Adelle’s story, then, turns out to be what we least expected it,—a hopeful one. It leaves us with almost a sense of security, for is she not one of those who can “derive good from her mistakes,” and therefore “the safest sort of human being to raise in this garden plot of souls”? And although we are still saddled with “that absurd code of inheritance and property rights that the Anglo-Saxon peoples have preserved from their ancient tribal days in the gloomy forests of the lower Rhine,” the situation is not without hope, since it has yielded a man of the judge’s type, in whom the beauty of a past idealism is coupled with the freshness of a new vision of responsibility.
To hark back to the recent article in The Yale Review, we believe that Mr. Herrick himself has given us an American novel—thoroughly American in situation, character, treatment, and even in philosophy. We, as a people, are beginning to suspect our boastful optimism as we become aware of the sordidness beneath the fair exterior of our glorious civilization. And in accordance with the western temperament, the awareness of wrong leads not to bitter cynicism but to sturdy efforts toward amelioration. Such, then, is the spirit of Clark’s Field—a hopefulness in the power of courage, and labor, and a growing sense of social responsibility to move mounds that seem to have become immovable mountains through a tenacious fostering of tradition.
—Marguerite Swawite.
THE “SAVAGE” PAINTERS
Cubists and Post Impressionism, by Arthur Jerome Eddy. [A. C. McClurg and Company, Chicago.]
An attempt to explain the new schools in art “in plain, every-day terms.” An earnest appeal for tolerance in regard to seemingly perversive forms. The book has a wealth of material and numerous quotations from Picasso, Picabia, Cézanne, Matisse, and others, considerably more interesting and instructive than Mr. Eddy’s own truisms. Although the author repeatedly resents any accusation in his adherence to Cubism, the reader gets the impression that the Cubistic movement has received a more thorough and fair treatment than the other new schools. Of the sixty-nine reproductions of Post-Impressionistic paintings and sculpture, only five represent the Futurists. Idillon Redon, who gave us the greater delight in last year’s International Exhibition, is totally ignored. Among the Self-Portraits that of Matisse is sorely missed—a work that helps greatly in understanding the quaint painter of the Woman in Red Madras. Whether Mr. Eddy will succeed in convincing the prejudiced conservatives is doubtful; but in those who have appreciated the daring attempts of the new schools his book will arouse a renewed longing for the foreign “savages” and an ardent hope for their further invasions in our “sane and healthful” galleries.
THE SAME BOOK FROM ANOTHER STANDPOINT
(With apologies to the author of Tender Buttons)
Oil and Water
Enough water is plenty and more, more is almost plenty enough. Enthusiastically hurting sad size, such size, same size slighter, same splendor simpler, same sore sounder. Glazed glitter, eddy eddies discover discovered discoveries, discover Mediterranean sea, large print large. Small print small, picked plumes painters and penmen, pretty pieces Picasso, Picabia plus Plato, Hegel, Cézanne, Kandinsky, more plenty more, small print single sign of oil supposing shattering scatter and scattering certainly splendidly. Suppose oil surrounded with watery sauce, suppose spare solely inside, suppose the rest.