Y

ESTERDAY I read a new volume of American poems which I confidently recommend, being certain that nine out of ten will share my admiration. It is called "The Home Road" and was written by the late Martha Haskell Clark. She was the wife of the secretary of Dartmouth College, and Professor Curtis Hidden Page, in his introduction, speaks of "her charming, vital, and typically American personality." I envy those who had the privilege of her friendship; she must have been an extraordinary woman. I especially commend the poem called "The Villages," because such a poem seems to be acutely needed at this moment, to remind us of something eternally and profoundly true in human nature. With reference to the metrical skill displayed in these verses, I cannot do better than quote Professor Page:

They are always strongly lyrical. If any adverse criticism may be made on them, it is that they almost too easily and naturally, for presentday taste in metrics, "sing themselves." But just possibly that may be a criticism not on the poems but on present-day taste, which is certainly for a day, not for all time. Such poems as these have a permanent appeal, to readers that love lilting song for its own sake, to hearts that love at once the open sky and the roofedin fireside.

I advise those who prefer free verse to rhyme, or squalor to beauty, not to buy this book. They won't like it.

It is worth remembering that the ten leading living British poets are metrically conservative; they are-well, name them yourself.

Mr. Stark Young, the accomplished dramatic critic of the New York Times, is the author of a book on the theatre called "Glamour." Even if one does not agree with all of his pronouncements, this work is worth reading for the sheer beauty of its style. There is displayed a command of the resources of the English language which is especially welcome at a

time when so much "criticism" in America is written in slang. Mr. Young's long chapter on Duse is a particularly fine appreciation. I wish I could have seen one-tenth as much in her interpretations as he saw; perhaps I could, if my knowledge of Italy, of the Italian language, and of Italian dramatic literature were one-tenth as much as his.

The New York Theatre Guild opened their own building in April, with one of the best of modern plays-Shaw's "Cæsar and Cleopatra." The rise of this Theatre Guild is the most astonishing and the most encouraging thing in American dramatic history. And yet I believe its initial success is owing to luck, to one individual's chance shot. There was a little group (semi-professional, semi-amateur) of actors called The Washington Square Players, who had the usual experience of bankruptcy, though in this instance it is possible that their downfall was one of the innumerable war casualties. In the New York Sun for March 28, 1925, Alexander Woollcott, in a highly interesting article on their rise from obscurity to fame, says:

When the first Guild meeting was held in 1919, they had $500 in the bank and access to the Garrick Theatre, which had not had a success in it for so many seasons that it usually stood idle and the superstitious Broadway managers would have none of it.

From that nervous beginning the Guild has so grown that its subscribers-those who at the beginning of each season buy seats for each of the six plays the Guild is pledged each year to give -now number more than 14,000. Its fame has so spread that it is known in Buda Pest and Vienna and Dublin and Paris as no American theatre was ever known before. Its scale of operations has so expanded that besides its new theatre it has four other New York playhouses under at least temporary control. And it has so grown in resourcefulness and skill that the best of American playwrights are beginning to bring their manuscripts to its door.

At first these were offish and suspicious and the Guild was fairly driven to depend on the playwrights of other lands. Indeed the wags

insisted that the new theatre should be named either the Hungarrick or the Buda Pesthouse. But all this is changing and I think the day may not be far distant when the very fact that the Guild stands there equipped for (and committed to) disinterested production will inspire the writing of some great plays just as the existence and perfection of the Moscow Art Theatre moved

a shabby country doctor named Tchekhov to

write the finest plays of his age.

There have been innumerable theatre companies started, whose members have had ability and ambition; most of them have been regarded by the multitude with indifference. It is just the other way with the New York Theatre Guild in 1925. If this organization selects a play, its choice is in itself a magnificent advertisement. "Theatre Guild Production" means just about the best thing in New York. How did this come about?

The first play put on in 1919 by the Theatre Guild was Benavente's "Bonds of Interest." It ran three weeks, steadily lost money, and apparently the company was going the way of all flesh. But one day Lawrence Langner was windowshopping on Fifth Avenue. Some years before that he had belonged to a debating team in England of which St. John Ervine was a member. Looking into a window at Brentano's, Mr. Langner saw the book "John Ferguson," and being attracted by the name of the author on account of his personal acquaintance, he bought the book and recommended it to the Guild. Any manager in New York might have produced it, but no one believed in it. The new Theatre Guild put it on as their second production; it had an enormous success; it gave the Guild prestige, and best of all, it filled the treasury to the brim. It made the company independent; since the first night of John Ferguson" they have never known either mental or financial depression. They followed it up with John Masefield's "The Faithful," the performance being one of the worst bores I have ever had the bad luck to witness. But after the success of Ervine's play, they could have mounted even worse things than "The Faithful," and still been solvent.

