LITTLE MIRRORS OF SINCERITY
BARNEY IN THE BOX-OFFICE
_First Scene._ It is snowing on the Strand. Not an American actor is
in sight, though voices are wafted occasionally from the bar of the
Savoy (remember this is a play, and the unusual is bound to happen).
In front of the newly built Theatre of Arts, Shaw, and Science, two
figures stand as if gazing at the brilliantly lighted facade. The
doors are wide open, a thin and bearded man sits smiling and talking
to himself in the box-office. His whiskers are as sandy as his wit.
The pair outside regard him suspiciously. Both are tiny fellows, one
clean-shaven, the other wearing elaborately arranged hair on his
face. They are the two Maxes--Nordau and Birnbaum. Says Nordau:
"Isn't that Bernard in the booking-office?" "By jove, it is, let's
go in." "Hasn't he a new play on?" "I can't say. I'm only a critic
of the drayma." "No cynicism, Maxixe," urges Nordau. They approach.
In unanimous flakes the snow falls. It is very cold. Cries Bernard
on recognising them:
"Hi there, skip! To-night free list is suspended. I'm giving my
annual feast in the Cave of Culture of the modern idols, in one
scene. No one may enter, least of all you, Nordau, or you, Sir
Critic." "Why, what's up, George?" asks in a pleading mid-Victorian
timbre the little Maxixe. "Back to the woods, both of you!" commands
George, who has read both Mark Twain and Oliver Herford. "Besides,"
he confidentially adds, "you surely don't wish to go to a play in
which your old friends Ibsen and Nietzsche are to be on view." "On
view!" quoth the author of Degeneration. "Yes, visible on a short
furlough from Sheol, for one night only. My benefit. Step up, ladies
and gentlemen. A few seats left. The greatest show on earth. I'm in
it. Lively, please!" A mob rushes in. The two Maxes fade into the
snow, but in the eyes of one there is a malicious glitter. "I'm no
Maxixe," he murmurs, "if I can't get into a theatre without paying."
Nordau doesn't heed him. They part. The night closes in, and only
the musical rattle of bangles on a naughty wrist is heard.
_Second Scene._ On the stage of the theatre there are two long
tables. The scene is set as if for a banquet. The curtain is down.
Some men walk about conversing--some calmly, some feverishly.
Several are sitting. The lighting is feeble. However, may be
discerned familiar figures; Victor Hugo solemnly speaking to Charles
Baudelaire--who shivers (un nouveau frisson); Flaubert in a corner
roaring at Sainte-Beuve--the old row over Salammbo is on again.
Richard Strauss is pulling at the velvet coat-tails of Richard
Wagner, without attracting his attention. The Master, in company
with nearly all the others, is staring at a large clock against the
back drop. "Listen for the Parsifal chimes," he says, delight
playing over his rugged features. "Ape of the ideal," booms a deep
voice hard by. It is that of Nietzsche, whose moustaches droop in
Polish cavalier style.
"Batiushka! If those two Dutchmen quarrel over the virility of
Parsifal I'm going away." The speaker is Tolstoy, attired in his
newest Moujik costume, top-boots and all. In his left hand he holds
a spade. "To table, gentlemen!" It is the jolly voice of the Irish
Ibsen, G. B. S. Lights flare up. Without is heard the brumming of
the audience, an orchestra softly plays motives from Pelleas et
Melisande. Wagner wipes his spectacles, and Maurice Maeterlinck
crushes a block of Belgian oaths between his powerful teeth. But
Debussy doesn't appear to notice either man. He languidly strikes
his soup-spoon on a silver salt-cellar and immediately jots down
musical notation. "The correspondences of nuances," he sings to his
neighbour, who happens to be Whistler. "The correspondence of
fudge," retorts James. "D'ye think I'm interested in wall-paper
music? Oh, Lil'libulero!" All are now seated. With his accustomed
lingual dexterity Mr. Shaw says grace, calling down a blessing upon
the papier-mache fowls and the pink stage-tea, from what he
describes as a gaseous invertebrate god--he has read Haeckel--and
winds up with a few brilliant heartless remarks:
"I wish you gentlemen, ghosts, idols, gods, and demigods, alive or
dead, to remember that you are assembled here this evening to honour
me. Without me, and my books and plays, you would, all of you, be
dead in earnest--dead literature as well as dead bones. As for the
living, I'll have a shy at you some day. I'm not fond of
Maeterlinck. ["Hear, hear!" comes from Debussy's mystic beard.] As
for you, Maurice, I can beat you hands down at bettering
Shakespeare, and, for Richard Strauss--well, I've never tried
orchestration, but I'm sure I'd succeed as well as you----"
"Oh, please, won't some one give me a roast-beef sandwich? In Russia
I daren't eat meat on account of my disciples there and in
England--" It is Tolstoy who speaks. Shaw fixes him with an
indignant look, he, the prince of vegetarians: "Give him some salt,
he needs salting." In tears, Tolstoy resumes his reading of the
confessions of Huysmans. The band, on the other side of the curtain,
swings into the Kaisermarch. "Stop them! Stop it!" screams Wagner.
