ARCHIBALD LOWELL

Archibald Lowell, owner of the Times

Lived six months of the year at Sunnyside,

His Gothic castle near LeRoy, so named

Because no sun was in him, it may be.

His wife was much away when on this earth

At cures, in travel, fighting psychic ills,

Approaching madness, dying nerves. They said

Her heart was starved for living with a man

So cold and silent. Thirty years she lived

Bound to this man, in restless agony,

And as she could not free her life from his,

Nor keep it living with him, on a day

She stuck a gas hose in her mouth and drank

Her lungs full of the lethal stuff and died.

That was the very day the hunter found

Elenor Murray's body near the river.

A servant saw this Mrs. Lowell lying

A copy of the Times clutched in her hand,

Which published that a slip of paper found

In Elenor Murray's pocket had these words

“To be brave and not to flinch.” And was she brave,

And nerved to end it by these words of Elenor?

But Archibald, the husband, could not bear

To have the death by suicide made known.

He laid the body out, as if his wife

Had gone to bed as usual, turned a jet

And left it, just as if his wife had failed

To fully turn it, then went in the room;

Then called the servants, did not know that one

Had seen her with the Times clutched in her hand.

He thought the matter hidden. Merival,

All occupied with Elenor Murray's death

Gave to a deputy the Lowell inquest.

But later what this servant saw was told

To Merival.

And now no more alone

Than when his wife lived, Lowell passed the days

At Sunnyside, as he had done for years.

He sat alone, and paced the rooms alone,

With hands behind him clasped, in fear and wonder

Of life and what life is. He rode about,

And viewed his blooded cattle on the hills.

But what were all these rooms and acres to him

With no face near him but the servants, gardeners?

Sometimes he wished he had a child to draw

Upon his fabulous income, growing more

Since all his life was centered in the Times

To swell its revenues, and in the process

His spirit was more fully in the Times

Than in his body. There were eyes who saw

How deftly was his spirit woven in it

Until it was a scarf to bind and choke

The public throat, or stifle honest thought

Like a soft pillow offered for the head,

But used to smother. There were eyes who saw

The working of its ways emasculate,

Its tones of gray, where flame had been the thing,

Its timorous steps, while spying on the public,

To learn the public's thought. Its cautious pauses,

With foot uplifted, ears pricked up to hear

A step fall, twig break. Platitudes in progress —

With sugar coat of righteousness and order,

Respectability.

Did the public make it?

Or did it make the public, that it fitted

With such exactness in the communal life?

Some thousands thought it fair — what should they think

When it played neutral in the matter of news

To both sides of the question, though at last

It turned the judge, and chose the better side,

Determined from the first, a secret plan,

And cunning way to turn the public scale?

Some thousands liked the kind of news it printed

Where no sensation flourished — smallest type

That fixed attention for the staring eyes

Needed for type so small. But others knew

It led the people by its fair pretensions,

And used them in the end. In any case

This editor played hand-ball in this way:

The advertisers tossed the ball, the readers

Caught it and tossed it to the advertisers:

And as the readers multiplied, the columns

Of advertising grew, and Lowell's thought

Was how to play the one against the other,

And fill his purse.

It was an ingrown mind,

And growing more ingrown with time. Afraid

Of crowds and streets, uncomfortable in clubs,

No warmth in hands to touch his fellows’ hands,

Keeping aloof from politicians, loathing

The human alderman who bails the thief;

The little scamp who pares a little profit,

And grafts upon a branch that takes no harm.

He loved the active spirit, if it worked,

And feared the active spirit, if it played.

This Lowell hid himself from favor seekers,

Such letters filtered to him through a sieve

Of secretaries. If he had a friend,

Who was a mind to him as well, perhaps

It was a certain lawyer, but who knew?

And cursed with monophobia, none the less

This Lowell lived alone there near LeRoy,

Surrounded by his servants, at his desk

A secretary named McGill, who took

Such letters, editorials as he spoke.

His life was nearly waste. A peanut stand

Should be as much remembered as the Times,

When fifty years are passed.

And every month

The circulation manager came down

To tell the great man of the gain or loss

The paper made that month in circulation,

In advertising, chiefly. Lowell took

The audit sheets and studied them, and gave

Steel bullet words of order this or that.

He took the dividends, and put them — where?

God knew alone.

He went to church sometimes,

On certain Sundays, for a pious mother

Had reared him so, and sat there like a corpse,

A desiccated soul, so dry the moss

Upon his teeth was dry.

