into a unit.' One thinks largely
in terms of national integers, of which the United States is one.
Like a historian of the old school or a writer of diplomatic notes,
one conceives of what the United States is doing about this or that.
It is taken, as schoolmen say, as an entity. Then one happens to
receive a newspaper from one of the smaller towns, from any town,
,
that is, smaller than New York-and sometimes Chicago. Then
one gets a momentary shock. One is brought back to earth. And
the earth is just what it used to be. It is a loose collection of
houses, of streets, of neighbourhoods, villages, farms, towns. Each
of these has an intense consciousness of what is going on within
itself in the way of fires, burglaries, murders, family jars, weddings,
and banquets to esteemed fellow citizens, and a languid drooping
interest in the rest of the spacious land.
Very provincial ? No, not at all. Just. local, just human, just
at home, just where they live. Of course, the paper has the Asso-
ciated Press service or some other service of which it brags. As a
newspaper which knows its business, it prints "national” news, and
strives assiduously for “national” advertisements, making much on
provocation of its “national” circulation. But somehow all this
wears a thin and apologetic air. The very style of the national
news reminds one of his childhood text-book in history, or of the
cyclopaedia that he is sometimes regretfully obliged to consult. Let
us have this over as soon as possible and get to something interest-
ing, it all seems to say. How different the local news. Even in
the most woodenly treated item there is flavour, even if only of the
desire to say something and still avoid a libel suit.
Yet there is a strange phenomenon noted. These same papers
that fairly shriek with localisms devote a discreet amount of space
to the activities of various Americanization agencies. From time
to time, with a marked air of doing their duty, there are earnest
editorials on the importance of Americanization and the wickedness


JOHN DEWEY
685
-
of those who decline to be either Americanized or to go back where
they came from. But these weighty and conscientious articles lack
the chuckle and relish one finds in the report of the increase of the
population of the town and of its crime wave.
One vaguely wonders whether perhaps the recalcitrants who are
denounced may not also be infected by the pervading spirit of
localism. They decline to get Americanized for the same reason
they put up with considerable annoyance rather than go back. They
are chiefly concerned with what goes on in their tenement house,
their alley, their factory, their street. If a “trained mind” — like
the writer's, for example-can't tell very well from these articles
just what Americanization is, probably the absorbed denizens of
the locality are excusable for not trying to find out more about it.
One gathers of course that Americanization consists in learning a
language strangely known as English. But perhaps they are too
busy making the American language to devote much time to study-
ing the English.
In any case, the editorial emphasis on Americanism stands in
extraordinarily vivid contrast to the emphasis in the news columns
on local interests. The only things that seem to be “nation-wide"
are the high cost of living, prohibition, and devotion to localisms.
A Pacific Coast newspaper just reaching Peking contains on its
front page the correspondence between President Wilson and Sec-
retary Lansing about the latter's resignation. Doubtless in London
the news was of the first importance. The San Francisco editor
was too good a journalist not to print the entire correspondence
faithfully. But it was entirely overshadowed by a local graft case
as to head-lines, space given, and editorial comment.
This remark is not a complaint. It is merely a record of a fact
easily verified in almost any city in the United States. The editor
doubtless sympathized with the feeling of the mass of the readers
that a civic reformation at home was more important than a
cabinet revolution in Washington; certainly more important for the
"home town,” and quite likely for the country-the country, mind
you, not the nation, much less the state.
For the country is a
spread of localities, while the nation is something that exists in
Washington and other seats of government.
Henry Adams somewhere remarks in effect that history is a
record of victories for the principle of unity in form and of plurality


686
AMERICANISM AND LOCALISM
in effect. The wider the formal, the legal unity, the more intense
becomes the local life. The defeat of secession diversified the South
even more than the North, and the extension of the United States
westward to the ocean rendered New England less exclusively a
New Englandish homogeneity and created a unique New York, a
New York clustering about Wall Street. When we have a United
States of the World, doubtless localism will receive its last release
—until we federate with the other planets. And yet there are those
who fear internationalism as a menace to local independence and
variety!
I am not, however, essaying a political treatise. The bearing
of these remarks is upon the literary career of our country. They
perhaps explain why the newspaper is the only genuinely popular
form of literature we have achieved. The newspaper hasn't been
ashamed of localism. It has revelled in it, perhaps wallowed is the
word. I am not arguing that it is high-class literature, or for
the most part good literature, even from its own standpoint. But it
is permanently successful romance and drama, and that much can
hardly be said for anything else in our literary lines.
The exception, as usual, proves the fact. There are journals of
hundreds of thousands—nay, millions of circulation, which claim
to be national, and which certainly are not local, even when they
locate their stories in New York. This seeming exception is ac-
counted for by the simple fact that localities in the United States
are connected by railways and roads upon which a large number
of passenger trains and motor cars are moving from one place to
another. There is an immense population constantly in transit.
For the time being they are not localists. But neither are they
nationalists. They are just what they are—passengers. Hence
the S-E-P- and other journals expressly designed for
this intermediate state of existence. Besides, the motor car fugi-
tives must have advertisements and pictures of their cars. What
becomes of all these periodicals? The man who answered this ques-
tion would be the final authority on literature in America. Pending
investigation, my hypothesis is that the brakeman, the Pullman
porter, and those who clean out the street-cars inherit them.
Now the thing that makes these periodicals somewhat thin as
literature (even if they provide exciting reading matter for those
in a state of passage from one locality to another) is that they have


JOHN DEWEY
687
to eliminate the local. They subsist for those who are going from
one place and haven't as yet arrived at another. They cannot have
depth or thickness—nothing but movement. Take all the localities
of the United States and extract their greatest common divisor,
and the result is of necessity a crackling surface. The bigger and
more diversified the country, the thinner the net product.
Isn't this the explanation also of the "serious" novel, of its com-
parative absence and its comparative failure when it does come
into existence? It aims at universality and attains technique.
Walt Whitman exhausted the cataloguing of Iralities, and it
hasn't occurred to the novel writer to dig down in some locality
mentioned in the gazetteer till he strikes something. The writers
of short stories have done something but they have hardly got be-
yond what is termed local colour. But a locality exists in three
dimensions. It has a background and also extensions. I haven't
read Mary Wilkins' stories of New England life for many years,
but I have only to think of them to recover the whole feel of the
life. They are local with a faithfulness that is beyond admiration.
But they lack background.
To invert a sentence of Mr. Oppenheim's: The persons in them
are characters but they have no manners. For manners are a
product of the interaction of characters and social environment, a
social environment of which the background, the tradition, the de-
scent of forces, is a part. And in Mary Wilkins' stories, as in
the New England she depicts, the traditions are the characters.
They have become engrained. There is no background with which
they may interact. There are only other characters and the bleak
hills and the woods and fields. All, people and nature alike, exist,
as the philosophers say, under the form of eternity. Like Mel-
chisedek, they have no ancestry or descent-save from God and
the Devil. Bret Harte and Mark Twain have dimensions as well
as colour. But the former never attained adequate momentum for
lack of a suitable audience. The latter had an audience when he
came East but it was an alien one. He tamed himself lest he should
shock it too much. His own, his real, locality could not be pro-
jected on the Eastern locality without reserve. He believed in his
locality, but he believed in his audience more.
We are discovering that the locality is the only universal. Even
the suns and stars have their own times as well as their own places.


688
AMERICANISM AND LOCALISM
a
This truth is first discovered in abstract form, or as an idea. Then,
as Mr. Oppenheim points out in the February Dial, its discovery
creates a new poetry—at least so I venture to paraphrase him.
When the discovery sinks a little deeper, the novelist and dramatist
will discover the localities of America as they are, and no one will
need to worry about the future of American art. We have been
too anxious to get away from home. Naturally that took us to
Europe even though we fancied we were going around America.
When we explore our neighbourhood, its forces and not just its
characters and colour, we shall find what we sought. The beginning
of the exploring spirit is in the awakening of criticism and of
sympathy. Heaven knows there is enough to criticize. The desired
art is not likely to linger long, for the sympathy will come as soon
as we stay at home for a while. And in spite of the motor car,
moving about is getting difficult. Things are getting filled up-
and anyway we only move to another locality.


THE FOURTH CANTO
1
BY EZRA POUND
Palace in smoky light,
Troy but a heap of smouldering boundary-stones,
ANAXIFORMINGES! Aurunculeia!
Hear me. Cadmus of Golden Prows;
The silver mirrors catch the bright stones and flare,
Dawn, to our waking, drifts in the green cool light;
Dew-haze blurrs, in the grass, pale ankles moving.
Beat, beat, whirr, thud, in the soft turf under the apple trees,
Choros nympharum, goat-foot with the pale foot alternate;
Crescent of blue-shot waters, green-gold in the shallows
A black cock crows in the sea-foam;
And by the curved carved foot of the couch,
claw-foot and lion head, an old man seated
Speaking in the low drone:
“Ityn!
"Et ter flebiliter. Ityn, Ityn!
“And she went toward the window and cast her down,
"All the while, the while, swallows crying:
"Ityn!
“"It is Cabestan's heart in the dish."
""It is Cabestan's heart in the dish?
""No other taste shall change this."
And she went toward the window,
the slim white stone bar
Making a double arch;
Firm even fingers held to the firm pale stone;
Swung for a moment,
and the wind out of Rhodez
Caught in the full of her sleeve.
the swallows crying:
Ityn! Ityn!”


690
THE FOURTH CANTO
a
Actaeon. ..::
And a valley,
The valley is thick with leaves, with leaves, the trees,
The sunlight glitters, glitters a-top,
Like a fish-scale roof,
Like the church-roof in Poictiers
If it were gold.
Beneath it, beneath it
Not a ray, not a slivver, not a spare disk of sunlight
Flaking the black, soft water;
Bathing the body of nymphs, of nymphs, and Diana,
Nymphs, white-gathered about her, and the air, air,
Shaking, air alight with the goddess
fanning their hair in the dark,
Lifting, lifting and waffing:
Ivory dipping in silver,
Shadow'd, o'ershadow'd
Ivory dipping in silver,
Not a splotch, not a lost shatter of sunlight.
Then Actaeon: Vidal,
Vidal. It is old Vidal speaking,
stumbling along in the wood
Not a patch, not a lost shimmer of sunlight,
the pale hair of the goddess,
The dogs leap on Actaeon,
“Hither, hither, Actaeon,”
Spotted stag of the wood;
Gold, gold, a sheaf of hair,
Thick like a wheat swath,
Blaze, blaze in the sun,
The dogs leap on Actaeon.
a
.
.
Stumbling, stumbling along in the wood,
Muttering, muttering Ovid:
“Pergusa pool pool Gargaphia
‘Pool, pool of Salmacis.
The empty armour shakes as the cygnet moves,
Thus the light rains, thus pours, e lo soleils plovil,
The liquid, and rushing crystal


EZRA POUND
691
whirls up the bright brown sand.
Ply over ply, thin glitter of water;
Brook film bearing white petals
(“The pines of Takasago grow with pines of Ise”)
“Behold the Tree of the Visages.”
The forked tips flaming as if with lotus,
Ply over ply
The shallow eddying fluid
beneath the knees of the gods.
Torches melt in the glare
Set flame of the corner cook-stall,
Blue agate casing the sky, a sputter of resin;
The saffron sandal petals the tender foot, Hymenaeus!
Io Hymen, Io Hymenaee! Aurunculeia
The scarlet flower is cast on the blanch-white stone,
Amaracus, Hill of Urania's Son.
Meanwhile So-Gioku:
“This wind, sire, is the king's wind,
this wind is wind of the palace
Shaking imperial water-jets.”
And Ran-Ti, opening his collar:
“This wind roars in the earth’s bag,
it lays the water with rushes;
“No wind is the king's wind.
Let
every cow keep her calf.”
"This wind is held in gauze curtains.
No wind is the king's.
The camel drivers sit in the turn of the stairs
look down to Ecbatan of plotted streets,
"Danae! Danae!
What wind is the king's?
Smoke hangs on the stream,
The peach-trees shed bright leaves in the water,
Sound drifts in the evening haze,
The barge scrapes at the ford.
Gilt rafters above black water;
three steps in an open field
Gray stone-posts leading nowhither.


692
THE FOURTH CANTO
The Spanish poppies swim in an air of glass.
Père Henri Jacques still seeks the sennin on Rokku.
Polhonac,
As Gyges on Thracian platter, set the feast;
Cabestan, Terreus.
It is Cabestan's heart in the dish.
Vidal, tracked out with dogs for glamour of Loba;
Upon the gilded tower in Ecbatan
Lay the god's bride, lay ever
Waiting the golden rain.
Et saave!
But to-day, Garonne is thick like paint, beyond Dorada,
The worm of the Procession bores in the soup of the crowd,
The blue thin voices against the crash of the crowd
Et “Salve regina.”
In trellises
Wound over with small flowers, beyond Adige
In the but half-used room, thin film of images,
(by Stefano)
Age of unbodied gods, the vitreous fragile images
Thin as the locust's wing
Haunting the mind as of Guido
Thin as the locust's wing. The Centaur's heel
Plants in the earth-loam.


THE POLITICAL HORSE
BY MANUEL KOMROFF
A
1
HORSE sat down in the middle of a street in Petrograd and
wouldn't get up. Do what you would, he remained, as
though rooted to Hell.
The shafts of the wagon, still attached to the harness, stood up
at a foolish angle. Beating the animal did no good, so the next
best thing was to unfasten the harness and push back the wagon.
This we all helped to do. We then formed a circle around the
beast and advised each other as to the best way of getting him up
or shifting him over so that the traffic of the street could pass.
Several members from the Newspaper Men's Co-operative Store,
which was just opposite, joined us as we decided upon mass attack.
Two of our strongest took hold of the stout part of the dirty white
tail, and two of our tallest took hold of the upper mane and nostrils,
and at the signal: “Hup!" they pulled while we kicked the beast
in the belly from all sides.
“Hup!” once more, and: "Hup!" the third time, but it did no
good. It only seemed to fix the beast more solidly on the pavement.
We rested awhile and then tried to roll the beast over, every one
pushing on one side, but the horse had planted his shoes firmly in
the soft pavement. It was impossible to budge him.
After we had again rested a bit we decided to lift him bodily,
but we could succeed in bringing up only the fore part, which we
held as long as we could; then down it went as we let it go.
А
crowd was gathering. The driver grew angry and attempted to
fight the horse all by himself while we were resting. He kicked
him and beat him; he punched him and pulled his hair, but the
beast only rolled his cowish eyes. The driver soon grew tired and
left off.
Well, as we could not succeed with violence, we decided upon
other methods. We placed a box of oats a yard or so in front of
the animal. He pricked up his nostrils for a moment and caught
the scent, but refused to do more.
Then we tried petting him. We stroked his mane from both


694
THE POLITICAL HORSE
sides and petted his neck and rubbed his nose and slapped his ribs
and fed him sugar and spoke kind words to him.
“Nice horsie, good horsie, nice horsie. Get up like a nice fellow.
Come, little pony, nice little pony."
It almost helped, he was just about to move when the driver
forgot himself and shouted:
“You low-down beast-get up!"
That ended it. Down went the spirits of the horse and again
all was lost; even the four lumps of sugar.
We decided finally that it was of no use and the only weapon
we had left to use was starvation. We would starve the beast
until he stood upon his legs, realizing also that the more we starved
him, the less would he be able to stand on his legs.
The driver of a motor car, thinking our circle a political-dis-
cussion, blew his horn as he headed straight for the crowd. We
stepped aside, leaving the horse in view. The car with its big brass
lamps went very near to the stubborn beast before slowing down.
This the horse did not at all like, so he rapidly got up.
“Hurry," we shouted as we quickly ran the cart up to the beast
and strapped the two together.
“Keep the auto here or he'll sit down again,” some one shouted.
But the driver was already on the box and off went the horse
and wagon at a good pace.
>
The next morning the following variation appeared in a leading
newspaper of Petrograd, written by one of the well known satirists.
It was entitled: A Fable!
In a Socialistic Commune that believed neither in violence nor
force, a man sat down in the middle of the street and refused to
get up. The traffic was stopped.
Nothing could induce him to move. The four tram cars, all that
the town possessed, stood idle. His best friend, the blacksmith,
was called and asked to lend his aid. Approaching the obstacle,
he asked:
"Ivan, how long have we been friends ?”
The seated man refused to reply.
“It's eleven years, is it not, Ivan ?”
"Well, what of it?" asked Ivan.
“Well, if that is true, then you ought to have more sense. If
If you


MANUEL KOMROFF
695
have the little sense I think you have, you will move your soap-box
a bit to the side and let the trolley cars go past.”
"No! I won't!"
“Just listen to reason, a minute, Ivan. If the trolley cars can't
go, then no wagons will be broken and I shall have no repairing
to do and my wife and children will have nothing to eat. Come
now, be a good man, move your box and allow the wagons to be
broken.”
“No, I won't!"
“Listen to me, Ivan. To-morrow I must go to the cemetery and
it will cost me three rubles for a horse and wagon and I shall have
to feed the horse besides, all because the trolley can't go. And why ·
can't it go ? Because my best friend sits on its tracks. Move your
soap-box over a little and let me trolley to the cemetery to-morrow.”
"No, I won't!"
Nothing helped. Ivan continued to sit like a bearded Buddha
with his cap on one side of the box and a piece of bread tied in a
handkerchief on the other. Evening came on and the cars were
backed into the barn. Ivan stretched over the tracks, covered him-
self with his coat, put his head in the box, and went to sleep.
In the morning he found many pennies and other coins in his
hat, but he threw these to the children, who were indeed happy at
the sight of a man camping on the tracks.
At ten the three directors of the Community Car Service held a
meeting, after which they approached Ivan. Said the secretary:
“We, the directors of the Community Car Service, have decided
that no man, woman, or child has the right to interfere with the
franchise granted us by the community, to run cars through this
street for a period of twenty years. Inasmuch as we have been in
service only for three years, we come to ask you to wait aside for
seventeen years before resuming your obstruction."
“I am not sitting on your franchise,” said Ivan, “I am sitting on
my own box."
“But your box is setting on our tracks."
"Well, move your tracks,” advised Ivan.
"I never thought of that,” replied the secretary, as he turned to
consult with the other directors.
"If we move the tracks,” said one, "what is to prevent him from
moving his box?”


696
THE POLITICAL HORSE
a
"We'll do it this way,” said the secretary. "We'll build a sid-
ing at least six feet from the main line and if he sits on one, the cars
will run on the other. And as he is less than six feet tall, he cannot
occupy both at one time.”
And so it was decided; work was at once started. The mayor
of the town dug the first spadeful and the spade was later band-
aged with a red ribbon and hung on a wall in the city hall.
Ivan sat on his box and watched the whole process. The work-
ingmen left their coats in his charge as they worked on the siding
and for this convenience they shared their food with Ivan.
The next day some of the impatient people tried to frighten
Ivan off the box. The fire brigade was called out and as they ran
past shouted:
“Hurry, Ivan! Your house and store are burning. Hurry!"
But Ivan sat firm to his box.
The real reason why Ivan was sitting on the box was because
he had quarrelled with his wife. He had asserted his individu-
ality, and in reply his wife had turned over a bowl of soup on his
head.
The next day Ivan's wife thought that her husband had been
away long enough, so she called upon the blacksmith to fetch Ivan,
who, she supposed, was playing checkers, as the smith and Ivan
always did after quarrelling with their wives. But this time she was
told of a new Ivan, Ivan the terrible obstacle.
The driving of the last few spikes into the ties was a great cere-
mony and Ivan would very much have liked to take part. He
thought to himself: "If I had only been a better fellow they
would have let me hammer a spike. But then, were I a better fel-
low, there would be no siding and therefore no spikes to hammer!”
Suddenly he saw his wife coming down the street with anger in
her eyes and nothing in her hands. Ivan quickly left his box and
went to the siding, where he mingled with the crowd. With one
good spring the barrel figure of Ivan's wife pounded upon the box
and splintered it to bits. Only one board was saved and this the
wife held firmly aloft as she ran Ivan home.
The day after this fable appeared in the newspaper the long
awaited changes in the cabinet took place. Two of the conservative
ministers were removed for obstructive tactics.



LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS. BY IVAN OPFFER


>



CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND.
BY IVAN OPFFER


基
​1



(becom
BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD FULLER. BY IVAN OPFFER






ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE. BY IVAN OPFFER


.
1
1
1
1
T
!
1



LEO WIENER. BY IVAN OPFFER





1

GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE. BY IVAN OPFFER


1
1
1
1
.


THE NEGLECTED AGE
BY OLIVIA HOWARD DUNBAR
HAT celebrated claim of the Jesuits that it is a child's first
TE
his life
enough, one would suppose, to challenge serious examination. Yet
while the words have become common counter their real significance
has been practically ignored. Until almost the other day, the child
too young to go to school-as we used to think of schools—had
rather terribly to take his chances in a world that persisted in treat-
ing him either as a nuisance to be held in check or a plaything to be
intemperately fondled. It is true that provision for something
more than the material needs of babyhood is now beginning to be
made. But this is an effort so recent, so unrelated to all the old
mechanical systems and traditions, that it can be described only as
revolutionary.
An indirect sort of revolution, however. Educational congresses
haven't known it was going on and family councils haven't yet
come to distrust their own adequacy. It is the psychological labora-
tory that is responsible. Neglect of the young child is a matter in
which school and home have heartily abetted each other. Yet the
very charge of neglect will seem in both quarters perversely para-
doxical, inasmuch as for years past schools have been offering edu-
cation-and-water through the kindergarten, and reasonable health
regimens have made their way into every home at all enlightened.
Unreflecting parents, jealously retaining their monopoly of the most
critical period of life, will in fact guilelessly protest that at no
time is their parenthood so consciously a passion as during this
early and most dependent stage.
It happens that while psychologists have been discovering how
very early in life the conditions that we still have to sum up under
the misused name of education, should properly be supplied, the lay
onlooker, finding many things wrong with the world, has come
to the conclusion that here lies the clue to some of them. It isn't
primarily through observing the charming speech and gesture of,
for instance, the baby of three, that one becomes fervently com-


698
THE NEGLECTED AGE
mitted to the cause of infant education, in the new sense. The
deepest needs of the young child, disguised as they are by his energy
and zest, are most often not superficially evident, are obscure to the
child himself, and, as we know, are totally unsuspected by the
parent. One comes to perceive what is due to babyhood through
long, sad consideration of the case of the average adult.
.
Diagnosis of this adult, or rather of his mental state, has been
pretty thoroughly made. It is conceded that the most lamentable
habit this has revealed is that of surrender to herd psychology.
His amiable incapacity to think or act for himself in any real sense
has been made tragically plain. Cases are also rare in which
legitimate development in one or more directions hasn't been
arrested or distorted. These facts are no longer to be questioned.
But if the serious conditions that they correspond to can be remedied
to any extent, then the effort to do this surely becomes the
one supremely important undertaking. The only debatable point
is whether the educator's solicitude should be directed toward the
human being at birth, or whether he can afford to wait a brief
interval. Roughly speaking, it is clear that human development is
past control at twenty. It is perhaps almost equally clear that it is
past control at fifteen. What is beginning to be seen is that in the
essential sense the same is true of ten—and that if we are honestly
concerned to promote the really free and complete development of
human beings, the attempt to do this must begin practically in baby-
hood. The argument is thoroughly logical in itself, and unhappily
for childhood, the world is full of evidence to support it. If in-
fancy were not inarticulate and weak, it would never have waited
for a chance handful of elders to contrive its revolution for it. In-
fancy must always have known better.
For consider, from his own point of view, the life of a four-year-
old in any “sheltered home.” Consider what a base level he oc-
cupies in the domestic hierarchy, how officiously he is buttoned and
swathed, pushed and pursued, forced and forbidden, how to 'an
almost intolerable degree he is made the buffer for adult emotion,
even as adult mood and adult convenience determine practically the
entire arrangement of his life. Consider how his desires and im-
pulses are derided, his tastes ignored, his will thwarted. Consider
the cases in which he is the helpless victim of a nurse-maid one
hasn't the patience to characterize; or those in which he is some-


OLIVIA HOWARD DUNBAR
699
body's unwholesomely dominated pet and parasite. And doubtless
the most important point of all is that the child's own strong, eager
effort to relate himself to life is persistently frustrated until, at the
very age when maturity concedes that the time for a little decorous
initiative has begun, he has become silenced and dulled. For these
years are irremediably the age of unanswered whys. Almost
every
child has some genial relative who, when not too busy, will now
and then answer a What or a How. But who ever candidly and
conscientiously answers a Why?
Yet the first inquiries that a child frames may be said to rep-
resent brave attempts to define for himself, in wide outline, the
particular universe that he is thereafter always to live in. They de-
serve responses that are square and unafraid. If, as is so often the
case, no material whatever is supplied him, he has to adapt himself
to an intellectual homelessness, to groping through a meaningless
blur. Or he is offered such mean, false, scanty substance that the
best universe he can construct is one that is tiny, dark, and goblin-
ridden, that leaks and gapes, that is full of locked closets stuffed
with skeletons, and of mystery-choked corridors that lead nowhere.
The pity of it is that the normal child's own early impulses are
dauntless ones, up to the time when enough fears are taught him,
enough dogmas and taboos imposed, to destroy his chance of be-
coming a thinking being.
It is not of course a fresh discovery that a child doesn't spend
his early years in a mental vacuum. Something is happening to
him continuously, whatever hypocritical pretence of unawareness
the world about him may affect. Every grown person must know
through his own observation that at the age of seven, or at the close
of that pre-school period whose influences by conventional agree-
ment have been held not to matter, appalling if invisible things may
already have befallen a child. His mind may have become con-
ventionalized, the habit of acceptance fixed, the tendency toward
inquiry and initiative arrested. He may have been made a snob.
Perversities of temperament may have been established, dangerous
secret complexes formed. Through repression he may have learned,
in a polite and elaborate way, to lie and steal. He may have made
the basest approach to sex knowledge. “And none of these calami-
ties is in the least incompatible with a charming exterior or with the
stupid stock requirements of home and school.


700
THE NEGLECTED AGE
It is a knot of manifold humiliations in which the
young
child
is caught. But there is a genuine if belated interest in his rescue.
And it is of peculiar importance to note the characteristics of such
schools as the desire for this rescue has called into being. These
are naturally the creation of idealists who are not escaped teachers
merely, but really impassioned workers in human material. And
they are doers rather than talkers. The new age that they have
inaugurated treads delicately and shouts no challenges. Any pos-
sible hostility the new schools disarm by calling themselves “ex-
perimental” and by honestly meriting the term. System has not
so far gripped them and even "method,” that fetish of the peda-
gogue, is a word used only in occasional discreet whispers. If the
children who spend their days in these animated little laboratories
learn much, their teachers learn of course a great deal more, and
even the fortunate parents indirectly profit.
Individualistic and independent of each other as experimental
schools are and should be, their approximately common derivation
brings them nevertheless within a single group, and it is in their
resemblances rather than their differences that their revolutionary
character consists. A modern school may acknowledge in place of
the "system” it has discarded an abstract purpose, merely. In place
of "equipment” it may boast only of an atmosphere. And even if
there is any uncertainty, which there usually isn't, as to just what it
will do for a child, and how, there is at least no uncertainty what-
ever as to what it won't do that is, as to what ancient sins it
won't commit. A school of this type doesn't make it its first
business to seal up the approaches to experience. It doesn't “in-
struct” little children, it doesn't “train" them, it doesn't "dis-
cipline”—and these are perhaps the three words that summed up
the former educational code. This means, of course, that the
philosophy of “education through play” is put into practice, that
authority is to a greater or less extent discarded in favour of liber-
tarianism. It may even be taken for granted that there will
be no artificial cleavage between the interests of girls and boys,
and no discrimination in favour of the children of the well-to-do.
Furthermore, the lowest age limit is sinking rapidly. One school
that now accepts children at two hopes in time to take them at
six months.
So far, this is naturally not a concrete enough program to per-
a


OLIVIA HOWARD DUNBAR
701
suade that obstructionist parent in whose hands a young child's
chances of development usually lie. It is not unfair to insist that
this is most often the male parent. His anxious conservatism, pre-
cisely the quality from which you hope to keep his child free, leads
him to conceive of education as a thoroughly exact process, having
mainly to do with Latin and Mathematics, a process to which he
sees the human intelligence as normally first exposed at about the
age of twelve and as in point of fact reducible to the two-fold feat,
first of “getting into” college, and second, of staying there. Such
a parent will demand to know what in the world a school can
accomplish for his tumultuous and unlettered three-year-old that
the child's mother (who may nevertheless delegate her privilege to
a nurse-maid) cannot do better-can't do, in fact, by divine and
exclusive right. Argument probably won't convince him, nor
would libraries full of psychological treatises. The shortest cut is
to take the skeptic by the hand and persuade him to “visit school,”
to yield himself to a personal impression.
This adventure of course no longer consists of accepting a chair
on the teacher's platform-a vanished symbol, that platform—and
pretending that you yourself are familiar with the textbook at
whose contents young performers are making desperately ingenious
guesses with the teacher's covert aid. On the contrary, babyhood
at school is too busy to be aware of you. It is almost as if you
were invisible. Garmented, therefore, in your invisibility, you pick
your way about like an awkward fascinated giant among sand-
piles and gold-fish bowls, coloured modelling clay and tiny tool
benches. You stumble against a creditably authentic "house" that
a group of children have built of blocks and within which they are
a
conducting a domestic drama. You gasp at the savage eloquence
of the bright crayon drawings that are pinned on the walls. You
wonder, if you are a parent, why nobody goes near that youngster
of three who, with phenomenal concentration, is teaching himself
the use of a saw—why nobody either does it for him or tells him
to stop. You concede that although rupture with academic tradi-
tion seems complete, yet infancy is safe, happy, active-however
much that may mean to you. You will cling parentally to your
secret reservations as to discipline and authority and the danger
lying in the free use of sharp-edged tools, yet you may admit that
it might be convenient to have the children away from home at


702
THE NEGLECTED AGE
>
times, and enjoying themselves in such fashion as this. But you
prefer not to be too readily bamboozled. You linger a little and
you try to ask an intelligent question or two.
So you discover, further, that the infant individualists choose
their own occupations. Everything is within reach, nothing is for-
bidden. The teachers, instead of being expected single-handed to
force cohorts of from forty to sixty children to do the same thing at
the same time, are present, as Miss Caroline Pratt so well puts it,
“to enrich each individual child's performance; to awaken and help
him to satisfy his curiosity; to direct him to sources of information;
to help him to adjust his social difficulties.” With a school full of
“play material,” ranging from hammers and nails to pollywogs,
there is probably no child who won't feel an urge to use this ma-
terial to do something, to make something, or to dramatize some-
thing. Indeed, children placed in an environment of this sort and
given genuine liberty, react in a fashion to astound both parents
and unreformed teachers. The absorption, the continuity of in-
terest that they exhibit, both so much more rarely noted in the
relatively frivolous atmosphere of the home, do strikingly bear out
the current theory that not only does the child educate himself
through spontaneous play, but that this is the only way in which
he can become educated.
And the followers of the play theory hold to it in strict detail.
They are quite innocent of any conspiracy, through the medium
of lettered blocks, or the like, to entrap playboys and playgirls into
premature acquaintance with alphabet or numerals. In fact these
cornerstones of the “learning' to which we in our earliest days were
encouraged to aspire, are as nearly in the nature of forbidden fruit
as anything can consistently be in these libertarian gardens. Mrs.
Marietta Johnson, whose famous school at Fairhope has been so
warmly endorsed by Professor Dewey, holds an extreme position
on the ground, one hopes still debatable, of infant literacy, and dis-
courages reading and writing until her pupils are several years
beyond the conventional school age. The lay onlooker is of course
at liberty to believe that with a child of really lively intelligence
this prohibition couldn't humanely be made effective.
In the days that we all remember, there was a sharp dividing
line between school hours and the rest of one's existence. It has
even been considered tonic for children that this should be the case,


