Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 289
Or no — he wasn’t drowned — I remember — he was rescued by some of the pupils whom he had taught to swim.
After he was resuscitated by the boys — it was one of the things he had taught them — the school dismissed him.
Then some of the boys who were sorry for him taught him how to swim, and he got a new job as a swimming master in another place.
But this time he was an utter failure. He swam well, but they said he couldn’t teach.
So his friends looked about to get him a new job. This was just at the time when the bicycle craze came in. They soon found the man a position as an instructor in bicycle riding. As he had never been on a bicycle in his life, he made an admirable teacher. He stood fast on the ground and said, “Now then, all you need is confidence.”
Then one day he got afraid that he might be found out. So he went out to a quiet place and got on a bicycle, at the top of a slope, to learn to ride it. The bicycle ran away with him. But for the skill and daring of one of his pupils, who saw him and rode after him, he would have been killed.
This story, as the reader sees, is endless. Suffice it to say that the man I speak of is now in an aviation school teaching people to fly. They say he is one of the best aviators that ever walked.
According to all the legends and story books, the principal factor in success is perseverence. Personally, I think there is nothing in it. If anything, the truth lies the other way.
There is an old motto that runs, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” This is nonsense. It ought to read— “If at first you don’t succeed, quit, quit, at once.”
If you can’t do a thing, more or less, the first time you try, you will never do it. Try something else while there is yet time.
Let me illustrate this with a story.
I remember, long years ago, at a little school that I attended in the country, we had a schoolmaster, who used perpetually to write on the blackboard, in a copperplate hand, the motto that I have just quoted: —
“If at first you don’t succeed,
Try, try, again.”
He wore plain clothes and had a hard, determined face. He was studying for some sort of preliminary medical examination, and was saving money for a medical course. Every now and then he went away to the city and tried the examination: and he always failed. Each time he came back, he would write up on the blackboard —
“Try, try, again.”
And always he looked grimmer and more determined than before. The strange thing was that with all his industry and determination, he would break out every now and then into drunkenness, and lie round the tavern at the crossroads, and the school would be shut for two days. Then he came back, more fiercely resolute than ever. Even children could see that the man’s life was a fight. It was like the battle between Good and Evil in Milton’s epics.
Well, after he had tried it four times, the schoolmaster at last passed the examination; and he went away to the city in a suit of store clothes, with eight hundred dollars that he had saved up, to study medicine. Now it happened that he had a brother who was not a bit like himself, but was a sort of ne’er-do-well, always hard-up and sponging on other people, and never working.
And when the schoolmaster came to the city and his brother knew that he had eight hundred dollars, he came to him and got him drinking and persuaded him to hand over the eight hundred dollars and to let him put it into the Louisiana State lottery. In those days the Louisiana Lottery had not yet been forbidden the use of the mails, and you could buy a ticket for anything from one dollar up. The Grand Prize was two hundred thousand dollars, and the Seconds were a hundred thousand each.
So the brother persuaded the schoolmaster to put the money in. He said he had a system for buying only the tickets with prime numbers, that won’t divide by anything, and that it must win. He said it was a mathematical certainty, and he figured it out with the schoolmaster in the back room of a saloon, with a box of dominoes on the table to show the plan of it. He told the schoolmaster that he himself would only take ten per cent of what they made, as a commission for showing the system, and the schoolmaster could have the rest.
So in a mad moment, the schoolmaster handed over his roll of money, and that was the last he ever saw of it.
The next morning when he was up he was fierce with rage and remorse for what he had done. He could not go back to the school, and he had no money to go forward. So he stayed where he was in the little hotel where he had got drunk, and went on drinking. He looked so fierce and unkempt, that in the hotel they were afraid of him, and the bartenders watched him out of the corners of their eyes wondering what he would do: because they knew that there was only one end possible, and they waited for it to come. And presently it came. One of the bartenders went up to the schoolmaster’s room to bring up a letter, and he found him lying on the bed with his face grey as ashes, and his eyes looking up at the ceiling. He was stone dead. Life had beaten him.
And the strange thing was that the letter that the bar-tender carried up that morning was from the management of the Louisiana Lottery. It contained a draft on New York, signed by the treasurer of the State of Louisiana, for two hundred thousand dollars. The schoolmaster had won the Grand Prize.
