A Shorn Strindberg

Marguerite Swawite.

Had Mme. Strindberg deliberately planned to revenge herself upon him who was once her husband, she could have devised no subtler way of wounding that redoubtable sham-hater than the manner in which she chose to speak of him before the Chicago public. As I sat in the prickly darkness, with its accompanying rumble of Beethoven, I half-expected the musty atmosphere of legerdemain to be scattered by the great August’s derisive laughter. But the promise of occult things was not fulfilled, for with the cessation of the music came a rosy glow, and then a gracious lady with a wistful presence. And she seemed quite at ease in her mise en scène.

She read to us of herself, of Prince Hassan’s feast in Paris, of her theatrical meeting with Strindberg, and of how he talked with her all the evening and later walked home with her; of how she stopped on the bridge to toss snowballs and Strindberg dried her hands upon his handkerchief; and of how she dreamed of him that memorable night—a strange symbolic dream. And as she read, her face was as quiet water rippled by gentle vagrant breezes.

The remainder of the meeting was distinguished by the fact that there was light, but the spirit of the seance persisted. Madame pleaded for questions, but the little audience seemed frozen into inarticulateness. Those few who did venture stammered for a moment and then drooped into silence. Madame, however, was not discouraged. She read us Strindberg’s views on divorce. In reply to the mumbled questions she replied that she considered eugenics impractical and indelicate, that her husband had believed intensely in peace and had written a beautiful story in its favor, which she had meant to read us but to which an accident had occurred; that Strindberg was a democrat in theory but an aristocrat in feeling; that he was not a misogynist, but had reviled bad women because he loved good women; that The Father was a plea for the sanctity of the home, the sanctity of woman.... Until it seemed that she was not speaking of the bitter-tongued, fiery-souled Swede, but of some complacent American, say, Augustus Thomas. And then someone said that it was past ten, and Madame thanked us and disappeared.

As we swung down Michigan Avenue in the fresh night air I smiled to think that over across the water they still thought of us as the “hayseed” among the nations to whom the “gold brick” might be disposed with impunity—and with exceeding profit. But we are learning....