Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers, and Swells: The Best of Early Vanity Fair Read online

The cinema is rapidly replacing the school as a medium of education for the young. School teachers and professors everywhere have been forced to admit that their youthful charges are learning a great deal more about life in the motion-picture palaces than they ever can in the class-rooms; and the resultant degree of precocity and sophistication in the young is cause for both amazement and alarm.

  In fact, the day is actually at hand when the silver screen will supplant the blackboard. The present system of education has been weighed in the balance and found wanting—and not only the kindergartens and schools, but the universities as well, are doomed.

  What will be the viewpoint, the attitude, of the average child of a few years hence—a child trained mentally by the cinema? How will this one differ from us, who had to content ourselves with the meager supply of information furnished in the old fashioned and soon-to-be-obsolete institutions of learning?

  GEOGRAPHY

  First, let us consider the study of geography. At an age corresponding to ours when we were just about capable of grasping the fact that Quito is the capital of Peru, the child of the future will have an adequate working knowledge of conditions in the Bad Lands of Montana, the Limehouse wharves in London, and the downtown districts of Shanghai. He will be perfectly acquainted with the habits and habitat of the Apaches—both Parisian and Arizonian—and will know things about the points east of Suez that Kipling never dreamed of. He will never have to open the pages of Rand-McNally, and will not be bothered with such details as the outline of continents or the tide tables in their relation to the lunar orbit; but every film trained child will be glad, upon examination, to disclose the following facts of geographic interest:

  1. Africa is a vast expanse of passion bounded by Alla Nazimova and Theda Bara.

  2. A forest is something which catches fire in Reel 4.

  3. The Grand Canyon is that ditch which Douglas Fairbanks jumps across.

  4. A desert island is a spot of land which yachts run into and which generally turns out to be inhabited by Norma Talmadge.

  5. The Pacific Ocean is a body of water six paces due west of the Mack Sennett Bathing Girls.

  And so forth.

  SOCIOLOGY

  Nor will the question of social values be neglected. The seething spirit of unrest—a spirit born of mutual distrust and jealousy—which breeds the germ of revolution, will be killed in its infancy by the provisions of a mutual meeting ground for people in all stations of life. The man in the street will condescend to fraternize with the man in the drawing room because, having seen him in the pictures, he knows all there is to know about him. For instance, every child who behaves himself and watches the screen closely will know:

  That a rich man is (9 times out of 10) a rascal bent upon the wooing of Pearl White.

  That he may be identified by his immaculate sartorial equipment, which includes a belted waistcoat, a Glen-Urquhart plaid cap and cloth-topped shoes.

  That he lounges about in exclusive clubs which are heavily upholstered in the neo-Selznick style, and drinks rows upon rows of whiskeys straight.

  That he shakes dice and the shimmy, and misleads parlor-maids when not otherwise engaged.

  Whereas:

  A poor man is invariably noble.

  That he, in his turn, may be identified by the fact that his shirt is always open, disclosing a corrugated neck and a liberal expanse of knotted chest, which he thumps periodically.

  That he likes nothing better than to murder his rivals “with his two hands.”

  That, even if he “ain’t long on book l’arnin’,” he’s “true blue.”

  History will, of course, receive a certain degree of attention. From now on, contemporary events will be so effectively mirrored in motion pictures that future generations will have a living record of that which has gone before, instead of the uninteresting and inaccurate volumes which we, in our simple way, have had to muddle through with. The little scholars of the future will be able to check up on the various shortcomings of their predecessors in a manner hitherto undreamed of.

  HISTORY OF THE WAR

  The World War will be chiefly notable throughout the years to come because it is the first great historical event to be chronicled by means of the motion picture camera. The War has already received much valuable publicity on the screen, and there is no doubt but that it will furnish a well nigh inexhaustible source of entertainments and diversion for our descendants in the peaceful days of the future.

