Books: The Hohenzollerns in America
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Stephen Leacock >> The Hohenzollerns in America
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"That seems fairly exciting, isn't it?" I said.
"Oh, he won't get boiled," said the little boy. "He's
the hero."
So I knew that the child has already taken his first
steps in the disillusionment of fiction.
Of course he was quite right as to Ned. This wonderful
youth, the hero with whom we all begin an acquaintance
with books, passes unhurt through a thousand perils.
Cannibals, Apache Indians, war, battles, shipwrecks,
leave him quite unscathed. At the most Ned gets a flesh
wound which is healed, in exactly one paragraph, by that
wonderful drug called a "simple."
But the most amazing thing about this particular hero,
the boy Ned, is the way in which he turns up in all the
great battles and leading events of the world.
It was Ned, for example, who at the critical moment at
Gettysburg turned in his saddle to General Meade and said
quietly, "General, the day is ours." "If it is," answered
Meade, as he folded his field glass, "you alone, Ned,
have saved it."
In the same way Ned was present at the crossing of the
Delaware with Washington. Thus:--
"'What do you see, Ned?' said Washington, as they peered
from the leading boat into the driving snow.
"'Ice,' said Ned. 'My boy,' said the Great American
General, and a tear froze upon his face as he spoke, 'you
have saved us all.'"
Here is Ned at Runningmede when King John with his pen
in hand was about to sign the Magna Carta.
"For a moment the King paused irresolute, the uplifted
quill in his hand, while his crafty, furtive eyes indicated
that he might yet break his plighted faith with the
assembled barons.
"Ned laid his mailed hand upon the parchment.
"'Sign it,' he said sternly, 'or take the consequences.'
"The King signed.
"'Ned,' said the Baron de Bohun, as he removed his iron
vizor from his bronze face, 'thou hast this day saved
all England.'"
In the stories of our boyhood in which Ned figured, there
was no such thing as a heroine, or practically none. At
best she was brought in as an afterthought. It was
announced on page three hundred and one that at the close
of Ned's desperate adventures in the West Indies he
married the beautiful daughter of Don Diego, the Spanish
governor of Portobello; or else, at the end of the great
war with Napoleon, that he married a beautiful and
accomplished French girl whose parents had perished in
the Revolution.
Ned generally married away from home. In fact his marriages
were intended to cement the nations, torn asunder by
Ned's military career. But sometimes he returned to his
native town, all sunburned, scarred and bronzed from
battle (the bronzing effect of being in battle is always
noted): he had changed from a boy to a man: that is, from
a boy of fifteen to a man of sixteen. In such a case Ned
marries in his own home town. It is done after this
fashion:
"But who is this who advances smiling to greet him as he
crosses the familiar threshold of the dear old house?
Can this tall, beautiful girl be Gwendoline, the
child-playmate of his boyhood?"
Well, can it? I ask it of every experienced reader--can
it or can it not?
Ned had his day, in the boyhood of each of us. We presently
passed him by. I am speaking, of course, of those of us
who are of maturer years and can look back upon thirty
or forty years of fiction reading. "Ned," flourishes
still, I understand, among the children of today. But
now he flies in aeroplanes, and dives in submarines, and
gives his invaluable military advice to General Joffre
and General Pershing.
But with the oncoming of adolescent years something softer
was needed than Ned with his howling cannibals and his
fusillade of revolver shots.
So the "Ned" of the Adventure Books was supplanted by
the Romantic Heroine of the Victorian Age and the
Long-winded Immaculate who accompanied her as the Hero.
I do not know when these two first opened their twin
career. Whether Fenimore Cooper or Walter Scott began
them, I cannot say. But they had an undisputed run on
two continents for half a century.
This Heroine was a sylph. Her chiefest charm lay in her
physical feebleness. She was generally presented to us
in some such words as these:
"Let us now introduce to our readers the fair Madeline
of Rokewood. Slender and graceful and of a form so fragile
that her frame scarce fitted to fulfil its bodily
functions...she appeared rather as one of those ethereal
beings of the air who might visit for a brief moment this
terrestrial scene, than one of its earthly inhabitants.
Her large, wondering eyes looked upon the beholder in
childlike innocence."
