_Maternity_. Considering the deadly earnestness with which author and
cast struggled to inculcate lessons, the apathy of the public in respect
to moral instruction was pathetic. On the night of my visit there was
exactly one normal “theatre-goer” in the house. There was a sprinkling
of people who had long admitted what Brieux has to say, and went from
“high-brow” reasons. There was a young society matron who had escaped
from her husband for the evening and is taking an amateurish interest in
social questions. There were numerous persons who are always on the
lookout for a chance to cackle at what they consider broad humor. These
blonde ladies furnished an interesting refutation of one of Brieux’s
theories. In one scene various women tell their troubles, emphasizing
the fact that all women are united in their sorrows and understand them,
whereas men do not. Immediately after this the drunken husband returns
and disgusts and outrages the wife. There were many laughs in the
audience to greet him—but not one from a man. Even the blonde ladies’
fat escorts tried to quiet them while the rest of us were hissing.
Granville Barker opens this week with _Androcles and the Lion_ and some
of the other recent London productions. A number of the backers of the
old “New Theatre” are guaranteeing his expenses, a fact which is a
historical corroboration for Mr. Barker’s wit. When he was brought over
as the chosen manager for that institution, he objected to the immense
size of the house. “But the alterations you suggest would cost us a
million dollars,” he was told. “If you don’t make them, it will cost you
three million,” he replied, and sailed back to London. His popularity
with the New Theatre guarantors has been steadily increasing from that
day to this.
There is even a rumor that if the present experiment succeeds, the New
Theatre project will be resumed. This whisper aroused an answering howl
from the American managers and actors. Why should good American money be
spent in encouraging English talent, especially in such a disastrous
season? they wailed. The answer was, in effect, the one that should be
made to the whole “made in America” propaganda. What has American
production done that it should be encouraged? When “made in America”
comes to have any relation to honesty and intelligence, it will be time
enough to invoke “patriotism” in its favor. In the meantime, the more
disastrous foreign competition can be to our present shoddy products,
the better.
This ironic year has produced few more strange reversals than the one
which has brought Mr. McClure to the status of an employee of Mr.
Munsey. When a man has apparently won his life campaign and written so
engagingly of it as has Mr. McClure in his Autobiography, we begin to
regard him as beyond the touch of the fates. Perhaps the present
eventuality should be taken, however, merely as another proof that in
our present arrangement of things it is less profitable to have a touch
of genius than to become the owner of trust companies. At any rate
_McClure’s Magazine_ has apparently not profited much in recent years by
Mr. McClure’s separation from its editorial policy.
There is one real consolation in a season which has brought such
material devastation to commercial managers and magazines. When
conventionally-planned “successes” don’t succeed, success comes to have
less meaning. People who are after money in the promotion of artistic
products are in their desperation more ready to try less “safe” ways of
getting it, while the others have a decidedly better chance of gaining a
respectful public attention.
Music
KREISLER AND SHATTUCK
In certain realms, words are opaque and stupid things. In others—oh,
comforting thought!—they seem to become transparent and almost
intelligent. Following this out consistently, it becomes easy to write a
page about Arthur Shattuck, pianist, and very difficult to say anything
at all about Fritz Kreisler, violinist.
Arthur Shattuck was a disappointment. His faults, in a lesser man, would
have been considered the sign of mere mediocrity; but in himself, they
are obtrusive and disagreeable. An exasperating contrast existed between
what may be called his style, with its rhythmic sureness and its
admirable perspectives, and his great lack of tonal beauty. He cracks
out hard tones. Any particular phrase of Mr. Boyle’s concerto for piano
with orchestra, when passed on from the orchestra to the solo
instrument, lost its lyric curve and became flat and lifeless under Mr.
