Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

I see the wild-boar that comes out of the wood; he drinks very much,
and he has a wounded foot.
His jaws are drooping, blood-covered, and his bristles are whitened with
age.
He is followed by his tribe, grunting from hunger.[5]
The sea-horse[6] comes to meet him; he makes the river banks tremble in
horror.
He is as white as the brilliant snow; he has silver horns on his
forehead.
The water boils under him from the thunder-fire of his nostrils.
Other sea-horses surround him, close packed as herbs by a swamp.
“Hold fast! hold fast! sea-horse; hit him on the head; hit hard, hit!
The bare feet slip in the blood! harder! have at them! harder!
I see blood flowing like a river! hit hard! hit them! strike harder!
I see the blood rise to his knees! I see blood like a lake!
Harder! have at them! harder! Thou may’st rest thyself tomorrow.
Hit hard! Hit hard, sea-horse! Hit him on the head! Hit hard! Hit!”

[5] Wild-boar and his brood—the men of Bretagne and their leader.

[6] Sea-horse—the Norsemen.

III

As I lay soft wrapt in sleep in my cold tomb, I heard the eagle call
in the midst of the night.
He summoned his brood and all the birds of the heavens.
He said to them in calling:
“Rise you quickly upon your two wings!
It is not of the rotten flesh of dogs or of sheep; it is of the flesh of
Christians that we will be eating!”
“Old sea-crow, listen; tell me—what do you hold there?”
“I hold the head of the Chief of the Army; I wish to have his two red
eyes.
I tear out his two eyes, because he has torn out thine own.”
“And you, fox, tell me—what do you hold there?”
“I hold his heart, which was false as mine is;
The heart which desired your death, and long ago plotted your death.”
“And you, tell me, Toad, what do you there, at the corner of his mouth?”
“I, I am put here to await his soul in passage:
It will remain in me as long as I shall live in punishment for the crime
he has committed against the Bard who no longer lives between
Roc’allaz and Porzguenn.”

Editorials and Announcements

_Rupert Brooke on the War_

In her Letter from London two months ago Miss Amy Lowell made a reference to Harold Munro’s Poetry Book Shop in London which may have seemed a little unfair to people who know the high aim of Mr. Munro in that undertaking of his. Miss Lowell did not intend it to be so; in fact she plans for an early number of THE LITTLE REVIEW an article which shall set forth the interesting work that is being done there. In the meantime we have been shown a letter from Robert Brooke, one of the Poetry Book Shop group, which is certainly not open to the charge of “preciousness”. Mr. Brooke is in the War; he is a Naval Sub-Lieutenant for service on land, attached to the Second Naval Battalion and was sent with the relief force to Antwerp “just too late”. The letter reads: “There I saw a city bombarded and a hundred thousand refugees, sat in the trenches, marched all night, and did other typical and interesting things. Now we’re back for more training. I will probably get out again by Christmas.... There’s nothing to say, except that the tragedy of Belgium is the greatest and worst of any country for centuries. It’s ghastly for anyone who liked Germany as well as I did.... I’m afraid fifty years won’t give them the continuity and loveliness of life back again! Most people are enlisting. —— and his brother have gone into cavalry; I’m here: among my fellow officers being Denis Brown, one of the best musicians in England; Kelly, the pianist who won the Diamond Sculls; one of the Asquiths; a man who has been mining in the Soudan; a New Zealander—an Olympic swimmer; an infinitely pleasant American youth, called ——, who was hurriedly naturalized “to fight for justice” ... and a thousand more oddities. In the end, those of us who come back will start writing great new plays.” Our London correspondent, Mr. E. Buxton Shanks, sends a note with infinite pathos in it. “I enclose a letter for December,” he writes. “Unfortunately it may be my last. The greater part of my regiment went to France last Monday and I expect to follow it before long, so that this may be not only my last Letter to THE LITTLE REVIEW, but also my last piece of literature for ever and ever.”

_Russia in Storm_

From Russian newspapers and private letters that have been smuggled through into this country we learn about the great resurrection that is taking place in the land of extremes. The war has shaken the dormant giant, and life is pulsating with tremendous vigor. The abolition of liquor-trade has had an unbelievable effect on the population; the fact that this reform was promulgated by the government which has thereby lost nearly a billion yearly revenue, is of inestimable significance. The Czar and his counsellors have finally awakened to recognize the impossibility of reigning over a country without citizens, and liberal reforms on a wide scope are being announced. Nationalities and parties are united under a new slogan: “Down with Nationalism! Long live Patriotism!” Even the reactionary organs have abandoned their chauvinistic tone, and they preach equality and freedom and the abolition of the bureaucratic régime which they ascribe to Germanistic influences. The revolutionary parties, however, are not intoxicated with the momentary upheaval; they have had too many bitter experiences to be lulled by promises from the throne. Of all the warring nations the Russian socialists were the only party to take an openly antagonistic attitude towards their government. They were demonstratively absent from the Douma when the war manifesto was announced, and later they gave out a declaration in which they expressed their condemnation of the government and its policy. Recently an official communication stated a discovered conspiracy among the radical members of the Douma. It is clear that the revolutionists intend to forge the iron while it is hot; this time affords them a rare opportunity for forcing the Autocrat to yield to the demands of the people and in defiance of popular sentiments and drummed up patriotism, the uncompromising fighters brave their way forward to the ultimate goal. It is great life in Russia!

