Chapter: LONELINESS

He was the son of Mrs. Al Robinson who once owned a
farm on a side road leading off Trunion Pike, east of
Winesburg and two miles beyond the town limits. The
farmhouse was painted brown and the blinds to all of
the windows facing the road were kept closed. In the
road before the house a flock of chickens, accompanied
by two guinea hens, lay in the deep dust. Enoch lived
in the house with his mother in those days and when he
was a young boy went to school at the Winesburg High
School. Old citizens remembered him as a quiet, smiling
youth inclined to silence. He walked in the middle of
the road when he came into town and sometimes read a
book. Drivers of teams had to shout and swear to make
him realize where he was so that he would turn out of
the beaten track and let them pass.

When he was twenty-one years old Enoch went to New York
City and was a city man for fifteen years. He studied
French and went to an art school, hoping to develop a
faculty he had for drawing. In his own mind he planned
to go to Paris and to finish his art education among
the masters there, but that never turned out.

Nothing ever turned out for Enoch Robinson. He could
draw well enough and he had many odd delicate thoughts
hidden away in his brain that might have expressed
themselves through the brush of a painter, but he was
always a child and that was a handicap to his worldly
development. He never grew up and of course he couldn't
understand people and he couldn't make people
understand him. The child in him kept bumping against
things, against actualities like money and sex and
opinions. Once he was hit by a street car and thrown
against an iron post. That made him lame. It was one of
the many things that kept things from turning out for
Enoch Robinson.

In New York City, when he first went there to live and
before he became confused and disconcerted by the facts
of life, Enoch went about a good deal with young men.
He got into a group of other young artists, both men
and women, and in the evenings they sometimes came to
visit him in his room. Once he got drunk and was taken
to a police station where a police magistrate
frightened him horribly, and once he tried to have an
affair with a woman of the town met on the sidewalk
before his lodging house. The woman and Enoch walked
together three blocks and then the young man grew
afraid and ran away. The woman had been drinking and
the incident amused her. She leaned against the wall of
a building and laughed so heartily that another man
stopped and laughed with her. The two went away
together, still laughing, and Enoch crept off to his
room trembling and vexed.

The room in which young Robinson lived in New York
faced Washington Square and was long and narrow like a
hallway. It is important to get that fixed in your
mind. The story of Enoch is in fact the story of a room
almost more than it is the story of a man.

And so into the room in the evening came young Enoch's
friends. There was nothing particularly striking about
them except that they were artists of the kind that
talk. Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout
all of the known history of the world they have
gathered in rooms and talked. They talk of art and are
passionately, almost feverishly, in earnest about it.
They think it matters much more than it does.

And so these people gathered and smoked cigarettes and
talked and Enoch Robinson, the boy from the farm near
Winesburg, was there. He stayed in a corner and for the
most part said nothing. How his big blue childlike eyes
stared about! On the walls were pictures he had made,
crude things, half finished. His friends talked of
these. Leaning back in their chairs, they talked and
talked with their heads rocking from side to side.
Words were said about line and values and composition,
lots of words, such as are always being said.

Enoch wanted to talk too but he didn't know how. He was
too excited to talk coherently. When he tried he
sputtered and stammered and his voice sounded strange
and squeaky to him. That made him stop talking. He knew
what he wanted to say, but he knew also that he could
never by any possibility say it. When a picture he had
painted was under discussion, he wanted to burst out
with something like this: "You don't get the point," he
wanted to explain; "the picture you see doesn't consist
of the things you see and say words about. There is
something else, something you don't see at all,
something you aren't intended to see. Look at this one
over here, by the door here, where the light from the
window falls on it. The dark spot by the road that you
might not notice at all is, you see, the beginning of
everything. There is a clump of elders there such as
used to grow beside the road before our house back in
Winesburg, Ohio, and in among the elders there is
something hidden. It is a woman, that's what it is. She
has been thrown from a horse and the horse has run away
out of sight. Do you not see how the old man who drives
a cart looks anxiously about? That is Thad Grayback who
has a farm up the road. He is taking corn to Winesburg
to be ground into meal at Comstock's mill. He knows
there is something in the elders, something hidden
away, and yet he doesn't quite know.