The above story, I am afraid, is a little gloomy. I put it down merely for the moral it contained, and I became so absorbed in telling it that I almost forgot what the moral was that it was meant to convey. But I think the idea is that if the schoolmaster had long before abandoned the study of medicine, for which he was not fitted, and gone in, let us say, for playing the banjo, he might have become end-man in a minstrel show. Yes, that was it.
Let me pass on to other elements in success.
I suppose that anybody will admit that the peculiar quality that is called initiative, — the ability to act promptly on one’s own judgment, — is a factor of the highest importance.
I have seen this illustrated two or three times in a very striking fashion.
I knew, in Toronto, — it is long years ago, — a singularly bright young man whose name was Robinson. He had had some training in the iron and steel business, and when I knew him was on the lookout for an opening.
I met him one day in a great hurry, with a valise in his hand.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Over to England,” he said. “There is a firm in Liverpool that have advertised that they want an agent here, and I’m going over to apply for the job.”
“Can’t you do it by letter?” I asked.
“That’s just it,” said Robinson, with a chuckle, “all the other men will apply by letter. I’ll go right over myself and get there as soon or sooner than the letters. I’ll be the man on the spot, and I’ll get the job.”
He was quite right. He went over to Liverpool, and was back in a fortnight with English clothes and a big salary.
But I cannot recommend his story to my friends. In fact, it should not be told too freely. It is apt to be dangerous.
I remember once telling this story of Robinson to a young man called Tomlinson, who was out of a job. Tomlinson had a head two sizes too big, and a face like a bun. He had lost three jobs in a bank and two in a broker’s office, but he knew his work, and on paper he looked a good man.
I told him about Robinson, to encourage him, and the story made a great impression.
“Say, that was a great scheme, eh?” he kept repeating. He had no command of words, and always said the same thing over and over.
A few days later I met Tomlinson on the street with a valise in his hand.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m off to Mexico,” he answered. “They’re advertising for a Canadian teller for a bank in Tuscapulco. I’ve sent my credentials down, and I’m going to follow them right up in person. In a thing like this, the personal element is everything.”
So Tomlinson went down to Mexico and he travelled by sea to Mexico City, and then with a mule train to Tuscapulco. But the mails, with his credentials went by land and got there two days ahead of him.
When Tomlinson got to Tuscapulco he went into the bank and he spoke to the junior manager and told him what he came for. “I’m awfully sorry,” the junior manager said, “I’m afraid that this post has just been filled.” Then he went into an inner room to talk with the manager. “The tellership that you wanted a Canadian for,” he asked, “didn’t you say that you have a man already?”
“Yes,” said the manager, “a brilliant young fellow from Toronto; his name is Tomlinson, I have his credentials here — a first class man. I’ve wired him to come right along, at our expense, and we’ll keep the job open for him ten days.”
“There’s a young man outside,” said the junior, “who wants to apply for the job.”
“Outside?” exclaimed the manager. “How did he get here?”
“Came in on the mule train this morning: says he can do the work and wants the job.”
“What’s he like?” asked the manager.
The junior shook his head. “Pretty dusty-looking customer,” he said; “shifty-looking.”
“Same old story,” murmured the manager. “It’s odd how these fellows drift down here, isn’t it? Up to something crooked at home, I suppose. Understands the working of a bank, eh? I guess he understands it a little too well for my taste. No, no,” he continued, tapping the papers that lay on the table, “now that we’ve got a first class man like Tomlinson, let’s hang on to him. We can easily wait ten days, and the cost of the journey is nothing to the bank as compared with getting a man of Tomlinson’s stamp. And, by the way, you might telephone to the Chief of Police and get him to see to it that this loafer gets out of town straight off.”
So the Chief of Police shut up Tomlinson in the calaboose and then sent him down to Mexico City under a guard. By the time the police were done with him he was dead broke, and it took him four months to get back to Toronto; when he got there, the place in Mexico had been filled long ago.
But I can imagine that some of my readers might suggest that I have hitherto been dealing only with success in a very limited way, and that more interest would lie in discussing how the really great fortunes are made.
Everybody feels an instinctive interest in knowing how our great captains of industry, our financiers and railroad magnates made their money.
Here the explanation is really a very simple one. There is, in fact, only one way to amass a huge fortune in business or railway management. One must begin at the bottom. One must mount the ladder from the lowest rung. But this lowest rung is everything. Any man who can stand upon it with his foot well poised, his head erect, his arms braced and his eye directed upward, will inevitably mount to the top.
