Part 6

The old situation: A revered priest, saint abroad, sinner at home; the old sin—adultery; the old moral about casting the first stone. What is new is the clergyman’s point of view that a “plaster saint” has no right to preach righteousness, that only one who has gone through temptation, sin, and contrition may be fit for the post of God’s shepherd.

A sea captain who has never made a voyage—the perfection of ignorance—and you trust him with the ship. You take a youth—the fool of the family for choice—keep him in cotton-wool under a glass case, cram him with Greek and Latin, constrict his neck with a white choker, clap a shovel hat on his sconce, and lo! he is God’s minister!

... When I look at my old sermons, I blush at the impudence and ignorance with which I, an innocent at home, dared to speak of sin to my superiors in sinfulness.

It is all very well, if we grant that society is still in need of sermons on chastity, if the Hebraic ideal of monogamy is still the most important problem in the life of a community, to be discussed and advocated from the pulpit, while ignoring the economic and social complexities of the present age. But can we grant this anachronism? Is it not high time to follow the policy of _laisser faire_ in regard to individual morals? Mr. Zangwill appears in the unenvious position of one quixotically breaking into an open door; yet he has been accused of possessing a sense of humor.

MAGAZINE VERSE

_Anthology of Magazine Verse, 1914; selected and published by William S. Braithwaite._

The proper way to review this collection of verse would be, no doubt, to quote some of the best and some of the worst, make a learned and perfectly empty comment upon so-and-so, and say that the book was better or worse than last year’s compilation. But Mr. Braithwaite has sifted and re-sifted the entire crop of poems until there is in his book nothing but the best, such as it is. And the general trend of the volume is scarcely a matter for enthusiasm. A fair conclusion must be that magazine editors were frequently hard pressed for copy. As a faithful and stupidly patriotic American, one should ponder long over certain attempts to found new “American” verse-forms; but it is to be regretted, possibly, that the most enjoyable poems in the collection are written upon foreign or mediaeval topics. As a true aesthete, one ought to reek with admiration for nameless or badly-labelled sonnets that, for some reason, fail to delight. And, as an exponent of politico-poetic modernity, there should be wild raving over the “radical” art of formless form; but this also is shamefully wanting in one’s reaction to this anthology. A number of intelligent humans have been observed in their expectant approach to this collection; they closed the book with neither smiles nor frowns. It is difficult to forget that good poetry will bear re-reading, or prove its worth by clinging to the memory; and it is still more difficult to remember that art has only to be new, rude, or extreme to be called wonderful. Why is this?

John Cowper Powys on Henry James

(_Some more jottings from one of Mr. Powys’s lectures._)

Henry James is a revealer of secrets, but never does he entirely draw the veil. He has the most reluctance, the most reverence of all the great novelists. He is always reluctant to draw the last veil. This great, plump-handed moribund figure, waits—afraid. All of his work is a mirror—never a softening or blurring of outlines, but a medium through which one sees the world as he sees it. In reading his works one never forgets the author. All his people speak in his character. All is attuned to his tone from beginning to end.

He uses slang with a curious kind of condescension,—all kinds of slang,—with a tacit implicit apology to the reader. So fine a spirit—he is not at home with slang.

His work divides itself into three periods—best between 1900 and 1903. In reading him approximate 1900 as the climacteric period.

His character delineation is superb. Ralph in _The Portrait of a Lady_, is the type of those who have difficulty in asserting themselves and are in a peculiar way hurt by contact with the world. Osborne—in the same book—is one of those peculiarly hard, selfish, artistic, super-refined people who turn into ice whatever they touch. He personifies the cruelty of a certain type of egoism—the immorality of laying a dead hand upon life. Poe has that tendency to lay a dead hand upon what he cares for and stop it from changing. Who of us with artistic sensibilities is not afflicted with this immorality? This is the unpardonable sin—more than lust—more than passion—a “necrophilism,” to lay the dead hand of eternal possession upon a young head.

