“Jimmy Tomorrow” Revisited
2014; Penn State University Press; Volume: 35; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5325/eugeoneirevi.35.1.0094
ISSN2161-4318
Autores Tópico(s)Theater, Performance, and Music History
ResumoJames “Jimmy” Findlater Byth (March 19, 1866?–June 6, 1913), O'Neill's roommate at Jimmy the Priest's and a former press agent of James O'Neill, shared the O'Neill men's predilection for drink but little of their ambition. Byth did manage to publish at least one reminiscence, however, titled “Cecil Rhodes,” a yarn that partially recounts his time as a correspondent during South Africa's Boer War (1899–1902).1 Byth regaled anyone seated on the next barstool with tales of his adventures as a war correspondent embedded with the Boers. He even makes a tantalizing comparison in “Cecil Rhodes,” for O'Neillians at least, between James O'Neill's most celebrated role and the unregulated greed of South African diamond smugglers, “all feverish and intoxicated with rapid wealth far beyond the dreams of Monte Cristo.” Now that we have Byth's reminiscence, supported by press releases from his time working for the Great Boer War Spectacle, the accepted narrative of Byth's experience in South Africa as apocryphal can be reopened for further debate.“Cecil Rhodes” has eluded scholars for over a century. But like Poe's purloined letter, the reminiscence by one of O'Neill's most significant acquaintances was hidden in plain sight—right in the pages of the storied Pleiades Club Year Book of 1912. It was in this oft-cited volume that O'Neill published his earliest-known literary work, “Free” (penned in 1910 while sailing on the Charles Racine en route to Buenos Aires), and it is now reasonable to assume that “Free” was published at Byth's behest.2 More important, Byth appears not to have been the inveterate liar O'Neill scholars have largely presumed.James Byth, a muse-like ghost in the O'Neill canon, served as the model for James “Jimmy” Anderson in O'Neill's 1916 short story “Tomorrow,” the drunken roommate Jimmy in his 1919 play Exorcism, and, most famously, James “Jimmy Tomorrow” Cameron in The Iceman Cometh (a play that's first title was also “Tomorrow”). Byth's character in “Tomorrow” lived in a “dream of tomorrows,” while Iceman's “Foolosopher” Larry Slade (based on O'Neill's close friend, the philosophical anarchist Terry Carlin) refers to Jimmy as “the leader of our Tomorrow Movement.”3 O'Neill describes Jimmy as having a face “like an old well-bred, gentle bloodhound's…. His eyes are intelligent and there once was a competent ability about him. His speech is educated, with a ghost of a Scotch rhythm in it. His manners are those of a gentleman. There is a quality about him of a prim, Victorian old maid, and at the same time of a likable, affectionate boy who has never grown up.”4Echoes of Byth also reverberate in Ted Nelson, the young playwright in O'Neill's earliest full-length play Bread and Butter (1914), who remarks, “I'm always going to start that play—tomorrow…. They ought to write on my tombstone: The deceased at last met one thing he couldn't put off till tomorrow,” as well as in the fiction writer Stephen Murray in The Straw.5 Although based primarily on O'Neill himself, Stephen characterizes his latent passion for writing serious literature by admitting, “I was always going to—tomorrow—and tomorrow never came. I got in a rut—and stayed put.”6Byth's origins remain a mystery, but he was most likely born James Findlater Bythe to the upholsterer George Bythe in Church Town, England, a working-class district of Cornwall.7 He claimed to have graduated with honors from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, but O'Neill scholars have since discredited this as more Byth chicanery, given that there is no record of this. Other background information on Byth is scarce, and the only bona fide source is Richard M. Little's feature article about Byth and O'Neill's father, James O'Neill, entitled “Haunted by the Ghosts of Monte Cristo,” which appeared in the Chicago Record Herald on February 9, 1908. The story lists Byth as having reported for Reuters during the Boer War in South Africa, but Louis Sheaffer checked Reuters' manifests and found no one listed by that name. Sheaffer concluded that Byth—a “fraud, an innocent harmless one, yet still a fraud”—must have derived his tales about the war from his friends and associates at the St. Louis World Fair in 1904.8“While he may have worked obscurely as a reporter in Britain,” Sheaffer reiterated in 1983 after both of his biographies had appeared, “he never served as a Boer War correspondent.”9 Arthur and Barbara Gelb submit that Byth's ostensibly bogus claims are, whether true or not, “immaterial, for he was incontestably brilliant, witty, often wondrously resourceful and entirely persuasive—if often drunk.”10In 2005, Doris Alexander took Sheaffer's accusation to task. Alexander argued that Byth was likely telling the truth, positing that he would have been “a lunatic” to have worked for Reuters, since he said he marched with the Boers. The Dutch colonials, she said, would have killed anyone in the service of the pro-British news agency, so Richard Little