OLIVIA HOWARD DUNBAR
703
a
and most of the unlovely machinery of public schools, at least, has
been invented in the interests, not at all of education, even as this
has been understood, but of sheer ruthless subordination of the vital
impulse. But this ancient distinction between the joy of living and
the discomfort of being educated, experimental schools have done
their best to annihilate. Part of every school day the children
spend outdoors; and city schools, when they haven't a yard, have
at least a roof to be devoted to this purpose. Conducted excursions,
of the sort that only an inspired uncle ever used to have time for,
occur frequently. It is a matter of course that there must be beds
for naps and equipment for frequent meal-times. Both outdoors
and in, the facilities for play conform to the best knowledge so
far attainable. And at least one school chooses in its equipment
to minister to a sense of beauty that isn't always postulated
to exist in children. Rugs, hangings, chairs, the china that they
use daily, all these are not only of arresting design, but authentic
and beautiful.
Naturally enough, under such conditions as these, those tradi-
tional misdemeanours of infancy, as to which the unconverted
parent will not fail to express concern, scarcely constitute a prob-
lem. It is not difficult to avoid that emotional waste in children
for which unwise relatives or nurses are usually responsible. Chil-
dren engaged in “purposeful activities” under wise and gentle di-
rection, rarely have those outbursts of perverseness, of "naughti-
ness,” which are often a mere protest against being mishandled.
Similarly, those of us who are out of jail have no impulse to or-
ganize hunger strikes.
All this is of course but the rudest outline of the sort of educa-
tion that is beginning to be offered little children, so far as it may
be generalized about, and so far as it may be seen from the outside.
This outline the idealist who attempts to create a school fills in as
individual inspiration or as borrowed wisdom may suggest. Prob-
ably nothing better could happen for childhood than that educational
theory should always remain Auid, each new school contenting it-
self, as the experimental schools now do, with a modest working
hypothesis. Meanwhile, it is precisely these hypotheses that fur-
nish an extremely interesting basis of comparison.
Mrs. Johnson, for instance, whose Fairhope school is probably
the best known of its type, bases her work on the central idea that


704
THE NEGLECTED AGE
education should be "organic,” and schools founded by her disciples
give themselves in fact the rather grim name of "organic schools.”
The idea is simply that the organic or natural development of the
human being should be reverently heeded and that particular vio-
lence is done the child by interrupting or perverting the sequence of
nature. Thus stated, this theory has almost a conservative sound.
It is in its application that it has arrested attention. The organi-
cally educated child becomes miscellaneously experienced in "hand
work” before he learns to read. The type that the organic method
particularly strives to avoid developing is the "over-intellectualized
child”—precisely the type that parents will recognize as having
for so long been their especial pride.
Statements of purpose that are perhaps more concrete are made
by that popular resort of liberalized infancy, the City and Country
School in New York. Miss Pratt's idea is that the all-round
growth of the child is best stimulated by interesting it in the actual
and familiar, the near at hand, and in following out the lines these
interests lead to. Her little children are assisted in unravelling
the “humming activities of the streets,” so far as possible at first
hand. A serviceable scheme, even though at least as good a case
could, one may suspect, be made out for the theory that the natural
point of departure for infant interest is something unreal or dis-
tant, something uncomprehended and vast.
Again, in the school and baby garden which they conducted at
Stony Ford, Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson laid their main stress upon
the educational value of practical co-operation in a school family
conducted strictly on a single social level. Even the
youngest chil-
dren developed a sense of responsibility for the affairs not only of
schoolroom, but of kitchen and garden. The difference between
this communal life and that period when “Adam delved and Eve
span” is, of course, that nowadays Eve is expected to take her turn
at the spade and Adam to take his at the wheel. To softly reared
children these conditions must seem at first a little austere, as is
perhaps the case also at the Ferrer School at Stelton, but against
their beautiful reasonableness there is nothing valid to urge.
To see children either baking the bread they are to eat, or or-
ganizing the drama they are to produce, is to grasp the principle
behind the activity and to judge, perhaps, of the success of its ap-
plication. But the main effort of such a school as Miss Margaret


OLIVIA HOWARD DUNBAR
705
Naumburg's depends on no processes thus readily visible. It is a
getting beneath the smooth misleading surfaces of children and cor-
recting, admittedly by very delicate arts, what may
be
wrong
there.
It is psychological reconstruction. As the school itself states it, the
purpose is “to reach the personal problem of each child and to
master it as a means for his development.
The causes of
a child's problem are not to be found on the surface. It is neces-
sary to trace them back to the early impulses hidden beneath the
external action.” And, still more definitely, “Education in the
sense of 'leading forth’ what is already there, is not enough. The
child comes to the school with physical inhibitions and emotional
fixations which must be analyzed back to their elementary com-
ponents, in order that his energies may be released for proper
growth.” Inasmuch as every grown person of any sensitiveness
will admit that his own childish development was distorted by
wrongness of some secret, unsuspected sort, it is apparent what a
fundamental undertaking this is, and how incomparably more im-
portant, if adequately carried out, for the child's proper growth,
than his early introduction to the multiplication table or even, more
modernly speaking, to the jig-saw.
But schools of this order are still few. For a child who isn't
within reach of one, how much may be done by super-parents in a
super-home? Obviously, a home cannot remedy the state of a child
whose development has been deflected from the psychologist's point
of view, since it is to home conditions that his very difficulty will
doubtless be referred. And how can a home supply, for little chil-
dren, that factor of group association that recent educators regard
as so important? As matters now stand, children have very little
group life before they are six years old. But it is believed that the
need for it occurs much earlier and that meeting this need results
in a highly desirable "socialization”-to use the slang that the
subject entails
of the child's interests and behaviour. It is true
that this point is made by the same teachers who insist upon the
importance of approaching a child as an individual, not as a mere
member of a class or “grade.” But as Miss Naumburg explains,
“It is a mistake to consider the individual and the group concepts
as really antagonistic. The instincts that underlie individual and
social life are both inherent in mankind, and the realization of
either is impossible without the other. There can be no developed
a
>


706
THE NEGLECTED AGE
individual without a constructive group sense. And there can be
no developed society that is not integrated and composed of indi-
viduals each functioning fully and completely.”
Admittedly there are some young children who won't accept
companionship even when it is abundantly within their reach, re-
maining contented or timid recluses in a corner of the schoolroom
until, in a month or a year, as the case may be, the social impulse
comes to flower. But it is possible that the normal child longs for
group contact with a longing so deeply seated that he is quite
unable to formulate it. A boy of eight who had been removed for
a year from a public school of ungracious atmosphere, burst one
day into a lament for the educational privileges he was foregoing.
"Did you like your school so much, then ?” somebody asked him.
“
“No, I didn't like it at all, but I loved recess.”
But where there is a mother intelligently bent on supplying, not
food and clothing alone, but all that her young child needs she will
probably not overlook the matter of companionship nor forget that
there is a fruitful modern science of applied psychology. Such a
mother will naturally be aware that the whole matter of infant
education goes much deeper than its animated surface might sug-
gest. She won't make the mistake of supposing that it is a mere
question of sand piles and plasticene, of dancing or dishwashing.
She will know that the whole story isn't told even when a child
comes to express himself with joy and freedom in a drawing or a
bit of carpentry, when he comes to develop a really unwavering
initiative or learns to dispense with all but the minimum of per-
sonal service. The really radical feature of the new education is
one, after all, that parents can appropriate without the installation
of a single "educational toy.” And this, as has already been pointed
out, is a new attitude on the part of the adult toward the child, a
respect both theoretic and practical for his individuality and his
person. One may suspect that it isn't of fundamental importance
whether a child learns to read at four or at eight years old; whether
he begins "number” by the old fashioned method of direct attack
or by some one of the roundabout approaches that are continually
being devised. But it is impossible to doubt that his being treated
as a free human being rather than “kept in his place," may pro-
foundly affect his entire development.
And it is perhaps not too speculative to suggest that this new
a
a


OLIVIA HOWARD DUNBAR
707
attitude is, in part at least, a reflex of the markedly altered one that
in our own day has come to prevail toward women. Until recently,
even the most sympathetic student of childhood nevertheless re-
garded children as inevitably and properly a subject race. Just as
a “good” woman was a submissive and conforming one, so a “good”
child was an obedient child, merely. But women having claimed
the right to think, speak, and act for themselves, a certain measure
of release seems to have been granted childhood from a mere natural
association of ideas. Not that being just to children is an entirely
simple matter. A being who must be protected, yet mustn't be
bullied, occupies a delicate position. And the doctrine that even
a young child has definite individual rights is more difficult to put
into action than it sounds. Even yet, few really believe or practise
it. The corollary doctrine is naturally that these rights are the
same, whatever the child's sex; but this also, simple as it sounds,
has been very imperfectly practised. After developing to such beau-
tiful and sane detail his memorable service to educational theory,
Rousseau was capable of inventing that monstrous parody of all
the "womanly” traditions that he called Sophie. And even Pro-
fessor Dewey implies that while the typical boy may express his
urge to activity in a hundred interesting ways, all with the approval
of his enlightened modern teacher, the typical girl is expected to
express hers in but two-dressmaking or preparing food.
Defining of the present character of infant schools is not of
course the important matter, however interesting these may indi-
vidually be. The essential point is that infancy is definitely emerg-
ing from those long dark ages of resistance to a grown-up world
that urged it to be helpless, to be inactive, to be afraid. It is achiev-
ing a status of its own, and a status of peculiar significance. Far
from being an age unripe for education, this little stretch of years
that comprises the "first age” of man is the only age, according to
the utmost wisdom that we can now summon, when education in
the deepest sense matters at all. The age of historic neglect is the
age on which the utmost energy should be expended.
Even to the least critical person, however, it will probably occur
that education of this untraditional sort, education based on the
delicate processes that have been suggested, can scarcely be turned
over to the slightly equipped persons who have always taught young
children or had charge of them, heretofore. The new sense in


708
THE NEGLECTED AGE
which children are being educated does, it is true, make enormous
demands upon educators, and practically summons into being a new
profession, if not a new race of women and of men. There is no
conceivable "training course” that would fit any one within a stipu-
·lated time to be a young child's stimulus and steadying power, his
sensitively adequate connecting link with the universe, his intel-
lectual source of supply. That "cultural background" so often
spoken of must be reinforced, one imagines, by definite native gifts.
It is probably because of defective equipment; defective person-
ality, on the part of teachers, that both the old education and the
new have perhaps a tendency, so far as actual content is concerned,
to be a little meagre. Teachers can scarcely supply a child's life
and imagination with what they have not found for themselves.
In his exposition of “The Play Way,” the English schoolmaster,
Mr. H. Caldwell Cook, gives a far broader notion than is current
in this country of the extent of a child's intellectual and imagina-
tive appetite. The bulk of poetry and science, of drama, of
mechanics, of the general apparatus of living and thinking, that his
children assimilated through the single stimulus of play, is highly
suggestive. Perhaps no school has yet been devised that adequately
estimates the amount either of phantasy or of reality that a child
of the sort known as "promising" longs for and can digest. Which
makes it all the more apparent that companionship with the very
young, which has always been assigned to a class of left-overs,
should properly be the task of philosophers and seers; of some
Thoreau who should also have a pleasant taste for whimsy; some
Pied Piper who should also be the intimate of electricity and steam;
some poet who should know the secret ways of leaf and star; some
master of rhythm or design, who should know how tales are told;
some heroic runner or swimmer or dancer, who should also be able
to think and to rouse thought. It may be that there is nothing
valuable, significant, in life or art to which even the first stages of
childhood cannot achieve an enriching relationship.


GAVOTTE IN D MINOR
BY AMY LOWELL
+
She wore purple, and when other people slept
She stept lightly—lightly-in her ruby powdered slippers
Along the flags of the East portico.
And the moon slowly rifting the heights of cloud
Touched her face so that she bowed
Her head, and held her hand to her eyes
To keep the white shining from her. And she was wise,
For gazing at the moon was like looking on her own dead face
Passing alone in a wide place,
Chill and uncosseted, always above
The hot protuberance of life. Love to her
Was morning and a great stir
Of trumpets and tire-women and sharp sun.
As she had begun, so she would end,
Walking alone to the last bend
Where the portico turned the wall.
And her slipper's sound
Was scarce as loud upon the ground
As her tear's fall.
Her long white fingers crisped and clung
Each to each, and her weary tongue
Rattled always the same cold speech:
“Gold was not made to lie in grass,
Silver dints at the touch of brass,
The days pass.
>>
Lightly, softly, wearily,
The lady paces, drearily
Listening to the half-shrill croon
Leaves make on a moony Autumn night
When the windy light
Runs over the ivy eerily.


710
D
GAVOTTE IN D MINOR
A branch at the corner cocks an obscene eye
As she passes—passes—by and by-
A hand stretches out from a column's edge,
Faces float in a phosphorent wedge
Through the points of arches, and there is speech
In the carven roof-groins out of reach.
A love-word, a lust-word, shivers and mocks
The placid stroke of the village clocks.
Does the lady hear?
Is any one near?
She jeers at life, must she wed instead
The cold dead?
A marriage-bed of moist green mould,
With an over-head tester of beaten gold.
A splendid price for a splendid scorn,
A tombstone pedigree snarled with thorn
Clouding the letters and the fleur-de-lis,
She will have them in granite for her heart's chill ease.
I set the candle in a draught of air
And watched it swale to the last thin flare.
They laid her in a fair chamber hung with arras,
And they wept her virgin soul.
The arras was woven of the story of Minos and Dictynna.
But I grieved that I could no longer hear the shuffle of her feet
along the portico,
And the ruffling of her train against the stones.


CRUMBLED BLOSSOMS
BY ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
Translated by Pierre Loving
AFT
а
FTER tramping up and down the streets all afternoon in the
snow, I find myself home at last. The lamp's turned up and
my cigar is lit. My books surround me with an atmosphere of cozy
intimacy. The various appointments of the room fairly radiate
comfort and induce amiable reverie. But to no avail. Try as I
may,
I can focus
my mind on nothing else.
But was she not, in her relation to me, as good as dead, ever so
long ago? She is indeed dead quite a long time or-as, with the
infantile pathos of the betrayed, I humoured myself into fancying-
"worse than dead.” And what, in the last instance, is the nature
,
of my emotions, now that I have come to accept that she is not
"worse than dead”; but just dead-dead like a multitude of others
who sleep yonder under the soil, who sleep uninterruptedly; when
spring arrives, and when sultry summer flames and when snow
drifts down, as to-day. So utterly without hope of resurrection!
What do I feel, now that I know that even for me, she didn't pass
away a second sooner than she passed away for the rest of the
world? Pangs? Hardly. Only that familiar cold shudder that
is bound to lay hold of you when some being who was once an
integral part of you is deposited in a grave; a being, it may be,
whose presence keeps haunting you, with a memory of a look or
the faltering inflection of the voice.
It was of course piercingly tragic when I first unmasked her hy-
pocrisy. But what, at bottom, lay concealed behind it all? Anger,
sudden hate, black pessimism, and naturally scotched vanity. Suf-
fering came long after. One consolation was the dearly bought
knowledge that she herself was suffering greatly. I have them all
- haven't 1?- the dozens of letters imploring forgiveness, sobbing
and wailing their heart out. Whenever I feel the impulse to do so,
I can read them over. As for herself, why, I can still picture her,
as I stepped out of the house, standing at the corner of the street


712
CRUMBLED BLOSSOMS
in the falling dusk. I can still call to mind our last meeting, when
she stood before me with big wondering eyes framed in a child's
oval face, so pale and careworn. I gave her my hand when she
went-when she went away for the last time. From my window
I followed her with my eyes until she skirted the corner and van-
ished for ever. Now she will return no more.
The manner in which I came to know of it was purely casual.
As far as I personally was concerned, it might have happened weeks
-even months ago. This morning, as chance ordained it, I ran into
her uncle, whom I hadn't laid eyes on for a year. You see, he
rarely comes to Vienna. I had spoken to him on but few occasions
previous to this. The first time was at one of those gay “Bowling
Parties," at which she and her mother were present. The second
opportunity took place in the course of the following summer at
the "Czarda” in the Prater. I happened to be there with a couple
of friends. At the very next table to ours, one of a group of, I
should judge, three or four men, sat her uncle quite amiably dis-
posed-well-nigh festive. He tossed off a glass in honour of my
health. Before leaving the garden, he made up to where I sat and,
as if it were a secret of the greatest delicacy, whispered in my ear
that his niece was desperately in love with me. Plunged in a sort
of day-dream, it seemed so quaint, so uncommonly jolly, so larkish,
in brief, that the old fellow should impart this piece of news amid
the racket of cymbals and shrill violins. News that I had been
hugging to my heart only too dearly; for, at that very moment,
there still clung to my lips the moist fragrance of her kisses.
This morning I had a mind to cut him on the street. I didn't,
though. More out of courtesy than out of genuine interest, I in-
quired after his niece. Lately I had gotten completely out of touch
with her. Even her letters, some time back, had stopped altogether.
Only the flowers, which it was her wont to send regularly, arrived;
souvenirs of our most blissful moments. Once a month they came,
without a message—inarticulate, modest flowers. When at length
I uttered my regard, the old fellow appeared as one struck dumb.
“You mean, you don't know about it? She died a week ago,
poor dear."
rest.
Shaken to the roots of my being, I listened attentively to the
She had lingered an invalid for a long period, but was con-
fined to her bed actually less than eight days. What ailed her?


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
713
Melancholia, anaemia—physicians, as a rule, rarely probe what
the trouble is.
For what seemed an endless lapse of moments, after the old man
had proceeded on his way, I stood transfixed to the spot. Somehow
I felt infinitely tired in spirit, just as if I had but then rid my-
self of an enormous, taxing burden. And I know I shall always
look back on to-day as marking a turning point in my life. Why?
Why? After all, what has occurred is purely external. She was
nothing to me. Scarcely did she enter my thoughts—having writ-
ten all this down has brought with it a feeling of indescribable
relief, and all perturbation has fled.
The cozy atmosphere my home suffuses is beginning to take a
potent hold on me. When you come to think of it, it is futile and
self-tormenting to brood and brood on. Somewhere, I doubt not,
there is some one who has deeper cause to feel desolated at her loss
than I. Who will say ?
We laugh
To-day, to my sombre view, the world— life is garbed in less
brilliant colours. I realize that, side by side, thrive Joy and Pain-
no, there exist but the grimaces of mirth and sorrow.
and
cry,
and invite the soul to the feast. At this moment I feel
like burying myself in that chair and delving into serious brow-
beating tomes. And I could distil, without effort, their quintes-
sential lore. I feel like gazing upon old masterpieces that had
nothing whatever to offer me once, and their divine beauty would
break over me like white light. And when I muse on those who are
departed, my heart somehow stubbornly refuses to be convulsed as
formerly. Death has grown kinder and lost its sting. It wanders
among men and doeth no evil.
Snow! Padded white snow robing every street. Little Gretel
dropped in to-day and conceived the notion to go sleighing. So out
into the country, along smooth glimmering roads we flew to the
accompaniment of sleigh-bells, while the sky overhead burned pale
amethyst. Swiftly, swiftly we glided between effulgent hills
mantled in white. And Gretel dropped her head upon my shoulder,
and gazed with happy twinkling eyes up the long road. We drew
rein in front of an inn, well remembered from the previous
summer, when it reposed amid verdure. And so completely meta-


714
CRUMBLED BLOSSOMS
morphosed did it appear, so solitary, so secluded from the rest of
the world, that we had to explore about and discover it all over
again. The stove in the sitting-room glowed red-hot. We were
compelled at last to push the table away from its vicinage because,
you see, Gretel's left cheek and dainty left ear had acquired an
intensely crimson tinge. I had to kiss the pale cheek, to even
,
things up.
1
On the way back, in the dusking half-light, Gretel snuggled quite
close and took both my hands in her own. She said:
“To-day at last I have you back again.”
Without the slightest self-consciousness she had, as it were, ut-
tered the one magic word necessary to complete my happiness. - Per-
haps the crisp snowy air had the effect of newly untrammelling my
senses; for undoubtedly I did feel freer and more light-hearted than
before.
Only recently, as I reclined full-length on the divan, an un-
canny idea raided my mind. I appeared, in my own estimation,
cold and heartless, as if I were standing with dry eyes, wholly
incapable of emotion, on the edge of a grave into which a loved
one had just been lowered. Callous, I did not tremble once with
remorse. Ah-remorseless--that's it.
It's all over and done with—quite. Life, pleasure, and the bit
of love life purveys, serve to scatter the phantom dream. Once
more I take up the thread of intercourse with people. I am fond
of them. Gossiping, as they do, of every pleasant thing under
heaven, really they are quite harmless. And Gretel grows more
charming and delicate every day; and she is loveliest when of an
afternoon she nestles at my side in the window-niche, while the
sunbeams plait themselves into a dazzling halo for her head.
Something odd happened to-day. It is the red-letter day of the
month on which she used to send me flowers. Well, the flowers
came as if—as if nothing extraordinary had intervened. Quite
early this morning by post they came, wrapped in a narrow white
oblong box. It was still very early, and I was but half-awake. It
was only when I undertook to undo the box that the thing dawned
on me. Daintily bound together with a strand of gold cord, violets
and carnations lay together. As in a coffin they lay. As I lifted
the flowers, an icy shudder pervaded the depths of me. Clearly


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
715
upon falling ill, perhaps divining the end, she had given the usual
order to the florist. Even after she was gone I should not miss her
ministering tenderness. That, in a word, is how I account for their
being delivered. Quite natural, you see; a trifle moving per-
haps.
And yet, as I held them in my hand, these flowers, they took to
trembling and nodding. Against all reason and will, I could not
for the world help viewing them as something spectral; as if they
were despatched directly by her-her compliments; as if she still
ardently longed even in death to protest her belated troth. Ah, we
do not glimpse the meaning of death; we never glimpse the meaning
of death. A living being cannot be dead if those who knew him
intimately are still alive.
To-day I handled the flowers quite differently, more fondỊingly,
as if by treating them rudely I might work them harm, as if in
I
exquisite agony, their souls should suddenly break forth in low
whimpering. As they rest before me on the escritoire, in a pale-
green glass, the petals give the appearance of nodding to tragic
,
memories. The incisive pathos of a vain yearning is wafted from
-them to me, and I verily believe that they are aching to say some-
thing. If one were only versed in the language of sentient as well
as speaking things!
-
Assuredly I do not wish to divert my thoughts into confusing
byways. They are flowers- nothing more. They are no summons
-no summons from the grave. They are just flowers, and some
saleswoman at the florist's wrapped them together quite mechanic-
ally, swathed them in a wad of absorbent cotton, put them in a
white box and posted them. And here they are! Why do I brood
over them like this?
These days I am a good deal out in the open. I take long unac-
companied walks. When I come into society, I do not quite feel
a part of it; the bonds, I believe, are threatening to snap short.
I am conscious of this no less when Gretel is here and starts prat-
tling about every conceivable thing that comes into her head. I
don't follow her. And no sooner is she gone than she begins to
grow misty as if she were being snatched ever so far away, as if the
ebb of humanity had swirled her out of reach, as if she had vanished


716
CRUMBLED BLOSSOMS
Do you
irrevocably. Suppose, now, she were never to return.
imagine I'd be perplexed?
The flowers are in the slender green glass, their roots immersed
in water, and the whole room is charged with their fragrance. They
dispense their perfume still, although I have had them here a week
and they are slowly giving evidences of fading. I fancy all kinds
of absurd things which at one time I didn't hesitate to hold up to
scorn. I fancy, for instance, converse with the denizens of Nature's
kingdom. I conceive you may anticipate a response when you ad-
dress clouds and springs. Hence I stare at these flowers expecting
them to break out into speech any minute. Ah, no. Always they
are talking; even now they talk and complain without pause, and
I am on the eve of understanding.
I am well content that the stark winter weather is drawing to a
close. Already in the air you can divine floating hints of oncoming
spring. Winter is departing. I have not in any sense revised the
order of my existence, and yet the outline of things touching my
life grows less acutely defined. Yesterday is melting into mist, and
the events of several days ago are filmy as shadows in a dream.
Whenever Gretel leaves me, and particularly when I don't see her
for several days at a stretch, I can't resist the impression that it's
all an old story lived through ages ago. She limns into view from
some distant horizon, immeasurably remote. And when, in her
inimitable way, she starts chattering, I am suddenly my old self
again. I regain a solid grip on the immediate and life in general.
One might almost demur: the words are too loud and the colours
too gay. No sooner has she tripped away over the threshold, dear
creature, than she is translated miles and miles away; no sooner
does she appear than her presence becomes, on the sudden, dazzling.
Otherwise, I think, I ought to cherish an echo of her, or an image
of fetching glances. But, as in a dank cave, everything melts into
nothingness, and no trace is left behind. Then I am face to face
with my flowers. They are faded already, quite faded-bereft of
their fragrance.
Odd, Gretel hadn't observed them until
now. To-day for the first time her eyes fastened on them linger-
ingly, and I trembled, for it seemed she was about to question me.
All at once, however, a secret timidity restrained her. Saying no
word, she rose and went away.


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
717
The leaves crisp and flutter from them slowly. I never touch
them lest they should crumble to dust between my fingers. I am
stirred to the depth of my being at their fading. Why does the
strength fail me to shatter this nightmare? I can't make it out.
They are harassing my nerves, these dead flowers. Sometimes in
sheer distraction I dash away, Out in the street an indescribable
anxiety seizes me and, whether I like it or not, I must return to
tend their needs.' And invariably I find them where I left them,
in the selfsame green glass, jaded and tragic of aspect. Last night
I shed tears over them as you might weep over a grave; but I gave
no thought to her who sent them. I may be mistaken, but I suspect
Gretel also senses the presence of something preternatural in my
rooms. Nowadays, when she's here, she doesn't laugh as much as
she used to do. She doesn't lift her voice, at least not with those
fresh ringing animated tones I know so well. Frankly nowadays
I don't greet her with the same heartiness I used to display. I am
hunted, yes I am hunted by the misgiving that some day, not far
distant, she is going to ply me with questions. And the least ques-
tion will shrivel me up with dismay.
Often she brings her crocheting with her. While I am deep in
my books, she sits noiselessly at the table crocheting or embroider-
ing. In reality, though, she is only tranquilly waiting for me to
put my books aside, saunter up to her, and take the work out of her
hands. Then I remove the shade of the lamp at which she is sitting,
and the entire room is splashed with generous, mellow light. I can't
bear to have the nooks and crannies filled with gloom.
Spring! my window is wide open. Late last evening we gazed
out into the dark street. The air, swishing about us, was balmy
and warm. As I glanced toward the street corner where the street
lamp diffuses a feeble light, a shadow-thing appeared in its glow.
I saw it and I saw it not. I know, for a fact, that I did not see it.
I shut my eyes. And through the veil of closed lids I was enabled to
-In a circle of jaundiced light showing supernaturally clear,
as if illumined by the midday sun, I beheld her face. Set in the
pale, careworn face, I marked plainly the big wondering eyes. I
shrank away from the window and collapsed into a chair alongside
the escritoire. The candle flame flickered in the occasional wind-
puff piercing through the window. Motionless I sat, for I knew
see.


718
CRUMBLED BLOSSOMS
that the miserable creatures trysted at the street corner, waiting;
and if only I had possessed the hardihood, I would have snatched
the dead flowers out of their receptacle and laid them at her feet.
So I believed, so I believed quite firmly, knowing at the same time,
that it was a perfectly ridiculous notion. Gretel also went away
from the window, and remained a moment standing behind my
chair. With her lips she touched my hair. Then she hurried away
and left me alone.
I stared at the flowers. Virtually they are no more, nothing
more than stripped stems, withered and pitiable. They jangle my
nerves and make me angry. Confident am I that my instinct is un-
erring; otherwise Gretel would have questioned me. Instead, she
fled away as if visitants from the grave haunted my room.
.
Ghosts! Ghosts indeed. Dead things playing at the game of
!
life. I am unable to endure their cynical attitude. Gretel came
in, happy and gay. She saw in a glance the thoughts that were
a
troubling me. Quite boldly, she walked up to the escritoire, took
the flowers out of their green vase, and, stepping to the window,
flung them out. The wind drifted them down the street. The room
is brighter. There is an inexplicable joy in my heart, as if an in-
tolerable burden has been lifted.
At last I am free!
1
H
1


SOME REMARKS ON RIMBAUD
·AS MAGICIAN
BY W. C. BLUM
LT
ET us agree that Arthur Rimbaud at one time in his life seri-
ously wanted what is outside and beyond ordinary human
experience, that he was a dreamer, not in the Sunday school sense of
the word—a youth with abstract words in his head and the usual
aspirations in his stomach, whose dreams at best eventuate in a canti-
a
lever bridge, or a new political party—but a true wizard of dreams
consciously working changes in his receptive apparatus, trying to
regain and perfect that omnipotence of thought which Freud at-
tributes to the savages. I will not pretend to interpret his discov-
eries, but will only represent, at least to the commoner prejudices,
how he or some one like him might have been led to set off on such
an adventure and might later have returned.
Rimbaud differs from the magicians who preceded him in that he
began his work when he was only seventeen, a difference which had
its consequences, as I hope to show.
All our information about his enterprise is in what he wrote, and
as he began to write before he began his enterprise and continued to
write a little after it had been given up, we have the prologue and
the retrospect in his own words.
From the time when he first wrote poetry at twelve until he was
seventeen he showed an enormous precocity without any very unique
intentions. His early pastorals he fashioned with a strong hand in
regular unexceptional verses. The procession of his alexandrines
and quatrains is neither flawless nor unusual in construction, but it
moves, and with a new pride. The remarkable element in these
early verses, as Laforgue pointed out, is the "inexhaustible unex-
pected of his ever adequate images.”
In his satires, products of savage annoyance, he still stood away
from his enemies, priests, librarians, shopkeepers, and emperors,
and regarded them with frigid ill-will. His humour was of the
sort described by Frenchmen as goguenard and pince-sans-rire, a
humour unknown to the followers of Dickens:


720 SOME REMARKS ON RIMBAUD AS MAGICIAN
"Ceux qui disent: Cré Nom, ceux qui disent macache,
Soldats, marins, débris d'Empire, retraités
Sont nuls, très nuls devant les soldats des Traités
Qui tailladent l'azur frontière à grands coups d'hache.
“Pipe aux dents, lame en main, profonds, pas embêtés,
Quand l'ombre bave aux bois comme un mufle de vache
Ils s'en vont, amenant leurs dogues à l'attache,
Excercer nuitamment leurs terribles gaietés!
“Ils signalent aux lois modernes les faunesses.
Ils empoignent les Fausts et les Diavolos:
*Pas de ça, les anciens! Déposez les ballots!'
"-Quand sa sérénité s'approche des jeunesses,
Le Douanier se tient aux appas contrôlés.
Enfer aux délinquants que sa paume a frôlés !"
a
1
The miracle of such precocity is not to be explained, but one is
also inquisitive about his enthusiastic bitterness. The root of all
bitterness, of course, is supposed to be disillusion, but in this case
it is curious how few people seem born predestined to bitterness.
At first, rather, one suspects Rimbaud of having had a high, con-
trary stomach. Some old injury had made it impossible for him
to acquiesce with his elders, to endure eating out of the same trough
with a multitude of ordinary persons. It is a matter of: "If these
pigs like it how can there possibly be anything there for me?"
Later he finds out that the pigs not only choose to eat out of the
same trough but appoint others to keep them to their choice, to see
that you do not eat elsewhere. They also talk about obedience and
loyalty and invent the most lacerating situations. The insult
through mankind to yourself, and through yourself to mankind, of
those rituals of abasement which have only now ceased at the
Invalides and in other places—the dead soldier's family receive
ing his cross from the authorities! Always and everywhere one is
outraged by the thing in power, to which humble people make their
sacrifices. Like Butler, Rimbaud had addressed his iambics to The
Righteous Man; he did not care to become one himself. He would
not work since work meant submission and worse, authority for him-


W. C. BLUM
721
>
ing his
self. It was a long time before he tired of battering at these blind,
deaf heads and senseless bodies, whose chief offence is not in what
they do to one (atrocities would be almost a relief), but in the fact
that they are in a position to do anything.
Somewhat harder to understand was his permanent aversion
to army life; not to the life of a mercenary (he enlisted several
times in the Dutch colonial expeditions, saw service in the Far East,
and deserted again apparently at 'will)—but to the life of a con-
script in the army of his own country. Even at thirty-nine, after
thirteen years of hardship and danger in the desert, dying, his leg
amputated above the knee, he still worried over the possibility of
conscription.
Without illusions, then, as to the pleasures of service and of mak-
way in the modern world, he still preserved an illusion on the
score of Paris, which represented to him, as to others, escape from
ennui in the provinces, superior companionships, appreciation, and
fame.
His first trip to Paris was made in 1871 on a wave of fellow-feel-
ing for the communists, whom he had never seen and to whom he
was therefore able to give his allegiance. That is, if he were not
willing to live with them at any rate he was willing to die with
them. But such a fate had not been arranged for Rimbaud.. When
the revengeful army of the Republicans came from Versailles, court-
martialling and burning, he escaped back to Charleville, resolved
never to die in any company except his own.
But although he had overcome the impulse to go off with the
crowd he was still a slave to Paris, which he next attempted success-
fully about a year later on Paul Verlaine's invitation. Rimbaud had
sent Verlaine some manuscript poems, among which was the famous
Bateau Ivre; with them went a squirmingly arrogant letter in which
Rimbaud spoke of himself in wincing phrases, “petites crasses,'
" “moins génant qu'un Zanetto.” Verlaine wrote a hyperbolic reply
and showed the poems about to his literary friends and acquaint-
ances, among whom Victor Hugo was heard to exclaim: "Shake-
speare Enfant.” This was doing quite well even for Hugo. When
Rimbaud arrived, however, his youthful awkwardness and his over-
grown appearance momentarily cooled the general ardour, and by
the time it returned Rimbaud was thoroughly sick of the whole col-
lection of artists and literati, with the exception of Verlaine, Cros,
а


722
SOME REMARKS ON RIMBAUD AS MAGICIAN
.
and Forain. Potentially and actually he considered himself more
remarkable than Hugo, or Shakespeare for that matter, with their
"ambitions of a maître du café.” Therefore he expressed himself
frequently, especially when drunk, with the Frenchman's talent for
sibilant contempt, and even with his fists: "Ce n'était pas-fa,
“,
disait-il, ça n'y était pas du tout mais là pas du tout. Racine, peuh!
Victor Hugo
pouah. Homère? Homère!”
Lesser reputations came off somewhat worse, and Rimbaud's desire
to cover his shyness only exaggerated his natural inclination for tell-
ing people where they could get off. Even after thirty years tired
journalists like Verlaine's biographer, Lepelletier, remembered this
child, Shakespeare perhaps, but very terrible, with horror.
Manifestly Rimbaud was in no danger of being lured by the
pros-
pects of a reputable and congenial life in the capital. He had writ-
ten great poems, his mind was full of new projects. He was not
going to settle down to producing always the same sort of thing,
evolving a little perhaps, with one eye on his public, till his
reputation spread all over the world and he became un très grand
homme. At thirty he might have thought twice about it, but not at
seventeen.
In this way he disposed of ambitions which would have lasted a
talented man a lifetime. Paris he never mentioned again without
imprecations. London and Brussels he thought infinitely preferable,
and he might have liked New York and Chicago in comparison. He
was one of those Frenchmen who ought never to have been born in
France.
The void which was thus apparently produced in him, however,
had been filled to overflowing about this time by ambitions of an
entirely different character from those customary ones we have been
describing. Smoking his pipe on long walks with his friend Ernest
Delahaye through the Bois d'Amour, the young giant with the
crescentic
eyes and inapposite lips had elaborated ideas of which we
get a first taste in the notorious letter of May 15, 1871. As this has
appeared only in a pre-war number of the Nouvelle Revue Fran-
çaise, I may as well quote a good part of it.
"Charleville, 15 Mai, 1871.
Here is some prose about the future of poetry :
All ancient poetry came together in the poetry of Greece, Life at
.


