Vol. LXXXVIII No. 5
The
Yale Literary Magazine
Conducted by the
Students of Yale University.
[Illustration]
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February, 1923.
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_A Story of Progress_
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THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE
Contents
FEBRUARY, 1923
Leader WINFIELD SHIRAS 137
Five Sonnets MAXWELL E. FOSTER 140
Girl Friends NORMAN R. JAFFRAY 145
Under the Arch I Passed MORRIS TYLER 146
A Benediction WALTER EDWARDS HOUGHTON, JR. 147
Sonnet J. CROSBY BROWN, JR. 148
Georgiana RUSSELL W. DAVENPORT 149
The Artistry of Art MAXWELL E. FOSTER 164
Gossip W. T. BISSELL 170
_Book Reviews_ 174
_Editor’s Table_ 180
The Yale Literary Magazine
VOL. LXXXVIII FEBRUARY, 1923 NO. 5
_EDITORS_
MAXWELL EVARTS FOSTER
RUSSELL WHEELER DAVENPORT
ROBERT CHAPMAN BATES
WINFIELD SHIRAS
FRANCIS OTTO MATTHIESSEN
_BUSINESS MANAGERS_
CHARLES EVANDER SCHLEY
HORACE JEREMIAH VOORHIS
_Leader_
We appear to have been surrounded in these weeks by a polemic atmosphere.
Tremendous controversies have proved and disproved the validity of
Christianity, the inability of the Faculty and Corporation to make
great men from Yale undergraduates, and whether we should be made to
go to Chapel on Sundays and to recitations on other days. Editorials,
communications, and private discussions continue to feed the maw of this
wholesale argumentative machinery, and to the casual observer, a spirit
of radicalism hovers above the campus, clouding or illuminating it as the
individual chooses to suppose.
There is no place here to discuss the beneficial effect of controversy
upon thought. Nor is there any need for pointing out the possibility
of reform arising from the conviction which thought brings. It is the
controversy itself which is interesting, especially in an institution
where experience and tradition form the basis of the laws and customs.
Controversy at Yale must mean an offensive begun by young minds upon what
time has taught their controlling elders. And consequently, as is being
seen, it takes a ton of controversy to germinate a pound of “reform”.
But young minds are impulsively active. They are impatient, and the
distant hope of a change in a present state of affairs holds in itself
a vast attraction. The philosophy of “all things must change”, applied
to conditions as well as to matter, extends a sweet and optimistic
prospect to youth. And it is to this natural tendency, as well as to any
deep-rooted sincerity concerning evils, that much of our controversy
may be attributed. And when a beginning has been made, a flaming
question raised, there are the additional attractions of being given
an opportunity to turn clever phrases, to appear in the public eye, to
champion or rend in a spirit of battle. The argumentative machinery
clanks frantically, and the sound and rhythm of it beats a false
sincerity into the minds of the controversialists, a kind of belief
founded more upon emotional than mental activity; more upon desire than
knowledge.
A controversy may be said to be worth while to us only when it involves
more thought than impulse. A questionaire has recently been sent
broadcast through the University which is quite definite in its spirit
of controversy, but which falls for no definiteness of thought. Rather,
it requires the impulsive reply, the mere “yes” or “no” form. Do we (yes
or no) think Sunday Chapel should be abolished? Are we (yes or no) in
favor of unlimited cuts from recitations for those whose stand is above
70 per cent.? Although there is certainly no chance to turn phrases
here, the philosophy of change readily asserts itself. It is so easy and
delightful to change things with a slight swift affirmation or negation.
Those who write “yes” to the suggestion of unlimited cuts may be the
identical persons who have been complaining that certain professors
require all cuts, even within the present limited range, to be made up.
Nor do those hasty souls pause to consider that continuous attendance
would be inevitably required under the new system through a more severe
grading and a greater emphasis upon examinations. But it is so easy
and delightful to write “yes”, whereas to reply in the negative would
indicate a desire for the boring continuation of existing conditions!
Then, says the non-University man, what is the advantage of a system
of education which stimulates emotional rather than rational opinion?
The answer is simply we learn through disappointments, and through a
later realization of our childlike wistfulness for new things. This
latter begins often as early as our Senior year, in which we realize
other things as well, including our transience as undergraduates and our
lack of time for conducting many of the new states of affairs which we
advocate so heartily, such as complete student government. There is too
much extra-curriculum activity already in our lives here to allow us to
be administrators as well. Also, in Senior year, we tend to acquire more
or less veneration for the force of experience and for the opinions of
older minds than our own. The greatest lesson of life is dawning upon
us,—that the truest form of living is one which is built upon simplicity,
fundamentals, and a direction of our actions by old example.
University life, operating upon our intelligent spirit, is the emerging
from the sensationalism of thought and action craved by youth, into
the more simple contemplative nature of maturity. In our Freshman and
Sophomore years we seek diversion almost wholly in gaudy forms. Then,—too
soon, it seems—we find that we were wrong, that it is the life of the
Quadrangle, the relationship of friends, the contact with the internal
rather than with the external shows, which are the vital and permanent
attractions. The fire-brand element is prone to vanish.
