1
MEANWHILE, with summer coming on, Felix had wondered what an assistant
dramatic editor would find to do. He learned from Hawkins that the
management traditionally continued the Saturday dramatic department
through the season, though in a restricted space. Later, in anticipation
of the opening of the theatrical season, he could print the news of what
New York and London held in prospect for the Chicago public. And for the
present a column or two once a week could be furbished up somehow—the
how of it being left entirely to Felix’s own discretion and ingenuity.
“Interviews—clip-stuff from the London weeklies of last winter—anything
to keep going,” said Hawkins, cleaning up his desk and going home on a
formal leave of absence for the summer to rewrite his play—which, it
appeared, had impressed a New York manager and only needed to be
“strengthened” in its second act.
Felix, according to his arrangement with Willie Smith, was to write
“something light,” every day if possible, for the editorial page; and
that done, nobody cared what he put in the Saturday “Plays and Acting”
column. With Hawkins away, he felt that he had a free hand. And the fact
that there were no new plays to criticize did not matter much, for the
kind of criticism that Felix liked to write subsisted quite as well on
familiar plays that everybody had seen as upon brand-new ones—better,
perhaps.
Felix was rather humble about the kind of dramatic criticism he wrote;
though that humility merely concealed, from himself and others, a fierce
egotistic pride. For his attitude toward plays was different from that
of any other dramatic critic whose work he had ever seen. It was, in a
sense, not a “critical” attitude at all. Perhaps that was why his
commentaries had been so well received, by the management and the
readers of the Chronicle. It was at least an agreeable novelty. But
Felix knew quite well that he did not have either the experience or the
knowledge necessary to do the job in the usual way. Truth to tell, he
both stood in awe of, and despised, the usual way.... The regular
critics were always telling you whether a play was good or bad, and why,
and assessing expertly the merits of various bits of acting. Old
Jennison, “the dean,” as he was sometimes called, “of the critical
fraternity,” could remember the way Somebody had played Hamlet, and how
Miss Somebody Else had done the “great scene” in “Camille,” and he told
you all about it apropos of the latest play. This, doubtless, was real
criticism, but of a kind Felix could not aspire to, for he had never
seen Anybody in Anything. On the other hand, Hawkins was gravely an
enthusiast for modernity, as represented by Ibsen and Shaw, and took
occasion to point out the duty of American drama to bestir itself and
deal with the problems of the time. Then, of course, there was a third
kind of criticism, for which Felix had little respect—the enthusiastic
pounding of drums outside the tent of some favourite actor or actress.
And there was a fourth kind, for which Felix had no respect at all, but
to which he sometimes feared his own work belonged—the smart-aleck kind
of criticism.
He confessedly did not know very much about the art of acting, and could
not even say that some part was played “in a masterly manner,” let alone
tell the poor devil of an actor how he should have played it. He was, as
a matter of fact, not interested in the technique of acting, but only in
the effects produced. And, though he was a little ashamed of it, he
could not really feel that the stage had any “duties,” either to modern
problems or anything else. He still got a childlike thrill out of the
fantasies enacted behind the footlights—at least for the first few
moments after the curtain went up. And then, as that magic vanished for
him, and he became bored by the dull spectacle and unconvincing dialogue
on the stage, he became interested in the audience, for whom evidently
this magic still persisted. He wondered why, and tried to see the play
with their eyes, to find the things in it that held them, if not
breathless, at least coughless, for minutes at a time. What emotions
were those that were so touched by the cheap tears and tawdry heroisms
of “The Witching Hour” and “The Third Degree”? Why was it that they
liked to see the heroine in distress, the hero unjustly accused? Felix
set himself the task of proving that he knew why they liked these
things—and he described the commonplace predicaments and familiar crises
of current drama in terms which conveyed to his own mind some real
emotional excitement, with only a touch or two of humorous satire as he
resumed his own proper character as a philosophic observer. He found
that he could translate the most absurd plot into something
authentically interesting to himself—as if the worst play in the world
were, after all, only a good play badly conceived. And in this mood,
seeing bad plays through the eyes of an audience to whom they were
interesting, he too became interested. He discovered some at least of
the secrets of that wish-world of the theatre, in which what happens is
what we want to happen: and, only when conscience pinches too hard, and
reminds us that crime must be punished and virtue rewarded, what _ought_
to happen—but not at all, no, never, a place where things happen as they
do in everyday life! A strange world of pseudo-realities, elaborately
persuading us at the outset that it is the same world of houses and
streets as ours, inhabited by people like ourselves, wearing the same
clothes and talking the same talk, ruled by the same eternal laws of
probability—and then making come true for us for an hour our wildest,
silliest, loveliest, most impossible dreams!
