2
At Community House, Felix was having difficulties with his class. Not that they were lacking in enthusiasm; on the contrary, their enthusiasm carried him in directions where he had no intention of going. At the outset, he had conceived English composition to be a simple matter. Perhaps it might have been for children; but these young people of eighteen were already convinced of its difficulties, and haggled over semicolons. They wanted to know the “rules” by the observance of which one became a good writer!
Felix presently gave up prose as too hard to teach, and started in upon verse, with greater success. Yet when it came to explaining why love and rove are technically correct rhymes, and young and son no rhymes at all, he was nonplussed. Very soon the class had hit upon a mode which was neither verse nor prose—a kind of free verse. It was quite other than Felix had any wish to encourage anybody to write. He doubted if the writing of free verse would ever enable them to appreciate the Ode to a Nightingale. But he was helpless in the situation, and could only let them go ahead.
His conception of verse was precisely that it was not free; he had thought that the pains and pleasures of rhyme and metre would give them a creative understanding of English poetry. This free verse of theirs seemed to him utterly unrelated to the tradition into which he sought to give them an insight. It was very free verse indeed—it mixed its metaphors recklessly, it soared into realms of vague emotion. And when its meaning was at all clear, it carried the burden of a hopeless reproach against circumstance, and a plaintive yearning for it knew not what. Felix fiercely disliked this plaintive hopelessness, and preached scornfully at his class. They seemed to be impressed; but they continued as before.
“I can’t believe you really feel like that,” he said to a merry-faced young Jewess who had just read aloud a poem full of world-sorrow.
She looked offended. “But I do!” she cried. “If you only knew!” and she put her hand expressively to her bosom.
“My God!” he said. “What a broken-hearted crowd!”
There was a quick burst of laughter, and then a girl spoke up. “But Mr. Fay, do you not think we feel?”
“I know you feel unhappy. But don’t you ever feel anything else? Don’t you ever have a good time? Or don’t you think good times are worth writing about?”
“Did Keats and Shelley write about their good times?” asked an ironical youth.
“Yes,” said Felix defiantly. “They wrote about lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon, and skylarks, and things like that; and they loved them to begin with—that was why they wrote about them. Don’t you love anything—anything that is right on hand to be loved—babies, or pet kittens, or pretty clothes, or pretty girls? Are you always pining for something you haven’t got?”
“Always!” two or three of them responded impressively in chorus.
“The desire of the moth for the star,” the ironical young man contributed.
“See here,” said Felix. “Shelley was a young aristocrat with an income, living luxuriously in Italy, and he could afford to be unhappy.” They laughed, but Felix went on earnestly. “He could afford to be devoted to something afar from the sphere of his sorrow, because his sorrow consisted of the fact that after eloping with two girls, he couldn’t elope with a third and have a perfectly clear conscience. Added to the fact that he knew, if he did, he would be tired of her in a few weeks anyway. He had tried it before, and he knew. That was what Shelley’s sorrow was all about, and if any one here present is in the same situation, I grant that he is entitled to feel that the desire for happiness is the desire of the moth for the star. But for ordinary mortals like ourselves, happiness is no such impossible thing. It is not the desire of the moth for the star, but—” he hesitated, and the ironical youth broke in with:
“The desire of the moth for the candle-flame!”
“And suppose that it is!” said Felix. “What is life anyway, except a burning of ourselves up in action? Only I don’t see why you prefer such tragic figures of speech. Why not—”
The ironical youth interrupted again: “The desire of the caterpillar for the cabbage-leaf!”
“I give you up!” said Felix.
But he learned from Rose-Ann that his class was considered by the residents a real success. And fat old Mrs. Perk, one evening at the tiny theatre, said to him: “I hear you’re making poets out of the boys and girls. They say you’re a grand teacher!”
It was very odd: it seemed to make no difference that they could not take what he wanted to give them, or that he did not want to give them what they were getting; the class was a success anyway!
“Who was telling you?” he asked.
“That David Arenstein,” she told him. “The one that always used to be talking about committing suicide.” David was the ironical youth who had quoted Shelley at him. “But he’s far from committing suicide now—” and she smiled her comfortable smile. “He’s going to be married. Oh, yes, he comes and tells me all his troubles.”
Felix laughed. “I hope he doesn’t hold me to blame!”
She shook her head. “Well, you’ll be getting married yourself, pretty soon, I suppose?”
He did not venture to challenge her as to whom. But he said, “What in the world makes you think that?”
“Oh,” she said, “young folks do, sooner or later, I’ve noticed.”