Libertatis Sacra Fames
Albeit nurtured in democracy,
And liking best that state republican
Where every man is Kinglike and no man
Is crowned above his fellows, yet I see,
Spite of this modern fret for Liberty,
Better the rule of One, whom all obey,
Than to let clamorous demagogues betray
Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.
Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane
Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street
For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign
Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honor, all things fade,
Save Treason and the dagger of her trade,
And Murder with his silent bloody feet.
Oscar Wilde
Frank Harris: Curriculum Vitae
FRANK HARRIS was born in Galway, Ireland, Over fifty years ago, of Welsh parents. He is proud of the fact that he is pure Kelt and without intermixture for as far back as he knows. Till he was twelve years of age, he was educated in Ireland, the last year or so at the Royal School, Armagh. In spite of his ultra-protestant or Black Orange relations, Frank Harris still recounts with glee how he was a Fenian even before he could think. "As a small boy," he says, "I remember reading a proclamation offering five thousand pounds for any information that would lead to the arrest of James Stephens.the Fenian Head-Centre. While my playmates were gloating over the idea of getting this large sum of money I was only thinking how I could help him away from the 'polis.' The 'Head-Centre' fascinated my fancy!"
At twelve, his father sent him as a boarder to a well known public school on the Welsh border. There, for the first time, he met English boys and English sentiment. The school horse fed him; it was all punishments, he says, nothing human or humane about it except the library. He read madly; morning, noon and night till he knew Scott almost by heart, Charlotte Bronte, Mrs, Gaskell, Thackeray and Reade — and even Dickens. Dickens he never liked. After reading every other novel in the library he read Dickens and the poets. The fagging system in the school was abhorrent to this born rebel; he fought it tooth and nail; but in spite of trouble with boys as well as with the masters, he won prize after prize.
At fourteen his father disappointed him by failing to give him the nomination to become midshipman in the British Navy and the boy resolved to run away. For weeks he weighed the charms of South Africa (where they had just discovered diamonds) with those of Western America and at length he decided in favor of the Wild West. He came to America and soon made his way to Kansas and drove on the trail as a cowboy to New Mexico. He always declares that whatever capacity of thought he possesses comes from the fact that while his mind was growing he had to solve all the modern problems for himself and without books. "I think first and read afterwards" is his motto.
After a couple of years of wild western life, skirmishes with Indians, mad gamblings, ups and downs of fortune, he met the man Byron Smith, Professor of Greek at the University of Kansas. Professor Smith persuaded him to become a student and he spent the next three years with his mentor and friend at Lawrence, Kansas. When Professor Smith left the University for his health, Harris quarreled at once with the authorities, refusing to come in to morning chapel, and left the University in turn and went on with his law studies. In due time he was admitted to the bar and began the practice of law.
A year later Smith grew worse in Philadelphia and Harris threw up everything and went East to be with him. In another year his friend died and Harris returned to Europe to study; first in Paris, later in Heidelberg, Gottingen and Berlin. Then he went from Berlin to Athens where he studied a year. On his way back to America he met Froude in London and gave him a letter of introduction from Carlyle. Almost immediately he was offered the editorship of the "London Evening News" which he brought to success. Then he was offered the editorship of "The Fortnightly Review" which John (now Lord) Morley had just resigned. Seven years later he bought "The Saturday Review" and made it ever famous among English papers by bringing Bernard Shaw on it to write about the theatre; Wells to review the novels; D. S. McColl (now the head of the Tait Gallery) to write on art; Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, now the head of the Zoological Society, to write on Science; Max Beerbohm too, and Arthur Symonds, Ernest Dowson, Herbert Crackanthorpe and Cunningham Graham to do what they could. It is hardly too much to say that Harris picked then, in 1894, nearly all the men who today form public opinion in Great Britain. Shaw has acknowledged his debt to him again and again, and Wells calls him his literary godfather, asserting that Harris, when editing "The Fortnightly" accepted the first article he (Wells) ever had in print.
His career is a record of the books he has written including his first book of American stories, Elder Conklin by Mcmillan in 1890; Montes which Arnold says is "the best short story in English" (1894); another, 1907; The Man Shakespeare, which according to [illegible] established his reputation in 1909; The Women of [illegible], 1910; Shakespeare and His Love (a drama), [illegible] Days, 1911; The Veils of Isis; Contemporary [illegible] both last year, 1915 and Oscar Wilde, His Life [illegible] which is now in the press and we have had [illegible] pleasure of reading. We think it is his best work, so far [illegible] the best biography in the language.
Freedom of Man Upon Earth
By Frank Harris
THE wonderful age in which we live — this twentieth century with its X-rays that enable us to see through the skin and flesh of men, and to study the workings of their organs and muscles and nerves — has brought a new spirit into the world, a spirit of fidelity to fact, and with it a new and higher ideal of life and of art, which must of necessity, change and transform all the conditions of existence, and in time modify the almost immutable nature of man. For this new spirit, this love of the fact and of truth, this passion for reality will do away with the foolish fears and futile hopes which have fretted the childhood of our race, and will slowly but surely establish on broad foundations the Kingdom of Man upon Earth. For that is the meaning and purpose of the change which is now coming over the world. The faiths and convictions of twenty centuries are passing away and the forms and institutions of a hundred generations are dissolving before us like the baseless fabric of a dream. A new morality is already shaping itself in the spirit; a morality based not on guess-work and on fancies, but on ascertained laws of moral health; a scientific morality belonging not to statics, like the morality of the Jews, but to dynamics, and so fitting the nature of each individual person. Even now conscience with its prohibitions is fading out of life, evolving into a more profound consciousness of ourselves and others, with multiplied incitements to wise living. The old religious asceticism with its hatred of the body is dead; the servile acceptance of conditions of life and even of natural laws is seen to be vicious; it is of the nobility of man to be insatiate in desire and to rebel against limiting conditions; it is the property of his intelligence to constrain even the laws of nature to the attainment of his ideal.
Already we are proud of being students, investigators, servants of truth, and we leave the great names of demi-gods and heroes a little contemptuously to the men of bygone times. As student-artists we are no longer content with the outward presentment and form of men; we want to discover the protean vanities, greeds and aspirations of men and to lay bare, as with a scalpel, the hidden motives and springs of action. We dream of an art that shall take into account the natural daily decay and up-building of cell-life; the wars that go on in the blood; the fevers of the brain; the creeping paralysis of nerve-exhaustion; above all, we must be able even now from a few bare facts, to re-create a man and make him live and love again for the reader, just as the biologist from a few scattered bones can reconstruct some prehistoric bird or fish or mammal.
