anything in life really matter?" She appeared very blase in all her
desperate young beauty. She and Edgar Tomlinson looked as near right as
anything you'd see in Washington Square. Vernabelle said the true spirit
of Bohemia knew neither time nor place; it was wherever those gathered
who were doing things, and wasn't it splendid that even here in this
crude Western town a few of the real sort could meet and make their
own little quarter and talk about the big things, the lasting things!
Everyone said yes, quite so; and they all tried to handle their wine like
it was a rare old vintage. But you can't hold much wassail on the juice
of the elderberry; it ain't the most jocund stuff the world as fermented
by Metta's mother.
However, it livened things up a bit and Vernabelle set down her glass and
chattered some more. She said after all life was anything but selective,
but didn't we think that all the arts rounded out one's appreciation
of the beautiful. Several said "How true--how true indeed!" and sighed
importantly. Then Metta said Vernabelle must show us some of her work and
Vernabelle said she could hardly bring herself to do that; but yet she
could and did, getting up promptly. She had designs for magazine covers
and designs for war posters and designs for mural decorations and designs
for oil paintings and so forth--"studies; crude, unfinished bits" she
called 'em, but in a tone that didn't urge any one else to call 'em that.
It was mostly clouds and figures of females, some with ladies' wearing
apparel and many not, engaged in dancing or plucking fruit or doing up
their hair. Quite different stuff from Metta's innocent pictures of
kittens and grapes and daffodils. After everyone was put on the easel
Henrietta Templeton Price would stick her thumb up in the air and sight
across it with one eye shut and say "A stunning bit, that!" and the
others would gasp with delight and mutter to each other about its being
simply wonderful.
Vernabelle listened in an all-too-negligent manner, putting in a tired
word or two now and then. She admitted that one or two was by way of
being precious bits. "Rather precious in an elemental way," she would
say. "Of course I am trying to develop the psychology of the line."
Everyone said "Oh, of course!"
While she had one up showing part of a mottled nude lady who was smiling
and reaching one hand up over to about where her shoulder blades would
meet in the back, who should be let in on the scene but Lon Price and
Cousin Egbert Floud. Lon had called for Henrietta, and Cousin Egbert had
trailed along, I suppose, with glass blowing in mind. Vernabelle forgot
her picture and fluttered about the two new men. I guess Lon Price is a
natural-born Bohemian. He took to her at once.
"Sit here and tell me all about yourself," says Vernabelle, and Lon did
so while the girl hung breathless on his words. In no time at all he was
telling her about Price's Addition to Red Gap, how you walk ten blocks
and save ten dollars a block and your rent money buys a home in this,
the choicest villa site on God's green earth. Vernabelle had sort of kept
hold of Cousin Egbert's sleeve with an absent hand--that girl was a man
hound if ever there was one--and pretty soon she turned from Lon to
Egbert and told him also to tell her all about himself.
Cousin Egbert wasn't so glib as Lon. He looked nervous. He'd come
expecting a little glass blowing and here was something strange. He
didn't seem to be able to tell her all about himself. He couldn't start
good.
"Tell me what you are reading, then," says Vernabelle; and Cousin Egbert
kind of strangled at this, too. He finally manages to say that he tried
to read Shakespere once but it was too fine print. The old liar! He
wouldn't read a line of Shakespere in letters a foot high. It just showed
that he, too, was trying to bluff along with the rest of 'em on this
Bohemian chatter.
Vernabelle continued full of blandishment for the two men and poured 'em
out stiff hookers of this demon elderberry wine and lighted cigarettes
for 'em from hers. I don't know whether this beverage got to Lon Price
or not, but in a minute he was telling her that beauty in her sex was a
common-enough heritage, but how all-too rare it was to find beauty and
brains in the same woman! Vernabelle called him comrade after that, and
then she was telling Cousin Egbert that he was of the great outdoors--a
man's man! Egbert looked kind of silly and puzzled at this. He didn't
seem to be so darned sure about it.
Then Vernabelle worked over by the easel--it took her about six attitudes
leaning against things, to get there--and showed her oil paintings to the
newcomers. Lon Price was full of talk and admiration and said she must
do a poster for him showing a creature of rare beauty up in the clouds
beckoning home-buyers out to Price's Addition, where it was Big Lots,
Little Payments, and all Nature seemed to smile. He said this figure,
however, had better have something in the shape of a garment on it
because the poster would go into homes where art in its broader extent
was still regarded in a suspicious or even hostile manner, if she caught
what he meant. The artist says she can readily understand, and that life
after all is anything but selective.
