by Frank Norris
The Latin inhabitant of San Francisco’s Quarter takes his holiday at home. He — or she — lives in the street. Even when indoors the windows are wide open. The doorstep and open windows answer the purposes of the club. They are coigns of vantage where one may see the world go by. The women on the doorstep, the men on the sidewalk and the children in the street, is the arrangement most frequently met with.
On Sundays, the Anglo-Saxon goes to the country, the Latin goes to church and to mass. In the afternoon he amuses himself chez lui, goes to the theater, if he can, and crowds the gallery if there be an opera in town. In the evening he dines with his family at a restaurant, staying there, be it understood, until bedtime. Occasionally you will find him in one of the Bocce courts underneath Telegraph Hill, absorbed in the game, which one is inclined to believe is the stupidest game ever conceived by the mind of man.
Little Japan is more scattered, Yokohama is broken into bits of marquetry and set here and there in San Francisco, in back courts and cul de sacs and streets that have no outlet. The Jap is too eager for Western customs to keep his individuality long. He becomes Americanized as soon as he may. However, he organizes fencing clubs, which seem to be quite a feature of his social life among his fellows. On Sundays these clubs meet, (there is one of them in a court off Geary street, not far from Powell, and another in a small Japanese colony in Prospect Place, off Pine, between Powell and Stockton streets). The Japs get into their native regalia and fence with bamboo swords from dawn to dark. It is a strange idea of amusement, but no stranger than the Celt’s love for actual fighting.
And the Chinaman. One leaves him to the last, for the sake of the last word, if ever there can be a last word said of the Chinaman. He is in the city but not of it. His very body must be carried back to Canton after his death, whither his money has gone already. He has brought to San Francisco and implanted here the atmosphere of the Mysterious East, that — short stories and Chinese plays to the contrary — must always remain an unknown, unknowable element to the West. No two races the world round could be more opposite than the Mongolian and Anglo-Saxon that are placed side by side in the streets of this strange city of the Occident. The Saxon is outspoken, the Mongolian indirect; the one is frank, the other secretive; the one is aggressive, the other stealthy; the one fears neither God, man nor the devil, the other is ridden with superstitions; the one is brusque, the other patient to infinity; the one is immoderate, the other self-restrained. But — it is well to remember this — the Chinaman is high-tempered and passionate to a degree, with finely-tempered nerves and much more sensitive temperament than the Westerner would care to give him credit for. His policy of self-repression is deceiving. In every Chinaman there is something of the snake and a good deal of the cat. If one knew him better one would hesitate longer before injuring him. He remembers things. The Presbyterian Mission is all very well, the police force and special detectives are all very well, but we can never know anything of the real Chinaman, can never have any real influence upon him, either to better his moral condition, or punish his crimes. Where else, in what other city in the world, could the Tongs fight with impunity from street to street? Where else would Little Pete have been shot to death in a public place and his murderers escape beyond all hope of capture?
With the Chinaman curiosity is considered a vice — almost a crime. Chinatown in San Francisco is as foreign to us — much more so — than a village in the interior of France or Spain. As a consequence Saxon visitors must be equally foreign in the eyes of the livers in Chinatown. If you went through a hamlet in France or Germany, far enough off the railroad, you would be stared out of countenance. Every doorway and window would be filled after your passage, and the very dogs would bark at your heels. But how is it with the visitor in Chinatown? Get down into the very lowest quarter, where the slave-girls are kept, where the Cantonese live, where Chinatown is most Chinese. Of the hundreds of silently shuffling Chinamen, not one will turn to look at you — they will hardly make way for you. You may go into their shops, their tea houses, their restaurants, their clubs, their temples — almost into their very living rooms — to those thousands of slit-like, slanting eyes you do not so much as exist.
FICTION IN REVIEW
Three new novels come to hand: “In a Dike Shanty,” by Maria Louise Pool (Stone & Kimball), “His Honour and a Lady” (Appleton & Co.), by Sarah Jeanette Duncan, and “Chronicles of Martin Hewitt” (Appleton & Co.), by Arthur Morrison.
