CHAPTER XXII

by Sinclair Lewis

　　ITHE greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex orpraise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hoursa day. It is this which puzzles the long-shoreman about the clerk, theLondoner about the bushman. It was this which puzzled Carol in regardto the married Vida. Carol herself had the baby, a larger house to carefor, all the telephone calls for Kennicott when he was away; and sheread everything, while Vida was satisfied with newspaper headlines.But after detached brown years in boarding-houses, Vida was hungry forhousework, for the most pottering detail of it. She had no maid, norwanted one. She cooked, baked, swept, washed supper-cloths, withthe triumph of a chemist in a new laboratory. To her the hearth wasveritably the altar. When she went shopping she hugged the cans of soup,and she bought a mop or a side of bacon as though she were preparing fora reception. She knelt beside a bean sprout and crooned, "I raised thiswith my own hands--I brought this new life into the world.""I love her for being so happy," Carol brooded. "I ought to be that way.I worship the baby, but the housework----Oh, I suppose I'm fortunate; somuch better off than farm-women on a new clearing, or people in a slum."It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a verylarge or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he isbetter off than others.In Carol's own twenty-four hours a day she got up, dressed the baby, hadbreakfast, talked to Oscarina about the day's shopping, put the baby onthe porch to play, went to the butcher's to choose between steak andpork chops, bathed the baby, nailed up a shelf, had dinner, put the babyto bed for a nap, paid the iceman, read for an hour, took the baby outfor a walk, called on Vida, had supper, put the baby to bed, darnedsocks, listened to Kennicott's yawning comment on what a fool Dr.McGanum was to try to use that cheap X-ray outfit of his on anepithelioma, repaired a frock, drowsily heard Kennicott stoke thefurnace, tried to read a page of Thorstein Veblen--and the day was gone.Except when Hugh was vigorously naughty, or whiney, or laughing,or saying "I like my chair" with thrilling maturity, she was alwaysenfeebled by loneliness. She no longer felt superior about thatmisfortune. She would gladly have been converted to Vida's satisfactionin Gopher Prairie and mopping the floor.IICarol drove through an astonishing number of books from the publiclibrary and from city shops. Kennicott was at first uncomfortable overher disconcerting habit of buying them. A book was a book, and if youhad several thousand of them right here in the library, free, why thedickens should you spend your good money? After worrying about it fortwo or three years, he decided that this was one of the Funny Ideaswhich she had caught as a librarian and from which she would neverentirely recover.The authors whom she read were most of them frightfully annoyed by theVida Sherwins. They were young American sociologists, young Englishrealists, Russian horrorists; Anatole France, Rolland, Nexo, Wells,Shaw, Key, Edgar Lee Masters, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, HenryMencken, and all the other subversive philosophers and artists whomwomen were consulting everywhere, in batik-curtained studios in NewYork, in Kansas farmhouses, San Francisco drawing-rooms, Alabama schoolsfor negroes. From them she got the same confused desire which themillion other women felt; the same determination to be class-consciouswithout discovering the class of which she was to be conscious.Certainly her reading precipitated her observations of Main Street, ofGopher Prairie and of the several adjacent Gopher Prairies which she hadseen on drives with Kennicott. In her fluid thought certain convictionsappeared, jaggedly, a fragment of an impression at a time, while she wasgoing to sleep, or manicuring her nails, or waiting for Kennicott.These convictions she presented to Vida Sherwin--VidaWutherspoon--beside a radiator, over a bowl of not very good walnuts andpecans from Uncle Whittier's grocery, on an evening when both Kennicottand Raymie had gone out of town with the other officers of the Ancientand Affiliated Order of Spartans, to inaugurate a new chapter atWakamin. Vida had come to the house for the night. She helped in puttingHugh to bed, sputtering the while about his soft skin. Then they talkedtill midnight.What Carol said that evening, what she was passionately thinking, wasalso emerging in the minds of women in ten thousand Gopher Prairies. Herformulations were not pat solutions but visions of a tragic futility.She did not utter them so compactly that they can be given in her words;they were roughened with "Well, you see" and "if you get what I mean"and "I don't know that I'm making myself clear." But they were definiteenough, and indignant