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Fs . - on a eee n= < = - > 7 J na a ~~ == eae Pa a a = ae 4 Tats —— a — : > ae 24 —s a ae a —ae ° a eee = ae, 1) het tines a , we as a Fe gg Pm Wind — - ~ — a —s — 7 ——— megan «emcees and We ay Th Phe \ HY, hi AM ni i i] ; fy) \ vir Net ) Derk ware it a a Hi te Ai ri { ON WATT nh Ne (i it ’ wiih ae Sh) ae ay : i. MOS eT ty : i‘ a | Neh ‘ : en AM IDS eulere, AL ay - ; \ : ait { i mts thy: uu Whi We ah aN ut < ih aah Hnhy uh ie i mat — oh a on ae i Ne, Ri Oi OPEN HE ih EAL Ath i is ny Me iA fil : Ai My uy i ’ Hy he Ae aS hte Reet lie ae At i Hi att tn Hy , att Hy A aE Re +4, yt pth? : bf ae tf 40 cw : 4 rit ey a att b ’ i! ; Hh ny / hes Nee i eu , : | Rua Vv wile aii eu i f it bal if te (ape LAT) 4 Me ae ia, > I 1F LTE Peer et bil f Inheritance of Night om “s 7 yea . 7 W ey ae oy. | ma William Styron Inheritance of Night Early Drafts of Lie Down in Darkness With a preface by the author and an introduction by James L. W. West III Duke University Press Durham and London 1993 © 1993 Duke University Press Preface and text © 1993 William Styron Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Typeset in Berkeley Medium Publication of this volume has been facilitated by the generosity of The Friends of Duke University Library The introduction to this volume appeared in an earlier form in the French journal Delta, no. 23 (octobre 1986); portions are reprinted here with permission. Styron’s five-page prospectus for Inheritance of Night was published in an appendix to the article. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Inheritance of Night : Early Drafts of Lie Down in Darkness /William Styron : with a preface by the author and an introduction by James L. W. West IIL. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8223-1308-1 (lettered ed. : alk. paper). ISBN 0-8223-1309-X (numbered ed. : alk. paper). IBSN 0-8223-1310-3 (trade ed. : alk. paper) 1. Styron, William, 1925— —Manuscripts—Facsimiles. 2. Manuscripts, American—Facsimiles. I. Title. PS3569.T9154 1993 813'.54—de20 92-26030 CIP Contents Preface Vil Introduction x1 Prospectus (Winter 1947-48) 1 Typescript I: First Beginning (Winter 1947-48) 9 Typescript II: Second Beginning (Fall 1948) 67 Typescript III: Continuation of Second Beginning (Spring 1949) UNS) Description of the Documents 138 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2021 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/inheritanceofnigO1 styr Preface Its fascinating for me to read, for the first time in over forty years, the stumbling starts toward the creation of Lie Down in Darkness. These passages show how, in my early twenties, I may have been in possession of a luminous vision for a novel but how it was a luminosity clouded by much indecision and awkwardness. As my words now strike responsive chords of memory, I can see how well-prepared I was, emotionally, to set down my narrative but how ill-formed still was my sense of pro- portion and pacing, those elements of storytelling that elude so many beginning writers. Much of the present material was ultimately discarded from the ongoing manuscript of the book. Obviously I later found that these passages simply didn’t correspond to my evolving needs. Some of the writing, however, remained almost word for word in the final version; the most notable example is the long description of the train ride from Richmond to “Port Warwick” which constitutes the novel’s opening paragraphs. I finished this beginning section a few months after I was fired from the McGraw-Hill Book Company, during the post-New Year’s period of 1948, when I was living on upper Lexington Avenue in New York. All through a snowstorm—the worst in the northeast since the famous blizzard of 1888—I had been holed up in my chilly basement apartment reading Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. The be- ginning of that masterful novel also involves a trip, by car, and is told in the second person, evoking a vivid immediacy; still in thrall to Warren’s book, I wrote about the train ride in an attempt to emulate the vigor of the original, and then went on to cre- ate the scenes of Milton Loftis and his companions waiting for the train at the Port Warwick station. Much later I substantially reworked the scenes which are pub- lished here, eliminating for instance the character of Marcus Bonner, who may have borne a pale resemblance to myself. I also struck a bad snag in the writing process while I was living on Lexington Avenue. Somehow I felt that the book might proceed with greater ease if 1 moved away from the big city, which had begun to disenchant me for various reasons, not the least of which was a persistent financial ache. Since I had a number of friends in the Duke community, I decided to move back to Durham and try my luck there, where the winters were more tolerable, the rents reasonable, and the food, espe- cially the delicious Carolina barbeque, within the scope of my dwindling re- sources. I then owned an extremely neurotic cocker spaniel named Mr. Chips, with whom I was emotionally entangled. Mr. Chips and I traveled south by train and took up residence in a new but nondescript apartment in a house on Fifth Street in West Durham. One of my warmest welcomers was Professor William Blackburn, whose role as mentor while I was a student had been decisive in my seeking a career in writ- ing, and who now made it clear that he was still ready to offer encouragement and, if need be, solace. The East Campus Library was close by, and I haunted its shelves. I had some good Duke friends, among them the late Ashbel Brice, editor of Duke Press, whose house nearby became a West Durham version of a literary salon, and Bob Loomis, who was then finishing his last year at the university and later be- came my editor at Random House. I also began a very satisfactory romantic arrangement with a fine-looking nurse at Duke hospital. Nurses, with their biologi- cal know-how, were esteemed for their atypical generosity in that erotic ice age. All should have been propitious for the creation of a first novel, but there were further snags. Mr. Chips, for one thing, became canis non grata at my house, owned by an ill-tempered redneck who one day gave me seventy-two hours to get rid of my be- loved friend or face eviction. I was distraught but so financially insecure that I couldn’t move to another place, and was forced to convey ownership of the dog to a professor of philosophy on the Duke faculty. (1 vowed to steel myself against the hurt by not seeing Mr. Chips again, fearful that my heart would break; when, two months later, I relaxed my resolve and paid him a visit he attacked me savagely.) More importantly, however, the book that was to become Lie Down in Darkness simply refused to stir, or be stirred, from its embryonic state and acquire the out- lines and substance of a living, breathing novel. It’s clear that this had to do with a failure of conceptualization. By this | mean Vill that I hadn’t at that time worked out adequately in my mind an idea of the book’s essential architecture, the invisible scaffolding so necessary to support the complex structure of character and event and dramatic revelation. The vision I possessed— and it was a passionate one, arousing me each day to what seemed prodigious efforts of concentration—was still in the realm of feeling; 1 hadn’t found a way to subdue that feeling so that it would be obedient to the demands of narrative, blending with it to form the more or less symmetrically made, aesthetically satisfying object all novelists, young or old, yearn for their works to become. I was floundering, and re- mained floundering as I scribbled away on my yellow legal pads on the wobbly card table in the house on Fifth Street, often wondering if I shouldn’t have gone into the foreign service, my first boyhood ambition. The handwritten notation I made on the final page of the present text doubtless sums up my mood at that time: Or am I too far gone? Would like to write a war novel: these people give me the creeps. Inheritance of Night, then, is made up of the fragments of a beginning, bits of fruitful inspiration mingled with conceits that were stillborn. Most of it is the prod- uct of my frustrated but by no means worthless year in Durham. As I’ve said, certain portions are embedded verbatim, or nearly so, in the finally published work. So my time on Fifth Street could scarcely be regarded as a waste, no matter how indecisive the outcome of my labor. Still, I realized that again I had reached a dead end. And so once more I traveled back north to the metropolis, hoping that I might finally re- solve the problems that had been driving me to distraction. Clearly I managed to do this, at least to my own satisfaction, in the two years that passed between the time I left Durham and the early spring day in 1951 when I wrote the last line of Lie Down in Darkness. William Styron Roxbury, Connecticut April 5, 1992 af Som (ar, de Oe ei iain, «nas aire 14) crac ange milter Delete ahi ailigedlaiientes 20 ling Woe Pei Bee Viengbuier types wwtoly pea, on tw teal agi teiglilen aleed iy ied ecu Ste ibe Haeeidirachateal [ibe af a iCROMINGL Str eis Me lt winter er os) me a) oO0 lve OP a ihe, : 4°) are ae an, Aopen a A ae aww) Mm Bey ipa wy a ee 7) Sal Cees | Hiwwbowt al) priv Daeeei vel ell ee aul) ate Mev ita iki er ony pov Vareet eared by bat Lea Re al oo ee ae ee TT ps Cpe pe LCG Dt ER ae a ‘4 r ret (case Oj po rire & ee eet ie rata LAs ee Ti ahs erry hh ite, tha Ae 2819 y Salado te Ly eet erred PM pa ree PT RS VTE, SNe on ea fshen itnagesé vl «Lt aginst png fae dt aaliy OF AR hae got 4 udeas @oed sib: Linea inhi’ ih Peed SPL aera “) AER. 4 a pams atl pera) Oe See mb Sed tal oO lehy Ge fede ight hee eer ee ee re leans task oi ains iw C+) OD wii Ree Vines Se ee tile, ben goed Ay S09) Cote + LTS APTI Pa son as pl iA eames : OAc: Palais) tS AR ety Tacx eco ean ey haul hive dibe (UTR DY