ADVENTURES

 IN THE ARTS

 INFORMAL

 CHAPTERS

 ON PAINTERS

 VAUDEVILLE

 AND POETS

 BY

 MARSDEN HARTLEY

 BONI AND LIVERIGHT

 Publishers New York

 COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY

 BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC. 

 * * * * *

PREFATORY NOTE

The papers in this book are not intended in any way to be professionaltreatises. They must be viewed in the light of entertainingconversations. Their possible value lies in their directness ofimpulse, and not in weight of argument. I could not wish to go intothe qualities of art more deeply. A reaction, to be pleasant, must besimple. This is the apology I have to offer: Reactions, then, throughdirect impulse, and not essays by means of stiffened analysis. 

MARSDEN HARTLEY. 

 * * * * *

 Some of the papers included in this book have appeared in _Art and Archeology_, _The Seven Arts_, _The Dial_, _The Nation_, _The New Republic_, and _The Touchstone_. Thanks are due to the editors of these periodicals for permission to reprint. 

 * * * * *

TO

ALFRED STIEGLITZ

 * * * * *

INTRODUCTION

TO

ADVENTURES IN THE ARTS

Perhaps the most important part of Criticism is the fact that itpresents to the creator a problem which is never solved. Criticism isto him a perpetual Presence: or perhaps a ghost which he will notsucceed in laying. If he could satisfy his mind that Criticism was acertain thing: a good thing or a bad, a proper presence or anirrelevant, he could psychologically dispose of it. But he can not. For Criticism is a configuration of responses and reactions sointricate, so kaleidoscopic, that it would be as simple to categoryLife itself. 

The artist remains the artist precisely in so far as he rejects thesimplifying and reducing process of the average man who at an earlyage puts Life away into some snug conception of his mind and race. This one turns the key. He has released his will and love from thevast Ceremonial of wonder, from the deep Poem of Being, into someparticular detail of life wherein he hopes to achieve comfort or atleast shun pain. Not so, the artist. In the moment when he elects toavoid by whatever makeshift the raw agony of life, he ceases to befit to create. He must face experience forever freshly: reduce lifeeach day anew to chaos and remould it into order. He must be always awilling virgin, given up to life and so enlacing it. Thus only may heretain and record that pure surprise whose earliest voicing is thefirst cry of the infant. 

The unresolved expectancy of the creator toward Life should be his waytoward Criticism also. He should hold it as part of his Adventure. Heshould understand in it, particularly when it is impertinent, stupidand cruel, the ponderable weight of Life itself, reacting upon hissearch for a fresh conquest over it. Though it persist unchanged inits rôle of purveying misinformation and absurdity to the Public, heshould know it for himself a blessed dispensation. 

With his maturity, the creator's work goes out into the world. And inthis act, he puts the world away. For the artist's work defines: anddefinition means apartness: and the average man is undefined in thesocial body. Here is a danger for the artist within the very essenceof his artistic virtue. During the years of his apprenticeship, he hasstruggled to create for himself an essential world out of experience. Now he begins to succeed: and he lives too fully in his own selection:he lives too simply in the effects of his effort. The gross andfumbling impact of experience is eased. The grind of ordinaryintercourse is dimmed. The rawness of Family and Business is refinedor removed. But now once more the world comes in to him, in the formof the Critic. Here again, in a sharp concentrated sense, the worldmoves on him: its complacency, its hysteria, its down-tendingappetites and fond illusions, its pathetic worship of yesterdays andhatred of tomorrows, its fear-dogmas and its blood-avowals. 

The artist shall leave the world only to find it, hate it only becausehe loves, attack it only if he serves. At that epoch of his life whenthe world's gross sources may grow dim, Criticism brings them back. Wherefore, the function of the Critic is a blessing and a need. 

The creator's reception of this newly direct, intense, mundaneintrusion is not always passive. If the artist is an intelligent man, he may respond to the intervening world on its own plane. He may turncritic himself. 

When the creator turns critic, we are in the presence of aconsummation: we have a complete experience: we have a sort ofsacrament. For to the intrusion of the world he interposes his ownbody. In his art, the creator's body would be itself intrusion. Theartist is too humble and too sane to break the ecstatic flow of visionwith his personal form. The true artist despises the personal as anend. He makes fluid, and distils his personal form. He channels itbeyond himself to a Unity which of course contains it. But Criticismis nothing which is not the sheer projection of a body. The artistturns Self into a universal Form: but the critic reduces Form to Self. Criticism is to the artist the intrusion, in a form irreducible toart, of the body of the world. What can he do but interpose his own?

This is the value of the creator's criticism. He gives to the worldhimself. And his self is a rich life. 

It includes for instance a direct experience of art, the which noprofessional critic may possess. And it includes as well a directknowledge of life, sharpened in the retrospect of that devotion to theliving which is peculiarly the artist's. For what is the critic afterall, but an "artistic" individual somehow impeded from satisfying hisesthetic emotion and his need of esthetic form in the gross andstubborn stuff of life itself: who therefore, since he is toointelligent for substitutes, resorts to the already digested matter ofthe hardier creators, takes their assimilated food and does with itwhat the athletic artist does with the meat and lymph and bone of Godhimself? The artist mines from the earth and smelts with his own fire. He is higher brother to the toilers of the soil. The critic takes theproducts of the creator, reforges, twists them, always in the cold. For if he had the fire to melt, he would not stay with metals alreadyworked: when the earth's womb bursts with richer. 

When the creator turns critic, we are certain of a feast. We have afare that needs no metaphysical sauce (such as must transform theproduct of the Critic). Here is good food. Go to it and eat. Theasides of a Baudelaire, a Goethe, a Da Vinci outweight a thousandtomes of the professional critics. 

 * * * * *

I know of no American book like this one by Marsden Hartley. I do notbelieve American painting heretofore capable of so vital a responseand of so athletic an appraisal. Albert Ryder barricaded himself fromthe world's intrusion. The American world was not intelligent enoughin his days to touch him to an activer response. And Ryder, partakingof its feebleness, from his devotion to the pure subjective notebecame too exhausted for aught else. As a world we have advanced. Wehave a fully functioning Criticism . .. Swarms and schools of makers ofthe sonorous complacencies of Judgment. We have an integral body ofcreative-minded men and women interposing itself with valiance uponthe antithesis of the social resistance to social growth. Hartley isin some ways a continuance of Ryder. One stage is Ryder, the solitarywho remained one. A second stage is Hartley, the solitary who standsagainst the more aggressive, more interested Marketplace. 

You will find in this book the artist of a cultural epoch. This manhas mastered the plastic messages of modern Europe: he has gone deepin the classic forms of the ancient Indian Dance. But he is, still, not very far from Ryder. He is always the child--whatever wise oldworlds he contemplates--the child, wistful, poignant, trammeled, ofNew England. 

Hartley has adventured not alone deep but wide. He steps from NewMexico to Berlin, from the salons of the Paris of Marie Laurencin tothe dust and tang of the American Circus. He is eclectic. But whereverhe goes he chronicles not so much these actual worlds as his ownpleasure of them. They are but mirrors, many-shaped and lighted, forhis own delicate, incisive humor. For Hartley is an innocent and a_naïf_. At times he is profound. Always he is profoundly simple. 

Tragedy and Comedy are adult. The child's world is Tragicomic. SoMarsden Hartley's. He is not deep enough--like most of our Moderns--inthe pregnant chaos to be submerged in blackness by the hot struggle ofthe creative will. He may weep, but he can smile next moment at apretty song. He may be hurt, but he gets up to dance. 

In this book--the autobiography of a creator--Marsden Hartley peersvariously into the modern world: but it is in search of Fairies. 

WALDO FRANK. 

_Lisbon_, June, 1921. 

CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTION BY WALDO FRANK

_Foreword_

 CONCERNING FAIRY TALES AND ME

_Part One_

1. THE RED MAN

2. WHITMAN AND CÉZANNE

3. RYDER

4. WINSLOW HOMER

5. AMERICAN VALUES IN PAINTING

6. MODERN ART IN AMERICA

7. OUR IMAGINATIVES

8. OUR IMPRESSIONISTS

9. ARTHUR B. DAVIES

10. REX SLINKARD

11. SOME AMERICAN WATER-COLORISTS

12. THE APPEAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY

13. SOME WOMEN ARTISTS

14. REVALUATIONS IN IMPRESSIONISM

15. ODILON REDON

16. THE VIRTUES OF AMATEUR PAINTING

17. HENRI ROUSSEAU

_Part Two_

18. THE TWILIGHT OF THE ACROBAT

19. VAUDEVILLE

20. A CHARMING EQUESTRIENNE

21. JOHN BARRYMORE IN PETER IBBETSON

_Part Three_

22. LA CLOSERIE DE LILAS

23. EMILY DICKINSON

24. ADELAIDE CRAPSEY

25. FRANCIS THOMPSON

26. ERNEST DOWSON

27. HENRY JAMES ON RUPERT BROOKE

28. THE DEARTH OF CRITICS

_Afterword_

 THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING "DADA"

 * * * * *

FOREWORD

CONCERNING FAIRY TALES AND ME

Sometimes I think myself one of the unique children among children. Inever read a fairy story in my childhood. I always had the feeling asa child, that fairy stories were for grown-ups and were bestunderstood by them, and for that reason I think it must have been thatI postponed them. I found them, even at sixteen, too involved andmystifying to take them in with quite the simple gullibility that isnecessary. But that was because I was left alone with the incrediblymagical reality from morning until nightfall, and the nights meantnothing more remarkable to me than the days did, no more than they donow. I find moonlight merely another species of illumination by whichone registers continuity of sensation. My nursery was always on theedge of the strangers' knee, wondering who they were, what they mighteven mean to those who were as is called "nearest" them. 

I had a childhood vast with terror and surprise. If it is true thatone forgets what one wishes to forget, then I have reason for notremembering the major part of those days and hours that are supposedto introduce one graciously into the world and offer one a clue tothe experience that is sure to follow. Not that my childhood was sobitter, unless for childhood loneliness is bitterness, and withoutdoubt it is the worst thing that can happen to one's childhood. Minewas merely a different childhood, and in this sense an original one. Iwas left with myself to discover myself amid the multitudinous otherand far greater mysteries. I was never the victim of fear of goblinsand ghosts because I was never taught them. I was merely taught bynature to follow, as if led by a rare and tender hand, the then almostunendurable beauty that lay on every side of me. It was pain then, tofollow beauty, because I didn't understand beauty; it must always, Ithink, be distressing to follow anything one does not understand. 

I used to go, in my earliest school days, into a little strip ofwoodland not far from the great ominous red brick building in a smallmanufacturing town, on the edge of a wonderful great river in Maine, from which cool and quiet spot I could always hear the dominant clangof the bell, and there I could listen with all my very boyishsimplicity to the running of the water over the stones, and watch--forit was spring, of course--the new leaves pushing up out of the mould, and see the light-hued blossoms swinging on the new breeze. I caredmore for these in themselves than I did for any legendary presencessitting under them, shaking imperceptible fingers and waving invisiblewands with regality in a world made only for them and for childrenwho were taught mechanically to see them there. 

I was constantly confronted with the magic of reality itself, wondering why one thing was built of exquisite curves and another ofharmonic angles. It was not a scientific passion in me, it was merelymy sensing of the world of visible beauty around me, pressing in on mewith the vehemence of splendor, on every side. 

I feel about the world now precisely as I did then, despite all thereasons that exist to encourage the change of attitude. I care for themagic of experience still, the magic that exists even in facts, thoughlittle or nothing for the objective material value. 

Life as an idea engrosses me with the same ardor as in the earlierboyish days, with the difference that there is much to admire and somuch less to reverence and be afraid of. I harp always on the "idea"of life as I dwell perpetually on the existence of the moment. 

I might say, then, that my childhood was comparable, in its simplicityand extravagance of wonder, to the youth of Odilon Redon, thatremarkable painter of the fantasy of existence, of which he speaks sodelicately in letters to friends. His youth was apparently much likemine, not a youth of athleticism so much as a preoccupancy with wonderand the imminence of beauty surrounding all things. 

I was preoccupied with the "being" of things. Things in themselvesengrossed me more than the problem of experience. I was satisfied withthe effect of things upon my senses, and cared nothing for theirdeeper values. The inherent magic in the appearance of the world aboutme, engrossed and amazed me. No cloud or blossom or bird or human everescaped me, I think. 

I was not indifferent to anything that took shape before me, thoughwhen it came to people I was less credulous of their perfectionbecause they pressed forward their not always certain credentials uponme. I reverenced them then too much for an imagined austerity as Iadmire them now perhaps not enough for their charm, for it is thecharm of things and people only that engages and satisfies me. I havecompleted my philosophical equations, and have become enamored ofpeople as having the same propensities as all other objects of nature. One need never question appearances. One accepts them for their facevalue, as the camera accepts them, without recommendation orspecialized qualification. They are what they become to one. Thecapacity for legend comes out of the capacity for experience, and itis in this fashion that I hold such high respect for geniuses likeGrimm and Andersen, but as I know their qualities I find myselfleaning with more readiness toward Lewis Carroll's superb "Alice inWonderland. "

I was, I suppose, born backward, physically speaking. I wasconfronted with the vastitude of the universe at once, without theingratiating introduction of the fairy tale. I had early made the notso inane decision that I would not read a book until I really wantedto. One of the rarest women in the world, having listened to myremark, said she had a book she knew I would like because it was sodifferent, and forthwith presented me with Emerson's Essays, the firstbook that I have any knowledge of reading, and it was in my eighteenthyear. Until then I had been wholly absorbed with the terrors and themajestical inferences of the moment, the hour, and the day. I wasalone with them, and they were wonderful and excessively baffling intheir splendors; then, after filling my mind and soul with thelegendary splendors of Friendship, and The Oversoul-Circles, andCompensation, each of these words of exciting largeness in themselves, I turned to the dramatic unrealities of Zarathustra, which, of course, was in no way to be believed because it did not exist. And then cameexpansion and release into the outer world again throughinterpretation of Plato, and of Leaves of Grass itself. 

I have saved myself from the disaster of beliefs through these magicalbooks, and am free once more as in my early childhood to indulgemyself in the iridescent idea of life, as Idea. 

But the fairy story is nothing after all but a means whereby we, aschildren, may arrive at some clue as to the significance of thingsaround us, and it is through them the child finds his way out fromincoherency toward comprehension. The universe is a vast place, as weall know who think we comprehend it in admiring it. The things wecannot know are in reality of no consequence, in comparison with thefew we can know. I can know, for instance, that my morning is the newera of my existence, and that I shall never live through another likeit, as I have never lived through the one I recall in my memory, whichwas Yesterday. Yesterday was my event in experience then, as it is myevent in memory now. I am related to the world by the way I feelattached to the life of it as exemplified in the vividness of themoment. I am, by reason of my peculiar personal experience, enabled toextract the magic from the moment, discarding the material husk of itprecisely as the squirrel does the shell of the nut. 

I am preoccupied with the business of transmutation--which is to say, the proper evaluation of life as idea, of experience as delectablediversion. It is necessary for everyone to poetize his sensations inorder to comprehend them. Weakness in the direction of philosophycreates the quality of dogmatic interrogation. A preoccupancy withreligious characteristics assists those who are interested in theproblem of sublimation. The romanticist is a kind of scientific personengaged in the correct assembling of chemical constituents that willproduce a formula by which he can live out every one of his momentswith a perfect comprehension of their charm and of their everlastingvalue to him. If the romanticist have the advantage of comprehensionof the sense of beauty as related to art, then he may be said to bewholly equipped for the exquisite legend of life in which he takes hisplace, as factor in the perfected memory of existence, which becomesthe real history of life, as an idea. The person of most power in lifeis he who becomes high magician with the engaging and elusive trick. 

It is a fairy-tale in itself if you will, and everyone is entitled tohis or her own private splendor, which, of course, must be inventedfrom intelligence for oneself. 

There will be no magic found away from life. It is what you do withthe street-corner in your brain that shall determine your gift. Itwill not be found in the wilderness, and in one's toying with themagic of existence is the one gift for the management of experience. 

I hope one day, when life as an "idea" permits, and that I havefigured will be somewhere around my ninetieth year, to take up booksthat absorb the brains of the intelligent. When I read a book, it isbecause it will somehow expose to me the magic of existence. My fairytales of late have been "Wuthering Heights, " and the work of theBrothers James, Will and Henry. I am not so sure but that I likeWilliam best, and I assure you that is saying a great deal, but it isonly because I think William is more like life as idea. 

I shall hope when it comes time to sit in a garden and fold one'shands gently, listening to the birds all over again, watching theblossoms swinging with a still acuter eye, to take up the books ofGrimm and Andersen, for I have a feeling they will be the books thatwill best corroborate my comprehension of life as an idea. I think itwill be the best time to read them then, to go out with a memorysoftened by the warm hues and touches of legend that rise out of theair surrounding life itself. 

There will be a richer comprehension of "once upon a time there was aprincess"--who wore a great many jewelled rings on her fingers andwhose eyes were like deep pools in the farthest fields of the sky--forthat will be the lady who let me love in the ways I was made toforget; the lady whose hands I have touched as gently as possible andfrom whom I have exacted no wish save that I might always love someoneor something that was so like herself as to make me think it was noother than herself. It is because I love the idea of life better thananything else that I believe most of all in the magic of existence, and in spite of much terrifying and disillusioning experience of late, I _believe_. 

PART ONE

THE RED MAN

It is significant that all races, and primitive peoples especially, exhibit the wish somehow to inscribe their racial autograph beforethey depart. It is our redman who permits us to witness the signing ofhis autograph with the beautiful gesture of his body in the form ofthe symbolic dance which he and his forefathers have practiced throughthe centuries, making the name America something to be rememberedamong the great names of the world and of time. It is the redman whohas written down our earliest known history, and it is of his symbolicand esthetic endeavors that we should be most reasonably proud. He isthe one man who has shown us the significance of the poetic aspects ofour original land. Without him we should still be unrepresented in thecultural development of the world. The wide discrepancies between ourearliest history and our present make it an imperative issue foreveryone loving the name America to cherish him while he remains amongus as the only esthetic representative of our great country up to thepresent hour. He has indicated for all time the symbolic splendor ofour plains, canyons, mountains, lakes, mesas and ravines, our forestsand our native skies, with their animal inhabitants, the buffalo, thedeer, the eagle and the various other living presences in their midst. He has learned throughout the centuries the nature of our soil and hassymbolized for his own religious and esthetic satisfaction all thevarious forms that have become benefactors to him. 

Americans of this time and of time to come shall know little ornothing of their spacious land until they have sought some degree ofintimacy with our first artistic relative. The redman is the one trulyindigenous religionist and esthete of America. He knows every form ofanimal and vegetable life adhering to our earth, and has made forhimself a series of striking pageantries in the form of stirringdances to celebrate them, and his relation to them. Throughout thevarious dances of the Pueblos of the Rio Grande those of San Felipe, Santo Domingo, San Ildefonso, Taos, Tesuque, and all the other tribesof the west and the southwest, the same unified sense of beautyprevails, and in some of the dances to a most remarkable degree. Forinstance, in a large pueblo like Santo Domingo, you have the dancecomposed of nearly three hundred people, two hundred of whom form thedance contingent, the other third a chorus, probably the largestsinging chorus in the entire redman population of America. In a smallpueblo like Tesuque, the theme is beautifully represented by fromthree to a dozen individuals, all of them excellent performers invarious ways. The same quality and the same character, the same senseof beauty, prevails in all of them. 

It is the little pueblo of Tesuque which has just finished its seriesof Christmas dances--a four-day festival celebrating with all butimpeccable mastery the various identities which have meant so much tothem both physically and spiritually--that I would here cite as anexample. It is well known that once gesture is organized, it requiresbut a handful of people to represent multitude; and this lonelyhandful of redmen in the pueblo of Tesuque, numbering at most butseventy-five or eighty individuals, lessened, as is the case with allthe pueblos of the country to a tragical degree by the recentinvasions of the influenza epidemic, showed the interested observer, in groups of five or a dozen dancers and soloists including drummers, through the incomparable pageantry of the buffalo, the eagle, thesnowbird, and other varying types of small dances, the mastery of theredman in the art of gesture, the art of symbolized pantomimicexpression. It is the buffalo, the eagle, and the deer dances thatshow you their essential greatness as artists. You find a species ofrhythm so perfected in its relation to racial interpretation as hardlyto admit of witnessing ever again the copied varieties of dancing suchas we whites of the present hour are familiar with. It is nothingshort of captivating artistry of first excellence, and we are familiarwith nothing that equals it outside the Negro syncopation which wenow know so well, and from which we have borrowed all we have ofnative expression. 

If we had the redman sense of time in our system, we would be betterable to express ourselves. We are notoriously unorganized in estheticconception, and what we appreciate most is merely the athletic phaseof bodily expression, which is of course attractive enough, but is notin itself a formal mode of expression. The redman would teach us to beourselves in a still greater degree, as his forefathers have taughthim to be himself down the centuries, despite every obstacle. It isnow as the last obstacle in the way of his racial expression that weas his host and guardian are pleasing ourselves to figure. It is asinhospitable host we are quietly urging denunciation of his paganceremonials. It is an inhospitable host that we are, and it is amazingenough, our wanting to suppress him. You will travel over manycontinents to find a more beautifully synthesized artistry than ourredman offers. In times of peace we go about the world seeking outevery species of life foreign to ourselves for our own esthetic orintellectual diversion, and yet we neglect on our very doorstep theperhaps most remarkable realization of beauty that can be foundanywhere. It is of a perfect piece with the great artistry of alltime. We have to go for what we know of these types of expression tobooks and to fragments of stone, to monuments and to the preservedbits of pottery we now may see under glass mostly, while there is theliving remnant of a culture so fine in its appreciation of the beautyof things, under our own home eye, so near that we can not even seeit. 

A glimpse of the buffalo dance alone will furnish proof sufficient toyou of the sense of symbolic significances in the redman that isunsurpassed. The redman is a genius in his gift of masquerade alone. He is a genius in detail, and in ensemble, and the producer of todaymight learn far more from him than he can be aware of except byvisiting his unique performances. The redman's notion of the theatricdoes not depend upon artificial appliances. He relies entirely uponthe sun with its so clear light of the west and southwest to do hisprofiling and silhouetting for him, and he knows the sun willcooperate with every one of his intentions. He allows for the sense ofmass and of detail with proper proportion, allows also for theinterval of escape in mood, crediting the value of the pause with theability to do its prescribed work for the eye and ear perfectly, andwhen he is finished he retires from the scene carefully to the beatingof the drums, leaving the emotion to round itself out gradually untilhe disappears, and silence completes the picture for the eye and thebrain. His staging is of the simplest, and therefore, the mostnatural. Since he is sure of his rhythms, in every other dancer aswell as himself, he is certain of his ensemble, and is likewise surethere will be no dead spots either in the scenario or in thepresentation. His production is not a show for the amusement of theonlooker; it is a pageant for the edification of his own soul. Eachman is therefore concerned with the staging of the idea, because it ishis own spiritual drama in a state of enaction, and each is in his ownway manager of the scene, and of the duos, trios, and ensembles, orwhatever form the dances may require. It is therefore of a piece withhis conception of nature and the struggle for realism is notnecessary, since he is at all times the natural actor, the naturalexpresser of the indications and suggestions derived from the greattheme of nature which occupies his mind, and body, and soul. Hisacting is invented by himself for purposes of his own, and it isnature that gives him the sign and symbol for the expression of lifeas a synthesis. He is a genius in plastic expression, and everymovement of his is sure to register in the unity of the theme, becausehe himself is a powerful unit of the group in which he may beperforming. He is esthetically a responsible factor, since it concernshim as part of the great idea. He is leading soloist and auxiliary inone. He is the significant instrument in the orchestration of thetheme at hand, and knows his body will respond to every requirement ofphrasing. You will find the infants, of two and three years of ageeven, responding in terms of play to the exacting rhythms of thedance, just as with orientals it was the children often who wove theloveliest patterns in their rugs. 

In the instance of the buffalo dance of the Tesuque Indians, contraryto what might be expected or would popularly be conceived, there isnot riotry of color, but the costumes are toned rather in the sombrehues of the animal in question, and after the tone of the dark flanksof the mountains crested and avalanched with snows, looking more likebuffaloes buried knee deep in white drifts than anything else one maythink of. They bring you the sense of the power of the buffalopersonality, the formidable beast that once stampeded the prairiesaround them, solemnized with austere gesturing, enveloping him withstateliness, and the silence of the winter that surrounds themselves. Three men, two of them impersonating the buffalo, the third with bowand arrow in hand, doubtless the hunter, and two women representingthe mother buffalo, furnish the ensemble. Aside from an occasionalnote of red in girdles and minor trappings, with a softening touch ofgreen in the pine branches in their hands, the adjustment of hue isessentially one of the black and white, one of the most difficultharmonies in esthetic scales the painter encounters in the making of apicture, the most difficult of all probably, by reason of its limitedrange and the economic severity of color. It calls for nothing shortof the finest perception of nuance, and it is the redman of Americawho knows with an almost flawless eye the natural harmonies of thelife that surrounds him. He has for so long decorated his body withthe hues of the earth that he has grown to be a part of them. He is aliving embodiment in color of various tonal characteristics of thelandscape around him. He knows the harmonic value of a bark or a hide, or a bit of broken earth, and of the natural unpolluted coloring to bedrawn out of various types of vegetable matter at his disposal. Evenif he resorts to our present-day store ribbons and cheap trinkets foraccessories, he does it with a view to creating the appearance ofracial ensemble. He is one of the essential decorators of the world. Alook at the totem poles and the prayer robes of the Indians of Alaskawill convince you of that. 

In the buffalo dance, then, you perceive the redman's fine knowledgeof color relations, of the harmonizing of buffalo skins, of whitebuckskins painted with most expressively simple designs symbolizingthe various earth identities, and the accompanying ornamentation ofstrings of shells and other odd bits having a black or a grey andwhite lustre. You get an adjusted relation of white which traversesthe complete scale of color possibility in monochrome. The two menrepresenting the buffalo, with buffalo heads covering their heads andfaces from view, down to their breasts, their bodies to the waistpainted black, no sign of pencillings visible to relieve the austerityof intention, legs painted black and white, with cuffs of skunk's furround the ankles to represent the death mask symbol, relieving theedges of the buckskin moccasins--in all this you have the notes thatare necessary for the color balance of the idea of solemnitypresented to the eye. You find even the white starlike splashes hereand there on backs, breasts and arms coinciding splendidly with theflecks of eagles-down that quiver in the wind down their black bodies, and the long black hair of the accompanying hunter, as flecks of foamwould rise from waterfalls of dark mountain streams; and the feathersthat float from the tips of the buffalo horns seem like young eagletsready to leave the eyry, to swim for the first time the far fields ofair above and below them, to traverse with skill the sunlit spacestheir eyes have opened to with a fierce amazement. Even the clouds offrozen breath darting from the lips of the dancers served as anessential phase of the symbolic decoration, and the girdles of tinyconchlike shells rattling round their agile thighs made a music youwere glad to hear. The sunshine fell from them, too, in scales oflight, danced around the spaces enveloping them along with the flecksof eagle-down that floated away from their bodies with the vigors ofthe dance, floating away from their dark warm bodies, and theirjet-blue hair. It is the incomparable understanding of their owninventive rhythms that inspire and impress you as spectator. It is theswift comprehension of change in rhythm given them by the drummers, the speedy response of their so living pulsating bodies, theirresistible rapport with the varying themes, that thrills and invitesyou to remain close to the picture. They know, as perfect artistswould know, the essential value of the materials at their disposal, and the eye for harmonic relationships is as keen as the impeccablegift for rhythm which is theirs. The note of skill was againaccentuated when, at the close of the season's ensemble with arepetition of the beautiful eagle dance, there appeared twogrotesqueries in the form of charming devil spirits in the hues ofanimals also, again in startling arrangements of black and white, withthe single hint of color in the red lips of the masks that coveredtheir heads completely from view, and from which long tails of whitehorsehair fell down their grey white backs--completing the feelingonce again of stout animal spirits roaming through dark forests insearch of sad faces, or, it may even be, of evil doers. 

All these dances form the single spectacle surviving from a great racethat no American can afford actually to miss, and certainly not toignore. It is easy to conceive with what furore of amazement thesespectacles would be received if they were brought for a singleperformance to our metropolitan stage. But they will never be seenaway from the soil on which they have been conceived and perpetuated. It is with a simple cordiality the redman permits you to witness theesthetic survivals of his great race. It is the artist and the poetfor whom they seem to be almost especially created, since these areprobably nearest to understanding them from the point of view offinely organized expression; for it is by the artist and the poet ofthe first order that they have been invented and perfected. We asAmericans of today would profit by assisting as much as possible inthe continuance of these beautiful spectacles, rather than to assistin the calm dismissal and destruction of them. It is the gesture of aslowly but surely passing race which they themselves can not livewithout; just as we, if we but knew the ineffable beauty of them, would want at least to avail ourselves of a feast for the eye which noother country in existence can offer us, and which any other nation inthe world would be only too proud to cherish and foster. 

We are not, I think, more than vaguely conscious of what we possess inthese redman festivities, by way of esthetic prize. It is with painthat one hears rumors of official disapproval of these rare andinvaluable ceremonials. Those familiar with human psychologyunderstand perfectly that the one necessary element for individualgrowth is freedom to act according to personal needs. Once anopposition of any sort is interposed, you get a blocked aspect ofevolution, you get a withered branch, and it may even be a dead root. All sorts of complexes and complexities occur. You get deformity, ifnot complete helplessness and annihilation. I can not imagine whatwould happen to the redman if his one racial gesture were denied him, if he were forbidden to perform his symbolic dances from season toseason. It is a survival that is as spiritually imperative to him asit is physically and emotionally necessary. I can see a whole flood ofexquisite inhibitions heaped up for burial and dry rot within thecaverns and the interstices of his soul. He is a rapidly disappearingsplendor, despite the possible encouragement of statistics. He needsthe dance to make his body live out its natural existence, preciselyas he needs the air for his lungs and blood for his veins. He needs todance as we need to laugh to save ourselves from fixed stages ofmorbidity and disintegration. It is the laughter of his body that heinsists upon, as well as depends upon. A redman deprived of his racialgesture is unthinkable. You would have him soon the bleached carcassin the desert out of which death moans, and from which the lizardcrawls. It would be in the nature of direct race suicide. He needsprotection therefore rather than disapproval. It is as if you clippedthe wing of the eagle, and then asked him to soar to the sun, to cut acurve on the sky with the instrument dislodged; or as if you asked thedeer to roam the wood with its cloven hoofs removed. You can not cutthe main artery of the body and expect it to continue functioning. Depriving the redman of his one enviable gesture would be cutting theartery of racial instinct, emptying the beautiful chamber of his soulof its enduring consciousness. The window would be opened and the birdflown to a dead sky. It is simply unthinkable. The redman isessentially a thankful and a religious being. He needs to celebratethe gifts his heaven pours upon him. Without them he would in shortperish, and perish rapidly, having no breath to breathe, and nofurther need for survival. He is already in process of disappearancefrom our midst, with the attempts toward assimilation. 

Inasmuch as we have the evidence of a fine aristocracy among us still, it would seem as if it behooved us as a respectable host to let theredman guest entertain himself as he will, as he sublimely does, sinceas guardians of such exceptional charges we can not seem to entertainthem. There is no logical reason why they should accept an inferiorhospitality, other than with the idea of not inflicting themselvesupon a strange host more than is necessary. The redman in theaggregate is an example of the peaceable and unobtrusive citizen; wewould not presume to interfere with the play of children in thesunlight. They are among the beautiful children of the world in theirharmlessness. They are among the aristocracy of the world in thematters of ethics, morals, and etiquette. We forget they are vastlyolder, and in symbolic ways infinitely more experienced thanourselves. They do not share in tailor-made customs. They do not needimposed culture, which is essentially inferior to their own. Soon weshall see them written on tablets of stone, along with the Egyptiansand the others among the races that have perished. The esthetics ofthe redman have been too particular to permit of universalunderstanding, and of universal adaptation. It is the same with allprimitives, who invent regimes and modes of expression for themselvesaccording to their own specific psychological needs. We encourageevery other sign and indication of beauty toward the progress ofperfection. Why should not we encourage a race that is beautiful bythe proof of centuries to remain the unoffensive guest of the sun andthe moon and the stars while they may? As the infant prodigy amongraces, there is much that we could inherit from these people if wecould prove ourselves more worthy and less egotistic. 