_Alexander Berkman on the Crime of Prisons_

Mr. Alexander Berkman, author of _Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist_, which is reviewed in this issue, will deliver two lectures in Chicago, Sunday, December 6, in Room 512 of the Masonic Temple. His subject in the afternoon will be _War and Culture_; in the evening _The Psychology of Crime and Prisons_.

Winter Rain

EUNICE TIETJENS

Winter now has come again;
All the gentle summer rain
Has grown chill, and stings like pain,
And it whispers of things slain,
Love of mine.

I had thought to bury love,
All the ways and wiles thereof
Buried deep and buried rough—
But it has not been enough,
Heart of mine.

Though I buried him so deep,—
Tramped his grave and piled it steep,
Strewed with flowers the aching heap,—
Yet it seems he cannot sleep,
Soul of mine.

And the drops of winter rain,
In the grave where he is lain
Drip and drip, and sting like pain,
Till my love grows live again,
Life of mine!

Home as an Emotional Adventure

MARGARET C. ANDERSON

I was going Home!

It was seven o’clock on a clear, cold, snowless night in December—the ideal night for a journey. Behind me, Chicago:—noise, jangle, rush, and dirt; great crowds of people; a hall room of agonizing ugliness, with walks of a green tone that produces a sort of savage mental biliousness and furniture of striped oak that makes you pray for destruction by fire; frayed rugs the color of cold dishwater and painted woodwork that peels off like a healing sore; smells of impromptu laundry work, and dust that sticks like a hopeful creditor; an outlook of bare brick walls, and air through the window that should have been put through a sieve before entering. All these—and one thing more which makes them as nothing: the huge glory of accomplishment.

Before me?... It was snowing hard as we steamed in. There came a clanging of brakes, a cold blast of snowy air through the opened doors, a rush of expectant people; and then, shining in the glow of a flickering station light, one of the loveliest faces I’ve ever seen—my sister’s,—and one of the noblest—my “Dad’s.” Then a whirring taxi, a luxurious adjustment to comfort in its dark depths, a confusion of “So _glad_ you’re here,” and “Mother’s waiting at home”; a surging of all my appreciation at the beauty of young Betty, with her rich furs and stunningly simple hat and exquisitely untouched face; a long dash through familiar streets until we reached the more open spaces—the Country Club district where there are only a few homes and a great expanse of park and trees; and finally a snorting and jerking as we drew up before a white house from which lights were shining.

Now this little house is all white, with green shutters and shingles, with a small formal entrance porch, like a Wallace Nutting print, in front, and a large white-pillared, glass-enclosed living-porch on one side. A red brick walk of the New England type leads up to it, and great trees stand like sentinels at the back. On a winter night, when the red walk and the terrace are covered with soft snow, when the little cedar trees massed around the entrance sparkle with icy frost, when the warm light from the windows touches the whiteness with an amethyst radiance—well, it’s the kind of house that all good dreamers sometimes have the reward of dreaming about. And when Mother opened the door, letting out another stream of light and showing her there against the warm red background of the hall, I was convinced that getting home was like being invited to paradise.

Of course we talked and laughed for an hour; and underneath it all I was conscious, above everything, of the red and white room in which we sat; of the roaring, singing fire; of the shadows it threw on the luxurious rugs and old mahogany; of the book-lined walls; of the scattered magazines on the long table; of the chiming grandfather’s clock; of the soft lights; and—more than all—of the vase of white roses against the red wall.

“But you must hear the new Victrola records!” Mother cried. And so I lay back in a deep chair with my face to the fire, and listened—listened with my soul, I think, to some of the world’s great music: Sembrich and Melba and Homer and Gluck; Paderewski and Pachmann, orchestras, operas, and old, old songs; and finally my favorites—the violin ones. There was Kreisler, with his perfect art, playing old Vienna waltzes, haunting Provence folk songs, quaint seventeenth-century gavottes and dances; Maud Powell putting new beauty into the Schubert _Ave Maria_, and that exquisite tone-picture of Saint-Saëns called _The Swan_; and last of all Mischa Elman, with his deep, passionate singing of Bach’s _Air for the G String_ and Tschaikovsky’s _Ye Who Have Yearned Alone_. There’s a beauty about those last ones that is almost terrible, so close is it to the heart of human sorrow.

“Well,” said Dad, a little later, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but _I’m_ going to bed. And first I mean to have some milk and a piece of pumpkin pie. Does that attract a city girl?”

It did—to the extent of three glasses of milk, besides the pie. “You’ll not sleep,” warned Mother; but I retorted that I didn’t care; I was too happy to sleep, anyhow. And, besides, the kitchen, in its immaculate gray and whiteness, was so refreshing that I wanted to stay there awhile. Large baskets of grape fruits and oranges and red apples stood on the pantry shelves; the stove was polished until it looked like a Sapolio advertisement; and a clock, ticking loudly, gave the room that curious sense of loneliness that a kitchen needs. I can conceive of a library without books, or a fireplace without a fire, but never of a kitchen without a loud-ticking clock.

After a while we all trooped up to bed—up the white staircase with the mahogany rail, and into fresh white bedrooms in such perfect harmony with the snow outside.

“This house is positively sensuous!” I told Mother. “It’s an emotional adventure just to come into it....”