enough.IIIIn reading popular stories and seeing plays, asserted Carol, shehad found only two traditions of the American small town. The firsttradition, repeated in scores of magazines every month, is that theAmerican village remains the one sure abode of friendship, honesty,and clean sweet marriageable girls. Therefore all men who succeed inpainting in Paris or in finance in New York at last become weary ofsmart women, return to their native towns, assert that cities arevicious, marry their childhood sweethearts and, presumably, joyouslyabide in those towns until death.The other tradition is that the significant features of all villages arewhiskers, iron dogs upon lawns, gold bricks, checkers, jars of gildedcat-tails, and shrewd comic old men who are known as "hicks" and whoejaculate "Waal I swan." This altogether admirable tradition rulesthe vaudeville stage, facetious illustrators, and syndicated newspaperhumor, but out of actual life it passed forty years ago. Carol's smalltown thinks not in hoss-swapping but in cheap motor cars,telephones, ready-made clothes, silos, alfalfa, kodaks, phonographs,leather-upholstered Morris chairs, bridge-prizes, oil-stocks,motion-pictures, land-deals, unread sets of Mark Twain, and a chasteversion of national politics.With such a small-town life a Kennicott or a Champ Perry is content, butthere are also hundreds of thousands, particularly women and young men,who are not at all content. The more intelligent young people (and thefortunate widows!) flee to the cities with agility and, despite thefictional tradition, resolutely stay there, seldom returning even forholidays. The most protesting patriots of the towns leave them in oldage, if they can afford it, and go to live in California or in thecities.The reason, Carol insisted, is not a whiskered rusticity. It is nothingso amusing!It is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness ofspeech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appearrespectable. It is contentment . . . the contentment of the quietdead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It isnegation canonized as the one positive virtue. It is the prohibition ofhappiness. It is slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullnessmade God.A savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterward,coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inanedecorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical thingsabout the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as thegreatest race in the world.IVShe had inquired as to the effect of this dominating dullness uponforeigners. She remembered the feeble exotic quality to be found in thefirst-generation Scandinavians; she recalled the Norwegian Fair at theLutheran Church, to which Bea had taken her. There, in the bondestue,the replica of a Norse farm kitchen, pale women in scarlet jacketsembroidered with gold thread and colored beads, in black skirts with aline of blue, green-striped aprons, and ridged caps very pretty to setoff a fresh face, had served rommegrod og lefse--sweet cakes and sourmilk pudding spiced with cinnamon. For the first time in Gopher PrairieCarol had found novelty. She had reveled in the mild foreignness of it.But she saw these Scandinavian women zealously exchanging their spicedpuddings and red jackets for fried pork chops and congealed whiteblouses, trading the ancient Christmas hymns of the fjords for "She's MyJazzland Cutie," being Americanized into uniformity, and in less thana generation losing in the grayness whatever pleasant new customsthey might have added to the life of the town. Their sons finished theprocess. In ready-made clothes and ready-made high-school phrases theysank into propriety, and the sound American customs had absorbed withoutone trace of pollution another alien invasion.And along with these foreigners, she felt herself being ironed intoglossy mediocrity, and she rebelled, in fear.The respectability of the Gopher Prairies, said Carol, is reinforced byvows of poverty and chastity in the matter of knowledge. Except forhalf a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievementof ignorance which it is so easy to come by. To be "intellectual" or"artistic" or, in their own word, to be "highbrow," is to be priggishand of dubious virtue.Large experiments in politics and in co-operative distribution, venturesrequiring knowledge, courage, and imagination, do originate in the Westand Middlewest, but they are not of the towns, they are of the farmers.If these heresies are supported by the townsmen it is only by occasionalteachers doctors, lawyers, the labor unions, and workmen like MilesBjornstam, who are punished by being mocked as "cranks," as "half-bakedparlor socialists." The editor and the rector preach at them. The cloudof serene ignorance submerges them in unhappiness and futility.VHere