there be such a one) for his first dealing with that deceptive, goldlike
metal. He owns it first on his blue coat. Supposing the whole coat not to
be brass, we will by elimination and hypothesis proceed to the buttons.
A correct supposition—and more, for the brass is embossed with an anchor
and chain, together with a crest or other insignia of the kind. These
have the virtue (a) of shininess, and (b) of being like a policeman’s—or
a trolley car conductor’s, bellboy’s, naval officer’s, etc.,—all of whom,
finally, are pretty much policemen. Elders may presume such a coat—or
such buttons—to be unhealthy since they tend to make the wearer stick out
his stomach, to show them off. But critics must as well realize that this
attitude increases the morale, and while mortifying the flesh, tends to
exalt the spirit. Possibly the spirit in this case is not of the purely
heavenly quality that some would-be angels might desire,—yet it is higher
and more serene than the majority of sensualists would admit.
When Chris, the coachman (pardon me, the chauffeur) stalks into the
kitchen of a wintry evening, mayhap to see Marie,—how could a person of
the brass-button age be expected to conceive of the use of those great
orbs stationed at intervals along the front of Chris’s great, fuzzy coat.
They are mammoth. Their very size confounds one, especially since, in
common with many great objects, preciousness of detail or surface and
delicacy of effect have declined their rightful position in favor of a
world of the _gigantesque_, to be widely wondered at. Even thus Chris’s
buttons. But wonderful to say, they _are_ useful. For after Marie had
helped him off with his greatcoat, I tried to lift it slightly from the
back of the chair in the corner. My wonder henceforth was not that the
buttons were so big, but that such a great mountain of heavy stuff as
this could be held together by anything at all!
How broadly the influence of the button world is felt you have had as
yet, dear reader, but little indication. In matters great as the height
and age of a child and in the relations which, physically, at any rate,
he may bear to his father, buttons are most subtle indicators. Thus when
one morning my parents asked me to stand up beside my father to see how
tall I was, we found among us that my topmost crest of hair reached the
second button of his waistcoat. Feet and inches were no longer needed
in the mathematical scale:—their place was superseded by buttons and
buttonholes. “How tall are you, my boy?” I might be asked. With romantic
evasion of the point and still with a certain exactitude I answered,
“Well, I come up as far as the second button on father’s vest.”
Some day I hope to write _An Historie on the Romance of Buttonholes_.
Buttonholes, however, are such unbodied beings and taken on the whole
without their buttons, are such lonely objects that I fear lest the
ambitious author should, in entertaining a morbid affinity for the
Universal Desolate, fall a prey to his own affections and die of an
heavenly grief. Have you never felt the pitiful sentiments put forward at
the mere suggestion of _the lost buttonhole_? The classic illustration
of this type is, of course, the one on the lapel of a coat. Perhaps
the scholar will here accuse me of having incorrectly used the word
_buttonhole_ for a little slit fashioned to receive no button. In reality
this is a buttonhole of many buttons. At the age when one is just too
old to be spanked the aperture first becomes fully a buttonhole—it
accommodates a youth with provision for his innumerable colored,
enamelled buttons emblazoned with advertisements of charity drives,
political campaigns, circus days, wholesale houses, and the like. The
only visible regret on these occasions is that there is but one of its
kind. In necessity invention presses even normal ones into service.
Later on, this receptacle receives buttonhole bouquets from frail
lady-fingers—fragrant forget-me-nots, spring flowers, or dainty garden
nosegays. And in empty declining years it may clasp only an infrequent
bachelor’s button or an onion blossom.
About two years after the father-vest-second-button age, which would
land me in the father-vest-third-and-a-half-button stage, I fell to
wondering about buttons in a scientific way. Buttons were awkward. The
world, I knew, had been going on for hundreds of centuries and men had
discovered no more graceful fashion of fastening their clothes together
than by these round discs, dangling ridiculously from clothes and yet
anchored there with an amount of pains out of all proportion to the
achievement. Furthermore the cloth was sloppy. The combination sufficed,
you may judge, to drive any young neurotic into a very unenviable state.
I fell to inventing. Pins would not do (this was an instinct). Hooks and
eyes were worse still (I had experienced all too intense agony at the
canniness of “doing up” mother’s dress). Sewing in for the winter was
obviously unchristian. In a desperate, fevered condition of mind clothes
pins, railroad spikes, patent clasps, a series of bands like a Michelin
man’s, box fasteners, padlocks, rings, thongs, strings, and lobster claws
whirled by as a giddy panorama of substitutes, leaving me at last faint
and content necessarily with the extant order of things, yet peaked at
the impotency of my inventive genius. After carefully revolving the
matter in my mind, picturing many modes of clothes and corresponding
sorts of buttons, I finally concluded that this whole section of the
world—buttons—instead of falling under the rule of science, was an art.
