slaughtering each other in the most bloody massacre, and in this
free country thousands of men and women are tramping the streets
without food and shelter, and at the same time the church holds
dinners that cost $15 a cover, beginning with Beluga caviar and
champagne—the money which was beggared from poor working men and
women, the money which the blood of poor workers has run for.
These conditions are a scandal. This is the failure of
Christianity—an insult to honesty and a challenge to humanity.
Let the church answer my charges toward the world and I shall
stand for the charges made against me.
_MOTOR BUSSES ON CHICAGO BOULEVARDS._
There is really a definite plan on foot for this miracle. A Motor Bus
Company has been formed, and the necessary certificates from the State
Public Utilities Commission secured. Its plan is to operate from the
south end of Jackson Park to the north end of the city limits. People
who haven’t limousines, who can’t afford taxis, and who can’t possibly
walk the whole distance of the parks, will be able to drive through the
beautiful parts of the city—the _only_ beautiful parts, it is necessary
to add. For ten cents they can have an astounding romance. They can sit
on top of an omnibus, under the sun or the stars, and watch Lake
Michigan stretching out to the other side of the world. That is, they
can do this if the Park Commissioners decide to allow them.
Some of these commissioners raise the objection that motor busses will
add seriously to the traffic congestion. That is true, but how is the
thing managed in New York? Fifth Avenue is narrower than Michigan, and
it is always more crowded. Other commissioners object to the wear and
tear on the boulevards which have not been constructed for such heavy
traffic. But the Chicago Motor Bus Company “has agreed to pay the
Lincoln Park Commissioners $1,300 a year for each mile of their route
and the South Park Commissioners $1,000 a year per mile.”
The thing that really halts the plan at present is the attitude of a
couple of private citizens who complain to the South Park Board that
motor busses will destroy the beauty of the boulevards! You know the
type of mind whose thinking runs in such channels? The type that doesn’t
give a hang who pays the taxes which maintain the boulevards; the type
that is fond of talking about democracy and what great things we do for
the foreigner in America.
Of the men who rhyme, so large a number are cursed with suburban
comforts. A villa and books never made a poet; they do but tend
to the building up of the respectable virtues; and for the
respectable virtues poetry has but the slightest use. To roam in
the sun and air with vagabonds, to haunt the strange corners of
cities, to know all the useless and improper, and amusing people
who are alone very much worth knowing; to live, as well as to
observe life; or, to be shut up in hospital, drawn out of the
rapid current of life into a sordid and exasperating inaction; to
wait, for a time, in the ante-room of death; it is such things as
these that make for poetry.
—_Arthur Symons._
Poems
RICHARD ALDINGTON
Bloomsbury Square
I walk round Bloomsbury Square.
Bright sky over Bloomsbury Square;
Bright fluttering leaves
Between the sober houses.
I carry my morning letters,
Some telling of lives spoiled and cramped,
Some telling of lives hopeful and gay,
Some full of yearning for London
And our wider life.
In Bloomsbury Square
The worms of a little moth
Are spinning their Cocoons,
Weaving them out of bright yellow silk
And bits of plane bark
Into strong, comfortable houses.
But hundreds of them
Have wandered on to the iron fence
And go wearily wandering,
Spending a little silk here
And a little silk there,
And at last dropping dead from weariness....
“Our wider life”—
That is our wider life:
To wander like blind worms
Spending our fine useless golden silk
And at last dropping dead from weariness.
Blue sky over Bloomsbury Square;
Bright fluttering leaves
Between the sober houses.
Epigram
Rain rings break on the pool
And white rain drips from the reeds
Which shake and murmur and bend;
The wind-tossed wistaria falls.
The red-beaked water fowl
Cower beneath the lily leaves;
And a grey bee, stunned by the storm,
Clings to my sleeve.
Lollipop Venders
LUPO DE BRAILA
“Misfit clothing”—I saw these words this morning on a small shop sign
and they kept dancing before my eyes. Misfit clothing. In vain all my
attempts to concentrate on the object of my visit to the Art Institute.
I sat down to search my brain for the cause of this phenomenon, and I
soon recalled another such visit I once made under similar difficulties.
