Peter Whiffle by Carl Van Vechten

First published: 1922

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Simulated biography

Time of work: 1907-1919

Locale: New York, Paris, and Italy

Principal Characters:

• Peter Whiffle, a would-be writer
• Carl van Vechten, his friend
• Edith Dale, a friend of Peter and Carl
• Mahalah Wiggins, Peter’s friend

The Story

Carl Van Vechten saw Peter Whiffle for the first time in Paris, in the spring. They were both young. Carl was naive and unworldly; Peter was sophisticated and knowing. Theirs was a strange friendship. Often they did not see each other for several years; but Carl knew that he was one of the few people whom Peter called his friend. They had spent many enjoyable hours in Paris that spring and together had seen all the famous places of which they had read. Peter wanted to write, and at that point in his life he thought that subject was unimportant, that style and form were the only important things. In fact, it was his plan to write a book containing nothing but lists of Things. When he wrote, he used colored papers to express his moods.

After that spring in Paris, six years passed before Carl saw Peter again. Carl was back in New York at the time, and while walking in the Bowery one night, he met Peter. He hardly recognized his friend when he saw Peter in rags, unshaven and unkempt. Carl learned that the rags were only another phase of Peter’s life, for Peter was a rich man. After he had learned Peter’s history, Carl began to understand him better.

Peter Whiffle, the son of a banker, was born and reared in Toledo, Ohio. From infancy, Peter found it almost impossible to make decisions. Whether to do this or that was a problem that he could seldom solve, and so, preferring inactivity to decision, he usually did nothing. There was, however, one thing about which he knew, his own mind. He hated work in any form. When Peter could no longer stand his work in his father’s bank, he left home and went to New York. There he often slept in the park and went for days without food. He took a few odd jobs in order not to starve. He lived in this fashion until his mother’s brother died and left him a fortune. On the night he learned of his inheritance, he decided to become a writer. A few days later, he left for Paris.

When they met in New York, Carl learned from Peter that, although he was still a wealthy man, he had joined a group of Socialists and with them was plotting an American revolution against capitalism. He was full of plans to barricade the rich in their homes and starve them to death, or bomb them, or hang them. Carl was not much disturbed, for he recognized this idea as another stage in Peter’s life. When Carl asked Peter about his book, he learned that Peter now believed subject, rather than style or form, was all-important. He was planning to write about the revolution, to have as his heroine a girl with a clubfoot, a harelip, and a hunched back. The book would be bloody and dirty, for that was the way life was.

When Carl took Peter to see Edith Dale, a woman of wealth, Peter and Edith became friends. At Edith’s house, Peter met Mahalah Wiggins, a young girl whom he found interesting; but he could not make up his mind whether he wanted to marry her, and so he did nothing. He did change his living habits, however, and the next time Carl saw him, Peter was clean and neat in appearance. He still talked of the revolution, but halfheartedly, and Carl knew another phase of Peter’s life was almost over.

Deciding at last to marry Mahalah, Peter asked Carl to be his attendant. On the wedding day, however, Peter sent Carl a note saying that he could not go through with the wedding; it was too big a decision for him to make. Instead, Peter went to Africa.

Four months later, Carl was in Italy, visiting Edith Dale at her villa in Florence. One night, while they were dining in the city, they saw Peter again. His father had died, and his mother was traveling with him. Peter told them that he had almost died in Africa and that while he lay at the point of death he had had a vision. An angel from hell and an angel from heaven had waited for him to make up his mind about the place to which he wanted to go when he died. It had been a terrible moment, until he remembered that he did not have to make a decision; he could stay right where he was. Then he recovered.

He had again changed his mind about the book he planned to write. He claimed that everything about the characters must be put down, but he admitted that it would be quite a task to record all emotions, impressions, actions, and speech. Having sent his mother home, Peter went to stay with Carl and Edith. The days at the villa were peaceful and happy ones, so happy, in fact, that one day Peter told Carl that he was going to leave the villa at once, without telling Edith good-bye. He wanted to leave in the midst of his happiness so that his memory would not have one blot on it. He could not tell Carl where he was going because he had not yet made up his mind.

A few months later, Carl found Peter sitting on a park bench in New York. Peter did not want Edith to learn that he was there, for he was in the middle of a new experiment, and Edith might distract him. Interested in black magic, Peter was trying to discover the mystery of life and death. He took Carl to his apartment and showed him his laboratory. He also persuaded Carl to join him in an experiment. The magic brew exploded, and they woke up in the hospital.

Carl sustained only minor injuries and left the hospital before Peter, who was dangerously hurt. Peter recovered later and returned to Toledo with his mother. Carl did not see him again until after the war, in 1919. By that time, Peter was very ill from some incurable disease. He never mentioned his illness, but Carl knew that his friend’s time was not long. One afternoon in December, while the two friends were in Peter’s apartment, Carl learned that Peter had at last found himself. He told Carl that his book had never become a reality because he had attempted to do something that he was never intended to do. He was not meant to be a writer or a worker—he was meant only to appreciate and love the work of others: the art, the literature, the ability. He would make art greater and people better by bestowing upon them his appreciation and his affection. He would never have to make a decision; he would be himself. He told Carl that now he was happy and that he was a success. Then he closed his eyes. When Carl spoke to him again, Peter Whiffle did not answer.

Critical Evaluation:

Carl Van Vechten, music critic, essayist, novelist, and photographer, was one of the primary figures in the American literary renaissance of the 1920’s, both as an artist and as a personality. Clever, gregarious, sophisticated, and a talented party-giver, Van Vechten numbered among his friends almost all of the important literary and cultural personages of his time. His apartments in Paris and New York became centers of cultural activity.

Out of this milieu, especially from his early years in Paris, Van Vechten wrote PETER WHIFFLE, HIS LIFE AND WORKS, a novel set in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The novel’s unique appeal lies in its balance between the realistic descriptions and social observations of the artistic life in Paris, New York, and Florence, and the exotic, fantastic, humorously developed “biography” of Peter.

The realistic anchor comes from Van Vechten’s decision to place himself, as a character, at the novel’s center. As the narrator and confidant of Peter, he presents the cultural environment of the period with feeling and precision. Van Vechten conveys a sense of personal involvement as he accurately describes local customs and inhabitants, social mores and peculiarities, as well as real places and events with careful attention to concrete details and physical actuality. He chronicles the social gatherings and artistic happenings of the time, using actual names in some cases, thinly disguised and suggestive ones in others.

Peter Whiffle is hardly a “real” character; his “biography” is an ironical, whimsical fantasy. Peter is charming and amusing but lacks any solid identity. The book traces his attempts to find one through artistic creativity—and his failure to do so. In his ambition to become a writer, Peter systematically commits himself to every artistic fad that has excited the fancy of modern writers. Each time he devotes himself to a new set of experiments, he surrounds himself in the trappings of the new approach and absorbs himself in the life-style appropriate to it. He even renames his cat accordingly. Peter begins imitating Henry James’s emphasis on style and form to the exclusion of subject matter, moves on to a cataloging of phenomena in the same vein as Whitman, to “bloody and dirty” revolutionary writing, to a flirtation with Africa that suggests Rimbaud, to pure subject matter without any style in the mode of Dreiser, to experiments with diabolism and black magic, and finally to a slow death from exhaustion and futility. In dying, Peter acknowledges his incapacity as a writer, his talent as a spectator, and, at last, turns to his cat for the real answer.