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Commedia dell’Arte, its Structure
and Tradition

Commedia dell’Arte, its Structure and Tradition chronicles a series of

discussions between two renowned experts in commedia dell’arte –
master practitioners Antonio Fava and John Rudlin.
These discussions were recorded during three recent visits by
Fava to Rudlin’s rural retreat in south west France. They take in
all of commedia dell’arte’s most striking and enduring elements – its
masks, its scripts and scenarios, and most outstandingly, its cast of
­characters. Fava explores the role of each stock Commedia character
and their subsequent incarnations in popular culture, as well as their
roots in prominent figures of their time. The lively and wide-ranging
conversations also take in methods of staging commedia dell’arte for
contemporary audiences, the evolution of its gestures, and the collec-
tive nature of its theatre-making.
This is an essential book for any student or practitioner of ­commedia
dell’arte – provocative, expansive wisdom from the modern world’s
foremost exponent of the craft.

John Rudlin is the author of Commedia dell’Arte: An Actor’s Handbook

and Commedia dell’Arte: A Handbook for Troupes.

Antonio Fava is a world-renowned teacher, practitioner and scholar of

commedia dell’arte, based in Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Arlecchino is on trial. Le Docteur presides. Pulcinella stands ominously
behind the accused, dangling a large bunch of keys.
Commedia dell’Arte, its
Structure and Tradition
Antonio Fava in Conversation
with John Rudlin

John Rudlin and Antonio Fava

First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2021 John Rudlin and Antonio Fava
The right of John Rudlin and Antonio Fava to be identified as
authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance
with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-64856-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-12660-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

eResource: www.routledge.com/9780367648565
For Dina, Trish
and theatre-makers and theatregoers everywhere
Contents

List of figures viii

Preface xi
Prologue xiii

1 The mask 1

2 The personnages 6

3 Performance location 35

4 The scenarios 38

5 Collective creation 41

6 Gestural evolution 43

7 Closed forms 49

8 Multilingualism 52

9 Anachronism 54

Appendix A: The Pulcinella Saga61

Appendix B: Il Pozzo66
Appendix C: The mystical mask69
Index 74
List of figures

Detail of an engraving of a scene from Colombine Avocat pour et

­contre in Le Théâtre Italien by Evaristo Gherardi, Brussels, 1697. The
engravings were made by Gabriel Huquier between 1729 and 1731 and
­published as Théâtre Italien. Livre des Scènes Comiques inventés par
Gillot.

1.1 Grande Zanni mask, from left to right: natural leather recently
made; natural leather darkened after several years of use;
natural leather blackened by many years of use. Atelier Fava.
This image can be seen in colour via the book’s eResource page
www.routledge.com/9780367648565. 2
1.2 Pantalone dancing in an inn: 17th century engraving by
unknown hand. 3
1.3 Pedrolino/Pierrot with back turned: engraving by Du Bosc,
after Watteau, 18th century. 5
2.1 Brighella: 17th-century engraving. 8
2.2 Arlecchino: engraving by Mitelli, 17th century. 11
2.3 Il Magnifico: engraving by Joullain, in Riccoboni,
Histoire du Théâtre Italien, 18th century. 13
2.4 Il Dottore: engraving by Joullain, in Riccoboni,
Histoire du Théâtre Italien, 18th century. 17
2.5 Arlecchino disguised as a doctor. Engraving by
Claude Gillot, 18th century. 20
2.6 A Bolognese Doctor. Lithograph, 19th century. 21
2.7 Angelo Constantini as Mezzettino. Acquatint by
Yves Barret, 19th century. 22
2.8 Francesco Andreini: engraving by A. Fiedler after the
fresco by Bernardino Poccetti, Church of the Santissima
Annunziata, Florence, in Comici Italiani by Luigi Rasi,
19th century. 24
 List of figures ix
2.9 Antonio Fava as Il Capitano Bellerofonte
Scarabombardone da Rocca di Ferro. 25
2.10 Pulcinelli cooking maccaroni: etching by F.G. Shmidt
from G.B. Tièpolo, 18th century. Grimaldi, Rome, 1899. 26
2.11 The last rites: Tartaglia as a notary at Pulcinella’s
deathbed, after Ghezzi. in Pulcinella e il Personaggio
del Napoletano in Commedia by Benedetto Croce. 32
6.1 Domenico Biancolelli as Arlecchino: engraving,
18th century. 44
9.1 Zanni skinheads: montage, Atelier Fava. 59
A.1 Antonio Fava as Pulcinella. 63
B.1 Antonio Fava as Pulcinella in Il Pozzo. 67

Engravings, acquatint and etching all from the Archivio Fava-

Buccino. Photographer: Marcello Fava.
Preface

‘It gets dark quite early in Reggio Emilia in August. The station
taxi-driver looks at me disbelievingly when I give him the name
of the student residence on the outskirts of town where I am
supposed to be staying for the next four weeks while attending
Antonio Fava’s summer course in commedia dell’arte. ‘Vacanza –
chiuso – clo-zed’ he says, but still takes me there, hoping perhaps
for a return fare to a cheap hotel. Sure enough, there isn’t a light
on, but I pay him off courageously and am standing forlornly in
the porch when suddenly a car pulls up, and a small, dark ball of
energy (later to be identified as Dina Buccino, Antonio’s partner
in life and work) says “quick, put your bags in here and jump in –
we’re going to see Antonio perform!”
At first sight, Reggio is not a very prepossessing town, espe-
cially when compared with the splendours of neighbouring Parma,
Bologna, and Ferrara. Prosciutto crudo (the pig population is
three times that of the human one), and Parmigiano Reggiano
are what it is famous for. But behind the rather blank facades
lie exquisite renaissance courtyards, and it was in one of those
that Antonio was performing. The concert had already started
and when we arrived and Antonio was providing comic interludes
between madrigals. Dressed in a baggy white tunic, he was asleep
– Zanni’s only relief from the primordial hunger that afflicts him
– alternately snoring and farting. All at once, train-lag vanished,
and it wasn’t dark any more: the irreverent elemental light of a
Commedia lazzo, this was what I had come for…
Next day, in intense heat and humidity, the course started.
Immediately one realised why the original 16th-century masks were
made of leather – they absorb your sweat. Not very hygienic, but
very practical. And practical is what we had to be: forty of us from
fourteen different countries, speaking eight different languages.’
xii Preface
I wrote the above as the opening of my programme note for Antonio’s
production of Love is a Drug for the Oxford Stage Company, which
toured England in 1995. The note records the beginning of a dialogue
which has continued up to the present day, with the following pages
comprising a further episode.
One of our subsequent encounters was when we shared a plat-
form together at the international conference ‘Crossing Boundaries:
Commedia dell’Arte Across Gender, Genre, and Geography’ in 2013
at the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. I remember then allud-
ing to the Arab saying that a teacher is a candle that burns down so
that others might see, and Antonio vehemently denying that this was
the case with him. Then he later wrote to me to say that he was, how-
ever, scandalised by the systematic way in which some former students
have ‘stolen’ his work. He said he felt ‘cloned, copied, plagiarised’, and
that his teaching was often not even credited, the worst example is
that of an American student emailing his notes on each day’s teaching
for use in a simultaneous workshop back home. ‘And what do they
go on to do?’ he continued, ‘they invent a sort of ‘commedia’ that has
no other existence, is alien, idiotic, rotten at the core. The result is
the humiliation and amateurisation of a great historical phenomenon
which led to the creation of the modern professional actor. Ignored
today by theatres everywhere in the world, Commedia thus pays a
very dear dramatic price and finishes up in the hands of ignoramuses
and incompetents. I have a whole encyclopedia in my head about what
commedia dell’arte is and what it is not. If I took time just to write it
out, it would run to several volumes. Obviously, there wouldn’t be any
readers patient enough to take it all in, but it would be ideal if we could
eventually condense it into a single ‘conversational’ book.’
These conversations document the recorded discussions we had
at my home in Charente over three sessions lasting 2/3 days each
between 2017 and June 2019. Our language was French, which I have
subsequently translated into English, the lingua franca which Antonio
believes is vital to future world-wide study and development of the
form.
The illustrations are from Antonio’s personal collection; most have
never been published in an English edition.
The endnotes have been added post hoc, as have the appendices.
Translations and explanations in square brackets […] have also been
added later by me, often in consultation with Antonio.