  What a comfort for the man who has been Over There to know that his great-great-grandchildren will be privileged to see all the war photoplays which have descended upon us since “that mighty grey horde swept into Belgium” in August, 1914! Perhaps the man who has been Over There will wonder what impression this same great-great-grandchild will receive of his forefather’s share in the famous victory; we hazard the opinion that the impressions (if the child has faithfully followed all the war films) will be something like this:

  What did my great-great-grand-daddy do in the Great War?

  He (1) captured a village, practically single-handed, just in time to save an exquisite French girl from an unspeakable fate.

  (2) Lay wounded in the heart of No-Man’s-Land until rescued by a Red Cross dog.

  (3) Received the Légion d’Honneur and a kiss from Marshal Foch—a part posed by a corpulent old man with a walrus mustache and a Sam Browne belt over his left shoulder; and finally he

  (4) returned home to find that he had been given up for lost by everyone except her—who had never wavered for so much as an instant.

  There were many obstacles which blocked the path of the camera-man in Northern France, where many of the leading battles took place. The light was so poor (due to constant overdoses of high-explosive) as to preclude the possibility of any effective photography, the result being that the scenes had to be reproduced in California, some six thousand miles away. Motion picture promoters hope that the next war be staged in a more suitable location than the last one; and this hope is shared, to a certain extent, by the inhabitants of Northern France.

  LITERATURE

  Literature will not be quite submerged as a study, but it will receive the subordinate place which it deserves and will be offered only in supremely condensed form. The subtitles in photoplays will provide ample reading matter for the young and will serve to fulfill the mission in which such stalwart literateurs as Hans Anderson and Peter Grimm have utterly failed. The average romance could be told in a few sentences—punctuated, of course, with the real action on the screen—somewhat as follows:

  “Pure and unsmirched as the driven lily, Myra Figgis was the only glint of sunshine which penetrated the dark shadows of Hell-bent Alley.”

  “Arnold Starchworthy, social vulture, cast doubtful eyes upon the little sunflower of the slums.”

  “And so—”

  “Years sped past in their relentless flight.”

  “Jim Muldoon was a man who UNDERSTOOD.”

  “‘You cur.’”

  “‘Jim! Oh, Jim! You’ve killed him.’”

  “Down through the ages, pure as the sunset, comes the eternal message of LOVE—deathless, undying—without end.”

  “Next week—The screen version of Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts’ with Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle.”

  THE MILLENNIUM

  The result of this is obvious—the mind will mature far earlier than the body and the physical will become subservient to the intellectual. This approximates the ideal state.

  Could we but see and talk with some of these prodigies of the future, we would gain a faint conception of the narrowness of our own minds in this primitive age. Think of it!—a nine-year-old child of today is incapable of writing anything less puerile than “The Young Visiters,” for instance. Tomorrow after the cinema has replaced the school, our kiddies will be composing unexpurgated versions of “The Thousand and One Nights.�
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  Then, indeed, will we be able to open up the flood gates and let the millennium rush in.

  MR. WILSON’S INELASTIC INTELLIGENCE

  JOHN JAY CHAPMAN

  FROM FEBRUARY 1920

  No wonder that Europe has found it hard to understand the American mind. The American can see things in the clouds: he has magnificent visions and enthusiasms. He can also see a thing which he holds in his hands, or the branch of a tree when it is very near him, and is perhaps about to put out one of his eyes. But the mind of the American has no middle distance. He is either star-eyed and idealistic about a dim future, or else he is deadly practical and very efficient about some necessary job.

  It was this blindness to things in the middle distance that prevented America from seeing the war as it came on. The war was not in the skies but on earth; it contradicted our theories and our beliefs, and we couldn’t really believe in it till it was close upon us. Then, in a flash, we saw it plainly, sized it up accurately, treated it as a practical job and finished it off magnificently.