Sounds simple, doesn't it? One might suspect there was
something wrong with the girl's brain. But listen to
this:--
"The mind of Madeline, elegantly formed by the devoted
labours of the venerable Abbe, her tutor, was of a degree
of culture rarely found in one so young. Though scarce
eighteen summers had flown over her head at the time when
we introduce her to our readers, she was intimately
conversant with the French, Italian, Spanish, and Provencal
tongues. The abundant pages of history, both ancient and
modern, sacred and profane, had been opened for her by
her devoted instructor. In music she played with exquisite
grace and accuracy upon both the spinet and the harpsichord,
while her voice, though lacking something in compass,
was sweet and melodious to a degree."
From such a list of accomplishments it is clear that
Madeline could have matriculated, even at the Harvard
Law School, with five minutes preparation. Is it any
wonder that there was a wild rush for Madeline? In fact,
right after the opening description of the Heroine, there
follows an ominous sentence such as this:--
"It was this exquisite being whose person Lord Rip de
Viperous, a man whose reputation had shamed even the most
licentious court of the age, and had led to his banishment
from the presence of the king, had sworn to get within
his power."
Personally I don't blame Lord Rip a particle; it must
have been very rough on him to have been banished from
the presence of the king--enough to inflame a man to do
anything.
With two such characters in the story, the scene was set
and the plot and adventures followed as a matter of
course. Lord Rip de Viperous pursued the Heroine. But at
every step he is frustrated. He decoys Madeline to a
ruined tower at midnight, her innocence being such and
the gaps left in her education by the Abbe being so wide,
that she is unaware of the danger of ruined towers after
ten thirty P.M. In fact, "tempted by the exquisite clarity
and fulness of the moon, which magnificent orb at this
season spread its widest effulgence over all nature, she
accepts the invitation of her would-be-betrayer to gather
upon the battlements of the ruined keep the strawberries
which grew there in wild profusion."
But at the critical moment, Lord de Viperous is balked.
At the very instant when he is about to seize her in his
arms, Madeline turns upon him and says in such icy tones,
"Titled villain that you are, unhand me," that the man
is "cowed." He slinks down the ruined stairway "cowed."
And at every later turn, at each renewed attempt, Madeline
"cows" him in like fashion.
Moreover while Lord de Viperous is being thus cowed by
Madeline the Heroine, he is also being "dogged" by the
Hero. This counterpart of Madeline who shared her popularity
for fifty years can best be described as the Long-winded
Immaculate Hero. Entirely blameless in his morals, and
utterly virtuous in his conduct, he possessed at least
one means of defending himself. He could make speeches.
This he did on all occasions. With these speeches he
"dogged" Lord de Viperous. Here is the style of them:--
"'My Lord,' said Markham..." (incidentally let it be
explained that this particular brand of hero was always
known by his surname and his surname was always Markham)
--"'My lord, the sentiments that you express and the
demeanour which you have evinced are so greatly at variance
with the title that you bear and the lineage of which
you spring that no authority that you can exercise and
no threats that you are able to command shall deter me
from expressing that for which, however poor and inadequate
my powers of speech, all these of whom and for what I am
what I am, shall answer to it for the integrity of that,
which, whether or not, is at least as it is. My lord, I
have done. Or shall I speak more plainly still?'"
Is it to be wondered that after this harangue Lord Rip
sank into a chair, a hideous convulsion upon his face,
murmuring--"It is enough."
But successful as they were as Hero and Heroine, Markham
and Madeline presently passed off the scene. Where they
went to, I do not know. Perhaps Markham got elected in
the legislature of Massachusetts. At any rate they
disappeared from fiction.
There followed in place of Madeline, the athletic sunburned
heroine with the tennis racket. She was generally called
Kate Middleton, or some such plain, straightforward
designation. She wore strong walking boots and leather
leggings. She ate beef steak. She shot with a rifle. For
a while this Boots and Beef Heroine (of the middle
nineties) made a tremendous hit. She climbed crags in
the Rockies. She threw steers in Colorado with a lariat.
She came out strong in sea scenes and shipwrecks, and on
sinking steamers, where she "cowed" the trembling stewards
and "dogged" the mutinous sailors in the same fashion
that Madeline used to "cow" and "dog" Lord Rip de Viperous.
With the Boots and Beef Heroine went as her running mate
the out-of-doors man, whose face had been tanned and
whose muscles had been hardened into tempered steel in
wild rides over the Pampas of Patagonia, and who had
learned every art and craft of savage life by living
among the wild Hoodoos of the Himalayas. This
Air-and-Grass-man, as he may be called, is generally
supposed to write the story... He was "I" all through.
And he had an irritating modesty in speaking of his own
prowess. Instead of saying straight out that he was the
strongest and bravest man in the world, he implied it
indirectly on every page.