W. C. BLUM
723
harmony.-From Greece to the romantic movement,—middle
ages—there are pedants, versifiers. From Ennius to Theroldus,
from Theroldus to Casimir Delavigne, all is rhymed prose, a game,
stupefaction and glorification of innumerable generations of idiots :
Racine is the pure, the strong, the great.—Had some one blasted his
.
rhymes, shuffled his hemistiches, the Divine Fool would to-day be as
unknown as the first author of Origins.-After Racine the game
grew mouldy. It has lasted two thousand years!
Neither pleasantry nor paradox. Reason inspires me to more cer-
titudes on this subject than a Jeune-France ever had indignations.
For that matter the moderns are free to curse their ancestors: one
is at home and one has the leisure.
No one has ever made a good estimate of romanticism. Who
would have judged it? The Critics!! The Romantics? Who
prove so well that the song is so seldom the work, I mean the well
sung and understood thought of the singer.
For the I is somebody else. If the brass wakes to find itself a
trumpet, that is no fault of the brass! This seems plain to me: I
attend the hatching of my thought: I watch it, I listen to it: I make
a stroke with the bow: the symphony stirs in the depths, or comes on
the scene with a bound.
The first subject for a man to study who wants to be a poet is his
own consciousness, all of it. He searches his soul, inspects it, tries
it, learns it. When he knows it he should work on it; isn't that evi-
dent; in every brain a natural development goes on; so many egoists
call themselves authors; there are surely others who attribute their
intellectual progress to themselves!—But it is a question of making
one's soul monstrous; in the manner of the comprachicos, eh!
Imagine a man planting warts on his face and cultivating them.
I say it is necessary to be a seer, to make oneself a S EER!
The poet makes himself a seer by a long, immense, and reasoned
derangement of all the senses. All the forms of love, suffering,
folly, he searches in himself, he boils down in himself so as to keep
nothing of them but the quintessences. Unspeakable torture, wherein
he needs all constancy, all superhuman strength, wherein he becomes
among all the great invalid, the great malefactor, the great out-
cast, and the supreme Savant -For he reaches the unknown!
Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, richer than any!
He reaches the unknown; and when, gone mad, he ends by losing the
.
a


724 SOME REMARKS ON RIMBAUD AS MAGICIAN
1
.
.
.
comprehension of his visions, he has seen them! Let him die in his
leap among things unheard of and without names: other horrible
toilers will come; they will begin at the horizons where he went
down.
So the poet is truly Thief of Fire.
He is entrusted with humanity, with the animals even; he must
make his inventions felt, touched, listened to. If that which he
brings back from down there has form, he gives form; if it is un-
formed he gives unform. Find a language.
This language will be of the soul, for the soul, summarizing every-
thing: smells, sounds, colours, thought hooking thought and draw-
ing it through. The poet would define the unknown awaking in the
soul of the universe during his time: he would give more than the
formula of his thought, than the announcement that he was walking
with Progress! Enormity become norm, absorbed by all, he would
be really a multiplier of progress!
This future will be materialistic, you see.-—Always full of Num-
ber and Harmony, poems will be made to stay.–At bottom, this
will again be something like the poetry of Greece.
So I am working to make myself a seer.
You would be abominable not to answer; quick, for in eight days
I shall be in Paris, perhaps.
Au revoir.
A. RIMBAUD."
-
.
As we have seen, the Paris illusion blew up very shortly.
One word about the letter. It is true that it has a rather theat-
rical tone, but at least this better becomes a boy of seventeen than an
adult like Baudelaire, who appears to most people to have wasted
his time in mystification. Even with Baudelaire we may be sure
that time spent in this way was not wholly lost; some artists re-
quire a spiritual studio where they can work undisturbed by the
public consciousness, and in France, where banality is better edu-
cated than elsewhere and hence more penetrating, especially thick
walls are desirable. De Nerval, who pursued the same profession
as Rimbaud, was insane from the start, and being thus placed by
God in a world strictly his own could afford a greater geniality, and
finally even the classic frankness of middle-aged suicide. Rimbaud,
too, after he had gone a little forward in wizardry, became less and
less concerned with externals.


W. C. BLUM
725
Rather his work was an interior affair having little to do with
what others thought or did not think. For he seems very quickly
to have found out that he had a much more dangerous and subtle
enemy than his acquaintances: one which would sooner or later ruin
the whole adventure; so that looking backward in Une Saison en
Enfer he summed up his tactics in the words “Je m'évade."
The document which is said to have described his first intimacies
with magic, Les Chasses Spirituelles, was left in Paris with Mme.
Verlaine, when Rimbaud and Verlaine went to London. Later when
the lady brought suit for separation against her husband, she held
the manuscript as possible evidence and then presumably lost it.
The record therefore begins in the midst of things with Les Illu-
minations, a heterogeneous collection of notes in prose and verse.
Some of these are obviously, for one reason or another, out of the
period, for example, Rimbaud's last poem in his grand manner which
begins with a crash of breaking china:
"Qu-est-ce pour nous mon coeur, que
les
nappes
de
sang
Et de braise, et mille meurtres, et les longs cris
This poem is said to have been written while he was drunk. Sober
he had passed miles beyond, in verse to still, perfect songs,
"rhythmes naïfs, refrains niais”; in prose to a manner which still
echoes in much of our best free verse, not yet the rapid, passionate
ejaculations of Une Saison en Enfer, aimed at the joints of human-
ity, but a tense whisper of icy delirium.
There are also two poems in the free verse of his own invention,
Marine and Mouvement, colossal, static structures, one block
piled carefully on another, that have never to my knowledge been
imitated.
It is curious that a poet whose verses had been so flatly regular,
who had criticized Verlaine for a misplaced caesura, and whose
first adventure out of bounds (as he considered it) was into a fa-
vourite verse form of the late Andrew Lang, should later have
become famous as one of the founders of a new school of poetry.
The secret of his innovation, I think, is in that sentence of his
letter where he advised the poet to give “unform” to his form-
less discoveries: a simple idea, which yet did not preclude in its
discoverer's work a complex system of internal rhymes and relations.


726 SOME REMARKS ON RIMBAUD AS MAGICIAN
.
.
At the time of Les Illuminations he had plainly left behind De
Nerval and Baudelaire, and the old masters of magic whose works
he had read so avidly, and was in love, so he tells us, with “crazy
paintings, overdoors, decorations, acrobats' backdrops, signs, popu-
lar illustrations;
church Latin, lewd books without spell-
ing, novels of our ancestors, fairy tales.
” If he had ever
planned "creation from the void” he had found it impracticable,
and in default of something better had settled down to a contem-
plation of lowly objects, in order to break with human valuations
and virtues. Nature especially was in his line. “I envied animals
their contentment,” he says, "caterpillars which symbolize the in-
nocence of limbo, moles, the sleep of virginity.” It is like the
saying of Krishna: “A Brahmin, full of wisdom and virtue, an
elephant, a cow, a dog, or an eater of dogs, in these the sage sees no
difference.”
But his serenity at moments of creation was not won without
trouble at other times, and already he was beginning to know dis-
gust. By disgust I do not mean the perverse or the righteous indig-
nation which gave point to his early attacks on Napoleon III and
the Christian church, nor precisely the perverse ennui which led him
to make fun of his townspeople and various officials whom he en-
countered. These emotions accompany a splendid feeling of supe-
riority and are, in the present state of society, the birthright of every
healthy young animal. Whereas it is the essence of disgust to impli-
cate the disgusted person permanently with the disgusted thing, and
besides liberating his destructive forces to turn them inward. With
ennui as with seasickness it is the moment before expression that is
painful, and Rimbaud by seventeen had rid himself via poetry of a
heavy load of bitterness. Disgust is not so rapidly disposed of. It
came upon him when, having given up aggression, he was trying to
be on good terms with everything intelligence looked down upon, to
lose his human mind in nature. We might define disgust as the
sense of happiness lost, not in the past, but now.
At first it was disgust only in twinges at what he had written.
"Burn,” he says in a letter to a friend, "all the verses which I was
fool enough to give you during my visits in Douai.” This was well
enough theoretically; he had entered on a new enterprise and could
not afford to look back. But it was a bad omen if, to keep from
looking back, he must lay waste the whole landscape.
>


W. C. BLUM
727
three years.
Disgust, of course, is not the peculiar adjunct of genius, but an
emotion perfectly familiar to no end of adolescents, growing in
strength as they get nearer the suicidal twenties. It was the mis-
fortune as well as the glory of Rimbaud's adventure that it should
have been undertaken when he was so young. For precocious as he
was, he had not by any means put behind him at seventeen man's
great climacteric. So that while his imagination was more extrava-
gant and his aptitude for self-transformation more remarkable then
than it would have been at thirty, forces even stronger than his will
to aberration stopped him short before he had gone
As he admitted in Une Saison, then, his adventure soon turned
into a flight, with disgust following close on his heels. From Charle-
ville he went to Paris, from Paris to Brussels, from there to London,
and the chase would begin over again with variations. Only in his
Illuminations could he fixate the poised violence of his efforts to
throw himself once and finally beyond human desires.
Alas, for all his violence, he only succeeded in falling into the
arms of Nature, attaining at times a sweet resignation, premonitory
of the end.
“Qu'on patiente et qu'on s'ennuie,
C'est si simple!
Fi de ces peines.
Je veux que l'été dramatique
Me lie à son char de fortune.
Que par toi beaucoup, ô Nature,
Ah! moins nul et moins seul! je meure.
رو
He attained more; for one supreme moment he “stripped away the
sky's azure which is blackness and lived, gold spark of the radiance
nature." A shrill song of triumph, so swift as scarcely to be dis-
tinguishable from the light itself: "The sea gone with the sun.”
Follows a long fall.
“I am an inventor very differently deserving from all who have
preceded me; a musician even, who has found something like the
key to love. At present, squire of a meagre countryside, with a
gloomy sky, I try to rouse myself with memories of my beggar's
childhood, my apprenticeship or my coming into sabots, my polem-
ics, my six or seven widowhoods, and the several parties when my
strong head kept me from rising to the diapason of
my
comrades.


728 SOME REMARKS ON RIMBAUD AS MAGICIAN
t
I do not regret my old rôle of divine gaiety: the sober air of this
sour country most diligently feeds my atrocious skepticism. But
since this skepticism cannot be put in practice hereafter, and since
besides I am at the service of a new disorder. I look forward
to becoming a very wicked idiot."
.
.
If he is looking forward to this, he is certainly not looking for-
ward to much else. Indeed how is he to look forward any longer?
Disgust has caught up with him and the infinite possibilities are
gone. Deserving, this is a new word for Rimbaud. And what does
he mean by his new disorder?
Shortly after writing these words, Rimbaud returned again to
London, and there occurred in a series of rather monotonous brawls
and arguments a really decisive incident. For two years Rimbaud
and Verlaine had been almost constant companions. At first there
was a basis, at least of mutual admiration. But the precarious
friendship between two such impossible persons was already becom-
ing intolerable when Verlaine was called to Brussels by his mother,
who stated that she had arranged for a reconciliation to take place
there between him and his wife. Rimbaud tried to persuade his
friend that the reconciliation would never be realized, but Verlaine
persisted in hoping against hope and finally departed without even
saying good-bye. As Rimbaud had predicted, Verlaine found only
his mother in Brussels and sent off a despairing telegram to Rimbaud
imploring his assistance. Rimbaud, who feared that Verlaine might
dispose of himself, spent his last penny on a ticket to Brussels.
When Verlaine saw him again he forgot his misery, forgot also the
plans for sensible behaviour which his mother had been urging upon
him, and went into transports of relief, which included the absorp-
tion of a large quantity of absinthe. Rimbaud, himself considerably
relieved, remembered that he was through with Verlaine and asked
for money with which to get home. Verlaine not only refused the
money, but, when Rimbaud insisted that he was going even if he had
to walk, shot him with a revolver, wounding his hand. After other
ridiculous manoeuvres, Verlaine through no fault of his victim's
went to a Belgian prison for two years, while Rimbaud returned to
Charleville in the final stages of disorganization.
During that summer he completed Une Saison en Enfer, which as
far as we know was the last thing, outside of a few letters and re-



7
Yimbands
Fron Berrichon's Life
ARTHUR RIMBAUD


1


W. C. BLUM
729
1
ports, that he ever wrote. That a man of so much ability, to say the
least, should stop writing at the age of nineteen has astonished and
annoyed a great many people, and some of them have tried to ex-
plain how it happened. Of course, it is a great mystery why men
write anyway, but writing has come to be counted a natural func-
tion, and we reserve our curiosity for those who give it up. The
easiest theory about Rimbaud seems to have been that by a logical
route he arrived at the conclusion that his writing did good neither
to him nor to any one else, and that he ought to devote himself to
other pursuits. But this theory does not really explain anything.
Artists rarely give up one form of expression except for another,
and when they do, it is not for logical reasons. There must have
been some active element, some actual aversion, which made writing
impossible. The disgust which had made him burn his old poems
had crept up and fixed itself in the very idea of writing.
Even so, he continued to write for a little while but in a very dif- .
ferent spirit from that of the first Illuminations. The innocence
of mind which he had acquired with so much labour was no longer
there. He had come to the towns as a savage might, treating civili-
zation as he treated nature; and it had seemed to him that he found
civilization good. But the strain was too great; the actuality of
others began to force itself again on his attention. He began to
judge. There is an impure complexity in the last Illuminations, an
echoing of many voices out of tune, in these execrations of society
by one who, try as he would, could not but feel himself party to "all
this Sin.”
Une Saison en Enfer, which followed Les Illuminations, is an
account not only of his enterprise and its failure but of his struggle
with that new disorder which now, when he was sick with disgust,
suddenly unmasked itself before him. "Le Bonheur! Sa dent, douce
à la mort, m'avertissait au chant du coq,—ad matutinum, au Chris-
tus venit,-dans les plus sombre villes.” Paul Claudel picks this
passage out of Une Saison with a knowing chuckle. He has been
there himself; the symptoms are not unfamiliar to him. Happiness,
or as the church calls it, salvation had come to Rimbaud with intol-
erable sweetness; at moments he had visions of "endless beaches
covered with white nations in joy."
Yet he was scarcely ripe for all the indignities. Authority and
limitation still as horrible as ever returned to annoy him in all their


730
SOME REMARKS ON RIMBAUD AS MAGICIAN
>
different guises, poisoning his old affections. Even nature, that
nature he had so loved, to which he had given himself and all his,
he now saw to be no more than a "display of liberality.” Wherever
he projected his thought the spirit faced him; he became convinced
that there was nothing outside the spirit. Art too was a display of
liberality, a mocking present to him from the powers. His antics
had served only to amuse the spirit. Ironically he pretended to
find comfort in what he had done for others. “Bah! Faisons toutes
les grimaces imaginables!”
In this mood his relations with Verlaine appeared to him particu-
larly silly: himself, the amusing demon leading astray into spiritual
aberration, Verlaine the foolish virgin; who had never understood
the demon's aspirations, who never would understand them. In a
chapter of Une Saison Rimbaud mocks Verlaine as cruelly and
anxiously as though Verlaine were a part of his own nature, in-
finitely weak and foolish.
Yet did not Verlaine, continuing with absinthe and humility, turn
out in the end the more steadfast wizard?
The future was now as much a source of trouble to Rimbaud as
the past. He dared not kill himself. “Quick,” he says, "are there
.
other lives?” He considers the various conditions and professions
which are open, now that his chosen profession has failed him, and
rejects them all. “A hard life, a pure self-stultification—lift with
withered fist the lid of the coffin, sit down, suffocate.” But grad-
ually the sickness is abating, life begins to appear almost possible
again, and he ends his book in a curious accent of determination, and
starts off again “to possess the truth in a soul and body.”
What did he mean? We only know that a few months later he
burned every copy of Une Saison which he could lay hands on and
set off on a painful journey over the planet, which came to centre
eventually in the deserts about the Rea Sea. Silent except for a
few letters to his family, this period of twenty years is subject to
interpretations.
The persons who have thought and written about him most since
his death, M. Berrichon, M. Paul Claudel, and Isabelle Rimbaud,
his sister, have considered it their duty to give him a reputation
for sanctity—and in a way with reason. The legend of Rimbaud,
growing like a snowball as it rolled through the Paris cafés, had
become peculiarly monstrous. Even the thoughtful and perverse
a


W. C. BLUM
731
epicurean, de Gourmont, could allow himself a moment of prudish
eloquence against a man who, “alone among us all,” had despised
his poetic gift, a more evident one than de Gourmont's, and had
sought, far from belles-lettres, the vulgar enjoyments of adventure.
Yet even to clear his reputation the apologists of Rimbaud need
not have gone to the trouble of fitting him with a Roman halo;
an uncertain expedient at best, as any one will be persuaded who
recalls the reputations of some of the saints, and in this case a super-
fluous one, seeing that rumour had accomplished this also several
years before, and advertised in many places, including an essay by
George Moore, in which the trading post at Harrar becomes a
convent on the shores of the Red Sea.
Those who have tried to take possession of Rimbaud in the name
of the church have not entirely proved their case. When he wrote
Une Saison en Enfer, he was indeed not free from the old tortures
of theology, original sin, heaven, and the rest. But if we allow that
brave men can have fear, why should not Rimbaud have shaken
off what may have been only a momentary sickness? There is cer-
tainly no trace of it in his letters, even in the last letters from
Marseilles, where he endured a septic knee-joint, an unsuccessful
amputation, crutches and wooden legs all useless, a slow relapse, and
a hard death. It would be difficult to find a record of suffering
with comfort more sturdily refused than these frightful letters.
M. Berrichon seizes on the fact of Rimbaud's name entered at
the hospital Jean instead of Jean-Arthur, and hints that the dying
man wanted to identify himself with the John of Revelations. It
is more likely that this was simply another instance of his fear of
the military authorities. Again his sister says that he asked for a
priest when he was dying; yet even by her account he seems to have
passed his last hours in imagination, more in the flare of the African
sun, the creak of saddle leather, the smell of camels, than in the
candle glow and oil and whispering of the extreme unction. He
was a born wanderer as his father had been before him.
The burden of his letters to his family is always the same one of
exasperation. “I am very bored; I have never known anybody so
bored as I am; and that is not the worst. The worst is in the fear
;
of becoming oneself more and more stupid, isolated and exiled from
all intelligent society.”
He had escaped disgust by exchanging it for despair. It is true
a


732
SOME REMARKS ON RIMBAUD AS MAGICIAN
that he made a pretence of keeping in mind the ordinary human
hopes. He wrote home of a desire to marry some sensible woman
who would not insist on his settling down; he wanted to make
money, to be independent so that he might drug himself with more
travel and more knowledge of the world. To this end he organized
caravans and led them with feverish energy over hundreds of miles
of desert. But it is significant that whenever success was in reach
he always managed to miss it, and then, curiously enough, experi-
ence the last bitterness of disappointment. Like some noble animal
caught in a garden, he ignored the things at hand and persisted in
butting his head against the wall.


ASPHALT
BY CONRAD AIKEN
Light your cigarette, then, in this shadow,
And talk to her, your arm engaged with hers.
Heavily over your heads the eaten maple
In the dead air of August strains and stirs.
Her stone-white face, in the lamp-light, turns toward you;
Darkly, with time-dark eyes, she questions you
Whether this universe is what she thinks it-
Simple and passionate and profound and true-
a
Or whether, as with a sound of dim disaster,
A plaintive music brought to a huddled fall,
Some ancient treachery slides through the heart of things—
The last star falling, seen from the utmost wall
.
And you—what sinister, far, reserves of laughter,
What understandings, remote, perplexed, remain
Unguessed for ever by her who is
your
victim-
Victim, of whom you too are victim again?
Come! let us dance once more on the ancient asphalt:
Seeing, beneath its strange and recent shape,
The eternal horror of rock, from which, for ever,
We toss our tortured hands, to no escape.
:


ANTONIO MACHADO: POET OF CASTILE
BY JOHN DOS PASSOS
Y NOW
OU cannot read any Spanish poet of to-day without thinking
now and then of Rubén Darío, that prodigious Nicaraguan
who collected into his verse all the tendencies of poetry in France
and America and the Orient and poured them in a turgid cataract,
full of mud and gold-dust, into the thought of the new generation
in Spain. Overflowing with beauty and banality, patched out with
images and ornaments from Greece and Egypt and France and
Japan and his own Central America, symbolist and romantic and
Parnassian all at once, Rubén Darío's verse is like those doorways
of the Spanish Renaissance, where French and Moorish and Italian
motives jostle in headlong arabesques, where the vulgarest routine
stone-chipping is interlocked with designs and forms of rare beauty
and significance. Here and there among the turgid muddle, out of
the impact of unassimilated things, comes a spark of real poetry.
And that spark can be said-as truly as anything of the sort can be
said to be the motive force of the whole movement of renovation
in Spanish poetry. Of course the poets have not been content to
be influenced by the outside world only through Darío. Baudelaire
and Verlaine had a very large direct influence, once the way was
opened, and their influence succeeded in curbing the lush impromptu
manner of romantic Spanish verse. In Antonio Machado's work-
and he is beginning to be generally considered the central figure-
there is a restraint and terseness of phrase rare in any poetry.
I do not mean to infer that Machado can be called in any real sense
a pupil of either Darío or Verlaine; rather one would say that in a
generation occupied largely in more or less unsuccessful imitation
of these poets, Machado's poetry stands out as particularly original
and personal. In fact, except for the verse of Juan Ramón
Jimenez, it would be in America and England rather than in Spain,
in Aldington and Amy Lowell, that one would find analogous aims
and methods. The influence of the symbolists, and the turbulent
experimenting of the Nicaraguan broke down the bombastic roman-
tic style current in Spain, as it was broken down everywhere else in
a
a


JOHN DOS PASSOS
735
the middle nineteenth century. In Machado's work a new method
is being built up, that harks back more to early ballads and the verse
of the first moments of the Renaissance than to anything foreign,
but which shows the same enthusiasm for the rhythms of ordinary
speech and for the simple pictorial expression of undoctored emo-
tion that we find in the renovators of poetry the world over.
Campos de Castilla, his first volume to be widely read, marks an
epoch in Spanish poetry.
Antonio Machado's verse is taken up with places. It is obsessed
with the old Spanish towns where he has lived, with the mellow
sadness of tortuous streets, and of old houses that have soaked up
the lives of generations upon generations of men, crumbling in
the flaming silence of summer noons or groaning in the icy blast
off the mountains in winter. Though born in Andalusia, the bitter
strength of the Castilian plain, where half-deserted cities stand
aloof from the world, shrunken into their walls, still dreaming of
the ages of faith and conquest, has subjected his imagination, and
the purity of Castilian speech has dominated his writing, until his
poems seem as Castilian as Don Quixote.
“My childhood: memories of a courtyard in Seville,
and of a bright garden where lemons hung ripening.
My youth: twenty years in the land of Castile.
My history: a few events I do not care to remember.”
a
So Machado writes of himself. He was born in the eighties, has
been a teacher of French in government schools in Soria and Baeza
and at present in Segovia-all old Spanish cities very mellow and
very stately—and has made the migration to Paris customary with
Spanish writers and artists. He says in the Poema de un Dia:
"Here I am, already a teacher
of modern languages, who yesterday
was a master of the gai scavoir
and the nightingale’s apprentice.”
He has published three volumes of verse, Soledades (Solitudes),
Campos de Castilla (Fields of Castile), and Soledades y Galerías
(Solitudes and Galleries), and recently a government institution,


736
ANTONIO MACHADO: POET OF CASTILE
the Residencia de Estudiantes, has published his complete works
up to date.
a
The following translations are necessarily inadequate, as the
poems depend very much on modulations of rhythm and on the
expressive fitting together of words impossible to render in a foreign
language. He uses rhyme comparatively little, often substituting
assonance in accordance with the pecular tradition of Spanish pros-
ody. I have made no attempt to imitate his form exactly.
Madrid
I
Yes, come away with me-fields of Soria,
quiet evenings, violet mountains,
aspens of the river, green dreams
of the grey earth,
bitter melancholy
of the crumbling city-
perhaps it is that you have become
the background of my life.
.
Men of the high Numantine plain,
who keep God like old-Christians,
may the sun of Spain fill you
with joy and light and abundance!
II
A frail sound of a tunic trailing
across the infertile earth,
and the sonorous weeping
of the old bells.


JOHN DOS PASSOS
737
The dying embers
of the horizon smoke.
White ancestral ghosts
go lighting the stars.
.
- Open the balcony-window. The hour
of illusion draws near
The afternoon has gone to sleep
and the bells dream.
III
Figures in the fields against the sky!
Two slow oxen plough
on a hillside early in autumn,
and between the black heads bent down
under the weight of the yoke,
hangs and sways a basket of reeds,
a child's cradle;
And behind the yoke stride
a man who leans towards the earth
and a woman who, into the open furrows, ,
throws the seed.
Under a cloud of carmine and flame,
in the liquid green gold of the setting,
their shadows grow monstrous.
IV
Naked is the earth
and the soul howls to the wan horizon
like a hungry she-wolf.
What do
poet, in the sunset?
you seek,


738
ANTONIO MACHADO: POET OF CASTILE
Bitter going, for the path
weighs one down, the frozen wind,
and the coming night and the bitterness
of distance
On the white path
the trunks of frustrate trees show black,
on the distant mountains
there is gold and blood. The sun dies
What do you seek,
poet, in the sunset?
V
Silver hills and grey ploughed lands,
violet outcroppings of rock
through which the Duero traces
its curve like a cross-bow
about Soria,
dark oak-woods, wild cliffs,
bald peaks,
and the white roads and the aspens of the river.
Afternoons of Soria, mystic and warlike,
to-day I am very sad for you,
sadness of love,
Fields of Soria,
where it seems that the rocks dream,
come with me! Violet rocky outcroppings,
silver hills and grey ploughed lands.
VI
1
We think to create festivals
of love out of our love,
to burn new incense
on untrodden mountains;


JOHN DOS PASSOS
739
and to keep the secret
of our pale faces,
and why in the bacchanals of life
we carry empty glasses,
while with tinkling echoes and laughing
foams the gold must of the grape.
.
A hidden bird among the branches
of the solitary park
whistles mockery.
We feel
the shadow of a dream in our wine-glass,
and something that is earth in our flesh
feels the dampness of the garden like a caress.
VII
I have been back to see the golden aspens,
aspens of the road along the Duero
between San Polo and San Saturio,
beyond the old stiff walls
of Soria, barbican
towards Aragon of the Castilian lands.
These poplars of the river, that chime
when the wind blows their dry leaves
to the sound of the water,
have in their bark the names of lovers,
initials and dates.
Aspens of love where yesterday
the branches were full of nightingales,
aspens that to-morrow will sing
under the scented wind of the springtime,
aspens of love by the water
that speeds and goes by dreaming,
aspens of the bank of the Duero,
come away with me.


740
ANTONIO MACHADO: POET OF CASTILE
VIII
Cold Soria, clear Soria,
key of the outlands,
with the warrior castle
in ruins beside the Duero,
and the stiff old walls,
and the blackened houses.
Dead city of barons
and soldiers and huntsmen,
whose portals bear the shields
of a hundred hidalgos;
city of hungry greyhounds,
of lean greyhounds
that swarm
among the dirty lanes
and howl at midnight
when the crows caw.
Cold Soria! The clock
of the Lawcourts has struck one.
Soria, city of Castile,
so beautiful under the moon.
IX
AT A FRIEND'S BURIAL
They put him away in the earth
a horrible July afternoon
under a sun of fire.
A step from the open grave
grew roses with rotting petals
among geraniums of bitter fragrance,
red-flowered. The sky


JOHN DOS PASSOS
741
a pale blue. A wind
hard and dry.
Hanging on the thick ropes,
the two gravediggers
let the coffin heavily
down into the grave.
It struck the bottom with a sharp sound,
solemnly, in the silence.
The sound of a coffin striking the earth
is something unutterably solemn.
The heavy clods broke into dust
over the black coffin.
A white mist of dust rose in the air
out of the deep grave.
And you, without a shadow now, sleep.
Long peace to your bones.
For all time
you sleep a tranquil and a real sleep.
a
X
THE IBERIAN GOD
Like the cross-bowman,
the gambler in the song,
the Iberian had an arrow for his god
when he shattered the grain with hail
and ruined the fruits of autumn;
and a gloria when he fattened
the barley and the oats
that were to make bread to-morrow.


