Horatio's story

Chapter I

Rhoda Lispenyard-Child always had an enticing way of getting people to do favours for her. A slightly beckoning movement of the lips, an uncertain quiver of the eyes, or a designating gesture from her always glove¬ less hand would bring me, or almost any man she knew, at once to her feet. What she wanted seemed to make no difference. But it must be admitted that she used this power rarely and then most sparingly. In fact, she prided herself upon her independence with perfect justice, and you always felt in her debt, or at least I did, and when she asked some trivial thing I thought she bestowed upon me some vast favour. For friendship knows how impos¬ sible it is to justify its mysterious faith in devotion. Per¬ haps real friendship begins only when we cast aside all hope of keeping the scales even, when gratitude gives up all hope of paying its debt.

When she left us finally Rhoda gave me a last oppor¬ tunity to serve her. She made me promise that I would clear her name and explain to those who knew her what her life had really been. I agreed to do so, and at that time I expected to find it a simple duty. I had thought that people would be pleased to learn the truth, but upon attempting to explain the situation to those who had previously, and I think erroneously, thought themselves concerned in Rhoda’s affairs, I ran amuck of traits of human nature the existence of which, in my naive way, I had never suspected.

Almost invariably her friends and relatives took the matter in one of two ways: either they desired to quiet the troubled waters in order to diminish the possible effect of Rhoda’s vicious example, and so closed the doors upon any discussion of the scandal; or, as if to enhance their own reputations both social and intellectual, they insisted upon rating their version of the gossip higher than mine, and adding to it any untoward implication their puerile imaginations could supply.

I therefore gave up hope of complying with Rhoda’s request so simply, and am now determined to write down the whole story, and overcome thereby the sting of having failed to fulfil an act of friendship. Rhoda knew better than I. She told me in the first place that it would be necessary to do it in writing, but I would not then concede the point as I do now. Those who refused to listen, and those who insisted upon aggravating her error, will be driven to read this by their own malignant curiosity. Henceforth they may continue their falsehood if they please, but if they continue to convince the honest-minded I shall certainly be remiss in my undertaking.

Of course Rhoda did not ask me to give an account of her life merely to explain away an idle scandal that she thought clouded her last hours in Belmont unjustly. She believed herself the epitome of the modern woman— strictly speaking, the contemporary woman—and visited upon herself at all times the ruthless severity of a selfsacrificing member of an idealistic movement. What preyed upon her mind unduly was the thought that she had lived in vain. She deplored having the generally ignominious opinion of herself prevail over those few whom she loved and who had, indeed, cared for her.

In asking me to be the one to clear her name she used deliberation not altogether characteristic of her nature as I understood it. Usually Rhoda arrived at her conclu¬ sions as fast as the problems presented themselves to her, by means of intuition, a faculty commonly said to be the special endowment of the feminine mind. I think that this time Rhoda arrived at her conclusion by the masculine process of elimination. She thought that I was the only friend left who could do it, and she believed me, though in some respects hostile toward her as a critic, fair enough and imaginative enough to deal justly and sympathetically with her remains. She thought too that I was the only one of her friends with sufficient leisure to undertake the rehabilitation of her reputation.

It was characteristic of her to overlook the fact that I preserve an unusual margin of leisure in my daily life be¬ cause I regard it as a precious good, without which life seems to me, if not unbearable, certainly worthless. But she is by no means the only person to think that because I refrain from obvious activity I have nothing to do; the notion is unhappily spread abroad.

Whatever the obligations of friendship, my propensities hardly favour me in carrying out Rhoda’s request. I rarely read works of biography or prose fiction, and I have never possessed the slightest desire to compose them. It will therefore be a difficult task for me to hand down the narrative justly.

For one thing, try as I may, I shall not be able to keep myself wholly out of it. I was too close to Rhoda for her to have escaped my being a significant fact in her environment. Another reason is that one cannot do more than approximate the truth that one desires to re¬ veal. For the first time I realize why painters sometimes employ the delightful subterfuge of giving only the back of the model directly and showing the face through a mirror. Rhoda’s own testimony becomes mine when I present it as evidence. And as is true of almost every biographic work, other faculties of the mind than those involved in a mere retailing of fact are necessary. I shall have to interpret the facts of Rhoda’s life as I go along, for they presented themselves to me during a period of years of acquaintance and are so small a part of her story as to be in themselves quite useless.

