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Title: The Yale Literary Magazine (Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 8)
Author: (Students of Yale)
Language: English
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(VOL. LXXXVIII, NO. 8) ***
Vol. LXXXVIII No. 8
The
Yale Literary Magazine
Conducted by the
Students of Yale University.
[Illustration]
“Dum mens grata manet, nomen laudesque YALENSES
Cantabunt SOBOLES, unanimique PATRES.”
May, 1923.
New Haven: Published by the Editors.
Printed at the Van Dyck Press, 121-123 Olive St., New Haven.
Price: Thirty-five Cents.
_Entered as second-class matter at the New Haven Post Office._
* * * * *
ESTABLISHED 1818
[Illustration: _Brooks Brothers_, CLOTHING, Gentlemen’s Furnishing Goods.]
MADISON AVENUE COR. FORTY-FOURTH STREET NEW YORK
Clothing for the Tennis Player and the Golfer
Flannel Trousers, Knickers, Special Shirts, Hosiery, Shoes
Hats, Caps
Shetland Sweaters, Personal Luggage
Men’s and Boys’ Garments for
Every requirement of Dress or Sporting Wear
Ready made or to Measure
The next visit of our Representative to the HOTEL TAFT will be on May 30
and 31
BOSTON TREMONT COR. BOYLSTON
NEWPORT 220 BELLEVUE AVENUE
* * * * *
THE YALE CO-OP.
_A Story of Progress_
At the close of the fiscal year, July, 1921, the total membership was
1187.
For the same period ending July, 1922, the membership was 1696.
On May 1st, 1923, the membership was 1922, and men are still joining.
Why stay out when a membership will save you manifold times the cost of
the fee.
THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE
Contents
MAY, 1923
Leader LAIRD SHIELDS GOLDSBOROUGH 245
The Acolyte HERBERT W. HARTMAN, JR. 249
Chopin ARTHUR MILLIKEN 250
The Bells of Antwerp MORRIS TYLER 251
Rhapsody ARTHUR MILLIKEN 253
Offering D. G. CARTER 254
Gabrielle Bartholow LEWIS P. CURTIS 255
A Little Learning LAIRD GOLDSBOROUGH 268
Notabilia: On the Francis Bergen Medal MAXWELL E. FOSTER 273
_Book Reviews_ 274
_Editor’s Table_ 277
The Yale Literary Magazine
VOL. LXXXVIII MAY, 1923 NO. 8
_EDITORS_
WALTER EDWARDS HOUGHTON, JR.
LAIRD SHIELDS GOLDSBOROUGH
MORRIS TYLER
DAVID GILLIS CARTER
NORMAN REGINALD JAFFRAY
_BUSINESS MANAGERS_
GEORGE W. P. HEFFELFINGER
WALTER CRAFTS
_Leader_
_There be two handles to all things in this world, one called_
the good, _and one_ the bad. _But a man may lay hold of
anything by whichever handle shall please him best._—Old Stoic
Maxim.
It has been usual, in the past, for Editors of THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE
to express themselves as strongly opposed to something, when engaged
in writing a leader. Two recent leaders have varied this procedure to
the extent of declaring the opposition of their authors to opposition,
but the principle of being opposed to something remains. At the present
moment, it occurs to us that it might be interesting to suppose correct
a few of the pessimistic opinions held by that rather noisy group whom
we shall call The Troubled Spirits. On the basis of these suppositions,
we shall then try to show that, bad as things are, there still remain a
few bright spots lurking in unsuspected corners of the very evils whose
existence we are admitting, for the sake of argument.
A convenient starting point may perhaps be found in the Compulsory Sunday
Chapel question. It can be urged that the two services now provided
prevent anyone from claiming that he is forced to listen to propaganda
in the form of a sermon, on Sunday. But The Troubled Spirits, whose
positions we are now admitting, regard the matter differently. If we are
correctly informed, they consider it a fact, however unpleasant, that
the average Yale student feels a very real, if unofficial, compulsion to
attend whichever Sunday service is held at a later hour than the other.
The Troubled Spirits defy the University to hold the short service at
eleven o’clock, and the long one at ten—believing that their position
would be more than vindicated by the lack of attendance at the earlier
service. In short, so far as The Troubled Spirits are concerned, Sunday
service is at eleven o’clock, and contains a sermon varying in length
from twenty minutes to half an hour.
But after allowing all that, and allowing, too, that the visiting
clergymen are attempting to foist opinions of their own upon the
undergraduate body, there is still something to be said. In the first
place, we imagine that The Troubled Spirits, on leaving college, will
perform their undoubted duty of attacking Christianity with every
resource in their power. Hence, were we in their place, we should ask
nothing better than to have all the foremost of our enemies brought
before us, at great expense, and exposed in such a manner that we could
most easily detect the flaws in their armor, which we were later to
pierce.
Secondly, there will be certain of The Troubled Spirits whose ardor will
evaporate on leaving college, and who will allow the public opinion of
their friends and relatives to force them to church again every Sunday.
To these we should like to say that observations upon the sermons of
more than one pitifully underpaid clergyman have convinced us, from The
Troubled Spirits’ point of view, that in this respect “the worst is
yet to come”. However stupid and unthinking The Troubled Spirits may
find the highly cultured, and in many cases highly paid, gentlemen who
speak at Yale, they will find the less highly paid, and not infrequently
less cultured, type of man to whom they are destined, infinitely more
stupid, and perhaps positively unpalatable. The flowers of rhetoric, when
blended skillfully into a delicately fragrant and perfumed discourse,
are, indeed, far more expensive than a bouquet of orchids—few of us will
ever be able to afford them again. And so, after a lapse of years, I can
imagine an old and embittered Troubled Spirit attempting a Drydonian
paraphrase to this effect:—
Battell to some faint meaning made pretense,
Elsewhere, they never deviate into sense.
That, of course, would happen to very few Troubled Spirits, but it is not
impossible.
Having attempted to prove, let us hope with some slight measure of
success, that even the most troubled of The Troubled Spirits may find
some crumb of consolation in present-day Sunday Chapel conditions, let
us pass on to another example. Perhaps, by way of trivial digression,
it might be interesting to speak of the feeling among The Troubled
Spirits that Osborn Hall should be summarily destroyed as a relic of a
past and barbarous age. Here, though we might admit the contentions of
The Troubled Spirits as before, we think it more serviceable merely to
recommend that The Troubled Spirits go and look at Osborn Hall. If our
own spirits were troubled, we can imagine nothing more soothing than to
look at Osborn Hall for the first time. Around the front of the main
entrance runs a band of stonework carved with animals and foliage exactly
resembling the woodcuts in The Troubled Spirits’ favorite magazines.