But after all — I say this as a kind of afterthought in conclusion. Why bother with success at all? I have observed that the successful people get very little real enjoyment out of life. In fact the contrary is true. If I had to choose — with an eye to having a really pleasant life — between success and ruin, I should prefer ruin every time. I have several friends who are completely ruined — some two or three times — in a large way of course; and I find that if I want to get a really good dinner, where the champagne is just as it ought to be, and where hospitality is unhindered by mean thoughts of expense, I can get it best at the house of a ruined man.
Historical Drama
AFTER ALL THERE is nothing like the Historical Drama! Say what you will about moving pictures or high-speed vaudeville they never have the same air and class to them. For me as soon as I see upon the program “A tucket sounds!” I am all attention, and when it says “Enter Queen Elizabeth to the sound of Hoboes,” I am thrilled. What does it matter if the queen’s attendants seem to speak as if they came from Yonkers? There is dignity about it all the same. When you have, moving in front of you on the stage, people of the class of Louis Quatorze, Henry Quinze, Arthur Cromwell and Mary of Roumania, you feel somehow as if they were distinctly superior to such characters as Big-hearted Jim, and Shifty Pete and Meg of the Bowery and Inspector Corcoran. Perhaps they are!
But of all the characters that walk upon the stage, commend me to Napoleon. What I don’t know about that man’s life, from seeing him on the boards is not worth discussing. I have only to close my eyes and I can see him before me as depicted by our greatest actors, with his one lock of hair and his forehead like a door knob, his melancholy eyes painted black and yellow underneath. And as for his family life, his relations with Josephine, his dealings with the Countess Skandaliska, I could write it all down if it was lost.
There is something about that man, — I don’t mind admitting it, — that holds me. And he exercises the same fascination over all our great actors. About once in every ten years some one of them, intoxicated by success, decides that he wants to be Napoleon. It is a thing that happens to all of them. It is something in their brain that breaks.
Every time that this happens a new Napoleonic play is produced. That is, it is called new but it is really the same old play over again. The title is always entirely new but that is because it is a convention that the title of a Napoleon play is never a straight-out statement of what it means such as “Napoleon, Emperor of France” or “Napoleon and Josephine.” It is called, let us say, “Quinze Pour Cent” or “Mille Fois Non” or “Des Deux Choses L’Une” — that sort of thing. And after it is named it is always strung together in the same way and it is always done in little fits and starts that have no real connection with one another but are meant to show Napoleon at all the familiar angles. In fact, here is how it goes: —
“DES DEUX CHOSES L’UNE”
A DRAMA OF THE FIRST EMPIRE
Adapted from the French of Dumas, Sardou, Hugo, Racine, Corneille, and all others who ever wrote of Napoleon.
The opening part of the play is intended to show the extraordinary fidelity towards the Emperor on the part of the marshals of France whom he had created.
Scene One
The ball room of the palace of the Tuileries. Standing around are ladies in directoire dresses, brilliant as rainbows. Up right beside them are the marshals of France. There is music and a buzz of conversation.
Enter Napoleon followed by Talleyrand in black, and two secretaries carrying boxes. There is silence. The Emperor seats himself at a little table. The secretaries place on it two black despatch boxes.
The Emperor speaks: Marshal Junot.
The Marshal steps forward and salutes.
The Emperor: Marshal: I have heard strange rumours and doubts about your fidelity. I wish to test it. I have here, — he opens one of the boxes, — a vial of poison. Here, — drink it.
Junot: With pleasure, Sire.
Junot drinks the poison and stands to attention.
The Emperor: Go over there and stand beside the Comtesse de la Polissonerie till you die.
Junot (saluting): With pleasure, Sire.
Napoleon (turns to another marshal): Berthier?
Here, Sire!
Berthier steps out in front of the Emperor.
The Emperor (rising): Ha! Ha! Is it you, — he reaches up and pinches Berthier’s ear, — Vieux paquet de linge sale!
Berthier looks delighted. It is amazing what a French marshal will do for you if you pinch his ear. At least it is a tradition of the stage. In these scenes Napoleon always pinched the Marshals’ ears and called them, — Vieux paquet de linge sale, etc.
The Emperor turns stern in a moment.
Marshal Berthier!
Sire!
Are you devoted to my person?
Sire, you have but to put me to the test.
Very well. Here, Marshal Berthier (Napoleon reaches into the box), is a poisoned dog biscuit. Eat it.
