Part 1

The Fly Leaf

A Pamphlet Periodical of the New--the New Man, New Woman, New Ideas, Whimsies and Things.

CONDUCTED BY WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE.

Published Monthly by the Fly Leaf Publishing Co. Subscription One Dollar a Year. Single Copies 10 Cents. December, 1895. Number One.

The Fly Leaf.

A Pamphlet Periodical of the New--the new man, new woman, new ideas, whimsies and things. Conducted by Walter Blackburn Harte.

Published monthly. Single copies 10 cents; subscription, $1.00 a year. Subscriptions to be made payable to W. B. Harte, 269 St. Botolph Street, Boston, Mass. Subscriptions may be left with newsdealers, or sent direct to the publisher.

Business communications should be addressed simply W. B. Harte, 269 St. Botolph Street, Boston. All matter intended for publication should be sent to same address. All MSS. must be accompanied by properly stamped addressed envelope, and those found unavailable will be promptly returned. Everything will be fairly considered, according to the requirements of the FLY LEAF. Unknown writers of ability will be welcomed. All articles and sketches must be short and piquant--not exceeding 1200 or 1500 words.

Entered at the Boston Post Office as second class mail matter.

Copyright, 1895, by W. B. Harte,

_The trade supplied by the New England News Company._

THE FLY LEAF

No. 1. December, 1895. Vol. 1.

THE STIR IN LITERATURE.

Of course the most important event of the month in this favored part of the world is the unheralded advent of such a robust youngster as the FLY LEAF. Oh yes, thank you, Mrs. Grundy, we are doing very well indeed--a very healthy and vigorous infant and a favorite already; and we may be able to show a very pretty set of teeth in a month or two, if occasion should demand. Some of our distinguished contemporaries will perceive the delicacy of this metaphor; albeit the babe is quite good-natured.

And now a few words about the aims and purposes of the FLY LEAF will be in order--and the incidental commentary may be found to be equally interesting. For the FLY LEAF, although but the bantling of yesterday, has been nursed in the lap of harsh experience, and is at least as wise as some drivelling and decrepit contemporaries it finds lagging superfluous on the stage.

It is true that the field of contemporary journalism is already fairly well stocked with various periodicals, of various shades of unprovoked domesticity, and innocuous intention in the way of imparting that miscellaneous misinformation, which is the mental stock-in-trade of the millions everywhere, and put into print day after day, is the most effective bar to tolerance and growth and hospitality of thought. But there is plenty of room for the FLY LEAF. These highly respectable publications are all competing with each other, and reaping the rich rewards that are the portion of those who have invested their capital in the impossible virtues and spotless innocence of the Young Person. They are all reported to be very prosperous, and we cannot bring ourselves to believe so highly of human nature in the bulk as to doubt the truth of their returns.

But the FLY LEAF will occupy a field that all these periodicals regard with the suspicion of conservatism. It will not impinge on their field, and they cannot by any possibility intrench upon its. For it is a magazine of the New, the Modern, the Young Man, the Young Woman, Today and its stirring, probing, fantastical spirit.

With the immense reading public that exists in this land of popular education and enlightenment--a public which expands every year, as generation after generation takes its place in the ranks of life--there is room for all sorts of periodicals; and instead of these various periodicals being in rivalry, they actually raise up new readers for each other. Even the old fogy magazines have helped to prepare the way for honest bubbling thought and fancy and humor. They have unwittingly and unwillingly educated their readers for the FLY LEAF. The more literature is cultivated in America--the more writers with fresh opinions and experiences and ideas increase--the more readers there will be to encourage the treatment of ever new and wider aspects of the complex life of this vast and complex aggregation of people.

In the pages of these respectable domestic periodicals, old-fashioned folk, who lived before thought was let loose in the English tongue among respectable, law-abiding people, and who linger on to the confusion of poetry and new ideas and new interests, can still doze over profound articles on “How to Cook a Beefsteak” and fiction that has even less relevance to the comedy and tragedy of real modern life. But all inspiring literature is drenched in the spirit and vigor of Youth--even though the writers may be only belated boys. It is the New in eternal nature that entrances the imaginations of thinkers and poets. The day is coming when the periodicals now devoted to the dissemination of the platitudes and ideas of two or three generations ago will have to awaken to the fact that the Young Man and the Young Woman of this era demand the heart of life in their literature, or they will be compelled to give way to bolder spirits, such as are now gathering strength in every modern literature. Already the tide has set in. Hence the FLY LEAF.

The FLY LEAF belongs to this end of the century. It is essentially modern. It does not look to the future, however, with any affected _fin de siecle_ weariness or ennui, but with the hopefulness and stirring courage of youth. It does not aim to be Decadent, or pin its faith to any particular Ism; although it will always be hospitable to art and beauty and truth from any quarter.