I climbed into a big mahogany four-poster; but not to sleep—oh no! I sat bolt upright with the silk comfortlet (oh luxury of luxuries!) around my knees, and gazed out the windows: for from both of them I saw a fairyland. It was all white—all except the amethyst shimmerings of boulevard lights; and white flakes dropped one by one through the amethyst. Away in the distance on both sides were faint outlines of woods—bare, brown woods now covered warmly with snow. And over it all a complete and absolute stillness. Just as in spring I used to feel fairies leaping from every separate violet and tulip and hyacinth for their twilight dance on the wet grass, so now I felt a great company of snow fairies dancing in the faint rays of amethyst that darted into the woods—dancing and singing and glittering in their silver frostiness. And then a slow quiet wind would sound far off in the branches of the oak trees; and gradually the fairy carnival ceased and I went ecstatically to sleep.

The next morning, after breakfast in a dining-room of old blue and white and mahogany, I stated my ideas of what one ought to do in such a house. “I don’t want to go anyplace or see anyone or do anything. Don’t plan luncheons or teas or other things. It will take a week to store up all the impressions I want to. So please just let me stay here quietly and absorb the atmosphere.”

And so my precious week began. In the mornings I’d put on boots—for the snow was deep by this time—and take long tramps through the woods. Then each afternoon had its distinct adventure: sometimes it would be a mere wandering about from room to room standing before a specially-loved picture or buried in a favorite old book. And what an enchanting thing it is to read in such a setting: to look up from your book knowing that wherever your eyes fall they will be rested; to feel your imagination sinking into the soft depths of a reality that is almost dream stuff!

Sometimes the afternoon would have its hard-fought game of cards between Dad and me—with the table drawn close to the fire, and Bertha running in from the kitchen with a hearty offering of cider and hot doughnuts. (Bertha always seemed to sense the exact moment when we declared, with groans, that to wait another hour for dinner would be a physical impossibility.) Sometimes at four o’clock I’d conceal myself in a mass of cushions in the big swing on the porch, and wait for the darkness to come on, loving every change of tone in the grayness until the boulevard lights blossomed like flowers and made another fairyland. And always we’d have tea by candle-light—on the porch in deep wicker chairs, or before the leaping fire.

Sometimes after tea I’d take a two-mile tramp down town, stopping at the post-office (because a post-office in a small town is a place worth seeing at five o’clock in the evening) and trying deliberately to get cold and tired before reaching home again, so that the warmth and comfort would come as a fresh shock and joy. And then a quite wonderful thing would happen: namely, the miracle of a superlatively good dinner. I shall never forget those dinners! Not the mere physical pleasure of them, but their setting: Mother feeling a little gossipy, and talking cozily of the day’s small happenings; Dad in a mood of tolerant amusement at our chatter; and Betty, usually in white, looking so adorable that even the roses on the table couldn’t rival her.

But most perfect of all were the long evenings! First we’d read aloud a little Pater, just for the ravishing music of his language, and then Betty would sing. I don’t know any lovelier singing than Betty’s; it’s so young and fresh and wistful. And when she’d finish with the Brahms _Lullaby_ I could have cried with the beauty of it all. Later, when everyone had gone to bed, I would creep downstairs again to lie by the fire and have the obliging Mr. Mischa Elman play me another concert. _Ye Who Have Yearned Alone_ was the thing he’d play most often, for it has a surging sadness that keeps one humble in the midst of happiness. Everything of yearning is in it: the agonies of countless tragic loves; the sad, sad strivings for joy and comprehension; the world-old miseries of “buried lives”; hopes and fears and faiths—and crucifixions; ecstacies dying out like flames; utter weariness of living—and utter striving to live.

* * * * *

Oh, you people who have homes! Why _don’t_ you realize what they might yield you! When you find yourself uneager, stupefied with contentment, ashamed of your vicious comfort—why not share your homes?... Back in Chicago, I have a vision strong and soothing, like a poppy seed that brings sleep. I close my eyes at night; and suddenly my bare walls are lined with books; soft lights are lighted; in a great fireplace burns a crackling fire that has in it sometimes soft sounds like bird-singing; and out of the rumble of elevated trains, drowning the roar of traffic and bringing a deep stillness, come the singing tones of a violin, rising and falling over an immortal melody—_Ye Who Have Yearned Alone_.

A Miracle

CHARLES ASHLEIGH

If the gods of Greece walked abroad,
The sun blazing their splendor to all eyes,
It would not amaze me.

If the court of Solomon, the king,
In clashing storm of color,
Were to descend into the murk of the city,
I should not be surprised.

For I have conversed with a stripped soul
And its grandeur and wonder have filled me.

London Letter

E. BUXTON SHANKS

_London, September 29th._

Enough of war poetry. An industrious statistician has calculated that three thousand pieces have been printed since the beginning of August. When our poets are unanimous in the choice of a subject, their unanimity is horrible. We have had lyrical outrages from railway porters, dairymen, postmen, road scavengers, and what not, with their names and professions duly appended, in the delectable fashion set some time ago by _The English Review_. Meanwhile, in France, young poets are killing one another. We must arrange a balance-sheet of gains and losses when the war is done. M. Charles Péguy is gone already; that is a loss which makes one fear for Jules Romains and the rest who must be at the front in one army or the other. The French and German casualty lists are not published in the English papers: when the smoke clears off again the arts of the continent will show a different complexion.