"It's a woman you see, that's what it is! It's a woman
and, oh, she is lovely! She is hurt and is suffering
but she makes no sound. Don't you see how it is? She
lies quite still, white and still, and the beauty comes
out from her and spreads over everything. It is in the
sky back there and all around everywhere. I didn't try
to paint the woman, of course. She is too beautiful to
be painted. How dull to talk of composition and such
things! Why do you not look at the sky and then run
away as I used to do when I was a boy back there in
Winesburg, Ohio?"

That is the kind of thing young Enoch Robinson trembled
to say to the guests who came into his room when he was
a young fellow in New York City, but he always ended by
saying nothing. Then he began to doubt his own mind. He
was afraid the things he felt were not getting
expressed in the pictures he painted. In a half
indignant mood he stopped inviting people into his room
and presently got into the habit of locking the door.
He began to think that enough people had visited him,
that he did not need people any more. With quick
imagination he began to invent his own people to whom
he could really talk and to whom he explained the
things he had been unable to explain to living people.
His room began to be inhabited by the spirits of men
and women among whom he went, in his turn saying words.
It was as though everyone Enoch Robinson had ever seen
had left with him some essence of himself, something he
could mould and change to suit his own fancy, something
that understood all about such things as the wounded
woman behind the elders in the pictures.

The mild, blue-eyed young Ohio boy was a complete
egotist, as all children are egotists. He did not want
friends for the quite simple reason that no child wants
friends. He wanted most of all the people of his own
mind, people with whom he could really talk, people he
could harangue and scold by the hour, servants, you
see, to his fancy. Among these people he was always
self-confident and bold. They might talk, to be sure,
and even have opinions of their own, but always he
talked last and best. He was like a writer busy among
the figures of his brain, a kind of tiny blue-eyed king
he was, in a six-dollar room facing Washington Square in
the city of New York.

Then Enoch Robinson got married. He began to get
lonely and to want to touch actual flesh-and-bone
people with his hands. Days passed when his room seemed
empty. Lust visited his body and desire grew in his
mind. At night strange fevers, burning within, kept him
awake. He married a girl who sat in a chair next to his
own in the art school and went to live in an apartment
house in Brooklyn. Two children were born to the woman
he married, and Enoch got a job in a place where
illustrations are made for advertisements.

That began another phase of Enoch's life. He began to
play at a new game. For a while he was very proud of
himself in the role of producing citizen of the world.
He dismissed the essence of things and played with
realities. In the fall he voted at an election and he
had a newspaper thrown on his porch each morning. When
in the evening he came home from work he got off a
streetcar and walked sedately along behind some
business man, striving to look very substantial and
important. As a payer of taxes he thought he should
post himself on how things are run. "I'm getting to be
of some moment, a real part of things, of the state and
the city and all that," he told himself with an amusing
miniature air of dignity. Once, coming home from
Philadelphia, he had a discussion with a man met on a
train. Enoch talked about the advisability of the
government's owning and operating the railroads and the
man gave him a cigar. It was Enoch's notion that such a
move on the part of the government would be a good
thing, and he grew quite excited as he talked. Later he
remembered his own words with pleasure. "I gave him
something to think about, that fellow," he muttered to
himself as he climbed the stairs to his Brooklyn
apartment.

To be sure, Enoch's marriage did not turn out. He
himself brought it to an end. He began to feel choked
and walled in by the life in the apartment, and to feel
toward his wife and even toward his children as he had
felt concerning the friends who once came to visit him.
He began to tell little lies about business engagements
that would give him freedom to walk alone in the street
at night and, the chance offering, he secretly
re-rented the room facing Washington Square. Then Mrs.
Al Robinson died on the farm near Winesburg, and he got
eight thousand dollars from the bank that acted as
trustee of her estate. That took Enoch out of the world
of men altogether. He gave the money to his wife and
told her he could not live in the apartment any more.
She cried and was angry and threatened, but he only
stared at her and went his own way. In reality the wife
did not care much. She thought Enoch slightly insane
and was a little afraid of him. When it was quite sure
that he would never come back, she took the two
children and went to a village in Connecticut where she
had lived as a girl. In the end she married a man who
bought and sold real estate and was contented enough.

