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February 20, 2010

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Theodore Dreiser returned to his roots in 1915 (Part I)

By Mike McCormick

TERRE HAUTE — It was at an evening reception in New York City for Edgar Lee Masters, “a new poet of renown,” on Sunday, Aug. 4, 1915, that Terre Haute native Theodore Dreiser and artist Franklin Booth first talked about visiting Indiana.

Dreiser had known Booth, also a native Hoosier, for about eight years but had not seen him in several months. A prosperous illustrator, Booth maintained studios in New York and in Carmel, Ind., his home town.

As emcee at the reception, Dreiser entertained the audience by reading selections from Masters’ best-selling “Spoon River Anthology.” Amid the gaiety of the occasion, Booth posed a simple question to his friend: “How would you like to go out to Indiana in my car?”

“At the beginning of this particular evening nothing was farther from my mind than the idea of going back to Indiana,” Theodore later wrote.

“Twenty-eight years before, at the age of sixteen, I had left Warsaw, the last place in the state that I resided. I had not been in the town of my birth, Terre Haute, Indiana, since I was seven. I had not returned since I was twelve to Sullivan or Evansville on the Ohio River, each of which towns had been my home for two years.

“The State University of Indiana at Bloomington, in the south central portion of the state, which had known me for one year when I was eighteen, had been free of my presence for twenty-six years.”

Yet, since Dreiser began writing “Dawn: The History of Myself,” he occasionally considered “his need” to return to his home state.

As a flood of memories rushed through Theodore mind, he responded. “I’ll tell you what, Franklin, all my life I’ve been thinking of making a return trip to Indiana and writing a book about it. I was born in Terre Haute, down in the southwest below you, and I was brought up in Sullivan and Evansville … and in Warsaw up north.

“Agree to take me to all those places after we get there, and I’ll go. What’s more, you can illustrate the book if you will.”

Booth agreed with one stipulation: “If we ruin many tires, we split the cost.” To that, Dreiser acquiesced.

Within a few days Theodore was able to secure a modest advance from Harper & Brothers, his publisher, and maps of proposed routes. He also secured from his sister Mame an incomplete list of Terre Haute addresses where the Dreisers had lived.

On Aug. 11, 1915 — nearly 95 years ago — the two men embarked on a 2,000-mile venture in Booth’s new 60-horsepower Pathfinder. Though Dreiser had little experience traveling cross country by auto, the men were compatible. Both were in their Forties: Drieser was born in August pf 1871; Booth was born in July of 1874.

As “Speed” — the nickname Theodore gave Franklin during the trip — drove over bumpy unpaved roads in upstate New York, Dreiser thought about the four (or was it five or six?) houses he occupied in Terre Haute, particularly the home at the southwest corner of 12th and Walnut streets where he spent five years. He also remembered a house on South Seventh Street, near a lumber yard and railroad track with a swing in its cool, musty basement, and the small house on 13th (or was it 14th?) Street, where he had been sick with measles.

Theodore also wanted to revisit “the charming Basler House” in Sullivan, next to a clover field and maple syrup camp. He had fished in nearby Busseron Creek. In Evansville, he remembered 1413 East Franklin St., a small brick home where he lived for one year. He nearly drowned in the Ohio River at Evansville in the dead of winter.

Dreiser had spent four adolescent years in Warsaw, residing in a large home set in a grove of pines. The first girl he ever kissed and the first girl to ever kiss him lived in that town; so, inevitably, did the first girl with whom he fell in love.

Because the two vagabonds had taken the northern route along the coast of Lake Erie — through Buffalo, Cleveland, Cedar Point, Sandusky and Toledo — the first Indiana stops were Fort Wayne, Columbia City and Warsaw. En route to Carmel, Booth and Dreiser passed through North Manchester, Wabash, Peru and Kokomo.

After staying a few days at home of John and Susan Booth in Carmel, the men passed through Indianapolis on their way to the city of Dreiser’s birth. They arrived at dusk, “entering along a street whose name was changed to Wabash shortly after my brother’s song became so popular.”

The two wanderers visited the buildings and grounds of Rose Polytechnic Institute, at Thirteenth and Locusts streets, soon after their arrival.

“Chauncey Rose, the man who founded it,” Dreiser noted, “was once a friend and admirer of my father’s. At the time my father’s mill burned in Sullivan and he was made penniless, it was this man who came forward and urged him to begin anew, offering to advance him the money.

“But my father was too much of a religious and financial and moral coward to risk it… .[H]e feared he might not be able to pay Mr. Rose and so, in the event of his dying, his soul would be in danger of purgatory. Of such is the religious mind.”

In one of the several Terre Haute homes — likely the one at Twelfth and Walnut, which still exists — Theodore shared with his family, “a Cat-man” lived in the cellar. At least that is what his mother told him. As a young boy Theodore firmly believed in the Cat-man, often hearing him move boxes and barrels in the basement.

During the spring, Cat-man sometimes perched in a tree near the house and made sawing and rasping sounds. The first time Theodore heard it, he “knew” Cat-man was leering at him — he even saw its eyes — and raced to his mother in fear and tears. Mrs. Dreiser told him “there wasn’t any Cat-man” and that the sound was produced by locusts.

But, to Theodore, for a long time Cat-man was real enough, just the same.

Dreiser concluded that Terre Haute, more than most other places the two men had visited, seemed vital. Booth agreed:

“I can’t tell you what it is,” the illustrator offered. “I have heard the boys up in Carmel and Indianapolis who have been down here say it was a ‘hot town.’ I can understand now something of what they mean. It has a young, hopeful, seeking atmosphere. I like it.”



— Continued to next week

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