Bedouins — Story, Setting & Ideas

The Caruso Anecdote and the Critical Persona

In the chapter “Caruso on Wheels,” Huneker recounts a day traveling with the tenor and other opera figures. The scene is deliberately anti-climactic: singers are “very human,” not “gloomy, grand, and peculiar.” Huneker describes Caruso whistling the Rataplan, the blond Ordynski wishing a Polish curse on Otto Weil, and the author flying home to Flatbush in a “trusty Glenn Curtiss hydro-aeroplane.” The tone is wry and self-deprecating, with Huneker positioning himself as an observer who punctures romantic notions of artistic life. This anecdote, though brief, exemplifies how the book mixes personal narrative with critical commentary, often undercutting the mystique of its subjects.

Polemic Against Vocal Teaching Fraud

The chapter “Sing and Grow Voiceless” opens with a blistering attack on fake singing teachers: “We have had over forty years’ experience in the fair land of song, a scarred battle-field strewn with the shards and wrecks of beautiful voices.” Huneker calls for legal protection against “vocal parasites,” comparing the lack of regulation in music teaching to the medical profession. He then pivots to the “comic side,” mocking pamphlets like “How to Be Happy Though Divorced.” This shift from outrage to absurdity is characteristic of Huneker’s style. The passage shows that the book is not solely celebratory; it includes sharp social criticism grounded in the author’s long observation of the music world.

Structure and the Bedouin Metaphor

The book’s structure—two parts, the first on Mary Garden and the second titled “Idols and Ambergris”—suggests a deliberate miscellany. The catalog subjects list only Garden and music criticism, but the excerpts include chapters on “Calico Cats,” “Grindstones,” and “The Vision Malefic.” The dedication’s Flaubert quote, “I prefer the desert, I return to the Bedouins who are free,” frames the collection as a refusal to be confined to a single topic. Huneker’s voice is that of a cultural wanderer, moving from soprano to circus, from Poe to Brahms. Readers expecting a focused study of Garden will find instead a series of essays linked by the author’s personality and his skeptical, erudite perspective.

Readers should approach Bedouins as a collection of occasional pieces rather than a unified work. The catalog subjects underrepresent the range of topics Huneker covers. The excerpts suggest that the book rewards browsing: the Caruso anecdote, the diatribe against vocal teachers, and the eclectic chapter titles all point to a writer more interested in the free play of ideas than in systematic analysis. Huneker’s critical persona—worldly, ironic, and opinionated—is the true subject.

Reading Huneker’s Bedouins, I kept thinking of wandering free spirits, and then my mind drifted to a quieter kind of restlessness—finding humor in worn-down corners of life. There’s a fondness in both, a gentle shrug at the world’s oddities. That same tender curiosity lives in The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 01 (of 11) Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original Illustrations — Themes and Context, like an old friend’s familiar chuckle.