Therefore, I take off my hat to the man who picked "John Ferguson." He performed a great service to modern drama -for if it had not been for that one

choice-well, here is one of those rare instances where we can all be thankful for what was, rather than for what might have been.

And what a magnificent performance! Not to my dying day shall I forget Dudley Digges, as he revealed all the degrada

tion of talkative cowardice.

Since that time, the Guild has made few errors in choosing plays; and it has worked several miracles, two notable instances being "Heartbreak House" and "Back to Methuselah." I hope some day it will conduct a genuine Repertory Theatre.

It has given encouragement to dramatic art everywhere; and if the citizens of other American cities have no opportunity to see good plays, it is their own fault. But better times are coming; to take only one instance out of many, the recent opening of Miss Jessie Bonstelle's Playhouse in Detroit is significant.

Visitors to New York who wish to know what plays to see and what ones to avoid cannot do better than read the "Tips on Amusements" contributed to The Wall Street Journal by the veteran critic Metcalfe. His list of plays is rewritten every Monday noon, and his prefatory remarks are as sensible and penetrating as his condensed comment on each play.

The English literature of the Restoration (1660-1700) has always seemed unEnglish in its pornography; historians have explained it as a reaction against Puritan suppression. The dramatic critic, Charles Belmont Davis, in The Herald Tribune, calls attention to the disquieting fact that the present season, 192425, has rivalled the filth of Restoration drama, and also hints that we may be in for a restoration of Restoration plays. If this is true, I hope we may be honest enough, as Mr. Davis is, to state the reason for this sudden interest in historical revivals. It is absolute cant to talk about their wit and charm; there is more wit and cerebration in one play of Shaw's than in the entire Restoration drama.

Furthermore, it is always assumed, and probably correctly, that any play which is denounced as immoral and comes near to being suppressed without quite achieving it, will instantly become popular. Who are the men and women who prove the truth of this assumption? Why

should people, who care nothing about a play until it is branded as immoral, then flock to see it? They are really Peeping Toms, who are delighted to find that they can peep legally at five dollars and fifty cents a peep.

Mr. Metcalfe, in The Wall Street Journal, foreseeing the tide of indecency which is about to engulf New York, makes a point that ought not to be forgotten. "In the general rejoicing let there be a little sympathy for those managers who have been deterred by their self-respect and sense of decency from putting on plays of a certain kind which have always been at their command. They have lost money they might have had. The other managers who have refrained only from fear of the authorities may now go as far as they like."

The most healthful of all antisepticslaughter has recently disposed of two rotten plays. Certain misguided persons, supposing that filth was all that was necessary, mounted two impossible productions, at which, according to the New York critics, the audiences howled and guffawed in derisive damnation.

That acute interpreter of American life, Ring W. Lardner, has risen from the ranks of the fun-makers to the deserved dignity of a Collected Edition of his Works. And although some of the earlier pieces are surprisingly unequal in merit, there is an abundance of good things in every volume.

Edith Wharton's new novel, "The Mother's Recompense" has for the basis of its plot the same tragic material used by Guy de Maupassant in "Fort Comme La Mort," and by Maurice Donnay in "L'Autre Danger." A man wishes to marry the daughter of his former mistress. Mrs. Wharton's book, while not so good as her masterpiece, "The Age of Innocence," is valuable for its pictures of New York and especially for its analysis of the mother's state of mind. In "A Son at the Front" a father was the protagonist; here it is a mother. Some may find this prolonged analysis too minute for their taste; to me, everything Mrs. Wharton writes is sufficiently rewarding.

Thomas Boyd's collection of war stories, "Points of Honor," confirms my

first opinion of him, formed when I read "Through the Wheat." No books take me closer to the ranks of our fighting men. No one writes more honestly, or with more impartiality. He has chosen to omit the humor which is characteristic even of war, perhaps because he found war a serious business. But although there is no humor, there is an undertone of irony, which is perhaps best displayed in the tale, "A Long Shot."

Scott Fitzgerald shows more potentialities in "The Great Gatsby" than in any of his preceding books. It is not a completely satisfactory story, but there is uncanny insight. He might easily have become a caterer; he is an artist.

Sheila Kaye-Smith proceeds on her triumphant way with "The George and the Crown." I know of no living novelist, except Thomas Hardy, who mingles nature and human nature into so perfect an amalgam. The remarkable thing is that she is as successful in the Channel Islands as she is in her beloved Sussex. The island idyl is a beautiful interlude. She displays extraordinary skill in fashioning her hero. He is a non-heroic hero who carries our sympathy from beginning to end. Such men are the salt of the earth.