The artist and the poet of perception come forward with heartiestapproval and it is the supplication of the poet and the artist whichthe redman needs most of all. Science looks upon him as a phenomenon;esthetics looks upon him as a giant of masterful expression in ourmidst. The redman is poet and artist of the very first order among thegeniuses of time. We have nothing more native at our disposal than thebeautiful creations of this people. It is singular enough that the asyet remote black man contributes the only native representation ofrhythm and melody we possess. As an intelligent race, we are not evensure we want to welcome him as completely as we might, if his colorwere just a shade warmer, a shade nearer our own. We have no qualmsabout yellow and white and the oriental intermediate hues. We maytherefore accept the redman without any of the prejudices peculiar toother types of skin, and we may accept his contribution to our cultureas a most significant and important one. We haven't even begun to makeuse of the beautiful hints in music alone which he has given to us. Weneed, and abjectly so I may say, an esthetic concept of our own. Othernations of the world have long since accepted Congo originality. Theworld has yet to learn of the originality of the redman, and we whohave him as our guest, knowing little or nothing of his powers and thebeauty he confers on us by his remarkable esthetic propensities, should be the first to welcome and to foster him. It is not enough toadmit of archaeological curiosity. We need to admit, and speedily, therare and excellent esthetics in our midst, a part of our own intimatescene. The redman is a spiritual expresser of very vital issues. Ifhis pottery and his blankets offer the majority but little, hisceremonials do contribute to the comparative few who can perceive aspectacle we shall not see the equal of in history again. It wouldhelp at least a little toward proving to the world around us that weare not so young a country as we might seem, nor yet as diffident asour national attitude would seem to indicate. The smile alone of theredman is the light of our rivers, plains, canyons, and mountains. Hehas the calm of all our native earth. It is from the earth all thingsarise. It is our geography that makes us Americans of the present, children. We are the product of a day. The redman is the product ofwithered ages. He has written and is still writing a very impressiveautograph on the waste places of history. It would seem to me to be asign of modernism in us to preserve the living esthetic splendors inour midst. Every other nation has preserved its inheritances. We needlikewise to do the same. It is not enough to put the redman as aspecimen under glass along with the auk and the dinosaur. He is stillalive and longing to live. We have lost the buffalo and the beaver andwe are losing the redman, also, and all these are fine symbols of ourown native richness and austerity. The redman will perpetuate himselfonly by the survival of his own customs for he will never be able toaccept customs that are as foreign to him as ours are and must alwaysbe; he will never be able to accept a culture which is inferior to hisown. 

In the esthetic sense alone, then, we have the redman as a gift. AsAmericans we should accept the one American genius we possess, withgenuine alacrity. We have upon our own soil something to show theworld as our own, while it lives. To restrict the redman now wouldsend him to an unrighteous oblivion. He has at least two contributionsto confer, a very aristocratic notion of religion, and a superb giftfor stylistic expression. He is the living artist in our midst, and weneed not think of him as merely the anthropological variation or as anarchaeological diversion merely. He proves the importance ofsynthetic registration in peoples. He has created his system forhimself, from substance on, through outline down to every convincingdetail. We are in a position always of selecting details in the hopeof constructing something usable for ourselves. It is the superficialapproach. We are imitators because we have by nature or force ofcircumstance to follow, and improve upon, if we can. We merely"impose" something. We can not improve upon what the redman offers usin his own way. To "impose" something--that is the modern culture. Theinterval of imposition is our imaginary interval of creation. Theprimitives created a complete cosmos for themselves, an entireprinciple. I want merely, then, esthetic recognition in full of thecontribution of the redman as artist, as one of the finest artists oftime; the poetic redman ceremonialist, celebrant of the universe as hesees it, and master among masters of the art of symbolic gesture. Itis pitiable to dismiss him from our midst. He needs rather royalinvitation to remain and to persist, and he can persist only byexpressing himself in his own natural and distinguished way, as is thecase with all peoples, and all individuals, indeed. 

WHITMAN AND CÉZANNE

It is interesting to observe that in two fields of expression, thoseof painting and poetry, the two most notable innovators, Whitman andCézanne bear a definite relationship in point of similarity of idealsand in their attitudes toward esthetic principles. Both of these menwere so true to their respective ideals that they are worthconsidering at the same time in connection with each other: Cézannewith his desire to join the best that existed in the impressionisticprinciple with the classical arts of other times, or as he called it, to create an art like the Louvre out of impressionism. We shall findhim striving always toward actualities, toward the realization ofbeauty as it is seen to exist in the real, in the object itself, whether it be mountain or apple or human, the entire series of livingthings in relation to one another. 

It is consistent that Cézanne, like all pioneers, was withoutprescribed means, that he had to spend his life inventing for himselfthose terms and methods which would best express his feelings aboutnature. It is natural that he admired the precision of Bouguereau, itis also quite natural that he should have worshipped in turn, Delacroix, Courbet, and without doubt, the mastery of Ingres, and itis indicative too that he felt the frank force of Manet. It was hisspecial distinction to strive toward a simple presentation of simplethings, to want to paint "that which existed between himself and theobject, " and to strive to solidify the impressionistic conception witha greater realization of form in space, the which they had so muchignored. That he achieved this in a satisfying manner may be observedin the best of his landscapes and still-lifes, and in some of thefigure studies also. The endeavor to eliminate all aspects ofextraneous conception by dismissing the quality of literature, ofpoetry and romance from painting, was the exact characteristic whichmade him what he is for us today, the pioneer in the field of modernart. It was significant enough when he once said to Renoir, that ittook him twenty years to find out that painting was not sculpture. Those earlier and heavy impasto studies of his are the evidence ofthis worthy deduction. It was significant, too, when he said thatGaugin was but "a flea on his back, " and that "he does nothing butpaint Chinese images. "

The phrase that brings these two strikingly original personages in arttogether is the one of Cézanne: "I remain the primitive of the way Ihave discovered"; and that of Whitman, which comes if I am notmistaken from Democratic Vistas, though it may be from elsewhere inWhitman's prose, running chiefly: "I only wish to indicate the way forthe innumerable poets that are to come after me, " etc. , and "I warnyou this is not a book, this is a man. " These two geniuses are both ofone piece as to their esthetic intention, despite the great gulf thatlies between their concepts of, and their attitudes toward life. Forthe one, life was a something to stay close to always, for the other, it was something to be afraid of to an almost abnormal degree; Whitmanand his door never closed, Cézanne and his door seldom or neveropened, indeed, were heavily padlocked against the intrusion of theimaginary outsider. These are the geniuses who have done most forthese two arts of the present time, it is Whitman and Cézanne who haveclarified the sleeping eye and withheld it from being totally blinded, from the onslaughts of jaded tradition. 

There were in Cézanne the requisite gifts for selection, and fordiscarding all useless encumbrances, there was in him the great desirefor purification, or of seeing the superb fact in terms of itself, majestically; and if not always serenely, serenity was neverthelesshis passionate longing. He saw what there was for him in those old andaccepted masters who meant most to him, and he saw also what there wasfor him in that newest of old masters, which was also in its way theassumed discovery of our time, he saw the relativity of Greco'sbeautiful art to the art of his own making. He saw that here was apossible and applicable architectonic suited to the objects of hisnewly conceived principles, he felt in Greco the magnetic tendency ofone thing toward another in nature, that trees and hills and valleysand people were not something sitting still for his specialdelectation, but that they were constantly aspiring to fruition, either physical, mental, or let us say, spiritual, even when the wordis applied to the so-termed inanimate objects. He felt the"palpitancy, " the breathing of all things, the urge outward of alllife toward the light which helps it create and recreate itself. Hefelt this "movement" in and about things, and this it is that giveshis pictures that sensitive life quality which lifts them beyond theaspect of picture-making or even mere representation. They are notcold studies of inanimate things, they are pulsing realizations ofliving substances striving toward each other, lending each other theirindividual activities until his canvases become, as one might namethem, ensembles of animation, orchestrated life. We shall, I think, find this is what Greco did for Cézanne, and it is Cézanne who wasamong the first of moderns, if not the first, to appreciate thatparticular aspirational quality in the splendid pictures of Greco. They "move" toward their design, they were lifted by the quality oftheir organization into spaces in which they were free to carry on thefine illusion of life. 

Whitman has certainly aspired equally, but being more things in onethan Cézanne, his task has been in some ways greater, more difficult, and may we say for humanistic reasons, loftier. Whitman'sinclusiveness was at one and the same time his virtue and his defect. For mystical reasons, it was imperative for him to include all thingsin himself, and so he set about enumerating all those elements whichwere in him, and of which he was so devoted and affectionate a part. That he could leave nothing out was, it may be said, his strongestesthetical defect, for it is by esthetical judgment that we choose andbring together those elements as we conceive it. It is the mark ofgood taste to reject that which is unessential, and the "tact ofomission, " well exemplified in Cézanne, has been found excellentlyaxiomatic. So that it is the tendency in Whitman to catalogue indetail the entire obvious universe that makes many of his pages astrain on the mind as well as on the senses, and the eye especially. The absolute enforcement of this gift of omission in painting makes iteasier for the artist, in that his mind is perforce engrossed with theidea of simplification, directness, and an easy relationship of theelements selected for presentation to each other. 

It is the quality of "living-ness" in Cézanne that sends his art tothe heights of universality, which is another way of naming theclassical vision, or the masterly conception, and brings him togetherwith Whitman as much of the same piece. You get all this in all thegreat masters of painting and literature, Goethe, Shakespeare, Rubens, and the Greeks. It is the reaching out and the very mastering of lifewhich makes all art great, and all artists into geniuses. It is thespecializing on ideas which shuts the stream of its flow. I have feltthe same gift for life in a still-life or a landscape of Cézanne'sthat I have felt in any of Whitman's best pieces. The element incommon with these two exceptional creators is liberation. They havedone more, these modern pioneers, for the liberation of the artist, and for the "freeing" of painting and poetry than any other men ofmodern time. Through them, painting and poetry have become literallyfree, and through them it is that the young painters and poets havesought new fields for self deliverance. Discipleship does not hold outlong with the truly understanding. Those who really know whatoriginality is are not long the slave of the power of imitation: it isthe gifted assimilator that suffers most under the spell of mastery. Legitimate influence is a quality which all earnest creators learn tohandle at once. Both poetry and painting are, or so it seems to me, revealing well the gift of understanding, and as a result we have abetter variety of painting and of poetry than at the first outbreak ofthis so called modern esthetic epidemic. 

The real younger creators are learning the difference between surfaceand depth, between exterior semblances, and the underlying substances. Both Whitman and Cézanne stand together in the name of one commonpurpose, freedom from characteristics not one's own. They have taughtthe creators of this time to know what classicism really is, that itis the outline of all things that endure. They have both shown that itis not idiosyncrasy alone which creates originality, that idiosyncrasyis but the husk of personal penetration, that it is in no way theconstituent essential for genius. For genius is nothing but the namefor higher perception, the greater degree of understanding. Cézanne'sfine landscapes and still-lifes, and Whitman's majestic line with itsgripping imagery are one and the same thing, for it reaches the sameheight in the mind. They walk together out of a vivid past, these twogeniuses, opening the corridors to a possibly vivid future for theartists of now, and to come. They are the gateway for our modernesthetic development, the prophets of the new time. They are most ofall, the primitives of the way they have begun, they have voiced mostof all the imperative need of essential personalism, of directexpression out of direct experience, with an eye to nothing butquality and proportion as conceived by them. Their dogmas were bothsimple in the extreme, and of immense worth to us in their respectivespheres. We may think of them as the giants of the beginning of thetwentieth century, with the same burning desire to enlarge the generalscope of vision, and the finer capacity for individual experience. 

ALBERT P. RYDER

Albert P. Ryder possessed in a high degree that strict passivity ofmental vision which calls into being the elusive yet fixed element themystic Blake so ardently refers to and makes a principle of, thatelement outside the mind's jurisdiction. His work is of the essence ofpoetry; it is alien to the realm of esthetics pure, for it has veryspecial spiritual histories to relate. His landscapes are somewhatakin to those of Michel and of Courbet. They suggest Michel's widewastes of prodigal sky and duneland with their winding roads that haveno end, his ever-shadowy stretches of cloud upon ever-shadowystretches of land that go their austere way to the edges of somevacant sea. They suggest, too, those less remote but perhaps even morealoof spaces of solitude which were ever Courbet's theme in his deeperhours, that haunting sense of subtle habitation, that acute invasionof either wind or soft fleck of light or bright presence in a breadthof shadow, as if a breath of living essences always somehow pervadedthose mystic woodland or still lowland scenes. But highly populate asthese pictures of Courbet's are with the spirit of ever-passing feetthat hover and hold converse in the remote wood, the remoter plain, they never quite surrender to that ghostliness which possesses thepictures of our Ryder. At all times in his work one has the feeling ofthere having lately passed, if ever so fleetly, some bodily shapeseeking a solitude of its own. I recall no other landscapes impressedwith a more terrific austerity save Greco's incredible "Toledo, " to mythinking a finality in landscape creation. 

There is quietude, solace, if you will, in Michel, in Courbet, butthere is never a rest for the eye or the mind or the spirit in thosemost awesome of pictures which Ryder has presented to us, few as theyare; for the Ryder legend is akin to the legend of Giorgione. There isalways splendor in them but it is the splendor of the dream given overto a genius more powerful than the vision which has conjured themforth. It is distinctly a land of Luthany in which they have theirbeing; he has inscribed for us that utter homelessness of the spiritin the far tracts that exist in the realm of the imagination; there issuffering in his pictures, that fainting of the spirit, thatbreathlessness which overtakes the soul in search of the consummationof beauty. 

Ryder is akin to Coleridge, too, for there is a direct visionalanalogy between "The Flying Dutchman" and the excessively pictorialstanzas of "The Ancient Mariner. " Ryder has typified himself in thisexcellent portrayal of sea disaster, this profound spectacle of thesoul's despair in conflict with wind and wave. Could any picturecontain more of that remoteness of the world of our real heart aswell as our real eye, the artist's eye which visits that world in noofficial sense but only as a guest or a courtly spectator? No artist, I ought to say, was ever more master of his ideas and less master ofthe medium of painting than Ryder; there is in some of his finestcanvases a most pitiable display of ignorance which will undoubtedlyshorten their life by many years. 

I still retain the vivid impression that afflicted me when I saw myfirst Ryder, a marine of rarest grandeur and sublimity, incrediblysmall in size, incredibly large in its emotion--just a sky and asingle vessel in sail across a conquering sea. Ryder is, I think, thespecial messenger of the sea's beauty, the confidant of its majesties, its hauteurs, its supremacies; for he was born within range of the seaand all its legends have hovered with him continually. Since that timeI have seen a number of other pictures either in the artist'spossession or elsewhere: "Death on the Racetrack, " "Pegasus, " canvasesfrom The Tempest and Macbeth in that strange little world of chaosthat was his home, his hermitage, so distraught with débris of theworld for which he could seem to find no other place; I have spentsome of the rare and lovelier moments of my experience with thisgentlest and sweetest of other-world citizens; I have felt withever-living delight the excessive loveliness of his glance and of hissmile and heard that music of some far-away world which was hislaughter; I have known that wisdom which is once and for all wisdomfor the artist, that confidence and trust that for the real artistthere is but one agency for the expression of self in terms of beauty, the eye of the imagination, that mystical third somewhere in the mindwhich transposes all that is legitimate to expression. To Ryder theimagination was the man; he was a poet painter, living ever outsidethe realm of theory. 

He was fond of Corot, and at moments I have thought of him as the heirand successor to some of Corot's haunting graces; but there was allthe difference between them that there is between lyric pure andtragic pure. Ryder has for once transcribed all outer semblances bymeans of a personality unrelated to anything other than itself, animagination belonging strictly to our soil and specifically to ourEastern geography. In his autographic quality he is certainly ourfinest genius, the most creative, the most racial. For our genius, atits best, is the genius of the evasive; we are born lovers of thesecret element, the mystery in things. 

How many of our American painters have given real attention to Ryder?I find him so much the legend among professional artists, this masterof arabesque, this first and foremost of our designers, this realcreator of pattern, this first of all creators of tragic landscape, whose pictures are sacred to those that revere distinction and powerin art. He had in him that finer kind of reverence for the element ofbeauty which finds all things somehow lovely. He understood best ofall the meaning of the grandiose, of everything that is powerful; noneof his associates in point of time rose to just that sublimatedexperience; not Fuller, not Martin, not Blakelock, though each ofthese was touched to a special expression. They are more derivativethan Ryder, more the children of Barbizon. 

Ryder gave us first and last an incomparable sense of pattern andausterity of mood. He saw with an all too pitiless and pitiful eye theelement of helplessness in things, the complete succumbing of thingsin nature to those elements greater than they that wield a fatalpower. Ryder was the last of the romantics, the last of that greatschool of impressive artistry, as he was the first of our realpainters and the greatest in vision. He was a still companion of Blakein that realm of the beyond, the first citizen of the land of Luthany. He knew the fine distinction between drama and tragedy, the tragedywhich nature prevails upon the sensitive to accept. He was the painterpoet of the immanent in things. 

WINSLOW HOMER

In Winslow Homer we have yankeeism of the first order, turned to acreditable artistic account. With a fierce feeling for truth, a mania, almost, for actualities, there must have been somewhere in his make-upa gentleness, a tenderness and refinement which explain his fineappreciation of the genius of the place he had in mind to represent. There is not an atom of legend in Homer, it is always and alwaysnarrative of the obvious world. There is at once the essentialdramatic import ruling the scene. With him it is nothing but dramaticrelationship, the actionary tendency of the facts themselves, innature. You are held by him constantly to the bold and naked theme, and you are left to wander in the imagination only among theessentials of simple and common realism. 

Narrative then, first and last with Homer, and the only creativeaspect of his pictures is concealed in the technique. The only touchof invention in them is the desire to improve the language they speak. Dramatic always, I do not call them theatric excepting in the case ofone picture that I know, called "Morro Castle" I think, now in theMetropolitan Museum, reminding me much of the commonplace, "Chateau deChillon" of Courbet's, neither of these pictures being of any valuein the careers of their authors. But once you sat on the rocks ofMaine, and watched the climbing of the surf up the morning sky after aheavy storm at sea, you realize the force of Homer's gift for therealities. His pictures are yankee in their indications, as a work ofart could be, flinty and unyielding, resolute as is the yankee natureitself, or rather to say, the original yankee, which was pioneer thenin a so rough yet resourceful country. It is the quality of Thoreau, but without the genius of Thoreau for the poetry of things. 

Homer's pictures give you nothing but the bare fact told in the betterclass terms of illustration, for he was illustrator, first of all. While the others were trying to make a little American Barbizon oftheir own, there were Homer, Ryder, Fuller, Martin, working alone forsuch vastly opposite ideas, and yet, of these men, four of them wereexpressing such highly imaginative ideas, and Homer was theunflinching realist among them. I do not know where Homer started, butI believe it was the sea at Prout's Neck that taught him most. I thinkthat William Morris Hunt and Washington Allston must have seemed likeinfant Michelangelos then, for there is still about them a sturdinesswhich we see little of in the American art of that time, or even nowfor that matter. They had a certain massive substance, proving theforce of mind and personality which was theirs, and while these menwere proving the abundance and warmth of themselves, Homer was thefrozen one among them. Nature was nature to him, and that alone herealized, and yet it was not precisely slavish imitation that impelledhim. 

There was in him a very creditable sense of selection, --as will beseen especially in the water colours, so original with him, so giftedin their power of treatment--one of the few great masters of themedium the world has known. He knew the meaning of wash as few sincehave known it, he knew that it has scale and limitation of its own, and for all that, infinite suggestibility. Not Turner or Whistler haveexcelled him, and I do not know of anyone who has equalled him inunderstanding of this medium outside of Dodge Macknight and JohnMarin. It is in these so expressive paintings on paper that you feelthe real esthetic longing as well as a certain contribution in Homer, the desire to realize himself and to release himself from too slavishimitation of nature and the too rigid consideration of truth. He wasfiner in technique than perhaps any that I have mentioned, though thetwo modern men have seconded him very closely, and in point of visionhave, I am certain, surpassed him. Homer arrived because of his powerto express what he wished to say, though his reach was far less loftythan theirs. He was essentially on the ground, and wanted to paint thevery grip of his own feet on the rocks. He wanted the inevitabilityput down in recognizable form. He had not feeling for the hint or thesuggestion until he came to the water-color, which is of course mostessentially that sort of medium. He knew its scope and its limitationsand never stepped out of its boundaries, and he achieved a finemastery in it. His imitators will never arrive at his severity becausethey are not flint yankee. They have not the hard head and snappytongue. It was yankee crabbedness that gave Homer his grip on the ideahe had in mind. Florida lent a softer tone to what Maine rocks couldnot give him. He is American from skin to skeleton, and a leader amongyankee as well as American geniuses. He probably hated as much asThoreau, and in his steely way admired as much. It was fire from theflintlock in them both, though nature had a far softer and loftierpersuasion with the Concord philosopher and naturalist. 

Homer remains a figure in our American culture through his feeling forreality. He has learned through slavery to detail to put down theessential fact, however abundantly or however sparsely. He has alittle of Courbet's sense of the real, and none whatever of his senseof the imaginative. It was enough for him to classicize the realisticincident. He impels me to praise through his yankee insistence uponintegrity. Story is story with Homer and he leaves legend to itself. It is the narrative of the Whittier type, homely, genuine, andtypical. He never stepped outside of his yankee determination. Homerhas sent the art of water colour painting to a very high place inworld consideration. He cannot be ignored as a master in this field. His paintings must be taken as they are, solid renderings of fact, dramatically considered. He offers nothing else. Once you have seenthese realistic sea pictures, you may want to remember and you maywant to forget, but they call for consideration. They are true intheir living appreciation of reality. 

He knew the sea like the old salts that were his neighbors, and fromaccounts he was as full of the tang of the sea as they. He was a foeto compromise and a despiser of imposition. The best and mostimpersonal of him is in his work, for he never ventured to expressphilosophies, ethics, or morals in terms of picture-painting. That isto his credit at least. He was concerned with illustration first andlast, as he was illustrator and nothing else. He taught the proceedingschool of illustrators much in the significance of verity, and in theways and means of expressing verity in terms of pigment. What thestiff pen and ink drawings and the cold engravings of his time taughthim, he conferred upon the later men in terms of freedom of technique. And at the same time he rose a place, as painter and artist of no meanorder, by a certain distinction inherent in him. He had little feelingfor synthesis outside of the water-colours, and here it was necessaryby virtue of the limitations of the medium. 

Winslow Homer will not stimulate for all time only because his mindwas too local. There is nothing of universal appeal in him. Hisrealism will never reach the height even of the sea-pieces of Courbet, and I shall include Ryder as well. Courbet was a fine artist, and sowas Ryder, and both had the advantage of exceptional imagination. Homer and Ryder are natives of the same coast and typify excellentlythe two poles in the New England temper, both in art and in life. Homer as realist, had the one idea in mind only, to illustrate realismas best he could in the most distinguished terms at the disposal ofhis personality. He succeeded admirably. 

Homer typifies a certain sturdiness in the American temper at least, and sends the lighter men away with his roughness, as doubtless hesent the curious away from his cliffs with the acidity of truth hepoured upon them. He had lived so much in the close association of theroughest elements in existence, rocks and the madly swinging sea thatglides over and above them defiantly, that he had without doubt takenon the character of them. The portrait of Homer gives him as one wouldexpect him to look, and he looks like his pictures. His visage bore aferocity that had to be met with a rocky certainty. It is evidentthere was no fooling him. He was filled with yankee tenacity andyankee courage. Homer is what you would expect to find if you weretold to hunt up the natives of "Prout's Neck" or "Perkins Cove, " orany of the inlets of the Maine coast. These sea people live so muchwith the roughness of the sea, that if they are at all inclined toacidity, and the old fashioned yankee was sure to be, they take on thehard edges of a man's temper in accordance with the jaggedness of theshores on which they live. The man around the rocks looks so very likethe profiles one sees in the rocks themselves. They have absorbed theenergy of the dramatic elements they cope with, and you may be surethat life around the sea in New England is no easy existence; and theygive out the same salty equivalent in human association. 

If you have lived by the sea, you have learned the significance of thebravery of sea people, and you learn to understand and excuse thesharpness of them which is given them from battle with the elementalfacts they are confronted with at all times. That is the character ofHomer, that is the quality of his painting. That is what makes himoriginal in the American sense, and so recognizable in the New Englandsense. He is one of New England's strongest spokesmen, and takes hisplace by the side of Ryder, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Fuller, Whittier, andsuch representative temperaments, and it is this quality thatdistinguishes him from men like Inness, Wyant, and the less typicalpainters. It is obvious, too, that he never painted any other coast, excepting of course Florida, in the water colours. 

It was Florida that produced the chef d'oeuvre in him. It was Mainethat taught him the force of the southern aspect. Romancer among therealistic facts of nature, he might be called, for he did not merelycopy nature. He did invest things with their own suggestive reality, and he surmounted his earlier gifts for exact illustration by thisother finer gift for romantic appreciation. Homer was an excellentnarrator, as will be seen in the "Gulf Stream" picture in theMetropolitan Museum. It has the powers of Jack London and of Conrad init. Homer was intense, vigorous, and masculine. If he was harsh in hischaracteristics, he was one who knew the worth of economy in emotion. He was one with his idea and his metier, and that is sufficient. 

AMERICAN VALUES IN PAINTING

There are certain painters who join themselves together in a kind ofgrouping, which, whether they wish to think of themselves in this lightor not, have become in the matter of American values in painting, afixed associative aspect of painting in America. When we speak ofAmerican painting, the choice is small, but definite as to the number ofartists, and the type of art they wished themselves to be consideredfor. From the Hudson River grouping, which up to Inness is not moremarked than as a set of men copying nature with scrupulous fidelity todetail, rather than conveying any special feeling or notion of what apicture of, or the landscape itself, may convey; and leaving aside theAmerican pupils of the Academy in Paris and Rome, most of whom returnedwith a rich sense of rhetorical conventionalities in art--men likeWilliam Morris Hunt and Washington Allston--we may turn to that othergroup of men as being far more typical of our soil and temper. I meanartists such as Homer Martin, Albert P. Ryder, George Fuller, and thelater Winslow Homer who certainly did receive more recognition than anyof them prior to his death. 

Martin, Ryder, and Fuller could not have enjoyed much in the way ofappreciation outside of a few artists of their time, and even nowthey may be said to be the artists for artists. It is reasonable tohope that they were not successful, since that which was à la mode inthe expression of their time was essentially of the dry Academy. Onewould hardly think of Homer Martin's "Border of the Seine" landscapein the Metropolitan Museum, hardly more then than now, and it leavesmany a painter flat in appreciation of its great dignity, austerity, reserve, and for the distinguished quality of its stylism. What Martinmay have gotten, during his stay in Europe, which is calledimpressionism is, it must be said, a more aristocratic type ofimpressionism than issued from the Monet followers. Martin must thenhave been knowing something of the more dignified intellectualism ofPissarro and of Sisley, those men who have been the last to reach thedegrees of appreciation due them in the proper exactitude. 

We cannot think of Martin as ever having carried off academic medalsduring his period. We cannot think of Martin as President of theAcademy, which position was occupied by a far inferior artist who waslikewise carried away by impressionism, namely Alden Weir. The actualattachment in characteristic of introspective temper in Alden Weir isnot so removed from Martin, Fuller and Ryder as might be imagined; heis more like Martin perhaps though far less profound in his sense ofmystery; Fuller being more the romanticist and Ryder in my estimationthe greatest romanticist, and artist as well, of all of these men. ButAlden Weir failed to carry off any honor as to distinctive qualitiesand invention. A genial aristocrat if you will, but having for me nomarked power outside of a Barbizonian interest in nature with a kindof mystical detachedness. 

But in the consideration of painters like Martin, Fuller and Ryder weare thinking chiefly of their relation to their time as well as theirrelation to what is to come in America. America has had as muchpainting considering its youth as could be expected of it and the bestof it has been essentially native and indigenous. But in and out ofthe various influences and traditional tendencies, these severalartists with fine imaginations, typical American imaginations, wereproceeding with their own peculiarly original and significantlypersonal expressions. They represent up to their arrival, and longafter as well, all there is of real originality in American painting, and they remain for all time as fine examples of artists with purelynative imaginations, working out at great cost their own privatesalvations for public discovery at a later time. 

All these men were poor men with highly distinguished aristocraticnatures and powerful physiques, as to appearances, with mentalitiesmuch beyond the average. When an exhibition of modern Americanpainting is given, as it surely will and must be, these men and notthe Barbizonian echoes as represented by Inness, Wyant & Co. , willrepresent for us the really great beginning of art in America. Therewill follow naturally artists like Twachtman and Robinson, as likewiseKenneth Hayes Miller and Arthur B. Davies for reasons that I think arerather obvious: both Hayes Miller and Arthur B. Davies having skippedover the direct influence of impressionism by reason of theirattachment to Renaissance ideas; having joined themselves byconviction in perhaps slight degrees to aspects of modern painting. Miller is, one might say, too intellectually deliberate to allow forspontaneities which mere enthusiasms encourage. Miller is emotionallythrilled by Renoir but he is never quite swept. His essentialconservatism hinders such violence. It would be happier for himpossibly if the leaning were still more pronounced. 

The jump to modernism in Arthur B. Davies results in the same sort ofway as admixture of influence though it is more directly appreciablein him. Davies is more willing, by reason of his elastic temper andintellectual vivacity, to stray into the field of new ideas with asimple though firm belief, that they are good while they last, nomatter how long they last. Davies is almost a propagandist in hisfeeling for and admiration of the ultra-modern movement. Miller is aquestioner and ponders long upon every point of consequence orinconsequence. He is a metaphysical analyst which is perhaps theextraneous element in his painting. In his etching, that is, thenewest of it, one feels the sense of the classical and the modernjoined together and by the classical I mean the quality of Ingres, Conjoined with modern as in Renoir, relieved of the influence ofItalian Renaissance. 

But I do not wish to lose sight of these several forerunners inAmerican art, Martin, Ryder and Fuller who, in their painting, may belinked not without relativity to our artists in literary imagination, Hawthorne and Poe. Fuller is conspicuously like Hawthorne, not by hisappreciation of witchcraft merely, but by his feeling for those eerypresences which determine the fates of men and women in their time. Martin is the purer artist for me since he seldom or never resorted tothe literary emotion in the sense of drama or narrative, whereas inthe instances of Ryder or Fuller they built up expression entirelyfrom literary experience. Albert Ryder achieves most by reason of hisvaster poetic sensibility--his Homeric instincts for the drama and bya very original power for arabesque. He is alone among the Americansin his unique gift for pattern. We can claim Albert Ryder as our mostoriginal painter as Poe takes his place as our most original poet whohad of course one of the greatest and most perfect imaginations of histime and possibly of all time. 

But it is these several painters I speak of, Martin, Ryder, andFuller, who figure for us as the originators of American indigenouspainting. They will not be copied for they further nothing beyondthemselves. No influence of these painters has been notable, exceptingfor a time in the early experience of one of the younger modernistswho, by reason of definite associations of birthright and relativityof environment, essayed to claim Albert Ryder as a very definiteinfluence; just as Courbet and Corot must in their ways have beenpowerful influences upon Ryder himself. Albert Ryder is too much of afigure to dismiss here with group-relationship, he must be treated ofseparately. So far then, there is no marked evidence that theinfluence of Fuller or Martin was powerful enough to carry beyondthemselves. They had no tenets or theories other than those ofpersonal clarification. All three remained the hermit radicals oflife, as they remain isolated examples in American art; and all ofthem essentially of New England, in that they were conspicuouslyintrospective, and shut in upon their own exclusive experience. 

But for all these variances, we shall find Homer Martin, George Fuller, and Albert Ryder forming the first nucleus for a definite value instrictly American painting. They were conscious of nothing reallyoutside of native associations and native deductions. The temper of themis as essentially American as the quality of them is essentially Easternin flavor. They seldom ventured beyond more than a home-spun richness ofcolor, though in Ryder's case Monticelli had assisted very definitelyin his notion of the volume of tone. We find here then despite theimpress of artists like William Morris Hunt, Washington Allston, and thelater Inness with the still later Winslow Homer, that gripping andrelentless realist who took hold of the newer school ofpainter-illustrators, that the artists treated of here may be consideredas the most important phase of American painting in the larger sense ofthe term. If I were to assist in the arrangement of an all Americanexhibition to show the trend toward individualism I should begin withMartin, Fuller and Ryder. I should then proceed to Winslow Homer, JohnH. Twachtman, Theodore Robinson, Hayes Miller, Arthur B. Davies, Rockwell Kent, then to those who come under the eighteen-ninety tendencyin painting, namely the Whistler-Goya-Velasquez influence. 

From this it will be found that an entirely new development had takenplace among a fairly large group of younger men who came, and veryearnestly, under the Cézannesque influence. It may be said that thechoice of these men is a wise one for it is conspicuous among artistsof today that since Cézanne art will never, cannot ever be the same, just as with Delacroix and Courbet a French art could never haveremained the same. Impressionism will be found to have had a fargreater value as a suggestive influence than as a creative one. Itbrought light in as a scientific aspect into modern painting and thatis its valuable contribution. So it is that with Cézanne the world isconscious of a new power that will never be effectually shaken off, since the principles that are involved in the intention of Cézanne areof too vital importance to be treated with lightness of judgment. Suchvaluable ideas as Cézanne contributes must be accepted almost asdogma, albeit valuable dogma. Influence is a conscious and necessaryfactor in the development of all serious minded artists, as we haveseen in the instances of all important ones. 

So it is I feel that the real art of America, and it can, I think, justly be said that there is such, will be headed by the imaginativeartists I have named in point of their value as indigenous creators, having worked out their artistic destinies on home soil with all thevirility of creators in the finer sense of the term. They haveassisted in the establishment of a native tradition which withoutquestion has by this time a definite foundation. The public must bemade aware of their contribution to a native production. It will nodoubt be a matter for surprise to many people in the world today thatart in general is more national or local than it has ever been, duemostly to the recent upheaval, which has been of great service to there-establishment of art interest and art appreciation everywhere inthe modern world. Art, like life, has had to begin all over again, for the very end of the world had been made visible at last. Theartist may look safely over an utterly new horizon, which is the onlyencouragement the artist of today can hope for. 