Whether all this may be considered too conservative in the present day
and place; whether, in itself, it is a turning of phrases, or invites
controversy by _attacking_ controversy, is extraneous. Whether it may
be thought to neglect too much the good influence of controversy upon
right thinking, is another and fairer question. One thing it seeks
to inculcate: a realization of the component parts of undergraduate
controversy, a useful knowledge of the natural emotional forces involved
which veil clarity; so that truth may be found more fully than in the
replies to questionaires and in the disputes revolving about destructive
editorials.
WINFIELD SHIRAS.
_Five Sonnets_
1
Now lift the burden of your pagan hair,
And shame the sun; now stretch your eager hands,
And with your lily-fingers fasten bands
About me. I am Prometheus, and so dare.
Your eyes are vultures and my heart their fare,
But you are something no one understands,
You are the spirit of the falling sands,
You are the color that is lost in prayer.
I am Prometheus, but your dreams conceive
New subtle desolations for desire,
Holding aloft the gold unbroken bowl.
What wisdom of black art can so deceive?
For though it is the guerdon of my soul,
I cannot reach to steal that Titan fire.
2
Let the Hippolytuses make their prayers
To altars of cold death, and let them take
The dead results their clear libations make,
Or with bowed head climb up the golden stairs.
The glory of their dying is all theirs
Who have found fire only about the stake,—
It is a pity we should try to break
The perfect symmetry of their despairs.
But we who are the children of our birth
Loving the clay we are, and are to be,
Find more sufficient life wherein we spawn,
And eat and drink, mere creatures of the earth,
And so endure with less fragility
The sun and starlight of the lonely dawn.
3
I cannot watch this dawn with humble eyes,
Feel the wind on my forehead, and not feel
My genius and my destiny reveal
Themselves unto the surge of that surmise,
Nor with a humdrum and dust-worn surprise
Can I unveil the λόγος you conceal,
Or praise the Potter or the Potter’s wheel
For having made the beautiful that dies.
It is with a new light I find my way,
But you have given that; it is your light.
And if I walked in darkness as of old,
I should not blame the Gods, nor shall I say
That they have changed into this day the night,
Or fashioned of my crown of thorns this gold.
4
Could I foresee the Truth gleaming ahead
Out of our common reach, but in my own,
I should not go unto that perilous throne
To lose myself among the famous dead.
For in the glory where a martyr’s bled
Lurks a renunciation of the known,—
His wine is salty, and his bread a stone....
Mine is a sparkling wine, mine sweetened bread.
I care not for a deathless imagery
With you a living image by my side,
Nor for a visioned truth with you the true.
I need no Godhood save the gift of pride
To make my idol my idolatry,
And me insatiate of only you.
5
A moment hold that pose for my applause:
My heart’s an artist; it would paint its fill.
Let you the model be the test of skill
Whether or not your eye or mine’s the cause.
No need this moment for artistic laws;
Lost in the poem is the prosaic will—,
My art is lost in you. And do you kill
The picture moving so?—A moment pause.
So goes the brush on canvas, so the rhyme,
And so mortality. What do we fear
If there be only a moment, so that lives?
The aeon passes, and no dream regives
Its passion repetition in our time.
Pause for a moment. There is beauty here.
MAXWELL E. FOSTER.
_Girl Friends_
On the bench at the piano, playing
Very close together,
Fingers touching one another lightly—
Light as any feather—
Sat they, smiling to each other brightly
What their hearts were saying.
One would turn the sheets of music over
Gently, for the other,
As a kind and sympathetic sister
Helps a younger brother;
Till at last she bent and swiftly kissed her
As one would a lover.
NORMAN R. JAFFRAY.
_Under the Arch I Passed_
Under the arch I passed
Out of a blasphemous world
Into the quiet of years
And of old lives departed.
Under the arch I passed
Out of life’s traffic and din
Into the playground of youth
And of ghostly tradition.
Under the arch I passed
Out of a turmoil of gain
Into the light of the truth
And of days past recalling.
MORRIS TYLER.
_A Benediction_
What if the storm to-night
Drive us on unknown shore?
What if the morning light
Never shall bless us more?
Need we to fear or care
What is our given share?
Dawn will bring skies of blue,
And calm will the waters be—
Long as I live for you,
And long as you live for me.
WALTER EDWARDS HOUGHTON, JR.
_Sonnet_
Free have I wandered over all earth’s lands
Where paths are windy roads; on stately ships
I sought my dreams where the Pacific dips
And swells and breaks its heart out on the sands.
I found a love of small boats and the sky
With low swung stars, the friendly tropic rain
And ebbing tides in haste to flood again,
A love of Beauty that may not pass by.
I want not joys of many towered halls,
Of proud cathedrals or the seats of kings,
But only stillness to enshadow me
In places where the world to silence falls
Wondering at the loveliness of things
Like sun and starshine on the hills and sea.
