Civilization and Civilizers
Stuart, Henry Longan
November 26, 1924 THE COMMONWEAL CIVILIZATION AND THE CIVILIZERS By...
...Arc we not told that Mr...
...Waiter:—(with a wintry smile) Si signore...
...For does not Lawrence "remind us that poets make a civilization...
...A Welcome...
...C :—Where are you now...
...I told you at the time that as I had only just arrived it should have been "Civilization in the United States...
...C:—Why not...
...C :—Wcll, I must be going...
...C:—I don't know...
...Van Vcchtcn, on Ernest Boyd's authority, the author of "the great realistic novel of contemporary life," the creator of characters "whose activities it would be both dangerous and unfair to divulge unless one has the mvnuating charm of the author En conveying very delicate facts...
...What if the immortality to whose hope mankind has immolated his desires and foregone his vengeances, be nothing save an uneasy dream from which, with cramped limbs and bemused brain, he is only now awakening...
...The literary and near literary are at lunch...
...The harm they do is that in their turn they set up a standard, just as false and one intolerably unjust to men who have managed to preserve intelligence and integrity at the same time...
...So it is...
...M :—.I must be going too...
...Myself :—Si, Jacopo...
...But when it was all over I didn't seem popular, somehow...
...C:—(deflandy) After all, why not...
...M :—I don't take him as seriously as you think But I don't have to turn up the circulation figures of his Mercury to know that thousands of people take serious things less seriously after he has donc with them...
...Also your new friend Waldo Frank...
...Even then, I don't quite see where you come in...
...M :—L'm quoting Seligniann on Lawrence...
...So turn awhile and rest with me in the hostelry that shelters youth and death...
...C :—.-They didn't seem to have much use for me in Europe after the war...
...A mask seems to fall from Civilization's face...
...M :—That doesn't altcr the fact that sonic far sighted people arc afraid for you...
...M:—That he is niorc on thc side of the angels than be guesses...
...Nor could he...
...As his eyes look into mine for the first time this afternoon, I could swear the, are a little misty...
...What all you fellows weren't going to do for me...
...This is hardly wonderful, since someone is always giving Civilization a black eye.] Civilization :—Fancy meeting you here...
...Tragic dupe of an outworn mystification, recoiling before phantoms of chastity and mercy that be has himself raised, turned back in his course from love hunt and prey hunt by precepts in which he no longer has any faith...
...M :—I'm told them every day...
...C :—(surpriscd) Seen me—and didn't speak...
...Who are you keeping step with me the day and night...
...No one else in all the world may carry it," she said...
...Your eyes were turned to the setting sun and the rising moon held you not...
...It isn't your experience that a moral man is never honorable or that the "really civilized man," when be has transgressed morally, wastes no time on regrets but makes a note to be "more careful another time...
...M :—A bounding success, even...
...A: these words, some of the sleek, shrewd men spare us a glance...
...Now and then you looked so seedy that II was half afraid you were on your way to becoming what the people at Ellis Island call a public charge...
...M :—You look pretty prosperous now...
...You musn't take all he says seriously...
...GnnT.inE CALLACHAN...
...Do you mind if a gentleman shares your table...
...An Inquiry...
...Don't forget there are a good many violent deaths and a few nasty lingering ones in your family history...
...M :—So it is...
...Well, it didn't matter...
...I've stood a good many shocks in my time...
...C :—(palpably starting, then chuckling reminiscently) Peter ~Vhiffic...
...Your name's in it...
...That he couldn't be put into the dock without half of society standing at his side as co-defendants...
...I look up and see Civilization...
...They contract misalliances...
...Civilization raps for his bilk) Strange carnal "paysagistes," for whom the whole world is sentient flesh that sweats and heaves, who see the sky "a drum of drawn white skin," a road "a great jugular, bleeding up the throat of the hill," for whom a beach is "the cheek of a god...
...Exits...
...Was it that the warm body of the great orb held you closer than the marble dise just axning into its own...
...I think so still—that his immunity is edifying...
...C :—rm not afraid...
...What poets shall make his songs, if not those who Circe-wise, charm him back to the uninhibited joys that lurk behind snout and muzzle...
...At an oblong table to the right, a roomy, middle-aged man with quizzical eyes leans back in his chair and distributes his attention between ten or a dozen obvious satellites and the noisy, colorful room...
...Can you imagine thirty, or cvcn twenty years ago1 your name being used as the "imprimacur" for Petcr Whiffic...
...Take one concrete instance...
...You see, I didn't want to discourage you so early in the game but I felt you were facing disappointment and some hardship...
...That s just why be's deadly...
