The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Powder of Sympathy, by Christopher
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Title: The Powder of Sympathy
Author: Christopher Morley
Illustrator: Walter Jack Duncan
Release Date: January 17, 2022 [eBook #67188]
Language: English
Produced by: Emmanuel Ackerman, Charlie Howard, and the Online
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY ***
Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is indicated by _underscores_;
boldface is indicated by =equals signs=.
THE POWDER OF
SYMPATHY
OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
_Fiction_
PARNASSUS ON WHEELS
THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP
KATHLEEN
TALES FROM A ROLLTOP DESK
WHERE THE BLUE BEGINS
_Essays_
SHANDYGAFF
MINCE PIE
PIPEFULS
PLUM PUDDING
TRAVELS IN PHILADELPHIA
_Poetry_
SONGS FOR A LITTLE HOUSE
THE ROCKING HORSE
HIDE AND SEEK
CHIMNEYSMOKE
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CHINESE
THE POWDER OF
SYMPATHY
BY
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
[Illustration]
Strange, when you come to think of
it, that of all the countless folk who
have lived before our time on this planet
not one is known in history or in
legend as having died of laughter.
--MAX BEERBOHM
ILLUSTRATED
BY
WALTER JACK DUNCAN
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1923
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1921, 1922, BY THE NEW YORK EVENING POST, INC.
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
_First Edition_
[Illustration]
DEDICATION
TO FELIX RIESENBERG and FRANKLIN ABBOTT
DEAR FELIX, DEAR FRANK:--It is a pleasant circumstance that as one sets
about collecting material for a book, scissoring night after night
among scrapbooks to determine what may or may not be worth revisiting
the glimpses of the press, there comes to mind with perfect naturalness
who should carry the onus of the dedication. For a book is a frail
and human emanation, and has its own instinctive disposition toward a
certain kind of people. These Powders of Sympathy I hopefully sprinkle
in your direction.
Another good friend warned me seriously, some time ago, against the
danger of being too apologetic in a preface. For, said he, people
always read prefaces and dedications, even if nought else; if you
deprecate, you at once persuade them to the same attitude. And to you
two, of all readers, I need not explain just how these pieces were
written, day by day, out of the pressure and hilarity and contention
of the mind. I have made no attempt to conceal their ephemeral
origin. They were almost all written for a newspaper, and contain
many references to journalism. And, if I may speak my inmost heart, I
have had a sincere hope that they might, in collected form, play some
small part in encouraging the youngest generation of journalists to be
themselves and set things down as they see them. If these powders have
any pharmacal virtue--other than that of Seidlitz--it is likely to be
relative, not absolute. I mean, it is remarkable that they should have
been written at all: remarkable that any newspaper should take the
pains to offer space to speculations of this sort. I have not scrupled,
on occasion, to chaff some of the matters newspapers are supposed to
hold sacred. And it is my privilege, by the way, to say my gratitude
and affection to Mr. Edwin F. Gay, editor of the New York _Evening
Post_, under whose jurisdiction these were written. With the generosity
of the ideal employer he has encouraged my ejaculations even when he
did not agree with them.
But a columnist (it is frequently said) is not a real Newspaper Man:
he is only a deboshed Editorial Writer, a fallen angel abjected from
the secure heaven of anonymity. That is true. The notable increase, in
recent years, of these creatures, has been held to be a sign that the
papers required more scapegoats, or safety valves through whom readers
might blow off their disrespect. And that by posting these innocent
effigies as decoys, the wicked press might go about its privy misdeeds
with more security, and conspire unobserved with the dangerous minions
of Capital (or Labour, or the Agrarian Bloc).
However that may be, and unsuspecting whether intended by his scheming
employer as a decoy, or a doormat, or a gargoyle, or a lightning rod
(how is he to know, never having been given instruction of any sort
except to go ahead and write as he pleases?) the columnist pursues
his task and gradually distils a philosophy of his own out of his
duties. Oddly enough, instead of growing more cautious by reason of his
exposure, he becomes almost dangerously candid. He knows that if he
is wrong he will be set right the next morning by a stack of letters
varying in number according to the nature of his indiscretion. If he is
wrong about _shall_ and _will_, he will get five letters of reproof.
If about some nautical nicety, ten letters. If about the Republican
Party, twenty letters. If about food, thirty-two. If about theology
or Ireland, sixty to seventy. In all cases most of these letters will
be wittier and wiser than anything he could have composed himself.
Surely there is no other walk of life in which mistakes are so promptly
retrovolant.
I have christened these soliloquies after dear old Sir Kenelm Digby’s
famous nostrum, the Powder of Sympathy. But in spite of its amiable
name and properties that powder was not a talcum. Its basis was
vitriol; and I fear that in some of these prescriptions I have mixed
a few acid crystals. It was either Lord Bacon or Don Marquis (two deep
thinkers whose maxims are occasionally confounded in my mind) who told
a story about a dog of low degree who made his reputation by biting a
circus lion--thinking him only another dog, though a large one. Two or
three times herein I have snapped at circus lions; and probably escaped
only because the lion was too proud to return the indenture. Let it
be remembered, though, that often you may love a man even while you
dispute with him.
But the chief consideration (Frank and Felix) that seems to emerge from
our friendship is that the eager squabbles of critics and littérateurs
are of minor account; that the great thing is to circulate freely in
the surrounding ocean of inexhaustible humanity, enjoying with our
own eyes and ears the gay and tragic richness of life. We have had
expeditions together, not commemorated in print, that have been both
doctrine and delight. The incident of the Five-Dollar Bill we hid in a
certain bookshop will recur to your minds; the day spent in New York
Harbour aboard Tug Number 18, and her skipper’s shrewd, endearing
sagacity. Then consider the Mystery of the House on 71st Street; the
smell of Gorgonzola cheese on a North River pier; the taste of _asti
spumante_; the arguments on the Test of Courage! These are matters it
pleases me to set down, just as a secret among us. And though I am
(you are aware) no partisan of the telephone, there are especially
two voices I have learned to hear with a thrill. They say: “_Hello!
This is Frank_;” or “_Hello! This is Felix!_” And I reply with honest
excitement, for so often those voices are an announcement of Adventure.
Give me a ring soon.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY.
_New York City,
November 24, 1922._
CONTENTS
PAGE
An Oxford Symbol 1
Scapegoats 7
To a New Yorker a Hundred Years Hence 12
A Call for the Author 16
Mr. Pepys’s Christmases 19
Children as Copy 25
Hail, Kinsprit! 30
Round Manhattan Island 33
The Unknown Citizen 37
Sir Kenelm Digby 42
First Impressions of an Amiable Visitor 58
In Honorem: Martha Washington 63
According to Hoyle 67
L. E. W. 71
Our Extension Course 75
Some Recipes 78
Adventures of a Curricular Engineer 82
Santayana in the Subway 87
Madonna of the Taxis 95
Matthew Arnold and Exodontia 99
Dame Quickly and the Boilroaster 109
Vacationing with De Quincey 114
The Spanish Sultry 132
What Kind of a Dog? 137
A Letter from Gissing 140
July 8, 1822 143
Midsummer in Salamis 148
The Story of Ginger Cubes 153
The Editor at the Ball Game 183
The Dame Explores Westchester 191
The Power and the Glory 197
Gissing Joins a Country Club 202
Three Stars on the Back Stoop 208
A Christmas Card 213
Symbols and Paradoxes 218
The Return to Town 223
Maxims and Minims 228
Two Reviews 262
Buddha on the L 271
Intellectuals and Roughnecks 279
The Fun of Writing 288
A Christmas Soliloquy 291
THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY
[Illustration]
AN OXFORD SYMBOL
When in October, 1910, we arrived, in a hansom, at the sombre gate
of New College, Oxford; trod for the first time through that most
impressive of all college doorways, hidden in its walled and winding
lane; timidly accosted Old Churchill, the whiskered porter, most
dignitarian and genteel of England’s Perfect Servants; and had our
novice glimpse of that noble Front Quad where the shadow of the
battlemented roof lies patterned across the turf--we were as innocently
hopeful, modestly anxious for learning and eager to do the right thing
in this strange, thrilling environment as ever any young American
who went looking for windmills. No human being (shrewd observers
have remarked) is more beautifully solemn than the ambitious Young
American. And, indeed, no writer has ever attempted to analyze the
shimmering tissue of inchoate excitement and foreboding that fills the
spirit of the juvenile Rhodes Scholar as he first enters his Oxford
college. He arrives with his mind a gentle confusion of hearsay about
Walter Pater, Shelley, boat races, Mr. Gladstone, Tom Brown, the
Scholar Gypsy, and Little Mr. Bouncer. Kansas City or Sheboygan indeed
seem far away as he crosses those quadrangles looking for his rooms.
But even Oxford, one was perhaps relieved to find, is not all
silver-gray mediæval loveliness. The New Buildings, to which Churchill
directed us, reached through a tunnel and a bastion in a rampart not
much less than a thousand years elderly, were recognizably of the
Rutherford B. Hayes type of edification. Except for the look-off
upon gray walls, pinnacles, and a green tracery of gardens, and the
calculated absence of plumbing (a planned method of preserving monastic
hardiness among light-minded youth), the immense cliff of New Buildings
might well have been a lobe of the old Johns Hopkins or a New York
theological seminary. At the top of four flights we found our pensive
citadel. Papered in blue, upholstered in a gruesome red, with yellow
woodwork, and a fireplace which (we soon learned) was a potent reeker.
It would be cheerful to describe those two rooms in detail, for we
lived in them two years. But what first caught our eye was a little
green pamphlet lying on the red baize tablecloth. It was lettered
NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD
Information and Regulations
_Revised October, 1910_
Our name was written upon it in ink, and we immediately sat down
to study it. Here, we thought, is our passkey to this new world of
loveliness.
First we found the hours of college chapel. Then, “All Undergraduates
are required to perform Exercises.” In our simplicity we at first
supposed this to be something in the way of compulsory athletics, but
then discovered it to mean intellectual exercises. Fair enough, we
thought. That is what we came for.
“Undergraduates are required, as a general rule, to be in College or
their Lodgings by 11 p. m., and to send their Strangers out before that
time.... No Undergraduate is allowed to play on any musical instrument
in College rooms except between the hours of 1 and 9 p. m., unless
special leave has been obtained beforehand from the Dean.... No games
are allowed in the College Quadrangles, and no games except bowls in
the Garden.” Excellent, we meditated; this is going to be a serious
career, full attention to the delights of the mind and no interruption
by corybantic triflers.
“A Term by residence means pernoctation within the University for
six weeks in Michaelmas or in Hilary Term, and for three weeks in
Easter or in Trinity (or Act) Term.”... We felt a little uncertain as
to just what time of year Hilary and Act happened. But we were not
halting, just now, over technicalities. We wanted to imbibe, hastily,
the general spirit and flavour of our new home.... “Every member of
the College is required to deposit Caution-money. Commoners deposit
£30, unless they signify in writing their intention to pay their
current Battels weekly; in this case they deposit £10. An undergraduate
battling terminally cannot withdraw part of his Caution-money and
become a weekly battler without the authority of his parent or
guardian.” We at once decided that it was best to be a weekly battler.
Battling, incidentally, is a word that we believe exists only at Eton
and Oxford; dictionaries tell us that it comes from “an obsolete verb
meaning to fatten.” Sometimes, however, in dispute with the Junior
Bursar, it comes near its more usual sense. We wondered, in our young
American pride, whether we were a Commoner? We were pleased to note,
however, that the alternative classification was not a Lord but a
Scholar.
We skimmed along through various other instructions. “A fine of 1s. is
charged to the owner of any bicycle not put away before midnight.” The
owner, or the bicycle, we mused? Never mind--we would soon learn. Coals
and faggots, we noted, were variable in price. “The charge for a cold
bath is 2d., for a hot 4d., inclusive of bath-towel.” The duties of a
mysterious person named as the Bedmaker (but always, in actual speech,
the Scout) were punctually outlined. But now we found ourself coming
to Kitchen, Buttery, and Store-Room Tariffs. This, evidently, was the
pulse of the machine. With beating heart we read on, entranced:
Beer, Mild half-pint 1½
Beer, Mixed “ 2
Beer, Strong “ 2½
Beer, Treble X glass 3
Beer, Lager pint 6
Stout half-pint 2
Cider “ 1½
There was something significant, we felt by instinct, in the fact that
Treble X was obtainable only by the glass. Vital stuff, evidently.
Our education was going to come partly in casks, perhaps? In the
Kitchen Tariff we read, gloatingly, magnificent syllables. _Grilled
Sausages and Bacon_, commons, 1/2. _Devilled Kidneys_, commons, 1/.
(A “commons,” we judged, was a large portion; if you wanted a lesser
serving, you ordered a “small commons.”) _Chop with Chips_, 11d.
_Grilled Bones_, 10d. _Kedgeree_, plain or curried, commons, 9d. (Oh
noble kedgeree, so nourishing and inexpensive, when shall we taste your
like again?) Herrings, Bloaters, Kippers, each 3d. (To think that,
then, we thought the Junior Bursar’s tariff was a bit steep.) Jelly,
Compôte of Fruit, Trifle, Pears and Cream. Creams ... commons, 6d.
“Gentlemen’s own birds cooked and served ... one bird, 1/. Two birds,
1/6.”
We went on, with enlarging appreciation, to the Store Room and Cellar
Tariffs: Syphons, Seltzer or Soda-water, 4½d. Ginger-beer, per bottle,
2d. Cakes: Genoa, Cambridge, Madeira, Milan, Sandringham, School, each
1/. Foolscap, per quire, 10d. Quill Pens, per bundle, 1/6. Cheroots,
Cigars, Tobacco, Cigarettes--and then we found what seemed to be the
crown and cream of our education, LIST OF WINES.
Port, 4/ per bottle. Pale Sherry, 3/. Marsala, 2/. Madeira, 4/.
Clarets: Bordeaux, 1/6. St. Julien, 2/. Dessert, 4/. Hock or Rhenish
Wine: Marcobrunner, 4/. Niersteiner, 3/. Moselle, 2/6. Burgundy, 2/ and
4/. Pale Brandy, 5/. Scotch Whisky, 4/. Irish Whisky, 4/. Gin, 3/. Rum,
4/.
It is really too bad to have to compress into a few paragraphs such a
wealth of dreams and memories. We sat there, with our little pamphlet
before us, and looked out at that great panorama of spires and towers.
We have always believed in falling in with our environment. The first
thing we did that afternoon was to go out and buy a corkscrew. We have
it still--our symbol of an Oxford education.
[Illustration]
SCAPEGOATS
The man who did most (I am secretly convinced) to deprive American
literature of some really fine stuff was Mr. John Wanamaker. It
was in his store, some years ago, that I bought a kind of cot-bed
or couch, which I put in one corner of my workroom and on which it
is my miserable habit to recline when I might be getting at those
magnificent writings I have planned. Every evening I pile up the
cushions and nestle there with _The Gentle Grafter_ or some detective
story (my favourite relaxation), saying to myself: “Just ten minutes of
loafing”....
But perhaps Messrs. Strawbridge and Clothier (also of Philadelphia) are
equally at fault. When I wake up, on my Wanamaker divan, it is usually
about 2 A. M. Not too late, even then, for a determined spirit to make
incision on its tasks. But I find myself moving towards a very fine
white-enamelled icebox which I bought from Strawbridge and Clothier in
1918. With that happy faculty of self-persuasion I convince myself it
is only to see whether the pan needs emptying or the doors latching.
But by the time I have scalped a blackberry pie and eroded a platter
of cold macaroni au gratin, of course work of any sort is out of the
question.
So do the Philistines of this world league themselves cruelly against
the artist, plotting temptation for his carnal deboshed instincts,
joying to see him succumb. Once the habit of yielding is established,
Wanamaker, Strawbridge and Clothier (dark trio of Norns) have it their
own way. Just as surely as robins will be found on a new-mown lawn,
as certainly as bonfire smoke veers all round the brush pile to find
out the eyes of the suburban leaf burner, so inevitably do the Divan
and the Icebox exert their cruel dominion over us when we ought to be
pursuing our lovely and impossible dreams. Wanamaker and Strawbridge
and Clothier have blueprints of the lines of fissure in our frail
velleity. As William Blake might have said:
Let Flesh once get a lead on Spirit,
It’s hard for Soul to reinherit:
When supper’s laid upon a plate
Mind might as well abdicate.
But one of the things I think about, just before I drop off to sleep
on that couch, is My Anthology. Like every one else, I have always
had an ambition to compile an anthology of my own; several, in fact.
One of them I call in my own mind _The Book of Uncommon Prayer_, and
imagine it as a kind of secular breviary, including many of those
beautiful passages in literature expressing the spirit of supplication.
This book, however, it will take years to collect; it will be entirely
non-sectarian and so truly religious that many people will be annoyed.
People do not care much for books of real beauty. That anthology edited
by Robert Bridges, for instance--_The Spirit of Man_--how many readers
have taken the trouble to hunt it out?
But the _Uncommon Prayer Book_ is not the kind of anthology I have in
mind at the moment. What I need is a book that would boil down the best
of all the books I am fond of and condense it into a little bouillon
cube of wisdom. I have always had in mind the possibility that I might
go travelling, or the house might burn down, or I might have to sell my
library, or something of that sort. I should like to have the meat and
essence of my favourites in permanent form, so that wherever I were I
could write to the publisher and get a fresh copy.
This thought came with renewed emphasis the other day when I was
talking to Vachel Lindsay. He was saying that he had lately been
rereading Swinburne, for the first time in nearly twenty years, and was
grieved to see how the text of the poet had become corrupted in his
memory. He had been misquoting Swinburne for years and years, he said,
and the errors had been growing more and more firmly into his mind.
That led me to think, suppose we had only memory to rely on, how long
would the text of anything we loved remain unblurred? Suppose I were on
a desert island and yearned to solace myself by spouting some of the
sonnets of Shakespeare? How much could I recapture? Honestly, now, and
with no resort to the book on the shelf at my elbow, let me try an old
friend:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
That alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken--
Love is the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Then there’s something about a sickle, but I can’t for the life of me
quite get it. Presently I’ll look it up in the book and see how near I
came.
Before opening the Shakespeare, however, let’s have one more try:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I wail the lack of many a thing I sought
... my dear time’s waste----
And all the rest of that sonnet that I can think of is something about
“death’s dateless night.” A pretty poor showing. Of course, I should do
better on a desert island: there would be the wide expanse of shining
sand to walk upon, and I could throw myself into it with more passion
and fury. The secret of remembering poetry is to get a good barytone
start and obliterate the mind of its current freight of trifles.
The metronomic prosody of the surf would help me, no doubt, and the
placid frondage of the breadfruit trees. But even so, the recension
of Shakespeare’s sonnets that I would write down upon slips of bark
would be a very corrupt and stumbling text. Favourite lines would
be scrambled into the wrong sonnets, and the whole thing would be a
pitiful miscarriage of memory.
The only sagacious conduct of life is to prepare for every possible
emergency. I have taken out life insurance, and fire insurance, and
burglary insurance, and automobile insurance. I have always insured
myself against losing my job by taking care not to work too hard at
it, so I wouldn’t miss it too bitterly if it were suddenly jerked
from under me. But what have I done in the way of Literary Insurance?
Suppose, to-morrow, Adventure should carry me away from these
bookshelves? How pleasant to have a little microcosm of them that I
could take with me! And yet, unless I can shake off the servitude of
those three Philadelphia mandarins, Wanamaker and Strawbridge and
Clothier, I shall never have it.
When I think of the plays that I would have written if it weren’t for
those three rascals.
[Illustration]
TO A NEW YORKER A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE
I wonder, old dear, why my mind has lately been going out towards you?
I wonder if you will ever read this? They say that wood-pulp paper
doesn’t last long nowadays. But perhaps some of my grandchildren (with
any luck, there should be some born, say twenty-five years hence)
may, in their years of tottering caducity, come across this scrap of
greeting, yellowed with age. With tenderly cynical waggings of their
faded polls, perhaps they will think back to the tradition of the
quaint vanished creatures who lived and strove in this city in the year
of disgrace, 1921. Poor old granfer (I can hear them say it, with that
pleasing note of pity), I can just remember how he used to prate about
the heyday of his youth. He wrote pieces for some paper, didn’t he?
Comically old-fashioned stuff my governor said; some day I must go to
the library and see if they have any record of it.
You seem a long way off, this soft September morning, as I sit here
and sneeze (will hay fever still exist in 2021, I wonder?) and listen
to the chime of St. Paul’s ring eleven. Just south of St. Paul’s brown
spire the girders of a great building are going up. Will that building
be there when you read this? What will be the Olympian skyline of
your city? Will poor old Columbia University be so far downtown that
you will be raising money to move it out of the congested slums of
Morningside? Will you look up, as I do now, to the great pale shaft
of Woolworth; to the golden boy with wings above Fulton Street? What
ships with new names will come slowly and grandly up your harbour? What
new green spaces will your street children enjoy? But something of
the city we now love will still abide, I hope, to link our days with
yours. There is little true glory in a city that is always changing.
New stones, new steeples are comely things; but the human heart clings
to places that hold association and reminiscence. That, I suppose, is
the obscure cause of this queer feeling that impels me to send you so
perishable a message. It is the precious unity of mankind in all ages,
the compassion and love felt by the understanding spirit for those, its
resting kinsmen, who once were glad and miserable in these same scenes.
It keeps one aware of that marvellous dark river of human life that
runs, down and down uncountably, to the unexplored seas of Time.
You seem a long way off, I say--and yet it is but an instant, and you
will be here. Do you know that feeling, I wonder (so characteristic
of our city) that a man has in an elevator bound (let us say) for the
eighteenth floor? He sees 5 and 6 and 7 flit by, and he wonders how he
can ever live through the interminable time that must elapse before he
will get to his stopping place and be about the task of the moment. It
is only a few seconds, but his mind can evolve a whole honeycomb of
mysteries in that flash of dragging time. Then the door slides open
before him and that instantaneous eternity is gone; he is in a new
era. So it is with the race. Even while we try to analyze our present
curiosities, they whiff away and disperse. Before we have time to turn
three times in our chairs, we shall be the grandparents and you will be
smiling at our old-fashioned sentiments.
But we ask you to look kindly on this our city of wonder, the city of
amazing beauties which is also (to any man of quick imagination) an
actual hell of haste, din, and dishevelment. Perhaps you by this time
will have brought back something of that serenity, that reverence for
thoughtful things, which our generation lost--and hardly knew it had
lost. But even Hell, you must admit, has always had its patriots. There
is nothing that hasn’t--which is one of the most charming oddities of
the race.
And how we loved this strange, mad city of ours, which we knew in our
hearts was, to the clear eye of reason and the pure, sane vision of
poetry, a bedlam of magical impertinence, a blind byway of monstrous
wretchedness. And yet the blacker it seemed to the lamp of the spirit,
the more we loved it with the troubled eye of flesh. For humanity,
immortal only in misery and mockery, loves the very tangles in which it
has enmeshed itself: with good reason, for they are the mark and sign
of its being. So you will fail, as we have; and you will laugh, as we
have--but not so heartily, we insist; no one has ever laughed the way
your tremulous granfers did, old chap! And you will go on about your
business, as we did, and be just as certain that you and your concerns
are the very climax of human gravity and worth. And will it be any
pleasure to you to know that on a soft September morning a hundred
years ago your affectionate great-grandsire looked cheerfully out of
his lofty kennel window, blew a whiff of smoke, smiled a trifle gravely
upon the familiar panorama, knew (with that antique shrewdness of his)
a hawk from a handsaw, and then went out to lunch?
[Illustration]
A CALL FOR THE AUTHOR
But who will write me the book about New York that I desire? The more
I think about it, the more astonished I am that no one attempts it. I
don’t mean a novel. I would not admit any plot or woven tissue of story
to come between the reader and my royal heroine, the City herself. Not
to be a coward, should I try to write it myself? It is my secret dream;
but, better, it should be written by some sturdy rogue of a bachelor,
footfree, living in the very heart of the uproar. Some fellow with a
taste and nuance for the vulgar and vivid; a consort of both parsons
and bootleggers; a _Beggar’s Opera_ kind of rascal. I can think of
three men in this city who have magnificent powers for such a book; but
they are getting perhaps a little elderly--yes, they are over forty!
Ginger must be very hot in the mouth of my imagined author. He must be
young (dashed if I don’t think about 32 is the ideal age to write such
a book), but not one of the Extremely Brilliant Young Men. They are too
clever; and they are not lonely enough. For this is a lonely job. It’s
got to be done _solus_, slowly, with an eye only upon the subject. It
has got to show the very tremble and savour of life itself.
The man who will write this book will not necessarily enjoy it. To get
into the secret of Herself he has got to have a peculiar feeling about
her. For years he must have wrestled with her almost as a personal
antagonist. He must have vowed, since he first saw her imperial skyline
serrated on blue, to make her his own; a mistress worthy of him, and
yet he himself her master. But he must know, in his inward, that in the
end she triumphs, she tramples down mind and heart and nerve. Loveliest
enemy in the world, implacable victor over reason and peace and all the
quieter sanities of the spirit, her mad, intolerable beauty crazes or
silences the sensitive mind that woos her. If you think this is only
fine writing and romantic tall-talk, then you know her only with the
eye, not with the imagination. With good reason, perhaps, her poets
have, for the most part, kept mum. Enough for them to see and cherish
in imagination her little sudden glimpses. A girl, slender, gayly
unconscious of admiration, poises on one foot at the edge of the subway
platform, leaning over to see if the train is coming. That gallant
figure is perhaps something of a symbol of the city’s own soul.
There must be many who feel about Herself as I do--and, more wisely,
are tacit. There are many whose minds have trembled on the steep sills
of truth, have felt that golden tremble of reality almost within touch,
and rather than mar the half-apprehended fable, have turned troubled
away. But there is such poetry in her, and such fine, glorious animal
gusto--why is there not some determined attempt to set it down, not
with “rhetoricating floscules,” but as it is? Day after day one comes
to the attack; and returning, as the sloping sunlight and fresh country
air flood the dusty red plush of the homeward smoking-car, readmits the
expected defeat. Here is a target for you, O generation of snipers. Let
us have done with pribbles and prabbles. Who is the man who will write
me the book I crave--that vulgar, jocund, carnal, beautiful, rueful
book!
[Illustration: _Pepys’ House at Brampton_]
MR. PEPYS’S CHRISTMASES
Christmas being the topic, suppose we call upon Mr. Samuel Pepys for
testimony. The imperishable Diarist had as keen a faculty of enjoyment
as any man who ever lived. He wrote one of the world’s greatest love
stories--the story of his own zealous, inquisitive, jocund love of
life. Surely it is not amiss to inquire what record be left as to the
festival of cheer.
On seven of the nine Christmases in the Diary, Mr. Pepys went to
church--sometimes more than once, though when he went twice he admits
he fell asleep. The music and the ladies’ finery were undoubtedly
part of the attraction. “Very great store of fine women there is in
this church, more than I know anywhere else about us,” is his note for
Christmas, 1664. But in that generously mixed and volatile heart there
was a valve of honest aspiration and piety. One can imagine him sitting
in his pew (on Christmas, 1661, he nearly left the church in a huff
because the verger didn’t come forward to open the pew door for him),
his alert mind giving close attention to the sermon of his favourite
Mr. Mills, busy with sudden resolutions of virtue and industry, yet
happily conscious of any beauty within eyeshot.
The giving of presents was not a large part of Christmas in those
days. In 1662 Mr. Gauden gave Pepys “a great chine of beef and three
dozen of tongues,” but this had its drawbacks. Pepys had to give five
shillings to the man who brought it and also half a crown to the
porters. Drink and food were the important part of the festival. At
Christmas, 1660, Mr. and Mrs. Pepys, with Tom Pepys as guest, enjoyed
“a good shoulder of mutton and a chicken.” This was a brave Christmas
for Mrs. Pepys--she had “a new mantle.” We must remember that the fair
Elizabeth, though already married five years, was then only twenty
years old. Not all Mrs. Pepys’s Christmases were as merry as that, I
fear. On Christmas, 1663, she was troubled by anxious thoughts----
My wife began, I know not whether by design or chance, to
enquire what she should do, if I should by any accident die, to
which I did give her some slight answer, but shall make good
use of it to bring myself to some settlement for her sake.
Why haven’t the ingenious life insurance advertisers made use of this
telling bit of copy?
Christmas, 1668, seems to have been poor Mrs. Pepys’s worst Yule, but
perhaps it was only her natural feminine frivolity that caused the
sadness. Samuel says:
Dinner alone with my wife, who, poor wretch! sat undressed all
day, till 10 at night, altering and lacing of a noble petticoat.
This noble petticoat was perhaps to be worn at the play they attended
the next day, “Women Pleased.” What a pleasant Christmas card that
scene would make: Mrs. Pepys sitting, négligée, over the niceties of
her needlework, with Samuel beside her “making the boy read to me the
Life of Julius Cæsar.” But we do not “get” (as the current phrase is)
Mrs. Pepys at all if we think of her as merely the irresponsible girl.
For, at Christmas, ’66, we read:
Lay pretty long in bed, and then rose, leaving my wife desirous
to sleep, having sat up till 4 this morning seeing her maids
make mince-pies.
Ah, we have no such mince pies nowadays. Mrs. Pepys’s mince pies were
evidently worthy the tradition of that magnificent delicacy, for at
Christmas, 1662, when Elizabeth was ill abed, Samuel records--with an
evident touch of regret--that he had to “send abroad” for one.
* * * * *
Which brings us back to the Christmas viands. In 1662, besides the
mince pie from abroad, he “dined by my wife’s bedside with great
content, having a mess of brave plum-porridge and a roasted pullet.”
We are tempted to think 1666 was Samuel’s best Christmas. Parson Mills
made a good sermon. “Then home and dined well on some good ribs of beef
roasted and mince pies; only my wife, brother, and Barker, and plenty
of good wine of my own, and my heart full of true joy.” After dinner
they had a little music; and he spent the evening making a catalogue of
his books (“reducing the names of all my books to an alphabet”), which
is probably the happiest task a man of Pepys’s temperament could enjoy.
Christmas Eve, 1667, was evidently a cheerful evening. Mr. Pepys
stopped in at the Rose Tavern for some “burnt wine”; walked round
the city in the moonlight, and homeward early in the morning in such
content that “I dropped money in five or six places, which I was
the willinger to do, it being Christmas Day, and so home, and there
find my wife in bed, and Jane and the maid making pies.” The evening
of that Christmas Mrs. Pepys read aloud to him--_The History of the
Drummer of Mr. Mompesson_, apparently a kind of contemporary Phillips
Oppenheim--“a strange story of spies, and worth reading, indeed.” It
was only in 1660 that the Christmas cheer was a little too much for
our Diarist. December 27, 1660, “about the middle of the night I was
very ill--I think with eating and drinking too much--and so I was
forced to call the maid, who pleased my wife and I in her running up
and down so innocently in her smock.”
* * * * *
It is painful to this tracker of Mr. Pepys’s vestiges to note that on
Christmas Day, 1662, Bishop Morley at the Chapel Royal “made but a poor
sermon.” The Bishop apparently rebuked the levity of the Court. “It was
worth observing how far they are come from taking the reprehensions of
a Bishop seriously, that they all laugh in the chapel when he reflected
on their ill-actions and courses. He did much press us to joy in these
public days of joy, and to hospitality; but one that stood by whispered
in my ear that the Bishop do not spend one groat to the poor himself.”
In 1665 we fear that Samuel indulged himself in church with some rather
cynical thoughts:
Saw a wedding in the church, and the young people so merry one
with another; and strange to see what delight we married people
have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition, every
man and woman gazing and smiling at them.
One could continue for some space recounting the eupeptic Pepys in his
Christmas merriments--so large an edifice of pleasing conjecture can be
built upon even his slightest notes. One observes, for instance, that
on December 27, 1664, when “my wife and all her folks” came “to make
Christmas gambols,” Samuel left the party and went to bed. This was
very different from his usual habit when there was fun going. He was
annoyed also that on this occasion his wife revelled all night, not
coming to bed until 8 the next morning, “which vexed me a little, but I
believe there was no hurt in it at all, but only mirth.”
So we take leave of the Christmases of the Pepyses; 1668 is the last
one recorded--the time when Elizabeth stayed at home all day altering
her petticoat. After supper, the boy played some music on the lute, and
Samuel’s mind was “in mighty content.” Let us think kindly of the good
fellow; and not forget that he coined one of the enduring phrases of
English literature--a phrase that is no such ineffective summary of all
the lives of men--_And so to bed_.
[Illustration]
CHILDREN AS COPY
Titania said: “You haven’t written a poem about the baby yet.”
It is quite true. She is now thirteen months old, and has not yet
had a poem written about her. Titania considers this deplorable. The
first baby was hardly a week old before all sorts of literary studies
were packing the mails, speeding to such editors as were known to be
prompt pay. (I hope, indeed I hope, you never saw that astounding
essay--published anonymously in _Every Week_ which expired soon
after--called “The Expectant Father,” which was written when the poor
urchin was some twenty-four hours old. It was his first attempt to
earn money for his parent. If any child ever paid his own hospital
bills--C. O. D., as you might say--it was he. I believe in bringing up
my children to be self-supporting.)
And the second baby was only three weeks old when the first poem about
_her_ was written.
But here is this third morsel, thirteen months old and no poem yet.
Titania, I say, considers this a kind of insult to the innocent babe.
No, not at all, my dear. I admit that it would be very helpful if H.
(I will call her that, for _baby_ is a word that cannot be repeated in
print very often without all hands growing maudlin; and I don’t like to
use her own name, which seems too personal; just remember, then, that
H. stands for a small brown-eyed creature who is still listed in the
Bureau of Records of the Department of Health [certificate No. 43515,
_anno_ 1920] as _Female Morley_, because when the birth was registered
by the doctor her name had not been decided, and ever since then I
have been too busy to go round to call on Dr. Copeland, the Health
Commissioner, and ask him to have her more specifically enrolled)--I
admit it would be very helpful if she were to turn to and lend a hand
in paying the coal bill by having some verses written about herself. I
have looked at her with admiration every day for these thirteen months,
trying, as one might say, to get some angle on her that would lead to a
poem. She does not seem very angular.
I insist that my not having written a poem about her is really very
creditable. Titania seems to think that it implies my having become,
in some sense, blasé about children. Again, not so, not so at all. I
must confess that in my enthusiasm I rather made use of the two older
urchins as copy. But H., droll infant that she is, is too subtle for
me. I’ll come to that in a minute.
I talked all this matter over (being of a cautious turn, and fond
of getting experienced advice) with two eminent author-parents--Mr.
Tom Masson and Mr. Tom Daly--long ago, before Titania and I began
putting on heirs. Both these gentlemen have made a lot of use of their
children in earning, or at any rate gaining, a living. Their advices
coincided. I myself was worried, but Mr. Tom Masson insisted that there
was nothing like having offspring as a source of copy; he said that
he would pay ten cents a word, in _Life_, for anything about the then
shortly arriving urchin. (He said it would be fifteen cents a word if
it was a girl, because girls cost you so much more later on. He has had
experience in that matter, I believe.) Mr. Tom Daly, who has run rather
to boys, said very much the same thing; but he was not in a position to
buy my stuff, so I paid less attention to him.
But to get back to H. There never was a more enchanting infant. Mr.
Walter de la Mare, who is also an authority, has written me delightful
letters about her, although he has never seen her. But even a prose
letter from a poet like Mr. de la Mare is more valuable, I think, than
an actual poem from most other poets, so darling H. cannot say she
has been neglected. But she is much too delicious for me to be able
to sit down easily and write something that would do her justice. The
night before she was born her mother and I did two things. We went
to Huyler’s for chocolate ice-cream soda, and we read aloud Bernard
Shaw’s autobiography, which is printed in Frank Harris’s _Contemporary
Portraits_. I dislike to bring Mr. Harris into this, for certainly I
can think of no one who has less in common with H., that celestial
nugget. But I have to tell the truth, don’t I? Mr. Harris wrote an
essay about Shaw; and Shaw, feeling that it was not adequate, wrote a
really amusing sketch to show how Harris should have done it. Well,
there is something symbolic about this, for H. is as sweet as anything
Huyler ever compounded; and she is even more enigmatic than Shaw. (I
can see now it should have been Page and Shaw instead of Huyler.)
But I feel that pretty soon I shall be writing a poem about her. I
have felt it coming for some time. But it has got to _come_; I am not
going to bring it. That shows how I have matured by associating with
H. Sometimes I wish I could hire a really great poet to write about
her. Swinburne might do for the rough draft. “Oh, what a bee-yootiful
babby!” he used to cry when he saw them in their prams up at
Putney--so, I think, Max Beerbohm describes. But I should want to have
his rough draft polished and refined by someone else. I can only think
of Mr. Walter de la Mare. He alone has just the right insight. For
babies thirteen months old--the best age of all--must not be treated
condescendingly, nor fulsomely, nor adoringly, nor sugarishly. William
Blake, if left alone in the room with H., would have understood her.
What an infant, I give you my word! Living with children is largely a
contest of endurance. It is a question of which one can tire the other
out first. (This is a great secret; never before made plain.) Start in
early in the morning, and take things with a rush. If you are strong,
austere, resolute, you may be able to wear them down and exhaust them
by dusk. If you can do so, without prostrating yourself, then you may
get them to bed safely and have a few hours of cheerful lassitude.
But take every possible advantage. Let them run and frolic, yourself
sitting down as much as you can. Favour yourself, and snatch a little
rest while they are not looking. Even so, the chances are you will
crack first.
This applies to older children; after they gain the use of their limbs
and minds. But H. has not reached that harrowing stage. Placable, wise,
serene, she sits in her crib. She has four teeth (beauties). To hear
her cry is so rare that I hardly know what her voice of sorrow sounds
like. Sometimes, for an instant, she looks a little frightened. Then
I like her best, for I know she is human, and has in her the general
capsule of frailty.
You may be quite sure of one thing, I shall never print that poem
unless I feel that it comes somewhere near doing her justice.
[Illustration]
HAIL, KINSPRIT!
The keenest pleasure in life, of course, is to find a Kindred
Spirit--one whose mind glows and teeters with delight at the same queer
things that rouse us to excitement. We have just found one, and yet
we shall never know him, except by his address, which is Y. 1926, the
_Times_, E. C. 4, London. For we are much too busy to write to any one,
even to a Kindred Spirit.
We will tell you _why_ we feel sure he is a Kindred Spirit; but in
parenthesis, it was Mr. Pearsall Smith who lamented the fact that the
English language contains no satisfactory word for “a person who is
enthusiastic about the same things that you are enthusiastic about.” It
is too grossly clumsy to say _fellow-fan_ or _co-enthusiast_; so Mr.
Smith, a philologist of charming finesse (have you read his little book
_The English Language_ published by Henry Holt?) boldly proposed to
fill the vacancy by coining the word _milver_. This, he said, would be
useful to poets, since there is no rhyme in English for _silver_.
The word _milver_, alas, leaves us cool, in spite of its usefulness
as a rhyme. It does not strike down in the great subsoil of the
language--the dark deep skein of inherited word-roots from which our
present meanings blossom and put forth. We suggest--without much
thought--a mere contraction. How would _kinsprit_ do? We rather like
the look of it; it has a droll, benign, elvish appearance as we put it
down. A couplet occurs to us--
_They pledged their bond with joyful oath--
A kinsprit passion knit them both._
That shows you it could be used as an adjective as well. Come, now, if
we all pull together very likely we can get Messrs. Merriam to put it
in the next edition of Webster:
=Kinsprit=, _n_ and _a_. (orig. obscure: perh. contracted from
kin[dred] sprit[e])--A fellow-enthusiast, one impassioned with
the same zeal or hobby or enthusiasm.
The reason why we know that Y. 1926 is a kinsprit is in the following
notice in the _Personal_ column of the London _Times_:
LOST in Taxi last week, SMALL PORTFOLIO containing colour
diagrams and newspaper print of Lamb’s portrait of Lytton
Strachey. Finder rewarded. Y. 1926, The _Times_, E. C. 4.
Well, well, we say to ourself: then there is one other person in the
world who felt just as we did about that gloriously entertaining
portrait of Mr. Strachey, and who carried it about with him just
as we did ours, clipped from the _Manchester Guardian_. But we are
luckier than poor Y. 1926, because in an access of enthusiasm we wrote
to Mr. Henry Lamb, the artist, and begged from him a photo-print of
the picture, which is in front of us now. We think that Mr. Alfred
Harcourt, Mr. Strachey’s publisher, should implore the loan of the
canvas for a few months, and have it exhibited in a Fifth Avenue window
where we could all have a good look at it.
We are consumed with curiosity to know more about Y. 1926--where he
was going in that taxi, and what the colour diagrams were (they sound
interesting) and what are his general comments on life?
[Illustration]
ROUND MANHATTAN ISLAND
We were talking with an American who had just come back after living
several years in Europe. He expressed with some dismay his resensitized
impression of the furious ugliness and clamour of American life; the
ghastly wastes of rubbish and kindling-wood suburbs fringing our
cities; and suggested that the trouble is that we have little or no
instinctive sense of beauty.
To which we replied that perhaps the truth of it is that the
American temperament is more likely to see opportunities for beauty
in large things than in small. But we were both talking bosh. Only
an extraordinarily keen and trained philosophic perception--e. g.,
a Santayana--can discuss such matters without gibbering. A recent
book on young American intellectualism recurs to us as an example of
the futility of undigested prattle about æsthetics. Even the word
_æsthetics_ itself has come to have a windy savour by reason of much
sophomore talk.
But, though we have laid by our own copy of that particular book as
a permanent curio in the realm of well-meant gravity, its author was
obeying a sound and praisable instinct in trying to think about these
things--beauty, imagination, the mind’s freedom to create, the meaning
of our civilization. We are all compelled to such an attempt: shallow,
unversed, clumsily intuitive, we grope into them because we are
sincerely hungry to understand. The same wise, brave, gracious spirit
that moved Mr. Montague to write his exquisite book _Disenchantment_ is
tremulously and tentatively alert in thousands of less competent minds.
And we, for our own part, grow just a little impatient with those who
are quick to damn this wildly energetic and thronging civilization
because it shows a poverty of settled, tranquil loveliness. We look out
of our window into this morning where Mrs. Meynell’s “wind of clear
weather” tosses the Post Office flags and the rooftop plumes of steam;
we see the Woolworth pinnacle hanging over our head--and ask, is it
possible that this great spectacle breathes from her towers only the
last enchantments of a muddled age?
Aristotle remarked that “the flute is not an instrument which has
a good moral effect; it is too exciting.” And very likely New York
civilization falls under the same reproach. But even if it is all
madness, what a gallant raving! You cannot see the beauty in anything
until you love it for its own sake. Take the sightseeing boat round
Manhattan if you want to get a mental synthesis of this strangest of
islands. From a point in the East River off Coenties Slip you will
see those cubed terraces of building rising up and upward, shelves
and ledges of rectangular perspective like the heaven of a modernist
painter. Nor do we deny the madness and horror. Farther up the river
you will see the ragged edges of the city, scows loading their tons of
jetsam and street scourings, wizened piers, grassless parks, all the
pitiful makeshift aquatics of the Harlem region. And yet, all along
that gruesome foreshore, boys--and girls, too--bathing gayly in the
scum-water, flying ragged kites from pier-bollards, merry and naked
on slides of rock or piles of barrels. Only on the three grim islands
of Blackwell, Ward, and Randall will you see any touch of beauty.
There, grass and trees and beds of canna and salvia (the two great
institutional flowers) to soothe the criminal and the mad. When your
mind or your morals or your muscles give way, the city will allow you a
pleasant haven of greenery and air. It is odd to see the broad grounds
of the Children’s Hospital--on Randalls Island, is it?--with no child
in sight; but across the river the vile and scabby shore is thick with
them. And the bases of the Harlem swing-bridges, never trod by any one,
are carefully grassed and flowered.
