obvious to need cataloging. And this is the reason she signally fails to
tell the whole of the truth about woman. This is the reason why the
latter chapters of her book, in which she writes of marriage and divorce
and prostitution, are of less worth to the generality of readers than
the earlier ones; though this is not to say that these chapters do not
contain a very great deal of vigorous thinking and excellent suggestion.
But to anyone who holds that the continuance of life is the principal
justification for having lived, yet deplores free love and state
endowment of mothers, there is inevitably an appalling waste, for the
elimination of which she may well be staggered to suggest a remedy.
Mrs. Gallichan's book is not constructive in effect. But it is so
excellently analytical, as far as it goes, that it can scarcely fail to
provoke a great deal of thought.
"Change"
There is coming soon, to the Fine Arts Theatre--that charming Chicago
home of the Irish Players and of "the new note" in drama--a play with an
interesting title. It is called _Change_. It is to be given by the Welsh
Players--which fact alone has a thrill in it. But the theme is even more
compelling.
Two old God-fearing Welsh people have denied themselves of comforts and
pleasures to give their sons an education. Then, when they expect to
reap the benefits of the sacrifice, three unexpected and awful things
happen: the student son has so fallen under the influence of modern
skepticism as to be forced to abandon his father's Calvinistic creed.
The second one has become soaked with socialism and syndicalism. The
third, a chronic invalid, is a Christian and a comfort; but he is
killed, quite unnecessarily, in a labor conflict instigated by his
brother. Then--the two old people again, alone. What can a playwright do
with such a situation? Nothing, certainly, to attract a "capacity
house." But we shall be among the first of that small minority who likes
thinking in the theatre to hear what Mr. Francis has to say. His theme
is tremendous.
The Poetry of Alice Meynell
LLEWELLYN JONES
Not least among the stirring events of our present poetical renaissance
are the publication of the collected editions of the works of Alice
Meynell and Francis Thompson (Scribner). Spiritually akin, mutually
influencing one another in material as in more subtle ways, their poetry
stands in vivid contrast to the muse of our younger singers, the makers
of what English critics hail as a new Georgian Age. That this difference
gives them an added significance, and not as some critics have said, a
lessened one, is the burden of the present appreciation of the poems of
Alice Meynell. For there is a tendency for the reader who is intoxicated
with poetic modernity to reason somewhat after this fashion. Here, he
will say,--as indeed Mr. Austin Harrison has said of Francis
Thompson--is a "reed pipe of neo-mediaevalism ... a poet of the
gargoyle," not of this modern world, and so neither in sympathy of
thought or melody with us of the twentieth century, its free life and
_vers libre_. All this, of course, because, Francis Thompson was--as is
Mrs. Meynell--a child of the Catholic Church. Our supposititious reader
will continue to the effect that there is no spiritual profit to be had
in reading these poets when the modern attitude is to be found in such
writers as W. W. Gibson, Masefield, and Hardy. But in so arguing, our
reader will be entirely wrong as to the facts, and mistaken in his whole
manner of approach to the realm of poetic values.
Mr. Max Eastman, in his charming book, _The Enjoyment of Poetry_, lays
stress on the fact that poetry is not primarily the registering of
emotions but the expression of keen realizations. A mathematical concept
may arouse an emotion, but the poet makes the actual emotion
transmissible by his selective power in picking out the focal point of
the experience by which it is aroused. If poetry is essentially
realization of life, then we have no longer any excuse for asking our
poets to share our doctrinal views before we consent to read them. On
the contrary, we should be more anxious to read Mrs. Meynell than Mr.
