Mr. Blue
By Myles Connolly

144 Pages • $11.95

EXCERPT

Mr. Blue
By Myles Connolly

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I had not heard from Blue for a year. He had written me from England where he had gone on a pilgrimage to Tyburn and the places of Thomas More. He had written something about generosity or humor. I had written back, urging him to get a good job with a reliable firm or he would end up in the poorhouse. “That will be glorious,” he replied. “I have long known the magnificent possibilities of living in a poorhouse. I will become the troubadour of the poorhouse.”

I have not the slightest doubt he would have been, in spite of his youth (he was not yet thirty), immensely happy in a poorhouse. He had no money. When by accident he happened upon some he gave it away. He worked here and there for his meals and a place to sleep. He roamed the eastern United States and really did get abroad. The while he lived gloriously and, withal, religiously. He impressed one as a sort of gay, young, and gallant monk without an order. Or perhaps his order was life and the world his monastery. I suppose he deserved little credit for his courage, his disdain of money and comfort, his laughter, for all these qualities were as spontaneous in him as smugness and caution are in you or me. Yet his life was his vocation. He created, wherever he went, a sense of the adventurousness and beauty of existence. He made people friendlier and drove not a few to generosity. And he inspired some young men I know to really noble ambitions. One or two of these ambitions will, I feel sure, be fulfilled.

I would have wagered with you that he would come back from England penniless and much wiser, that he would begin to see the folly of his haphazard life, that he would find himself some reputable office work and settle down to the normal, sensible existence of a good American citizen.

I was, accordingly, astonished when I discovered him on Park Avenue lolling in the tonneau of an unnamable foreign automobile, with a chauffeur and footman stiff-backed before him. The automobile was a magnificent creation, very much like a Hispano-Suiza cabriolet, in ebony with the most delicate of white enamel and silver trimmings. The chauffeur and footman matched, even to the silver, the decorative scheme of the car. Blue lay deep in gorgeous pillows that were massed against the dark upholstery. He looked for all the world like a child in its first fine robes in its first fine baby carriage. His eyes were bright. I could see from his lips he was singing, singing perhaps some flamboyant song of his own making.

The car had rolled by when Blue caught sight of me. I was too astounded even to salute him. The car came up to the curb. Blue slid out to the sidewalk, kicking three blue-and-orange cushions to the street. They lay there, huge swollen flowers in the dirt. He looked like a college boy on a holiday.

“What do you think of it? It’s my own idea,” he broke out.

“What?”

“The automobile.”

And this was his greeting after a year!

He had come over the road from Boston and hired, so far as I could gather, the entire Ambassador. Wouldn’t I stop in for a bit to eat?

I stopped in for the bit, which was served with candles in his own private rooms. He had a whole corps of waiters for the two of us and a majordomo to run the show.

“Well,” he was laughing at me from a lounge in the drawing room afterward, “what’s your guess?”

“Crazy.”

His eyes twinkled, “No. Not that.”

“I give up.”

“Behold a plutocrat. An uncle who made a fortune in Romanian oil left me five million dollars.”

Sure enough. Blue had become a millionaire, although I found out afterward that his fortune was two million and was left him by a cousin. He had made it in Australia, where a great deal of it was in real estate and sheep holdings. Blue promptly turned every possible investment into cash, which he kept on check in numerous banks. He had a little library case of these checkbooks and was very proud of them. “I have more checking accounts than anyone alive” was his happy boast.

I believe he did. One day I counted sixty-three of these books on sixty-three different banks. It is remarkable what a man can do with money.

Believe me, Blue did some amazing things with his money. He bought three or four palatial houses and filled them full of run-down servants. He used only one of the houses, but he always saw to it that the servants had a good time. He bought his favorite mansion from an old Boston aristocrat, bought it with all the furnishings. It was overstuffed when he took it, crammed full of lumpy, useless furniture and atrocious pictures. Blue remedied all this by doubling everything. That is, if a room had ten chairs, he ordered twenty put into it. If a room had six pictures and two tables, he saw to it that there were twelve pictures and four tables. He carried out the former owner’s designs to an amazing absurdity.

