Title: The Fly Leaf, No. 4, Vol. 1, March 1896
Author: Various
Language: English
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  THE FLY LEAF is distinctive among all the Bibelots.--FOOTLIGHTS,
    PHILADELPHIA.


  [Illustration]

  The Fly Leaf

  A Pamphlet Periodical of
  the Century-End, for Curious
  Persons and Booklovers.


  CONDUCTED BY WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE.


  WITH PICTURE NOTES BY
  H. MARMADUKE RUSSELL.


  Published Monthly by the Fly Leaf Publishing Co.,
  Boston, Mass. Subscription One Dollar a Year.
  Single Copies 10 Cents. March, 1896. Number
  Four.



Unique and Distinctive in Bibelot Literature.

THE CRITICS AGREE IN SAYING THE FLY LEAF FILLS A FIELD OF ITS OWN.

THE FLY LEAF is distinctive among all the Bibelots.--FOOTLIGHTS,
Philadelphia.

It is a delightfully keen little swashbuckler.--THE ECHO, Chicago.

The latest of the Bibelots. In my opinion it is the only one of the
lot, including the “Chap-Book,” “Philistine,” etc., which knows what it
is driving at. The editor of the “Chap-Book” toddles along, following
or attempting to follow, the twists and turns of the public taste--at
least that is what he wrote in a Note not long ago--and the editor of
the “Philistine” curses and swears, and devastates the atmosphere,
trying his best to kill everything. “THE FLY LEAF” at once impressed me
that Mr. Harte knows what he wants, and seriously intends to have it. I
hope he will.--THE NORTH AMERICAN, Philadelphia.

It will pay any one who wishes to keep up with the literary procession
to peruse this sprightly little periodical.--THE EXAMINER, San
Francisco, Cal.

That bright little bundle of anecdote, comment, essay, poetry and
fiction, “THE FLY LEAF,” of Boston, comes out in particularly good
style. It gives rich promise of many good things to come.--THE
COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER, New York.

Number two of Walter Blackburn Harte’s dainty monthly “THE FLY LEAF,”
is out, and filled with the spirit of youth and beauty in literature,
and zealous with culture, taste and faith toward higher ideals, it is
going about doing good.

Mr. Harte is strong, brilliant and brave as an essayist of the
movement, and is making friends everywhere. The poetry and prose is all
of high merit.--THE BOSTON GLOBE.

The thing I like about Mr. Harte is his splendid spirit of Americanism,
his optimistic belief in native literature and native writers; his
hatred of all things bordering on toadyism or servile flattery of
foreign gods to the exclusion of home talent. This is the key-note of
THE FLY LEAF, and Mr. Harte will be apt to say some trenchant, candid
and always interesting things in its pages.--THE UNION AND ADVERTISER,
Rochester, N. Y.

These are a few criticisms of the first two numbers, selected from
a great heap of enthusiastic notices. THE FLY LEAF is promoting a
Campaign for the Young Man in Literature. All the young men and women
in America are discussing its unique and original literature, and
spreading its fame.



The Fly Leaf


  No. 4.      March, 1896.      Vol. 1.


THE FLY LEAF.

      Like a thumb-nail sketch
          In the world of art;
      Like a humming-bird
          In leafy bowers;
      Like a pure quatrain
          In a poet’s heart;
      Like a harebell blue
          In a garden of flowers;
  Or like (I think this figure better)
  The post-script at the end of her letter.

                                WAITMAN BARBE.



TO BE PUBLISHED SHORTLY.

LUCKY RICHARD’S MANUAL ON HOW TO SPEND MONEY.

INTENDED FOR PERSONS OF SIMPLE TASTES WHO HAVE HAPPENED TO STRIKE TEN!


This is probably the last subject under heaven I ever dreamed I
should find occasion to discuss in print. But we are the playthings
of Fate, and at this moment I am wholly immersed in weighty affairs
and endless calculations as to what my income would be if this
bibelot of literature became indispensable, as it undoubtedly should
be, in thousands of homes in this country. When I have the figures
satisfactorily arrived at on the basis of ten thousand subscribers, I
see how easy it would be to introduce the periodical to the friends and
relations of these ten thousand should-be delighted subscribers. Then
my figures are naturally inconclusive and, as my wife says, with a fine
belief in my destiny that is quite irresistible, _absurdly modest_.
Then I’m bound to consider her figures, and her arithmetic becomes
more convincing with her wants. She says that, out of a population of
seventy million souls, there must be at least one million readers for
the FLY LEAF.