Berthier (saluting): With pleasure, Sire. It is excellent.
Napoleon: Very good, Mon Vieux trait d’union. Now go and talk to the Duchesse de la Rotisserie till you die.
Berthier bows low.
The Emperor: Marshal Lannes! You look pale. Here is a veal chop. It is full of arsenic. Eat it.
Marshal Lannes bows in silence and swallows the chop in one bite.
The Emperor then gives a paquet of prussic acid to Marshal Soult, one pill each to Marshals Ney and Augereau, then suddenly he rises and stamps his foot.
No, Talleyrand, no! The farce is finished! I can play it no longer. Look, les braves enfants! They have eaten poison for me. Ah non, mes amis, mon vieux. Reassure yourselves. You are not to die. See, the poison was in the other box.
Talleyrand (shrugging his shoulders): If your Majesty insists upon spoiling everything.
Napoleon: Yes, yes, those brave fellows could not betray me. Come, Berthier. Come, Junot, come and let us cry together —
The Emperor and his marshals all gather in a group, sobbing convulsively and pulling one another’s ears.
But one must not think that the Imperial Court was all sentiment. Ah, no! The great brain of the Emperor could be turned in a moment to other concerns and focused into a single point of concentrated efficiency. As witness: —
Scene Two
Showing how Napoleon used to dictate a letter, carry on a battle, and Reveal Business Efficiency at the Acme.
Napoleon in a room in a château, announced to be somewhere near a battle, striding up and down, dictating a letter with his hat on. On the stage the great Emperor always dictates through his hat. A secretary sitting at a table is vainly trying to keep pace with the rush of words.
Now are you ready, de Meneval. Have you written that last sentence?
De Meneval (writing desperately): In a moment, Sire, in a moment.
Imbecile, write this then, “The Prefect of Lyons is ordered to gather all possible cannon for the defense of Toulon . . . He is reminded that there are six cannon on the ramparts of Lyons which he has apparently forgotten. The Emperor orders him to pass them forward at once—” Have you written that, imbecile?
In a moment, Sire, in a moment.
“To have them forwarded to Toulon. He is reminded that there are six more in the back garden of the Ministry of the Marine, and two put away in the basement of the Methodist Church.”
After he was resuscitated by the boys — it was one of the things he had taught them — the school dismissed him.
Then some of the boys who were sorry for him taught him how to swim, and he got a new job as a swimming master in another place.
But this time he was an utter failure. He swam well, but they said he couldn’t teach.
So his friends looked about to get him a new job. This was just at the time when the bicycle craze came in. They soon found the man a position as an instructor in bicycle riding. As he had never been on a bicycle in his life, he made an admirable teacher. He stood fast on the ground and said, “Now then, all you need is confidence.”
Then one day he got afraid that he might be found out. So he went out to a quiet place and got on a bicycle, at the top of a slope, to learn to ride it. The bicycle ran away with him. But for the skill and daring of one of his pupils, who saw him and rode after him, he would have been killed.
This story, as the reader sees, is endless. Suffice it to say that the man I speak of is now in an aviation school teaching people to fly. They say he is one of the best aviators that ever walked.
According to all the legends and story books, the principal factor in success is perseverence. Personally, I think there is nothing in it. If anything, the truth lies the other way.
There is an old motto that runs, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” This is nonsense. It ought to read— “If at first you don’t succeed, quit, quit, at once.”
If you can’t do a thing, more or less, the first time you try, you will never do it. Try something else while there is yet time.
Let me illustrate this with a story.
I remember, long years ago, at a little school that I attended in the country, we had a schoolmaster, who used perpetually to write on the blackboard, in a copperplate hand, the motto that I have just quoted: —
“If at first you don’t succeed,
Try, try, again.”
He wore plain clothes and had a hard, determined face. He was studying for some sort of preliminary medical examination, and was saving money for a medical course. Every now and then he went away to the city and tried the examination: and he always failed. Each time he came back, he would write up on the blackboard —
“Try, try, again.”
And always he looked grimmer and more determined than before. The strange thing was that with all his industry and determination, he would break out every now and then into drunkenness, and lie round the tavern at the crossroads, and the school would be shut for two days. Then he came back, more fiercely resolute than ever. Even children could see that the man’s life was a fight. It was like the battle between Good and Evil in Milton’s epics.
