The Conservative (Lovecraft)/July 1918/In the Editor's Study
In the Editor's Study
Anglo-Saxondom
When the historian of the future shall look back upon the stupendous events of this age, it is likely that he will find, aside from the general defence of civilisation, no event of greater magnitude and significance than the new understanding which is daily being cemented between the two political divisions of Anglo-Saxondom.
The war has stripped many shams and delusions from the social and political life of the world; and paramount amongst these is the pernicious fallacy, fostered by and for the unthinking immigrant rabble, that America's path must lie apart from that of the Mother Empire.
The strongest tie in the domain of mankind, and the only potent source of social unity, is that mystic essence compounded of race, language, and culture: a heritage descended from the remote past. This tie no human fords can break, whatever political revolution may by such an agency be effected. It may be temporarily submerged by the base prejudices of passion and the detestable contamination caused by alien blood, but rise it must when overwhelming stress calls out man's deeper emotions, and sweeps aside the superficialities of arbitrary modes of thought.
Today, we know that, as in the beginning, England and America are spiritually one: one undivided rampart of liberty and enlightenment ordained by the Fates to defend for humanity the priceless legacy of classical civilisation.
Amateur Criticism
The somewhat remarkable attack of an amateur editor upon the United's critical bureau, made just a year ago, has apparently inaugurated a long period of debate regarding this phase of our literary activity. Exponents of mildness and severity, vagueness and frankness, personality and generality, archaism and modernism, each have had their say; without arriving at any very perfect community of ideas or consensus of opinion.
The Conservative in this issue publishes a brief contribution to the fray, from the pen of Prof. Philip B. McDonald, Chairman of the Department of Private Criticism. Prof. McDonald is a modernist and liberalist; and while his remarks are undeniably the fruit of much erudition, mature reflection, and sincere conviction, it is hard to let them pass unchallenged. As former Public Critic, The Conservative feels impelled to defend the policy whereby he was always a strict upholder of classical standards and impeccable technic.
Prof. McDonald affirms, ‘that it is more important to be interesting than to be correct,’ and in enunciating this dictum he is indeed speaking truly. All things, however, have their limits; and there are certain standards of technique below which no author may fall without impairing his literary strength, and distracting the attention of his readers by the grossness and numerousness of his faults. Style should be imperceptible; the crystal medium through which the theme is viewed. Laxity of technique is the least excusable of literary deficiencies; since it depends not on a want of natural parts, but on pure haste or indolence. We may pardon a dull writer, since his Bœotian offences arise from the incurable mediocrity of his genius; but can we thus excuse the careless scribbler whose worst blunders could be corrected by an extra hour of attention or research? The contemporary tendency to condone carelessness for the sake of brilliancy, is as illogical as it is pernicious. No man ever wrote the duller for being correct, whilst many have transformed commonplaceness to pleasing urbanity by means of a graceful mode of expression.
Among amateur journalists, technique is the most neglected branch of literary art. We have scores of brilliant writers whose productions lose a considerable percentage of their possible force through lack of polish. Concretely, it may be pointed out that of our well-known poets only Messrs. Kleiner, Lowrey, and Loveman have an absolutely comprehensive and unfailing mastery of their medium, whilst the writers of elegant and musical prose are scarcely greater in number. Not to strive in every way to remedy this condition would be both unwise and reprehensible. It is in no spirit of cavilling or assumed superiority that The Conservative and other official critics have consistently laboured on the side of correctness. Any other course would have seemed, in their eyes, a flagrant dereliction of duty.
Regarding the element of individual taste and personal preferences in official criticism, it would be foolish to insist that the reviewer suppress all honest convictions of his own: foolish because such suppression is an impossibility. It is, however, to be expected that such an one will differentiate between personal and general dicta, nor fail to state all sides of any matter involving more than one point of view. This course The Conservative sought to follow during his tenure of the critical chairmanship, with the matter of vers libre as a single possible exception. That abominable species of artistic Bolshevism, condemned with equal vigour by every person who has ever been connected with the United’s critical bureau, has no more right to a defence than political Bolshevism or any other sort of anarchy. Fortunately but few specimens have been inflicted upon our Association.
Within the last few weeks one of amateurdom's most prominent critics, a man who has served for more than a decade on either the public or private board, expressed in a personal letter the belief that all amateur public criticism is futile: that if honest it offends too deeply to instruct, and that if "sugar-coated" it has no power to inculcate ideas. The Conservative does not entirely coincide with this view, but experience and observation have done much to remove from his mind the opposite opinion.
The United 1917-1918
The Conservative views with profound gratification the official year hust completed by the United Amateur Press Association, proud to have borne the honour of the presidency through this period of cultural excellence and intensive development. Too much cannot be said in grateful praise of the perfect harmony and complete fidelity of the official board, and of the tireless effort and brilliant work of the critical bureaux. The United Amateur has surpassed all standards hitherto known to amateur journalism, writing the names of Miss McGeoch and Mr. Cook imperishably into the pages of our history. The lack of numerous publications has been more than atoned for by the quality of those which have appeared. The Vagrant is a magazine worthy to be compared with anything the amateur world has produced since the beginning, and the smaller publications have been close rivals in quality, however much exceeded in bulk.
