Heywood Broun

Large, shambling, often ill at ease, kindly, yet with that curious detachment which marks those who are much absorbed in their own thought, Heywood Broun invariably impresses one as possessing a child-like eagerness. Whether as sport writer, feature writer, critic of books or plays, colyumnist, essayist or novelist, his writing is characterized by the same freshness, the same accuracy of reporting. He was born in Brooklyn. For a time he attended Harvard University. His greatest enthusiasm is, perhaps, for baseball, though he likes poker. I like best to think of him in his office at the New York “World”, about fifteen minutes before copy is due for the morning paper, surrounded by papers, letters from contributors, his own jottings, what not, spinning a yarn from nowhere, gathering an opinion from the wind as it whistles around the tower of the Pulitzer Building. His wife is Miss Ruth Hale, writer and motion picture critic. His child is well known to the public through his father’s writings as “H 3d.” I have attended football games, theatres, dinners, and heaven save me, teas, with Mr. Broun. He always shows fresh curiosity for events as they unfold, a gentle sympathy for all types of men and a thorough disrespect for all forms of snobbery. It is natural that in the following essay he should defend the somewhat frowned on champion of the ring. Dempsey’s child-like determination could not but appeal to the mind of Mr. Broun. If he were not so clever, he would be sentimental; as it is, he is thoroughly human.

MR. DEMPSEY’S FIVE-FOOT SHELF

It is hardly fair to expect Jack Dempsey to take literature very seriously. How, for instance, can he afford to pay much attention to George Bernard Shaw who declared just before the fight that Carpentier could not lose and ought to be quoted at odds of fifty to one? From the point of view of Dempsey, then, creative evolution, the superman and all the rest, are the merest moonshine. He might well take the position that since Mr. Shaw was so palpably wrong about the outcome of the fight two days before it happened, it scarcely behooves anybody to pay much attention to his predictions as to the fate of the world and mankind two thousand years hence.

Whatever the reason, Jack Dempsey does not read George Bernard Shaw much. But he has heard of him. When some reporter came to Dempsey a day or so before the fight and told him that Shaw had fixed fifty to one as the proper odds on Carpentier, the champion made no comment. The newspaper gossiper, disappointed of his sensation, asked if Dempsey had ever heard of Shaw and the fighter stoutly maintained that he had. The examination went no further but it is fair to assume that Dempsey did know the great British sporting writer. It was not remarkable that he paid no attention to his prediction. Dempsey would not even be moved much by a prediction from Hughie Fullerton.

In other words literature and life are things divorced in Dempsey’s mind. He does read. The first time we ever saw Dempsey he discussed books with not a little interest. He was not at his training quarters when we arrived but his press agent showed us about—a singularly reverential man this press agent. “This”, he said, and he seemed to lower his voice, “is the bed where Jack Dempsey sleeps”. All the Louises knew better beds and so did Lafayette even when a stranger in a strange land. Washington himself fared better in the midst of war. Nor can it be said that there was anything very compelling about the room in which Dempsey slept. It had air but not much distinction. There were just two pictures on the wall. One represented a heavy surf upon an indeterminate but rather rockbound coast and the other showed a lady asleep with cupids hovering about her bed. Although the thought is erotic the artist had removed all that in the execution.

Much more striking was the fact that upon a chair beside the bed of Dempsey lay a couple of books and a magazine. It was not The Bookman but “Photo Play”. The books were “The Czar’s Spy” by William Le Queux, “The Spoilers” by Rex Beach, and at least one other western novel which we have unfortunately forgotten. It was, as we remember it, the Luck of the Lazy Something or Other. The press agent said that Jack read quite a little and pointed to the reading light which had been strung over his bed. He then went on to show us the clothes closet and the bureau of the champion to prove that he was no slave to fashion. We can testify that only one pair of shoes in the room had grey suède tops. Then we saw the kitchen and were done.

There had been awe in the tones of the conductor from the beginning. “Jack’s going to have roast lamb for dinner to-night”, he announced in an awful hush. Even as we went out he could not resist lowering his voice a little as he said, “This is the hat rack. This is where the champion puts his hat”. We had gone only fifty yards away from the house when a big brown limousine drew up. “That”, said the press agent, and this time we feared that he was going to die, “is Jack Dempsey himself”.

The preparation had been so similar to the first act of “Enter Madame” that we expected temperament and gesture from the star. He put us wholly at ease by being much more frightened than anyone in the visiting party. As somebody has said somewhere, “Any mouse can make this elephant squeal”. Jack Dempsey is decidedly a timid man and we found later that he was a gentle one. He answered, “Yes sir” and “No sir” at first. If we had his back and shoulders we’d have a civil word for no man. By and by he grew a little more at ease and somebody asked him what he read. He was not particularly strong on the names of books and he always forgot the author, which detracts somewhat from this article as a guide for readers. There were almost three hundred books at his disposal, since his training quarters had once been an aviation camp. These were the books of the fliers. Practically all the popular novelists and short story writers were represented. We remember seeing several titles by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Irvin Cobb, Zane Grey, Rupert Hughes, and Rex Beach. Older books were scarce. The only one we noticed was “A Tale of Two Cities”. This Dempsey had not read. Perhaps Jack Kearns advised against it on account of the possible disturbing psychological effects of the chapter with all the counting.