Here, for example, is a typical scene in which "I" and
Kate figure in a desperate adventure in the Rocky Mountains,
pursued by Indians.
"We are about to descend on a single cord from the summit
of a lofty crag, our sole chance of escape (and a
frightfully small chance at that) from the roving band
of Apaches.
"With my eye I measured the fearsome descent below us.
"'Hold fast to the line, Miss Middleton,' I said as I
set my foot against a projecting rock. (Please note that
the Air-and-Grass Hero in these stories always calls the
Heroine Miss Middleton right up to the very end.)
"The noble girl seized the knotted end of the buckskin
line. 'All right, Mr. Smith,' she said with quiet
confidence.
"I braced myself for the effort. My muscles like tempered
steel responded to the strain. I lowered a hundred fathoms
of the line. I could already hear the voice of Kate far
down the cliff.
"Don't let go the line, Miss Middleton,' I called. (Here
was an excellent piece of advice.)
"The girl's clear voice floated up to me... 'All right,
Mr. Smith,' she called, 'I won't.'"
Of course they landed safely at the foot of the cliff,
after the manner of all heroes and heroines. And here
it is that Kate in her turn comes out strong, at the
evening encampment, frying bacon over a blazing fire of
pine branches, while the firelight illuminates her leather
leggings and her rough but picturesque costume.
The circumstances might seem a little daring and improper.
But the reader knows that it is all right, because the
hero and heroine always call one another Miss Middleton
and Mr. Smith.
Not till right at the end, when they are just getting
back again to the confines of civilization, do they depart
from this.
Here is the scene that happens... The hero and heroine
are on the platform of the way-side depot where they are
to part... Kate to return to the luxurious home of her
aunt, Mrs. van der Kyper of New York, and the Air-and-Grass
Man to start for the pampas of Patagonia to hunt the
hoopoo. The Air-and-Grass Man is about to say goodbye.
Then... "'Kate,' I said, as I held the noble girl's gloved
hand in mine a moment. She looked me in the face with
the full, frank, fearless gaze of a sister.
"'Yes?' she answered.
"'Kate,' I repeated, 'do you know what I was thinking of
when I held the line while you were half way down the
cliff?'
"'No,' she murmured, while a flush suffused her cheek.
"'I was thinking, Kate,' I said, 'that if the rope broke
I should be very sorry.'
"'Edward!' she exclaimed.
"I clasped her in my arms.
"'Shall I make a confession,' said Kate, looking up
timidly, half an hour later, as I tenderly unclasped the
noble girl from my encircling arms, ...'I was thinking
the same thing too.'"
So Kate and Edward had their day and then, as Tennyson
says, they "passed," or as less cultivated people put
it, "they were passed up in the air."
As the years went by they failed to please. Kate was a
great improvement upon Madeline. But she wouldn't do.
The truth was, if one may state it openly, Kate wasn't
TOUGH enough. In fact she wasn't tough at all. She turned
out to be in reality just as proper and just as virtuous
as Madeline.
So, too, with the Air-and-Grass Hero. For all of his
tempered muscles and his lariat and his Winchester rifle,
he was presently exposed as a fraud. He was just as
Long-winded and just as Immaculate as the Victorian Hero
that he displaced.
What the public really wants and has always wanted in
its books is wickedness. Fiction was recognised in its
infancy as being a work of the devil.
So the popular novel, despairing of real wickedness among
the cannibals, and in the ruined tower at midnight, and
on the open-air of the prairies, shifted its scenes again.
It came indoors. It came back to the city. And it gave
us the new crop of heroes and heroines and the scenes
and settings with which the fiction of to-day has replaced
the Heroes and Heroines of Yesterday. The Lure of the
City is its theme. It pursues its course to the music of
the ukalele, in the strident racket of the midnight
cabaret. Here move the Harvard graduate in his dinner
jacket, drunk at one in the morning. Here is the hard
face of Big Business scowling at its desk; and here the
glittering Heroine of the hour in her dress of shimmering
sequins, making such tepid creatures as Madeline and Kate
look like the small change out of a twenty-five cent
shinplaster.
3.--The Discovery of America;
Being Done into Moving Pictures and Out Again
"No greater power for education," said President Shurman
the other day, "has come among us during the last forty
years than the moving picture."