must have misquoted Byth as saying it was Reuters. As O'Neill never mentions Reuters in his recollections of Byth, Alexander concluded that Byth could only have worked for a “continental agency.”11 Byth's reminiscence “Cecil Rhodes,” left unmentioned in any O'Neill scholarship to date, makes clear to my mind that this must have been true, and that Jimmy Byth was, in fact, embedded with the Boers.Though Alexander believed Byth about the war, she indicated that “no direct evidence” had been uncovered that Byth ever worked for the St. Louis World's Fair.12 (A man named H. C. Duce was listed as the fair's press agent for the Boer War Spectacle, not Byth.) I have found a press release about the fair, however, that lists his job title at the fair as vice president and amusement manager.13 “Mr. James F. Byth,” the notice reads, “has been associated with some of the largest enterprises in the world, having made a life study of amusements in all branches, and has only returned recently from a tour through Europe from England to Russia, South Africa and Australia, gaining knowledge and ideas in adopting the best points in the United States.”14 To my mind, it is highly improbable he would lie about South Africa while working alongside hundreds of the war's veterans who could easily call him out as a fraud.One “amusement” under Byth's purview included the “Great Boer War Spectacle,” first performed at the St. Louis exposition and then at New York City's Coney Island the following year, 1905. This outlandish reenactment, like the actual cowboys and Indians in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, included veterans who had fought viciously against one another in South Africa. Another press release, attributable to Byth since it mentions by name several of the characters described in “Cecil Rhodes,” and reported that the Boer War Company integrated “1,000 men, including 200 Kafirs, Zulus, Matabeles, and representatives of other South African tribes, and 600 horses.”15In 1928, while recollecting the dramatic tales of Byth and his hard-drinking comrades from the Boer War Spectacle, O'Neill said that South Africa was “a country I have always had a strong yen for because in the distant past I was pals with so many of its people, both British Africanders [sic] and Boers and really know a lot about it for one who has never been there.”16 Two of Byth's associates from the Spectacle appear as the characters Piet “The General” Wetjoen and Cecil “The Captain” Lewis in The Iceman Cometh. In O'Neill's play, Wetjoen and Lewis share a table with Jimmy Tomorrow at Harry Hope's bar, though they had fought on opposing sides of the South African war. (Something rarely mentioned about The Iceman Cometh is that the models of O'Neill's derelict “spongers” at Harry Hope's had in fact lived uniquely fascinating lives.)Cecil Lewis recalls the names of the famed British imperialist Cecil Rhodes, about whom Byth published his eponymous work, and Captain A. W. Lewis, the general manager of the Spectacle, upon whom the fictional character is based.17 O'Neill depicts Lewis in ways that accurately portray the actual Captain Lewis (see photographs): “as obviously English as Yorkshire pudding and just as obviously the former army officer. He is going on sixty. His hair and military mustache are white, his eyes bright blue, his complexion that of a turkey. His lean figure is till erect and square-shouldered.”18 Unlike his doomed fictional counterpart, it must be said here, Captain Lewis went on to enjoy a profitable livelihood as a general manager of fairs and expositions across the country.19Piet Wetjoen's name is a composite of the Boer generals Piet Cronjé, Ben J. Viljoen, and Christiaan Rudolf de Wet (pronounced “de Vet”). Cronjé worked in the Spectacle with Byth, and Viljoen had been a companion of Byth's in South Africa.20 O'Neill's description of Wetjoen, when matched with a photograph of Cronjé, strikingly and conclusively demonstrates that he had Cronjé in mind (see photos): “Piet Wetjoen, the Boer, is in his fifties, a huge man with a bald head and a long grizzled beard…. A Dutch farmer type, his once great muscular strength has been debauched into flaccid tallow … [but] there is still a suggestion of old authority lurking in him like a memory of the drowned” (566–67). Cronjé was actually in his early seventies and had returned to South Africa and died in 1911, over a year before O'Neill's play was set, the summer of 1912.By the spring of 1912, just a few months after Byth saved O'Neill's life by discovering him nearly dead from his suicide attempt at Jimmy the Priest's (as dramatized in Exorcism), O'Neill's poem “Free” and Byth's article “Cecil Rhodes” appeared in the yearbook of the Pleiades Club, a hail-fellow-well-met group of bohemian patrons and dilettante practitioners of the arts in New York. Byth's and O'Neill's contributions are separated, appropriately enough, by the music and lyrics of the Pleiades Club's drinking song. “Cecil Rhodes” no doubt contains one of the actual stories told by Byth at the Garden Hotel and Jimmy the Priest's without the filter of twenty-five years' time and a playwright's artistic license. (Byth's own