Plum Pudding by Christopher Morley

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Of Long Island commuters there are two classes: those who travel to
Penn Station, those who travel to Brooklyn. Let it not be denied,
there is a certain air of aristocracy about the Penn Station clique
that we cannot waive. Their tastes are more delicate. The train-boy
from Penn Station cries aloud "Choice, delicious apples," which
seems to us almost an affectation compared to the hoarse yell of our
Brooklyn news-agents imploring "Have a comic cartoon book, 'Mutt
and Jeff,' 'Bringing Up Father,' choclut-covered cherries!" The
club cars all go to Penn Station: there would be a general apoplexy
in the lowly terminal at Atlantic Avenue if one of those vehicles
were seen there. People are often seen (on the Penn Station branch)
who look exactly like the advertisements in _Vanity Fair_. Yet we,
for our humility, have treasures of our own, such as the brightly
lighted little shops along Atlantic Avenue and a station with the
poetic name of Autumn Avenue. The Brooklyn commuter points with
pride to his monthly ticket, which is distinguished from that of the
Penn Station nobility by a red badge of courage--a bright red
stripe. On the Penn Station branch they often punch the tickets with
little diamond-shaped holes; but on our line the punch is in the
form of a heart.

When the humble commuter who is accustomed to travelling via
Brooklyn is diverted from his accustomed orbit, and goes by way of
the Pennsylvania Station, what surprising excitements are his. The
enormousness of the crowd at Penn Station around 5 P.M. causes him
to realize that what he had thought, in his innocent Brooklyn
fashion, was a considerable mob, was nothing more than a trifling
scuffle. But he notes with pleasure the Penn Station habit of
letting people through the gate before the train comes in, so that
one may stand in comparative comfort and coolness downstairs on the
train platform. Here a vision of luxury greets his eyes that could
not possibly be imagined at the Brooklyn terminal--the Lehigh Valley
dining car that stands on a neighbouring track, the pink candles
lit on the tables, the shining water carafes, the white-coated
stewards at attention. At the car's kitchen window lolls a young
coloured boy in a chef's hat, surveying the files of proletarian
commuters with a glorious calmness of scorn and superiority. His
mood of sanguine assurance and self-esteem is so complete, so
unruffled, and so composed that we cannot help loving him. Lucky
youth, devoid of cares, responsibilities, and chagrins! Does he not
belong to the conquering class that has us all under its thumb? What
does it matter that he (probably) knows less about cooking than you
or I? He gazes with glorious cheer upon the wretched middle class,
and as our train rolls away we see him still gazing across the
darkling cellars of the station with that untroubled gleam of
condescension, his eyes seeming (as we look back at them) as large
and white and unspeculative as billiard balls.

In the eye of one commuter, the 12:50 SATURDAY ONLY is the
most exciting train of all. What a gay, heavily-bundled, and
loquacious crowd it is that gathers by the gate at the Atlantic
Avenue terminal. There is a holiday spirit among the throng, which
pants a little after the battle down and up those steps leading from
the subway. (What a fine sight, incidentally, is the stag-like stout
man who always leaps from the train first and speeds scuddingly
along the platform, to reach the stairs before any one else.) Here
is the man who always carries a blue cardboard box full of chicks.
Their plaintive chirpings sound shrill and disconsolate. There is
such a piercing sorrow and perplexity in their persistent query that
one knows they have the true souls of minor poets. Here are two
cheerful stenographers off to Rockaway for the week-end. They are
rather sarcastic about another young woman of their party who always
insists on sleeping under sixteen blankets when at the shore.

But the high point of the trip comes when one changes at Jamaica,
there boarding the 1:15 for Salamis. This is the train that on
Saturdays takes back the two famous club cars, known to all
travellers on the Oyster Bay route. Behind partly drawn blinds the
luncheon tables are spread; one gets narrow glimpses of the great
ones of the Island at their tiffin. This is a militant moment for
the white-jacketed steward of the club car. On Saturdays there are
always some strangers, unaccustomed to the ways of this train, who
regard the two wagons of luxury as a personal affront. When they
find all the seats in the other cars filled they sternly desire to
storm the door of the club car, where the proud steward stands on
guard. "What's the matter with this car?" they say. "Nothing's the
matter with it," he replies. Other more humble commuters stand in
the vestibule, enjoying these little arguments. It is always quite
delightful to see the indignation of these gallant creatures, their
faces seamed with irritation to think that there should be a holy of
holies into which they may not tread.

