Plum Pudding by Christopher Morley

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

_Taciturnity is natural to man._

When he says, "How about a nice little shampoo this morning?" we are
prompt to indicate:

_The wise man attends to the inner significance of things and
does not concern himself with outward appearances._

When, as we sit in the chair, we see (in the mirror before us) the
lovely reflection of the beautiful manicure lady, and she arches her
eyebrows at us to convey the intimation that we ought to have our
hands attended to, old Lao-Tse is ready with the answer. We reassure
ourself with his remark:

_Though he be surrounded with sights that are magnificent, the
wise man will remain calm and unconcerned._

When the shine boy offers to burnish our shoes, we call his
attention to:

_He who closes his mouth and shuts his sense gates will be free
from trouble to the end of life._

When the barber suggests that if we were now to have a liberal
douche of bay rum sprayed over our poll it would be a glittering
consummation of his task, we show him the words:

_If one tries to improve a thing, he mars it._

And when (finally) the irritated tonsor suggests that if we don't
wait so long next time before getting our hair cut we will not be
humiliated by our condition, we exhibit Lao-Tse's aphorism:

_The wise man is inaccessible to favour or hate; he cannot be
reached by profit or injury; he cannot be honoured or
humiliated._

"It's very easy," says the barber as we pay our check; "just drop in
here once a month and we'll fix you up." And we point to:

_The wise man lives in the world, but he lives cautiously,
dealing with the world cautiously. Many things that appear easy
are full of difficulties._

* * * * *

To a lot of people who are in a mortal scurry and excitement what is
so maddening as the calm and unruffled serenity of a dignified
philosopher who gazes unperturbed upon their pangs? So did we
meditate when facing the deliberate and mild tranquillity of the
priestly person presiding over the bulletin board announcing the
arrival of trains at the Pennsylvania Station. It was in that
desperate and curious limbo known as the "exit concourse," where
baffled creatures wait to meet others arriving on trains and
maledict the architect who so planned matters that the passengers
arrive on two sides at once, so that one stands grievously in the
middle slewing his eyes to one side and another in a kind of
vertigo, attempting to con both exits. We cannot go into this matter
in full (when, indeed, will we find enough white paper and enough
energy to discuss _anything_ in full, in the way, perhaps, Henry
James would have blanketed it?), but we will explain that we were
waiting to meet someone, someone we had never seen, someone of the
opposite sex and colour, in short, that rare and desirable creature
a cook, imported from another city, and she had missed her train,
and all we knew was her first name and that she would wear a "brown
turban." After prowling distraitly round the station (and a large
station it is) and asking every likely person if her name was
Amanda, and being frowned upon and suspected as a black slaver, and
thinking we felt on our neck the heated breath and handcuffs of the
Travellers' Aid Society, we decided that Amanda must have missed her
train and concluded to wait for the next. Then it was, to return to
our thesis, that we had occasion to observe and feel in our own
person the wretched pangs of one in despair facing the gentle--shall
we say hesychastic?--peace and benevolent quietness of the man at
the bulletin board. Bombarded with questions by the impatient and
anxious crowd, with what pacific good nature he answered our doubts
and querulities. And yet how irritating was his calmness, his
deliberation, the very placidity of his mien as he surveyed his
clacking telautograph and leisurely took out his schoolroom eraser,
rubbed off an inscription, then polished the board with a cloth,
then looked for a piece of chalk and wrote in a fine curly hand some
notation about a train from Cincinnati in which we were not at all
interested. Ah, here we are at last! Train from Philadelphia!
Arriving on track Number--; no, wrong again! He only change _5
minutes late_ to _10 minutes late_. The crowd mutters and fumes. The
telautograph begins to stutter and we gaze at it feverishly. It
stops again and our dominie looks at it calmly. He taps it gently
with his finger. We wonder, is it out of order? Perhaps that train
is already coming in and he doesn't know it, and Amanda may be
wandering lost somewhere in the vast vistas of the station looking
for us. Shall we dash up to the waiting room and have another look?
But Amanda does not know the station, and there are so many places
where benches are put, and she might think one of those was the
waiting room that had been mentioned. And then there is this
Daylight Saving time mix-up. In a sudden panic we cannot figure out
whether Philadelphia time is an hour ahead of New York time or an
hour behind. We told Amanda to take the one o'clock from
Philadelphia. Well, should she arrive here at two o'clock or at
four? It being now 5:10 by our time, what are we to do? The
telautograph clicks. The priestly person slowly and gravely writes
down that the Philadelphia train is arriving on Track 6. There is a
mad rush: everyone dashes to the gate. And here, coming up the
stairs, is a coloured lady whose anxiously speculating eye must be
the one we seek. In the mutuality of our worry we recognize each
other at once. We seize her in triumph; in fact, we could have
embraced her. All our anguish is past. Amanda is ours!

