A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him by Paul Leicester Ford

P >> Paul Leicester Ford >> The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him




Perhaps a conversation between the two, a week later, will answer these
questions. It occurred on the deck of a vessel. Yet this parting glimpse
of Peter is very different from that which introduced him. The vessel is
not drifting helplessly, but its great screw is whirling it towards the
island of Martinique, as if itself anxious to reach that fairy land of
fairy lands. Though the middle of November, the soft warmth of the
tropics is in the air. Nor are the sea and sky now leaden. The first is
turned into liquid gold by the phosphorescence, and the full moon
silvers everything else. Neither is Peter pacing the deck with lines of
pain and endurance on his face. He is up in the bow, where the vessel's
forefoot throws up the white foam in silver drops in the moonlight. And
he does not look miserable. Anything but that. He is sitting on an
anchor stock, with his back comfortably braced against the rail. Another
person is not far distant. What that person sits upon and leans against
is immaterial to the narrative.

"Why don't you smoke?" asked that person.

"I'm too happy," said Peter, in a voice evidencing the truth of his
words.

"Will you if I bite off the end?" asked Eve, Jr., placing temptation
most temptingly.

"I like the idea exceedingly," said Peter. "But my right arm is so very
pleasantly placed that it objects to moving."

"Don't move it. I know where they are. I even know about the matches."
And Peter sat calmly while his pockets were picked. He even seemed to
enjoy the sensation of that small hand rummaging in his waistcoat
pockets. "You see, dear, that I am learning your ways," Leonore
continued, in a tone of voice which suggested that that was the chief
end of woman. Perhaps it is. The Westminster catechism only tells us the
chief end of man.

"There. Now are you really happy?"

"I don't know anybody more so."

"Then, dear, I want to talk with you."

"The wish is reciprocal. But what have we been doing for six days?"

"We've been telling each other everything, just as we ought. But now I
want to ask two favors, dear."

"I don't think that's necessary. Just tell me what they are."

"Yes. These favors are. Though I know you'll say 'yes.'"

"Well?"

"First. I want you always to keep your rooms just as they are?"

"Dear-heart, after our six weeks' trip, we must be in Albany for three
years, and when we come back to New York, we'll have a house of course."

"Yes. But I want you to keep the rooms just as they are, because I love
them. I don't think I shall ever feel the same for any other place. It
will be very convenient to have them whenever, we want to run down from
Albany. And of course you must keep up with the ward."

"But you don't suppose, after we are back in New-York, that I'll stay
down there, with you uptown?"

"Oh, no! Of course not. Peter! How absurd you are! But I shall go down
very often. Sometimes we'll give little dinners to real friends. And
sometimes, when we want to get away from people, we'll dine by ourselves
and spend the night there. Then whenever you want to be at the saloons
or primaries we'll dine together there and I'll wait for you. And then I
think I'll go down sometimes, when I'm shopping, and lunch with you.
I'll promise not to bother you. You shall go back to your work, and I'll
amuse myself with your flowers, and books, till you are ready to go
uptown. Then we'll ride together."

"Lispenard frightened me the other day, but you frighten me worse."

"How?"

"He said you would be a much lovelier woman at thirty than you are now."

"And that frightened you?" laughed Leonore.

"Terribly. If you are that I shall have to give up law and politics
entirely, so as to see enough of you."

"But what has that to do with my lunching with you?"

"Do you think I could work at law with you in the next room?"

"Don't you want me? I thought it was such a nice plan."

"It is. If your other favor is like that I shan't know what to say. I
shall merely long for you to ask favors."

"This is very different. Will you try to understand me?"

"I shan't misunderstand you, at all events." Which was a crazy speech
for any man to make any woman.

"Then, dear, I want to speak of that terrible time--only for a moment,
dear. You mustn't think I don't believe what you said. I do! I do! Every
word of it, and to prove it to you I shall never speak of it again. But
when I've shown you that I trust you entirely, some stormy evening, when
we've had the nicest little dinner together at your rooms, and I've
given you some coffee, and bitten your cigar for you, I shall put you
down before the fire, and sit down in your lap, as I am doing now, and
put my arms about your neck so, and put my cheek so. And then I want
you, without my asking to tell me why you told mamma that lie, and all
about it."

"Dear-heart," said Peter, "I cannot tell. I promised."

"Oh, but that didn't include your wife, dear, of course. Besides, Peter,
friends should tell each other everything. And we are the best of
friends, aren't we?"

"And if I don't tell my dearest friend?"

"I shall never speak of it, Peter, but I know sometimes when I am by
myself I shall cry over it. Not because I doubt you, dear, but because
you won't give me your confidence."

"Do you know, Dear-heart, that I can't bear the thought of your doing
that!"

"Of course not, dear. That's the reason I tell you. I knew you couldn't
bear it."