(From the Man Shakespeare and his Tragic Life Story, published by Mitchell Kennerley)
Guy de Maupassant
By Frank Harris
Yesterday I went out to "Les Ravenelles," his mother's villa in France. It is set on a little height behind the Rue de France, and here de Maupassant spent that 1st of January 1892, his last day on earth as a man among men. The "Vampire" in grey silk had just paid him another visit and had left him drained of strength and hope, exhausted, unnerved, panting. In spite of his indescribable wretchedness and misery, that "malaise indicible," he would not alarm his mother by his absence on such a day; but dragged himself over from Cannes, and gave her whom he loved so tenderly the illusion at least that he was getting better. The effort cost him more than life. He returned to Cannes by train, and at two the next morning Francois heard him ringing and hurried to his bedside, only to find him streaming in blood and out of his mind, crying — "Au rancart! Au rancart!"
Today I went through the little, low two sided villa, and sat where he had sat, and walked where he had walked. Here on this raised, half-moon terrace, on that bright, clear day, with the sunshine sparkling over there on the red roofs and the blue sea he had always taken such pleasure in; here he stood, another Anthony, and fought a more terrible fight than the Roman ever imagined. I had seen him a month before, and had had a long, intimate talk with him which cannot be set down in these pages; but it enables me to picture him as he was on that fatal morning. He had taken Francois with him to cook his food; he meant to give himself every chance of winning in the fight, and now, the meal over, the strain of talking and pretending grew intolerable, and he came out here by himself, with only the blue, unheeding sky above and the purple, dancing sea in front to mock his agony.
Albeit nurtured in democracy,
And liking best that state republican
Where every man is Kinglike and no man
Is crowned above his fellows, yet I see,
Spite of this modern fret for Liberty,
Better the rule of One, whom all obey,
Than to let clamorous demagogues betray
Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.
Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane
Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street
For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign
Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honor, all things fade,
Save Treason and the dagger of her trade,
And Murder with his silent bloody feet.
Oscar Wilde
Frank Harris: Curriculum Vitae
FRANK HARRIS was born in Galway, Ireland, Over fifty years ago, of Welsh parents. He is proud of the fact that he is pure Kelt and without intermixture for as far back as he knows. Till he was twelve years of age, he was educated in Ireland, the last year or so at the Royal School, Armagh. In spite of his ultra-protestant or Black Orange relations, Frank Harris still recounts with glee how he was a Fenian even before he could think. "As a small boy," he says, "I remember reading a proclamation offering five thousand pounds for any information that would lead to the arrest of James Stephens.the Fenian Head-Centre. While my playmates were gloating over the idea of getting this large sum of money I was only thinking how I could help him away from the 'polis.' The 'Head-Centre' fascinated my fancy!"
At twelve, his father sent him as a boarder to a well known public school on the Welsh border. There, for the first time, he met English boys and English sentiment. The school horse fed him; it was all punishments, he says, nothing human or humane about it except the library. He read madly; morning, noon and night till he knew Scott almost by heart, Charlotte Bronte, Mrs, Gaskell, Thackeray and Reade — and even Dickens. Dickens he never liked. After reading every other novel in the library he read Dickens and the poets. The fagging system in the school was abhorrent to this born rebel; he fought it tooth and nail; but in spite of trouble with boys as well as with the masters, he won prize after prize.
At fourteen his father disappointed him by failing to give him the nomination to become midshipman in the British Navy and the boy resolved to run away. For weeks he weighed the charms of South Africa (where they had just discovered diamonds) with those of Western America and at length he decided in favor of the Wild West. He came to America and soon made his way to Kansas and drove on the trail as a cowboy to New Mexico. He always declares that whatever capacity of thought he possesses comes from the fact that while his mind was growing he had to solve all the modern problems for himself and without books. "I think first and read afterwards" is his motto.
After a couple of years of wild western life, skirmishes with Indians, mad gamblings, ups and downs of fortune, he met the man Byron Smith, Professor of Greek at the University of Kansas. Professor Smith persuaded him to become a student and he spent the next three years with his mentor and friend at Lawrence, Kansas. When Professor Smith left the University for his health, Harris quarreled at once with the authorities, refusing to come in to morning chapel, and left the University in turn and went on with his law studies. In due time he was admitted to the bar and began the practice of law.
A year later Smith grew worse in Philadelphia and Harris threw up everything and went East to be with him. In another year his friend died and Harris returned to Europe to study; first in Paris, later in Heidelberg, Gottingen and Berlin. Then he went from Berlin to Athens where he studied a year. On his way back to America he met Froude in London and gave him a letter of introduction from Carlyle. Almost immediately he was offered the editorship of the "London Evening News" which he brought to success. Then he was offered the editorship of "The Fortnightly Review" which John (now Lord) Morley had just resigned. Seven years later he bought "The Saturday Review" and made it ever famous among English papers by bringing Bernard Shaw on it to write about the theatre; Wells to review the novels; D. S. McColl (now the head of the Tait Gallery) to write on art; Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, now the head of the Zoological Society, to write on Science; Max Beerbohm too, and Arthur Symonds, Ernest Dowson, Herbert Crackanthorpe and Cunningham Graham to do what they could. It is hardly too much to say that Harris picked then, in 1894, nearly all the men who today form public opinion in Great Britain. Shaw has acknowledged his debt to him again and again, and Wells calls him his literary godfather, asserting that Harris, when editing "The Fortnightly" accepted the first article he (Wells) ever had in print.
His career is a record of the books he has written including his first book of American stories, Elder Conklin by Mcmillan in 1890; Montes which Arnold says is "the best short story in English" (1894); another, 1907; The Man Shakespeare, which according to [illegible] established his reputation in 1909; The Women of [illegible], 1910; Shakespeare and His Love (a drama), [illegible] Days, 1911; The Veils of Isis; Contemporary [illegible] both last year, 1915 and Oscar Wilde, His Life [illegible] which is now in the press and we have had [illegible] pleasure of reading. We think it is his best work, so far [illegible] the best biography in the language.
