ENPages
(seq. 6)
June. 21. 32
Dear Miriam: I am beginning to get alarmed about you - no word since I got here. I hope you haven't worked yourself sick and I am trying to believe you are just so busy and so interested with your job that you haven't had the time waste on letters, which is ok. I'm having such a fine, lazy time here that I'm ashamed to talk about it. Just lying around in the sun and gathering strength to face another Eastern winter.
The Olders send their love to you and yours and so do I, of course. Just a line, please when you have a minute.
(seq. 7)
John Black - file - 5/ Return those Carmelite clips to me - please - 7-4-32.
(seq. 8)
Endosure: 21 June 1932
Page Four
The Carmelite J.A. Coughlin------Editor and Publisher Printed and published weekly at Carmel-bythe-Sea (Carmel P. O.) California. Entered as second-class matter February 21, 1928, at Post Office at Carmel, California, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Subscription, two dollars fifty per annum; single copies, five cents. Office, Dolores Street between Seventh and Eighth; Telephone 717.
***The views expressed in signed contributions should be taken as those of the individual writes, not necessarily endorsed by the Editor.
Lincoln Steffens---continued son of the missionary in "Rain," the play of the Community Players. The audience was made to see that the good missionary was a blankety-blank; and why: Because he was so sure he was right. But do we see that all righteous people are blankety-blanks in the degree that they are sure that they are right? The waste of such propaganda as that of "Rain" is that it carries us only far enough to see that some neighbors of ours,--the missionary, is against God. Artists have to find some form that will tell me that I am a blankety-blank; not only missionaries but all of us, who seeing some evil, proceed to pass a law against it. In brief, all prohibitionists, whether of drink or of trusts. We don't see that it is the natural economic laws of God that have to be understood, obeyed or controlled.
A watchful parents finds that they-- you know who they are--they teach your child things you would not teach him; not the way you would do it. My little boy broke out with "Lafayette, we are here." He declaimed often at strange intervals for several days, till one morning, early--too early--he woke me up with "Lafayette, we are here" and, as I lifted to see that we were, he asked intelligently: "Daddy, what does it mean, Lafayette, we are here?" And I had a chance to tell him about the French Hitler who came over here during our Revolution to help us go not too far. Adolph Hitler is a man who can say "Lafayette, we are here" the way our kids say it, that and all the other slogans. He can declaim "My country right or wrong," "You may fire when ready," with one hand on his heart, the other in the air, with a good voice and a perfectly grand sincerity and no intelligent sense of what they mean. Just like our little Pete's. And he moves the infantile people who are proud that they never grow up with the senseless emotions that were planted with those signals. Then he takes out his citizenship papers and becomes the leading citizen of his country, leads all his peers up to the government and bawls, "Lafayette, we are here." And there they are.
The Kaiser, like the Czar, is gone, Bruenig, like Milyoukov, has to go, and Deutschland enters upon the Minchivik chapter of Hitler as Russia did with Kerensky; as Italy did with Mussolini: --the chapter before the Bolshevik chapter of revolution. The repetitions of current history are--to use a Carmel word--significant. Teachers of children should teach them this: that grown-ups never did and never can learn: that all nations are a procession marching, after music, along one bad ancient road and that the backward countries can not only foresee--they can learn to control their future.
There are Germans who know this and will try to save Germany from some of the repetitions of history, both modern and ancient. There are Americans who will watch the immediate future of Germany as a stage director watches a rehearsal.
Fremont Older, the ex-reformer and Jack Black, the ex-burglar and stickup man, drove down to the Getaway early one morning to see the troubled world from the serene heights of Carmel. They possess the radiant serentiy, those two veterans of the hard, good life, but they like also to take in quietude from outside. They checked off the crimes of business and politics with the smile of understanding and of humorouse expectation. There are no more outrages. Jack Black inferred from the fact that he could not understand the unprofessional contradictions in the Lindbergh kidnaping that no regular criminals had done it, but amateurs for money, or more likely, nuts for revenge or spite. He liked it that Miriam Van Waters had been given absolute charge of a prison. I wondered how long it would take to make of her a regular warden. "Never," he said. "She will never fall." "How long would it take to make a warden of you, Jack?" "About fifteen minutes," he laughed. "I'd begin punishing, right away--the stool pigeons."
