GnMo I II II |fjjj|f}|}Jiil{tfiJjtli||{|JH r THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES JOHN RANDOLPH HAYNES AND DORA HAYNES FOUNDATION COLLECTION SOULS ON FIFTH BY GRANVILLE BARKER THE MADRAS HOUSE ANATOL THE MARRYING OF ANN LEETE THE VOYSEY INHERITANCE WASTE SOULS ON FIFTH In Collaboration ivith Laurence Housman PRUNELLA SOULS ON FIFTH BY GRANVILLE BARKER WITH FRONTISPIECE BY NORMAN WILKINSON NON-REFERT £qWVAO-Q3S BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1916 Copyright, 191b, By Granville Barker. All rights reserved Published, April, 191 6 Nottoooo P«2S Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. SOULS ON FIFTH 785577 SOULS ON FIFTH Many times have I paced the relentless street ; on its stones that are harder than stone was ever meant to be and smoother than any false wel- come in the world. I have paced it at all hours and seasons ; when it was shadowless in a burning sun ; with the snow clouding and whitening the night. Why I started up it that early autumn morning is no matter to anyone but myself. But never had I seen the Avenue emptier, found it more silent. Day would not dawn yet for an hour. The sky was clear ; as I went it grew opaque, pressing down upon the world. There was an eddying wind, which surprised one at the street corners. Since I was alone and rather lonelier than that, my spirit sought refuge [3] Souls on Fifth among impossible things. Even Fifth Avenue itself was not at that moment very real to me ; a place for the body to tire in, that was all. I had noticed somewhere about Forty-fourth Street, at a good height from the ground, a whirl in the air of what seemed — snow — ashes — dead leaves ? Not snow, I thought, and too grey for snow besides. Not ashes ; and what should dead leaves do there ? I did not stop. By the cathedral there was something curious too. It seemed as if large grey flakes of many shapes and sizes were being blown about and caught upon the crockets of the spires. My eyes are queer tonight, I said. Up against the great door there seemed to be a shadowy drift of grey, thick and fermenting. Still I did not cross the road. I looked about though now for these strange things, and, heavens ! when I looked the air of the Avenue was full of them. They were much larger than snowflakes and some were of the queerest shape. One saw them best when they blew up against the sky; though by peering carefully, I could find them [4]' Souls on Fifth too, grey against the grey walls, well above my head. From every corner and crevice the gusty wind was dislodging them, and it seemed as if they clung to the walls. I looked on the ground. I thought I saw several blowing past. I thought I saw one flat and still. I went up to put my foot on it. No, that was only a little facet of the pavement that had lost the reflection of the street lights. Then I turned to go back to inspect the cathedral door. As I turned, there, quite distinctly, in the corner of a window-sill within my reach was one small grey shape. Against the red stone one couldn't miss it. I went closer. It was thicker than I'd fancied and might have been almost transparent but that it was covered, patchily, with a sort of silvery fur, not unlike the growth on an Edelweiss flower. Beneath the fur it was of a rather mottled dirty grey. There were odd markings on it which might have been made by hand. It was just about as wide at its widest as my palm and as long as a glove would be. But the shape of the shape was no shape you could name, it looked a rag. It was [5] Souls on Fifth indeed very ugly, more like than anything to a dirty little bit of used grey flannel. I noticed that the thing seemed somehow to palpitate. That was queerest of all, though then I re- membered the fermenting mass against St. Patrick's door. After a moment I took it gingerly in my hand. It had no weight. But by this time I was so surprised that I think I spoke aloud. "What on earth is it?" I said. And there seemed to come from it a sound like the echo of a scraped violin, shaping into words which were : "I am the soul of the late Mrs. Henry Brett van Goylen and I'll trouble you to put me down." Politely and in some alarm I put her down and as I did so one of the eddying gusts of wind blew the shape of her away.' Thus then I began my search for souls. I caught no more that night for the dawn came soon. But many a night after for an hour or two before the morning broke would I adven- ture up the Avenue and make my bag. They [6] I Souls on Fifth were easy to find when you knew how to look, and after a time easy enough to catch. I thought first of buying a butterfly net for the sport but policemen would have noticed that. As it was I had to mind not to loiter long. I was alone in New York and knew no one though ten years before, visiting it with m father, a man of some fame, I had known every one there was to know. But now I had only work to do which took me day by day to the library at Forty-second Street. "This time then," I had said, "I will know nobody." It needed not any effort. ', But now, it seemed, I was to know New Yorkers as they had never