From the point of view of eccentric effectiveness and _reclame_ wonders
had been wrought with the small, ancient, brick stable on Macdougal
Street; but very little had been or could be done for the comfort of its
guests. The flat exterior wall had been stuccoed and brilliantly
frescoed to suggest the entrance to some probably questionable side-show
at a French village fair; and a gay clown with a drum, an adept at
amusing local patter, had been stationed before the door to emphasize
the _funambulesque_ illusion. Within, this atmosphere--as of something
gaudy and transitory, the mere lath-and-canvas pitch of a vagabond
_banquiste_--had been cleverly carried out. The cramped little theater
itself struck one as mere scenery, which was precisely the intention.
There was clean sawdust on the floor, and the spectators--one hundred of
them suffocatingly filled the hall--were provided only with wooden
benches, painted a vivid Paris green. These benches had been
thoughtfully selected, however, and were less excruciating to sit on
than you would suppose. There was, naturally, no balcony; a false
pitch-roof had been constructed of rough stable beams, from which hung
bannerets in a crying, carefully studied dissonance of strong color,
worthy of the barbaric Bakst. The proscenium arch was necessarily a
toylike affair, copied, you would say, from the _Guinol_ in the
Tuileries Gardens; and the curtain, for a final touch, looked
authentic--had almost certainly been acquired, at some expenditure of
thought and trouble, from a traveling Elks' Carnival. There was even a
false set of footlights to complete the masquerade; a row of oil lamps
with tin reflectors. It was all very restless and amusing--and
extravagantly make-believe....
Jimmy and I arrived just in time to squeeze down the single narrow
side-aisle and into our places in the fourth row. We had no opportunity
to glance about us or consult our broad-sheet programs, none to acquire
the proper mood of tense expectancy we later succumbed to, before the
lights were lowered and the curtain was rolled up in the true antique
style. "Gee!" muttered Jimmy, on my left, with involuntary dislike.
"Ah!" breathed a maiden, on my right, with entirely voluntary rapture.
Someone in the front row giggled, probably a cub reporter doing duty
that evening as a dramatic critic; but he was silenced by a sharp hiss
from the rear.
The cause for these significant reactions was the _mise en scene_ of the
tiny vacant stage. It consisted of three dead-black walls, a dead-black
ceiling, and a dead-black floor-cloth. In the back wall there was a
high, narrow crimson door with a black knob. A tall straight-legged
table and one straight high-backed chair, both lacquered in crimson,
were the only furniture, except for a slender crimson-lacquered perch,
down right, to which was chained a yellow, green and crimson macaw. And
through the crimson door presently entered--undulated, rather--a
personable though poisonous young woman in a trailing robe of vivid
yellow and green.
The play that followed, happily a brief one, was called--as Jimmy and I
learned from our programs at its conclusion--"Polly." It consisted of a
monologue delivered by the poisonous young woman to the macaw,
occasionally varied by _ad lib._ screams and chuckles from that evil
white-eyed bird. From the staccato remarks of the poisonous young woman,
we, the audience, were to deduce the erratic eroticism of an _ame
damnee_. It was not particularly difficult to do so, nor was it
particularly entertaining. As a little adventure in supercynicism,
"Polly," in short, was not particularly successful. It needed, and had
not been able to obtain, the boulevard wit of a Sacha Guitry to carry it
off. But the poisonous young woman had an exquisitely proportioned
figure, and her arms, bare to the slight shoulder-straps, were quite
faultless. Minor effects of this kind have, even on Broadway, been known
to save more than one bad quarter hour from complete collapse.... No, it
was not the author's lines that carried us safely through this first
fifteen minutes of diluted Strindberg-Schnitzler! And the too
deliberately bizarre _mise en scene_, though for a moment it piqued
curiosity, had soon proved wearisome, and we were glad--at least, Jimmy
and I were--to have it veiled from our eyes.