[Illustration]

A woman who marries into Grub Street never appreciates the situation
quite so vividly as the man who is to all intents and purposes born
into it. To begin with, she is naturally somewhat prejudiced in her
husband’s favor. I was foreordained by Providence for a career in
Grub Street, and I could not marry out of it. A long acquaintance
with its chances has made me less sanguine than my helpmate, and a
million rather staggered me. I know that only good dead authors get
a million readers, and then only in stolen editions. So to keep my
wife’s imagination within bounds I told her it was true there were
seventy millions in this country, but that not even the most credulous
acceptors of that bad makeshift, human nature, would dream of calling
them seventy million _souls_. The huge bulk was simply _the mob_! In
the residuum some _souls_, and perhaps half a million intelligent
people, were possibly to be found. Luckily some sense of humor saves
me from the temptation of reckoning my possible gains in periodical
literature on the data furnished by the Census Bureau.

[Illustration]

But my wife, whose devotion to the severe goddess of literature is
somewhat vicarious, cannot altogether stifle some pangs of envy as she
regards the fine new silk dress of the janitor’s wife, or learns that
Mr. So and So, who is in the advertising business, has just given his
wife a new span of trotting horses for her new racing cutter. This
is enough to make a woman hiss invidious things about the calling of
literature.

A woman may love literature for her husband’s sake, or even for its
own, and yet she cannot help looking into the haberdashers’ and
milliners’ windows with wistful hungry eyes. And the goddess of
literature does not allow her votaries, especially the married ones,
anything but the shabbiest of shoddy drabs. So my wife declares that
one million out of seventy is a moderate and conservative estimate,
and she will not abate the figures one jot or tittle. I am convinced
that the feminine love of finery and comfort and elegance constitutes a
temperamental inadaptability to high aims in literature.

It all came about in this way: We were out marketing--my better half
and I--and we got mixed up with the crowd of swell people pouring into
the main entrance of the opera-house, and, as we passed under the
brilliantly lighted portico, my wife stopped a moment and peered in to
catch the name of MELBA on the billboard.

“We never go to see anything nowadays,” she said, a little regretfully,
as we moved on. Then we crossed the street and joined the shopping
crowd, pushing and elbowing in opposing streams on the other pavement,
and presenting an entirely different appearance to the radiant throng
about the opera-house. “Oh, well,” I answered, “you can’t expect
literature to prosper in a year of financial panics, depreciated
dollars and war scares. We must be content to just grub along.” “But
I should like to hear Melba and Calve--and I’ve not been to a single
Symphony this winter. Then, too, we’ve only seen one play, and that was
stupid. And we couldn’t even afford to go up in the gods to see Irving
or Beerbohm Tree. It’s a shame the way the speculators run the prices
up for everything good!”

“Well, you saw Otis Skinner in ‘Villon the Vagabond,’ and that was a
good bit of romantic acting.” “Oh, I know, but I do wish we didn’t
always have to go up in the gods.” “Get more performances for your
money.”

“If I could turn dramatic critic now--and, ’pon my soul, I don’t see
why not! The trick’s comparatively easy. _My father_ remembers the
great Edmund Kean, and I remember what he says of him; and then there
is theatrical literature in abundance.” “Oh, no; there’s no fun in
seeing a play if you’ve got to go home and write about it. You know
that. But there is no reason why we shouldn’t go to the opera and sit
in the best seats, if you only put all your energy and lots of good
things into what you call your organ of civilization. Of course it
should succeed--and once the book lovers and reading public know what
it really is, it _must_ succeed.”

“And then--why, what shall we do with all our money? I can’t think how
we shall spend it.”

“We shan’t get too rich in a hurry. This is the one direction in which
you women have a fine sweep of imagination--but it is not so easy to
make money as it is to spend it in imagination. People don’t care
for simply _good stuff_ in periodical literature, nowadays. It must
intoxicate them with the odor of blood, and I can’t do that--I can’t
do Jack the Giant Killer stories. I abominate anachronisms of mood
in literature. Fancy an old friar writing on modern sex problems!
But refined literary taste craves _gore_, and plenty of it, and gore
is sent by the shipload from over the sea. The British make the best
literary butchers--it comes natural to them to hack and chop and stab.
The renaissance of blood and thunder in fiction is the wonder of our
age. We cure any tendency to thinking by letting blood, just as the old
surgeons did all forms of virulent disease a generation or so ago.”

“Oh, but surely, there is just a big enough public for good wit and
good humor to make our venture a success--and then with a million
readers we can hear Melba in the orchestra chairs.”

“A million--what an imagination you’ve got! That would be a ten-strike!”

“Well, why shouldn’t _you_ have a ten-strike? I’m sure you deserve
it.” “All moralists do--but ten-strikes do not go to the deserving.
Providence does not reward virtue in this fashion.” “Then Providence
should. I’m sure you ought to succeed--and I’ve made up my mind about
it. We’ll do lots of things with our million. I think we’ll begin
by ceasing to buy our tea where they give the crockery with it. But
tonight I want a little pitcher.