"I'm a Social-Democrat now. I wrote that march when I was a
Monarchist." This was the chance for Nietzsche. Drawing up his
tall, lanky figure, he began: "You mean, Herr Geyer--to give you
your real name--you wrote it for money. You mean, Richard Geyer,
that you cut your musical coat to suit your snobbish cloth. You
mean, the Wagner you never were, that you wrote your various
operas--which you call music-dramas--to flatter your various
patrons. Parsifal for the decadent King Ludwig----"
"Pardieu! this is too much." Manet's blond beard wagged with rage.
"Have we assembled this night to fight over ancient treacheries, or
are we met to do honour to the only man in England, and an Irishman
at that, who, in his plays, has kept alive the ideas of Ibsen,
Nietzsche, Wagner? As for me, I don't need such booming. I'm a
modest man. I'm a painter." "Hein! You a painter!" Sitting alone,
Gerome discloses spiteful intonations in his voice. "Yes, a
painter," hotly replies Manet. "And I'm in the Louvre, my Olympe--"
"All the worse for the Louvre," sneers Gerome. The two men would
have been at each other's throats if some one from the Land of the
Midnight Whiskers hadn't intervened. It was Henrik Ibsen.
"Children," he remarks, in a strong Norwegian brogue, "please to
remember my dignity if not your own. Long before Max Stirner--"
Nietzsche interrupted: "There never was such a person." Ibsen calmly
continued, "I wrote that 'my truth is the truth.' And when I see
such so-called great men acting like children, I regret having left
my cool tomb in Norway. But where are the English dramatists, our
confreres? Ask the master of the revels." Ibsen sat down. Shaw pops
in his head at a practicable door.
"Who calls?"
"We wish to know why our brethren, the English playwrights, are not
bidden to meet us?" said Maeterlinck, after gravely bowing to Ibsen.
Smiling beatifically, Saint Bernard replied:
"Because there ain't no such thing as an English dramatist. The only
English dramatist is Irish." He disappears. Ensues a lively
argument. "He may be right," exclaims Maeterlinck, "yet I seem to
have heard of Pinero, Henry Arthur Jones, Barrie--well, I'll have to
ask the trusty A. B. C. Z. Walkley." "And the Americans?" cries
Ibsen, who is annoyed because Richard Strauss persists in asking for
a symphonic scenario of Peer Gynt. "I'm sure," the composer
complains, "Grieg will be forgotten if I write new incidental music
for you." Ibsen looks at him sourly.
"American dramatists, or do you mean American millionaires?" Manet
interpolated. "No, I fancy he means the American painters who
imitate my pictures, making them better than the originals, and also
getting better prices than I did."
"What envy! what slandering! what envious feelings!" sighs
Nietzsche. "If my doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence of all things
sublunary is a reality, then I shall be sitting with these venomous
spiders, shall be in this identical spot a trillion of years hence.
Oh, horrors! Why was I born?"
"Divided tones," argues Manet, clutching Whistler by his carmilion
necktie, "are the only--" Suddenly Shaw leaps on the stage.
