Square Pegs; Some Ameriearivi Who Dared to Be Different« Knopf, 1 9 5 7
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920 m 89s ' 5 7 -H 3W Wallace, Irving, 1916- $5.00 > The square pegs; some Ameriearivi who dared to be different« Knopf, 1 9 5 7 . 'mO I'Q,89b 5 7 - l l 5^fi]t Wallace, M n g, 1916^ $5,00 ■ x,ae square pegs; some Americana to be d i f t e e r t . J p f , H J p . flB kansas city ^ 9 public lilii'ary ■ SS9 kansas city, missouri Books will be issued only ^ on presentation of library card. Please report lost cards and change of residence promptly. Card holders are responsible for all books, records, films, pictures or other library materials checked out on their cards. BOOKS BY Irving Wallace THE SQUARE PEGS Some Americans Who Dared to Be Different Op Si) THE FABULOUS ORIGINALS Lives of Extraordinary People Who Inspired Me?mrable Characters in Fiction 09S5) These are Borzoi Books published in New York by Alfred A. Knopf The Square Pegs THE SQUARE PEGS ^ome Americans Who Dared to Be Different by Irving Wallace N E W Y O R K Alfred-A-Knopf 1 9 5 7 “ They 'were learning to draw" the Dormouse went on, “and they drew all manner of things— everything that began with an M—” “ Why with an M?” said Alice. “ Why not?” said the March Hare. L ewis C arroll Contents r In Defense of the Square Peg . Wherein ive meet Wilbur Glenn Voliva, who believed the earth nxias flat, and wherein we leam the need for encour aging individualism and nonconformity. 3 II- The King OF Thirtst-Sixth Street . Where in we meet Baron James A . Harden-Hickey, Amer ican ruler of Trinidad, who became an authority on the art of suicide. 25 III- T he M a n W ho W as P hileas F ogg . Wherein we meet George Francis Train, nnllionaire member of the CoTmmne, who was the first man to travel around the world in eighty days. 61 IV- The Free Lover Who Ran for President . Wherein we meet Victoria Woodhull, stockbroker, spiritualist, and prostitute, who competed with Ulysses S. Grant for tenancy of the White House. 100 V- The Forty-Niner Who Abolished Congress . Wherein we meet Joshua Norton, self-ap pointed Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, who issued orders to Abraham Lincoln. 148 VI- The Lady Who Moved Shakespeare’s Bones . Wherein we meet Delia Bacon, schoolteacher frustrated in love, who became the implacable en emy of the Bard of Avon. 168 (ix) Contents VII- The Explorer of the Hollow Earth . Wherein we meet John Cleves Symnes, hero of the War of 1812, who planned an expedition into the interior world through holes in the North and South poles. 223 VIII- The Editor Who Was A Common Scold . Wherein we meet Anne Roy all, widow and author, who interviewed a Chief Executive while he was in the nude. 243 IX- The First in the East . Wherein we meet Timothy Dexter, merchant prince and foe of gra7n- mar, who sent coals to Newcastle and published a book without punctuation. 267 A n o te on Principal Sources 313 Index follow s page 315 ( X ) Illustrations Baron James A. Harden-Hickey -fmng page 48 (Brown Brothers) G eorge F rancis T rain 49 (Braum Brothers^ from origiml negative in the Meserve Collection) VICTORIA WOODHULL 112 (Bettmann Archive) Emperor Norton I 113 {California State Library) D elia Baco n 208 (New York Public Library) C a pta in John C leves Sy m m e s • 209 (Library of the Ohio Historical Society) L orb T im o t h y D exter 272 (Newburyport [Massachusetts] Public Library) The Square Pegs I In Defense of the Square Peg square person has squeezed hknself into the round hole” Sy d n e y Sm it h n an autumn afternoon in 1932, when I was sixteen years old and filled with wonder, I sat in an office in Othe medieval American community of Zion City, Illinois, and heard a strange and wealthy man named Wilbur Glenn Voliva tell me that the world was not round. “The world is flat like a saucer,” Voliva said. “The North Pole is in the center of the flat earth, and the South Pole is a great ice barrier around the rim. The sky is a solid dome above, like an inverted blue basin, and the sun, the moon, the stars hang from it like a chandelier from a ceiling.” This theory, with which I was already famiHar, made a deep impression on me, not so much for its scientific stimu lation as for its oddity. It was to this incredible interview that I like to attribute my first interest in the role played by the extreme individualist and nonconformist in our society. Furthermore, it was to this interview, I