John Rudlin
Prologue

JR: Here we are, then, eventually. What is our aim in these

conversations?
AF: To reconsider a kind of theatre that was once simply the theatre,
found more entertaining than any other kind and which, in con-
sequence, is being variously re-interpreted. In order to perform
commedia dell’arte one has an obligation to study the form from
its inception right up to the present day. I consider it to be a voca-
tion. Such consideration, incidentally, does not entail being a slave
to the past, but we’ll come on to that.
Let’s begin with the name: commedia dell’arte is a term first
used by the playwright Carlo Goldoni towards the end of the 18th
century and it is open to misinterpretation. The word ‘commedia’
itself simply means ‘theatre’ – of all kinds, not just ‘comedy’, and
the word ‘arte’ has nothing to do with ‘art’. The simplest translation
would be ‘professional’. A more meaningful overall nomenclature
would be the earlier ‘commedia mercenaria’, but ‘mercenary’ has
unfortunate overtones in other languages: here it just meant that
the plays were performed for money, i.e. professional. ‘Commedia
improvvisa’ is another earlier term and one which it might be pref-
erable to use today.
JR: In English, some scholars are now content to reduce the nomencla-
ture to just ‘Commedia’.
AF: As shorthand possibly. For me the word ‘Commedia’ on its own
would preferably be with reference to a particular scenario as per-
formed. For the form as a whole I still prefer the whole phrase.
Anyway, professional theatre is what we are talking about here, in
a form that has changed and developed throughout its existence,
but always on the basis of an underlying structure. It is that struc-
ture that I now want to insist upon. It is based on solid foundations
with the following pillars: the mask; the personnages; performance
xiv Prologue
location; the scenario; collective creation; gestural evolution;
closed forms; multilingualism and, finally, anachronisms.
JR: Let’s begin at the beginning…
AF: In the beginning there were only zannis, and what they performed
were called zannesca, comedie degli zanni, or zannata: zanni plays.
JR: How did they develop into the full form?
AF: 1560 enter the woman: it is she that imposes the mask as an object
on the fledging commedia dell’arte. And, if you invent Isabella, the
role of the attractive young woman, you must also invite on stage
Flavio, the handsome young man, who must not have his face
covered either. The female servant, furthermore, was required to
expose more than just her face. Who was left to wear the leather
mask, then? The old, the stupid and the grotesque. In the baroque
period there were definitively five Masks: the two old men, the
Magnifico (Pantalone) and the Doctor; the two male servants
(zannis) and the Captain, making, with the addition of the Lovers,
a company of seven. The old, the young, the servants and the
intruder. The Lovers could be reduplicated and there could also
be a servetta – a female servant, making a troupe of nine. As time
went by different actors changed the names in order to make a
name for themselves, but the tipi fissi [fixed types] remained basi-
cally the same.
Commedia dell’arte then dominated the European stage for
more than two centuries, but the thing which nearly killed it off,
like the huge meteorite which is supposed to have destroyed the
habitat of the dinosaurs, was the French revolution. What hap-
pened in Europe at that moment was precisely the same sort of
step-change: taste in art and all other cultural forms altered rad-
ically, first in France and then in monarchies throughout Europe
whose aristocrats did not want to find themselves following their
French counterparts to the scaffold. They preferred to change
their constitutions.
JR: So commedia dell’arte became a profession that one could no
longer profess to.
AF: It was inevitably a victim. Until then patronage had been extended
by royalty, by the aristocracy and even rich merchants to troupes
to be disbursed amongst individuals by mutual agreement, after
production and other costs had been met. In Italy the amounts
offered reflected a certain rivalry between Dukes, who each
wanted to boast of having the best company under their wing. The
Duke of Mantua was particularly magnanimous. That’s how the
Renaissance had developed: there were lots of little States whose
 Prologue xv
Dukes wanted to be the biggest, the best, the most beautiful. The
intensity of competition was incredible, not only in the beaux arts,
but also in the sciences. That is why the French revolution was
such a disaster: all that smacked of the Ancien Régime was swept
away by fear. Since la commedia dell’arte had always been pro-
tected and provided for by that régime, it now became necessary
for audiences to distance themselves from it. The exception was
in the South of Italy, where Pulcinella survived as he always has
done. There were new themes for him to explore, but he retained
the same identity.
JR: And, under various guises, commedia dell’arte also survived in the
Parisian foires… but that’s another story. Let’s go on to examine
your sense of structure, then.
1 The mask

AF: As an object the commedia dell’arte mask is a false countenance

made of leather. It is commonly thought that it was black, ab
origine, but this is not the case: it was of natural tan colour when
new, only becoming blackened with use and age. In the olden
days, performing in the open air or by candle-light, it might take
two or three generations of wear for a mask to blacken totally.
Furthermore, the mask-makers of the time did not have the means
to introduce different colours. With today’s stage illumination
by electricity, the darkening process is speeded up considerably,
and one also needs to introduce some subtlety of tone. When I
dye a mask that I have made, it is in anticipation of the hue that
the leather would have adopted after 10 years or so. Incidentally,
the comici dell’arte would never have requested a new mask to be
made black: a lot of servants were slaves at the time, but black
slaves had no place in commedia dell’arte. Ariane Mnouchkine
was quite wrong to make such a supposition.1
Furthermore, there is no evidence whatsoever for the misap-
prehension going round present-day mask-makers that Brighella’s
mask should be olive-green. Where the green supposition has
come from I do not know, but it is the kind of theorisation with
no historical basis in actual Commedia performance that I find
unacceptable. (See Figure 1.1)
JR: I think there’s been a mistranslation somewhere along the line.
‘Olivatre’ in French when referring to facial complexion would
perhaps be better rendered ‘sallow’ than ‘olivaceous’ in English.
AF: Even olive-brown due to the natural tanning process, but not
green. I repeat, as the leather ages, with temperature and sweat,
the mask passes through all the colours by which a white European
face is normally known. Green is not one of them. Commedia
mask-makers never made fantastical masks.
2 The mask

Figure 1.1 Grande Zanni mask*

*This image can be viewed in colour via the eResource link found in the preliminary
pages of this edition www.routledge.com/9780367648565 and on the book’s webpage on
Routledge.com.

JR: In the 18th century Brighella did acquire green frogging on his
costume…
AF: A green-faced Brighella is on my no-no list, and that’s that.
JR: I’m interested to discover what else you are going to put on your
no-no list…
AF: All in good time… It is not usually understood that the first
mask to be found in commedia dell’arte was make-up, that of
the infarinato, [literally ‘the enfloured one’, the white-faced fool].
His make-up was white2, heavily so, made popular again in the
19th century, particularly by the French Pierrots. In the early days
of playing in the street in the broad light of day, actors wanted to
show a face that was not their own: that of the character, not of the
actor. The white face also more readily enabled women’s parts to
be played by men, as was the tradition. (See Figure 1.2)
JR: Traces of the floured face can still be found in early cinema: the
Keystone Cops, Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd,
Stan Laurel, for example, Why?
AF: Because the principals needed to stand out from the crowd in both
cases – the sunlit streets of the Italian carnivals and the film lots
of Hollywood.
 The mask 3

Figure 1.2 Pantalone dancing in an inn

JR: And early black-and-white one and two-reelers were filmed

outdoors…
AF: Yes.
JR: …Hollywood becoming the movie-making centre it did because
of the exceptional quality of the light in the days before pollution.
But why then did those white-faced comici dell’arte end up wear-
ing the mask?
AF: The facial mask alone is not a sufficient disguise: the head needs
to be considered as a whole: the wig or hat, facial hair, the chin
below the half-mask line, the cheeks even in the case of the doc-
tor’s quarter-mask. Today there is a whole line of theatrical inves-
tigation, altogether modern, specific to our times, which is based
on the presumption that all you need is the mask and that if you
put it on, and little else in terms of dressing head or body – are
practically naked, in fact – it will dictate to you how your body
should behave. I’ve seen this several times on the internet as street
performance being practised in the name of commedia dell’arte;
it makes about as much sense as promenading naked except for a
pair of shoes.
4 The mask
JR: No-no list?
AF: No-no list. Inevitably, each time, the mask has been that of
Arlecchino; the actors, also inevitably, are young, with handsome,
good-looking bodies. But to take on a mask is a commitment for
life, a professional commitment. What are these youngsters going
to do when they grow older?
JR: They may be latter-day disciples of Etienne Decroux who worked
in just a loincloth.
AF: Ah, the tanga…. The most important disciples of Decroux are
Eugenio Barba of Odin Teatr and Jerzy Grotowski who developed
the idea of the corps plastique. But you can’t mix near nudity with
a mask on with Decroux’s gestuality and Grotowski’s plasticity
and claim the result to be commedia dell’arte. Commedia dell’arte
is much more precise, much less elastic, much less individually
expressive. It is a genre which exists within specific boundaries:
when we recognise those boundaries, we know where we are.
Form and content coincide.
JR: In commedia dell’arte you have to work with constriction, not
freedom. Pantalone’s Moroccan slippers, for example, have open
backs and pointed toes, obliging him to shuffle and even dance in
a particular way. (See Figure 1.2)
AF: And there’s also the fact that, in the expressive system of comme-
dia dell’arte, a mask never takes its clothes off. The costume is
part of the mask – in fact, the only non-masked part of the actor
is his hands. These should never be brought into proximity with
the mask for fear of betraying its lack of plasticity. Also, and it
doesn’t matter whether the actor is masked or not, I find that
one must never turn one’s back on the spectator or, if absolutely
necessary, only rapidly: anything more than a fleeting glance at
the back of the neck and the mask’s identity is lost. I notice in my
collection of engravings, especially those of the 17th century, of
Watteau and his school in particular, that occasionally Pierrot,
for example, does turn his back. (See Figure 1.3) But on stage,
rather than on canvas, one learns what I call the ‘principle’ of the
masks. I prefer this word to ‘laws’ or ‘rules’ because it is some-
thing you learn through personal experience, not as behaviour
imposed from without by society’s enforcers: police, priests,
teachers and so on.
 The mask 5

Figure 1.3 Pedrolino/Pierrot with back turned

Notes
1. The Théâtre du Soleil’s L’age d’Or (1975) featured a North African
immigrant worker in Marseilles named Abdullah. He was based on
Arlecchino.
2. Probably made by using rice flour which is finer and whiter than wheat-
meal and is still used by Japanese Kabuki actors today. The English
Pierrot troupes used zinc oxide – highly carcinogenic...
2 The personnages

JR: What do you mean by a ‘personnage’?

AF: Occasionally (for present purposes, and even though our inten-
tion is ultimately anglophone), there is a word which is better left,
for clarity’s sake, in a romance tongue. The masks of the comme-
dia dell’arte are known as tipi fissi (‘fixed types’), or personaggi
in Italian, but the French personnage is to my mind more readily
adoptable into English.
JR: Whereas the word ‘personage’ in English signifies someone of ele-
vated status, and ‘personality’ defines individual character, for
example, one of the dramatis personae of a particular play.1
AF: Let’s stay with the French, then. Each personnage hailed from a
different part of Italy and spoke in a different tongue. They can
however, be grouped into families: Bergamese, Tuscan, Venetian,
Bolognese, and then Neapolitan, the language of the south.
I’ll begin with the northern families and the innamorati, the
Lovers, since the inception of what is now called commedia
dell’arte dates from their arrival.