"How did you know?"

"Because I understand you, dear. I know just what you are. I'm the only
person who does."

"Tell me what I am."

"I think, dear, that something once came into your life that made you
very miserable, and took away all your hope and ambition. So, instead of
trying to make a great position or fortune, you tried to do good to
others. You found that you could do the most good among the poor people,
so you worked among them. Then you found that you needed money, so you
worked hard to get that. Then you found that you could help most by
working in politics, so you did that. And you have tried to gain power
so as to increase your power for good. I know you haven't liked a great
deal you have had to do. I know that you much prefer to sit before your
study fire and read than sit in saloons. I know that you would rather
keep away from tricky people than to ask or take their help. But you
have sacrificed your own feelings and principles because you felt that
they were not to be considered if you could help others. And, because
people have laughed at you or misunderstood, you have become silent and
unsocial, except as you have believed your mixing with the world to be
necessary to accomplish good."

"What a little idealist we are!"

"Well, dear, that isn't all the little idealist has found out. She knows
something else. She knows that all his life her ideal has been waiting
and longing for some one who did understand him, so that he can tell her
all his hopes and feelings, and that at last he has found her, and she
will try to make up for all the misery and sacrifice he has endured She
knows, too, that he wants to tell her everything. You mustn't think,
dear, that it was only prying which made me ask you so many questions.
I--I really wasn't curious except to see if you would answer, for I felt
that you didn't tell other people your real thoughts and feelings, and
so, whenever you told me, it was really getting you to say that you
loved me. You wanted me to know what you really are. And that was why I
knew that you told me the truth that night. And that is the reason why I
know that some day you will tell me about that lie."

Peter, whatever he might think, did not deny the correctness of
Leonore's theories concerning his motives in the past or his conduct in
the future. He kissed the soft cheek so near him, tenderly, and said:

"I like your thoughts about me, dear one."

"Of course you do," said Leonore. "You said once that when you had a
fine subject it was always easy to make a fine speech. It's true, too,
of thoughts, dear."

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott - "The Indiscreet Letter"

James D. Richardson - "A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents"

Pedro Antonio de Alarcon - "Novelas Cortas"

Archie S. Milton and Otto K. Wohlers - "A Course In Wood Turning"

Audio slideshow: Robert Shaw discusses his production of Sylvia Plath's only play
Articles published by guardian.co.uk Books

Stephen King fan publishes Shining's Jack Torrance's novel
Three Women was first heard as a radio drama and then published as a poem. Robert Shaw explains his desire to stage the piece as it was intended

Video: Costa prize winners

A Stephen King fan has published an 80-page version of the book which novelist Jack Torrance obsessively writes during King's The Shining, where his descent into madness is revealed when his wife discovers that his work consists of just one phrase, endlessly repeated.

Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson in terrifying form in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, is a frustrated writer who goes with his wife and son to spend the winter in the isolated Overlook Hotel in an attempt to get the novel he has always wanted to write started. But the hotel's grisly past and unquiet ghosts have their way with him, and his wife Wendy eventually finds that the manuscript he has been working on actually only contains the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", typed over and over again.

Now New York artist Phil Buehler, who describes himself as "a big fan of Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King", has self-published a book credited to Torrance, repeating the phrase throughout but formatting each page differently, using the words to create different shapes from zigzags to spirals.

"The idea has probably been marinating for years, because I loved the movie and the Stephen King book," said Buehler. "I'd just finished my own obsessive art project [and] it was an idea I had over the Christmas holidays."

He said he decided to stick to type and formatting that could have been created on a typewriter, with the first ten pages duplicating shots of Torrance's work from the film. "I thought 'if he continues to get crazier, what would those pages look like?'" he said. "I hit writer's block about 60 pages in, and I had to get to 80 - that went on for about a week." His fiancée, who had neither read the book nor seen the film, became a little concerned about his actions. "I finally showed her the movie, and she realised I wasn't really losing it," said Buehler.

He's included a spoof review from the blog OverThinkingIt.com on the book's back jacket, which compares it to "the best of Beckett" in its "lack of forward momentum", and considers the struggles of the author, "heroically pitting himself against the Sisyphusean sentence". "It's that metatextual struggle of Man vs. Typewriter that gives this book its spellbinding power," the review says. "Some will dismiss it as simplistic; that's like dismissing a Pollack canvas as mere splatters of paint."

So far, Buehler says that around 1,000 people have viewed the book, for sale on Blurb.com for $8.95 in paperback, or $22.95 in hardback, and he's sold "a few" copies, with sales now starting to pick up steam. "A few people have asked me to sign it - they're looking it as a piece of art rather than a funny thing to give to a Kubrick fan," he said. "If you're not a Kubrick or King fan, you might not even get it."

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds