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

After the applause won by Mr. Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, a little reaction is not strange; and this has already taken, in some quarters, a form quite unjust and unfair. Certainly any one who spent so much as a week or two in camp, thirty years ago, must be struck with the extraordinary freshness and vigor of the book. No one except Tolstoi, within my knowledge, has brought out the daily life of war so well; it may be said of these sentences, in Emerson’s phrase, “Cut these and they bleed.” The breathlessness, the hurry, the confusion, the seeming aimlessness, as of a whole family of disturbed ants, running to and fro, yet somehow accomplishing something at last; all these aspects, which might seem the most elementary and the easiest to depict, are yet those surest to be omitted, not merely by the novelists, but by the regimental histories themselves.

I know that when I first read Tolstoi’s War and Peace, The Cossacks and Sevastopol, it seemed as if all other so-called military novels must become at once superannuated and go out of print. All others assumed, in comparison, that bandbox aspect which may be seen in most military or naval pictures; as in the well known engraving of the death of Nelson, where the hero is sinking on the deck in perfect toilette, at the height of a bloody conflict, while every soldier or sailor is grouped around him, each in spotless garments and heroic attitude. It is this Tolstoi quality—the real tumult and tatters of the thing itself—which amazes the reader of Crane’s novel. Moreover, Tolstoi had been through it all in person; whereas this author is a youth of twenty-four, it seems, born since the very last shot fired in the Civil War. How did he hit upon his point of view?

Yet this very point of view, strange to say, has been called a defect. Remember that he is telling the tale, not of a commanding general, but of a common soldier—a pawn in the game; a man who sees only what is going on immediately around him, and, for the most part, has the key to nothing beyond. This he himself knows well at the time. Afterward, perhaps, when the affair is discussed at the campfire, and his view compared with what others say, it begins to take shape, often mixed with all sorts of errors; and when it has reached the Grand Army Post and been talked over afterward for thirty years, the narrator has not a doubt of it all. It is now a perfectly ordered affair, a neat and well arranged game of chess, often with himself as a leading figure. That is the result of too much perspective. The wonder is that this young writer, who had no way of getting at it all except the gossip—printed or written—of these very old soldiers, should be able to go behind them all, and give an account of their life, not only more vivid than they themselves have ever given, but more accurate. It really seems a touch of that marvelous intuitive quality which for want of a better name we call genius.

Now is it a correct criticism of the book to complain, as one writer has done, that it does not dwell studiously on the higher aspects of the war? Let the picture only be well drawn, and the moral will take care of itself; never fear. The book is not a patriotic tract, but a delineation; a cross section of the daily existence of the raw enlisted-man. In other respects it is reticent, because it is truthful. Does any one suppose that in the daily routine of the camp there was room for much fine talk about motives and results—that men were constantly appealing, like Carlyle’s Frenchman, “to posterity and the immortal Gods?” Fortunately or unfortunately, the Anglo Saxon is not built that way; he errs on the other side; habitually understates instead of overstating his emotions; and while he is making the most heroic sacrifices of his life, usually prefers to scold about rations or grumble at orders. He is to be judged by results; not by what he says, which is often ungracious and unornamental, but by what he does.

The very merit of this book is that in dealing with his men the author offers, within this general range, all the essential types of character—the man who boasts and the man who is humble—the man who thinks he may be frightened and is not, and the man who does not expect to be, but is. For his main character he selects a type to be found in every regiment—the young man who does not know himself, who first stumbles into cowardice, to his own amazement, and then is equally amazed at stumbling into courage; who begins with skulking, and ends by taking a flag. In Doyle’s Micah Clarke the old Roundhead soldier tells his grandchildren how he felt inclined to bob his head when he first heard bullets whistle, and adds “If any soldier ever told you that he did not, the first time that he was under fire, then that soldier is not a man to trust.” This is putting it too strongly, for some men are born more stolid, other more nervous; but the nervous man is quite as likely to have the firmer grain, and to come out the more heroic in the end. In my own limited experience, the only young officer whom I ever saw thoroughly and confessedly frightened, when first under fire, was the only one of his regiment who afterwards chose the regular army for his profession, and fought Indians for the rest of his life.

