Not-God (56 page)

The consistent Wilson-Thomsen version is that Mrs. Seiberling’s was the tenth name on the list. I choose to follow the HS version, especially because she herself — a Presbyterian — barely knew Dr. Tunks: “Origins,” [p. 3].

The final quotation is from
ibid.
, the “from New York” added later orally by HS and inscribed in the A.A. archive copy by Nell Wing; also added orally to this writer, interview of 6 April 1976.

64
    Mrs. Seiberling’s background from interview cited; her efforts with Dr. Smith,
ibid.
, and HS, “Origins,” [pp. 1-2]. Mrs. Seiberling’s
“memory
of Bill’s physical appearance at their first meeting may aid in understanding some of the tensions which over the years marked the relationship between the Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous as it came into being: “Bill stood hunched over, and was dressed in ill-fitting and unmatched clothes. He laughed too loudly and showed too many teeth even when talking. He had this mannerism of rubbing his hands together and a simpering smile — a regular Uriah Heep.” It is Mrs. S’s conviction that she “polished” Bill, and clearly her belief that only through her efforts did Wilson — and A.A. — achieve “class.” (Interview of 6 April 1976).

65
    According to Dr. Bob’s telling of his story,
AA
, p. 179: “The day before Mothers Day … I came home plastered, carrying a big potted plant which I set down on the table and forthwith went upstairs and passed out.” Admittedly, I here prefer the more colorful detail as related by Mrs. Seiberling on the basis of later conversation with Anne Smith as precisely “more colorful.” (Interview cited;
cf
. also Sue G., tr.).

66
    The direct quotations are from Wilson’s recounting of Dr. Bob Smith’s story on the occasion of the latter’s death: “Dr. Bob,”
AAGV
7:7 (January 1951), 22. According to Mrs. Seiberling, the Smiths had been invited to dinner and the four did dine first; this is reflected by Wilson in
AACA
, p. 67, although “[Bob] did not eat.” Bob’s description of the meeting in his own story,
AA
, p. 179, seems to belie this — as does his emphasis in “Last Major Talk” that he had extracted from his wife a promise that they would stay only “fifteen minutes,” and Wilson’s stress in the earlier sources on “immediately on seeing.” This writer’s guess is that Mrs. Seiberling would not have invited Sunday afternoon guests to arrive at five o’clock unless they were to dine. Perhaps, then, Wilson’s in
AACA
is the most accurate memory; I have not reflected this in the narrative here because of the emphasis in A.A.’s self-consciousness of its own history on the
immediacy
of identification between Bill and Bob. I suspect that at the beginning of the dinner, perhaps even before they sat, Bill noted Bob’s discomfort at facing in his condition a fully laden table and suggested that they adjourn privately — an hypothesis which also fits well with Mrs. Seiberling’s opinion of Wilson’s deficiencies in “class.”

67
    There are but two printed sources for Dr. Bob’s story: his own telling of it in
AA
, pp. 171-192; and the
AAGV
detailed obituary cited in the previous note, 10-44. Beyond what is available by inference from “Last Major Talk,” these sources have been supplemented by (1) the taped memories of Dr. Bob’s son, Robert R. Smith, as reported to me by Nell Wing and Niles P.; (2) interviews with Dr. Russell Smith, a cousin of Dr. Bob, 12 and 13 June 1977; (3) conversations with Niles P., who at the time was working on a biography of Dr. Bob, 5 April, 27 August, and 14 November 1977; (4) interview with Anne C., who knew Dr. Bob before 1935 and after her own entrance into A.A. in 1948 was cherished among Akron-area A.A.s as “Dr. Bob’s girl,” 7 September 1977; (5) Sue G. tr.: Sue G. was the adopted daughter of Dr. Bob and Anne Smith.

68
    Bill’s stress on his felt-need of Dr. Bob at this moment is clear less from Dr. Bob’s story than from Wilson’s many retellings of the tale:
cf
. especially “Fellowship,” p. 465:
LM
, [p. 8]; “Society,” p. 8 tr.; also
AACA
, p. 70. The quotation of Dr. Bob is from
AACA
, p. 68; the exact quotation of Wilson is my construction from the sources just listed —
cf
. also Thomsen, pp. 237-238.

69
    “Dr. Bob,” 13; the details narrated in the paragraphs to follow derive from the printed sources cited above, notes #66 and 67. As these are brief and easily followed, I shall offer specific citation only when some other source is also used or I have employed direct quotation.

