The Accursed (51 page)
POSTSCRIPT: ON THE MATTER OF THE “UNSPEAKABLE” AT PRINCETON
A
s it is very difficult to speak of the “unspeakable,” so the historian is limited in his presentation of certain materials; in this case, the historian is in fact ignorant of what the “unspeakable” might be, despite a considerable effort of research over the decades.
And, as this chapter contains much that is of interest only to those with a curiosity about Princeton University and its history of the “unspeakable,” the suggestion is that other readers skim rapidly through it, or skip it altogether, and move to the next chapter, which is more directly related to the unfolding story of
The Accursed
.
All of Princeton was aghast, and terrified: on a May morning, only a few days before the end of term, the body of a young college student, twenty years of age, was found in the paludal wilderness between Princeton and Princeton Junction, in a swampy area beside the railroad track; as if the abused body had been thrown from the local train.
This, the second body of an undergraduate to be found, in a similar setting, and with similar injuries, within a week.
The first, a sophomore member of Cottage Club; the second, a twenty-year-old junior, living “off campus” at a rooming house at 77 Mercer Street.
For those who believed that the “curse” was related specifically to Crosswicks, to the Slades and other prominent families, these deaths presented clear anomalies: for both Heckewalder and Kaufman appeared to have been assaulted and killed purely by chance, having been in the wrong place at the wrong time; the one at the shore of Lake Carnegie, in a secluded area, in midday; the other in or near a lane off Mercer Street, past 10 p.m. of a weekday. Neither young man was a Princetonian by birth and his death very likely had nothing to do with ancestry or fate.
Like Heckewalder, Kaufman was said to have suffered “grievous”—“bestial”—“savage”—injuries to his throat, torso, and lower body; his death was of “exsanguination”; and he had suffered “unspeakable insult.”
Though I am not a theologian, or a philosopher, I think it is most helpful here to follow the admonition of St. Thomas Aquinas in his discussion of “that abominable and detestable crime against Nature, not to be named among Christians.”
THROUGH THE HISTORY
of Princeton University the alert historian might trace a thread, or chain, of “unspeakable” incidents involving the abrupt dismissal of certain faculty members, preceptors, and students, and their immediate decampment from town; the ostracizing, by their fellows, of undergraduates suspected of partaking in the “unspeakable,” or possessing the potential for such; from time to time, otherwise inexplicable acts of cruelty inflicted upon “unorthodox” individuals, particularly with regard to freshman hazing. Bicker, a time of much anxiety, was a favored time for such cruelty, in the form of boyish pranks; for a boy who very badly wanted to belong to an eating club might be led to believe that he would be invited, only to be confronted with the fact that
not a single club wanted him
. (Not that this sort of prank was limited to those boys suspected of the potential for the “unspeakable”—for of course it was more general.)
Connected with this, we have the unfortunate suicides: young men whose self-loathing came to match the loathing of their peers, leading them to the (unforgivable, by Christian standards) sin of self-destruction. That this sin is, in its way, “unspeakable,” adds to the mystery.
For instance, isolated “unspeakable” episodes were whispered of during the administration of James Carnahan (1823–1854), at which time eating clubs were being formed, spontaneously; these arose from the students’ need for meals, as the college was unable to provide adequate dining facilities for its ever-increasing student population. (President Carnahan’s tenure was tumultuous, for near-anarchy reigned when boys rebelled, as often they did; administrators and faculty could not control gangs of roving boys who set fires, smashed windows, and vandalized the campus; the beleaguered president considered shutting down the college, until he was dissuaded by James Madison, a loyal alum.) At this time, such eating clubs were formed as “Knights of the Round Table”—“Knights of Hudibras”—“King’s Court”—“Knickerbockers”—“Epicureans”—“Alligators” (this was to be Woodrow Wilson’s club, or substitute for a club, as Wilson was seemingly blackballed by his first-choice club, Ivy, in 1879). Later, these names would be changed, and the eating clubs dignified by the construction of very handsome, mansion-like houses along Prospect Avenue, built by prosperous alums. In their origins the eating clubs were quite innocent, and it was only later, in the time of Woodrow Wilson’s undergraduate years, for instance, that the situation radically altered: inspiring in underclassmen a frenzy of anxiety and apprehension at “bicker”—“pledge week”—as to who would be invited to join which club, and who would not be invited to join any club at all—(that is, the majority of students).
