informed that Bobby Clark of _Peek-A-Boo_ is one of the funniest men of
the year. Unfortunately I am not in a position to make a first hand
report because on the night his show opened at the Columbia I was
watching _Mixed Marriage_ break into another theater, or attending a
revival of John Ferguson or something like that.
Accordingly, I missed the scene in which Bobby Clark tries to put his
head into the lion's mouth. Clark must be a good comedian, because he
sounds funny even when you get him at second or third hand in the form,
"And then you see he says, 'You do it fine. You even smell like a lion.
Take off the head now and we'll get along.'"
As it has been explained to me, Clark and the other comedian are hired
by a circus because the trained lion has suddenly become too ill to
perform. Clark's partner is to put on a lion's skin and pretend to be a
lion while Clark goes through the usual stunts of the trainer, including
the feat of putting his head into the lion's mouth. At the last minute
the lion recovers and is wheeled out on to the stage in a big cage.
Clark believes the animal is his partner in disguise and compliments him
warmly on the manner in which he roars. Finally, however, he becomes
irritated when there is no response, except a roar, to his request,
"Take off the head now and come on." After a second roar Clark remarks
with no little pique, "Come on, now, cut it out, you're not so good as
all that."
What happens after that I don't know because the people who have been to
the Columbia Theater always leave you in doubt as to whether Clark
actually goes into the lion's den or not. Presumably not, because later
in the show, according to these reports, there is a drill by The World's
Worst Zouaves in which Clark as the chief zouave whistles continually
for new formations only to have nothing happen. Whether Clark is the
originator of the material about the lion and the rest, or only the
executor, I am not prepared to say. All the scouts talk as if he made it
up as he went along, and whenever a comedian can bring about that state
of mind there need be no doubt of his ability.
XXXVII
DANGER SIGNALS FOR READERS
By this time, of course, we ought to know the danger signals in a novel
and realize the exact spot at which to come to a full stop. On page 54
of "The Next Corner," by Kate Jordan, we found the situation in which
Robert, husband, came face to face with Elsie, wife, after a separation
of three years. Mining interests had called him to Burma, and she, being
given the world to choose from, had decided to live in Paris. He was
punctual at the end of his three years in arriving at his wife's
apartment, but she was not there. The maid informed him that she had
gone to a tea at the home of the Countess Longueval. Without stopping to
wait for an invitation John hurried after her. He entered the huge and
garish reception room and there, yes there, was Elsie. But perhaps Miss
Jordan had better tell it:
"The effect she produced on him, in her yellow gauze, that though
fashioned for afternoon wear was so transparent it left a good deal of
her body visible, with her face undisguisedly tricked out and her
gleaming cigarette poised, was a harsh one--a marionette with whom
fashion was an idolatry; an over-decorated, empty eggshell. She could
feel this, and in a desperate way persisted in the affectation which
sustained her, the more so that under Robert's earnest gaze a feeling of
guilt made her hideously uncomfortable.
"'Throw that away,' Robert said quietly with a scant look at the
cigarette."
It seemed strange to us that Robert had been so little influenced toward
liberalism during his three years in Burma, for that was the spot where
Kipling's soldier found the little Burmese girl "a smokin' of a whackin'
big cheeroot."
Still, Robert carried his point. Elsie, our heroine, gave a laugh. What
sort of a laugh, do you suppose? Quite so, "an empty laugh," and "she
turned to flick it from her fingers"; that is, the cigarette. Perhaps we
should add that she flicked it to "a table that held the smokers'
service." Elsie, undoubtedly, had degenerated during Robert's absence,
but she was still too much the lady to put ashes on the carpet. And yet
she did use cosmetics. This was the second thing which Robert took up
with her. In the cab he wanted to know why she put "all that stuff" on
her face. Perhaps her answer was a little perplexing, for she said,
"Embellishment, mon cher. Pour la beaute, pour la charme!"
"I'm quite of the world in my tolerance," he explained to her. "If you
needed help of this sort and applied it delicately to your face I'd not
mind. In fact, if delicately done, probably I'd not know of it."
