The Memoirs of a Failure: with an Account of the Man and His ManuscriptKittredge, Daniel Wright
Science
The Memoirs of a Failure: with an Account of the Man and His Manuscript
Kittredge, Daniel Wright
Failure (Psychology) -- Fiction; Harvard University -- Fiction; University of Virginia -- Fiction
I went to see him again, but I was not admitted by his servant. Before
the end of the week Dunlevy had left the University, and never returned.
Nobody missed him particularly, because he had had practically little
to do with any of us. There were some stories told concerning his
disappearance. One was to the effect that an old mental trouble
had come over him again, and that he had retired to his ancestral
plantation in Albemarle County, over in the James River country. Though
it was admitted that perhaps this old trouble was brought about by
overwork, as I have said, still, certain students used to look wise
and say nothing whenever it was given as a reason for his breakdown.
As to what his incubus was or the cause of it, I could not well make
out. Two students who came from the same part of the state also sat at
our table, and they said that they used to hear their older brothers
and sisters talk about Dunlevy and tell how he was much like the rest
of them up to the time when he was quite a young man; that he was such
a wit and so entertaining, and what a fine dancer he was, and how he
used to be asked to break the colts which were to be ridden by the
young ladies of the neighborhood. And that he was one of the shrewdest
young poker players that ever drew cards from a pack. Then, of course,
there was a love affair. Was there ever a young southerner without love
affairs? But here, it appears was the unusual with Dunlevy; for he had
just one love affair.
He had courted the girl season after season ever since he was fourteen
years old, so their tale went. She lived down the river near his home
on a big plantation in Goochland County. One of these students said
that he remembered hearing his father say that he had often seen
Dunlevy as a boy in knee breeches and tan legs drop down on a packet
boat when she was going through the locks; and then how Mr. Dunlevy,
senior, would have to send down to Goochland to get him home again.
That was in the last days of the old James River canal when traffic
with Richmond went by packet. But to go on with what I heard about his
unusual case. They said that this couple, young as they were, seemed
perfectly devoted to each other and grew more and more attached and
tender in their affection up to the time when Dunlevy became a full
grown youth.
I am writing this at a distance of nearly a decade since I heard the
account and naturally most of the details have escaped me. But as I
remember, they said it was one Easter vacation when young Dunlevy
felt his blood rise with the sap and determined to see the world by
spending a fortnight in metropolitan New York. Probably he took a
little undue prestige unto himself, for not many young southerners
could afford a metropolitan junket in those poverty stricken days of
the Reconstruction period. He made the journey, staying a month instead
of a fortnight. Up to this point his case is conventional enough.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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