So the history of every modern city consists of a painful, slow
retracing of its errors, an attempt to undo painfully and at vast
expense the slattern stupidities it has allowed to accumulate. But to
see only these paradoxes and uglinesses is to see less than the whole.
He cannot have lived very long or thoughtfully with humanity for
neighbour who does not ruefully accept greeds and blindnesses as part
of its ineradicable habit. It takes a strong stretch of the imagination
to grasp this island entire; to see, even in its very squalors and
heedlessnesses, an integral portion of its brave teeming life. You must
love it for what it is before you have a right to love it for what it
may be. We have never been able to think this thing out, but there
seems to us to be some vital essence, some miraculous tremor of human
energy and folly in the whole scene that condones and justifies the
ugliness. It is queer, but the hideous back-lots of the city do not
trouble us so greatly: we have a feeling that they are on their way
towards being something else. We do not praise them, but we feel in an
obscure way they are part of the picture. Zealous passion and movement
always present, to the eye of dispassion, aspects either grotesque
or terrible, according to that eye’s focus. In this ugly hurly-burly
we feel daily (though we cannot define it) that there is a beauty so
overriding that it does not depend on beautiful particulars. And, to
feel that beauty fully, one must discard all hankerings to improve
humanity, or to preach to it, or even understand it--simply (as Uncle
Remus said) “make a great ’miration”--accept it as it thrillingly is,
and admire.
[Illustration]
THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN
We shall never forget being in Washington when the great celebration
was held in honour of the Unknown Citizen.
The day was proclaimed a National Fête. On that day the Unknown
Citizen--chosen after long investigation by a secret committee sworn to
silence--arrived at the Union Station. He and his wife had been quietly
lured away from their home on a plausible pretext and then kidnapped
into a gaudy special train, where everything had been explained to
them. Halts had been made at big cities en route for the crowds to pay
homage.
It would take too long to describe the clever selective process by
which the Citizen had been chosen. Suffice it to say that he was a
typical _homo Americanus_--a worthy and slightly battered creature, who
had raised a family of four children and plugged along at his job and
paid his taxes and cranked his flivver and set up a radio on the roof
and planted sunflowers in the back yard and lent his wife a hand at
the washing and frequently mended the kitchen stove-pipe. He had never
broken open the china pigs containing the children’s money.
We saw him arrive at the great station in Washington. He was strangely
troubled and anxious, a bit incredulous, too, believing this was all
some sort of put-up job. Also, somewhere on the train he had lost
one of his elastic sleeve-suspenders, and one cuff kept on falling
round his wrist. He walked uneasily along the red velvet carpet and
was greeted by President Harding and the Ambassadors of Foreign
Powers. Mr. Sousa’s band was there, and struck up an uproarious anthem
composed for the occasion. The tactful committee of Daughters of the
American Bourgeoisie had made all arrangements and taken all possible
precautions. It had been feared that perhaps the Citizen’s Wife might
be overcome, and an ambulance was waiting behind potted palms in
case of any emergency. But it is always the unexpected that happens.
It was Senator Lodge, who had been appointed to read the telegrams
from prominent people, who swooned. President Harding, with kindly
readiness, stepped into the breach. As they were handed to him he read
aloud the messages from M. Clemenceau, Mr. Lloyd George, William Allen
White, Samuel Gompers, Dr. Frank Crane, President Ebert, Paul Poiret,
M. Paderewski, M. Venizelos, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Isaac
Marcosson. Mr. Harding then spoke in the most friendly and charming
way, appraising the value of preserved nationality, the solid virtue of
the Founding Fathers, and the services of the Unknown Citizen to his
country.
For a moment there was an awkward pause, but the Citizen’s Wife,
evidently a strong-minded woman, nudged him sharply, and the Citizen
tottered forward. Fortunately some New York newspaper men had been
on the train with him, and had written a little speech for him to
deliver. He read it, a bit tremulously. It stated that he was aware
this tribute was not meant for him personally, but for the great body
of middle-class citizenship he had been chosen to represent. There was
great speculation in the audience as to what part of the country the
Citizen came from: his accent was perhaps a trifle Hoosierish, but
wiseacres insisted that his general fixings were plainly Sears-Roebuck
and not identifiable with any section.
Accompanied by a troop of cavalry and the national colours, the
Unknown Citizen was taken to the Capitol, where Congress, convened
in joint session, awaited to do him honour. He was presented to the
great body by Senator Lodge, who had now completely recovered. After
being introduced, the Citizen stammered a few words of embarrassment.
During the buffet lunch in the lobbies, however, he began to pluck up
heart, for he found the Congressmen very human. He even ventured to
express, very politely, a few sentiments about the bonus, the tariff,
the income tax, the shipping subsidy, and the coal strike. Gathering
confidence, he might have grown almost eloquent over these topics, but
the Senatorial committee, foreseeing trouble, hastened him along to
see the gifts that had been sent from all over the world. They were
all laid out for inspection. Henry Ford had sent a new sedan, with a
self-starter and the arms of the United States gilded on the door.
William Randolph Hearst had sent a bound volume of Arthur Brisbane’s
editorials. The Prince of Wales, perhaps misunderstanding the exact
nature of the ceremony, had sent a solid gold punch bowl engraved _Dieu
et Mon Drought_. The Premier of New Zealand had sent a live kangaroo.
The Bailiff of Angora had sent a large silky goat. Mayor Hylan had sent
a signed photograph of himself wearing overalls. The Shipping Board
had sent a silver flask. But we have not space for the full list of
presents.
Tea was served at the White House. All the _corps diplomatique_ were
there, and were presented to the Citizen and his Wife. It was a great
afternoon. The Marine Band played in the garden; Senator Borah and
William Jennings Bryan, beginning to see a sort of prickly heat burn
out upon the Unknown Citizen’s forehead, tactfully played a tennis
match to keep the crowd in good humour. Laddie Boy, wagging his tail
vigorously, kept at the Unknown Citizen’s heels and did much to cheer
him. The Unknown Citizen liked Mr. Harding greatly and found him easy
to talk to; but some of the Special Representatives from abroad, such
as Mr. Balfour and M. Tardieu, he found difficult.
The monument in Potomac Park was dedicated at sunset. After that the
committee on Savoir Faire, observing the wilted collar of the Unknown
Citizen, thought it the truest courtesy to let him escape. We ourself
managed to follow him through the crowds. He and his wife looked
nervously over their shoulders now and then, but they had shaken off
pursuit. At a little stationery store they bought some postcards. Then
they went to the movies.
[Illustration]
SIR KENELM DIGBY
Sir Kenelm Digby, of whose acquaintance all his contemporaries seem to
have been ambitious.
--Dr. Johnson, _Life of Cowley_.
Prohibition, I dare say, is going to make fashionable the private
compilation of just such delightful works as _The Closet of the
Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Opened; London, at the Star in
Little Britain, 1669_. Sir Kenelm, “the friend of kings and the special
friend of queens,” crony of such diverse spirits as Bacon, Ben Jonson,
and Oliver Cromwell, kept this notebook of his jocund experiments in
home brewing and cookery. Just as nowadays a man will jot down the
formula of some friend’s shining success in the matter of domestic
chianti, so did the admirable Kenelm record “Sir Thomas Gower’s
Metheglin for Health,” or “My Lord Hollis’ Hydromel,” or “Sir John
Colladon’s Oat-Meal Pap,” or “My Lady Diana Porter’s Scotch Collops;”
and adding, of course, his own particular triumphs--e. g., “Hydromel
as I Made it Weak for the Queen Mother,” “A Good Quaking Bag-Pudding,”
and “To Fatten Young Chickens in a Wonderful Degree.” Sir Kenelm’s
official duty at the court of Charles the First was Gentleman of the
Bed-chamber; but if I had been Charles, I should have transferred him
to the Pantry.
The _Closet Opened_ (which was not published until after Sir Kenelm’s
death; he was born 1603, died 1665) is the kind of book delightfully
apt for the sad, sagacious, and solitary, for one cannot spend an hour
in it without deriving a lively sense of the opulence and soundness
of life. The affectionate attention Sir Kenelm pays the raisin makes
him seem almost a Volsteadian figure: in his pages that excellent and
powerful fruity capsule plays, perhaps for the first time in history, a
heroic and leading rôle. Consider this:
TO MAKE ALE DRINK QUICK
When small Ale hath wrought sufficiently, draw into bottles;
but first put into every bottle twelve good raisins of the
Sun split and stoned. Then stop up the bottle close and set
it in sand (gravel) or a cold dry Cellar. After a while this
will drink exceedingly quick and pleasant. Likewise take six
Wheat-corns, and bruise them, and put into a bottle of Ale; it
will make it exceeding quick and stronger.
Kenelm was not only a good eater; he was a devilish good writer. The
fine lusty root of English prose was in him. If this is not true
literature, we know it not:
ANOTHER CLOUTED CREAM
Milk your Cows in the evening about the ordinary hour, and fill
with it a little Kettle about three quarters full, so that
there may be happily two or three Gallons of Milk. Let this
stand thus five or six hours. About twelve a Clock at night
kindle a good fire of Charcoal, and set a large Trivet over it.
When the fire is very clear and quick, and free from all smoak,
set your Kettle of Milk over it upon the Trivet, and have in a
pot by a quart of good Cream ready to put in at the due time;
which must be, when you see the Milk begin to boil simpringly.
Then pour in the Cream in a little stream and low, upon a
place, where you see the milk simper....
To simper--a word of sheer genius! There are many such in his recipes.
We find the raisin again at work in his directions:
TO MAKE EXCELLENT MEATHE
To every quart of Honey, take four quarts of water. Put your
water in a clean Kettle over the fire, and with a stick take
the just measure, how high the water cometh, making a notch,
where the superficies toucheth the stick. As soon as the water
is warm, put in your Honey, and let it boil, skiming it always,
till it be very clean; Then put to every Gallon of water, one
pound of the best Blew-raisins of the Sun, first clean picked
from the stalks, and clean washed. Let them remain in the
boiling Liquor, till they be throughly swollen and soft; Then
take them out, and put them into a Hair-bag, and strain all
the juice and pulp and substance from them in an Apothecaries
Press; which put back into your liquor, and let it boil, till
it be consumed just to the notch you took at first, for the
measure of your water alone. Then let your Liquor run through
a Hair-strainer into an empty Woodden-fat, which must stand
endwise, with the head of the upper-end out; and there let it
remain till the next day, that the liquor be quite cold. Then
Tun it up into a good Barrel, not filled quite full, and let
the bung remain open for six weeks. Then stop it up close, and
drink not of it till after nine months.
This Meathe is singularly good for a Consumption, Stone,
Gravel, Weak-sight, and many more things. A Chief Burgomaster
of Antwerpe, used for many years to drink no other drink but
this; at Meals and all times, even for pledging of healths.
And though He were an old man he was of an extraordinary vigor
every way, and had every year a Child, had always a great
appetite and good digestion; and yet was not fat.
One of good Sir Kenelm’s most famous instructions, which has become
fairly well-known, does honour not only to his delicate taste but also
to his religious devotion. It is his advice on the brewing of tea--“The
water is to remain upon it no longer than whiles you can say the
_Miserere_ Psalm very leisurely.” This advice occurs in the recipe
TEA WITH EGGS
The Jesuite that came from China, Ann. 1664, told Mr. Waller,
That there they use sometimes in this manner. To near a pint
of the infusion, take two yolks of new laid-eggs, and beat
them very well with as much fine Sugar as is sufficient for
this quantity of Liquor; when they are very well incorporated,
pour your Tea upon the Eggs and Sugar, and stir them well
together. So drink it hot. This is when you come home from
attending business abroad, and are very hungry, and yet have
not conveniency to eat presently a competent meal. This
presently discusseth and satisfieth all rawness and indigence
of the stomack, flyeth suddainly over the whole body and into
the veins, and strengthenth exceedingly and preserves one a
good while from necessity of eating. Mr. Waller findeth all
those effects of it thus with Eggs. In these parts, He saith,
we let the hot water remain too long soaking upon the Tea,
which makes it extract into itself the earthy parts of the
herb. The water is to remain upon it no longer than whiles you
can say the _Miserere_ Psalm very leisurely. Thus you have only
the spiritual parts of the Tea, which is much more active,
penetrative, and friendly to nature.
Sometimes, it is true, one suspects Sir Kenelm of a tendency to
gild the lily. In the matter of perfuming his tobacco, this was his
procedure:--
Take Balm of Peru half an ounce, seven or eight Drops of Oyl of
Cinamon, Oyl of Cloves five drops, Oyl of Nutmegs, of Thyme, of
Lavender, of Fennel, of Aniseeds (all drawn by distillation) of
each a like quantity, or more or less as you like the Odour,
and would have it strongest; incorporate with these half a dram
of Ambergrease; make all these into a Paste; which keep in a
Box; when you have fill’d your Pipe of Tobacco, put upon it
about the bigness of a Pin’s Head of this Composition.
It will make the Smoak most pleasantly odoriferous, both to
the Takers, and to them that come into the Room; and ones
Breath will be sweet all the day after. It also comforts the
Head and Brains.
It is a great temptation to go on quoting these seductive formulæ. I
feel sure that my tenderer readers would relish instructions for the
Beautifying Water or Precious Cosmetick,--for the secret of which
ladies of high degree pursued Sir Kenelm all over Europe. (He does
not include in the _Closet_ any details of the Viper Wine for the
Complection which was said to have caused the death of Lady Digby--a
rather painful scandal at the time.) But I fear to trespass on your
patience. Let me only add that the ambition of the Three Hours for
Lunch Club has long been to hold a DIGBY DINNER, at which all the
dishes will be prepared as nearly as possible according to Sir Kenelm’s
prescriptions. The project offers various perplexities, and might even
have to be consummated at sea, beyond the hundred-fathom curve. But if
it ever comes to pass, the following menu, carefully chosen from Sir
Kenelm’s delicacies, seems to me promising:--
Portugal Broth, As It Was Made for the Queen
Sack with Clove Gillyflowers
Sucket of Mallow Stalks
A Herring Pye
A Smoothening Quiddany of Quinces
My Lady Diana Porter’s Scotch Collops
Mead, from the Muscovian Ambassador’s Steward
The Queen Mother’s Hotchpot of Mutton
Pease of the Seedy Buds of Tulips
Boiled Rice in a Pipkin
Marmulate of Pippins
Dr. Bacon’s Julep of Conserve of Red Roses
Excellent Spinage Pasties
Pleasant Cordial Tablets, Which Strengthen Nature
Small Ale for the Stone
A Nourishing Hachy
Plague Water
Marrow Sops with Wine
My Lord of Denbigh’s Almond Marchpane
Sallet of Cold Capon Rosted
My Lady of Portland’s Minced Pyes
The Liquor of Life
A Quaking Bag-Pudding
Metheglin for the Colic
But I must not mislead you into thinking that Sir Kenelm was merely a
convivial trencherman. His biography as related in the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_ is as diverting as a novel--more so than many. Infant
prodigy, irresistible wooer, privateer, scientist, religious
controversialist, astrologer, and a glorious talker, he made a profound
impression on the life of his time. But, as so often happens, his
name has been carried down to posterity not by the strange laborious
treatise he regarded as his opus maximum, but by his chance association
with one of the great books of all time. When Digby was under
honorable confinement (as a “Popish recusant”) at Winchester House,
Southwark, in 1642, he was busy there with chemical experiment and
the MS. of his _Of Bodies and Mans Soul_ (of which more in a moment).
Apparently they treated political prisoners with more indulgence in
those days. One evening he received a letter from his friend the Earl
of Dorset, urging him to read a book that was making a stir among
the intellectuals. One may think it was perhaps a trifle niggardly
of Dorset merely to have recommended the book. To a friend in jail,
surely he might (and it was just before Christmas) have sent a copy
as a present. But the liberality of the Earl is not to be called in
question: he had made Sir Kenelm at least one startlingly gracious
gift--viz. Lady Digby herself, previously Dorset’s mistress. This oddly
amusing story, or gossip, may be pursued in Aubrey’s _Brief Lives_,
a fascinating book (published by the Oxford Press)--a sort of Social
Register of seventeenth century England.
“Late as it was” when Sir Kenelm received the letter from his
benefactor and colleague, he sent out at once (mark the high spirit
of the true inquirer; also the sagacity of seventeenth century
booksellers, who kept open at night)--
To let you see how the little needle of my Soul is throughly
touched at the great Loadstone of yours, and followeth
suddenly and strongly, which way soever you becken it.... I
sent presently (as late as it was) to _Pauls_ Church-yard, for
this Favourite of yours, _Religio Medici_: which found me in
a condition fit to receive a Blessing; for I was newly gotten
into my Bed. This good natur’d creature I could easily perswade
to be my Bed-fellow, and to wake with me, as long as I had any
edge to entertain my self with the delights I sucked from so
noble a conversation.
Rarely have the pleasures of reading in bed had such durable result.
The following day he spent in pouring out a long, spirited and
powerful letter to Dorset (75 printed pages) which has become famous as
_Observations upon Religio Medici_, and a few years later was included
as a supplement to that book--where it still remains in most editions.
In this tumbling out of his honourable meditations and excitements,
Sir Kenelm took issue pretty smartly with Dr. Browne on a number of
points, particularly in regard to his own special hobby of Immortality.
He, just as much as the Norwich physician, loved to lose himself in an
Altitudo; but in some cloudlands of airy doctrine Browne seemed to him
too precise. “The dint of Wit,” Digby remarked felicitously of some
theological impasse, “is not forcible enough to dissect such tough
matter.”
These _Observations_ are of more than casual importance. Dorset,
apparently, took steps (unknown to Digby) to have them published;
and report of this coming blast roused Browne to protest courteously
against “animadversions” based upon the unauthorized and imperfect
version of his book--his own “true and intended Originall” being by
this time in the printer’s hands. Digby had written his observations
without knowing who the author of _Religio_ was. The letters that now
passed between him and Browne are an exhilarating model of controversy
goldenly conducted between gentlemen of the grand manner. “You shall
sufficiently honour me in the vouchsafe of your refute,” writes Browne,
“and I obliege the whole world in the occasion of your Pen.” To which
Digby, avowing that his comments were written without thought of
print and merely as a “private exercitation,” charmingly disclaims
any ambition to enter public argument with so superior a scholar.
“To encounter such a sinewy opposite, or make Animadversions upon so
smart a piece as yours is, requireth such a solid stock and exercise
in school learning. My superficial besprinkling will serve only for
a private letter, or a familiar discourse with Lady auditors. With
longing I expect the comming abroad of the true copy of the Book,
whose false and stoln one hath already given me so much delight.” The
delightful remark about lady auditors causes one to suspect that even
in that day the germ of the lecture passion was moving in circles of
high-spirited females.
Digby and Browne were evidently kinsprits. They were nearly of an
age; Browne was a physician, and Digby--though many considered him a
mountebank and charlatan--had a genuine scientific zeal for medical
dabblings. His Powder of Sympathy, a nostrum for healing wounds at a
distance, has been a cause of merriment among later generations; but
Sir Kenelm was no fool and I am not at all sure that there wasn’t much
excellent sense in his procedure. The injury itself was washed and
kept under a clean bandage. The Powder of Sympathy was to be prepared
from a paste of vitriol, and the instructions included necessity for
mixing and exposing it in sunshine. Sir Kenelm was quite aware of
the public appetite for hocus-pocus, and surely there was a touch of
anticipatory Christian Science and Coué in his idea of keeping the
patient’s mind off the trouble and giving him this harmless amusement
in the open air. For the sympathetic powder, please note, was never to
be applied to the wound itself, but only to something carrying the
blood of the injured person--a stained bandage, a garment, or even
the weapon with which the damage was done. The injury was left to the
curative progress of Nature. This theory of treating not the wound but
the weapon might well be meditated by literary critics. For instance,
when some toxicated energumen publishes an atrocious book, the best
course to pursue is not to attack the author but to praise Walter de la
Mare or Stella Benson. This may be termed the allopathic principle in
criticism; but few of us are steadfast enough to adhere to it.
Digby’s _Memoirs_--not published until 1827--exhibit him as the
swashbuckler, and amorist by no means faint. They are amusing enough
but give only a carnal silhouette. Perhaps he did not write the book
himself: there is a vein of burlesque in the narrative that makes me
suspicious. It purports to be an account of Sir Kenelm’s fidelity to
his wife, the lovely Venetia; and we are told that the account was
written under Antonian pressure. Importuned by ladies of much personal
generosity and recklessness, Sir Kenelm austerely retires to a cave and
pens this confession of uxorious loyalty. When you consider that the
relations of Sir Kenelm and Lady Venetia were one of the fashionable
uproars of the day, you begin to guess that the Memoir (in which all
the characters are concealed by romantic pseudonyms) was an elaborate
skit intended for private circulation, probably the work of some
satirical friend. Exactly so, when any great scandal nowadays is riding
on the front pages of the newspapers, do City Room reporters compose
humorous burlesques of the printed “stories,” and these have delightful
currency round the office.
So you will still find legends in print suggesting that Sir Kenelm
was a blend of Casanova and Dr. Munyon. He has been attributed what
historians used to call “Froude’s disease”--an insufficient curiosity
as to the total of 2 and 2 when added together. But a man whose
memory still makes a page and a half of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_
such lively reading, must have had more than mere animal spirits in
his make-up. It is easy to find testimony to his potent social and
military accomplishments. But the man himself, his earnest scientific
passions, his valiant speculation on human destinies, does not emerge
from the entries in encyclopædias. For that you must look into his
great book _Two Treatises: The Nature of Bodies, and The Nature of Mans
Soul_ (1658). By the kindness of Mr. Wilbur Macey Stone, generous and
astonishingly Elizabethan explorer of old books, I have an original,
tawny and most aromatic copy of this queer treasure. The title page of
the Second Treatise is endorsed, with a charming use of the aspirates--
SAMUEL MELLOR’S BOOK, December 22th 1792.
_Samuel Mellor his my Name
and Cheshire is my Nation
and Burton is my Dwellings
Place and Christ is my
Salvation
this Book geven
has A Gift to Samuel Mellor_
Sir Kenelm dedicates the volume to his son, in a touching and
honourable letter dated “Paris the last of August 1644.” “The calamity
of this time” (he says) “hath bereft me of the ordinary means of
expressing my affection to you; I have been casting about, to find some
other way of doing that in such sort, as you may receive most profit
by it. Therein I soon pitched upon these Considerations; that Parents
owe unto their children, not only material subsistence for their Body,
but much more, spiritual contributions to their better part, their
Mind.” Accordingly, with perfect gravity and that sombre and Latinized
eloquence which was the peculiar gift of his century, he proceeds to
expound in nearly 600 dense pages his observations on what we would
call nowadays physics and psychology. It would be agreeable enough,
if I did not fear to weary you, to copy down some of Sir Kenelm’s
delightful shrewd comments. A few of his section headings will serve to
give an idea of his matter. For instance:--
_The experience of burning glasses, and of soultry gloomy
weather, prove light to be fire._
_Philosophers ought not to judge of things by the rules of
vulgar people._
_The reason why the motion of light is not discerned coming
towards us, and that there is some real tardity in it._
_The true sense of the Maxim, that Nature abhorreth from
vacuity._
_The loadstone sendeth forth its emanations spherically.
Which are of two kinds: and each kind is strongest in that
hemisphere, through whose polary parts they issue out._
_The reason why sometimes the same object appears through the
prism in two places: and in one place more lively, in the other
place more dim._
_How the vital spirits sent from the brain, do run to the
intended part of the body without mistake._
_Of the rainbow, and how by the colour of any body, we may know
the composition of the body it self._
_How things renewed in the fantasie, return with the same
circumstances that they had at first._
_Why divers men hate some certain meats, and particularly
cheese._
Here, you will agree, was a man who even when he seems naïf, examined
phenomena with his own eyes and with notable sharpness. Delving into
the “crooked narrow cranies & restrayned flexuous rivolets of corporeal
things” was, he insisted, a “difficult & spiny affaire;” he was eager
to avoid “meer Chymeras and wild paradoxes,” hoped that “by strong
abstraction, and by deep retirement into the closet of judgment” he
might win “a favourable doom” from his readers. There is no naïveté so
dangerous as that of underestimating the power of another man’s mind.
Behind some of his fanciful suggestions there is an astonishing agility
of conjecture. On the subject of physiology he is delicious. Hear him
(pared down to stark brevity) on the brain:--
We may take notice that it containeth, towards the middle of
its substance, four concavities, as some do count them: but in
truth, these four, are but one great concavity, in which four,
as it were, divers roomes, may be distinguished.... Now, two
rooms of this great concavity, are divided by a little body,
somewhat like a skin, (though more fryable) which of itself is
clear; but there it is somewhat dimmed, by reason that hanging
a little slack, it somewhat shriveleth together: and this,
Anatomists do call _Septum lucidum_, or speculum....
This part seemeth to me, to be that and onely that, in which
the fansie or common sense resideth ... it is seated in the
very hollow of the brain; which of necessity must be the place
and receptacle where the species and similitudes of things doe
reside, and where they are moved and tumbled up and down, when
we think of many things. And lastly, the situation we put our
head in, when we think earnestly of any thing, favoureth this
opinion: for then we hang our head forwards, as it were forcing
the specieses to settle towards our forehead, that from thence
they may rebound, and work upon this diaphanous substance.
But it is in the Second Treatise (“Declaring the Nature and Operations
of Mans Soul; out of which, The Immortality of Reasonable Souls, is
Convinced”) that the darling man rises to really dazzling heights. In
this mystical, ecstatic and penitential essay he (in Burton’s phrase)
rectifies his perturbations. He is no longer channeled in the “crooked
narrow cranies of corporeal things;” he works from withinward and
spirals in happy ether:--
To thee then my soul, I now address my speech. For since by
long debate, and toilsom rowing against the impetuous tides
of ignorance, and false apprehensions, which overthrow thy
banks, and hurry thee headlong down the stream, whiles thou
art imprisoned in thy clayie mansion; we have with much ado
arrived to aim at some little attome of thy vast greatness; and
with the hard and tough blows of strict and wary reasoning, we
have strucken out some few sparks of that glorious light, which
invironeth and swelleth thee: it is high time, I should retire
my self out of the turbulent and slippery field of eager strife
and litigious disputation, to make my accounts with thee; where
no outward noise may distract us, nor any way intermeddle
between us, excepting onely that eternal verity, which by thee
shineth upon my faint and gloomy eyes.... Existence is that
which comprehendeth all things: and if God be not comprehended
in it, thereby it is, that he is incomprehensible of us: and
he is not comprehended in it, because himself is it.... Which
way soever I look, I lose my sight, in seeing an infinity round
about me: Length without points: Breadth without Lines: Depth
without any surface. All content, all pleasure, all restless
rest, all an unquietness and transport of delight, all an
extasie of fruition.
So don’t let any one tell you that Sir Kenelm was only a seventeenth
century epicure and bootlegger.
[Illustration]
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF AN AMIABLE VISITOR
We thought of telling you about the things that most interested a
British friend of ours during the first hours of his first visit to
this country.
Perhaps first of all we should give you an inkling of what kind of chap
he is. He’s a Welshman, an Oxford man, served in the war as a captain
in the Highland Light Infantry, was awarded the Military Cross, is now
in the wholesale tobacco business, is an ardent reader, and we daren’t
mention his name. He’s over here to study conditions in the world of
tobacco.
We went down the bay and boarded the _Baltic_ in the Narrows. We stood
with our friend on what a landsman might call the roof while the ship
came up the harbour. We pointed out Liberty, as she emerged from the
sunlit wintry haze. At first glimpse, coming in from sea, she has
rather a forbidding mien--her gesture seems one of warning. Then, as
you come nearer, she seems to be holding up a cocktail shaker. But we
promised to give our friend’s impressions, not our own.
The first things he wanted to have pointed out to him were the
Woolworth Tower and the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn engaged his fancy
more than the Jersey shore--probably on account of the Walt Whitman
tradition. “I have rather a feeling for Whitman,” he said. He was quiet
as we passed the long profile of downtown skyscrapers, but we saw that
he was inwardly meditating. He wanted to know about all the water tanks
on top of the buildings, especially on the Jersey side. “You people
seem very keen about water,” he said. He was hugely pleased with the
way the tugs got the _Baltic_ into her berth.
He wondered whether, before landing, we had better dispose of a little
toddy he had in his pocket flask. He had heard that if any usquebaugh
were found, the officials would confiscate the flask. We agreed that it
would be better not to take any chances on this matter. He was greatly
surprised and delighted with the rapidity and courtesy of the customs
examination. We got away from the pier with no more trouble, he said,
than we would have had in arriving at a railway terminal in London.
We took a taxi, bound for Penn. Station, and then decided to prolong
the ride by going down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square, and up again.
He remarked that the street paving near the docks was no better than it
is in Liverpool. He was charmed by the chauffeur’s air of camaraderie.
The latter, hearing through the open window that this was an exploring
expedition, began offering most friendly suggestions as to nice long
rides we might take, to Central Park, for instance. “Take him to see
the skaters, he’ll enjoy that,” said the chauffeur. This friendly
informality on the part of brakemen, soda jerkers, cab drivers, ticket
choppers, shop girls, and all such public servants delighted him.
Madison Square appealed to him, for he is an admirer of O. Henry.
“That’s where the old tramps sit on the benches, isn’t it?” he said. He
was anxious to see a “surface car,” for he had read about them in _The
Four Million_. The L did not seem to interest him so much. In a drug
store, he was excited by the little whirling instrument that mixed our
“frosted chocolate.” The lighting, spaciousness, and attractive display
in the department stores tickled him. The Penn. Station gave him
extraordinary pleasure. Chiefly, we thought, he was struck by a general
spaciousness and lack of hurry everywhere, in the traffic, in the
shops, etc. When we asked him what he wanted to see, he said, “I want
to see some of you _hustling_.” We looked everywhere, but could find
no one hustling. Like a candid observer, however, he noticed one thing
which is not beneath the attention of any student of human manners.
“Your people have rather a fine line in legs,” he said.
We pointed proudly to the Public Library (but could not bear to tell
him that the City has again cut its appropriation for buying new
books). He praised the large windows at the backs of the taxicabs,
making it possible to see what was going on behind the car. In Madison
Square he was particularly delighted by Diana, who seemed just then to
be aiming her gilded arrow at the pale, low-swimming daylight moon.
He asked us whether we thought he should subscribe to the _Saturday
Evening Post_ and the _Literary Digest_. Both these journals, in some
way or other, had come prominently to his attention at his home in
Cheshire. _Harper’s_ and _The Century_, he said, he frequently reads.
He thought it was a bit unfair of the advertisers (this was in the Long
Island train) to take advantage of public attention by issuing a card
with the announcement NOTICE TO PASSENGERS, looking very like official
information, which turned out to be a chewing gum ad. We told him about
the card in the subway which says PASSENGERS CHANGE HERE and then adds
“to ---- Union Suits.” This amused him, but we could see that he didn’t
think it quite sporting. He was highly diverted by the little signs at
the subway ticket booths--_Sing Out How Many_ and _The Voice with the
Smile Wins_. He was quite startled to learn that the author of Trivia
(one of his favourite books) is an American. He was pleased by the
informality of the Long Island conductor, who, seeing a lady friend
among the passengers, sat down with her between stations and had a
social chat.
Standing at the front of a subway train as it roared through the
tunnel from Brooklyn seemed to give him innocent happiness. Again he
commented, in the downtown region, on the general air of order and
good management in the conduct of the traffic. He could see none of
the brutal scurry that he had been taught to expect. Going up the
Woolworth Tower was the greatest adventure of these few hours. This,
we think, he will not soon forget. He was greatly pleased, being
himself a householder, with the American kitchen. He thought it very
well planned. Jericho cider he praised without reserve. A revolving
apparatus for airing clothes in the back garden pleased him mightily.
Delightful fellow, blessings upon him!
It is visits such as his that add to the stock of true international
understanding.
[Illustration]
IN HONOREM: MARTHA WASHINGTON
An American figure of national consequence has passed away from
the scene of her many glories. We refer to Martha Washington, the
Independence Hall cat.
When we worked in the old Philadelphia _Ledger_ office, and paragraphs
were scarce, we had an unfailing recourse. We would go over to the
State House (as they call it in its home town), descend to the cool
delightful old cellar underneath the hall, and call on Fred Eckersberg,
the engineer. We would see Martha sleeking herself on the flagstones
by the cellar steps (she was the blackest cat we ever knew, giving off
an almost purple lustre in hot sunlight) or perhaps we would have
to search her out among the coal bins where she was fixing a layette
for the next batch of kittens. In any case, Martha having been duly
admired, Fred Eckersberg would gladly talk about her and tell us what
were the latest adventures of her historic life. Which was always
good copy, for Fred, having been on friendly terms with Philadelphia
reporters for many years, knew the kind of anecdotes that would please
them. One of Fred’s unconscious triumphs was the time he told us of
his perplexity about ringing in the New Year in the Independence Hall
belfry. It was about Christmas time, 1919. “Last January,” he said, “I
rang One-Nine-One-Nine to welcome in the New Year. But what am I going
to do this time? How can I ring One-Nine-Two-Nought?” We told him we
saw no way out of it but to start early in the afternoon of New Year’s
Eve and ring the whole One Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty tolls.
We could say a good deal about Martha Washington: her kittens are
surely the most noble in the land, charter members of the Colonial
Felines of America, all born in the Hall, directly underneath the lobby
where the Bell stands. When the most famous brood of all were swaddled,
four fine jetty daughters born in November, 1918, Fred christened them
Victory, Freedom, Liberty, and Independence. He paid us the greatest
compliment of our life by offering us Victory, but at that time we were
living in a small apartment in the city and we didn’t think it would be
a sufficiently dignified home for such a kitten, who deserved nothing
less than a residence on the Main Line (Oh, Philadelphia!), with
scrapple made on the premises.
But it is time to get down to the point of our story. Martha has left
the Hall. Poor Fred, in his bereavement, has taken pen in hand. We can
see him, sitting at his desk down there in the ancient cellar, with all
his emblems, souvenirs, and clippings posted up above him and an oblong
of gold-and-green brightness shining down through the doorway from the
leafy sunshine of the Square. We can see him talking it over with his
comrades “the boys”--the State House carpenter and the gardeners, as
they sit at their lunch in the cellar. There is the empty saucer, dry
and dusty now; in the good old days Fred always brought in a little
bottle of milk every morning for Martha. And this is what Fred writes
us, word for word:
PHILA Aug 3, 21.
DEAR FRIEND: I thought I would write you a few lines to let
you know that I am still at the Hall but the Black cat is
gone--without a press agent Martha just became a cat the boys
miss her as we had a bag of grass seed the mice got in and they
have to hang their lunch on a string but we have a pair of
Robbins that sing in the square they would not be long there if
Martha was strolling around. We kept one of her kittens when I
was on my vacation it was sent to the Morris Refuge with one of
the men, on a Friday the next day he got a yellow slip (good
bye). Lot of people ask me about her and a Friend of yours left
this card: _Dear friend It looks as if Martha is going to have
a family--Will you save me two kittens if they are black like
their ma!_ But she did not have a black kitten so he did not
get one.
She left them for a few days came back when they were sent
away this was what got her in wrong, but when a fight between
two Thomas cats on the lawn was pulled off Martha’s doom was
sealed. She had the same sleek black coat the same bright eyes
but she was in wrong with our Superintendant so I called up and
had a boy from the cat home call for her they said it would
cost 50 cents so I left the cents and the job of putting her in
the basket to one of the men, but her picture is still on the
wall.
We are making changes and repairs about the buildings if the
tower would interest you would be pleased to take you up when
over in Phila had a party from New York up and they said they
knew you.
The old janitor lived in the tower because he had to ring the
bell for fires funerals and most everything that went on they
tell me one son was born there he had three children, the
rafter alongside the open fireplace is burned and we found some
old shoes worn by children under the floor, and some bones we
thought ment a Crime but upon investigation turned out to be
soup bones from Sheep Legs. This is about all. Your Friend
FRED ECKERSBERG
Engineer, Independence Hall.
[Illustration]
ACCORDING TO HOYLE
“If it be true” (remarks old John Mistletoe, in his little known _Life
of Edmund Hoyle_) “that a happy life leaves behind it little material
for the biographer, and only those whose careers have been marked by
the pangs of ambition and the wearinesses of achievement offer maxims
for the moralist, then there is little to be said of Edmund Hoyle. And
yet it is odd that a man whose name has become proverbial, who lived to
the age of close upon a century (1672–1769), and who standardized and
codified the chief social amusement of his age into an etiquette which
remained unchanged for six generations--it is odd, I say, that this
great peaceful benefactor has left so slight a trace in biographical
annals. For I ask you, which of Hoyle’s contemporaries conferred a
more placable and sedentary boon upon the world than he?”
“Hoyle” (continues Mr. Mistletoe) “was a man of very speechless humour.
It was his wont to say that he had been lured into the study and
metaphysic of whist because it was a silent game. As is well known,
the game was originally called _whisk_; it was Mr. Hoyle who, by his
continual utterance of the imperative and hushing monosyllable _Whist!_
when gaming with those whose tongues were apt to wag irrelevantly,
caused the diversion, at first only in sport, and then in genuine
earnest, to be rechristened. It was a sight not to be forgotten, by
contemporary account, to see the Master (as he was known) sitting
down at the Three Pigeons tavern for his afternoon rubber. The
mornings he spent in tutoring wealthy ladies in the rudiments of the
fashionable game, this being the chief source of his income. He was
very particular, moreover, as to the standing and rank of his pupils;
he was much in demand, and could afford to take only such students
as satisfied his fastidious taste for youth and beauty. In fact, he
anticipated the doctrine announced many years later by John Keats, who
remarked, ‘I intend henceforth to have nothing to do with the society
of ladies unless they be handsome. You lose time to no purpose.’
“It was, I repeat, an agreeable spectacle to witness the Master
driving up to the Three Pigeons about the hour of (as we would now
say) luncheon, in his white hackney coach with his emblem--the Ace
of Hearts--blazoned on the panel. Before the gaming began he would
always take a leisurely meal; indeed, it was his habit to say that no
gentleman would ever spend less than three hours at the table. One
of his humours was to insist that warm weather was dangerous to his
constitution, and that in summer it was desirable to eat sparingly
and with deliberation. On days that had, as someone has put it, the
humidity of Uriah Heep, this was an example of his menu, which I have
found filed in the old papers kept in the vaults of the Three Pigeons:
_Service to Mr. Edmund Hoyle, this 28th July 1730, on acct_:
_A capon broth, with toasted bread_
_A flagon of small ale_
_Fricassee of sweetbreads, with currant jelly_
_A flask of cool Canary_
_Rosted wild ducks, with cheesecake and parsnips_
_A jugg of malmsey, from the special butt_
_A sallet of shrimpes and candyed cherries_
_A hot rabbit pye, with buttered pease and a pottle of mulled
claret_
_Rhubarbe pasty, with barley wine to ease Mr. Hoyle’s digestions_
_Plague water for the hott weather_
“Having done suitable homage to this judicious nourishment” (Mr.
Mistletoe proceeds), “Mr. Hoyle would have brought to him his own yard
of clay, which he would leisurely fill with the best pure Virginia
leaf, gazing about him the while upon the impatient faces of his
friends who were anxious to get to the cards. ‘Never indulge the carnal
appetites immoderately in hot weather,’ he would say, blowing out a
long blue whiff into the cool twilight of the old taproom, panelled in
magnificent dark walnut. This was the last word uttered, for when the
Master took his seat at the card table no man dared speak. A sacred
quiet filled the place as he reached for the pasteboards and deftly
cut for the deal, tossing back his lace cuffs over his lean yellowish
wrists, the colour (he was something bilious) of old piano keys. The
rest was silence, with only the fall of the cards and the occasional
clink of a bottle when Mr. Hoyle refilled his vase of Burgundy, which
he always drank while gaming. A life of abstemious control, he said,
was needful for one who must keep his wits alert.”
[Illustration]
L. E. W.
We are continually obtaining new and piercing glimpses into human life
and character. We are now able to assert, without fear of rebuttal,
that even men of unblemished intellect and lofty, serene understanding
have always some particular point of frailty at which morals, virtue,
and integrity collapse in a dark confusion of spiritual wreckage.
Reconsidering the above sentence it seems to need a little
clarification. We shall have to explain what we mean, and can only do
so by referring, with painful verity, to the Leading Editorial Writer.
L. E. W. came into our kennel yesterday morning and saw lying on our
desk a newly published detective novel that a publisher had sent us.
“Oh,” he said, “What’s this?” and began looking it over. We were rather
busy at the moment, and paid no particular heed, but looked up a
minute later to see him slipping out of our hutch with the book under
his arm.
“Here!” we cried, “what are you doing with that book?”
“I’m going to read it,” he said, with bland composure.
“Nothing doing,” we asserted sternly. “We began to read that in the
subway this morning, and we’re just getting interested in it. You’ll
have to wait until we’ve finished it.”
“But you can’t read it in the office,” he said; “you’re too busy.”
“So are you,” we replied; “but we’re going to read it to-night; after
an exhausting day we shall need an innocent diversion of that sort.”
We did not think of it at the time, but we now remember that there was
a curious evasive lustre in his eye. We wish we could make it plain
to you how this person, generally a highly cultivated and responsible
citizen, occasionally exhibits himself as naïvely unscrupulous, in a
way so charming and unashamed that, with lesser men than ourself, he
successfully gets away with it.
A little later in the day, again comes L. E. W. into our nook. He
looks about in an absent-minded way, giving much the appearance of the
_animula vagula blandula_ the Roman emperor told about. He made one or
two random remarks, and seemed to be pretending that he had intended
to say something important but had forgotten what it was. We may say
that we penetrated his game immediately. We kept an eye on him, and as
soon as he had retired we took the detective story and put several
newspapers on top of it.
But after all, one cannot sit around the office all day watching the
book one is saving for evening reading. By and by we had to go out to
lunch, and thought no more of the matter until 5 o’clock. Then, hastily
gathering our effects for the trek uptown, we looked for the novel. It
was gone.
We could not quite believe it, at first. We thought we must have
mislaid it somewhere on top of our desk. We rummaged briskly. No sign
of it. With a sudden vile suspicion we ran to L. E. W.’s room. He was
gone, too.
Well, we had to console ourself on the ride uptown by reading something
else; but you know how it is--when you have set your heart on finishing
a particular story....
This morning L. E. W. has just come into our coop, with his usual
enigmatic smile, and laid the book before us. We assailed him with
bitter reproach and contumely. But we made no impression on him. There
is some mysterious knot of villainy in his bosom that leads him to
believe that any detective story left within his reach.... Of course it
is true that writing Leading Editorials for a number of years may well
undermine a man’s character. But that is what we mean when we say that
even men of unblemished intellect and lofty, serene understanding have
always some particular point of frailty at which morals, virtue, and
integrity collapse in a dark confusion of spiritual wreckage.
We haven’t mentioned the title of the book, because L. E. W. says it
isn’t much good. But we are not certain whether that is not just his
quaint way of trying to minify the gruesomeness of his offence. It is a
perverted form of conscience: he thinks that if he tells us the book is
punk we will not regret that our reading was brutally postponed. But we
are going to tell him that he missed a trick there. It would have been
much more in line with the delightful humour for which he is famous if
he had said: “It’s a great yarn. You ought to read it.”
[Illustration]
OUR EXTENSION COURSE
This has been a pleasantly serene quiet morning in the office, and
we have been sitting here tenderly educating ourself by studying the
catalogue of University Extension Courses given at Columbia. We may not
have admitted it before, but we are rather ambitious, and find a great
deal in this fasciculus that appeals to our necessities.
Among the courses we should like to enroll in, first we come to
_Business e163--Personnel methods for office executives_ (Fee $24).
