Kings Row

Henry Bellamann

Description

This is Henry Bellamann's wonderful novel that many call a lost American classic. Despite being a critical and commercial success on its release in 1940, leading to a film version with Ronald Reagan two years later, King's Row and the rest of Bellamann's works are largely forgotten today. This is unfortunate, as King's Row is a novel that should be richly appreciated both for the skill of its construction and the richness of its ideas. It's an important novel from a cultural and historical context, and there's nothing else quite like it.
At first, King's Row almost seems as if it could pass as just another slice of small town Americana, no more daring or cutting than a Norman Rockwell painting -- a safer and gentler Peyton Place. However, as the story unfolds, it reveals surprising depths of darkness, using beautiful prose to reveal some very ugly truths about the human mind and the civilization that it creates.

Sujets

• Fiction
• Noir

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 09 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774644041
• Langue: English

Extrait

Kings Row
by Henry Bellamann

First published in 1940
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
[e-mail]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Kings Row




by Henry Bellamann

to
Katherine Bellamann

BOOK ONE
1
Spring came late in the year 1890, so it came more violently, and thefullness of its burgeoning heightened the seasonal disturbance thatmade unquiet in the blood.
On this particular day, the twenty-eighth of April, the vast skyseemed vaster than ever—wider, bluer, higher. Continents of whiteclouds moved slowly from west to east, casting immense drifts ofblue over the landscape which seemed alternately to expand and toshrink as sunlight and shadow followed in deliberate procession.
The green distances of the land were gashed and scarred withwandering roads, lumpy and deep-rutted from the heavy wheels thathad groaned and strained through the winter mud. These roadscame from the outlying regions, springing up, like casual streams,marking themselves more and more deeply in the soil as they movedbetween rail fences, widening as they wound toward the county seat.Scattered in their beginnings, they drew nearer to each other, convergedand straightened as they approached the town.
They were like the strands of a gigantic web, weaving and knittingcloser and closer until they reached a center—Kings Row, thecounty seat. “A good town,” everyone said. “A good, clean town. Agood town to live in, and a good place to raise your children.”
In the sagging center of this web of roads Kings Row presentedan attractive picture as one drove in from the country. Elms, oaks,and maples arose in billows of early summer green. The whitesteeple of the Methodist church, the gilt weather vane of the Baptist,and the slender slate-covered spire of the Presbyterian thrust high.In the center arose the glistening dome of the courthouse. A fewmansard roofs and an occasional turret broke through the leaves.Outside the comfortable shade a straggle of unconsidered Negroshacks and tumble-down houses of poor whites lay like back-yarddebris.
In the first glimpse of the town, if one happened to approach itfrom the west, one saw the public-school building—Kings Row’sspecial pride. It stood on a rise of ground and looked down onTown Creek, where that noisy little stream bent itself around thewest and south of the city limits. It was a red brick building, luxuriantlyGothic—a bewildering arrangement of gables, battlements,and towers. The tall narrow windows, sharply pointed like those ofa church, were divided into many irregularly shaped panes. In lateafternoons, when the towers and windows caught the level flow ofwaning light, it was as picturesque as an old castle.
On an adjoining rise stood Aberdeen College, the Presbyterianschool for boys. It was less imposing than its neighbor, the publicschool, but most people thought its classic Corinthian portico impressivein spite of the mansard roof and square, iron-railed towerthat surmounted it. Aberdeen College stood in a wide grove ofbeautiful elms.
The principal streets of the town had lately been macadamized.Formerly the stifling clouds of dust in summer and the quagmiresof winter made these streets as bad as country roads. The new macadamwas dazzling in the blaze of hot sun, but it was neat.
The old brick sidewalks, uneven after many years, were mossyand cool under the shade trees. The houses stood back from thestreet, and the lawns were dotted with flower beds which wouldshortly glow with verbenas, geraniums, and “foliage plants.”
To the east of town the State Asylum for the Insane expandedits many wings through ample grounds. At night, with its hundredsof windows gleaming through the high trees, it had a palatial andfestive air.
