Part 20

One hears it on the stage, in the drawing-room, in the kitchen, on the streets, everywhere: “Yes; we have no bananas.” A song has been written about it, and is the musical rage of the moment.

Cardboard imitations of bunches of bananas are making their appearance bearing the legend, “Yes; we have no bananas.” Business men hang these ornaments in their offices, as a reminder that, after all, there must be a way out of every difficulty. The phrase originated in the fruit shops kept in New York by Greeks, Italians, and Jews, whose knowledge of the English language is limited in verbiage, but not in volubility, nor in willingness to try.

These ancient races come to the New World for profit, and never like to turn a customer away. So they have evolved a curious positive and negative for the same sentence. Why the slangmakers hit on bananas has not been discovered. It might as well have been any other commodity. But the phrase means that one having asked for bananas in a fruit shop where there are none, the anxious proprietor, seeking to be ingratiating and not desiring to displease, answers: ‘Yes; we have no bananas.’ Thereupon he may seek to sell a cabbage or a bunch of beets instead, since most fruit shops in New York are vegetable establishments as well.

The phrase is a tribute to the optimism of the newly arrived immigrant; to his earnest fight to master the language of his temporary country, and so, somehow, is supposed to take on the American characteristic of “getting there,” even though by way of an affirmative in a negative sentence.

It is, I believe, a generation at least since the English began to say “Yes I don’t think.” And they talk about the cable having brought the two countries closer together. O God! O Montreal!

AN INCOMPLETE LIST OF THE SONGS WRITTEN BY IRVING BERLIN

When I Lost You When I Leave the World Behind Alexander’s Ragtime Band Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning (From _Yip-Yip-Yap-hank_) Everybody’s Doing It I Want to Go Back to Michigan Ragtime Violin When That Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam’ Mysterious Rag Yiddle, On Your Fiddle My Wife’s Gone to the Country That Mesmerizing Mendelssohn Tune Kiss Me Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon Grizzly Bear I Want to Be in Dixie Keep Away from the Fellow Who Owns an Automobile International Rag In My Harem Snooky-Ookums Somebody’s Coming to My House You’ve Got Your Mother’s Big Blue Eyes Araby My Bird of Paradise This Is the Life They’re on Their Way to Mexico He’s a Devil in His Own Home Town He’s a Rag-picker Along Came Ruth Sadie Salome, Go Home Wild Cherry Next to Your Mother Who Do You Love Sweet Italian Love Piano Man When I’m Alone I’m Lonesome Ragtime Soldier Boy Goody - Goody - Goody - Goody - Good Pullman Porters on Parade At the Devil’s Ball Old Maids’ Ball San Francisco Bound If You Don’t Want Me, Why Do You Hang Around Down in Chattanooga When It’s Night Time Down in Dixieland If That’s Your Idea of a Wonderful Time, Take Me Home { The Hula-Hula { Girl on the Magazine Cover { I Love a Piano { The Ragtime Melodrama { When I Get Back to the U. S. A. (From Stop! Look! and Listen!) I’m Gonna Pin My Medal on the Girl I Left Behind Settle Down in a One-Horse Town (From Watch Your Step) Mandy (From Ziegfeld Follies) A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody (From Ziegfeld Follies) Some One Else May Be There While I’m Gone My Sweetie Good-bye, France The Hand That Rocked My Cradle Rules My Heart I’ve Got My Captain Working for Me Now You’d Be Surprised If I’d Have My Way (I’d Be a Farmer) Nobody Knows and Nobody Seems to Care I Never Knew Homesick All by Myself Some Sunny Day When You Walked Out MUSIC BOX REVUE, 1922: Say It With Music Everybody Step MUSIC BOX REVUE, 1923: Lady of the Evening Crinoline Days Pack Up Your Sins

GOOD-BYE TO DEAR OLD ALASKA

By John Murray Anderson and Irving Cæsar

The scene it is Alaska and beneath the setting sun We see a brave young miner toiling there. He’s thinking of the home folks and when his day’s work is done, To a humble little shack he doth repair. He’s dreaming of the happy days When he was but a boy, The places he frequented long ago; On memories’ wings he flies again to his dear mother’s knee. ’Tis then we hear him whisper soft and low.

