Post Impressions Part 14

In the presence of Yum-Yum he is that most appealing figure, a strong man in love torn between desire and duty. The firmness with which he rejects the suggestion that he decapitate himself, arguing that in the nature of things such an operation was bound to be injurious to his professional reputation, reveals a character of almost Roman austerity.

There is something of the Roman, too--or shall we say something of the German?--in the thoroughness with which he would enter on his career. He would prepare himself for his functions as Lord High Executioner by beginning on a guinea pig and working his way through the animal kingdom till he came to a second trombone. This is the old standard of conscientiousness of which our modern world knows so little.

And yet a very modern man withal, this Ko-Ko. I cannot help thinking that Mr. Chesterton would have loved him, and would have had no difficulty in proving that his name should be p.r.o.nounced not Ko-Ko, but the second syllable before the first. He is modern in his extraordinary adaptability to time and circ.u.mstance. Starting life as a tailor, he adapts himself to the august functions of Lord High Executioner. He adapts himself to Yum-Yum. He adapts himself to Katisha. No sooner is he released from prison to become Lord High Executioner than he has ready his convenient little list of people who never would be missed. Of his powers of persuasion we need not speak at great length. His wooing of Katisha is a triumph of romantic eloquence. It carries everything before it, as in that superb climax when Katisha inquires whether it is all true about the unfortunate little tom-t.i.t on a tree by the river, and Ko-Ko replies: "I knew the bird intimately." He is modern through and through, our Ko-Ko. He is at one with Henri Bergson in a.s.serting that existence is not stationary but in constant flux, and that the universe takes on meaning only from our moods:

The flowers that bloom in the spring, Tra la, Have nothing to do with the case.

Far less subtle a character is the Lord High Chancellor in "Iolanthe,"

although, within the well-defined liminations of his type, he is as real as Ko-Ko. Like Ko-Ko he has risen from humble beginnings. But whereas our j.a.panese hero attains fortune by trusting himself boldly and joyfully to life, letting the currents carry him whither they will, like Byron, like Peer Gynt, and like Captain Hobson, the Lord High Chancellor's rise is the result of painful concentration and steadfast plodding. Ko-Ko is at various times the statesman, the poet, the lover, the man of the world (as when he is tripped up by the Mikado's umbrella-carrier). The Lord High Chancellor is always the lawyer. In response to Strephon's impa.s.sioned cry that all Nature joins with him in pleading his love, that dry legal soul can only remark that an affidavit from a thunderstorm or a few words on oath from a heavy shower would meet with all the attention they deserve.

Plainly, we have here a man who has won his way to the highest place in his profession by humdrum methods; the same methods which Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., employed when, by writing in a hand of remarkable roundness and fluency, he became the ruler of the Queen's navee; the same methods brought into play by Major-General Stanley, of the British army and Penzance, when he qualified himself for his high position by memorising a great many cheerful facts about the square of the hypothenuse.

There is matter enough for an entire volume on Gilbert's self-made men--Ko-Ko, the Lord High Chancellor, Major-General Stanley, and the lawyer in "Trial by Jury," who laid the foundation of his fortunes by marrying a rich attorney's elderly ugly daughter. I throw out the suggestion in the hope that it will be some day taken up as the subject of a Ph.D. thesis in the University of Alaska. That is only one hint of the unworked treasures of research that await the student in these librettos. How valuable would be a really comprehensive monograph on the royal attendants in Gilbert, including a comparison of the Mikado's umbrella-carrier with the Lord High Chancellor's train-bearer!

