Post Impressions Part 1

Post-Impressions.

by Simeon Strunsky.

I

ALMA MATER BROADWAY

He came in without having himself announced, nodded cheerfully, and dropped into a chair across the desk from where I sat.

"I am not interfering with your work, am I?" he said.

"To tell the truth," I replied, "this is the busiest day in the week for me."

"Fine," he said. "That means your mind is working at its best, brain cells exploding in great shape, and you can follow my argument without the slightest difficulty. What I have to say is of the highest importance. It concerns the present condition of the stage."

"In that case," I said, "you want to see Mr. Smith. He is the editor responsible for our dramatic page."

"I want to speak to the irresponsible editor," he said. "I asked and they showed me in here. I think I had better begin at the beginning."

I sighed and looked out of the window. But that made no difference. He, too, looked out of the window and spoke as follows:

"Last night," he said, "I attended the first performance of A. B.

Johnson's powerful four-act drama ent.i.tled 'H2O.' It was a remorseless exposure of the phenomena attending the condensation of steam. In the old days before the theatre became perfectly free the general public knew nothing of the consequences that ensue when you bring water to a temperature of 212 degrees Fahrenheit. The public didn't know and didn't care. Those who did know kept the secret to themselves. I am not exaggerating when I say that there was a conspiracy of silence on the subject. A play like 'H2O' would have been impossible. The public would not have tolerated such thoroughgoing realism as Johnson employs in his first act, for instance. With absolute fidelity to things as they are he puts before us a miniature reciprocating engine, several turbine engines, and the latest British and German models in boilers, piston-rods, and valve-gears. When the curtain rose on the most masterly presentation of a machine shop ever brought before the public, the house rocked with applause. But this was nothing compared to the delirious outburst that marked the climax of the second act, when the hero, with his arm about the woman he loves, proudly declares that saturated steam under a pressure of 200 pounds shows 843.8 units of latent heat and a volume of 2.294 cubic feet to the pound. The curtain was raised eleven times, but the audience would not be content until the author appeared before the footlights escorted by a master plumber and the president of the steamfitters' union.

"The third act was laid in the reception room of a Tenderloin resort--"

"I don't quite see," I said.

"That followed inevitably from the development of the plot," he replied.

"The heroine, you must understand, had been abducted by the president of a rival steamfitters' union and had been sold into a life of shame.

She is saved in the nick of time by an explosion of the boiler due to superheated steam. In the old days such a scene would have been impossible and the author's lesson about the effects of condensation and vaporization would have been lost to the world."

"And the play will be a success?" I said.

"It's a knockout," he replied. "No play of real life with a punch like that has been produced since C. D. Brewster put on his three-act tragi-comedy, 'Ad Valorem.' As the t.i.tle implies, the play sets out to demonstrate the difference between the Payne-Aldrich tariff law and the Underwood law, item by item. I have rarely seen an audience so deeply stirred as all of us were during the long and pathetic scene toward the end of the first act in which the author deals with the chemical and mineral oil schedule. Are you aware that under the Underwood law the duty on formaldehyde is reduced from twenty-five per cent. to one cent a pound?"

"I hardly ever go to the theatre nowadays," I said.

He looked at me reproachfully.

"Some day you will find yourself, quite unexpectedly, facing a crisis in which your ignorance of the duty on formaldehyde will cost you dear, and then you will have cause to regret your indifference toward the progress of the modern drama. However, the third act of 'Ad Valorem' is laid in the reception room of a Tenderloin resort."

"What?" I said.

"It was bound to be," he replied. "Freed from all Puritanical restrictions, the playwright of the present day follows wherever his plot leads him in accordance with the truth of life. In 'Ad Valorem,'

for instance, the fabulously rich importer of oils and chemicals who is the villain of the piece has succeeded in smuggling an enormously valuable consignment of formaldehyde out of the Government warehouse.

What is more natural than that he should conceal the smuggled goods in the Tenderloin? The case is a perfectly simple one. Forbid a playwright to show the interior of a Tenderloin dive and the public will never know the truth about the Underwood bill. You see, there is nothing about the tariff in the newspapers. There is nothing in the magazines. College professors never mention the subject. Campaign speakers ignore it. There is a conspiracy of silence. Only the theatre offers us enlightenment on the subject. Under such conditions would you keep the playwright from telling us what he knows?"

"Putting it that way--" I said.

"I knew you would agree with me," he went on. "Take, for instance, E. F.