Meanwhile we are beginning to ask, prematurely of course, what effect the war will have indirectly on our own arts. The war of ’70 caused an epoch of literary ferment in Germany and was at the back of much good poetry. To that war we owe Detter von Liliencron, Richard Dehmel, and Gerhart Hauptmann, who is, I freely admit, a great dramatist, though I cannot abide him. In France it produced the tired subtleties of Kahn, Régnier, and the other Symbolists. In Austria, a century of humiliation, which has become almost a national habit, has evolved the tired elegance of Hofmannsthal and the weary tenderness of Schnitzler who is so obviously so sorry for all his characters as almost to make the reader weep with him. If we win this war, what may we expect? We can be certain that the English arts will react to the strain: the reaction will not necessarily be a good one, unless the efforts of those who sit about at home and vulgarize war are neutralized or ignored. The tone of our newspapers—and these mould our minds, whether we like it or not—is now most insufferably ugly. And as a result of victory, I fear a blatant hollow tone of exultation in our poetry that—from a literary and social standpoint—is almost worse than the languors of defeat. It will be well if we achieve victory when every person in the country has been made to feel the cost of it. Three days knee-deep in flooded trenches—our arts must draw strength from that dreadful experience.

It is true perhaps that we do wish to feel the cost. We are supposed to live in fear of a Zeppelin raid. In my opinion, half the inhabitants of London constantly though secretly hope it. We feel that with a bomb or two tumbling about our heads we shall be “in it.” To read the newspapers is like having a surfeit of the kind of book which is called “The Great War of 19—.” I have read dozens of them and they move my imagination almost as much as the reports—some of them, such as are well-written, like Mr. Wells’s _War in the Air_, even more.

The result that we must pray for is a greater concreteness and reality in our writing. We have developed an inhuman literary point of view which is fundamentally insincere and which is never more ugly or less convincing than when our poets try to be “modern.” Such poets as Emile Verhaeren—now a refugee in London—treat factories and so forth, the typical products, they think, of modern life, purely as romantic apparitions, much as the romantic writers treated mountains and deserts, excuses for rhetoric and flamboyant description. They have never felt the reality of them, because modern life in its rapidity has outdistanced the poet’s mind in his attempt to conceive it.

I hold no brief for “modern poetry” in that sort of sense: I do not hold it necessary to write about these things. But if you will compose upon a factory or a railway-station, you must feel what factories and railway-stations really are; you must not take refuge in a romantic description of lights and roaring machinery. The perpetually breaking high note of the Futurists is merely a rather useless attempt to deal with a difficulty that we all know. Perhaps the war will bring us rather suddenly and jarringly in touch with reality. It is certain that the young men of the class from which literature chiefly comes, have now in their minds a fixed and permanent thought which from time to time comes up onto the surface of consciousness. This thought is the thought of violent death. We have grown physically and morally soft in security; but, as I write, affairs are reaching a crisis in France, fresh regiments are being sent abroad. We each of us wonder which may be the next to go.

This honest and undisguised fear—a man is wonderfully insensitive if he does not feel it and a braggart if he will not admit it—has a powerful and purifying effect on the spirit. Its spiritual action is comparable to that of violent and maintained physical exercise. The flabby weight of our emotions is being reduced and hardened: we have sweated away a great many sick fancies and superfluous notions. The severe pressure of training for war induces in us a love of reason, a taste for hard thinking and exactitude and a capacity for discipline.

The art of war is fortunately an art that allows itself to be definitely judged. Either you win your battles or you lose them. It is of no use to say that Warmser was a great general whose subtle and esoteric methods of making war have never been appreciated by a numskulled public. Napoleon thrashed him and there is an end of argument. A soldier cannot resignedly appeal from the fortunes of the field to the arbitrament of the future.

The consideration of these facts leads us to wish that poetry were in the same case; and we are beginning to feel both that poetry may become a more active factor in normal life than hitherto and that a careful criticism may remove it from the desert space of assertion and undefended preference which it now inhabits. Possibly the war may help to cure us of our ancient English muddle-headedness. We have awakened with surprise to find our army an admirable and workmanlike machine. The South African war rid us, in military affairs, of the incompetent amateur and the obstructive official. Vague rumors of what the army had learnt there even reached other departments of activity: possibly this war will infect us all with a new energy and a new sense of reality. We may learn how to reach our ends by taking thought and by cherishing ideas instead of plunging on in a sublimely obstinate and indisciplined muddle. As for our war-poetry—I must end where I began—it is merely a sloughing of the old skin, a last discharge of the old disease.

New York Letter

GEORGE SOULE

Nature flowers in the spring, man in the fall. With the first of November comes a bewilderment of elections, concerts, books, plays, new magazines, bombs, exhibitions, and all the other things that seem to have blossomed so futilely year after year. To set about the task of discovering the significant in it all is more confusing than to attempt to trace the origin of new species in a single May countryside.

Take the theatres, for instance. There is the usual increase in plays which are so bad that even visiting travelling salesmen begin to suspect their artistic integrity. There is Shaw’s _Pygmalion_, which some think is second-rate Shavism well acted by Mrs. Campbell, and others believe is a good play badly acted. There is Molnar’s _The Phantom Rival_, an amusing and slender satire which is understood by one-quarter of the audience, and applauded for its faults by the other three-quarters. MacDonald Hastings, who aroused hopes with _The New Sin_, has descended to a very bad second-rate in a vehicle for Nazimova called _That Sort_. Elsie Ferguson has made a hit in _Outcasts_, written by Hubert Henry Davies,—the author of the fascinating _Cousin Kate_,—as a vehicle for Ethel Levey, the former star of unspeakable musical comedy in America who has become a great actress in London. It is a play of sordid “realism,” whose principal function seems to be to raise an almost academic question of morals and then disclaim any moral intent by a solution which in the opinion of most of the audience is either grossly immoral or disgustingly moral. Everything is topsy-turvy.