Uae rte ahi of ge : Hin a eth * in, ity: ies i oe whee ‘Med ea ARMA, Ie hy “eee ioe a Se eee iyhy'sy ER Pan ses Rr) ay re hie Huson «ie MAT ae ee mL on peat 7 spent, i ie er rer by the ena lua A qulity ist, i = es ad ee | «bind alin woul oe a a i nl vat id ey icsstligwiandiin raat noe, i me rs ea re nye Introduction Near the end of Sophie’s Choice, William Styron’s middle-aged narrator Stingo men- tions the novel he was in the process of composing some thirty years earlier: “I had already fashioned for it an appropriately melancholy title: Inheritance of Night. This from the Requiescat of Matthew Arnold, an elegy for a woman’s spirit, with its con- cluding line: ‘Tonight it doth inherit the vasty hall of Death.’”' Most readers of Sophie’s Choice know that the narrative is autobiographical, and some of them are probably able to identify broad parallels between the story and Styron’s literary ca- reer. Few readers, however, would likely know that from 1947 to 1949 Styron did in fact work on a novel entitled Inheritance of Night, and that this novel was the unfin- ished predecessor of Lie Down in Darkness (1951). The original handwritten drafts of Inheritance no longer survive, but in March 1980 Styron’s former literary agent Elizabeth McKee came upon the typescripts of Inheritance in her files and sent them to the novelist at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. Styron forwarded these materi- als to the Manuscript Department of the William R. Perkins Library, Duke Univer- sity, in March 1982. Today they are housed in the collection of his papers there. These typescript materials—a prospectus, two lengthy beginnings, and a con- tinuation of the second of these beginnings—are reproduced in this volume. They show young William Styron groping his way into his first novel, trying out various narrative strategies, and attempting with some success to discard the heavy influ- ence of William Faulkner. These materials, studied in conjunction with Styron’s ex- tant letters from the late 1940s, reveal important information about the composition of Lie Down in Darkness. They also establish an unexpected link between Marcus Bonner, one of the characters in Inheritance of Night, and Stingo of Sophie’s Choice. In May 1947, Styron was living in New York City, working as an associate edi- tor and manuscript reader for Whittlesey House, the trade-book division of McGraw-Hill publishers. He was trying to begin a novel but was having little suc- cess, partly because the rooming house in which he was living was so dreary. “I find my present room on 11th street a completely depressing affair,” he wrote to his father at about this time, “and I know I'd go mad if I had to stay pent up there for long.”* By October 10, Styron had been fired from McGraw-Hill and had de- cided to work full-time on his novel. He had some savings in the bank and could draw twenty dollars a week from the Veterans Administration; later in October he learned that he and his father were to share a modest legacy. By having his father dole out the legacy to him in small monthly amounts, Styron was able to cover his expenses and work without distraction on his novel. He had moved to more suit- able quarters on Lexington Avenue and had enrolled in editor Hiram Haydn’s class in fiction-writing at the New School for Social Research. Inheritance of Night began to take shape, but progress was slow. A letter from Styron to his father, written on December 9, reveals hesitancy and self-doubt: I can’t tell you how much this novel means to me. The process of sitting down and writing is pure torture to me, but at the same time I think about the book all the time and am in more or less a suspended state of worry and anxiety if I'm not writing. I worry, too, about the sincerity of my effort; if whether what I’m writing is not so much rhetoric, and it is only in my most now- self-critical mood that I can even come vaguely to realize that what I write does, in truth, have an element of truth in it and is, after all, a more faithful rendering of life than I believe it to be in my moments of doubt. By early January, Haydn had persuaded Crown Publishers to give Styron a contract and an advance on his novel. The first fifty pages were nearing comple- tion, and Styron was preparing a prospectus of the rest of the book. Portions of this initial draft were later reworked and published in Lie Down in Darkness, but Styron would have to rewrite the material extensively before he would be satisfied to pub- lish it. Prospectus and Typescript I The first version of Inheritance of Night is prefaced by epigraphs from Matthew Arnold and Euripides. In a note on the third leaf, Styron explains the narrative xil strategy: “I intend for this novel to be divided into three books of from ten to fifteen sections apiece. Each book is to be preceded by a monologue, direct or interior, which is intended to throw light upon Peyton and her story.” The narrative begins with the first of the monologues, this one from Maudie Loftis, who has been placed in the Mordecai Clinic in Richmond by her father, Milton. But Maudie, in this monologue, is not the same character one finds in the published version of Lie Down in Darkness. In Inheritance, Maudie is only mildly retarded and speaks in an idiom that suggests lack of education rather than feeble-mindedness. Her monologue is delivered in September 1945, when she is almost thirty years old. She is angry over being institutionalized and believes that only an injured leg has held her back—that otherwise she is normal. Maudie ends her monologue: “I want to do things like other people and I think it’s a shame that Papa put me in this place. I just want to be happy, I tell you.” Maudie’s monologue is reminiscent of Benjy Compson’s opening section in The Sound and the Fury. Though not nearly so backward mentally as Benjy, she has, like him, been brought up by an alcoholic father and a neurotic mother, and she has been sent to an institution, just as Benjy was sent to Jackson by Jason Compson. Styron was not satisfied with these pages, and he would drop them when he made a second attempt to begin his novel. He had not been able to suggest Maudie’s retarda- tion through her speech, and her section had sounded rather as if it were narrated by a backwoods countrywoman. In the published book Maudie is presented quite differently. She is so slow mentally that she is nearly mute, and she has become more symbol than character—an object for Helen’s demented love and a representa- tion of the emptiness of the Loftis marriage. The second section of Typescript I is familiar to readers of Lie Down in Dark- ness. It is the initial passage of the published novel, the section that begins “Riding down to Port Warwick from Richmond. . . .” Styron patterned this section, with its > direct address to the reader as “you,” after the opening pages of Robert Penn Warrten’s All the King’s Men.’ This section was the only writing from Inheritance of Night with which Styron was truly pleased, and it remained essentially unchanged, except for a cut of nine lines, from Typescript I through all succeeding typescripts and into the published book. The next twelve pages of Typescript I are similar to the corresponding section of Lie Down in Darkness. Here Styron presents the scene at the railroad station where xiii Peyton’s body will shortly arrive, but in this early version only Milton Loftis, Ella Swan, and one undertaker meet the train. Riding in the train, however, and accom- panying the body from New York, where he rescued it from a pauper’s grave, is a character wholly absent from Lie Down in Darkness. His name is Marcus Bonner; he was a childhood classmate of Peyton’s who, after college and service in the war, went to New York where he worked as a manuscript reader in a publishing house and “lived alone in a furnished room in a residence club.” He has been infatuated with Peyton since childhood, but it was his older brother, Luther Bonner, who be- came one of Peyton’s lovers. (Milton Loftis, partly out of revenge, has had an affair with Luther’s wife Dolly.)* Originally Marcus must have been intended to play a central role in Inheritance of Night, but that role was reduced in the second version (Typescript Il in the present volume). The character was dropped entirely from later versions and does not appear in Lie Down in Darkness. Marcus is such a hesitant, Prufrockian character that Lie Down in Darkness is probably stronger without him. Styron, however, would carry the outlines of Marcus in his mind for the next twenty-five years, rethinking and reimagining him until he emerged as a quite different figure—Stingo, the narrator of Sophie’s Choice. Stingo is similar to Marcus in many ways: both are young men with literary ambi- tions, both are manuscript readers, both live in dreary rooming houses, both are sensitive and observant, both are inclined to idealize women. But Stingo is feistier than Marcus, more confident and altogether more attractive. Part of the difference is in point-of-view: Stingo in Sophie’s Choice is portrayed in the retrospective first-person mode by an older Stingo who views his younger self with humor and irony. In 1947 and 1948, Styron was not yet able to achieve this narrative detachment. The next section of Inheritance of Night is told from Marcus's point-of-view. The most important revelation here comes as Marcus regards Milton Loftis and is “filled with an enormous contempt” when he remembers what Peyton had told him “one night in New York in a fury of grief and drunkenness.” She had confessed “things he refused to believe until later when, carefully retrieving in his memory all those curious and unnamed gestures of the past, he came to know that the things she told him were true indeed.” One suspects that Peyton had told Marcus of some kind of incestuous relationship between herself and her father—whether sexually consummated or not, one cannot