This would be highly advantageous to us, to teach us how to get along
tactfully with office boys, proof-readers, leading editorial writers,
and sudden, unexpected telephone calls. We look somewhat wistfully
upon _Business e13--Advertising Display and Mechanics, and Business
e17--Salesmanship_. (“The student is given a grounding in the
principles of selling and practice in the presentation of a selling
proposition from its inception in the customer’s mind throughout its
development and final consummation as a sale.”) But the course for
us, austerely denying ourself the lectures on _Advanced Advertising
Writing_, is _Business e19-20--Sales promotion_ (Fee $24). This
“includes a thorough study of merchandising, direction of a sales
force, methods of breaking down sales resistance.” It specializes in
“dealer helps” and regards “consumer advertising” as only secondary. We
agree.
The Graduate Courses in Psychology of Advertising and Selling we feel
are probably too advanced for us.
So we pass eagerly on to literary topics. _English elf-2f_ has an
agreeably elvish sound--_Advanced short story writing_; but it’s a bit
expensive (Fee $48. We might not get that much for the story after we
had written it.). _Juvenile story writing_ is only $32; but we elect
_English e3f-4f--Play Production_. The fee for that is only $24,
which shows you how much money a lot of theatrical managers waste;
moreover, it is held in the Attic of Hamilton Hall, which sounds very
jolly. The Attic playwrights were always pretty good. And certainly
we must have _English e11-12--Public speaking_, which is only $16,
and gives us “drill in breathing, articulation, gesture and reading
aloud, after-dinner speaking; how to stir the emotions and move to
action.” Philosophy, of course, must not be neglected: we rather like
the look of _Philosophy e135--Radical, conservative, and reactionary
tendencies in present-day morals_, which seems to cover the ground.
(Fee $24.) _Photoplay composition e3--Advanced course_ “deals with
the finer phases of character delineation” (Fee $24) and ought to be a
pleasant relaxation, for “Scenario editors and directors will address
the students from time to time.” _Physical education eY1-Y2--Swimming_
($16) will very happily conclude that part of our course.
A great need in our life would obviously be filled by _Secretarial
Correspondence e2--Letter writing_ (Fee $24). This studies the methods
adopted by “Huxley, Lanier, Lowell, Henry James, William James, Mark
Twain, Cicero, Pliny the Younger, and the letter writers of the World
War” in dealing with their correspondence. But we are anxious to get
on to even more congenial subjects. _Cookery e3L--General Principles
of cookery and their application. Lectures and laboratory work_ (Fee
$30) appeals to us. Also _Cookery 41xL--Principles of candy making_
($10) and _Cookery e75L--Large quantity cookery_ (Fee $30). The only
difficulty here is that the costume required for laboratory courses
in cooking is “white cotton clothing, plain skirt; tailored waist;
plain white collar; long plain white apron with bib.” That presents
difficulties.
We thought that we had outlined a very full curriculum for ourself,
but then we see that our old friend Professor Roger Loomis is giving a
course (_English eB10_) on _Argumentative writing_, “planned especially
for those interested in the writing of editorials and controversial
articles.” That certainly we must also have (Fee $24).
The total seems to be $270, and certainly the excitement sounds well
worth it.
[Illustration]
SOME RECIPES
I. MULLED CIDER
On a clear, cold afternoon towards the end of October go to the Cider
Mill at Jericho, Long Island, and obtain a gallon jug of cider.
Take this home and put in a cool place in the cellar, away from
observation. Cider is rather a bold and forward beverage: ever since
Eden was first established in an apple orchard the fruit has been
tainted with a secret capsule of sin: it is well to let the jug work
(in the fine old brewmaster’s sense of that word) in private, where its
conduct need not be a source of scandal.
Drive the cork in as tightly as possible; but, since Man is no match
for Nature, it will not be possible to prevent its extrusion. The
best way to deal with this problem is to keep chained in the cellar a
trained Cider Hound, a breed of dog known only on the North Shore of
Long Island. This is an animal which, by long instruction, has been
taught to howl when he hears the whoop of a cider cork blown out by
accumulating gases. When the dog howls hasten to the cellar, restopper
the jug, fondle the animal, and give him a small piece of Roquefort
cheese to keep him keen.
Continue this process until the cider has worked for five days--not
longer, or you may (like Faust) unchain dark forces with which you
cannot cope. At the end of the Fifth Day release the animal and carry
the jug upstairs.
Late that night, after the family has retired, pour a pint of cider
into a saucepan and heat it--preferably over the glowing logs of a wood
fire--until it steams. Then stir in three tablespoons of granulated
sugar. Do not be startled by the violence of the foaming and hissing
that ensues--this is only Nature at her inscrutable tasks of making
life puzzling for dogmatists.
Into the steaming sweetened cider pour as much brandy from the family
medicine chest as you think you can spare. If brandy is not obtainable,
whiskey will serve. If whiskey is not obtainable, invite some friend
who has recently made a transatlantic voyage and ask him to breathe
gently upon the saucepan while it is heating.
Serve the beverage hot, and, while drinking, utter any toast or
sentiment that is a favourite in your family. Reckon quantities at the
rate of not more than one pint per person. Mulled cider is recommended
during years of coal shortage, when the house may be chilly; but it is
not to be trifled with save by the most hardy.
Before retiring walk three times round the house and try to name all
the constellations. If you don’t know the names, give them new ones.
This quiets the pulse.
(_P. S.--This is an old recipe, swallowed down through several
generations, which accounts for some of its anachronisms._)
II. STEWED RHUBARB
Early in the spring buy a rhubarb root on Vesey Street. The root
itself, an uncouth, gnarled object, is not beautiful, but it bears
small red and yellow shoots that are highly decorative, like little
Spanish flags.
This root must be planted in a churchyard, preferably Episcopalian,
which gives the rhubarb a pleasantly Athanasian flavour, much esteemed
by connoisseurs. We specially recommend St. Paul’s churchyard, partly
because the high buildings round about keep the sharp winds of early
spring away from the tender sprouts, but also because the pleasant hum
of young women reading Keable and Ruby M. Ayres aloud at lunch time on
the benches encourages the plant and hastens its growth.
The stalks must not be picked prematurely. Wait until they are a
brilliant red. The best way to get this right is to test them with a
leather-bound copy of one of Kipling’s books, in that scarlet leather
edition. When the stalks are exactly the same colour as _Stalky & Co._,
pick them.
Take them home, wash them, cut them into cylindrical lengths, and have
them stewed in the usual manner.
III. HAGGIS AND BAGPIPES
Haggis should always be served with bagpipes. The reason for this will
be explained later.
In our recipes we always try to give the easiest way in which our
favourite dishes may be attained. The easiest way to enjoy Haggis is
to enlist the assistance of a number of Scotsmen, who by tradition,
training, temperament, and centuries of romantic strife have fitted
themselves to prepare and eat this sovereign piece of resistance.
Make friends, therefore, with as many prominent local Scots as
possible. Season the mixture by adding a few directors of some
well-known Scottish steamship companies. These friendships must be
cultivated gently and cannot be unduly hurried. Subscribe to the
_Caledonian_ or some other Scottish-American magazine. Eventually, if
all goes well, you may be invited to a dinner of the Caledonian Club or
the St. Andrews Society, or a luncheon on an Anchor Line steamship. At
this dinner The Haggis will be served.
The bagpipes are for the purpose of muffling any metaphysical argument
that may arise round the tables, and also to drown out any stories that
begin “There was a man frae Aberdeen----”
Do not ask your neighbour at table why it is that the pipes always
play the same tune. If you do, you will not be invited again. It is
better to garnish the occasion with a few carefully chosen Scottish
phrases--such as _’Tis a braw day the day_; _I’ll no can keep that
appointment for three o’clock_; _Let the world gang tapsalteerie_;
_Whaur’s Wullie Shaksper noo?_
[Illustration]
ADVENTURES OF A CURRICULAR ENGINEER
Having made up our mind to become an engineer, we thought it would be
a mistake not to take advantage of all possible aid. We were passing
the corner of Church and Fulton streets just now when we saw, in
a drugstore, a fair young lady sitting in the window conducting a
demonstration of Violet Rays. She wore a most appealing expression,
held in her hand a glass tube with a bulbous end which was filled with
pale blue electrical excitement, and was displaying various placards
inviting the public to enjoy a free treatment of the Violet Ray. This
Ray, her placards said, confers all imaginable pleasures and animations
upon the user. It subdues inflammations and tumescences; it imparts the
vigorous glow of health and beauty; it dispels lethargy and that Omar
Khayyám kind of feeling that we get on a warm day in spring; it confers
(so we gathered) all the benefits of Pelmanism without having to read
George Creel’s little essays.
A large crowd of loitering gentry stood at the window watching the lady
who was applying the Violet Ray to her own person and getting more
seemly every moment. But none of them, self-satisfied chaps apparently,
seemed eager to try the effect of the sparks when she pushed them
towards the pane. But we, in our humility, feeling the need of greater
ambition and resoluteness, offered our hand to the thunder-stone and
absorbed as much of the life-giving current as she was willing to give
away. We felt sure, somehow, that the Violet Ray would help us in
learning to understand our new self-propelled vehicle. (We have to call
it that, for to call it a _car_ is a little too imposing; and to call
it a flivver is a little too degraded; besides, it isn’t. Hereafter we
shall call her by her given name, which is Dame Quickly.)
Our first adventures with Dame Quickly, by the way, were not devoid
of excitement. One who on his second day as a curricular engineer,
navigates the main roads of Long Island on Decoration Day may be said
to be a daring soul. Titania, who was with us, says that our publisher
passed by in his limousine and looked annoyed because we did not
acknowledge his friendly gesture; but, indeed, all the concentrated
powers of our retinal system were focussed upon the highway, and even
if he docks our royalties for rudeness we cannot help it. We noticed,
however, that the drivers who overhauled us as we prowled cautiously
along had a way of looking sideways at us in a fixed, not exactly
hostile, but at any rate curious gaze, as though to reassure themselves
as to what kind of person this was. We remained bland and undismayed,
for we are still a driver without spirit; we will give any man as much
of the road as he wants; we have no sense of humiliation, nor any
competitive lust. Any collisions that Dame Quickly suffers will occur
only in her rearward parts.
Oyster Bay, we aver, is a dangerous place to be on the afternoon of
Decoration Day. We reached that amiable town around two hours post
meridiem, exceedingly hungry from our anxieties en route. As we
unobtrusively trundled along the main street our general nervousness
was not allayed by the spectacle of a motor fire engine rushing towards
us at full speed. Our general idea was to attract as little attention
as possible, so we made a bashful détour among back ways. To our
horror, there was another fire engine, also roaring along at a furious
pace. The whole town of Oyster Bay is burning up, was our thought;
however, that is a small matter compared to getting this vehicle to a
safe place where we can eat lunch and at the same time watch her with
a paternal eye. (Our neighbour in Salamis had said something about new
cars getting stolen, and we had a dreadful vision of being trailed
along the highways by an experienced crook who would get away with Dame
Quickly if we left her unwatched for five minutes.) But every time we
approached the main street, trying to slip in unobserved, either a man
on a motor bike would rush up and shout something quite unintelligible
or else we would hear the roar of another fire engine dashing about.
Gradually we divined that a number of Long Island fire departments were
having their annual competition; but the fact that it was only a game,
and not a real fire, made things worse. No fire engine would go to a
real fire with the furious zest with which those fellows sped up and
down the street. So, chivvied about by fire engines and cops, we had to
take lunch at the only place we could approach unobserved, a very small
hash-house which, since we cannot praise, we will not mention.
However, we had cause, later, to be grateful to these fire engines
that had so terrified us. For, after some delightful rambling by blue
watersides and under green colonnades of ancient trees, we found
ourselves endeavouring to shake off the pursuing traffic on a remote
and hilly byroad. We shall not go into the why and how of this matter,
but the fact is that at one moment the honourable and shining Dame
Quickly might have been seen docilely purring along the road; and
then, a few minutes later, she was insecurely suspended half over the
slope of a steep ravine, quite immovable. The curricular engineer
wrung his hands. This, he asserted, is the End. With beaded brow he
made some amateurish play with logs of wood that he found in that
solitary woodland; but the back wheels of the beautiful, the lovely,
the spirited Dame Quickly only revolved grindingly in the sand, and her
commodious form hung inert, not to say in peril. Then did the engineer
realize that, even on such short acquaintance, he loved her already;
and the thought of intrusting her sweet body to the harsh hands of an
alien garage man was poisonous. And if we leave her to go back to a
garage, we thought, the earth will give; she will plunge to her doom.
Titania, we think, prayed.
And then, gods from the machine, here came the Glen Cove Fire
Department, some twenty strong, merrily speeding past. What they were
doing up this bosky bypath we did not halt to inquire. The hand of
Providence, patently, was at work. When the hand of Providence appears,
one does not stop to inquire into its palmistry. We laid, bashfully,
our case before these great-hearted lads. With a shout they seized our
dear Mrs. Quickly; strong arms and gallant hearts of Glen Cove bore her
up the perilous precipice; she stood again on level roadway, catching
the sun on her noble enamel. The task accomplished, the Glen Cove Fire
Department, with their two red engines behind them, looked humorously
at us and seemed tacitly to inquire how any sane man would get into
such a position. We said, sheepishly, a word of explanation. They
roared with laughter.
[Illustration]
SANTAYANA IN THE SUBWAY
To confess one’s self to have had a seizure of pure happiness is, by
one theory, to admit one’s self a boob.
And yet we do not know when we have been more happy--in our own secret
definition of that state--than when we set off for the subway yesterday
noon-time. A more timid or more subtle spirit, perhaps, would not dare
the envy of the gods by mentioning it. A fig for the gods!
For, in the first place, that clear pearly light, the patchwork of sun
and shadow down the harsh channel of Broadway, the close embrace of
wintry air (so dartingly cold that it seemed to enfold and surround one
as water does the bather) and the great Singer tower lifting above
the cliffs in a tender wash of blue--these were enough of themselves
to make one lively. Again, we were bound uptown on an errand of pure
generosity, to turn over to a publisher the MS. of a book written by a
friend of ours, which we believe to be a fine book. Further, we even
considered it possible that the publisher might buy our lunch.
We went down into the subway, and clanked through the turnstile. The
thought occurred to us that it seems pretty poor sportsmanship to make
merry--as some of the papers have been doing--over the fact that many
people have devised ways of bilking the turnstiles. We suppose we shall
be accused of having been bought with mickle gold, but we must admit
that we have never had any hankering to cheat the subway. There are
many corporations we would cheat without a qualm, but the subway is
not one of them. It gives us more for a nickel--not only in the way of
transportation, but also privacy, mental relaxation, and scrutiny of
the human scene--than anything else we know.
We stood in the subway express, about to open a book. We noticed,
sitting a little farther along, a young woman whose hat interested
us. It was pierced in front by a pin of silver and brilliants, zigzag
in shape, representing (we supposed) a bolt of lightning. It was
emblematic, we opined, of high-spirited humanity itself, that toys with
lightning in more ways than one. This of itself, while valuable for
meditation, was not the cause of our happiness. We had a book with us,
a book that we have wanted to read for some time. We began to read it.
It was not necessary to travel more than a few lines to be perfectly
happy. Why were we happy? We could write many pages to try to explain
it to you, and even then should probably fail. This is what we read:
About the middle of the nineteenth century, in the quiet
sunshine of provincial prosperity, New England had an Indian
summer of the mind; and an agreeable reflective literature
showed how brilliant that russet and yellow season could be.
There were poets, historians, orators, preachers, most of
whom had studied foreign literatures and had travelled; they
demurely kept up with the times; they were universal humanists.
But it was all a harvest of leaves; these worthies had an
expurgated and barren conception of life; theirs was the purity
of sweet old age. Sometimes they made attempts to rejuvenate
their minds by broaching native subjects; they wished to prove
how much matter for poetry the new world supplied, and they
wrote “Rip van Winkle,” “Hia----”
That was exactly the first page, as we read it; we needed to go no
further to have cause for complete and unblemished satisfaction.
There was the kind of writing that we understand, that speaks to us.
There, barring the fact that Rip was not written in New England, was
that exact, humorous, and telling use of every word--“_demurely_ kept
up with the times”; “the purity of sweet old age”--if you don’t get
pleasure out of that sort of thing, then there is no use trying to
labour it in. And there, in every line and syllable, was exactly what
we had expected to find--a genuine Intellect speaking, and not a pseudo
and jejuvenile “Young Intellectual.” There were urbanity, charm, the
word well-weighed, the strong, reticulated thought. To go into private
minutiæ, we even had additional pleasure from the fact that the usage
of the semicolons (a matter of great delight to some enthusiasts)
conformed to our own private sense of felicity. And we gazed about the
car in a tranquil ecstasy.
The book was George Santayana’s _Character and Opinion in the United
States_.
We said to ourself, in a kind of anger (for truly a certain ingredient
of anger is necessary for complete happiness; a zealous espousal
of what one believes to be worth while carries with it the most
cheerful flush of irritation towards those who have not, one thinks,
sufficiently espoused it)--we said, Why is it that no one has hitherto
driven in upon our mind that this book (published a year ago) is
one that we could not possibly get along without? Why is it that
our admirable colleague L. E. W., from whom we borrowed it, did not
long ago come and sit on our desk and talk to us, endlessly, calmly,
suasively, about it and about?
We went on reading, and stood there in as perfectly felicitous an
absorption as we have ever enjoyed. We could have said to that golden
instant, as Mephistopheles promised Faust he would be able to say,
“Verweile doch, du bist so schön!” We had committed Grand Larceny.
We had achieved what the news headlines daily describe as a “Daring
Robbery.” We had stolen, from uncajolable and endless Time, a Perfect
Moment.
We see you smile gravely, and perhaps pityingly, at our simplicity.
Never mind. We shall never forget the mood of serene peacefulness and
cheer in which we then turned to Mr. Santayana’s preface and began to
read:
Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long
winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic
Christendom--picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode--may be
coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for
despair....
Ah, we said to ourself, that is the kind of writing that makes us truly
happy!
* * * * *
We cannot remember when we have marvelled more truly at the pregnancy,
the wit, and the exquisite under-piercing insight of any book. We
should like to ask those competent to speak--certainly we ourself are
not competent; and it is the sheerest bumptiousness for us even to
offer an opinion on a book so consummately wise and lovely--whether
there has ever been written any more thrillingly potent examination
of a whole civilization? In a book so packed and rifted with gold one
knows not where to start quoting; but almost at random we seize this
passage--not by any means one of the subtlest, but it will serve to
begin with:
... The American is imaginative; for where life is intense,
imagination is intense also. Were he not imaginative he
would not live so much in the future. But his imagination is
practical, and the future it forecasts is immediate; it works
with the clearest and least ambiguous terms known to his
experience, in terms of number, measure, contrivance, economy,
and speed. He is an idealist working on matter. Understanding
as he does the material potentialities of things, he is
successful in invention, conservative in reform, and quick in
emergencies. All his life he jumps into the train after it has
started and jumps out before it has stopped; and he never once
gets left behind, or breaks a leg.
Or, if you prefer, consider this:
That philosophers should be professors is an accident,
and almost an anomaly. Free reflection about everything
is a habit to be imitated, but not a subject to expound;
and an original system, if the philosopher has one, is
something dark, perilous, untested, and not ripe to be
taught, nor is there much danger that any one will learn
it. The genuine philosopher--as Royce liked to say, quoting
the Upanishads--wanders alone like the rhinoceros.... If
philosophers must earn their living and not beg (which some
of them have thought more consonant with their vocation), it
would be safer for them to polish lenses like Spinoza, or to
sit in a black skull-cap and white beard at the door of some
unfrequented museum, selling the catalogues and taking in the
umbrellas; these innocent ways of earning their breadcard in
the future republic would not prejudice their meditations
and would keep their eyes fixed, without undue affection, on
a characteristic bit of that real world which it is their
business to understand.... At best, the true philosopher can
fulfil his mission very imperfectly, which is to pilot himself
or at most a few voluntary companions who may find themselves
in the same boat. It is not easy for him to shout, or address a
crowd; he must be silent for long seasons; for he is watching
stars that move slowly and in courses that it is possible
though difficult to foresee, and he is crushing all things in
his heart as a winepress until his life and their secret flow
out together.
You understand (don’t you?) that we do not necessarily recommend
Santayana for _you_. As we grow, painfully, in sagacity, we realize the
absurdity of recommending anything to anybody. We are simply saying
that for us he fulfils (both in what we agree with and what we dissent
from) most of the requirements of our private conception of beauty and
happiness.
It is a book that quickens the mind. Continuing it on the train, as
the smoking car spins through those green Long Island meadows, we look
round on our fellow travellers with renewed amazement. Somehow it gives
us a strange pleasure to see them immersed in the _Evening Journal_ or
the _Evening World_, those grotesque monuments of human frailty. How
damnable it would be if they were all reading Santayana. How we should
hate them! We know that all humanity are precious fools, and ourself
the most arrant of the lot; but we like them that way. It adds to the
cheerful comedy of the scene.
Certainly you would have said that two names that sound something
alike are at opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum--Santayana
and Pollyanna. And yet, oddly enough, the thought has come to us that
the foundations of the two philosophies interlock. Santayana’s method
of extracting happiness from life; his perfection of cool, tender,
smiling, grave, cruel, and imperturbable resignation; the exquisitely
sophisticated contentment of his solitude, flight from needless buzbuz,
reverie in places haunted by old association; his noble ridicule of
destiny--all this brings to a reasonably sophisticated mind the same
kind of heavenly refreshment and sense of truth that simpler people
find in literature of the Pollyanna sort.
We vented this tentative idea to some colleagues of ours, and they
leapt upon us with shouts of anger and contradiction.
Yet we think there is something in it. There is no way of assessing
the operations of other people’s minds. But we are inclined to think
that very possibly the pure happiness we experience in Mr. Santayana’s
calm, humorous, disillusioned, and poetic reveries is not essentially
different from the cheerful exaltation some young woman feels reading
either of the Mrs. Porters in the Y. W. C. A.
[Illustration]
MADONNA OF THE TAXIS
Speaking of commuting, the Long Island Railroad owes us $7, and we are
wondering how long it will take us to collect it.
The incident, tragic as it was, will prove a lesson to us never again
to be unfaithful to our beloved Brooklyn.
On Wednesday evening we had to decide whether we would take the train
for Salamis from the Penn. Station or from Brooklyn. We decided we
would take it from Penn. Station, because we were without reading
matter, and knew that at Penn. Station we could stop in at the bookshop
in the Arcade and get something to amuse us en route. All began
merrily. We got to the station at 9 o’clock, bought an Everyman edition
of Kit Marlowe’s plays, and, well supplied with tobacco, we set sail
on the 9:10 vehicle. How excellent are the resources of civilization,
said we to ourself, as we retraced the sorrows of Dr. Faustus. Here
we are, we cried, sitting at ease in a brilliantly lighted smoker
reading “Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,” and
in fifty minutes we will greet again the shabby but well-loved station
at Salamis. We even meditated writing a little verse in Marlowe’s own
vein, to be called “The Passionate Long Islander to His Love”:
Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
That Patchogue, Speonk, Hempstead fields,
Ronkonkoma or Yaphank yields.
At this moment, which was 9:15, and just issuing from the tunnel, the
train stopped, all lights went out, and we sat gazing at the dreary
dormitory of Pullman cars in Long Island City.
For thirty-six minutes we sat so. Occasionally there would be the sound
of a heavy sigh, a long-drawn suspiration of some mentally troubled
commuter whose feels (in the language of Opal Whiteley) were not
satisfaction feels; but commuters are a tested and toughened lot. The
time lagged heavily and darkly by, but there was no shrill outcry, no
futile beating of the breast. One shining thought there was to console,
and the conductor ratified it (we asked him ourself). “Oh, yes,” he
said, “the Oyster Bay connection waits for this train at Jamaica.” We
envisaged the picture of that battered and faithful old Oyster Bay
loco, waiting patiently for its lovers along the windy platform, and we
were heartened.
But when we got to Jamaica, the old harridan steam train had gone.
Then, indeed, hearts were broken. Then there was scudding to and fro,
and voices raised in menace and imprecation. The next train to Oyster
Bay, said the officials, leaves at 12:10. The mourners gathered in
little groups, drawn by their several affinities. Those who yearned
for Garden City formed one posse. Those who yearned for Babylon and
Bayshore, another. But, let it proudly be said, the Oyster Bay group
were the loudest in outcry, the angriest in mood. We have a pride of
our own on the Oyster Bay branch. (“Cut was the branch that might have
gone full straight.”) In Salamis alone, Gen. Pershing is living there,
and Dorothy Gish visits sometimes. Are we to be trifled with? Off
went the Oyster Bay contingent, some twenty angry, to see the Station
Master. Words were passed, without avail.
We ourself are a realist at such moments. We saw that the Station
Master held no balm for the sufferers. We fled from the brutal scene.
Downstairs one taxi, the only one, was just embarking a passenger and
wheeling off. For an instant (we confess it) our nerve was shaken. We
screamed, and there was in that scream the dreadful keening note of a
lioness balked of her whelps or a commuter ravished of his train. Ha!
the taxi halted. It was, strangely enough, a lady chauffeur, and tender
of heart. No man chauffeur would have halted at such a time, but this
madonna of taxi drivers had a bosom of pity. Her fare, already in situ,
was bound for Garden City. They agreed to take us along, and after
Garden City had been made she would steer for Salamis.
O Lady Taxi Driver of Jamaica, a benison befall thee. The wind roared
stiffly across the plains, and the small henry made leeway. The small
henry scuttled like a dog, half sideways, nosing several points upward
into the gale in order to pursue a straight course. The other passenger
was plainly a Man of Large Affairs, sunk in a generous melancholy.
There was little talk. We sat, or, when the roadway required it, leaped
aloft like striking trout. Garden City was duly reached, and then,
by and by, the woody glens of Salamis Heights. The fare we paid our
saviour was $7. We did not grudge it her. She has a seven-year-old
boy, and all day she keeps house, all night she runs her taxi. But, in
candour, we think the railroad owes us that $7. It has ever been held a
point of honour that the Oyster Bay train shall wait for its children.
When there are only two after-dinner trains, that seems not much to ask.
If we had gone from Brooklyn, all would have been well.
[Illustration]
MATTHEW ARNOLD AND EXODONTIA
I
This year (1922) brings the centennial of Matthew Arnold’s birth.
Except for a few of his more important poems, we confess to an
affectionate ignorance about Arnold. Of course, we remember taking
notes during a number of lectures about him when we were at college;
a few catchwords about culture and anarchy; sweetness and light;
seeing life steadily and seeing it whole; Barbarians, Philistines, and
Populace--a few faded buntings of this sort flutter rather dingily from
the halliards of our memory; and we remember that he had exceptionally
fine whiskers. We used to speculate, in the jejune manner of youth,
as to whether Matt, as Rugby boy and Oxford undergraduate, was not
a rather amusing contrast to the robust Tom Brown whom his father
made famous. But, as you will see, Arnold has never been more than an
interesting and gracious wraith in our mind. Those of his essays that
we were told to reread we have forgotten, or else (more likely) we
never opened.
But rambling not long ago in the cellar of Mr. Mendoza’s bookshop
on Ann Street we found, with a shock of excitement, a little book
published in Boston in 1888, called _Civilization in the United States:
First and Last Impressions of America_, by Matthew Arnold. We wondered
whether this little book had ever been perused by any of the vigorous
skeptics who published a recent large volume with the same title. They
made, as far as we can recall, no allusion to it. Yet they would have
found in it much nourishing meat.
Matthew Arnold’s analysis of American life is interesting to read
now. Much of his estimate he would certainly wish to revise. We
forget just when it was that he travelled over here--in the 80’s, we
suppose--but his general comment was that American civilization was not
_interesting_. He used the word in a very special sense, apparently;
he explains it by mentioning the sense of beauty and the sense of
distinction. He found American life lacking in charm and in those
elements of beauty which appeal to the tranquil and more reflective
emotions. It is entertaining--in view of later developments--to hear
him say that “the American cities have hardly anything to please a
trained or a natural sense for beauty ... where the Americans succeed
best in their architecture--in that art so indicative and educative of
a people’s sense for beauty--is in the fashion of their villa-cottages
in wood.” One cannot help putting a little covey of exclamation marks
in the margin at that point. Those “villa-cottages in wood” of the
1880’s are now the jest and rapidly vanishing pox of our suburbs.
Even to Abraham Lincoln, by the way, he denies “distinction.” He
says, “shrewd, sagacious, humorous, honest, courageous, firm; a man
with qualities deserving the most sincere esteem and praise, but he
has not distinction.” We have read somewhere (it is an unforgettable
crumb of human oddity) that Arnold was chiefly interested in Lincoln’s
assassination because the murderer shouted in Latin as he leapt on the
stage.
There is much that might be said about a point of view so sincere, so
sympathetic, so bravely honest, and yet so lacking in some qualities
of imagination as that we seem to find in Arnold’s book. But what we
want to quote is a portion of his comment on the American newspapers.
Perhaps it is more nearly true still--and, since Northcliffe, more
nearly true of British newspapers also--than any other part of his
remarks. But we wish to quote it without either assent or denial. He
wrote:
You must have lived amongst their newspapers to know what they
are. If I relate some of my own experiences, it is because
these will give a clear enough notion of what the newspapers
over there are, and one remembers more definitely what has
happened to oneself. Soon after arriving in Boston I opened a
Boston newspaper and came upon a column headed: “Tickings.”
By _tickings_ we are to understand news conveyed through the
tickings of the telegraph. The first “ticking” was: “Matthew
Arnold is sixty-two years old”--an age, I must just say in
passing, which I had not then reached. The second “ticking”
was: “Wales says, Mary is a darling”; the meaning being that
the Prince of Wales expressed great admiration for Miss Mary
Anderson. This was at Boston, the American Athens. I proceeded
to Chicago. An evening paper was given me soon after I arrived;
I opened it, and found under a large-type heading, “_We have
seen him arrive_,” the following picture of myself: “He has
harsh features, supercilious manners, parts his hair down the
middle, wears a single eyeglass and ill-fitting clothes.”
Notwithstanding this rather unfavourable introduction, I was
most kindly and hospitably received at Chicago. It happened
that I had a letter for Mr. Medill, an elderly gentleman of
Scotch descent, the editor of the chief newspaper in those
parts, the Chicago _Tribune_. I called on him, and we conversed
amicably together. Some time afterwards, when I had gone back
to England, a New York paper published a criticism of Chicago
and its people, purporting to have been contributed by me to
the _Pall Mall Gazette_ over here. It was a poor hoax, but many
people were taken in and were excusably angry, Mr. Medill of
the Chicago _Tribune_ amongst the number. A friend telegraphed
to me to know if I had written the criticism. I, of course,
instantly telegraphed back that I had not written a syllable
of it. Then a Chicago paper is sent to me; and what I have the
pleasure of reading, as the result of my contradiction, is
this: “Arnold denies; Mr. Medill refuses to accept Arnold’s
disclaimer; says Arnold is a cur.”
There were California boosters even then, we note. Arnold quotes a
Coast newspaper which called all Easterners “the unhappy denizens of
a forbidding clime,” and added: “The time will surely come when all
roads will lead to California. Here will be the home of art, science,
literature, and profound knowledge.”
II
You probably thought (and justly) that we cut off Matthew Arnold
rather abruptly yesterday. Well, we did; but there’s always a reason
for everything. We had to hurry uptown, by order of Dr. James Kendall
Burgess, the philosophical dentist, to call on Dr. Hillel Feldman for
some exodontia. In the old days, we dare say, it would have been called
having a tooth pulled, but we like the word exodontia much better.
Now, since we have always been candid with our clients, we will admit
that we were a bit nervous. Of course, we knew that these operations
rarely turn out fatally; but still, we could see, as soon as we got
into that medical office building at 616 Madison Avenue, that we
were out of our element. Everywhere there were trained nurses in
uniform--going about on “errands of mercy,” we supposed. There was
one near the elevator downstairs; there was another in the corridor
upstairs; and the soothing, tender way they asked what we wanted made
us, somehow, even more conscious of the painful nature of our errand.
However, another of our habits came somewhat to our rescue when we
found ourself sitting in Dr. Feldman’s chair. We are timid, we admit;
but we are also inquisitive and like to know the details of what’s
going on. We could see right away that Dr. Feldman is a tactful man,
for he keeps his instruments under a neat little napkin so that you
don’t have a chance to be alarmed by all those interesting gouges and
pincers. Dr. Feldman immediately pierced our jaw with some stuff he
called novocaine, and then, quite as though this was a very commonplace
proceeding, began to chat leisurely. “You know,” he said, “a fellow
can’t read your things in the paper just for a laugh. Those other
fellows’ columns, you can read them and get some fun out of it; but
your stuff, you have to read carefully and wade through a long slab to
see what it’s all about.”
“Yes,” we said, “we’re like you, Doctor. We believe in giving our
patients discipline--making them suffer.”
Now, of course, we said this hoping to give Dr. Feldman a chance to say
right away, “Oh, I’m not going to make you suffer. This won’t hurt a
bit.”
He didn’t say it, however. He chuckled in a way that seemed to us
a trifle threatening. We hastened to appease him by saying some
complimentary things about his shining, complicated apparatuses. To our
displeasure we found that our jaw now had a numb and frozen feeling, so
that we could not talk properly. We could only mumble.
The calm, genial way in which Dr. Feldman sized us up as we sat there
with our jaw getting more and more queer--a curious sensation of
mingled freezing and heat--reassured us a little. “Does the novocaine
make perspiration come out on your forehead like that?” he asked, with
a sort of intellectual curiosity. “No, no,” we hastened to say, out of
the other side of our mouth. “We’ve been hurrying to get here, Doctor.
Didn’t want to keep you waiting.” That was true; but we were afraid
he would think we were scared. He began to toy gently with the corner
of the napkin on his instrument stand. We were tremendously eager
to see what kind of tools he had concealed there. But he outwitted
us. He suddenly uttered the excellent words we had been hoping for.
“This’ll be absolutely painless,” he said, and then with great gusto
and alacrity he sprang upon us. There was a sound rather like grinding
out a stone that is imbedded in a frozen pond. It was very interesting.
We think the adverb _absolutely_ perhaps was a trifle too strong:
perhaps a precisian in words might substitute _almost_; but at any rate
our sense of excitement far outweighed any small twinges. By the time
we thought that he was getting well started, “That’s all,” he said.
“Perhaps you’d better have a little stimulant.”
Well, naturally, by this time we felt that Dr. Feldman was one of
the best friends we had ever had. We shook his hand warmly and
assured him we wouldn’t have missed the adventure for anything. Then
we went to browse for a few minutes in the second-hand bookshops
on Fifty-ninth Street to think it over. We called on Mr. Mitchell
Kennerley at the Anderson Galleries. As our jaw was still very much
frostbitten, we couldn’t talk very clearly, and we had to hold our
pipe in an unaccustomed corner of our mouth. We fear he misunderstood
our condition; but he was too polite to say so. Our mind went back to
Matthew Arnold.
Matthew Arnold, as we were saying, complained that American
civilization was not _interesting_. A silly thing to say, it seems to
us. He meant, evidently, that it did not supply the kind of interest
to which he was accustomed, or for which he yearned. For surely, to
any one ready to lay aside preconceptions, _interesting_ is exactly
what American life has always been. We reflected that the one word we
instinctively used in explaining to Dr. Feldman how we had enjoyed our
visit to him was just that--_interesting_. We feel that if Arnold had
been a little more courageously imaginative he might have felt the
same way about America. It may very truly have troubled some of his
sensitive nerves; it may have caused him terror and shuddering; it may
have seemed violent and tragic; but surely he might have seen that it
was a teeming laboratory of life and amazement. We believe, by the way,
that it was 1883 when he was first here; for we have just noticed in
Mendoza’s bookshop a copy of Arnold’s poems autographed by him for a
lady, and dated 1883. It was an American edition, so probably he signed
it while in this country.
Mr. Arnold’s comments on American newspapers, we should like to add,
were perhaps just a little scarce in humour. It is all very well to
stand aghast at the jocular irreverence of much newspaper writing;
but evidently it never occurred to Arnold that much of it is not mere
vulgarity but expresses a national sense of gusto and hilarity that is
far from a bad thing.
We cannot resist concluding this too brief excursus by quoting a letter
which came to us from a mysterious correspondent--whom we know only by
the initials N. O. N. P. It seems to us the most charming portrait of
Arnold that we have ever seen. N. O. N. P. wrote:
There is no art to read the mind’s construction in the face;
but it is possible to see the correspondence, after the cypher
has been well de-coded. Matthew Arnold--a plain face--a
plain brow--dark hair, parted exactly in the middle--and
cheek whiskers! A long nose, slightly thick, and drooping--a
wide plaster of mouth, firm but highly sensitive--a six-foot
stature and slim build--a scholastic figure and face and
cut--tutorial, perhaps; and in that plain face the expression
of _im_pression--that is, the visible result of sensitiveness.
Every pre-natal and post-natal fineness of his rarely fine,
high, sincere mind pervaded the texture of his countenance and
gave its stamp of authentic quality to render nugatory anything
that might seem superficially to counteract the inherent
integrity. Superficially, it might have seemed (perhaps) a smug
face or a supercilious one; not inwardly. Inward daintiness
might have been there, as there certainly was fastidiousness,
if not a frigidity. But a warm heart corresponded to that
mouth, which was thick without seeming sensual, and back of
that face was a just, a clear, a steady mind, a heat for right
and truth, a manly spirit with a manly intellect, a manly sense
of clean beauty--and with whatever æsthetic narrowings (if
they existed), a broad, direct, noble simplicity and humanity.
I hope he will verily have his reward, for in his brave,
unwhining, spotless life, he did most valuable, intelligent
drudgery for his bread; and out of a beautiful gift composed
the loftiest, simplest, broadest, gravest, most reserved and
felt, and perhaps most musical and moving poem (as pure poem)
of his generation--_Sohrab and Rustum_. It lacks all the
prettinesses of his contemporaries, but is the sole product of
his time, in “The Grand Style”--this, however, being of course
only the individual opinion of the present commenter.
If a man, one hundred years after his birth, still evokes such graceful
and pensive homage, he has evidently some durable claim upon our
hearts. Ever since our teens we have wondered what _Sohrab and Rustum_
was about and why it was always assigned as required study for College
Entrance. Now we intend to read it.
[Illustration]
DAME QUICKLY AND THE BOILROASTER
Something had happened to Dame Quickly’s storage battery, and all
the amperes seemed to have escaped. An extremely friendly and
cheerful young man came up from Fred Seaman’s garage, with mysterious
medical-looking instruments, to grant a consultation. In the course of
the chat he remarked, “If you once ride in a _Boilroaster_ car, you’ll
never be satisfied with any other.”
His energetic hands were at that moment deep in our loved Dame
Quickly’s mechanisms; she was wholly at his mercy; naturally we did not
feel like contradicting him or saying anything tactless. We wondered,
but only privately, whether the fact that Fred Seaman is the local
agent for the _Boilroaster_ had anything to do with this comment? Or
perhaps, we thought to ourself, our friend the battery expert really
is a convinced enthusiast for the _Boilroaster_, and felt that way
about it before he took a job at Fred Seaman’s establishment? We were
sorry that William James was dead, for we felt that the author of _The
Will to Believe_ would be the man to whom to submit this philosophical
problem. We were puzzled, because only a few days earlier another man
had said to us (with an equal accent of decisiveness and conviction)
that he would rather have a Dame Quickly than any _Boilroaster_ ever
made. “They stand up better than any of ’em,” he had said. Suddenly
it occurred to us how useful it would be if there were some kind of
spiritual gauge--like the hydrometer our friend was plunging into
the cells of the Dame’s battery--which one could dip into a man’s
mind to test the intellectual mixture of his remarks; to evaluate the
proportions of those various liquids (the strong acid of self-interest,
the mild distilled water of candour, etc.) which electrify his mental
ignition.
Well, how about the _Boilroaster_, we said--(searching for a technical
term that would show him we are a practical man)--Do they stand up?
He suggested that we get into his own _Boilroaster_, which stood
grandly overshining the dusty Dame (reminding us of those pictures
where a silhouette of the new _Majestic_ is placed behind a little
picture of the _Teutonic_ or some other humble ship of older days) and
take a run around Salamis while he tinkered with the battery.
Oh, no, we said nervously. Dame Quickly is the only car we know how to
run, and besides the gear shift is different in the _Boilroaster_; we
might get confused and have to come all the way home in reverse, which
would be bad for our reputation in the village.
Have you ever ridden in the _Boilroaster_? he asked.
Yes, we said--Fred Seaman took us over to Locust Valley the other
evening. (Suddenly a horrid thought struck us. We had thought that Fred
had given us that lift over to Locust Valley just in the goodness of
his heart. But now we wondered----)
When he left, he put in our hand a handsome book all about the
_Boilroaster_. That, we felt, was the first step in breaking down our
“sales resistance,” as they say in the _Business e19 Course_ up at
Columbia.
We’ve been reading that book, and we want to say that the chaps
who write that sort of literature are cunning fellows, and masters
of a very insinuating prose style. They begin with a very pretty
frontispiece of a _Boilroaster_ car standing, all alone and
dazzling-new, in a magnificent landscape of snow-clad peaks and clear
lakes. How the _Boilroaster_ got way up there (evidently somewhere near
Banff) without any one driving her, and without even a speck of dust on
her fenders, is a mystery. But there she is. Perhaps the man who drove
her all those miles from the nearest distributing agency is at the bar
of the C. P. R. Hotel, off behind those pine forests.
All the highbrow critics will tell you that the truly great writers
are lovers of Beauty. Well, the anonymous author of the _Boilroaster_
book is as keen a champion of Beauty as any one we ever heard of. And
not only beauty, but refinement, too. There are two whole pages giving
little pictures of “refinements.” This is a book, we think, that could
be put in the hands of the young without any hesitation. In fact,
that is just where we did put it, for the urchin is cutting out the
pictures of _Boilroasters_ at this very minute. The whole trend of
Advertising nowadays (we wonder if they mention this in the lectures on
Advertising Psychology up at Columbia) is to give delight to children.
We would hate to tell the Cunard Line and the International Mercantile
Marine Company how many of their folders our juveniles have scissored
up with shouts of delight.
The _Boilroaster_ book is going to be a lesson to us. We don’t know
if we will ever own a _Boilroaster_, but we are certain that before
we do we have got to spruce up and be a bit more genteel. At present,
we would be a bit of anticlimax riding in a car like that. There is
“new beauty in its double bevel body line.” We want to look a bit
more streamline ourself before we go in for one. There are “massive
head lamps, graceful cowl lights, the louvres are more in number and
their edges show a smart touch of gold.” There is “a courtesy light
illuminating the left side of the car,” and a ventilator in the cowl.
We don’t know exactly what the cowl is, or the louvres, or at any rate
we’ve never discovered them in Dame Quickly.
Just as we are writing this, we see a headline in the papers (in
the _Evening Post_, to be accurate) about Sir Charles Higham, who
“Sees Advertising as a Great Moral Force.” We know of no writer who
has a more solid appreciation of moral forces than the author of
our _Boilroaster_ brochure. What he has to say about “sheer merit,”
“sound principles,” “elimination of waste,” “combination of beauty and
utility,” “superiority and refinement,” “good taste” and “harmony of
colour” makes this work a genuine essay in æsthetics. Moreover, we
like his rational eclecticism. When the car has a 126-inch wheelbase,
it makes it very easy riding and gives it charming “roadability.”
When it has a 119-inch wheelbase, it “gives a short turning radius
which makes it remarkably easy to handle.” Even in the least details,
our author has an eye for loveliness. He confesses himself struck by
“the attractive grouping of instruments on the dash, which emphasizes
_Boilroaster_ individuality.” The upholstery, he says, is “restful.”
The folding seat for the extra passenger is “in reality a comfortable
chair.” And when we learn that the opalescent dome and corner lamps
“provide enough light for reading,” our only regret is that he doesn’t
add a suggested list of readings for tenants of a _Boilroaster_
Enormous Eight.
