The Little Review, April 1916 (Vol. 3, No. 2)

Your educational film also I have seen applied. _Saved From the Flames_ worked out in co-operation with the New York Fire department. It teaches a lesson. So does _The Human Cauldron_—your own phrase, I believe, taken from the first line of page forty-two, your book. This picture was done with the aid of the New York Police department. Both were stupid, inane in story and treatment, and on the whole a bore. Even Walthall couldn’t save _The Raven_ from cardboard clouds and angels and “visions”.

Your scenario, the “second cousin to the dream that will one day come forth”, seems quite symbolic of your prophecies. Pallas Athena, Jeanne D’Arc, and Our Lady Springfield; a treeless hill top in Washington Park: this then is the rank of the Goddesses. Springfield is to have secular priests and her patriots are irresolute! “Without prophecy there can be no fulfillment. Without Isaiah there can be no Christ”.—A truly Christian interpretation of the Hebrew’s great Isaiah, to whom Christ was but a disciple! But so you will have it.... We need Isaiahs and John the Baptists, but they were prophets and fore-runners of a Christ, a personality—not a Utopia, World State or International Brotherhood. If you appear before us as an Isaiah we demand to hear of your Christ. You recognize the demand of Confucius for rectification of names. Do you realize Nietzsche’s transvaluations for our day? Faith as opposed to affirmation! Zarathustra has spoken! There is now the mountain peak—and you are still rhyming about a hill top.

Announcements

“_The Weavers_”

Gerhardt Hauptmann’s Weavers is coming to Chicago! It begins a limited engagement at the Princess Theatre Sunday night, April 2. If you don’t go—well, we will pray for you.

It is to be the same production with which Emanuel Reicher stirred New York this winter. Mr. Reicher is no longer with the company, having finally given up the struggle of trying to make a financial success of art and truth. His stage director, Augustin Duncan, who is a man of vision and ability, has formed the actors into a co-operative company, and they have been struggling through various cities where their efforts have been intensely though not largely appreciated. This is to be expected; but surely in Chicago they ought to find an audience.

P. S.—Since I wrote the above _The Weavers_ has opened, and I have heard how the first-night audience laughed where it should have applauded and guffawed when it should have recognized something fine.

_Margaret Sanger in Chicago_

There is an announcement on the cover page of two of Margaret Sanger’s lectures in Chicago, and others may be arranged after she gets here. We have got into the habit of looking upon birth control as a thing in which everybody believes, and which almost everybody practices whether they believe in it or not. It seems quite superfluous to keep on talking about it. But then you remember that Emma Goldman has been arrested for talking about it, and that when her trial comes up—some time this month or in May—it is quite within the possibilities that she may spend a year in prison for her crime. That is something none of us could face without a kind of insanity. So please don’t be content with merely abusing the government: send your protests to the District Attorney and it may help a great deal.

Any one who wishes to arrange for further lectures by Mrs. Sanger may write to Fania Mindell, care THE LITTLE REVIEW.

_The Rupert Brooke Memorial_

It has been decided to set up in Rugby Chapel, England, a memorial of Rupert Brooke in the form of a portrait-medallion in marble. The medallion will be the work of Professor J. Havard Thomas, and is to be based on the portrait by Schell. Contributions not exceeding five dollars may be sent to Maurice Browne, Chicago Treasurer, Rupert Brooke Memorial Fund, 434 Fine Arts Building, Michigan Avenue, and will be sent to England without deduction. Money left over after the completion of the medallion will be given to the Royal Literary Fund. Mr. Browne adds that the nickels and dimes of those who wish to make their offering, but cannot afford the larger sum, will be welcomed in the spirit of their giving; also that he believes there are many admirers of Rupert Brooke and his work in Chicago who will welcome the opportunity to pay in some measure their debt to the poet, particularly remembering that this city stimulated and interested him more than any other in America.

_Jerome Blum’s New Work_

Beginning April 15 Mr. Blum will have a two-weeks’ exhibit of paintings done on a recent trip through China and Japan, at O’Brien’s Art Galleries, 334 South Michigan Avenue. At the same time Mrs. Blum will exhibit some Chinese and Japanese figures—and there is one especially that we prophesy will be talked of. It is of a weary-eyed Chinese philosopher, the art of which has been put into words by a painter: “He has seen everything, so he doesn’t look any more; he has done everything—so he folds his hands.”