Early in the season the Schubert organ created some amusement by demanding the abolition of dramatic critics. Here are the managers, ran the argument, responsible business men who put large sums of money into new productions. Along comes your newspaper critic to the first night, with a somewhat exalted standard of taste, a jaded appetite, and a reputation for wit. Before the play is over he leaves, hastily writes a column in which he exploits his own cleverness at the expense of the play, and turns away many possible customers. This is not good business ethics. If the play really is bad, let the public find it out gradually. They may never find it out at all. If it is good, we really don’t need the critics for publicity. The article was ingenuous and engaging. Most of our critics are so undiscerning that we were glad to see them baited. Perhaps as a result of this, Alan Dale and Acton Davies both left their respective papers. But as if to heap coals of fire, the critics united in a roar of praise for _The Beautiful Adventure_, a play so truly awful that the most ingenious and expensive pushing could not even bluff the public into liking it. It failed after a few precarious weeks.

Just now The Catholic Theatre Movement has created a diversion by issuing their “White List” of plays and threatening to prosecute by law the producers of “unclean” drama. They take occasion to compliment the newspaper critics for abandoning to some extent artistic standards of criticism and substituting moral standards. The movement will undoubtedly tell against much undesirable filth, but it is needless to say that it would be used with equal effectiveness against most works of genius which might by some strange chance be produced.

Little Theatres are sprouting up by the handful. The Punch and Judy Theatre is a clever imitation of the theatrical prototype, with benches for seats, wall boxes for two only, and boy ushers. It is the personal enterprize of Charles Hopkins, a Yale graduate who shows his enthusiasm by combining not only the rôles of actor, manager, and producer, but owner and playwright as well. He has not yet, however, put on any of his own plays. Mrs. Hopkins, a really talented graduate of Ben Greet’s company, plays the feminine leads. The Neighborhood Theatre is a quasi-philanthropic undertaking with enough money behind it to aspire to the new stage art in all its magnificence of the concrete dome and more expensive settings. Perhaps the most interesting of all will be a new theatre planned by the Washington Square villagers under the leadership of a committee among whose members are Mr. and Mrs. Max Eastman and Charles and Albert Boni. It will be supported principally by its own subscribers at a very moderate expense, and will be as far as possible from a philanthropic attempt to “elevate the stage.” It is the result merely of a belief that here is a group of people who want to see more intelligent drama than is ordinarily supplied, and that the dramatic material and acting and producing ability are available. Plays by American authors will be used as far as possible, but the standards will not be lowered for the sake of encouraging either authors or propaganda. Such a thing cannot avoid being at least a healthy experiment.

Pavlowa opened in the Metropolitan a week after Genée had given a Red-Cross benefit in a vaudeville theatre. The conjunction was a striking example of the marked inferiority of a romantic form to a classic unless the romantic vehicle is done honestly and supremely well. Genée gave in ten minutes more genuine æsthetic pleasure by her perfection of line than Pavlowa in a whole evening of half-done work. Pavlowa has proved often enough that she can be one of the goddesses of the dance. Last year she had with her Cecceti, her ballet master, and practiced with him constantly. Only by such external vigilance can perfection be maintained. This year, presumably for reasons of economy, Cecceti is not present. The company is much weakened by the absence of the principal character dancers. The opening ballet was a second-rate concoction with almost no real dancing in it. And to top off the insult, a third of the program was devoted to ordinary ball-room dances, which any number of cabaret performers in the United States can do better than trained ballet people. It was the usual tragedy of the artist who tries to popularize his work. An enthusiast sitting next me said: “We are now seeing the funeral of good dancing in America. Those who want this sort of thing will go to the restaurants. And the others will say, ‘If this is ballet, give me baseball.’” But there is still hope. The original Diaghilew company which plays yearly in London and Paris is coming next season. Then we shall see romantic ballet at its highest.

Only one other event must be mentioned now. While various discontented persons, perhaps anarchists, have been leaving bombs about public buildings, the socialists have elected Meyer London to Congress. In itself this is not of great significance. It is interesting to see, however, that twelve thousand people went to the public reception to him in Madison Square Garden. It is still more interesting to compare what was said there with ordinary political buncombe. Mr. London began by calling President Wilson one of the ablest men this country has produced. He went on to say “The business of socialism is to give intelligence to discontent.... When I take my seat in Congress I do not expect to accomplish wonders. What I expect to do is to take to Washington the message of the people, to give expression there to the philosophy of socialism. I want to show them what the East side of New York is and what the East side Jew is. I am confident that I will get fair play. I will be given my opportunity, and I do not intend to abuse it. Do not let yourselves be deceived by this victory. You are good noise-makers, but you are poor organizers. Organize now for the next campaign. Organize for victory, not by violence, but by the greatest of all forces, the force of the human intellect. Give the people your message clearly and make them think about it.”

If the ballot fails because of lack of intelligence, is it reasonable to suppose that violence will succeed with the same material? Or that any arrangement under the sun for the welfare of human beings can take the place of individual human quality? “My friends, mankind is something to be surpassed!”

