The Little Review, May 1917 (Vol. 4, No. 1)

T. S. Eliot

Eeldrop and Appleplex rented two small rooms in a disreputable part of town. Here they sometimes came at nightfall, here they sometimes slept, and after they had slept, they cooked oatmeal and departed in the morning for destinations unknown to each other. They sometimes slept, more often they talked, or looked out of the window.

They had chosen the rooms and the neighborhood with great care. There are evil neighborhoods of noise and evil neighborhoods of silence, and Eeldrop and Appleplex preferred the latter, as being the more evil. It was a shady street, its windows were heavily curtained; and over it hung the cloud of a respectability which has something to conceal. Yet it had the advantage of more riotous neighborhoods near by, and Eeldrop and Appleplex commanded from their windows the entrance of a police station across the way. This alone possessed an irresistible appeal in their eyes. From time to time the silence of the street was broken; whenever a malefactor was apprehended, a wave of excitement curled into the street and broke upon the doors of the police station. Then the inhabitants of the street would linger in dressing-gowns, upon their doorsteps: then alien visitors would linger in the street, in caps; long after the centre of misery had been engulphed in his cell. Then Eeldrop and Appleplex would break off their discourse, and rush out to mingle with the mob. Each pursued his own line of enquiry. Appleplex, who had the gift of an extraordinary address with the lower classes of both sexes, questioned the onlookers, and usually extracted full and inconsistent histories: Eeldrop preserved a more passive demeanor, listened to the conversation of the people among themselves, registered in his mind their oaths, their redundance of phrase, their various manners of spitting, and the cries of the victim from the hall of justice within. When the crowd dispersed, Eeldrop and Appleplex returned to their rooms: Appleplex entered the results of his inquiries into large note-books, filed according to the nature of the case, from A (adultery) to Y (yeggmen). Eeldrop smoked reflectively. It may be added that Eeldrop was a sceptic, with a taste for mysticism, and Appleplex a materialist with a leaning toward scepticism; that Eeldrop was learned in theology, and that Appleplex studied the physical and biological sciences.

There was a common motive which led Eeldrop and Appleplex thus to separate themselves from time to time, from the fields of their daily employments and their ordinarily social activities. Both were endeavoring to escape not the commonplace, respectable or even the domestic, but the too well pigeonholed, too taken-for-granted, too highly systematized areas, and,—in the language of those whom they sought to avoid—they wished “to apprehend the human soul in its concrete individuality.”

“Why,” said Eeldrop, “was that fat Spaniard, who sat at the table with us this evening, and listened to our conversation with occasional curiosity, why was he himself for a moment an object of interest to us? He wore his napkin tucked into his chin, he made unpleasant noises while eating, and while not eating, his way of crumbling bread between fat fingers made me extremely nervous: he wore a waistcoat cafe au lait, and black boots with brown tops. He was oppressively gross and vulgar; he belonged to a type, he could easily be classified in any town of provincial Spain. Yet under the circumstances—when we had been discussing marriage, and he suddenly leaned forward and exclaimed: “I was married once myself”—we were able to detach him from his classification and regard him for a moment as an unique being, a soul, however insignificant, with a history of its own, once for all. It is these moments which we prize, and which alone are revealing. For any vital truth is incapable of being applied to another case: the essential is unique. Perhaps that is why it is so neglected: because it is useless. What we learned about that Spaniard is incapable of being applied to any other Spaniard, or even recalled in words. With the decline of orthodox theology and its admirable theory of the soul, the unique importance of events has vanished. A man is only important as he is classed. Hence there is no tragedy, or no appreciation of tragedy, which is the same thing. We had been talking of young Bistwick, who three months ago married his mother’s housemaid and now is aware of the fact. Who appreciates the truth of the matter? Not the relatives, for they are only moved by affection, by regard for Bistwick’s interests, and chiefly by their collective feeling of family disgrace. Not the generous minded and thoughtful outsider, who regards it merely as evidence for the necessity of divorce law reform. Bistwick is classed among the unhappily married. But what Bistwick feels when he wakes up in the morning, which is the great important fact, no detached outsider conceives. The awful importance of the ruin of a life is overlooked. Men are only allowed to be happy or miserable in classes. In Gopsum Street a man murders his mistress. The important fact is that for the man the act is eternal, and that for the brief space he has to live, he is already dead. He is already in a different world from ours. He has crossed the frontier. The important fact that something is done which can not be undone—a possibility which none of us realize until we face it ourselves. For the man’s neighbors the important fact is what the man killed her with? And at precisely what time? And who found the body? For the “enlightened public” the case is merely evidence for the Drink question, or Unemployment, or some other category of things to be reformed. But the mediæval world, insisting on the eternity of punishment, expressed something nearer the truth.

