Upton Sinclair - Love's pilgrimage

§ 1. THROUGHOUT this long winter of discontent came to them one ray of hope from the outside world. "The Genius" was given in the little town in Germany, and Thyrsis' correspondent sent the twenty-five dollars, and wrote that it had made a great impression, and that more performances were to be expected. Then, after an interval, Thyrsis was surprised to receive from his clipping-bureau some items to the effect that his play was to be produced in one of the leading theatres in Berlin. He wrote to his correspondent for an explanation, and learned to his dismay that his play had been "pirated"; it was, of course, not copyright .in Germany, and so he had no redress, and must content himself with what his friend referred to as "the renowns which will be brought to you by these performances".

The play came out, in the early spring, and apparently made a considerable sensation. Thyrsis read long reviews from the German papers, and there were accounts of it in several American papers. So people began to ask who this unknown poet might be. The publishers of "The Hearer of Truth" were moved to venture new advertisements of the book—whereby they sold perhaps a hundred copies more; and Thyrsis was moved to pay some badly-needed money to have more copies of the play made, so that he might try to interest some other manager. He carried on a long correspondence with a newly-organized "stage society", which thought a great deal about trying the play at a matinee,

but did nothing.

Also, Thyrsis received a letter from one of the country's popular novelists, who had heard of the play abroad, and asked to read it. When he had read it, and told what an interesting piece of work it was, Thyrsis sat down and wrote the great man about his plight, and asked for help; which led to correspondence, and to the passing round of the manuscript among a group of literary people. One of these was Haddon Channing, the critic and essayist, who was interested enough to write Thyrsis several long letters, and to read the rest of his productions, and later on to call to see him. Which, visit proved a curious experience for the family.

He arrived one day towards spring, when it chanced that Corydon was in town visiting the dentist. Thyrsis had just finished his dinner when he saw two people coming through the orchard, and he leaped up in haste to put the soiled dishes away, and make the place as presentable as possible. Mr. and Mrs. Channing had come in their car (they lived in Philadelphia), and were followed by an escort of the farmer's children—since an automobile was a rare phenomenon in that neighborhood. The entrance to the peach-orchard proved not wide enough for the machine, so they had to get out and walk; and this they found annoying, because the ground was wet and soft. All of which seemed to emphasize the incongruity of their presence.

Haddon Channing might have been described as a dilettante radical. He employed a highly-wrought and artificial style, which scintillated with brilliant epigram; one had a feeling that it rather atoned for the evils in human life, that they became the occasion of so much cleverness in Channing's books. Perhaps that was the reason why most people did not object to the vague-

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ness of his ideas, when it came to any constructive suggestion. In fact he rather made a point of such vagueness—when you tried to do anything about a social evil, that was politics, and politics were vulgar. One could never pin Channing down, but his idea seemed to be that in the end all men would become free and independent spirits, able to make their own epigrams; after which there would be no more evil in the world.

And here he was in the flesh. It seemed to Thyrsis as if he must have made a study of his own books, and then proceeded to fit his person and his clothing, his accent and his manner, to make a proper setting thereto. He was tall and lean, immaculate and refined; he spoke with airy and fastidious grace, pouring out one continuous stream of cleverness—any hour of his conversation was equivalent to a volume of his works at a dollar and a quarter net.

Also, there was Mrs. Channing, gracious and exquisite, looking as if she had stepped out of one of Hossetti's poems. She was a poetess herself; writing about Acteon, and Antinoiis, and other remote subjects. Thyrsis assumed that there must be something in these poems, for they were given two or three pages in the thirty-five-cent magazines; but he himself had never discovered any reason why he should read one through.

§ 2. THEY seated themselves upon his six-foot piazza; and Thyrsis, who had very little sense of personality, and was altogether wrapped up in ideas, was soon in the midst of a free and easy discussion with them. It seemed ages since he had had an opportunity to exchange opinions with anyone except Corydon. With these people he roamed over the fields of litera-

ture; and as they found nothing to agree about anywhere, the conversation did not flag.

A strange experience it must have been to them, to come to a lonely shanty in the woods, and encounter a haggard boy in a cotton-shirt and a pair of frayed trousers, who was all oblivious of their elegance, and unawed by their reputation, and who behaved like a bull in the china-shop of their orderly opinions. Mrs. Channing, it seemed, was completing her life-work, a volume which was to revolutionize current criticism, and lead the world back to artistic health; to her, modern civilization was a vast abortion, and in Greek culture was to be sought the fountain-head of health. She sang the praises of Athenian literature and art and life; there was sanity and clarity, there was balance and serenity! And to compare it with the jangled confusion and the frantic strife of modern times!

To which Thyrsis answered, "We'd best let modern times alone. For here you've all facts and no generalization ; and in the case of the Greeks you've all generalization and no facts."

And so they went at it, hot and heavy. Mrs. Channing, her Greek serenity somewhat ruffled, insisted that she had studied the facts for herself. The other proceeded to probe into her equipment, and found that she knew Homer and Sophocles, but did not know Aristophanes so well, and did not know the Greek epigrams at all. Thyrsis maintained that the dominant note in the Greek heritage was one of bewilderment and despair ; in support of which alarming opinion he carried the discussion from the dreams of Greek literature to the realities of Greek life. Did Mrs. Channing know how the Greeks had persecuted all their great thinkers?

Did she know anything about the cruelties of their slave-code ?

"Have you ever studied Greek politics?" he asked. "Do you realize, for instance, that it was the custom of statesmen and generals who were defeated by their political rivals, to go over to the enemy and lead an expedition against their homes?"

"Isn't that putting it rather strongly?" asked Mrs. Channing.

"I don't think so," he answered. "Didn't the conquerors of both Salamis and Plataea afterwards sell out to the Persian king? And then you talk about the noble ideal of woman which the Greeks developed! Don't you know that it was nothing but a literary tradition?"

"I had never understood that," said Mrs. Channing.

To which the other answered: "It was handed down from imaginary Homeric days. The Greek lady of the Periclean age was a domestic prisoner and drudge."

§ 3. THEN, late in the afternoon, came Corydon; and this part of the adventure must have seemed stranger yet to the Channings. Corydon wore a shirtwaist and a ten-cent straw hat, trimmed with some white mosquito-netting, and an old blue skirt which she had worn before her marriage, and had enlarged little by little during the period of her pregnancy, and had taken in again after the baby was born. Also she was pale and sad-looking, much startled by the sight of the automobile, and the sudden apparition of elegance. She got rid of her armfuls of groceries and bundles, and seated herself in an inconspicuous place, and sat listening while the argument went on. For a full hour she never uttered a word; only once during the controversy over the "Greek lady", Mrs. Channing