"The Clutch of the Corsican," by Alfred H. Bill, is a first novel, and shows decided promise. It is a romance of the last days of Napoleon but quite different from the manufactured conventional type.

"The Cruise of the Cachalot," by F. T. Bullen, recently reprinted, is on the whole the best account of a whaling voyage I ever read. It is prefaced by a superlative compliment from Rudyard Kipling; but his enthusiasm for the book will be shared by all who love stories of the sea. Its fidelity to fact increases its value without decreasing its charm; and it has none of the tiresome metaphysics of Herman Melville.

To those who love to travel in remote and dangerous places vicariously, let me recommend Rockwell Kent's astonishing narrative, "Voyaging Southward from the Strait of Magellan." I have sailed around the Horn many times in books, and in like fashion have I often proceeded through the Straits. I have always vaguely imagined what the land was like between the Straits and the tip of the

Horn, and wondered why brave fellows who love perilous adventures had never gone there. Manifestly the same idea had occurred to Rockwell Kent, only he turned the dream into reality. This is a thrilling story, and the numerous illustrations from the author's hand add to its piquancy.

"The Life of John L. Sullivan," by R. F. Dibble, handles this hero as Lytton Strachey manhandled Manning. It is a highly amusing biography of the most popular pugilist of all time. John L. was a fighter who loved to fight. To-day it takes more diplomacy to get two heavyweights into the ring than to organize a League of Nations.

Mr. Dibble's book entertained me prodigiously; perhaps it is lucky for him that Sullivan is dead. I wish in enumerating the various battles of the Strong Boy of Boston, the author had given him a little more credit for the greatest victory he ever achieved, the conquest of his thirst. ... Let me recommend all who are interested to read Vachel Lindsay's poem, "John L. Sullivan."

Another very diverting book is "Twenty Years on Broadway," by George M. Cohan, written in Broadway dialect. Speed! Speed! and then More Speed! has been the chief characteristic of Mr. Cohan's work as a dramatist. Well, that is also the ground quality of this autobiography. It is a headlong, breathless dash from obscurity to fame; written by one from whom no secret of success is hid. Years ago I saw Mr. Cohan in an American-flag-song-anddance-show called "The Yankee Prince." I found it a colossal bore. However, the house was jammed to the last inch, and apparently the audience or vidience loved it. I rejoiced when Mr. Cohan raised his game from his heels to his head-I have never enjoyed any American play more than "The Tavern." I cannot yet see why the critics attacked that piece so savagely. It seems to me one of the most original, one of the most brilliant, one of the most humorous of our native dramas. In addition to its outrageous mirth, it has an atmosphere of poetry and romance and wonder and mystery. I would go a long way to see it again.

Scribnerians who share my opinion

that Louis Tracy's "The Wings of the Morning" is the most exciting novel ever written, will be glad to know that a sumptuous quarto edition has just been published, embellished with colored illustrations.

Several questions of good usage are brought to the front by my correspondents. S. K. Ratcliffe, the accomplished English critic, wonders if "like I do" is a recent vulgarism, and uncommon in America. No, to both queries; but I hate it. Mr. Ratcliffe continues: "Certainly in England 'like' is getting everywhere; the so-called educated do it. Harold Laski sounds it in his lectures with aggressive force! . . . Well, anyhow, vile as it is, it isn't so villainous as 'different than,' which is now universal in America. When, I wonder, did it begin? You and a few others, if you will enlist the colyumnists ought to be able to abolish it. But perhaps not. Think of F. P. A.'s lifelong war upon whom is he? And, by the bye, why don't you stop your countrymen from writing, always, 'his ilk'?

what has it to do with him and his class or kind?"

A professor of English writes: "If you abominate 'angle,' in the sense-unknown till these later years, and I believe not yet known to the dictionaries— of point de vue, or Standpunkt, I wonder if you couldn't make a good paragraph of it for one of your SCRIBNER articles."

Alas, I may have, among my numerous errors, been guilty of this one. But it is an error, and henceforth

1925 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the first printing of the English Bible by Tyndale, and the two hundred and fiftieth of the first Oxford Bible. The best way for every American to celebrate the occasion is forthwith to buy an Authorized Version IN BIG TYPE. One reason adults leave off reading the Bible is because they do not know that it is possible to buy an English Bible in a volume no bigger than many a novel, and yet with enormous black type, as big as that in pulpit tomes. The ordinary flexibly bound Bible, with tissue-paper, and small, thin, pale type, is a discouragement and even a danger to eyes that