by Frank Norris
The only movement perceptible throughout the audience was the swaying of gay coloured fans like the balancing of butterflies about to light. Occasionally there would be a vast rustling, like the sound of wind in a forest, as the holders of librettos turned the leaves simultaneously.
The orchestra thundered. The French horns snarling, the first violins wailing in unison, while all the bows went up and down together like parts of a well-regulated machine. The kettle-drums rolled sonorously at exact intervals, and now and then one heard the tinkling of a harp like the pattering of raindrops between peals of thunder. The leader swayed from side to side in his place, beating time with his baton, his hand, and his head.
On the stage the act was drawing to a close. There had just been a duel. The baritone lay stretched upon the floor at left centre, his sword fallen at some paces from him. On the left of the scene, front, stood the tenor who had killed him, singing in his highest register, very red in the face, continuously striking his hand upon his breast and pointing with his sword at his fallen enemy. Next him, on the extreme left, was his friend the basso, in high leather boots, growling from time to time during a sustained chord, “Mon honneur et ma foi.” In the centre of the stage, the soprano, the star, the prima donna, chanted a fervid appeal to the tenor, who cried, “Jamais, jamais!” striking his breast and pointing with his sword. The soprano cried, “Ah, mon Dieu, ayez pitie du moi.” Her confidante, the mezzo-soprano, came to her support, repeating her words with an impersonal meaning— “ayez pitie d’elle.”
“Mon honneur et ma foi” growled the basso. The contralto, dressed as a boy, turned toward the audience on the extreme right, bringing out her notes with a wrench and a twist of her body and neck, and intoning, “Ah, malheureuse! mon Dieu, ayez pitie d’elle!”
The leader of the chorus, costumed as the captain of the watch, leaned over the dead baritone and sang, “II est mort, il est mort, mon Dieu, ayez pitie de lui.” The soldiers of the watch were huddled together immediately back of him. They wore tin helmets much too large, and green peplons, and repeated his words continually.
The chorus itself was made up of citizens of the town; it was in a semicircle at the back of the stage — the men on one side, the women on the other. They made all their gestures together and chanted without ceasing, “O horreur, O mystere! Il est mort, mon Dieu, ayez pitie de nous!”
“Edgardo,” cried the soprano.
“Jamais, jamais,” echoed the tenor, striking his breast and pointing with his sword.
“O mystere,” chanted the chorus, while the basso struck his hand upon his sword hilt growling, “Mon honneur et ma foi!”
The orchestra redoubled. The finale began; all the pieces of the orchestra, all the voices on the stage commenced over again very loud. They all took a step forward, and the rhythm became more rapid till it reached a climax where the soprano’s voice jumped to a C in alt, holding it long enough for the basso to thunder, “Mon honneur et ma foi” twice. Then they all struck the attitudes for the closing tableau, and in one last burst of music sang altogether, “Mon Dieu, ayez pitie de moi,” and “de nous,” and “de lui.” Then the orchestra closed with a long roll of the kettledrums, and the soprano fainted into the arms of her confidante. The curtain fell.
There was a roar of applause. The gallery whistled and stamped. Everyone relaxed his or her position, drawing in a long breath, looking about them. There was a general stir, the lights in the great glass chandelier clicked and blazed up, and a murmur of conversation arose. The footlights were lowered, and the orchestra left their places and disappeared underneath the stage, leaving the audience with the conviction that they had gone out after beer. All over the house one heard the shrill voices of boys crying out: “Op’ra books — books for the op’ra — words and music for the op’ra.”
Throughout the boxes a great coming and going took place, and an interchange of visits. The gentlemen out in the foyer stood about in groups, or walked up and down smoking cigarettes, often pausing in front of the big floral piece that was to be given to the soprano at the end of her “great scene” in the fourth act.
There was a little titter of an electric bell. The curtain was about to go up, and a great rush for seats began. The orchestra was coming back and tuning up. They sent up a prolonged medley of sounds, little minor chirps and cries from the violins, liquid runs and mellow gurgles from the oboes and woodwind instruments, and an occasional deep-toned purring from the bass viols, a bell rang faintly from behind the wings, the house lights sank, and the footlights blazed up. The leader tapped with his baton; a great silence fell upon the house, while here and there one heard an energetic “Sh! Sh!” The fourth act was about to begin.