tell from the surviving drafts. This incestuous ele- XiV ment survives in Lie Down in Darkness though it is muted there, partly because of cuts in Peyton’s final interior monologue that Styron’s publisher, Bobbs-Merrill, in- sisted upon in 1951. The following section of Typescript I is narrated from the point-of-view of Mr. Casper, the undertaker; it appears on pages 18-23 of the published novel in consid- erably expanded form. Then we return, in the typescript, to Marcus’s point-of-view: he remembers a school production of “Cinderella” in which Peyton played the title role and he was the page boy who tried the glass slipper on her foot. This material too would be dropped when Styron prepared the second typescript version. The final portion of Typescript I is an early version of the first of the sections in Lie Down in Darkness that are narrated from Helen Loftis’s point-of-view. Helen, in her bedroom, listens as the undertaker’s limousine pulls away from her house; then she thinks about Milton, Maudie, and Peyton. Most of the scenes she recollects in the published book are present already in this early typescript, but they appear in Lie Down in Darkness in rewritten and expanded form, and in a different order. Surviving with Typescript I is a five-page prospectus which Styron apparently prepared for Crown Publishers. Though the plot of Inheritance is markedly different from that of Lie Down in Darkness, the elements of the later novel are already present: alcoholism, adultery, failed love, suicide, the dissolution of an upper middle-class family, and the decadence of postwar southern society. In form this prospectus most nearly resembles the Compson Appendix to The Sound and the Fury, which Styron first encountered during the summer of 1947 in Malcolm Cowley’s edition of The Portable Faulkner. He seems to have been trying here to imi- tate some of its features.° In the prospectus and Typescript I, Styron’s characters are beginning to come alive, but they appear not yet to have been fully conceived. Faulkner's influence is apparent, both in the prospectus and in much of the other writing. There are echoes of F. Scott Fitzgerald as well. The possible incest between father and daughter brings to mind Tender Is the Night, for example, and later, when Marcus recalls that Peyton’s voice “had the sound of silver coins clinking together” one thinks of the famous description of Daisy Buchanan’s voice in The Great Gatsby. Styron must have recognized that these influences were rather too apparent. He resolved to begin his novel over, cutting much material, expanding the salvaged sections, and at- tempting to forge his own distinctive prose style. XV Typescript II First, however, Styron left New York and returned to live in Durham, on more fa- miliar ground. By July 11, 1948, he was back in the city, temporarily staying with a friend; by July 21 he was installed in an apartment at 901 Fifth Street, near Duke’s East Campus.’ Early in September he contacted a literary agent for the first time; his choice was Elizabeth McKee, who had been recommended by a mutual friend at Whittlesey House. In his first letter to McKee, dated September 9, Styron mentions that he is writing a novel but admits that “only a small part” is finished. “I ain’t no speedball,” he notes. He is also working on several short stories, which he hopes McKee will be able to market for him. The novel, he thinks, will be finished “some- time in the middle of next year.” Near the end of the letter he adds: “I'm twenty-three years old, and for some dreary and inexplicable reason I guess I'll keep at this writing business for a long time. Maybe it’s because it’s the only thing I know how to do with even a faint degree of competence.”® Styron settled in and began to rewrite the opening section of Inheritance of Night. By October 12, he had finished his revision and expansion and had sent a typescript of the material to McKee. In his covering letter, one can see that his con- ception of his novel had by this time crystallized into a form very close to the even- tual pattern for Lie Down in Darkness: The story, in short, is nothing but that of a modern upper South middle-class family, and the daughter of the family, named Peyton Loftis. I've got no drum to beat, political or otherwise. I just want to give a picture of a way of life that I have known, and of the people therein. I probably have a moral purpose— the late Bliss Perry said that you had to have one—but it hasn't quite yet emerged. Anyway, Peyton, who is twenty-four and something of a bitch, has just died violently and I must say horribly in New York and is being returned to her home town for a hasty and unpublicized interment. What transpires on the one day of her burial is the burden of the novel. Gradually, through their memories, you get a picture of Peyton and, I hope, of the “way of life” of which I was speaking. If the story seems morbid it’s because I’m probably morbid myself, although I’ve got some good ghastly humor later on. This second typescript survives in two identical copies, a ribbon and a carbon, both among Styron’s papers at Duke. It has no title page; letters from this period sug- gest that Styron had by now rejected Inheritance of Night as a title and was referring to his novel as The Story of Peyton Loftis. Typescript II begins with the epigraph from Euripides, then launches straight into the opening of the eventual published text: “Riding down to Port Warwick from Richmond. . . .” Maudie’s monologue is gone, and the scene at the train station, which still follows the “Riding down” section, has been expanded. Now Milton and Dolly Bonner meet the train along with Ella Swan and two undertakers. Marcus Bonner is still on the train, but his role is diminished and he does not recall, in the limousine, any drunken revelations from Peyton. In this second typescript one finds the first mention of the radiator trouble that will de- lay the hearse in the published novel. In the earlier version Styron had slowed down the automobile by means of detours for Daddy Faith’s followers and for road-repair gangs, but in Typescript II he used the more plausible device of radiator trouble on a hot August day. Milton’s recollections begin on page 9 of this second typescript: this time he is more obviously haunted by his father’s disapproval of him and bothered by his memories of the old man’s sententious advice. Beginning on page 18 one finds the eight-page section told from the undertaker’s point-of-view. Marcus’s recollections about grade school and the production of “Cinderella” are gone, though, and Helen’s reverie in her bedroom has been considerably expanded and rewritten. The most noticeable change in Helen’s section is the addition of her self-righteous satisfaction over Milton’s grief. “He is feeling it now,” she thinks. “Perhaps now it will be upturned that chalice he has borne of whatever constant immeasurable selflove . . . upturned in this moment of his affliction and dishonor.” Typescript III Styron continued to push ahead with his writing. In early January 1949, he visited New York and talked with Haydn and McKee, then returned to Durham and re- sumed work. By the first of March he had finished twenty more pages and had mailed them to Haydn. These pages also survive; they are reproduced as Typescript III in this volume. Some of this material would be included in the novel, but much of it would not. The first nine pages are similar to portions of Lie Down in Darkness: in this section Milton hears a lyric from a country song on a restaurant jukebox, then enters the restaurant where he becomes nauseated in the restroom. Next follows a XVii five-page history of Port Warwick which traces the development of the city from a coaling stop to a shipbuilding center and explains the demographic origins of the population. The passages, though informative, are so transparently expository that they stand out awkwardly from the surrounding narrative. In the published book Styron would drop these pages and reveal information about Port Warwick in a dif- ferent way, bit by bit through the recollections of his characters. The final pages of Typescript III are a first attempt to develop the character of Dolly Bonner. She is a native of Port Warwick whose father died when she was fourteen, leaving her and her mother in straitened circumstances. Her mother had to take in boarders to make ends meet, and Dolly married one of them, “a fleshy, asthmatic man of about forty with soft hands and spectacles and a look of vague alarm.” The boarder, named Albert Brokenborough, has a lung ailment and has come to Port Warwick for the sea air. He dies about a year after marrying Dolly, and she is left alone. Styron was displeased with this writing when he sent it to Haydn. At the bottom of the final page he noted: “Would like to write a war novel: these people give me the creeps.” Unhappy over the way his novel was going, Styron wrote a troubled letter to Haydn in mid-March. In his answering letter, Haydn suggested that it might be best for Styron to begin another manuscript. On April 15, Styron wrote Elizabeth McKee that he would move back to New York within two weeks. “Still under Mr. Haydn’s guidance,” he wrote, “I am beginning another novel—an elaboration of the prison story I told you about. The novel which I sent you just seemed to bog down. I had no idea where I was going. I’m sure the new novel will be better all the way around.” This new project was to be a short narrative about Styron’s experi- ences as a military prison guard on Hart's Island in New York Harbor during 1945.