Chapter 1

Chapter 13,819 wordsPublic domain

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Transcriber's note

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other inconsistencies are as in the original.

A BOOK WITHOUT A TITLE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Another Book on the Theater

Europe After 8.15 (_in collaboration with H. L. Mencken_)

Bottoms Up

Mr. George Jean Nathan Presents

_In Preparation_:

The Democratic Theatre

I Love You: A Reminiscence

A BOOK WITHOUT A TITLE

BY GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

PHILIP GOODMAN COMPANY NEW YORK NINETEEN EIGHTEEN

Titles of books: Decoys to catch purchasers--_Chatfield._

Mademoiselle Ex

CONTENTS

I The Atheist 7

II Allies 8

III Viewpoint 9

IV The Mistake 10

V Tempora Mutantur 11

VI Love 12

VII Flippancy 13

VIII The Gift 14

IX Sic Transit-- 15

X The Intruder 16

XI Memory 17

XII Maxim 18

XIII The Greater Love 19

XIV The Public Taste 20

XV The Future 21

XVI Sic Passim 22

XVII The Severer Sentence 23

XVIII Rache 24

XIX Sic Semper Tyrannis 25

XX Respect 26

XXI Temperament 27

XXII Immortality 28

XXIII Inspiration 29

XXIV Recipe 30

XXV Transmigration 31

XXVI The Savant 32

XXVII Companion 33

XXVIII Good Fairy 34

XXIX The External Feminine 35

XXX Fraternite 36

XXXI Reputation 37

XXXII The Lariat 38

XXXIII The Analyst 39

XXXIV Couplet 40

XXXV The Philosopher 41

XXXVI Rosemary 42

XXXVII Strategy 43

XXXVIII A Work of Art 44

XXXIX Offspring 45

XL V. C. 46

XLI But-- 47

XLII Conjecture 48

XLIII The Judgment of Solomon 49

XLIV The Supernatural 50

XLV Curiosity 51

XLVI The Mirror 52

XLVII Patria 53

XLVIII The Lover 54

XLIX The Public 55

L The Scholar 56

LI Grotesquerie 57

LII Contretemps 58

LIII Dramatic Criticism 59

LIV Nepenthe 60

LV Ecce Homo 61

LVI The Actor 62

LVII Vade Mecum 63

LVIII Butterflies 64

LIX Boomerang 65

LX Advice 66

LXI Pastel 67

LXII Imitations 68

LXIII The Coquette 69

LXIV Moonlight 70

LXV The Eternal Masculine 71

LXVI Satire 72

LXVII Glory 73

LXVIII Romance 74

LXIX The Spider and the Fly 75

LXX Veritas 76

LXXI The Reformer 78

LXXII Fatalism 79

LXXIII Technique 80

LXXIV Finis 81

THE ATHEIST

"I worship no one," cried the atheist. "Divinities are senseless, useless, barriers to progress and ambition, a curse to man. Gods, fetiches, graven images, idols--faugh!"

On the atheist's work-table stood the photograph of a beautiful girl.

ALLIES

The Devil, finishing his seidel of Wuerzburger, eyed the young man quizzically.

"What would you of me?" he said.

"I would ask," bade the young man, "how one may know the women who serve you as allies?"

"Find those who smile at themselves in their mirrors," said the Devil.

III

VIEWPOINT

In a rapidly ascending balloon were two men.

One watched the earth getting farther and farther away.

One watched the stars getting nearer and nearer.

THE MISTAKE

He was the happiest man in the world, and the most successful in all things. In his eyes was ever a smile; on his lips ever a song.

For the gods had made an awful mistake when they bore him into the world. They had placed his heart in his head, where his brain should have been, and his brain in his bosom, where his heart should have been.

TEMPORA MUTANTUR

They couldn't understand why he married her, but the ironic little gods who have such matters in hand knew it was because she had a little way of swallowing before speaking, because she had a little way, when she came to him and saw him standing there with arms open to clasp her tight and kiss her, of sweeping her hat off and sailing it across the room, because she had a way of twining her little fingers in his.