Nothing exists but civilization for H. J. There has been no such writer since Vergil. And for him (H. J.) there is but one civilization—European. He is the cosmopolitan novelist. He describes Paris as no Frenchman does! Not only Paris, but America, Italy, anywhere the reader falls into a delicious passivity to the synthesis of nations. He knows them all and is at home in all. He is the novelist of society. Society—which is the one grand outrage; it is not pain—it is not pity; it is society which is the outrage upon personality, the permanent insult, the punishment to life. As ordinary people we hate it often—as philosophers and artists we are bitter against it, as hermits we are simply on the rack. But it is through their little conventionalities that H. J. discovers people, human beings, in society. He uses these conventionalities to portray his characters. He hears paeans of liberation, hells of pity and sorrow, and distress as people signal to one another across these little conventionalities. He fills the social atmosphere with rumors and whispers of people toward one another.

In describing city and country he is equally great. He does not paint with words, but simply transports you there. Read _The Ambassadors_ for French scenery! Everything is treated sacramentally. He is the Walter Pater of novelists with an Epicurean sense for little things—for little things that happen every day.

There is another element in his work that is psychic and beyond—magnetic and beyond. His people are held together by its vibrations. Read _The Two Magics_.

H. J. is the apostle to the rich. Money! that accursed thing! He understands its importance. It lends itself in every direction to the tragedy of being. He understands the art of the kind of life in which one can do what one wants. He understands the rich American gentleman in Europe—touches his natural chastity, his goodness, the single-hearted crystalline depths of his purity. Read _The Reverberator_.

In the _Two Hemispheres_ we find a unique type of woman—a lady from the top of her shining head to the tips of her little feet—exquisite, and yet an adventuress.

This noble, distinguished, massive intelligence is extraordinarily refined and yet has a mania for reality. He risks the verge of vulgarity and never falls into it. He redeems the commonplace.

To appreciate the mise en scène of his books—his descriptions of homes—read _The Great Good Place_. He has a profound bitterness for stupid people. He understands amorous, vampirish women who destroy a man’s work. Go to H. J. for artist characters—for the baffled atrophied artists who have souls but will never do anything.

Read _The Tragic Muse_. Note the character of Gabriel Nash, who is Whistler, Oscar, Pater all together and something added—the arch ghost—the moth of the cult of art.

The countenance of H. J. says that he might have been the cruelest and is the tenderest of human beings. To him no one is so poor, so unwanted a spirit but could fill a place that archangels might strive for. James is a Sennacherib of Assyria, a Solomon, a pasha before whom ivory-browed vassals prostrate themselves. He is the Solomon to whom many Queens of Sheba have come and been rejected, the lover of chastity, of purity in the natural state.

He is difficult to read, this grand, massive, unflinching, shrewd old realist, because of his intellect—a distinguished, tender, subtle spirit like a plant. And in the end I sometimes wonder whether H. J. himself in imagination does not stroll beyond the garden gate up the little hill and over to the churchyard, where, under the dank earth he knows that the changing lineaments mold themselves into the sardonic grin of humanity.

The Reader Critic

_William Thurston Brown, Chicago_:

I have just read your article on Mrs. Ellis’s lecture, and I wish to congratulate you upon its sentiments. Although I did not hear Mrs. Ellis, some of my friends did, and their report quite agrees with your judgment.

I must confess I did not expect much from her to begin with. From interviews and quotations it seemed clear that she was simply one who had never faced realities frankly. Besides, her rather mawkish “religiousness” betrayed a mind unfitted to deal adequately with such a problem.

I wish also to congratulate you upon your recognition of the genuine worth of Emma Goldman. I had thought you were in danger of making a fetich of her, but this article shows that you appreciate the things for which she stands.

