Unicorns Part 11

_Second Scene._ On the stage of the theatre there are two long tables. The scene is set as if for a banquet. The curtain is down.

Some men walk about conversing--some calmly, some feverishly.

Several are sitting. The lighting is feeble. However, may be discerned familiar figures; Victor Hugo solemnly speaking to Charles Baudelaire--who s.h.i.+vers (un nouveau frisson); Flaubert in a corner roaring at Sainte-Beuve--the old row over Salammbo is on again.

Richard Strauss is pulling at the velvet coat-tails of Richard Wagner, without attracting his attention. The Master, in company with nearly all the others, is staring at a large clock against the back drop. "Listen for the Parsifal chimes," he says, delight playing over his rugged features. "Ape of the ideal," booms a deep voice hard by. It is that of Nietzsche, whose moustaches droop in Polish cavalier style.

"Batiushka! If those two Dutchmen quarrel over the virility of Parsifal I'm going away." The speaker is Tolstoy, attired in his newest Moujik costume, top-boots and all. In his left hand he holds a spade. "To table, gentlemen!" It is the jolly voice of the Irish Ibsen, G. B. S. Lights flare up. Without is heard the brumming of the audience, an orchestra softly plays motives from Pelleas et Melisande. Wagner wipes his spectacles, and Maurice Maeterlinck crushes a block of Belgian oaths between his powerful teeth. But Debussy doesn't appear to notice either man. He languidly strikes his soup-spoon on a silver salt-cellar and immediately jots down musical notation. "The correspondences of nuances," he sings to his neighbour, who happens to be Whistler. "The correspondence of fudge," retorts James. "D'ye think I'm interested in wall-paper music? Oh, Lil'libulero!" All are now seated. With his accustomed lingual dexterity Mr. Shaw says grace, calling down a blessing upon the papier-mache fowls and the pink stage-tea, from what he describes as a gaseous invertebrate G.o.d--he has read Haeckel--and winds up with a few brilliant heartless remarks:

"I wish you gentlemen, ghosts, idols, G.o.ds, and demiG.o.ds, alive or dead, to remember that you are a.s.sembled here this evening to honour me. Without me, and my books and plays, you would, all of you, be dead in earnest--dead literature as well as dead bones. As for the living, I'll have a shy at you some day. I'm not fond of Maeterlinck. ["Hear, hear!" comes from Debussy's mystic beard.] As for you, Maurice, I can beat you hands down at bettering Shakespeare, and, for Richard Strauss--well, I've never tried orchestration, but I'm sure I'd succeed as well as you----"

"Oh, please, won't some one give me a roast-beef sandwich? In Russia I daren't eat meat on account of my disciples there and in England--" It is Tolstoy who speaks. Shaw fixes him with an indignant look, he, the prince of vegetarians: "Give him some salt, he needs salting." In tears, Tolstoy resumes his reading of the confessions of Huysmans. The band, on the other side of the curtain, swings into the Kaisermarch. "Stop them! Stop it!" screams Wagner.

"I'm a Social-Democrat now. I wrote that march when I was a Monarchist." This was the chance for Nietzsche. Drawing up his tall, lanky figure, he began: "You mean, Herr Geyer--to give you your real name--you wrote it for money. You mean, Richard Geyer, that you cut your musical coat to suit your sn.o.bbish cloth. You mean, the Wagner you never were, that you wrote your various operas--which you call music-dramas--to flatter your various patrons. Parsifal for the decadent King Ludwig----"

"Pardieu! this is too much." Manet's blond beard wagged with rage.

"Have we a.s.sembled this night to fight over ancient treacheries, or are we met to do honour to the only man in England, and an Irishman at that, who, in his plays, has kept alive the ideas of Ibsen, Nietzsche, Wagner? As for me, I don't need such booming. I'm a modest man. I'm a painter." "Hein! You a painter!" Sitting alone, Gerome discloses spiteful intonations in his voice. "Yes, a painter," hotly replies Manet. "And I'm in the Louvre, my Olympe--"

"All the worse for the Louvre," sneers Gerome. The two men would have been at each other's throats if some one from the Land of the Midnight Whiskers hadn't intervened. It was Henrik Ibsen.