J. CROSBY BROWN, JR.
_Georgiana_
If Helen Trumbull had lived in the 19th, instead of in the 20th century,
there would have been no turmoil in her life and little romance. But
being a child of the Victorian era, rigorously instructed in the
puritanism of old Connecticut, and taught to accept without question the
old moral axioms of her forefathers, she was confronted, at the very
outset of her career, with the conflict between her moral heritage, and
the desire to cultivate her active mind. Of course, at the age of ten
or twelve, no such conflict existed. What the Bible said about lying,
and loving God and your neighbor seemed adequate to cover any of life’s
emergencies. Marriage was taken for granted: it was a straight-forward
compact with God. There was nothing to be concealed in the marriage
relationship. Father and mother were just two people.
These things are all familiar to the modern reader. He has heard about
them. Indeed, most readers have themselves sprung from some such
atmosphere, and know, to their sorrow, how the 19th century prepared
one for life. But Helen, like most of us, thought herself the exception
rather than the rule. When she came home, after commencement exercises in
her twelfth year, bearing the “best scholarship” cup, and a prize for a
theme about the life of Christ, she experienced, for the first time, that
feeling of confidence in her own mental prowess, which was to accompany
her through life. Henceforth, the pleasure of exercising her mind was
among the greatest of all pleasures. Henceforth, she could not be content
with accepting everything on faith. And, perhaps, at this point we may
place the beginning of a conflict in her nature which she never quite
succeeded in solving.
Of course the difficulty grew slowly and imperceptibly. She was confirmed
in the Episcopal Church. She took her vows with the utmost solemnity,
her whole nature responding passionately to the mystery of her religion.
After confirmation there was a deep sense of responsibility toward
God, as well as an appeal, derived from the beauty of the Christian
conception, which aroused a strain of poetry in her. And these things
were only intensified as she grew to understand the prerogatives and the
subtleties of womanhood. At school she was respected for her brilliance
and conscientiousness, and loved for her dark eyes and hair, her slim
figure, and the frank, open-hearted way she had of talking to people. She
was not a “leader”, because her intense religious faith made her a trifle
“different”. Yet the girls felt that they could always go to her when
assistance of any kind was needed. And the boys who fell in love with her
eyes were always treated in the kindest, most sympathetic way. They did
not know how much it thrilled her to have a crowd of them to “manage”,
nor how many hours she had spent scheming for secret and complicated
flirtations.
However, “the truth will out”, and it soon became whispered that Helen
was a “flirt”—although “just in fun”. Indeed, the game held a dual
fascination for her, because it not only satisfied her love of emotional
excitement and mystery, but also supplied a field of activity into which
her mind could overflow. Neither her teachers nor her parents recognized
this. They smiled, in a reminiscent way, and rejected the thought that
Helen was learning to play with fire.
When she was sixteen, she played once too often, with a boy named
Harry McMichael, who was a freshman football hero at Harvard. His
vigorous personality, and the almost savage way he took her hand,
after she had tempted him for several days “in fun”, quite swept her
away, so that her puritanism seemed all afloat in a flood of emotions.
She had never thought of this contingency. Heretofore, she had been
mistress, not only of her lovers, but of herself also. Yet this time
the dams seemed to break. And she found herself leading Harry on, quite
delicately—unsatisfied until he had kissed her. She even made him do it
more than once, although, as it appeared to him, reluctantly.
After this episode her conscience roused itself from a New England
slumber, and asserted the old principles, even to the verge of extreme
asceticism. But there was no longer the old mystery lurking in life; and,
coincidently, there was no longer the old fascination in the communion
service. She wrote Harry a letter saying that they had done wrong; they
must never do it again. But she could not really believe this—what
was there wrong about it, anyway? At the time, it was beautiful. And
there ought to be nothing left for regret save perhaps the memory of
that beauty. It seemed to her extremely narrow to eliminate this kind
of relationship from life entirely—to sit back and wait for a stupid
old husband. She read a good deal of Shelley, and managed, against
all odds, to skim through a book by Havelock Ellis. Reason, she said,
ought to dominate life—reason and beauty. So she smoked a cigarette and
experienced a wild, imaginative thrill—a thrill which only ended in the
old pangs of conscience which seemed to curse her in every new venture.
A more trying experience arrived a year later, when she met John Emerson,
from Williams, flirted with him in her usual manner, and was for a
second time overcome by her emotions. In this case, however, she had
been even more the aggressor than in the former, and poor John, who had
himself a puritan ancestry and a dim belief in the ways of God, could
do nothing but respond to her clever insinuations. Four or five times
they met, during the summer. Each time, it seemed to Helen that a new
world had been opened up before her. Each time, the old world receded a
step, though tearing with it part of her heart. Yet John announced one
night, passionately, that he loved her and wanted to marry her. She was
overwhelmed. She had not thought of love—like that. She did not love
John. She wept.
Here at last common sense came to perform a function which religion
seemed powerless to perform. John held her tightly and stroked her dark
hair, but she writhed inwardly. A kind of agony petrified her. This was
her work—her damnable thoughtlessness. She had made him love.
Of course it all ended in a tragedy, and she had to send John away,
definitely. The old religion was sought as a refuge from strife.