suppose, that I must trace the beginnings of this biography of American eccen tricity. Of course, I had always known about Wilbur Glenn Vol iva. I had been raised to maturity in the shadow of his singu lar personality. During the first eighteen years of my life I dwelt with m y parents in the small, pleasant, half-rural, half- ( 3 ) The Square Pegs of Zion City, had been one John Alexander Dowie, a Scot who studied for the ministry at Edinburgh University and then went on to establish a pastorate near Sydney, Australia. In 1888 Dowie brought his theories of faith healing to Amer ica. A t the Columbian Exposition in Chicago he pitched a tent, and there, as Prophet Elijah III, competed with John Philip Sousa and Sandow for customers. He soon had 50,000 followers and sufficient funds to purchase ten square miles of land on the shores of Lake Michigan north of Chicago and establish his private religious settlement, Zion City. From the pulpit of his enormous Christian Apostolic Church he thun dered forth against the sins of sex, oysters, and life insurance. He built huge lace, candy, and furniture factories, and he made $20,000,000. When he tried to spread his gospel Dowie met his first re verses. He failed in N ew York, in London, and finally in Mexico. In desperation, he sent to Australia for one of his most successful assistant prophets, a thirty-seven-yeax-old Indiana-born preacher named Wilbur Glenn Voliva. B y the time Voliva reached Zion City, old Dowie had suffered a par alytic stroke. In a moment of weakness, he gave Voliva power of attorney, and Voliva savagely turned upon him. In 1905 Voliva ordered his superior suspended from the church and exiled from Zion City on the charges that he had appro priated $2,000,000 of community funds for private luxuries and that he had engaged in polygamy. Dowie was driven to insanity and finally to his death two years later. Thereafter, Voliva was dictator, and the 6,000 persons who depended upon his tabernacle for spiritual comfort and upon his indus tries for physical sustenance were entirely in his grip. Yet, when I was led into his presence in an expansive office of Shiloh House on the day of our appointment, I was agree ably surprised. In his record I had read only ruthlessness, and I had been apprehensive. But seated in the straight chair be hind his walnut desk, he had the look of a benevolent busi nessman. His head was massive, partially bald, and his eyes ( 6 ) In Defense of the Square Peg were quick. He closely resembled portraits I had seen of President William McKinley, but when he grasped his black satin robe and began to speak, it was not M cKinley but Savonarola. Voliva made it plain at once that the Bible was his entire scientific library. Astronomers were “ignorant fools.” The Scriptures suggested a flat world, and Voliva was a funda mentalist. The earth was as “flat as a saucer, a pancake, a stove lid.” It was surrounded by an enormous wall of ice that was the South Pole. “ That barrier exists,” he said. “If you doubt me, then go read the testimony of Sir James Ross, the only explorer who ever went all the way around the world near the inside of the ice wall, sailing some sixty thousand miles and taking nearly four years to make the trip. The Byrd expedition was only further proof of that wall. They found an unconquerable barrier— ^what I call the falling-off place, the end of the world.” Voliva’s conception of the universe, with its blue, solid roof, was equally bizarre. “Books tell you the sun is ninety- three million miles away,” he said. “That’s nonsense. The sun is only three thousand miles away, and is only thirty-two miles in diameter. It circles above the plane earth, spirally, and makes one circuit every twenty-four hours, always at the same height. A ll that talk about the rising and setting sun is an optical illusion.” On another occasion, when asked to ex plain w hy he thought the sun so near the earth, he remarked: “ God made the sun to light the earth, and therefore must have placed it close to the task it was designed to do. W hat would you think of a man who built a house in Zion and put a lamp to light it in Kenosha, Wisconsin? ” During our hour meeting, I timorously suggested that I had prepared a scientific list of proofs usually given in sup port of a globular earth. These proofs were, indeed, sopho- moric, but they were the best I knew at that time, and I thought they would serve to draw Voliva out.