Seeing Things at Night

A Reviewer's Notebook

There is an amazing simplicity about great events. Creation week was clear, calm and quiet. Hardly a ripple was on the Rubicon the afternoon that Cæsar crossed. Even Babylon fell softly and bounced only once. In the same spirit Pierre V. R. Key started John McCormack: His Own Life Story.

"It was a summer's day, with the sun shining," writes Mr. Key, "when we began. McCormack sat on the veranda of Rocklea, his Noroton, Connecticut, villa, gazing out upon the waters of Long Island Sound. He had sat that way for some minutes, in a suit of tennis flannels, his stalwart body relaxed in an armchair. I waited for his opening words. 'What a debt a man owes to his mother and father,' he said."

Mr. Key's admiration for McCormack we found later on rests on unassailable grounds. "He began to sing," Key writes, "he sings to-day – and will go on singing until he dies – for just one reason alone: God meant that he should sing."

We trust it will not be considered an impiety if we express a curiosity as to whether the nasal quality was included in God's intention.

We have forgotten what Aristotle or Clayton Hamilton or any of the others have set down as the first rule for playwrights, but it seems to us that it ought to be: Get O. P. Heggie. It makes no difference what the part may be, court dandy, early Christian or conjuror, Heggie is your man. The only disturbing factor is that into every rôle this actor brings a sort of spiritual animation. If you chance to call upon him to fall down stairs he will do it splendidly, missing not a single bump, and the audience will laugh its bellyful, but it will also have the feeling that in some curious way the thing has become exalted, that after all it may be the heart instead of the gizzard which is breaking under the emotion of the moment. Giving sawdust to this man is dangerous business, for the first thing you know he has changed it into blood.

Heggie was by all odds the outstanding figure in Ian Hay's pleasant farce-comedy, Happy-Go-Lucky. He was cast as Samuel Stillbottle, a bailiff's man, made up like Fields, the tramp juggler, and called upon to perform all the antics dear to low comedy. He did them with gusto, but there was something more. Heggie is almost the only actor we know who can trip over a door sill and keep his performance in two dimensions. The playwright may spread him into as broad a character as you please, but he cannot flatten him. Depth remains. When Heggie sets all the dishes to crashing or guzzles stage whisky till he chokes we laugh first and then pause to wonder whether or not the soul of man is immortal.

All this should be a part of the best clowning. The great clown is for us all the symbol of man's defiance to the great spaces and the wide darkness. Perhaps we die to-morrow, but to-day we are fellows of infinite jest. No matter what happens, we have laughed. To see O. P. Heggie is to be reminded of all the clowns that have ever been and are to come in the eternal succession of the brave and brazen.

Nothing in the world dies quite as completely as an actor and the greater the actor the more terrifying becomes the sudden transition from radiance to darkness. One day he is there with all his moods and complexities and curious glints of this and that, and the next day there is nothing left but a few wigs and costumes; perhaps a volume of memoirs, and a scrapbook of clippings in which we learn that the dead player was "majestic in presence" that "the poise of his head was stag-like" that he had "a great voice which boomed like a bell," that he was "regal, subtle, pathetic," and that "every one who was ever associated with him loved and respected him."

Ask some veteran theatergoer "What was Booth like as Hamlet?" and he will say "Oh, he was wonderful." Perhaps the face of the old theatergoer will grow animated and Booth may live again for a moment in his mind, but we who have never seen Booth will never know anything about him. Nobody can recreate and explain the art of a dead actor to the next generation. Even men who do tricks and true magic with words are not adept enough to set down any lasting portrait of an actor on the wing.

A good deal of whitewash has flowed past the fence, but Tom Sawyer's trick still holds good. Even to-day it is possible to get hard work done by making people think of it as a privilege. In looking over an autumn catalogue, we came across a series of books for young persons in which we were struck by the titles, When Mother Lets Us Help and When Mother Lets Us Cook. We trust that the series will be extended along these lines. If so, we intend to use as birthday gifts for H. 3rd, When Father Lets Me Stoke the Furnace, When Father Lets Me Shine His Shoes, and When Father Lets Me Lend Him Money.