“What you say,” replied Appleplex, “commands my measured adherence. I should think, in the case of the Spaniard, and in the many other interesting cases which have come under our attention at the door of the police station, what we grasp in that moment of pure observation on which we pride ourselves, is not alien to the principle of classification, but deeper. We could if we liked, make excellent comment upon the nature of provincial Spaniards, or of destitution (as misery is called by the philanthropists), or on homes for working girls. But such is not our intention. We aim at experience in the particular centres in which alone it is evil. We avoid classification. We do not deny it. But when a man is classified something is lost. The majority of mankind live on paper currency: they use terms which are merely good for so much reality, they never see actual coinage.”

“I should go even further than that,” said Eeldrop. “The majority not only have no language to express anything save generalized man; they are for the most part unaware of themselves as anything but generalized men. They are first of all government officials, or pillars of the church, or trade unionists, or poets, or unemployed; this cataloguing is not only satisfactory to other people for practical purposes, it is sufficient to themselves for their ‘life of the spirit.’ Many are not quite real at any moment. When Wolstrip married, I am sure he said to himself: ‘Now I am consummating the union of two of the best families in Philadelphia.’”

“The question is,” said Appleplex, “what is to be our philosophy. This must be settled at once. Mrs. Howexden recommends me to read Bergson. He writes very entertainingly on the structure of the eye of the frog.”

“Not at all,” interrupted his friend. “Our philosophy is quite irrelevant. The essential is, that our philosophy should spring from our point of view and not return upon itself to explain our point of view. A philosophy about intuition is somewhat less likely to be intuitive than any other. We must avoid having a platform.”

“But at least,” said Appleplex, “we are....”

“Individualists. No!! nor anti-intellectualists. These also are labels. The ‘individualist’ is a member of a mob as fully as any other man: and the mob of individualists is the most unpleasing, because it has the least character. Nietzsche was a mob-man, just as Bergson is an intellectualist. We cannot escape the label, but let it be one which carries no distinction, and arouses no self-consciousness. Sufficient that we should find simple labels, and not further exploit them. I am, I confess to you, in private life, a bank-clerk....”

“And should, according to your own view, have a wife, three children, and a vegetable garden in a suburb,” said Appleplex.

“Such is precisely the case,” returned Eeldrop, “but I had not thought it necessary to mention this biographical detail. As it is Saturday night, I shall return to my suburb. Tomorrow will be spent in that garden....”

“I shall pay my call on Mrs. Howexden,” murmured Appleplex.

(Next chapter in June number.)

Scene courte mais typique

(After the “Pierrots” of Jules Laforgue.)

John Hall

Ezra Pound

The soul of Jodindranath Mawhwor clove to the god of this universe and he meditated the law of the Shastras.

He was a man of moderate income inherited for the most part from his fathers, of whom there were several, slightly augmented by his own rather desultory operations of commerce. He had never made money by conquest and was inclined to regard this method of acquisition as antiquated; as belonging rather to the days of his favorite author than to our own.