Freedom of Man Upon Earth
By Frank Harris
THE wonderful age in which we live — this twentieth century with its X-rays that enable us to see through the skin and flesh of men, and to study the workings of their organs and muscles and nerves — has brought a new spirit into the world, a spirit of fidelity to fact, and with it a new and higher ideal of life and of art, which must of necessity, change and transform all the conditions of existence, and in time modify the almost immutable nature of man. For this new spirit, this love of the fact and of truth, this passion for reality will do away with the foolish fears and futile hopes which have fretted the childhood of our race, and will slowly but surely establish on broad foundations the Kingdom of Man upon Earth. For that is the meaning and purpose of the change which is now coming over the world. The faiths and convictions of twenty centuries are passing away and the forms and institutions of a hundred generations are dissolving before us like the baseless fabric of a dream. A new morality is already shaping itself in the spirit; a morality based not on guess-work and on fancies, but on ascertained laws of moral health; a scientific morality belonging not to statics, like the morality of the Jews, but to dynamics, and so fitting the nature of each individual person. Even now conscience with its prohibitions is fading out of life, evolving into a more profound consciousness of ourselves and others, with multiplied incitements to wise living. The old religious asceticism with its hatred of the body is dead; the servile acceptance of conditions of life and even of natural laws is seen to be vicious; it is of the nobility of man to be insatiate in desire and to rebel against limiting conditions; it is the property of his intelligence to constrain even the laws of nature to the attainment of his ideal.
Already we are proud of being students, investigators, servants of truth, and we leave the great names of demi-gods and heroes a little contemptuously to the men of bygone times. As student-artists we are no longer content with the outward presentment and form of men; we want to discover the protean vanities, greeds and aspirations of men and to lay bare, as with a scalpel, the hidden motives and springs of action. We dream of an art that shall take into account the natural daily decay and up-building of cell-life; the wars that go on in the blood; the fevers of the brain; the creeping paralysis of nerve-exhaustion; above all, we must be able even now from a few bare facts, to re-create a man and make him live and love again for the reader, just as the biologist from a few scattered bones can reconstruct some prehistoric bird or fish or mammal.
(From the Man Shakespeare and his Tragic Life Story, published by Mitchell Kennerley)
Guy de Maupassant
By Frank Harris
Yesterday I went out to "Les Ravenelles," his mother's villa in France. It is set on a little height behind the Rue de France, and here de Maupassant spent that 1st of January 1892, his last day on earth as a man among men. The "Vampire" in grey silk had just paid him another visit and had left him drained of strength and hope, exhausted, unnerved, panting. In spite of his indescribable wretchedness and misery, that "malaise indicible," he would not alarm his mother by his absence on such a day; but dragged himself over from Cannes, and gave her whom he loved so tenderly the illusion at least that he was getting better. The effort cost him more than life. He returned to Cannes by train, and at two the next morning Francois heard him ringing and hurried to his bedside, only to find him streaming in blood and out of his mind, crying — "Au rancart! Au rancart!"
Today I went through the little, low two sided villa, and sat where he had sat, and walked where he had walked. Here on this raised, half-moon terrace, on that bright, clear day, with the sunshine sparkling over there on the red roofs and the blue sea he had always taken such pleasure in; here he stood, another Anthony, and fought a more terrible fight than the Roman ever imagined. I had seen him a month before, and had had a long, intimate talk with him which cannot be set down in these pages; but it enables me to picture him as he was on that fatal morning. He had taken Francois with him to cook his food; he meant to give himself every chance of winning in the fight, and now, the meal over, the strain of talking and pretending grew intolerable, and he came out here by himself, with only the blue, unheeding sky above and the purple, dancing sea in front to mock his agony.
Auguste Rodin. Original
drawing by A. Delanney
How desperately he struggled for control; now answering some casual remark of his friends, now breaking out into cold sweat of dread as he felt the rudder slipping from his hand; called back to sanity again by some laughing remark, or some blessed sound of ordinary life, and then, again, swept off his feet by the icy flood of sliding memory and dreadful thronging imaginings, with the awful knowledge behind knocking at his consciousness that he was already mad, mad — never to be sane again, mad — that the awful despairing effort to hold on to the slippery rock and not to slide down into the depths was all in vain, the he was slipping in spite of himself, in spite of bleeding fingers, falling — falling. . . .
Hell has no such horror! There in that torture chamber did his agony last but a minute — he paid all debts, poor, hounded, hunted creature with wild beseeching eyes, choking in the grip of the foulest specter that besets humanity. . . . And all for what? For another mad hour with the "bourgeois de plus grand chic . . . d'ume beante remarquable," all for another kiss from the stylish lady of really remarkable beauty, "to whom he was always glad to say good-bye."
The worship of the great goddess Aselgeia is sweet indeed honey to the lips; but the price she exacts from her devotees is appalling. How many of them I have known, and how brilliant they were; her victims are taken from the most gifted of the sons of men. Heine fell to her and Maupassant and scores of others whom for pity's sake one does not name — young and gifted and lovable. As the clown says in "Twelfth Night," —
Rodin
By Frank Harris
RODIN is to me the creature of his works; the bodily presentment even is a true symbol of his soul; a French present in figure — a short, broad man with heavy shoulders, thick thighs and great, powerful hands. There is realistic likeness in Tweed's bust. The neck is short and thick, the nose large and fleshy; the forehead high but retreating; the eyes grey, by turns reflective and observant. There is an air transparent sincerity about the sturdy little man, with his careless grey beard and worn clothes. Always I see the large, strong hands, the short neck and lumpy shoulders — a master craftsman with a tremendous sensual endowment.
From Contemporary Portraits
Art and Our Village
THE chaotic conditions prevailing in the American art world of today are but a true replica of what is going on among the artists of our village. The times of Babel seem to be here again. The great individual efforts towards the one big achievement seem to be perturbed. Everybody is working as hard as he can and trying and failing and starting out again with new energy . . . . but he seems to do it in his own language, a different language from that of the universe. And everybody else fails to understand him. I am not talking now about artists who are busy getting out orders for magazins and commercial purposes, and I am not thinking of imitators and who are trying to create sensations with the empty language of others who really meant sincerely what they presented to the world.