_The Vers Libre Prize Contest_

Two of the judges for our contest have been chosen. They will be Helen Hoyt and Zoë Akins. The third will be announced in the next issue, and the contest will be continued until August 15, as it seems wiser not to close it before it has been fully heralded. All details will be found on page 40.

“_A Lost Tune_”

Between April 25 and May 7 Mr. Stanislaw Saukalski will give our soft teeth a chance to crack a hard nut at the Art Institute. The “Lost Tune” will lead the flaming lava of this young volcano. Will the readers of THE LITTLE REVIEW send in their impressions of this sculptor’s work? We may print some of them.—_L. de B._

_When You Buy Books_—

Won’t readers remember to order their books through the Gotham Book Society? You can get any book you want from them, whether it is listed in their advertisement or not, and THE LITTLE REVIEW makes a percentage on the sales. Our margin of profit per book is small, but it all helps very much and the continuation of the magazine depends upon just such co-operation. We have two thousand subscribers. If each one of them would order one dollar’s worth of books a month we should make about two hundred dollars out of it,—which would pay for two issues of the magazine and enable us to eat regularly besides. Will you please remember?

_The Russian Literature Group_

Alexander Kaun’s next lecture on Russian Literature will be on Dostoevsky, and will be given April 16, at 8:30 P. M., in 612 Fine Arts Building. Mr. Kaun is becoming more interesting with each lecture—by which I mean that he is revealing more of Kaun the artist, and less of Kaun the professor.

_Independent Society of Artists_

The first international exhibition of this new organization will be held on April 4 in the Ohio Building, Wabash Avenue and Congress Street, from three to seven P. M.

“_Because of the War_”—

Paper is going up. We can’t help looking ugly this month.

The Beautiful and the Terrible. Which is which will never be put into words. But I am free to tell myself; and let me but preserve the senses—my eyes, my ears, my touch, and all shall be well—all shall seem far more beautiful than terrible—_Gordon Craig._

Only fanaticism is possible for phlegmatic natures.—_Nietzsche._

Flamingo Dreams

LUPO DE BRAILA

A burst of passion in a pagan god’s eye was the sunrise as I saw it from the top of Mount Rose one morning last summer. Trembling and with squinting eyes I looked at the grand spectacle, fearing to go blind if I opened my eyes.

The sun stretched its arms and with flaming fingers lifted the bluish-grey blanket from the Nevada hills and the Truckee Valley. Feeling that the beauty of this moment could not be surpassed, I turned my face toward California and ran down the western side of Mount Rose.

One day last week when the massive shoulders of Jerome Blum stepped in between me and a canvas that had transformed his studio into a strange land for me, I wanted to hold his hands for fear the next canvas would take the joy produced by the one in front of me. He came back from an eight-months’ trip through Japan and China recently, and he brought with him over twenty paintings with pulsating nature and unrestrained joy in every one of them. The rhythmic lines dance through the curling roofs and weird trees—and all of them are bathed in sunshine. At the same time they are a close study of this strange land, its people and their habits, by a forceful and unusual artist—a man who says “yes” to nature in no uncertain terms. His bold colors are handled in a most sensitive manner, and when I wanted to place him among the Chicago artists I found that he belongs to an entirely different class and could not even be compared to some of the vacillating and doubtful men who paint in this town.

He has a portrait of a Chinese girl in a green gown, and some scenes along a canal and in a Chinese garden, that have tempted my usually honest mind to some queer contemplations. I have found myself wandering to the windows and other unusual entrances to his studio, figuring out how one might find access to that place without a key and at a certain dark hour. I have only one hope left now of owning one in a figurative way, and it is that the trustees of the Art Institute may see the light and....

I hope Jerome Blum will not be compelled, like some of the best men this country has produced, to go to other shores to gain the recognition due a man of his ability. A few weeks ago I saw one of the older trustees spend considerable time before a canvas by a Boston painter that lacked all that goes to make a work of art,—a canvas on which the artist, with the aid of a pointed stick, had tried to prod his dead and colorless paint into some kind of motion. In spite of this I still believe that they will rise to the high intellectual and artistic understanding that they are supposed to possess, but which they have failed to display up to the present, as far as modern art is concerned.

