The New Age, August 14 1913

This issue of The New Age contains the first protest against anti-Semitism that I have come across in my explorations, "The Folly of Anti-Semitism" by one of the editors (Orage, presumably?), starting on page 449.  It's very disturbing, and very revealing, how much the author has to hedge their position.  The main thrust of the piece is to discredit the Jewish international finance conspiracy theory, and further to discredit the idea that Jews have more money than is proportionate to their population.  So far, so good.  The author also defends Jewish intellectual culture, particularly their left-wing, to which The New Age is (at the moment) claiming alliance. 

But then the bad: there's a lot of very-vintage backpedaling about "intermixture" and "purity of blood and spirit."  This isn't shocking.  I almost wrote about it in my piece on Rebecca West's "At Valladolid," (The New Freewoman, August 1)--but there's a throw-away aside in that story that has the narrator casually say, "We hate the Jews because of their habit of evaluation," going on to explain that Englishfolks are just as bad (67).  Stuck in my craw.  West has the fictioneer's excuse that she's writing characters and not her own views, but it says something about the audience.  I remember  a professor of mine during my undergraduate schooling telling the class that Pound was somewhat of a scapegoat--he was attacked by people who felt guilty for his public airing of their private thoughts.  That seems likely, definitely possible, if not grounds for excuse. 

At any rate, I'm glad The New Age has at least taken steps to combat the more-obviously-bullshit conspiracy theories then current. 


Other moments:

I love it when the journals I read give me a shout-out.  This time, Orage published the financials of The New Age "published, not as an appeal, but as a record for posterity, how soon to arrive I do not know" (458).  They're losing one thousand pounds a year, pretty tough. 

They also review John Gould Fletcher's Fool's Gold.  Remember last New Age, when I was surprised to see him outright panned?  They're just as surprised to really like his second book, going so far as to accuse the publisher of delaying the first one too long.  So he's redeemed.  

Satirical poet P. Selver makes fun of the vogue for villanelles, by writing a crappy one about villanelles.  Ha. 

There's a great surrealist urban short story by Arthur Thorne, "A Modern Metamorphosis," on page 466.  I won't give away what the "organism" is--maybe I should have figured it out sooner, but I was happy when the moment of recognition came. 

Beatrice Hastings, alas, continues "Feminism and Common Sense."  This week's concern: how the decay of English hospitality has made it difficult to marry off daughters.  Complete with totally square anger over dance parties. 

The New Age, August 7 1913

This issue of The New Age has some cool stuff in it.  The anger over the attack on the South African miners continues.  The colonies are on everyone's mind these days: India, the St. Gilbert Islands, Australia, but most of all South Africa. 

That said, I'm not going to dwell on colonial issues--instead I want to examine the strong strain of ecological apocalyptic thinking in this issue, in two science fiction short stories.  Then I'm going to move to cover a few less important things that are notable for the purposes of my research.

First, "The Wild Rabbit" by Mouche, on page 427 (a pseudonym, French for fly) : it is set in the not-to-distant future, as two young women go on holiday from London.  They take the trains out to the country, notable for houses with yards and sparrows (the other birds are all gone, and all birds are gone from the city core).  They are overcome with the desire to see the last living wild rabbit in England, and go to the national park to do so--I won't ruin the punch line here, but it's a pretty amazing ecological story for 1913.  I think the war will squash ecological concerns when it turns up.  "The Wild Rabbit" is in part a scathing satire of the "touristization" of nature, calling out Yellowstone by name as a sort of fraud.

Second, "Speculative Philosophy" by E. H. Davenport, who I cannot trace.  It's much more heavy-handed than "The Wild Rabbit:" through eugenics, humanity has finally perfected itself, and determines to commit mass suicide.  The protagonist reveals that it was all just an attempt to beat God.  At the end, the world breathes a sigh of relief to be through with humanity.  That ecological note again!  Also: the speculative philosophy could refer to the young man's, or the story itself.  Speculative fiction, almost by name, 1913. 

Third, "Two Memories" by Beatrice Hastings.  This is an autobiographical diptych, one which makes me suspect BH may be Mouche.  The first is about finding a hidden and perfectly beautiful glen in Sussex.  The second is about climbing Table Mountain over Cape Town, South Africa.  It fits with the other stories because it ends by describing how the same spot is now being developed into crappy suburbs and a prison. 

To more mundane issue-tracking:

"Journals Insurgent" is useful as showing "The New Age"'s self-image as a guerilla journal that refuses to be assimilated. 

