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Acolyte, v. 3, issue 1, whole no. 9, Winter 1945
Page 15
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thing I picture, as I saw him draw that very pistol on one occasion when we were driving across the open country and he suspected an ambush. It is all too clear and sharp a reconstruction. It was an automatic; whether a Colt or a Savage I do not remember. It is my impression that it was a .32, but whatever it was, it was big enough. I do not know positively that it could not have been heavier than a .38, and, somehow, I always come back to the feeling that it was a .32, even though I did not have any occasion to heft the weapon or even scrutinize it. I think my familiarity with pistols makes my guess passably sound. The bullet went in the right side of the head, coming out the left. His vitality was such that some hours passed before it was certain he would die. Not knowing the precise trace of the bullet, and being aware of the tricks played by bullets directed with suicidal intent, I am not able to state whether his surviving for some hours after the shot is or is not remarkable; yet I do feel justified in hazarding the guess that uncommon vitality was necessary to stave off the shock, and for such a period resist a fatal wound.... ...REH at the age of 30 had that same dismay and despair that one might expect of a child who has lost his mother. When I was a kid, very young, I remember my feelings when my mother was seriously ill and her survival was doubtful. Forty years later, on the event of her 75th birthday, I tried hard to consider realistically that despite her good health and good spirits she could not have many more years to go. But today I consider the inevitable with an entirely different emotional flavor; twenty years ago, when I was younger than REH, I'd have considered her death in somewhat the way I would today, or five years hence. As a child there was that natural feeling of dependency---and also, shrinking from stranger,s most of whom I felt were enemies--so that my mother's death then would have delivered me into the hands of the Philistines! More than mere bereavement, there was plenty of self-centered fear of unpleasant possibilities, grim certainties--a terrifying world in which I'd have not an ally. Now it seems to me that REH, big and grown up and rugged and bluff as he was, had carried with him from early childhood a lot of the state of mind I have tried to describe; and with his growing up, he had also acquired a lot of grown-up grimness, lack of which would have made his act impossible. While a 5-year-old would be terrified of a world devoid of a mother's emotional and spiritual sustenance, to say nothing of her material support and attention, he'd finally adjust himself; he simply would not have the means of escape, or if he had, he'd lack the brute courage to use the means on himself. But REH had, in a way of speaking, the 5-year-old's crying need for escape, and the grown man's stern resolution. He was a strange blend of the rugged, the grim, and the highly emotional, the sensitive, and the super-sensitive. I have often wondered if Dr. Howard--a physician, and a very wise and experienced man, as is inevitable from having practiced medicine for 40 years--has seen it in that light, and has asked himself, in his loneliness and bereavement, if there could have been any forestalling or warding off of the tragedy, had Robert found stronger interests away from home. He has never, in any of his many letters, suggested this possibility; but while affable and cordial, and inclined to reveal his thoughts to one whom he considers one of Robert's foremost friends, Dr. Howard has also a realist's full knowledge of the futility and unmanliness of speaking in terms of "it might have been otherwise". A man of his fortitude and courage may even within himself think such thoughts, but he'll rarely if ever utter them. One is not to assume that Robert was a stay-at-home. He got -- 15 --
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thing I picture, as I saw him draw that very pistol on one occasion when we were driving across the open country and he suspected an ambush. It is all too clear and sharp a reconstruction. It was an automatic; whether a Colt or a Savage I do not remember. It is my impression that it was a .32, but whatever it was, it was big enough. I do not know positively that it could not have been heavier than a .38, and, somehow, I always come back to the feeling that it was a .32, even though I did not have any occasion to heft the weapon or even scrutinize it. I think my familiarity with pistols makes my guess passably sound. The bullet went in the right side of the head, coming out the left. His vitality was such that some hours passed before it was certain he would die. Not knowing the precise trace of the bullet, and being aware of the tricks played by bullets directed with suicidal intent, I am not able to state whether his surviving for some hours after the shot is or is not remarkable; yet I do feel justified in hazarding the guess that uncommon vitality was necessary to stave off the shock, and for such a period resist a fatal wound.... ...REH at the age of 30 had that same dismay and despair that one might expect of a child who has lost his mother. When I was a kid, very young, I remember my feelings when my mother was seriously ill and her survival was doubtful. Forty years later, on the event of her 75th birthday, I tried hard to consider realistically that despite her good health and good spirits she could not have many more years to go. But today I consider the inevitable with an entirely different emotional flavor; twenty years ago, when I was younger than REH, I'd have considered her death in somewhat the way I would today, or five years hence. As a child there was that natural feeling of dependency---and also, shrinking from stranger,s most of whom I felt were enemies--so that my mother's death then would have delivered me into the hands of the Philistines! More than mere bereavement, there was plenty of self-centered fear of unpleasant possibilities, grim certainties--a terrifying world in which I'd have not an ally. Now it seems to me that REH, big and grown up and rugged and bluff as he was, had carried with him from early childhood a lot of the state of mind I have tried to describe; and with his growing up, he had also acquired a lot of grown-up grimness, lack of which would have made his act impossible. While a 5-year-old would be terrified of a world devoid of a mother's emotional and spiritual sustenance, to say nothing of her material support and attention, he'd finally adjust himself; he simply would not have the means of escape, or if he had, he'd lack the brute courage to use the means on himself. But REH had, in a way of speaking, the 5-year-old's crying need for escape, and the grown man's stern resolution. He was a strange blend of the rugged, the grim, and the highly emotional, the sensitive, and the super-sensitive. I have often wondered if Dr. Howard--a physician, and a very wise and experienced man, as is inevitable from having practiced medicine for 40 years--has seen it in that light, and has asked himself, in his loneliness and bereavement, if there could have been any forestalling or warding off of the tragedy, had Robert found stronger interests away from home. He has never, in any of his many letters, suggested this possibility; but while affable and cordial, and inclined to reveal his thoughts to one whom he considers one of Robert's foremost friends, Dr. Howard has also a realist's full knowledge of the futility and unmanliness of speaking in terms of "it might have been otherwise". A man of his fortitude and courage may even within himself think such thoughts, but he'll rarely if ever utter them. One is not to assume that Robert was a stay-at-home. He got -- 15 --
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