It afforded immeasurable comfort. God seemed clothed in His truest
light—that of the forgiver—the comforter. Her heart could not worship
Him enough, and her lips could not satisfy all that she had to say in
prayer. True, she never gave up her flirtations. They seemed to be an
indispensable outlet to her nature. But experience had taught her the
boundary lines which lie between men and women. This, and a refreshed
enthusiasm for the church guided her life successfully for the ensuing
six or seven years.
She was twenty-four when she met Roger Lockwood. It was at a fancy dress
ball in Hartford, to which she had come a trifle reluctantly, since the
prospect of a repetition of familiarly identical scenes did not stimulate
her imagination. However, once having arrived, she found herself enjoying
the gayly colored dresses and the jazz music. She quite lost herself in
the crowd of faces before her. As in her coming-out year, she allowed
her consciousness of self to be swept away, and, urged on by the music,
confronted one partner after another with a rapid-fire of conversation
and glances from her eyes. She seemed almost to dominate the room at
times—especially to-night—although she could have given no very definite
reason for it. Perhaps it was merely that her ever active nature was
seeking some new and more thrilling experience.
Roger, on the other hand, was not participating to any great extent in
the dancing. He was something of a ludicrous figure—calm, passive, tall,
and dressed as a young Southern gentleman of the thirties, in brown plaid
trousers, high collar, and black bow tie. He wandered listlessly from
one corner of the room to another, keeping his eyes upon the figures
of the dancers, but rarely cutting in. He seemed to be searching for
something intangible—so intangible that he did not know what it was. He
could merely contemplate the faces around him, and follow the rhythm of
the music in an imaginative way. Roger was a visitor at Hartford. He was
up there seeking merely for diversion. He wanted to divert his mind from
the constantly recurrant thoughts of his fiancée, who had gone with her
family to Europe for the winter.
Stolidly he “looked over” the girls as they went past. He was surprised
to find so many of them really beautiful. There was one in particular who
was dressed in the costume of the harem,—scarlet with spangles,—and whose
fair, almost childish, face suggested moonlight and a kind of misplaced
romance. Her light hair hung prettily over her forehead. She talked with
her partners in an intimate way. He was introduced to her. But he could
proceed no more than a few steps before some one cut in; and although he
repeated this process several times, he found at last more satisfaction
in gazing at her from a distance and experiencing a tantalizing feeling
in the unattainableness of her beauty. After all, it did not matter
much since he was engaged to a girl fully as beautiful. Besides, there
were plenty of others to dance with. And presently he became aware of a
slim, dark-haired figure, in a gipsy costume, which often swept by him.
He looked more closely at the face; and once he caught the mischievous,
half-serious glance of her eyes.
“Who is that?” he asked his friend, standing beside him.
“Who?”
“That girl in a gipsy dress.”
“That’s Helen Trumbull. Want to meet her?”
“Yes.”
His friend dragged him by the arm into the midst of the dancers. Roger
could not help thinking how ridiculous his brown plaid trousers must
appear.
“Mr. Lockwood—Mr. Trumbull.”
They danced. Roger experienced a slight thrill in the way she held him.
Her touch was very delicate. But she kept her hand perhaps a trifle too
far toward the back of her neck.
“Here I am at last,” he said. “I have been looking for you all evening.”
“How tragic, to be kept in such agony of suspense for three hours!”
She said it so quickly that he was put on his mettle. “Has it only been
three hours? It seemed like six!”
She laughed. “May I ask _why_ you delayed so long?”
“I was stuck.”
“Oh, too bad. With whom?”
“With Dorothy Hollingshead.” He referred to the girl in the scarlet harem
costume.
“Oh, really! How exceptional! I suppose you are still stuck.”
“No,” he replied; “I’m free at last.”
They looked at each other and laughed. But Roger thought, “Hell, this
is platitudinous”; and felt that there was more to be found in her
personality than these rather strained mental gymnastics. “Let’s sit
out,” he suggested on the spur of the moment.
“Already? Why I hardly _know_ you!”
“You might get to know me better.”
“Would it be worth while?” she looked up at him, on the verge of
laughter. He nodded solemnly. And presently she stopped dancing and led
him by the arm out of the room.
“This,” she said, as she sat down in a large gilt-edged arm-chair, “is
the most _un_conventional thing I have ever done.”
“Really? You must be something of a model of excellence.”
“Oh, do you think I could be? I should like to be.”
He wondered how seriously to take this remark.
“Oh,” said she, “you’re a skeptic. You don’t believe any woman is a model
of excellence.”
“I have never found one.”
She turned away prettily.
“Well,” said Roger, “it isn’t a question of models; it’s a question of
more or less.”
“And where would you put me—more or less?”
He hesitated, seeking for a clever twist to give the words.
“Oh there! You see! I have made a wrong impression.”
“I was going to say _more_. But sometimes my first impressions are wrong.”
“And I suppose you would _like_ to have them wrong?”
How cleverly she had touched upon a forbidden subject!
“Yes,” he said, “I would.”