A proud man, and a high-spirited, is the conductor of the 4:27 on
weekdays. This train, after leaving Jamaica, does not stop until
Salamis is reached. It attains such magnificent speed that it always
gets to Salamis a couple of minutes ahead of time. Then stands the
conductor on the platform, watch in hand, receiving the plaudits of
those who get off. The Salamites have to stand patiently beside the
train--it is a level crossing--until it moves on. This is the daily
glory of this conductor, as he stands, watch in one hand, the other
hand on the signal cord, waiting for Time to catch up with him.
"_Some_ train," we cry up at him; he tries not to look pleased, but
he is a happy man. Then he pulls the cord and glides away.

Among other articulations in the anatomy of commuting, we mention
the fact that no good trainman ever speaks of a train _going_ or
_stopping_ anywhere. He says, "This train _makes_ Sea Cliff and Glen
Cove; it don't make Salamis." To be more purist still, one should
refer to the train as "he" (as a kind of extension of the engineer's
personality, we suppose). If you want to speak with the tongue of a
veteran, you will say, "He makes Sea Cliff and Glen Cove."

The commuter has a chance to observe all manner of types among his
brethren. On our line we all know by sight the two fanatical checker
players, bent happily over their homemade board all the way to town.
At Jamaica they are so absorbed in play that the conductor--this is
the conductor who is so nervous about missing a fare and asks
everyone three times if his ticket has been punched--has to rout
them out to change to the Brooklyn train. "How's the game this
morning?" says someone. "Oh, I was just trimming him, but they made
us change." However thick the throng, these two always manage to
find seats together. They are still hard at it when Atlantic Avenue
is reached, furiously playing the last moves as the rest file out.
Then there is the humorous news-agent who takes charge of the
smoking car between Jamaica and Oyster Bay. There is some mysterious
little game that he conducts with his clients. Very solemnly he
passes down the aisle distributing rolled-up strips of paper among
the card players. By and by it transpires that some one has won a
box of candy. Just how this is done we know not. Speaking of card
players, observe the gaze of anguish on the outpost. He dashes
ahead, grabs two facing seats and sits in one with a face contorted
with anxiety for fear that the others will be too late to join him.
As soon as a card game is started there are always a half dozen
other men who watch it, following every play with painful scrutiny.
It seems that watching other people play cards is the most absorbing
amusement known to the commuter.

Then there is the man who carries a heavy bag packed with books. A
queer creature, this. Day by day he lugs that bag with him yet
spends all his time reading the papers and rarely using the books he
carries. His pipe always goes out just as he reaches his station;
frantically he tries to fill and light it before the train stops.
Sometimes he digs deeply into the bag and brings out a large slab of
chocolate, which he eats with an air of being slightly ashamed of
himself. The oddities of this person do not amuse us any the less
because he happens to be ourself.

So fares the commuter: a figure as international as the teddy bear.
He has his own consolations--of a morning when he climbs briskly
upward from his dark tunnel and sees the sunlight upon the spread
wings of the Telephone and Telegraph Building's statue, and moves
again into the stirring pearl and blue of New York's lucid air. And
at night, though drooping a little in the heat and dimness of those
Oyster Bay smoking cars, he is dumped down and set free. As he
climbs the long hill and tunes his thoughts in order, the sky is a
froth of stars.

[Illustration]

THE PERMANENCE OF POETRY

We heard a critic remark that no great sonnets are being written
nowadays. What (he said morosely) is there in the way of a recent
sonnet that is worthy to take its place in the anthologies of the
future beside those of Sir Philip Sidney, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats,
Mrs. Browning, Louise Guiney, Rupert Brooke, or Lizette Reese?
(These were the names he mentioned.)

This moves us to ask, how can you tell? It takes time for any poem
to grow and ripen and find its place in the language. It will be for
those of a hundred or more years hence to say what are the great
poems of our present day. If a sonnet has the true vitality in it,
it will gather association and richness about it as it traces its
slender golden path through the minds of readers. It settles itself
comfortably into the literary landscape, incorporates itself subtly
into the unconscious thought of men, becomes corpuscular in the
blood of the language. It comes down to us in the accent of those
who have loved and quoted it, invigorated by our subtle sense of the
permanent rightness of its phrasing and our knowledge of the
pleasure it has given to thousands of others. The more it is quoted,
the better it seems.

