Chapter Seventeen #2
“Concluded correctly.” Louisa favored government helping the working class, but she was skeptical of all forms of socialism.
Leaves far too much to people’s decency, and most aren’t so decent.
Given that one of the members of Pelham’s little commune had made off with all the funds, Julia had thought he might have come to the same conclusion.
“I fear I am insufficiently proletarian or self-sacrificing to relish the idea of living on a commune,” Julia said.
“You’re selling yourself short.” Louisa had the hint of a smile on her lips. “We lived on something like a commune ourselves, did we not?”
“I suppose. But we were never on Liberty Island for more than a few days. We always came back to Haven Point.”
“… for tennis,” Louisa added. “Perhaps there’s a compromise in the works.”
“Part-time communism. With tennis,” Julia replied.
“Monday through Friday in Siberia. Weekends at a hotel.”
“With room service. Also good motorcars and moving pictures.”
“You will scrub floors,” Louisa said, then raised an admonitory finger and added, “But not if you must go without good hats.”
They went back and forth for a while, until they were both laughing.
“I highly doubt he’ll ask you to live on a commune, Julia,” Louisa said finally.
“Well, he did once,” Julia said, but then she began to chuckle again. “Though he was thrilled with his advance and is presently looking for a larger apartment. For a collectivist, he’s rather obsessed with money.”
Louisa had picked up the manuscript and was thumbing through it. When she reached the place that Julia had marked with Mother’s telegram, she held it up, a question in her eyes.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. Lillian died.”
“Oh, my,” Louisa said, crossing her heart. “When is the funeral?”
“Saturday.”
“But wasn’t Pelham supposed to come this weekend?”
“I’m not going to the funeral.”
“What?” Louisa looked more confused than appalled, but even this was too much for Julia. The sensation of her mood crashing back to earth filled her with rebellious anger.
“Not you, too!” she snapped.
Louisa’s face fell. “Julia, I am sorry. I’m just surprised.”
“It’s long past time for me to stand up to my parents. There’s no reason for me to attend after the way Lillian treated me. You realize, don’t you, that Liberty Island started in part because of her? They wanted to keep me out of her sight!”
“What a stroke of luck that was.” Louisa’s tone was gentle, but there was still a confused wrinkle in her brow.
“I know you are nostalgic for Liberty Island, Louisa, but I can’t love the memory as you do. Think about it. My own family—my own mother—hid me away. It was all an elaborate way of saying, ‘You cannot behave this way in public.’”
“Well, we couldn’t. That’s how things were. And it was hardly bondage. It was permission. Encouragement, even.”
“You’re being too generous,” Julia scoffed. “How was Mother any different from Father or William? They hoped I’d get it out of my system and eventually do as they wished. Make my debut, marry, and settle down in Back Bay.”
“And yet here you are, unmarried and not in Back Bay.”
“Despite my family. And what did Mother ever do to protect me from Lillian? Nothing!”
“I don’t recall your needing protection.”
“Yes, because I repressed my feelings,” Julia said, too annoyed to stop herself, even as she knew that, for the second time that evening, she was channeling Pelham (and therefore Sigmund Freud).
Louisa tilted her head and looked at Julia, as if she were seeing someone familiar on the street but could not quite place her face. As Julia had been struggling to recognize herself of late, this, too, hit a bit too close to the bone.
“Just say it. I’m spoiled. I was clothed and fed and had a very fine roof over my head.”
“I was not thinking anything of the kind.”
“Then what?”
“I suppose I don’t understand what feelings you supposedly repressed. You were the most expressive person I’d ever met,” Louisa said. She paused, then shook her head slowly. “You were a happy child, Julia.”
“I just hadn’t faced the truth. Pelham agrees I shouldn’t go. So does Mina.”
“Naturally.” Louisa sighed wearily.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that, according to their philosophy, we should do whatever our impulses say, with no limits or criticism. Pelham, in particular, seems to have a knack for concocting elaborate intellectual justifications that happen to serve him. They hate anything or anyone that tries to regulate their behavior, including families, and especially parents. And it’s more fun when everyone else hates their parents, too.