Shattuck’s long, aggressive hands. When another pianist, Ernest
Hutcheson, played the same work with the composer conducting the New
York Philharmonic, a certain phenomenon was lacking which appeared when
Frederick Stock conducted the work with the Chicago Symphony. This
phenomenon (let it be whispered) was a strange prominence of the brass
choir of the orchestra in certain portions of the work which led one to
believe that Mr. Stock was, perhaps, more interested in the orchestral
accompaniment than in the performance of the soloist. If this were as
true as it appeared, it is on a par with another startling fact:—that
the public is really learning something about tone-values and the
possible beauties of piano music. What else could account for the
numerous confessions caught in snatches in the corridors and stairways,
the composite of which was, “He left me cold”?... Arthur Shattuck is a
millionaire.
A compassionate attitude toward Chicago was considerably relieved by the
sight of the Auditorium-full which paid to hear Kreisler. Think of so
many people being moved by such good taste! And, what was better still,
they all behaved well. Kreisler deserved their tribute of attentive
silence. Such violin playing hasn’t been heard in Chicago since the same
artist was here last season. There is no describing Kreisler’s tone; a
magic circle of stillness encloses it, which words have not learned to
cross. In the memory it is a living beauty, penetrant and bewitching.
Praise and appreciation are miserable things in the presence of this
man’s music. Fritz Kreisler is a genius.
HERMAN SCHUCHERT.
Book Discussion
Ellen Key’s Steady Vision
_The Younger Generation, by Ellen Key._ [_G. P. Putnam’s, New
York._]
In the present amusing reign of boisterous propagandic voices, it is
good to find a thinker who describes the exciting truth in simple terms.
The many are able to catch glimpses of the truth; between glimpses, they
shout and wave their inefficient arms for the enlightenment of their
brothers, and for their own joy. The few see the truth steadily and,
because they see steadily, become so passionately enthusiastic that they
are driven to express themselves in quiet, mighty phrases. Such phrases
imprint vital ideas upon the mind of the seeker, while pitiable
confusion alone results from the shouts and wavings. In _The Younger
Generation_, Ellen Key tells simply and surely her conclusions about
vital things.
Conservative judgment is at once a splendid balance and a terrific
barrier in the world of ideas. Intense enthusiasm, when it displays
itself, often combines blindness with sight. It has always seemed to be
asking too much to expect in one person a finely balanced enthusiasm in
which the conservative element does not hamper the divine qualities of
youth—courage, impetuosity, and an ever-fresh perception. Not to be
extravagant, but to characterize her fairly, one may say that this
Swedish woman writes as if she possessed the virtues commonly attributed
to both age and youth. She is vigorous, free-hearted, and
calm—enthusiastic, fiery, and sane—a champion of revolution when and
wherever it breaks the path for evolution.
Reaching deftly into anarchism, christianity, feminism, individualism,
socialism, and other good glimpses of the truth, she secures the
elements for a strangely consistent wisdom.
Parents of the new generation will feel it to be a blasphemy
against life—another name for God—that the beings their love has
called into existence, the beings who bear the heritage of all
past generations and the potentialities of all those to come,
should be prematurely torn from the chain of development. Every
such link that is wrenched away from unborn experiences, from
unfinished work, was a beginning which might have had the most
far-reaching effects within the race.... It is not death that the
men of the new age are afraid of, but only premature and
meaningless death.
“Women ought not to be content until governments have been deprived of
the power of plunging nations into war.”—Ellen Key doesn’t ask the
ladies to fidget and whimper at afternoon teas, nor to operate upon
male-kind with their verbal lancets, nor to adopt circuitous resolutions
about affairs of which they know nothing; but her suggestion, here as
elsewhere, is simple and practical—so very simple that the ladies will
smile down upon it as something delightfully girlish and
unsophisticated. It is safe to speculate that not one of the smilers
could, in her comfortable condescension, live up to this humble and
powerful procedure:—“Women can always and everywhere ennoble the
feelings, refine an idea of justice, and sharpen the judgment of those
who come under their influence. The indirect result of this influence
will then be that war will become more and more insufferable to the
feelings, repugnant to the sense of justice, and absurd to the
intelligence. When thus the eyes of the best among the nation are opened
to the true nature of war, they will be finally opened also to the way
to real, not armed, peace.” And as it is the secret and boasted and
forgotten desire of every woman to influence a man, or men, these
profoundly plain suggestions would seem to be sown in a fertile field.