Unhappily space is lacking to tell you in detail what a competent and
winning fellow this author is. In the scientific portions of the work
he rivals Fabre--in regard to the clutch, he says “the driven member is
a single spider rotating between two rings.” His passion for elegance,
comfort, simplicity, and economy has never been surpassed--no, not by
Plato or Walter Pater. The only drawback about his essay is that we
feel we could never live up to the vehicle he describes.
[Illustration]
VACATIONING WITH DE QUINCEY
I
Having severed our telephone wire and instructed the office boys to
tell all callers that we are out at lunch, we look forward to a happy
summer. We are going to begin enjoying ourself by systematically
exploring the books in the library of the _Evening Post_. On a top
shelf, well sprinkled with dust, we have found the excellent collected
edition of De Quincey, in fourteen volumes, edited by David Masson. It
is true that the first four volumes seem to have disappeared; but even
if we begin at Volume V we calculate we shall find enough to keep us
entertained for some time.
After we have finished De Quincey we are going to tackle P. T. Barnum’s
_Struggles and Triumphs_, a book that has long tempted us. We think
kindly of the Founding Fathers of the _Post_ for having assembled all
these interesting volumes for our pleasure.
We have begun De Quincey with Volume V--_Biographies and Biographic
Sketches_. Some of this--particularly the Joan of Arc--has a faintly
familiar taste: perhaps we were made to read it at school. But we
do not think we ever read before the magnificent essay on Charles
Lamb. There is a long interpolated passage about Joan of Arc which
does not seem to have anything to do with Lamb. Perhaps the _North
British Review_ (in which the essay first appeared in 1848) paid its
contributors on a space basis. But, ejecting this parenthesis, it is
certainly noble stuff. Moreover, it is interesting to note that at the
time De Quincey wrote, Lamb was by no means established on the pinnacle
of security as a permanent brightness in our literature. De Quincey
writes as though consciously contradicting some opposition. It seems
odd to hear him speak of people who “regard him [Lamb] with the old
hostility and the old scorn.”
We had intended not to introduce any quotations, for in this very
volume De Quincey makes some stinging remarks about people who pad out
their copy by interlarding material from stronger fists. But indeed the
following passage seems to us so near the top of prose felicity that we
lapse from grace:
In regard to wine, Lamb and myself had the same habit, viz.,
to take a great deal _during_ dinner, none _after_ it.
Consequently, as Miss Lamb (who drank only water) retired
almost with the dinner itself, nothing remained for men of our
principles, the rigour of which we had illustrated by taking
rather too much of old port before the cloth was drawn, except
talking; amœbean colloquy, or, in Dr. Johnson’s phrase, a
dialogue of “brisk reciprocation.” But this was impossible;
over Lamb, at this period of his life, there passed regularly,
after taking wine, a brief eclipse of sleep. It descended
upon him as softly as a shadow. In a gross person, laden with
superfluous flesh, and sleeping heavily, this would have been
disagreeable; but in Lamb, thin even to meagreness, spare and
wiry as an Arab of the desert or as Thomas Aquinas wasted by
scholastic vigils, the affection of sleep seemed rather a
network of aërial gossamer than of earthly cobweb--more like
a golden haze falling upon him gently from the heavens than a
cloud exhaling upwards from the flesh. Motionless in his chair
as a bust, breathing so gently as scarcely to seem certainly
alive, he presented the image of repose midway between life and
death, like the repose of sculpture; and, to one who knew his
history, a repose affectingly contrasting with the calamities
and internal storms of his life.
De Quincey’s essay on Lamb, like so many of the great critiques of the
early nineteenth century, was originally written as a book review. We
like to imagine what a _Blackwood_ or _Edinburgh_ reviewer would have
said if the editor (in the manner of to-day) had told him to deal with
a volume in 500 or 1,000 words. The nineteenth century reviewer took a
spacious view of his job. Of this particular essay, which purported to
be a notice of Talfourd’s _Final Memorials of Charles Lamb_ (1848), De
Quincey said (very nobly):
Liberated from this casual office of throwing light upon a
book, raised to its grander station of a solemn deposition to
the moral capacities of man in conflict with calamity--viewed
as a return made into the chanceries of heaven upon an issue
directed from that court to try the amount of power lodged in
a poor desolate pair of human creatures for facing the very
anarchy of storms--this obscure life of the two Lambs, brother
and sister (for the two lives were one life), rises into
grandeur that is not paralleled once in a generation.
Of course, De Quincey was a celestial kind of reviewer. Not even opium
could make most of us write like that. Also he had the right idea about
dealing with correspondence and accumulated papers. He used to live in
one set of lodgings until the mass of miscellaneous matter filled the
room. Then he would move to other quarters, leaving the pile in charge
of the landlady. He always took care not to inform her of the new
address.
There is a great deal more to be said about this Volume V, but we must
skip along. (There is no reason, you know, why you shouldn’t look up
the book for yourself.) We will just be generous enough to pass on De
Quincey’s anecdote about how Coleridge first became a great reader.
Coleridge, as a child, was going down the Strand in a day dream,
imagining himself swimming the Hellespont. Moving his hands as though
swimming, he happened to touch a gentleman’s pocket. The latter thought
him a young pickpocket. “What! so young and yet so wicked?” The boy,
terrified, sobbed a denial, and explained that he had been imagining
himself as Leander. The gentleman was so pleased that he gave him a
subscription to a circulating library.
The next volume of De Quincey that we intend to study is X, in which we
find _Letters to a Young Man Whose Education Has Been Neglected_. We
are rather stricken to note that these were addressed to a young man
who was exactly the same age as ourself.
The first of these letters was evidently in the nature of a Christmas
present to the young gentleman, known to us only as Mr. M. It is dated
December 24, 1824. Whether Mr. M. was an actual person and drew this
letter from his stocking on Christmas morning we are not informed.
Our own conjecture is that he was as mythical as his sister-in-lore
Miss M., of Walter de la Mare’s _Memoirs of a Midget_. Somehow there
is a humorous lack of reality in the way De Quincey introduces him.
Mr. M. is in possession of “great opulence, unclouded reputation, and
freedom from unhappy connexions.” Also he had “the priceless blessing
of unfluctuating health.” And yet he exhibited “a general dejection.”
This, a young lady of seventeen told De Quincey, “was well known to
arise from an unfortunate attachment in early life.” But finally De
Quincey exhumed the truth. Mr. M. had been defrauded of education. And
Mr. M.’s first inquiry is whether at his present age of 32 it would be
worth his while to go to college.
No, indeed, is De Quincey’s unhesitant reply. Mr. M. would be 12
or 14 years older than his fellow-students, which would make their
association “mutually burthensome.” And as for the value of college
lectures--
These whether public or private, are surely the very worst
modes of acquiring any sort of accurate knowledge, and are just
as much inferior to a good book on the same subject as that
book hastily read aloud, and then immediately withdrawn, would
be inferior to the same book left in your possession, and open
at any hour to be consulted, retraced, collated, and in the
fullest sense studied.
It appears that the dejected young man, despite--or perhaps on account
of--his lack of education, nourished a secret desire to be a writer. He
had been reading Coleridge’s _Biographia Literaria_, particularly the
chapter called _An Affectionate Exhortation to Those Who in Early Life
Feel Themselves Disposed to Become Authors_. According to De Quincey,
Mr. M. asks his opinion on Coleridge’s views of this topic. Alas!
now we are more convinced than ever that Mr. M. is only a phantom:
unquestionably De Quincey, the canny super-journalist, wafted him from
the opium flagon as an ingenious target for some anti-Coleridge banter.
His chaff directed at Coleridge is gorgeous enough. It is double-decked
chaff, too; for he not only affectionately twits his fellow opium-eater
_in propria persona_, but introduces for discussion an anonymous
“eminent living Englishman,” who is plainly also Coleridge. He compares
C. with Leibnitz for his combination of fine mind with a physique of
equine robustness. This passage somehow causes us to chuckle aloud--
They were centaurs--heroic intellects with brutal capacities of
body. What partiality in nature! In general, a man has reason
to think himself well off in the great lottery of this life if
he draws the prize of a healthy stomach without a mind; or the
prize of a fine intellect with a crazy stomach; but that any
man should draw both is truly astonishing.
The first letter concludes with a charmingly humorous discussion of the
problem (valid now as then) how a man of letters may get any creative
work done and at the same time keep his wife and children happy.
II
Old Bill Barron, up in the composing room, asks us when we are going to
take our Vacation. We are taking it now, we reply, reading De Quincey.
Certainly we can’t imagine why any one with as pleasing a job as ours
should have any right to go off on holiday. There are so many people
in this town who have to spend their time reading the new books: we
are going to enjoy ourself by dipping into the old ones. With one
exception. We have found, in the office of the _Literary Review_, and
immediately made off with, _L’Extravagante Personnalité de Jacques
Casanova_, by Joseph Le Gras (Paris: Bernard Grasset). We read the
first sentence--
Emporté dans une berline confortable, dont les coffres sont
abondamment pourvus de viandes, de pâtés et de vins; une femme
sur les genoux, une autre parfois à ses côtés qui se frotte
amoureusement à lui; vêtu de riches vêtements, le jabot et les
manchettes enjolivés de fines dentelles, les goussets garnis
de montres précieuses, le ventre chatouillé de breloques,
les doigts étincelants de bagues, les poches tintant d’or et
le mollet caressé dans la soie; réclamant à grand bruit les
meilleurs chevaux aux relais, la plus belle chambre dans les
auberges, jetant sa bourse à l’hôtelier et repartant au milieu
des révérences et des courbettes; tel nous apparaît, en une
attitude un peu conventionelle, l’aventurier Casanova au temps
de sa splendeur.
That, of course, is one way of taking a Vacation. We remember, with a
small behind-the-arras chuckle, one of Pearsall Smith’s _Trivia_ called
“Lord Arden,” which deliciously hits off the buried Casanova in all of
us. At any rate, we shall read this book about Extravagant Jack.
But we must get back to De Quincey, or you’ll think we are purposely
avoiding the topic. We hardly know where to resume our prattle about
this glorious creature. Perhaps the first thing to note is an advisable
shift in viewpoint. Nowadays we are all introduced to De Quincey at
school, so his name comes to us with a peculiar mixture of sublimity
and painful awe--for we learn that he was a wicked opium eater. We
do not realize that a number of his contemporaries regarded him as a
low-down dog of a journalist. Southey, for instance, called him “one of
the greatest scoundrels living,” and urged Hartley Coleridge to go to
Edinburgh with a strong cudgel and give De Quincey a public drubbing
as “a base betrayer of the hospitable social hearth.” What was the
cause of this peevishness? Why, of course, the _Reminiscences of the
English Lake Poets_, a book whose social indiscretion is exceeded
only by its magnificently fecund humour; told, like all De Quincey’s
waggishness, with a rich sonorous volubility and luxurious plenitude of
verbal skill. There is a subtle wickedness of amusement in the apparent
solemnity of De Quincey’s polysyllables. The indignation caused
latterly by such books as Margot Asquith’s was nothing compared to the
anger of the Lake Poets when they found their innocent privacies laid
bare by the Opium Eater’s pen. The Lakers took themselves as seriously
as groups of humanitarians always do. And they were quite right.
Francis Thompson complains that Milton never forgot he was Milton--“but
we must admit it was worth remembering.” Yet the domestic affairs of
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were indeed irresistibly comic.
We have not forgotten that Hartley Coleridge, whose childhood was so
charmingly enshrined in a poem by Wordsworth--
Thou fairy voyager, that dost float
In such clear water that thy boat
May rather seem
To brood on air than on an earthly stream--
also floated in liquids more ruddy. He was removed from his fellowship
at Oxford on the charge of drinking too much--which must have been a
very great deal in the Oxford of those days.
_Reminiscences of the Lake Poets_ is the kind of book (Boswell’s _Tour
to the Hebrides_ is another) that causes indignation to the victims,
but intense delight to posterity. Posterity always has the best of us,
anyhow. The anecdote of Coleridge’s father and the protruding shirt
has always seemed to us one of the most disgracefully amusing minutiæ
in literature--and yet even now, after a hundred years of sanctity,
we are not sure whether we ought to reprint it. Well, you can buy
_Reminiscences of the Lake Poets_ in the Everyman Series.
The next thing to be said about De Quincey is that he would have been
a glorious editor for one of Mr. Hearst’s newspapers. He wrote a
good deal better than Mr. Arthur Brisbane; but he had the same acute
instinct as to what the public is really interested in. We believe it
was James L. Ford who described the Hearstian doctrine of newspaper
policy as “Plenty of crime and plenty of underclothes.” De Quincey was
a glutton for crime. Did you know that he lost his job as editor of the
_Westmoreland Gazette_ because for sixteen months he filled its columns
mainly with news of local lawbreaking? His employers did not appreciate
genius. His instinct was absolutely sound. In spite of the disclaimers
of refined people, crime news, when written not merely vulgarly but
with earnestness and art, is one of the most valuable features of any
journal. If we were running a newspaper we would begin by scouring the
press clubs for a young De Quincey.
He had, we say, the newspaper man’s instinct. Writing of the appalling
Williams murders in 1811, he complains that though the outrage was
committed shortly after midnight on Sunday morning, nothing reached the
papers until Monday. “To have met the public demand for details on the
Sunday, which might so easily have been done by cancelling a couple
of dull columns and substituting a circumstantial narrative ... would
have made a small fortune. By proper handbills dispersed through all
quarters of the infinite metropolis, 250,000 extra copies might have
been sold.”
This occurs in the postscript to _Murder as One of the Fine Arts_. In
that immortal essay itself the macabre humour and the sledge-hammer
impact of irony are probably a bit too grim and a bit (also)
too learned and crushing for the gentler sort of reader. But the
postscript, dated 1854, is the kind of horrific febrifuge that turns
the heart to an Eskimo patty. We suggest that you try reading it
aloud to a house party if you want to see blenching and shudders. The
ultimate tribute to any writing of the narrative kind is to read it
perpetually running ahead, in a horrid tension of eagerness, meanwhile
holding one’s proper “place” with a finger until one can force the eye
back to pursue a methodical course. We ourself read that postscript
thus, late at night in a lonely country house; and, by a noble
summation of horror, Gissing began to growl and bristle as we reached
the climax. We should hate to admit with what paltry quaverings we went
forth into the night, where the trees were smoke-colour in a pallid
moonglow, to see what was amiss. It was only a wandering dog prowling
about. But for a few moments we had felt certain that our harmless
Salamis Estates were thickly ambushed with assassins. It then required
a trip to the icebox, and a considerable infare upon a very ammoniac
Roquefort cheese, to restore tranquillity.
III
But we were talking about De Quincey. Yesterday was by no means a
day wasted, for we got our amiable friend Franklin Abbott into our
clutches, made him take a note of _Reminiscences of the English Lake
Poets_ (in the Everyman Series, we repeat) and insisted to him that
for a man of genteel tastes this is one of the most entertaining
works ever printed. And also by mere chance, which so often disposes
the bright fragments of life into a ruddy and high-spirited pattern,
we stopped in at a bookshop on Church Street just to say howdy to the
eccentric Raymond Halsey. Happening to remark that it is now just a
hundred years since the _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_ was
published, Raymond disappeared with a rabbit-like scuttling motion; was
heard digging among shelves at the rear, and returned with the smile of
one who thinks he foresees a sale. It was a first edition of the _Opium
Eater_ with the magical imprint of Taylor & Hessey. Was there ever a
more sacred name among publishers? We don’t need to remind you they
were Keats’s publishers, too. “Only fifty dollars,” said Raymond, but
it was lunch time and we had to leave.
In the dark rear chamber of a Cedar Street tavern, in that corner
underneath the photographs of the “Cheshire Cheese,” something happened
that seemed to us almost as pretty as anything published by the
vanished Taylor & Hessey. Frank spied an old friend of his, a fellow
Pittsburger, and the latter halted at our table on his way out. We
complimented him upon the fine bronze patina of his countenance, to
which he replied that he had been salmon fishing. “You know,” he said,
“there are only three salmon-flies that I care a continental for,” and
from his pocket he drew a small pink envelope. With a tender hand he
slid its contents onto the board. “There they are,” he said. His voice
seemed to change. “Dusty Miller, Durham Ranger, and Jock Scott.” The
little feathery trinkets, glowing with dainty treacheries, lay there
on the ale-bleached wood. Certainly it seemed to us there was poetry
in that moment. “I go to Bingham, Maine,” he said, “and drive eighteen
miles up the Kennebec.” (A small postern door opened gently upon
another world.) “Old So-and-so is waiting at the station. He’s always
there. I could leave to-night; he’d be sure to be there when the train
got in.”
We had a perfectly vivid picture of old So-and-so waiting at the
Bingham station. Yes, we could see him. Then the postern door closed,
gently but definitely, with that strong pneumatic piston that is
attached to all our doors.
We were saying, however, that De Quincey’s _Reminiscences of the Lake
Poets_ caused great indignation among the Grasmere coterie. This was
due not to any malice in De Quincey’s manner of writing, which was
affectionate and admiring throughout. It was due to something far more
painful than malice--the calm, detailed, candid, and minute dissection
of their lives. There was truly something astoundingly clinical in this
microscopy. For instance, to take the case of Wordsworth’s household,
these are some of the comments De Quincey makes:
(1) That Mrs. Wordsworth--whose charm and simplicity he
adores--was cross-eyed.
(2) That Dorothy--Wordsworth’s sister--was a fervid and noble
character, but stammered and was ungraceful.
(3) That Wordsworth’s appearance grew less attractive with
advancing age.
(4) That his legs were very ill-shapen and “were pointedly
condemned by all female connoisseurs in legs.” And that his
shoulders were drooping and narrow.
(5) “The mouth, and the whole circumjacencies of the mouth,
composed the strongest feature in Wordsworth’s face.” In fact,
they reminded De Quincey of Milton.
(6) That he aged very rapidly--when thirty-nine he was taken to
be over sixty.
(7) That his brother John, a sea captain, had lost his ship
while drunk.
(8) That Wordsworth cannot have been amiable as a child.
(9) That the only time Wordsworth was drunk was as an
undergraduate at Cambridge on visiting the rooms once occupied
by Milton.
(10) That he had not the temperament ever to be an attractive
wooer, and that it was “perplexing” that he had ever married.
(11) That he had had astonishing good luck in financial matters.
(12) That the Wordsworth menage was excessively plain and
severe in simplicity.
(13) That Wordsworth and Southey did not really like each other.
(14) That Wordsworth treated books very barbarously, and used
to cut the pages with a butter-smeared knife.
(15) That Wordsworth’s library was meagre and insignificant
compared to Southey’s.
These are only a few of De Quincey’s remarks, digested to their naked
gist; by which they lose all the amusing complexity of comment wherein
they are folded. But the précis will suffice to show that, whether
consciously or not, they were exactly calculated to wound, with very
deep incision, the most delicate sensibilities of an austere, somewhat
humourless and extremely self-regarding man.
IV
On the 13th of February, 1848, De Quincey received a letter asking
him to contribute a writing of some sort for an “album,” to be sold
at a Ladies’ Bazaar. This was to be held in March of that year, for
the benefit of the Library of the Glasgow Athenæum, and the ladies
begged him to reply by “return of post.” This incident in itself sounds
contemporary enough to give us a fellow feeling with De Quincey.
He had nothing available to send to the bazaar, but there was one
unfailing resource--his bathtub. Let him describe it:
In my study I have a bath, large enough to swim in, provided
the swimmer, not being an ambitious man, is content with going
ahead to the extent of three inches at the utmost. This bath,
having been superseded (as regards its original purpose) by a
better, has yielded a secondary service to me as a reservoir
for my MSS. Filled to the brim it is by papers of all sorts
and sizes. Every paper written _by_ me, _to_ me, _for_ me,
_of_ or _concerning_ me, and, finally, _against_ me, is to be
found, after an impossible search, in this capacious repertory.
Those papers, by the way, that come under the last (or hostile)
subdivision are chiefly composed by shoemakers and tailors--an
affectionate class of men, who stick by one to the last like
pitch-plasters.
De Quincey decided that the only thing to do was to draw something at
random from the bathtub for the ladies’ album. Accordingly, he made
a little ceremony of it. “Three young ladies, haters of everything
unfair,” were called in as referees; and a young man to do the actual
dipping. There were to be four dips into the tub, and, for some reason
not quite clear to us, the young man was made to attire himself in a
new potato-sack, with holes cut for his legs and only his right arm
free. It would have been more to the purpose, we should have thought,
to blindfold him; but he was instructed to dip at random, holding his
face “at right angles to the bath.” He was to be allowed one minute
to rummage at random among “the billowy ocean of papers,” and at
the command _Haul Up!_ was to come forth with whatever his fingers
approved. Before the ceremony began a glass of wine was brought. De
Quincey proposed the health of the ladies of the Athenæum, and pledged
his honour that whatever MS. should be dredged up would be sent off
to the bazaar. And this, he protested, though somewhere buried in the
bath there lay a paper which he valued as equal to the half of his
possessions.
But he was compelled to depart from the strict rigour of his scheme.
For let us see what the young man discovered in the bathtub. The first
dip brought up a letter still unopened. It proved to be a dinner
invitation for the 15th of February. De Quincey was congratulating
himself on the success of his raffle, which had thus enabled him to
answer this letter without irreparable breach of manners, when the
young lady referees discovered that the letter was four years old.
Number 2 was a “dun.” The young man was, to De Quincey’s dismay,
dredging in a portion of the tub rich in overdue bills. “It is true,”
he says, “that I had myself long remarked that part of the channel
to be dangerously infested with duns. In searching for literary or
philosophic paper, it would often happen for an hour together that I
brought up little else than variegated specimens of the dun.” And so
Number 3 was also a dun.
Number 4 turned out “a lecture addressed to myself by an ultra-moral
friend--a lecture on procrastination, and not badly written.” And
this also De Quincey refused to allow to be sent to the Athenæum. So
everything hinged on the fifth and extra dip, which was committed to
one of the young ladies. She blushed rosily (De Quincey assures us) at
the responsibility, and earnestly “ploitered” among the papers for full
five minutes. “She contended that she knew, by intuition, the sort of
paper on which duns were written: and, whatever else might come up,
she was resolved it should not be a dun.” “Don’t be too sure,” said De
Quincey; but when the paper was finally drawn out it was a blank sheet.
This, the referees maintained, was a judgment on De Quincey, and
meant that he should use the empty page to begin a new and original
contribution for the ladies of Glasgow. Which he did, and turned out
a little essay, suggested by their recent sport, on _Sortilege and
Astrology_. We have tried to read it, but so far without success.
We are interested to note that others besides ourself have been
turning back to De Quincey. In a recent _Fortnightly Review_ there
is an article by H. M. Paull, sound enough in its observations, but
grievously lacking in style. Mr. Paull, moreover, seems to us to shoot
too far when he says that “to modern readers De Quincey’s efforts
to be sprightly only cause annoyance.” It is true that sometimes
his astonishing verbosity and his passion for footnotes outrun a
hasty temper; but for our part we find something notably odd and
agreeable in his queer, preposterous humour. His habit of calling
great men familiarly by their first names--Dr. Johnson is “Sam,” and
even the learned and ancient Josephus becomes “Joe,” and Thomas à
Kempis “Tom”--is deplored by Mr. Paull; but this habit, we fear, has
been inherited by columnists, and we had better not defend it too
vigorously. The bathtub anecdote, which we have pared down until it
loses most of its gusto, is, in the original, not devoid of humour.
(Volume XIII of the collected works.)
And De Quincey’s ramified and rambling way of narrative offers
surprising delights in unexpected parentheses. For instance, in the
_Opium Eater_ he happens to mention a murder that had been committed
on Hounslow Heath. “The name of the murdered person was Steele, and
he was the owner of a lavender plantation in that neighbourhood.” A
lavender plantation! There is a fragrant circumstance for the mind of
a poet to dwell on. Think of the chance immortality of the unlucky
Steele--deathless now, because (poor devil) he was murdered and had a
lavender plantation.
[Illustration]
THE SPANISH SULTRY
Turning up masterpieces of unintentional humour is a pleasant diversion
of most writers. Everyone has his own favourites--on this side Atlantic
many students vouch for _The Balsam Groves of Grandfather Mountain_ (by
Shepherd M. Dugger) as the most amusing book written in America; in
Britain a few diligent explorers beat the drum for _Irene Iddesleigh_,
a novel written by Mrs. Amanda McKittrick Ros (of Belfast). Neither of
these books, unhappily, is easy to lay hand upon. But as a possible
competitor, how do you like _The Spanish Sultry_, by Ambrose Dargason
(Harrisburg, 1905)? We have no copy, but once we took down some
extracts.
Mr. Dargason’s hero was a window-glass merchant “whose nature was as
transparent and reflective as the goods he throve in.” This merchant’s
name was Wilbert Vocks; after his retirement from merchandise he spent
his time in travelling about looking for a suitable wife to inherit his
fortune. Unhappily, his inherent caution always caused him to sheer off
just when the reader was expecting the happy nuptials. The scene on the
park bench in Harrisburg, one moony evening, is a favourite of ours:
In the anæmic brightness of the crescendo moon Frederica’s eyes
were gilded with the splendor of her sex’s softest charms. They
were frosted bulbs of allure, and Wilbert trenched delicately
upon her French-shod toes as a symbol of hardy waxing
tenderness.
“Oh, Mr. Vocks,” said she, the beautiful coamings of her orbs
brimming over with cheer, “how many equinoxes will hereafter
wax and wane, search through this garden, but for one in vain.”
“You are quoting the Rubaiyat,” said he, “but with indifferent
adhesion to the text.”
“Adhesion,” she replied, “was never one of my frailties,” and a
trifle peaked [sic] withdrew to the distant angle of the iron
settee.
Wilbert’s momentary harshness had already dissipated and he
regretted this intrusion of pedantic nicety upon the moonlit
promise of their double entente. “I bespeak a rapproachment,”
he gallantly murmured and, sliding deftly along the parallel
rods of metal subforming the trysting bench, found himself
chilled by coming en rapport with a section of the seat not
warmed by humane contact.
“But you must not reproach me,” she taunted shyly. “It is too
plain that you were not brought up in Harrisburg, where men
speak chivalrously to women and good breeding is a native
filament of the tender air.”
“Probably you are cold on that hitherto unfrequented segment
of iron slatting,” he said, shrivelling his inward tremolo by
an affection of stern brusque. “Why not slide over this way a
little, and chivalry commends my sheltering you from the sharp
fidgetings of frost which, however commendable to coal dealers,
betray the softer passions to gooseflesh and eventual snivel.”
Womanly, without further quibble, she responded, and the beauty
of that unsophisticated face was shielded soon from external
examination by the protective polygon of his arm and elbow. It
was a generous moment, and in harmony with all the higher laws
of human sentiment.
The delighted reader might be pardoned for thinking that in this
idyllic scene the restless affections of Mr. Vocks had found
satisfaction. But Frederica, after several evenings of intellectual
interchange, proved too shallow for his deep-laden mind. As Mr.
Dargason put it (his taste for oddly mixed nautical metaphors was
rather extreme):
He grounded upon the shoals of her mentality and, after
striving vainly to warp off into deeper areas of thought and
sentiment, was forced to broach his cargo of affection upon
the outgoing tides. Only thus, by careening and jettisoning
his rich hatches of emotional freight, and scudding forth
under bare poles and jury rigging, was he able to win clear
to the open sea of freedom, escaping the lee shores of an
uncongenial union. The bright occulting lamps of her eyes shone
like desperate beacons, but he remembered that lighthouses
are intended not to allure the cautious mariner, but to warn
him away. He reefed his binnacle gravely, and with only an
aching heart throbbing in the empty hatches of his personality
determined henceforward to steer by the unquestionable stars of
intuition. Her soundings were too easily fathomed. In a word,
she was not deep enough.
To quiet his melancholy, Mr. Vocks returns into the busy world of
trade. We have not space for very full quotation, but his discussion
with his business associates is worth a brief extract:
As surely as my name is Wilbert Vocks (he said), I intend that
this business shall be conducted in accord with all principles
of integrity and without demurrage to trickery. I have been
allowed by fortune to make a frugal and circumstantial
inspection of the general laws and accidents of life, and it
is my conviction that by exploring the estuaries of remorse no
bill of lading was ever brought to consummation. My rudder is
uncompromisingly turned to the favoring gales of expedience,
and we will sail a vigorous course into the latitudes of
magnetism.
In this admirable resolution Mr. Vocks was strengthened by his partner
(Mr. Henry Shingle), who is described as “a thrifty man the colour of a
glass of light beer, bleached brown by an open-air youth in Monongahela
County, but surmounted spiritually by the bright bubbles of aspiration
and elasticity. His clothes were neat and his habits orderly; of his
meditative components it is not necessary to surmise. He had not made
a habit of thinking profoundly, for he knew that any thought he might
have could easily be rebutted by more carefully trained men; therefore
he spared himself the embarrassment of argument. His management of the
Sales Department, however, was not to be criticized.”
We wish we had taken the trouble to copy out more of _The Spanish
Sultry_ while we were about it. The Sultry herself was the lady to
whom Mr. Vocks finally succumbed: she caused the fracture of the
window-glass business. As the author put it: “Hers was not the clear
transparence of Mr. Vocks’s glassy nature; she was stained with violent
and ominous colours, and through the panes of her vehement character
there burst downpours of scarlet and lavender trouble.”
[Illustration]
WHAT KIND OF A DOG?
“What kind of a dog is he?” said the Sea Cliff veterinary over the
phone.
We must confess we were stumped. All we could say was that he is--Oh,
well just a kind of a dog. We didn’t like to say that he is a Synthetic
Hound, and that his full name is Haphazard Gissing I. We didn’t like
to admit, at any rate over the telephone, that one of his grandmothers
may have been a dachshund and that certainly one of his brothers-in-law
is an Airedale. But at any rate it was fixed that we should take our
excellent Gissing over to the kennels to be boarded while we were in
the city.
Gissing’s behaviour was odd. He seemed, in some inscrutable way, to
suspect that something was going to happen. The night before his
departure he disappeared, and was away all night--saying good-by to
his cronies, we suppose. When we came home early in the afternoon
to convoy him to Sea Cliff he was nowhere to be found. But about
suppertime he turned up, looking more haggard and disreputable than
ever. There was a fresh scar on his face, and he was very hungry. He
ate his supper hurriedly, with no dignity at all. As soon as he heard
the rattle of his chain his spirits went very low.
But the admirable creature was docile. Dogs are profoundly religious
at heart: they put their trust in their deities. Unlike cats, who are
determined atheists and fight to the last against fate, dogs accept
calmly what they see is ordered by the gods. Gissing hopped into
Dame Quickly without protest and sat in silence during the ride. His
nose was unusually cold, but then that may have been only the winter
evening. He had somewhat the bearing of one who is going to the dentist.
Dog fanciers are always baffled and set at naught when they see
Gissing. But the Sea Cliff veterinarian made the most penetrating
remark when we arrived. He is accustomed, indeed, to dogs of high
degree--such dogs as are favoured by the North Shore of Long Island,
and Gissing was rather a shock to him. After a long look, “What is
his name?” he said. “Gissing,” we replied, with just a little of that
embarrassment we always feel when such questions are asked; for it
is generally shown in the manner of the inquirer that Gissing is an
unusual name, particularly for a dog who looks as though he ought to be
called Rover. So we said, perhaps a little defiantly, “Gissing.” But
the Doctor misunderstood it. “Guessing!” he said dubiously, and looked
again at the abashed quadruped. “That’s because he keeps you guessing
what breed he is.”
It amuses us the more to have Gissing staying there, associating with
the lordly dogs of Long Islanders who are spending the snow season
in Florida, because we feel that it is rather like sending a child
to a fashionable boarding school. It is probably useless as far as
education is concerned, but it ought to be an interesting experience,
and he may pick up a little polish. Gissing may make friends with some
influential dogs who will be of help to him in future life; who knows?
It is expensive, we admit; but since we paid nothing for him in the
first place, and have used him liberally for copy, we feel that we
owe Gissing this opportunity to improve himself. At any rate, he has
promised to write us a letter from time to time, and we shall see how
he gets on.
[Illustration]
A LETTER FROM GISSING
SEA CLIFF, L. I., February 13.
Dear Friend, I thought that as to-morrow is Valentine’s Day I had
better send you a line to report progress and to wish you my respectful
greeting. This Dr. R with whom I am living is a fine man and he smells
good to me I heard him say something about a Dog Show being on in
New York now and I thought I ought to tell you what the old veterans
in this veterinary hotel say, they say not to go to any such show
because those things there are not Regular Dogs, not Red Blooded He
Dogs not Dogs as you might say with the Bark On. Of course at first
it was a bit hard for me here being as I am a self-made dog so to say
and not accustomed to associate with pedigree folks and I rather wish
you would send me a new collar, that old strap is about wore out and
to tell you the truth there is a little Airedale flapper in the next
cage that I would like to make an impression on, some of the boys have
those collars that are studded with brass spikes and look mighty fine
don’t forget my size is 16. As I was saying, at first things were a
bit unpleasant, there is a big collie who looked me over the first
morning I was here and said “Ye men, how do they get that way? Who let
this mutt in here among cultivated animals?” Well, I wasn’t going to
stand for that stuff, so I talked right back to him and asked him if
he had ever been in print, but I didn’t get it across very big because
he was so ignorant he didn’t seem to realize what it means to have
been written up right along in the _Evening Post_. By the way, I get
kennel-sick for the old paper, out here they all read the sensational
sheets and I wish you would tell the Circulation Manager to put me
down for a two-months’ subscription. All the other fellows here gave
me the razz when I told them my name, Gissing, what kind of a name is
that for a dog they said? I told them I was named after a Writer but
none of the roughnecks ever heard of him. But I noticed right away
that the little Airedale kid was interested, she seems to have some
imagination her name is Mistress Zephine IV and I understand that the
Airedales are a very fine family. I told her that it had been suggested
by some that I had some Airedale in me too, and she laughed and looked
a bit scandalized. Either you are an Airedale or you aren’t, she said;
there’s no half and half measures. Live and learn, I told her. Anyway
she and I go out for a walk together with one of the men every morning,
and I have got her quite interested in books, she has promised to write
me when she gets home and tell what kind of books her master reads.
When you write, send me a cake of flea soap, I want to make myself
solid with this dame. There is a whole lot I could write about, but
this is just to say that You are my Valentine. These dogs here all have
three-barrelled names so I will sign myself in full,
Your affectionate dog,
HAPHAZARD GISSING I.
P. S. Please write right away and tell me what is the name of your
publisher, I want to give one of your books to Zephine, when I told
her you were a Writer she wouldn’t believe it, I am talking you up big
all the time here, but it is hard work to get away with it because
appearances are against us; never mind, some day we will knock them
cold; and what is the name of your car, one of these fellows here
says he rides around in a Rolls Royce and I told him yours was a Dame
Quickly and he says there isn’t any such boat, it’s an imported car I
told him. Yes, he says, imported from Detroit; never mind, I’ve got
them all guessing, they’re all keen to see what kind of a guy you are,
I told them the story about the old trousers, I guess it was a mistake.
H. G. I.
[Illustration]
JULY 8, 1822
It is to-day a hundred years since that sultry afternoon when Edward
John Trelawny, aboard Byron’s schooner-yacht _Bolivar_, fretted
anxiously in Leghorn Harbour and watched the threatening sky. The
thunderstorm that broke about half-past six lasted only twenty minutes,
but it was long enough to drown both Shelley and his friend Williams,
very haphazard yachtsmen, who had set off a few hours earlier in their
small craft. It was only some foolish red tape about quarantine that
had prevented Trelawny from convoying them in the _Bolivar_; in which
case, probably, that dauntless and all-competent adventurer could
have saved them. He was already dubious of their navigating skill.
So, if there is any comfort in the thought, one may conclude that
Shelley--though of course doomed to some tragic end, for skylarks do
not die in nests--was partly the victim of that invincible social and
bureaucratic stupidity against which he had always nobly chafed.
Those of our clients who care to devote this week-end to some
meditation on Shelley and what he still means to us can well begin
with Professor Firkins’s excellent essay. Mr. Firkins, with his usual
clarity, lays pen upon a number of considerations that have always
occurred to Shelley’s readers, but are not often carefully thought out.
For our own part, we also have a mind to reread Francis Thompson’s
essay, which remains in our memory as a prismatic dazzle of metaphor.
But there are two items which, if our high-spirited clients have not
read, they should certainly take steps to meditate. Hogg’s description
of Shelley at Oxford is as lovely a picture of youthful genius as one
is likely to find: and Trelawny’s _Recollections of the Last Days of
Shelley and Byron_ gives the other panel of the portrait. It is surely
not often that chance bequeaths us such sympathetic observers for both
beginning and end of a great life. And then, of course, it is not
impossible for our clients to recruit their imaginations by reading
some of Shelley himself. If your hearts are what we like to think they
are, you may
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number.
But, for information about Shelley, Trelawny is the darling of all
hearts. There is something indescribably manly in his rough, cheery,
potent narrative, with its amazing vigour and humour. “As a general
rule,” says he, “it is wise to avoid writers whose works amuse or
delight you, for when you see them they will delight you no more.”
But Shelley, he adds, was a grand exception to this very wise rule.
One could happily spread several pages with excerpts from his
good-humoured, observant companionship with Shelley and Byron. But,
to commemorate the date now here, we intend to copy out part of his
description of the burning of Shelley’s body on the Italian coast. Fine
and gruesome as it is, we cannot help believing it not well enough
known among those younger clients whom we daily cudgel towards virtue.
Trelawny says:
The lonely and grand scenery that surrounded us so exactly
harmonized with Shelley’s genius that I could imagine his
spirit soaring over us. The sea was before us ... not a human
dwelling was in sight. As I thought of the delight Shelley felt
in such scenes of loneliness and grandeur whilst living, I felt
we were no better than a herd of wolves or a pack of wild dogs,
in tearing out his battered and naked body from the pure yellow
sand that lay so lightly over it, to drag him back to the light
of day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I power to check
the sacrilege.... Even Byron was silent and thoughtful. We
were startled and drawn together by a dull hollow sound that
followed the blow of a mattock; the iron had struck a skull,
and the body was soon uncovered. Lime had been strewn upon it;
this, or decomposition, had the effect of staining it of a
dark and ghastly indigo color. Byron asked me to preserve the
skull for him; but remembering that he had formerly used one
as a drinking-cup, I was determined Shelley’s should not be so
profaned. The limbs did not separate from the trunk, as in the
case of Williams’s body, so that the corpse was removed entire
into the furnace. I had taken the precaution of having more and
larger pieces of timber, in consequence of my experience of
the day before of the difficulty of consuming a corpse in the
open air with our apparatus. After the fire was well kindled we
repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more wine was
poured over Shelley’s dead body than he had consumed during his
life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten
and quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense that
the atmosphere was tremulous and wavy. The corpse fell open and
the heart was laid bare. The frontal bone of the skull, where
it had been struck with the mattock, fell off; and, as the back
of the head rested on the red-hot bottom bars of the furnace,
the brains literally seethed, bubbled, and boiled as in a
cauldron, for a very long time.
Byron could not face this scene; he withdrew to the beach and
swam off to the _Bolivar_. Leigh Hunt remained in the carriage.
The fire was so fierce as to produce a white heat on the iron,
and to reduce its contents to grey ashes. The only portions
that were not consumed were some fragments of bones, the
jaw, and the skull, but what surprised us all, was that the
heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery
furnace, my hand was severely burnt; and had any one seen me do
the act I should have been put into quarantine.
After cooling the iron machine in the sea, I collected the
human ashes and placed them in a box, which I took on board the
_Bolivar_.
There are those still living who have shaken the hard, quick hand
that snatched Shelley’s heart from the coals. Sir Sidney Colvin, for
instance, who tells much about Trelawny in his _Memories and Notes of
Persons and Places_. And ghastly as the above account may seem to
those of tender sensibility, the parable it implies is too rich to be
omitted. Lo! were they not words of Shelley’s that winged the greatest
popular success in recent fiction?[A] And, though lulled long ago by
the blue Mediterranean--
that burning, reckless heart survives to us little corrupted by
time--survives as a symbol of poetic energy superior to the common
routines of life. “Mighty meat for little guests, when the heart of
Shelley was laid in the cemetery of Caius Cestius!”
[A] If Winter Comes.
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams--
[Illustration]
MIDSUMMER IN SALAMIS
In midsummer the morning walk to the station is one long snuff of green
and gold. On the winding stony lane through the Estates, before you
reach the straight highway to the railroad, it is a continual sharp
intake through the nostrils, an attempt to savour and identify the
rich, moist smells of early day. That tangle of woodland we would like
to call by the good old English word _spinney_, if only to haul in an
equally ancient pun. It is in the spinney that you get the top of the
morning. Dew is on the darkening blackberries. Little gauzy cobwebs are
spread everywhere on grass and bushes, suggesting handkerchiefs dropped
by revelling midnight dryads. The little handkerchiefs are all very
soppy--do the dryads suffer from hay fever? As you emerge onto the
straight station road, it is comforting if you see, not far away, some
commuter whose time-sense is reliable trudging not too far ahead. When
that long perspective is empty anxiety fills the breast. Across the
level Long Island plain come occasional musical whistles from trains on
the other line--the Westbury branch. But the practiced commuter knows
his own whistle and alarms not at alien shrillings.
In midsummer the subaltern life around us is grown lusty. The spider
is in his heyday and cannot be denied. Even indoors he shrewdly
penetrates. Looking for a book along the shelves, our eye was caught
by the hasty climb of one small spinner, who had been hanging on his
airy cord apparently also scanning the titles. To the top of the case
he retired, beyond reach. We wish him luck and hope no domestic besom
may find him. The young lumpish robins that used to flutter heavily
across the road, easily within grasp, fat paunches of feathers upon
incapable wings--these are now strong of flight and cat-safe. The young
rabbits with whom our woods are crowded no longer stand curiously in
the roadway almost until our foot is on them. They too are maturing and
have learned wise suspicion. The mole nightly increases his meandering
subway, which looks like a zigzagging varicose vein on the surface of
the lawn. And Gissing, untaught by menace or thrashing, every night
buffets down more of the phlox plants so carefully set out by Titania,
in his caperings with a roving Airedale from no one knows where. Only
the pond noises seem to have lessened in vitality. The frogs are
growing cynical, perhaps. In the sylvester midnight--thanks to Mr.
C. E. Montague for that pretty phrase--they utter only an occasional
disillusioned twangle, like the pluck of a loose bass string.
But there are signs that the Salamis Estates, so long a rustic Nirvana,
are going to fall under the hand of civilization. Which will, one
doubts not, have its advantages. It will be helpful to have gas to cook
with; and sidewalks are enjoyable for baby carriages and velocipedes.
But we shall never forget the happy Salamis Estates as they still
are--the lonely roads through virgin woods; the little hidden lakes;
the old abandoned orchard buried in overgrowth of vines and forest;
solitude and sanctuary. It is our darling old horror of a Salamis
railway station that has spared us the evils of “development.” The
casual passenger looking out on that gruesome pagoda of claret-coloured
brick and the huddle of wooden shacks around it, can only think of
Salamis as a place damned and forgotten. When some of our neighbours
grunt about that station we think inwardly of it with affection. It has
spared us much. There are some people, of course, who really like to
live in an artificed toy park like Nassau Boulevard or Garden City. We
were raised on the books of Mayne Reid and Du Chaillu; we are for the
jungle.