In this manner I became artistic—such mammoth results do transpire from
buttons. Whether this be the cause, or whether the grey years are dulling
with their sepulchral dust the gloss of my golden hair, I know not.
But I am now largely unconscious of buttons. They are only miserable
little nuisances flying off and rolling across the floor at the most
inconvenient moments. They are intensely realistic. How in truth could
anyone, save a fool, suck romance from their marrow? Fie upon you!—collar
buttons—but tread softly,—we will not embark there. One exception only
to this indifference do I know—the comfort of sitting in an easy-chair
and _unbuttoning_ a tight vest. This sensation is the most agreeable
immediately after a large meal—say, an over-large meal. And however gross
the indulgence, it causes buttons again to swim into my ken—this time on
the side of mine enemies;—and as great ones indeed do they loom over me
when I, by yielding to the order of unbuttoned vests, am constrained to
think—
“... now ’tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.”
L. HYDE.
_Book Reviews_
_The Story of Mankind._ By HENDRICK VAN LOON. (Boni & Liveright.)
“The Story of Mankind” by Hendrick Van Loon is an original and valuable
contribution to education. Those who have read little or no history will
find here a well-drawn picture of the life of the world and its people
from the earliest times we know of. And those who have read much of these
things will find the book an acute survey of the whole—a survey which
sets off individual races and periods and changes in definite perspective.
Mr. Van Loon’s viewpoint of history and its presentation varies very
radically from that of the average historian. History to him is no long
list of wars and kings and papal edicts; it is primarily dramatic. Here
before you are the greatest plots, intrigues, heroes, heroines, villains
that you could ever imagine—now playing a comedy, now a tragedy, now a
farce. No wonder you are startled to find your attention so completely
held by “an old history book”.
But beneath this we find a more fundamental viewpoint. In the author’s
own words you are to “try to discover the hidden motives behind every
action and then you will understand the world around you much better and
you will have a greater chance to help others, which (when all is said
and done) is the only true satisfactory way of living”. Here we have Mr.
Van Loon’s ideal as an historian; and the spirit which runs through the
book proves how well he lived up to it.
As I turn back over the pages the treatment of three or four subjects
is particularly significant. Another of the author’s precepts—“it is
more important to ‘feel history’ than to know it”—perhaps explains why
the chapters on the religions of the world are so impressive. That on
Joshua of Nazareth, when the Greeks called Jesus, is indeed a unique
presentation of the story of Christ. And for the first time in my life I
feel that Mohammed and Buddha and Confucius have ceased to be names—have
become very wise men who actually lived and whose words one may well
listen to. Napoleon is criticized very severely, but with unprejudiced
insight into his character. The last chapters—those on the Great War
and the New World—sum up all that has gone before. Mr. Van Loon turns
from his backward glance into the ages and looks with all his optimistic
philosophy to the greater drama that is still to be enacted. In all you
feel the man’s sympathetic touch; he believes in mankind—in its past and
in its future.
W. E. H., JR.
_Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard._ By ELEANOR FARJEON. (Frederick A.
Stokes Company.)
In these enlightened days when the past is a memory only and life but
the illusion of our daily experience, it is rather startling to have a
“grown-up person” talk to us of fairies, and magic spells, and the beauty
of an apple orchard. Such things are all very well in the nursery, but
really, now that we have grown wise enough to put away childish things—.
So let this be a warning to all who by chance might read the first page
of “Martin Pippin”, for he who once exposes himself to the magic spell
of this fairy tale may well find himself an object for mockery by his
scornful companions. At least, here is one man’s experience, and he
speaks for many others. Mr. J. D. Beresford, who read the manuscript,
writes in the introduction: “Before I had read five pages ... I had
forgotten who I was or where I lived. I was transported into a world of
sunlight, of gay inconsequence, of emotional surprise, a world of poetry,
delight, and humor. And I lived and took my joy in that rare world until
all too soon my reading was done.” A better expression could not be
found for the fancy, the whimsy, the delicate beauty of this fairy tale.
Its spirit touches in us a chord that is rarely awakened in our modern
environment or in the literature of to-day.
To clothe her richness of imagination, Miss Farjeon possesses a richness
of language most worthy of so high a service. Quite unconsciously you run
across striking metaphors, most subtle bits of philosophy. You may look
far before discovering quite as beautiful a combination of language and
imagination as this:
“‘I am not so old, young shepherd, that I do not remember the
curse of youth.’