They couldn't understand why he divorced her, but the ironic little gods who have such matters in hand knew it was because she had a little way of swallowing before speaking, because....

LOVE

They showed her a nest swarming with impostures, deceits, lies, affectations, bitternesses, low desires, simulations, suspicions, distrusts, cheatings, hates, delusions, distortions, evasions. And she shrank from the sight of it as she looked close. But presently, when she turned from a distance of a dozen paces and looked back, she saw a brilliant-hued, beautiful bird soar from the nest and alight among the flowers.

"What is that gorgeous bird?" she asked.

"Love," they told her.

VII

FLIPPANCY

The scholar spoke to the mob in his own language and the mob heard him not.

The scholar, that he might make himself understood to the mob, expressed himself then in rune and jingle.

"A wise man and one who speaks the truth," quoth the mob, "but it is a pity he is so flippant."

VIII

THE GIFT

All women avoided him; no woman loved him.

The mischievous gods had given him, as the one gift they give at birth to each child on earth, great eloquence.

SIC TRANSIT--

"Everyone likes me," said the man.

"That is Popularity," whispered the little star.

"Everyone likes me and envies me," said the man, a year later.

"That is Fame," whispered the little star.

"Everyone despises me," said the man, a year later still.

"That is Time," whispered the little star.

THE INTRUDER

It was moonlight in the court yard where languished among the flowers a lover and his mistress.

The lover, presently, and for the first time since he had known his fair lady, felt Wit flying close to his lips.

The little god of Love who had dwelt with the lovers in the court yard since first they had come there, sensing the flutter of the intruder's wings, took to his heels and slid between the bars of the great bronze gate into a neighbouring garden.

MEMORY

Memory, wandering back over the great highway of the years, paused by the wayside to gather some of the flowers that embroidered the road. While Memory so bent himself, there confronted him suddenly a young woman, and Memory saw there were tears in her eyes. "Who are you?" asked Memory, for though about the young woman there was something vaguely he knew, he could not recall her.

Through her tears the young woman looked at him and said, "Of all of us you knew, me alone you have forgotten and do not remember. I am the woman who truly loved you."

XII

MAXIM

The young man, sitting at the feet of a philosopher, noticed a cynic smile tugging at the silence of the philosopher's lips.

"I was thinking," observed with an alas presently the philosopher, "that one is always a woman's second lover."

XIII

THE GREATER LOVE

"I love you," said the wife to her husband, looking up from the book she was reading, "because you are a successful man."

"I love you," said she to her lover, drawing his head close to hers, "because--because you are a failure."

XIV

THE PUBLIC TASTE

A number of jackasses were sent to pasture in a meadow that was all green grass and dandelions and buttercups and daisies. At the far end of the meadow was a large billboard upon which was pasted the flaming lithograph of a moving-picture actor standing on his head on the top of an upright piano. The jackasses, immediately they entered the meadow, made a bee-line for billboard and began omnivorously to pasture off the lithograph.

THE FUTURE

Time snatched the roses from the girdle of a man's Past and tore her gown of silvered chiffon and brought her thus before him.

"And who is this, pray?" bade the man.

"This," replied Time, "is your Future."

XVI

SIC PASSIM

"For what qualities in a man," asked the youth, "does a woman most ardently love him?"

"For those qualities in him," replied the old tutor, "which his mother most ardently hates."

XVII

THE SEVERER SENTENCE

He had done a great wrong to a good woman, and the congress of the gods sat upon his punishment.

"Be it decreed by us," spoke the god at the far end of the table, "that he be compelled to walk, with the pace of a tortoise, through Hell."

"Be it decreed rather by us," spoke the god at the head of the table--and all the gods, hearing him, nodded grimly their approval--"that he be compelled to race, with the pace of a hare, through Paradise."