742 ANTONIO MACHADO: POET OF CASTILE
“God of ruin,
I worship because I wait and because I fear.
I bend in prayer to the earth
a blasphemous heart.
“Lord, through whom I snatch my bread with pain,
I know your strength, I know my slavery.
Lord of the clouds in the east
that trample the country-side,
of dry autumns and late frosts
and of the blasts of heat that scorch the harvests!
"Lord of the iris in the green meadows
where the sheep graze,
Lord of the fruit the worms gnaw
and of the hut the whirlwind shatters,
your breath gives life to the fire in the hearth,
your warmth ripens the tawny grain,
and your holy hand, St. John's eve,
hardens the stone of the
green
olive.
“Lord of riches and poverty,
Of fortune and mishap,
who gives to the rich luck and idleness,
and pain and hope to the poor!
“Lord, Lord, in the inconstant wheel
of the year I have sown my sowing
that has an equal chance with the coins
of a gambler sown on the gambling-table!
“Lord, a father to-day, though stained with yesterday's blood,
two-faced of love and vengeance,
to you, dice cast into the wind,
goes my prayer, blasphemy and praise !!!
This man who insults God in his altars,
without more care of the frown of fate,


JOHN DOS PASSOS
743
also dreamed of paths across the seas
and said: It is God who walks upon the waters.
Is it not he who put God above war,
beyond fate,
beyond the earth,
beyond the sea and death?
Did he not give the greenest bough
of the dark-green Iberian oak
for God's holy bonfire,
and for love flame one with God?
But to-day
What does a day matter?
for the new household gods
there are plains in forest shade
and green boughs in the old oak-woods.
Though long the land waits
for the curved plough to open the first furrow,
there is sowing for God's grain
under thistles and burdocks and nettles.
What does a day matter? Yesterday waits
for to-morrow, to-morrow for infinity;
men of Spain, neither is the past dead,
nor is to-morrow, nor yesterday, written.
Who has seen the face of the Iberian God?
I wait
for the Iberian man who with strong hands
will carve out of Castilian oak
The parched God of the grey land.


ART AND CRAFTSMANSHIP
BY ANANDA COOMARASWAMY
IN
1
reply to the inquiry, What is art? an answer may
be made
as follows: art is the involuntary dramatization of subjective
experience. In other words, the crystallization of a state of mind
in images (whether visual, auditory, or otherwise). This excludes
from art the practical activity of mere illustration, which involves
only the combination of empirical observation with skill of crafts-
manship. Even the setting down on paper of the signs, lines,
words, musical notes, and so forth, that serve to communicate aes-
thetic experience, or the transmission of such an experience by the
indications of gesture, or audible sounds, is a practical activity-
in kinema phraseology, "registering”—to be distinguished from that
of creation. However swiftly the record may follow on the heels
of the single spiritual activity of intuition-expression, it is always
the externalization of an already completed cycle. The words of
a poem, the lines of a drawing are not expressive, but indicative;
they are the catalytic stimuli to a renewed aesthetic activity, or
expression, on the part of the hearer. It is therefore by ellipsis that
we call them expressive, as it is by ellipsis that we speak of a physi-
cal work of art as beautiful. It is scarcely needful to add that ques-
tions of personal taste or interest have nothing to do with aesthetic
values, however legitimately they may govern conduct.
The element of skill enters only into the voluntary practical
activity of externalization, the use of the language of stimulation.
We cannot measure qualities of art by measuring degrees of skill.
In fact, there are no degrees of art: nor is it possible to speak of
a progress or degeneration of art, in individuals or schools, as we
can speak of progress or loss in the realm of knowledge, technique,
and skill. In the words of Blake: “The human mind cannot go
beyond the gift of God, the Holy Ghost. To suppose that art can
go beyond the finest specimens of art that are now in the world is
not knowing what art is; it is being blind to the gifts of the Spirit.”
Wagner and Raphael are not necessarily superior to Palestrina
and Giotto because of their more elaborate technique or superior


ANANDA COOMARASWAMY
745
facility. We can only ask: in which have we evidence of most
profound vision; which of these artists is the greater vessel ? For
this is what we really mean, when we relinquish our preoccupation
with the accidentals of technique and accomplishment, and still
observe that at various moments in the history of an individual or
of a school there is a varying degree of vision.
This is not a variability of art, but of the individual. Two men
at the same time, or one man at different times, may go down to
the sea, with a bucket or a cup, and bring back a bucketful or a
cupful of water; but each brings back the same water, whether the
vessels be large or small, of gold or clay. In other words, however
broad or narrow, noble or ignoble the subject of the art, however
elegant or crude the language, art is always recognizable as art. All
that we can demand of an artist is that he should offer us living
water: for this water has a miraculous quality and even though it
be offered in a thimble, it will fill a bowl. One can only say that
a
there are greater and lesser artists, as there are greater and lesser
lovers; but we can no more speak of progress in art than we could
speak of progress in love.
If Mrs. Eddy speaks of the same truth that Jesus speaks of, it
is not because of her defective literary education that she fails to
touch us, but because of the less intensity or clarity of her experi-
The most awkward means are adequate to the communica-
tion of authentic experience, and the finest words no compensation
for the lack of it. It is for this reason that we are moved by the
true Primitives and that the most accomplished art may leave us
cold.
It is as hard for the learned artist as for the rich man to enter
the kingdom of heaven. In saying this, we need not forget that
the gates are as widely opened to the learned and the rich as to the
illiterate and the poor. There is no essential virtue in immaturity:
for the greatest art is required not merely love, but the compre-
hension of what is loved, and full self-consciousness. Skill and
sophistication, learning and wealth are neither good nor bad in
themselves—that is to say, they can be used or misused. And both
are relative terms. Most great artists have been learned in their
own time and place (Giotto was acclaimed as a realist), and there
is nothing in the coincidence of the external signs of art with the di-
mensional aspect of nature which of itself precludes the possibility
ence.


746
MOUNT AUBURN
of communicating by 'such signs an authentic spiritual experience.
We cannot separate the tares from the wheat by distinguishing a
naturalistic from a symbolic language. It is not by an intellectual
or categorical activity that we can judge of the intensity of any
artist's vision. We cannot judge except by our own response; and
whether or not we can respond, will depend on our own state of
grace. The critic is the measure of his own critique.
MOUNT AUBURN
BY ELIZABETH J. COATSWORTH
In the whole graveyard there is not a nymph
To rustle through the yellow fall of leaves,
Upon a tomb a pitying angel grieves,
And pigeons wrapped in Tyrian purple shawls
Forget the shrine of Cyprus in the sea
To sit upon the headstones gloomily.
Only the yellow trees are casual
Of all the meager dust they stand above-
And still ignoring death, shout "hail!”. to love.


FRÄULEIN
BY PAUL ROSENFELD
FOREWORD
F ,
RAULEIN was our German governess. She entered our house-
hold shortly after Mama discovered that Bridget, our nurse,
permitted us to eat buttered lumps of sugar. We addressed her,
not by her given name, but as “Fräulein,” for she was, as Mama put
it, “a superior sort of servant," and dined, not in the kitchen, as
Bridget had done, but at table. We remained in her care two years.
During that period, she lived with my sister and me more imme-
diately than either our mother or father. She had her bed
up
in the
third story where we slept, waked and washed us in the morning,
conducted us to the school house after breakfast, fetched us at lunch
time, and, in the afternoon, walked with us in Central Park.
Indeed, she very nearly lived as we. She was seldom separated
from us, and went out alone very little. Sometimes, of a Sunday
afternoon, she called on a married cousin who lived near First
Avenue, and whose husband ran a “grocery business.” That was
her chief excursion. She had few friends. At times, she was assidu-
ous in the kitchen. But, for the most, there was little cordial inter-
course between her and the other servants. Nor did she associate
freely with the other governesses in the block, or with those we
encountered so frequently in the Park. “They've not so much
respect for a person,” she repeated to us oftentimes. And conse-
quently, those afternoons, when we strolled, or when we sat on
sunny benches, we were alone, Fräulein and my sister and I.
It was at such moments that she took us into her confidence, and
amazed us by revealing to us what surprising adventures had be-
fallen her, in such generous measure, all her life. Her stories left
upon my mind the impression of an indeed unforgettable personage.
And for that reason I have sought to recount them faithfully.


748
FRÄULEIN
I
THE STORY OF "WHY FRÄULEIN HAD TO
BECOME A GOVERNESS”
When Fräulein was a child in Germany, her parents lived in
the greatest luxury. They had everything money can buy. They
were immensely rich. They lived in an actual castle, and had their
own horses and carriages, and at least ten servants. They had an
estate in the country, and went with nothing but the nobility. Fräu-
lein's mother never went out driving without two men on the box.
If any one in her childhood had even mentioned to Fräulein that
one fine day she would have to earn her own living, she would have
laughed in their face. She was brought up to have not the slightest
regard for money. For who ever thought that they would ever need
it? If they had wanted to they could have thrown gold by the
handfuls out of the window, and it wouldn't have mattered in the
least.
Fräulein was brought up like a little princess. She used to have
her own horses, and a pony cart, and whenever she went out, people
used to turn around in the street and look at her. But then her
parents lost all their money. And so Fräulein had to go and earn
her own living. No one knows what a thing it is to have to earn
your own bread in the house of strangers who look on you as if you
were a common servant! And the worst of it is that if you'd have
your rights, you'd be as rich as the richest people, and far, far from
here!
II
THE STORY OF WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THERE WASN'T
ROOM FOR FRÄULEIN AT THE SECOND-CABIN TABLE
When Fräulein went to Europe the last time, to see her dear par-
ents, she travelled second cabin.
Everybody knows you have much more fun in the second cabin
than in the first. In the first place, you can dance and sing all night
if you want to, and on Fräulein's steamer they sang a song every
night that was the drollest thing, all about the different Meyers-
Obermeyers and Mittelmeyers and Untermeyers. It was to laugh
yourself dead over. Most of the first-cabin passengers were dying
to come over to the second cabin, because it wasn't so stiff and for-


PAUL ROSENFELD
749
a
mal as the first. Fräulein had only one other lady with her in her
cabin, so really she might have been in the first cabin, she had so
much room. The lady in Fräulein's cabin was sea-sick most of the
time, and wouldn't eat a single thing but soda crackers, and though
you tried to reason with her it was like talking to a door, you got
not that much satisfaction.
Not everybody is the way they are here in America. Here in
America, everything depends whether you are wealthy or not. They
say this is the Land of the Brave and the Home of the Free, and
that everybody here is a Lord and a Lady. Yes, if you're rich, then
you're a Lord and Lady. But if you have to earn your own living,
then you're nobody, and get not so much consideration from your
employers. And if anything happens to the children, who gets the
blame?
But it's not everywhere like that, thank Heaven! For instance,
it was different on the steamer. There nobody asked you whether
you earned your own bread or not, but treated you absolutely po-
litely.
For instance, there wasn't any room for Fräulein at the second-
cabin table, because the steward had forgotten to save a seat for
her, and she had her choice between going hungry and eating in the
steerage. But suddenly, who should come up to her but the captain
himself! And he said to the steward who hadn't kept a seat for
Fräulein:
“If I ever hear of it happening again that on my steamer a single
passenger, no matter who it is, is left without a seat at table, I'll
have you discharged the moment we land!”
And then he said to Fräulein : “My dear young lady, will you do
me the honor of sitting at my table in the first cabin ?"
Fräulein said she was only a poor governess in the second cabin,
and had no right to mingle with the passengers in the first.
But the captain said to her, “Any one who sits at the captain's
table on the North German Lloyd is every bit as good as the finest
lady on Fifth Avenue!” And without another word, he made her
take his arm and led her straight to the first-cabin dining-saloon.
You should have seen the looks on the first-cabin passengers
when Fräulein walked into the first-cabin dining-saloon on the cap-
tain's arm! But she acted just as if nothing had happened, and the
captain led her straight to his table, which was in the middle of the


750
FRÄULEIN
room, and made her sit right next to him. If Fräulein had engaged
the most expensive cabin on the boat, he couldn't have treated her
any different. It all just goes to show that there are some people
· who don't always ask how much money you have in the bank.
III
THE GRAND PEOPLE WHO WERE ON FRÄULEIN'S BOAT
There were the grandest people on Fräulein's boat. For instance,
there was an English lord and his wife, Mylady.
Now, if there's anything that Fräulein never could stand, it's the
English. They're so stuck up they think they're too good even to
so much as look at you. And then, the joke of the whole thing is
that the Queen of England, Queen Victoria, is really a German,
and comes from right near from where Fräulein does. And she's an
absolutely plain woman, and takes her chicken-bones right up in her
fingers, and picks them. And this is the way it was found out. A
German professor had dinner with her at Windsor Castle, the castle
where she lives, and when he came home, he said, “Children, from
now on you can all pick your chicken-bones. The Queen of Eng-
land picks hers!”
The English lord on Fräulein's boat was so proud he never
spoke to any one but his own wife, Mylady. For instance, when
he'd want anything, he'd say, "Bless my soul, Mylady, tell the
steward I want some ham-and-eggs!" You know, they always say
"Bless my soul” before anything they say, and ham-and-eggs is
what they like to eat best of all.
The Mylord wore a glass in one eye, which is to laugh, for if
you need glasses, you wear them on both eyes, and not just one.
The Mylady was just as proud, and stared at people through a
lorgnette as if they were wild animals in a menagerie. But what
Fräulein couldn't stand was to hear her boast how
many
foxtails
she had. It just shows how cruel the English really are, for their
greatest pleasure in life is to get bloodhounds and make them run
after the foxes. And when the bloodhounds catch the poor hunted
creature, they tear it alive limb from limb, and the most beautiful
Mylady there gets the fox’s tail. The Mylady on Fräulein’s boat
actually boasted she had over a thousand foxes' tails. "I love hunt-


PAUL ROSENFELD
751
ing,” she said, in that affected way the English have, “and I love
to be there when the dogs tear the foxes.in bits.”
When Fräulein heard her talk that way, she was so aggravated
she couldn't control herself a moment longer. And she just gave
her a piece of her mind.
“If I were you,” she said to her, “I'd blush to acknowledge that
I have a thousand foxes' tails. Fox-hunting is one of the cruellest
things in the world. What have the foxes done to you that
you
should kill them? Aren't they living creatures the way you and I
are, and haven't they the same right to live that you and I have?
There is a saying in German and it goes, “Never torture any animal
,
'
just for the fun of it, because it feels just the same pain you do!'”
Fräulein trembled from head to foot while she spoke, and no
sooner had she finished than she burst right into tears, she was so
provoked. But she could see from the way the Mylady turned
white that she had touched her heart, and that it was only ignorance
and want of a friendly word that made her do such things. After
that, they became good friends and many's the time Mylady
thanked Fräulein for speaking as she had done. It just shows how
many and many a person has done wrong for years out of sheer
ignorance, simply because nobody's taken the trouble to say a
friendly word to them.
a
IV
THE OTHER GRAND PEOPLE ON FRÄULEIN'S BOAT
On Fräulein's boat there was a Roman Catholic bishop. He was
going to Rome to kiss the Pope of Rome's toe, because the Catholics
think that if they kiss the Pope of Rome's toe, they will go to
Heaven, which is the greatest superstition. Because why should
people go to Heaven just because they kiss a man's toe? Isn't the
Pope of Rome another human being just the way we are? And
even if he's the best man in the world, a toe is a toe, and the way
to get to Heaven is to do good on earth, and not to have all these
foolish ideas.
Another person who was on Fräulein's boat was Anna Held, the
actress. She played in a play called The Little Duchess, and had
the most gorgeous jewels.


752
FRÄULEIN
V
THE STORY OF HOW MRS. VANDERBILT TRIED TO
GIVE FRÄULEIN A BAD CHARACTER
Just because people are rich doesn't say for an instant they are
refined. Many a poor person is more refined than people who have
horses and carriages and everything that money can buy. For in-
stance, Mrs. Vanderbilt was on Fräulein's boat. She was so proud
she wouldn't talk to any one, and went around all day with a "don't
touch me so” expression. But just because she had a marble man-
sion on Fifth Avenue, and could wear a different dress every day if
she wanted to doesn't prove that she was ladylike. “Handsome is
what handsome does” is one of the truest things ever said.
From the moment Fräulein laid eyes on Mrs. Vanderbilt, she
knew her true character. The captain didn't like her either, and
many's the time he told Fräulein that Mrs. Vanderbilt hadn't the
slightest right to give herself airs, for she was nothing but a common
scrubwoman before Mr. Vanderbilt married her, and was only too
thankful when people gave her a few cents over her wages for car-
fare home. But instead of remembering where she came from and
being modest the way she should, she carried on actually as if she
had been born with a gold spoon in her mouth.
The whole thing was that she was jealous of Fräulein. When
she came on board the steamer, she thought that she and her daugh-
ter were going to sit next to the captain at table, and when she saw
the captain give Fräulein the place, she turned positively green, and
from that minute she hated Fräulein. But what made her madder
than anything else was that her daughter was the ugliest thing, and
on the night of the first-cabin ball, not a single gentleman spoke to
her. Fräulein danced every dance, though, and every one of her
partners said it was a real pleasure to dance with some one who knew
how to put a hop and a spring into a waltz, instead of gliding
around in that stiff way the Americans do. Dancing was intended
for a pleasure, not a ceremony!
Well, just when Fräulein passed by where Mrs. Vanderbilt and
her daughter were sitting, she heard Mrs. Vanderbilt say in a loud
voice that it was a shame a governess should be allowed to mix with
first-cabin passengers. Fräulein was just about to give her a piece
of her mind that she wouldn't forget to her dying day, but her part-
>


PAUL ROSENFELD
753
may be
ner told her the real reason why Mrs. Vanderbilt said such things
was because she was jealous of her taking away all her daughter's
partners, and that it only went to prove that many a governess is
superior to girls who have every advantage money can buy.
The next morning, the moment Fräulein came in to breakfast,
Mrs. Vanderbilt walks up to the captain and says, "A diamond ring
has been stolen from my cabin!”
”
“I don't believe it,” says the captain. “Nothing like that has
ever happened on my ship!"
“I tell you, a diamond ring has been stolen from my cabin,” Mrs.
Vanderbilt says, “and I accuse her of stealing it. That comes from
allowing common servant girls to mingle with their betters!”
Fräulein could have flown at her right then and there, but she
controlled herself, and said: "I never took her diamond ring, and
what is more, I am not a common servant girl! I poor
and
forced to earn my own living, but if I had my rights, I would be
far from here!"
The captain took Fräulein's part, and said to Mrs. Vanderbilt,
“What right have you got to accuse her with being a thief? Are
you so perfect yourself that you can go around giving other people
bad characters ?''
“I'll tell you what right I have,” Mrs. Vanderbilt says. “She
once was a governess in some people's house that I know, and was
discharged, and no one gets discharged for anything except for
stealing!”
“No one but a perfect devil could make up such a story,” Fräu-
lein said to her. “I never was discharged, and if I left Mrs. Phil-
lips' house, it was of my own free will the moment she even ac-
cused me. It was Henny himself who shook the money out of his
bank to buy candy with at the candy store around the corner, and
he afterwards told the truth, and said he had said it was I because
he was afraid of getting punished; but I wouldn't stay a minute
longer in such a house, and no one can say for an instant that I was
discharged. And nobody can say for an instant that I have done
anything wrong. The worst I have done is to send my mother a
pair of gloves hidden in a Staats-Zeitung so she wouldn't have to
pay any duty on them, but many people do worse than that, and I
never pass a beggar on the street without giving him a penny!”
But it was like talking to a wall. Mrs. Vanderbilt had simply
!


754
FRÄULEIN
1
made up her mind to give Fräulein a bad character, and she made
them search her trunk. At first, the captain said he wouldn't dream
of doing it, but she said she would make him lose his position if he
didn't, and so he had to. Fräulein gave him her keys without a
word, and said, "You can search my trunk all you like. And when
you
have found out there is nothing in it but what belongs to me by
rights, then I'll hope you realize once for all how much wrong is
done the whole time to poor girls who are every inch as honest as
those that employ them.”
No sooner did the captain unlock the trunk and lift up the cover
than there on top of everything lay the diamond ring!
"What did I tell you?” says Mrs. Vanderbilt. “Arrest her!
She's nothing but a common thief!"
"It's a trick,” Fräulein said. “I never put it there. It was put
there while I was asleep, to get me into trouble! I am as innocent
as I can be, for if I were the one, wouldn't it be written in large
letters right on my forehead?”
You know, whenever you do anything bad, it's written in large
letters on your forehead so that everybody can read it, and that's
the way they find out.
No sooner had Fräulein gotten it out of her mouth than every-
body pointed to Mrs. Vanderbilt. And there, right on her fore-
head, it said that she was the one who had put it there herself.
The moment everybody saw it, she gave a scream and fainted
dead away. They put cold water on her, and the moment she came
to her senses she said that she had really done it, and what proved
it was that her wrongdoing had come out. Oh, you should have
heard her cry and beg forgiveness!
“You are not worthy of forgiveness,” Fräulein said to her. But
the captain told her to repay evil with good, and so Fräulein for-
gave her, and hoped it would be a good lesson to her. Then the
captain said that since she had wronged Fräulein, she ought to give
her the diamond ring. She would have been only too glad to do it,
but she made a great mistake when she thought Fräulein would take
it from her hand.
“Do you think for a minute that I would even wear on my lit-
tlest finger a ring that has made so much trouble in the world?”
Fräulein said to her. "You are much mistaken. Do you think my
conscience would rest for a single moment if I did? They are right
1
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
755
when they say that 'money is the cause of all the trouble in the
world! It would be better for the whole world if there were no
such things in it as diamond rings and wealth and marble mansions,
for then there would be no envy and crime and suffering, and people
would be happy and good to one another! And that is why I don't
want your ring! Let it go where it can do no more harm!”
And with that Fräulein takes it and throws it right into the mid-
dle of the ocean, and it sank to the bottom, and no one ever saw it
again.
1
VI
ABOUT THE POOR WOMAN WHO DIED
ON FRÄULEIN'S SHIP
$
There was a funeral on Fräulein's ship.
It's bad enough to die on land when you're far from home, and
never be able to see your mother and father again, and perhaps be
buried in Potter's Field, in a grave'without a name! But it's much
worse to die on the ocean, for the only people they keep on a ship
when they're dead are the rich people. They keep them on ice till
they get to land, so that they can get buried; but if you're poor, they
throw you overboard in a sack of sailcloth, right into the water of
the ocean.
It happened on Fräulein's ship. There was a poor woman in the
steerage, and she was sick already when she came on board, and
the only reason she was on the steamer was because she wanted to
see her home again before she died. She was in the steerage because
she was as poor as a church mouse. As soon as the ship got into the
ocean, she began to get worse. Fräulein went down into the steer-
age to see whether she couldn't do something for the poor creature,
for if there's anything that's terrible, it's to be sick among strangers.
You should have heard her moan! Oh, it was enough to make
your blood run cold. She was too sick even to recognize her own
child, and when she saw Fräulein, she took her for her own mother,
and began to cry with gratitude, for she never thought she would
see her mother again. Of course, Fräulein didn't say anything to
her, because it would have been the worst cruelty, and as it was, at
least she could die in peace.
The doctor on the ship had to give her morphine the whole time.


756
FRÄULEIN
Oh, how she did scream! The whole time she kept on screaming,
“They're putting a stone in me! They're putting a stone in me!”
In German, of course.
It went straight through you! At the very last, she wanted Fräu-
lein to sit by her side, and when she died, she died in Fräulein's
arms. It wasn't like dying at all. It was just as if she went to
sleep. When she lay there, she looked so peaceful any one could
have wished to be like her. Only the little boy couldn't be consoled.
He knelt by her bedside, and cried and cried as if his heart was
breaking. Really it was the saddest thing the way the child was
attached to his mother! Fräulein was so sorry for him that she took
him into her own cabin, and let him sleep in her own bed, and took
him to her heart just as if he were her very own. At first, he cried
a lot, but Fräulein sang songs to him out of her own childhood, and
bye and bye he fell sound asleep with his head on her heart.
The worst was when they put her overboard! The child abso-
lutely refused to go and see it. He kept on saying over and over
again, “I won't be there when they throw my mother into the wa-
ter! I won't be there when they throw my mother into the water!”
At last Fräulein got him quiet, and took him out on deck, because
some one of her own had to be there to say good-bye to her. The
body was all wrapped in an American flag, and the band played,
only sad, though, and Fräulein and the child had to stand right in
front of everybody. The Captain read the funeral service, and
everybody stood bareheaded, and then some sailors took the body
and let it slip into the ocean. It had coal in with it, to make it
sink, and it went right to the bottom of the sea, and no one will ever
know where it is, and no cross or tombstone can be put over it, and
even her own child will never come and weep over her. Never to
her dying day will Fräulein forget the scream that poor child gave
when they put his mother into the ocean. And she told him he
must never forget his mother who was so good to him, and that in
losing her he was losing the best friend any one could ever have, and
that he must always do the things she wanted him to, and become
the fine man she wanted him to become. He promised never, never,
to forget her, but it is hard to expect a child that age to remember,
for the difference between grown-up people and children is that
grown-up people always remember such things, but children forget
the dead so soon.


PAUL ROSENFELD
757
VII
THE STORY OF HOW FRÄULEIN WAS ON THE ELBE
WHEN IT WENT DOWN
a
You know about the Elbe, the steamer that went down in the
middle of the ocean, and only the Captain and five people were
saved? Well, Fräulein was on the Elbe when it went down.
Just before she sailed, one of her friends was warned in a dream
that the boat was going down, but Fräulein paid no attention to
the warning, and went on it just the same.
It all happened in the middle of the night. Fräulein was in her
berth sound asleep when all of a sudden she heard them yelling,
“The steamer is going down! The steamer is going down!”
She had the presence of mind to put on a skirt and jacket before
she rushed on deck, for which she was very glad, for most of the
passengers were in their very nightclothes, only at times like this
nobody cares what they have on.
Oh, it was terrible! The front part of the boat went down first.
There were a hundred Chinamen on the boat, and they were all in
the front part of it, which was the steerage. Oh, how those poor
wretches did scream when they went in the water! Never till her
dying day could you forget it! It rang and rang in Fräulein's ears!
None of them could speak the least English, and they were all beg-
ging and begging to be saved, in Chinese, only nobody could under-
stand them. Oh, the way they screamed when they went down the
third time! You know when you are drowning, you come up three
times before you drown, and if nobody saves you then, you go under.
The rest of the passengers got into the little boats, and rowed
away from the ship towards the land. They had to row for days
and days till they reached land, and by the time they got there they
were almost as good as dead from cold and hunger, for it's no fun
to be out that way in the middle of the ocean, with nothing on but
what you have the presence of mind to throw around yourself, and
nothing to eat but bread and water. And you know, you can't drink
the sea-water, because it's salty, and only makes your thirst worse.
You should have seen how glad the passengers were when they
got to the land! The place they got to was only a poor fishing vil-
lage where poor fisher-people lived, and at any other time those pas-
sengers would have turned up their noses at going into such little


758
FRÄULEIN
houses and eating such plain food. But now, they were only too
glad to be taken by the poor people, and to wear the clothing they
could give them. It would have done you good to see some of those
rich women glad only to get a flannel petticoat and a calico waist
to put on, that at any other time they would have thought only fit
for servants !
VIII
THE STORY OF WHAT FRÄULEIN WOULD DO
IF SHE WERE RICH
a
Many's the time Fräulein has said it, it's too bad she wasn't rich,
on account of all the good she could do with her money. The onl
luxury she would really allow herself was to change her underwear
every day, for if there's anything she would have liked, it was that.
All the rest of her money she would have given to charity. Not
charity only for the body, but charity for the heart, for just as
much unhappiness comes in this world because people are sick in
their hearts as it does from people being sick with a real sickness.
For instance, she'd found hospitals for people who have no one
to care for them in the whole world, and when they were sick and
tired of life, she'd have them taken to her hospital. It wouldn't
be right in the city, the way the German Hospital is, but in the mid-
dle of a beautiful garden full of flowers, and the people would be
taken into the hospital just as they would into their own home.
And the rooms wouldn't be bare and ugly. The parlour where they'd
be received would be all filled with plants. And from there they'd
be taken to a bedroom all furnished in pink, and they'd be put to
bed, and have all the nursing and the sunshine and the quiet they
needed. And when they were better, they'd go to a big parlour and
sit there and talk to each other and have the piano played to them.
And they'd play games together, and go walking in the garden, and
lie under the trees when it was warm. When it was cold, they'd
sit inside by the fireplace, or go sleigh-riding. And they'd never be
treated as if they hadn't any money, but just as if they were the
finest ladies and gentlemen in the world. Each one of them would
have a nurse all to themselves, and she'd be kind and polite to them
and read to them and talk to them. And then, there'd be one nurse
just to go around and talk to them, and tell them they were needed
in the world, for if there's anything that's terrible, it is when a


PAUL ROSENFELD
759
person thinks they might as well be dead. And then, she'd make
matches between some of them, and everybody when they were
ready to be discharged would have a good position found for them,
so that while they were in the hospital they wouldn't have to worry
about whether they would have anything to eat when they got out.
Nobody really knows how much poor people suffer from the fear
of not having anything to eat and drink when they get out of the
hospital !
Fräulein wouldn't only found hospitals. For instance, there
would be other things she'd do with her money. For instance, she'd
take care of poor families who were starving. And on Christmas
Eve, when they thought that there was nobody in the wide, wide
world who cared for them, and the father was just going to tell his
children that there was no such thing as Santa Claus, or any love
on earth, and that Christmas was just invented for rich children
who have more than they want anyway while the poor haven't even
the necessities of life, then the door would fly open, and there would
be standing Fräulein, all loaded down with presents for them, and
all the things they needed, and the father would cry out,
“Yes, children, there is a Santa Claus after all.”
On Sylvester Night, Fräulein would hire people to go through
the streets looking for people who were old and lonely, old maids
and poor widows and orphans and all people like that who have no
place to go Sylvester Night. For nobody knows what it is to have to
go to bed early that night so as not to have to hear the whistles and
horns and know that others are happy and you are not. And on
that night, Fräulein would give a ball in a great, big ball-room, just
for people like that, and it would be so grand that everybody would
just die to come to it, and be glad they had been deserted all year
round, so that they could be invited to it.
Another thing Fräulein would do would be to get husbands for
poor girls, and mothers for orphans, and children for lonely old
maids that could support them.
а
IX
THE STORY OF THE DARK MAN WITH THE
POISONED NEEDLE
It's no fun for an unprotected lady to travel all by herself, for
you can never tell who's going to speak to you.