"Readers and Writers" contains a relatively mean review of John Gould Fletcher's latest book, Fire and Wine.  As Fletcher was in outer orbit of the Imagists, I was surprised to read that he's still publishing heavy rhyming love poems. 

Of course, my sympathy for Beatrice Hastings is always strained when she get to feminism.  Last issue contained a letter that called her out for inconsistency in her series of editorials, "Feminism and Common Sense."  This week's edition claims to respond to Morley' criticism, but instead explains that women should be happy with power in the domestic sphere and being pretty etc. I do not understand how she can write so much so well, while also declaring that she wouldn't study with a man, "no not for his immortality." 

Last, there's a nice caricature of Madame Pavlova.

The New Freewoman, August 1 1913

This issue of The New Freewoman is particularly interesting.  The best part is their long and detailed response to the suffragism crisis, including a direct response to Orage and Hastings of The New Age.  With typical hardheaded materialism, Marsden frames everything as a problem of an inequality of power, based in an unequal distribution of property.  The argument runs thus: individuals seek power over their own lives, which is only possible if they have property.  The only way to acquire property is to get if from someone who has it.  Because women have no property, their only option is to sell themselves (echoing an earlier argument) into marriage for security and property (ultimately power).  Because most men are poor, they must sell their labor for the same reasons.  The trouble with liberating women in an unequal society is, that women will not command the high price they used to command (this is Hastings's argument, see last New Age).  The market will tank, so to speak.  If women enter the labor force, they will in turn hurt the labor market and drive down the cost of labor, which will make it harder for working men to support families.  That's the diagnosis from The New Freewoman.  The solution is for people to become aware of their value in the market: "When power becomes more self-conscious, it will make it clear that while dignity and freedom are myths, power is a reality and that it comes from within" (64). I also came across this line, which I know I've heard quoted partially before, perhaps in de Beauvoir?:

"Men had the hunger : the womanly woman was the loaf. So that whereas men had a sex, women were the sex, which regarded as a "commodity," she sold in the best market."

Rebecca West outdoes herself with an excellent short story, "At Valladolid."  It has many disturbing moments, but I am beginning to believe that her contributions to The New Freewoman aren't as autobiographical as I had thought.  Angsty, dark stuff. 

Author "F.R.A.I.," a regular contributor, writes a feminist interpretation of Frazer's Golden Bough, which means that I've encountered both texts that inspired The Waste Land within a month of each other. 

Ananda Coomarswami has been appearing occasionally in many publications: here Huntley Carter gives him a thrashing for introducing sexist Indian holy texts to the misunderstanding West.  Good for contrast, because everyone else seems to like him: he worked on a special supplement to The New Age.  I'll be on the lookout for more about him. 

Plenty of food for thought.  I'm excited to see what the response is...

  

The New Age, July 31 1913

Not a whole lot that caught my eye in this one.  S. Verdad predicts that America is about to annex Mexico.  The always deeply nasty Sevota has a piece about how sad it is that what-we-now-call Apartheid is probably going to get voted down in South Africa.  The house philologist explains that similarities in transatlantic vocabulary prove the existence of Atlantis.  Beatrice Hastings skewers all the also-rans after Robert Bridges wins the poet laureateship. 

The most interesting thing is a letter to Beatrice Hastings about her recent screeds against feminism, in which the reasonable author (one Bertha C. Morely) asks her "tu quoque?"  Props to Bertha Morely, who is brave enough to confront the sharpest pen in England so directly: "I do not seem to have made as clear as I could wish the point that Mrs. Hastings appears to have mistaken the false for the true, and so judges the true by the false." 

Hastings' long response to all her critics, though not specifically Morely, is that she isn't a puritan but is scared that the men will rise up and smash all of womankind by force if they continue agitating for freedom.  It sounds like more outlandish New Age nonsense, but I wonder if this sounded more plausible pre-WWI.  Reminds me of Matt Hofer's Paideuma article on Giovanni Papini's "The Massacre of the Women," in which Papini attempts in Swiftian Satire to suggest that men should just kill all women.  So it's on other people's minds, too--even if less seriously. 

Poetry Magazine, July 1913

This issue has a pair of debuts: Amy Lowell and F.S. Flint.  Compared to the usual Poetry fare, they come out pretty well. 

I'm especially a fan of the second of Flint's "Four Poems in Unrhymed Cadence."  It's of a genre that happens again and again in poetry--the "connection with the beautiful person on the train" poem.  I've read lots, though I'll admit I'm having trouble locating an example--I'll keep an eye out and add when I do.  The best part is the last line, "This is my station,"  where a lovely ambiguity that is tender and tense emerges between the station he's arriving at and the station of his soul, the stations of the cross, duty and the banal blend together.