MODERN ART IN AMERICA

The question may be asked, what is the hope of modern art in America?The first reply would be that modern art will one day be realized inAmerica if only from experience we learn that all things happen inAmerica by means of the epidemical principle. It is of little visibleuse that single individuals, by sitting in the solitary confinement oftheir as yet little understood enthusiasms, shall hope to achieve whatis necessary for the American idea, precisely as necessary for us hereas for the peoples of Europe who have long since recognized that anymovement toward expression is a movement of unquestionable importance. Until the moment when public sincerity and the public passion forexcitement is stimulated, the vague art interests of America will goon in their dry and conventional manner. The very acute discernment ofMaurice Vlaminck that "intelligence is international, stupidity isnational, art is local" is a valuable deduction to make, and appliesin the two latter instances as admirably to America as to any othercountry. Our national stupidity in matters of esthetic modernity is amatter for obvious acceptance, and not at all for amazement. 

That art is local is likewise just as true of America as of any othercountry, and despite the judgment of stodgy minds, there is adefinite product which is peculiar to our specific temper andlocalized sensibility as it is of any other country which is nameable. Despite the fact that impressionism is still exaggeration, and thatlarge sums are still being paid for a "sheep-piece" of Charles Jacque, as likewise for a Ridgeway Knight, there is a well defined grouping ofyounger painters working for a definitely localized idea of modernism, just as in modern poetry there is a grouping of poets in America whoare adding new values to the English language, as well as assisting inthe realization of a freshly evolved localized personality in modernpoetics. 

Art in America is like a patent medicine, or a vacuum cleaner. It canhope for no success until ninety million people know what it is. Thespread of art as "culture" in America is from all appearances havinglittle or no success because stupidity in such matters is so national. There is a very vague consideration of modern art among the directorsof museums and among art dealers, but the comprehension is as vague asthe interest. Outside of a Van Gogh exhibition, a few Matisses, nowand then a Cézanne exhibited with great feeling of condescension, there is little to show the American public that art is as much anecessity as a substantial array of food is to an empty stomach. Thepublic hunger cannot groan for what it does not recognize as realnourishment. There is no reason in the world why America does not haveas many chances to see modern art as Europe has, save for minormatters of distance. The peoples of the world are alike, sensibilitiesare of the same nature everywhere among the so-called civilized, andit must be remembered always that the so-called primitive racesinvented for their own racial salvation what was not to be found readymade for them. Modern art is just as much of a necessity to us as artwas to the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Greeks. Those peoples havethe advantage of us only because they were in a higher state ofculture as a racial unit. They have no more of a monopoly upon theidea of rhythm and organization than we have, because that which wastypical of the human consciousness then, is typical of it now. As aresult of the war, there has been, it must be said, a heightening ofnational consciousness in all countries, because creative minds thatwere allowed to survive were sent home to struggle with the problem oftheir own soil. 

There is no reason whatever for believing that America cannot have asmany good artists as any other country. It simply does not have thembecause the integrity of the artist is trifled with by the intriguingagencies of materialism. Painters find the struggle too keen and it iseasy to become the advertising designer, or the merchant in painting, which is what many of our respectable artists have become. The lustfor prosperity takes the place of artistic integrity and courage. ButAmerica need not be surprised to find that it has a creditablegrouping of artists sufficiently interested in the value of modern artas an expression of our time, men and possibly some women, who feelthat art is a matter of private aristocratic satisfaction at least, until the public is awakened to the idea that art is an essentiallylocal affair and the more local it becomes by means of comprehensionof the international character, the truer it will be to the place inwhich it is produced. 

A catalogue of names will suffice to indicate the character andvariation of the localized degree of expression we are free to callAmerican in type: Morgan Russell, S. Macdonald Wright, Arthur G. Dove, William Yarrow, Dickinson, Thomas H. Benton, Abraham Walkowitz, MaxWeber, Ben Benn, John Marin, Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, MarsdenHartley, Andrew Dasburg, William McFee, Man Ray, Walt Kuhn, JohnCovert, Morton Schamberg, Georgia O'Keeffe, Stuart Davis, RexSlinkard. Added to these, the three modern photographers AlfredStieglitz, Charles Sheeler, and Paul Strand must be included. Besidesthese indigenous names, shall we place the foreign artists whose workfalls into line in the movement toward modern art in America, JosephStella, Marcel Duchamp, Gaston Lachaise, Eli Nadelman. There may be noleast questioning as to how much success all of these artists wouldhave in their respective ways in the various groupings that prevail inEurope at this time. They would be recognized at once for theauthenticity of their experience and for their integrity as artistsgifted with international intelligence. There is no reason to feelthat prevailing organizations like the Society of Independent Artists, Inc. , and the Société Anonyme, Inc. , will not bear a great increase ofinfluence and power upon the public, as there is every reason tobelieve that at one time or another the public will realize what isbeing done for them by these societies, as well as what was done bythe so famous "291" gallery. 

The effect however is not vast enough because the public finds noshock in the idea of art. It is not melodramatic enough and Americamust be appealed to through its essentially typical melodramaticinstincts. There is always enough music, and there are some whocertainly can say altogether too much of the kind there is in thiscountry. The same thing can be said of painting. There is altogethertoo much of comfortable art, the art of the uplifted illustration. Itis the reflex of the Anglo-Saxon passion for story-telling in pictureswhich should be relegated to the field of the magazines. Great artoften tells a story but great art is always something plus the idea. Ordinary art does not rise above it. 

I often wonder why it is that America, which is essentially a countryof sports and gamblers, has not the European courage as well asrapacity for fresh development in cultural matters. Can it be becauseAmerica is not really intelligent? I should be embarrassed inthinking so. There is nevertheless an obvious lethargy in theappreciation of creative taste and a still lingering yet old-fashionedfaith in the continual necessity for importation. America has a greatbody of assimilators, and out of this gift for uncreative assimilationhas come the type of art we are supposed to accept as our own. It isnot at all difficult to prove that America has now an encouraging andcompetent group of young and vigorous synthesists who are showing withintelligence what they have learned from the newest and most engagingdevelopment of art, which is to say--modern art. The names which havebeen inserted above are the definite indication, and one may go so faras to say proof, of this argument that modern art in America israpidly becoming an intelligently localized realization. 

OUR IMAGINATIVES

Is it vision that creates temperament or temperament that createsvision? Physical vision is responsible for nearly everything in art, not the power to see but the way to see. It is the eye perfect or theeye defective that determines the kind of thing seen and how one seesit. It was certainly a factor in the life of Lafcadio Hearn, for hewas once named the poet of myopia. It was the acutely sensitive eye ofCézanne that taught him to register so ably the minor and majorvariations of his theme. Manet saw certainly far less colour thanRenoir, for in the Renoir sense he was not a colourist at all. Hehimself said he painted only what he saw. Sight was almost sciencewith Cézanne as it was passion. 

In artists like Homer Martin there is a something less than visualaccuracy and something more than a gift of translation. There is adistinguished interpretation of mood coupled with an almostminiature-like sense of delicate gradation, and at the same time asomething lacking as to a sense of physical form. In the few specimensof Martin to be seen there is, nevertheless, eminent distinctionparamount. He was an artist of "oblique integrity": He sawunquestionably at an angle, but the angle was a beautiful one, andwhile many of his associates were doing American Barbizon, he wasgiving forth a shy, yet rare kind of expression, always a littlesymbolic in tendency, with the mood far more predominant. In "The sanddunes of Ontario" there will be found at once a highly individualisticfeeling for the waste places of the world. There is never so much as ahint of banality in his selection. He never resorts to stock rhetoric. 

Martin will be remembered for his singularly personal touch along withmen like Fuller and Ryder. He is not as dramatic as either of theseartists, but he has greater finesse in delicate sensibility. He was, Ithink, actually afraid of repetition, a characteristic very much invogue in his time, either conscious or unconscious, in artists likeInness, Wyant, and Blakelock, with their so single note. There isexceptional mysticity hovering over his hills and stretches of duneand sky. It is not fog, or rain, or dew enveloping them. It is acertain veiled presence in nature that he sees and brings forward. Hispicture of peaks of the White Mountains, Jefferson and Madison, givesyou no suggestion of the "Hudson River" emptiness. He was searchingfor profounder realities. He wanted the personality of his places, andhe was successful, for all of his pictures I have seen display themagnetic touch. He "touched it off" vividly in all of them. Theyreveal their ideas poetically and esthetically and the method ispersonal and ample for presentation. 

With George Fuller it was vastly different. He seemed always to behalting in the shadow. You are conscious of a deep and ever so earnestnature in his pictures. He impressed himself on his canvases in spiteof his so faulty expression. He had an understanding of depth butsurface was strange to him. He garbled his sentences so to speak withexcessive and useless wording. "The Octoroon" shows a fine feeling forromance as do all of the other pictures of Fuller that have beenpublicly visible, but it is romance obsessed with monotone. There isthe evidence of extreme reticence and moodiness in Fuller always. Iknow little of him save that I believe he experienced a severity ofdomestic problems. Farmer I think he was, and painted at off hours allhis life. It is the poetry of a quiet, almost sombre order, walking inthe shadow on the edge, of a wood being almost too much of anappearance for him in the light of a busy world. 

Why is it I think of Hawthorne when I think of Fuller? Is there arelationship here, or is it only a similarity of eeriness in temper? Iwould suspect Fuller of having painted a Hester Prynne excepting thathe could never have come to so much red in one place in his pictures. 

There was vigour in these strong, simple men, masculine in sensibilityall of them, and a fine feeling for the poetic shades of existence. They were intensely serious men, and I think from their isolation invarious ways, not popular in their time. Neither are they popular now. They will only be admired by artists of perception, and by laymen ofkeen sensibility. Whether their enforced isolations taught them tobrood, or whether they were brooders by nature, it is difficult tosay. I think they were all easterners, and this would explain awaycertain characteristic shynesses of temper and of expression in them. Ryder, as we know, was the typical recluse, Fuller in all likelihoodalso. Martin I know little of privately, but his portrait shows him tobe a strong elemental nature, with little feeling for, or interest in, the superficialities either of life or of art. Of Blakelock I can saybut little, for I do not know him beyond a few stylish canvases whichseem to have more of Diaz and Rousseau in them than contributes toreal originality, and he was one of the painters of repetition also. Asingle good Blakelock is beautiful, and I think he must be includedamong the American imaginatives, but I do not personally feel theforce of him in several canvases together. 

All of these artists are singularly individual, dreamers like MathewMaris and Marées of Europe. They all have something of Coleridge aboutthem, something of Poe, something of the "Ancient Mariner" and the"Haunted Palace", sailors in the same ship, sleepers in the samehouse. All of these men were struggling at the same time, the paintersI mean, the same hour it might be said, in the midst of conventionsof a severer type of rigidity than now, to preserve themselves fromcommonplace utterance. They were not affected by fashions. They hadthe one idea in mind, to express themselves in terms of themselves, and they were singularly successful in this despite the variousdifficulties of circumstance and of temper that attended them. Theyunderstood what this was better than anyone, and the results invarying degrees of genius attest to the quality of the Americanimagination at its best. 

I should like, for purposes of reference, to see a worthy exhibitionof all of these men in one place. It would I am sure prove mystatement that the eastern genius is naturally a tragic one, for allof these men have hardly once ventured into the clear sunlight of theworld of every day. It would offset highly also, the superficialattitude that there is no imagination in American painting. We shouldnot find so much of form or of colour in them in the stricter meaningof these ideas, as of mood. They might have set themselves to bedisciples of William Blake's significant preachment, "put offintellect and put on imagination, the imagination is the man"; theintellect being the cultivated man, and the imagination being thenatural man. There is imagination which by reason of its power andbrilliance exceeds all intellectual effort, and effort atintellectualism is worse than a fine ignorance by far. Men who arehighly imaginative, create by feeling what they do not or cannotknow. It is the sixth sense of the creator. 

These artists were men alone, touched with the pristine significanceof nature. It was pioneering of a difficult nature, precarious as allindividual investigation of a spiritual or esthetic character is sureto be. Its first requisite is isolation, its last requisite isappreciation. All of these painters are gone over into that place theywere so eager to investigate, illusion or reality. Their pictures arewitness here to their seriousness. They testify to the brighteverlastingness of beauty. If they have not swayed the world, theyhave left a dignified record in the art of a given time. Theircontemporary value is at least inestimable. They are among the veryfirst in the development of esthetics in America in point of merit. They made no compromise, and their record is clear. 

If one looks over the record of American art up to the period ofultra-modernism, it will be found that these men are the trueoriginals among American painters. We shall find outside of them and avery few others, so much of sameness, a certain academic conventionwhich, however pronounced or meagre the personalities are, leave thosepersonalities in the category of "safe" painters. They do not disturbby an excessively intimate point of view toward art or toward nature. They come up to gallery requirements by their "pleasantness" or theinoffensiveness of their style. They offer little in the way ofinterpretive power or synthetic understanding. It is the tendency tokeep on the comfortable side in American art. Doubtless it is morepractical as any innovator or investigator has learned for himself. Artists like Ryder and Martin and Fuller had nothing in common withmarket appreciations. They had ideas to express, and were sincere tothe last in expressing them. 

You will find little trace of commercialism in these men, even when, as in the case of Martin and Ryder and I do not know whom else, theydid panels for somebody-or-other's leather screen, of which"Smuggler's Cove" and the other long panel of Ryder's in theMetropolitan Museum are doubtless two. They were not successful intheir time because they could not repeat their performances. We knowthe efforts that were once made to make Ryder comfortable in aconventional studio, which he is supposed to have looked into once;and then he disappeared, as it was altogether foreign to him. Eachpicture was a new event in the lives of these men, and had to bepondered over devoutly, and for long periods often, as in the case ofRyder. Work was for him nine-tenths reflection and meditation andpoetic brooding, and he put down his sensations on canvas with greatdifficulty in the manner of a labourer. It seems obvious that hisfirst drafts were always vivid with the life intended for them, but noone could possibly have suffered with the idea of how to complete apicture more than he. His lack of facility held him from spontaneity, as it is likewise somewhat evident in Martin, and still more inFuller. 

They were artists in timidity, and had not the courage of physicalforce in painting. With them it was wholly a mental process. But weshall count them great for their purity of vision as well as for thesincerity and conviction that possessed them. Artistry of this sortwill be welcomed anywhere, if only that we may take men seriously whoprofess seriousness. There is nothing really antiquated aboutsincerity, though I think conventional painters are not sure of that. It is not easy to think that men consent to repeat themselves fromchoice, and yet the passing exhibitions are proof of that. Martin andRyder and Fuller refresh us with a poetic and artistic validity whichplaces them out of association among men of their time or of today, inthe field of objective and illustrative painters. We turn to them withpleasure after a journey through the museums, for their reticence letus say, and for the refinement of their vision, their beautiful giftof restraint. They emphasize the commonness of much that surroundsthem, much that blatantly would obscure them if they were notpronouncedly superior. They would not be discounted to anyconsiderable degree if they were placed among the known masters oflandscape painters of all modern time. They would hold their own bythe verity of feeling that is in them, and what they might lose intechnical excellence, would be compensated for in uniqueness ofpersonality. I should like well to see them placed beside artists likeMaris and Marées, and even Courbet. It would surprise the casualappreciator much, I believe. 

OUR IMPRESSIONISTS

I have for purely personal reasons chosen the two painters whoformulate for me the conviction that there have been and are but twoconsistently convincing American impressionists. These gentlemen areJohn H. Twachtman and Theodore Robinson. I cannot say precisely inwhat year Twachtman died but for purposes intended here this data isof no paramount consequence, save that it is always a matter of queryas to just how long an artist must live, or have been dead, to bediscovered in what is really his own time. 

John H. Twachtman as artist is difficult to know even by artists; forhis work is made difficult to see either by its scarcity as determinedfor himself or by the exclusiveness of the owners of his pictures. Itrequires, however, but two or three of them to convince one thatTwachtman has a something "plus" to contribute to his excursions intoimpressionism. One feels that after a Duesseldorf blackness whichpermeates his earlier work his conversion to impressionism was asfortunate as it was sincere. Twachtman knew, as is evidencedeverywhere in his work, what he wished to essay and he proceeded withpoetic reticence to give it forth. With a lyricism that is asconvincing as it is authentic, you feel that there is a certainunderlying spirit of resignation. He surely knew that a love ofsunlight would save any man from pondering on the inflated importanceof world issues. 

Having seen Twachtman but once my memory of his face recalls thisadmixture of emotion. He cared too much for the essential beauties toinvolve them with analyses extraneous to the meaning of beauty. Thatthe Japanese did more for him than any other Orientals of whom hemight have been thinking, is evident. For all that, his own personallyricism surmounts his interest in outer interpretations of light andmovement, and he leaves you with his own notion of a private anddistinguished appreciation of nature. In this sense he leads one toRenoir's way of considering nature which was the pleasure in naturefor itself. It was all too fine an adventure to quibble about. 

Twachtman's natural reticence and, I could also believe, naturalskepticism kept him from swinging wildly over to the then newtheories, a gesture typical of less intelligent natures. He had thegood sense to feel out for himself just where the new theories relatedto himself and set about producing flat simplicity of planes of colorto produce a very distinguished notion of light. He dispensed with thephotographic attitude toward objectivity and yet at the same time heldto the pleasing rhythmical shapes in nature. He did not resort todivisionalism or to ultra-violence of relationship. The pictures thatI have seen such as "February", for instance, in the Boston Museum, present for me the sensation of a man of great private spiritual andintellectual means, having the wish to express tactfully andconvincingly his personal conclusions and reactions, leaning alwaystoward the side of iridescent illusiveness rather than emotionalblatancy and irrelevant extravagance. His nuances are perhaps toofinely adjusted to give forth the sense of overwhelming magic eitherin intention or of execution. It is lyrical idea with Twachtman withseldom or never a dramatic gesture. He is as illusive as a phrase ofMallarmé and it will be remembered that he is of the period more orless of the rose and the lily and the lost idea in poetry. He doesrecall in essence at least the quality of pastels in prose, though theart intention is a sturdier one. It is enough that Twachtman did findhis relationship to impressionism, and that he did not evolve a systemof repetition which marks the failure of all influence. 

Twachtman remains an artist of super-fine sensibility and distinction, and whatever he may have poured into the ears of students as aninstructor left no visible haggard traces on his own production otherthan perhaps limiting that production. But we know that while thequality is valuable in respect of power it has no other precise value. We remember that Giorgione perished likewise with an uncertain productto his credit, as to numbers, but he did leave his immemorialimpression. So it is with John H. Twachtman. He leaves his indelibleinfluence among Americans as a fine artist, and he may be said to beamong the few artists who, having taken up the impressionisticprinciple, found a way to express his personal ideas with a truedegree of personal force. He is a beautifully sincere product and thatis going far. Those pictures I have seen contain no taint of themarket or clamoring for praise even. They were done because theirauthor had an unobtrusive yet very aristocratic word to say, and theword was spoken with authority. John H. Twachtman must be counted asone of the genuine American artists, as well as among the most genuineartists of the world. If his pictures do not torment one withproblematic intellectualism, they do hold one with their inherentrefinement of taste and a degree of aristocratic approach which histrue intelligence implies. 

With the work of Theodore Robinson, there comes a wide divergence offeeling that is perhaps a greater comprehension of the principles ofimpressionism as applied to the realities involved in the academicprinciple. One is reminded of Bastien Le Page and Léon L'Hermitte, inthe paintings of Robinson, as to their type of subject and theconception of them also. That he lived not far from Giverney islikewise evident. Being of New England yankee extraction, a VermonterI believe, he must have essayed always a sense of economy in emotion. No one could have gone so far as the then incredible Monet, whosepictures wear us to indifference with vapid and unprofitablethinking. What Monet did was to encourage a new type of audacity and abrand-new type in truth, when no one had up to then attempted to seenature as prismatical under the direct influence of the solar rays. All this has since been worked out with greater exactitude by thelater theorists in modernism. 

While Van Gogh was slowly perishing of a mad ecstasy for light, covering up a natural Dutch realism with fierce attempts at prismaticrelationship, always with the rhythms in a state of ecstaticascendency; and Seurat had come upon the more satisfying pointillismas developed by himself; somewhere in amid all these extravagances menlike Robinson were trying to combine orthodoxy of heritage andradicalist conversion with the new and very noble idea ofimpressionism. That Robinson succeeded in a not startling butnevertheless honorable and respectable fashion, must be conceded him. I sometimes think that Vignon, a seemingly obscure associate of theimpressionists, with a similar impassioned feeling of realism, outdidhim and approached closer to the principles as understood by Pissarro:probably better by a great deal than Monet himself, who is accreditedwith the honor of setting the theme moving in a modern line of thatday. And Pissarro must have been a man to have so impressed all themen young and old of his time. After seeing a great number of Monet'sone turns to any simple Pissarro for relief. And then there was alsoSisley. 

But the talk is of Theodore Robinson. He holds his place as a realistwith hardly more than a realist's conception, subjoined to a reallypleasing appreciation of the principles of impressionism as imbibed byhim from the source direct. Here are, then, the two true Americanimpressionists, who, as far as I am aware, never slipped into thebanalities of reiteration and marketable self-copy. They seem to havefar more interest in private intellectual success than in a practicalpublic one. It is this which helped them both, as it helps all seriousartists, to keep their ideas clean of outward taint. This is one ofthe most important factors, which gives a man a place in the art heessays to achieve. When the day of his work is at an end it will beseen by everyone precisely what the influences were that prompted hiseffort toward deliverance through creation. It is for the sake of thisalone that sincere artists keep to certain principles, and withgenuine sacrifice often, as was certainly the case with Twachtman. Andafter all, how can a real artist be concerned as to just how salablehis product is to be? Certainly not while he is working, if he bedecent toward himself. This is of course heresy, with Wall Street sonear. 

ARTHUR B. DAVIES

If Arthur B. Davies had found it necessary, as in the modern time ithas been found necessary to separate literature from painting, weshould doubtless have had a very delicate and sensitive lyric poetryin book form. Titles for pictures like "Mirrored Dreaming, ""Sicily-Flowering Isle, " "Shell of Gold, " "A Portal of the Night, ""Mystic Dalliance, " are all of them creations of an essentially poeticand literary mind. They are all splendid titles for a real book oflegendary experience. The poet will be first to feel the accuracy oflyrical emotion in these titles. The paintings lead one away entirelyinto the land of legend, into the iridescent splendor of reflection. They take one out of a world of didactic monotone, as to theirartistic significance. They are essentially pictures created for thepurpose of transportation. 

From the earlier days in that underground gallery on Fifth Avenue nearTwenty-seventh Street to the present time, there has been a constantlyflowing production of lyrical simplicity and purification. One cannever think of Davies as one thinks of Courbet and of Cézanne, wherethe intention is first and last a technically esthetic one; especiallyin Cézanne, whose object was the removal of all significance frompainting other than that of painting for itself. With Cézanne it wasproblem. One might even say it was the removal of personality. WithDavies you are aware that it is an entirely intimate personal life heis presenting; a life entirely away from discussion, from all sense ofproblem; they are not problematic at all, his pictures; they havelyrical serenity as a basis, chiefly. Often you have the sensation oflooking through a Renaissance window upon a Greek world--a world ofPlatonic verities in calm relation with each other. It is essentiallyan art created from the principle of the harmonic law in nature, things in juxtaposition, cooperating with the sole idea of a poeticexistence. The titles cover the subjects, as I have suggested. ArthurB. Davies is a lyric poet with a decidedly Celtic tendency. It is thesmile of a radiant twilight in his brain. It is a country of greenmoon whispers and of shadowed movement. Imagination illuminating themoment of fancy with rhythmic persuasiveness. It is the Pandaeanmystery unfolded with symphonic accompaniment. You have in thesepictures the romances of the human mind made irresistible with melodiccertainty. They are _chansons sans paroles_, sung to the syrinx inSicilian glades. 

I feel that it is our own romantic land transposed into terms ofclassical metre. The color is mostly Greek, and the line is Greek. Youcould just as well hear Glück as Keats; you could just as well see theworld by the light of the virgin lamp, and watch the smoke of oldaltars coiling among the cypress boughs. The redwoods of the Westbecome columns of Doric eloquence and simplicity. The mountains andlakes of the West have become settings for the reading of the"Centaur" of Maurice de Guerin. You see the reason for the titleschosen because you feel that the poetry of line and the harmonicaccompaniment of color is the primal essential. They are not sodynamic as suggestive in their quality of finality. The way is leftopen, in other words, for you yourself to wander, if you will, andpossess the requisite instincts for poetry. 

The presence of Arthur B. Davies, and conversation with him convinceone that poetry and art are in no sense a diversion or a delusioneven. They are an occupation, a real business for intelligent men andwomen. He is occupied with the essential qualities of poetry andpainting. He is eclectic by instinct. Spiritually he arrives at hisconviction through these unquestionable states of lyrical existence. He is there when they happen. That is authenticity sufficient. Theyare not wandering moods. They are organized conditions and attitudes, intellectually appreciated and understood. He is a mystic only in thesense that perhaps all lyrical poetry is mystic, since it strives forunion with the universal soul in things. 

It is perfectly autobiographical, the work of Arthur B. Davies, andthat is so with all genuine expression. You find this gift forconviction in powerful painter types, like Courbet and Delacroix, whoare almost propagandic in their fiercely defined insistence upon thechosen esthetic principle. Whatever emanation, illusion, or "aura, "dreadful word that it is, springing from the work of Davies, is onlytypical of what comes from all magical intentions, the magic of theworld of not-being, made real through the operation of true fancy. Davies' pictures are works of fancy, then, in contradistinction to theessays of the imagination such as those of William Blake. Poets likeDavies are lookers-in. Poets like Blake are the austere residents ofthe country they wander in. The lookers-in are no less genuine. Theymerely "make" their world. It might be said they make the prosaicworld over again, transform it by a system of prescribed magic. Thiswork, then, becomes states of fancy dramatized in lyric metre. Daviesfeels the visionary life of facts as a scientist would feel themactually. He has the wish for absolute order and consistency. There isnothing vague or disconcerting in his work, no lapses of rhetoric. Itis, in its way, complete, one may say, since it is the intelligentlycontrived purpose of this poet to arrive at a scheme of absolutespiritual harmony. 

He is first of all the poet-painter in the sense that Albert Ryder isa painter for those with a fine comprehension of the imagination. Precisely as Redon is an artist for artists, though not always theirartist in convincing esthetics, he too, satisfies the instinct forlegend, for transformation. Painters like Davies, Redon, Rops, Moreau, and the other mystical natures, give us rather the spiritual trend oftheir own lives. In Redon and in Davies the vision is untouched by thefoul breath of the world around them. In Rops and Moreau you feel theimagination hurrying to the arms and breasts of vice for their senseof home. The pathos of deliverance is urgent in them. In the work ofDavies, and of Redon, there is the splendid silence of a world createdby themselves, a world for the reflection of self. There is even akind of narcissian arrogance, the enchantment of the illumined fact. 

Beauty recognizing herself with satisfaction--that seems to be thepurpose of the work of Arthur B. Davies. It is so much outside therealm of scientific esthetics as hardly to have been more thanoverheard. These pictures are efficiently exemplary of the axiom that"all art aspires to the condition of music. " I could almost hearDavies saying that, as if Pater had never so much as thought of it. They literally soothe with a rare poetry painted for the eye. They areilluminations for the manuscripts of the ascetic soul. They arewindows for houses in which men and women may withdraw, and bereconciled to the doom of isolation. 

With the arrival of Cubism into the modern esthetic scene, thereappeared a change in the manner of creation, though the same methodsof invention remained chiefly without change. The result seems morein the nature of kaleidoscopic variance, a perhaps more acutelyrealized sense of opposites, than in the former mode. They registerless completely, it seems to me, because the departure is too suddenin the rhythmus of the artist. The art of Davies is the art of amelodious curved line. Therefore the sudden angularity is abrupt to anappreciative eye. 

It is the poetry of Arthur B. Davies that comes to the fore in one'sappreciation. He has the almost impeccable gift for lyrical truth, andthe music of motion is crystallized in his imagination to a masterfuldegree. He is the highly sensitized illustrator appointed by thestates of his soul to picture forth the pauses of the journey throughthe realm of fancy. It has in it the passion of violet and silverdreaming, the hue of an endless dawn before the day descends upon theworld. You expect the lute to regain its jaded tune there. You expectthe harp to reverberate once again with the old fervors. You expectthe syrinx to unfold the story of the reed in light song. It containsthe history of all the hushed horizons that can be found over theedges of a world of materiality. It holds in it always the warm soulof every digit of the moon. Human passion is for once removed, unlessit be that the mere humanism of motion excites the sense of passion. You are made to feel the non-essentiality of the stress of the fleshin the true places of spiritual existence. The life of moments iscarried over and made permanent in fancy, and they endure by thepurity of their presence alone. There is no violence in the work ofDavies. It is the appreciable relation of harmony and counterpoint inthe human heart and mind. It is the logic of rhythmical equation feltthere, almost exclusively. It is the condition of music that art inthe lyrical state has seemed to suggest. 

The artistic versatility of Davies is too familiar to comment upon. Hehas no distress with mediums. His exceptional sensitivity to substanceand texture gives him the requisite rapport with all species ofmediums to which the artist has access. One might be inclined to thinkof him as a virtuoso in pastel possibly, and his paintings in themedium of oil suggest this sort of richness. He is nevertheless athome in all ways. All these are issues waved away to my mind, in viewof his acute leaning to the poet that leads the artist away fromproblems other than that of Greek rhythmical perfection. It isessentially a Platonic expression, the desire of the perfect union ofone thing with another. That is its final consummation, so it seems tome. 

REX SLINKARD

 "_I doubt not that the passionately wept deaths of young men are provided for. _"--WALT WHITMAN. 

We have had our time for regretting the loss of men of genius duringthe war. We know the significance of the names of Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Elroy Flecker on the other side of the sea, to the hopeof England. And on this side of the sea the names of Joyce Kilmer, Alan Seeger and Victor Chapman have been called out to us for thepoetic spell they cast upon America. All of them in their manful, poetic way. They were all of them poets in words; all but VictorChapman were professional poets, and he, even if he himself was notaware, gave us some rare bits of loveliness in his letters. There areothers almost nameless among soldier-hero people who gave us likewisereal bits of unsuspected beauty in their unpretentious letters. 

Rex Slinkard was a soldier, poet-painter by inclination, and ranchmanas to specific occupation. Rex has gone from us, too. How many arethere who know, or could have known, the magic of this unassumingvisionary person. Only a few of us who understand the meaning of magicand the meaning of everlasting silences. It is the fortune of Americathat there remain with us numbers of highly indicative drawings and agroup of rare canvases, the quality of which painters will at onceacclaim, and poets will at once verify the lyric perfection of, paintings and drawings among the loveliest we have in point of purityof conception and feeling for the subtle shades of existence, thoserare states of life which, when they arrive, are called perfectmoments in the poetic experience of men and women. 

There will be no argument to offer or to maintain regarding the workof Rex Slinkard. It is what it is, the perfect evidence that one ofthe finest lyric talents to be found among the young creators ofAmerica has been deprived of its chance to bloom as it would like tohave done, as it so eagerly and surely was already doing. Rex Slinkardwas a genius of first quality. The word genius may be used these dayswithout fear of the little banalities, since anyone who has evolvedfor himself a clear vision of life may be said to possess the qualityof genius. 

"The day's work done and the supper past. I walk through the horse-lotand to my shack. Inside I light the lantern, and then the fire, andsitting, I think of the inhabitants of the earth, and of the world, myhome. "

These sentences, out of a letter to a near friend, and the marginaliawritten upon the edges of many of his drawings, show the varyingdegrees of delicacy Rex was eager to register and make permanent forhis own realization. His thought was once and for all upon therealities, that is, those substances that are or can be realitiesonly to the artist, the poet, and the true dreamer, and Rex Slinkardwas all of these. His observation of himself, and his understanding ofhimself, were uncommonly genuine in this young and so poetic painter. He had learned early for so young a man what were his specialidealistic fervors. He had the true romanticist's gift forrefinements, and was working continually toward the rarer states ofbeing out from the emotional into the intellectual, through spiritualapplication into the proper and requisite calm. He lived in athoroughly ordered world of specified experience which is typified inhis predilection for the superiority of Chinese notions of beauty overthe more sentimental rhythms of the Greeks. He had found the propershade of intellectuality he cared for in this type of Orientalexpression. It was the Buddhistic feeling of reality that gave himmore than the platonic. He was searching for a majesty beyondsensuousness, by which sensuous experience is transformed into greaterand more enduring shades of beauty. He wanted the very life of beautyto take the place of sensuous suggestion. Realities in place ofsemblances, then, he was eager for, but the true visionary realitiesas far finer than the materialistic reality. 

He had learned early that he was not, and never would be, thefantasist that some of his earlier canvases indicate. Even his essaysin portraiture, verging on the realistic, leaned nevertheless moretoward the imaginative reality always. He knew, also, with clarity, the fine line of decision between imagination and vision, between thedramatic and the lyric, and had realized completely the supremacy ofthe lyric in himself. He was a young boy of light walking on a man'sstrong feet upon real earth over which there was no shadow for him. Hewalked straightforwardly toward the elysium of his own very personalorganized fancies. His irrigation ditches were "young rivers" for him, rivers of being, across which white youths upon white horses, andwhite fawns were gliding to the measure of their own delights. He had, this young boy of light, the perfect measure of poetic accuracycoupled with a man's fine simplicity in him. He had the priceless calmfor the understanding of his own poetic ecstasies. They acted upon himgently with their own bright pressure. He let them thrive according totheir own relationships to himself. Nothing was forced in the mind andsoul of Rex Slinkard. He was in quest of the modern rapture forpermanent things such as is to be found in "L'après midi d'un Faun" ofMallarmé and Debussy for instance, in quest of those rare, whiterproportions of experience. It was radiance and simplicity immingled inhis sense of things. 