To emphasize once more, at the danger of being tedious, the personal element in this undertaking, what was once seen and heard by me has now passed through a process of memory and recollection, a process that gives it form, colour, and remodelling according to the eccentricities of my own mind.

In order, therefore, to reduce the fraction of error to a minimum, I may be pardoned perhaps if I first give an account of my own life. This, too, will have a frac¬ tion of error but, unless I am mistaken, it will neverthe¬ less serve as a corrective for my version of the story of Rhoda Lispenyard-Child. In other words the more nearly we can establish the author’s point of view, the better can we correct his errors of perspective.

David Hume began his autobiography with this remark: “It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself with¬ out vanity; therefore I shall be short.” Without attempt¬ ing to conceal my vanity I shall, if possible, use fewer words than he and come a little nearer the truth.

My name is Lee Seebohm, and I was born in Boston, 5 January, 1876. My childhood was spent in that city and in Washington, D. C., my father being a Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1874 to 1898; but, after the time I entered Latin Grammar School, I rarely left Boston or its suburbs, being averse to travel and more than willing to bear the ignominy of provincial¬ ity. I was sent to college at Arlington University and there distinguished myself generally in my studies and particularly in philosophy and the sciences closely allied to metaphysical speculation. Upon taking a degree in 1899 I received with great delight a three years’ resident fellowship, and applied myself vigorously to my research. Besides taking the historical courses of study common to most American colleges, I went to Harvard University and studied the then contemporary schools of thought, especially the work of the late Professor William James, the late Professor Hugo Miinsterberg, and Dr. George Santayana. In 1902 I had the privilege of accepting the position of Lecturer in Philosophy at Arlington which I held for seven years.

Although my academic duties took a great deal of my time during this period I pursued my independent studies without serious interruption. For two years I studied logic and mathematics; for one year, aesthetics; and for four years, psychology, being convinced that the future of philosophical thought would depend upon suggestions from that science. Following these labours I published my first book, a work on psycho-physics, based on a course of Lowell Institute Lectures that I delivered in 1908.

In 1909 I became a full professor but I suffered shortly thereafter a great depression. My work dissatis¬ fied me, and I seemed to lose a certain self-confidence that had always sustained me before and has since. The cure was simple, once I lit upon it. I recommenced my educa¬ tion at the beginning and worked right through to the end at a cost of five years. Extravagant as this was I felt repaid. In the autobiographic Education of Henry Adams more than one chapter comes to a close with the remark “this was not education.” I often wondered whether he would have reached the same conclusion had he used my method, and what the result would have been i 4 HORATIO'S STORY

had I followed the method he recommended—that of visit¬ ing world’s fairs habitually.

At the age of forty-five, therefore, I find myself with fairly extensive knowledge and a more or less disciplined mind in the field of learning that concerns me, but with very little in constructive work actually accomplished. Perhaps it does not matter, for the philosophy that pre¬ ceded the recent war is doomed to perish, and in the re¬ maining years of my life I hope to take an insignificant part in the beginnings of a new renaissance. For I think that we shall be unwilling to put our faith in any system of knowledge that does not avoid the dangers of romantic idealism and equally romantic materialism or naturalism. Civilization, I have come to believe, must be based upon a scale of values essentially different from that of this generation, and it is precisely with the matter of funda¬ mental value that philosophy and religion concern them¬ selves.

But as I write this I am conscious that Rhoda would hardly consider that I approach any nearer to the fulfil¬ ment of her wish and my most rash promise. She would declare that if I can come no nearer to the life of a man whom I know fairly well, I cannot be expected to deal with a woman whom I knew surely less well. I shall therefore try again, this time with the assistance of Scotch and soda, to tell the story of my life with more considera¬ tion for the reason that prompts me to do it.

My father was not a bad sort. He really loved children and treated them with kindness and indulgence. He did not, however, become sentimental or erratic over them. He was a picturesque, humorous, and generous old soul, excessively cultivated and chivalrously moral. I never knew what he did in politics; as a public man he seemed to me evasive and a good deal of a coward. No doubt he wanted to do for his constituents the best that he knew how, as he certainly did for his family, but the fear of up¬ setting the sure progress of the Senate inhibited him con¬ stantly, a fear which I could never understand, for I always thought the Senate a legitimate place for my father to introduce legislation.