storytelling, though rambling, isn't bad at all.) On a related note, after the 1933 premiere of Ah, Wilderness!, drama critic Brooks Atkinson reported that O'Neill chatted enthusiastically about Cecil Rhodes, no doubt a residual interest from Byth, during his interview of him for the New York Times.21Only a few days after O'Neill's release from Gaylord Farm Sanatorium on June 3, 1913, he learned of his close friend Jimmy Byth's death. On June 5, Byth had fallen from his bedroom window on the top floor of Jimmy the Priest's. He was discovered in the courtyard with both legs broken and a fractured skull; without ever regaining consciousness, he died in the hospital the next day. The New York Health Bureau listed Byth's death as a suicide, and O'Neill firmly believed it was.22 Since then, Byth held an abiding place in O'Neill's imagination: “Always my friend—at least always when he had several jolts of liquor—saw a turn in the road tomorrow. He was going to get himself together and get back to work. Well, he did get a job and got fired. Then he realized that this tomorrow never would come. He solved everything by jumping to his death from the bedroom at Jimmy's.”23 Subsequently, the amiable newsman became one of O'Neill's most significant case studies in self-delusion—a central theme of his plays. In the final scene of “Tomorrow,” Jimmy is haunted by his failures as a husband and as a war correspondent in Cape Town; from within “Tommy the Priest's” bar, the O'Neill character Art hears “a swish, a sickish thud as of a heavy rock dropping into thick mud.”24 A group of the men rush outside to find Jimmy's body shattered on the flagstones in a black pool of blood. “The sky was pale with the light of dawn,” the story concludes; “tomorrow had come.”25Two other plausible sources for O'Neill, included below, also appear in the Pleiades Club Year Book: The first is a bit of doggerel entitled “To-Day's the Time,” by William Johnston, warning readers against the pitfalls of procrastination: “Once yesterday's gone, it's mighty/far off,/And to-morrow's still further away./So whatever there is you want to be doing,/You might as well do it to-day.”26 Another poem, “Beside the Road” by Madison Cawein, which follows Byth's reminiscence in the book, concludes with this stanza: “Of hope, whose light makes bright the road,/And beautifies the lonely hours,/And turns the sorrow of our load/To thoughts, like shining flowers.”27Together these new sources offer a smattering of humble beginnings for The Iceman Cometh and Eugene O'Neill's most far-reaching dramatic motif: The hopeless hope for a better tomorrow.It was June during the middle stage of the Anglo-Boer War when it had resolved into a gigantic guerilla campaign of such huge dimension as the world had never known. When Cronjé surrendered at Paardeburg and the Colonial troops of Great Britain from Canada, Australia, India, Cape Colony, combined with the regular “Tommy Atkins,” entered the Capitals of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal under Lord Roberts, the backbone of organized warfare was supposed to have been broken and the Chief Command handed over to Lord Kitchener of Khartoum.How little did the British public, their ministers and military advisers understand the Boer; his stubbornness, mobility, strategic keenness and preparedness.Even Cecil Rhodes was blind to the situation, notwithstanding his great knowledge of the South Africa that was saturated with a corruption of adventurers and politicians delving into Rands and illicit diamond dealing; a country teaming with Barnatos, Joels, Werners, Beits, and the great group of cut-throat money-mads, who were all feverish and intoxicated with rapid wealth far beyond the dreams of Monte Cristo; the sensational raid under Dr. (Jim) Jameson of Johannesburg with but a handful of men officered by a party of notables including John Hays Hammond, Earl Grey and Sir John Willoughby; their capture by Piet Cronjé, and their sentence to death—a sentence commuted by Paul Kruger to a heavy fine and perpetual banishment from the Transvaal. In this sentence, Rhodes, although not an actual participant, was included; and from that time he never set foot on Transvaal soil, nor lived to see his most treasured dream realized of painting the continent of Africa “red,” of which the Boer Republics were the first stepping stones to the goal of his ambition.Conscious almost to the moment of dissolution, his last words were “So much to do, so little done.”At the close of the war troops were pouring by thousands into Cape Town; all branches of the British Military Empire were represented; and as fast as transports could arrive, officers and men were embarked and sailed to their various destinations. During that time the “Tommy Atkins'” on one and three (30c.) per day were placed in camp at Green Bay, Camp's Bay, the Castle and other places, while the officers and the Colonial soldiers receiving five bob ($1.25) per day took advantage of hotel freedom. To swell the throng, Boer prisoners were coming in from Simons Town, Stellenbosch, and Wynberg to take the oath of allegiance.In the midst of the congested influx to Cape Town, I arrived to meet General Ben J. Viljoen (Assistant Commander-in-Chief of the Boer forces), Colonel Blake of the Irish Brigade; General Kretzinger, and Commandants Malan, Fouche and Joubert, who were all to meet in Johannesburg and join me in Cape Town to take ship for Europe.Everybody had money in Cape Town, the hotels, saloons with attractive bar-maids, and gambling rooms all working at high pressure.Of the hotels, there were two in particular that appealed to the American and Colonial: the Hotel Royal and the American Bar with a faro game and roulette wheels under the direction of J. Hildebrand of Chicago, who was a friend to any American in trouble.On one particular evening at the American Bar in company with Sir John M____, Colonel D____ and Mr. F. H.