He would have served his country well as one of its clearest and bestcitizens, far more impressively by the growth and expansion of hissoul in his own manly vision, than by the questionable value of hislabors in the military service. He did what he could, gladly andheroically, but he had become too weakened by the siege of physicalreverses that pursued his otherwise strong body to endure the strainof labor he performed, or wanted to accomplish. He knew long before heentered service the significance of discipline from very profoundexperience with life from childhood onward. Life had come to himvoluminously because he was one who attracted life to him, electrically. He did not "whine" or "postpone, " for he was in all ofhis hours at least mentally and spiritually equal to the world in allof its aspects. He was physically not there for the thing hevolunteered to do, despite the appearance of manly strength in him, orthought he would be able to do. He hoped strongly to serve. None knewhis secret so well as himself, and he kept his own secret royally andamicably. 

Exceptional maturity of understanding of life, of nature, and all thelittle mysteries that are the shape of human moments, wasconspicuously evidenced for as long as his intimates remember. Theextraordinary measure of calm contained in his last pictures and in somany of the drawings done in moments of rest in camp is evidence ofall this. He had a boy's brightness and certainty of the fairness ofthings, joined with a man's mastery of the simple problem. He was atrue executive in material affairs and his vision was another part ofthe business of existence. 

As I have said, Rex Slinkard had the priceless poise of the true lyricpoet, and it was the ordered system in his vision that proved him. Heknew the value of his attitudes and he was certain that perfection isimperishable, and strove with a poet's calm intensity toward that. Hehad found his Egypt, his Assyria, his Greece, and his own specificNirvana at his feet everywhere. 

As he stood attending to the duties of irrigation and the ripening ofthe alfalfa crops, he spent the moments otherwise lost in carvingpebbles he found about him with rare gestures and profiles, either ofhis own face or body which he knew well, or the grace of other bodiesand faces he had seen. He was always the young eye on things, an avideye sure of the wonder about to escape from every living thing wherelight or shadow fell upon them gently. He was a sure, unquestionable, and in this sense a perfect poet, and possessed the undeniablepainter's gift for presentation. 

He was of the company of Odilon Redon, of whom he had never heard, inhis feeling for the almost occult presence emanating from everythinghe encountered everywhere, and his simple letters to his friends holdtouches of the same beauty his drawings and paintings and carvings onpebbles contain. 

A born mystic and visionary as to the state of his soul, a boy oflight in quest of the real wisdom that is necessary for the lyricalembodiment, this was Rex Slinkard, the western ranchman andpoet-painter. "I think of the inhabitants of the earth and of theworld, my home. " This might have been a marginal note from the Book ofThel, or it might have been a line from some new songs of innocenceand experience. It might have been spoken from out of one of the oaksof William Blake. It must have been heard from among the live oaks ofSaugus. It was the simple speech of a ranchman of California, a realboy-man who loved everything with a poet's love because everythingthat lived, lived for him. 

Such were the qualities of Rex Slinkard, who would like to haveremained in the presence of his friends, the inhabitants of the earth, to have lived long in the world, his home. 

It is all a fine clear testimony to the certainty of youth, perhapsthe only certainty there can be. He was the calm declaimer of the lifeof everlasting beauty. He saw with a glad eye the "something" that iseverywhere at all times, and in all places, for the poet's and thevisionary's eye at least. He was sure of what he saw; his paintingsand drawings are a firm conviction of that. Like all who expressthemselves clearly, he wanted to say all he had to say. At thirty hehad achieved expression remarkably. He had found the way out, and theway out was toward and into the light. He was clear, and entirelyunshadowed. 

This is Rex Slinkard, ranchman, poet-painter, and man of the livingworld. Since he could not remain, he has left us a carte visite ofrarest clarity and beauty. We who care, among the few, for things inrelation to essences, are glad Rex Slinkard lived and laughed andwondered, and remained the little while. The new silence is but aphase of the same living one he covered all things with. He was gladhe was here. He was another angle of light on the poetic world aroundus, another unsuspected facet of the bright surface of the world. Surfaces were for him, too, something to be "deepened" with a freshvividness. He had the irresistible impulse to decorate and to decorateconsistently. His sense of decoration was fluid and had no hint of therhetorical in it. He felt everything joined together, shape to shape, by the harmonic insistence in life and in nature. A flower held aface, and a face held a flowery substance for him. Bodies were youngtrees in bloom, and trees were lines of human loveliness. The body ofthe man, the body of the woman, beautiful male and female bodies, theideal forms of everyone and everything he encountered, he understoodand made his own. They were all living radiances against the droppedcurtain of the world. He loved the light on flesh, and the shadows onstrong arms, legs, and breasts. He avoided theory, either philosophicor esthetic. He had traveled through the ages of culture in hisimagination, and was convinced that nothing was new and nothing wasold. It was all living and eternal when it was genuine. He stepped outof the world of visible realities but seldom, and so it was, books andmethods of interpretation held little for him. He didn't need them, for he held the whole world in his arms through the power of dream andvision. He touched life everywhere, touched it with himself. 

Rex Slinkard went away into a celestial calm October 18, 1918, in St. Vincent's Hospital, New York City. It is the few among those of us whoknew him as poet and visionary and man, who wish earnestly that Rexmight have remained. He gave much that many wanted, or would havewanted if they had had the opportunity of knowing him. The picturesand drawings that remain are the testimony of his splendid poetictalents. He was a lyrical painter of the first order. He is somethingthat we miss mightily, and shall miss for long. 

SOME AMERICAN WATER-COLORISTS

With the arrival of Cézanne into the field of water-color painting, this medium suffers a new and drastic instance for comparison. It isnot technical audacity alone, of course, that confronts us in thesebrilliantly achieved performances, so rich in form as well as radiantwith light. It is not the kind of virility for its own sake that istypical of our own American artists so gifted in this special medium, like Whistler, Sargent, Winslow Homer, Dodge Macknight, John Marin, and Charles Demuth. With Cézanne it was merely a new instrument toemploy for the realization of finer plastic relations. The medium ofwater-color has been ably employed by the English and the Dutchpainters, but it seems as if the artists of both these countriessucceeded in removing all the brilliance and charm as well as thefreshness which is peculiar to it; few outside of Cézanne have, Ithink, done more with water-color than the above named Americanartists, none who have kept more closely and consistently within theconfines and peculiarities of this medium. 

In the consideration of the American water-color artists it will befound that Sargent and Homer tend always toward the graphic aspect ofa pictorial idea, yet it is Homer who relieves his pictures of thisobsession by a brilliant appreciation of the medium for its own sake. Homer steps out of the dry conventionalism of the English style ofpainting, which Sargent does not do. Much of that metallic harshnesswhich is found in the oil pictures of Homer is relieved in thewater-colors and there is added to this their extreme virtuosity, anda great distinction to be discovered in their sense of light and life, the sense of the object illumined with a wealth of vibrancy that ispeculiar to its environment, particularly noticeable in the Floridaseries. 

Dodge Macknight has seen with a keen eye the importance of thisvirility of technique to be found in Homer, and has added to this apassion for impressionistic veracity which heightens his own work to apoint distinctly above that of Sargent, and one might almost say aboveWinslow Homer. Macknight really did authenticate for himself theefficacy of impression with almost incredible feats of visual bravery. There is no array of pigment sufficient to satisfy him as for whatheat and cold do to his sensibility, as experienced by the oppositepoles of a New England winter and a tropical Mexican landscape. He isalways in search of the highest height in contrasts, all this joinedby what his sense of fierceness of light could bring to the fantasticdune stretches of Cape Cod in fiery autumn. His work in water-colorhas the convincing charm of almost fanaticism for itself; and we findthis medium progressing still further with the fearlessness of JohnMarin in the absolute at-home-ness which he displays on all occasionsin his audacious water-color pictures. 

Marin brings you to the feeling that digression is for him imperativeonly as affording him relief from the tradition of his medium. JohnMarin employs all the restrictions of water-color with the wisdom thatis necessary in the case. He says that paper plus water, plus emotionwill give a result in themselves and proceeds with the idea at hand inwhat may without the least temerity be called a masterly fashion; hehas run the gamut of experience with his materials from the earliestTurner tonalities, through Whisterian vagaries on to Americandefiniteness, and has incidentally noted that the Chinese have beenprobably the only supreme masters of the wash in the history ofwater-color painting. I can say for myself that Marin produces theliveliest, handsomest wash that is producible or that has ever beenaccomplished in the field of water-color painting. Perhaps many of thepictures of John Marin were not always satisfying in the tactile sensebecause many of them are taken up with an inevitable passion fortechnical virtuosity, which is no mean distinction in itself but weare not satisfied as once we were with this passion for audacity andvirtuosity. We have learned that spatial existence and spatialrelationships are the important essentials in any work of art. Theprecise ratio of thought accompanied by exactitude of emotion for thegiven idea is a matter of serious consideration with the modernartists of today. That is the special value of modern painting to thedevelopment of art. 

The Chinese really knew just what a wash was capable of, and confinedthemselves to the majesty of the limitations at hand. John Marin hasbeen wise in this also though he is not precisely fanatical, which maybe his chief defect, and it is probably true that the greatestexperimenters have shown fanatical tendency, which is only theaccentuated spirit of obsession for an idea. How else does one hold avision? It is the only way for an artist to produce plastic exactitudebetween two planes of sensation or thought. The parts must be asperfect as the whole and in the best art this is so. There must be thesense of "existence" everywhere and it might even be said that thecool hue of the intellect is the first premise in a true work of art. Virtuosity is a state of expression but it is not the final state. Onemust search for as well as find the sequential quality which isnecessitated for the safe arrival of a work of art into the sphere ofesthetic existence. 

The water-colors of John Marin are restless with energy, which is inits way a real virtue. They do, I think, require, at times at least, more of the calm of research and less of the excitement of it. Alltrue artistry is self-contained and never relies upon outer physicalstimulus or inward extravagance of phantasy, or of idiosyncrasy. Awork of art is never peculiar, it is always a natural thing. In thissense John Marin approaches real art because he is probably the mostnatural water-colorist in existence. 

With Charles Demuth water-color painting steps up into the truecondition of ideas followed by experience. He has joined withmodernism most consistently, having arrived at this state ofprogression by the process of investigation. The tradition ofwater-color painting takes a jump into the new field of modernism, andDemuth has given us his knowledge of the difference betweenillustration, depiction, and the plastic realization of fact. Probablyno young artist has accomplished a finer degree of artistic finesse inillustration than has Charles Demuth in his series of illustrationsfor "The Two Magics" of Henry James, or more explicitly to say "TheTurn of the Screw". These pictures are to the true observer all thatcould be hoped for in imaginative sincerity as well as in technicalelusiveness. Demuth has since that time stepped out of the confinementof water-color pure, over into the field of tempera, which brings itnearer to the sturdier mediums employed in the making of picturesevolving a greater severity of form and a commendable rigidity ofline. He has learned like so many moderns that the ruled line offersgreater advantages in pictorial structure. You shall find his approachto the spirit of Christopher Wren is as clear and direct as hisfeeling for the vastiness of New England speechlessness. He has comeup beyond the dramatisation of emotion to the point of expression forits own sake. But he is nevertheless to be included among the arrivedwater-colorists, because his gifts for expression have been evolvedalmost entirely through this medium. There is then a fine Americanachievement in the art of water-color painting which may safely becalled at this time a localized tradition. It has become an Americanrealization. 

THE APPEAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography is an undeniable esthetic problem upon our modern artistichorizon. The idea of photography as an art has been discussed no doubtever since the invention of the pinhole. In the main, I have alwayssaid for myself that the kodak offers me the best substitute for thepicture of life, that I have found. I find the snapshot, almostwithout exception, holding my interest for what it contains of simpleregistration of and adherence to facts for themselves. I have had avery definite and plausible aversion to the "artistic" photograph, andwe have had more than a surfeit of this sort of production for thepast ten or fifteen years. I have referred frequently in my mind tothe convincing portraits by David Octavius Hill as being among thefirst examples of photographic portraiture to hold my own privateinterest as clear and unmanipulated expressions of reality; and it isa definite as well as irresistible quality that pervades thesemechanical productions, the charm of the object for its own sake. 

It was the irrelevant "artistic" period in photography that did somuch to destroy the vital significance of photography as a type ofexpression which may be classed as among the real arts of today. Andit was a movement that failed because it added nothing to the ideasave a distressing superficiality. It introduced a fog on the brain, that was as senseless as it was embarrassing to the eye caringintensely for precision of form and accuracy of presentation. Photography was in this sense unfortunate in that it fell into thehands of adepts at the brush who sought to introduce technicalvariations which had nothing in reality to do with it and with whichit never could have anything in common. All this sort of thing wasproduced in the age of the famous men and women, the period ofeighteen ninety-five to nineteen hundred and ten say, for it was theage when the smart young photographer was frantic to produce famoussitters like Shaw and Rodin. We do not care anything about such thingsin our time because we now know that anybody well photographedaccording to the scope as well as the restrictions of the medium athand could be, as has been proven, an interesting subject. 

It has been seen, as Alfred Stieglitz has so clearly shown, that aneyebrow, a leg, a tree trunk, a body, a breast, a hand, any part beingequal to the whole in its power to tell the story, could be made asinteresting, more so indeed than all the famous people in existence. It doesn't matter to us in the least that Morgan and Richard Strausshelped fill a folio alongside of Maeterlinck and such like persons. All this was, of course, in keeping with the theatricism of the periodin which it was produced, which is one of the best things to be saidof it. But we do know that Whistler helped ruin photography alongwith Wilde who helped ruin esthetics. Everyone has his officenevertheless. As a consequence, Alfred Stieglitz was told by theprevailing geniuses of that time that he was a back number because ofhis strict adherence to the scientific nature of the medium, becausehe didn't manipulate his plate beyond the strictly technicaladvantages it offered, and it was not therefore a fashionable additionto the kind of thing that was being done by the assuming ones at thattime. The exhibition of the life-work of Alfred Stieglitz in March, 1921, at the Anderson Galleries, New York, was a huge revelation evento those of us who along with our own ultra modern interests had founda place for good unadulterated photography in the scheme of ourappreciation of the art production of this time. 

I can say without a qualm that photography has always been a realstimulus to me in all the years I have been personally associated withit through the various exhibitions held along with those of modernpainting at the gallery of the Photo-Secession, or more intimatelyunderstood as "291". Photography was an interesting foil to the kindof veracity that painting is supposed to express, or rather to say, was then supposed to express; for painting like all other ideas haschanged vastly in the last ten years, and even very much since theinterval created by the war. I might have learned this anywhere else, but I did get it from the Stieglitz camera realizations with morethan perhaps the expected frequency, and I am willing to assert nowthat there are no portraits in existence, not in all the history ofportrait realization either by the camera or in painting, which sodefinitely present, and in many instances with an almost hauntingclairvoyance, the actualities existing in the sitter's mind and bodyand soul. These portraits are for me without parallel therefore inthis particular. And I make bold with another assertion, that from ourmodern point of view the Stieglitz photographs are undeniable works ofart, as are also the fine photographs of the younger men like CharlesSheeler and Paul Strand. Sheeler, being also one of our best modernpainters, has probably added to his photographic work a different typeof sensibility by reason of his experience in the so-called creativemedium of painting. It is, as we know, brain matter that counts in awork of art, and we have dispensed once and for all with the sillynotion that a work of art is made by hand. Art is first and last ofall, a product of the intelligence. 

I think the photographers must at least have been a trifle upset withthis Stieglitz Exhibition. I know that many of the painters of the daywere noticeably impressed. There was much to concern everyone there, in any degree that can be put upon us as interested spectators. Formyself, I care nothing for the gift of interpretation, and far lessfor that dreadful type of effete facility which produces a kind ofhocus-pocus technical brilliancy which fuddles the eye with atrickery, and produces upon the untrained and uncritical mind a kindof unintelligent hypnotism. Art these days is a matter of scientificcomprehension of reality, not a trick of the hand or the old-fashionedmanipulation of a brush or a tool. I am interested in presentationpure and simple. All things that are living are expression andtherefore part of the inherent symbology of life. Art, therefore, thatis encumbered with excessive symbolism is extraneous, and from mypoint of view, useless art. Anyone who understands life needs nohandbook of poetry or philosophy to tell him what it is. When apicture looks like the life of the world, it is apt to be a fairpicture or a good one, but a bad picture is nothing but a bad pictureand it is bound to become worse as we think of it. And so for my ownpleasure I have consulted the kodak as furnishing me with a betterpicture of life than many pictures I have seen by many of theso-called very good artists, and I have always delighted in therotograph series of the Sunday papers because they are as close tolife as any superficial representation can hope to be. 

It was obvious then that many of those who saw the Stieglitzphotographs, and there were large crowds of them, were non-plussed bythe unmistakable authenticity of experience contained in them. If youstopped there you were of course mystified, but there is no mysterywhatever in these productions, for they are as clear and I shall evengo so far as to say as objective as the daylight which produced them, and aside from certain intimate issues they are impersonal as it ispossible for an artist to be. It is this quality in them which makesthem live for me as realities in the art world of modern time. All artcalls for one variety of audacity or another and so these photographsunfold one type of audacity which is not common among works of art, excepting of course in highly accentuated instances of autographicrevelation. It is the intellectual sympathy with all the subjects onexhibition which is revealed in these photographs: A kind of spiritualdiagnosis which is seldom or never to be found among the photographersand almost never among the painters of the conventional portrait. Thisability, talent, virtue, or genius, whatever you may wish to name it, is without theatricism and therefore without spectacular demonstrationeither of the sitter or the method employed in rendering them. 

It is never a matter of arranging cheap and practically unrelatedexternals with Alfred Stieglitz. I am confident it can be said that hehas never in his life made a spectacular photograph. His intensityruns in quite another channel altogether. It is far closer to theclairvoyant exposure of the psychic aspects of the moment, ascontained in either the persons or the objects treated of. With theseessays in character of Alfred Stieglitz, you have a series of typeswho had but one object in mind, to lend themselves for the use of themachine in order that a certain problem might be accurately renderedwith the scientific end of the process in view, and the givenactuality brought to the surface when possible. I see nothing in theseportraits beyond this. I understand them technically very little onlythat I am aware that I have not for long, and perhaps never, seenplates that hold such depths of tonal value and structuralrelationship of light and shade as are contained in the hundred andfifty prints on exhibition in the Anderson Galleries. Art is a vastlynew problem and this is the first thing which must be learned. Precisely as we learn that a certain type of painting ended in thehistory of the world with Cézanne. 

There is an impulse now in painting toward photographic veracity ofexperience as is so much in evidence in the work of an artist of suchfine perceptions as Ingres, with a brushing aside of all old-fashionednotions of what constitutes artistic experience. There is a deliberaterevolt, and photography as we know it in the work of Alfred Stieglitzand the few younger men like Strand and Sheeler is part of the newesthetic anarchism which we as younger painters must expect to makeourselves responsible for. It must be remembered you know, that therehas been a war, and art is in a condition of encouraging andstimulating renascence, and we may even go so far as to say that it isa greater world issue than it was previous to the great catastrophe. And also, it must be heralded that as far as art is concerned the endof the world has been seen. The true artist, if he is intelligent, iswitness of this most stimulating truth that confronts us. We cannothope to function esthetically as we did before all this happened, because we are not the same beings intellectually. This does not meanin relation to photography that all straight photography is good. Itmerely means that the kind of photography I must name "Fifth Avenue"art, is a conspicuous species of artistic bunkum, and must berecognized as such. 

Photographers must know that fogging and blurring the image iscurtailing the experience of it. It is a foolish notion thatmystification is of any value. Flattery is one of the false elementsthat enter into the making of a work of art among the artists ofdoubtful integrity, but this is often if not always the commercialelement that enters into it. There is a vast difference between thissort of representation and that which is to be found in Greeksculpture which is nothing short of conscious plastic organization. These figures were set up in terms of the prevailing systems ofproportion. Portraits were likewise "arranged" through the artistry ofthe painter in matters of decoration for the great halls of theperiods in which they were hung. They were studies on a large scale ofornamentation. Their beauty lies chiefly in the gift of execution. Inthese modern photographs of Stieglitz and his followers there is anengaging directness which cannot be and must not be ignored. They dofor once give in the case of the portraits, and I mean chiefly ofcourse the Stieglitz portraits, the actuality of the sitter withoutpose or theatricism of any sort, a rather rare thing to be said of themodern photograph. 

Stieglitz, therefore, despite his thirty or more years ofexperimentation comes up among the moderns by virtue of his ownpersonal attitude toward photography, and toward his, as well as its, relation to the subject. His creative power lies in his ability todiagnose the character and quality of the sitter as being peculiar toitself, as a being in relation to itself seen by his own clarifyinginsight into general and well as special character and characteristic. It need hardly be said that he knows his business technically for hehas been acclaimed sufficiently all over the world by a series ofalmost irrelevant medals and honours without end. The Stieglitzexhibition is one that should have been seen by everyone regardless ofany peculiar and special predilection for art. These photos will haveopened the eye and the mind of many a sleeping one as to what can bedone by way of mechanical device to approach the direct charm of lifein nature. 

The moderns have long since congratulated Alfred Stieglitz for hisoriginality in the special field of his own creative endeavor. It willmatter little whether the ancients do or not. His product is a finetestimonial to his time and therefore this is his contribution to histime. He finds himself, and perhaps to his own embarrassment even, among the best modern artists; for Stieglitz as I understand him careslittle for anything beyond the rendering of the problem involved whichmakes him of course scientific first and whatever else afterward, which is the hope of the modern artists of all movements, regardless. Incidentally it may be confided he is an artistic idol of the Dadaistswhich is at least a happy indication of his modernism. If he were toshift his activities to Paris, he would be taken up at once for hisactual value as modern artist expressing present day notions of actualthings. Perhaps he will not care to be called Dada, but it isnevertheless true. He has ridden his own vivacious hobby-horse with asmuch liberty, and one may even say license, as is possible for oneintelligent human being. There is no space to tell casually of hisvarious aspects such as champion billiard player, racehorseenthusiast, etcetera. This information would please his dadaisticconfrères, if no one else shows signs of interest. 

SOME WOMEN ARTISTS IN MODERN PAINTING

It is for the purpose of specialization that the term woman isherewith applied to the idea of art in painting. Art is for anyonenaturally who can show degree of mastery in it. There have been agreat many women poets and musicians as well as actors, thoughsingularly enough the women painters of history have been few, and forthat matter in question of proportion remain so. Whatever the wish maybe in point of dismissing the idea of sex in painting, there has sooften been felt among many women engaging to express themselves in it, the need to shake off marked signs of masculinity, and evenbrutishness of attack, as denoting, and it must be said here, afactitious notion of power. Power in painting does not come frommuscularity of arm; it comes naturally from the intellect. There are agreat many male painters showing too many signs of femininity in theirappreciation and the conception of art in painting. Art is neithermale nor female. Nevertheless, it is pleasing to find women artistssuch as I wish to take up here, keeping to the charm of their ownfeminine perceptions and feminine powers of expression. It is theirvery femininity which makes them distinctive in these instances. Thisdoes not imply lady-like approach or womanly attitude of moral. Itmerely means that their quality is a feminine quality. 

In the work of Madame Delaunay Terck, who is the wife of Delaunay, theFrench Orphiste, which I have not seen since the war came on, one cansay that she was then running her husband a very close second fordistinction in painting and intelligence of expression. When twopeople work so closely in harmony with each other, it is and willalways remain a matter of difficulty in knowing just who is the realexpressor of an idea. Whatever there is of originality in the idea ofOrphisme shall be credited to Delaunay as the inventor, but whetherhis own examples are more replete than those of Mme. Delaunay Terck isnot easy of statement. There was at that time a marked increase ofvirility in production over those of Delaunay himself, but these arematters of private personal attack. Her Russian temper was probablyresponsible for this, at least no doubt, assisted considerably. Therewas nevertheless at that time marked evidence that she was in masteryof the idea of Orphisme both as to conception and execution. Sheshowed greater signs of virility in her approach than did Delaunayhimself. There was in his work a deal of what Gertrude Stein thencalled "white wind", a kind of thin escaping in the method. Thedesigns did not lock so keenly. His work had always typical charm ifit had not always satisfying vigor. His "Tour Eiffel" and a canvascalled "Rugby" I think, I remember as having more grace than depth, but one may say nevertheless, real distinction. 

In the exchanging of ideas so intimately as has happened splendidlybetween Picasso and Braque, which is in the nature of professionaldignity among artists, there is bound to be more or less confusioneven to the highly perceptive artist and this must therefore confusethe casual observer and layman. So it is, or was at that time with thepainting of Robert Delaunay and Mme. Delaunay Terck; what you learnedin this instance was that the more vigorous of the pictures were hers. She showed the same strength and style in her work as in herinteresting personality which was convincing without being toostrained or forced; she was most probably an average Russian womanwhich as one knows means a great deal as to intelligence and personalpower. 

MARIE LAURENCIN

With Marie Laurencin there was a greater sense of personal andindividual creation. One can never quite think of anyone in connectionwith her pictures other than the happy reminiscence of Watteau. Withher work comes charm in the highest, finest sense; there is nothingtrivial about her pictures, yet they abound in all the graces of the18th Century. Her drawings and paintings with spread fans and now andthen a greyhound or a gazelle opposed against them in design, holdgrace and elegance of feeling that Watteau would certainly havesanctioned. She brings up the same sense of exquisite gesture andsimplicity of movement with a feeling for the romantic aspect ofvirginal life which exists nowhere else in modern painting. Sheeliminates all severities of intellect, and super-imposes wistfulcharm of idea upon a pattern of the most delicate beauty. She isessentially an original which means that she invents her ownexperience in art. 

Marie Laurencin concerns herself chiefly with the idea of girlishyouth, young girls gazing toward each other with fans spread orfolded, and fine braids of hair tied gently with pale cerise or paleblue ribbon, and a pearl-like hush of quietude hovers over them. Shearrests the attention by her fine reticence and holds one's interestby the veracity of esthetic experience she evinces in her least orgreatest painting or drawing. She paints with miniature sensibilityand knows best of all what to leave out. She is eminently devoid ofexcessiveness either in pose or in treatment, with the result thatyour eye is refreshingly cooled with the delicate process. 

That Marie Laurencin keeps in the grace of French children is in noway surprising if you know the incomparable loveliness of them. Apartfrom her modernistic excellence as artist, she conveys a poetry soessentially French in quality that you wish always for more and moreof it. It is the light breath of the Luxembourg gardens and thegardens of the Tuilleries coming over you once more and the samegrace in child-life as existed in the costly games at Versailles amongthe grown-ups depicted so superbly by Watteau and his most worthyfollowers, Lancret and Pater, in whom touch is more breath thanmovement. It is a sensitive and gracefully aristocratic creation MarieLaurencin produces for us, one that makes the eye avid of moreexperience and the mind of more of its subtlety. It is an essentiallybeautiful and satisfying contribution to modern painting, thisnacreous cubism of Marie Laurencin. 

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE[1]

With Georgia O'Keeffe one takes a far jump into volcanic crateralethers, and sees the world of a woman turned inside out and gapingwith deep open eyes and fixed mouth at the rather trivial world ofliving people. "I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoythem then, " says Georgia O'Keeffe. Georgia O'Keeffe has had her feetscorched in the laval effusiveness of terrible experience; she haswalked on fire and listened to the hissing of vapors round her person. The pictures of O'Keeffe, the name by which she is mostly known, areprobably as living and shameless private documents as exist, inpainting certainly, and probably in any other art. By shamelessness Imean unqualified nakedness of statement. Her pictures are essentialabstractions as all her sensations have been tempered to abstractionby the too vicarious experience with actual life. She had seen hell, one might say, and is the Sphynxian sniffer at the value of a secret. She looks as if she had ridden the millions of miles of her everyknown imaginary horizon, and has left all her horses lying dead intheir tracks. All in quest of greater knowledge and the greater senseof truth. What these quests for truth are worth no one can preciselysay, but the tendency would be to say at least by one who has gone farto find them out that they are not worthy of the earth or sky they arewritten on. Truth has soiled many an avenue, it has left many adrawing room window open. It has left the confession box filled withbones. However, Georgia O'Keeffe pictures are essays in experiencethat neither Rops nor Moreau nor Baudelaire could have smiled away. 

[Footnote 1: American. --Ed. ]

She is far nearer to St. Theresa's version of life as experience thanshe could ever be to that of Catherine the Great or Lucrezia Borgia. Georgia O'Keeffe wears no poisoned emeralds. She wears too much white;she is impaled with a white consciousness. It is not withoutsignificance that she wishes to paint red in white and still have itlook like red. She thinks it can be done and yet there is more red inher pictures than any other color at present; though they do, it mustbe said, run to rose from ashy white with oppositions of blue to keepthem companionable and calm. The work of Georgia O'Keeffe startles byits actual experience in life. This does not imply street life or skylife or drawing room life, but life in all its huge abstraction ofpain and misery and its huge propensity for silencing the spirit ofadventure. These pictures might also be called expositions of psychismin color and movement. 

Without some one to steady her, I think O'Keeffe would not wish thecompany of more tangible things than trees. She knows why she despisesexistence, and it comes from facing the acute dilemma with moreacuteness than it could comprehend. She is vastly over-size as toexperience in the spiritual geometric of the world. All this gives herpainting as clean an appearance as it is possible to imagine inpainting. She soils nothing with cheap indulgence of wishingcommonplace things. She has wished too large and finds the worldaltogether too small in comparison. 

What the future holds for Georgia O'Keeffe as artist depends uponherself. She is modern by instinct and therefore cannot avoidmodernity of expression. It is not willed, it is inevitable. When shelooks at a person or a thing she senses the effluvia that radiate fromthem and it is by this that she gauges her loves and hates or hertolerance of them. It is enough that her pictures arrive with astrange incongruous beauty which, though metaphysically an import, does not disconcert by this insistence. She knows the psychism ofpatterns and evolves them with strict regard for the pictural aspectsin them which save them from banality as ideas. She has no preachmentto offer and utters no rubbish on the subject of life and the problem. She is one of the exceptional girls of the world both in art and inlife. As artist she is as pure and free from affectation as in lifeshe is relieved from the necessity of it. 

 * * * * *

If there are other significant women in modern art I am not as yetfamiliarized with them. These foregoing women take their placedefinitely as artists within the circle of women painters like LeBrun, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, and are in advance of them bybeing closer to the true appreciation of esthetics in inventing themfor themselves. 

REVALUATIONS IN IMPRESSIONISM

In the consideration of the real factors in the impressionisticmovement, we learn that it is not Monet and the younger crew such asMoret, Maufra, George d'Espagnat and Guillaumin who give us the realweight of this esthetic argument. We find Monet going in forhyper-sentimentalized iridiscences which culminate or seem toculminate in the "Lily" series until we are forced to say he has letus out, once and for all, as far as any further interest in the theorywith which he was concerned. We are no longer held by these artificialand overstrained hues, and we find the younger followers offeringlittle or nothing to us save an obvious integrity of purpose. Theseyounger men had apparently miscomprehended idiosyncrasies for ideasand that, save for a certain cleanness of intention, they wereoffering scarcely anything of what is to be found by way ofrealization in the pictures of a really great colorist like Renoir. 

The two artists who give the true thrill of this phase of the modernmovement are without question Pissarro and Sisley. It is the belief ofthese two artists in the appearance of things for themselves, underthe influence of the light problem, which gives them a strength notalways visible at first by reason of a greater simplicity of effectwhich dominates all of their pictures. We see in both these men a realand impressive desire for a more exacting scientific relation asdiscovered by intellectual consideration, than is to be found in theemotional outcry predominating in most of the pictures of Monet. Thesedo not hold for us in this day as solidly as they were expected to. There is a kind of superficiality and consequent dissatisfaction inthe conspicuous aspiration toward the first flush, one may call it, ofenthusiasm for impressionistic experience. There comes to one who isreally concerned, the ever increasing desire to turn toward Pissarroand Sisley and to quietly dispense with many or most of Monet'spictures, not to speak of a legitimate haste to pass over thephlegmatic enthusiasms of the younger followers. 

One feels that Pissarro must have been a great man among men not sogreat. One feels likewise that the stately reticence of a man likeSisley is worth far more to us now, if only because we find in hisworks as they hang one beside another in numbers, a soberer and morecautious approach to the theme engrossing him and the other artists ofthe movement of that time. In the pictures of Sisley there is thecharm of the fact for itself, the delight of the problem of placingthe object in relation to the luminous atmosphere which covers it. 