As for The Red Badge of Courage, the test of the book is in the way it holds you. I only know that whenever I take it up I find myself reading it over and over, as I do Tolstoi’s Cossacks, and find it as hard to put down. None of Doyle’s or Weyman’s books bear re-reading, in the same way; you must wait till you have forgotten their plots. Even the slipshod grammar seems a part of the breathless life and action. How much promise it gives, it is hard to say. Goethe says that as soon as a man has done one good thing, the world conspires against him to keep him from doing another. Mr. Crane has done one good thing, not to say two; but the conspiracy of admiration may yet be too much for him. It is earnestly to be hoped, at least, that he may have the wisdom to stay in his own country and resist the temptation to test his newly-found English reputation by migrating—an experiment by which Bret Harte has been visibly dwarfed and Henry James hopelessly diluted.

T. W. Higginson.

Cambridge, Mass.

Having finished some literature I put it into an envelope, with postage stamps to get it back; for that happened sometimes, even when it was real, hand-made literature, as in this case. It came back, because the editor of the Bugle said it was too long. I sat up that night paring and changing, and when it had been condensed a third it occurred to me that maybe there was a surer market for it in the office of the Banner of Freedom. Another try; more postage stamps. Returned with statement that “We never print stories less than 6,000 words long and yours is too short.” I rewrote it in part, restoring an episode on which I had slightly prided myself in the original version, and as it was neither long nor short I sent it, this time to Tomlinson’s Bi-Monthly. Tomlinson kept it for nearly two years before returning it, and it reached me a veritable tramp of a manuscript, dusty, creased, dog-eared and ragged, with editorial changes in blue pencil that could not be erased, and the remark that, as Tomlinson’s circulated largely among the Bulgarians in America, and received advertising patronage from them, it was impossible to print anything that might offend Bulgarians. This surprised me, because the fact that one of my characters, Gilhooly McManus, was a Bulgarian had nearly escaped my notice. He was introduced because his nationality made occasion for an incident that I needed, and had he been an American every reader would have denounced his conduct as absurd.

There was nothing for it but to copy it afresh and send it to Bloxam’s. It was returned in the next mail, manifestly unread, with the usual form announcement that “owing to pressure” etc., it was impossible, etc., so I tried The Pacific with it next. It came back in time with the objection that it was too sensational, and the next week it was returned by the Chambermaid’s Own as too quiet. Hanks’ Review would not have it because plots were going out of fashion, and The Athenian suggested that I imbue it with at least a trace of interest. At last a little one-horse magazine in Texas offered to print it if I would subscribe for three years to his magazine at two dollars per year. I accepted the offer by return mail, stipulating only that the magazine should be sent, with my compliments, to an almshouse.

And I set out on my next story wondering if the time would ever come when a man could speak his mind to his fellow men in print, or if all written things would have to be shaped according to the Procrustean notions of the average editor.

Charles M. Skinner.

Clangingharp told Frostembight the only prophetic way to write an epic was to save all the rough drafts, with interlinear corrections. He said your biographer could thus trace the growth of your work from its earliest inception to its final bloom, and the photographic reproductions would do away with the cost of sketches. Frostembight said a man that would write an epic was a lunk-head. Clangingharp started to get up and destroy Frostembight, but he stepped on Marcus Aurelius, and with a rush of words to the throat fell helpless into his chair. Marcus Aurelius was the cat. “Dam that cat,” added Clangingharp.

One night when Clangingharp sat writing, an episode occurred. Clangingharp couldn’t write on an empty stomach, and the verses he made when he was sober were so drab and elegiac that in spite of his remark to Frostembight he threw them away and went out after cocktails. He could write shriller and hotter stuff when he had had cocktails. Well, one night he sat thinking of what an empty thing a cocktail is. He had been writing verses, and he knew they were regrettable. But he did not go out and have cocktails. It might be told why he didn’t, but what’s the use? You go to a comedy to get away from your business troubles, and the chief clown constantly thrusts under your nose a big wad of stage money. It would simply be dragging in sordid matter that should have no place in a psychological study. It is enough to say he didn’t go out. He sat and plunked drops of purple ink from his pen into a blotter with an insurance advertisement on it that lay submissively on the desk. Then Marcus Aurelius leaped onto the blotter, and a fiendish shine glittered dryly in the epicist’s eye. He noticed the cat was white. Rainy afternoons on the fire-escape had made the beast very white. Clangingharp plunked a drop of royal purple on the tip of Marcus Aurelius’s tail.