There are men and women among us trying to do one thing or the other, who are using their paints and brushes for no other purpose but self-expression. They are people who will have found themselves in the course of the coming
ten or fifteen years, and who will really have something to give, to a generation which will have grown with them in the meantime.
Almost as many studios as we have down here — just as many different ways and means of expression of impressions "to the world" do we have. And these creations drift eventually uptown and are exhibited in "leading" galleries on the Avenue. Shall and can experiments be taken seriously? Shouldn't those in authority, especially the keepers of galleries refrain from using their walls for experimental purposes, especially when the artist today might laugh at his creation of yesterday? Must the public be the goat here, too, as well as in the other branches of the free arts for mere commercial reasons?
The individualistic expression of a man is of course, the most ideal way to attempt the big. But if he uses, in order to express himself, a language not understood by anybody else, and if he is not able to compile at the present time a dictionary to be used by those interested and eager to understand, because in most of the cases he doesn't know himself what he wants, why not refrain from exhibiting? Why not take the consequences of the prerogative of the self-expressionist: "I don't care what you think about it — if you can understand it or not; it is just exactly as I see it and that is sufficient unto me," and keep his creations unto himself until such time arrives where either he shall have found a medium which is not strange to our eyes and which we really can see or feel, or our posterity shall have adjusted their focus, in the course of the progress of the world, which will enable them to see and to feel.
The grotesque seems to be favored at present by magazines who are willing to pay large prices for something that outdoes this week the unbelievable of last week.
Money is the great lure in the career of our artists.
Do away with the money which can be gained by the act of production everybody seems to aim at present, and most of the members of our hopeful colony of geniuses will return to the diligent study of drawing.
And now be honest to yourself — What is the most wonderful idea worth and the most glorious and impossible color scheme, if you don't know how to draw and if you think that composition is something that one can do away with?
G. B.
La La
Chatter, chatter, chatter
THE busy tongues spin webs of scandal — odd bits of laughter, knowing winks — earnest "Too bads" — fragments of a resurrected past, all woven artfully to give a moments pleasure to the weavers.
And the girl, the motive of their pattern — what of her?
She faces them defiant for a time. Then frightened and unstrung, draws gradually within herself. Friends drop away — her house grows dark. At last, in bitterness she quits the tow, and tries to lose herself in the turmoil and rush of cities.
"Ah! what did we tell you," the weavers cry. "Her mother went that way before her — wait, just wait."
Bit by bit they carry their tapestry of lies into the city. She begins to meet questioning looks — a little coolness here — a practiced insult there. Men treat her boldly. She sees the snares with reddening eyes. Long days and weary nights are hers. Prayer and religion fail her. Books bring only fleeting solace. Exasperated — nervous — at bay — she plunges into the social whirl. An act of impulse — a false step — then — down — down — down —
Chatter, chatter chatter
Tom Sleeper
Suicide
Corpse A
THEY brought her in, a shattered small Cacoon,
With a little bruised body like a twilight rune.
Corpse B
THEY gave her hurried shoves this way and that,
Her body shock-abbreviated as a city cat,
She lays out listlessly like some small mug of beer gone flat
Djuana Barnes
Replated Platitudes
WHEN God had planted love in the human heart, the devil spat upon it, and lo! it became lust.
"The dictates of fashion" are mostly in fashion with those who haven't gotten into the fashion of being on good terms with common sense.
Your character is the treasure of what you are, while your reputation is merely the report of what you seem to be.
The sage is he who obtains his experiences vicariously, permitting the fool to pay the price.
Usury is the interest that necessity pays to merciless greed.
J. Dorner
The Crook
Chinese Letter
By Alan W. S. Lee, Wuhu, China
A WEEK ago I went to the garden of one of the Professors to sketch. It was a beautiful place, a huge garden full of lovely trees and shrubs, with a fine view of the Gon Len. The only flowers out then were violets, but there were masses of them — sweet and fragrant. It was an immense relief to work here without a hundred pairs of eyes staring grimly at me, as is my usual fate when I try to sketch. As I worked I noticed a small black bird hopping about among the violets — and every once in a while he would leave his hunt and fly up onto a branch and sing — I never heard a bird sing so gloriously, not even a nightingale at home, for this was no lament, but a song of joy and triumph.
Professor Meigs came out after a while to watch me dabble and he told me about the little black bird. He is a robin, a jet black robin, and he glistens like line lacquer. He is smaller than an American robin, but larger than an English one, and he sings to beat both. He has just the same jaunty hop, and impertinent thrust of the head, just the same quick jab after a worm, and the bracing of his black legs when he gets it. He is a very rare bird, even here, but this one comes every year to the Meigs garden, and they think a great deal of him. I have been reading Algernon Blackwood's "Centaur" and I think no book ever got me so completely. It is so full of sheer beauty, and exquisite phrasing, I found in it that bit of verse I liked so well that I found in an old number of the Academy.
"What dim Arcadian pastures
Have I known,
That out of nothing a wind is blown
Lifting a veil and a darkness
Showing a purple sea —
And under your hair, the fauh's eyes
Look out at me."
The story is a powerful protest against the civilization of today, a denouncement of materialism and pure intellectualism, and makes a plea for a fairer and larger life, for nobler interests, for a life of harmony with nature instead of feverish and unsatisfying struggling for little imaginary pleasures. Blackwood regards men and animals, flowers and trees as possible projections of the Earth's consciousness, even as she herself is perhaps a projection of the great Consciousness of the Universe. But what am I trying to do — tell you all about it in my feeble words? I will get another copy in Shanghai and send it to you.
There is a Chinaman singing outside the garden, I wish you could hear him, many of the Chinese songs are really nice, but this reminds me of the guinea pig Ruth St. Denis used to let loose upon the stage just before she did her cobra dance.
All our bamboos are full of turtle doves now, and they coo and coo. The groves are full of birds, and they sing amidst the small green leaves that rustle and blow in the west wind that comes whispering across the fields, calling the flowers to wake from their long winter's sleep. There are no trees quite so frivolous as young bamboos; they are frivolous even when they grow up and all the other trees ignore them.
Thoughts of Suicide — III
By Martin Brown
A Pistol
This cold steel thing of which I am afraid
Can in a flash free me from every wolf that's barking
at my heels
And set my soul before the throne of God.
