been dead about a century and a half, had shot himself on account of
unrequited love. After having looked him up and found that he was an
eligible ghost in every particular, Frances decided to take him up. She
continued to play for him without the discords. In fact, she began to
look forward to his afternoon calls with a great deal of pleasure. Her
husband did not understand her. She did not like his friends, and his
friends' friends were impossible. Oxley's calls, on the other hand, were
a social triumph. He was punctiliously exclusive. Nobody else could even
see him. When he came into the room others often noticed that the room
grew suddenly and surprisingly chilly, but the author fails to point out
whether that was due to Lord Oxley's station in life or after life.
Bit by bit the acquaintance between Frances and the ghost ripened. At
first she never looked at him directly, but regarded his shadow in the
mirror. And they communicated only through music. Later Frances made so
bold as to speak to his lordship.
"When you first came," she said, her voice veiled, husky, even a little
broken, "I was afraid. I thought only of myself. I was terrified both at
you and what you might demand from me. I hastened to leave this house,
to go away and try to forget. But I wasn't permitted to forget. While I
was away much concerning you was told me which changed my feeling toward
you and showed me my duty. I have come back of my own free will. I am
still afraid, but I no longer mind being afraid. My desire now is not to
avoid, but rather to meet you. For, as I have learned, we are kinsfolk,
you and I; and since this house is mine, you are in a sense my guest. Of
that I have come to be glad. I claim you as part of my inheritance--the
most valued, the most welcome portion, if you so will it. If I can help,
serve, comfort you, I am ready to do so to the utmost of my poor
capacity."
Alexis, Lord Oxley, made no reply, but it was evident that he accepted
her offer of service and comfort graciously, for he continued to call
regularly. His manners were perfect, although it is true that he never
sent up his card, and yet in one matter Frances felt compelled to chide
him and even tearfully implore a reformation. It made her nervous when
she noticed one day that he carried in his right hand the ghost of the
pistol with which he had shot himself. Agreeably he abandoned his
century old habit, but later he was able to give more convincing proof
of his regard for Frances. She was alone in the Tall Villa when her
husband's vulgar friend, Morris Montagu, called. He came to tell her
that her husband was behaving disgracefully in South America, and on
the strength of that fact he made aggressive love. "Montagu's voice grew
rasping and hoarse. But before, paralyzed by disgust and amazement,
Frances had time to apprehend his meaning or combat his purpose, his
coarse, pawlike--though much manicured--hand grasped her wrist."
Suddenly the room grew chilly and Morris Montagu, in mortal terror,
relaxed his grip and began to run for the door as he cried, "Keep off,
you accursed devil, I tell you. Don't touch me. Ah! Ah! Damn you, keep
off----"
It is evident to the reader that the ghost of Alexis, Lord Oxley, is
giving the vulgar fellow what used to be known as "the bum's rush" in
the days before the Volstead act. At any rate, the voice of Montagu grew
feeble and distant and died away in the hall. Then the front door
slammed. Frances was saved!
After that, of course, it was evident to Alexis, Lord Oxley, and Frances
that they loved each other. He began to talk to her in a husky and
highfalutin style. He even stood close to her chair and patted her head.
"Presently," writes Lucas Malet, "his hand dwelt shyly, lingering upon
her bent head, her cheek, the nape of her slender neck. And Frances felt
his hand as a chill yet tender draw, encircling, playing upon her. This
affected her profoundly, as attacking her in some sort through the
medium of her senses, from the human side, and thereby augmenting rather
than allaying the fever of her grief."
Naturally, things could not go on in that way forever, and so Alexis,
Lord Oxley, arranged that Frances should cross the bridge with him into
the next life. It was not difficult to arrange this. She had only to
die. And so she did. All of which goes to prove that though it is well
to be polite and well spoken to ghosts, they will bear watching as much
as other men.
XL
PROFESSOR GEORGE PIERCE BAKER
A great many persons speak and write about Professor George Pierce
Baker, of Harvard, as if he were a sort of agitator who made a practice
of luring young men away from productive labor to write bad plays. There
is no denying the fact that a certain number of dramatists have come out
of Harvard's English 47, but the course also has a splendid record of
cures. Few things in the world are so easy as to decide to write a play.