This, of course, seems to us an immoral attitude. Things are right or
wrong, whether one notices them or not. After all, the recording angel
would know. Elsie could use paint and powder with such delicacy as to
deceive him. However, we are interrupting Robert, who went on, and "His
voice grew kinder, although his eyes remained sternly grave."
"It's been from the beginning of the world," he said, "and it is in the
East, wherever there are women. But--and make a note of it--they are
always women of a certain sort."
Seemingly, Robert got away with this statement, although it is not true.
Manchu women of the highest degree paint a great scarlet circle on the
side of their face in spite of the fact that there is a native proverb
which, freely translated, may be rendered, "Discretion is the better
part of pallor."
It is only fair to add that the indiscretions of Elsie went beyond
powder and paint and even beyond smoking cigarettes. When her husband
told her that he must make a brief business trip to England she asked to
be excused from accompanying him on the ground that she would prefer to
remain in Paris for a while. As a matter of fact, she planned to go to
Spain. And she did. She went to a house party at the home of Don Arturo
Valda y Moncado, Marques de Burgos. She had been told that it was to be
a house party, but when she got to the isolated little castle on the top
of the crag she found no one but Don Arturo Valda y Moncado, Marques de
Burgos. No sooner had she arrived than a storm began to rage and the
last mule coach went down the mountain. She must stay the night! Still,
after her first wild pleadings that he allow her to clamber down the
mountain alone at night until she could find a hotel, reasonable in
price and respectable, she did not feel so lonely with Arturo. To be
sure, he sounded a good deal like a house party all by himself, and more
than that she loved him.
After dinner he began to make love and soon she joined him. He grew
impassioned, and Elsie said that she would throw in her lot with his and
never leave him. In a transport of joy, Arturo was about to bestow upon
her one of those Spanish kisses which no novelist can round off in less
than a page and a half. Elsie commanded him to be patient. First, she
said, she must write a letter to her husband. In this moment Arturo was
superb in his Latin restraint. He did not suggest a cablegram or even a
special delivery stamp. Perhaps it would have meant death to go to the
postoffice on such a night. Elsie wrote to Robert, painstakingly and
frankly, confessing that she loved Arturo and was going to remain with
him and that she would not be home at all any more. Then a sure footed
serving man was intrusted with the letter and told to seek a post box on
the mountain side.
No sooner was that out of the way than a Spanish peasant entered the
house and shot Arturo. It seems that Arturo had betrayed his daughter.
The shot killed Arturo and Elsie wished she had never sent the letter.
Unfortunately, you can't make your confession and eat it too. No
postscript was possible. Elsie staggered down the mountain side and a
chapter later she woke up in a hospital in Bordeaux. The strain had been
too great.
Nor could we stand it either. We sought out somebody else who had
already read the book and he told us that Elsie went back to America and
found her husband, and that for months and months she lived in an agony
of shame, thinking he knew all about what had never happened. Finally
she decided that he didn't, and then she lived months and months in an
agony of fear that the letter was still on its way. She got up every
morning, opening everything feverishly and finding only bills and
advertisements. At this point the person who knew the story was
interrupted in telling us about it, but we think we can supply the end.
After more months and months, in which first shame died and then fear,
hope was born. And then came happiness. The old hunted look faded from
the eyes of Elsie. She seemed a superbly normal woman, save in one
respect. During the political campaign of 1920, when practically every
visitor who came to the house would remark, at one time or other during
the course of the evening, "Don't you think this man Burleson is a
mess?" Elsie would look up with just the suggestion of a faint smile
about her fine, sensitive mouth and answer, "Oh, I don't know."
XXXVIII
ADVENTURE MADE PAINLESS
One of my favorite characters in all fiction is D'Artagnan. He was
forever fighting duels with people and stabbing them, or riding at top
speed over lonely roads at night to save a woman's name or something. I
believe that I glory in D'Artagnan because of my own utter inability to
do anything with a sword. Beyond self-inflicted razor wounds, no blood
has been shed by me. Horseback riding is equally foreign to my
experience, and I have done nothing for any woman's name. And why should
I? D'Artagnan does all these things so much better that there is not the
slightest necessity for personal muddling. When he gallops I ride too,
clattering along at breakneck speed between ghostly lines of trees. Only
there is no ache in my legs the next morning. Nor heartache either over
heroines.