There is hope in this. Then she says, on another page: “To win over
men’s brains to the idea of solidarity, that is the surest way of
working for peace.” And this, being a more complex remark, will probably
upset everything gained by the clarity of the preceding quotations; but
it is given here to repay the time otherwise wasted by the many for whom
simplicity has lost its god-like charm. Solidarity is a great idea,
partly because it is something to be shouted about. But the first
element in solidarity, human kindness, has never seemed “strong” to a
shouting age.
One of the firm demands which Ellen Key makes in her future “Charter for
Children” is “the right of all children to disinheritance; in other
words, their being placed in the beneficent necessity of making full use
of their completely developed powers.” After reminding us of the
strenuous manners of a past age in which the children of any conquered
city were dashed hideously against the walls, she claims that “the
judgment upon our time will be more severe. For the people of antiquity
knew not what they did, when they caused the blood of children to flow
like water. But our age allows millions of children to be worn out,
starved, maltreated, neglected, to be tortured in school, and to become
degenerate and criminal; and yet it knows the consequences, to the race
and to the community, that all this involves. And why? Because we are
not yet willing to reckon in life-values instead of in gold-values.”
What a frantic rage must there be in the souls of the truly
social-minded when this terrific indictment is pronounced in their
hearing! But the appalling nightmare will go on until the frantic
element is overcome, and the rage is focused to a point of white heat—an
intense simplicity.
HERMAN SCHUCHERT.
Two Conrad Reviews
_Joseph Conrad: A Study, Richard Curle._ [_Doubleday, Page and
Company, New York._]
“The business of criticism,” says Mr. Curle, “is to surmount this
_impasse_ between conviction and the power to convince.” Judged by this
test, his study of Joseph Conrad is undoubtedly successful: it is hard
indeed to imagine any reader reaching the end of it without believing
that Conrad is a very great writer. A careful reading of the numerous
and often lengthy quotations from Conrad’s books should alone convince
the persons Mr. Curle is most anxious to convert—those who know nothing
about them.
But _Joseph Conrad_ has two obvious faults. In the first place, Mr.
Curle is quite too modest—almost haltingly so. His pages abound in such
phrases as “I dare say”, “I cannot help”, “I think”, and the like.
That’s all very honest, but Americans prefer the more lordly manner. One
feels really, that while the critic may speak in such fashion to
himself, he should give us only his conclusions—and no apologies for
them to boot. In the second place, Mr. Curle seems to think that he is
very brave in putting forth this book, that the critics haven’t
appreciated Conrad at all, and that since _he_ does there must be a real
quarrel between him and them. Now as a matter of fact this is not so.
Probably no living writer has had a fraction of the hearty recognition
from the best critics that Conrad has. True, he has (until six months
ago) woefully lacked anything like popularity and the material rewards
it brings—but very few of those whose opinion carries weight will
hesitate to agree with most of the fine things that Mr. Curle says about
the author of _Chance_. Mr. Curle’s attitude simply arouses unfriendly
antagonism on the part of his readers who know and love their Conrad.
So much for its faults. They are not of serious importance and should
not obscure the really splendid qualities of Mr. Curle’s book. It
abounds in acutely perceptive remarks—often extremely well put. In the
course of seven chapters on Conrad’s Psychology, Men, Women, Irony and
Sardonic Humour, Prose and the Artist, he piles up an overwhelming
evidence of the man’s greatness. Is there a man alive, has any English
novelist ever lived about whom one could wax so easily, so madly
enthusiastic? True, to some Conrad does not appeal. They have never
caught the glorious glamour of his pages—the solemn grandeur of his
magnificent prose. Probably the surest way to win converts would be to
compile a small book of extracts from his works, carefully graded
according to their difficulty.
