619_vanvalkenburgh_the-odd-trick

putterings 619 < 619_vanvalkenburgh_the-odd-trick > index

Helen Van Valkenburgh. “The Odd Trick.”
The Catholic Telegraph 80:37 (14 September 1911) : 3
via jstor : link

paragraphs numbered for ease of reference

Helen Van Valkenburgh, her instance of puttering, and writings and about : link

What did you say Barnstables looked like?” Jamie Black drawled lazily from his corner of the hearth.
“It’s ten years since I saw him last,” Whitcomb answered “As I remember him, he was tall, very thin, and a morbid sort of chap — oh, not at all what his writing would lead you to expect.”
The fire in the broad grate flickered and spluttered, making long shadows in the corners, and casting wavering lights across the faces gathered about it. As Whitcomb spoke, his wife smiled indulgently :
“What a notion! I’m sure you’ve confused him with another of your college friends, Will. Nobody who was morbid could have written ‘Fabius for Ashes’ or the ‘Cutting String,’ indeed they couldn’t. But I wish he’d come,” she added, glancing at the clock; “he’s ten minutes late.”
“Perhaps he believes in arousing the expectations,” Bella chirped in; “they say great men do.”
Bella Edwards, the invariable soubrette, never failed to have a reason ready for the unexpected.
“Or he may be afflicted with the artistic temperament,” Whitcomb remarked, winking slyly at Cromby, a novelist of no small repute, lean, dark, and fascinating, who stood beside Margaret Maywood.
Margaret looked mischievously into his face at Whitcomb’s sally. “How did you happen to be early, Rex?” she teased. Her stern beauty never failed to attract attention, and her pictures had brought her the delightful sensation of work achieved.
“It was a mistake,” he admitted. “I had forgotten to put back the clock”
“I always suspected your artistic temperament of deficiencies,” Mrs. Black exclaimed; “I’m glad you confess it.”
“I didn’t; the fact leaked out,” Cromby smiled, whimsically; “by the way, isn’t that a step ?”
“It is, it is,” Bella clapped her jeweled little hands ecstatically. “Oh, what do you suppose he will be like?”
“Hush, dear,” Margaret admonished, “he’ll hear you.”
“Well, and suppose he did?” she retorted with some asperity; “what great harm —”
But she was interrupted by Everett Barnstables, who entered the room as she spoke. Mrs. Whitcomb, tall, gracious, the perfect hostess, rose to greet him, making him known to her guests with that charming hospitality which always sets the newcomer at ease.
“I’m sorry to be so late,” he apologized, looking down at her from his great height; “the taxi that brought me met with difficulties in the form of a very much hobbled lady.” He furtively swept the gowns of the women present with his somber eyes, and seeing that the abominated article was not in evidence, continued his story. “She was crossing Broadway, and between her hobble, the snow, and her fear lest we run her down, she slipped and sprained her ankle. Oh no, not very badly,” in answer to an inquiring glance from Bella, “and we took her home. She was a quaint little woman, and —”
“Good copy;” Bella finished the sentence, looking closely at the powerfully built stranger.
“Exactly;” his answer was tart, and in the pause which followed Mrs. Whitcomb led the way to the dining-room. Here a round table with a low centerpiece of pink snapdragons in a deep silver bowl, mellowed by the light from shaded candles, created a conversational spell. Barnstables, finding himself seated between his hostess and Bella, to whom he had taken an impressionistic dislike, glanced across the table to meet Margaret’s clear gaze, and to find himself abashed before her quiet scrutiny.
He turned to Mrs. Whitcomb, rather more in self-defence than from any other motive, and was soon deep in the intricacies of the weather and the caviare, both of which kept him absorbed. Each one at the table studied him curiously; he was not the type Whitcomb had described, from which it would appear that his wife had been right, but neither was he the type they had expected. There was little or nothing of the humorist in his stern appearance, and he was subtly disappointing to all of them. A squarely built jaw; massive forehead, thrown into relief by heavy, black hair; a mouth, smooth shaven and cold; eyes, smouldering deep in their sockets and seeming to have burned the life out of the face, leaving it an ashy white, gave an expression of extreme asceticism rather than that of friendly humor. He was without the sparkle, the spontaneous gaiety of the jester, its place being filled by a haunting something, which piqued and baffled the curious while holding them at bay. That he should laugh with the world seemed preposterous, yet each knew it to be what he had done. There was nothing cruel in his comedy, rather a deep understanding and charity toward the foibles he exploited.