Yet we would not admit impediments to progress, if it does not rob our
rustic Eden of all its wilderness charm. And anyhow progress is coming
willynil. Actually, in the past six months, we have seen several houses
built on the outskirts of our region. The new Methodist kirk, though
apparently halted temporarily while our good dominy raises some more
funds, is already shoulder-high. Another church, years ago foundered
to the status of a saloon, now does brisking business as garage. The
little empty lodge at the entrance to the Estates, where we vote on
election days, will some day be a tea-room, we suspect. It is ideal
for that purpose, with its big open fireplace. In fact, we have heard
influential Salamites say that it could be had almost rent-free by some
really refined lady as a pekoe-saloon. Those who move the destinies of
the Estates think that a nice tea-room there would help the tone of
the neighbourhood. We pass this information on to ambitious ladies, on
condition we are allowed to have three lumps and an extra pat of butter.
It is all very interesting, because we are going to have a unique
opportunity to see exactly how civilization works. We have watched
new signboards go up at the front and back entrances to the Estates.
Not long ago a hundred thousand people might have gone by and never
known our little world was there. We study the new board of a
Mortgage Company announcing Desirable Plots. Yes, we can see a plot.
Civilization is plotting to take us under its wing. We are going to
have a good look at this thing they call civilization and see how it
goes about it. Five years from now will we be able to see cows being
driven home from their daily pasture near our Green Escape? We are not
blind to omens. Just as lightning glimmers even through eyelids closed
in bed, so behind the leafy screen of our still scatheless sanctum we
can see the bright eyes of Real Estate men blazing in the sky. Well
... there are compensations. Our title is clean and clear, and our
second mortgage sticks to us closer than a shinplaster. Wait till they
try to buy us out; we’ll get some of our own back.
So we meditate, partly as poet and partly as Man of Affairs, as we
walk homeward up the hill. The singing peanut-wagon of George Vlachos,
steaming its thin, pensive tune, comes clopping wearily down the road,
the white horse shambling a bit after a long day on the highways. FRESH
ROSTED PEANUTS, CANDY, ICE CREAM, says the legend. We note the pile of
fresh shingles beside the little house going up near the station; we
sniff the tang of mortar where our good friend Mr. Corliss will next
year be preaching the word of God in his new steeple-house (as George
Fox would have called it). We wonder where the Salamis Heights movie
will be, when it comes? That, and an occasional street-lamp up in our
tangled knolls, will make it easier to keep servants, very likely. And
think of having gas to cook with instead of those oil stoves.... Yes,
perhaps civilization will have merits.
[Illustration]
THE STORY OF GINGER CUBES
I
[_A letter from the Proprietor of the Ginger Cubes to his Advertising
Manager, who is ill in hospital._]
DEAR RUSSELL: When I heard that you had been taken to the hospital with
a badly dislocated sense of proportion and exhaustion of the adjective
secretions, I was worried. The doctor said that you were suffering
from a severe attack of deprecation and under-statement, and I feared
that would mean you would be quite unfit to help me in the forthcoming
campaign for Ginger Cubes. But I hear now that a few weeks of silence
and relaxation will bring you round. I have ordered the _Police
Gazette_ and _The Nation_ to be sent you. Each in its own way is highly
entertaining.
In our last conference, just before you were taken ill, you tried with
your usual energy and bullheaded vitality to persuade me to say a word
about the Ginger Cubes at the Paperhangers Convention. You made a great
deal of the point that this would be a vast gathering, and that it
would be excellent business for me to give them a “message.”
I ask you to meditate this thought: give me a small group of folks
who are more or less interested in the same sort of thing that I am,
and I will “talk my head off.” But speaking to large, miscellaneous
audiences, many of whom are only incubating there to pass away the time
until the theatres open, is my idea of loss of compression.
We have appropriated a fine promotion budget for the Ginger Cubes,
but I am holding up any action until I can argue the situation with
you. About newspaper advertising, for instance--I want your opinion as
to the papers which are read (1) most carefully, (2) by the class of
people to whom the Ginger Cubes are likely to appeal, (3) at the time
of day when their minds (and palates) are receptive--i. e., morning or
evening? For instance, do you think that people will be likely to be
tempted by the Cubes in the morning, just after breakfast? I think not.
I believe that the evening, in that faintness and debility that are
supposed to attack office-workers on their way home (especially in the
subway) is the psychological zero hour for the Ginger Cubes.
Miss Balboa, to whom I am dictating this, says that she never noticed
any sign of weakness or lack of energy in the evening rush on the
subway. I believe it is worth while to get the feminine reaction on
this matter before we make any decisions. One thing I have always
regretted about you as an Advertising Manager is that you are
not married. Wives are often very helpful in these questions of
merchandising strategy. But perhaps you can question some of the nurses
at the hospital and get their reaction.
In regard to these mediums, the question of circulation does not
cut any ice in my cynical and querulous mind. It is not a matter of
circulation, but of penetration, that excites me.
The chemical laboratory reports that the Cubes will positively have a
soothing and tonic effect upon the digestive organs, and that we are
justified in saying so. Unfortunately they say that the Cubes cannot
possibly be of any value in combating “pyorrhea,” so we cannot go
riding on the other folks’ toothpaste copy. For your amusement, I have
thought up this slogan:
+---------------------+
| WHY NOT INVEST IN |
| A NEW INTESTINE? |
| |
| TRY GINGER CUBES |
+---------------------+
Which is probably too startling. But anyhow, when we have decided, I
wish our copy to be Cumulative, Concise, and Continuous. Then, ho for
the Ginger Cubes!
Yours,
NICHOLAS RIBSTONE,
President The Ginger Cubes Corporation.
N.R./D.B.
II
[_A letter from the Proprietor of the Ginger Cubes to his Advertising
Manager, who is ill in hospital._]
DEAR RUSSELL: I am glad to hear from Dr. Nichevo that you are doing
well. He reports that in your delirium you had visions of nothing but
full page insertions, so I realize that you must have been a very sick
man. I am glad you are coming out of it. The Doctor says that a little
quiet meditation on business problems will help to bring you back to
“normalcy.”
So you might think this over. I have just been telling the boys at
our conference this morning that I want our advertising matter for
the Ginger Cubes to be distinguished. I’ve been much impressed, for
instance, by those ads that Childs restaurants have been running for
some time, in which they make use of historians, philosophers, poets,
and what not, to introduce the topic of food. I am wondering whether,
in your extensive reading, you have come across any literature in which
Ginger or Cubes have been written about in a pleasing, sentimental
strain? Miss Balboa thinks that Shakespeare said something about Ginger
being “hot in the mouth,” but I am a little afraid of that word hot.
How about
+--------------------------+
|THESE CUBES FROM THE SOUTH|
| ARE WARM IN THE MOUTH |
+--------------------------+
What I want you to do is tell me what the resources of literature are
in the way of quotations about Ginger.
Some of the boys are much taken by a suggestion that has come in from
the Gray Matter Advertising Agency, who somehow got wind of our plans.
Mr. Gray, the Psychology Director of Gray Matter Agency, wants us to
mark the cubes with little spots of white sugar, so that they look like
dice. Here’s the joker: he wants us to pack them in little boxes in
which half the cubes will be marked as five-spots and half as deuces,
using the slogan, They Always Turn Up Seven.
That seems to me a bit complicated, but I must admit that I’m rather
struck by the idea of advertising the Cubes as Digestive Dice. I’m
having the idea of marking them with sugar spots looked into, to see
what it will cost. I visualize a subway poster showing the cubes
tumbling out of a dice shaker, with the words Throw These for Good
Health. Do you think that is too distinctly masculine an appeal? But
think of getting this idea across to the lunching public, of always
carrying a box of the Ginger Cubes in their vest pocket (we could have
the box shaped like a little dice-shaker, hey?), they can use them to
throw for who is to pay the check, and then eat them. Can you put that
thought in twelve words?
What a pity that neither of us is married, and has no wife to fall
back on for advice in this delicate matter. Miss Balboa, my new
stenographer, thinks that women would not be attracted by this gambling
note; she says that women are born Dutch-treaters, and do not fall for
the idea of settling the lunch-check by mere chance. Please see what
the hospital nurses think about this.
This man Gray, from the Gray Matter Agency, is a whirlwind. He has shot
in some suggestive layouts for car-cards that make my head spin. These
are some of his aspirations--
+-----------------------+
| DIGESTIVE DICE |
|MEAN LUCK FOR THE LIVER|
| TRY GINGER CUBES |
+-----------------------+
+-----------------------+
|FOR A CHEW IN THE TUBES|
| CHOOSE GINGER CUBES |
+-----------------------+
And he has doped out a map showing the whole digestive apparatus laid
out like a subway system, and the Ginger Cubes keep traffic moving.
All this seems to me a bit too unconventional, although I confess I am
amused by the originality. Tell me what your reaction is. I’m sending
you some of the Cubes to distribute among the nurses.
Yours,
NICHOLAS RIBSTONE,
President The Ginger Cubes Corporation.
N.R./D.B.
III
[_A letter from Miss Candida Cumnor, one of the nurses at the
Hippocrates Hospital, to Mr. Nicholas Ribstone, President of the Ginger
Cubes Corporation._]
DEAR MR. RIBSTONE: Poor Mr. Russell is still very weak, and has not
been able to write to you himself. Dr. Nichevo says that he has never
seen a more interesting case of complete exhaustion of the salesmanship
glands. He thinks that the patient must have been under a very severe
strain for a long time preceding the breakdown. I gathered from what
Mr. Russell said in his period of delirium that he had been trying
to sell by mail order a complete set of Tolstoy’s works, but by some
mistake had bought the wrong mailing list from one of the houses that
deal in such things. They gave him a list of members of the Ku Klux
Klan, and the returns on his effort were so disheartening that it broke
him all up. He was very queer for a while. But one delusion helped a
great deal. He had a fixed idea that the temperature chart at the end
of his bed was a sales graph, and the more peaks there were in it the
better he was pleased, for he thought that at last the K. K. K. were
beginning to fall for Tolstoy.
At any rate, he is much better now, and asks me to write to you for
him. I must say that I think you picked a fine Advertising Manager for
your Ginger Cubes: I have never seen such an enthusiastic fellow. The
specimen drawings for car cards that you sent him are pinned up on a
screen beside the bed, and he hardly takes his eyes off them. He has
had all the nurses in the ward munching the Ginger Cubes, or Digestive
Dice as he likes to call them, and is asking me to make a note of their
opinions. He says he plans an interesting lay-out under the caption
COMMENTS OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION
ON THE GINGER CUBES
I must admit that I find the Cubes very tasty and refreshing.
To show you that he is really picking up, I will tell you that this
morning he asked me to send out to the nearest newsstand for a number
of magazines and papers, which he has been looking through with close
attention.
But I must not deceive you. In spite of his enthusiasm he is still very
weak, and it will take a lot of building up before his merchandising
centres are up to par. It would do no harm if you were to send him some
stimulating books to read, such as Orison Swett Marden or Dr. Crane.
By the way, Mr. Ribstone, someone in your office has made a mistake
in addressing letters to this hospital, the name of which is not
Hypocrites but Hippocrates; the spelling is nearly the same but the
pronunciation is different, after the name of a famous doctor of old
times. Now I must draw to an end, for the patient needs attention; this
is a long letter but he wanted you to know all about him.
Yours sincerely,
CANDIDA CUMNOR.
IV
[_A telegram from the National Drug Novelties Company to Nicholas
Ribstone._]
Chicago, April 11, 1922.
Hear interesting rumour about new lozenge Ginger Cubes to be marketed
by you would you consider entrance of outside capital in this venture
or sell outright trade name formula and goodwill. Believe you have a
winner.
EDWARD GARTENBAUM,
President National Drug Novelties.
V
[_A telegram from Nicholas Ribstone, president of the Ginger Cubes
Corporation, to Edward Gartenbaum of the National Drug Novelties
Company._]
Decline discuss selling interest in Ginger Cubes distribution plans
perfected watch our smoke.
RIBSTONE.
VI
[_A memorandum sent to heads of departments of the National Drug
Novelties Company, Chicago._]
OFFICE BULLETIN No. 38946 (Series B).
Minutes of Conference Held in Directors’ Room, April 12.
Mr. Gartenbaum reported that he had had a telegram from Ribstone
declining assistance in financing the Ginger Cubes. Mr. Gartenbaum
thought the matter important enough to warrant calling the directors
together. Was it possible that Ribstone had access to new sources of
capital hitherto unemployed in the drug trade? This seemed unlikely in
view of their own recent canvass. Mr. G. asked Mr. O’Keefe, who had
just come back from New York, whether he had been able to find out
anything definite about the plans for Ginger Cubes.
Mr. O’Keefe said that he had found the trade greatly interested in the
rumours that had been current. It was said everywhere that Ribstone
had got hold of a formula that was a knockout, and that the Ginger
Cubes had caused more talk in pharmacist and confectionery circles than
anything since the Smith Brothers sold their razors. He had not been
able to get any very definite dope about the distribution plans, but
it was common talk that Ribstone intended to spend half a million in
the New York newspapers. He had heard that the Gray Matter Advertising
Agency was to handle the account. Mr. O’Keefe said that Mr. Gray was an
old friend of his, but going to Gray’s office to inquire he found the
reception room so choked with solicitors from the newspapers that he
did not wait.
Mr. Oldham asked if this man Ribstone had had previous experience in
the drug specialty line which would warrant their believing he could
make a go of the so-called Ginger Cubes.
Mr. Gartenbaum said that Ribstone had had no experience in that field,
so far as he knew, but that he was a very clever merchandiser and had
done big things with the Ribstone Memory Course several years ago.
Professor Devonshire of the laboratory department was called upon
to ask if he had any idea what the formula of the Ginger Cubes
might be, and whether it could be easily duplicated or improved.
Professor Devonshire said that, speaking as a chemist, ginger had many
possibilities as a popular drug staple, that its principal constituents
are starch, volatile oil, and resin; that it has carminative and
purgative values, especially for dyspepsia and flatulence, and is
helpful for seasickness, headache, and toothache. He said that as soon
as the Cubes themselves were on the market he could analyze them and
suggest a variation in the formula.
Mr. O’Keefe said that he had tried to get hold of some of the Cubes,
but that they were being carefully kept under cover. He believed that
Ribstone’s plans were still in the air until his advertising man,
Russell, was out of hospital.
Mr. Gartenbaum asked if Mr. Russell was in hospital because he had been
trying some of the Ginger Cubes.
Mr. Oldham said that he had been greatly impressed by the amount of
gossip in the trade about the Ginger Cubes, but he believed the value
of the thing lay not in any unique formula but in the cleverness of the
name Ginger Cubes, and particularly the additional name Digestive Dice.
Mr. Gartenbaum agreed and submitted it to the meeting that it would be
well worth while to ride on Ribstone’s effort by putting out a similar
product with an equally catchy name. He instanced the way Eskimo Pie
was followed immediately by a dozen imitations, all very nearly as
successful.
Mr. Sombre of the Promotion Department asked if Mr. Gartenbaum had
thought of any name as appealing as Ginger Cubes.
Mr. Gartenbaum admitted he hadn’t, but said that his mind was working
on this matter and the only thing he had thought of so far was Ginger
Blocks.
Mr. Sombre said he thought that was too similar to Ginger Cubes and
might mean legal proceedings.
Mr. O’Keefe suggested Tingling Squares.
After a good deal of discussion, Mr. Gartenbaum adjourned the
meeting, ordering these minutes to be sent confidentially to heads
of departments. Another conference to be held to-morrow at which
suggestions for a rival name would be brought in.
By E. K. R.,
Stenographer.
VII
[_A letter from Allan Russell, Advertising Manager of the Ginger Cubes
Corporation, to Nicholas Ribstone._]
Hippocrates Hospital, April 14.
DEAR BOSS, I’m still a bit seedy but am getting better every minute
thanks to the care these “good people” have taken of me. This is my
first letter and it will have to be short. Just wanted to say that if
you still need an assistant in the office I’d like to recommend Miss
Cumnor, one of the nurses here, who has been taking care of me. She is
tired of the nursing job and wants to get into a “business position.”
Certainly she’s a mighty capable girl and her medical knowledge would
be of great value to us in marketing the Cubes. She is 23 years old and
ambitious.
I’ll be out of here pretty soon now, I hope, and am keen to get into
the thick of the fight for the good old Cubes.
Yours always
RUSSELL.
VIII
[_A letter from Nicholas Ribstone to Allan Russell._]
Ginger Cubes Corporation
Nicholas Ribstone, President.
Theodore Carbo, Vice-President.
Arthur MacCready, Treasurer.
Simon Haggard, Secretary.
Allan Russell, Advertising Mgr.
Executive Offices
2216 Duane Street
New York
Cable Address: Gincubes
April 14, 1922.
DEAR RUSSELL: Here are our letterheads. How do you like them? I am
sending some to the hospital so you can use them for any letters you
may need to write. Show them to the nurses and get their reaction. The
more they circulate, the better.
This is just to tell you that I am going out of town for a little rest
over the week-end. We have got things pretty well lined up so far. I
shall be glad when you get back so we can visit together for I want
your advice. You understand advertising men better than I do, I guess.
To me, a great deal of their jargon is a mystery. What, for instance,
do you think of the enclosed one that has just come to me from the Gray
Matter Agency? Does it mean anything?
Miss Balboa, by the way, is somewhat upset by a remark made by your
Miss Cumnor, about our error in spelling the name of the Hospital.
I’m afraid the mistake was due to my wrong pronunciation, which she
misunderstood.
As ever,
NICHOLAS RIBSTONE.
N.R./D.B.
(Encl.)
IX
[_Enclosure, sent by Mr. Ribstone to Mr. Russell, being a letter from
the Gray Matter Advertising Agency._]
MY DEAR MR. RIBSTONE: Obviously you intend, ultimately at any rate, to
have a nation-wide, or even world-wide, distribution for the Ginger
Cubes. You are going to need a large merchandising staff. I wish to
enlist your interest in our newly created Department of Salesmanizing.
Let us train your representatives before they go on the road, and
instil into the personnel just those qualities of enthusiasm and
confidence that go to make not mere salesmen, but Ambassadors of
Commerce.
I solicit the pleasure of convincing you on this topic; in the meantime
let me briefly state the nutshell of our theory.
In our Salesmanizing School, which is really a kind of Graduate
College of the Selling Arts, we seek to drive out from the student
all negative and minus thoughts, ideas of possible failure, business
depression, etc., and to substitute robust energizing concepts,
positive and plus in their nature. Many a man has come to us doubtful
about his own selling abilities, doubtful about the general condition
of trade, doubtful about economics and literature and even theology.
When they leave us, after a three weeks’ course under Mr. Harvey K.
Tidaholm, they have pronounced convictions.
You wish to have your product--the Ginger Cubes--marketed swiftly,
cleanly, universally. There are four steps in this process. The
commodity must be
(1) Institutionalized
(2) Publicized
(3) Distributionized
(4) Internationalized
To bring this about, your representative personnel must be
(a) Humanized }
(b) Stabilized } = SALESMANIZED
(c) Energized }
It is on such matters as these that Consumer Preference and Dealer
Convictionability are based.
I should like very much to have our Mr. Harvey K. Tidaholm discuss this
matter with you. I know that your reaction will be enthusiastic.
Yours faithfully,
GEO. W. GRAY,
Technical Director, Gray Matter Advertising Service.
X
[_A letter from Nicholas Ribstone to George W. Gray._]
DEAR MR. GRAY: I am just leaving town for a few days rest. All
decisions have been postponized until my advertising manager returns.
He is now hospitalized. I will confer with you as soon as I am
re-urbanized.
Yours truly,
(Signed, in absence, with rubber stamp.)
NICHOLAS RIBSTONE.
N.R./D.B.
XI
[_An article in LOZENGE AND PASTILLE, the weekly trade journal of the
throat tablet trade._]
THE VALUE OF THE CUBICAL FORM FOR MEDICATED CANDIES
BY BEN F. MENTHOL,
Secretary of National Lozenge Men’s Chamber of Commerce.
A great deal of talk has been roused in lozenge circles by the
formation of the Ginger Cubes Corporation, to manufacture and
distribute a new product called the Ginger Cubes. Mr. Nicholas
Ribstone, the head of the enterprise, while reticent as to details,
admits that he hopes to spring a surprise on the world of bronchial
tablets and breath-perfumers. We understand that the Ginger Cubes,
while more in the general nature of a confection than a medical
preparation, are based on a careful pharmacal formula, and will go
before the public on an appeal at least partly therapeutic.
But what interests us is, that Mr. Ribstone’s venture again brings up
the necessity of standardizing the shape of the medicated sweet, if
lozenge men are ever to get back to genuine prosperity. At present the
lozenge and jujube world is in a state of wild disorder and lack of
intelligent coöperation. Post-war deflation has not been followed by
anything constructive. Lozenge men are cutting one another’s throats
instead of healing the public’s. Mr. Ribstone, unconsciously, has put
his finger on a vital spot in the lozenge industry.
Hitherto the trade has manufactured its products mainly in four shapes:
(1) Square tablet
(2) Round tablet
(3) Spherical
(4) Oval
It will be evident, however, that for close packing and neat
appearance, the cube is undoubtedly an attractive shape. It is well
worth consideration on the part of the trade whether a general adoption
of the cube would not be advantageous. Moreover, a great economy
could be effected by standardizing cartons and containers. How can
the present debilitating fluctuations be ironed out while the whole
industry is proceeding on a basis of mere individualism? We do not wish
to disparage competition, which is the life of trade, but to advocate
a higher form of coöperating competition. The lozenge trade owes it
as a duty to humanity to take its part in the general stabilizing
and soothing movement. The inflamed throat of Commerce can never be
healed until lozenge men get together. There is no reason why the
breath-sweetener clique should be so jealous of the digestive wing,
both suspicious of larynx and bronchial men. We hope that at the
convention in June these matters can be taken up and constructively
dealt with.
XII
[_A letter from Mr. Gray of the Gray Matter Advertising Agency to
Nicholas Ribstone, proprietor of the Ginger Cubes._]
MY DEAR MR. RIBSTONE: I do not wish to seem too insistent, but I am
so interested in the success of the Ginger Cubes that I feel it is my
duty to inform you of the tested methods in which prosperity has been
attained by other manufacturers.
I am so confident of your eventually deciding to place your advertising
account in our hands that I went ahead last week and had our Laboratory
of Merchandising Survey conduct a preliminary clinic in the local
field. Of course, you understand that you are not obligated in any
way; but I felt that this was the most useful mode of helping you to
envisage your problem.
Just a word about our Merchandising Survey work, which is headed by Mr.
Henry W. Geniall. Mr. Geniall is a man who knows how to talk to dealers
in their own language; he is a born sales engineer. He began selling
in 1892 and has never stopped; though now he sells service instead of
commodities. He is the author of a book which has run through fifteen
editions, including the Scandinavian, entitled _How to Meet and
Dominate Your Fellow Men_, an autographed copy of which I am having
forwarded to you.
The principle of our Merchandising Survey is to conduct a preliminary
investigation of markets, in a representative field and on the highest
plane of detached observation. Our Merchandising Surveyors are not
to be confused with the street men employed by the less professional
agencies. Most of them are college graduates; they are so tactful and
genteel that they are welcomed by the dealers as valuable counsellors
and coöperators; very often they are asked to stay to supper.
The survey we conducted shows conclusively that there is going to be a
big market for Ginger Cubes if they are well publicized. We drew up the
inclosed printed blank and questionnaired 100 druggists in the uptown
section, just as a preliminary test. I have selected the inclosed at
random from the returns, to show you the kind of thing. The others are
being bound in a folder, which I will have much pleasure to lay before
you on your return to the office, together with a tabulated analysis.
It is a pleasure to be able to put at your disposal all the resources
of Gray Matter Service.
Faithfully yours,
GEO. W. GRAY.
Technical Director, Gray Matter Advertising Service.
XIII
[_Confidential Report of an interview with a druggist by a
Merchandising Surveyor from the Gray Matter Advertising Agency._]
INTERVIEW
_Name_--Higgly-Piggly Drug Store.
_Address_--673 Sunnyside Ave.
_Type of Store_--Chain.
_Party Interviewed_--J. K. Liquorice, Mgr.
_Subject of Interview_--Ginger Cubes Canvass.
_Approachtalk Used_--General Coöperation No. 3, as per Mr.
Geniall’s suggestion.
* * * * *
_What Brands of the following Does Dealer Sell_--(List in order
of popularity):
_Throat Tablets_--Roko, Southern Soothers, Tussicules.
_Cough Drops_--Lady Larynx, Lotos Cone.
_Confectionery Laxatives_--Sugar Chew, Cascarilla.
_Appetizer Lozenges_--Paprika Pastilles, Curlicues.
_Digestive Tablets_--Stowaways, Cul de Sacs.
_Medicated Candies_--Sweeto, Spicy Chiplets, Candoids.
_Breath Purifiers_--Balmozone, Pineapple Hints, Clover Slices.
_To What Does Dealer Attribute Success of These Best Sellers?_
Newspaper Advertising.
_Does He Push Any Particular Brands? If so, Which?_ No Answer.
_What Methods of Manufacturers’ Promotion Produces Best Result for the
Dealer?_ Newspaper Advertising.
_What per cent. of his customers suffer from Sore Throat?_ Ten per
cent. in winter.
_What per cent. from bad digestion?_ No answer.
_What per cent. from cacopneumonia (bad breath)?_ No answer.
_What per cent. prefer a doctor’s prescription to a patent medicine?_
Fifty per cent.
_What Does Dealer think of prospects of Ginger Cubes?_ Excellent;
thinks name very “catchy.”
_Does Dealer approve the subtitle “Digestive Dice”?_ Yes.
_Will He Use Window Display Material?_ Sure.
_General Remarks_--Dealer suggests we investigate what effect the
Ginger Cubes will have on smokers’ tongue; says ginger bites the tongue
after smoking, would not have percentage of ginger too powerful.
_Name of Surveyor_--Richmond Brown.
_Analyzed by_ Henry W. Geniall.
XIV
[_A letter from Allan Russell, Advertising Manager of the Ginger Cubes
Corporation, to his employer, Mr. Nicholas Ribstone._]
Hippocrates Hospital, April 18.
DEAR BOSS: This is just to say that I am so much better I expect to get
out of here in a few days, and hope to be back “on the job” next week.
Dr. Nichevo says that I have made surprising progress and thinks it
is due to Miss Cumnor’s fine care. She is certainly some nurse. She
and I have gone over those papers you sent me, from the Gray Matter
people, very carefully. Miss Cumnor’s reaction is that we ought to go
slow about signing up with them. She thinks, and I am inclined to agree
with her, that they talk tripe. By the way, you didn’t reply to my
suggestion about our giving her a job in the office. She is certainly a
remarkable woman.
Yours always,
RUSSELL.
XV
[_A letter from Mr. Nicholas Ribstone to his secretary, Miss Daisy
Balboa._]
Kill Kare Kountry Klub,
Wayanda, Conn., April 18.
DEAR MISS BALBOA: I have decided to stay here a few days longer for
the fishing. Nothing much can be done in the office until Mr. Russell
returns, and it just happens that one of the big drug jobbers is
staying at this place and it will do no harm for me to get to know him
in a social way. Thanks for telling me about the Gray Matter portfolio.
I am interested to know that you are impressed by their enthusiasm. But
every one is enthusiastic when they go out fishing for a big one.
Look here, instead of mailing the Gray Matter stuff, why not run up
here with it yourself? I will get you a reservation at the Bonhomie
Inn, which is near this club, and then we can go over the papers
together. There’s a train that leaves Grand Central at 4:20. The
little change would do you good, and there are several matters on which
I wish to get your reaction.
Sincerely yours,
NICHOLAS RIBSTONE.
XVI
[_A letter from Miss Balboa to Mr. Russell._]
DEAR MR. RUSSELL: Mr. Ribstone is still away, but I am going up to the
country this afternoon to take him some papers, including your letter
of yesterday. We’ll all be mighty glad to see you when you get back.
Faithfully yours,
DAISY BALBOA.
XVII
[_A letter from Mr. Gray, of Gray Matter Service, to Mr. Ribstone,
proprietor of the Ginger Cubes._]
MY DEAR MR. RIBSTONE: I was glad to get your note from Kill Kare
Kountry Klub, and to hear that you have been taking a few days’
recreation. You will return, I am confident, much refreshed and eager
to take up the problems that confront us.
I have been a little disappointed at not getting a definite
authorization from you to go ahead with our plans. We have had
tentative advances from other possible clients in this same general
field, but I have put them off, desiring not to take on any accounts
that might possibly conflict with the Ginger Cubes. To be perfectly
frank, the thing that has appealed to me about Ginger Cubes is the
bully opportunity for public service in a big way, and the chance to
institutionalize a product whose possibilities have filled the members
of our organization with unusual enthusiasm.
Ever since we first began talking institutional advertising for Ginger
Cubes, a real thought impression has been epitomizing itself in my
mind, and our Department of Cumulative Service has been giving the
matter special study and analytical constructive investigation. We have
been going right back to fundamentals on this proposition, studying the
different sides of the problem along all its different angles. It will
indeed be a source of satisfaction if we are accorded the opportunity
to work with you. Our Mr. Geniall was saying in conference yesterday,
“I am convinced I would rather be associated with the Ginger Cubes
Corporation than any other company I know of, because what I have heard
of the quality of men that make up that organization and the quality
of service they would expect convinces me it would be an educative
experience to coöperate with that firm. The product-attributes of their
Ginger Cubes fill me with enthusiasm, and I feel that if they were our
clients we could work for them as personal friends, and not in any
cold-blooded businesslike fashion.”
That is the way we want you, Mr. Ribstone, to feel towards our
organization.
It is not our desire to merely build a number of advertisements which
may be combined together in a more or less connected series by some
such device as art treatment. Art is all very well as a handmaiden of
advertising, but for a monumental campaign you need the inspiration of
a Big Idea, a genuinely dominating thought that will clarionize every
piece of copy and tie the whole together in a culminating increment of
public consciousness.
Advertising is either Product-Advertising or Institutional-Advertising.
The functions of the first are obvious--
A. Function is to sell product
B. Means of accomplishment are
(1) Directly presenting the product to the market
(2) Urging the market to accept the product
But Institutional-Advertising is far more psychological. Here enters
the supreme function of the merchandising arts, to create consumer
“good-will.” This may be defined as encouraging consumer-benevolence,
that is, educating the public to a sense of subjective interest in the
entire business, and a conscious awareness of benefit therefrom. A
feeling of friendly satisfaction engendered by Knowledge, Understanding
and Appreciation is the inception of this consumer-benevolence.
The various factors that jointly and severally enter into these great
merchandising truths I will not insist upon. But it would give me
great satisfaction if you and Mr. Russell would meet the members of
our organization and talk the whole matter over frankly and fully. Mr.
Russell and your good self and the writer ought to get together in the
near future for a long, serious talk on the whole proposition. We could
not do nearly so well for you if our headquarters were not in New York,
where we can have daily intimate conference with your organization
headquarters. Our psychological director for the Chicago Territory,
Mr. Alfred Ampere, has been so stimulated by what he has heard of your
plans, that he wires me asking to be transferred to New York if our
proposition goes through. I am inclined to favour appointing him as
chief contact man, so that he could be summoned at any time within
twenty minutes if a conference were called.
The objectives are all clearly defined, and we are ready to go to work.
This is simply to assure you of my own personal appreciation of the
splendid energy and fighting spirit your organization exhibits, and
to hope that from the very inception of the Ginger Cubes we may be
accorded an opportunity to coöperate in the public educationalization
which is the real satisfaction of the advertising profession.
Cordially yours,
GEO. W. GRAY.
Technical Director, Gray Matter Advertising Agency.
XVIII
[_Story in the New York Lens, April 23, written by the star humorous
reporter._]
CUPID COMES TO DOCTORS’ AID
HOSPITAL ROMANCE CULMINATES IN PATIENT WEDDING PRETTY NURSE
Allan Russell, advertising man, left Hippocrates Hospital yesterday
afternoon, completely cured of a stubborn case of nervous debility
that at first puzzled the doctors. With him, in a taxicab, was Miss
Candida Cumnor, one of the nurses, still in her uniform. They went
to the Little Church Around the Corner and were married. After the
ceremony, Mrs. Russell took her husband’s temperature with a clinical
thermometer. It was Centigrade A, or whatever the normal reading is.
She did not test his pulse, which was probably excusably fluttered.
Even a hardened reporter, who horned in on this story by accident, was
stirred by the sight of the bride in her crisp white linen. She has
golden-bronzy hair and indigo eyes, or they looked that way in the
twilight of the church. But what’s the use? She is now Mrs. Russell.
During Mr. Russell’s illness Miss Candida had charge of the case. She
sympathized with his business problem--Dr. Nichevo, the Hippocrates
expert on nervous mechanics, said that he had been run down by
too constant intercourse with advertising agencies. She took his
temperature soothingly with that cold little glass tube. But what she
took away with one hand she gave back with the other. When her palm
floated like a water-lily across his commerce-heated brow his mind grew
calm, but his heart was caloric. As he became stronger she assisted him
with advertising layouts which were spread on the bed, and they pored
over them together. Why is it, we wonder, that reporters never have
time to be taken ill?
Mr. Russell is Advertising Manager of the Ginger Cubes Corporation. He
and his wife expect to spend their honeymoon hunting an apartment.
“Cupid is the best doctor,” said Mr. Russell as they left the church.
“I intend to keep the thermometer as a souvenir.”
XIX
[_A letter from Nicholas Ribstone, proprietor of the Ginger Cubes, to
Allan Russell._]
Bonhomie Inn, April 23.
DEAR RUSSELL: Forgive my delay in writing, but I have exciting news for
you. Miss Balboa and I have decided to get married. You know that I
have always felt we laboured under a handicap in not being able to get
disinterested feminine reaction on the Cubes. Miss Balboa’s excellent
sense will be a great help. I dare say you will be surprised--I am,
myself. I had thought I was too old to become a Benedictine, but Miss
Balboa has quite carried me off my feet. I must not be sentimental,
however. We are going to be married here, to-morrow, very quietly.
I should have written to you before about Miss Cumnor. I thought rather
well of your suggestion, but Miss Balboa has convinced me that it is
better not to add to our staff just now, at any rate until we get
things going.
I’m sending this to the office, as I guess you have left the hospital
by now. Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Ribstone will be back in a few days.
Yours always,
NICHOLAS RIBSTONE.
XX
[_Another letter from Mr. Ribstone._]
Bonhomie Inn, April 24.
DEAR RUSSELL: Just got your wire. Congratulations. It reaches me on
the brink of the altar myself. My Lord, man, you should have tipped me
off beforehand. It wasn’t necessary for both of us to get married in
order to get wifely reactions on the Cubes. If I had known sooner--but
anyhow, it’s all arranged now.
Miss Balboa has just about convinced me that we will do well to accept
Gray Matter’s proposition. I wish I could consult you about this.
Perhaps you had better get in touch with Gray and have the papers ready
for signing when I get to the office.
We can exchange wedding presents later on. At the moment I’m too
flustered to know just what happens next.
Yours, from the jumping-off place,
NICHOLAS RIBSTONE.
XXI
[_A letter from Allan Russell to an old friend, known to us only as
Bob._]
DEAR BOB: There’s the devil to pay in this office. I’ve just heard that
old Ribstone has married Miss Balboa, his stenographer, in order to get
her unbiassed reactions on business. Now I know very well that Candida
and Mrs. Balboa-Ribstone will never get on together. This Balboa
person, for instance, has argued old Rib into believing that the Gray
Matter stuff is real. Candida doesn’t fall for it, says it’s the bunk.
I won’t go on as Ad. Mgr. if Ribstone accepts the Gray Matter contract.
I just want to ask you if there’s anything in your office that I could
take a hand in. You know my experience and qualifications. Let me have
a line.
Yrs. in haste,
A. R.
XXII
[_An editorial in LOZENGE AND PASTILLE._]
We hear that Nicholas Ribstone, of the Ginger Cubes Corporation, has
sold out his entire interest in the much-touted Cubes to the National
Drug Novelties Company. This comes as quite a surprise to the trade,
as no specialty in recent years had aroused so much advance interest
as the Ginger Cubes. The figure paid by National Drug Novelties for
the formula, stock in hand, and jobbing contracts already arranged, is
said to be half a million dollars. We await with interest to hear just
how Gartenbaum and his associates will develop this property. In the
meantime the affair suggests some meditations on the desirability of
guarding the medicated confectionery industry against the machinations
of mere adventurers and speculators.
(Walk, Not Run,
to Nearest Exit)
[Illustration]
THE EDITOR AT THE BALL GAME
(WORLD’S SERIES OPENING, 1922)
At the Polo Grounds yesterday $119,000 worth of baseball was played.
Of that, however, only a meagre $60,000 or so went to the players. We
wonder how much the accumulated sports writers got for writing about
it. They are the real plutocrats of professional athletics.
We have long intimated our inflexible determination to learn how to
be a sports writer--or, as he is usually called, a Scribe. This is
to announce progress. We are getting promoted steadily. In the 1920
World’s Series we were high up in the stand. At the Dempsey-Carpentier
liquidation we were not more than a parasang from the ring. We broke
into the press box at the 1921 World’s Series, but only in the rearward
allotments assigned to correspondents from Harrisburg and Des Moines.
But our stuff is beginning to be appreciated. We are gaining. Yesterday
we found ourself actually below the sacred barrier--in the Second Row,
right behind the Big Fellows. Down there we were positively almost on
social terms (if we had ventured to speak to them) with chaps like Bill
McGeehan and Grant Rice and Damon Runyon and Ring Lardner. Well, there
are a lot of climbers in the world of sporting literature.
One incident amused us. We heard a man say, “Which one is Damon
Runyon?” “Over there,” said another, pointing. The first, probably
hoping to wangle some sort of prestige, made for Mr. Runyon. “Hullo,
Damon!” he cried genially. “Remember me?”
It must have been Pythias.
So far we have only been allowed to shoot in a little preliminary
patter--what managing editors call “human interest stuff.” When the
actual game starts they take the wire away from us, quite rightly,
and turn it over to the experts. But, being inexorably ambitious, we
sit down now, after the game is over, to tell you exactly how we saw
it. Because we had a unique opportunity to study a great journalist
and see exactly how it’s done. It was just our good luck, sitting in
the second row. The second sees better than the first--it’s higher.
You have to use your knee for writing desk, and you have to pull up
your haunches every few minutes to let by the baseball editor of the
Topeka _Clarion_ on his way back to Harry Stevens’s Gratis Tiffin for
another platter of salad. But the second row gave us our much needed
opportunity to watch the leaders of our craft.
It was just before the game began. The plump lady in white tights (a
little too opulent to be Miss Kellermann, but evidently a diva of some
sort) was about to begin the walking race around the bases against the
athletic-looking man. She won, by the way--what a commutrix she would
make. Suddenly we recognized a very Famous Editor climbing into the
seat directly in front of us. He was followed by two earnest young men.
One of these respectfully placed a Noiseless typewriter in front of the
Editor, and spread out a thick pile of copy paper.
This young man had shell spectacles and truncated side-whiskers. Both
young men were plainly experts, and were there to tell the Editor the
fine points of what was happening. The Famous Editor’s job was to whale
it out on the Noiseless, with that personal touch that has made him (it
has been said) the most successful American newspaper man.
This, we said to ourself, is going to be better than any Course in
Journalism.
We admired the Editor for the competent businesslike way he went to
work. He wasted no time in talking. After one intent glance round
through very brightly polished spectacles, he began to tick--to “file,”
as we professionals say. Already, evidently, he felt the famous
“reactions” coming to him. He looked so charmingly scholarly, like some
well-loved college professor, we could not help feeling it was just a
little sad to see him taking all this so seriously. He never paused to
enjoy the scene (it really is a great sight, you know), but pattered
along on the keys like a well-trained engine.
The two young men fed him facts; with austere and faintly indignant
docility he turned these into the well-known pseudo-philosophic
comment. It was beautifully efficacious. The shining, well-tended
typewriter, the plentiful supply of smooth yellow paper, the ribbon
printing off a clear blue, these were right under our eyes; we couldn’t
help seeing the story rolling out though most of the time we averted
our eyes in a kind of shame. It seemed like studying the nakedness of a
fine mind.
“Jack Dempsey’s coming in,” said the young man. Or, “Babe Ruth at bat.”
The Editor was too busy to look up often. One flash of those observant
(and always faintly embittered, we thought) eyes could take in enough
to keep the mind revolving through many words. “I’ll take them, and
correct the typographical errors,” remarked young Shellspecs, gathering
up the Editor’s first page. Thereafter the Editor passed over his story
in “takes” and young Shellspecs copyread it with a blue pencil. Once
the Editor said, a little tartly: “Don’t change the punctuation.” From
Shellspecs the pages went smoothly to the silent telegraph operator who
sat between them.
Our mind--if we must be honest--was somewhat divided between admiration
and pity. Here, indeed, is slavery, we said to ourself, watching the
great man bent over his work. Babe Ruth came to the plate. Judge
Landis is named after a mountain, but Ruth looks like one. There
was pleasant dramatic quality in the scene: the burly, gray figure
swinging its bat, the agile and dangerous-looking Mr. Nehf winding up
for delivery, the twirl of revolving arms against a green background,
the flashing, airy swim of the ball, the turbine circling of the bat,
the STRIKE sign floating silently upon the distant scoreboard ...
but did the Editor have time to savour all this? Not he! One quick
wistful peer upward through those clear lenses, he was back again on
his keyboard--the Noiseless keyboard carrying words to the noisiest of
papers.
And yet, we had to insist, here was also genius of a sort. The
swiftness with which he translated it all into a rude, bright picture!
But he was going too consciously on high, we thought. Proletarianizing
it, fitting the scene into his own particular scheme of thinking,
instead of genuinely puzzling out its suggestions. He was honest enough
to admit that the game itself was mostly rather dull--and in so far he
was much above most of the Sporting Writers, those high-spirited lads
who come back from a quite peaceable game and lead you to believe that
there have been scenes of thunder and earthquake.
But, like most of us, he tended to exaggerate those things he
had decided upon beforehand. He made much of the roaring of the
crowd--which, after all, was not violent as crowds go; and he wrote
cheerily of the bitterness of hatred manifested towards the umpires,
the deadly glances of players questioning close decisions. He seemed
to view these matters through a pupil dilated with intellectual
belladonna (if that’s what belladonna does).
He wrote something about the perfect happiness of the small boy who
was the Giant mascot. Heaven, he said, would have to be mighty good to
be better than this for that urchin. But to us the boy seemed totally
calm, even sombre. What does baseball mean to him? More interesting,
and more exact, we thought, would have been to note the fluctuating
sounds of the spectators; a constant rhythm of sound and silence--the
hush as the pitcher winds up, the mixed surge of comment as the
ball flicks across, the sudden unanimous outcry at some dramatic
stroke. Or the ironical cadenced clapping and stamping that break out
spontaneously at certain recognized moments of suspense.
But the Editor was going strong, and we felt a kind of admiring
affection for him as we saw him so true to form. He picked reactions
out of the ether, hit them square on the nose, and whaled them to
Shellspecs. Shellspecs recorded faultless assists, zooming them in to
Western Union.
In the third inning the Editor hoisted a paragraph clean over the heads
of the bleachers by quoting the Bible. Mr. Bush, the red-sleeved Yankee
pitcher, was at bat and lifted a midfield fly. Bancroft made a superb
tergiversating catch going at full speed. It was beautifully done.
For the second time, we thought, history has been made in America by
a Bancroft. “The human body is a wonderful machine,” ticked the busy
Editor. We watched Mr. Bancroft more carefully after that. A small
agile fellow, there was much comeliness in the angle of his trunk and
hips as he leaned forward over the plate, preparing for the ball.
In the fourth inning the Editor was already at page 13 of his copy.
The young man with truncated side-whiskers then drew the rebuke for
inserting commas into the story. The other young man, sitting behind,
kept volleying bits of Inside Stuff. Scott came to bat. “This fellow,”
said Inside Stuff, “is known as the Little Iron Man; he’s played in one
thousand consecutive games.” This was faithfully relayed to the Editor
by Shellspecs, and went into the story. But the Editor changed it to
“almost a thousand.” This pleased us, for we also felt a bit skeptical
about that item.
