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 needn'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: -