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  • Entering History
  • John Picard (bio)

Anson Lockley, last of the great post–World War II men of letters, Nobel Prize winner, "America's Tolstoy," was dying in the first floor study of his Pacific Palisades villa.

"I'm sorry," Mrs. Lockley said, "but it's only family and friends." All that morning Lawrence Turnbull had been discreetly stalking the author's wife, a frail-looking woman with dark crinkly eyes and a slight limp, finally waylaying her as she exited the corridor bathroom.

"You may not have noticed," Turnbull said, "but John Bald has been at your husband's side since he left the hospital."

"John Bald?"

"The biographer."

"Oh yes. He was given special permission by Anson. I think it's ghoulish myself but …"

Turnbull had been thrilled when he learned that John Bald (biographer of Irwin Shaw and Richard Yates) had been hired as Lockley's official life chronicler, then crushed when Bald, who filled out his books with verbatim quotes from living witnesses, refused to interview him. Being excluded from a book destined to be on the shelf of every library in the country, not to mention a likely best seller, had thrown Turnbull into existential despair. Bald had interviewed hundreds of other people for his book, among them the author's chauffeur, housekeeper, landscaper, and personal assistant, but not the man who helped Lockley write his late masterpieces.

"I only mention it," he said, "because your husband and I have worked so closely together." Turnbull, who stood a head taller than Mrs. Lockley, knew he was making a bad impression (wheezy breathing, cigarette breath, sweat-stained collar), but there was too much at stake to worry about appearances. "Out of my profound respect," he continued doggedly, "I'd consider it an honor to be included in the vigil. Not just as a bystander, either. I'd be perfectly willing to partici—"

"Turnbull! Stop harassing my mother." Levin Lockley, the great man's eldest son, was approaching with rapid footsteps and pumping fists.

"Lev, he—" [End Page 40]

"How did you even get in here? Who invited you?" Short and plump, Levin had a round face that was flushed even when he wasn't angry, which he clearly was at this moment, and a waist so high it gave the impression his pants started just below his armpits.

"I wasn't aware an invitation was required," Turnbull said.

"Can't you see my mother's suffering?"

"I was just—"

"What is it? What do you want?"

"He'd like to be in the room with us," Mrs. Lockley said.

"That's not happening. There is no way in—"

"It's all right, Lev," Mrs. Lockley said, resting a hand on her son's shoulder. "We need all the support we can get."

"But Mother, the man is a liar and a—"

"This is not the time or the place," she said.

"Thank you," Turnbull gushed, as if he'd received a last-minute reprieve from execution, which he had, potentially.

Few people today would have ever heard of Joseph Severn if he hadn't accompanied John Keats to Italy, where the poet went in search of a cure for his tuberculosis, nursing Keats the last three months of his life. Because of the important part he played in his friend's death, no biographer of Keats could fail to write about Severn, the two men inextricably linked for all time. The same was true of Robert Klopstock, who was in attendance during Franz Kafka's agonizing death. Klopstock's subsequent career as a successful lung surgeon would not have been enough to keep his name alive. He would have been as dead to history as a private in Napoleon's army. As it was, his name produced 4,200 hits on Google. Edwin Stanton, present when Abraham Lincoln was dying, managed to eternalize himself with a single well-timed utterance: "Now he belongs to the ages." If Turnbull could make his presence felt during Lockley's death watch, he stood to be remembered as long as the writer's reputation survived, which according to reputable critics was as durable as Homer's. There would be no biographer...

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