Cousin Egbert just looked at the pictures in an uncomfortable manner.
He spoke only once and that was about the mottled lady reaching over
her shoulder and smiling. "Grinitch," says he with a knowing leer. But
Vernabelle only says, yes, it was painted in the dear old village.
Then the crowd sort of got together on the couch and in chairs and
Vernabelle talked for one and all. She said how stimulating it was for a
few of the real people who did things to come together in this way after
the day's turmoil--to get away from it all! Beryl Mae said she had often
wanted to get away from it all, but her aunt was narrow-minded. Henrietta
Price lighted her ninth cigarette and said how it reminded her of the
Latin Quarter of Paris, which she had never been to, but her cousin had
spent a whole afternoon there once and had been simply wild about it.
Vernabelle said it was times like this, with a few real people, that she
got her biggest ideas; that life in the rough was too terribly a
labyrinth, didn't we think, stunning one with its immensity, while in
these dear little half-lighted moments the real came out unafraid, if
we understood what she meant. Many of us said we did.
It was when we got up to go that Vernabelle told me things about Cousin
Egbert. She said he must have great reserve strength in his personality.
She said he fairly frightened her, he was so superbly elemental.
"It is not so much Mr. Floud that frightens me," says she, "as the
inevitability of him--just beautifully that! And such sang fraw!"
Poor Egbert was where he had to overhear this, and I had never seen him
less sang fraw--if that's the word. He looked more like a case of nettle
rash, especially when Vernabelle gripped his hand at parting and called
him comrade!
We finally groped our way through the smoke of the door and said what a
lovely time we'd had, and Metta said we must make a practice of dropping
in at this hour. Vernabelle called us all comrade and said the time had
been by way of being a series of precious moments to her, even if these
little studio affairs did always leave poor her like a limp lily. Yep;
that's the term she used and she was draped down a bookcase when she said
it, trying to look as near as possible like a limp lily.
The awestruck group split up outside. Nothing like this had ever entered
our dull lives, and it was too soon to talk about it. Cousin Egbert
walked downtown with me and even he said only a few little things. He
still called the lady a glass blower, and said if she must paint at all
why not paint family pictures that could be hung in the home. He said,
what with every barroom in the state closed, there couldn't be much
demand for them Grinitch paintings. He also said, after another block,
that if he owned this lady and wanted to get her in shape to sell he'd
put her out on short sand grass, short almost to the roots, where she'd
wear her teeth down. And a block later he said she hadn't ought to be
calling everyone comrade that way--it sounded too much like a German.
Still and all, he said, there was something about her. He didn't say
what.
So now the Latin Quarter had begun, and in no time at all it was going
strong. It seemed like everybody had long been wanting to get away from
it all but hadn't known how. They gathered daily in Metta's studio, the
women setting round in smocks, they all took to wearing smocks, of
course, while hungry-eyed Vernabelle got the men to tell her all about
themselves, and said wasn't it precious that a few choice spirits could
thus meet in the little half-lighted hour, away from it all, and be by
way of forgetting that outer world where human souls are bartered in the
market place.
Of course the elderberry wine was by way of giving plumb out after
the second half-lighted hour, but others come forward with cherished
offerings. Mrs. Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale brought round some currant
wine that had been laid down in her cellar over a year ago, and Beryl Mae
Macomber pilfered a quart of homemade cherry brandy that her aunt had
been saving against sickness, and even Mrs. Judge Ballard kicked in with
some blackberry cordial made from her own berries, though originally
meant for medicine.
Lon Price was a feverish Bohemian from the start, dropping in almost
every day to tell Vernabelle all about himself and get out of
convention's shell into the raw throb of life, as it was now being
called. Lon always was kind of light-minded, even after the state
went dry. He told Vernabelle he had a treasured keepsake hid away which
he would sacrifice to Bohemia at the last moment, consisting of one quart
bottle of prime old rye. And he was going to make over to her a choice
building lot in Price's Addition, right near the proposed site of the
Carnegie library, if Vernabelle would put up something snappy on it in
the way of a Latin Quarter bungalow.