When I was still at college I was curious about Conrad. A well-meaning
bookseller sold me _Lord Jim_. I tried to read it, but fifty pages was
as far as I could go. I tried again, but with even less success. Then
one day at Interlaken I found a Tauchnitz copy of _A Set of Six_. Before
I had quite finished the last story I lost the book—changing trains. But
Conrad has never since seemed obscure to me. A beginner in French would
never try to appreciate the shimmering pages of Flaubert; nor would even
the Yankee farm-hand feed his baby pie. More than any living writer has
Conrad needed some one to _present_ him to the public. This his American
publishers have tried of late to do. Mr. Curle’s book will add to their
success in so far as they manage to persuade people to read it. Except
for those who have begun with _Lord Jim_, _Nostromo_, or _Chance_, I
have never found anyone, who, having read one book by Conrad, was
content to stop there. Mr. Curle thinks _Nostromo_ Conrad’s greatest
work. It is now, with Europe in the throes of a bloody conflict, that
one realizes more and more how Conrad’s men and women, far removed from
the problems of a Wells, a Chesterton, or a Shaw—problems which _appear_
suddenly to be of very little importance after all—bulk great and ever
greater. There they loom—like Rodin’s _Balzac_ against the glowering
sky.
ALFRED KNOPF.
_A Set of Six, by Joseph Conrad._ [_Doubleday, Page and Company,
New York._]
In this first American edition of his _Set of Six_, Conrad is revealed
as an artist _par excellence_. You find no subjective emotionalism on
the part of the author in any of his six tales, in spite of their
subtitles—_Romantic_, _Indignant_, _Pathetic_, and the like. You see in
him the wistful observer of characters and situations, which he presents
with impassionate objectivity, with the impartiality of a painter who
lovingly draws his object, whether it is ugly or beautiful, whether it
is a villain or a saint. Conrad possesses a wonderful skill in setting
up a background, which, at times, appears of more importance than the
plot. He makes you feel equally at home in the atmosphere of Napoleonic
France and of France of the Restoration, of revolutionary Peru and of a
Neapolitan amusement garden. You enjoy the tales greatly, you admire the
clever craftsmanship of the story-teller, but you close the book with an
empty feeling, as if you had listened to brilliant anecdotes in a
bachelors’ club.
K.
Amy Lowell’s Poetry
_Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, by Amy Lowell._ [_The Macmillan
Company, New York._]
In one of his letters, Byron says: “To withdraw myself from myself has
ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.”
Such a confession seems strange coming from a poet, and it is a
confession of quite a different character which is written on every page
of Miss Lowell’s book of poems. There one finds in every line the
expression of a personality which tries to realize itself and succeeds
in doing so. The unity as well as the interest of the book is in this
very development of a strong personality, of which a new and original
aspect is revealed in every poem.
What charms us at once in this personality, and renders the reading of
the book a constant enchantment, is a most wonderful imagination—an
imagination at the same time creative and representative, rich, varied,
overflowing with images and themes. All that life and nature offer is
the domain of this imagination; it wakes up at the most unexpected
moment and seizes the unseen detail, giving us an idea of the wonderful
wanderings through which it must take the person fortunate enough to
possess it. Now it is a temple; now a church; now a beggar; a blue
scarf; the distant notes of a flute; or the nocturnal noises of a London
street, which starts it on its way. At other times we find the
imagination at play with itself, so to speak, creating out of nothing a
historical or legendary atmosphere, or opening a philosophical vista, as
in _The Great Adventure of Max Breuck_, _The Basket_, or the poem from
which the book takes its name. Each one of these poems (and several
others also) has its own special atmosphere, precise in its complexity
and different from all the others.
In the style itself, in the development of the subjects, one finds the
same quality. It seems as if the pen were too slow to note the multiple
images which offer themselves to the mind of the poet. They accumulate
themselves, sometimes, in a manner not unlike that of Victor Hugo,
forming long periods in which the idea is turned in all possible ways,
presented from all angles and in every natural or artificial light.