Men like Pissarro and Sisley were not forgetting Courbet and hisadmirable knowledge of reality. They were not concerned with thespectacular aspect of the impressionistic principle, not nearly somuch as with the satisfying realization of the object under theinfluence of the new scientific problem in esthetics with which theywere concerned. For myself I am out of touch with Monet as a creatorand I find myself extracting far more satisfaction and belief fromPissarro and Sisley, who deal with the problem of nature plus idea, with a much greater degree of let me even say sincerity, by reason ofone fact and perhaps the most important one: they were not dramatizingthe idea in hand. They were not creating a furor with pink andlavender haystacks. They were satisfied that there was still somethingto be found in the old arrangement of negative and positive tones asthey were understood before the application of the spectrum turned thebrains and sensibilities of men. In other words Courbet survived whilethe Barbizonians perished. There was an undeniable realization of factstill there, clamoring for consideration. There was the reality theneven as now, as always. With Pissarro and Sisley there appeared thetrue separation of tone, making itself felt most intelligently in thework of these men from whom the real separatists Seurat, Signac, andCross were to realize their principle of pointilism, of whichprinciple Seurat was to prove himself the most satisfactory creativeexponent. 

The world of art lost a very great deal in the untimely death ofSeurat; he was a young man of great artistic and intellectual gifts. There was an artist by the name of Vignon who came in for his shareduring the impressionistic period, probably not with any more dramaticglamour than he achieves now by his very simple and unpretentiouspictures. I am sorry for my own pleasure that I have not been able tosee more of this artist's pictures from whom I think our own TheodoreRobinson must have gained a deal of strength for his own bridgebuilding between Bastien Le Page and the Monet "eccentricity, " so tocall it. 

There is always a reason for reticence, and it is usually apt to comefrom thinking. Sisley and Pissarro, Vignon, Seurat, and Robinson werethinking out a way to legitimize the new fantastic craze for prismaticviolence, and they found it in the direct consideration for the fact. They knew that without objects light would have nowhere to fall, thatthe earth confronted them with indispensable phenomena each one ofwhich had its reason for being. They were finding instead of losingtheir heads, which is always a matter of praise. I could stay withalmost any Pissarro or Sisley I have ever seen, as I could always wantany Seurat near me, just as I could wish almost any Monet out of sightbecause I find it submerged with emotional extravagance, too muchenthusiasm for his new pet idea. 

Scientific appreciation had not come with scientific intentions. Likemost movements, it was left to other than the accredited innovatorsfor its completion and perfection. That is why we find Cézanneworking incessantly to create an art which would achieve a union ofimpressionism and an art like the Louvre, as he is said to havecharacterized it for himself. We know now how much Cézanne cared forChardin as well as for Courbet, and Greco. There is a reason why hemust have respected Pissarro, far more than he did at any time suchmen as Gaugin, the "flea on his back" as he so vividly and perhapsjustly named him. There was far more hope for a possible great art tocome out of Van Gogh, who, in his brief seven years had experimentedwith every aspect of impressionism that had then been divulged. He toowas in search of a passionate realization of the object. His method ofheavy stitching in bright hues was not a perfected style. It was anextravagant hope toward a personal rhythm. He was an "upwardly"aspiring artist by reason of his hyper-accentuated religious fervours. All these extraneous and one might even say irrelevant attempts towardspeedy arrivism are set aside in the presence of the almost solemnseverity of minds like Pissarro and Sisley, and of Cézanne, whoextracted for himself all that was valuable in the passing idea ofimpressionism. The picture which lasts is never the entirelyidiosyncratic one. It is that picture which strives toward realizationof ideas through a given principle with which it is involved. 

So it seems then, that if Monet invented the principle ofimpressionism as applied to painting, Pissarro and Sisley assistedgreatly in the creative idea for our lasting use and pleasure by theconsideration of the intellect which they applied to it; just asSeurat has given us a far greater realization than either Signac orCross have offered us in the principle of pointillism. 

The "test of endurance" in the impressionistic movement is borne out;the strength of realization is to be found in Pissarro and Sisley andnot in the vapid niceties of Monet, whose work became thinner andthinner by habitual repetitive painting, and by a possible false senseof security in his argument. Monet had become the habitualimpressionist, and the habitual in art is its most conspicuousfatality. The art of Monet grew weaker throughout the various stagesof Waterloo, Venice, Rouen, Giverney, and the Water Lilies whichformed periods of expression, at least to the mind of the observer. Monet's production had become a kind of mercerized production, and akind of spurious radiance invested them, in the end. It remained forPissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, and Seurat to stabilize the new discovery, and to give it the stamina it was meant to contain, as a scientificidea, scientifically applied. 

ODILON REDON

With the passing of this rare artist during the late summer months, [2]we are conscious of the silencing of one of the foremost lyricists inpainting, one of the most delicate spirits among those who havepainted pictures so thoroughly replete with charm, pictures of suchreal distinction and merit. For of true charm, of true grace, of truemelodic, Redon was certainly the master. I think no one has covetedthe vision so much as, certainly no more than, has this artist, possessed of the love of all that is dream-like and fleeting in themore transitory aspect of earthly things. No one has ever felt morethat fleeting treasure abiding in the moment, no one has been morejealous of the bounty contained in the single glancing of the eyeupward to infinity or downward among the minuter fragments at hisfeet. 

[Footnote 2: Of 1917. --Ed. ]

It would seem as if Redon had surely walked amid gardens, so much ofthe morning is in each of his fragile works. There seems always to behovering in them the breath of those recently spent dawns of which hewas the eager spectator, never quite the full sunlight of the laterday. Essentially he was the worshipper of the lip of flower, of dustupon the moth wing, of the throat of young girl, or brow of youngboy, of the sudden flight of bird, the soft going of light clouds in awindless sky. These were the gentle stimulants to his most virileexpression. Nor did his pictures ever contain more; they neverstruggled beyond the quality of legend, at least as I know them. Heknew the loveliness in a profile, he saw always the evanescences oflight upon light and purposeless things. The action or incident in hispictures was never more than the touch of some fair hand gently andexquisitely brushing some swinging flower. He desired implicitly tobelieve in the immortality of beauty, that things or entities oncethey were beautiful could never die, at least for him. I followedfaithfully for a time these fine fragments in those corners of Pariswhere they could be found, and there was always sure to be in them, always and ever that perfect sense of all that is melodic in theuniverse. 

I do not know much of his early career as an artist. I have readpassages from letters which he wrote not so long ago, in which herecounts with tenderness the dream life of his childhood, how he usedto stand in the field for hours or lie quietly upon some cool hillshaded with young leaves, watching the clouds transforming themselvesinto wing shapes and flower shapes, staining his fancy with the magicof their delicate color and form--indeed, it would seem as if allthings had for him been born somewhere in the clouds and hadcondescended to an earthward existence for a brief space, the betterto show their rarity of grace for the interval. Although obviouslyrendered from the object, they were still-lifes which seemed to takeon a kind of cloud life during the very process of his creation. Theypaid tribute to that simple and unaffected statement of his--"I havefashioned an art after myself. " Neither do I know just how long he wasthe engraver and just how long he was the painter--it is evidenteverywhere that his line is the line of the fastidious artist on steeland stone. 

Beyond these excessively frail renderings of his, whether in oil or inpastel, I do not know him, but I am thinking always in the presence ofthem that he listened very attentively and with more than a common earto the great masters in music, absorbing at every chance all that wasin them for him. He had in his spirit the classical outline of music, with nothing directly revolutionary, no sign of what we call revoltother than the strict adherence to personal relationship, no otherprejudice than the artist's reaction against all that is not reallyrefined to art, with but one consuming ardor, and that to render withextreme tranquillity everything delicate and lovely in passing things. There is never anything in his pictures outside the conventional logicof beauty, and if they are at all times ineffably sweet, it is onlybecause Redon himself was like them, joyfully living out the daysbecause they were for him ineffably sweet, too. Most of all it isRedon who has rendered with exceptional elegance and extremeartistry, the fragment. 

It is in his pictures, replete with exquisiteness, that one finds thetrue analogy to lyric poetry. This lyricism makes them seem mostlyGreek--often I have thought them Persian, sometimes again, Indian;certainly he learned something from the Chinese in their porcelainsand in their embroidery. I am sure he has been fond of these outerinfluences, these Oriental suggestions which were for him thespiritual equivalent from the past for his spontaneous ideas, for he, too, had much of all this magic, as he had much of the hypnoticquality of jewelry and precious stones in all his so delicatepictures, firelike in their subtle brilliancy. They have always seemedto contain this suggestion for me: flowers that seemed to be much morethe embodiment of jades, rubies, emeralds, and ambers, than justflowers from the common garden. His flamelike touches have always heldthis preciousness: notations rather for the courtly robe or diademthan just drawings. All this gift of goldsmithery comes as one wouldexpect, quite naturally, from his powers as an engraver, in which arthe held a first place in his time and was the master of the youngerschool, especially in Belgium and Germany. Of all the painters of thistime it is certain he was first among them essaying to picture thejewelled loveliness of nature; it is most evident in La Touche who wasin no way averse to Renoir either, but Redon has created this touchfor himself and it is the touch of the virtuoso. Perhaps it would havebeen well if Moreau, who had a sicker love of this type of expression, had followed Redon more closely, as he might then have added a littlemore lustre to these very dead literary failures of his. 

I cannot now say who else beside Ferdinand Khnopff has been influencedgreatly by him, but I do know that he was beloved by the more modernmen, that he was revered by all regardless of theories or tenets, forthere is in existence somewhere in Paris a volume of letters andtestimonials celebrating some anniversary of Redon in proof of it. AndI think that--regardless of ideas--the artist must always find himsympathetic, if for no other reason than that he was the essence ofrefinement, of delicacy, and of taste. When I think of Redon I thinkof Shelley a little, "he is dusty with tumbling about among thestars, " and I think somewhat, too, of some phrases in Debussy and hisunearthly school of musicians, for if we are among those who admiresturdier things in art we can still love the fine gift of purity. Andof all gifts Redon has that, certainly. 

His art holds, too, something of that breathlessness among the treesone finds in Watteau and in Lancret, maybe more akin to Lancret, forhe, also, was more a depicter of the ephemeral. We think of Redon asamong those who transvaluate all earthly sensations in terms of apurer element. We think of him as living with his head among themists, alert for all those sudden bursts of light which fleck here andthere forgotten or unseen places, making them live with a newresplendency, full of new revealment, perfect with wonder. Happily wefind in him a hatred of description and of illustration, we find thesepictures to be illuminations from rich pages not observed by thecommon eye, decorations out of a world the like of which has been buttoo seldom seen by those who aspire to vision. _Chansons sans paroles_are they, ringing clearly and flawlessly to the eye as do those songsof Verlaine (with whom he has also some relationship) to thewell-attuned ear. 

He was the master of the nuance, and the nuance was his lyricism, hisspecial gift, his genius. He knew perfectly the true vibration of noteto note, and how few are they whose esthetic emotions are built uponthe strictly poetic basis, who escape the world-old pull towardsdescription and illustration. How few, indeed, among those of thematerialistic vision escape this. But for Redon there was but oneworld, and that a world of imperceptible light on all things visible, with always a kind of song of adoration upon his lips, as it were, obsessed with reverence and child wonder toward every least andgreatest thing, and it was in these portrayals of least things that heexposed their naked loveliness as among the greatest. Never did Redonseek for the miniature; he knew merely that the part is therepresentation of the whole, that the perfect fragment is a truerepresentative of beauty, and that the vision of some fair hand orsome fair eye is sure to be the epitome of all that is lovely in theindividual. 

We have as a result of this almost religious devotion of Redon's, thefairest type of the expression of that element which is the eye'sequivalent for melodious sound. In his pictures he perpetuated hisbelief in the unfailing harmony in things. Either all things werelovely in his eye, or they are made beautiful by thinking beautifullyof them. That was the only logic in Redon's painting. He questionednothing; he saw the spiritual import of every object on which his eyerested. No one shall go to Redon for any kind of intellectualdeparture or for any highly specialized theory--it is only too evidentfrom his work that he had none in mind. He had, I think, a definitebelief in the theosophic principle of aura, in that element ofemanation which would seem sometimes to surround delicate objectstouched with the suffusion of soft light. For him all things seemed"possessed" by some colorful presence which they themselves could inno way be conscious of, somewhat the same sort of radiance whichfloods the features of some beauteous person and creates a presencethere which the person is not even conscious of, the imaginativereality, in other words, existing either within or without everythingthe eye beholds. For him the very air which hovered about all thingsseemed to have, as well, the presence of color not usually seen ofmen, and it was this emanation or presence which formed the livingquality of his backgrounds in which those wondrous flowery heads andhands and wings had their being, through which those dusty wings ofmost unearthly butterflies or moths hurry so feverishly. He has givenus a happy suggestion of the reality of spiritual spaces and the waythat these fluttering bodies which are little more than spiritthemselves have enjoyed a beauteous life. He was Keats-like in hisappreciation of perfect loveliness, like Shelley in his passionatedesire to transform all local beauty into universal terms. 

No one will quarrel with Redon on account of what is not in him. Whatwe do find in him is the poetry of a quiet, sweet nature in questalways of perfect beauty, longing to make permanent by means of a rareand graceful art some of those fragments which have given him hisprivate and personal clue to the wonders of the moment, creating apersonal art by being himself a rare and lovely person. He remains forus one of the finest of artists, who has reverted those whisperingsfrom the great world of visual melody in which he lived. It was withthese exquisite fragments that he adorned the states of his own soulin order that he might present them as artist in tangible art form. Weare grateful for his lyricism and for his exquisite goldsmithery. After viewing his delicately beautiful pictures, objects take on a newpoetic wonder. 

THE VIRTUES OF AMATEUR PAINTING

WITH SPECIAL PRAISES FOR JENNIE VANVLEET COWDERY

Some of the finest instances of pure painting will be found, not asmight be imagined by the layman, among the professional artists, butamong those amateurs whose chief occupation is amusing themselves firstof all. If you who read will make close reference to those rich examplesof the mid-Victorian period, when it was more or less distinguished totake up painting along with the other accomplishments, you will findthat the much tabooed antimacassar period produced a species of paintingthat was as indicative of personal style and research as it was fresh inits elemental approach. The perfect instance in modern art of this sortof original painting raised to the highest excellence is that of HenriRousseau, the true primitive of our so eclectic modern period. No onecan have seen a picture of this most talented douanier without beingconvinced that technique for purely private personal needs has beenbeautified to an extraordinary degree. 

Rousseau stands among the very best tonalists as well as among thebest designers of modern time, and his pictures hold a quality sorelated to the experience contained in their subjects, as to seemlike the essence of the thing itself. You feel that unquestionablyRousseau's Paris is Paris, and you are made to feel likewise that hisjungle scenes are at very least his own experiences of his earlierlife in Mexico. Rousseau convinces by his unquestionable sensitivityand integrity of approach. He was not fabricating an art, he wasendeavoring to create a real picture for his own private satisfaction, and his numerous successes are both convincing and admirable. 

As I have said, if you have access to a variety of amateur picturescreated during the mid-Victorian era, of whatever style or subject, you will find in them the most admirably sincere qualities of paintingas well as singularly enchanting gifts for simplication and the alwaysengaging respect for the fact itself out of which these paintedromanzas are created. There was the type of memorial picture forinstance, with its proverbial tombstone, its weeping willow tree, andits mourner leaning with one elbow, usually on the cornice above, where the name of the beloved deceased is engraved; below it theappropriate motto and its added wealth of ornamentation in the way oflandscape, with houses, hills, winding roads, with maybe an animal ortwo grazing in the field, and beyond all this vista, an ocean withpretty vessels passing on their unmindful way, and more often thannot, many species of bright flowers in the foreground to heighten therichness of memory and the sentimental aspects of bereavement. 

I wish I could take you to two perfect examples of this sort ofamateur painting which I have in mind, now in the possession of theMaine Historical Society, of Portland, Maine, as well as one othersuperb and still more perfect example of this sort of luxuriouslypainted memory of life, in the collection of a noted collector ofmid-Victorian splendours, near Boston. It is sensation at first handwith these charmingly impressive amateur artists. They have beenhampered in no way with the banality of school technique learned inthe manner of the ever-present and unoriginal copyist. They literallyinvent expression out of a personally accumulated passion for beautyand they have become aware of it through their own intenselypersonalised contact with life. The marine painters of this period, and earlier, of which there have been almost numberless instances, andof whose fine performances there are large numbers on view in theMarine Museum in Salem, Mass. , offer further authentication of privateexperience with phases of life that men of the sea are sure to know, the technical beauty alone of which furnishes the spectator with manysurprises and fascinations in the line of simplicity and directness ofexpression. 

Many of these amateur painters were no longer young in point of actualyears. Henri Rousseau was as we know past forty when he was finallydriven to painting in order to establish his own psychic entity. Andso it is with all of them, for there comes a certain need somewhere inthe consciousness of everyone, to offset the tedium of commonexperience with some degree of poetic sublimation. With the resultthat many of them find their way out by taking to paints and brushesand canvas, astonishing many a real painter, if not the untutoredlayman, who probably expects to be mystified in one way or another bysomething which he thinks he does not understand. It is of thecharming pictures of Jennie Vanvleet Cowdery that I wish to speakhere. 

Mrs. Cowdery is a southern lady, and of this fact you become awareinstantly you find yourself in conversation with her. She evidencesall the traits and characteristics of a lady of her period, which isto say the late mid-Victorian, for she must have been a graceful youngwoman herself at the close of this fascinating period. And you find, therefore, in her quaint and convincingly original pictures, thepassion for the charms and graces that were consistent with the periodin which she spent her girlhood, and which has left upon herconsciousness so dominant a trace. The pictures of Mrs. Cowdery, despite their remoteness of surrounding--for she always places hergraceful figures, which are no less than the embodiments of her owngraceful states of being, in a dense woodland scene--bring up to thesenses all the fragrances of that past time, the redolence of theoleander by the wall, of the camelia in the shadow, and of the pansyby the hedge. You expect these ladies to shake gently upon the air, like flowers in the morning, their own fascinating perfumes, as youexpect them to recite in the quietude of the wood in which they arewalking those sentiments which are appropriate to the season and ofother soft remembrances. 

Mrs. Cowdery might have taken to needlework, and sat like many anotheryoung woman of that time by the window with the sunlight streaming inupon the coloured stitches of her work, or she might perhaps morestrictly have taken to miniature painting, the quality of which styleis so much in evidence in these pleasant pictures of hers. Thepictures of Mrs. Cowdery will not stimulate the spectator to reflectwith gravity upon the size of the universe, but they dwell entirelyupon the intimate charm of it, the charm that rises out of breedingand cultivation, and a feeling for the finer graces of the body andsweet purities of mind. Mrs. Cowdery is essentially a breather and abringer of peace. There is no purpose in these gracious andentertaining pictures, for they are invented solely to recall and makepermanent, for this lady's own delight, those moments of joy of whichthere must have been many if the gentleness and the clear quality ofrevery in them is to be taken; and these pictures are to be takenfirst and last as genuine works of art in their own way, which is theonly way that true works of art can be taken seriously. 

The most conspicuous virtue of these quaintly engaging pictures ofMrs. Cowdery is the certainty you find in them of the lack ofstruggle. Their author is, without doubt, at peace with the world, forthe world is without significance in the deeper sense to all reallyserious artists, those who have vital information to convey. Mrs. Cowdery's career as a painter is of short and impressive duration, barely four years she confides, and she has been an engaging featureof the Society of Independent Artists for at least three of theseyears, I believe. It is her picture which she names "1869" which hascalled most attention to her charming talents, and which created soconvincing an impression among the artists for its originality and itsinsistence upon the rendering of beautified personal experience. 

Mrs. Cowdery must have loved her earliest girlish hours with excessivedelight, and perhaps it is the garish contrast of the youth of theyoung women of this time, energetic and, from the mid-Victorianstandpoint certainly, so unwomanly, that prompts this gentle andrefined woman to people her gracious solitudes of spirit with thosestill more gracious lady-like beings which she employs. For herpictures, that is her most typical ones, contain always thesegroupings of figures in crinoline-like gowns with perhaps more of thetouch of eighteen-eighty than of seventy in them, so given to flouncesand cascades of lace with picture hats to shade the eyes, andstreamers of velvet ribbon to give attenuated sensations of grace totheir quietly sweeping figures that seem to be always in a state ofharmless gossip among themselves. One never knows whether it is to bequite morning or afternoon for there is seldom or never present thequality of direct sunlight; but as ladies and gentlemen usually walkin the afternoon even now, if there are still such virtuous entitiesas ladies and gentlemen, we may presume that these are afternoonseances, poetically inscribed, which Mrs. Cowdery wishes to convey tous. That Mrs. Cowdery has a well adjusted feeling for the harmony ofhues is evident in her production as well as in the outline of hersimple and engaging conversation. 

Thus the lady lives, in a world gently fervorous with lyricdelicacies, and her own almost girlish laughter is like a kind ofgracious music for the scenes she wishes to portray. I am reminded inthis instance to compare her gentle voice with the almost inaudibleone of Albert Ryder, that greatest of visionaries which America has sofar produced. It is probable that all mystical types have voicessoftened to whispers by the vastness of the experience which they haveendured. These gentle souls survive the period they were born in, andit is their clean and unspoiled vision that brings them over to us inthis hectic and metallic era of ours. They come, it must beremembered, from the era of Jenny Lind and Castle Garden, though ofcourse in Mrs. Cowdery's case she is too young actually to havesurvived that period literally. It is the grace of that period, however, to which she has become heir and all her efforts have beenexercised in rendering of the graces of this playful and pretty hourof human life. 

We are reminded, for the moment only, of Monticelli, chiefly throughsimilarity of subject, for he also was fond of the silent parkinhabited with gracious beings in various states of spiritual ecstasyand satisfaction. In the pictures of Mrs. Cowdery there is doubtlessgreater intimacy of feeling, because it is a private and very personalissue with her own happy soul. She has come out on the other edge ofthe horizon of the world of humans, and finds the looking backward soimperatively exquisite as to make it necessary for her to paint themwith innocent fidelity; and so she has set about, without any previousexperience in the handling of homely materials, to make them tell inquaint and gracious accents the pretty story of the life of herrevivified imagination. In these ways she becomes a kind ofrevivification of the spirit of Watteau, who has made perfect, for usall, what is perfect in the classicized ideality of experience. 

I think of Mrs. Cowdery's pictures as mid-Victorian fans, for theyseem more like these frail shapes to be wafted by frail and slenderhands; I seem to feel the quiet glitter of prisms hanging from hugechandeliers in a ball-room, as I look at them; for they become, if youdo not scrutinize them too closely as works of art, rather asprismatic memories bathed in the light of that other time, when menand women now grandfathers and grandmothers were young and handsomeboys and girls, seeking each other out in the fashion of polite beausand belles, a period that will never come again, it is certain. Mrs. Cowdery need not be alarmed that modern painters wish to offer plainhomage to her fresh and engaging talents. It is an object lesson, ifsuch is necessary, to all men and women past fifty: that there isstill something for each of them to do in a creative way; and I canthink of no more engaging way for them than to recite the romantichistory of their youthful longings and realizations to a world thathas little time for making history so romantically inoffensive. 

Mrs. Cowdery may be complimented therefore that she has followed herprofessional daughter's advice to take up painting as a pastime, andshe has already shown in these brief four years, with all theintermissions that are natural to any ordinary life, that she is afine type of amateur artist with all the world of rediscovery at herdisposal. She will be hampered in no way with the banalities ofinstruction offered her by the assuming ones. She is beyond the needof anything but self-invention, and this will be her own unique andsatisfying pleasure. It is in no way amiss, then, to congratulateMrs. Cowdery upon her new and vital artistic career. That she willhave further success is proven by the few pictures already created byher. They show the unmistakable signs of taste and artisticcomprehension as applied to her own spiritual vision. No interventionwill be of any avail, save perhaps the permissible intervention ofpraise and congratulations. 

Incidentally, I would recommend to those artists who are long sincejaded with repetition and success, and there are many of them, torefresh their eyes and their senses with the work of these outwardlyunassuming but thoroughly convincing amateurs, like Henri Rousseau, Mrs. Cowdery and the many others whose names do not appear on theirhandsome works of art. There is such freshness of vision and true artexperience contained in them. They rely upon the imagination entirelyfor their revelations, and there is always present in theseunprofessional works of art acute observation of fact and fine giftsfor true fancy. These amateurs are never troubled with the "how" ofmediocre painting; neither are they troubled with the wiles of theouter world. They remain always charming painters of personalvisionary experience, and as such are entitled to praise for theirgenuine gifts in rendering, as well as for a natural genius forinterpretation. 

HENRI ROUSSEAU

Not long since, we heard much of naïveté--it was the fashion among theschools and the lesser individuals to use this term in describing thework of anyone who sought to distinguish himself by eccentricity ofmeans. It was often the term applied to bizarrerie--it was fashionableto draw naïvely, as it was called. We were expected to believe in ahighly developed and overstrained simplicity, it was the resort of acertain number who wanted to realize speedy results among theunintelligent. It was a pose which lasted not long because it wasobviously a pose, and a pose not well carried, it had not theprescribed ease about it and showed signs of labor. It had, for atime, its effect upon really intelligent artists with oftenrespectable results, as it drew the tendency away from too highlyinvolved sophistication. It added a fresh temper in many ways, andhelped men to a franker type of self-expression; and was, as we mayexpect, something apart from the keen need of obliviousness in thegreat modern individualists, those who were seeking direct contactwith subject. 

We have learned in a short space of time that whatever was exceptionalin the ideas and attitudes of the greater ones, as we know them, wasnot at all the outcome of the struggle toward an affected naïvetésuch as we have heard so much about, but was, on another hand, a realphase of their originality, the other swing of the pendulum, so tocall it. It was the "accent" of their minds and tempers, it was a truepart of their personal gesture, and was something they could not, andneed not, do anything about, as if it were the normal tendency in themin their several ways. We all of us know that modern art is nothaphazard, it is not hit or miss in its intention at least, certainlynot the outcome of oddity, of whim, or of eccentricity, for thesetraits belong to the superficial and cultivated. We have found thatwith the best moderns there has been and is inherent in them the samesincerity of feeling, the same spirit directing their research. Thesingle peculiarity of modern art therefore, if such there be, is itsspecial relationship to the time in which it is being produced, explicitly of this age. 

What we know of the men, much or little, proves that they are, andhave all been, simple earnest men, intelligent, following nowiseblindly in pursuit of fresh sensation, excitement, a mere phantasy, orfreak of the mind. It was, and is, the product of a logic essentiallyof themselves, and of the period they represent; and because thisperiod is not the period of sentimentality in art, but a periodstriving toward a more vigorous type of values--something as beautifulas the machinery of our time--it is not as yet to any great degreecared for, understood nor, up to very recently, even trusted. It hasdestroyed old fashioned romance, and the common eye has ceased tofocus, or rather, does not wish to concentrate on things which do notvisualize the literary sensation. In the midst of all this strugglewas Henri Rousseau, the real and only naif of this time, and certainlyamong the truest of all times. As much as a man can remain child, Rousseau remained the child, and as much as a man could be naïve andchildlike, certainly it was this simple artist who remained so. 

If report has the truth correctly, Rousseau began his career aspainter at the age of forty, though it is quite possible and probablethat he was painting whenever he could, in his untutored fashion, inall of his spare intervals, and with but one object in view apparent:to give forth in terms of painting those phases of his own personallife which remained indelibly impressed upon his memory, pictoriallyalways vivid to him, as in his pictures they are seen to be the scenesor incidents of loveliness to his fine imagination. We find themcovering a rather wide range of experience, apparently in two places, somewhere in the tropics of Mexico, and Paris; the former, experiencesof youth in some sort of governmental service I believe, and thelatter, the more intimate phases of life about him in Paris, of Parisherself and of those people who created for him the intimacy of hishome life, and the life which centered about the charming rue dePerelle where he lived. 

In Rousseau then, we have one of the finest individual expressions ofthe amateur spirit in painting, taking actually a place among theexamples of paintings, such as those of the Kwakiutl Indians, or thesculpture of the Congo people, partaking of the very same quality ofdirectness and simplicity, and of contact with the prevailing imagechosen for representation. He was too evidently the product ofhimself, he was not hybrid, nor was he in any sense something strangespringing up out of the soil in the dark of night, he was notmushroom. He did not know the meaning of affectation, and I doubt ifhe even knew what was meant by simplicity, so much was he that elementhimself. 

It is with fascination that we think of him as living his life outafter his discharge for incompetency from the customs service outsidethe fortifications of Paris, and doubtless with the strain of povertyupon him also, within a ten minutes' walk from the world famousquartiers, and almost certainly knowing nothing of them. That therewas a Julian's or a Colarossi's anywhere about, it is not likely thathe knew, or if he knew, not more than vaguely. He drew his quaintinspirations directly from the sources of nature and some pencildrawings I have seen prove the high respect and admiration, amountingto love and worship, which he had for nature and the phenomena ofher, to be disclosed at every hedge. 

If he was no success as a douanier, he was learning a great deal, meanwhiles, about those delicate and radiant skies which cover Parisat all times, charming always for their lightness and delicacy, pearl-like in their quiet splendour; and it was during this service ofhis at the city's gates that he learned his lovely sense of blacks andgreys and silvers, of which Paris offers so much always, and whichpredominate in his canvases. Even his tropical scenes strive in no waytoward artificiality of effect, but give rather the sense of theirprofundity than of oddity, of their depth and mystery than ofpeculiarity. He gives us the sense of having been at home in them inhis imagination, being so well at home in those scenes of Paris whichwere daily life to him. We find in Rousseau true naïveté, withoutstruggle, real child-likeness of attitude and of emotion, followingdiligently with mind and with spirit the forms of those stored imagesthat have registered themselves with directness upon the area of hisimagination, never to be forgotten, rendered with perfect simplicityfor us in these quaint pictures of his, superb in the richness ofquality which makes of them, what they are to the eye that issympathetic to them, pictures out of a life undisturbed by all themachinations and intrigues of the outer world, a life intimate withitself, remote from all agencies having no direct association with it, living with a sweet gift of enchantment with the day's disclosures, occupied apparently with nothing beyond the loveliness contained inthem. 

There is not once, anywhere, a striving of the mind in the work ofthis simple man. It was a wealth of innocence that tinged all hismethods, and his pictures are as simple in their appeal as are thedeclarations of Jacob Boehme--they are the songs of innocence andexperience of a nature for whom all the world was beautiful, and haveabout them the element of song itself, a poetry that has not yetreached the shaping of words. Who looks at the pictures of this trueand charming naif, will find nothing to wonder at beyond this extremesimplicity, he had no prescribed attitude, no fixity of image thatcharacterizes every touch of school. He was taught only by nature andconsulted only her relationships and tendencies. There is never amistaking of that. Nature was his influence, and he saw with anuntrammelled eye the elemental shape of all things, and affixed nofalsity of feeling, or anything, to his forms which might havedetracted from their extreme simplicity. He had "first sight, " firstcontact with the image, and sought nothing else beyond this, and avery direct correspondence with memories dictated all his efforts. 

That Rousseau was musical, is shown in the natural grace of hiscompositions, and his ideas were simple as the early songs of Franceare simple, speaking of everyday things with simple heart and voice, and he painted frankly what he saw in precisely the way he saw it. We, who love richness and sobriety of tone, will never tire of Rousseau'sbeautiful blacks and greys, and probably no one has excelled them fordelicacy of appreciation, and perfection of gradation. It will be longbefore the landscapes will be forgotten, it will be long before theexquisite portrait of the "Child with the Harlequin" will fade fromremembrance, we shall remember them all for their loveliness indesign, a gift which never failed him, no matter what the subject. Simple arabesque, it was the jungle that taught him this, and thereinlay his special power, a genuine feeling for the richness of laces andbrocades in full and subdued tones, such as one would find in theelaborate intricacies of tropical foliage, strange leaves intermingledwith parrots, monkeys, strange white lilies on high stalks, tigerspeering through highly ornate foliage and branches intertwined, allexcellently suggestive of that foreign land in which the mind wandersand finds itself so much at home. 

"Le Charmeur, " "Jadwigha, " in these are concentrated all that islovely in the land of legend; and, like all places of legend, repletewith imaginative beauty, the places where loveliness and beauty ofform congregate, after they have passed through the sensuous spaces ofthe eye travelling somewhere to an abode where all those things arethat are perfect, they live forever. Rousseau was a charming andlovable child, whether he was painting or whether he was conductinghis own little orchestra, composed of those people who kept shoparound his home, and it is as the child of his time that he must beconsidered, child in verity among the sophisticated moderns whobelieved and believe more in intellect than in anything else, many ofwhom paid tribute to him, and reverenced him, either in terms ofsincere friendship, or by occasional visit. The various anecdotes, touching enough, are but further proof of the innocence of this sosimple and untutored person. 

The real amateur spirit has, we like to think, much in its favor, ifonly for its freshness, its spontaneity, and a very gratifyingnaturalness. Rousseau was all of this, and lived in a world untouched, he wove about himself, like other visionaries, a soft veil hiding allthat was grossly unreal to him from all that was real, and forRousseau, those things and places he expressed existed vividly forhim, and out of them his pictures became true creations. He was thereal naif, because he was the real child, unaffected and unspoiled, and painting was for him but the key of heaven that he might openanother door for the world's weary eye. 

PART TWO

THE TWILIGHT OF THE ACROBAT

Where is our once charming acrobat--our minstrel of muscular music?What has become of these groups of fascinating people gotten up insilk and spangle? Who may the evil genius be who has taken them andtheir fascinating art from our stage, who the ogre of taste that hasdispensed with them and their charm? How seldom it is in these timesthat one encounters them, as formerly when they were so much thecharming part of our lighter entertainment. What are they doing sincepopular and fickle notions have removed them from our midst?

