Project Gutenberg's The Fly Leaf, No. 4, Vol. 1, March 1896, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Fly Leaf, No. 4, Vol. 1, March 1896 Author: Various Editor: Walter Blackburn Harte Release Date: July 9, 2020 [EBook #62591] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLY LEAF, MARCH 1896 *** Produced by hekula03, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
The Fly Leaf is distinctive among all the Bibelots.—Footlights, Philadelphia.
A Pamphlet Periodical of
the Century-End, for Curious
Persons and Booklovers.
Conducted by Walter Blackburn Harte.
With Picture Notes by
H. Marmaduke Russell.
Published Monthly by the Fly Leaf Publishing Co.,
Boston, Mass. Subscription One Dollar a Year.
Single Copies 10 Cents. March, 1896. Number
Four.
The Critics agree in saying The Fly Leaf fills a field of its own.
The Fly Leaf is distinctive among all the Bibelots.—Footlights, Philadelphia.
It is a delightfully keen little swashbuckler.—The Echo, Chicago.
The latest of the Bibelots. In my opinion it is the only one of the lot, including the “Chap-Book,” “Philistine,” etc., which knows what it is driving at. The editor of the “Chap-Book” toddles along, following or attempting to follow, the twists and turns of the public taste—at least that is what he wrote in a Note not long ago—and the editor of the “Philistine” curses and swears, and devastates the atmosphere, trying his best to kill everything. “The Fly Leaf” at once impressed me that Mr. Harte knows what he wants, and seriously intends to have it. I hope he will.—The North American, Philadelphia.
It will pay any one who wishes to keep up with the literary procession to peruse this sprightly little periodical.—The Examiner, San Francisco, Cal.
That bright little bundle of anecdote, comment, essay, poetry and fiction, “The Fly Leaf,” of Boston, comes out in particularly good style. It gives rich promise of many good things to come.—The Commercial Advertiser, New York.
Number two of Walter Blackburn Harte’s dainty monthly “The Fly Leaf,” is out, and filled with the spirit of youth and beauty in literature, and zealous with culture, taste and faith toward higher ideals, it is going about doing good.
Mr. Harte is strong, brilliant and brave as an essayist of the movement, and is making friends everywhere. The poetry and prose is all of high merit.—The Boston Globe.
The thing I like about Mr. Harte is his splendid spirit of Americanism, his optimistic belief in native literature and native writers; his hatred of all things bordering on toadyism or servile flattery of foreign gods to the exclusion of home talent. This is the key-note of The Fly Leaf, and Mr. Harte will be apt to say some trenchant, candid and always interesting things in its pages.—The Union and Advertiser, Rochester, N. Y.
These are a few criticisms of the first two numbers, selected from a great heap of enthusiastic notices. The Fly Leaf is promoting a Campaign for the Young Man in Literature. All the young men and women in America are discussing its unique and original literature, and spreading its fame.
No. 4. March, 1896. Vol. 1.
LUCKY RICHARD’S MANUAL ON
HOW TO SPEND MONEY.
INTENDED FOR PERSONS OF SIMPLE TASTES
WHO HAVE HAPPENED TO STRIKE TEN!
This is probably the last subject under heaven I ever dreamed I should find occasion to discuss in print. But we are the playthings of Fate, and at this moment I am wholly immersed in[2] weighty affairs and endless calculations as to what my income would be if this bibelot of literature became indispensable, as it undoubtedly should be, in thousands of homes in this country. When I have the figures satisfactorily arrived at on the basis of ten thousand subscribers, I see how easy it would be to introduce the periodical to the friends and relations of these ten thousand should-be delighted subscribers. Then my figures are naturally inconclusive and, as my wife says, with a fine belief in my destiny that is quite irresistible, absurdly modest. Then I’m bound to consider her figures, and her arithmetic becomes more convincing with her wants. She says that, out of a population of seventy million souls, there must be at least one million readers for the Fly Leaf.