"Children," he remarks, in a strong Norwegian brogue, "please to remember my dignity if not your own. Long before Max Stirner--"

Nietzsche interrupted: "There never was such a person." Ibsen calmly continued, "I wrote that 'my truth is the truth.' And when I see such so-called great men acting like children, I regret having left my cool tomb in Norway. But where are the English dramatists, our confreres? Ask the master of the revels." Ibsen sat down. Shaw pops in his head at a practicable door.

"Who calls?"

"We wish to know why our brethren, the English playwrights, are not bidden to meet us?" said Maeterlinck, after gravely bowing to Ibsen.

Smiling beatifically, Saint Bernard replied:

"Because there ain't no such thing as an English dramatist. The only English dramatist is Irish." He disappears. Ensues a lively argument. "He may be right," exclaims Maeterlinck, "yet I seem to have heard of Pinero, Henry Arthur Jones, Barrie--well, I'll have to ask the trusty A. B. C. Z. Walkley." "And the Americans?" cries Ibsen, who is annoyed because Richard Strauss persists in asking for a symphonic scenario of Peer Gynt. "I'm sure," the composer complains, "Grieg will be forgotten if I write new incidental music for you." Ibsen looks at him sourly.

"American dramatists, or do you mean American millionaires?" Manet interpolated. "No, I fancy he means the American painters who imitate my pictures, making them better than the originals, and also getting better prices than I did."

"What envy! what slandering! what envious feelings!" sighs Nietzsche. "If my doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence of all things sublunary is a reality, then I shall be sitting with these venomous spiders, shall be in this identical spot a trillion of years hence.

Oh, horrors! Why was I born?"

"Divided tones," argues Manet, clutching Whistler by his carmilion necktie, "are the only--" Suddenly Shaw leaps on the stage.

"Gentlemen, G.o.ds, ghosts, idols, I've bad news for you. Max Nordau is in the audience." "Nordau!" wails every one. Before the lights could be extinguished the guests were under the table. "No taking chances," whispers Nietzsche. "Quoi donc! who is this Nordau--a spy of Napoleon's?" demands Hugo, in bewildered accents. For answer, Baudelaire s.h.i.+vers and intones: "O Poe, Poe! O Edgar Poe." Silence so profound that one hears the perspiration drop from Wagner's ma.s.sive brow.

_Third Scene._ It still snows without. Max, the only Nordau, stands in silent pride. He is alone. The erstwhile illuminated theatre is as dark as the Hall of Eblis. "Gone the idols! All. I need but crack that old whip of Decadence and they crumble. So much for a mere word. And now to work. I'll write the unique tale of Shaw's Cave of Idols, for I alone witnessed the denouement." He spoke aloud. Judge his chagrin when he heard the other Max give him this cheery leading motive: "I saw it all--what a story for my weekly review." "How like a yellow pear-tree!" exclaims the disgusted theorist of mad genius. Nordau speeds his way, as from the box-office comes the c.h.i.n.k of silver. It is G. B. S. counting the cash. Who says a poet can't be a pragmatist? The little Maxixe calls out: "Me, too, Blarney! Remember I'm the only living replica of Charles Lamb." "You mean dead mutton," tartly replied Bernard. The other giggled. "The same dear old whimsical cactus," he cries; "but with all your faults we love you still--I said still, if that's possible for your tongue, George, quite still!" Curtain.

THE WOMAN WHO BUYS

She (entering art gallery): "I wish to buy a t.i.tian for my bridge-whist this evening. Is it possible for you to send me one to the hotel in time?" He (nervously elated): "Impossible. I sent the last t.i.tian we had in stock to Mrs. Groats's Dejeuner Feroce." She (making a face): "That woman again. Oh, dear, how tiresome!" He (eagerly): "But I can give you a Raphael." She (dubiously): "Raphael--who?" He (magisterially): "There are three Raphaels, Madame--the archangel of that name, Raphael Sanzio, the painter, and Raphael Joseffy. It is to the second one I allude. Perhaps you would like to see--" She (hurriedly): "Oh! not at all. I fancy it's all right. Send it up this afternoon, or hadn't I better take it along in my car?" (A shrill hurry-up booing is heard without. It is the voice of the siren on a new one hundred horse-power Cubist machine, 1918 pattern.) She (guiltily): "Tiens! That is my chauffeur, Constant. The poor fellow. He is always so hungry about this time.