...But that your hand, Civilization, which built Chartres and Rheims out of the Neanderthal cavern, which leveled the harem to raise the home, which struck the chains from the slave and tore torture from the statute book, should be the hand pointing out for him the way down the Gadarene slope...
...All the employment bureaus told me this was the country for me, in fact, that it was the only place that would be able to afford me for some years to come...
...Haven't you noticed, lust after people have done a lot for you, it is a bad time to...
...It's my e,~erience words arc very like human beings...
...You don't seriously maintain that your old business, the liberation of the human mind, was ever furthered by "gay fellows 'who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the THE COMMONWEAL November ±6, 1924 world...
...M :—Why not...
...Meglio solo die male accompagnato...
...M :—1 don't often quote de Gourmont, but it sccms to me he must have had an inkling of what was coming when he wrote.—"If a civilized country were to reach that state of mind where every novelty is at once welcomed and substituted for traditional ideas and methods, men would be obliged to seek refuge in a purely animal existence, and civilization would perish...
...Individually insignificant, for all their comeliness, the women convey a massed dccora:ive impression that is effective and ;horoughly of the age...
...An old man, a wise man and pitying," said he...
...You seemed to linger in the warm glow of the day just passed and to shun the still, gray secret of the mistress of the night Don't you know you must zest awhile in her silver castle to greet that same lord on the morrow...
...I see you've been sifting in on the American Mercury right from the start "The point of view it will seek to maintain will be that of the civilized minority...
...New and monstrous race of fabulists, no Iongcr content, as were Ata4ind Li Fontaine 66 November 26, 1924...
...Bobbed hair, bare arms, small neat faces elaborately rouged and enamelled~ like Javanese dancers...
...Is it a state of mind you want to see...
...It is largely due to your complaisance in lending them your twine that every time a book comes from the press in which history is raked for its garbage, the sub-conscious dredged for its abortions, and the seven veils of decency danced away in as many chapters, I can't review it as k deserves without arraigning myself as an ignoramus and blockhead, a "howling dervish" or "birchman...
...Then it is no longer the beasts of field and forest who are the disinherited and outcast, but Man—Man, of all created beings the most wretched...
...I strollcd through the Musc6 de Cluny, where I bought postcards" (I won't go on...
...That is something to which I can never reconcile my imagination...
...C :—I remember...
...C —Of course...
...Was that your suggestion...
...Being only a -word wasn't going to save you...
...C :—Oh I I can't complain...
...The little Dutch house on J— Street...
...M :—The new men are not in question now...
...I am savoring the pleasure of multitude and solitude when ] Waiter :—Are you alone, sare...
...In fact, they rather hinted all the trouble was about me...
...C:—" purely animal cdstenc 1" M :—.-Yes...
...Sits down and orders a bromo-seltzer) How many years is it since we met...
...MALOAREr HILL S,cnrNBL...
...But I think I can say, in the local dialect, that I've made good since...
...And you who saw the brave veil that I wear Rent into fragments, leaving me forlorn And naked in the whirlwind—only spare Me of your scorn...
...You don't stand bchind the discovery that the whole of Dante was "a flaming satire on the Christian hocus-pocus...
...I can give you a few minutes morc...
...I'd rather think you were simply hard up when you let them use your name...
...she said...
...But your name is used...
...M :—No...
...Fill your arms with roses—with roses white and red, This, I wry for you is light as those may be...
...C:— (a little self-consdously) Partly...
...The great use of men like Menckcn and Nathan (II own it frankly) is to convict society of moral cowardice and false face...
...Blind is the man who does not see its shadow already upon us...
...A slight discoloration is visible to the left of his classic nose...
...Nothing about that last one...
...I forgot...
...Naturally, they found rue a good lob doing liaison in Paris...
...Is not Mr...
...C:—Look at the circulation figures...
...The saint phrase is probably being used a: six different lunch tables in New York...
...M :—They are Carl Van Doren's...
...M :—Three last month...
...M :—Now Civilization—you can't tell inc that down in your wise old heart you really and truly believe that the Christians of the apostolic age were "men without taste or imagination, whoopers and shouters, low vulgarians and cads...
...THE COMMONWEAL 67 to picture for us beasts, wise and witty like men, but whose "tragi-comic Zoo," superseding the "delicately moralized affair" of the French writer, would interpret beasts for us in terms of our own repressed kinship, conveying "the sensation of the body observing, not with the rarefied ideas of the brain, but in its entirety, through skin and pores and limbs...
...You ought to read the book...
...A plump head waiter shepherds them, holding up two or three fingers as tables become vacant...
...It came to nothing...