REFRAIN

Good-bye to dear old Alaska. I’m going across the sea, Back to the dear old home land, My country, the land of the free. I can picture a love nest at twilight Where the old folks for me sit and pine, So good-bye, Alaska, for I’m going home To that old-fashioned mother of mine.

Once again the scene is changed, he’s on a special train And lands down at the Battery safe and sound. He wends his way on Broadway and on every side again The old familiar faces can be found.

He lingers but a moment as he passes City Hall, And there he hears the national anthem sung, And just to prove he’s Yankee, aye, Yankee through and through, He sings the chorus in his native tongue.

--Sung by Jack Hazzard in “The Greenwich Village Follies,” with dissolving views by Walter Hoban.

HEAVEN WILL PROTECT THE WORKING GIRL

Words by Edgar Smith. Music by A. Baldwin Sloane. Copyright, 1909, by Charles K. Harris. British copyright secured.

A village maid was leaving home, with tears her eyes were wet. Her mother dear was standing near the spot; She says to her: “Neuralgia dear, I hope you won’t forget That I’m the only mother you have got. The city is a wicked place, as any one can see, And cruel dangers ’round your path may hurl; So ev’ry week you’d better send your wages back to me, For Heaven will protect a working girl.

CHORUS

“You are going far away, but remember what I say, When you are in the city’s giddy whirl, From temptations, crimes, and follies, villains, taxicabs and trolleys, Oh! Heaven will protect the working girl.”

Her dear old mother’s words proved true, for soon the poor girl met A man who on her ruin was intent; He treated her respectful as those villains always do, And she supposed he was a perfect gent.

But she found different when one night she went with him to dine Into a table d’hôte so blithe and gay. And he says to her: “After this we’ll have a demi-tasse!” Then to him these brave words the girl did say:

CHORUS

“Stand back, villain; go your way! here I will no longer stay, Although you were a marquis or an earl; You may tempt the upper classes with your villainous demi-tasses, But Heaven will protect the working girl.”

APPENDIX TO “THESE, TOO ...”

I cannot write about Eva Tanguay--not in the way of Aleister Crowley, at any rate. Here are fragments from his appreciation:

Eva Tanguay! It is the name which echoed in the Universe when the Sons of the Morning sang together and shouted for joy, and the stars cried aloud in their courses! I have no words to hymn her glory, nay, not if I were Shelley and Swinburne and myself in one--I must write of her in cold prose, for any art of mine would be but a challenge; I rather make myself passive and still, that her divine radiance may be free to illumine the theme. Voco! per nomen nefandum voco. Te voco! Eva veni!

Eva Tanguay is the soul of America as its most desperate eagle-flight. Her spirit is tense and quivering, like the violin of Paganini in its agony, or like an arrow of Artemis--it is my soul that she hath pierced!

The American Genius is unlike all others. The “cultured” artist, in this country, is always a mediocrity. Longfellow, Bryant, Emerson, Washington Irving, Hawthorne, a thousand others, all prove that thesis....

Eva Tanguay is the perfect American artist. She is alone. She is the Unknown Goddess. She is ineffably, infinitely sublime; she is starry chaste in her colossal corruption. In Europe men obtain excitement through Venus, and prevent Venus from freezing by invoking Bacchus and Ceres, as the poet bids. But in America sex-excitement has been analyzed; we recognize it to be merely a particular case of a general proposition, and we proceed to find our pleasure in the wreck of the nervous system as a whole, instead of a mere section of it. The daily rush of New York resembles the effect of Cocaine; it is a universal stimulation, resulting in a premature general collapse; and Eva Tanguay is the perfect artistic expression of this. She is Manhattan, most loved, most hated, of all cities, whose soul is a Delirium beyond Time and Space. Wine? Brandy? Absinthe? Bah! such mother-milk is for the babes of effete Europe; we know better. Drunkenness is a silly partial exaltation, feeble device of most empirical psychology; it cannot compare with the adult, the transcendental delights of pure madness.... Why titillate one poor nerve? why not excite all together? Leave sentiment to Teutons, passion and romance to Latins, spirituality to Slavs; for us is cloudless, definite, physiological pleasure!

