Pieces Of Hate; And Other Enthusiasms Part 7

"In my early married life," writes Mrs. Wilc.o.x, "he was much in demand for the game of poker," but a little later she explains, "Even in his love of cards and in his monotonous life of travel for the first seven years after our marriage, when card games were his only recreation, he introduced his idea of altruism. This, too, was a matter known only to me. He played games of chance only with men he knew; whatever money he made was kept in a separate purse, and when he came home he asked me to help him distribute it among deserving people."

Any new system is worth trying when your luck is bad, and yet it seems to us that there are fundamental objections to the scheme suggested by Mrs. Wilc.o.x. At least, we don't think it would work well for us. If we drew a club to four hearts we might bravely push all our chips forward and say "Raise it," provided the risk was ours alone. We couldn't do that if we were playing for Uncle Albert. Our anxiety would betray us.

Even if Aunt Hattie had been mentally selected as the beneficiary of the evening we should feel compelled to play the cards close to our chest.

She is a dear old lady and not a bit prudish, but we're sure she would never approve of whooping the pot on a king and an ace and a seven spot.

Then take the debatable question of two pairs. Personally we have always believed in raising on them before the draw. Such a procedure is dangerous, perhaps, but profitable in the long run. Under the Wilc.o.x system it might be difficult to take the larger viewpoint. It is more than possible that we would grow timorous if Cousin Susie's hope of a comfortable old age rested upon eights and deuces.

Some years ago we used to encounter, every now and again, a kindly middle-aged gentleman who was playing to send his brother to Harvard. It weighed on him. Whenever he looked at his cards he had his brother's chance of an education in mind. In fact, he grew so excessively cautious that anybody could bluff him out of quite large pots merely by reaching for a white chip. Some of the players, we fear, used to take advantage of this fact. As we remember it, the young man finally went to the C. C.

N. Y.

Of course, Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x makes no claim that the system is a winning one. The implication is quite the other way. After all, she writes of her husband, "He was much in demand for the game of poker."

XVIII

THE WELL MADE REVIEW

One of the simplest ways in which a critic can put a play in its place is to refer to it as "well made." The phrase has come to be a reproach.

It suggests a third act in which the friend of the family tells the husband, "Take her out and buy her a good dinner," and the lover decides that he will go back to Mesopotamia----"Alone!"

George Bernard Shaw changed the style, and taught playgoers to refuse to accept technic as something just as good as spiritual significance. We now await the revolt against the well-made revue. Each of the Ziegfeld Follies is perfect of its kind, but just as in the plays of Pinero, form has triumphed over substance. The name Ziegfeld on the label means a magnificent product perfect in every detail with complete satisfaction guaranteed, but it is a standardized product. You know just what you are going to get. Ziegfeld scenery, Ziegfeld costumes mean something definite. Even "a Ziegfeld chorus girl" suggests an unvarying type. The hood is as unmistakable as that of a Ford automobile.

At times one is struck with a longing to find a single homely girl among all the merry marchers. And there is at least a shadow of a wish to encounter, likewise, something in a song or a set or a costume rough, unfinished and ungainly. Alexander sighed and so might Ziegfeld. His supremacy in the field of musical revue is unquestioned. Even the shows with which he has no connection follow his modes as best they can, though sometimes at a great distance. He really owes it to himself and to his public to put on, in the near future, a very bad revue so that in the ensuing year that most precious element in entertainment--surprise--may again come to the theater through him. The first of all the Ziegfeld Follies must have furnished its audience with a night of startled rapture. The rest have produced a pleasant evening.

Burdened by years of success, Mr. Ziegfeld must be hampered by innumerable rules about revue making. He has created tradition and probably it rises up in front of him now and again to bark his shins.

The Follies is still an entertainment, but now it is also an inst.i.tution. Plan, premeditation and the note of service must all have won their places in the making of each new show in the succession. The critic will not depart in peace until he has seen somehow, somewhere an altogether irresponsible revue. It will be produced not by Edward Royce but by spontaneous combustion. Some of it will be terrible. Few of the costumes will fit and many of them will be in bad taste. None of the tunes will be hummed by the audience as it leaves the theater. But, nevertheless and notwithstanding, this irresponsible revue of which I speak is going to contain two good jokes.

I had at least a glimmer of hope that _Shuffle Along_ might be the first blow of the revolution against the well-made revue. Early explorers in the Sixty-Second Street Music Hall came back glowing with discovery.

And yet after seeing the negro revue it seems to me that stout Cortes and all his men were duped. In book and music and dancing _Shuffle Along_ follows Broadway tradition just as closely as it can. It is rough with old things which have crumbled and not with new things which are unfinished. And yet it is easy to understand the thrill which swept through some of the pioneers who were the first to see _Shuffle Along_.