Hence, Woodrow Wilson’s pledge to “shut down” the eating clubs—and the opposition to him, by a strong coalition of alums.
Whatever the “unspeakable” was, or is, these incidents escalated at hazing and bicker-time. One can imagine the inevitable consequences of fevered adolescent “courting”—“horsing”—“disciplining”—“hazing.” (It was not unusual for freshman boys to be so violently “disciplined,” they had to leave college, some of them hospitalized; yet none of these boys ever testified against the upperclassmen who harassed them. Deaths following “hazing” and “horsing” were not common, of course—yet those that did occur were kept quiet, by university decree.)
Over the decades, through subsequent administrations, the eating clubs grew: from five, to nine, to thirteen; eventually, to twenty. Alums began to compete in building eating-club houses on Prospect Avenue, and so the university dining facilities, though in handsome “Gothic” buildings mimicking Oxford and Cambridge, appeared paltry by contrast. Soon it came to be, there were those boys who were
clubbable
—and those who
were not clubbable
. For the great gratification of the club is, simply, that only a few members are chosen; the rest being, if not precisely beneath contempt, beneath at least that latitude demarking one’s fellows from those with whom
we would not wish to dine
.
Of my own experience at Princeton as a graduate, with honors, of the Class of 1927, I will not speak: except to say that it was instructive, and illuminating; and if I had to repeat it again, I would hang myself.
During annual Bicker Week, when club elections took place, the university was gripped by a veritable epidemic of frazzled nerves, sleepless nights, agitation, anxiety, elation, despair, rage, rising even to homicidal and suicidal impulses, and acts; there was no way that faculty members could distract their students from “bicker,” as one could not force children to sit still and calm, and not gape at fireworks in the sky.
This situation seemed to Woodrow Wilson, quite plausibly, as counter to the purpose of the university, as an unwholesome focus upon athletics would be; it had even come to pass that aggressive “hat clubs” (so named because of their colorful headgear) sprang up among sophomores, that they might control elections to upperclass clubs by banding together to accept, or refuse, election as a block; resulting in freshman clubs springing up, to control the “hat clubs”; all this involving every sort of cajoling, and intimidating, and courting, and threatening, and double-dealing, and horsing, and hazing, and broken hearts, and plummeting academic performances, often resulting in expulsion. The most egregious development being that freshman club memberships were often not made at Princeton at all but during senior year in prestigious prep schools like Lawrenceville and Groton; so that a lad of fifteen might already begin to anticipate the anxiety of Bicker Week at Princeton University, years hence, when his “fate” would be decided. In this way, a great many boys suffered, including many from “good” families, that a few boys might preen themselves as elite.
During the genial but somewhat lax administration of Dr. Patton, there occurred a scandal of an ambiguous sort, having to do with the hazing procedures of the third “most powerful” club on campus: this, “Ballarat,” housed in a Tudor mansion that was said to have cost more than $200,000, a very high sum for the time, and quite the architectural gem of Prospect Street. As it was the club of a favored nephew of J. P. Morgan, Ballarat enjoyed many special privileges and competed aggressively with other clubs for positions of campus power; yet came to grief in 1899 when a scandal erupted following the rough treatment of new members, with hazing canes and “branding irons.” And so, Ballarat was disbanded readily, and its handsome house sold to another eating club. As the scandal had to do with “unspeakable matters” the exact nature of the offenses was never spelt out, and never spoken of.