Of my mother, who died whilst I was still an infant, I can of course remember nothing. She seems, however, to have had an effect on the characters of my elder brothers, both of whom are considerably older than I. I cannot say that they were more pleasure-seeking than I, for I was from the earliest beginnings of personality an indulgent and obstinate fellow, but they found their pleasures in more concrete and material ways. They were more emotional, more sensitive, more practical. Both of them embraced the legal profession. Perhaps in a few years we can say that they have been more successful than I, but at present it would be unsafe to assume that they are nearer the doors of their conceived paradise than I mine.

Our essential differences may have been due to the fact that they were brought up by a woman and I, arriv¬ ing into the family so late that I always felt my welcome to be a matter of charity, was raised by my aged father. From the way in which my brothers seduce juries and clients to this day, and from the way in which they fight shy of the slightest abstraction or theory in discourse with a burst of outraged innocence, I believe that, in spite of their great stature and proud physical beauty, they re¬ ceived a larger share of the feminine genius of the race than their younger brother ever hopes to possess.

The first twenty-four years of my life were without romance of sufficient significance to retain a place in my memory, but during the first year that I held my fellow¬ ship, I fell in love with a Radcliffe girl, an affair that I shall have occasion to describe in detail later. For the i6 present all I need say is that the lady in question could not see anything in my attentions that gave promise of future happiness.

The effect of having the woman of one’s choice reject one with a decisiveness from which appeal is useless varies much according to temperament. In my case it had the effect of rendering me generally susceptible to the enchantments of women, and in particular eager to take the offensive against young women who in some ways seemed similar to her who had rejected me.

Being fairly active at that time in Boston society and having a slight acquaintance with many young women, I was exposed to a great deal of feminine charm, and within three months of the time I had stubbed my toe at Radcliffe College, I became secretly engaged to a young girl whose chief characteristics were her beauty and her high social standing. We straightway eloped, and I re¬ member that upon our return my brothers for the first time divided their opinion of me. Hallam, the elder, said that it was extraordinarily inconsiderate of me not to remember the state of my father’s nerves. Sidney, how¬ ever, grasped my hand warmly; “I’m so damned glad,” he had the impudence to say, “that you remembered to go through with the formality of a wedding that I forgive you everything!” As a matter of fact I had thought that my father would suffer less from one sharp blow than the excitement of an engagement and a formal wedding, and Sidney’s remark did not give me any more pleasure than Hallam’s censure. Forgiveness, I have found, is something that always gets in the way unless you have a craving for it, when one word will surfeit. But I was dazed at the time, and did not much care what was said.

My father being then hopelessly feeble, we remained in the old house on Beacon Hill, both of my brothers hav¬ ing establishments of their own further out on Common-

*7

wealth Avenue. Shortly thereafter the old Senator took sick and died. We remained in town; it was my wish to go to the suburbs but my wife preferred a more active social life than the outskirts of Boston could offer her.

There is no boredom like the tediousness of a social life that for one reason or another fails to give the dis¬ traction, the stimulation, and the friendliness that a man feels that he has a right to expect when he puts on his dinner jacket. There is no loneliness like the solitude of meeting constantly goodly numbers of men and women on terms of accepted social equality, and feeling that the equality is so pervasive as to preclude the possibility of having one real, chosen friend in the lot.

I began to be restless. Boston society could not even waste time gracefully. It could neither inspire health nor permit the charming vices of exotic decadence. In less than a year I began dining privately in my library, and very shortly thereafter it was generally understood that I was out of society. I pleaded work: what I really wanted was leisure.

This return to normal living strengthened me to survive what was probably the greatest shock of my life. In May, 1903, my wife committed suicide by throwing herself into the sea. She had left New York three days previous and was on her way to France where I was to have joined her at the close of the academic year.

This event added to the isolation into which I had been retiring, and it was some time before I resumed any inter¬ course with my relatives and old acquaintances. Being then a lecturer in philosophy, I went out to Arlington and lived at the university, but there was much that was unsatisfactory in that. The students had a way of draw¬ ing upon me too deeply and leaving me in a state of in¬ tellectual impotence. I cannot spend the day in discus¬ sions and explanations, and then have four or five young i8 HORATIO’S STORY,

men find their way to my room at night and oblige me to talk. There comes a time when a teacher should turn upon the pack of wolves and say: “Gentlemen, I have no perpetual fountain of wisdom. Why do you insist upon pumping me dry? You must give me peace to go on with my studies; you must let me rejuvenate myself. 1 ”