It carries a sense of satisfaction entirely disproportionate to the
amount of effort entailed. Even the failure to put a single line on
paper brings no remorse, for it is easy to convince yourself that the
thing would have had no chance in the commercial theater.
All this would be well enough except that the author of a phantom play
is apt to remain a martyr throughout his life. He makes a very bad
husband and father and a worse bridge partner. Freudians know the
complaint as the Euripidean complex. The sufferer is ailing because his
play lies suppressed in his subconscious mind.
Professor Baker digs these plays out. People who come to English 47 may
talk about their plays as much as they choose, but they must write them,
too. Often a cure follows within forty-eight hours after the completion
of a play. Sometimes it is enough for the author to read the thing
through for himself, but if that does not avail there is an excellent
chance for him after his play has been read aloud by Professor Baker and
criticized by the class. If a pupil still wishes to write plays after
this there is no question that he belongs in the business. He may, of
course, never earn a penny at it but, starve or flourish, he is a
playwright.
Professor Baker deserves the thanks of the community, then, not only for
Edward Sheldon, and Cleves Kincaid, and Miss Lincoln and Eugene O'Neill
and some of the other playwrights who came from English 47, but also for
the number of excellent young men who have gone straight from his
classroom to Wall Street, and the ministry, and automobile accessories
with all the nascent enthusiasm of men just liberated from a great
delusion.
In another respect Professor Baker has often been subjected to much
undeserved criticism. Somebody has figured out that there are 2.983 more
rapes in the average English 47 play than in the usual non-collegiate
specimen of commercial drama. We feel comparatively certain that there
is nothing in the personality of Professor Baker to account for this or
in the traditions of Harvard, either. We must admit that nowhere in the
world is a woman quite so unsafe as in an English 47 play, but the
faculty gives no official encouragement to this undergraduate enthusiasm
for sex problems. One must look beyond the Dean and the faculty for an
explanation. It has something to do with Spring, and the birds, and the
saplings and "What Every Young Man Ought to Know" and all that sort of
thing.
When I was in English 47 I remember that all our plays dealt with Life.
At that none of us regarded it very highly. Few respected it and
certainly no one was in favor of it. The course was limited to juniors,
seniors and graduate students and we were all a little jaded. There were
times, naturally, when we regretted our lost illusions and longed to be
freshmen again and to believe everything the Sunday newspapers said
about Lillian Russell. But usually there was no time for regrets; we
were too busy telling Life what we thought about it. Here there was a
divergence of opinion. Some of the playwrights in English 47 said that
Life was a terrific tragedy. In their plays the hero shot himself, or
the heroine, or both, as the circumstances might warrant, in the last
act. The opposing school held that Life was a joke, a grim jest to be
sure, cosmic rather than comic, but still mirthful. The plays by these
authors ended with somebody ordering "Another small bottle of Pommery"
and laughing mockingly, like a world-wise cynic.
Bolshevism had not been invented at that time, but Capital was severely
handled just the same. All our villains were recruited from the upper
classes. Yet capitalism had an easy time of it compared with marriage. I
do not remember that a single play which I heard all year in 47, whether
from Harvard or Radcliffe, had a single word of toleration, let alone
praise, for marriage. And yet it was dramatically essential, for
without marriage none of us would have been able to hammer out our
dramatic tunes upon the triangle. Most of the epigrams also were about
marriage. "Virtue is a polite word for fear," that is the sort of thing
we were writing when we were not empowering some character to say,
"Honesty is a bedtime fairy story invented for the proletariat," or "The
prodigal gets drunk; the Puritan gets religion."
But up to date Professor Baker has stood up splendidly under this yearly
barrage of epigrams. With his pupils toppling institutions all around
him he has held his ground firmly and insisted on the enduring quality
of the fundamental technic of the drama. When a pupil brings in a play
in favor of polygamy, Baker declines to argue but talks instead about
peripety. In other words, Professor Baker is wise enough to realize that
it is impossible that he should furnish, or even attempt to mold in any
way, the philosophy which his students bring into English 47 each year.
