A SKETCH
By Sidney L. Nyburg
Many years ago it was my privilege to know a sturdy, forthright Judge who had, in his own youth, faced a jury upon a charge of murder. He had attempted no shifty, technical defence, but admitted frankly that he had killed a man, and had the best of reasons for having done so. The jury agreed with him and set him free, to sentence many another less fortunate creature, during his long and honoured career on the bench. I remember how often I used to wonder as I watched him meting out punishments whether he ever meditated upon his own narrow escape. If he did, it never seemed to temper his severity. He was there to deal out what he felt sure was justice, and the closed pages of his own personal history had nothing at all to do with his appraisement of the degrees of guilt or innocence of the culprits who stood before him.
Every one who, like myself, has committed the crime of authorship and afterwards presumes to sit in judgment upon the art of fiction is in a position somewhat analogous to that of my old friend, the Judge. It is true my own sins of this character have been few and obscure. Nevertheless, they must have been marked by the Recording Angel, and underscored with a sinister emphasis, since the Recording Angel has also for many generations coquetted with the business of professional book-making.
And my plea must be precisely that of this same militant Judge. After all, it’s not a bad excuse. Today’s criminal is no less red-handed because of the indelible stain we succeed in hiding so neatly under our own well-fitting glove.
One can afford carelessly to ignore the cheap jibes of those who insist on the obvious and meaningless taunt: “Why don’t you write as you say you would have other American fictionists write?” with the equally obvious retort that, if any author really succeeded in writing the book of which he dreamed, it would mean no more than that his dream was a tawdry, worthless thing.
It is enough for me, at least, to know what I wish to embody in my own writings, no matter how far short of success I may fall in the endeavour, or how certainly my adherence to my own beliefs may cost me the interest of a public in whose commendation I would find a healthy, human enjoyment, provided always, I could have it without compromise.
I believe, then, that fiction is something vastly more than a medium of amusement. I believe it has been, in all countries and ages, that art best fitted to interpret life to the human beings who share that life. I think it can be and should be made a revelation of man’s emotion, impulse and character. To me, it seems that any and every phase of human life, any and every choice of scene and dramatis personae is worthy of the fictionist’s study, and his only inflexible obligation is to paint life as he sees it instead of sophisticating his tints and outlines to portray what he would prefer seeing, or to depict what he thinks his readers would like to see, or, worst of all, to prove some pet thesis. I hold it as fundamental that, if one can give an understanding picture of any phase of life, no matter how trivial it may be intrinsically, he has contributed something to the comprehension of the most important of all things—Men and Women.
By his very choice of fiction as his mode of expression, the author is committed to some sense of form. He has acknowledged also the duty of telling some kind of a story which shall not prove unbearably dull to the sensitive and alert reader. If he has no story at all, he is an essayist in an ill-fitting disguise. If he cannot or will not endeavour to interest some portion of the public, he might as well keep a diary and secure it under lock and key; but the writer holds himself and his art too cheaply who makes no demands whatever upon his reader. A fictionist’s public has no right to a predigested diet, or to a menu skilfully arranged to give it only what it happens to enjoy.
Unless the author has something actually craving utterance, there is no excuse for his intrusion into a world already well provided with printed matter, and if he feels this impulse for expression he cannot satisfy it if he expresses the conception of his critics, his publishers, or that inarticulate abstraction called the public. If speaking his own thought, the public will not buy his wares, then it must go without them, and he must earn his bread in another fashion. But if this public chooses to traffic with him at all, it must do so upon his terms and at the price of some little effort upon its own part. If the reader will expend no such energy to gain a new idea or a new point of view regarding those ideas, then the thing he attempts to assimilate so easily will, after all, profit him nothing. The author is not the servant of his public. He is a man with something to say. If passers-by choose to listen—good. If they prefer to ignore him, he may not therefore seek some more alluring jingle of words to catch their fancy. If he descends to such devices he is a mere brother of the mountebank. He must paint truth as he sees it even if he realizes that other and better men cannot accept his pictures as truth. It is not his function to reproduce other men’s images, whether better or worse than his own. He must be austere to deny himself the luxury of preaching. If his work is what it ought to be, the reader may be stimulated to fashion out his own deductions, but the hedonist who sets out to point a moral, usually ends most immorally by distorting a character.
