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Title: The Fly Leaf, No. 1, Vol. 1, December 1895
Author: Various
Editor: Walter Blackburn Harte
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Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLY LEAF, NO. 1, VOL. 1, DECEMBER 1895 ***
The Fly Leaf
A Pamphlet Periodical of
the New--the New Man,
New Woman, New Ideas,
Whimsies and Things.
CONDUCTED BY WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE.
Published Monthly by the Fly Leaf Publishing Co.
Subscription One Dollar a Year. Single Copies 10
Cents. December, 1895. Number One.
The Fly Leaf.
A Pamphlet Periodical of the New--the new man, new woman, new ideas,
whimsies and things. Conducted by Walter Blackburn Harte.
Published monthly. Single copies 10 cents; subscription, $1.00 a year.
Subscriptions to be made payable to W. B. Harte, 269 St. Botolph
Street, Boston, Mass. Subscriptions may be left with newsdealers, or
sent direct to the publisher.
Business communications should be addressed simply W. B. Harte, 269
St. Botolph Street, Boston. All matter intended for publication should
be sent to same address. All MSS. must be accompanied by properly
stamped addressed envelope, and those found unavailable will be
promptly returned. Everything will be fairly considered, according to
the requirements of the FLY LEAF. Unknown writers of ability will be
welcomed. All articles and sketches must be short and piquant--not
exceeding 1200 or 1500 words.
Entered at the Boston Post Office as second class mail matter.
Copyright, 1895, by W. B. Harte,
_The trade supplied by the New England News Company._
THE FLY LEAF
No. 1. December, 1895. Vol. 1.
THE STIR IN LITERATURE.
Of course the most important event of the month in this favored part
of the world is the unheralded advent of such a robust youngster as
the FLY LEAF. Oh yes, thank you, Mrs. Grundy, we are doing very well
indeed--a very healthy and vigorous infant and a favorite already; and
we may be able to show a very pretty set of teeth in a month or two,
if occasion should demand. Some of our distinguished contemporaries
will perceive the delicacy of this metaphor; albeit the babe is quite
good-natured.
And now a few words about the aims and purposes of the FLY LEAF will
be in order--and the incidental commentary may be found to be equally
interesting. For the FLY LEAF, although but the bantling of yesterday,
has been nursed in the lap of harsh experience, and is at least as
wise as some drivelling and decrepit contemporaries it finds lagging
superfluous on the stage.
It is true that the field of contemporary journalism is already fairly
well stocked with various periodicals, of various shades of unprovoked
domesticity, and innocuous intention in the way of imparting that
miscellaneous misinformation, which is the mental stock-in-trade of
the millions everywhere, and put into print day after day, is the most
effective bar to tolerance and growth and hospitality of thought. But
there is plenty of room for the FLY LEAF. These highly respectable
publications are all competing with each other, and reaping the rich
rewards that are the portion of those who have invested their capital
in the impossible virtues and spotless innocence of the Young Person.
They are all reported to be very prosperous, and we cannot bring
ourselves to believe so highly of human nature in the bulk as to doubt
the truth of their returns.
But the FLY LEAF will occupy a field that all these periodicals regard
with the suspicion of conservatism. It will not impinge on their field,
and they cannot by any possibility intrench upon its. For it is a
magazine of the New, the Modern, the Young Man, the Young Woman, Today
and its stirring, probing, fantastical spirit.
With the immense reading public that exists in this land of popular
education and enlightenment--a public which expands every year, as
generation after generation takes its place in the ranks of life--there
is room for all sorts of periodicals; and instead of these various
periodicals being in rivalry, they actually raise up new readers for
each other. Even the old fogy magazines have helped to prepare the way
for honest bubbling thought and fancy and humor. They have unwittingly
and unwillingly educated their readers for the FLY LEAF. The more
literature is cultivated in America--the more writers with fresh
opinions and experiences and ideas increase--the more readers there
will be to encourage the treatment of ever new and wider aspects of the
complex life of this vast and complex aggregation of people.
In the pages of these respectable domestic periodicals, old-fashioned
folk, who lived before thought was let loose in the English tongue
among respectable, law-abiding people, and who linger on to the
confusion of poetry and new ideas and new interests, can still doze
over profound articles on “How to Cook a Beefsteak” and fiction that
has even less relevance to the comedy and tragedy of real modern life.
