Murdock Pemberton's Poems — Sunny Stalter-Pace

One of the main characters involved with the New York Hippodrome’s history is Murdock Pemberton. He came to New York City from Kansas, worked as the Hippodrome’s press agent, and joined the New Yorker magazine as its first art critic.

A black and white photograph of a white man with glasses in a suit, holding a glass of port in one hand and a cat in the other arm, in front of a wall with paintings. — Image from Llyn Towner. *The New Yorker’s First Art Critic: A Portrait of Murdock Pemberton*. 17 July 2013, https://waamblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/the-new-yorkers-first-art-critic-a-portrait-of-murdock-pemberton/.. *The New Yorker’s First Art Critic: A Portrait of Murdock Pemberton*. 17 July 2013.

Pemberton ends up getting overshadowed in histories of the period because his older brother Brock also moved to New York City and became a fairly successful playwright. They were both part of the Algonquin Round Table group; the Alongonquin, notably, was just across 44th street from the Hippodrome. The Round Table’s first lunch, held for Alexander Woollcott after he returned from WWI, even included a prop fabricated by the Hippodrome costume department, a felt pennant that comically misspelled his name as “A.W.O.L cot." This information comes from an amazing book by Pemberton’s granddaughter Sally Pemberton, which is called Portrait of Murdock Pemberton: The New Yorker’s First Art Critic.

Picture of the Algonquin hotel in September 2021 by epicgenius via Wikimedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquin_Hotel#/media/File:W_44_St_Sep_2021_01.jpg

Pemberton kept working for the Hippodrome through the 1920s. While still penning the usual press releases, he also championed the Hippodrome to more highbrow readers by writing poetry about the Hippodrome. His “Hippodrome Anthology” poems appeared on the front page of the New York Times Culture section, along with theater reviews by Woollcott. One poem is on my mind today. It was on the front page of the Drama section of the Times for October 29, 1922. The poem shares space with current reviews and theatrical gossip, an illustration of actor Robert Warwick in profile, and a notice that Six Characters in Search of an Author would premier the following day at the Princess Theater. The translation of the Pirandello play was “imported from Italy by Brock Pemberton.” Brock’s brother, though, had his own byline: a free-verse poem called “Play for Puritans (From the Hippodrome Anthology.)” The poem reflects on the current Hippodrome show Better Times and its friendly, ambitious international cast. This cosmopolitan stood in even sharper contrast to the boring, mainstream culture of visiting businessmen who see shows at the Hippodrome and then ask “Now what’s the next best thing?” The one thing I always try to get across about 1920s America in my classes is that the era of jazz and flappers also saw a resurgence of white supremacy and immigration restriction. “Play for Puritans” shows how the Hippodrome fought back against that norm in its own way.

The cover for 1922-1923 Hippodrome show *Better Times*, from https://www.tumblr.com/newyorkthegoldenage

“Play for Puritans
(From the Hippodrome Anthology.)

The press agent threads his way
Through the maze of peachtrees,
Neighing horses, baying hounds
In the cavernous Hippodrome basement
Seeking stuffs that might weave into a pattern.
There are young girls from Honolulu,
Paris, Moscow, Madrid, Rome,
One who danced in a bull ring in Juarez,
Two who went on foot from Petersburg to Tokio,
And God knows how many from Newark and Manhattan.
One of these may turn up something
That will round itself out neatly
To fit a Sunday page —
But the only meter is the hurdling horses’ hoofs,
And shaped for Pegasus, a donkey,
A stag’s horn on his head,
Doubling n the brass.
So the stag hunt is gone
And Merrie England turns to Shadwoland.
There’s Long Tack Sam,
He comes of a race that plays the Lute of Jade —
Perhaps he has some verse in him;
But Sam is chuckling at a letter
From his wife in Austria
And has no mood for poetry —
”Looks,” says Sam, “my wife, She’s Viennese;
”She writers: ‘The Emperor’s bedroom suite
”‘You bought for eight hundred dollar
”‘Is now worth half a million.;”
Well, muses the press agent,
There must be an epic here somewhere:
Olga, who broke the prison pen in Tomsk;
Winifred, who danced around the world
In the shadow of Pavlowa’s toes;
Perhaps there’s a thousand epics,
One in every dressing room,
A whirling stream of life
Longer than Spoon River,
Seeking this hospitable stage
From far countries.
But the verse will stay there
For all this Homer.
And the press agent walks back,
Sits in his office, disconsolate
* * *
What is this thing, this lodestone?
As it drew Olga from Russia,
And Long Tack from the Yang-tse-kiang,
It had drawn him from Spring Valley,
Now there was a verse — if you could name it.
Perhaps the burning of the opera house
And the decision of the deacons of the nineteen churches
And the three colleges
That the hand of God had struck the match
And that there should be no more devil’s hall in Spring Valley,
Anyway, here he was,
And here was his assistant
Lured from the same hamlet,
And upstairs the stone-mason’s son,
Serving soda so he could hear the Sunday concerts
And take lessons until Mr. Gazzazza calls him;
And on the desk a letter from home saying,
”Look up the banker’s son—
He went East to enter the ministry,
And his father hears he’s entered
A school for dramatics,”
And all the bankers, the merchants and lawyers,
Coming East each year,
Drop in and say:
”We’ve seen the Hippodrome —
Now what’s the next best thing?”
But none of them asks where the best church is,
Or the Second Baptist,
And the press agent wished
Some one would tell Spring Valley
That to keep its prided population
It would do well to scrap a few churches
And build of the stone a good theatre,
And that there’s been several ships docked since the Mayflower.

”

— Murdock Pemberton

I definitely feel like this poem speaks to the present moment, a week into the new administration. I need to think more about how to articulate my feelings about both. In the meantime, here’s a picture of Long Tack Sam’s family. Assuming that’s his Austrian wife in the middle.