A great number of persons for whose opinions we have the highest respect have assured us that Woman, by Magdeleine Marx, is an absorbing and well-written novel. We have done our best but we can't go through. At the last attempt, under whip and spur, we reached page 46 and there we found, "A gentle pearl-gray breeze was stirring the curtains." We can go no further. There is nothing for us to do but lie down and wait for the St. Bernards.

We rushed in blithely the other day to talk to a woman's club up New York State on how to bring up children. Quoting from W. H. Hudson, we said firmly that they should never be spanked or even chided very much. "Let them run about and shift for themselves," we said airily. "The instinct of the child is often more sound than that of the grown-up. He is closer to old race instincts and memories than his parent." Then we finished up with our mule story and asked for questions.

We expected that somebody would ask whether Ethel Barrymore was a good actress, and did we like the novels of H.G. Wells, or one or two other easy questions like that, to which a lecturer need say nothing more than "yes" or "no" or "assuredly." Instead of that somebody said, "How many children have you brought up?"

We could only answer that there was one, and that he wasn't very far up yet, nor had we been trusted with complete charge of him. At that point objections and questions became general and exceedingly difficult. Probably we gave some ground. There was, as we remember it, the admission that there were times in which a spanking might seem a very tempting solution of a difficult problem, although we did qualify it by urging that no moral interpretation be introduced into the punishment. We once knew a mother who used to say, "Gladys, you have been a bad girl, and so to-morrow at half-past eleven I'm going to spank you." That pose of cool and calm deliberation, of even-handed justice, of godlike inflexibility, has always seemed to us unbecoming in a parent. If he spanks a child he ought to be frank enough to say that he does it because he is angry and can't think up anything better.

However, it is probable that we were too much flustered to develop our position at any great length. We felt uncomfortably as if we had agreed to talk to a G. A. R. Post on the Battle of Gettysburg. One mother told us that she had raised four children with frequent spankings and that one was now a college professor while the other three were exceedingly successful in the wholesale hardware business. She said she had never regretted it. All four had grown up God-fearing and dutiful.

A still more devastating revelation of experience in child raising was yet to plague our confidence and complacency. "I'm an old woman," said one hearer, as we started to retire in none too good order, "and I can talk to you frankly. I have a daughter now who is old enough to have children of her own. I brought her up on that go-as-you-please system you have been talking about, and do you know what has become of her?"

We blanched a little and wondered just how frank she was going to be before we said "No."

"She calls herself a Socialist," said the old lady, and our lines broke away into full retreat at all points.

Some of the political friends insist dolefully, a few gleefully, that if certain candidates, laws, economic schemes, or what not, fail of speedy adoption we shall have a revolution. We are even told that the scenes of the French Revolution will be enacted here. We don't believe it for a moment. At any rate, not if Dickens painted a true picture in A Tale of Two Cities because none of the radical ladies of our acquaintance could possibly perform the required knitting.

"For no man can be free," writes the author of The Book of Marjorie, "unless he despises pain and heat and cold and fatigue, unless those things mean no more to him than the patter of rain outside his room, unless he does succeed in keeping them so outside himself that they never enter at all into the calculations of the thinking part of him. If we can bring up our child like this he will have nothing to fear, because he will know that no real hurt can be done to him except by himself." And in another portion of the book we read, "I should hate for my son to be afraid, because there are so many things that hinder him and check him that he must take into consideration."

But we are not at all sure that fear is to be set aside as one of the destructive emotions of mankind. All our fearless ancestors were eaten by ichthyosauri and other ferocious and primitive monsters. Indeed, there would be more ichthyosauri than men in the world to-day if certain of our progenitors had not learned that it is an exceedingly healthful thing at times to run for dear life. Of course, we admit that some fears are ignoble. We shall make no attempt, for instance, to justify our abiding distrust of cows, but the fact remains that a little decent fear is part of the proper portion of man.

Man is a weak and pitiful dweller in a violent world and nothing has done so much to sharpen his wits as fear. Probably he found fire because he feared the dark. Surely he instituted law through distrust of his fellows. And fear must have been the first prompting toward religion. Then, too, it seems more than likely that there would never have been a literature but for fear. Primitive peoples liked to hear the stories of great heroes who did mighty deeds because such things served to cheer and inspirit them.