The pleasure of being around where so much money was thrown away drew me to Blue’s company. At first I remonstrated with him. For I had the old-fashioned idea that money is something you treasure or use to acquire more money. It had never occurred to me that money was a handy medium of exchange. Blue, with his usual intuitive wisdom, knew all this. He exchanged money for everything possible. He exchanged it with the poor for their delight. He exchanged it with the helpless for lighter hearts. I thought at one time he was setting a bad example for other plutocrats. But the fear was unfounded. Nobody imitated him.

I came upon him in his library, lying on the floor with his checkbooks and a heap of marked papers around him. He was evidently in great glee. “I have spent just nine hundred thousand dollars in eight months,” he announced, leaning back, his arms as stiff braces behind him. He was exultant. (I found out afterward that he had spent somewhat more than a million.) “And believe it or not,” he continued, “I have a million left.”

He built a little factory for the manufacture of toy balloons. Colored toy balloons were one of his great passions. He designed various shapes and color schemes and had the balloons made accordingly. His favorites remained, however, the plain round balloons with the plain bright colors. He would go out into the hills with hundreds of these balloons and, lying on his back on some high crest, set them off. He made up little ditties to sing with the launching of the balloons. I never have seen and never expect to see a happier man than Blue on his back on the green grass watching with enrapt bright eyes a gorgeous orange balloon fade in the hazy skies. Sometimes when the wind was toward the gashouse, he would attach a small bill, perhaps of fifty or a hundred dollars, to the balloons. This was a ritual that gave him great delight. On other days he would paint, in contrasting colors, rhyming couplets on the balloons and send these too off into the skies.

I suppose Blue had a purpose in all this business. He struck me sometimes as being suspiciously naïve. He had the boyishness of the true mystic. There were those who thought him crazy. Whether or not he had a purpose, he certainly succeeded in producing a very definite effect on me. I have always been extremely fond of money. There’s no question about a man’s best friend being his bankbook. And yet I must confess this madcap Blue put the stuff in a rather bad light and made one feel that making it was a ridiculous and nonsensical business. I suppose it is a bit foolish to spend the few years one has here accumulating any commodity. But, then, a man wants comfort and the things money can buy. I told Blue this once, and he laughed until I felt uneasy. “My dear boy,” he said to me, ten years his senior, “my dear boy, it makes no difference what you want or what you do.”

“What do you mean?” I queried.

“What I said.” And he laughed again.

I was in New York for a few months. When I returned to Boston, I made a call. McCarthy, his favorite butler, came to the door in his shirtsleeves. I missed the usual ornate uniform. I knew something was up. McCarthy told me.

Blue had given away the last of his money, sold all his effects, paid off all his help, and disappeared.

I had a devil of a time finding him.

A month or so later—autumn it was—I was tramping across Boston Common when, lo, before me, bareheaded, hands in his pockets, kicking up the leaves, is my friend Blue.

I took a delicious pleasure in trailing him as he slouched along. He had on a suit of clothes that was either very cheap or very expensive, a hempen effect. I discovered later that the suit was made by Mr. Blue himself out of the substance of three burlap bags. It struck me as being an excellent idea. I followed him up Beacon Hill a block. He took a couple of turns and stopped before a house that might have been owned by one of the Adamses, one of those flat naïve affairs with a white door and a shiny brass knocker. It turned out to be a former residence of the Episcopal dean of St. Paul’s and was now run as a decent lodging house by a large German woman. Before Prohibition it enjoyed an honest reputation even among the ancients who, unimportant though they are, still hold on to this citadel of Boston’s glory. But since Prohibition—well, since Prohibition there are few of us whose reputations have not suffered.

Blue turned the doorknob. I touched his arm. He looked casually around. He smiled, as if he had left me an hour before.

“This,” he said, “is the only place in Boston for a man to live in.”

I looked him over carefully. He was exceedingly thin and a bit haggard, though his eyes were as luminous as ever. I asked him about his lost grandeur, his money, his establishments. He looked at me with that childlike look of his, his eyes straight at you but out of focus by yards.

“Come up,” he said.