It was at the San Francisco Exposition. I discovered by chance the
so-called Annex of the Fine Arts Building, a stable-like structure in
comparison to the main building. It housed the Norwegian, Hungarian, and
Spanish exhibits—by the way, almost the only ones worth seeing. At that
time another vision kept me from seeing the exhibit for some moments. It
seemed as if some short bald men danced along green velvet walls, each
one plucking his heart beats with gusto and, after arranging them in a
queer design on a crystal glass plate, offering them to the stars and
children.
This recollection cleared the air and I realized that surroundings have
a strong effect on me. I have come to enjoy the result of the finest
faculty we possess, our imagination. I have come to admire the result of
a year’s work of our Chicago Artists.
Three hundred and twenty-one paintings, says my catalog; and in order to
simplify matters I decide to look at some of the most popular names
first—names usually found on the juries.
Artists, according to Rodin, are different from other mortals because
they love their work. Let us see: Adam Emory Albright, Alfred Juergens,
Lucie Hartrath, John F. Stacey, and Dahlgreen. Each one of them has
between three and seven paintings. With all that canvas they must have
sailed on the most enchanting seas, and surely have brought back a
holiday for our eyes and hearts.
The first one I encounter is _An October Afternoon_ by Mr. Alfred
Juergens; visions of little coral trees with hanging heads against a
faint green dream sky, embroidered brown leaves in the foreground and
cool blue hills like thoughtless sighs in the background, appear on the
catalog page. But see what Mr. Juergens has done with this subject. I
can scarcely believe my eyes. A mushroom dog in front of some formless
and lifeless trees; amateur composition, thoughtless technique, and
dirty color. And Mr. Juergens has a steady job on the jury. I wonder
what is his reason for painting: he certainly does not love his work.
Something suddenly interferes with my thoughts on this subject: it is
the jingling of coin in a visitor’s pocket. I look around and find
number 174 by the same gentleman, and it reminds me of a cat walking on
the keyboard of a stringless piano.
They say this is the best exhibition of the Chicago Artists. If it is,
Mr. Juergens has done nothing to make it good. He has six such things on
the walls.
Mr. Albright, a painter of children playing in the open, has seven
pictures in the exhibit, five of them on one wall. One is called _The
Barn Yard_. The name reminds me of the reproduction of a painting by
Malchevski I saw in a Polish library a few days ago. It was called _Art
in the Back Yard_ and showed a little satyr playing a flute for a little
girl and a few turkeys. There was romance in the fence boards, and
marvelously clean colors; it shouted life and joy. Mr. Albright’s
old-maid’s conception of childhood made me feel sad. His shapeless hens,
his flattened children on the wall, weak composition, dirty colors, and
no sign of life in the whole thing, or feeling of out-of-door air.
Almost disgusted, I look further:—_A Summer Dream_. I look for the dream
and find it in the fact that the biggest of the boys has borrowed his
older brother’s head, and the painting is full of some dirty yellow
color. A horrible dream. I wish Mr. Albright as well as Mr. Juergens
would at least clean their pallets if they can not change their
conception of things.
Next I visit _Sunshine Alley_, by Lucie Hartrath. It is the alley of
poverty of ideas and bad color. Miss Hartrath evidently wants to paint
what she sees, but she does not happen to see anything startling. She,
too, has six such things on the walls.
The mediocre work of John F. Stacey and Anna L. Stacey really deserves
no attention. Especially bad is the portrait of John by Anna (there is
little love expressed in it) and _The Beach Road, Belvedere,
California_, by John, takes the prize for being the poorest painting in
the exhibition. John F. has only one painting that looks as if it were
made by a man who loves his work—_The Golden Hills of California_.
Next comes a man I dislike to place among the lollipop venders—he being
a very nice quiet and honest man; but why does Mr. Dahlgreen paint?
Now, when I come to Messrs. Griffith and Irvine, I find their anaemic
work quite good in comparison to the work I have seen until now. Of
course, I did not expect paintings with as wide a scope as the work of
the Zubiaure Brothers, Zuologa, Edward Munch, Hodler, Welti, Malchevski,
Franz, Stuck, Fritz Erler, Putz, Elie Reppin, etc., to say nothing of
the latest developments of modern art and ideals—I mean the disciples of
Cezane, Matisse, Van Gogh, Gauguin, etc.—because Chicago is still a
frontier town. All the latest improvements plus the Art Institute cannot
change its real character: a frontier town with frontier town ideals. In
this case, all criticism being comparative, I did not look for the
highest standard. Had I done so, three words might have been my
comprehensive criticism. As it is, all I expected was clear feeling,
clean color, good design, and a certain amount of delicacy in handling.
