The Accursed Read online

  Over the decades, through subsequent administrations, the eating clubs grew: from five, to nine, to thirteen; eventually, to twenty. Alums began to compete in building eating-club houses on Prospect Avenue, and so the university dining facilities, though in handsome “Gothic” buildings mimicking Oxford and Cambridge, appeared paltry by contrast. Soon it came to be, there were those boys who were clubbable—and those who were not clubbable. For the great gratification of the club is, simply, that only a few members are chosen; the rest being, if not precisely beneath contempt, beneath at least that latitude demarking one’s fellows from those with whom we would not wish to dine.

  Of my own experience at Princeton as a graduate, with honors, of the Class of 1927, I will not speak: except to say that it was instructive, and illuminating; and if I had to repeat it again, I would hang myself.

  During annual Bicker Week, when club elections took place, the university was gripped by a veritable epidemic of frazzled nerves, sleepless nights, agitation, anxiety, elation, despair, rage, rising even to homicidal and suicidal impulses, and acts; there was no way that faculty members could distract their students from “bicker,” as one could not force children to sit still and calm, and not gape at fireworks in the sky.

  This situation seemed to Woodrow Wilson, quite plausibly, as counter to the purpose of the university, as an unwholesome focus upon athletics would be; it had even come to pass that aggressive “hat clubs” (so named because of their colorful headgear) sprang up among sophomores, that they might control elections to upperclass clubs by banding together to accept, or refuse, election as a block; resulting in freshman clubs springing up, to control the “hat clubs”; all this involving every sort of cajoling, and intimidating, and courting, and threatening, and double-dealing, and horsing, and hazing, and broken hearts, and plummeting academic performances, often resulting in expulsion. The most egregious development being that freshman club memberships were often not made at Princeton at all but during senior year in prestigious prep schools like Lawrenceville and Groton; so that a lad of fifteen might already begin to anticipate the anxiety of Bicker Week at Princeton University, years hence, when his “fate” would be decided. In this way, a great many boys suffered, including many from “good” families, that a few boys might preen themselves as elite.

  During the genial but somewhat lax administration of Dr. Patton, there occurred a scandal of an ambiguous sort, having to do with the hazing procedures of the third “most powerful” club on campus: this, “Ballarat,” housed in a Tudor mansion that was said to have cost more than $200,000, a very high sum for the time, and quite the architectural gem of Prospect Street. As it was the club of a favored nephew of J. P. Morgan, Ballarat enjoyed many special privileges and competed aggressively with other clubs for positions of campus power; yet came to grief in 1899 when a scandal erupted following the rough treatment of new members, with hazing canes and “branding irons.” And so, Ballarat was disbanded readily, and its handsome house sold to another eating club. As the scandal had to do with “unspeakable matters” the exact nature of the offenses was never spelt out, and never spoken of.

  Yet there was nothing quite so extreme, I think, as the “anarchy” of the early 1800s, when mutinous students occupied Nassau Hall and set off charges of gunpowder in the building. There was even a kidnapping of a pastoral assistant whom a gang of boys, cloaked in black robes and hoods, dragged out of his bachelor’s quarters on campus, and tarred and feathered on the lawn of the president’s house which was at that time on Nassau Street, in the very center of the village—said pastor having been accused, by the boys, of “unspeakable”—“filthy”—acts perpetrated upon them.

  During a previous administration, that of Reverend Samuel Stanhope Smith (1795–1812), the students had already, it seems, begun to behave badly, for more than one hundred of them were expelled after a disastrous fire, determined to be arson, leveled Nassau Hall in 1802!—among these boys the adopted son of the President of the newly formed United States, George Washington (a lad about whom little is known except that he was expelled from the college for “meanness and irregularity of character”). Then, during the administration of the much admired Reverend Aaron Burr, Sr., his precocious son Aaron, Jr., was known at the college for both his “brilliance” and his “dissipation” —this, in a mere lad of thirteen!

  At this time, it should be noted, Princeton University did not yet exist: these long-ago individuals lived in the era of the College of New Jersey.

  Addendum.

  This segment of my chronicle contains, for all its horrors, a “positive” ending of a kind, for, after the gruesome—and never-solved—murders of Heckewalder and Kaufman, the Curse in its primary, or ghoulish form, will not strike again.