I went up. His quarters were in the attic. The furnishings of the room consisted of one bed with straw sticking out of the mattress, one chair, and an oil stove that, I imagine, Blue used for cooking, though I could see no signs of food. Perhaps Blue didn’t eat anymore. I was quite willing to believe anything.

He motioned me most gracefully to the single seat. No courtier in a palace was ever more considerate of his king than Blue of me. After a while he began to laugh again. He stood before me, six lean feet of him in his burlap bags, his arms folded, twinkling at me, grinning at me. And then:

“What’s your guess this time?”

“Crazy again.”

I said this but I didn’t mean it. He had many of the marks of insanity but somehow he gave you the impression that we were all crazy and he alone was sane. He seemed to have such a simple purpose in his life and succeeded so well in being very noble and very happy that one hesitated to judge him. After all, there are few things—except, perhaps, accumulating money and real estate and a little glory—that mean as much as being very noble and very happy. After a substantial bank account I can think of nothing quite as important as happiness. One has to give him some credit.

He laughed at my guess. I mentioned again the fortune he had thrown away. He held up his palms prohibitively as if he didn’t want the subject mentioned.

“Those millions were a trial set me by my Lady Poverty.”

He bowed politely as if to stress the sincerity of his words. He changed the subject.

“Don’t you love it here?”

I could not summon much enthusiasm. “It would be better wouldn’t it if you could see the gardens or the statehouse or the river?”

He was a little hurt. “Look!” he pointed toward a small skylight. “Didn’t you notice this?”

I hadn’t particularly.

He pulled his bed over until it was directly under the skylight. He threw himself hastily on it.

“Watch,” he cried. “Watch.” He looked up through the skylight.

I looked. It was nothing much, a bright square of blue sky with strings of cloud slipping across it.

“Isn’t that glorious? At night I lie here and watch the stars fill the frame. One of these nights the moon will be there for me. I can think so quietly with my eyes on my own piece of sky.

“I was saying to myself last night how I didn’t have any property, but I did own a piece of sky. It’s odd how the window makes you think you are all alone with its frame of stars.”

I mentioned how Hans Christian Andersen used to sleep in an attic with the stars similarly above him.

“Andersen would have made a beautiful Catholic,” he said.

I could not see the point, so I held my peace. He began to talk, talk intensely, brilliantly, talk not as if he were talking to me but to some vast audience that hung on every word. He talked of life, the adventure of life, the loveliness of life. It is an old theme, but this lanky picturesque egotist touched it up with glory. The room grew dark in the dusk but his words lighted it. He filled the attic with his great courageous enthusiasm. What a small challenge death has for such a lad, I thought.

It was dark. He stopped suddenly. There was quiet for a few minutes. Then a ripple of soft laughter.

“Was I preaching?”

I did not answer. I waited a minute and then said:

“Yes, life is beautiful. What are you doing to pay for it?”

I could hardly see him in the dark. Then after a while his voice came, and I had never heard it so grave, so, almost, tragic.

“Please, please,” it begged; “what can I do?”

I wanted to give him the old advice: go to his confessor. But any advice seemed so futile when given to Blue. Instead, I took my hat and slipped downstairs.

I felt he would like to be alone.

It was still dusk in the street. Some students in a theological school nearby were practicing hymns. Lights were spurting out, street lights, window lights. I thought of the boy of the balloons and the limousines. It occurred to me suddenly that perhaps I was wrong about his self-sufficiency and that he needed someone. I turned and went back.

I knocked on the narrow door that led into the attic. There came no answer. I slipped in. The room was black except where at the end, above a tall screen I had not noticed before, there was a faint uncertain yellow glow. I was mystified. I walked the length of the room and looked.

Behind the screen was a tall black cross mounted on a slight elevation. It was a brutal, bare cross. Before it, to one side, burned a candle. And on the floor, on his knees, his hands on the floor, his head almost on his hands, his hair barely out of reach of the smoky candle, knelt the erstwhile gay and gallant Blue. It was a striking picture, the black cross, the black figure, and the splotch of yellow candle.

I drew back into the darkness of the room and waited. Blue made no sign or stir.

I tiptoed downstairs again and went down to the side of the river. It was cool there and clear and immensely open.

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