Greenwich Village Part 17

When he called for her she felt slightly faint. He was in evening dress, the most impeccable evening dress conceivable, even to the pumps and the opera hat. He, too, looked a little shocked when he saw her. Doubtless he would have asked her to dine at Rector's first if she had been properly dressed. They both recovered sufficiently to go to "Hamlet," and she trembled lest he would not like it. She need not have worried--or rather she had more cause to worry than she knew.

Like it? He loved it; he shouted with honest mirth from first to last.

And, when it was over--

"Say," he burst out, "that beats any musical comedy show hollow! _It's the funniest thing I ever see in my life!_"

Henceforward that dear lady did not let her theories out in a cold world, but kept them safe in cotton wool under lock and key.

There are fakers in the Village--just as there are fakers everywhere else. Only, of course, the ardour of new ideas which sincerely animates the Village does lend itself to all manner of poses. And because of this a perfectly earnest movement will attract a number of superficial dilettanti who dabble in it until it is in disrepute. And, vice versa, a cra.s.sly artificial fad will, by its novelty and picturesqueness, draw some of the real thinking people. Such inconsistencies and discrepancies are bound to occur in any such mental crucible as Greenwich. And, moreover, if the true and the false get a bit mixed once in a way, the wise traveller who goes to learn and not to sit in judgment will not look upon it to the disadvantage or the disparagement of the Village. Young, fervent and courageous souls may make a vast quant.i.ty of mistakes ere they be proved wrong with any sort of sound reasoning. If our Villagers run off at tangents on occasion, follow a few false G.o.ds and tie the cosmos into knots, it is, one may take it, rather to their credit than otherwise. No one ever accomplished anything by sitting still and looking at a wall. And it is far better to make a fool of yourself with an intense object, than to make nothing of yourself and have no particular object at all!

There are all sorts of fakers--conscious or otherwise. There is the futurist, post-impressionist _poseur_ who more than half believes in his own pose. Possibly two small incidents may indicate what the genuine Villagers think of him.

There was once a post-impressionist exhibition at the Liberal Club, and a certain young man who shall be nameless was placed in charge of it. He was a perfectly sane young man and he knew that many of the "art specimens" hung on such occasions were flagrant frauds. Sketch after sketch, study after study, was sent in to him as master of ceremonies until, in his own words, he became so "fed up with post-impressionism that he could not stand another daub of the stuff!"

The worm turned eventually, and he vowed to teach those "artists" a short, sweet lesson. He knew nothing about painting, being a writer by trade, but he had the run of several studios and could collect paint as he willed. After fortifying himself with a sufficiency of Dutch courage, he set up a canvas and painted a picture. It had no subject, no lines, no scheme, no integral idea. It was just a squareful of paint--and it held every shade and variety of paint that he could lay his hands on. He says that he took a wicked satisfaction in smearing the colours upon that desecrated canvas. His disgust with the futurist artists who had submitted their works for exhibition was one element to nerve his arm and fire his resentful spirit--another was the stimulus he had, in sheer desperation, wooed so recklessly. When the thing was done it was something for angels and devils alike to tremble before. It meant nothing, of course, but, like many inscrutable and unfathomable things, it terrified by its sheer blank, chaotic madness.

He hung it in the exhibition. And it was--yes, it was--the hit of the occasion. This is not a fairy tale--not even fiction. The story was told me by the culprit--or was it genius?--himself.

And then people began to talk about it and speculate on what its real, inner meaning might be. They said it was a "mood picture," a "study in soul-tones" and a lot more like that. They even asked the guilty man what he thought of it. When he coldly responded that he thought it "looked like the devil" they told him that, of course he would say so: he had no soul for art.

Now, he had signed this horror, but (let me quote him): "I had signed it in a post-impressionist style, so no one on the earth could read the name."

After a few days an artist came along who was not wholly obsessed with the new craze. He studied the thing on the wall, and after a while he said: "Someone is guying you. That isn't a picture. It's a joke."

The futurist devotees were indignant, but there were enough who were stung by faint suspicion to investigate. They studied that signature upside down and under a microscope. After a while they got the ident.i.ty of the man responsible for it, and--we draw a veil over the rest!

Then there was the man--another one--who, by way of a cheerful experiment, painted a post-impressionist picture with a billiard cue, jabbing gaily at the canvas as though trying to make difficult screwed shots, caroms and so on. Having done his worst in this way, he then took his picture to a gallery and exhibited it upside down. It attracted much attention and a fair quota of praise.

Stories such as these might discourage one if one did not keep remembering that even in far deeper and greater affairs of life, "A hair perhaps divides the false and true." Who are we to improve on Omar's wise and tolerant philosophy?

I have less sympathy with the girl who wrote poetry, and even occasionally sold it, at so much a line. Having sold a poem of eighteen lines for $9.00 she almost wept because, as she ingenuously complained, she might just as easily have written twenty lines for $10.00!

