Love's Pilgrimage: A Novel

by Upton Sinclair

So it was that the Utopians came to Thyrsis; those men of the future, worshippers of joy! They came to him, alive and in the flesh, beautiful and noble, gracious and free-hearted—as some day they will come, if so the earth endure; as they will stand upon that portico, and listen to that music, and gaze upon the valley of that American Rhine! And will they remember the long-dead dreamer, and how they walked with him there and spoke with him; how they put their arms about him, and gave him of their love and understanding? Will they remember what shuddering rapture their touch conveyed to him; how the tears ran down his cheeks, and he pledged his soul to yet more years of torment, so only their glory might come to be upon earth? Will they read the blazing words in which he pictured them, the trumpet-blast he sounded to the dead souls of his time?

Thyrsis knew that this was the greatest hour of his life, and he fought like mad to hold it. But that might not be—the music ceased, and he heard the voices of his host and Miss Lewis. They came to the door; and then Thyrsis’ thoughts came back quickly to earth. For he saw that Barry Creston’s arm was about the woman, and she was leaning upon him; nor did they separate when they saw him, but stood there, smiling; so that at last Thyrsis had solved for him the problem of their relationship. It was not so that the Utopians loved, he thought, as he watched them; and found himself wondering if young Creston was as imperious with his women as he was with the slaves in his Western mines.

The car came to the door, and they parted from their host and sped back to the city. “What do you think of him?” asked Miss Lewis—and went on in a burst of confidence to tell him that it was to this prince of the new dispensation that he owed the great chance of his life. For it was Barry Creston who had given the Broadway “show-girl” the start that had made her a popular comédienne; it was Barry Creston who had awakened in her an interest in the “drama of ideas”, and had set her to fermenting with new ambitions; and finally it was Barry Creston who in a moment of indulgence had promised the money which had set the managers and actors and musicians, the stage-carpenters and scene-painters and press-agents to work at the task of embodying “The Genius”!

Section 10. It may have been a coincidence; but from that hour dated the process of Thyrsis’ disillusionment concerning the production of his play. Could it be, he asked himself, that such wealth as Barry Creston’s could buy true art? Could it be that forces set in motion by it could really express his vision? “Genius surrounded by Commercialism”, had been the formula of his play; and did not the formula describe his own position as well as Lloyd’s?

A strange thing was this theatrical business—the business of selling emotions! One had really to feel the emotions, in order to portray them with force; yet one had at the same time to appraise them with the eye of the business-man—one must not feel emotions that would not pay. Also, one boomed and boosted his own particular emotions, celebrating their merits in the language of the circus-poster. If you had taken up a certain play, you considered it the greatest play that had ever made its bow to Broadway; and you actually persuaded yourself to believe it—at least those who made the real successes were men who possessed that hypnotic power.

There was, for instance, Mr. Rosenberg, the press-agent and advertising-man. He was certain that “The Genius” was a play of genius, and its author a man of genius; and yet Thyrsis knew that if it had been Meyer and Levinson, across the street, who were producing it, Mr. Rosenberg would have called it “rot”. Mr. Rosenberg was to Thyrsis a living embodiment of Moses Rosen in the play—so much so that he felt the resemblance in the names to be perilous, and winced every time he heard Rosenberg speak of Rosen. But fortunately neither Rosenberg nor Rosen possessed a sense of irony, and so there were no feelings hurt. Thyrsis had written the play without having met either a press-agent or the head of a music-bureau; he had drawn the character of Moses after the fashion of the German, evolving the idea of an elephant out of his inner consciousness. But now that it was done, he was amazed to see how well it was done; he was like an astronomer who works out the orbit of a new planet, and afterwards discovers it with his telescope.

As the preparations neared completeness, Thyrsis found himself more and more disturbed about the production. He was able to judge of the actors now, and they seemed to him to be cheap actors—to be relying for their effects upon exaggeration, to be making the play into a farce. But when he pointed this out to Mr. Tapping, Mr. Tapping was offended; and when he spoke to Mr. Jones, he was referred to Miss Lewis. All he could accomplish with Miss Lewis, however, was to bring up the eternal question of the lack of “charm” in her part. Poor Ethelynda was also getting into an unhappy frame of mind; she had begun to doubt whether the “drama of ideas” was her forte after all—and whether the ideas in this particular drama were real ideas or sham. She got the habit of inviting friends in to judge it, and she was always of the opinion of the last friend; so the production was like a ship whose pilot has lost his bearings.

The time drew near for the opening-performance, which was to be given in a manufacturing city in New England. The nerves of all the company were stretched to the breaking point; and overwrought as he was himself, Thyrsis could not but pity the unhappy “leading lady”, who could hardly keep herself together, even with the drugs he saw her taking.

The “dress-rehearsal” began at six o’clock on Sunday evening; and from the very start everything went wrong. But Thyrsis did not know the peculiar fact about dress-rehearsals, that everything always goes wrong; and so he suffered untellable agonies at the sight of the blundering and stupidity. Mr. Tapping stormed and fumed and hopped about the stage, and swore, first at his gouty foot, and then at some member of the company; and he sent them back, over and over again through the scenes—it was midnight before they finished the first act, and it was six o’clock in the morning before they finished the second, and it was nearly noon of Monday before the wretched men and women went home to sleep.

Thyrsis had left before that, partly because he could not endure to see the mess that things were in, and partly because they told him he would have to make a speech that night, and he had to spend two of his hardearned dollars for the hire of a dress-suit. Here, as always, the scarcity of dollars was like a thorn in his flesh. He had been obliged to leave Corydon heart-broken at home, because he had not been able to lay by enough to bring her; he had to stay at a cheap hotel—cheaper even than any of the actors; and when Miss Lewis and Mr. Tapping went out to lunch, he would have to say that he was not hungry, and then go off and get something at a corner grocery.