Older told the story of his visit with Clarence Darrow to the dynamiters in San Quentin. They saw Tom Mooney, too. A remark of Older's was that, "if Labor were for Mooney, he would have been free long ago."
(seq. 9)
Page Three
[left column] Certainly, some things were not quite complete--things belonging to the higher brackets of the old art; vocal control, physical sureness, fullness of realization, temper, fire, the Yanh! of life. But, good lord, one can't plant a whole garden at once.
Would that Carmel might have a play big enough to be repeated each year-- some story of this great coat. The interest is here--the very sands reek with material unlimited, rich as the gold that drew adventureres who brought and made romance so that every arroyo has its honeycomb of human story.
Writers, who will be the Recording Angel?
***
DRAMATIC INTERLUDE Saturday night at the Playhouse saw a little "drama within the drama." Ruth Waring, who Mrs. Davidson was one of the real highlights of the show, was taken suddenly ill--an illness brought on largely by too conscientious application to the rigorous requirements of the part. Marian Todd, who had been helping at rehearsals generally but without understudying any particular part stepped into the breach. She read the lines, with a palm-leaf fan as a screen for the script; but the lines were only half of the task. Her Mrs. Davidson became a very commendable approximation of what Ruth Waring had made of the role--and that is high praise.
DELAVANTI RETURNS Next on the boards at the Community Playhouse will be the farce "Naughty Wife," directed by Cyril Delavanti. Production dates are June sixteenth to nineteenth.
[right column] NEW BOOKS AT THE LIBRARY Fiction: Bromfield: A Modern Hero Dix: Pity of God Huddleston: The Captain's Table Seymour: Maids and Mistresses Strong: State Fair War: Yu'an Hee See Laughs Non-Fiction: Baldwin: Stanford White Bourke-White: Eyes on Russia Eldgridge: Holy Prayers in a Horse's Ear Farrington: Ernest H. Wilson, Plant Hunter. Jeffers: Thurso's Landing
Worry Fear Anger Self Pity Indescision Disease COMING Friday, June 3rd 8:15 P. M.
Illustrated Lecture on "HOW TO READ CHARACTER AT A GLANCE" by DR. A. L. VAN HOUTTE at the ALL SAINTS PARIS HALL Admission -- 50 cents
[bottom] FOURTH SEASON Carmel Summer Festival of Music (CIVIC INDORSEMENT) July 12 -- 19 -- 26 Tuesday Evenings 8:30 CARMEL THEATRE (Formally Theatre of the Golden Bough) World Famous PRO ARTE STRING QUARTET of Belgium TRIO ENSEMBLE -- INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS CARMEL ARTIST'S CONCERT TICKETS ON SALE TYLER BOOK SHOP, DIRECTLY OPPOSITE POST OFICE: $3.50 -- $4.00 -- $5.00. Phone Carmel 72; Box 16. Marie Gordon Director
(seq. 10)
"J A M B O R E E "
with
MARIE KENNEY
NOW PLAYING
AT THE VANDERBILT THEATRE
48th STREET, EAST OF BROADWAY
[text in box] "A good roaring melodrama of the nineties" N Y Times[text in box]
[text in box]"Marie Kenney's impersonation is steadfast and sincere." HERALD TRIBUNE[text in box]
Jan 2 33
Dear Miriam As a writer of letters I am easily in the "Missing Persons Bureau" and if You couldn't and didn't put yourself in the other guys place you would have had the police "dragging the scion" for me, long ago. I was out of town for the Holiday week and found on my return, Sara Ann's beautiful scarf and your (ditto) photo. I'm not going to plead Excuses for failing to write but one of the my reasons I had for letting it go was that I had a speaking date at Boston which had They changed several times and was canceled. Yesterday - no money. I've been in the room two weeks - in bed with the flu - not with a nurse. This A.M I decided to get up and forget it.