The curtain rolled down, nevertheless, to ecstatic cries and stubbornly
sustained applause. Raised lights revealed an excited, chattering band
of the faithful. The poisonous young woman took four curtain calls and
would seemingly, from her parting gesture, have drawn us collectively to
her fine bosom with those faultless, unreluctant arms. And the maiden on
my right shuddered forth to her escort, "I'm thrilled, darling! Feel
them--feel my hands--they're _moon-cold_! They always are, you know,
when I'm thrilled!"
"You can't beat this much, Mr. Hunt," whispered Jimmy, on my left. "It's
bughouse."
In a sense, it was; in a truer sense, it was not. A careful analysis of
the audience would, I was quickly convinced, have disclosed not merely a
saving remnant, but a saving majority of honest workmen in the arts--men
and women too solidly endowed with brains and humor for any
self-conscious posing or public exhibition of temperament. The genuine
freaks among us were a scant handful; but it is the special talent and
purpose of your freak to--in Whitman's phrase--"positively appear." Ten
able freaks to the hundred can turn any public gathering into a side
show; and the freaks of the Village, particularly the females of the
species, are nothing if not able. Minna Freund, for example, who was
sitting just in front of Jimmy; it would be difficult for any assembly
to obliterate Minna Freund! She was, that night, exceptionally repulsive
in a sort of yellow silk wrapper, with her sparrow's nest of bobbed
Henner hair, and her long, bare, olive-green neck, that so obviously
needed to be scrubbed!
Having strung certain entirely unrelated words together and called them
"Portents," she had in those days acquired a minor notoriety, and
Susan--impishly enjoying my consequent embarrassment--had once
introduced me to her as an admirer of her work, at an exhibition of
Cubist sculpture. Minna was standing at the time, I recalled, before
Pannino's "Study of a Morbid Complex," and she at once informed me that
the morbid complex in question had been studied from the life. She had
posed her own destiny for Pannino, so she assured me, at three separate
moments of psychic crisis, and the inevitable result had been a
masterpiece. "How it writhes!" she had exclaimed: but to my uninstructed
eyes Pannino's Study did anything but writhe; it was stolidly passive;
it looked precisely as an ostrich egg on a pedestal would look if viewed
in a slightly convex mirror.... How far away all that stupid nonsense
seems!
And, suddenly, Jimmy leaped on the bench beside me as if punctured by a
pin: "Oh, good Lord, Mr. Hunt!" he groaned. "Look here!"
He had thrust his program before me and was pointing to the third play
of the series with an unsteady finger.
"It's the same name," he whispered hoarsely; "the one she's used for her
book. Do you think----"
"I'll soon find out," was my answer. "We must know what we're in for,
Jimmy!" And just as the lights were lowered for the second play I rose,
defying audible unpopularity, and squeezed my way out to the door. That
is why I cannot describe for you the second play, a harsh little tragedy
of the sweatshops--"Horrible," Jimmy affirmed, "but it kind of _got_
me!"--written by an impecunious young man with expensive tastes, who has
since won the means of gratifying them along Broadway by concocting for
that golden glade his innocently naughty librettos--"_Tra-la, Therese!_"
and "_Oh, Mercy, Modestine!_"
Having sought and interviewed Stalinski--I found him huddled in the tiny
box-office, perspiring unpleasantly from nervousness and many soaring
emotions--I was back in my seat, more unpopular than ever, in good time
for Susan's--it was unquestionably Susan's--play.
But most of you have read, or have seen, or have read about, Susan's
play....
It was the sensation of the evening, of many subsequent evenings; and I
have often wondered precisely why--for there is in it nothing
sensational. Its atmosphere is delicately fantastic; remote, you would
say, from the sympathies of a matter-of-fact world, particularly as its
fantasy is not the highly sentimentalized make-believe of some popular
fairy tale. This fantasy of Susan's is ironic and grave; simple in
movement, too--just a few subtle modulations on a single poignant theme.
And I ask myself wherein lies its throat-tightening quality, its
irresistible appeal? And I find but one answer; an answer which I had
always supposed, in my long intellectual snobbery, an undeserved
compliment to the human race; a compliment no critic, who was not either
dishonest or a fool, could pay mankind.