One of the beavers, in particular, is gnawing away at a capitalistic
grapevine with a communistic fury only to be called prophetic. Again,
we have never seen anything more “advanced” than the exquisite mosaiced
representation of a steamboat complete with paddle-wheels, which adorns
the under surface of one of the arches. It is exactly the same thing as
the “Painting Of A Train of Gear Wheels” sold recently in Paris as the
latest example of Da Da. It seems, then, that this matter might very well
rest by allowing The Troubled Spirits to admire Osborn Hall as a sample
of the latest phase in unrepressed art, while the rest of us respect
it as an example of what our grandfathers were fond of, and of what
our grandsons will treat with veneration. But to return to things less
trivial—
As this is written, the Senior class have voted that the most important
thing needed by Yale is football victories, and we are, for once, in
accord with The Troubled Spirits in thinking that our gridiron defeats
are dreadful things. They may not go so far as to admit, with The
Troubled Spirits, that football at Yale has become not the most manly but
the most sentimental of sports, yet they do attach great weight to the
matter. The Troubled Spirits, I understand, go much further, and assert
that year after year the University is expected to have confidence,
trust, or perhaps blind faith in the team. They would have us believe
that Yale has been taught to accept defeat with a pious resignation
that savors of slave morality. And then they point to other fields of
endeavor. Is the student given a long cheer by his parents before going
into an examination, and assured that it won’t matter anyhow if he fails?
Does the greatest of generals receive the same amount of encouragement
from his people no matter if his success be large or small? The Troubled
Spirits have put these questions to many of us, and, without waiting for
reply, answered them almost vulgarly in the negative. They remark that it
is fundamentally self-evident that one must spur one’s charger, not feed
him lumps of sugar, before going into battle. And therefore they would
attempt to excite the student body to such a pitch that to be a member of
a team defeated by Harvard would not be an wholly enviable post.
But, even supposing there was a word of truth in these extreme views,
it seems to us that, while The Senior Class, The Troubled Spirits, and
ourselves are agreed in desiring a football victory as soon as possible,
we may as well take pleasure in a certain aspect of these defeats
which is very desirable in a quiet way. It has always been held that
football victories help to stimulate enrollment, and it is universally
admitted that the enrollment of the University is far too large as it
is. Likewise, victorious Harvard is swamped with “race problems” and
what not, which do not trouble us. We are permitted to jog along without
attacks from “degraded races, who are trying to cast off the yoke of
oppression with the key of learning”, and want a look through our
keyhole. That, at least, is a consoling thought. May it bring a little
peace to The Troubled Spirits.
LAIRD SHIELDS GOLDSBOROUGH.
_The Acolyte_
Shall we then consecrate those things we know,
Clinging to patterns with complacent ease,—
Or, tired with feigning meekness on our knees,
Rise up in might and confidently go,
Leaving the rest to kneel? The candles glow
Whether or not we speak our litanies.
Yet wiser men say hope cannot appease
The lasting voice that chants, “God wills it so!”
Rather I think our fitful prayers ascend
To Him who lights the candles of our Love,
Knowing we seek in Him our human best:
Thus does the worth of God in man defend
Our emulation, make us walk above
Man’s world with Him while kneeling with the rest.
HERBERT W. HARTMAN, JR.
_Chopin_
Ethereal and pale, pure melody,
Was Shelley’s song, while Keats could never sing
Without more warmth and depth of coloring:
But Chopin soars unshackled, truly free,
For music is a higher poetry,
Not bound by clumsy words, so it may wing
Its way through groves celestial or cling
To the warm couch of wine and revelry.
I hear the sea wind crooning; far below
The cold stars shiver on the ocean floor.
What nation is that rising ’gainst the foe
In revolution fierce? What antique lore
Do those bells toll? Whence comes this overflow
Of tones so sweet that we can bear no more?
ARTHUR MILLIKEN.
_The Bells of Antwerp_
_Why do you call to me,_
_Bells of the centuries, mellowed with yearning and joy o’er the ages?_
_What is your secret that charms each new listener back to life’s pages_
_Men scrawled out in blood and carousel, love and the brine of the north
wind?_
...
“We are the keepers of secrets, sighed to us out of the darkness;
Guardians of clandestine loves that will burn past all human remembrance,
Told by our tongues that rejoice in the undying ardor of telling.
Ancient conspiracy ran to our doors, we appointing the hour,
Passed through the arras and knelt for the gesture that spelt absolution,
Forgetting that we spied the drama to curse and proclaim at our pleasure.
We are the tyrants that reigned in the city of mantle and doublet
And hose; when the gem-crusted baldric that sheltered the dagger was
slung
’Cross a heart that beat steadfast and calm with a faith most eternally
constant.
Each of us carols an air that was born of a vision-mad organist,
Preaches the infinite word that God whispered to man when his uplifted
Eyes caught a flash of eternity granted as part of the covenant.
Joyful our voices and kind to the heart that is sad with contrition,
Bringing a hope in the good that is past with the quieter ages,
Soothing humanity’s fears with our message that tells of a future.
Harsh and unmeaning and cruel is our song to the souls that are stiff
With a pride that turns faith in the mind to a stone in the heart of
the thinker,
Blinded by twilight within, which shuts out all sunshine and laughter.
Ever unchanging our call, to the winds, the clouds and the rainbow,
Rings forth in song at the moments that God as His sentinels ordered;
Now we are one with the jet-wingéd night and the cloud-mantled sunrise.”
...
“_Thus do we call to you,_
_Bells of the centuries, mellowed with yearning and joy o’er the ages._
_These be our secrets that charm each new listener back to life’s pages_
_Men scrawled out in blood and carousel, love and the brine of the north
wind._”
MORRIS TYLER.
_Rhapsody_
Moon-lit sea coast, wild rose blowing,
Smack of salt, and gray gull’s cry:
Night that is wild with the exultation
Of the bellowing breath from a cool, clear sky:
Green waves swinging down the moon-path
Pause and lean and break and roar,
Making full majestic music,
As they pound the sounding shore.
Oh, to forget! half-mad with moon-light,
And toss with the cold waves where they go,
Cedar green and molten silver,
Tireless tumult of ebb and flow,
Rapturous, wild, eternal rhythm,
To and fro.
ARTHUR MILLIKEN.
_Offering_
I will go into the city of tired eyes,
And tell my thoughts to each pedestrian,
And on its towers, beneath its leaden skies,
Inscribe a little message for all men.
And few shall read its modest letters there,
And none of them shall ever understand,
Yet all I will perform, nor greatly care,
For I may not be long within the land.
D. G. CARTER.
_Gabrielle Bartholow_
When Miss Amy Lowell, in an essay upon the poetry of Edwin Arlington
Robinson, expressed a doubt whether Mr. Robinson’s recent popularity
had not gone to his head and would for the future endanger his work,
no one then reading could fully comprehend the ineptitude of her
fear. Perhaps the reader severely questioned her, but he could not
be convinced until _Roman Bartholow_ appeared to prove that any such
statements as Miss Lowell’s were erroneous. Miss Lowell has based her
fear, curiously enough, upon the melodramatic poem _Avon’s Harvest_, in
which, though the poet was but playing with dime novel effects, his verse
was more masterfully composed than in any of his earlier poems. _Avon’s
Harvest_ in its technique alone revealed a tightening of the poet’s
art. His cadences were more definite, his vocabulary less elaborate,
his construction certain and replete with the artlessness of art. There
was to be seen no machinery in this poem, for it had vanished in the
poet’s change to an objective method. The faults of _Merlin_ and of
_Lancelot_ were due only to construction and that construction itself to
an intensely subjective method. In these poems Mr. Robinson did not let
the story tell itself as he was wont to do in the now famous short poems,
but he must, for _Merlin_ and _Lancelot_ are essentially lyric dramas,
sing for himself the love motifs, the tragedies as he himself experienced
them. For this reason he must weave the story according to the whispering
of his own moods. And in so doing he must lay himself open to attack on
the grounds of incoherence of form. Miss Lowell was indeed one of the
first of his critics to notice this, yet it is surprising that she should
have refused to see in _Avon’s Harvest_ the correction of the faults she
censured in the lyrics; to wit, the change of treatment, the growth of
sureness that the poet’s objective manner was displaying. That essential
objectivity which distinguishes _Flammonde_, _Richard Cory_, and _Zola_,
which previously was employed only to etch a character in a paucity of
strokes,—that objectivity, with the publication of _Avon’s Harvest_, Mr.
