OSTEND PURGED OF SIN
At Vermilion the sun suddenly burst forth once more, clear and warm from
a blanket of grey, and the whole world looked different and much more
alluring. Speed arrived with the car just when we had finished luncheon,
and we had the pleasure of sitting outside and feeling thoroughly warm
and gay while he ate. Betimes Franklin commented on the probable
character of the life in a community like this. He was of the conviction
that it never rose above a certain dead level of mediocrity—however
charming and grateful the same might be as life—and that all the ideas
of all concerned ran to simple duties and in grooves of amusing, if not
deadly prejudice; which was entirely satisfactory, so long as they did
not interfere with or destroy _your_ life. He was convinced that there
was this narrow, solemn prejudice which made all life a sham, or a kind
of rural show piece, in which all played a prescribed part, some
thinking one thing, perhaps, and secretly conforming to it as much as
possible, while publicly professing another and conforming to that,
publicly, or, as is the case with the majority, actually believing in
and conforming to life as they found it here. I know there were many
such in the home communities in which I was brought up. Franklin was not
one to charge general and widespread hypocrisy, as do some, but rather
to sympathize with and appreciate the simple beliefs, tastes, and
appetites of all concerned.
“Now take those four town loafers sitting over there on that bin in
front of that store,” he commented, apropos of four old cronies who had
come out to sun themselves. “They haven’t a single thing in their minds
above petty little humors which do not seriously affect anyone but
themselves. They sit and comment and jest and talk about people in the
town who are doing things, quite as four ducks might quack. They haven’t
a single thing to do, not an important ambition. Crime of any kind is
nearly beyond them.”
Just then a boy came by crying a Cleveland afternoon paper. He was
calling, “All about the lynching of Leo Frank.” This was a young Jew who
had been arrested in Atlanta, Georgia, some months before, charged with
the very disturbing crime of attempted rape and subsequent murder, the
victim being a pretty working girl in a factory of which the murderer,
socalled, was foreman or superintendent. The trick by which the crime
was supposed to have been accomplished, as it was charged, was that of
causing the girl to stay after work and then, when alone, attempting to
seduce or force her. In this instance a struggle seems to have ensued.
The girl may have fallen and crushed her head against a table, or she
may have been struck on the head. The man arrested denied vigorously
that he had anything to do with it. He attempted, I believe, to throw
the blame on a negro janitor, or, if not that, he did nothing to aid in
clearing him of suspicion. And there is the bare possibility that the
negro did commit the crime, though personally I doubted it. When, upon
trial, Frank’s conviction of murder in the first degree followed, a
great uproar ensued, Jews and other citizens in all parts of the country
protested and contributed money for a new trial. The case was appealed
to the supreme court, but without result. Local or state sentiment was
too strong. It was charged by the friends of the condemned man that the
trial had been grossly unfair, and that Southern opposition to all
manner of sex offenses was so abnormal and peculiar, having a curious
relationship to the inversion of the psychoanalyst, that no fair trial
could be expected in that section. Personally, I had felt that the man
should have been tried elsewhere because of this very sectional
characteristic, which I had noticed myself.
It had been charged that a southern mob overawed the jury in the very
court room in which the case had been conducted, that the act of rape
had never really been proved, that the death had really been accidental
as described, that the very suspicious circumstance of the body being
found in the cellar was due to fear on the part of the murderer, whoever
he was, of being found out, and that the girl had not been brutally
slain at all. Nevertheless, when the reigning governor, whose term was
about to expire, commuted the sentence from death to life imprisonment,
he had to leave the state under armed protection, and a few weeks later
the criminal, if he was one, was set upon by a fellow convict in the
penitentiary at Atlanta and his throat cut. It was assumed that the
convict was employed by the element inimical to Frank at the trial. A
little later, while he was still in the hospital, practically dying from
this wound, Frank was taken out by a lynching party, taken to the small
home town of the girl, Marietta, Georgia, and there lynched. It was this
latest development which was being hawked about by the small newsboy at
Vermilion.
Personally, as I say, I had the feeling that Frank had been unjustly
dealt with. This seemed another exhibition of that blood lust of the
South which produces feuds, duels, lynchings and burning at the stake
even to this day and which I invariably relate to the enforced
suppression of very natural desires in another direction. Southerners
are usually so avid of women and so loud in their assertions that they
are not. I have no opposition to Southerners as such. In many respects
they are an interesting and charming people, courteous, hospitable, a
little inclined to over-emphasis of gallantry and chivalry and their
alleged moral purity, but otherwise interesting. But this sort of thing
always strikes me as a definite indictment of the real native sense of
the people. Have they brains, poise, judgment? Why, then, indulge in the
antics and furies of children and savages?
I raged at the South for its narrowness and inefficiency and ignorance.