Gli innamorati
It’s important to recognise that the young lovers were not lovers, in
fact, but adventurers – adventurers in love. How they were portrayed
varied from company to company, although they moved from troupe
to troupe as a pairing much more than other comici. They invariably
spoke Tuscan since it was linguistically the most elegant, the language
of the academies, and the literati. Since they acted without the mask,
the question was always, how long they could go on convincing audi-
ences that they were young lovers?
 The personnages 7
JR: Perhaps their make-up helped there?
AF: Yes, to that extent, it replaced the mask: it was always thickly
applied and was based on the white face of the infarinato.
Why white-face? Because it is an object half-way between mask
and face, you could call it a mask that moves, capable of multiple
variations.
JR: Stan Laurel rather than Buster Keaton, then…
You used the phrase ‘young lovers’. When a larger troupe had
two pairs, were the second pair usually older?
AF: First of all, one must avoid considering the pairings as being
first and second, as if one were more important than the other.
Over the centuries, that did become the case, but in the origins of
Commedia, its foundations, which are our most important refer-
ence point in trying understand how this kind of theatre works,
they had equal status on stage. It might be better to call them the
blue pair and the red pair. They are distinguished by the fact that
one couple are ingénues and brimming over with love, an idealised
love, which has marriage as its objective, whereas the other couple
seeks amorous adventure, preferably clandestine and erotic. The
first two are very young and dependent on their fathers, they are
adolescents; the second is adult, independent, rather irresponsi-
ble. Some are already married, such as the woman who is the wife
of an old man who is always, in all the plays, widowed from his
first wife, who was the mother of his son or daughter. The second
male might be a gambler whose addiction causes enormous prob-
lems. The male of the first pair is mentally fragile and given to
foolishness, which has to be resolved in the happy ending.
The intrigues of both pairs can be fuelled by madness, most
often in the female, or by the quest of a rich and beautiful widow
for stimulating company, sometimes even by the seeking of an
assassination rather than an assignation. These give rise to come-
dic situations, and that is what the Commedia ‘system’ is based on
putting the Lovers into various extreme situations, each of which
offers both actors and spectators something to get their teeth into.

Zanni
AF: If we go back beyond the arrival of the Lovers to the origins of
commedia dell’arte, we find Zanni. He was not a mythical or fan-
tastical personnage, but a reality: an immigrant. His name is a
diminutive of ‘Giovanni’, the most common first name in the Po
valley.
8 The personnages

Figure 2.1 Brighella

JR: Why are there always two zannis in the developed form? What is
the distinction between first and second Zanni?
AF: First Zanni is always there, a continual presence, whereas second
Zanni comes and goes – something which is completely ignored
by everyone who performs commedia dell’arte today. No-no list.
First Zanni schemes and intrigues, second Zanni botches things
up. Both are essential to the development of the plot.
JR: The most common first Zanni being Brighella? (See Figure 2.1)
AF: The frogging on his costume, which you mentioned earlier, is a
sort of livery worn in Italy by those who worked in kitchens, espe-
cially the head chef. The costumes of the masks often made refer-
ence to clothing worn in real life; in the case of Brighella, as first
Zanni, it shows that he has a metier, a real job, not a servile one
– he may even own the business – and he never goes hungry, unlike
second Zanni who is always half-starved.
 The personnages 9
JR: Is he always independent, then?
AF: He can be a servant when his services are needed, usually by the
Lovers, but he does not change costume for that. For the 150 years
that commedia dell’arte dominated the world stage, actors did not
want changes or development in their costume: what was desired
was instant recognition of their personal personnage, the sort of
recognition that we give today to serial cartoon characters such as
Tom and Jerry or Wilee Coyote and the Roadrunner. When you
see such characters on screen, you know what to expect, includ-
ing surprises. What actors did change other than minor details,
was the name of their personnage, making it specific to their own
interpretation. Brighella is simply the best known among hun-
dreds of variations – Beltrame, Mezzetino, Flautino, Gradellino,
Traccagnino, Finocchio, Bagolino, Scapino, etc.
JR: Why is Brighella so malevolent?
AF: He isn’t, he isn’t evil. Amoral, perhaps, but he only does what is
necessary. You won’t find a scenario where he takes pleasure in
harming someone.
JR: Even Scapino?
AF: Ah, you’re thinking of Molière, that’s something different. Molière
was formed by commedia dell’arte, but he did not practise it. His
Scapin is not the Scapino invented by Francesco Gabrielli. There is
a comic poem, written by an actor, Bartolomeo Bocchini,2 who sep-
cialised in a personnage he called Zan Muzzina, who hailed from
Lombardy and lived in an imaginary country he called La Zagnara,
using the definite article as in ‘La France’ or ‘L’Italie’. In the poem Il
Trionfo di Scappino, written in a mixture of Northern dialects, it is
inhabited solely by zannis and zannettas. Grub and sex are all they
want and all they have. Scapino is made king because he is right-
eous. He tries to resolve all disputes. He is a good man. Bocchini
based his Scapino character on the experience of working for many
years with the Gabriellis – I’ll come on to them in a moment.
The first known edition of the poem is from Modena in 1648,
well before Molière’s Les Fourberies de Scapin. Molière has per-
haps done commedia dell’arte a disservice by portraying Scapin as
someone with a mean streak, out for revenge.
JR: Why then does Brighella/Scapino sometimes do awful things?
AF: Because, like Pulcinella, he is a survivor, and in order to survive,
he has to protect himself. But he is not wicked, no: moral concerns
have no place in commedia dell’arte, which is essentially secular.
His name comes from the Lombard word ‘scapa’, to escape in
English. He escapes from the consequences of his actions, but he
is not a coward.
10 The personnages
JR: So, at a certain moment, Zanni divided himself into two: how,
where, and when?
AF: At the end of the 17th going into the beginning of the 18th cen-
tury, the Gabrielli family, father Giovanni and son Francesco,
were very active, the father in particular being very inventive.
They created a personnage they called Scapi in 1702/3 in Paris.
The suffix ‘ino’ was added, not as a diminutive but, as is often the
case in Italian, meaning ‘inhabitant of’. Although he was crafty
in the extreme, Scapino needed a sidekick to do some of his dirty
work for him. However, the Gabriellis didn’t use the terminology
‘first and second Zanni’, they called them ‘l’astuto’ or ‘il furbo’, the
clever servant, and the stupid one, ‘sciocco’ [pronounced ‘shoko’]
which is difficult to translate – more naive than stupid, ‘silly’ per-
haps in English.
JR: Foolish?
AF: Ah, yes. But naive, not stupid, I don’t like to call a zanni stu-
pid, because stupidity is limiting, whereas naivete has a certain
dynamism. Anyway, he later becomes known as ‘second Zanni’.
Second, Zanni has considerable experience of life, rural life, that
is. He knows about plants and animals and is a hunter of great
ability. For example, he can ensnare songbirds and make bam-
boo cages for them to sell at the market. In the days before the
gramophone, people would pay good money to have music in their
homes. In the commedia dell’arte Zanni finds himself as a migrant
in an urban environment where his lack of urban savoir faire and
illiteracy is a handicap, and he becomes a facchino, a porter of
heavy loads. Nevertheless, he does not allow himself to become
burdened by them: he remains resilient. He is an adult, a man
of culture, just not the culture in which he finds himself. In my
research, I have found more than three hundred names for him,
but whether he is called Arlecchino or Truffaldino or Tabacchino
or Traccagnino or by any derivative name, he is still second Zanni
and his function remains the same, as do the patches on the cos-
tume. As I said about the first Zanni, the name changes reflect
the change of actor, each one wanting to give a signature to their
personal take on the role. In the hundreds of years of commedia
dell’arte, he has been played by hundreds of actors, and that is why
there are hundreds of names. We must, therefore, correct today’s
prevailing idea that there is only one single second Zanni, the
famous Arlecchino/Arlequin/Harlequin. (See Figure 2.2)
JR: No-no list?
AF: No-no list.
 The personnages 11

Figure 2.2 Arlecchino

What I detest above all is ‘Harlequinism’, the idea that he is the

ace which trumps all the other cards in the pack. To many people,
Mozart is baroque music. In fact, his music is rococo, but that’s
not the point. Likewise, to many people, Harlequin is commedia
dell’arte. I am against the synthesising of culture around illustri-
ous exponents.
JR: A definite no-no?
AF: He has become a brand-name for everything you can think of
from delivery vans to shopping centres like the one near you
[Exeter] when we stayed with you in England.
JR: Even a rugby team.
AF: It cheapens not only him, but also the form to which he belongs,
where he has his place but should not predominate.
To an extent the same is true of Pulcinella, but he has to be
forgiven because he spent so many years in isolation. Who today
has heard of his variant Shcatozza (or Shcatotza, in Campanian
pronounciation)? Most people don’t even realise that he and
Arlecchino are second zannis and, when you have a second Zanni,
that presupposes that there is a first. Together they become a
12 The personnages
comedic machine, a dynamic duo. The first Zanni is the leader,
the one who says ‘Let’s go’ and second Zanni is happy to follow.
One understands the problem better than the other, but it is often
number two who comes up with an idea of how to solve it. But
once the idea is adopted, it creates another, larger difficulty, and
so on. We call this the panettone effect.
JR: When you cook panettone [an Italian sweet bread, originally
from Milan, now a Christmas treat] in the oven it gets bigger and
bigger…
AF: But finally there has to be a simple solution – you eat it!
JR: Laurel and Hardy again: in The Music Box, having delivered the
piano (finally) up seemingly never-ending steps, they discover
there is a road which goes round leading to the front door.
AF: So, with the introduction of the two zanni system, the comme-
dia dell’arte structure was complete, and there was no reason to
change it for a 100 years until in Un Servitor di due Padroni [A
Servant of Two Masters], Carlo Goldoni called the second Zanni
‘Truffaldino’ because that was the name that Antonio Sacchi used
for his Zanni. Because it was Sacchi, who asked him to write a play
rather than a scenario3, Goldoni the playwright gave Truffaldino
a little more licence and continuity of presence than would nor-
mally be allowed the second Zanni, a little more freedom to do as
he pleased, effectively rolling the two zannis back into one.4
JR: However, the general belief amongst people who have not actu-
ally read the play is that the role is Arlecchino’s: this is because
Marcello Moretti played him as such in the omnipotent 1947
Piccolo Teatro di Milano revival.

La servetta
AF: ‘Zagna’ was the original female counterpart of Zanni in the zan-
nesca plays. ‘She’ was played by men, infarinato, with grotesque
padding in gender specific places, and often wearing a headscarf
(See Figure 1.2). When the zannis became masked ‘she’ did like-
wise, wearing one that was similar or even identical. Then, with
the arrival of actresses on stage, came la Fantesca – a rather sim-
ple peasant girl whose charms were, however, real. The name is
simply an older word for ‘female servant’. Next, around 1580–90,
the servetta drove them both, masked and unmasked, off stage. In
the La Scala scenarios la servetta is Colombina, the girlfriend of
Pedrolino who is first Zanni, and she is still a little naive. In the
Casa Marciano scenarios, however, which are a little later in date
 The personnages 13
(or at least date of reference since La Scala was writing retrospec-
tively) she becomes Rosetta. Sometimes Rosetta is attached by the
scenario to second Zanni Pulcinella, sometimes to first Zanni,
Coviello. No matter: she is smarter than both of them and has
become in fact the most intelligent personnage in the commedia
dell’arte. So much so that when a plotline couples her with second
Zanni, she assumes the function of first Zanni.