2
It was fascinating, this imaginative insight into people’s minds. And—in
the absence of a real play—a vaudeville act or moving-picture or
burlesque show afforded him the same, or even a more profound and
startling, enlightenment.
One evening that summer he went with Rose-Ann to a burlesque theatre on
South State street. He noted the people who went in—workingmen, toughs,
sailors, young men wearing the latest Arrow collar, and husbands
accompanied by their wives. In the street outside, the wind picked up a
litter of dust and paper and flung it into people’s faces. Over the
roofs of tall buildings a dim moon shone in a cloudy sky. The brightest
thing in this street was the arc-lighted promise of the
theatre-entrance: “Refined Burlesque!”
In the front row, in an aisle seat, was a white-haired man who seemed to
be nearly a hundred years old; he sat there with an air of having
occupied that seat once every week since the theatre was built. Midway
of the parquet floor sat a placid matron of fifty, beside her fat and
complacent husband; their views on all subjects must have coincided
exactly with those of Dr. Parkhurst—they were solid blocks in the fabric
of our American civilization—and they had come here to find something
which their life required, not to be had elsewhere. About them was a
grey mass of padded masculine shoulders, with here and there, in twos
and threes, girls, making spots of colour on the greyness. Above, the
balcony buzzed—and the peanut-gallery filled suddenly like the breaking
of a dam. An orchestra of seven filed in. And a hush, not of eagerness
but of religious certainty, filled the theatre. In fifteen hundred souls
there was the calm that comes of utter confidence in the absolution (or,
as Aristotle would say, _katharsis_!) which they were about to
receive....
No one had come there for novelty; they had come for the familiar and
satisfying benediction of burlesque. The old rite had changed a little
with the changing times—it pretended to be a “musical comedy”—but the
heart of the ancient mystery was still there. The tunes were those
invented by Jubal, father of all such as handle the harp and
organ—revised slightly, year by year; the first chord awoke dim
ancestral memories. There was a trace of plot on the program, and the
name of an author; but no one was deceived. For, to put any doubts at
rest, and to make clear that this was simply the ten millionth
performance of the seasonal festival invented by Adam (after a hard
day’s work pulling eucalyptus stumps to the westward of Eden), it was
entitled, in the good old traditional manner, “The Jolly Girls.”
The orchestra played its immemorial tunes, the sons of Adam leaned a
little forward with a beatific look on their faces, the curtain rose,
and the festival, the sacred orgy, began. The stage was filled with
Beauty, in the form of four dozen female legs, while in the right wing
waited Laughter, in the shape of a little man with a putty nose. The
legs burst upon the scene in a blaze of light and sound—a kaleidoscope
of calf and ankle, a whirl of soft pink feminine contours, a paradisiac
vision of essential Girl: the whole theatre breathed forth a sigh of
happiness, and the sons of Adam leant back in their seats, content. The
promise of the dionysiac god to them that toiled and bore harsh burdens,
was being fulfilled.
The legs, encased in pink tights, moved forward and back, up and down.
Somewhere above them were lungs and larynxes that poured forth a volume
of sound, in time to the hypnotic throb of the music. Gradually, in the
melée, arms became visible, and, vaguely connecting the arms and legs,
pieces of coloured cloth that finally became definite as golden tunics,
green sashes, scarlet bodices. Moreover, there were faces—but not real
faces of weariness or anger or sadness, to disturb the illusion—these
faces were masks, painted to express an impersonal and disinterested
pleasure in the exhibition of bodily charms. Pink cheeks, bestrode
eyelashed depths that emitted glances at the corners, carmined lips set
in an imperishable smile—these served as the perfect and sufficient
symbols of a joy that never was on sea or land.—But faces, after all,
belong to another world, the world of reality; if one looks at them too
long, one sees them, and the dream vanishes; so they were extinguished
presently by a row of flying legs and arms—the scene became a chaos of
feminine extremities, the music rose to a climax, and stopped, as the
chorus left the stage. Entered the man with the putty nose.
He spoke to somebody, in a rapid, monotonous, unintelligible voice; it
did not matter, he was only telling what the plot of the piece was. His
real function was revealed a minute later, when two tramps—a tall one
and a short one—entered, and the tall one hit him over the head with a
stick. The victim fell on his putty nose. The house rocked with
laughter, and the gallery stormed applause.
What secret wish is gratified when we see man who was created in the
image of God falling bump on his nose? Irresistibly, by a profound
impulse, we laugh. The cares of the day, the harsh realities of life,
fade away when in the golden land of Never-never a tall man enters with
his short companion and hits the third man (he of the putty nose) over
the head with a slapstick.