been known before. For a long time it was absorbingly interest- ing. There were nights on which one couldn't catch a soul. It depended a good deal on the weather, but I soon found out the quite im- possible times. When the night was still, they hung — a cubic layer of them, four miles long and more and very thick — a hundred feet or so high in the air. It was some while before I could discover the general laws of their being, [71 Souls on Fifth but I gathered for one thing that, normally, a sort of double river of souls was always flow- ing up and down Fifth Avenue ; not side by side as the traffic flows, but above and below ; below, of course, to come up and above to go down. This was the general law; and, in spite of interruptions and scatterings, the flow never ceased. They are supposed to be quite invisible and in nothing like daylight have I ever caught a glimpse of one. Heavy rain is hard on them. It beats them to the ground in a sort of jellified mass. I went out one pouring night to discover what did happen then. For a long time I could see noth- ing, the wet had made them transparent to my eyes. But soon I found that I was actually treading inches deep in a mess of souls. While such a thing can give them no actual pain yet the indignity of it was great and I felt I could not stop and talk to any of them that night. Besides they were all mashed up one with the other, like jujubes that a child has warmed in its pocket. I should have had to pick them apart. A blizzard upsets them badly, i I remember [8] Souls on Fifth a soul telling me that once for a long time she was blown and blown between Forty-second and Forty-fifth Streets, never further either way. She'd get into the stream flowing down, but every time at Forty-second Street, a gust would whirl her up and round, and at Forty- fifth the same thing happened if she'd got into the stream flowing up. She said it went on like that for a year. She probably didn't mean to be inaccurate, (these disembodied beings quickly lose our sense of time) but I've no doubt she was blown about so for some days. \ It is the light eddying wind which brings them down to earth or near it and scatters them into corners singly or by twos and threes. That was the great weather for soul-hunting and I did my best never to miss a night of it. From first to last I suppose I had talks with quite five hundred souls. But they were difficult to get on with; that's the truth. I had thought at first that any of them would be thankful for a terrestrial chat. Not a bit of it. In the first place they took no interest what- ever in the affairs of the world. They knew [9] Souls on Fifth of nothing that had happened in it since their deaths and, as a rule, they cared to know noth- ing. I believe that not more than a dozen times was I questioned. A woman might ask me if I knew her widower, but it was purely to make conversation, the habit of small talk not having died with her. Three men at various times wanted to hear about the last Presiden- tial Election. But two of them I found did not in the least know how long they had been dead ; it was Bryan's chances against McKinley they were fussed about. No doubt they had been keen politicians for when they learned that eighteen years had passed since then in which many most serious things had happened to the world, they at once lost all interest. \ Usually they would only talk about them- selves. They wouldn't even recognize the exist- ence of other souls. They were not more ego- tistic than they had been in the material world, but now there was no false shame about it, and it was carried to extremes for which even forty years' growing contempt for the human race found me unprepared. [10] Souls on Fifth I remember for instance how the lady who was blown wildly for what seemed to her (poor dear!) a year between Forty-fifth and Forty-second Streets, would keep on insisting that such a thing had never happened to any soul before. I sympathized with her for the uncomfortable time she had had ; but no, that wasn't enough. She kept at it till I bettered her by saying that, quite obviously, such a thing never could happen to any soul again. Then she was satisfied. \ There were exceptions. There was the Reverend Evan Thomas. It was from him indeed that I gathered most information ; by his help that I was able to grasp at last what really was happening to them all in this future life. I found the soul of this once popular preacher on a September night wedged in the shutters of a candy shop. I dug him out and he thanked me. He was about seven inches long by three broad, quite straight down one side, but with undular indentations upon the other; of no thickness to speak of, with rather a rub- [II] Souls on Fifth bery surface and in colour a sort of blueish grey. It was a fine night. The harsh gust of wind that had wedged him in the shutter had died down and we had a long and pleasant chat. He spoke with equal ease and cheerfulness about his past life and his present death. Was this state of things the Heaven he had spent so much time and energy preaching about ? No, on the whole