Books: The Native Son
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Inez Haynes Irwin >> The Native Son
All that I have written thus far is only by way of preliminary to
showing you what the background of the Native Son has been and to
explaining why Europe does not dazzle him much and the East not at all.
Remember that he is instinctively an athlete and that he has never
dissipated his magnificent strength in fighting weather. If he is a
little - mind you, I say only a little - inclined to use that strength
on more entertaining dissipation, he is as likely to restore the balance
by much physical exercise.
There I go again! Enormous! Superb! Splendid! Spacious! You see how
impossible it is to keep your vocabulary down when California is your
subject. Another moment and I shall be saying more unique.
Remember that all his life he has gazed on beauty - beauty tragic and
haunting, beauty gorgeous and gay. Remember he is accustomed to enormous
sizes; superb heights; splendid distances; spacious vistas. That
California does not produce an annual crop of megalo-maniacs is the best
argument I know for the superiority of heredity over environment.
Remember, too, that all his life the Native Son has soaked in an art
atmosphere potentially as strong and individual as ancient Greece or
renaisance Italy. The dazzling country side, the sulphitic brew of
races, the cosmopolitan "city" have taken care of that. That art-spirit
accounts for such minor California phenomena as photography raised to
unequalled art levels and shops whose simple beautiful interiors
resemble the private galleries of art collectors; it accounts for such
major phenomena as the Stevenson monument, the "Lark", the annual Grove
Play of the Bohemian Club, and the Exposition of 1915.
The tiny monument to Stevenson, tucked away in a corner soaked with
romantic memories - Portsmouth Square - compares favorably with the
charming memorials to the French dead. It is a thing of beautiful
proportions. A little stone column supports a bronze ship, its sails
bellying robustly to the whip of the Pacific winds. The inscription - a
well known quotation from the author - is topped simply by "To remember
Robert Louis Stevenson."
Perhaps you will object that some of these are not Native Sons. But
hush! Californians consider anybody who has stayed five minutes in the
State - a real Californian. And believe us, Reader, by that time most of
them have become not Californians but Californiacs.
The "Lark" is perhaps the most delicious bit of literary fooling that
this country has ever produced. It raised its blythe song at the Golden
Gate, but it was heard across a whole continent. For two years, Gelett
Burgess, Bruce Porter, Porter Garnett, Willis Polk, Ernest Peixotto, and
Florence Lundborg performed in it all the artistic antics that their
youth, their originality, their high spirits suggested. Professor
Norton, speaking to a class at Harvard University, and that the two
literary events of the decade between 1890 and 1900 were the fiction of
the young Kipling and the verse that appeared in the " Lark."
The Grove-Play is an annual incident of which I fancy only California
could be capable. Of course the calculable quality of the weather helps
in this possibility. But the art-spirit, born and bred in the
Californian, is the driving force. Every year the Bohemian Club produces
in its summer annex - a beautiful grove of redwoods beside the Russian
river - a play in praise of the forest. The stage is a natural one, a
cleared hill slope with redwoods for wings. The play is written, staged,
produced and acted by members of the club. The incidental music is also
written by them. Scarcely has one year's play been produced before the
rehearsals for the next begin. The result is a performance of a finished
beauty which not only astounds Easterners, but surprises Europeans.
Although undoubtedly it is the best, it is only one of numberless
out-of-door masques, plays and pageants produced all over California.
As for the Exposition of 1915, when I say that for many Californians, it
will take the edge off some of the beauty of Europe, I am quite serious.
For it was colored in the gorgeous gamut of the Orient, clamant yellows,
oranges, golds, combined with mysterious blues, muted scarlets. And it
was illuminated as no Exposition has ever before been illuminated; with
lights that dripped down from the cornices of the buildings; or shot up
from their foundations; or gleamed through transparent pillars; or
glistened behind tumbling waters; or sparkled within leaping fountains.
