The Contributors' Club

FROM time to time my attention has been attracted to comments in newspapers and elsewhere upon the expediency or inexpediency of masculine pseudonyms as employed by the literary sisterhood. The practice is frequently defended on the ground that the woman who adopts a masculine signature secures thereby a more impersonal consideration than if her productions were known to be “ woman’s work,” and is accordingly judged by a more indulgent set of criteria. Also, it is argued that if the individual woman have an inclination to take up some line of thought not yet generally pursued by her sisters, she will be best able to carry her free lance by donning a manly visor. Some commentators on the practice have gone so far as to justify it on the ground that the literary wares of men receive a better market price than do those of women. It is not my purpose to look into the validity of these and similar arguments vindicating the use of the masculine pseudonym, but I venture to suggest what has hitherto been overlooked, — the utility of the feminine pseudonym as adopted by writers of the opposite sex. With no intention to disparage that which by exact antithesis might be termed “ man’s work in literature,” it may be remarked, I trust, that one now and then meets both prose and verse which, lacking the highest virility, suffers through being accompanied by a too robust signature. It will be readily seen that a certain protective advantage would be gained for such weaklings if they were put forth over some feminine pen-name. For instance, should the bardic youth, conscious of feebleness in his song, subscribe himself “ Laura Matilda,” he would be tolerably well insured against critical archery, which rarely aims at a mark so deprecatory.

But there is another phase of the question, — one that has to do with philanthropy and chivalry rather than with selfish expediency. Consider to what an extent the current estimate placed upon woman’s literary productions would be raised if able writers of the stronger sex should frequently make use of feminine pseudonyms. The question even becomes one of conscience, if we admit as true the statement that the writings of women are underpaid. It would be genuine chivalry and benevolence if man would consent to submit his work to the same level of pecuniary depreciation. His frequent adoption of a feminine pen-name would probably tend to bring about a more equitable system of appraisal and remuneration. I shall be glad if the suggestions here thrown out shall be related even remotely to the accomplishment of a needed reform; and in pursuance of these suggestions I should, if the Club permitted the use of signatures, beg to subscribe myself, self-sacrificingly, Astrœa.

— It is not that the outside world is so wearisome ; the trouble is with the monotony of our own minds. They are only music-boxes, after all, that play the same tunes, over and over. They are, in fact, like some queer species of musicbox that should suppose itself to be infinite in variety, and be always expecting to play a wonderful new tune the next minute. It is really vexatious to find, if we set a watch on ourselves, that from the moment of waking, each morning, we take up the same old programme of interests, ideas of people and things, mind - pictures, and what not; and the inner life of every hour, as we go along through the forenoon and afternoon, copies the corresponding hour of the previous day with painful exactness. At least, I myself confess to that; “ ’t is so in Denmark.” To a certain extent, no doubt, this mental repetition is due to the repetition of outside impressions. When we open our eyes on waking, for instance, there is the same eastern light through the same half-closed window, the familiar pillow and bed drapery, the pictured Madonna that has always hung on the opposite wall, and the friendly favorite books upon the little table. So the mind, as it begins to glimmer out of the mists of sleepiness, naturally moulds itself, as usual, upon this wonted ensemble of surroundings. The face, or the faces, never failing to appear at this hour to the mind’s eye punctually reappear ; the past scene — mournful, or delightful, or bitter-sweet — that habitually comes back renews itself as ever; the mind’s day begins, with the same mingling of the old regret, the old plan, the old discouragement, the old rousing of the will ; the music-box commences to play its tune. So, when one gets to be aware of this, he may look forward to each accustomed place and act of the day, and see a certain set of ideas waiting for him. He sits down in the prescribed chair as the clock strikes, and finds he has seated himself also among a throng of mental activities, the same as the day before, the genies of the place. He takes a certain invariable attitude, and dips a pen in the usual inkstand, and finds he has at the same moment taken a wonted mental attitude toward things in general, and has dipped his pen into a flood of habitual ideas. I am not sure that, when a man so much as puts up an umbrella, he does not put up with it a hovering cloud of notions that have their regular habitation in its folds. We all remember the pathetic declaration of the old man, that he was " so tired of putting on his shoes in the morning, and taking them off again at night.” It was not the shoes of which he was so tired !

It is on this account that it is almost always good advice to a person suffering from disaster, or overwhelming sorrow, to “ go away somewhere.” The new surroundings give the mind a chance, at least, to get free from its besetting thoughts and moods; and it is strange and pitiful, sometimes, to see how, on returning and opening the door, the old trouble steps out and takes one by the hand and leads him in.

Are we not all driven to wonder, first or last, that our friends do not get more weary of us, when we get so weary of ourselves ? But then, fortunately, they do not often have us by the twenty-four hours together, as we do ourselves. As to those who are not particularly our friends, it is not strange that they do not find us any more interesting. We cannot blame them. It is a natural and healthy desire, this craving for something a little fresh and new. We may sometimes feel a kind of apologetic sense of our monotonous aspect in their eyes. We may say, under our breath, as we meet their accustomed faces on our beaten tracks along the pavement, “ Here I am again, the same old sixpence ! I wish, for your sakes, I were something different, but here I am again ! ” And one may even feel moved, of an autumn afternoon, to put his feeling about it into some such verse as we shall venture to append to this fragmentary meditation : —

MY REFUGE.