In the course of the evening, the small man was hit over the head
fifty-seven hundred times; he rose but to fall again, more helplessly
than before. He was also kicked—in the nose, in the ear, in front and
behind. His nose was pulled into an infinite variety of shapes, being
made to resemble every object under heaven from a telephone wire to a
turnip. He submitted meekly, and upon him the desire of the whole
audience to see mankind made ridiculous was visited times without
number.
Genially, casually, the tall man kicked him in the face whenever he
happened to notice him. The tall man had taken possession of the stage.
Singing, dancing, clowning, guying, arguing, wheedling, mocking,
bullying—now as an unshaven tramp, a few minutes later as an unshaven
Turk, then as an unshaven pirate—whatever a man could be and do without
first submitting to that odious refinement of civilization, the clean
shave; in a dozen different costumes, always delightful and
irresponsible and seductive, and always accompanied by his short
comrade, he pervaded the evening. He spoke, and the audience laughed; he
refrained from speaking, and the audience laughed.
His slapstick, that magic wand which had only to touch things to make
them funny, was like himself. He had slapstick shoulders, slapstick
eyebrows, ears, nose, legs, posteriors; he acted with all of these,
eloquently—and at each gesture some ideal of human dignity was knocked
on the head and tumbled on its nose. He sang, walked across the room,
made love—and these actions, to the immense satisfaction of the
audience, were revealed as essentially absurd. The precious gift he
brought was a genial vulgarity, a hilarious cheapening of the values of
normal life. When he spoke, with irresistible drollery, about women,
about work, about marriage, about anything in the world, it became not
worth a—his abrupt gesture told what—and the stout matron in the middle
of the parquet became hysterical with laughter. For a moment she was not
a solid block in the structure of our respectable American
civilization—she was a rebellious child, delightedly come into a dream
world where all burdens are lifted, all values transvalued. It seemed to
do her good.... Then two dimpled soubrettes sang another song.
In and out between these episodes floated the chorus, shaking its
immortal legs. The legs and their owners classified themselves into
three ranks or hierarchies of fleshly charm: in front, the “little
ones,” the “ponies”; in the next row, the “mediums”; and, last and most
sumptuous, the “big ones,” the “show girls.” The big ones were the
_piece de resistance_; no frills, no sauces, but a satisfying
super-abundance. All that the hungry eye desired was bodied forth in
these vast and shapely statues of feminine flesh, tipping the scales at
not less than two hundred pounds. Two hundred pounds of arm and leg,
bust and buttock; here was riches, here was Golconda—two hundred pounds
of female meat! A thousand hungry eyes feasted rapturously on the sight.
But this was not the ultimate magic of burlesque.
A storm of applause, and a young woman entered on one toe, kicking the
zenith with the other. A young woman? A pinwheel, a skyrocket, a slender
feminine firework! Feminine? Not with the obvious allurements of her
sex. Her figure was like that of a boy; boyish was the mischievous face
that sparkled behind the tangle of her short curls. She was like a
sword-blade in this poppyfield of easy dreams. Her soul was adventurous,
like her legs; she kicked open the zenith with her boisterous boyish
laugh. She defied the code of this tinsel dream-world, in which women
burn with the ready fires of miscellaneous invitation; she seemed beyond
sex. Nor was she a mere bundle of graceful muscles. She had, shining in
contrast to all this impersonal eroticism, a hint of personality, a will
of her own, an existence independent of the wishes of the audience. She
smiled at them, but scornfully, indifferently, mischievously,—and
triumphed over them. That touch of reality gave a momentary sharp savour
to the too-cloying illusion. Then she left the stage—on her hands—and
the dream-festival went on as before.
The music pounded itself, with endless repetition, through the senses,
into the soul. The rhythm of legs became the rhythm of the universe. The
people of the audience were absolutely at one with each other and with
the genius of the slapstick, who talked to them familiarly now, as his
friends. Cries and handclaps of applause mingled with the rhythm. The
heart of the theatre beat gigantically, joyously, ecstatically. The play
rose to its climax. To the tune of “Yankee Doodle,” the young firework
appeared, turning handsprings, an American flag on the seat of her
pants. Walking on her ear, she crossed the stage, waving the flag in the
faces of the audience. The audience applauded in patriotic frenzy. They
would have died for that flag.
The curtain fell, rose a foot from the floor, and disclosed a row of
legs—legs—legs—twinkling across behind the footlights. Into those legs
was concentrated the infinite sorcery of the theatre.... But it was time
to go home. It was time to re-enter the world of reality.—Another leg
appeared, the eloquent left leg of the tall slapstick comedian, clothed
round with heavy woolen drawers and clasped by a Boston garter. It
seemed to say: “After all, my friends, a leg is only a leg!” The spell
was broken, and the audience began slowly to file out into the dusty
street.
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