XVIII

RACHE

"I hate my enemy with a hate as bitter as the hate he bears me, and I would do that to him that would for all time weaken both him and his power against me," muttered the man.

"That is easy," whispered Revenge in the man's ear. "Flatter him extravagantly for the qualities he knows he doesn't possess."

XIX

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS

An anarchist threw a bomb at the equipage of a king, and missed him.

A dancer threw a kiss to his box....

RESPECT

The mistress of the man on trial for bigamy was in tears.

"What is it, dear?" the man asked of her, tenderly.

The woman's frame shook under her sobs. "You don't respect me," she wailed. "Because if you did, you'd marry me."

XXI

TEMPERAMENT

The rage of the artiste knew no bounds. That she should be thus annoyed just before her appearance in the great scene! She stamped about her dressing-room; she threw her arms heavenward; she brushed the vase of roses from her table; she slapped her maid for venturing at such a moment to speak to her; she sank exhausted into an armchair, a bottle of salts pressed to her nostril.

It was full fifteen minutes before she recovered.

Then she went out upon the stage and began her famous interpretation of the great scene in which she chloroforms the detective, breaks open the safe, shoots the policeman who attempts to handcuff her, smashes the glass in the window with the piano stool and makes her getaway by sliding down the railing of the fire-escape.

XXII

IMMORTALITY

The little son of the reverend man of God stood at his father's knee and bade him speak to him of immortality.

And the reverend man of God, his father, spoke to him of immortality, eloquently, impressively, convincingly.

But what he spoke to him of immortality we need not here repeat, for the while he spoke out of the romantic eloquence of his heart, his matter-of-fact mind kept incorrigibly whispering to him that immortality is the theory that life is a rough ocean voyage and the soul a club breakfast.

XXIII

INSPIRATION

A poet, searching for Inspiration, looked into the hearts of all the women he knew. But all the hearts of these were empty and he found it not. And then, presently, in the heart of one woman whom he had forgotten, at the edge of a deep forest, he found what he sought for. For the heart of this woman was full. And as he looked at this heart, it seemed to him strangely familiar, as if, long ago, he had seen it before. And as he looked, the truth dawned fair upon him. The heart was his own.

XXIV

RECIPE

A young fellow, with something of the climber to him, took himself to the arbiter of manners and urged the latter instruct him how best he might learn effectively to pass himself off for a gentleman.

"Practise insulting persons in such wise that they shall not feel insulted," the arbiter of manners advised him.

XXV

TRANSMIGRATION

A great love faded and died.

Its soul passed into the body of a cobra.

XXVI

THE SAVANT

There lived in Boeotia a lout who was even more empty-headed than his most empty-headed neighbour and who yet, throughout the domain, was looked on as a shrewd and wise and sapient fellow.

Whenever any one spoke to him of a thing he did not understand, he vouchsafed no reply, but merely smiled a bit, and winked.

XXVII

COMPANION

Modesty left his mistress to fare forth into the world alone. But, turning in his flight, he saw someone at his heels.

In despair, Modesty sought still another mistress and this mistress one night he likewise left to fare forth into the world alone. But, turning in his flight, he saw again someone at his heels.

Modesty, sitting sadly on a rock by the wayside, realized then that his wish for a lonely adventure was never to be fulfilled. For he must always, when he sallied forth from his mistress, take with him his mistress' lover.

XXVIII

THE GOOD FAIRY

A fairy, in the form of a beautiful woman, came to a young man and whispered, "One wish will I grant you."

The young man gazed into the deep eyes of the beautiful woman and, with thoughts playing upon her rare loveliness, breathed, "I wish for perfect happiness for all time!"

And the fairy in the form of the beautiful woman granted him his wish.

She left him.

XXIX

THE EXTERNAL FEMININE

As the blonde young woman stepped from the swimming pool of the Turkish Bath, the attendant thought that never had she seen so fair and golden and beautiful a creature. Unable to contain her admiration, she spoke her thought. The beautiful blonde thanked her and said, "But you should have seen me at the Mi-Careme Ball as an African slave girl!"