He had followed the advice of the Sutras, had become the head of an house in the not unprosperous city of Migdalb, in a quarter where dwelt a reasonable proportion of fairly honest and honourable people not unaverse to gossip and visits. His house was situated by a watercourse, in lieu of new fangled plumbing, and in this his custom was at one with that of the earliest Celts. It was divided in various chambers for various occupations, surrounded by a commodious garden, and possessed of the two chief chambers, the “exterior” and the “interior” (butt and ben). The interior was the place for his women, the exterior enhanced with rich perfumes, contained a bed, soft, luscious, and agreeable to the action of vision, covered with a cloth of unrivalled whiteness. It was a little humped in the middle, and surmounted with garlands and bundles of flowers, which were sometimes renewed in the morning. Upon it were also a coverlet brightly embroidered and two cylindrical pillows, one at the head and the other placed at the foot. There was also a sort of sofa or bed for repose, at the head of which stood a case for unguents, and perfumes to be used during the night, and a stand for flowers and pots of cosmetic and other odoriferous substances, essences for perfuming the breath, new cut slices of lemon peel and such things as were fitting. On the floor near the sofa rested a metal spittoon, and a toilet case, and above it was a luth suspended from an elephant’s tusk, uncut but banded with silver. There was also a drawing table, a bowl of perfume, a few books, and a garland of amaranths. Further off was a sort of round chair or tabouret, a chest containing a chess board, and a low table for dicing. In the outer apartment were cages for Jodindranath’s birds. He had a great many too many. There were separate small rooms for spinning, and one for carving in wood and such like dilettantismes. In the garden was a sort of merry-go-round of good rope, looking more or less like a May-pole. There was likewise a common see-saw or teeter, a greenhouse, a sort of rock garden, and two not too comfortable benches.

Jodindranath rose in the morning and brushed his teeth, after having performed other unavoidable duties as prescribed in the sutra, and he applied to his body a not excessive, as he considered it, amount of unguents and perfumes. He then blackened his eyebrows, drew faint lines under his eyes, put a fair deal of rouge on his lips, and regarded himself in a mirror. Then having chewed a few betel leaves to perfume his breath, and munched another bonne-bouche of perfume, he set about his day’s business. He was a creature of habit. That is to say, he bathed, daily. And upon alternate days he anointed his person with oil, and on the third day he lamented that the mossy substance employed by the earliest orthodox hindoos was no longer obtainable. He had never been brought to regard soap with complaisance. His conscience was troubled, both as to the religious and social bearing of this solidified grease. He suspected the presence of beef-suet, it was at best a parvenu and Mohametan substance. Every four days he shaved, that is to say, he shaved his head and his visage, every five or ten days he shaved all the rest of his body. He meticulously removed the sweat from his arm-pits. He ate three meals daily; in the morning, afternoon and at evening as is prescribed in the Charayana.

Immediately after breakfast he spent some time instructing his parrots in language. He then proceeded to cock-fights, quail-fights and ram-fights; from them to the classical plays, though their representations have sadly diminished. He slept some hours at mid-day. Then, as is befitting to the head of an house, he had himself arrayed in his ornaments and habiliment and passed the afternoon in talk with his friends and acquaintance. The evening was given over to singing. Toward the end of it Jodindranath, as the head of his house, retaining only one friend in his company, sat waiting in the aforementioned perfumed and well arranged chamber. As the lady with whom he was at that time connected did not arrive on the instant, he considered sending a messenger to reproach her. The atmosphere grew uneasy. His friend Mohon fidgeted slightly.

Then the lady arrived. Mohon, his friend, rose graciously bidding her welcome, spoke a few pleasant words and retired. Jodinranath remained. And for that day, the twenty fifth of August, 1916, this was his last occupation. In this respect the day resembled all others.

This sort of thing has gone on for thirty five hundred years and there have been no disastrous consequences.

As to Jodindranath’s thoughts and acts after Mohon had left him, I can speak with no definite certainty. I know that my friend was deeply religious; that he modeled his life on the Shatras and somewhat on the Sutra. To the Kama Sutra he had given minute attention. He was firmly convinced that one should not take one’s pleasure with a woman who was a lunatic, or leperous, or too white, or too black, or who gave forth an unpleasant odor, or who lived an ascetic life, or whose husband was a man given to wrath and possessed of inordinate power. These points were to him a matter of grave religion.

He considered that his friends should be constant and that they should assist his designs.

He considered it fitting that a citizen should enter into relations with laundrymen, barbers, cowmen, florists, druggists, merchants of betel leaves, cab-drivers, and with the wives of all these.

He had carefully considered the sizes and shapes and ancient categories of women; to wit, those which should be classified as she-dog, she-horse, and she-elephant, according to their cubic volume. He agreed with the classic author who recommends men to choose women about their own size.

The doctrine that love results either from continuous habit, from imagination, from faith, or from the perception of exterior objects, or from a mixture of some or all of these causes, gave him no difficulty. He accepted the old authors freely.