But what other explanation can be given for the success of Susan's play,
both here and in England, than its sheer _beauty_? Beauty of substance,
of mood, of form, of quiet, heart-searching phrase! It is not called
"The Magic Circle," but it might have been; for its magic is genuine,
distilled from the depths of Nature, and it casts an unescapable
spell--on poets and bankers, on publicans and prostitutes and priests,
on all and sundry, equally and alike. It even casts its spell on those
who act in it, and no truer triumph can come to an author. I have never
seen it really badly played. Susan has never seen it played at all.
On the first wave of this astonishing triumph, Susan's pen-name was
swept into the newspapers and critical journals of America and England,
and a piquant point for gossip was added by the revelation that "Dax,"
who for several months had so wittily enlivened the columns of _Whim_,
was one and the same person. Moreover, it was soon bruited about that
the author was a slip of a girl--radiantly beautiful, of course; or why
romance concerning her!--and that there was something mysterious, even
sinister, in her history.
"A child of the underworld," said one metropolitan journal, in its
review of her poems. Popular legend presently connected her, though
vaguely, with the criminal classes. I have heard an overdressed woman in
a theater lobby earnestly assuring another that she knew for a fact that
---- (Susan) had been born in a brothel--"one of those houses, my
dear"--and brought up--like Oliver Twist, though the comparison escaped
her--to be a thief.
And so it was that the public eye lighted for a little hour on Susan's
shy poems. Poetry was said to be looking up in those days; and
influential critics in their influential, uninfluenced way suddenly
boomed these, saying mostly the wrong things about them, but saying them
over and over with energy and persistence. The first edition vanished
overnight; a larger second edition was printed and sold out within a
week or two; a still larger third edition was launched and disposed of
more slowly. Then came the war....
V
If I can say anything good of the war, it is this: Since seemingly it
must have come anyway, sooner or later, so far as Susan is concerned it
came just in time. A letter from Phil to Susan, received toward the
close of July, 1914, at the chateau of the Comtesse de Bligny, near
Brussels, will tell you why.
"_Dear Susan_: If the two or three notes I've sent
you previously have been brief and dull, I knew
you would make the inevitable allowances and
forgive me. In the first place, God didn't create
me to scintillate, as you've long had reason to
know; and since you left us I've been buried in a
Sahara of work, living so retired a life in my
desert that little news comes my way. But Jimmy
breaks in on me, always welcomely, with an
occasional bulletin, and last night Hunt came over
and we had a long evening together. He's worried,
Susan, not without great cause, I fear; he looks
tired and ill; and after mulling things over, with
my usual plodding caution--I've thought best to
explain the situation to you.
"It can be put in very few words. The deserved
success of your play and the poems, following a
natural law that one too helplessly wishes
otherwise, has led to a crisis in the
gossip--malicious in origin, certainly--which has
fastened upon you and Hunt; and this gossip lately
has taken a more sinister turn. More and more
openly it is being said that the circumstances
surrounding Mrs. Hunt's death ought to be
probed--'probed' is just now the popular word in
this connection. The feeling is widespread that
you were in some way responsible for it.
"I must use brutal phrases to lay the truth before
you. You are not, seemingly, suspected of murder.
You are suspected of having killed Mrs. Hunt
during a sudden access of mental irresponsibility.
It is whispered that Hunt, improperly, in some
devious way, got the matter hushed up and the
affair reported as an accident. As a result of
these absurd and terrible rumors, Hunt finds
himself a pariah--many of his oldest acquaintances
no longer recognize him when they meet. It is a
thoroughly distressing situation, and it's
difficult to see how the mad injustice of it can
be easily righted.
"The danger is, of course, that some misguided
person will get the whole matter into the
newspapers; it is really a miracle that it has not
already been seized on by some yellow sheet, the
opportunity for a sensational story is so
obviously ripe. Happily"--oh, Phil! oh,
philosopher!--"the present curious tension in
European politics is for the moment turning
journalistic eyes far from home. But as all such
diplomatic flurries do, this one will pass,
leaving the flatness of the silly season upon us.
This is what Hunt most fears; and when you next
see him you will find him grayer and older because
of this anxiety.