Robinson announced to be the latest of his secrets for the writing of
narrative poetry.
Though he followed this poem with others in the objective manner, the
most remarkable of which is the little known _Avenel Gray_, no complete
study has appeared until his last narrative poem, _Roman Bartholow_, a
work that is dramatic, expressive, and yet holds about it more folds
of dignity and power than even the elegiac _The Man Against the Sky_.
_Roman Bartholow_, because of its complete and extensive objectivity,
impresses one most signally with its inevitability, a characteristic
which Mathew Arnold termed the basis for all great poetry. From the
opening lines where Bartholow gazes down upon “a yellow dusk of trees”
to the close of the last canto there is never a moment when the story
does not move silently ahead, dynamically, inevitably, since the author
has been able to withhold comment, and since he has purposely avoided an
obvious climax. Mr. Robinson can no longer see climax in life, for to
him destinies are decided well in advance of any catastrophe, so that
the climax that does appear in the poem is one miraculously cast in
overtones. No word comes from the poet that it is at hand. No word comes
from the characters. The word is found in the reader’s mind, forcing
him to believe its presence. He knows that Gabrielle, though she would
“shrivel to deny it”, is come to the end of all her hopes. He knows she
can only accept her fate. There is nothing more to say. The poet has only
set down the theme, for the story has of its own force driven itself to
its conclusion with the majestic restraint of an Aeschylean tragedy.
Mr. Robinson has discovered that to take Nature as she is is not
necessarily to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.
Yet this taking of Nature as she is, despite the fact that Mr. Robinson
calls the theme a “good deal of a mix up”, in no wise complicates
the bare plot. Roman Bartholow, an ailing descendant of an old Maine
family, is brought to know again the joy of life by acquaintance with
a man that comes to visit him and forgets to go away. This Penn-Raven,
though he works a cure for Bartholow, succeeds in doing the opposite
for Roman’s wife. He falls in love with her and, before the opening of
the poem, has for some time possessed her adequately. Gabrielle is a
peculiar character, but let it suffice here to say that the liaison
with Penn-Raven is no answer to her problem. In Bartholow she married
the wrong man, and the Raven she comes to find intolerable. She is one
who has always suffered disappointments. It is no wonder, therefore,
that, realizing she cannot fully enter into Bartholow’s renascence as he
would have her do, in an effort to save for him his new-found light she
drowns herself. Thenceforward the solution is cruelly plain. Bartholow,
unaware of Gabrielle’s act and provoked by Penn-Raven, pays him to leave
the house. Word is then brought that Gabrielle is drowned. That is in
midsummer. It is fall when Bartholow himself leaves the house forever to
go whither he will, cherishing the light of his regeneration the while he
thinks of Gabrielle who couldn’t follow his rebirth, not being reborn in
his manner, and who threw herself away.
These men and this one woman are the persons around whom the whole power
of Mr. Robinson’s poetry abides. Yet there is one of whom I have not
spoken, a fisherman who, though playing a minor part, frets his useful
time upon the stage. He makes his appearance in the two opening cantos
and again in the last two. Once in the final scene between Penn-Raven
and Gabrielle he is referred to as one who knows more of their relation
than even Bartholow. Thus his function is immediately evident. He is
the chorus that gives its warning and advice. More than that, he is the
mouthpiece to Mr. Robinson’s own thoughts.
That spring when, out of a winter steeped in night, Bartholow was
reborn to breathe again
Insatiably the morning of new life,
there came to him from across the river this prophet-fisherman, this hobo
scholiast with his face “to frighten Hogarth” who was at once
Socratic, unforgettable, grotesque,
Inscrutable, and alone.
He came to Bartholow dressed in “a checkered inflammation of myriad hues”
and bearing as a peace-offering for his appearance a catch of trout for
breakfast. Presumably he came to bring the fish and drink a glass, but
incidentally he was curious to investigate this new birth of Roman’s and
to discover if it blinded his eyes so that he saw nothing further than
acquaintance between Penn-Raven and his wife. Wherefore he sat with Roman
and heard recounted the glory of being alive once more. But Umfraville
was wise. He was in the eyes of the world “irremediably defeated” and for
that reason had hid himself back in the woods where he
lived again the past
In books, where there were none to laugh at him
And where—to him, at least—a world was kind
That is no more a world.
Hence from this distance he was able to understand the flood of human
nature and capable of pronouncing judgment upon it. He was gifted, as he
said, with an “ingenuous right of utterance” which gave him full license
to speak his mind. He knew that Gabrielle’s unfaithfulness must come
to Roman’s ears. He knew the tragedy that it would be to this proud,
sensitive friend of his, and, knowing it, offered his aid if ever Roman’s
light should be obscured.
It is in brilliant contrast to this “unhappy turtle” that Penn-Raven
appears, Penn-Raven, the bounder, archguest, corruptor and healer in one
breath. He it is, with his solid face, thick lips and violet eyes, upon
whom “one may not wholly look and live”, for in Penn-Raven there is more
of the devil than is safe to investigate. The devil only knows why he
came to Bartholow, why he possessed those violet eyes withal, and, after
he had met Gabrielle, why the devil he ever went away. He was large and
muscular and imbued with a healthy-mindedness which could purge the soul
of Roman. Not only was he able to change this man’s outlook upon life,
bringing him light where only darkness had lain, but he could worm his
way to the heart of Gabrielle and make her his for as long as he chose.
He loved her with all the force of his animal self, yet he could hint
to her that she was insufficient to Bartholow’s present needs. Callous
Penn-Raven! He never understood Gabrielle, though he later called her
“flower and weed together”. In her he saw mostly the weed, the woman
who had forsaken her husband and who might be expecting him to take
her away. So he thought and so he said to her, not noticing the agony
he caused. He did not know the woman he later called the flower who,
though she had surrendered herself to his affections, yet saved for Roman
a far transcending love. Thus to hint that she go with him was perhaps
insulting her. At any rate it was a brutal intimation, a selfish one—and
Penn-Raven was always brutal and always selfish. He could cry aloud of
his tragedies and disillusions, the while the woman by his side was
preparing herself to die. He could confront the husband with a nasty
truth, looking upon him with those violet eyes, half triumphant and half
sad. “Setting it rather sharply,” he could say, “you married the wrong
woman.”