I cannot believe that the superiority of Emma Goldman to such people as Mrs. Ellis—I mean in the discernment of real values—is due to a difference of psychology, or rather of temperament, but rather to the difference of point of view from which Miss Goldman has seen the problems of human life. Her experience as a protagonist of Labor in its struggle for freedom from exploitation has been a vital factor, I think, in her development.

All good wishes to THE LITTLE REVIEW.

_Albrecht C. Kipp, Indianapolis_:

Some time ago a friend of yours, and mine, under guise of a Yuletide remembrance, innocently and unapprehensive of the consequences no doubt, presented me with a year’s subscription to the magazine which you purport to edit. Our mutual acquaintance made some point of the fact that you were, as I aspire to be, a Truth-Seeker, and also alluded, in passing, to a feminine pulchritude which you possessed, not ordinarily a concomitant of an intellectual curiosity sufficiently keen to delve to the bottom of things material and spiritual. I therefore looked forward with undeniable expectation to a gratification of an insatiable desire to view the remains of many idols and statues still unbroken, which have been laboriously erected by the prejudice, credulity and ignorance of mankind for eons. Permit me to apprise you of my keen disappointment in perusing what I have found ensconced between the covers of your magazine.

I was given to understand that you were a quasi-missionary, in the most elastic sense of that word, and as one who is sincerely trying to fathom your mission, if one you have, I am writing to ascertain what it may be, because, owing either to an utter failure of a somewhat impoverished sense of humor or a too ordinary quantum of common sense, I seem to miss what you are driving at. If your magazine is designed to interest a coterie of semi-crazed, halfbaked, “fin de siècle” ideologists, I would appreciate a recognition of your object. To be quite frank with you, however, I do not yet consider myself in the proper frame of mind to be classified in that category of readers without demur. I am only a humble Searcher for the Truth in Life in all its phases and being congenitally opposed to the baleful spreading of “Buschwa,” I seem to find my mental equipoise disturbed by an attempt to diagnose by any rational standard most of the alleged literary ebullitions which find place in your REVIEW.

If we were still living in the Stone Age and reading matter of any sort were still a scarce article, it might be necessary to put up with the poetical balderdash which you publish. But having the daily newspapers to contend with and other pernicious thiefs of valuable time, it seems a heinous offense to a perfectly respectable mind to offer it, the unripe or overripe, mayhap, products of insane mentalities.

No doubt the fault is entirely that of an unschooled intellect, but at that, I have to take my mind as it is. Just as it is unable to fathom this Christian Science drivel, in that same measure does it utterly fail to be touched by what has appeared in THE LITTLE REVIEW of the past four months.

Let me assure you that I have made an honest effort to understand your viewpoint. Unless, however, I am cleared up as to what your aim and goal may be, I am compelled, in self defense, to request you to kindly discontinue sending your magazine to me. It may deflour my joy of life and ruin a saving and virtuous sense of the funny. You are too kindhearted, I am sure, as our mutual acquaintance informs me, to be an accessory before the fact to such an ungracious crime.

_Sada Cowan, New York_:

Your article on Mrs. Havelock Ellis was wonderful! Mrs. Ellis failed here ... just as in Chicago. I admire the clear and concise way in which you illumined the reason of her failure.

There is so much work to be done it seems wicked that a woman, to whom the world is so ready and willing to listen, who has the gift of poetic expression and direct logical thinking, should waste her powers. It is as though she held understanding and wisdom in her hands—tightly clenched—then when she should hold out those gifts to the world, she opened wide her fingers ... here a flash—there a glimmer!—And all vanishes!