We have left him with Lalunmokish seated upon the bed humped in the middle. I can but add that he had carefully considered the definitions laid down in the Sutra; kiss nominal, kiss palpitant, kiss contactic, the kiss of one lip and of two lips (preferring the latter), the kiss transferred, the kiss showing intention. Beyond this he had studied the various methods of scratching and tickling, and the nail pressures as follows: sonorous, half moon and circle, peacock-claw, and blue-lotus.

He considered that the Sutra was too vague when it described the Bengali women, saying that they have large nails, and that the southern women have small nails, which may serve in divers manners for giving pleasure but give less grace to the hand. Biting he did not much approve. Nor was he very greatly impressed with the literary tastes of the public women in Paraliputra. He read books, but not a great many. He preferred conversation which did not leave the main groove. He did not mind its being familiar.

(For myself I can only profess the deepest respect for the women of Paraliputra, who have ever been the friends of brahmins and of students and who have greatly supported the arts.)

Upon the day following, as Jodindranath was retiring for his mid-day repose, his son entered the perfumed apartment. Jodindra closed the book he had been reading. The boy was about twelve years of age. Jodindra began to instruct him, but without indicating what remarks were his own and what derived from ancient authority. He said:—

“Flower of my life, lotus bud of the parent stem, you must preserve our line and keep fat our ancestral spirits lest they be found withered like bats, as is said in the Mahabharata. And for this purpose you will doubtless marry a virgin of your own caste and acquire a legal posterity and a good reputation. Still the usage of women is not for one purpose only, for what purpose is the usage of women?”

“The use of women,” answered the boy, “is for generation and pleasure.”

“There is also a third use,” said his father, “yet with certain women you must not mingle. Who are the prohibited women?”

The boy answered, “We should not practise dalliance with the women of higher caste, or with those whom another has had for his pleasure, even though they are of our own caste. But the practise of dalliance with women of lower caste, and with women expelled from their own caste, and with public women, and with women who have been twice married is neither commanded us nor forbidden.”

“With such women,” said Jodindranath, “dalliance has no object save pleasure. But there are seasons in life when one should think broadly. There are circumstances when you should not merely parrot a text or think only as you have been told by your tutor. As in dalliance itself there is no text to be followed verbatim, for a man should trust in part to the whim of the moment and not govern himself wholly by rules, so in making your career and position, you should think of more things than generation and pleasure.

“You need not say merely: ‘The woman is willing’ or ‘She has been two times married, what harm can there be in this business?’ These are mere thoughts of the senses, impractical fancies. But you have your life before you, and perchance a time will come when you may say, ‘This woman has gained the heart of a very great husband, and rules him, and he is a friend of my enemy, if I can gain favor with her, she will persuade him to give up my enemy.’ My son, you must manage your rudder. And again, if her husband have some evil design against you, she may divert him, or again you may say, ‘If I gain her favor I may then make an end of her husband and we shall have all his great riches’. Or if you should fall into misfortune and say, ‘A liaison with this woman is in no way beset with danger, she will bring me a very large treasure, of which I am greatly in need considering my pestilent poverty and my inability to make a good living.’

“Or again: ‘This woman knows my weak points, and if I refuse her she will blab them abroad and tarnish my reputation. And she will set her husband against me.’

“Or again: ‘This woman’s husband has violated my women, I will give him his own with good interest.’

“Or again: ‘With this woman’s aid I may kill the enemy of Raja, whom I have been ordered to kill, and she hides him.’

“Or again: ‘The woman I love is under this female’s influence, I will use one as the road to the other.’

“Or: ‘This woman will get me a rich wife whom I cannot get at without her.’ No, my Blue Lotus, life is a serious matter. You will not always have me to guide you. You must think of practical matters. Under such circumstances you should ally yourself with such women.”

Thus spoke Jodindra; but the council is very ancient and is mostly to be found in the Sutras. These books have been thought very holy. They contain chapters on pillules and philtres.

When Jodindranath had finished this speech he sank back upon one of the cylindrical cushions. In a few moments his head bowed in slumber. This was the day for oil. The next day he shaved his whole body. His life is not unduly ruffled.

