Parris Mitchell of Kings Row

Katherine Bellamann, Henry Bellamann

Description

In this sequel to Kings Row, Parris Mitchell is definitely the proponent of the story - and not Kings Row itself. Parris has achieved his goal as psychiatrist (still a young profession in the Midwest of the First World War) in his home town hospital - but he is still somewhat in need of his own medicine, as he tries to rationalize his marriage with Elise, emotionally a child-wife. Kings Row seems still to have a predominant percentage of abnormal personalities, but there are a few to offset them. There's melodrama here, perversion too, violence in a near-lynching and a rape with its tragic aftermath. There's the back-biting and bitter jealousies of small town life, which lead to Parris' loss of his job, until the flu-epidemic gives him a chance of a comeback. In plot structure, in character and mass of incident, there is a similarity of appeal in Parris Mitchell of Kings Row and a worthy sequel to the first book.

Sujets

• Fiction
• Noir

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 09 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774644010
• Langue: English

Extrait

Parris Mitchell of Kings Row
by Henry Bellamann and Katherine Bellamann

First published in 1948
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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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.
Parris Mitchell of Kings Row





HENRY BELLAMANN

and

KATHERINE BELLAMANN

To Edith
“. . . what we call destiny comes out of people,not into them from the outside.”
Letter of R. M. Rilke
Commentary on Duino Elegies
FOREWORD
The story of Kings Row was originally planned as a trilogy, depictingthe life of a small town from the turn of the century through tothe present time. The first volume was published in 1940 and was tohave been followed in 1945 by the second volume , Parris Mitchell ofKings Row. However, my husband’s failing health made it impossiblefor us to complete the work, and the task long planned has fallen to mealone.
After his death, Simon and Schuster, knowing how closely my husbandand I had collaborated, suggested that I complete the story, followingthe outline which had been submitted and approved. I undertookthe exacting task fully conscious of the magnitude of effortrequired to sustain the writing at the level of the first volume. But byfollowing conscientiously the outline on which my husband and I hadworked, and with the use of copious notes which we made togetherduring the years that elapsed between the publication of the first volumeand the death of my husband, I am able to offer this story of ParrisMitchell. There has been no effort to copy my husband’s style as evidencedin Kings Row. There has been only a sincere effort to tell thestory as I knew it from the many hours of our discussion of the proposedincidents and our development of the characters involved.
Recognizing the fate that so often befalls “sequels,” I hasten to saythat this is not a sequel, but a continuation of the story of the town,introducing many new characters and situations.
Henry Bellamann’s method of work was an unusual one. We talkedstories out in minutest detail, and he rarely wrote a line unless I was inthe room with him. He never, at any time, wrote a scene that had notbeen clearly rehearsed, and after it was written, he never revised a passage.Any revision or cutting or editing fell to my lot. For that reasonthe characters created were my constant companions as well as his.They did not always act as we expected. They often went their ownway—sometimes to our dismay. But by the time a story was written,we both knew the characters intimately.
I have often wondered how it was possible for two writers of totallydifferent background and training to collaborate successfully on astory, yet it has been done often. However, I wish to explain that myhusband and I were married young and most of our training was obtainedtogether. For nearly forty years we read the same books, studiedthe same music, saw the same pictures, knew the same people, andhad the same hobbies. During all that time we were seldom separatedfor a week at a time. When he taught piano, I taught singing in astudio not more than twenty feet away from his own. When heworked on the translation of the Brahms song texts for a French publisher,I sat across the table and wrote a novel , My Husband’s Friends. When he reviewed books for a literary page, which he did for manyyears, I looked over each week’s accumulation of volumes, eliminatedthose of less importance, and read with him those he needed to review.It is not strange that our tastes and ideas should have followed parallellines.
The present volume departs somewhat from the original purpose;it was to have been the psychoanalysis of the town as viewed andunderstood by Dr. Mitchell. It so happens that it has turned out to bemore of a personal history of the young doctor and his frequentlyfrustrated efforts to help the unwilling people about him.
The reader will recognize many characters carried over from KingsRow: Parris, Randy, Miles Jackson, Fulmer Green, Jamie Wakefield,Mrs. Skeffington, and others. Paul Nolan, Laurel, and David Kettringwere taken from Floods of Spring. I have tried to develop thesecharacters logically and naturally.