Il Magnifico
AF: The Magnifico (See Figure 2.3) most often goes under the name
of Pantalone, but again there were others, Stefanello, for example.
Venetians pronounced his name ‘Pantalon’, as in ‘San Pantalon’,
but since commedia dell’arte is a secular form it doesn’t do to
insist. As with Brighella’s supposed malevolence, too much can be
made of his meanness and his prurience. Commedia dell’arte is not
about sending him to hell for being a self-made man who wants to
hang on to his money and/or for being an old man who has trouble

Figure 2.3 Il Magnifico

14 The personnages
with his libido. He’s willing to spend his money, but only on the
latter, and Brighella, for example, is happy to take it from him in
exchange for some dodgy potion… At that moment, Pantalone is
not a miser: he will pay as much as necessary to be successful in
bed with a beautiful woman. So he is duped, but he is not stupid.
JR: He just wants to relive his youth? To go back to the dawn when the
night is closing in?
AF: Yes, and if he is willing to pay for that, commedia dell’arte will not
condemn him.
JR: A thing that has always puzzled me is when and how did the
Magnifico with such thunderous thighs become the enfeebled old
Venetian merchant Pantalone?
AF: Well, for a start, Pantalone is not a Venetian creation, he was
invented at the very beginning for the zannesca, when all the inter-
actions that zannis could provide had been used up and more
personnages were needed. And since the zannis were servants, the
first new personnages to make their appearance were their mas-
ters: the Magnifico and the Doctor.
‘Magnifico’ simply signifies a rich man, and is a generic term, a
personnage, a capitalist who is then defined by specific names such
as Pantalone, Pancrazio, Zanobio or Stefanello . The great popu-
larity of the name ‘Pantalone’ does not make this Venetian variant
different or special. Just as Arlecchino is one of the very numerous
names for second Zanni, Pantalone is one of the numerous names
for the Magnifico. All those names tell us where they come from:
Pantalone comes from Venice and he speaks Venetian. His name has
two etymological possibilities: ‘Pianta-il-Leone’ – to plant the lion
stamp on goods passing through la Serenissima, the Republic of
Venice, especially from the Orient, or a contraction of ‘Pantaleone’,
a very common name in Venice in the mid 16th century.
He is old, is Pantalone, but he is not feeble. He has the incon-
veniences of old age, obviously, but he does not have the physical
weakness that would make him a ‘poor old man’. On the contrary,
he represents the kind of man who does not accept the ageing pro-
cess and does things which at his age he should not do. In particu-
lar, he absolutely wants to re-marry with a very young woman.
And that’s typical of the Magnifico, wherever he hails from.
But it is true that the iconographic evidence shows very often
a personnage who is well-muscled, then sometimes an old bour-
geois and, more rarely, a little old man. All these representations
are tied in with the epoch when they were made. Let me explain:
what is consistent throughout, with only minor changes, such as
 The personnages 15
Moroccan slippers for clogs, is the image of the same old boy in
the same costume, one that perhaps changed the least in the whole
history of Commedia. A big black jacket is practically enveloping
him but for the front which remains open to reveal a red shirt,
long red breeches which are sometimes red, sometimes not, on
his head a sort of fez which, with the Moorish slippers on his feet,
mean that both ends tell us of his commercial relations with the
Orient. On his belt, there is often a money bag and a dagger.
JR: And a very pointed goatee beard.
AF: The real changes are in his physique. In the first epoch, we see
a very sprightly old man, strong, muscly, with thighs to make a
young man envious. This epoch did not last long, but it coincided
with the painting and drawing of the human body under the influ-
ence of Michaelangelo. The Trauznitz5 Pantalone, for example,
is reminiscent, physically, of the Sistine Chapel; it has the same
style, could almost be by the same hand – offering the same idea of
the human form triumphant in its flesh, bones and musculature,
whatever the age of the subject.
In the Baroque period big changes happened: pitiless reality,
old age is old age, very different from youthfulness, and that dif-
ference had to be depicted. But this old man, Pantalone, is still
a master, he is rich, he gives orders and has plenty of energy, so
though we see an old man, he is a very active one. And that is the
definitive historical image of him. Much later, in the epoch which
we might call ‘Goldonian’, he becomes very old, but still lucid and
master of any given situation. When he loses control of a situation
it is not because of his age, but because of the decisions, he makes,
involving others who are not normally content to be pushed
around by an old man and who, since they are in the majority, are
able to organise a response which wins out in the end.
JR: So it’s a no-no to play Pantalone as a ‘poor old man’.
AF: That’s something he can do for himself when necessary, however.
He can play the poor old man, the ‘old dodder’ with ‘one foot in
the grave’, when it might help him to get his way, without actually
being any of that. Old does not mean ill. It’s just a stage of life, and
he is very, very well.
JR: It seems to me that. As time has gone by, you have insisted more
and more on the humanity of the masks and less and less on their
grotesque qualities.
AF: Yes, and there was a very good example of that in my production
Love is a Drug for the Oxford Stage Company.6 Pantalone was
played by Andrew Frame, a very good actor – but then they were
16 The personnages
all very good actors. One particular scene brought out exactly that
human quality in his performance of the mask: Flaminia, the Lover
in the play, takes a drug, rather like Juliet, it makes her seem as if
she is dead. Immediately afterwards, the scene is a cemetery and
Flaminia’s tomb is open. Pantalone arrives in tears, in despair
because his daughter is dead. The scenario indicates that he then
severely reproaches her, then gives her a piece of his mind, then
works himself into a rage over her behaviour. The progression as
performed was really fantastic: the father grieving for the death of
his daughter, then remembering what she was like when she was
little, then what a wonderful girl she was, before finally becoming
the father who bawls his daughter out in front of her sepulchre for
something she should not have done. The scene provoked an intense
emotion, both in the actor and in the audience, but Pantalone’s com-
portment, his manner of speaking, his gesticulation, everything
which makes the personnage what it is, remained appropriate to the
mask. Funny yet profoundly moving at the same time – a perfect
example of the paradox of the human condition.

Il Dottore
AF: Il Dottore Gratiano delle Cotiche, plural of cotica…
JR: … meaning ‘pork rind’.
AF: Gratiano was the name of the founder of the University of
Bologna, the oldest in the world. When the comici dell’arte wanted
to create Il Dottore, they made him a native of that city as being
the most cultured in Italy. But it was also the number one for gas-
tronomy: a reputation which it still holds today.
The point, which is worth insisting upon, is that it was not the
individual city states which contributed a local type to the comme-
dia dell’arte, but the actors who made the attribution for each per-
sonnage. Since there was no national language, they made sure
that each mask spoke in a tongue that was appropriate to its char-
acteristics. But having said that, Bolognese speech was perhaps
the most understood, the closest to universal comprehension.
Look out, however: Gratiano’s name in Bolognese sounds very
similar to a slang word meaning ‘cod’.
JR: So, as well as being Doctor Pork-rind, he is also a cod Doctor.
AF: Yes, and let’s not forget the gourmet connection as well. He is old, he
is rich. He is a widower. He is father to one of the Lovers. He can fall
in love with a young woman, just like the other old man, Il Magnifico,
who is also rich and also a widower. The actor playing the Doctor
 The personnages 17
wore and wears (the costume has changed little through the ages)
a large black cape and a big hat of the same colour – originally the
attire of an intellectual. He can wear a large belt round his midriff,
or rather pot belly, often with a white handkerchief attached. Often
he carries a big book which contains the truth about everything, but
which can also be used as a weapon. (See Figure 2.4)
The important thing to remember is that he thinks he is impor-
tant: an absolute authority both on legal matters and the con-
sumption of food. That authority extends to his relationship with
his son – he never has any doubt advising him over his troubles.
JR: One thinks of Polonius…
AF: There are other names: ‘Balanzone’, for example, the scales that
are the symbol of justice, but also signify scientific precision. He
affects, therefore, to be scrupulous in his judgements and opinions,
which is evidently far from the case. Another name: Furbizòun in
Bolgnaise dialect. Forbicione when pronounced in Italian. ‘Big
Scissors’ in English, meaning that he separates everything out
so that each part is made clear. Another: ‘Plusquamperfetcus’
– Latin for ‘more than perfect’. As usual, there are many others

