Review of the Current Monthly

The leading article of the current Monthly is a serious and thoughtful essay on "Whistler and the Multitude" by L. Simonson. The author is mistaken, I think, in one of his main theses, that art has no message for the multitude; he is right if he limits himself to the Anglo-Saxon multitude, but wrong if he remembers the Italian; for example one of the most encouraging things in our American composite life is a Sunday afternoon visit to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Mr. Simonson is wrong, too, in choosing the slashing style, in throwing other critics out of court. Such phrases as "critical ephemeridae", "there is a great deal of nonsense written", are likely to put the reader out of sympathy with the writter, who has the whole field to himself; the other fellow cannot answer back. But Mr. Simonson is very happy in such phrases as these: "Holbein did not paint the court of Henry VIII; he painted the eternal beauties of texture in terms of English noblemen. Velasquez did not paint the court of Philip II; he painted the eternal beauties of light in terms of Spanish noblemen", and in styling Whistler "the poet of the dusk". So, too, though I disagree with Mr. Simonson's doctrine that Whistler is the single message-haven of a century of painters, I like his final sentence, "When we have seen the exquisite combinations of color silhouette which the hour brings, we shall have understood Whistler's message to the multitude."

Of the other numbers two mark themselves out. In "Atropos" Mr. Shipherd takes us back to the deluge and gives a keen study of self-centered emotion, a picture of the last man clambering up Ararat before the waters cover the universe. The tense tragedy of the final moment is well done. Mr. Simon's "The Blue Coat" tells the story of a poor Russian peasant woman following with high hopes on the trail of the husband who has sought a new home in this country. She discovers he has found a new bride and forgotten the old. It is an elemental bit of tragedy well handled.

A book review in the number speaks patronizingly of a novel as no doubt very good of its kind, brisk, exciting, entertaining. These excellent qualities are not found in the stories of the Monthly, Mr. Adams's "Beyond the Gate," Mr. Bellows's "Brother and Sister," and Mr. Carbs's "Reveilles." Mr. Moon's "In the Track of the Turk" shows experience in an out-of-the-way corner of the world; it could have been made more tense.

The verse is not distinguished. Mr. Rogers's "Ride of the Hill Folk" is well told, but shows the weakness of much verse in the saga form in that it lacks story. Mr. Wheelock's "Serenade" does not show emotion; Mr. Dickerman's translation "Light" shows sensuous color, better at the beginning than the end; the fault is doubtless in the original. Mr. Reed's "Guinevere" reflects Tennyson.

I should be glad to find something showing more of the spirit of our little world in Cambridge. It is a big little world and yet awaits its Homer, even its Conan Doyle