San Francisco Wave, November 27, 1897.
A SOUTH SEA EXPEDITION
ONE hundred men went sailing out of this port yesterday “as the sun went down,” bound for a little surf-ringed island, far down there in the South Pacific, down below the Paumoto group, below the Marquesas — below even the Gilberts. One hundred of them — workingmen, for the most part — carpenters, joiners, machinists, a photographer, I believe, and (of course) one journalist.
I think they call themselves the South Pacific Colonization Company, and they are going down there to found and form a nation — practically, that is what it is. There are different ways of looking upon this business. You may consider it as a joke, if you will — a lark indulged in by certain wild fellows, to go down there and seize the natives’ land and the natives’ women and live a luxurious life, made up largely of love, breadfruit, and surf bathing — or you may take it more seriously, especially after you have had a good look at some of the young men who are concerned — none of them of the vicious, irresponsible type — you may take it seriously, I say, and see in this ship’s company of Americans, Germans, and Englishmen the types of that sturdy, shouldering Anglo-Saxon race that, from the time of its first exodus from the salt marshes of Holland, has been steadily, stubbornly pushing west, pushing west — sometimes in the dragon-beaked snekrs of marauding vikings, sometimes in the blunt-nosed, high-sterned packets of the Puritan fathers, sometimes in the trundling, creaking prairie schooners of the pioneers, and, last, in a two-stick trading brig called the Percy Edwards — transport vessel of the South Pacific Colonization Company.
I do not think that this is taking the affair too seriously. You may call these men adventurers, if you choose, and they are adventurers, just as Drake was and the Northmen. The scheme may fail (colonization companies are notoriously unstable), but the point is not that, so much as it is the fact that the great majority of these men are the big-boned, blond, long-haired type — the true Anglo-Saxon type — and are responding to that same mysterious impulse that ever drives their race toward the setting sun — the same impulse that stirred in the shaggy, hide-clad breasts of their forefathers so many hundreds of years ago in the depths of the Frisian forests and swamps. Here it is again, working itself out under your very eyes. Consider it: we are here in the Far West, we other Anglo-Saxons; we have practically just arrived, and the place is hardly built up and made habitable when some hundred of us are already chafing at the barrier of the Pacific — are fitting out a ship and are going farther west, farther west.
Of course, the newspapers have made capital out of the affair, and have exploited the idea of the Adamless Eden to which the colonists are steering. The island of Bougainville (the colony’s home) is rather thickly populated with a race of cannibals, and the aggregate number of fighting men in the various tribes is close upon a thousand. So very important an item is this that every colonist is compelled to equip himself with a repeating rifle and a revolver — instruments that would be rarely out of place in an “Adamless Eden.” It is, literally, the beginning of a history. You have gone right back three thousand years, right into the legends, to the time of the migrations (that’s what this venture is — a tribal migration). You are back to first principles — to a primal condition of things, where all the old maxims are a
pplicable as soon as the colony begins to work out. “The weakest to the wall,”
“the survival of the fittest,”
“the race to the swift,” and “the battle to the strong.” Every tub will stand on its own bottom on Bougainville Island, and a man is a man only in so far as he can shoot straight, work with his hands, and acquire food.
But for all that, complications are ahead for the South Pacific Colonization Company. No women are voyaging with them to their island home, so that perforce the existence of the colony depends upon the intermarriages — let us call them marriages — of the colonists with the native women.
I do not think the colony will fail. The fellows look serious, sober, and steady. They are well armed, the conditions of life are absurdly easy, and the men are enthusiastic and determined. The trouble will come with their relations with the native women. That they will quarrel over them, fight over them, and perhaps slay each other over them, it is only natural to expect. It is almost inevitable. But if all comes well in the end, and the colony works out its own salvation, imagine the race that will be found there — say, in about two hundred years (remember, you are dealing with history, and must reckon with big figures) — a race having in its veins the strain of Anglo-Saxon combined with that of the rich strong blood of a south sea savage — vigorous enough, surely.
San Francisco Wave, February 20, 1897.