Wherever possible, I have incorporated actual pages from suggestionsmade by my husband during his illness. Any diversity of stylemust be attributed to the fact that I wished to preserve every particleof any actual writing that he had done. A good memory has enabledme to record more accurately than one would suppose the precisephraseology of his comments. To mention some of the work that is setdown precisely as he dictated, I call attention to the Davis Pomeroycompulsion—the scene at the hilltop in the moonlight—the death ofPick Foley and the near tragedy of Drew Roddy. The Punch Raynestory had been fully planned and partly written.
On the whole, I have followed as closely as was logically possible ourplan for the book on which we worked together before and during hisillness.
Katherine Bellamann
August 22, 1947
Jackson, Mississippi
BOOK ONE
1
The courthouse, nobly porticoed and domed, dominated the businesssection of the town of Kings Row. It had been built before the CivilWar, and was a handsome building for a town of four thousand. Thefloor of the west portico jutted out to make a stand which had beenthe auction block when the region had sold large numbers of slavesdown the river. The huge four-faced clock in the tower kept timewith surprising accuracy, and the great bell tolled the hours in a deepand drowsy tone.
The deep shade cast by the elms and maples on the lawn surroundingthe building was inviting on this morning of late July in 1916, forthe little Midwest town was experiencing an extraordinarily hot dayas noon approached. The tall trees seemed to be waiting for somewave of wind to give them voice and gesture, but the air was as stillas if the last wind had gone home forever. The humming spell of asummer day was heavy about the place.
Groups of shirt-sleeved men idled about in chairs or on benchesunderneath the trees. Across the street on the south side of the squarewas another group at the door of Matt Fuller’s feed store. The popularityof this particular spot was partly due to the fact that it was nextdoor to McKeown’s saloon.
In Kings Row, as everywhere else in the world, these groups of menobserved and talked. Year after year, in the casual way of the frontier,they watched and estimated, weighed and decided, praised and condemned.Talk, like the everyday life, was ingrained. Gossip wascrossed with gossip; hearsay was grafted on certainty; warp of suspicionand woof of guesswork became a web of binding assurance.This was the tissue of life—the tissue of the town of Kings Row.
Looking deceptively cool in a palm beach suit, Dr. Parris Mitchellviewed this familiar scene as he walked down Federal Street on hisway to see Miles Jackson, editor of The Gazette . He caught sight ofthe men on the benches and returned their salutes with a smile and alifted hand. The young doctor’s face was browned by wind and sun,and his black hair swept damply back from a broad forehead. Hismouth with its full upper lip was sensitive—a little sensuous. It waslarge enough to denote a generous nature, but there were no lax linesabout it. The discipline, the eternal watchfulness of a man whosebusiness was the healing of sick minds, had left firmness in his mouthand chin. And there was no mistaking the strength of purpose andconfidence bred of achievement in the carriage of his head and shoulders,though his walk and his general look suggested an age ten yearsyounger than his thirty-five. His hazel eyes, set rather wide apart,were shadowed and thoughtful.
Young Dr. Mitchell, now so well established at the big State Hospitalfor the Insane there at the end of Federal Street, was a ratherlonely man. The very nature of his work isolated him somewhat. Thepractice of doctors among the insane was mysterious to the layman,and Dr. Mitchell’s work was especially so. People spoke of it in vagueterms—even the town doctors. Psychiatry was a new word. Gradually,in the popular imagination, Dr. Mitchell was set apart from otherdoctors, and to a greater degree from other men. No one quite understoodwhy he had studied all those years in Vienna, just to end upright here in Kings Row—out at the asylum. None of the other doctorshad thought it necessary to go to Europe.
True, there was a shortage of practicing physicians in Kings Rowjust now, and there were times when Dr. Waring, desperately overworked,called on Dr. Mitchell for help. Mitchell’s medical trainingwas superior, and while he was necessarily devoting more and moretime to his psychiatric work at the hospital, he never failed to respondto these calls. He was particularly prompt when the calls came fromJinktown, the little settlement of poorer people under Aberdeen Hill.His was a well-known and highly respected figure on the streetsdown there. His poignant sympathy for those who endured untowardfates and the bitterness of defeat informed his nature with unusualwarmth and insight.
Yes, Parris Mitchell was respected in Kings Row, but he had fewclose friends. An habitual absent-mindedness gave him a detached air,a seeming aloofness that the town vaguely resented. It was perhapsfortunate for him that those few who liked him wholeheartedly werenot only intensely loyal but influential as well. Dr. Paul Nolan, hischief at the asylum, was the most intimate of these.