Last of all—for here lies the vital differences between the work of a mere honest craftsman and a true artist,—I should like to hope that in my pages, I might now and then capture some gleam of beauty—beauty of form, or of thought, or of comprehending insight. For without this, fiction is a thing of effort, dead and mechanical, however well intentioned. But beauty is the gift of the capricious gods, and no one by taking thought, or by the exercise of weary toil can feel sure of counting it among his treasures.
CHANT OF THE NURSES
A Modern Greek Folk-Song
Translated from the French Version of Antonin Proust
By Eunice Tietjens
Sleep, my child! For if you sleep you shall have three cities, three villages and three monasteries. In the cities you shall command, in the villages you shall walk at leisure, in the monasteries you shall pray.
Sleep, my child! For if you do not wish to command, nor to walk at leisure, nor to pray, sleep shall carry you away to the vineyards of the Sultan. The Sultan shall give you grapes, the Moons of the Harem shall give you roses and the odalisques shall make you cakes of sesame.
Sleep, my child, sleep!
A MEMORY OF YPRES[[3]]
By H. M. Tomlinson
As for the city itself you probably know all about it, and wish you had never heard of it. As for me I had been in it so often that my mouth didn’t get so dry on wet days, when walking up that Sinister Street from Suicide Corner to what was once the Cloth Hall. There I was, one summer day, in a silence like deafness, amid ruins which might have been in Central Asia, and I, the last man on earth, contemplating them. There was something bumping somewhere, but it wasn’t in Ypres, and no notice is ever taken in Flanders of what doesn’t bump near you. So I sat on the disrupted pedestal of a forgotten building and smoked, and wondered why I was in the city of Ypres, and why there was a war, and why I was a fool.
It was a lovely day, and looking up at the sky over what used to be a school dedicated to the gentle Jesus, which is just by the place where one of the seventeen-inchers has blown a forty-foot hole, I saw a little round cloud suddenly appear in the blue, and then another, and then lots in a bunch, the sort of soft little cloudlets on which Renaissance cherubs rest their chubby hands, and with fat faces on one side consider mortals from cemetery monuments. Then came down dull concussions from the blue, and right over head I made out two Boche ‘planes. A shell case banged the pavé near me and went on to make a white scar on a wall. Some invisible things were whizzing about. One’s own shrapnel is often tactless. There was a cellar and I got into it, and while the intruders were overhead I smoked and gazed at the contents of the cellar—the wreckage of a bicycle, a child’s chemise, one old boot, a jam pot, and a dead cat. Owing to an unsatisfactory smell of many things I got out soon and sat on the pedestal again.
A figure in khaki came straight at me across the square, his boots sounding like the deliberate approach of Fate in solitude. It stopped, saluted, and said, “I shoodden stay ‘ere, sir. They’ve been gitten sights, and they gen’ally begin about now. Sure to drop some ‘ere.”
At that moment a mournful cry went over us, followed by a crash in Sinister Street. My way home! Some masonry fell in sympathy from the Cloth Hall.
“Better come with me till it blows over, sir. I’ve got a dug-out near.”
We turned off sharp, and not really before it was time to move, into a part of the city unknown to me. There were some unsettling noises, worse no doubt because of the echoes, behind us; but it is not dignified to hurry when you look like an officer. You ought to fill your pipe. I did so, and stopped to light it. Once I paused in drawing it, checked by the splitting open of the earth in the first turning to the right and the second to the left, or thereabouts.
“That’s a big ‘un, sir,” said my soldier, who then took half a cigarette from his ear, and a light from my match: we then resumed our little promenade. By an old motor bus, whose windows were boards, whose colour was War-Office neuter, but who, for memory’s sake, still bore on its forehead the legend “Liverpool Street,” my soldier hurried slightly, and was then swallowed up. I was alone. While looking about for possible openings, I heard his voice under the road, and then saw a dark mouth, low in a broken wall, and crawled in. Finding my way by touching the dark with my forehead and my shins, I found a lower smell of graves hollowed by a candle and a bottle. And there was my soldier, who provided me with an empty case, and himself another, and we had the candle between us. On the table was a tin of condensed milk suffering from shock, and some documents under a shell-nose. Pictures of partly clad ladies began to dimmer from the walls through the gloom. Now and then the cellar trembled.
