The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. I, No. 2)

At any time the sight of a Don Quixote leveling an earnest lance at a mill is inspiring, hence a book called Degeneration, by one Max Simon Nordau, is worthy of attention. The book has been discussed pro and con as fully as it deserved. If not forgotten it is reserved for another generation to adjudicate its value. Enough that it has stirred up a valiant mess, out of which can come nothing but good.

As a whole it is worthless—it might well have been written by a son of Robert Elsmere and Mrs. Nickelby—for the mosaic of clever observation is wrought into a most grotesque picture. The perception of Mr. Nordau is fine, but his perspective is absurdly jumbled. The premises, logical enough, are made to form an absurd conclusion—yet the half-truths in the book are well worthy of note.

Genius was an abnormality long before Nordau found it out from Lombroso. Granted that everybody who has risen above the dead level of mediocrity is a maniac, let us head the list with Jesus of Nazareth. But does that detract from the value of their work or the good of their mission? Moses may have had asymmetrical ears, and Blind Homer been possessed with all sorts of mental afflictions. That is not the point. What Mr. Nordau does show us is that the literature of this decade is self conscious and that it is marked in general by a hopeless lack of unity. Not that these facts were discovered by the captious German: Good lack, they are apparent enough, but he has surely emphasized them. And the object of this is to say a say about the present non-importance of modern literature’s self consciousness and its lack of unity.

When one talks with a decrier of modernity, when our ears are stuffed with the prattle about self consciousness, should there be an attempt to say a word it is met with a flaunting statement about Homer. Homer is undeniably the great unsullied spring, the rock struck in the desert which pours forth a clear limpid stream. But the example does not serve. If Homer is pristine he is also primeval. Self consciousness in these days means nothing less than that one comprehends in part that momentous question of where we are at. Underlying which it means that it has a realizing sense of battles to fight and wrongs to retrieve. Marry and up, we might all be Homers had literature no past. The past is a millstone that has hung around the neck of many a sturdy man.

Truth to tell, there must be a certain self consciousness nowadays if anything is to be done. Besides, what is self consciousness? Not the kind that mistakes the medium for the work accomplished, but a genuine hearty self consciousness. Is it not manifestly absurd to deny to the father of an idea the most complete conception of his paternity? Can we interpret the works of an author in any other proportion than that which exists between our understanding and his?

But Nordau’s principal casus belli is the present diversity in literature, he thinks; its lack of unity—a segregation which denotes decay.

Pish!

Diversity is a step towards universality. And is not the present aspect due primarily to a self assertive spirit, a declaration of individual independence in literature, built upon the lack of single leaders and the abolition of a great literary center?

Take the literary capillarity of a great name. It has a marvelous effect, availing perhaps for all time, but scarcely to the succeeding generation. Dante, Shakespeare and the world’s sons are but the flood marks of a great literary tidal wave that crests with eternity. These marks leave such an influence on the next generation that they can only be viewed with wonder. And when that same next generation perceives that deeds were wrought on certain lines, behold a mad rush to build on the same, to blindly copy after the model, to servilely imitate the pattern. This is the damning power of the so-called classicists. Not having the original spontaneity, such doing accomplishes little more than to emasculate itself wittingly.

Trend is an unseen thread in the warp and woof of literature. It bobs about, hides here and there, and who will say but now and then it drops a stitch? Yet the weave goes on for all that. Achievement in the realm of the real and the realm of the ideal are rarely synchronous. Literature acted as a John the Baptist for the Renaissance. Artistic expression antedated for centuries the march of science. Why should we of the purple trouble ourselves if science should now be the vanguard. It will be a close finish at the End of Things.

The Sleeping Beauty is now all ready for the magic kiss. The Prince is perhaps bending over her. He has cut a way through the thorns, the briars and brambles that hedged her in. He has climbed the stairs and looks her at last squarely in the face. She will be awake while we yet pule and despair that there is no good in us and that if a good thing ever came out of Nazareth it was immediately and ignominiously pushed along by the rabble.

That’s a close analogue, that Sleeping Beauty. Literature wanted not for thorns and brambles. Conventions, artificial ties and misconceptions were of the prickliest kind. Those that spring up where empty ancient forms are worshipped always are, but we have had some Princes with strong buskins, who laughed at the stings and bade the small things do their worst.

Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites were of that kind. Walt Whitman lacked the princely qualities, the blue blood of prestige that would work the magic charm, but he was valiant for all that. And there have been others who have not lacked in bravery.

Now, it is just that hardihood that Nordau derides. Let him creak and carp, let others erect their idols and worship thereat. Even fetiches have their use. The world wags on, however, and the line is forming anew. We will be happy yet.

It is a Gargantuan task to get at the heart of this multiple age. He will be a Titan who does it.