Eva Tanguay is--exactly and scientifically--this Soul of America. She steps upon the stage, and I come into formal consciousness of myself in accurate detail as the world vanishes. She absorbs me, not romantically, like a vampire, but definitely, like an anæsthetic, soul, mind, body, with her first gesture. She is not dressed voluptuously, as others dress; she is like the hashish dream of a hermit who is possessed of the devil. She cannot sing, as others sing; or dance, as others dance. She simply keeps on vibrating, both limbs and vocal chords without rhythm, tone, melody, or purpose. She has the quality of Eternity; she is metaphysical motion. She eliminates repose. She has my nerves, sympathetically irritated, on a razor-edge which is neither pleasure nor pain, but sublime and immedicable stimulation. I feel as if I were poisoned by strychnine, so far as my body goes; I jerk, I writhe, I twist, I find no ease; and I know absolutely that no ease is possible. For my mind, I am like one who has taken an overdose of morphine and, having absorbed the drug in a wakeful mood, cannot sleep, although utterly tired out. And for my soul? Oh! Oh!--Oh! “Satan prends pitié de ma longue misère!” Other women conform to the general curve of Nature, to the law of stimulation followed by exhaustion; and by recuperation after rest. Not so she, the supreme abomination of Ecstasy! She is perpetual irritation without possibility of satisfaction, an Avatar of sex-insomnia. Solitude of the Soul, the Worm that dieth not; ah, me! She is the Vulture of Prometheus, and she is the Music of Mitylene. She is the one perfect Artist in this way of Ineffable Grace which is Damnation. Marie Lloyd in England, Yvette Guilbert in France, are her sisters in art: but they both promise Rest in the end. The rest of Marie Lloyd is sleep, and that of Yvette Guilbert death; but the lovers of Eva Tanguay may neither sleep nor die. I could kill myself at this moment for the wild love of her....

And so on--until French intervenes.

THE KRAZY KAT BALLET

Mr John Alden Carpenter has been good enough to permit me to reprint the programme note attached to his ballet of Krazy Kat, performed Friday, January 20, 1922, at the Town Hall, in New York, and several times thereafter. The piano transcription of the score, decorated with many attractive designs by Herriman, is published. The note is:

To all lovers of Mr Herriman’s ingenious and delightful cartoons it must have seemed inevitable that sooner or later Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse would be dragged by some composer into music. I have tried to drag them not only into music but on to the stage as well, by means of what I have called, for obvious reasons, a Jazz Pantomime.

To those who have not mastered Mr Herriman’s psychology it may be explained that Krazy Kat is the world’s greatest optimist--Don Quixote and Parsifal rolled into one. It is therefore possible for him to maintain constantly at white heat a passionate affair with Ignatz Mouse, in which the gender of each remains ever a delightful mystery. Ignatz, on the other hand, condenses in his sexless self all the cardinal vices. If Krazy blows beautiful bubbles, Ignatz shatters them; if he builds castles in Spain, Ignatz is there with a brick. In short, he is meaner than anything, and his complex is cats.

After a few introductory bars the curtain is raised and Krazy is discovered asleep under a tree. Officer Pup passes, swinging his club. All is well. Then comes Bill Poster, a canine relative of Officer Pup, with his bucket and brush, and pastes upon the wall an announcement of the grand ball which will shortly be given for all the animals. The job finished, Bill departs.

Krazy wakes up; he rubs his eyes and reads the exciting poster. He is moved to try his steps; he finds his feet heavy and numerous. Of a sudden he spies on a clothes line which the moving scenery has brought into view, a _ballet skirt_. Undoubtedly it is his costume for the ball. He approaches the clothes line, first with restraint, then with eagerness. He snatches the skirt from the line, claps it on, and comes bounding forward in high abandon.

