Pieces of Hate; And Other Enthusiasms

PREFACE

The trouble with prefaces is that they are partial and so we have decided to offer instead an unbiased review of "Pieces of Hate." The publishers have kindly furnished us advance proofs for this purpose.

We wish we could speak with unreserved enthusiasm about this book. It would be pleasant to make out a list of three essential volumes for humanity and suggest the complete works of William Shakespeare, the Bible and "Pieces of Hate," but Mr. Broun's book does not deserve any such ranking. Speaking as a critic of books, we are not at all sure that we care to recommend it. It seems to us that the author is honest, but the value of that quality has been vastly overstressed in present-day reviewing. We are inclined to say "What of it?" There would be nothing particularly persuasive if a man should approach a poker game and say, "Won't you let Broun in; I can assure he's honest." Why should a recommendation which is taken for granted among common gamblers be considered flattering when applied to a writer?

Anyhow, it does not seem to us that Broun carries honesty to excess. There is every indication that most of the work in "Pieces of Hate" has been done so hurriedly that there has been no opportunity for a recount. If it balances at any given point luck must be with him as well as virtue. All the vices of haste are in this book of stories, critical essays and what not. The author is not content to stalk down an idea and salt it. Whenever he sees what he believes to be a notion he leaves his feet and tries to bring it down with a flying tackle. Occasionally there actually is an exciting and interesting crash of flying bodies coming into contact. But just as often Mr. Broun misses his mark and falls on his face. At other times he gets the object of his dive only to find that it was not a genuine idea after all, but only a straw man, a sort of tackling dummy set up to fool and educate novices.

And Broun does not learn fast. Like most newspaper persons he is an extraordinary mixture of sophistication and naïveté. At one moment he will be found belaboring a novelist or a dramatist for sentimentality and on the next page there will be distinct traces of treacle in his own creative work. Seemingly, what he means when he says that he does not like sentimentality is that he doesn't like the sentimentality of anybody else. He would restrict the quality to the same narrow field as charity.

The various forms introduced into the book are a little confusing. Seemingly there has been no plan as to the sequence of stories, essays, dramatic criticism and the rest. Possibly the author regards this as versatility, but here is another vastly overrated quality. We once had a close friend who was a magician and after we had watched him take an omelet out of his high hat, and two white rabbits, and a bowl of goldfish, it always made us a little uneasy when he said, "Wait a minute until I put on my hat and I'll walk home with you."

The fear constantly lurked in our mind that he might suddenly remember, in the middle of Times Square, that he had forgotten a trick and be compelled to pause and take a boa-constrictor from under the sweat-band. We suggest to Mr. Broun that he make up his mind as to just what he intends to do and then stick to it to the exclusion of all sidelines.

Perhaps he has promised, but we are prepared to wager nothing on him until we are convinced that he has begun to drive for something. He may be a young man but he is not so young that he can afford to traffic any further with flipness under the impression that it is something just as good as humor. And we wish he wouldn't pun. George H. Doran, the publisher, informs us that he had to plead with Broun to make him leave out a chapter on the ugliness of heirlooms and particularly old sofas. Apparently the piece was written for no other purpose than to carry the title "The Chintz of the Fathers."

We also find Mr. Broun's pose as the professional Harvard man a little bit trying, particularly as expressed in his essay "The Bigger the Year." We suppose he may be expected to outgrow this in time but he has been long enough about it.

I

THE NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHEIK

Women must be peculiar people, if that. We have just finished "The Sheik," which is described on the jacket as possessing "ALL the intense passion and tender feeling of the most vivid love stories, almost brutal in its revelations."

Naturally, we read it. The author is English and named E. M. Hull. The publishers expand the "E" to Ethel, but we have a theory of our own. At any rate the novelist displays an extraordinary knowledge of feminine psychology. It is profound. It is also a little disturbing because it sounds so silly. After all, whether peculiar or not women are round about us almost everywhere, and we must make the best of them. Accordingly, it terrifies us to learn that if by any chance whatsoever we happen to hit one of them and knock her down she will become devoted to us forever. The man who knows this will think twice before he strikes a woman no matter what the provocation. He will be inclined to count ten before letting a blow go instead of after. Miss Hull's book deserves the widest possible circulation because of its persuasive propaganda for forebearance on the part of men in their dealings with women.

