Читать книгу Religio Journalistici - Christopher Morley - Страница 5

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It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall....

I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,

Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,

Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant....

Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting,

Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet never told them a word.

—Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”

The secret thoughts of a man run over all things without shame or blame; which verbal discourse cannot do farther than the judgment shall approve of the time, place, and persons.—Hobbes’s “Leviathan.”

I WAS coming home from Buffalo in a train delightfully called “The Black Diamond.” I had any number of books in my bag, but my lower instincts were uppermost: I was tired, and pined for the narcosis of newspapers. I asked the porter, also a black diamond, to see if there were any lying around. He brought me a great mass of them: Chicago papers, Buffalo papers, Wilkes-Barre papers. With great happiness I browsed among their cheerful simplicities. From Wilkes-Barre I learned that

Shakespeare’s marvellous plays could never have been written by a dyspeptic. He ate carefully, sensibly, and had excellent digestion.

(I had just come back from the dining car when I read that, and wondered a little sadly if I had been sensible.)

From Chicago (“The World’s Greatest Newspaper”) I learned, in an article on “A Perfume to Suit Your Personality,” that

The vampire had best be sparing in her use of any odour. An oriental bouquet of jasmine, tube rose, cassie, and civet would enhance the individuality of the colourful type. For a perfume combination of this sort when used correctly can create a sensation akin to ecstasy, bringing to the wearer a feeling of tremendous vitality.

But in this Chicago paper I found so much to perpend that I never reached the journals of other cities. I learned in an interview with Lady Diana Manners (“Pressed for Precious Secrets of Pulchritude, She Reveals a Surprising Lack of Them”) that

The life of a newspaper person is not without its recompenses—aside from the weekly stipend. Sometimes it is a hard life—when, say, you scratch and pound upon the old dome, pleading, begging its tenant, Mr. Brain, to give up an idea, and you get in response a loud and hollow echo convincing you he has left for parts unknown!

I learned from Chicago that

The literary life of New York continues to rattle on. And it is a rather grand life: though a number of writers appear to scratch an existence from the soil of Greenwich Village and the purlieus of mean streets, most of the men who write our books live quite comfortably. One meets them every day—a prosperous crew—who lunch cosily at the —— or at the —— and not infrequently the ——, then are whisked homeward in shining limousines to put in another hour or so on the manuscript of a new novel.

A few days later, filled with pensive, affectionate, and somewhat irreverent thoughts about the newspaper business, I went uptown to the offices of a very great New York paper—a paper which, as a gatherer of news, though it does not claim the “Greatest” phrase, comes a lot nearer to it than that one in Chicago. A beautiful bronze elevator lifted me gently to the tenth floor, a beautiful bronze attendant took my name politely and asked me to wait until my host emerged from conference. I gazed amazedly into the editorial penetralia, churchly in aspect, with groined ceiling, panelled alcoves, like pews, and lead-veined glass. Very handsome young women came strolling from those shadowy cloisters of opinion. A scholarly-looking young man, with tortoise spectacles, sat under a reredos of books. If not a curate, at least a curator. It all came down upon me with crushing force. How could one chaff this magnificent thing? How could one speak jocularly of The Press? This was all so terribly real, so unmistakably there. I remembered my amazement when I first entered the Curtis Building in Philadelphia. Beside the humble little state house where a nation was founded rises that gigantic cube of Americanization; in more senses than one it is the exact spiritual centre of America. Does it not contain a mosaic glass picture with “over a million pieces”? It has been told, with the jolliest humour, how several of the world’s greatest artists were commissioned, one after another, to create a painting of Plato’s Grove of Academe for that lobby; but they kept on “passing away” before it was done. There is something most quaintly American, I believe, in adoring Plato with a vast painting rather than by listening to what he had to say. At a window on the seventh floor (I think it was the seventh) might have been seen the strong masculine face of the fashion editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal gazing out with a sudden unaccountable nostalgia. The trademarked patroness of the “L. H. J.,” I remembered, was Pallas Athene. Pallas is right, I said to myself, studying that building. This must be a home of literature, the walnut panelling is so fine. This huge bulk, edified from the ribs of a simple, shrewd, courageous, and strangely wistful little man from Maine—surely if the Muse were looking for a comfortable lodging, this is where she would habit?

Sometimes it is with an effort that one must remind oneself, a thing is not necessarily wrong because it is so large.

Well, all that came back to me as I sat waiting in the New York newspaper office. Painful doubts, too, as to whether what I am anxious to say is worth attempt. For it is sure to be misconceived. I am not satirizing anything. These matters are far too serious for mere satire, which is so agreeably easy. No, I am merely attempting to think.

I remembered also how, not long before, it strangely befell me to speak in a large church on a Sunday afternoon. I had not rightly apprehended the situation beforehand: I found that I should have to mount into what the cheerful minister called “the high pulpit.” Sitting behind a thin frondage of palms, and scanning the scene in some frightfulness, I waited my exposure. It was a beautiful church, and there was a large and friendly congregation. In one of the front pews there was even a gentleman with a silk hat. There was music, the thrilling tumult of the organ, a choir, a soprano soloist with a clear and lovely voice. There were prayers, and great words were said. And in the same way that the editorial magnificence of that newspaper office came down upon me from above, so I felt the whole weight and beauty and tradition of Holy Church moulding me and subduing my poor little premeditated ardours. I felt the awful hopelessness of attempting to convey, in those circumstances, my feeble and futile sense of the love and liberty of life. I knew then why Christ preached in the open air. And I knew that the people in those pews, dear friendly people the latchets of whose minds I was not worthy to unloose, desired me to say what was in my heart just as keenly as I desired to say it. Yet it could not, fully, be done. Holy Church was too strong for them as it was for me. I knew then, even in the small, imperfect way I know things, something of the whole history of religions. I knew how the majesty and glamour and noble gravity of institutions and authorities must have lain heavy on the hearts of schismatics and reformers. It is not that those poor brave souls did not love the rote they questioned. But the rote must be kept in its place. I knew then, for the first time, the real dangers of the pulpit. And yet even that polished wood was once alive, growing from earth toward sky.