"Getting to Warsaw was a matter of an hour or so at most from [Fort Wayne]. I think my principal sensation on entering Indiana and getting thus far was one of disappointment that nothing had happened . . . Life is a shifting and changin thing. Not only your own thoughts and moods, but those of all others . . . Houses and landscapes and people go by and return no more."
As Warsaw was the last town where Theodore was resident of before leaving for Chicago, and that location was so tied to what could easily be termed his mother-reverence, it loomed large in his mind on the journey out from Manhattan. As it is only over an hour's drive from Lafayette, I too made a trip up. It was, I happily found, more than a withered small town among the corn and soya fields. During the years that the Dreisers lived in Warsaw and up to today to some extent, part of the economy for the immediate area stems from people visiting the lakes in and around the town. Today, too, as the Kosciusko County seat, it remains a business center. It has, however, undergone changes, as all towns do.
". . . on the northwest corner of Centre and Buffalo Streets (the princiapl street corner opposite [the] courthouse) where once had stood a bookstore, and next to that a small restaurant . . . a billiard and pool room, the three constituting in themselves the principal meeting or loafing place for the idle young . . . clever workers, school boys . . . of the entire town . . . all this was entirely done away with . . . "
Even the changes that Theodore noted on that street corner in '15 has subsequently been changed, and nothing remains of anything he'd have recognized from any time he'd spent in Warsaw. Some manner of private hotel - a "members only" establishment - occupies the site of the bookstore of his youth. "Where do the boys meet now, I asked myself . . . "
From the old bookstore's site, the trio went in search of the houses that the Dreisers occupied, and the school where he had his first experience with public, rather than Catholic, education:
"My mother (my father was still working in Terre Haute) placed us in what was known as the West Ward School. It adjoined an old but very comfortable house we had rented; the school yard and our yard touched. He we dwelt for one year and part of another, then moved directly across the street, south, into an old brick house known as the Thralls Mansion [the first brick] house to be built in the county . . . "
Talk about changes: when Theodore revisited, he saw that the "old Grant house" where his family first rented, had already been moved up closer to the school and other houses "crowded" in about it. When I visited, I found nothing resembling the neighborhood that he had known in his teens, or seen as an adult. Some time in the 20th Century, the old houses were replaced with smaller family structures:
As can be seen on the map detail below, the "old Grant house" was appropriately in Grant's Addition, and across the street, the Thralls'. The photo above shows the North-west corner of the intersection of what is now West Center and Union Street, where the Grant house likely would have stood. Of the Thralls Mansion there is likewise nothing.
By Theodore's description, both of those old houses probably occupied the No. 1 lots of their eponymous areas.
From the Grant house, Theodore " . . . sallied each day to my studies of the seventh grade . . . " in the West Ward School built in 1872 in what was once known as Thrall's Grove.
The West Ward, noted on the map above as simply "school," and pictured at right, probably appeared the same throughout its existence. It was demolished in 1954, replaced by a new building constructed behind it.
That replacement elementary school, in the background below, looks much like one I attended another 20 years later, in Redondo Beach. The building in the foreground is a yet more recent addition.
"From the Thralls house I accompanied my sister Tillie each day to the high school, in the heart of the town . . . where I completed my work in the eighth grade and first year high."
In the postcard at right is the high school that Theodore and Tillie attended. By 1915, Theodore noted, it was operating as an elementary, a newer high school being built elsewhere.
By my visit, this site was occupied by an assisted living facility.
A West Ward School room, probably much as Theodore would have recalled.
"I have (in spite of the fact that I have been myself all these years) but a very poor conception of the type of youth I was, and yet I love him dearly. For one thing, I know that he was a dreamer. For another, somewhat cowardly, but still adventurous and willing, on most occasions, to take a reasonable chance. For a third, he was definitely enthusiastic about girls or beauty in the female form, and what was more, about beauty in all forms, natural and otherwise. What clouds meant to him! What morning and evening skies! What the murmur of the wind, the beauty of small sails on our lakes, birds a-wing, the color and flaunt and rhythm of things!"
It was, I think, Theodore's recollections of his childhood's happier moments that really endeared the book to me. (Of Theodore himself I knew almost nothing of, save what he related of his life in ...Holiday. Having begun the Lingeman biography, it's obvious that the man was as complicated as any of us - and yet, I find some odd parallels in our views and reactions. But that's another story.) It took me some time to get started reading but once I finally settled in and let the rhythm of the thing pull me along, as Theodore waxed more on "the good days," I found myself smiling and nodding numerous times at his descriptions. My own remembrance of summer days visiting Kansas or Oklahoma to see relatives also have that half-dreamy aspect of blue sky middle American heat with clouds and birds "a-wing." Would visiting any of the towns I did then reveal the same changes in the places and in myself? I haven't been back West of the Mississippi since 2001 or -02, and I find I have a similar problem with that younger self: I know he was there - he's me after all - but my in- and out-look is not as his was then.