But all inspiring literature is drenched in the spirit and vigor of
Youth--even though the writers may be only belated boys. It is the
New in eternal nature that entrances the imaginations of thinkers
and poets. The day is coming when the periodicals now devoted to the
dissemination of the platitudes and ideas of two or three generations
ago will have to awaken to the fact that the Young Man and the Young
Woman of this era demand the heart of life in their literature, or
they will be compelled to give way to bolder spirits, such as are now
gathering strength in every modern literature. Already the tide has set
in. Hence the FLY LEAF.
The FLY LEAF belongs to this end of the century. It is essentially
modern. It does not look to the future, however, with any affected _fin
de siecle_ weariness or ennui, but with the hopefulness and stirring
courage of youth. It does not aim to be Decadent, or pin its faith to
any particular Ism; although it will always be hospitable to art and
beauty and truth from any quarter.
The Editor and his coadjutors are of the new school of younger writers,
and they aim to unite free sincere thought with humor and fantastic
whimsies and imagination; to be serious and amusing; earnest and
honest; but never dull. The underlying purpose and inspiration of our
efforts will be to strike this Modern note and awaken this broader
Modern spirit, which marks the literature of our era off from all the
ancient thought and literature of the world.
The FLY LEAF will deal with the Here and Now, with the aims and ideals
of the Young Man and the Young Woman, with the drift and tendencies of
American social and literary thought. It will embody the New Spirit of
the age that is moving the literature of all the world, but it will be
distinctively an American periodical.
The FLY LEAF hopes that in this struggle for the recognition of this
broader spirit in criticism and the material of literature, and for
the encouragement of American writers of ability, it will receive the
cordial support of the younger generation of readers throughout the
country.
THE NEW MYSTICISM.
The latest development of the new mysticism, or symbolism, or
impressionism, which first came to us from the Continent, has just
reached the Editor of the FLY LEAF from the pen of an old friend.
It appears that my friend had been reading Maurice Maeterlinck’s “The
Blind” and “The Seven Princesses,” and he had come to the conclusion
that a painful poverty of ideas was palpably wrapped up in a barren
iteration of half meaningless and half ludicrous phrases. He then
turned to Stephen Crane’s recently published “Black Riders,” thinking
that symbolism might be a little more coherent and comprehensible
in the alembic of the colder and clearer Anglo-Saxon intellect and
imagination. He had heard Crane’s impressionistic book of rhythms
spoken of in the inner circles of the New York and Boston literary
world as a collection of startling psychological pictures--the Heaven
and Hell of the human soul by flashlight. The Boozy Prophet, Crane has
been called by a certain eminent critic--and there’s invitation to
human nature in such a piquant characterization.
But, for a long while, he labored in Crane’s pages, without discovering
the secret flame of spiritual insight that others had spoken of
so confidently, and he began to suspect that the profundity which
had allured so many minds was simply the fatal lure of the weirdly
incomprehensible, which is the inspiration of a good many schools of
art and new religions. He had looked for a burst of spiritual light
that should spur his tired imagination to renewed efforts in setting
forth the superior qualities of a certain brand of coal tar soap which
was the inspiration of his Muse for so much a week. He sank into the
rocker by the fire, and fell into a mood of despondent reminiscence,
weaving all the sad strands of his life into haunting fancies. Then, as
he says in his letter, a change suddenly came over him, and he sprang
up feeling oppressed and dizzy with a flood of crimson thoughts that
inspired his brain.--Ed.
Here is his account of what happened.
There is something irresistible about this new mysticism in poetry,
which those who have not pondered over its potent fascinations cannot
understand. It seizes upon the mind suddenly and without warning.
For years all my dreams of literary achievement and fame had lain
buried, and as I thought, a little sadly, dead--strangled by cruel
circumstance and devoured by an ever increasing family. I had become
completely reconciled to writing on tar soap and other commodities.
But all of a sudden my thoughts seemed to plunge into an abyss of
mystical yearnings after the impossible and infinite, and then I
recalled some of Crane’s verses with a new and vivid realization
of their photographic fidelity to perplexity of mind. Then, to my
amazement, I felt the divine afflatus rise overpoweringly within me,
and for the first time in my life I produced two lines which rhymed.
They ran as follows:
A goblin hung on to the horn of the moon
A-singing a love song composed by a coon.
I had never performed such a feat as this in my whole life before,
for even in my hours of transcendent ambition I had recognized the
essentially prosaic bent of my mind. I had always expected to be a
great prose writer, and I had felt a rather indulgent condescension
toward contemporary poets--especially those of my acquaintance. I
used to think prose was the only vehicle of modern thought, and that
all the great poets were dead. But when a man finds himself beginning
to lisp in poetry at a belated age, his views on the significance of
modern poetry are apt to undergo some important modification.
