The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. I, No. 4)

In Mr. Cudahy’s remarkable book entitled The Pawns of Chance there are Sixteen Women who Did. Its sure success is prophesied on this account, for of the five novels that have made ten-strikes during the past year each has contained at least One Woman who Did, and in two instances Several.

And right here, before referring further to Mr. Cudahy’s book, I wish to place on file a modest word of protest concerning the modern sex novel.

Just now the stage and story-book seem to vie with one another in putting on parade the Men and Women who Did for the delectation of those who Have or May. The motif in all these books and plays is to depict the torturing emotions that wring and tear the hearts of these unhappy mortals. The Camp of Philistia does not boast that there are in it no People who Did, neither do we deny the reality of the heartaches and tears that come from unrequited love and affection placed not wisely. But from a somewhat limited experience in wordily affairs I arise to say that life does not consist entirely in these things, and furthermore that the importance given to the Folks who Have is quite out of proportion to their proper place with the procession. There are yet loves that are sweet and wholesome; there are still ambitions that are manly and strong. Let’s write and talk of these.

But still even in spite of a morbid plot and many incidents that are rather bluggy, Mr. Cudahy has produced a work that probably will outsell any of the other volumes issued by Chicago’s Enterprising Decadent Publishers. This book has a few positive virtues. Evidently it is a collaboration. I think the author has employed some exceptionally bright apprentices and like Dumas the Elder, Mr. Cudahy is to be congratulated on the rare discrimination shown in choosing his help. In literature, as in commerce or war, much depends on selecting one’s aides: every good general must be properly reinforced.

The prospectus of The Pawns of Chance describes the binding of the book as “a symphony in pig-skin.” And the volume is certainly very pleasing to the eye. The paper is hand-made—deckle edge; the illustrations and etchings on Japan paper; and the portrait of the author that serves as frontispiece is a genuine work of art.

The space in The Philistine at my disposal will not admit of an extended criticism, so I will briefly trace the plot, and make a few casual remarks on the more important situations, trusting that my readers will procure the work and each read for himself. For while its faults are many, yet there are here and there redeeming features, and in the moral at the close is a suggestion that is worth one’s while.

Now for the story:

James Hunks, known on the bills as Signor De June, was in 1875 proprietor of a Ballet Troupe. The corps de ballet consisted of sixteen ladies who were personally selected by Signor De June, and trained by him so that they performed some very wonderful terpsichorean evolutions. Eight of these women were blondes and eight brunettes. Surprising to state, none were over thirty and none under twenty years of age. But they were all Women who Did—that is to say, Ladies with a Past.

Not that they were selected on this account; indeed, Signor De June did not interest himself in their Experiences—he only wanted form and intellect—but mostly form. Yet a coryphee must have brains, else she could not learn to conduct her airy shape through the mazy evolutions of the dance.

But it came about by degrees that Signor De June learned that all of his ladies were Ladies with a History. And being a philosopher, he reasoned it out that the ballet was the only respectable calling that was open to a woman who had been the victim of misplaced love. Such is the bitter cruelty of a sham-virtuous society.

And thus on page 141 Signor De June muses as follows: “Had my ladies been possessed of homely faces and crusty manners, no temptation could have come to them, and they would all have lived and died virtuous maidens; or at best been the contented (or discontented) wives of farmers, molders, bricklayers or mill hands. But being loving and gracious and sympathetic and withal beautiful, they have been unfortunate. Furthermore no woman should ever speak of her virtue unless she hates her husband and loves another man.”

So Signor De June was very kind and gentle with these ladies—aye! tender. He loved them all; he guarded and shielded them from every fierce temptation. It was a pure paternal love—more properly Platonic. He only wished to make them happy—that was all.

They gave exhibitions in the principal cities of the United States and were everywhere successful. Occasionally a husband or a former lover of one of these Women who Did would appear upon the scene, and whenever this happened the Signor, who was a large man and ambi-dextrous, would take the offender neck and crop and throw him out. This always cooled the most amorous follower, but it kept Signor De June quite busy. Yet it must not be thought that the Signor was brutal—far from it: all were welcome to worship his ladies, but it must be done from the parquette or dress circle.

