IS THE AGE VULGAR?

Dunstan Times, Issue 3360, 15 August 1927, Page 7

IS THE AGE VULGAR?

(By James Agate.) Leaving the theatre after tho firstnight of an unhappy revue, I heard one Cockney say to another with reference to a'scene taken from “Oliver Twist”; “Why didn’t Bill Sikes ’ave no dorg?” And his friend replied: “Blimey, they only ’ad thirty thahsand pahuds!” 1- suppose the thing which has stuck most in people’s throats in connection with this entertainment is the superlavishness of it all. Other revues have begun badly before now, and roused no feelings beyond sympathetic condolence. Mountains in time past have given forth mice, but the eyes of the community have not been bent solely and singly upon their labor, nor have they been proclaimed as exceeding anything the Andes or the Himalayas have to show. For days together one could not take up the paper without having it dinned into one that for an incredible period His Majesty’s Theatre had been hired at £6OO weekly solely that on its stage might be rehearsed the most colossal, hair-raising and earth-shaking revue of modern times. Now it is in my mind that some of the best, wittiest, and most successful revues have been produced on a stage which three nights before reeked with .tragedy. But .other minds have other views, and to-day it is not easy to find acceptance for the belief that twopennyworth of brains will go farther cnan twenty or thirty or thirty thousand pounds worth, of bricks and uroitiu\. ■ There would appear to be some peculiar magnetism about the sum of £6OO, for I read that this is the amount which is being expended weekly upon the training of an American boxer. I have had tiie pleasure of meeting Mr Mickey Walker, and can testify that he is the pleasantest, nicest-mannered, most modest andi unassuming little American gentleman that I have ever encountered. .This being so, I must believe that all the opulence in training is demanded, not by him nor by the journalist who reports, but by the public which reads. “Six hundred pounds a week seems rather a large sum.” The paragraphist then went on to explain that ot that amount at least £ls a week was spent upon sparring partners. Let me be generous and admit the possibility of a misprint, and that not £ls but £l5O was meant. In addition, it was explained, the boxer must have his small army of masseurs and a highly competent and expensive chef to prepare his food. But I confess that 1 rubbed my eyes on reading; that tlie greater part of the money is to be spent upon entertaining, the sum ot £IOO per week being allotted to the purchase of champagne. How much, does the reader suppose, was spent upon the training—l will not say of the old prize fighters —but of Carpentier when he travelled from fair to fair, or of Wilde, pitboy one day and champion of tho world the next? 1 ' “American Fli.es Atlantic with Millionaire Passenger” was one of Monday’s head lines. Am I wrong in suggesting that the word “millionaire” in this connection is inexpressibly vulgar? Poised between sea and sky no man is either millionaire or pauper. His wealth consists in his skill, courage, nerve and power to resist fatigue. There are all his capital and all his investments, while his loose cash is represented by his stock of petrol, his sandwiches, and the contents of his thermos' flask. The accidental stopping of a pipe, or a misplaced bit of grit may bring his house to disaster. His riches, in a. word, consist in the mercies of God. And yet our journalists discourse of a flying hero and a millionaire passenger. But who, in heaven’s name, during those few hours is the millionaire—the man with the air-sense and the pilot’s skill, or the passenger whose only qualification is a bank balance from which, he is separated by a thousand watery leagues? l.et such a one take his cheque book with him. and in sheer bravado write cheques for millions and drop them over the side every five minutes from Newfoundland to the Irish coast; they will be neither honored nor dishonored. An old phrase for describing the death of a man was to say that he has made his account with God. If money, or metaphors drawn from money, are to be used in connection with the. supreme enterprises ot tho human spirit, should we not coniine them to the statement that in each case Man is asking the Bank of Info to grant him an enormous overdraft without any security whatever? Let me not be misunderstood. Ido not deprecate adventure or the spirit which Is eternally seeking to break records. The painter is always trying, and must always he trying, to paint a greater picture than any which has been achieved; the writer a greater novel; the pet a greater poem. There is a sense in which the smallest dramatist would be discouraged on being told that he will not be greater than Shakespeare. For if he is not trying to be greater than Shakespeare, he is probably not trying at all. Every artist will understand what T mean by that. Let me put it more simply still. Every golfer tries to do a short hole in one. And if, having succeeded, he does-not try to do the next short hole also in one—a feat never yet achieved—then be isT no golfer. But—and it is an enormous but, which contains the whole of my point—--1 deprecate very strongly indeed that attitude which deems the breaking of the record to be the important thing. It is the attempt, and not the deed, which justifies Man. i swear that I breopennyworth of the Comic Spirit shall always amuse me more than thirty thousand pounds worth of silk tights and spangles, that no championship shall inspire me more than that of Teddy Bablock whose youth was not princely, that he who flies the Atlantic shall ever astound me, whether for companion he have a beggar with his toes coming through his boots or merely his own spirit. Expense is not everything. Must T give up my favorite newspaper because it has not the largest circulation in the Solar System ?