Some of this light even floated from enormous braziers, thereby filling
the night with clouds of mist-flame; or flooded across the bay from
reservoirs of tinted glass, thereby sluicing the whole dream-world with
fluid color. All this was reflected in still lakes and quiet pools. The
procession of one year's seasons gradually subdued its gorgeousness to
an effect of antiquity, toned but still colorful. The quick-growing
California vines covered it with an age-old luxuriance of green. As for
the architecture - I repeat that the Californian, seeing for the first
time the square of St. Peter's in Rome and of St. Mark's in Venice, is
likely to suffer a transitory but definite sense of disappointment. For
the big central court of the Exposition held suggestions of both these
squares. It seemed quite as old and permanent. And it was much more
striking in situation, with the bay offering an immense, flat blue
extension at one side and the city hills, pricked with lights, slanting
up and away from the other. By day, the joyous, whimsical fantasy of the
colossal Tower of Jewels, which caught the light in millions of rainbow
sparkles, must, for children at least, have made of its entrance the
door to fairyland. At night, there was the tragedy of old history about
those faintly fiery facades . . . those enormous shadow-haunted hulks .
. .
Remember, last of all, as naturally as from infancy the Native Son has
breathed the tonic and toxic air of California, he has breathed the
spirit of democracy. That spirit of democracy is so strong, indeed, that
the enfranchised women of California give intelligent guidance to the
feminists of a whole nation; public opinion is so enlightened that it
sets a pace for the rest of the country and labor is so progressive that
it is a revelation to the visiting sociologist.
Indeed, nowhere in the whole world, I fancy, is labor so healthy, so
happy, so prosperous. California brings to the workers' problems the
free enlightened attitude characteristic of her. As between on the one
hand hordes of unemployed; huge slums; poverty spots; and on the other a
well-paid laboring class with fair hours, she chooses the latter,
thereby storing up for herself eugenic capital.
I have always wished that California would strike off a series of medals
symbolic of some of the Utopian conditions which prevail there. I would
like to suggest a model for one. I was walking once in the vicinity of
the Ferry with a woman who knows the labor movement of California as
well as an outsider may. Suddenly she whispered in my ear, " Oh look!
Isn't he a typical California labor man?"
It was his noon hour and, in his shirt sleeves, he was leaning against
the wall, a pipe in his mouth. He was tall and lean; not an ounce of
superfluous flesh on his splendid frame, but a great deal of muscle that
lay in long, faintly swelling contours against it. He was black haired
and black-mustached; both hair and mustache were lightly touched with
grey. His thicklashed blue eyes sparkled as clear and happy as a
child's. In their expression and, indeed, in the whole relaxed attitude
of his fine, long figure, was an entertained, contented interest, an
amused tolerance of the passing crowd. You will see this type, among
others equally fine, again and again, in the unions of California.
Yes, that spirit of democracy is not only strong but militant.
Militant! I never could make up my mind which made the fightingest
reading in the San Francisco papers, the account of Friday's boxing
contest or of Monday's meeting of the Board of Supervisors. They do say
that a visiting Easterner was taken to the Board of Supervisors one
afternoon. In the evening he was regaled with a battle royal. And, and -
they do say - he fell asleep at the battle royal because it seemed so
tame in comparison with the Board of Supervisors.
The athletic instinct in the Native Son accounts for the star athletes,
boxers, tennis players, ball players; that art instinct for the
painters, illustrators, sculptors, playwrights, fiction writers, poets,
actors, photographers, producers; that spirit of democracy for the labor
leaders and politicians with whom California has inundated the rest of
the country.
I started to make a list of the famous Californians in all these
classes. But, when I had filled one sheet with names, realizing that no
matter how hard I cudgelled my memory, I would inevitably forget
somebody of importance, I tore it. up. Take a copy of "Who's Who" and
cut out the lives of all those who don't come from California and see
what a respectable-sized volume you have left.
If any woman tourist should ask me what was the greatest menace to the
peace of mind of a woman travelling alone in California, I should answer
instantly - the Native Son. I wish I could draw a picture of him.
Perhaps he's too good looking. Myself, I think the enfranchised women of
California should bring injunctions - or whatever is the proper legal
weapon - against so dangerous a degree of male pulchritude. Of course
the Native Son could reply that, in this respect, he has nothing on the
Native Daughter, she being without doubt the most beautiful woman in the
world. To, this, however, she could retort that that is as it should be,
but it's no fair for mere men to be stealing her stuff.
This is misleading!