Then there is the fair Villager who intones Walt Whitman to music of her own composition; that is a bit trying, I grant you. And the male Villager who frequents spiritualistic seances and communes with dead poets.

One night Emerson presided. And, after the ghosts had departed, the spiritualistic Villager read some of his own poems.

"And do you know," he declared, enraptured, "everyone thought it was still Emerson who was speaking!"

Now for him we may have sympathy. He is perhaps a faker, but I am inclined to believe that he is that anachronism, a sincere faker. He is on the level. Like two-thirds of the Village, he is playing his game with his whole heart and soul, with all that is in him. I am afraid that it would be hard to say as much for a certain cla.s.s of outside-the-Village fakers who, from time to time, drift into the cheery confines thereof and carry away sacks of shekels--though not, let us hope, as much as they wanted to get!

Have you ever heard, for instance, of the psychoa.n.a.lysts? They diagnose soul troubles as regular doctors diagnose diseases of the body, and they are in great demand. Some of them are alienists, healers of sick brains; some of them are just--fakers. They charge immense prices, and just for the moment the blessed Village--always pa.s.sionately hospitable to new cults and theories and visions--is receiving them cordially, with arms and purses that are both wide open.

None of us can afford to depreciate the genius nor the judgment of Freud, but I defy any Freud-alienist to efficiently psychoa.n.a.lyse the Village! By the time he were half done with the job he would be a Villager himself and then--pouf! That for his psychoa.n.a.lysis!

Have you ever read that most enchanting book of Celtic mysticism, inconsequent whimsey and profound symbolism--"The Crock of Gold"--by one James Stevens? The author is not a Villager, and his message is one which has its root and spring in the signs and wonders of another, an older and a more intimately wise land than ours. But when I read of those pure, half-pagan immortals in the dance of the _Sluaige Shee_ (the Fairy Hosts) I could not help thinking that Greenwich Village might well adopt certain pa.s.sages as fitting texts and interpretations of themselves and their own lives--"The lovers of gaiety and peace, long defrauded."

The Shee, as they dance, sing to the old grey world-dwellers,--or Stevens says they do, and I for one believe he knows all there is to know about it ('tis a Leprechaun he has for a friend):

"Come to us, ye who do not know where ye are--ye who live among strangers in the houses of dismay and self-righteousness. Poor, awkward ones! How bewildered and be-devilled ye go!... In what prisons are ye flung? To what lowliness are ye bowed? How are ye ground between the laws and the customs? Come away! For the dance has begun lightly, the wind is sounding over the hill...."

CHAPTER IX

_And Then More Villagers_

... A meeting place for the few who are struggling ever and ever for an art that will be truly American. An art that is not hidebound by the deadening influences of a decadent Europe, or the result of intellectual theories evolved by those whose only pleasure in existence is to create laws for others to obey ... an art, let us say, that springs out of the emotional depths of creative spirit, courageous and unafraid of rotting power, or limited scope ... an art whose purpose is flaming beauty of creation and nothing else.--HAROLD HERSEY, in _The Quill_ (Greenwich Village).

Someone said today to the author of this book:

"How can you write about the Village? You don't live here. Live here a few years and then perhaps you'll have something to say!"

It is by way of answer that the following little tale is quoted; it is an old tale but, after a fashion, it seems to fit.

Once upon a time an explorer discovered a country and set about to write a book concerning it. Then the people of the country became somewhat indignant and asked:

"Why should a stranger, who has scarcely learned his way about in our land, attempt to describe it? We, who have lived in it and know it, will write its chronicles ourselves."

So the traveller sat down and shut the book in which he had begun to write and said:

"Well and good. Do you write about your country, the land you have lived in so long and know so well, and we will see what we shall see."

So the people of the country--or their scribes, a most gifted company--began the task of describing that which they knew and loved, and had lived in and with since birth. And after they were through they took the fruits of their joint labours to an a.s.semblage of kings in a far-off place.

And the kings said, after they had read:

"This is beautiful literature, but what is the country like,--that of which they write?"

So one of their chamberlains, who was a plain soul, said sensibly:

"Your Majesties, there is only one fault to find with the book written by these people about their country, and that is that they know it too well to describe it well."

Therefore one of the kings said, "How can that be truth? For what we are close to we must see more clearly than others who view it from afar."

So the sensible chamberlain took a certain little object and held it close to the eyes of one of the kings, and cried, "What is this?"

And the king, blinking and scowling, said after a bit:

"It is a volcano!"

The chamberlain answered, "Wrong; it is an inkstand," and showing it proved that he spoke truth.

Then he held another thing close before the eyes of another king and cried again, "What is this?"

And this king, puzzled, said, "I think it is a little piece of cloth."

"Wrong," said the sensible chamberlain. "It is the statue of the Winged Victory."

And this happened not once but many times until at length the kings understood. And they made a law that no one should stand too close to the thing he wished to see clearly. And they added their judgment that only the visitors to a country could see it as it is.