A CLASSIC REVIVAL
Only now and then does nature allow us a perfect thing.
The day of the presentation of the Greek poem of the Odyssey by the
Girl and Boy Scouts was a perfect day.
It occurred during the last week in August. Here at the fringe of the
deep woods the afternoon was like early September; there was more
color, more radiance than one associates with any other month of the
year.
Beyond the woods the wheat fields were golden, the final growth of the
summer gardens a riot of purple and rose and blue. The corn fields
having ripened, bent their green maturity to the breezes, the silk of
the corn tassels made valiant banners. In the forests the beech trees
showed bronze leaves amid the midsummer foliage, the sumach and the
woodbine were flaunting the scarlet signals of autumn.
Along the road leading from Westhaven to the site in the woods where
the Greek pageant would take place, from an early hour in the
afternoon motor cars moved back and forth.
The first cars transported the players and their costumes and such
odds and ends of scenery as had to be attended to at the last.
The same cars returned for the families and friends of the actors.
Every automobile and carriage the town could spare for the occasion
had been commandeered.
The interest the town of Westhaven and several neighboring villages
displayed in the Greek pageant was beyond the realms of possibility in
the original conception of the Girl and Boy Scouts.
But the summer was closing. In a short time a good many of the summer
residents would be returning to their city homes. The thought of a
final entertainment, a final memory of the summer days became
inspiring.
Moreover, a Greek pageant was unusual presented by groups of American
girls and boys. Probably they would make a failure of so ambitious an
effort, yet it would be worth while to see.
The first arrivals among the audience found several hundred chairs
placed in more or less orderly array upon one side of a stream that
ran straight as a ribbon along this part of the countryside.
Upon an elevation a small platform had been constructed with a table
and a chair so banked with golden rod and Michaelmas daisies and green
boughs that the wooden outlines were concealed.
On the further side of the water was an ingenious structure, half
palace and half tent.
The walls were of a heavy white canvas, the roof had been made of
narrow lattice and this covered with green branches.
In front was the court yard of the palace. The furnishings were
severely simple, a long bench and a table, a few straight chairs,
little more than stools, and painted white to suggest marble.
No other paraphernalia of the approaching performance was visible.
Now and then a figure appeared from the background of trees, never one
of the players, only some assistant bent upon an errand.
Not upon the shore-line supposed to represent ancient Greece, but
immediately facing the audience waved a giant American flag. On either
side were the Scout flags, one bearing the imprint of an eagle's wing,
the insignia of the Girl Scouts, the other an elm tree, the flag of
the boys.
At four o'clock in the afternoon the pageant began.
Before that hour not only were the seats filled but a number of people
were standing.
A guest of honor of the occasion was one of the distinguished men who
originated the Scout movement for boys in the United States. Another
guest of honor was a member of the National Girl Council, who had come
up from the headquarters in New York for no other reason than to be
present at the pageant.
With simple Scout ceremonies the entertainment opened.
A few moments after the applause had subsided, a beautiful resonant
voice read aloud the first lines describing the Odyssey:
"Sing us the song of the hero, steadfast, skilful and strong,
Taker of Troy's high towers who wandered for ten years long
Over the perilous waters, through unknown cities of men,
Leading his comrades onward, seeking his home again.
Sing us the song of the Wanderer, sing us the wonderful song."
A moment later slowly rowing down the stream appeared a solitary
figure, Odysseus, seated upon a raft to which were fixed sails and a
rudder.
Before reaching the place along the shore where the boat, built by
Odysseus on the island of Calypso, was to land, a storm was supposed
to beset the hero. The audience beholds him struggle with the storm
and then reach a safe harbor.
On the shore he piles up branches and lies down upon a bed of leaves.
A short time passes and Odysseus sleeps.
This opening scene in the tableaux Donald McClain insisted was the
most difficult in the entire program. During the rehearsals he had
been possessed by the fear that he would not be able to produce the
illusion, so that his audience would not take him seriously.
Therefore, the tableaux would begin and end in disaster.
Don need not have troubled. Very handsome and heroic he appeared, his
dark hair grayed to represent the age of the Greek hero who had
wandered so many weary years after the siege of Troy.
While Odysseus slumbers the Princess Nausicaa and her maidens come
down toward the river. Unaware of the sleeper, they begin washing
their clothes in the river and afterwards spread them out to dry in
the sun.
Victoria Drew, as the Princess Nausicaa, wore a gown of bright blue
with a Greek design in silver braid. Her bright red-gold hair was
bound in a silver fillet. Her maids were Margaret Hale, Edith Linder,
Martha Greaves and Julia Murray. Their costumes were white and
crimson, yellow and green.
