The group in the smoke room this morning was a fairly representative
microcosm. There were two men making the round trip because it was
the slack of the year in their businesses, and Europe was too far,
too costly, and too inconvenient. There were a couple of salesmen
voyaging with the idea of conquering the West Indies for their houses,
an official, with a monocle, proceeding to some distant British
possession; and one or two of the ship’s officers, who regarded the
glittering beauty of the blue waters with bored and introspective eyes.
In a far corner a young gentleman with extremely sleek black hair was
writing a letter--he was no doubt a Latin American youth returning
disconsolately to his own volcanic country after a hilarious time at
an American university. In the palm court abaft the smoke room were
reclining a number of dark dazzling creatures, their hands and arms
and ears sparkling with massive gems, who were likewise returning to
the bosoms of their families after a successful season in New York.
And ever and anon there could be seen passing the open windows, as he
made his morning promenade, the inevitable elderly and dried up Latin
American of immense wealth, one of whom, in grey pants and alpaca coat,
seems to be forever drifting to and fro on the waters of the Caribbean.
And in some way now forgotten by all concerned, the talk turned upon
books.
“I never read anything,” barked one of the roundtrippers, reaching for
a match. “My wife’s crazy about books--house is full of ’em--Ibáñez and
Harold Bell Wright, and Shakespeare, and all those fellows. I never
read any of ’em.”
There was a delighted silence while he lit his cigar.
The Englishman’s monocle showed a blind white glare as he looked out at
the dancing sea.
“Oh, I shouldn’t go as far as that”, he murmured. “It is a great
comfort, you know, in certain situations--the reading habit, don’t you
think?”
He didn’t look it, but he had spent an anxious year in Mesopotamian
prisons and would have gone mad there but for a damaged novelette
which he had read so often it had rotted under his hands. He received
unexpected support from the other roundtripper.
“You’ve said something,” agreed that gentleman. “I consider reading
a very fine thing--a very fine thing indeed. I collect books,
gentlemen, first editions of living authors. I have a remarkably fine
collection--all signed first editions. I send my bookplate with a
letter and the authors send it back signed.”
“What’s the good of that?” demanded his companion suspiciously. “Look
at the cost!”
“Autographs,” replied the other tranquilly, “are going up. Some of mine
are worth fifty dollars.”
His truculent friend let his jaw drop a little as he stared and
digested this novel fact. He was interested in an indolent way.
His suspicion, his truculence, his interest, all had a slightly
meretricious air. He was on vacation. No doubt his attitude toward life
at home was sane and humorous enough. Books were not his métier.
“Oh, no doubt,” the Englishman was saying. “It is very difficult to
make a decent choice, once you leave the regular well known men. Even
they,” he added, rubbing his nose with the side of his forefinger,
“let you down at times.”
One of the salesmen reached behind him on the cushions and fished out
a volume. “What would you say about this sort of thing,” he asked,
handing it over. “Everybody seems to be reading them now.”
The Englishman accepted it gingerly, his rigid features assuming an
expression of extreme concern, as though he felt he had been taken
at a disadvantage. As he had. He had forgotten the American Law of
Applied Responsibility. By this law, if you reveal an aptitude or a
proclivity, you are instantly voted into a position where that aptitude
or proclivity can be useful to the community and a source of profit to
yourself. This peculiar custom is unknown in England, where a man of
talent often spends half his life modestly concealing his ability, and
the other half waiting for someone else to die, so that he can get a
chance to use it. Realizing, however, that he was one of an imperial
race, this particular Englishman braced himself, settled his eyeglass,
and after examining the book said he had read it and “found it rather
rot, you know.”
“Oh, no!” objected one of the officers, suddenly. “It is a very
important book, if you look at it from the right standpoint. Did you
read it through?”
“Couldn’t,” replied the Englishman in a small, precise voice. “I got as
far as--as far as--well, anyhow, I had to chuck it. Not in my line.”
“Then you can hardly set up as a judge of it,” suggested the other. The
Englishman was somewhat nettled.
“Only in so far as I couldn’t stay the whole distance,” he retorted.
“That’s criticism in a way I take it. What!”
There was a general laugh and a readjustment of moods as the waiter
approached with tall glasses.
“You were saying--” murmured the Englishman after a first libation.
“That a book like this one here, a solidly packed slab of fiction, is a
sign of the times. It has no particular features of originality at all.
But it has for its theme and milieu the Marquesas or some such island
group in the South Seas, and just at present there is a very peculiar
craze for the South Seas. Anything at all, so long as it is about the
South Seas, may go with the public, and the publishers take the wildest
chances. People without any ability to write at all are preparing huge
masses of trivial travel talk and illustrating it with photographs of
themselves in loin cloths grouped with native women who do not look
beautiful even in the prints. Anything at all may make a hit. They, the
publishers, think of ‘The Moon and Sixpence,’ forgetting that Somerset
Maugham’s genius had a good deal to do with that book. They remember
only that in spite of Curwood, Jack London, Ridgwell Cullum, and other
specialists of the north, there is a decided set toward the South Seas.”