He is my substitute in adventure. After an evening with him I can go
down to the office in the morning and go through routine work without
the slightest annoying consciousness that it is, after all, pretty dull
stuff. I am not tempted to put on my hat and coat and fling up my job in
order to go out to seek adventures with swordsmen and horses and
provocative ladies in black masks.
Undoubtedly there must be some longing in me for all this or I would
not have such a keen interest in _The Three Musketeers_, but, having
read about it, there is no craving for actual deeds. Possibly, after a
long evening with a tale of adventure, I may swagger a little the next
day and puzzle a few office boys with a belligerent manner to which they
are not accustomed; but they do not fit into the picture perfectly
enough to maintain the mood. It has been satisfied, and when it begins
to tug again there are other books which will serve to gratify my keen
desire to hear the clink of blades and the sound of running footsteps on
the cobbles as the miscreants give way. The scurvy knaves! The system
saves time and expense and arnica. Without it I might not be altogether
reconciled to Brooklyn.
In my opinion, most of the men and women whom I know find the same
relief in books and plays and motion pictures. The rather stout lady on
the floor below us has three small children. I imagine that they are a
fearful nuisance, but recently, after getting them to bed, she has been
reading "The Sheik." Her husband--he is one of these masterful men--told
me that he had glanced at the book himself and found it silly and highly
colored. He said that he was going to tell her to stop. I agreed with
him as to the silliness of the book, but it seemed to me that his wife
had earned her right to a fling on the desert. If I knew him a little
better, I would go on to say that it ought to comfort him to have his
wife reading such a highly flavored romance. He is excessively jealous,
and he ought to be pleased to have a possibly roving fancy so completely
occupied by an intense interest in an Arab chieftain who never
lived--no, not even in Arabia or any place at all outside the pages of a
book. The husband has no need to worry. There is no one in our
neighborhood who resembles Ben Ahmed Abdullah--or whatever his fool name
may be.
Once, when my neighbor found me at the door of his apartment, where I
had gone to borrow half an orange, he seemed unusually surly. That was
certainly a groundless suspicion. At the time I was entirely absorbed in
"The Outline of History." Mrs. X--of course I can't give her name or
even provide any description which might serve to identify her--was
entirely safe from my attentions, for during that particular week I was
rather taken with Cleopatra, even though Wells did speak slightingly of
her. Unfortunately we have no adequate idea of Cleopatra's appearance.
Wells attempts no description. The only existing portrait is one of
those conventionalized Egyptian things with the arms held out stiffly as
if the siren of the Nile was trying to indicate to the clerk the size of
the shoe which she desired. Still, we can imply something from the
enthusiasm of Antony and the others. Somehow or other, I have always
felt sure that there was not the slightest resemblance between Cleopatra
and Mrs. X.
Here is what I am trying to get at. Mr. X sells something or other, and
apparently nobody in New York wants it, which makes it necessary for him
to go on long journeys in which he touches Providence, Boston, New
Bedford, and Bangor. Practically all my evenings are spent at home.
I have spoken of the stairs, but it is only a short flight. Mrs. X is
sentimental and I am romantic. And we are both quite safe, and Mr. X can
go peacefully and enthusiastically around Bangor selling whatever it is
which he has to sell. I resemble the Sheik Ben Ahmed Abdullah even less
than Mrs. X resembles Cleopatra. Mr. Smith (we might as well abandon
subterfuges and come out frankly with the name, since I have already
been indiscreet enough for him to identify the personages concerned) has
no rival but a phantom one.
