CROWN PRINCE ON THE RUN
But the smiles that fill my heart with sunshine
Are
the
smiles
you
give
to
me
persistent talk of peace is an unsettling factor and the epidemic of influenza has deterred country buyers from visiting the larger centers
The Camera Eye (32)
à quatorze heures precisement the Boche diurnally shelled that bridge with their wellknown precision as to time and place à quatorze heures precisement Dick Norton with his monocle in his eye lined up his section at a little distance from the bridge to turn it over to the American Red Cross
the Red Cross majors looked pudgy and white under their new uniforms in their shined Sam Browne belts in their shined tight leather puttees so this was overseas
so this was the front well well
Dick Norton adjusted his monocle and began to talk about how as gentlemen volunteers he had signed us up and as gentlemen volunteers he bade us farewell Wham the first arrivé the smell of almonds the sunday feeling of no traffic on the road not a poilu in sight Dick Norton adjusted his monocle the Red Cross majors felt the showering mud sniffed the lyddite swift whiff of latrines and of huddled troops
Wham Wham Wham like the Fourth of July the shellfragments sing our ears ring
the bridge is standing and Dick Norton adjusting his monocle is standing talking at length about gentlemen volunteers and ambulance service and la belle France
The empty staffcar is standing
but where are the majors taking over command
who were to make a speech in the name of the Red Cross? The slowest and pudgiest and whitest of the majors is still to be seen on his hands and knees with mud all over his puttees crawling into the abris and that’s the last we saw of the Red Cross Majors
and the last we heard of gentlemen
or volunteers
The Happy Warrior
The Roosevelts had lived for seven righteous generations on Manhattan Island; they owned a big brick house on 20th Street, an estate up at Dobbs Ferry, lots in the city, a pew in the Dutch Reformed Church, interests, stocks and bonds, they felt Manhattan was theirs, they felt America was theirs. Their son,
Theodore,
was a sickly youngster, suffered from asthma, was very nearsighted; his hands and feet were so small it was hard for him to learn to box; his arms were very short;
his father was something of a humanitarian, gave Christmas dinners to newsboys, deplored conditions, slums the East Side, Hell’s Kitchen.
Young Theodore had ponies, was encouraged to walk in the woods, to go camping, was instructed in boxing and fencing (an American gentleman should know how to defend himself) taught Bible Class, did mission work (an American gentleman should do his best to uplift those not so fortunately situated);
righteousness was his by birth;
he had a passion for nature study, for reading about birds and wild animals, for going hunting; he got to be a good shot in spite of his glasses, a good walker in spite of his tiny feet and short legs, a fair horseman, an aggressive scrapper in spite of his short reach, a crack politician in spite of being the son of one of the owning Dutch families of New York.
In 1876 he went up to Cambridge to study at Harvard, a wealthy talkative erratic young man with sidewhiskers and definite ideas about everything under the sun.
at Harvard he drove around in a dogcart, collected stuffed birds, mounted specimens he’d shot on his trips in the Adirondacks; in spite of not drinking and being somewhat of a christer, having odd ideas about reform and remedying abuses, he made Porcellian and the Dickey and the clubs that were his right as the son of one of the owning Dutch families of New York.
He told his friends he was going to devote his life to social service: I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife.
From the time he was eleven years old he wrote copiously, filled diaries, notebooks, loose leaves with a big impulsive scrawl about everything he did and thought and said;
naturally he studied law.
He married young and went to Switzerland to climb the Matterhorn; his first wife’s early death broke him all up. He went out to the badlands of western Dakota to become a rancher on the Little Missouri River;
when he came back to Manhattan he was Teddy, the straight shooter from the west, the elkhunter, the man in the Stetson hat, who’d roped steers, fought a grizzly hand to hand, acted as Deputy Sheriff,
(a Roosevelt has a duty to his country; the duty of a Roosevelt is to uplift those not so fortunately situated, those who have come more recently to our shores)
in the west, Deputy Sheriff Roosevelt felt the white man’s burden, helped to arrest malefactors, bad men; service was bully.
All this time he’d been writing, filling the magazines with stories of his hunts and adventures, filling political meetings with his opinions, his denunciations, his pat phrases: Strenuous Life, Realizable Ideals, Just Government, when men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom, and well it is that they should vanish from the earth, where they are fit subjects for the scorn of all men and women who are themselves strong and brave and highminded.
T.R. married a wealthy woman and righteously raised a family at Sagamore Hill.
He served a term in the New York Legislature, was appointed by Grover Cleveland to the unremunerative job of Commissioner for Civil Service Reform,
was Reform Police Commissioner of New York, pursued malefactors, stoutly maintained that white was white and black was black,
wrote the Naval History of the War of 1812,
was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy,
and when the Maine blew up resigned to lead the Rough Riders,
Lieutenant-Colonel.
This was the Rubicon, the Fight, the Old Glory, the Just Cause. The American public was not kept in ignorance of the Colonel’s bravery when the bullets sang, how he charged without his men up San Juan Hill and had to go back to fetch them, how he shot a running Spaniard in the tail.
