Latter-Day Snobs
Marbury, Elisabeth
6x6 THE COMMONWEAL October 28, I925 LATTER-DAY SNOBS
By ELISABETH MARBURY I N OLDEN days nothing was easier to detect, at first glance, than snobs. They were simple and obvious. There was...
...It is the same with art, and above all it is the same with drama...
...they have come into contact with all the royal refugees...
...Thus parish schools and church colleges are often shunned by those parents who are eagerly seeking social advancement for their children...
...The rest was easy...
...He must "entertain," as it is called...
...who turns his back upon any information which might savor of sight- seeing or of tourist energy...
...The artist must, of necessity, have in him something of the true mystic...
...The critics are as much snobs as the readers...
...What a nuisance he has become I There seems no way to suppress him, and no way to escape him...
...They live to be in evidence from morning until night...
...The contents of the bags and boxes they unpack tell them the story...
...And the card snob l He must not be omitted...
...Amateur acting and amateur management are multiplying...
...Maids and valets in the houses of the great, are such snobs as cannot be equaled, and their vast experience makes them inexorable in their judgment...
...It makes no difference whether the clothes are old or new, whether the toilet cases are filled with real shell or pyralin, these servants know whether the guests whom they are about to serve are to the manor born, or whether they are just plain snobs and social climbers...
...They adore the flesh-pots of Egypt even when prepared by themselves...
...The various groups of men and women directing the leading "experimental theatres" have been accused far too often of an exaggerated interest in the grotesque, the bizarre and the purely expressionistic aspects of the theatre...
...who pays his morning visit to his fashionable Franco- American bank merely to nod to his American acquaint- ances...
...There was no town so small as not to possess one either as an exhibit or as a subject for conversation...
...The more complex the organism which science has dis-closed, the more awful and imperative becomes this question of why the organism should exist at all--of why the soul should aspire, of why the will should hunger, of why the flames of love should consume and purify, of why beauty should be born only of anguish...
...To help a fellow when he is in financial straights, is frequently the surest way of having the latter do nothing to support your name when it comes up for admission to his club...
...If the writer comes from overseas, the product of modish society in a foreign country, that is quite enough to advance his prices and stimulate his market...
...In-ternational travel has produced another species...
...Undoubtedly the same malady which is an epidemic in this genera- tion, has been always present...
...Like the doctor or the lawyer or the dentist, the snob was a local institution...
...and this is not the moon: She waits in Luxor by a languid river...
...They have had their training in a school of snobs from which they automatically graduate...
...To chuck the girl with whom he had been "keeping company" for years might make him the object of unkind criti- cism in his home town, but what cared he for that...
...who boasts of his knowledge of every broadly advertised "specialty" in every historical restaurant in Paris...
...THOSE RICH, FAR PLACES By R. DANA SKINNER W HAT an astounding paradox it is that the utmost explorations of science serve only to deepen the utter mystery of life, of love and of death...
...They have done their season in London...
...Oh, it is a hard life when the old-fashioned, all around American cook is sup- plemented by a French chef--yet the snob dares not have it otherwise...
...Nervously, the snob takes out two dollars (all he has left) which he thrusts into the hand of this impressive personage only to have it returned with the mortifying statementn"Excuse me, sir, but I never take small change...
...Artistic genius is quite as fallible as science itself, but with the added excuse that it is exploring regions where logic and observable facts are of small help...
...The music of the old man's instruments became only a discordant memory in the mind of his son, the snob...
...They can never draw an easy breath...
...You will be always wise enough to bring A light to show you where the path is sure...
...The authors struggle to become more incoherent and more involved in their style of writing...
...Their reaction is invariably in its favor...
...That is the one place in the world where he can be sure of never seeing you, hence never reminded of the obligation he owes...
...Finally, we are reminded of the worst of all snobs--- the intellectual snob...
...Never mind, he is as last in "the smart set," that set with which he has struggled to become identified ever since he reached the metropolis from his home town in Ohio...
...why not...
...New York: Theatre drts, Incorporated...
...No one dares to say that the play is bad and that the performance is boring...
...What a field for effort these represent...
...respond to her follies...
...It is only at rare moments that he finds himself gifted with utter clarity of sight and insight and with the simultaneous power to create in outward form the truth of his inner vision...
...Then have you ever met the restaurant snob...
...The fire crackles before an empty lounge during many hours of the day...
...His work, as it passes before us in daily panorama, must be judged with the same fine charity with which we appraise the progress of any soul toward perfection--that is, by its fixity and nobility of purpose rather than by the number of its pitiful and bold failures...
...They are the words of a theatrical producer of New York, of a man who has revealed his inner and nobler thoughts only in a moment of inspiration, standing before the .9 J naked soul of a great artist of the theatre...
...That youth who is so elated at the invitation to spend a week-end in some country home which is little else but a gambling hell, that he accepts it with no hesitancy, notwithstanding the fact that he is earning only a small weekly stipend and that he can ill afford to lose at either bridge or Mah-Jongg, which all the guests are expected to patronize...