The man was busied with his thoughts, and it was hard to make him talk. Mention of his work turned him sulky, and it was of his work that they were anxious to hear. Neither did he have the gracious small talk, the fund of amusing anecdotes and sprightly repartee which each had anticipated; and by the time the fillet had been reached, Mrs. Whitcomb was beginning to realize she had drawn, instead of the magnet she had imagined, a repeller, and that her dinner, the dinner she had looked forward to with such high spirits, was on the point of becoming a bore. Barnstables had distinctly snubbed Bella, ignored Margaret, and endured herself, and the fact that he was a genius, albeit an erratic one, was slight compensation. Rex Cromby was a genius, too; at least so every one said, and he had never behaved in this fashion. Mrs! Whitcomb was dismayed, and looked appealingly at her husband, but he was parrying Mrs. Brown’s deft thrusts and quite oblivious to her signals of distress.
She had tried every humorous subject her brain could devise. All had failed, alike, to bring her guest out of his mood, and at last she besought Cromby, who was seated at her other hand, to help her. Rex smiled enigmatically, and leaning toward Barnstables, looked mischievously into his peculiar eyes. “I suppose,” he said, airily, with a certain flippancy he ofted used, “I suppose you are much interested in Service verse?” It was a fling at the other’s romanticism, and Rex expected a torrent of abuse against the real in art, convinced that this gloomy comedian would have small patience with the poet’s work.
Barnstables nodded quickly, throwing back his head with a free gesture characteristic of him when interested. “Yes,” he answered, meeting Cromby’s eyes with a curious intentness, “very much interested. Realism has charmed me wherever I have found it.”
“You are broad,” Rex replied, “you of the romantic school are usually rather hard on the stern realist.”
“I know.” For a moment a frown played on Barnstables’ forehead; the mention of his work invariably irritated him, and he was quick to show his feeling. “I know, but, well, realism has always seemed to me the thing, the big thing. To be able to hand out chunks of life as Ibsen did; that’s my notion of art.” His eyes were alight, and he spoke with a passion hitherto unsuspected. All at the table had stopped their talking and were absorbed in the sudden flow of conversation.
“Yes,” Rex was enthusiastic, his face alert, “that’s are — and yet, is it art, I wonder? Isn’t it almost something transcending art? Do you remember in The Doll’s House and again in Ghosts and Hedda Gabbler and oh, in any number of others, how, as Shaw puts it, Ibsen removes the outer wall of a real room in a real house, and shows the life going on behind it? It’s brutally, cruelly real — but it’s great!”
“Realism has always seemed to me a two-edged knife,” Margaret said, softly, “a knife which invariably cuts the listener with one of its sides, if not both; I don’t like it.”
“Exactly,” Barnstables threw her an odd glance. ‘Miss Maywood has summed it up; Ibsen is never without the cut.”
“It’s queer that you, admiring realism as you do, have never dabbled in it,” Bella interjected, attempting to give the talk a personal element.
“One hardly ‘dabbles’ in realism;” Barnstables accented the repetition unpleasantly, the irritated frown again knotting his brow. “Do you dabble in life, Miss Edwards?”
“A little,” she laughed, and caught Rex’s eye, a twinkle in her own; the present was ample proof of her statement. She was thoroughly enjoying her unsociable neighbor. “It adds spice to the situation.”
Barnstables frowned. “So it would seem,” he said, cynically, “and you would enjoy dabbling in my attitude toward my work?”
“Immensely; I have been wondering all the evening how you came to write comedy.” She tilted her pert little nose saucily as she made the statement and eyed him wickedly.
“Well!” He gasped at her frankness and turned hastily to Cromby, reverting to the previous subject. “Realism seems to me to be gaining ground,” he remarked, leaving Bella with the uncomfortable impression that he had disposed of her as he might have an annoying fly; “there are more and more writers attempting it, and very successfully: you among the number.
“Thank you,” Cromby smiled, diffidently, “I’ve rather a long row to hoe before I arrive. Of course I’m a rabid enthusiast, but hardly expected you to be. The comedy element in your work would lead one to believe you were of the opinion that art is more for the sake of amusement than otherwise.”
“So Miss Edwards is not alone in her wish to know why I became a comedian?”
