Steven Millhauser - Edwin Mullhouse - The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954

MY FOOT

Traced from Prints, Feb. 18, 1944. Age 6½ months.

These instructive diagrams were taken from a slim faded volume with a padded cover entitled My Story: A Baby Record, wherein Abraham Mullhouse recorded a wealth of doting data concerning the early months of his first child and only son. Edwin was quite fond of this volume, which was divided into numerous sections with titles such as “I Am Born,” “Height and Weight,” “First Steps,” “Travel,” “Happy Birthdays,” “Some Things I Said and Did,” “Days to Remember”; his favorite page was “My Baby Hair,” to which an actual lock of his six-month-old hair is carefully taped. As a biographer I must judge the volume more severely. Mr. Mullhouse’s loving and indiscriminate fascination with all the details of a developing life, though undoubtedly commendable in a budding father, cannot but be looked at askance by the true biographer, who, an artist in his own right, is interested solely in destiny’s secret designs. Indeed I hope that these diagrams will lead the reader to reflect upon the nature and meaning of true biography; for it is the purpose of this history to trace not the mere outlines of a life but the inner plan, not the external markings but the secret soul.

It was about this time that a number of commonplace physical events began to take place, even in Edwin. They are of small interest to this biographer. With the aid of My Story: A Baby Record, I here record them in cold mechanical fashion:

Dec. 31. Crawled backward.

Jan. 22, 1944. Crawled forward (not real crawling — a lurch).

Feb. 22, 1944. Sat up by himself.

Feb. 29, 1944. Crawled (really).

Mar. 2, 1944. Crawled rapidly and extensively.

Mar. 3, 1944. Stood erect in playpen.

Mar. 11, 1944. Walked sideways by holding onto edge of playpen.

Mar. 31, 1944. Walked two steps forward, holding onto table.

Apr. 13, 1944. Knelt without support.

Apr. 30, 1944. Stood without support.

May 26, 1944. Rose from crawl to standing position without use of hands.

June 4, 1944. Took single step.

June 11, 1944. Walked! (8 or 10 steps at a time).

Aug. 1, 1944 (1st birthday). Climbed onto couch, unaided.

I should like to add my own brief note to the entry of April 30: Edwin drew himself to an upright position by means of my pants pocket and then let go (the pocket was torn, though not badly). That spring he began to stand in front of his carriage in the pose of a solemn captain. He enjoyed eating ice-cream cones and chewing buttons, and for a while he enjoyed biting tables. I remember him trying desperately to remove the yellow flowers from a red dress of his mother’s, and I remember a way he had of tilting his head to one side with a coy flirtatious smile. He moved his lips ecstatically at the sight of custard, he patted his favorite animals on the head, he pressed his face against the legs of people he liked, he sucked his thumb with his little finger crooked aristocratically. On July 4, to a sound of distant firecrackers, he climbed the back stairs. On his first birthday he did a little dance (on the couch). I gave him a lovely box of eight crayons, which he mistook for candy.

And here, at the completion of Edwin’s first year, I should like to pause briefly in order to consider my special relation to Edwin, then and in the months and years to come. From the moment of our first meeting I was the watcher, he the watched. True, I was older by six months, a great stretch of time in the early days, and Edwin looked up to me, learned from me, and sometimes even copied me; and if I add that I was an unusually bright child, always advanced for my age, the reader will not be accused of leaping without looking if he jumps to the conclusion that I in my own small way exerted an influence, however humble, on the development of Edwin’s style and soul. But he was the special one, not I — not, at at first, because there was anything special about him but simply because his parents breathed into him a glow of specialness. Mrs. Mullhouse added to her instinctive pride of motherhood and the pride of her race in its firstborn sons the certainty that any boy of Abe’s was bound to be special. Edwin, always an obedient son, did not disappoint her. Fortunately for the history of Western literature she happened to admire books and famous writers, though she also admired professors, painters, surgeons, lawyers, opera stars, and famous violinists and pianists. If she had happened to loathe literature and love airplanes, there is no question in my mind that Edwin would have become a pilot, yes, and probably crashed into a rainbow; for he was always an obedient son. Oh you were, Edwin, you were. You may have mocked the whole world as a dream or cartoon but you were always an obedient son. He was like one of those people in India who disbelieve in the world of appearances but adhere rigidly to the rules of their caste. As for Mr. Mullhouse (Dr. in 1949), he seemed indifferent to Edwin’s future, for the very good reason that he knew Edwin’s future could not possibly resemble anything he would not approve. And so from the first unrecorded howl, from the first flap of the wings of the stork, Edwin glowed with his parents’ love and expectations. He was one of the watched, and I a watcher. I have never regretted my role; far from it; for there is a joy of watching as well as a joy of being watched; and what of the pain of the watched, what of that? Do you think it was easy for Edwin? Don’t you know how he longed for the bliss of not being noticed? Thus the spotlight flies from shadow to shadow, longing to hide itself, but in vain. Edwin looked up to me as a prince looks up to a trusty servant; there was never any question of a clash of privileges. In bitter loneliness the prince asks his man to decide a subtle question of policy, and so the unseen man has a hand in the affairs of state. Then perhaps the prince forgets the existence of his man for a week or weeks or months at a time, until suddenly he needs him again. But the man never forgets his prince, and in the servant’s chamber, which the prince never enters, who can tell what strange midnight thoughts flit through a skull?

IT WAS A PERFECT SUMMER MORNING. The sky had been soaked for hours in blue easter-egg dye and the grass shone like green cellophane. From the kitchen window at the side of our house mama had seen Helen Mullhouse step from her back door with Edwin in her arms, had watched her walk down the four gray steps and make her way along the green back yard in our direction until, turning the corner of her house, she disappeared, cut off from view by the detached Mullhouse garage. Moments later mama stepped onto our own back porch holding me by the hand. Together we walked down the steps, across the ambiguous part of the lawn that was both side and back, down a little slope that marked the border with the Mullhouse lawn; and passing between a small vegetable garden and the rickety chicken coop at the back of the red-roofed white garage, which seemed a miniature version of the red-roofed white house, we turned to the right and entered a little paradise. A white trellis covered with pink roses stretched from the side of the house to the front of the garage. In the center of the lawn stood a round white table semicircled by three brightly painted slope-backed wooden chairs and surmounted by a white-fringed red umbrella, whose shadow spilled over the edge of the table, fell onto the lawn, and rolled toward us. Mrs. Mullhouse, wearing green sunglasses, red shorts, and a white halter, sat reading in the yellow chair on the left, pulled slightly back from the table and turned so that her pale legs could stretch out in the full glare of the sun. A pair of white sandals rested on the grass by her feet, and on the arm of her chair stood a blue eyeglass case. Beside the sandals lay a small cloth zebra with a red ribbon around its neck. Puzzle: Find Edwin.