They both laughed then, for it seemed that they had already attained a
kind of intimacy. He was aware that her charms emanated not only from the
way she spoke these, but also from the whole expression of her face and
her body, which was tantalizing—a vague innuendo. He compared her, not
unfavorably, to Georgiana, his absent fiancée. But then he cursed himself
for a fool. Georgiana and he had grown up together.
They returned to the dance, chatting easily, arm in arm. But when supper
came, which was an informal affair, he found himself leading her into
a secluded corner of the room, where they settled themselves into their
chairs, and sipped coffee luxuriously.
“I think you’re a fast worker,” she said, right in the middle of a
silence.
He smiled. “I was about to say the same thing of you.”
“Oh, but it wouldn’t be true—of a girl.”
“No?”
“No.”
The finality of her voice would have been convincing, had it not been for
the expression of her mouth. But it was easy, from this point, to branch
off into a more serious discussion about the relative functions of girls
and boys. In order to ascertain her reaction, he ventured the theory that
a woman was always justified in her flirtations; that the beauty of the
moment, in love, was all that really counted; and that an engagement was
really not binding if either party should lose interest. She disagreed
with this, and said:
“I think an engagement is sacred. Flirting—well, that’s the food of life,
you know. But it’s one of my principles never—”
She paused, fearing that she was becoming a trifle too frank with this
comparative stranger.
“Well, go on. Never—”
“No, I don’t know you well enough to tell you.”
He laughed. “Well, it’s quite obvious what you were going to say.”
She bit her lip and colored, with a flush of anger.
“I suppose you think me a fool,” she said.
“I don’t. I admire you. I think an engagement _is_ sacred—of course. But
what I meant was that often men are carried away—in a moment—by a look or
a gesture—by anything. And I can’t exactly blame them for it. I can’t see
how a man is expected to live up to his ideal, in a case like that.”
“No.” She seemed to ponder the question carefully. “But don’t you see,
it’s the woman’s fault—when men are carried away?”
They looked at each other, then, each recognizing the potentialities of
their own situation. The look was intense. It sent a flush across Helen’s
cheek.
“Perhaps you are engaged. How little I know about you! Are you?”
He hesitated. “No,” he said at length. What did it matter?—this one
evening!
“Ah then,” she replied, “the sky’s the limit.”
“No; the stars!”
They both laughed and proceeded with their coffee. Somehow the
conversation turned upon religion. They grew more and more serious. He
respected her beliefs, although he did not hold them himself.
“There was only once in my life,” she said, alluding vaguely to the
past, “when I didn’t believe. But I was growing up at the time. I was
fascinated by Byron’s character and used to picture him as an ideal
lover. Then I read some of Mathew Arnold. Have you ever read him.”
“Yes—long ago—at college.”
She smiled. “Long ago?”
“Well, four or five years ago—I don’t remember exactly.”
“Oh, you _must_ read him again. He will give you a new point of view.”
“Did he give you that—that theory about engagements?”
“No.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Oh—why—from myself, I guess. It’s common sense, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Isn’t that the way morals are made—from common sense? Don’t your
principles, as you call them, come mostly from your own common sense,
rather than from your religion?”
She hesitated. “Well, put it this way: I think out my principles, and
religion gives me the strength to live up to them. There now—that’s
almost like Mathew Arnold.”
There was quite a long silence.
“My, but we’ve gotten serious,” she said at last, and looked at him, as
though to see if he were playing with her. But it was evident that he was
not.
Presently they returned again to the dance.
Roger decided to prolong his visit to Hartford, and in the course of the
next few days he saw her several times. She did not live very far out of
town. For her part, Helen found herself dangerously fascinated by him.
Whenever she was with him, she was led to suggest things “in fun”—things
which would actually be quite contrary to her puritanical principles. And
he always seemed to respond, up to the very limit, although he had not so
much as tried to take her hand. She reflected that she had never flirted
quite so violently with any man, without having him spoil the excitement
by an attempt to leave the realms of the intellectual, and burst into the
physical. Roger almost satisfied her highest ideal.
She asked Mary Waterworth about him one night, and Mary told her that he
was engaged. Mary even showed her a picture of Georgiana, which Helen
gazed at for a long time. Georgiana had light hair and large eyes, which
were probably brown, and almost classic features. She was very lovely,
Helen thought. The expression of her face seemed to say, “I understand
Roger. I belong to Roger. There is more to bind _us_ together than a
night’s flirtation. There is the whole past.” Helen was jealous in spite
of herself. The picture, which was mounted in a large silver frame, and
which gazed out at the world innocently enough, fascinated her. She could
with difficulty remove her eyes from it.
“What are you looking at?” asked Mary.
“Nothing—I—I thought the face seemed familiar.”
Why, _why_ had Roger lied to her? What could be his motive in telling her
that he was not engaged? It seemed altogether despicable of him—after her
direct question.
The awful thought came to her that he had been playing with her. She had
always feared this—that some man would see through her superficialities,
and _play_ with her. She drew a mental picture of Roger’s calm, ironical
smile, and his conceit in his own success. Oh!