“How do you account for that?” asked one of the company.
“I can’t account for it, but I have sometimes felt that people were
turning toward these distant spots of earth as to a kind of modern
Hesperides or Fortunate Islands, where the troubles of life in
steamheated apartments, department stores, and crowded subways, for
instance, do not exist. The north and the west have been worked to
death. The east, Europe and so forth, have gone down in our estimation
as paradises. And so, led as usual by the artists, by Gauguin,
Stevenson, and Somerset Maugham, we are all busy in the bazaars
demanding private magic carpets to take us to the Sunny South Seas,
where golden skinned men and delicious girls play _papalagis_ to the
_wahines_. Or is it the _wahines_ which are played to the _papalagis_?
I forget. Nor does it matter. This search for innocent and philosophic
harems is bound to fail. Those islands have no existence save for
the artists who discover them. If you look around the promenade deck
here you will find most of the passengers reading about the distant
coral groups of the Southern Pacific, with one or two exceptions
who are reading about the coral lips of Ethel Dell’s heroines, or
the cattle corrals of Zane Grey’s virile heroes. The author of this
particular book, however, has rashly decided to do without photographs
of repulsive Polynesian women. The character of his hero, a handsome
Englishman in love with a Latin American president’s daughter, is out
of date as well as out of drawing. Indeed there is no harm in a picture
being out of drawing, as we say, if it carries you with it and conveys
an authentic emotion. But to be out of date is the worst of literary
crimes. All art is convention, and it is therefore imperative that
you use the current convention to reveal the truth. This book reveals
nothing save the author’s absurd notions of the ingredients of a
romance.”
“A romance is a love story, I take it,” said someone.
“Quite possibly. Nowadays, however, a romance has to take place on an
island. Have you ever reflected upon the fascination islands seem to
exert upon novelists? Think of the islands of literature--a veritable
archipelago! Shakespeare with his ‘Tempest’ was an early victim.
Swift invented a floating island. Defoe of course you recall. Modern
authors teem with islands. ‘Treasure Island,’ ‘The Island of Doctor
Moreau,’ ‘L’Ile des Pingouins,’ ‘The Island Princess,’ ‘Island Nights’
Entertainments,’ ‘The Isle of Unrest,’ ‘An Outcast of the Islands.’
You can even include Kipling’s ‘Islanders’ and Galsworthy’s ‘Island
Pharisees’ if you are of a sardonic turn. There is something romantic
in the very nature of an island, something finite, enclosed, cut off,
remote--the centre of a mysterious hemispherical universe of sea and
sky. I admit this because I am under the spell of an island myself. I
know an island, not so large, which is very dear to my heart. All day
and all night you can hear the immense rumor of the tides of human life
washing to and fro in the caverns, almost ‘measureless to man,’ of
her rocks. Each day increase the great cliffs of coralline structure
fashioned by her millions of tiny inhabitants. The men are not golden
skinned, but they have strong hearts and steady brains and are good
comrades. As for the women, who would leave them for the doubtful
charms of Polynesia? The women of my island are the most beautiful in
the world, for they have been garnered from all over the world.”
“Where’s this place!” barked the truculent health seeker. “In the West
Indies?”
The other man smiled a little and shook his head.
“Oh no,” he said, signaling to the waiter, “we’ve just left it. I was
speaking of Manhattan.”
_John Erskine_
First, the lover of literature, second, the professor, I should say of
John Erskine. This large, genial but positive gentleman has long been
among the undergraduates one of the most popular professors at Columbia
University. Yet he has preserved, in the midst of academic strictures,
an unusual tolerance for modern tendencies in letters. While he chides
you gently for carelessness of viewpoint or slovenly phrase, he is
willing to find whatever is good in the new thing. His own poetry in
its recent collection shows beauty of phrase, incisive imagery, and
adherence to old models. Always he is interested in the young poet, and
we find him the willing patron and adviser of undergraduate poets and
poetry societies. Born in New York City, he took both his A.B. and his
Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. This has not made him, however,
insular. As President of the Authors Club he made valiant attempts to
keep that institution from a too rigid adherence to dusty tradition,
and, if his efforts to unite and strengthen the unruly and amorphous
Poetry Society of America were not successful, failure must be traced
to the nature of the organization itself rather than to any lack of
effort on Dr. Erskine’s part. His viewpoint is well illustrated by this
essay in which he deplores the journalistic attitude. Technique, after
all, is a god which cannot be lightly discarded. An able executive, a
poet of charm, a teacher of great abilities, John Erskine has been a
stabilizing force in American letters.