Exaggerated Mushrooms
Minions of the Moon, by Madison Cawein. [Stewart and Kidd, Cincinnati.]
At a glance the book seems merely a collection of unusual nursery-rhymes, but after a careful reading one finds little glimmers of poetry, like faded flowers touched with sulphur and pressed between the leaves of a very inane volume. If you have the sublime suggestion of patience necessary to turn the leaves of the book you will rather delight in fingering the flowers. They are moon-light flowers. Mr. Cawein is at his best when he goes into his usual tremulous raptures over moon-light. His moon-light poems actually drip with slim, wistful (to use a much-abused word) color. If he could forget elfs, fairies, and mushrooms for more than a moment, Madison Cawein would reach the plateaus, if not the mountain-tips of poetry. But he can only cast out the trite child which has taken possession of him, now and then. Strange to say, though three or four of the poems in the volume are good, they do not contain a line worth quoting. Their halfbeauty lies in the ensemble. As for the rest of the book, I can best describe it by saying that one feels inclined to turn over the page.
M. B.
Sentence Reviews
(Inclusion in this category does not preclude a more extended notice.)
The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd, by D. H. Lawrence. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.] A three-act drama, by a young English poet, that feels into new recesses of the problem of sex relationships. Clear thinking, acute analysis, and provocative criticisms of life make this a notable addition to The Modern Drama Series.
An Island Outpost, by Mary E. Waller. [Little, Brown and Company, Boston.] “I respect the clam,” says Miss Waller; “it has certain reserves.” She also says: “Liberty is the restraint of controlled intelligence,” and she tells us that a million ideas unloaded on an unwarned public will cause befogment of its reasoning powers. Miss Waller in her Island Outpost has not shown the reserve of the clam, nor the restraint of controlled intelligence, but has unloaded her “million ideas on a million subjects unannounced and uncatalogued.” Socrates, Swedes, and Simians, Hull House and Helsingfors, Praxiteles and Plum Jelly, Clucking Hens and Chemistry, Philanthropic Frenzies, Psychiatry Astigmatic, Outlooks, and Intellectual Miasma overlap each other in “indecent haste”—and to cap all comes an analogy taken from old “turned carpets,” suggestive of prehistoric methods of sanitation to a mere “Westerner.”
Gillespie, by J. MacDougall Hay. [George H. Doran Company, New York.] A big story of heroic Scotch life by a new writer who has tremendous power. It makes that kind of profound personal impressions which a well-bred man refuses to discuss.
Songs and Poems, by Martin Schütze. [The Laurentian Publishers, Chicago.] The discriminating reader who is a bit wearied of the “free verse” of “free poets” will find refreshing contrast in this slender volume of Mr. Schütze. Here there is beauty combined with delicate craftsmanship; lines finely wrought, fresh rhythms, uncommon phrasing. The contents reveals a happy versatility: there are a variety of Songs, some Poems, Discourses, and Epigrams.
When Love Flies Out o’ the Window, by Leonard Merrick. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.] A pretty story of the love affair of a charming chorus girl and a novelist-journalist. It should make good late summer reading, for the route of true love is not over-smooth, and the end is happy. We recommend the earlier portion of the book as done in the inimitable Merrick fashion. It is rather too bad that this author’s sustained performances fall so far below his short stories.
The Man and the Woman, by Arthur L. Salmon. [Forbes and Company, Chicago.] A comforting little volume for smug Victorian women of both sexes.
Short Plays, by Mary Macmillan. [Stewart and Kidd Company, Cincinnati.] Ten short plays deftly done, and sufficiently varied in theme to meet the diverse demands of the woman’s club, the girls’ school, and the amateur dramatic society.
English Drama of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century, by George Henry Nettleton. [The Macmillan Company, New York.] Interesting to academic students of the historical facts of the early periods of the modern English drama.
Erna Vitek, by Alfred Kreymborg. [Albert and Charles Boni, New York.] This further enterprise of a new and daring publishing house is an attempt, and a promising one at that, at the naturalistic American novel. But it is only an attempt. Mr. Kreymborg’s style is marred by the very frequent use of journalese. He has an excellent plot, but the treatment has somewhat failed to do it justice. Also, it seems to us that the episode narrated in the book would have made a far better short story than a novel. Despite these defects of juvenility, the book gives promise of future work by this author that will surely count. Also one obtains a refreshing insight into the real New York Bohemia.