I determined to build a house in the country and live the life of a scholar and a gentleman. At Belmont I found a delightful site not far from the golf links of the country club. I sold my Beacon Hill property and got to work with architect and builder. First I had one large room constructed, to serve primarily as a library. It is of oak with great rafters and panels, and a large gray fireplace—of limestone, I think. In one end there is an organ, the only musical instrument that I play with any pleasure, and in the other end are my books and table. The longer walls are cut, on one side with the fireplace in front of which are a divan, a bench and a few chairs, and the remaining wall is cut with French windows opening upon the porch. I took my fathers best rugs, and decorated some shelves of my bookcases with pottery, chiefly Persian or alleged to be so, that I had gathered myself; and I have since been collecting a few Zorn etchings for the panels, which is odd, my friends say, because I don’t like swimming.

The windows are fairly large, but I did not give the room as much light as a painter or artist would require. I enjoy long shadows with their delicate gradations of colour rather than the high lights of most studios. In this room I placed most of the things to which I am attached, and of course my small library, which consists of only some four thousand books, the value of which, if they could have value for anyone else, lies in the selection.

The remainder of the house I left wholly to the architect, and he finished it with a pleasing combination of simplicity and comfort. It was completed in the spring of 1905.

There I have sat over fifteen years going on with my studies and speculations. It is only fair to say that dur¬ ing the great upheaval of the World War I remained at peace there without taking the slightest part in it. I acted as though there were really no war going on. I am no pacifist by intellectual or religious conviction. I am inclined that way by habit, temperament, and occupa¬ tion. I thought my work so much more important than anything else I could do, and I argued that there ought to be at least one civilian left to fight for. The ease with which European and American philosophers threw down their pens and took up their swords, or practiced journal¬ ism on behalf of the non-combatant mobilization, shocked me thoroughly. It seemed to me par excellence the time to sit on a barrel of rum and think.

I began to lose faith in the power of contemporary thought to exert any influence for good. It seemed to me that civilization would have to produce a new philoso¬ phy, and that the spectacle of our greatest thinkers all throwing aside their work and taking up the social and military sciences, showed quite clearly that they them¬ selves had no doubts of the ineffectiveness of their powers. I succumbed to a vast skepticism which I have shaken off only very recently.

Meanwhile the mention of a few events during this period will help to explain the apparent monotony of my career. It was during my third year as lecturer that I drafted my book on psycho-physics. A few years later it was received with a most profound silence; but lately, however, I find it quoted, which gives me pleasure. The only deliberate criticism that it received was from the celebrated Dr. Edelman of New York, who attacked it in the medical journal with all the vehemence and arro¬ gance of the psychoanalytic school.

Nevertheless it established me as a philosopher in the estimation of those who read either the book or the re¬ view. My colleagues at Arlington gave it kind attention. Unfortunately the publishers never delivered themselves of five hundred copies, and what they did sell I am sure went to libraries. While there was still some feeble dis¬ cussion of the merits of this little book, I had a stroke of good fortune that has meant a good deal to me, chiefly through the added estimation in which I am held as a result of it.

One of the more remote satellites of Arlington Univer¬ sity is the New Balliol Theological Seminary which we absorbed only very recently. New Balliol is character¬ ized by a plentiful lack of students and, distinct from its ample endowment and real property, one endowed chair created through the last will and testament of one John Jay Brewer who died in 1869. The securities of this en¬ dowment having increased abundantly and without taxa¬ tion, the stipend is now between eleven and twelve thou¬ sand dollars, which is more than sufficient for most philos¬ ophers whether they have private means or not. With the death of the late Professor Preserved Hobhouse, this chair fell vacant in December, 1908, and in March of the following year the Trustees and Faculty of Arlington University met to consider filling the vacancy. The voting was exceptionally warm and the learned gentle¬ men remained deadlocked until the middle of April. No quarter being given to either of the opposing candidates, it became necessary to bring out some dark horses. Luckily being one of the first to be considered in this light by the fatigued electors, and having friends on both sides, I won the election. To the amazement of my elders and betters, I was at the June commencement in

1909 given the chair as the third Brewer Professor of Christian Morals.

It must be admitted, however, that although there are six matriculated divines at the university, I do not have much opportunity to fulfil the wishes of the founder of the chair. Familiarly I am known to the students as the Christian Professor of Brewer Morals, and from the present state of my cellar there is more justice in their jest than they themselves suppose. Actually I give only two courses a year: The Philosophy and Psychology of Religion and Religious Experience, and European Reli¬ gion and Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century.

