The Invisible Censor Part 9

"Oh!" he digested the fact. Then his eye brightened. "Ah, you have your geisha girls at the swim-beach. How very charming!"

"No," I corrected him. "Those are not our geisha girls. That is the 'shimmy set.' You know: people who are opposed to the daylight saving act and the prohibition amendment."

"Oh, I understand. Republicans," he nodded happily.

As the Servants' Hour was approaching at Bailey's Beach, and as I had no good explanation to give of it to Okura, I thought we might walk along by the ocean before lunch. Okura was entranced by the walk, and by the fact that it ran in front of these private houses, free to the public as to the wind. Once or twice we went down below stone walls, with everything above hidden from us, but this was exceptional. Okura thought the walk a fine example of essential democracy.

"And what are those long tubes?" he asked, as we gazed out toward Portugal.

"Sewer pipes," I said bluntly, looking at the great series of excretory organs that these handsome democratic mansions pushed into the sea.

"Are they considered beautiful?" asked Okura.

"Quite," I told him. "They are one of the features provided strictly for the public."

"So kind!" said the acquiescent j.a.panese.

We went to lunch with a friend of mine whose plutocracy was not entirely intact, and but for one instructive incident it was an ordinary civilized meal. That incident, however, shall live long in my memory because of my inability to interpret it to Okura.

We had just finished melon, the six of us who sat down, when the third man was called to the telephone.

He came back, napkin in hand, and said to his hostess, "I'm awfully sorry, I've got to leave."

His hostess looked apprehensive. "I hope it's nothing serious?"

"Oh, not at all; please don't worry," he responded, plumping down his napkin, "but I've just had a message from Mrs. Jinks. She's a man short and she wants me to come over to luncheon. So long. Awfully sorry!"

"What did that mean, please?" Okura inquired, as we hurried back to see k.u.magae play.

"Do you mean, democratically?"

"Yes."

"I give it up," I retorted.

"But Mr. Owen said you would want to interpret everything democratic to me," Okura ventured on, "and is there not some secret here hidden from me? I fear I am very stupid."

Democratically, I repeated dully, I could not explain.

"But," pressed Okura, "'the world has been made safe for democracy.' I want so much to understand it. I fear I do not yet understand Newport."

And he looked at me with his innocent eyes.

THE CRITIC AND THE CRITICIZED

It is the boast of more than one proud author, popular or unpopular, that he never reads any criticism of his own work. He knows from his wife or his sorrowing friends that such criticism exists. Sometimes in hurrying through the newspaper he catches sight of his unforgettable name. Inadvertently he may read on, learning the drift of the comment before he stops himself. But his rule is rigid. He never reads what the critics say about him.

Before an author comes to this admirable self-denial he has usually had some experience of the ill-nature and caprice of critics. Probably he started out in the friendliest spirit. He said to himself, Of course I don't profess to _like_ criticism. n.o.body likes to be criticized. But I hope I am big enough to stand any criticism that is fair and just. No man can grow who is not willing to be criticized, but so long as criticism is helpful, that's all a man has a right to ask. Is it meant to be helpful? If so, shoot.

After some experience of helpful criticism, it will often occur to the sensitive author that he is not being completely understood. A man's ego should certainly not stand in the way of criticism, but hasn't a man a right to his own style and his own personality? What is the use of criticism that is based on the critic's dislike of the author's personality? The critic who has a grudge against an author simply because he thinks and feels in a certain way is scarcely likely to be helpful. The author and the critic are not on common ground. And the case is not improved by the very evident intrusion of the critic's prejudices and limitations. It is perfectly obvious that a man with a bias will see in a book just what he wants to see. If he is a reactionary, he will bolster up his own case. If he is a Bolshevik he will unfailingly bolshevize. So what is the use of reading criticism?

The critic merely holds the mirror up to his own nature, when he is not content to reproduce the publisher's prepared review.

The author goes on wondering, "What does he say about me?" But the disappointments are too many. Once in a blue moon the critic "understands" the author. He manages, that is to say, to do absolutely the right thing by the author's ego. He strokes it hard and strokes it the right way. After that he points out one or two of the things that are handicapping the author's creative force, and he shows how easily such handicaps can be removed. This is the helpful, appreciative, perceptive critic. But for one of his kind there are twenty bristling young egoists who want figs to grow on thistles and cabbages to turn into roses, and who blame the epic for not giving them a lyric thrill.

These critics, the smart-alecks, have no real interest in the author.

They are only interested in themselves. And so, having tackled them in a glow of expectation that has always died into sulky gloom, the author quits reading criticism and satisfies his natural curiosity about himself by calling up the publisher and inquiring after sales.

For my own part, I deprecate this behavior without being able to point to much better models. Critics are of course superior to most authors, yet I do not know many critics who like to be criticized. It does not matter whether they are thin-skinned literary critics or the hippopotami of sociology. They don't like it, much. Some meet criticism with a sweet resourcefulness. They choke down various emotions and become, oh, so gently receptive. Others stiffen perceptibly, sometimes into a cautious diplomacy and sometimes into a pontifical dignity that makes criticism nothing less than a personal affront. And then there is the way of the combative man who interprets the least criticism as a challenge to a fight. The rare man even in so-called intellectual circles is the man who takes criticism on its merits and thinks it natural that he should not only criticize but be criticized.

