Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[graphic]

THE CLUB CORNER

Being Suggestions for Topics of Discussion and Study for Women's Clubs

Only this morning there came to our desk a review of a recent SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE by The Bookman of the Manitoba Free Press, who says among other things, "It is rare to find mediocre verse in SCRIBNER'S."

A study of the magazine for 1924 and the first quarter of 1925 reveals the work of fifty-nine American poets, ranging from Edith M. Thomas who also contributed to the first volume of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE in 1887, to young poets in their teens or early twenties, such as Evelyn Hardy, Helen Choate, Milton Offutt, and Edward Steese.

A PROGRAM ALL COMPLETE

The poets and poems appearing in SCRIBNER'S
MAGAZINE during this period and the number in
which they appear follow (the year to be under-
stood as 1924 unless otherwise specified):
John Alden-"On Hearing the Clavichord," Sept.
Eleanor Baldwin-"The Rider of the Wind,"
May.
William Rose Benét-"The Wood-Cutter's
Wife," Aug.

Bertha Bolling-"Pan's Garden," Dec.
Helen Bowen-"Scent of Sage," March.
Anna M. Branson-"The Dreamer," Sept.
Roger Burlingame-"Romance," Nov.
Amelia Josephine Burr-"Sanctuary," June.
Struthers Burt-"Threnody in Major and
Minor," June; "To This House," Dec.
Helen Choate "The Tired Woman," April, 1925.
Thomas Caldecot Chubb-"Longshore," Feb.;
"At the Edge of the Bay," Jan., 1925.
Martha Haskell Clark-"The Purchasers," Jan.
Helen Coale Crew-"Non Sine Floribus," July.
Grace Noll Crowell "Silver Poplars," April;
"I Grieve for Beauty Wasted," April, 1925.
Elizabeth Daly-"To the Ladies," Aug.
Dorothy Dow-"Man-of-All-Work," Sept.
Louis Dodge "The Prison," May.
H. G. Dwight-"Codicil," Jan.
John Erskine "Mediterranean," March, 1925.
John Finley "The Blue Flowers of Marathon,"
June; "At Christendom's Cross," April, 1925.
Helen Íves Gilchrist-"The Leash," Aug.
Arthur Guiterman-"Little Ponds," Aug.
Robert Beverly Hale-"Mary Ellen," April, 1925.
Ann Hamilton-"Two Songs," Feb., 1925.
Evelyn Hardy-"The Trust," June; "Certainty,"
Aug.
William H. Hayne "Unfathomed," Aug.;
"Mirth," Sept.

[blocks in formation]

1925.

Corinne Roosevelt Robinson-"Refusal," Dec.
Archibald Rutledge-"Deserted," Sept.
Louise Saunders-"Unreality," Oct.
Helen Minturn Seymour "A Dancer from
Margaret Sherwood-"The Latch," Feb., 1925.
Tanagra," Aug.
Lewis Worthington Smith-"On a Woman With
Cornelia Otis Skinner-"Martinique," Dec.
a Letter," Feb.

George Sterling-"Lonely Beaches," Aug.
Charles Livingston Snell-"The Chalice," Sept.
Edward Steese-"Daylight Saving," April, 1925.
Marian Storm-"Perdita," Feb., 1925.
Edith M. Thomas-"Asylum Artis," Sept.
Charles Hanson Towne "Wisdom," May; "In
Autumn," Nov.

Mark van Doren-"Alfalfa Coming," April. Lorraine Roosevelt Warner-"The Poet," Jan., 1925.

John V. A. Weaver-"Old Farm," Jan., 1925. John Hall Wheelock-"I Sought You," Dec. Edith Ives Woodworth-"Contrasts," Sept. Roland Young-"Pittsburg-Lakewood," Jan.

Biographical information concerning any of these poets given upon request, accompanied by stamped self-addressed envelope, to Editor, Club Corner, SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE, 597 Fifth Avenue, New York.

Dear, dear. 1 wonder where Mr.Hammond got that funny 2dea!

about it

[blocks in formation]

Where the Reader, the Author, and the Editor Mix It Up
in a Friendly Manner

A short time after John Hays Hammond's "Strong Men of the Wild West" appeared there came a letter from Charles J. Bosworth, of the Pacific Coast Department of the Fidelity and Casualty Company of New York.

DEAR EDITOR: I read with great interest the article of John Hays Hammond "Strong Men of the Wild West," but I want you to write to Mr. Hammond and correct a misstatement made in this article. He speaks at length about Charles A. Siringo and ends up by stating that Mr. Siringo is in his grave. I want you to advise him that on January 8th, Mr. Siringo was very much alive and living at 6057 Eleanor Avenue, Hollywood, California.

A little later there came this letter.