Figure 2.4 Il Dottore Gratiano

18 The personnages
but, with one exception, they are all from Bologna. The exception
is Neapolitan because Naples needed to enjoy its own language
in order to confirm its status as the capital of the South. So it
invented its own variant Doctor: ‘Formizoun Spacca Strummolo:
Formizoun [big forbici – scissors] plus Spacca [from the verb spac-
care meaning ‘to cut’] in the sense of splitting a hair in four, thus
indicating someone who demands absolute precision in word and
deed, like a lawyer, for example. What he splits in Neapolitan isn’t
a hair, however, but a spinning top, similarly cut into four.
JR: A spinning top? Why?
AF: Because it represents the whirlwind of life where everything
changes. He wants to stop the top and dissect it. Anyway, he’s the
only Doctor who speaks anything but Bolognese – unless there
are Sicilian or Piedmontese ones that I haven’t heard about!
JR: But the fun in parodying a Bolognese doctor would have been lost
in translation when the comici dell’arte became, for example, les
comediens du Roi in France?
AF: The personnage made its appearance relatively early in the
Commedia system, necessitated by certain dramatic conflicts –
amorous ones, for example, as in master and servant both being after
the same sexy servant girl. The authority of the Doctor is not only
expressed in his age and status – which characterise him as a master
– but through his preferred method of pretentious knowledge.
He knows everything, he is a ‘tuttologo’, an ‘everythingolo-
gist’ (my attempt at an English translation!). So he uses a wide
assortment of languages and an exaggerated, ostentatious vocab-
ulary. The basis is both juristic and notarial, since together they
make up his profession, being at once both a Doctor of Law and
a Notary. Then he adds some Latin, some Ancient Greek, then
other languages au choix. He generates long lists, usually in order
to treat a subject from A to Z; he delivers his sproloquio [bullshit
tirade] with enthusiasm and scientific passion, but above all with
authority. Everything is spoken with a great sonority that comes
from the language of origin, the Bolognaise, which is predomi-
nant as an accent and has a musicality which is immediately rec-
ognisable throughout Italy, and also from his ‘Bolognisation’ of
other languages. The effect is always extremely comical, even in
very serious situations: for example, when he uses his overbearing
authoritativeness to oblige his daughter to marry an old man.
In exporting the Doctor to Europe through their tours, the Italian
actors adapted all that sonority into the appropriate native tongue.
Not a particularly difficult thing to do since there were already
 The personnages 19
several languages present in his sproloquio. The native tongue,
which the actor would have to learn if he was not already familiar
with it, took the place of Bolognaise, seeking wherever possible to
use an uneducated terminology which would betray to an audience
that the Doctor was not the great savant that he pretended to be.
When I play the Doctor in France I make use of a lot of
Italianised gallicisms or Frenchified Italianisms, And the same in
Spanish and in English. It still works!
JR: But, as I understand it, he became Le Pédant in France – younger,
less ridiculous?
AF: There is a difference between the traditional Dottore and the ver-
sions of him offered up by the Italians in Paris. Il Dottore is a man
of Law, definitively. But the ‘Parisians’ manipulated him according
to the piece to be performed – and often their plays ‘à l’italienne’
were written by French authors and adjusted for French audiences.
‘Italianess’ became more and more clichéd, and gradually moved
away from the traditional. Gherardi, for example, played him some-
times as a medical Docteur, sometimes as an avocat [solicitor], very
different from the second vecchio [old man] traditionally paired with
Pantalone. For these reasons, in my opinion, this phase of comme-
dia dell’arte should be considered localised and timebound.
JR: And often when he became a medical doctor it was not really
him, but another mask dressed up for the purposes of the plot –
as in Molière’s Le Médecin Volant, for example. Moliere played
Sganarelle, an Arlequin type, as a cod doctor. (See Figure 2.5)
AF: The Italians in Paris were in fact, a two-fer: they played Commedia
pure, and when they did that they mixed languages, as they did
elsewhere, even in Italy. More of that when we get to multilin-
gualism. The local tongue, in this case, French, predominated,
but their system was plurilinguistic. Il Dottore was no exception,
though he exaggerated at times. And then there was the other
manner of playing, the literary one, that of comedy conceived
and written before being performed, in verse, in that alexandrine
verse7 which once possessed poetry in the French language, espe-
cially during the baroque period.
One finds an interesting example of this duality in the theatre
of Domenico Biancolelli: his Scenario is a collection of canovacci
that he played in Paris with his company, and in them, we find
perfect examples of Commedia in its original form. But one can
also study in his Nouveau Théâtre Italien some pieces from his
repertoire which are written in alexandrine verse, in an elevated
language where everyone speaks in the same style. Even Arlequin
20 The personnages

Figure 2.5 Arlecchino disguised as a doctor

speaks in such a manner. The Doctor of the Scenario, however, is

definitely ours: he participates in the lazzi and gets fully involved
in the disasters which the Commedia plots throw up. The Doctor
of the ‘regular’ plays is a pedant, ponderous as you have to be
when you inhabit the alexandrine world. In fact, the French
Doctor called Le Pédant is much closer to the commedia erudita
than to Il Dottore of the commedia dell’arte.
JR: He appears towards the end of Le Médecin Volant and, as a real
lawyer, using real Latin, and censures the medical methods of the
cod Sganarelle.
JR: What about his mask? You’ve already mentioned it is a quarter not
a half mask like all the others.
AF: Yes, the mask used by the actor who plays the Doctor is smaller
than the other Commedia masks: just a nose and a forehead,
which is often a simple band that holds the nose on.
The reduced form can be explained by the double necessity of
(1) being comical, droll, to be laughed at, and (2) a lightness in
wearing which permits the actor to use part of the face, particu-
larly around the eyes, thus helping him to establish his authority
over the other masks.
 The personnages 21
JR: I’m going to persist about the French connection: if the identity
of the Doctor slipped through culture contact, other masks were
either created or gained in stature in France: Scaramouche and
Mezzetin for example?
AF: Yes, both actors became particularly celebrated in France – or rather
in Paris. The French capital offered great opportunities to the Italian
actors who were given theatres, money and protection – all of which
they well merited. There were, however, two periods: first, the begin-
nings when Commedia was introduced and became known imme-
diately as ‘Comédie Italienne’, but without gaining a firm footing.
That was still in the 16th century, the century of creation, of come-
dic invention, the age dominated by the great actor, or, even more,
the great actress. The Andreini dominated in an age that really was
golden. Another name which was paramount in this period was that
of Tristano Martinelli, who named his zanni ‘Arlequin’ to please a
foreign public (and for that reason alone). Then came the second
period when the ‘emigres’ arrived in Paris and founded their compa-
nies: Tibierio Fiorilli, a Neapolitan who had invented Scaramuccia

Figure 2.6 A Bolognese Dottore

22 The personnages
in Naples, Frenchified him with great success as Scaramouche in
Paris, where he made a permanent home, making only occasional
returns to his beloved Naples. Angelo Constatini wrote a biogra-
phy of Fiorilli entitled ‘La Vie de Scaramouche’. Nothing, absolutely
nothing in it is true, except the spirit in which it is written, which
gives the reader a good idea of the personnage of Scaramouche.
JR: Which is?
AF: A mixture of First Zanni and a low-life Captain. Very flexible in
his contribution to the scenario. A terrible liar with whirlwind
energy. Dressed entirely in black, white face infarinato, with a
painted-on moustache, a bit like Groucho Marx. The personnage
never gained the universality of Pulcinella as it was so very much
linked to the personality of its inventor, and it is, for this reason,
I don’t much like to include him in my work, although I did once
experiment with a group of older actors, all playing him in a sort
of ‘Scaramuchiata’.
Constantini created for himself the personnage of Mezzetino:
white-faced, a singer and musician, refined, rather soppy, perfect

Figure 2.7 Angelo Constantini as Mezzettino

 The personnages 23
for the paintings of Watteau. The name, Mezetino, or Mezeti, is
Bergamasque and comes from an original which was played in the
mask. Constantini transformed it into an infarinato. Who became
definitively Mezzetin in France.
JR: By the time the Italians were relegated to the Parisian fairs he had
become outrageously camp and given to cross-dressing,
The personnage most transformed in Paris, though, by a succes-
sion of actors, was:
Pedrolino who became Pierrot…
AF: In the fifty scenarios of Flaminio Scala’s ‘Teatro delle favole
rappresentative’ the dominant servant-intriguer is Pedrolino.
Arlecchino appears in the collection in print for the first time,
but only as a minor figure, as Il Capitano’s spalla [go-fer]. Scala
was an old man when he wrote and published the Teatro in 1611,
after the end of his career on stage, though he remained active as
director and manager of the Confidenti. What he transcribed was
the repertoire of the glory years of Commedia, already grown-up
but still very young, the period of the triumph of the Gelosi in
Europe. And, as I said, Pedrolino figures as the principal hatcher
of intrigues, very cunning, very dynamic. Was he played in a
mask? Or was he already white-faced? We still don’t know. There
are no images of the Scala personnages, though we can possibly
deduce some of them from the rare images which ‘perhaps’ show
the Gelosi in action. It is still a mystery as to whether Scala was a
member of the Gelosi or not, but it is certain that he knew them
and that Isabella and Francesco Andreini are recognisable in sev-
eral of the scenarios.
By the time he arrived in Paris with the other personnages,
Pedrolino was certainly white-faced, defined, classic, ready to be
part of the great success of the Comédie Italienne. Again, it’s the
story of a name that was insignificant, to begin with becoming
important by chance, almost by accident due to the success of
a few greatly talented actors. Like Scaramuccia and Mezzetino,
Pedrolino’s name became Frenchified as Pierrot [Little Peter].
However, it was not only the name that evolved in France: impor-
tant changes were made to the original. He became naive, solitary,
silent, long before Debureau made him into the mime artist we
know today.8 Pierrot found himself cast as the dupe, rather than
being Pedrolino the duper.
Let’s go back then to Scala’s Pedrolino: whether played in the
mask or not, he is part of the classical commedia dell’arte. Why did
he become white-faced? I think one reason was that actors knew
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had been aroused to the point of swearing at her. When she died, he
felt strangely that it was a rebuke. He tried to compensate by
increased tenderness toward his débutante daughter.
He found this especially easy because Betty was the image of her
beautiful mother. Indeed if it had not been that she possessed one of
those intrinsically virtuous characters, in whom moral principles are
realized quite naturally without a struggle and without being mentally
formulated—if she had not owed much to heredity—Betty would
have been spoiled by her father’s attentions. As it was, however, she
came out successfully, being one of the belles of that season; and
had since lived with her father for three years. She was now just
twenty-one.
Of course, Mr. Harrow was not one of those disagreeable early-
Victorian fathers who force their daughters into undesirable
marriages; but he had nevertheless a choice for Betty in the back of
his mind, and allowed no opportunity to slip by without a sly hint
concerning the desirability of this gentleman. The gentleman’s name
was Conrad, and he had lately risen to a responsible position in one
of the largest of the down-town brokerage houses. He was noted for
his cleverness, his cool head, and for the astoundingly impersonal
way in which he looked out at the world. He was one of those
“objective” persons, who, if any criticism is to be made of them,
regard life with too slight an emphasis upon the heart. Betty liked him
well enough, though she did not perceive those same virtues in him
which had attracted her father. But she was not yet prepared to
sacrifice for a man already past thirty-five, her present life of
laughter, young love, and gayety.
Do not let me give you a false impression of this young lady. If you
had seen her in any one of a number of “scrapes” into which her gay
life had led her, you would, I think, form a very high estimation of her
character. Clandestine parties in automobiles, with silly young men
who know little beyond the recent baseball scores, and who really do
not know how to kiss a woman—these kinds of things she had no
use for. They bored her, and did not tempt her. Romance, for her,
was much more artistic than this, and much more fundamental.
 She had, indeed, managed to scare up a real romance which
served, for the present at least, as an added enjoyment to a life that
was already a happy one. Betty was cruel in such affairs. She made
it quite plain to her lovers that she was very much in love with them:
but she never allowed them to approach her with anything more
forceful than their eyes. And as her present favorite one day
exclaimed to a confidential friend, “I might as well hang her picture
on the wall and flirt with that.”
This exclamation was carried to Betty’s ears by the said friend,
who, notwithstanding his vows of secrecy, was only human. A few
days after the disclosure Betty sent the following note by way of
consolation:

“Dearest Charles:
“Monty tells me that you want to look at my picture, but that
you haven’t got one to hang on the wall. I’m sorry for this; I
don’t wish to lose any opportunities, even if it only is with a
picture; so I am sending you the very best photograph I have,
hoping that you will not fail to make use of it.
“Yours for the winter,
“Betty.”