That night they were to drive out to the country, to a barn dance. Roger
arrived in his roadster at the appointed hour. Helen stepped into the
car frigidly, not deigning to take his extended hand. She was going
to punish him—punish him—for leading her on as he had. But no sooner
had the car started than he made her laugh at some foolish joke; and
half of the frost was thawed. Then, too, he was sitting very close to
her. And he had that damnably attractive look in his eyes. She decided
to defer the punishment—for a number of “reasons”. It would spoil
the whole evening—their last evening, since John was bound for New
York the next day. There would be so much fun for both of them—to go
ahead—to-night—just as they had been going. Finally—and this decided
her—by holding her knowledge of his engagement secretly in the back
of her mind, she would be able to inflict a subtler and much more
severe punishment upon him when he was not expecting it. She would be
in the position of an opportunist, with hidden weapons ready for the
emergencies. So she sat back comfortably in the seat beside him, and
talked in the most fascinatingly intimate way that she knew.
They stopped at the top of a long hill, and he swung the car to the
side of the road, so that they could see far out across the moonlit
Connecticut valley.
“We’re out of gas,” he said with a smile, “and besides, I want to look at
the view.”
Helen rather liked the way he said it, since the engine was still turning
over healthily. Still, she hesitated. As he reached for the switches
and turned out the lights, she knew, deep in her nature, that she could
not control _this_ situation. They had better drive on. But then, there
was the thrill of excitement, of the new experience. Again she found
“reasons”. Why, it would be all right. John was in love with Georgiana.
There was no danger. He was a sane, honest man. He desired, like herself,
merely the thrill of the moment. Men who are engaged are safe. Yet even
as this thought flashed into her mind, she felt his hand upon hers, and
his arm around her shoulders. For a moment the picture of Georgiana
flashed before her eyes. She saw, again, Georgiana’s beautiful hair and
her supreme expression. Then it was that she gave herself up to Roger
entirely, for the vision of the other girl made him seem even more
intensely romantic.
Her principles! Where were they now? After Roger had started up the car
again, the whole past seemed to cry out to her that she had been unworthy
of herself.
“Roger,” she said, holding his arm, “we ought not to have done that?”
“Why not?”
“Because—you—I know you are engaged.”
He turned upon her, a little fiercely. “_How_ did you know that?”
“Some one told me.”
“Well, what if I am?” he said. “I suppose you think me insincere—and a
beast.”
“No, I was thinking of myself. I knew you were engaged. I ought not to
have allowed you to go ahead.”
“Hell,” he said, “it isn’t your fault. It’s Georgie’s fault. I didn’t
want her to go abroad. I told her that I couldn’t stand it. But she
laughed, not being able to understand a man’s point of view. She laughed
and said that if I really loved her, it would be easy. But it isn’t easy,
and I do love her.”
“Have you loved her—long?”
“All my life. We were brought up together. I can’t remember any girls at
all, without having the impression of Georgie mixed up with them somehow.”
“And you have done—this—before?”
“Occasionally. You see, Georgie is a peculiar character. She is too
exacting. She sails serenely on—like an angel—imagining that everyone
else is an angel also. Sometimes, when she deserts me for a long time, I
don’t live up to scratch. I always complain to her, and tell her about
it. But she laughs, and calls me silly.”
“How long have you been engaged?”
“Actually, only about six months.”
“Oh.” The problem fascinated Helen. And it was, for her, an important
problem, since she wished to ascertain how much evil she had done. She
began to feel extremely unhappy, not only because she had broken her
principles, but mainly because she had lost her supremacy as mistress
of the situation. Artistically, she had failed. And she writhed at the
thought of how the punishment which she had intended to inflict upon
Roger had turned itself back upon her.
On the other hand, she told herself inwardly that neither was Roger
really in love with Georgiana, nor Georgiana with Roger. She reiterated
this several times. It gave her comfort. And she justified her
presumption on the grounds that Roger was too easily led astray, and
Georgiana apparently too casual, for any very lasting relationship to
exist between them.
Toward the close of that evening she began to feel more the mistress of
the situation again.
Of course, after Roger had gone back to New York, she experienced some
qualms. Indeed, there were times when it made her utterly miserable, to
think what she had done, and when Georgiana’s picture would come before
her eyes again to arouse a poignant feeling of remorse. Her flirtations
had not only been unfair to Roger: they would be considered despicable by
Georgiana. And somehow she loved and admired Georgiana. At such times,
religion seemed the only outlet to her emotions, and the altar the only
pedestal upon which she could place her heart. Thus she was comforted.
Nevertheless, that winter proved to be a period of emotional ups and
downs. Roger visited Hartford more and more frequently. Each time he
came the same scenes were enacted, alone, somewhere, in the little
roadster, on the highway. It was simply inevitable. To begin with, he
had kissed her once; and ever after that his kisses seemed not sinful,
but natural. She found, also, that he filled a definite place in her
life. She needed him. And this need was only the more strengthened by the
gradual association of him with her religious emotions. Starting from the
feelings of remorse, her prayers gradually changed from fervent requests
for strength to keep Roger away, to pleas, as fervent, that he come back
again soon. Georgiana was thrust into the background. Although she did
not admit it, Helen was in love. In a sense it was only her just share of
the spoils that she have these short hours with Roger, while Georgiana
was gallivanting about Europe.