I'll take my chance, for if the world he made
He knows what tortuous paths my feet have trod.
The ring of steel like ice behind my ear —
Each heart-beat like a blow, each breath a prayer to
still my trembling hand
And make my death as sure as my despair.
Dry-throated, gasping, icy-cold with fear —
After that crash, where will I be — God— where?
Gas
Good-night for I must sleep.
Yes sleep, and know no waking to this pain of living.
I must rest.
I give you back my life, and giving
For the first time peace lies within my breast.
A coward badly beaten.
Yes, and a weakling too — I can bear no more living.
It is too long.
I give you back my life, and giving
For the first time I knowingly do wrong.
I am too tired to pray, but dreams will keep
Me company — what scent is that? — when I'm asleep.
Roma Lucida
By Henri Fomet
Translated from the French for Bruno's Weekly by Renee Lacoste
(Continued from last issue)
THE next day she called on him. He had spent the whole day arranging his room so it would appear pleasant and precise. Little Roma entered shyly, tiptoeing around and casting glances about her. As she saw that he was respectful and embarrassed, she gradually became reassured enough to sit by him on the divan. Then, in a very earnest manner, she made this little speech to him:
"Do not think I am here through childishness. I am well aware of what might happen to me, but I don't fear anything. I don't think I am imprudent or crafty. I like you very much. I imagine that you will perhaps understand me. Consequently, I wanted to know you."
And so they spent a very pleasant afternoon. He showed her the books which he had patiently collected and carefully bound. She was intelligent in her admiration, recognizing some volumes like those she had seen at her father's. She looked through his papers, too, and read a few scattered notes, here and there, and wondered at two or three phrases.
"Have you written this?"
"Certainly. Do you think me incapable of it?"
"No, no, but it causes me so much pleasure . . . Tell me, do you draw?"
"So badly!"
"So much the better! Because — I must tell you, seeing that you are asking me no questions — I draw, too, sometimes. It is the only serious work I can do. Therefore, it is advisable for one to turn to something else. Otherwise it would become a bore!"
I Am Satisfied
If tonight
I should die,
I am satisfied
Swiftly, the Heart of Things
Love in a flash,
Holding my heart and senses:
A swift cut with Sorrow's Knife
No tears of Flame,
Joys which briefly
Held me utterly,
And entirely.
To have sinned
Suddenly
Not becoming Evil.
And without regret.
If tonight
I should die,
I am satisfied
To have touched
Swiftly
The Heart of Things.
Diamond Crisp
She walked up and down the apartment a few times; then resumed her seat:
"It looks all right"
"Now that you have inspected my premises, it is your turn to tell me something.''
"What?"
"I don't know. You wanted to know me. As for me, your name would almost suffice. However, if you would be obliging enough to add an inscription to it . . ."
"Ask me questions. . . Become inquisitive."
"Well, young lady, tell me what you know about life."
"Sir, you speak of banalities. I thought you had no patience with them. . . Life doesn't exist. It is only an illusion. There are words, noises, sunsets and melodies. We have put a frame around all this to make it into a whole. But it is our work. I will add that it isn't worth the rest of it. There! Have I answered well?"
"Not badly. Kiss me!"
Roma Lucida let him kiss her. She did not without embarrassment but without great pleasure. Then she began to play some of Cesare Frank's music to prove that she was a musician too.
When she was leaving, he detained her near the door for a minute, and, taking both her hands in his, said:
"Roma, Roma Lucida! My little girl! Is it possible that there is a Roma Lucida on earth. . . Do not go so soon."
She smiled sweetly at him and responded to the pressure of his hands.
He continued in a lower voice:
"Listen: I want to be happy, at least tor an hour. I ought never to have seen you. Now it is too late; you must give back to me all you have taken from me. You will be in my thoughts until your return. Now go! But think of me. When you come back here, it will be because you wished it."
She was going to answer a little hotly; but he put his hand over her lips:
"Don't say anything. I know all you could say to me. Go! When you come back here, it will be because you wished it."
She left. He spent the rest of the evening going over the few phrases of the sonata in A which she had played. When night came it was a pleasure for him to repeat her name many times in succession, as in prayer.
She didn't come back the next day, nor the day after that. As he didn't know her address, he could only wait for her sadly. At last, on the third day, she knocked at his door. He saw by her eyes that she had spent several nights dreaming about him. He took her in his arms and undid her blonde hair, which fell over him like a shroud. They didn't say a word to each other the whole night long.
The next day she was crying. He knelt in front of her and pressed her in his arms:
"Pardon me, my Roma. It isn't my fault."
"I don't bear you with ill-will. I came of my own free will and I regret nothing. I don't know why I am unhappy."
"Are you happy now? You wanted to have me. I am yours, but you aren't happy! I wanted to love and to suffer — and I weep. Why should we struggle against it? We must part as we met" — and she added, smiling — "In the dust."
He made no answer. Roma dressed quickly. She fixed her hair and put on a red hat. In the glorious morning sunlight she seemed to be the same he had seen roaming the streets of Paris. It was the same face, the same quiet eyes; the same little black spot over her lips. But she was not the same; the real Roma Lucida seemed to have gone very far away and her voice reached him indistinctly:
He didn't try to stop her. When he looked up, she was no longer there. The sunlight swept over the furniture as if clearing the room of the least remembrances. All that was left of her was a faint perfume. That same evening it was gone. In the course of the following days, he forgot her voice, then the shape of her face and in a few months he only recalled her name.
Bruno's Weekly, published weekly by Charles Edison, and edited and written by Guido Bruno, both at 58 Washington Square, New York City.. Subscription $2 a year.
Entered as second class matter at the Post Office 6f New York, N. Y., October 14th, -1916, under the Act of March 3d, 1879.
How desperately he struggled for control; now answering some casual remark of his friends, now breaking out into cold sweat of dread as he felt the rudder slipping from his hand; called back to sanity again by some laughing remark, or some blessed sound of ordinary life, and then, again, swept off his feet by the icy flood of sliding memory and dreadful thronging imaginings, with the awful knowledge behind knocking at his consciousness that he was already mad, mad — never to be sane again, mad — that the awful despairing effort to hold on to the slippery rock and not to slide down into the depths was all in vain, the he was slipping in spite of himself, in spite of bleeding fingers, falling — falling. . . .