The Theatre

“The Philanderer”

(_Chicago Little Theater_)

The most interesting thing about Shaw’s _Philanderer_ as it was put on at The Little Theater the latter part of November, was the new treatment it received at the hands of the scenic artists of that precious institution. One is tempted to use the trite but pretty figure and say that it was an instance of an old gem in a new setting, only modifying it by the statement that _The Philanderer_ is merely a fake gem. The luster it may have had in the eighteen-nineties is now almost entirely worn away. In short, its fun is pointless. Ibsen, thanks largely to Mr. Shaw’s active propaganda, is a household pet. Ibsen clubs are as obsolete as Browning clubs; while the “new” woman as embodied in her present-day sister, the feminist, is too familiar and too permanent a figure to be the subject of effective satire. That the play still has appeal for a modern audience is due wholly to its characters, and yet these stage people are not real. They are no more than caricatures, each effectively distorted and exaggerated in the drawing, each effectively touched off in monochrome. To use another overworked phrase, they are typically Shavian in that they are not characters but traits of character. They are not real people; they are perambulating states of mind, as are almost all of Shaw’s creations, and the more emotional, rather than intellectual, the state of mind, the wider its appeal.

But neither Shaw nor the play is the thing in this discussion. The setting of the play, subordinate, no doubt, in intention, but predominating because of its novelty, is what interested most the eyes of the layman brought up for years on the familiar conventions of the ordinary-sized theater. The action demands interior settings, but instead of the realistically-painted canvas walls and wooden doors, The Little Theater gives us tinted backgrounds with rectangular openings for entrances and exits. The first act is done in gray, the second and third in blue, and the fourth in a soft green. The effect of people, particularly of women, moving against such plain unrelieved tints is pictorial in the extreme. Each successive movement, each new position is a new picture. The curtains parting on the last act, showing the copper tint of a samovar, a vase of delicate pink flowers, a white tablecloth, a handsome dark woman pouring tea, all against a soft glowing green, gave one the feeling of seeing an artfully-composed, skillfully-colored canvas at a picture gallery. And it suggested, more successfully than any other setting I have ever seen, the home of a person of refinement and restraint. Less successful was the setting for the second and third acts. The use of indigo in representing an Ibsen club may be satirical and it may be subtle, but its effect on the spectator after an hour or so is depressing, and in the general atmospheric gloom that increases as the act goes on the sparkle of some of the brightest dialogue is lost.

On the whole, the workings out of this new idea in scenery is suggestive in its effect and lovely in its pictorial quality, but until the novelty wears off it obtrudes itself upon the interest that belongs rightly to the play. Its cheapness should ingratiate it to the professional producer. Naturally, the effect of one unrelieved tint in the settings of a theater of ordinary size would be deadly in its monotony, but the idea suggests of itself endless variation and improvements. After leaving _The Philanderer_, with its obvious limitations, with its uneven, at times amateurish acting, one cannot help wishing that our every night plays had half the thought, half the taste, half the imagination in their production that The Little Theater plays seem to have.

SAMUEL KAPLAN.

Music

The Kneisel Quartet and Hofmannized Chopin

... And in the meantime war went on beyond the ocean. Strange, but this absurd thought accompanied me as a shrill dissonance throughout the concert. I could not help conjecturing what would be the result, if all the warriors were brought together to listen to the Kneisel Quartet: Would they not become ennobled, harmonized, pacified, humanized? Could they go on with their dull work—for modern war gives no thrills for the individual fighter—after Mozart’s Quartet in E Flat Major, which has the soothing effect of a transparent vase? They might have found Brahms’s Quintet suffering from this artist’s usual weakness—lack of sense of _measure_,—but the Scherzo would certainly have elated the most avowed anti-German. The four instruments performed their work so artistically that one forgot their existence and heard “just music.” The only number that could have aroused international complications was the insincere grotesque of Zoltan Kodaly, who succeeded in misusing an excellent source, Danuvian motives. “But this is Modern”, I was shrapnelled. Well, call me a conservative, but if this is modern music, then, in the name of Mozart and Beethoven, _Pereat!_

Still imagining a Marsian audience I was not dismayed even by the appearance of the effeminate Chopin. For Josef Hofmann took the artistic liberty of interpreting the gentle Pole in his own way, and the Scherzo in B Flat Minor sounded as a virile volcanic charge. The pianist refuses to take Chopin sentimentally, and he puts charming vigor even into the moon-beamed, tear-strewn D Flat Nocturne, even into the frail ephemeral E Minor Valse.

K.

Hofmann’s Concert

The spoiled child of the world’s pianism—Josef Hofmann—played Schumann’s A Minor piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at two concerts during the first week in November. Both performances were masterly and splendid in musical values.

Since he left his cradle, Hofmann has had the world sitting at his pianistic feet and fingers so that he has come to take the most vigorous and sincere homage as a matter of fact; and, perhaps for this reason, he occasionally fails to merit it. He is insolent to his worshippers and furious with his critics. Long and copious praise has gone to his head. His insolence is less poetic and far less handsome than Paderewski’s, and Hofmann’s playing needs to reach magnificent proportions before one is able to forget his bad-boyish disposition.

But one does forget. For his musicianship and key-wizardry are things of great beauty. Despite the fact that his scorn sometimes leads him to abuse the piano, in the way of crude smashing blows, there is (in the Schumann work, for instance, which displays him at his best) never a moment in which he loses a rythmic grasp that is deeply satisfying. And when he chooses, and doesn’t lose his temper, he can bring forth remarkable tonal beauties from the box of wood and wire. There is an admirable drive in his art. It is vital and powerful. One’s regrets are swallowed and quite forgotten in listening to his artistic qualities of tone, rhythm, piano-color, and, in fact, of genuine music.

HERMAN SCHUCHERT.

Art

Rose Madder or Red?

