KATHLEEN NORRIS, THE AUTHOR OF "MOTHER" books bearing the same signature appeared before it was officially announced that the writer was Mary E. F. Fenollosa McNeill Fenollosa, the wife of Professor Ernest F. Fenollosa. It can hardly be said that Professor Fenollosa became known as the husband of the author of Truth Dexter, for his own position was one of much distinction. He was Professor of Sociology in the University of Tokio, an Imperial Japanese Commissioner for the Fine Arts, and the head of a number of commissions, academies, and other native Japanese art institutions. Professor Fenolloso died in 1906, and his wife, putting aside for the time her own work, devoted herself to the revising and final polishing of the book which Professor Fenollosa had made his life work. This is Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art, published this autumn by the Messrs. Frederick A. Stokes Company. For three years Mrs. Fenollosa has been working on the book, which is not a mere history of the artists of the Far East, but also a view of art in its relation to human progress. The distinguished Parisian actress, The Art of Simone a son of a former President of France, has been appearing, in the English language, in New York, in a series of 347 parts which she originally played in her own tongue in Paris. This is not the first time that Mme. Simone has acted in English: she has made the experiment before, with Sir George Alexander in London. She is nearly, but not entirely, bi-lingual. Her pronunciation of English words is almost faultless; and yet she speaks the English language as if it were French. Her utterance is pitched in that high, incisive, and soprano key, and runs or ripples along on that smooth, swift level of monotony, which the ear expects of speech in French, but which is rarely to be heard in the utterance of English people. The effect, on the whole, is pleasing to an auditor accustomed to both languages, for after a few moments he will cease to notice that the actress is not speaking in French. Mme. Simone is a very interesting acvisedly. It is her main merit that she tress; and the adjective is used adkeeps the spectator constantly interested in what she is doing; and it is her main defect that she rarely succeeds in mak PROFESSOR E. F. FENOLLOSA pathy, for Marise is not a sympathetic part: she turned the little woman inside out and revealed her essential emptiness. The result was thoroughly convincing to the intellect; but-intentionally and quite rightly-it did not touch the heart. As Hélène de Brèchebel in M. Bernstein's appalling melodrama called The Whirlwind [La Rafale], she produced a very different impression. The heroine of this play is blown upon by all the winds of passion and swept whirling along from doom to doom; and Mme. Simone's fine art of understanding was fully adequate to render this conception. The impression given was again unsympathetic; but it was harrowing and thrilling,-an enthralling and exhausting thing to watch. These two parts were created, as the phrase is, by Mme. Simone in Paris. She also created the Hen-pheasant in Chantecler, a part that requires quite other qualities of histrionic art than those demanded by M. Bernstein's hateful heroines. Of these other, and more ingratiating qualities, Mme. Simone has promised to give the American public an exhibition by presenting La Princesse Lointaine of M. Edmond Rostand. This is to be given in a paraphrase by Mr. Louis N. Parker. It is rather a pity that this particular piece, so exquisitely lyrical, so utterly untranslatable, should not be played in the original French; and the talented actress could more emphatically convince us of her range if she would let us hear at first hand her reading of M. Rostand's melodious and lilting verse. Vive L'Emperor launching his terrible cartoons. It numbers some distinguished men. Lord Rosebery is a rather conservative member. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is another, having for the intellectual grasp and marvellous energy of the great Corsican an admiration, the extent of which he seems unwilling to admit even to himself. But by far the most rabid addition to the Napoleonic party in England is Sir Walter Runciman, who has written a book called The Tragedy of St. Helena. At first sight one would take Sir Walter to be a type of the British Conservative. The son of an English baronet, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was for a time the Managing Director of the Moor Line of Cargo steamships, and a power in many other shipping organisations. He twice stood for Parliament, is now Vice President of the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom, a member of the National Educational Board, and Justice of Peace for Newcastle-on-Tyne. Yet the only interpretation of this man's book is that the then British Government deliberately hastened the deposed Emperor's death at St. Helena. Sir Walter Runciman's pet