“Then--just think!--I wouldn’t have to go to the butcher’s and watch
the scale to see whether I get fair weight or not. I wouldn’t care--I’d
order by telephone, and I’d get the very best parts of the meat instead
of the _good_ parts, and you could eat the _fillet_ of beef all the
time to build you up and make blood and brain. You must hurry up and
get that million.”

[Illustration]

“I’m all right as it is, but I _do_ like a tender steak. And I
think we’d quit something of our enthusiasm for Boston baked beans,
though I’ve got quite to enjoy them. Still, it’s a sort of acquired
patriotism--and, like most forms of patriotism, popular because it’s
inexpensive. Then we wouldn’t have frankfurters so often. And we could
begin to cultivate a taste for paté de fois gras instead--although I
think it looks hateful.”

“Yes, and we’d have enough table napkins for unexpected callers.” “And
ones for everyday, too.” “You shouldn’t speak so loud about such things
in the crowd. I’m sure that woman heard you--she stared so hard. Oh,
and we’d have silver rings for them!”

“Better get married again and see if we couldn’t get a stock of silver
this time. Generous folk always load the rich down with plenty of
silver. At poor people’s weddings one sees nothing but cake baskets.”
“We got a brass lamp and some napkin rings.” “Did we? I don’t remember;
we must have lost the rings.” “No; they turned brassy, and I didn’t
dare to put them on the table any longer.

“Oh, I tell you what _I_ should have, and I’m sure I need it badly
enough to get it immediately.”

“Humph!” “Yes; you know, you guessed it--a new dress--right away. And
it should have silk linings, finer on the inside than the out, and real
hair cloth, and--yes!” with a rising inflection, “four godets in it!
There! I should buy no more Monday bargain coats.”

“And I believe I would have my suits made to order, and I should like
some of those English imported ties--the ‘purple moment’ ones.”

“I should only wear the very finest silk stockings.” “You should--and
red ones at that, to gratify my aesthetic love of a flash of color.”

“Another thing; I have enough to do as guide, counsellor and friend;
we’d get a girl to help in the housework.”

“But we wouldn’t move into a larger house. There is too much stuff
in the cellar to dream of moving, and we couldn’t abandon it--or _I_
couldn’t. Yes, by Jove! we’d move. I’d begin to collect Posters and
first editions, and I guess we’d want more room.”

“That’s just a man’s selfishness to want a whole house to himself.
Well, I want a parasol which is a parasol, and not an umbrella in
winter as well.”

“That’s only a trifle. When we go for excursions in summer we’ll take
the car down to the very wharf. You know how mad you get sometimes in
summer when I try to persuade you it’s more healthful to walk than to
ride.”

“Yes? but we wouldn’t go for _excursions_. We’d go to Newport--to
Europe. You see how prosperity saves bitterness of spirit by making
walking altogether unnecessary.” “That’s so--and I’ll get shaved at
the barber’s, and we’ll have our portraits done by Aubrey Beardsley or
Whistler.”

“Let me see--a box at the opera, the Symphony, flowers--really, there
must be more ways of spending money than we’ve thought of.”

“The only things I can think of are first editions, Posters--and
English ties.”

“Then I’ll tell you what. You must set to work and write a manual on
‘How to Spend Money’ at once, or we shall be perfectly miserable and
distracted with the consciousness of a lack of yearnings when we get
our million.”

“That’s so; the best way to learn anything is to write a book about
it--and perhaps this may be as true of spending a million as of
anything else.”

And so it has come about that I am to engage in the labor of compiling
a companion volume to Benjamin Franklin’s admirable Poor Richard book
of precepts on economy and the wise conduct of life. It appears to be
almost as much needed for people who lack the spending faculty and
imagination.

A lifetime of narrow and thrifty living has almost entirely unfitted us
for a life of luxury, and chilled and benumbed our imaginations. There
must be other persons of severe and simple tastes who have happened
to strike ten, and want to live up to it, and to such my “Lucky
Richard’s Manual” will appeal as a sort of moral salvation. It will be
indispensable and invaluable, and it will be sold at a price that will
put it within the reach of persons of modest means as well as of those
who have struck ten. Everybody in America has his own scheme for making
and spending a million, and mine will be sure to be of comparative
interest and value, for I have only been rich in dreams. Like the
“Proverbial Philosophy,” “Lucky Richard” will find a million readers.
WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE.

       *       *       *       *       *

To Ten-Strikers and others: The first chapters of this important Manual
will be published at an early date, when the author has made some
opportunities for gaining experience and knowledge of this abstruse
branch of Economics.



REWARD.


  What shadow winnowed through the skies
  And paused on Earth’s grey rim?
  The stars ran to their windows
  To catch a glimpse of Him.

  One in his haste fell foremost,
  A sudden splash of flame--
  Ah! eager little Asteroid
  Thy folly was thy aim!

