everything in his favor. His family was well-to-do and of good social
position in New York; he was sent to Eton and then to Heidelberg, and
apparently made useful friends at both places; he plunged into writing
at the precise moment when revolt against the New England Brahmins was
rising; he attracted attention quickly, and was given a lavish welcome.
No American author of 1885 was more talked about. When his first novel,
“The Truth About Tristrem Varick,” came out in 1888 it made a genuine
sensation. But the stick came down almost as fast as the rocket had
gone up. His books set the nation agog for a short while, and were then
quietly forgotten. He began as the hope of American letters, and ended
as a writer of yellow-backs and a special correspondent for the Hearst
papers. What ailed him was simply lack of solid substance. He could
be clever, as cleverness was understood during the first Cleveland
administration, but he lacked dignity, information, sense. His books of
“philosophy” were feeble and superficial, his novels were only facile
improvisations, full of satanic melodrama and wooden marionettes.
Of late I have been re-reading them--a sad job, surely, for when I was
a schoolboy they were nine-day wonders, barred from all the libraries
but devoured eagerly by every aspiring youth. Now their epigrams are
dulled, and there is nothing else left. “The Anatomy of Negation” and
“The Philosophy of Disenchantment” have been superseded by far better
books; “The Truth About Tristrem Varick” reads like one of the shockers
of Gertrude Atherton; “Mary Magdalen” is a dead shell; the essays
and articles republished as “Uplands of Dream” are simply ninth-rate
journalism. Of them all only “Imperial Purple” holds up. A certain fine
glow is still in it; it has gusto if not profundity; Saltus’s worst
faults do not damage it appreciably. I find myself, indeed, agreeing
thoroughly with the literary judgment of Dr. Harding. “Imperial Purple”
remains Saltus’s best book. It remains also, alas, his only good one!
XVII. MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
1
_Martyrs_
To die for an idea: it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it
would be if men died for ideas that were true! Searching history, I can
find no such case. All the great martyrs of the books died for sheer
nonsense--often for trivial matters of doctrine and ceremonial, too
absurd to be stated in plain terms. But what of the countless thousands
who have perished in the wars, fighting magnificently for their
country? Well, show me one who knew precisely what the war he died in
was about, and could put it into a simple and plausible proposition.
2
_The Ancients_
The theory that the ancient Greeks and Romans were men of a vast and
ineffable superiority runs aground on the fact that they were great
admirers of oratory. No other art was so assiduously practiced among
them. To-day we venerate the architecture of Greece far more than we
venerate its orators, but the Greeks themselves put the orators first,
and so much better records of them are preserved to-day. But oratory,
as a matter of fact, is the most primitive and hence the lowest of all
the arts. Where is it most respected to-day? Among savages, in and out
of civilization. The yokels of the open spaces flock by the thousand
to hear imbeciles yawp and heave; the city proletariat glues its ears
to the radio every night. But what genuinely civilized man would turn
out to hear even the champion orator of the country? Dozens of the
most eminent professors of the art show off their tricks every day in
the United States Senate. Yet the galleries of the Senate, save when
news goes out that some Senator is stewed and about to make an ass of
himself, are occupied only by Negroes who have come in to get warm, and
hand-holding bridal couples from rural North Carolina and West Virginia.
3
_Jack Ketch as Eugenist_
Has any historian ever noticed the salubrious effect, on the English
character, of the frenzy for hanging that went on in England during
the Eighteenth Century? When I say salubrious, of course, I mean in
the purely social sense. At the end of the Seventeenth Century the
Englishman was still one of the most turbulent and lawless of civilized
men; at the beginning of the Nineteenth he was the most law-abiding;
_i. e._, the most docile. What worked the change in him? I believe that
it was worked by the rope of Jack Ketch. During the Eighteenth Century
the lawless strain was simply choked out of the race. Perhaps a third
of those in whose veins it ran were actually hanged; the rest were
chased out of the British Isles, never to return. Some fled to Ireland,
and revivified the decaying Irish race: in practically all the Irish
rebels of the past century there have been plain traces of English
blood. Others went to the Dominions. Yet others came to the United
States, and after helping to conquer the Western wilderness, begat the
yeggman, Prohibition agents, footpads and hijackers of to-day.