So they were all very prosperous and very happy, until one day the wife of Signor De June appeared and camped upon his trail. He had gotten an Indiana divorce from this woman five years before, but the courts had pronounced it invalid, and now she was upon him neck and crop, just as he had been upon the lovers and husbands. He tried to explain to her that he loved the Corps de Ballet, not the ladies individually. He loved them as a Whole, not singly. Moreover, his love was idyllic—Platonic. The wife explained that the thing did not exist except in books, and further stated her belief that the love was Plutonic if anything; and moreover it must cease.

No doubt the woman really loved Mr. Hunks. He, too, had a little regard for her, although they quarrelled. But he was essentially commercial—a man of peace. He had no stomach for a legal battle with his wife’s attorneys, who had taken the case on speculation, and he could not run away. The woman utterly refused to be bought off for a reasonable sum, and she also declined joining the Ballet herself, in spite of De June’s assertions that he could love seventeen as well as sixteen, for in love capacity increases through use.

“Try it for a month and you will see that it is Platonic,” said De June.

“I’ve no doubt I’d find it so,” said the wife.

She still was firm. He must choose between her and the Troupe. If he chose the Troupe he’d have her, like the poor, always with him. If he chose her alone she would still resemble the poverty stricken; but there would come times when vigilance might relax and he could slip a way.

But what to do with the Troupe! He could not throw these beautiful, susceptible women on a struggling, seething, wicked world. He could not put them on a farm, for who would look after, correct, discipline and restrain them as he had done? If allowed to scatter they would marry, and marriage according to civilized methods, so-called, was a failure; had he not tried it?

But De June was a man of resource (he was from Chicago). They were in Denver and women were scarce. He would select husbands for his ladies, himself.

He did so, choosing sixteen strong fine young miners. Calling the men out one side, he made known to them his plan. Each man was to have a wife on payment of the trifling fee of two hundred dollars “matriculation” (Sic). The men were delighted—but had the ladies been consulted? No, that was not necessary—there was to be a return to primitive methods, which indeed were ever best: civilization was artificial, unnatural and corrupt.

These sixteen ladies were all of fair intelligence, good hearted, able to work, willing to obey. More than that they had great capacity for loving, for had not this excess of love been their misfortune? The love only needed proper direction, like all of our other gifts.

The sixteen gentlemen that the philosophic De June selected were of fair intelligence, healthy and good natured, prosperous and all men of fine physique. There was no choice in the men; there was no choice in the women; they were on the same intellectual plane—they were well mated and De June would not defeat the God of Chance by allowing any personal selection. One man offered a thousand dollars for first choice, but Mr. Hunks was a man of honor and could not be bought.

The gentlemen were to be in the parquette. When the ladies appeared on the stage, at the word “Go” from De June, the sixteen men were to make a rush for the stage and each seize his future wife. All after the manner of the Romans who captured the Sabine women—and I guess the Roman Nation is not to be sneezed at! Cæsar, Antony, Brutus and all the rest of those honorable men were products of just such marriages.

The rush was made—the women screamed, some fainted, but each man held his prize. The electric lights were turned off, the audience got out as best it could. Then the doors were locked, the curtain dropped and Signor De June stepped forward and in gentle words assured the sixteen ladies that no harm should come to them. All had been arranged for the best. They must be good honest wives, and the men must be good honest husbands, and Mr. Hunks, being a Justice of the Peace, declared them all man and wife—that is sixteen wives and sixteen husbands.

The women, it must be confessed, had grown a trifle weary of the De June Idyllic Plan; and in the good old-fashioned womanly way, oft in the night season, each had confessed in her own heart, that one loving husband for each woman was what Nature intended. So they accepted the situation, and each began to use those winning ways that Herbert Spencer says are woman’s weapons: woman conquers through her intuition.

At a word from De June the women repaired to their dressing rooms and soon appeared in customary feminine attire. This time the ladies had to pick their mates, for the change in dress greatly mystified the hirsute miners. There was a slight scramble among the ladies when three of them selected the same man, but the Signor soon brought order out of chaos. This scene, which occurs in chapter XXXIII, is quite dramatic.