He is interrupted by the appearance of Old Joe Stork, drilling by with his bundle on his back. He passes on, but he has carelessly dropped his pack. Krazy sniffs at it, filled with curiosity. He picks it up and carries it triumphantly to his tree in the corner. He opens the bundle, and finds that it contains not what you thought it would, but a vanity case, mirror, rouge, powder-puff, lip-stick and all, complete, including a beautiful pair of white cotton gloves.

He abandons himself to the absorbing task of make-up for the ball. Meanwhile the moving scenery has brought into view the house of Ignatz Mouse. The door opens, and Ignatz’ head appears. Opportunity has knocked. The Mouse steals forward and is about to seize an inviting brick when Officer Pup (thank heaven!) arrives in the very nick of time and drives him from the scene. The unsuspecting Kat, in the meantime, has completed his make-up. He now arises, draws on his white cotton gloves, and then by way of further preparatory exercise, he indulges in a bit of a Spanish dance.

At its conclusion Krazy is suddenly confronted by the _Mysterious Stranger_. The sophisticated audience will observe that it is none other than Ignatz disguised as a catnip merchant. Very formidable indeed! The Stranger steps briskly forward and holds out to the ever-receptive Kat a bouquet--an enormous bouquet of catnip. Krazy plunges his nose into the insidious vegetable, inhales deeply to the very bottom of his lungs, and then goes off at once into what Mr Herriman calls a _Class A fit_. It is a fit progressive, a fit _de luxe_, the Katnip Blues, in which the wily Ignatz joins as additional incitement. When the frenzy has achieved its climax, the Mouse throws off his disguise, seizes his brick, dashes it full in the face of the Kat, and escapes. Krazy staggers back, stunned and exhausted, but yet undaunted. There is the moment of ecstatic recognition--Ignatz Dahlink--as he totters and reels back to his little tree. He sinks down wearily under its protecting boughs. The moon comes out. Krazy sleeps. Krazy dreams. Indominatable Kat!

FURTHER NOTE ON THE FRATELLINI

The Fratellini are so ingenious and so full of surprises that it is useless to try to keep up with them. I have seen them a dozen times since first writing about them, sometimes three times in a week with a still growing delight. Some of the stunts demand to be mentioned. There is one as good as the photographer--it is based on the idea that a saxophone player who cannot play the saxophone, is engaged because he has a starving family; another, concealed in a box, does the actual playing in the test before the manager of the house. The complications can easily be guessed; but it is impossible to guess the combination of delicacy and uproariousness with which they are rendered. At the end of this act Alberto, the grotesque with the square painted windows over his eyes, hides in a sack and you have one of the everlasting sources of children’s humour carried to its supreme conclusion. Still another stunt is a dancing act, first as a burlesque of ballet, and then as a straight tango, with Francesco as a rather wicked old dowager in a green dress, and Alberto with complete facial make-up, but otherwise extremely chic, dancing exquisitely. Finally, I mention another entrance, superior to the one described in the text. Francesco, very much the English gentleman, arrives on the scene, followed by his two servants, Paulo and Alberto, the former with a ludicrous exaggeration of the Englishman’s travelling rug, the latter with a wicker hamper of unimaginable proportions. As these two stagger after their master he tries to get out, as if he had come into the wrong place. Finally he addresses himself to an attendant, at the same time ordering his servants to drop their impedimenta. Before these two have time to light cigarettes, Francesco is off again, they must lift the huge burdens and follow him; again he orders them to discharge and enters into conversation; and this goes on until it works itself into a fury, the master always walking in one direction while the servants are so far behind him that they are walking in the opposite one. The human basis of the event, the skill with which it is done, and the intensity of it, are combined to make a miracle. At the end Alberto is so exhausted that he sees visions and begins to fight a duel with his own shadow; he leaps back, guards, and finally falls upon it and beats it to death.