  At about this time, Dabney Bayard learned that, through powerful relatives in Washington, D.C., he had been reinstated in the U.S. Army at the rank of lieutenant; from this rank, within a year he would be promoted to the rank of captain. Soon then he was given the honor of accompanying Vice President William Howard Taft on one of numerous “trouble-shooting” expeditions to the exotic Philippines, where native unrest and divers political complications necessitated United States intervention in the name of democracy. “We must have order there among those villainous little monkeys,” President Roosevelt declared, “and by God I will see to it that we do!”

  It would come about that Captain Dabney Bayard acquitted himself so well in his new station, within a few years he was to be promoted yet again, to the gold-starred rank of major; and with a well-trained battalion of men under his command, maintained the civil order in the Philippines, of which President Roosevelt spoke. And no further innocent persons fell prey to the ghoulish appetite of the Fiend, in Princeton.

  “HERE DWELLS HAPPINESS”

  Though it was a matter of public record that twelve-year-old Todd Slade was found “turned to stone” in Princeton Cemetery, and his remains put to rest inside the family vault with his sister Oriana and his cousin Annabel, yet it also seems to be true that Todd lived still; though in a realm of being that is inexplicable to this historian, which I am obliged to describe at second- and third-hand.

  Here, Todd Slade’s adventure.

  HOW FREQUENTLY NOW his sleep was troubled by words unfamiliar to him, yet teasingly familiar—HIC HABITAT FELICITAS—and again, HIC HABITAT FELICITAS. Todd woke from such dreams anxious and confused, believing that a “voice” was in the room with him, or echoed inside his head.

  Before being transformed into stone, and declared to be dead through some trauma to the body that resisted diagnosis, Todd had fallen into the habit of wandering at Crosswicks, as I’ve mentioned; though he shunned the company of his cousin Josiah, his aunt and uncle Henrietta and Augustus, and avoided his grandfather Winslow, whose “confession” had been shocking to the boy, and incompletely understood. For was Winslow Slade now confessing to a truth, as he had not confessed to the truth in the past; and, if this was so, why should he be believed now? There was a sense of shame, that passed between grandson and grandfather, that made Todd want to avoid his grandfather even as he found himself drawn to Crosswicks Manse, that seemed to him the core of the Curse. Yet, an antic mood came over the boy, the mischievousness of his old Todd-self, before Annabel had departed, that led him to haunt the corridor outside his grandfather’s library, softly singing:

  He lied once and might lie again

  She lied once and might lie again

  They lied once and might lie again

  But Thor shall not lie

  Thor alone shall not lie:

  For the poor beast is dead.

  That is why.

  (It was fortunate that Winslow Slade was often no longer in his library, but in his private rooms at the Manse, in a farther wing of the house.)

  Difficult as Todd had become, he was yet hounded by a “voice” more insidious than his own, that murmured “HIC HABITAT FELICITAS” in a jeering tone as if to tease him that he should seek this out
, and put an end to mystery.

  So it finally came about, sometime past midday of May 28, 1906, that the boy wandered into his grandfather’s library, which was a room long forbidden to him, especially when no adult was present; and, poking and prying about, he chanced to see carved into the fireplace the very words that had been haunting him: HIC HABITAT FELICITAS.

  At once Todd understood that he was in the presence of a profound riddle, which he alone might solve. But what was he expected to do?

  Very strange it was to find himself alone in Winslow Slade’s fabled library with its high coffered ceiling, and walls of leather-bound books said to be antique and priceless; and the rare Gutenberg Bible on its pedestal; and shadowed portraits by illustrious American artists (Gilbert Stuart, John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins) of Slade ancestors whose stern gazes appeared to be fixed upon him. Should Todd have wanted to, he might have performed any prank: run the wheeled ladder along the bookcases, and climb like a monkey to the ceiling; or steal away his own likeness, a portrait in pastels of a sweet-faced and innocent child of two or three, sketched in a patch of grass in which lay a lady’s white parasol, perhaps his mother’s . . . Todd had always been fascinated by this drawing of an angelic little child who was, presumably, himself; as he was fascinated by portraits of his sister Oriana and his cousins Josiah and Annabel, executed by the same artist. “Was that ever ‘Todd’?” he’d asked his mother wistfully; and Lenora had said, laughing, brushing his forehead with her lips, “Of course! That angelic little boy is with us right now, if eclipsed.”

