Peter Whiffle

by Carl Van Vechten

In time, college days passed. Peter confessed to me that the last two years were an awful strain but he stuck them out, chiefly because he could not think of anything else he wanted to do. His real mental agony began with his release. He dreaded life and most of all he dreaded work. His father, although well-to-do, had a sharply defined notion that a boy who would not work never amounted to anything. His peculiar nature sometimes asserted itself in ludicrous and fantastically exaggerated demonstrations of this theory. Once, for example, during a summer vacation spent in the country, he insisted that Peter skin a pig. You have an opportunity to learn now and you never can tell when you may have to skin another pig. When the time comes you will be prepared. His father, Peter returned from college discovered, was in no mood to tolerate vacillation or dawdling. But Peter seemed to feel no urge of any kind. I not only did not want to do anything, he explained, there was nothing that I wanted to do. Here his father, with whom the boy had never been particularly sympathetic (motive of the Œdipus complex by the flutes in the orchestra), asserted his authority and put him in the bank. Peter loathed the bank. He hated his work, cutting open envelopes early in the morning, sorting out bills for collection, and then, on his bicycle, making the collections. In the afternoon, an endless task at the adding machine seemed Dantesque and, at night, the sealing of envelopes was even more tiresome than opening them in the morning. There was, however, one mitigating circumstance in connection with the last job of the day, the pleasure afforded by the rich odour of the hot sealing-wax. His pay was $9 a week; he has told me that probably he was not worth it! Fortunately he lived at home and was not asked to pay board. He bought books with the $9 and "silly things." When I asked him what he meant by silly things, he replied: O! Rookwood pottery, and alligators, and tulip bulbs: I don't remember, things like that! One day, he promised his father that he would give up smoking if that one would present him with a gold cigarette-case!

There came a morning when he could not make up his mind to get up. His mother called him several times in vain. He arrived at the bank half an hour late and was reprimanded. His father spoke about his tardiness at lunch. At this period he was inclined to be sulky. He started off on his bicycle in the afternoon but he did not go to the bank. He rode along by the river, stopping at a low saloon in the outlying districts, where the workmen of some factory were wont to congregate in the evening, and drank a great many glasses of beer. Cheered somewhat thereby, the thought of facing his father no longer exasperated him. The big scene took place before dinner. Had it not been for the beer, he would have been obliged to act his part on an empty stomach.

Are you no good at all? Thus his father's baritone aria began. Are you worthless? I'm not going to support you. Suppose you had to pay your own board. I can't keep a son of mine in the bank because he is a son of mine unless he does some work. Certainly not. How long are you going to dawdle? What are you going to do? Et cetera, et cetera, with a magnificent cadenza and a high E to top off with. Sustained by the beer, Peter reported to me that he rather enjoyed the tune. He said nothing. Dinner was eaten in complete silence and then the paternal parent went to bed, a discouraged and broken man. He seemed senescent, although he was not yet fifty. After dinner, Peter's mother spoke to him more gently but she also was full of warning and gloomy foreboding: What is it you want to do, my son?... I don't know. I'm not sure that I want to do anything.... But you must do something. You wouldn't be manly if you didn't do something. It is manly to work. A day will come when my son will want to marry and then he will need money to support his dear wife. Etc. Etc. Peter reported to me that he seemed to have heard this music before. He had not yet read The Way of All Flesh; I doubt if it were published at this time, but Ernest Pontifex would have been a sympathetic figure to him. Peter knew the meaning of the word cliché, although the sound and the spelling of it were yet strange to him.

When he got to his room certain words his mother had spoken rang in his ears. Why, he asked himself, should men support women? Art is the only attraction in life and women never do good work in art. They are useless in the world aside from their functions of sex and propagation. Why should they not work so that the males could be free to think and dream? Then it occurred to him that he would be furious if any woman supported his father; that could not be borne, to have his father at home all day while his mother was away at work!

Nevertheless, he went to sleep quite happy, he has assured me, and slept soundly through the night, although he dreamed of a pair of alligators, one of which was pulling at his head and the other at his feet, while a man with an ax rained blows on his stomach. In the morning his affairs seemed to be in a desperate state. He could not bear the idea of getting up and going to the bank and yet there was nothing else he wanted to do. Of one thing only he was sure: he did not want to support himself. He did not, so far as he was able to make out, want to do anything! He wanted his family to stop bothering him. Was no provision made in this world for such as he?