It may not be inappropriate to mention here the name of another clown also appearing, although not regularly, at the Medrano. He is one of the three Oréas, the other two being quite exceptional acrobats on the trapeze. The clown Oréas does not create as the Fratellini do; he parodies acrobatics and uses an amazingly physical adaptability for immense fun. To be sure he falls off and on the bars; but he is also capable of mounting a ladder in a series of march steps, and of missing the support, as he swings from the bar, sliding round it with his arm on the upright, and slipping down on his bottom, in a movement of great grace. His little trick of taking a glass full of beer out of his pocket at the end of each tumble is not new, but he does it extremely well, and he has the sense of gait as well as the sense of costume and impression.

THE CINEMA NOVEL

It begins to look as if we will have to find a new explanation for the French. Since that would be difficult, I suggest that we hold fast to the old one, with variations. Let us continue to say that they are moribund and explain any outburst of activity as a death struggle. The last gasp. History provides plenty of precedent, and we who find pleasant things in their art and letters will rank ourselves with those cultivated persons who cannot begin to care for Latin until it becomes a highly corrupt language.

I do not know whether seeing new opportunities and developing them quickly are the best signs of degeneracy, for I seem to remember reading about these things in the advertisements, where nothing as irrevocable as degeneracy is permitted. The adaptability of the moving picture scenario to something besides moving pictures was a thing easy to guess; the thing has been done in both America and England in burlesque of the films--an adaptation requiring and receiving very little intelligence.

It may be slightly beside the point, but it is interesting to note that the cinema influence in literature in France is almost exactly opposite to what it is here. There it seems to make for brevity, hardness, clarity, brilliance. You will find it in the extraordinary stories of Paul Morand and Louis Aragon; and you will find in neither of these those characteristic sloppinesses which American authors are beginning to blame on the movies. If they would take the trouble of studying the pictures, instead of trying to make money out of them, and discover the elements in the cinema technique which are capable of making their own work fruitful, we might have better novels, and we certainly would have a few less bad pictures.

Two Frenchmen have, at the same time, used the scenario as a method of fiction, and each of them has written a highly ironic piece which is capable of being transferred to the film, but which reads sufficiently well to be considered as an end in itself.

Blaise Cendrars, poet, responsible for the _Anthologie Nègre_, is the author of _La Fin du Monde_ and of _La Perle Fièvreuse_; the second of these is running as a serial in a Belgian magazine, _Signaux_. Both are called Novels; the third instalment of _The Pearl_ adding the word cinematographic. _The End of the World_ is a cosmic cinema-novel in fifty-five swift, concisely told scenes.

It deals with a sort of deity, resident on a planet accessible to all the mechanical comforts of this earth, who is induced to travel to Mars as a propagandist for his own religion. Like many propagandists he errs in his psychology and, in a Billy Sunday frenzy of the imagination, shows the Martians all the cruelties his religion is capable of. Too late he learns that “the Martians are disillusioned and confirmed pacifists, iodophages living on the peptonic vapours of human blood, but incapable of bearing the sight of the least cruelty.” The mission failing, he decides to make good on certain prophecies uttered in his name. The following scenes are left a little in the air; continuity is lacking. One begins again with the sculptured angel on Notre Dame blowing a blast on her trumpet and the whole world rushing towards Paris and crumbling into dust. Thereafter, with the aid of retarded and accelerated projection, we see the world slowly dissolving into its elements, through those stages so graphically presented to us by H. G. Wells. There is chaos, and then annihilation.

And then, by an accident in the projection room, the film begins to reverse and so, naturally, one gropes upward out of the slime and returns to the first scene--to which is added the single phrase “It’s bankruptcy.” It opens with the deity “at his American (roll-top) desk. He hastily signs innumerable letters. He is in his shirt sleeves with a green eye-shade on his forehead. He rises, lights a big cigar, looks at his watch, strides nervously up and down the room.... He makes notes on his pad and blows away the ash which falls from his cigar between the leaves. Suddenly he snatches the telephone and begins to ’phone furiously....”