  This was a clever answer of his mother’s, Todd thought. Much of life is eclipse.

  Todd studied a life-sized portrait of General Elias Slade, by Copley, which had begun to crack, and exuded a dark aura; and there was the Reverend Azariah Slade, in an oil painting by Stuart, looking as if he were made of wax, eyes hard and pitiless as stone. There was a terrible temptation, for a moment, to tear at the brittle pages of the Gutenberg Bible, and knock it from its pedestal onto the floor. Then, as if he’d been postponing this moment, Todd returned to the marble fireplace, and to the words carved into it: “ ‘Hic Habitat Felicitas.’ ” He knew no Latin yet guessed that this must mean “Here Dwells Happiness”—or some similar phrase. Happiness must dwell at home, within the family—or nowhere.

  At first idly, then with more curiosity, Todd poked about the fireplace; so large a fireplace, he could stand inside it, slightly hunched. There was a smell of ashes here, and there were cobwebs in the chimney; standing inside the fireplace and looking out, he felt a dizzying sense of disorientation, like one looking from the other side of a mirror. Within a few minutes, Todd’s fingers discovered a loose brick, at which he tugged; when it loosened further, and fell to the floor, he tugged at another brick, and another—until to his astonishment he was seeing into the chimney, or through it, as if through a small window opening into a luminous light.

  What should have been dark was not dark but “light”—a tunnel of some sort, a secret passageway.

  Now Todd pulled at the bricks systematically, and set them with care onto the hearth. He did not want anyone in the house to hear him, and to interrupt. Until it was as Todd had thought: a passageway led out of his grandfather’s library, not into another part of the house but into another landscape entirely, unknown to him.

  How was this possible? Todd knew that the opening in the chimney could only lead to a familiar setting, yet somehow it did not; as he poked and pried further, and removed more bricks, he saw that he was looking into a forest, a tangled woodland devoid of all color yet vividly “lighted” like a movie screen. Though the very hairs stirred on the back of his neck with apprehension, and the daring of what he did, Todd continued to remove bricks, his fingers now scraped and very grimy, until, having made an aperture of about twelve inches in diameter, he could force his head and shoulders through.

  In this way, Todd Slade disappeared from his grandfather’s study as, indeed, from our world.

  THE NORDIC SOUL

  At last, Josiah Slade and Upton Sinclair are to meet. But in hardly the circumstances these idealistic young men would have chosen, and with hardly the result.

  HE WOULD MOVE now more forcibly. In the history of the Revolution, it was time.

  Ever more his devotion to the cause grew. Ever more, his certainty that he was in the forefront of change.

  His sojourn in Princeton was coming to an end, or nearly. There would follow now a triumphant move to New York City, and from there to—he knew not precisely where: the great state of California, or a Socialist commune in rural New Jersey. There, the Socialist principles of shared property, shared labor, shared food would prevail.

  He would not beg Meta to accompany him. But he believed, if he explained carefully enough to her, she would want to be with him, and would not doubt him again.

  SOME FACTS OF his life Upton Sinclair had hoped to conceal. He had hidden from Meta and from those comrades—Florence Kelly, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, with whom he’d founded the Intercollegiate Socialist Society in 1905—the fact that his mother’s father was John S. Harden, a “high official” of the notorious Western Maryland Railroad; yet more egregiously, his father’s grandfather was Commodore Arthur Sinclair of the U.S. Navy, a hero of the War of 1812 rumored to have “profited considerably” through his military connections and to have gloated There is no war that is not a rich harvest—for some!

  Such blunt truths of the capitalist spirit, such facts—somehow did not repel the majority of Americans, as one might expect. Why?—young Upton Sinclair yearned to know.