"Gentlemen, gods, ghosts, idols, I've bad news for you. Max Nordau
is in the audience." "Nordau!" wails every one. Before the lights
could be extinguished the guests were under the table. "No taking
chances," whispers Nietzsche. "Quoi donc! who is this Nordau--a spy
of Napoleon's?" demands Hugo, in bewildered accents. For answer,
Baudelaire shivers and intones: "O Poe, Poe! O Edgar Poe." Silence
so profound that one hears the perspiration drop from Wagner's
massive brow.
_Third Scene._ It still snows without. Max, the only Nordau, stands
in silent pride. He is alone. The erstwhile illuminated theatre is
as dark as the Hall of Eblis. "Gone the idols! All. I need but crack
that old whip of Decadence and they crumble. So much for a mere
word. And now to work. I'll write the unique tale of Shaw's Cave of
Idols, for I alone witnessed the denouement." He spoke aloud. Judge
his chagrin when he heard the other Max give him this cheery leading
motive: "I saw it all--what a story for my weekly review." "How
like a yellow pear-tree!" exclaims the disgusted theorist of mad
genius. Nordau speeds his way, as from the box-office comes the
chink of silver. It is G. B. S. counting the cash. Who says a poet
can't be a pragmatist? The little Maxixe calls out: "Me, too,
Blarney! Remember I'm the only living replica of Charles Lamb." "You
mean dead mutton," tartly replied Bernard. The other giggled. "The
same dear old whimsical cactus," he cries; "but with all your faults
we love you still--I said still, if that's possible for your tongue,
George, quite still!" Curtain.
THE WOMAN WHO BUYS
She (entering art gallery): "I wish to buy a Titian for my
bridge-whist this evening. Is it possible for you to send me one to
the hotel in time?" He (nervously elated): "Impossible. I sent the
last Titian we had in stock to Mrs. Groats's Dejeuner Feroce." She
(making a face): "That woman again. Oh, dear, how tiresome!" He
(eagerly): "But I can give you a Raphael." She (dubiously):
"Raphael--who?" He (magisterially): "There are three Raphaels,
Madame--the archangel of that name, Raphael Sanzio, the painter, and
Raphael Joseffy. It is to the second one I allude. Perhaps you would
like to see--" She (hurriedly): "Oh! not at all. I fancy it's all
right. Send it up this afternoon, or hadn't I better take it along
in my car?" (A shrill hurry-up booing is heard without. It is the
voice of the siren on a new one hundred horse-power Cubist machine,
1918 pattern.) She (guiltily): "Tiens! That is my chauffeur,
Constant. The poor fellow. He is always so hungry about this time.
By the way, Mr. Frame, how much do you ask for that Raphael? My
husband is so--yes, really, stingy this winter. He says I buy too
much, forgetting we are all beggars, anyhow. And what is the
subject? I want something cheerful for the game, you know. It
consoles the kickers who lose to look at a pretty picture." He
(joyfully): "Oh, the price! The subject! A half-million is the
price--surely not too much. The picture is called The Wooing of Eve.
It has been engraved by Bartolozzi. Oh, oh, it is a genuine Raphael.
There are no more imitation old masters, only modern art is forged
nowadays." She (interrupting, proudly): "Bartolozzi, the man who
paints skinny women in Florence, something like Boldini, only in
old-fashioned costumes?" He (resignedly): "No, Madame. Possibly you
allude to Botticelli. The Bartolozzi I mention was a school friend
of Raphael or a cousin to Michael Angelo--I've forgotten which.
That's why he engraved Raphael's paintings." (He colours as he
recalls conflicting dates.) She (in a hurry): "It doesn't much
matter, Mr. Frame, I hate all this affectation over a lot of musty,
fusty pictures. Send it up with the bill. I ought to win at least
half the money from Mrs. Stonerich." (She rushes away. An odour of
violets and stale cigarette smoke floats through the hallway. The
siren screams, and a rumbling is heard in the middle distance.) He
(waking, as if from a sweet dream, vigorously shouts): "George,
George, fetch down that canvas Schmiere painted for us last summer,
and stencil it Raphael Sanzio. Yes--S-a-n-z-i-o--got it? Hurry up!
I'm off for the day. If any one 'phones, I'm over at Sherry's, in
the Cafe." (Saunters out, swinging his stick, and repeating the old
Russian proverb, "A dark forest is the heart of a woman.")