It is impossible for me to describe any of Blum’s canvases except to say that they tear you away from the dirty grey and ill-smelling Chicago, to a country you have seen in your dreams as a child. We will have a chance to see this artist’s work, beginning April fifteenth, at O’Brien’s, on Michigan Boulevard.

Lucille Swan Blum will exhibit at the same time and place some very graceful Japanese dancers, Chinese children, Corean, Chinese, and Japanese mothers with their babies and other far-eastern types. Best of all is a Chinese philosopher, reduced almost to design to emphasize the idea of the age and wisdom of this people—folded hands, an emotionless face, all seeing eyes....

In the end one experienceth nothing but himself.—_Nietzsche._

New York Letter

(_A scattering of words anent Washington Square, “Henry VIII”, Yvette Guilbert, “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, and sundry other things and people, as far as space and time allow._)

ALLAN ROSS MACDOUGALL

From my garret window I look out on Washington Square. Snow and ice still lie there, and the trees are black and mean.

On the first page of his new book, “_Moby Lane and Thereabouts_”, Neil Lyons says: “Spring has many ushers, and is heralded by divers signs. Some people look for these signs among the hedgerows; others seek them in the sky, or listen for them in the night, whilst other people neither look or listen, but go smelling about, or stand upon hill-tops, tasting.” My sign shall be, I think, the grimy trees of the Square. And sometimes as I sit here looking out on the icy barrenness I wonder if, when Spring’s breath does touch the earth, whether flowers will come up—flowers that I long to see: crocuses, anemones, daffodils. It’s all very well to see them in shop windows, but God! to see them come up out of the earth and unfold! But I fear our Square is too sophisticated. I know a man will come—a common tobacco-chewing man with a stunted soul who belongs to a Union and gets paid so much coin by the hour—and he will arrange squares, and oblongs, and diamond shaped plots of earth. Then will he proceed laboriously and without joy to stick tulips or some other straight official flower into these geometrical, soulless patterns. And throughout the year in the Square, nature will be kept in bounds and orders.

“_Henry VIII_”

It seems scarcely possible that Sir Herbert Tree would have the calm artistic audacity to come to this country and present his production of “Henry VIII” in the moth-eaten scenery and costumes that were used in the London production in the year 1910. Yet he did, and oh! the wearisome drab antiquity of it all! But the “People” liked it and gave the beknighted actor-manager “one of the greatest premieres that New York has witnessed these many years”.

Mention is made in the programme of “the inspiring aerchiological advice” of Percy Macquoid, R. I. The advice may have been quite inspiring. I do not doubt it. But the results of that advice! That medley of costumes! Those photo scenes of Windsor Castle and Blackfriars Hall and Westminster Abbey! They were bad when first conceived and painted, and five years in a London storeroom has not improved them to any degree compatible with their presentation to an audience that has looked upon the work of Bakst, Urban, Jones, Sime, and Rothenstein.

And what can be said of the lighting? There was one comic spotlight that followed Sir Herbert (or ought I to say Wolsey? I hardly know; they were never quite distinct) around the stage like a little motherless puppy. Sometimes it went before, sometimes it frisked after, on the tail of his magnificent scarlet gown. It had a grand time! But it never seemed to be doing the thing it ought to be doing.

But let me not bore you as these things bored me. Pass we now to the acting. In London the honors of the play were carried off by Arthur Bouchier as Henry, and his wife, Violet Vanburgh, as Katherine. A repetition was performed here. Lyn Harding as Henry, and Edith Wynne Matheson as Katherine, carried every one before them. And Tree? Well, he had his moments. There was his superb entrance with the look he flashed at Buckingham: fine too was the acting in the scene of his downfall. Between these two highlights such ordinary acting has seldom been seen in a man of Tree’s reputation. In a cold classic way Miss Matheson was splendid. I liked her much, and but for her some of the scenes in the play would have been colourless. There was the usual mob of supers who got caught in doorways and tripped over furniture, but on the whole they behaved as well as an ordinary stage manager can make such people behave.