literary aversion seems to be Sir Walter Scott's Life. Now of the two utterly preposterous biographers of Napoleon one was Scott, whose plan of villification was quite unworthy of his genius, and the other was the American, John C. Abbott, who professed to find in his hero a man utterly without moral blemish. The truth probably lies about midway between these two poles. In Sir Walter Runciman's book there is a curious echo of a certain paragraph in Abbott's history. Of Scott he says: The pious bard who sings the praises of Napoleon's executioners-Wellington and his coadjutors—and whose History was unworthy of the reputation of himself and his publishers, will have sunk into oblivion when the fiery soul of the "Sultan Kebir" will seize on the imagination of generations yet unborn, and intoxicate them with the memory of the deeds that he had done. There seems to be a Napoleonic party in England to-day just as there was when Charles James Fox schemed between drinking bouts and sittings at cards, and Tom Moore pilloried the unfortunate jailer of St. Helena in scathing verse, writing of Sir Hudson Lowe as "by name and ah! by nature so." The English Napoleonic party of to-day is peaceable enough, though it harbours and expresses sentiments that would have been held highly Sir Walter Runciman professes to treasonable in the days when Gillray was have begun with anti-Napoleonic ideas. It was reading in Scott's Life the socalled evidence which had been obviously collected for the purpose of exonerating the English Government that he became convinced of the enormity of the treatment meted out to the Emperor. Then, like the Psalmist, "my heart was hot within me, and at last I spake with my tongue." Perhaps Sir Walter Runciman's early life has had something to do with the radicalism of his ideas. Before he became a wealthy ship owner his career was tinged with every kind of romance. As a boy in Scotland, the sea fascinated him, and he ran away at the age of twelve. He became a cabin boy and was subjected to all the tyranny of the ship of fifty years ago. He forsook the English merchant service and for a time sailed on a Yankee skipper's brig. But his former captain recaptured him, and daily beatings with a rope's end made him run away again. It was the time of transition from sailing vessels to steam. Young Walter watched his chance, and turned from sailing to the business of shipping. Somehow the picture of his entire life recalls vividly the Sir Anthony Gloucester of the Kipling poem. John Jay Chapman's Learning and Other Essays, to be reviewed later, fared as well as could be exMr. Chapman's pected at the hands of New Essays the skimming commen tators of the press last summer. Most of them perceived that it was a remarkable book and tried hard to rise to the occasion. But when a remarkable book does by chance fall into the hands of our professional reviewers. it usually catches them unawares and leaves them rather agape. Their minds are adjusted to books that are not at all remarkable, and that may be quickly despatched by routine methods without injustice. Second thoughts seem to be not part of their business, so rarely do they meet a book that calls for them. Hence a certain bewilderment runs through the comments on Mr. Chapman's latest volume. The London Athenæum covers its embarrassment by calling him a latterday Emerson. Several American reviewers, prompted perhaps by the Athenæum, employ the same expedient. None of them mentions any specific point of resemblance to Emerson. Probably none of them could in the limited time at their disposal, and if they gave the matter of Mr. Chapman's literary pedigree a fair consideration they would have to name many other ancestors equally important with Emerson. It is a long pedigree. The book has fused the results of very wide and varied reading. It is the work of an alert mind rooted in tradition. The roots are not visible, as in the case of the newly and obviously "Cultured." They are under the soil, where they should be. Mr. Chapman is very much alive to the issues of the moment and writes of Mr. Chapman on times aggressively. Edithem forcibly, and someCollege Professors torial writers would find a much-needed stimulus in his pages, and might pluck up courage after reading them. For example, compare the timid comment of the press on certain alleged acts of tyranny toward college professors with Mr. Chapman's paper on "Professorial Ethics." The average professor in an American college, says Mr. Chapman, will look on at an act of injustice done to a brother professor by their college president, with the same unconcern as the rabbit who is not attacked watches the ferret pursue his brother up and down through the warren, to predestinate and horrible death. We know, of course, that it would cost the non-attacked rabbit his place to express sympathy for the martyr; and the non-attacked is poor, and has offspring, and hopes of advancement. The non-attacked