The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ at the very rear of the trolley; hoping to relax among them, as he could not relax elsewhere; and trying to take no note that, with his arrival in their midst, the men had abruptly ceased talking.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: PRINCETON SNOBBERY

      In our egalitarian American society, it is considered a kind of evil to feel superior to other Americans; though the lower strata of all human societies yearn to feel superior to other, yet lower, strata, still it is sacrosanct to pretend that this is not so; that snobbery, in all its forms, is aberrant as well as evil.

      This may be a convenient time for me to provide to the reader some information concerning the subtle yet crucial differentiations in social rank between those persons in our chronicle who belong to the old “county” families, of long-established lineage and wealth, and those of a more recent sort who have but lately, that’s to say within the past century, migrated to the area.

      The original category is pilgrims, settlers, or colonists; the second, much vaster, is immigrants.

      On one hand we have the old Jersey families of the stature of the Slades, initially inhabitants of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who had moved to the Crown Colony of New Jersey at a time when “Princeton” did not exist, being but one of three small villages—“King’s Town,” “Queen’s Town,” and “Prince’s Town”—on the old pike road between New York and Philadelphia. Along with the Slades, if not rivaling them in reputation and wealth, are the Morgans, the FitzRandolphs, the Bayards, the van Dycks, the Pynes (of the magnificent mansion Drumthwacket, in more recent years the residence of the governor of New Jersey), the several families of Burrs (descended from Reverend Aaron Burr, Sr.)—and others, falling beyond the periphery of this history. That these noble old families predated Princeton University by decades should be kept in mind, for, in its earlier guise as the College of New Jersey, the institution was first founded in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and later moved, in 1748, by the Reverend Aaron Burr, Sr., to Newark; then, a decade later, the college was moved by President Samuel Davies to its present location in the village of Princeton, on Route 27, or Nassau Street as it is called, near the intersection with state highway 206. From this modest beginning, with its close ties to the Presbyterian Church, the university has grown, and grown—and has now overgrown itself, one might say, in a crowded and cramped campus in which “green” is scarcely glimpsed and unsightly high-rise structures fly in the face of the elegant Collegiate Gothic architecture of the earlier era. In the West End of Princeton, to this day, descendants of the old families yet reside, some very nearly anonymously; for time has passed them by, as the admission of women, “blacks,” and a quota-less quantity of Jews to the great university would indicate, a trickle of anarchy at first in that low decade, the 1970s, and now a flood.

      Thus, one can see a clear division between the old “settler” families and the swarm of “new persons” who had moved into the area merely to be employed by the university, at decidedly modest salaries.

      (It was held against Woodrow Wilson, by individuals like Adelaide McLean Burr, that, being too poorly paid to afford a motorcar, the president of the university was obliged to bicycle much of the time; this is a cruel sort of snobbery, indeed. Yet we must laugh with Adelaide, for she is very witty!) Naturally there was some overlapping as in the case of my father Pearce van Dyck, the son of one of the most distinguished “county” families, who was also a scholar and philosopher of national reputation, with degrees from Cambridge (U.K.) as well as Princeton. To reason more finely, Ellen Wilson was related, on her paternal grandmother’s side, to the Randolphs of Virginia, by way of which she might have claimed a familial connection with the wealthy FitzRandolphs of Princeton, except, we have to assume, Mrs. Wilson lacked the courage to do so, and risk being snubbed.

      As to Josiah and Annabel, the principal characters of The Accursed—though they are wholly sympathetic, and indeed very good-hearted individuals, it is inescapable that they, too, are snobs—all unconsciously and helplessly, as they are Slades.

THE UNSPEAKABLE I

      (Excerpted from the secret journal of Mrs. Adelaide McLean Burr, April–May 1905)

      This invaluable journal, transcribed in a secret code which no other historian has “cracked” until now, was originally discovered amid a miscellany of papers, household accounts, and other memorabilia, at Maidstone House, long after Mrs. Burr’s premature death. At the time, inscribed in an eccentric and near-unreadable code, in a spidery hand, in lavender ink, in the Crimson Calfskin Book, the journal was not recognized for its worth.

      The present narrator is hesitant to put himself forward as the sole living person capable of reading Mrs. Burr’s journal with full comprehension, yet I think that false modesty is remiss; and rival historians of the period are hereby warned against infringing upon my labors, which are fully protected by copyright.

      (I hope it will not seem over-protective of my rights, but I have decided not to reveal to the reader the way in which, after months of frustration, I managed to “crack” Adelaide’s code, which would seem, to the untrained eye, the most egregious gibberish, festooned with eccentric Theosophical symbols and doodles.)

      The reader should be informed that Adelaide McLean Burr was stricken with a mysterious “malaise” shortly after her wedding, in September 1891, to Horace Hudiger Burr, Jr., which manifested itself in a variety of physical and mental complaints, including partial paralysis, extreme fatigue, and breathlessness; among the female invalids of Princeton at this time, Mrs. Burr was quite the most prominent, and often sent “bulletins” to friends whom she could not see socially. It was not uncommon that the invalid would ask to be carried downstairs, to greet distinguished visitors at Maidstone House, for instance Mr. and Mrs. Grover Cleveland, when they were new to town, or to visit with a select sisterhood of Princeton ladies at teatime primarily; though it was believed that she had not left the confines of the Maidstone property since returning from her Bermuda honeymoon in October 1891.

      Another detail that the reader should know: Maidstone House, the ancestral home of the Pembroke Burrs, who had, like the Slades, originally settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but moved to the Crown Colony of New Jersey in the 1700s, is one of the more striking of the stately homes in the West End of Princeton. It is located at 164 Hodge Road, having been built in 1803 in a quaint (and somewhat forbidding) style of “bastardized” Romanesque and Gothic, in somber-hued granite tending toward the luminous, depending upon the strength of the light. With more than twenty-five rooms in the house proper, and a dozen more in the old carriage house and in the slaves’ quarters to the rear, Maidstone exerts a curious spell upon the observer: suggesting, in its somewhat blunt, foursquare architecture, and its towering chimneys and exceptionally tall, narrow, and “brooding” windows, frequently kept shuttered, an unusual blend of the funereal and the sublime.

      As the reader knows, my childhood was passed at 87 Hodge Road, which is but a half-block from Maidstone House. It was a childish fancy, though taken very seriously by our impressionable servants, and other household workers and tradesmen who came often to the house, that Maidstone House was “haunted”—well before Adelaide Burr’s horrific death.

      _____ . UNSPEAKABLE!—the incident of which all Princeton whispers this morning.

      But how shall a lady inquire of it?

      I know not for certain when it took place—(two nights ago?)—& whether the woman to whom it happened—(an outrage, was it?—so delicious!)—was the sort to embark out alone, at dusk; whether she was a resident of Princeton proper, or dwelt in some pokey little village nearby.

      How unjust, to be denied this crucial information!—but if the crime against the lady be UNSPEAKABLE СКАЧАТЬ