Fear of his own frailties made man seek wisdom. To wish a child to grow up without fear is almost to wish him to be devoid of imagination. And more than that, if there was no such thing as fear courage would be without meaning and significance.

And yet we could wish that H. 3rd was not so frankly terrified at the sight of Ajax, who is not more than three months old or a foot long. Of course, Ajax attempts to bay, but it doesn't sound like much in a soprano. When the thin and piping voice of the dog sounds in agonized protest at being shut in the kitchen H. 3rd will throw both hands over his face and hide his head, as if he were Uncle Tom with a whole pack of bloodhounds on his trail. Moreover, he showed such abject fear when taken out to have his hair cut that we had to desist and let him keep his curls. Still a little such trepidation on the part of Samson might have been set down as a virtue.

Not the least interesting part of William Byron Forbush's seven volumes in The Literary Digest Parents' League Series is the section devoted to questions and answers.

"I have a child," writes Esther P., "who already seems to be cut out for a business man. He refuses to play with dolls, balls, or even soldiers. This seems to restrict the range of toys for him. What can I provide?"

And Mr. Forbush answers: "There is an inexpensive 'toytown bank.' Also an outfit of tickets and uniform with which to play ticket-agent. Encourage him to print paper money and checks and buy him some toy money…"

If he is to be a real business man he'll not have anything to do with tickets bought directly at the box office. It would be better we think to get him a bright vest and a derby hat and let him pretend to be a sidewalk speculator. He might be encouraged to demand one pin a day from each of his parents for admission to the nursery and two pins, of course, on Saturdays and holidays. Also, arrangements could be made with some reliable brokerage house to have him supplied with the ticker tape each day.

We like John Galsworthy a great deal better than we ever did before after reading his Addresses in America, 1919, for it seems to us that this man of lofty wisdom shows in this book a certain human tendency to fall into poppycock occasionally, like all the rest of us. In urging a closer comradeship between the English-speaking nations Mr. Galsworthy writes: "For unless we work together, and in no selfish or exclusive spirit – Good-by to Civilization! It will vanish like dew off the grass. The betterment not only of the British nations and America, but of all mankind, is and must be our object."

We suppose the dewdrops in each particular meadow get together occasionally and tell each other that when they are gone there will be no more dew. But then there comes another morning. We are not anxious to see Anglo-English civilization pass away, but after all there are other civilizations in the world, and there have been others, and others will come. Some, we suppose, may be worse, but there is at least a possibility that others may be better. Nor are we fond of hearing the English-speaking peoples talking about "the betterment of all mankind." It has at least a savor of a German heresy which put the world into a four years' war. Next to maltreating foreign nations, almost the worst thing that any powerful country can do is to set out to better them.

Germany, in all truth, has enough to answer for without also being made responsible for the charges implied in humorous anecdotes. Margaret Deland, in rounding off her case against the Hun in Small Things, writes, "And I recall here the revealing remark of a German, a member of a commission which, before the war, was traveling in America: 'Yes,' he said, 'we found your railroad cars very comfortable – except the sleeping cars. Our wives don't like to climb into the upper berths.'"

It may be remembered that one of the attacks made against England during the war by a famous German propagandist was contained in the story of the English woman who went to the hospital with a badly wounded face and upon being asked whether she had been bitten by a dog, replied, "No, another lady."

Then, of course, the honor of the United States is called into question by the yarn about the man from Chicago who took his wife to a big New York restaurant and ordered two broiled lobsters. The waiter returned to report that only one remained. "Only one lobster!" exclaimed the man from Chicago, "but what's my wife going to eat!"

Still again a number of persons in America cannot bring themselves to sympathize with the Sinn Fein movement because of the well-known meeting between two Irishmen at which one inquired, "Who was that lady I seen you walking down the street with?" to which the other replied, "That was no lady, you chump; that was my wife."

The Irishman's offense was not alone one of taste but of brutality as well, for we all know that as he said "You chump," he hit his friend violently over the head with a dull, blunt instrument. All this, in addition to the Ulster problem, makes the solution of the difficulties of Ireland seem insurmountable to many students of international affairs.

