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

  Small wonder then that with such a native kinship we in Canada often talked of annexation, or joining in with the United States. Every time in the last hundred years of history that we felt surly against England we spoke of annexation. There was a time (it was in 1849) when all the notables of Montreal signed a document asking for it. We might have had it, too, long ago, but for the attitude of the people of England. “Glorious,” they said, “a grand idea.” Cobden grew rhetorical about a great republic from the Polar seas to Mexico; Gladstone said farewell to us in Greek, and Disraeli called us millstones and began to untie us from his neck. This was more than we could stand. We stayed where we were.

  • • •

  But in any case annexation proved impossible on larger grounds. As a mere matter of kingship and high diplomacy it might have been arranged. But it ran against such higher realities as your tariff and ours, the price of hay in Cahoga county, your bacon and our butter. We didn’t object to your institutions. We were afraid of your cattle on the hoof. These things are the bed rock of politics.

  So we have stayed on in the British Empire, wondering what we were to be, till now suddenly, with the first shock of war, we know. That is the supreme meaning of the war to us. The rush to arms in Canada is the glad cry of a people that have found themselves.

  We are free men, we in Canada, and our kinsfolk in Australia and South Africa. There is no compulsion on us. England has never asked, and never will, a single soldier or a single sovereign from the dominions overseas. And England now may draw from them, if need be, their men in thousands, their money in millions, till all are gone. This is the spirit of the British empire. We know now the full meaning of our motto Imperium et Libertas.

  Let those who have ruled and misruled Germany these fifty years under the name of empire reflect upon it. Buckle yourself tight, O German officer, driving your Silesian peasants to the cannon mouth: clap down your pointed helmet on your skull and scowl your fiercest as you multiply your wanton deeds against the helpless. Empire you have, made as you wanted it, of Blood and Iron, but freedom, that should give it power and meaning, never.

  This is the war of the free peoples against the peoples still in chains. England and France and Italy are free and answer to the people’s will. Russia, in the very travail of the war, is born into democracy. In Germany and Austria and under the banner of the Turk, the old tyranny that mankind has fought since the first dawn of freedom stands for its last fight. Who, that believes in humanity or God, can doubt the end?

  ARE THE RICH HAPPY?

  STEPHEN LEACOCK

  FROM DECEMBER 1915

  Let me admit at the outset that I write this article without adequate material. I have never known, I have never seen, any rich people. Very often I have thought that I had found them. But it turned out that it was not so. They were not rich at all. They were quite poor. They were hard-up. They were pushed for money. They didn’t know where to turn for ten thousand dollars.

  In all the cases that I have examined this same error has crept in. I had often imagined, from the fact of people keeping fifteen servants, that they were rich. I had supposed that because a woman rode down town in a limousine to buy a fifty dollar hat, she must be well to do. Not at all. All these people turn out on examination not to be rich. They are cramped. They say it themselves. Pinched, I think is the word they use. When I see a glittering group of eight people in a stage box at the opera, I know that they are all pinched. The fact that they ride home in a limousine has nothing to do with it.

  A friend of mine who has ten thousand dollars a year told me the other day with a sigh that he found it quite impossible to keep up with the rich. On his income he couldn’t do it. A family that I know who have twenty thousand a year have told me the same thing. They can’t keep up with the rich. There is no use in trying. A man that I respect very much who has an income of fifty thousand dollars a year from his law practice has told me with the greatest frankness that he finds it absolutely impossible to keep up with the rich. He says it is better to face the brutal fact of being poor. He says he can only give me a plain meal—what he calls a home dinner—it takes three men and two women to serve it—and he begs me to put up with it.

  As far as I remember, I have never met Mr. Carnegie. But I know that if I did he would tell me that he found it quite impossible to keep up with Mr. Rockefeller. No doubt Mr. Rockefeller feels the same.

  On the other hand there are, and there must be rich people somewhere. I run across traces of them all the time. The janitor in the building where I work has told me that he has a rich cousin in England, who is in the South Western Railway and gets ten pounds a week. He says the railway wouldn’t know what to do without him. In the same way the lady who washes at my house has a rich uncle. He lives in Winnipeg and owns his own house, clear, and has two girls at the high school.

  • • •

  But these are only reported cases of richness. I cannot vouch for them myself.

  When I speak therefore of rich people and discuss whether they are happy, it is understood that I am merely drawing my conclusions from the people that I see and know.

  My judgment is that the rich undergo cruel trials and bitter tragedies of which the poor know nothing.

  In the first place I find that the rich suffer perpetually from money troubles. The poor sit snugly at home while sterling exchange falls ten points in a day. Do they care? Not a bit. An adverse balance of trade washes over the nation like a flood. Who have to mop it up? The rich. Call money rushes up to a hundred per cent, and the poor can still sit and laugh at a ten cent moving picture show and forget it.

  But the rich are troubled by money all the time.

