THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS SAD AND SERIOUS REFLECTIONS ON THE FIRST SALON OF AMERICAN HUMORISTS T HE aim of the "Salon of American Humorists," recently held in the Folsom Galleries in New York, was nothing if not a highly serious one. The aim, as explained by the organizer of the show, Louis Baury, was to rise quite above the trivialities of the comic supplements and the "funny" pages, to "the highest artistic empire-the empire bequeathed it by Rabelais and Swift and Fielding and all that lusty company." So Mr. Baury is reported in the Telegraph. "The humor that breathes in a line-and needs not a 'boisterous' joke 429 All this may sound excessively serithe trouble with humor: "One simply ous, Mr. Baury concludes, but that is serious-particularly here in America." cannot consider it without becoming est; on the stage he may be as essentially be consigned always to the lighter, more rash. "That a brilliant spirit that without mis But one of the least serious aspects of this presentation of typically American humor in art is the fact that a large number of the exhibitors are American only in the sense that America is the "melting pot" of other races. Swedish, Spanish, German, French, Anglo-Amer to support it"-Mr. Baury explains in sion or message or school craves only the icans, are among the various races rep the catalog of the salon-"the humor "For humor is more with us than a mere mood. It is the very pith and essence of that swift, electric atmosphere which is so particularly our own, that capitalization of the instant which serves us in lieu of the tradition that is Europe's. And tho the artists here assembled have no mission other than the right expression of the mood at hand, one cannot but feel, looking at these expressions, that if, indeed, we are to have an art nationally our own, it will burst, laughing-lipped, from out this attitude-and that it will expand only insofar as we bring the highest, sincerest artistry to minister to the fantastic, the extravagant, the bizar, the witty, the ironic, the mocking, the incongruous-in short, humor in all its multihued phases. "And the fact that this initial American Salon of Humorists strikes the first concerted chord in such tone-and does it without recourse to the adventitious aid of any outré 'new' technique-should serve to endow it with an interest and significance more far-reaching even than the hilarity of the moment." The Salon of American Humorists is the outcome of a plea made for such an exhibition by Mr. Baury in a recent number of the Bookman. In this article he points out the American neglect of the great American sense of humor: "In literature a man has every chance, if he can, to be as hilariously unbridled as Mark Twain and still take his place unchallenged on the shelf with the great privilege of making holiday with facts resented by, the exhibitors. Even the American artists indicate decidedly foreign artistic influences. Among the contributors to this first "Salon of American Humorists" are: "Robert Henri, John Sloan, W. Glackens, Guy Péne du Bois, Boardman Robinson, George Bellows, O. E. Cesare, Arthur Young, Glenn O. Coleman, Stuart Davis, H. J. Glintenkamp, Oliver Herford, Herbert Crowley, Mrs. Helena Smith-Dayton, Marjorie Organ (Mrs. Robert Henri), Edith Dimock (Mrs. Glackens), Herb Roth, Alfred Frueh, Frank Walts, Maurice Becker, L. R. Chamberlain, Helen Dryden, Cornelia Barns. If one misses the names of Mr. "Bud" Fisher and Mr. Reuben Goldberg from this galaxy of American humorists, it may be because those two popular gentlemen are not actuated by the same high and austere devotion to humor that characterized Rabelais, Swift and Sterne. Even the delightful wit who looks at pictures for the New York Sun is stricken with sad seriousness in viewing these humorous artists, and begins to quote Bergson and Meredith. He is of the impression that this "salon" had for its purpose the uplift of the American sense of humor. After looking over the pictures, this critic comes to the pessimistic conclusion that we Americans are pitifully poverty-stricken in the local tender that passes as wit. "The impression is unavoidable that these artists are without any experience of life and have throttled the powers of imagination with which they must have started out. It goes without saying that they have not cut off this power from themselves consciously. It is the state of society, the condition of things in general that has thus mutilated them as comic artists and which makes their situation and ours so critical." VACATION GIRLS Edith Dimock's maids are not as sweet as those of Kate Greenaway, nor as sickeningly sentimental as most of the children we find in the women's magazine, but infinitely more real and amusing.. She calls them "Vacation Girls," and one divines they have come into Central Park off the great East Side. work on laughter to these humorists. It is not