It is two years since I have seen the American stage. I used to say tomyself in other countries, at least America is the home of realvariety and the real lover of the acrobat. But I hear no one sayingmuch for him these days, and for his charming type of art. 

What has become of them all, the graceful little lady of the slackwire, those charming and lovely figures that undulate upon the air bymeans of the simple trapeze, those fascinating ensembles and all thevarious types of melodic muscular virtuosity?

We have been given much, of late, of that virtuosity of foot and legwhich is usually called dancing; and that is excellent among us here, quite the contribution of the American, so singularly the product ofthis special physique. Sometimes I think there are no other dancersbut Americans. It used to be so delightful a diversion watching ouracrobat and his group with their strong and graceful bodies writhingwith rhythmical certitude over a bar or upon a trapeze against ahappily colored space. Now we get little more in the field ofacrobatics beyond a varied buck and wing; everything seems tuxedoedfor drawing room purposes. We get no more than a decent handspring ortwo, an over-elaborated form of split. It all seems to be over withour once so fashionable acrobat. There is no end of good stepping, aswitness the Cohan Revue, a dancing team in Robinson Crusoe, Jr. , and"Archie and Bertie" (I think they call themselves). This in itselfmight be called the modern American school: the elongated and elasticgentleman who finds his co-operator among the thin ones of his race, artistically speaking. I did not get to the circus this year, much tomy regret; perhaps I would have found my lost genius there, among theanimals disporting themselves in less charitable places. But we cannotfollow the circus naturally, and these minstrel folk are disappearingrapidly. Variety seems quite to have given them up and replaced themwith often very tiresome and mediocre acts of singing. 

How can one forget, for instance, the Famille Bouvier who used toappear regularly at the fêtes in the streets of Paris in the summerseason, living all of them in a roving gipsy wagon as is the custom ofthese fête people. What a charming moment it was always to see thesimple but well built Mlle. Jeanne of twenty-two pick up her stalwartand beautifully proportioned brother of nineteen, a strong, broad-shouldered, manly chap, and balance him on one hand upright inthe air. It was a classic moment in the art of the acrobat, interesting to watch the father of them all training the fragilebodies of the younger boys and girls to the systematic movement of thebusiness while the mother sat in the doorway of the caravan nursingthe youngest at the breast, no doubt the perfect future acrobat. Andhow charming it was to look in at the doors of these little houses onwheels and note the excellent domestic order of them, most always witha canary or a linnet at the curtained window and at least one cat ordog or maybe both. This type is the progenitor of our stage acrobat, it is the primitive stage of these old-time troubadours, and it isstill prevalent in times of peace in France. The strong man gotten intawdry pink tights and much worn black velvet with his very elaborateand drawn out speeches, in delicate French, concerning the marvels ofhis art and the long wait for the stipulated number of _dix centimes_pieces before his marvellous demonstration could begin. This is, so tosay, the vagabond element of our type of entertainment, the wanderingminstrel who keeps generation after generation to the art of hisforefathers, this fine old art of the pavement and the open countryroad. But we look for our artist in vain these days, those groupswhose one art is the exquisite rhythmical display of the human body, concerted muscular melody. We cannot find him on the street in theshade of a stately chestnut tree as once in Paris we found him atleast twice a year, and we seek him in vain in our modern music hall. 

Is our acrobatic artist really gone to his esthetic death; has hegiven his place permanently to the ever present singing lady who isalways telling you who her modiste is, sings a sentimental song or twoand then disappears; to the sleek little gentleman who dances off amoment or two to the tune of his doll-like partner whose voice isusually littler than his own? Perhaps our acrobat is still the delightof those more characteristic audiences of the road whose taste is lessfickle, less blasé. This is so much the case with the arts inAmerica--the fashions change with the season's end and there is neverenough of novelty; dancing is already dying out, skating will notprevail for long among the idle; what shall we predict for our varietywhich is in its last stages of boredom for us?

I suspect the so-called politeness of vaudeville of the elimination ofour once revered acrobats. The circus notion has been replaced by theparlor entertainment notion. Who shall revive them for us, who admiretheir simple and unpretentious art; why is there not someone amongthe designers with sufficient interest in this type of beauty to makeattractive settings for them, so that we may be able to enjoy them attheir best, which in the theater we have never quite been able todo--designs that will in some way add luster to an already bright andpleasing show of talents. 

I can see, for instance, a young and attractive girl bareback rider ona cantering white horse inscribing wondrous circles upon a stageexquisitely in harmony with herself and her white or black horse asthe case might be; a rich cloth of gold backdrop carefully suffusedwith rose. There could be nothing handsomer, for example, than youngand graceful trapezists swinging melodically in turquoise bluedoublets against a fine peacock background or it might be a rich palecoral--all the artificial and spectacular ornament dispensed with. Weare expected to get an exceptional thrill when some dull personappears before a worn velvet curtain to expatiate with inappropriategesture upon a theme of Chopin or of Beethoven, ideas and attitudesthat have nothing whatsoever to do with the musical intention; yet ouracrobat whose expression is certainly as attractive, if not much moreso generally, has always to perform amid fatigued settings of theworst sort against red velvet of the most depraved shade possible. Weare tired of the elaborately costumed person whose charms are trivialand insignificant, we are well tired also of the ordinary gentlemandancer and of the songwriter, we are bored to extinction by theperfectly dull type of playlet which features some well knownlegitimate star for illegitimate reasons. Our plea is for there-creation of variety into something more conducive to light pleasurefor the eye, something more conducive to pleasing and stimulatingenjoyment. Perhaps the reinstatement of the acrobat, this revival of areally worthy kind of expression, would effect the change, relieve themonotony. The argument is not too trivial to present, since thespectator is that one for whom the diversion is provided. 

I hear cries all about from people who once were fond of theater andmusic hall that there is an inconceivable dullness pervading thestage; the habitual patron can no longer endure the offerings of thepresent time with a degree of pleasure, much less with ease. It hasceased to be what it once was, what its name implies. If the oldschool inclined toward the rough too much, then certainly the newinclines distressingly toward the refined--the stage that once was sofull of knockabout is now so full of stand-still; variety that wasonce a joy is now a bore. Just some uninteresting songs at the pianobefore a giddy drop is not enough these days; and there are too manyof such. There is need of a greater activity for the eye. The returnof the acrobat in a more modern dress would be the appropriateacquisition, for we still have appreciation for all those charminggeometrics of the trapeze, the bar, and the wire. 

It is to be hoped that these men will return to us, stimulating anewtheir delightful kind of poetry of the body and saving our varietyperformances from the prevailing plague of monotone. 

VAUDEVILLE

I have but recently returned from the vaudeville of the centuries. Watching the kick and the glide of very ancient performers. I havespent a year and a half down in the wonderful desert country of theSouthwest. I have wearied, however, of the ancient caprice, and turnwith great delight to my old passion, vaudeville. I return with gleeto the ladies and gentlemen and pet animals of the stage, includingthe acrobats. Is there one who cares for these artists and for theirrhythmical gesture more than myself? I cannot think so. I have wishedwith a real desire to create new sets for them, to establish analtogether new tradition as regards the background of these charmingartists. If that were the chosen field for my esthetic activities, Ishould be famous by now for the creation of sets and drops by whichthese exceptional artists might make a far more significant impressionupon the type of public they essay to interest and amuse. 

I would begin first of all by severing them from the frayed traditionsof worn plush and sequin, rid them of the so inadequate back drop suchas is given them, the scene of Vesuvius in eruption, or the walk inthe park at Versailles. They need first of all large plain spaces uponwhich to perform, and enjoy their own remarkably devised patterns ofbody. I speak of the acrobats, the animals, the single and doubledancers who perform "down in one" more especially. The so calledheadliners have their plush parlours with the inevitable purple orrose lamp, and the very much worn property piano just barely in tune. Only the dressmaker and the interior decorator can do things for them, as we see in the case of Kitty Gordon. It is to be hoped that aBeardsley of the stage will one day appear and really do something forthe dainty type of person or the superbly theatric artist such as MissGordon, Valeska Suratt, and the few other remarkable women of thevaudeville stage. 

I am more concerned with the less appreciated artists. I would seethat they glitter by their own brilliance. Why, for instance, should afine act like the Four Danubes and others of their quality be taggedon to the end of a bill, at which time the unmannerly public decidesto go home or hurry to some roof or other, or dining place?

I should like seeing the Brothers Rath likewise, perhaps as refinedacrobatic artists as have been seen on our stage for some time, in aset that would show them to better advantage, and give the public agreater intimacy with the beauty of their act than can be had beyondthe first six rows of the Winter Garden. They are interposed there asa break between burlesques, which is not the place for them. I would"give" them the stage while they are on it. Theirs is a muscularbeauty which has not been excelled. I have no doubt that if Iattempted to establish these ideas with the artists whom I spend somuch time in championing, they would no doubt turn aside with the word"highbrow" on their lips. They would have to be shown that they needthese things, that they need the old-fashioned ideas removed, andfresher ones put in their place. I have expressed this intention oncebefore in print, perhaps not so vehemently. I should like toelaborate. I want a Metropolitan Opera for my project. An orchestra ofthat size for the larger concerted groups, numbers of stringedinstruments for the wirewalkers and jugglers, a series of balancedwoodwinds for others, and so on down the line, according to thequality of the performer. There should be a large stage for manyelephants, ponies, dogs, tigers, seals. The stage should then be mademore intimate for the solos, duets, trios, and quartets among theacrobats. I think a larger public should be made aware of the beautyand skill of these people, who spend their lives in perfecting graceand power of body, creating the always fascinating pattern and form, orchestration if you will, the orchestration of the muscles into acomplete whole. You will of course say, go to the circus, and get itall at once. The circus is one of the most charming places inexistence, because it is one of the last words in orchestratedphysical splendour. But the circus is too diffused, too enormous inthis country to permit of concentrated interest, attention, orpleasure. One goes away with many little bits. It is because thebackground is made up of restless nervous dots, all anxious to get thecombined quota which they have paid for, when in reality they do noteven get any one thing. It is the alert eye which can go over threerings and two stages at once and enjoy the pattern of each of them. Itis a physical impossibility really. 

I think we should be made aware in finer ways of the artists who openand close our bills. Why must the headliner always be a talking or asinging person who tells you how much money he needs, or how much sheis getting? There is more than one type of artistic personality forthose who care for vaudeville. Why doesn't a team like the RathBrothers, for example, find itself the feature attraction? Must therealways be the string of unnecessary little men and women who have sucha time trying to fill up their twenty-two minutes or their fourteen?Why listen forever to puppy-like song writers when one can hear andwatch a great artist like Ella Shields? My third visit to Ella Shieldsconvinces me that she is one of the finest artists I have ever heard, certainly as fine in her way as Guilbert and Chevalier were. It is arare privilege to be able to enjoy artists like Grock--MarkSheridan--who is now dead, I am told. Mark, with his "They all walkthe wibbly-wobbly walk, they all wear the wibbly-wobbly ties, " and soon. Mark is certainly being missed by a great many who care for thepleasure of the moment. When I look at and listen to the aristocraticartist Ella Shields, I feel a quality in her of the impeccable Mrs. Fiske. And then I am thinking of another great woman, Fay Templeton. What a pity we must lose them either by death or by decisions in life. Ella Shields with her charming typification of "Burlington Bertie fromBow. "

The other evening as I listened to Irene Franklin, I heard for certainwhat I had always thought were notes from the magic voice of dear oldFay. Unforgettable Fay. How can one ever say enough about her? I thinkof Fay along with my single glimpses of Duse, Ada Rehan, Coquelin. Yousee how I love her, then. Irene Franklin has the quality of imitationof the great Fay without, I think, the real magic. Nevertheless Ienjoy her, and I am certain she has never been finer than now. She hasenriched herself greatly by her experiences the last two years, andseems at the height of her power. It was good to get, once again, little glimpses of her Childs waitress and the chambermaid. It seemedto me that there was a richer quality of atmosphere in the littleJewish girl with the ring curls and the red mittens, as also in herFrench girl with, by the way, a beautiful gown of rich yellow silkFrenchily trimmed in vermilion or orange, I couldn't make out which. The amusing French girl, who having picked up many fag-ends of Englishfrom her experience with the _soldats Américains_--got her "animals"mixed--"you have my goat, I have your goat, et--tie ze bull outside, "and so on. I am crossing Irene and Fay here because I think themsimilar, only I must say I think the magic was greater in Fay, becausepossibly Fay was the greater student of emotion. Fay had theundercurrent, and Irene has perfected the surface. If Irene did studyFay at any time, and I say this respectfully, she perhaps knows thatFay went many times to Paris to study Rejane. The light entertaineris, as we know, very often a person of real intellect. 

If you want distinction, then, you will get it in the presence of EllaShields. Her "Burlington Bertie" is nothing less than a chefd'oeuvre; "Tom Lipton, he's got lots of 'oof--he sleeps on the roof, and I sleep in the room over him. " Bertie, who, having been slapped onthe back by the Prince of Wales (and some others) and asked why hedidn't go and dine with "Mother, " replied--"I can't, for I've just hada banana with Lady Diana. .. . I'm Burlington Bertie from Bow. " MissShields shows also that she can sing a sentimental song withoutslushing it all over with saccharine. She has mastered the drollEnglish quality of wit with real perfection. I regret I never sawVesta Tilley, with whom the old tops compare her so favourably. Superbgirls all these, Fay, Ella, Cissie, Vesta, as well as Marie Lloyd, andthe other inimitable Vesta--Victoria. 

Among the "coming soon, " we have Miss Juliet, whom I recall with somuch pleasure from the last immemorable Cohan Revue. I wait for her. Iconsider myself fortunate to be let in on James Watts. We thought ourEddy Foy a comic one. He was, for I remember the Gibson girl with theblack velvet gown and the red flannel undershirt. I swing my swaggerstick in the presence of Mr. Watts by way of applause. His art is verydelicately understood and brought out. It has a fine quality of broadcaricature with a real knowledge of economy such as Grock is masterof. The three episodes are certainly funny enough. I find myselfcaring more for the first, called "June Day, " since he reminds me sostrongly in make-up of the French caricaturists in drawing, Rouveyreand Toulouse-Lautrec. Mr. Watts's feeling for satirical make-up is afine shade of artistry in itself. He has excellent feeling for thebroad contrast and for fierce insinuation at the same time. If youwant real unalloyed fun, Mr. Watts will supply you. Nor will Grockdisappoint you. Quite on the contrary, no matter what you areexpecting. 

I do not know why I think of vaudeville as I think of a collection ofgood drawings. Unless it is because the sense of form is the same inall of the arts. The acrobat certainly has line and mass to think of, even if that isn't his primal concern. He knows how he decorates thespace on which he operates. To make another comparison, then, Grock isthe Forain of vaudeville. He achieves great plastic beauty withdistinguished economy of means. He dispenses with all superfluousgesture, as does the great French illustrator. Grock is entirely rightabout clownery. You are either funny or you are not. No amount ofstudy will produce the gift for humour. It is there, or it isn't. Grock's gift for musicianship is a singular combination to find withthe rest of his artistry. It goes with the remarkably refined look inhis face, however, as he sits upon the back of the seatless chair, andplays the little concertina with superb execution. There are no"jumps" in Grock's performance. His moods flow from one into anotherwith a masterly smoothness, and you are aware when he is finished thatyou have never seen that sort of foolery before. Not just that sort. It is the good mind that satisfies, as in the case of James Watts, andMiss Shields. 

From elephants carrying in their trunks chatelaines of Shetlandponies, curtseying at the close of the charming act like a pretty missat her first coming out, to such work as the Four Danubes give you asthe closing number, with Irene as a lead, you are, to say the least, carried over the dreadful spots, such as the young man who sways outlike a burlesque queen and tells you whom he was with before Keith gothim. His name should be "Pusher, " "Advance Man, " or something of thatsort, and not artist. What he gives you, you could find just as wellif not better done on Fourteenth Street. He has a ribbon-counter, adenoid voice production that no really fine artist could afford. Hewill "get by, " because anything does, apparently. 

One turns to the big artist for relief, even though minor artists likeThe Brown Sisters charm so surely with their ivory and silverdiamond-studded accordions, giving very pleasing transitions fromgrave to gay in arias and tunes we know. Accordions and concertinasare very beautiful to me, when played by artists like these girls, andby such as Joe Cawthorne, and Grock. 

There are more dancing men of quality this season, it seems to me, whoare obscured by dancing ladies of fame, and not such warrantableartistry. Perhaps it is because male anatomy allows of greatereccentricity and playfulness. There are no girls who have just suchlaughing legs as the inimitable Frances White. It is the long-leggedAmerican boy who beats the world in this sort of thing. 

The lovely bit of hockey which James Barton gives is for me far moredistinguished than all the rest of his work in the Winter GardenRevue. He is a real artist, but it is work that one sees rather a dealof this season, whereas the hockey dance is like nothing else to befound. A lovely moment of rhythmic leg work. We are now thoroughlyfamiliar with the stage drunk, as we have long been familiarized byWeber and Fields with the stage Jew, which is fortunately passing outfor lack of artist to present it. Léon Errol is good for once, eventwice. He is quite alone in his very witty falls and runs. They arefull of the struggle of the drunk to regain his character and manhood. The act lives on a very flat plane otherwise. It has no roundness. 

I have come on my list to Mijares and Co. , in "Monkey Business. " Wehave the exquisite criterion always for the wire, in the perfect BirdMillman. "Monkey Business" is a very good act, and both men doexcellent work on the taut and slack wire. "Monkey, " in this casebeing a man, does as beautiful a piece of work as I know of. I havenever seen a back somersault upon a high wire. I have never heard ofit before. There may be whole generations of artists gifted in thisparticular stunt. You have here, nevertheless, a moment of very greatbeauty in the cleanness of this man's surprising agility and sureness. The monkey costume hinders the beauty of the thing. It should be donewith pale blue silk tights against a cherry velvet drop, or else indeep ultramarine on an old gold background. 

The acrobatic novelty called "The Legrohs" relies chiefly on its mostexceptional member, who would be complete without the other two. He ismost decidedly a virtuoso in vaudeville. Very gifted, certainly, if atmoments a little disconcerting in the flexibility and the seeminglyuncertain turns of his body. It is the old-fashioned contortionismsaved by charming acrobatic variations. This "Legroh" knows how tomake a superb pattern with his body, and the things he does with itare done with such ease and skill as to make you forget the actualphysical effort and you are lost for the time being in the beauty ofthis muscular kaleidoscopic brilliancy. You feel it is like"puzzle--find the man" for a time, but then you follow his exquisitechanges from one design into another with genuine delight, andappreciate his excessive grace and easy rapidity. He gives you chieflythe impression of a dragon-fly blown in the wind of a brisk morningover cool stretches of water. You would expect him to land on alily-pad any moment and smooth his wings with his needle-like legs. 

So it is the men and women of vaudeville transform themselves intolovely flower and animal forms, and the animals take on semblances ofhuman sensibility in vaudeville. It is the superb arabesque of thebeautiful human body that I care for most, and get the most from inthese cameo-like bits of beauty and art. So brief they are, and likethe wonders of sea gardens as you look through the glass bottoms ofthe little boats. So like the wonders of the microscopic, full ofsurprising novelties of colour and form. So like the kaleidoscope inthe ever changing, ever shifting bits of colour reflecting each other, falling into new patterns with each twist of the toy. If you care forthe iridescence of the moment you will trust vaudeville as you are notable to trust any other sort of a performance. You have no chance forthe fatigue of problem. You are at rest as far as thinking isconcerned. It is something for the eye first and last. It is somethingfor the ear now and then, only very seldomly, however. For me, theyare the saviours of the dullest art in existence, the art of thestage. Duse was quite right about it. The stage should be swept ofactors. It is not a place for imitation and photography. It is a placefor the laughter of the senses, for the laughter of the body. It is aplace for the tumbling blocks of the brain to fall in heaps. I givefirst place to the acrobat and his associates because it is the artwhere the human mind is for once relieved of its stupidity. Theacrobat is master of his body and he lets his brain go a-roving uponother matters, if he has one. He is expected to be silent. He wouldagree with William James, transposing "music prevents thinking" into"talking prevents silence. " In so many instances, it preventsconversation. That is why I like tea chitchat. Words are never meantto mean anything then. They are simply given legs and wings, and theyjump and fly. They land where they can, and fall flat if they must. The audience that patronizes vaudeville would do well to be present atmost first numbers, and remain for most or many of the closing ones. Anumber, I repeat, like the Four Danubes, should not be snubbed by anyone. 

I have seen recently, then, by way of summary, four fine bits ofartistry in vaudeville--Ella Shields, James Watts, the Brothers Rath, and the Four Danubes. I shall speak again of these people. They arewell worth it. They turn pastime into perfect memory. They are, therefore, among the great artists. 

A CHARMING EQUESTRIENNE

I am impelled to portray, at this time, my devotion to the littleequestrienne, by the presence of a traveling circus in these loftyaltitudes in which I am now living, seven thousand feet above the sea, in our great southwest. The mere sight of this master of the miniaturering, with all the atmosphere of the tent about him, after almostinsurmountable difficulties crossing the mountains, over through thecanyons of this expansive country, delivering an address inexcellently chosen English, while poised at a considerable height onthe wire, to the multitude on the ground below him, during which timehe is to give what is known as the "free exhibit" as a high wireartist--all this turns me once more to the ever charming theme ofacrobatics in general and equestrianism in particular, and it is of aspecial genius in this field that I wish to speak. 

I have always been a lover of these artists of bodily vigour, ofmuscular melody, as I like to call it. As I watched this ringmaster ofthe little traveling circus, this master mountebank of the sturdyfigure, ably poised upon his head on the high wire, outlined againstthe body of the high mountain in the near distance, about which thethunder clouds were huddling, and in and out of which the lightningwas sharply playing, it all formed for me another of those perfectsensations from that phase of art expression known as the circus. Myhappiest memories in this field are from the streets of Paris beforethe war, the incomparably lovely fêtes. Only the sun knows where thesedear artists may be now. 

But I am wanting to tell of the little equestrienne, whose work hasfor the past five years been a source of genuine delight to me, charming little May Wirth, of Australian origin, with her lovely darkeyes, and captivating English accent. If you have a genuine sympathyfor this sort of expression, it is but natural that you want to getinside the ring, and smell the turf with them, and so it was therepresentative of this gifted little woman who brought us together. Itis, in the first place, a pity that there is so little written of thehistory of these people, so little material from which to gather thedevelopment of the idea of acrobatics in general, or of any one phasein particular. It would be impossible to learn who was the firstaerial trapezist, for instance, or where high wire performing wasbrought from, just when the trick of adjusting the body to thesedifficult and strenuous rhythms was originated. They cannot tell youthemselves. Only if there happens to be more than two generations inexistence can you trace the development of this form of athleticentertainment. It may have begun with the Egyptians, it may have begunwith the first gypsies. 

These people do not write their history, they simply make it amongthemselves, and it is handed down through the generations. When Iasked May Wirth for information, she said she knew of none on thesubject, save that she herself sprang from five generations ofacrobats and equestrians, and that it is terrifically hard labour frombeginning to end, equestrianism in particular, since it requires aknowledge of several if not all the other physical arts combined, suchas high wire walking, handspring and somersault, trapeze work, bars, ballet dancing, etc. ; that she herself had begun as a child, and hadrun the entire gamut of these requirements, coming out the finishedproduct, so to speak, in all but ballet dancing, which she disliked, and wept always when the time came for her lesson in this department. 

When one sees the incomparable brilliancy of this little woman of thehorse, watching her marvellous ground work, which is in itself anexample of virtuosity, one realizes what accomplishment alone can do, for she is not yet twenty-five, and the art is already in thecondition of genius with her. Five handsome side-wheels round thering, and a flying jump on the horse, then several completesomersaults on the horse's back while he is in movement round thering, is not to be slighted for consideration, and if, as I have said, you have a love or even a fancy for this sort of entertainment, youall but worship the little lady for the thrill she gives you throughthis consummate mastery of hers. 

"I always wanted to do what the boys could do, and I was neversatisfied until I had accomplished it. " This was the strongestassertion the little lady of the horse was moved to make while inconversation, and that the ring is more beautiful to work in than on amat upon a stage, for it is in the ring that the horse is most athome, it is easier for him, and gives him greater muscular freedom, with the result naturally, that it is easier on the muscles of thehuman body while in action. I have never tired of this species ofentertainment. It has always impressed me as being the most naturalform of transposed physical culture, esthetically speaking. It doesfor the eye, if you are sensitive, what music does for the ear. Itgives the body a chance to show its exquisite rhythmic beauty, as noother form of athletics can, for it is the beautiful plastic of thebody, harmonically arranged for personal delight. 

It is something for so young a woman to have walked away with firsthonours in her chosen field, yet like the true artist that she is, sheis thinking always of how she can beautify her accomplishment to astill greater degree. She is mistress of a very difficult art, and yetthe brilliancy of her performance makes it seem as if it were but theexperiment of an afternoon, in the out-of-doors. Like all fineartists, she has brushed away from sight all aspects of labour, andpresents you, with astounding ease, the apparent easiness of thething. She is powerfully built, and her muscles are master ofcoordination, such as would be the envy of multitudes of men, andwith all this power, she is as simple in her manner and appearance asis the young debutante at her coming out function. You are impressedwith her sweetness and refinement, first of all, and the utter lack ofshow about her, as also with her brother who is a dapper young man ofthe very English type, who works with her, and acts as thedress-suited gentleman in this acrobatic ringplay of theirs. Threeother members of her family take part also with her, thering-mistress, a woman of possibly forty, acting as host, lookingexceptionally well, handsome indeed, in grey and silver evening dress, with fine dark eyes and an older sister who opens the performance withsome good work. This seems to me to be the modern touch, for there wasa time when it was always the very well groomed ringmaster, with tophat and monocle, who acted as host of the ring. 

It will likewise be remembered by those who saw the Hannafords at thecircus, that they were also possessed of a very handsomering-mistress, elegantly gowned, both of these older ladies lendinggreat distinction, by their presence, to already brilliantperformances. I would be very pleased to make myself historian forthese fine artists, these esthetes of muscular melody. I should likevery much to be spokesman for them, and point out to an enforcedlyignorant public, the beauties of this line of artistic expression, andto give historical account of the development of these variouspicturesque athletic arts. Alas, that is not possible, for it mustremain forever in the limbo of tradition. 

We shall have to be grateful beyond expression for the beautiful artof May Wirth, and devote less enthusiasm to asking of when and how itcame about. To have established one's art at the perfect point inone's girlhood, is it not achievement, is it not genius itself?Charming little May Wirth, first equestrienne of the world, Icongratulate you for your beautiful presentation, for the excellenceof its technique, and for the grace and fascination contained therein. Triumph in youth, victory in the heroic period of life, that surely issufficient. Let the bays fall upon her young head gleefully, for sheearned them with patience, devotion, intelligence, and very hardlabours. Salutations, little lady of the white horse! How charming, how simple she was, the little equestrienne as she rode away from thedoor of the huge theatre, in her pale blue touring car. "I love theaudiences here in this great theatre, but O, I love the circus so muchmore!" These were the sentiments of the little performer as she rodeaway. She is now touring, performing under the huge canvases in theopen areas of the middle West, and the little traveling circus is onits way over the mountains. Fascinating people, and a fascinating lifefor whom there is not, and probably never will be, a written history;the story of whose origin lies almost as buried as that of theprimitive peoples. Charming rovers, content with life near to thebright sky, charming people, for whom life is but one long day inwhich to make beautiful their bodies, and make joyful the eyes ofthose who love to look at them!

JOHN BARRYMORE IN PETER IBBETSON

The vicissitudes of the young boy along the vague, precarious way, thelonging to find the reality of the dream--the heart that knew himbest--a study in sentimentality, the pathetic wanderings of a "littleboy lost" in the dream of childhood, and the "little boy found" in thearms of his loved mother, with all those touches that are painful andall that are exquisite and poignant in their beauty--such is thepicture presented by John Barrymore, as nearly perfect as any artistcan be, in "Peter Ibbetson. " Certainly it is as finished a creation inits sense of form, and of color, replete with a finesse of rareloveliness, as gratifying a performance, to my notion, as has beenseen on our stage for many years. Perhaps if the author, recallingvain pasts, could realize the scum of saccharinity in which the playis utterly submerged, and that it struggles with great difficulty tosurvive the nesselrodelike sweetness with which it is surfeited, hewould recognize the real distinction that Barrymore lends to a rôle soclogged by the honeyed sentimentality covering most of the scenes. Barrymore gives us that "quickened sense" of the life of the youngman, a portrayal which takes the eye by "its fine edge of light, " aportrayal clear and cool, elevated to a fine loftiness in hisrendering. 

The actor has accomplished this by means of a nice knowledge of whatsymbolic expression means to the art of the stage. He is certainly apainter of pictures and moods, the idea and his image perfectlycommingled, endowing this mediocre play with true charm by thedistinction he lends it, by sheer discretion, and by a power ofselection. All this he brings to a play which, if it had been writtennowadays, would certainly have convicted its author, and justly too, of having written to stimulate the lachrymal effusions of theshop-girl, a play about which she might telephone her girl friend, atwhich she might eat bon bons, and powder her nose again for thestreet. No artist, no accepted artist, has given a more suggestiverendering than has Barrymore here. It would be difficult to say wherehe is at his best, except that the first half of the play counts formost in point of strength and opportunity. 

A tall frail young man, we find him, blanched with wonder and with aweat the perplexity of life, seeking a solution of things by means ofthe dream, as only the dreamer and the visionary can, lost from firstto last, seemingly unloved in the ways boys think they want to beloved; that is, the shy longing boy, afraid of all things, and mostlyof himself, in the period just this side of sex revelation. He is theneophyte--the homeless, pathetic Peter, perplexed with the strangenessof things real and temporal--vision and memory counting for all thereis of reality to him, with life itself a thing as yet untasted. Whoshall forget (who has a love for real expression) the entrance ofPeter into the drawing-room of Mrs. Deane, the pale flowery wisp of aboy walking as it were into a garden of pungent spices and herbs, andof actions so alien to his own? We are given at this moment thekeynote of mastery in delicate suggestion, which never failsthroughout the play, tedious as it is, overdrawn on the side ofsymbolism and mystical insinuation. 

One sits with difficulty through many of the moments, the literaryquality of them is so wretched. They cloy the ear, and the mind thathas been made sensitive, desiring something of a finer type ofstimulation. Barrymore has evoked, so we may call it, a coldmethod--against a background of what could have been overheated actingor at least a superabundance of physical attack--the warmth of theplay's tender sentimentalities; yet he covers them with a stillspiritual ardor which is their very essence, extracting all thedelicate nuances and arranging them with a fine sense of proportion. It is as difficult an accomplishment for a man as one can imagine. Forit is not given to many to act with this degree of whiteness, devoidof off colorings or alien tones. This performance of Barrymore in itsspiritual richness, its elegance, finesse, and intelligence, has notbeen equaled for me since I saw the great geniuses Paul Orleneff andEleonora Duse. 

It is to be at once observed that here is a keen pictorial mind, amind which visualizes perfectly for itself the chiaroscuro aspects ofthe emotion, as well as the spiritual, for Barrymore gives them withan almost unerring felicity, and rounds out the portrayal which in anyother hands would suffer, but Barrymore has the special power to feelthe value of reticence in all good art, the need for completesubjection of personal enthusiasm to the force of ideas. His art isakin to the art of silver-point, which, as is known, is an art ofdirectness of touch, and final in the instant of execution, leaving noroom whatever for accident or untoward excitement of nerve. 

We shall wait long for the silver suggestiveness such as Barrymoregives us when Peter gets his first glimpse of Mary, Duchess of Towers. Who else could convey his realization of her beauty, and the qualityof reminiscence that lingers about her, of the rapt amaze as he standsby the mantel-piece looking through the door into the space where hesees her in the midst of dancers under a crystal chandelier somewherenot very distant? Or the moment when he finds her bouquet neglected onthe table in the drawing-room, with her lace shawl not far from hishands? Or when he finds himself alone, pressing his lips into thedepth of the flowers as the curtain gives the finale to the scene withthe whispered "l'amour"! These are moments of a real lyrist, andwould match any line of Banville, of Ronsard, or of Austin Dobson fordelicacy of touch and feeling, for freshness, and for the precisespiritual gesture, the "intonation" of action requisite to relieve themoments from what might otherwise revert to commonplacesentimentality. 

Whatever the prejudice may be against all these emotions glacé withsugary frosting, we feel that his art has brought them into being withan unmistakable gift of refinement coupled with superb style. How anartist like Beardsley would have revelled in these moments is easy toconjecture. For here is the quintessence of intellectualizedaquarelle, and these touches would surely have brought into beinganother "Pierrot of the Minute"--a new line drawing out of a period heknew and loved well. These touches would have been graced by the handof that artist, or by another of equal delicacy of appreciation, Charles Conder--unforgettable spaces replete with the essence offancy, of dream, of those farther recesses of the imagination. 