A woman who marries into Grub Street never appreciates the situation quite so vividly as the man who is to all intents and purposes born into it. To begin with, she is naturally somewhat prejudiced in her husband’s favor. I was foreordained by Providence for a career in Grub Street, and I could not marry out of it. A long acquaintance with its chances has made me less sanguine than my helpmate, and a million rather staggered me. I know that only good dead authors get a million readers, and then only in stolen editions. So to keep my wife’s imagination[3] within bounds I told her it was true there were seventy millions in this country, but that not even the most credulous acceptors of that bad makeshift, human nature, would dream of calling them seventy million souls. The huge bulk was simply the mob! In the residuum some souls, and perhaps half a million intelligent people, were possibly to be found. Luckily some sense of humor saves me from the temptation of reckoning my possible gains in periodical literature on the data furnished by the Census Bureau.
But my wife, whose devotion to the severe goddess of literature is somewhat vicarious, cannot altogether stifle some pangs of envy as she regards the fine new silk dress of the janitor’s wife, or learns that Mr. So and So, who is in the advertising business, has just given his wife a new span of trotting horses for her new racing cutter. This is enough to make a woman hiss invidious things about the calling of literature.
A woman may love literature for her husband’s sake, or even for its own, and yet she cannot help looking into the haberdashers’ and milliners’ windows with wistful hungry eyes. And the goddess of literature does not allow her votaries, especially the married ones, anything but the shabbiest of shoddy drabs. So my wife declares that one million out of seventy is a[4] moderate and conservative estimate, and she will not abate the figures one jot or tittle. I am convinced that the feminine love of finery and comfort and elegance constitutes a temperamental inadaptability to high aims in literature.
It all came about in this way: We were out marketing—my better half and I—and we got mixed up with the crowd of swell people pouring into the main entrance of the opera-house, and, as we passed under the brilliantly lighted portico, my wife stopped a moment and peered in to catch the name of Melba on the billboard.
“We never go to see anything nowadays,” she said, a little regretfully, as we moved on. Then we crossed the street and joined the shopping crowd, pushing and elbowing in opposing streams on the other pavement, and presenting an entirely different appearance to the radiant throng about the opera-house. “Oh, well,” I answered, “you can’t expect literature to prosper in a year of financial panics, depreciated dollars and war scares. We must be content to just grub along.” “But I should like to hear Melba and Calve—and I’ve not been to a single Symphony this winter. Then, too, we’ve only seen one play, and that was stupid. And we couldn’t even afford to go up in the gods to see Irving or Beerbohm Tree. It’s a shame the way the speculators run the prices up for everything good!”
[5]“Well, you saw Otis Skinner in ‘Villon the Vagabond,’ and that was a good bit of romantic acting.” “Oh, I know, but I do wish we didn’t always have to go up in the gods.” “Get more performances for your money.”
“If I could turn dramatic critic now—and, ’pon my soul, I don’t see why not! The trick’s comparatively easy. My father remembers the great Edmund Kean, and I remember what he says of him; and then there is theatrical literature in abundance.” “Oh, no; there’s no fun in seeing a play if you’ve got to go home and write about it. You know that. But there is no reason why we shouldn’t go to the opera and sit in the best seats, if you only put all your energy and lots of good things into what you call your organ of civilization. Of course it should succeed—and once the book lovers and reading public know what it really is, it must succeed.”
“And then—why, what shall we do with all our money? I can’t think how we shall spend it.”
“We shan’t get too rich in a hurry. This is the one direction in which you women have a fine sweep of imagination—but it is not so easy to make money as it is to spend it in imagination. People don’t care for simply good stuff in periodical literature, nowadays. It must intoxicate them with the odor of blood, and I can’t do[6] that—I can’t do Jack the Giant Killer stories. I abominate anachronisms of mood in literature. Fancy an old friar writing on modern sex problems! But refined literary taste craves gore, and plenty of it, and gore is sent by the shipload from over the sea. The British make the best literary butchers—it comes natural to them to hack and chop and stab. The renaissance of blood and thunder in fiction is the wonder of our age. We cure any tendency to thinking by letting blood, just as the old surgeons did all forms of virulent disease a generation or so ago.”
“Oh, but surely, there is just a big enough public for good wit and good humor to make our venture a success—and then with a million readers we can hear Melba in the orchestra chairs.”
“A million—what an imagination you’ve got! That would be a ten-strike!”
“Well, why shouldn’t you have a ten-strike? I’m sure you deserve it.” “All moralists do—but ten-strikes do not go to the deserving. Providence does not reward virtue in this fashion.” “Then Providence should. I’m sure you ought to succeed—and I’ve made up my mind about it. We’ll do lots of things with our million. I think we’ll begin by ceasing to buy our tea where they give the crockery with it. But tonight I want a little pitcher.