NEW YEAR’S AT SAN QUENTIN
NEW YEAR’S DAY in a penitentiary! I wonder what they think of on this day — the “cons” — the murderers, burglars, highwaymen, thieves, and the like — the striped army of them down there in the prison yard, with the gatling guns of the watchtowers trained on them.
One would like to suppose that the suggestiveness of the day forced itself upon them. If ever there were occasions for New Year Day resolutions, they would exist here in the “yard.” I should like to think that the sentenced murderer in the condemned cell — number twenty-four, it is — chose the day to think a bit over a misspent life; that he attained to a “might-have-been” mood, or that the twenty-year-men checked off the passing of another year that brought them nearer to liberty, or that the “life-timer” gloomily reflected that the advent of 1897 brought no encouragement or hope to him.
Perhaps there are isolated cases of this kind, but they are few and far between. I went all over the penitentiary of San Quentin on the first day of this year, and though I did not get speech of the men in the yard, I talked to some of the “outsiders” — the trusties — who are the connecting link between the yard and the outside world; who are in touch with the “cons” and know them thoroughly; and this was the impression I gained.
New Year’s Day in San Quentin is indeed a period of rejoicing, but the “pen” is a distinct and isolated world of its own, having its own ideals and enjoyments and ambitions, absolutely and radically different from any other community that exists. The “cons” make merry over New Year’s Day, not because it is New Year’s, but because it brings with it two inestimable blessings — fish dinner and that consummate beatitude of the “con’s” existence, the blissful freedom from the detested and execrated half-day’s work in the jute mill.
I think this hatred of manual labour among certain of the criminal class is a mild form of dementia — a mania, a blind, unreasoned aversion (only intensified a thousandfold), such as some people have of cats — an aversion that cannot be conquered, or argued with, or outlived. It develops in the children of criminal families, like homicidal manias and the like. You cannot understand this thing — can get no idea of the “con’s” horror of it until you have visited the “pen,” and have listened to some of the stories there told.
Consider the situation a moment. Suppose you and I were “cons,” and that for some reason we were not “outside men,” but had to work in the mill. It is a regulation that each man who works in that mill must do his tick of a hundred yards of jute per day. With ordinary industry the “con” can finish it at about halfpast twelve o’clock. After that he can do what he likes with his time until lock-up. The work is of the easiest description — a child could learn it and perform it without difficulty. You and I, if we were “cons,” would fall into the regime without complaint, we would get into the habit of the thing, and I’ve no doubt would come to do our hundred yards of jute ahead of time for the sake of the extra leisure it would insure. Why, for the matter of that, we might even prefer to work rather than to lounge all day idle about the flagstones of the sunny yard.
Not so the average “con.” He rages at his task, goes to it with a furious reluctance that no habit can overcome, blasphemes the prison directors in the din of the clashing shuttles, and leaves his machine with a relief that can only be expressed by long rolls of oaths. He hates it as a victim of the Great Persecution hated the rack and the stake — sees in the loom he daily toils before only an instrument of torture, of oppression, and injustice — is kept to his work only by guards with guns and the fear of the “hole” and strait-jacket. You will not believe the extremities to which he will go to escape from it. You are shown one man in the hospital ward who is shamming insanity. For fourteen months this man has lain upon his back, speaking to no one, in order to persuade the authorities of the prison that he is crazy and unfit to work in the mill. Fourteen months! Think of that — a year and two months in bed so as not to work for half a dozen hours per day! But this is not the worst. A man whose fingers are missing can do no work in the mill, naturally. One of the “cons” (who, mind you, had only four more months of his sentence to serve), took advantage of this fact, and one day deliberately thrust his thumb between the cog-wheels of one of the jute machines and let it be crushed off.
“Now let ’em make me work!”
“Huh!” answered his mates. “You’ll work just the same. A man without a thumb can tend the machine all right. Doctor Lawlor won’t excuse you from work for that.”
“He won’t, won’t he!” shouts my “con.”
“I’ll fix him,” and in goes the whole hand, to come out again with the four fingers ground away.
Only four months more of work, but he preferred maiming for life rather than undergo it. You can’t account for this on the ground of simple dislike of labour. It’s dementia — hereditary mental obliquity, taking the form of a horror of work.