° This project too was stillborn, however, and Styron eventually returned to Inherit- ance of Night in the summer of 1949 after a brief residence in a rooming house at 1506 Caton Avenue in Brooklyn—the rooming house that became the model for Yetta Zimmerman’s establishment in Sophie’s Choice. Styron again rewrote the material he had shown Haydn and McKee (except for the “Riding down to Port Warwick” passage), and somehow, on this third attempt, the novel “took.” Styron pushed ahead steadily through the rest of 1949 and all of 1950; in early April of 1951 he finished the manuscript of a novel he was now calling Lie Down in Darkness. XVlil In reconstructing the history of Inheritance of Night, in ordering the typescripts and in studying the extant correspondence, one is struck by Styron’s dogged persistence, his commitment to making himself into a good writer, and his refusal to let less than his best work pass. Probably he could have finished Inheritance of Night and pub- lished it, but it would not have been the novel that Lie Down in Darkness turned out to be. Styron had to wait for his own writing and thinking to mature. While waiting, he practiced by composing short stories and by manipulating the sections of narra- tive that he had already written, rather as one turns a kaleidoscope, searching for the position in which the colored fragments will combine to produce the most beautiful pattern. Only when he hit upon the proper arrangement was he able to proceed with the novel that would eventually establish his reputation. Notes 1. William Styron, Sophie’s Choice (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 449. 2. Styron to W. C. Styron, Sr., dated “Saturday” in the former’s hand and “May 1947” in the latter’s. Styron’s letters to his father are among the materials at Duke and are quoted here with his permission. 3. See Styron’s memoir “Robert Penn Warren” in This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (New York: Ran- dom House, 1982), pp. 245-48. 4. None of these relationships is found in Lie Down in Darkness. Both Marcus and Luther are absent from the published book; Styron retains only the surname “Bonner” for Dolly and her husband Pookie. 5. Arthur D. Casciato, “His Editor's Hand: Hiram Haydn’s Changes in Styron’s Lie Down in Darkness,” Studies in Bibliography 33 (1980), 263-76; reprinted in Critical Essays on William Styron, ed. Arthur D. Casciato and James L. W. West III (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982), pp. 36-46. 6. Styron mentions The Portable Faulkner and comments on Cowley’s influential introduction in a letter to his father dated 24 July 1947. 7. This apartment house still stands; Fifth Street has been renamed Sedgefield Street. 8. Styron’s letters to Elizabeth McKee are among the Harold Matson Papers at the Butler Library, Co- lumbia University; they are quoted here with permission. 9. No drafts of this early attempt to fictionalize the Hart’s Island experience survive, but in the summer of 1953, while living in Italy, Styron again tried without success to write a novella based on his stint as a prison guard. The seven-thousand-word aborted opening is among his papers at the Library of Con- gress; it was published as “Blankenship” in Papers on Language and Literature, special Styron issue, 23 (Fall 1987), 430-48. xix oP Woda Re Li rae “eynt. onrlotap ela at Caine | On oe ei a Hee eo pe TUAeel ty * 4) ne Re es ae a acts? tool Bim RAP ea teahifenn aie @ r fi -< y Marta Saletan og yh oy oe id Ae? iw oe nlite a Abt be Wy =» Tae inte ie Lgl iy caylee (hey Ot “lee I 0 or 4 ACO Vie ayy A pk? 88) Tue SAD a oer ie fl en a } t 4 479 (Oh ey WI etl j elie bk Ad \ div ¥ yee aA S “we 1% # } ee e yt @ iv ww) ri -. ‘ iv, iy) - é ae , @ =Y ’ é ‘ A ero otis (Te Gil | aces 5 , Gea ‘ aed") jul baad aa Hwee we? Fy ae TAL Ae Pi ein in: Heep iT con Cam) 049 en a) dinhd 4 ariivile (4 ene ae 2 Wh ¥ Lyle eugene Ae ep cgeglen 9 mpeg ant Ab its’ +. Ae ch Pap é "14 1) \ oc [vous iW? Shoes th oe Ow si? } lu 7 ars > . 4% wemtaM A) «al lor ~ e ev eli ale ) welt y Ja el 6 oe eee vee! . Dai Pew ih bald eet eeenee Vos +) Whe on oUt mead gobhotinn qnogadtaunt bheiia aaa ONE, pga poate lay ee gl ee oe A igen AD eduiey! dev wae eae ge ‘ L¥ PROSPECTUS (Winter 1947-48) "Inheritance of Night! THE STORY OF PEYTON LOFTIS This novel beats no drum, makes no moral, rights no wrong. It is a pieture of part of life as T have seen it and of the lives of veople I have known = although of the lives of various and dissimilar people, none of whom could be identified singly with any of the characters in this book. Mainly it is the story of 9» girl who although not the typi- cal American girl shares at least part of the nature of her contempor- aries in that her life, while nerhans no more hevoy a life had it been lived in another age, might 1n some measure appeared then 2 bit less futile, She was bound in 4 web of glittering days and dark, fury-driven nights and although she would have been the last nerson to use the word "lonely in regerd to herself, she died as she lived, in loneliness. Thie is the story of: PEYTON LOFTIS,. Born in 1922 of vatrician perents in the seacoaart city of Port Warwick, Virginia, she died at the ege of twenty-four, in 1946, in New York, lying for twelve days and nichts - silent st last, decanitated, and calcimine white =— on a stretcher in the city mortuary on Hest Twenty-ninth Street, after which, when the legal time was cone cluded, she was hauled away in a pine box along with twentyesix others in a rattling creen truck to the vaupers! cemetery. When she was dise interred some weeks later, unon the intervention of 8 young man whom she hed never Joved, it wac found that the flesh - woon which so many lovers (in her last days lovers of all egec, sizes, colors, end degrees of intoxication) had tendered esrecses in every conceivable yertretion of 2 passton, wonder, gentleness, and lust = that this self-same flesh, which Peyton herself had stroked so edmiringly and tenderly after each fragrant bath, had reached such a state of vutrefaction in Potter's Field (it was August) that the authorities, even more annoyed than the three prisoners assigned to transfer the remains into the chromium interior of a Chambers! hearse, considered for a moment the advisability of leaving the body there to resume its process of gradual, anonymous decaye Upon the urgent demands, however, of the young man whom she had never loved, what was left of Peyton was placed in a Health Bepartment- inepected, hermetically sealed case and loaded eboard a baggage car in Pennaylvania Station and was eventually delivered to Port Warwick, ale though some four hours late, since the train itself was derailed near Fredericksburg, Virginie, partially wrecking the Baggage car and slight- ly damaging the case, At the private burial the next day at the Warwick Memorial Park were the following spectators and mourners; MILTON LOFTIS, age fifty-four, father of Peyton, vortly, handsome, his face slightly flushed with sunburn and the prolonged effects of bonded Bourbon whiskey, which he loved dearly, He was awape then for the firet time, es he gazed st the cool pine grove beyond Route 60, not so much of the tragedy of life,iin his own verticuler case, but merely of its swift vassing, He was married to an influentual and wealthy woman end it was only rarely, elthough inteneely, that he exnerienced @ pains ful sense of guilt when he realized that it was through her slone that he had conducted such @ succesgful and lucrative practice of law, In only two apnerent ways did he differ from his colleagues, One wes that, unlike them, hic affair with another woman occurred only once and then at ean age when one would think that abstinence for so many years might have indicated morpl compunction, or a&t least ® dogged lack of interest, Esvecially in the light of his almost slavish Aevotion to hie younger daughter, Peyton, &# love so devouring, sn attachment so intense that it in itself comprised the other manner —- at least the outward manner = in which he seemed different from the others, HELEN LOFTIS, age forty-nine, mother of Peyten, wife of Milton, Born Helen Peyton in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, the daughter of an indenene dently wealthy Army colonel, she spent her early life in veacetime Army camps end boarding schools but nevertheless developed into an intelligent woman with sanguine ambitions for her husband, 2 fastidious housékeeper, and an impecesable hostess of notable charm, When, in the year following the secon@ World War, her husband left her for Dolly Bonner end her elder daughter, Maudie = a retarded girl of twent¥enine —- killed herself . efter e thwarted love-sffair with a taxiedriver, she herself attempted self-destruction by poison, was saved by a stomach pump, and, after prome ising the Episcopal rector, Mr, Carr, "never to do it again," she dis= asopeared into the big house on the Boulevard and was seen only once in a while —- a stooped, white-haired old woman who took walke in the garden and could be seen from the Boulevard, unon occasion, standing beneath a, sycamore, jerking her hands srasmodically toward the sun, MARCUS BONNER, age twenty-seven. ‘Born in Port Warwick, The young men whom Peyton never loved, He spent his adolescence in indolent and harmless pursuits, vaid helpless court to Peyton's attentions, and watched in agony 2s she eccepted and vanauished one after enother of his com- panions, After college and the experience of war dimmed his memory of her he went to New York where he was employed by 2 book publisher to read end pass judgment on manuscripts with such titles ae: "Tall Growa the Eelgrase" and “World Peace: A Solution," He lived alone in a furnished room in @ residence club, the only young versen in @ vnalace of crushed hopes and lingering memories, He met Peyton long sfter her effair with his brother, Luther, although not so long after her brief marriage to Sidney Harris, And loving her once more, and loathing her, he watched her as she nesred the end of that road which she set out on fifteen years before, that day when, as a child seclded@ by her mother for wearing lipstick, she retorted: "T know what I'm doing," SIDNEY HARRTS, age twenty-six, Born in New York City, He fell in love