By the way, Mr. Frame, how much do you ask for that Raphael? My husband is so--yes, really, stingy this winter. He says I buy too much, forgetting we are all beggars, anyhow. And what is the subject? I want something cheerful for the game, you know. It consoles the kickers who lose to look at a pretty picture." He (joyfully): "Oh, the price! The subject! A half-million is the price--surely not too much. The picture is called The Wooing of Eve.

It has been engraved by Bartolozzi. Oh, oh, it is a genuine Raphael.

There are no more imitation old masters, only modern art is forged nowadays." She (interrupting, proudly): "Bartolozzi, the man who paints skinny women in Florence, something like Boldini, only in old-fas.h.i.+oned costumes?" He (resignedly): "No, Madame. Possibly you allude to Botticelli. The Bartolozzi I mention was a school friend of Raphael or a cousin to Michael Angelo--I've forgotten which.

That's why he engraved Raphael's paintings." (He colours as he recalls conflicting dates.) She (in a hurry): "It doesn't much matter, Mr. Frame, I hate all this affectation over a lot of musty, fusty pictures. Send it up with the bill. I ought to win at least half the money from Mrs. Stonerich." (She rushes away. An odour of violets and stale cigarette smoke floats through the hallway. The siren screams, and a rumbling is heard in the middle distance.) He (waking, as if from a sweet dream, vigorously shouts): "George, George, fetch down that canvas Schmiere painted for us last summer, and stencil it Raphael Sanzio. Yes--S-a-n-z-i-o--got it? Hurry up!

I'm off for the day. If any one 'phones, I'm over at Sherry's, in the Cafe." (Saunters out, swinging his stick, and repeating the old Russian proverb, "A dark forest is the heart of a woman.")

SCHOOLS IN ART

"Yes," said the venerable auctioneer, as he shook his white head, "yes, I watch them coming and going, coming and going. One year it's light pictures, another it's dark. The public is a woman. What fas.h.i.+on dictates to a woman she scrupulously follows. She sports bonnets one decade, big picture hats the next. So, the public that loves art--or thinks it loves art. It used to be the Hudson River school. And then Chase and those landscape fellows came over from Europe, where they got a lot of new-fangled notions. Do you remember Eastman Johnson? He was my man for years. Do you remember the Fortuny craze? His Gamblers, some figures sitting on the gra.s.s?

Well, sir, seventeen thousand dollars that canvas fetched. Big price for forty-odd years ago. Bang up? Of course. Meissonier, Bouguereau, and Detaille came in. We couldn't sell them fast enough. I guess the picture counterfeiters' factories up on Montmartre were kept busy those times. It was after our Civil War. There were a lot of mushroom millionaires who couldn't tell a chromo from a Gerome.

Those were the chaps we liked. I often began with: 'Ten thousand dollars--who offers me ten thousand dollars for this magnificent Munkaczy?' Nowadays I couldn't give away Munkaczy as a present. He is too black. Our people ask for flas.h.i.+ng colours. Rainbows.

Fireworks. The new school? Yes, I'm free to admit that the Barbizon men have had their day. Mind you, I don't claim they are falling off. A few seasons ago a Troyon held its own against any Manet you put up. But the 1830 chaps are scarcer in the market, and the picture cranks are beginning to tire of the dull greys, soft blues, and sober skies. The Barbizons drove out Meissonier and his crowd.

Then Monet and the Impressionists sent the Barbizons to the wall. I tell you the public is a woman. It craves novelty. What's that?

Interested in the greater truth of Post-Impressionism? Excuse me, my dear sir, but that's pure rot. The public doesn't give a hang for technique. It wants a change. Indeed? Really? They have made a success, those young whippersnappers, the Cubists. Such cubs! Well, I'm not surprised. Perhaps our public is tiring of the Academy.

Perhaps young American painters may get their dues--some day. We may even export them. I've been an art auctioneer man and boy over fifty years, and I tell you again the public is a woman. One year it's dark paint, another it's light. Bonnets or hats. Silks or satins.

