IBID (11 page)

The poem is obviously marred by Bowling’s use of the neologism
pastwastard
. Bowling himself regretted its employment, noting in chatty letters to his urologist (Byron Blackfoot:
Confessions to a Pee Pee Doctor
[Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Towler Press, 1989]) that it was never his intention to include it, but “sometimes you just do a thing, knowing it is wrong, inappropriate, senseless or patently
moronic. Like when you eat a piece of fish that clearly isn’t fresh or when you admit to a crime you didn’t commit.” On March 16, 1932, the sixty-three-year-old poet was executed for the murder of Libby Morgan, a woman he had clearly never even met.

12.
“Come to New York.”
After learning that his aged father was barely making ends meet by working part time as a moonshine “still basher” in the Ozarks, Jonathan wrote to his mother (13 May1920, JBP), begging her to move the two of them to New York City where Jonathan was certain that his salary as a waiter at a midtown Childs Restaurant would be sufficient to support the three until Addicus could find work locally. Although the letter was never received, we know that it was sent because it turned up in the mailbox of one Atticus Bouchard in Pettiville, Alabama, a philatelist who kept it for the stamp on the envelope: a rare Benjamin Franklin misprint—one of only eight in existence. The image is familiar to most stamp collectors and is valued even more than the coveted “Inverted Jenny.” Franklin’s mouth is missing and he has apparently been given Thomas Jefferson’s hair. Under “U.S. Postage” are the additional words, “U.S. Pastwastard.”

13.
“His name is Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguolla.”
Jonathan’s Diary, 14 July1920. Jonathan and the superfluously named Italian-American taxi cab driver were to spend the next several hours together, drinking Allash Kummel and crème de bananes. Although neither was successful in concocting a perfect screen name for the Hollywood-bound cabby who ultimately became Rudolph Valentino, or an eye-catching alternative name for Jonathan’s forthcoming deodorant venture (Jonathan was waffling over “Dandy-de-odor-o”), their lists of possibilities for both were varied and colorful, and became even more so as the evening wore on and the
men became increasingly intoxicated. There is no evidence to confirm the rumor that the sexually ambivalent Valentino asked Jonathan to share his bed for the night, although Jonathan, his heterosexual libido perhaps slightly compromised by excessive alcohol intake, did note in his diary that the young man was “too beautiful to be a man, and certainly too beautiful to be driving livery for a living. I wish him well in his film career, and especially in his efforts to get that meandering birth name of his down to a manageable moniker.” One wonders if Valentino would have enjoyed the same level of popularity and acclaim had his name been drawn from Jonathan and Rudolph’s brain-stormed catalogue of possibilities. Box 17, Ephemera: napkins, JBP.

Among the names the two concocted for Jonathan’s startup male deodorant company were:

14.
The death of his mother hit him hard.
Less credible are other stories that circulated at the time, including one that had Jonathan spending long nights staring at his mother’s photograph and singing softly the lullabies she taught him in his youth, including a gentler version of a traditional favorite. JBP.

15.
Addicus had no choice in the matter.
The conversation as remembered by Jonathan’s Aunt Delilah proceeded as follows:

Delilah Blashette Frost,
Scribblings and Babblings
(privately produced mimeograph, 1944). Used by permission of Frost’s great-granddaughter Glynnis Kingston in exchange for my noting here that Glynnis, in addition to writing trenchant women’s pieces, creates customized wall hangings and has a lovely professional singing voice that has a slightly feline quality, which makes it appropriate for cat litter commercial jingles. She can be reached via her representatives Michele G. Rubin or Nadia Grooms at Writers House LLC, 21 West 26th Street, New York City 10010.

16.
“Childs has taken me back on as waiter and even given me a raise!”
Jonathan’s Diary, 31 May1921, JBP.