Form antedates concept. Thus far have we journeyed on this way of ours—the leaven of concept and of form both have broken out in patches here and there. Let someone arise who can master both.

Then—

E. R. W.

Before George Du Maurier created the one complaisant female who is admitted into all the good society of Europe and America he achieved some fame as the author of a recipe for keeping peace in families. The good wife was to apply the prescription, and it read “Feed the Brute.” Whether this meant to keep a good cook or to cater to the element in human nature which the paradox of civilization constantly brings into abnormal prominence among the overwrought people Mr. Du Maurier describes, is not clear. The man as a whole or his grosser nature may be the brute referred to. But the policy of feeding the unidentified fauna of Mr. Du Maurier’s world is in no doubt. Modern custom has settled the most direct road to satisfaction of the men and women who compose society. You may see its sign boards at any formal social meeting, and they all point to the dining room.

When The Philistine said some time ago that hospitality had become an exchange he meant an exchange of food. There is no plainer way to state the fact—short of nausea. Of course hospitality does not start at eating. That is where it ends. The starting point is the purest courtesy—the caritas that “seeketh not her own,” “is not puffed up” and “abideth” as the head of the trinity of eternal virtues. But on the most generous of virtues grows the most selfish of vices, and ostentation is the death-dealing parasite that destroys primitive hospitality.

Mrs. Moor Gage lives in the suburbs. It is the proper place to live—if you can. She has neighbors and likes them. She calls, swaps cards with the ladies, imbibes a little hot water, and then gets along where her social position requires somebody should be fed. She is just as good as Mrs. Taxsale on the other avenue, so hospitality alone won’t fill the bill. A caterer must mince this dinner. Mr. Moor Gage must perspire later on, but now is feeding time. At much expense the food is arranged for. At more expense virgin dresses must be gotten together, if all hands stitch and try on till the hour the dinner comes. When they are gone, feeders and fed draw one breath of content. “It’s all over.”

Or, is it a reception. The hospitality is all in the front of the house. That’s where the receiving party are. But the procession doesn’t linger there. It moves rearward. The animals are to be fed. If one doubts the sincerity of this movement let him recall the comments of those who “couldn’t get to the dining room” at the last distribution of eatables.

Of course when Mrs. Taxsale opens her larder to her friends she will have a little better “stuff”—they really do call it by that name in competent society—and so the auction goes on. Sometimes card parties and other social efforts not primarily connected with digestion get mixed up with catering. The result is usually disastrous. Bidding gets too high for some of the members. The bargain day pace is too fast. There ends the card club.

There are persons, here and there, who think there is something finer than feeding in courtesy. They are Philistines. They object to materialism, even when it swamps only the things of this world. It is also reported, on somewhat vague evidence, that refined literary people are not so given to feeding as the common folks of Mr. Du Maurier’s world. It is to bear a suggestion to these that this is written. Literary persons being functionally the makers of custom have a great glory within easy reach. Let them crystallize their scattered atoms of protest in an Anti Free Lunch League. It may take some self denial, but there is the compensating pleasure of mutual admiration when they gather at a call like this:

Contemplation of the infinite fall will take the place of supper in a most edifying way. It is to be presumed that literary people have had something to eat at home.

The segregation of society thus begun will leave the materialists who compose its majority to follow out their instincts, and it will be reasonable to look for a vast improvement in eating entertainments in consequence. Mrs. Moor Gage and Mrs. Taxsale will then be freer to advertise their attractions—as thus:

“H. L.” means hot lunch, which may be varied indefinitely. It is plainly a great improvement on “Dancing at 9.” You get dancing everywhere. Specifications may be introduced. For those who don’t like bread pencils and ice cream shingles something more solid may be put on the bill of fare, which will in time serve as the invitation also.

The suggestion is made in the interest of sincerer living. If we are to “feed the brute,” why not say so?

W. M.

The taste for literature in homeopathic doses seems to be growing. If this thing keeps on, the time may come when knowledge will be put up like pills or wafers or tablets. And a great convenience it would be to the busy sons of American toil. If one wished to prepare an article on some historical subject, for instance, he could buy a box of Motley’s American Pills or Gibbon’s Roman Tablets, and take one after another until the requisite amount of historical information were absorbed. It would also be pleasant, if a gentle titillation of the literary senses were desired, to buy a few Richard Harding Davis wafers and lie down to delightful dreams. Or in case one’s conscience became unusually obstreperous, he could take Biblical tabules till his system was soaked with sanctity. If one’s pessimism were temporarily upmost, he could find plenty of Nordau’s pillules to help him enjoy his misery while the fit lasted. It’s a great scheme. Methinks the dim distant future holds a publisher’s announcement similar to this:

Herbert L. Baker.