  Oh! ye who stretch forth sturdy hands
  To stay Art’s toppling Ark,
  Though you have saved the cherubim,
  Receive your meed of Dark.

                        EUGENE R. WHITE.



LIFE AND DEATH.


In the bedroom was a cradle; in the adjoining room, dimly lighted
and kept cool, was a coffin loaded with flowers. There was the awful
presence of life and death.

The infant turned its head and cried as a young woman bent over it,
one hand pressing her breast as if she was restraining her breath, and
touched its fair skin caressingly. The child’s tiny fist struck blindly
at the air, and getting fairly awake he cried aloud. She drew back,
pressing her hands to her face, sighing in her heart. The child blinked
its blue eyes, and dozed off again.

The woman went into the other room, where a man was praying at the
coffin.

“Oh, God! Oh, God! not this! Not this, Oh, God!”

She sat down, away from the man, her elbows on her spread knees,
pressing her fingers into her cheeks, gazing at him, at the coffin, at
the blurred mist of all this unreal reality.

The man moaned, “Oh, God! Oh, my God!”

She smiled bitterly, making a gesture partly of impatience, and with
something of scorn.

“Have you no prayers--for the dead?”

“No.”

“Dead! Oh, my God, dead!”

“Hush, hush! Pray for the living.”

“The living! The living? It is the fruit of death.”

“What is death?”

“My wife.”

“Your child--lives.”

“My life is dead.”

“It is but born.”

The woman looked at the pinched, faded face of the corpse.

“The child is the soul of my death, and my death lives.” He stood
beside her at the coffin. “This is death.”

“Yes, this is death.” Her voice was as if it came from the tomb. “You
loved her?”

“Ah, I loved my wife better than all else in life. Those cold eyes I
kissed; those dry lips kissed me; her folded hands held mine in love.
Only a man--only some men, can know what that is to a man.”

“You will love your child.”

“My love lies there.”

“Love is a terrible thing.”

“It is life.”

“Love is death.”

“What do you know of love? Poor child, you have never loved.”

“I was never _loved_.”

“Ah, I was loved! Why do you weep? Who knows not love can smile at
suffering.”

She shrank from him.

“Do not touch me, I pray you! Respect--the living.”

“Yes, my child lives; does it not live? But oh, my wife! You cannot
know or guess how a man loves.”

“Ah, yes, I do--I do indeed.”

“Then look at me. She was my life, my first real love.”

“Oh, restrain your tears.”

“You have never loved. She was all the better part of me, or bore
the burden of the worse. She took me in growing manhood, she, only a
tender girl. She leaned to my first embrace, she overlooked my failings
and shared my first struggles. After some years we married. She said
I was patient to wait. And then we grew in life together, the weak
strengthening the weak. I used to dream of our growing old together,
dying together, and our loves living on after us together, after having
drawn us nearer and making us dearer to God and each other. Ah, me!
that short life soon ended; and now it is dead, dying in the dream of
another life in our child. And I saw the soft look in the eyes of the
mother harden under the cold shadow of death. Do not weep for me!”

“I, too, have loved. You do not know how a woman loves. The base of
eternity was the love I builded on. I loved unspeaking, silently, as a
woman must; but I loved, and I would have shared hell with the man I
loved. I resisted, fought against it and he never knew. Yet I think he
loved me once--is it impossible? I felt myself mastered by the generous
and godly mind of a man; my weaknesses vanished in the potency of his
strength. And he may have loved me--he may have loved me.

“But I saw another woman’s love for this man. I knew the frail flower
of her life was dying in the want of sustenance for her love.... No,
I did not love her; a woman does not love so. Perhaps it was for pity
of her, perhaps it was for love of him, that I was impelled to offer
myself a sacrifice. His was a man’s love. Oh, yes, I know a man’s love
rises to that height at times where only a woman’s love constantly
abides. His was a man’s love, and soon he loved her. Ah, I envied her,
almost bitterly. I sewed her bridal linen; it was a work of love which
she dreamed not of. I made the garments for their first born; it was a
holy duty of my love. I laid her in her shroud. I envy her, even now.”

He was as a man waking from a dream. He took a step toward her, but she
turned away. He looked at the waxen face of the corpse.

“Ah, it is terrible to die; but what is it to live?”

                                                   HERBERT ATCHISON COX.



A LITERARY ORDER.

TO THE LATEST CELEBRITY.


    Dr. Sir:--Send us at once post-haste
      1000 words--no matter what
    The theme; 2 ideas--just a taste--
      But make ’em up-to-date and hot.

  P.S.
    We find for 2 we have no room;
      Babb’s soap requires a 2 pg. ad;
    But never mind; we mean to boom
      Your name while ’tis the newest fad.
          Who cares a ---- for what’s inside
          Now you are on the rising tide?

                                 ADAM QUINCE.



