A follower of Fourier, a friend of
Emerson, the elder Wyartz had gone to Brook Farm and had left it in a
few months. Dollars, not dreams, was his true ambition. But he
registered his dissatisfaction with this futile attempt by christening
his only son, Arthur Schopenhauer; it was old Wyartz's way of getting
even with the ideal. Obsessed from the age of spelling by his
pessimistic middle name, the boy had grown up in a cloudy compromise of
rebellion and the church. For a few years he vacillated; he went to
Harvard, studied the Higher Criticism, made a trip abroad, wrote a
little book recording the contending impulses of his pale, harassed
soul--Oscillations was the title--and returned to Boston a mild anarch.
Emerson the mystic, transposed to the key of France, sometimes makes
bizarre music.
She arose and, walking over to him, put her hand nonchalantly on his
shoulder.
"Arthur, comrade, what do you mean to do with yourself--come, what will
all this enthusiasm bring forth?" He fumbled his glasses with his thumb
and index finger--a characteristic gesture--and nervously regarded her
before answering.
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