impartial smile. But she never told her love.