...The servants of today have associated with as many lords and ladies as have the millionaires by whom they are employed...
...Then what shall we say about the snob whose diet is selected by his social ambitions...
...From the moment they are born, the sons are entered at such places of learning as have the long- est and most exclusive waiting lists...
...When this youth had shore-leave, he always spent it in New York...
...It was his best chance of social advancement, for his father made fiddles, just plain "fiddles" in a back alley in an adjacent town...
...This kind of getting on was simple...
...he was so soon leaving it that it did not much matter...
...Perhaps further study and effort at understanding would show that from each plunge to failure, they have risen a little higher than before...
...If he were born in the city the same influences were at work...
...They take themselves so seriously that they lose all sense of comedy...
...He is too much of a coward to re- fuse...
...The so-called art-theatres are increasing by leaps and bounds...
...In a comparatively short time he became the president of one of our largest corporations, and the master mind in a flourishing industry...
...Then the snob who has the problem of education to face for his children...
...He pulls his little check book out of his pocket, with trembling hand he signs for the full amount, wondering from whom he can eventually bor- row in order to make that same check good...
...He was getting on socially and was proud of the fact...
...The heroine must have the complex of vice, so as to produce con- fusion in her character...
...The economies practised under the circumstances are usually made on the poor devil of an ordinary waiter whose tip is small in proportion as his chief's is large...
...Was it the moon--or you, who spoke...
...This, at least, is the impression gathered from scanning the *Drawings for the Theatre, by Robert Edmond Jones...
...Then we have the traveling snob to reckon with...
...Scenic artists are re-placed by upholsterers and curtain hangers...
...To eat terrapin when he infinitely prefers codfish balls...
...At the very least we should credit them with the courage of the leap...
...If I acknowledge that I still am bound Remembering a voice---that one swift stroke Will yet beat ash and ember into smoke--- You need not think that all this will be found A symbol of surrender to a thing I have long known to be a witch's lure...
...Every sacrifice of com-fort is apparent...
...No matterm For you are gone...
...He is asked to play...
...Our friend goes down, and on the very first evening his courage is put to the test...
...They are, robbed of all glamor, an 618 T H E C O M M O N W E A L October 28, I925 emasculate group of repellant egoists, who talk in phrases which are presumably epigrams, but which as a rule are deadly inanities...
...Statement Oh, I shall hide it in a veil of sound-- I shall make pleasant fictions, to enhance The moment when by tricky moves of chance We find ourselves again on shifting ground...
...You read about blue hor- tensias, only to realize that their fluttering leaves are to remind you of a railroad whistle...
...The criminal's handcuff when snapped upon the wrist is as nothing compared with that almost invisible bracelet of slavery worn by the man and woman who today have before them the Mecca of getting on...
...In their eyes it is far easier to get into heaven than to beat down many of those unwritten barriers which force them to stand on the wrong side of the portals, shivering, isolated, yet always hoping...
...LORETTA ROCHE...
...who reproduces Newport in Paris, while gather- ing Paris to transplant to Newport...
...He may have fooled others, but not them...
...The fact is, that at last the snob has met his equal, because where are snob...
...they have traveled from Paris to the Riviera...
...in your design No space was ever left for hand of mine...
...Their analysis is as keen as the blade of a razor...
...Snobbishness today is in all and over all...
...The servants' hall is permeated with the atmosphere of grandeur which envelopes them with its glory...
...Poor creaturesmthey are to be pitied, not envied...
...One and all they literally run themselves of[ their feet to minister to her caprices and to...
...To refuse doughnuts and to take "petits fours...
...These mystical words are not drawn from any hook of prayer...
...The hangman's noose is ever about their necks...
...He had to think of his future...
...They have become extinct...
...Is there a more pitiful sight than one of these grandiose man-sions, prepared by a professional decorator and fur- nished by an antique dealer...
...I do not walk your way...
...When he leaves to be motored back to town on the Monday morning, he has just enough money in his pocket for his fees to the various servants...
...Hour after hour his losses go on...
...To swallow arti- chokes instead of spinach...
...No one is so much your enemy as the man you have befriended...
...But at the social functions the rush begins and the new members delight to be able at last to sit in the members' dining room, to attend the ball-room symposiums, to write to their less fortunate friends on October 28, I925 THE COMMONWEAL 6x7 club paper and to use the plural pronoun when refer- ring triumphantly to "our club...
...Toil, under the circumstances, means nothing...
...who remains ignorant in the midst of learn- ing...
...To order a wild duck rather than a beefsteak...
...And what are snobs' houses as a rule...
...Surely his luck must change...
...They can neither be deceived nor diverted...
...When science has gloriously answered the first questions of childhood, when it has told you how the laws of life tread mightily onward, you still find yourself bowed humbly before the ultimate and greater question of all mankindmthe immutable and unanswerable, why...
...They are rulers in the great army of snobs who become their ardent and admiring disciples...