A Stepdaughter of the Prairie, by Margaret Lynn. [The Macmillan Company, New York.] Vivid impressions of pioneer life in the Missouri Valley by a writer who knows the wide prairies of that region.
Business: A Profession, by Louis D. Brandeis. [Small, Maynard and Company, Boston.] A book composed of the lectures, essays and discussions which gave rise to the efficiency idea in big business management. It belongs on the shelf with President Wilson’s The New Freedom.
London and Paris, by Prof. John C. Van Dyke. [Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.] Two additions to the New Guides to Old Masters Series that point out to conventional visitors the things that they should see when they look at the pictures in the famous galleries of London and Paris.
Letters from a Living Dead Man, dictated to Elsa Barker. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.] Unimportant even if true, which they are alleged to be. Psychical researchers will salt this thing down with their “facts.”
Where Rolls the Oregon, by Dallas Lore Sharp. [Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.] A group of delightful impressions of “the vast outdoors of Oregon” by an interpretative observer whose zestful phraseology is full of local atmosphere. A number of charming halftones are included.
The Red Light of Mars, by George Bronson-Howard. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.] This philosophical comedy in three acts, which adds creditable variety and interest to The Modern Drama Series, will be staged this season. Being typically American in spirit, it lacks iron in the body of its thought.
Bambi, by Marjorie Benton Cook. [Doubleday, Page and Company, New York.] “Bambi” is altogether delightful. After marrying a writer of impossible plays, she endeavors to support him and to teach him to support himself. She becomes an author, and with her delicious vanity, and knowledge of her ability to wind men around her tiny finger, uses her own fame as a lever to place her husband among the successful playwrights. This sprightly midget is one of the most lovable characters we have met in many moons.
The Reader Critic
“Gaudeamus”:
In these historic days I cannot think of your September issue in other terms than as of a Zeppelin hurling bombs into the enemy’s strongholds. From the first to the last page (yes, even the letters!) I read the copy to an imaginary beating of drums, blasting of trumpets, fluttering of banners. When I reached the last line, I relaxed in nervous expectation of the results of the grandiose charge: Will there be no explosion, no earthquake?
I ask this question in dead earnest. The Little Review has become definite in one point—in its uncompromising warfare against the rotten features of the existing order. In this one issue you have attacked with the fervor of unhesitating youth some of the stanchest fortified dunghills of American life and art. From Armageddon, that merciless bomb into the camp of provincial complacency prevailing in this country, through the execution of academical Grocers, through the venomous Democrat that reveals the beauty of constructive hatred, down to the palpitating letter of the “Boy-Reader” who deals a tender death-blow to the despotic authoritativness of parenthood,—I scent war powder! And with hope and anxiety I put the question once more:
Will there be no response to the call of the clarion? Will your battle-cry not be echoed by young America, who for the first time hear a free unmercenarized word? Will your courageous gospel not stir the hearts of college men and women, those who have not yet been completely philistinized by their “vocational guides”; college men and women who in other countries have always been the torch-bearers, the advance-guard and martyrs in the fights for truth and ideals? Will The Little Review not succeed in creating a Drang und Sturm epoch?
A negative answer would spell a death-verdict for the future of this over-dollarized land.
An Interested Reader, Chicago:
The Little Review bubbles over with enthusiasm and love of life. Here is an instance of a losing fight with life—perhaps it may interest you.
A childhood spent in the slums of a large city—not in the camaraderie spirit of the slums but within the close bounds of a little clean apartment presided over by an aristocratic-notioned mother. Absolute barrenness of childhood experience—not a toy, never even a rag doll, not a tree, not a flower, not a picture of any beauty—a household of petty quarreling and incessant scrubbing and cleaning, and strict adherence to duties. As the child, now grown, thinks back, she knows that there was always a subconscious feeling of revolt. She would often go off for many hours knowing that punishment would follow; she destroyed much that caused tears in her efforts to create, she craved and found affection where life was a little richer.