with Peyton when she came to New York to art school, He was caught by the same beauty that had held all the others, She thought him intellectusl and vrofound, The marriage, which lasted seven months, was consecrated at the Loftisec' home by the Reverend Mr, Carr, following which no announcement was made of the affair, and Mrs, Loftis went to bed for two days because Peyton was already pregnant (everybody knew that), and furthermore Sidney was a Jew. In New York agein, a few weeks after the beby was born, Peyton, who despized everything she need= ed the most to love, tried to drown the infant in a bathtub, and would have succeeded had not Sidney broken the door down and teken thecohildt from her, The came day he left without saying 9 word and she never saw him or her baby again, and didn't care, The following were not vresent at the burial, Some were thinking of Peyton, however, and some were deads LUTHER AND DOLLY BONNER, Mareus's elder brother and his wife, Tt was Dolly who wrote the society column for the local morning news paner and who at the Huntington Country Club one night made Milton Loftis tell her,°in a buoyant spasm of too-much-whiskey and laughter how much he loved her - words that he remembered with & sudden shock the following morning when he realized that after 911 these yeers he did love her, indeed, And Peyton, half in revenge, half in despair because her father no longer loved her in the came way, took up with Dolly's husband, Luther, who was ® draughtsman in the shipyard and eang tenor in the choir of St, Mark’ Episcopal Church. MAUD LOFTIS. Born in Port Warwick. In her the same madness that Milton Loftis had fathered in his younger daughter worked a gentler, but just as fatal necessity. When she died, by throwing herself off the seawall, she was nearly thirty yesrs old, with the mind of a child of twelve, A gaunt, masculine face and an accident as a child, which cost her a leg, mede her the victim 911 her life of Peyton's fury, Although she had two lovers in her life - one e gardener, the other 4 taxi-driver, she found no love et all, Her life was spent in hoping, and dying for her, finally, wees no more terrible than going to sleep. HUGH BONNER, age sixty-two, Born in Plymouth, North Caroline, Spent his days at sea, Pride, and not women, ruined him, Upon the death of his divorced wife he left his two sons, Marcus and Luther, in the care of his married sister in Port Warwick, He knew very little of either of his sons when, dying of cencer in the Norfolk Marine Hospital, Luther snd Peyton vaid him a visit and persuaded him to sign over his will from Marcus's to Luther's name, The next day he died, not thinking of his sons at all, but dreaming of a life raft and a horrible cabin boy in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and something soft and unutterably kind named Irma, in Bremerhavn, long ago. Also voresent at the burial but off to the side a little, beneath the voplar tree, because che wae a Negro, was: ELLA SWAN, the Loftises' cook, ege seventy-cne, born in Port Warwick, She wes the only friend, beside her father, that Peyton ever had, God to her was Father Charity who drove down from Baltimore every August in a glittering Cadillac to oa alee the faithful in Hempton Roads. She alone understood, DVR ESCRIPT 1 First Beginning (Winter 1947-48) Beit woke oe) i) einige test I intend for this novel to be divided into three books of from ten to fifteen sections apiece, Esch book is to be vreceded by a monologue, direct or interior, which ig in= tended_to throw light upon Peyton end her story.] ral \ ey et” SS ake | PLY, a ‘ ya hs WA p was ’ a at a’ Sasa. ~ > Parte iy aT eat 4) .? Wties AN rae male! A bs > MAUDIE LOFTIS, at the Mordecsi Clinic, Richmond, Virginia, September, 1945, Bta1) LORD, I don't know how many times I remember seeing Pepa come tearing up the lawn when T'd be sitting there sewing on the vorch, IT sewed a lot thet summer. A sampler T remember T did for 014 lady Dyke who wee in the hospitel, She died before T wes finished but T remember how much trouble it took because Mama taught me a lot of new things sbout sewing - stitching she called it — and I did that sampler in blue and red with & verse oh it that went God bless our home a happy one. I forget the rest but Peyton would leugh sat me every afternoon and say that it was old-fashioned and I could hear Mama holler out, "Hush, Peyton, hush," Peyton was eround nine years old then, I reckon, because she's six yesrs younzer then me and I was fifteen then, Fifteen then because that's how old I wes when I got out of The Schodl, And it wes that summer thet I sat on the pvorch every afternoon end worked on the sampler, They taught me st The Sehool, And T'd sit there in the swing out of the sun, moving every onee in a while when the sunshine would hit me, you know, end then Pana would come home, tesring up the lawn velling "Peyton, Peyton!" TT couldn't see him for the hydrangeas but I could hear his voiee, Lord, thet was » long time ago, but I remember it plain. Iwas fifteen then because I remember Peyton hed her ninth birthdsy then. 15 She was born in June and she's six years younger than me. “Peyton, Peyton," I could heer Pana holler, ond the Gog = his name wac Dover, He's dead now but his name was Dover because thet's whet Peyton celled him when she wasx8 baby and couldn't sey the name right, I think his name wee really Rover or something = he'd run out barking st Papa and Pana would come up the stens with sweat on his face and pat me on the back and say "Hello, Meudie, honey," and run right into the house hollering, "Peyton, Peyton," And Peyton would be hid somewhere in the house and he'd ruch ell over inside, I could hear him inside whistling end then she'd come out from wherever she was hid and if they were near *- the window T could see him nick her un and kiss her, him laughing and her laughing just like that, Oh IT reckon she was his fevorite, all richt, He'd call her his little glamor ctrl end then Mame would holler out from the sunvorch in the beck, T could hear her say, "Milton, Milton, nleese try to be oulet, my migraine is so bad today," end they'd hush up, Pena and Peyton, and then thev'd come out of the house real quiet, whispering together like he wasn't any older than her, and go up to Powhatan Road and get come teererean and bring me back some,eLord, it was hot that summer, IT couldn't walk very far, just like now, on account of my leg, and while they'd be gone I'd sit there and sew and watch the water, We live on the water, on Hampton Roads, Papa alwaye said it wes the best nlace for a house in Port Warwick, where we live, and I guess so, In the summer the water is reel blue and you can see the battleshins and airplane carrirs and all. When Peyton got older Papa would take her out clamming and Mama and me would sit on the vorch and drink ice tea and watch them way out in the low tide looking like sticks, Pans teaching Peyton how to clam T couldn't ever go on sccount of my leg, you *now, end I never wanted to go mach Bnyhow because, Lord, I elways thought clams and oysters are the messiest things there are, I like fish end softshell crabs and all, but clams end oysters are mesaye Mama didn't ever go with them clamming, She didn't think it was dignified, That's what she'd Saye "Milton, why don't you let Clay get those clams? TJ think it looks awful undignified for you to do that." And Pane would say, “Where's all your spirit, Helen?" ‘Thet!sc what held cay, Glsy's our nigger boy, only he's not with us any more, He left a long time ago. Pana caid he went uv North where he could make more money, I don't know, But Pana would alweys take Peyton clamming,. We live on the Boulevard snd there are a lot of houses around us but we own the beach and we had a boat, too, until the storm blew it away. We own the clams, too, Pana was slwsys down there on the beach with Peyton in the summer, buildine sand houses and alle That is, when he wasn't playing golf. He used to love golf, He doesn't olay sny more because he's got heart trouble, T think, He'tc a lawyer end he vlayed golf with 511 of hic sand Mama's friends, They were mostly doctors and lawyers that be= longed to the country club because they were the only ones in Port Werwick that had esny money, Papa always said, But some of the bosses in the shipyard used to play, too. Me snd Mama would sit there watching Papa and Peyton way out clamming, watching them go down the beach until they weren't any bigger than sticks, the sunlight shining down snd the water real green, until you couldn't see them any more and #11 you could see was the beach stretching down in a kind of curve to Old Point and Norfolk scross the water looking resl little with the smoke coming uo and making the sky smoky and ell, Mama would sit there on the swing by me until you couldn't cee them any more, looking mad and sAye ing that Papa forgot all ebout her when Peyton wes around. And then 17 4 she'd go in and tell Ella Swan - she's our nigger cook = to cook dinner and she'd come out end stroke my hair end say, "my deer little derkeyed girl," and then she'd go back on the sunporech and lie down, I'd just sit there and sew on that 01d samvler until Paos and Peyton would come back eround six o'clock with mud all over their legs and they'd be laughing together like they elways did, Peyton was only nine years old but she was smart, Lord, she was smart, like she is now I reckon, and Papa and her would be talking together like she wasn't any younger than him et all, Once Peyton vut a clam down my neck and Lord didn't IT scream, I just hollered and eried and Meme came out end slapped Peyton good and hard, "Didn't I tell you to auit teasing her?" Mama said, and Peyton cried and Mama eried end T was crying fit to kill, Pava came out end told Mama to auit slapping Peyton and they argued something ewful and I walked out on the breakwater and watched the shive, Lord, I remember that summer so