By this time, having noted the quickness of the Editor at
“reactionizing,” we were very keen to get something of our own into his
story. An airplane came over. Inside Stuff announced that the plane was
taking pictures to be delivered in Cleveland in time for the morning
papers. How he knew this, we can’t guess--very likely he didn’t.
This also faithful Shellspecs passed on. The plane was a big silvery
beauty--we remarked, loudly, to our neighbour that she looked as though
made of aluminum. A moment later the Editor, having handed a page to
Shellspecs, said: “Add that the plane was aluminum.” Shellspecs wrote
down in blue pencil: “It’s an aluminum flying machine.” But we mustn’t
be unjust. Very likely the Editor got the reaction just as we did. It
was fairly obvious.
Sixth Inning--The Editor hit a hot twisting paragraph to the outposts
of his syndicate, but troubled Shellspecs by saying--Mr. Whitey Witt’s
name having been mentioned--“Is he a Yankee or a Giant?” “He’s an
albino, has pink eyes,” volunteered indefatigable Inside Stuff. The
flying keys caught it and in it went, somewhat philosophized: “Lack of
pigment in hair, skin, and retina seems not to diminish his power.”
Inside Stuff: “It’s the beginning of the Seventh and they’re all
stretching. It’s the usual thing.” But no stretching for the Editor. He
goes on and on. Twenty pages now. When his assistants put a fact just
where he likes it his quick mind knocks it for five million circulation.
“Stengel, considered a very old man in baseball,” says the cheery
mentor. “He’s thirty-one years old.” To none of these suggestions does
the Editor make any comment. He wastes no words--orally, at least. He
knows what he wants--sifts it instanter.
We left at the end of the Eighth. The Editor was still going strong. He
didn’t see the game, but we think he was happy in his own way.
We hope we haven’t seemed too impertinent. We want to be a Scribe--not
a Pharisee. But our interest in the profession is greater than our
regard for any merely individual sanctity. We’ve given you a faithful
picture of what has been called supreme success in journalism. Take
a good look at it, you students of newspapers, and see how you like
it. We’ll tell you a secret. It’s pretty easy, if that’s the sort of
thing you hanker for. In a way, it’s rather thrilling. But (between
ourselves) it’s also a Warning.
[Illustration]
THE DAME EXPLORES WESTCHESTER
We fear that the Salamis dealer in cigars, newspapers, and ice
cream cones thinks we are a low-spirited fellow. For ten days or so
preceding the Fourth of July he urged us every day not to forget to
buy our supply of firecrackers from him. Finally he grew so insistent
that we had to tell him the truth. We don’t believe in firecrackers
for small children, we told him. Well, how about some nice rockets,
balloons, Roman candles? he cried. No, we said firmly; Mr. Mackay, up
on Harbour Hill, shoots off about five thousand dollars’ worth of very
lovely fireworks every Fourth of July evening for the pleasure of the
villagers; why should we attempt vainly to compete?
But of course, something had to be done to celebrate the Fourth. It
would be only just, we thought, to have an adventure that would give
pleasure to Dame Quickly, who has given us more innocent cheer than
any one else during the past year. Besides, she had just attained the
dignity of having travelled more than 8,000 miles. Excepting for two
or three tentative and brief excursions upon Manhattan, she had never
been off Long Island. We had heard, from time to time, that across
the Sound there lay a region of mystery and heyday called Westchester
County--a land supposed to be more aristocratic and splendid than
anything our lowly Paumanok could show. A land, they said, flowing
with gasolene and Eskimo Pie. But, in our timid and non-temerarious
disposition we had never ventured. The ferry from Sea Cliff to New
Rochelle ceased running during the war and has never resumed. The
ferry from Oyster Bay to Greenwich--well, we had once made inquiry as
to the prices; 25 cents per foot, measured over all, for the vehicle
alone, to say nothing of the fare for the occupants. But, then, we had
heard rumour of a humbler craft plying between College Point and The
Bronx. This, we had an instinctive prompting, would be the caper. We
determined to make the attempt.
No one has yet (so far as we know) properly uttered the fine poetry
of a car that feels herself turned loose for the day upon unknown
paths. That strong, rigorous hum underneath the bonnet, the intelligent
questing look of her hood as it goes snouting along the road--these are
potent mystery. The Younger Generation, duly caparisoned for either
shine or rain, were installed, and ejaculated innocent defiance. Two
small and quite useless wooden rabbits accompanied them, emblems of
fortune and also of the Occupational Therapy Society (from whom they
were purchased). The Urchin and Urchiness were hopeful of storm; they
enjoy seeing a parent hustle to rig up the curtains. Some day we shall
fool them by getting a sedan. We have a name already chosen for her.
She will be Diana of the Crossways. The Microcosm, still too young to
care what happens to her, was a nugget of plump, regardless cheer.
Titania wore her khaki breeks, which are astoundingly comely. This had
all the earmarks of a Foray against Relentless Destiny.
So, without hap--save for two grievous motor-bikers near Willets Point,
who had jammed their clutch and halted the Dame to beg the borrow of a
screwdriver--the equipage proceeded mildly to College Point. Here there
was secret applause when the official said that only 50 cents would be
necessary. That excellent ancient vessel the _Steinway_ was already
waiting. The Dame, with an air of skittish enterprise, trundled aboard.
Befitting a boat of such orchestral name, a person with the word
_Musician_ embroidered on his cap played a powerful concertina. Already
it seemed a literary excursion, for the chauffeur, studying his map,
learned that not far away was a region of The Bronx called Casanova.
Let this be a reminder, he said to himself, to read the frequently but
enigmatically commended memoirs of De Seingalt. The chevalier himself,
it is said, was once reduced to playing a fiddle in a cabaret: perhaps
this concertina person is also a virtuoso of quality in an ad interim
embarrassment. In the brass bowl ingeniously affixed to the machine of
melody the chauffeur contributed a nickel as cautious largesse to Art.
On such occasions, adventuring in little-known parts of this great
panorama of surprise known as New York, we reflect sadly on our own
lack of enterprise in exploring its grim hilarities. Indeed we always
intend to spend all our time on the streets, where we are endlessly
happy and entertained; it is only a lack-lustre and empty resolution
towards answering letters that brings us to the office. By this time,
however, the _Steinway_ had reached Clason Point, and with a keen sense
of excitement we set forth to examine new lands and strange.
The first thing to do was to lay in some lunch. On Westchester Avenue
our eye was caught by the sign _Bible & Son, Undertakers and Real
Estate_; right next door was a meritorious-looking delicatessen shop,
which we invaded. The young man in charge was much pleased. All his
family had gone away for a three days’ holiday and had left him to run
the store; the Fourth was proving shockingly tranquil, he said; he was
so gratified by getting our trade that he gave us a bottle opener for
the near-beer. We thought we were doing very well in our purchasing
when Titania entered and revised it, saying that sardines would not
do for the Younger Generation. Turning north at a venture, we found
the Williamsbridge Road, where lunch was enjoyed beside a damp, quiet
woodland.
But it was after lunch, when we turned into the Boston Post Road,
that the real thrills began. On that famous highway Dame Quickly
seemed to feel herself really in swell company. But we were glad we
had not attempted it in our freshman days as a driver. Off in the
distance we could see Long Island, a quiet, blue profile: how calm it
looked. A vast vanload of elated coloured folk, packed ecstatically
on lurching camp stools, groaned uphill on low gear. All subsequent
traffic was stalled by this vehicle’s sudden halt, and we found an
impulsive flivver browsing along our fender. We began to wonder whether
Westchester was as élite as they had told us. We were startled, also,
by the number of kennels offering chows and those animals called
Pekingese. We were glad Gissing had not accompanied us: we fear his
hardy, vulgar soul would have scoffed.
New Rochelle seemed an almost unnecessarily large town; much larger
than Long Islanders are used to. Larchmont is evidently very civilized.
In Mamaroneck, when we sought the waterfront, we found ourself
embarrassingly arriving at the front door of a private mansion. On such
occasions Dame Quickly, who is really a very noble creature, looks
suddenly paltry and shameful. We turned towards home, though we were
sorry to leave the view of the rocks called SCOTCH CAPS. These appealed
to all our instincts as a printer. And by the way: the low tide seems
to go much lower over there than it does along Paumanok. Real estate
men, we are told, always take care to bring their clients out that way
at high water.
Titania had an eagerness to see Neptune Avenue in New Rochelle, where
she had lived as an urchin. She hadn’t been there for more than twenty
years and said it was much changed. Trying to discover which had been
the house, we found one for sale, and the door yielded to pressure.
Inside, in an empty room, was a gilt sword blazoned with emblems of the
Knights of Pythias or the Knights Templars or something of that sort.
Somehow this seemed like an ideal setting for a humorous mystery story.
We hoped that a crime had been committed; and yet the sword was very
blunt.
We are still a confirmed Long Islander.
[Illustration]
THE POWER AND THE GLORY
Dear old Dr. Johnson used to pray to be delivered from “vacillation
and vagrancy of mind, mental vellications and revulsions.” These
are also our most painful infirmity. The conflict of ambitions in
the mind is no easy problem. When one considers the career of a man
like Lord Northcliffe it is fairly evident that he knew more or less
clearly what he wanted, and went after it. He wanted to be a Great
Newspaper Proprietor, and he wanted to be a figure behind the scenes
(but the scenes need not be too opaque) in politics. He succeeded very
powerfully in all this, as competent and dogged men do when they have
a clearly defined objective. And in order to succeed in this manner,
it is fairly plain that he did not mind failure in the other realms of
life. Poetry, peaceful privacy, philosophy, and all the other pensive
pleasures that begin with a p, he was content (we imagine) to ignore.
This business of making up one’s mind among the various ambitions
that an exciting planet offers is highly perplexing. There is one
part of our mind that hankers only for seclusion, rambling by lonely
watersides, and plenty of ink and paper. There is another unregenerate
lobe of our brain that would find a life of important trivial
bustling like Northcliffe’s highly diverting and agreeable. It must
be interesting (we sometimes ponder) to have a steam yacht, play golf
with Premiers, talk choppily and brusquely over the telephone to a
hireling Editor, and persuade oneself that the great laws of life are
coming to heel very nicely. There is no doubt about it, the business of
being a Public Figure probably has in it a great deal of exhilarating
excitement that keeps the mind from brooding and painful activity.
We were interested to read in one of the papers not long ago a piece
about how a conscientious young man of wealth is studying to fit
himself for “public life”--which means, presumably, politics. It would
be profitable to hear a discussion from the local magi as to what
constitutes the best training for a political career. Aristotle made
some comment--didn’t he?--about educating a special class of public
servants--we must look it up in the _Politics_. We cannot rid ourself
of the idea that the most important feature of such a training would
be a considerable period of travel, to instil into the mind of the
intending statesman that no one country has any monopoly of wisdom,
humour, scenery, or good cooking. We have been much struck by the fact
that since the war young graduates of British universities who would
in earlier times have made their Grand Tour on the mainland of Europe
have been trooping hither in astonishing numbers to have a look at the
American scene. It has evidently penetrated the mind of the British
political-minded classes that social phenomena over here are important
and interesting enough to merit observation.
Almost every reasonably high-minded young man has, we suppose, thought
at one time or another about the duty of going into politics--and then,
if he has any tincture of sensitiveness, has sheered off in alarm after
seeing the dreadful antics that the ambitious underling has to perform.
He has seen, perhaps, a current event movie of an Assistant Secretary
of the Navy marching gayly in a parade of The Elks at Atlantic City;
or, driving quietly past a Long Island picnic glade, has noticed a
gathering in motor trucks--Greenpoint Nest No. 653, Fraternal Order
of Owls--being harangued, preliminary to hot dogs and Eskimo Pie, by
a perspiring young man in white flannel trousers who hopes for a job
as Assemblyman. Do not misunderstand us: we are not mocking these
necessary small jobs at the foot of the political ladder. They have to
be done, and it is only right that they should be done by those zealous
fellows who can get some fun out of them. The life of politics, which
we study with increasing amazement, must be an exhausting and exciting
one, very foreign to the placid instincts of the philosophic observer.
The latter, if he is wise, will restrain his impulse to mock, and will
try to preserve that mood of affectionate scrutiny which is the only
permanently valuable attitude towards human affairs. But sometimes he
will think that newspaper men ought to be drafted, by an occasional
compulsory legislation, into Government service. After several years
of unrebuked privilege to snap and snigger at public men the tables
ought to be turned. Some of us who show, in our unmolested kennels,
such sweet untested wisdom, might well be hounded out to take a share
in the difficult, damnable business of making the machinery go. But the
electorate need not be alarmed. There is no real danger. At the first
tread on the stair the editor would be out by the window.
But we were speaking of Lord Northcliffe. We have never made a careful
study of his career, but oddly enough we have always had a sort of
sneaking affection for the man himself while regarding that type of
person in general as extremely mischievous. We do not care at all for
these people who accumulate newspapers much as they would a number of
suits of clothes, and who hire editors to traipse round the world with
them as a kind of subservient mouthpiece. We are being told by all the
papers that Northcliffe “wielded terrific power.” Well, in a way, we
suppose he did; but it was a power that dealt mainly in ephemeral and
unimportant things. Even his greatest triumph, the Premiership of Lloyd
George, he could not permanently control. It was one of the oddities of
coincidence that on the day of Northcliffe’s death a cable dispatch
comes in telling us that four of Mr. George’s goats have won prizes at
a goat show. Mr. George has a goat farm, it appears. If it would not
seem heartless, we should say that Lord Northcliffe died rather than
have to read Mr. Lloyd George’s memoirs. He had a great spirit and a
huge ambition; but we cannot see in his career any evidence that Public
Life and power necessarily develop the finer and more sensitive parts
of man.
[Illustration]
GISSING JOINS A COUNTRY CLUB
A number of our clients have been asking for news of Haphazard Gissing,
the Synthetic Dog. Since we have always been so candid with our
patrons, we shall have to tell the unvarnished story of the latest
surprising chapter in that romantic animal’s career.
We say it with reluctance, and we say it with unfeigned sadness: we
have had to deport Gissing. Admirable creature though he was, active,
agile (you should have seen him play catch with a rubber ball),
sonorous at night when he suspected alien footstep, highly intelligent
and not devoid of a rude houndish comeliness--with all these gifts,
he was not congenial among children. We do not know whether it was
due to some dark strain of philosophy in him that rendered him too
introspective to understand the ways of juveniles, or whether it was a
blend of hot cavalier jealousy--at any rate, he never seemed able to
unbend properly among the extremely young. The terror that he inspired
in icemen and tinsmiths could be countenanced, but when he bristled and
showed his teeth at neighbouring children something had to be done.
It was the familiar problem of literature and life: here is an amiable
creature, well beloved, possessed (by some kink of breeding) with an
unexorcisable deviltry. We can leave it at that, and not harmonize the
theme with sentimental arpeggios.
Of course the first thing to be done was to find a good home for the
exile. We consulted Dr. Rothaug, the kindly veterinarian of Sea Cliff,
at whose establishment Gissing took a cultural course last winter. Dr.
Rothaug told us of a farmer in that pretty suburb of Glen Cove which
is miscalled _Skunk’s Misery_, who was said to be looking for a fierce
watch-dog to guard his chickens. Thither we went, and found the farmer
milking at a barn on the lonely hillside. But just the night before
he had been given a tramp collie. We liked the look of the farm at
Skunk’s Misery; it was the kind of place where Gissing would have been
well content, but the farmer said that one dog was enough. That night,
very late, we let Gissing indoors, and shared a Last Supper with him
at the icebox. Perhaps we shall remember that he seemed just a little
surprised at the beef-bone and the arrowroot biscuits spread with
Roquefort cheese. Well, we said to ourself defensively, he was always
fond of Roquefort; there’s only a scrap of it left; and very likely
he’ll never taste it again.
We refuse to be stampeded into any sentiment about this matter; we
always thought that Gissing, as he matured, was developing a touch
of the Thomas Hardy fatalism; he would be annoyed if we tried to
over-dramatize this incident.
The next day the whole family was mustered to pay parting honours; all
hands were embarked in Dame Quickly; the condemned dog ate a hearty
breakfast, and with a bight of clothesline about his neck was escorted
to the chariot, his long unused hawser having vanished since the Urchin
used it to moor a full-rigged ship to a neighbouring sapling. By this
time the victim had suspected something amiss; his deeply stricken
cider-coloured eye was painfully interrogative. The Dame, however,
seemed to us a trifle heartless. Off she went, her cylinders drumming
with their usual alacritous smoothness. To a wedding or a funeral,
all one to her. Gissing, now probably reviewing inwardly the tale of
his errors (there must have been many of which we are ignorant: we
never did know where he went on those long daily expeditions) was (we
are pleased to record it) too honourable to attempt any insincere
repentances. He kept climbing into the laps of his guardians, but the
ironist insists that this was not all affection, but rather that the
vibration of the floorboards tickled his pads. There was an occasional
secret caress, both given and taken, but we know our clients are too
stiff in the bosom to want to hear about such matters. The younger
generation, in the back seat, were eager to see the country club that
Gissing was going to join. So had the matter been explained to them.
Across those autumn-tinted fields of central Long Island--all
colours of pink and fawn and panther with the weathered shrivelling
corn-shocks like old ghost-Indian tepees, and the pumpkins bright in
the stubble--we proceeded to the Bide-a-Wee Home, which lies tucked
away in the woods near Wantagh. This place had been to us only a name,
and indeed we knew not exactly what to expect. Great was our pleasure
to find a charming old farmhouse with great barns and outhouses, and
an immediate clamour from hundreds of dogs running gayly in fenced
inclosures, and lesser dogs, both hale and cripple, about the yard.
Gissing hopped out blithely: his tail lifted sharply over his back,
feathering downward as it curved: the warm October air, one supposes,
came to him sharply barbed with the aromas of innumerable congenials.
He was very much alive, and walked nimbly on cushion toes. Holding the
rope, we walked among the barns, saluted by prodigious applause from
all sides. Even an inclosure full of cats showed gracious interest. The
conclusion drawn by the Younger Generation was that Gissing’s friends
were glad to see him. Then came a genial curator, Gissing was led to a
wire gate, and introduced into an orchard plot among about thirty more
or less his own size. There was a good deal of bristling and growling,
but he stood his ground calmly while a dozen or so of his new clubmates
inquired into his credentials.
We had been somewhat troubled by the signboard of the Bide-a-Wee, which
calls itself a _Home for Friendless Animals_. We wished to impress
upon the curator that Gissing was far from friendless, but we soon
found that the legend on the board was inaccurate. Many very well-loved
animals go there, for one reason or another; the organization tries
to find a suitable home for all the beasts in its care; the name
and characteristics of each are entered in a ledger when it arrives,
and, if he so desires, the previous owner is notified when the animal
goes to its new home. We were pleased to learn also that much of the
broken bread from the Waldorf and Vanderbilt Hotels is shipped out to
the Bide-a-Wee; so, if you are lunching there and don’t finish your
roll, perhaps Gissing will get it. (He is particularly fond of the
crescent-shaped ones, with little black specks on them.) The Home is
supported by voluntary contribution. In the record book we inscribed
Gissing’s biography very briefly:
GISSING: _origin doubtful: two years old: has always had a good
home. A fine watch-dog, but not good with children._
We would have liked to go on, for much more might have been said. We
would have liked to tell the friendly curator that this very week
(by the quaint irony of circumstance) a book is to be published of
which Gissing--somewhat transformed--is the hero. But we thought it
best not to mention this, lest it get around among the other members
and they taunt Gissing about it. We were happy to leave him in so
congenial and friendly a home. And if any of our clients happen to
need a good dog for a lonely country place--a dog who is perhaps too
intellectual and excitable for children, but a tocsin of excellent
acoustic strength--there you’ll find him. He has promised to write to
the Urchiness, provided she eats her cereal a little faster.
As we left, Gissing was standing on his hind legs looking through the
fence. He wailed just a little. It would be less than justice (to both
sides) not to admit it. Like Milton’s hero leaving the Garden, “a few
natural tears he shed, but dried them soon.” As the friendly curator
said, “By to-morrow he’ll think he’s lived here all his life.” On the
way home, there being more room in the Dame, a supply of cider was laid
in for consolation. Last night it seemed just a little strange to visit
the icebox all alone. To-morrow, perhaps, we shall take lunch at the
Waldorf.
[Illustration]
THREE STARS ON THE BACK STOOP
Before starting on our new notebook we have been looking over the old
one. We are painfully astonished to see so many interesting ideas that
we never turned to account.
We see no reason for being ashamed of using a memorandum book to jot
down casual excitements in the mind. If you are really interested in
what goes on inside your head, that is the only possible way to keep
track of those flittermice of thought. Astronomers spend much time
examining the Great Nebula in Orion, and other pinches of star dust
that circumspangle the universe. It is equally important to scrutinize
those dim patches of mental shining where, once in a while, one
suspects the phosphorescent emergence of Truth. Unhappily, most of
the ideas jotted down for sonnets and meditations never get anything
done to them. They lie there unexercised, and once a year or so, when
we run through the pile of old notebooks just to cheer ourself up, we
are newly gratified to see how many occasions for thought the world
suggests. Often, however, we aren’t quite certain just what we meant.
For instance, scattered through our now discarded memoranda we find the
following cryptic entries:
_The army of unalterable bunk._
_Prayers for newspaper men._
_Nesting season for mares._
_Who wrote the line “A rose-red city half as old as time”?_
_The current fetiches, taboos, and hokums are as hard to expel
from the mind as the deboshed melody of some vulgar popular
song._
_As a child, the phrase “civil engineer” puzzled me--the
civility or civics of engineering I could not comprehend._
_It’s a mistake to conclude that the result of an action was
necessarily included in the purpose: i. e. Effects overlap
Causes, e. g. The Tariff._
_If every day we are surrounded by astonishment and unexpected
adventures in the actual realm, why may it not also be true in
the spiritual?_
_Kipling is the kind of man who, after half a dozen visits to
the dentist, would have been able to write a story filled with
accurate technical details of dental science._
_Sign on Italian restaurant on Park Place_: IF YOUR WIFE CAN’T
COOK DON’T DIVORCE HER--KEEP HER AS A PET, AND EAT HERE.
_Sign on a Manicure Parlour_: SPECIAL ATTENTION PAID TO OTHER
GIRLS’ FELLOWS.
_Potboiling--the crackling of a crown of thorns under a pot._
_Biography is impossible. There’s no such thing._
Well, the preceding items, lifted more or less at random from one of
these notebooks, are sufficient to explain the sense of mystification
with which one examines old memoranda. And yet one always hopes that
he may chance upon some germ of thought which is worth the fun of
expanding it. It reminds us rather of the Janitor Emeritus of the
_Post_, an elderly and pensive darkness, who has a fixed idea that some
day he is going to find something precious in the various rubbish of
the office, and is to be seen gravely poking into baskets and canisters
of jetsam in the hope of motion picture magazines, tobacco, and
detective stories.
But among these fugitive and sudden scribbles we did find one notation
that brings back to us more or less clearly what we had in mind. It was
written thus: _People in N. Y. no rooted sense of place._
We had been thinking of the curious life of those who dwell in city
apartments. We are a great lover of apartments every now and then, for
a briefly adventurous term; and certainly every one who has read Simeon
Strunsky’s admirable book _Bellshazzar Court_ will have realized how
fecund with human episode these great, dense barracks are. But there
can be no good life for very long unless one has an opportunity to
plant feet on actual soil; to be close witness of earth’s colours and
seasons; to be able (sovereign pleasure of all) to go out at night and
make the circuit of one’s terrain and recognize a few stars. There are
three stars, for instance, that we see (at certain seasons) from the
back stoop when we visit the icebox towards midnight. We suspect them
of being the trio known as Orion’s Belt. Anyhow, part of our pleasure
in life is to notice them occasionally and know that they are still
there, or _were_ still there when those agile beams left them to
vibrate across all the light-years between us.
Orion’s Belt, by the way, seems to be a Sam Browne, for it is tilted up
diagonally. We will show you exactly what his starry girth looks like,
so you can recognize it:--
*
*
*
The simple and sensuous pleasures of place are not so easy to enjoy
in the city. There is a feeling of unreality, of human and mechanical
interposition, when you are snugly nested in a niche of a stone cliff
fifteen stories high. Something stands between you and the realization
of earth. That something may be fine, comfortable, reassuring, it may
be highly stimulant for the mind; but there is also a loss to the
spirit. It is a loss not to be able to see exactly how Nature tints her
tapestry curtain of gold and bronze, behind which she quietly shifts
the scenes for the next act; and then suddenly the curtain is shredded
away; the landscape widens and is transvisible to the eye; going out on
the porch at night you find the trees full not of leaves but stars.
This is a large topic: we can only hint at it. Science, criticism,
ethics, these are urbane. Poetry and religion are rustic. Poetry
particularly--whether the writing or the reading of it--thrives
best where there is silence and the foundation on earth. The solid
satisfaction of visiting one’s own cellar and the brightness of one’s
own furnace grate, actually set down inside the shell of earth’s crust;
of knowing one’s own chimney shaft open topward to the sky; the fall
of autumn acorns rattling on the roof--are sentiments felt rather than
understood. But from that quiet fertility of feeling understanding
grows gradually. You must be quiet with things before you can love
them; and you must love them before you can write about them.
But very likely these fragmentary ideas are true only for those who
believe them. It is a way ideas have.
[Illustration]
A CHRISTMAS CARD
[_December, 1921_]
As the Christmas season approaches, it sits heavily upon our mind that
there are some to whom we should like to say a word of respectful
admiration. First of these is Woodrow Wilson. This, you may think, is
a gesture both irrelevant and impertinent on our part. We cannot help
it. We feel, as the Friends say, a “concern.” The conjunction of the
Christmas month, the Conference on Limitation of Armaments, the hopes
and memories of all honest men, Mr. Wilson’s coming birthday, makes the
occasion irresistible. There are some things that must be said.
Woodrow Wilson has found the peace he sought. Never before, perhaps,
did a public man enjoy such posthumous privilege in his own lifetime.
He has joined (in Melville’s noble phrase) “the choice hidden handful
of the divine inert.” This phrase requires scrutiny. The divinity
is not ascribed to Mr. Wilson, but to inertia. Silence, thought,
withdrawal from the maddening struggles of mankind--these are divine;
these are godlike. If there were ever any doubt as to his having
qualities of true greatness, consider the patience and decency of his
present silence. It is a silence, one feels, not of bitterness but of
honourable dignity.
Sometimes, tucked away in the papers, one finds a single line or so
that gives us more to ponder than all the rest of the day’s news. Such
an item was the following, quoted lately by Mr. Tumulty as having been
said by Mr. Wilson to one of his advisers at the Paris Conference:
“M. Clemenceau called me a pro-German and abruptly left the
room.”
They said this man was impatient and stubborn. Yet he endured insult
calmly in the pursuit of his strangely hoped-for peace.
The post-Armistice career of Mr. Wilson has been called a tragedy. We
do not see it so. The Paris Conference--it is easy to see it now--was
foredoomed to a certain measure of failure. On sand one puts up a tent,
not a house. Moreover, in so far as that Conference is concerned, Mr.
Wilson has suffered a double fatality. He has never spoken candidly
for himself; he has been unfortunate in those who have spoken for him.
It has been the habit of those naïf and loyally affectionate souls who
have been closest to him to assure us of his subtlety and quicksilver
craft. We cannot see it. He has seemed to us, always, a man of genuine
simplicity--what would have been called, at one time, a _righteous_ man.
It is an odd thing that when you say a character is rooted in
simplicity and piety some will conclude that you are sneering. His
character is a great character. Those influences which shake and
unsettle men’s fibre more than anything else it has endured in full
measure--adulation and hatred. The anger and mockery which were
lavished upon Wilson are interesting to contemplate. But, so far
as one can see, they did not trouble that stubborn zeal. There was
a Cromwellian grimness and singleness of heart in his battle with
Europe. You remember what Cromwell said (if Carlyle can be trusted as a
reporter)--
“Would we have Peace without a Worm, lay we Foundations of
Justice and Righteousness.”
For that he struggled, burdening himself beyond human strength. For
that he compromised, as all men do. For that he incurred the malice of
all aspirants--both the pure and the impure.
It is amazing to remember the power and depth of that malice. In a
perverse way, it is almost encouraging to remember it: it proves so
excellently that this earth is still the fallen star, the cindered
Eden, in which merely human failings incur more than human angers. What
a gruesome life that of politics must be! And yet when, in our recent
history, were more positive virtues and high-minded hopes brought into
the muddled ferment of national politics? Do you remember how this man
lay at death’s door for many silent months, and how ill suppressed
were the satisfaction and the sneer? What was his crime? We used to
wonder. Only that he had believed the world was ripe for some strokes
of simplicity and unselfishness.
Little by little the minds of fair-hearted men are returning to
realization and gratitude. There is nothing now accomplished, or even
accomplishable, in matters of international dealing, that Woodrow
Wilson was not fighting for three years ago. The granolithic minds
of the old stand-patters and the luxurious sniffs of young, hot
doctrinaires formed for a while a quaint partnership of scorn. Nor
would we ourself deny that there were many things to lament. But
the world still waits for a competent, understanding, and judicial
expression of Woodrow Wilson’s service to men. It was not a perfect
service, for it was marred by necessary mortal blunders and qualms.
For that perhaps we reverence it the more. And when the just tribute
comes, perhaps it will come from the hand of some great writer to whom
the puerilities of partisan squabble fade into their deserved shadow;
to whom the humour and the pathos will be evident; and most evident of
all, the dignity and austerity of a great human hope, frustrated and
postponed, but an addition to the honour of the race. Perhaps it will
come from the hand of some great dramatist, with the dramatist’s art
that can revive great figures, great moments; can purge the occasion
of what was merely peevish and fortuitous, and remind us of truths and
visions we lost in the hurly-burly of the time.
It is sheer selfishness on our part to hope that some such expression
may come soon. We are jealous for the credit of this generation. We
are proud to have lived in days when men suffered so hideously and
yet did and said and wrote great things. We would like it to be said
of this generation that it recognized greatness in its own time. That
would be an honourable thing to be able to say. Have we erected, from
our imagination, a figure that is not really there? We think not. And
so, with humility and hesitation, but impelled by a motive we cannot
resist, we would like to say to Woodrow Wilson that there are many who
gratefully wish him Merry Christmas.
[Illustration]
SYMBOLS AND PARADOXES
We always suspected, after reading _The Flying Inn_, that G. K.
Chesterton is fond of dogs. And now, reading his book, _The New
Jerusalem_ (which is full of very gorgeous matter), we learn that at
his home in Beaconsfield he is host to both a dog (called “Winkle”) and
a donkey (called “Trotsky”). Very genial is his picture of the start of
his pilgrimage to Palestine and his last farewell to these beasts:
The reader will learn with surprise that my first feeling
of fellowship went out to the dog; I am well aware that I
lay open my guard to a lunge of wit.... He jumped about me,
barking like a small battery, under the impression that I was
going for a walk; but I could not, alas, take him with me on a
stroll to Palestine.... The dog’s very lawlessness is but an
extravagance of loyalty; he will go mad with joy three times
on the same day at going out for a walk down the same road. We
hear strangely little of the real merits of animals; and one
of them surely is this innocence of all boredom; perhaps such
simplicity is the absence of sin. I have some sense myself
of the sacred duty of surprise; and the need of seeing the
old road as a new road. But I cannot claim that whenever I go
out for a walk with my family and friends, I rush in front of
them volleying vociferous shouts of happiness; or even leap
up round them attempting to lick their faces. It is in this
power of beginning again with energy upon familiar and homely
things that the dog is really the eternal type of the Western
civilization.
The only thing that bothers us in this: If it had occurred to G. K. C.
to prove that the scraper on his doorstep, or the radish growing in
the garden, was the “eternal type” of Western civilization, would he
not have made out an equally agreeable and convincing case for it? In
fact, only a few steps away from his home, he came to the crossroads
(and well we remember that crossroads, and the pub thereby--which is
it, Mr. Chesterton: the _Saracen’s Head_, or the _Royal White Hart_?)
and there decided that they were the symbol of civilization which had
lost its way. And then, a few minutes later (in the train, we suppose)
the glorious creature was noticing the heavy clouds that lay over the
landscape, and decided that _they_ were the emblem of our civilization.
It takes a good deal of agility to pursue our pilgrim through this
book, for every olive tree, signboard, sunset, gateway, proves to be a
magnificent symbol of some spiritual gorgeousness.
We were sorry that Mr. Chesterton, when leaving Beaconsfield, did
not find some symbolism in a thing which impressed us when we went
pilgriming in those parts. Edmund Burke lived there at one time, and
we remember reading in some guide-book that his home was “bounded in
front by a ha-ha.” We thought to ourself at that time, how excellently
symbolic it would have been if G. K. C. had bounded his own house in
the same way. In fact, we often went along his road to listen for it.
There was another bit of symbolism that used to impress us (it is
surprising how quickly one can pick up the habit of symbolizing) when
we dallied around Beaconsfield. That was that Edmund Waller is buried
under the big walnut tree in the churchyard:
_Edmundi Waller hic jacet
id quantum morti cessit_
And we thought it pleasant that Mr. Chesterton should have settled
in the village sacred to the poet who wrote the loveliest poem ever
written on girth--or, rather, on slenderness. You remember, of course,
his “On a Girdle.”
The average person dearly loves a label--also a libel: and Mr.
Chesterton’s gnomes--which are sometimes nuggets, sometimes merely
nugæ, but always golden--are ticketed as “paradoxes” by those who have
small inkling of what a paradox really is. The best definition was that
of Don Marquis, our happiest native contemporary practitioner in this
art, when he said that if the positive and negative poles of a truth
are bent until they meet (or approach) a spark flashes across.
The paradox is the oldest outcry of the philosopher on contemplating
the absurdity of the world. Originally a paradox was simply a
surprise--a statement contrary to generally accepted opinion, and
very likely untrue. As Hamlet said: “This was sometime a paradox, but
now the time gives it proof.” But latterly we do not grant the virtue
of paradox unless the epigram fulfils a double requirement: it must
_seem_ absurd; it must _be_ true, or at any rate true enough to give
the mind a sense of cheerful satisfaction. Its essence is that of
surprise--which is the essence of humour.
The intellectual growth of humanity is shown by its increasing
tolerance of the paradox. The greatest of all Paradoxers was crucified.
Every true paradox is a little parable of human fallibility. A parabola
is a conic section; a parable, one might say, is a comic section.
Mr. Chesterton once, in a delightful essay called “Christmas,” said
something that lingers in our mind as an exhibition of the paradox both
in its strength and weakness. He wrote:
It is not uncommon nowadays for the insane extremes in reality
to meet. Thus I have always felt that brutal Imperialism and
Tolstoian nonresistance were not only not opposite, but were
the same thing. They are the same contemptible thought that
conquest cannot be resisted, looked at from the two standpoints
of the conqueror and the conquered. Thus again teetotalism and
the really degraded gin-selling and dram-drinking have exactly
the same moral philosophy. They are both based on the idea that
fermented liquor is not a drink, but a drug.
Now a moment’s thought will show the reader that while these two
paradoxes are equal in wit, they are not equal in truth. The second
is gloriously true; the first, delightfully acute as it is, begs the
question. For the Tolstoian will retort that he does not maintain
that conquest cannot be resisted; but that, on the contrary, it _is_
resisted and defeated by passive oppugnance.
The paradox holds the mirror up to nature, but it is not a plane
mirror. It dignifies human nature by assuming that the mind is capable
of viewing itself in the refraction of absurdity. Thoughtless people
speak of the paradox as a reduction to absurdity. That is not so. There
are some subjects that have to be elevated to absurdity.
In conclusion: it is a dangerous tool. It must be gingerly handled lest
it become--like the pun--a mere verbicide. And towards the fair sex,
beware of paradoxes. They esteem but rarely its prankish tooth. Was
not Hamlet’s downfall--and his betrothed’s also--occasioned when he
practiced paradoxes on Ophelia?
[Illustration]
THE RETURN TO TOWN
It was with somewhat a heavy heart that we prepared to leave Salamis
for the winter. Yet inscrutable lust of adventure spurred us on;
the city, also, is the place for work. In the country one is too
comfortable, and there are too many distractions. Either cider, or
stars, or the blue sparkle of the furnace fire--all these require
frequent attentions. But it was hard to part with Long Island’s charms
in November, loveliest of months. The copper-coloured woods, the
chrysanthemums, the brisk walk to the morning train, the yellow crackle
of logs in the chimney, the chill dry whisper of the neighbouring belt
of trees heard at midnight from an airy veranda--these are some of the
excitements we shall miss. Most of all, perhaps, that stony little
unlit lane, traversed in pitch darkness towards supper time, until,
coming clear of the trees, you open up the Dipper, sprawled low across
the northern sky.
It was hard, too, to leave Salamis just when its winter season of
innocent gayeties was commencing. You would hardly believe how much
is going on! Did you know that that deathless old railroad station is
being (as they say of ships) reconditioned? And there’s going to be
a drug store in Salamis Heights. The new Methodist church is nearly
finished--and, most glamorous of all, we now have an actual tea-room at
the entrance to the Salamis Estates. When you are motoring out that way
you can see if we don’t speak the truth. In another five years, most
likely, we shall have street lights along our lonely wood road to Green
Escape--and pavements--and gas to cook with. But there never will be
quite as many fairies in the woods as there have been these past three
years.
But, perhaps fortunately, the day set for moving into town was wet and
drizzly. And the labour of piling into Dame Quickly various baggages,
hampers, toys, a go-cart, and the component railings, girders, rods,
springs and mattresses of two cribs was lively enough to oust from the
mind any pangs of mere sentiment. The mind of one who has accomplished
that task, in shirt-sleeves under a dripping weather, is heated
enough to make him ready for any sort of adventurous foray. The Dame,
also, grossly overloaded, and travelling smartly on greasy ways, was
skiddish. As is ever our fortune, we found the road through Astoria
torn up for repairs. This involved a circuit along a most horrible
bypath, where our ill-adjusted freight leaped crazily with every
lurch, go-cart and mattresses descended on our neck, and the violence
of the bumping caused the crib-girders to burst through the rear of
the Dame’s canopy. Also we incurred, and probably deserved, a stern
rebuke from a gigantic policeman on Second Avenue. To tell the truth,
in a downshoot of rain and peering desperately through a streaming
wind-shield, we did not know he was a policeman at first. We thought he
was an L pillar.
Yet, when both voyages were safely accomplished--one for the baggage,
and one for the household: it would be harder to say which lading was
the tighter squeeze--what an exhilaration to move once more in the city
of our adoring. It is true that we began by making an immediate enemy
in the apartment house, for, as we were quite innocently taking a trunk
upstairs in the elevator, assisted by the cheerful elderly attendant, a
lady living in the same house entered by chance and burst into violent
reproach because _her_ baggage had had to go aloft in the freight
elevator. She accused the attendant of favouritism; to which he, quite
placidly, explained that this particular baggage had been delivered at
the front door in a private car. This compliment to the Dame pleased
us, but knowing nothing of the rules, and being wet and pensive, we
pretended to be an expressman and said naught. The only other shock
was when we took the Dame to a neighbouring garage to recuperate for a
few days. (We were glad, then, it had been raining, for the well-loved
vehicle looked very sleek and shiny, and it was too dark for the garage
man to notice the holes in her top. We wouldn’t want him to sneer at
her, and his garage, we observed, was full of very handsome cars.) When
he said it would cost the Dame $1.50 a night to live there we were a
little horrified. That, we reflected, was what we used to pay ourself
at the old Continental Hotel in Philly, the inn where the Prince of
Wales (the old one) and Dickens and Lincoln and others stayed. We now
look with greater and greater astonishment at all the cars we see in
New York. How can any one afford to keep them?
We were dispatched to do some hasty marketing, in time for supper.
We made off to our favourite shopping street--Amsterdam Avenue.
Delightedly we gazed into those alluring windows. In a dairy, a young
lady of dark and appealing loveliness made us welcome. When we ordered
milk and laid in a stock of groceries, making it plain to her (by
consulting a list) that we were speaking on behalf of the head of the
house, she urged us to advise Titania to open an account. Money she
seemed loath to accept: it could all be paid for at the end of the
month, she said. It is well to shop referring perplexedly to a little
list. This proves that you are an humble, honest paterfamilias, acting
only under orders. To such credit is always lavish, and fair milkmaids
generously tender.
Various tradesmen in that neighbourhood were surprised, in the tail end
of a wet and depressing day, by unexpected increments of traffic. “Just
nick the bone?” inquired the butcher, when, from our list, we read him
the item about rib lamb chops. “Yes, just nick the bone,” we assented,
not being very definite on the subject. We were interested in admiring
the thick sawdust on the floor, very pleasant to slide the foot upon.
The laundry man was just closing when we arrived with our bundle.
“Here’s a new customer for you,” we announced. Whatever private sorrows
he has were erased from his manly forehead. He told us that he also
does tailoring. Cleaning and pressing, he insisted. We had a private
feeling, a little shameful, that he hasn’t got as good a customer as he
imagines. Next door to the tailor, by the way, and right opposite the
apartment house, is a carpenter who advertises his skill at bookshelves.
How different it is from Salamis nights. Hanging out of the kitchen
window (having gone to the rear of the apartment to see what the
icebox is like: it’s a beauty)--instead of Orion’s Belt and the dry
rustle of the trees, we see those steep walls of lighted windows,
discreetly blinded, hear sudden shrills of music from above and below.
Just through the wall, as we lie abed, we can hear the queer droning
whine of the elevator; through the open window, the clang of trolleys
on Broadway. Hunting through the books that belong in the furnished
apartment, after startling ourself by reading Mr. D. H. Lawrence’s
poems called _Look! We Have Come Through!_ we found an old Conan
Doyle--always our favourite bedtime author. _The Adventures of Gerard_,
indeed, and we are going to have a go at it immediately.
Yes, it’s very different from Salamis; but Adventure is everywhere, and
we like to take things as we find them. We have never been anywhere
yet, whether in the steerage of the _Mauretania_ or in a private
lunch-room at the Bankers’ Club, where there wasn’t more amusement than
we deserved.
[Illustration]
MAXIMS AND MINIMS
KINSPRITS
You know how it is: there are books that magically convey a secret
subtle intimation that _you_ are the only reader who has ever, will
ever, wholly grasp their elusive wit and charm. So it is with certain
people. I think of my friend Pausanias. He is quiet, shy; he makes his
points so demurely, so quaintly, that you sometimes think, sadly, of
all the occult little japes he may be making in the weeks that elapse
when you don’t see him ... and no one, perhaps, “gets” them. Folly, of
course--and yet I have seen his eye widen and brighten as it caught
mine across the dinner table, and I knew that he and I, secretly,
had both caught some faint, delicious savour of absurdity and human
queerness--something that no one else there (I strongly believed it)
had quite so sharply tasted. Yes, you can catch his eye--no word is
necessary. Just a slow, enjoying, gentle grin. Across the great clamour
of blurb and bunk, across the huge muddle of beauty, weariness, and
frustration that makes up our daily life--I am always catching his eye.
JOURNALISM AND LITERATURE
Art is the only human power that can make life stand still. Each of
us, desperately clutching his identity amid the impalpable onward pour
of Time and Thought, finds only in art--and chiefly in written art--a
means to halt that ceaseless cruel drift. Literature was invented to
halt life, to hold it still for us to examine and admire.
Here you may see the essential distinction between literature and
journalism. For journalism was devised to hurry life on even faster,
to give the already whirling wheel an insane accelerating fillip.
Journalism is, actually, a pastime; literature, a stoptime. I refer,
of course, not to the journalism of facts, which is a department of
government rather than of letters; but to the journalism of fancy. In
great books life (however troubled and violent in itself) stands pure
and unvexed, unfretted by time and interruption.