Yet there was nothing quite so extreme, I think, as the “anarchy” of the early 1800s, when mutinous students occupied Nassau Hall and set off charges of gunpowder in the building. There was even a kidnapping of a pastoral assistant whom a gang of boys, cloaked in black robes and hoods, dragged out of his bachelor’s quarters on campus, and tarred and feathered on the lawn of the president’s house which was at that time on Nassau Street, in the very center of the village—said pastor having been accused, by the boys, of “unspeakable”—“filthy”—acts perpetrated upon them.
During a previous administration, that of Reverend Samuel Stanhope Smith (1795–1812), the students had already, it seems, begun to behave badly, for more than one hundred of them were expelled after a disastrous fire, determined to be arson, leveled Nassau Hall in 1802!—among these boys the adopted son of the President of the newly formed United States, George Washington (a lad about whom little is known except that he was expelled from the college for “meanness and irregularity of character”). Then, during the administration of the much admired Reverend Aaron Burr, Sr., his precocious son Aaron, Jr., was known at the college for both his “brilliance” and his “dissipation” —this, in a mere lad of thirteen!
At this time, it should be noted, Princeton University did not yet exist: these long-ago individuals lived in the era of the College of New Jersey.
Addendum
.
This segment of my chronicle contains, for all its horrors, a “positive” ending of a kind, for, after the gruesome—and never-solved—murders of Heckewalder and Kaufman, the Curse in its primary, or ghoulish form, will not strike again.
At about this time, Dabney Bayard learned that, through powerful relatives in Washington, D.C., he had been reinstated in the U.S. Army at the rank of lieutenant; from this rank, within a year he would be promoted to the rank of captain. Soon then he was given the honor of accompanying Vice President William Howard Taft on one of numerous “trouble-shooting” expeditions to the exotic Philippines, where native unrest and divers political complications necessitated United States intervention in the name of democracy. “We must have order there among those villainous little monkeys,” President Roosevelt declared, “and by God I will see to it that we do!”
It would come about that Captain Dabney Bayard acquitted himself so well in his new station, within a few years he was to be promoted yet again, to the gold-starred rank of major; and with a well-trained battalion of men under his command, maintained the civil order in the Philippines, of which President Roosevelt spoke. And no further innocent persons fell prey to the ghoulish appetite of the Fiend, in Princeton.
T
hough it was a matter of public record that twelve-year-old Todd Slade was found “turned to stone” in Princeton Cemetery, and his remains put to rest inside the family vault with his sister Oriana and his cousin Annabel, yet it also seems to be true that Todd
lived still;
though in a realm of being that is inexplicable to this historian, which I am obliged to describe at second- and third-hand.
Here, Todd Slade’s adventure.
HOW FREQUENTLY NOW
his sleep was troubled by words unfamiliar to him, yet teasingly familiar—HIC HABITAT FELICITAS—and again, HIC HABITAT FELICITAS
.
Todd woke from such dreams anxious and confused, believing that a “voice” was in the room with him, or echoed inside his head.
Before being transformed into stone, and declared to be dead through some trauma to the body that resisted diagnosis, Todd had fallen into the habit of wandering at Crosswicks, as I’ve mentioned; though he shunned the company of his cousin Josiah, his aunt and uncle Henrietta and Augustus, and avoided his grandfather Winslow, whose “confession” had been shocking to the boy, and incompletely understood. For was Winslow Slade now confessing to a truth, as he had not confessed to the truth in the past; and, if this was so, why should he be believed now? There was a sense of shame, that passed between grandson and grandfather, that made Todd want to avoid his grandfather even as he found himself drawn to Crosswicks Manse, that seemed to him the core of the Curse. Yet, an antic mood came over the boy, the mischievousness of his old Todd-self, before Annabel had departed, that led him to haunt the corridor outside his grandfather’s library, softly singing:
He lied once and might lie again
She lied once and might lie again
They lied once and might lie again
But Thor shall not lie
Thor alone shall not lie:
For the poor beast is dead.
That is why.
