Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise.
by David Graham Phillips.
DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
A TRIBUTE
Even now I cannot realize that he is dead, and often in the city streets--on Fifth Avenue in particular--I find myself glancing ahead for a glimpse of the tall, boyish, familiar figure--experience once again a flash of the old happy expectancy.
I have lived in many lands, and have known men. I never knew a finer man than Graham Phillips.
His were the clearest, bluest, most honest eyes I ever saw--eyes that scorned untruth--eyes that penetrated all sham.
In repose his handsome features were a trifle stern--and the magic of his smile was the more wonderful--such a sunny, youthful, engaging smile.
His mere presence in a room was exhilarating. It seemed to freshen the very air with a keen sweetness almost pungent.
He was tall, spare, leisurely, iron-strong; yet figure, features and bearing were delightfully boyish.
Men liked him, women liked him when he liked them.
He was the most honest man I ever knew, clean in mind, clean-cut in body, a little over-serious perhaps, except when among intimates; a little p.r.o.ne to hoist the burdens of the world on his young shoulders.
His was a knightly mind; a paladin character. But he could unbend, and the memory of such hours with him--hours that can never be again--hurts more keenly than the memory of calmer and more sober moments.
We agreed in many matters, he and I; in many we differed. To me it was a greater honor to differ in opinion with such a man than to find an entire synod of my own mind.
Because--and of course this is the opinion of one man and worth no more than that--I have always thought that Graham Phillips was head and shoulders above us all in his profession.
He was to have been really great. He is--by his last book, "Susan Lenox."
Not that, when he sometimes discussed the writing of it with me, I was in sympathy with it. I was not. We always were truthful to each other.
But when a giant molds a lump of clay into tremendous ma.s.ses, lesser men become confused by the huge contours, the vast distances, the terrific s.p.a.ces, the majestic scope of the ensemble. So I. But he went on about his business.
I do not know what the public may think of "Susan Lenox." I scarcely know what I think.
It is a terrible book--terrible and true and beautiful.
Under the depths there are unspeakable things that writhe. His plumb-line touches them and they squirm. He bends his head from the clouds to do it. Is it worth doing? I don"t know.
But this I do know--that within the range of all fiction of all lands and of all times no character has so overwhelmed me as the character of Susan Lenox.
She is as real as life and as unreal. She is Life. Hers was the concentrated n.o.bility of Heaven and h.e.l.l. And the divinity of the one and the tragedy of the other. For she had known both--this girl--the most pathetic, the most human, the most honest character ever drawn by an American writer.
In the presence of his last work, so overwhelming, so stupendous, we lesser men are left at a loss. Its magnitude demands the perspective that time only can lend it. Its dignity and austerity and its pitiless truth impose upon us that honest and intelligent silence which even the quickest minds concede is necessary before an honest verdict.
Truth was his G.o.ddess; he wrought honestly and only for her.
He is dead, but he is to have his day in court. And whatever the verdict, if it be a true one, were he living he would rest content.
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.
BEFORE THE CURTAIN
A few years ago, as to the most important and most interesting subject in the world, the relations of the s.e.xes, an author had to choose between silence and telling those distorted truths beside which plain lying seems almost white and quite harmless.
And as no author could afford to be silent on the subject that underlies all subjects, our literature, in so far as it attempted to deal with the most vital phases of human nature, was beneath contempt. The authors who knew they were lying sank almost as low as the nasty-nice purveyors of fake idealism and candied pruriency who fancied they were writing the truth. Now it almost seems that the day of lying conscious and unconscious is about run. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
There are three ways of dealing with the s.e.x relations of men and women--two wrong and one right.
For lack of more accurate names the two wrong ways may be called respectively the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental. Both are in essence processes of spicing up and coloring up perfectly innocuous facts of nature to make them poisonously attractive to perverted palates. The wishy-washy literature and the wishy-washy morality on which it is based are not one stage more--or less--rotten than the libertine literature and the libertine morality on which it is based. So far as degrading effect is concerned, the "pure, sweet" story or play, false to nature, false to true morality, propagandist of indecent emotions disguised as idealism, need yield nothing to the so-called "strong" story. Both pander to different forms of the same diseased craving for the unnatural. Both produce moral atrophy. The one tends to encourage the shallow and unthinking in ignorance of life and so causes them to suffer the merciless penalties of ignorance. The other tends to miseducate the shallow and unthinking, to give them a ruinously false notion of the delights of vice. The Anglo-Saxon "morality" is like a nude figure salaciously draped; the Continental "strength" is like a nude figure salaciously distorted. The Anglo-Saxon article reeks the stench of disinfectants; the Continental reeks the stench of degenerate perfume. The Continental shouts "Hypocrisy!" at the Anglo-Saxon; the Anglo-Saxon shouts "Filthiness!" at the Continental. Both are right; they are twin sisters of the same horrid mother. And an author of either allegiance has to have many a redeeming grace of style, of character drawing, of philosophy, to gain him tolerance in a clean mind.
