The Lost Prince (6 page)

“With all its political factions?” Mr. Ochs said. “The Czechs wishing to be Czech, the Hungarians wanting to be Hungarian, and so forth. And all without a crown prince to signal the bright future, after that awful Mayerling business.”

Eleanor suppressed a frown. “Exactly,” she said. “To lose such a prince is to lose the future.”

“And what of the politically motivated anti-Semitism?” Her book did not dwell on the phenomenon, but it had described in detail the strategy of the mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, using resentment of Jewish control to rally the working classes.

At first Eleanor looked away, not wishing to venture into the territory of future predicting—knowing what she did of the future, the part of her challenge she had assiduously avoided and would continue to avoid. But then she realized she was in the presence of a representative of a major world newspaper, an ultimate realist.

“Horrific” was the single and simple word she chose.

Eleanor could not tell Dr. James until later about the encounter with Mr. Ochs over
City of Music,
since he did not know at that time the identity of the book’s author, but she could tell him about her close association with Sigmund Freud, at least a part of it. In 1900, when three copies of the newly published
Interpretation of Dreams
by Sigmund Freud, in the
original German, arrived in a package from Ernst Kleist, a friend from her time in Vienna, she made certain that Dr. James received one of them. “Another book to read,” he said, repeating his gratitude for her attention.

“I believe you need to know about Dr. Freud.”

“I was teasing,” he said. “We all know of Dr. Freud, and I have been eagerly awaiting this publication.” William James had met Dr. Freud in Europe some years before and had been impressed by his thinking. “You are good to have obtained a copy for me with such speed.”

“You are meant to read it,” she said decisively. “It is the vital next step.”

“You are impressed by Sigmund Freud, aren’t you?”

“I am,” she said with conviction. “I think his message is one the modern world needs to hear right now.”

“Well,” the famous professor said, pleased to hear such self-assurance from his young protégé, “I shall put it on the top of my stack. I am eager for the vital next step.”

In the following year, 1901, convinced of the book’s worth and determined to do all she could to spread its important message—“my mission,” she was to call it years later—she arranged for twenty or so copies of the then-obscure work to be sent out, anonymously, to the most prominent German-speaking scholars she could find. “It was in my interests to have Sigmund Freud discovered by American scholars,” she also said later.

At the same time she set about having Freud’s largely unknown work translated into English. She searched around Harvard until she came upon a German-born graduate student in history who seemed amenable to the task, and in need of the money, and he agreed to work quickly on the project.

“This must be carried out in the greatest secrecy,” she said.

“I am German,” the young man said. “I have no trouble with secrecy.” Later she went to his small office and collected a thick typed manuscript.

“This is beautiful,” she said to the young graduate student.

“It is quite a work,” he said. “This Dr. Freud is a very profound thinker.”

She lifted this stack of papers. “And now, thanks to you, we have at least one copy of his words in English.”

“What are you going to do with it?” the young man said.

“It is intended for just one purpose,” Eleanor said, “to spread the discoveries of this remarkable man.”

MR. HONEYCUTT

T
he fact that she met Will Honeycutt because of discussions with William James about dreams was, she found later, one of the great ironies of this story. During her many visits with her godfather and confidant after her return from Vienna, she had mentioned a number of times her belief that one could actually engage productively in dialogue with characters from one’s own dreams. It was not a practice she had actually employed herself but one dear to the soul mate she met in Vienna and one referred to numerous times in the journal. She remembered Dr. James finding in the idea more fascination, she had to admit, than she found in it herself. “It seems a straight path to the unconscious mind,” he had said.

One day, as they were talking, the subject came up again, it seemed to her, quite spontaneously. “Remember your notion of conversations with dreams?” Dr. James said. “You told me of this a few months ago, and it made quite an impression. Now I have something I wish you to read,” he said to her, holding up a bound volume of what looked like handwritten pages. “This is a Harvard senior thesis from last year, sent over to me from the physics department. I would not expect you to read the whole thing, but the main idea is fascinating, and apropos of our previous discussions. A former student of mine, a quite eccentric fellow, claiming that he got the idea solely from my lectures, has written a dialogue about physics with a character in his dreams.” James handed her the volume, and when she opened it and saw for the first time the name of the Harvard student who had written it, she found herself shaken. There before her was the name
T. Williams Honeycutt, the very name mentioned in the journal as someone who was to play a major role in her future; “the linchpin,” he would be called later.

It was shortly before the whole Cincinnati adventure began, and she was just putting together her approach to the assigned tasks, having just begun the rudiments of a search for someone of that prescribed name: T. Williams Honeycutt. A man with such a name was supposed to become the longtime director of the monetary fund she was to create, she knew, and someone in all likelihood it was her responsibility to find and recruit.

For all she knew this T. Williams Honeycutt might have been in Chicago or Omaha or anywhere. As with the rest of her assignments, she had not approached this important part lightly, but she had had little idea how to proceed. Initially, she had not thought to ask William James if he knew of anyone of such a name, and now, totally at random, here he was handing her a senior thesis with that very name inscribed.