necessary to be cruel in order to laugh. Laughter, according to his interpretation, is unmoral. "Laughter has no greater enemy than emotion," wrote the sage of the Sorbonne. The slightest bit of sympathy or pity kills the tendency of it instantly. Indifference is the milieu of laughter. Bergson, Meredith and the critic of the New York Sun all agree that "the comic muse deigns to appears only in enlightThe Sun critic recommends Bergson's ened communities; so the paucity of humor noticed in such a display as that we are now discussing can only be blamed upon the public in general." He quotes Meredith apropos the infrequent apparition of the great comic genius: "A society of cultivated men and women is required wherein ideas are current and the perceptions quick, that he may be supplied with matter and an audience." "Upon the whole, Bergson rather than Meredith may be recommended to the American salon of humorists for purposes of study. Meredith, one of the wittiest appreciators of modern life himself, is naturally somewhat too subtle and difficult for beginners, whereas Bergson, coldly, scientifically, unhumorously analyzing humor, is just the thing for adult inquirers, principally because he catalogs with French thoroness all the known mirthproducing agencies, starting with the excruciating individual who tumbles inadvertently upon the sidewalk. His reasons why and wherefore need not be taken too seriously, but if the examples be weil pondered by our salon members the exhibition of next year cannot fail to raise the guffaws of success. "In a year or two it may even arrive at wreathing the faces of the erudite with smiles; the smile being the higher test. "All of which goes to prove that the feebleness of the Salon of Humorists in the year 1915 is its best excuse for being. The art needs incubation, that's clear. By putting itself and us on record in this way by very shame, we'll strive to educate ourselves up to something better. The promised exceptions I must make to the general dulness are those of Boardman Robinson, H. E. Crowley and Alfred Fruch. It is also necessary to exonerate George Bellows from charges of vulgarity in his two drawings of the Rev. Billy Sunday." OUR SUPREME ART FORM THE GREATEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED A SA result of a detailed analysis of the short stories published by a group of representative American magazines during 1914, Edward J. O'Brien makes the interesting claim in the Boston Transcript that "the American short story has been developed as an art form to a point where it may fairly claim a sustained superiority, as different in kind as in quality from the tale or conte of other literatures." For the purposes of his analytical study, Mr. O'Brien chose the output of six monthly magazines and of two weeklies: The Atlantic Monthly, the Century, the Forum, Harper's Magazine, the Metropolitan, Scribner's Magazine, the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's Weekly. The standards to which he submitted the 601 short stories published by these periodicals during the course of the year 1914 he indicates as follows: "As the most adequate means to this end, I have taken each short story by itself, and examined it impartially. I have done my best to surrender myself to the writer's point of view, and, granting his choice of material and interpretation of it in terms of life, have sought to test it by the double standard of substance and form. Substance is something achieved by the artist in every act of creation, rather than something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of facts in a story only attain substantial embodiment when the artist's power of compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a living truth. I assume that such a living truth is the artist's essential object. The first test of a short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis is to report upon how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected facts or incidents. This test may be called the test of substance. "But a second test is necessary in the qualitative analysis if a story is to take high rank above other stories. The test of substance is the most vital test, to be sure, and, if a story survives it, it has imaginative life. The true artist, however, will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful selection and arrangement of his material, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization." Of the six hundred and one short stories published in these periodicals, Mr. O'Brien is of the opinion that two hundred and twenty-nine were marked by distinction, and that of these eightysix possessed very high distinction. The best two short stories of the year are by comparative newcomers in the field of fiction. And it is instructive to note, remarks the critic, that both are marked by brevity and severe sim DURING A YEAR plicity of structure. "Brothers of No Bravest Son" (Scribner's, "The Triple Mirror." By Katharine Ful- Fullerton Gerould. Harper's. "A Twilight Adven- "The Doomdorf Post. Saturday the Sea." By H. "The Night School." By James Hopper. "The Ishmaelite." By Elsie Singmaster. 