"He dreads, for you, a sudden journalistic demand
for a public investigation, and feels--though in
this I can hardly agree with him--that such a
demand could end only in a public trial, in view
of the peculiar nature of all the circumstances
involved--a veritable _cause celebre_.
"How shocking all this must be to you. The sense
of the mental anguish I'm causing you is a horror
to me. Nothing could have induced me to write in
this way but the compulsion of my love for Hunt
and you. It seems to me imperative that your names
should be publicly cleared, in advance of any
public outcry.
"So I urge you, Susan--fully conscious of my
personal responsibility in doing so--to return at
once and to join with Hunt and your true friends
in quashing finally and fully these damnable lies.
It is my strong conviction that this is your duty
to yourself, to Hunt, and to us all. If you and
Hunt, together or separately, make a public
statement, in view of the rumors now current, and
yourselves demand the fullest public investigation
of the facts, there can be but one issue. Your
good names will be cleared; the truth will
prevail. Dreadful as this prospect must be for you
both, it now seems to me--and let me add, to
Jimmy--the one wise course for you to take. But
only you, if you agree with me, can persuade Hunt
to such a course...."
It is unnecessary to quote the remaining paragraphs of Phil's so
characteristic letter.
* * * * *
No doubt Susan would have returned immediately if she could, but, less
than a week after the receipt of Phil's letter, the diplomatic flurry in
Europe had taken a German army through Luxemburg and into Belgium, and
within less than two weeks Susan and Mona Leslie and the Comtesse de
Bligny were in uniform, working a little less than twenty-four hours a
day with the Belgian Red Cross....
It is no purpose of mine to attempt any description of Susan's war
experience or service. Those first corroding weeks and months of the war
have left ineffaceable scars on the consciousness of the present
generation. I was not a part of them, and can add nothing to them by
talking about them at second hand. It might, however, repay you to
read--if you have not already done so--a small anonymous volume which
has passed through some twenty or thirty editions, entitled _Stupidity
Triumphant_, and containing the brief, sharply etched personal
impressions of a Red Cross nurse in Flanders during the early days of
Belgium's long agony. It is now an open secret that this little book was
written by Susan; and among the countless documents on frightfulness
this one, surely, by reason of its simplicity and restraint, its entire
absence of merely hysterical outcry, is not the least damning and not--I
venture to believe--the least permanent.
There is one short paragraph in this book of detached pictures, marginal
notes, and condensed reflections that brought home to me, personally,
_war_, the veritable thing itself, as no other written lines were able
to do--as nothing was able to do until I had seen the beast with my own
eyes. It is not an especially striking paragraph, and just why it should
have done so I am unable to say. Certain extracts from the book have
been widely quoted--one even, I am told, was read out in Parliament by
Arthur Henderson--but I have never seen this one quoted anywhere; so I
am rather at a loss to explain its peculiar influence on me. Entirely
individual reactions to the printed word are always a little mysterious.
I know, for example, one usually enlightened and catholic critic who
stubbornly maintains that a very commonplace distich by Lord De Tabley
is the most magical moment in all English verse. But here is my
paragraph--or Susan's--for what it is worth:
"This Pomeranian prisoner was a blond boy-giant; pitifully shattered;
it was necessary to remove his left leg to the knee. The operation was
rapidly but skillfully performed. He was then placed on a pallet, close
beside the cot of a wounded German officer. After coming out of the
ether his fever mounted and he grew delirious. The German officer
commanded him to be silent. He might just as well have commanded the sun
to stand still, and he must, however muzzily, have known that. Yet he
was outraged by this unconscious act of insubordination. Thrice he
repeated his absurd command--then raised himself with a groan, leaned
across, and struck the delirious boy in the face with a weakly clenched
fist. It was not a heavy blow; the officer's strength did not equal his
intention. '_Idiot!_' I cried out; and thrust him back on his cot,
half-fainting from the pain of his futile effort at discipline. 'Idiot'
was, after all, the one appropriate word. It was constantly, I found,
the one appropriate word. The beast was a stupid beast."