Lon also added Jeff Tuttle to the Bohemians the day that old horned toad
got down from his ranch. After going once Jeff said darned if he hadn't
been a Bohemian all his life and never knew what was the matter with him.
Vernabelle had him telling her all about himself instantly. She said he
was such a colourful bit, so virile and red-blooded, and she just knew
that when he was in his untamed wilderness he put vine leaves in his
hair and went beautifully barefoot. She said it wasn't so much him as the
inevitability of him. She'd said this about Cousin Egbert, too, but she
was now saying of this old silly that he had a nameless pathos that cut
to her artist's heart. It seems Cousin Egbert had gone round a couple
times more looking for glass blowing and getting disappointed.
And there was new Bohemians every day. Otto Gashwiler, that keeps books
for the canning factory, and Hugo Jennings, night clerk of the Occidental
Hotel, was now prominent lights of the good old Latin Quarter passing
their spare moments there where they could get away from it all, instead
of shaking dice at the Owl cigar store, like they used to. And Oswald
Cummings of the Elite Bootery, was another. Oswald is a big fair-haired
lummox that sings tenor in the Presbyterian choir and has the young men's
Bible class in the Sabbath School. Vernabelle lost no time in telling
him that he was oh, so frankly a pagan creature, born for splendid sins;
and Otto seemed to believe it for a couple of weeks, going round absent
like as if trying to think up some sins that would be splendid, though
if any one but a Bohemian had told him this he'd have blushed himself to
death. It shows you what a hold Vernabelle was by way of getting on Red
Gap.
It was sure one season of triumph for Metta Bigler, who lurked proudly
in the background as manager. Metta's mother wasn't near so thrilled as
Metta, though. She confided to me that Bohemians was a messy lot to clean
up after, raining cigarette ashes over everything; and also it was pretty
hard to have raised a child to Metta's age only to see her become a
cigarette fiend overnight, and having these mad revels with currant
wine and other intoxicants--and Metta was even using a lip stick!
And Metta's mother wasn't the only one in town looking sidewise at these
Bohemian doings. There was them that held aloof from the beginning and
would give their bitter reasons at every opportunity. These was the
ultra-conservative element of the North Side set, and what they said
about the new Latin Quarter was a plenty. They said it was mostly an
excuse for drunken orgies in which all sense of decency was cast aside,
to say nothing of cigarettes being brazenly smoked by so-called ladies.
They said this here talk about getting away from it all meant the ruin
of the home upon which all durable civilization must be built; and as
for wives and mothers going round without their stockings look at what
befell proud Rome! And it was time something was done to stem this tide
of corruption.
Mrs. Cora Wales and Mrs. Tracy Bangs, president and vice-president of our
anti-tobacco league, was the leaders of this movement and sent in a long
complaint to the chamber of commerce urging instant action or a foul blot
would be splashed on the fair name of our city, to say nothing of homes
being broken up. They was ably backed up in this move by a committee from
the civic purity league.
And of course this added to the attractions of the Latin Quarter, giving
each Bohemian a new thrill. Vernabelle said it was by way of being
ancient history; that from time immemorial these little groups of choice
spirits who did things had been scorned and persecuted, but that every
true Bohemian would give a light laugh and pursue his carefree way,
regardless of the Philistine And so it went, venomous on both sides, but
with Vernabelle holding the bridge. She'd brought new stuff to town and
had a good working majority in favour of it.
Downtown one day I met Metta in the Red Front grocery buying olives and
sardines in an excited way. I suppose it's for one of her unspeakable
orgies, but she tells me it's something special and I must be sure to
come.
"Dear Vernabelle," she says, "has consented to give an evening cycle of
dance portrayals for just a few of the choicer spirits. I know there has
been dreadful talk about our little group, but this will be a stunning
bit and you are broad-minded, so do come."
I could just see Vernabelle consenting, almost peevishly; but it sounded
like it might be disorderly enough, so I says I'll come if she promises
to leave at least one window down at the top, me not having a gas mask.
Metta thinks a minute, then says she guesses she can leave one window
down a mite; not much, on account of the nature of Vernabelle's dance
costume. I says if such is to be the nature of her costume I'll come
anyway and risk being gassed. Metta chides me gravely. She says the
costume is perfectly proper to the artist eye, being a darling little
early Greek thing; built on simple lines that follow the figure, it is
true, yet suggest rather than reveal, and if the early Greeks saw no harm
in it why should we? I tell her to say no more, but reserve me a ringside
seat, though near a window if one can be opened; say, as far as the early
Greeks would have done at such a time, on account of the punk sticks.