I thought this couplet a very fair beginning; but no well rounded
thought would come that had any relevance to the goblin, the moon
or the love song. So I leave the couplet to stand by itself as a
picture, suggestive of the fact that ambition may miss its mark, but
a love song will surely live in some heart. My next attempt--for I
was on fire with symbolic rhapsody--was a little more successful. I
submit it without comment. The lesson is so obvious.
I saw a bleeding head grinning,
It grinned at me; I grinned at it,
In fact, we both grinned irreverently.
But the smiling sun shone on!
I find the longer one delves in mystic poetry the deeper
philosophical problems one can sound in a very few poignant flashes
of symbolic description. Here is one of my happiest efforts:
As my worn soul lay wriggling in the dust,
I cried aloud to God in indignation
That he had so mistreated me;
But God only laughed, until He’d like to bust
And pointed out that dirt was all creation.
I turned off a number of other things, quite as profound and
fantastical, and I find that in mystical poetry the Deity lends
Himself to picturesque treatment a good deal more readily than any
other person or subject of immediate and contemporary interest.
So that in this way it leads the mind of the masses away from
the frivolities of the hour to the larger considerations of life
and destiny, and chastens folly with thoughts of the over-ruling
immutable providence that is too often forgotten in the bustling
cities of civilization.
I send you only one more piece, to which I have given the dignity
of a title. It is “The Dissatisfactions of Luxury,” and is in two
stanzas:
I heard a man mumbling in the horrid silence of the night.
He was chaffering aloud with the good God;
But God in the darkness vouchsafed no sign.
And I asked him, scoffing, what he desired of the Omnipotent.
“I am rich, I am Plutus,” answered he, angrily,
“And I am bargaining for the moon.”
“And why do you want it?” asked I in amaze.
“Because I am tired of all my other toys.”
“And the price?” asked I, scoffing, for I bore the badge of Lazarus.
“Untold millions, heaped up to Heaven’s gate.”
“Fool!” I cried in bitter derision;
“Offer the good God your corrupt soul.”
I can make affidavit I never wrote a line of poetry before in my
life, and so I am sorely troubled at this writing. This is a crisis
in my career. I do not know whether to continue in my employment as
a writer of soap and medicine “ads,” or to devote myself wholly to
the service of the Muses. The question is, am I a genius, or is this
new mystic poetry, which is so uplifting and inspiring, merely some
delusive imposture of bubbling verbiage?
JONATHAN PENN.
THE YELLOW GIRL.
The advent of the Yellow Girl--the mad, fantastic siren who is
beginning to haunt the hoardings and our dreams--is calling forth a
good deal of an outcry among those who hold the cure of morals in the
English public press. It is rather a difficult undertaking to attempt
to import a ray or two of cheer and fantasy into the gloom and drab
of English life, but some of the English artists, touched with the
spirit of the age, have had the audacity to import the Yellow Girl
from Paris. There she is--on every hoarding and bare wall a gleam of
light and color and deviltry, under those dull gray skies, that must
awaken a flash of fantasy here and there in some toil-worn heart in
the crowd, and cheer some fog born pessimists who would fain forget
the necessities and narrowness of their drab existence. Instead of the
old monotonous clumsy pictures and unescapable rivers of hideous black
and white catch words, that seemed to emphasize the limited horizon
and freedom of the millions bound to spend their whole lives in the
great cities, there are ten thousand variations of the Eternal Feminine
in her latest glamor of gold and yellow, and even under the pall of a
London sky, the very walls open out into the land of Fantasia.
But the moralists are shocked, and they are fearful for the future
intellectual and moral stability of England, simply because the Yellow
Girl is the embodiment of an artist’s dream of the modern Circe--a
reminiscence of the Bacchantic dreams that used to fill the poets’
heads in the old days, before they were all become so very respectable.
It is the artist who now puts a little diversion and unreal distraction
from the invading ugliness and melancholy of modern metropolitan life
into the passing current of our fancies. The poets used to serve this
purpose, but they are all so anxious to stand well with Mrs. Grundy
nowadays, whereas Mrs. Grundy and the artists have never really arrived
at any amicable understanding. Old England and civilization are in no
danger from the Yellow Girl.
The moralists, unluckily, have no sense of humor, and so they fail to
perceive that the masses accept the Yellow Girl as an unreal fantastic
abstraction without any sort of relevance to the reality of life, which
yet stirs the imagination and puts a little splash of fitful joy into
reality.