That gives some impression of the kind of man I am, neither old nor young, and about ready to put together the work of twenty years’ reflection and study. I live a lonely life at Belmont and lecture four times a week at Arlington. Usually I see little of my neighbours, though there are some who are indulgent enough to tol¬ erate my playing the organ now and then. When the weather is suitable I try a few holes of golf at the country club hard by, where I have a few acquaintances. My students, who are now very few—sometimes not more than twenty meet me in the course of the year—think of me as an aloof and disagreeable person; but not one of them has ever come to me for assistance that I have not done what I could without sparing myself, a fact that is not generally known. It is my misfortune that cir¬ cumstances prevent me from making the initial advances. These circumstances are my irritable disposition, my love for leisure and solitude, and my caution lest I intrude upon the young. Children have need of disciplining and advised intrusion in education, but by the time young men and women reach my courses they ought to be ready to stand on their own feet. They may accept or reject my lectures as they please, but I take care not to interfere with their budding maturity. Sometimes, though rarely, I profit by their criticism.

One important fact that I neglected to mention is that my wife bore me a son, Wentworth Seebohm, now in his twentieth year, who has been something of a responsi¬ bility in my life, and will be, I suppose, a year or so longer. When not away at school he lives with me at Belmont. Partly because I do not wish him to fall a victim to the seductions of luxury at too early an age, and partly because I count the years I spent in Boston living up to the traditions of my father and mother the most wasted in my life, I live now in the utmost simplicity, with only a man and his wife to serve as butler and cook, and a chaufifeur whose wife practices the arts of a laundress somewhat inadequately.

Having given some notion of myself and the preoccupa¬ tions of my life, I shall now proceed with the story of Miss Rhoda Lispenyard, later Mrs. O’Flarity Child. It is to be hoped that what can fairly be expected of me as narrator is now reasonably clear, and that the point of view thus suggested will help us to see whether she was, as she thought herself to be, profoundly misunderstood, and, if so, to clear up what misunderstanding we can.

Chapter II

Rhoda Lispenyard was born in Boston in 1883. She is said to have been my first cousin twice removed (how¬ ever such things are computed) and I have never argued to the contrary. The span of the removal, I thought as a boy, was as great as it well could be in Boston. It em¬ braced the gulf that separates the rich and the poor. Rhoda came into a branch of the family that possessed less means by far than the rest and, from all I can gather, her childhood must have been fairly unpleasant on that account if no other, for her immediate family seemed opposed to any pleasures commensurate with its income. At any rate I have never known her to look back, as most of us do, and say: “Those were the happy days/' Even by the familiar process of idealizing things in retro¬ spect, she could never raise them to par.

Her father was an improvident politician, one time collector of the port, which was his highest attainment. Usually he remained out of office or appointment, and as his independent means amounted to almost nothing the family suffered. It can be said of some politicians that their desire to render unselfish service justifies their poverty, for the poorer the politician the more he is gen¬ erally thought honest and sincere. Amos Lispenyard managed to escape all reverence for his poverty. He had never convinced anyone that he was in politics for other than his own good, and there is something piteous about plying any profession for purely material ends without attaining them.

Rhoda’s mother had a certain sweetness of nature, but she was a woman of more than ordinary stupidity and timidity, and one who fell an easy and frequent victim to hysteria. She possessed, as do many whose circumstances have been greatly reduced in life, a superstructure of char¬ acter that never seemed convincingly her own. While at bottom most of her acts were actuated by motives of gen¬ erosity and affection, mingled with a keen sense of duty, she acted during the last years of her life according to a second nature of great fear and suspicion of evil. Par¬ ticularly when her children were involved did her mind seethe with the phantoms of cowardice. Above all they should climb out of the poverty that suppressed them. She feared everything and everybody, and developed a false sense of martyrdom that Rhoda despised.

Mrs. Lispenyard’s hope lay in the ultimate success of her four children and it was usually when one of them showed signs of failure that she broke down. Instinc¬ tively she tried to instill in their hearts an opportunist philosophy. Against her better nature she wanted them to be shrewd. At school studies did not matter; grades and prizes were what she expected them to obtain. In social matters she retired rather than entrenched. The family suffered isolation through the fact that the children were not permitted to associate with their neighbours. When circumstances were better, Mrs. Lispenyard would argue, she would entertain again. Meanwhile she kept a stiff upper lip and dreamed of a future attack on Back Bay.