17.
She was a dead ringer for Great Jane.
Glover drops the ball with a giant thud here. The short paragraph in his book devoted to Jonathan’s association with Kissy Valentine is based solely upon conjecture. He apparently doesn’t bother
to look at Jonathan’s journal entries for the period and seems unaware of the existence of Kissy’s lengthy diary, which was published in 1987 by Man Love Press as
Kissy Tell.
Glover was apparently so uncomfortable writing about the relationship that he painted it with as few brushstrokes as possible. For a biographer usually given to breathless literary hyperbole, he is here emotionally uninvested and descriptively spare.

Glover makes no mention of the fact that the incompatibility had much to do with the fact that Kissy Valentine was, in actuality, Wade Kissman, a transvestite and Childs regular who fell in love with Jonathan and who, after revealing her true gender to him, was heartbroken by his inability to reciprocate the affection. Glover is correct when he states that the two remained friends and that Kissy went on to a theatrical career (although technically, as Tallulah Bankhead’s dresser, she never appeared on the boards), but he misses a prime opportunity to explore the complexity of Jonathan’s ambivalent feelings. Jonathan’s diary entry for June 17, 1921, the day of the breakup, is quite illuminating.

1.
It was a sizeable investment.
We can only guess at the identity of the mysterious benefactor. I am inclined to believe it was J.P. Morgen who twenty years earlier had been suspected of having paid Jonathan’s legal fees in the lawsuit filed to free him from his indentureship with the Grund Traveling Circus and Wild West Show. In the interim, Morgen had significantly increased his financial holdings through shrewd wartime investments and successful stock and bond trades. There was another reason why the Arkansas businessman might have been a prime candidate to loan start-up capital for Dandy-de-odor-o, Inc.: Morgen suffered from a severe form of bromhidrosis that left him virtually friendless, often emptied corporate board rooms, and on one occasion cleared out a well-attended stockholders’ meeting, the hall subsequently requiring fumigation. A strong affinity by Morgen for such a venture would not be an implausibility. One wonders at the same time if Jonathan’s battlefield inspiration for Dandy-de-odor-o might have been antedated by a hospital visit from the aromatic businessman on the eve of the boy’s scheduled operation, a half-forgotten memory later revived—as olfactory memories often are—as fresh and aromatic as the day of their birth.

For a different opinion, consider Glover and Furman’s theory that the money for Jonathan’s start-up company came from his academic mentor Andrew Bloor. They posit that Bloor may very well have inherited some of his uncle’s estate following the old man’s death during the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918. There would be some truth to this if Bloor’s uncle Cleve MacDougal had, in fact, passed away.
(The Spanish Flu was notorious for sparing the very young and the very old, a phenomenon that baffles scientists to this day.) Apparently, neither Glover nor Furman read the
Carpentertown (Arkansas) Gazette’s
retraction of MacDougal’s obituary. I include it here.

2.
Jonathan hired him on the spot.
Chief chemist Hiram Diles would remain employed for the next forty-two years in Dandy-de-odor-o’s Research and Development Division.

3.
Jonathan hired him half way through the interview.
Chief financial officer Charleton Caldwell would remain a part of the Dandy-de-odor-o corporate family for the next forty-five years.

4.
Jonathan hired him after several months of harassing phone calls, an extensive letter-writing campaign and at least one episode of drunken stalking.
Ironically, it was Harlan Davison who was to become Jonathan’s most trusted lieutenant and, in time, his best friend. In his letter to his sister Shirley Watkins, written several months after he was brought on board (19 November 1922, HD), Davison states as much. An excerpt follows.

5.
Davison was related to Carry Nation.
Griswold Lanham, “Harlan Davison: the Three-legged Business Marvel’s Right-Hand Man,”
Journal of Entrepreneurial History
13 (1990): 25-42. In an amazing historical coincidence, Davison was also related to Reid Lowell, the only saloon owner who succeeded in a counter-offensive against Mrs. Nation’s reign of terror. While Nation was off on a road trip, taking her whacks at a new crop of demon “rummy houses,” Lowell visited Nation’s own home and chopped into fine kindling most of its Adirondack porch and lawn furniture with his own sharply whetted hatchet. Pinned to the resultant wreckage was a note that read, “Like you, Mrs. Nation, I did this stone sober. Unlike you, I shall now go and have myself a pint to celebrate.”