[Illustration]

THOUGHTS IN THE SUBWAY

I

We hear people complain about the subway: its brutal competitive
struggle, its roaring fury and madness. We think they have not
sufficiently considered it.

Any experience shared daily and for a long time by a great many
people comes to have a communal and social importance; it is
desirable to fill it with meaning and see whether there may not be
some beauty in it. The task of civilization is not to be always
looking wistfully back at a Good Time long ago, or always panting
for a doubtful millennium to come; but to see the significance and
secret of that which is around us. And so we say, in full
seriousness, that for one observer at any rate the subway is a great
school of human study. We will not say that it is an easy school: it
is no kindergarten; the curriculum is strenuous and wearying, and
not always conducive to blithe cheer.

But what a tide of humanity, poured to and fro in great tides over
which the units have little control. What a sharp and troubled
awareness of our fellow-beings, drawn from study of those thousands
of faces--the fresh living beauty of the girls, the faces of men
empty of all but suffering and disillusion, a shabby errand boy
asleep, goggling with weariness and adenoids--so they go crashing
through the dark in a patient fellowship of hope and mysterious
endurance. How can one pass through this quotidian immersion in
humanity without being, in some small degree, enriched by that
admiring pity which is the only emotion that can permanently endure
under the eye of a questioning star?

Why, one wonders, should we cry out at the pangs and scuffles of the
subway? Do we expect great things to come to pass without
corresponding suffering? Some day a great poet will be born in the
subway--spiritually speaking; one great enough to show us the
terrific and savage beauty of this multitudinous miracle. As one
watches each of those passengers, riding with some inscrutable
purpose of his own (or an even more inscrutable lack of purpose)
toward duty or liberation, he may be touched with anger and contempt
toward individuals; but he must admit the majesty of the spectacle
in the mass. One who loves his country for a certain candour and
quick vigour of spirit will view the scene again and again in the
hope of spying out some secrets of the national mind and destiny.
Daily he bathes in America. He has that curious sense of mystical
meaning in common things that a traveller feels coming home from
abroad, when he finds even the most casual glimpses strangely
pregnant with national identity. In the advertisements, despite all
their absurdities; in voices humorous or sullen; even in the books
that the girls are reading (for most girls read books in the subway)
he will try to divine some authentic law of life.

He is but a poor and mean-spirited lover--whether of his city, his
country, or anything else--who loves her only because he has known
no other. We are shy of vociferating patriotism because it is callow
and empty, sprung generally from mere ignorance. The true
enthusiast, we would like to think, is he who can travel daily some
dozen or score of miles in the subway, plunged in the warm wedlock
of the rush hours; and can still gather some queer loyalty to that
rough, drastic experience. Other than a sense of pity and affection
toward those strangely sculptured faces, all busy upon the fatal
tasks of men, it is hard to be precise as to just what he has
learned. But as the crowd pours from the cars, and shrugs off the
burden of the journey, you may see them looking upward to console
themselves with perpendicular loveliness leaping into the clear sky.
Ah, they are well trained. All are oppressed and shackled by things
greater than themselves; yet within their own orbits of free
movement they are masters of the event. They are patient and
friendly, and endlessly brave.

II

The train roared through the subway, that warm typhoon whipping
light summer dresses in a multitudinous flutter. All down the
bright crowded aisle of patient humanity I could see their blowing
colours.

My eyes were touched with Truth: I saw them as they are, beautiful
and brave.

Is Time never sated with loveliness? How many million such he has
devoured, and must he take these, too? They are so young, so
slender, so untutored, such unconscious vessels of amazing life; so
courageous in their simple finery, so unaware of the Enemy that
waits for us all. With what strange cruelties will he trouble them,
their very gayety a temptation to his hand? See them on Broadway at
the lunch hour, pouring in their vivacious thousands onto the
pavement. Is there no one who wonders about these merry little
hostages? Can you look on them without marvelling at their gallant
mien?