If it is often a crude philosophy that is no fault of his. He can't
attempt to tell the fledgling playwrights what things to say and, of
course, he doesn't. English 47 is designed almost entirely to give a
certain conception of dramatic form. Professor Baker "tries in the light
of historical practice to distinguish the permanent from the impermanent
in technic." He endeavors, "by showing the inexperienced dramatist how
experienced dramatists have solved problems similar to his own, to
shorten a little the time of apprenticeship."
When a man has done with Baker he has begun to grasp some of the things
he must not do in writing a play. With that much ground cleared all that
he has to do is to acquire a knowledge of life, devise a plot and find a
manager.
XLI
WHAT SHAKESPEARE MISSED
Next to putting a gold crown upon a man's head and announcing, "I create
you emperor," no evil genius could serve him a worse turn than by giving
him a blue pencil and saying: "Now you're a censor." Unfortunately
mankind loves to possess the power of sitting in judgment. In some
respects the life of a censor is more exhilarating than that of an
emperor. The best the emperor can do is to snip off the heads of men and
women, who are mere mortals. The censor can decapitate ideas which but
for him might have lived forever. Think, for instance, of the
extraordinary thrill which might come to a matter-of-fact individual
living to-day in the city of Philadelphia if he happened to be the
censor to whom the moving-picture version of "Macbeth" was submitted.
His eye would light upon the subtitle "Give me the dagger," and, turning
to the volume called "Rules and Standards," he would find among the
prohibitions: "Pictures which deal at length with gun play, and the use
of knives."
"That," one hears the censor crying in triumph, "comes out."
"But," we may fancy the producer objecting, "you can't take that out;
Shakespeare wrote it, and it belongs in the play."
"I don't care who wrote it," the censor could answer. "It can't be shown
in Pennsylvania."
And it couldn't. The little fat man with the blue pencil--and censors
always become fat in time--can stand with both his feet upon the face of
posterity; he can look Fame in the eye and order her to quit trumpeting;
he can line his wastebasket with the greatest notions which have stirred
the mind of man. Like Joshua of old, he can command the sun and the moon
to stand still until they have passed inspection. Cleanliness, it has
been said, is next to godliness, but just behind comes the censor.
Perhaps you may object that the censor would do none of the things
mentioned. Perhaps he wouldn't, but the Pennsylvania State Board of
Censors of Motion Pictures has been sufficiently alive to the
possibilities of what it might want to do in reediting the classics to
give itself, specifically, supreme authority over the judgment and the
work of dead masters. Under Section 22 of "Standards of the Board" we
find:
"That the theme or story of a picture is adapted from a publication,
whether classical or not; or that portions of a picture follow paintings
or other illustrations, is not a sufficient reason for the approval of a
picture or portions of a picture."
As a matter of fact, it is pretty hard to see just how "Macbeth" could
possibly come to the screen in Pennsylvania. It might be banned on any
one of several counts. For instance, "Prolonged fighting scenes will be
shortened, and brutal fights will be wholly disapproved." Nobody can
question that the murder of Banquo was brutal. "The use of profane and
objectionable language in subtitles will be disapproved," which would
handicap Macduff a good deal in laying on in his usual fashion.
"Gruesome and unduly distressing scenes will be disapproved. These
include shooting, stabbing, profuse bleeding----" If Shakespeare had
only written with Pennsylvania in mind, Duncan might be still alive and
Lady Macbeth sleep as well as the next one.
But at this point we recognize another gentleman who wishes to protest
against any more attacks upon motion-picture censorship being made which
rest wholly on supposition. He has read "Standards of the Board," issued
by the gentlemen in Pennsylvania, and he asserts that all the rules laid
down are legitimate if interpreted with intelligence.
It will not be necessary to put the whole list of rules in evidence
since there need be no dispute as to the propriety of such rules as
prohibit moving pictures about white slavery and the drug traffic.
