Just received a book for review, an author’s complimentary copy, from
one of my friends, one of the finest hearted, most beautiful natured
men in the world. This is one of the saddest ironies of life. It is
just such a book as I wish my enemy had written.
* * * * *
The New Woman, who is really new and not a mere simulacrum of the old
fetish masquerading in borrowed plumage, carries a copy of the FLY LEAF
in the pocket of her bloomers; for the editor of the FLY LEAF is a New
Woman’s man, and distinctly prefers her to her grandmother.
* * * * *
This is worth the attention of young people just graduating from our
schools and colleges and entering upon the sad and serious business of
life, as it will put them in the path of success quicker than all the
wisdom of Aristotle and Plato--and I say this, who spawned it. One can
break all the ten commandments upon a technicality.
* * * * *
A wink is much more innocent than a blush.
* * * * *
One of the tragedies of old fogyism is the wit and wisdom of youth. But
youth has its little ironies, and the longevity of old fogeyism is one
of them.
* * * * *
The Humphrey Ward nightmare is stalking through the land again already.
It is evident this female survival of the Inquisition has awakened to
the glorious possibilities of the American market, and in future we
may expect to meet Marcella and the whole string of British boobies
that she has imported (they did not need creating) into fiction at
every turn in our periodical literature. And we had hoped we had seen
the last of the little snob Marcella and the rest of them for at least
another year. But the world is pressing Mrs. Ward for the solution of
the servant girl question and she is becoming more industrious than
ever. Subtle studies of snobocracy seem out of place, though, in the
periodicals of a democratic country.
* * * * *
I have just seen the latest portrait of Mrs. Humphrey Ward in the
“Century.” It explains the aridity of the atrocious Robert Elsmere.
Mrs. Ward’s physiognomy is severe. She is no hero to her maid servants
and man servants, but a terror to evil doers. British superiority is in
evidence; but the benignity of genius is not.
* * * * *
There are certain aspects of Stephen Crane’s literature that appeal
to the risibilities of a man who is blessed or cursed with some
humorous perception. His mystic, weird lines outrage all the laws of
prosody, and can only stand as the audacious flings of a fantastic and
untrammeled imagination, that is impatient of form and loves the hot
splash of thought. But it must not be rashly judged that any fool can
do this sort of thing. It demands a feeling for words and an abundant,
bubbling imagination. Still, the grave critics who have seriously
accepted Mr. Crane’s little book of verses as poetry and literature of
a high order appear in a rather ludicrous light. It is an interesting
freak of a quick fancy playing over life and thought and taking all
that comes to the surface in all seriousness. It is, however, something
new in print, for the unchastened whimsies of a perfervid imagination
seldom get into print--except in a few periodicals where there is no
one appointed to edit the editor.
* * * * *
The article of Jonathan Penn in this number seems to raise an
uncomfortable theory that this sort of inspiration is infectious, and
that a million new poets may spring up any morning. But Mr. Penn is
really only surprised at his own versatility, which does not surprise
us in the least, for he is one of the most imaginative and brilliant
prose writers in contemporary journalism. It is a pity that his
necessities and the conditions governing the literary market in America
compel him to write advertisements for his living. But if Mr. Crane
and others can only manage to put into their serious efforts such fine
limpid prose and such delicious fancies and quirks of humor as Mr. Penn
puts into his alluring advertisements, a great future awaits them in
prose literature.
* * * * *
In the death of Eugene Field, American literature has sustained a loss
that will not be readily forgotten, for this whimsical poet of genius
won a place for himself in the hearts of thousands. His “Sharps and
Flats” in the _Chicago Record_ also gained him a national reputation,
but it is the fate of all journalists who succeed in winning such a
place as he held in daily journalism to waste in the eternal ferment
of the short-lived daily newspaper the fine talents of imagination and
wit, that put into the permanent form of literature, would give them a
place among the famous wits and humorists of the world. Luckily Eugene
Field was a poet as well as a wit and droll, and the publisher of the
_Record_ was appreciative and catholic enough to open his columns to
his poetry.
If other American newspapers would allow their cleverest writers the
same latitude of doing signed work in poetry and prose, we should
soon have a very encouraging group of distinctive and virile American
writers. Eugene Field was, perhaps, the only American man of letters
using the term in its broad sense, and not restricting it especially
to the writer of merely funny or political work, who has won fame in
literature through the medium of a newspaper. This is high praise for
the _Record_ as well as a monument of achievement for Field, which only
those in the harassing harness of journalism can properly appreciate.
At the close of his career, of course, Field was published in books and
magazines, but he won his reputation in the _Record_.
Why do not some other proprietors of large newspapers give other young
American writers of originality and talent a show, instead of giving
the public nothing in the way of literature but syndicate matter by
English writers who crop up everywhere? If the newspaper publishers
and editors took to producing literary men of their own, and were not
content to get out a newspaper that tallies with every other in every
town from Maine to Frisco, we should soon find that a rich streak of
spontaneous, fresh talent would be struck in this country.
* * * * *
Those early “Plain Tales from the Hills” were fine, and “The Light that
Failed,” and the rest showed that in Kipling we had a man of virile
force, great observation and picturesque power. But it seems to one who
looks for the sense of permanence in an artist’s choice of subjects
and style of treatment that the furore over the “Jungle Stories”
is simply the exaggeration that is meted out to every established
literary favorite in a mere strain for novelty. There is nothing really
permanent about this literary twist of investing the wild beasts with
human traits and speech, and although it is doubtless well done, it
does not support the contention of some critics that Kipling is the
most significant and robust writer in English today. This is not
denying Kipling’s universally acknowledged abilities, it is merely
pointing out that he is striving more for immediate effect than for
the substantial art that would insure his place in the great body of
standard English literature.