Murder
By Witter Bynner
Once of all my friends and cronies
First was my own heart and best;
But aggrieved my heart rebuked me,
And I broke it in my breast.
Now my body laughs and offers
Any sum I bid it lend;
And I borrow and I borrow—
And I spend and I spend.
—From Grenstone
Poems
**
With Arsenic and Ax
Surely one needs make no apology in
bringing out a murder number of a books page. It has one of the chief
diversions of humankind, ever since Cain, in a fit of peeve hardly
consonant with the relative serenity of his times, perpetrated his
utterly inartistic slaughter of Abel. Without it Euripides would have
been a dull fellow, Shakespeare no more than a comedian of sorts.
Edgar Allan Poe the dingy genius of an editorial office. Why, the
very history of the Habiri, as recounted from Genesis on, would be a
wallow of pollyanna. Indeed, it is quite impossible to imagine this
best of all possible worlds without the thing.
And our interest in murder still
continues. To be sure, the uplift from time to time turns gnashing on
the matter and exerts its influence to stamp the practice out.
Nevertheless, every now and then one of us has a going-out, and the
rest of us hustle breathlessly to view, vicariously through the press
if not actually in person, the corpse. Indeed, there is coming to be,
among the more cultured, a greater and greater delight in every new
slaying of actually aesthetic qualities. The murderers are feted and
banqueted at the most exclusive cafes.
In a studio in one of Greenwich
Village’s most noisome and exclusive alleys, a year ago, a Murder
Club was organized. Among those present were a professor of
psychology in one of our great universities, an organist and pianist
of repute, a sculptress, two poets and two business men. It was
decided that on the night of every murder in New York City, the club
would dine. As guests of honor would be invited the newspaper men who
had covered the murder and the murderer herself; it was expected,
however, that now and then it would be impossible to get in touch
with the lady. At the conclusion, the murderer and the reporters
would be asked to describe the deed, and the evening would end with a
general discussion of it from aesthetic and psychological points of
view.
Eventually the club collapsed, some of
the members becoming tired of boarding together.
**
Brightly did McNaught’s Monthly
start the new year, in its January number, with a charming essay on
our present subject by Charles B. Driscoll, in which he declares:
“There are two kinds of murder, the grave and the gay. The former
should be suppressed.” As a fine example of the gay murder, which
Mr. Driscoll so eloquently defends, he gives the following:
“There was a barber with an artist’s
soul, residing in one of our large Western cities. A customer
requested a shave, but insisted on talking back. The talkative shavee
had not been going long when he expressed the opinion, if I can
recall it correctly, that Calvin Coolidge is nothing less than
another Abraham Lincoln and Moses, combined in one super-character.
The barber with the soul cut a warning gash athwart the customer’s
left cheek, and lapsed into comparative silence. The rash patient
continued to converse. He said that Judge Landis is a gentleman, a
jurist unexcelled, and a stickler for clean baseball. The barber
could endure no more. He cut the victim’s windpipe neatly in two,
between the predicate end and the object. Placing the razor carefully
upon the remains, he went into the street and summoned a policeman.”
Mr. Driscoll deplores, as must we all,
that so sensitive a spirit is now reduced to shaving his fellow
convicts in a state penitentiary. It would also seem hardly fair to
the other convicts. But then, such treatment cannot have been
encouraging: harsh criticism worried Keats almost to death. The
dejected fellow today in all probability would not retort with even a
half-inch slick on the chin to the most preposterous affirmation by a
loquacious customer. Helpless in his chair, one doubtless could
asseverate even that Theodore Dreiser is the greatest thinker in
contemporary letters, without fearing more chastisement than perhaps
the loss of an ear-lobe.
**
Mr. Driscoll’s is but one literary
voice raised in protest against too broad a censorship of dirk and
pistol. Are we to assume that other literary ladies and gentlemen
agree with the uplift? No, no, no; that is incredible. Rather let us
conclude that, with their bludgeons as with their booze, they indulge
in quiet, feeling that the homicide laws are no more effectual to
constrain them than are the prohibitionist.
In the cellar of Henry Mencken, for
instance, there is unquestionably much more to be found than empty
bottles. Search of the place might disclose a very catacombs, an
array of grinning skulls, each one with a gaping wound left by his
vorpal pen. Doubtless, too, they are labeled; this was a critic, this
a soprano, this the author of a novel in which the hero slew the
villain just as he was about to steal a kiss from the lilylike
heroine. Else why do critics disappear so frequently, drop out of
sight and leave no trace behind them but the miasma of their
opinions?
And there is Ben Hecht. Rumors too
persistent to be denied indicate that from a secret door in his study
Ben Hecht issues forth upon the streets of Chicago every night, armed
with hatchet and lantern. Never is he content until he has treed a
Winkelberg*, and though as yet there is no bounty on their skins Mr.
Hecht never allows them to escape the dogs.
Then history of the courts reveals few
cases in which a literary man has been successfully prosecuted for a
killing. But let us not conclude on merely such evidence that they
all eschew arsenic and the ax. Why, even myself. . . . But those
were, after all, matters of slight importance.
**
A curious side-light on the matter of
murder is afforded by the latest volume published by Simon and
Schuster, The Celebrities Cross-Word Puzzle Book. Fifty
notables of art, politics and finance were asked each to contribute a
puzzle. They did so, apparently quite without realizing that to the
psychoanalyst, scrutinizing the particular words that forced
themselves out from the subconscious upon the printed page, each
contributor was making a complete revelation of himself. To be sure,
here was a hundred-word test quite similar in effect to that of the
psychological laboratory.
On this theory one studies with huge
delight the puzzle composed by little Miss Ann Pennington, How
graciously harmless she appears indeed on the Follies stage! But now,
fill in the squares of her diagram. No. 21 Horizontal is defined as
“whip,” and turns out to be “lash.” No. 24 Horizontal is
defined as “cut, as with a sword,” and turns out to be “slash.”
No. 4 Vertical is defined as “grind the teeth,” and turns out to
be “gnash.” No. 5 Vertical is defined as “heedless,” and
turns out to be “rash.” No. 39 Vertical is defined as “blood,”
and turns out to be “gore.” No. 50 Vertical is defined as
“raves” and turns out to be “rants.”
I hesitate still to congratulate Miss
Pennington; her appearance is so completely disarming. But this
puzzle of hers may indicate to the shrewd psychologist that, should a
committee of rash censors happen to call on Miss Pennington, ranting
and raving, she herself might slash into them with whip and sword,
gnashing her white teeth.
**
Only, no murder ever should be
committed with gnashing of teeth. It is undignified, to say the
least, to allow one’s temper to get beyond one’s control. It
shows lack of breeding, lack of philosophic equanimity; and in such a
condition one is likely to mar the artistic effect. If a man is going
to commit murder let him do so with an obvious joi de vivre,
genteelly, delicately, with a flow in his button-hole. To any
murderer such as this I offer an eager hand of approval.
* Winkelberg: the Babbitt of Mr.
Hecht’s Humpty Dumpty.
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