[7]“Then—just think!—I wouldn’t have to go to the butcher’s and watch the scale to see whether I get fair weight or not. I wouldn’t care—I’d order by telephone, and I’d get the very best parts of the meat instead of the good parts, and you could eat the fillet of beef all the time to build you up and make blood and brain. You must hurry up and get that million.”
“I’m all right as it is, but I do like a tender steak. And I think we’d quit something of our enthusiasm for Boston baked beans, though I’ve got quite to enjoy them. Still, it’s a sort of acquired patriotism—and, like most forms of patriotism, popular because it’s inexpensive. Then we wouldn’t have frankfurters so often. And we could begin to cultivate a taste for paté de fois gras instead—although I think it looks hateful.”
“Yes, and we’d have enough table napkins for unexpected callers.” “And ones for everyday, too.” “You shouldn’t speak so loud about such things in the crowd. I’m sure that woman heard you—she stared so hard. Oh, and we’d have silver rings for them!”
“Better get married again and see if we couldn’t get a stock of silver this time. Generous folk always load the rich down with plenty of silver. At poor people’s weddings one sees nothing but cake baskets.” “We got a brass[8] lamp and some napkin rings.” “Did we? I don’t remember; we must have lost the rings.” “No; they turned brassy, and I didn’t dare to put them on the table any longer.
“Oh, I tell you what I should have, and I’m sure I need it badly enough to get it immediately.”
“Humph!” “Yes; you know, you guessed it—a new dress—right away. And it should have silk linings, finer on the inside than the out, and real hair cloth, and—yes!” with a rising inflection, “four godets in it! There! I should buy no more Monday bargain coats.”
“And I believe I would have my suits made to order, and I should like some of those English imported ties—the ‘purple moment’ ones.”
“I should only wear the very finest silk stockings.” “You should—and red ones at that, to gratify my aesthetic love of a flash of color.”
“Another thing; I have enough to do as guide, counsellor and friend; we’d get a girl to help in the housework.”
“But we wouldn’t move into a larger house. There is too much stuff in the cellar to dream of moving, and we couldn’t abandon it—or I couldn’t. Yes, by Jove! we’d move. I’d begin to collect Posters and first editions, and I guess we’d want more room.”
“That’s just a man’s selfishness to want a[9] whole house to himself. Well, I want a parasol which is a parasol, and not an umbrella in winter as well.”
“That’s only a trifle. When we go for excursions in summer we’ll take the car down to the very wharf. You know how mad you get sometimes in summer when I try to persuade you it’s more healthful to walk than to ride.”
“Yes? but we wouldn’t go for excursions. We’d go to Newport—to Europe. You see how prosperity saves bitterness of spirit by making walking altogether unnecessary.” “That’s so—and I’ll get shaved at the barber’s, and we’ll have our portraits done by Aubrey Beardsley or Whistler.”
“Let me see—a box at the opera, the Symphony, flowers—really, there must be more ways of spending money than we’ve thought of.”
“The only things I can think of are first editions, Posters—and English ties.”
“Then I’ll tell you what. You must set to work and write a manual on ‘How to Spend Money’ at once, or we shall be perfectly miserable and distracted with the consciousness of a lack of yearnings when we get our million.”
“That’s so; the best way to learn anything is to write a book about it—and perhaps this may be as true of spending a million as of anything else.”
[10]And so it has come about that I am to engage in the labor of compiling a companion volume to Benjamin Franklin’s admirable Poor Richard book of precepts on economy and the wise conduct of life. It appears to be almost as much needed for people who lack the spending faculty and imagination.
A lifetime of narrow and thrifty living has almost entirely unfitted us for a life of luxury, and chilled and benumbed our imaginations. There must be other persons of severe and simple tastes who have happened to strike ten, and want to live up to it, and to such my “Lucky Richard’s Manual” will appeal as a sort of moral salvation. It will be indispensable and invaluable, and it will be sold at a price that will put it within the reach of persons of modest means as well as of those who have struck ten. Everybody in America has his own scheme for making and spending a million, and mine will be sure to be of comparative interest and value, for I have only been rich in dreams. Like the “Proverbial Philosophy,” “Lucky Richard” will find a million readers. Walter Blackburn Harte.
