It is rather a complicated matter, this sneering business; and after attending a Walt Whitman dinner I don’t know whose sneers disgust me more, Mr. Darrow’s or my friend’s. They are both, however, identical in spirit, the spirit of mediocrity and sincerity when sincerity becomes, as it most always does, the cloak for ignorant convictions and bigoted fanaticism.
And now we come to the third and last condition—boredom. Among the speakers at this memorable dinner was Mr. Llewellyn Jones. Mr. Jones is a critic of literature by profession if not qualification—although I do not say it, really. Of all the orators at good old Walt’s memorial gabfest Mr. Jones was the least offensive. He said nothing that shocked the taste or violated one’s innerself or harrowed one’s soul. I don’t, of course, remember what Mr. Jones did say. One never does, not only in the case of Mr. Jones but in the thousands like him. They occupy time and space and leave them empty. Not for them the sneer or the slobber. Mr. Jones wouldn’t sneer for the world. And as for slobbering Mr. Jones has too much good taste and discretion for that. Not that he is above them. His fear of them, his apparent uncertainty in distinguishing between these two characteristics and the characteristics of inspired opinion, indicate this plainly enough.
So to be safe Mr. Jones resorts to the time-honored entrenchment of mediocrity. He barricades himself behind the bulwarks of boredom. He discharges no cannon, he commits no sins, he makes no false steps or takes no false flights. He is boredom incarnate, the eternal convention in the arts whether he deals with Nihilism, radicalism, or stands pat on the isms of the past. Mr. Jones never gets anywhere, I repeat. I speak of all the Joneses. Nobody derives anything from him—from them—except ennui. He, they, never offend, never elate. He, they, are always Mr. Jones.
Listening to the Joneses is as elevating an experience as watching the water blop-blop out of the kitchen hydrant. And this idea leads me back to where I started—The Little Review.
Can you imagine what a thorough contempt a kitchen hydrant would have for a fountain rising from the rocks, for a brook gurgling down the hillside, or a strong river capering to sea? It wouldn’t exactly sneer at them. Mr. Jones doesn’t. But it would feel moved to spirited reproof. How juvenile it is to gurgle, the hydrant would say, how vain and foolish it is to rise from the rocks, how upsetting it is to be continually capering to sea. I do not claim any super-intelligence in the matter of hydrants. But Mr. Jones and all the Joneses do say, and I have enough intelligence to understand them if not to sympathize with them, that The Little Review is young and idiotic and given to unnecessary emotions and so forth. All of which is true, looked at from the elevation of a kitchen sink. “Why don’t you,” remonstrates the hydrant to the brook, “blop blop with me?”
An afterthought: at this Whitman dinner there was one among the speakers who sustained a dying faith in Walt, humanity, and vers libre in general. He was Carl Sandburg who read a free verse poem of his own on Billy Sunday.
It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.—Whitman.
The Death of Anton Tarasovitch
A Short Story of the Present War
Florence Kiper Frank