well, Papa and Peyton never went clamming together any yeers after that because I guess Peyton was growing up end she had a lot of friends in school and all, I never went to public school myself, on account of my leg, I mean TIT was in publig school for a while in the first and second grades but I never could do my work es good as the other children on seccount of my leg and finally Mama and Papa took me out and sent me to 4 private teacher named Miss Barton, I don't remember much about her. Then when I got a little older they sent me to The School up in Maryland, I was un there five years, It was built like a home, almost, and there were fifteen girls besides me, It was on e green hill looking down on a river end an old woman named Mrs, Flame was the principal. Lord, she was mean, She used to ecsll us "mics," Miss Loftis this and Miss Loftis that until IT thought I would go crazy. I wes always crying 18 that first vear, I was so homesick, One time Mre, Flame called me into her office end told me T was a silly little ninny and I went out eryine and tripped on the floor getting out of there - Lord, I had such a time with my leg until I got grown up - end she tried to help me up, saying, "I'm sorry, dear girl," and I hit her with my hand and got up and went up to my room and out all my stuff in @ bag and was going home, I would have gone, too, but Mrs, Flame came un and said she was sorry and not to go home, She sure acted worried, Well, I didn't go home but I stayed in my room and eried for a long time until Mics Monehan came uv snd told me not to grieve, Oh, she was wonderful, I'11 always remember that Miss Monahan, She was so pretty. Always wanting to help you and all, and ealling you Maudie instead of miss, She teught arithmetic end horsebeck riding, I could ride, too, even with my leg, snd Miss Monahan was always saying with that smile of nets, "You'll be the best of them all." And T was pretty zood, too. When I started bleeding the first time I was so scared IT wanted to die, I hid in the closet and stuffed handkerchiefs in my mouth to keep from screaming, I wanted to scream so bad, I passed out in arithmetic class that morning and the niggers took me up to my room and Mrs, Flame was going to call the doctor but Miss Monahan said, no, she knew what was wrong and she told them 211 to go away and she sat down and told me in that soft voice of ner | what was wrong, you know, how girls get that sort of thing end sll, and how I was more worried than sick, I could have kissed her then, T guess I loved her more then anybody ezceot Harvey, and now Harvey's gone, I wrote love letters to her a long time, even efter I got out of school but finally I just sort of stopped, She wrote me that she wac going to get married and move to California and I was awful jenlous for a while, but that 19 was years ago end I've elmost forgotten wheat she looks like, When T esme back to Port Warwick from The School everything was real strange for a while but I finally got used to being at home and helping Mame eround the house, just like I sot used to The School and even Mrs, Flame after I was there for a while, I made good grades there and I pestered Mama ell summer after I got out of The School about going to vrep school, I wanted to go to St. Mary's, thst's the schbol that all the girl#:from our church in Port Warwick go to and Mama said she'é think about it, but I never did go to any vrep school or college or anything after The School. One time I got in a fight with Peyton thet summer, I forget what over, but Peyton kicked me in my leg, you know, this one, end called me crazy end feeble-minde and al] until I got up and threw e@ book at her, I cried, too, and Mama came out and made Peyton say she was sorry, We never did have any fights after that end Peyton said she didn't mean to say it, Sometimes when r remember whet she seid I get to thinking thst Mama and Pana didn't send me to St. Mamy's because TI was dumb, But T know that's not so because Dr, Meekins = he's the doctor up here, you know, that Ive been coming to ever since my accident when T wes a baby — he said that I wes as smart as anybody my age, except that my leg hac kept me back, that's 911, And it's true, I am es smart es Peyton, or anybody, Even if Peyton @id go to St. Mery's, Even if she can paint pictures and all. Sometimes T want to hete Pevton because she's so smart and beautiful. I've hed a man to love me, too, snd T think it's a shame just because Harvey's a gardener Mame and Pepa called the police and carried me up to this old hospital again, Lord, I hate it, I hate every bit of it. I'm just as good es anybody, Heven't I got a right to love somebody, just as much es anybody else? I know sbout Peyton and I know ebout Pepa, too, Peyton loving Luther 20 Bonner and Pape loving Luther's wife, I know al] about it, And Tf think it's e shame that Mame has to stey slone at home, trying to be havpy sbout everything, Luther Bonner is better than his wife and I don't much blame Peyton if she want& to, But Pana ought to be eshamed, And putting me in this hosvital just because TI love Hervey. He was so good to me, What if he is married? He loved me, he told me so, and I don't care if he is almort as old as Panae Yes he loved me, I know it, We were in the garden behind the trellis and he kissed me and called me his braekeyed Susan and he felt me all over and he said he wanted me, And I let him do it to me, righS there. It was the first time and I could smell the ferns and the azaleas somewhere, And it wesn't like what Peyton said it was like but it was wonderful all the same feeling his body up next to me and feeling his heart beating and hearing him say “oh, honey" over and over again, Rut he wanted me, he wanted to take me awey, he said, That was the best, And what good is it for me to be in this place here when I have = memery like that, just as happy end naturel memory es anybody else? T'm almost thirty years old now end I have & right to be happy just like anybody. Sometimes I stay ewake at night anc remember the thoughts I had when I was already grown end Peyton had started going with Eddie Boutchard sndvI could see them parked in the car at night end I knew what they were doing, And I'd go back to bed and listen to the silence in the house and look out across the water snd see the lights blink on and off at the navel bese. I'a throw off the sheets it would be so hot, end I'd listen sgain and hear the baby squalling in the house next door, sounding far-off and faint, like the noise you heer in 2 dream, Then there would be foote steps on the sidewalk and the hot summer night outside and Peyton's voice, low like it always was, "Goodnight, "ddie . . ,goodnight... 21 8 coodnight . . . goodnight," and silence again. I'd get to wanting something terrible, way inside, down here, almost like a pain. And T'd turn my head so T could feel the breeze from the water touch my face and the wanting would get so bad that I could have hollered out anything, "Take me!" or "My derling!" or enything. Anything, I tell you, to teke sway the pain, Then I'd go to sleep and in the morning I'd open my eyes and the sun would be chining down on my face, That's the wey it is now sometimes, I want to get out of here, I want to be happy like other veople. I want to do things like other people end IT think it's 2 shame that Papa put me in this place, I just want to be hanpy, T tet#l you, DD, RIDING down to Port Warwick from Richmond the train begind to pick up speed on the outskirts of the city, past the tobacco factories with their eyr-present, hovering haze of faintly ecrid dust and past the rows of uniformly-brown, clepboarc houses which stretch down the hilly streets for miles, it seems, the hundreds of rooftops all reflect= ing the vele light of dawn; pact the suburban roads still sluggish end sleepy with esrly-morning treffic, ané rattling swiftly now over the long bridge which cerarates the last two hills where in the valley below you can see the Jemes River winding benesth its acid-green, malignant crust of scum out pact the chemicsl plants end more rows of uniformly=—brown, clapboard houses and into the woods beyond, Suddenly the train is burrowing through the pine woods end the conductor, who looks middle-aged and resnectsble, like someone's fevorite uncle, lurches through the car asking for tickets, Tf vou sre particularly alert at thet unconscionable hour you notice his voice, which is somewhat gutturel end negroid = certainly veguely fatuousecounding after the accents of New York or Columbus or wherever you came from =, and when you asknhim how far it is to Port Warwick end he says, "aboot eighty miles," you know you're in tidewater Virginia, Then you settle back in your seat, your face feeling unwashed and swollen from the intermittent sleep you got sitting up the night before, end your gums sore from too many cigerettes, and you try to doze off, 23 10 but the nap of the blue felt seat vrickles your neck and so you sit up once more end eross your legs, gazing drowsily st the vipe manue facturer from Allentown, PA, next to you, who told you last night ebout his hobby, model treins, and the joke ebout the two college girls at the Hotel Astor, and whose sleek white face, sprouting a faint gray crop of fine stubble, one day old, is now veacefully relaxed and immobile in sleep, his breath issuing from slightly parted lips in delicate sighs. Or, turning sway, you look out et the pine woods driving past et sixty miles per hour, the trees standing close together, green and somnolent, and the browneneedled carpet of the forest floor dappled brightly in the early morning light, until the white fog of smoke from the engine sheed swirls and dips against the window like a tattered scarf, and obscures the view, Later the woods thin out into fields green and nodding with rows of corn, the corn getting brown because it's August, snd leter still es the trainsdins into the tidelands the fields merge