To Ten-Strikers and others: The first chapters of this important Manual will be published at an early date, when the author has made some opportunities for gaining experience and knowledge of this abstruse branch of Economics.
In the bedroom was a cradle; in the adjoining room, dimly lighted and kept cool, was a coffin loaded with flowers. There was the awful presence of life and death.
The infant turned its head and cried as a young woman bent over it, one hand pressing her breast as if she was restraining her breath, and touched its fair skin caressingly. The child’s tiny fist struck blindly at the air, and getting fairly awake he cried aloud. She drew back, pressing her hands to her face, sighing in her heart. The child blinked its blue eyes, and dozed off again.
[12]The woman went into the other room, where a man was praying at the coffin.
“Oh, God! Oh, God! not this! Not this, Oh, God!”
She sat down, away from the man, her elbows on her spread knees, pressing her fingers into her cheeks, gazing at him, at the coffin, at the blurred mist of all this unreal reality.
The man moaned, “Oh, God! Oh, my God!”
She smiled bitterly, making a gesture partly of impatience, and with something of scorn.
“Have you no prayers—for the dead?”
“No.”
“Dead! Oh, my God, dead!”
“Hush, hush! Pray for the living.”
“The living! The living? It is the fruit of death.”
“What is death?”
“My wife.”
“Your child—lives.”
“My life is dead.”
“It is but born.”
The woman looked at the pinched, faded face of the corpse.
“The child is the soul of my death, and my death lives.” He stood beside her at the coffin. “This is death.”
“Yes, this is death.” Her voice was as if it came from the tomb. “You loved her?”
[13]“Ah, I loved my wife better than all else in life. Those cold eyes I kissed; those dry lips kissed me; her folded hands held mine in love. Only a man—only some men, can know what that is to a man.”
“You will love your child.”
“My love lies there.”
“Love is a terrible thing.”
“It is life.”
“Love is death.”
“What do you know of love? Poor child, you have never loved.”
“I was never loved.”
“Ah, I was loved! Why do you weep? Who knows not love can smile at suffering.”
She shrank from him.
“Do not touch me, I pray you! Respect—the living.”
“Yes, my child lives; does it not live? But oh, my wife! You cannot know or guess how a man loves.”
“Ah, yes, I do—I do indeed.”
“Then look at me. She was my life, my first real love.”
“Oh, restrain your tears.”
“You have never loved. She was all the better part of me, or bore the burden of the worse. She took me in growing manhood, she, only a tender girl. She leaned to my first embrace,[14] she overlooked my failings and shared my first struggles. After some years we married. She said I was patient to wait. And then we grew in life together, the weak strengthening the weak. I used to dream of our growing old together, dying together, and our loves living on after us together, after having drawn us nearer and making us dearer to God and each other. Ah, me! that short life soon ended; and now it is dead, dying in the dream of another life in our child. And I saw the soft look in the eyes of the mother harden under the cold shadow of death. Do not weep for me!”
“I, too, have loved. You do not know how a woman loves. The base of eternity was the love I builded on. I loved unspeaking, silently, as a woman must; but I loved, and I would have shared hell with the man I loved. I resisted, fought against it and he never knew. Yet I think he loved me once—is it impossible? I felt myself mastered by the generous and godly mind of a man; my weaknesses vanished in the potency of his strength. And he may have loved me—he may have loved me.
“But I saw another woman’s love for this man. I knew the frail flower of her life was dying in the want of sustenance for her love.... No, I did not love her; a woman does not love so. Perhaps it was for pity of her, perhaps it was for love of him, that I was impelled to offer[15] myself a sacrifice. His was a man’s love. Oh, yes, I know a man’s love rises to that height at times where only a woman’s love constantly abides. His was a man’s love, and soon he loved her. Ah, I envied her, almost bitterly. I sewed her bridal linen; it was a work of love which she dreamed not of. I made the garments for their first born; it was a holy duty of my love. I laid her in her shroud. I envy her, even now.”
He was as a man waking from a dream. He took a step toward her, but she turned away. He looked at the waxen face of the corpse.
“Ah, it is terrible to die; but what is it to live?”
Herbert Atchison Cox.
TO THE LATEST CELEBRITY.