WILLIAM SAPHIER

Physical usefulness predominates in the make-up of every real piece of craftsmanship. Its lines and the beauty of its decoration make up its value.

Art does not rely on physical usefulness, form, or decoration. It is its suggestiveness, its appeal to the imagination, its drawing out of sympathy or hatred, its arousing of new and deep emotion—this is what gives the fine arts their importance in life. Art should act as a screen for fine tragic acts, for great emotions. Nature should be the pigment for the painter’s brush, but not his aim. He should dilute it with his blood and marrow and fling it on the canvas with determination.

Thus I pondered as I entered the twenty-seventh exhibition of American Oil Paintings and Sculpture at the Chicago Art Institute. Wandering from canvas to canvas, from one prize-winner to another, I felt all my hope for a miracle vanish. They are so real, so true to life, so bereft of imagination, that one wonders why anybody ever took the trouble to paint them.

Just look at these flowers, trees, cows, and nudes. I have seen them many, many times exactly the same way and under the same circumstances in life. They are “pretty” and will undoubtedly make a good decoration in a middle-class home. This may be a worthy thing to do, but why should it be called art? I think this is our punishment for great achievements in the industrial field. No nation can go on building the fastest railroads, the tallest skyscrapers, the largest factories, the fastest automobiles, without paying for it by a loss of its finer æsthetic senses.

But I am getting away from the exhibition. It has become the fashion to be disappointed with exhibitions both here and abroad—and with good reason. As there are few good artists, the chances of getting them on a jury is slight. The result is apparent: good pieces of craftsmanship are hung along with fine pieces of art, and the prizes intended for fine art go to good craftsmanship. In saying this I do not wish to join the popular sport of hitting the jury and getting a round of applause. But how can one escape these conclusions if he compares the prize-winner, _A Nude_, by Richard E. Miller, with “_Under the Bough_,” by Arthur B. Davis, whose rhythmically-moving figures and beautiful colors transport one to fairyland? The figures remind me of Hodler, the foremost painter today in Switzerland, who is sixty years old and younger than the youngest. Or compare the prize with _Thomas and his Red Coat_, by Robert Henri. What simple forms and colors—what a thorough understanding of a child and his world! Or _The Widow_, by Charles W. Hawthorne. These are works of great simplicity, understanding, imagination, and individuality; they are monuments to some fine feeling, dream, thought, or incident in the life of their creators.

As for the other prize winners—the disjointed color spots serving as garden flowers and the chocolate box cover-design—I shall not discuss them. The meaning of such stuff and the reason for awarding is too obscure.

Outside the pictures mentioned above the following are worth seeing: _The Venetian Blind_, by Frederic C. Frieseke; _Dance of the Hours_, by Louis F. Berneker; _Winter Logging_, by George Elmer Brown; _Through the Trees_, by Frank T. Hutchins; _The Harbor_, by Jonas Lie; _The Garden_, by Jerome S. Blum; _Procession of the Redentore Venice_, by Grace Ravlin; _The Ox Team_, by Chauncey F. Ryder; _Smeaton’s Quay, St. Ive’s_, by Hayley Lever; _The Fledgling_, by Grace H. Turnbull. _A Hudson River Holiday_, by Gifford Beal, looks much like a department store. In fact you may find everything in this exhibition from a flag to a mountain—and all the popular colors. The only thing that is missing is a “For Sale” sign, with a “marked-down” price.

Seven pieces of sculpture by Stanislaw Szukalski, whose work the readers of THE LITTLE REVIEW had a chance to see reproduced in the last number, make up the most interesting part of the exhibition.

The original obscuring of the works of Grace Ravlin, Grace H. Turnbull, Johansen, and Blum by the hanging committee deserves praise. But I think if they really wanted to do something unusual they might have thought of something better. For instance, hang all the rejected ones in separate rooms, marked “rejected,” and let the visitors see and judge for themselves. This would give the exhibition a bigger meaning. As it is, it means confusion; and confusion asks persistently in this case: are the fine arts anything in particular or just a mixture of craftsmanship, cleverness (the usual companion of emptiness) and some undigested ideas?

Life is a learning to die.—_Plato._

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!—_Dostoevsky._

Book Discussion

A Watteauesque Enthusiast

_The Enchantment of Art_, by Duncan Phillips. [John Lane Company,
New York.]

To Mr. Phillips life is a _Fête Galante_ in Watteau’s style. He sees nothing but the elegant, the poetic, the joyous, the enchanting. I picture him in a powdered wig, clad in a gorgeous costume of the Louis XV. period, playfully lorgnetting life and art, and raving ecstatically over everybody and everything. I confess, an all-loving person looks suspicious to me; but Mr. Phillips’ book is so sincere, he adores things so pathetically, that I cannot help enjoying him. He becomes irritating only at such moments when he tries to be very much in earnest and breaks into absurd generalization. His credo is Impressionism—in life and in art—but what an elastic term is Impressionism to our dear enthusiast. Giotto, Titian, Da Vinci, Velasquez, Corot, and Dégas were impressionists, and so were Shakespeare, and Browning, and Keats, and Yeats, and Robert Bridges and who not! He loves them all, loves beautifully, touchingly, but he fails pitifully to define his beliefs. Why should he define? Why not be happy in enjoying good things without giving reasons, without strained endeavors to form classifications and definitions? Oh, those definitions! But we easily forgive the author his absurd statements, we can even sympathize with the pain he gets when contemplating the Futurists, whom he terms “lawless.” We forgive a lover everything, for we feel grateful to him for the moments of bliss that he generously shares with us. Truly, it is a book of religious joy.

