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THE REPAIRER OF
REPUTATIONS
“Ne raillons pas les fous; leur folie dure
plus longtemps que la nôtre… Voilà
toute la différence.”
I
Toward the end of the year 1920 the Government of
the United States had practically completed the programme,
adopted during the last months of
President Winthrop’s administration. The country
was apparently tranquil. Everybody knows how the
Tariff and Labor questions were settled. The war
with Germany, incident on that country’s seizure of
the Samoan Islands, had left no visible scars upon
the republic, and the temporary occupation of
Norfolk by the invading army had been forgotten in
the joy over repeated naval victories, and the subsequent
ridiculous plight of General Von Gartenlaube’s
forces in the State of New Jersey. The Cuban and
Hawaiian investments had paid one hundred per
cent and the territory of Samoa was well worth its
cost as a coaling station. The country was in a superb
state of defence. Every coast city had been well
supplied with land fortifications; the army under the
parental eye of the General Staff, organized according
to the Prussian system, had been increased to
300,000 men, with a territorial reserve of a million;
and six magnificent squadrons of cruisers and
battle- ships patrolled the six stations of the navigable
seas, leaving a steam reserve amply fitted to
control home waters. The gentlemen from the West
had at last been constrained to acknowledge that a
college for the training of diplomats was as necessary
as law schools are for the training of barristers;
consequently we were no longer represented abroad
by incompetent patriots. The nation was prosperous;
Chicago, for a moment paralyzed after a second
great fire, had risen from its ruins, white and imperial,
and more beautiful than the white city which
had been built for its plaything in 1893. Everywhere
good architecture was replacing bad, and even in
New York, a sudden craving for decency had swept
away a great portion of the existing horrors. Streets
had been widened, properly paved and lighted, trees
had been planted, squares laid out, elevated structures
demolished and underground roads built to
replace them. The new government buildings and
barracks were fine bits of architecture, and the long
system of stone quays which completely surrounded
the island had been turned into parks which proved
a god- send to the population. The subsidizing of the
state theatre and state opera brought its own
reward. The United States National Academy of
Design was much like European institutions of the
same kind. Nobody envied the Secretary of Fine
Arts, either his cabinet position or his portfolio. The
Secretary of Forestry and Game Preservation had a
much easier time, thanks to the new system of
National Mounted Police. We had profited well by
the latest treaties with France and England; the
exclusion of foreign- born Jews as a measure of selfpreservation,
the settlement of the new independent
negro state of Suanee, the checking of immigration,
the new laws concerning naturalization, and the
gradual centralization of power in the executive all
contributed to national calm and prosperity. When
the Government solved the Indian problem and
squadrons of Indian cavalry scouts in native costume
were substituted for the pitiable organizations
tacked on to the tail of skeletonized regiments by a
former Secretary of War, the nation drew a long sigh
of relief. When, after the colossal Congress of
Religions, bigotry and intolerance were laid in their
graves and kindness and charity began to draw
warring sects together, many thought the millennium
had arrived, at least in the new world which
after all is a world by itself.
But self- preservation is the first law, and the
United States had to look on in helpless sorrow as
Germany, Italy, Spain, and Belgium writhed in the
throes of Anarchy, while Russia, watching from the
Caucasus, stooped and bound them one by one.
In the city of New York the summer of 1899 was
signalized by the dismantling of the Elevated
Railroads. The summer of 1900 will live in the memories
of New York people for many a cycle; the Dodge
Statue was removed in that year. In the following
winter began that agitation for the repeal of the
laws prohibiting suicide which bore its final fruit in
the month of April, 1920, when the first Government
Lethal Chamber was opened on Washington Square.
I had walked down that day from Dr. Archer’s
house on Madison Avenue, where I had been as a
mere formality. Ever since that fall from my horse,
four years before, I had been troubled at times with
pains in the back of my head and neck, but now for
months they had been absent, and the doctor sent
me away that day saying there was nothing more
to be cured in me. It was hardly worth his fee to be
told that; I knew it myself. Still I did not grudge him
the money. What I minded was the mistake which
he made at first. When they picked me up from the
pavement where I lay unconscious, and somebody
had mercifully sent a bullet through my horse’s
head, I was carried to Dr. Archer, and he, pronouncing
my brain affected, placed me in his private
asylum where I was obliged to endure treatment for
insanity. At last he decided that I was well, and I,
knowing that my mind had always been as sound as
his, if not sounder, “paid my tuition” as he jokingly
called it, and left. I told him, smiling, that I would
get even with him for his mistake, and he laughed
heartily, and asked me to call once in a while. I did
so, hoping for a chance to even up accounts, but he
gave me none, and I told him I would wait.