“Indeed not!” Margaret exclaimed, eagerly. “I imagine we are all just a little bit curious to know why you, who have succeeded so brilliantly, believing as you do in realism, have never given any to the world.”
“I wonder,” Barnstables spoke slowly, “what you would say if I were to tell you?”
“Try us and find out,” Cromby begged; “we’re all friends of yours — friends of your work, I mean — and I’m sure a sympathetic audience.”
“Perhaps,” the man was clearly ill at ease, “perhaps, I might tell you. I’ve never told any one; it’s — well it’s against my principles to talk shop; sounds conceited, though heaven knows I’ve nothing to be conceited about.” His eyes grew suddenly dissatisfied.
“We’ll understand,” Whitcomb promised, genially; “you’re a ship passing in the night, anyway.”
He was still doubtful. “Yes;” again he looked questioningly at the interested faces about him, last of all at Bella’s. “You seem about to have your way, Miss Edwards.”
“I always do,” she smiled wilfully.
"It must be monotonous.”
“Often,” glancing at him archly, “but I’m certain this is not to be one of those oc-casions.”
Yet he hesitated, frowning gloomily, as he moved his coffee spoon with those long, tapering fingers of his; womanish fingers, of which he was inordinately self-conscious. Then: “I am not a humorist,” he said, abruptly.
“Not a humorist!” Mrs Black gasped. “Why, I think Fabius for Ashes is the screamingest farce I’ve seen in ages, and the Cutting String is unutterably funny, the funniest novel I have ever read!”
“Thank you;” Barnstables’ voice had a jarring note; “neverthless I am not a humorist.”
“Do explain,” his hostess implored; “indeed, we are all bewildered. We had taken it for granted that your work was comedy.”
“And so it is.” He spoke somberly, and his eyes glowed; “rampant comedy, but I am not a humorist, nor a comedian, though that is what the editors and the rejection slip have led you to believe! No; I, like Mr. Cromby, am a realist!”
“But,” (it was Jamie Black, and he looked at the other alertly) — “but how can that be possible? Surely, no editor would reject your work: your name alone would sell untold copies.”
“Listen: the explanation is simple.” He spoke rapidly, the words tumbling out one upon the other. He seemed to have forgotten the place; to have forgotten the fact that those present were strangers who might misunderstand. All the pent-up bitterness, the thwarted ambition of the man, were rioting through him, and his eyes blazed as sentence followed sentence.
“When I left college, I left with the determination to write; to write real things about real life and real people.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Stacks of other fellows have had similar ambitions, and have had them knocked out of them. I slaved for my ideal, and I lived for her, too, experiencing, willingly, all the hard things that came to me, reading copy into them, and giving my best, for seven long years, to be turned down by magazines and publishers alike. Some of it was rank, but some of it was good. How good I know, now.
“It came back, and came back, and came back, always with that disheartening printed slip. I toiled on at the newspaper work I was doing, and at odd moments did more of the stuff that nobody seemed willing to buy, and at last I got discouraged. Then I took what I had learned from my attempts at realism, and wrote For All That. It was flippant, crude, uncharitable, and a lie; but it was funny, and it succeeded. The editors demanded more, and more, and more. For All That had proved the odd trick, and I have made a big slam. But how! And now, I can’t go hack, I’ve lost the cunning, and blunted the power the gods gave me, and, well — l’m rich; that’s all I’ve got to show for it.” He paused, a far-away look in his eyes. “I could have done it once,” he sighed, “but we are what the editors make us; we poor, weak, human vessels, and they ordained that I should be a humorist.”
“But,” Jamie Black exclaimed, after a pause, “but the old things; they are still there. I’ll bring them out for you, all of them. I’m a publisher, you know!”
Barnstables stared at Jamie’s impulsive face. “I know,’ he said grimly. “I’ve had plenty of your printed slips. No, Mr. Black, it’s too late.”
“Nonsense! You’re not going to allow the fact that my first readers rejected your stuff to stand in its way, now.”
“It’s not that;” Barnstables’ voice was husky; “it’s not that.”
“What is it?” Black demanded, impatiently.
There was a slight pause, then Barnstables met the other’s eye; “It’s too late, I tell you.”
“Oh no, it’s never too late,” Bella cried, optimistically; “you can have your wish now, Mr. Barnstables.”
“You are mistaken, Miss Edwards,” he replied, verv quietly. “It is, as I have said, too late. The manuscripts are burned!” —
The Living Church

30 May 2026