"You are all a lost generation/'
GERTRUDE STEIN in conversation
"One generation passeth away, and another generation comcih;
but the earth abicleth forever . . . The sun also ariseth, and the
sun goeth down, and hastcth to the place where he arose . . .
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the
north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again
according to his circuits. . . . All the rivers run into the sea; yet
the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come,
thither they return again ."
-Ecclesiastes
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
ROBERT COHN was once middleweight boxing champion of
Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that
as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for
boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and
thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he
had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. There was a cer-
tain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who
was snooty to him, although, being very shy and a thoroughly
nice boy, he never fought except in the gym. He was Spider
Kelly's star pupil. Spider Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to
box like featherweights, no matter whether they weighed one
hundred and five or two hundred and five pounds. But it seemed
to fit Cohn. He was really very fast. He was so good that Spider
promptly overmatched him and got his nose permanently flattened.
This increased Cohn's distaste for boxing, but it gave him a cer-
tain satisfaction of some strange sort, and it certainly improved his
nose. In his last year at Princeton he read too much and took tc
wearing spectacles. I never met any one of his class who remem-
bered him. They did not even remember that he was middle-
weight boxing champion.
I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their
stories hold together, and I always had a suspicion that perhaps
Robert Cohn had never been middleweight boxing champion,
and that perhaps a horse had stepped on his face, or that maybe
his mother had been frightened or seen something, or that he had,
maybe, bumped into something as a young child, but I finally had
somebody verify the story from Spicier Kelly. Spider Kelly not only
remembered Cohn. He had often wondered what had become of
him.
Robert Cohn was a member, through his father, of one of the
richest Jewish families in New York, and through his mother of
one of the oldest. At the military school where he prepped for
Princeton, and played a very good end on the football team, no
one had made him race-conscious. No one had ever made him feel
he was a Jew, and hence any different from anybody else, until
he went to Princeton. He was a nice boy, a friendly boy, and very
shy, and it made him bitter. He took it out in boxing, and he
came out of Princeton with painful self-consciousness and the flat-
tened nose, and was married by the first girl who was nice to him.
He was married five years, had three children, lost most of the
fifty thousand dollars his father left him, the balance of the estate
having gone to his mother, hardened into a rather unattractive
mould under domestic unhappiness with a rich wife; and just
when he had made up his mind to leave his wife she left him
and went off with a miniature-painter. As he had been thinking
for months about leaving his wife and had not done it because it
would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her departure was a
very healthful shock.
The divorce was arranged and Robert Cohn went out to the
Coast. In California he fell among literary people and, as he still
had a little of the fifty thousand left, in a short time he was back-
ing a review of the Arts. The review commenced publication in
Carmel, California, and finished in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
By that time Cohn, who had been regarded purely as an angel,
and whose name had appeared on the editorial page merely as a
member of the advisory board, had become the sole editor. It was
his money and he discovered he liked the authority of editing. He
was sorry when the maga/ine became too expensive and he had to
give it up*
By that time, though, he had other things to worry about. He
had been taken in hand by a lady who hoped to rise with the
magazine. She was very forceful, and Cohn never had a chance of
not being taken in hand. Also he was sure that he loved her.
When this lady saw that the magazine was not going to rise, she
became a little disgusted with Cohn and decided that she might
as well get what there was to get while there was still something
available, so she urged that they go to Europe, where Cohn could
write. They came to Europe, where the lady had been educated,
and stayed three years. During these three years, the first spent in
travel, the last two in Paris, Robert Cohn had two friends, Brad-
docks and myself. Braddocks was his literary friend. I was his
tennis friend.
The lady who had him, her name was Frances, found toward
the end of the second year that her looks were going, and her
attitude toward Robert changed from one of careless possession and
exploitation to the absolute determination that he should marry
her. During this time Robert's mother had settled an allowance on
him, about three hundred dollars a month. During two years and
a half I do not believe that Robert Cohn looked at another woman.
He was fairly happy, except that, like many people living in
Europe, he would rather have been in America, and he had dis-
covered writing. He wrote a novel, and it was not really such a
bad novel as the critics later called it, although it was a very poor
novel. He read many books, played bridge, played tennis, and
boxed at a local gymnasium.
I first became aware of his lady's attitude toward him one night
after the three of us had dined together. We had dined at
1'Avenue's and afterward went to the Cafe" de Versailles for coffee.
We had several fines after the coffee, and I said I must be going.
Cohn had been talking about the two of us. going off somewhere
on a weekend trip. He wanted to get out of town and get in a
good walk. I suggested we fly to Strasbourg and walk up to Saint
Odile, or somewhere or other in Alsace. "I know a girl in Stras-
bourg who can show us the town," I said.
Somebody kicked me under the table. I thought it was acci-
dental and went on : "She's been there two years and knows every-
thing there is to know about the town. She's a swell girl."
I was kicked again under the table and, looking, saw Frances,
Robert's lady, her chin lifting and her face hardening.
"Hell," I said, "why go to Strasbourg? We could go up to Bruges,
or to the Ardennes."
Cohn looked relieved. I was not kicked again. I said good-night
and went out. Cohn said he wanted to buy a paper and would walk
to the corner with me. "For God's sake," he said, "why did you
say that about that girl in Strasbourg for? Didn't you see Frances?"
"No, why should I? If I know an American girl that lives in
Strasbourg what the hell is it to Frances?"
"It doesn't make any difference. Any girl. I couldn't go, that
would be all."
"Don't be silly."
"You don't know Frances. Any girl at all. Didn't you see the way
she looked?"
"Oh, well," I said, "let's go to Senlis."
"Don't get sore."
"I'm not sore. Senlis is a good place and we can stay at the
Grand Cerf and take a hike in the woods and come home."
"Good, that will be fine."