6057 Eleanor Ave.
Hollywood, Cal.

DEAR EDITOR: Having read John Hays Hammond's story "Strong Men of the Wild West" in your magazine for February, thought I would send you a detailed account of my part in the Cœur d'Alene riots. Mr. Hammond is mistaken in one thing, and that is that I am in my grave. CHAS. A. SIRINGO.

After such evidence, we became a bit skeptical of the cadaverification of the doughty Siringo. We forwarded the letter to Mr. Hammond and received the following in reply:

Thanks for your letter of the 19th. I too have heard from our friend Siringo and I am inclined to doubt the accuracy of my statement concerning his demise.

So that's that, and Siringo is not dead,long live Siringo.

PLAGIARISM?

Hollywood figures largely in our columns this month. We violate our general rule against printing anonymous communications because so much interest is attached to this

one.

Hótel Hollywood, Hollywood, Cal. DEAR EDITOR: I have read with great pleasure the interesting January number of SCRIBNER'S,

and was much struck with "Letters from a Bourgeois Father To His Bolshevik Son." It is too bad that this story should be taken bodily from two old Saturday Evening Post features "The Gibson Upright," by Harry Leon Wilson and Booth Tarkington, and "The Letters of Old Gordon Graham," by George Horace Lorimer.

But SCRIBNER's would please everybody if he would publish a series of good and original fiction stories on the foolish and ridiculous literary and artistic Young Bolshevists of Greenwich Village. A READER OF SCRIBNER'S.

The author replies thus:

Old Colony Club, Hotel Tutwiler, Birmingham, Ala. DEAR EDITOR: I am returning the communication of the anonymous Hollywood lady, after noting contents carefully.

between my "Letters" and Mr. Lorimer's. Now It is astonishing that she found a similarity that I recall the details, I am forced to admit that each series had something to do with a father, and each mentioned a son.

I had never read "The Gibson Upright," but I hastened to do so to-day. If Mr. Tarkington and Mr. Wilson were guilty of anticipatory plagiarization in using my idea, it was doubtless due to the fact that this project of turning a factory over to its workmen has been discussed, in fiction and out, some thousands of times, and all three of us may have been influenced by the events in Russia. Beyond that point, I am sorry to say on my own behalf, I can find no likeness between my story and the play by the gentlemen from Indiana. However, I am grateful to the Hollywood lady for the compliment.

E. D. TORGERSON. Our correspondent apparently voiced her conviction to Harry Leon Wilson also.

Even before this letter came, Mr. Wilson forwarded a letter which he had received from

Hollywood, signed A Harry Leon Wilson Admirer. The letter made the same charge. Mr. Wilson penned a comment on the missive to the effect that he could detect no plagiarism; that he had also once written a story about a professor and a medicine show, referring to "For Sale: Med Show," by Kyle S. Crichton, in the March number. We received an appreciative comment from Charles W. Collier, of Boston, regarding this story and Gamaliel Bradford's "Portrait of Edwin Booth."

WHY THEY DID NOT CHEER

III Broadway, New York City. DEAR EDITOR: Stella Beehler Ruddock's article "Taggin' Ship" in the February SCRIBNER'S was very human and most interesting.

Mrs. Ruddock refers to the lack of cheering when the men of the fleet marched down from Grant's Tomb after the war. She speaks of this absence of cheering as a "freak' of crowd psychology and naturally she felt hurt.

It was not in fact a "freak" of crowd psychology, it was crowd psychology-that is, New York crowd psychology. I myself have known scores of military parades in New York, either as a participant or as a spectator, and without exception the crowds have been "silent staring"

ones.

Practically the only thing that will bring a cheer or applause is a particularly straight line when marching in column of companies or pla

toons.

Mrs. Ruddock is not alone in having felt hurt but she may be assured that the crowd really is sympathetic and grateful, only perhaps too much moved to applaud.

STANLEY D. McGRAW.

PRAISE FROM THE NAVY

Concerning "Taggin' Ship," Captain Elliot Snow, from the Office in Charge of Special Instruction, Students of Construction Corps, U. S. N., at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writes:

I am planning to bring the publication of this article to the attention of the Information Sec

tion of the Office of Naval Intelligence as being one of interest to the service at large.

Mrs. Ruddock has written a story, "Landlocked," which will appear in an early number.

EXCOMMUNICATION FROM THE ARMY

With the praise of the navy ringing in our ears we receive this jolt from the army:

War Department,

United States Engineer Office,

Florence, Alabama.

DEAR EDITOR: The reading of Mr. Thomas Boyd's latest contribution to your publication

proved to be very unpleasant to the writer, and I can not imagine anybody but a damfule Pacifist receiving any pleasure or instruction from such an article.

Yet, I could excuse him for writing it and you for publishing it, because such things could have happened in our, or any other army recruited as ours was during the war, but I cannot subscribe to any such comment as the one enclosed which I have clipped from your February issue and I therefore feel compelled to cancel my subscription. EDWIN P. KETCHUM, Ist Lt., C. of E., U. S. A.

