VIII
Louis Goeth on a Journey
Early in the summer of ’70, Henri List felt an impelling desire to visit his second daughter, Jennie, whom he had not seen in a number of years. In 1862, she was married to a certain Walter Whittlesey, a contracting railway engineer, and they lived on 300-acre farm at Lyons Falls, N.Y. On the 29th day of February, 1864, she added to the world’s population a daughter, in due time named Anna, under Presbyterian auspices. Mrs. Whittlesey at the time we are considering, was 34 years of age—one year younger than her sister, Andrienne, greatly beloved mother of Louis Sullivan. When Henri List’s desire had ripened into a resolve and was so announced, there was “the devil to pay,” as was said at times in those days. Louis became frantic. He must go too. He, also, had not seen his Tante Jennie in many years. He must see where she lived and how she lived. He must see his dear little cousin Anna, and Uncle Walter too. He must see the farm, and the river and the great waterfall.
“Grandpa, I have never seen a waterfall, only in pictures, and in pictures they don’t move and they don’t roar; I want to live with a real waterfall; and I want to see the Berkshire Hills; and the Hudson; you know, Grandpa, pictures don’t give you any real idea; why Grandpa, a picture of a tree isn’t anything at all when you see a real tree, like our great Ash at Cowdry’s; and to think, Grandpa, I’ve never been farther away than Newburyport; take me with you, Grandpa. I want to see something big; everything in Boston and Wakefield has grown so small; we are so shut in; my geography says there are big things as you go west, that outdoors gets bigger and bigger; I want to go Grandpa; now is the time; I may never have another chance.”
Grandpa, at first was angry and obdurate. He thought only of what a pest, of what a continuous nuisance his growing grandson would be, and the thought became a nightmare; for Henri List, conforming to custom, was growing older, was acquiring nerves; his easygoing humor showed occasional thin spots of temper. He roared at the “dear little Cousin Anna” business, but the possible significance of the pleadings concerning a “shut-in life” and “big things as you go west” dawned upon him, grew stronger, and he came finally to believe that what he had heard was not altogether boyish nonsense but a rising cry for expansion, a defining hunger for larger vision, bigger things; that his grandson, as it were, was outgrowing his cocoon. Upon second and third thoughts he agreed; whereupon the few remaining sane ones also agreed that Louis needed kennel, collar and chain.
The day came. They departed via the Boston and Albany Railway in the evening. Sleepless, restive, Louis awaited, as best he might, the coming of the Berkshire Hills into his growing world. He knew he would see them near dawn. The hour came; he entered the foothills and began winding among them, as with labored breath the engines, like heavy draft horses, began a steady pull, the train dragging reluctantly into steadiness as succeeding hills grew taller—with Louis eagerly watching. The true thrill of action began with the uprearing of imposing masses as Louis clung to the solid train now purring in the solitudes in ever-lengthening swings—deep valleys below—until, amid mists and pale moon gleaming, arose the mighty Berkshires, their summits faint and far, their immensities solemn, calm, seeming eternal in the ghostly fog in the mild shimmer, clad in forests, uttering great words, runic words revealing and withholding their secret to a young soul moving as a solitary visitant, even as a wraith among them, the engines crying: “We will!” the mountains replying: “We will!” to an expanding soul listening within its own mists, its own shimmering dream, to the power without and within, amid the same echoes within and without, bereft of words to reply, a bare hush of being, as though through mists of mind and shimmer of hope, sublimity, in revelation, had come to one wholly unprepared, had come to one as a knock on the door, had come to one who had known mountains only in books. And Louis again, in wonder, felt the power of man. The thought struck deep, that what was bearing him along was solely the power of man; the living power to wish, to will, to do. That man, in his power, with broad stride, had entered the regioned sanctity of these towering hills and like a giant of Elfinland had held them in the hollow of his hand. He had made a path, laid the rails, builded the engines that others might pass. Many saw engines and rails, and pathway, and one saw what lay behind them. In the murky mist and shimmer of moon and dawn, a veil was lifted in the solitude of the Berkshires. Louis slept, his nerves becalmed, amid the whistle’s sonorous warnings, the silence of the engine, the long, shrill song of the brakes, with mingling echoes, as the train, with steady pace, wound slowly downward toward the Hudson, leaving the Berkshires to their silence and their solitude—and Louis slept on, under the wand of the power of man.
They reached Albany in broad daylight. The Hudson, to Louis’s dismay, did not impress him as greatly as he had hoped and believed it would. Its course was straight instead of broadly curving, and the clutter of buildings along its western flank seemed to belittle it. It appeared to him as a wide waterway, not unpleasant of its kind. It seemed to lack what Louis had come to believe the character of a river. The bridge crossing it, with its numberless short spans and lack of bigness, beauty and romance