SCHOOLS IN ART
"Yes," said the venerable auctioneer, as he shook his white head,
"yes, I watch them coming and going, coming and going. One year it's
light pictures, another it's dark. The public is a woman. What
fashion dictates to a woman she scrupulously follows. She sports
bonnets one decade, big picture hats the next. So, the public that
loves art--or thinks it loves art. It used to be the Hudson River
school. And then Chase and those landscape fellows came over from
Europe, where they got a lot of new-fangled notions. Do you remember
Eastman Johnson? He was my man for years. Do you remember the
Fortuny craze? His Gamblers, some figures sitting on the grass?
Well, sir, seventeen thousand dollars that canvas fetched. Big price
for forty-odd years ago. Bang up? Of course. Meissonier, Bouguereau,
and Detaille came in. We couldn't sell them fast enough. I guess the
picture counterfeiters' factories up on Montmartre were kept busy
those times. It was after our Civil War. There were a lot of
mushroom millionaires who couldn't tell a chromo from a Gerome.
Those were the chaps we liked. I often began with: 'Ten thousand
dollars--who offers me ten thousand dollars for this magnificent
Munkaczy?' Nowadays I couldn't give away Munkaczy as a present. He
is too black. Our people ask for flashing colours. Rainbows.
Fireworks. The new school? Yes, I'm free to admit that the Barbizon
men have had their day. Mind you, I don't claim they are falling
off. A few seasons ago a Troyon held its own against any Manet you
put up. But the 1830 chaps are scarcer in the market, and the
picture cranks are beginning to tire of the dull greys, soft blues,
and sober skies. The Barbizons drove out Meissonier and his crowd.
Then Monet and the Impressionists sent the Barbizons to the wall. I
tell you the public is a woman. It craves novelty. What's that?
Interested in the greater truth of Post-Impressionism? Excuse me, my
dear sir, but that's pure rot. The public doesn't give a hang for
technique. It wants a change. Indeed? Really? They have made a
success, those young whippersnappers, the Cubists. Such cubs! Well,
I'm not surprised. Perhaps our public is tiring of the Academy.
Perhaps young American painters may get their dues--some day. We may
even export them. I've been an art auctioneer man and boy over fifty
years, and I tell you again the public is a woman. One year it's
dark paint, another it's light. Bonnets or hats. Silks or satins.
Lean or stout. All right. Coming--coming!" Clearing his throat, the
old auctioneer slowly moves away.
THE JOY OF STARING
Watch the mob. Watch it staring. Like cattle behind the rails which
bar a fat green field they pass at leisure, ruminating, or its
equivalent, gum-chewing, passing masterpiece after masterpiece, only
to let their gaze joyfully light upon some silly canvas depicting a
thrice-stupid anecdote. The socialists assure us that the herd is
the ideal of the future. We must think, see, feel with the People.
Our brethren! Mighty idea--but a stale one before Noah entered the
ark. "Let us go to the people," cried Tolstoy. But we are the
people. How can we go to a place when we are already there? And the
people surge before a picture which represents an old woman kissing
her cow. Or, standing with eyeballs agog, they count the metal
buttons on the coat of the Meissonier Cuirassier. It is great art.
Let the public be educated. Down with the new realism--which only
recalls to us the bitterness and meanness of our mediocre existence.
(Are we not all middle-class?) How, then, can art be aristocratic?
Why art at all? Give us the cinematograph--pictures that act.
Squeaking records. Canned vocally, Caruso is worth a wilderness of
Wagner monkeys. Or self-playing unmusical machines. Or chromos.
Therefore, let us joyfully stare. Instead of your "step," watch the
mob.
A DILETTANTE
He is a little old fellow, with a slight glaze over the pupils of
his eyes. He is never dressed in the height of the fashion, yet,
when he enters a gallery, salesmen make an involuntary step in his
direction; then they get to cover as speedily as possible,
grumbling: "Look out! it's only the old bird again." But one of them
is always nailed; there is no escaping the Barmecide. He thinks he
knows more about etchings than Kennedy or Keppel, and when Montross
and Macbeth tell him of American art, he violently contradicts them.