he didn't think it was. But in that case had his soul (I had to put this deli- cately) and the thousands upon thousands of other souls besides that we knew were drifting up and down — had they taken, so to speak, the wrong turning? No, he didn't exactly think that either. I must remember, of course, that he had not been dead long. I must also re- member that for many years now the world, or, at any rate, that part of it that lived and moved on Fifth Avenue, had taken Heaven so much for granted that it had become the vaguest of ideas to them and had entirely ceased to believe in Hell. Now people cannot possibly go to places they don't understand or believe in ; that stands to reason. And he quoted me a line from the [12] Souls on Fifth Acts about the man who died and went to his own place. That had furnished him, he thought, with a solution of this question. "When I first died," he told me, "and found myself floating lightly about here, I will own that I was puzzled and even — though I had and still ■ have every faith in God's goodness — even a little disappointed. It was true that in the exercise of my calling I had refrained from painting any very definite picture of the state of bliss to which the souls of the righteous should be called. My own congregation was certainly not such a one as I could indulge in any highly coloured or romantic vision of that Future. They were well educated, practical people. Besides, as far as I could see, the use that they did already make of their imagination was very questionable. To say that they used it merely as a stimulus to erotic frivolities would perhaps have been too harsh, though I have at times been tempted to put my com- plaint in so many words. But what they needed from me surely, was sobering, commonplace morality. Still, let me confess that when it [I3l Souls on Fifth actually came to entering upon a more blessed existence, I had in my secret heart looked for- ward to something in the nature of a pleasant little surprise. And to find myself drifting — " "Still drifting," I said, rather wickedly. He was not to be checked by any mere witti- cism— " Drifting," he went on, "and for all I know drifting for an eternity up and down Fifth Avenue ! — it was disappointing. " But I reflected. As a rational Christian I was eager to assure myself of God's laws and then to square them, if possible, with the exigen- cies of any world in which it might please Him to place me. And I have always been ready, nay, anxious to search out my own faults and if necessary to repent of them. So in the course of much drifting and some whirling, often round the very steeple that pointed to heaven from above the pulpit of my late labours, I dis- interestedly reviewed my former existence and gathered it up, so to say, as even the longest life may be gathered, into a dozen sentences. See, now, if they do not give you the key to this mystery. [I4l <( Souls on Fifth ; I remembered my call from a sphere of popular eloquence in England to the church that — well, it can hardly be said to ornament Fifth Avenue, but it is a pleasant comfortable church. I knew nothing of America at that time. But I had heard stories of the luxury of New York women and of financial corrup- tion among the men, and when the flattering offer came I naturally asked myself whether God had not summoned me to scarify, though lovingly, these highly placed sinners, to bring them to repentance and a more humble fol- lowing in the footsteps of their Lord. I settled, if possible, to turn a surplus of the enormous stipend they were to give me into a trust fund for some sensible and suitable charity — " I looked. We were opposite the very church. " Is the stipend so big ? " I asked and nodded across. "When it came to the point," he said, "I found it not big enough. I had a grown-up son and daughters. They had, of course, to mix on terms of equality with my congrega- tion. We had to keep up appearances ; the [I5l Souls on Fifth lay patrons of the church expected it. Still we were never seriously in debt. "To continue — " "Please," I begged him. I was enjoying it. He had evidently been a preacher of some style. "My congregation at once impressed me as being made up of charming people, kindly, clever and hospitable, boundlessly hospitable. We spent several weeks, my wife and I, or my eldest daughter and I, night after night, dining with the chief families among them. One should always accept such invitations, one should view the home-life of one's flock. And while I was sampling them, sizing them up, determining by personal and unprejudiced observation upon which most prevalent vice or failing the sword of my spiritual condemna- tion should first fall, I merely preached week by week, not to be rash, not to be unfair, sermons upon less disputable subjects, sermons that purposely avoided any vital thrusts into that body politic to which I was now the chosen minister. [16] Souls on Fifth "They were admirable to preach to; quick to seize on a point, ever ready for those little sub-humorous sallies which are the salt of a sermon, the delight of a preacher who can