John Passos - 1919

Sophomore year Dick and Blake Wigglesworth began to go around together. Dick had a room in Ridgely and Blake was always there. Dick suddenly found he liked college, that the weeks were flying by. The Advocate and the Monthly each published a poem of his that winter; he and Ned, as he took to calling Blake Wigglesworth, had tea and conversation about books and poets in the afternoons and lit the room with candles. They hardly ever ate at Mem any more, though Dick was signed up there. Dick had no pocketmoney at all once he’d paid for his board and tuition and the rent at Ridgely but Ned had a pretty liberal allowance that went for both. The Wigglesworths were well off; they often invited Dick to have Sunday dinner with them at Nahant. Ned’s father was a retired art critic and had a white Vandyke beard; there was an Italian marble fireplace in the drawingroom over which hung a painting of a madonna, two angels and some lilies that the Wigglesworths believed to be by Botticelli, although B.B., out of sheer malice, Mr. Wigglesworth would explain, insisted that it was by Botticini.

Saturday nights Dick and Ned took to eating supper at the Thorndike in Boston and getting a little tight on sparkling nebbiolo. Then they’d go to the theatre or the Old Howard.

The next summer Hiram Halsey Cooper was campaigning for Wilson. In spite of Ned’s kidding letters, Dick found himself getting all worked up about the New Freedom, Too Proud to Fight, Neutrality in Mind and Deed, Industrial Harmony between capital and labor, and worked twelve hours a day typing releases, jollying smalltown newspaper editors into giving more space to Mr. Cooper’s speeches, branding Privilege, flaying the Interests. It was a letdown to get back to the dying elms of the Yard, lectures that neither advocated anything, nor attacked anything, The Hill of Dreams and tea in the afternoons. He’d gotten a scholarship from the English department and he and Ned had a room together in a house on Garden Street. They had quite a bunch of friends who were interested in English and Fine Arts and things like that, who’d gather in their room in the late afternoon, and sit late in the candlelight and the cigarettesmoke and the incense in front of a bronze Buddha Ned had bought in Chinatown when he was tight once, drinking tea and eating cake and talking. Ned never said anything unless the talk came around to drinking or sailingships; whenever politics or the war or anything like that came up he had a way of closing his eyes and throwing back his head and saying Blahblahblahblah.

Election Day Dick was so excited he cut all his classes. In the afternoon he and Ned took a walk round the North End, and out to the end of T wharf. It was a bitterly raw grey day. They were talking about a plan they had, that they never spoke about before people, of getting hold of a small yawl or ketch after they’d graduated and following the coast down to Florida and the West Indies and then through the Panama Canal and out into the Pacific. Ned had bought a book on navigation and started to study it. That afternoon Ned was sore because Dick couldn’t seem to keep his mind on talk about sailing and kept wondering out loud how this state and that state was going to vote. They ate supper grumpily at the Venice, that was crowded for once, of cold scallopini and spaghetti; the service was wretched. As soon as they’d finished one bottle of white orvieto, Ned would order another; they left the restaurant walking stiffly and carefully, leaning against each other a little. Disembodied faces swirled past them against the pinkishgold dark of Hanover Street. They found themselves on the Common in the fringes of the crowd watching the bulletin board on the Boston Herald building. “Who’s winning? Batter up…. Hurray for our side,” Ned kept yelling. “Don’t you know enough to know it’s election night?” a man behind them said out of the corner of his mouth. “Blahblahblahblah,” brayed Ned in the man’s face.

Dick had to drag him off among the trees to avoid a fight. “We’ll certainly be pinched if you go on like this,” Dick was whispering earnestly in his ear. “And I want to see the returns. Wilson might be winning.”

“Let’s go to Frank Locke’s and have a drink.”

Dick wanted to stay out with the crowd and see the returns; he was excited and didn’t want to drink any more. “It means we won’t go to war.” “Razer have a war,” said Ned thickly, “be zo amuzing… but war or no war lez have a lil drink on it.”

The barkeep at Frank Locke’s wouldn’t serve them, though he’d of ten served them before, and they were disgruntedly on their way down Washington Street to another bar when a boy ran past with an extra in four inch black type HUGHES ELECTED. “Hurray,” yelled Ned. Dick put his hand over his mouth and they wrestled there in the street while a hostile group of men gathered around them. Dick could hear the flat unfriendly voices, “College boys… Harvard men.” His hat fell off. Ned let go his hold to let him pick it up. A cop was elbowing his way through toward them. They both straightened up and walked off soberly, their faces red. “It’s all blahblahblahblah,” whispered Ned under his breath. They walked along toward Scollay Square. Dick was sore.

He didn’t like the looks of the crowd around Scollay Square either and wanted to go home to Cambridge, but Ned struck up a conversation with a thuggylooking individual and a sailor whose legs were weaving. “Say, Chub, let’s take ’em along to Mother Bly’s,” said the thuggylooking individual, poking the sailor in the ribs with his elbow. “Take it easy now, feller, take it easy,” the sailor kept muttering unsteadily.

“Go anywhere they don’t have all this blahblahblahblah,” Ned was shouting, seesawing from one foot to the other. “Say, Ned, you’re drunk, come along back to Cambridge,” Dick whined desperately in his ear and tugged at his arm, “They want to get you drunk and take your money.”

“Can’t get me drunk, I am drunk… blahblahblahblah,” whinnied Ned and took the sailor’s white cap and put it on his head instead of his own hat.

“Well, do what you damn please, I’m going.” Dick let go Ned’s arm suddenly and walked away as fast as he could. He walked along across Beacon Hill, his ears ringing, his head hot and thumping. He walked all the way to Cambridge and got to his room shivering and tired, on the edge of crying. He went to bed but he couldn’t sleep and lay there all night cold and miserable even after he’d piled the rug on top of the blankets, listening for every sound in the street.

In the morning he got up with a headache and a sour burntout feeling all through him. He was having some coffee and a toasted roll at the counter under the Lampoon Building when Ned came in looking fresh and rosy with his mouth all twisted up in a smile, “Well, my young politico, Professor Wilson was elected and we’ve missed out on the sabre and epaulettes.” Dick grunted and went on eating. “I was worried about you,” went on Ned airily, “where did you disappear to?” “What do you think I did? I went home and went to bed,” snapped Dick. “That Barney turned out to be a very amusing fellow, a boxing instructor, if he didn’t have a weak heart he’d be welterweight champion of New England. We ended up in a Turkish Bath… a most curious place.” Dick felt like smashing him in the face. “I’ve got a lab period,” he said hoarsely and walked out of the lunchcounter.

It was dusk before he went back to Ridgely. There was somebody in the room. It was Ned moving about the room in the blue dusk. “Dick,” he began to mumble as soon as the door closed behind him, “never be sore.” He stood in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets swaying. “Never be sore, Dick, at things fellows do when they’re drunk…. Never be sore at anything fellows do. Be a good fellow and make me a cup of tea.” Dick filled the kettle and lit the alcohol flame under it. “Fellow has to do lotta damn fool things, Dick.”