I have some understanding of the potential benefits of committing one’s thoughts — and in this case, one’s memories — to paper, for I have published various monographs and essays within my field, most notably my celebrated treatise on Scott’s Marmion, and my less well known but no less critically well received commentary upon the Sir Roger de Coverley Papers in The Spectator. Of course, such a venture as that upon which I now embark this twentieth day of September 1933 is filled more with terror than with imagined reward, for I know not what feelings such a narrative may evoke; but I am determined to do so for the sake of my son, Nicodemus, who will almost certainly one day ask a question it will take all of his father’s courage to answer.
We have had some slight excitement here aboard the train, and I confess I am just now recovering from the shock of the event. Approaching New Haven, there was a great screech and then a jolt of terrific proportions. The car that I was in derailed itself, so that all was upended within my compartment, and I was knocked quite hard against the luggage rack. I have sustained a nasty bruise on my forehead as a result, but I hope that such will have largely disappeared by the time I reach Florida.
I will not write here of the fright the accident gave me, but I did think for a moment that I might die, and in the next instant (how swift the imagination) contemplated my own funeral; but then I began to worry about who should come to such an event, and so I abandoned this avenue of thought. I did ponder, as the trainmen were taking us off the injured vehicle, the prospect of not continuing on my journey and instead returning to New Hampshire. Although it then occurred to me that I should have to do so by train, and, if that were the case, what was the difference between that trip and one to Florida, apart from duration? So I am once again ensconced in my moving library (a different compartment, in fact a sleeper), my books no worse for the accident, but the tin cake box, in which Etna’s letters remain, so severely dented at one corner that it lists badly to one side as it sits across from me on the seat. (Accusingly, I rather think.)
I have just had a good meal of roast pork and prunes with a fruity wine, as well as a shimmering apple custard for dessert, so I am more than a little satisfied and can with complete contentment contemplate a pleasant evening of writing (for this part of my narrative contains not a little joy) and then a night of good sleep, which doubtless shall be swiftly induced by the rhythmic rocking of my vehicle.
Inspired by my brief visit to the Bliss residence, I set out with an ambition not equaled in me before or since to win the hand of the woman whose voice and hair and skin seemed to have permeated every membrane of my body and breached every boundary of my soul. Such a state, I have sometimes thought, must be akin to that rapture that defines the life of the religious mystic — a sense of the body filled with the spirit of God. I hope it is not blasphemous to make such a comparison, but I do not think I have ever been so close to a state of grace as I was in the weeks and months of my courtship of Etna Bliss, a state of grace that showed itself in my speech and gestures and a nearly irrepressible smile. I was seen by others to be not only kinder and more compassionate during this period, but also more physically appealing than I had ever been, perhaps explaining why Miss Bliss was not entirely put off by the prospect of accompanying me on various outings.
Students remarked upon my new leniency, and if they took advantage of it, I did not care. Colleagues, unaccustomed to encountering in me anything but a serious mien, seemed at first puzzled by and then responsive to my transformation. I was asked, during this period, to head up a committee that was to look into the notion of revitalizing the English Literature curriculum for the coming academic year. I was also invited to chaperone the Winter Ball (I remember being delighted and thinking immediately that of course I could invite Etna to share this pleasant duty with me). Noah Fitch, the Senior Professor of English Literature and Rhetoric, asked me to spend Christmas with his family (though secretly I was angling for — but did not receive — an invitation to the Bliss house for Christmas dinner), and John Birch Clark, a former tutor of mine at Dartmouth, gave a soiree to which I was invited. Alas, I could not persuade Etna to join me at this event, since it would require an overnight stay in Hanover, which was, of course, bliss for me to contemplate. (I will try to refrain from playing endlessly upon Etna’s patronym, however tempting; though in those early weeks I exhausted the word in my thoughts, as if I were creating endless variations upon a rhapsodic phrase of music.) During this time, I cultivated a tailor and ordered three new suits of clothes, my previous garments bearing the somewhat shabby look of the schoolmaster. I scarcely remember my weeks at college then. I have no doubt my students’ examinations benefited from my exuberant spirits, for I shed, in those few months, the dull persona of the professor in favor of the more impassioned demeanor of the suitor. If my students learned anything at all that winter term of 1899, it was only that love is capable of transforming even most self-disciplined and emotionally shuttered of persons.