The next instant Clangingharp had written:

“And gave him hemorrhage of the soul.”

“Great!” he screeched in a seething cauldron of joy. “Powerful!”

He began to wonder whether or not cattails were as effective as cocktails. He plunked another royal purple drop onto the cat’s tail, and wrote another line. It was not so good as hemorrhage of the soul, but it was pretty fair:

“And freshet-flushed his hydrant eye.”

For two weeks Clangingharp’s days and nights were dry. He did not go out after cocktails, and as there was a drought on the fire-escape the cat was becoming splendidly regal. The window was kept open, for the weather was hot; but Marcus Aurelius got no nourishment excepting an occasional mouse and what he absorbed from the ink, so he staid in. Clangingharp would sit there for hours and deliberately sling ink at him. Not a growl from Marcus. At last he would take down the folding-bed, and before getting in would remember the pen and wipe it along Marcus’s spine. Not a plaint from the cat: always patient and forgiving.

The epic was growing. It had become so vast now that Clangingharp had long since stopped saving rough drafts, and the complete copy was piled up neatly on his desk. There was so much that he had even ceased reading the whole of it through after writing each new line. The evening came when Clangingharp felt that he could finish the last canto. His heroine was about to get her document so she could be married to the hero, and Clangingharp felt that without stimulants he was scarcely up to writing the heroine’s final spasm to the jury. It may as well be said here that Clangingharp had been hearing from home lately, so he decided to go out and have them for a last strain. He piled his manuscript fondly on a corner of the desk, dipped his pen thoughtfully into the ink-well, and gazing abstractedly at Marcus, plunked the whole penful into a mute Aurelian eye.

When Clangingharp got back he had had several of them, so at first he did not quite take in what had happened. It seemed to him as if much greater cohesion and consistency had been imparted to the epic by the insertion interlinearly as well as between the pages, of his pot of mucilage. Illustrations had also been sketched over the sheets with the unbridled ink-bottle. The work as a whole had begun to circulate, and was already widespread in its influence. Much of it looked as if the critics had already been at it. Clangingharp stepped to the window and looked out. Golden light from the window in a first-floor flat shone brightly over the bottom of the air-shaft. There, curled up on the cement, lay Marcus Aurelius, a study in purple and dead.

“Dam that cat!” said Clangingharp.

Frank W. Noxon.

Subscribers to the Philistine not fully understanding my jokes will be supplied with laughing gas at club rates.

The St. Louis Mirror is flashing the light on to one W. J. Arkell, who it says has a habit of carrying on a brilliant conversazione with himself through his chapeau. Just what this means I do not know, but Arkell is not the only man in this country who owns an Unjust Judge.

The city of Cork in Ireland has one hundred thousand inhabitants, one-half of whom can neither read nor write. Able-bodied men can be hired for forty cents a day, and women who get a dollar a week and board are very fortunate. The city of Cork has no street cars, nor electric lights; the best hotel has no elevator, nor gas; so you can neither fall down the shaft nor asphixiate. At bed-time you are given a candle which is duly charged in your bill. Three-fifths of the citizens are Catholics and yet the city of Cork boasts the finest Protestant Episcopal church of its size in the United Kingdom. I refer to the Church of St. Fin Barre. It cost seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The bronze gates that separate the chancel from the nave, alone cost twenty thousand dollars; sixteen thousand dollars were paid for one window, and the grill-work, hand carved, in the choir, took two men five years to make. The building of this beautiful temple was made possible only through the generosity of one Mr. Guinness, manufacturer of a certain “stout” that is known as “XXX.” This mixture is highly recommended for nursing mothers and those in need of a tonic.

And now a resident of Chicago proposes to build in the Windy City a church patterned after the beautiful church at Cork, but whose steeple is to be twice as high, and which is to cost a full million dollars. Cork can keep her rags and illiteracy; she may continue sending her guests to bed with a candle; but no longer shall she be able to boast her supremacy in things ecclesiastic—not by a dam sight!