This note, and the photograph which followed it, astounded

Charles, in spite of the fact that he was becoming used to Betty’s
impetuosity. Yet, he reflected, he had only known her a few months
and could be excused for his astonishment. He very dutifully placed
the picture upon his dresser, and very dutifully made love to it. He
liked to fill in the colors which the photograph did not reveal. There
was nothing to distinguish them from other observations than a
lover’s except possibly the hair, which was a strange mixture of
brown and gold. The eyes were blue and large. And the nose had a
peculiar curve of its own, which was extremely feminine. Charles
sighed and decided that he would pay a visit to New York; for he was
at that time occupied with journalism in Boston.
 Now Betty was no more anxious to fall seriously in love with
Charles than she was with Mr. Conrad. While the latter was
somewhat uninteresting and unromantic, the former acquitted
himself of those faults only at the expense of poverty and an
unpretentious position on a Boston newspaper. Mr. Conrad could
offer her everything that money could buy; Charles could only bring
her those sacrifices which love often demands. She was no more
willing to save her pennies for Charles than she was to forfeit her
freedom to the middle age of Conrad. And although she did not
reason this out, she decided that something ought to be done in the
way of intimating her convictions to both lovers. The direct antithesis
which they presented amused her and gave her an inspiration. She
would pit them against one another and see what would happen.
Perhaps it was the restless tendency of her generation which made
her want to find out what would happen. Perhaps it was the
skepticism of the age which had entered her heart and had led her to
doubt which of the two goods wielded the greatest motive—romance
or a life of ease. Perhaps, in the true spirit of the modern débutante,
she preferred empirical methods. Or perhaps it was merely
femininity.
At any rate, she invited them both to dinner on the same evening,
and noted with satisfaction Mr. Conrad’s apparent uneasiness upon
perceiving the attractive features and the youthful bearing of the new
arrival. She laughed also to see that Charles merely regarded Mr.
Conrad as an uncle or as an old family friend, and had not, as yet, a
suspicion of the true nature of the case. So she devoted the evening
to Charles.
They were discussing the last Yale Promenade—for Charles was
a Yale man, having graduated only a year ago. Conrad, who had
never gone to college, leaned over with his elbows on his knees, and
tried to enter into the conversation, though puffing nervously his
cigar. Mr. Harrow was getting out the chess board, for he was an
enthusiastic player, and made it a habit to challenge Conrad for an
evening bout—usually, we fear, to that gentleman’s annoyance, and
always to his disgrace.
 “Christy,” said the old man, having set up the chess-men and
arranged the chairs, “what do you say to a game of chess?”
The question was asked in this identical manner every evening,
and Christy, who had never yet found the method of avoiding such
elaborate preparations, invariably answered in the affirmative. This
evening he sat down even more reluctantly, since he had no sooner
begun to play than Betty delicately suggested to Charles that they go
into the parlor to see the family photograph albums.
“That old gentleman looks as if he needed a rest,” said Charles
after they were seated side by side.
Betty gasped. “Do you mean Christy?”
“Christy?—Is that what you call him?”
“Christopher Conrad of Wall Street,” said Betty, puckering her lips
and making a serious frown. Then she laughed. “The idea of your
calling him an old gentleman! Why—why—he’s one of my best
friends!”
“Oh.”
“And he’s just the kind of man to make a woman happy, don’t you
think, Charlie? Plenty of money—and—a fortunate disposition.”
Charles flushed. This seemed something of a pickle. “I’m sorry,”
he said. “I didn’t understand.”
Betty, having achieved that victory, sat back and opened a large
album, which she presently spread out across her knees, and his,
and leaned very close to him in order to point to the pictures of
principal interest.
After many oh’s and ah’s, Charles noticed a distinguished
individual and said: “There’s another man, I suppose, who could
make a woman happy.”
“Why, yes,” said Betty, “that’s Uncle Alfred. But he’s the romantic
type—like you. He hasn’t got a cent of money because he spends it
as fast as he gets it. I’m sure Aunt Susan must have been very much
in love with him before she married him.”
 “Hm,” said Charles, “you seem to emphasize the economic side of
things to-night.”
Betty looked at him quietly. “I always make a point of it when I’m
with you,” she said; “but look here—that’s me when I was six.”
Charles leaned as far over toward her as possible, in order to get
a clear view of the situation. She offered no objection. Presently they
were talking very seriously about his future.
Suddenly Charles said: “I say, Betty, are you engaged to—that—
that young gentleman?”
Betty eyed him. “Of course not,” she said. “Whatever put that into
your head?”
“Oh nothing, except that you have been continually praising him all
evening; and I thought perhaps you had some reason for it.”
“Well, I have,” she said. “I think you ought to profit by his example.
He’s so industrious and calm and dignified. People all talk about him.
We’ve sort of made a model out of him.”
Saying which, she lighted a second cigarette and sat back to look
at Charles in a tantalizing way.
Meanwhile the chess players had been discussing very personal
matters between moves. Conrad had suggested to Mr. Harrow, who
knew his heart, that it was high time for a proposal of marriage to the
young lady in the adjoining room. “Especially,” he said, “since she
seemed to have her head turned by the attentions of this young man
Charles what-do-you-call-him.”
“Saunders,” said Mr. Harrow.
“Yes, Saunders. He hasn’t a cent in the world, has he?”
“No,” said Mr. Harrow, “but you mustn’t be alarmed at that. If you
had brought up a daughter, you wouldn’t be alarmed at that. Your
move.”
“Precisely,” said Conrad, moving his bishop into a position of
extreme peril, where it was promptly snatched up by the opponent’s
queen. “But I believe, sir—and surely you must agree with me—that
the better portion of a woman’s life is that which is devoted to the
care of the home; and that your daughter—”
“Your move again,” said Mr. Harrow, who was now commencing
the final drive of his attack.
“Certainly. That your daughter has seen enough of the world to
realize the futility of flirtation with—”
“Hold on—that move puts you in check. Besides, Christy, it’s
obvious that you ought to protect this rook here, if you want to break
my attack.”
“Certainly. But don’t you agree with me?”
“Eh-what? Yes. But I’ll tell you what, Christy. This modern
generation can’t be forced to do a damn thing. Haven’t I argued with
her? Haven’t I told her she’d end up in a scandal? ’Pon my word,
Christy, you’d better get a hustle on—check.”
Thus the party broke up, somewhat after ten o’clock, much to the
dissatisfaction of both lovers, and much to Betty’s enjoyment. She
was not surprised when Conrad called up the next day and wished to
have tea with her that afternoon—alone, if possible. “Why, yes,” she
said; “it would be delightful. But one can never tell who will drop in.”