into acres of wooded bottoms where the pines grow tall,standing in marshes deep in sewegrass and murky with the brackish ooze thet seens off the river, Here the horse-doctore flit soundlessly with small, swift flutterings of inpiaescent wings, searching for grubs in the algse-green weter, and at night, standing on the highway, you can hear a hound baying through the darkness, Now the sun is up and you see the mist lifting off the fields end in the middle of the fields the solitary cabins with their slim threads of smoke trailing out of plastered chimneys and the glow of a fire through -n open door and then, st 9 crossing, the sudden, swift tableau of a Negro and his hay-wagon, and a lopecared mule; the Negro with his mouth agape, exposing calcimine teeth, etering in astonishment at the speeding train, until the amoke obscures 24 11 him, too, from view, end the one dark brown hand held cataleptic in the aire Stirring, the vive manufacturer sauints sleepyeyed out at the sunlight end grunts, "Where ere we?" and you murmur Not far from Port Warwick, IT hope," end as he turns on his side to sleep some more you finger your cony of the Richmond Times-Dispatch which the newsboy sold you an hour ago, and which you haven't read and won't read because maybe you have things on your mind; and instead you look out once more at the late summer Isndscape and the low, sorrowful besuty of the tide— land swamps and the pine=shadowed creeks - turgid, involute, and secret - winding through marshes full of smell, derting, frightened noises and glistening and deed silent at noon except for a whistle, far off, and a distant rumble on the rails, Then the fields once more, end the shacks, end now and then @ white=-painted house where you can cee 2 truck stand ing in the yerd end a sycemore which casts © trembling light on the ground end a farmer, one overalled leg on the running board, about to climb in the truck, but with his hesd turned towerd the train, staring. Then the house is gone end the sycamore with its tender, trembling light, end the fields again, hot and dusty and sending up greasy waves of heat, and the marshland again, And you think esbout the farmer for a moment, won= dering where he's going and what his wife looks like - but you forget him, because you see ® sign on the bordering highway which points to Port Warwick and thet, most likely, is where you're going, Port Warwick is a shivbuilding city and the workers! houses begin where the marshlends end = the clean, chean clusters of plywood cottages springing out of the woods like toadstools - sand now the men ere going to work, their sutomobiles creeping southwserd along the highway past more groups of houses encrosching suddenly upon the desolation of the 25 12 merchlands, the houses themselves backed up against the forest well, where, in their tiny back yerds, the women are hanging clothes in the, morning cunlight, turning vale white feces slowly toward the train | soing bye The trein slows down and the vive manufacturer wakes, perplexed end sleepy, end borrows your newsnaner and drowsily studies the market renorts snd when you turn egain the wilderness is gone, the suburbden houses are rolling by, end the grey, anonymous streets, end the Suner Market signs, Then the town itself, which from the trein looke like any other smell city sinee onecside of the treeks = in this eace the Negro section = presents a less imposing view than the other side, which belongs to the white neonles; and then the eofehnt yerds — you sre soing slowly now benesth the »voverpasses — ond finally the halt at the station which 1s the end of the line because beyond the station is the river which is five miles wide and a deen salty green. You set up ond cav goodbye to the nive menufecturer, who is soing on to Norfolk by ferry, snd vou cet your bag off the reck end climb down off the trein onto the station dock where the smell of the water is clean end refreshing efter the fistulent warmth of the car and where, thirty yards away, your cirl or your friends are waiting with expectant erins, "Oh, there he is!" and as you walk toward them you've Already forgotten the vine manufecturer forever, end the ride down, It's soing to be a hot day, On pram Ne foe woekdey seats lete Augict th 1946 Ar peo? 26 13 On a weekday morning in late August in 1946 four people were assembled on the railroad dock at Port Warwick. The three, who stood closely together - two white men and a negro woman past seventy - could hardly have been distinguishable from the dozen or so other people awattting the train were it not for two things which, to a more than casual observer, set them inmediately apart. One was the fact that it might appear curious that twoce such affluent-looking men =- certainly they were "eentlemen" - so obviously dressed for an occasion, were to be seen at such an inauspicious hour (it was fifteen min= utes past nine by the station clock) in the company of a soli= tary anlaged Negro woman who, in turn, was dressed in clothes worn only on Sunday and to funerals. The other was the fact that the face of one of the men wore a look of profound and troubled agitation, The other man, younger than his compan= ion and dressed in black, his hands encased in gloves the color of house mice, seemed nonetheless to convey an air of sympathetic and thoughtful awareness, but for the most part he remained Silent. The sky was clear and cloudless and a deep violent blue, the sort of morning that promises heat and vague, langorous activity all day long. The air, already humid, smelled of creesete and tar and the dead fish which had been basking in the sunlight on the end of the dock for three or four days. Across from the dock and separated from it by fifty yards of slick greasy water 27 28 14 a freighter lay tethered to its pier. Into its hold a gang ofr stevedores had begun to load a cargo of bauxite. From the pier there came the clanking metallic rattle of an electric crane and a workman's voice from the hold, sounding like the echo from a cave, "Come up there come up there}" Drifting up from the hold a dense fog of dust had begun to shimmer brick red in the sunlight and floated like smoke im a dense, undulat= ing, ruddy clouds; settling gently on the dock and covering everything with a fine dusty sediment the color of rust. Most of the waiting people on the dock retreated into the station, pounding their clothes with their hands, but the two men and the Negro woman waited patiently beside the tracks while the haze settled upon them silently, seeping into their clothes and encrusting the wrinkled face of the old woman in a dusty mask. They stood for a while in the sunlight, none of them appare ently noticing the dust sifting down except the younger man =who at intervals tapped delicately at his gloves and who furtively withdrew a gold pocket=watch from his black=-vested paunch, in= spected it quickly, and then gazed hopefully up the tracks. And with a sudden abashed look he turned away, regarding with studied and gentle commiseration the other man, who remained Silent out of some compulsion he could not explain even to him-=- self - because God knows, he thought, I need someone to talk to - and who gazed out at the river now through the dust, at the green tidal water glistening with dancing blades of light. He was in his middle fifties and had been good-looking in his youth 15 (one could see that); though traces of handsomeness remained his face had fallen into negligent disrepair = a young man's face thickly distended into an unhealthy flabbiness, the skin over well=formed bones now porous and deeply flushed. Through his sparse brown hair ran a wide streak off steel gray which had been there ever since adolescence and which, far from being Gieftguine, had provided an added flourish to his appear= ance, & focal point toward which strangers might direct admir= ing looks; about this streak of gray he had been quite vain, and because of it he rarely wore a hat. £ shall not think too much about this thing, he thought, I shall as he thought that he could not circumvent immediacy by think= ing of the future (when hé was a young man his moments of gloom bacame more bearable by merely saying to himself: Soon all of this will be over, perhaps tomorrow I shall be drunk and happy and possibly I'11 even have a woman) because now the future was more dismal to contemplate than the present, So because what he had to face in the immediate future (the reason he was on the dock) was bad enough and the time beyond that would be, inevitably, even worse, he confined his thoughts to the water and in the distance the forested ridge of) deepsblue which:was therother shore, Perhaps, he thought, afi think only of this second this moment the train wont come at all perhaps its possible to make time stop by not acknowledging the future by merely thinking of realizing that he was too old now and too weary for paradoxes, that the train would come 29 16 after all, bringing with it the final, positive proof of fate and circumstance which all his life he had passively denied, believing (he an wpigopalian) or rather faintly understanding that the word Fate was merely one of those words like Conscience or Will which festooned the structure of the liturgy like pale plaster gargoyles and which became an imminent meaningful thing only in the Greek plays he had read in college years ago, and then in a cloudy and abstract manners bringing with it (he saw, his mind advancing hesitantly into that future he could not accept, the train squeaking and shuddering to a stop, ponderous on the dock as it would appear five minutes hence or ten, the white steam panting upward and mingling with the drifting asthmatic fog of dust) the conclusive totality of all his errors and yet all his love (becausec he loved his daughter more than enything) and his life indeed, which was begun fifty-four years ago in a cluttered museum of a house in Washington, DC, where his first memory