That agglomeration of the Anglo-Saxon, the Celt and the Latin, has
endowed the Native Son with the pulchritude of all three races. In
eugenic combination with Ireland, California is peculiarly happy. The
climate has made him tall and big. His athletic habits has made him
shapely and strong. Both have given him clear eyes, a smooth skin, swift
grace of motion. Those clear eyes invest him with alook of innocence and
unsophistication. He is as rich in dimples as though they had been
shaken onto him from a salt-cellar. One in each cheek, one in his chin -
count them - three! The Native Daughter would have a license to complain
of this if she herself didn't look as thou she'd been sprinkled with
dimples from a pepper-caster. In addition - oh, but what's the use? Who
ever managed to paint the lily with complimentary words or gild refined
gold with fancy phrases? The region bounded by Post, Bush, Mason and
Taylor Streets contains San Francisco's most famous clubs. Any Congress
of Eugenists wishing to establish a standard of male beauty for the
human race has only to place a moving-picture machine at the entrance of
any one of these - let us say the Athletic Club. The results will at the
same time enrapture and discourage a dazzled world. I will prophesy that
some time those same enfranchised women of California are going to
realize the danger of such a sight bursting unexpectedly on the
unprepared woman tenderfoot. Then they'll rope off that dangerous area,
establish guards at the corners and put up "Stop! Look! Listen!" signs
where they'll do the most good. And as proof of all these statements, I
refer you to that array of young gods, filing endlessly over the
sporting pages of the California newspapers.
And I'll pay for the privilege. What the Chamber of Commerce ought to
do, though, is to advertise that this concession will be put up at
auction. Indeed, if this sale were made an annual event, women bidders
would flock to California from all over the world.
A Native Son told me once that he had been given the star-assignment of
newspaper history. Somebody offered a prize to the most beautiful
daughter of California. And his job was to travel all over the State to
inspect the candidates. He said it was a shame to take his pay and I
agreed that it was sheer burglary. All I've got to say is that if
anybody wants to offer a prize for the handsomest Native Son in
California, I'll give my services as judge. I will add that after nearly
two years of war-time Europe, in which I have had an opportunity to
study some of the best military material of England, France, Italy,
Portugal, Spain and Switzerland - the Native Son leads them all. I am
inclined to think he is the best physical specimen in the world.
But there is a great deal more to the Native Son than mere comeliness.
That long list of nationally-famous Californians proves this in one way,
the high average of his citizenship in another. Physically he is a big,
strong, high-geared, high-powered racing machine; and he has an
inexhaustible supply of energy for motive fluid and an extraordinary
degree of initiative and enterprise for driving forces. That initiative
and enterprise spring part from his inalienable pep, his vivid interest
in life; and part from that constructive looseness of the social
structure, which gives them both full play. If the Native Son sees
anything he wants to do, he instantly does it. If he sees anything that
he wants to get, he promptly takes it. If he sees anything that he wants
to be, he immediately is it. He saunters into New York in a degage way
and takes the whole city by storm. He strolls through Europe with an
insouciant air and finds it almost as good as California. All this,
supplemented by his abiding conviction that California must have the
most and best and biggest of everything, accounts for what California
has done in the sixty-odd years of her existence, accounts for what San
Francisco has done in the decade since her great disaster, accounts for
that wartime Exposition; perhaps the most elaborate, certainly the most
beautiful the world has ever seen.
The Native Son has a strong sense of humor and he invents his own
slang. He expresses himself with the picturesqueness of diction
inevitable to the West and with much of its sly, dry humor. But there is
a joyous quality to the San Francisco blague which sets it apart, even
in the West. You find its counterpart only in Paris. Perhaps it is that,
being reenforced by wit, it explodes more quickly than the humor of the
rest of the country. The Californian with his bulk, his beauty, his
boast and his blague descending on New York is very like the native of
the Midi who with similar qualities, is always taking Paris by storm.
Marseilles, the chief metropolis of the Midi, has a famous promenade -
less than half a dozen blocks, packed tight with the peoples and colors
and odors of two continents - called the Cannebiere. The Marseillais,
returning from his first visit to Paris, remarks with condescending
scorn that Paris has no Cannebiere. Of course Paris has her network of
Grand Boulevards but - So the Californiac patronizingly discovers that
New York has no Market Street, no Golden Gate Park, no Twin Peaks, no
Mt. Tamalpais, no seals. Above all - and this is the final thrust - New
York is flat.
Somebody ought to invent a serum that renders the victim immune.