Vida observed, "Yes--well----Do you know, I've always thoughtthat Ray would have made a wonderful rector. He has what I call anessentially religious soul. My! He'd have read the service beautifully!I suppose it's too late now, but as I tell him, he can also servethe world by selling shoes and----I wonder if we oughtn't to havefamily-prayers?"VIDoubtless all small towns, in all countries, in all ages, Caroladmitted, have a tendency to be not only dull but mean, bitter, infestedwith curiosity. In France or Tibet quite as much as in Wyoming orIndiana these timidities are inherent in isolation.But a village in a country which is taking pains to become altogetherstandardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as thechief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longerdowny and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seekingto dominate the earth, to drain the hills and sea of color, to set Danteat boosting Gopher Prairie, and to dress the high gods in Klassy KollegeKlothes. Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a travelingsalesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacksadvertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicate to thesayings of Confucius.Such a society functions admirably in the large production of cheapautomobiles, dollar watches, and safety razors. But it is not satisfieduntil the entire world also admits that the end and joyous purpose ofliving is to ride in flivvers, to make advertising-pictures of dollarwatches, and in the twilight to sit talking not of love and courage butof the convenience of safety razors.And such a society, such a nation, is determined by the Gopher Prairies.The greatest manufacturer is but a busier Sam Clark, and all the rotundsenators and presidents are village lawyers and bankers grown nine feettall.Though a Gopher Prairie regards itself as a part of the Great World,compares itself to Rome and Vienna, it will not acquire the scientificspirit, the international mind, which would make it great. It picks atinformation which will visibly procure money or social distinction.Its conception of a community ideal is not the grand manner, the nobleaspiration, the fine aristocratic pride, but cheap labor for the kitchenand rapid increase in the price of land. It plays at cards on greasyoil-cloth in a shanty, and does not know that prophets are walking andtalking on the terrace.If all the provincials were as kindly as Champ Perry and Sam Clark therewould be no reason for desiring the town to seek great traditions. It isthe Harry Haydocks, the Dave Dyers, the Jackson Elders, small busy mencrushingly powerful in their common purpose, viewing themselves as menof the world but keeping themselves men of the cash-register and thecomic film, who make the town a sterile oligarchy.VIIShe had sought to be definite in analyzing the surface ugliness ofthe Gopher Prairies. She asserted that it is a matter of universalsimilarity; of flimsiness of construction, so that the towns resemblefrontier camps; of neglect of natural advantages, so that the hillsare covered with brush, the lakes shut off by railroads, and thecreeks lined with dumping-grounds; of depressing sobriety of color;rectangularity of buildings; and excessive breadth and straightness ofthe gashed streets, so that there is no escape from gales and from sightof the grim sweep of land, nor any windings to coax the loiterer along,while the breadth which would be majestic in an avenue of palaces makesthe low shabby shops creeping down the typical Main Street the more meanby comparison.The universal similarity--that is the physical expression of thephilosophy of dull safety. Nine-tenths of the American towns are soalike that it is the completest boredom to wander from one to another.Always, west of Pittsburg, and often, east of it, there is the samelumber yard, the same railroad station, the same Ford garage, the samecreamery, the same box-like houses and two-story shops. The new, moreconscious houses are alike in their very attempts at diversity: the samebungalows, the same square houses of stucco or tapestry brick. The shopsshow the same standardized, nationally advertised wares; the newspapersof sections three thousand miles apart have the same "syndicatedfeatures"; the boy in Arkansas displays just such a flamboyantready-made suit as is found on just such a boy in Delaware, both of themiterate the same slang phrases from the same sporting-pages, and ifone of them is in college and the other is a barber, no one may surmisewhich is which.If Kennicott were snatched from Gopher Prairie and instantly conveyedto a town leagues away, he would not realize it. He would go downapparently the same Main Street (almost certainly it would be calledMain Street); in the same drug store he would see the same young manserving the same ice-cream soda to the same young