The Merry-Go-Round

Carl Van Vechten

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• Publié par: migum
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 25
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Merry-Go-Round, by Carl Van Vechten This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: The Merry-Go-Round Author: Carl Van Vechten Release Date: August 15, 2008 [EBook #26320] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MERRY-GO-ROUND *** Produced by Bryan Ness, Diane Monico, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) The Merry-Go-Round BOOKS BY CARL VAN VECHTEN MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS 1915 1916 INTERPRETERS AND INTERPRETATIONS 1917 THE MERRY-GO-ROUND THE MUSIC OF SPAIN 1918 1918 The Merry-Go-Round Carl Van Vechten "Tournez, tournez, bons chevaux de bois, Tournez cent tours, tournez mille tours, Tournez souvent et tournez toujours, Tournez, tournez au sons de hautbois." PAUL VERLAINE New York Alfred A. Knopf MCMXVIII COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, I NC . PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Contents PAGE IN D EFENCE OF BAD TASTE 11 MUSIC AND SUPERMUSIC EDGAR SALTUS THE N EW ART OF THE SINGER Au Bal Musette MUSIC AND C OOKING AN INTERRUPTED C ONVERSATION THE AUTHORITATIVE WORK ON AMERICAN MUSIC OLD D AYS AND N EW TWO YOUNG AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHTS De Senectute Cantorum IMPRESSIONS IN THE THEATRE I II The Land of Joy A Note on Mimi Aguglia 23 37 93 125 149 179 197 215 227 245 281 298 307 329 330 331 III The New Isadora THE MODERN C OMPOSERS AT A GLANCE FOOTNOTES INDEX IV Margaret Anglin Produces As You Like It 318 Some of these essays have appeared in "The Smart Set," "Reedy's Mirror," "Vanity Fair," "The Chronicle," "The Theatre," "The Bellman," "The Musical Quarterly," "Rogue," "The New York Press," and "The New York Globe." In their present form, however, they have undergone considerable redressing. [Pg 10] In Defence of Bad Taste "It is a painful thing, at best, to live up to one's bricabric, if one has any; but to live up to the bricabric of many lands and of many centuries is a strain which no wise man would dream of inflicting upon his constitution." Agnes Repplier. [Pg 11] In Defence of Bad Taste In America, where men are supposed to know nothing about matters of taste and where women have their dresses planned for them, the household decorator has become an important factor in domestic life. Out of an even hundred rich men how many can say that they have had anything to do with the selection or arrangement of the furnishings for their homes? In theatre programs these matters are regulated and due credit is given to the various firms who have supplied the myriad appeals to the eye; one knows who thought out the combinations of shoes, hats, and parasols, and one knows where each separate article was purchased. Why could not some similar plan of appreciation be followed in the houses of our very rich? Why not, for instance, a card in the hall something like the following: This house was furnished and decorated according to the taste of Marcel of the Dilly-Billy Shop or We are living in the kind of house Miss Simone O'Kelly thought we should live in. The decorations are pure Louis XV and the furniture is authentic. It is not difficult, of course, to differentiate the personal from the impersonal. Nothing clings so ill to the back as borrowed finery and I have yet to find the family which has settled itself fondly and comfortably in chairs which were a part of some one else's aesthetic plan. As a matter of fact many of our millionaires would be more at home in an atmosphere concocted from the ingredients of plain pine tables and blanket-covered mattresses than they are surrounded by the frippery of China and the frivolity of France. If these gentlemen were fortunate enough to enjoy sufficient confidence in their own taste to give it a thorough test it is not safe to think of the extreme burden that would be put on the working capacity of the factories of the Grand Rapids furniture companies. We might find a few emancipated souls scouring the town for heavy refectory tables and divans into which one could sink, reclining or upright, with a perfect sense of ease, but these would be as rare as Steinway pianos in Coney Island. For Americans are meek in such matters. They credit themselves with no taste. They fear comparison. If the very much sought-after Simone O'Kelly has [Pg 13] decorated Mr. B.'s house Mr. M. does not dare to struggle along with merely his own ideas in furnishing his. He calls in an expert who begins, rather inauspiciously, by painting the dining-room salmon pink. The tables and chairs will be made by somebody on Tenth Street, exact copies of a set to be found in the Musée Carnavalet. The legs under the table are awkwardly arranged for diners but they look very well when the table