431 Mr. O'Brien not only indicates what are, in his opinion, the best short stories. published by the eight magazines; he indicates also the percentage of stories of distinctive merit published in each. The results are illuminating. While the Saturday Evening Post is considered to have published the greatest number of short stories of all kinds, its percentage for merit is the lowest; and while The Forum published fewest, in percentage of merit it ranks second only to Scribner's. The magazines rank as follows: 1. Scribner's Magazine... 3. The Century Magazine. 58% -56% .52% 52% .50% ..26% .25% .20% The curved lines may subtly indicate that this gentleman whom George Luks has portrayed is "running rings around himself"-figuratively speaking-in coming into contact with some more than usually violent manifestation of "the modern movement." W lish literature. HO has ever heard of "The Spiritual Quixote," by Richard Graves? Probably only the most erudite students of Eng Yet it was considered a great English novel in its day. Published first in 1773, during the next forty years it went through any number of editions. People supposed that it had taken its place among the British classics. In 1812 Mrs. Barbauld-an estimable lady now nearly forgotten except by bookworms-included it in her series of British novels. And, indeed, "The Spiritual Quixote" is, in its way, one of the very best of English novels. So at least Havelock Ellis informs us in The Nineteenth Century, in an essay that ought to lead to the republication of this interesting book, that has been submerged for practically a century. Why was "The Spiritual Quixote" thrown aside and forgotten? asks Havelock Ellis. Largely, no doubt, he concludes, because it was shocking to the prim and rather serious tastes of the early Victorian period. Graves was a clergyman, it is true, "but the savor and vivacity of his humor, the occasional picaresque touch, the little audacities of expression, were not of the Victorian epoch, while his satire of religious extravagances . . . was positively dangerous ground in days when Methodism was firmly established and Evangelicalism was permeating the Church." Mr. Ellis found a copy of the submerged "masterpiece" in an old farmhouse, and was immediately struck with its curiously modern note. But the credit of practically rediscovering Graves' work he assigns to the distinguished French critic, Marcel Schwob. Graves, it is interesting to learn, was practically submerged by the great romantic movement of the beginning of the nineteenth century. Readers of Sir Walter Scott could find little of interest in a writer who stood beside Fielding, Smollett and Sterne. These three survived the tidal wave of romantic fiction only by virtue of reputations that had already been labori MASTERPIECE ously and solidly established. Graves was modest and retiring. As a consequence he did not survive the inundation. Richard Graves wrote by native instinct, to please himself, "to record his judgments of men and things, to revive sweet memories, to while away winter evenings, to find consolation amid the cares of old age." At the age of fiftyeight, almost the same age at which Cervantes published his immortal romance, the British author published his comic romance (in three volumes) anonymously. Its full title is "The Spiritual Quixote; or, the Summer's Ramble of Mr. Geoffry Wildgoose: A Comic Romance." Havelock Ellis thus describes the book: "The Spiritual Quixote' follows, tho with no slavish imitation, the classic model furnished by Cervantes. That is to say, we have the central figure, stirred by a too highly strung idealistic impulse, to sally forth on a great mission-in Wildgoose's case the restoration of primitive Christianity. We have his faithful, uncouth, earthly-minded servant; we have the variegated adventures, serious and comic, of this pair; we have the long interspersed narrative episodes, often of considerable interest and skilfully introduced. "Wildgoose, the spiritual Quixote, a young country gentleman living with his mother, on his return from the university, is moved to religious enthusiasm, partly by reading old Puritan literature, partly by the arrival at his village of some strolling preachers. He becomes a preacher himself, and in order to gain further spiritual illumination he sets forth to find Whitefield, taking with him, in the capacity of servant, the village cobbler, Jerry Tugwell. At an early stage of his advenTugwell. At an early stage of his adventures Wildgoose falls in with a young lady who has been compelled to run away from home. This distressed damsel, Julia Townsend, arouses Wildgoose's chivalrous feelings, and his quest