One custom obtains on New Year’s Day, and, as far as I can see, but one. We arranged to see, or rather hear, it.
On New Year’s Eve, just before twelve o’clock, we sat ourselves down upon a flight of steps on a terrace above the prison, where we could overlook the yard. The last moments of the old year were passing, and the scene, in the night, looking down into the huge dark prison, with its rows of bolted iron doors that stood for so much of the crime and wickedness and perversity of life, should have been impressive. But there was a jarring note. The female ward was the part of the “pen” nearest us, and through the stillness of that New Year’s Eve came the monotonous and raucous plaint of a woman’s voice, flung across the narrow court to some inmate of an opposite cell, the words as distinct as if spoken in the ear:
“... an’ after all I’ve said an’ done fur him, that’s the way he treated me.” (Here a long roll of oaths.) “Why, he might be a-beggin’ on the streets if it hadn’t a-been fur me — beggin’ on the streets to-day if it hadn’t a-been fur me, an’ that’s the way he treated me.”
This was the theme, repeated again and again, in different words. What did it stand for? What was the grievance this female “con” was lamenting in these moments when the year was turning as the turning of a tide? Was it a slight of yesterday? Was it a wrong that had wrecked a life? Was it true? Was it a lie? Was she old or young, innocent or guilty? I shall never know. It was a mystery. A voice from a prison at midnight. The incident of a moment!
“If it hadn’t a-been fur me — an’ that’s the way he treated — a-beggin’ on the streets, an’—”
Suddenly it was the New Year. Very far off at the end of the line of guards c
ame a prolonged cry: “Twelve o’clock and a-a — all’s well,” and another nearer cry repeated it. But we lost the sound of the answer. With the call of the first guard the prison of San Quentin thundered with noises. Somewhere near by a chorus of bugles sang together, only to be drowned by a vast clamour that rang from wall to wall of the prison, and that split the silence of the night with the clamour of a splitting berg. At that moment the thirteen hundred prisoners of San Quentin were beating their fists upon the iron doors of their cells. A strange noise — strange for its suddenness — stranger when you consider its suggestiveness. The iron barrier that shuts out from liberty and the pursuit of happiness serving as a clashing cymbal of rejoicing — the door of a prison cell used as a bell to sound the New Year in! Surely no stranger New Year chimes were rung that night the world around.
And with all this vast clangor, this strange, reverberating tumult, not a movement, not a sign of human life. The moonlight and the white glare of electricity flooded the prison yard and the building till the very bolts on the doors were visible, but not a living thing stirred. The enclosure roared with the roar of an army with clashing shields, yet remained deserted, desolate, abandoned of all life.
One thing I remember, however, that compensated — one thing that redeemed the gloom and the weirdness of it all. Just after the first guard had raised his cry of “All’s well,” and just before the thunder of the thirteen hundred fists upon the doors of the cells, a fraction of a second had intervened — a brief moment of time — long enough for the female “con,” she of the hoarse and raucous voice, to interrupt her monotonous complaint and cry:
“Happy New Year, May!”
San Francisco Wave, January 9, 1897.
A “LAG’S” RELEASE
EVERYBODY knows how a man goes to jail. A little legal jargon, a little “entering of names,” a little posing for the Rogues’ Gallery, a little trip across the bay, the shutting of a grated door — and there is your “con” — jugged in the “pen,” perhaps for thirty months, perhaps for thirty years. During the time of his sentence the world knows absolutely nothing of him, and he nothing of the world. He is buried alive. Let us suppose he is a thirty-year man — consider for a moment what that means. Remember backward, if you can, for thirty years. Try to fix some event that happened thirty years ago, and then imagine that, instead of that particular event happening, a prison door had closed behind you, and that all your life from that time till now had been spent in the “pen” — between four high cement walls. For recreation you had the yard to walk in, and the conversation of murderers and petit-larcenies and assault-to-kills; for occupation you wove one hundred yards of jute every morning; you ate, in enforced silence, three meals of beef, beans, and coffee per day, and you were locked in your cell from three o’clock in the afternoon until seven the next morning. And this is your life for thirty years! The Civil War was barely over, thirty years ago. Then comes the day when your sentence expires.