And so Enoch Robinson stayed in the New York room among
the people of his fancy, playing with them, talking to
them, happy as a child is happy. They were an odd lot,
Enoch's people. They were made, I suppose, out of real
people he had seen and who had for some obscure reason
made an appeal to him. There was a woman with a sword
in her hand, an old man with a long white beard who
went about followed by a dog, a young girl whose
stockings were always coming down and hanging over her
shoe tops. There must have been two dozen of the shadow
people, invented by the child-mind of Enoch Robinson,
who lived in the room with him.

And Enoch was happy. Into the room he went and locked
the door. With an absurd air of importance he talked
aloud, giving instructions, making comments on life. He
was happy and satisfied to go on making his living in
the advertising place until something happened. Of
course something did happen. That is why he went back
to live in Winesburg and why we know about him. The
thing that happened was a woman. It would be that way.
He was too happy. Something had to come into his world.
Something had to drive him out of the New York room to
live out his life an obscure, jerky little figure,
bobbing up and down on the streets of an Ohio town at
evening when the sun was going down behind the roof of
Wesley Moyer's livery barn.

About the thing that happened. Enoch told George
Willard about it one night. He wanted to talk to
someone, and he chose the young newspaper reporter
because the two happened to be thrown together at a
time when the younger man was in a mood to understand.

Youthful sadness, young man's sadness, the sadness of a
growing boy in a village at the year's end, opened the
lips of the old man. The sadness was in the heart of
George Willard and was without meaning, but it appealed
to Enoch Robinson.

It rained on the evening when the two met and talked, a
drizzly wet October rain. The fruition of the year had
come and the night should have been fine with a moon in
the sky and the crisp sharp promise of frost in the
air, but it wasn't that way. It rained and little
puddles of water shone under the street lamps on Main
Street. In the woods in the darkness beyond the Fair
Ground water dripped from the black trees. Beneath the
trees wet leaves were pasted against tree roots that
protruded from the ground. In gardens back of houses in
Winesburg dry shriveled potato vines lay sprawling on
the ground. Men who had finished the evening meal and
who had planned to go uptown to talk the evening away
with other men at the back of some store changed their
minds. George Willard tramped about in the rain and was
glad that it rained. He felt that way. He was like
Enoch Robinson on the evenings when the old man came
down out of his room and wandered alone in the streets.
He was like that only that George Willard had become a
tall young man and did not think it manly to weep and
carry on. For a month his mother had been very ill and
that had something to do with his sadness, but not
much. He thought about himself and to the young that
always brings sadness.

Enoch Robinson and George Willard met beneath a wooden
awning that extended out over the sidewalk before
Voight's wagon shop on Maumee Street just off the main
street of Winesburg. They went together from there
through the rain-washed streets to the older man's room
on the third floor of the Heffner Block. The young
reporter went willingly enough. Enoch Robinson asked
him to go after the two had talked for ten minutes. The
boy was a little afraid but had never been more curious
in his life. A hundred times he had heard the old man
spoken of as a little off his head and he thought
himself rather brave and manly to go at all. From the
very beginning, in the street in the rain, the old man
talked in a queer way, trying to tell the story of the
room in Washington Square and of his life in the room.
"You'll understand if you try hard enough," he said
conclusively. "I have looked at you when you went past
me on the street and I think you can understand. It
isn't hard. All you have to do is to believe what I
say, just listen and believe, that's all there is to
it."

It was past eleven o'clock that evening when old Enoch,
talking to George Willard in the room in the Heffner
Block, came to the vital thing, the story of the woman
and of what drove him out of the city to live out his
life alone and defeated in Winesburg. He sat on a cot
by the window with his head in his hand and George
Willard was in a chair by a table. A kerosene lamp sat
on the table and the room, although almost bare of
furniture, was scrupulously clean. As the man talked
George Willard began to feel that he would like to get
out of the chair and sit on the cot also. He wanted to
put his arms about the little old man. In the half
darkness the man talked and the boy listened, filled
with sadness.

"She got to coming in there after there hadn't been
anyone in the room for years," said Enoch Robinson.
"She saw me in the hallway of the house and we got
acquainted. I don't know just what she did in her own
room. I never went there. I think she was a musician
and played a violin. Every now and then she came and
knocked at the door and I opened it. In she came and
sat down beside me, just sat and looked about and said
nothing. Anyway, she said nothing that mattered."