In it there is one quality possessed by no other show which has been seen in New York this year. Most musical comedy performers seem to be altruists who are putting themselves out to a great extent in order to please you and the other paying customers. _Shuffle Along_ is entirely selfish. No matter how enthusiastic the audience, it cannot possibly get as much fun out of the show as the performers. Not since the last trip to New York of the Triangle Club have I seen the amateur spirit more fully realized in the theater. Perhaps the performers get paid, but it does not seem fitting. The more engaging theory is that each member of the chorus of _Shuffle Along_ who keeps his work up at top pitch until the end of the season receives a large blue sweater with a white "S. A."

on the front and is then allowed to break training. The ten best performers, in addition, are tapped on the shoulder. There is a rumor that social distinction as well as merit enters into this selection, but it has never, to my knowledge, been confirmed.

Of course, nothing in the remarks above is to be construed as implying that people in the Ziegfeld choruses do not have a good time. Such a statement would certainly be far from the facts. As somebody or other has so aptly said, "It's great to be young and a Ziegfeld chorus girl."

The difference is that no Caucasian chorister, including the Scandinavian, has the faculty of enjoying herself with the same frankness and abandon as the African. Centuries of civilization and weeks of training make it impossible. The Follies girl knows what she likes, but she has been taught not to point. A certain reserve and reticence is part of the Ziegfeld tradition. Even the most daring of Mr.

Ziegfeld's experiments in summer costuming are more esthetic than erotic. Though the legs of the longest showgirl may be bare, one feels that she is clothed in reverence. When the lights begin to dim, and the soft music sounds to indicate that the current Ben Ali Haggin tableau is about to be disclosed, I am always a little nervous. So solemn and dignified is the entire atmosphere of the affair that I feel a little like a Peeping Tom in the presence of G.o.diva and generally I cover my eyes in order that they may be preserved for the final processional in which one girl will be Coal, another Aviation and a third the Monroe Doctrine.

The parade is one of the traditions of the Follies. "When in doubt make them march," is the way the rule reads in Mr. Ziegfeld's notebook. All of which opens the way to the suggestion that Mr. Ziegfeld should try the experiment some year of cutting about $100,000 out of his bill for costumes and using the money to buy a joke. In that case the marching chorus girls could pa.s.s a given point.

XIX

AN ADJECTIVE A DAY

It was a child in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale who finally told the truth by crying out, "He hasn't got anything on," as the king marched through the streets clad only in the magic cloth woven and cut by the swindling tailor. You may remember that everybody else kept silent because the tailor had given out that the cloth was visible only to such as were worthy of their position in life. The child knew nothing of this and anyway he didn't have any position in life, so he piped up and cried, "He hasn't got anything on." And though he was but a child others took up the cry, and finally even the king was convinced and ran to get his bathrobe. The tailor, as we remember the story, was executed.

In course of time that child grew up, and married, and died leaving heirs behind him. And they in turn were not so barren, so that to-day vast numbers of his descendants are in the world. Nearly all of them are critics of one sort or another, but mostly young critics. Like their great ancestor they are frank and shrill, and either valiant or foolhardy as you choose to look at it. Certainly they seldom hesitate to rush in. No, there is no doubt at all that they are just a wee bit hasty, these descendants of the child. It is rather useful that every now and then one of them should point a finger of scorn at some falsely great figure in the arts and cry out his nakedness at top voice. But sometimes they make mistakes. It has happened not infrequently that worthy and respectable artists and authors in great coats, close-fitting sack suits, and heavy woolen underwear, have been greeted by some member of the clan with the traditional cry, "He hasn't got anything on."

This may be embarra.s.sing as well as unfair. Ever since the child scored his sensational critical success so many years ago, all his sons have been eager to do likewise. They have inherited extraordinary suspicion regarding the raiment of all great men. Even when they are forced to admit that some particular king is actually clad in substantial achievement of one sort or another, they are still apt to carp about the fit and cut of his clothing. Almost always they maintain that he borrowed his shoes from some one else and that he cannot fill them.

In regard to humbler citizens they are apt to carry charity to great lengths. In addition to the incident recorded by Andersen they cherish another legend about the child. According to the tradition, he wrote a will just before he died in which he said, "Thank heaven I leave not a single adjective to any of my descendants. I have spent them all."

The clan is notoriously extravagant. They live for all the world like Bedouins of the Sahara without thought of the possibility of a rainy day. Their gaudiest years come early in life. Middle age and beyond is apt to be tragic. Almost nothing in the experience of mankind is quite so heartrending as the spectacle of one of these young critics, grown gray, coming face to face in his declining years with a masterpiece. At such times he is apt to be seized with a tremor and stricken dumb.