Mr. Morrison’s collection surprises me. That the man who wrote “Tales of Mean Streets” could descend to such crude, unoriginal, really amateurish compositions as these “Chronicles” is not to be explained. Of course it is just possible that the tales may have been written prior to Mr. Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes” stories, and, for Mr. Morrison’s sake, I hope they were. However, I am afraid it is quite the other way about. You lay down the “Chronicles” with a feeling of indignation. The idea of the series is palpably, openly cribbed from Doyle. They are detective stories, bad detective stories at that. Martin Hewitt is but a copy of Holmes and Brett a feeble reproduction of his friend who accompanies him on all his adventures and relates them afterward.
There is nothing new or original in any of the tales. If you have not read of Sherlock Holmes’ adventures you may be interested in Martin Hewitt; but if you are familiar with the doings of that famous amateur you will not find these chronicles worth their ink.
Mrs. Coates’ “His Honour and a Lady” is something better. It is a tale of modern city life in India, most of the characters being the officers and employees of the civil service and their wives and daughters. It is a bit dreary, I find, in spite of all its intrigue. Mrs. Coates is too literary in fact. One feels that there has been a polishing and a repolishing of the whole matter, a refining and filing down as it were, to twelve places of decimals until the verve and spontaneity, the life of the thing, in a word, has been quite covered up and lost under an exquisite cold veneer. It is impossible not to compare this elaborate study of Indian society with the rapid ebauches of Mr. Kipling flung off at white heat, crammed with living, breathing things, with no execrable “literary finish” to hide the true, honest grain of human life underneath. Mrs. Coates’ novel makes fair reading, however, if one can be satisfied with its literature, or can forget it.
“In a Dike Shanty,” by Maria Louise Pool, is a novel — no, not a novel, nor yet a tale, nor collection of tales, but rather a picture of life, precisely the reverse of Mrs. Coates’ production. “His Honour and a Lady” is essentially a work of the closet. The author sitting apart at her desk watching the world go by through her windows. But it’s a hundred dollars to a paper dime that the author of a “Dike Shanty” actually lived the life she writes about. I honestly believe she and Caroline Branson did buy a tract of Dike. I believe in Orlando the terrier, in Mar Baker’s “idjit,” and in Rodge Peake’s wife’s niece. I believe in the tract of Dike and the flat grass land and the wind and the shanty and the hayricks. It’s fine, and if there is little composition in it, little arrangement, or the pulling of concealed strings, there is at least the breath of real life. “In a Dike Shanty” is just what it pretends to be — a picture of open-air life on the New England coast, or rather a series of pictures, one for each short chapter, loosely held together by the little love affair of Leife and “Miss” Vance.
A romance may, of course, have excitement and brilliancy and any number of attractive things, but there is one quality it absolutely must have — that which prevents you from putting it down when you have once begun it. In this Elizabeth Knight Tompkins has succeeded very pleasantly in her new novel, “The Broken Ring.” (G. P. Putnam’s.) The danger is nowhere uncomfortably thrilling, nor the mystery bewilderingly dark, but there is just enough of both to keep one well absorbed until it all comes out right in the last chapter. There are some very pretty love scenes towards the end, notably the one in the park, where the broken ring and what the parrot said figure. The book is essentially a light one,
more appropriate to a lazy afternoon than a serious morning, and must be taken as literary lemonade rather than beef tea or absinthe — pleasant and refreshing, with no lasting effects.