____, the proprietor of the largest livery stable and owner of practically every hansom cab, buggy, landau, etc., in Cape Town, the subject of Cecil Rhodes came up and the consensus of opinion was that, although a great man, he was a hard man with little feeling. After many varied opinions our friend of the livery stable spoke up and gave the following story of his own personal relations with Rhodes.“Rhodes had in his employ for a number of years a groom at Groote Scheur, Rondebosch, his estate ten miles from Cape Town; the groom was steady and attentive to his duties, but his prospects showed very little signs of improving; and being married, with a large family, his anxieties increased. Finally he determined to branch out in a small way, in the livery business. To do this, he needed considerable capital to purchase a cab and a couple of horses; his salary had not enabled him to accumulate enough to start with, so he determined to broach the subject to Mr. Rhodes. Early one morning he presented himself and was greeted by his master with a “good morning, how are all the family and what can I do for you?” He replied, stating, “I have been in your employ, sir, for a number of years,” upon which Rhodes replied, “I know you have and your services have been very satisfactory; what is it you wish?” He then stated his plans regarding his new venture; that he was well satisfied with his position, but that he felt it his duty to branch out and provide in a more fitting manner for his family. Rhodes expressed regret at losing his services, and asked him what he could do in the matter; upon which the stableman replied, “I would like to borrow three hundred pounds ($1,500) to start business with.” After a few minor questions, Rhodes delivered his secretary a note; they continued their conversation and in a few minutes the secretary entered with a bag containing three hundred sovereigns in gold which was handed over to the stableman with best wishes for success from his master. The stableman prospered far beyond his expectations; and on Cecil Rhodes returning from Europe two years after, he called on his former master; Rhodes was pleased to see him, asked after the wife and children, and finally, thinking possibly of a request for more aid said, “Well, Frank, what can I do for you?” Frank replied, “Sir (placing a canvas bag on the desk), I have come to repay you the money you gave me to start in life with.”Rhodes, in his characteristic way, looked at the bag, asked a few questions, and finally said, “Frank, I am glad to see you succeed in life; keep the money as a gift from your old employer, Cecil Rhodes.”At the finish of the story the company was silent. F. H. ____ is now one of the most prominent men in Cape Town business circles, and was a former stableman to Cecil Rhodes at Groote Scheur, Rondebosch, South Africa.Of all the great pioneers of historical South Africa, few are living to-day.Cecil Rhodes died at Muizenberg, laid in state at Groote Scheur, and was buried beside Lobengula on the top of the Matoppo Mountain near Buluwayo; Barney Barnato jumped overboard from the Steamship Scot in the Bay of Biscay; Werner and Beit, Cronjé and Kruger, are all dead; one of the Joel brothers was murdered by Von Veltheim; John Hays Hammond is prominent with mining interests on this continent; Dr. (Jim) Jameson is premier of Cape Colony, and the Boer leader, Louis Botha, is prime minister of United South Africa.ONCE YESTERDAY'S gone, it's mightyfar off,And TO-MORROW'S still further away.So whatever there is you want to be doing,You might as well do it TO-DAY.There's only one time you ever can claim,To-day's the one day you possess;If we all of us all the time realized that,We'd spend it far better, I guess.There isn't a minute we're sure of but NOW,So we might as well grab it and smile;Give yesterday trouble—and worry to-morrowLet's see that TO-DAY is worth while.WHO has not walked with loneliness,And leaned upon the arm of grief,Along the road of Heart's Distress,Mourning that joy is brief?The paths appointed us to takeAre not the ways that we would choose;The guide post reading: “Duty's Sake,”Is one we cannot lose.But they, who kneel awhile and pray,Or muse with Nature upon God,May find, beside the lonely way,The faery goldenrod.Of hope, whose light makes bright the road,And beautifies the lonely hours,And turns the sorrow of our loadTo thoughts, like shining flowers.
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