The murder rate is very low in England, perhaps the lowest in the
world. It is low because nearly all the potential ancestors of
murderers were hanged or exiled in the Eighteenth Century. Why is it
so high in the United States? Because most of the potential ancestors
of murderers, in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries,
were _not_ hanged. And why did they escape? For two plain reasons.
First, the existing government was too weak to track them down and
execute them, especially in the West. Second, the qualities of daring
and enterprise that went with their murderousness were so valuable
that it was socially profitable to overlook their homicides. In other
words, the job of occupying and organizing the vast domain of the
new Republic was one that demanded the aid of men who, among other
things, occasionally butchered their fellow men. The butchering had
to be winked at in order to get their help. Thus the murder rate, on
the frontier, rose to unprecedented heights, while the execution rate
remained very low. Probably 100,000 men altogether were murdered in
the territory west of the Ohio between 1776 and 1865; probably not 100
murderers were formally executed. When they were punished at all, it
was by other murderers--and this left the strain unimpaired.
4
_Heroes_
Of human eminence there are obviously two varieties: that which issues
out of the inner substance of the eminent individual and that which
comes to him, either partially or wholly, from without. It is not
difficult to recognize men at the two extremes. No sane person would
argue seriously that the eminence of such a man, say, as Richard Wagner
was, in any plausible sense, accidental or unearned. Wagner created
“Tristan und Isolde” out of his own inherent substance. Allowing
everything for the chances of his education and environment, the
massive fact remains that no other man of the same general education
and environment has ever created anything even remotely comparable to
it. Wagner deserved the eminence that came to him quite as certainly
as the Lord God Jehovah deserves that which attaches to Him. He got it
by differing sharply from other men, and enormously for the better,
and by laboring colossally and incessantly to make that difference
visible. At the other extreme lies such a fellow, say, as young John
D. Rockefeller. He is, by all ordinary standards, an eminent man. When
he says anything the newspapers report it in full. If he fell ill of
gallstones to-morrow, or eloped with a lady Ph.D., or fell off the roof
of his house, or was taken in a rum raid the news would be telegraphed
to all parts of the earth and at least a billion human beings would
show some interest in it. And if he went to Washington and pulled
the White House bell he would be let in infallibly, even if the Heir
of Lincoln had to quit a saxophone lesson to see him. But it must be
obvious that young John’s eminence, such as it is, is almost purely
fortuitous and unearned. He is attended to simply because he happens
to be the son of old John, and hence heir to a large fortune. So far
as the records show, he has never said anything in his life that was
beyond the talents of a Rotary Club orator or a newspaper editorial
writer, or done anything that would have strained an intelligent
bookkeeper. He is, to all intents and purposes, a vacuum, and yet he
is known to more people, and especially to more people of means, than
Wagner, and admired and envied vastly more by all classes.
Between Wagner and young John there are infinite gradations, and
sometimes it is a hard matter to distinguish between them. To most
Americans, I daresay, a Harding or a Coolidge appears to enjoy an
eminence that is not only more gaudy but also more solid than that
of, say, an Einstein. When Einstein visited the United States, a few
years ago, he was taken to see Harding as a sort of treat, and many
worthy patriots, no doubt, regarded it as somewhat too rich for him,
an enemy alien and a Jew. If Thomas Hardy came here to-morrow, his
publisher would undoubtedly try to get an invitation to the White House
for him, not merely to advertise his books but also to honor the man.
Yet it must be plain that the eminence of Coolidge, however vastly
it may be whooped up by gentlemen of enlightened self-interest, is
actually greatly inferior to that of either Einstein or Hardy. These
men owe whatever fame they have to actual accomplishments. There is
no doubt whatever that what they have is wholly theirs. They owe
nothing to anyone, and no conceivable series of accidents could have
made them what they are. If superiority exists among men, then they are
indubitably superior. But is there any sign of superiority in Coolidge?
I can find none. His eminence is due entirely to two things: first, a
series of accidents, and secondly, the possession of qualities that, in
themselves, do not mark a superior man, but an inferior. He is a cheap,
sordid and grasping politician, a seeker of jobs all his life, willing
to do almost anything imaginable to get them. He has never said a word
worth hearing, or done a thing requiring genius, or even ordinary
skill. Put into his place and given the opportunities that have arisen
before him in a long succession, any other ninth-rate lawyer in the
land could have got as far as he has got.