In making a careful study of the costumes worn by the early Greeks,
Miss Frean and the Troop Captain had been surprised to find that white
did not play so important a part in their dress as they had supposed.
Together with their love for the beauty of line and form the Greeks
possessed an equal love for color.
Nausicaa and her maidens begin a game of ball on the sands. The
princess misses the ball and as it rolls into the water she gives a
cry that awakes Odysseus.
He comes forward and asks Nausicaa's aid.
Together they move toward the palace of the Sea-kings, when the first
tableau ends.
The second scene shows Odysseus seated inside the tent narrating his
adventures to the good King Alcinous and his wife, Queen Arete.
Again the voice of the interpreter recited further lines from the
Greek poem:
"Hither, come hither and hearken awhile, Odysseus, far-famed king!
No sailor ever has passed this way but has paused to hear us sing.
Our song is sweeter than honey, and he that can hear it knows
What he never has learnt from another, and has joy before he goes;
We know what the heroes bore at Troy in the ten long years of strife
We know what happens in all the world, and the secret things of life."
A thrill of appreciation and sympathy stirred the larger portion of
the audience at the outset of the next tableau.
Strangers, slightly puzzled to guess the cause, found that a few
hurried words made the situation clearer.
Odysseus has sailed from Crete and comes at last to his own land.
No change of scenery was possible. The hearers learned from the
recitation that he had reached the island of Ithaca. Here his ship was
moored in a haven between two steep headlands near a shadowy cave,
where the water-fairies come to look after their bees and weave their
sea-blue garments on the hanging looms.
Odysseus, knowing not that he has reached his home at last, walks up
the steep incline from the shore. Here he meets the Goddess of wisdom,
Pallas Athena.
Contrary to her own judgment Katherine Moore had agreed finally to
represent Athena; in spite of the difficulties to be surmounted not to
have accepted would have been too ungracious.
From beyond in the grove of trees the Goddess advances. She is seated
in a chariot drawn by four children. The children wore costumes of
white, short skirts to their knees and sandals on their feet.
The Goddess herself was clad in white with a wreath of green leaves
about her hair. Had the audience been closer she would have appeared a
pale and fragile Goddess with wide gray eyes set in a delicate,
bravely smiling face. For the old-time Kara had been doing her best to
return these days in order to cast no gloom upon the pleasure of her
friends.
Better for Kara perhaps that the general effect of the tableau was
what was desired and not a too apparent view of details!
This, however, was not true concerning the little group of children
who drew the chariot.
So startling was Lucy Martin's beauty that not only the Girl Scouts
and their older friends discussed it among themselves, the Boy Scouts,
not so apt to notice a little girl's appearance, also spoke of it to
one another privately.
Fortunately Lucy, in spite of her wilfulness, was not self-conscious.
To-day evidently she was thinking not of herself but of Katherine
Moore and Billy, her former friends from the Gray House on the Hill.
A blond Cupid grown slightly older and thinner, Billy Duncan appeared,
with his blond hair and large childish blue eyes and his somewhat
expressionless face.
Either the performance of the Greek tableaux or the presence of the
little girl who had so dominated him during the years they had spent
together at the Gray House made Billy dazed and speechless.
There was no need, however, that he should use any intelligence save
to do what Lucy commanded.
Her dark eyes sparkled with a brilliant excitement, her rose cheeks
glowed. The stiff aureole of her dark hair made a striking contrast to
the whiteness of her childish costume.
The other two children were acquaintances of Lucy's from the Gray
House and equally ready to do her bidding.
So, whatever the others may have believed, Lucy Martin was convinced
that she had taken complete charge of Kara's tableau.
Watching the little girl, Kara in a measure forgot what she felt to be
her own unfitness for her distinguished role.
Athena touches Odysseus with her magic wand and he changes into an old
man, not wishing to be recognized on his return to his own palace.
Athena's chariot is then drawn back into the grove of trees and
Odysseus, now disguised as a beggar, once more sets out for his home.
The Goddess has presented him with a worn coat which he places over
his former costume.
The tableaux did not consume any length of time, scarcely longer than
it requires in the telling, nevertheless the entire drama of Odysseus
could not be unfurled in a single afternoon's pageant.
The meeting of Odysseus with the faithful steward, Eumaeus, played by
Mr. Fenton, was presented without the details one finds in the story.
Immediately after the son of Odysseus, Telemachus, makes his
appearance.
Neither Lance McClain nor Donald had ever acted until to-day.