A writer in one of the leading English journals assails the Yellow
Girl in a tremendous tirade, that shows the English intellectual
incapacity for appreciation of the light and good humored caricature
of the superficial aspects of life, which, by exaggeration, puts the
permanent and beautiful things of life into their true proportions and
tempers sanity of thought with a gleam of insight into the fantastic
range of human nature that lies always just below the drab surface
of the show of things. The English mind only seems to understand the
coarse and brutal caricature of Hogarth, with its savage insistence
upon a moral. Hogarth was too great an artist and observer, however,
not to have enjoyed and made capital of the Yellow Girl himself, if
he were alive today. The caricature of today is less obvious, and we
may thank our stars it is. The moralists, like the poor, we have always
with us, and they make modern life one perpetual din that leaves us no
time for thought, meditation or merriment. We should be grateful that
the hoarding places do not assail us at every turn with the sort of
caricature that bites into the heart and soul. There is quite enough
sadness in life in the all absorbing struggle for existence, and I
think that the Yellow Girl is one of those Providential gifts that keep
human life sweet and sane in the stress of the heartless strife for
bread and riches. She is the creation of the law of compensation that
gives us love and poetry, dreams and religion, and every other refuge
from life. The moralists and the realists and the rest of them who
would forever pin our minds in the narrow and sordid round of reality
would drive us all to madness if they had their way. The fantasy of
art and poetry keep life balanced and sane. Human nature requires
this outlet from the horrid nightmare of sordid sorrow it has created
in civilization. The so-called mad poets and unhinged artists give
us that distraction from ourselves and our monomaniac absorption in
money-making that saves the world from becoming one immense lunatic
asylum.
The English moralist describes the Yellow Girl in somewhat of the
fierce contumely of an ancient Hebrew prophet--but the Yellow Girl is
not really to be spoken of in the same breath with Ashtaroth. She is
but the phantom of dreams that pictured or unpictured lives ever in
the heart of youth. But she does not rule life as did Aphrodite. The
moralists should remember that youth and sorrow must have their dreams.
And all the commonplace virtues of domesticity are fed upon them. The
English writer bemoans the decadence of soberness in life in this
fashion:
“The growth of modern life is in great measure the Parisianising of
the civilized world. The worship of the senses is insensibly taking
hold on the world, and so in the land of Milton and the Martyrs is
set up the flaunting sign of the growing worship, this hair-brained
comedienne--the Yellow Girl. Bare armed, bare throated, great hatted,
with parasol a-kimbo, with flapping gown of gold, and snakey boa
bristling in the breeze, with tripping toes a la Chinoise, with waspy
waist, with painted cheeks and sparkling, wine-fed eyes, and a monkey
grin of daftest daftness--there flaunts the Yellow Girl, the she Baal,
the new born goddess of Today, laughing the amazed to scorn. She is the
Spirit of the Age--Circe herself again--Venus in a Regatta gown, the
Devil in petticoats, as he always was.”
This is strong as well as picturesque. But the truth is that the Yellow
Girl puts a splash of color into the dulness of city life, with its
endless bricks and placards and blank walls, and come upon in a sudden
turning her gleaming, impish eyes remind us that it is our own fault if
we take life too sadly, for the spirit of fantasy and joy lurks forever
in nature and life. As for our morals--they are less safe with drab
folk than they are with the Yellow Girl, who simply reminds us that Pan
rules in modern life as much as in the olden days.
BEN FRANKLIN, JR.
A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS.
The Americans are the most curious people since the Athenians.
Our big American periodicals buy their “great features” by contracting
with the busy bees of the London literary world, for so many thousands
of words before there are even ideas to be put into words. It is a way
of encouraging literature which destroys the personality that is the
soul of literature. It develops the taste of readers of literature
by strangling all the original thinkers and writers who may spring
up here in America. These periodicals aim simply to put before the
public a bill of well known names--which usually belong to some of the
busiest, most slip-shod and worthless writers of our time. But genius
two thousand miles away has twice the potent fascination of genius
that lives in Boston or Hoboken. They command the services of all the
writers of England and the Continent who are on the topmost wave of the
hour’s popularity, and whose names and achievements are viewed in this
country through a rosy and delusive glamor of European reputation that
effectually silences all criticism. If English romancers cost such a
pretty penny, surely no obscure American critic or man of letters will
dare to be so captious as to declare that at least half the literature
made in England for this appreciative American people is palpable
balderdash, wholly out of tune with the large democratic spirit of our
age.