All this is a slow process and an inscrutable. No one has ever given
us a continuous history of any particular poem, tracing its history
and adventures after its first publication--the places it has been
quoted, the hearts it has rejoiced. It could only be done by an
infinity of toil and a prodigal largesse to clipping bureaus. It
would be a fascinating study, showing how some poems have fought for
their lives against the evaporation of Time, and how they have come
through, sometimes, because they were carried and cherished in one
or two appreciative hearts. But the point to bear in mind is, the
whole question of the permanence of poetry is largely in the hands
of chance. If you are interested to observe the case of some really
first-class poetry which has been struggling for recognition and yet
shows, so far, no sign of breaking through into the clear light of
lasting love and remembrance, look at the poems of James Elroy
Flecker.

Generally speaking, one law is plain: that it is not until the poet
himself and all who knew him are dead, and his lines speak only with
the naked and impersonal appeal of ink, that his value to the race
as a permanent pleasure can be justly appraised.

There is one more point that perhaps is worth making. It is
significant of human experience that the race instinctively demands,
in most of the poetry that it cares to take along with it as
permanent baggage, a certain honourable sobriety of mood. Consider
Mr. Burton E. Stevenson's great "Home Book of Verse," that
magnificent anthology which may be taken as fairly indicative of
general taste in these matters. In nearly 4,000 pages of poetry only
three or four hundred are cynical or satirical in temper. Humanity
as a whole likes to make the best of a bad job: it grins somewhat
ruefully at the bitter and the sardonic; but when it is packing its
trunk for the next generation it finds most room for those poets who
have somehow contrived to find beauty and not mockery in the inner
sanctities of human life and passion. This thought comes to us on
reading Aldous Huxley's brilliant and hugely entertaining book of
poems called "Leda." There is no more brilliant young poet writing
to-day; his title poem is nothing less than extraordinary in pagan
and pictorial beauty, but as a whole the cynical and scoffish tone
of carnal drollery which gives the book its appeal to the humorously
inclined makes a very dubious sandal for a poet planning a
long-distance run. Please note that we are not taking sides in any
argument: we ourself admire Mr. Huxley's poems enormously; but we
are simply trying, clumsily, to state what seem to us some of the
conditions attaching to the permanence of beauty as arranged in
words.

It is not to be supposed that you have done your possible when you
have read a great poem once--or ten times. A great poem is like a
briar pipe--it darkens and mellows and sweetens with use. You fill
it with your own glowing associations and glosses, and the strong
juices seep through, staining and gilding the grain and fibre of the
words.

[Illustration]

BOOKS OF THE SEA

The National Marine League asks, What are the ten best books of the
sea? Without pondering very deeply on the matter, and confining
ourself to prose, we would suggest the following as our own
favourites:

_Typhoon, by Joseph Conrad
The Nigger of the "Narcissus," by Joseph Conrad
The Mirror of the Sea, by Joseph Conrad
Captains Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling
The Brassbounder, by David W. Bone
Salt of the Sea, by Morley Roberts
Mr. Midshipman Easy, by Captain Marryat
The Wreck of the "Grosvenor," by Clark Russell
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
An Ocean Tramp, by William McFee._

If one is allowed to include books that deal partially with salt
water, one would have to add "Treasure Island," "Casuals of the
Sea," by McFee, and "Old Junk," by Tomlinson. The kind of
shallow-water sea tales that we love to read after supper, with our
feet on the nearest chair and a decent supply of tobacco handy, are
the delicious stories by W.W. Jacobs. Dana's "Two Years Before the
Mast," which is spoken of as a classic, we have never read. We have
always had a suspicion of it, we don't know why. Before we tackle it
we shall re-read "The Water Babies." We have always found a good
deal of innocent cheer in the passages in John Woolman's Journal
describing his voyage from Philadelphia to London in 1772. Friend
Woolman, like the sturdy Quaker that he was, was horrified (when he
went to have a look at the ship _Mary and Elizabeth_) to find
"sundry sorts of carved work and imagery" on that part of the vessel
where the cabins were; and in the cabins themselves he observed
"some superfluity of workmanship of several sorts." This subjected
his mind to "a deep exercise," and he decided that he would have to
take passage in the steerage instead of the cabin. Having our self
made use of the steerage aforetime, both in the _Mauretania_ and
humbler vessels, we feel a certain kindred sympathy for his
experiences. We have always enjoyed his remark: "The wind now blew
vehemently, and the sea wrought to that degree that an awful
seriousness prevailed."