The Editor and his coadjutors are of the new school of younger writers, and they aim to unite free sincere thought with humor and fantastic whimsies and imagination; to be serious and amusing; earnest and honest; but never dull. The underlying purpose and inspiration of our efforts will be to strike this Modern note and awaken this broader Modern spirit, which marks the literature of our era off from all the ancient thought and literature of the world.

The FLY LEAF will deal with the Here and Now, with the aims and ideals of the Young Man and the Young Woman, with the drift and tendencies of American social and literary thought. It will embody the New Spirit of the age that is moving the literature of all the world, but it will be distinctively an American periodical.

The FLY LEAF hopes that in this struggle for the recognition of this broader spirit in criticism and the material of literature, and for the encouragement of American writers of ability, it will receive the cordial support of the younger generation of readers throughout the country.

THE NEW MYSTICISM.

The latest development of the new mysticism, or symbolism, or impressionism, which first came to us from the Continent, has just reached the Editor of the FLY LEAF from the pen of an old friend.

It appears that my friend had been reading Maurice Maeterlinck’s “The Blind” and “The Seven Princesses,” and he had come to the conclusion that a painful poverty of ideas was palpably wrapped up in a barren iteration of half meaningless and half ludicrous phrases. He then turned to Stephen Crane’s recently published “Black Riders,” thinking that symbolism might be a little more coherent and comprehensible in the alembic of the colder and clearer Anglo-Saxon intellect and imagination. He had heard Crane’s impressionistic book of rhythms spoken of in the inner circles of the New York and Boston literary world as a collection of startling psychological pictures--the Heaven and Hell of the human soul by flashlight. The Boozy Prophet, Crane has been called by a certain eminent critic--and there’s invitation to human nature in such a piquant characterization.

But, for a long while, he labored in Crane’s pages, without discovering the secret flame of spiritual insight that others had spoken of so confidently, and he began to suspect that the profundity which had allured so many minds was simply the fatal lure of the weirdly incomprehensible, which is the inspiration of a good many schools of art and new religions. He had looked for a burst of spiritual light that should spur his tired imagination to renewed efforts in setting forth the superior qualities of a certain brand of coal tar soap which was the inspiration of his Muse for so much a week. He sank into the rocker by the fire, and fell into a mood of despondent reminiscence, weaving all the sad strands of his life into haunting fancies. Then, as he says in his letter, a change suddenly came over him, and he sprang up feeling oppressed and dizzy with a flood of crimson thoughts that inspired his brain.--Ed.

Here is his account of what happened.

There is something irresistible about this new mysticism in poetry, which those who have not pondered over its potent fascinations cannot understand. It seizes upon the mind suddenly and without warning. For years all my dreams of literary achievement and fame had lain buried, and as I thought, a little sadly, dead--strangled by cruel circumstance and devoured by an ever increasing family. I had become completely reconciled to writing on tar soap and other commodities. But all of a sudden my thoughts seemed to plunge into an abyss of mystical yearnings after the impossible and infinite, and then I recalled some of Crane’s verses with a new and vivid realization of their photographic fidelity to perplexity of mind. Then, to my amazement, I felt the divine afflatus rise overpoweringly within me, and for the first time in my life I produced two lines which rhymed. They ran as follows:

A goblin hung on to the horn of the moon A-singing a love song composed by a coon.

I had never performed such a feat as this in my whole life before, for even in my hours of transcendent ambition I had recognized the essentially prosaic bent of my mind. I had always expected to be a great prose writer, and I had felt a rather indulgent condescension toward contemporary poets--especially those of my acquaintance. I used to think prose was the only vehicle of modern thought, and that all the great poets were dead. But when a man finds himself beginning to lisp in poetry at a belated age, his views on the significance of modern poetry are apt to undergo some important modification.

I thought this couplet a very fair beginning; but no well rounded thought would come that had any relevance to the goblin, the moon or the love song. So I leave the couplet to stand by itself as a picture, suggestive of the fact that ambition may miss its mark, but a love song will surely live in some heart. My next attempt--for I was on fire with symbolic rhapsody--was a little more successful. I submit it without comment. The lesson is so obvious.

I saw a bleeding head grinning, It grinned at me; I grinned at it, In fact, we both grinned irreverently.

But the smiling sun shone on!

I find the longer one delves in mystic poetry the deeper philosophical problems one can sound in a very few poignant flashes of symbolic description. Here is one of my happiest efforts:

As my worn soul lay wriggling in the dust, I cried aloud to God in indignation That he had so mistreated me; But God only laughed, until He’d like to bust And pointed out that dirt was all creation.

I turned off a number of other things, quite as profound and fantastical, and I find that in mystical poetry the Deity lends Himself to picturesque treatment a good deal more readily than any other person or subject of immediate and contemporary interest. So that in this way it leads the mind of the masses away from the frivolities of the hour to the larger considerations of life and destiny, and chastens folly with thoughts of the over-ruling immutable providence that is too often forgotten in the bustling cities of civilization.