It was easy enough, however, to arrange matters so that no one

could drop in. This she did. She was knitting in the parlor when
Conrad arrived. He was resplendent in gray spats and shiny shoes.
She asked him to sit down beside her on the sofa, and poured him a
cup of tea. After this was finished, he began, quite abruptly:
“Elizabeth, you must have noticed that even during your childhood
I have looked upon you, not with the eyes of an elderly friend—which
might, indeed, have been the case—but with those of a lover. I have
never been entirely happy out of your sight, and never so supremely
happy as when favored with a glance of your eyes” (here he looked
at her), “or a touch of your hand” (here he took her hand, which she
allowed him to retain). “I have, of course, understood, my dear, that
your youth and extreme beauty entitled you to—ah—your little fling
in—ah—society. I have for this reason stood aside, and have offered
not the slightest objection, either to your—ah—modernism, or to your
—ah—gayety. But I feel now that you have reached the age of full
discretion. I regard you openly as a woman with whom I am in love.
And I ask you, humbly, to become my wife.”
If Betty was laughing she did not show it. “Oh, Christy!” she
exclaimed. “I—I hadn’t thought. I don’t know. It is such a step.”
“Why, dearest? How would it change you so very much?”
“Change? That’s just it. I’m afraid it wouldn’t change me at all. I
would still love dances and parties and music and Harry Fisher (here
Mr. Conrad started) and Charles Saunders (here he jumped
perceptibly), and cabarets. These things you can’t give me, dear. I
should have to be such a dutiful wife.”
She looked at him in a manner which simply denied the words she
spoke. He thought to himself “This is feminine resistance,” and
sought to embrace her. But she pushed him away gently.
“No, dear. Think it over; you will understand then.”
They talked on for some time—Conrad very ill at ease, Betty quite
delighted with the situation. She felt no compassion for him. He was
such a stupid man not to realize these things. After an hour or so he
left, to think it over.
He had no sooner gone than Charles arrived, breathlessly, and
wanted to know if Betty could go on a party that night.
She laughed at his young enthusiasm. “What kind of a party?” she
asked.
“Oh, just you and I—down to Greenwich Village. We could go to
the Green Wagon and dance and have a little punch—I know them
down there.”
The temptation was almost overpowering. Ordinarily she might
have gone. “Why, Charlie,” she exclaimed, “how perfectly absurd!
How could I think of being seen in a place like that—alone—with
you?”
 Charles grinned, in spite of his disappointment, and said that she
wasn’t likely to be “seen” by anybody she knew—“unless you are in
the habit of going there,” he added.
“Well, I’m not! And I don’t think you ought to have asked me. I
think it’s something of an insult.” Upon which she pouted her lips just
a trifle and fingered one of the books on the table.
To Charles this seemed the extreme of perversity. He gazed at her
for some time without knowing whether to become angry or humble.
To most young lovers, the situation would have called for a certain
amount of humility, inasmuch as the lady seemed to consider herself
deeply insulted. We venture the opinion that the reader would have
asked Betty’s pardon and offered his services in some other and
more refined amusement. In other words, most of us with Charles’
meagre experience in matters of love, would have taken a healthy
bite to the hook. But Charles was impetuous and possessed of a
quick temper, which, while it never lasted for any length of time, often
asserted itself in precarious situations. It had already ducked him
into much hot water and had been the cause of a broken
engagement with a young Boston girl, who, far from having Betty’s
nice scruples, was too much devoid of them in the eyes of her lover.
Meanwhile, we have left Charles and Betty standing there silent. And
the former, being keenly disappointed (for he had come there to offer
her nothing but the best intentions) suddenly looked up and said,
“Well, I’m sorry you see it that way.—So long.” Whereupon he turned
and left the house.
You may imagine Betty’s surprise, which soon turned into anger,
for it seemed that one of the actors in her little play was growing
recalcitrant. She was decidedly not the mistress of the situation,
since Charles had done this most unexpected thing. It was really
horrid of him to react in such a manner. She boiled over
considerably.
On the other hand, Conrad rose immensely in her estimation,
because he reacted precisely as she had intended. As if he had
received written instructions, he announced his arrival as usual by
telephone, had tea with her the following afternoon, and said that “he
had thought the situation over with extreme care, and had come to
the conclusion that, in spite of his more advanced age, he was
perfectly capable of supplying Betty with that life of gayety, music,
and dancing which she so loved: in proof of which he desired her to
accompany him to Greenwich Village that very night.” Betty was so
flattered at the success of her anticipations that she acquiesced
somewhat too enthusiastically, although she had intended to go with
him from the very beginning. By way of making her acceptance a
trifle more lady-like, she urged him to pick some cabaret obscure
enough so that they would not be seen.
Now, in case the reader should accuse me of relying too much
upon Fate in the relation of this tale, I had better acquaint him before
hand with certain facts: namely, that Conrad, having made his
decision, found himself at a loss to know of an obscure and poorly
frequented establishment in Greenwich Village, which should at the
same time be fairly respectable; that he had an artist friend named
Peter, to whom he went for advice; and that Peter, who owned an
establishment himself which seemed to suit Conrad’s needs, was an
intimate friend of Charles Saunders.
Charles, whatever may be said of his good qualities as a lover,
was not the kind to deny himself pleasure on account of a perverse
mistress. In fact, her very perversity aroused in him such a craving to
forget her, such a desire to avoid what he considered a sickly and
unmanly pining, that he was driven to indulge in those passions,
which, without the proper settings, the world considers un-Christian.
Charles would merely have called them unbeautiful. But it is a well-
known fact that the loss of a very delicate and tender beauty, which
we have coveted, leads us to madness, in a vain attempt to beautify
anything which happens to be at hand. Thus it happened that
Charles had been drunk twice since leaving Betty’s house (for that
young lady had been too proud to relent), and had spent his
evenings at his friend Peter’s establishment, called the Green
Wagon, in company with Peter himself and a couple of not-too-
respectable girls.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Charles had no sooner seated
himself and ordered cocktails, than his gaze fell upon what appeared
to him the most beautiful back in the room. He gazed at it steadily,
doubting his own senses, which, however, insisted that the color of
the lady’s hair was a strange mixture of brown and gold. He glanced
at her partner, who was none other than the dignified Conrad, and
who was leaning far over the edge of the table, tea-cup in hand, and
talking with her earnestly. Charles thought that he could even
perceive the reflection of her beautiful eyes in Conrad’s loathsome
ones. Charles shuddered, and muttered to himself, and drank his
liquor violently, ordering more.
Meanwhile, Betty and Conrad were enjoying themselves hugely.
He had been very liberal, and she had taken rather more than she
would ordinarily have considered prudent. Perhaps it was the fact
that she was safe in the care of this old and reliable friend. Perhaps,
too, she wished to compensate for the good time which she had
denied herself with Charles.
“You know, my dear,” said Conrad, gazing at her intensely, “I have
never enjoyed any experience in my life quite so much as this one. I
must thank you for delivering me out of what was proving to be a
monotonous routine. I could be happy forever, this way, with you.”
Whereupon he took her hand, which she had placed carelessly on
the table, and which she allowed him to hold. Indeed, she even gave
his an affectionate squeeze, not realizing perhaps that even old
family friends can be fools. We would, however, blush to set down on
paper the thoughts which were now in Conrad’s mind. We fear he
had attempted to transfer the cruel tactics of business into the affairs
of love. For he saw plainly that there was only one way of winning
Betty for his wife, and that he could never do so while she was in her
more rational environment at home. And although Conrad was not
an unscrupulous man, his present plan could be considered little less
than diabolical.
“You have been such a good girl to come out with me to-night,” he
said—“to give me this little pleasure which I have lacked all my life.”
Betty met his eyes. She could not see or hear things very
distinctly. Yet she was conscious that he had said something kind.
She really liked him a great deal. She squeezed his hand again, and
asked him to light a cigarette for her.
“Dear Christy,” she said, “you have always been such a good
friend to me.”
Soon after this the music started. They rose to dance, and Betty
allowed his cheek to touch hers; for although she was not in the
habit of doing this with everybody, she chose to make an exception
to-night. She had her reasons to justify this. One was that she
wanted to show Conrad how things were done; the other, she said,
was that he was perfectly safe anyway. Whatever motive lay beneath
this we will leave the reader to judge. At present she closed her eyes
and felt rather happy and a trifle drowsy. She was a little surprised,
however, in the middle of the dance, to feel him tighten his arm about
her body and move his lips closer to hers. This was so unlike the
Conrad she knew—the dignified Wall Street broker. She opened her
eyes and looked up at him, and smiled.
Her glance had no sooner left Conrad’s eyes than it fell upon
Charles, who was not far away, and who was watching her over the
head of his partner, with a look of dismay, and, as it seemed to Betty,
even disgust. Her first reaction was one of terror. What a frightfully
compromising meeting. Then she remembered how she had refused
Charles an invitation to this very establishment, without any reason
for so doing. Whereupon she hated herself for the part which she
was now playing. She next looked at Charles’ partner, whose lips
and cheeks were painted, and hated Charles.
“Let’s sit down a moment,” she said to Conrad. “I’m tired.” She
changed seats with him, saying that she wanted to see the dancers
better. What was Charles doing down here, anyway, with a
disreputable woman like that? And after professing to be in love with
her! But he had never—yes, she knew he was in love with her! Well,
she did not love Charles, so it did not matter; only she wished he had
not seen her down here with Conrad; and especially after her refusal
to go with him!
Oh, it all went in such hopeless circles; and here was Conrad
trying to make her take another drink. “It will revive you, my dear,” he
said, “and brace you up.”
She looked at him. “Thank you; I’ve had enough.”
What was to be done?
The dance ended. Charles took his partner to their table. He sat
down, facing Betty. Suddenly Betty had an inspiration. She quite
unexpectedly exclaimed, “Oh!” and waved her hand toward Charles,
who, though surprised by this enthusiasm, responded with a laugh.
He presently arose and walked over to their table, said hello to
Conrad, and rallied Betty on the inconsistencies of Fortune, “Which,”
he said, “will never allow the most secret conspiracies to pass
unobserved by others.” Betty laughed and promised to take the next
dance with him, “If Christy didn’t mind”; and Christy, scowling heavily,
said he did not.
The next dance came, and Charles, realizing that Conrad’s eye
was upon them, retired with her to a corner, where they danced in
slow circles.
“Betty,” he exclaimed, “why did you come here with him—after
refusing, the other day?”
She laughed. “Why, Charles, dear, how foolish. Were you offended
at that? There’s quite a difference in your ages, you know. He is a
very old friend of mine. And he’s such a nice, respectable man.”
“Hm. Well, to tell you quite frankly, I didn’t see anything very
respectable going on during the last dance.”
Betty flushed and bit her lip, and would have been angry had not
embarrassment overcome her.
Charles continued ruthlessly: “The woman I was with said,
‘There’s a happy party for you’, and I looked up—and saw—you.”
“Charles—” began Betty.
“Now wait a minute. Tell me one thing truthfully. Have you ever
been out like this with him before?”
“Why?”
 “Because—well, because I don’t believe you ever have.”
“No, I haven’t. But I don’t see that that has anything to do with it. I
—”
“Just this. I don’t like his looks—that’s all. I judge men by their
eyes, and I don’t like his eyes. They seem especially bad to me to-
night. If you don’t believe me—”
“Well, I don’t believe you. And what I’d like to know is, what are
you doing down here with that—that creature. I should think you
would be ashamed to speak to me!”
It was her turn now to lash him, which she did, a trifle unjustly, in
the manner of a woman.
“I see,” he said, “that we can’t agree.” He began leading her back
to her table.
