August Derleth Pages

 

 

INCIDENT ON A TRAIN

 

“In this incident lay something of a story that might be written...” So August Derleth wrote in his second volume of published journal, Village Daybook (1947). (1) The incident itself is one that Derleth “turned over and over in [his] mind”, since it was not only written up as an entry in his journal, but also surfaced in two poems and a short story.

In his journal entry for 3 December, Derleth describes a train journey to New York via Chicago, in the company of Helen Thompson and her small daughter Joan. Donald Wandrei (1908-87) a friend of Derleth's, and co-founder with him in 1939 of the publishing company Arkham House, was also travelling with them. Wandrei having left them in order to get some sleep, the Thompsons and Derleth must have looked like a family: husband, wife, and child. This was the assumption of the train conductor, who started talking to them as if this was the case. Thompson and Derleth went along with the conductor. “Both Helen and I were equally guilty of perpetuating his belief in us as man and wife.”

The next journal entry is for ten days later, 13 December. Derleth was travelling back to Chicago and thence to Sac Prairie, apparently alone (Wandrei is not mentioned). The same conductor as before recognizes Derleth and asks about his “family”. Derleth continues the deception. “Each time he passed thereafter, he grinned at me, as if he and I shared a secret, and I knew we did, though it differed...”

The whole tone of these two journal entries is that of light-hearted fun and an amusing deception, doing harm to no one. But was that all?

In 1940, Derleth published his third collection of poetry, Here on a Darkling Plain (2). In that book there are two poems in the section “Striding Place” which seem to view the same train incident, but in further different ways.

In the poem “3 A.M.” Derleth wrote:

The following poem, “Woman on a Train” this time focuses on the woman only, and is much more introspective. Derleth tries to analyse his feelings about their time together, rather than just describe it:

It was Derleth's practice to include poems in his published journals (with the exception of Countryman’s Journal, 1963), usually because an incident or experience that he recorded became the genesis of the poem.(Although strictly speaking the poem perhaps generated the journal entry, as it would usually have been written first, often in situ, and the journal entry made some time afterwards. At least, this is how the process seems in Derleth's published texts.)

In Village Daybook and its predecessor Village Year (1941), several poems from Here on a Darkling Plain are included, although neither “3 A.M.” nor “Woman on a Train” appear. Also, no reference is made in the journal entries to any poems being written at the time or subsequently.

It is possible that Derleth wrote the poems (or earlier drafts of them) at the time, or he could well have written them at any time between the train incident and the publication of the collection (See below about the dating of the incident.) Both are possible explanations, and serve to show how the creative mind can use the same single event or emotion in different ways to put over different aspects of the incident.

The original incident is fleshed out by the journal entry, and further enhanced by the poetry, so both the outer appearances and the inner feelings are recorded -- at least, as far Derleth wanted them to be.

Doubtless reflection had also taken place in the meantime, so the incident as recorded in journal and poetry might not bear much relation to the actual event. Yet they would still tell the truth, and put over reality, as Derleth saw them. It a pity that Donald Wandrei (was he a “travelling salesman” at the time of the journey?) and Helen and Joan Thompson have not recorded their versions...

The fourth and final piece resulting from the incident on the train is the short story
“McCrary's Wife” (1944). (3) In this story the character of Bill McCrary has the experience of travelling from Chicago to New York with Christine and Helen, the wife and small daughter of his Sac Prairie friend Frank Norman. The conductor mistakes them for a family, and McCrary and Christine play along with the deception.

But Derleth has McCrary enter in and deepen the emotions that he describes in
“Woman on a Train”:

Then Derleth puts into McCrary's thoughts what is actually a quoted verse from “Woman on a Train”, and is a key to most of Derleth's serious work: This is the way a man dies -- in moments gone just beyond his reach.

McCrary finds himself wishing that he was part of a family, with Christine and Helen. When they separate in New York, Christine and Helen leave his life, but he will never be the same again. Another story begins.

McCrary meets the train conductor several times more, on subsequent business trips to and from New York. They talk about their families: the conductor's real one, and McCrary's imaginary one. McCrary elaborates his story until it almost feels true:

But the dream, reality as it seemed, is broken by McCrary finding out about the sudden death of the conductor, after one trip on which he does not appear.

McCrary finds that he cannot bring himself to return to Chicago on his usual train, so he cashes in his ticket and returns on a different train. He gives, as his reason, the death of his wife, "McCrary's Wife". More than that had died.

This theme is a recurring one throughout Derleth's life, and is put down and explored in much of his writing, especially the apparently autobiographical fiction, and the journals and poems. Perhaps the feelings expressed in “McCrary's Wife” express how Derleth felt during the writing of the story, if not during the original train incident itself.

The material in the journals seems to date from before the Second World War (8). It would seem that the entries do not follow a definite sequence, but that all four published volumes contain material from the same few years, not necessarily published in sequence.

In Thirty Years of Arkham House (1970) Derleth states that he had only paid two visits to New York. Unless he regarded New York and the East Coast of the United States as totally separate places, I assume that these visits tally with his recorded visits to Walden Pond, Massachusetts, in 1938 and 1947, as described in Walden Pond, Homage to Thoreau (1968).

The date of Derleth's incident on the train could thus be December 1938, although the entries in Walden Pond are dated in September. Perhaps, further to what I say above, the journals as published are very inaccurate as to precise dates and details, but are more intended to be a representative rather than a literal account of reality. (9)

It is always tempting, but dangerous, to speculate as to the state of mind and circumstances of life of a writer of an autobiographical story, because of the lack of knowledge of the degree of autobiography involved (So, too, the use of the first person singular in fiction and poetry, and perhaps also in journals in this case.)

Derleth's engagement to Marcia Masters (the daughter of poet Edgar Lee Masters) ended in early 1944 (10). Questions of the sort troubling Bill McCrary would have probably been troubling Derleth too. McCrary was given the same age that Derleth was in 1944.

Perhaps all that can safely be said is that for a truly creative writer (or any artist), any incident can be used to produce a piece or pieces of work that illuminate the human experience, not only of the artist at the time, but also of the reader. The balance between humour and pathos -- always delicate in Derleth's work -- shows the complexity and contradictory nature of what it is to be a thinking, feeling human being.

The incident on a train, which sparked off two entries in a published journal, two poems, and a short story (and presumably earned him some cash!) shows Derleth's creative mind at work, at full power. His mixture of reality and reflections, of the chronicling of an objective event and then treating the subjective responses in different ways and genres, and perhaps even mixing them, allows thought-provoking glimpse into a created world, but one no less real and true for all that.

 

NOTES

1. Chicago: Pellegrini and Cudahy 1947. Quotations are from pp 182-4.

2. Philadelphia: Ritten House 1940.  Poems are on pp 29-32.

3. Published in Good Housekeeping, August, 1944; reprinted in Sac Prairie People, Sauk City:     Stanton & Lee, 1948, pp 51-74. Quotes are from the latter edition. In his lecture “Are Editors     People?” (reprinted in the August Derleth Society Newsletter Vol 8 No 2, 1984) Derleth states that     the first magazine publication of “McCrary’s Wife” had a different ending, which was removed     when he restored the original ending for book publication.

4. “McCrary's Wife”, p 60.

5. Ibid, pp 71-2.

6. Ibid, p 73.

7. Ibid, p 74.

8. See Derleth's introduction to Wisconsin Country (1965), p x.

9. Walden Pond also records a third visit, in 1965.

10. See Alison M. Wilson, August Derleth: a Bibliography, p xviii.

 

A slightly different version of this article first appeared in the August Derleth Society Newsletter Vol 13 No 1, 1991

 

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