Upon another day Jodindranath said to his son, “There are certain low women, people of ill repute, addicted to avarice. You should not converse with them at the street corners, lest your creditors see you.”

His son’s life was not unduly ruffled.

(Six Letters of William Bland Burn to his Wife)

Wyndham Lewis

Petrograd, January 7, 1917.

Dear Lydia,

Your amiable letter to hand. I am glad Yorke’s cold is better. He has not a throat of iron—tout comme son pere. But I should not wrap it up—When he hears me in the house he always comes leaping in my direction; but the moment he sees me, he seems to grow old and sober, rather than shy, and when he gets within about five yards of me, makes some innocently aggressive remark. I wish I could see him more. These long absences at the ends of the Earth prevent that. He thinks me a casual beggar I believe.

I am glad you ask me those questions. “Why not be happy?” The chief use of a wife, after love, is to disgust you with your weaknesses, and to watch them constantly returning, by all sorts of bye-ways, to the attack. Or rather they seem to regard a wife as ideal “cover,” and a first-rate avenue of return. You kick one out one day, and you find him the next skulking beneath your wife’s petticoat waiting his chance. The conjugal skirt is a trap from which, any day you feel like hunting, you can return with a full bag.

“Why not be happy?” That is, why not abandon the plane of exasperation and restlessness, and be content with the approximations and self-deceptions of the majority? Well, of course happiness of that sort is not within my grasp, if I wished it. But why expect from you a perpetual discipline? That discipline is however, at least as easy for you as for me, if you think of it. The serenity and ease with which you accomplish the most gruesome self-restraints at first surprised me—until I remembered that you did not take them seriously, like me, or suffer from their necessity. Not having a sense of values (very roughly a masculine corner) but only the complacency of an obedient mummer, you cover the harshest ground with Spartan face. It is only when you are left alone that you complain or question seriously. You forget a little the intricacies of our ceremonial dance, and find that worrying. Don’t be offended at what I have been saying. You need not be ashamed of being calmly hypnotic. Yorke was older than you when he was born. We should all be mad if our mothers did not invigorate us with the airs of a twinkling, early and sweet world, and feed us with a remote “happiness.”

You want more “happiness,” though, for your child. Why? I would not be anything but what I am (unless I could find something “unhappier”) and why should he, in the future, wish to be anything but what I think he will become? There is an intoxication in the vistas of effort and self-castigation which cannot be bought with “happiness.” Again you might say, “Why be so hard on this person or on that, and not accept him as a “good fellow,” or take him at the valuation of the world, and derive amusement and sentimental satisfaction from him, Richards, Hepburn, Tom, Mrs. Fisher Wake etc., etc. They have all been “quarrelled with.” That is, I have not been civil, and we do not see them. But I have left you a Menu of equally amusing birds to while away life with. You would have quarrelled with the first lot in time and in due course on unreasonable grounds, if I had not forestalled you. I have merely done the job cleanly and reasonably. Clean is not the word, you argue, for this cold-blooded process. It is not veiled in the forms and frenzies of life, but indecently done before people shocked into attention. The intellect is cruel and repugnant. Dirty, that is. (Everything loathesome is related to dirt).

I am attributing a line of argument to you and a tone, which your questions do not warrant. But I am taking them to their ultimate development. I must always do this, c’est mon mal et mon gloire.

Thousands of beautiful women have spent their lives in cloisters; there are millions of old maids. When I am with you I show a full, if not excessive, appreciation of your sex. You have a child. With a sort of lofty cunning you dote on my cleverness and improve your own. You would not be with me if you required anything much different from what you get. But still you deplore some of my notions and habits. I suspect my friend Villerant of having smiled at my naivete, and also suggested that in some things I was cracked and difficult.

I will follow the line of argument that your questions imply: “Why not ease off a little?” You would say, “You will admit that it is uncomfortable to be at loggerheads with anybody. You flatter a person by taking so much notice of him as to turn your back.”

(At this point I interject: “It is nevertheless more comfortable for me, in the long run, to be rude than to be polite. It is a physical discomfort not to show, after a time, my feelings.”)