Poor Bartholow and proud! Stung with the malevolent implications with
which Penn-Raven sought to gain Gabrielle, Bartholow once leaped upon
him, feeling his “thick neck luxuriously yielding to his fingers”,
and in his absurd pride thought to throttle him. At that time he was
experiencing more pain than ever he had through the long winter before.
He as a proud idealist was waking up to the fact that to be bathed in a
new light is not to be external to sorrow.
Imagine his position. During the months previous to the spring when he
“ached with renovation”, Bartholow had suffered from the malady of the
sick-soul. His hopes were dulled, his ideals gone crashing. In his wife,
for whom he cherished a desire to bring her closer to his thoughts, he
found a woman cold and bitter from the disappointments she had suffered.
Plainly she knew she had married the wrong man, plainly he did not know
it. For to him life meant no more than disillusion, until one day,
perhaps in April, life brought Penn-Raven with his zest for living, with
his red-corpuscular religion of healthy-mindedness. To Bartholow, ready
to catch at anything, this formidable spirit was the light. He grasped
and claimed it. The light was his remaking. He was of the elect of earth,
the twice-born. With joy gleaming in his eyes, he was up at dawn that
spring morning,
Affirming his emergence to the Power
That filled him as light fills a buried room
When earth is lifted and the light comes in.
Penn-Raven was the Friend! Blessed Penn-Raven! He had given him gold with
which to build the city of his desires. There was Gabrielle. How glad she
would be to help him build that city, that house of gold in particular
where he and she should live! She should be partner to his every mood.
Gabrielle too should receive rebirth and with him build that house. Poor
Bartholow!
Bartholow is a man upon whom the Light has fallen. What he will do with
it is the subject of the poem. Where Lancelot was the study of a man in
pursuit of the Light, Roman Bartholow is the study of a man after the
Light had come. If both men were heroes in the sense that Galahad was a
hero, no suffering would be entailed. But these are mortal men and mortal
men are plagued with ignorance and frailty. Each has to learn that when
the Light gleams before him he must follow it alone. Alone he must live
in the Light. Alone he must fight for it. Few men know this and of all
men Bartholow was the most unaware.
Bartholow then, because he did not know that his new position demanded
the leaving of the old, still clung, but with added eagerness, to the
hope of entering into spiritual communion with his wife. He was ever
besieging her with his hopes and reproving her for delinquency, but by
degrees he came to perceive that she would never erect that house with
him. Gabrielle had two reasons, neither of which he knew. She was no
longer his wife and she alone realized that the Light for him might mean
the night for her. Roman was too wrapt up in himself to discover the
first, the second he could learn, as Gabrielle had learned, only through
suffering. So on he hoped and thought about it. Then Gabrielle, revealing
that weakness, that was so peculiarly hers, of telling preferably the
wrong and obvious reason for her delinquency to the right and subtle one,
made it out to him that she could not share his light because Penn-Raven
was hers too intimately. Anon came the Raven himself and forced the
truth upon the husband, making a darkness to cover him that was far
more agonizing than any he had known. When Bartholow saw this and would
abandon the Light to seek again a less tormented existence, Penn-Raven
said to him, “There is no going back”. He said, with an insight and
eloquence unusual to him,
Your doom is to be free. The seed of truth
Is rooted in you, and the seed is yours
For you to eat alone. You cannot share it
Though you may give it, and a few thereby
May take of it and so not wholly starve.
...
Your dawn is coming where a dark horizon hides it,
And where a new day comes with a new world.
The old place that was a place for you to play in
Will be remembered as a man remembers
A field at school where many victories
Were lost in one defeat that was itself
A triumph over triumph—now disowned
In afterthought. You know as well as I
That you are the inheritor to-night
Of more than all the pottage or the gold
Of time would ever buy. You cannot lose it
By gift or sale or prodigality
Nor any more by scorn. It is yours now,
And you must have it with you in all places,
Even as the wind must blow.
Like Job, when Jehovah spoke to him out of the heavens, Bartholow
listened to the sentence placed upon him by one who had brought him light
only to obscure it darkly. He listened and behold he was like a man that
understands. He was quickly to know what Gabrielle in her suicide had
done for him, and it was well he understood, before he learned of her,
that he was free to live a life of knowledge and of sympathy with man,
that he was alone, and that not even Gabrielle could build a golden house
with him. Sadly he replied,
When a man’s last illusion, like a bubble,
Covered with moonshine, breaks and goes to nothing,
And after that is less than nothing,
The bubble had then better be forgotten
And the poor fool that blew it be content
With knowing he was born to be a fool.
Poor Bartholow! It was a hard road along which he forced himself to go,
proud, defiant, hopeful, until the night when he found the Raven, like
a reproving older child, pinning him to his chair lest he again try to
annihilate him. After that he knew what was before him, for he was no
longer hopeful, defiant, or proud. He had learned as Lancelot and like
him
in the darkness he rode on
Alone; and in the darkness came the Light.
Penn-Raven had brought the Light and showed Bartholow how it must be
followed. But it was Gabrielle who was “too beautiful to be alive” that
revealed to him its incessant worth. It was Roman’s wife who failed
and died, Gabrielle whom Penn-Raven loved, for whom Roman hungered,
Gabrielle, whose
dark morning beauty
Was like an armor for the darts of time
Where they fell yet for nothing and were lost
Against the magic of her slenderness,
Gabrielle in whom there was much of spring, much of chilly fall, much
of Botticelli—a shadowed mingling of violets and wintergreen. Bartholow
saw this and that morning, when she stood in the doorway, half awake,
watching his springtime antics of adoration of his new self in his
looking-glass, he found her irresistible and
crushed
The fragrant elements of mingled wool
And beauty in his arms and pressed with his
A cool silk mouth, which made a quick escape,
Leaving an ear—to which he told unheard
The story of his life intensively.
“He told unheard”. There, there was the cloud that must bring him
darkness. Gabrielle did not heed him.
For the sake of an explanation, let us first attribute her listlessness
to a dislike of physical affections from her husband. Let us say, along
with Penn-Raven, that she retreated from Roman because she was an
adultress, that she told him she would never build that house because
that house would be founded on a lie. Infidelity must out. How great then
would be the tumbling down of Roman’s house! A woman guilty as she could
never hope to build a spiritual house.
Such an explanation of Gabrielle’s lack of enthusiasm is at first
glance somewhat superficial. The Gabrielle of the poem who has moved
us so profoundly is not the woman Penn-Raven describes in this manner.
Gabrielle was not motivated by selfishness and cowardice. She did not die
because she feared her husband. Yet, however one interpret Gabrielle,
this judgment of her, which Penn-Raven voiced, remains partially correct.
Gabrielle was essentially “flower and weed together”. In the eyes of
the men the weed was uppermost and, provokingly at that, discouragingly
beautiful. Wintergreen and violets! This weed to Bartholow was just a bit
shallow and colder than any fish in any ocean. She mocked his renascent
gestures, his Greek, and even mistook Apollo for Narcissus when she found
him looking in his mirror. She even had a cursed habit of innuendo, so
it seemed, for after a pretty speech of his about a soul groping in its
loneliness, out she came with a furtive remark that the fish upon her
plate was “beautiful, even in death”.