For the new year the prospect is encouraging. The war will naturally curtail the production of papers to a greater or less extent, but that our present high ideals will be sustained and and amplified, there is no reason to doubt. Free from friction with contemporaries, whose correct and liberal attitude is most heartening to observe, the United moves prosperously in its chosen sphere.
The Amateur Press Club
Attention is directed to the new international organisation of amateur journalists founded in the Mother Country by Messrs. Benjamin Winskill and Joseph Parks, and denominated "The Amateur Press Club." This society, which now possesses nearly an hundred members, both in England and the States, is designed for the diffusion of higher literary standards amongst amateurs, and commands the services of such earnestly progressive writers and critics as Sub-Lieut. Ernest Lionel McKeag and Miss Vere M. Murphy. The Conservative not long ago joined the Amateur Press Club, and believes it would be to the advantage of amateurdom if his readers were to do likewise; for the drawing together of amateur interests on both sides of the sea is something much to be desired in this period of decreased general activity. Detailed information may be obtained from the Secretary, Joseph Parks, Esq., 38, Garnet St., Saltburn-by-the-Sea, Yorkshire, England.
Ward Phillips Replies
The Conservative acknowledges a communication from Ward Phillips, Esq., whose recent ulalumish poem entitled “Astrophobos” was so unfavourubly contrasted with Mr. Kleiner’s “Ruth” by a reviewer in the May United Amateur. Mr. Phillips would make it plain, that if he so desired he could work with perfect ease in a simpler, tenderer, and more popular medium; and us an answer to his critics he has graciously favoured this office with the following effusion, in the metre and manner of his distinguished contemporary:
Grace
With Unstinted Apologies to the Author of "Ruth.”
By Ward Phillips
In the dim light of the unrustled grove,
Amidst the silence of approaching night,
I saw thee standing, as through boughs above
Filter’d the pencils of the dying light.
Grace! I had thought thou wert by far too proud,
Too harden’d to the world and all its pain,
To pause so wistfully, with fair head bow’d,
Forgetting all thy coldness and disdain.
But in that instant all my doubts and fears
Were swept away as on the evening breeze,
When I beheld thee, not indeed in tears,
But rack’d and shaken with a mighty sneeze!
Les Mouches Fantastiques
Extreme literary radicalism is always a rather amusing thing, involving as it does a grotesque display of egotism and affectation. Added to this comic quality, however, there is a distinct pathos arises from reflection on the amount of real suffering which the radical must, if serious, endure through his alienation from the majority.
Both of these aspects lately impressed The Conservative with much force, as he glanced over a new and most extraordinary amateur publication entitled Les Mouches Fantastiques published by Miss Elsie Alice Gidlow and Mr. Roswell George Mills of Montreal. Miss Gidlow and Mr. Mills are sincere and solemn super-aesthetes, fired with the worthy ambition of elevating dense and callous mankind to their own exalted spiritual plane, and as such present vast possibilities to the humourist; but it is also possible to view their utterances so outre an atmosphere.
The Gidlow-Mills creed, so far as may be discovered from their writings, is that Life is a compulsory quest of beauty and emotional excitement; these goals being so important that man must discard everything else in pursuing them. Particularly, we fancy, must he discard his sense of humour and proportion. The sceptical bulk of humanity, who cannot or do not enter upon this feverish quest, are (as Miss Gidlow tactfully tells us) "unnecessary."
And of what do these great objects of Life, as revealed in the pages of Les Mouches, consist? The reader may, up to date, unearth nothing save a concentrated series of more or less primitive and wholly unintellectual sense-impressions; instinct, form, colour, odour, and the like, grouped in all the artistic chaos characteristic of the late Oscar Wilde of none too fragrant memory. Much of this matter is, as might be expected, in execrable taste. Now is this Life? Is human aspiration indeed to be circumscribed by the walls of some garishly bejewelled temple of the Dionaean Eros; its air oppressive with the exotic fumes of strange incense, and its altar lit with weirdly coloured radiance from mystical braziers? Must we forever shut ourselves in such an artificial shrine, away from the pure light of sun and stars, and the natural currents of normal existence?
It seems to The Conservative that Miss Gidlow and Mr. Mills, instead of being divinely endowed seers in sole possession of all Life's truths, are a pair of rather youthful persons suffering from a sadly distorted philosophical perspective. Instead of seeing Life in its entirety, they see but one tiny phase, which they mistake for the whole. What worlds of beauty -- pure Uranian beauty -- are utterly denied them on account of their bondage to the lower regions of the senses! It is almost pitiful to hear superficial allusions to "Truth" from the lips of those whose eyes are sealed to the Intellectual Absolute; who know not the upper altitudes of pure thought, in which empirical forms and material aspects are as nothing.
The editors of Les Mouches complain very bitterly of the inartistic quality of amateur journalism; a complaint half just and half otherwise. The very nature of our institution necessitates a modicum of crudity, but if Miss Gidlow and Mr. Mills were more analytical, they could see beauty in much which appears ugly to their rather astigmatic vision.
The Conservative, in order to forestall conjecture; desires to state that "Consul Hasting," signed to the following parody, is not a pseudonym for himself. The nom de plume cloaks one of our most brilliant new members, a young man of great attainments and infinite promise.