was a sunny room murmurous with the sad hushed sounds of Sunday afternoon and a parade outside on the street with distant band music both bright and disconsolate and his mother&S voice whispering Its President Cleveland going by, liilton dear Listen dear. And agains his mind wandering compulsively into that minuscule portion of the future which separated the Now and the arrival of the train on the dock - the train now is on the outskirts of town, he thought, and passing with a terrible rumbling noise over the last creek and se ee ee the nigger shacks on the banks = he knew, with a sudden luminous ED intensity, less a thought than a sound in his head, that it was all too dreadful for him to have to bear, 30 ally) "Ella" "Ella, what am I going to do?" The Negro woman turned her face toward him. The dust had inflamed the wrinkled old skin in a blaze of orange. Peering out of cave-like sockets, her eyes blinked moistly. "Now you just set tight, Cap'n Loftis," she said. "Ne and Mr. Casper'll take care of things nice and easy. You just set tight." The man behind them made a quick noiseless motion with his lips = at once hesitant and a bit sorrowful - but no sound came forth; he remained silent and looked up the tracks. "you just trust in the Lord," Ella said, In five minutes by the station clock = the flyspecked white disk, reading Bulova, emitted a faintly audible whirr above them = the train would arrive. Beyond the dock white sparks of sunlight twinkled on the water. On the freighter a brick-red figure scurried along a catwalk and stopped and peered into the hold. From the depths the hollow voice echoed, "Come up there}" In five minutes - above, the attenuated grimy finger of the minute hand jerked ahead with a clicketing sound = no, four now, he thought - the train would arrive, its arrival substantially meaningful in that it would signify his own departure just as (the lawyer in him speaking now) the pronouncement of guilty by a jury foreman generally assures an immediate and thorough dispatch and so in its coming would in a way symbolize the complete and irrevocable consummation of his minutes, hours, years, not only the hushed, murmurous hours which he remembered as a baby - the sunlight seeping in through gently rustling blinds and he, lying on something soft, watching the afternoon shadows bloom around him and his mother's hovering face, long forgotten now because she died before he could picture. 31 32 18 in his consciousness those features his father later said were refined and lovely = but beyond that the days of his childhood, of which he remembered walks in Rock Creek park with his father and the damp ferny smell of the woods and his best friend, a boy named Charley Quinn, who had a pale face and cheeks with famished hollows and a birthmark on his cheek like a brown=petalled flower, and who was killed at the Somme, And his father, who was a lawyer, descended from a long line of lawyers - until his death in 1920 he sported stiff wing collars and a twitching Edwardian moustache # had neither the prescisnce to avoid pampering his son nor to realize that sending him to the University of Virginia to study law, unprepared and at the age of seventeen, would produce the results it did: at nineteen he was a campus character known as "Blow," a drunkard even by fraternity standards, who drank because, fatherless, he found the sudden freedom oppressive and because, tao, he liked the taste of whiskey and its attendant effect, in his case, of surpassing goodwill. Because he combined glibness with a natural curiosity he was moderately successful as a student and when, in his twentyfourth year, he was graduated from the law school, he was pleasantly surprised upon reviewing his record that he had performed so well, cosidering the fact that he had spent a prepos= terous amount of time drunk and in the town whorehouse, run by an elegant mulatto named Carmen Metz. And when the war broke out, although he did not shirk duty exactly (for two months he made gestures toward joining the Army which years later he still had to confess to himself were trifling and excursive), he was greatly relieved when his father procured for him, through government connections, a commission in the Army legal branch and he was sent to Governor's Island in New York City where, by processes infinitely 19 more simple than he had ever imagined they would be, he was promoted in quick succession to first lieutenant and then to captain (a title which he retained throughout his civilian life), emerging from the war with that rank, and with the colonel's daughter. They met at an officers! dance on the islands; her name was Helen Peyton. That night they walked along the seawall together in a drizzling rain and when he bent over, unsteadily and quite drunk, to kiss her, the city lights drifted like embers across the darkness, Her mouth was parted and warm; then she fled, the raindrops on her cape leaving a trail of trembling sparks. The next day she went away with her mother, a small gray wisp of a woman who never smiled, leaving him a note whim reads My Dear Lieutenant Loftis, The dance was wonderful. I will be in Saratoge For a week, May I meet you in the lobby of the Ritz next Saturday afternoon? I think you understand. Helen He was trapped, and he was married five months later on the island, with the bright hollow panoply attending suchmilitary affaizs =- the ceremony that disturbed him because of the untroubled thrill it gave him, not the mere sense of patriotic urgency, the spinal excitement that came from the flags and the music, but because of the more or less unwarranted pride he felt in his rank ( a captaincy now) which, in spite of the fact that it was secured only through his bride, and he knew it, made him nonetheless feel a fierce adolescent upsurge of exciting arrogance - the twin silver bars and the starched dress uniform, impeccably white = and the feeling of disquietude was not dispelled by the news brought by his father, now a diffidently mild, still doting old man in whom patience was no longer a virtue but a habit, who stood shyly in one corner of the 33 34 20 officers! club at the reception, the ends of his once=proud moustache twitching sadly, and told him in an apologetic mourn= ful tone that Charley Quinn had been killed overseas, and that it was bad, too bad, while the anger and outrage mounted silently in the younger man as he expressed a faint regret for the death of a boy he had lost track of long ago, barely concealing the resent= ment he felt at having been told such a thing on his wedding day, as if his father, in vague atonement for his own perhaps ill-advised move in procuring his son's commission in the first place, had passed the remark as a reminder that war was not all champagne and flowers and. the gay brittle laughter of officers' wives, And he had hardly restrained himself from saying something bitter and insulting to the old man as he stood there, the damp feeble blink-= ing of his eyes accentuating the weakness for which his son had felt all his life a quiet contempt,:wanting to say I know I know goddamit you think Im a slacker, wanting to get him out of there and on his way back to Washington (after all he was free now he ee proved that Christ sake couldnt you ever get away from your father?) = until a sudden, quick ache of pity and sadness came over him and ie fumbled stupidly for a word to say father, father and then Helen rustled up next to him, her face contorted with bliss, lead= ing him away to meet someone, his father standing awkwardly in the corner now, groping in conversation with a bored young lieutenant while he (the new captain) listened to the rhythmic nuptial cliches of a general's wife, nodded,. and thought of the pale boy with the blemish like a flower, the brother he never had, and of the father he had never found, "Really, Helen," the general's wife was say= Pl ing, "I think you have the pick of the Army. Such a peach," and her laughter shattered the air like falling glass. On the dock it was time for the train and the younger man, somberly eyeing the clock, leaned over and whispered in a tone of careful deference, "I think the train is late," while Hlla Swan clucked forlornly, brushing the dust from her hands. "Lord Lord," she sighed. Perhaps it isnt coming at all, he thought, with the insistent unreason he had employed at other crises in his life which, out of the anxiety they entailed, demanded a momentary cessation of logic, he thinking now, perhaps in all truth this is only a dream, as when he had stood in a sweat of apprehension and horror in the offices of Dr Samuel Mordecai in Richmond while the doctor, a kindly Jew, lisping hesitantly, had told him that his daughter Maudie could never hope to progress beyond grammar school and that he must be brave about it, patient and tolerant, while he stood vertiginous and blinking incredulously in the newly-painted office smelling of turpentine, thinking this surely isnt true, not me, because he loved his daughter and even more - though he could scarcely admit it - he found the implications of the doctor's words almost too grotesque = there had never been anyone in his family who was off in any way - "I Imow (the doctor talk- ing now), but it does happen, you know. There are some things we can never understand," and he, as the doctor spoke, thought of the words, the hollow, devouring pity breathed with septic and pleasur-= able fascination over cocktails at the country club, "Isn't it a shame. She's retarded you know," but he left with the child, feeling for her more compassion than love, but loving her just the same, and determined that she would always have the best, the very best. So his second daughter, Peyton, whom he had wanted to 35 36 be a boy, she - not his wife, nor Maudie - who received the extravagant outpouring of his love, was born a year later, a girl who although she did not become beautiful was not without beauty of a