Hell has no such horror! There in that torture chamber did his agony last but a minute — he paid all debts, poor, hounded, hunted creature with wild beseeching eyes, choking in the grip of the foulest specter that besets humanity. . . . And all for what? For another mad hour with the "bourgeois de plus grand chic . . . d'ume beante remarquable," all for another kiss from the stylish lady of really remarkable beauty, "to whom he was always glad to say good-bye."
The worship of the great goddess Aselgeia is sweet indeed honey to the lips; but the price she exacts from her devotees is appalling. How many of them I have known, and how brilliant they were; her victims are taken from the most gifted of the sons of men. Heine fell to her and Maupassant and scores of others whom for pity's sake one does not name — young and gifted and lovable. As the clown says in "Twelfth Night," —
Pleasure will be paid some
time or other.
From Contemporary Portraits, published by Mitchell
KennerleyRodin
By Frank Harris
RODIN is to me the creature of his works; the bodily presentment even is a true symbol of his soul; a French present in figure — a short, broad man with heavy shoulders, thick thighs and great, powerful hands. There is realistic likeness in Tweed's bust. The neck is short and thick, the nose large and fleshy; the forehead high but retreating; the eyes grey, by turns reflective and observant. There is an air transparent sincerity about the sturdy little man, with his careless grey beard and worn clothes. Always I see the large, strong hands, the short neck and lumpy shoulders — a master craftsman with a tremendous sensual endowment.
From Contemporary Portraits
Art and Our Village
THE chaotic conditions prevailing in the American art world of today are but a true replica of what is going on among the artists of our village. The times of Babel seem to be here again. The great individual efforts towards the one big achievement seem to be perturbed. Everybody is working as hard as he can and trying and failing and starting out again with new energy . . . . but he seems to do it in his own language, a different language from that of the universe. And everybody else fails to understand him. I am not talking now about artists who are busy getting out orders for magazins and commercial purposes, and I am not thinking of imitators and who are trying to create sensations with the empty language of others who really meant sincerely what they presented to the world.
There are men and women among us trying to do one thing or the other, who are using their paints and brushes for no other purpose but self-expression. They are people who will have found themselves in the course of the coming
Aubrey
Beardsley.
By himself
By himself
ten or fifteen years, and who will really have something to give, to a generation which will have grown with them in the meantime.
Almost as many studios as we have down here — just as many different ways and means of expression of impressions "to the world" do we have. And these creations drift eventually uptown and are exhibited in "leading" galleries on the Avenue. Shall and can experiments be taken seriously? Shouldn't those in authority, especially the keepers of galleries refrain from using their walls for experimental purposes, especially when the artist today might laugh at his creation of yesterday? Must the public be the goat here, too, as well as in the other branches of the free arts for mere commercial reasons?
The individualistic expression of a man is of course, the most ideal way to attempt the big. But if he uses, in order to express himself, a language not understood by anybody else, and if he is not able to compile at the present time a dictionary to be used by those interested and eager to understand, because in most of the cases he doesn't know himself what he wants, why not refrain from exhibiting? Why not take the consequences of the prerogative of the self-expressionist: "I don't care what you think about it — if you can understand it or not; it is just exactly as I see it and that is sufficient unto me," and keep his creations unto himself until such time arrives where either he shall have found a medium which is not strange to our eyes and which we really can see or feel, or our posterity shall have adjusted their focus, in the course of the progress of the world, which will enable them to see and to feel.
The grotesque seems to be favored at present by magazines who are willing to pay large prices for something that outdoes this week the unbelievable of last week.
Money is the great lure in the career of our artists.
Do away with the money which can be gained by the act of production everybody seems to aim at present, and most of the members of our hopeful colony of geniuses will return to the diligent study of drawing.
And now be honest to yourself — What is the most wonderful idea worth and the most glorious and impossible color scheme, if you don't know how to draw and if you think that composition is something that one can do away with?
G. B.
La La
Chatter, chatter, chatter
THE busy tongues spin webs of scandal — odd bits of laughter, knowing winks — earnest "Too bads" — fragments of a resurrected past, all woven artfully to give a moments pleasure to the weavers.
And the girl, the motive of their pattern — what of her?
She faces them defiant for a time. Then frightened and unstrung, draws gradually within herself. Friends drop away — her house grows dark. At last, in bitterness she quits the tow, and tries to lose herself in the turmoil and rush of cities.
"Ah! what did we tell you," the weavers cry. "Her mother went that way before her — wait, just wait."
Bit by bit they carry their tapestry of lies into the city. She begins to meet questioning looks — a little coolness here — a practiced insult there. Men treat her boldly. She sees the snares with reddening eyes. Long days and weary nights are hers. Prayer and religion fail her. Books bring only fleeting solace. Exasperated — nervous — at bay — she plunges into the social whirl. An act of impulse — a false step — then — down — down — down —
Chatter, chatter chatter
Tom Sleeper
Suicide
Corpse A
THEY brought her in, a shattered small Cacoon,
With a little bruised body like a twilight rune.
Corpse B
THEY gave her hurried shoves this way and that,
Her body shock-abbreviated as a city cat,
She lays out listlessly like some small mug of beer gone flat
Djuana Barnes
L. P. Morgan
in Heaven
"Nice chair, Sir, you have there. How much will you take for it?"
"Nice chair, Sir, you have there. How much will you take for it?"
Replated Platitudes
WHEN God had planted love in the human heart, the devil spat upon it, and lo! it became lust.
"The dictates of fashion" are mostly in fashion with those who haven't gotten into the fashion of being on good terms with common sense.
Your character is the treasure of what you are, while your reputation is merely the report of what you seem to be.
The sage is he who obtains his experiences vicariously, permitting the fool to pay the price.
Usury is the interest that necessity pays to merciless greed.
J. Dorner
The Crook
MR.
PHIL
RICH, day laborer, was betrayed shamefully by his
betrothed. With the explanation that his income was too
uncertain to risk upon it a marriage, she handed him,
after seven years courtship, his walking papers. Mr.
Rich was hurt to the roots and he vowed revenge. A very
peculiar one. He decided to become a criminal. Not a
very desperate criminal, but still one whom they would
lock up. And if his betrothed would have only the
slightest inkling of a conscience and recognize that it
was she who had caused his downfall, her tortures would
be terrible. At the same time he wished to combine the
pleasant with the useful and to have as good a time as
he could. Therefore he chose the profession of a crook
and started upon his new activities by entering an
automobile factory, He said: "My name is Rich, formerly
day laborer. I wish to get an automobile with as many
horsepower as you can put in it."