It was too bad that the regulars had gotten up San Juan Hill first from the other side, that there was no need to get up San Juan Hill at all. Santiago was surrendered. It was a successful campaign. T.R. charged up San Juan Hill into the governorship of the Empire State;
but after the fighting, volunteers warcorrespondents magazine-writers began to want to go home;
it wasn’t bully huddling under puptents in the tropical rain or scorching in the morning sun of the seared Cuban hills with malaria mowing them down and dysentery and always yellowjack to be afraid of.
T.R. got up a round robin to the President and asked for the amateur warriors to be sent home and leave the dirtywork to the regulars
who were digging trenches and shovelling crap and fighting malaria and dysentery and yellowjack
to make Cuba cosy for the Sugar Trust
and the National City Bank.
When he landed at home, one of his first interviews was with Lemuel Quigg, emissary of Boss Platt who had the votes of upstate New York sewed into the lining of his vest;
he saw Boss Platt too, but he forgot about that afterwards. Things were bully. He wrote a life of Oliver Cromwell whom people said he resembled. As Governor he doublecrossed the Platt machine (a righteous man may have a short memory); Boss Platt thought he’d shelved him by nominating him for the Vice-Presidency in 1900;
Czolgocz made him president.
T.R. drove like a fiend in a buckboard over the muddy roads through the driving rain from Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks to catch the train to Buffalo where McKinley was dying.
As President
he moved Sagamore Hill, the healthy happy normal American home, to the White House, took foreign diplomats and fat armyof-ficers out walking in Rock Creek Park where he led them a terrible da
nce through brambles, hopping across the creek on steppingstones, wading the fords, scrambling up the shaly banks,
and shook the Big Stick at malefactors of great wealth.
Things were bully.
He engineered the Panama revolution under the shadow of which took place the famous hocuspocus of juggling the old and new canal companies by which forty million dollars vanished into the pockets of the international bankers,
but Old Glory floated over the Canal Zone
and the canal was cut through.
He busted a few trusts,
had Booker Washington to lunch at the White House,
and urged the conservation of wild life.
He got the Nobel Peace Prize for patching up the Peace of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese war,
and sent the Atlantic Fleet round the world for everybody to see that America was a firstclass power. He left the presidency to Taft after his second term leaving to that elephantine lawyer the congenial task of pouring judicial oil on the hurt feelings of the moneymasters
and went to Africa to hunt big game.
Big game hunting was bully.
Every time a lion or an elephant went crashing down into the jungle underbrush, under the impact of a wellplaced mushroom bullety
the papers lit up with headlines;
when he talked with the Kaiser on horseback
the world was not ignorant of what he said, or when he lectured the Nationalists at Cairo telling them that this was a white man’s world.
He went to Brazil where he travelled through the Matto Grosso in a dugout over waters infested with the tiny maneating fish, the piranha,
shot tapirs,
jaguars,
specimens of the whitelipped peccary.
He ran the rapids of the River of Doubt
down to the Amazon frontiers where he arrived sick, an infected abscess in his leg, stretched out under an awning in a dugout with a tame trumpeterbird beside him.
Back in the States he fought his last fight when he came out for the republican nomination in 1912 a progressive, champion of the Square Deal, crusader for the Plain People; the Bull Moose bolted out from under the Taft steamroller and formed the Progressive Party for righteousness’ sake at the Chicago Colosseum while the delegates who were going to restore democratic government rocked with tears in their eyes as they sang
On ward Christian so old gers
March ing as to war
Perhaps the River of Doubt had been too much for a man of his age; perhaps things weren’t so bully any more; T.R. lost his voice during the triangular campaign. In Duluth a maniac shot him in the chest, his life was saved only by the thick bundle of manuscript of the speech he was going to deliver. T.R. delivered the speech with the bullet still in him, heard the scared applause, felt the plain people praying for his recovery but the spell was broken somehow.
The Democrats swept in, the world war drowned out the righteous voice of the Happy Warrior in the roar of exploding lyddite.
Wilson wouldn’t let T.R. lead a division, this was no amateur’s war (perhaps the regulars remembered the round robin at Santiago). All he could do was write magazine articles against the Huns, send his sons; Quentin was killed.
It wasn’t the bully amateur’s world any more. Nobody knew that on armistice day, Theodore Roosevelt, happy amateur warrior with the grinning teeth, the shaking forefinger, naturalist, explorer, magazinewriter, Sundayschool teacher, cowpuncher, moralist, politician, righteous orator with a short memory, fond of denouncing liars (the Ananias Club) and having pillowfights with his children, was taken to the Roosevelt hospital gravely ill with inflammatory rheumatism.
Things weren’t bully any more;
T.R. had grit;
he bore the pain, the obscurity, the sense of being forgotten as he had borne the grilling portages when he was exploring the River of Doubt, the heat, the fetid jungle mud, the infected abscess in his leg,
and died quietly in his sleep
at Sagamore Hill
on January 6, 1919
and left on the shoulders of his sons
the white man’s burden.