  I know a man, for example—his name is Spugg—whose private bank account was overdrawn last month twenty thousand dollars. He told me so at dinner at his club, with apologies for feeling out of sorts. He said it was bothering him. He said he thought it rather unfair of his bank to have called his attention to it. I could sympathize, in a sort of way, with his feelings. My own account was overdrawn twenty cents at the time. I knew that if the bank began calling in overdrafts it might be my turn next. Spugg said he supposed he’d have to telephone his secretary in the morning to sell some bonds and cover it. It seemed an awful thing to have to do. Poor people are never driven to this sort of thing. I have known cases of their having to sell a little furniture, perhaps, but imagine having to sell the very bonds out of one’s desk. There’s a bitterness about it that the poor can never know.

  • • •

  With this same man, Mr. Spugg, I have often talked of the problem of wealth. He is a self-made man and he has told me again and again that the wealth he has accumulated is a mere burden to him. He says that he was much happier when he had only the plain simple things of life. Often as I sit at dinner with him over a meal of nine courses, he tells me how much he would prefer a plain bit of boiled pork, with a little mashed turnip. He says that if he had his way he would make his dinner out of a couple of sausages, fried with a bit of bread. I forget what it is that stands in his way. I have seen Spugg put aside his glass of champagne,—or his glass after he had drunk his champagne,—with an expression of something like contempt. He says that he remembers a running creek at the back of his father’s farm where he used to lie at full length upon the grass and drink his fill. Champagne, he says, never tasted like that. I have suggested that he should lie on his stomach on the floor of the club and drink a saucerful of soda water. But he won’t.

  I know well that my friend Spugg would be glad to be rid of his wealth altogether, if such a thing were possible. Till I understood about these things, I always imagined that wealth could be given away. It appears that it can not. It is a burden that one must carry. Wealth, if one has enough of it, becomes a form of social service. One regards it as a means of doing good to the world, of helping to brighten the lives of others, in a word, a solemn trust. Spugg has often talked with me
so long and so late on this topic,—the duty of brightening the lives of others,—that the waiter who held blue flames for his cigarettes fell asleep against a door post, and the chauffeur outside froze to the seat of his motor.

  Spugg’s wealth, I say, he regards as a solemn trust. I have often asked him why he didn’t give it, for example, to a college. But he tells me that unfortunately he is not a college man. I have called his attention to the need of further pensions for college professors; after all that Mr. Carnegie and others have done, there are still thousands and thousands of old professors of thirty-five and even forty, working away day after day and getting nothing but what they earn themselves, and with no provision beyond the age of eighty-five. But Mr. Spugg says that these men are the nation’s heroes. Their work is its own reward.

  • • •

  But after all, Mr. Spugg’s troubles,—for he is a single man with no ties,—are in a sense selfish. It is perhaps in the homes,—or more properly in the residences, of the rich that the great silent tragedies are being enacted every day,—tragedies of unbelievable grimness of which the fortunate poor know and can know nothing.

  I saw such a case only a few nights ago at the house of the Ashcroft-Fowlers, where I was dining. As we went in to dinner, Mrs. Ashcroft-Fowler said in a quiet aside to her husband, “Has Meadows spoken?” He shook his head rather gloomily and answered, “No, he has said nothing yet.”

  I saw them exchange a glance of quiet sympathy and mutual help, like people in trouble, who love one another.

  They were old friends and my heart beat for them. All through the dinner as Meadows,—he was their butler,—poured out the wine with each course, I could feel that some great trouble was impending over my friends.

  After Mrs. Ashcroft-Fowler had risen and left us, and we were alone over our port wine, I drew my chair near to Fowler’s and I said, “My dear Fowler, I’m an old friend and you’ll excuse me if I seem to be taking a liberty. But I can see that you and your wife are in trouble.”

  “Yes,” he said very sadly and quietly, “we are.”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Tell me,—for it makes a thing easier if one talks about it,—is it anything about Meadows?”

  “Yes,” he said, “it is about Meadows.”

  There was silence for a moment but I knew already what Fowler was going to say. I could feel it coming.

  “Meadows,” he said presently, constraining himself to speak with as little emotion as possible, “is leaving us.”

  “Poor old chap!” I said, taking his hand.

  “It’s hard, isn’t it,” he said. “Franklin left last winter,—no fault of ours, we did everything we could,—and now Meadows.”

  There was almost a sob in his voice.

  “He hasn’t spoken definitely as yet,” Fowler went on, “but we know there’s hardly any chance of his staying.”

  “Does he give any reason?” I asked.

  “Nothing specific,” said Fowler. “It’s just a sheer case of incompatibility. Meadows doesn’t like us.”

  He put his hand over his face and was silent.

  I left very quietly a little later, without going up to the drawing room. A few days afterwards I heard that Meadows had gone. The Ashcroft-Fowlers, I am told, are giving up in despair. They are going to take a little suite of ten rooms and four baths in the Grand Palaver Hotel, and do their best to rough it there for the winter.

  Yet one must not draw a picture of the rich in colors altogether gloomy. There are cases among them of genuine, light-hearted happiness.