” She shrugged and added, “It’s a bit ungrateful, if you don’t mind my saying. ”
Julia felt a spasm of compunction. Louisa never said a self-pitying word, but she was just a little girl when her mother died, and she never knew her father. Still, Julia had had a few too many home truths for one night. “I feel like you’re taking what I’ve told you and throwing it back at me!”
Louisa closed her eyes, took a tired breath. “I’m sorry. Forgive me, Julia. I did not mean to speak of that.”
Julia knew she was the one who should ask for forgiveness, but she was too agitated. When she said nothing, Louisa tiredly pushed herself up from her seat and left.
Unfortunately, finishing Pel’s manuscript late that evening did nothing to improve Julia’s mood.
She was correct that Pelham had set out to rewrite the history of Brook Farm.
In the eponymous “Schoolcraft Colony,” two factions emerged, one of which he portrayed as responsible for the failure.
The other split off to start a new commune.
The reader was left with the impression that the new experiment would flourish.
By this time, however, Julia had a much bigger concern than having to feign enthusiasm for utopianism. From the first pages, she saw that one of Pelham’s characters, Patience Turner, was based on Margaret Fuller.
In Pelham’s interpretation, this beloved figure from Concord, idolized by three generations of Julia’s family, teemed with neuroses and secret perverse yearnings.
Patience Turner’s father was devoted to her, just as Margaret Fuller’s had been, but Pelham had interpreted it as a twisted devotion, resulting in Patience’s perverse sexual desires.
She repressed them, but as any believer in psychoanalysis would tell you, nothing is ever really suppressed, and they manifested in Patience’s ill health, irregular behavior, and bizarre dreams.
Julia could have kicked herself for letting Pelham borrow her bound copy of Margaret Fuller’s diaries, which Michael’s mother had given her. They were her adolescent diaries, and as such contained dramatic flights of emotional fancy.
Worse, Margaret Fuller had suffered from nightmares and written about them. However forward-thinking, not even this brilliant woman could have predicted Freudians, who reacted to a description of a dream as a kitten responds to a ball of twine.
Julia put the manuscript down and stared into the dying embers in the fireplace.
Louisa’s summary of Pelham and his comrades’ beliefs was accurate.
They disdained society’s rules and held the “primitive” in great regard.
Feelings and instincts were superior to logic and reason, and an authentic life required indulging one’s impulses.
The very reason they were so attached to Sigmund Freud was that he affirmed all these beliefs.
Julia had not forgotten Pelham’s scolding letters during the war, or that horrible last letter, when he said her “inclination toward contentment,” her naive optimism, made them incompatible.
When they reunited last spring, though, his system of beliefs manifested in ways that appealed to Julia’s native spontaneity. “Following one’s impulses” meant delightful hours spent walking aimlessly about New York, stopping when and where the mood struck.
They went to jazz clubs, art shows, and experimental theater productions.
One evening, they saw a play at some makeshift theater near Hell’s Kitchen.
Julia found it bizarre and incomprehensible, but given Pelham’s deeper appreciation for the avant-garde, she figured he might be enjoying it.
But then he squeezed her hand, and she turned and saw amused horror on his face.
With a jerk of his head toward the aisle, he signaled Let’s go.
They snuck out the back, managing to hold in their laughter until they were on the sidewalk.
He truly seemed to appreciate Julia’s more cheerful disposition and more optimistic perspective. One warm midsummer night, a long ramble landed them near Morningside Heights, looking out on the Hudson, and Pelham turned to her suddenly.
“Julia, I’ve begun writing a novel.” He spoke quickly, as if it was a confession he had been afraid to make.
“Oh, Pelham, I am so glad. Your writing is almost too beautiful for magazines.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Of course! Your metaphors, your imagery and descriptive prose. You bring things to life, even in the letters you wrote me.”
Just then, they heard the sound of a great deep horn from a boat on the river.
“Well, that’s that, then,” he said, and they both laughed.
“Literature really is the only real venue for primal creativity and authentic emotion,” he added. (Pelham could still be a bit oratorical, but in those blissful days, Julia did not mind.)
He stuck to his rule of not speaking about the content of his novel, but that still left plenty to discuss.
Julia found it enthralling to hear him speak about his inspirations, his writing process, and the exhilaration of coming up with ideas.
He credited Julia with his completing it: “If not for my absolute faith in your intuition, I would never have pressed forward.”