"Just as you please,"
replied the very polite salesman, "Do you wish to pay in
cash for it?"
"Not right now," replied Mr. Rich
frankly. "At first I would wish to get it on credit. I
just happen to be out of work, you know."
The polite salesman was very sorry not
to be able to oblige Mr. Rich and advised him to go to
the competitor across the street. He followed the advice
but here, too, they did not seem to be very eager to
count him among their customers. Everybody simply
refused to trust. This astounded Mr. Rich. He always had
heard and read how easy it was to get credit, and still
two people had refused already to sell him an
automobile. But this could not discourage him. He went
to a bank. He introduced himself as Mr. Rich, day
laborer, and asked for a loan of ten thousand dollars.
But here, too, the result of his expedition was very
sad. The manager of the bank gave him even a lackey who
should show him out of the building. But that was all he
was willing to give him.
In the meantime, his monthly room rent
became due. Mr. Rich was not able to pay and informed
Mrs. Mclntyre, the keeper of his boarding house, to that
effect. He assured her at the same time, that he was
willing to take from now on in addition to the
breakfasts included in his rental, dinner and supper
with her. Mrs. Mclntyre didn't seem to approve of this
new business arrangement.
"The devil git ye!" did she scream at
the top of her voice, "Do yez think Oim crazy?" and she
gave him a push and down the stairs he went. All four
flights at once. His possessions she forwarded to the
sidewalk where he had landed, through the window.
"It's just my luck," he philosophized.
And now it had become most urgent to turn some trick or
another because his thirst for revenge was diminishing
from day to day.
His last recourse was the cook. These
beings are supposed to have savings. He wanted to get a
hold of them, promise marriage, he wanted to have a good
time and then he wanted to welcome his fate no matter
what might come. But nothing came. Mr. Rich, day
laborer, remained an honest man. Even the cooks wouldn't
give him anything. And so he was at the end of his wits.
He knew nothing more! To take away the pennies from
little children which they kept in their hands, if sent
to buy something in the nearby grocery store, seemed
even to him in his desperate mood, too dastardly.
And again he become a day laborer. But
if ever anybody mentions to him how dead easy it is to
get the best of credulous people, he will declare it
emphatically as pure invention and just newspaper talk.
Chinese Letter
By Alan W. S. Lee, Wuhu, China
A WEEK ago I went to the garden of one of the Professors to sketch. It was a beautiful place, a huge garden full of lovely trees and shrubs, with a fine view of the Gon Len. The only flowers out then were violets, but there were masses of them — sweet and fragrant. It was an immense relief to work here without a hundred pairs of eyes staring grimly at me, as is my usual fate when I try to sketch. As I worked I noticed a small black bird hopping about among the violets — and every once in a while he would leave his hunt and fly up onto a branch and sing — I never heard a bird sing so gloriously, not even a nightingale at home, for this was no lament, but a song of joy and triumph.
Professor Meigs came out after a while to watch me dabble and he told me about the little black bird. He is a robin, a jet black robin, and he glistens like line lacquer. He is smaller than an American robin, but larger than an English one, and he sings to beat both. He has just the same jaunty hop, and impertinent thrust of the head, just the same quick jab after a worm, and the bracing of his black legs when he gets it. He is a very rare bird, even here, but this one comes every year to the Meigs garden, and they think a great deal of him. I have been reading Algernon Blackwood's "Centaur" and I think no book ever got me so completely. It is so full of sheer beauty, and exquisite phrasing, I found in it that bit of verse I liked so well that I found in an old number of the Academy.
"What dim Arcadian pastures
Have I known,
That out of nothing a wind is blown
Lifting a veil and a darkness
Showing a purple sea —
And under your hair, the fauh's eyes
Look out at me."
The story is a powerful protest against the civilization of today, a denouncement of materialism and pure intellectualism, and makes a plea for a fairer and larger life, for nobler interests, for a life of harmony with nature instead of feverish and unsatisfying struggling for little imaginary pleasures. Blackwood regards men and animals, flowers and trees as possible projections of the Earth's consciousness, even as she herself is perhaps a projection of the great Consciousness of the Universe. But what am I trying to do — tell you all about it in my feeble words? I will get another copy in Shanghai and send it to you.
There is a Chinaman singing outside the garden, I wish you could hear him, many of the Chinese songs are really nice, but this reminds me of the guinea pig Ruth St. Denis used to let loose upon the stage just before she did her cobra dance.
All our bamboos are full of turtle doves now, and they coo and coo. The groves are full of birds, and they sing amidst the small green leaves that rustle and blow in the west wind that comes whispering across the fields, calling the flowers to wake from their long winter's sleep. There are no trees quite so frivolous as young bamboos; they are frivolous even when they grow up and all the other trees ignore them.
Thoughts of Suicide — III
By Martin Brown
A Pistol
This cold steel thing of which I am afraid
Can in a flash free me from every wolf that's barking
at my heels
And set my soul before the throne of God.
I'll take my chance, for if the world he made
He knows what tortuous paths my feet have trod.
The ring of steel like ice behind my ear —
Each heart-beat like a blow, each breath a prayer to
still my trembling hand
And make my death as sure as my despair.
Dry-throated, gasping, icy-cold with fear —
After that crash, where will I be — God— where?
Gas
Good-night for I must sleep.
Yes sleep, and know no waking to this pain of living.
I must rest.
I give you back my life, and giving
For the first time peace lies within my breast.
A coward badly beaten.
Yes, and a weakling too — I can bear no more living.
It is too long.
I give you back my life, and giving
For the first time I knowingly do wrong.
I am too tired to pray, but dreams will keep
Me company — what scent is that? — when I'm asleep.