Although technically and historically Barrymore has the advantage ofexcellent traditions, he nevertheless rests entirely upon his ownachievements, separate and individual in his understanding of whatconstitutes plastic power in art. He has a peculiar and most sensitivetemper, which can arrange points of relation in juxtaposition with akeen sense of form as well as of substance. He is, one might say, amasterly draftsman with a rich cool sense of color, whose work hassomething of the still force of a drawing of Ingres with, as well, thesensitive detail one finds in a Redon, like a beautiful drawing onstone. An excellent knowledge of dramatic contrasts is displayed bythe brothers Barrymore, John and Lionel, in the murder scene, one ofthe finest we have seen for many years, technically even, splendid, and direct, concise in movement. Every superfluous gesture has beeneliminated. From the moment of Peter's locking the door upon his unclethe scene is wrapped in the very coils of catastrophe, almostEuripedean in its inevitability. All of this episode is kept strictlywithin the realm of the imagination. It is an episode of hatred, ofwhich there is sure to be at least one in the life of every youngsensitive, when every boy wants, at any rate somewhere in his mind, todestroy some influence or other which is alien or hateful to him. Thescene emphasizes once again the beauty of technical power for its ownsake, the thrill of discarding all that is not immediately essentialto simple and direct realization. 

Little can be said of the play beyond this point, for it dwindles offinto sentimental mystification which cannot be enjoyed by anyone underfifty, or appreciated by anyone under eighteen. It gives opportunitymerely for settings and some rare moments of costuming, the lady withthe battledore reminding one a deal of a good Manet. This and, ofcourse, the splendid appearance of the Duchess of Towers in the firstact--all these touches furnish more than a satisfying background forthe very shy and frail Peter. 

This performance of Barrymore holds for me the first and lastrequisite of organized conception in art--poise, clarity, and perfectsuggestibility. Its intellectual soundness rules the emotionalextravagance, giving form to what--for lack of form--so often perishesunder an excess of energy, which the ignorant actor substitutes forthe plastic element in all art. It has the attitude, this performance, almost of diffidence to one's subject-matter, except as the intellectjudges clearly and coolly. Thus, in the sense of esthetic reality, areall aspects clarified and made real. From the outward inward, or fromthe inward outward, surface to depth or depth to surface--it isdifficult to say which is the precise method of approach. JohnBarrymore has mastered the evasive subtlety therein, which makes himone of our greatest artists. The future will surely wait for his ripercontributions, and we may think of him as one of our foremost artists, among the few, "one of a small band, " as the great novelist once saidof the great poet. 

PART THREE

LA CLOSERIE DE LILAS

Divine Tuesday! I had wondered if those remarkable evenings ofconversation in the rue de Rome with Mallarmé as host, and Henri deRegnier as guest, among many others, had been the inspiration of theevenings at the Closerie de Lilas, where I so often sat of an evening, watching the numbers of esthetes gather, filling the entire café, rainor shine, waiting unquestionably, for it pervaded the air always, thefeeling of suspense, of a dinner without host, of a wedding withoutbridegroom, in any event waiting for the real genius of the evening, le grand maitre prince de poètes, Paul Fort. The interesting book ofAmy Lowell's, "Six French Poets, " recalls these Tuesday eveningsvividly to my mind, and a number of episodes in connection with theidea of poetry in Paris. 

Poetry an event? A rather remarkable notion it would seem, and yetthis was always so, it was a constituent of the day's passing, therewas never a part of the day in this arrondissement, when you would notfind here, there, everywhere, from the Boul-Mich up, down Montparnasseto Lavenue's, and back to the Closerie, groups of a few or of many, obviously the artist or poet type, sometimes very nattily dressed, often the reverse, but you found them talking upon one theme, art, meaning either poetry or painting, cubistes, futuristes, orphistes anddoubtless every "iste" in poetry from the symboliste period up to the"unanimistes" of the present time, or the then present time nearly twoyears before the war. It was a bit novel, even for a sensitiveAmerican, sitting there, realizing that it was all in the name of art, and for the heralding of genius--a kind of sublimated recruitingmeeting for the enlistment in the army of expression of personality, or for the saving of the soul of poetry. 

It was a spectacle, edifying in its purport, or even a littledistressing if one had no belief in a sense of humour, for there weremoments of absurdity about it as there is sure to be in a room filledwith any type of concerted egotism. But you did not forget the raisond'etre of it all, you did not forget that when the "prince" arrivedthere was the spirit of true celebration about it, the celebration notonly of an arrived artist, but of an idea close to the hearts andminds of those present, and you had a sense, too, of what it must havebeen like in that circle of, no doubt, a higher average of adherents, in the drawing room of the genius Mallarmé, who, from all accounts, was as perfected in the art of conversation, as he was in expressionin art. When I read Miss Lowell's chapter on Henri de Regnier, I findmyself before the door of the Mallarmé house in the rue de Rome, probably the only American guest, on that Sunday morning in June, justone given a privilege that could not mean as much as if I had beenmore conversant with the delicacies of the language. 

It was the occasion of the placing of a tablet of homage to the greatpoet, at which ceremony Henri de Regnier himself was the chiefspeaker: a tall, very aristocratic, very elegant looking Frenchman, not any more to be called young, nor yet to be called old, butconspicuously simple, dignified, dressed in a manner of a gentleman ofthe first order, standing upon a chair, speaking, as one wouldimagine, with a flow of words which were the epitome of music itselfto the ear. I had been invited by a poet well known in Paris, withseveral volumes to his credit and by a young literary woman, both ofwhom spoke English very creditably. After the ceremonies, which werevery brief, and at which Madame Mallarmé herself was present, standingnear the speaker, de Regnier, the entire company repaired to arestaurant near the Place Clichy, if I remember rightly. My hostessnamed for me the various guests as they appeared, Madame Rachilde, Reynaldo Hahn, André Gide, and a dozen other names less conspicuous, perhaps, excepting one, Léon Dierx, who was an old man, and whosedeath was announced about the city some days later. It was, needlessto say, a conspicuous company and the dinner went off very quietly, allowing of course for the always feverish sound of the conversationof many people talking in a not very large room. 

But all these suggestions recall for me once more what such thingsmean to a people like the French, or, let one say, Europeans as well. I wonder what poetry or even painting will do, if they shall rise tosuch a state in this country that we shall find our masters ofliterature holding audience with this degree of interest like Fort, oras did all the great masters of literature in Paris, hold forth in thename of art, a divine Tuesday set apart for the admirable worship ofpoetry, or of things esthetic. I can imagine Amy Lowell doingsomething of this sort after the custom of those masters she soadmires, with her seemingly quenchless enthusiasms for all that ismodern in poetry. I think we shall wait long for that, for the timewhen we shall have our best esthetics over the coffee, at the curbsideunder the trees with the sun shining upon it, or the shadow of theevening lending its sanction, under the magnetic influence of such aone as Paul Fort or Francis Jammes, or Emile Verhaeren--as it was onceto be had among such as Verlaine, Baudelaire and that high company ofdistinguished painters who are now famous among us. 

The studio of Gertude Stein, that quiet yet always lively place in therue de Fleurus, is the only room I have ever been in where this spiritwas organized to a similar degree, for here you had the sense of thereal importance of painting, as it used to be thought of in the daysof Pissarro, Manet, Degas, and the others, and you had much, in allhuman ways, out of an evening there, and, most of all, you had a fundof good humour thrust at you, and the conversation took on, not thequality of poetic prose spoken, as you had the quality of yourself andothers, a kind of William James intimacy, which, as everyone knows, isstyle bringing the universe of ideas to your door in terms of your ownsensations. There may have been a touch of all this at the once famedBrook Farm, but I fancy it was rather chill in its severity. 

There is something of charm in the French idea of taking theirdiscussions to the sunlight or the shadow under the stars, eitherwithin or outside the café, where you feel the passing of the world, and the poetry is of one piece with life itself, not the result ofstuffy studios, and excessively ornate library corners, where bookscrowd out the quality of people and things. You felt that the café wasthe place for it, and if the acrobat came and sang, it was all of onefabric and it was as good for the poetry, as it was for the eye andthe ear that absorbed it. Despite the different phases of thespectacle of Tuesday, at the Closerie de Lilas, you had the feeling ofits splendour, its excellence, and, most of all, of its reality, itsrelationship to every other phase of life, and not of thehypersensitivity of the thing as we still consider it among ourselvesin general; and if you heard the name of Paul Fort, or Francis Jammes, it was a definite issue in daily life, equal with the name of thegreat statesmen in importance, you were being introduced into asphere of activities of the utmost importance, _that_ poetry wassomething to be reckoned with. 

It was not merely to hear oneself talk that artists like Mallarmé heldforth with distinction, that artists like de Regnier and Fort devotethemselves, however secretly, or however openly to the sacred theme. They had but one intention, and that to arrive at, and assist in therealization of the best state of poetry, that shall have carried theart further on its way logically, and in accordance with theprinciples which they have created for their time; endeavoring alwaysto create fresh values, new points of contact with the prevailing aswell as with the older outlines of the classics. It was, then, aspectacle, from our removed point of view, the gathering of the poeticmultitude around the café tables, over the Dubonnet, the grenadines, and the café noir, of a Tuesday evening. It gave one a sense ofperpetuity, of the indestructibility of art, in spite of the obstaclesencountered in the run of the day, that the artist has the advantageover the layman in being qualified to set down, in shapesimperishable, those states of his imagination which are the shapes oflife and of nature. 

We may be grateful to Amy Lowell for having assembled for ourconsummation, in a world where poetry is not as yet the sublime issueas it was to be felt at every street corner, much of the spirit of therue de Rome, the Café Novelles D'Athènes, and the Closerie de Lilas, as well as the once famed corner of the Café D'Harcourt where theabsinthe flowed so continuously, and from which some very exquisitepoetry has emanated for all time. It is the first intimation we haveof what our best English poetry has done for the best French poets ofthe present, and what our first free verse poet has done for thegeneral liberation of emotions and for freedom of form in allcountries. He has indicated the poets that are to follow him. He wouldbe the first to sanction all this poetic discussive intensity at thecurbside, the liberty and freedom of the café, the excellence of adivine Tuesday evening. 

EMILY DICKINSON

If I want to take up poetry in its most delightful and playful mood, Itake up the verses of that remarkable girl of the sixties andseventies, Emily Dickinson, she who was writing her little worthlesspoetic nothings, or so she was wont to think of them, at a time whenthe now classical New England group was flourishing around Concord, when Hawthorne was burrowing into the soul of things, Thoreau wasrefusing to make more pencils and took to sounding lake bottoms andholding converse with all kinds of fish and other water life, andEmerson was standing high upon his pedestal preaching ofcompensations, of friendship, society and the oversoul, leaving amighty impress upon his New England and the world at large as well. 

I find when I take up Emily Dickinson, that I am sort of sunningmyself in the discal radiance of a bright, vivid, and really new typeof poet, for she is by no means worn of her freshness for us, shewears with one as would an old fashioned pearl set in gold and darkenamels. She offsets the smugness of the time in which she lived withher cheery impertinence, and startles the present with her uncommongifts. Those who know the irresistible charm of this girl--who gaveso charming a portrait of herself to the stranger friend who inquiredfor a photograph: "I had no portrait now, but am small like the wren, and my hair is bold like the chestnut burr, and my eyes like thesherry in the glass that the guest leaves, " this written in July, 1862--shall be of course familiar with the undeniable originality ofher personality, the grace and special beauty of her mind, charmunique in itself, not like any other genius then or now, or in thetime before her, having perhaps a little of relationship to thecrystal clearness of Crashaw, like Vaughan and Donne maybe, in respectof their lyrical fervour and moral earnestness, yet neverthelessappearing to us freshly with as separate a spirit in her versecreations as she herself was separated from the world around her bythe amplitude of garden which was her universe. Emily Dickinsonconfronts you at once with an instinct for poetry, to be envied by themore ordinary and perhaps more finished poets. Ordinary she never was, common she never could have been, for she was first and lastaristocrat in sensibility, rare and untouchable if you will, vague andmystical often enough, unapproachable and often distinctly aloof, asundoubtedly she herself was in her personal life. Those with afondness for intimacy will find her, like all recluses, forbidding anddifficult, if not altogether terrifying the mind with her vagueriesand peculiarities. 

Here was New England at its sharpest, brightest, wittiest, mostfantastic, most wilful, most devout, saint and imp sported in one, toying with the tricks of the Deity, taking them now with extremeprofundity, then tossing them about like irresistible toys with anincomparable triviality. She has traced upon the page and withcelestial indelibility that fine line from her soul which is like afine prismatic light, separating one bright sphere from another, oneplanet from another planet, and the edge of separation is but faintlyperceptible. She has left us this bright folio of her "lightning andfragrance in one, " scintillant with stardust as perhaps no otherbefore her, certainly not in this country, none with just hercelestial attachedness, or must we call it detachedness, and withalalso a sublime, impertinent playfulness which makes her images dancebefore one like offspring of the great round sun, fooling zealouslywith the universes at her feet, and just beyond her eye, with aloftiness of spirit and of exquisite trivialness seconded by none. Whohas not read these flippant renderings, holding always some touch ofausterity and gravity of mood, or the still more perfect "letters" toher friends, will, I think, have missed a new kind of poeticdiversion, a new loveliness, evasive, alert, pronounced in everyinterval and serious, modestly so, and at a bound leaping as it werelike some sky child pranking with the clouds, and the hills and thevalleys beneath them, child as she surely was always, playing in somecelestial garden space in her mind, where every species of tether wasunendurable, where freedom for this childish sport was the one thingnecessary to her ever young and incessantly capering mind--"hail tothee, blithe spirit, bird thou ever wert"!

It must be said in all justice, then, that "fascination was herelement, " everything to her was wondrous, sublimely magical, awsomelyinspiring and thrilling. It was the event of many moons to havesomeone she liked say so much as good morning to her in human tongue, it was the event of every instant to have the flowers and birds callher by name, and hear the clouds exult at her approach. She was thebrightest young sister of fancy, as she was the gifted young daughterof the ancient imagination. One feels everywhere in her verse and inher so splendid and stylish letters an unexcelled freshness, brightness of metaphor and of imagery, a gift of a peculiarity thatcould have come only from this part of our country, this part of theworld, this very spot which has bred so many intellectual andspiritual entities wrapped in the garments of isolation, robed withquestioning. Her genius is in this sense essentially local, as muchthe voice of the spirit of New England as it is possible for one tohold. If ever wanderer hitched vehicle to the comet's tail, it was thepoetic, sprite woman, no one ever rode the sky and the earth as shedid in this radiant and skybright mind of her. 

She loved all things because all things were in one way or in anotherway bright for her, and of a blinding brightness from which she oftenhad to hide her face. She embroidered all her thoughts with starryintricacies, and gave them the splendour of frosty traceries upon thewindowpane in a frigid time, and of the raindrop in the sun, andsummered them with fragrancing of the many early and late flowers ofher own fanciful conjuring. They are glittering garlands of her clear, cool fancies, these poems, fraught in some instances, as are certainfinely cut stones, with an exceptional mingling of lights coursingswiftly through them. She was avid of starlight and of sunlight alike, and of that light by which all things are illumined with a splendournot their own merely, but lent them by shafts from that radiant spherewhich she leaned from, looking out gleefully upon them from the windowof that high place in her mind. 

To think of this poet is to think of crystal, for she lived in aradianced world of innumerable facets, and the common instances werechariots upon which to ride widely over the edges of infinity. She isalive for us now in those rare fancies of hers, with no other wish inthem save as memorandum for her own eyes, and when they were finishedto send them spinning across the wide garden, many of them to herfavorite sister who lived far, far away, over beyond the hedge. Youshall find in her all that is winsome, strange, fanciful, fantasticand irresistible in the eastern character and characteristic. She isfirst and best in lightsomeness of temper, for the eastern is knownas essentially a tragic genius. She is perhaps the single exponent ofmodern times of the quality of true celestial frivolity. Scintillantwas she then, and like dew she was and the soft summer rain, and thelight upon the lips of flowers of which she loved to sing. Her mindand her spirit were one, soul and sense inseparable, little sister ofShelley certainly she was, and the more playful relative of FrancisThompson. 

She had about her the imperishable quality that hovers about allthings young and strong and beautiful, she was the sense of beautyungovernable. What there are of tendencies religious and moral disturbin nowise those who love and have appreciation for true poeticessences. She had in her brain the inevitable buzzing of the bee inthe belly of the bloom, she had in her eyes the climbing lances of thesun, she had in her heart love and pity for the innumerable pitifuland pitiable things. She was a quenchless mother in her gift forsolace and she was lover to the immeasurable love. Like allaristocrats she hated mediocrity, and like all first rate jewels, shehad no rift to hide. She was not a maker of poetry, she was a thinkerof poetry. She was not a conjurer of words so much as a magician insensibility. She has only to see and feel and hear to be in touch withall things with a name or with things that must be forever nameless. If she loved people, she loved them for what they were, if shedespised them she despised them for what they did, or for lack ofpower to feel they could not do. Silence under a tree was a far moretalkative experience with her than converse with one or a thousanddull minds. Her throng was the air, and her wings were the multitudeof flying movements in her brain. She had only to think and she wasamid numberless minarets and golden domes, she had only to think andthe mountain cleft its shadow in her heart. 

Emily Dickinson is in no sense toil for the mind accustomed to thelabours of reading, she is too fanciful and delicious ever to makeheavy the head, she sets you to laughter and draws a smile across yourface for pity, and lets you loose again amid the measureless pleasinglittle humanities. I shall always want to read Emily Dickinson, forshe points her finger at all tiresome scholasticism, and takes achance with the universe about her and the first rate poetry it offersat every hand within the eye's easy glancing. She has made poetrymemorable as a pastime for the mind, and sent the heavier ministerialtendencies flying to a speedy oblivion. What a child she was, childimpertinent, with a heavenly rippling in her brain!

These random passages out of her writings will show at once the rarityof her tastes and the originality of her phrasing. "February passedlike a kate, and I know March. Here is the light the stranger said wasnot on sea or land--myself could arrest it, but will not chagrinhim"--

"The wind blows gay today, and the jays bark like blue terriers. "

"Friday I tasted life, it was a vast morsel. A circus passed thehouse--still I feel the red in my mind though the drums are out. "

"The lawn is full of south and the odors tangle, and I hear today forthe first the river in the tree. "

 "The zeros taught us phosphorus We learned to like the fire By playing glaciers when a boy And tinder guessed by power

 "Of opposite to balance odd If white a red must be! Paralysis, our primer dumb Unto vitality. "

Then comes the "crowning extravaganza. .. . If I read a book, and itmakes my whole body so cold no fire will ever warm me, I know that ispoetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. Is there any other way? These are the only waysI know it. "

No one but a New England yankee mind could concoct such humours andfascinatingly pert phrases as are found here. They are like thechatterings of the interrupted squirrel in the tree-hole at nut-time. There is so much of high gossip in these poetic turns of hers, and so, throughout her books, one finds a multitude of playful tricks for thepleased mind to run with. She was an intoxicated being, drunken withthe little tipsy joys of the simplest form, shaped as they were toelude always her evasive imagination into thinking that nothing shecould think or feel but was extraordinary and remarkable. "Yourletter gave no drunkenness because I tasted rum before--Domingo comesbut once, " etc. , she wrote to Col. Higginson, a pretty conceit, surelyto offer a loved friend. The passages offered will give the unfamiliarreader a taste of the sparkle of this poet's hurrying fancy and sether before the willing mind entrancingly, it seems to me. She willalways delight those who find it in their way to love her elfish, evasive genius, and those who care for the vivid and living element inwords will find her, to say the least, among the masters in herfeeling for their strange shapes and the fresh significance containedin them. A born thinker of poetry, and in a great measure a giftedwriter of it, refreshing many a heavy moment made dull with theweightiness of books, or of burdensome thinking. This poet-sprite setsscurrying all weariness of the brain, and they shall have an hour ofsheer delight who invite poetic converse with Emily Dickinson. Shewill repay with funds of rich celestial coin from her rare andprecious fancyings. She had that "oblique integrity" which shecelebrates in one of her poems. 

ADELAIDE CRAPSEY

One more satellite hurried away too soon! High hints at least, of theyoung meteor finding its way through space. Here was another of those, with a vast fund of wishing in her brain, and the briefest of hours inwhich to set them roaming. Brevities that whirl through the mind asyou read those cinquains of Adelaide Crapsey, like white birds throughthe dark woodlands of the night. Cameos or castles, what is size? Isit not the same if they are of one perfection of feeling? Such alittle book of Adelaide Crapsey, surely like cameos cut on shell, soclear in outline, so rich in form, so brave in indications, so much ofsinging, so much of poetry, of courage. 

 "Just now, Out of the strange Still dusk--as strange, as still, A white moth flew; Why am I grown So cold?"

Isn't the evidence sufficient here of first rate poetic gifts, sensibility of an exceptional order? Contrast in so many ways withthat perhaps more radiant and certainly more whimsical girl, with herrarest of flavours, she with her "whip of diamond, riding to meet theEarl"! I think geniuses like Keats or Shelley would have said "how doyou do, poet?" to Adelaide Crapsey and her verse, lamenting also thatshe flew over the rainbowed edge of the dusk too soon, like the verymoth over the garden wall, early in the evening. It is sure that hadthis poet been allowed her full quota of days, she would have leftsome handsome folios bright enough for any one caring for verse at itspurest. Pity there was not time for another book at least, of herverses, to verify the great distinction conferred. She might havewalked still more largely away with the wreaths of recognition. Nottime for more books, instead of so much eternity at her bedside. Shewould surely have sent more words singing to their high places andhave impressed the abundant output of the day with its superficialityby her seriousness. There is no trifling in these poetic things ofhers. Trivial might some say who hanker after giantesque composition. Fragile are they only in the sense of size, only in this way are theysmall. 

Those who know the difficulties of writing poetic composition areaware of the task involved in creating such packed brevities. EmilyDickinson knew this power. "H. D. " is another woman who understandsthe beauty of compactness. Superb sense of economy, of terseness theart calls for, excessive pruning and clipping. Singular that thesethree artists, so gifted in brevity were women. There is little, afterall, in existence that warrants lengthy dissertation. Life itself isepigrammatic and brief enough. No volumes needed by way ofexplanation. The fascinating enigma diverts and perplexes everyonealike. The simple understand it best, or at least they seem to do so. Segregation, aloofness, spiritual imprisonment, which is another namefor introspection, the looking out from bars of the caged house, allthis discovers something through penetration. Walking with life ismost natural, grazing its warm shoulder. There is little room forinquiry if one have the real feeling of life itself. Poetry is thatwhich gleans most by keeping nearest to life. Books and firesidesavail but little. Secretaries for the baggage of erudition do notenhance poetic values, they encumber them. Poetry is not declamation, it is not propaganda, it is breathing natural breaths. There isnothing mechanical about poetry excepting the affectation of forms. Poetry is the world's, it is everybody's. You count poetry by itsessence, and no amount of studied effect, or bulging erudition willcreate that which is necessary, that which makes poetry what it is. The one essential is power to sing, and the intelligence to get itdown with degrees of mastery or naturalness, which is one and the samething. 

Real singing is unusual as real singers are rare. Adelaide Crapseyshows that she was a real singer, essentially poet, excellent amongthose of our time. She impresses her uncommon qualities upon you, inthe cinquains of hers, with genuinely incisive force. She has so muchof definiteness, so much of technical beauty, economy, all veryvaluable assets for a true poet. She had never been touched with themania for journalistic profusion. She cared too much for language toride it. She cared too much for words to want to whip them intoslavery. She was outside of them, looking on, as it might be, throughcrystal, at their freshness. She did not take them for granted. Theywere new to her and she wanted the proper familiarity. She worked upona spiritual geometric all her own. She did not run to the dictionaryfor eccentricities, she did not hunt words out of countenance. Theywere natural to her. She wanted most their simple beauty, and shesucceeded. She had dignity, a rare gift in these times. She raisesherself above the many by her fine feeling for the precision. That isher artistry, the word, the thing of beauty and the joy forever withher. 

It is to be regretted that Adelaide Crapsey had no more time for theminiature microscopic equations, the little thing seen large, thelarge thing seen vividly. She might have spent more hours with themand less with her so persistent guest, this second self at her side;ironic presence, when she most would have strode with the brightercompanion, her first and natural choice. Her contribution isconspicuous among us for its balance and its intellectualism temperedwith fine emotions. She had so much to settle for herself, so muchbargaining for the little escapes in which to register herselfconsistently, so much of consultation for her body's sake, that hermind flew the dark spaces about her bed with consistent feverishness. 

Reckoning is not the genius of life. It is the painful, residualelement of reflection. One must give, one must pay. It is notinspiring to beg for breath, yet this has come to many a fine artist, many a fine soul whose genius was far more of the ability for living, with so little of the ability for dying. You cannot think along withclarity, with the doom of dark recognition nudging your shoulder everyinstant. There must be somehow apertures of peace for production. Adelaide Crapsey's chief visitant was doom. She saw the daysvanishing, and the inevitable years lengthening over her. No wondershe could write brevities, she whose existence was brevity itself. Thevery flicker of the lamp was among the last events. What, then, wasthe fluttering of the moth but a monstrous intimation. If her work waschilled with severity, it was because she herself was covered with thecool branches of decision. Nature was cold with her, hence there isthe ring of ice in these little pieces of hers. They are veiled withthe grey of many a sunless morning. 

 "These be Three silent things; The falling snow, --the hour Before the dawn, --the mouth of one Just dead. "

Here you have the intensity once more of Adelaide Crapsey. It hauntsyou like the something on the dark stairway as you pass, just as when, on the roadway in the dead of night, the twig grazing one's cheekwould seem like the springing panther at one's throat. Dramaticvividness is certainly her chief distinction. No playfulness here, buta stout reckoning with austere beauty. The wish to record the elementat its best that played so fierce a rôle in her life. She writes herown death hymn, lays her own shroud out, spaces her own epilogue as ifto give the engraver, who sets white words on white stone, the clue, stones the years stare on, leaving the sunlight to streak the oldpathos there, and then settles herself to the long way of lying, tothe sure sleep that glassed her keen eyes, shutting them down too soonon a world that held so much poetry for her. 

The titles of her cinquains, such as "November night", "The guardedwound", "The warning", "Fate defied", and the final touch ofinevitability in "The Lonely Death", so full of the intensity of lastmoments, intimate the resolute presence of the grey companion of thecovering mists. It must be said hurriedly that Adelaide Crapsey wasnot all doom. By no means. The longer pieces in her tiny book attestto her feeling for riches, and the lyrical wonders of the hour. Herfervour is the artist's fervour, the longing, coming really topassion, to hold and fix forever the shapes that were loveliest toher. That is the poet's existence, that is the poet's labour, and hislast distress. No one wants to give in to a commonplace world when thelight that falls on it is lovelier than the place it falls on. If youcannot transpose the object, transport it, however simply, howeverornately, then of what use is poetry? It is transport!

Adelaide Crapsey was efficient in her knowledge of what poetry is, asshe was certainly proficient as workman. She was lapidary more thanpainter or sculptor. It was a beautiful cutting away, and a sweepingaside of the rifts and flaws. That is to say, she wanted that. Shewanted the white light of the perfect gem, and she could not have beencontent with just matrix, with here and there embedded chips. She wasa washer of gold, and spared no labours for the bright nuggets shemight get, and the percentage of her panning was high. But the cloudhung on the mountain she clomb, and her way was dimmed. 

 "In the cold I will rise, I will bathe In the waters of ice; Myself Will shiver, and will shrive myself Alone in the dawn, and anoint Forehead and feet and hands; I will shutter the windows from light, I will place in their sockets the four Tall candles and set them a-flame In the grey of the dawn; And myself Will lay myself straight in my bed, And draw the sheet under my chin. "

There could be no more of resolute finality in this chill epilogue. There is the cold of a thousand years shuddering out of this scene, itis the passing, the last of this delicate and gifted poet, AdelaideCrapsey. If she has written more than her book prints, these mustsurely be of her best. She took the shape of that which she made sovisible, so cold, so beautiful. With her white wings she has skirtedthe edge of the dusk with an incredible calm. No whimpering here. Toomuch artistry for that; too much of eye to let heart rule. The giftsof Adelaide Crapsey were high ones, and that she left so little ofsong is regrettable, even though she left us a legacy of some of thebest singing of the day. It is enough to call her poet, for she wasamong the first of this hour and time. She had no affectations, nofashionable theories and ambitions. She simply wrote excellent verse. That is her beautiful gift to us. 

FRANCIS THOMPSON

If ever a meteor fell to earth it was Francis Thompson. If ever a starascended to that high place in the sky where sit the loftier planetsin pleasant company, it was this splendid poet. Stalking through theshadows of the Thames Embankment to find his clear place in the milkyway, is hardly the easiest road for so exceptional a celebrity. It isbut another instance of the odd tradition perpetuating itself, thatsome geniuses must creep hand and knee through mire, heart piercedwith the bramble of experience, up over the jagged pathways to thatstill place where skies are clear at last. Thompson is the last amongthe great ones to have known the dire vicissitude, direst, if legendsare true, that can befall a human being. We have the silence of hissaviour friends, the Meynells, saying so much more than their fewpublic words, tender but so careful. What they knew, and what thewalls of the monastery of Storrington must have heard in that sopained stillness, there, is probably beyond repetition for pathos. DeQuincey had taught him much in the knowledge of hardship. Whether itis just similarity of experience or a kind of imitation in nature, isnot easy to say. It was hardly the example to repeat. It is singularenough also, that De Quincey's "Ann" should have become so vivid arepetition to Thompson, in just the same terms. 

London has no feeling for the peace of poets. They are the littlethings in the confused maelstrom of human endeavor. Poets are taughtwith the whip. They must bleed for their divine idea, or so it wasthen. Sometimes it seems as if a change had come, for so many poetssit in chairs of ease these days. Science produces other kinds ofdiscomfort, and covers the old misery with a new tapestry ofcontrasts. I doubt if many poets are selling matches these days, living on eleven pence a day. There is still the poet who knows hischeap lodging. There seems enough of them still for high minds tocrawl into, and yet there is another face to the misery. 

Thompson was seraph from the first. You see the very doom burning outof his boy's eyes in the youthful portrait, and you see the logicalend in that desperate and pitiful mask, the drawing of the last periodin the Meynell Book. His was certainly the severed head, and his feetwere pathetically far away, down on a stony earth. That he should haveforfeited the ordinary ways of ease, is as consistent with hisappearance, as it was necessary to his nature. That he should findhimself on the long march past the stations of the cross, to the verytree itself, for his poetic purpose, if it is in keeping withtradition, is not precisely the most inspiring aspect of humanexperiences. Human he was not, as we like to think of human, for hewas too early in his career marked for martyr. There is the note ofcricket-time in his earlier life, and how long this attached to thephysical delights of his being cannot be told here. His eyes werelodged too far in heaven to have kept the delights for long, to havecomprehended all that clogged his impatiently mercurial feet. 

"The abashless inquisition of each star" was the scrutiny thatobsessed his ways, the impertinence that he suffered most; for he hadthe magnitude of soul that hungered for placement, and the plague oftwo masters was on him. Huntress and "Hound" he had to choose between, beauty and the insatiable Prince; harsh and determined lovers, both ofthem, too much craving altogether for an artistic nature. The earthhad no room for him and he did not want heaven so soon. He was notsaint, even though his name followed him even, for recognition. 

"Stood bound and helplessly, for Time to shoot his barbed minutes atme, suffered the trampling hoof of every hour, " etc. , all thisconfided to some childish innocent in "The child's kiss". Whom elseshould he tell but a child? Where is the man or woman withunderstanding but has the "child" lodged somewhere for sympathy, forrecognition? The clearest listener he could find, and the leastcommiserative, happily. "The heart of childhood, so divine for me", isbut typical of a being so dragged, and emaciate with the tortures ofthe body, in earth places where no soul like his could ever be athome. What was Preston, or Ashton-under-Lyne to him, more than KensallGreen is to him now? What is such dust in his sky but some blindingand blowing thing? What is there for singer to do but sing until thethroat cracks? Even the larks and the thrushes do that. They end theirmorning and evening with a song. He was brother to these birds in thatloftiness. He sang, and sang, and sang, while flesh fainted fromhunger and weakness. 

Had not Storrington come to him in the dark places of London, weshould have had no "Hound of Heaven", and without that masterpiecewhat would modern poetry do? He sang to cover up his wounds withclimbing music. That was his sense of beauty. He filled his hollowingcheek with finer things than moaning. He might have wept, but theywere words instead of drops. 

It will be difficult to find loftier song as to essences. We shallhave room for criticising stylistic extravagances, archaisms of a notinteresting order for us, yet there will be nothing said but thehighest in praise of his genius. Excess of praise may be heaped uponhim without cessation, and it may end in the few cool yet incisivewords that fell from the lips of Meredith, with the violets fromanother's worshipped hands, "a true poet, one of a small band. " Poetsof this time will have much to gather from Thompson in point ofsincerity. There is terrific mastery of words, which is likeShakespeare in felicity we do not encounter so often it seems to me. 

Thompson has scaled the white rainbow of the night, and sits inradiant company among the first planetary strummers of song. Hisdiamond is pure, and the matrix that hid him so long from showing hisglinted facets is chipped away of miseries carried down with death. They will soon be forgotten by the multitude as death itself made himforget them. We have his chants and his anthems and plainsongs toremind us of the one essential, of how lofty a singer passed down ourhighroad. "Dusty with tumbling about amid the stars!" That is what heis for us now, if he rolled in too much clay of earth. Shelley mighthave turned his own handsome phrase on him, for they both strode themorning of their bright minds like sun the sky, with much of the samesolemn yet speedy gait. There are times when they are certainly of theone radiance, lyrical and poetical. Their consuming intellectualinterests were vastly apart, as were their paths of spirit. 