And of course I wouldn't miss it. I'm there at eight-thirty and find
quite a bunch of Latin Quarter denizens already gathered and full of
suppressed emotion. The punk sticks, of course, are going strong.
Vernabelle in a pink kimono says they supply atmosphere; which is the
only joke I ever heard her get off, if she knew it was one. Bohemians
Lon Price and Jeff Tuttle are hanging over the punch bowl, into which
something illegal has been poured. Jeff is calling Vernabelle little
woman and telling her if worse comes to worst they might try being
Bohemians on a mixture his men up on the ranch thought of for a New
Year's celebration. He says they took a whole case of vanilla extract
and mixed it with one dozen cans of condensed milk, the vanilla having
a surprising kick in it and making 'em all feel like the good old days
next morning.
Vernabelle says he reminds her of some untamed creature of the open,
some woodsy monster of the dells, and Jeff says that's just what he feels
like. He's going on to tell her some more about what he feels like, but
Vernabelle is now greeting Oswald Cummings, the pagan of splendid sins,
from the Elite Bootery. She tells Oswald there is a cold cruelty in the
lines of his face that reminds her of the emperor Nero.
Finally about twenty choice spirits who did things was gathered for this
half-lighted hour, so everybody set down on chairs and the couch and the
floor, leaving a clear space for Vernabelle; and Professor Gluckstein,
our music teacher, puts down his meerschaum pipe and goes to the piano
and plays a soft piece. The prof is a German, but not a pro-German, and
plays first rate in the old-fashioned way, with his hands. Then, when
all the comrades get settled and their cigarettes lighted, the prof
drifted into something quite mournful and Vernabelle appeared from
behind a screen without her kimono.
The early Greeks must of been strong on art jewellery. Vernabelle clanked
at every step with bracelets and anklets and necklaces. She had a
priceless ruby weighing half a pound fastened to the middle of her
bony forehead. Her costume was spangled, but not many spangles had been
needed. The early Greeks couldn't of been a dressy lot. If Vernabelle had
been my daughter I could of give her what she deserved with almost no
trouble. The costume, as Metta had said, not only followed the lines
of the figure, so far as it went anywhere at all, but it suggested and
almost revealed that Vernabelle had been badly assembled. The Bohemians
kind of gasped and shivered, all except Jeff Tuttle, who applauded
loudly. They seemed to feel that Vernabelle was indeed getting away
from it all.
Then came this here cycle-of-dance portrayals. The first one wasn't much
dance; it was mostly slow, snaky motions with the arms and other things,
and it was to portray a mother cobra mourning her first-born. At least
that's the way I understood it. Another one was called "The Striving
Soul," to which the prof played something livelier. Vernabelle went round
and round, lifting her feet high. It looked to me like she was climbing
a spiral staircase that wasn't there. Then she was a hunted fawn in a
dark forest and was finally shot through the heart by a cruel hunter--who
was probably nearsighted. And in the last one she was a Russian peasant
that has got stewed on vodka at the Russian county fair. This was the
best one. You couldn't see her so well when she moved quick.
Of course there was hearty applause when it was all over, and pretty soon
Vernabelle come out again in her kimono. Panting like a tuckered hound
she was when the comrades gathered to tell her how wonderful she had
been.
"That music tears me," says Vernabelle, putting her hands to her chest
to show where it tore. "That last maddening Russian bit--it leaves me
like a limp lily!" So she was led to the punch bowl by Comrades Price
and Tuttle, with the others pushing after and lighting cigarettes for
her.
It was agreed that the evening had been a triumph for Vernabelle's art.
Almost every Bohemian present, it seemed, had either been tore or
maddened by that last Russian bit.
Vernabelle was soon saying that if she had one message for us it was the
sacred message of beauty. Jeff Tuttle says, "You've certainly delivered
it, little woman!" Vernabelle says, oh, perhaps, in her poor, weak
way--she was being a limp lily against the piano then--but art is a
terrible master to serve, demanding one's all. Comrade Price says what
more could she give than she has to-night. And then, first thing I
know, they're all talking about an intimate theatre.