discreetly indulge in them. One could not hold their attention long, it is true, but it was keen while it lasted. They liked to have their intelligence appealed to, they welcomed my references to the very latest things in science and literature. \ I projected a series of sermons, in which I proposed to take Sunday by Sunday the works of some famous sceptical philosopher and endeavour to reconcile them with the Christian Ethic. Such a course would not have been possible in England, where, I will confess, the indifference of congregations to my very extensive modern reading and the quotations I could make from it had often nettled me exceedingly. But these New Yorkers, I did find, to use a vulgar phrase, to be both mentally and spiritually a thoroughly up-to-date crowd. "Not, mind you, that I had weakened in my resolve to scarify them, when need were [17] Souls on Fifth and opportunity came, for their deeper sins. But I had found that they were not children, they were not fools, that the thing needed doing well, and from the point of view of a thorough understanding of the very peculiar circumstances under which fashionable life must be lived here, otherwise it had better be left alone altogether. That thorough under- standing I set myself conscientiously to acquire. "But, dear me !" he broke off. "My twelve sentences have been much exceeded. Old habits ! And about myself — it is inexcus- able." Again I begged him to continue. Quite cheerfully he did. "I found many difficulties in my way. Society women undoubtedly did indulge in outrageous luxury, but the worst offenders did not come to my church, and to berate them in their absence would merely have given un- deserved satisfaction to the women who did come and were themselves by no means inno- cent in the matter. That is a danger in preach- ing. Your congregation will always imagine that you are — as one says — getting at their neigh- [18] Souls on Fifth bours and not at them. I did make a most strenuous effort, though, to tackle the question of financial corruption. I worked at it for weeks. But it was a very difficult subject, involving a great complication of figures (at which in- deed I was never good) as well as several tricky points of difference between State and Federal law which it really needed an expert to solve. But I could not, above all things, risk exposing my ignorance. That would have done more harm than good. The habit that newspapers in this country have of reporting sermons flatters, it is true, but also intimidates. In the end, to my lasting regret, I felt compelled to abandon the idea. \ "I remember I made one attempt to deal with the simple sin of over-eating, of which quite 70 per cent, of my congregation were without doubt guilty. I hung the construc- tive part of the sermon upon the subject of Food Reform, a very popular one just then. But the destructive part had to be too deli- cately done to make a real effect. It had to be. For had I not myself fed and fed well at [19] Souls on Fifth most of their tables ? And in the flesh I was a little inclined to stoutness. "And so after a while I found that I slipped into preaching to my congregation only such sermons as my congregation wanted to hear. What else was to be done ? They would not otherwise have come to hear me at all, for there is no law to make them, and nowadays precious little public opinion. I should have lost any chance at all of doing good. , As it was, by contriving at any cost to be interest- ing, my church was kept full, and, starting os- tensibly from strange and far-away subjects, Wars with the heathen, Greek Legends, or the latest good novel, I never failed I think in the end to bring my hearers, though at the time they might hardly be conscious of it, one small step nearer to Jesus. It is true that a really strong man in my place might have done better before they turned him out. \ All I can say is that I did the best that was in me. But looking back I see quite clearly now what happened. I had set out to convert Fifth Avenue ; it was Fifth Avenue converted me. [20] Souls on Fifth "And that, my dear sir, is why, though dis- embodied, I am still here and why we are all here ; poor souls. In our lifetime, this, at its best, was all we strove towards, and in our death we have come 'to our own place.' 5 He ceased. t His shape had all the time been - lying comfortably along my left forearm.V I looked up from it to where, in the air above me, the river of souls flowed ceaselessly on. It was a still night now. I could never make out why, since they had absolutely no personal power of volition, some always got along faster than others. On an average they seemed to make about three miles an hour. It was a wonder- fully weary sight. "Who are they, generally speaking ?" "Well," said the preacher's soul, "it's a most curious mixture. There are the tip-top people who used to belong here and never thought there was any further to get. And then there are all the people who badly wanted to get here in their lifetimes and never could." "I take it that the two sorts don't mix well," I said. [21] Souls on Fifth