WEBVTT

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Now, that may seem strange,
but every bit of it,

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it just happened, was true.

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My opium lady used
to say that there

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were two moralities, one for the
kitchen and one for the parlor.

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She was once a hostess to-- at
the service of a lady who had

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some beautiful--

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she and her husband
loved to walk about stark

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naked in the house.

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And that was fine
for the poetess,

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but not for the kitchen,
because he different morality

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for the kitchen.

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Also, she did believe that
she had gone to bed, because

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of a birthmark.

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She always had stood in the
shadow, but the shadow fell.

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And always kept one part of her
face turned towards a shadow.

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Actually there was no
birthmark, it was imaginary.

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And she also believed that
she was both living and dead.

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But it was the theme of
death in the midst of life,

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which Coleridge felt
is an opium addict.

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And she did not imitate
Coleridge, for she knew him.

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It does happen in
this way in opium.

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That you get the sense of
being both living and dead.

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And I can say that this was
a medical fact of her life.

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Every other thing
that she seemed--

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that when her eyes were wide
open, she was fast asleep

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or that when her eyes were
closed, she was wide awake.

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This gave her a
tremendous sense of--

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gave all the people around her
a feeling of her omniscience.

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That if she were--

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that if her eyes were--

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they could never adjust
themselves to these signals

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to the eyes.

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When her eyes were
open, they naturally

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thought that she was awake.

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And when her eyes were
closed, that she was asleep,

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but it was just the other way.

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And so she had a wonderful
way of knowing things

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she thought she
couldn't possibly know,

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and confusing
everybody in this book

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as in the reality of the case.

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One of her bedside
callers is the hero

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of my novel, Mr. Spitzer,
who is one of twins

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and doesn't know which one
died, because his sympathies are

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so great.

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His guilt is so great, and
he was an identical twin.

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He says, he's the only man that
ever went to his own funeral,

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so to speak.

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And he seems to be suffering
from mistaken identity

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all his life.

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He's supposed to be
a musical composer,

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but no one's heard
a word of his--

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note of his music since
his brother's death.

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His brother was a
horseplayer, an impresario

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in the world of sport.

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He knew everything about the
underworld, the under life.

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Whereas Mr. Spitzer
was a graduate

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of the Boston
Conservatory of Music,

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and I think Harvard also.

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He had his degrees from Harvard.

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There are continual confusions
in the minds of all people,

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as to which brother it is.

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Some had never heard that
the sportsman had died,

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so when they see Mr. Spitzer
on the streets of Boston,

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they ask him for a
tip on the horses.

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Sometimes he finds it simpler
to give it to them than not,

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to explain look, I'm dead.

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It's my brother.

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They didn't even know he
had a brother, you see.

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And so he gets into continual
confusions in which,

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they'll open before him realms
of adventure and reality,

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and sympathy with other
men and their confusions

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of identity, which he
had never known before.

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The opium lady
loved that gambler,

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and hated the musician who
always wanted to marry her.

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And she has to spend
all these years in bed,

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talking to the musician
about his dead brother,

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the sportsman.

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But of course, toward
the end of the book, when

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she is a prisoner
from her bed and turns

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into an old hag, she--

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Mr. Spitzer confesses
to her that he is really

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the sportsman,
the one she loved.

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And unfortunately, she dies at
the beginning of his speech,

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so that she never
hears his explanation.

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And he says, foiled again.

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She'll go over there
now, and she'll

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meet that musician on the other
side, the one she was so bored

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with in life.

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He plays the role of the gambler
for about three or four days

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after her death.

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And then he reverts them
to being a musician again.

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And someone asked him why and
he said, the powers of habit

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are very strong.

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The truth is that he is both
brothers, that he's not only

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as a twin, but this
is his schizophrenia.

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His duality.

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Well, I got there.

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I think you as an
educated audience,

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will be interested to know
my opium lady also arose

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from her bed, and died
as a-- suddenly withered

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into an old hag and died.

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But I got the idea
of the confessional

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from the death of Eleanor Wylie.

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I have heard this
may be just a tale,

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but it's been told
many times in New York.

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That William Rose Benét
was talking to Eleanor,

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and he said, Eleanor, I
have always loved you.

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Why are you so suspicious,
so cold and withdrawn?

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Now I want to tell
you a few things,

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the way they really are.

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And he confessed his
great love, and all the--

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ironed out all the
misunderstandings

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which might have arisen.

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And she had been
dead for an hour,

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sitting at the
dining room table.

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He didn't know
that she was dead,

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and never heard the explanation.

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That always fascinated me.

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The confessional to
the beautiful lady

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who no longer hears, that's why
she was so cold and withdrawn.

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One of the greatest
loves of mine, it's true.