“Where’s that old ‘bus come from?” I asked.
“Ah! the pore old bitch, sir,” said the soldier sadly.
“Yes, of course, but what’s the matter with her?”
“She’s done in, sir. But she’s done her bit, she has,” said my soldier, changing the crossing of his legs. “Ah! little did she think when I used to take ‘er acrorse Ludgit Circus what a ‘ell of a time I’d ‘ave to give ‘er some day. She’s a good ole thing. She’s done ‘er bit. She won’t see Liverpole Street no more. If Milertery Medals wasn’t so cheap, she ought to ‘ave one, she ought.”
The cellar had a shocking fit of the palsy, and the candlelight shuddered and flattened.
“The ruddy swine are ruddy wild today. Suthin’s upset ‘em. ‘Ow long will this ruddy war last, sir?” asked the soldier, slightly plaintive.
“I know,” I said. “It’s filthy. But what about your old ‘bus?”
“Ah! What about ‘er. She ain’t ‘arf ‘ad a time. She’s seen enough war to make a general want to go home and shell peas the rest of ‘is life. What she knows about it would make all them clever fellers in London who reckon they know all about it turn green if they heard a door slam. Learned it all in one jolly old day too. Learned it sudden, like you gen’ally learns things you don’t forgit afterwards.
“And I reckon I ‘adn’t anything to find out, either, not after Antwerp. It only shows—Don’t tell me, sir, war teaches yer a lot. It only shows fools what they don’t know but might ‘ave guessed if they ‘adn’t been fools.
“You know Poperhinge. Well, my trip was between there an’ Wipers, gen’ally. The stones on the road was enough to make her shed nuts and bolts by the pint. But it was a quiet journey, take it all round, and after a cup o’ tea at Wipers I used to roll home to the garage. War? It was easier than the Putney route. Wipers was full of civilians. Shops all open. Estaminets and nice young things. I used to like war then better than a school boy likes Sat’d’y afternoons. It wasn’t work and it wasn’t play. And there was no rule you couldn’t break if you ‘ad sense enough to come to attention smart an’ answer quick. Yes, sir.
“I knew so little about war then that I’m sorry I never tried to be a milertary expert. But my education was neglected. I can only write picture postcards. It’s er pity. Well, one day it wasn’t like that. Not by a damn sight. It dropped on Wipers, and it wasn’t like that a bit. It was bloody different. I wasn’t frightened, but my little inside was.
“First thing was the gassed soldiers coming through. Their faces were green and blue, and their uniforms a funny colour. I didn’t know what was the matter with ‘em, and that put the wind up, for I didn’t want to look like that. What the ‘ell was up? We could hear a fine rumpus in the Salient. The civies were frightened, but they stuck to their homes. Nothing was happening there then, and while nothing is happening it’s hard to believe it’s going to. After seeing a Zouave crawl by with his tongue hanging out, and his eyes like a choked dog’s, and his face the colour of a mottled cucumber, I said good-bye to the nice lady where I was. It was time to see about it.
“And fact is I didn’t ‘ave much time to think about it; what with gettin’ men out and gettin’ reinforcements in. Trip after trip.
“But I shall never have a night again like that was till all I’ve ever done is called out loud, and I get thumbs down on the last day. Believe me, it was a howler. I steered the old ‘bus, but it was done right by accident. It was certainly touch and go. I shoodden ‘ave thought a country town, even in war, could look like Wipers did that night.
“It was gettin’ dark on my last trip in, and we barged into all the world gettin’ out—and gettin’ out quick. And the guns and reinforcements were comin’ up behind me. There’s no other road in or out, as you know. I forgot to tell you that night comin’ on didn’t matter much, because the place was alight, and the sky was bursting with shrapnel, and the high explosives were falling in the houses on fire, and spreading the red stuff like fireworks. It was like driving into a volcano. The gun ahead of me went over a child, but only its mother and me saw that, and a house in flames ahead of the gun got a shell inside it, and fell on the crowd that was mixed up with the army traffic.