Gibson, if we are modernists, for Mr. Gibson may, conceivably, not be
able to tell us anything we have not already felt. Mrs. Meynell, on the
other hand, can inform our feelings with fresh aspects of experience,
and she does so abundantly. Her Catholicism is not mediaevalism, but, in
so far as it is translatable into her poetry it is simply a vocabulary
for the expression of certain emotional realizations of life which we
modernists find it very hard to express because we do not have the
necessary vocabulary. What can be more modern than the doctrine of the
immanence of God and his abode in man, that much-discussed "social
gospel?" Yet the following poem, not in spite of but through its
Catholic terminology, heightens our realization of brotherhood and
dependence one upon another. It is entitled _The Unknown God_:
One of the crowd went up,
And knelt before the Paten and the Cup,
Received the Lord, returned in peace, and prayed
Close to my side; then in my heart I said:
"O Christ, in this man's life--
This stranger who is Thine--in all his strife,
All his felicity, his good and ill,
In the assaulted stronghold of his will,
"I do confess Thee here,
Alive within this life; I know Thee near
Within this lonely conscience, closed away
Within this brother's solitary day.
"Christ in his unknown heart,
His intellect unknown--this love, this art,
This battle and this peace, this destiny
That I shall never know, look upon me!
"Christ in his numbered breath,
Christ in his beating heart and in his death,
Christ in his mystery! From that secret place
And from that separate dwelling, give me grace."
The spectacle of a general communion again gives Mrs. Meynell
inspiration for a poem whose last two stanzas apply equally as well to
the secular, evolutionary view of salvation as they do to the
ecclesiastical view, and whose last stanza is most suggestive in the
light it throws upon the puzzling discrepancy between the littleness of
man and the unlimited material vast in which he finds himself a floating
speck:
I saw this people as a field of flowers,
Each grown at such a price
The sum of unimaginable powers
Did no more than suffice.
A thousand single central daisies they,
A thousand of the one;
For each, the entire monopoly of day;
For each, the whole of the devoted sun.
Even so typically modern a philosopher as Henri Bergson would find one
of his leading and rather baffling ideas beautifully realized in one of
Mrs. Meynell's sonnets. Matter, Bergson tells us, in all its
manifestations is moulded by a spiritual push from behind it, so that
the sensible world is not a mosaic of atoms obeying fixed laws but
rather a cosmic compromise between matter and spirit, a _modus vivendi_
the operation of which would seem very different to us were our
viewpoint that of pure spirit. Says Mrs. Meynell in _To a Daisy_:
Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide
Like all created things, secrets from me,
And stand, a barrier to eternity.
And I, how can I praise thee well and wide
From where I dwell--upon the hither side?
Thou little veil for so great mystery,
When shall I penetrate all things and thee,
And then look back? For this I must abide,
Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled
Literally between me and the world.
Then I shall drink from in beneath a spring,
And from a poet's side shall read his book.
O daisy mine, what shall it be to look
From God's side even of such a simple thing?
The sense of what might, perhaps, be called restrained paradox in that
sonnet, is frequently met with in Mrs. Meynell's writings, and it
corresponds to aspects of reality which the old religious phraseology
she has so freshly minted for us is alone fitted to convey. _The Young
Neophyte_ is a beautiful sonnet enshrining the fatefulness of every
human action, the gift of the full flower which is implicit in the gift
of the smallest bud, the preparation we are constantly making for crises
which are yet hidden in the future. _Thoughts in Separation_ also deals
with the paradoxical overcoming of the handicaps of personal absence of
our friends through community of thought and feeling. Not only are these
paradoxes in human psychology delicately set forth by the poet, but
those darker ones of human work and destiny are consolingly illuminated
in such a poem as _Builders of Ruins_--which does not depend for its
quality of consolation upon anything foreign to its poetic truth.
One poem in the book is, perhaps, most remarkable for the light it
throws upon the sense in which the term poetic truth may be used, and as
showing the difference between the poetic, the realizable, and,
therefore, the true side of a religion--the side Matthew Arnold was so
anxious to keep--and the mere theological framework, always smelling of
unreality and always in need of renovation. The poem may stand as a
warning against confusing real poetry--in whose truth we need not be
afraid to trust because its author does not inhabit our own thought
world--with versified theology. If all of Mrs. Meynell's work were like
her _Messina, 1908_, then the critic and reader who now mistakenly shun
her would be right. And the poem is a curious commentary upon Mr.