A NEW BILL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO READERS.


Some of the things our industrious writers of today are doing, rather
incline us to regret that the craft has become so exemplary and
respectable. It may be that morality is served by the reformation of
Grub Street, but industry in literature is rather a fearful thing
when unaccompanied by other qualities of mind; and a good many
contemporary writers are more industrious than anything else. Indeed,
it has occurred to me, though I personally take nothing stronger than
tea, that a revival of loose living in the literary world would be a
God-send to discriminating readers, as we might then cherish the hope
that some of our popular novelists would perish ignominously, like poor
Kit Marlowe, before they could put in their cheap, slop literature on
the strength of their first bit of genuine work.

It is noticeable that of nearly all our contemporary writers it is true
that their best work was done first in obscurity. With success came
easy writing and slop literature for the bag-men of the syndicates.
This is the most severe criticism that can be made on them, for a
writer who respects himself should strive to continue developing
until forty. It is a pity some of our writers cannot meet a bad end
early in life, for in that case they would leave a fame unspoiled and
unsmirched with endless scamp work done for the speculators in literary
reputations.

If, perhaps, two-thirds of the present brood of fiction writers had
died, or been cut off in their first flush, we should have just so much
good literature without being compelled to sift it out of much “boomed”
rubbish.

Max Nordau claims that the writers of today are degenerates. As far
as our literature is concerned, the majority of our popular writers
have no such valid claim to serious consideration. It is conceivable
that degenerates may produce priceless and imperishable literature.
Our writers are mostly merely sober and respectable tinkers, and they
imperil the intellectual development of the race by coddling themselves
so well that they threaten to live as long as Queen Victoria.

Indeed the glut of balderdash in the literary market has become so
serious and critical that it seems to me some heroic measure is
necessary. I humbly suggest a measure that would, in a radical and
effective manner, meet the situation. It is this: that a Censorship
of Literature should be established in connection with the department
of justice. The sole object of the censorship would be the promotion
of the best interests of literature. The censorship would take the
delinquents in hand, with a stern and implacable majesty of law, that
would indeed put a premium on literary ambition and tempt only the
finest spirits and wits into the field.

The idea is this: At forty years of age every successful literary man
should be “removed”--and by removal we imply the full significance
of the picturesque Oriental figure. To obviate all chances, it would
be fairly understood that all literary careers ended at forty. There
would be no alternative of banishment or imprisonment. It would be
death in every case. This would not be done to embarrass the production
of good literature, no matter how great the production might become,
for the world is big enough, and humanity is slow and dull enough to
accommodate all the good literature the centuries may bring forth.
But the measure is needed to prevent authors from destroying the
good influence of their first honest and strenuous work and their
own reputations. And this fate would not deter the finest minds, for
they would be content to die with fame secure. But just think of the
beneficial and deterrent effect of such an institution on the horde of
scribbling men and women who bury all the good literature of our time
under their huge mountain of silly novels!

                                                          JONATHAN PENN.



A FANTASIE OF DREAMS.


  Dreams of Death,
  Wherein the Breath
  Of pulsing Life wavereth
      ’Twixt earth and sky,
  And fluttering Things sail by
  In hideous forms that cause the eye
      To quail in fright ...
      Dark Things of Night
  With bat-like wings, and eyes as bright
      As flames of Hell
      Wherein they dwell
  To torment souls with wild revel.
  With bony claws of razored steel
  They clutch the naked soul and seal
  Thereon their hellish dies ...
  ... Midst eldritch yelps, and cries
  Of fiendish triumph--echoed by the skies--
  They bear the gasping soul,
  Livid and seared, through voids that roll
  Away in endless horrors up to the goal
  Of all lost souls: and there
  They wrench their way thro’ putrid air
  Of brimstone,--foul smells that bear
  The Soul on seas of thirsty flames
      That surge and swell ...
  ... And there the soul forever broils
      And roasts and boils
      Within the blackened gates of Hell.

                           JOHN NORTHERN HILLIARD.



BUBBLE AND SQUEAK.


Women are the exceptions to every rule. That is what rules are made
for--so that women can be exceptions to them.


Wickedness in women is expiated by the joy it affords the saints.


We all profess to think well of humanity because we want to be well
thought of.


It is something to convert one’s enemies, but the disillusion of life
comes when one attempts to convert one’s friends.


The definition of an immoral story in the eyes of a certain caste of
critics and the smugs is one that has a moral.


A man who values his peace of mind marries a plain woman.


We get a good deal of literature about the Woman with a Past. A woman
has not got _a past_ until she begins the folly of repentance.


There is something radically wrong with a misanthrope who is not merry
and cheerful, for this is a state of mental and moral independence and
self-complacency.