Well, after he had tried it four times, the schoolmaster at last passed the examination; and he went away to the city in a suit of store clothes, with eight hundred dollars that he had saved up, to study medicine. Now it happened that he had a brother who was not a bit like himself, but was a sort of ne’er-do-well, always hard-up and sponging on other people, and never working.
And when the schoolmaster came to the city and his brother knew that he had eight hundred dollars, he came to him and got him drinking and persuaded him to hand over the eight hundred dollars and to let him put it into the Louisiana State lottery. In those days the Louisiana Lottery had not yet been forbidden the use of the mails, and you could buy a ticket for anything from one dollar up. The Grand Prize was two hundred thousand dollars, and the Seconds were a hundred thousand each.
So the brother persuaded the schoolmaster to put the money in. He said he had a system for buying only the tickets with prime numbers, that won’t divide by anything, and that it must win. He said it was a mathematical certainty, and he figured it out with the schoolmaster in the back room of a saloon, with a box of dominoes on the table to show the plan of it. He told the schoolmaster that he himself would only take ten per cent of what they made, as a commission for showing the system, and the schoolmaster could have the rest.
So in a mad moment, the schoolmaster handed over his roll of money, and that was the last he ever saw of it.
The next morning when he was up he was fierce with rage and remorse for what he had done. He could not go back to the school, and he had no money to go forward. So he stayed where he was in the little hotel where he had got drunk, and went on drinking. He looked so fierce and unkempt, that in the hotel they were afraid of him, and the bartenders watched him out of the corners of their eyes wondering what he would do: because they knew that there was only one end possible, and they waited for it to come. And presently it came. One of the bartenders went up to the schoolmaster’s room to bring up a letter, and he found him lying on the bed with his face grey as ashes, and his eyes looking up at the ceiling. He was stone dead. Life had beaten him.
And the strange thing was that the letter that the bar-tender carried up that morning was from the management of the Louisiana Lottery. It contained a draft on New York, signed by the treasurer of the State of Louisiana, for two hundred thousand dollars. The schoolmaster had won the Grand Prize.
The above story, I am afraid, is a little gloomy. I put it down merely for the moral it contained, and I became so absorbed in telling it that I almost forgot what the moral was that it was meant to convey. But I think the idea is that if the schoolmaster had long before abandoned the study of medicine, for which he was not fitted, and gone in, let us say, for playing the banjo, he might have become end-man in a minstrel show. Yes, that was it.
Let me pass on to other elements in success.
I suppose that anybody will admit that the peculiar quality that is called initiative, — the ability to act promptly on one’s own judgment, — is a factor of the highest importance.
I have seen this illustrated two or three times in a very striking fashion.
I knew, in Toronto, — it is long years ago, — a singularly bright young man whose name was Robinson. He had had some training in the iron and steel business, and when I knew him was on the lookout for an opening.
I met him one day in a great hurry, with a valise in his hand.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Over to England,” he said. “There is a firm in Liverpool that have advertised that they want an agent here, and I’m going over to apply for the job.”
“Can’t you do it by letter?” I asked.
“That’s just it,” said Robinson, with a chuckle, “all the other men will apply by letter. I’ll go right over myself and get there as soon or sooner than the letters. I’ll be the man on the spot, and I’ll get the job.”
He was quite right. He went over to Liverpool, and was back in a fortnight with English clothes and a big salary.
But I cannot recommend his story to my friends. In fact, it should not be told too freely. It is apt to be dangerous.
I remember once telling this story of Robinson to a young man called Tomlinson, who was out of a job. Tomlinson had a head two sizes too big, and a face like a bun. He had lost three jobs in a bank and two in a broker’s office, but he knew his work, and on paper he looked a good man.
I told him about Robinson, to encourage him, and the story made a great impression.
“Say, that was a great scheme, eh?” he kept repeating. He had no command of words, and always said the same thing over and over.
A few days later I met Tomlinson on the street with a valise in his hand.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m off to Mexico,” he answered. “They’re advertising for a Canadian teller for a bank in Tuscapulco. I’ve sent my credentials down, and I’m going to follow them right up in person. In a thing like this, the personal element is everything.”
So Tomlinson went down to Mexico and he travelled by sea to Mexico City, and then with a mule train to Tuscapulco. But the mails, with his credentials went by land and got there two days ahead of him.
