2.1 Romancing Oneself Into a Nation: The Star Spangled Manner by Peter B. Kyne (1926)

We’ve lived with "adventure" for ten days. Perhaps to the point of repetition. In the last posts I returned to the same question: what are the conditions that define “adventure?” Grant Overton, the editor of the collection, gave his own account in the introduction and it may make the most sense to chalk up the term to contingency. Whatever the necessary and sufficient conditions are, I certainly haven’t figured them out. However, as I wrote before the connections between imperialist desire and colonialism were foundational to most of the first volume. 

Peter B. Kyne

And now we turn to “romance.” After the first story I’m not sure if romance will refer to stories of love and explicit sexuality or those invested in the slippery smoothness of Coleridge’s Xanadu. Either vision will be interesting as most of the stories (except for “The Dummy Chucker”) in the first volume detailed certain undercurrents of obligation within homosocial relationships. Values were important to men whether in the system of life unshared by the Lord of Brisetout and Villon in Stevenson’s story or the lifelong debt in O. Henry’s “Friends in San Rosario.”

For Bill Emlow, an Englishman of royal lineage, appearance and the performance of identity are fluid and contextual. Emlow is the focus of Peter B. Kyne’s “The Star Spangled Manner” a tale of life on the border of Northwest America and Canada. Where is the romance? Along that border are the supposedly beautiful possibilities of cowboy life. Kyne shares this vision with the intricacies involved in the long courtship between Emlow and Lady Angela.

The table of contents for Volume 2 "Romance"

This is a slow moving story and, to be upfront, perhaps the least interesting tale read so far. “The Star Spangled Manner” is front-loaded with 7 pages of a framing device where the narrator is invited to Dad Tully’s ranch. Only after the two discuss marriage does it all begin to unfold, as Kyne writes: “And then Dad proceeded to tell the story of Bill Emlow.”

A synopsis: Bill Emlow is the 13^th descendent of English royalty. Living in America in the 1910s he sheds his accent and fashions himself first and foremost as a strong American (this is where Kyne’s values are). He is a straight shooter, he doesn’t muck about, he does his work and doesn’t waste time. When he is introduced to a wonderful neighbor following a dispute about cattle, he falls in love and endeavors to marry her. Lady Angela, prefers royalty, but Emlow wants to be appreciated as an individual, isolated from his heritage.

He is smart and cunning: when a man named Lord Bardleigh is engaged to marry Angela, he immediately understands that the lord is a con-artist. The narrative details Emlow’s life, routing out the faux-lord, building  a successful life before going to serve in the military during World War I. For Emlow the is a turning point, as he first adopted the mentality of an apprehensive American isolationism—as he saw it the Germans (who fought in large numbers for the Union) were more helpful than the British were in the Civil War. When he returns he gets together with Lady Angela, though he reveals his past as well.

This story first appeared in 2 issues of Colliers in 1926, when Overton was the editor

Kyne’s work is known as somewhat didactic. It is clear from the Amazon.com reviews of his novel The Go-Getter: A Story that Tells You How to Be One that he is invested in what the socialist Max Weber famously described as the “Protestant Work Ethic.” These are stories of his working hard is a virtue itself—though a virtue that, as a go-getter might have it, will bring financial recompense if not spiritual satisfaction. It is unsurprising that The Go-Getter, which was a mammoth success in 1921, was published by William Randolph Hearst, an avaricious tycoon of the industry. My understanding of Hearst is most informed by the little I know of his love for colonialism, and Orson Welles’ depiction of Kane Citizen Kane (1941.) But there are no downfalls in Kyne’s story. There is instead a kind of nativist romance. In “The Star Spangled Manner” — a title that equates the national anthem with a way of being — nationalities carry with them specific dispositions. These are framed as humorous, but true.

As Emlow explains: “A Britisher knows exactly where he or she belongs in the body politic, and any time he or she gets out of that class and finds somebody smart enough to remind ‘em of it, it’s never an occasion for hard feelings. The only crime I could commit with Lady Angela would be in lettin’ her get away with murder. Whether a feller is right or wrong doesn’t matter. It’s lowerin’ the tail an’ bendin’ the neck that gravels that class of Britisher.”

Dialect is emphasized to establish some sort of folk wisdom—rhetoric reflects a set of values. The excerpt above carries with it an interesting commentary are the rigidity of the English class system. It is also a passage carried forward, in the narrative, more by humor than critique. In the country where one is supposed to be able to remake themselves, ignoring past privilege (Emlow comes from royalty) signals how America is a nation where attitude and energy are meant to matter rather than history and tradition.

And yet in this world there is an “American way o’ doin’ things.” For Emlow to know what that way is, Kyne has to flick his wrist or glide his thumb and forefinger to mark word after word with an apostrophe.

Kyne is yet another popular short story writer that had his hands in Hollywood. Well, sort of.  Many of his stories were taken up as the outlines for films. Kyne didn’t always get credit. But he also worked in the industry, perhaps most famously penning The Three Godfathers, which was remade numerous times, most notably with John Wayne. 

This marks the 2^nd author who has been adapted by the director known for American Western: John Ford. (Ford’s 1924 film The Iron Horse is based on a story by John Russell). Ford and Kyne share an interest in a good ole’ fella vision of America. Yet Ford’s landscapes always suggested a world bigger than he could conceptualize or reckon with. He sculpted celluloid. Kyne’s world, seems locked into the linguistic tics that present themselves as “authentic.” It is assured and totalizing, vacant in its preachiness of promise.

That is clear in the story’s nationalism. The nationalist sentiment closes out the tale as Bill and Dad argue who “won” World War I, the British or the Americans. Dad wants Bill to admit the Americans won, especially since he has repeatedly proclaimed his American identity. Dad wants Bill to “own up.” But all Bill can say is “we won.” Who is this we? This is played for laughs. I didn’t really laugh.

We’ve entered the volume titled romance. We end the first story ends with a romance I should have expected: the love between Lady Angela and Bill Emlow. Still to get there I was lethargically pulled through another romance, this one between two men rallying claims of national superiority