You continue: “Being so easily disgusted with people suggests a naive idealism. We are all ridiculous, looked at properly, by means of our little forked bodies. We are disgusting physically (except a few in their fluffy and velvety youth). So why carp, and glare, and sheer off? Take life, in the English-civilized way, as a joke; our funny bodies and their peculiar needs, our ambitions, greeds, as comic stunts of an evidently gentleman-creator, who is most unquestionably “a sport.”

At this point, my dear lady, I am going to stop you, and bring in the counter-flux; release the over-mounting objections.

First. I feel that we are obviously in the position of Ulysses’ companions; and there is nothing I resent more than people settling down to become what is sensible for a swine. I will still stalk about with my stumpy legs, and hold my snout high, however absurd it may be. We must get through this enchantment without too many memories of abasement. We most need, in the inner fact, changing back into men again! And I don’t want the “happiness” of the swill-pail, but a perpetual restlessness until the magic is over! I set out somewhere on a legendary expedition= I do not date from Nineteen Two.= I do not feel like sniggering over our plight. I am permanently in a bad temper!= (I am not a “a sport.”)

So! So! So!

Society, most people, have their little bit of beauty and energy which is a small compartment of life. The rest is the gentleman-animal, which ambles along, the end-in-itself= oh yes!

I do not like the gentleman-animal. He is a poor beast. His glory is to belong to a distinguished herd. He prefers to himself a Human Cliche of manners, catch-phrases, fashionable slang, herd-voice (when he Baas the well-instructed can instantly tell that he comes from a very distinguished herd; or from a quite good herd; or from a respectable herd; as the case may be). When he hears a similar Baa he pricks his ears up, and Baas more loudly and lispingly himself, to show his label and that he is there, he prefers a code which is, most of it, imbecile in its inductions, impracticable, and not holding water. Human weakness, human need—is the worse for a gloss. You do not agree? I have that feeling very strongly.

But I have amplified too much, and will return to what I wished immediately to say.= The best that most people can see is the amiable-comic, the comfortable, the advantages of the gentleman-animal. I, who see beauty and energy so much that they bulk and outweigh a thousand times these cowardly contentments and pis-allers, why should you expect me to admit society as anything but an organized poltrooney and forgetfulness? The gentleman-animal has his points. And it is just when he is successful that we should dislike him most. For he is the most cunning effort of society to close its eyes and clog its ears. He is the great sham reconciliation and justifying of ease.

I must leave you at this, my dear woman, as I have to correct proofs wanted tomorrow and twice written for.= In glancing through what I have written in this letter, I find things that, were I writing for any but a familiar ear, would require restating. There is an implication, for instance, that enthusiastic herd-man could, if he would, produce some excellent ego in place of his social self, and that it is this immoral waste of fine material that I object to= whereas of course he is radically boring and obnoxious. He is a perfect metis, the gentleman-animal, having crossed consummately his human and inhuman qualities. I like to see things side by side, perfectly dual and unmixed. Neither side of a man is responsible for the other.

But you know my ideas on these subjects and can dialogue for me as I have for you.

I wish, Lydia, you were here, with your body rasping under mine now. We could beat out this argument to another tune.

Send me more of Villerant’s Aunt Sally’s, or anybody else’s, to bowl at. I like these immemorial phizzes stuck up within easy reach. I have bags full of cocoa-nuts!

As far as I can see I shall be stopping over here at least another six weeks. The war continues! I was sorry to hear Grant had been blown up. It sounds like a practical joke. I hope Pampas will take care of himself.= Much occurs here of the strangest. The Russian factor is quite curious in this game. It is really, much more than the other countries, a theatre to itself, carrying on a play of quite a different description. Kiss Yorke for me. All love to yourself.

Yours, William Burn.

(Next letter of series will appear in June number.)

Morris Ward

To G. M. Chadwick

The New Dawn

“You have slept long, oh heart! And you, my heart’s dear comrade, whom men call Beauty—why have you awakened me once more and made my bed no longer roses but sharp thorns?”—“Too many are yet asleep: they have slept overlong. You must awaken now and once more, in this golden dawning, sing to them and to this silence round about them out of your soul’s rich pain, out of your body’s weariness. Sing, then, sing!”—“I will, dear my heart, my Beauty, I will! But oh, the silence, this silence!”