The clipping which the lieutenant enclosed follows:

With all this propaganda for preparedness going on about us, with admirals and navy secretaries and generals howling about the enemies without our gates, Thomas Boyd's stories have an added significance. It is refreshing to see that President Coolidge, according to newspaper reports, has put the quietus on the jingos. About a year and a half ago the New York Times on its editorial page, while finding Thomas Boyd's book, "Through the Wheat," praiseworthy, deplored the fact that Mr. Boyd "gives hardly a hint of realizing that the war had an object of sufficient importance to make the heavy price worth paying." We wonder what the author of the editorial thinks about it now.

It is from "Behind the Scenes With Scribner's Authors." The conductor of that department appends the following note:

[blocks in formation]

When perhaps too young to understand all that the poem meant, I was compelled to learn it and "recite in public," so many of its splendid sentences are indelibly impressed on my brain.

Although a very recent resident of New Haven I am glad I live in the same city with the author of the interesting, refreshing and illuminating pages of "As I Like It."

With gratitude for your magazine,

MRS. GEORGE W. BOSTWICK.

Lowell's poem must have been a favorite school piece in New England, for a number of people have called our attention to the slip.

CALIFORNIA TUNES IN

California, impatient at the slowness of response in New England, entered its voice.

1216 Oxford Street Berkeley, California. Well, for the love of Mike! (surely a Californian may use that classic phrase if our eminent critic B. M. may say "Not on your life") for the love of Mike, then, are you all going to let Mr. Edward Bok get away with it? I searched the February SCRIBNER's for a protest from Boston but apparently that city has forgotten that the Lowell family produced a poet many years before Amy Lowell began to write free verse.

Wasn't there anybody in New York to tell the gentleman from the Netherlands (I know better than to say "Holland") that it was not Emerson but James Russell Lowell who wrote "The Present Crisis," in which these words occur? Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, They were men (not "souls") that stood alone.

Is it true that Mr. Mencken is trying to get a bill before the N. Y. legislature to forbid the reading within the limits of Manhattan of any American poet earlier than Carl Sandburg?patrols to be stationed on the ferries to confiscate forbidden works?

Why, out here on the coast there are still untrammeled souls who can, but, thank goodness, seldom do, quote from “The Psalm of Life," and who know that "Thanatopsis" is not the name of a toothpaste.

But please tell Mr. Bok to read Lowell some day.

MARION PRYNE.

No, there was no intention on the part of our readers to let Mr. Bok get away with it. Among those who upheld the individuality of the nineteenth century poets were: Carl Shrode, assistant principal of the Benjamin Bosse High School, Evansville, Ind.; Cora L. Cox, 1626 Arch Street, Philadelphia; A. F. Waldo, the University Club of Chicago; Lucy Lockwood Hazard, Mills College, California; Doctor J. C. Hubbard, Holyoke, Mass.; Eva M. Turner, North Evans, N. Y.; Mrs. Francis J. Moors,

61 Bay State Road, Boston; the Reverend William Hooper Adams, Roswell, N. M.; Mary H. Humphrey, Simsbury, Conn.; J. N. Rutledge, Minneapolis.

Manhattan Island is provincial. We admit that. But does our correspondent think that it is to be reached only by ferry?

THE POLICE GAZETTE AGAIN

We seem to be drumming up trade for the Police Gazette.

315 College Street Jackson, Tenn.

DEAR EDITOR: I wish to tell you how much I enjoy the magazine that prints the articles of William Lyon Phelps and Royal Cortissoz, and the absorbing "White Monkey." I read it from cover to cover, advertisements included, each month, and always with the same great enjoyment.

I liked "Smile and Lie" and "Pete Retires" immensely, and I hope more stories by the same author will appear in my favourite magazine. It appears that several of your readers do not share my opinion of Mr. George S. Brooks' stories. One lady asks in the October number if SCRIBNER'S classes itself with the Police Gazette. I have never read the vulgar periodical with which this lady is apparently familiar, but if it prints stories as refreshing and original as these two I shall certainly commence reading it.

LOUISE IRVINE MCDOWELL.

AT LAST

A difference with Doctor Phelps is rare. We take an almost evil joy in printing this one, because we believe that every one ought to be disagreed with occasionally.

Stoneleigh Court, 46th and Walnut Streets, Philadelphia, Pa.