woman with the samemagazines and phonograph records under her arm. Not till he had climbedto his office and found another sign on the door, another Dr. Kennicottinside, would he understand that something curious had presumablyhappened.Finally, behind all her comments, Carol saw the fact that the prairietowns no more exist to serve the farmers who are their reason ofexistence than do the great capitals; they exist to fatten on thefarmers, to provide for the townsmen large motors and social preferment;and, unlike the capitals, they do not give to the district in return forusury a stately and permanent center, but only this ragged camp. It is a"parasitic Greek civilization"--minus the civilization."There we are then," said Carol. "The remedy? Is there any? Criticism,perhaps, for the beginning of the beginning. Oh, there's nothing thatattacks the Tribal God Mediocrity that doesn't help a little . . . andprobably there's nothing that helps very much. Perhaps some day thefarmers will build and own their market-towns. (Think of the club theycould have!) But I'm afraid I haven't any 'reform program.' Not anymore! The trouble is spiritual, and no League or Party can enact apreference for gardens rather than dumping-grounds. . . . There's myconfession. WELL?""In other words, all you want is perfection?""Yes! Why not?""How you hate this place! How can you expect to do anything with it ifyou haven't any sympathy?""But I have! And affection. Or else I wouldn't fume so. I've learnedthat Gopher Prairie isn't just an eruption on the prairie, as I thoughtfirst, but as large as New York. In New York I wouldn't know more thanforty or fifty people, and I know that many here. Go on! Say what you'rethinking.""Well, my dear, if I DID take all your notions seriously, it would bepretty discouraging. Imagine how a person would feel, after working hardfor years and helping to build up a nice town, to have you airily flitin and simply say 'Rotten!' Think that's fair?""Why not? It must be just as discouraging for the Gopher Prairieite tosee Venice and make comparisons.""It would not! I imagine gondolas are kind of nice to ride in, but we'vegot better bath-rooms! But----My dear, you're not the only person inthis town who has done some thinking for herself, although (pardon myrudeness) I'm afraid you think so. I'll admit we lack some things. Maybeour theater isn't as good as shows in Paris. All right! I don't wantto see any foreign culture suddenly forced on us--whether it'sstreet-planning or table-manners or crazy communistic ideas."Vida sketched what she termed "practical things that will make a happierand prettier town, but that do belong to our life, that actually arebeing done." Of the Thanatopsis Club she spoke; of the rest-room, thefight against mosquitos, the campaign for more gardens and shade-treesand sewers--matters not fantastic and nebulous and distant, butimmediate and sure.Carol's answer was fantastic and nebulous enough:"Yes. . . . Yes. . . . I know. They're good. But if I could put throughall those reforms at once, I'd still want startling, exotic things. Lifeis comfortable and clean enough here already. And so secure. What itneeds is to be less secure, more eager. The civic improvements whichI'd like the Thanatopsis to advocate are Strindberg plays, and classicdancers--exquisite legs beneath tulle--and (I can see him so clearly!)a thick, black-bearded, cynical Frenchman who would sit about and drinkand sing opera and tell bawdy stories and laugh at our proprieties andquote Rabelais and not be ashamed to kiss my hand!""Huh! Not sure about the rest of it but I guess that's what you and allthe other discontented young women really want: some stranger kissingyour hand!" At Carol's gasp, the old squirrel-like Vida darted out andcried, "Oh, my dear, don't take that too seriously. I just meant----""I know. You just meant it. Go on. Be good for my soul. Isn't it funny:here we all are--me trying to be good for Gopher Prairie's soul, andGopher Prairie trying to be good for my soul. What are my other sins?""Oh, there's plenty of them. Possibly some day we shall have your fatcynical Frenchman (horrible, sneering, tobacco-stained object, ruininghis brains and his digestion with vile liquor!) but, thank heaven, fora while we'll manage to keep busy with our lawns and pavements! You see,these things really are coming! The Thanatopsis is getting somewhere.And you----" Her tone italicized the words--"to my great disappointment,are doing less, not more, than the people you laugh at! Sam Clark,on the school-board, is working for better school ventilation. EllaStowbody (whose elocuting you always think is so absurd) has persuadedthe railroad to share the expense of a parked space at the station, todo away with that vacant lot."You sneer so easily. I'm sorry, but I do think there's somethingessentially cheap in your