Mark Dunn - Ibid - A Life

8. “I promise to stop being so sesquipedalian.”Jonathan’s Diary, 4 April1906. A difficult task, it would seem, since the word itself means “given to use of long polysyllabic words.” The irony was, nonetheless, lost on companion Crutch, whose attention had been diverted by the sudden unsettling appearance of a tree squirrel upon the open-window sill.

9. By Jonathan’s second year, correspondence with his mother had become comfortably routine.The following is typical of the many letters Jonathan received from his mother during his years at Devanter — brimming with chat and reportorially framed gossip. JBP.

October 3, 1906

Dear Jonny,

I am so proud of you I can hardly express it. You are now a college sophomore! No one in our family has ever been to college before except for your Great Uncle Phineas and it still isn’t clear whether he was actually enrolled or merely pretended to be — a situation similar to that in which he pretended to be an assistant of Mathew Brady’s — the one in charge of photographic portraiture of the “unencumbered female physique.” While he was in prison I do believe he even pretended to be a guard at one point, but only in an odd exchange with a brain-addled sentry who on occasion liked to pretend to be an inmate to break the daily monotony. This is why your great uncle was able to walk out the front gate of that place to attend the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

Your father is doing well, and the farm is on a slightly better footing. That new heifer had a beautiful twinkle-eyed calf we have named after Pastor Stoddard’s daughter Igraine. (Remember the way the reverend would rub his temples and say, “That troublesome Igraine! She gives me such a migraine!”) We may even make a nice profit at the end of the year.

Aunt Lindy sends her love. She had a nasty altercation with the butcher. She accused him of placing his hand on a part of her body men generally should not touch without a marriage license. If she had been the one holding the cleaver, I don’t know that he would be here right now. I think that your Aunt Lindy needs a doctor’s care and some strong medication. Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound is not doing the job.

I have seen little Mildred and she wishes to let you know that she is “doing quite well, thank you.” There was an edge to her voice that belied the sentiment. She must have heard about your friend Jane.

With all my love,

Your Mother

10. Jonathan’s experiences at Devanter shaped his politics for years to come.One individual, in particular, made the strongest impression of all. His name was Andrew Bloor and he was a young history professor who had taken an instant liking to this intellectually curious three-legged student. Ostracized by most of the Devanter faculty and subsequently sacked by the school’s administration for his liberal views on race and gender, Bloor obviously recognized Jonathan’s nascent early progressive tendencies and sought to encourage and nurture them.

His employment terminated only a week before Jonathan’s graduation, Bloor wrote the following letter to his favorite student from a rooming house in Oberlin, Ohio, where he was in the process of applying for a faculty position with the famed liberal arts college there, a paradigm of progressive pedagogy. The letter has been preserved in Jonathan’s papers.

May 27, 1909

My dear Mr. Blashette,

Congratulations on arriving at this special juncture in your promising young life. I am confident that you will take what you have learned from your matriculation at Ol’ Devanter and make of yourself a man most exemplary among men. The loam of your character possesses sprouts of greatness, to be sure, but a species of greatness born of humanitarian compassion. You understand as do I the frailty of man and the ever-present need to repair human inadequacy with the sutures and dressing of tender respect. Man is a flawed creature, to be sure, yet has the potential for great healing, aided by the ministrations of the knowledgeable and well-tooled physician of the soul. I hope that I have taught and supplied you well.

I have observed your thoughtful intercourse with the other students, the friendship you have formed with the pocked erstwhile prostitute they call Great Jane. I have watched you spend one particularly long evening pulling our alcohol-intemperate janitor Charlie Royce from the puddle of his own vomit, cleaning him up, and secreting him within your very own dormitory room to prevent his discovery and removal for serial intoxication. I have watched you rescue the mestizo Jiminy Crutch when he was pursued across the quadrangle by mischievous students holding squirrel puppets with exaggerated teeth. And when the prank caused young Jiminy to lose his breakfast, you cleaned up the resultant puddle of vomit knowing that Charlie Royce was unavailable, as he was himself sleeping off yet another night of heavy binge-drinking, curled upon the rag rug in your room. And surely you must also recall the night that you extended your hand of kindness to me — the night that I spoke at the faculty-student forum on the need to protect the right of Negro men to cast their Constitution-given vote in a climate of strong disenfranchisement sentiment among members of the local community. You’ll remember that I was silenced by a tomato which struck the left side of my face and proceeded to adhere — for the most part — drippingly to my spectacles. And then the second tomato which brushed my chin and left its rotted juices oozing down my neck. And then another and yet another while a sincere effort was launched by my fellow faculty members to do absolutely nothing to stop the assault. You will remember that they sat — each of them — quietly, with arms folded, not willing to move an inch, except for professors Rabdau and Gilbert who shifted and squirmed in most animated fashion as they debated whether the tomato was a vegetable or a fruit. Such a night of debasement and abashment it was to become for me. But such a night of heroism it became for you, as you sprang from your seat and took a tomato or two yourself (to the rump, I do believe) in the course of helping me from the red-plastered podium and off that slippery stage. I shall never forget your concern for me at that moment.

You are poised for great things, my dear young friend. I will stand in the wings and prompt if needed, but will mostly, I daresay, commend your time upon this world stage. It was a joy to have you as student and it will be a joy to have you as lifelong friend.

With sincere affection,

Andrew Bloor

11. Jonathan unfortunately missed his graduation.There are several theories as to why Jonathan was unable to attend graduation ceremonies at Devanter. His diary is strangely silent, stating only “I did not go.” Some, including Glover and Cyril in his unfinished biographical manuscript The Story of Jonathan Blashe— , believe that Great Jane was so distraught over the fact that Jonathan would soon be returning home and thus out of her life, that she made a clumsy attempt at suicide which Jonathan had to foil. Lucianne Flom theorizes that Jane probably chose the then popular arsenic-incremental method — a painful and ultimately harebrained way to kill oneself — which involved taking larger and larger doses of the poison over a period of several hours. Flom imagines that Jonathan’s heroic efforts involved intermittent dashes to the kitchen to restrain Great Jane from stirring arsenic into her freshened tea, followed by an ebb of casual conversation, and then another mad dash for the kitchen, upon Great Jane’s sudden announcement, “I believe I’ll have another spot of tea.” Flom and Furman surmise that this pattern played out for hours and did not end until Jonathan thought to toss the vial of arsenic out the window.