Realizing how much Smith and I and Mrs. Smith owe to the protecting
consolations of fiction, which includes history as written by Wells, I
feel that I ought to go on to generalize in favor of many much-abused
types of entertainment. Whenever a youngster steals anything, or a wife
runs away from home, the motion pictures are blamed. Censorship is
devoted to removing all traces of bloodshed from the films. Police
magistrates are called in to suppress farces dealing with folk given to
high jinks, on the ground that they threaten the morals of the
community. We assume, of course, that the censors are thinking of morals
in terms of deeds. They can hardly be ambitious enough to hope to
curtail the thoughts of a community.
And I deny their major premise. Evil instincts are in us all.
Practically everybody would enjoy robbing a bank or running away with
somebody with whom he ought not to run away. These lawless instincts are
invariably drained off by watching their mimic presentment in novels and
films and plays.
If only accurate statistics were available, I would wager and win on the
proposition that not half of 1 per cent of all the cracksmen in America
have ever seen _Alias Jimmy Valentine_. No burglar could watch the play
without being shamed out of his job by sheer envy. An ounce of
self-respect--and there are figures to show that yeggs average three and
a quarter--would keep a crook from continuing in his bungling way after
observing the manner in which Jimmy Valentine opens the door of a safe
merely by sandpapering his fingers. What sort of person do you suppose
could go and buy nitroglycerine ungrudgingly after that? Even by the
least optimistic estimate of human nature, the worst we could expect
from a criminal who had seen the play would be to have him make a
gallant and sincere effort to employ the touch system in his own career.
Such attempts would be easy to frustrate. Night watchmen could creep up
on the idealists and catch them unaware. They could be traced by their
cursing. And, of course, the police might keep an eye open at the doors
of the sandpaper shops.
_Kiki_, David Belasco's adaptation from the French, taps another rich
vein of human depravity and allows it to be exploited and exhausted by
means of drama. The heroine of the play is a rowdy little baggage. She
has a civil word for no man. The truth is not in her. Now, every child
born into the world would like to lie and be impertinent. There is
practically no fun in being polite, and truth-telling is most
indifferent judged solely as an indoor sport. Manners and veracity are
things which people learn slowly and painfully. Undoubtedly both are
useful, though I am not at all sure that their importance is not
somewhat exaggerated. Community life demands certain sacrifices,
particularly as the pressure of civilization increases. The men of a
primitive tribe do not get up in the subway to give their seats to
ladies, because they have no subways. Likewise, having no hats, they are
not obliged to take them off. Of course it goes deeper than that. Even a
primitive civilization has weather, and yet one seldom hears an Indian
in his native state observing: "Isn't it unusually warm for November?"
Once everybody was primitive, and the most intensive training cannot
wholly obliterate the old longing to be done with strange and
self-imposed trappings. Until it is licked out of them, children are
savagely rude. Training can alter practice, but even the most severe
chastisement cannot get deep enough to affect an instinct. We all want
to be rude, and we would, now and again, break loose in unrestrained
spells of boorishness if it were not for an occasional Kiki who does the
work for us. Accordingly, one of the most salutary forms of
entertainment is the comedy of bad manners which recurs in our theater
every once in so often.
"But," I hear somebody objecting, "no matter how much each of us may
like to be rude, we don't care much about it when it is done to us. In
real life we would all run from Kiki because her monstrous bragging
would irritate us, and her vulgarity and bad manners would be most
annoying."
All that would be true but for one factor. In any play which achieves
success a curious transference of personality takes place. Before a play
begins the audience is separated from the people on the stage by a
number of barriers. First of all, there is the curtain, but by and by
that goes up. The orchestra pit and the footlights still stand as moats
to keep us at our distance. Then the magic of the playhouse begins to
have its effect. If the actors and the playwrights know the tricks of
the business, they soon lift each impressionable person from his seat
and carry him spiritually right into the center of the happenings. He
becomes one or more persons in the play. We do not weep when Hamlet dies
because we care anything in particular about him. His death can hardly
come as a surprise. We knew he was going to die. We even knew that he
had been dead for a long time.
Probably a few changes have been made in adapting _Kiki_ from the
French. Kiki is made just a bit more respectable than she was in the
French version, but she remains enough of a gamin and a rebel against
taste and morals to satisfy the outlaw spirit of an American audience.