As for Gilbert and Sullivan's women, I find that even if I were not so near to the end of my chapter, I could not enter upon a discussion of the subject. The field is too vast. I must content myself with merely pointing out that Gilbert's ideas on women were painfully Victorian. It is true that the eternal chase of the male by the female was no secret to him. In Katisha's pursuit of Nanki-Poo we have a striking antic.i.p.ation of Anne's pursuit of John Tanner in "Man and Superman." But on the whole, Gilbert describes his women of the upper cla.s.ses as simpering and sentimental--Josephine, Yum-Yum, Mabel, Iolanthe--and his women of the working cla.s.ses as ignorant and incapable. What an extraordinary example of inept.i.tude is afforded by Little b.u.t.tercup, who, in her capacity as baby-farmer, so disastrously mixes up Ralph Rackstraw with Captain Corcoran. Or by Nurse Ruth of Penzance, who fails to carry out orders and, instead of apprenticing her young charge to a pilot, apprentices him to a pirate. Miss Ida Tarbell could not have framed a severer indictment of inefficiency in the home.

XXV

TWO AND TWO

Harding said that if he were ever called upon to deliver the commencement oration at his alma mater, he knew what he would do.

"Of course you know what you would do," I said. "So do I. So does every one. You would rise to your feet and tell the graduating cla.s.s that after four years of sheltered communion with the n.o.blest thought of the ages they were about to plunge into the maelstrom of life. If you didn't say maelstrom you would say turmoil or arena. You will tell them that never did the world stand in such crying need of devoted and unselfish service. You will say that we are living in an age of change, and the waves of unrest are beating about the standards of the old faith. You will follow this up with several other mixed metaphors expressive of the general truth that it is for the Cla.s.s of '14 to say whether this world shall be made a better place to live in or shall be allowed to go to the demnition bow wows. You will conclude with a fervent appeal to the members of the graduating cla.s.s never to cease cheris.h.i.+ng the flame of the ideal. You will then sit down and the President will confer the degree of LL.D. on one of the high officials of the Powder Trust."

But Harding was so much in earnest that he forgot to receive my remarks with the bitter sneer which is the portion of any one unfortunate enough to disagree with him.

"The commencement address I expect to deliver," he said, "will precisely avoid every peculiarity you have mentioned. It is the fatal mistake of every commencement orator that he attempts to deal with principles. He knows that by the middle of June the senior cla.s.s has forgotten most of the things in the curriculum. His error consists in supposing that this is as it should be; that Euclid and the rules of logic were made to be forgotten, and that the only thing the college man must carry out into the world is an Att.i.tude to Life and a Purpose. Which is all rot. There is no necessity for preaching ideals to a graduating cla.s.s. The ideals that a man ought to cling to in life are the same that a decent young man will have lived up to in college. The dangers and temptations he will confront are very much like those he has had to fight on the campus. The undergraduate of to-day is not a babe or a baa-lamb."

He paused and seemed to be weighing the significance of what he had said. Apparently he was pleased. He nodded a vigorous approval of his own views on the subject, and proceeded:

"It is not the temptations of the world the college man must be on the lookout against, but its stupidities, its irrelevancies, its general besotted ignorance. He is less in peril of the flesh and the devil than of the screaming, unintelligent newspaper headline, whether it leads off an interview with a vaudeville star or with a histrionic college professor. What he needs to be reminded of is not principles, but a few elementary facts. My own commencement address would consist of nothing more or less than a brief review of the four years' work in cla.s.s--algebra, geometry, history, physics, chemistry, psychology, everything."

"How extraordinarily simple!" I said. "The wonder is no one has ever thought of this before."

"I admit," he said, "that it may be rather difficult to compress all that matter in fifteen hundred words, but it can be done. It can be done in less than that. My peroration, for instance, would go somewhat as follows--that is, if you care to listen?"

"It will do no harm to listen," I said.

"I would end in some such way: 'Members of the graduating cla.s.s, as you leave the shades of alma mater for the career of life, the one thing above all others that you must carry with you is a clear and ready knowledge of the multiplication table. Wherever your destiny may lead you, to the Halls of Congress, to the Stock Exchange, to the counting room, the hospital ward, or the editorial desk, let not your mind wander from the following fundamental truths. Two times two is four. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. Rome fell in the year 476, but it was founded in the year 753 B. C., and so took exactly 1,229 years to fall. The northern frontier of Spain coincides with the southern frontier of France. The Ten Commandments were formulated at least 2,500 years ago. j.a.pan is sixty times as far away from San Francisco as it is from the mainland of Asia. Virginius killed his daughter rather than let her live in shame. The subject of illicit love was treated with conspicuous ability by Euripides. The legal rate of interest in most of the States of the Union is six per cent. The instinct for self-preservation is one of the elementary laws of evolution. Hamlet is a work of genius. Victor Hugo is the author of "Les Miserables." I thank you.'"