This was another part of Vernabelle's message. It seems intimate theatres
is all the rage in New York, and the Bigler barn is just the place to
have one in. Vernabelle says they will use the big part where the hay
used to be and paint their own scenery and act their own plays and thus
find a splendid means of self-expression the way people of the real sort
are doing in large cities.
Everyone is wild about this in a minute, and says how quaint and jolly
Bohemian it will be. The Bigler barn is just the place, with no horse
there since Metta bought one of the best-selling cars that ever came out
of Michigan, and Vernabelle says she has written a couple of stunning
little one-act pieces, too powerful for the big theatres because they go
right to the throbbing raw of life, and it will be an inspiration and
uplift to the community, of which all present can be proud. Lon Price
says he will furnish a good drop curtain free, painted with a choice
nine-room villa with just a line mentioning Price's Addition to Red Gap,
Big Lots, Little Payments. And he's quite hurt when Vernabelle tells him
no, that they must keep entirely out of the slime of commercialism. I
don't think Lon ever again felt the same toward Vernabelle--calling his
business slime, that way.
However, the party broke up full of plans for the new intimate theatre,
leaving an empty punch bowl and a million cigarette ends.
And right here was where the Philistine opposition braided feathers in
its hair and done a war dance. Members of the little group that did
things spoke freely the next day of Vernabelle's art in the dance and her
early Greek costume, taking a mean enjoyment in the horror they inspired
among pillars of the church and the civic purity league. It is probable
that in their artistic relish they endowed Vernabelle with even fewer
clothes than she had wore. At any rate, they left a whole lot to be
inferred, and it promptly was inferred.
The opposition now said this was no job for a chamber of commerce; it
had become a simple matter for the police. The civic purity league had
a special meeting at which the rind was peeled off Vernabelle's moral
character, and the following Sabbath one of the ministers gave a hot
sermon in which the fate of Babylon and a few other undesirable residence
centres mentioned in the Bible was pointed out. He said that so-called
Bohemia was the gateway to hell. He never minced his words, not once.
And the Latin Quarter come in for some more shock assaults when the
talk about an intimate theatre in the Bigler barn got out. The regular
theatre was bad enough, said the civic purity league; in fact, they had
started a campaign against that the month before, right after a one-night
engagement of the Jolly Paris Divorcees Burlesque Company, which, I
gathered, had not upheld the very highest standards of dramatic art.
And if the town was going to stand for anything more intimate than this
show had provided, why, it was time for drastic action if any wholesome
family life was to be saved from the wreck.
Feeling ran high, I want to tell you, and a few of the younger set fell
out of the ranks of good old Bohemia--or was yanked out. Luella Stultz's
father, who is old-fashioned, it was said, had give Luella a good licking
for smoking cigarettes, and old Jesse Himebaugh had threatened his
daughter Gussie with the reform school if she didn't stop trying to get
away from it all. Even Beryl Mae's aunt put her foot down. Beryl Mae met
me in the post office one day and says auntie won't let her be a Bohemian
any more, having threatened to take her new ukulele away from her if she
goes to that Latin Quarter another single time; and poor Beryl Mae having
hoped to do a Hawaiian dance in native costume for the intimate theatre,
where it wouldn't be misunderstood!
Things was just in this shape, with bitterness on every side and old
friends not speaking, and the opposition passing the Bohemians on the
street with the frown of moral disgust, and no one knowing how it would
all end, when I hear that Cora Wales has a niece coming from New York to
visit her--a Miss Smith. I says to myself, "My lands! Here's another Miss
Smith from New York when it looks to me like the one we got is giving us
a plenty of the big league stuff." But I meet Cora Wales and learn that
this one's first name is Dulcie, which again seemed to make a difference.
Cora says this Dulcie niece is one of New York's society leaders and
she's sorry she invited her, because what kind of a town is it in which
to introduce a pure young girl that never smoked or drank in her life and
whose people belong to one of the very most exclusive churches in the
city. She had hoped to give Dulcie a good time, but how can she sully
herself with any of our young people that have took up Bohemianism? She
being fresh from her social triumphs in New York, where her folks live
in one of the very most fashionable apartment houses on Columbus Avenue,
right in the centre of things and next to the elevated railway, will
be horrified at coming to a town where society seems to be mostly a
little group of people who do things they hadn't ought to.