Certainly, no provision was made for him in Toledo, Ohio. The word temperament was still undiscovered there. His negative kind of desire was alien to American sympathy. Of so much, he was aware. Adding machines and collections awaited him. He went to the bank where the paying teller again reprimanded him. So did one of the clerks. So did one of the directors, a friend of his father. He staggered through another day, which he helped along a little by returning at noon with all his notes uncollected. Nobody wants to pay today, he explained.... But it's your business to make them pay.... There was cold ham, cold slaw, and rice pudding for lunch. His mother had been crying. His father was stern.

During the rice pudding, he made a resolution, which he kept. From that day on he worked as he had never worked before. Everybody in the bank was astonished. His father was delighted. His mother said, I told you so. I know my son.... He stopped buying books and silly things and, when he had saved enough money, he took a train to New York without bidding the bank officials or his family good-bye. Once there, his resolution again failed him. He had no desires, or if he had, one counteracted another. His money was almost gone and he was forced to seek for work but everywhere he went he was refused. He lived at a Mills Hotel. He retained a strange fondness for his mother and began to write her, asking her to address him care of general delivery.

At last he secured a position at a soda fountain in a drug-store. He worked there about a week. One night the place got on his nerves to such an extent that he wanted to break the glasses and squirt fizz at every customer. To amuse himself, therefore, he contrived to inject a good dose of castor oil or cantharides into every drink he served. The proprietor of the shop was snoopy, Peter told me, and after watching me out of the corner of his eye for some time, he gave me a good kick, which landed me in the middle of the street. He tossed six dollars, the remainder of my wages, after me. It may appear strange to you but I have never been happier in my life than I was that night with six dollars in my possession and the satisfactory knowledge that I would never see that store again.

During the next three weeks, Peter did not find any work. I doubt if he tried to find any. He often slept in Madison Square or Bryant Park with a couple of newspapers over him and a couple under him. He lived on the most meagre rations, some of which he collected in bread lines. He even begged at the kitchen doors of the large hotels and asked for money on the street. He has told me, however, that he was neither discouraged nor unhappy. He felt the most curious sense of uplift, as if he were suffering martyrdom, as, indeed, he was. Life seemed to have left him out of its accounting, to have made no arrangements for his nature. He had no desire to work, in fact his repugnance for work was his strongest feeling, and yet, it seemed, he could procure no money without working. He was willing, however, to go without the things he wanted, really to suffer, rather than work. I just did not want to do anything, he has said. It was a fixed idea. It was my greatest joy to talk about the social unrest, the rights of the poor, the wicked capitalist, and the ideas of Karl Marx with the man in the street, the real man in the street, the man who never went anywhere else. During this period, he continued to write his mother what she afterwards described as "bright, clever letters." I have seen a few of them, full of the most astounding energy and enthusiasm, and a vague philosophy of quietism. She wrote back, gently chiding him, letters of resignation but still letters of advice, breathing the hope that he might grow into a respected citizen of Toledo, Ohio. She did not understand Peter but she loved him and would have gone to New York to see him, had not a restraining hand burked her. Mr. Whiffle was determined to hold no more traffic with his son. He refused, indeed, to allow Peter's name to be mentioned in his presence. Toledo talked with intensity behind his back but Mr. Whiffle did not know that. Hard as he tried not to show it, he was disappointed: it was impossible for him to reconcile his idea of a son with the actuality. Mrs. Whiffle's first mild suggestion that she might visit Peter was received with a terrible hurricane of resentment. She did not mention the subject again. She would have gone anyway if Peter had asked her to come but he never did.

Through an Italian, whom he met one day in Bryant Park, Peter next secured a position as a member of the claque at the Opera. Every night, with instructions when to applaud, he received either a seat in the dress circle or a general admission ticket. There was also a small salary attached to the office. He did not care about the salary but he enjoyed going to the Opera which he had never before attended. He heard Manon Lescaut, La Damnation de Faust, Tristan, Lohengrin, Tosca, Roméo et Juliette, and Fedora. But his favourite nights were the nights when Olive Fremstad sang. He heard her as Venus in Tannhäuser, as Selika in L'Africaine, as Carmen, and he heard her in that unique performance of Salome on January 22, 1907. One night he became so interested in watching her that he forgot to applaud the singer who had paid the claque. His delinquency was reported by one of his colleagues and the next evening, when he went to the bar on Seventh Avenue where the claque gathered to receive its orders, he was informed that his services would no longer be required.