This has been fulfilled only in a measure by Mr. Bartlett, whose
strength and individuality places him at the head of the landscape
painters exhibiting. He reminds me very much of Trubner, especially his
_Autumn Afternoon_. I also like his daring composition in _Under Chinese
Tower, Munich_. Pauline Palmer’s work is full of broadly-painted
sunshine, though the foliage in some of her trees seems too heavy and
shapeless.
Next in merit I think comes Marie Lokke, whose yellow sail in _The Old
Pier_ takes the wind out of many a neighbor. Hermann More’s _A Summer
Afternoon_, is a good example of clear feeling and clean color. I also
like Mr. Kraft’s delicate _Silver Mist_ and _An Autumn Afternoon_, and
Mr. Ingerles’s, _The Fascinating Ozarks_.
There is also a class of painters who can best be described as able and
honest. At the head of these artists stands Mr. Peyraud and Edward B.
Butler. There are also Frank V. Dudley, H. Leon Roecker, Edgar S.
Cameron, J. H. Carlsen, Lawton Parker, Charles Francis Brown, A. H.
Schmidt, William Wendt, Alfred Jansson, Alson Clark, Karl A. Buehr,
Grace Ravlin, Edgar Payne and the following portrait painters: our own
Franz Hals, Mr. Christian Abrahamsen, Oscar Gross, Gordon Stevensen,
Cecil Clark Davis and Arvid Nieholm.
Mr. Werner’s mannerism is too monotonous.
Mr. Ufers and Mr. Higgins have taken yellow ochre into the open and made
good use of it. I have taken these two men separately because both have
done good work and I expect much improvement in the near future. Their
work at present looks too much like illustrations. Miss Dorothy Loeb is
the only one who has a real sense of rhythm in line.
The Chicago Society of Artists, which runs this exhibition every year,
seems to be controlled at present by a number of men who have inherited
a long-discarded weak imitation of a technique once used by Segantini.
They have excluded almost everything that showed some originality and
feeling, but have accepted and hung a few very poor and meaningless
things, so that they may shine by contrast. However, it seems to me they
are at the end of the rope. The public refuses to buy the dope and their
best men have sent in nothing to this show. I refer to Clarkson,
Reynolds, Betts, Oliver Dennet Grover, Henderson, Rittman; and Lawton
Parker has only one little canvas.
A Vers Libre Prize Contest
Through the generosity of a friend, THE LITTLE REVIEW is enabled to
offer an unusual prize for poetry—possibly the first prize extended to
free verse. The giver is “interested in all experiments, and has
followed the poetry published in THE LITTLE REVIEW with keen
appreciation and a growing admiration for the poetic form known as _vers
libre_.”
The conditions are as follows:
Contributions must be received by April 15th.
They must not be longer than twenty-five lines.
They must be sent anonymously with stamps for return.
The name and address of the author must be fixed to the manuscript in a
sealed envelope.
It should be borne in mind that free verse is wanted—verse having beauty
of rhythm, not merely prose separated into lines.
There will be three judges, the appointing of whom has been left to the
editor of THE LITTLE REVIEW. (Their names will be given in the next
issue, as we are hurrying this announcement to press without having had
time to consult anyone.)
There will be two prizes of $25 each. They are offered not as a first
and second prize, but for “the two best short poems in free verse form.”
As there will probably be a large number of poems to read, we suggest
that contributors adhere closely to the conditions of the contest.
A. Neil Lyons
(_John Lane Company, New York_)
A roomy garret with a wee dirty window in the sloping roof. Some trunks
with old fine clothes and older musty books—books of hymns and sermons,
most of them were. Broken limp chairs. A fire that would not “draw.”
Bits of worn carpets on the floor. A smelly oil lamp on one of the
trunks. Such was the place of my solitary confinement, for rebellion, at
least once a week. I admit to having even deliberately whistled and
danced a highland fling on dreary Sundays in order to provoke my
God-fearing, Sabbath-respecting elders to send me to the garret! How
could they, unsuspecting, unimaginative Olympians, know that it was one
of the places where I had real joy?