attitude. Especially about religion."If you must know, you're not a sound reformer at all. You're animpossibilist. And you give up too easily. You gave up on the newcity hall, the anti-fly campaign, club papers, the library-board, thedramatic association--just because we didn't graduate into Ibsen thevery first thing. You want perfection all at once. Do you know what thefinest thing you've done is--aside from bringing Hugh into the world?It was the help you gave Dr. Will during baby-welfare week. You didn'tdemand that each baby be a philosopher and artist before you weighedhim, as you do with the rest of us."And now I'm afraid perhaps I'll hurt you. We're going to have a newschoolbuilding in this town--in just a few years--and we'll have itwithout one bit of help or interest from you!"Professor Mott and I and some others have been dinging away at themoneyed men for years. We didn't call on you because you would neverstand the pound-pound-pounding year after year without one bit ofencouragement. And we've won! I've got the promise of everybody whocounts that just as soon as war-conditions permit, they'll vote thebonds for the schoolhouse. And we'll have a wonderful building--lovelybrown brick, with big windows, and agricultural and manual-trainingdepartments. When we get it, that'll be my answer to all your theories!""I'm glad. And I'm ashamed I haven't had any part in getting it.But----Please don't think I'm unsympathetic if I ask one question: Willthe teachers in the hygienic new building go on informing the childrenthat Persia is a yellow spot on the map, and 'Caesar' the title of abook of grammatical puzzles?"VIIIVida was indignant; Carol was apologetic; they talked for another hour,the eternal Mary and Martha--an immoralist Mary and a reformist Martha.It was Vida who conquered.The fact that she had been left out of the campaign for the newschoolbuilding disconcerted Carol. She laid her dreams of perfectionaside. When Vida asked her to take charge of a group of Camp Fire Girls,she obeyed, and had definite pleasure out of the Indian dances andritual and costumes. She went more regularly to the Thanatopsis. WithVida as lieutenant and unofficial commander she campaigned for a villagenurse to attend poor families, raised the fund herself, saw to it thatthe nurse was young and strong and amiable and intelligent.Yet all the while she beheld the burly cynical Frenchman and thediaphanous dancers as clearly as the child sees its air-born playmates;she relished the Camp Fire Girls not because, in Vida's words, "thisScout training will help so much to make them Good Wives," but becauseshe hoped that the Sioux dances would bring subversive color into theirdinginess.She helped Ella Stowbody to set out plants in the tiny triangular parkat the railroad station; she squatted in the dirt, with a small curvedtrowel and the most decorous of gardening gauntlets; she talked to Ellaabout the public-spiritedness of fuchsias and cannas; and she feltthat she was scrubbing a temple deserted by the gods and empty even ofincense and the sound of chanting. Passengers looking from trains sawher as a village woman of fading prettiness, incorruptible virtue, andno abnormalities; the baggageman heard her say, "Oh yes, I do thinkit will be a good example for the children"; and all the while she sawherself running garlanded through the streets of Babylon.Planting led her to botanizing. She never got much farther thanrecognizing the tiger lily and the wild rose, but she rediscoveredHugh. "What does the buttercup say, mummy?" he cried, his hand full ofstraggly grasses, his cheek gilded with pollen. She knelt to embracehim; she affirmed that he made life more than full; she was altogetherreconciled . . . for an hour.But she awoke at night to hovering death. She crept away from the humpof bedding that was Kennicott; tiptoed into the bathroom and, by themirror in the door of the medicine-cabinet, examined her pallid face.Wasn't she growing visibly older in ratio as Vida grew plumper andyounger? Wasn't her nose sharper? Wasn't her neck granulated? Shestared and choked. She was only thirty. But the five years since hermarriage--had they not gone by as hastily and stupidly as though she hadbeen under ether; would time not slink past till death? She pounded herfist on the cool enameled rim of the bathtub and raged mutely againstthe indifferent gods:"I don't care! I won't endure it! They lie so--Vida and Will and AuntBessie--they tell me I ought to be satisfied with Hugh and a good homeand planting seven nasturtiums in a station garden! I am I! When I diethe world will be annihilated, as far as I'm concerned. I am I! I'm notcontent to leave the sea and the ivory towers to others. I want them forme! Damn Vida! Damn all of them! Do they think they can make me believethat a display of potatoes at Howland & Gould's is enough beauty andstrangeness?"