Manhattan, New York City, Oct 3, 1909
To J. L. Harrison; in Princeton:
MR. HARRISON, – Nowhere in the letters I have received from you
do you mention that you have burned the diary. Quite to the
contrary it seems, and the fact that it is an action you have so
far refused to take speaks volumes. Did you mention it to Webster
when you met him? I do not know what Webster was engaged in with
Price, but if he was still using the Diary then the origin of
whatever documents he has is suspect. Completing whatever
experiments are there may yield results that are not readily
visible! Hadn’t we enough of this other-worldly dabbling in our
youth? How many people had to die, Harrison? Do you remember? I
do, and it haunts me every day! As the years pass I have needed
more and more tipples to soothe my guilt – the Prohibition Party
be damned! Even when my dear Isabel was taken from me during
Anne’s birth I didn’t turn back to the sickness in which we
immersed ourselves. Do you have no guilt or shame, or has the life
of an academic and your lectures on William James turned your
morals into malleable convictions to be changed or discarded when
they become impediments to Science? Please do this, if not for me,
then for your sanity and the sweet memory of our dear friend
Charles.
Though I am still shaking with rage at your naivety please do not
mistake me, my friend, I deeply value our friendship. My harsh
words are not meant to drive you from me, but to plead for common
sense in this matter. My goading is truly only out of a fraternal
love for you. As for Mr. Price, I have not yet been paid a visit
by him, but will send you any details from our conversation when
he arrives. We must find out who else is on the list to receive
these packages and stop them from having the same thoughts that
run through your mind.
I passed on your greetings to Anne by way of post as she has just
started at Radcliffe this past month, and from what she has
written she is enjoying her first term there. It’s been
difficult on Anne and Reginald since Isabel died; the house has
never been right and it’s been rough raising children on my own
with my injuries, but I have been thankful for their governess and
my maids. Anne’s transformation into a most capable woman now on
her own at university has given me such happiness. I do not want
my children to inherit the mistakes of their ailing father. You
and I are inextricably linked in these happenings and I fear that
if you go down this ignominious path I will be taken forcibly with
you.
I do not know what to make of your dream, but from the description
it must have been terrifying in the least from which to wake.
Dreams to me seem to be just the mind running wild when the eyes
close and darkness descends. My doctor, however, believes that
nonsense from Professor Freud at Harvard, that dreams have some
deeper meaning and provide a clouded window into the soul. Every
time I visit him I must put up with relaying my ridiculous dreams
of being crushed by massive ledgers, drinking champagne with
President Taft in the library, or my terrier Huxby in a smoking
jacket asking if I would like cream or sugar in my tea! Nonsense I
tell you, Harrison, pure drivel! I really must find a new doctor.
I feel I must disagree with you on your musings of Death. Death is
not kind, for He is like a child with a hammer who crushes the
nail but leaves a dozen craters in the wood. This is to say that
for every moribund man or woman He pounds into the Earth, He
leaves many more in sorrow and tests the faith of those who face
it. Do you recall what we did to the Wharton boy? This memory
plagues me so. We had meant to cure that poor child of typhus, but
what he was twisted into was surely a result of some mistake we
had made in our ritual. That death was not sweet or kind just a
relief from the agony we inflicted. His death tainted many lives
with the lingering, blood-soaked finality of its noisy thrashes
and rattles. You seemed to handle tragedy the best out of us all,
save for Eliza. Her cloak of callousness and cold indifference was
that of the strongest steel, though I view her extreme quality as
a fault and not commensurate to your stalwart heart. It is no
surprise how hard it had impacted Charles, for all of his
brilliance in chemistry he lacked in fortitude of spirit.
Just as we thought we could end death and cure those whose throats
Death had already wrapped His osseous fingers around, are you
implying that Charles and Price thought to do the same with
alchemy? Whatever the route, these veins of research or conjuring
should both be forgotten, for nature cannot and should not be
subverted; it is beyond the territory of mortal man. The feverish
impetus we had called up in our work never truly went back to
whence it came but lived on and thrived in Charles eating his mind
and soul to madness. Another death delivered handily to our
doorstep, Harrison. We are all haunted each in our own lonely
crater.
How could you not remember when we burned the Diary? Do you even
remember when we all decided that the Diary should be destroyed?