And on a day,

His wife now in the earth a week or so,

Himself not well, the doctor there to quiet

His fears of sudden death, pains in the chest,

His manager had come — was made to wait

Until the doctor finished — brought the sheets

Which showed the advertising, circulation.

And Lowell studied them and said at last:

“That new reporter makes the Murray inquest

A thing of interest, does the public like it?”

To which the manager: “It sells the paper.”

And then the great man: “It has served its use.

Now being nearly over, print these words:

The Murray inquest shows to what a length

Fantastic wit can go, it should be stopped.”

An editorial later might be well:

Comment upon a father and a mother

Invaded in their privacy, and life

In intimate relations dragged to view

To sate the curious eye.

Next day the Times

Rebuked the coroner in these words. And then

Merival sent word: “I come to see you,

Or else you come to see me, or by process

If you refuse.” And so the editor

Invited Merival to Sunnyside

To talk the matter out. This was the talk:

First Merival went over all the ground

In mild locution, what he sought to do.

How as departments in the war had studied

Disease and what not, tabulated facts,

He wished to make a start for knowing lives,

And finding remedies for lives. It's true

Not much might be accomplished, also true

The poet and the novelist gave thought,

Analysis to lives, yet who could tell

What system might grow up to find the fault

In marriage as it is, in rearing children

In motherhood, in homes; for Merival

By way of wit said to this dullest man:

“I know of mother and of home, of heaven

I've yet to learn.” Whereat the great man winced,

To hear the home and motherhood so slurred,

And briefly said the Times would go its way

To serve the public interests, and to foster

American ideals as he conceived them.

Then Merival who knew the great man's nature,

How small it was and barren, cold and dull,

And wedded to small things, to gold, and fear

Of change, and knew the life the woman lived,—

These seven days in the earth — with such a man,

Just by a zephyr of intangible thought

Veered round the talk to her, to voice a wonder

About the jet left turned, his deputy

Had overlooked a hose which she could drink

Gas from a jet. “You need n't touch the jet.

Just leave it as she left it — hide the hose,

And leave the gas on, put the woman in bed.”

“This deputy,” said Merival, “was slack

And let a verdict pass of accident.”

“Oh yes” said Merival, “your servant told

About the hose, the Times clutched in her hand.

And may I test this jet, while I am here?

Go up to see and test it?”

Whereupon

The great man with wide eyes stared in the eyes

Of Merival, was speechless for a moment,

Not knowing what to say, while Merival

Read something in his eyes, saw in his eyes

The secret beat to cover, saw the man

Turn head away which shook a little, saw

His chest expand for breath, and heard at last

The editor in four steel bullet words,

“It is not necessary.”

Merival

Had trapped the solitary fox — arose

And going said: “If it was suicide

The inquest must be changed.”

The editor

Looked through the window at the coroner

Walking the gravel walk, and saw his hand

Unlatch the iron gate, and saw him pass

From view behind the trees.

Then horror rose

Within his brain, a nameless horror took

The heart of him, for fear this coroner

Would dig this secret up, and show the world

The dead face of the woman self-destroyed,

And of the talk, which would not come to him,

To poison air he breathed no less, of why

This woman took her life; if for ill health

Then why ill health? O, well he knew at heart

What he had done to break her, starve her life.

And now accused himself too much for words,

Ways, temperament of him that murdered her,

For lovelessness, and for deliberate hands

That pushed her off and down.

He rode that day

To see his cattle, overlook the work,

But when night came with silence and the cry

Of night-hawks, and the elegy of leaves

Beneath the stars that looked so cold at him

As he turned seeking sleep, the dreaded pain

Grew stronger in his breast. Dawn came at last

And then the stir and voices of the maids.

And after breakfast in the carven room

Archibald Lowell standing by the mantel

In his great library, felt sudden pain;

Saw sudden darkness, nothing saw at once,

Lying upon the marble of the hearth;

His great head cut which struck the post of brass

In the hearth's railing — only a little blood!

Archibald Lowell being dead at last;

The Times left to the holders of the stock

Who kept his policy, and kept the Times

As if the great man lived.

And Merival

Taking the doctor's word that death was caused

By angina pectoris, let it drop.

And went his way with Elenor Murray's case.

So Lowell's dead and buried; had to die,

But not through Elenor Murray. That's the Fate

That laughs at greatness, little things that sneak

From alien neighborhoods of life and kill.

And Lowell leaves a will, to which a boy —

Who sold the Times once, afterward the Star —

Is alien as this Elenor to the man

Who owned the Times. But still is brought in touch

With Lowell's will, because this Lowell died

Before he died. And Merival learns the facts

And brings them to the jury in these words:—