The pontifical man is not necessarily secure in his ego. His frigid reception of criticism corresponds to something like a secret terror of it. His air of dignity is really an air of offended dignity: he hates being called on to defend himself in anything like a rough-and-tumble fight. He resents having his slow, careful processes hustled and harried in the duel of dispute.

To hand down judgments, often severe judgments, is part of the pontifical character. But the business of meeting severe judgments is not so palatable. As most men grow older and more padded in their armchair-criticism, they feel that they become ent.i.tled to immunity. The Elder Statesmen are notorious. The more dogmatic they are, the more they try to browbeat their critics. They see criticism as the critic's fundamental inability to appreciate their position.

If you are going to be criticized, how take it? The best preparation for it is to establish good relations with your own ego first. If you interpose your ego between your work and the critic you cannot help being insulted and injured. The mere fact that you are being subjected to criticism is almost an injury in itself. You must get to the point where you realize the impregnability of your own admirable character.

Then the b.u.mblings of the critic cannot do less than amuse you, and may possibly be of use. He is not so sweet a partisan as yourself, yet he started out rather indifferent to you, and the mere fact that he is willing to criticize you is a proof that he has overcome the initial inhumanity of the human race. This alone should help, but more than that, you have the advantage of knowing he is an amateur on that topic where you are most expert-namely, yourself. Be kind to him. Perhaps if you are sufficiently kind he may learn that the beginning of the entente between you is that he should always start out by appeasing your ego.

BLIND

He was, in a manner of speaking, useless. He could tend the furnace and help around the house-scour the bath-tub and clean windows-but for a powerful man these were trivial ch.o.r.es. The trouble with him, as I soon discovered, was complete and simple. He was blind.

I was sorry for him. It was bad enough to be blind, but it was terrible to be blind and at the mercy of his sister-in-law, Mrs. Angier. Mrs.

Angier ran the rooming-house. She was a grenadier of a woman, very tall and very bony, with a virile voice and no touch of femininity except false curls. She wore rusty black, with long skirts, and a ta.s.seled shawl. Her smile was as forced as her curls. She hated her rooming-house and every one in it. Her one desire, insane but relentless, was to save enough money out of her establishment to escape from it. To that end she plugged the gaps in the bathroom, doled out the towels, scrimped on the furnace, scrooged on the attendance. And her chief sacrifice on the altar of her economy was Samuel Earp, her brother-in-law. Since he was blind and useless, he was dependent on her. When she called, he literally ran to her, crying, "Coming, coming!" He might be out on the window-sill, risking his poor neck to polish the windows that he would never see, but, "Do I hear my sister calling me? Might I-would you be so good-ah, you are very kind. Coming, Adelaide, just one moment...." and he would paddle down stairs. She treated him like dirt. Sometimes one would arrive during an interview between them. The spare, gimlet-eyed Mrs. Angier would somehow manage to compel Samuel to cringe in every limb. He was a burly man with a thick beard, iron-gray, and his sightless eyes were hidden behind solemn and imposing steel-rimmed spectacles. Usually, with head lifted and with his voice booming heartily, he was a cheerful, honest figure. I liked Samuel Earp, though he was a most plat.i.tudinous Englishman. But when Mrs. Angier tongue-lashed him, for some stupidity like spilling a water-bucket or leaving a duster on the stairs or forgetting to empty a waste-basket, he became infantile, tearful, and limp. Her lecturing always changed to a sugared greeting as one was recognized. "Good e-e-evening, isn't it a pleasant e-e-evening?" But the only value in speaking to Mrs. Angier was that it permitted Samuel somehow to shamble away to the limbo of the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Of course I wanted to know how, he became blind. Luckily, as Mrs. Angier had prosperous relatives in another part of Chicago, she sometimes could be counted on to be absent, and on those occasions or when she went to church, Samuel haunted my room. He was unhappy unless he was at work, and he managed to keep tinkering at something, but I really believe he liked to chatter to me: and he was more than anxious to tell me how his tragedy had befallen him.

"Oh, dear, yes," he said to me, "it happened during the strike. They hit me on the head, and left me unconscious. And I have never seen since, not one thing."

"Who hit you, Samuel?"

"Who hit me? The blackguards who were out on strike, sir. They nearly killed me with a piece of lead pipe. Oh, dear, yes."

It seemed an unspeakable outrage to me, but in Samuel there was nothing but a kind of healthy indignation. He was not bitter. He never raised his voice above its easy reminiscent pitch.

"But what did you do to them? Why did the strikers attack you? What strike was it?"

"I did nothing at all to them. But, you see, my horse slipped and when I was helpless on the ground with my hip smashed, one of them knocked me out. It was right up on the sidewalk. I had gone after them up on the sidewalk, and I suppose the flags were so slippery that the horse came down."

"But what were you doing on a horse?" I asked in despair.

"I was a volunteer policeman. These scoundrels were led by Debs, and we were out to see that there was law and order in Chicago."

"Oh, the Pullman strike. Were you railroading then?"