At Evening

The lamp shines low in the silent room, and the lonely poet dreams of long-forgotten evenings. Putting aside the volume in my hand I caress the sumptuous fur of the cat asleep on my knees, crooning to myself the while an old old folk song. Without, stretching far away into the horizon, the fields of golden wheat sway to and fro under the moon’s full light; and on the screen of the window a single moth clings motionless, its fire-like eyes drinking long draughts of the light which it cannot reach.—Oh moth! why should you love so well the thing that seeks your death?...

An Invocation

You who love Beauty as the bee loves the flower, as the bird loves the air—hail! You who lie awake at night dreaming of the Beauty that is in the world yet not of the world—all hail! You whose life is like a broken song trailing through the ceaseless monotone of human things—hail and farewell!

We were not long together, but haply neither will soon forget. Almost we understood each other, and in all the world there is no word that touches life so quickly as “almost”. And on that word we parted.

Because you have not learned that Beauty never stops to kiss her chosen ones. You do not know that with her sweet, too-sweet and awful breath alone does she condemn them to journey forever from flower to flower by day, by night from star to star. Even as you journey, a frail, wondrous and ghostly being, pouring forth your pain-mad melodies, broken melodies, ceaselessly yearning toward the verge of that perfection ... ah! and you would have me leap into those chill profundities, out of the world, out of your dear remembrance, out of the bright sun’s warmth, forever!

Hear me, passionate stricken one! Hear me this once: then if you will forget me; if you can remember still.—For I have pondered on the rune of dreams and therein I have read:

That Beauty is always in the search and in the seeker; it is a wandering and not a goal; a wave and not the sea; a flame and not the candle:

It is that soul which is not man, nor woman, nor child, nor anything at all save one long shattered cry echoing down the galleries of stupendous night!

It is this cry that I now send to you, valiant and wayward one, my sister:——

This, and once more, this: “Hail and farewell.”

The Lover’s Lament

Once in the waning of an autumn day, as I was reading to my beloved from a little book of verse, I came upon the lines: “They are not long, the days of wine and roses: out of a misty dream....” But suddenly a flower-like hand covered the page from my eyes and the moment of sweet gladness that was mine vanished like the saffron tints from the clouds beyond, as I felt her arms steal about my body and saw her mute poppy lips craving yet another kiss—yet another kiss.

Wanderers

Dreaming one night of a triumphant journey along the Milky Way, traversing the Infinite from world to world as though on flaming cushions, I was awakened by a dull shuffling noise outside my door. I listened for a moment: “Ah, it is only the old blind woman across the hall, stumbling in the darkness on the way to her room.”—And I went to sleep again, but my dream had gone forever....

The Accursed

“Into the same river thou mayst not step twice!” Oh sage grim one, weaver at a sable loom, Heraclitus,—arise from your ashes and I will show you a woman so fair that looking on her you will love, and loving, nevermore plait your sombre nets of Change!—“Into the same river thou mayst not step twice!”—Not even if the river’s name is Love? Answer me, spirit of desperation, ruthless passer-by: not even Love?—Silence, only silence, and the continual hasting of waters down to the sea....

Ennui

I am tired of dancing and song, of pictures and the words that men ceaselessly utter without need. And of my own dancing and song, of my own visions and unavailing speech I am more tired still.—If so it might be, I would like to have a room at the top of a tower, far above the earth: a room consecrated to silence, where only the night could enter. And there I would sit forever by the window, receiving the benedictions of the stars, and watching in the moon’s pale disc the reflections in lovers’ eyes as they drank from one another at the sorrowful fountains of illusion.

The Rose-Jar

Rose-jar, soft to the finger’s touch, rose-jar like a maiden’s breast, thou chance issue from the womb of Beauty—what coarse-mouthed potter turned thee on his wheel, shaping thee from the inert clay? And in what ancient garden bloomed the flowers now so dry within thy comely belly, now so very dry but oh so fragrant to the nostrils of the poet?—Rose-jar, soft to the finger’s touch, rose-jar like a maiden’s breast—and even thou some day will lie upon the earth and all thy loveliness and all thy perfume will return again unto the clay ... unto the clay beneath swift brutal feet....

Vesperal

Clear-eyed evening, and thou, dark shadows, children of the moon, let us dance together a little while, and sing to one another antique melodies, compounded all of passion and youth and glad forgetfulness.—For soon the morning will come again out of the fateful East—the morning with all its sullen duties....