Of course we are not going to deny the abilities of the greatest
European writers and artists of the day. That would be too absurd;
and we thank the good God that a proper sense of humor is one of the
unfailing elements of good nature, good taste and charm that our
readers may always count upon finding in the FLY LEAF. In some cases,
they are men of the finest genius, who would grace the literature of
any era; and it will never be the province of the FLY LEAF to decry
men who have honestly won their laurels.
But we have particularly in mind some of the mere industrious mechanics
of letters, who build their domestic and sanguinary romances after the
pattern desired by the exemplary publishers, who are most romantic for
the dollar’s sake. And the publishers have somehow become invested with
the onerous charge of the world’s morality, and insist that we poor
critics shall be driven into crime and immorality by sheer intolerable
dulness, and not by any potent allurements of the sort employed by
some of the delightfully audacious French romancers. If we must make
a choice between the female theological novelist of the Humphrey Ward
stripe and Catulle Mendes, we prefer to be debauched morally rather
than mentally.
In the case of these eminently successful writers who are so liberally
encouraged to save us the trouble of producing a native literature
peculiar to the soil and conditions of life and thought here, it is
not too much to say that the genius is so excellently and artistically
simulated by ingenious puffery, that the average American reader,
gobbling up his culture and luncheon in one frantic breath, does not
stop to inquire whether this London hall mark is genuine or fraudulent.
It is not generally known, or even suspected, in this land of guileless
innocence, outside “the Trade” and journalism, that a good many British
authors flourish in American literature as full fledged masters of
the Yellow-jacket, who are very much more famous in this country than
they are at home. In fact, a crowd of English mediocrities, of no more
significance in their Grub-street than the most ordinary denizen of
our own Grub Street is here, are received by our critics and public as
writers of the first order of merit. They flood the American newspapers
and magazines from Portland, Maine, to San Francisco, until there is
actually no sort of opening left to the men and women who are trying,
under the most discouraging circumstances, to produce an American
literature.
This is due largely to the adroit exploitation of the literary
syndicates, and partly due to the apathy and timorousness of the
American reading public, that is almost afraid to recognize American
authors without the endorsation of the London press. And the English
critics damn all American writers on principle.
But the magazine publishers are largely responsible, as they set
the pace in Anglo-mania in literature; and today about the only
circumstance that is peculiarly American in American periodical
literature is this: the copyright law obliges the publishers to have
the typography and printing done in this country. The literature is all
made in Great Britain, because there is nothing interesting to write
about in America and God does not allow genius to sprout here!
But a stir is beginning to be felt among the younger people in every
city and state of this country, and the Young Man and the Young
Woman--as entirely distinct from “The Young Person”--of contemporary
America, are beginning to want to see this life here at our doors
put into literature, and to read poetry and romance through eyes in
sympathy with modern life. It will, therefore, be one of the principal
aims of the FLY LEAF to foster and encourage this new spirit of
independence and self-reliance and faith in the common life and beauty
of this country. There are men and women in America who have something
to say, too.
We protest that the periodicals, ostensibly appealing to Americans,
should deal with the life and interests here, and should mirror
American literary life and thought. How else are we to foster a
literature here? The periodical world is the trial arena for the men
who may be the giants of thought and poetry in a few years. But no
arena, no circus; no audience, no gladiators. Poets and romancers are
not produced when public apathy drives all the writers into clerking,
or advertisement-writing or journalism. America is filled with literary
talent, and yet a birch broom is more to be depended upon than the pen
for mere bread, for the American market is monopolized by aliens.
We are devoured by a plague of locusts.
THE JEALOUS GOD.
In the gloom of the sunless November afternoon the ordinary solemnity
of the old church seemed palpably increased by an atmosphere of unusual
peace and mystery that gave sorrow its solace in a sense of the latent
and inevitable sadness of all mortal life.
From one or two of the confessional boxes there arose a confused murmur
of voices, and under one of the galleries, where the great fantastic
shadows were rather increased than diminished by a flare of gaslight,
a nun was drilling a bevy of demure little maidens in their catechism.
And every now and again the subdued chords of the organ rose into a
joyous peal and thrilled and dominated the drowsy, monotonous sibilant
murmur of prayer and clear treble responses of the children. Then in
the hush the muffled sounds of praying and moving women seemed to
intensify the stillness that filled the dome and nave, and a sense of
isolation in the midst of life crept over the spirit of one touched
with the human pathos of the scene.