Birmingham's realistic drama, 'The Shortest Way,' in which the author has demonstrated with implacable truthfulness and irresistible logic that in any triangle the sum of two sides is greater than the third. In a joint letter to the freshman cla.s.ses of Columbia University and New York University, the author and the producer of 'The Shortest Way' have pointed out that nowhere have the principles of plane geometry been so clearly formulated as in the second act of the play. The gunman has just shot down his victim on the corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street.

He flees northward on Broadway to Forty-third Street and then doubles backward on Seventh Avenue. The hero, who is a professor of mathematics, recalling his Euclid, runs westward on Forty-second Street, and the curtain descends. At the beginning of the next act we find that the gunman has taken refuge in the reception room of a Tender--"

"I know," I replied. "He was driven there by the irresistible logic of the dramatist's idea."

"Exactly," he said. And so left me.

II

THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE

From the chapter ent.i.tled "My Milkman," in Cooper's volume of "Contemporary Portraits," hitherto unpublished, through no fault of his own, but because one publisher declined to handle anything but typewritten copy, and another suggested that if cut down by half the book might be accepted by the editor of some religious publication, and still another editor thought that if several chapters were expanded and a love story inserted, the thing might do, otherwise there was no market for essays, especially such as failed to take a cheerful view of life, whereupon Cooper insisted that his book was exceptionally cheerful, inasmuch as it showed that life could be tolerable in spite of being so queer, to which the editor replied that serializing a book of humour was quite out of the question. "Then how about Pickwick?" said Cooper--but let us get back to the chapter on the milkman. I quote:

Would sleep never come! I shifted the pillow to the foot of the bed and back; threw off the covers; pulled them over my head; discarded them; repeated the multiplication table; counted footsteps in the street beneath my window; lit a cigarette; tried to go to sleep sitting up and embracing my knees the way they bury the dead in Yucatan. No use. I would doze off, and immediately that unfortunate column of figures would appear, demanding to be added up, and I unable to determine whether sums written in Roman numerals could be added up at all. That is the disadvantage of taking conversation seriously, after ten in the evening, or at any time. I had been discussing the immigration problem till nearly midnight, and now I was busy adding up the annual influx from Austria-Hungary during the last twelve years expressed in Roman numerals. Some people are different. Their opinions don't hurt them. I have heard people say the most biting things about the need of abolishing religion and the family, and five minutes later ask for a caviare sandwich. Whereas I take the total immigration from Austria-Hungary for the last twelve years to bed with me and cannot fall asleep.

I heard the rattle of wheels under my window. It was nearing daybreak. I looked at my watch and it was close to five. I got up, washed in cold water, dressed, and went outside. As I walked downstairs I heard the clatter of bottles in the hallway below and some one whistling cheerfully. It was the milkman. His wagon was at the curb, and as I pa.s.sed down the front steps and stopped to breathe in the sharp, clean, mystic air of dawn, the milkman's horse raised his head, gazed at me for a moment with a curious, friendly scepticism, and sank back into thoughtful contemplation of a spot eighteen inches immediately in front of his fore-legs.

(Here one editor had written in the margin: "Amateurish beginning; should have led off with a crisp phrase or two addressed to the milkman and then proceeded to a psychological a.n.a.lysis of the milkman's horse.")

I said to the milkman:

"This life of yours must be wonderfully conducive to seeing things from a new angle. A world of chill and pure half-shadows; the happiest time of the twenty-four hours; the roisterers gone to bed and the factory-workers not stirring for a good hour. I should imagine that men in your line would all be philosophers."

"It does get a bit lonely," he said. "But I always carry an evening paper with me and read a few lines from house to house. Do you think they'll let Thaw off?"

"What do _you_ think about it?" I said. "I haven't been following up the case."

"I have read every bit of the story," he said. "He isn't any more crazy than you or me. He's been punished enough; what's the use of persecuting a man like that?"

If Thaw were as sound in mind as my friend the milkman, there would be no doubt that he deserved his freedom. My new acquaintance was so well set up, so clear-eyed, with that ruddy glow which comes from shaving and washing in cold water before dawn, with the quiet air of peace and strength which comes from working in the silent hours. I thought what an upright, independent life a milkman's must be, so free from the petty chaffering and meanness that make up the ordinary tradesman's routine.

He has no compet.i.tion to contend with. He is no one's servant. He deposits his wares at your doorstep and you take them or leave them as you please. He can work in the dark because he does not need the light to study your face and overreach you. With no one to watch him, with no one to criticise him, with leisure and silence in which to work out his problems--I envied him.

(Here another editor had written: "Tedious; chance for an excellent bit of characterisation in dialogue entirely missed.")

"You're an early riser," he said.

"Can't fall asleep," I said. "This air will do me good."

"A brisk walk," he suggested.

"I'm too tired," I said.