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By Root 6050 0

I was marvelously happy. I had never visited a poet’s house, never drunk straight gin, never eaten steamed clams, never smelled the tide. I had never heard such things said about business, its power to petrify the soul. Humboldt spoke wonderfully of the wonderful, abominable rich. You had to view them in the shield of art. His monologue was an oratorio in which he sang and played all parts. Soaring still higher he began to speak about Spinoza and of how the mind was fed with joy by things eternal and infinite. This was Humboldt the student who had gotten A’s in philosophy from the great Morris R. Cohen. I doubt that he would have talked like this to anyone but a kid from the sticks. But after Spinoza Humboldt was a bit depressed and said, “Lots of people are waiting for me to fall on my face. I have a million enemies.”

“You do? But why?”

“I don’t suppose you’ve read about the Cannibal Society of the Kwakiutl Indians,” said learned Humboldt. “The candidate when he performs his initiation dance falls into a frenzy and eats human flesh. But if he makes a ritual mistake the whole crowd tears him to pieces.”

“But why should poetry make you a million enemies?”

He said this was a good question but it was obvious that he didn’t mean it. He turned gloomy and his voice went flat—plink —as though there were one note of tin in his brilliant keyboard. He struck it now. “I may think I’m bringing an offering to the •altar, but that’s not how they see it.” No, it was not a good question, for the fact that I asked it meant that I didn’t know Evil, and if I didn’t know Evil my admiration was worthless. He forgave me because I was a boy. But when I heard the tinny plink I realized that I must learn to defend myself. He had tapped my affection and admiration, and it was flowing at a dangerous rate. This hemorrhage of eagerness would weaken me and when I was weak and defenseless I would get it in the neck. And so I figured, ah ha! he wants me to suit him perfectly, down to the ground. He’ll bully me. I’d better look out.

On the oppressive night when I achieved my success, Humboldt picketed the Belasco Theatre. He had just been let out of Bellevue. A huge sign, Von Trenck by Charles Citrine, glittered above the street. There were thousands of electric bulbs. I arrived in black tie, and there was Humboldt with a gang of pals and rooters. I swept out of the taxi with my lady friend and was caught on the sidewalk in the commotion. Police were controlling the crowd. His cronies were shouting and rioting and Humboldt carried his picket sign as though it were a cross. In streaming characters, mercurochrome on cotton, was written, “The Author of this Play is a Traitor.” The demonstrators were pushed back by the police, and Humboldt and I did not meet face to face. Did I want him run in? the producer’s assistant asked me.

“No,” I said, wounded, trembling. “I used to be his protégé. We were pals, the crazy son of a bitch. Let him alone.”

Demmie Vonghel, the lady who was with me, said, “Good man! That’s right, Charlie, you’re a good man!”

Von Trenck ran for eight months on Broadway. I had the attention of the public for nearly a year, and I taught it nothing.

three

Now as to Humboldt’s actual death: he died at the Ilscombe around the corner from the Belasco. On his last night, as I have reconstructed it, he was sitting on his bed in this decayed place, probably reading. The books in his room were the poems of Yeats and Hegel’s Phenomenology. In addition to these visionary authors he read the Daily News and the Post. He kept up with sports and with night life, with the jet set and the activities of the Kennedy family, with used-car prices and want ads. Ravaged as he was he maintained his normal American interests. Then at about 3 a.m.—he wasn’t sleeping much toward the end—he decided to take his garbage down and suffered a heart attack in the elevator. When the pain struck he seems to have fallen against the panel and pressed all the buttons, including the alarm button. Bells rang, the door opened, he stumbled into a corridor and fell,