XXX

FRATERNITE

A woman, lying in the arms of her lover and who until now had spoken of many things but never of her husband, presently mentioned his name, and jested of him, and laughed.

Her lover, who adored her, laughed with her and bending to her, kissed her passionately--hating her.

XXXI

REPUTATION

The famous comedienne, suffering a sudden cramp, made a face.

"How wonderfully she expresses the feeling of homesickness," observed the gentleman seated in E 10.

"How wonderfully she expresses the feeling of wanderlust," observed the gentleman seated in M 7.

XXXII

THE LARIAT

A lonely dreamer, dreaming under the poplars of a far hill, saw Love dancing in the bright valley and casting promiscuously about her a lariat of silk and roses. That he, too, might feel the soft caress of the lariat about him, the dreamer clambered down into the gay valley and there made eyes at Love. And Love, seeing, whirled her lariat high above her and deftly twirled it 'round the dreamer. And as in Love's hand the lariat of silk and roses fell about him and drew tighter and tighter about his arms and legs, the dreamer saw it slowly turn before his eyes into a band of solid steel.

XXXIII

THE ANALYST

A little girl loved her doll dearly: it was to her very real and very human.

One day a little girl living next door told her the doll was only filled with cotton. And the little girl cried.

When the other little girl had gone, the little girl got out a scissors and determined to find out if her doll was, after all, not real and human, but only filled with cotton, as the little neighbour girl had said.

The little girl cut her doll open, and found that it was filled with sawdust.

XXXIV

COUPLET

Again Mephisto chuckled in anticipation.

Somewhere, a little country girl, for the first time, was powdering her nose.

XXXV

THE PHILOSOPHER

They had quarrelled.

Suddenly, her eyes flashing, she turned on him. "You think you are sure of me, don't you?" she cried. And in her tone at once were defiance and irony.

But the man vouchsafed nothing in reply. For he well enough knew that when a woman flings that question at a man, the woman herself already knows deep in her heart that the man is--perfectly.

XXXVI

ROSEMARY

In the still of the late December twilight, the old bachelor fumbled his way to the far corner of the great attic and from an old trunk drew falteringly forth a packet of letters. And pressing the letters tenderly in his hands, sighed. For, anyway, _she_ had loved him in those years ago, the years when youth was at its noontide and the stars seemed always near. Memory, sweet and faithful mistress....

The old bachelor fumbled for his spectacles. Alas, he had left them below. And without them he could not read the words she had written. But he kissed the little packet ... and sighed.

He could not see it was his little nephew's school trunk he had opened by mistake, and that the packet which he held reverently in his reminiscent clasp was merely a bundle of blank, empty envelopes.

XXXVII

STRATEGY

One woman read up on everything and put on silks and jewels and perfumes and dimmed the lamps and set liqueurs and cigarettes upon the tabourette and caused the flames to dance low in the open hearth.

And one woman merely put a bit of soft lace about her throat and every once in a while prefaced a word with a sudden little intake of breath.

XXXVIII

A WORK OF ART

A poet, unknown and unsung, wrote a beautiful play. Those who read the play felt strange tears creep into their eyes and odd little pullings at the strings of their hearts.

"This," they said, "is art."

And the news of the poet's beautiful play spread far. And it came in time to be produced upon the great highway of a city with a company of actors the very least of whom received as weekly emolument some nuggets nine hundred and more. And citizens traveled from ulterior Haarlm and the far reaches of Brukkelhyn and counties beyond the Duchy of Nhuyohrk to see the costly actors play the poet's work. And the citizens looked at one another sorely perplexed, for they felt no strange tears creep into their eyes nor odd pullings at the strings of their hearts.

"Art hell!" they said.

XXXIX

OFFSPRING

Egotism and Carnality married and gave birth to a child.