  Much the same thing happened with regard to the League of Nations. So long as the League was a splendid dream we loved it. [President Woodrow] Wilson, who for all his eccentricities is a stamped and patented American mind, espoused the League idea platonically. He swallowed it whole: the world must have a League that should govern Humanity. The war itself and the Treaty of Peace sank in his mind to insignificance before the thought of the League. He was at home in the Empyrean, and was going to set the stars in order. He didn’t in the least see the middle distance of practical difficulties which lay between him and his League. He cared nothing about difficulties; they would, he thought, settle themselves. Of course, if he had been a European he would first have put through a Treaty of Peace, and then later formed some sort of a League, devoted to certain practical ends, a utilitarian and not very noble affair.

  • • •

  Such a plan would, however, have excited little interest in America. It would not have been big enough, new enough, ideal enough for us. It would have seemed like the Hague over again. But Mr. Wilson’s scheme was large enough to suit us. It was all theory, and in theory we are at home. Now when the great League constitution was perfected (at least printed) and presented to the American people, a strange and quite unexpected thing happened. The theory of the plan conflicted with the American Constitution. We now saw for the first time, what any thoughtful person should have seen from the start, that there were practical and peculiar difficulties in hitching the United States to the League. Our people gave no thought to such problems till the crisis was upon them. It wasn’t until the World Ship which we had launched ourselves was about to run down the U.S.S. Constitution that we woke up.

  The Americans now began to follow the discussions of the United States Senate, first, with a sort of surly half approval of the Senate’s reservations, and later with the dismayed, undisguised conviction that the League must be amended. We became confused and uncomfortable, did nothing, and hoped for the best.

  All this time the thing which Europe really wanted and would have worked out for herself if the Americans hadn’t been there, was a makeshift. The European is (compared to the American), a cynical person, and is anxious for a quiet life and enough to eat. He fell in with the Platonic and universal theories of Mr. Wilson only because there seemed no other way of getting America to co-operate and lend a helping hand toward setting Europe’s house in order. He wanted the aid of American idealism in making and guarding his new home. In order to get this aid the European consented to Wilson’s new Cosmic Machine which was larger than he had really wished for. When Europe found that the American people were growing cold toward the League she was grieved and surprised, and no wonder. How should Europe know that before the distant, rosy, academic League, so clearly seen and deeply loved by the American could approach the American eye and get into a range where the American could see it as a fact, realize it as a claim, and act upon it in a commonplace, efficient way,—how could the European know that that rosy vision must pass through the middle distance, lose its shine, grow vague, grow almost invisible, and finally reveal itself to the Americans as very near at hand, very insistent, very imperfect,—straggling into sight as the thing it really was all the while, the thing which Europe wanted all along,—a makeshift?

  As soon as the American saw that the League was a makeshift he began to be sensible about the matter.

  • • •

  In looking back over the whole historic episode we must try to divest it of its personalities, however startling they may have been, and see only national traits and great public currents of thought in the story. You and I are Wilson. We may not like him, but we are like him. You and I are the Senate. We may not like them, but we are like them. The American mind in its first contact with Europe,—i.e., in the War, began by seeing the issue in a fog of false idealism and fumbling at it, but ended by seeing that the matter in hand was a job, and doing it.

  In this second episode—the League of Nations—the American mind followed the same course. First it bit off more than it could chew and then with great deliberation spat it all out, in the face of all men.

  If Mr. Wilson had had a more elastic intelligence, that is to say, had our people possessed more common sense, he would have drafted a common-sense League, in Paris, and we should have adopted it. If Mr. Wilson could only have seen that part of the world which lies between the horizon line and the veranda railing, he would have done this, or rather we should have done it. But our favorite proverb is “Never cross a bridge till you come to it.” And, accordingly, we shouted at the outset, “League, League and nothing but the League!” Then later we shouted, “Down with the League, damn the League!” and, finally, we shouted, “Up with the League, after all!”

  This is our way of doing things.

  But note this: On all these occasions we acted with substantial unanimity: we were governed by a great wave of public thought. Another fact must be noted, for it is very extraordinary. Our final shout of “Up with the League, after all!” was a silent shout: no procesions, denunciatory monster meetings, but just an invisible mandate which issued from everyone and informed the Senators that the United States must enter the League.

