Baltimore Evening Sun (15 November 1912): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

Plumbocaput, n, a City Councilman, a leadhead.

AMUSEMENTS NEXT WEEK

That high talent for the ludicrous which seems to be the chief characteristic of the Hon. the Archangel Harry is now giving a considerable raciness to the Putts bribery case. First, the hon. gent. made elaborate efforts to keep all news of the alleged bribery from the two Sunpapers, thus hoping to provide the docile Hot Towel with material for a sensational solo, and then, having failed in this benign endeavor, he began talking, melodramatically, through the Towel, his mouthpiece, about a foul plot to ruin him, and as much as hinted that the alleged briber of the Hon. Mr. Putts was an agent of the hellish Sunpaper.

Thus our great and virtuous friend, whatever the situation confronting him, contrives infallibly to give it a touch of the ridiculous. His effort to grab the Vice-Presidency, in itself a justifiable and even honorable enterprise, was quickly converted, by his own incredible mountebankeries, into a low comedy which set the whole country to roaring. In the same way he reduced his unsuccessful battle for Paving Bob Padgett to a farce worthy to rank with “Charlie’s Aunt.” And so, too, with his historic attempt to prove that Baltimore has a low death rate, and with his fight against intelligence in the School Board, and with his fatuous effort to carry the Light street bridge scheme and the sewer rental plan, and with his bold endeavor, aided by the Towel, to ravish the Hon. Robert Crain of certain agreeable gratitudes and umufructs.

In each case a situation perhaps somewhat painful, but certainly not inherently discreditable, was converted into a situation of clownish comedy. The man, in brief, is an unconscious comedian of a high order, and whatever he touches takes on an air of humor. Let us thank the fates for this gift. The trouble with most of our public officials is that they radiate a depressing solemnity. But this one, whatever you may say about him, at least gives a good show. He is always fighting and always getting licked; and every time he gets licked he proceeds to protest and explain, and every time he protests and explains he raises a loud and salubrious horse laugh.

Calcocaput, n, a ward heeler, a marble-head, a chalkhead, a limehead.

If last night was a fair sample, Col. Jacobus Hook is going to quit the Old Town Merchants and join the Concord Club.—Adv.

The ceaseless turmoil of the platitudinarians:

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! See Gaby and die!–Adv.

And no matter what sort of charter the Harry committee prepares, the Hon. Jacobus Hook will be in favor of it heart and soul.

Now that the beautiful little Hansa Haus, at Charles and German streets, is almost ready for occupancy, it is to be hoped that the owners of the Phœnix Building, its neighbor to the eastward, will have public spirit enough to paint out the hideous sign which now disfigures their west wall. That sign is how partly hidden by the Hansa Haus, but the portion which remains is even more ugly than the whole. If we had civilized laws in Baltimore such signs would be prohibited; if we had an intelligent public sentiment they would be impossible. As it is, we can only suffer and swear.

Polite note from the board of lady managers of the estimable Maryland Suffrage News:

The Maryland Suffrage News has now become sufficiently well known not to warrant our sending out any more free subscriptions: consequently we are sorry to say that the Suffrage News will not be sent to you hereafter unless you wish to have your name entered as a regular subscriber.

A hard blow, but I respond nobly with the mazuma. Tell me where to send it, ladies, and how much to send, and my camerlengo will bring it at the gallop.

Vitreocaput, n, a political burro, a glasshead.

The horrific merit system! When a ward heeler is given a job as a paving inspector, he is sent out to Bob Padgett’s asphalt plant to learn the business. Let the band play “Love Me and the Job Is Mine.”

And the more he thinks about that new Harry charter, the more Bob Padgett snickers and snickers. Let the band play “The Jolly Brothers.”

The Putts bribery case, in the Towel at least, is fast becoming a smearkase.—Adv.

Cornocaput, n, a precinct executive, a hornhead.

Theodore Dreiser’s new novel, “The Financier,” seems to be getting the same shy, uncertain reception from the newspaper reviewers that greeted his “Sister Carrie” and “Jennie Gerhardt,” both of which now have safe rank among the few genuinely first-rate novels of our day and generation. Even those daring spirits who admit frankly that the book is better than any best-seller ever hatched from an Indiana egg—even these fair ones insist that the author has a deficient feeling for form, that he neglects amazingly every shining chance to fatten up a scene, and that his English has far more iron and flint in it than goose-grease.

What is more, these dubious and hem-hawing critics are so near to making out a respectable case that it is hardly worth while to quarrel with them. It is perfectly true, as they allege, that Dreiser is an inept and ponderous craftsman, that he has no instinct for crescendo and sforzando, that he is deaf to the lascivious music of the Paterian phrase, that he puts too much of his trust in heavy hammering and too little, or none at all, to the finer rapier thrusts. And yet—and yet—when all is said and done, when all objections have been brought forward. and admitted, what superb effects he gets, how gorgeous his colors when he has finally laid them on, how nearly perfect the illusion of reality in the end!