Occasionally, however, one of the low, narrow doors of the main
entrance was held open for a few moments, and the rumble of the traffic
in the crowded streets without surged in with a music of its own,
and the nearness of the whirlpool of human destiny swept through the
minds of many who would fain put the world out of their thoughts and
lives and find a refuge for all sorrow in the love of God. Unburdened
hearts thus suddenly invaded by the chill mockery of reality sought
to drown the reawakened memory of life’s human web of fate in a fresh
abandonment to all their deepest sorrows and unutterable hopes in the
silence of God’s House. Here they would forget the fierce turmoil of
the world, and acknowledge to God all the anguish of thoughts and soul
that none dare reveal to their fellows. But there is no sanctuary in
the world for the soul of man so sacred that the irony of life cannot
enter.
At the chancel steps the form of a woman was bent in an attitude of
prostrate prayer--in an oblivious abandonment of everything but the
passion in her soul, so entirely unusual in a conventional religious
assembly in our time, that several eyes were directed toward her. A
gray and venerable father who was passing through the church observed
her, and hesitated for a moment whether he should go and say a word of
comfort to her. But as a sob shook her frame he murmured to himself,
“She is in the hands of God and He will restore,” and with a little
sigh passed on. This was a very poor parish. The good father was used
to pitiable scenes and the prayers of those whose only friend in all
the world was God--and even so the priest had to admit that life was
sad.
The woman was oblivious or indifferent to all that passed about her.
Her face was buried in her hands, clenched together in anguish, and
the sobs that rose and choked her utterance and swept conscious
thought into paroxysms of inarticulate despair, showed how intensely
she suffered and hoped and doubted. There was no serenity, no calm
acquiescence in her prayer--it was all revolt and demand, and in the
presence of the Host at God’s altar she doubted.
She had purposely withdrawn from the little groups of women gathered
together in their devotions, and when the door opened and the noise
of the street clashed for a moment with the harmony of prayer and the
low tide of flutey music from the organ loft, she shrank closer to the
altar railing. The stir of life without struck a chill into her heart,
and all the fervor of her hopes died within her.
For a few moments her lips were compressed in the silent anguish that
benumbs the mind and racks the body in every nerve and fibre. She
almost collapsed inertly on the steps. Then the loathing of life that
had possessed her as she had threaded her way through the narrow,
sordid streets returned with all its dread insistence of inconquerable
morbid thought. “So long as men are what they are,” she said under her
breath, despairingly, “God cannot be good,” and she drew herself up
with dry eyes and haggard face, and mechanically crossing herself as
she gained her feet, she turned to leave the church without another
word.
She tottered slowly and half blindly down the aisle and only reached
the darkened vestibule with a great effort and several stops on the
way. Putting her hand to the heavy, leathern door, she found herself
too feeble to move it. She leaned wearily against the wainscot and
waited. No one came. Then, moved with the petulance of passionate
despair, she prayed in her heart, “Oh, God, let me out of thy House
since thou wilt not answer my prayers.”
It was now twilight, and she recalled the flaunting horrors and misery
of the squalid streets of the quarter, and a feeling of revulsion swept
over her. After all, she and her husband had only God in all the world
to look to for help and comfort under the burdens of life; for even
the knowledge of misery and sorrow does not teach men love and pity.
And in the cruel world she only dared to be human with God.
She steadied herself against the wall, her eyes dimmed with tears, and
her soul filled with a great longing to pour out her repentance, and
again ask the boon that haunted her troubled dreams as well as her
waking thoughts.
She stumbled into one of the nearest pews, and falling upon her knees
she repeated mentally, with her busy thoughts otherwhere, one of the
prayers of the regular service, and then a great cry arose in her soul,
and she wailed the prayer that monopolized her heart and mind day and
night, and in or out of church was always being prayed in all her life.
“Oh, Lord God, we are utterly alone and bereft in the world, save
as Thy presence is near to comfort us. I ask and pray for only one
thing--for the life and strength of my poor husband, who is as Thou
knowest wasting at death’s door, and in our misery I can do nothing to
save him, nothing to alleviate his sufferings. Oh, God, I have given
Thee this day, to make my special prayer--and a day is so much to the
poor, whose bread must be won somehow every day. Oh, dear Lord, in
mercy hear me. There is no pity, no mercy, no compassion among men, for
they live only for gold though they bring their prayers to Thee. Only
Thou, the living truth and God art left to our hope, and I am here at
thy altar to claim the gift of life Thou hast promised in giving life.