They are aware of their charms, but unconscious of their loveliness.
Surely they are a new generation of their sex, cool, assured, even
capable. They are happy, because they do not think too much; they
are lovely, because they are so perishable, because (despite their
naive assumption of certainty) one knows them so delightfully only
an innocent ornament of this business world of which they are so
ignorant. They are the cheerful children of Down Town, and Down Town
looks upon them with the affectionate compassion children merit.
Their joys, their tragedies, are the emotions of children--all the
more terrible for that reason.

And so you see them, day after day, blithely and gallantly faring
onward in this Children's Crusade. Can you see that caravan of life
without a pang? For many it is tragic to be young and beautiful and a
woman. Luckily, they do not know it, and they never will. But in
courage, and curiosity, and loveliness, how they put us all to
shame. I see them, flashing by in a subway train, golden sphinxes,
whose riddles (as Mr. Cabell said of Woman) are not worth solving.
Yet they are all the more appealing for that fact. For surely to be
a riddle which is not worth solving, and still is cherished as a
riddle, is the greatest mystery of all. What strange journeys lie
before them, and how triumphantly they walk the precipices as though
they were mere meadow paths.

My eyes were touched with Truth, and I saw them as they are,
beautiful and brave. And sometimes I think that even Time must be
sated with loveliness; that he will not crumble them or mar their
gallant childishness; that he will leave them, their bright dresses
fluttering, as I have seem them in the subway many a summer day.

[Illustration]

DEMPSEY vs. CARPENTIER

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but as
Frank Adams once remarked, the betting is best that way. The event
at Boyle's Thirty Acres in Jersey City was the conclusive triumph of
Reality over Romance, of Prose over Poetry. To almost all the
newspaper-reading world--except the canny fellows who study these
matters with care and knowledge--Carpentier had taken on something
of the lustre and divinity of myth. He was the white Greek god, he
was Mercury and Apollo. The dope was against him; but there were
many who felt, obscurely, that in some pregnant way a miracle would
happen. His limbs were ivory, his eyes were fire; surely the gods
would intervene! Perhaps they would have but for the definite
pronouncement of the mystagogue G.B. Shaw. Even the gods could not
resist the chance of catching Shaw off his base.

We are not a turncoat; we had hoped that Carpentier would win. It
would have been pleasant if he had, quite like a fairy tale. But we
must tell things as we see them. Dempsey, in a very difficult
situation, bore himself as a champion, and (more than that) as a man
of spirit puzzled and angered by the feeling that has been rumoured
against him. Carpentier entered the ring smiling, perfectly at ease;
but there was that same sunken, wistful, faintly weary look about
his eyes that struck us when we first saw him, at Manhasset, three
weeks ago. It was the look of a man who has had more put upon him
than he can rightly bear. But with what a grace and aplomb he stood
upon that scaffold! Dempsey, on the other hand, was sullen and
sombre; when they spoke together he seemed embarrassed and kept his
face averted. As the hands were bandaged and gloves put on, he sat
with lowered head, his dark poll brooding over his fists, not unlike
Rodin's Thinker. Carpentier, at the opposite corner, was apparently
at ease; sat smilingly in his gray and black gown, watching the
airplanes.

You have read the accounts of the fight to small purpose if you do
not realize that Carpentier was utterly outclassed--not in skill or
cunning, but in those qualities where the will has no part, in power
and reach. From the first clinch, when Dempsey began that series of
terrible body jabs that broke down the Frenchman's energy and speed,
the goose was cooked. There was nothing poetic or glamorous about
those jabs; they were not spectacular, not particularly swift; but
they were terribly definite. Half a dozen of them altered the scene
strangely. The smiling face became haggard and troubled.