Some of the things our industrious writers of today are doing, rather incline us to regret that the craft has become so exemplary and respectable. It may be that morality is served by the reformation of Grub Street, but industry in literature is rather a fearful thing when unaccompanied by other qualities of mind; and a good many contemporary writers are more industrious than anything else. Indeed, it has occurred to me, though I personally take nothing stronger than tea, that a revival of loose living in the literary world would be a God-send to discriminating readers, as we might then cherish the hope that some of our popular novelists would perish ignominously, like poor Kit Marlowe, before they could put in their cheap, slop literature on the strength of their first bit of genuine work.
It is noticeable that of nearly all our contemporary writers it is true that their best work was done first in obscurity. With success came easy writing and slop literature for the bag-men of the syndicates. This is the most severe criticism that can be made on them, for a writer who respects himself should strive to continue developing until forty. It is a pity some of our writers[17] cannot meet a bad end early in life, for in that case they would leave a fame unspoiled and unsmirched with endless scamp work done for the speculators in literary reputations.
If, perhaps, two-thirds of the present brood of fiction writers had died, or been cut off in their first flush, we should have just so much good literature without being compelled to sift it out of much “boomed” rubbish.
Max Nordau claims that the writers of today are degenerates. As far as our literature is concerned, the majority of our popular writers have no such valid claim to serious consideration. It is conceivable that degenerates may produce priceless and imperishable literature. Our writers are mostly merely sober and respectable tinkers, and they imperil the intellectual development of the race by coddling themselves so well that they threaten to live as long as Queen Victoria.
Indeed the glut of balderdash in the literary market has become so serious and critical that it seems to me some heroic measure is necessary. I humbly suggest a measure that would, in a radical and effective manner, meet the situation. It is this: that a Censorship of Literature should be established in connection with the department of justice. The sole object of the censorship would be the promotion of the best[18] interests of literature. The censorship would take the delinquents in hand, with a stern and implacable majesty of law, that would indeed put a premium on literary ambition and tempt only the finest spirits and wits into the field.
The idea is this: At forty years of age every successful literary man should be “removed”—and by removal we imply the full significance of the picturesque Oriental figure. To obviate all chances, it would be fairly understood that all literary careers ended at forty. There would be no alternative of banishment or imprisonment. It would be death in every case. This would not be done to embarrass the production of good literature, no matter how great the production might become, for the world is big enough, and humanity is slow and dull enough to accommodate all the good literature the centuries may bring forth. But the measure is needed to prevent authors from destroying the good influence of their first honest and strenuous work and their own reputations. And this fate would not deter the finest minds, for they would be content to die with fame secure. But just think of the beneficial and deterrent effect of such an institution on the horde of scribbling men and women who bury all the good literature of our time under their huge mountain of silly novels!
Jonathan Penn.
Women are the exceptions to every rule. That is what rules are made for—so that women can be exceptions to them.
Wickedness in women is expiated by the joy it affords the saints.
We all profess to think well of humanity because we want to be well thought of.
It is something to convert one’s enemies, but the disillusion of life comes when one attempts to convert one’s friends.
The definition of an immoral story in the eyes of a certain caste of critics and the smugs is one that has a moral.
A man who values his peace of mind marries a plain woman.
We get a good deal of literature about the Woman with a Past. A woman has not got a past until she begins the folly of repentance.
There is something radically wrong with a misanthrope who is not merry and cheerful, for this is a state of mental and moral independence and self-complacency.
Another impending catastrophe that looms up large on the literary horizon is a serial publication of the innocuous, but insufferably tedious[21] William Black. This is one of the most notorious modern instances of a writer of fine abilities who has fallen into the slough of mere money making. Black ceased to write anything that really seizes one’s interest almost as long ago as ten years. He has written nothing but guide and patter-book stories of the Scotch highlands since his first legitimate successes, and today he writes simply for the largest audience. The style and workmanship is always up to his own standard, for, of course, he is a good workman, but the charm of a forceful and original mind that we enjoyed in “Shandon Bells” and the rest, is lacking in these later stories, in which the conventional love story of old-fashioned romance is told over and over again, with a background of London and Scotch country houses.
Mrs. Humphrey Ward is in the field again. She is the female political and religious prophet of the nonconformist many-headed. She is to contribute an interminable, commonplace snob-novel, dealing with utterly superfluous English “society” and political life, to one of the American magazines for mature sucklings. It is bad enough to get this freak female in books.