  He had himself firsthand experience of the rich—from time to time pitied, in his threadbare Baltimore home, with a failing salesman/drunkard father and a helpless and overwhelmed mother, and invited to spend time with his Harden grandparents; he had no illusions as to the higher quality of the intelligence of the rich, as of their moral condition; it is true, the rich can be “generous”—“charitable”—no one more kindly, in an ostentatious manner, than rich Christian women at such times of years—Christmas, Easter—when their hearts are swayed by the pathos of the poor!—this is true, but not relevant to the cause of social justice. When private property is abolished the true spirit of Christianity will emerge. But not until then.

  Sinclair felt a stab of shame, that his weak, often ailing mother took pride in the sorry fact that her Harden ancestors were Protestant landowners in northern Ireland, said to be of the very highest rank of breeding, wealth, and influence. How ashamed to be told, with a reproachful squeeze of his hand In your veins their blood flows, even now! The blood of aristocrats.

  These painful biographical facts! Never to be published in any “profile” of Upton Sinclair, if he could prevent it.

  THOUGH HE PASSIONATELY opposed censorship of course. Any infringement upon the freedom of others—the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of freedom in speech and in print—the natural rights of man—Upton Sinclair would oppose with his life.

  “Thank you—but no. There is only one man for this office—that is Jack London.”

  It was flattering, and very tempting, to be offered the first presidency of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, in the fall of 1905. But with a grave smile for the nominating committee Upton Sinclair had declined in favor of the popular and far more famous young Socialist author from San Francisco.

  “Though I don’t know the man personally, I have read such remarkable work of his—The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf, The War of the Classes—above all that masterful chronicle of slum life The People of the Abyss—I can vouch for his genius. And what I’ve heard of our comrade—his efforts in the cause of Socialism—I would stake my life on it, that Jack London would present our cause to the world more admirably than any other individual of our time.”

  He was utterly sincere! This was not false modesty—this was not modesty at all, Upton would have insisted. The vision of Socialism presented by Karl Marx—and refined by Friedrich Engels—was impersonal
, and shorn of individual ego; all that was ego was of the past, condemned to decay, wither away and vanish within a few generations; this Upton Sinclair believed passionately, and meant to inculcate into his daily, moral life as the most effective antidote to his quasi-bourgeois background.

  At this time Upton Sinclair had been twenty-six—about to publish the most challenging work of his career, The Jungle; already the author of numerous articles, plays, and books since his first novel Springtime and Harvest in 1901. Jack London was two years older and had not published nearly so much—yet The Call of the Wild and The Sea Wolf, best sellers in several languages, had made him famous—as popular a writer as the legendary Mark Twain whose prime was now past.

  Now in the spring of 1906 Upton had yet to meet London. He had yet to shake London’s hand and to gaze upon the young Yukon adventurer face to face—though he’d seen London’s rugged photograph in numerous places, including the New York Sun where the “socialist-seditionist” author was anathema to the editorial writers.

  How handsome London was! In secret—for his wife Meta would not have understood such a predilection—Upton examined photographs of the adventurer-writer hoping to see in his comrade’s smiling gaze some sort of—mystic connection, or kinship . . . Upton could not have articulated what he sought but knew it to be the identical ravishment of the soul he’d experienced when first reading Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; intellectually, it was Marx, Engels, Feuerbach, and Nietzsche whom Upton most admired, but he could not feel the sort of zealous passion for these thinkers he felt for the poets, and for Jack London, who was not only his contemporary but a sort of brother, or soul mate . . . Guiltily aware of himself as the privileged son of a genteel family, he found fascinating the details of London’s very different background: London was the illegitimate son of an itinerant astrologer, born in San Francisco in poverty, forced to quit school at the age of fourteen to work as a sailor, gold miner, and manual laborer; as a young man he’d begun writing for newspapers, and had been bold enough to campaign as the Socialist mayor of Oakland in 1901. (London had lost, of course—but newspaper accounts spoke of the power of the “Boy Socialist” to “captivate” the crowds that gathered to hear him speak.) In Upton’s dreams London appeared not wraith-like, like most dream-figures, but solid, earthy, muscled, lively and livid-faced; as he’d been rumored to be in actual life, London was quarrelsome, yet charming; so very charming, it was impossible to turn away from him, or to shake off the effect of his personality . . . Here is my deepest self Upton thought—far deeper than I myself can realize.