Some day medical journals will give the same space to the victims of
California hospitality that they now allot to victims of Oriental
famines. For with Californians, hospitality is first an instinct, then
an art, then a religion and finally a mania. It is utterly impossible to
resist it, but it takes a strong constitution to survive. Californians
will go to any length or trouble in this matter; their hospitality is
all mixed up with their art instinct and their sense of humor. For no
matter what graceful tribute they pay to famous visiting aliens, its
formality is always leavened by their delicious wit. And no matter how
much fun they poke at departing or returning friends, it is always
accompanied by some social tribute of great charm and originality.
A loyal Adopted Son of California, a novelist and muckraker, returned a
few years ago to the beloved land of his adoption. His arrival was made
the occasion of a dinner by his Club. He had come back specifically on a
muckraking tour. But it happened that during his absence he had written
a series of fiction stories, all revolving about the figure of a
middle-aged woman medium. In the midst of the dinner, a fellow clubman
disguised as a middle-aged woman medium began to read the future of the
guests. She discoursed long and accurately on the personal New York
affairs of the returned muckraker. To get such information, the wires
between the committee who got up the dinner and his friends in New York
must have been kept hot for hours. Moreover, just after midnight, a
newsboy arrived with editions of a morning paper of which the whole
first page was devoted to him. There were many, highly-colored accounts
of all-night revelries; expense accounts, of which every second item was
champagne and every fifth bromo-selzer, etc., etc.
Of course but a limited number of papers with this extraneous sheet were
printed and those distributed only at the dinner. One, however, was sent
to the Eastern magazine which had dispatched our muckraking hero to the
Golden Gate. They replied instantly and heatedly by wire to go on with
his work, that in spite of the outrageous slander of the opposition,
they absolutely trusted him.
This was only one of an endless succession of dinners which dot the
social year with their originality.
During the course of the Exposition, the governing officials presented
so many engraved placques to California citizens and to visiting
notabilities that after a while, the Californians began to josh the
system. A certain San Franciscan is famous for much generous and
unobtrusive philanthropy. Also his self-evolved translation of the
duties of friendship is the last word on that subject. He was visited
unexpectedly at his office one day by a group of friends. With much
ceremony, they presented him with a placque - an amusing plaster
burlesque of the real article. He had the Californian sense of humor and
he thoroughly enjoyed the situation. Admitting that the joke was on him,
he celebrated according to time-honored rites. After his friends had
left, he found on his desk a small uninscribed package which had
apparently been left by accident. He opened it. Inside was a beautiful
leather box showing his initials in gold. And within the box was a small
bronze placque exquisitely engraved by a master-artist . . . bearing a
message of appreciation exquisitely phrased . . . the names of all his
friends. I know of no incident more typical of the taste and the humor
with which the Native Son performs every social function. That sense of
humor does not lessen but it lightens the gallantry and chivalry which
is the earmark of Westerners. It makes for that natural perfection of
manners which is also typical of the Native Son,
Touching the matter of their manners . . . A woman writer I know very
well once went to a boxing-match in San Francisco. Women are forbidden
to attend such events, so that a special permission had to be obtained
for her. She was warned beforehand that the audience might manifest its
disapproval in terms both audible and uncomplimentary. She entered the
arena in considerable trepidation of spirit. It was an important match -
for the lightweight championship of the world. She occupied a ring-side
box where, it is likely, everybody saw her. There were ten thousand men
in the arena and she was the only woman. But in all the two hours she
sat there, she was not once made conscious, by a word or glance in her
direction, that anybody had noticed her presence. That I think is a
perfect example of perfect mob-manners.
Perhaps that instinct, not only for fair but for chivalrous play, which
also characterizes the Native Son, comes from pioneer days. Certainly it
is deepened by a very active interest in all kinds of sports. I draw my
two examples of this from the boxing world. This is a story that Sam
Berger tells about Andrew Gallagher.
It happened in that period when both men were amateur lightweights and
Mr. Gallagher was champion of the Pacific Coast. Mr. Berger challenged
Mr. Gallagher and defeated him. The margin of victory was so narrow,
however, that Mr. Gallagher felt justified in as asking for another
match, and got it.