Seemingly, there are no exceptions to the rules about women laid down by Miss Hull. To state her theory concisely, the quickest way to reach a woman's heart is a right hook to the jaw. To take a specific instance, there was Miss Diana Mayo. She seemed an exception to the rule if ever a woman did. "My God, Diana! Beauty like yours drives a man mad!" said Arbuthnot, the young British lieutenant, in the moonlight at Biskra. More than that, "He whispered ardently, his hands closing over the slim ones lying in her lap." Those were her own.

Still, Diana was no miss to take a hint. With a strength that seemed impossible for their slimness she disengaged her hands from his grasp. "Please stop. I am sorry. We have been good friends, and it has never occurred to me that there could be anything beyond that. I never thought that you might love me. I never thought of you in that way at all. I don't understand it. When God made me he omitted to give me a heart. I have never loved any one in my life."

That was before Miss Diana Mayo went into the desert and met the Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan. The meeting was unconventional. Ahmed sacked the caravan and kidnapped Diana, seizing her off her horse's back at full gallop. "His movement had been so quick she was unprepared and unable to resist. For a moment she was stunned, then her senses came back to her and she struggled wildly, but stifled in the thick folds of the Arab's robes, against which her face was crushed, and held in a grip that seemed to be slowly suffocating her, her struggles were futile. The hard, muscular arm around her hurt her acutely, her ribs seemed to be almost breaking under its weight and strength, it was nearly impossible to breathe with the close contact of his body."

But Diana did not love him yet. She seems to have been less susceptible than most girls. Even when "her whole body was one agonized ache from the brutal hands" she persisted in not caring for Ahmed Ben Hassan. It almost seemed as if she had taken a dislike to the man. Up to this time she had not learned to make allowances for him. It was much later than this that "She looked at the marks of his fingers on the delicate skin with a twist of the lips, then shut her eyes with a little gasp and hid her bruised arm hastily, her mouth quivering. But she did not blame him; she had brought it on herself; she knew his mood and he did not know his own strength."

Diana's realization that she loved the Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan and had loved him for some time came under sudden and dramatic circumstances. She was running away from him at the time and he was riding after her. Standing up in the stirrups, the Sheik shot the horse from under her and "Diana was flung far forward and landed on some soft sand." But even yet her blindness to the whispering of love persisted. She thought she hated Ahmed, but dawn was about to break in her starved heart. "He caught her wrist and flung her out of the way," yet it was not until he had lifted her up on the saddle in front of him, using his favorite hold – a half nelson and body scissors – that the punishing nature of the familiar grip roused Diana to an understanding of her great good fortune. "Quite suddenly she knew – knew that she loved him, that she had loved him for a long time, even when she thought that she hated him and when she had fled from him. She knew now why his face had haunted her in the little oasis at midday – that it was love calling to her sub-consciously." And all the time poor, foolish Diana had imagined that it was arnica which she wanted.

Even after Ben Hassan had succeeded in impressing Diana with his affection, we feared that the story would not end happily. While riding some miles away from their own carefully restricted oasis Diana was captured by another Arab chief named Ibraheim Omair. It seemed to us that he was in his way just as persuasive a wooer as Ben Hassan. We read, "He forced her to her knees, and, with his hand twined brutally in her curls, thrust her head back," and later, "She realized that he was squeezing the life out of her." Worst of all from the point of view of a Ben Hassan partisan (and by this time we too had learned to love him) was the moment in which Omair dashed his hand against Diana's mouth, for the author records that "She caught it in her teeth, biting it to the bone." We feared, then, that Diana's heart was turning to this new and wondrously rowdy Arab. Already it was quite evident that she was not indifferent to him. Fortunately Ahmed came in time to shoot Omair before Diana's Unconscious could flash to her any realization of a new love.