Skipping these, we come to No. 5, which is as follows:
"Scenes showing the modus operandi of criminals which are suggestive and
incite to evil action, such as murder, poisoning, housebreaking, safe
robbery, pocket picking, the lighting and throwing of bombs, the use of
ether, chloroform, etc., to render men and women unconscious, binding
and gagging, will be disapproved."
Here I take the liberty of interrupting for a moment to protest that
the board has framed this rule upon the seeming assumption that to see
murders, robberies, and the rest is to wish at once to emulate the
criminals. This theory is in need of proving. "A good detective story"
is the traditional relaxation of all men high in power in times of
stress, but it is not recorded of Roosevelt, Wilson, Secretary of State
Hughes, Lloyd George, nor of any of the other noted devotees of criminal
literature that he attempted to put into practice any of the things of
which he read. But to get on with the story:
"(6) Gruesome and unduly distressing scenes will be disapproved. These
include shooting, stabbing, profuse bleeding, prolonged views of men
dying and of corpses, lashing and whipping and other torture scenes,
hangings, lynchings, electrocutions, surgical operations, and views of
persons in delirium or insane."
Here, of course, a great deal is left to the discretion of the censors.
Just what is "gruesome and unduly distressing"? This, I fancy, must
depend upon the state of the censor's digestion. To a vegetarian censor
it might be nothing more than a close-up of a beefsteak dinner. To a man
living in the city which supports the Athletics and the Phillies a mere
flash of a baseball game might be construed as "gruesome and unduly
distressing."
This is another of the rules which puts Shakespeare in his place,
sweeping out, as it does, both Lear and Ophelia. And possibly Hamlet.
Was Hamlet mad? The Pennsylvania censors will have to take that question
up in a serious way sooner or later.
"(7) Studio and other scenes, in which the human form is shown in the
nude, or the body is unduly exposed, will be disapproved."
This fails to state whether the prohibition includes the reproduction of
statues shown publicly and familiarly to all comers in our museums.
Prohibition No. 8, which deals with eugenics, birth control and similar
subjects, may be passed without comment, as it refers rather to news
than to feature pictures.
Prohibition No. 9 covers a wide field:
"Stories or scenes holding up to ridicule and reproach races, classes,
or other social groups, as well as the irreverent and sacrilegious
treatment of religious bodies or other things held to be sacred, will be
disapproved."
Here we have still another rule which might be invoked against Hamlet's
coming to the screen, since the chance remark, "Something is rotten in
the state of Denmark," might logically be held to be offensive to
Scandinavians. "The Merchant of Venice," of course, would have no
chance, not only as anti-Semitic propaganda, but because it holds up
money lenders, a well-known social group, to ridicule.
No. 10 briefly forbids pictures which deal with counterfeiting,
seemingly under the impression that if this particular crime is never
mentioned the members of the underworld may possibly forget its
existence. In No. 11 there is the direct prohibition of "scenes showing
men and women living together without marriage." Here the greatest
difficulty will fall upon those film manufacturers who deal in travel
pictures. No exhibitor is safe in flashing upon a screen the picture of
a cannibal man and woman and several little cannibals in front of their
hut without first ascertaining from the camera man that he went inside
and inspected the wedding certificate. No. 13 forbids the use of
"profane and objectionable language," which we shall find later has been
construed to include the simple "Hell."
Under 15 we find this ruling: "Views of incendiarism, burning, wrecking,
and the destruction of property, which may put like action into the
minds of those of evil instincts, or may degrade the morals of the
young, will be disapproved."
In other words, Nero may fiddle to his heart's content, but he must do
it without the inspiration of the burning of Rome. Curiously enough,
throughout all the rules of censorship there runs a continuous train of
reasoning that the pictures must be adapted to the capacity and
mentality of the lowest possible person who could wander into a picture
house. The picture-loving public, in the minds of the censors, seems to
be honeycombed with potential murderers, incendiaries, and
counterfeiters. Rule No. 16 discourages scenes of drunkenness, and adds
chivalrously: "Especially if women have a part in the scenes."