This time Mr. Berger's victory was complete. In a letter, Mr. Berger
said, "A woman cannot possibly understand what being a champion means to
a man. It isn't so much the championship itself but it's the slap on the
shoulder and the whispered comment as you pass, 'There goes our
champion!' that counts. Looking back at it from the thirties, it isn't
so important; but in the twenties it means a lot. My dressing room was
near Gallagher's, so that, although he didn't know this, I could not
help overhearing much that was said there. After we got back to our
rooms, I heard some friend of Gallagher's refer to me as 'a damn Jew'.
What was my delight at Gallagher's magnanimity to hear him answer, 'Why
do you call him a damn Jew? He is a very fine fellow and a better boxer
than me, the best day I ever saw.' "
That incident seems to me typical of the Native Son; and the long
unbroken friendship that grew out of it, equally so.
A few years ago an interview with Willie Ritchie appeared in a New York
paper. He had just boxed Johnny Dundee, defeating him. In passing I may
state that Mr. Ritchie was, during that winter, taking an agricultural
course at Columbia College, and that this is quite typical of the kind
of professional athlete California turns out. You would have expected
that in a long two-column interview, Mr. Ritchie would have devoted much
of the space to himself, his record, his future plans. Not at all. It
was all about Johnnie Dundee, for whom personally he seems to have an
affectionate friendship and for whose work a rueful and decidedly
humorous appreciation. He analyzed with great sapience the psychological
effect on the audience of Mr. Dundee's ring-system of perpetual motion.
He described with great delight a punch that Mr. Dundee had landed on
the very top of his head. In fact Mr. Dundee's publicity manager could
do no better than to use parts of this interview for advertising
purposes.
I began that last paragraph with the phrase, "A few years ago". But
since that time a whole era seems to have passed - that heart-breaking
era of the Great War. And now the Native Son has entered into and
emerged from a new and terrible game. He has needed - and I doubt not
displayed - all that he has of strength, natural and developed; of
keenness and coolness; of bravery and fortitude; of capacity to endure
and yet josh on.
Perhaps after all, though, the best example of the Native Son's fairness
was his enfranchisement of the Native Daughter and the way in which he
did it. Sometime, when the stories of all the suffrage fights are told,
we shall get the personal experiences of the women who worked in that
whirlwind campaign. It will make interesting reading; for it is both
dramatic and picturesque. And it will redound forever and ever and ever
to the glory of the Native Son.
The Native Son - in the truest sense of the romantic - is a romantic
figure. He could scarcely avoid being that, for he comes from the most
romantic State in the Union and, if from San Francisco, the most
romantic city in our modern world. It is, I believe, mainly his sense of
romance that drives him into the organization which he himself has
called the Native Sons of the Golden West; an adventurous instinct that
has come down to us from mediaeval times, urging men to form into
congenial company for offence and defence, and to offer personality the
opportunity for picturesque masquerade.
That romantic background not only explains the Native Son but the long
line of extraordinary fiction, with California for a background, which
California has produced. California though is the despair of fiction
writers. It offers so many epochs; such a mixture of nationalities; so
many and such violently contrasted atmospheres, that it is difficult to
make it credible. The gold rush . . . the pioneers . . . the Vigilantes
. . . the Sand Lot days . . . San Francisco before the fire . . . the
period of reconstruction. As for the drama lying submerged everywhere in
the labor movement . . . the novelists have not even begun to mine below
the surface. To the fiction-writer, the real, everyday life is so
dramatic that the temptation is to substitute for invention the literal
records of some literary moving-picture machine.
In fact, all the time you stay in California you're living in a story.
The San Franciscans will inundate you with stories of that old San
Francisco. And what stories they are! The water-front, Chinatown, the
Barbary Coast and particularly that picturesque neighborhood, south of
Market Street - here were four of the great drama-breeding areas of the
world. The San Franciscans of the past generation will tell you that the
new San Francisco is tamed and ordered. That may be all true. But to one
at least who never saw the old city, romance shows her bewildering face
everywhere in the new one. Almost anything can happen there and almost
everything does. Life explodes. It's as though there were a romantic
dynamite in solution in the air. You make a step in any direction and -
bang! - you bump into adventure. There is something about the sparkle
and bustle and gaiety of the streets . . . There is something about the
friendliness and the vivacity of the people . . . There is something
about the intimacy and color and gaiety of the restaurants. . . .