He is the embittered dilettante; embittered, because with his
moderate means he can never hope to own even the most insignificant
of the treasures exposed under his eyes every day, week, and month
in the year. So he rails at the dealers, inveighs against the
artists, and haunts auction-rooms. He never bids, but is extremely
solicitous about the purchases of other people. He has been known to
sit for hours on a small print, until, in despair, the owner leaves.
Then, with infinite precautions, our amateur arises, so contriving
matters that his hard-won victory is not discovered by profane and
prying eyes. Once at home, he gloats over his prize, showing it to a
favoured few. He bought it. He selected it. It is a tribute to his
exquisite taste. And the listeners are beaten into dismayed silence
by his vociferations, by his agile, ape-like skippings and parrot
ejaculations. Withal, he is not a criminal, only a monomaniac of
art. He sometimes mistakes a Whistler for a Duerer; but he puts the
blame upon his defective eyesight.
THE CITY OF BROTHERLY NOISE
Philadelphia is the noisiest city in North America. If you walk
about any of the narrow streets of this cold-storage abode of
Brotherly Love you will soon see tottering on its legs the
venerable New York joke concerning the cemetery-like stillness of
the abode of brotherly love. Over there the nerve shock is
ultra-dynamic. As for sleep, it is out of the question. Why, then,
will ask the puzzled student of national life, does the venerable
witticism persist in living? The answer is that in the United
States a truth promulgated a century ago never dies. We are a race
of humourists. Noise-breeding trolley-cars, constricted streets that
vibrate with the clangour of the loosely jointed machinery, an army
of carts and the cries of vegetable venders, a multitude of jostling
people making for the ferries on the Delaware or the bridges on the
Schuylkill rivers, together with the hum of vast manufactories, all
these and a thousand other things place New York in a more modest
category; in reality our own city emits few pipes in comparison with
the City of Brotherly Noise which sprawls over the map of
Pennsylvania. Yet it is called dead and moss-grown. The antique joke
flourishes the world over; in Philadelphia it is stunned by the
welter and crush of life and politics. Oscar Hammerstein first
crossed the Rubicon of Market Street. The mountain of "society" was
forced to go northward to this Mahomet of operatic music; else
forego Richard Strauss, Debussy, Massenet, Mary Garden, and Oscar's
famous head-tile. What a feat to boast of! For hundreds of years
Market Street had been the balking-line of supernice Philadelphians.
Above the delectable region north of the City Hall and Penn's statue
was Cimmerian darkness. Hammerstein, with his opera company,
accomplished the miracle. Perfectly proper persons now say "Girard
Avenue" or "Spring Garden" without blushing, because of their
increased knowledge of municipal topography. Society trooped
northward. Motor-cars from Rittenhouse Square were seen near Poplar
Street. Philadelphia boasts a much superior culture in the
crustacean line. The best fried oysters in the world are to be found
there. Terrapin is the local god. And Dennis McGowan of Sansom
Street hangs his banners on the outer walls; within, red-snapper
soup and deviled crabs make the heart grow fonder.
The difference in the handling of the social "hammer" between
Philadelphia and New York, or Boston and Philadelphia, may be thus
illustrated: At the clubs in Philadelphia they say: "Dabs is going
fast. Pity he drinks. Did you see the seven cocktails he got away
with before dinner last night?" In Boston they say: "Dabs is quite
hopeless. This afternoon he mixed up Botticelli with Botticini. Of
course, after that--!" Now, in New York, we usually dismiss the case
in this fashion: "Dabs went smash this morning. The limit! Serves
the idiot right. He never would take proper tips." Here are certain
social characteristics of three cities set forth by kindly disposed
clubmen. As the Chinese say: An image-maker never worships his
idols. We prefer the Cambodian sage who remarked: "In hell, it's bad
form to harp on the heat."
THE SOCIALIST
The socialist is not always sociable. Nor is there any reason why he
should be. He usually brings into whatever company he frequents his
little pailful of theories and dumps them willy-nilly on the carpet
of conversation. He enacts the eternal farce of equality for all,
justice for none. The mob, not the individual, is his shibboleth.
Yet he is the first to resent any tap on his shoulder in the way of
personal criticism. He has been in existence since the coral atoll
was constructed by that tiny, busy, gregarious creature, and in the
final cosmic flare-up he will vanish in company with his fellow man.
