# Pastiches et Pistaches

BY CARL VAN VECHTEN.

## *Concerning the Simplicity of the Great.*

One often hears it said, by those who take refuge in routine phrases without stopping to consider their meaning, that great people are always simple. Nothing could be further from the truth. Show me a simple man and you show me a mediocrity. Of the great people I have known, not one was simple, and those who attempted to give an impression of simplicity to their manner were the least simple of all. Opera singers, of course, are never simple, but just here I can hear my audience shrieking that opera singers are seldom great. Let us, then, consider geniuses in other spheres. Let us contemplate Beethoven striding through the tempest without coat or hat, ordering his dinner in a restaurant and then refusing to eat it, breaking the strings of his piano with his poundings, and insulting his friends. Let us observe James McNeill Whistler, whose life was so much of a pose that it almost became natural. Is The Gentle Art of Making Enemies a product of simplicity? Let us occupy our attention with Count Tolstoy who, as an octogenarian, in quest of the simple life, deserted his wife and family and died in the waiting-room of a wayside station. Let us take a peep at Richard Wagner, who flattered anybody who could be useful to him, ran away with the wife of his best friend, stole money and themes from his father-in-law, and left behind him an autobiography which is chiefly remarkable for its studied pretentiousness. Let us inspect John D. Rockefeller . . . but no, there are limits! In one sense, the superstition contains a germ of truth: all these men were very simple in their egotism.

## *The Intelligence of Cats.*

No one, so far as I know, pretends to understand the cat. Let those who persist in asserting that this animal is unintelligent read the following dictum of Samuel Butler: "Nothing, we say to ourselves, can have intelligence unless we understand all

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about it—as though intelligence in all except ourselves meant
the power of being understood rather than of understanding.”

Charles Demuth and Florine Stettheimer.

Edgar Saltus once remarked: “America is in the matter of
act as it is in the matter of truffles: we consume but we do not
produce.” This is a good epigram but it is not altogether true.
Any country which has produced Herman Melville, Henry James,
James McNeill Whistler, James Branch Cabell, Joseph Hergé-
sheimer, and Edgar Saltus himself cannot be held entirely con-
temptible in the matter of art. Art of various percentages is dis-
tilled everywhere, even, perhaps, in New Jersey, but usually there
is little appreciation for home-brews. We prefer expensive im-
portations. It is easy to sell a picture for $50,000 in America
whether the picture is worth it or not. The sale is of sufficient
importance to be recorded in the newspapers and the buyer
proves, merely by hanging the picture on his wall, not only that
he is a man of culture but also that he is a man of position and
property. This might be called Rolls-Royce snobbery. But it is
a difficult and ticklish matter to put a contemporary American
canvas up for sale at $50,000. The dealers, indeed, by the very
force of circumstances, are compelled to ask comparatively small
prices for such canvases. The possessor of one of these, there-
fore, can only be called a man of courage. Some of his friends,
doubtless, remark that he bought it because it was cheap.

I wonder how many collectors are buying the water-colours
of Charles Demuth? In a few years they will surely bring big
prices. Have you seen his jugglers and acrobats and circus
clowns, his flowers, and his illustrations for Nana and The Turn
of the Screw? The sketches for Henry James's negromantic tale
are stranger than the tale itself. They do not reveal; they con-
ceal. They keep the secret of the master in a decorative manner.
On the other hand, the illustrations for Nana, elaborate in realisti-
cally fanciful arabesques the vicious horrors of Zola. How beau-
tiful and how terrible the flowers: daisies with cabalistic secrets,
cyclamens rosy with vice, orchids wet with the mystery of the

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Rosicrucians! And the acrobats, the jugglers, and the clowns all contribute their share to the glory of this perverse genius, a genius which would be recognized at once at full-value in Germany or France. His later pictures, apparently depicting houses in New England villages, are orderly and concrete, and yet ...

I pause in wonder, also, before the canvases of Florine Stettheimer, canvases as gay as the fête at Neuilly. Her bowls of multi-coloured zinnias, fox-gloves, and stocks are lacking in persversity. These are not the flowers of Demuth. They are apparently more honest, but no clairvoyant spirit standing before them would be misled by their honesty. Ecstasy is there but it is agathodemonic and not kakodemonic. It is perhaps, however, in her riotous picnics and parties, flooded with sunlight and splashes of violent colour, that Miss Stettheimer is most original. This lady has got into her painting a very modern quality, the quality that ambitious American musicians will have to get into their compositions before any one will listen to them. At the risk of being misunderstood, I must call this quality jazz. Jazz music, indubitably, is an art in itself, but before a contemporary American can triumph in the serious concert halls he must reproduce not the thing itself but its spirit in a more lasting form. This, Miss Stettheimer has abundantly succeeded in doing. I hope some upstate Richard Strauss will be able to follow her!

## The King of the Jews

Two Jewish playwrights, Sholom Ash and Ossip Dymoff, are walking on Canal Street.

**ASH.** If the Jews go back to Palestine, they must have a ruler. What shall this ruler be, a king or a president?

**DYMOFF.** A president might better suit these democratic times.

**ASH.** But the tradition of the Jews points to a king. A king we must have. A king must be our ruler in Palestine!

**DYMOFF.** Very well, let him be a king.

**ASH.** But who is to be this king? What manner of man shall we crown?