The June issue will contain:

The Little Review Bookshop is now open.

You may order any book you want from us and we have the facilities for delivering or mailing it to you at whatever time you specify.

You may come in and look over our stock and take your selections with you.

Some of the books you will want are these:

NOTE.—We have some interesting discussion for the Reader Critic this month, but owing to lack of space it will have to be held over until the next issue.

Garments created by Bertha Holley give the wearer the distinction in color and line of an artist’s portrait. Their beauty is essential, therefore permanent, and raises one forever above the confusion and extravagance of changing fashion. Moreover, each garment forms part of an accumulative, interchangeable wardrobe which may be acquired at once or gradually, as a booklover acquires books, and when complete enables the possessor to meet every occasion with variety and charm.

BERTHA HOLLEY

Twenty-one East Forty-ninth Street
New York City
Telephone: Plaza 1495

THE
MOUSE TRAP.

TEAS & LUNCHES

We move to 3 Sheridan Square Tuesday, May the fifteenth. You are cordially invited to have lunch, tea, or dinner. Open from twelve-thirty to eight.

Orders Taken for Studio Teas
3 Sheridan Square

“Hello Huck!”

Recall that golden day when you first read “Huck Finn”? How your mother said, “For goodness’ sake, stop laughing aloud over that book. You sound so silly.” But you couldn’t stop laughing.

Today when you read “Huckleberry Finn” you will not laugh so much. You will chuckle often, but you will also want to weep. The deep humanity of it—the pathos, that you never saw, as a boy, will appeal to you now. You were too busy laughing to notice the limpid purity of the master’s style.

MARK TWAIN

When Mark Twain first wrote “Huckleberry Finn” this land was swept with a gale of laughter. When he wrote “The Innocents Abroad” even Europe laughed at it itself.

But one day there appeared a new book from his pen, so spiritual, so true, so lofty that those who did not know him well were amazed. “Joan of Arc” was the work of a poet—a historian—a seer. Mark Twain was all of these. His was not the light laughter of a moment’s fun, but the whimsical humor that made the tragedy of life more bearable.

A Real American

Mark Twain was a steamboat pilot. He was a searcher for gold in the far West. He was a printer. He worked bitterly hard. All this without a glimmer of the great destiny that lay before him. Then, with the opening of the great wide West, his genius bloomed.

His fame spread through the nation. It flew to the ends of the earth, until his work was translated into strange tongues. From then on, the path of fame lay straight to the high places. At the height of his fame he lost all his money. He was heavily in debt, but though 60 years old, he started afresh and paid every cent. It was the last heroic touch that drew him close to the hearts of his countrymen.

The world has asked is there an American literature? Mark Twain is the answer. He is the heart, the spirit of America. From his poor and struggling boyhood to his glorious, splendid old age, he remained as simple, as democratic as the plainest of our forefathers.

He was, of all Americans, the most American. Free in soul, and dreaming of high things—brave in the face of trouble—and always ready to laugh. That was Mark Twain.

The Price Goes Up

25 VOLUMES Novels—Stories—Humor—Essays—Travel—History

This is Mark Twain’s own set. This is the set he wanted in the home of each of those who love him. Because he asked it, Harpers have worked to make a perfect set at a reduced price.

Before the war we had a contract price for paper, so we could sell this set of Mark Twain at half price.

Send the Coupon Without Money

L. R. 5
HARPER &
BROTHERS

Franklin Sq., N. Y.

Send me, all charges prepaid, a set of Mark Twain’s works in 25 volumes, illustrated, bound in handsome green cloth, stamped in gold, gold tops and untrimmed edges. If not satisfactory, I will return them at your expense. Otherwise I will send you $1.00 within 5 days and $2.00 a month for 12 months, thus getting the benefit of your half-price sale.

Little Review

Name ....................

Address .................

The last of the edition is in sight. The price of paper has gone up. There can be no more Mark Twain at the present price. There never again will be any more Mark Twain at the present price. Get the 25 volumes now, while you can. Every American has got to have a set of Mark Twain in his home. Get yours now and save money.

Your children want Mark Twain. You want him. Send this coupon today—now—while you are looking at it.

HARPER & BROTHERS, New York