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FRÄULEIN
One time, Fräulein was on an overnight train travelling all by
herself. The people wanted to send some one with her, but she was
a fool, and said she would be all right, and so they let her go by
herself.
No sooner had she sat down in the train than she noticed some
one staring at her in the most impudent way.
The moment she looked at him, she knew what sort of a char-
acter he was. There was one thing the fortune-teller had always
warned her against, and the moment she laid eyes on him, she just
knew he was one of those men that go around trying to hypnotize
friendless girls. And then when they get them hypnotized, they
stick poisoned needles into them with chloroform on the end of
them, and after that, they have to do whatever they say.
The way that man looked at you would have been enough to
make any one shudder! He looked just like the Devil in Faust,
only worse, and
you felt just as if his wicked black eyes were look-
ing straight through you. That is the way they hypnotize you.
Fräulein just made up her mind to keep her eyes absolutely to
herself, but she found it hard, I can tell you! And all the while
she could feel those cruel black eyes just boring themselves into
her, and really, it was one of the worst experiences she had ever been
through, and she just hoped nobody would have to go through what
she had been through. She could have screamed, it was so awful,
the
way he kept looking at her!
As soon as they rang the bell for supper in the dining-car, Fräu-
and went into the dining-car, thinking at last she could
get a few moments' peace. But no sooner did she sit down than
who should come up and sit right opposite her than that man! And
all during dinner he kept looking at her in that same wicked way.
Really, it made her so absolutely nervous that she couldn't get a
single bite of food down, and she was glad enough when dinner was
through. The moment it was, she flew straight to her state room,
for she was travelling in a state room all by herself. The moment
she got in it, she double-locked the door behind her, for she knew
he had every intention of sticking one of those poisoned needles
into her. Oh, what wouldn't she have given to be at the end of
the journey, instead of having to be alone a whole night on the
same train with that man! Oh, what wouldn't she have given to
be off that train!
lein got up
V


PAUL ROSENFELD
761
Of course, not a wink did she sleep, because she didn't know at
what moment he mightn't try to get into her room! And all night,
she just sat there, praying for morning to come, for she never knew
what not to expect.
By the time it began to get morning, she was so absolutely ex-
hausted that try as she could she couldn't keep her eyes open a
moment longer, she was so worn out with the excitement. So she
thought she would try to snatch a few moments' sleep, and lay
down and dozed off.
No sooner did she fall asleep, when it seemed to her that some one
was opening the door without any noise, and that some one was
standing looking at her, and looking at her. “It's only a dream,'
she said to herself.
But it wasn't a dream. It was the dark man who was standing
looking at her. He had gotten into her state room with a skeleton
key!
She couldn't scream, try as she did. She couldn't get even a
whisper out of her throat. She couldn't move. She was absolutely
hypnotized.
All of a sudden, he bent over her, and held her down with his
one hand. She knew that he was going to stick the poisoned needle
into her, and that after that, it would be all over with her. She tried
her best to get up, or scream, or beg for mercy. But she couldn't
get a single sound out of her throat. It was as if she were nailed to
her bed. And then all of a sudden everything became black in front
of her eyes, and she fainted dead away.
Heaven knows what wouldn't have happened to Fräulein if at
that moment something hadn't happened that prevented it. You
know about the “Montreal Express” that went into the Hudson
River? Well, the same thing happened to Fräulein's train, just at
the moment when she fainted dead away. Of course, she didn't
know anything about it, but the first thing she knew she was in a
bed in the hospital with a doctor and a trained nurse next to her,
and they told her the whole thing. It was really the most terrible
thing, because people were killed right in their berths while they
were sleeping. It was the strangest thing how Fräulein herself es-
caped, because the car right in front of hers went straight into the
Hudson River, and the people in it were drowned to death. The
man who wanted to poison Fräulein with the needle was killed,


762
FRÄULEIN
too, and they didn't even find his body, it was sunk so deep in the
river.
Really, it was one of the most terrible experiences Fräulein ever
went through, and it was weeks before she felt well enough to leave
the hospital, and it was a long time before she was anything like
herself again.
X
HOW SOME PEOPLE HAVE RESPECT FOR THEIR SERVANTS
Just the other day, Fräulein saw in the newspaper how a young
man, the son of wealthy American parents, lost his life trying to
save one of his mother's servants from drowning.
She was nothing but an Irish kitchen maid, but it didn't make
the slightest difference to him. She went out too far, and a wave
carried her out into the sea, and he tried to save her from drowning,
and that is how he lost his life himself. He had horses and lived in
a marble mansion, and had everything you could want, and yet, he
,
,
had the same respect for servants that he had for anybody else, and
didn't think himself too fine to try to save one from drowning. And
Fräulein has always said, if children were brought up more like that,
it would be better for everybody.
For there's nothing worse than having it thrown in your face the
whole time that you're a servant. You might think it was your
fault that you had to earn your own living! From the way people
carry on, you might think so. And then the way they say, “Don't
make a scene in front of the servants,” right in your face, as if you
had no more feelings than a stone!
Fräulein has always said, the real ladies and gentlemen are those
that have the most consideration for their servants. It always shows
what people really are, the way they treat their inferiors. Fräulein
knew about a lady who had houses in the city and houses in the
country, and everything money can buy, and yet looked after her
servants the way she would after her own relatives. If anybody
really was a lady, it was she. For instance, on Sundays, she'd let
them go driving in her own victoria, and when they were old, she'd
give them enough to live on, so that they could look forward to
their last days without having to be afraid the whole time they
would have to go to the poorhouse. And when they were sick, or
anything, she'd have her own doctor to look after them, and if


PAUL ROSENFELD
763
1
they'd have to go to the hospital, she'd have them put in a small
room with only two or three others, and not in the common ward.
And when they got married, she'd give them a good present, and be
at their wedding herself, and not be ashamed to sit at the table
with them.
She made her children have the same respect for them. She
taught them to always say "please” and “thank you” whenever they
asked for anything, and to always take off their hats to them when
they met them on the street, if they were boys. She always told
them, “Even if they are servants, they're every bit as good as you
are," and if any of her children were ever impudent to them or
anything, she'd punish them good and hard.
And sometimes servants are better to children than their own
parents. Fräulein knew about a gentleman who, when his own wife
died, married the governess of his children, and she was a much
better mother to them than their own had been. Instead of spoiling
them the way she did, she brought them up the way they should be,
and everybody said that if they had been her own, she couldn't have
done any better by them. Because it's all nonsense to say that step-
mothers are always bad to children. Sometimes they are better to
children than their own mothers, and the children learn to love
them the way they did their own mother. Fräulein knew of just
such a case, where the mother died when the children were babies,
and they never knew that it wasn't their own mother, and only
when they were twenty-one years of age did she tell them.
XI
THE STORY OF HOW FRÄULEIN WENT TO THE GRAND BALL
AT WINDSOR CASTLE
One time, Fräulein had a villa in London. It wasn't really hers,
but the lady of the house and her husband were never there, and
Fräulein had the house practically to herself. She had the right to
use the horses and carriages as much as she pleased, and the servants
took their orders from her, and really, the house was as good as her
own.
It was really the most beautiful place. It was furnished all in
white and gold. Downstairs, there was the kitchen, and the ser-
vants' dining-room. On the parlour floor, there was the hall, and in


764
FRÄULEIN
a
front, the parlour, and in back, the dining-room, and in the back of
that, the extension where there was the pantry. Also, on the other
side of the hall, there was the ball-room and the music-room.
On the second floor, there was the sitting-room and the bedroom
and bath-room of the master and the missis. The third floor was all
Fräulein's. In the front, there was her sitting-room and her bou-
doir, and in the back, her bedroom and bath room. She had a big
double bed with a canopy on top of it, and a long mirror that
reached to the ground, and a dressing table with everything out of
gold and ivory. The bath-room was all out of marble, even the
toilet, and there was a real swimming bath in the bath-room. Oh,
I tell you, it was luxury!
Fräulein had three closets just for her own clothes, she had so
many. All her dresses came from Paris, and they were out of every
colour except yellow, which Fräulein hated. Each dress had a hat
and shoes and stockings and a parasol to match.
In the mornings, Fräulein would never have to get up till ten
o'clock. She always had her breakfast brought to her on a tray.
After that, her maid would draw the water for her bath, and after
she had a bath, she would have a massage till she tingled all over
with health. And after, she would start dressing. She put clean
underwear on every day and her corset was out of white satin and
was a C. and B. Her stockings were all out of silk, and a hair-
dresser came every day from a hair-dressing store to fix her hair.
When she was dressed, she would go out shopping in her carriage,
and after lunch, she would lie down for an hour, and then go out
for a drive.
One day, Fräulein was in her carriage going out for a drive. She
had a coachman and a footman on the box, and she had on a violet
dress, and a big hat with ostrich-feathers, and a feather boa, and a
silk parasol all to match. Her victoria was lined all with white
satin. And just as she was driving along, who should come along
in his state carriage but the Prince of Wales himself. He is the
Crown Prince of England, only, in England, the Crown Prince is
called the Prince of Wales. He is the son of the Queen of England.
Just as their carriages passed, Fräulein could hear him ask one of
his attendants who she was, and the attendant said she was a Ger-
man lady who lived in a big villa all by herself. But Fräulein just
drove on, and paid no more attention to it.
a
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
765
1
That evening, hardly had Fräulein gotten home when the front
door bell rang, and who should be standing there but a royal foot-
man, all in red velvet. He carried a gold salver out of real gold,
and on it was a letter for Fräulein. This is what it said:
“This is to certify that the person holding this invitation has the
right to come to the grand ball at Windsor Castle to-night.” Wind-
sor Castle is the castle where the Prince of Wales lives.
You know it is the greatest honour in the world to get invited to
the grand ball at Windsor Castle, for only the nobility are invited.
So you can imagine how pleased Fräulein was to get it.
Fräulein dressed right away for the ball, to lose no time. She
dressed all in white from the top of her head to the sole of her feet.
After her hair was fixed, she put a diamond tiara on it. Her petti-
coat had real lace insertions, and the buckles of her slippers were
out of diamonds, too. Her ball dress was out of white satin, and
was all cut-out at the neck and all bare at the arms. It had a long
train on it like a wedding dress.
When she was dressed, she looked at herself in the mirror that
reached to the floor. Over and over she said to the mirror,
"Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest at the ball?''
and over and over the mirror answered her,
“You are the fairest at the ball.”
Then she went down and got into her closed carriage, and or-
dered the coachman and footman to drive to Windsor Castle.
Windsor Castle is in the middle of the most beautiful grounds.
It begins with a big gate full of soldiers in the most gorgeous uni-
forms. The moment Fräulein's carriage got there, it stopped, and
a general on a white horse rode up and asked her whether she had
an invitation, because he said lots of people actually try to get in
without invitations. Fräulein showed him hers, and he told her to
go right in, because she had every right to, because she had an
invitation.
Before you get to the castle, you have to drive down a grand
avenue all lined with linden trees. Even though it was night it
was really as bright as day, for the whole road was lit by electric
lights. And all the windows in the castle were lit, and there were


766
FRÄULEIN
flags flying from all the towers, the American flag, and the English
flag, and the German flag. The whole castle is out of white marble,
and it is all covered with climbing roses, and music plays the whole
time, and lords and ladies are on the balconies.
When you get to the castle, the carriage drives under a porte-
cochère, and from there you go up a flight of steps covered with a
red velvet carpet into the castle. The first room you get into is
where you take off your cape, and right next to it there is a ladies'
dressing room with sofas to lie down if you want to, and a hundred
dressing tables, and a special hair brush and comb for each lady so
that you all don't have to use the same.
Just as Fräulein came into the ball-room, where they give the
state balls, the orchestra which was in a golden balcony began to
play Lohengrin. The ball-room was the most gorgeous sight. It
was about half a mile long, all full of people in the most gorgeous
clothes, and at the end of it was the throne, all out of gold, with the
Lion and the Unicorn on it. No one was on the throne yet, because
the Prince of Wales was only going to come in when the ball began.
He was going to choose his partner for the evening when he came in,
and all the ladies had to stand in a line, and the Prince would drop
a red rose at the feet of the one he chose to be his partner. You
should have seen the fighting and the pulling among the ladies for
the first place! Most of them would have given ten years of their
lives for a single dance with the Prince of Wales, and really, from
the way they acted, you might have thought they were common
washerwomen. Common washerwomen couldn't have acted any
worse. Of course, Fräulein was pushed to the end of the line, be-
cause she wouldn't make herself so cheap as to fight the way they
did. But she had the satisfaction of knowing that she was a hundred
times better mannered than all the so-called "ladies,” for noble is
as noble does, just as handsome is as handsome does. The two
women next to Fräulein, and they were women even if they were
called “ladies,” were a sight to behold. One of them was all red in
the face from trying to get a good place, while the other one had
clawed like a tom-cat, and her fine purple and yellow dress was all
torn to shreds. How glad Fräulein was that she had worn some-
thing simple and refined, for it made her look a thousand times more
distinguished than all the others put together.
All of a sudden, the orchestra began to play Aïda, and the
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
767
.
door opened, and the royal procession came in. First came fifty
pages, all in gold and white. Next came fifty lords, the highest in
the land. Last of all came the Prince of Wales himself. He was
all in white, with a gold crown on his head, and an ermine cape
fall-
ing from his shoulders. He began walking down the line to choose
his partner. You should have seen some of those fine ladies doing
their best to attract his attention, smiling at him and making eyes,
but he didn't pay the slightest attention to them, and walked down
the line till he came to where Fräulein stood, and right in front of
where she stood he threw the red rose, which meant that he had
taken her for his partner. Fräulein could hardly believe her eyes,
for imagine out of all those ladies his choosing her! She hardly
knew what to say to the Prince out of gratitude, and she thanked
him a thousand times, but he just said, “Don't mention it," and
made her take his arm, and together they walked around the room.
You should have seen the jealous looks the others gave her! But
Fräulein acted as ladylike as she could, and when they saw that she
was a perfect lady in her way, they all gave in, and chose other
partners.
The ball began with a grand march around the room led by
Fräulein and the Prince of Wales. After that, there was a grand
galop, and then the polka and then the schottische, and then the
two-step, and the lancers, and the Virginia Reel, and last of all the
Blue Danube. All the dances Fräulein danced with the Prince.
He was a perfect dancer, and dancing with him was like a perfect
dream.
When the bell for supper rang, Fräulein and the Prince of Wales
led the march into the dining-room. They sat together at the head
of the table, and drank out of the same glass, and when it struck
twelve, they kissed, and everybody sang "Hoch sollen sie leben!"
For supper, they had lobster-salad and sweetbread patties and
afterwards ice-cream and kisses to eat, and champagne to drink.
After the supper was over, there was more dancing. But the
Prince of Wales and Fräulein didn't dance. When nobody was
looking, they went away quickly through a door. And from there,
the Prince took Fräulein to a secret balcony, where only he was
allowed to go, and where nobody could disturb them.
It was the highest tower of the castle, 'way out over everything,
and the view from there was the most beautiful thing you ever saw.


768
FRÄULEIN
It was just like fairyland, and never in her life had Fräulein ever
seen anything like it. The full moon was out, and right in front
of them was a lake with swans and sailboats with sails out of silk,
and all the while, you could hear the music playing, and the night-
ingales singing.
And Fräulein and the Prince sat on a marble bench on the bal-
cony, and they had their arms around each other, and the Prince of
Wales made love to her.
EPILOGUE
Fräulein quit us when Mama died, and we were sent to live with
my grandmother. I saw her only once again. It was during my
twelfth or thirteenth year. I came in from school one afternoon,
and found in the sitting-room conversing with Grandma, some one
I recognized as "Fräulein.” She had come to inquire after us. I
remember a sudden relief and gladness at sight of her, and my
hilarity at finding how short she had grown, and my enormous pride
at her exclamation "Goodness, Pauly, what a big boy you've gotten
into!” And then, I remember a new creeping sense of her voice and
person and clothing, a sudden consciousness of how frustrate and
timorous and humble she was. Grandma had them bring a tray of
tea and cake for her, and while she ate of the food, we sat and
watched her. I was ashamed. She asked me whether I was a good
boy, and whether I thought often of my mother who had always
wanted me to grow up into a fine man, and whether I obeyed my
grandmother. She called me “Pauly” till it was explained to her
that now since I was twelve years old and nearly a man, I was called
"Paul.” She told us that since she had left ours she had been em-
ployed in two households, and had been sick in the hospital, and at
present had a very good position in a family who lived on the West
Side. She had but one child to take charge of, she said, and had
every other Wednesday evening to herself. Before she went, she
kissed my grandmother, and my grandmother nodded very softly
and sadly, and I knew they were thinking of my mother. And then
she kissed me, and after she had said good-bye, I suddenly wanted
to go with her. Then she went away. She wore a little tan jacket
with sleeves puffed from the shoulders, and wide, outstanding
flounces. That is all that I remember. I have not heard of her
since.


1
LONDON LETTER
May, 1920
THE
HE heading of my letter is, to speak frankly, no better than i
a lie. I write from Italy, not from England. All good English
poets come here when they die, and sometimes before. It is as
though English artists finding a part of their temperaments not satis-
fied by their own country had consented together to adopt this as
their second native land. Yes: this is Italy. Outside my
window
there is a bay of the Mediterranean, flanked by tall hills on which
grow olive trees and vines, figs and cypresses, and the cherry in
full flower. Immediately beneath is the little harbour, with two
or three lateen-rigged vessels riding at anchor. Just around the
corner, if I crane my neck, I can see the piazza and its colonnades
and the high painted houses and the green sun-shutters. So far, so
good: but convention will carry me no further. It is raining hard
and it is atrociously cold. My companion is sitting wrapped in a
greatcoat, sipping hot brandy-and-water and reading the Christmas
Carol. Our thoughts are of England, of sun and light and warmth.
And the English papers arrived this morning and reminded us of
all that we had left.
Mrs. Humphry Ward is dead; and I observe a quite general
embarrassment in commenting on the fact. For Mrs. Ward out-
lived her intellectual eminence, though not her popularity. At one
time she was a pioneer and was taken very seriously. She was a
member of a family which, in the great religious struggles of the
Victorian era, did much to make disbelief in the Christian revelation
respectable and possible to avow. In the accomplishment of this
process, she herself was not far, if at all, behind Matthew Arnold.
The storms which greeted her Robert Elsmere were prodigious,
but they were the storms which precede a calm. Mrs. Ward's ap-
parently anarchic strokes at the foundations of society were like
the lawless coup d'état of Napoleon, which was the indispensable
preliminary to an iron reign of law. She, with others, sapped the
faith of the middle classes in the verbal inspiration of the Bible;
but she helped to replace that faith with a strong and efficient code


770
LONDON LETTER
of respectability and good manners. Let us give her her due, and
admit that in her prime she was a powerful influence.
She was one of the most serious novelists that ever lived. It is
said that when the London Library was founded for the benefit of
students, the proposal was made at one of the inaugural meetings
that novels should be excluded from its shelves. This proposal was
received with applause. “Except, of course,” added Herbert
Spencer, “the novels of George Eliot”; and this, too, was received
with applause. Mrs. Ward was a novelist of that kind. She has
a place in history, which is not with the artists, but with the sociolo-
gists. The long list of her novels describes very well certain phases
of late Victorian society, and the writer of the future who wishes
to describe that time will not be able to do without her. In later
times this power of hers diminished. She ceased to be an influence
because she lost touch with the age. She made herself a little ab-
surd by her opposition to woman's suffrage, while she was publicly
supporting her son's candidature for Parliament. A number of
observers found this irrational; but it meant no more than that she
had survived unaltered from an earlier period of thought. The
same inability to change prevented her from observing as accurately
as once she had done the characteristics of the society about her.
The last novel of hers which I read, published last year, purported
to describe the behaviour and mental attitude of the younger gen-
eration as it appeared at the end of the war; and, in elementary
points of slang and idiom, Mrs. Ward had obviously the knowledge
of what she was describing. But, in her earlier years, when she
was not peering down from Olympian heights of experience and
wisdom into the misty valleys of youth, she knew what she was
talking about.
I know very well that even in her best books there is much that
to-day gives us cause to smile. Those intellectual ladies, those
urbane Prime Ministers, those thoughtful Dukes! Mrs. Ward had
not a first-class mind. But she knew her governing classes and she
had journalistic ability of a superior kind. Besides, it is a very
sound rule in criticism not to disparage altogether any book that
you have at all enjoyed, whatever may be at the moment the fash-
ions in enjoyment and disparagement. And, as I write, the names
of books by Mrs. Ward that I have more or less enjoyed, Robert
Elsmere and The Marriage of William Ashe and Lady Rose's


EDWARD SHANKS
771
Daughter, come rising out of the dark and would reproach me with
ingratitude, did I not pay this last tribute of respect to their author.
There are other things in the English papers. In The Athenaeum
there is a long article by Mr. Conrad Aiken on the English attitude
towards American literature; and, on this point, which is, I suppose,
of interest to readers of The Dial as well as to me, I
may
be
per-
mitted to make a few observations. Mr. Aiken is profoundly dis-
satisfied with what he conceives us to think of you. "We remain,”
he says, "for the English, a nation of barbarians—uncouth, restless,
sharp at a bargain; enormously conceited and naked of culture.”
This he calls “the Dickens legend” and not unnaturally he dislikes
it. He goes on to cite a number of American authors who are ap-
proved in England; and of these, some, he says, such as Hawthorne
and Poe, we put out of the argument as not being truly American,
while others, such as Whitman and O. Henry, we welcome by rea-
son of their barbarity, determined as we are to see in your literature
,
only what we expect to see there, and moreover, only what will
leave us with a comfortable sense of superiority and condescension.
“Give us,” says his imaginary Englishman, “the broad, the ele-
mental and the raw!
This is what America is for. Here
we have the fine flower of its singular culture.” No wonder Mr.
Aiken is annoyed! But the first observation that comes to my pen
is that his imaginary Englishman is, in fact, so far as I know, quite
imaginary. We discuss American literature a great deal in Eng-
land, but I can put my hand on my heart and declare that I have
never excluded any book from the discussion on the ground that it
was not sufficiently American, though I have heard Americans do
so. Why indeed should I? National characteristics are possible
and indeed inevitable in any given part of that body.
The literature of Italy and the literature of England present, as
wholes, sufficiently vivid contrasts; but there are Italian influences
in, say, Spenser and Shelley. French literature as a whole has its
own character, but who can deny the English and, let me say, the
American influences visible in the work of Baudelaire and Verlaine?
These foreign influences are not necessarily bad things. They are
bad only when their power is due solely to the fact that they are
exotic. One's complaint against certain American poets is not that
they are not sufficiently “American,” but that they resemble too
much bad French or English poets—and that is a complaint that
.
.


772
LONDON LETTER
a
а
2
1
can be made against some of our home products. I should hesitate
to say that I found a writer characteristically American, since I have
never been in your country and have no clear notion of distinctively
American characteristics. Mr. Lindsay, for whom I have a great
admiration, represents a temper unknown among us, but he seems
to me more energetic, excitable, and rapid of movement than any
· American I have ever met. Mr. Hergesheimer is to me simply a
very good novelist with an individual style. Mr. Robert Frost is
simply a very good poet who came over here and had a considerable
influence on one of our poets, Edward Thomas, of whom we are
exceedingly proud. Who was it that kept on shouting for years
for “the great American novel ?''
rican novel?" Was it we? Of course it was
not. It was American critics singly and in chorus, and I am in-
clined to believe that Mr. Aiken's English critic is merely a pro-
jection of many American critics, falsely patriotic and blind to ex-
cellence in literature, with whom he might justly be incensed.
This confession I will freely make, that on the whole we know
less of your best literature than you of ours, though your worst
literature is, in the popular magazines, rapidly driving ours from
the field. It seems to me, speaking at a distance of two thousand
miles or so, that there is in America a larger appetite for would-be-
good, and especially for experimental, literature than there is in
England.' We recognize that fact and are grateful for it: indeed
some of our best writers are deeply indebted for support to the
American public. I will add, having determined on frankness, that
the opinion actually held in England of American literature, as we
know it, is not such as would gratify Mr. Aiken or any American
interested in the writers of his country, whether the dissatisfaction
fell on those writers or on our ignorance. It is (remember that I
am speaking of facts and express no view as to whether the facts
ought to be what they are) a comparatively low opinion. But,
once again, Mr. Aiken's English critic with his preconceived theory
has no real existence; and Mr. Aiken's suggestion that, uncon-
sciously (a kindly reservation!) we are influenced by jealousy is
really not worthy of him.
The American appetite for the newest, and, so far as it can be
found, the best, in ideas and literature from England is, I sup-
pose, no new thing; but, judging by the numbers of our authors
who have recently visited, or are about to visit, America, it is par-
1


EDWARD SHANKS
773
ticularly active at this moment. In any place where writers are
gathered together you hear scraps of conversation like this—“I'm
going next month—Oh, I'm not going until the autumn-Brown
comes back in June—Smith writes to say he is staying a month
longer"; and the United States is to be understood in each of these
sentences. Sometimes you welcome our mistakes just as we begin
to find them out; and then an American boom seems only the pre-
lude to an English slump. At other times you give to a deserving
author not only the recognition, which perhaps he has received
here, but also the material rewards of which we are much more
sparing but which the best of authors both deserves and requires.
Again there are curious gaps in your appreciation. Why is it
that with you Mr. Chesterton seems to have only a small success
and Mr. Belloc hardly any success at all? No doubt there is
somewhere a reason for this; but I cannot discover it. At any
rate I think the discussion of this question and of those I have
temerariously approached above makes, in however small a degree,
for international understanding and the advancement of the cause
of good letters.
There are few events of real importance to be chronicled in
English literary affairs. The Letters of Henry James, I hear, have
just appeared. They were eagerly awaited. Mr. Conrad's new
novel, which, when it appeared in serial form, could not properly
be judged, is awaited in the expectation that it will definitely
establish him as one of the greatest of our writers. Among the
younger authors, Mr. Robert Nichols has announced a volume of
poems entitled Aurelia and Mr. Aldous Huxley another called
Lada. Mr. Nichols' book will, I am certain, show a very great
advance on the collection which made more of a stir three years
ago than perhaps was warranted by the actual performance which
it contained. The long narrative poem which gives the title to
Mr. Huxley's book has already appeared and is a beautiful piece
of work; but I am inclined to doubt whether Mr. Huxley's talents,
which are great, are really those of a poet. The Poet Laureate
has published his first book in that capacity, a collection of
autumnal beauty, fitly called October. On the rest of the front,
all is quiet.
EDWARD SHANKS


DOSTOEVSKY AS TRIVIALIST
An Honest Thief and Other Stories. By Fyodor
Dostoevsky. Translated by Constance Garnett. 12mo.
325 pages. The Macmillan Company. New York.
THE
a
HE eight stories and two novelettes in this volume show more
than Dostoevsky's better known work the negative character-
istics of his method and mind. There is not here the command
and vision of sombre psychology, of the punished mind, the terrible
adventures of the heart, described with peculiar effectiveness in
Crime and Punishment. In the second longest story of the present
series, An Unpleasant Predicament, the wretched clerk Pseldoni-
mov and his heroic mother, and Ivan Ilyitch, the official victimized
by his own theories of good will among men, are in the particular
mood characteristic of Dostoevsky; but An Honest Thief, a single
tone depiction of abjectness, is the only one among these some-
what miscellaneous tales really well within the range of qualities
for which he is eminent. Between the two stories just mentioned
and Bobok, a ghoulish Poeistic irony, or the Dream of a Ridiculous
Man, a short study in asperity, there is considerable disagreement;
and their contrast with Uncle's Dream, the amplest tale in the
volume, is even greater. Dostoevsky has, in the last named tale,
in the character of Marya Alexandrovna, greatly elaborated on
his customary rather broad and simple characterization. As the
heroine of what is really a small novel, this spry and wily old
desperado is copiously done, shown with an astonishing equipment
for offence: piety, sentimentality, palaver, rhetoric, cant, sophistry,
heroics; and how shrewdly she uses her weapons, with what a
heartiness and daring, even in the middle of despair. Autocrat and
flatterer in alternate breaths, she reduces her vacuous, stupid
husband to shudders with a single aside, while enveloping in a
din of amiability the old simpleton she proposes to stake down for
her daughter. This simpleton, an archaic prize, is a nobleman, a
prince temporarily deserted by the female Argus who is his guardian
attaché; accordingly he enters the scene, the back county town of
Mordasov, à la holiday, simpering and chirruping. On his ap-


CHARLES K. TRUEBLOOD
775
pearance there is a concerted swoop by the spiteful and formidable
gossips of the place, each of whom wants to snatch him away for
her own purposes. Marya Alexandrovna fights them all off with
the spirit of a Balkan chief, and in a great stroke gets the old
simperer to propose marriage to her daughter. The ultimate defeat
of this Napoleonic Mama is brought to pass by the rebuffed lover,
villain of the piece, who gets the ear of the antiquity and instils
into him the suggestion that the whole scene of the proposal is a
dream had during the princely siesta; from this idea the old fellow,
in a mush of befuddlement, cannot be shaken. It is done with high
spirit and accomplishes more of the effect of insouciance, lightness,
ease than the other longish story of the volume, Another Man's
Wife; this latter, so evidently aimed at comedy, is little more
than obscure wry farce.
Insouciance, self-possession of the absolute much prized French
variety, the all-containing nonchalance, the iron-nerved sense of
form, Dostoevsky apparently cannot claim. His close realism quite
lacks easiness and is impersonal in a rough and elemental, not an
accomplished way; he has no suggestion of the considered faint
irony of Chekhov. From the present volume one comes to the
opinion that the effects that are got by afterthought or forethought
should not be looked for in Dostoevsky; he is not an artificer, not
a pausing, self-possessed or contemplative man; as it is done once
with him, so it is done always. His eminence is the eminence of
endowment, not of training or consideration; he is the great artist
of few accomplishments. The vitality of his many memorable per-
sons, and their salience are due to the virility of his conception
rather than to any accomplishment of his in the subtler sorts of pictur-
ing. Active and acute in observation as he is, he is yet not clever
at intimacy, particularly intimacy with the ordinary, or knowing
in the close-drawn distinctions of description and contrast in which
many ordinary novelists now are fairly proficient. As a realist of
the trivial, at least in the present volume, he is less successful than
many persons of much inferior creative substance. He is, it is true,
voluminous and detailed; but all his specificity, descriptive of these
shallower realities, seems not to profit him much. He sees truly and
deals accurately with the things of sense, but his assemblage and
description of them is curiously naïve and mechanical. In spite of
a rich sensibility, he is more or less neutral to the appeal of scene


776
DOSTOEVSKY AS TRIVIALIST
and appearance for their own sake or for the sake of picturesque-
ness. The detailed fulness of his description of ordinary, trivial,
or farcical surfaces and events has something the effect of haste, of
the unrewarded excess effort of stammering. He has not Chekhov's
skill of irony or his meticulous sensitiveness. The habitual and
natural going deep of his thought, the tremendousness which he
can summon to the vision of states of suffering, his penetration into
the secret places of consciousness are out of place where there is
nothing but paltriness for consideration, nothing but shallows to
fathom.
CHARLES K. TRUEBLOOD


MR. GOSSE GROWS OLD GRACEFULLY
Some DIVERSIONS OF A MAN OF Letters. By
Edmund Gosse. 12mo. 344 pages. Charles
Scribner's Sons. New York.
"M
ORE than fifty years have passed—like a cloud, like a
dream—since I first saw my name printed below a passage
of critical opinion,” confesses Mr. Gosse, in his preface. He has
been musing over the fall of the princes of his youth, noting the
remark of a "very clever and very popular literary character of
our day” that Wordsworth’s was a "genteel mind of the third
rank,” exclaiming over the débâcle of Sully-Prudhomme's magnifi-
cent prestige. "How many reputations, within that half century,
have not been exalted, how many have not been depressed! We
have seen Tennyson advanced beyond Virgil, and Victor Hugo be-
yond Homer.” In the face of these disconcerting reversals of pub-
lic favour, Mr. Gosse rejects the aesthetic skepticism of Mr. Balfour
in holding that “all beauty consists in the possession of certain
relations, which being withdrawn, beauty disappears from the ob-
ject that seemed to possess it.” He inquires whether there does
not exist, “out of sight, unattained and unattainable, a positive
norm of poetic beauty.” And he finds in the search of this unat-
tainable a persistent source of exhilaration. “To me,” he concludes,
“it seems that security can only be found in an incessant explora-
tion of the by-ways of literary history and analysis of the vagaries
of literary character. To pursue this analysis and this exploration
without bewilderment and without prejudice is to sum up the pleas-
ures of a life devoted to books."
Such a summing up Mr. Gosse in the main gives us in the present
volume. As a literary man-of-the-world, unbewildered and un-
prejudiced, he goes forth to pay his calls here and there down the
centuries, and returns to his club in Victoria Street to chat with his
intimates. He is correct in dress and manner, discreet in speech;
he says the right thing to every one, and nearly always of every
one. He is endlessly curious; he picks up all the gossip but he uses
it for pleasure and not for malice. A Major Pendennis of litera-


778
MR. GOSSE GROWS OLD GRACEFULLY
ture, one might say, he plays an important part in the world which
he has so long cultivated. He diffuses knowledge of it, brings the
right people together, promotes, in short, its sociability. He revives
for us the days when literature was in effect a social institution,
like the church or the theatre. Perhaps his predilection for the
eighteenth century, that most social period of literature, has de-
termined his conception of a literary metropolis, built in time rather
than space, with its court, its taverns, its coffee-houses and clubs,
like the London of the Augustan Age.
Mr. Gosse's first call this morning is upon Sir Walter Raleigh,
for whom he borrows Spenser's pastoral phrase, The Shepherd
of the Ocean, as the title of an address at the Mansion House, in
which, while celebrating Raleigh's old time fame, he strikes more
than one note of contemporary patriotism. Next he betakes him
to Salisbury, the home of that precocious playwright Catharine
Trotter, who among the Drydens, Congreves, and Lockes of the
Restoration played the part of little sister to the great, as did Fanny
Burney a century later among the Johnsons, Goldsmiths, and
Burkes. He stops at Oxford to take up The Message of the War-
tons, the Pre-Raphaelite brothers of the Romantic Movement of
the eighteenth century. The charm of Sterne detains him a half
hour, and then he must extend his bantering patronage to young
Bulwer, of Pelham fame, and young Disraeli of Vivian Grey, and
kiss the hands of the eternally youthful Misses Brontë. It is clear
that it is youth which on these excursions attracts the old beau of
letters. Bulwer is to him the “Author of Pelham”; and he finds in
Lord Lytton's candid story of the romantic follies of his grand-
father's courtship and marriage, and of the devotion which earned
the wherewithal to send to his Rosina "a little Christmas box..
containing only eight Gros de Naples dresses of different colours not
made up, two merino ones, four satin ones, an amber, a black, a white
and a blue. Four pieces (sixteen yards in each) of beautiful
white blonde—a beautiful and very large blue real cashmere shawl,
a Chantilly veil that would reach from this to Dublin . . . three
dozen pair of white silk stockings, one dozen of black," and so on,
abundant evidence of the economic determination of literature.
Among his contemporaries, indeed, Mr. Gosse checks this ex-
uberance and becomes quiet as old age.
He writes with pene-
trating and sympathetic appreciation of Thomas Hardy's Poetry.
.