All being amicably settled De June gave each woman a chaste kiss on the cheek, shook hands with the grateful miners and went sorrowfully back (with his $3,200.00) to the hotel where his Mary Jane sat up awaiting him.

That night Mr. Hunks and his wife left for Chicago. There he went into real estate and was very successful. Having resolved to face his fate, he treated Mary Jane as gently as he could and she repaid it all in kindness. So things were really not so bad as the Signor had imagined.

Ten years passed and Mr. Hunks went back to Denver and found that the sixteen couples were living happily. Many little pledges had appeared to cement the bonds. All were content and perfectly mated, although several of the men were a bit henpecked—but a man soon gets used to such things. (See page 491, line 16). The women having had Experience were resolved to hold their new found mates with love’s own bonds; and the men fearing to lose such beautiful treasures were ever kind. There was a little doubt in the minds of all concerning De June’s commission as Justice of the Peace, and then certain requirements of the divorce courts had not been fully met, but these irregularities put all on their good behavior. For it is a fact that if a mortal knows that his mate cannot get away he is often severe and unreasonable.

And the curious part of all this is that the story is true. Mr. Cudahy protests it on his honor, and declares that these sixteen worthy couples laid the foundation for the elite of Denver society, and are now the leading lights in that beautiful city.

The story is somewhat marred by such ungrammatical expressions as “has came,” “shouldn’t ought,” etc. There are also a needless number of French and Latin phrases, culled from a lexicon I fear, and a striving after Latin derivatives. It is also a pity that more pains was not taken with the proof reading, as exasperating errors are on nearly every page. Still these are minor points.

In the last four chapters there is considerable symbolism, which one cannot but wish had been put in plain English. Like Zangwill’s The Master, the moral is left for the last. It is a little clouded, but I take it that Mr. Cudahy believes that civilization’s plan of selection is very faulty. He suggests indirectly that Congress should appoint Matrimonial Commissioners for each district—men of discretion, experience and judgment. The Commissioner is to select from society sixteen marriageable young women and place them in a room, and then take a like number of young men and let them make a rush, and this, says Mr. Cudahy, would doubtless do away with many of our matrimonial misfits.

Lovers of literature will look anxiously for Mr. Cudahy’s next book, and in the meantime I am sure that the Young Decadents will reap a rich harvest from The Pawns of Chance. I am in receipt of a letter from the distinguished author wherein he says that he is positively declining all invitations to lecture in the provinces, but that he may appear late in the season in a few of our principal cities.

It may interest the Philistines to know that R. G. Dun & Co. rate Mr. Cudahy Z Z xxx 1, while Hobart Chatfield-Chatfield Taylor is only Y x 2 3·4 and Mrs. Reginald De Koven ranks K x 4. At the present moment I can recall but two residents of Grub Street who have ratings so high as Mr. Cudahy, these being William Waldorf Astor and Walter Blackburn Harte.

Elbert Hubbard.

An old and worn out Tart once sat on the pantry shelf and as it dried and stiffened, thus it soliloquized: “In my youth men fought over me, not to possess me, but that each should pass me to his neighbor.

“I was a fair Tart, greatly to be prized, but the manners of all were such that I was left alone on the table, the last of my kind, the Manners Tart, and they all withdrew, feigning indifference.

“The cook, having made many of my brethren, cared not for me, so I, created to rejoice the soul of man, sit here, a cold and cheerless thing at which the rats gnaw nightly.

“There was a little boy at the table, but why speak of him? He stretched out his hand for me, but detecting a slight frown between the eyebrows of his mother, he withdrew it and my chance was gone.

“The little boy was the only one that sympathized with me; he knew that a Tart is short lived at best; that the only modest ambition of a Tart is to gladden some one in life and to overhear a few words of praise as it passes away.

“But alas! I am a failure, and all because I move in a circle that makes a merit of self-sacrifice. I do not understand such things, but——” here a pang of mold struck to the Tart’s heart and it relapsed into unconsciousness.

If it had understood it would have said—“there are many joys in the world that die unrejoiced over because no man will have the courage to do what he wants to do.”

