The Martial Adventures of Henry and MeWhite, William Allen
History
The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
White, William Allen
World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
One night we fell into a Boulevard show the like of which we had
never seen before. It was a political revue! The whole evening was
devoted to skits directed at the ministry, at the food administration,
at the scandals in the interior department and the deputies, at the
high taxes and the profiteering of the munition makers. The skits
were done in dialogue, song and dance, and the various forms of
burlesque. A good crowd--but not a soldier crowd--sat through it
and applauded appreciatively. Imagine an American audience devoting
a whole evening to a theatrical performance exclusively concerned
with Hoover, Secretary Daniels, Colonel Roosevelt, former Mayor
Mitchel, and LaFollette. In America we get little politics out of
the theater. In France, where they distrust the newspapers, they get
much politics from the theater. The theater is free in France--and
apparently not so closely censored as the newspapers. We learned that
night at the revue of a coming cabinet crisis, before the newspapers
announced it. And in learning of the crisis we had this curious
social experience, which we modestly hoped was quite as Parisian as
the Revue. During the first act of the show it was Greek to Henry
and me. We could understand a vaudeville show, and by following
the synopsis could poke along after the pantomime in a comedy. But
here in this revue, where the refinements of sarcasm and satire
were at play and that without a cue, we were stumped. Henry was
for getting out and going somewhere else. But we had a dollar a seat
in the show and it seemed to me that patience would bring results.
And it did! A good-looking, middle-aged couple sat down in the seats
next to us, and the woman began talking English. She was sitting
next to me, so it was my turn, not Henry's to speak. We asked her
if it would be too much trouble to interpret the show for two jays
from Middle Western America. She replied cordially enough. And she
gave us a splendid running interpretation of the show. The man with
her seemed friendly. We noticed that he was slyly holding her hand
in the dark, and that once he slipped his arm around her when the
lights went clear down. But that spelled a newly married middle-aged
couple, and we would have bet money that he was a widower and she,
late from his office, was at the head of his household. Between
acts he and Henry went out to smoke, leaving me with the lady. We
exchanged confidences of one sort and another after the manner of
strangers in a strange land. When it occurred to me to ask: "What
does your husband do for a living?"
"My--what?" she exclaimed.
"Your husband, there?"
"Who--that man? Why, I never saw him in my life until I picked him
up in a cafe an hour ago!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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