eventually becomes the quest of love. It is Julia Townsend whom at the end he finds, and he settles down in his native village reconciled to the Church and to a life of normal and benevolent activity. "Graves concludes with a moral which forecasts that of Wilhelm Meister, who, like Saul the son of Kish, went forth to seek his father's asses and found a kingdom: 'Providence frequently makes use of our passions, our errors, and even our youthful follies, to promote our welfare and conduct us to happiness.' Among the great novels of the eighteenth century, Havelock Ellis writes, "The Spiritual Quixote" stands in a class by itself. Fielding and Smollett were professional men of letters. They wrote to earn their living, belonging to a transitional stage "when the man of letters who lived to write was giving place to the man of letters who wrote to live, a disastrous change which has produced results we know." "Graves wrote to amuse himself. That is doubtless the secret of his wayward ease. That is why every page of his book is readable. He has all the levity which we miss in his stolid predecessors. If we compare 'The Spiritual Quixote' with 'Joseph Andrews' or 'Humphrey Clinker' - which are probably the novels of Fielding and Smollett most easily lending themselves to this comparison - we note not only that Graves's book is much more various but that it is more modern. It presents us, indeed, with no single figure that stands out so memorably as Parson Adams, and it cannot rival Smollett's masterpiece for sustained brilliance and caustic wit; but, unlike them, it is never heavy and it is never brutal. Graves's mental alertness, his unfailing humor, here serve him well, while his genial love of men, altogether distinct from Fielding's humanitarian philanthropy, becomes naturally translated into urbanity. This observant yet indulgent humor, one notes, is that of the cleric, and Graves may perhaps in this respect remind us of another cleric, his contemporary, the Rev. Laurence Sterne, and still more, I think, of Goldsmith, a cleric's son, who has immortalized himself by delineating clerical life. A more delicate masterpiece than Graves's comic romance, tho on a very much smaller scale, 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' published only seven years earlier, is probably the only novel of that age at all allied to 'The Spiritual Quixote.' Graves's romance has something of the same tender levity . . . while it also reveals a mature breadth and variety which were outside the scope of Goldsmith's immortal little story." T POETS STILL SING OF THE WAR VOICES OF THE LIVING POETS wroth, Bemoans the ruin of Icarian wings! Potential in bland cruelties, the Goth- One of the finest poems on the other "WILLOW, WILLOW." It is said that England lacks cradles, the best HE Napoleonic wars were fol- With neurasthenic shudders, suavely lowed by the early Victorian period in art, with what seems to us now like a very inane sentimentality and a strong swing toward extreme romanticism. History never repeats itself. We shall never, it is probable, revert to the inanities of that period; but, unless we are mistaken, a reaction has already set in, as a result of the war, away from the freakishness of ultra-modern art and literature, and toward a higher seriousness and a deeper sincerity. It is manifest in American as well as in British poetry. The note of decadence has for the time being almost disappeared and even the note of social revolution is now directed almost entirely against war and the war-lords. The sense of the instability of life and the groping toward some power not ourselves that makes for righteousness grow more and more evident as the world we have known so long reels in the shock of battle. Emerson's essay on Compensation may still be read with appreciation, in spite of the horrors. that dwell in the headlines. Disaster, riding on a thunder-smoke, Bewail the wasted centuries-and yet, They do but take the ancient bath again, What false dawns summoned by the How toiled the lean to batten the obese ! A canting generation, smug in greed, WILLO ILLOW, willow, river-willow Hear you not that England's white hood overhead, "All in vain you call the willow. we willows now are found For Bending with our load of sorrows—stoop- "Spring comes fearing and retireth! For there's crimson on the rivers to “England, England, if our springy osiers for we strive to rise in vain. "Willows, willows, river-willows, England All her hearts of oaken fibre to your Stretch out a mighty wing above- 433 Let Fancy listen at these listening walls And give us back the record that they bear, These phonographs of sorrow, where are In Time's attenuated echoes, sounds The guarded plot; the treacherous prom- The tragedy that here was masked as hope. Here the dark powers conspired, using as bribes Our dearest virtues - goodness, friendship, love. Here many who came with dawn upon the brow, |