One correction: “Dr. Bob,” 17, gives as Smith’s final medical school “Brush University;” according to Niles P. and Dr. Russell Smith, and confirmed by Dr. Bob’s
Akron Beacon-Journal
obituary (17 November 1950), it was Rush Medical College in Chicago.

70
    The mildly scatological memory is indirectly from Dr. Russell Smith, from family lore. I, of course, have no way of knowing for certain that Dr. Bob recounted this incident to Bill on this occasion; however, such an attempt at humor would well fit what I know of his personality and the “reaching to be understood” amply verified in the other sources and to which this narrative turns again in the second paragraph hence. For Dr. Bob’s sense of humor,
cf
. Ruth H., tr., and especially Virginia M., tr.

According to Henrietta Seiberling, interview of 6 April 1977, Dr. Bob had been dismissed from the staff of Akron City Hospital in 1934. According to Dr. Russell Smith and Niles P. (June and August 1977 interviews cited), this was not so, although his privileges may have been in jeopardy. I incline to accept this latter opinion and research rather than Mrs. Seiberling’s strongly held memory: neither Wilson nor Smith recount or allude to such an occurrence, for all their eagerness to portray the depths of “alcoholic bottom.” Further, the 1938 examination of Akron A.A. by Frank Amos, intended to be carefully critical and based on interviews with many prominent Akronites including the chairman of the board of ACH, makes no mention of either such disgrace or subsequent reinstatement — a point which it seems would surely have been used by Amos in his ultimate enthusiastic effort to portray A.A.’s many “salvagings.” — Attachment, dated 23 February 1938, to Frank Amos (New York) to J. D. Rockefeller, Jr. of the same date: “Notes on Akron, Ohio Survey.”

71
    The information in this paragraph is basically from Henrietta Seiberling, “Origins” and interview cited. It seems fairly certain that Dr. Bob in 1932 had in no way realized that others were concerned about his drinking, nor that even in 1935 he was aware that such concern had led to his invitation to join the OG. This interpretation, and the reference to Bob’s guilt that begins the next paragraph, are supported by Sue G., tr.

72
    "Dr. Bob,” 22; this point is especially clear in “Last Major Talk,”
cf
. especially p. 5: “I had done all these things that these good people told me to do. Everyone of them. And I thought very faithfully and sincerely but I still continued to overindulge. But the one thing that they hadn’t told me was the one thing that Bill had, the instructions to attempt to be helpful to somebody else.”

Yet: those who remember the OG more favorably than most A.A. members, and my own study of the OG (
cf
. note #33 to
Chapter Two
, p. 323, below), indicate that, unless the Akron OG was a glaring exception (which is a real possibility, given its origin and composition), Smith’s final point here was due less to the Groupers not saying this than to Bob’s not hearing it. This last, indeed, seems very likely, and the hypothesis is strengthened by two observations. First, Smith’s subsequent four years within the OG, and the esteem in which he was held by OG adherents even after he left the Group in 1939, indicate that after this first meeting with Wilson, Bob moved closer to rather than away from the OG. Second, that this insight was available within the OG but was heard by Smith only when it was presented by Wilson (who, be it noted, was here consciously working from OG principles), points up and makes understandable Wilson’s and Smith’s early emphasis upon the special
identification
possible between alcoholics. On this latter,
cf
. pp. 60-61, below.

73
    Wilson did not return home with the Smiths that evening. Mrs. Seiberling had arranged for him to stay at the Portage Country Club, and Bill did so for several more days. The exact chronology remains obscured by conflicting memories rooted in the continuing disagreement between the OG-inclined and most other A.A.s about the role of the OG in the genesis of A.A. and so over the relative importance of the roles of Wilson, Smith, and Seiberling at this moment. It is certain that Bill stayed at the Country Club for a time; it seems as certain from all the sources considered and evaluated together, that Bob and Anne Smith were anxious to welcome Bill into their home as soon as possible.

74
    
AACA
, p. 70: I have slightly varied Bill’s exact words there in order to highlight his characteristic question-answering style — a style abundantly witnessed to in all his correspondence. This style is treated more directly in
Chapter Four
, below, pp. 103-104. In “Last Major Talk,” p. 4, Smith wryly stressed his “terrific thirst for knowledge” in telling of this incident.