"Thus equipped, any young man ought to become President in time," I said.

"Thus equipped," retorted Harding, "any young man ought to make his way through life as a rational being, and not as a sheep. And that is the main purpose of a college education, or of any process of education. No amount of moral enthusiasm will safeguard a man against the statement that the panic of 1893 was caused by the Democratic tariff bill; but the knowledge that the tariff bill was pa.s.sed in 1894 may be of use. It saves a rational being from talking like a fool. Idealism will not keep a man from investing in get-rich-quick corporation stock; but knowledge of the fact that the common sense and experience of mankind have agreed upon six per cent. as a fair return on capital will keep him from going after 520 per cent. Mind you, it is not the fact that he will lose his money which concerns me. It is the fact that there should be a mentality capable of believing in 520 per cent. The dignity of the human mind is at stake. Or take this matter of the boundary line between France and Spain."

"If you are sure it is related to the subject in hand," I said.

"It is, intimately," he replied. "I am, as you know, exceedingly fond of books of travel. I read them as eagerly as I do all the cheap fiction that deal with brave adventures in foreign lands. Now a very common trait in books of both kinds is the author's fondness for pointing out the differences between the people of the southern part of a particular country and the people living in the northern part. You are familiar with the distinction. The inhabitants of the south are hot-headed, amorous, given to mandolin playing, and lacking in political genius. The people of the north are phlegmatic, practical, averse to love-making, unimaginative, readers of the Bible, and tenacious of their rights. I don't recall who first called attention to the fact. Perhaps it was Macaulay. Perhaps it was Herodotus. The idea is sound enough.

"But observe what the writers have made out of this simple truth. It has escaped them that anything is north or south only by comparison with something else. In the minds of our parrot authors the south has simply become a.s.sociated with one set of stock phrases and the north with another. Here is where my Franco-Spanish frontier comes in. We learn that the people of southern Spain are gay and fickle whereas the people of northern Spain are st.u.r.dy and sober-minded. But cross over into France and the people of southern France are once more gay and fickle, in spite of the fact that they live further north than the sober-minded inhabitants of northern Spain; and the people of northern France are calm and self-reliant. Moving still further toward the Pole, into Belgium, we find that the Belgians of the south are a frivolous lot, but the Belgians of the north are eminently desirable citizens. From what I have said you will no longer be surprised to hear that the inhabitants of southern Sweden are a harum-scarum populace, whereas in the north of Sweden every one attends to his own business. As a result of my long course in travel literature I am convinced that the southern Eskimos are not to be mentioned in the same breath, for hardihood and manly self-control, with the st.u.r.dy inhabitants of northern Congo. People go on writing this terrific nonsense and people go on reading it. A brief review in geography would put a stop to the nefarious practice. Have I made myself clear?"

"The question is whether people are interested in the countries you have mentioned," I said.

Even then Harding was patient with me.

"That is what I would try to do in my commencement oration--arm those young minds against the catch-words and imbecilities of the great world.

Altruism, the pa.s.sion for service, the pa.s.sion for progress, are all very well in their way. But first of all comes the duty of every man to defend the integrity of his own mind and the multiplication table."

XXVI

BRICK AND MORTAR

It is a pleasure to put before my readers the first completely unauthorised interview with Professor Henri Bergson on the spiritual significance of American architecture. We were speaking of Mr. Guy Lowell's original design for New York's new County Court house.

M. Bergson smiled pragmatically.

"A round court house, you say? Suggestive of the Colosseum, with a touch of the Tower of Babel, and the merest _soupcon_ of Barnum and Bailey?