There is the third and right way of dealing with the s.e.x relations of men and women. That is the way of simple candor and naturalness. Treat the s.e.x question as you would any other question. Don"t treat it reverently; don"t treat it rakishly.
Treat it naturally. Don"t insult your intelligence and lower your moral tone by thinking about either the decency or the indecency of matters that are familiar, undeniable, and unchangeable facts of life. Don"t look on woman as mere female, but as human being. Remember that she has a mind and a heart as well as a body. In a sentence, don"t join in the prurient clamor of "purity" hypocrites and "strong" libertines that exaggerates and distorts the most commonplace, if the most important feature of life. Let us try to be as sensible about s.e.x as we are trying to be about all the other phenomena of the universe in this more enlightened day.
Nothing so sweetens a sin or so delights a sinner as getting big-eyed about it and him. Those of us who are naughty aren"t nearly so naughty as we like to think; nor are those of us who are nice nearly so nice. Our virtues and our failings are--perhaps to an unsuspected degree--the result of the circ.u.mstances in which we are placed. The way to improve individuals is to improve these circ.u.mstances; and the way to start at improving the circ.u.mstances is by looking honestly and fearlessly at things as they are. We must know our world and ourselves before we can know what should be kept and what changed. And the beginning of this wisdom is in seeing s.e.x relations rationally. Until that fundamental matter is brought under the sway of good common sense, improvement in other directions will be slow indeed. Let us stop lying--to others--to ourselves.
D.G.P.
July, 1908.
SUSAN LENOX
CHAPTER I
"THE child"s dead," said Nora, the nurse. It was the upstairs sitting-room in one of the pretentious houses of Sutherland, oldest and most charming of the towns on the Indiana bank of the Ohio. The two big windows were open; their limp and listless draperies showed that there was not the least motion in the stifling humid air of the July afternoon. At the center of the room stood an oblong table; over it were neatly spread several thicknesses of white cotton cloth; naked upon them lay the body of a newborn girl baby. At one side of the table nearer the window stood Nora. Hers were the hard features and corrugated skin popularly regarded as the result of a life of toil, but in fact the result of a life of defiance to the laws of health. As additional penalties for that same self-indulgence she had an enormous bust and hips, thin face and arms, hollow, sinew-striped neck. The young man, blond and smooth faced, at the other side of the table and facing the light, was Doctor Stevens, a recently graduated pupil of the famous Schulze of Saint Christopher who as much as any other one man is responsible for the rejection of hocus-pocus and the injection of common sense into American medicine. For upwards of an hour young Stevens, coat off and shirt sleeves rolled to his shoulders, had been toiling with the lifeless form on the table.
He had tried everything his training, his reading and his experience suggested--all the more or less familiar devices similar to those indicated for cases of drowning. Nora had watched him, at first with interest and hope, then with interest alone, finally with swiftly deepening disapproval, as her compressed lips and angry eyes plainly revealed. It seemed to her his effort was degenerating into sacrilege, into defiance of an obvious decree of the Almighty. However, she had not ventured to speak until the young man, with a muttered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n suspiciously like an imprecation, straightened his stocky figure and began to mop the sweat from his face, hands and bared arms.
When she saw that her verdict had not been heard, she repeated it more emphatically. "The child"s dead," said she, "as I told you from the set-out." She made the sign of the cross on her forehead and bosom, while her fat, dry lips moved in a "Hail, Mary."
The young man did not rouse from his reverie. He continued to gaze with a baffled expression at the tiny form, so like a whimsical caricature of humanity. He showed that he had heard the woman"s remark by saying, to himself rather than to her, "Dead? What"s that? Merely another name for ignorance." But the current of his thought did not swerve. It held to the one course: What would his master, the dauntless, the infinitely resourceful Schulze, do if he were confronted by this intolerable obstacle of a perfect machine refusing to do its duty and pump vital force through an eagerly waiting body?
"He"d _make_ it go, I"d bet my life," the young man muttered.
"I"m ashamed of myself."
As if the reproach were just the spur his courage and his intelligence had needed, his face suddenly glowed with the upshooting fire of an inspiration. He thrust the big white handkerchief into his hip pocket, laid one large strong hand upon the small, beautifully arched chest of the baby. Nora, roused by his expression even more than by his gesture, gave an exclamation of horror. "Don"t touch it again," she cried, between entreaty and command. "You"ve done all you can--and more."
Stevens was not listening. "Such a fine baby, too," he said, hesitating--the old woman mistakenly fancied it was her words that made him pause. "I feel no good at all," he went on, as if reasoning with himself, "no good at all, losing both the mother and the child."
"_She_ didn"t want to live," replied Nora. Her glances stole somewhat fearfully toward the door of the adjoining room--the bedroom where the mother lay dead.