It is a poor imitation of Anthony Trollope, and it is filled with the profound platitudes that have made the Ward nightmare a ludicrous libel and parody of George Eliot. Such is the taste[22] of the serious minded women readers of our time, that this unendurably tiresome portrayer of merely snob life and snob philosophy is hailed as one of the geniuses of our age.
I hope I am a good Democrat here at home, but in following English politics in the newspapers I observe one intellectual characteristic of a Tory government which touches my admiration and enthusiasm, and inclines me to prefer the Tories to the Liberals. The Liberals, like the large army of “Reformers” we have with us in this country, are rather apt to appeal to the mawkish sentimentality of the unbalanced and short-sighted masses, and they encourage schemes for the reformation of human nature by Act of Parliament. The Tories are saner, broader and more tolerant of human failings that are in the nature of things incurable. Perhaps it is because they themselves do not pretend to be wholly incorruptible on the moral side that they have perception enough to recognize the fact, that folly and wickedness are the sole compensations of the lower orders for the hardships of existence. The Lord save the poor from the dispensation of the reformers and moralists! I am glad to note that Lord Salisbury has just turned down a deputation of fanatics on the liquor question with the curt remark that the subject did not attract the government[23] after past experience, and, moreover, the government had other more important matters to attend to. It is time these Prohibition lunatics learned that free men will never relinquish their divine and human rights to go to the devil in their own way. And besides, liquor is not by any means the worst evil in this world.
It is time Americans arrived at maturity of judgment in intellectual matters, instead of complacently occupying a position of servile dependence upon English opinion. A declaration of Literary Independence is needed, and must soon be made by some bold spirits.
It is ridiculous to see the American cultivated public taking all its opinions in literary matters from the organs of British complacency and ancient prejudice. The London Times, an ancient bulwark of immovable Tory Know-nothingism, is regarded seriously on this side. Then there is the Saturday Review, a dirty gutter rag of imbecile impertinence, which diverts the naturäl “sports” and hobbledehoys of the British aristocracy. It is written in choice English superciliousness, by snobbish and half baked boys, for English country houses, where the coagulation of insular stupidity needs a whip and stable-boy familiarities to set any wits in motion. These astounding journals of civilization are taken seriously by the American reading public,[24] and more especially by the critics, who will, with very few exceptions, dance to any jig that is played in London.
That the English “bag-men” of literature do not fail to take advantage of American credulity and servile deference to English opinion, which is as easily counterfeited as “public opinion” is here, is shown once more for the thousandth time, by a recent statement in The London Times. The English do not take any trouble to dissemble their contempt of everything American, and a good stirring spirit of retaliation in every department, including literature and criticism in this country, would increase John Bull’s friendliness and tolerance as much as Cleveland’s message on the Monroe doctrine did in one astonishing fortnight. We now learn the English love us! After all those scurrilous articles in their magazines!
The Times says: “Nothing but a boom in London will induce American publishers to boom an author in the States. There are very few literary journals in the United States, so that ours have a remarkable influence, and their verdict on a new work is eagerly scanned and, as a rule, accepted.”
Well, it is time the literary journals we have awoke to their duty and opportunity, and gave up singing to English piping, and took to thinking[25] for themselves. They might also look around here, and learn something of their own writers. It is really worth while to encourage authorship in America. There is an abundance of talent here, and, when circumstances are favorable, real genius.
The howling of the critics and the frantic female moralists convinced me that I must read “Jude the Obscure,” which I might have postponed until I was less busy, and so finally have missed, as I have many good things—swept on with the tide of events and affairs. But when the frantic female moralist is stirred up in holy indignation, I know that there is something moving forward worthy of masculine consideration.
I’ve read “Jude the Obscure.” It is the comedy and tragedy of real human life. I have no criticism. It seems Thackeray ought to have lived to have remarked the literary successor of Henry Fielding. I’m like Oliver Twist. Alarmed at my own temerity, I want some more.
Let our English literature be written for men and women. Let it dare, even if it can never achieve the range of Balzac, the Aristophanes, the Shakspeare of modern fiction.