They had both been fearful that playing together would have its
drawbacks, as one is inclined to be more nervous and critical with
regard to one's own family. Actually the brothers were more surprised
by each other than they could have surprised their audience.
The change in costume, the gray in his hair, the lines of makeup on
his handsome boyish face, gave Donald a look of maturity, while
Lance's slenderness and the fact that he was several inches smaller
carried with it the necessary suggestion of graceful youth.
Together the father and son set forth to their home, crowded with the
suitors who, believing Odysseus dead, have come to seek the hand of
Penelope.
Instead of going directly to the palace they retire toward the woods
to suggest a lapse of time.
So far the Greek tableaux had been dominated by single figures,
chiefly the hero of the poem.
Now a change occurs.
In the courtyard before the palace Penelope is seen to appear
accompanied by her maidens.
A serene and stately Penelope robed in ivory and gold, her ash-brown
hair braided and coiled low on her neck, a gold band in her hair, Joan
Peters had never looked so handsome.
About her the troop of maidens like a swarm of brilliant, many-colored
flowers.
They moved from the yard and onto a broad space of ground untouched by
tree or shrub. Here the grass had been closely cut so that it formed a
velvet greensward.
Penelope stands in the background and her maidens advance.
They were sixteen in number and represented the four seasons.
As Kara's illness made it impossible for her to be of their number,
the sixteen girls were not alone Girl Scouts from the camp in
Beechwood Forest. Four of them were gowned in white, four in pale
green, four in blue and four in scarlet.
Their costumes were like the simple, flowing draperies of the Greek
dancing girls seen upon the friezes of the ancient Parthenon at
Athens.
Carefully Mrs. Phillips had made a study of every detail of Greek
dancing and costuming. Anxious to impress the people of Westhaven with
her ability as a teacher of dancing, she appreciated that no such
opportunity as the present one would be offered her again.
Evan Phillips was to lead the Greek Dance of the Four Seasons; one of
the dancers representing winter, she was dressed in white and silver.
Advancing, the entire line made a streak of rainbow beauty upon the
farther edge of the silver stream of water.
The line recedes, forming a crescent about the solitary dancer.
Then Evan danced alone. Her dancing was a series of graceful gestures,
of movements of her arms and postures of her body, not toe dancing or
a skilful employment of her feet, such as we associate with modern
dancing.
In the midst of her dancing she summons the four seasons to advance.
Winter comes first. They seem to be blown forward by a gust of winter
wind that sets them dancing and shivering forward. Supposedly the snow
falls and their arms, partly covered by delicate white draperies, are
raised as a shield.
The sun shines, the snow melts and they move backward to give place to
the birth of spring, the four Girl Scouts in shimmering green
costumes.
The dance of the Spring recalled Evan Phillips' dance of the young
beech trees, save that it was more stately. As far as possible her
mother had adapted her idea to the Greek model.
Summer follows spring and the dance suggests the blossoming of the
flowers. The scarlet succeeds the blue and autumn comes with its
portents of flying leaves and birds moving southward.
The dance ends and for the first time the audience broke into
enthusiastic applause. Nothing so beautiful had ever been witnessed in
Westhaven!
Penelope and her maidens return to the palace. Later Odysseus wanders
into his own home, unrecognized by his family and friends.
The Girl Scouts composed the household of Penelope, the Boy Scouts
found their opportunity as the impatient suitors of the lady Penelope.
They remain about her palace, playing at games, feasting and wasting
her substance and that of her son, Telemachus. The hour must be near
when she shall make up her mind who is to fill the place of her lost
husband, Odysseus.
In the games that took place the Boy Scouts found their chance to
exhibit their prowess in outdoor sports.
Penelope fetches the bow and the quiver full of deadly arrows. She
then goes to meet the princes, her attendants following carrying the
axes.
To the suitor who wins at the trial of the bow Penelope vows to give
herself in marriage.
Odysseus, with as little trouble as a minstrel fits a new cord to his
lyre, bends the mighty bow with an arrow caught up from the table at
his side.
Even when the bronze-tipped shaft goes clean through twelve axes set
up in a row, the blinded Penelope fails to know her lord.
The last scene reveals Odysseus, his shabby coat cast aside, his
figure no longer bent and aged, a shining hero seated opposite
Penelope in the courtyard of his home, united at last after long
parting.
The Greek tableaux were over. Within a quarter of an hour the audience
departed for their homes, the Girl Scouts to their own camp and the
boys to theirs on the other side of the hill. Yet not until bed-time
was any other subject discussed by the players and their audience than
the surprising success of the Greek pageant given that afternoon in
the familiar setting of the New England woods.
So the beauty of the past held its re-birth in the present.