ROBERT MORSS LOVETT
779
a
“With the passage of years Mr. Hardy, observing everything in
the little world of Wessex, and forgetting nothing, has become
almost preternaturally wise, and, if it may be said so, “knowing,'
with a sort of magic, like that of a wizard. He has learned to track
the windings of the human heart with the familiarity of a game-
keeper who finds plenty of vermin in the woods, and who nails
what he finds, be it stoat or squirrel, to the barn-door of his poetry.
But there is also in these last-fruits of Mr. Hardy's mossed tree,
much that is wholly detached from the bitterness of satire, much
that simply records, with an infinite delicacy of pathos, little inci-
dents of the personal life of long ago, bestowing the immortality
of art on these fugitive fancies in the spirit of the Japanese sculptor
when he chisels the melting of a cloud or the flight of an insect on
his sword hilt.”
a
As one old man of another what could be more lovely? And he
has undertaken Three Experiments in Portraiture, to commemorate
three friends with whom he shared the garrulous pleasure of age.
These portraits are modern “characters” which preserve three as-
pects of the Victorian society of which Mr. Gosse might have been
the Addison. There is Lady Dorothy Nevill—a woman whom
Thackeray would have adored—whose sprightly vigour showed
itself in a racy Anglo-Saxon bluntness of which her portrayer is
delightedly conscious. “So dull here,” she wrote him from the
country, "except for one pleasant episode of a drunken housemaid.”
Of her old-time energy Mr. Gosse justly observes, “If she com-
plained that hospitality ‘hampered her it was not that it interfered
with any occupation or duty, but simply that she could not eat
luncheon at three different houses at once.” There is Lord Cromer,
retired from his pro-consulate to the dignity of the House of Lords,
where Mr. Gosse, as librarian, was obsequious in ministering to his
taste for Empedocles and Theognis. For him, also, Mr. Gosse has
found the characteristic pose and expression.
“Probably the nearest counterpart to his manner of mind and
conversation may be found in the circle of whom we read in the
Diary of Fanny Burney. We can conceive Lord Cromer leaning
against the Committee Box in earnest conversation with Mr. Wind-
ham and Mr. Burke at Warren Hastings' trial. We can restore


780
MR. GOSSE GROWS OLD GRACEFULLY
the half-disdainful gesture with which he would drop an epigram
(“from the Greek”) into the Bath Easton Vase.”
And there is Lord Redesdale, whose gentlemanly instinct for let-
ters the courteous librarian likewise delighted to encourage, and of
whose serene, stoical old age he has left a perfect record.
With the younger set Mr. Gosse is less at ease. He extends his
patronage to Some Soldier Poets, Rupert Brooke, Julian Grenfell,
Robert Nichols, whose simple creed and lyric language are known
to him. He shrinks at Siegfried Sassoon, but he will be discreetly
generous. “. . . He may not always have thought correctly, nor
have recorded his impressions with proper circumspection, but his
honesty must be respectfully acknowledged.”
At that portentous spirit of the age, Mr. Lytton Strachey, with his
Eminent Victorians, Mr. Gosse is plainly aghast, but he makes a
brave effort to hold his aplomb, acknowledging the marvellous art
with which this anti-Christ of biography has done his work of de-
struction, and only interposing his protest in the name of good
form. “His cynicism sometimes carries him beyond the confines
of good taste," objects Mr. Gosse, “as in the passage where he re-
fers to the large and dirty ears of the Roman Cardinals." He
laments that the age of reverence and admiration is gone. “Every
scribbler and dauber likes to believe himself on a level with the
best, and the positive criterion of value which sincere admiration
gave is lost to us. Hence the success of Mr. Lytton Strachey.”
So Major Pendennis used to grumble about the rowdiness of the
younger generation at his club. In this last essay, The Agony of the
Victorian Age, Mr. Gosse turns with obvious relief from this enfant
terrible to "the measured utterances of Mr. Asquith,” wherein
"we recognize the speech of a man to whom all that is old and good
is familiar, and in whom the art of finished expression has become
a habit.” Yes, he concludes regretfully, "The time has doubtless
come when aged mourners must prepare themselves to attend the
obsequies of the Victorian Age with as much decency as they can
muster.” It would be ungracious to quarrel with his preference in
the matter of undertakers.
Robert Morss LOVETT


T. S. ELIOT
Poems. By T. S. Eliot. 12mo. 63 pages. Alfred
A. Knopf. New York.
TH
IHE somewhat recently published Poems is an accurate and
uncorpulent collection of instupidities. Between the negative
and Aabby and ponderous and little bellowings of those multitudi-
nous contemporaries who are obstinately always "unconventional”
or else "modern” at the expense of being (what is most difficult)
alive, Mr. T. S. Eliot inserts the positive and deep beauty of his
skilful and immediate violins the result is at least thrilling.
He has done the trick for us before. In one of the was it two
Blasts skilfully occurred, more than successfully framed by much
soundness noise, the Rhapsody and Preludes. In one of the God
knows nobody knows how many there will be Others, startlingly
enshrined in a good deal of noiseless sound Prufrock and Portrait
of a Lady carefully happened. But "this slim little volume” as a
reviewer might say achieves a far more forceful presentation, since
it competes with and defeats not mere blasters and differentists but
TÒ šv-s and origens and all that is Windily and Otherwise ener-
vate and talkative.
Some Notes on the Blank Verse of Christopher Marlowe are,
to a student of Mr. T. S., unnecessarily illuminating:
.
.
this style which secures its emphasis by always hesitating
on the edge of caricature at the right moment
this intense and serious and indubitably great poetry, which,
like some great painting and sculpture, attains its effects by some-
thing not unlike caricature.”
.
Even without this somewhat mighty hint, this something which for
all its slipperyness is after all a door-knob to be grasped by any-
one who wishes to enter the "some great” Art-Parlours, ourselves
might have constructed a possibly logical development from Pre-
ludes and Rhapsody on a Windy Night along J. Alfred and Por-
trait up the two Sweeneys to let us say The Hippopotamus. We
#


782
T. S. ELIOT
might have been disgracefully inspired to the extent of projecting
as arithmetical, not to say dull, a classification of Eliot as that of
Picasso by the author of certain rudimentary and not even ecclesi-
astical nonsense entitled The Caliph's Design. But it is an enor-
mous but) our so doing necessarily would have proved worthless,
precisely for the reason that before an Eliot we become alive or
intense as we become intense or alive before a Cézanne or a
Lachaise: or since, as always in the case of superficial because verti-
cal analysis, to attempt the boxing and labeling of genius is to in-
volve in something inescapably rectilinear—a formula, for example
-not the artist but the "critic."
However, we have a better reason. The last word on caricature
was spoken as far back as 1913. “My dear it's all so perfectly
ridiculous” remarked to an elderly Boston woman an elderly woman
of Boston, as the twain made their noticeably irrevocable exeunt
from that most colossal of all circusses, the (then in Boston) Inter-
national. “My dear if some of the pictures didn't look like some-
thing it wouldn't be so amusing” observed, on the threshold, the
e.B.w., adding “I should hate to have my portrait painted by any
of those 'artists'!” “They'll never make a statue of me” stated
with polyphiloprogenitive conviction the e.w.o.B.
“Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.”
a
Says Mr. Eliot.
In the case of Poems, to state frankly and briefly what we like
may be as good a way as another of exhibiting our numerous
"critical” incapacities. We like first, to speak from an altogether
personal standpoint, that any and all attempts to lassoo Mr. Eliot
with the Vorticist emblem have signally failed. That Mr. E.
Pound (with whose Caesarlike refusal of the kingly crown we are
entirely familiar) may not have coiled the rope whose fatal noose
has, over a few unfortunate Britons, excludingly rather than in-
cludingly settled, makes little or no difference since the hand which
threw the lariat and the bronc' which threw the steers alike belong
to him. Be it said of this peppy gentleman that, insofar as he is
responsible for possibly one-half of the most alive poetry and prob-
ably all of the least intense prose committed, during the last few
years, in the American and English languages, he merits something


E. E. CUMMINGS
783
beyond the incoherent abuse and inchoate adoration which have
become his daily breakfast-food---merits in fact the doffing of many
kelleys; that insofar as he is one of history's greatest advertisers
he is an extraordinarily useful bore, much like a rivetter which
whatever you may say asserts the progress of a skyscraper; whereas
that insofar as he is responsible for the overpasting of an at least
attractive manifesto, “Ezra Pound,” with an at least pedantic
war-cry, “Vorticism,” he deserves to be drawn and quartered by
the incomparably trite brush of the great and the only and the
Wyndham and the Lewis—if only as an adjectival garnish to that
nounlike effigy of our hero by his friend The Hieratic Buster. Let
us therefore mention the fact, For it seems to us worthy of notice-
that at no moment do T. S. Eliot and E. P. propaganda simultane-
ously inhabit our consciousness.
Second, we like that not any of Poems' fifty-one pages fails to
impress us with an overwhelming sense of technique. By technique
we do not mean a great many things, including: anything static, a
school, a noun, a slogan, a formula, These Three For Instant
Beauty, Ars Est Celare, Hasn't Scratched Yet, Professor Wood-
berry, Grape Nuts. By technique we do mean one thing: the alert
hatred of normality which, through the lips of a tactile and
cohesive adventure, asserts that nobody in general and some one in
particular is incorrigibly and actually alive. This some one is, it
would seem, the extremely great artist: or, he who prefers above
everything and within everything the unique dimension of intensity,
which it amuses him to substitute in us for the comforting and com-
fortable furniture of reality. If we examine the means through
which this substitution is allowed by Mr. Eliot to happen in his
reader, we find that they include: a vocabulary almost brutally
tuned to attain distinctness; an extraordinarily tight orchestration
of the shapes of sound; the delicate and careful murderings—almost
invariably interpreted, internally as well as terminally, through
near-rhyme and rhyme—of established tempos by oral rhythms.
Here is an example of Eliot's tuning:
“Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.”


784
T. S. ELIOT
Here is a specimen of his compact orchestration:
“I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown."
Here is Eliot himself directing the exquisitely and thoroughly
built thing:
"His laughter was submarine and profound
Like the old man of the sea's
Hidden under coral islands
Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in
the green silence,
Dropping from fingers of surf.”
To come to our final like, which it must be admitted is also our
largest—we like that no however cautiously attempted dissection of
Mr. T. S.'s sensitivity begins to touch a few certain lines whereby
become big and blundering and totally unskilful our altogether
unnecessary fingers:
“The lamp hummed:
Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smooths the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,”
At the risk of being jeered for an “uncritical” remark we mention
that this is one of the few huge fragilities before which comment
is disgusting.
E. E. CUMMINGS


A NEW PHILOSOPHER
GOD AND PERSONALITY. Being the Gifford Lectures
Delivered in the University of Aberdeen in the Years
1918 and 1919. By Clement C. J. Webb. 12mo.
281 pages. The Macmillan Company. New York.
MR:
R. CLEMENT C. J. WEBB has written a book on God
and Personality which is a remarkable achievement in more
ways than one. He has managed to discuss a difficult and abstract
problem in delightfully clear and often beautiful language. He has
presented simple and attractive answers to the various questions
raised by his subject. And in doing so he has shown that he pos-
sesses in considerable degree the quality of which real philosophers
are made.
This last fact, which any one who reads the book will readily
verify, should cause professional critics to forego the usual mimetic
treatment they accord to the logic-chopping of the schools and
handle Mr. Webb's book on a higher plane. A real philosopher
is of course not one whose answers to the problems of philosophy
are solutions of those problems. Mr. Webb's answers are interest-
ing, and in the main we may agree with them, but they are certainly
not incontestable. It is true that philosophers aim at incontestable
solutions; but it is also true that none has ever achieved them, or
is likely to do so. A real philosopher is rather an artist or poet of
ideas. Not solution but revelation is his true business. He opens
wide the doors of the spirit and lets in the fresh air of wonder.
Readers of the book before us will not fail to notice the author's
power of stimulating speculation as he goes along.
Philosophers, however, not only aim at solutions, they prove
them; and it is experience and not logic which affords the reputa-
tion. Mr. Webb attacks his problem, the determination of the
place to be assigned to personality in our conception of God, quite
in the regulation manner. He is in turn historical, analytical, and
constructive. But his treatment cannot pretend even to logical
finality. Exception may be taken not only to his results, though
for our part we like them so far as they go, but also to his method,


786
A NEW PHILOSOPHER
which we would here examine in particular. This method consists
in appealing to the authority of the religious experience whenever
argument is lacking, at the same time that no indication is given
as to what the religious experience may be. Those individuals who
are not fortunate enough to know it by acquaintance are at once
thrown out of court-a ruling the justice of which in general no
one will question. It is, of course, useless to discuss a problem with
those incapable of comprehending it. But trouble arises for Mr.
Webb when, upon his own ipse dixit, and that only, he rules certain
particular gentlemen out of court as not having had the religious
experience. The reader at once asks whether, although their words
may not betray acquaintance with the religious experience as Mr.
Webb knows it, they may not possibly have enjoyed it all the same
in some manner of their own. Who is to decide the matter? Re-
member Hamlet's remark to Horatio; or in more modern language,
the "varieties of religious experience” are many. Mr. Webb is not
on firm ground here. In thus ruling out Signor Croce and others,
he shows perhaps more prudence and certainly more haste than
logic.
The matter becomes complicated when we discover that the re-
ligious experience he denies to Signor Croce is by no means very
clear to Mr. Webb himself. He is insistent that the religious ex-
perience justifies our considering the Deity as no less than the Ab-
solute, as insistent as he is that the religious consciousness demands
that God be all in all. Yet he is very careful to qualify his state-
ments by such words as "seem,” “I venture to think,” and so forth.
If, therefore, we take his book as an argument for the validity of
his conclusions, his diffidence regarding his knowledge of his own
argument's very foundation will certainly shake our confidence,
especially as it appears in strong contrast to his confident exclusion
of certain thinkers from the field of discussion. In fact, we may
be led to feel that Mr. Webb proves very little in the course of his
book, since his final appeal is always to an undefined experience
concerning the implications of which he is at the same time boldly
assertive and modestly uncertain.
Luckily, however, God and personality are subjects about which
a man gifted with insight and power of expression can say much
to advantage without proving anything. Little disappointment
will be expressed that Mr. Webb has not proved all he has to say


LINCOLN MAC VEAGH
787
about the personality of God. In fact, the conclusions he arrives
at are such that many will feel they need no proof at all. God, he
says in effect, is both personal and more than personal. He can
enter into personal relations with His worshippers at the same time
that He far transcends them. In the theological language which
Mr. Webb effectively alternates with that of modern philosophy,
He is both immanent and transcendent. This is surely in accord
with the demands of the most highly developed forms of normal
religious consciousness, and is the view approximated by the less
highly developed forms in which the concept of personality, itself
a late development, is already nascent. Mr. Webb's plea for the
admission of the Logos or Mediator on the same footing as the
immanence and transcendence of the Deity is more open to question,
though it is by no means the least interesting or suggestive portion
of his book.
But, setting aside his conclusions along with his arguments, we
would emphasize that the real value and significance of Mr. Webb’s
book lies, as we have already hinted, by the way. Mr. Webb does
not write for children, and we travel a long road with him from
the first page to the last. But when we are through we find that,
though he adheres conscientiously to his theme, his book has meant
far more to us than by itself any simple treatment of such a theme
could mean. We find that there is more here than meets the eye,
and that under the irresistible impulse to follow further the sug-
gested speculation somehow contained in Mr. Webb’s admirably
straightforward sentences, we have gone through a metaphysical
experience involving no small spiritual excitement. Let an example
suffice.
“I will. ask whether in Dante's introduction of himself
among the characters of his Comedy we may not find an analogue
to that personal intercourse with human souls which Religion
ascribes to God, but which it seems to philosophers of Mr. Bosan-
quet's school impossible to ascribe to the Absolute, because human
souls are included within the Absolute.”
It is only a hint, thrown out by the way, and quite in the order,
too, of his general discussion. But it contains a refreshing well of
suggestiveness. Around such genuine originalities grow up, if we


788
A NEW PHILOSOPHER
mistake not, the great oases in the general desert of discussion over
abstract things. The question of the relations of the finite indi-
vidual to the Absolute is one of the major questions subject to our
previous observation concerning impossible solutions. Brought face
to face with it, the true philosopher turns mythologist. As Mr.
Webb aptly quotes in this connection, “Without a parable spake
He not unto them.” One remembers Royce's famous myth of the
map of England reproduced upon the map of England ad infinitum,
and setting it beside this one little sentence of Mr. Webb's about
Dante and the soul, one is tempted to give the palm to Mr. Webb.
One suspects that Plato would claim him as a mythologist after
his own heart. But at any rate, it is clear that in the future he may
have to be reckoned with among the few who from generation to
generation supplement man's daily bread with a pittance of vision.
James has gone from us, Bosanquet and Bergson belong to the
generation of Mr. Webb's teachers. It is to be hoped that Mr.
Webb, relieved of the restrictions of the Gifford programme, may
soon give us a measure of the powers of which we here have a fore-
taste, and take a place among the leaders of thought in his genera-
tion which is only waiting to be occupied.
LINCOLN MacVeagh


JERUSALEM AND JAZZ
The Golden WHALES OF CALIFORNIA. By Vachel
Lindsay. 12mo. 181 pages. The Macmillan Com-
pany. New York.
TWO
WO impulses dominate Lindsay's latest volume; two tenden-
cies that are almost opposed in mood and mechanics. Some-
times the Jerusalem theme is uppermost; sometimes the jazz orches-
tration drowns everything else. Frequently, in the more successful
pieces, there is a racy, ragtime blend of both. But a half-ethical,
half-aesthetic indecision, an inability to choose between what most
delights Lindsay and what his hearers prefer is the outstanding
effect—and defect-of his new collection. Lindsay, the grotesque
entertainer, he of the moaning saxophone and the squawking clari-
net, is continually disturbing-and being disturbed by-Lindsay
the mystic, the cross-roads missionary, the small town evangelist.
Had Lindsay been let alone, he would undoubtedly have de-
veloped the romantically religious strain so pronounced in his
earliest pamphlets and in the tentative Rhymes to be Traded for
Bread- the strain that was amplified in General Booth Enters Into
Heaven and extended in that tour de force of spiritual syncopation,
The Congo. But, with the sweeping success of the latter poem, a
new element began to exert a potent influence on Lindsay's subse-
quent work: the element of popularity which, beginning by smiling
on the astonished poet, immediately made fresh demands of him.
And Lindsay complied. The surge and gusto of The Congo, the
uncanny power of Simon Legree, the panoramic dignity of John
Brown were forgotten and only their loudest, most sensational,
lowest-common-denominator qualities retained. Result: The Daniel
Jazz, The Blacksmith's Serenade, The Apple Blossom Snow Blues,
Davy Jones' Door-Bell, A Doll's Arabian Nights. Undeniably
light-hearted and humorous some of these are; their incongruities
and release of animal spirits are contagious, particularly when the
audience helps to make them a communal performance. But Lind-
say is beginning to step over the delicate line that separates buoy-
ance and even boisterousness from burlesque. He continues to


790
JERUSALEM AND JAZZ
broaden his effects, to over-emphasize his tympanic tricks; he begins
to depend too much on the stuffed trumpet and a freak battery of
percussion. Lindsay, at least this phase of him, is the chief ex-
ponent of a movement that might be called (if the patrioteers will
permit an umlaut) an American Überbretti. But, pandering to
a cruder response, what (in The Santa Fé Trail, The Congo, King
Solomon) was dedicated to the shrine of a Higher Vaudeville, is
now offered on the platform of a lower cabaret.
"His sweetheart and his mother were Christian and meek.
They washed and ironed for Darius every week.
.
One Thursday he met them at the door:-
Paid them as usual, but acted sore.
a
"He said:--'Your Daniel is a dead little pigeon.
He's a good hard worker, but he talks religion.'
And he showed them Daniel in the lions' cage.
Daniel standing quietly, the lions in a rage.
“Thus roared the lions:-
We want Daniel, Daniel, Daniel,
We want Daniel, Daniel, Daniel.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
> >
It is too easy a laugh to be proud of. And in the delightful
Rhymed Scenario dedicated to Mae Marsh, the whimsy and deli-
cate colours of Lindsay's pattern are broken by the raucous refrain.
Romance yields to tinsel; the gaudy rhythms, the lit run-way and
the entire Winter Garden chorus are summoned by lines like:
“Oh, quivering lights,
Arabian Nights!
Bagdad,
Bagdad!"
Politically, Lindsay is even more clamorous and less compelling.
He has a score of contradictory ideals, a hundred factional idols.
Experience does not make Lindsay more critical; he never seems


LOUIS UNTERMEYER
791
to lose an illusion. On the contrary, he assimilates new slogans,
new causes, new enthusiasms with an incredible appetite and an
iron digestion. There is something sublime about a nature that can
celebrate, with blithe impartiality and equal vigour, John L. Sul-
livan, Prohibition, Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan,
Kerensky, Mary Pickford, localism, Americanism, International-
ism, Campbellism. On one page Lindsay exhorts us to Sew the
Flags Together, an inspiring appeal which is preceded by the
proudly patriotic information that
now old Andrew Jackson fights
To set the sad, big world to rights.
He joins the British and the French.
He cheers up the Italian trench.
He's making Democrats of these,
And freedom's sons of Japanese.
His hobby horse will gallop on
Till all the infernal Huns are gone.”
And (in Shantung) there is, in the three lines, a significant and
astonishing assemblage:
“In the light of the maxims of Chesterfield, Mencius,
Wilson, Roosevelt, Tolstoy, Trotzky,
Franklin or Nietzsche, how great was Confucius?”
This undeviating catholicity proves nothing so much as the fact
that Lindsay is not, as he fondly believes, a politically-minded
person, a reconstructive philosopher. In his ready admiration, he
is a radiant, undiscriminating emotionalist; even when he thinks
he thinks, it is strong feeling that impels him. And it is this very
lack of intellectual finesse and hesitation that makes his religious
rhymes so obviously robust. John Brown, one of our finest inter-
pretations of native folk-lore and possibly the noblest poem Lind-
say has achieved, is full of a reverent sonority. So is that strange
tract, A Rhymed Address to All Renegade Campbellites Exhort-
ing Them to Return. And the first of the Campbell trilogy, en-
titled My Fathers Came from Kentucky, is even more surprisingly
successful. Observe this animated fragment:


792
JERUSALEM AND JAZZ
"Why do I faint with love
Till the prairies dip and reel?
My heart is a kicking horse
Shod with Kentucky steel.
" "No drop of my blood from north
Of Mason and Dixon's line.
And this racer in my breast
Tears my ribs for a sign.”
It is only when one pauses to synthesize Lindsay's attitude to
life, that one is struck by his amazing distrust of it. Life and (with
even greater emphasis) passion are never accepted by him as con-
ditions through which the ordinary world passes. They are, on
the contrary, the wildest and most dangerous traps to snare the soul.
In the earlier The Fireman's Ball, life is compared to a burning
building, roaring with the flames of lust. The fire-obsession per-
sists. Here in one of his most recent poems, Lindsay returns to
the fantasy:
“The door has a bolt.
The window a grate.
O friend, we are trapped
In the factory, Fate!"
“The flames, pierce the ceiling; the brands heap the floor”-and
what can save us? anxiously inquires the poet of his sweetheart.
And it is love, of all things—The Fire-Laddie, Love—which is to
rescue them from life! It is a queer mixture of fascination and
fear that keeps Lindsay dreaming of a spotless and almost sexless
love. His emotions are not so much Buddhistic as determinedly
innocent; the great sin is not growing wicked but growing up. In
that charming echo of childhood For All Who Ever Sent Lace
Valentines, Lindsay expresses this phase in another guise:
a
“The lion of loving,
The terrible lion,
Woke in the two
Long before they could wed.


LOUIS UNTERMEYER
793
The world said: 'Child hearts,
You must keep till the summer:
It is not allowed
That
your
hearts should be red.'
And Lindsay concludes:
"Were I god of the village
My servants should mate them.
Were I priest of the church
I would set them apart.
If the wide state were mine
It should live for such darlings,
And hedge with all shelter
The child-wedded heart."
“The child-wedded heart.” It is, in spite of a frequent violence
of manner, the apotheosis of this poet. Is it unnatural that such a
genuinely ascetic and childhood-yearning spirit should over-com-
pensate by flying from the extremes of hushed intimacies and
whispered dream-stuff to the limits of brassy declamations ? This
very backward-turning hunger drives Lindsay to his best achieve-
ments. He shines brightest not in the rôle of prophet, politician,
or jazz-conductor but in the far more homely part of country
chronicler, the reminiscent collector of the strange minutiae that
compose the background of ruralism. It is the inspired reporter
that, after a turgid beginning, builds so powerful a climax in Bryan,
Bryan, Bryan, Bryan (that amazing compound of mid-western
vigour and American Esperanto) or turns (in John L. Sullivan, the
Strong Boy of Boston) an almanac of 1889 into a glittering,
humorous panorama. One willingly forgets both parlour minstrel
and missionary for the downright vitality of such summaries. In
its very
crudities The Golden Whales of California reflects an im-
pulse that is as autochthonous—and poetic—as the half-withheld
disclosures of New Englanders like Frost and Robinson or the
free and easy confidences of Westerners like Sandburg and Masters.
But, to develop this expression beyond his present equipment, Lind-
say will have to repudiate the very audience that welcomes him
most heartily. There are larger things ahead of him.
Louis UNTERMEYER


DELIVERANCE
12mo.
DELIVERANCE. By E. L. Grant Watson.
322 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. New York.
LIFE
IFE and the sane way to live it form the theme of Grant Wat-
son's novels. Deliverance is the third book he has written in
illustration of his profound belief that men and women, in order to
find vital expression, must cast off all philosophies and systems,
those "signs of a failing vitality,” and live with individual desire
as a guide to the realization of life. In the preface to his first book
he says:
“Life can survive all bludgeoning provided that the individual
soul is so violently shaken that all its old valuations fall completely
away. Out of the ruins, life naked and without shame, but beauti-
ful in that naked vitality, can rise to new expression.”
Surely he has tested his theory, for it would be difficult to find
any writer who has brought more naked, effortless vitality to the
making of stories of lives that break and then find a way to tran-
quillity through a reconstructed faith in life. As to his starting
point he has come to human problems over a road new to novelists.
He is a zoologist, and after he had taken honours in natural science
at Cambridge, spent a year in an ethnological expedition in Austra-
lia. Then he went to the Fiji Islands and studied animal and vege-
table life from as close a range as a man may win to. Suddenly he
came out of the bush with a desire to write about people. He has
given up his other work, though for that matter he has brought
much of it over bodily into his three books, Where Bonds Are
Loosed, The Mainland, and Deliverance.
In the first story, a man and a twice-broken woman struggle
through suffering to a happiness compatible with nature. The
second book gives the same conflict in the life of their son. It is
not so difficult for him because he has grown to manhood away
from the herd and its flock morality. But he must go over to the
mainland and learn for himself that life is best in forests where


HELEN IVES GILCHRIST
795
bonds are loosed. Now comes the third book to present the cultured
woman's side of the game. Deliverance will startle you by its
beauty, set you to hard thinking by its depth, and hold your in-
terest from first to last in a heroine who is easily recognized as Mr.
Watson's ideal woman.
He has given Susan Zalesky the only ancestry possible to her: her
father is Russian and her mother English. Susan has, therefore,
warmth, a sensitive, beauty-loving nature, a strong human instinct,
and charm—so much for the Russian. She has also restraint, a
deep-rooted feeling for nature, and a breadth of understanding that
can meet a man on his own level without embarrassment and with-
out becoming at all masculine thereby. Neither in Susan nor in
any other woman in the three books is sex ignored. Rather it is
included without shame in the new expression and vitality which
Mr. Watson predicates.
Susan's testing in the fire of life begins early. Her irresponsible
father, bored by his wife's illness, deserts his family in a dusty bun-
galow in India, and Susan, watching death come, is frightened.
Then her mother tells her, “To fear Death unduly is always a sign
that life has ceased to be beautiful. And life can be beautiful in
spite of all adversity if you can remember your duty: your duty
which is your love unto yourself.”
There are more lessons to follow in the little English village to
which her aunt takes the children. Susan loves the downs and the
glimpse of the sea from them, the strength and beauty of the
beeches, and all the peopled solitude of the forest. Then, for a
time, when her childish fancies about nature fall away, the unsen-
tient indifference of all that surrounds human life appals her.
Love for the beauty and quiet of her hills comes back, but she asks
nothing in return from them.
It is in this very respect that Grant Watson marks his stride
ahead of the poetic animalists who came to the fore several years
ago. W. H. Hudson could always handle a nature theme without
losing his way, but in Algernon Blackwood's sinister tales, nature
“took dislikes” as readily as any village gossip, forests were men-
acing and seas malevolent. This influence shows a little in Mr.
Watson's short story Man and Brute which is included in Edward
O'Brien's collection of the best short stories, but in his novels he has
worked his way out of the nets which Blackwood is not strong