She is for the New York stage "a good girl," but since this seems to be
only the slightest check upon her speech and conduct, there can be no
violent objection. Of course the type is perfectly familiar in the
American theater, but this time it seems to us better written than
usual, and much more skillfully and warmly played. Indeed, in my
opinion, Miss Ulric's Kiki is the best comedy performance of the season.
Even this is not quite enough. It has been a lean season, and this
particular piece of acting is good enough to stand out in a brilliant
one. The final scene of the play, in which Kiki apologizes for being
virtuous, seems to me a truly dazzling interpretation of emotions. It is
comic because it is surprising, and it is surprising because it concerns
some of the true things which people neglect to discuss.
By seeing _Alias Jimmy Valentine_, the safe-cracking instinct which lies
dormant in us may be satisfied. _Kiki_ allows us to indulge our fondness
for being rude without alienating our friends. But more missionary work
remains. In _The Idle Inn_, Ben-Ami appears as a horse thief.
Personally, I have no inclination in that direction. I would not have
the slightest idea what to do with a horse after stealing him. My
apartment is quite small and up three flights of stairs. However, there
are other vices embodied in the role which are more appealing to me. The
role is that of a masterful man, which has always been among my thwarted
ambitions. In the second act Ben-Ami breaks through a circle of dancing
villagers and, seizing the bride, carries her off to the forest.
Probably New York will never realize how many weddings have been carried
on without mishap this season solely because of Ben-Ami's performance in
_The Idle Inn_. In addition to entrusting him with all my eloping for
the year, I purpose to let Ben-Ami swagger for me. He does it superbly.
To my mind this young Jewish actor is one of the most vivid performers
in our theater. His silences are more eloquent than the big speeches of
almost any other star on Broadway.
The play is nothing to boast about. Once it was in Yiddish, and as far
as spirit goes it remains there. Once it was a language, and now it is
words. The usually adroit Arthur Hopkins has fallen down badly by
providing Ben-Ami with a mediocre company. He suffers like an
All-America halfback playing on a scrub team. The other players keep
getting in his way.
One more production may be drawn into the discussion, but only by
extending the field of inquiry a little. _The Chocolate Soldier,_ which
is based on Shaw's _Arms and the Man,_ can hardly be said to satisfy the
soldiering instinct in us by a romantic tale of battle. Shaw's method is
more direct. He contents himself with telling us that the only people
who do get the thrill of adventure out of war are those who know it only
in imagination. His perfect soldier is prosaic. It is the girl who has
never seen a battle who romances about it. Still, Shaw does make it
possible for us to practice one vice vicariously. After seeing a piece
by him the spectator does not feel the need of being witty. He can just
sit back and let George do it.
XXXIX
THE TALL VILLA
"The Tall Villa," by Lucas Malet, is a novel, but it may well serve as a
textbook for those who want to know how to entertain a ghost. There need
be no question that such advice is needed. For all the interest of the
present generation in psychical research, we treat apparitions with
scant courtesy. Suppose a visitor goes into a haunted room and at
midnight is awakened by a specter who carries a bloody dagger in one
hand and his ghostly head in the other; does the guest ask the ghost to
put his things down and stay a while? He does not. Instead, he rushes
screaming from the room or pulls the bedclothes over his head and dies
of fright.
Ghosts walk because they crave society and they get precious little of
it. Frances Copley, the heroine of "The Tall Villa," managed things much
better. When the apparition of Lord Oxley first appeared to her she did
not faint or scream. On the contrary, the author tells us, "The
breeding, in which Frances Copley trusted, did not desert her now. After
the briefest interval she went on playing--she very much knew not what,
discords more than probably, as she afterward reflected!"
After all, Lord Oxley may have been a ghost, but he was still a
gentleman. Indeed, when she saw him later she perceived that the shadow
"had grown, in some degree, substantial, taking on for the most part,
definite outline, definite form and shape. That, namely, of a young man
of notably distinguished bearing, dressed (in as far as, through the
sullen evening light, Frances could make out) in clothes of the highest
fashion, though according to a long discarded coloring and cut."