Bot. Let me play the lion, too. I will roar, that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me; I will roar that I will make the duke say, “Let him roar again. Let him roar again.”

Quin. An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all.

All. That would hang us, every mother’s son.

Bot. I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us; but I will aggravate my voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an ’twere any nightingale.

To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven.

There is a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to cast stones and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to cast away; a time to rend and a time to sew; a time to keep silence and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.

I have seen the tribulation that God has given to the sons of men; yet He has made everything beautiful in its time: and I know that there is no good but for a man to rejoice and to do the good that he can in life: and I would have every man eat and drink and enjoy the fruit of his labor, for this is the gift of God.

Our neighboring city of Buffalo is to be congratulated. The International League of Press Clubs will convene there next summer. A plumber who was accidentally blackballed by the Buffalo club writes me that they will come “some in rags and some in jags.”

If the women who wheel did but know it they would undoubtedly be influenced by the fact, patent to all men, that all the compromise garments for bicycle wear are hideous. There is no beauty in and of any of them. The more cut off they are the worse. There is only one element of grace about drapery, and that is in its flowing lines. The cut-off Russian blouses are no lovelier than a high hat or a hydrant cover. By and by, when Philistine good sense shall have won dominion over the ladies who bike, it will be discovered by them that there is no essential impurity in dress. The woman who does masculine things should wear masculine covering. Why not? Is it to be assumed that the pedal branches of the human form divine are by any natural law under ban? Or is it custom that makes the difference? If so, it will be deemed indecent one of these days to drape the arms, now hidden in balloons, in the tight sleeves of our elder sisters.

It may be guessed at a venture, there being no authority except that nebulous tyranny that controls all matters of feminine custom, that the difficulty would be met in some measure if the fair wheelers did not have to get off the machine in public view. Even a man is apt to be embarrassed when he walks the pavement with a clamp around his nether drapery, both looking and feeling as if he had been through burdocks and come away loaded. It is of easy recollection how one feels on the board walk with clinging garments that were all right in the water a moment ago. The ladies might be willing to wear knickerbockers—and they ought to be told that in nothing else would they look so well—if by some contrivance a fall of drapery sheltered the too-freely evidenced pedestals of beauty when off the wheel. What Felix will invent such a curtain and a way of keeping it out of the way when not wanted? Here is an opening for genius—and a beneficent one, for by such devices is civilization advanced.

Mrs. Frank Guesslie has written an article on How My Husbands Proposed. It will be syndicated by the National Thought Supply and Newspaper Feeding Company.

A newspaper that does much show printing announces in big headlines: “A Woman Clown. The Only One Is With Barnum and Bailey.” Barnum and Bailey reside in different climates just now. That “only” woman clown must be as ubiquitous as Sydney Smith’s Scot.

The Boston Woman’s Rescue League has the champion non sequitur. The league is against bicycling by women, and announces the startling discovery that “thirty per cent of the girls that have come to the Rescue League for aid were bicycle riders at one time.” Probably one hundred per cent of the same were innocent girls at one time. Maybe it was when they biked.

I understand there’s a movement in the Back Bay gravel pit of Boston, Mass., to abolish the word “Mr.” on calling cards. Some of the three-named have been a little crowded for space, perhaps, or it may be that they dimly realize that it isn’t good taste to call oneself by a complimentary title. Some clergymen refuse to sign “Rev.” before their names, or put it in parenthesis as if to have it beyond their personal reach, as New England ladies write “(Miss)” and others “(Mrs.)”. Good Philistines need not be told that Mr. means Master and is a compliment in the second person. It is of a piece with lifting the hat, theoretically a helmet, to the person whom you respect. That was the old time vote of confidence. You thus expressed the belief that he wouldn’t brain you with a broadsword at the first opportunity. Giving the hand was another token of disarmament as a mark of confidence. Bowing the head also invited the knightly salute with any convenient weapon. With this went a more or less sincere confession of his imputed power. You called him “master,” which became “mister” by corruption. Our imitative good society has forgotten the meaning of the thing it imitates, as usual. Our ready-made coats of arms seldom fit. He that is greatest calls himself servant, according to good authority, and not master. Even Beacon Hill and the adjacent desert seems to have come to a realization of the fact. We may look for the cards of John De Smythe Smythe or Perkins Hopkinson Revere with Mr. in brackets or omitted one of these days.

“Mamma,” said seven-year-old, in the suburbs, “when will somebody’s house or somebody’s barn burn up?”

“I don’t know,” said mamma, “I hope never. But I suppose they will sometime.”

“Well,” said the son, with a sigh, “it’s an awful long time since we had a good fire.”

Thus we see that even calamity may furnish entertainment for the simple and sincere.