Kings Row was no frontier town with raw newness upon it. Ithad successfully simulated the mellowness and established ways ofolder towns East and South—towns remembered in the affections ofthe early builders. Kings Row was, in fact, an odd but not incongruousblend of characteristics to be found in trim New Englandvillages and more casual towns of the deep South.
A mid-afternoon drowsiness lay over Kings Row. Here andthere in the residential sections some belated gardeners raked leavesand burned heaps of dead vines, the columns of blue smoke risingstraight, and whitening as they thinned and drifted.
The business streets were deserted. There were no farm teamsat the hitching posts about the courthouse, no knots of men gatheredat street corners or in saloons. The country was busy launching aseason, and the life of Kings Row came from the farms.
In the courthouse yard, a few men sat under the trees withchairs tilted back. Some, declaring that summer had come and thatsuch heat was unseasonable, had taken off their coats.
“It’s not healthy,” they declared. “There’ll be a lot of sickness ifthis keeps up.”
A wagonload of lumber passed, the creaking of harness and thesqueak of dry axles noticeably loud in the quiet street. The eyes ofthe loafing group followed it idly as it turned and passed out of sightalong West Street.
“Jim Miller’s building a new barn out to his place,” someoneremarked.
“Old one burned down, didn’t it?”
“Yep; last of February.”
“He’s late buildin’.”
“Had to borrow some money and old man Long over to theHome Savings Bank wouldn’t let him have it no sooner.”
“Miller’s a good farmer.”
“You’d think Mr. Long would let Jim Miller have a loan allright.”
“Long always wants good security.”
“Yes. Guess that’s right, too.”
“Maybe so. Long’s a hard man, though.”
“Got to be. Other people’s money.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
The subject seemed to be exhausted. Nothing else passed; conversationdied.
The wagon made its deliberate way along West Street. Streetshad borne names for years in Kings Row, but it was only lately thatpeople had begun using them. Miles Jackson, editor of The Gazette ,had started the fashion in the weekly paper. Some thought it soundedtoo pretentious for a town of four thousand people.
“Kings Row’s trying to be tony, like Fielding.”
“It’s as good as Fielding any day.”
“Yes, but Fielding’s a lot bigger.”
“Don’t make no difference.”
The lumber wagon had reached the hill where the road slopeddown to the bridge across Town Creek. Ray Barber, the driver,awoke from pleasant meditations as the heavy load gained unwontedspeed on the descent. He jerked the lines. “Whoa, Goddamn it, where you think you’re goin’?”
Rays voice carried easily through the open windows of theschoolroom where Miss Sally Venable held sway over some sixtychildren ranging in age from ten to fourteen. Several boys giggled.One or two bolder girls grinned across aisles toward the boys’ sideof the room in appreciation of Ray’s vocabulary, but most of thegirls pretended not to hear.
Miss Sally rapped on her desk with a brass-bound ruler, andstretched her abnormally long fingers out in a gesture of admonition.Miss Sally was tired and she had broken schedule to devotethe last hour of the day to reading. She was a veteran teacher andmuch a law unto herself. The reading was entrusted to two or threeof the better readers, and Miss Sally had settled into a wanderingreverie behind her desk until aroused by Ray Barber’s passing. Shewrinkled her long nose fastidiously.
“Disgusting!” she remarked to the room. “Go ahead, Lizzie.”
Lizzie, the proudly self-conscious reader, feigned not to understandthe interruption, and continued with an increased elegance ofdelivery.
Miss Sally, whose sense of humor was seldom far submerged,passed a hand over her face and smoothed away the derisive smilethat lurked in her deeply seamed features. That smile was herstrongest weapon of discipline. There was not a pupil in her roomwho did not dread it far more than the superintendent’s switches.She sank back in her chair and shut out the sound of Lizzie Morris’mincing pronunciation. Her prominent brown eyes roved theroom, resting for brief instants on first one face and then another.Her charges were intent on the story and remained unaware of herquick scrutinies.
Sally Venable was not an ordinary woman. She was intelligent,and the sardonic cast of her features indicated that her observationsof the world were rewarding. She liked her children and she hadbeen teaching long enough to see a generation grow up. She neverlost interest in old pupils, and the knowledge so acquired lent morethan common zest to her speculations about those who sat beforeher this afternoon. She knew practically everybody. She knew thehomes of these children, and their present fortunes, so she foundinterest in imagining their probable destinies.
She stirred in her chair and sniffed audibly. The windows wereopen—those tall, narrow church windows, but they afforded poorventilation. The room smelled abominably. Sweaty bodies, most ofthem infrequently washed; winter clothes that had seen a hard season;the harsh