Lean or stout. All right. Coming--coming!" Clearing his throat, the old auctioneer slowly moves away.

THE JOY OF STARING

Watch the mob. Watch it staring. Like cattle behind the rails which bar a fat green field they pa.s.s at leisure, ruminating, or its equivalent, gum-chewing, pa.s.sing masterpiece after masterpiece, only to let their gaze joyfully light upon some silly canvas depicting a thrice-stupid anecdote. The socialists a.s.sure us that the herd is the ideal of the future. We must think, see, feel with the People.

Our brethren! Mighty idea--but a stale one before Noah entered the ark. "Let us go to the people," cried Tolstoy. But we are the people. How can we go to a place when we are already there? And the people surge before a picture which represents an old woman kissing her cow. Or, standing with eyeb.a.l.l.s agog, they count the metal b.u.t.tons on the coat of the Meissonier Cuira.s.sier. It is great art.

Let the public be educated. Down with the new realism--which only recalls to us the bitterness and meanness of our mediocre existence.

(Are we not all middle-cla.s.s?) How, then, can art be aristocratic?

Why art at all? Give us the cinematograph--pictures that act.

Squeaking records. Canned vocally, Caruso is worth a wilderness of Wagner monkeys. Or self-playing unmusical machines. Or chromos.

Therefore, let us joyfully stare. Instead of your "step," watch the mob.

A DILETTANTE

He is a little old fellow, with a slight glaze over the pupils of his eyes. He is never dressed in the height of the fas.h.i.+on, yet, when he enters a gallery, salesmen make an involuntary step in his direction; then they get to cover as speedily as possible, grumbling: "Look out! it's only the old bird again." But one of them is always nailed; there is no escaping the Barmecide. He thinks he knows more about etchings than Kennedy or Keppel, and when Montross and Macbeth tell him of American art, he violently contradicts them.

He is the embittered dilettante; embittered, because with his moderate means he can never hope to own even the most insignificant of the treasures exposed under his eyes every day, week, and month in the year. So he rails at the dealers, inveighs against the artists, and haunts auction-rooms. He never bids, but is extremely solicitous about the purchases of other people. He has been known to sit for hours on a small print, until, in despair, the owner leaves.

Then, with infinite precautions, our amateur arises, so contriving matters that his hard-won victory is not discovered by profane and prying eyes. Once at home, he gloats over his prize, showing it to a favoured few. He bought it. He selected it. It is a tribute to his exquisite taste. And the listeners are beaten into dismayed silence by his vociferations, by his agile, ape-like skippings and parrot e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns. Withal, he is not a criminal, only a monomaniac of art. He sometimes mistakes a Whistler for a Durer; but he puts the blame upon his defective eyesight.

THE CITY OF BROTHERLY NOISE

Philadelphia is the noisiest city in North America. If you walk about any of the narrow streets of this cold-storage abode of Brotherly Love you will soon see tottering on its legs the venerable New York joke concerning the cemetery-like stillness of the abode of brotherly love. Over there the nerve shock is ultra-dynamic. As for sleep, it is out of the question. Why, then, will ask the puzzled student of national life, does the venerable witticism persist in living? The answer is that in the United States a truth promulgated a century ago never dies. We are a race of humourists. Noise-breeding trolley-cars, constricted streets that vibrate with the clangour of the loosely jointed machinery, an army of carts and the cries of vegetable venders, a mult.i.tude of jostling people making for the ferries on the Delaware or the bridges on the Schuylkill rivers, together with the hum of vast manufactories, all these and a thousand other things place New York in a more modest category; in reality our own city emits few pipes in comparison with the City of Brotherly Noise which sprawls over the map of Pennsylvania. Yet it is called dead and moss-grown. The antique joke flourishes the world over; in Philadelphia it is stunned by the welter and crush of life and politics. Oscar Hammerstein first crossed the Rubicon of Market Street. The mountain of "society" was forced to go northward to this Mahomet of operatic music; else forego Richard Strauss, Debussy, Ma.s.senet, Mary Garden, and Oscar's famous head-tile. What a feat to boast of! For hundreds of years Market Street had been the balking-line of supernice Philadelphians.