_E. C. A. Smith, Grosse Ile, Michigan_:

I was delighted with your critique on Mrs. Ellis, not that I feel she fell as short as you seem to think, but because your own article made a beginning on things which must be said. I also emphatically endorse your views on enabling the poor to restrict their birthrate, not on sentimental grounds, but because I know by experience it would be a wise economy for the state. It is natural for wholesome people to want children; the rise in the labor market caused by the dropping off in production by the cowardly and incompetent would be amply compensated by the reduction in the ranks of economically valueless dependents. It would take less, per capita, to support orphan and insane asylums, dispensaries, and jails—not to speak of the wasteful drain of unestimated sporadic charity. The contention that it would contribute to immorality is absolutely absurd to anyone who has tried rescue work—girls have child after child, undeterred by pain or shame, just as the mentally deficient in other lines injure themselves in their frenzies.

The only way one has a right to judge life is to look at it from the inside. Before I read Havelock Ellis I was unable to take this view of the subjects you so sanely and clearly project on our imaginations. After laying down his book I found my only shock came from some of the methods employed in “curing” these unfortunates. From the histories of cases he cites, I should consider it fair to conclude that the nervous organization of inverts tended to average below par—as is the usual medical view. This may be a psychic, not physical, result. Personally, I cannot see any effect the reading of that material has had on me except to make me more wisely charitable in my views. It has broadened my ideals, without weakening them. It has put a new value on normality. It has not modified my personal theory of love any more than the not-entirely aesthetic conditions of carrying and bearing my children did. There are points about that sort of experience—especially the attitude of the inexperienced—which makes the prude’s attitude to the whole broad question ridiculous. Another generation will regard ours as we do the Victorians—my shade will grind its spirit teeth to hear them laugh.

I am not sure your point of view as a writer rather than a speaker does not make you overlook legitimate limitations in Mrs. Ellis’s position. A speaker can often suggest far more than she actually utters; the conclusions people are inspired to make for themselves are of far greater value than if they were cast forth with inspired eloquence. To antagonize an audience by forcing your point is to lose efficiency. In print one has not the personal element so strongly and immediately to consider. Perhaps she was subtler than Emma Goldman, but not so much weaker as you think.

THE LITTLE REVIEW is the most satisfactory source of mental stimulation I have yet discovered. If I do not always agree with it I at least have the sense of arguing with a friend whose intellect I respect—never did I feel that for any other publication. And I love freshness and freedom and enthusiasm as I love youth itself—they’re the qualities that promise growth.

_Stella Worden Smith, Monte Vista Heights, Cal._:

For six months or so I have been blessed with the presense of your LITTLE REVIEW. Many times I have wanted to tell you so. It is a matter of deep gratitude that at last one can open the pages of a magazine and feel that sense of freedom and incomparable beauty that one does in, say, looking out at a sunset across the mountains—and no more hampering! You give new horizons, fresh inspiration, and revive the creative impulse that is more likely to be snuffed out than stimulated when one peruses the majority of our “best” magazines. Forgive me if I seem over enthusiastic, but it springs from a gratitude born of great need. And you have filled it.

Your review of Mr. Powys’s lectures have carried me back four years into a period when I was studying music in New York with a Norwegian singer, and she and I listened to him at the Brooklyn Institute week by week! Never will I forget it. And she—well, she is a genius herself, an interpreter of Norwegian folk songs—and Powys lit her soul until it flamed forth like a beacon! If you heard his Shelley, I think you saw the veritable incarnation of that transcendent spirit....

Then I listened to him again in Buffalo, last year, on Keats. And the audience, mostly women (God forgive them!) seemed like school children—no, I will not confound such innocent souls with the inert mass that confronted him! And this is our culture!

I think the spirit of your magazine is to other magazines what Powys is to other lecturers. He makes you forget that he is such. You become part of his theme, or is it, _himself_? And so it is I seem both to lose and find myself when I read the pages of THE LITTLE REVIEW.

The “Little Review” Gives a Party!

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THE EGOIST

Every Number of THE EGOIST Contains an Admirable Editorial by Dora Marsden

In addition to the regular contributors, James Joyce, Muriel Ciolkowska and Richard Aldington, the March Number contains an article on James Elroy Flecker by Harold Monro and poems by Paul Fort, prince des poètes, and F. S. Flint.