"Well, I'll see you to-morrow at the courts," I said.
"Good-night, Jake," he said, and started back to the cafe\
"You forgot to get your paper," I said.
"That's so." He walked with me up to the kiosque at the cor-
ner. "You are not sore, are you, Jake?" He turned with the paper
in his hand.
"No, why should I be?"
"Sec you at tennis," he said. 1 watched him walk back to the
cafe holding his paper. I rather liked him and evidently she led
him quite a life.
CHAPTER II
THAT winter Robert Cohn went over to America with his novel,
and it was accepted by a fairly good publisher. His going made
an awful row I heard, and I think that was where Frances lost
him, because several women were nice to him in New York, and
when he came back he was quite changed. He was more enthu-
siastic about America than ever, and he was not so simple, and he
was not so nice. The publishers had praised his novel pretty
highly and it rather went to his head. Then several women had
put themselves out to be nice to him, and his horizons had all
shifted. For four years his horizon had been absolutely limited to
his wife. For three years, or almost three years, he had never seen
beyond Frances. I am sure he had never been in love in his life.
He had married on the rebound from the rotten time he had in
college, and Frances took him on the rebound from his discovery
that he had not been everything to his first wife. He was not in
love yet but he realized that he was an attractive quantity to
women, and that the fact of a woman caring for him and wanting
to Jive with him was not simply a divine miracle. This changed
him so that he was not so pleasant to have around. Also, playing
for higher stakes than he could afford in some rather steep bridge
games with his New York connections, he had held cards and
won several hundred dollars. It made him rather vain of his bridge
game, and he talked several times of how a man could always
make a living at bridge if he were ever forced to.
Then there was another thing. He had been reading W. H.
Hudson. That sounds like an innocent occupation, but Cohn had
read and reread "The Purple Land." "The Purple Land" is a very
sinister book if read too late in life. It recounts splendid imaginary
amorous adventures of a perfect English gentleman in an intensely
romantic land, the scenery of which is very well described. For a
man to take it at thirty-four as a guide-book to what life holds is
about as safe as it would be for a man of the same age to enter
Wall Street direct from a French convent, equipped with a com-
plete set of the more practical Alger books. Cohn, I believe, took
every word of "The Purple Land" as literally as though it had
been an R. G. Dun report. You understand me, he made some
reservations, but on the whole the book to him was sound. It was
all that was needed to set him off. I did not realize the extent to
which it had set him off until one day he came into my office.
"Hello, Robert," I said. "Did you come in to cheer me up?"
"Would you like to go to South America, Jake?" he asked.
"Why not?"
"I don't know. I never wanted to go. Too expensive. You can see
all the South Americans you want in Paris anyway."
"They're not the real South Americans."
"They look awfully real to me."
I had a boat train to catch with a week's mail stories, and only
half of them written.
"Do you know any dirt?" I asked.
"Nc."
"None of your exalted connections getting divorces?"
"No; listen, Jake. If I handled both our expenses, would you
go to South America with me?"
"Why me?"
"You can talk Spanish. And it would be more fun with two ot
us."
"No," I said, "I like this town and I go to Spain in the summer-
time."
"All my life I've wanted to go on a trip like that," Cohn said.
He sat down. "I'll be too old before I can ever do it."
"Don't be a fool," I said. "You can go anywhere you want.
You've got plenty of money."
"I know. But I can't get started."
"Cheer up," I said. "All countries look just like the moving
pictures."
But I felt sorry for him. He had it badly.
"I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not
really living it."
"Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters."
"I'm not interested in bull-fighters. That's an abnormal life. 1
want to go back in the country in South America. We could have
a great trip."
"Did you ever think about going to British East Africa to shoot?"
"No, I wouldn't like that."
"I'd go there with you."
"No; that doesn't interest me."
"That's because you never read a book about it. Go on and read
a book all full of love affairs with the beautiful shiny black
princesses."
"I want to go to South America."
lie had a hard, Jewish, stubborn streak.
"Come on down-stairs and have a drink."
"Aren't you working?"
"No," I said. We went down the stairs to the cafe on the ground
floor. I had discovered that was the best way to get rid of friends.
Once you had a drink all you had to say was: "Well, I've got to
get back and get off some cables," and it was done. It is very im-
portant to discover graceful exits like that in the newspaper busi-
ness, where it is such an important part of the ethics that you
should never seem to be working. Anyway, we went down-stairs
to the bar and had a whiskey and soda. Cohn looked at the bottles
in bins around the wall. "This is a good place," he said.
"There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.
"Listen, Jake," he leaned forward on the bar. "Don't you ever
get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking
advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time
you have to live already?"
"Yes, every once in a while."
"Do you know that in about thirty-five years more we'll be
dead?"
"What the hell, Robert," I said. "What the hell."
"I'm serious."
"It's one thing I don't worry about," I said.
"You ought to."
"I've had plenty to worry about one time or other. I'm through
worrying."
"Well, I want to go to South America."
"Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn't make any dif-
ference. I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by
moving from one place to another. There's nothing to that."
"But you've never been to South America."
"South America hell! If you went there the way you feel now it
would be exactly the same. This is a good town. Why don't you
start living your life in Paris?"
Tm sick of Paris, and I'm sick of the Quarter/'
"Stay away from the Quarter. Cruise around by yourself and
see what happens to you."
"Nothing happens to me. I walked alone all one night and
nothing happened except a bicycle cop stopped me and asked to
see my papers/'
"Wasn't the town nice at night?"
"I don't care for Paris/'
So there you were. I was sorry for him, but it was not a thing
you could do anything about, because right away you ran up
against the two stubbornnesses: South America could fix it and
he did not like Paris. He got the first idea out of a book, and I
suppose the second came out of a book too.
...
magnolia75