And the book does end happily, even more happily than anybody has a right to expect. Ahmed is badly wounded but only in the head, and recovers without any impairment of his punching power. The greatest surprise of all is reserved for the last chapter, when Diana and the reader learn that Ben isn't really an Arab at all, but the eldest son of Lord Glencaryll, and of Lady Glencaryll, too, for that matter. It seems Lord Glencaryll drank excessively, although his title was one of the oldest in England. Lady Glencaryll left him on account of his alcoholism and went to the Sahara desert for rest and contrast. A courtly sheik gave her shelter in his oasis. Here her son was born, and when he heard about his father's disgraceful conduct he turned Arab and stayed that way. Of course, if he had intended nothing more than a protest against overindulgence in alcoholic liquors he could have turned American. We suppose such a device would not have seemed altogether plausible. No Englishman could pass for an American. Nor can we say that we are altogether satisfied with the ending even as it stands. For all we know E. M. Hull may decide to take a shot at Uncle Tom's Cabin and add a chapter revealing the fact that Uncle Tom was not actually a colored man but the child of a couple of Caucasians who had happened to get a little sunburned. We are not even sure that E. M. Hull is a woman. Publishers do get fooled about such things. According to our theory, the E stands for Egbert. He is, we think, at least five feet four inches tall and lives in Bloomsbury, in very respectable bachelor diggings. He has never been to the desert or near it, but if "The Sheik" continues to run through new editions he plans to take a jaunt to the East. He thinks it might help his hay fever.

II

JOHN ROACH STRATON

In the course of his Sabbath day talk at Calvary Baptist Church the other day the Rev. Dr. John Roach Straton spoke of "miserable Charlie Chaplin," or words to that effect. This seems to us an expression of the more or less natural antipathy of a man who regards life trivially for a serious artist. It is the venom of the clown confronted by the comedian.

Dr. Straton is, of course, an utter materialist. He is concerned with such temporal and evanescent things as hellfire, and a heaven which he has pictured in one of his sermons as a sort of glorified Coney Island. Moreover, he has created a deity in his own image and has presented the invisible king as merely a somewhat more mannerly John Roach Straton. And while Dr. Straton has been thus engaged in debasing the ideals of mankind, Charlie Chaplin has brought to great masses of people some glint of things which are eternal. He has managed to show us beauty and, better than that, he has contrived to put us at ease in this presence. We belong to a Nation which is timorous of beauty, but Charlie has managed to soothe our fears by proving to us that it may also be merry.

While Straton has been talking about jazz, debauchery, modesty, vengeance and other ugly things, Chaplin has given us the story of a child. "The Kid" captured a little of that curiously exalted something which belongs to paternity. All spiritual things must have in them a childlike quality. The belief in immortality rests not very much on the hope of going on. Few of us want to do that, but we would like very much to begin again.

Naturally, we are under no delusions as to the innate goodness even of very small children. They are bad a great deal of the time, but before it has been knocked out of them they see no limit to the potentialities of the human will. Theirs is the faith to move mountains, because they do not yet know the fearful heft of them. The world is merely a rather big sandpile and much may be done to it with a tin pail and shovel. We would capture such confidence again.

As a matter of fact, a great deal could be done with a pail and shovel. We do not try because we have lost our nerve. Nobody will ever get it back again by listening to Dr. Straton. He seems solely intent upon detailing the limitations and the frailties of man. We think he has outgrown his soul a little. He has sold his birthright for a mess of potterism.

But Charlie Chaplin moves through the world which he pictures on the screen like a mischievous child. He confounds all the gross villains who come against him. His smile is a token and a symbol that man is too merry to die utterly. Fearful things menace us, but they will flee before the audacious one who has the fervor to draw back his foot and let it fly.