rabbit would of course become a suspect; and a marked man the moment he lifted up his voice in defence of rabbit-rights. Such personal sacrifice seems to be the price paid in this world for doing good of any kind. I am not, however, here raising the question of general ethics; I refer to the philosophical belief, to the special theory of professorial ethics, which forbids a professor to protect his colleague. I invite controversy on this subject; for I should like to know what the professors of the country have to say on it. It seems to me that there exists a special prohibitory code, which prevents the college professor from using his reason and his pen as actively as he ought in protecting himself, in pushing his interests, and in enlightening the community about our educational abuses. He goes on to say that the professor must in all ways and upon all occasions appeal to the public. He should be willing to speak and to fight for himself. It is the public that protects the professor in Europe. The public alone can protect the professor in America. The proof of this is that any individual learned man in America who becomes known to the public through his books or his discoveries, or his activity in any field of learning or research, is comparatively safe from the guillotine. . . . I have often wondered, when listening to the sickening tale of some brutality done by a practical college president to a young instructor, how it had been possible for the eminent men upon the faculty to sit through the operation without a protest. A word from any one of them would have stopped the sacrifice, and protected learning from the oppressor. But no, these eminent men harboured ethical conceptions which kept them from interfering with the practical running of the college. Merciful heavens! who is to run a college if not learned men? Our colleges have been handled by men whose ideals are as remote from scholarship as the ideals of the New York theatrical managers are remote from poetry. In the meanwhile, the scholars have been dumb and reticent. Mr. Chapman believes that just as the Boss has been the tool of the business man in politics, so the An Opening for college president has Muckrakers been his instrument in education. The colleges have been manned and commissioned for a certain kind of service, as you might man a fishing-smack to catch herring. There has been so much necessary business-the business of expanding and planning, of adapting and remodelling that there has been no time for education. Some big deal has always been pending in each college-some consolidation of departments, some annexation of a new world -something so momentous as to make private opinion a nuisance. In this regard the colleges have resembled everything else in America. The colleges have simply not been different from the rest of American life. Let a man express an opinion at a party caucus, or at a railroad directors' meeting, or at a college faculty meeting, and he will find that he is speaking against a predetermined force. What shall we do with such a fellow? Well, if he is old and distinguished, you may suffer him to have his say, and then override him. But if he is young and energetic, and likely to give more trouble, you must eject him with as little fuss as the circumstances will permit. There are signs that Mr. Chapman's views on this subject are shared by an increasing number of persons. "Practical efficiency" as interpreted by the successful, hustling type of college president is losing some of its charm as a university ideal. And a good many of such college presidents, who are now apparently strongly intrenched, will be easily blown over the moment some enterprising journalist raises the popular wind. A muckraker taking his cue from the passages above quoted would find plenty of material. If he belonged to the rather small group of conscientious muckrakers he would certainly improve the situation. Thus far there have been only general accusations on the one side and general denials on the other, and whenever an instance of alleged injustice has been made public, it has immediately become so complicated and confused that the outsider could not make head or tail of it. And inasmuch as college professors are not at all likely to take Mr. Chapman's advice and "speak for themselves," the chance for a clear-headed muckraker is very conspicuous. In his Classic Point of View, Mr. Kenyon Cox sums up his artistic convictions in so lucid and straightThe Promise of forward a manner that American Painting any one, however ignorant of the technicalities of painting, may read the book with profit. In fact it belongs as much to the general public as to the art students to which, as a course of lectures, it was originally addressed. Mr. Cox deprecates the search for novelty which is now going on among the painters of all European countries, and applauds the tendency of the "American School" to go back to what is old. |