DEAR EDITOR: Will you be the medium through whom I may voice a remonstrance to the gifted writer of your department "As I Like It"? I hold no brief for Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer; many of his books I dislike. But "Balisand," which Mr. Phelps calls "dead," seemed to me such an atonement for "Cytherea" that I am fain to weep for Mr. Phelps's condemnation of it; and fain to wonder if our critic resisted the critic's frequent temptation to review without reading through. (I have been a reviewer in my time.) For "the attractive heroine" who "fell down-stairs and broke her neck" is by no means "disposed of." Had she not so fallen, there would have been but a commonplace story. As it is, she is throughout the book the vital, animating force, the flash of light that darkened the sun. Rivalries between live men over a live woman are of the fabric of everyday life; but here, shot through with the gold thread of dream and romance, is a rivalry

between a dead woman and a living. Clouding the rich outline of the vibrant personality of Lucia, to Richard Bale's senses, rises the incense of the perfume of the yellow rose Lavinia wore. Can it be that in a hasty or partial reading Mr. Phelps missed the point?

The dreamlike river with the mournful song of the negroes; the lifelike children quarreling over the birthday feast of "gooseberry fool"; the giant figure of Washington, "moving ghost like to his doom," the magnet of Bale's loyalty-these things have atmosphere as well as style. These things are alive not dead, even as was Lavinia alive; for they are vivid in memory after an intervening four months filled with current and usually negligible fiction. Will Mr. Phelps reconsider?

MABEL DODGE HOLMES.

A CURTAIN CALL FOR IRENE

Rockledge, Florida.

DEAR EDITOR: May I take exception to the remarks of your anonymous correspondent who rejoices that Galsworthy has finished "The White Monkey" and hopes he can write something not connected with the "Forsyte English Bunch." I am hoping to hear more about the Forsytes, perhaps even the adventures of Irene and Jon from California to North Carolina.

I also wish to express my appreciation of Gaylord S. White's "Reflections of a Settlement Worker." Having been a resident of the New York Settlement where Mr. White was the headworker, I can vouch for the truth of his conclusions and the deep interest found in that form of social work.

J. WHITNEY.

THE FRENCH ON VAN DYKE

An exceedingly interesting symposium reveals the reaction of French educators to Doctor Paul van Dyke's "The Provincial Universities of France," in the January number.

Professor Collinet of the Faculty of Law at Paris writes: "Professor van Dyke has given a marvellously accurate impression of the soul and spirit of the provinces of France as shown in their Universities."

A Rector writes: "Professor van Dyke has judged us with sympathetic justice. We are glad that he has thrown into relief the place held in the intellectual life of our country by the provincial universities and the eminent services, which, in spite of a deadly centralization, we are able to render to her."

The Rector of Grenoble writes: "I have read with great pleasure these pages of Mr. van Dyke in which he gives so just an idea not only of the more external characteristics of our universities, but also of their method of work."

The Rector of Toulouse says: "I find the article of Professor van Dyke at once extremely interesting and judicious."

The Rector of Strasburg adds: "Nobody is better qualified to write about the universities of France than Mr. van Dyke who has visited them all and knows them so well. I have read his article with great pleasure."

Mr. Firmin-Roz of the Office National des Universités Françaises writes: "I have read the article of Dr. Paul van Dyke with the greatest pleasure and the liveliest interest and I intend to print a summary of it in the pages of the Figaro."

A PERSONAL IMPRESSION

We reprint below a few paragraphs from an article by Alexander Inglis, of the editorial department of the Pasadena Star-News, as an interesting personal impression of Conrad, the writing of which was based upon Mr. Galsworthy's article in the January number.

John Galsworthy tells in this month's SCRIBNER'S of his acquaintance with Joseph Conrad. When two authors meet they can exchange congenial yarns and the English novelist of the land has much to say of the novelist of the seas, who was master mariner of his art.

But in all he says of his now dead friend, Mr. Galsworthy leaves the strange impression that the Polish master of English saw life through sad and lonely eyes. It tallies with impressions of my own formed on a voyage to this country. On the occasion Joseph Conrad was a passenger on the Tuscania, making his first trip to America, despite his many years at sea.

I used to see him on the upper decks gazing with melancholy eyes out over the grey Atlantic. He looked far into the horizons, like one whose vision saw not the circle-boundary of the sea, but whose imagination was taking him along uncharted channels of introspection. His eyes, half-closed, saw none who was near; only across the wide waters did he look with a strange thoughtfulness marking his face. . .

I used to wonder what his fancies were. Perhaps he was peopling the expansive waste with characters of his imagination, those lovable creatures who never get on paper but who haunt the mind of writers with insistence. Perhaps he was pondering on his own early days when the lure of the sea first called him and the stress of the storm first began to mould his great character. .

But he always made a striking picture as he looked out over the seas, the man who had found so much in the sea to color his life and establish his name. Something of its elemental ruggedness seems to characterize the literary figure. It was generally in the direction of the receding tracks he looked, watching the foam roused by the liner fading away into the blackening waters; there, and beyond, he looked, never seeing his immediate environment, always viewing with thoughtful vision the dream fancies of his imagination.

« AnteriorContinuar »