Moreover, the success of the proposed league of nations is questioned by many persons on account of the revelation contained in the story about the Jugo-Slav who said, "Yes, but ain't we going to give any to dear old mother?" We have forgotten the exact details of the story, but as we remember, it was equally damning to the national aspirations of the Slovenes.

The Russian writer Dmitry Mereshkovsky has called Roshpin's The Pale Horse "the most Russian book of the period," according to the introduction in the new edition. We are not disposed to dispute that statement after reading the first chapter, in which we found: "The hotel bores me to weariness. I know so well its hall porter in his blue tunic, its gilt mirrors, its carpets. There is a shabby sofa in my room and dusty curtains. I have placed three kilograms of dynamite under the table. I have brought it from abroad. The dynamite smells of a chemist's shop. I have headaches at night."

He should have tried the dynamite. We understand that it is an excellent cure for headaches when used internally.

In his introduction to Madeleine: An Autobiography, Judge Ben B. Lindsey writes of the book, "It ought to be read and pondered over. It is true." For our part, we doubt whether the book will prove of any vital aid in solving what newspapers are fond of referring to as "white slavery"; for, although much of the book is convincing and seemingly veracious, it is hard to grasp its intent. Indeed, there is such a mass of informative detail in this life story of a woman of the underworld that it almost seemed to us as if it were intended to be a companion book to such works as How To Be a Boy Scout or Golf in Fifty Lessons. It is true that the author of the book takes great pains to dwell frequently on the way in which her whole physical and spiritual nature revolted against the life which she was leading, but at other times there is a very evident intimation of her satisfaction in having been at any rate a leading member of her profession. Certainly, she writes with a good deal of gusto of the manner in which she and her friend Olga succeeded in selling the same bottle of champagne seven times to a befuddled gentleman, and undeniable pride in her accounts of how well she succeeded professionally in an executive capacity.

And yet, though we are not very much concerned with seeking for morals in books, there is one telling sermon in the volume, and all the more telling because it does not seem to have been within the plan of the writer. "Madeleine" ought to do something to clear away the mist in minds which confuse prudery and virtue. Even in her most degraded and sinful moments, Madeleine remains a proper person. In telling of her conversation with an associate in the life of shame Madeleine writes, "I felt sure that human degradation could go no further; when she took a box of cigarettes from under her pillow and offered me one I was speechless with indignation." A year or so later, while Madeleine still has both feet set in the primrose path, she violently upbraids a girl who wants her to use rouge. "I would not have my face painted, and that settled it! Not only for that day but for all of the succeeding days in which I remained in the business. I had to draw a line somewhere." Again she rails at present-day fashions, and observes, "If a girl had come into Lizzie Allen's parlors wearing some of the present-day street styles she would have been told to go upstairs and put on her clothes."

But we were even more impressed by the chapter in which Madeleine goes to Butte to open a brothel and takes a dislike to the town because of its loose observance of the Sabbath. "Clothing stores, groceries, saloons, small drygoods shops, cigar stands, dance halls and variety shows elbowing one another and wide open for business, gave a shock to my sense of the fitness of things."

There are persons to whom a preposition is as inspiring as a trumpet call. Dangle an "on" before a dying essayist and he will get up and dash you off something entitled "On an Old Penwiper," or "On the Delights of Washing Before Breakfast." It is essential that an essayist be an enthusiast about more things than prepositions. They are merely his springboards. He ought to be a man who wears his Corona on his sleeve, for there is no moment of the day or night in which he is safe from the onrush of ideas. I once knew a man who was a complete essayist at heart but a city editor by profession. He came into the office one July afternoon and called me over. "As I was walking downtown," he began, "I saw a little piece of ice in the middle of Broadway. Write me a funny story about it."

The assignment floored me completely. I idled over it for an hour and then reported back that I couldn't see a story in the suggestion. "What suggestion?" said the city editor. The thing had gone from his mind. He was of the mold from which great men are made. Having said of anything "Let it be done" he at once felt not only that it was accomplished, but that he had done it himself. The matter never came to his mind again. At the moment I spoke to him he was already deeply engrossed in a scheme for a story computing the value of all the lobster salad sold in the City of New York, exclusive of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island, in a single evening.