— There recently fell into my hands a little book entitled Sylvian, a Tragedy, and Poems, by John Philip Varley. It was so unpretending in appearance that its modesty was a plea for tolerance, but the first glance at its contents showed that it was not to be judged by externals in any way. Sylvian takes up half the volume ; the rest consists of poems, of which the most striking are, The River of Dreams, The Wayside Virgin, Ballad of the Three Winds, Pan Fleeing before Apollo, Written at the End of a Book, with the more usual themes of Absence, A Picture, The Flower, The Cloud, and a quant. suf. of songs and sonnets. On turning over the leaves, my first impression was that somebody had been printing selections from his favorite poets, the Elizabethans, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Browning, Matthew Arnold, the Persians Omar Khayyam and Mirza Schaffy as interpreted by Fitzgerald and Bodenstedt. It did not take long to see that the resemblance was more a result of influence than of imitation ; where the likeness was strongest, the boldness, not the servility, of the copy was most apparent. For a study of Shelley take the morsel called Corinthus : —

Of Keats, Faun and Oread, a fragment : —

Of Blake, Love’s Hopes : —

Of Bodenstedt’s Mirza Schaffy : —

Of Browning and Lowell combined, the following passage (the only good one), in Ziek Stedfast on poets in general and himself in particular : —

Many poets of the most vivid originality have seemed at first mere Æolian harps under the breath of a stronger genius, and the same may be said of some of the greatest masters in every art. Beethoven wrote pages that may be mistaken for Mozart and Haydn ; Raphael’s early pictures might pass for Perugino’s; a famous portrait assigned for centuries to Titian is now given to his teacher, Palma the elder. The phenomenon is too well known to need illustration. One great difference between Philip Varley and the general run of versifiers is that if their imitations excel at all it is most often in facility and felicity, while he is much less remarkable for those qualities than for energy and audacity. His rhythm is often rough and uneven, his rhyme imperfect, his metre faulty, the sequence or repetition of syllables unmusical, betraying a defective ear ; yet after the smooth-flowing rondels and triolets with which we have lately been inundated, this harshness is a relief, a stump to cling to and rest upon. It is none the less a defect, and so are his mannerisms, of which he has as many as he has masters, and among them a trick of repeating words or phrases, as in the poem of The Cloud, which is given entire for the sake of its beauty rather than its blemishes : —

None of these examples give an adequate idea of a vigor and concentration which, though not frequent, occur too positively in Philip Varley’s verses to be overlooked in an estimate of them. The following are instances : —

It must, be admitted that if there be not original power of production, the power of reproduction amounts to force ; it is very unusual to hear so strong and resonant an echo.

Besides the minor faults already mentioned, which Philip Varley must correct before he can take a place in the ranks of sweet singers, and among which is bad grammar, there are more serious ones, — incoherency, obscurity, absence of aim, purpose, definiteness, conclusion ; the poems are not only for the most part fragmentary, but convey no notion of a possible form. To go deeper, they lack personality ; a child of the age is speaking, but he is one of a million. A profound love of Nature and familiarity with her is the only individual tendency to be discerned, and this is proved not only by fine descriptions, but by many faithful, subtle touches. This, however, is no distinctive merit either in the prose or poetry of the present century. Of youth, too, one is aware, and it is long since anybody has called so loudly from the midst of its Sturm und Drang. There is a ferment which throws up foam and not a little scum; all well enough if it works itself clear in the end. The author, in a note at the end of the book, which would be in better place at the beginning us a preface to Sylvian, speaks of " the dross of youth and defect of immaturity ” as things to be remembered in judging this work. In allowing for these drawbacks it makes an important difference whether he is nineteen or twenty-five. For instance, it would be excusable only in a collegian to choose Spain in the seventeenth century, a country and period of which he avows his ignorance, as the theatre of a tragedy meant to represent “ the passions and morals, the characters and customs, of the generation that is about us,” and, moreover, to give it in the phraseology of the Elizabethan drama. There are bursts of force and fire in Sylvian, and striking situations. Of its value as an acting play only a theatrical critic can judge. One patent defect to a literary judgment is the want of clearness both in conception and expression, and the absence of motive for the conduct of the personages. Olivia, the heroine, alone justifies herself; the rest have to be forced up to her pitch to carry on the action.

In summing up my impressions of John Philip Varley’s first volume I find that I must wait for the second before coming to a conclusion. If there should never be a second, the fact will speak for itself; if there should, every one will know whether we have a new poet or not. Meanwhile, he has much to learn,— to know what he wishes to say, to say it clearly, to scan his metre and not give short measure, to prune his redundancy, and to complete at least one poem which shall be entirely his own.