...They are from the introduction of Arthur Hopkins to a book of drawings for the theatre by Robert Edmond Jones.* I have quoted them with thankfulness because they illuminate so much that has seemed mysterious and inexplicable in the strivings of the newer art of the theatre, so much that rises as a challenge to our sympathy and deeper understanding...
...What infinite pains he takes, with the aid of his equally ambitious wife, to see to it that their offspring goes only to the most fashionable and distinguished schools and colleges that can be discovered...
...They discover geniuses over night...
...s so universal as in the servant class...
...His desire to know the owners of the house on the hill, to be re- ceived by them, or to be on terms with the "city folk" when they drifted down for the summer--there was nothing complex about his aim or his object in life...
...It seldom occurs to the captious critics to dig beneath the surface results and to ask themselves seriously whether in this groping, this stretching toward far horizons, and this frequently imperfect attainment, there is not the inescapable evidence of sincerity and ever in-creasing purpose...
...Snobs, snobs everywhere l Yet, in contemplating them, we can take a little comfort in the thought that in reality they are the most wretched, unhappy people on the top of the globe...
...To turn away from a blue- berry pie in favor of a water ice...
...Old family servants are as hard to find as the re-mains of a dinosaur...
...5.0o...
...The owners of all the luxury, if they were really nice people, would have been discovered sooner or later by the very men and women they wished to know, so that gradually their houses would have been warm with the sympathy of friends and not cold with the criticism of the curious...
...And how many are the red-hot plowshares over which the snobs' feet must tread when it is a question of clubs...
...Servants, as a rule, worship wealth...
...The spirit of man trembles and recoils before the enlargement of these mysteries, and then it is that the soul of the artist sets forth to those "rich, far places where to him shines the face of God...
...Soon his visits home grew fewer and fewer, until one day his handsome appearance and his cold- blooded brain landed him an heiress...
...His creative endeavor must travel the paths of imperfection, of partial illumination, of deep and terror-stricken night, of the temptation of pride, of the glow of humility...
...DOROTHY CRUIKSHANK...
...Moon Magic Moons have I seen, but only one believe in-This pallid thing can never be the moon: She lives in Luxor by a languid river, Making the gardens silver like a swoon, And all the world is different where she watches...
...The man or woman who, in becoming a patron of one of the most modish of these resorts, calls the head waiter by his first name, "Theodore," "Pierre," "Louis," as the case may be, bestowing upon him ostentatiously a very large tip, which afterwards gives the donor the privilege of boasting--"Oh Theodore always takes care of me," and Theodore, mindful of benefits to come, bows obsequiously to his patron the next time and conducts him to a table marked "reserved" which is thus regarded as an eternal source of revenue...
...Whether the curriculum and discipline of such schools is the best, little matters...
...The better the English, the purer the style, the more noble the thought, the less has such fiction any place upon the bookshelves of today...
...It has now degener- ated into a caravansary of pushing, struggling femin- inity, who fondly believe that membership in it has added a social lustre to them, which even a diamond tiara cannot equal...
...Words have I heard, but only one rememberm "Lover"--it echoes morning, night and noon...
...The imperious mistress who regards them only as a mechanism con- tributing to her comfort inspires their best service...
...The book publishers turn out their fiction to cater to these so-called intellectuals...
...I have heard it said that the experimental theatres, by per- mitting their imagination to leap too far, have landed in a chasm of mediocrity or absurdity...
...She turns her back upon a perfectly decent husband so as to select for her soul- mate, a loathsome degenerate...
...Unfamiliarity with their surround- ings is evident...
...I know of a women's club in this city which was originally small and exclusive, yet, as is often the case, it was decided to remove it uptown, to increase its size and consequently its membership...
...The father kept on making his fiddles, but for twenty years be- fore he died, he never saw his magnificent offspring, nor did the latter ever let the society he graced into the secret of his origin...
...The rooms are vast and imper- sonal...
...The more incomprehensible and boresome the entertainment, the larger the audience...
...Coronets and ropes of pearls are familiar objects...
...6x6 THE COMMONWEAL October 28, I925 LATTER-DAY SNOBS By ELISABETH MARBURY I N OLDEN days nothing was easier to detect, at first glance, than snobs...
...The last in line is the butler, an inflated and pompous individual who stares at him with but little concealment of contempt...
...The spacious library is deserted...
...He is apt, especially if he is not a Christian by race, to rent a conspicuously expensive pew in a Protestant church which is slowly becoming the first synagogue of the city which it adorns...
...The man who crowds upon the expensive ocean liner...
...The heroes are little more edifying...
...She indulges in chronic adultery merely that she may not be suspected of any wholesome joy in living...
...How can we classically describe the church snob-- that oily gammon individual who carefully selects a place of worship whither he can hie himself on a Sunday morning immaculately tailored and indisput-ably well-groomed...
...The next day at any rate it will be dif[erent, but a few good hands seem hardly to help the situation...
...He could not afford to be senti- mental...
...I knew a good-looking fellow once who went into the navy...
Vol. 2 • October 1925 • No. 25