The fall from my horse had fortunately left no
evil results; on the contrary, it had changed my
whole character for the better. From a lazy young
man about town, I had become active, energetic,
temperate, and above all—oh, above all else—ambitious.
There was only one thing which troubled me,
I laughed at my own uneasiness, and yet it troubled
me.
During my convalescence I had bought and read
for the first time, The King in Yellow. I remember after
finishing the first act that it occurred to me that I
had better stop. I started up and flung the book into
the fireplace; the volume struck the barred grate and
fell open on the hearth in the firelight. If I had not
caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second
act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to
pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page,
and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so
poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched
the thing out of the coals and crept shaking to my
bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and
laughed and trembled with a horror which at times
assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for
I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in
the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts
lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink
into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever
the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse
the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with
this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its
simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which
now trembles before the King in Yellow. When the
French Government seized the translated copies
which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course,
became eager to read it. It is well known how the
book spread like an infectious disease, from city to
city, from continent to continent, barred out here,
confiscated there, denounced by Press and pulpit,
censured even by the most advanced of literary
anarchists. No definite principles had been violated
in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no
convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any
known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged
that the supreme note of art had been struck in The
King in Yellow, all felt that human nature could not
bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the
essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality
and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow
to fall afterward with more awful effect.
It was, I remember, the 13th day of April, 1920,
that the first Government Lethal Chamber was
established on the south side of Washington Square,
between Wooster Street and South Fifth Avenue. The
block which had formerly consisted of a lot of shabby
old buildings, used as cafés and restaurants for
foreigners, had been acquired by the Government
in the winter of 1898. The French and Italian cafés
and restaurants were torn down; the whole block
was enclosed by a gilded iron railing, and converted
into a lovely garden with lawns, flowers and
fountains. In the centre of the garden stood a small,
white building, severely classical in architecture,
and surrounded by thickets of flowers. Six Ionic
columns supported the roof, and the single door was
of bronze. A splendid marble group of the “Fates”
stood before the door, the work of a young American
sculptor, Boris Yvain, who had died in Paris when
only twenty- three years old.
The inauguration ceremonies were in progress as
I crossed University Place and entered the square.
I threaded my way through the silent throng of
spectators, but was stopped at Fourth Street by a
cordon of police. A regiment of United States lancers
were drawn up in a hollow square round the Lethal
Chamber. On a raised tribune facing Washington
Park stood the Governor of New York, and behind him
were grouped the Mayor of New York and Brooklyn,
the Inspector- General of Police, the Commandant
of the state troops, Colonel Livingston, military
aid to the President of the United States, General
Blount, commanding at Governor’s Island, Major-
General Hamilton, commanding the garrison of
New York and Brooklyn, Admiral Buffby of the fleet
in the North River, Surgeon- General Lanceford, the
staff of the National Free Hospital, Senators Wyse
and Franklin of New York, and the Commissioner
of Public Works. The tribune was surrounded by a
squadron of hussars of the National Guard.
The Governor was finishing his reply to the short
speech of the Surgeon- General. I heard him say:
“The laws prohibiting suicide and providing punishment
for any attempt at self- destruction have been
repealed. The Government has seen fit to acknowledge
the right of man to end an existence which may
have become intolerable to him, through physical
suffering or mental despair. It is believed that the
community will be benefited by the removal of such
people from their midst. Since the passage of this
law, the number of suicides in the United States has
not increased. Now the Government has determined
to establish a Lethal Chamber in every city, town and
village in the country, it remains to be seen whether
or not that class of human creatures from whose
desponding ranks new victims of self- destruction
fall daily will accept the relief thus provided.” He
paused, and turned to the white Lethal Chamber.
The silence in the street was absolute. “There a
painless death awaits him who can no longer bear
the sorrows of this life. If death is welcome let him
seek it there.” Then quickly turning to the military
aid of the President’s household, he said, “I declare
the Lethal Chamber open,” and again facing the
vast crowd he cried in a clear voice: “Citizens of New
York and of the United States of America, through
me the Government declares the Lethal Chamber
to be open.”
The solemn hush was broken by a sharp cry
of command, the squadron of hussars filed after
the Governor’s carriage, the lancers wheeled and
formed along Fifth Avenue to wait for the commandant
of the garrison, and the mounted police
followed them. I left the crowd to gape and stare
at the white marble Death Chamber, and, crossing
South Fifth Avenue, walked along the western side of
that thoroughfare to Bleecker Street. Then I turned
to the right and stopped before a dingy shop which
bore the sign:
HAWBERK, ARMORER.
Imported From: United States