Delmore Schwartz - Once and for All - The Best of Delmore Schwartz

“How about you,” said Laura to Rudyard, “don’t you read the newspaper at the dinner table?”

“It’s not the same thing,” said Rudyard, “I did not marry you.”

The insensitivity of this remark would not have passed unnoticed, had not Francis French entered on one of his rare visits. He too had a story in which he was very much interested. He had encountered during the previous week-end a youthful teacher and critic, Mortimer London, who was reputed to be brilliant.

“I have long believed,” said Francis, “that everyone himself tells the worst stories about himself. London told me (keep in mind that fact that London himself tells this story about himself) that when he was in England last year, he had paid a visit to T. S. Eliot who had given him a letter of introduction to James Joyce, since he was going to Paris also. Now London says that he was confronted with a cruel choice, whether to use the letter and converse with the author of Ulysses or to keep the letter in which a great author commends him to a great author. He decided to keep the letter!”

“What a dumb-bell,” said Edmund, the veteran scholar, “he should have known that the choice might be forestalled. He might have made a photostat copy!”

“Never mind that,” said Rudyard, who did not like to be concerned with practical considerations, “what’s really interesting is the extent to which this Mortimer London is insane. For obviously he tells this story because of great pride in himself. He does not know that there is nothing worse that he can say about himself: he would rather possess the letter than converse with the great author.”

“Never mind,” said Laura to Rudyard, “I never saw you hiding your light in a dark closet.”

Rudyard did not reply, fascinated by this example of egotism as only an egotist can be.

“I wonder,” said Jacob, “what are the worst stories each of us tells against himself.”

“Once in a while,” said Laura, “just for a change, we ought to try saying something good about anyone. Anyone can run down anyone else, it is as easy as sliding off a chute. What’s hard is to love other human beings and to speak well of them.”

“You are being sententious,” said Rudyard, “it is obviously true that human beings are more evil than good, and thus it would be false to speak well of other human beings very much, although I am willing to try anything once,” concluding as often with an irony which, directed against himself, defended him against what anyone else might say.

“The fact is” said Jacob, as the visitor arose to depart, “I can’t think of what the worst story I tell against myself is, and that is nothing, if not alarming. We are all living in a world of our own.”

“Yes,” said Rudyard, chortling because the idea delighted him, “in a certain sense, we are all cracked!”

FIVE: “IT IS GOOD TO BE THE WAY THAT WE ARE”

During the day, after he had labored at his new play in the morning in the glow of after-breakfast, Rudyard participated in a life apart from the circle, a life in which a different part of his being showed itself. This life was concerned with the children and the adolescents of the neighborhood, and it was an intrusion, which annoyed Rudyard, if he encountered an adult. If the adult, the parent of one of his friends, met Rudyard, he said with the politeness and interest of the middle class:

“What are you doing now?” meaning, how are you trying to make a living? How are you trying to get ahead?

“I am helping my father,” Rudyard always answered, having nurtured this answer until it was automatic.

“What is your father doing?” the helpless adult often inquired, never having heard of Rudyard’s father because he had been dead for twenty years.

“My father is doing nothing!” was Rudyard’s stock answer, followed by harsh and triumphant laughter that the questioner had walked into the trap, although in all truth Rudyard was ashamed that he had nothing impressive to announce.

Among the children and the adolescents of the neighborhood Rudyard was at his best, however. In the schoolyard near the apartment house, between bouts of handball, Rudyard conversed in the fall and in the spring with those who were to him the pure in heart and the wise just as he seemed to himself to be to them one of the wise and the pure in heart.

As he sat upon the asphalt court, after a game of doubles, he discussed with his friends Chester and Jeremiah, the star of the school, a boy named Alexander, twelve years of age, who was best in handball, basketball, high jumping, and the hundred yard dash. It was felt by all that Alexander had a great future.

“Suppose,” said Rudyard to his friends, “Alexander was at least a hundred times better than he is. Then he would win all the time in all the games. But if he was as good as that, if he won all the time, if every contest was a victory, if he was sure of winning every game, then he would not enjoy the game very much.”

Chester suggested that Alexander might then join the New York Yankees and earn a fabulous salary, more than the President’s. Jeremiah added that his picture might appear in all the newspapers and he might marry a moving picture actress.

“Yes,” said Rudyard patiently, brushing aside these ideas of the glory of this world, “suppose he hit a homer every time he came to bat? Suppose he was sure of hitting a homer? Don’t you think he would get bored with playing baseball?”

“Yes,” answered Chester and Jeremiah, “but he can’t and he won’t.”

Rudyard was not in the least concerned or disturbed by any pointing to an actual fact.

“This is how we can see,” he continued, “that it is good to be the way that we are. It would be no good, if we were unable to play any games at all. But just because we don’t know if we are going to win or lose, just because our powers are limited and the other boys have powers not unlike our own, the game is exciting to play. So you can see that we are all what we ought to be.”

“Just the same,” said Chester, “I would like to hit a homer every time I came to bat.”

“Me too,” said Jeremiah, “for a year, anyway.”

From such interviews Rudyard returned refreshed to his dramatic works. The volley of the conversation, as at a tennis match, was all that he took with him. For what he wanted and what satisfied him was the activity of his own mind. This need and satisfaction kept him from becoming truly interested in other human beings, although he sought them out all the time. He was like a travelling virtuoso who performs brilliant set-pieces and departs before coming to know his listeners.

An old teacher, meeting Rudyard after not seeing him for years, said to him that he showed no little courage in continuing to write works which gained for him neither fame nor money nor production.

“O, no,” said Rudyard, “it requires no courage whatever. I write when I feel inspired. When I don’t feel like writing, I don’t. Thus I am not like other authors. It is not a career, it is like playing a game, and it is not courage, but inspiration, a very different emotion.”

This reply was made in the style which Rudyard felt to be noble and necessary. But after this exchange, Rudyard asked himself if he had spoken truly. He knew very well a passion in himself to be applauded and to be famous, the same as other authors. Triumphant and delighted with himself, Rudyard decided that he did not want to be regarded as a playwright, he truly desired and enjoyed the activity of writing plays. This activity was enough to satisfy him.

The question and the answer inspired Rudyard to write a play in one act which resembled many of his previous dramas. This play contained only one character, a famous lyric poet, and only one scene, his study, in which he is surrounded by books, photographs, objects of art, and the black souvenir album in which are fixed essays and reviews of his poems which testify to his fame. The shades have been drawn down to bar the light of the living street.