Love's Pilgrimage: A Novel

by Upton Sinclair

The facts were there, to be had for the gathering. Thyrsis again could only compare himself to Aladdin in his palace. Could it be believed that so many ideas had been left for one man to discover? It seemed to him, that the kingdoms of literature lay at his mercy; he was like a magician who has discovered a new spell, which places his rivals in his power. He knew that this book, if he could ever finish it, would alter the aspect of literary criticism, as a blow changes the pattern in a kaleidoscope.

Thyrsis had failed many times before, but this time he felt that success was in his hands; he knew the bookworld now, he was master of the game. This would set them to thinking, this would stir them up! He had got under the armor of his enemy at last, and he could feel him wince and writhe at each thrust that he drove home. So he wrought at his task, in a state of tense excitement, living always in imagination in the midst of the battle, following stroke with stroke and driving a rout before him.—So he would be for weeks; and then would come the reaction, when he fell back exhausted, and realized that his victory was mere phantasy, that nothing of it really counted until he had completed his labor. And that would take two years! Two years!

Section 7. From visions such as this Thyrsis came back to wrestle with all the problems of a household; with pumps that froze and drains that clogged, with stoves that went out and ashes that spilled, with milk-boys that were late and kitchen-maids that were snow-bound. He would leave his work at one or two o’clock in the morning, and make his way through the snow and the storm to the house, and crawl into bed, and then take his chances of being awakened by the baby, or by some spell of agony with Corydon.

He might not sleep alone; that supreme symbol of domesticity Corydon could not give up, and he soon ceased to ask for it. It seemed such a little thing to yield; and yet it meant so much to him! The room where he slept came to seem to him a chamber of terror, a place to which he went “like the galley-slave at night, scourged to his dungeon”. It was a place where a crime was enacted; where the vital forces of his being were squandered, and the body and soul of him were wrung and squeezed dry like a sponge. This was marriage—it was the essence of marriage; it was the slavery into which he had delivered himself, the duty to which he was bound. And in how many millions of homes was this same thing going on—this licensed preying of one personality upon another? And the nightmare thing was upheld and buttressed by all the forces of society—priests were saying blessings over it and moralists were singing the praises of it—“the holy bonds of matrimony”, it was called!

It was all the worse to Thyrsis because there was that in him which welcomed this animal intimacy. So he saw that day by day their lives were slipping to a lower plane; day by day they were discovering new weaknesses and developing new vices in themselves. Corydon was now a good part of the time in pain of some sort; and the doctors had accustomed her to stave off these crises with various kinds of drugs, so that she had a set of shelves crowded with pills and powders and bottles. She had learned to rely upon them in emergencies, to plead for them when she was helpless; and so Thyrsis saw her declining into an inferno. He would argue with her and plead with her and fight with her; he would spend days trying to open her eyes to the peril, to show her that it was better to suffer pain than to resort to these treacherous aids.

Section 8. They still had their hours of enthusiasm, of course, their illuminations and their resolutions. During the summer, while browsing among the English magazines in the library, Thyrsis had stumbled upon an astonishing article dealing with the subject of health. He read it in a state of great excitement, and then took it home and read it to Corydon. It told of the achievements of a gentleman by the name of Horace Fletcher, who had once possessed robust health, and lost it through careless living, and had then restored it by a new system of eating. To Thyrsis this came as one of the great discoveries of his life. For years every instinct of his nature had been whispering to him that his ways of eating were vicious; but he had been ignorant and helpless—and with all the world that he knew in opposition to him. As he read the article, he recalled a talk he had had with his “family doctor”, way back before his marriage, when he had first begun to notice symptoms of stomach-trouble. He had suggested timidly that there might be something wrong with his diet, and that if the doctor would tell him exactly what he ought to eat, and how much and how often, he would be glad to adopt the regimen. But the doctor had only laughed and answered, “Nonsense, boy—don’t you get to thinking about your food!” And so Thyrsis had gone away, to follow the old plan of eating what he liked. Health, it would seem, must be a spontaneous and accidental thing, it could not be a deliberate and reasoned thing.

But now he and Corydon became smitten with a passion of shame for all their stupidity and their gluttony; they invested in Fletcher’s books, and set out upon this new adventure. They would help themselves to a very small saucerful of food; and they would take of this a very small spoonful—and chew—and chew—and chew. Mr. Fletcher said that half an hour a day was enough for the eating of the food one needed; but they, apparently, could have chewed for hours, and still been hungry. They labored religiously to stop as soon as they could pretend to be satisfied; the result of which was that Thyrsis lost fourteen pounds in as many days—and it was many a long year before he got those fourteen pounds back! He became still more “spiritual” in his aspect; until finally he and Corydon set out for a walk one day, and coming up a hill to their home they gave out altogether, and first Thyrsis had to crawl up the hill and get something to eat, and then take something down to Corydon!

However, in spite of all their blunders, this new idea was of genuine benefit to them; at least it put them upon the right track—it taught them the relationship between diet and disease. They saw the two as cause and consequence—they watched the food they ate affecting their bodies as one might watch a match affecting a thermometer. They were no longer victims of the idea that health must be a spontaneous and accidental thing—they were set definitely to thinking about it, as something that could be achieved by will and intelligence.

But the right knowledge lay far in the future; and meantime they were groping in ignorance, and disease was still a mysterious visitation that came upon them out of the night. “Thus saith the Lord, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt; and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there hath been none like it, nor shall be like it any more.”

Their own firstborn had low been on the regime of the “child specialist” for a year and a half. He was big and fat and rosy, and according to all the standards they knew, a picture of health. He was the pride of his parents’ hearts—the one success they had achieved, and to which they could turn their eyes. He was a frightful burden to them—the most noisy and irrepressible of children. But they struggled and worried along with him, and were proud of him—and even, in a stormy sort of way, were happy with him. But now a calamity fell upon him, bringing them the most terrible distress they had yet had to face in their lives.