“‘What’s that?’ he said moodily.
“‘To bear the soul of a master in the body of a slave,’ she
said; ‘to be a flower in a sealed bud, the moon in a cloud,
water locked in ice, Spring in the womb of the year, love that
does not know itself.’”
There will be few who will not find delight in this fairy tale; and there
shall be some, even, who will see beyond their illusions for a day and an
hour and follow Martin Pippin where his fancy may lead.
W. E. H., JR.
_Finders._ By J. V. A. WEAVER. (Alfred Knopf.)
_Dramatic Legends and Other Poems._ By PADRAIC COLUM. (Macmillan.)
These two volumes are similar in intention and to a certain extent in
method. Padraic Colum is attempting to communicate some of the nuances
of Irish character and life, more especially as it is lived in the farms
and villages of the countryside. Mr. Weaver, substituting the subway
for the lonely roads, is performing the same service for America. Both
poets use the language of the people with whom they are dealing, either
because they believe it beautiful in itself or because it adds to their
effect. The sole but enormous difference between the two men is in the
measure of their success. Mr. Weaver, in choosing the American language,
was admittedly under great disadvantage at the start. He was forced to
assume a defensive attitude and as a result lost sight of most of the
important things which constitute poetry. He seemed to think that the
fact he was writing in a new language was sufficient, that he need use
no fine discretion in the choice of his words in that language, or the
manner in which those words were arranged. We imagine he is trying to
write in metrical verse, although few of the lines have meter. In short,
the novelty of his medium was too much for Mr. Weaver. He was so overcome
by the thought of writing in American slang that he forgot the essential
elements of poetry. Moreover, if Mr. Weaver fails in his language, there
is little other interest to be found in the book. His themes are as
sentimental and inconsequential as ever.
But Padraic Colum is primarily a poet and only incidentally the exponent
of a new form of expression. He does not take the speech of his people as
spoken in the dull hours, but only when it is lifted to eloquence by the
vision and poignancy of rare moments. He is a master of the words in his
language, their sounds, their colors, their subtle shadings. Furthermore,
the things he writes about, however local they might at first appear,
have always something permanent and universal in them—death, poverty,
thwarted heroes and remembered queens. Perhaps the first lyric, To a
Poet, is the most significant in the book, both in its relation to the
author and in its expression of the ancient problem of the artist and his
race. He is speaking of his own people:
“White swords they have yet, but red songs;
Place and lot they have lost—hear you not?
For a dream you once dreamed and forgot!”
Despite the many fine things in the present volume it is greatly inferior
to the earlier _Wild Earth_. Every lyric in that collection was cast in
the same mood and attained the same high degree of perfection. _Dramatic
Legends_ would almost make us believe that Mr. Colum has abandoned the
particular type of poetry which he can write so much better than anyone
else in the language.
W. T.
_The Interpreters._ By A. E. (Macmillan & Co.)
“The Interpreters” is a product of the present-day groping for an
explanation of man’s purpose on earth as conceived by the Creator and the
instrument of government—or non-government—best adapted to fulfill this
purpose; as A. E. has put it, “the relation of the politics of time to
the politics of eternity”. Like the rest of the world A. E. is not able
to completely pierce the mist which conceals our conception of things
eternal, so that this book is rather a seeking along a path illumined by
the white light of a superbly analytical reasoning, and the path seems to
lead somewhere.
It is A. E.’s belief that there is a spiritual law operating above all
intellectual and physical laws in such a way that our affairs are linked
with the vast purpose that the Creator has for His universe. This is not,
however, a doctrine of fatalism, for A. E. believes we have control of
our own destinies in proportion as we work in harmony with the Eternal—“I
think it might be truer to say of men that they are God-_animated_ rather
than God-_guided_”. In this sentence he has precluded the possibility of
interpreting his doctrine as a disguised fatalism.
A. E. is moving in an extremely rarified atmosphere in his discussion. To
keep the book somewhere near the ground, he provides a simple mechanism.
During a revolution against an autocratic world state two centuries hence
a number of revolutionary leaders are brought together in a prison,
where they devote the night before their death to a discussion of their
ideals for the union of world politics with the spiritual Will. Each one
takes a different stand as to the methods to be employed, one supporting
socialism, another nationalism, a third individualism, and it is in the
arguments over governmental forms that some of the finest logic comes
out. The following quotation is an example, taken from Leroy’s statement
for individualism: “You and I see different eternities.... It is our
virtue to be infinitely varied. The worst tyranny is uniformity.”...