Eastman's insistence that poetry is realization. For in her other poems
the author has presented those aspects of her religion which are
verifiable in experience. Perhaps the quotations given above bear out
that point. But one aspect of religious thought has now been pretty
generally abandoned, not because it has ever been proven false, but
because we have never succeeded in realizing it for ourselves. The God
of orthodox church theodicy never did "make good"; Christ, the Saints,
and even the very material form of the cross itself had to mediate
between man and the divine. And it is precisely in the one case in this
book where Mrs. Meynell tries to present the governing rather than the
immanent God to us that she fails--as, if poetry be realization, we
should expect her to fail. The first stanza of the poem addressed to the
Deity describes in a few bold strokes the wreck of Messina, and ends
with the lines:
Destroyer, we have cowered beneath Thine own
Immediate unintelligible hand.
The second stanza describes the missions of mercy to the stricken city,
and ends:
... our shattered fingers feel
Thy mediate and intelligible hand.
The essential weakness of this dependence for poetic effect upon the two
adjectives and their negatives is no less obvious than the weakness of
the poet's attribution of such apparently impulsive and then
retractatory conduct to a God whose ways must either be explicable in
terms of a human sense of order or not made the subject of human
discourse at all.
Mrs. Meynell describes herself in one of these poems as a singer of a
single mood. Some of her critics have taken her at her word and saved
themselves some trouble thereby in their task of appreciation. But as a
matter of fact, she should not be taken at her own modest estimate, for
her one mood is such a pervasive one, such a large and sane mood, that
it pays to look at more than one aspect of life through its coloring.
And in truth, besides her better-known poems which need no further
mention here, _The Lady Poverty_ and _Renouncement_, for example, there
will be found within the small compass of her beautifully-housed
collection of verse many aspects of nature, all of them instinct with a
mystic shimmer of life, as well as aspects of the innermost life of man
which it is given to few spirits to sing in words--only, in fact, to
those spirits whose effort it is to make their poetry
Plain, behind oracles ... and past
All symbols, simple; perfect, heavenly-wild,
The song some loaded poets reach at last--
The kings that found a Child.
To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and
the great proof of being alive, and it is not denied to criticism
to have it; but then criticism must be sincere, simple, flexible,
ardent, ever widening its knowledge.--Matthew Arnold in _Essays
in Criticism_ (First Series).
An Ancient Radical
WILLIAM L. CHENERY
_Euripides and His Age_, by Gilbert Murray. [Henry Holt and Company,
New York.]
The "conspiracy of silence" which oppressed the youth of those of us who
were born in the late Victorian era never seems more hateful than when
some master hand connects the present labors of liberty with the
strivings of the infinite past. In some fashion the dominating spirits
of a generation ago contrived to make the struggles for human freedom
appear as ugly isolated episodes without precursors or ancestry. They
forgot the Shelleys and the Godwins and they even denied the
significance of the classic forerunners of today's ardent prophets.
There were happy exceptions. Some of us cherish the teachings of a
Virginia professor who, as far as the adolescent capacities of his
students permitted, bridged the gap between Socrates's free questionings
and the contemporary yearnings for a world of uncompromising justice and
beauty. What that Southern student did for his small band of followers
Gilbert Murray has long been doing for the great world. His present
contribution belongs to that satisfying series, _The Home University
Library_. Incidentally, one reflects that this _Home University_ is one
of the few institutions of learning which has completely avoided the
blinders so many are complacently wearing. The Euripides of Murray
suggests to the author--and to the reader, one may claim--both Tolstoi
and Ibsen. But, one hastens to state, Professor Murray is too learned
and thoughtful a man to paint a revolutionary Euripides such as _The
Masses_--much as one loves that exuberant Don Quixote--would delight to
honor and to portray. His onset, however, catches us:
"Every man who possesses real vitality can be seen as the
resultant of two forces," says Murray. "He is first the child of
a particular age, society, convention; of what we may call in one
word a tradition. He is secondly, in one degree or another, a
rebel against that tradition. And the best traditions make the
best rebels. Euripides is the child of a strong and splendid
tradition and is, together with Plato, the fiercest of all rebels
against it.... Euripides, like ourselves, comes in an age of
criticism, following upon an age of movement and action. And for
the most part, like ourselves, he accepts the general standards
on which the movement and action were based. He accepts the
Athenian ideals of free thought, free speech, democracy,
'virtue,' and patriotism. He arraigns his country because she is
false to them."