...Which direction are you taking...
...Civilization in the United States...
...His enemies call him a deadly repeater, and so he is...
...It's the repeaters like Voltaire with his "Ecraset 1' Infame I" who create the new state of mind...
...THEODOSTA GARRISON...
...Oh, yes...
...They tramp the roads, tagged out in all sorts of disguises and misfits...
...Van Vcchtcn MU his books "with wit and crudhion," that "he ii a dviIizcdwri~irT' C :—Those aren't my words...
...To Pierrot I who saw fear tear away your mask Feel only pity—you are still Pierrot The gay—what I have seen they need not ask, I shall not know...
...What prophets shall he follow if not those whose rough sense can break the spell if only by heaving a dead cat through a church window, who will lay the ghost and save him from his own soul...
...We're an abounding success...
...M :—Sometimes you were in such queer company that I felt a little shy...
...Let mc give you them in his own words...
...For suppose this life be indeed all...
...He is a middle-aged man, rat her soft and out of condition, but smartly turned out in well pressed clothes...
...Why, my dear Civilization, I appeal to anything you preserve of your fonner dignity and self-respect, and ask you whether these are the occupations of a dviiized man in the world's centre of culture, or of a libidinous bcy playing hookey in a Lupanaria...
...Let me take the sorrow and bear it in your stead, If only for a little way while you walk straight arid free...
...Why was it...
...What made you come over in the first place...
...Put on again your mask as I my veil, And let me know the friendship of your hand, And be Pierrot the gay—I shall not fail To understand...
...The lobby swarms wit/s guests who mill and press round a red cord barring ingress to the big dining room...
...hang around...
...C :—Sounds like my old friend Whitman...
...But sorrow is so heavy—so heavy, Sir," she said— "I only bear a memoir, my child," said he...
...C:—(rcitlz the air of repeating a lesson) I think you arc unfair to the new men...
...Time and Grief "My sorrow is so heavy that I may not turn my bead To see who walks this sunless road, this road of thorns with me...
...Don't you like it...
...Mistress of the N(ght TO-NIGHT you were far away...
...I will confess that, though this is the first time we've met in three years, I've seen you quite often, and had you a good deal on my mind...
...Politics— scholarship—criticism—the law—religion...
...The large room is filled with sleek, shrewd men and smart women...
...C:— (blushing sligbsly) Mcnckcn is a nut...
...There are traces of a "hard night...
...Of course I did my bit...
...They come down in the world, they a~e set to work at mean jobs...
...Other times you were alone, but looked as if you didn't want to be noticed...
...C :—Yet Eve heard you say, down at J— Street...
...They all shied off...
...Mv sorrow that has cried so long is still upon your breast And I can hear the singing birds and lift my eyes and see Sun and foam of blossoms on the high hifl's crest," "See, your sorrow sleeps against my bean," said he...
...Wilfully blind is the critic who will not perceive in this new wistfulness over primordial life In literature and drama—this new preoccupation with the hobo, the bully, the mc man, the rise of a generation sick of its own wud~ aM cager to rut thc secret of their happincn from tbc brutes...
...M s—I knew you would...
...Whyon earth not...
...Trust me, I have carried many such," said he...
...My big mistake was coming to you fellows...
...M :—-Ob, nothing you'd understand today, I'm afraid...
...I see you remember what thc postcards were) - "I took in the naughty reviews - - I discovered a miniature shop in the rue Furstemburg where elegant reprints of bawdy eighteenth century romances might be procured - On days when I felt rich I dined with the cocattes...
...M :—Why not, indeed...
...November 26, 1924 THE COMMONWEAL CIVILIZATION AND THE CIVILIZERS By HENRY LONGAN STUART [Scene, the Aldebaran, in she "roaring forties...
...And you remember the activities of this "civilized writer" in Paris...
...M :—Rather symbolical, don't you think...
...C :—(Iooking at his watch) Croak on...
...His face is beautiful, but pale and somehow dilapidated...
...But since you mention them and since you seem to share a very common confusion, let me tell you that what the really new men—the Andersons, Lawrcnces and Franks—arc after has no relation whatever to anything you stand for or have stood for, and that, when you have done the work they look for from you, and have deared the ground of "prejudIces" that are stilt a little in their way, they will have about as much respect for you as the devil kceps for holy water...
...It Is largely owing to Mcncken and those who feel (I won't say think) with him, that literary criticism is becoming, as Samuel Butler foresaw, a battle ground between thc prigs and the blackguards, where the man who is neither one nor the other is hustled and buffeted by both sides...
Vol. 1 • November 1924 • No. 3