The East Aurora Summer School of Literature: The season of 1896 opens July 1st, and will last for two months. The idea of the course being to prepare beginners that they may score a success in the fall publishing season.

A feature of our system is the Art of Sonneting which is imparted in three lessons, leaving the pupil then free to take up Novel Writing, Essay Composition or Dramatic Construction. The Modern Sex Novel Department is under the special care of the Matron.

For prospectus, address with stamp,

Doctor John Peascod, D. D., Principal,
Room 1001, Philistine Building,
East Aurora, New York.

A small but lusty Philistine is now following Strange Gods in one of the Buffalo (N. Y.) newspapers. In his “Philistine Talk” he cites certain authors who he claims have an itch for fame; and for their benefit and the benefit of Organized Charity he gives the following Fable:

To Jehn Z.—No, Way & Williams do not publish The Short Horn Register.

I descend again to Mr. Bok, and apologize to the Philistines for having once seemingly coupled his name with that of Mr. Howells. That particular issue of the Philistine is now listed at seven dollars with no copies to be found. Whether the scarcity arises from the agents of Mr. Howells having bought up all obtainable copies and destroyed them, or whether Mr. Bok’s emissaries scoured the book stalls for them, to keep as precious heirlooms, or both, I cannot say.

The New York World recently gave two full columns to old epitaphs, and how the writer missed this, the choicest of them all, I know not. I hope, by the way, that none of the enemy will be deceived by its typographical form and quote it as a Stephen Crane poem:

When George Haven Putnam said, “The chief business of the True Publisher is to discourage the publication of books,” he made a strong bid for immortality. The mot deserves to rank with Tallyrand’s concerning the gift of language.

In a recent issue of Harper’s, “the pastor of Mt. Clemens” has something to say. And who would ha’ thought Mark Twain had a pastor?

Any writer who poses before the country as being the winner of A Big Prize is no longer like Caezar’s wife.

Quarterly. Illustrated.

“If Europe be the home of Art, America can at least lay claim to the most artistically compiled publication devoted to the subject that we know of. This is Modern Art.”—Galignani Messenger (Paris).

“The most artistic of American art periodicals. A work of art itself.”—Chicago Tribune.

Fifty Cents a Number. Two Dollars a Year.
Single Copies (back numbers) 50 Cents in Stamps.
Illustrated Sample Page Free.

Arthur W. Dow has designed a new poster for Modern Art. It is exquisite in its quiet harmony and purely decorative character, with breadth and simplicity in line and mass, and shows the capacity of pure landscape for decorative purposes.—The Boston Herald.

Price, 25 Cents in Stamps,
Sent Free to New Subscribers to Modern Art.

L. Prang & Company, Publishers.
286 ROXBURY STREET, BOSTON.

We make a specialty of Dekel Edge Papers and carry the largest stock and best variety in the country. Fine Hand-made Papers in great variety. Exclusive Western Agents for L. L. Brown Paper Company’s Hand-mades.

GEO. H. TAYLOR & CO.,
207-209 Monroe Street,
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Have you seen the Roycroft Quarterly? The May issue is a “Stephen Crane Number.” 25c. a copy or one dollar a year.

The Roycroft Printing Shop,
East Aurora,
New York.

THE ROYCROFT PRINTING SHOP at this time desires to announce a sister book to the Song of Songs: which is Solomon’s. It is the Journal of Koheleth: being a Reprint of the Book of Ecclesiastes with an Essay by Mr. Elbert Hubbard. The same Romanesque types are used that served so faithfully and well in the Songs, but the initials, colophon and rubricated borders are special designs. After seven hundred and twelve copies were printed the types were distributed and the title page, colophon and borders destroyed.

IN PREPARATION of the text Mr. Hubbard has had the scholarly assistance of his friend, Dr. Frederic W. Sanders, of Columbia University. The worthy pressman has also been helpfully counseled by several Eminent Bibliophiles.

Bound in buckram and antique boards. The seven hundred copies that are printed on Holland hand-made paper are offered at two dollars each, but the twelve copies on Japan Vellum at five dollars are all sold. Every book will be numbered and signed by Mr. Hubbard.

The Roycroft Printing Shop,
East Aurora, N. Y.