Clara Cahill Park.

Detroit, August, 1895.

The publishers of the Chap Book of July 15th have kept their promise to furnish original matter in one way perhaps not contemplated when they made mention of that booklet in their catalogue.

We can rest assured that Tacitus never wrote “emperasset” in the sentence quoted on page 174; we shall be slow to believe that the author of The Children of the Ghetto, in confusion of mind was referring empire and empirical to a common origin, mixing up the sons of Aeneas and Danaos after the fashion of Little Buttercup.

With perhaps a trifle less confidence we may acquit him of dragging into notice as a prominent name in English letters the hitherto obscure or wholly mythical “Carlysle,” who figures on page 177. But in excusing the writer from the fatherhood of these literary foundlings we are compelled to look to the publishers or at least to their proof-reader as the responsible man, a sense of decency no less than the requirements of this metaphor, repudiates the suggestion that he might after all turn out to be a woman, and whether the reproach belong at the door of the principals or of the workman is quite immaterial to us, the house must stand the breakage of glassware, not the bartender.

A matter of two typographical errors within the space of a single short article may seem but trifling subject for comment in a world where the surest footed at times slip, but one or two considerations make even such venial sins fit objects for animadversion. The publishers of the little fortnightly, in the manner of their issues if not in so many words, set themselves up, in a fashion, as guides in the matter of literary elegance, it behooves them therefore to take heed that the unwary be not led astray. “Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat,” nor should the venerable name of Caxton be made a laughing-stock in the mouths of scoffers.

W.

San Francisco, August, 1895.

To Mark Twain: I am awfully sorry you have lost all your money. I am in the same boat, but let’s not talk about it all the time.

ERIN (IRAN?) YEAR OF THE HEGIRA 94—VIA BROOKLYN.

To Robert Cameron Rogers: You are keeping the stage waiting.

My friend with the Sharp Scissors which edit the Table Talk column of the Buffalo Commercial had a few words to say the other evening regarding success. He alleged that Mr. Bok and Richard Harding Davis were successful men, and that it was the pleasure of unsuccessful people to jump on them mercilessly. I dislike to disagree with Mr. Quilp, but it seems to me that he belongs to that class of people who habitually miss the point of things.

The story in Gil Blas of the strolling player—true to what he deemed his art—working with commendable if misdirected energy, walking from town to town, and as he walked soaking his dry crusts in the water of wayside wells—this were a story of success. Success, it seems to me, lies not so much in having one’s name a commonplace among this great American public, which falls down to worship mediocrity if it is well advertised, as in doing one’s day’s work honestly and sincerely. To sing a song that finds its way into the hearts of men; to act a part that helps another toward his happiness, and do it all without blare of trumpets and jangle of hurdy-gurdy; and then walk on to the next town, stopping by the roadside wells to soak a dry crust in cool water, or, perhaps, a fresh cake in a mug of Bass as occasion served, and then, at the end, to lie down quietly, listening to the singing by the people of one’s own songs—though they know it not—presents a picture of a perfect harmony. This is the preachment of Stevenson and of men before him, and until a better one may be advanced this will serve. I would rather have written The Pavilion on the Links than Successward, or even Mr. Davis’s masterpiece, Van Bibber and the Swan Boats. Still, it is a matter of taste, and if one likes lactated food, roast mutton is bad for his stomach.

According to the prospectus Mr. Cudahy’s book fairly bristles with epigram: the bristles alone are said to be worth the money.

Probably Lawrence Hutton knows more about death masks than any living man. I cheerfully grant him this honor, but when he writes the advertising pages in Harper’s and springs them on an unsuspecting public as “Literary Notes,” I rebel. Rebellion is not, however, confined to mere objection to his sailing under false colors, but to such sentences as these from a recent number of Harper’s:

The italics are mine, and are put in simply to emphasize the occult meaning of Mr. Hutton, who belongs to the class which assumes to set the literary pace of the world. I doubt if Brander Matthews could do worse.

The portrait of Mr. Cudahy that is used as a frontispiece in his new book is a photograph from the original chromo, signed by the electrotyper.