Now for my point. It is, in brief, that the public estimation of
eminence runs almost directly in inverse ratio to its genuineness. That
is to say, the sort of eminence that the mob esteems most highly is
precisely the sort that has least grounding in solid worth and honest
accomplishment. And the reason therefor is not far to seek. The kind of
eminence that it admires is simply the kind that it can understand--the
kind that it can aspire to. The very puerility of a Coolidge, in fact,
is one of the principal causes of the admiration he excites. What he
has done in the world is within the capacities, given luck enough, of
any John Smith. His merits, such as they are, are almost universal,
and hence perfectly comprehensible. But what a Wagner or an Einstein
does is wholly beyond the understanding of an ordinary ignoramus, and
so it is impossible for the ignoramus to admire it. Worse, it tends
to arouse his suspicion, and hence his animosity. He is not merely
indifferent to the merits of a Wagner; he will, if any attempt is made
to force them upon his attention, challenge them sharply. What he
admires fundamentally, in other words, is himself, and in a Coolidge,
a Harding, a baseball pitcher, a movie actor, an archbishop, or a bank
president he can see himself. He can see himself, too, though perhaps
more dimly, in a Dewey, a Pershing, a Rockefeller or a Jack Dempsey.
But he can no more see himself in a Wagner or an Einstein than he can
see himself on the throne of the Romanoffs, and so he suspects and
dislikes such men, as he suspects and dislikes Romanoffs.
Unluckily, it is one thing to denounce his stupidity, and quite another
thing to escape its consequences. The history of mankind is peopled
chiefly, not with the genuinely great men of the race, but with the
flashy and hollow fellows who appealed to the mob. Every American
remembers vividly the contribution that Theodore Roosevelt made to the
building of the Panama Canal--a contribution that might have been made
by any other American thrown fortuitously into his place, assuming
only that the substitute shared his normal American lack of a sense
of honor. But who remembers the name of the man who actually designed
the canal? I turn to the New International Encyclopedia and find nine
whole pages about the canal, with many drawings. There is eloquent
mention of Col. Goethals--who simply carried out the designer’s plans.
There is mention, too, of Col. Gorgas--whose sanitary work was a simple
application of other men’s ideas. There is ample space for Roosevelt,
and his blackjacking of Colombia. But so far as I can find, the name of
the designer is not there. The mob did not admire him, and so history
has overlooked him.
5
_An Historic Blunder_
The Southern gentry made a thumping mistake when, after the Civil War,
they disfranchised the blacks. Had they permitted the latter to vote,
they would have retained political control of all the Southern States,
for the blacks, like the peasants everywhere else, would have followed
their natural masters. As it was, control quickly passed to the poor
white trash, who still maintain it, though many of them have ceased
to be poor. The gentry struggle in vain to get back in the saddle;
they lack the votes to achieve the business unaided, and the blacks,
who were ready to follow them in 1870, are now incurably suspicious
of them. The result is that politics in the South remain fathomlessly
swinish. Every civilized Southerner knows it and is ashamed of it, but
the time has apparently passed to do anything about it. To get rid of
its Bleases, Mayfields, Slemps, Peays and Vardamans, the South must
wait until the white trash are themselves civilized. This is a matter
demanding almost as much patience as the long vigil of the Seventh Day
Adventists.
6
_On Cynicism_
One of the most curious of human delusions lies in the theory that
cynics are unhappy men--that cynicism makes for a general biliousness
and malaise. It is a false deduction, I believe, from the obvious fact
that cynics make _other_ men unhappy. But they are themselves among the
most comfortable and serene of mammals; perhaps only bishops, pet dogs
and actors are happier. For what a cynic believes, though it may be too
dreadful to be put into formal words, at least usually has the merit of
being true--and truth is ever a rock, hard and harsh, but solid under
the feet. A cynic is chronically in the position of a wedding guest
who has known the bride for nine years, and has had her confidence.
He is a great deal less happy, theoretically, than the bridegroom.
The bridegroom, beautifully barbered and arrayed, is about to launch
into the honeymoon. But the cynic looks ahead two weeks, two months,
two years. Such, to borrow a phrase from the late Dr. Eliot, are the
durable satisfactions of life.