In the smallest trunk there were back numbers of _Punch_. Pencils and
paper were there also. When the steps sounded no more on the stairs, and
I had stopped my stage crying, I would take out my drawing materials and
an issue of _Punch_ and start to copy the easiest drawings I could find.
Among the artists there was none that I liked better than Phil May. His
sense of the comic and his economy of line appealed to me and my lack of
ability to draw. His Cockney folk gave me more pleasure than any of the
staid humans I knew. He....
But I forget myself. I started out to write of Neil Lyons.... All the
words I have spun for the prelude are merely to say that during my
re-reading of the work of Neil Lyons in the past few months I have been
struck again and again by its likeness to the drawings of Phil May: the
same joy, the same delight was there in the reading as there was in the
contemplation of the drawings.
Now, this likeness not only existed in the handling of the subject, but
also in the choice thereof. The Cockney men, women and children that
Phil May has drawn Neil Lyons has written about. The pictures of the
peasantry that May has left are alike in line and spirit to those Lyons
has drawn verbally in _Cottage Pie_ and _Moby Lane_.
If you know Phil May’s work think of one of his drawings of a fat
middle-aged woman, and then listen to this drawing of another, by Neil
Lyons:
“She was forty years old at a venture. She had lots of mouth and
a salmon-coloured face and a pretence of a nose and small watery
eyes. All these amenities were built up on a triple foundation of
chin, which was matched by an exceeding amplitude of bosom and
waist.”
Don’t you recognize the same swift, sure lines?
But I must get away from this parallel. Never at his best is the artist
as great as the writer. There is no line or collection of lines in May’s
work to match this in Lyons’:
“Mrs. Godge, who was lately the mother of twin babies, is now the
mother of memories.”
That sentence is only a shadow of the quiet poignancy of the tale that
follows it. Oh, the wonder of the man who can see every side of the
common people and set them down with such verve, such relish, such keen
poignancy and hilarious joy! Let me quote from the story of blind Unity
Pike, “the wanton”:
“I imagine poor old Unity at this period of her life as having
been a little, fresh, dark-haired maiden of Quaker habit. I know
she must have been beautiful because ALL young things are
beautiful. I imagine this poor bound soul in the dark with its
toil and its thoughts—half-formed thoughts, half-formed memories,
half-formed wishes. Nothing real about her or within her save the
darkness. And I can imagine how it was, therefore, that——
“Yes! They found Jack Munsey in her cottage. They found him in
the night. And so, in the name of Christ, whose name they give to
all their wickedness—that Christ, who forgave a woman that was
not blind for sins beside which this sin of Unity’s was pure and
white—in the name of this God, I say, they seized her sightless,
wondering soul and threw it, a sacrifice, to those bloody wolves
they call their virtue.”
I would fain go on quoting, showing you the wit of this man, gentle, and
on occasion barbed and stinging: his humor, kindly, of the soil; his
great jollity and high good spirits. I would indeed like to introduce
you to “Clara,” the hussy, who is fat and motherly and with a heart and
mind unbounded. I would like to take you to “Arthur’s,” the midnight
coffee-stall where you would meet with street-walkers and soldiers,
scavengers and tramps and hear from the lips of a gutter snipe one of
the most perfect and touching love tales ever told.
Oh, but you must read them all yourself. Will you, if I give you the
names of the various volumes? Here they are, then: _Arthur’s_, _Sixpenny
Pieces_, _Cottage Pie_, _Clara_, _Simple Simon_, _Moby Lane_.
John Lane, he of the Bodley Head Publishing Company, who gave the world
_The Yellow Book_, the works of Anatole France and Stephen Leacock, is
the publisher.
I wait expectantly your showers of gratitude!
—_Allan Ross Macdougall._
The Reader Critic
_ANARCHY_
_Alice Groff, Philadelphia_:
Anarchy is scientifically a reductio ad absurdum and those who claim to
be anarchists are self-deceivers,—minds that cannot complete a circuit
of reason. There is no place in reason for anarchy, hence there is not
and cannot be an anarchist on a basis of reason. All who call themselves
so are either _archists_ of the most rabid sort or helpless flies in the
sticky syrup of laissez faire. The only professed anarchists that make
any impression upon the world are of three kinds: either they are
spirits of revolt of the most bitterly, materialistically tyrannical
sort; or they are those who suffer with the oppressed and strive
individually to set them free, even to the point of _self_-martyrdom; or
they are sentimentalists who maunder maudlinly on about love and justice
and yet do absolutely nothing to bring about the love of justice or the
justice of love, either in their preaching or their practice. But none
of these are really anarchists, they are only varieties of _archists_
who wish to impose their _own_ social ideals upon the social order in
place of those that already prevail.