Shallow Gabrielle! Selfish, faithless, beautiful Gabrielle! Thus men saw
her until it was too late to see her again. Like Flammonde, what was she
and what was she not?
Gabrielle’s superficiality, at first so evident, appears to be explained
by her later actions. In cantos IV and V Gabrielle is very far from any
taint of superficiality. It is only at the outset that she gives the
impression. This is done by Mr. Robinson in order that the reader may
understand the attitudes of Bartholow and Penn-Raven toward her. What
Gabrielle really is the reader will shortly discover. But the touch
of the weed, nevertheless, remains. It was part of Gabrielle and she
employed it as a protection against her lovers. Fearing lest Penn-Raven
find her suffering, she preferred to be tortured by him rather than
reveal herself. Against Bartholow she adopted it because, knowing herself
to be totally outside his mystical experience, she hoped to ease his
desires of building impossible houses.
Gabrielle, indeed, is worthy of infinite pity. Beset at once by the
Raven’s exhortations that she go away with him, and by her husband with
his mysticism, her situation was precarious. No light had come to her,
but since it had fallen blessedly upon her husband, to aid him in his
holding it was her duty. That she might desert him to sink again into
the night she refused to consider. That she might do nothing but remain
with him she pondered carefully. If so she stayed she could not save him.
She was not worthy, as he himself had bitterly reproached her, of his
mysteries. Yet how he prayed she might be! Without her all would be as
it had been, though Gabrielle knew differently. She knew he must follow
the Light alone. Such was the law. It was decreed that she look with
“tired and indolent indifference” upon the spring that was for Roman the
beginning of a new life. “I am not worthy of your mysteries”, she had
said with an insight at once supreme. Afterwards she told him,
You understand it
You and your new-born wisdom, but I can’t;
And there’s where our disaster like a rat,
Lives hidden in our walls.
...
Even a phantom house if made unwisely
May fall down on us and hurt horribly.
A different light was come to Gabrielle. As she spoke these words, a
“pale fire” descended upon her, shriveling the weed, giving luxuriance
to the flower. A miracle alone could have revealed to her the truth, and
if it was not a miracle, it was the light from her own tragedy. She had
failed, in marrying Bartholow, to find the being she sought. Likewise
Penn-Raven had disappointed her. But she loved her husband for the light
that had come to him. The Light was greater than herself. Wherefore of
Bartholow she thought,
If my life would save him,
And make him happy till he died in peace,
I’m not so sure he mightn’t have it.
No one had known the flower that grew within the weed. No one had cared
to search beyond a certain libidinous examination. She, however, was
aware. The command was come that she save Bartholow. She accepted. With
her determination made she resisted two trying interviews with Penn-Raven
and her husband, who successively tried to wound her sensitivity more
deeply. The Raven groaned about his tragedies and disillusions, while
Gabrielle was going out to die. There was nothing more in life for her
than an austere duty, implacable and dark.
Where the Light falls, death falls;
And in the darkness comes the Light.
But a cruel farewell to her husband and the faces were for her no more.
This woman, greater in every way than Vivian or Guinevere, Gabrielle,
the one complete and incisive expression of a poet’s ideal, the crowning
achievement to a brilliant tier of characters, Gabrielle who stepped
above the broken ruins of her life to save a weak man, this Gabrielle
crept stilly from the house and, before descending, paused a moment in
the night.
Now she could see the moon and stars again
Over the silvered earth, where the night rang
With a small shrillness of a smaller world,
If not a less inexorable one,
Than hers had been; and after a few steps
Made cautiously along the singing grass,
She saw the falling lawn that lay before her,
The shining path where she must not be seen,
The still trees in the moonlight, and the river.
Yes, she was surely dead before she died. Tragedies had been her secret
playthings and there was nothing left, nothing but to follow her peculiar
light. Like Juliet her dismal scene she must act alone. She must
go—forever. But the going was not difficult, for she was dead before she
died.
Truly if one lingers over this pitiable death of Gabrielle’s, protesting
against a destiny that will enact such evil, there is bound to rise in
one’s mind the many instances in Mr. Robinson’s poetry where the same
story is told. It is in _The Children of the Night_ that this judgment of
the world found its earliest expression, thenceforward developing until
it has now reached its culmination. Here, in _Roman Bartholow_, in the
magic loveliness of Gabrielle it has come to a noble conclusion.
Previous to this poem Mr. Robinson’s philosophy has expressed itself
negatively. It is his belief that evil is the result of moral choice.
He does not call disease, accident, or war by the name of evil, because
it is possible to look forward to a day when such excrescences will be
removed. Evil, to Mr. Robinson, is that which is ineradicable and the
ineradicable is the situation resulting from moral choice. Man has little
free will. He is continuously obliged to make a choice against his wish,
a choice that will bring disappointment. We have seen how Orestes was
locked in evil perplexity when the alternative was presented: either to
obey heaven, slay his mother, and be damned by earth, or to obey earth,
forgive his mother, and be damned by heaven. Whichever road he followed
evil overtook him. Whichever road we choose, says Mr. Robinson, evil must
overtake us—with this one exception, however, that whereas Aeschylus
believed the gods brought man to his doom, Mr. Robinson maintains that it
is man’s own frailty. Take Lancelot for an example. Lancelot has come to
a point where he must make a moral choice. Either he can accept the Light
and forsake Guinevere, or he can retain the Queen and lose the Light. The
alternative is implacable. The one or the other, it says. There is no
middle way nor any synthesis. To accept the new situation and leave the
old, that is the way of truth. Only by that way can man hope to achieve
happiness. If he attempt to mediate, then he will lash himself and cry in
Lancelot’s words,
God, what a rain of ashes falls on him
Who sees the new and cannot leave the old!
Thus, previous to _Roman Bartholow_, Mr. Robinson, believing that man
can rarely leave his old surroundings for the new, has developed his
philosophy from the negative side. He has not treated of the attainment
of the Light, but has showed the struggle of the man who is making the
choice. He has been interested in the man’s failure and in consequence he
has written of Merlin, Lancelot, and of Seneca Sprague.
With _Roman Bartholow_, however, he has represented in Gabrielle a
complete and final expression of the positive side of his philosophy.
Many years ago in an exquisite lyric, _Bon Voyage_, he wrote fleetingly
of a man who saw his light and claimed it. But the poem was only a
_scherzo_, a dash down the hill. Mocking the “little archive men” who
tried to extract therefrom a “system” of thought, it raced away. Yet it
contained a seed that to-day has burst into a flower that Gabrielle is,
or was. It told of a man who had left the old. He had been as courageous
as Galahad. To-day Gabrielle is such.
Roman, of course, in finding the Light, was obliged to abandon his
earlier hopes of building that house with Gabrielle. Roman like Lancelot
was unable to meet that requirement. He failed, and would have perished
had it not been for Gabrielle. She was to reveal to him her incessant
worth. The Light for Gabrielle demanded a mad sacrifice. There was
no happiness entailed. There was alone the recompense of that cold,
resistless river. Leaving an inexorable world as she followed the light,
she was, to complete the list of the poet’s figures, the one
who had seen and died,
And was alive now in a mist of gold.
