Hors d’Oeuvre

The Chaplains by Jackie Coogan

Travel broadens the mind. The Kid left for America, where his success was prodigious. According to the latest news, cabled throughout the universe, he was playing at the Tennis Club of New York, before a crowd estimated at 100,000 people, and large police forces had to be employed to make way for him in the flood of his admirers... It is not that the young man plays tennis better than anyone else, although he certainly won the game (it is easier to let the Prince of Wales win a game of tennis than a steeplechase on the Liverpool course; for, to win a steeplechase, one must stay on one's horse until the end. It is not because of his sporting merit that the Americans are giving the Heir this delirious welcome.

It is because America is a very young people and the Prince of Wales represents something very old. It is because America is a truly republican and democratic country, and the Prince of Wales embodies the autocratic tradition in its most conventional, most decorative, most absurd form, an autocratic tradition freed from any consideration of the personal merit of the autocrat.

But, during this time, America sends another miracle Kid to the old continent. This Kid is not a son of a family; he is a head of a family, whose parents are reduced to a humiliating and somewhat ridiculous condition. Jackie Coogan, at nine years old, is "worth" twenty-one million; he is a very American phenomenon, worthy of exciting the admiration of the most spiritual people on earth...

Ah! we have artists, famous artists, not to mention the photogenic kids who swarm on the slopes of the Butte... But, in our country, no artist has ever earned twenty-one million; we have lots of kids-at-Poulbol, but we don't have the Kid, the only one, the one with a checkbook and who crosses Paris like a sovereign on a trip, monopolizing the front page of the newspapers for the report of his actions of the day before and the program of his actions for the next day...

Hooray for the Kid of George V, who will inherit the Empire of the Indies And long live the Kid of the Cinema, who, in front of the lens, has already collected twenty-one million! Jackie Coogan did not go to lay a palm on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and we must be grateful to him for this truly exceptional delicacy. But he did visit Versailles, where he pronounced historical words, carefully collected by zealous gazetteers. And, in the morning, he had gone to be crowned at Notre-Dame.

One of our colleagues, and not the least, published a delicious and remarkable document about this ceremony. It is a shot in which we see the child of the miracle flanked by two obsequious vicars, bowing, hat in hand, and, to quote the text that accompanies the photograph, "smiling at the triumphant youth of Jackie Coogan". Twenty-one million!

Certainly, Jesus, when he was Jackie Coogan's age, was not received as kindly in the Temple where he presented himself to explain to the Doctors of the Law the elementary principles of religion. But Jesus Christ had not earned twenty-one million at the cinema; if he had earned twenty-one million, the Jewish priests of Palestine would have lavished excessive marks of respect on him from the outset. Although my reputation as an unbeliever is firmly established, it bothers me a little that two ecclesiastics belonging to the clergy of Notre-Dame posed, for a flashy publicity, in a photogenic group whose central ornament was a disgustingly rich little ham.

It bothers me, because it spoils the admirable ceremony of Holy Thursday... On that day, to commemorate the most beautiful gesture of Christ, priests wash the feet of poor children... If the child has twenty-one million, the gesture is much less admirable.

Priests can interpret the Gospel words thus: "Wash the feet of the poor child once a year. But, whenever you have the opportunity, lick the feet of the rich child." All the same, this interpretation seems to me to be slightly tainted with heresy.

G. DE LA FOUCHARDIÈRE,