7
_Music and Sin_
Among Christian workers and other intellectual cripples the delusion
seems to persist that jazz is highly aphrodisiacal. I never encounter
a sermon on the subject without finding it full of dark warnings to
parents, urging them to keep their nubile daughters out of the jazz
palaces on the ground that the voluptuous music will inflame their
passions and so make them easy prey to bond salesmen, musicians and
other such carnal fellows. All this seems to me to be nonsense. Jazz,
in point of fact, is not voluptuous at all. Its monotonous rhythm and
puerile tunes make it a sedative rather than a stimulant. If it is an
aphrodisiac, then the sound of riveting is also an aphrodisiac. What
fetches the flappers who come to grief in the jazz parlors is not
the music at all, but the alcohol. Drinking it out of flasks in the
washrooms, they fail to keep the dose in harmony with their natural
resistance, and so they lose control of their faculties, and what
follows is lamentable. Jazz, which came in with Prohibition, gets
the blame that belongs to its partner. In the old days, when it was
uncommon for refined women to get drunk at dances, it would have been
quite harmless. To-day even Chopin’s funeral march would be dangerous.
The truth is that jazz is probably the least voluptuous variety of
music commonly heard in Christendom. There are plenty of Methodist
hymns that are ten times as aphrodisiacal, and the fact is proved
by the scandals that follow every camp-meeting. In most parts of
the United States, indeed, the Methodists have begun to abandon
camp-meetings as subversive of morality. Where they still flourish
it is not unusual for even the rev. clergy to be taken in byzantine
practices. But so-called good music is yet worse than the Methodist
hymns. Has the world so soon forgotten James Huneker’s story of the
prudent opera mamma who refused to let her daughter sing Isolde, on
the ground that no woman could ever get through the second act without
forgetting God? That second act, even so, is much overestimated. There
are piano pieces of Chopin that are a hundred times worse; if the
Comstocks really had any sense, they would forbid their performance.
And what of the late Puccini? If “La Bohème” is not an aphrodisiac,
then what is it? Yet it is sung publicly all over the world. Only in
Atlanta, Ga., is there a law against it, and even that law was probably
inspired by the fact that it was written by a Catholic and not by the
fact that it has brought hundreds of thousands of Christian women to
the edge of the abyss.
Old Ludwig himself was not without guilt. His “Egmont” overture is a
gross and undisguised appeal to the medulla oblongata. And what of
his symphonies and quartettes? The last movement of his Eroica is not
only voluptuous to the last degree; it is also Bolshevistic. Try to
play it with your eyes on a portrait of Dr. Coolidge. You will find
the thing as impossible as eating ice-cream on roast beef. At the time
of its first performance in Vienna the moral sense of the community
was so greatly outraged that Beethoven had to get out of town for a
while. I pass over Wagner, whose “Tristan und Isolde” was probably
his most decorous work, despite Huneker--think of “Parsifal”!--and
come to Richard Strauss. Here I need offer no argument: his “Salomé”
and “Elektra” have been prohibited by the police, at one time or
another, in nearly every country in the world. I believe that “Der
Rosenkavalier” is still worse, though the police leave it unmolested.
Compare its first act to the most libidinous jazz ever heard of on
Broadway. It is like comparing vodka to ginger-pop. No woman who hears
it is ever the same again. She may remain within the law, but her
thoughts are wayward henceforth. Into her ear the sirens have poured
their abominable song. She has been beset by witches. There is a
sinister glitter in her eye.
8
_The Champion_
Of the forty-eight sovereign States of this imperial Federation,
which is the worst? In what one of them is a civilized man most
uncomfortable? Over half the votes, if the question were put to a
vote, would probably be divided between California and Tennessee.
Each in its way, is almost unspeakable. Tennessee, of course, has
never been civilized, save in a small area; even in the earliest days
of the Republic it was regarded as barbaric by its neighbors. But
California, at one time, promised to develop a charming and enlightened
civilization. There was a touch of tropical balm in its air, and
a touch of Latin and oriental color in its ideas. Like Louisiana,
it seemed likely to resist Americanization for many years; perhaps
forever. But now California, the old California, is simply extinct.