Another impending catastrophe that looms up large on the literary
horizon is a serial publication of the innocuous, but insufferably
tedious William Black. This is one of the most notorious modern
instances of a writer of fine abilities who has fallen into the slough
of mere money making. Black ceased to write anything that really seizes
one’s interest almost as long ago as ten years. He has written nothing
but guide and patter-book stories of the Scotch highlands since his
first legitimate successes, and today he writes simply for the largest
audience. The style and workmanship is always up to his own standard,
for, of course, he is a good workman, but the charm of a forceful and
original mind that we enjoyed in “Shandon Bells” and the rest, is
lacking in these later stories, in which the conventional love story of
old-fashioned romance is told over and over again, with a background of
London and Scotch country houses.


Mrs. Humphrey Ward is in the field again. She is the female political
and religious prophet of the nonconformist many-headed. She is to
contribute an interminable, commonplace snob-novel, dealing with
utterly superfluous English “society” and political life, to one of the
American magazines for mature sucklings. It is bad enough to get this
freak female in books.

It is a poor imitation of Anthony Trollope, and it is filled with the
profound platitudes that have made the Ward nightmare a ludicrous libel
and parody of George Eliot. Such is the taste of the serious minded
women readers of our time, that this unendurably tiresome portrayer of
merely snob life and snob philosophy is hailed as one of the geniuses
of our age.


I hope I am a good Democrat here at home, but in following English
politics in the newspapers I observe one intellectual characteristic
of a Tory government which touches my admiration and enthusiasm, and
inclines me to prefer the Tories to the Liberals. The Liberals, like
the large army of “Reformers” we have with us in this country, are
rather apt to appeal to the mawkish sentimentality of the unbalanced
and short-sighted masses, and they encourage schemes for the
reformation of human nature by Act of Parliament. The Tories are saner,
broader and more tolerant of human failings that are in the nature of
things incurable. Perhaps it is because they themselves do not pretend
to be wholly incorruptible on the moral side that they have perception
enough to recognize the fact, that folly and wickedness are the sole
compensations of the lower orders for the hardships of existence.
The Lord save the poor from the dispensation of the reformers and
moralists! I am glad to note that Lord Salisbury has just turned down a
deputation of fanatics on the liquor question with the curt remark that
the subject did not attract the government after past experience, and,
moreover, the government had other more important matters to attend to.
It is time these Prohibition lunatics learned that free men will never
relinquish their divine and human rights to go to the devil in their
own way. And besides, liquor is not by any means the worst evil in this
world.


It is time Americans arrived at maturity of judgment in intellectual
matters, instead of complacently occupying a position of servile
dependence upon English opinion. A declaration of Literary Independence
is needed, and must soon be made by some bold spirits.

It is ridiculous to see the American cultivated public taking all its
opinions in literary matters from the organs of British complacency and
ancient prejudice. _The London Times_, an ancient bulwark of immovable
Tory Know-nothingism, is regarded seriously on this side. Then there
is the _Saturday Review_, a dirty gutter rag of imbecile impertinence,
which diverts the naturäl “sports” and hobbledehoys of the British
aristocracy. It is written in choice English superciliousness, by
snobbish and half baked boys, for English country houses, where
the coagulation of insular stupidity needs a whip and stable-boy
familiarities to set any wits in motion. These astounding journals of
civilization are taken seriously by the American reading public, and
more especially by the critics, who will, with very few exceptions,
dance to any jig that is played in London.

That the English “bag-men” of literature do not fail to take advantage
of American credulity and servile deference to English opinion, which
is as easily counterfeited as “public opinion” is here, is shown once
more for the thousandth time, by a recent statement in _The London
Times_. The English do not take any trouble to dissemble their contempt
of everything American, and a good stirring spirit of retaliation in
every department, including literature and criticism in this country,
would increase John Bull’s friendliness and tolerance as much as
Cleveland’s message on the Monroe doctrine did in one astonishing
fortnight. We _now_ learn the English _love_ us! After all those
scurrilous articles in their magazines!

The _Times_ says: “Nothing but a boom in London will induce American
publishers to boom an author in the States. There are very few
literary journals in the United States, so that ours have a remarkable
influence, and their verdict on a new work is eagerly scanned and, as a
rule, accepted.”

Well, it is time the literary journals we have awoke to their duty
and opportunity, and gave up singing to English piping, and took to
thinking for themselves. They might also look around here, and learn
something of their own writers. It is really worth while to encourage
authorship in America. There is an abundance of talent here, and, when
circumstances are favorable, real genius.


The howling of the critics and the frantic female moralists convinced
me that I must read “Jude the Obscure,” which I might have postponed
until I was less busy, and so finally have missed, as I have many good
things--swept on with the tide of events and affairs. But when the
frantic female moralist is stirred up in holy indignation, I know that
there is something moving forward worthy of masculine consideration.