There's a positive review of Max Eastman's poetry anthology--I'm still waiting for it to show up at the library, but it's cool to have a connection to The Masses. 

There's a less positive review of Jessie Weston's translations of Middle English, notable for me because of Weston's connection with The Waste Land. 

Lastly, a hilarious review of D.H. Lawrence's Love Poems and Others, where he manages to move from "The Love Poems, if by that Mr. Lawrence means the middling-sensual erotic verses in this collection, are a sort of pre-raphaelitish slush, disgusting or very nearly so," to calling him the best English poet under 40 at the time. 
 

The New Freewoman, July 15 1913

The mid-July issue of The New Freewoman is wild.  Here are the headlines from my notes, which I'm including because they should give an idea of just how wild things have gotten--followed by explanations,  etc.  I'm looking forward to reviewing The Masses, where the politics are radical but reasonable. 

1. Democracy is a delusion, tyranny is preferable. Editors.

The libertarian argument here is that someone living under a tyranny knows that they are under an arbitrary system and can therefore act more freely than under a democracy--because in a democracy you cede your moral authority to the majority.  Not sure about that, but in general this article resonated with lots of fringey stuff still going around. 

2. Feminism is a bunch of rotten rhetoric, buy a gun. 

In June 1913 a strike of white South African miners was brutally crushed: see The New Age for an angry and horrified response.  The New Freewoman scorns the mainline suffragettes for writing a letter of protest, instead advocating arming oneself in case it happens in England.  Again, resonance. 

3. The "Cat and Mouse Act" is "exceedingly good government."

Because it keeps people from subverting the rule of law.  I do NOT understand the jump from the libertarian pleas for individual action to the defense of law and order. 

4. Anti-Semitic (but lighthearted) rant about how the Jewsrun England. 

Apparently someone wrote an article titled "What shall we do with our Jews?" in a contemporary publication, with the suggestion that they be given Angola for a homeland.  The New Freewoman laughs at this, calling it the tail asking "What shall we do with our dogs?" and suggesting that the Jews will take over England whenever they want to.  Ugh. 

5. There is an immortal soul, it's ecstasy, and sometimes it makes you kill yourself. 

Rebecca West's third contribution is more of a philosophical essay than her earlier travel writings--she reviews one book that says there is no such thing as a soul, and then another (by Francis Grierson, who keeps popping up) that says there is.  Her opinion is that their is something kind of soul-like, present in the ecstasy of dynamism.  Sort of reminded me of the Futurism+religion. 

6. White Slavery = Marriage

After all, that's what marriage is, right?  In its historical roots?  An entertaining but not at all useful contribution to the discussion of the white slave panic (see earlier posts).

7. The only thing paintable is the realm of the imagination

Huntley Carter describes a modern abstract painting as linked to photography: painting isn't distracted by realism anymore (photos beat them every time), so now it's about art (rather, about Art).  Cool connection to photography. 

The New Age, July 17, 1913

I'm only going to report on Beatrice Hastings's editorial, "Feminism and Common-Sense."  This is a recurring series of letters, and though it is good to have Hastings back, it's always depressing when she writes about feminism.  Her thesis: the establishment feminists are attacking prostitutes because of the decline in the marriage rate, not for moral reasons (remember the White Slave stuff?).  But it's not the prostitutes that are lowering the marriage rate--it's loose women who sleep around and try to be "pals" with men instead of getting married.  Note how Hastings rails against herself.  The fundamental flaw in her argument is that she takes it for granted that men will only marry virgins, though she acknowledges this as a disaster: "the unchangeable little tragedy is that the average man considers a temporarily loose woman a confirmed loose woman... wheras she is liable to prove an immaculate monogamist" (343).  The solution?  A capitulation before nature, a return to "virtue" by which she means sexy feminine mystique: "Mrs. Humphrey Ward was lately jeered at in 'Votes for Women' as suggesting a return to the poke bonnets and flounces, but a woman in a poke bonnet and flounces was a charming mystery... I should say that the craft of wearing clothes is pretty well lost to-day: we are all too busy putting them on!"

Of course, Beatrice Hastings was a fiercely independent woman who was "loose" enough to cut notches in her bed for every man who slept in it.  The contrast is intense, almost too much.  I am fascinated by Hastings--her rough start in life may be leading her to warn women away from her own path, a path that I tend to read as liberated?  More on this as it develops.