Rock & Bumball, of Chicago, announce a new volume by Gallbert Faker. Its title is Scenes in the Boshy Hills.

Several mighty and high church bishops in this country are out against “the new woman.” It is noted that they don’t say anything against “the old woman” in general or in particular.

How to Carry a Cat in a Basket is the attractive title of an article to appear in the forthcoming Ladies’ Fireside Fudge, from the pen of its gifted editor, Mr. E. W. Sok.

There are things in these maxnordo days that are enough to make a man strike his father—for something besides a loan. For instance, a few weeks since we had the peculiar spectacle of the Marquis of Queensbury being done up by his son according to London rules; and now in the last issue of the Chip-Munk we see “A Recent Writer in Scribner’s” well cuffed by a boy of whom he is the author. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” etc.

Judge Tourgee is still making straw without bricks in the Basis.

Now that Mrs. Cady Stanton has launched her Woman’s Bible, let her prepare to enter a woman’s heaven. The men won’t be in it.

Robert Grant is getting democratic. He is down as far as the summer girl in the current Scribner.

The Napoleon on the Hearth is a new magazine announced from New York. It will bear the subtitle, Every Man His Own Bonaparte Revival.

A new book by Mr. Poultry Bigead is about ready. It will be called My Collection of Stones from Cherries Eaten by the German Emperor, and will contain a frontispiece of Cavalry Horses Having Spasms, by a well known artist.

On what ought to be very good authority I am told that if the women who wheel adopt knickerbockers, there will be more care of the female infants of the next generation. Some of the ladies who most strongly object to the advanced and advancing style are said to have good reasons in the matter of physical conformation. I know parents who are very careful not to let their boy babies stand alone too early, fearing bow legs. Perhaps the parents of the future will be equally careful about their girlies, in view of the changing fashion in nether drapery.

Apropos of this, I know a very pleasant little lady—pleasant, but thin—whose brother is a sad wag. “Adelaide,” he said to her last Tuesday, “if you wear those new knickerbockers of yours out on the street, you’ll get yourself arrested for having no visible means of support.”

It is asserted that Mr. George A. Hibbard is perfectly serious.

It is really too bad that a magazine which lives up to its standard so well as the Overland Monthly should try to make us believe that its illustrations are much better than those in Frank Leslie’s Budget.

How I Wrote the Account of How I Wrote My First Book, by General Louisa Wallace, author of Bob Hur, is announced.

I have received through Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, publishers of a Methodist dictionary and other works of erudition and vital piety, an invitation to vote aye on a large number of changes of words in common use—mostly in the fonetic direction. Simplicity is the apparent aim. There is a good deal of retrospect in the list. Some of the spellings that were licked out of us when we were boys seem like old friends come back to ask our pardon. The old days are with us when we are told to spell “skul,” for example. The evisceration of sacred words is a little arbitrary. “Savior” is spelt without the full-mouthed British “u,” dear to every lover of the Prayer Book, but Antichrist isn’t economized at all. “Pel-mel” looks it, if a word ever did. “Graf” is something to be guessed at, and one may ask if “adulterin” is something to eat. The fonetix didn’t reach Czar, or perhaps our M. E.—me friends are respecters of persons. However, they shortened “pontiff” by an “f,” and I wouldn’t be surprised if His Holiness masqueraded as “Pop” in the next circular. It is interesting, if not impressive, this reform—like the abbreviation of bicycle clothes and the sending of bad writing by wire.

That choking female on the cover of the Mid-Continent is still tottering, but hasn’t tumbled yet. Neither have the publishers, it would seem.

A hammock and a book and a horse and a yacht are really enough to begin with for Robert Grant. He says as much in Scribner’s and he doesn’t care a dam for Newport for a week or two. How little the things of this vain world appeal to those who can have them by touching a button.

It runs in the Howl family. W. Dean has a daughter who puts her poems under display ad heads in Scribner’s. The decorative head is the thing. The poem just belongs.

The last Century is not so distinctly medieval as some of its predecessors.

Mrs. Robert Humphrey Elsmere Ward has quit twaddling for a space. “Bessie Costrell” is ended, and it’s a toss up between jubilate and nunc dimittis.

The current Atlantic is very pacific—not to say mild.

The June Chautauquan really praises “newspaper English.” This is the time of year when the Reservation wants all the newspaper English it can get for nothing.

The amazing thing about that Amazing Marriage is the lot of talk the proof reader has read about it.

Tarbell discovered Napoleon, but McClure discovered Tarbell. Now let’s have a series of living documents—“Tarbell at 8,” “Tarbell at 9:30,” “Tarbell at 46,” etc.

The World, the Flesh and the Devil have gone out of partnership in the ’Frisco News-Letter. The head of the firm retires.

AFTER THE MANNER OF MR. STEAMIN’ STORK.