  • • •

  One cannot blame Europe for being puzzled by all these gyrations of ours. This vast and complex American people is a thinking-machine, and it all thinks together. It arrives at results through an infinite clatter, an infinite bable and confusion, interrupted by periods of subsidence and of creakings that seem to be premonitory of a breakdown. And then, suddenly, some conclusion is registered on the dial. The machine hands you out a printed slip. On the last occasion the lettering of the slip read: “Take the Makeshift.”

  This short edict represents a great advance in wisdom over our clamorous rejoicing when the League was born in Paris, and when Mr. Wilson was promising peace and happiness to mankind. We are less callow now, less idée fixe, more worldly wise.

  We are cutting our eye teeth.

  THE LAMPS OF LIMEHOUSE

  THOMAS BURKE

  FROM MARCH 1920

  In the featureless twilight of the Causeway, Sing-a-song Joe, the loony of Poplar, the half-witted drunkard, the sport of idle crowds, took his tin whistle from under his coat, put it to his lips, and blew a piercing cry. Drawn by the note, a group of street boys . . . soon surrounded him, crying to others: “Come on, boys! We got Sing-a-song! Now we’ll ’ave some sport!”

  They gathered about him and hustled him to the wall, jeering and baiting him; while he, with wide grins and aimless gestures, made mild protest, and palpably took pride in the attention he commanded. Yet something in his face and demeanor was markedly incongruous to his situation. His wayward hair, pinched face, and starveling eye belonged rather to the dreamer than to the self-sufficient street-waif. And a dreamer he was; he was Sing-a-song Joe: a name that was fixed upon him by his re
ady offers to sing a song in return for cigarette, drink, or bread. All Poplar knew that witless voice that cried so shockingly the obscenities of sea-chanties or inane jingles of his own impromptu invention; but of the strange heart of the singer that hung tangled in a net of stars and flowers, Poplar knew nothing.

  At a point when jeering ceased, and sharp physical violence began, he broke away from his persecutors, fled down the Causeway, and, whistle in hand, darted through an open door. The sanctuary to which he fled was the little store of John Sway Too, who alone showed him kindness unmixed with taunts or blows; for to John Sway Too he was useful as a casual entertainment to his evening customers. [The proprietor] received him with an inexpressive smile, and waved him to a seat. He went to a seat in the back room, deliberately, as one who took his rights, and, placing the whistle again between his teeth, made shrill music, his lean fingers fluttering merrily over its stops. John Sway Too, still smiling, poured out a tumbler of rice-spirit, and handed it to him. He drank it in two gulps.

  A few casuals of the docks, who were eating at adjoining tables, cocked eyes at him. One spoke:

  “Sing us a song, Joe. ’Ere’s a fag for yeh. Catch!”

  The boy caught deftly the thrown cigarette, and, laying aside his whistle, threw back his head, and screamed in thin tones traditional lewd verses of waterside life. The guests gave ironical applause, and threw pieces of bread at him. Somebody charged his glass, and under its influence he expanded. He lolled in his chair. He threw a wide arm, and babbled.

  “I’m a poet!” he cried. “I make poems out of my own head. I’d show them to you if you could understand them. But you couldn’t; so I keep ’em to myself. But I’m a great poet all the same. Ha!”

  The company sniggered drily. They had heard this many times before. It was time, they said, that he thought of some new gag. At this moment the latch of the shop-door clicked, and two girls entered; one self-consciously, the other swinging in self-possession. John Sway Too ambled forward, and bowed them to the back room and seats. They ordered chow-chow and tea: and at the sound of their voices, Sing-a-song, whose head had fallen to his breast, sharply looked up. The drink was working within him, and he could see but one object at a time. That on which his heavy-lidded gaze rested was the shy girl: a slim, slight figure, with white face and dense black hair encircling it; all grace and unappeased expectancy. So keen was his look that her eyes were withdrawn from the multitude of novel and distracting points of interest in this grotesque establishment, towards him. The stare was noted by the loungers, who muttered ribald epithets, spattered with chill giggles from the girl’s companion.