I am not certain that it was President Shurman. And he
may not have said it the other day. Nor do I feel absolutely
sure that he referred to the LAST forty years. Indeed
now that I come to think of it, I don't believe it WAS
Shurman. In fact it may have been ex-President Eliot. Or
was it, perhaps, President Hadley of Yale? Or did I say
it myself? Judging by the accuracy and force of the
language, I think I must have. I doubt if Shurman or
Hadley could have put it quite so neatly. There's a touch
about it that I recognise.
But let that pass. At any rate it is something that
everybody is saying and thinking. All our educators have
turned their brains towards the possibility of utilising
moving pictures for the purpose of education. It is being
freely said that history and geography, and even arithmetic,
instead of being taught by the slow and painful process
of books and memory, can be imparted through the eye.
I had no sooner heard of this idea than I became impassioned
to put it into practice. I have therefore prepared, or
am preparing, a film, especially designed for the elementary
classes of our schools to narrate the story of the
discovery of America.
This I should like the reader to sit and see with me, in
the eye of his imagination. But let me first give the
plain, unvarnished account of the discovery of America
as I took it from one of our school histories.
"Christopher Columbus, otherwise Christoforo Colombo,
the celebrated discoverer of America, was born of poor
but honest parents in the Italian city of Genoa. His
mother, Teresa Colombo, seems to have been a woman of
great piety and intelligence. Of his father, Bartolomeo
Colombo, nothing is recorded. From his earliest youth
the boy Christopher developed a passion for mathematics,
astronomy, geodesy, and the other sciences of the
day..."
But, no,--stop! I am going too fast. The reader will get
it better if we turn it into pictures bit by bit as we
go on. Let the reader therefore imagine himself seated
before the curtain in the lighted theatre. All ready?
Very good. Let the music begin--Star Spangled Banner,
please--flip off the lights. Now then.
DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
AUTHORIZED
BY THE BOARD OF CENSORS OF
NEW YORK STATE
There we are. That gives the child the correct historical
background right away. Now what goes on next? Let me see.
Ah, yes, of course. We throw an announcement on the
screen, thus.
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.. Mr. Quinn
Here the face of Mr. Quinn (in a bowler hat) is thrown
on the screen and fades out again.
We follow him up with
SPIRIT OF AMERICA.. Miss E. Dickenson
Now, we are ready to begin in earnest. Let us make the
scenario together. First idea to be expressed:
"Christopher Columbus was the son of poor but honest parents."
This might seem difficult to a beginner, but to those of
us who frequent the movies it is nothing. The reel spins
and we see--a narrow room--(it is always narrow in the
movies)--to indicate straitened circumstances--cardboard
furniture--high chairs with carved backs--two cardboard
beams across the ceiling (all this means the Middle
Ages)--a long dinner table--all the little Columbuses
seated at it--Teresa Colombo cutting bread at one end of
it--gives a slice to each, one slice (that means poverty
in the movies)--Teresa rolls her eyes up--all the little
children put their hands together and say grace (this
registers honesty). The thing is done. Let us turn back
to the history book and see what is to be put in next.
"...The father of Christopher, Bartolomeo Colombo, was
a man of no especial talent of whom nothing is recorded."
That's easy. First we announce him on the screen:
BARTOLOMEO COLOMBO.. Mr. Henderson
Then we stick him on the film on a corner of the room,
leaning up against the cardboard clock and looking at
the children. This attitude in the movies always indicates
a secondary character of no importance. His business is
to look at the others and to indicate forgetfulness of
self, incompetence, unimportance, vacuity, simplicity.
Note how this differs from the attitudes of important
characters. If a movie character--one of importance--is
plotting or scheming, he seats himself at a little round
table, drums on it with his fingers, and half closes one
eye. If he is being talked to, or having a letter or
document or telegram read to him, he stands "facing full"
and working his features up and down to indicate emotion
sweeping over them. If he is being "exposed" (which is
done by pointing fingers at him), he hunches up like a
snake in an angle of the room with both eyes half shut
and his mouth set as if he had just eaten a lemon. But
if he has none of these things to express and is only in
the scene as a background for the others, then he goes
over and leans in an easy attitude against the tall
cardboard clock.
That then is the place for Bartolomeo Colombo. To the
clock with him.
Now what comes next?
"...The young Christopher developed at an early age a
passion for study, and especially for astronomy, geometry,
geodesy, and the exact science of the day."
Quite easy. On spins the film. Young Christopher in a
garret room (all movie study is done in garrets). The
cardboard ceiling slopes within six inches of his head.
This shows that the boy never rises from his books. He
can't. On a table in front of him is a little globe and
a pair of compasses. Christopher spins the globe round.