Thus, after the tale is told, comes the realization of the ultimate
isolation of man. Gabrielle had gone away alone. Penn-Raven too had
disappeared. Each was bound from the other by ineradicable law. There
never could have been a golden house with two to build it. It is not
thus we are made. Bartholow was to come to understand that he could not
build but by himself, that his renascence was a gift to him alone. It
was Umfraville, who saw what he could see and was accordingly alone, who
summed it up when he said,
There were you two in the dark together
And there her story ends. The leaves you turn
Are blank; and where a story ends it ends.
So Bartholow left him there on the steps of the old house that he had
sold after the others had disappeared. Umfraville was free and Bartholow,
with his memories before him, was alone and free. A cold fire was his
light to prove, but he knew it never would go out. There would always be
with him the memories of Gabrielle, the cool fragrance of her body, the
silent beauty of her deed. The key he held in his hand was the key to the
ivied house. The key he held was his no longer. For the last time it had
locked for him a door that once had opened to so much pain. But a tide
was come and there were no more sand castles. All was as it had been and
was to be.
They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
LEWIS P. CURTIS.
_A Little Learning_
I.
It was one of those blistering July afternoons that sometimes descend
upon people who have traveled a long way in the palatial discomfort of
a Pullman, only to find themselves completing the last leg of their
journey amid the democratic rattle-ty-bang of an antique, plush-lined
day-coach. Several cars in advance, the energetic branch line locomotive
was belching clouds of smoke and whistling shrilly at each spralling
crossroad; while within the day-coach itself, a faded sign proclaimed
that persons of color would only be tolerated on the last three seats of
each car, and thus localized the scene to one of those down at the heel
Southern railroads that have not yet recovered from the Civil War.
The greater part of the passengers were negroes, prosperously dressed,
and covertly taking pains to be as obnoxious as possible to the little
group of whites entrenched in a compact and strategic position among
the last three seats of the car. Of the latter, one was a grey-haired
gentlewoman of the old South, her expression combining with the pride of
blood a certain indefinable mellow sweetness. A blue-eyed child of six
sat by her side, and perhaps he too was conscious of his descent, but he
kept his nose glued close to the window for all that. Behind these two,
in a little compartment formed by turning two seats together, sat three
ruddy farm girls in uncomfortable attitudes of acute self-consciousness.
They had been giggling and overflowing with spirits during most of the
trip, but the appearance of a young man in the seat opposite, at the last
junction, had reduced their exuberance and heightened their curiosity.
For, on one side of the neatly strapped suitcase which he had erected
beside him as a sort of barrier from the negroes, appeared the legend,
“P. R. Melton, N. Y. C.”
II.
Thought Philip Melton, “Niggers ... niggers and heat ... the Devil
putting collars of mustard plaster on damned souls....
“Common, common, common sort of girls ... perfectly decent, but not my
class ... too muscular, or maybe it’s fat....
“Nice little chap ... eyes, hair, skin ... football some day ... wonder
if his grandmother’s a Carroll ... aristocrat....
“Hot ... gosh....
“Marion ... letters ... letters in my pocket ... mush, but not common ...
my class ... glad I’m a gentleman ... ‘known by what he does not do’ ...
clickety clack, clickety clack, clickety clack....
“Marion ... never wrote a girl stuff like that before ... laps it up all
right ... must practice on some one ... my class, not common at all....
“‘The man who seduces a pure country girl because he fears the diseases
of the city deserves to be flayed alive’ ... funny ... seduce _is_ such a
nasty word....
“Clickety clack, clickety clack, clack, click.... Fool train had to get
here some time....”
III.
As he clattered down the precipitous steps of the day-coach, the last
of which was a clear jump of at least two feet, Philip saw the tall,
still vigorous figure of his uncle detach itself from the crowd and come
forward with its perpetually surprising grace.
“Glad to see you, boy.” The words had something soothingly restful about
them that betrayed the unhurried country gentleman.
“A very long, hot ride, I’m afraid, and the train late as usual. Your
mother well? And Don’ld?” The last name was slurred with the paternal
carelessness of the man who has lived to ask his youngest brother’s son
whether that brother is well.
“I brought Marion over in the car.” The clear eyes twinkled
mischievously. “She was sitting on the porch as I drove by, and it seemed
to me you rather liked her last summer. Mind she doesn’t wind you around
her little finger before your two weeks are over. These ministers’
daughters—” The phrase melted away, and his uncle turned to direct the
chauffeur. But Philip smiled inwardly. He knew his favorite uncle had
once been “a bad man among the ladies”, as they put it in the South.
IV.
That night Philip lay half smothered in his enormous feather bed, and
thought again, this time in retrospect. He was a boy whom a nagging
illness had kept secluded during most of his early life, and the previous
Freshman year at college had filled him with restless new ideas.
Adolescence, too long delayed, was upon him with a vengeance, at last.
“Good move, coming here ... she’s certainly one of the most naturally
beautiful girls I ever saw ... skin a little off, perhaps.... Lord, how
can people stand to eat sausages the way they do here ... we’ll have them
to-morrow ... in July!
“Somehow I feel too overconfident.... God help us if she ever really
falls in love with me ... still, I don’t quite see why that’s my lookout
... Don Juan....”
“See here, Philip Melton, you’re an ass!” (That was the voice of common
sense, speaking in crisp periods.) “You’ve never kissed a girl in your
life, and you’ve thought too much about it lately. You’ve always been too
bashful to even flirt with sub-debs. And now that curiosity, not romance,
has gotten hold of you, and you’ve achieved the enormous conquest of
receiving a few sloppy letters from a country clergyman’s daughter, you
think—! Don Juan, blaah!” (And common sense disgustedly retired.)
But Philip’s thoughts soon began to drift in the old channel. And
egotism, which lies crushed into its corner during waking hours, came out
and sported in the land of demi-dreams.
“She blushed once, really.... I saw her do it ... and she let me take her
hand practically as long as I wanted to, to look at her ring.
“Oh Phil, you’re not so bad ... you’ll learn ... learn ... lllle....”
Sleep.
V.
The river was not very broad. It curved and twisted between ranks of
weeping willows, and, just as Philip grew tired of rowing, a perfect
grotto of a cove beckoned them to come in and rest. Marion had taken off
her ugly rubber bathing cap while Philip rowed, and as they slid among
the green and golden shadows of the willows, he was almost startled
at the beauty of her hair. It seemed to flow about her shoulders in a
leaping cascade of light and shadow, and Philip’s throat tightened as he
watched it. Then he remembered that he was in search of love, not beauty,
and that with a girl one must “shoot a line”. The boat touched the bank
with a soft plash, and Philip summoned courage to mention one of his
poems, which he said had come to him while he was rowing her up the river.
It began:
“Oh, how I wish I might transmute the arts,
And make of poetry a long caress—”
and, aside from the questionable novelty of addressing a short poem to
one’s love in Elizabethan blank verse, it was neither better nor worse
than the efforts of many young poets, not as yet nipped in the bud.
VI.
A week later, Philip could lie out on the terrace of his uncle’s garden,
sunning himself, and muse somewhat as follows:
“I’m getting the hang ... not a doubt in the world ... last night, now
... her hair is awfully nice when you feel it on your cheek....
