THE ROMAN FOUR HUNDRED
A few years after Virgil came another Roman poet, whom I learned to read
as a lad. He also was taken up by the Emperor Augustus, and wrote
fulsome odes in praise of this emperor. Also he found a patron, a
wealthy gentleman by the name of Mæcenas, who was really fond of the
arts, and gave the poet a Sabine farm to live on. This poet was, I
believe, the first author who invited the public into his home, and told
them his private affairs, pleasant or otherwise. Being that kind of a
tactless author myself, I early conceived a feeling of affection for Mr.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known to us as Horace.
For one thing, this worldly wise poet knows how to tip us a wink, even
while handing out flattery to his patron. For another thing, his Mæcenas
seems to have been a really worthy soul. I know how easy it is to love a
rich man; but in Rome it must have been hard to find a rich man who
could be loved at any price. Horace was a man of humble tastes; all he
wanted was to live in his books, and to escape the brawl and fury of
politics. We might have expected him to fall down on his knees and kiss
the hand of a man who gave him a quiet home, with fruit-trees around
him, and snow-capped mountains in the distance, and a crackling log fire
in winter-time.
But, as a matter of fact, the poet was quite decent about it. He
asserted the right of a man of letters to live an independent
life--quite a “modern” idea, and hard for brutal rich Romans to
understand. Every now and then Horace would have to visit his patron and
friend, and meet some of these haughty conquerors of the world, and be
put in his place by them. The father of Horace was what the Romans
called a “freedman”; that is, he had formerly been a slave, and the
great world sneered at the poet on that account. But instead of being
ashamed of his ancestry, and trying to hide it, Horace put his old
father into his books, for all Rome to meet. Yes, said the poet, that
fond old freedman father brought his little boy to Rome to get an
education, and walked every day to school with him, carrying his books
and slate.
We can honor this honest gentleman, and read his charming verses with
pleasure--but without committing the absurdities of the classical
tradition, which ranks Horace as a great poet. He was a pioneer man of
letters, and in that way made history; but there is nothing he wrote
that the world has not learned to write better today. There are a score
of young fellows writing verses for the columns of American newspapers
who can turn out just as witty and clever and human stuff. “F. P. A.”
has written “take-offs” on Horace, which shock the purists, but would
have delighted Horace. Louis Untermeyer has published volumes of such
mingled wisdom and wit; and there is Austin Dobson, and above all,
Heine--a man who writes verse of loveliness to tear your heart-strings,
and at the same time had the nerve to hit out at the ruling-class brutes
of his age.
“Wasn’t there a single artist in Rome who revolted?” asks Mrs. Ogi.
“Yes, there was one. He also was the son of a freedman, and came nearly
a century after Virgil and Horace, in the reign of the infamous
Domitian. His name was Juvenal, and he wrote satires in which he flayed
the aristocracy of the empire for their vileness and materialism. I once
published a novel, ‘The Metropolis,’ in which I did the same thing for
the so-called ‘Four Hundred’ of New York; and it is interesting to
compare the two pictures--”
“Now don’t you start talking about your own books!” cries Mrs. Ogi.
“I don’t offer ‘The Metropolis’ as literature, but merely as a record of
things I saw in New York twenty years ago. Afterwards I’ll show what
Juvenal has to say on the same topics. First, ‘The Metropolis,’ page
278, listing the health-cures of ladies in high society:
“One of the consequences of the furious pace was that people’s health
broke down very quickly; and there were all sorts of bizarre ways of
restoring it. One person would be eating nothing but spinach, and
another would be living on grass. One would chew a mouthful of soup
thirty-two times; another would eat every two hours, and another only
once a week. Some went out in the early morning and walked barefooted in
the grass, and others went hopping about the floor on their hands and
knees to take off fat. There were ‘rest cures’ and ‘water cures,’ ‘new
thought’ and ‘metaphysical healing’ and ‘Christian Science’; there was
an automatic horse, which one might ride indoors, with a register
showing the distance traveled. Montague met one man who had an electric
machine, which cost thirty thousand dollars, and which took hold of his
arms and feet and exercised him while he waited. He met a woman who told
him she was riding an electric camel!