Dempsey said he had devoted most of his time to western novels. When questioned he admitted that he did not altogether surrender himself to them. “I was a cowboy once for a while”, he said. “There’s a lot of hoakum in those books”. But when pressed as to what he really liked his face did light up and he even remembered the name of the book. “There was one book I’ve been reading”, he burst out; “it’s a fine book. It’s called ‘The Czar’s Spy’.”

“Perhaps”, suggested Ruth Hale of the visiting party, “a grand duke would say there was a lot of hoakum in that.”

Dempsey was not to be deterred by any such higher criticism. Never having been a grand duke, he did not worry about the accuracy of the story. It was in a field far apart from life. That we gathered was his idea of the proper field for fiction. In life Dempsey is a stern realist. It is only in reading that he is romantic. A more impressionable man would have been disturbed by the air of secrecy which surrounded the camp of Carpentier. That never worried Dempsey. He prepared himself and never thought up contingencies. He did not even like to talk fight. None of us drew him out much about boxing. Somebody told him that Jim Corbett had reported that when he first met Carpentier he had been vastly tempted to make a feint at the Frenchman to see whether or not he would fall into a proper attitude of defense.

“Yes”, giggled Dempsey, “and it would have been funny if Carp had busted him one on the chin.” This seemed to him an extraordinarily humorous conceit and he kept chuckling over it every now and then. While he was in this good humor somebody sounded him out as to what he would do if he lost; or rather the comment was made that an old time fighter, once a champion, was now coming back to the ring and had declared that he was as good as he ever was.

“Why shouldn’t he?” said Dempsey just a little sharply. “Nobody wants to see a man that says he isn’t as good as he used to be.”

“Would you say that?” he was asked.

“Well”, said Dempsey, and this time he reflected a little, “it would all depend on how I was fixed. If I needed the money I would. I’d use all the old alibis.”

We liked that frankness and we liked Dempsey again when somebody wanted to know how he could possibly say anything in the ring during the fight to “get the goat of Carpentier”. “We ain’t nearly well enough acquainted for that”, said Dempsey and we gathered that he was of the opinion that you must know a man pretty well before you can insult him. The champion is not a man to whom one would look for telling rejoinders, though he has needed them often enough in the last year and a half. Criticism has hurt him, for he is not insensitive. He is merely inarticulate. This must have been the reason which prompted some sporting writers to feel that he would come into the ring whipped and down from the fact that he had been able to make no reply to all the charges brought against him. It did not work out that way. Dempsey did have a means of expression and he used it. There is no logic in force and yet a man can say, “Is that so?” with his fists. Dempsey said it. As the Freudians have it, fighting is his “escape”. Decidedly he is a man with an inferiority complex. But for his boxing skill he would need literature badly. As it is he does not need to read about hairbreadth escapes. He has them, such as in the second round of the fight on Boyle’s Thirty Acres. In summing up we can only add that as yet literature has had no large effect upon the life of Jack Dempsey.

But what does Carpentier read? That we must confess was part of our assignment. We have nothing to report. The challenger was in secret training throughout. Evidently his trainers hoped to worry Dempsey by not letting him know whether Carpentier was with Racine or Paul de Kock. And all the time Dempsey was sticking to “The Czar’s Spy” and worrying not at all. We don’t know then whether or not Carpentier is interested in literature or influenced by it, but the drama has made him. He is drama. No piece of acting was ever so perfect as the tragedy which Carpentier played in Jersey City. We liked Dempsey but no sooner had Carpentier come into the ring than we began to cheer him and kept it up. The crowd cheered him when he took off his bath-robe, when he was photographed, when he almost knocked Dempsey down, and when he was himself knocked down. Leaving the ring a little later, he was cheered as no other beaten fighter has ever been cheered in America.

We wish every young American playwright who is about to write a tragedy had seen the fight. They would realize then that the school founded by Eugene O’Neill is based on a misconception of the spirit of tragedy. It does not lie in the fact that man is small and helpless in the hands of fate which outclasses him in reach and in weight. The tragic fact is that man is almost good enough to win in his inspired moments. He can rock fate but he cannot down it. That is the pity of the struggle. But come to think of it there is nothing so terribly sorrowful in tragedy after all. Fate, like Jack Dempsey, wins the title; but the gesture remains with man, the light heavyweight. As he goes down he hears no slow toll of numbers. All that is drowned out by the cheering.