The Wave 1896
MILLARD’S TALES
Mr. F. B. Millard of the San Francisco “Examiner” is out with a collection of stories — some fifteen of them — which the Eskdale Press publishes under the general title of “A Pretty Bandit.” In telling his yarns Mr. Millard has adopted the method employed by the latest successful short-story men. This is not to tell a story, but to strike off an incident or two clean-cut, sharp, decisive, and brief, suggesting everything that is to follow and everything that precedes. The method is admirable, but it demands an originality and ingenuity on the part of the author that is little short of abnormal. The “motif” of the story must be very strong, very unusual, and tremendously suggestive. More than this, it must be told in sentences that are almost pictures in themselves. The whole tale must resemble, as one might say, the film of a kinetoscope, a single action made up from a multitude of viewpoints. In choosing this method Mr. Millard has volunteered to enlist in the army of the strongest story-writers the world ‘round, and some of his stories are quite good enough to bring him well up in the front ranks, notably the “Caliente Trail,”
“A Notch in a Principality” (to our thinking the best story of the book), “The Girl Reporter,” and “Horse-In-The-Water.” It is a dodge of publishers, as everyone knows, to put the two best stories at the beginning and end of such a collection. But there is little in “A Pretty Bandit” and “The Making of Her” to commend them. Mr. Millard crystallizes a most startling experience in each of these tales, but somehow fails to convince the reader of its “probability”; as, for instance, the hold-up in the first-named story. That a girl should stand up a stage is extraordinary enough for the most sensational-loving reader, but that she should do so upon the impulse of the moment is quite beyond belief — even worse, it is inartistic. In “The Making of Her” (which came very near being the marring of her) Mr. Millard has evidently striven for a contrast of types, the Boston bluestocking and the Western cowboy. The contrast is sharp enough, but the “events” narrated are not plausible. They all could have happened, it is true, but in story-telling the question is “might” they have happened? One can forgive the impossible, never the improbable. As a whole, however, the tales make capital good reading. Mr. Millard wastes no time — his own nor his readers — in getting down at once to the heart of his work. There is a plainness, a directness in his style that is “the easy reading and hard writing” one has heard so much about. The author has confined himself to California material, which is always good policy, and at the same time impresses his readers with the fact that he is thoroughly posted upon whatever subject is under consideration for the moment, whether it be railroad life, newspaper life, camp life, or ranch life. (“A Pretty Bandit,” F. B. Millard. The Eskdale Press, New York.)
The Wave 1896
LACKAYE “MAKING-UP.”
After I had waited a few minutes in the “star’s dressing-room,” Mr. Lackaye entered in a great hurry. Indeed, everything that went on during that half hour of preparation seemed to be done in a hurry. Wilton Lackaye hurried through the endless details of his wonderful make-up; members of the company hurried in to receive hurried directions, and hurried out again to follow them; a wig-maker hurriedly displayed a number of wigs and was hurried off without ceremony; a certain young man, whether he was a supe or a valet I could not make out, removed Mr. Lackaye’s shoes in a great hurry, and hurried on Dr. Belgraff’s carpet slippers, while at every moment a sceneshifter made a sudden appearance at the dressing-room door exclaiming in breathless excitement: “Five minutes more,” and a little later: “Orchestra on.” Then at succeeding intervals: “Overture.” “Curtain up.” “Mrs. Lackaye on.”
All this while Wilton Lackaye, the pivot about whom everything revolved, was at one moment talking and laughing with Miss Fuller’s manager, at another making suggestions to a younger actor as to his wig in “Moliere” (next week’s play), or abusing a recalcitrant shoemaker over the fit of a certain pair of shoes, or again talking to me as to “make-ups,” theories of acting and the difference between his methods and those of Coquelin and Irving. Not for an instant, however, did he pause in his work of transforming himself from the rotund, well favored American that he is into the blonde, whiskered German Herr Doktor — Roentgen it is, so Mr. Lackaye says. “There are two theories of acting,” said Wilton Lackaye, carefully modeling the pink, putty-like false nose before the glass, as cleverly as any sculptor. “There is the actor who says, ‘It will be all right on the night,’ and who relies upon the hysteria (note that Mr. Lackaye calls it hysteria; that’s a curious word in such connection) the hysteria of the occasion to carry him through. They call it inspiration. Maybe it is inspiration. I’ve nothing against it. And—”
The nose was about finished, and Mr. Lackaye smeared his face plentifully with grease paint and rubbed some vermilion stuff — it was crude vermilion — around his eyes and cheeks. “And there is the other kind of actor” (the false nose made his tone a little nasal) “who relies almost entirely upon the careful manipulation of his mechanical effects to — Eh, what do you want? (the wig-maker had approached him). No; a servant would not wear puffs at the side of his wig like that; take it away and change it. — Relies almost entirely upon the careful manipulation of his mechanical effects—”
“I say, Governor” (this from a dignified old gentleman made up as a doctor, who put his head in the door) I say, can we have the California to-morrow for the rehearsal of “Captain Bob”?