The suffragist and the feminist movements have recently brought the
great dramatist to his proper appreciation in respect to women. Some of
the passages in the _Medea_ are quoted as often in suffragist campaigns
as the words of Bernard Shaw or of Olive Schreiner. This Greek is
sometimes said to be the first literary man who understood women. For
that reason, as Professor Murray so charmingly emphasizes, Euripides was
ever accounted a woman hater, despite even the implications of his great
chorus which sings so nobly woman's destined rise as a power in the
world. His statement of the cause of barbarian woman against a civilized
man who has wronged her is incomparably more contemporary than _Madam
Butterfly_, and with Murray we may doubt "if ever the deserted one has
found such words of fire as Medea speaks." And, as the author continues,
"Medea is not only a barbarian; she is also a woman, and fights the
horrible war that lies, an eternally latent possibility, between woman
and man. Some of the most profound and wounding things said both by
Medea and Jason might almost be labelled in a book of extracts 'Any Wife
to Any Husband' or 'Any Husband to Any Wife.'"
The change which came over the spirit of Euripides's vision, as Athens
itself was transformed by empire lust from the first glories of
Pericles, suggest again the purifying satire of our ablest moderns. War
is hateful and the picture which the Attic dramatist drew of the horrors
of dying Troy leave little to the present imagination. Euripides
accordingly became as popular in imperialistic Athens as was Bebel among
the Kaiser's ministers. Murray interprets this phase magnificently. He
concludes: "This scene, with the parting between Andromache and the
child which follows, seems to me perhaps the most heartrending in all
the tragic literature of the world. After rising from it one understands
Aristotle's judgment of Euripides as the 'most tragic of the poets.'"
One has only to recall the brave gentleness of Hector's wife, described
first in Homeric words, to agree with the present author.
On the purely critical side Professor Murray's words are vastly
important. Especially valuable is his discussion of the chorus and the
_deus ex machina_ concerning which so much error has been taught since
Horace wrote on the art of poetry. But this small book is not designed
for those whose interest in Greek drama is technical. It is Euripides,
the philosopher; Euripides, the satirist of his times; Euripides, the
preacher of lofty virtues, the apostle of new men and more righteous
gods, who concerns the great awakening world of 1914. The intellectual
battles which Euripides fought on behalf of Athens have been waged again
and often for the millions who slumber and are content. They are being
fought now with an intensity unprecedented. So it brings courage and it
brings calm to realize the continuity of the conflict, and to recall the
signal victories of the olden days. Gilbert Murray's achievements are
too numerous to permit praise. One may only say now that the present
book is in line with the fine things of his past; that by virtue of his
labors the world agony for liberty and justice and beauty reveals new
phases of the intrinsic dignity and honor which have been its possession
since men desired better things.
For those whose lives are chaotic personal loves must also be
chaotic; this or that passion, malice, a jesting humor, some
physical lust, gratified vanity, egotistical pride, will rule and
limit the relationship and color its ultimate futility.--H. G.
Wells in _First and Last Things_.
Isn't it possible to be pedantic in the demand for simplicity?
It's a cry which, if I notice aright, nature has a jaunty way of
disregarding. Command a rosebush in the stress of June to purge
itself; coerce a convolvulus out of the paths of catachresis.
Amen!--_Some Letters of William Vaughn Moody._
Equal Suffrage: The First Real Test
HENRY BLACKMAN SELL
The query of the anti-suffragist--"Will the women really use suffrage if
they have it"--was rather conclusively answered in the affirmative at
Chicago aldermanic elections on April 7, when equal suffrage was given
its first real test in an American city of first rank. This election
brought out many interesting incidents which might be considered as
having "laboratory" value.