“When I got to a side turning I went up, and hopped off to see how my little lady was getting on. A shell had got her estaminet. The curtains were flying in little flames through the place where the windows used to be. Inside, the counter was upside down, and she was lying among the glass and bottles on the floor. I couldn’t do anything for her. And further up the street my headquarters was a heap of bricks, and the houses on both sides of it alight. No good looking there for any more orders.
“Being left to myself, I began to take notice. While you’re on the job you just do it, and don’t see much of anything else, except with the corner of yer eye. I’ve never ‘eard such a row, shells bursting, houses falling, and the place was chock full of smoke, and men you couldn’t see were shouting and women and children, wherever they were, turning you cold to hear them.
“It was like the end of the world. Time for me to hop it. I backed the old ‘bus and turned her, and started off. Shells flashed in front and behind and overhead, and, thinks I, next time you’re bound to get caught in this shower. Then I found my transport officer, ‘is face going in and out in the red light. ‘E was smoking a cigarette, and ‘e told me my job. ‘E gave me my cargo. I just ‘ad to take ‘em out and dump ‘em. ‘Where shall I take ‘em, sir?’
“‘Take ‘em out of this, take ‘em anywhere, take ‘em where you damn like, Jones, take ‘em to hell, but take ‘em away,’ says he.
“So I loaded up. Wounded Tommies, gassed Arabs, some women and children, and a few lunatics, genuine cock-eyed loonies, from the asylum. The shells chased us out. One biffed us over on to the two rear wheels, but we dropped back on four on the top speed. Several times I bumped over soft things in the road, and felt rather sick. We got out o’ the town with the shrapnel a bit in front all the way. Then the old ‘bus jibbed for a bit. Every time a shell burst near us the lunatics screamed and laughed and clapped their hands, and trod on the wounded. But I got ‘er going again. I got ‘er to Poperhinge. Two soldiers died on the way, and a lunatic had fallen out somewhere, and a baby was born in the ‘bus; and me with no ruddy conductor or midwife.
“I met our chaplain, and says he: ‘Jones, you want a drink. Come with me and have a Scotch syrup.’ That was a good drink. I ‘ad the best part of ‘arf a bottle without water, an’ it done me no ‘arm. Next mornin’ I found I’d put in the night on the parson’s bed in me boots, and ‘e was asleep on the floor.”
ON THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING BORN
ON THE SEVENTEENTH OF JUNE
[To Alfred A. Knopf, Jr.]
By Carl Van Vechten
The disadvantages of being born on any day at all are sufficiently obvious, and every mortal must occasionally experience moments of envy for those vice elementals who exist in the eldritch fourth dimension outside the limits of Time and Space. But there are certain days on which it seems particularly unpleasant and discouraging to be born: Christ’s birthday, for instance, whose sharers must face the fate of either receiving their Christmas presents on their birthday or else their birthday presents on Christmas, and the twenty-ninth of February, which by some is not regarded as a day at all. Any cold day in Winter is sufficiently cheerless in a land where Rum Punch, Mulled Claret, and Tom and Jerry are not to be readily procured; any hot day in Summer is scarcely suitable for celebration in a country which prohibits the sale of Amer Picon, Sloe Gin, and White Absinthe. No one really wants to be born in the Spring, which is a period of hope, or in the Autumn, which is a season of death and depression. I could, indeed, find many reasons for not being born on three hundred and sixty-four days. Fortunately there is one day in every year which is in every way worthy of being a birthday.
I say in every way, and then I remember that John Wesley was born on this day ... but that, after all, was probably an accident. Nor do I linger over the name of Charles Gounod, but the birth of Igor Stravinsky on June 17 was pre-ordained. There have been those who have chosen this as a suitable date on which to die: Joseph Addison on June 17, 1719, and Henrietta Sontag (in Mexico), on June 17, 1854. The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on June 17, 1775, and the Battle of Waterloo on June 18 (not 1775!) so that the celebrated ball held on its eve, described so vividly in Vanity Fair fell on the seventeenth. And Abraham Lincoln was nominated on this day in 1860.