  I have observed that this is especially the case among those of the rich who have the good fortune to get ruined, absolutely and completely ruined.

  AN AFGHAN IN AMERICA

  SYYED SHAYKH ACHMED ABDULLAH

  FROM FEBRUARY 1916

  My father’s wireless was a shock to me: “Expect me New York Monday. Steamship Afghanistan.” I am a Moslem. Islam is said to teach two things at least to its followers: Utter resignation to Fate, and respect for one’s parents. But, somehow, when I read that telegram I felt that both of these painfully acquired virtues were slipping away from me.

  My father had never before been to America. He had been educated in Europe in the good old days when it was still fashionable for Afghan princes and Hindu Rajahs to know the difference between the teachings of Spencer and those of Comte, and to prefer a hirsute German professor’s latest philosophic extravaganzas to the ancient, solid wisdom of the Vedas and of Moslem doctors. He knew the old Europe well: The London of Gladstone and Disraeli, the Paris of Cora Pearl, Madame Paiva, and the July Monarchy. I, on the other hand, had America to thank for whatever Occidentalizing I had experienced. And I liked America. Liked the zip of it. Also the bang. Mostly the bang. And then I liked her. So I felt nervous. For my father would surely sneer at her. All elderly Orientals sneer. And then I would lose my temper. All young Orientals lose their tempers.

  • • •

  Then I decided that I would not lose my temper. Not at all. For my father remits promptly, vastly, and regularly. He also remits between-times. He can be counted upon in the hour of need. In Afghanistan he is the head of a large corporation. He is the corporation itself . . . a business organization which makes a specialty of helping itself to the lands and goods of other weaker chiefs and tribes. Also I had to think of her.

  “Her” was a widow. She was older than I. I had been warned against her. Her hair was dangerous. In fact, everything was in her favor. I wanted to marry her . . . at times. She shone, socially. She shone like the planet Khizr. So did her sisters.

  So did all of her family.

  They were, in fact, a constellation. She used bistre-brown face powder which smelt distressingly of red Jamaican jessamine. Her hair mated Ysabel; it also was every-day mouse-color. More mouse than Ysabel.

  I liked her house. Some day I meant to live in it. The second floor was charming. It combined a nuance of Florentine distinction with all the latest American creature comforts. So I decided that the second floor would do for my private apartments . . . after our . . . yes . . . after our . . .

  • • •

  The first ball of the season was to be given two days after my father’s arrival. “Her” was giving it. My father arrived at his hotel in New York in due course of time, and went to the ball with me. I told him that it was given in his honor. I lied to him. (I studied the art of lying in Kashmere, the home of deceits.) I do not think that my father believed me. (He, I forgot to say, had also studied the art of deceit in Kashmere.)

  • • •

  Of course I danced with “her” . . . my hostess. For she could dance. The rhythm of her lithe body reminded me of Petrarch twanging his melancholy lute in the gardens of Vaucluse. And, as we swung together to the cadences of the latest Argentine tango, I was mentally composing verses to her in my native Persian. I am somewhat of a poet in my own modest way. One started like this:

  Thy feet are like twin blossoms scampering in the wind of desire;

  Thy throat is the soft throat of the passionate kokila-bird . . .

  and so on. Never mind. The dance was over. I returned to my father who had been watching us with the sneering expression of a cross-grained Buddha.

  “I saw you dancing,” he said.

  “I am fairly good at it, don’t you think?” My father lit a cigarette.

  “When I was your age I lived in Kabul,” he said. “I did not dance with women. I had women dance for me . . . for me,” he repeated, with a rising accent. “And I paid ’em out of hand. Now there was one little Nautch girl: my cousin sent her to me as a Ramazzan present. Her name was Khaizr’an . . .”

  It is not good for the old to shock the young. I pointed at the crowd.

  “Over there, father, is a man who has just made a million dollars out of Standard Copper . . . all in a week . . . and the little chap talking to him . . . that
’s the man who made such a furore last year at Newport. He gave a dinner party at which the farmyard animals were represented by the guests, and . . .”

  My father interrupted me. My country is a strange, barbaric country. There the old can interrupt the young.

  “When I was your age I did not bother about financial affairs. By the way, my son,” he drew pencil and paper from his pocket. “What’s the name of the stock you spoke about? Standard Copper? Still going up? Thanks. Yes . . . we didn’t bother about sordid financial details. We left that to Hindu bankers. Also to Armenians. Also to Greeks. Also to pigs.”

  Then he began reminiscing again. He told me anecdotes of the friends of his youth in Paris. I could not stop him. He spoke of M. de Montalembert, M. de Falloux, Mgr. Dupanloup, about Jules Simon, whom he hated . . . and then he spoke at length about the old Duke de Broglie.

  I tried to change the conversation. The only Falloux I knew was a shirtmaker on the Boulevard des Italiens who had invented a soft-rolling cuff, and the only Dupanloup I had ever met was not a Monsignor of the Church. On the contrary, she lived in the Rue Nouvelle.