There are many schools of journalism; for journalism, being only a
hasty knack, can readily be taught. There are no schools of literature,
for that is born in your own hearts only, and by manifold joys and
disgusts. If it is in you, you shall know; the disease will grow more
and more potent. If it is in you, you shall be dedicated to misery
unguessed by the easy minds beside you. A great poet spoke of hovering
between two worlds, one dead, one powerless to be born. That shall be
your mental lot. You shall realize, more and more, that the bustling
cheery life of the general is, in some seizures, dead to your spirit:
and yet that new brave world of imagination, which travails in your
heart, can never quite come to paper. Would you know the mood and
emotion that move behind literature, read Arnold’s _Scholar Gipsy_. I
love journalism and honour it; but it must be added that it inhabits a
different world from literature, and does not even faintly understand
the language that literature speaks.
HOBBES
There are some famous books which are the delight of scholars but
hardly at all known to the amateur reader. Of such, we think of Thomas
Hobbes’ _Leviathan_. It is so nobly sagacious and entertaining that
with a little trouble spent on rephrasing his stuff and giving it
snappy captions we could probably sell it to a long chain of newspapers
and enter into competition with the Syndicated Spinozas who prey upon
the public appetite for aphorisms.
Hobbes’ wisdom is of the shrewd and nipping sort. If we had to choose
but one passage, to show a seventeenth-century mind at its best, we
should pluck his remarks on Laughter--famous indeed, but probably
little known to casual readers. See the clear stream of the mind
flowing in a channel of granite prose:--
Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called
laughter; and is caused either by some sudden act of their own
that pleaseth them, or by the apprehension of some deformed
thing in another by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud
themselves. And it is incident most to them that are conscious
of the fewest abilities in themselves: who are forced to keep
themselves in their own favour by observing the imperfections
of other men. And therefore much laughter at the defects of
others is a sign of pusillanimity. For of great minds one of
the proper works is to help and free others from scorn, and
compare themselves only with the most able.
On the contrary, sudden dejection is the passion that causeth
weeping, and is caused by such accidents as suddenly take
away some vehement hope or some prop of their power; and
they are most subject to it that rely principally on helps
external, such as are women and children. Therefore some weep
for the loss of friends, others for their unkindness, others
for the sudden stop made to their thoughts of revenge by
reconciliation. But in all cases, both laughter and weeping are
sudden motions, custom taking them both away. For no man laughs
at old jests, or weeps for an old calamity.
The vain-glory which consisteth in the feigning or supposing of
abilities in ourselves which we know are not is most incident
to young men, and nourished by the histories or fictions
of gallant persons, and is corrected oftentimes by age and
employment.
LADIES AT THE PHONE
There is a certain department store on the slope of Murray Hill which
has in it a gallery much frequented by ladies for meeting their
friends. Once in a while we have an appointment there to wait for
Titania, and always we find it an entertaining corner of the world.
Along one side of the gallery is a long line of telephone booths, and
we know nothing more amusing than to stroll past the glass doors, with
apparently abstracted and meditative air, to watch the faces of the
fair captives within. How admirable a contrivance is the feminine face
for reflecting the emotions! Some you will see talking animatedly,
with bright colour, sparkling eyes, every appearance of mirth and
merry cheer. Others are waiting, all anguish and grievance, for some
dilatory connection; their small brows heavy with perplexity. Often
it seems to be necessary, for some mysterious sharing of secrets or
shopping plans, for two ladies to occupy the same booth at a time; how
they do it we cannot guess; but they sit demurely squeezed upon one
another and their faces appear side by side, both apparently talking at
once into the receiver. Through the glass pane this offers a curious
sight, apparently a lady with two heads; muffled by the barrier, shrill
squeaks and conjectures are dimly heard. There are ladies, generous
of physique, who find it hard enough to press in singly; when they
seek to arise they are held tightly by the cage and a great wrench and
backing outward are necessary. Particularly on a Saturday, shortly
before matinée time, are these lively creatures full of animation and
derring-do. A gay and vivid panorama of human frailty, only surpassed
in quaint absurdity by a similar row of men in the phone booths of a
large cigar store.
* * * * *
OF STREET CLEANING
(_By Our Own Lord Bacon_)
Snow is a deposit fair in itself, but a shrewd thing in a city.
Where ways be crowded and traffic insisteth, let there be alacrity
and stirring on the part of the city servants, lest the public have
occasion of murmuring. Of streets which need purifying, there be three
kinds: as Broadway, which is treacle; Fifth Avenue, syrup; and uptown,
which is soup and all manner of beastliness. So also of snow there
be three sorts, the dry and powdery; the wet and slushy, liquefying
soon; the granular and sleety, whereof the latter adhereth long and
occasioneth sudden prostrations, unwholesome to human dignity but
opportunity of sport to the vulgar. When men are checked in their
desires to pass to and fro without let or stoppage, then must the
prince be wary to reason with the commuters, who being ever great
self-lovers, _sui amantes sine rivali_, are like to be disproportionate
in outcry. And for the most part, the subway will be still current,
but small praise accrueth thereto from citizens, sudden cattle in
protest but tardy to acknowledge favour. This is not handsome. Of the
surface cars I will not speak; let them be, for the occasion, as though
they existed not. For though there be some talk about revival of the
service when the Broadway slot be picked and scalded by hand, yet is
this but vaunting and idle boast. There is no impediment in the streets
but may be wrought out by resolute labour. Of block parties, flame
throwers, tractors, steam-ploughs and other ingenuities, I like them
not. These be but toys. Let men toil with wit and will, by pick and
shovel and horse-cart. This is best for the public.
* * * * *
DR. OSLER
“In seventy or eighty years” (said Thomas Browne, M. D.) “a man may
have a deep Gust of the World, know what it is, what it can afford,
and what ’tis to have been a Man. Such a latitude of years may hold a
considerable corner in the general Map of Time.”
Surely no modern thinker has taken a deeper gust of life or pondered
more charitably over the difficult problems of the race than Sir
William Osler, a true follower and kinsprit of the wise physician of
Norwich. “The Old Humanities and the New Science,” his last public
address (given in Oxford, May 16, 1919), was the capsheaf of that
long series of writings and speakings in which Dr. Osler unlocked his
generous, humane heart and gave inspiring counsel to his fellows.
It was an occasion that even the most severe brevity must describe
as of happy import. Osler, a physician and a man of science, had
been honoured by the presidency of the Classical Association, Great
Britain’s most distinguished gathering of the men who have made the
culture of the antique world their touchstone in life. And Dr. Osler,
himself a keen classical student, did not permit himself merely
gracious and suave messages. Pleading for a new bridal of science and
the classics, in that delightful and urbane chaff which he knew so well
to administer, he pointed out the barrenness of the tradition that
has made the famous “More Humane Letters” of Oxford entirely neglect
the workings and winnings of the science that has transformed the
world. Dr. Osler, in his great career, perhaps never spoke with more
convincing persuasion than when he pointed out that even in their own
province of the classical tongues the modern humanists have passed over
the scientific work of the ancients, as for instance in Aristotle and
Lucretius.
Among men who err and are baffled, but still blunder eagerly and
hopefully in the magnificent richness of the natural world, there arise
ever and again such figures as Osler’s, a pride and a consolation to
their comrades. Men, alas! are slow in finding the treasures that lie
close about them. Dr. Osler’s essays are too little known among general
readers. His all-embracing humanity, his mind packed with wisdom and
beauty, his humour and his sagacious and persistent method in the
conduct of a crowded life, make him a figure exceptionally helpful to
contemplate. This last of his essays needs to be read not only by all
educators, but by all who have any rational ideals of life, and who
need, every now and then, to surmount the troubled stream of quotidian
affairs and focus their visions more clearly.
No sensible man doubts that, if haste and confusion and greed do
not overcome us, the world should stand to-day on the sill of a new
Renaissance, a new empire of the mind, in which the old foolish
antagonism of science and the so-called “humanities” will be only a
vain and dusty rumour. What are “liberal” studies, one may ask? Why,
surely, studies that _liberate_--that set the spirit free from the
oppression of sordid and small motives, that stir and urge it toward
generous achievement and the assistance of misfortune. When did letters
arrogate to themselves the heavenly adjective _belles?_ Are there not
the _belles sciences_ also? And is the biplane now soaring over the
olive-shining Hudson any less lovely than the most precious sonnet ever
anchored and flattened in persisting ink?
This essay of Dr. Osler’s shows one the pulse and heartbeat of modern
science, the tender spirit of idealism that urges so much of the
technical investigation of our time. In Dr. Osler, as in hundreds
of other scientists less known and perhaps less gifted in public
utterance, there is the union of the two Hippocratic ideals which the
great Canadian physician laid before himself as his guides in life--the
union of _philanthropia_ and _philotechnia_--a love of humanity joined
to a love of his craft.
To infect the average man with the spirit of the humanities, Dr. Osler
said, is the highest aim of education. And this brilliant address
of his is a crowning instance of the way in which, in his mind,
the practical service of science was beautified by the liberal and
imperishable spirit of classical thought.
* * * * *
THE MOST EXCITING BOOK
We have just been reading what we honestly believe is the most
fascinating book in the world. It is, we must confess, very much in
the vein of this modern realism, because it is written in a terse,
staccato, and even abrupt style, although always well balanced. The
general effect, we admit, is depressing, though that may be only
our own personal reaction, because the plot is one with which we
are intimately familiar. Every now and then the action rises to a
climax when we think it is going to end happily after all; but then
something always occurs to sadden us. Occasionally it gives us moments
of gruesome suspense, followed by flashes of temporary optimism. The
general technique is distinctly that of the grieving Russian prose
writers, for the total effect is gloomy and grim. The critics have had
nothing to say about this book, but for us it has cumulating interest.
* * * * *
We find we forgot to mention the title of the above volume, which is
issued in very handy format, bound in limp brown leather. We mean, of
course, our bank book.
* * * * *
A SUGGESTION
We have been looking over the catalogue of Coventry Patmore’s library,
issued by Everard Meynell at “The Serendipity Shop,” London. The
following note interested us; some of our vigorous readers, now that
the wooing season is toward, may find in it a gentle technical hint:
Patmore told Dr. Garnett that during his courtship, wishing to
be sure that a congeniality of taste existed between himself
and Emily Andrews, he lent her Emerson’s Essays, asking her to
mark the passages that most struck her, and on getting the book
back was delighted to find that the marks were those which he
would have made for himself.
According to Mr. Meynell’s catalogue, the copy of Emerson referred
to is inscribed, in Patmore’s hand: “Emily Andrews, June 24, 1847.”
Emerson’s efficacy in the rôle of Cupid may be judged from the fact
that the two were married September 11, 1847.
One wonders if Patmore applied the same test before his two subsequent
marriages (1864, 1881).
* * * * *
ADVICE TO YOUNG WRITERS
A gentleman asks us to give some advice to young men intending to enter
journalism. Well, we would say, get a job as a sporting writer. That is
where the real fun lies. Being a sporting writer is hot stuff; it keeps
you out in the open air, you are respected and even admired by the
least easily impressionable classes, such as policemen, car conductors,
and office boys; you have immense fun inventing new ways of saying
things (which is the groundwork of good literature), get a great many
free meals, have your expenses paid, meet people who have high-powered
cars and put them at your disposal, and your lightest word is deemed
important enough to be put on a telegraph wire and flashed to the
office for an EXTRA. If you write about such minor matters as war and
peace, poetry, books, or the beauty of this, that, and the other,
you will be hidden demurely away on an inside page and there is no
particular hurry about it.
The other day at the Polo Grounds we noticed a hard-boiled fan
leaving the stand after the game. As he passed out onto the field he
suddenly saw the gang of reporters finishing up their stories and the
instruments clattering beside them. “Gee,” he cried, “look at all the
writers!” And with a real awe he turned to his companion and said:
“Their stuff goes all over the world.”
We contend that Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, James Branch Cabell, Joe
Hergesheimer, Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, and Lord Dunsany, sitting
side by side on a bench writing short stories for a wager, would not
have elicited such a gust of reverent admiration from our friend.
We are not joking. You can have more fun, and get better paid for it,
as a sporting reporter than in any other newspaper job. And there is in
it a bigger opportunity for men of real originality.
* * * * *
A GREAT REPORTER
We have been reading--for the first time, we blush to admit--the
_Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, in the magnificent ten-volume
edition of Boswell published by Gabriel Wells. It is the ideal book
for reading on the train, and causes us to reassert that Jamie
was one of the world’s greatest reporters. If we were running a
newspaper we would give a copy of this book to every man on the news
staff. Professor Tinker in his introduction calls it “perhaps the
sprightliest book of travels in the language.” Indeed, this is Boswell
_in excelsis_, and it warms us to note the magnificent zest and gusto
and triumphant happiness that peep between all his paragraphs. Happy,
happy man, he had his adored Doctor to himself; he had him, at last,
actually in Scotland; they were on holiday together! “Master of the
Hebridean Revels,” Tinker charmingly calls him. What an immortal touch
is this, of the somewhat baffled Mrs. Boswell, who must have thought
the expedition a perverse absurdity. This is on the day Johnson and
Boswell left Edinburgh--
She did not seem quite easy when we left her; but away we went!
Perfect, perfect--even down to the exclamation point.
We have not got very far in the Tour--only some fifty pages--but we
are drowned deep in the engulfing humour and fecund humanity of the
book. What an appetite for life, what a glorious naïf curiosity! What a
columnist Boswell would have made! He quotes Johnson to this effect--
I love anecdotes. I fancy mankind may come, in time, to
write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of
preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those
arts by which a big book is made.
Boswell, with superb dramatic instinct, unconsciously adopted the most
triumphant subtlety of manœuvre. He put himself in the posture of a
boob in order to draw out the characteristic good things of the great
men he admired. He fished passionately for human oddity, and used any
bait at all that was to hand--even himself. To see the two together
on Boswell’s artfully contrived stage--Scotland, which he knew would
elicit the Doctor’s most genuine humours, prejudices, shrewd manly
observations--and in the bright light of a junketing adventure--ah,
here is a bellyful of art. What a pair: the subtle simpleton, the
simple-minded sage!
* * * * *
AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE
Of course, it’s the oldest spoof in the world; and also it isn’t quite
fair; but we felt that (for private reasons) we owed it to ourself to
chaff a certain publisher friend. So we diligently typed out the first
dozen or so of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and, making use of a borrowed
name and address kindly lent us by a colleague, submitted them to the
publisher.
We accompanied them by a pseudonymous letter which we truly think was
something of a work of art, it was so amiably true to the sort of thing
that publishers are accustomed to receive. We explained that these were
the first of a series of 154 sonnets, and added that though many of our
friends thought them good, we feared their affectionate partiality. We
were submitting only a few, we said, in the hope of frank criticism
from a great publishing house. If we were lucky enough to have them
accepted the rest would be forthcoming; and the volume (we hoped) would
be bound in red leather with very wide margins and a blank page at
the front for autographing. And a good deal more innocent and hopeful
meditation.
We had to wait some time for the reply--and had even begun to fear that
the publisher had spotted our jape. But no--here is the answer that
came:
We are sorry that after a careful consideration of your
“Sonnets” we cannot make a proposal for publication. We fear
that we are lacking in a real enough enthusiasm to push the
book as it must be pushed to bring about any success.
We regret, too, that we cannot comply with your request to
criticise the work, but it is against our policy to offer
criticism on material which we cannot accept for publication.
We handle so many manuscripts that we could not do the work
justice, and then, too, we are diffident about offering
suggestions when you may find a publisher who will like your
work just as it stands. In general, however, we may say that,
so far as we can judge, we thought that the work was not up to
standard.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity of considering your
manuscript. It is being returned to you by mail.
We now lay this before a candid world and ask our friend how much
blackmail we can get out of him to refrain from publishing his identity?
Yet we admit it wasn’t quite fair. A knowledge of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
is no necessary equipment for successful publishing. And some of them,
if you are taken unawares, do sound a bit preposterous.
* * * * *
CARAWAY SEEDS
It seemed to us that we saw a deep significance in the fact, told
by Lytton Strachey in his _Queen Victoria_, that the Queen’s pious
governess, Lehzen, was a fanatic about caraway seeds. Mr. Strachey says:
Her passion for caraway seeds, for instance, was
uncontrollable. Little bags of them came over to her from
Hanover, and she sprinkled them on her bread and butter, her
cabbage, and even her roast beef.
Surely throughout the whole Victorian era the attentive observer
can discern the faint but pungent musk of the mild, bland, uncandid
caraway. We ourself, in our early youth, crossed the trail of that seed
more than once, in small cakes and patties, and instinctively revolted
from it. If there is any emblem symbolic of the Victorian age, perhaps
it is the caraway seed, a thing that Greenwich Village, we dare say,
has never encountered even in its most enterprising tea-room. The
kingdom of Victoria, we suggest, was like a grain of caraway seed;
but it became a tree so vast that the fowls of the air lodged in the
branches thereof.
* * * * *
BLUNT’S DIARIES
We have a fear that the two volumes of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’s
Diaries--published here last year by Alfred Knopf--are not as widely
known as they should be. This is natural, for the two big volumes are
expensive, but they are a mine of most interesting material. They are a
liberal education in the truth _quot homines tot sententiæ_--in other
words, that there are infinite matters of difference among honourable
men.
Blunt was a gallant dissenter and whole-hearted skeptic about
civilization. Of course these aristocratic rebels, who have never had
to pass through the gruelling discipline of middle-class life; who have
always been free to travel, to ramble about to witty week-end parties
at country houses, ride blooded horses, sit up all night drinking
port wine and talking brilliantly with Cabinet Ministers, have (or so
it seems to us) a fairly easy time compared to the humdrum plod who
wambles through a stiff continuous stint of hard work and still keeps
a bit of rebellion in his heart. And of course, since Blunt condemned
almost everything in European politics throughout his lifetime, one
begins to suspect that he was almost too pernickety. Of the unnumbered
British statesmen whom he roasted, not all can have been either fools
or knaves. The law of average forbids. But a protestant of that sort is
a magnificently healthy and useful person to have about. He had a habit
of assuming that Egypt, India, Ireland, Turkey, Germany, were always
right, and England necessarily wrong. When a country has a number of
citizens like that and regards them affectionately, it is a sign that
it is beginning to grow up. One of Blunt’s remarks to Margot Asquith is
worth remembering: “There is nothing so demoralizing for a country as
to put people in prison for their opinions.”
But the casual reader ought to have a go at Blunt’s Diaries because
they are a rich deposit of pithy human anecdote. We see him, at the age
of sixty-six or thereabouts, attending a performance of Hippolytus,
translated by Murray. “At the end of it we were all moved to tears, and
I got up and did what I never did before in a theatre, shouted for the
author, whether for Euripides or Gilbert Murray I hardly knew.” With
Coquelin père he goes to have lunch with Margot Asquith. Her little
daughter, twelve years old (now, of course, Princess Bibesco, whose
short stories are well worth your reading), dressed in a Velasquez
costume, was called on to recite poems. “Coquelin good-naturedly
suggested that ‘perhaps Mademoiselle would be shy,’ but Margot would
not hear of it. ‘There is no shyness,’ she said, ‘in this family.’” Any
lover of the human comedy will find intense joy in Blunt’s comments
on Edward VII, for instance. When his antipathies were aroused, Blunt
lived up to his name. Roosevelt’s speech in Cairo in 1910 praising
British rule in Egypt was a red rag to the elderly skeptic, who
considered that Britain had no business anywhere on earth outside
her own island. His comment in his journal was: “He is a buffoon of
the lowest American type, and roused the fury of young Egypt to the
boiling point ... he is now at Paris airing his fooleries, and is to
go to Berlin, a kind of mad dog roaming the world.” It is quaint that
the humanitarians and intense lovers of their kind are always the most
brutal in attack upon those with whom they disagree.
There are also innumerable snapshots of men of letters in mufti.
Rossetti, for instance, throwing a cup of tea at Meredith’s face. Most
of Meredith, Blunt found unreadable. His picture of Francis Thompson’s
last days is unforgettable. For our own part we find particular
amusement in the little sideviews of Hilaire Belloc--a neighbour in
Sussex in the later years. It is disconcerting to learn that Belloc’s
horse “Monster,” of whom the hilarious Hilaire speaks so highly in a
number of essays, is “a very ancient mare which he rides in blinkers.
He is no great horseman.” Belloc coming to picnic with a bottle of wine
in his pocket; Belloc out-talking Alfred Austin, Arthur Balfour, and
indeed everyone else; Belloc wondering if he would be given a peerage;
Belloc groaning because he has sworn off liquor during Lent, and
Belloc delightfully and extremely wrong in the days just preceding the
war--insisting that Germany was unprepared and afraid of France--these
are the sort of things that cannot by any stretch of exaggeration be
called malicious tattle; they are the genial byplay of civilization
that keeps us reminded that those we love and admire may be not less
absurd than ourselves.
There is much real beauty in the book, too. Blunt was a poet of very
considerable charm, and a little story told by a former schoolmate
of his seems rather characteristic. When a child he used to keep
caterpillars in paper boxes; but he always pricked holes in the lids
in the form of the constellations--so that the imprisoned caterpillars
might think they were still out of doors and could see the stars.
It’s a queer thing. Those caterpillars, somehow or other, make us think
of newspaper men.
* * * * *
GENIUS
Occasionally we have fired off a culverin or two in honour of Stella
Benson, that remarkably agile and humorous creature, who is, with May
Sinclair and “Elizabeth,” one of our favourite female novelists. So we
are particularly pleased to have F. H. P. recall to us a passage about
the Dog David, in _Living Alone_:
David Blessing Brown, a dog of independent yet loving habit,
had spent about four-fifths of his life in the Brown family.
He was three years old and though ineligible for military
service made a point of wearing khaki about his face and in a
symmetrical heart-shaped spot near his tail. To Sarah Brown he
was the Question and the Answer, his presence was a constant
playtime for her mind; so well was he loved that he seemed to
her to move in a little mist and glamour of love....
I believe that Sarah Brown had loved the Dog David so much that
she had given him a soul. Certainly other dogs did not care for
him. David said that they had found out that his second name
was Blessing and that they laughed at him for it. His face was
seamed with the scars of their laughing. But I know that the
enmity had a more fundamental reason than that. I know that
when men speak with the tongues of angels they are shunned and
hated by men, and so I think that when dogs approach humanity
too nearly they are banished from the love of their own kind.
If you do not recognize, even in that little random passage, the
curious quality of Stella Benson’s talent, then we fear (brave friends)
we can never agree about literature. In her writing we always seem to
see that special and bewildering richness that we prize most of all;
something that does not lie in any particular nicety or adornment of
words, but in an underrunning flavour and queer subtlety of meaning. Is
there any subject in the world more trite, more shopworn, and defaced
by acres of blab than Dogs and their relations to mankind? There is
not. And yet see how Stella Benson, without one pompous or pretentious
word, and with a humour both mocking and tender, has not only said
something new, but something which, as soon as it is said, becomes old,
because it is permanent. That is what, in lieu of a better word, we are
inclined to call genius, and we have never read a page of Miss Benson’s
work which did not show it.
* * * * *
EMBARRASSMENTS
Among our numerous embarrassments we don’t know any more painful
than being compelled, the other day, to expose our theory of rolltop
housekeeping to an insurance man. Old Henry Sonneborn, Jr., of
Philadelphia (who is, let us explain, the only insurance man with whom
we ever do business) came over to arrange some alterations in our
complicated scheme of “protection.” But he caught us unawares, and when
he wanted to see some of our receipts we had to go hunting through our
desk while he was sitting right there watching us.
We explained our theory. Now, Henry, we said, there are only three
places where that missing receipt can possibly be. It may be in one of
the pigeonholes that run due east of the foc’s’le of the desk. If it
isn’t there, it will be in the right-hand front corner of the principal
drawer, where we put things while waiting for a chance to file them. If
it isn’t there, it will be in the tin tobacco box that we keep hidden
under the unanswered letters. We feared that Henry would think us very
unbusinesslike, but he was polite and kind, as always.
We went through the drawer first. Henry was a bit disconcerted to find
it so dusty; and so were we. We found a clay pipe that we hadn’t seen
for a long time; we found some foreign stamps that we have been saving
to send to a small boy in Philadelphia. We tried with these to distract
Henry’s attention from the object of search. We asked him if his little
boy was a stamp collector. But Henry kept bringing us back to the
receipt, which was necessary for some reason. He said he needed that
receipt to complete some scheme he had for reducing our overhead; the
best authorities on finance, he said, are agreed that no man has any
_right_ to attempt to save money before he is 40; no, he should put it
into insurance. We tried to keep Henry talking while we were scuffling
about through the back of the desk. We thought that perhaps the receipt
would turn up unexpectedly; we didn’t want him to notice that we were
looking in parts of the desk where we had explained it could not
possibly be.
Damnation, Henry, we said; it isn’t our fault that this desk is in
such a mess; we have the most orderly instincts, but our clients keep
dumping stuff on us so fast that we can’t ever catch up with it.
It was a queer coincidence, we thought, that when we went out to lunch
that day we noticed at 56 Wall Street a tablet in honour of Morris
Robinson, who “established on this spot the business of modern life
insurance.” He was a Canadian, the tablet says. We’re glad he wasn’t an
American.
In the meantime we are going to have another look through those
pigeonholes.
* * * * *
AN IDEA
We do not often spend time thinking up ways of surprising humanity with
kindness; yet when we stand in line at the bank while a queue of merry
merchants ahead of us are drawing out huge payroll sums which take
about five minutes each to be counted and recounted, a blithe thought
comes our way. It is this: On some Saturday morning, when banking
traffic is particularly heavy, we will gather half a dozen friends of
ours who have nothing to do. We will go round to the bank and stand in
line, all seven of us. As we draw nearer and nearer to the window we
will watch the anguished faces of those behind, despairingly counting
the number of people that still stand between them and the cherished
teller. Then just as the first of our seven gets up to the window we
will all slip deftly away and enjoy ourselves by watching the joyous
elation of the man who thought himself eighth in line and now finds
himself next to the grill. All down the impatient throng passes a
tremor of surprised pleasure. Then we will move on to the next bank and
do the same thing.
* * * * *
ALGEBRA FOR URCHINS
We wish we weren’t so rusty in our mathematics. One of our favourite
projects has always been to write an algebra book for the use of the
Urchin when he gets a little older. This algebra would be in the form
of a story in which the problems would be introduced naturally into the
movement of the tale, and each one would be (if we could persuade him
to do it) illustrated by Fontaine Fox.
The problems, moreover, would deal with facts and topics familiar to
the Urchin. One problem, for instance, would run something as follows:
Riding in Dame Quickly along the North Hempstead turnpike, the Urchin
notices that a man is walking on the sidewalk but at just such a pace
that a telephone pole prevents him from being recognized. Attempting to
see who the pedestrian is, and foiled by the fact that the simultaneous
motions of Dame Quickly and the man on the sidewalk keep the pole
constantly in the line of sight, the Urchin becomes interested in the
problem. He notes that the speedometer indicates 22 miles an hour.
He persuades his father to stop the car and measure the width of the
road and the sidewalk. Dame Quickly stops opposite the pole and the
measurements are taken. It is 24 feet from the Dame to the pole. The
line along which the man was walking, down the middle of the sidewalk,
was three feet from the pole. How fast was the man walking?[B]
[B] The answer, if you care to work it out, seems to be 2¾
miles per hour.
* * * * *
A MODEST SCAFFOLD FOR PHILOSOPHERS
We have been meditating on the dissimilar conduct of cats and dogs,
since we added a kitten (named _Pepys_) to our household roster.
The dog, plainly, is a boob, for he tries so hard to please and
ingratiate the Masters of the Event, his deities. Whereas the cat,
while calmly recognizing the paramountcy of the gods, goes ahead in
every way within his power to circumvent and outwit their control. The
dog, poor honest simpleton, shows his genuine and unselfish affection
for his deities; the cat never makes up to them unless he wants
something from them, or feels that a little friendly caressing would
be agreeable. The cat is 100 per cent. pro-feline. The dog, we reckon,
is at least 30 per cent. pro-human. You open the back door. If the
cat wants to go abroad, he will streak through without an instant’s
hesitation; but the dog will wait, politely, until he is sure whether
you wish him to go out. Question, then, for philosophic ruminators--Do
not the domestic gods secretly respect the cat a little more because
they know he is inwardly hostile and contemptuous and a perfect ego? A
whole rationale of heaven and hell may be quizzed out of this matter.
* * * * *
ICI ON PARLE
We have been considerably humiliated lately by the fact that although
we once studied French with some persistence, and enjoy nothing more
than reading such demi-gods as the chrysostom Bourget (a celestial
ironist far too little known in this country)--humiliated, we repeat,
that our spoken French is so appalling. Lately, as the surprising
result of an advt. in the _Herald_, Titania landed an elderly female
French cook who speaks no word of English. And if you speak French no
better than we do, figure to yourself the complexities of trying to
explain to Celeste the workings of a kerosene water-heater (we have
no gas in the rustic Salamis Estates) while Titania (whose French is
better than ours) stands by squeaking with cruel mirth. Comme ça:
Voyez vous, Celeste, l’huile--comment dit-on en français le
liquide?--le petrole? Ah, oui--eh bien, le petrole entre par
là, dans le petit cylindre, vous prenez moi, hein?--et donc on
place le cylindre comme ça--mais pas comme ça, comprenez?--et
donc le petrole marche (quand le--comment appelle-t-on le
_wick_? le petit toile ici--le mèche? ah oui!--quand le
mèche est en ordre laborieux--telle quelle ce n’est pas
maintenant)--_ye gods, Titania, give me a hand with this
explanation_--le petrole marche en haut--mais voyez vous, ceci
n’est pas un mèche honnete-à-dieu; c’est d’asbeste; on place le
soi-disant mèche--(le _burner_ on dit en anglais) comme ainsi
ici bas, et donc on allume une allumette et vous directez le
feu par ici, par là, et après le feu s’eteint vous reallumez
avec patience. Du patience, toujours, avec ces poêles à
l’huile,--et prenez garde, ne replacez pas ces cylindres à
flamme auparavant que le feu a monté, et exhibite quelque
vitalité, vous voyez?
Eh bien; en une heure peut-etre vous rattrapez de l’eau
chaud, si le feu n’evanouie pas et le _backdoor_--la porte
de derrière--n’est pas ouverte et le vent ne siffle pas trop
forte....
CELESTE: Ah oui, Monsieur, c’est bien simple!
* * * * *
ASTONISHMENT
One of the most astounding scenes in the local panorama of human oddity
is a news-stand at one of the big terminals when the homeward-bound
commuters are buying their evening papers. Those who believe there is
no hustle in New York might contemplate that spectacle--the continual
patter of hurried people scampering up to the counter to seize a paper,
throw down their money, and bound away. Indeed, if you stand for a
while near the news-stand and watch, you will gradually become aware
that there is something pathologic about the matter; that the great
mass of newspaper readers crave and swallow their daily potion much as
they would a familiar drug or anodyne. The absolute definiteness of
the traffic is another curious feature: the news dealer can tell you,
almost to a figure, how many of each paper he will sell each evening.
As the commuters hurry up to the counter, you will never see them
hesitate, ponder, and ask themselves, “Well, which paper shall I read
to-night?” No; they grab the usual sheet, and off they go.
* * * * *
SPIDERS
We wrote[C] something about the spider’s “struts and cantilevers,”
and were gently chaffed by some friendly correspondents. Well, the
spider is not only a marvellous engineer, he also seems a persistent
patriot. There is one on our front lawn who still celebrates the
Spanish-American war. Every morning, among the sun-sparkled shrubbery,
we find he has erected a dewey arch.
[C] You can refer, if you insist, to a book called _Plum
Pudding_.
One of the most exciting things we know is a series of dainty models at
the Natural History Museum in New York, showing the various stages in
a spider’s web. Did you know, for instance, that often a preliminary
spiral is blocked in, to hold the web together during construction?
This is afterward carefully removed to make room for the sticky spiral
which does the fly-catching. So at any rate we remember the Museum’s
models. If you find being stricken with astonishments a pleasing
humiliation, the Museum is the place to visit. We always think to
ourself, how old Sir Kenelm Digby would have enjoyed it.
Then, of course, you mustn’t omit to read Fabre’s glorious _Life of the
Spider_. The microscopic Archimedes can much more than mere tenuous
trusses and gossamer girders. M. Fabre tells us that the triumph of
the spider’s unconscious art (for the creature works divinely, without
reason or calculation) is the logarithmic spiral. So if by chance you
have ever fallen into that meanest absurdity of the unthinking and
asserted that “Mathematics is uninteresting,” consider Fabre’s words:--
Geometry, that is to say, the science of harmony in space,
presides over everything. We find it in the arrangement of the
scales of a fir-cone, as in the arrangement of an Epeira’s
lime-snare; we find it in the spiral of a Snail-shell, in the
chaplet of a Spider’s thread, as in the orbit of a planet;
it is everywhere, as perfect in the world of atoms as in the
world of immensities. And this universal geometry tells us of a
Universal Geometrician, whose divine compass has measured all
things.
The mathematician, let us add for our own part, is the greatest of
poets, the greatest of priests.
But a study of M. Fabre’s magnificent books will not necessarily add
consolations to the Pollyanna brand of religious thought. You will
find, in his discussion of the appalling married life of insects,
gruesome considerations which will furnish merriment to the cynic
and painful grief to the old-fashioned. M. Maeterlinck says, in his
eloquent preface to _The Life of the Spider_:
Nothing equals the marriage of the Green Grasshopper, of which
I cannot speak here, for it is doubtful whether even the Latin
language possesses the words needed to describe it as it should
be described.
The fiercest realist yet produced by the younger generations of Chicago
and Greenwich Village is a mere trifler compared to the immortal Fabre.
* * * * *
PERNICIOUSNESS OF MR. LEAR
We are rather startled to find, on beginning to read Edward Lear’s
immortal _Nonsense Books_ to our Archurchin, that liquor plays a
considerable rôle in his waggishness. This phase of Lear’s works we
had quite forgotten, although it may have played a subtle part in
undermining our character when young. But what are we to do, we ask,
when, in reading aloud we come upon such distressing testaments as this:
B was a Bottle blue,
which was not very small;
Papa he filled it full of beer,
And then he drank it all.
Or this:
There was an Old Man with an Owl,
Who continued to bother and howl;
He sat on a rail, and imbibed bitter ale,
Which refreshed that Old Man and his Owl.
Or this:
There was an old person of Sheen,
Whose expression was calm and serene;
He sate in the water, and drank bottled porter,
That placid old person of Sheen.
Now, of course, in reading these passages we can improvise variations:
we can say that Papa’s blue bottle was filled with tea; we can
substitute “ginger ale” for “bitter ale”; we can make the old person
of Sheen sit in the porter and drink bottled water; but before very
long our audience will begin to read the book for himself, and when he
finds that we have implanted a false version in his mind there will be
a swift succession of logical inquiries. The Old Soak’s problem is far
easier: _his_ sons are grown up and become “revenooers”; their minds
were long since formed on this topic. But what is the comparatively
Young Soak to do in the matter of explaining literature to his
offspring?
Only in one place, as far as we can see, does Mr. Lear refer to drink
with any tinge of moral or reprobatory feeling. Thus:
Twas a tumbler full
Of Punch all hot and good;
Papa he drank it up, when in
The middle of a wood.
We shall have to lean heavily upon that cautionary stanza in reading to
the Urchin. We will not try to bias him, of course; but by grave and
solemn repetition surely the idea will pierce his meninges--that no
matter how excellent the libation, it must be performed in secret and
far from scrutiny.
THE SEDAN
Not long ago, in the garage at Salamis run by our friend Fred Seaman,
we were admiring and examining a very beautiful sedan. Not that we
had any idea of ever abandoning our cherished Dame Quickly, who means
more to us than any other vehicle ever will or can. But, just in a
contemplative spirit, and as a frustrated lover of luxury, we were
admiring this sedan, and saying to ourself that if we were a person of
wealth and standing that would be just about the kind of car we would
like to own. And we gazed entranced at its opulent upholstery, its
cut-glass carnation-vase, its little 8-day clock, cigar-holder, and all
the other gauds and trinkets. Just in idle curiosity we inquired the
price. Then we went over the hill to our home.
A day or so later a cheerful Polish friend of ours, who is so kind as
to call for the washing weekly, and who used to do odd jobs round our
estate, and with whom we boarded our admirable cat _Pepys_ while we
were in town, called at our house. Titania had always represented this
person to us as being in the last agony of financial dissolution and a
worthy object of charity.
“I want to show you my new boat,” said he.
We thought at first that he meant an actual boat, down in the harbour,
and were interested. But he pointed out to the front of the house.
There was the very sedan we had admired. He insisted on our going down
to listen to the engine. “Paid all cash for it,” he said proudly.
When we see a large, glimmering limousine pass us on the road,
hereafter, we shall always wonder whether it is some thrifty washerman
and his family.
BAD VERSE
Really thoroughly bad verse (as Mr. Hilaire Belloc pointed out in an
essay) has a magic and an attraction all its own. It has (he said)
“something of the poignant and removed from common experience which
you get also in poetry. Great pits strike one with horror, as do the
mountains with their sublimity.”
A philosophic friend of ours, whose dolorous task it is to examine
manuscripts for a large publishing house, sent us the other day a
collection of verses that had been submitted to his firm. We have had
considerable diversion in examining them; though compositions of this
sort lead one also to melancholy. It is sad to think that the accident
of rhyme, which has been the occasion of so much verbal loveliness, has
also been responsible for so many atrocities.
We shall not say who wrote the verses in question, except that he lives
in a Southern State, but we will quote a few stanzas from a poem called
“Love’s Progress.” After several pages describing the sorrows of a pair
of lovers, we arrive at this:
They broke to break their breaking breach,
Which both have caused, because of each
Failing to procure, or reach,
The longing goal they did beseech.
They sought to seek their seeking truth,
Which all do crave, and never boot;
They kept their cadence to a flute,
Which only wisdom seeks to mute.
They slid to slide their sliding sleigh
Toward goals, but met a fray;
And, striking, struck the striking broil;
And found themselves to winds a spoil.
They swung to swing their swinging life
To higher spheres and lusty fife;
But flung against the sturdy cliff,
And sunk beneath the brutal grief.
They shed their shedding tears in vain,
Fruitless as the dismal rain;
And pined their pine, and pined it more;
And reaped their crop they sowed to store.
Defying fies have they defied;
Lying lies have they belied;
Brisky thought did both deride;
Happy hope had both denied!
You see how low rhyme can bring a man.
Of the following, our friend the publisher’s reader observes: “Alas,
poor Henley--’twas an excellent fellow: I knew him well!”
I Am
I am the tutor of my mind;
I am the pastor of my soul;
All that pass, I leave behind,
And focus straight upon my goal.
Until we read that we felt sorry for the author; but indeed it takes
him out of the sphere of charity.
[Illustration]
TWO REVIEWS
I
(New York _Evening Post_, July, 1922)
It is curious that the agencies for letting people know about the
things that really matter are so feeble and ineffective. There was
published in England, last February, a book called _Disenchantment_,
by C. E. Montague. It seems to us perhaps the first book we have seen
that tells truth about the war, tells it beautifully, with a power and
humour and tenderness that are palpable on every page. Five months have
elapsed, and yet we have heard no word as to its being published over
here. Worse still, we learn that more than one New York publisher,
after reading the book, reluctantly declined it. Sometimes one fears
that publishers are not unerring judges of what we all desire to read.
What does a man need to do to deserve well of his generation? Suppose
he had written a book that with quiet dignity and restraint summed up
the “ardours and endurances” of earth’s greatest crisis; a book that
showed sane and sweet knowledge of our poor, frail, tough, bedevilled
human nature; a book so delicately and firmly written that the manner
of it was no less potent than the matter; a book that dealt with
furious subjects calmly; that reviewed passion and misery with reason
and candour; a book that was bitter where bitterness was needed, but
with the bitterness of antiseptic. C. E. Montague has written such a
book. And even though it may be bad manners to speak about it publicly
before it has been published here, we venture do so in the hope of
speeding its coming. To confess a personal incident, when we were half
way through it we encountered one of our friends who is a sagacious
devourer of books. “What’s worth reading?” he said. “Sit down at your
desk and let me dictate a letter to you,” we replied. With admirable
docility this fine creature obeyed. We happened to know that he has
an account at Brentano’s, so we dictated thus: “Brentano’s, New
York. Gentlemen: Please order for me from Chatto & Windus, London,
three copies of _Disenchantment_, by C. E. Montague, and charge to
my account.” We watched carefully while our friend signed his name,
addressed and stamped the envelope, and dropped it down the chute.
By the time we had read him half a page of the book he had already
decided to whom he would give his two extra copies. He will never
regret the transaction, we swear.
We are anxious to put a brake on ourself in speaking of this book: if
we tried to tell you how deeply moving and true we found it, you might
be alarmed. We admit that we came to it favourably prejudiced, for Mr.
Montague’s name has been honourable to us ever since we read his novel
_The Morning’s War_, published in 1913. We had heard, also, of his
gallant record in the war: that in spite of his age (born in 1867), and
an occupation (he is one of the editors of the Manchester _Guardian_)
that many found a full excuse for non-combatancy, he enlisted as a
private in 1914, rose through the ranks to a captain’s commission, and
was three times mentioned in dispatches. We also knew (from _Who’s
Who_) that his recreation was mountaineering, and that he had been
awarded a medal “for saving life from drowning.” But we found in this
book so much more than we had imagined possible that we are at a loss
to describe it. It is the kind of book that, like its author, “saves
life from drowning.” It may save some foundering reason from the dark
tide of cynicism and disorder that is the natural result of the war
years. Even if we only persuaded every newspaper man in America to read
this book, we would have done a good stroke of achievement. It is a
book peculiarly necessary for journalists to meditate.
It is very plain that the world to-day has a bad case of acid mouth,
and Mr. Montague’s book (to use a very humble metaphor) is a kind of
litmus paper that shows the extent of our palate’s embitterment. His
reminiscent synopsis of the war’s moods and its increasing disillusions
and perplexities is the first account that seems to us to fit in with
those troubled, enigmatic, and fragmentary confessions that one hears
from those who saw the trouble from the under side; who are not always
very articulate, but spasmodically ejaculate that “The war didn’t
get into the papers.” The book deals with the greatest topic of our
age in a spirit of commensurate greatness. Of course we think we can
guess why some American publishers have been timid about it. In this
country we have not been anywhere nearly so close to the war as Britain
was. The war was still bullish with us when it suddenly ended. As a
nation, we had not been in it long enough to feel that infernal douche
of skepticism. England has been far, far more bitterly disillusioned.
The war left us economically troubled, but spiritually much the same.
The old bunkums, one suspects, still pass current here as they do not
any longer in England. And perhaps this book, conceived in suffering
and weariness, can be relished only by those who have been more deeply
immersed in horror than most of us. Even in England, we hear, its sale
has not been very large.
For, after all, humanity has an uncanny instinct to avoid truth as
long as it can. As we read this book of Mr. Montague’s we had a sudden
vision of it selling as well as H. G. Wells does--passing from hand to
hand, quoted, sermonized, becoming the fashionable topic of the season.
It even made our beloved Santayana seem dim and pale, in a way; for it
is so close and actual to our present moods and troubles. But then,
with a sigh, we abandoned that vision. Why, if this book were really
seized upon, gloried in as it deserves to be, if its eloquent humour
and generous brave spirit were really acclaimed.... No, we can’t quite
see it! The book is too beautiful, too true.
II
(New York _Herald_, October, 1922)
They don’t come very often, the books that speak so generously and
beautifully to the inner certainties of the mind. And when they do, it
is desirable not to do them dishonour by words too clumsy or sweeping.
But that Mr. Montague’s _Disenchantment_ has come to us in just the
way that it has is a curiously mixed satisfaction and disappointment
to the present reviewer. Satisfaction, in that for the past several
years I have been saying to every publisher who was going abroad: “Why
the devil do you go only to London and nowhere else? Are you aware
that there are very exciting centres of literary activity in Glasgow,
Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham--all sorts of places outside London.