Abandoned and despised, denied and starved by men, I come to Thee, in
our dire extremity, and ask this boon of life of Thy omnipotent arm.”
And so she prayed with all the fervor of her overwrought spirit, until
the dusk reminded her of the many hours she had been absent from the
sick man in the attic they called home.
As she was about to cross her own threshold, a hand was laid upon her
shoulder in the darkness, and a voice filled with a love and tenderness
she had never heard in any human speech, said, softly:
“What ails thee?”
She could see nothing, but her soul was grown desperate, and she
answered, without fear, “I am troubled for my husband, for his life is
ebbing away, and the miseries we suffer. I pray only for him, but God
does not answer my prayers.”
“And do you pray only for your husband?”
“Yes, we are all alone in the world, and there are none who care for
us, or do for us, or pity us. We have only God.”
“Then pray for all the world and all mankind, and perhaps God will hear
your prayer.”
Then the sorrowing soul knew that she too was not without sin, and that
out of the House of God she had met the angel of the Lord.
WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE.
BUBBLE AND SQUEAK.
Just received a book for review, an author’s complimentary copy, from
one of my friends, one of the finest hearted, most beautiful natured
men in the world. This is one of the saddest ironies of life. It is
just such a book as I wish my enemy had written.
* * * * *
The New Woman, who is really new and not a mere simulacrum of the old
fetish masquerading in borrowed plumage, carries a copy of the FLY LEAF
in the pocket of her bloomers; for the editor of the FLY LEAF is a New
Woman’s man, and distinctly prefers her to her grandmother.
* * * * *
This is worth the attention of young people just graduating from our
schools and colleges and entering upon the sad and serious business of
life, as it will put them in the path of success quicker than all the
wisdom of Aristotle and Plato--and I say this, who spawned it. One can
break all the ten commandments upon a technicality.
* * * * *
A wink is much more innocent than a blush.
* * * * *
One of the tragedies of old fogyism is the wit and wisdom of youth. But
youth has its little ironies, and the longevity of old fogeyism is one
of them.
* * * * *
The Humphrey Ward nightmare is stalking through the land again already.
It is evident this female survival of the Inquisition has awakened to
the glorious possibilities of the American market, and in future we
may expect to meet Marcella and the whole string of British boobies
that she has imported (they did not need creating) into fiction at
every turn in our periodical literature. And we had hoped we had seen
the last of the little snob Marcella and the rest of them for at least
another year. But the world is pressing Mrs. Ward for the solution of
the servant girl question and she is becoming more industrious than
ever. Subtle studies of snobocracy seem out of place, though, in the
periodicals of a democratic country.
* * * * *
I have just seen the latest portrait of Mrs. Humphrey Ward in the
“Century.” It explains the aridity of the atrocious Robert Elsmere.
Mrs. Ward’s physiognomy is severe. She is no hero to her maid servants
and man servants, but a terror to evil doers. British superiority is in
evidence; but the benignity of genius is not.
* * * * *
There are certain aspects of Stephen Crane’s literature that appeal
to the risibilities of a man who is blessed or cursed with some
humorous perception. His mystic, weird lines outrage all the laws of
prosody, and can only stand as the audacious flings of a fantastic and
untrammeled imagination, that is impatient of form and loves the hot
splash of thought. But it must not be rashly judged that any fool can
do this sort of thing. It demands a feeling for words and an abundant,
bubbling imagination. Still, the grave critics who have seriously
accepted Mr. Crane’s little book of verses as poetry and literature of
a high order appear in a rather ludicrous light. It is an interesting
freak of a quick fancy playing over life and thought and taking all
that comes to the surface in all seriousness. It is, however, something
new in print, for the unchastened whimsies of a perfervid imagination
seldom get into print--except in a few periodicals where there is no
one appointed to edit the editor.
* * * * *
The article of Jonathan Penn in this number seems to raise an
uncomfortable theory that this sort of inspiration is infectious, and
that a million new poets may spring up any morning. But Mr. Penn is
really only surprised at his own versatility, which does not surprise
us in the least, for he is one of the most imaginative and brilliant
prose writers in contemporary journalism. It is a pity that his
necessities and the conditions governing the literary market in America
compel him to write advertisements for his living. But if Mr. Crane
and others can only manage to put into their serious efforts such fine
limpid prose and such delicious fancies and quirks of humor as Mr. Penn
puts into his alluring advertisements, a great future awaits them in
prose literature.