I’ve read “Jude the Obscure.” It is the comedy and tragedy of real
human life. I have no criticism. It seems Thackeray ought to have lived
to have remarked the literary successor of Henry Fielding. I’m like
Oliver Twist. Alarmed at my own temerity, I want some more.

[Illustration]


Let our English literature be written for men and women. Let it dare,
even if it can never achieve the range of Balzac, the Aristophanes, the
Shakspeare of modern fiction.


One very significant change has almost imperceptibly crept into English
fiction of recent years. It will be remembered that all Dickens’
and Thackeray’s heroines were in their teens; only adventuresses and
wicked women being allowed a fictitious existence after passing their
twentieth birthday. And so with all the conventional novels from
that time to date--all the heroines are sylphish, roguish, innocent,
or pale-faced, meditative maids. To-day the heroines in some rather
advanced books are allowed to be as aged as twenty-five. This is moral
and intellectual progress. A woman is now also allowed to be in love
with a man before he pops any question.


The February “Bachelor of Arts” has an article on “The Yale Prom [From
the Girl’s Point of View].” It is signed by “Florence Guertin.” In the
second paragraph we read: “Skirt the ballroom with boxes; place in them
hundreds of pretty girls, typical American beauties from all parts of
the country; offset these by a fringe of diamond-decked chaperones;
confront them with a solid phalanx of _white-shirted_, handsome,
muscular young men, and you have a rough sketch of the outward aspect
of the Junior Promenade.” “White-shirted!” Why, Florence! Is the Yale
Prom such a barbarous, uncivilized affair? This out-Poteats Mrs.
Poteat, who said she had rather send her son to hell than to Yale (she
was not a Harvard grad., either). Our moral sensibilities are rudely
disturbed by this vision, but we struggle on for a few paragraphs not
knowing what awful disclosure Florence will make next, till we heave
a sigh of relief when we read: “Yale University teaches one thing not
down in the curriculum: it teaches a man how to dress. The majority of
students could pass a hundred in this course.” From this we are led
to infer that the solid phalanx of handsome, muscular young men had
something else on beside white shirts, and that there was more regard
for the conventionalities of modern civilization at New Haven than
Florence at first would have us believe. But why “white-shirted?” Did
Florence expect that Yale men would appear in their dress suits with
colored shirts? Or perhaps she thought they wore sweaters.


I do not know how it may be with other Epicureans, but I find the
complete dominance of daily journalism, the stage, and a certain class
of magazines with a million readers apiece, by the Fractionally-attired
Female of the variety stage or of society, is becoming distinctly
nauseating.

[Illustration]

To get the semi-nude fleshly female thrust upon us in bulk at every
turn, day after day, awakens a fierce revolt in some masculine minds
against this insane worship of the Triumphant Harlot, which is fast
growing to be the principal characteristic of modern civilization. It
is getting to be a nightmare to all who cherish any intellectual and
moral ideal aims in life, and instead of increasing the witchery of
woman it makes her a loathsome vacuous symbol of the corrupt millions
who are groaning and praying for a Utopia of unrestrained bestial
content. I hope they may never throw off the yokes that keep them
tame--and out of my neighborhood. This degradation of the stage and
literature is enough to create a race of Epicurean misogynists.


Mr. Edward Sanford Martin, in a department called “This Busy World” in
_Harper’s Weekly_, expresses his strenuous disapproval of the Bibelot
movement in contemporary literature, and of the aims of the FLY LEAF in
particular. He says: “The FLY LEAF is a periodical of the New--not to
say the ‘Fresh.’”

I should have thought a man who has enough love of _real_ literature to
turn to the good old eighteenth century form of the gossipy essay, as
Mr. Martin has done in one or two books, would have had enough sense of
humor to appreciate a sincere and honest attempt to rehabilitate free
thought, robust opinion and high endeavor in present day literature.
The revival of the old and honorable pamphlet form, which is and
always has been the vehicle of free thought, free fancy and the honest
literature of Democracy since the popularization of the printing press
should appeal to a bookman.

Mr. Martin is, however, a much better Tory than he is a humorist; and
to those who are not aware of it, it is well to point out that one
of the significant developments in American literature is the Tory
spirit of a certain clique of comfortables, who regard literature not
as the sacred tables of the human mind, but as a mere game for people
of taste. It is disappointing, however, to find a man who shows his
appreciation of the good old school of essayists by attempting to work
out a career as one of this scanty apostolic succession, so completely
vitiated in his critical and humorous perception by bad company that
he can only find a cheap, cant term, borrowed from the gutter or the
class-room, for the honest work of men, who, in this age of clatter and
notoriety, are striving against odds to bring in the ideals of the old
robust English literature.