I send you only one more piece, to which I have given the dignity of a title. It is “The Dissatisfactions of Luxury,” and is in two stanzas:

I heard a man mumbling in the horrid silence of the night. He was chaffering aloud with the good God; But God in the darkness vouchsafed no sign. And I asked him, scoffing, what he desired of the Omnipotent. “I am rich, I am Plutus,” answered he, angrily, “And I am bargaining for the moon.” “And why do you want it?” asked I in amaze. “Because I am tired of all my other toys.” “And the price?” asked I, scoffing, for I bore the badge of Lazarus. “Untold millions, heaped up to Heaven’s gate.” “Fool!” I cried in bitter derision; “Offer the good God your corrupt soul.”

I can make affidavit I never wrote a line of poetry before in my life, and so I am sorely troubled at this writing. This is a crisis in my career. I do not know whether to continue in my employment as a writer of soap and medicine “ads,” or to devote myself wholly to the service of the Muses. The question is, am I a genius, or is this new mystic poetry, which is so uplifting and inspiring, merely some delusive imposture of bubbling verbiage?

JONATHAN PENN.

THE YELLOW GIRL.

The advent of the Yellow Girl--the mad, fantastic siren who is beginning to haunt the hoardings and our dreams--is calling forth a good deal of an outcry among those who hold the cure of morals in the English public press. It is rather a difficult undertaking to attempt to import a ray or two of cheer and fantasy into the gloom and drab of English life, but some of the English artists, touched with the spirit of the age, have had the audacity to import the Yellow Girl from Paris. There she is--on every hoarding and bare wall a gleam of light and color and deviltry, under those dull gray skies, that must awaken a flash of fantasy here and there in some toil-worn heart in the crowd, and cheer some fog born pessimists who would fain forget the necessities and narrowness of their drab existence. Instead of the old monotonous clumsy pictures and unescapable rivers of hideous black and white catch words, that seemed to emphasize the limited horizon and freedom of the millions bound to spend their whole lives in the great cities, there are ten thousand variations of the Eternal Feminine in her latest glamor of gold and yellow, and even under the pall of a London sky, the very walls open out into the land of Fantasia.

But the moralists are shocked, and they are fearful for the future intellectual and moral stability of England, simply because the Yellow Girl is the embodiment of an artist’s dream of the modern Circe--a reminiscence of the Bacchantic dreams that used to fill the poets’ heads in the old days, before they were all become so very respectable. It is the artist who now puts a little diversion and unreal distraction from the invading ugliness and melancholy of modern metropolitan life into the passing current of our fancies. The poets used to serve this purpose, but they are all so anxious to stand well with Mrs. Grundy nowadays, whereas Mrs. Grundy and the artists have never really arrived at any amicable understanding. Old England and civilization are in no danger from the Yellow Girl.

The moralists, unluckily, have no sense of humor, and so they fail to perceive that the masses accept the Yellow Girl as an unreal fantastic abstraction without any sort of relevance to the reality of life, which yet stirs the imagination and puts a little splash of fitful joy into reality.

A writer in one of the leading English journals assails the Yellow Girl in a tremendous tirade, that shows the English intellectual incapacity for appreciation of the light and good humored caricature of the superficial aspects of life, which, by exaggeration, puts the permanent and beautiful things of life into their true proportions and tempers sanity of thought with a gleam of insight into the fantastic range of human nature that lies always just below the drab surface of the show of things. The English mind only seems to understand the coarse and brutal caricature of Hogarth, with its savage insistence upon a moral. Hogarth was too great an artist and observer, however, not to have enjoyed and made capital of the Yellow Girl himself, if he were alive today. The caricature of today is less obvious, and we may thank our stars it is. The moralists, like the poor, we have always with us, and they make modern life one perpetual din that leaves us no time for thought, meditation or merriment. We should be grateful that the hoarding places do not assail us at every turn with the sort of caricature that bites into the heart and soul. There is quite enough sadness in life in the all absorbing struggle for existence, and I think that the Yellow Girl is one of those Providential gifts that keep human life sweet and sane in the stress of the heartless strife for bread and riches. She is the creation of the law of compensation that gives us love and poetry, dreams and religion, and every other refuge from life. The moralists and the realists and the rest of them who would forever pin our minds in the narrow and sordid round of reality would drive us all to madness if they had their way. The fantasy of art and poetry keep life balanced and sane. Human nature requires this outlet from the horrid nightmare of sordid sorrow it has created in civilization. The so-called mad poets and unhinged artists give us that distraction from ourselves and our monomaniac absorption in money-making that saves the world from becoming one immense lunatic asylum.