One very significant change has almost imperceptibly crept into English fiction of recent[26] years. It will be remembered that all Dickens’ and Thackeray’s heroines were in their teens; only adventuresses and wicked women being allowed a fictitious existence after passing their twentieth birthday. And so with all the conventional novels from that time to date—all the heroines are sylphish, roguish, innocent, or pale-faced, meditative maids. To-day the heroines in some rather advanced books are allowed to be as aged as twenty-five. This is moral and intellectual progress. A woman is now also allowed to be in love with a man before he pops any question.
The February “Bachelor of Arts” has an article on “The Yale Prom [From the Girl’s Point of View].” It is signed by “Florence Guertin.” In the second paragraph we read: “Skirt the ballroom with boxes; place in them hundreds of pretty girls, typical American beauties from all parts of the country; offset these by a fringe of diamond-decked chaperones; confront them with a solid phalanx of white-shirted, handsome, muscular young men, and you have a rough sketch of the outward aspect of the Junior Promenade.” “White-shirted!” Why, Florence! Is the Yale Prom such a barbarous, uncivilized affair? This out-Poteats Mrs. Poteat, who said she had rather send her son to hell than to Yale (she was not a Harvard grad.,[27] either). Our moral sensibilities are rudely disturbed by this vision, but we struggle on for a few paragraphs not knowing what awful disclosure Florence will make next, till we heave a sigh of relief when we read: “Yale University teaches one thing not down in the curriculum: it teaches a man how to dress. The majority of students could pass a hundred in this course.” From this we are led to infer that the solid phalanx of handsome, muscular young men had something else on beside white shirts, and that there was more regard for the conventionalities of modern civilization at New Haven than Florence at first would have us believe. But why “white-shirted?” Did Florence expect that Yale men would appear in their dress suits with colored shirts? Or perhaps she thought they wore sweaters.
I do not know how it may be with other Epicureans, but I find the complete dominance of daily journalism, the stage, and a certain class of magazines with a million readers apiece, by the Fractionally-attired Female of the variety stage or of society, is becoming distinctly nauseating.
To get the semi-nude fleshly female thrust upon us in bulk at every turn, day after day, awakens a fierce revolt in some masculine minds against this insane worship of the Triumphant[28] Harlot, which is fast growing to be the principal characteristic of modern civilization. It is getting to be a nightmare to all who cherish any intellectual and moral ideal aims in life, and instead of increasing the witchery of woman it makes her a loathsome vacuous symbol of the corrupt millions who are groaning and praying for a Utopia of unrestrained bestial content. I hope they may never throw off the yokes that keep them tame—and out of my neighborhood. This degradation of the stage and literature is enough to create a race of Epicurean misogynists.
Mr. Edward Sanford Martin, in a department called “This Busy World” in Harper’s Weekly, expresses his strenuous disapproval of the Bibelot movement in contemporary literature, and of the aims of the Fly Leaf in particular. He says: “The Fly Leaf is a periodical of the New—not to say the ‘Fresh.’”
I should have thought a man who has enough love of real literature to turn to the good old eighteenth century form of the gossipy essay, as Mr. Martin has done in one or two books, would have had enough sense of humor to appreciate a sincere and honest attempt to rehabilitate free thought, robust opinion and high endeavor in present day literature. The revival of the old and honorable pamphlet form, which[29] is and always has been the vehicle of free thought, free fancy and the honest literature of Democracy since the popularization of the printing press should appeal to a bookman.
Mr. Martin is, however, a much better Tory than he is a humorist; and to those who are not aware of it, it is well to point out that one of the significant developments in American literature is the Tory spirit of a certain clique of comfortables, who regard literature not as the sacred tables of the human mind, but as a mere game for people of taste. It is disappointing, however, to find a man who shows his appreciation of the good old school of essayists by attempting to work out a career as one of this scanty apostolic succession, so completely vitiated in his critical and humorous perception by bad company that he can only find a cheap, cant term, borrowed from the gutter or the class-room, for the honest work of men, who, in this age of clatter and notoriety, are striving against odds to bring in the ideals of the old robust English literature.
But a Tory cannot be tolerant of Grub Street, or stick at simple honesty in criticism. He is bound to associate genius with prosperity, or some of his friends’ fame will suffer, and discriminating readers will grow overbold in their choice of polite literature. Fame depends nowadays[30] on one’s appreciations of one’s well to do contemporaries. It is the solemn business of all “respectable” critics to keep literature as the sacred gift and heirloom of a close corporation of perfectly “respectable” and inoffensive writers.
