Romance and Reticence
Whenever a man remarks "I've had a mighty adventurous life, I have," we usually set him down as a former king of the Coney Island carnival or a recently returned delegate from an Elks' convention in Kansas City. It has been our somewhat bitter experience that the man who pictures himself as a great adventurer is almost invariably spurious. As a matter of fact, the rule holds good for great wits, great lovers and great drinkers. But it applies with particular pertinence to romantic folk.
A wise professor at Harvard once remarked that he didn't believe that the ancients realized that they were ancients. We have somewhat the same feeling about quaint people and romantic people and adventurous people.
Of course we must admit the existence in life and in literature of authentic but sophisticated romantic figures. Cyrano was one and, to a lesser extent, d'Artagnan. Porthos is on our side. But the best example we can remember is Huckleberry Finn. Tom Sawyer pictured himself as a romantic figure. Huck didn't. When Huck went a-wandering he thought it was because the store clothes the widow had given him were uncomfortable. It was actually another itch, but he did not know its name. This to our mind is the essence of true adventure. When a man comes to recognize romance he is in a position to bargain and parley. He is not the true adventurer. Things no longer just happen to him. He has to go out and seek them. He has lost his amateur standing.
Huck, who didn't know what it was all about, had much more exciting adventures than Tom and he was a more fascinating figure in the happening. Jim would also come into our category of true adventurers, and, to skip back a bit, Tom Jones is almost type perfect. Just so Sancho Panza seems to us more fundamentally romantic than Don Quixote, and we have always been more interested in what happened to Doctor Watson than in the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock foresaw things--and that is fatal to romance.
The Prodigal Son belongs in our list, and Andrew Jackson, and Lot's wife, and Eddie Rickenbacker, and Lord Jim, and Ajax, and Little Red Riding Hood, and Thomas Edison, and the father of the Katzenjammer Kids, and most of Bluebeard's wives and all the people who refused to go into the ark.
While we are willing to admit that there are other types who are successfully romantic, in spite of self-consciousness, they are the exceptions. We are hardly willing to accept them in a group. This brings us to Mrs. Fiske's new play, _Mis' Nelly, of N'Orleans_, at which we have been aiming throughout the article.
There are nine characters in the play, and the author pictures each of them as being distinctly aware that he is an adventurous character, in a quaint garden, in a romantic city, in a mad story. It is true that these people do some romantic and adventurous things, but never without first predicting that they are going to be romantic, and then explaining after it is all over that they have been romantic. From our point of view there is too much challenge in this. Whenever a man or woman in a play or in life promises that he is about to do something quaint we have an irresistible desire to lay him 6 to 5 that it won't be any such thing.
Then if the decision is left to us we always decide against him.
The method of the preliminary puff and the subsequent official confirmation is decidedly a mistake in the case of the character portrayed by Mrs. Fiske in _Mis' Nelly, of N'Orleans_. Mrs. Fiske showed herself quite capable of carrying the role of a spirited, romantic and adventurous belle, and it was unnecessary to have her triumph so carefully prepared in advance by the predictions of her servants as to what she would do when she "got her Jim Crow up."
We might have been content to accept some of the other characters as sure enough romantic figures if they had not been so confoundedly confident that they were. They fairly challenged us into disbelief. The author, to our mind, was wrong from the beginning in describing his comedy on the program as a comedy of "moonshine, madness and make-believe." Moonshine and madness are both elusive stage qualities.
An author is fortunate indeed if he can achieve them. He is foolish to take the risk of predicting them. If he succeeds in presenting authentic moonshine and madness he will not need to inform the audience of the fact by means of the program and still less through his characters.
_Mis' Nelly, of N'Orleans_ left us much more convinced of the make-believe.
A play which affected us in somewhat similar fashion was _The Gipsy Trail_, produced here a season or so ago. In this play the author presented a character who seemed to be a truly romantic figure for at least half the play. Then he was suddenly trapped into a confession that he was romantic. Somebody asked him about it, and, most unfortunately, he set out to prove that he was an adventurer in a long speech beginning "I have fried eggs on top of the Andes" or in some such manner, and from that moment we grew away from him. We knew him as no true adventurer, but as a man who would eventually write a book or at best a series of articles for a Sunday magazine.
The real tragedy of romance is that any man who appreciates his own loses it. In this workaday world we can live only by taking in the other fellow's adventures.
A Robe for the King
Hans Christian Andersen once wrote a story about the tailors who made a suit for a King out of a magic cloth. The quality of the cloth was such, so the tailors said, that it could be seen by nobody who was not worthy of the position he held. And so all the people at court declared that they could see the cloth and admired it greatly, but when the King went out to walk a little boy cried: "Why, he hasn't got anything on." Then everybody took up the cry, and the King rushed back to his palace, and the two tailors were banished in disgrace. Information has recently been discovered which casts new light on the story. According to this information there was only one tailor, and his adventure with the King was about as follows:
AN IMPERIAL FOOTMAN--There's a man at the gate who says he's a tailor and that he wants to see your majesty.
THE KING--Explain our constitution to him. Tell him that all bills for revenue originate in the lower House, and point out that on account of a vicious bipartisan alliance of all the traitors in the kingdom I'm kept so short of money that I can't possibly afford any new clothes.
THE IMPERIAL FOOTMAN--He didn't say anything about money, your majesty.
THE KING--Well, I won't give him a bealo down and a bealo a week either.
Tell him to wait until I've got a clear title to the pianola.