When Tomlinson got to Tuscapulco he went into the bank and he spoke to the junior manager and told him what he came for. “I’m awfully sorry,” the junior manager said, “I’m afraid that this post has just been filled.” Then he went into an inner room to talk with the manager. “The tellership that you wanted a Canadian for,” he asked, “didn’t you say that you have a man already?”
“Yes,” said the manager, “a brilliant young fellow from Toronto; his name is Tomlinson, I have his credentials here — a first class man. I’ve wired him to come right along, at our expense, and we’ll keep the job open for him ten days.”
“There’s a young man outside,” said the junior, “who wants to apply for the job.”
“Outside?” exclaimed the manager. “How did he get here?”
“Came in on the mule train this morning: says he can do the work and wants the job.”
“What’s he like?” asked the manager.
The junior shook his head. “Pretty dusty-looking customer,” he said; “shifty-looking.”
“Same old story,” murmured the manager. “It’s odd how these fellows drift down here, isn’t it? Up to something crooked at home, I suppose. Understands the working of a bank, eh? I guess he understands it a little too well for my taste. No, no,” he continued, tapping the papers that lay on the table, “now that we’ve got a first class man like Tomlinson, let’s hang on to him. We can easily wait ten days, and the cost of the journey is nothing to the bank as compared with getting a man of Tomlinson’s stamp. And, by the way, you might telephone to the Chief of Police and get him to see to it that this loafer gets out of town straight off.”
So the Chief of Police shut up Tomlinson in the calaboose and then sent him down to Mexico City under a guard. By the time the police were done with him he was dead broke, and it took him four months to get back to Toronto; when he got there, the place in Mexico had been filled long ago.
But I can imagine that some of my readers might suggest that I have hitherto been dealing only with success in a very limited way, and that more interest would lie in discussing how the really great fortunes are made.
Everybody feels an instinctive interest in knowing how our great captains of industry, our financiers and railroad magnates made their money.
Here the explanation is really a very simple one. There is, in fact, only one way to amass a huge fortune in business or railway management. One must begin at the bottom. One must mount the ladder from the lowest rung. But this lowest rung is everything. Any man who can stand upon it with his foot well poised, his head erect, his arms braced and his eye directed upward, will inevitably mount to the top.
But after all — I say this as a kind of afterthought in conclusion. Why bother with success at all? I have observed that the successful people get very little real enjoyment out of life. In fact the contrary is true. If I had to choose — with an eye to having a really pleasant life — between success and ruin, I should prefer ruin every time. I have several friends who are completely ruined — some two or three times — in a large way of course; and I find that if I want to get a really good dinner, where the champagne is just as it ought to be, and where hospitality is unhindered by mean thoughts of expense, I can get it best at the house of a ruined man.
Historical Drama
AFTER ALL THERE is nothing like the Historical Drama! Say what you will about moving pictures or high-speed vaudeville they never have the same air and class to them. For me as soon as I see upon the program “A tucket sounds!” I am all attention, and when it says “Enter Queen Elizabeth to the sound of Hoboes,” I am thrilled. What does it matter if the queen’s attendants seem to speak as if they came from Yonkers? There is dignity about it all the same. When you have, moving in front of you on the stage, people of the class of Louis Quatorze, Henry Quinze, Arthur Cromwell and Mary of Roumania, you feel somehow as if they were distinctly superior to such characters as Big-hearted Jim, and Shifty Pete and Meg of the Bowery and Inspector Corcoran. Perhaps they are!
But of all the characters that walk upon the stage, commend me to Napoleon. What I don’t know about that man’s life, from seeing him on the boards is not worth discussing. I have only to close my eyes and I can see him before me as depicted by our greatest actors, with his one lock of hair and his forehead like a door knob, his melancholy eyes painted black and yellow underneath. And as for his family life, his relations with Josephine, his dealings with the Countess Skandaliska, I could write it all down if it was lost.
There is something about that man, — I don’t mind admitting it, — that holds me. And he exercises the same fascination over all our great actors. About once in every ten years some one of them, intoxicated by success, decides that he wants to be Napoleon. It is a thing that happens to all of them. It is something in their brain that breaks.
