The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

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      The last thing Woodrow Wilson wanted was to be talked-of; to be the object of speculation, crude gossip.

      His dignity was such, yes and his pride: he could not bear his name, his reputation, his motives so besmirched.

      For it was beginning to be generally known in Princeton, in this fourth and most tumultuous year of his presidency of the university, that Woodrow Wilson was encountering a cunning, ruthless, and unified opposition led by the politically astute Dean Andrew Fleming West, whose administrative position at the university preceded Woodrow’s inauguration as president; and who was reputed to be deeply aggrieved that the presidency, more or less promised to him by the board of trustees, had unaccountably been offered to his younger rival Woodrow Wilson, who had not the grace to decline in his favor.

      All this rankled, and was making Woodrow’s life miserable; his primary organ of discomfort was his stomach, and intestines; yet nearly so vulnerable, his poor aching brain that buzzed through day and night like a hive of maddened hornets. Yet, as a responsible administrator, and an astute politician, he was able to disguise his condition much of the time, even in the very company of West, who confronted Woodrow too with mock courtesy, like an unctuous hypocrite in a Molière comedy whose glances into the audience draw an unjust sympathy, to the detriment of the idealistic hero.

      Like a large ungainly burden, a steamer trunk perhaps, stuffed with unwanted and outgrown clothing, shoes and the miscellany of an utterly ordinary and unexamined life, Woodrow Wilson sought to carry the weight of such anxiety to his mentor, and unburden himself of it, at his astonished elder’s feet.

      It would not be the first time that “Tommy” Wilson had come to appeal to “Win” Slade, surreptitiously; but it would be the final time.*

      “Woodrow, hello! Come inside, please.”

      A gust of wind, tinged with irony, accompanied Woodrow into the elder man’s library.

      Reverend Slade grasped the younger man’s hand, that was rather chill, and limp; a shudder seemed to run from the one to the other, leaving the elder man slightly shaken.

      “I gather that there is something troubling you, Woodrow? I hope—it isn’t—anything involving your family?”

      Between the two, there had sometimes been talk, anxious on Woodrow’s side and consoling and comforting on Winslow’s, about Woodrow’s “marital relations”—(which is not to say “sexual relations”—the men would never have discussed so painfully private a matter)—and Woodrow’s disappointment at being the father of only girls.

      Woodrow, breathless from the wind-buffeted walk along Elm Road, where streetlights were few, and very little starlight assisted his way, and but a gauze-masked moon, stared at his friend for a moment without comprehending his question. Family? Was Winslow Slade alluding to Woodrow’s distant “cousin”—Yaeger Washington Ruggles?

      Then, Woodrow realized that of course Winslow was referring to his wife, Ellen, and their daughters. Family.

      “No, Winslow. All is well there.” (Was this so? The answer came quickly, automatically; for it was so often asked.) “It’s another matter I’ve come to discuss with you. Except—I am very ashamed.”

      “ ‘Ashamed’? Why?”

      “But I must unburden my heart to you, Winslow. For I have no one else.”

      “Please, Woodrow! Take a seat. Beside the fire, for you do look chilled. And would you like something to drink?—to warm you?”

      No, no! Woodrow rarely drank.

      Out of personal disdain, or, if he gave thought to it, out of revulsion for the excess of drinking he’d had occasion to observe in certain households in the South.

      Woodrow shivered, sinking into a chair by the fireplace that faced his gracious host. Out of nervousness he removed his eyeglasses to polish them vigorously, a habit that annoyed others, though Winslow Slade took little notice.

      “It is so peaceful here. Thank you, Dr. Slade, for taking time to speak with me!”

      “Of course, Woodrow. You know that I am here, at any time, as your friend and ‘spiritual counselor’—if you wish.”

      In his heightened state of nerves Woodrow glanced about the library, which was familiar to him, yet never failed to rouse him to awe. Indeed, Winslow Slade’s library was one of the marvels of the wealthy West End of Princeton, for the part-retired Presbyterian minister was the owner of a (just slightly damaged and incomplete) copy of the legendary Gutenberg Bible of 1445, which was positioned on a stand close by Winslow’s carved mahogany desk; on another pedestal was an early, 1895 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. And there were first editions of works by Goethe, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Ritschl, James Hutchinson Stirling and Thomas Carlyle among others. In his youth Dr. Slade had been something of a classics scholar, and so there were volumes by Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and others in Greek, as well as Latin texts—Virgil, Caesar, Cicero, Seneca, Livy, Cato, and (surprisingly, considering the unmitigated pagan nature of their verse) Ovid, Catullus, and Petronius. And there were the English classics of course—the leather-bound works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift, Samuel Johnson through the Romantics—Wordsworth and Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats and, allegedly Dr. Slade’s favorite, the fated John Clare. The library was designed by the celebrated architect John McComb, Jr., famous for having designed Alexander Hamilton’s Grange: among its features were an ornate coffered ceiling, paneled walls of fifteenth-century tooled leather (reputedly taken from the home of Titian), and portraits of such distinguished Slade ancestors as General Elias Slade, the Reverend Azariah Slade, and the Reverend Jonathan Edwards (related by marriage to the original Slade family)—each rendered powerfully by John Singleton Copley. Portraits, daguerreotypes, and shadow drawings of Dr. Slade’s sons Augustus and Copplestone, and his grandchildren Josiah, Annabel, Todd, and little Oriana, also hung on the wall, just behind Dr. Slade’s desk; and should be mentioned here since all but the child Oriana will figure prominently in this chronicle.

      (Is this unobtrusively done? I am a historian, and not a literary stylist; so must “intercalate” such details very consciously, that the reader will take note of them; yet not so obtrusively, that the sensitive reader is offended by over-explicitness.)

      In this gracious room, commanding a position of prominence, was a fireplace of stately proportions in whose marble mantel was carved, in Gothic letters, HIC HABITAT FELICITAS—which caught Woodrow’s eye, as always it did when he visited Winslow Slade. With a morose smile Woodrow leaned over to run his fingertips over the chiseled inscription, saying, “Here, Dr. Slade, I have no doubt that happiness abides; but at my home, and in the president’s office in Nassau Hall—not likely.”

      During the conversation to follow, the fire in the fireplace blazed and waned; and blazed again, and again waned; until, without either man noticing, the logs collapsed in a crumbling of smoldering coals, like distant, dying suns, into darkness and oblivion which not even a belated poker-stirring, by the younger man, could revive.

      AT THIS TIME, before the terrible incursions of the Curse would prematurely age him, Winslow Slade, partly retired from his longtime pastorship at the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton, was a vigorous gentleman of seventy-four, who looked at least a decade younger; as his visitor, not yet fifty, yet looked, with such strain in his face, and his eyes shadowed in the firelight, at least a decade older than his age.

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