It is reported to me that quite a large section of the Metropolitan colony sing their jubilate this way: “It is Howells that hath made us and not we ourselves—We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.”

“Papa,” said the smart boy at dinner, “does consomme mean consumed?”

“No, my son,” said the philologic pa, “consomme is from a Latin word, summum—all—and comes to us via the French. It means ‘all together’—the same as the Trilby pose.” And there was silence for the space of four seconds.

Somebody has sent me the prospectus of a magazine shortly to be published in Cincinnati. In spite of rumors to the contrary The Philistine will continue publication. Even The Century, although frightened, will let advertising contracts as heretofore. The Philistine, and supposedly other magazines, base their hopes of a longer existence not on their equal worth—for lo! it is but timorously we draw breath after reading this prospectus—but knowing that the new magazine will be keyed to so exquisite a pitch of literary supremacy that only a few from the world erudite may revel in such a rarified atmosphere. The birth of the periodical—from the prospectus—fittingly closes this momentous era. Evolution, hitherto satisfied with minute gradations, now forges ahead in a stupendous leap; we are diatoms, we scratch rudely on bones, and live in caves; we still bag the mastodon with embryonic pitfall, we shave with a shell and are only paleozoic microbes in a literary miocene age. We are mental fossils clogged in stratified oblivion—but we can’t help it, we are rudimentary and still possess some basal instincts such as love, religion, love of beauty and the like. But we never imagined how infinitesimal we were until the coming of that fatal prospectus. Now we realize that the groaning of the world, the extraordinary upheaval of the age, the quickening of the leaven, the quaking of the Zeit Gheist were but the premonitory travaillings of eternity before the awful nativity of this infant from Over-the-Rhine. The veil of our temple is rent and our suspenders are in hock. Mighty Spirit of the æons have mercy on us! we are worms! moribund, senile old things. Our ears are sessile, yet we hear the portents. In this hackneyed, conventional, sterile age somebody is going to be original! Prostrate we make obeisance. Spare us Original that is to be—spare us! But who t’ell started this Literary Fresh Air Fund, anyway?

“Three generations from the soil” may be a good rule of social eligibility after all. I know a family in one of our great lake cities which has ruled society therein for half a lifetime and it is only two removes from the mud. But savagery will crop out now and then, despite all the austerities of social custom and the perpetual effort to reach the calm of Nirvana and look as if life was a doosid bore. The delight of these, as of all savages, is to astonish the natives. When it can be done by driving a loping team of circus horses down the chief avenue of the city, that suffices. Another pet trick is to mass the family on the porch of the wooden-castled mansion on a Sunday morning and take their pictures in group, in full view of worshippers returning from church. The suggestion of a Ute reservation at such times is complete. When these fail to create a sensation, a yellow tally-ho driven madly through the narrowest streets of the Quartier Teuton, scattering dogs and babies, with whoops and horns and the mottled circus horses in the lead, does the business. It isn’t so long since the richest of our American nobility showed the craven blood of the materialistic sons of the bush, to whom brute life is everything. The American-English duel that failed is still an unpleasant memory. I mention these things only to illustrate the paradox of our days. We do labor hard to get rid of the joy of living and we call the new state culture and repose, when we get it. But the storage of force is a poor thing. It breaks out in abnormal ways and the acquisitive father is punished in his degenerate children to the third and fourth generation sometimes—and usually to the second.

I have received the second volume of Moods, which my Philadelphia correspondent calls Sulks. It is a retrograde from the first number in that in some places the printing is on both sides of the leaf. I had hope that Moods would continue its good work and in the second number leave both sides blank. As it is, however, I commend the first volume to that eminent figurer, Mr. Edward Atkinson of Boston, who may use the blank sides upon which to calculate what the other pages are good for. By the way, the announcement of the second volume contains a description of the type used, which is a reprint of the typefounder’s circular concerning the Jenson type. I would imagine that some of the geniuses of Moods could have at least written an original circular. The prospectus of the second volume contains a list of one hundred and seventeen stars—geniuses of the first magnitude—still as my friend of the Picayune says, “Though they twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, we wonder what they are.”