Then he makes two circles with the compasses, one after
the other, very carefully. This is the recognised movie
symbol for mathematical research.
So there we have Christopher--poor, honest, studious,
full of circles.
Now to the book again.
"...The young Columbus received his education at the
monastery of the Franciscan monks at Genoa. Here he spent
seven years."
Yes, but we can put that on the screen in seven seconds.
Turn on the film.
Movie Monastery--exterior, done in grey cardboard--ding,
dong, ding, dong (man in the orchestra with triangle and
stick)--procession of movie friars--faces more like thugs,
but never mind--they are friars because they walk two
and two in a procession, singing out of hymn books.
Now for the book again.
"...Fra Giacomo, the prior of the monastery, delighted
with the boy's progress, encourages his studies."
Wait a minute.
FRA GIACOMO... Mr. Edward Sims
Mr. Sims's face, clean-shaved under a round hat fades in and out.
Then the picture goes on. Movie monastery interior--young
Christopher, still at a table with compasses--benevolent friar
bending over him--Christopher turns the compasses and looks up
with a what-do-you-know-about-that look--astonishment and delight
of friar (registered by opening his eyes like a bull frog). All
this shows study, progress, application. The friars are delighted
with the boy.
"...Christopher, after seven years of study, reaches the
firm conviction that the world is round."
Picture. Christopher--with his globe--jumps up from
table--passes his fingers round and round the
globe--registers the joy of invention--seats himself at
table and draws circles with his compasses furiously. He
fades out.
"...Fired with his discovery Christopher sets out from
the monastery."
Stop a minute, this is a little hard. Fired. How can we
show Christopher "fired." We can't. Perhaps he'll be
fired if the film is no good, but we must omit it just
now.
"He sets out."
One second only for this. Monastery door (double cardboard
with iron across it)--Christopher leaving--carries a
wallet to mean distance. Fra Giacomo blessing him--fade
out.
"...For eighteen years Columbus vainly travelled through
the world on foot offering his discovery at the courts
of Europe, in vain, though asking nothing in return for
it except a fleet of ships, two hundred men and provisions
for two years."
To anybody not used to scenarios this looks a large order.
Eighteen years seems difficult to put on the screen. In
reality this is exactly where the trained movie man sees
his chance. Here he can put in anything and everything
that he likes, bringing in, in a slightly mediaeval form,
all his favourite movie scenes.
Thus, for example, here we have first the good old midnight
cabaret supper scene--thinly disguised as the court of
the King of Sardinia. To turn a cabaret into a court the
movie men merely exchange their Fifth Avenue evening
dress for short coats and knee breeches, heavily wadded
and quilted, and wear large wigs. Quilted pants and wigs
register courtiers, the courtiers of anybody--Charlemagne,
Queen Elizabeth, Peter the Great, Louis Quatorze, anybody
and everybody who ever had courtiers. Just as men with
bare legs mean Romans, men in pea-jackets mean detectives,
and young men drunk in evening dress Harvard graduates.
The ladies at the court of Sardinia wear huge paper frills
round their necks. Otherwise it is the cabaret scene with
the familiar little tables, and the ukaleles going like
mad in one corner, and black sarsaparilla being poured
foaming into the glasses.
In this scene Columbus moves up and down, twirling his
little globe and looking appealingly in their faces. All
laugh at him. His part is just the same as that of the
poor little girl trying to sell up-state violets in the
midnight cabaret.
The Court of Sardinia fades and the film shows Columbus
vainly soliciting financial aid from Lorenzo the
Magnificent.
Stop one minute, please.
LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT... Mr. L. Evans
This scene again is old and familiar. It is the well-known
interior representing the Grinding Capitalist, or the
Bitter Banker refusing aid to the boy genius who has
invented a patent pea-rake. The only change is that
Lorenzo wears a huge wig, has no telephone, and handles
a large quill pen (to register Middle Ages) which he
wiggles furiously up and down on a piece of parchment.
So the eighteen years, with scenes of this sort turn out
the easiest part of the whole show.
But let us to the book again.
"...After eighteen years Columbus, now past the prime of
life, is presented at the Court of Queen Isabella of
Spain."
Just half a moment.
QUEEN ISABELLA.. Miss Janet Briggs
There will be very probably at this point a slight applause
from the back of the hall. Miss Briggs was here last
week, or her astral body was--as Maggie of the Cattle
Ranges. The impression that she made is passed on to
Isabella.
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