Of course, we are not advocating any suppression of Dr. Straton by censorship. We regard him and his sermons as a bad influence. But after all, the man or woman who strays into Dr. Straton's church knows what to expect. In justice to the clergyman it must be said that he has never made any secret of his methods or his message. There is no deception. Sentimentally, we think it rather shocking that these talks of his should occur on Sunday. There really ought to be one day of the week upon which the citizens of New York turn away from frivolity. And still we do not urge that the Sunday Law be amended to include the performances of John Roach Straton. He is not one whit worse than some of the sensational Sunday magazines.

III

PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF OFFSPRING

Fannie Hurst gurgles with joy over the fact that her heroine in "Star Dust" is able to look over the whole tray of babies which is brought to her in the hospital and pick out her own. Miss Hurst attributes Lily's feat to "her mother instinct." A friend of ours, more practically minded than the novelist, suggests that she might have been aided by the fact that hospitals invariably place an identification tag around the neck of each child. For our part we have never been able to understand the fear of some parents about babies getting mixed up in the hospital. What difference does it make so long as you get a good one? Another's may be better than your own and Lily, with a whole tray from which to choose, should not have made an instinctive clutch immediately for her own. It would have been rational for the lady in the story to have looked at them all before coming to any decision.

Of course, to tell the truth, there isn't much choice in the little ones. They need much more than necklaces with names on them to be persons. There really ought to be some system whereby small children after being born could be kept in the shop for a considerable period, like puppies, and not turned over to parents or guardians until in a condition more disciplined than usual. None of them amounts to much during the first year. We can't see, for the life of us, why your own should be any more interesting or precious to you during this time than the child of anybody else.

After two, of course, they are persons, but a parent must have a good deal of imagination if he can see much of himself in a child. Oh, yes, a nose or the eyes or the color of the hair or something like that, but the world is full of snub noses and brown eyes. To us it never seemed much more than a coincidence. And if it were something more, what of it? How can a man work up any inspiring sentimental gratification over the fact that after he is gone his nose will persist in the world? The hope of immortality through offspring offers no solace to us. The joys of being an ancestor are exaggerated.

Mind you, we do not mean for a moment to cry down the undeniable pleasure which arises from the privilege of being associated with a child of more than two years of age. For a person in rugged health who is not particularly dressed up and does not want to write a letter or read the newspaper, we can imagine few diversions more enjoyable than to have a child turned loose upon him. His own, if you wish, but only in the sense that it is the one to which he has become accustomed. The sense of paternity has nothing on earth to do with the fun. Only a person extraordinarily satisfied with himself can derive pleasure if this child in his house is a little person who gives him back nothing but a reflection. You want a new story and not the old one, which wasn't particularly satisfactory in the first place. We want Heywood Broun, 3rd, to start from scratch without having to lug along anything we have left him. As a matter of fact, we like him just as well as if he were no relation at all, because he seems to be a person quite different from what we might have expected. When he says he doesn't want to take a bath we feel abashed and wish we had been a cleaner child, but for the most part we find him leading his own life altogether. When he bends over the Victrola and plays the Siegfried Funeral March over and over again we have no feeling of guilt. We know we can't be blamed for that. He never got it from us.

And again, he is a person utterly strange, and therefore twice as interesting, when we find him standing up to people, us for instance, and saying that he won't do this or that because he doesn't want to. Much sharper than a serpent's tooth is the pleasure of an abject parent who finds himself the father of a stubborn child. If the people from the hospital should suddenly call up to-morrow and say, "We find we've made a mistake. We sent the wrong child to you three years ago, but now we can exchange him and rectify everything," we would say, "No, this one's been around quite a while now and is giving approximate satisfaction, and if you don't mind you can keep the real one."

Plays and novels which picture meetings between fathers and sons parted from birth or before have always seemed singularly unconvincing to us. The old man says "My boy! My boy!" and weeps, and the young man looks him warmly in the eye and says, "There, there." Not a bit like it is our guess. If we had never seen H, 3rd, and had then met him at the end of twenty years, we wouldn't be particularly interested. Strangers always embarrass us. It would not even shock us much to find that they had sent him to Yale or that he brushed his hair straight back or wore spats. There are to us no ties at all just in being a father. A son is distinctly an acquired taste. It's the practice of parenthood that makes you feel that, after all, there may be something in it. And anybody's child will do for practice.