“Curtain up,” called the stage hand over the old gentleman’s shoulder.
Mr. Lackaye had just finished gluing on the chin part of his beard; now he was putting on the remainder over his cheeks in little patches, “so as not to interfere with the play of the facial muscles,” he explained to me in an aside. “‘Captain Bob’ here,” he said to the dignified gentleman, “‘Moliere’ at the California. As I was saying,” he continued, adjusting the auburn wig and blackening his eyelids, “relies altogether upon his mechanical effects. But they make the mistake — pass me that sponge — of supposing that the one must exclude the other. Now I—” he pinned a lock of his real hair to that of the wig with a couple of invisible hairpins, and smeared the spot gray— “now I hold that the two methods should go together, first your detail, your mechanics and effects and make-up; then the fine frenzy is right enough when it comes.”
The curtain had been up and the play progressing fully five minutes. Mr. Lackaye had only finished making-up his face and was still in his street dress. I thought of amateur performers ready an hour before and waiting for their cue in an agony of excitement. From time to time the star’s dresser stepped to the door, cocking an ear in the direction of the stage. He drew out Lackaye’s costume — Dr. Belgraff’s woolen shirt, stained trousers and apron. It did not seem possible that the actor could get into them and out upon the stage in time. I began to get horribly nervous, began to wish he would stop wasting breath talking to me and attend to business. The dresser hurried him into his clothes. Mrs. Lackaye had long since disappeared; we could hear her voice from the direction of the stage. While the big white apron was being fastened, Lackaye was chaffing with Miss Fuller’s manager. By this time I was absolutely certain that his cue was long past and Miss Wainwright was holding the stage for him. In another minute I should have had nervous prostration.
“Denver really surprised us,” said Lackaye. “We did not count on large fronts there, but—”
“All ready, Mr. Lackaye,” cried the call boy from the door. In an instant Wilton Lackaye — I mean Dr. Belgraff, for the transformation was absolutely beyond belief — was gone, the dresser running after him tying the last knot on the apron strings. He disappeared under the stage, and just in time, just by the fraction of a second came up through the cellar door and out on the stage in response to his cue
, as calm and as absolutely master of himself as if he had been listening for it throughout the whole previous hour, rehearsing his opening speech the while.
The Wave 1896 and 1897.
MRS. CARTER AT HOME
One was rather awestruck with No. 50. It was the kind of hotel room at which one rings, not knocks, and thereafter is “ushered into an ante-chamber” by the maid. Inside, beyond the ante-room, where three Gargantuan trunks, bundles (not bunches, you know), bundles of flowers, and Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Carter who of late has become so celebrated on account of her fame.
Laura Jean Libby would have said that Mrs. Carter was dressed in “some soft, clinging stuff”; and so, precisely, she was; lace like soapsuds and silk that had a glimmer on it like wet asphalt. But that dress, or tea-gown, or peignoir (of course it wasn’t a peignoir, though), or whatever it was, had as much form and shape as a spilled plate of mush. It was all blooming mass and color, no outline at all, and on top of this heap of pale, indeterminate tints Mrs. Carter’s hair flamed up with an effect that was somehow brusque and abrupt, as if some one had suddenly turned up the gas.
Mrs. Carter is very tall; carries that gold-girdled head of hers six feet from the ground, I’m thinking, and is very graceful in a strange, stiff way — just as a tall, stiff reed is graceful. But she is not pretty to my notion. No, as I recall her, she is not pretty. One would have had her face a little fuller and not quite so tired looking, and her nose might have been a little littler, and her eyebrows not so heavy. But I suspect one sees Mrs. Leslie Carter at a disadvantage when she is off the stage. She impressed me as if seen out of her element in No. 50. I was continually drawing an imaginary line of footlights between us. We sat down, Mrs. Carter with her back to the mirror. Interviewing Mrs. Carter is interviewing made easy, for she did all the talking. There was nothing for me to do but to put in an occasional word, just to keep her going. I suppose she has been interviewed so much, poor lady, that she knows just what to say without being asked. Some wretch, I think, must have told her to be ready on the subject of “climate,” for she started off on that with a rush, and had got so far as fruits and flowers before I could stop her. All through our talk she was continually bolting up that worn, worn road.