Next we come to a rule which would handicap vastly any attempt to
reproduce Stevenson or any other lover of the picaresque upon the
screen. "Pictures which deal at length with gun play," says Rule 17,
"and the use of knives, and are set in the underworld, will be
disapproved. Prolonged fighting scenes will be shortened and brutal
fights will be wholly disapproved."
What, we wonder, would the censors do with a picture about Thermopylae?
Would they, we wonder, command that resistance be shortened if the
picture was to escape the ban? The Alamo was another fight which dragged
on unduly, and Grant was guilty of great disrespect in his famous "If it
takes all summer," not to mention the impudent incitement toward the
prolongation of a fight in Lawrence's "Don't give up the ship."
No. 19 suggests difficulties in its ban on "sensual kissing and
love-making scenes." Naturally the question arises: "At just what point
does a kiss become sensual?" Here the censors, to their credit, have
been clear and definite in their ruling. They have decided that a kiss
remains chaste for ten feet. If held upon the screen for as much as an
inch above this limit, it changes character and becomes sensual. Here,
at any rate, morality has been measured with an exactitude which is
rare.
No. 20 is puzzling. It begins, liberally enough, with the announcement
that "Views of women smoking will not be disapproved as such," but then
adds belatedly that this ruling does not apply if "their manner of
smoking is suggestive." Suggestive of what, I wonder? Perhaps the
censors mean that it is all right for women to smoke in moving pictures
if only they don't inhale, but it would have been much more simple to
have said just that. No. 22 is the famous proclamation that the
classics, as well as other themes, must meet Pennsylvania requirements,
and in 23 we have a fine general rule which covers almost anything a
censor may want to do. "Themes or incidents in picture stories," it
reads, "which are designed to inflame the mind to improper adventures,
or to establish false standards of conduct, coming under the foregoing
classes, or of other kinds, will be disapproved. Pictures will be judged
as a whole, with a view to their final total effect; those portraying
evil in any form which may be easily remembered or emulated will be
disapproved."
Perhaps there are still some who remain unconvinced as to the excesses
of censorship. The argument may be advanced that nothing is wrong with
the rules mentioned if only they are enforced with discretion and
intelligence. In answer to this plea the best thing to do would be to
consider a few of the eliminations in definite pictures which were
required by the Pennsylvania board and by the one in Ohio which operates
under a somewhat similar set of regulations. An industrial play called
"The Whistle" was banned in its entirety in Pennsylvania under the
following ruling: "Disapproved under Section 6 of the Act of 1915.
Symbolism of the title raises class antagonism and hatred, and
throughout subtitles, scenes, and incidents have the same effect."
But most astounding of all was the final observation: "Child-labor and
factory laws of this State would make incident shown impossible." In
other words, if a thing did not happen in Pennsylvania it is assumed not
to have happened at all. It is entirely possible that the next producer
who brings an Indian picture to the censors may be asked to eliminate
the elephants on the ground that "there aren't any in this State."
The same State ordered out of "Officer Cupid," a comedy, a scene in
which one of the chief comedians was seen robbing a safe, presumably
under the section against showing crime upon the stage.
Most troublesome of all were the changes ordered into the screen version
of Augustus Thomas's well-known play "The Witching Hour." It may be
remembered that the villain of this piece was an assistant district
attorney in the State of Kentucky, but Pennsylvania would not have him
so. It is difficult to find any specific justification for this attitude
in the published standards of the State unless we assume that a district
attorney was classified as belonging to the group "other things held to
be sacred" which were not to be treated lightly. The first ruling of the
censors in regard to "The Witching Hour" ran: "Reel One--Eliminate
subtitle 'Frank Hardmuth, assistant district attorney,' and substitute
'Frank Hardmuth, a prosperous attorney.'"
Next came: "Reel Two--Eliminate subtitle, 'I can give her the
best--money, position, and, as far as character--I am district attorney
now, and before you know it I will be the governor,' and substitute: 'I
can give her the best--money, position, and, as far as character--I am
now a prosperous attorney, and before you know it I will be running for
governor.'"
And again: "Eliminate subtitle: 'Exactly--but you have taken an oath to
stand by this city,' and substitute: 'Exactly, but you have taken an
oath to stand by the law.'"