To come to poetry, we suppose that the greatest sea-poet who never
ventured on anything more perilous than a ferry-boat was Walt
Whitman. Walt, one likes to think, would have been horribly sea-sick
if he had ventured out beyond the harbour buoy. A good deal of
Walt's tempestuous uproar about the glories of America was
undoubtedly due to the fact that he had never seen anything else.
Speaking of Walt reminds us that one book of the sea that we have
never read (for the best of reasons: it has not been written) might
be done by Thomas Mosher, the veteran tippler of literary minims.
Mr. Mosher, we understand, "followed" the sea in his youth. Not long
ago, when Mr. Mosher published that exquisite facsimile of the 1855
"Leaves of Grass," we asked him when and how he first came in
contact with Whitman's work. He said:

I don't suppose there was anything particularly interesting
about my first acquaintance with Whitman, which at 14 years of
age I made in my old family mansion situated at Smith's Corner,
America. I had been taking "The Galaxy" from its start, only a
few months previous to the date I mention. I can still see
myself in the sitting room of the old house. Smith's Cor.,
America, I will remind you, is a portion of Biddeford, Me. An
extra "d" has got into the old English name--which, by the way,
only a year later I passed through after a shipwreck on the
Devonshire coast. (That was in 1867.) No one ever told me
anything about Walt.

These amateurish speculations on maritime books are of no value
except for the fact that they elicited an interesting letter from an
expert on these matters. William McFee wrote us as follows:--

"The first thing I laid my hands on this evening, while hunting
for some forgotten nugget of wisdom in my note-books filled
with Mediterranean brine, was that list of books for a
projected sea library. Perpend....

_The Sea Farer's Library_

Tom Cringle's Log Michael Scott
Two Years Before the Mast Dana
Midshipman Easy Marryat
Captains Courageous Kipling
The Flying Cloud Morley Roberts
The Cruise of the Cachalot Frank T. Bullen
Log of a Sea Waif Frank T. Bullen
The Salving of a Derelict Maurice Drake
The Grain Carriers Edward Noble
Marooned Clark Russell
Typhoon Conrad
Toilers of the Sea Hugo
An Iceland Fisherman Loti
The Sea Surgeon D'Annunzio
The Sea Hawk Sabatini

"A good many of these need no comment. Attention is drawn not
to the individual items, but to the balance of the whole. That
is the test of a list. But there is a good balance, a balance
of power, and a balance of mere weight or prestige. It is the
power we are after here. Regard for a moment the way 'Tom
Cringle' balances Dana's laconic record of facts. No power on
earth could hold 'Tom Cringle' to facts, with the result that
his story is more truly a representation of sea life in the old
navy than a ton of statistics. He has the seaman's mind, which
Dana had not.

"Then again 'Captains Courageous' and 'The Flying Cloud'
balance each other with temperamental exactitude. Each is a
fine account of sea-doings with a touch of fiction to keep the
sailor reading, neither of them in the very highest class. 'The
Cruise of the Cachalot' is balanced by the 'Log of a Sea Waif,'
each in Bullen's happier and less evangelical vein. I was
obliged to exclude 'With Christ at Sea,' not because it is
religious, but because it does not balance. It would give the
whole list a most pronounced 'list,' if you will pardon the
unpardonable.... I regret this because 'With Christ at Sea' has
some things in it which transcend anything else Bullen ever
wrote.

"Now we come to a couple of books possibly requiring a little
explanation. 'The Salving of a Derelict' is a remarkably able
story of a man's reclamation. I believe Maurice Drake won a
publisher's prize with it as a first novel some years ago. It
was a winner among the apprentices, I remember. 'The Grain
Carriers' is a grim story of greedy owners and an unseaworthy
ship by an ex-master mariner whose 'Chains,' while not a sea
story, is tinged with the glamour of South American shipping,
and is obviously a work written under the influence of Joseph
Conrad. 'Marooned' and 'Typhoon' balance (only you mustn't be
too critical) as examples of the old and new methods of telling
a sea story.

"'The Sea Surgeon' is one of a collection of stories about the
Pescarese, which D'Annunzio wrote years ago. They are utterly
unlike 'II Fuoco' and the other absurd tales on which
translators waste their time. In passing one is permitted to
complain of the persistent ill-fortune Italian novelists suffer
at the hands of their English translators.