Come then, why not? To me it is eminently just that your architecture should typify the different racial strains that have entered into the making of the American people. When one observes in the facade of your magnificent public buildings the characteristic marks of the Chinese, the Red Indian, the Turco-Tartar, the Provencal, the Lombard Renaissance, the Eskimo, and the Late Patagonian, one catches for the first time the full meaning of your so complex civilisation."

The distinguished philosopher turned in his seat, struck a match on a marble bust of Immanuel Kant just behind him, and lit his cigar. He gazed thoughtfully out of the window. Before him stretched the enchanting panorama of Paris so familiar to American eyes--Notre Dame, the Gare de St. Lazare, the Bois de Boulogne, the Eiffel Tower, the cypresses of Pere Lachaise, the tomb of Napoleon, and the offices of the American Express Company.

"Yes," he said, "one envies the advantages of your multi-millionaires.

The kings and princes of former times, when they built themselves a home, had to be content with a single school of architecture. Your rich men on Fifth Avenue may have two styles, three, four--what say I?--a dozen! And on their country estates, where there is a garage, a conservatory, stables, kennels, the opportunities are unlimited."

"But we have pretty well exhausted all the known styles," I said. "What about the future?"

"Have no fear," he replied. "The archaeologists are continually digging up new monuments of primitive architecture. By the time you need a new City Hall excavations will be very far advanced in Peru and Ceylon.

"The one secret of great architecture," M. Bergson went on, "is that it shall contain a soul, that it shall be the expression of an idea. A splendid courage accompanied by a high degree of disorder is what I regard as the American Idea. Hence the perfect propriety of a fifty-story Venetian tower overlooking a Byzantine temple devoted to the Presbyterian form of wors.h.i.+p. Too many of my countrymen are tempted to scoff at your skysc.r.a.pers. But I maintain that a skysc.r.a.per perfectly expresses the spirit of a people which has created Pittsburg, the Panama Ca.n.a.l, and Mr. Hammerstein's chain of opera houses. Take your loftiest structures in New York and think what they stand for."

I thought in accordance with instructions, and recognised that the three tallest structures in New York symbolised, respectively, the triumph of the five and ten cent store, the sewing machine, and industrial insurance at ten cents a week.

"In your skysc.r.a.pers," he went on, "there speaks out the soul of American idealism."

I recalled what a drug the skysc.r.a.pers are on the real estate market, how they yield an average of two per cent. on the cost, and I decided that our tall buildings are indeed the expression of uncompromising idealism. As an investment there was little to be said for them.

"I repeat," said M. Bergson, "your skysc.r.a.pers stand for an idea, but they also express beauty. Not only do they reveal the restless energy of a people which waits five minutes to take the elevator from the tenth floor to the twelfth, but they also embody the most modern conception of fine taste. I think of them as displaying the perfection of the hobble-skirt in architecture--tall, slim, expensive, and never failing to catch the eye."

We were interrupted by a trim-looking maid who brought in a telegram. My host tore open the envelope, glanced at the message, and handed it to me with a smile. It was from a Chicago vaudeville manager who offered M.

Bergson five thousand dollars a week for a series of twenty-minute talks on the influence of Creative Evolution on the Cubist movement to be ill.u.s.trated with motion pictures. I handed the telegram to M. Bergson, who dropped it into the waste basket.

"People," he said, "have fallen into the habit of a.s.serting that beauty in architecture is not to be separated from utility. To be beautiful a building must at once reveal the use to which it is devoted. But this need not mean that a certain architectural type must be devoted to a certain purpose. The essential thing is uniformity. The same form should be devoted to the same purpose. Then there would be no trouble in learning the peculiar architectural language of a city. When I was in New York I experienced no difficulty whatsoever. When I saw a Corinthian temple I knew it was a church. When I saw a Roman basilica I knew it was a bank. When I saw a Renaissance palace I knew it was a public bath house. When I saw an a.s.syrian palace I knew there was a cabaret tea inside. When I saw a barracks I knew it was a college laboratory. When I saw a fortress I knew it was an aquarium. The soul of the city spoke out very clearly to me."