796
DELIVERANCE
enough to break. Indeed, Mr. Watson comes near to reversing
Blackwood's process. The one sees trees as human beings, the other,
so close are his nature analogies, sometimes sees men as trees walk-
ing, or more often as animals stalking. On the surface it is a com-
mon comparison. People often suggest their plant or animal proto-
type, but this human ethnologist goes farther, traces the animal in
their natures, and is pleading for as consistent a following of animal
law in human life as makes for calm and strength.
It is Matthew Arnold's old cry for self-dependence,
a
“From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of Heaven,
Over the lit sea's unquiet way,
Through the rustling night air came the answer,
Wouldst thou be as these are, live as they.'”
a
Susan has no prototype among animals. She is rather like a tree,
alert to every change of season, bending to the gale as a tree must,
and tossing on the wind's passion unafraid because her roots go
deep. Her mother's last counsel comes to mean much to her. Later,
her father gives her a man's version of the same idea. He has come
airily back to live with his daughters and Aunt Dorothy in Sway-
stead, but he cannot keep from intriguing for the affections of the
aunt and the housemaid indiscriminately. When he defends his
conduct, Susan asks, rather indignantly:
“But don't women have their own lives, their own values?
Haven't you the imagination to consider them ?—Is that impos-
sible?" And Paul replies, “How can I consider them when they
do not consider themselves ?”
All this leads Susan to fight hard against love when it comes to
her. She succeeds at least in keeping her spiritual freedom, and for
the rest is content with her lover. Tom Northover, who is at once
hero, and for a time, agent of unhappiness to Susan, is distinctly
an animal type. Mr. Watson refers to him as a "conscienceless
animal”—with no suggestion of Puritan disgust for his ruthless
intelligence. When Susan wonders how he can live so quietly and
at peace with old mad Henry, she remembers “those accidents in
nature when animals quite dissimilar in habit live together in the
same hole.” Noel Sarret, a vivid and disturbing pilgrim towards
individual expression, watched Tom's swift and animal-like move-


HELEN IVES GILCHRIST
797
>
ments as he painted and felt a simple desire to stroke his brown
arms and close-cropped head.
Mr. Watson must have felt that his readers might carry his
analogies between nature and man past his meaning, for in the
course of a conversation between Tom and Susan, Tom, after com-
paring people to trees, adds, “Don't press the simile too far.”
"It would be convenient to know one's own variety,” Susan
muses, and Tom repeats, “Yes, but don't press the simile. It may
,
lead to false and absurd conclusions."
Mr. Watson himself does not press any of his similes. He makes
Tom a very live human being, though, after all, this is the book of
Susan, and Tom is an accessory. Gradually you see the working of
the one law which Mr. Watson thinks is consistent for tree and man
and beast. He shows you people shedding the artificialities of civi-
lization, not the beauties of life, and living at last without any
warping of their own natures, so simply that “sin” becomes only a
figment of that unreal world that bred false motives. You may
not care for the results as he depicts them in the lives of his people.
Indeed he is not quite so successful in Deliverence as in the first two
books, but at least you can see the simplification of their problems.
As artificial standards drop away, Susan, Tom, and even Paul
Zalesky, that uneasy, warped egoist, grow as naturally towards hap-
piness as do any of the creatures and plants created before the sixth
day.
Susan's trial by fire reaches its crisis when Tom fails her. She
cannot see her way through, but all her past training fights for her,
and at last she wins past suffering to her own deliverance. She is
ready now for life. Tom, who did not know his luck, is distanced
and left to work his way out of a new difficulty. Susan goes on
without him, and we leave her at last, sure that she will be greater
than anything that can happen to her. We are equally sure that
something fit for her new vitality will come. The book will have
a sequel, whether through Mr. Watson's pen or in the reader's
imagination, assisted by some foreshadowings in the present story.
It would be a mistake to stop here and leave the impression that
these characters are only incidentally strung upon a theory. Mr.
Watson is not merely an ethnologist who draws comparisons. His
people are real enough to walk out of the book. They have time to
talk nonsense, despair of painting good pictures, and to remember


798
DELIVERANCE
Norbert's cry against artists, "We'll be the thing they look at. Let
Rubens there paint us!" There is a sureness of psychology about
all that Mr. Watson has written, and he has a keen eye for the ac-
cessories of life. He has, though he seldom uses it, a humour that
grows out of situation and has little to do with words. He has-
his own words tell it best—"that leanness and alertness of mind
that come from sharp criticism.” Then his love for nature with
which he endows Susan is a solace for most ills. His pictures of
wintry woods, the downs in early spring, and of Susan's glee in
escaping into the first flood of August rain after a drouth, are poetic
and satisfying
And if he had nothing else, he would be sure to win recognition for
the sheer beauty of his workmanship. It is hard to see how his first
two books managed to fall upon the world so silently, except that in
nineteen-seventeen and eighteen, when they were published, the
world's interest was concentrated on the Hindenburg line. But
Mr. Watson has as easy a mastery of technique as though he were
Heifetz playing the violin. You forget technique in the effect of it.
There is abundant detail in his three books, not one stroke of it insig-
nificant. Construction becomes simply natural growth. Prepara-
tion, suspense, action, and result, all are unhurried, inevitable,
woven but never tangled by any influence of character or the sea-
sons. His diction is the outgrowth of the story he has to tell. Here
is none of that massing of words, each groping a little way towards
the meaning, tossed together to let you draw a gradual sense from
the heap. No Jean Christophe here! There is an inspiration of
phrase that is like the lion's easy drop of padded paws as he melts
into the forest with a graceful, unconscious sureness.
Indeed it is easier to quarrel with some of the natural results of
his process of spiritual emancipation than with his illustrations of it
in characters, or with his manner of setting it forth. There is no
doubt that life in its final reductions is ruthless and often discon-
certing. But this man is too big to fit into any pattern. He took a
running leap into first rank with Where Bonds Are Loosed, held
his record and bettered it in The Mainland. We miss their large-
ness of movement, their sweep and tropical colour in Deliverance,
but the charm of Susan, and of winter and spring at Swaystead, are
unforgettable.
Helen Ives GILCHRIST


THE PEACE OF GOD
[2mo.
BEFORE THE WAR. By Viscount Haldane.
223 pages. Funk & Wagnalls. New York.
How THE WAR CAME. By The Earl Loreburn.
12mo. 340 pages. Knopf. New York.
THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE Conference.
By Dr. Edward J. Dillon. 12mo. 513 pages. Harpers.
THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE LEAGUE. By Lord
Eustace Percy. 12mo. 318 pages. Doran. New York.
THE
THE evil conscience of Europe is an obsession from which no es-
cape is possible. It shows itself in the restless shifting of politi-
cal alliances, in feverish activity without plan, in long diplomatic
hesitations and impulsive plunges, in the helpless fear of statesmen
before the forces of their own making. The sense of sin is profound,
for even victory has not brought absolution, and the conquerors are
as profuse in their apologies as their enemies. It is a strange psy-
chological case and one is left uncertain whether the sin is too deep
or the triumph not glorious enough to give peace.
For it is still peace that the statesmen of Europe are seeking,
peace with their consciences, their constituencies, their gods, and
their historians. The four books in hand are the works of men who
have in various ways upheld, criticized, and changed the social order
which came to fulfilment in the Treaty of Versailles. Serenity is not
in them. That of Viscount Haldane sets before us the ironic tragic
history of a cultivated and courageous man, spiritually hostile to
the implacable imperialism of Europe, foreseeing a new decency be-
tween nations and a new freedom of intercourse between them, and
condemned remorselessly to struggle within the web of intrigue, to-
dream of peace and to create an army, to give over the effort of be-
ing a European statesman and to become a Secretary for War. One
could forgive Europe everything except the corruption of minds
and the frustration of purposes of men like Lord Haldane.


800
THE PEACE OF GOD
It is precisely this unforgivable Europe that is described in Lord
Loreburn's book. Europe, monstrous and moribund, whose fever-
ish tossings have seemed so full of the energy of life! It is Europe
considered nationally, diplomatically, with all its subtlety and
all its guile, its wisdom and its incredible pompous unreality. I
do not desire to revive the bitterness of our disillusion; Lord Lore-
burn's pages, an analysis as dispassionate as may be of the whole
miserably intricate business of the telegrams of July, 1914, destroy
whatever remains of the unphilosophic hope that all the evil was
compact and corruptingly on one side. His analysis of that speech
of Sir Edward Grey which Lord Eustace Percy calls an instinctive
effort to deduce policy from morals is sufficient proof that in inter-
national affairs, at any rate, the death-bed repentance is not enough.
Nor is virtue enough after a century of diplomacy.
Dr. Dillon has made a splendid effort to write his book as if he
knew nothing whatever of the diplomatic history of Europe. There
is the customary literary flourish about the Congress of Vienna; the
rest is an almost maddening farrago of facts and fancies, gossip and
editorial opinion, small-talk and criticism, of the dreary business
at Paris. The points—that the Treaty virtually creates an Anglo-
American hegemony; that the small nations were outrageously
treated; that the Fourteen Points were cynically sacrificed—are
good points. But the chief value of the book is that the very heap-
ing up of trivialities must discourage even the most ignorant of
minds from the belief that the Treaty of Versailles represented the
active intelligence of the nations which made it.
Which brings me to the book of Lord Eustace Percy. I do not
understand all of it nor agree with all I understand, but I am fain
to mark its superior importance. It is, in the first place, a book writ-
ten in the interest of civilization. It is true that there have been
civilizations, not altogether contemptible, without Christianity; and
it is arguable that there may be civilizations hereafter not based on
state sovereignty. But the author's point is both true and indis-
putable, that the revolution which threatens both of these institu-
tions may drag all civilization with it unless a high intelligence
commands and canalizes its forces. Lord Eustace considers the
League of Nations as the potential champion of the idea of the
state and commonwealth, the possible medium by which we may
come to the spirit of a united Christendom. That, no doubt, is his
/


SGANARELLE
801
ideal: to set it off he offers a penetrating analysis of the past and
makes the profound observation that the Treaty of Versailles, which
he does not defend, is the almost complete result of the two forces
of nationalism and democracy, the sacred ideals for which the
noblest blood of a century has been fanatically sacrificed.
These are but four books: there will be four thousand, since the
writing of books is one of the means to salvation. Even the brief
summary must convey some sense of the bewilderment, the uncer-
tainty, the malaise, finally, of these writers. This unhappiness in
the politico-social predicament of the world is the psychological
problem. We know only its symptoms; we should be concerned
with its cause and cure.
The main cause is not hope too long deferred; nor is it the violent
uprooting of men and women from the rich soil of their illusions.
It is, if I mistake not, the conviction that the whole course of social
action in the last century has been misguided and mistaken. Liber-
alism is dead not because it failed but because it succeeded: yet a
little longer and we shall all be liberals. The demise of Liberalism
is honourable: but the lingering on of Reform is a little indecent,
since the distribution and not the abuse of power has become our
pressing social question. With these aberrations has gone Utopian-
ism, and the last concession is made to practical men.
scheme of social betterment now current dares to offer Liberty as its
prize and purpose. They are but differing degrees of enslavement.
That is the crux of the matter and it is not so far removed from
the question of world politics as it seems to be. For centuries the
world has defined progress in terms of emancipation, and is now
cruelly hurt to find that in freeing men it has perforce set them free
to enslave their fellows. It is to this that democracy has come:
yet, so long as democracy walked arm in arm with capitalism it
did offer the freedom to exploit, to tyrannize, and to conquer. At
the end of it there rises out of Russia a rebellion against this democ-
racy, not in the tyranny of the proletariat but in the subjugation
of all men to the basic law that no man shall be free to exercise
economic power over another. That is the theory, and it explains
all our indignation, since the beast and the fool, the abysmal and
the divine, which dwell in the soul of men, cry out against it. For
it is the end of freedom; and freedom is the peace of God.
This is the dilemma in which the war has fixed us by dispelling
For no


802
THE PEACE OF GOD
for ever the myth of our freedom in the modern state. In the old
democracy the state had become an intolerable power and the free-
dom it left untouched, rapidly diminishing, was almost exclusively
devoted to the exploitation of the poor in spirit. The communist
state which is its only rival has all the tyranny of humanitarianism.
Between them the individual who cherishes life when it is free and
subjects himself with a glad heart only to the unalterable law of
Nature, is in a quandary. His relation to the state is undefined
and, as far as he is conscious of it, unacceptable.
Within the state the individual is torn among conflicting loyal-
ties; his wife, his parents, his children, his union, his lodge, his
political party, his city or county, his religion, set forth claims upon
him. Outside the state rises the new international order, which is
not universal like the Catholic church; nor cosmopolitan like cul-
ture, but a structural combination of powers, with no community of
policy or of ideals. This new order is, like the smaller groups,
founded with the purpose of giving security. One may well won-
der whether it be not destined to sum up the power of all the others
to corrupt and limit the freedom of humanity.
For the international system, as it was before the war, as it will
be under the League of Nations, has not even proposed to itself the
task of inquiring what the relations of a man to his community
must be; it is no part of that system to ensure freedom or to cor-
rect abuse. The common man, all of his rights forfeit long ago,
stands chilled and lonely in the presence of this System and vaguely,
behind it, imagines that he sees an ideal, humanity. He would like
to live, if not for humanity, at least in harmony with its deepest
purpose. And he condemns the whole social structure, from his
street to the international system, because he knows that no society
has yet expressed that purpose, and he fears that none ever will.
It will be strange, but it will be logical, that in this stress and
intensification of tyranny the individual will reassert himself. If
he is of sufficient intellectual courage he will try to work out his
own problem of the state, and if he sees that any process is beginning
to undermine the concentrated power of the state, he will further
it. He will ask for devolution, and if social schemes come to his
notice he will accept that one in which the state is reduced, that one
in which it has the least power to interfere with the lives of its citi-
zens. The life of such a man will be difficult; for he will meet the


SGANARELLE
803
accumulated and frightened power of every institution and will
have to fight against it. Even he, I fear, will have little faith in
the state, and happier by far will be the man who has none. For to
him will be restored the spectacle of life without the framework of
society; he will be forced to perpetual concessions and compromises
in his own circumstances, but he will make them without hurt be-
cause they will question no principle of his. He will let the state
go hang, not at all sure that civilization is destined to go with it,
but rather bleakly taking his chance. He will give up, and if he is
a superior individual the sacrifice will not be light, the pretension to
great power. He will have the consolation of knowing that Beauty
abides with him. For he will understand that the political life of
man has become in a sense the enemy of the creative life of the
mind. He will understand, I think, what Voltaire meant in the
most cynical precept of Candide, that we must cultivate our garden.
SGANARELLE


BRIEFER MENTION
TALES OF My Native Town, by Gabriele D'Annunzio, translated
by Rafael Mantellini (12mo, 287 pages; Doubleday, Page), is
a collection of twelve melodramas by an Italian Zola. Here
writing is done with the big stick. They are tales of the noisier
passions, executed with meticulous consideration for the formid-
able detail, since D'Annunzio writes with all the heat and
strength of pulse that is supposed to belong to the Southern tem-
perament. Also, he knows where to close a story to give it
solidity. The translation, with the possible exception of
parts of the conversation, is very smoothly done. As introduc-
tion there is a plea by Joseph Hergesheimer, an attempt at
coercing the American public into the A B C's of criticism.
CELIA AND HER FRIENDS, by Ethel Brunner (12mo, 152 pages;
Macmillan), is a novel conforming to the coat pocket in bulk
and to the dinner jacket in mood. It displays both the informal
and the superficial attributes commonly associated with that gar-
ment, and resembles it also in that it is seen to best advantage
under artificial light. The cut is modern, the tailoring bad.
Miss Lulu Bett, by Zona Gale (12mo, 264 pages; Appleton),
adds another distinct figure to the growing gallery of Middle
Western types from Miss Gale's pen. One is conscious that
the materials of the story have undergone a considerable warp-
ing in order to fit them into the tragic mould; there is less of
the hopeless, inevitable sweep of things than we have found in
other of the author's recent studies.
THE ISLAND OF SHEEP, by Cadmus and Harmonia (12mo, 170
pages; Houghton Mifflin), rolls the present world unrest up into
a cheerful and conservative package, with the strings tied a bit
too neatly. Behind the pseudonym is said to lurk a widely
known English writer and man of action. He has put his
thoughts on politics and labour into a fictional symposium, but
their driving power is diffused amid conversational mists.


BRIEFER MENTION
805
SATIRE IN THE VICTORIAN Novel, by Frances Theresa Russell
(8vo, 335 pages; Macmillan), is as little satirical as it is pos-
sible for a monograph to be. The author examines with
scholarly patience the great body of Literature which includes
Butler as well as Dickens, and Trollope as well as Meredith.
She goes so far as to chart humour, satire, and criticism; represent-
ing the first and last as circles which overlap, and satire as the
overlapping. She concludes that “we have as yet invented noth-
ing to surpass the general Victorian satiric philosophy,—that
the wisest reaction to life is a high seriousness graced with
humor. . . This
may
well be true. But the reader becomes
increasingly anxious to reach a point in the book where the
author will step into the magic region of overlapped circles, and
increasingly impatient of a high seriousness which has an odd
ring in what is, after all, the twentieth century.
-
OLD JUNK, by H. M. Tomlinson (12mo, 208 pages; Knopf), is a
book of sketches, "stories of travel and chance," full of "the in-
dubitable sense of the harmonies of imaginative prose.” The
quotation is from S. K. Ratcliffe, who writes an enthusiastic and
justifiable foreword. A book of almost magical delight to those
who care for beauty in writing and of enchantment for those who
love the flights of the exploring mind. It is the sort of book a
master of prose would be glad to have written in his apprentice
years. Few of our arrived writers have ever tried anything so
difficult or succeeded so well in their trials.
9
Many Many Moons, by Lew Sarett (12mo, 82 pages; Holt), is
an attempt to reproduce in poetry "the loam and the lingo, the
sand and the syllables of North America.” More specifically it
is a reproduction of Indian tribal chants, a task for which Mr.
Sarett was eminently fitted. His predecessors were either anthro-
pologists with little poetic ability, or poets with no authentic
knowledge of the Indian. He has combined the merits of both.
DIANA OF THE Ephesians, by Mrs. Desmond Humphreys (12mo,
492 pages; Stokes), cuts loose from the usual formulas of fiction
and attempts an ambitious study in feminine egotism, an un-
even performance but one which reveals decided vigour.


806
BRIEFER MENTION
Don Folguer and Other Poems, by Thomas Walsh (12mo, 135
pages; John Lane), gives the picturesque tale of the troubadour-
zealot with appropriately embroidered trappings. Romantic
narrative seems best to suit this poet's rather ponderous hand.
The lyrics of the collection are barren and the humorous pieces
cumbersome and pathetic.
CHORDS FROM ALBIREO, by Danford Barney (8vo, 100 pages;
Lane), has the mechanics of verse, but little of the content of
poetry. Mr. Barney attempts to reach the emotions by playing
leapfrog over the intellect, a form of calisthenics too muscular
to be much of an inspiration.
SONGS FROM THE JOURNEY, by Wilton Agnew Barrett (12mo, 93
pages; Doran), is a first volume of more than the conventional
promise. Mr. Barrett discourses about Man, Beauty, New
York, and the other eternal entities with appealing delicacy; he
likes nice things in a nice way, but except in one or two
places he fails of achieving poetry through a lack of ultimate
conviction.
The HESITANT Heart, by Winifred Welles (12mo, 56 pages;
Huebsch), throbs between rose-coloured covers, but not so faintly
as either its title or its binding might make one believe. Miss
Welles’ verse is distinguished by lyrism, rather than by imagery,
by delicacy, rather than intensity, but the distinction is certainly
present. It is obviously the verse of a woman, with the sentiment
and the softness that that implies. Yet it is at once lucid and
sensitive, and in such a poem as Humiliation shows a promise
of greater power.
Practical Fly Fishing, by Larry St. John (16mo, illustrated;
175 pages; Macmillan), starts off historically with a reference
to angling found—appropriately enough—in the Book of Job,
and finishes technically with all manner of concise and valuable
hints concerning tackle, flies, and casting. A chapter on Strategy
is particularly illuminating. Its frank and detailed revelation
of the life and habits of the bass would inevitably lead to the
book's suppression, if fish had any influence in that direction.


BRIEFER MENTION
807
THIRTY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY:
1911-1912 (8vo, 677 pages; Government Printing Office, Wash-
ington), is chiefly notable for the monograph on the symbolism
of the prehistoric Hopi pottery designs, by Jesse Walter Fewkes.
The uses of plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region,
by Melvin Randolph Gilmore, is an important contribution to
the study of the ecology of the American Indian. The Hawaiian
romance of Laieikawai, in original text and translation by Martha
Warren Beckwith, occupies a large portion of the volume. One
wishes, as so often with government publications, that the book
were designed for others than mandarins and megalobibliots.
a
The Russian Republic, by Col. Cecil L'Estrange Malone (12mo,
153 pages; Harcourt, Brace and Howe), reports, in an odd diary-
form, the observations of a British member of Parliament of the
state of affairs in Russia. It is remarkably sane, informative,
well-balanced; everything that political literature about Russia
is not, it is. It is in paper covers as is BOLSHEVISM AT WORK, by
William T. Goode, the correspondent of the Manchester Guard-
ian (12mo, 143 pages; same publisher). The two provide some-
thing of the actualities of this international case; a starting point
for intelligent judgement.
HISTORY OF GERMANY IN THE NINETEENTH Century, by Hein-
rich von Treitschke, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul (Volume
VII; 8vo, 632 pages; McBride), brings the English version of
this monumental work to a conclusion. Advancing from the
rather dull and uneventful decade, 1830-1840, which he dis-
cusses in his two preceding volumes, Treitschke describes the
course of events up to the eve of the revolutionary year, 1848.
Despite the author's chauvinist prejudices, which exert a percep-
tible influence upon his historical judgements, his history will un-
questionably live for its brilliant style and weighty scholarship.


THE THEATRE
WHE
HEN I wrote in these pages some months ago that there
was no reason to expect any great acting before the season
ended, I had no intention of saying, as some indignant critics have
assumed, that there could not and would not be great acting. The
offending words were so qualified as to indicate that in the present
state of the theatre great acting was not likely to be demanded by
either the producers or their audiences. To that I stand committed,
and am grateful to Broadway for bearing me out.
On the whole this may be a good thing for the stage. The second-
rate practitioners of an art are the sure heralds of its decay; let
them flourish in all their arrogance, let them be called great, and
their successors are already round the corner. I am the more con-
vinced that something new and revolutionary is coming into the
theatre by another circumstance. Ten years ago a critic might have
written that there was no reason to expect any great plays, because
neither the producer nor the audience demanded them. He would
have been amply justified; for a few flashes of genius might have
come, but the long run would have shown that the conventional
play is declining rapidly. Already the theatre is beginning to live
by other things.
a
It was Gorki's Night LODGING which gave the clue to this, and
gave it with a most moving power and beauty. I may say at once
that this was the most impressive production of the season; it lacked
;
the living beauty of Mr. Jones' investiture for RICHARD III, but it
was much better acted than that play; it lacked the poetic beauty
of the Medea, but it had a finer sense of rhythm and pace in the
production. A slightly sanctimonious air was thrown about the
wandering peasant who, by all of Gorki's implications, ought to
have been of the most simple; but this was virtually the only sur-
render (an unconscious one) to the prevalent conceptions of char-
acter-acting. The rest of the play, amazingly décousu, had the
irregular terrifying beat of life; for all its apparent dispersal of
interest, it possessed an almost intolerable concentration of emotion;


GILBERT SELDES
809
one assisted at the creation of its people and at the projection of its
passions with the intensity usually reserved for the deepest of one's
own experiences, and in the theatre one had amazingly the sense
of participation in mysteries. The piece was so self-contained, so
self-established, that one felt, as in listening to music, a great and
justifying hinterland taking shape and movement; and the night
watcher of the stars could have had no serener sense of the absolute
before him.
Yer of the speech and gesture, the exits and entrances, the atti-
tudes and dialogue of drama, this piece possessed nothing. The
eternal conflict of man in the madhouse of the world was there,
as it is in every expression of man's life; but the form and structure
of conventional drama would have been an impertinence. The
stage accepted this piece and was strengthened by it; just as this
season it accepted a pageant of history in Abraham Lincoln, or
a pageant
of
poetry
in the Medea and in THE FAITHFUL. That it
has accepted, at the same time, the work of the artists of the theatre
who are creating not only a new art, but a new theatre as well, is
some indication of the vitality which the theatre still possesses.
The attack on the theatre is in reality an attack on its old limita-
tions; it will come as readily from those who recognize beauty in
pantomime or dance as from those who find the demoniac vitality
of our time in the superb vulgarity of Mr. Jolson. When they ask
enough of the theatre, ask specifically that the theatre stop its dance
of death and give them these qualities of energy and beauty, the
renaissance will be complete. It is certainly beginning.
One does not like to pass the month without some reference to the
revival of FLORODORA, because that production, in addition to being
pleasing enough and offering much to the comic genius of George
Hassell, is a lesson in the changes of taste which are a little too
hastily called progress. This has been an exceptionally unhappy
year for musical comedy, in spite of the musicianly scores of Fritz
Kreisler and André Messager. Here (and here only) music is not
enough; and book is not enough. The work of genius will pre-
1
sumably last for ever, but in the truest sense, a musical comedy must
comprehend and satisfy the current temper of its audiences and
must hold the mirror up to artifice.
GILBERT SELDES


COMMENT
NOTHER little gust of fury has blown; another book has been
allowed to experience the triumph of democratic principles,
trial by jury. Our common law provides that the accused shall be
tried by a jury of his peers, but M. Théophile Gautier is dead and
Mademoiselle de Maupin was tried by a jury tout court. The
jurors slept while the golden book of spirit and sense was read
to them; and sleeping pronounced a verdict of not guilty.
This connection of sleep with morality establishes a new prece-
dent in law and solves many problems in literature. We have al-
ways felt sure that the soporific qualities of Mr. Christopher Mor-
ley's essays were not due to their excess of intelligence; we know
now that it is only moral rectitude which puts men, American men,
jurors, to sleep. We understand why the charge of immorality has
been brought from time immemorial against the few writers who
managed to keep their readers lively and awake.
But, as the Lord Chancellor remarked, it has its inconvenient
side. This prosecution is not the last, only the most recent of
many, and the judgements handed down have seriously imperilled
the freedom of art in America. It is now virtually impossible for
a publisher to defend himself on any ground, once the morality of
his book be called into question. Mr. H. L. Mencken has done no
greater service to American letters than in his exposition of the
judicial decisions which have robbed American letters of their inno-
The presumption of innocence, indeed, has disappeared;
it is no longer necessary for the prosecution to prove immoral inten-
tion; all that is necessary, it seems, is the testimony of the most
prudish, of the most prejudiced, of the most vulgar-minded, and of
the most ignorant.
The Comstockians have driven everything from Fanny Hill to
Rabelais, from Petronius to Dreiser, from the book-shelves, and the
prosecutions for new books are necessarily few. More grievous than
their efforts by far is the supine attitude of those editors who have
long ago ceased to run any risk in the publication of a free litera-
ture.
A thousand fears and a thousand inhibitions have worked
their will upon the editorial mind; and after an author has suffered
cence.


COMMENT
811
а
the indignity of seeing his work slashed and cut to conform to the
most fantastic of standards, it is not likely that his second manu-
script will challenge the accepted values. The author goes under,
too, and we arrive at the stage in America where the few men and
women who know how to write and care about the art of fiction, are
concerned only with the most bloodless of human creatures, and
gloss over sex (the great offender) as if its existence were an
offence to the better nature of our superior race. Our fictional re-
ports
of life are true in the diaries of suicides, in the Sunday papers,
in the terrible chaos of Theodore Dreiser's fumblings with words
and ideas, but not in the work of those who can pretend to the
divine dignity of the creative imagination.
We are not living in an age of religious fanaticism. The perse-
cutors of art are not enthusiasts for God. Although the Deity is
invoked a little more frequently and a little more vulgarly of late-
a sign on Fifth Avenue suggests that the Almighty was the first
believer in the open shop and a leaflet begging funds ends with the
stern assurance that “God expects every Baptist to do his duty”—
the principle of toleration maintains itself. The zeal of the Puri-
tan we can understand; he cannot bear that his eyes should be dis-
tracted from the single, blinding contemplation of the face of God.
It is not Puritanism which blights our artistic production now; it is
Philistinism, of which the first essential is the hatred of beauty.
We are inclined to sympathize with this hatred which begins in
fear and selfishness. It is only by hating beauty, wherever it is
found, that the dreariness and banality of common life are made tol-
erable. If one loved beauty and had to live for ever in the day of
small things! If one loved the sea and choked for ever in a rather
foul-smelling dungeon! We can bear the beauties of nature with
some fortitude; but that the work of man's hands should have
power to move us is an attack upon our self-esteem too bitter to be
borne. We satisfy the instinctive desire for creation by silly substi-
tutes, and the bad and successful art of every age is the consolation
we have for the wounds which beauty inflicts upon us. There is no
place for beauty in the life of man unless there is place for nothing
but beauty. And in the dilemma the artist for ever finds himself.
We have seen The Gardens of Italy which Charles Scribner's Sons
publish in this country with a sharp feeling of satisfaction, because
a


812
COMMENT
a
1
for a book to be neat and elaborate, rich not gaudy, is a rare thing.
It is, of course, the booklover's dream to find a volume so propor-
tioned, so illustrated, and so authoritative. At the other extreme of
publishing, it is pleasant to note that the house of Harcourt, Brace
and Howe have published several little books, on subjects of imme-
diate interest, in paper covers, and at a price which is moderate. The
experiment is worth noting and since, in this case, the books are
peculiarly interesting, worth supporting. The Modern Library of
Boni and Liveright has the advantage of paying no royalties to
authors, and is an established and, we understand, enviable collec-
tion. The new publishers have justified themselves admirably in
years or so. The great houses are being held to stricter
account; an altogether pleasing state of affairs.
the past
past five
A Few German comic weeklies, including Phosphor, new to us,
have arrived in this country. It is possible to import German novels
and belles-lettres, but one avoids the effort, lest judgement be too
hasty. The comic weeklies show all their old neatness and nicety
of caricature, all the old daring and gaiety of colour. But the
Navy Number of Phosphor and the run of comment in Jugend
and Kladderadatsch do not satisfy us that a peace of reconciliation
has been made. We would hardly risk the lives of our descendants
on the friendship which a grateful and democratic Germany has
for us. We would risk more on her art.


INDEX
VOLUME LXVIII
PAGE
306
.
684
744
.
.
.
371
I
.
496
.
.
.
O
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
ALBERT Bean's TRANQUILLITY (Fiction)
AMERICANISM AND
CALISM
ART AND CRAFTSMANSHIP
ART, INTRODUCING MODERN
AUTOBIOGRAPHIC CHAPTER, AN
AXIOMATICS
BEACHCOMBER, A DIVINE
BENAVENTE, JACINTO
BLINDS Down
Boss, THE (Fiction)
BREUGNON, COLAS
CANNAN, GILBERT: INQUISITOR
CHINESE POETRY, THE STRUCTURE OF
Critic, A COMPETENT
CRITIC OF THE THRESHOLD, A .
CRUMBLED BLOSSOMS (Fiction)
DELIVERANCE
DEMOCRACY, MAKING HEAVEN SAFE FOR
DESIRE (Fiction)
Door of THE TRAP, THB (Fiction)
DOSTOEVSKY AS TRIVIALIST
DREAMS AND FACTS
DUBLIN LETTER
EASTERN LIGHTS
Eliot, T. S.
FEMINIST BABY, A (Fiction)
FLAME, THE (Fiction)
FLECKER, JAMES ELROY .
FRÄULEIN (Fiction)
GHITZA (Fiction)
Gosse, MR., Grows Old GRACEFULLY
HARDY, THOMAS
“I, Too, HAVE BEEN IN
IDIOSYNCRASY AND TRADITION
ILLUSTRATOR, AN
INDIAN, AMERICAN, THE ART OF THE
INDIAN WATER-COLOURS, NOTES ON THE
JACOBSEN, JENS PETER
JERUSALEM AND Jazz
JOB, THREE REVIEWS OF
KIRI No MEIJIYAMA
LACHAISE, GASTON
W. S. Brown
John Dewey
Ananda Coomaraswamy
Henry McBride
Randolph Bourne
Kenneth Burke .
Evelyn Scott .
Williams Haynes
Virgil Jordan
James Stephens
Malcolm Cowley
Evelyn Scott
John Gould Fletcher
icher
Sganarelle
Evelyn Scott
Arthur Schnitzler
Helen Ives Gilchrist
Helen Sard Hughes
James Stephens
Sherwood Anderson
C. K. Trueblood
Bertrand Russell
Ernest Boyd
Babette Deutsch
E. E. Cummings
Edna Clare Bryner
Rowland Kenney
Douglas Goldring
Paul Rosenfeld
Konrad Bercovici
Robert Morss Lovett
Arthur Symons
Sganarelle
Conrad Aiken
Thomas J. Craven
Walter Pach
Walter Pach
Paul Rosenfeld
Louis Untermeyer
Edmund Wilson, Jr.
S. Foster Damon
E. E. Cummings
.
650
113
273
411
513
173
263
107
311
711
794
99
677
567
774
214
605
381
781
243
221
547
747
154
777
66
391
376
I21
57
343
644
789
469
205
194
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
•
.
.
.
.
.
.