“Do you know this T. Williams Honeycutt?” she asked, pointing to the first page of the document.

“Oh, yes,” Dr. James said. “I know Honeycutt, Ted as he is called. Sort of a strange fellow, rather bereft of social grace, but, like that document you hold in your hand, his is quite a story.”

“And you know how I can find him?”

“Oh, of course. He has a small office not far from here, in the physics department.” And he reached over to his own desk and wrote on a small slip of paper the office address at Harvard.

Before the visit to that office in the physics department, also through William James, she found a number of Harvard faculty to interview with regard to the young graduate student’s remarkable thesis, his character and performance. Each of his former teachers was cautious in describing the young man and his intelligence, but each referred to him with something like a wince and Dr. James’s “quite a story.”

Before Eleanor actually contacted this Mr. Honeycutt, William James told her with a smile, “When he was an undergraduate, he took two of my classes. He was immediately memorable for the look of rapt attention he brought to each lecture, and his intense questioning after it. A razor-sharp mind, but without much social moderation to accompany it, quite disarming actually, and he certainly stood out, this Mr. Honeycutt. He is now a graduate student in the physics department. Quite a famous one, or infamous,
you might say. That thesis you have seen stirred up quite a commotion. I have found it intriguing, and most imaginative.”

The thesis had indeed drawn a great deal of attention within the department. It had been, everyone agreed, a stroke of originality the likes of which few in the department had ever seen. Ted Honeycutt had written an expansive dialogue between himself, called Theodore, and the fourth-century
B.C.
Greek sage Democritus, the discoverer of the atom. In this lengthy discourse this Honeycutt had summarized—quite brilliantly, it was admitted—the known and theorized world of the atom, including Newton and the newest discoveries, and allowed his Democritus to speculate upon all of it, and the future. The results, called “outrageous and without foundation” by one senior department member, had been heralded as “stunningly bold and prescient” by another.

Years later, it would be noted that Honeycutt’s Democritan speculations were a near-pitch-perfect description of what would become known as quantum physics, the theory of connectedness. At first, it was feared that he had plagiarized from some unknown source, and when asked how he, a humble undergraduate, had come up with the bold imaginings, the young physics student said, “I simply allowed a visitation from a historical character and let him do the talking. The method came out of my studies with William James,” he offered as some sort of validation. Apparently, it was said, Dr. James had mentioned once or twice in a lecture that dreams were part of the reality of the unconscious mind, and we could carry on revelatory conversation with characters from those dreams in our waking life. “So that’s what I did,” Honeycutt said. “Democritus came to me in a dream, and I started the next morning writing down my conversations with him. I told him about modern physics, and he took it from there. And it worked, I guess.”

When William James was at first shown the thesis, he said he did not remember making the observation in a lecture, but he considered Honeycutt’s a fitting application of the idea, if he had said it, “a brilliant piece of parapsychology.” Some agreed with Dr. James that the thesis was brilliant, and some thought it the work of a deranged mind. “The young man hears voices,” one professor said, and then added dismissively, “We have a Joan of Arc on our hands.”

“And what was it that so distinguished the thesis?” Eleanor asked.

“It was a brilliant idea,” William James said, “conversations with a
character who had come to him in a dream. He got the idea from me. I got the idea from you when you were fresh back from Vienna. You got it from a wise man of your acquaintance there.”

“I do remember telling you that,” she said. “The idea had made quite an impression on me, and was helpful at the time.”

“Well, I don’t remember passing it along in a lecture to Harvard students,” he said. “Still, Honeycutt here wrote a rather astounding dialogue, and it made a powerful impression. The department asked him to defend himself, which is an uncommon practice for an undergraduate thesis.”

“And he did well, I assume.”

“It was quite a show,” William James said. “Mr. Honeycutt is not exactly normal; he is overly brusque, but brilliant, something of a savant, I am told. He is painfully inept at human interaction.”

“What is he like?”

“Well, he is definitely an original specimen. One of the skeptics asked young Honeycutt why he chose this man Democritus, and he answered imperiously, ‘I did not choose him, sir. Democritus chose me.’

“When another asked if he often heard voices, the young man answered in the affirmative, which did not help his case. The department has taken him on as a graduate student, some with great reluctance, and they are asking him to give proof to the many radical assertions made out of his extraordinary imaginings. The department is still split, I hear, as to the state of the young man’s mind, and whether this defense can be made. But they all are in agreement on one aspect: His is an exceptional mind.”

“And you know of no other of the same name?” she asked abruptly, realizing the complexity she was about to step into here by pursuing this young man.

“T. Williams Honeycutt?” William James said, and Eleanor nodded. The great man thought for a long moment. “No,” he said, with a kind of certainty. “Not in my ken.”

And all other research went nowhere. This controversial young graduate student about her age, in the department of physics, was her only possibility, it turned out, at least in the Boston area. And so, with no other options in front of her, and reasoning that T. Williams Honeycutt was an unusual and perhaps unique name, she made an appointment, which surprised
the young man no doubt, since Ted Honeycutt, by his own admission, was not the type who made many outside appointments, certainly not with attractive young women.