The old man arose from the cot and moved about the
room. The overcoat he wore was wet from the rain and
drops of water kept falling with a soft thump on the
floor. When he again sat upon the cot George Willard
got out of the chair and sat beside him.

"I had a feeling about her. She sat there in the room
with me and she was too big for the room. I felt that
she was driving everything else away. We just talked of
little things, but I couldn't sit still. I wanted to
touch her with my fingers and to kiss her. Her hands
were so strong and her face was so good and she looked
at me all the time."

The trembling voice of the old man became silent and
his body shook as from a chill. "I was afraid," he
whispered. "I was terribly afraid. I didn't want to let
her come in when she knocked at the door but I couldn't
sit still. 'No, no,' I said to myself, but I got up and
opened the door just the same. She was so grown up, you
see. She was a woman. I thought she would be bigger
than I was there in that room."

Enoch Robinson stared at George Willard, his childlike
blue eyes shining in the lamplight. Again he shivered.
"I wanted her and all the time I didn't want her," he
explained. "Then I began to tell her about my people,
about everything that meant anything to me. I tried to
keep quiet, to keep myself to myself, but I couldn't. I
felt just as I did about opening the door. Sometimes I
ached to have her go away and never come back any
more."

The old man sprang to his feet and his voice shook with
excitement. "One night something happened. I became mad
to make her understand me and to know what a big thing
I was in that room. I wanted her to see how important I
was. I told her over and over. When she tried to go
away, I ran and locked the door. I followed her about.
I talked and talked and then all of a sudden things
went to smash. A look came into her eyes and I knew she
did understand. Maybe she had understood all the time.
I was furious. I couldn't stand it. I wanted her to
understand but, don't you see, I couldn't let her
understand. I felt that then she would know everything,
that I would be submerged, drowned out, you see. That's
how it is. I don't know why."

The old man dropped into a chair by the lamp and the
boy listened, filled with awe. "Go away, boy," said the
man. "Don't stay here with me any more. I thought it
might be a good thing to tell you but it isn't. I don't
want to talk any more. Go away."

George Willard shook his head and a note of command
came into his voice. "Don't stop now. Tell me the rest
of it," he commanded sharply. "What happened? Tell me
the rest of the story."

Enoch Robinson sprang to his feet and ran to the window
that looked down into the deserted main street of
Winesburg. George Willard followed. By the window the
two stood, the tall awkward boy-man and the little
wrinkled man-boy. The childish, eager voice carried
forward the tale. "I swore at her," he explained. "I
said vile words. I ordered her to go away and not to
come back. Oh, I said terrible things. At first she
pretended not to understand but I kept at it. I
screamed and stamped on the floor. I made the house
ring with my curses. I didn't want ever to see her
again and I knew, after some of the things I said, that
I never would see her again."

The old man's voice broke and he shook his head.
"Things went to smash," he said quietly and sadly. "Out
she went through the door and all the life there had
been in the room followed her out. She took all of my
people away. They all went out through the door after
her. That's the way it was."

George Willard turned and went out of Enoch Robinson's
room. In the darkness by the window, as he went through
the door, he could hear the thin old voice whimpering
and complaining. "I'm alone, all alone here," said the
voice. "It was warm and friendly in my room but now I'm
all alone."

 Enoch Robinson is a childish man who seems crazy. He grew up on a farm near Winesburg, and he used to want to be an artist. When he was twenty-one he went to live in New York City, where he remained for fifteen years. There, he made friends who were artists, and they came to visit him in his little rented room. They talked of the composition of his pictures, but he felt they did not understand the art. Then, he stopped letting them come visit and instead invented people to keep him company in his room, people he could better control. Eventually, he married an art student, but that, too did not work out because of his egotism. He wanted people who exactly suited his needs, rather than real people, so he left his wife and two children, returned to his room, and continued imagining people. Finally, a young woman started visiting him again, and he tried to make her understand about his people, but she realized he was crazy and ran away. He ran after her and tried to explain, but he ended up swearing at her, instead. When she left, she took all the life and imagined people out of his room. He returned to Winesburg to live out his life alone and defeated.