“I think I’d better not try poetry ... again ... maybe ... it sounds too
well ... too as if I weren’t really _feeling_ deeply....
“Still I’ve got her going mighty well ... last night she said, ‘Maybe,
just one before you go’.... I’ve thought of an awfully romantic way to do
it....
“Poor Marion.... I wonder if I could really break her heart.... I mean I
hope she’ll soon get over it when I’m gone....
“Anyhow I’ll never be afraid of Peggy Armitage again.... I’ve got the
hang ... damn it ... got the hang....”
VII.
The Gods seemed to have conspired with Philip to make his last night in
the South all that he could have wished. He and Marion had been rowing
again in the moonlight, and now that it had really grown very late, they
were sitting in a secluded arbor at the far end of the garden, which
looked out over the river. The moon, which had been waxing ever since
Philip’s arrival, was now full. And great trailing strands of the weeping
willows shut them up alone, in a little secret lattice of moon shadows.
Her head was resting lightly against his shoulder, and they were speaking
only now and then in whispers. She was very lovely, a pale lady of the
moon, and he felt himself yearn strangely toward her. The note in his
voice was not forced now. She seemed to feel it, and as his eager lips
bent down to hers she met them firmly with her own, warm and yielding.
For a long, long minute the kiss lasted. Philip’s sensations seemed to
ebb and fuse together. Then suddenly the moment passed. Habit reasserted
itself, and Philip thought, “Lord! The trapper trapped! Another minute
and I’d have proposed!”
VIII.
It was afternoon on the broad, cool veranda. Philip had departed
northward by the morning train, and a twinkling-eyed old gentleman was
sipping great cooling sips of julep through a straw. He had once been
a bad man among the ladies, and perhaps a casual observer might have
thought he was so still. At least, the laughing girl at his side seemed
not to lack for entertainment.
“Ah but, my dear Maid Marion, you forget that after all Philip _is_ my
nephew.”
“And that should make him quite invincible to my poor charms?”
“Invincible! And you say he kissed you! Really, my dear, these minsters’
daughters—”
“And you a vestryman! But seriously, Mr. Melton, Philip got to making
love awfully well toward the last—except the poetry—that was always
terrible! You are to be congratulated, sir! With my aid you have started
your nephew on the road to ruin!”
“Dear child! And have you never heard me say he is my favorite nephew?”
LAIRD GOLDSBOROUGH.
_Notabilia_
_On the Francis Bergen Medal_
One of the most charming of all the intellectual traditions of Yale is
the group of Francis Bergen Memorial lectures delivered each year gratis
to the University. Mr. Frank Bergen has lately added another memorial to
his son. It takes the form of a gold medal to be awarded each year at the
LIT. dinner by the outgoing board to the author of the most creditable
contribution to the LIT. during their term of office. The editors
themselves are ineligible.
Francis Bergen was in the Class of 1914, and a member of the LIT. board
of that year. He was a college poet of distinction and promise. Had it
not been for his tragic death on his way to Plattsburg, and with a few
more years of lyric inspiration, it is likely that his poetry would have
served itself as his own commanding memorial.
As it is, he is a traditional character of the Renaissance. You will
meet no graduates of his generation who do not remember in greater or
less degree Bergen’s extraordinary Turkish water pipe, and his long
conversations with imaginary personages in his own room, unconscious of
the attentive and astonished ears of his classmates about him. And the
miracle is that in the Yale of then, still smacking of the Y-sweatered
bulldog ideal, he should have been universally loved and admired, in
spite of eccentricity. Such tales are indeed the romance of the beginning
of wisdom at Yale.
This medal, this awarded piece of gold, this honor in the eyes of the
literati of each winner’s generation at Yale, has about it a glamor of
remembrance, a glory peculiar to itself. It is in memory of a poet whom
the Gods loved too well, and did not allow to sing his fill. By its own
name it is an inspiration more precious than gold.
M. E. F.
_Book Reviews_
_The Captain’s Doll._ By D. H. LAWRENCE. (Thomas Seltzer.)
There is, in all living literature, a kind of between-the-lines
expression of the atmosphere belonging to the described period and the
described place. With the advent of literary interest in thought as
well as action, the point of view peculiar to the time, the race, and
the situation has been present also. To create these mysterious things
by connotation from the written word, so that the reader becomes,
temporarily, contemporary and incident with the characters of the story,
is at least one of the essentials of a permanent novel. And while I am
not at all prepared to predict permanency for _The Captain’s Doll_,
I feel that Mr. Lawrence has been particularly happy in this strange
business of evoking environmental atmosphere.
For instance, there is a moment in the first “novelette”—the volume
contains three—when the German Countess-heroine and the Scotch
Captain-hero are climbing a Tyrol Alp in a motorbus. The Alps and a
motorbus! Everywhere, against the naked looming rocks and great glaciers,
the blue sky and the blown clouds, are bulky trucks, picknickers, and
“the wrong kind of rich Jews”. There are wild mosses and berry bushes
among the rocks, but “the many hundreds of tourists who passed up and
down did not leave much to pick”. Yet the exhilaration and the spell that
belong to climbing even a civilized mountain are there; the civilized
climbers get out of their lorry and feel it. The German Countess feels
it in a glad, pagan abandonment: she likes the wind in her face, and
she likes to see “away beyond, the lake lying far off and small, the
wall of those other rocks like a curtain of stone, dim and diminished
to the horizon. And the sky with curdling clouds and blue sunshine
intermittent”. She “breathes deep breaths”, and says, “Wonderful,
wonderful to be high up!” The English-Scot feels it, but in a different
way. “His eyes were dilated with excitement that was ordeal or mystic
battle rather than the Bergheil ecstacy.” He looks soulfully out, out of
the world, hating the mountains for their excitement, and their “uplift”
that takes him beyond himself, and he feels bigger than the mountains.
All that, as Mr. Lawrence tells it, comes pretty close to “getting”
these races in a phase of our era, a phase which is important because
man in relation to nature is man at his best. And anyone who has climbed
mountains of late years will appreciate the realism of the picture, and
of the story’s atmosphere.
But I said I could not predict the future for _The Captain’s Doll_. To
me, Mr. Lawrence seems supremely able in handling the psychology of the
moment, but less effective with the dynamic psychology necessary for his
drama. I am not sure his characters would act as they do; I think no
others would. Through a series of individual snapshots which are real to
the life, Captain Hepburn and Countess Hannele move in a manner I cannot
take for granted. More decidedly I should apply this criticism to the
principals in the second story, _The Fox_. Over time, these people are
all a little queer: it is the fault in most of this “new” kind of writing.
D. G. C.
_Members of the Family._ By OWEN WISTER. (The MacMillan Company.)
When the cauldron of contemporary American literature has boiled down
and the dross been skimmed off by the years, there will be a special and
enduring mold set aside for the works of Owen Wister. In his writings
and in the pictures of Frederick Remington a richly romantic period of
our national life will be long preserved. The Virginia, Lin McLean, and
Scipio Le Moyne, even as the nightingale, were not born for death. As
Scipio himself remarked, “I ain’t going to die for years and years.”