They named it Love.

V. C.

The child, entering the dark room at night, hummed a tune to hide his fear and frightened a mouse who was playing in a far corner. The mouse ran blindly under the child's foot and the child, believing the mouse was his grandmother's ball of wool, gave it a vigorous kick and killed it.

XLI

BUT--

"But----" interposed the young woman.

A gleam came into the eyes of the man who coveted and who had long and vainly laid subtle siege against her.

He appreciated now that it was merely a matter of time.

XLII

CONJECTURE

The pretty girl looked up at the stars, wondering....

The stars looked down at the pretty girl, wondering....

XLIII

THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON

To his court spake Solomon: "I seek another woman for wife. But I have at length learned wisdom in these matters. So go you bring before me fifty or more you deem most suitable. And from these I shall select with deliberation and care and wisdom that one that will best be fitted for my throne-side and the bearing of children." And they went forth into the kingdom and brought before Solomon women who were strong and women who were wise and women who were gentle and women who were serious with the grave problems of life--the pick of the women of all the great kingdom who best were suited to the king.... Solomon, weighing studiously the merits of each and pondering the one whom he might most appropriately take unto him as best fitted for wife and mother, suddenly caught sight, on the far edge of the crowd, of a little flower girl with a cunning dimple in her ear....

XLIV

THE SUPERNATURAL

"What is my name?" asked August Kraut of the Ouija board, as his hands guided the apparatus hither and thither.

"August Kraut," responded the Ouija board.

XLV

CURIOSITY

A young woman, not content with delighting in the exquisite beauty of a magnolia bloom at a distance, came close to it and, coming close, touched it to make certain of its reality and, touching it, turned its fragile white petals to an ugly brown.

A young woman decided to analyze her lover's affections....

XLVI

THE MIRROR

In a great lonely house on a far lonely roadway lived in seclusion among her waxen flowers and cracking walls and faded relics of a far yesterday, a hateful and withered and bitter old woman. To the lonely house on the lonely roadway came one day out of the world to live with the old woman her young and beautiful and very lovely granddaughter. And one day--it was not so long afterward--the very lovely girl, rummaging about the great house, came upon a tall mirror, the mirror that the withered and bitter old woman had long been wont to use and that for all these many lonely years had seen and reflected naught but acrimony and decay and despair and ugliness. And the very lovely girl looked into the mirror--and suddenly cried out. For what the mirror reflected was not her very lovely self, but something hateful and withered and bitter....

XLVII

PATRIA

The young man lay dying on the field of battle. "Tell them I am proud to have died for my glorious country!" he breathed to the comrade who bent beside him.

They printed the young man's noble last words in all the leading papers of the country, conspicuously, where all the nation might see and read and therefrom take pride and inspiration, right next to the cartoons of the Katzenjammer Kids.

XLVIII

THE LOVER

"Three brilliant men are my suitors," said the beautiful young woman. "And I would marry the one who loves me most. Tell me how I may know that one."

"Pick the one who, when he is with you, is the most stupid," replied her old nurse.

XLIX

THE PUBLIC

The hurdy-gurdy man's monkey, cap in hand, clambered to the sill of the mediocre artist's window. And the mediocre artist tossed into his cap a peanut. The monkey, putting the peanut in his mouth, swallowed it, and grinned.

The hurdy-gurdy man's monkey, cap in hand, clambered to the neighbouring sill of the great artist's window. And the great artist tossed into his cap a sou. The monkey, putting the sou in his mouth, swallowed it, and grinned. But presently a great discomfort instituted itself in the monkey's abdomen. Whereupon the monkey immediately concluded that the sou was a counterfeit.

THE SCHOLAR

The scholar laid in solemn reverence a wreath upon the tomb of Beethoven.

"I place this wreath not upon the tomb of Beethoven," he exclaimed, "but upon the grave of music."

But no one heard what he said, because the robins were singing too loudly.

GROTESQUERIE