K.

Old Virtues in New Forms

_The Age of Mother-Power_, by C. Gasquoine Hartley (Mrs. Walter M.
Gallichan). [Dodd, Mead and Company, New York.]

One is compelled to take Mrs. Gallichan seriously in her visioning of the future social status of men and of women in the world of sex; for the results of close observation, research, and computation strengthen the most reasonable prophecies. She is modest enough to state her big idea in simple terms. She points out that, since society had in its primitive days a long and up-tending period of mother-power, or female dominance; and, following that, a protracted season of masculine rule, which is only now awakening to feminine rebellion; it is clearly apparent that a new era is commencing, in which all the old virtues of mother-right will be re-established in new forms, with the distinctly modern addition of that solitary virtue of male despotism—father-protection. This is a theory—only a theory, if one wishes to preen one’s own prejudice—which the writer approaches and develops from various angles. She has fruitfully studied history, legend, folk-lore, savages, and other departments of human life. Her deductions are carefully and lucidly thought out, strongly original, and entirely worthy of attention.

HERMAN SCHUCHERT.

A Handbook of the War

_The Great War_, by Frank H. Simonds. [Mitchell Kennerley, New
York.]

The European war threatens to become a prolonged phenomenon. To the Trans-Atlantic public it is a keenly-felt tragedy; to us here it is an interesting spectacle, the audience being requested to remain neutral, to refrain from applause and disapproval. Even so, we are in need of a libretto. Frank H. Simonds supplies us with a comprehensive account of the first act of the drama. The lay reader is getting acquainted with the complexities of the pre-war events and with the further developments of the conflict down to the fall of Antwerp. The simple maps and the lucid comments make the book not only instructive, but also readable. You must read the book if you do not want to play the ignoramus in present-day floating, cinematographic history.

The New Reporting

_Insurgent Mexico_, by John Reed. [D. Appleton and Company, New
York.]

“Who is John Reed?”, asked the newspapers when, forgetting for the moment their name-worshipping arrogance, they discovered that the best reports from Mexico were coming, not from the veteran correspondents, but from an unknown. The answer is that John Reed is the only “correspondent” that the Mexican mix-up or the present European struggle has yet brought to light, who has a really new and individual method of reporting. These are not dogmatic, cock-sure, crisis-solving “articles” from the front, but simple, vivid reporting of scenes and actions that have some reason for being reported. And John Reed is about the only reporter who has shown us that the Mexican people have visions of a future. The newspapers and those whose duty it seems to be to uphold the old idea are now crying that Reed’s simple realism is too slight to be of value as history, and that he does not “get beneath the surface”—but these people have still to see which kind of reporting can endure as history.

Incorrect Values

_Life and Law_, by Maude Glasgow. [G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York.]

A secondary title—“The Development of the Exercise of the Sex Function Together with a Study of the Effect of Certain Natural and Human Laws and a Consideration of the Hygiene of Sex”—is evidence _per se_ that the book is inadequate and superficial. In less than two hundred pages no writer can more than hint at all these topics, and in trying to cover so much ground the author really covers nothing. She tells over old facts and frequently gives them what are now accepted as incorrect values. Her statements are as sweeping as the scare heads of the old quack medicine almanacs. She describes men as ignorant, intolerable, immoral monsters; and women as being universally down-trodden and the sexual victims of man’s unbridled appetite. The book is as full of “musts” and “shoulds” as the rules of an old-fashioned school master. The author tells nothing new; veers from science to sentimentality in a most disconcerting way; and adds nothing to the constantly-increasing library of valuable sex books.

MARY ADAMS STEARNS.

Sentence Reviews

_Abroad at Home_, by Julian Street. [The Century Company, New York.] So far as what he will write is concerned we don’t give a rap whether Shaw visits America or not. Yes, we don’t believe even _he_ could lay out the statisticians as Street does when he advises us on the purchase of pig iron; or display such fiendish glee at the chance of hurting the feelings of a professional Fair booster: or—well, every paragraph of every chapter is worth reading.

_Reminiscences of Tolstoy_, by Count Ilya Tolstoy. [The Century Company, New York.] The book is richly illustrated; this is its main value. Nothing is added to what we have known about Tolstoy’s personality; we have had numerous, perhaps too many, works on his intimate life; Sergeyenko nearly exhausted the subject. True, we gain considerable information about the great man’s son, Count Ilya, but, pray, who is interested in it?

_American Public Opinion_, by James Davenport Whelpley. [E. P. Dutton and Company, New York.] The name is misleading: the book presents a series of articles on American internal and foreign problems, written from the point of view of a conservative. Why call Mr. Whelpley’s personal opinion “American Public Opinion”? The articles on our foreign diplomacy are valuable; they reveal our infancy in this peculiarly European art.

_Jael_, by Florence Kiper Frank. [Chicago Little Theater.] The production of this play was treated subjectively in the last issue of this magazine. In the reading of it the verse impresses one in much the same manner as the viewing of the production. The two effects are so similar as to impress one with the coherence and wonderful worth of the Chicago Little Theatre in harmonizing the value of the play as literature with the importance of the production.

_The House of Deceit._ Anonymous. [Henry Holt and Company, New York.] Maurice Sangster had a “conviction in his heart that he was born to make a conflagration of the Thames”. He came to London and proceeded to attack the religious, political, and social institutions of the present day. He serves merely as a blind for the author, who, attacking almost everything under the sun, is not courageous enough to reveal his identity.