Franklin, stung by the crime, no doubt, agreed with me. He told me of
being in a quick lunch room in New York one day when a young Southerner
entered and found a negro in the place, eating. Now as everyone knows,
this is a commonplace. I, often, have sat next to a negro and eaten in
peace and comfort. But according to Franklin, the first impulse of this
Southerner was to make a scene and stir up as much prejudice as
possible, beginning, as usual, with “What the hell is a damned negro
doing in here, anyhow?”
“He looked about for sympathy,” said Franklin, “but no one paid the
slightest attention to him. Then he began pushing his chair about
irritably and swaggering, but still no one heeded him. Finally, reducing
his voice to a grumble, he went quietly and secured his sandwich, his
coffee and his pie, like any other downtrodden American.”
“But what a blow it must have been to him to find himself swamped by a
sea of indifference!” I said—"not a soul to share his views!"
“It is that sort of thing that makes the South a jest to me,” continued
Franklin. “I can’t stand it.”
His face was quite sour, much more so than I had seen it on any other
occasion on this tour.
“Oh, well,” I said, “those things adjust themselves in the long run.
Frank is dead, but who knows, lynching may be killed by this act. The
whole North and West is grieved by this. They will take it out of the
South in contempt and money. Brutality must pay for itself like a stone
flung in the water, if no more than by rings of water. The South cannot
go on forever doing this sort of thing.”
After we had raged sufficiently we rode on, for by now Speed had
finished his lunch. Here, following that lake road I have mentioned, we
were in an ideal realm for a time again, free of all the dreary monotony
of the land farther south. The sun shone, the wind blew, and we forgot
all about Frank and careened along the shore looking at the tumbling
waves. Once we climbed down a steep bank and stood on the shore,
expatiating on how fine it all was. Another time we got off to pick a
few apples ready to our hand. There were many detours and we passed a
fair sized town called Huron, basking in a blaze of afternoon light, but
for once not stopping because it lay a little to the right of our road
to Sandusky. In another hour we were entering the latter place, a clean,
smooth paved city of brick and frame cottages, with women reading or
sewing on doorsteps and porches, and a sense of American solidarity and
belief in all the virtues hovering over it all.
[Illustration:
CEDAR POINT, LAKE ERIE
A Norse Sky
]
I never knew until I reached there and beheld it with my own eyes that
Sandusky has near it one of the finest fresh water beaches in the
world—and I have seen beaches and beaches and beaches, from those at
Monte Carlo, Nice and Mentone to those that lie between Portland, Maine,
and New Brunswick, Georgia. It is called Cedar Point, and is not much
more than twenty minutes from the pier at the foot of Columbus Avenue,
in the heart of the city—if you go by boat. They have not been
enterprising enough as yet to provide a ferry for automobiles. Once you
get there by a very roundabout trip of twelve miles, you can ride for
seven miles along a cement road which parallels exactly the white sand
of the beach and allows you to enjoy the cool lake winds and even the
spray of the waves when the wind is high. It is backed by marsh land,
some of which has been drained and is now offered as an ideal and
exclusive residence park.
But the trip was worth the long twelve miles—splendidly worth it—once we
had made up our minds to return there,—for coming we had passed it
without knowing it. What induced us to go was a number of picture cards
we saw in the principal department store here, showing Cedar Point Beach
in a storm, Cedar Point Beach crowded with thousands of bathers, Cedar
Point Beach Pier accommodating three or four steamers at once, and so
forth, all very gay and summery and all seeming to indicate a world of
Monte Carloesque proportions.
As a matter of fact, it was nothing like Monte Carlo or any other beach,
except for its physical beauty as a sea beach, for how could a watering
place on a lake in Ohio have any of the features of a cosmopolitan ocean
resort? In spite of the fact that it boasted two very large hotels, a
literally enormous casino and bathing pavilion, and various forms of
amusement pavilions, it was without the privilege of selling a drop of
intoxicants, and its patrons, to the number of thousands, were anything
but smart—just plain, Middle West family people.
What’ll we do with the Middle West and the South? Are they gradually and
unconsciously sinking into the demnition doldrums? Suppose our largest
soap factories, our largest reaper works, and our largest chewing gum
emporiums are out there—what of it? It doesn’t help much to amass large
fortunes making routine things that merely increase the multitude who
then sit back and do dull, routine things. Life was intended for the
spectacular, I take it. It was intended to sting and hurt so that songs
and dreams might come forth. When it becomes mere plethora and fixity,
it is nothing—a stultifying world. When a great crisis comes—as come it
surely will at some time or other—if people have just eaten and played
and not dreamed vastly and beautifully, they are as chaff blown by the
wind or burned in the oven. They do not even make a good spectacle. They
are just pushed aside, destroyed, forgotten.
But this resort was so splendid in its natural aspects I could not help
contrasting its material use by these middle westerners with what would
have been the case if it were situate say in the South of France, or on
the shores of Holland or Belgium. Anyone who has visited Scheveningen or
Ostend, or Nice or Cannes, need scarcely be told there is a certain
smartness not even suggested by the best of our American resorts.
