While Edward worked hard at Oakwood and flourished socially, among the letters were multiple slips reporting his infractions, from disorderly behavior in the dining room (Made noise with mouth) to personal untidiness (In geom class with coat on, no tie and shirt unbuttoned).
In 1932, he went to Manhattan and enrolled at the Art Students League, where he studied alongside Jackson Pollock and was influenced by teachers with leftist leanings, including Thomas Hart Benton, John Sloan, George Grosz, and Harry Sternberg. Edward began to use his middle name, Deyo, as his first name and as the signature on his paintings. On January 5, 1933, he wrote:
Dear Mother,
…John Sloan has taken over the Benton class. He was a shock after Benton’s sane, matter of fact criticisms. Artists’ jargon and references to painters makes quite a contrast to Benton’s laconic Americanisms…
In November:
I suppose you remember my buying 3 tickets to the Artists’ Union dance. Taylor, his wife, Frieda, and I went. It wasn’t at all like the dances in the country or like those the League gives. Everybody talked and danced with everybody else. Jackson Pollock was there exuding kerosene as he had picked up some sort of kerosene device and had the different parts somewhere on his person.
Other letters describe Deyo’s work on WPA mural projects, a freight-hopping trip out West, and his growing enthusiasm for Communism, which suggested a remedy for the economic injustice that had led to the suffering of the Depression.
In 1936, Franco, with the support of Hitler, took up arms against the elected socialist government of Spain. Democratic nations declared neutrality, and idealistic young men from the U.S. and Europe headed for Spain on their own. Deyo joined the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, arriving in Spain in 1937. He went directly to the trenches, then spent time at the battalion headquarters in Madrid doing propaganda work, producing sketches and cartoons. Eventually, however, he felt the urge to return to combat.
His last letter, addressed to his parents, was written from Teruel, as the government forces were retreating from the Fascist advance:
…I have found something here which I was looking for when I left work at headquarters. The war has become something very good in a purely personal way. This is probably the most satisfactory period in my life. I rather dread returning to the less significant life.
Deyo went missing in action at the age of 24. The family gradually lost hope that he was alive. Later they learned he had fallen behind in the retreat and was surely executed by Franco’s army. John Jacobs recalls:
When he was lost in Spain, sadness would come over me in waves. Things that bad did not happen to our family…I didn’t know how I felt or should feel. As Mother said of Deyos, “Of course, we have feelings but we don’t talk about them.” The result of all this unspoken emotion, of course, was tension. Given a snap, we twanged like violin strings.
In this remarkable book, Jacobs has brought his brother back to life.
John Jacobs will read from The Stranger in the Attic at the Golden Notebook, 29 Tinker Street, Woodstock, on Saturday, February 22, at 4 p.m. The book is also available on Amazon.com.