IV
INDEX
.
o
.
.
•
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
362
.
.
.
.
PAGE
LEGEND
Helen Ives Gilchrist
523
Lichen, The (Fiction)
Edna Wahlert McCourt 586
LOEFFLER, CHARLES Martin
Paul Rosenfeld .
27
LONDON LETTER
Edward Shanks
486, 769
LYRIST, AN ENGLISH
Edward Shanks
126
MACHADO, ANTONIO: POET OF CASTILE John Dos Passos
734
MACKENZIE's, MR., JEST
Gilbert Seldes
611
Mark Twain's HUMOUR
Van Wyck Brooks
275
Mark Twain's SATIRE
Van Wyck Brooks
424
MEN AND WOMEN
Maxwell Bodenheim
562
MODERN POETRY
Maxwell Bodenheim
95
MRS. MAECENAS (Fiction)
Kenneth Burke .
346
NEGLECTED AGE, THE
Olivia Howard Dunbar 697
NIGHTINGALES, AGAINST
Malcolm Cowley
621
Novelist's BACKGROUND, A
Robert Morss Lovett 626
OLD ORDER, THE
Sganarelle
517
ORNSTEIN, LEO
Winthrop Parkhurst
479
Pacifist Patriot, A
Elsie Clews Parsons
367
PEACE OF GOD, THE
Sganarelle
799
PHILOSOPHER, A NEW
Lincoln MacVeagh
785
POETRY: OUR FIRST NATIONAL ART
James Oppenheim
238
POLITICAL HORSE, THE (Fiction).
Manuel Komroff
693
PREJUDICES
Winthrop Parkhurst
267
PREPARING FOR PASSENGERS (Fiction)
Rowland Kenney
228
QUIETIST, A MODERN
Robert Morss Lovett
REALISM, THE RITUAL OF
Lisle Bell
388
REALIST, ONE KIND OF
Charles K. Trueblood
253
Renoir: AN APPRECIATION
Albert C. Barnes
165
RENOIR AT CAGNES, A PORTRAIT OF
René Gimpel
599
REVOLUTION AND THE FRENCH PEASANT William H. Chamberlin
255
RIMBAUD AS MAGICIAN, SOME REMARKS ON W. C. Blum
719
ROMANTICISM ENJOINED
William A. Nitze
131
SAKÉ AND SONG
Sydney Greenbie
33
SAUL AMONG THE PROPHETS
Robert Morss Lovett 506
Self-GLORIFICATION AND ART
Maxwell Bodenheim
92
SHEEPMAN'S DIARY, A .
Llewelyn Powys
447
SKEPTICISM AS ILLUMINATION
Charles K. Trueblood
491
Social PIONEER, A . .
Harold J. Laski
614
Sour
SOUR COMMENTARY OF RIDEO GENOVESE, THE B. J. Stolper
583
SPIRIT OF THE Old Hotel, THE
John Gould Fletcher
STRAUSS, RICHARD
Paul Rosenfeld .
137
Sun-Gods, ONE OF OUR
James Oppenheim
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
Louis Untermeyer
527
TALKIN' (Fiction)
Rowland Kenney
224
TEACHER, A GOOD
Thomas Jewell Craven
500
THEATRE, A People's
William Butler Yeats
TIME AND SPACE, NEw CONCEPTS OF
Claude Bragdon
187
Tragic END, A (Fiction)
Gilbert Cannan .
47
TRIUMPH Of The Egg, The (Fiction) Sherwood Anderson
295
VAUDEVILLE
Marsden Hartley
335
VIRTUIST, A CASUAL
Charles Kay
119
Way Of All Flesh, THE AUTHORESS OF THE Gilbert Cannan
248
WHARTON, EDITH
Charles K. Trueblood
80
WOMAN COMPOSER, ONE
Pitts Sanborn
637
Woman of IHORNDEN, THE
Malcolm Cowley
259
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
77
.
.
633
.
•
•
.
.
.
.
.
458
.
.
.
.
•
.
•
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.


INDEX
VERSE
PAGE
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
•
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
AFTER YOUTH
ASPHALT
AUTUMN NIGHT
BALLADE
BOARDING-HOUSE EPISODE
BROKEN-FACE GARGOYLES
Castle IN SPAIN
Death OF COLUMBINE, The
DESIGNS
Devil's CRADLE
DOROTHY
ENDING
ENGLAND
FIFTH AVENUE
Five PoEMS
FLOWERS
FOURTH Canto, THE
GAVOTTE IN D MINOR
Hats
IMMORTALITY
INFERENTIAL
INN, AN (Translation)
ISOLATION WARD
Jazz FANTASIA
LAWYERS Know Too Much, THE
LOVE IMPUISSANT
MATINÉE
MICHAEL
MOUNT AUBURN
My GRANDMOTHER'S LOVE LETTERS
NARROW FLOWERS
PASTORAL
PENNSYLVANIA
PICKING AND CHOOSING
Red Cross, THE .
RUSSIAN MEMORIES
SEVEN POEMS
SONNET
SPRING
To Be A Man (Translation)
To J. C.
Το PAN
TO THE DEAD FAVOURITE OF LIU CH'E
Two WOMEN ON A STREET
WHEN Fools DISPUTE .
WHEN You Told Me OF AN EAGLE
WIND OF LOVE, THE
WITH A VOLUME OF HEINE
Evelyn Scott .
Conrad Aiken
Evelyn Scott .
Robert Hillyer
Maxwell Bodenheim
Carl Sandburg
Witter Bynner
Evelyn Scott.
Evelyn Scott .
Evelyn Scott.
Alfred Kreymborg
Maxwell Bodenheim
Marianne Moore
Maxwell Bodenheim
E. E. Cummings
Florence Taber Holt
Ezra Pound.
Amy Lowell
Carl Sandburg
Evelyn Scott .
Edwin Arlington Robinson .
Witter Bynner
Evelyn Scott .
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Louis Untermeyer
A. E. .
Elizabeth J. Coatsworth
Hart Crane.
Evelyn Scott.
Djuna Barnes
Carl Sandburg
Marianne Moore
Evelyn Scott.
Louise Bryant
E. E. Cummings
Maxwell Bodenheim
Alter Brody.
Witter Bynner .
Maxwell Bodenheim
Florence Taber Holt
Djuna Barnes
Maxwell Bodenheim
Maxwell Bodenheim
Witter Bynner .
Florence Taber Holt
Hoit
Louis Untermeyer
74
733
72
305
171
293
473
73
71
74
359
168
422
170
577
193
689
709
292
76
46
474
75
294
106
342
237
326
746
457
73
445
292
421
75
565
22
169
598
477
169
192
444
170
168
473
192
236
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
0
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.


VI
INDEX
ART
.
.
O
Charles Demuth
Ivan Opffer .
Odilon Redon
Ivan Opffer
January
·
June
.February
.February
.
.
.
•
.
Ivan Opffer
Paul Cézanne
Ivan Opffer
Ivan Opffer
February
April
June
· June
.
Charles Burchfield :
March
April
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Box OF TRICKS, A
BRIGGS, LE BARON RUSSELL
BRUNNHILDE
CANNAN, GILBERT
CANNAN, GILBERT, AFTER READING THE
FOLLOWING ARTICLE
CLAIR DE LUNE .
COOLIDGE, ARCHIBALD Cary
COPELAND, CHARLES TOWNSEND
Corn Dance—PUEBLO INDIANS,
NEW MEXICO
CORNER STORE, THE
COSTUME DESIGNS FOR NIJINSKY AS TIL
EULENSPIEGEL
DISTANT VIEW, MOUNT DESERT
DRAWING, A
DUSK
EL MAJO
False GOD, THE
FIGURE, A
FlowER PANEL, A
FULLER, BENJAMIN APTHORP Gould
GOING HOME .
HAUNTED EVENING
HAVANA SUBURB, A
HEAD OF A POLISH GIRL
JESUS DEL MONTE (Havana)
KITTREDGE, GEORGE LYMAN
MAETERLINCK LECTURING
MOUNTAIN AND CLOUD
MOUNTAIN, MEADOW, AND TREES
“NA-KA-VO-MA": HOPI SNAKE Dance .
NationAL WINTER GARDEN BURLESQUE
Pastel, A
PORTRAIT, A
PRIMITIVE BATTLE
RIMBAUD, ARTHUR
ROBINSON, BOARDMAN
SCENE FROM THE SONG OF ROLAND
SPRING LIGHT
STUDY, A . .
Two PRISONERS: Russia, 1915
"VELINO SHIJE," SIA PUEBLO: THE LEGEND
OF THE DEER .
VILLAGE SCENE, A
WIENER, LEO
WIND OVER THE HILL
WOMAN GARDENER IN THE BIRTHDAY OF
THE INFANTA, A.
WOMAN'S HEAD .
.
.
.
Robert Edmond Jones . May
John Marin .
May
Gaston Lachaise . February
Gaston Lachaise January
Hunt Diederich .
June
Morris Kantor
May
Gaston Lachaise . February
Wm. E. Schumacher March
Ivan Opffer .
· June
Charles Burchfield . April
Charles Burchfield April
Jules Pascin.
May
Djuna Barnes
March
Jules Pascin
· May
Ivan Opffer
. June
Ivan Opffer .
March
Kahlil Gibran
April
John Marin.
May
Fred Kobotie
March
E. E. Cummings January
Carl Sprinchorn . February
Gaston Lachaise . February
S. Witkewitz
March
June
Ivan Opffer .
January
Robert Edmond Jones May
Charles Burchfield . April
Kahlil Gibran
April
Boardman Robinson January
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
•
W m. E. Schumacher
Ivan Opffer .
Charles Burchfield.
March
March
June
. April
.
:
.
Robert Edmond Jones . May
Gaston Lachaise . February
.
.
.


INDEX
VII
BOOKS REVIEWED
Authors and Titles
PAGE
.
.
536
.
.
.
.
•
ADE, GEORGE. Hand-Made Fables
665
Aiken, CONRAD. Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry
491
Aslan, KEVORK. PIERRE CRABITES, translator. Armenia and the Armenians
668
AUSTIN, Mary. Outland
BABBITT, IRVING. Rousseau and Romanticism
131
BAKER, KARLE WILSON. Blue Smoke .
527
BALDERSTON, JOHN LLOYD. The Genius of the Marne
667
“BARBELLION, W. N. P.” See Cummings, Frederick Bruce
BARNEY, DANFORD. Chords from Albireo
806
BARRETT, Wilton AGNEW. Songs from the Journey
806
BAXTER, ARTHUR BEVERLEY. The Blower of Bubbles
399
BAZALGETTE, LEON. ELLEN FITZGERALD, translator. Walt Whitman:
The Man and His Work .
633
BECKWITH, MARTHA WARREN, JESSE WALTER Fewkes, and MELVIN RANDOLPH
GILMORE. Thirty-third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology
807
BELASCO, DAVID. The Theatre Through Its Stage Door
388
Benavente, JACINTO. The Evil Doers of Good-La Comida de las Fieras-Lo
Cursi-La Gata de Angora .
113
BENAVENTE, JACINTO. JOHN GARRETT UNDERHILL, translator. Plays, Second Series 113
BERCOVICI, KONRAD. Dust of New York
400
BIRMINGHAM, GEORGE A. An Irishman Looks at His World
669
BIRNBAUM, MARTIN. Introductions: Painters, Sculptors, and Graphic Artists 371
BISPHAM, DAVID. A Quaker Singer's Recollections
402
BOJER, JOHAN. The Face of the World— The Great Hunger
273
BOLTON, ARTHUR T., editor. The Gardens of Italy, by E. MARCH PHILLIPPS
811
BOURNE, RANDOLPH. JAMES OPPENHEIM, editor. Untimely Papers
367
BRADFORD, GAMALIEL. Portraits of American Women
665
BRANGWYN, FRANK. Prints and Drawings by Frank Brangwyn: With Some
Other Phases of His Art, by WALTER SHAW SPARROW
BRIDGES, Robert. October
769
BROCK, A. CLUTTON-. See Clutton-Brock, A.
BROOKS, CHARLES S. Luca Sarto
664
BROWN, GEORGE E. A Book of R. L. S.
401
Brown, Lee D., and EwEN CAMERON MACVEACH. The Yankee in the British
Zone
539
BRUNNER, ETHEL. Celia and Her Friends
804
Buck, HOWARD. The Tempering.
667
BURY, G. WYMAN. Pan-Islam.
668
BYRNE, Donn. The Stranger's Banquet
536
CADMUS and HARMONIA. The Island of Sheep.
804
CAIRNS, Rev. D. S., editor. The Army and Religion
670
CANNAN, GILBERT. The Anatomy of Society-Everybody's Husband-Freedom
- James and John-Mary's Wedding-Mendel-Miles Dixon-Mummery-
Noel-Old Mole-Pink Roses-Samuel Butler: A Critical Study-Satire-
The Stucco House-Three Sons and a Mother-Young Earnest
173
CANNAN, GILBERT, translator. Jean Christophe, by ROMAIN ROLLAND
173
Chekhov, Anton. The Bishop and Other Stories .
253
CHEKHOV, ANTON. The Cherry Orchard
626
Chekhov, Anton. CONSTANCE GARNETT, translator. Letters of Anton Chekhov
to His Family and Friends .
626
CHESTERTON, G. K. Irish Impressions
403
Clemens, SAMUEL LANGHORNE. A Double-Barrelled Detective Story-Roughing
It-A Tramp Abroad
275
121
.
.
berei


VIII
INDEX
PAGE
-
-
.
.
538
.
542
.
.
.
.
CLEMENS, SAMUEL LANGHORNE. Huckleberry Finn-The Man That Corrupted
Hadleyburg-Sketches—The Stolen White Elephant – Tom Sawyer 3000
Years Among the Microbes .
424
Clemens, SAMUEL LANGHORNE. The Innocents Abroad-Joan of Arc-The
Mysterious Stranger–The Prince and the Pauper-A Yankee at the Court
of King Arthur
275, 424
Clemens, SAMUEL LANGHORNE. In collaboration with CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.
The Gilded Age
424
CLUTTON-BROCK, A. Essays on Art
Coles, RUTGERS REMSEN. Rapids and Still Water
527
Cone, Helen GRAY. The Coat Without a Seam
527
COURNOS, JOHN. The Mask
486, 496
CRABITES, PIERRE, translator. Armenia and the Armenians, by Aslan KEVORK 668
CRAIG, GORDON. The Theatre Advancing
Cresson, W. P. The Cossacks .
671
CROLY, Herbert. Promise of American Life
506, 614
CROMWELL, GLADYS. Poems
527
CUMMINGS, FREDERICK BRUCE. (ów. N. P. Barbellion.”) 'The Journal of a Dis-
appointed Man
486
DANE, Clemence. Legend-A Regiment of Women
523
D'ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE. RAFAEL MANTELLINI, translator. Tales of My Native
Town
804
DAVIDSON, GUSTAV. Songs of Adoration
527
Davies, George R. National Evolution
540
Davies, MARY CAROLYN. Youth Riding
527
DAVIESS, MARIA THOMPSON. The Matrix
664
DAVIS, WILLIAM STEARNS. A History of France from the Earliest Times to the
Treaty of Versailles
255
Dawson-Scott, C. A. The Rolling Stone
399
DILLON, DR. EDWARD J. The Inside Story of the Peace Conference
799
Donn BYRNE. See Byrne, Donn
DOSTOEVSKY, FYODOR. Crime and Punishment
774
DostoevSKY, FYODOR. CONSTANCE GARNETT, translator. An Honest Thief, and
Other Stories
774
EAGLE, SOLOMON. See Squire, J. C.
Eccles, F. Y. La Liquidation du Romantisme
131
Eliot, T. S. Poems-Prufrock
781
FEWKES, JESSE WALTER, Melvin RANDOLPH GILMORE, and MARTHA WARREN BECK-
WITH. Thirty-third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology
FISHER, IRVING. Stabilizing the Dollar
404
FITZGERALD, ELLEN, translator. Walt Whitman: The Man and His Work, by
Leon BAZALGETTE
633
FLECKER, JAMES ELROY. The Bridge of Fire-Collected Poems-Forty-two
Poems-The Golden Journey to Samarkand— The King of Alsander.
547
FOGG Art Museum. Collection of Mediaeval and Renaissance Paintings .
538
FORD, JOHN. 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Translated by MAURICE MAETERLINCK
under title Annabella
311
FORSTER, E. M. Where Angels Fear to Tread .
665
FRANK, WALDO. Our America.
362, 506
GALBRAITH, Anna M. The Family and the New Democracy
541
GALE, ZONA. Miss Lulu Bett
GARNETT, CONSTANCE, translator. An Honest Thief, and Other Stories, by
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
774
GARNETT, CONSTANCE, translator. Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and
Friends
626
GAUGUIN, PAUL. 0. F. Theis, translator. Noa Noa
650
GIBBS, A. HAMILTON. Gun Fodder
391
GILMORE, Melvin RANDOLPH, JESSE WALTER FEwkes, and MARTHA WARREN BECK-
WITH. Thirty-third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology
.
.
.
.
807
.
.
.
.
.
.
804
.
.
807


INDEX
IX
.
PAGE
537
807
777
391
403
799
669
671
.
.
66
.
665
311
.
.
.
400
670
666
805
769
536
•
311
540
644
.
GOLDRING, DOUGLAS. The Fortune
GOODE, WILLIAM T. Bolshevism at Work
Gosse, EDMUND. Some Diversions of a Man of Letters
GRAHAM, STEPHEN. A Private in the Guards .
HADLEY, ARTHUR TWINING. The Moral Basis of Democracy
HALDANE, VISCOUNT. Before the War
HALL, ARNOLD Bennett. The Monroe Doctrine and the Great War .
HAMMOND, J. L., and BARBARA HAMMOND. The Skilled Labourer: 1760-1832
HARDY, THOMAS. The Dynasts: a Drama in Three Parts-Poems of the Past
and Present- The Return of the Native .
HARMONIA. See Cadmus.
HARRISON, MARY ST. LEGER (“Lucas Malet”). The Tall Villa
HAUPTMANN, GERHART. Assumption of Hannele
HEIDENSTAM, VERNER VON. See von Heidenstam
HOLLIDAY, ROBERT Cortes. Broome Street Straws
HOLSTI. Relation of War to the Origin of the State
Howells, WILLIAM Dean. Hither and Thither in Germany
HUMPHREYS, MRS. DESMOND. Diana of the Ephesians .
HUXLEY, ALDOUS. Lada
HUYSMANS, J.-K. C. Kegan Paul, translator. En Route
Ibsen, Henrik. Little Eyolf—The Master Builder-When We Dead Awaken
-The Wild Duck
INGE, WILLIAM RALPH. Outspoken Essays
JACOBSEN, Jens PETER. HANNA ASTRUP LARSEN, translator. Marie Grubbe-
Niels Lyhne
JAMES, HENRY. A Landscape Painter
JOHNS, ORRICK. Black Branches
JOHNSON, SEVERANCE. The Enemy Within
JONES, Henry FESTING. Samuel Butler: A Memoir
JONESCU, TAKE. Some Personal Impressions
Joyce, JAMES. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
KARSNER, DAVID. Debs: His Authorized Life and Letters from Woodstock Prison
to Atlanta-Horace Traubel: His Life and Work .
KAYE-SMITH, SHEILA. The Challenge to Sirius- The Four Roads
KERR, R. Watson. War Daubs
KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD. The Economic Consequences of the Peace
KINGSTON, CHARLES. Famous Morganatic Marriages
LAIDLER, HARRY W. Socialism in Thought and Action
La Motte, ELLEN N. The Opium Monopoly
LARSEN, HANNA ASTRUP, translator. Marie Grubbe- Niels Lyhne, by Jens PETER
JACOBSEN
LATZKO, ANDREAS. The Judgment of Peace
LAUDER, SIR HARRY. Between You and Me .
LEACOCK, STEPHEN. The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice
LEDWIDGE, FRANCIS. Complete Poems
LESCOHIER, Don D. The Labor Market
LINDSAY, VACHEL. The Golden Whales of California
LIPPMAN, WALTER. Preface to Politics
LITTELL, PHILIP. Books and Things
LOCKE, WILLIAM J. The House of Baltazar
LOREBURN, THE EARL. How the War Came
Lowell, Amy. Can Grande's Castle
"LUCAS MALET.” See Harrison, Mary St. Leger
LUDENDORFF, Erich von. See von Ludendorff
LYSAGHT, EDWARD E. The Gael
McPHERSON, LOGAN GRANT. The Flow of Value
MACHADO, ANTONIO. Campos de Castilla (Fields of Castile)-Soledades (Soli-
tudes)-Soledades y Galerias (Solitudes and Galleries) .
MACKENZIE, COMPTON. Carnival-Guy and Pauline-Poor Relations-Sinister
Street
664
537
540
248
665
107
402
259
667
517
539
670
669
.
.
644
536
403
404
376
541
789
614
362
537
799
491
.
.
.
605
671
.
734
611


X
INDEX
PAGE
.
.
.
.
MACKENZIE, JEAN. An African Trail
650
MACKENZIE, W. Roy. The Quest of the Ballad
666
MACLEOD, JOHN. Macedonian Measures
667
MACNAMARA, BRINSLEY. The Clanking of Chains
605
MACVEAGH, Ewen CAMERON, and Lee D. Brown. The Yankee in the British Zone 539
MAETERLINCK, MAURICE. Aglavaine and Selysette-Alladine and Palomides-
The Betrothal—The Blue Bird–The Death of Tintagiles—The Disciples at
Sais-The Fragments of Novalis—The Intruder-Joyzelle—The Life of the
Bee-Mary Magdalene—The Measure of the Hours-Monna Vanna-Our
Eternity-Pélleas and Mélisande—The Princess Maleine-Serres Chaudes-
The Seven Princesses—The Sightless—The Treasure of the Humble-Wis-
dom and Destiny
311
MAETERLINCK, Maurice, translator. Annabella: from 'Tis Pity
' she's a Whore,
by John FORD
311
MAGNUS, LAURIE. A General Sketch of European Literature in the Centuries of
Romance
401
MALDCLEWITH, RONsby. The Professor's Love-Life: Letters
399
"MALET, LUCAS.” See Harrison, Mary St. Leger.
Malone, Col. Cecil L'ESTRANGE. The Russian Republic .
807
MANTELLINI, RAFAEL, translator. Tales of My Native Town, by GABRIELE
D'ANNUNZIO
804
"Mark Twain.” See Clemens, Samuel Langhorne
MASTERS, EDGAR LEE. The Spoon River Anthology
506
MATHERS, E. Powys, translator. Black Marigolds-Coloured Stars
381
Mencken, H. L. The American Language
409
MENCKEN, H. L. A Book of Burlesques
401
MENCKEN, H. L. Prejudices: First Series
267
Mencken, H. L., and George Jean NATHAN. The American Credo
666
MERRICK, LEONARD. The Worldlings .
399
MILLAIS, J. G. A Sportsman's Wanderings
666
MILLER, KATHERINE, translator. Colas Breugnon: Burgundian, by ROMAIN
ROLLAND
513
MILLS, ENOS A. The Adventures of a Nature Guide
400
MOOKERJI, RADHAKUMUD. Local Government in Ancient India
668
MORGAN, ANGELA. Hail, Man!
527
MOTTE, ELLEN N. LA. See La Motte
NATHAN, GEORGE Jean, and H. L. Mencken. The American Credo .
666
NATHAN, ROBERT. Peter Kindred
537
NICHOLS, ROBERT. Aurelia
769
O'Neil, GEORGE. The Cobbler in Willow Street
527
OPPENHEIM, JAMEs, editor. Untimely Papers, by RANDOLPH BOURNE
367
Paton, LUCY Allen. Elizabeth Cary-Agassiz .
402
PAUL, C. KEGAN, translator. En Route, by J.-K. HUYSMANS
536
PAUL, Eden and CEDAR, translators. History of Germany in the Nineteenth Cen-
tury, Vol. VII, by HeinricH VON TREITSCHKE
807
PERCY, LORD EUSTACE. The Responsibilities of the League
799
PHILLIPPS, E. MARCH. ARTHUR T. BOLTON, editor. The Gardens of Italy
811
PHILLPOTTS, EDEN. Evander-Storm in a Teacup- The Thief of Virtue
664
PILLSBURY, W. B. The Psychology of Nationality and Internationalism
404
Poet LAUREATE. See Bridges, Robert
Post, MELVILLE DAVISSON. The Mystery of the Blue Villa
537
RIMBAUD, ARTHUR. Les Illuminations-Une Saison en Enfer
719
Rivoira, G. T. G. McN. RUSHFORTH, translator. Moslem Architecture: Its Ori-
gins and Development
671
ROGERS, CLARA KATHLEEN. Memories of a Musical Career
403
RoHMER, SAXFu Manchu
107
ROLLAND, ROMAIN. KATHERINE Miller, translator. Colas Breugnon: Burgundian 513
ROLLAND, ROMAIN. GILBERT CANNAN, translator. Jean Christophe
173
ROTH, SAMUEL. Europe: A Book for America.
527
.
.
.
.
.
.
.


INDEX
XI
PAGE
.
.
.
.
.
.
538
.
546
I21
.
.
.
538
.
RUSHFORTH, G. McN., translator. Moslem Architecture: Its Origins and De-
velopment, by G. T. RIVOIRA
671
RUSSELL, FRANCES THERESA. Satire in the Victorian Novel
805
SARETT, Lew. Many Many Moons
805
SASSOON, SIEGFRIED. Picture Show-The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon 621
SCOTT, C. A. Dawson-. See Dawson-Scott
SEIFFERT, MARJORIE ALLEN. A Woman of Thirty
527
SERAO, MATILDE. Souls Divided
399
SETON-Watson, Dr. R. W. Europe in the Melting Pot
668
Seymour, W. Kean, editor. A Miscellany of British Poetry: 1919
SHANKS, EDWARD. The Queen of China and Other Poems
119
SHARP, DALLAS LORE. Patrons of Democracy
668
SHAW, CHARLES GRAY. The Ground and Goal of Human Life
401
SMITH, JUSTIN H. The War with Mexico: 1846–1848
669
SMITH, LOGAN PEARSALL, editor. A Treasury of English Prose
SMITH, SHEILA KAYE. See Kaye-Smith.
SMYTH, ETHEL. Impressions that Remained . ..
486, 637
SPARROW, WALTER SHAW. Prints and Drawings by Frank Brangwyn: With
Some Other Phases of His Art .
SQUIRE, J. C. Books in General-The Survival of the Fittest-Tricks of the
Trade
107
SQUIRE, J. C. Poems: First Series .
126
ST. JOHN, LARRY. Practical Fly Fishing
806
STORK, CHARLES WHARTON, translator. Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of
Verner von Heidenstam .
400
STRACHEY, LYTTON. Eminent Victorians
777
TASSIN, ALGERNON. The Craft of the Tortoise
TAUSSIG, F. W. Free Trade, The Tariff, and Reciprocity
541
TAYLOR, HUGH. Origin of Government
670
Theis, O. F. Noa Noa, by PAUL GAUGUIN
650
TIRPITZ, GRAND ADMIRAL VON. See von Tirpitz.
TODD, ARTHUR JAMES. The Scientific Spirit and Social Work
541
TOMLINSON, H. M. Old Junk .
805
TREITSCHKE, HEINRICH VON. See von Treitschke
TURGENEV, IVAN. Fathers and Children .
626
“TWAIN, MARK.” See Clemens, Samuel Langhorne
UNDERHILL, JOHN GARRETT, translator. Plays, Second Series, by JACINTO BENA-
113
UNTERMEYER, LOUIS. New Era in American Poetry
491
UNTERMEYER, Louis, editor. Modern American Poetry: An Introduction
667
VANSITTART, ROBERT. The Singing Caravan
537
VON HEIDENSTAM, VERNER. CHARLES WHARTON STORK, translator. Sweden's
Laureate: Selected Poems
400
VON LUDENDORFF, ERICH. Ludendorff's Own Story
539
VON TIRPITZ, GRAND ADMIRAL. My Memoirs
539
VON TREITSCHKE, HEINRICH. Eden and CEDAR PAUL, translators. History of
Germany in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. VII :
807
WALEY, ARTHUR, translator. More Translations from the Chinese
263, 381
WALLAS, GRAHAM. The Life of Francis Place: 1771-1854
614
WALSH, THOMAS. Don Folquet and Other Poems .
806
WARD, Mrs. HUMPHRY. Lady Rose's Daughter-The Marriage of William Ashe
-Robert Elsmere .
769
WARNER, CHARLES Dudley, collaborator. The Gilded Age, by SAMUEL LANG-
HORNE CLEMENS
424
WATSON, E. L. GRANT. Deliverance—The Mainland-Where Bonds are Loosed 794
WATSON, DR. R. W. SETON-. See Seton-Watson
WEBB, CLEMENT C. J. God and Personality
785
WEBB, SIDNEY and BEATRICE. History of Trade Unionism
614
Welles, WINIFRED. The Hesitant Heart . .
806
.
VENTE
.
.
.
.
-


XII
INDEX
PAGE
.
.
.
WHARTON, EDITH. The Custom of the Country-Ethan Frome-The Fruit of the
Tree-The House of Mirth-Madame de Treymes—The Reef-Sanctuary-
Summer- The Valley of Decision
WHITMAN, WALT. Leaves of Grass.
WILSON, ROMER. If All These Young Men-Martin Schüler
WOOD, ERIC FISHER. Leonard Wood: Conservator of Americanism
WOODBURY, CHARLES H. Painting and the Personal Equation
WRIGHT, W. H. Modern Painting
80
633
486
540
500
194
THE THEATRE
.
Aphrodite
Beyond the Horizon
Clarence
Déclassée
Faithful, The
Florodora
Gold Diggers, The
Hamlet
Jane Clegg
Jest, The
Letter of the Law, The
Medea
My Lady Friends
Night Lodging
Power of Darkness
Purple Mask, The
Richard III
Sacred and Profane Love
Too Many Husbands .
Wedding Bells
407
543
406
407
809
809
407
672
673
407
673
672, 808, 809
407
808
405
543
672, 808
542
407
407
.
.
.
.
.
.
COMMENT
American Grand Opera .
American Language, The
Art and Finance
Taste and Profit.
Critic vs. Advertiser
DIAL's Purpose, The .
Editions de Luxe and Paper Covers
German Comic Weeklies
“Learning" the Foreigner
London Mercury, The
Morality and the Book Publishers
Morality and the Printer's Art .
Muses and the Censor, The
Plea for Inefficiency, A
Steel in Jamalpur
Treasury of English Prose, A
Wells', Mr. H. G., History
410
409
544, 675
544
675
408
811
812
408
674
810
545
675
674
.
.
.
546
546
410
DEPARTMENTS
BRIEFER MENTION
COMMENT
DUBLIN LETTER
LONDON LETTER
THEATRE, The
399, 536, 664, 840
408, 544, 674, 810
605
486, 769
405, 542, 672, 808
.


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