It is not only the richness of the images, but their quality, which
reveals the power of Miss Lowell’s imagination. We all experience at
every minute of our lives an infinity of sensations of which we are more
or less conscious. It might almost be said that we are poets in exactly
the measure that we realize and enjoy our sensations. The real poet not
only registers his sensations, but is able to awaken in the mind of his
readers the sudden recollection of those visual or auditive impressions
which have never before reached his consciousness. This is what often
delights us in _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed_. It gratifies us to feel
that we are able to understand these subtle comparisons, these curious
and unexpected alliances of words, such as those in the first poem of
the book, where, to define certain shades of porcelains the poet speaks
Of lustres with so evanescent a sheen
Their colours are felt, but never seen.
Also in the first poem entitled _Miscast_, where she speaks of her mind
as
So keen, that it nicks off the floating fringes of passers-by,
So sharp, that the air would turn its edge
Were it to be twisted in flight.
To help her imagination, Miss Lowell possesses a faculty which belongs
only to the happy few: the gift of words. The astonishing description of
arms and vases in the first poem is but one example, if one of the best,
of this rare gift.
It is necessary also, in order to study thoroughly this interesting and
complex personality, to mention the great dramatic quality of some of
the long poems in the book. From that point of view, _The Great
Adventure of Max Breuck_ seems to me the most interesting. And there is
much to be said of the sincerity and depth of sentiment in such poems as
_A Gift_, _Stupidity_, _Patience_, _Absence_. All these short poems have
something unique about them and constitute one of the greatest charms,
and an important part of the value, of the book. It is almost incredible
that a little poem like _Obligation_, for example, should contain such a
world of thought and restrained sentiment in its ten short lines. I have
chosen this poem as the type of this genre, because it characterizes
perhaps better than any other this very special trait of Miss Lowell’s
talent:
Hold your apron wide
That I may pour my gifts into it,
So that scarcely shall your two arms hinder them
From falling to the ground.
I would pour them upon you
And cover you,
For greatly do I feel this need
Of giving you something,
Even these poor things.
Dearest of my heart.
There is, in these few lines, a simplicity so naive, a sincerity so
complete, and at the same time such an intensity of feeling, that we
almost feel while reading it as if we were composing it ourselves. And
everybody knows that this is the mark of genius. It is rare to attain
such perfection in thought and in form as we find in these short poems,
which stand on their stems, straight and pure, like wild flowers opening
their hearts to the sun.
I should like, in conclusion, to speak of the very new and effective
attempts of the author in the free use of all possible rhythms. The
preface presents the author’s point of view, but I may add that she has
been especially skilful in the adaptation of the rhythms to the
subjects, a thing which requires great poetic tact and musical sense. To
study this side of the book would carry us too far, for to do it
properly a long article written especially on the subject would be
necessary.
To those who love poetry, and who are at the same time interested in the
progress of new schools, this book must be of the greatest value.
MAGDELAINE CARRET.
The Man and the Artist
_Achievement, by E. Temple Thurston._ [_D. Appleton and Company,
New York._]
“Every man knows himself; but there are few women with all their
experience of men who act as if they knew anything about them.” “For it
is only in moments that men are dispassionate about women, while half
their lives through women are being dispassionate about men.” Why is it
that such glistening generalities prove invariably attractive to the
“general reader”? Perhaps the poor maligned g. r. fancies he is getting
“tips” on the values of his neighbors’ lives, or interminable “good
leads” as to his own adventures. Perhaps the fatuous distinctions merely
tickle the sex-vanity. Undoubtedly the same word-wisdom, offered in
regard to mankind and without the alluring distinction between man and
woman, would secure but half the attention. This attention seems no whit
slackened if the generalities are manifestly unfair by reason of their
fealty to traditionalism, as Mr. Thurston’s statements of this ilk are
apt to be.
The foregoing generality is not unfair to Mr. Thurston, since this
attractive bait is offered without stint in his latest novel
_Achievement_. In fact, the theme of the book is that ancient perennial
among popular themes: the conflict between a man and his loves; in this
case finding its redemption from the usual in that the protagonist is
the man’s work rather than the man.