The truth of the matter is that we must learn to take Dreiser as he is, faults and all, if we are to get at the real merit of his work. The fact that he doesn’t write at a gallop may be a bit disconcerting to the steady novel reader, but it is not, after all, sufficient in itself to condemn him, for it is precisely that galloping, flambuoyant style of writing which is responsible for most of the artificiality and peurility of our current fiction. In real life events do not commonly fall into well-modeled acts and scenes, nor to the discourse of men and women a succession of stings and flashes. On the contrary, the stream of life moves sluggishly and torturously, like some puny river feeling its way across an illimitable and inhospitable plain. Most of us live and die, not only without drama, but even without direction. What Dreiser tries to do is to produce, by the written word, this effect of blundering and pointless striving, of meaninglessness, of eternal ineffectuality, and with the high achievements of that method we must also take its necessary defects and limitations.

Frank Cowperwood, the central figure of “The Financier,” is a Philadelphian who comes to manhood at the time of the Civil War and plays an important part, but not dominating part in the great game of grab of the 10 years following. He is meant, I suppose, to be a sort of archetype of the first generation of American money-barons, and despite a good many variations in detail he is probably typical enough. The main thing to remember about him is that he is anything but a mere chaser of the dollar, that avarice as a thing in itself is not in him. For the actual dollar, indeed, he has only the toleration of an artist for his brushes and colors. What he is really after in life is power, and the way power always visualizes itself in his mind is as a means to beauty.

He is, in brief, a sort of refined and super-sensitive voluptuary. He likes all things that sooth the eye—a fine picture, a rare rug, a good horse, a pretty woman, particularly a pretty woman. And the delight that he takes in such things is always vastly more intellectual than sensual. A perfect eyebrow seems to him to be a phenomenon worth sitting down before and thinking about, soberly and profoundly. The world, in his sight, is conceivable only as a repository of beauty. In other aspects he seldom thinks of it, and can scarcely even imagine it.

Naturally enough, this over-development of the æsthetic sense carries with it an under-development of the ethical sense. The man, indeed, is a sort of moral vacuum, with no more feeling for right and wrong, as immutable principles of conduct, than a schoolboy or a hyena. When he sees a chance to make a lot of money by allying himself with political buccaneers, he takes it without the slightest questions of its essential virtue. And when, later on, the buccaneers themselves lay open for a bit of pillage, he pillages them with a light heart. Away from actual business the same crude hedonism is the mainspring of his acts. When he discovers that old Edward Malta Butler, his political and financial ally, has a radiant and venturesome daughter, he debauches her under old Butler’s very nose, and carries on the affair with the skill and impudence of a Tom Jones.

In this affair, indeed, he has little sense of wrongdoing, either to Butler, to young Aileen, or even to the wife of his youth. The only idea that presents itself to him with any force is the idea that Aileen is very pleasing, and to it he yields without analysis. Even when fortune turns against him, and he is the conquered instead of the conqueror, not much feeling that an act of conquest involves a moral wrong is apparent in him. Old Butler, discovering his affair with Aileen, knocks over his financial house of cards and has him railroaded to prison, but he shows little rancor against Butler, and less against Butler’s helpers in the business, but only an unemotional sort of disgust that fate should be so unkind to him, and keep him from beauty so long.

Nor does a year in prison change him. HE comes out just as he went in, convinced that life is merely a tedious game and that beauty is its one valuable prize. He has been defeated once, true enough, but next time he is determined to win–and win he does. Black Friday given him his chance, and his chance precipitates a million. On his feet again, he calmly prepares to leave Philadelphia for Chicago, where the scenes are being set for the wildest deeds of money and chicanery ever seen in the world. And as the curtain falls he is on his way—with Aileen under his arm.

A great rogue, of course, but still a rogue who rises above all mere hoggishness and takes on something of the heroic, and even of the tragic. The achievement of Dreiser lies in this very fact: that he has made the man wholly comprehensible, annd, as they say in the theatre, sympathetic. As the tale of his exploits in finance, politics and amour is slowly spun, a serene sort of dignity begins to appear in his sophistries and tergiversations. He is no common crook, but an immoral Prometheus, bound fast to a rock which seems to him to have no substance. And so seen he evokes that sympathy which inevitably goes with understanding. Dreiser’s laborious piling up of detail, his onerous progress uphill and down dale, his solemn matter-of-factness and disdain for trickery–all this has the effect, in the end, of showing you Cowperwood’s point of view, and once you have it, Cowperwood himself becomes as real as Falk or Barry Lyndon.

Dreiser, I am convinced, is the most considerable novelist, by long odds, now at work in America, and in saying this I do not forget Edith Wharton, nor even the sere and fluttering Howells. His philosophy of life, I am well aware, is wholly un-American, for Americans are all optimists, and he is the most abject of pessimists, but once you have granted him that philosophy of his and made allowance for his pecularities of method, you will find it difficult to escape the admission that he is a truly great artist, with the firm grip upon realities which distinguished Zola and Dostoevsky, and something of the rude poetry which illuminates the romances of Joseph Conrad.

Nothing finer than “Sister Carrie” has been done in our time, saving only “Huckleberry Finn,” our one great contribution to the literature of the world. “The Financier,” compared to this earlier book, leaves an impression decidedly less vivid, but that is chiefly because the central figure is a man instead of a woman. A hero, true enough, may outshine any heroine, but between the soiled lady and the villain the choice is always for the former. Beside, the book, for all its 780 pages, is incomplete, for it leaves Cowperwood at the very beginning of his real adventures. Those adventures will make the second volume, and Chicago will be their scene. Of the stature and appeal of that second volume I have no doubt whatever. Dreiser has got a secure grip upon his materials. He knows Chicago as few other men know it, and what is more, he knows Cowperwood inside and out.