The whole story of social evolution in a nutshell is as follows: every
phase of the social order at any stage of social evolution is maintained
by a social ego or group sufficiently powerful to dominate the rest of
the surrounding social body,—and this phase can be changed only by
revolution—bloodless or otherwise,—on the part of a new social ego
desiring this change and developing power to establish and maintain it.
Now the only way in which such a social ego can develop such power is by
obtaining control of _the means of living_,—food, clothing, shelter, and
the natural and financial resources back of these means; and this
control can be obtained only by _archists_,—_dominationists_,—organized
into a social ego or group that is a unit on any special social ideal.
Rebellions come and rebellions go, but the only rebellion that ever
reaches successful revolution is made by a social ego powerful enough to
get control of the necessities of life _by force_,—force material,
intellectual, or psychic. This disposes forever of the professed
repudiation of force by the philosophical anarchists, so-called. As for
the poetic anarchists, who draw moving pictures of the beautiful time to
come, when humanity will voluntarily organize to abolish all man-made
law (which _they_ consider the only social evil, not realizing that the
evil is not in law, per se, but in the _kind_ of law), and who look to
“Mother Nature” for social guidance,—these will wait and look till the
crack of doom, in vain. For “Mother Nature” is an old-wife of incredible
stupidity, socially considered, and must needs be pulled up by the hair
of her head at every whip-stitch, by her ever-evolving offspring, in
order that they may transform her social stupidity into scientific
truth. Social evolution depends entirely upon the discovery of such
scientific truth and its application to the social order, and such
application can be made only step by step through a social ego powerful
enough to compel such application.
From this it may be seen that by whatever name we may call
ourselves,—monarchists, democrats, anarchists,—we are really _archists_
striving to impose our ideals as social egos upon the social order, and
succeeding—only when we can get control of the means of living—in
dominating the rest of the social body with them,—until a new social ego
gets the power to cry “The king is dead! Long live the king!”
It, of course, goes without saying that no social dominance has ever
been entirely wise or beneficent, and that until very recently in social
history there has been no knowledge of sociological scientific truth to
speak of upon which to base social domination. But the hope of the world
lies in the ever-progressing discovery of such truth, and in its
application to the social order by ever-evolving social egos that will
more and more base their social ideals upon such truth, gradually
dominating the whole social order with ideals so based.
_Anonymous_:
After having read your “A Deeper Music” in the February issue I wondered
whether you had ever heard Mr. de Pachmann play the piano. There is
nothing in the world like it—nothing more wonderful. I am not speaking
of an ebony Mason and Hamlin alone on a stage, but of any piano at all,
with that madman bending his head over the keys of it.
I feel sure that had you heard him you would have included him in your
article and would not have put words into Bauer’s mouth. You would have
known that it is possible to play the piano very badly and play it more
beautifully than any one else; both of these in one afternoon. The
design of sound! But he, too, is becoming passé like Paderewski. But
there is little likelihood of a type arising from these two.
Do you know of any one who plays the piano as Casals plays the ’cello?
Have you looked at any of Scriabine’s later piano pieces? I wonder if he
expresses any of the moods which you prophesy will be caught by some new
composer. I knew a boy in Petrograd who went to the conservatory every
day with a volume of Scriabine and one of Bach under his arm. We called
him the “Scriabine chap.” He probably has had thirty-second quavers
punched into him by a German machine gun, for I am sure he couldn’t or
didn’t dare be as loyal to both Nicholas and Wilhelm as he was to
Scriabine and Johann S. B.
_Yes, I have heard Pachmann many times, and he was always wonderful. I
meant, of course, to put him in the article, but at the last minute he
slipped my mind ... perhaps because I was trying to write of a “deeper”
music, and since Pachmann is “master of the small essential thing and
master of absolutely nothing else” he doesn’t quite come into the realm
of the new vision of the piano._
_Isn’t there a good deal of similarity between Casals’ playing of the
’cello and Bauer’s playing of the piano?_