Every time that this happens a new Napoleonic play is produced. That is, it is called new but it is really the same old play over again. The title is always entirely new but that is because it is a convention that the title of a Napoleon play is never a straight-out statement of what it means such as “Napoleon, Emperor of France” or “Napoleon and Josephine.” It is called, let us say, “Quinze Pour Cent” or “Mille Fois Non” or “Des Deux Choses L’Une” — that sort of thing. And after it is named it is always strung together in the same way and it is always done in little fits and starts that have no real connection with one another but are meant to show Napoleon at all the familiar angles. In fact, here is how it goes: —
“DES DEUX CHOSES L’UNE”
A DRAMA OF THE FIRST EMPIRE
Adapted from the French of Dumas, Sardou, Hugo, Racine, Corneille, and all others who ever wrote of Napoleon.
The opening part of the play is intended to show the extraordinary fidelity towards the Emperor on the part of the marshals of France whom he had created.
Scene One
The ball room of the palace of the Tuileries. Standing around are ladies in directoire dresses, brilliant as rainbows. Up right beside them are the marshals of France. There is music and a buzz of conversation.
Enter Napoleon followed by Talleyrand in black, and two secretaries carrying boxes. There is silence. The Emperor seats himself at a little table. The secretaries place on it two black despatch boxes.
The Emperor speaks: Marshal Junot.
The Marshal steps forward and salutes.
The Emperor: Marshal: I have heard strange rumours and doubts about your fidelity. I wish to test it. I have here, — he opens one of the boxes, — a vial of poison. Here, — drink it.
Junot: With pleasure, Sire.
Junot drinks the poison and stands to attention.
The Emperor: Go over there and stand beside the Comtesse de la Polissonerie till you die.
Junot (saluting): With pleasure, Sire.
Napoleon (turns to another marshal): Berthier?
Here, Sire!
Berthier steps out in front of the Emperor.
The Emperor (rising): Ha! Ha! Is it you, — he reaches up and pinches Berthier’s ear, — Vieux paquet de linge sale!
Berthier looks delighted. It is amazing what a French marshal will do for you if you pinch his ear. At least it is a tradition of the stage. In these scenes Napoleon always pinched the Marshals’ ears and called them, — Vieux paquet de linge sale, etc.
The Emperor turns stern in a moment.
Marshal Berthier!
Sire!
Are you devoted to my person?
Sire, you have but to put me to the test.
Very well. Here, Marshal Berthier (Napoleon reaches into the box), is a poisoned dog biscuit. Eat it.
Berthier (saluting): With pleasure, Sire. It is excellent.
Napoleon: Very good, Mon Vieux trait d’union. Now go and talk to the Duchesse de la Rotisserie till you die.
Berthier bows low.
The Emperor: Marshal Lannes! You look pale. Here is a veal chop. It is full of arsenic. Eat it.
Marshal Lannes bows in silence and swallows the chop in one bite.
The Emperor then gives a paquet of prussic acid to Marshal Soult, one pill each to Marshals Ney and Augereau, then suddenly he rises and stamps his foot.
No, Talleyrand, no! The farce is finished! I can play it no longer. Look, les braves enfants! They have eaten poison for me. Ah non, mes amis, mon vieux. Reassure yourselves. You are not to die. See, the poison was in the other box.
Talleyrand (shrugging his shoulders): If your Majesty insists upon spoiling everything.
Napoleon: Yes, yes, those brave fellows could not betray me. Come, Berthier. Come, Junot, come and let us cry together —
The Emperor and his marshals all gather in a group, sobbing convulsively and pulling one another’s ears.
But one must not think that the Imperial Court was all sentiment. Ah, no! The great brain of the Emperor could be turned in a moment to other concerns and focused into a single point of concentrated efficiency. As witness: —
Scene Two
Showing how Napoleon used to dictate a letter, carry on a battle, and Reveal Business Efficiency at the Acme.
Napoleon in a room in a château, announced to be somewhere near a battle, striding up and down, dictating a letter with his hat on. On the stage the great Emperor always dictates through his hat. A secretary sitting at a table is vainly trying to keep pace with the rush of words.
Now are you ready, de Meneval. Have you written that last sentence?
De Meneval (writing desperately): In a moment, Sire, in a moment.
Imbecile, write this then, “The Prefect of Lyons is ordered to gather all possible cannon for the defense of Toulon . . . He is reminded that there are six cannon on the ramparts of Lyons which he has apparently forgotten. The Emperor orders him to pass them forward at once—” Have you written that, imbecile?
In a moment, Sire, in a moment.
“To have them forwarded to Toulon. He is reminded that there are six more in the back garden of the Ministry of the Marine, and two put away in the basement of the Methodist Church.”