Above the delectable region north of the City Hall and Penn's statue was Cimmerian darkness. Hammerstein, with his opera company, accomplished the miracle. Perfectly proper persons now say "Girard Avenue" or "Spring Garden" without blus.h.i.+ng, because of their increased knowledge of munic.i.p.al topography. Society trooped northward. Motor-cars from Rittenhouse Square were seen near Poplar Street. Philadelphia boasts a much superior culture in the crustacean line. The best fried oysters in the world are to be found there. Terrapin is the local G.o.d. And Dennis McGowan of Sansom Street hangs his banners on the outer walls; within, red-snapper soup and deviled crabs make the heart grow fonder.

The difference in the handling of the social "hammer" between Philadelphia and New York, or Boston and Philadelphia, may be thus ill.u.s.trated: At the clubs in Philadelphia they say: "Dabs is going fast. Pity he drinks. Did you see the seven c.o.c.ktails he got away with before dinner last night?" In Boston they say: "Dabs is quite hopeless. This afternoon he mixed up Botticelli with Botticini. Of course, after that--!" Now, in New York, we usually dismiss the case in this fas.h.i.+on: "Dabs went smash this morning. The limit! Serves the idiot right. He never would take proper tips." Here are certain social characteristics of three cities set forth by kindly disposed clubmen. As the Chinese say: An image-maker never wors.h.i.+ps his idols. We prefer the Cambodian sage who remarked: "In h.e.l.l, it's bad form to harp on the heat."

THE SOCIALIST

The socialist is not always sociable. Nor is there any reason why he should be. He usually brings into whatever company he frequents his little pailful of theories and dumps them w.i.l.l.y-nilly on the carpet of conversation. He enacts the eternal farce of equality for all, justice for none. The mob, not the individual, is his s.h.i.+bboleth.

Yet he is the first to resent any tap on his shoulder in the way of personal criticism. He has been in existence since the coral atoll was constructed by that tiny, busy, gregarious creature, and in the final cosmic flare-up he will vanish in company with his fellow man.

He is nothing if not collective. His books, written in his own tongue, are translated into every living language except sound English, which is inimical to jargon. If his communal dreams could come true he would charge his neighbour with cheating above his position; being a reformer, the fire of envy brightly burns in his belly--a sinister conflagration akin to that of Ram Da.s.s (see Carlyle). In the thick twilight of his reason he vaguely wanders, reading every new book about socialism till his confusion grows apace and is thrice confounded. From ignorance to arrogance is but a step. At the rich table of life, groaning with good things, he turns away, preferring to chew the dry cud of self-satisfaction. He would commit Barmecide rather than surrender his theory of the "unearned increment." He calls Shaw and Wells traitors because they see the humorous side of their doctrines and, occasionally, make mock of them. The varieties of lady socialists are too numerous to study.

It may be said of them, without fear of being polite, that females rush in where fools fear to tread. But, then, the woman who hesitates--usually gets married.

THE CRITIC WHO GOSSIPS

He has a soul like a Persian rug. Many-coloured are his ways, his speech. He delights in alliteration of colours, and avails himself of it when he dips pen into ink. He is fond of confusing the technical terms of the Seven Arts, writing that "stuffing the ballot-box is no greater crime than constipated harmonics." But what he doesn't know is that such expressions as gamut of colours, scales, harmonies, tonal values belong to the art of painting, and not alone to music. He is fonder of anecdote and gossip than of history. But what's the use! You can't carve rotten wood. Our critic will quote for you, with his gimlet eye of a specialist boring into your own, the story which was whispered to Anthony Trollope (in 1857, please don't forget) if he would be so kind (it was at the Uffizi Galleries, Florence) as to show him the way to the Medical Venus. This is marvellous humour, and worth a ton of critical comment (which, by Apollo! it be). But, as Baudelaire puts it: "Nations, like families, produce great men against their will"; and our critic is "produced," not made. In the realm of the blind, the c.o.c.k-eyed is king. The critic is said to be the most necessary nuisance--after women--in this "movie" world of ours. But all human beings are critics, aren't they?

THE MOCK PSYCHIATRIST