is unclothed. The decorator plans to hang Mr. M.'s personal bedroom in pale plum colour. Mr. M. rebels at this. "I detest," he remarks mildly, "all variants of purple." "Very well," acquiesces the decorator, "we will make it green." In the end Mr. M.'s worst premonitions are realized: the walls are resplendent in a striking shade of magenta. Along the edge of each panel of Chinese brocade a narrow band of absinthe velvet ribbon gives the necessary contrast. The furniture is painted in dull ivory with touches of gold and beryl and the bed cover is peacock blue. Four round [Pg 12] cushions of a similar shade repose on the floor at the foot of the bed. The fat manufacturer's wife as she enters this triumph of decoration which might satisfy Louise de la Vallière or please Doris Keane, is an anachronistic figure and she [Pg 14] is aware of it. She prefers, on the whole, the brass bedsteads of the summer hotels. Mr. M. himself feels ridiculous. He never enters the room without a groan and a remark on the order of "Good God, what a colour!" His personal taste finds its supreme enjoyment in the Circassian walnut panelling, desk, and tables of the directors' room in the Millionaire's Trust and Savings Bank. "Rich and tasteful": how many times he has used this phrase to express his approval! In the mid-Victorian red plush of his club, too, he is comfortable. "Waiter, another whiskey and soda!" Mildred is expected home after her first year in boarding school. Her mother wishes to environ her, so to speak. Mildred is delicate in her tastes, so delicate that she scarcely ever expresses herself. Her mind and body are pure; her heart beats faster when she learns of distress. Voluptuousness, Venus, and Vice are all merely words to her. Mother does not explain this to the decorator. "My daughter is returning from school," she says, "I want her room done." "What style of room?" "After all you are supposed to know that. I am engaging you to arrange it for me." "Your daughter, I take it, is a modern girl?" "You may assume as much." In despair for a hint the decorator steals a look at a photograph of the [Pg 15] miss, full-lipped, melting dark eyes, and blue-black hair. Sensing an houri he hangs the walls with a deep shade of Persian orange, over which flit tropical birds of emerald and azure; strange pomegranates bleed their seeds at regular intervals. The couch is an adaptation, in colour, of the celebrated Sumurun bed. The dressing table and the chaise-longue are of Chinese lacquer. A heavy bronze incense burner pours forth fumes of Bichara's Scheherazade. From the window frames, stifling the light, depend flame-coloured brocaded curtains embroidered in Egyptian enamelled beads. It is a triumph, this chamber, of style Ballet Russe. Diana is banished ... and shrinking Mildred, returning from school, finds her demure soul at variance with her surroundings. A man's house should be the expression of the man himself. All the books on the subject and even the household decorators themselves will tell you that. But, if the decoration of a house is to express its owner, it is necessary that he himself inspire it, which implies, of course, the possession of ideas, even though they be bad. And men in these United States are not expected to display mental anguish or pleasure when confronted by colour combinations. In [Pg 16] America one is constantly hearing young ladies say, "He's a man and so, of course, knows nothing about colour," or "Of course a man never looks at clothes." It does not seem to be necessary to argue this point. One has only to remember that Veronese was a man; so was Velasquez. Even Paul Poiret and Leon Bakst belong to the sex of Adam. Nevertheless most Americans still consider it a little efféminé, a trifle declassé, for a business man (allowances are sometimes made for poets, musicians, actors, and people who live in Greenwich Village), to make any references to colour or form. He may admire, with obvious emphasis on the women they lightly enclose, the costumes of the Follies but he is not permitted to exhibit knowledge of materials and any suddenly expressed desire on his part to rush into a shop and hug some bit of colour from the show window to his heart would be regarded as a symptom of madness. The audience which gives the final verdict on a farce makes allowances for the author; permits him the use of certain conventions. For example, he is given leave to introduce a hotel corridor into his last act with seven doors opening on a common hallway so that his characters may conveniently and persistently enter the wrong rooms. It may be supposed that I ask for some such license [Pg 17] from my audience. "How ridiculous," you may be saying, "I know of interior decorators who spend weeks in reading out the secrets of their clients' souls in order to provide their proper settings." There doubtless are interior decorators who succeed in giving a home the a