New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1921-07-13
Said Mr.. Hughes to Mr.. penvs

Said MIR. Hughes to Mr.. Pepys
Dear Mr.. F. P. A.: Your Mr.. Pepv
is as sympathetic as the person who
rebuked the breadless French peasants
with the contemptuous query, "Why
don't they eat cake?"
Your Mr.. Pepys was "wearied by the
sentimentality" of "The Old Nest" and
could not see why the mother, of ap-
parent capability, should fold her hands
and say, Life is ended, because her
children had left home. Why, me-
thought, not 60 to visit one of them p
The original Mr.. Pepys, believe, was
similarly bored by King Lear, who
tried visiting his married children.
The mother in "The Old Nest" does
not fold her hands and say, Life is
ended. She is brave and busy, but she
suffers because the children she loves
must be away. She says she does not
blame them, she wants them. My own
mother is busy and very studious, and
Ter children are devoted, yet she suf-
fers agonies Of loneliness.
l am afraid you have never been a
mother, but l had thought you had had
one. Would she find all her sorrows
ended if she could visit you in your
busy New York for as long as you
found it convenient?
The tragedy of motherhood Is tre-
mendous, eternal, and pitiful even if it
wearies you. It wearies mothers still
more to see the children they love
and held in their laps growing up, 60
ing away and loving other mothers
children.
Your sense Of humor is famous, but
surely you were not at your best when
you advised a lonely mother to go
visit one of her children and be happy
ever after
In my picture "The Old Nest" I tried
to show restraint. The tragedy is not
due to villains or conspiracies. As in
Greek drama, it is ineluctable fate
that wrings the heart, and claim that
my Mrs. Anthem has as good reason for
grief as Elektra, Medea, Iphigenia or
any of them, and is quite as brave.
Is treatment Of her sorrow illeriti-
death?
The ease with which you toss aside
the anguish of lonely motherhood is
strange in one who emits about 365
screams of woe a year over the par
turition Of last line and whose suffer
ihgs in the presence of a grammatical
indelicacy exceed those of womar, in
travail.
Criticism seems to be the only field
OF activity in which one boasts of his
limitations and lack of responsiveness.
Elsewhere, deafness, blindness, astig-
matism, paralysis, dyspepsia and the
absence of the knee-jerk are accounted
Affections. Yours nearly always.
Los Angeles. RUPERT HUGHES.
1t still is true that our Mr.. Pepys
was "wearied by the scntimentality''
OF "The Old Nest; but it was not his
notion that mothers visit to her chill
dren would give her sempiternal hap
piness.
Shrewd guesser that Mr.. Hughes is,
although we never have been a mother,
wo have had one. If she could visit
us in "our busy New York." the visit
itself might not dispe1 all her sorrows.
but it might dull the acuteness of her
loneliness. We wish such visit were
possible; and one Of the first things
we should do would be to introduce
her to Mr.. Hughes, for she would
know that for nobody in our family
had we deeper and more unass ailable
affection.
The tragedy of motherhood is, as
Mr.. Hughes says, tremendous, eternal.
and pitiful. 1t does not weary US.
But we felt the tragedy Of MOTHERHOOD
when we were seeing "The Old Nest"
hardly more than when we were hear
ing songs like "The Picture That Was
Turned Toward the WALL" "My Mother
Was Lady" and Just Tell Them
That You Saw Me-" No, the treatment
OF her sorrow IL not iIlegitimate; but
1.-THE Old Nest" wearied us lust the
same.
1t the original Mr.. Pepys was bored
By King Lear-which might have been
so, as his critical sense was almost n.
fallible as Our Own Mr.. Pepys's-he
never, so far as we recall. said q word
about it in his Diary. But he said
that "a Midsummer Nights Dream
was the most insipid, ridiculous play
ever saw in my life" So, $50 years
from now. our statue may be pointed
out as that of the nan who was
wearied by the sentimentality of "The
oid Nest" =. p. i.