But such a state of affairs couldn’t last long. Helen had completely
rationalized her principles, and Roger had completely ignored his duties
toward Georgiana. He woke up to this fact one day. He was at first
disturbed, but later cleared up the matter a little, with a grin, by
saying that for a lover there were really no _duties_. The mere fact that
it seemed to be a _duty_ for him to leave Helen alone, proved a great
deal—proved, in fact, that he was no longer in love with Georgiana. What
a stupid ass he had been, all this time. He was in love with the past,
but not with Georgiana. He had allowed a childish emotion to dominate
his maturity. Georgiana was a lovely dream; but she could never be his
wife. Ah! Who else—who else—but Helen? His mind fluctuated. It hovered
indecisively for several weeks. He saw Helen again. They parted, almost
tearfully. And then the only course seemed to be to write Georgiana, and
break the engagement.
Here was a small tragedy. But he accomplished the task. And the tragic
feelings aroused were transferred over to Helen’s personality, making his
love for her all the more compelling.
Then he told her, one night, what he had done.
For her, it was very much like a pitcher of cold water poured on one who
is half asleep. With a gasp she was roused from her rationalized dreams.
The most terrible aspect of it was that the deed was already done. It was
irretrievable. She had instigated it. She had allowed the whole affair
to drift to this conclusion. She could articulate nothing, but held
closely to Roger, sobbing—torn by the conflicting passions within her.
Never before had she actually seen God face to face. But now He came to
her, as a terrible, revengeful angel, out from the past; while Roger, who
sat there, seemed to represent the other extreme of her being—her mortal
love. Call it casual love—you Christian hypocrites; call it anything you
will; it was nevertheless present, in the person of this man, and its
power over her was irresistible. It seemed to her that her nature would
break in two. Especially after she had sent Roger away, with her promise
to give him an answer on the morrow—especially then, alone in her room,
she experienced a terrible feeling of being cut in half. The God of her
ancestors was simply merciless. “Why—why? What have I done?” she cried.
The answer was that she had flirted; she had forgotten her principles—one
moment—one fleeting moment; she had rationalized; she had debased her
own self-respect. Yet she was in love, now, and he was in love with her.
There was only one course to be taken.
Perhaps two lovers never embraced more passionately than these two when
Roger learned the next day what her decision had been. He understood,
almost as well as she, the tremendous storm within her. He understood
that he alone could create a haven where the storm might not enter, and
where this delicate, fitful ship could lie happily at anchor.
They were married quite peacefully in an old New England church, and she
went with him to live in New York.
Winter passed. Spring came. Georgiana returned. It is only after some
such calm as this that one can look back and contemplate the true causes
of a storm. Helen found, after she had lived intimately with Roger for a
short time, that there were a great many things yet to be learned about
each other’s characters. Not only this. There were a great many things
to be forgiven in each other’s characters—more things, perhaps, than the
average man and wife can forgive. In the first place, she was vivacious;
he was stolid. She had a quick mind, essentially French; his mind was
slow and Anglo-Saxon. She was loath to recognize these things; she tried
to rationalize them. But they were there continually to remind her that
she had a very difficult situation to manage, if she were to maintain her
supremacy. Of course she loved Roger. But it was not the same as in the
days when she had flirted with him.
Georgiana had come back—that was the difficulty. One day she heard Roger
return from work, and since he did not go directly to greet her as
usual, she started toward the parlor to greet him. Yet at the door she
paused, for she saw him in front of the window, bending over something.
Helen slipped behind the curtain and peered through the crack. He held a
picture in his hand; and as he went over to the light to look at it more
intensely, she saw who it was.
“God, but she was a beautiful girl!” said her husband, as he gazed for a
long time into those deep eyes.
Presently he turned, went over to a drawer in the bottom of the
book-case, and started to put the picture away. Helen retired quickly
from the curtain. What troubled her most of all was Roger’s queer
psychology, which concealed these things. Then, too, there was the
distasteful, though emotional, necessity of obtaining the picture, and
destroying it, without discovery.
RUSSELL W. DAVENPORT.
_The Artistry of Art_
When we speak of an artist we do not think of a day-laborer. Somehow
there is a connotation of long fingers and delicate features, an
implication as of flowers, a suggestion of the super-fine. About him as a
halo is the word beauty.
Whatever materials he lays hold of, he plucks out of it beauty: out of
the dung-hill the flower, out of the chill moon passion, out of the night
light, out of the noon-tide shade. If he is found lying in the gutter, as
Oscar Wilde has remarked, he will at least be looking at the stars.