Carpentier, too, must have been leaving something to the gods, for
his tactics were wildly reckless. He was the aggressor at the start,
leading fiercely for Dempsey's jaw, and landing, too, but not
heavily enough to do damage. Again and again in that first round he
fell into the fatal embrace in which Dempsey punished him busily,
with those straight body strokes that slid in methodically, like
pistons. Georges seemed to have no defence that could slacken those
blows. After every clinch his strength plainly ebbed and withered.
Away, he dodged nimbly, airily, easily more dramatic in arts of
manoeuvre. But Dempsey, tall, sullen, composed, followed him
steadily. He seemed slow beside that flying white figure, but that
wheeling amble was deadly sure. He was always on the inner arc,
Carpentier on the outer; the long, swarthy arms were impenetrable in
front of his vitals; again and again he followed up, seeking to
corner his man; Carpentier would fling a shining arm at the dark
jaw; a clinch would follow in which the two leaned together in that
curious posture of apparent affection; and they hung upon each
other's necks--Carpentier, from a distance, looking almost like a
white girl languishing in the arms of some dark, solicitous lover.
But Mr. Dempsey was the Fatal Bridegroom, for at each union he would
rivet in several more of those steam punches.

There was something almost incredible in the scene--so we had been
drilled in that Million-Dollar Myth, the unscathability of
Carpentier. Was this Gorgeous Georges, this blood-smeared, wilting,
hunted figure, flitting desperately from the grim, dark-jowled
avenger? And then, in the latter part of the second round, Georges
showed one flash of his true genius. Suddenly he sprang, leaping (so
it seemed) clear from the canvas, and landed solidly (though not
killingly) on Dempsey's jaw. There was a flicker of lightning blows,
and for an instant Dempsey was retreating, defensive, even a little
jarred. That was the high moment of the fight, and the crowd then
showed its heart. Ninety thousand people had come there to see
bloodshed; through several humid hours they had sat in a rising
temperature, both inward and outward, with cumulating intensity like
that of a kettle approaching the boil. Dempsey had had a bigger hand
on entering the ring; but so far it had been too one-sided for much
roaring. But now, for an instant, there was actual fighting. There
were some who thought that if Georges could have followed up this
advantage he still had a chance. We do not think so. Dempsey was not
greatly shaken. He was too powerful and too hard to reach. They
clinched and stalled for a moment, and the gong came shortly. But
Carpentier had shown his tiger streak. Scotty Monteith, manager (so
we were told) of Johnny Dundee, sat just in front of us in a pink
skirt, and had been gathering up substantial wagers from the
ill-starred French journalists near by. Scotty was not in any doubt
as to the outcome, but even he was moved by Carpentier's gallant
sally. "No one knew he was a fighter like that," he said.

The rest is but a few words. Carpentier's face had a wild, driven
look. His hits seemed mere taps beside Dempsey's. In the fourth
round he went down once, for eight or nine counts, and climbed up
painfully. The second time he sprawled flat; Dempsey, still with
that pensive lowered head, walked grimly in a semi-circle, waiting
to see if that was the end. It was. Greek gods are no match for
Tarzans in this game.

It was all over in a breathless flash. It was not one lucky blow
that did it, but a sequence of business-like crushing strokes. We
shall not soon forget that picture before the gong rang: Carpentier,
still the White Knight of legend and glory, with his charming upward
smile and easy unconcern; and Dempsey's dark cropped head, bent and
glowering over his chest. There was in Dempsey's inscrutable,
darkling mien a cold, simmering anger, as of a man unfairly hounded,
he hardly knew why. And probably, we think, unjustly. You will say
that we import a symbolism into a field where it scarcely thrives.
But Carpentier's engaging merriment in the eye of oncoming downfall
seemed to us almost a parable of those who have smiled too
confidingly upon the dark faces of the gods.

[Illustration]

A LETTER TO A SEA CAPTAIN
(To D.W.B.)

DEAR CAPTAIN:

You are the most modest of men, but even at the risk of arousing
your displeasure we have it on our mind to say something about you.
We shall try not to be offensively personal, for indeed we are
thinking not merely of yourself but also of the many others of your
seafaring art who have always been such steadfast servants of the
public, the greatness of whose service has not always been well
enough understood. But perhaps it is only fair that the sea captain,
so unquestionable an autocrat in his own world, should be called
upon to submit to that purging and erratic discipline which is so
notable a feature of our American life--publicity!

It is not enough understood, we repeat, how valuable and charming
the sea captain is as an agent and private ambassador of
international friendship. Perhaps we do not know you until we have
seen you at sea (may the opportunity serve anon!). We have only
known you with your majesty laid aside, your severity relaxed. But
who else so completely and humorously understands both sides of the
water, and in his regular movements from side to side acts so shrewd
a commentator on Anglo-American affairs? Who takes more keen delight
in our American ways, in the beauty of this New York of which we are
so proud, who has done so much to endear each nation to the other?
Yours, true to your blood (for you are _Scot Scotorum_), is the
humorist's way: how many passengers you have warmed and tickled with
your genial chaff, hiding constant kindness under a jocose word,
perhaps teasing us Americans on our curious conduct of knives and
forks, or (for a change) taking the cisatlantic side of the jape,
esteeming no less highly a sound poke at British foibles.