He is nothing if not collective. His books, written in his own
tongue, are translated into every living language except sound
English, which is inimical to jargon. If his communal dreams could
come true he would charge his neighbour with cheating above his
position; being a reformer, the fire of envy brightly burns in his
belly--a sinister conflagration akin to that of Ram Dass (see
Carlyle). In the thick twilight of his reason he vaguely wanders,
reading every new book about socialism till his confusion grows
apace and is thrice confounded. From ignorance to arrogance is but a
step. At the rich table of life, groaning with good things, he turns
away, preferring to chew the dry cud of self-satisfaction. He would
commit Barmecide rather than surrender his theory of the "unearned
increment." He calls Shaw and Wells traitors because they see the
humorous side of their doctrines and, occasionally, make mock of
them. The varieties of lady socialists are too numerous to study.
It may be said of them, without fear of being polite, that females
rush in where fools fear to tread. But, then, the woman who
hesitates--usually gets married.
THE CRITIC WHO GOSSIPS
He has a soul like a Persian rug. Many-coloured are his ways, his
speech. He delights in alliteration of colours, and avails himself
of it when he dips pen into ink. He is fond of confusing the
technical terms of the Seven Arts, writing that "stuffing the
ballot-box is no greater crime than constipated harmonics." But what
he doesn't know is that such expressions as gamut of colours,
scales, harmonies, tonal values belong to the art of painting, and
not alone to music. He is fonder of anecdote and gossip than of
history. But what's the use! You can't carve rotten wood. Our critic
will quote for you, with his gimlet eye of a specialist boring into
your own, the story which was whispered to Anthony Trollope (in
1857, please don't forget) if he would be so kind (it was at the
Uffizi Galleries, Florence) as to show him the way to the Medical
Venus. This is marvellous humour, and worth a ton of critical
comment (which, by Apollo! it be). But, as Baudelaire puts it:
"Nations, like families, produce great men against their will"; and
our critic is "produced," not made. In the realm of the blind, the
cock-eyed is king. The critic is said to be the most necessary
nuisance--after women--in this "movie" world of ours. But all human
beings are critics, aren't they?
THE MOCK PSYCHIATRIST
If for the dog the world is a smell, for the eagle a picture,
for the politician a Nibelung hoard, then for the psychiatrist
life is a huge, throbbing nerve. He dislikes, naturally, the
antivivisectionists, but enjoys the moral vivisection of his fellow
creatures. It's a mad world for him, my masters! And if your ears
taper at the top, beware! You have the morals of a faun; or, if your
arms be lengthy, you are a reversion to a prehistoric type. The only
things that are never too long, for our friend the "expert" of rare
phobias, are his bills and the length of his notice in the
newspapers. If he agrees with Charles Lamb that Adam and Eve in
Milton's Paradise behave too much like married people, he quickly
resents any tracing of a religion to an instinct or a perception. He
maintains that religious feeling is only "a mode of reaction," and
our conscience but a readjusting apparatus. His trump-card is the
abnormal case, and if he can catch tripping a musician, a poet, a
painter, he is professionally happy. Homer nodded. Shakespeare
plagiarised. Beethoven drank. Mozart liked his wife's sister. Chopin
coughed. Turner was immoral. Wagner, a little how-come-ye-so!
Hurray! Cracked souls, and a Donnybrook Fair of the emotions. The
psychiatrist can diagnose anything from rum-thirst to sudden death.
Nevertheless, in his endeavour to assume the outward appearance of a
veritable man of science, the psychiatrist reminds one of the
hermit-crab as described in E. H. Banfield's Confessions of a Beach
Comber (p. 132). "The disinterested spectator," remarks Professor
Banfield, "may smile at the vain, yet frantically anxious efforts of
the hermit-crab to coax his flabby rear into a shell obviously a
flattering misfit; but it is not a smiling matter to him. Not until
he has exhausted a programme of ingenious attitudes and comic
contortions is the attempt to stow away a No. 8 tail in a No. 5
shell abandoned." The mock psychiatrist is the hermit-crab of
psychology. And of the living he has never been known to speak a
word of praise.