THE WILLOW WALK
Plot. In constructing his plot, the author devised a plan whereby a robber might escape with stolen money. Having invented it, he tested each part to make it seem detective proof; and in following up this process he created a novel variety of the detective story genre. Similar stories have effected a resolution of the complication by a pull at some loose end left hanging through inadvertence of the criminal, and have so conserved justice. Mr. Lewis, avoiding this usual device, has requisitioned the peculiar advantages of dual personality to bring about the downfall of his criminal. (Compare with this motif, the one found in Frederick Stuart Greene’s “Galway Intrudes,” a story which has much in common with “The Willow Walk.”)
A thief, therefore, who plans his get-away by first inventing and then pretending to be his own “brother,” ultimately becomes the brother. The transformation is made plausible through the histrionic gifts attributed to the robber whereby he is, rather than merely acts, the represented character.
To the end that ultimate confession will occur, the brother must be religious; to the end that punishment is efficacious, the confession must be received with incredulity. These are necessary, if unconscious, preliminaries to this representative of the series which begins with Poe’s “William Wilson,” and which includes “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
Presentation. The author first sets forth details that lead to the beginning of the action, the most important of which convey that Jasper Holt is acquiring a new hand-writing, that he is a respectable paying teller, that he is a good actor.
Action Antecedent to the Present: Read the story, and find under its superstructure the groundwork of Jasper’s plan. How much preparation has been necessary? How long has it required, probably, to accomplish it? Has the author begun at the best point possible in the story action?
Incidents of the Complication Leading Immediately to the Dramatic Climax:
1. Jasper Holt prepares the hiding place.
Taking his car from the garage, Holt starts toward Rosebank, but turns aside to buy candy, which he has packed in boxes that imitate books. He purchases two novels. To one who recognizes him, he pretends he is looking after bank property. He reaches Rosebank; he enters the house of the willow walk, removes the candy to the paper wrapper, and places the two imitation books, with the novels, on the bottom shelf of the book-case. (Incidentally, he makes use of the principle exploited by Poe in “The Purloined Letter.”)
2. Jasper establishes his identity as “John Holt.”
He takes down a religious work, from which he selects a name to “spring”—Philo Judæus. He changes his clothes and becomes his own brother, hermit and religious fanatic. Downstairs he speaks to a neighbor; he makes purchases at the drug-store and the grocery; he visits Soul Hope Hall, speaks on Philo Judæus and prays for his brother Jasper.
3. He removes signs of his recent preparations, and re-establishes himself as Jasper Holt. (Note the significance of the Community Theatre scene.)
Jasper changes to his own clothes. On his way to town he throws out the candy and gives away his groceries. He burns the wrapper, later, in his boarding house. He takes part in theatricals; it is significant that he is a good actor, really becoming the part he plays.
4. Jasper prepares for the robbery and his sure escape.
Five days later, he complains of a headache. He takes a day off. John calls at the bank and emphasizes the contrast between himself and Jasper. Jasper afterwards suggests that in the event of his robbing the bank John would undoubtedly aid in bringing him to justice (dramatic irony, here).
5. He completes his preparations outside.
“Persuaded” to go away for a week-end, he drives south to Wanagoochie, but circuits back to St. Clair. Two miles from Rosebank, he investigates a lake. En route to St. Clair, he puts his machine out of order and leaves it at a garage, giving his name as Hanson. Arriving by train at Vernon, he says his car is at Wanagoochie. He announces to his landlady that he is taking two suit-cases to Wakamin.
6. He robs the bank. (Minor climax.) He escapes.
With the road clear for flight, he transfers the parcels of bills to his suit-case. He takes the train to Wakamin, but gets off at St. Clair and retrieves his car from the garage. He drives toward Rosebank; spreads his lunch near the lake. At nightfall he runs his car over the cliff into the water. With his suit-cases, he walks into Rosebank, and at the house of the willow walk destroys all evidence of himself as Jasper. He stores away $97,535 in the empty candy boxes. He goes to bed as John Holt.
Dramatic Climax: “I suppose John would pray,” etc. Jasper Holt ceases to exist; John begins to exist as a constant entity.
Incidents of the Solution Leading to the Climax of Action
1. Jasper “acts” John.
John learns of the theft, calls on the bank president and begs that his house be searched. President gets rid of him. He calls on the detective, who finally searches John’s house. John directs attention to the shed where Jasper kept his car. The police refuse to search. Jasper has thus further entrenched himself, outwardly, as John.
2. Jasper changes, subtly, to John.
John prays for Jasper. He plans a trip south, but continues his religious studies. It is obvious that this modern Frankenstein is rapidly becoming the monster of his own creation. At the end of one and a half years, he has sloughed off most of his Jasper nature and acquired that of John.
3. He endures a period of final struggle.
The John part of him wishes to confess; the dying Jasper refuses to take him back to the bank. But at the Soul Hope Fraternity, he confesses that he stole. For a week he stays at home; then he goes out. On his return he discovers that the money is missing.
Climax of Action: He goes to the bank and confesses; his story is not believed. He has changed natures, completely.
Dénouement: The jail refuses to take him. He finds work at the sand pits.
For parallelism of the final situation, read Edith Wharton’s “The Bolted Door.”