Some day” (I kept saying to publishers) “one of the great books will
bob up a long way from London. You might remember, for instance,
Stevenson and Barrie. Now when you are in England why don’t you go to
call on Mr. Montague at the Manchester _Guardian_? He’d know what was
going on. Very likely he could tell you of someone who was writing a
fine book--someone London wouldn’t know about.”
I take no particular credit for saying this: it was obviousness itself
to any one who had noticed Mr. Montague’s earlier books. But the
publishers, with their stereotyped habit of calling on a few literary
agents in London, and thinking they have then done their possible, paid
no attention. One of the odd things about publishers is that they have
so little adventurous spirit about spooring for the really fine stuff.
Well, the book, quietly written and published, turned out to be by
Mr. Montague himself. Half a year went by, but we in America heard
nothing about it. There are always wide and well-polished alleys for
the transmission of information amusing or trivial. Comparatively
unimportant news spins along the parquet floor, and a crash resounds
like that of tenpins tumbling. But humanity, probably with a wise
instinct, averts its ear from matters that require meditation. The
American publishers, seriatim, had their look at the sheets of
_Disenchantment_. All apparently agreed that it was magnificent, but
with their cheery assumption of knowledge as to what we want to read
opined that it was too British or too full of intricate allusion or too
much about the war, of which we were asserted to be weary. Or that the
British publisher was asking an unwarrantable price for it; that only
a few readers here would appreciate it; that it would be impossible to
come clear on the expense.
These are all sound, sagacious reasonings. The one thing our publisher
friends did not realize was that it is by publishing, every now and
then, a book of this sort that they save their souls. It is an honour
to put such a book on one’s list, even if it should prove presently
unprofitable.
_Disenchantment_ is an enchanting book. It is an _Anatomy of
Melancholy_ in the exact sense. It is a spiritual history of the
war: a penetrating, intellectual, richly allusive, wise, sober, and
compassionate study of that slow process of disintegrating certainty
that marked every mind capable of independent action. People who have
never read it probably imagine that the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ is
a dismal and grievous work. It is, however, one of the most richly
amusing of all books; and it is only fair to say (accepting the danger
of being misconceived) that Mr. Montague’s delicious humour makes
_Disenchantment_ one of the most witty of contemporary writings. For
war, after all, is a human institution and subject to the complexity of
all planetary matters. It has, in Mr. Robert Nichols’s great phrase,
its ardours and endurances; also its selfishnesses, stupidities, and
laughters. It is not to be supposed that men who are pompous and silly
and hilarious and craven in business, book reviewing, education and
theology will be otherwise when they go to war.
So Mr. Montague, in anatomizing the melancholy that has fallen upon
the world, employs, with perfect skill and perfect restraint, every
shaft in the quiver of a literary artist. The old devil of herd-poison
lingers among us yet: there will be some simple spirits who will think
this book bitter, some who will think it blasphemous; some who will
maintain that it plays into the hand of Apollyon (whose residence,
they will probably insist, is somewhere along Unter den Linden). But
there will also be some, and not few I think, who will see in this
book the breadth and burning spirit of one who has long gone beyond
the conception of war as a merely national matter; who looks upon it
as a movement of tragedy among men where the innocent suffer no less
outrage than the guilty. And yet even those who may find Mr. Montague’s
disrobing of official frailty almost too disturbing will take pleasure
in the beauty of his text. Let no one prate to you of the luxuriant
splendour of some of our accredited stylists. The deity of prose moves
in Mr. Montague’s pages. His savoury marrow of allusion--Shakespeare,
for instance, has become part of his actual thinking tissue--will be
undigested by some unpracticed readers. He will be, we might say,
shrimp to the sundry; but no harm will ensue: the casual reader will
merely pay Manchester compliment for what belongs first to Stratford.
And Mr. Montague deserves all the compliment that is possible in an
uncourtly world.
This book could only have been written by a man who has been through
the scorching and weariness. Its simplicity, its calm, temperate
understanding of human weakness, the optical vividness of its narrative
passages, the generous sympathy that moulds even its ironies--these are
the possession of experience. And it occurs to me to ponder the courage
and fortitude of one who could sit down, in the sobriety of retrospect,
to write a book recalling beauties and sufferings that most of us would
have been glad to let slide into the discard of memory. There could
have been only one motive, and only one sustaining power, potent enough
to carry the hand through so bitter a task. A love of humanity and a
generous hope of humanity’s increase of sanely innocent happiness
could beget a book as noble as this; no other emotion could avail.
And still the troubled reviewer feels--this being three months after
his reading of the book, and no mere snapped off opinion--that he has
not done justice to the subject. For this book is not merely one of
the noblest passages of political writing that he knows of, and not
merely one of the most clearly and beautifully moving exhibitions of
honest thinking. It is a book that is sanative and antitoxic for the
present time. He is a shallow observer indeed who does not see, in the
post-bellum world, muddy currents of cynicism and discontent; revulsive
twitchings, literature no less jangled than politics. Mr. Montague does
not disenchant us from any enchantments that were worth keeping. Except
the politicians and the ultra-parsonical parsons, we had slipped their
leash long ago. He offers a lucid enlarging mirror of truth and sense
in which a thoughtful reader may see enlarged and brightly snuffed the
small sooty flame of his own natural candle, as William Penn called the
inward spirit. He magics us for the moment by his charm and the lovely
humanity of his vision into thinking that we, too, can, if we will, be
just, liberal, and humane.
[Illustration]
BUDDHA ON THE L
In Frank Shay’s bookshop we found _A Buddhist Catechism_, by Subhadra
Bhikshu. We have never known much about the Buddha--so little, in fact,
that we thought that was his name. (His name was Prince Siddhartha
Gotama.) But we have always felt that he was a kinsprit.
We opened the book at random and the first thing we saw was:
95. _Did not the Buddha give us any information concerning the
first beginning and ultimate destiny of the Universe?_
No;
96. _Did he know nothing about it?_
He knew, but he taught us nothing.
There was a subtlety about that that pleased us greatly. It reminded
us of a Chinese mandarin of our acquaintance who says that the
universe was Dictated but not Signed. Immediately we forked out $1.25
to Frank Shay and took the book. Frank was so pleased to sell a book
(business is said to be at a very meagre pulse in Greenwich Village in
midsummer) that he at once responded by buying our lunch. We retorted
generously enough by buying a copy of Anatole France’s _L’Ile des
Pingouins_, which we have been hearing about for ten years or so. We
were interested to note that our copy is the “Cent Quatre-Vingt-Sixième
Edition.” Considering the book was published only fourteen years ago,
that seems good progress.
Coming back downtown on the L we went at Buddha hard and with great
satisfaction. We learned that Buddha is not a name but means a state
of mind, or Enlightenment. We learned the answers to the following
questions:
129. _Why has the upright and just man often so much to suffer
here on earth?_
130. _How is it that the wicked and unjust man often enjoys
pleasures and honours?_
118. _What is a meritorious action?_
109. _Why is not a layman able to reach Nirvana?_
We can hear you clamouring to know the answers to these exciting
questions; they are right here before us; but our duty is not to solve
problems, only to propound them.
But you must get it clearly in your minds that the Buddha is not a God.
The Buddhist Catechism expressly rejects “a personal God-Creator,”
and “distinctly denies the doctrine of a creation out of nothing.
Everything owes its origin and development to its own inherent
vitalism, or, what comes to the same, its own will to live.” The Buddha
was not a God, but “a man far superior to ordinary men, one of a series
of self-enlightened sublime Buddhas, who appear at long intervals in
the world, and are morally and spiritually so superior to erring,
suffering mankind, that to the childlike conceptions of the multitude
they appear as Gods or Messiahs.”
This is all tremendously exciting and leads to many pure and thrilling
speculations that are much too honourable to pursue here. They would
get us into horrible trouble, we feel sure. Indeed we are not at all
certain whether both Frank Shay and ourself are not already subject
to possible legal duress for vending and discussing so dangerous
a book. But a noble analogy occurs to us which we venture with
humility. Charley Chaplin is a great comedian. But the simple-minded
drama critics are not content to leave it at that. They will have it
(although it is now _vieux jeu_) that he is really a Great Tragic
Artist. And so the tradition will go down to posterity that he was
a Secret Hamlet, an Edgar Poe in clown’s trousers. Charley himself,
finding that his intellectual disciples insist upon this, perhaps
acquiesces in the idea. Only by doing so, he may feel, can he get his
stuff across.
It is really very astonishing; at this moment our Employer brings in
to us a letter he has had from a publisher, which begins:
_Do you agree with me that there is a need for a book on the
fundamentals of public opinion, for a book that will endeavor
to define the new profession of public relations counsel, its
scope and its functions and its relations specifically to the
press and to the public generally?_
A Public Relations Counsel, of course, is simply the post-war name
for a Press Agent. But we mustn’t be ribald. The press agent, if
conscientious, may contribute a valuable function. We ourself have
worked as a free-lance Press Agent for George Fox, Sir Thomas Browne,
Herman Melville, Thoreau, Lao-Tse, Pearsall Smith, and various
other people who have seemed to us to have the Right Idea. But one
of the troubles is that there have been (and always will be) a lot
of unauthorized Public Relations Counsels who get the ear of the
crowd and limn upon the great canvas of the public a portrait of the
Prophet which is very different from what that poor dreamer himself
may have wished. Even the humblest of authors has frequently cursed
the publisher’s man who writes the copy for his book-jacket. If you
want a really pregnant speculation, weigh in your mind how many Public
Relations Counsels there have been in the world of religion, and how
amazingly they have interpreted and toned down the simple dissolvents
of the founders of their creeds.
C. E. Montague, in _Disenchantment_, puts it beautifully:
Ever since those disconcerting bombs [i. e., _the words of
Christ_] were originally thrown courageous divines and laymen
have been rushing in to pick them up and throw them away,
combining as well as they could an air of respect for the
thrower with tender care for the mental ease of congregations
occupied generally in making money and occasionally in making
war. Yet there they lie, miraculously permanent and disturbing,
as if just thrown. Now and then one will go off, with seismic
results, in the mind of some St. Francis or Tolstoy.
The Buddha, sitting under his Bo Tree (_ficus religiosa_--and it is
fairly obvious why so many philosophers have chosen fig trees to sit
under; a really lusty fig will bear, according to the New International
Encyclopædia, three crops of fruit in a season, thus keeping the
eremite well fed; and a fig, L. E. W. says, is what he doesn’t give for
the ideas of rival magi) is to us an enviable vision. We wonder how his
meditations would have fared if there had been a telephone at the foot
of the tree.
The only drawback, as far as we are concerned, to becoming a Buddhist
is the vow to abstain from intoxicating liquors. In this respect the
Western religions seem to us more liberal. We have meditated long and
earnestly on the subject and still have never been able to understand
why an occasional exhilarating drink should be contrary to any wise
man’s ethic. Indeed, if Nirvana (or Perfect Release from Struggle) is
the object of life, we have seen it well attained by three or four
juleps or Tom-and-Jerries. The lay Buddhist has to take five vows;
the Bhikshus (or Brotherhood of the Elect) take ten. Some of these
additional vows required of the Bhikshu are:
_I vow and promise not to eat food at unseasonable times--that
is, after the midday meal._
_I vow and promise not to dance, sing light songs, frequent
public amusements, and, in short, to avoid worldly dissipation
of every kind._
_I vow and promise not to wear any kind of ornament, nor to use
any scents or perfumes, and, in short, to avoid whatever tends
to vanity._
_I promise and vow to give up the use of soft bedding and to
sleep on a hard, low couch._
These, we admit, present some difficulties. Frequenting “public
amusements” offers too many opportunities for quibble. In one sense
every possible mingling with the world is a public amusement. If there
is anything more amusing than a smoking car full of men or a Broadway
pavement at lunch time we don’t know what it could be. Sleeping on
a hard, low couch is easy enough--we can sleep anywhere with equal
satisfaction, even on the floor. The queer thing that we always notice
about every kind of moral code is that, sooner or later, it begins to
lose sight of the distinction between essentials and non-essentials.
Such matters as intoxicating drink and public amusements should not
be (for the Western philosopher) subject to prescriptive legislation.
The individual may very rightly impose restraints upon himself in
non-essential matters; but to lay them upon him from above is to
stultify the whole purport of ethics--which, if we understand it, is
to encourage and develop a worthy personal will. And the Buddhist
Catechism recognizes this in a very potent phrase--“Every one of us
must become his own redeemer.”
But Buddhism seems to have a firm grasp on one very essential and
valuable idea, which is comparatively rare among religions. Thus the
Catechism:
43. _Does Buddhism teach its followers to hate, despise, or
persecute non-believers?_
Quite the reverse. It teaches us to love all men as brethren,
without distinction of race, nationality, or creed; to respect
the convictions of men of other beliefs, and to be careful
to avoid all religious controversy. The Buddhist religion is
imbued with the purest spirit of perfect toleration. Even where
dominant, it has never oppressed or persecuted non-believers,
and its success has never been attended with bloodshed.
The true Buddhist does not feel hatred, but only pity and
compassion for him who will not acknowledge or listen to the
truth, to his own loss and injury only.
Of course, all forms of human attempt to unscrew the inscrutable
are fascinating and full of interest. The Westerner, however, is
a bit troubled when he finds “Love of life on earth” listed among
the “ten fetters” which, according to the Buddha, prevent the soul
from receiving full freedom and enlightenment. That seems, to our
earth-bound and muddied conceptions, a shabby doctrine. Even the most
timid tincture of good manners suggests that a life so exciting,
so amusing, so painful, so perplexing, and so variously endowed
with unearned beauty and amazement deserves at least a courteous
gratefulness on our part. Mr. C. E. Montague (if you will allow us to
quote him once more), explains what we mean:
Among the mind’s powers is one that comes of itself to many
children and artists. It need not be lost, to the end of his
days, by any one who has ever had it. This is the power of
taking delight in a thing, or rather in anything, everything,
not as a means to some other end, but just because it is what
it is.... A child in the full health of his mind will put his
hand flat on the summer turf, feel it, and give a little shiver
of private glee at the elastic firmness of the globe. He is not
thinking how well it will do for some game or to feed sheep
upon.... No matter what the things may be, no matter what they
are good or no good for, there they are, each with a thrilling
unique look and feel of its own, like a face; the iron
astringently cool under its paint, the painted wood familiarly
warmer, the clod crumbling enchantingly down in the hands, with
its little dry smell of the sun and of hot nettles; each common
thing a personality marked by delicious differences.
It is this sensuous cheerfulness in mere living, apparently, that the
Buddhist would have us cast away. You remember Rupert Brooke’s fine
poem _The Great Lover_. Western students may be pardoned for wondering
whether “Love of life on earth,” whatever that life’s miseries, ills,
and absurdities, is not too precious to be tossed lightly aside.
[Illustration]
INTELLECTUALS AND ROUGHNECKS
I
We look forward with keen interest to reading _Civilization in the
United States_, the work of thirty-three independent observers
commenting upon various phases of the American scene. So far we have
only glanced into it, and have already found much that looks as though
it needed contradiction. It is obviously going to be a gloomy book,
rather strongly flavoured with intellectual ammonia. Of course, it is
a healthy thing that some of our Intellectuals are so depressed about
America. It is a good thing for a nation, as it is for an individual,
occasionally to go home at night cursing itself for being a boob, a
numbskull, and a mental flounder. But we feel about some of our Extreme
Intellectuals as we do about the Physical Culture restaurants. The
people in these restaurants eat nothing but vitamines and plasms and
protose; they live in an atmosphere of carefully planned Scandinavian
hygiene; yet most of them look mysteriously pallid. And some of our
most Conscientious Brows, in spite of leading lives of carefully
regulated meditation, don’t seem any too robust in the region of the
wits.
However, we shall study this book with care. It contains articles by a
number of people whom we admire specially. What we have been wondering
is whether among its rather acid comments it gives any panoramic
picture of the America we see daily and admire--an America which, in
spite of comical simplicities and tragic misdirections of energy,
seems to us, in vitality, curiosity, and surprising beauty, the most
thrilling experiment of the human race.
In one article in this book we find the following:
Everything in our society tends to check the growth of the
spirit and to shatter the confidence of the individual
in himself. Considered with reference to its higher
manifestations, life itself has been thus far, in modern
America, a failure. Of this the failure of our literature is
merely emblematic. Mr. Mencken, who shares this belief, urges
that the only hope of a change for the better lies in the
development of a native aristocracy that will stand between
the writer and the public, supporting him, appreciating him,
forming as it were a _cordon sanitaire_ between the individual
and the mob.
Well, our confidence in ourself is not yet wholly shattered, in spite
of the grinding horror of American life. We feel confident enough
to venture that this theory is dubious. Greatness in literature does
not need to be protected from the insanitary infection of the mob.
How Charles Dickens would have roared at such a timid little bluesock
doctrine! Great writers do not need any clique of private appreciators
or supporters. They are not produced by plaintive patter about ideals
and the pride of the “artist.” They arise haphazard, and they carry
in them an anger, an energy, and a fecundity that deny all classroom
rules. And the mob, heaven help us! is the ground and source of their
strength and their happiness. Nothing can “check the growth of their
spirit,” because the spirit is big enough to turn everything to its own
inscrutable account. You might as well say that Shakespeare couldn’t
write great plays because the typewriter hadn’t been invented.
Of course, if by “a native aristocracy that will stand between the
writer and the public,” we are to understand an efficient service of
tactful office boys and mendacious telephone girls to keep the chance
caller from cutting the mortal artery of Time, we applaud. But we fear
that is not meant.
When we get weary of upstage comments about literature we go aloft and
have a talk to the fellows in the composing room (who, by the way, are
all reading _Moby Dick_ nowadays). There is no priggishness in their
criticism. They have the sound, sober, sincere instinct--as when one of
them tells us, with magnificent insight, that _Moby Dick_ is “Hamlet
stuff.” When professional connoisseurs can teach us as much as the
composing room can about the human values that lie behind literature,
then we will mend our manners.
The more we think about it, the more we are staggered by the statement
that American life “tends to check the growth of the spirit.” To us
the exact opposite seems true. American life as we see it all round us
seems to be crying aloud for a spirit great enough to grasp and express
it. It seems the most prodigious and stimulating material that any
writer ever had for his contemplation. It is a perpetual challenge to
the imagination--a challenge that hardly any one since Whitman has been
great enough, or daring enough, to deal with; but to say that it stunts
the spirit can only be valid as a personal opinion. It is to say that a
hungry man going into a restaurant loses his appetite.
II
We have ventured a little further into _Civilization in the United
States_ (which someone has said should really be called “Civilization
between Fourteenth Street and Washington Square”) and, to tell
the truth, we are astounded. This time we are astounded by the
extraordinary mellow gravity of the Young Intellectual. It is sad, by
the way, that the editor of the volume is actually not much younger
than ourself; but indeed he makes us feel immeasurably aged and
decadent.
There are, of course, admirable things in the book. Mr. Mencken is at
his best in his attack upon Congressional mediocrity. Messrs. Macy, Van
Loon, Lardner, and Ernest Boyd carry us with them, as they very often
do. Mr. Henry Longan Stuart’s “As an Englishman Sees It” is the most
quietly pregnant of the essays we have read. But we must confess that
when the editor (Mr. Harold Stearns) writes on “The Intellectual Life”
he leaves us puzzled and unhappy.
Perhaps Professor Colby’s contribution on “Humour” affords a clue. At
first we did not quite “get” it; we did not realize that Mr. Colby
was having his little joke at the expense of some of the masculine
Hermiones who met fortnightly (so Mr. Stearns assures us) at the
editor’s home “to clarify their individual fields, and contribute
towards the advance of intellectual life in America.” After reading
the appalling solemnities of Mr. Stearns’s Preface we realize how
charmingly Mr. Colby is (as becomes a veteran) chaffing the young
pyrophags. He remarks that the “upper literary class” in America is
utterly devoid of humour. This intramural stab he must have meditated
at one of those fortnightly meetings while the chairman was remarking
that “the most moving and pathetic fact in the social life of America
to-day is emotional and æsthetic starvation.”
When young men of thirty or so begin to talk about “contributing to
the advance of intellectual life in America” they should do it with a
smile. Otherwise someone else will have to do the smiling for them.
Consider the weight of the Great Problems faced by the editor of
_Civilization in America_ at those fortnightly meetings, while (let us
hope) the elder members, such as Jack Macy and Professor Colby, smiled
a trifle wanly--
... “These larger points of policy were decided by common
agreement or, on occasion, by majority vote, and to the end I
settled no important question without consultation with as many
members of the group as I could approach within the limited
time we had agreed to have this volume in the hands of the
publisher. But with the extension of the scope of the book, the
negotiations with the publisher, and the mass of complexities
and details that are inevitable in so difficult an enterprise,
the authority to decide specific questions and the usual
editorial powers were delegated as a matter of convenience to
me, aided by a committee of three.”
But you must read that Preface entire, to get the full humour of
the matter, to get the self-destroying seriousness of the Young
Intellectual. It ought to be reprinted as a pamphlet for the warning
of college students. Consider the syntax of the first sentence quoted
above, as a “contribution to intellectual life in America.” For our
own part, after reading that Preface we couldn’t help turning to the
quiet and modest little prefaces of some of the great books, e. g.,
_Leviathan_ and _Religio Medici_.
We must not be ill humoured. The editor of the volume, we are told,
has made his own contribution to the intellectual life in America by
leaving for Paris as soon as the proofs were corrected. He is perhaps
a victim of that oldest of American sophomore superstitions--the idea
that Paris is the only city of the world where men of letters may enjoy
true freedom of the body and the spirit. Mr. Stearns has for some time
been threatening that the sterility and coarseness of American life
will drive our sensitive young men overseas. Well, the rest of us
must shuffle along as best we can, and see what we can do with this
poor tawdry civilization of ours. And incidentally, as a gesture of
divorce from American crassness, going to Paris and taking a job on the
Parisian edition of the New York _Herald_ seems to us inadequate. We
are reminded of another Young Intellectual--in Chicago this time--who
greatly yearned to write a masterpiece of obscenity, but could not
spell Messalina correctly.
Mr. Stearns speaks of himself and his friends as “unhappy intellectuals
educated beyond our environment.” There is a roaring risibility in
this that leaves us prostrate. The tragedy is that they apparently
mean it. We admire their sincerity, their high-mindedness, and all
that, but even at the risk of seeming argumentative we cannot, as long
as honesty and clear thinking mean anything, let that sort of remark
go by unprotested. It is impossible for any man to be educated beyond
his environment--whatever that environment may be. For no man can be
greater than Life itself, and in whatever field of life he may be
placed, if he has the true insight and the true humility, he will find
material for his art. The extraordinary panorama of American life,
whatever its cruelties and absurdities, should be glowing material
for any artist with the genuine receptive and creative gift. The real
“artist” (since our Intellectuals love that term) will not timidly
crawl into a corner and squeak; nor need he run away to some imagined
Utopia abroad.
Perhaps this is a more serious matter than we had supposed. We are
one of the stoutest--one of the sincerest, let us say, to avoid
misunderstanding--partisans of the Young Intellectual. We used to
like, in our wilder moments, to think ourself almost one of them. But
it looks now as though we should have to organize a new clique--the
Young Roughnecks. The Young Intellectuals are too easily pleased with
themselves. In the first place, we honestly believe that few men have
any real critical balance and judgment before they are forty. In the
second place, the Young Intellectuals are perilously devoid of humour.
Of that rich, magical, grotesque, and savoury quality they have far too
little. They have it, but it works spasmodically.
We welcome a book like _Civilization in America_ because it shows
in a clear cross-cutting what is wrong with a great many excellent
young minds. They are quick to scoff, but they are not humorous; they
are eager for human perfection, but want to escape from humanity
itself. They say a great many admirable things, true things; but so
condescendingly that, by some quaint perversion, they impel us to fly
to the opposite view. Life itself, apparently, is too multitudinous,
too terrible for them. They enjoy pouring ridicule upon the world of
business and upon the business man. We should like to see them tackle
their own tasks with the same devotion and lack of parade that the
business man shows. Some of the most amazing beauties of American life
have been the work of quiet business men who were not clamouring for
admiration as “artists.” Our friends the Intellectuals keep shouting
that the “creative class” (so they call themselves) must be more
admired, more respected, more appreciated. We answer, they are already
respected and applauded as much as--perhaps more than--is good for
them. Let them cease to consider themselves a class above and apart.
They are too painfully conscious of being “artists.” They make us feel
like gathering a group of Young Roughnecks--let us say Heywood Broun
and H. I. Phillips for a nucleus--and going off in a corner to be
constructively and creatively vulgar.
[Illustration]
THE FUN OF WRITING
On the way to the station this warm / chilly morning
[_Note to Linotype Man: Please kill the inappropriate adjective; we
like to be accurate, and this April weather is so inconstant_] we were
thinking how little appreciated is the true pleasure of writing.
Writing is an art (or, if you prefer, a trade) never wholly and
properly enjoyed except by the intensely indolent. What we mean is
this: there are a lot of things in life that are not at all as they
should be. But the writer, by magnificent pretence, improves all that.
Gardening, for instance. No one enjoys seeing beds thickly decorated
with bright flowers and superb vegetables more than we do. But the
grubby and tiresome task of groping about with trowels and quicklime
and all the other fertilizers is distasteful. Getting sweet peas to
climb is a noxious business. Somehow the seedsman always palms off on
us a kind of horizontal sweet pea that runs lowly along the ground
and never blossoms at all. But take up the pen, or typewriter, and
how quickly everything is rectified. When you set to work to compose a
story, how easy it is to have things nice and genteel. Thus:
Out in the bland freshness of the suburban morning, Mr.
Frogbones was enjoying his garden. In twin beds under the tall
French windows the gardenias and sunflowers were just opening
towards the violent orb. Sweet peas and daffodils and vast
claret-coloured roses aspired upon a green trellis. “How I
love a little nosegay,” he said, as he clipped off a couple of
dozen of the great cider-tinted chrysanthemums, and bore them
indoors to his wife. In the breakfast room a well-trained maid
servant was putting the fragrant coffee on the table and the
children were drinking their morning milk with neatness and
gusto. “Elise,” said Mrs. Frogbones to the maid, “you may bring
in the sausages, kidneys, bacon, scrambled eggs, anchovy toast,
marmalade, grape fruit, porridge, raisin bread, and gooseberry
jam. Mr. Frogbones is ready for breakfast.”
Now what could be easier, what could be more agreeable, than to write
that? And yet not a word of it is true. We know Henry Frogbones well:
his garden is contemptible; the maid’s coffee is execrable, and she
is going to leave at the end of the week anyway; his children roar
with anguish when they see a mug of milk, which they detest. But how
pleasant it is to lend a hand to the travailing universe when you are
writing.
As Henry Frogbones finished his ample breakfast the large
absinthe-coloured limousine rolled with a quiet crunch
across the terrace which was pebbled with small blue gravel.
He slipped on his new herringbone surtout, lit a fine black
cheroot, hitched up one spat which had got twisted, and rolled
away to town. Ambrose, the chauffeur, was accustomed to his
employer’s ways: he drove gently so that Mr. Frogbones could
read the morning paper with comfort. After an hour’s ride
through exquisite scenery [_if the editor pays more than
five cents a word, it may be well to describe this scenery_]
Mr. Frogbones reached his office, where the morning mail had
already been opened and classified by a competent assistant. In
the anteroom a number of callers were waiting, held in check by
a respectful young man who was explaining to them that no one
can possibly disturb Mr. Frogbones until his morning article is
written....
As a matter of fact, we don’t feel that we can go on with this any
further; it is beginning to seem too unlikely. But it only seems
unlikely to us, because we know the truth about old Frogbones. The
average magazine reader would swallow it without cavil. That is
why we say that writing is huge fun, because you can solve all the
perplexities and distractions of life as you go along, and really enjoy
yourself at the same time, and (most remarkable of all) get paid for
it.
[Illustration]
A CHRISTMAS SOLILOQUY
I
In the most peaceful spot known to American life--a railroad train--we
had several hours of that pleasure which offices are devised to
prevent, viz., meditation; or even (if we may dare so high) thought.
Our thoughts, or whatever they are that go round inside you when you
are sitting passively in a train, were tinged by the approach of
Christmas.
There was evidently something in the bright air and pre-Christmas
feeling of that December afternoon that even softened the heart of
the news butcher, for we noticed as the train hastened along the
Connecticut shore his manner became more and more fond. He began, at
Grand Central, in a mood of formality, even austerity. “Lots of nice
reading matter here, gentlemen,” he cried. “Get a nice short story
book” (by “book” he meant, of course, magazine) “to kill time for
a coupla hours.” We thought, perhaps a little sadly, of the irony
of begging men to annul Time when they had happily reached almost
the only place in America where it can be enjoyed, examined, taken
apart, and looked at. But, perhaps due to a niggardly spirit among his
congregation in the smoker, the agent gradually became more fraternal.
His manner was almost bedside by the time we had got to New Rochelle.
“Choclut pepmints, figs, and lemon drops, fellas!” And at Stamford he
was beginning to despair. “Peanuts: they’re delicious, boys.” We made
up our mind, by the way, as to the correct answer to our old question,
Where does New England begin? The frontier is at South Norwalk, for
there we saw a sign _The New England Cereal Company_. And just about
there, also, begin the billboards urging Codfish, surely the authentic
image and superscription of New England.
Of course there is a great deal to think about in the signs you see
along the track. There is that notice:
+------------+
| DANGEROUS |
| LIVE WIRES |
| KEEP AWAY |
+------------+
which is a good advice socially as well as electrically. But we thought
that these warnings were a bit unfair to New England, where there are
fewer human Live Wires than there are south of the Harlem Strait. We
remembered a certain club in Philadelphia of which the bitter-minded
used to say it was the only organization in the world whose membership
was 100 per cent. Live Wires, Regular Fellows, and Go-Getters.
As we went through Greenwich, Riverside, Westport, we admired the blue
shore of Long Island lying so placidly across the Sound. And it struck
us almost with a sense of shock that there are a great many people
to whom Long Island is only a dim, unreal haze on the horizon. Yes,
foreign travel is a brisk aperient to the mind. We remembered, as we
always do when travelling on the New Haven, Robert Louis Stevenson’s
delight when he first went that way. In one of his letters he speaks of
the succession of beautiful rocky coves that saluted his eye. “Why,” he
wrote, “have Americans been so unfair to their own country?”
It would be impossible to tell you all the things we thought about:
they have already faded. We did not forget our duty, as a travelling
mandarin, to be a little magisterial when occasion seemed to require
it. In the station at New Haven, for instance, there is a young woman,
most remarkably coifed, who presides at the tobacco counter. She
seemed of a notably cheerful and lenient disposition, and we ventured
a remark upon the weather. She said she wished it would snow, so that
she could have some real fun, by which she meant, we dare say, a little
bobsledding with the youths of Yale College. We thought that this
showed a dangerous inappreciation of her general opulent good fortune
in being young, comely, and attached to a tobacco traffic. We looked at
her quite sternly and said, “Young women can always have a good time,
no matter what the weather.” To our regret, as we hastened on toward
the Springfield train, we heard her squeaking with mirth.
But the starting point of our meditation was an attempt to describe and
dissect this curious pre-Christmas feeling, which is one of the most
subtle and genuine adventures of the whole year. When we try to examine
it in its components we see that the whole thing is too delicate and
pervasive for analysis. What are its ingredients? we said to ourself.
We thought of the little shrill tingling bells of the Salvation Army;
we thought of the warm juicy smell of roasting chicken that out-gushes
from a certain rotisserie in Jamaica, Long Island. We thought of the
bright colours and toys in the windows of that glorious main street in
Jamaica, which is where we do our Christmas shopping. We thought of all
the sparkle, the chill, clear air, the general bustle of the streets,
that one associates with the Christmas season; and of the undercurrent
of dumb and troubled realization of human misery and stupidity and
frustration that comes to some more clearly now than at any other time.
And we thought also of the mockers and the cheerful skeptics, to whom
any candid expression of a simple human emotion is cause for nipping
laughter. Never mind, we said to ourself, there is at least one time of
year when they can all afford to put away their shining paradoxes and
their gingerbread cynicisms--like the gilded circus wagons we saw shut
up in winter quarters at Bridgeport.
Probably the most sensitive and complex of human sensations is
the pre-Christmas feeling: because it is not merely personal but
communal; not merely communal but national; not merely national but
even international. We know then that for a few weeks a great part of
the world is busily thinking of the same things: how it can surprise
its friends, how it can encourage the miserable, how it can amuse the
harmless. Even the dingiest street has its pathetic badges of colour.
It is a great thing to have such a widespread community of sentiment,
which, however varying in expression, is identical in essence. One may
be amused when he sees the Christmas Annuals published by Australian
magazines and finds under the title _A Happy Christmas in New South
Wales_ a photograph of girls in muslin enjoying themselves by
picnicking along shady streams with canoes and mosquito nettings. That
kind of Christmas, we think, would seem very grotesque for us, but our
friends the New South Welsh evidently find it exhilarating.
But it is that mysterious and agreeable pre-Christmas feeling which
is the best of the whole matter. Christmas Day itself is sometimes
almost too feverish a business of picking up blizzards of wrapping
paper, convincing the Urchin that his own toys are just as interesting
as the Urchiness’s, and treading on tiptoe for fear of walking on
the clockwork train or the lurking doll. At Christmas time we always
think--probably we are the only person who does--of the late admirable
William Stubbs, once Bishop of Oxford and Regius Professor of
history, the author of those three fat mulberry coloured volumes _The
Constitutional History of England_, a work far from easy to read, and
which, when we were compelled to study it, seemed of an intolerable
dullness. Bishop Stubbs, in the dreadful words of the _Dictionary of
National Biography_, “never forgot that he was a clergyman.” It is also
said that “his lectures never attracted a large audience.” But what
we are getting at is this, that on Christmas Day, 1873, the excellent
Bishop retired from the gambols and gayeties of his five sons and one
daughter and wrote the preface to his History. We love to think of him,
worthy man, shutting himself up from the Yuletide riot in roomy old
Kettel Hall (now a part of Trinity College, Oxford) and sitting down to
write those words, “The History of Institutions cannot be mastered--can
scarcely be approached--without an effort.” Now that we are somewhat
matured, we think that we could probably reread his _Constitutional
History_ with much profit. In that Christmas Day preface, written while
the young Stubbses were (we suppose) filling the house with juvenile
clamour, there is one phrase that catches our eye as we take the book
down for its annual dusting:
“Constitutional History reads the exploits and characters of men by a
different light from that shed by the false glare of arms. The world’s
heroes are no heroes to it.”
II
We shall remember the Christmas of 1921, partly, at any rate, by the
wonderful succession of pellucid, frosty, moonlit nights that preceded
it. We walked round and round our rustic grange trying to focus just
what we wanted to say to our friends as a Christmas greeting. A curious
misery was upon our spirit, for we felt that in many ways we had been
recreant to the spirit of friendship. When we think, for instance,
of the unanswered letters.... We have sinned horribly. Yet we wanted
to give ourself the selfish pleasure of saying a word of affection
to those who have been kind to us, and to whom, in the foolish but
unavoidable hurry of daily affairs, we have been discourteous. (The way
to love humanity, we said to ourself, is not to see too much of it.)
Moreover, to write a kind of Christmas sermon is, apparently, to put
one’s self into the loathsome false position of seeming to assume those
virtues one praises.
We remember the first clergyman who made an impression upon our
childish mind. It was in a country church in a village where we were
visiting some kinsmen. This parson was a great bearded fellow, long
since gone the way of flesh. He was a bit of a ritualist; his white
surplice and embroidered streamers of red and gold impressed us
enormously. He came very close to our idea of Divinity itself. We used
to sit and hear him booming away and think, vaguely, how wonderful to
be as virtuous as that. When the organ throbbed and his vast gray beard
rose ecstatically above his white-robed chest we thought that here was
Goodness incarnate. Years later we asked what had become of him. We
heard that he had lost his job because he drank too much. The more we
think about that the tenderer our feeling is towards his memory. Only
the sinner has a right to preach.
Thinking about this pre-Christmas feeling, and wanting to say something
about it, but not knowing how, we got (as we started to tell you) on
a train. We went, for a few hours, to another city. There we saw,
exhilaratingly different, but fundamentally the same, the shining
business of life going forward. The people in that city were carrying
on their own affairs, were hotfoot upon their own concerns; we saw
their eager, absorbed faces, and what struck us was, here are all these
people, whose lives are totally sundered from our own, but they have,
at heart, the same hopes and aspirations, the same follies, weaknesses,
disgusts, and bitternesses as ourself. And the same would be so of a
thousand cities, and of a hundred thousand. Then we got into one of
those things called a sleeper, which ought to be called a thinker. An
ideal cloister for meditation. All down the dark aisle we could hear
the innocent snores of our fellows, but we ourself lay wakeful. We felt
rather like the mystic Russian peasant who goes to bed in his coffin.
We were whirled along through a midnight landscape of transparent
white moonlight, and, quite as cheerful as the dead child in Hans
Andersen borne through starry space by the angel, we made our peace
with everything. We claim no credit for this. We would have slept if we
could. There was a huge bump in the middle of the berth, and there was
a vile cold draught. We read part of Stephen Crane’s magnificent sketch
_The Scotch Express_. But those miserable little dim lamps----
And then, strangely enough, there came a sudden realization of the
amazing richness and fecundity of life. Every signboard along the
railroad track is an illustration of it. Hideous enough, still it is a
kind of endless vista into the huge jumble of human affairs. Here is a
billboard crying out something about a Spark Plug, or about the Hotel
Theresa; or on the side of a little shabby brick tenement a painted
legend about Bromo Seltzer. Someone worked to put that advertisement
up; someone had sufficient credulity or gambling audacity to pay
for it; somewhere children are fed and clothed by that spark plug.
Christmas itself suddenly seemed a kind of spark plug that ignites
the gases and vapours of selfishness and distrust and explodes them
away. Everything seemed extraordinarily gallant and exciting. Take the
Hotel Theresa, for instance. We had never heard of it before. It is
on 125th Street, we gathered. We would like to wager that all sorts
of adventures are lying in wait up there, if we can slip away and go
looking for them.
As we were lying in our cool tomb (Carl Sandburg’s phrase) in the
thinking car, we meditated something like this: Christmas is certainly
a time when a reasonable man should overhaul his religion and see if
it amounts to anything. Christmas is a time when millions of people
are thinking of the same thing. Humanity is so constituted that you
can never get the world to agree about things that have happened; but
it is happily at one about something that probably never happened--the
Christmas story as told in the Gospels. If millions of simple people
believe a thing, that doesn’t make it true; but perhaps it makes it
better than true: it makes it Poetry, it makes it Beauty. Stephen
Graham says, in that moving book _With Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem_
(which certainly ought to be read by every one who is at all interested
in religion; it is published by Thomas Nelson & Sons; you may have to
get it from London, we don’t believe it is in print over here)--Stephen
Graham says:
True Religion takes its rise out of Mystery, and not out of
Miracle.
Religion, which has proved to be one of the greatest dividing and
hostilizing forces in the world, is in its essence just the opposite.
Surely, in the origin of the word, religion means a binding together,
a ligament. Now take the most opposite people you can think of--say
Babe Ruth and the Sultan of Turkey (is there still a Sultan?); or say
Mr. Balfour and the chap who runs the elevator in this office. No
matter how different these may be in training and outlook, there will
be some province of human thought and emotion, some small, sensitive
spot of the mind, in which they can meet and feel at one. We can
imagine them sitting down together for lunch and having a mutually
improving time, each admiring and enjoying the other. Widen the
incongruity of the individuals as much as you like: imagine Mr. Joseph
Conrad and Dr. Berthold Baer; or Mr. James W. Elliott (the Business
Builder) and Mahatma Gandhi--we care not who they are, if they can
make their thoughts intelligible to each other they can find that
remote but definite point of tangency where any experienced mind can
meet and sympathize with any other human mind, discussing the problems
of destiny which are common to all. It is this Common Multiple of
humanity, this sensitive pulse in the mind, this realization of a
universal share in an overburdening mystery too real to be ignored, but
too terrific to be defined or blurbed about, that is the province of
religion.
And then the devil of it (for there is always a Devil in every sensible
religion) is that the best way to be sure there is this possible point
of junction is not to attempt to find it. Both Mr. Balfour and the
cheerful elevator boy would probably pray heartily to be delivered
from sitting down to lunch together. This mysterious mental sensitive
spot that we speak of remains sensitive only as long as it remains
private and secret. Perhaps religion can be defined as a sense of human
fellowship that is best preserved by not being too companionable.
We were thinking, too, how extremely modern and contemporary the
Christmas story seems. It is appropriate that the final instalment of
the Income Tax falls just before Christmas. The same thing happened
1921 years ago. “There went out a decree that all the world should be
taxed,” says Luke. That was why Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem--to
pay their tax. And we can imagine that the Bethlehem _Evening Star_,
if there had been newspapers at that time, would have had a column of
social notes just similar in spirit to those of our own press to-day.
The arrival of Joseph and Mary would not have been noticed. We might
have read:
Mr. and Mrs. Pharisee of “White Sepulchre,” Galilee, are
spending the winter at the Tiberius Hotel.
The Hon. Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judæa, is enjoying a
week-end visit with Tetrarch and Mrs. Herod at the tetrarchal
mansion.
Mr. and Mrs. Philip Herod are travelling in Syria for the
winter. Mrs. Herod was before her marriage Miss Herodias,
socially prominent.
Prof. Melchior, Prof. Balthazar, and Prof. Gaspar arrived last
night from the West. They are said to be in town for some
astronomical investigations. The professors had great trouble
in securing hotel accommodations, the city being so crowded.
Rev. Caiaphas, one of the most respected High Priests in this
diocese, has an apartment for the winter at Philactery Court.
The train pursued its steady way through the moonlight, and the
silvered loveliness of earth and trees made us think generously of
our own country. We are still foolish enough to love this America of
ours with a dumb queer love. We still believe that in spite of Senates
and Live Wires, in spite of the antics of some of the half-educated
and well-meaning men who “govern” us, this country has a unique
contribution to make to the world in future years. There should be
international Christmas cards: there should be some way of one nation
surprising another with a friendly message on the Morning of Mornings.
We believe (perhaps we are not impartial) that the English-speaking
race, by its contributions to human liberty, has a right to a leading
place in the world’s affairs; but if it gives way to its characteristic
vice of arrogance, we weary of it. We think of the feminine brilliance,
charm, and emotional volatility of France; of the beautiful sensibility
and self-control of Japan; of the melancholy idealism of Russia; of the
sober industry of Germany. Have we, then, nothing to learn from these?
Printers’ ink is scattered about these days with such profusion that it
becomes almost meaningless. Sitting in the subway, and raising our eye
plaintively from a newspaper to an advertising card, we have wondered
which was the greater menace, Pyorrhea or Japan? Both were said to
be menaces. It is our own conviction that nothing can be a menace to
America but itself.
This seems a dismal kind of Christmas homily, but we enjoyed ourself
immensely while we were meditating it in our lower berth. Very likely
if it had been an upper berth the result would have been different.
In any case, we take the liberty of wishing our friends--who are, by
this time, too indurated to feel surprise or chagrin at anything we may
say--a Merry Christmas. We wish for them a cheerful and laborious New
Year, with good books to read, and both the time and the inclination to
think. We even wish for them occasional eccentric seizures, such as we
feel at the present; when we have a dim suspicion that behind the noble
and never sufficiently praised comedy of life there lies some simple
satisfying answer to many gropings. A simple thing, but too terrible
and far-reaching ever to be wholly put into practice by puzzled and
compromising mankind. We mean, of course, the teachings of Christ.
Consider the German generals and military men, who lost everything. But
the German toymakers conquered the world.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
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