Grub Street
MENTION is often made of Grub street writers and Grub street publications, but the terms are little understood; the following historical fact will explain them; during the usurpation of Cromwell a prodigious number of seditious and libelous pamphlets and papers, tending to exasperate the people, and increase the confusion in which the nation was involved, were from time to time published. The authors of these were, for the most part, men whose indigent circumstances compelled them to live in the most obscure part of the town. Grub Street then abounded with mean and old houses, which were let out in lodgings, at low rents, to persons of this description, whose occupation was the publishing of anonymous treason and slander. One of the original inhabitants of this street was Fox the martyrologist, who, during his abode there, wrote his Acts and Monuments. It was also rendered famous by having been the dwelling place of Mr. Henry Welby, a gentleman of whom it is related, in Wilson's "Wonderful Characters," that he lived here forty years without having been seen by any one.
MENTION is often made of Grub street writers and Grub street publications, but the terms are little understood; the following historical fact will explain them; during the usurpation of Cromwell a prodigious number of seditious and libelous pamphlets and papers, tending to exasperate the people, and increase the confusion in which the nation was involved, were from time to time published. The authors of these were, for the most part, men whose indigent circumstances compelled them to live in the most obscure part of the town. Grub Street then abounded with mean and old houses, which were let out in lodgings, at low rents, to persons of this description, whose occupation was the publishing of anonymous treason and slander. One of the original inhabitants of this street was Fox the martyrologist, who, during his abode there, wrote his Acts and Monuments. It was also rendered famous by having been the dwelling place of Mr. Henry Welby, a gentleman of whom it is related, in Wilson's "Wonderful Characters," that he lived here forty years without having been seen by any one.
Roma Lucida
By Henri Fomet
Translated from the French for Bruno's Weekly by Renee Lacoste
(Continued from last issue)
THE next day she called on him. He had spent the whole day arranging his room so it would appear pleasant and precise. Little Roma entered shyly, tiptoeing around and casting glances about her. As she saw that he was respectful and embarrassed, she gradually became reassured enough to sit by him on the divan. Then, in a very earnest manner, she made this little speech to him:
"Do not think I am here through childishness. I am well aware of what might happen to me, but I don't fear anything. I don't think I am imprudent or crafty. I like you very much. I imagine that you will perhaps understand me. Consequently, I wanted to know you."
And so they spent a very pleasant afternoon. He showed her the books which he had patiently collected and carefully bound. She was intelligent in her admiration, recognizing some volumes like those she had seen at her father's. She looked through his papers, too, and read a few scattered notes, here and there, and wondered at two or three phrases.
"Have you written this?"
"Certainly. Do you think me incapable of it?"
"No, no, but it causes me so much pleasure . . . Tell me, do you draw?"
"So badly!"
"So much the better! Because — I must tell you, seeing that you are asking me no questions — I draw, too, sometimes. It is the only serious work I can do. Therefore, it is advisable for one to turn to something else. Otherwise it would become a bore!"
I Am Satisfied
If tonight
I should die,
I am satisfied
Swiftly, the Heart of Things
Love in a flash,
Holding my heart and senses:
A swift cut with Sorrow's Knife
No tears of Flame,
Joys which briefly
Held me utterly,
And entirely.
To have sinned
Suddenly
Not becoming Evil.
And without regret.
If tonight
I should die,
I am satisfied
To have touched
Swiftly
The Heart of Things.
Diamond Crisp
She walked up and down the apartment a few times; then resumed her seat:
"It looks all right"
"Now that you have inspected my premises, it is your turn to tell me something.''
"What?"
"I don't know. You wanted to know me. As for me, your name would almost suffice. However, if you would be obliging enough to add an inscription to it . . ."
"Ask me questions. . . Become inquisitive."
"Well, young lady, tell me what you know about life."
"Sir, you speak of banalities. I thought you had no patience with them. . . Life doesn't exist. It is only an illusion. There are words, noises, sunsets and melodies. We have put a frame around all this to make it into a whole. But it is our work. I will add that it isn't worth the rest of it. There! Have I answered well?"
"Not badly. Kiss me!"
Roma Lucida let him kiss her. She did not without embarrassment but without great pleasure. Then she began to play some of Cesare Frank's music to prove that she was a musician too.
When she was leaving, he detained her near the door for a minute, and, taking both her hands in his, said:
"Roma, Roma Lucida! My little girl! Is it possible that there is a Roma Lucida on earth. . . Do not go so soon."
She smiled sweetly at him and responded to the pressure of his hands.
He continued in a lower voice:
"Listen: I want to be happy, at least tor an hour. I ought never to have seen you. Now it is too late; you must give back to me all you have taken from me. You will be in my thoughts until your return. Now go! But think of me. When you come back here, it will be because you wished it."
She was going to answer a little hotly; but he put his hand over her lips:
"Don't say anything. I know all you could say to me. Go! When you come back here, it will be because you wished it."
She left. He spent the rest of the evening going over the few phrases of the sonata in A which she had played. When night came it was a pleasure for him to repeat her name many times in succession, as in prayer.
She didn't come back the next day, nor the day after that. As he didn't know her address, he could only wait for her sadly. At last, on the third day, she knocked at his door. He saw by her eyes that she had spent several nights dreaming about him. He took her in his arms and undid her blonde hair, which fell over him like a shroud. They didn't say a word to each other the whole night long.
The next day she was crying. He knelt in front of her and pressed her in his arms:
"Pardon me, my Roma. It isn't my fault."
"I don't bear you with ill-will. I came of my own free will and I regret nothing. I don't know why I am unhappy."
"Are you happy now? You wanted to have me. I am yours, but you aren't happy! I wanted to love and to suffer — and I weep. Why should we struggle against it? We must part as we met" — and she added, smiling — "In the dust."
He made no answer. Roma dressed quickly. She fixed her hair and put on a red hat. In the glorious morning sunlight she seemed to be the same he had seen roaming the streets of Paris. It was the same face, the same quiet eyes; the same little black spot over her lips. But she was not the same; the real Roma Lucida seemed to have gone very far away and her voice reached him indistinctly:
He didn't try to stop her. When he looked up, she was no longer there. The sunlight swept over the furniture as if clearing the room of the least remembrances. All that was left of her was a faint perfume. That same evening it was gone. In the course of the following days, he forgot her voice, then the shape of her face and in a few months he only recalled her name.
Bruno's Weekly, published weekly by Charles Edison, and edited and written by Guido Bruno, both at 58 Washington Square, New York City.. Subscription $2 a year.
Entered as second class matter at the Post Office 6f New York, N. Y., October 14th, -1916, under the Act of March 3d, 1879.