It has been contended by the "antis" that the women would be bad losers;
that they would not support the non-partisan ideals which are becoming a
definite part of our "new patriotism"; that the result of equal suffrage
would simply be one of double vote, wives voting as their husbands
decided; that the women coming out in the first enthusiasm of
registration would not take the same interest in the prosaic work at the
polls; that the fights against bad nominees would result either in a
duplication of man-run campaigns, or in ineffective and lady-like
campaigns.
The first of these contentions was proved untrue to even the most casual
observer at the polls on election day. The women were fighting uphill
all the way, and where the so-termed "suffrage men" were slightly
unpleasant in their attitude towards the "antis," the women were all
cheerfulness and all refreshing encouragement. As one explained: "It has
been the most wonderful feeling, working shoulder to shoulder with the
men in something that has really been our duty all along."
Nine women candidates were up for election and not one was chosen; and
yet, after talking with five defeated women candidates and three
defeated men candidates, I concluded that the women knew more about the
philosophy of politics and its sad uncertainties than men who had been
contesting for years.
True, election to office is but a by-product of political experience; it
is a most coveted by-product, nevertheless, and when a woman like Marion
Drake, who ran a close race against Chicago's "bad" alderman, says, at
the closing of the polls, "I have not been elected, but every minute of
the time I have expended has been worth while and I shall try again at
the next election,"--it shows the right spirit and the fundamental error
in the assertion that women cannot lose gracefully.
Non-partisanism could be given no real test, for these ideals seemed
necessary of application in only two or three wards. In one--the
twenty-first--an alderman with a bad record was up for re-election in
opposition to a Republican of no particular merit. The women got
together, with the aid of some of the better men, and selected a
non-partisan candidate. This man was elected directly through the
efforts of the women who, Republican, Democratic, and Progressive,
rallied in true non-partisan spirit to his aid.
As to the control of the women's votes by the men: it is interesting to
note that in the more intelligent wards there was considerable variance
between the men and the women, while in the wards of the poorer and less
intellectually-inclined portions of the city the votes ran a great deal
alike.
The women came out in good numbers and, as a matter of fact, the
masculine vote was considerably higher than usual; but even with this
advantage, the registered women outvoted the registered men by a small
per cent.
The campaigns conducted by the various women were distinctly different
from the ordinary political campaigns. They were dignified,
straightforward, strong, and effective. Miss Drake, in her campaign
against John Coughlin, colloquially and delicately known as "Bathhouse
John,"--the name originating from the fact that the gentleman in
question received his political training as a mopper and rubber in one
of Chicago's most infamous bath houses,--made a direct appeal, in a
house to house, voter to voter, canvass of her ward. In this way she
told over two-thirds of the people of the "Bathhouse's" territory all
about the gentleman, his ambitions, his desires, and his insidious
motives. And while she was defeated, it must be remembered that though
Coughlin received a sufficient plurality, he by no means attained his
boast:--"I'll beat that skirt by 8,000 votes." In fact, where his
plurality at the last elections was approximately eight to one, this
year it was less than two-and-a-half to one, making an obvious deduction
that Miss Drake's campaign was decidedly successful even though she did
not win.
The Education of Yesterday and Today
WILLIAM SAPHIER
_The Education of Karl Witte_, translated by Leo Wiener and edited
by H. Addington Bruce. [Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York.]
Mr. Saphier is a Roumanian who came to this country only a few
years ago and learned English. The following review is his first
attempt at writing, and we print it just as it came to us, hoping
our readers will find it as interesting as we did.
French, Italian, English, Greek, and German at the age of nine, a Ph.D.
degree at fourteen, a doctor of laws and an appointment to the teaching
staff of the Berlin University at sixteen--these were some of the
achievements of Karl Witte. Or shall I say of pastor Witte, the father?
For the boy had very little to do with it: he was merely a piece of
putty in the able hands of a strong-willed man who knew what he wanted
and how to get it. A child of ordinary abilities, according to pastor
Witte and others, Karl absorbed an enormous amount of knowledge in a
comparatively short time, as a result of a method of education which
began almost as soon as he showed intelligence.