The English moralist describes the Yellow Girl in somewhat of the fierce contumely of an ancient Hebrew prophet--but the Yellow Girl is not really to be spoken of in the same breath with Ashtaroth. She is but the phantom of dreams that pictured or unpictured lives ever in the heart of youth. But she does not rule life as did Aphrodite. The moralists should remember that youth and sorrow must have their dreams. And all the commonplace virtues of domesticity are fed upon them. The English writer bemoans the decadence of soberness in life in this fashion:

“The growth of modern life is in great measure the Parisianising of the civilized world. The worship of the senses is insensibly taking hold on the world, and so in the land of Milton and the Martyrs is set up the flaunting sign of the growing worship, this hair-brained comedienne--the Yellow Girl. Bare armed, bare throated, great hatted, with parasol a-kimbo, with flapping gown of gold, and snakey boa bristling in the breeze, with tripping toes a la Chinoise, with waspy waist, with painted cheeks and sparkling, wine-fed eyes, and a monkey grin of daftest daftness--there flaunts the Yellow Girl, the she Baal, the new born goddess of Today, laughing the amazed to scorn. She is the Spirit of the Age--Circe herself again--Venus in a Regatta gown, the Devil in petticoats, as he always was.”

This is strong as well as picturesque. But the truth is that the Yellow Girl puts a splash of color into the dulness of city life, with its endless bricks and placards and blank walls, and come upon in a sudden turning her gleaming, impish eyes remind us that it is our own fault if we take life too sadly, for the spirit of fantasy and joy lurks forever in nature and life. As for our morals--they are less safe with drab folk than they are with the Yellow Girl, who simply reminds us that Pan rules in modern life as much as in the olden days.

BEN FRANKLIN, JR.

A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS.

The Americans are the most curious people since the Athenians.

Our big American periodicals buy their “great features” by contracting with the busy bees of the London literary world, for so many thousands of words before there are even ideas to be put into words. It is a way of encouraging literature which destroys the personality that is the soul of literature. It develops the taste of readers of literature by strangling all the original thinkers and writers who may spring up here in America. These periodicals aim simply to put before the public a bill of well known names--which usually belong to some of the busiest, most slip-shod and worthless writers of our time. But genius two thousand miles away has twice the potent fascination of genius that lives in Boston or Hoboken. They command the services of all the writers of England and the Continent who are on the topmost wave of the hour’s popularity, and whose names and achievements are viewed in this country through a rosy and delusive glamor of European reputation that effectually silences all criticism. If English romancers cost such a pretty penny, surely no obscure American critic or man of letters will dare to be so captious as to declare that at least half the literature made in England for this appreciative American people is palpable balderdash, wholly out of tune with the large democratic spirit of our age.

Of course we are not going to deny the abilities of the greatest European writers and artists of the day. That would be too absurd; and we thank the good God that a proper sense of humor is one of the unfailing elements of good nature, good taste and charm that our readers may always count upon finding in the FLY LEAF. In some cases, they are men of the finest genius, who would grace the literature of any era; and it will never be the province of the FLY LEAF to decry men who have honestly won their laurels.

But we have particularly in mind some of the mere industrious mechanics of letters, who build their domestic and sanguinary romances after the pattern desired by the exemplary publishers, who are most romantic for the dollar’s sake. And the publishers have somehow become invested with the onerous charge of the world’s morality, and insist that we poor critics shall be driven into crime and immorality by sheer intolerable dulness, and not by any potent allurements of the sort employed by some of the delightfully audacious French romancers. If we must make a choice between the female theological novelist of the Humphrey Ward stripe and Catulle Mendes, we prefer to be debauched morally rather than mentally.

In the case of these eminently successful writers who are so liberally encouraged to save us the trouble of producing a native literature peculiar to the soil and conditions of life and thought here, it is not too much to say that the genius is so excellently and artistically simulated by ingenious puffery, that the average American reader, gobbling up his culture and luncheon in one frantic breath, does not stop to inquire whether this London hall mark is genuine or fraudulent.

It is not generally known, or even suspected, in this land of guileless innocence, outside “the Trade” and journalism, that a good many British authors flourish in American literature as full fledged masters of the Yellow-jacket, who are very much more famous in this country than they are at home. In fact, a crowd of English mediocrities, of no more significance in their Grub-street than the most ordinary denizen of our own Grub Street is here, are received by our critics and public as writers of the first order of merit. They flood the American newspapers and magazines from Portland, Maine, to San Francisco, until there is actually no sort of opening left to the men and women who are trying, under the most discouraging circumstances, to produce an American literature.

This is due largely to the adroit exploitation of the literary syndicates, and partly due to the apathy and timorousness of the American reading public, that is almost afraid to recognize American authors without the endorsation of the London press. And the English critics damn all American writers on principle.