"Assuming, however, that our seafarer wants a book or two of
what is euphemistically termed 'non-fiction,' here are a few
which will do him no harm:

"Southey's 'Life of Nelson.'

"'The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,' Mahan.

"Admiral Lord Beresford's 'Memoirs.'

"The Diary of Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty
in the Reign of Charles II and James II. It is most grievously
overlooked that Samuel was the first to draft a naval Rate
Book, which is a sort of indexed lexicon of everything one
needs 'for fighting and sea-going efficiency.' And it is a
pleasure, chastened by occasional fits of ill-temper, to
discover that the present British Naval Rate Book hath in it
divers synonyms coeval with Samuel and his merry monarchs. As
when the present writer tried to order some hammer-handles and
discovered after much tribulation that the correct naval
equivalent for such is 'ash-helms.' Whereupon he toilfully
rewrote his requisitions 'and so to bed.'

"Another suggestion I might make is a volume to be compiled,
containing the following chapters:

I. "Landsmen Admirals," Generals Blake and Monk.
II. "A Dutch Triumvirate," Van Tromp, De Witt and De Ruyter.
III. "Napoleon as a Sea Tactician."
IV. "Decatur and the Mediterranean Pirates."
V. "The Chesapeake and the Shannon."
VI. "The Spanish-American Naval Actions."
VII. "The Russo-Japanese Naval Actions."
VIII. "The Turko-Italian Naval Actions."
Conclusion. "Short Biography of Josephus Daniels."

"Only deep-water sailors would be able to take this suggested
library to sea with them, because a sailor only reads at sea.
When the landward breeze brings the odours of alien lands
through the open scuttle one closes the book, and if one is a
normal and rational kind of chap and the quarantine regulations
permit, goes ashore."

Gruesome as anything in any seafaring pirate yarn is Trelawny's
description (in "Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and
Byron") of the burning of Shelley's body on the seashore near Via
Reggio. The other day, in company with two like-minded innocents, we
visited a bookshop on John Street where we found three battered
copies of this great book, and each bought one, with shouts of joy.
The following day, still having the book with us, we dropped in to
see the learned and hospitable Dr. Rosenbach at his new and
magnificent thesaurus at 273 Madison Avenue. We showed him the book,
because every time one shows the doctor a book he can startle you by
countering with its original manuscript or something of that sort.
We said something about Shelley and Trelawny, in the hope of
starting him off. He smiled gently and drew out a volume from a
shelf. It was the copy of "Prometheus Unbound" that Shelley had
given Trelawny in July, 1822, with an inscription. As the poet was
drowned on July 8, 1822, it probably was the last book he ever gave
away.

One wonders what may have become of the log of the American clipper
that Shelley and Trelawny visited in the harbour of Leghorn shortly
before Shelley's death. Shelley had said something in praise of
George Washington, to which the sturdy Yankee skipper replied:
"Stranger, truer words were never spoken; there is dry rot in all
the main timbers of the Old World, and none of you will do any good
till you are docked, refitted, and annexed to the New. You must log
that song you sang; there ain't many Britishers that will say as
much of the man that whipped them; so just set these lines down in
the log!"

Whereupon Shelley autographed the skipper's log for him, with some
sentiments presumably gratifying to American pride, and drank some
"cool peach brandy." It was his last drink.

We ourself, just as much as Shelley, enjoy visiting ships, and have
had some surprising adventures in so doing. We remember very clearly
our first call upon William McFee, when he was First Assistant
Engineer in S.S. _Turrialba_. But getting aboard vessels is a much
more complicated and diplomatic task than it was in Shelley's day.
Even when armed with Mr. McFee's autographed card, it was by no
means easy. We went dutifully up to the office of the United Fruit
Company at Pier 9, to apply for a pass, and were surveyed with grim
suspicion. Why, we asked gently, in these peaceful times is it so
difficult to visit a friend who happens to be in a ship?
Prohibition, said the candid clerk, and a whole province of human
guile was thereby made plain to our shrinking mind. Mortals incline
readily to sin, it seems, and apparently evil and base men will even
go so far as to pretend a friendship with those who go down to wet
territory in ships, simply for the sake of--well, we cannot bring
ourself to mention it. "How do you know Mr. McFee wants to see you?"
we were asked. Luckily we had Mac's card to prove it.

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