Contrasted even with these latter, this island place was lower in the
scale. (I presume the Christian Middle West would say it was higher.) We
motored out there positively thrilled by a halcyon evening in which a
blood red sun, aided by tattered, wind whipped clouds, combined to give
the day’s close a fabled, almost Norse aspect. The long beach was so
beautiful that it evoked exclamations of surprise and delight. Think of
being able to tear along for seven miles and more, the open water to
your right, a weird, grass grown marsh world dotted with tall, gaunt
trees to your left, this splendid cloud world above, turgid with red and
pink, and a perfect road to ride on! We tore. But when we reached the
extreme point of land known as Cedar Point, and devoted, as I have said,
to the more definite entertainment of the stranger, things were very
different. The exterior of all that I saw was quite charming, but
imagine an immense casino devoted to tables for people who bring their
own lunch or dinner and merely want to buy coffee or milk or soda!!—No
beer sold here, if you please. A perfectly legitimate and laudable
atmosphere, say you? Quite so, only——
And then the large hotels! We looked at them. The prices of the best one
ranged from two to four dollars a day; the other from one to two!!!
Shades of Atlantic City and Long Beach!—And remember that these were
well built, well equipped hotels. The beach pavilions were attractive,
but the crowd was of a simple, inexperienced character. I am not
sniffing. Did I not praise Geneva Beach? I did. And before I left here I
was fond of this place and would not have changed it in any least
detail. I would not have even these mid-westerners different, in spite
of anything I may have said. They seem to know that Sunday School
meetings are important and that one must succeed in business in some
very small way; but even so, they are a vivacious, hopeful crew, and as
such deserving of all praise.
Franklin and I walked about talking about them and contrasting them with
the East. Our conclusion was that the East is more schooled in vice and
sensuality, and show and luxury, perhaps, and that these people were
sweet and amusing and all right—here. We found a girl tending a cigar
counter in the principal casino—a very angular, not too attractive
creature, but not homely either, and decidedly vivacious. I could not
help contrasting her with the maidens who wait on you at telephone
booths and stands generally in New York, and who fix you with an icy
stare and, at telephone booths, inquire, “Numbah, please?” She was quite
set up, in a pleasantly human way, by the fact that she was in charge of
a cigar stand in so vivacious a world, and communicated her thoughts to
us with the greatest pleasure and fluency.
“Do you have many people here every day?” I asked, thinking that because
I had seen three excursion steamers lying at anchor at the foot of the
principal street in Sandusky it might merely be overrun by holiday
crowds occasionally.
“Indeed, yes,” she replied briskly. “The two big hotels here are always
full, and on the coldest days we have four or five hundred in bathing.
Haven’t you been here in the day time yet? Well, ya just ought to be
here when it’s very hot and the sun is bright. Crowds! Course, I haven’t
been to Atlantic City or any of them swell eastern places, but people
that have tell me that this is one of the finest beaches anywhere.
Style! You just oughta see. And the crowds! The bathing pavilions are
packed, and the board walk. There are thousands of people here.”
“I suppose, then, this casino fills up completely?” I said, looking
round and seeing a few empty tables here and there.
It had evidently been raining the day before, and even early this
morning, for it was pleasantly cool tonight and this seemed to have kept
away some people.
“Well, you just oughta see it on a real hot night, if you don’t think we
have crowds here. Full! Why people stand around and wait. It’s
wonderful!”
“Indeed? And is there much money spent here?”
“Well, I suppose as much as anywhere. I don’t know about them big
resorts in the East, but there’s enough money spent here. Goodness!
People come and take whole soots of rooms at these big hotels. You see
some mighty rich people here.”
Franklin and I availed ourselves of the cafeteria system of this place
to serve ourselves and be in the life. We walked along the beach looking
at the lights come out on the hotel verandas and in the pavilions and
under the trees. We walked under these same trees and watched the lovers
courting, and noted the old urge of youth and blood on every hand. There
was dancing in one place, and at a long pier reaching out into the bay
on the landward side, a large ferry steamer was unloading hundreds more.
Finally at ten o’clock we returned Sanduskyward, listening to the splash
of the waves on the shore, and observing the curious cloud formations
which hung overhead, interspersed with stars. In them once I saw a
Russian _moujik’s_ head with the fur cap pulled low over the ears—that
immemorial cap worn by the Assyrians and Chaldeans. Again I saw an old
hag pursuing a wisp of cloud that looked like a fleeing hare, and then
two horsemen riding side by side in the sky. Again I saw a whale and a
stag, and finally a great hand, its fingers outspread—a hand that seemed
to be reaching up helplessly and as if for aid.
The night was so fine that I would have counseled riding onward toward
Fort Wayne, but when we reached Sandusky again and saw its pleasant
streets and a clean-looking hotel, we concluded that we would stay by
the ills we knew rather than to fly toward others that we knew not of.