We knew it needed to be done but we had left it around for weeks
with none of us being able to commit the final act, only stare
impotently at it unable to carry out our consensus. Its weighty
presence seemed to have a life of its own, pleading for survival.
Maybe this was just our timidity in destroying two years of
exacting effort or was it us refusing to believe that all of the
sacrifices made were entirely in vain? As for my memory of Charles
and the Diary, I can call up when he took it and the night it was
destroyed.
I believe it was the end of the summer of 1881, the night before
Cecilia Penning’s annual dinner party. We had retired to our
third floor apartment in the evening. This was after you had left,
though I do not recall the reason for your departure. After our
evening tea, Charles’ mood drastically changed, anger and venom
boiled to the surface as though he were a bell suddenly struck. I
had never seen him like that. He was breathing heavily and the
corner of his upper lip lifted and quivered in a look I could not
mistake for any but pure contempt. His presence filled the room as
he stood over me, and that was the first and only time I could say
that I saw in him a complete manifestation of his bellicose
father. With his arm outstretched as if to pull me from the chair
he growled, “This has gone on long enough! Give it to me,
Alberts!” and I quickly took the Diary from the side table next
to me and handed it to him. I was fearful as I had never seen him
so enraged and dared not anger him further, especially after
hearing what his father had done to him weeks before. The moment
his fingers closed around the leather book his arm snapped back to
his chest and he began to back out of the room. He descended the
few steps to the stairwell door never taking his eyes from me. His
final words that evening were harsh and have stayed with me since,
“We were never meant for this work; no man was meant for this!
We have taken ourselves for God and look what we have left along
our bloody path of notes and diagrams and symbols! If we only had
used ourselves instead of the sick and the wretched, we would be
burning right now, but at least those innocent victims, yes I say
victims, Hendrick!, would have passed peacefully instead of the
agonizing torment we subjected them to! I mean to destroy this,”
he said, waving the book at me, “We will abandon our goal and I
will make sure no one picks up our sputtering torch.”
He yanked open the door with such force that the knob left a dent
in the plaster and stormed out. I couldn’t move until the stairs
were quiet and I heard the outer door close. It was then that I
felt a euphoric sense of relief wash over me now that the Diary
was out of the room. I was glad that one of us had the strength to
finally take our decision to action. I am sorry that I did not
discuss the details of that evening with you previously, but I
thought that Charles’ outburst was so uncharacteristic that it
would have been a source of embarrassment for him.
I didn’t see him again until the next night at the dinner party,
but the fire he had shown had completely left him; he was the
nervous, fidgety Charles once more. After the final course and a
few cocktails, the three of us were huddled in the corner of the
dining hall when he whispered, barely lifting his lips from his
glass, that “our work will be finished” and to meet him in the
back garden, then turned and left toward the garden balcony. By
the time we said our goodbyes to Miss Penning and made our way to
the garden, the outdoor stone fireplace was lit and Charles stood
squarely before it silhouetted with a flickering, orange aura. We
stood there for only a moment before he walked to us with the
Diary in his hand. The brief silence between us was profound and
the sharp crackling of the fire sounded as gunshots in the empty
night air. Charles held up the Diary to us as in some final
admonishment, then slowly walked back across the garden and cast
it into the fire. He didn’t come back to us, but instead walked
off into the darkness. For a few minutes we stood and watched the
Diary warp and hiss as it was consumed, and waited for Charles to
come back, but I knew he wouldn’t; he was gone to us, chased
away like the long shadow that had leapt and lurched in front of
him. Concerned that you would have trouble negotiating the stairs,
I helped you back to the apartment. I started packing for New York
City that very night.
The conviction and fervor he displayed that night in the apartment
made it clear that his will would be done and the Diary burned.
There was no doubt in my mind that his path would have taken him
anywhere else except a roaring fire with which to incinerate our
profane scribblings. Does this bring back any of the memory for
you? How could this infernal book reappear in a curio shop after
being immolated decades ago?
I do not want to water down the stuff of this letter by discussing
any of the personal and jovial events I wish to relay. I will save
those for the next time I sit down to write to you. Better times
are ahead if we wish it, my dear Harrison. I can smell them as
Huxby can smell the bacon fat now rending in the kitchen, and I
salivate for it.