And then came books—avid, unsystematic reading. But life was never touched intimately and directly from any angle but one of barrenness, pettiness. A routined school course enriched living by a deep and lasting friendship. Continually the inner revolt and the outward conforming dragged along together. And then came a time of complete awakening, of burning whys, with realization of a dual existence and a desire for sincerity in living above all things. Life demands some sort of a medium of expression which has its beginning in childhood experience. A maturing mind just beginning on impressions that should have come in childhood is a sorry spectacle. Its desires are so out of proportion to its human possibilities that it flounders and does nothing. It finds in itself capacities dulled for want of stimulation, it looks on things and sees them out of relation to itself. One grows to despise human beings, to hate living—to see that there is beauty and radiance in the world only for the chosen ones who respond to it intimately and not only through day dreams.
Youth is not always synonymous with love of life; the gutter does not always hold a reflection of the sky, and a conversation or even understanding with one’s parents but seldom solves the problem of soul imprisonment. Breaking the bars of immediate environment is not so wonderful a thing for an independent adult, but how is one to overcome the barriers of a wasted childhood?
C. A. Z., Chicago:
What splendid letters those are from George Soule! Every one has been really worth while and inspiring. Especially the advice and warning he gives in his last: “Let us go to the theatres next fall prepared to trace the beginnings of a new stage art in this country; in the meantime, however, not hoping to escape the flood of cheap and artistically vicious stuff with which the commercial managers will attempt to drown our sensibilities.”
Perhaps after this warning one ought not become agitated or angry with any of the productions of those showmen who are frankly in the business for the sake of revenue. However, when the “super”-showman, who is said by the press-agent to possess unconquerable ideals, does something that is supposed to be the uttermost of stage production—and fails—well, then one can’t help becoming irritated. In a production of Joseph and His Brethren which I saw recently there is evidence that he is aware of the presence of new ideas in the theatre. But nowhere is it perfect enough or fearlessly new enough to be satisfying. What new ideas are used are swamped under, in their imperfection, by the mass of “excellent mediocrity” that Mr. Soule speaks of. In every act is present that hideous compromise—rank mixture of the old theatrical devices with a cautious lifting of some daring modernists’ best ideas. But the pictures received applause. Most came for the scene that jarred most. It was a moon-light garden scene. The backdrop and sense of distance were perfect, but stuck prominently in the foreground, on either side of the stage, were huge clusters of pink blossoms. The applause for that was great—just as Soule predicted.
Mixing ideals—so-called—with the business of attracting the crowd for what it brings to the box-office may produce a super-showman and make of him a millionaire, but it does not advance the cause of the theatre. Not only is the production to be quarreled with, but the drama itself is of mongrel character. Everywhere is evident that catering to the ordinary theatrical taste:—entire speeches from the bible alongside those of modern idiom and thought together with re-arrangements and useless additions to the already satisfying detail of the scriptures.
After a “smashing” finale with the gorgeously garmented multitude waving dusty palms in a private house I decided to dismiss the entire show as fruitless, so far as the “new note” was concerned. However, one critic writes that the German and Russian moderns were suggested in some scenes and that the chief female character might have been costumed by Bakst himself! That arouses one to the danger of the thing. Is this the final word in the theatre and what we are to expect as the best this season?
Marion Thayer MacMillan, Cincinnati:
The July number of The Little Review is before me, and the demure brown cover brings a smile as I recall the stimulating sparkle and scarlet audacities hidden beneath. After Nietzsche’s notion of the Wagnerite, it is at least interesting to read Mr. Brooke’s description of pâte de foi-gras at the opera. The talk of Dr. Brandes and the tedious speaker is a gladsome thing, but most of all I was held by The Renaissance of Parenthood. It is a large subject for one article and too large for a letter; nevertheless I must quarrel with one of your implications. I refuse to admit that one can deduce anything whatever from the writings of Mr. George Bernard Shaw. Don’t mistake me: I feel sure that I agree with everything you think about him—“aye more.” But I deny that you can justly follow any statement of his with “hence.” When a man takes his authorized and adoring biographer and tells him “Lo! here is the house where I first saw the light,” and, when the adoring and authorized one comes a cropper because he deduces from this remark that the self-same house is the birth place of his idol, it behooves one to walk warily with this God! No doubt to read the profound and playful prophet philosopher is to conclude that he believes “the old-fashioned game in which the mother sacrificed everything was unfair and unnecessary and wasteful.” Equally, however, there is no doubt that G. B. S. himself holds an entirely opposite point of view since he emphatically affirms: “When others thought I should be working to support my mother, I made her work to support me. Five years after I was entirely capable of earning a living, I kept her at it so that I could learn to write English”; and, to prove his rightness, he cries: “And now look who’s here!”