Guy Vanderhaeghe - The Englishman’s Boy

A log sinks in the fireplace with a sputter of sparks. I shift uncomfortably in my chair, pick up my napkin, lay it down again. I say, “Your study of Griffith?”

My question seems to pull him back a little from wherever he has drifted. He begins to jab the linen tablecloth with the tines of a dessert fork. “No, not just Griffith,” he says. “Griffith is only one piece of the puzzle. A small piece.” His habitual fluency seems to return. “You might say that for ten years I searched for the pieces to the picture, trying this and trying that – history, sociology, economics, philosophy – looking for useful fragments here and there, testing and discarding. There were many roadblocks; I awoke in many dark woods.” He thinks for a moment, sips his champagne. “It is not easy to grope your way to first principles. It is not easy to forsake personal prejudices for the truth. For instance, even as a small boy I loathed my father. His materialism repelled me. But with time, I came to see that he was merely the unconscious and unwitting servant of the chief tendency of the nineteenth century – the drive to increase and bind together material forces. Carnegie, Gould, Rockefeller, their vaunted independence and initiative was all really an illusion, and they the unconscious agents of what the Germans call the Zeitgeist - the spirit of the age. These men were simply tools of an evolutionary process of which they were no more conscious than the lowest life form is of its role in the process of biological evolution. And realizing this, I came to pity my father, pitied his blind, mole-like industry, pitied him most because he deluded himself he was captain of his own fate. The growth of great industrial and business trusts, the unification of Italy and of Germany, the war we fought in this country to prevent the disintegration of the Union, the growth of the European empires were all manifestations of the same urge, the urge to combine and consolidate material forces.

“The more I meditated upon my father’s life the more I came to understand that every man is the servant of historical forces – that no man can deny the spirit of his age, any more than a fish can renounce the water for the land. But the fishes which know the currents, the pools, and the eddies of the stream they inhabit, these are the fishes who increase their chances of survival. And so do the men who familiarize themselves with the currents of the age to which they are confined. That I was determined to do.”

Chance hesitates briefly, a lecturer marshalling his forces for the next onslaught upon the topic. I wait, perplexed. I have no idea what this “spirit of the age” talk is all about. It sounds a bit like the spiritualist, table-knocking-to-get-in-touch-with-the-dearly-departed, Madame Blavatsky, Hindu swami bullshit which finds such a warm welcome in Hollywood. But I’m not sure. Somehow this is different.

“Which brings me to the present,” he says. “Before and after the war I travelled extensively in Europe. It was evident to me that the war had unravelled the nineteenth century and everything it stood for. But America has not realized this. In America, business continues as usual. One year of war was not enough to teach us the stern lessons learned by Europe. America’s supremacy in the field of industrial production has made her blind to the facts. The war racked Europe with a creative suffering, the travails of a hard and agonizing birth, the parturition of a quickening spirit. While bigger business, bigger armies, more coal, more steel gave the advantages necessary for survival in the nineteenth century, these alone will not be sufficient for success in the new century. In the twentieth century, survival can only be insured by a consolidation of spiritual forces.” Chance leans forward eagerly in his chair as he delivers this remarkable statement.

Eccentricity is the privilege of rich men. They can afford it. I set my glass down carefully on the table. “Spiritual forces, Mr. Chance? I’m not sure what you mean. Are you talking about the League of Nations? Ethical principles ruling the conduct of states?”

He smiles condescendingly. “No, Harry, the League of Nations is the furthest thing from my mind – Voltaire arguing that primitive impulses and bloodlust can be curbed by an appeal to reason. When I speak of spiritual forces, I am speaking of that side of man which the nineteenth century denied because of its worship of reason and science.”

“What side would that be?”

“Intuition, the life force, what Bergson calls the élan vital , the irrational. The night world of visions and fantasies and the waking world of fructifying daydreams. The lost primitive. Sudden insight, inspiration, impulse, imagination. Instinct , Harry! The flexing, the liberation of the will. The rich, chaotic, creative stew of the unconscious! But I speak only words, Harry, bare nouns, mere shadows of rich and complex impulses which words fail to properly describe.” He smiles, as if realizing he is getting too carried away, speaks more quietly. “I don’t want you to mistake my meaning, Harry. I am not suggesting we turn our back on the benefits science has conferred. Far from it. The question is not the rejection of technological and material innovations; the question is whether we Americans will summon up our as yet unawakened spiritual forces and employ them for proper ends.”

“What ends are these, Mr. Chance?”

Chance is not ready to answer my question. He leans back in his chair, relaxing in the warmth of a memory. “Can I describe for you one of the most momentous events in my life, Harry? It occurred in August of 1907 when I bought my first ticket to a nickelodeon. Do you remember what nickelodeons were like in those days? A couple of hundred folding chairs in a failed grocery store, pool room, bankrupt hardware store. Filled with poor immigrants – Irishmen, Poles, Russians, Scandinavians, Italians. Cheap entertainment for a nickel. The foreigners loved the new picture stories because you didn’t have to be able to speak English to understand them, pictures told the tale. The nickelodeons had a bad reputation among respectable people; they were rumoured to be dens of vice; people of my background spoke sneeringly of them as amusement for idiots. But one afternoon on a visit to New York my curiosity got the better of me; I paid my nickel and took my seat among the crowd in the dark. The stench was unbelievable! Week-old sweat, unwashed underpants, a cloud of garlic. Sickening. When the picture began, I was convinced it was nothing but idiotic tomfoolery, mind-numbing sentiment, crapulous melodrama. But then something happened, Harry. The hall was mesmerized, and I do not use the word loosely. They were moved. They wept over innocence outraged, they blazed with hatred for the unrepenting wicked. You recall what happened to Erich von Strpheim after playing so many evil Prussians during the war? It wasn’t safe for him to go out in the streets. When he was recognized, stones were thrown at his automobile. It was no different that afternoon. If the villain had appeared in the flesh, they would have torn him to pieces, limb from bleeding limb.

“I’d never experienced anything like it. They roared with laughter, rocking back and forth on their gimcrack seats, heaving like the body of some great beast, mindful of nothing but the flickering on the bed-sheets nailed to the wall. And as I sat there among them, something began to move in me as well, Harry. I began to feel the wordless pressure of the crowd, the deep desire of the crowd to encompass, to swallow everyone up in a surge of feeling, to bespeak itself with a single voice. And as the minutes flew by, I could feel arise in me a deep longing to lose myself in the shielding darkness, to lose myself in the featureless crowd! And in the end I did let myself go, all the Puritan reserve and self-possession I had been taught from childhood dissolved, gave way like a rotten dam. I found myself laughing, laughing like I had never laughed before in my life! I shook with it, I rocked back and forth in my chair, banging my heels against the floor! Seconds later I wept, tears streaming down my face! When the crowd hissed their hatred, I hissed my hatred too! Hissed like a snake! A great release of feeling in the darkness, feeling which touched the lost primitive.”