“You will perhaps think it over to-morrow morning. As for that
fellow there, I warn you, he’s drunk and not altogether responsible
for what he is doing.”
This ended the conversation, and they returned to the table in
silence. Although he did not show it, Charles was overcome with
grief. It seemed like such an unnecessary misunderstanding. He
adopted, in despair, a bravado mood, ordered some more liquor
quite loudly, and consciously acted as brazenly as possible. It was
unfair to him to do this. Betty sat and watched him, on the verge of
tears. She talked in an absent-minded way with Conrad, who was so
provoked that he suggested that they return home.
“No,” replied Betty, “I want to stay until the end.” As a matter of
fact, she could not tear herself away from Charles. She could not
keep her eyes from gazing at him, nor her heart from wishing that he
would stop. She hated Conrad now. He seemed like a silent, grim
barrier between herself and Charles.
She would not drink anything else, but sat there. She saw Charles
take the pudgy hand of the woman next to him. She saw him give
her a drink out of the white china cup. She saw him put his arm
around her and kiss her—passionately it seemed. Oh horrible,
horrible! This modernism!
She felt suddenly ashamed of herself, as though she had driven
Charles to do this. She wished she had not come down here. But
she could not leave.
Just before closing time, she saw Charles and his partner rise and
make preparation to go. The other two members of the party
remained seated. Charles never looked over in her direction, but
took the woman by the arm and escorted her out of the room. They
disappeared behind the green plush curtains.
The room seemed to whirl before her eyes. She arose to follow
them.
“Are you going?” asked Conrad, jumping up. This reminded her
that she had forgotten him.
“Christy,” she said, “I’m sorry. But, Christy, go and bring Charles
back here.”
“I certainly shall not,” he said. “What business have I with Charles
Saunders?”
“Please, Christy, I want to speak to him.”
“No, I shan’t do it.”
“Very well, I’ll go myself.”
He held her arm. “What do you want to speak to him about?” It
seemed to her almost like a snarl.
“Something personal. You shall go.” She eyed him, and he
obeyed.
She sat down and tapped a cup impatiently with her finger.
Presently a figure emerged from the green curtain. It was Conrad.
He crossed the now empty dance-floor at what seemed to her an
infinitely slow pace.
“He’s gone,” he said finally.
 She knew then, suddenly, that he lied; that he had been lying to
her all evening; that Charles was right. She rose abruptly and almost
ran across the room, forgetting her dignity. Pushing aside the
curtains she saw Charles, with his hat and coat on, just going out the
door.
“Charlie,” she cried—“Charlie!”
He turned quickly and looked at her in a perplexed way. There was
not a trace of humility on his features, until he saw her distressed
condition, and realized that the three or four strangers standing
around were laughing at her. He was then overcome with
compassion and led her into a small hallway where they could talk.
“Is anything the matter?” he asked.
“Just you,” she replied. “You probably think I have had too much,
but I am perfectly sober. Oh, Charlie, you—where were you going?”
“I wasn’t going home,” he said, looking toward the ground.
“Charlie, you can’t take care of yourself. You don’t know how.” She
was much disturbed over the thought, although it was a new one to
him. He had just been thinking the same thing about her.
She took hold of the lapels of his coat. “Charlie, don’t go back with
that awful woman?”
He looked at her defiantly. “Why not?” he asked. But the
expression of her eyes was so pitiful and so serious that his heart
relented.
“All right,” he said, “provided that you won’t let Conrad take you
home.”
Betty smiled then. There was humor in the situation.
“It’s all my fault,” she said.
“What’s all your fault?”
“Oh, I’ll tell you about it—soon—soon.”
“Tell me about it on the way home.”
“But Christy?”
 “Oh, Christy be damned!” he said. “Here’s a back way out. You
can get your hat and coat to-morrow.”
He led her down a long corridor and out into the street; where he
took off his overcoat and gave it to her. They walked around the
block and climbed into the car which Charles had borrowed for the
evening, from the friend who “notwithstanding his vows of secrecy,
was only human”.
Thus, when they started down the deserted street, it was after one
o’clock. Christopher Conrad remained behind in the Green Wagon
for nearly an hour, where he ordered a search to be made, at large
expense, and strode imperiously up and down the room. At two
o’clock he called up Mr. Harrow.
RUSSELL W. DAVENPORT.
 The Soul of a Button
Long ago, when I had just reached the age of walking and talking, a
young lady friend of my own age was called by the curious name of
“Buttons”. Possibly the additional touch that her father was the
author of this, that he also called her “Butterball”, and that she was
plump as all properly healthy young ladies of that age should be, will
seem proper explanation for such a christening. But mere physical
attributes can scarcely be hoped to give complete satisfaction, for
the subject is one so much of the spirit that we might almost call it
intangible. Little did I know in those younger years why my lady was
called “Buttons”; little, likewise, did I care; for the name seemed quite
suited to her. “Buttons” and the more formal, less Christian title which
a minister had pronounced over her fitted this childish personality
equally well. Indeed, how remarkable an artistic sense the girl’s
father must have been blessed with, in order to bestow on his
daughter such a charming sobriquet! How he could have thought of
the romance in the conception buttons embodied so delightfully in
his child I could never tell. A happy creative gift he must have had
indeed, since meditation on this whim has inspired in no small
measure the following remarks.
During the period when I thus heard the word buttons for the first
time, my mother habitually dressed me in a white suit, white
stockings and shoes. However much ridicule the white shoes
themselves may have occasioned as I and my fellows more nearly
approached the state of manhood, the buttons on the white shoes
made amends. Occasionally, when my nurse was with a large
button-hook “squeezing tight” a powdery shoe, one of these pearly
buttons would pop off. She was in such a case forced to search out
another one, for I at once engaged the attentions of the stray sheep.
Have you ever imagined a pearly thing more beautiful, and therefore
more precious, than a pearl? Perhaps on account of a semi-opacity
and semi-transparency and yet a transcendency of translucency—or
perhaps it was the slippery smugness of these little objects that
attracted me. At any rate, I was brought to wonder why father did not
have one mounted to wear instead of his pearl scarf-pin. Possibly it
would be too expensive, I thought. For long—I dare not say how long
—they became of an afternoon the center of my observation. I would
watch rather than look at their round surface backed up by a little
metal ring. They seemed to live. But in the midst of such reveries
one of the little things would slip from my fingers and, rolling along
the edge of the carpet, disappear, for all I knew, in the way most
fairies did.
Buttons were kept in a button-house—that is, the buttons which
were not in contemporary use. The button-house on the outside was
brown and oblong and said “Huyler’s Chocolates, New York” in black
script on the top. But, though this might have at first furnished an
allurement to the house, the shining interior sides and a sea of
buttons—white, black, grey, yellow, blue, and green—surging over
the bottom, invited continual revisitations which in the end caused a
far firmer friendship, or love, to be formed between me and this
object than any mere acquaintance could have brought about. As a
violinist flees in dark moments to expression through his violin, a
painter through his pictures, and a writer through his pen, so might
you have seen a child poring over his little button-house, poking in a
finger once in a while to stir the occupants to life, entirely absorbed.
But had you peered in, you would not have seen what he saw in the
little tin box. And I doubt if anyone ever will know what he saw. For I
have forgotten.
With the discarding of childish thoughts and childish ways, one
acquires boyish successors to these respective qualities. And so,
after learning to dress myself, I came to the struggle of buttoning up
clothes. My underwear gave me the most trouble. For who can hope,
except by dint of great practicing, to engineer in a controlled manner
a whole row of buttons up one’s back when, in the hurry of getting
up, a trying task is presented even by the side ones. Although the
appearance of these buttons fell short of attaining a standard of
beauty worthy of present description, the sight of one (say a side
one) at last becoming visible through an obstinate buttonhole
inspired me with no less joy than that felt by children at a puppet
show when they see Humpty Dumpty suddenly burst forth from a
covered box.
Aye! The struggle with these buttons gave them their meaning.
Perhaps we may rather call them villains than heroes. Or perhaps
big, plain-faced dubs with vacant eyes, hard to shove out of the way
because of their very clumsiness. Yet in a temper one way remained
—the sinful, easy road to Hell—the last resort—tearing them off.
A young man does not need to wait till his brass wedding
anniversary (if there be such a one) for his first dealing with that
deceptive, goldlike metal. He owns it first on his blue coat.
Supposing the whole coat not to be brass, we will by elimination and
hypothesis proceed to the buttons. A correct supposition—and more,
for the brass is embossed with an anchor and chain, together with a
crest or other insignia of the kind. These have the virtue (a) of
shininess, and (b) of being like a policeman’s—or a trolley car
conductor’s, bellboy’s, naval officer’s, etc.,—all of whom, finally, are
pretty much policemen. Elders may presume such a coat—or such
buttons—to be unhealthy since they tend to make the wearer stick
out his stomach, to show them off. But critics must as well realize
that this attitude increases the morale, and while mortifying the flesh,
tends to exalt the spirit. Possibly the spirit in this case is not of the
purely heavenly quality that some would-be angels might desire,—
yet it is higher and more serene than the majority of sensualists
would admit.
When Chris, the coachman (pardon me, the chauffeur) stalks into
the kitchen of a wintry evening, mayhap to see Marie,—how could a
person of the brass-button age be expected to conceive of the use of
those great orbs stationed at intervals along the front of Chris’s
great, fuzzy coat. They are mammoth. Their very size confounds
one, especially since, in common with many great objects,
preciousness of detail or surface and delicacy of effect have declined
their rightful position in favor of a world of the gigantesque, to be
widely wondered at. Even thus Chris’s buttons. But wonderful to say,
they are useful. For after Marie had helped him off with his greatcoat,
I tried to lift it slightly from the back of the chair in the corner. My
wonder henceforth was not that the buttons were so big, but that
such a great mountain of heavy stuff as this could be held together
by anything at all!
How broadly the influence of the button world is felt you have had
as yet, dear reader, but little indication. In matters great as the height
and age of a child and in the relations which, physically, at any rate,
he may bear to his father, buttons are most subtle indicators. Thus
when one morning my parents asked me to stand up beside my
father to see how tall I was, we found among us that my topmost
crest of hair reached the second button of his waistcoat. Feet and
inches were no longer needed in the mathematical scale:—their
place was superseded by buttons and buttonholes. “How tall are
you, my boy?” I might be asked. With romantic evasion of the point
and still with a certain exactitude I answered, “Well, I come up as far
as the second button on father’s vest.”
Some day I hope to write An Historie on the Romance of
Buttonholes. Buttonholes, however, are such unbodied beings and
taken on the whole without their buttons, are such lonely objects that
I fear lest the ambitious author should, in entertaining a morbid
affinity for the Universal Desolate, fall a prey to his own affections
and die of an heavenly grief. Have you never felt the pitiful
sentiments put forward at the mere suggestion of the lost
buttonhole? The classic illustration of this type is, of course, the one
on the lapel of a coat. Perhaps the scholar will here accuse me of
having incorrectly used the word buttonhole for a little slit fashioned
to receive no button. In reality this is a buttonhole of many buttons.
At the age when one is just too old to be spanked the aperture first
becomes fully a buttonhole—it accommodates a youth with provision
for his innumerable colored, enamelled buttons emblazoned with
advertisements of charity drives, political campaigns, circus days,
wholesale houses, and the like. The only visible regret on these
occasions is that there is but one of its kind. In necessity invention
presses even normal ones into service. Later on, this receptacle
receives buttonhole bouquets from frail lady-fingers—fragrant forget-
me-nots, spring flowers, or dainty garden nosegays. And in empty