Central Indiana; pencil sketch by Franklin Booth, as reproduced in ...Holiday.
I made two visits to Warsaw in July. The first was on the same kind of whim that had me buying ...Holiday in the first place: it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I had no plans, and I had a map, so why not go? I took the book along on this ride, and noted some of the changes, and found that the "northwest corner of Centre and Buffalo," rather than being across the street from the courthouse, actually describes a corner of the block where the courthouse stands. Just to the North of that block, at the corner of Buffalo and Main, stands the odd "hotel" noted previously, and I'm guessing it was the location of the bookstore Theodore recalled.
The staff of Gilworth's Drug, at the soda fountain counter, from 1913. Theodore does not mention Gilworth's either during his childhood or during his return visit, but if he had dropped in to get a postcard or a drink during his visit, these were probably the faces he would have encountered.
As my first visit was a Sunday afternoon, only a few of the businesses were open for patronage. Frankly, I was a little dumbfounded by the lack of anything that resembled Theodore's recollections, save for that of this courthouse. I suppose I had hoped that Warsaw hadn't changed too much since - still, it was a lovely day to amble about the square, and take a few photographs:
"From my bedroom window on the second floor [could be seen] the face of the town clock in the court house tower, lighted at night, and hear the voice of its bell tolling . . . "
The Thralls house, where Theodore had that second floor bedroom was only 3 blocks away from the square and courthouse.
Opposite the courthouse in Warsaw: while that might be a pizza joint right on the corner, it's not the only concern conducting business here. I do appreciate that where the older structures still exist, their facades are not buried under "modern" facings of aluminum or vinyl, and there are a fair number of old structures still about, all with some manner of commerce housed there-in. When I went through Zanesville, Ohio, on the first leg of the road trip, I thought that it seemed a bit dried up and looking for something, like Elmira, New York, would seem later on. When the streets look empty and downtown is occupied by a number of antique or flea market stores, then downtown is indeed "down," or so has my experience been. Warsaw felt more lively than that, more "peppy."
The second trip I made to Warsaw was to visit the Kosciusko Historical Society, to see if I could get a better idea where those homes and schools are, or had been. It was with their help that I was able to determine that, in fact, the Dreiser's rentals were where I thought they should be; that I got the location of the West Ward School, but that it was replaced - twice, and got directions to the site of the High School. They also had photographs and postcards, which I photographed myself for reproduction here.
It's interesting to contrast Theodore's better memories with the story described by biographer Lingeman, of the Dreisers estrangement from the various stratum of Warsaw society. While there was at the first a movement into the life around them, the Dreisers' lot seemed to be that of always being on the "outs:" Theodore's older brother blowing through town and trying to "dry out" (only to keep on going back to who-knows-where and more alcohol); his older sisters Emma and Sylvia moving down from Chicago and prowling for men in their "city clothes;" the town scandalized by Emma's affair with a married man (that, among other events in her life, would stick with Theodore and become part of the story of Sister Carrie); Sylvia baring a child out of wedlock.
Among other things.
There was also, according to Lingeman:
" . . . the virus of commercial ambition . . . The town was abuzz with schemes for growth, none of which panned out. Theodore sensed 'a keen rivalry among tradesmen and people of all walks and stations for place.' Place -- that was what he must have, 'to be something, to have money . . . ' "
Theodore and his family would not find these things in Warsaw, however much he, or his mother, wanted it. The story Theodore relates in ...Holiday seems bent on recalling as much as possible the better aspects of life. Lingeman relates that Theodore's other autobiographical material, however much or little embellished by time, is more pointed on the subject of "place" and sex and money.
Theodore would eventually light out for Chicago, at age 16, looking for some way to make something of himself.
I too, had to leave Warsaw, though not under such circumstances. Before getting completely out of town, though, I went 'round the block to get a photo of this house. It may or may not have been in existence while the Dreisers lived there, but it is a fine example of a brick structure from the late 1800's, and probably reminiscent of many of the houses Theodore would have known.
"But the feeling which I had here today . . . concerned only the particular days in which I was here, the days of a new birth and freedom . . . plus the overawing weight of the lapse of time. Never before I think, certainly not since my mother's death, was I so impressed by the lapse of time, the diaphanous nothingness of things. I was here thirtywo [sic] years before and all that I saw then had body and substance -- a glaring material state. Here was some of the same material, the same sunlight, a few of the same people, perhaps, but time had filched away nearly all our characteristics. That boy -- was his spiritual substance inside of me still unchanged, merely overlaid by experience like the heart of a palm? I could not even answer that to myself. The soul within me could not say. And at least foursevenths [sic] of my allotted three score years and ten had gone."
Special thanks to the Kosciusko County Historical Society for the historic photos and postcards on this page.