(It was fortunate that Winslow Slade was often no longer in his library, but in his private rooms at the Manse, in a farther wing of the house.)
Difficult as Todd had become, he was yet hounded by a “voice” more insidious than his own, that murmured “HIC HABITAT FELICITAS” in a jeering tone as if to tease him that he should seek this out, and put an end to mystery.
So it finally came about, sometime past midday of May 28, 1906, that the boy wandered into his grandfather’s library, which was a room long forbidden to him, especially when no adult was present; and, poking and prying about, he chanced to see carved into the fireplace the very words that had been haunting him: HIC HABITAT FELICITAS
.
At once Todd understood that he was in the presence of a profound riddle, which he alone might solve. But what was he expected to do?
Very strange it was to find himself alone in Winslow Slade’s fabled library with its high coffered ceiling, and walls of leather-bound books said to be antique and priceless; and the rare Gutenberg Bible on its pedestal; and shadowed portraits by illustrious American artists (Gilbert Stuart, John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins) of Slade ancestors whose stern gazes appeared to be fixed upon him. Should Todd have wanted to, he might have performed any prank: run the wheeled ladder along the bookcases, and climb like a monkey to the ceiling; or steal away his own likeness, a portrait in pastels of a sweet-faced and innocent child of two or three, sketched in a patch of grass in which lay a lady’s white parasol, perhaps his mother’s . . . Todd had always been fascinated by this drawing of an angelic little child who was, presumably, himself; as he was fascinated by portraits of his sister Oriana and his cousins Josiah and Annabel, executed by the same artist. “Was that ever ‘Todd’?” he’d asked his mother wistfully; and Lenora had said, laughing, brushing his forehead with her lips, “Of course! That angelic little boy is with us right now, if eclipsed.”
This was a clever answer of his mother’s, Todd thought. Much of life is
eclipse
.
Todd studied a life-sized portrait of General Elias Slade, by Copley, which had begun to crack, and exuded a dark aura; and there was the Reverend Azariah Slade, in an oil painting by Stuart, looking as if he were made of wax, eyes hard and pitiless as stone. There was a terrible temptation, for a moment, to tear at the brittle pages of the Gutenberg Bible, and knock it from its pedestal onto the floor. Then, as if he’d been postponing this moment, Todd returned to the marble fireplace, and to the words carved into it: “ ‘Hic Habitat Felicitas.’ ” He knew no Latin yet guessed that this must mean “Here Dwells Happiness”—or some similar phrase. Happiness must dwell at home, within the family—or nowhere.
At first idly, then with more curiosity, Todd poked about the fireplace; so large a fireplace, he could stand inside it, slightly hunched. There was a smell of ashes here, and there were cobwebs in the chimney; standing inside the fireplace and looking out, he felt a dizzying sense of disorientation, like one looking from the other side of a mirror. Within a few minutes, Todd’s fingers discovered a loose brick, at which he tugged; when it loosened further, and fell to the floor, he tugged at another brick, and another—until to his astonishment he was seeing into the chimney, or through it, as if through a small window opening into a luminous light.
What should have been dark was not dark but “light”—a tunnel of some sort, a secret passageway.
Now Todd pulled at the bricks systematically, and set them with care onto the hearth. He did not want anyone in the house to hear him, and to interrupt. Until it was as Todd had thought: a passageway led out of his grandfather’s library, not into another part of the house but into another landscape entirely, unknown to him.
How was this possible? Todd knew that the opening in the chimney could only lead to a familiar setting, yet somehow it did not; as he poked and pried further, and removed more bricks, he saw that he was looking into a forest, a tangled woodland devoid of all color yet vividly “lighted” like a movie screen. Though the very hairs stirred on the back of his neck with apprehension, and the daring of what he did, Todd continued to remove bricks, his fingers now scraped and very grimy, until, having made an aperture of about twelve inches in diameter, he could force his head and shoulders through.
In this way, Todd Slade disappeared from his grandfather’s study as, indeed, from our world.