THE IMPERIAL FOOTMAN--What he said was that he had a valuable gift for the most enlightened ruler in the world.
THE KING--Well, why didn't you say so in the first place? What was the use of keeping me waiting? Send him up right away. (_Exit the Footman._)
THE KING (_speaking in the general direction of the Leading Republican_)--Fortunately, my fame rises above petty slanders. The common people, they know me and they love me.
THE LEADING REPUBLICAN--They love your simplicity, your majesty, your lack of ostentation, your tractability. (_Enter the Tailor._)
THE TAILOR--I have come a far journey to see your majesty.
THE KING--I am honored.
THE TAILOR--For a long time I have been journeying to find an enlightened sovereign, a sovereign who was fitted in all respects for his high office. I stopped in Ruritania; he was not there. He was not in Pannonia or in Gamar. You are my hope, majesty.
THE KING--I trust this may indeed be the end of your journey. I think I may say that Marma is a model kingdom. As you doubtless know, the capital city is Grenoble, with a population of 145,000, according to the last census. We have modern waterworks, a library with more than 10,000 volumes, an art museum, a tannery, three cathedrals, two opera houses and numerous moving picture theaters. The principal industries, as you may recall, are salt fish, woolen blankets, pottery, dried raisins and shrapnel.
THE TAILOR--Your majesty will pardon me if I say that I don't give a fig for your raisins or your dried fish or the cathedrals, or even the library with the 10,000 volumes. What I am seeking is a man with eyes to see.
THE KING--No one has better eyes than myself, I'm sure. I have shot as many as a hundred pheasants in an afternoon, and, if you will pardon the allegorical allusion, I can see loyalty and virtue though they reside in the breast of the most distant and humble subject in my kingdom.
THE TAILOR--Perhaps, then, you can see my cloth. It is a marvelous cloth. It was one of the gifts the wise men brought to the Child. It lay across his feet in the manger. But in order that its richness should not attract the attention of Herod, the wise men decreed that the cloth should be invisible to every one who was not worthy of his station in the world. See, your majesty, and judge for yourself. (_He puts his hand into the bag and brings it forth, apparently empty, although he seems to be holding up something for the King and the courtiers to admire._) Is it not a brave and gallant robe, gentlemen?
(_All look intently at the hand of the tailor. There is a long silence, in which many sly glances are cast from one to another to ascertain if it is possible that somebody else sees this thing which is invisible to him. The King looks slowly to the right and slowly to the left to scan the faces of his subjects, and then he gazes straight at the Tailor in high perplexity. Of a sudden the Leading Republican pulls himself together and speaks in an assured and certain tone._)
THE LEADING REPUBLICAN--It is a magnificent robe. It is a robe for a King. It is so fine a robe that no king should wear it but our beloved monarch, Timothy the Third.
THE LEADING DEMOCRAT (_very hastily_)--Oh, I say, that is nice. So shiny and bright, and good serviceable stuff, too. That would make a mighty good raincoat. (_Briskly_) Say, now, Mr. Tailor, how would you like to form the Wonder Cloth Limited Company? You'd be president, of course, and hold thirty-three and one-third per cent of the stock, the same amount for the King, and the rest to be divided equally among my friends of the opposition here and myself.
THE TAILOR--There will never be any more of the cloth. Only a little is left. Much has been lost. It lies in lonely places, in forests, at the bottom of the sea, in city streets. I have searched the world for this cloth, and I have found no more than I could carry in this bag, a robe for the King (_he holds his hand up_), this square piece you see, and this long twisted piece that might be a rope. Yes, it might be a rope, for it is stronger than hemp.
THE LEADING DEMOCRAT--That robe there, as near as I can judge, should be pretty much of a fit for his majesty. He might wear it for his regular afternoon walk through the city to-day.
THE KING--Oh, I don't think I'll take my exercise to-day. There's rather a nasty bite to the air.
THE LEADING DEMOCRAT--Don't forget, you're a constitutional monarch.
THE TAILOR--If the King will wear my robe to-day I can go on with my journey to find the cloth the world has lost. Already I have found a King who can see, and it only remains to discover whether there is vision in his people, too.
THE KING (_musing_)--Hum! If the people can see it, hey? That's a bit of a risk now, isn't it? When I wear that robe of your magic cloth it might be a good idea to have something warm and substantial underneath. It wouldn't do to have any mistakes, you know. After all, I don't want a lot of stupid louts thinking I'm parading around in my B. V. D.'s.
THE LEADING DEMOCRAT--Does your majesty mean to suggest that the common people of Marma, from whom he derives all his just powers, are not to be trusted?
THE KING--You know I didn't mean that. Of course I trust the people. I realize perfectly well that they'd die for me and all that, but, after all, you can't be sure of everybody in a big crowd. There'll be fishwives, you know, and Socialists and highwaymen and plumbers and reporters and everything.
THE LEADING DEMOCRAT--It all gets down to this, your majesty: do you trust the people, or don't you?
THE KING--I trust them as much as you do, but I don't go to excess. I don't see any good reason why I shouldn't wear an ordinary business suit under this magic royal robe. A King can't take chances, you know. He must play it safe.
THE TAILOR--Don't say that, your majesty. You're a King, your majesty.
Think of that. You mustn't tap in front of you, like a blind man with a stick. You mustn't fear to bump your head. If you hold it high, you know, there'd be nothing to fear but the stars.
THE KING--You are eloquent, O stranger from a far country, and what do you mean?