But perhaps time will bring a sense of humor to Mr. Martin. We hope so, as we have a tenderness for every man who cares for and writes essays. Mr. Martin’s attitude surprised us somewhat, as he really can write an amusing essay and we expect much toleration from an essayist. But he may live to grow mellow and learn to love stout heretics. Every independent writer since Job has appeared “fresh” to smug complacency, and an essayist should never countenance smuggery, if he would hold any status with book men.
It always appears ridiculous to a clique that other men should fight for and demand a hearing. But we must honestly aver our egotistical opinion that there is fully as much brains in Grub Street, frowned upon as it is by the respectable tin gods of contemporary criticism and literature, as there is in other and more respectable coteries of literature.
The true ideal of a democracy is a natural aristocracy of intellect, recruited in every generation from all classes—the survival of the[31] fittest. But just now almost everything in our social, intellectual, political, and even religious activity, caters to the mass of lowest intelligences and their gross prejudices.
In the Fly Leaf the Beast will find no such pandering to his muddy and addled brains. There are plenty of periodical muck-heaps for him to wallow in. This thing is intended for our intellectual coevals and contemporaries, and we shall not be easily convinced that, in this seething time of wholesome change, there are not enough such people in America to sympathize with and support a periodical with such aims.
The Fly Leaf and its writers appeal to that rare and delightful being, the discriminating reader. Bookish folk constitute a division in the human species, a class by themselves, and as a Booklover as well as a quillfeather, I firmly believe that only those who are possessed of some intellectual and catholic interests of this sort will be found human and worthy enough to be admitted to Heaven. The Almighty will surely not destroy his own peace by allowing the fools to outnumber and outvote Him. The dull and unintelligent deserve to be lost. An acute philosopher (but why dissimulate to delude the dull, since the philosophic quip is my own?) has divided the human race into thinkers and readers—and mere bipeds. Why remain[32] simply a humble biped when you can read the Fly Leaf and hope for Heaven?
It should be distinctly understood by all readers who visit the book stores with the idea of getting the most for their money, that the Fly Leaf cannot be put upon the scale and weighed against the picture periodicals. It tips hopelessly in the air, and this airiness and lightness and intangible delicacy is the characteristic of all thought. It flies into the air while mud settles at once into its congenial mire. Thought and wit and fancy always fly up in this fashion; and this is the honor and distinction of the Fly Leaf and its staff, whether we win or lose.
We candidly do not appeal to the gross and clumsy wits of the many-headed, although we conserve the tradition of the democracy of fine spirit in literature. Nature’s aristocracy of intellect is all that makes humanity tolerable. We appeal to the Remnant, without which democracy would be the unmitigated dominion of the Beast; and luckily we see evidences everywhere of the rapid growth of this class and of a salutary revolt against the dominion of the Beast in journalism, literature, and even in politics. Let it grow—for no nation can take its proper place in civilization which is governed by its tail instead of by its head.
The Man in the Moon.
The Leading Critical Literary Journal of London, in a long review of “Meditations in Motley,” by Walter Blackburn Harte, says, among other things:
“When any book of good criticism comes it should be welcomed and made known for the benefit of the persons who care for such works. The book under notice is one of these. It is, so far as I know, the first from the author’s pen; but his writings are well known, and those who read his present book will, with some eagerness, await its successor. For it is a book in which wit and bright, if often satirical, humor are made the vehicle for no flimsy affectations, but for genuine thought. Mr. Ruskin has affirmed that the virtue of originality is not newness, but genuineness.
“In this true sense Mr. Harte’s book is original. Here is his own thought on several topics, pleasantly displayed, and no mere echo or second-hand production of the ideas of others. If Mr. Harte continues to act up to this sentiment, [a long quotation from the book under consideration] as he does in the present book, he may not achieve the triumph of twentieth editions, but he will be a power for good—as every true man of letters is, and must be in the world. If it were practicable I should be much disposed to let the author recommend himself by giving copious quotations from these essays. At his best—that is, in his most characteristic and seemingly unconscious passages—he reminds one of Montaigne: the charming inconsequence, the egotism free from arrogance.”
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