Undoubtedly he is tormented with the memory of all the adjectives which he flung away in his youth. They are gone beyond recall. He fumbles in his purse and finds nothing except small change worn smooth. The best he can do is to fling out a "highly creditable piece of work" and go on his way.

Still he has had fun for his adjectives for all that. There is a compensating glow in the heart of the young critic when he remembers the day an obscure author came to him asking bread, though rather expecting a stone, and he with a flourish reached down into the breadbox and gave the poor man layer cake.

"After all," one of the young critics told me in justifying his mode of life, "it may be just as tragic as you say to be caught late in life with a masterpiece in front of you and not a single adequate adjective left in your purse. Yes, I'll grant you that it's unfortunate. But there's still another contingency which I mean to avoid. Wouldn't it be a rotten sell to die with half your adjectives still unused? You know you can't take them with you to heaven. Of what possible use would they be up there? Even the bravest superlatives would seem pretty mean and petty in that land. Think of being blessed with milk and honey for the first time and trying to express your grat.i.tude and wonder with, 'The best I ever tasted.' No, sir. I'm going to get ready for the new eternal words by using up all the old ones before I die."

XX

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

They call him "the unknown hero." It is enough, it is better that we should know him as "the unknown soldier." "Hero" suggests a superman and implies somebody exalted above his fellows. This man was one of many. We do not know what was in his heart when he died. It is entirely possible that he was a fearful man. He may even have gone unwillingly into the fight. That does not matter now. The important thing is that he was alive and is dead.

He was drawn from a far edge of the world by the war and in it he lost even his ident.i.ty. War may have been well enough in the days when it was a game for heroes, but now it sweeps into the combat everything and every man within a nation. The unknown soldier stands for us as symbol of this blind and far-reaching fury of modern conflict. His death was in vain unless it helps us to see that the whole world is our business. No one is too great to be concerned with the affairs of mankind, and no one too humble.

The unknown soldier was a typical American and it is probable that once upon a time he used to speak of faraway folk as "those foreigners." He thought they were no kin of his, but he died in one of the distant lands. His blood and the blood of all the world mingled in a common stream.

The body of the unknown soldier has come home, but his spirit will wander with his brothers. There will be no rest for his soul until the great democracy of death has been translated into the unity of life.

XXI

A TORTOISE Sh.e.l.l HOME

Every once in so often somebody gets up in a pulpit or on a platform and declares that home life in America is being destroyed. The agent of devastation varies. According to the mood of the man with forebodings, it is the motion pictures, the new dances, bridge, or the comic supplements in the Sunday newspapers. It seems to us that these defenders of the home are themselves offensively solicitous. If we happened to be a home, we rather think that we would resent the overeagerness of our champions. They act as if the thing they seek to preserve were so weak and pitiful that it must go down before the gust of any new enthusiasm.

After all, the home is much older than these dragons which are said to be capable of devouring it. Least of all are we disposed to worry over deadly effects from the new dances. This fear has recently been put into vivid form by Hartley Manners in a play called "The National Anthem," in which Laurette Taylor, his wife, was starred. Jazz, according to Mr.

Manners, is our anthem. The hero and the heroine of his play dance themselves to the brink of perdition. The end is tragic, for the husband dies and the wife narrowly escapes from the effects of poison which she has taken by mistake while dazed from drink and dancing.

This seems to us special and exceptional. A vice must be easy to be universally dangerous. All the moralists a.s.sure us that descent by the primrose path is facile. Skill in the new dances argues to us a certain strength of character. We do not understand how any person of flabby will can become proficient. In our own case we must confess that it is not our strength and uprightness which has kept us from jazz, but such traits as timidity and lack of application. As a boy we painstakingly learned the two-step. For this we deserve no great credit. It was not our wish, and only the vigorous application of parental influence carried us through. After we broke away from the home ties we began to back-slide. The dances changed from month to month and we lacked the hardihood to keep up. Cravenly we quit and slumped into a job.

None of our excuses can be made persuasive enough for exoneration. All there is to be said for work as opposed to dancing is that it is so much easier. Of course, our respect is infinite for the st.u.r.dy ones who have gone through the flames of cleansing and perfecting fire and have earned the right to step out upon the waxed floor. Few of them escape the marks of their time of tribulation. Every close observer of American dancing must have noted the set expression upon the face of all partic.i.p.ants.

There is hardly one who might not serve as a model for General Grant exclaiming: "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."

No form of national activity begins to be so conscientious as dancing.