75
    
AACA
, p. 71. Sue G., tr., again adds colorful details — for example, the plying of Dr. Bob with tomatoes, sauerkraut, and Karo syrup.

76
    
Ibid.; cf
. also, beyond Wilson, tr., Smith, “Last Major Talk,” p. 4.

77
    
AACA
, p. 71.

78
    
AACA
, p. vii.

79
    The point concerning A.A.’s self-conscious sources should be clear from the text by this time; yet, should further explicit citation be desired,
cf.:

Wilson, “Fellowship,” where he expands at length on the sentence in his outline in his letter to Paul D., 4 August 1943: “An attempt will then be made to show some of these common denominators of psychiatry and religion …";

Wilson, “Basic Concepts”: “A.A. is a synthetic concept — a synthetic gadget, as it were, drawing upon the resources of medicine, psychiatry, religion, and our own experience of drinking and recovery.”

Wilson, “Co-founder”: “Therefore it is now clear that Alcoholics Anonymous is a synthetic construct which draws upon three sources, namely: medical science, religion and its own peculiar experience.”

Wilson, “Beginnings”: “Certainly nobody invented Alcoholics Anonymous. A.A. is a synthesis of principles and attitudes which came to us from medicine and religion.”

That others outside of A.A. share this understanding is also clear;
cf.
, e.g.,

R. Bircher (note #54, above): “The founders of A.A. learned through experience that psychiatry and religion meet in their field.” (Translation from CAAAL #4791);

C. N. Davis, “Alcoholics Anonymous,”
Archives of Neurological Psychiatry
, Chicago 57: 516-518 (1947): “A.A. employs a composite of many fundamental principles of medicine, psychiatry, religion";

cf.
, also note #4 to
Chapter Eight
;

The earliest name referring to “the program of Alcoholics Anonymous” before either of these terms was in use was “moral psychology”:
cf
. Silkworth,
AA
, p. xxv; Bob E., tr., p. 4; Warren C, interview of 8 September 1977;

Finally, the only definition of alcoholism in the book
AA:
“an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.” — p. 44.

80
    On “deflation at depth” as from Dr. Jung, my reading of the sources was confirmed by Fred W., interview of 20 November 1976. Mr. W., a prominent Philadelphian, was a correspondent of Wilson’s and had spent a considerable time in treatment under Jung.

81
    On Dr. Silkworth as the source here,
cf
. notes #46-48 above; on the history of the understanding of alcoholism as “disease,”
cf
. note #49 above.

82
    The Tenth Tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous reads: “Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinions on outside issues, hence the A.A. name ought never to be drawn into public controversy.” The “Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous” are treated in
Chapter Four
, below, pp. 113-114. For a discussion of the Tenth Tradition,
cf. AACA
. pp. 123-128;
12&12
, pp. 180-183. For the early stress on the essential centrality of hopelessness and “incurability,”
cf
. Wilson to Smith, 15 July 1938.

83
    The “misspelling” occurred in the multilith draft distributed for comment before publication, a copy of which is in the A.A. archives. The whole approach of
AA
, most clear in
Chapter 2
, “There Is A Solution” and
Chapter 3
, “More About Alcoholism,” is the description of “the real alcoholic” (p. 21) so that the reader may decide whether or not “I am one of them too” (p. 29).

84
    
AA
, p. 62. (Citations for the larger thoughts in this paragraph will appear in Chapters Eight and Nine.)

85
    That Wilson at the time focused on this aspect of Ebby’s visit is clear not only from his stress on
“one alcoholic talking to another”
in
AACA
, p. 59 (italics Wilson’s); but also and even more clearly from Wilson, “Society,” pp. 2-3 of the draft. For the evolving centrality of this idea between Ebby’s visit to Bill and Bill’s meeting with Dr. Bob,
cf
. also “After Twenty-Five Years — by Bill,”
AAGV
16:10 (March 1960), 27; Wilson’s remarks in the news story, “Epic Gathering Marks Tenth Anniversary,”
AAGV
2:2 (July 1945), 6; Wilson in his 1943 Yale talk outlined in the letter to Paul D. of 4 August 1943. Dr. Smith’s perception of this infuses “Last Major Talk.” The striking nature of this emphasis to those in early contact with A.A. is attested to by Ruth H., tr., and Marty Mann, tr. and interview of 15 November 1977.