The eight short stories included in _Members of the Family_ are typical
of Mr. Wister’s most delightful and vivid manner. Those who enjoyed _The
Virginian_ or _Red Men and White_ will wax happy over such tales as _The
Gift Horse_ and _Where It Was_. Owen Wister’s characters are unusual to
us, but like that most fanciful of characters, Long John Silver, they
live. For humor, strength of plot, characterization, and general worth
this collection takes rank with the very highest.
F. D. A.
_A Book of British and American Verse._ Edited by HENRY VAN DYKE.
(Doubleday, Page & Co.)
As a general rule anthologies are of a distinct sameness. The most
noticeable thing, therefore, in regard to this collection of verse by
Henry Van Dyke is his novel method of arrangement. Instead of fitting the
poems in chronologically he segregates them according to their poetical
form. The volume is divided into six sections, devoted respectively to:
ballads; idylls or stories in verse; lyrics; odes; sonnets and epigrams;
and elegies and epitaphs.
As to the selection, it is as judicious as one would expect coming from
Mr. Van Dyke. An attractive feature is the inclusion of a considerable
number of modern poems. In quantity the collection lies between the
_Oxford Book of English Verse_ and Burton Stevenson’s _Home Book of
Verse_, being nearer to the former. It is especially adapted for use in
class-room work and is a valuable addition to a small library, from a
utilitarian as well as an aesthetic viewpoint.
F. D. A.
_The Goose Step._ By UPTON SINCLAIR. (Paine Book Co.)
Thorough discussion of this latest book by Upton Sinclair is a task that
would require many pages. A brief dissertation upon his remarks about
Yale, however, will suffice to shed considerable light upon the book as a
whole.
Commenting upon the University in general, Mr. Sinclair remarks: “But the
secret societies come in, and now Yale is just what Princeton is, a place
where the sons of millionaires draw apart and lead exclusive lives.”
Disregarding for the moment the innuendo cast upon the societies here, it
seemed best to interview the millionaire we know in order to ascertain
whether he was really being secretly exclusive. The cause of research
suffered when he proved to be out for the evening wearing the dress suit
of his neighbor, who was working his way through college and could not
use it himself.
Concerning societies Mr. Sinclair further opines that they encourage
intoxication and venereal disease, but dictate the choice of clothing,
slang, and tobacco, while preventing originality of cogitation. It is
a sad thought, and the woeful plight of the American college lad is
typified by the brazen indifference with which he bears his shame.
Mr. Sinclair certainly exaggerates—we are now speaking constrainedly,
ourself—but his sincerity no one can doubt, as no one can sweepingly deny
all his charges. He may irritate or he may distress or he may merely
edify, but he always gets a reaction.
F. D. A.
_Editor’s Table_
Han and Cherrywold came across the campus together.
“What do you think of our first issue?” asked Han.
“Well,” replied Cherrywold, “a little thin, to be sure, but very fine
goods—and mostly home-made, at that.”
“Yes,” mused Han, “and this one shall be better. I look forward to a
short and pleasant evening.”
So saying, they approached the luxurious and delicately heated office
confidently and in the best of spirits. But oh, what enemies lurk in
the dark places ever eager to strike a treacherous blow at the Muse! In
the window of her palace hung a filthy, yellow sheet advertising that
altogether despicable sport of debating. With a mighty oath both jammed
their keys into the lock, tore to the window, and stamped upon this
latest outrage. That done, with spirits not altogether as calm as before,
they sat down to wait for the others, who were, of course, late. In a
short while they were joined by ante-moral, pro-subjective Rabnon. The
conversation turned, purely by chance, upon bastard sons. The question
before the house was: Whose was the greater—Aaron Burr’s or Elihu Yale’s?
So rife became the argument that Cherrywold was dispatched to follow up
certain clues and obtain further information upon the question. In a
short while he returned greatly excited and out of breath. A number of
prominent men had been interviewed—one of whom, though it may be hard
to believe, was a professor. It was, however, decided to withhold the
verdict on this remarkable case until the following month. As we go to
press, new evidence is pouring into the office, owing to our expert
secret service department, and we fully expect to startle the world by an
announcement of momentous import at a near date.
In spite of this coup, our spirits were sorely tried by the sudden
entrance of Mr. and Mrs. Stevens—one hour late! Due to the latter’s
persuasive smile, we controlled our language. Beside, one must be
cautious in the presence of three aliases. Cherrywold re-read Han’s poem
for the tenth time.
“On reading this more and more,” he remarked, “I like it less and less.”
“Then read it less and less,” suggested Mr. Stevens. His wife tittered
approvingly.
After that there was comparative silence, broken only by the muttered
threats of Cherrywold each time he pulled out his watch. Another
half-hour smoked by. Suddenly out of the darkness there appeared in the
doorway a halo. With badly shaken nerves, all stared wildly at the light.
Suddenly the hushed expectancy was broken.
“Well, if it isn’t little sunshine,” cried Rabnon. “And two hours late at
that!”
“Then he’s the cause of all this daylight saving muddle,” asserted Mrs.
Stevens. “Land sakes! Who’d think it to look at him?”
“My gosh!” yelled Cherrywold. “Aren’t we ever going to get down to work?
If the rest of you don’t stop your giggling there won’t be any May issue.
Now, Han, what do you want after this title; I suppose dashes?”
“No, thank you,” replied Han sweetly. “I’ll take dots.”
Eventually something was done, but no one knew exactly what nor cared
much, for by that time it was far into the night and we were all
three-quarters asleep. Some unknown person by the name of Briggs likes
to tell people how to ruin a perfectly good day. He better look to his
laurels, for he’ll have to go some to beat a new series, entitled “How to
ruin a perfectly good evening,” by
CHERRYWOLD.
_Yale Lit. Advertiser._
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Steamship lines in all parts of the world are combined in maintaining a
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Book Early
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The Oldest Established Laundry to Yale
We darn your socks, sew your buttons on, and make all repairs without
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by A. Edward Newton, Author of _The Amenities of Book-collecting_, and _A
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NEW HAVEN CONNECTICUT
522 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK CITY
L’Ile Percée
The Finial of the St. Lawrence or Gaspé Flaneries
Being a Blend of Reveries and Realities of History and Science of
Description and Narrative as also
A Signpost to the Traveler
By John M. Clarke
_Author of “The Heart of Gaspé”; D.Sc., Colgate, Chicago, Princeton;
LL.D., Amherst, Johns Hopkins; member of the National Academy of
Sciences; New York State Paleontologist._
Here is a book—the first for many years, so far as our knowledge
goes—which can legitimately be compared with that classic of regional
literature, Thoreau’s “Cape Cod.” Its author’s subject, like Thoreau’s,
is one of the quaintest and most fascinating provincial districts of the
continent; a district which has the literary advantage of being to this
day less known than Cape Cod was, even at the time when Thoreau tramped
its length.
_Illustrated, Price $3.00._
Poems of Giovanni Pascoli
Translated by Evaleen Stein
A generous selection from work of the most permanently significant of
modern Italian poets.
_Price $1.50_
Wind In The Pines
By Victor S. Starbuck
A volume of verse expressing the call of the open.
_Price about $1.50_
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