Characterization. Bear in mind that the diverse personalities of Jasper and John are bound up in Jasper, that although “John” was originally invented and then assumed, he finally dominated. The dramatic climax marks the point at which the outer Jasper disappears; the climax of action marks the disappearance of the inner Jasper. The man who goes to work at the sand pits is, essentially, John.
Details. Suspense, one of the best features, in the earlier two-thirds of the story, operates progressively, the cause shifting with the various steps of the action. For example, perhaps the first important question aroused is, “What is Jasper doing all this for?” The second, “Will he succeed in carrying out his well-laid plans?” Meantime, subordinate questions arise, to be satisfied by the author in the unfolding of the narrative. Show that suspense works of necessity less forcibly toward the end, where the outcome becomes more and more inevitable.
Do you know what became of the stolen money? Should that trailing thread be gathered up, or is it better left as it is?
Mr. Lewis declares that “The Willow Walk” has, so far as he can remember, no history at all. But he contributes the following by way of his views on the short-story:
“Technique defeats itself. The more nearly perfect it becomes, the nearer it is to stagnation. This rule holds true whether it be applied to ecclesiastical ceremony, to that humorous art known as ‘the manners of a gentleman,’ to the designing of motor-car bodies, or the practise of the arts. Once your motor-body designer has almost approximated the lines of a carriage, an innovator appears who boisterously ridicules the niceties of that technique, and, to the accompaniment of howling from the trained technicians, smashes out a new form, with monstrous hood and stream-line massiveness. Within two years he has driven out all the old technique, and is followed by a ‘school,’ neatly developing a new technique, in its turn to be perfected—then destroyed by some vulgarian who is too ignorant or too passionate to care for the proprieties of design.
“Once the technique of the academic school of painters of still life and landscape and portraits was practically perfect, a noisy, ill-bred, passionate crew of destroyers appeared, under such raucous labels as ‘futurists,’ ‘vorticists,’ ‘cubists,’ and despite the fact that their excesses have not become popular in plush parlors, these innovations have forever ruined the pleasure of picture-gazers in the smooth inanity of the perfected old technique. And now their followers in their turn——! As I write, the perfect militarist technique of the German empire has cracked into socialist republics. In time those republics will build up a perfect technique of bureaus, and be ready for the cleansing fire.
“Technique defeats itself. I have repeated the word ‘passion’ because that is the force that starts the rout. The man who is passionate about beauty or scientific facts, about making love or going fishing or the potentialities of Russia or revolt against smug oppressors, is likely to find himself cramped by the technique of the art which he chooses as a medium, to discard it, and to find a technique of his own. Austin Dobson could endure the triolet for the expression of delicate inexactitudes regarding French curés, but when Shelley was singing a world aflame, he made for himself a new mode of expression which, to formalists, seemed inexpressibly crude.
“And so to the short story. I am not afraid of this new technique of the proper beginning, the correct ending, the clever dénouement, the geometrically plotted curve of action—because I do not believe that anybody who passionately has anything to say is going to cramp himself by learning its pat rules. But I do believe that—before they go and smash the technique, anyway!—young writers may be saved much spiritual struggle if they be taught that there is nothing sacred, nothing they unquestionably must follow, in any exactly formulated technique.
“They will, of course, if they succeed, make a technique of their own. That is a short cut to salvation for them. It is only when a technique is that of other writers, when it is so crystallized that it can be definitely exhibited, that it becomes dangerous. I know that Joseph Hergesheimer in such absorbingly beautiful short stories as ‘Wild Oranges,’ ‘Tol’able David,’ or ‘Asphodel’ has a technique, a very definite idea of what he is doing; or what he is going to do before he starts, and of why he has done things after he has done them. But he has not obediently imitated the technique of other writers. None knows better than Mr. Hergesheimer the great art of such men as Conrad, Galsworthy, George Moore; but none has less imitated them, less accepted their technique as his guidance.
“Curse Stevenson for that ‘playing the sedulous ape,’ which has led so many thousands astray. It was Stevenson’s weakness, not his strength, that aping; and because of it his light is flickering, while that of his contemporaries, Rossetti, Hardy, Swinburne, Flaubert, who were not sedulous apes but men passionate about beauty or the curious ways of daily man, burns evenly and forever. Stevenson had an unequalled opportunity; he was a pioneer, with a pioneer’s chance to stake out the first claim; yet once Kipling galloped into sight, roaring at deft Stevensonian technique, irreverent and violent as one of his own Rajputs, doing really dreadful things to the balanced decencies of proportion and melody, he routed Stevenson in a handful of years ... and today we have read Stevenson, but we do read Kipling.
“Of course, of course, of course. ‘Freedom is no excuse for violence.’ ‘The young man must train his mind.’ ‘From a study of the elders youth learns to avoid their mistakes’ (but he doesn’t!). ‘Only the strong are able to govern themselves, to make their own codes of ethics or of beauty.’ All those sage warnings—used equally against Martin Luther and the Bolsheviks, against the bad boy in school and Rodin. Basically, the disagreement between classicists and modernists is temperamental, and will, under various guises, endure forever. Only, let it be clearly recognized for what it is; let the classicist not mistake himself for a modernist; let the innovator not suppose because O. Henry is still so living a force that his followers have not already hardened his technique into a form classic and very dead.”