The Camera Eye (33)
11,000 registered harlots said the Red Cross Publicity Man infest the streets of Marseilles
the Ford stalled three times in the Rue de Rivoli in Fontainebleau we had our café au lait in bed the Forest was so achingly red yellow novemberbrown under the tiny lavender rain beyond the road climbed through dovecolored hills the air smelt of apples
Nevers (Dumas nom de dieu) Athos Porthos and d’Artagnan had ordered a bisque at the inn we wound down slowly into red Macon that smelt of wineless and the vintage fais ce que voudras saute Bourgignon in the Rhone valley the first straw-colored sunlight streaked the white road with shadows of skeleton poplars at every stop we drank wine strong as beefsteaks rich as the palace of François Premier bouquet of the last sleetlashed roses we didn’t cross the river to Lyon where Jean-Jacques suffered from greensickness as a youngster the landscapes of Provence were all out of the Gallic Wars the towns were dictionaries of latin roots Orange Tarascon Arles where Van Gogh cut off his ears the convoy became less of a conducted tour we stopped to play craps in the estaminets boys we’re going south to drink the red wine the popes loved best to eat fat meals in oliveoil and garlic bound south cêpes provençale the north wind was shrilling over the plains of the Camargue hustling us into Marseilles where the eleven thousand were dandling themselves in the fogged mirrors of the promenoir at the Apollo
oysters and vin de Cassis petite fille tellement brune tête de lune qui amait les veentair sports in the end they were all slot machines undressed as Phocean figurines posted with their legs apart around the scummy edges of the oldest port
the Riviera was a letdown but there was a candy-colored church with a pointed steeple on every hill beyond San Remo Porto Maurizio blue seltzerbottles standing in the cinzanocolored sunlight beside a glass of VERMOUTH TORINO Savona was set for the Merchant of Venice painted by Veronese Ponte Decimo in Ponte Decimo ambulances were parked in a moonlit square of bleak stone workingpeople’s houses hoarfrost covered everything in the little bar the Successful Story Writer taught us to drink cognac and maraschino half and half
havanuzzerone
it turned out he was not writing what he felt he wanted to be writing What can you tell them at home about the war? it turned out he was not wanting what he wrote he wanted to be feeling cognac and maraschino was no longer young (It made us damn sore we greedy for what we felt we wanted tell ’em all they lied see new towns go to Genoa) havanuzzerone? it turned out that he wished he was a naked brown shepherd boy sitting on a hillside playing a flute in the sunlight
going to Genoa was easy enough the streetcar went there Genoa the new town we’d never seen full of marble doges and breakneck stairs marble lions in the moonlight Genoa was the ancient ducal city burning? all the marble palaces and the square stone houses and the campaniles topping hills had one marble wall on fire
bonfire under the moon
the bars were full of Britishers overdressed civilians strolling under porticoes outside the harbor under the Genoa moon the sea was on fire the member of His Majesty’s Intelligence Service said it was a Yankee tanker had struck a mine? been torpedoed? why don’t they scuttle her?
Genoa eyes flared with the light of the burning tanker Genoa what are you looking for? the flare in the blood under the moon down the midnight streets in boys’ and girls’ face Genoa eyes the question in their eyes
through the crumbling stone courts under the Genoa moon up and down the breakneck stairs eyes on fire under the moon round the next corner full in your face the flare of the bonfire on the sea
11,000 registered harlots said the Red Cross Publicity Man infest the streets of Marseilles
Joe Williams
It was a lousy trip. Joe was worried all the time about Del and about not making good and the deckcrew was a bunch of soreheads. The engines kept breaking down
. The Higginbotham was built like a cheesebox and so slow there were days when they didn’t make more’n thirty or forty miles against moderate head winds. The only good times he had was taking boxing lessons from the second engineer, a fellow named Glen Hardwick. He was a little wiry guy, who was a pretty good amateur boxer, though he must have been forty years old. By the time they got to Bordeaux Joe was able to give him a good workout. He was heavier and had a better reach and Glen said he’d a straight natural right that would take him far as a lightweight.
In Bordeaux the first port official that came on board tried to kiss Cap’n Perry on both cheeks. President Wilson had just declared war on Germany. All over the town nothing was too good for Les Americains. Evenings when they were off Joe and Glen Hardwick cruised around together. The Bordeaux girls were damn pretty. They met up with a couple one afternoon in the public garden that weren’t hookers at all. They were nicely dressed and looked like they came of good families, what the hell it was wartime. At first Joe thought he ought to lay off that stuff now that he was married, but hell, hadn’t Del held out on him. What did she think he was, a plaster saint? They ended by going to a little hotel the girls knew and eating supper and drinking a beaucoup wine and champagne and having a big party. Joe had never had such a good time with a girl in his life. His girl’s name was Marceline and when they woke up in the morning the help at the hotel brought them in coffee and rolls and they ate breakfast, both of ’em sitting up in bed and Joe’s French began to pick up and he learned how to say C’est la guerre and On les aura and Je m’en fiche and Marceline said she’d always be his sweetie when he was in Bordeaux and called him petit lapin.