_Yvette Guilbert_

Five years ago I saw Yvette Guilbert in London. I loved her all. Her red hair; the skinny arms of her, clothed in long black gloves; and her Gallic body with the low-necked white crinoline that gowned it. And how she sang!! And her acting! For five years I have carried the memory of her around with me, matching other people up with her but never finding her equal. On Sunday, March nineteenth, I saw her again. The black gloves and the white crinoline were gone, and she had grown a little stouter. The red hair was there, and the smile. Her voice had changed a bit and her personality had mellowed. She sang songs that were grave and moving, like Fiona Macleod’s _Prayer of Women_, and others that were gay and jocular, like _The Curé Servant_. But whatever she sang—and I didn’t know a word of what she sang—carried me away completely. Not a mood did I miss—not a suggestion of a mood. Perfect is her art. She has my adoration.

“_The Merry Wives of Windsor_”

The latest addition to the Shakespeare Festival that is being thrust upon the apathetic people of this place is the Hackett-Allen production of _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. Three things can be said without any further comment. Joseph Urban did the stage settings. Richard Ordynski directed the production. Willy Pogany designed the costumes. Gordon Craig says somewhere that any medium is easier to work in than human beings. After seeing the work expended on _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ by three geniuses, and watching the actors in that play, we understand completely.

_Soulless New York_

Witter Bynner, grown somber and blase,—the effect of living in soulless New York, he says—has become a sort of Greek Chorus to me. In various strophes with divers variations, in sundry public and private places, he chants the dismal fact that New York is soulless and that there is a danger of it robbing me of my joy in life. Not while its streets remain as they are will I lose the joy I possess! I cannot remember any city that I have been in where my sense of the comic has been tickled so often by happenings in the streets. So many comedies are enacted by the curbstone, so many quaintly funny things happen every hour on the streets, that it would be impossible for me to forget how jolly life really is. Of course I see tragedies too, but they seem to be there only for the purpose of balance!

For some time to come I’ll Dalcroze down the avenues and numerical by-ways of this “soulless” city. And my smile will always be handy; and my whistle wet, ready to pipe _Gathering Peascods_ or _The Parson’s Farewell_ or anything merry and bright to dance to.

To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air; the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.—_Eleonora Duse._

The Theatre

“Overtones”

Alice Gerstenberg, who dramatized _Alice in Wonderland_, wrote _Overtones_, evidently as an experiment, and had it produced in New York. Now it is crowding vaudeville houses. As an experiment only is it important. Cyril Harcourt intends collaborating with Miss Gerstenberg to produce a three-act play on the same lines: characters being followed by their “real selves”, veiled, with voices confused. A Shaw play might be done this way—it is a method effective for moralizing and bringing home a point. But why would Darling Dora need an overtone or an undertone; or Blanco Posnet or Fanny’s Father? If there is any reason for the dramatic presentation of characters at all it is the drama of themselves—their actions and their thoughts as opposed to those of others.... Imagine Rebecca West being followed through three acts by a “real self”; or Ulric Brendel—“... I am homesick for the mighty nothingness”.

“The New Manner”

(_Vague Questionings_)

It evidently means—this phrase—“that which is _accepted_ as new”.... There are signs of our dangerously settling down to flat brilliant backgrounds, spots of vivid color, and much _mention_ of “important as decoration”. It seems an unhealthy acquiescence.... “Is desire a thing of nothing, that a five-years’ quest can make a parody of it? Your whole life is not too long, and then only at the very end will some small atom of what you have desired come to you.”—Gordon Craig in his _Art of the Theatre_. It looks as if we are due for a period of the old, old, three-walled room with the new, new, “new” color.... I don’t believe we will find the future in Michael Carr’s butterfly proscenium and moving-picture screen shadows; but, surely, it is not _The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife_, or _Androcles and the Lion_, although Barker’s _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ costumes are the most far-reaching originalities yet seen. Nor will it be like _A Pair of Silk Stockings_, _The Sabine Women_, _Overtones_, _The Charity that Began at Home_, _The Taming of the Shrew_, nor Urban and his present enormous New York output of “designs” and “follies”. Our only light seems to come from Gordon Craig’s work in Florence. “In his work is the incalculable element; the element that comes of itself and cannot be coaxed into coming”. Or from Sam Hume’s enthusiasm over the “Dome”; Reinhardt, of course, has almost acquired his permanent “angle of repose”—the newness of the American stage being, in fact, the Reinhardt of yesterday. If I had my way, I’d destroy all books about the theatre excepting those of Gordon Craig, for inspiration, or those of Arthur Symons for appreciation.... Then, perhaps, we should begin to understand the Theatre.