“But of course they could not really succeed in reducing weight, because
they were incapable of self-restraint. Mrs. Billy Alden gave Montague a
delightfully malicious account of a certain lordly fat lady of her set,
who had got the Turkish-bath habit. Terrible to encounter, most awful in
visage, she would enter the baths by night, and all the attendants would
rush into instant action. ‘She delights in perspiring with great
tumult,’ said Mrs. Billy. ‘And when her arms have sunk down, wearied
with the heavy dumb-bells, the sly masseur omits to rub down no part of
her person. Meantime, perhaps there are a number of guests assembled for
dinner at home. They wait, overcome with drowsiness and hunger. At last
the lady comes, flushed, and declaring that she is thirsty enough for a
whole ‘magnum.’ As soon as she is seated at the table, the footman
brings her a bucket of ice, packed about her own special quart of
champagne. She drinks half of this before she tastes any food--calling
it an appetizer. She drinks so much that it won’t stay down, but returns
as a cascade on the floor’--and Montague had to stop Mrs. Billy in her
too vivid description of the sights which a certain unhappy banker, the
husband of this lady, had to witness at his dinner-parties. Said Mrs.
Billy, with her usual vividness of metaphor: ‘It is like a snake that
has crawled into a cask of wine; it takes in and gives out again.’”
Mrs. Ogi interrupts. “There is one thing I want to make plain--that you
weren’t married to me when you published that disgusting stuff.”
“All right,” says Ogi; “it shall be entered in the record. But you must
understand that I am not to blame for Mrs. Billy’s stories.”
“You were to blame for the company you kept,” declares Mrs. Ogi. “I call
that sort of writing inexcusable.”
“Well, I’ll try again,” says her husband. “On page 351 of ‘The
Metropolis’ you find a glimpse of the underworld of New York:
“So far had the specialization in evil proceeded that there were places
of prostitution which did a telephone business exclusively, and would
send a woman in a cab to any address; and there were high-class
assignation-houses, which furnished exquisite apartments and the
services of maids and valets. And in this world of vice the modern
doctrine of the equality of the sexes was fully recognized; there were
gambling-houses and pool-rooms and opium-joints for women, and
drinking-places which catered especially to them. In the ‘orange room’
of one of the big hotels, you might see rich women of every rank and
type, fingering the dainty leather-bound and gold-embossed wine cards.
In this room alone were sold over ten thousand drinks every day; and the
hotel paid a rental of a million a year to the Devon estate. Not far
away the Devons also owned negro-dives, where, in the early hours of the
morning, you might see richly gowned white women drinking.
“Montague was told by a certain captain of police a terrible story about
the wife of our very greatest railroad magnate, who lived in a colossal
marble palace on Fifth Avenue. As soon as she perceived that her husband
was asleep, she would put on a yellow wig as a disguise, and wearing an
overcoat which she kept for this purpose, she would quit the palace on
foot, with only a single attendant. She would enter one of the brothels
in the ‘Tenderloin,’ where she had a room set apart for herself. There
she took her stand, with naked breasts and gilded nipples, bearing the
name of Zaza, and displaying the person of the mother of one of our most
magnificent young lords of society and finance. She would receive all
comers with caresses, and when the madame dismissed her customers, she
would take her leave sadly, lingering, and being the last to close the
door of her room. Still unsatisfied in her desires, she would retire
with her sullied cheeks, bearing back the odors of the brothel to the
pillow of her mighty railroad magnate. And shall I speak of the
love-charms--”
“Most emphatically you shall not!” cries Mrs. Ogi, “I think we’ve had
enough of ‘The Metropolis’ and I won’t hear of its being reproduced in
this new book. It’s your crudest Socialist propaganda--”
“You’re quite sure it’s propaganda?” says Ogi.
“Of course. Who would question that?”
“Well then, I’ve proved one point!” says the other.
“I don’t understand.”
“I have made you the victim of a mean little trick. Each of those
passages starts out as ‘The Metropolis’; but then it slides into
Juvenal--the sixth satire, dealing with the ladies of ancient Rome. The
point of my joke is that you will have to consult the books in order to
be sure which is Juvenal and which is me. Of course I’ve had to change
names and phrases, replacing Roman things with New York things. And I’ve
had to tone Juvenal down, because there are some of his phrases I
couldn’t reproduce--”
“There are some you have tried to reproduce, and that you’re going to
cut out,” says Mrs. Ogi. And as always, she has her way, and so it is a
Bowdlerized Juvenal you have been reading!