The Quiet Corner
THE QUIET CORNER / counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy library.—C. Lamb. Miss Anonymoncule hurried in to face a great pile of Christmas cards in blue and black and yellow—Russian,...
...This fashion will be a positive menace to some of us poets," added Angelicus, shrinking up in his chair...
...According to a typewritten explanatory sheet, it is made of a piece of the author's own skin...
...Hereticus took up the train of thought—"One must be careful not to touch an author: if he jumps when you collide with him and you excuse yourself for not knowing he had been vaccinated, it will only give him another reason to tell you of his new book in its seven thousandth edition, and if you ask—'in real calf?' you may expect to hear from him, his wife, his daughter or his secretary and amanuensis when you get out that new epic, or even when they produce your autobiography to defray the expense of your mausoleum...
...We must be true to our pretentions and not substitute imitation leather for real author's skin...
...Will our younger poets show that 'skin I love to touch' or will it be necessary for us to be provided with acts sworn before a notary...
...Our book-shops will have to establish cold storage rooms like the furriers, if this fashion comes into effect before the warm weather sets in," solemnly declared Primus Criticus...
...Listen to this cable from Paris describing a new book— 'In the centre of the front cover there is, delicately traced, a butterfly with its wings extended, ready for flight, each wing measuring about an inch in spread...
...How the delicate pre-Raphaelite poetesses of our club will stand it, I can hardly fancy," exclaimed Miss Anonymoncule...
...interrupted Miss Brynmarian...
...Authorship will then be a responsibility and with the modern lotions and applications, of which I read the placards on my subway journeys, we should have no difficulty in binding up at least thirty volumes a year, aided, of course, by the Pompeian and Cutex lotions, creams and washes that are so invigorating and reconstituent...
...It will be more like a reconcentrado camp, or leper settlement or an escaped mission from Armenia or Mexico than the halls and groves of Academe and the Parthenon...
...It seems that so many of the French writers and artists have been losing their hair—" "In spite of their lovely tonics, Doctor...
...The author, however, unfortunately preferred to remain anonymous.'" "So as to preserve the rest of his skin, perhaps," suggested Hereticus...
...One must try to be quaint to face these upholstery artists seriously in our tortoise-shell eye-glasses...
...Besides how am I to know that these books are bound up, as purported in the invoices: shall I be able by the mere touch to distinguish the real suedes and baby and doe-skins of the Zane Gray authors, from the thickness and durability, the saddleleather porousness of certain of our Greenwich Village and radical self-laureates...
...I prefer those old black and white woodcuts," said Primus Criticus...
...That, as I was saying," the Doctor went on oblivious to her remark—"they have been forced to send regrets, in the same vein as Bismarck's, to all who asked for locks, tresses and curls, parings of fingernails, etc., and have grown very sensitive to such appeals...
...It is so much better than Smithers and wife's engraving of their summer lodge in the Adirondacks, or the photograph of the Browne's eldest and only son that wishes me a Merry Christmas," said Doctor Angelicus...
...I really fear that some of our psychoanalysts can hardly produce enough cuticle to satisfy their admirers," replied Angelicus, with a* complacent grin...
...Miss Anonymoncule hurried in to face a great pile of Christmas cards in blue and black and yellow—Russian, Czechoslovak, Spanish and French: Tittivillus's eyes were fixed covetously on the stamps as she carelessly abandoned the envelopes to the waste-basket...
...The Librarian...
...Writers like Theodore Dreiser, or Hergesheimer won't mind it, I suppose: and Irvin S. Cobb or Heywood Broun will be glad to part with epidermis in the cause of publicity and personal evaluations...
...Miss Anonymoncule tried to calm the meeting by remarking —"I have always heard that authors were a thin-skinned race, so I suppose the next development will be in the direction of sheepskin or Russian leather...
...I love these personal things," she said...
...There was a charmingly illuminated post-card painted in the mediaeval monastic manner that caused an appreciative "Oh...
...among those gathered around her...
...Angelicus was now in a clairvoyant state—"I can see the dimpled poetess of Yonkers showing her left elbow with the nonchalant remark—'After my volume of Love Litanies from the Gnostic;' and a red patch on the bald spot of the poet of the Bronx, the mark of his limited edition of Tiger Songs from the Chinese...
...Today I see in the cable despatches that they have taken to a new form of personal souvenir...
...A gathering of our authors will certainly present a peculiar picture," sighed Primus Criticus...
...Do you remember those dear old cards with the pink and yellow silk fringes that we once thought proper for tender messages," sighed Angelicus, "and the Christmas scenes with real frosting of mica that caused such high mortality among infants who could not be prevented from licking them off, that I believe they were suppressed by law at about the same time as the rock-and-rye candies...
...The butterfly is of different material from the leather which surrounds it...
...the reduced double-chin of the author of 'Babies and How to Feed Them,' and the yellowing scars of the James Joyce, Cabell, and Anderson realists and fantastics...
...Or photographs of the body, showing from where the patches have been grafted," said Angelicus, with inquisitorial warmth...
...I always prefer my books bound in cloth or canvas," said Doctor Angelicus, as he faded away again into his correspondence...
...Have you heard of the new fashion in France, Doctor," asked Hereticus, earnestly...
Vol. 3 • December 1925 • No. 8