I think we shall have no more "dread of height". Poetry has passedinto scientific discovery. Intellectual passions are the vogue, earthis coming into its own, for there is no more heaven in the mind. Weare showing our humanities now, and the soul must wait a little, andremain speechless in some dull corner of the universe. Thompson wasthe last to believe. We are learning to think now, so poetry has cometo calculation. Rhapsody and passion are romantic, and we are notromantic. The last Rhapsodist was Francis Thompson, and in the senseof lyrical fervour, the last great poet was Francis Thompson. 

ERNEST DOWSON

It is late to be telling of Dowson, with the eighteen-nineties nearlyout of sight, and yet it is Dowson and Lionel Johnson that I know mostof, from the last of this period. Poles apart these two poets are, theone so austere and almost collegiate in adherence to convention, theother too warm to let a coldness obsess his singing. There doesn'tseem to be anything wonderful about Dowson, and yet you want to besaying a line of his every now and then, of him "that lived, and sang, and had a beating heart, " ere he grew old, and he grew old so soon. "Worn out by what was really never life to him, " is a prefatorialphrase I recall. There was a genuine music in Dowson, even if it wassmothered in lilies and roses and wine of the now old way of sayingthings. "Come hither child, and rest--Behold the weary west, " mighthave been the thing he was saying to himself, so much is this theessence of his lost cause. 

There is a languor and a lack of power to lift a hand toward thelight, too much a trusting of the shadow. "I have flung roses, rosesriotously with the throng, to put those pale lost lilies out of mind. "Always verging on a poetic feeling not just like ourselves in thesedays, and yet Dowson was a poet. He caressed words until they sang forhim the one plaint that he asked of them. That he was obsessed of thebeauties and the intimations of Versailles, is seen in everything hedid, or at least he imbibed this from Verlaine. He was himself a palewanderer down soft green allées, he had a twilight mind strugglingtoward the sun, which was too bright for him, for the moon was hisbrightest light. Echoes of Verlaine linger through his verse and astrain of Poe is present, poet whom he with his French taste admiredso much, two very typical idols for a young man with a sentimentaljourney to pursue. Lost Adelaides, to keep him steeped in the sorrowthat he cherished, for he petted his miseries considerably; or was itthat he was most at home when he was unhappy? He would rather haveseen the light of day from a not quite clear window, for instead of aclear hill, he might see a vague castle of his fancy somewhere. Hehadn't the sweep of a great poet, and yet somehow there was the linnetin him, there was the strain of the lute among the leaves, there wasthe rustle of a soft dress audible, and the passing of hands he couldnot ever hold. 

He was the poet of the lost treasure. "Studies in Sentiment" is, Ithink, the title of a small book of prose of his. He might have calledhis poems "Studies in sentimentality". And yet, for his time, howvirile and vigorous he sounds beside "Posies out of Rings", of hisfriend Theodore Peters, of the renaissance cloak, the cherry colouredvelvet cloak embroidered in green leaves and silver veinings, so fullof the sky radiance of Dowson himself, this cloak. Cherry sounds redand passionate. But it was a cherry of olden time, with the bloomquite gone, the dust of the years permeating its silken warp. Itreposes here in America, the property of an artist of that period. 

One likes Dowson because of his sincerity, and a clear beauty which, if not exactly startling, was in its way truly genuine. It was merelytoo late for Dowson, and it was probably too soon. Swinburne hadstrummed the skies with every kind of song, and Verlaine had whisperedevery secret of the senses there was, in the land of illusion andvaguery. Dowson was worshipper of them both, for it was sound firstand last that he cared most for, the musical mastery of the one andthe sentimentality of the other. He was far nearer Verlaine in type. He had but the one thing to tell of, and that was lost love, and hetold it over and over in his book of verse. His Pierrot of the Minutewas himself, and his Cynara was the ever vanishing vision of his owninsecurity and incapability. He perished for the love of hands. He isso like someone one knows, whom one wants to talk to tenderly, touchin a friendly way, and say as little as possible. He comes to onehumanly first, and asks you for your eye to his verse afterward, something of the "Little boy Lost", in his so ineffectual face, weakwith sweetness and hidden in shyness, covered with irresponsibility, or lack of power to be responsible. 

He was a helpless one, that is certain. He resorted to theold-fashioned methods of the decadents for maintaining the certainrequisite melancholy apparently necessary to sing a certain way. Inthe struggle of that period, he must have seemed like a very clear, though a very sad singer. There were no lilies or orchids in hisbuttonhole, and no strange jewels on his fingers, for you remember, itwas the time of "Monsieur Phocas", and the art of Gustave Moreau. Hewas plain and sincere, and pathetic, old-fashioned too in that he wasbohemian, or at least had acquired bohemianism, for I think noEnglishman was ever really bohemian. Dieppe and the docks had gottenhim, and took away the sense of mastery over things that a real poetof power must somehow have. He was essentially a giver-in. Hisneurasthenia was probably the reason for that. It was the age ofabsinthe and little taverns, for there was Verlaine and the inimitableCafé d'Harcourt, which, as you saw it just before the war, had thevery something that kept the Master at his drinks all day. 

Murger, Rimbaud, Verlaine had done the thing which has lasted sosingularly until now, for there are still echoes of this in the air, even to the present day. Barmaids are memories, and roseleaves driedand set in urns, for that matter, too. How far away it all seems, andthey were the substance of poetry then. Sounds were the importantthings for Dowson, which is essentially the Swinburne echo. Significant then, that he worshipped "the viol, the violet, and thevine" of Poe. There was little else but singing in his verse however. His love of Horace did less for him than the masters of sound, excepting that the vision comes in the name "Cynara". But it was allstruggle for Dowson, a battle with the pale lily. It was for this heclung to cabmen's lounging places. He was looking for places to be outof the play in. He couldn't have survived for long, and yet there is astrain of genuine loveliness, the note of pure beauty in the verse ofDowson. He was poet, and kept to his creed with lover-like tenacity. 

He helped close a period that was distinguished all over the world, the period of the sunflower. Apart from its wildest and mostspectacular genius, it has produced Lionel Johnson with his religiouspurity, and Aubrey Beardsley. It was the time of sad and delicateyoung men. They all died in boyhood really. These were, I think, withDowson the best it offered. We never read Arthur Symons for his powerin verse, he with so much of the rose-tinted afterglow in him, so muchof the old feeling for stage doors and roses thrown from the boxes, and the dying scent of lingerie. His essays will be a far finer sourceof delight for a much longer time, for therein is the best poetry hehad to offer. 

Dowson was, let us say not mockingly, the boyish whimperer in song. Hewas ineffectual, too much so, to take up the game of laughter forlong. That would have been too strenuous for him, so he had to sit andweep tears of wordy rain. "Il pleut dans mon coeur" was the famoustouch of his master, it was the loudest strain in him. That was thelover-strain, and Dowson was the lover dying of love, imaginary loveprobably, and saw everywhere something to remind him of what he hadpathetically lost. If there had been a little savage in him, he wouldhave walked away with what he wanted. He maybe did have a try or two, but they couldn't have endured, for he wasn't loving a particularAdelaide. That was the name he gave to love, for it was woman's lips, and eyes and hands that he cared most for, or at least seemed most tocare. 

It was in the vision that crossed his ways in the dark and boisteroustaverns where love finds strange ways for expression, that thesingleness of feeling possessed him. It was among the rougher elementsof dock life that his refinements found their level. Dowson sang andsang and sang, until he grew old at thirty-three, "worn out by whatwas never really life to him". Aged pierrot, gone home to his mother, the Moon, to bask forever in the twilight of his old and vaguefancies. There might he strum his heart out in the old way, and theworld would never hear, for it has lost the ear for this kind of song. Perhaps in two hundred years, in other "golden treasuries" there mayappear the songs of Dowson as among the best of those early and latesingers of the nineteenth century. We cannot say now, for it cloys alittle with sweets for us at this time, though it was then the time ofhoney and jasmine, and the scent of far away flowers. Pierrot of theglass, with the hours dripping away in fine, gold rain. That was thegenius of poets like Dowson, and pierrot was the master of them all. 

HENRY JAMES ON RUPERT BROOKE

Henry James on Rupert Brooke! Here is certainly a very wide interval, separated, artist and subject, by the greatest divergence of power, and one may be even amazed at the contrast involved. He is surely, James, in all his elaborateness, trying to square the rose and computethe lily, algebraical advances upon a most simple thesis. Brooke--anature so obvious, which had no measure at all for what the sum haddone to him, and for all that about him, or for those stellarecstasies which held him bound with fervour as poet, planetaryswimmer, and gifted as well with a fine stroke for the sea, and runnerof all the beautiful earth places about the great seas' edge. 

For me, there is heaviness and over-elaboration paramount in thispreface to the Letters from America, excess of byword, a strainedrelationship with his subject, but that would of course be Jamesian, and very naturally, too. It is hardly, this preface, the tribute ofthe wise telling of beautiful and "blinding youth", surely more thetreatise of the problemist forging his problem, as the sculptor might;something too much of metal or stone, too ponderous, too severe letone say, for its so gracing and brightening theme, something notspringing into bloom, as does the person and personality of the youngsubject himself. Only upon occasion does he really come upon the youngman, actual, forgetful of all but him. 

There is no question, if the word of those be true who had relationhowever slight or intimate with Brooke, that he was an engrossingtheme, and for more than one greater than himself, as certainly he wasfor many much less significant than James. It is distinguished fromthe young poet's point of view that he was impressed, and that asperson to person he really did see him in a convincing manner, asmight one artist of great repute find himself uncommonly affected bythe young and so living poet with more than a common gift forcreation. It seems to me however that James is not over certain as tohow poetic all things are in substance, yet all the while treatingBrooke coolly and spaciously as an artist should. 

I did not know Brooke, and I know nothing of him beyond various photosshowing him one way, quite manly and robust, and I feel sure he wasso, and in another way as neither youth nor man, but somethingidyllic, separate and seraph-like, untouched mostly with earthlyexperience. These pictures do show that he was, unquestionably, abright gust of England, with an almost audible splendour about eventhese poor replicas, which make it seem that he did perform theascribed miracle, that England really had brought forth of herbrightest and best, only to lay away her golden fruitage in dust uponthe borders of a far and classical sea, with an acute untimeliness. But respectfully let me say, I think much in these hours of theincongruity and pathos of excessive celebration. There shall not befor long, singers enough to sing high songs commensurate with thedelights of those numberless ones "who lived, and sang, and had abeating heart", those who have sped into the twilight too soon, havingbut a brief time to discover if years had bright secrets for them orclear perspective. There shall always lack the requisite word for themwho have made many a dull morning splendid with faith, they who havebeen the human indication immeasurably of the sun's rising, and of thetruth that vision is a thing of reason. 

Of Brooke and the other dead poets as well, there has, it seems to me, been too much of celebration. But of Brooke and his poetry, which is afar superior product to these really most ordinary "Letters", there isin these poetic pieces too much of what I want to call "UniversityCleavage", an excess of old school painting, too much usage of thewarm image, which, though emotional, is not sensuous enough to expressthe real poetic sensuousness, to make the line or the word burnpassionately, too much of the shades of Swinburne still upon thehorizon. Rose and violet of the eighteen ninety hues have for longbeen dispensed with, as has the pierrot and his moon. We have in thistime come to like hardier colourings, which are for us moresatisfying, and more poetic. We hardly dare use the hot words of"Anactoria" in our day. To be sure rose is English, for it has beenfor long a very predominant shade on the young face of England, but inBrooke there is an old age to the fervour, and in spite of thebrilliant youth of the poet, there is an old age in the substance andreally in the treatment as well. We are wanting a fresher intonationto those images, and expect a new approach, and a newer aspect. It isnot to adhere by means of criticism to the prevailing graveyardtendency, nor do we want so much of the easy and cheap journalisticelement, as comes so often in the so named "free verse". What isreally wanted is an individual consistency, and a brightness ofimagery which shall be the poet's own by reason of his own personalattachment, and not simply the variance of the many-in-one poetry ofthe day. 

It is not enough to write passably, it is only enough when there areseveral, or even one, who will give their or his own peculiar contactwith those agencies of the day, the hour, and the moment, who willfind or invent a style best suited to themselves. Attempts atexcessive individualism will never create true individualisticexpression, no affected surprise in personal perversity of image ormetaphor will make a real poet, or real poetry. There must be firstand last of all, a sure ardour, the poet's very own, which will ofitself support obvious, or even slightly detectable, influences. It isnot enough to declaim oneself, or propose continually one's group. Thesingle utterance is what is necessary, a real freshness ofvocalization which is, so to speak, the singer's own throat. If he beoriginal in his freshness, we shall be able to single him away fromthe sweeping movements of the hour by his very "specialness" in touch, that pressure of the mind and spirit upon the page, which is his. 

We shall translate a poet through his indications and intentions aswell as through his arrivals, and we must condemn no one to famebeyond his capacity or deserts. We have never the need of extravagantlaud. It is not enough to praise a poet for his personal charm, hisbeauty of body and of mind and soul, for these are but beautifulthings at home in a beautiful house. In the case of Brooke, we haveringing up among hosts of others, James's voice that he was all ofthis, but I would not wish to think it was the wish of any real poetto be "condemned to sociability", merely because he was an eminentlysocial being, or because he was the exceptionally handsome, among themany less so; or be condemned to overpraise for what is after all butan indication to poetic power. "If I should die", is of course a verylovely sonnet, and it is the true indication of what Brooke might havebeen, but it is not the reason to be doomed to find all thingswonderful in him. For in the state of perfection, if one see alwayswith a lancet eye, we really do accentuate the essence of beauty by acareful and very direct critical sense, which can and should, whenhonorably exercised, show up delicately, the sense of proportion. 

It is as much a part of the artist's equipment to find fault as it isto praise, for he wants by nature the true value with which he mayrelate himself to the sense of beauty. It seems, perhaps only to me, that in Brooke's poems there is but a vigorous indication to poeticexpression, whereas doubtless the man himself was being excessivelypoetic, hour and moment together, and spent much energy of mind andbody poetizing sensation. For me, there is a journalistic quality ofphrasing and only very rarely the unusual image. As for the "Letters", they are loose and jotty in form, without distinction either inobservation or in form, without real felicity or uniqueness. Art isnothing if it is not the object, or the idea, or experience seen inreview, with clarity. In Brooke, I feel the superabundance of joy inthe attractiveness of the world, but I do not feel the language of himcommensurate or distinguished in the qualities of poetic or literaryart. There seems to me to be too much of the blown lock and thewistful glance, too much of the attitudinized poet, lacking, I mayeven say, in true refinement, often. 

A too comfortable poet, and poetry of too much verve without incision, too much "gesturing", which is an easy thing for many talented people, and there is also missing for me the real grip of amazement. You willnot find anything in the letters that could not have been done by thecub reporter, save possibly in the more charming of the letters withreference to swimming in the South Seas. Here you feel Brooke at homeinstantly, and the picturing is natural and easy. But other than this, you will find no phrasing to compare with passages of James's preface, such, for instance, as the "sky-clamour of more dollars", surely avastly more incisive phrase regarding the frenzies of New York, thanall that Brooke essays to tell of it. Brooke is distinctly "not there"too often in these so irregular letters of his. Letters are notablyrare in these times anyhow, and so it is with the letters of Brooke. We look for distinction, and it is not to be found, they have butlittle of the intimacy with their subjects that one expects. 

As to his poetry, it seems to be a poetry rapidly approaching stateapproval, there is in it the flavour of the budding laureate, it seemsto me to be poetry already "in orders". Brooke was certainly in dangerof becoming a good poet, like the several other poets who perished inthe throes of heroism. Like them, he would, had he lived, have had tosave himself from the evils of prosperity, poetically speaking. Hewould have had to overcome his tendency toward what I want to call theold-fashioned "gold and velvet" of his words, a very definite hazehanging over them of the ill effect of the eighteen-ninety school, which produced a little excellent poetry and a lot of very tameproduction. Poetry is like all art, difficult even in its freestinterval. Brooke must rest his claim to early distinction perhaps uponthe "If I should die" sonnet alone, he would certainly have had tocome up considerably, to have held the place his too numerous personaladmirers were wont to thrust upon him. Unless one be the veritablegenius, sudden laurels wither on the stem with too much of morning. 

This poet had no chance to prove what poetry of his would have enduredthe long day, and most of all he needed to be removed from too muchlove of everything. The best art cannot endure such promiscuity, notan art of specific individual worth. In the book which is called"Letters from America", the attraction lies in its preface, despitethe so noticeable irrelevancy of style. It seems to me that Jamesmight for once have condescended to an equal footing with his theme, for the sake of the devoutness of his intention, and have come to usfor the moment, the man talking of the youth. He might then have toldus something really intimate of "Rupert", as he so frequently nameshim, for this would indicate some intimacy surely, unless perchance hewas "Rupert" to the innumerables whom he met, and who were sure of hisintimacy on the instant's introduction, which would indeed be"condemned to sociability". 

This book is in two pieces, preface and content, and we are consciouschiefly of the high style and interest of the preface, first of all, and the discrepancy inherent in the rest of the book accentuating thewide divergence between praiser and praised. It is James withreference to Brooke, it is not Henry James informing of the young andhandsome Rupert Brooke. Apollo in the flesh must do some mightysinging. Brooke had not done much of this when they laid him by on theborders of that farther sea. He had more to prove the heritage laid soheavily upon him by the unending host of his admirers and lovers. Heneeded relief from the popular notion, and we must relieve ourselvesfrom his excessive popularity if we are to enjoy him rightly, by beingjust with him. A little time, and we should have learned his realdistinction. It is too soon for us, and too late for him. We mustaccept him more for his finer indications then, and less for hisachievement in the sense of mastery. 

THE DEARTH OF CRITICS

There is just cause for wonder at the noticeable absence of critics inthe field of painting, of individuals who are capable of some seriousapproach to the current tendencies in art. We have witnessed a verygeneral failure to rise above the common or high-class reportoriallevel in this particular sphere. Why do so many people who writespecifically about painting say so little that really relates to it?It is because most of them are journalists or men of letters who havemade emotional excursions into this field, which is in most instancesforeign to them; well-known literary artists, occasionally, intentupon varying their subject matter. 

We read Meier-Graefe, for instance, on the development of modern art, and we find his analogies more or less stimulating, but taken as awhole his work is unsatisfactory from an artist's point of view; notmuch more than a sort of novel with art for its skeleton, or rather ahandbook from which the untutored layman can gather superficialinformation about group and individual influences, a kind of verbalentertainment that is altogether wanting in true critical values. Ihave listened to lectures on art by people who were supposed to knowabout it, merely to see how much this type of critical study couldsatisfy the really artistic mind somewhat conversant with truerelations, and I have found these lectures of but the slightest value, _resumés_ compounded of wearisome and inappropriate detail. There isalways an extreme lack of true definition, of true information, thereis always too much of the amateur spirit passing for popular knowledgeamong these individuals who might otherwise do so much to form publictaste and appreciation. Thus we find that even the chatty Meier-Graefestops without going any further than Cézanne. It is possible thatafter writing two very heavy volumes upon the development of modernart, he has to remain silent on modern art itself, that he reallyfeels he is not qualified to speak upon Cézanne and his successors; ordoes he assume possibly that there is nothing this side of Cézanne?How many writer people are there who really do understand what hastaken place since then?

I have heard these characteristic remarks among the so-called artwriters who write the regular notices for the daily journals--"You seeI really don't know anything about the subject, but I have to write!"or--"I don't know anything about art, but I am reading up on it asmuch as possible so that I won't appear too stupid; for they send meout and I have to write something. " Their attitude is the same as iftheir subject were a fire or a murder: but either of the latter wouldbe much more in their line, calling for nothing but a registration ofthe simplest of facts. Just why these people have to write upon artwill never be clear. But because of this altogether trivialrelationship to the theme of painting we find it difficult to takeseriously at all what we read in our dailies, in every case the barestnotation with heavily worded comment, having little or no reference towhat is important in the particular pictures themselves. How cananyone take these individuals seriously when they actually have noopinion to offer, and must rely either upon humor or indignation toinspire them?

If we turn to the pundits of criticism we find statements like this ofRuskin on Giotto:--"For all his use of opalescent warm color, Giottois exactly like Turner, as in his swift expressional power he is likeGainsborough!" Again, speaking of Turner's _Fighting Téméraire_, hesays: "Of all pictures of subjects not visibly involving human pain, this is, I believe, the most pathetic that was ever painted--no ruinwas ever so affecting as this gliding of the vessel to her grave. "Journalism of the first class certainly, but at the farthest stretchof the imagination how can one possibly think of Gainsborough orTurner in connection with any special quality of Giotto? As for thepathos of an aged ship, that belongs to poetry, as Coleridge hasshown; sentiment of this kind has never had any proper place inpainting. A far worthier type of appreciation in words is to befound, of course, in Pater's passages on _La Gioconda_ andBotticelli's _Birth of Venus_. But these belong to a different realm, in which literature rises to a height independent of the picturesthemselves by means of the suggestion that is in them, the power ofsuggestion being a finer alternative for crude and worthlessdescription. We shall always dispute with the writer on art as toexactly what symbol is inherent in the presence of a rose in the handor a tear upon the cheek, but we cannot quarrel when the matter istreated as sublimely as in the case of a literary artist like Pater. It is in the sphere of professed critical judgment that the literaryauthorities so often go astray. 

Thus between the entertaining type of writer like Meier-Graefe and thedaily reporter there is no middle ground. The journalist is frank andsays that he doesn't know but that he must write; the other writesbooks that are well suited for reference purposes, but have scantbearing upon the actual truth in relation to pictures. Are there anycritics who attempt seriously to approach the modern theme, who findit worth their while to go into modern esthetics with anything likesincerity or real earnestness of attitude? Only two that I am awareof. There is the intelligent Leo Stein, who seldom appears in print, but who makes an art of conversation on the subject; and there isWillard Huntingdon Wright, who has appeared extensively and certainlywith intelligence also, both of these critical writers being verymuch at variance in theory, but both full of discernment whatever onemay think of their individual ideas. We are sure of both as beingthoroughly inside the subject, this theme of modern art, for they aresomehow painter people. I even suspect them both of having once, likeGeorge Moore, painted seriously themselves. 

Nevertheless there is a hopeful seriousness of interest developing inwhat is being done this side the sea, a rediscovery of native art ofthe sort that is occurring in all countries. The artist is beingtaught by means of war that there is no longer a conventional centerof art, that the time-worn fetish of Paris as a necessity in hisdevelopment has been dispensed with; and this is fortunate for theartist and for art in general. It is having its pronounced effect uponthe creative powers of the individual in all countries, almostobliging him to create his own impulse upon his own soil; it is makingthe artist see that if he is really to create he must createirrespective of all that exists as convention in the mind. 

How will this affect the artist? He will learn first of all to beconcerned with himself, and what he puts forth of personality and ofpersonal research will receive its character from his strict adherenceto this principle, whether he proceeds by means of prevailing theoriesor by departure from them. The public will thus have no choice but torely upon what he produces seriously as coming clearly from himself, from his own desire and labor. He will realize that it is not atrick, not a habit, not a trade--this modernity--and that withfashions it has nothing to do; that it is explicitly a part of ourmodern urge toward expression quite as much as the art of Corot andMillet were of Barbizon, as the art of Titian, Giorgione andMichelangelo were of Italy; that he and his time bear the strictestrelationship to one another and that through this relationship he canbest build up his own original power. Unable to depend therefore uponthe confessedly untutored lay writer or even the better class essayistto tell him his place, he will establish himself, and his place willbe determined in the régime of his day by precisely those qualitieswhich he contributes to it. He will not rely too insistently uponidiosyncrasy; the failure of this we have already seen, in thepost-impressionists. 

The truth is that painters must sooner or later learn to expressthemselves in terms of pure language, they must learn that creation isthe thing most expected of them, and, if possible, invention as well. Oddity in execution or idea is of the least importance. Artists have amore respectable service to perform than this dilettantist notion ofbeauty implies. Since the utter annihilation of sentimentality, oflegend, of what we call poetry has taken place, a richer substance forexpression has come to us by means of which the artist may express alarger, newer variety of matter, more relevant to our special need, our modernity. 

The war disintegrated the _art habit_ and in this fact lies the hopeof art. Fads have lost what slight interest they possessed, the follyof imitation has been exposed. As a result of this, I like to thinkthat we shall have a finer type of expression, a richer kind ofpersonal quality. Every artist is his own maker, his own liberator; heit is that should be the first to criticise, destroy and reconstructhimself, he should find no mood convenient, no attitude comfortable. What the lay-writer says of him in praise or blame will not matter somuch in the future; he will respect first and last only those who havefound the time to share his theme, at least in mind, if not inexperience, and the discerning public will free itself from thetemporary influences of the confessedly untutored critic. The artistwill gain its confidence by reason of his own sincerity andintelligence. It is probable, too, that in time criticism in the modeof Ruskin will utterly disappear and the Meier-Graefe type of criticwill have found a fitter and true successor, someone who, when hecalls himself a critic, will prove a fairly clear title to thedistinction and will not have to apologize for himself or for hisoccupation. 

AFTERWORD

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING "DADA"

We are indebted to Tristan Tzara and his followers for the newest andperhaps the most important doctrinary insistence as applied to artwhich has appeared in a long time. Dada-ism is the latest phase ofmodernism in painting as well as in literature, and carries with itall the passion for freedom of expression which Marinetti sponsored soloudly in his futuristic manifestoes. It adds likewise an exhilaratingquality of nihilism, imbibed, as is said, directly from the author ofZarathustra. Reading a fragment of the documentary statement ofDada-ism, we find that the charm of the idea exists mainly in the factthat they wish all things levelled in the mind of man to the degree ofcommonplaceness which is typical of and peculiar to it. 

Nothing is greater than anything else, is what the Dada believes, andthis is the first sign of hope the artist at least can discover in themeaningless importance which has been invested in the term ART. Itshows best of all that art is to betake itself on its own way blandly, despite the wish of its so ardent supporters and suppressors. I amgreatly relieved as artist, to find there is at least one tenet I canhold to in my experience as a useful or a useless human being. I havealways said for myself, I have no office, no obligations, no other"mission", dread-fullest of all words, than to find out the quality ofhumor that exists in experience, or life as we think we are entitledto call it. I have always felt the underlying fatality of habit inappreciation, because I have felt, and now actually more than ever inmy existence, the fatality of habit indulged in by the artist. Theartist has made a kind of subtle crime of his habitual expression, hisemotional monotonies, and his intellectual inabilities. 

If I announce on this bright morning that I am a "Dada-ist" it is notbecause I find the slightest need for, or importance in, a doctrine ofany sort, it is only for convenience of myself and a few others that Itake up the issue of adherence. An expressionist is one who expresseshimself at all times in any way that is necessary and peculiar to him. A dada-ist is one who finds no one thing more important than any otherone thing, and so I turn from my place in the scheme fromexpressionist to dada-ist with the easy grace that becomes anyself-respecting humorist. 

Having fussed with average intelligence as well as with averagestupidity over the various dogmatic aspects of human experience suchas art, religion, philosophy, ethics, morals, with a kind ofobligatory blindness, I am come to the clearest point of my vision, which is nothing more or less than the superbly enlightening discoverythat life as we know it is an essentially comic issue and cannot betreated other than with the spirit of comedy in comprehension. It iscause for riotous and healthy laughter, and to laugh at oneself inconjunction with the rest of the world, at one's own tragic vagaries, concerning the things one cannot name or touch or comprehend, is thebest anodyne I can conjure in my mind for the irrelevant pains we taketo impress ourselves and the world with the importance of anythingmore than the brilliant excitation of the moment. It is thrilling, therefore, to realize there is a healthy way out of all this dilemmaof habit for the artist. One of these ways is to reduce the size ofthe "A" in art, to meet the size of the rest of the letters in one'sspeech. Another way is to deliver art from the clutches of itsworshippers, and by worshippers I mean the idolaters and thecommercialists of art. By the idolaters I mean those whose reverencefor art is beyond their knowledge of it. By the commercialists I meanthose who prey upon the ignorance of the unsophisticated, withpictures created by the esthetic habit of, or better to say, throughthe banality of, "artistic" temperament. Art is at present a speciesof vice in America, and it sorely and conspicuously needs prohibitionor interference. 

It is, I think, high time that those who have the artistic habittoward art should be apprised of the danger they are in in assuming ofcourse that they hold vital interest in the development ofintelligence. It is time therefore to interfere with stupidity inmatters of taste and judgment. We learn little or nothing from habitexcepting repetitive imitation. I should, for the benefit of you asreader, interpose here a little information from the mind of FrancisPicabia, who was until the war conspicuous among the cubists, upon thesubject of dada-ism. 

 "Dada smells of nothing, nothing, nothing. It is like your hopes: nothing. Like your paradise: nothing. Like your idols: nothing. Like your politicians: nothing. Like your heroes: nothing. Like your artists: nothing. Like your religions: nothing. "

A litany like this coming from one of the most notable dada-ists ofthe day, is too edifying for proper expression. It is like a windowopened upon a wide cool place where all parts of one's exhausted beingmay receive the kind of air that is imperative to it. For the present, we may say, a special part of one's being which needs the most and thefreshest air is that chamber in the brain where art takes hold andflourishes like a bed of fungus in the dark. 

What is the use, then, of knowing anything about art until we knowprecisely what it is? If it is such an orchidaceous rarity as theworld of worshippers would have us believe, then we know it must bethe parasitic equivalent of our existence feeding upon the health ofother functions and sensibilities in ourselves. The question comes whyworship what we are not familiar with? The war has taught us thatidolatry is a past virtue and can have no further place withintelligent people living in the present era, which is for us the onlyera worth consideration. I have a hobby-horse therefore--to ride awaywith, out into the world of intricate common experience; out into thearena with those who know what the element of life itself is, and thatI have become an expression of the one issue in the mind worth theconsideration of the artist, namely fluidic change. How can anythingto which I am not related, have any bearing upon me as artist? I amonly dada-ist because it is the nearest I have come to scientificprinciple in experience. What yesterday can mean is only whatyesterday was, and tomorrow is something I cannot fathom until itoccurs. I ride my own hobby-horse away from the dangers of art whichis with us a modern vice at present, into the wide expanse ofmagnanimous diversion from which I may extract all the joyousness I amcapable of, from the patterns I encounter. 

The same disgust which was manifested and certainly enjoyed by Duse, when she demanded that the stage be cleared of actors in order to savethe creative life of the stage, is the same disgust that makes usyearn for wooden dolls to make abstract movements in order that we mayrelease art from its infliction of the big "A", to take away from artits pricelessness and make of it a new and engaging diversion, pastime, even dissipation if you will; for all real expression is aphase of dissipation in itself: To release art from the disease oflittle theatre-ism, and from the mandibles of the octopus-likeworshipper that eats everything, in the line of spurious estheticismwithin range, disgorging it without intelligence or comprehension uponthe consciousness of the not at all stupid public, with a so obviouslypernicious effect. 

"Dada is a fundamentally religious attitude, analogous to that of thescientist with his eyeglass glued to the microscope. " Dada isirritated by those who write "Art, Beauty, Truth", with capitalletters, and who make of them entities superior to man. "Dada scoffsat capital letters, atrociously. " "Dada ruining the authority ofconstraints, tends to set free the natural play of our activities. ""Dada therefore leads to amoralism and to the most spontaneous andconsequently the least logical lyricism. This lyricism is expressed ina thousand ways of life. " "Dada scrapes from us the thick layers offilth deposited on us by the last few centuries. " "Dada destroys, andstops at that. Let Dada help us to make a complete clearance, theneach of us rebuild a modern house with central heating, and everythingto the drain, Dadas of 1920. "

Remembering always that Dada means hobby-horse, you have at last theinvitation to make merry for once in our new and unprecedentedexperience over the subject of ART with its now reduced front letter. It is the newest and most admirable reclaimer of art in that it offersat last a release for the expression of natural sensibilities. We canride away to the radiant region of "Joie de Vivre", and find thatlife and art are one and the same thing, resembling each other soclosely in reality, that it is never a question of whether it shall ormust be set down on paper or canvas, or given any greater degree ofexpression than we give to a morning walk or a pleasant bath, or anordinary rest in the sunlight. 

Art is then a matter of how one is to take life now, and not by anymeans a matter of how the Greeks or the Egyptians or any other racehas shown it to be for their own needs and satisfaction. If art wasnecessary to them, it is unnecessary to us now, therefore it is freeto express itself as it will. You will find, therefore, that if youare aware of yourself, you will be your own perfect dada-ist, in thatyou are for the first time riding your own hobby-horse into infinityof sensation through experience, and that you are one moresatisfactory vaudevillian among the multitudes of dancing legs andflying wits. You will learn after all that the bugaboo called LIFE isa matter of the tightrope and that the stars will shine their friskyapproval as you glide, if you glide sensibly, with an eye on the funin the performance. That is what art is to be, must come to in theconsciousness of the artist most of all, he is perhaps the greatestoffender in matters of judgment and taste; and the next greatestoffender is the dreadful go-between or "middleman" esthete who soglibly contributes effete values to our present day conceptions. 

We must all learn what art really is, learn to relieve it from thesurrounding stupidities and from the passionate and useless admirationof the horde of false idolaters, as well as the money changers in thetemple of success. Dada-ism offers the first joyous dogma I haveencountered which has been invented for the release and true freedomof art. It is therefore most welcome since it will put out of use allheavy hands and light fingers in the business of art and set them toplaying a more honourable and sportsmanlike game. We shall learnthrough dada-ism that art is a witty and entertaining pastime, and notto be accepted as our ever present and stultifying affliction. 

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