It is possible to call A. E. a visionary. Doubtless, “The Interpreters”
was written under the press of an immense surge of inspiration, for there
is much of poetical fervor in its pages. But it is for this very reason
that it can hold us with the spell of its sincerity and the intensity of
its philosophy. The world of the world has been inspired by visionaries,
and there is a place for a vision to-day.
S. M. C.
_The Eighteen Nineties. A Review of Art and Ideas at the Close of the
Nineteenth Century._ By HOLBROOK JACKSON. (Published by Alfred A. Knopf,
1922. $5.00.)
This fine volume, whose thrillingly beautiful format is alone enough to
recommend it to any collector of unique books, is a reprint, with a few
addenda, of a work of the same name issued in 1913. It is to be doubted
whether the former copy could have been as effective as the present one
which, with its clear, round type, and profuse illustrations, and magenta
and purple covers, make up a volume that no true book-lover can afford
not to own.
Mr. Jackson, intimately connected with British periodicals of note since
1897, the author himself of such noteworthy pieces as “The Eternal Now”
and “Romance and Reality”, is admirably qualified to write on “The
Eighteen Nineties”, a creative period in English literature, which for
the quality as well as the quantity of its output, is second only to the
Elizabethan era. He knew intimately the men about whom he writes, and
whose work he appraises. In the admirable introduction he sets forth
his aim as “interpretative rather than critical ... to interpret the
various movements of the period not only in relation to one another,
but in relation to their foreign influences and the main trend of our
national art and life.” The following passage exemplifies as well as any
the illuminating quality of mind that makes all Mr. Jackson’s comments
valuable: “Anybody who studies the moods and thoughts of the Eighteen
Nineties cannot fail to observe their central characteristic is a
widespread concern for the correct—that is the most righteous, the most
effective, the most powerful mode of living. For myself, however, the
awakening of the nineties does not appear to be the realization of a
purpose, but the realization of a possibility.”
The book deals in twenty-one chapters with every important phase of art
and life that came into the crowded hour of the last decade of the last
century. To the present reviewer, at least, the most substantial and
most unusual interpretations are those in the cases of Francis Thomson,
Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw. “Consciously or unconsciously,”
the author says, “men were experimenting with life, and it would seem
also as if life were experimenting with men. It was a revolution
precipitated by the Time Spirit. Francis Thomson represented the revolt
against the world. He did not, as so many had done, defy the world; he
denied it, and by placing his condition beneath contempt, he conquered
it.” Of Shaw he says, “he strove to add to the heritage of the race a
keener sense of reality.... To look at life until you see it clearly
is Bernard Shaw’s announced aim.... His sense of reality does not take
reason for its basis. The basis of the new realism is the will.”
The predominating trends of the decade are summed up under the discussion
called “Fin de Siecle” under the three headings, “The So-called
Decadence; the introduction of a Sense of Fact into life literature and
art; and the development of a Transcendental View of Social Life”.
Each chapter, with its astounding collection of facts, never
pedantically, often brilliantly, and always intelligently presented,
are brightened by comment that is often epigrammatical: “Wilde was the
playboy of the Nineties.” “Aubrey Beardsley’s art would have been untrue
had it been imitable or universal.” “The decade began with a dash for
life and ended with a retreat—but not a defeat.” Speaking of Shaw’s wit,
the author says, “It was the sharp edge of the sword of purpose....
Although the majority of those who go to his plays go to laugh and remain
to laugh (often beyond reason), many remain to laugh and pray.” It is a
sane book, carefully written, and clamors to be read—and read again.
F. D. T.
_Editor’s Table_
The Egoist was engaged to, or at least with a Silent Woman, so of course
he knows nothing about it. And anyway, according to Ahasuerus, he had
resigned. So that’s that.
But perhaps it was a little like this. “Wet!” “Not quite good enough.”
“Mi-mi-mi-mi-ha-ha.” “Oh, come on...”—the interstices being filled with a
long silence, by the howling of the wind, or what you will.
No chaos this time—it’s serious, this last “LIT”.—
Or perhaps the dependable, or rather, more dependable four were not all
on deck: perhaps—perhaps—but then, Mr. Benson or Bukis can tell better
than the enamored Egoist. Or perhaps Richard Cory—ask one of them if
you would know.... It is of small moment now. Nothing matters any more.
Nothing.—
“They are not long, the days of wine and laughter,
Love, desire, and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate....”
We have passed the gate. “It is gone like time gone, a track of dust and
dead leaves that merely led to the fountain.” Gone.
GOOD-BYE, _good-bye_, good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.
* * * * *
_Sic transit gloria Yalensis!_
Yet _must_ it be so, O Ahasuerus, Richard Corey, Bukis, Mr. Benson—must
it be?...
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