A ‘Terrible and Beautiful’ Business: Wolfe Witnesses Childbirth
In July of 1927, Wolfe visited old UNC classmate and fraternity brother Dr. J. Donald MacRae, who was interning at the Manhattan Maternity and Dispensary in NYC. While there, the doctors allowed Wolfe to witness the birth of a baby. In a letter dated July 10th, 1927, he writes to his sister Mabel describing the account, noting he:
“stayed until four o’clock in the morning watching a baby get born. The doctors dressed me up in a long surgeon’s dress (they laughed like hell!) and took me in to the operating room. I saw everything; they explained everything. It was one of the most terrible and beautiful things I have ever seen. I shall never forget it. The result of everything was a fine eight pound boy with a very healthy set of lungs.”
Wolfe noted the mother’s difficulty and the doctors’ use of ether and forceps to help nature along, while coaxing and encouraging the young women with shouts of “Come on, momma! Do your stuff now! Give us some help, momma!” Wolfe noted:
“ . . . when I saw the little skull begin to come, and then the little body, and the doctor held him up by the heels and spanked him, and he screwed his face up and let out his first yell (a good loud one), I could restrain myself no longer: I gave a yell of my own and said, ‘Come on, baby, come on!’”
The entire experience deeply impacted Wolfe, and is evident in his final thoughts to Mabel on birth and life’s path. He lamented:
“The ugliness, the horror, the pain is gone now: all that remains is that little perfect child, and all the mystery and tragic beauty of life, which now seems greater to me than ever. I’ve been so excited and stirred all day that I cannot eat for thinking of it — I could hardly get to sleep when I got home this morning. You will understand me when I tell you that this thing has made a great music in me: something gathers in my throat and my eyes are wet when I think of all the pain and wonder that little life must come to know; and I hope to God those feet will never walk as lonely a road as mine have walked, and I hope its heart will never beat as mine has at times under a smothering weight of weariness, grief, and horror; nor its brain be damned and haunted by the thousand furies and nightmare shapes that walk through mine. This is no sentiment — but the stark truth, from a very deep place in me”
The Manhattan Maternity and Dispensary opened at 327 East 60th Street in 1905. As the New York Hospital and Cornell University became affiliated in 1913, many other smaller, local hospitals became a part of that system. In 1928, just a year after Wolfe’s visit there, the Manhattan Maternity and Dispensary became a part of the OB/GYN and pediatrics department of the New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center.
Wolfe’s P.S. to Mabel:
“I think Donald is going to be a good doctor. He has much kindliness and gentleness. When it was over last night I went downstairs with the doctors and nurses. We sat down and told one another dirty stories. It sounds bad — but it is their escape, healthy and harmless: I was more convinced than ever that they are fine people. If I get sick let me have such people around me — expert and calm tempered roughnecks. No weeping bunglers. This is a bad letter: too tired to write well.”
Source: The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, ed. by Elizabeth Nowell, letter dated July 10, 1927.