The Saints of the day bear fascinating, if somewhat unfamiliar, names: Nicander and Marcian, Saint Prior, Saint Avitus, Saint Botolph, Saint Molingus or Dairchilla. I like to think that some child carries one of these names, or that several children respectively carry them all.
The Stars are friendly. Gemini, the Twins, of the Air Triplicity, are in power. Mercury is the governing planet. The Astral Colours are Red, White, and Blue, which permit the child the choice of several patriotisms or gently dedicate him to polyglottism. The cabalistic stones of the day are blue, beryl, acquamarine, lapis lazuli, chalcedony, and sapphire.
The Twins endow those who fall under their sign with a genius for vacillation. They symbolically indicate a dual temperament, the eternal struggle between Psyche and Eros, which nowadays is of such interest to Freudian professors that these savants are said to pray many long hours each night that more children shall be born between May 20 and June 21. In the children of the Gemini one trait of character contradicts another. These lads wish to travel and they wish to stay at home. They are nervous and phlegmatic, happy and unhappy, serious and frivolous, satisfied and dissatisfied, affectionate and cold, generous and selfish. They are fond of colours and perfumes and rich foods. They delight in the Arts and Sciences, but as artists they will accomplish their best work through inspiration and not through study or preparation. They are, I am happy to observe, impatient and untruthful.
“On court, hélas! après la vérité;
Ah! croyez moi, l’erreur a son mérite.”
It is, you may see, a day on which charming people are born, who do what they please and lie about it afterwards to save their credulous dear ones needless perturbation. A Fish, a Water Bearer, a Lion, or a Virgin is allowed no such zodiacal privileges. His course is plain before him and he must follow it. But the Gemini! Each one of them is two! Nothing can be expected of him (or them), and everything! He can pleasantly make his way in the world, singing with Walt Whitman:
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself.”
Roses bloom and strawberry shortcake is in season. The date is six months removed from Christmas in both directions so that a plentitude of presents may be looked for. The weather is usually delightful anywhere on the seventeenth of June and the day may be suitably celebrated in several climes. A wise young man of twenty-one, however, who claims this superior birthday, would, I think, celebrate it in London. When I say London, I mean the River: Windsor or Hampton Court or Richmond will do. He will take a nice girl with him, a neat flapper in a frock with a Liberty pattern, American boots, a French hat, and a Japanese sunshade. Later he may marry her if he likes, but it is better that he defer the ceremony until after the celebration.
The two will sit on the balcony of some old inn with a romantic name like the Star and Garter and observe the gay scene on the Thames over the obstruction of flower boxes brimming over with pansies, fuschias, mignonette, heliotrope, feverfew, daisies, petunias, geraniums, portulaca, phlox, verbenas, candytuft, and other mid-Victorian posies. The girl will be perfumed with Coty’s Vertige and the young man of twenty-one will be garbed in white serge. His tie will be Chinese blue and through its folds will gleam a sapphire. The two will smoke Demetrino cigarettes and the two will drink Scotch whisky and soda, just as if nothing had happened. Presently hunger will become an emotion and I should suggest an English mutton chop, with the kidney, Pommes frites, and large English green peas. There will be some conversation but not too much.
After luncheon the fellow will engage a boat and, placing the young lady in the prow, her sunshade held at the right angle, he will punt her up or down the river, skilfully manoeuvring his craft between the intricacies of rival punts, all of which bear rival young ladies with equally peerless sunshades. Then the young man, if he still be wise and twenty-one, and if his circumstances and his acquaintanceships and the soviet government permit, will motor the young lady to a country house where they will drink tea on the sloping lawn under the spreading trees, casting lengthening shadows. So they may celebrate, if such peaceful celebrations in the restful aristocratic manner are possible in 1939, and they will both be very happy when night, the warm embracing English night, wraps the lawn in darkness. And about the night I shall give them no advice.
June 17, 1920
New York