What remains is an Alsatia of retired Ford agents and crazy fat
women--a paradise of 100% Americanism and the New Thought. Its laws
are the most extravagant and idiotic ever heard of in Christendom. Its
public officers, and particularly its judges, are famous all over the
world for their imbecilities. When one hears of it at all, one hears
that some citizen has been jailed for reading the Constitution of the
United States, or that some new swami in a yellow bed-tick has got all
the realtors’ wives of Los Angeles by the ears. When one hears of it
further, it is only to learn that some obscure movie lady in Hollywood
has murdered another lover. The State is run by its Chambers of
Commerce, which is to say, by the worst variety of resident shysters.
No civilized man ever seems to take any part in its public life. Not
an idea comes out of it--that is, not an idea beyond the grasp of a
Kiwanis Club secretary, a Christian Science sorcerer, or a grand goblin
of the American Legion. Twice, of late, it has offered the country
candidates for the presidency. One was the Hon. Hiram Johnson and the
other was the Hon. William Gibbs McAdoo! Only Vermont can beat that
record.
The minority of civilized Californians--who lately, by the way, sent
out a call from Los Angeles for succor, as if they were beset by
wolves!--commonly lay the blame for this degeneration of a once-proud
commonwealth upon the horde of morons that has flowed in from Iowa,
Nebraska and the other cow-States, seeking relief from the bitter
climate of the steppes. The California realtors have been luring
in these hinds for a generation past, and they now swarm in all
the southern towns, especially Los Angeles. They come in with their
savings, are swindled and sent home, and so make room for more. While
they remain and have any part of their money left, they patronize the
swamis, buy oil stock, gape at the movie folk, and pack the Methodist
churches. Unquestionably, the influence of such vacuums has tended to
degrade the general tone of California life; what was once a Spanish
_fiesta_ is now merely an upper Mississippi valley street-carnival. But
it is not to be forgotten that the Native Sons have gone down the chute
with the newcomers--that there is no more sign of intellectual vigor in
the old stock than there is in the new stock. A few intransigeants hold
out against the tide of 100% Americanism, but only a few. The rest bawl
against the Reds as loudly as any Iowa steer-stuffer.
The truth is that it is unjust to blame Iowa for the decay of
California, for Iowa itself is now moving up, not down. And so is
Nebraska. A few years ago both States were as sterile, intellectually,
as Spain, but both are showing signs of progress to-day, and in
another generation or two, as the Prohibition lunacy passes and the
pall of Methodism begins to lift, they will probably burst into very
vigorous activity. Some excellent stock is in them; it is very little
contaminated by what is called Anglo-Saxon blood. Iowa, even to-day,
is decidedly more civilized than California. It is producing more
ideas, and, more important still, it is carrying on a much less violent
war _against_ ideas. I doubt that any man who read the Constitution
in Davenport or Des Moines would be jailed for it, as Upton Sinclair
(or one of his friends) was in Pasadena. The American Legion would
undoubtedly protest, but the police would probably do nothing, for the
learned judges of the State would not entertain the charge.
Thus California remains something of a mystery. The whole United
States, of course, has been going downhill since the beginning of the
century, but why should one State go so much faster than the others?
Is the climate to blame? Hardly. The climate of San Francisco is
thoroughly un-Californian, and yet San Francisco is almost as dead as
Los Angeles. It was there, indeed, that that California masterpiece,
the Mooney case, was staged; it was here that the cops made three
efforts to convict poor Fatty Arbuckle of murder in the first-degree;
it was there that the late Dr. Abrams launched a quackery that went
Mother Eddy one better. San Francisco, once the home of Mark Twain and
Bret Harte, is now ravaged by Prohibition enforcement officers. But if
the climate is not to blame, then what is? Why should a great State,
lovely physically and of romantic history, so violently renounce all
sense and decency? What has got into it? God alone knows!
9
_Honor in America_
Some time ago I enjoyed the distinguished honor of entertaining an
American university professor in my house. The fellow had a resilient
gullet, and in the course of the evening we got down a quart of Scotch.
Made expansive by the liquor, he told me this story:
A short while before, at his university, one of the professors gave a
booze party for a group of colleagues, including the president of the
institution. It was warm weather, and they sat on the veranda, guzzling
moonshine and ginger-ale. There was so much chatter that they didn’t
hear a student coming up the path. Suddenly he was on them, and they
almost fainted....
At this point I asked why they were alarmed.