But a Tory cannot be tolerant of Grub Street, or stick at simple
honesty in criticism. He is bound to associate genius with prosperity,
or some of his friends’ fame will suffer, and discriminating readers
will grow overbold in their choice of polite literature. Fame depends
nowadays on one’s appreciations of one’s well to do contemporaries. It
is the solemn business of all “respectable” critics to keep literature
as the sacred gift and heirloom of a close corporation of perfectly
“respectable” and inoffensive writers.

But perhaps time will bring a sense of humor to Mr. Martin. We hope
so, as we have a tenderness for every man who cares for and writes
essays. Mr. Martin’s attitude surprised us somewhat, as he really can
write an amusing essay and we expect much toleration from an essayist.
But he may live to grow mellow and learn to love stout heretics. Every
independent writer since Job has appeared “fresh” to smug complacency,
and an essayist should never countenance smuggery, if he would hold any
status with book men.

It always appears ridiculous to a clique that other men should fight
for and demand a hearing. But we must honestly aver our egotistical
opinion that there is fully as much brains in Grub Street, frowned
upon as it is by the respectable tin gods of contemporary criticism
and literature, as there is in other and more respectable coteries of
literature.


The true ideal of a democracy is a natural aristocracy of intellect,
recruited in every generation from all classes--the survival of the
fittest. But just now almost everything in our social, intellectual,
political, and even religious activity, caters to the mass of lowest
intelligences and their gross prejudices.

In the FLY LEAF the Beast will find no such pandering to his muddy
and addled brains. There are plenty of periodical muck-heaps for him
to wallow in. This thing is intended for our intellectual coevals and
contemporaries, and we shall not be easily convinced that, in this
seething time of wholesome change, there are not enough such people in
America to sympathize with and support a periodical with such aims.

The FLY LEAF and its writers appeal to that rare and delightful being,
_the discriminating reader_. Bookish folk constitute a division in the
human species, a class by themselves, and as a Booklover as well as a
quillfeather, I firmly believe that only those who are possessed of
some intellectual and catholic interests of this sort will be found
human and worthy enough to be admitted to Heaven. The Almighty will
surely not destroy his own peace by allowing the fools to outnumber
and outvote Him. The dull and unintelligent deserve to be lost. An
acute philosopher (but why dissimulate to delude the dull, since the
philosophic quip is my own?) has divided the human race into thinkers
and readers--and mere bipeds. Why remain simply a humble biped when
you can read the FLY LEAF and hope for Heaven?

It should be distinctly understood by all readers who visit the
book stores with the idea of getting the most for their money, that
the FLY LEAF cannot be put upon the scale and weighed against the
picture periodicals. It tips hopelessly in the air, and this airiness
and lightness and intangible delicacy is the characteristic of all
_thought_. It flies into the air while mud settles at once into its
congenial mire. Thought and wit and fancy always fly up in this
fashion; and this is the honor and distinction of the FLY LEAF and its
staff, whether we win or lose.

We candidly do not appeal to the gross and clumsy wits of the
many-headed, although we conserve the tradition of the democracy of
fine spirit in literature. Nature’s aristocracy of intellect is all
that makes humanity tolerable. We appeal to the Remnant, without which
democracy would be the unmitigated dominion of the Beast; and luckily
we see evidences everywhere of the rapid growth of this class and of
a salutary revolt against the dominion of the Beast in journalism,
literature, and even in politics. Let it grow--for no nation can take
its proper place in civilization which is governed by its tail instead
of by its head.

                                                    THE MAN IN THE MOON.



THE LONDON ACADEMY


  The Leading Critical Literary Journal of London, in a long review of
  “MEDITATIONS IN MOTLEY,” by WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE, says, among other
  things:

“When any book of good criticism comes it should be welcomed and made
known for the benefit of the persons who care for such works. The book
under notice is one of these. It is, so far as I know, the first from
the author’s pen; but his writings are well known, and those who read
his present book will, with some eagerness, await its successor. For it
is a book in which wit and bright, if often satirical, humor are made
the vehicle for no flimsy affectations, but for genuine thought. Mr.
Ruskin has affirmed that the virtue of originality is not newness, but
genuineness.

“In this true sense Mr. Harte’s book is original. Here is his own
thought on several topics, pleasantly displayed, and no mere echo or
second-hand production of the ideas of others. If Mr. Harte continues
to act up to this sentiment, [a long quotation from the book under
consideration] as he does in the present book, he may not achieve the
triumph of twentieth editions, but he will be a power for good--as
every true man of letters is, and must be in the world. If it were
practicable I should be much disposed to let the author recommend
himself by giving copious quotations from these essays. At his
best--that is, in his most characteristic and seemingly unconscious
passages--he reminds one of Montaigne: the charming inconsequence, the
egotism free from arrogance.”


PRICE IN HANDSOME CLOTH, $1.25.


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Specimen pages, etc., sent on application.



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Fly Leaf, No. 4, Vol. 1, March 1896" ***

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