The artist is primarily a temperament. He is a point of view. Life may be
a dome of many-colored glass, and the white radiance of eternity thrown
through it to our minds in varying colors, but the artist sees them all,
and so sees white, or sees none of them and sees black. He looks at life
comprehensively, and seeks a unity. Where another is content with detail,
the artist demands structure. The general are genial enough to take life
as it comes, and are not concerned that it is chaos. The artist either
goes forth to meet life, or evades it utterly in both cases for the
purpose of making it cosmos. While others are content with a moderate
dividend of experience, the artist must have all of experience, or none
of it. He must be either a Pan or a Narcissus, a universalist, or an
egoist.
The Philistine world talk of artists as something not undesirable
certainly as past events, but undesired as present calamities. There is
in the air a sense of anxiety concerning them. They make the complacent
so uncomfortable. So has the world damned them as unique, apart from the
majority, being fearful of their destiny, and has evolved, because of
this fear, the false dogma of spontaneous creation in art. A Dante is
born the author of the Divine Comedy; a Shelley rises a child from the
womb the inevitable father of the Prometheus and the Cenci; a George
Meredith is given a somewhat humbler birth in a fashionable tailor’s
shop the fated creator of the “Egoist” and Modern Love.
At any play, novel or poem in which destiny played such an omnipotent
part the world would turn up its nose, and say: “Absurd! That’s not real,
that’s not life.” But in the case of the world’s artists it pleases the
general to say: “Well, well, life is stranger than fiction, is it not?”
A modern philosopher has written, and it seems to me most wisely, “Our
temperaments are in some sort our destinies”. Now let me admit thus far
the world’s conclusion. The true artist is born like the rest of us with
a certain temperament, which is in some sort his destiny. But it is at
this point we must leave the world. For if it were only this birthright
that was required, certainly there would be in this present day a
plethora of geniuses.
The artist is primarily a temperament, but secondarily he is an artist.
The importance I attach to this secondary cause of creative ability is
the importance of the unknown, or at best the unrecognized. For it is in
the world’s tradition to ignore this fact. Only the geniuses themselves
have spoken for the artistry of art.
Let us consider this paradox for a moment. The world’s idea of an artist
as born the child of destiny, conceived in the womb of Fate, fore-doomed
a priori; and the world’s idea of all other men as free, at least in
part, to form and fashion their own daily lives.
When we speak of an artist we do not think of a day-laborer, nor of
labor. We are amused at Whistler’s famous repartee to Ruskin’s lawyer
when he asked him how he dared charge so much for an hour’s work, and
Whistler replied, “Not for an hour’s work, but for the knowledge of a
lifetime,” but as a jury we are not convinced by it. And yet in following
the development of certain great poets I am more and more capable of
imagining what I know to be true, that, granted the temperament, genius
is made by intense industry; and that it is labor which causes the
difference between the great man and the unhappy dilettante.
Dante’s “Vita Nuova” is merely a promise of the Divine Comedy. His
greatness consists not in his having made, but in his having kept that
promise. You have in this little book a beautiful example of the artistic
temperament, and a brilliant statement of the methods of greatness:
“Then it came to pass that, walking on a road alongside of which was
flowing a very clear stream, so great a desire to say somewhat in verse
came upon me, that I began to consider the method I should observe....
Then I say that my tongue spoke as if it moved of its own accord, and
said, ‘Ladies that have intelligence of Love.’ These words I laid up in
my mind with great joy, thinking to take them for my beginning; wherefore
then, having returned to the above-mentioned city, after some days of
thought I began a canzone with this beginning.”
Now I do not think that walking along a road by a river and thinking
of a girl one loves, and speaking, as if one’s tongue moved of its own
accord, a line of verse concerning her is an unusual performance. In
fact, given the temperament, it seems a very natural one. I venture to
say that no one who has ever written poetry has not done the same. And
Dante’s resulting poem is not extraordinary. It certainly could not at
the time have suggested by itself its author as a compeer of ὁ ποιήτη. It
exemplifies the artistic temperament, and is indicative of it. By it we
know Dante to be a poet. Of his greatness as yet we know nothing.
It is fortunate that at the close of this book of his youth this young
and intense Italian mentions a vision by which was disclosed to him a
secret: “After this sonnet, a wonderful vision appeared to me, in which
I saw things which made me resolve to speak no more of this blessed one,
until I could more worthily treat of her. And to attain to this, I study
to the utmost of my power, as she truly knows. So that, if it shall
please him through whom all things live that my life be prolonged for
some years, I hope to say of her what was never said of any woman.”
Dante was born a poet, but only after seeing this vision of Beatrice
which revealed to him the necessity of artistry did he enter upon his new
life of greatness in the middle of the way of which he wrote the Divine
Comedy. His method was as simple as truth. He studied to the utmost of
his power, as she truly knows. You will remember the creation of the
Divine Comedy made him lean for many years.
So Dante, so Shelley; Shelley who is the example par excellence of the
genius born to make his life an infancy, and sing his fill, pouring
forth his soul in profuse strains of unpremeditated art. For when we
read critically Queen Mab, we are forced to admit that it is at best a
mediocre creation of little weight in the scales of beauty or of truth.
The development to the Prometheus is swift, but it is achieved by the
method of industry.