IV

G. K. C

The ship news man said that Gilbert K. Chesterton was staying at the Commodore and the telephone girl said he wasn't, but we'd trust even a ship news man before a hotel central and so we persisted.

In fact, we almost persuaded her.

"Maybe he's connected with one of the automobile companies that are exhibiting here," she suggested, helpfully. For a moment we wondered if by any chance the hotel authorities had made an error and placed him in the lobby with the ten-ton trucks. It seemed too fantastic.

"He's not with any automobile company," we said severely. "Didn't you ever hear of 'The Man Who Was Thursday'?"

"He may have been here Thursday, but he's not registered now," she answered with some assurance. We didn't seem to be getting on. "It's a book," we shouted. "He wrote it."

"Not in this hotel," said central with an air of finality and rang off before we could try her out on "Man Alive" or "The Ball and the Cross." Still, it turned out eventually that she was right for it was the Biltmore which at last acknowledged Mr. Chesterton somewhat reluctantly after we had spelled out the name.

"Not in his room, but somewhere about the hotel," was the message.

"You can find him," said the city editor with confidence. "Just take this picture with you. He's sort of fat and he speaks with an English accent."

We had a more helpful description than that in our mind, because we remembered Chesterton's answer when a sweet girl admirer once remarked, "It must be wonderful to walk along the streets when everybody knows who you are."

"Yes," said Chesterton; "and if they don't know they ask."

He wasn't in the bar, but we found him in the smoking room. He was giving somebody an interview without much enthusiasm. It seemed to be the last round. Chesterton was beginning to droop. Every paradox, we feared, had been hammered out of him. He rose a little wearily and started for the elevator. We chased him. At last we had the satisfaction of finding some one we could outrun. He paused, and now we know the look which the Wedding Guest must have given to the Ancient Mariner.

"It's for the New York Tribune," we said.

"How about next week?" suggested Mr. Chesterton.

"It's a daily newspaper," we remonstrated. "You know – Grantland Rice and The Conning Tower and When a Feller Needs a Friend."

Something in the title of the Briggs series must have touched him. "To-morrow, perhaps," he answered. Feeling that the mountain was about to come through we stood our ground like another Mahomet. Better than that we rose to one of the few superb moments in our life. Looking at Mr. Chesterton coldly we said slowly, "It must be now or never." And we used a gesture. The nature of it escapes us, but it was something appropriate. Later we wondered just what reply would have been possible if he had answered, "Never." After the danger had passed we realized that we had been holding up the visitor with an empty gun. It must have been our manner which awed him and he stopped walking and almost turned around.

"The press men have been here since two o'clock," he complained more in sorrow than in anger. "What is it you want to know?"

At that stage of the interview the advantage passed to him. The whole world lay before us. Dimly we could hear the problems of a great and unhappy universe flapping in our ears and urging us with unintelligible, hoarse caws to present their cases for solution. And still we stood there unable to think of a single thing which we wanted to know.

Mostly we had read Chesterton on rum and religion, but there were too many people passing to give the proper atmosphere for any such confidential questions. Moreover, if he should question us in turn we realized that we would be unable to give him any information as to when to boil and when to skim, nor did we feel sufficiently well disposed to let him in on the name of the drug store where you say "I'm a patient of Dr. Brown's" and are forthwith allowed to buy gin.

All the questions we had ever asked anybody in our life passed rapidly before us. "What do you think of our tall buildings?" "Have you ever thought of playing Hamlet?" "Why are you called the woman with the most beautiful legs in Paris?" We remembered that the last had seemed silly even when we first used it on Mistinguett. On second thought we had told the interpreter to let it drop because the photographers were anxious to begin. There seemed to be even less sense to it now. Indeed none of our familiar inquiries struck us as appropriate.