If McClure can give us more such exquisite stories as the Zenda tale in the August number, a good deal of reminiscent literature and living documents may be pardoned. Hope is better than memory, Mr. McClure.

Mr. Frank A. Munsey, who prints a picture book, of which eleven million copies are sold every four weeks, declares in a shrill, throaty falsetto that American literature at present is so and so; and that in the future he proposes to have it so. Mr. Oppenheimer of Rochester has not yet been heard from.

I hope no one suspects me of any disrespect toward Mr. Ham Garland of the Chicago Stock Yards, heretofore noticed in these columns. A correspondent reminds me that Mr. G. is favorably mentioned in the oldest records. The historian of the creation remarks “And Ham was the father of Canaan.”

Chicago’s Echo should be successful. It is taking from the foreign periodicals their very best of picturings and giving us a taste of the delightful fun of Fliegende Blætter, La Rire, and the rest—a fun which somehow we cannot produce in America, so Puck’s artists and those of Judge and a few others borrow the ideas and we pat ourselves on the back and say what a keen sense of humor we have. We are very funny—we Americans—funnier, by long odds, than we think. I notice, too, that The Echo knows another good thing when it sees it, so the editors have made the printers use my pet grape leaves for the beginnings of their paragraphs. For this compliment to my taste I thank The Echo.

What we are coming to in poetry is always a fascinating theme—like biking in the dark on a strange road. But what we are going away from is more satisfactory to contemplate. It is pleasant to think that Homer, the blind minstrel, and Omar, the tent maker, are fixed facts. They are the poles of verse—one standing for the heroic and romantic, self-unconscious and buoyant, the other for vampire introspection and fatalism which mistakes interior darkness for an eclipse of the universe. It is also consoling to know that such poetry as Francis Saltus Saltus’s “Dreams After Sunset” and Duncan Campbell Scott’s yawp in the August number has been written—for they won’t have to be written again.

Judge Grant, in commenting on the ways of the Summer Girl in the July Scribner’s, says that after her return to her own particular vine and fig-tree she has, among other perplexities, “a considerable uncertainty in her mind as to whom she is engaged to.” This is in form somewhat similar to the reporter who said the victim of the trolley accident was killed fatally dead.

According to Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith, who parts his name in the middle and therefore ought to know, “Abbey in his art really has done what Wagner has done in music, Tennyson and the poets in verse.” He says so in the current Scribner’s. Tennyson “and” the poets is so kind—with accent on the “so.” The author of “Locksley Hall” ought to come back to Lily Dale or somewhere and thank Mr. Hopsmith.

The style of whiskers formerly called “Dundreary,” is now known as “The Wind in the Clearing.”

I have received from the Department of Agriculture an envelope labelled “Official Business—Penalty for Private Use $300.” Stamped across the face in red ink is the autograph of Hon. D. N. Lockwood. Inside this envelope was one still smaller which bore this inscription:

If I remember correctly Mr. Lockwood Ran for something during last fall’s campaign. I wonder what he is going to Run for next that he wishes to be remembered.

New York rejoices in the possession of a magazine for rich people. It is called Form, and it tells all about the first families—Knickerbockers and others—and what they do to be decent. I understand it proposes to offer prizes after the manner of Judge Tourgee’s Basis for the cleverest paraphrase of the second verse in Genesis. The historian of creation declares that on the first day “the earth was without Form, and void.” It’s a great “ad.”

In

Praising poetry of William Morris

And Stephen Crane

Were you poking fun?

I hope ’twas so:

For

You must perceive

That those slashed and mangled lines

Do no more resemblance bear

To true poetry

Than hacked and shattered corpse

On battle field

Bears

To a perfect man,

Whose form divinely fair

Fitly enfolds feelings consummate

Against such lines—

And in fact ’gainst all your verse,

I do

Protest.

Nelson Ayres.

New Orleans, Aug. 15, ’95.

At the Publishers’ Convention recently held in San Francisco the delegates were treated to a steamboat ride down the bay where a picnic was held. Police were on hand to see that the delegates did not all rush down a steep place into the sea and perish in the waters.