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The
Merry-Go-Round

[Illustration]




_BOOKS BY_
_CARL VAN VECHTEN_

MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR              1915

MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS                  1916

INTERPRETERS AND INTERPRETATIONS       1917

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND                     1918

THE MUSIC OF SPAIN                     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


[Illustration]

New York   Alfred A. Knopf

MCMXVIII




COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




Contents


                                                     PAGE

IN DEFENCE OF BAD TASTE                                11

MUSIC AND SUPERMUSIC                                   23

EDGAR SALTUS                                           37

THE NEW ART OF THE SINGER                              93

_Au Bal Musette_                                      125

MUSIC AND COOKING                                     149

AN INTERRUPTED CONVERSATION                           179

THE AUTHORITATIVE WORK ON AMERICAN MUSIC              197

OLD DAYS AND NEW                                      215

TWO YOUNG AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHTS                        227

_De Senectute Cantorum_                               245

IMPRESSIONS IN THE THEATRE

    I _The Land of Joy_                               281

    II A Note on Mimi Aguglia                         298

    III The New Isadora                               307

    IV Margaret Anglin Produces _As You Like It_      318

THE MODERN COMPOSERS AT A GLANCE                      329

FOOTNOTES                                             330

INDEX                                                 331




     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.




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.




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 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 Musee 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 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 Valliere or please Doris Keane, is an
anachronistic figure and she 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 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- 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 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 _effemine_, a trifle
_declasse_, 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 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 appearance of a well-kept
hotel where guests may mingle comfortably and freely. I should not
wish to deny this. But I do deny that soul-study is a requirement for
the profession. If a man (or a woman) has a soul it will not be a
decorator who will discover its fitting housing. Others may object,
"But bad taste is rampant. Surely it is better to be guided by some
one who knows than to surround oneself with rocking chairs, plaster
casts of the Winged Victory, and photographs of various madonnas." I
say that it is _not_ better. It is better for each man to express
himself, through his taste, as well as through his tongue or his pen,
as he may. And it is only through such expression that he will finally
arrive (if he ever can) at a condition of household furnishing which
will say something to his neighbour as well as to himself. It is a
pleasure when one leaves a dinner party to be able to observe "That is
_his_ house," just as it is a pleasure when one leaves a concert to
remember that a composer has expressed himself and not the result of
seven years study in Berlin or Paris.

But Americans have little aptitude for self-expression. They prefer to
huddle, like cattle, under unspeakable whips when matters of art are
under discussion. They fear ridicule. As a consequence many of the
richest men in this country never really live in their own homes,
never are comfortable for a moment, although the walls are hung double
with Fragonards and hawthorne vases stand so deep upon the tables that
no space remains for the "Saturday Review" or "le Temps." And they
never, never, never, will know the pleasure which comes while
stumbling down a side street in London, or in the mouldy corners of
the Venetian ghetto, or in the Marche du Temple in Paris, or, heaven
knows, in New York, on lower Fourth Avenue, or in Chinatown, or in a
Russian brass shop on Allen Street, or in a big department store (as
often there as anywhere) in finding just the lamp for just the table
in just the corner, or in discovering a bit of brocade, perhaps the
ragged remnant of a waistcoat belonging to an aristocrat of the
Directorate, which will lighten the depths of a certain room, or a
chair which goes miraculously with a desk already possessed, or a
Chinese mirror which one had almost decided did not exist. Nor will
they ever experience the joy of sudden decision in front of a picture
by Matisse, which ends in the sale of a Delacroix. Nor can they feel
the thrill which is part of the replacing of a make-shift rug by _the_
rug of rugs (let us hope it was Solomon's!).

I know a lady in Paris whose salon presents a different aspect each
summer. Do her Picassos go, a new Spanish painter has replaced them.
Have you missed the Gibbons carving? Spanish church carving has taken
its place. "And where are your Venetian embroideries?" "I sold them to
the Marquise de V.... The money served to buy these Persian
miniatures." This lady has travelled far. She is not experimenting in
doubtful taste or bad art; she is not even experimenting in her own
taste: she is simply enjoying different epochs, different artists,
different forms of art, each in its turn, for so long as it says
anything to her. Her house is not a museum. Space and comfort demand
exclusion but she excludes nothing forever that she desires.... She
exchanges.

Taste at best is relative. It is an axiom that anybody else's taste
can never say anything to you although you may feel perfectly certain
that it is better than your own. If more of the money of the rich
were spent in encouraging children to develop their own ideas in
furnishing their own rooms it would serve a better purpose than it
does now when it is dropped into the ample pockets of the professional
decorators. Oscar Wilde wrote, "A colour sense is more important in
the development of the individual than a sense of right and wrong."