All this is your personal gift: it is no necessary part of the
master's equipment to be so gracefully conversable. Of the graver
side of the sea captain's life, though you say little, we see it
unconsciously written in your bearing. Some of us, who know just a
little about it, can guess something of its burdens, its vigils, and
its courages. There is something significant in the obscure instinct
that some of your friends have to seize what opportunity they can of
seeing you in your own quarters when you are in port. For though a
ship in dock is a ship fettered and broken of much of her life and
meaning, yet in the captain's cabin the landsman feels something of
that fine, faithful, and rigorous way of life. It is a hard life, he
knows; a life of stringent seriousness, of heavy responsibilities:
and yet it is a life for which we are fool enough to speak the
fool's word of envy. It is a life spared the million frittering
interruptions and cheerful distractions that devil the journalist;
it is a life cut down to the essentials of discipline, simplicity,
and service; a life where you must, at necessity, be not merely
navigator but magistrate, employer, and priest. Birth, death, and
all the troubles that lie between, fall under your sway, and must
find you unperturbed. But, when you go out of that snug cabin for
your turn of duty, at any rate you have the dark happiness of
knowing that you go to a struggle worthy your powers, the struggle
with that old, immortal, unconquerable, and yet daily conquered
enemy, the Sea.

And so you go and come, you go and come, and we learn to count on
your regular appearance every four weeks as we would on any stated
gesture of the zodiac. You come eager to pick up the threads of what
has been happening in this our town, what books people are talking
about, what is the latest jape, and what (your tastes being so
catholic!) "Percy and Ferdie" are up to. And you, in turn, bring
news of what they are saying in Sauchiehall Street or Fleet Street,
and what books are making a stir on the other side. You take copies
of American books that catch your fancy and pass them on to British
reviewers, always at your quixotic task of trying to make each side
appreciate the other's humours. For, though we promised not to give
you away too personally, you are not only the sea captain but the
man of letters, too, eminent in that field in your own right.

There must be some valid reason why so many good writers, and
several who have some claim on the word "great," have been bred of
the sea. Great writing comes from great stress of mind--which even a
journalist may suffer--but it also requires strictness of seclusion
and isolation. Surely, on the small and decently regimented island
of a ship a man's mind must turn inward. Surrounded by all that
barren beauty of sky and sea, so lovely, and yet so meaningless to
the mind, the doomed business of humanity must seem all the more
precious and deserving of tenderness. Perhaps that is what old
George Herbert meant when he said, _He that will learn to pray, let
him go to sea_.

THE END

* * * * *

_This and the following are advertisements of Mr. Morley's books._

A modern humorist with the tang of an Elizabethan

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

Once upon a time Christopher Morley was coerced, against the
objections of a well-nigh blushing modesty, to dictate some notes
which we may go so far as to call autobiographical. In part they
were:

"Born at Haverford, Pa., in 1890; father, professor of mathematics
and a poet; mother a musician, poet, and fine cook. I was
handicapped by intellectual society and good nourishment. I am and
always have been too well fed. Great literature proceeds from an
empty stomach. My proudest achievement is having been asked by a
college president to give a course of lectures on Chaucer.

"When I was graduated from Haverford in 1910, a benevolent posse of
college presidents in Maryland sent me to New College, Oxford, as a
Rhodes scholar. At Oxford I learned to drink shandygaff. When I came
home from England in 1913 I started to work for Doubleday, Page &
Company at Garden City. I learned to read Conrad, and started my
favorite hobby, which is getting letters from William McFee. By the
way, my favorite amusement is hanging around Leary's second-hand
book store in Philadelphia. My dearest dream is to own some kind of
a boat, write one good novel and about thirty plays which would each
run a year on Broadway. I have written book reviews, editorials,
dramatic notices, worked as a reporter, a librarian, in a bookstore,
and have given lectures." Mr. Morley should have added that he is
now conductor of "The Bowling Green" on the editorial page of the
New York _Evening Post_.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14