John Barth - Letters

Our situation was too off-putting for me to be able now to reconstruct those verses. In his well-amplified baritone Cook made the same connexion (but unrelated to ourselves) that I’d made earlier, between the funeral of Marshyhope’s founder in February and its first president’s now: the predictable September/remember/glowing-ember rhymes. Observing that John Schott’s Fallen Forerunner had been “an historian” (rhymed with “not boring one”!), Cook invoked “what might be called the Anniversary View of History”: surely it was Significant that 7 September Was the birthday of that other J. P. Morgan, as well as of Queen Elizabeth I: wouldn’t our late founder have approved! (Unaware of our presence behind him, or of much else, Jacob Horner added sotto voce “the Comte de Buffon, Taylor Caldwell, Elia Kazan, Peter Lawford”; Marsha poked him.) Surely it was Significant, given Joseph Morgan’s professional interests, that today marked the anniversary of the launching in Baltimore, in 1797, of the frigate Constellation, soon to play a rôle in the cinematical reenactment of our history; that on this date in 1812 Napoleon defeated the Russian army at Borodino, and in 1822 Brazil’s claim of independence began the Portuguese Revolution. (“Right on!” I was surprised to hear Drew Mack say; the morning paper had reported release of fifteen Brazilian leftist political prisoners as ransom for the kidnapped U.S. ambassador.) And 7 September 1940 had marked the peak of the German air war against Great Britain, rhymes with fittin’. Horner nodded vigorously.

None of us, the laureate concluded, is immortal:

The stoutest fort’ll

Fall; the final portal

Open. Death’s the key

Of keys, the cure of cures.

All passes. Art alone endures.

Horner applauded. Marsha whacked him. People shushed. Muttered Ambrose (as the chaplain rose to give a final benediction): “Art passes too.”

Outside there were brief unavoidable stiff encounters; I was relieved not to have to deal with them alone. John Schott harrumphingly gave me to know that other pressing commitments of Mr Cook’s might make it impossible for him to ornament the English faculty after all, and that he Schott, among others, was pressing for my immediate reappointment. That matter would be brought before the provostial Appointments and Tenure Committee at once if I was agreeable; bygones be bygones, etc. Perhaps for the fall semester, I replied, if the university dropped their action to rescind Ambrose’s honorary degree. But never mind the spring: we were expecting a baby in March or April.

The man was satisfactorily taken aback; his fink of a secretary as well. Ambrose squeezed my arm approvingly. But Marsha was all ears behind us, with her husband in tow. She too, she announced with saurian satisfaction, was expecting a child — with, given her relative youth, better odds than some on a normal delivery. Let us charitably suppose that Marsha had not yet heard of Peter’s death and was simply reconnoitering the effects of her Bombshell Letter. I feared for Ambrose’s temper; was tempted myself to reply that Marsha’s own track record in the delivery of normal children was not impressive. But our grief (and love) detached us; put things in right and wry perspective. You’re married, then, Ambrose remarks to the pair of them, with a great no-alimony smile. Certainly not, snaps Marsha. Well, opines Horner, in point of fact we are, though Marsha is retaining her maiden name. Shut up, Mrs H. commands him. And while their new baby is of course not his, Horner bravely persists, he hopes his wife will permit him to name it, if a boy, Joseph Morgan Horner; if a girl, Josephine. Oh, you jerk, says Marsha; I’ll Josephine you.

Ambrose expansively congratulated them and invited them to our own wedding on the Saturday next, at Fort McHenry (we had of course decided earlier to postpone it, but Magda was insisting that we proceed; this was my first and happy notice that we were going forward as scheduled). Marsha flounced and sniffed away as satisfyingly as a comeuppanced Rival at the end of a Smollett novel. Her husband shifted about, thanked us gravely for the invitation, but declined on the grounds that that date (Rosh Hashanah and birthday of Sherwood Anderson, Claudette Colbert, J. B. Priestley, Walter Reed, and Arnold Schoenberg, we might be interested to know) marked Marsha’s debut as admissions secretary at Wicomico State College, where he himself hoped soon to return to the teaching of remedial English. Hers was not normally a six-day job, we were to understand; but the coming week and weekend were busy at Wicomico, as at Marshyhope, with the orientation and registration of incoming students.

Ambrose fairly clapped him on the shoulder. Bravo, old chap, and so long! Have a good life, etc.! We were both grinning through our grief: poor bastards all! I’d not have minded a clarifying word with A. B. Cook, whom I espied in deep conversation with Todd Andrews; but we were anxious lest Marsha disturb our household with a visit to Angela. Our walk to the car took us past the Tower of Truth, the last of its scaffolding cleared and its landscaping in progress. Drew Mack, in clean blue denims, and those same three who had helped in the search for Merope Bernstein — the black girl Thelma, a good-looking Chicano or Puerto Rican boy, and a fuzzy gringo — were regarding the structure and pointing things out to one another. Drew had the good manners to offer his condolences for Peter’s death and his regrets that the rifling of Mensch Masonry’s files was being regarded in some quarters as an “inside job” to cover our legal tracks. As if the state General Services Department didn’t have copies of everything stolen! He himself thought the tower an architectural abomination, a rape of the environment, and a symbol of the American university’s corruption by the capitalist-imperialist society which sustained it. That there was literal falsehood in its construction he did not doubt; the building’s infamous flaws, with their attendant litigation, attested that. But he knew Peter Mensch to have been an honest man and an able stonemason, happier in blue collar than white.

That he was, my friend, said Ambrose. And it would have pleased him to see this thing dismantled, stone by stone.

Jane Mack was chauffeured past, somewhat grim-faced, I thought. She did not return her son’s amiable wave. They are, Drew explained, contesting his father’s will; he apologised to me that my own bequest was being delayed by that suit, and assured me that neither he nor his mother, and most certainly not the Tidewater Foundation, begrudged me my reward for “caring for” Harrison Mack. Drew’s own attorney and Mr Andrews were pressing the court to execute all such non-contested bequests forthwith.

Will you believe, sir, that I had quite forgot I was an heiress? I’d certainly never humoured and tended poor Harrison with expectation of reward, but my provision in his will is generous—$30,000, I believe. That amount would, will, decidedly bolster for a time the sagging economy of the Menschhaus and provide a bit of a nest egg for our hatchling-in-the-works. I shared the good news with Ambrose; together with the glad tidings of Marsha’s marriage, it cheered us right up, and Magda too, as we returned to our bereavement.

Harrison Mack, Joseph Morgan, and Peter Mensch, good men all: rest in peace!

We now enter our 6th, climactic week of Mutuality, Ambrose (and you) and I: what I must call, though I’ve yet to wed, our honeymoon; the “ourest” week of “our” stage, this 6th, of our romance. I write these words on Thursday evening, 11 September, just returned with my lover from a day of planning and conferring at Fort McHenry. It is, A. B. Cook has told us, the anniversary of Governor-General Prevost’s rout at Plattsburgh and Lake Champlain in 1814 (i.e., in the 1812 War), when also the British Chesapeake fleet, fresh from burning Washington, assembled at the mouth of the Patapsco for the attack on Baltimore. What’s more (Jacob Horner would have applauded to hear) it is by the Diocletian calendar New Year’s Day of Year 1686.