* * * * *
In the death of Eugene Field, American literature has sustained a loss
that will not be readily forgotten, for this whimsical poet of genius
won a place for himself in the hearts of thousands. His “Sharps and
Flats” in the _Chicago Record_ also gained him a national reputation,
but it is the fate of all journalists who succeed in winning such a
place as he held in daily journalism to waste in the eternal ferment
of the short-lived daily newspaper the fine talents of imagination and
wit, that put into the permanent form of literature, would give them a
place among the famous wits and humorists of the world. Luckily Eugene
Field was a poet as well as a wit and droll, and the publisher of the
_Record_ was appreciative and catholic enough to open his columns to
his poetry.
If other American newspapers would allow their cleverest writers the
same latitude of doing signed work in poetry and prose, we should
soon have a very encouraging group of distinctive and virile American
writers. Eugene Field was, perhaps, the only American man of letters
using the term in its broad sense, and not restricting it especially
to the writer of merely funny or political work, who has won fame in
literature through the medium of a newspaper. This is high praise for
the _Record_ as well as a monument of achievement for Field, which only
those in the harassing harness of journalism can properly appreciate.
At the close of his career, of course, Field was published in books and
magazines, but he won his reputation in the _Record_.
Why do not some other proprietors of large newspapers give other young
American writers of originality and talent a show, instead of giving
the public nothing in the way of literature but syndicate matter by
English writers who crop up everywhere? If the newspaper publishers
and editors took to producing literary men of their own, and were not
content to get out a newspaper that tallies with every other in every
town from Maine to Frisco, we should soon find that a rich streak of
spontaneous, fresh talent would be struck in this country.
* * * * *
Those early “Plain Tales from the Hills” were fine, and “The Light that
Failed,” and the rest showed that in Kipling we had a man of virile
force, great observation and picturesque power. But it seems to one who
looks for the sense of permanence in an artist’s choice of subjects
and style of treatment that the furore over the “Jungle Stories”
is simply the exaggeration that is meted out to every established
literary favorite in a mere strain for novelty. There is nothing really
permanent about this literary twist of investing the wild beasts with
human traits and speech, and although it is doubtless well done, it
does not support the contention of some critics that Kipling is the
most significant and robust writer in English today. This is not
denying Kipling’s universally acknowledged abilities, it is merely
pointing out that he is striving more for immediate effect than for
the substantial art that would insure his place in the great body of
standard English literature.
A Good Cause
Needs a good writer to support and advocate and present it.
A Bad Cause
Needs a better writer to make it appear as good as the best.
A writer of experience, ability and versatility is desirous of finding
employment in some journalistic capacity. He prefers to advocate a
damnably bad cause for good wages than a good one for bad. Address,
HARDUP, care FLY LEAF.
Meditations in Motley.
By WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE.
I have met with no volume of essays from America since Miss Agnes
Repplier’s so good as his “Meditations in Motley.”--Richard Le
Gallienne, in the London “Realm.”
Mr. Harte is a litterateur of the light and humorous sort, with a
keen eye for observation, and an extremely facile pen. His style is
quaint and interesting. He has original ideas and always an original
way of putting things. The writer if not quite a genius, is very
closely related to one. There is a sly and quiet humor everywhere
present. We hope that the author will soon sharpen his quill for more
work of the same kind.--New York “Herald.”
“Meditations in Motley” reveals a new American essayist, honest
and whimsical, with a good deal of decorative plain speaking.--I.
Zangwill, in “The Pall Mall Magazine” for April, 1895.
The reader gets out of this book a good deal of the satisfaction
which he finds in the essay-writing of the good old days of the
English essayists. He will be reminded in many ways of that
happy time, for he will gain the sense of leisure, independence
of democratic opinion, a willingness to be odd if one’s oddity
is attractive, a touch of the whimsical, and a good deal of
straight-forward and earnest thinking. One is often reminded in
reading these pages of Hazlitt. Mr. Harte understands the art of
essay-writing.--“The Outlook,” New York.
“Meditations in Motley,” which has stirred up thinking people
wherever it has entered their circles, is one of the lately built
pieces of literary masonry that is strong enough to last.--“The
Examiner,” San Francisco, Cal.
Price in Handsome Cloth, $1.25.
_FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS._
_Or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the Publishers_,
The Arena Publishing Co.,
Copley Square, Boston, Mass.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLY LEAF, NO. 1, VOL. 1, DECEMBER 1895 ***
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