The Quiet Corner
"I counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy library."—C. LAMB. Struggling through a crowd of wedding guests at the door of a church which is known by the strange title of fashionable, we realized...
...pray before lonely altars...
...remained a modest and self-effacing employee and died in a happy obscurity...
...I am sure my friend Barnaby retired to his tufted little cell with the same unction as I landed upon my old army cot, which I shall refuse to abandon even when they house me in the marble halls of my dreams...
...to drive through unfrequented country...
...The effect upon our household decorations, the proper barenesses and static horizontals will bring back our lives to a sense of seriousness and the claims of the spirit.' " 'Please, pass the chocolates again, my dear Barnaby,' I asked him...
...A sweet little old lady in her black lace and white fichu is far more significant than any blooming madame, tinted, bobbed, with cabachon jewelry and silver heels: we look at the sweet little old lady first—but then, perhaps, we are only significant ourselves...
...It seems that Verlaine fils grew up to became an official in the metropolitan traction service in Paris...
...Verily, Paul Verlaine was a great poet, and his son must have been another—although without royalties—for it is the crown that makes the king, not the rubber heels...
...to walk on streets that are not too smart...
...There were photographs and engravings of ecstatic poses of Saint Clare and Saint Teresa, and a general jumble of Spanish angels, altar lamps and copies of Ribera and El Greco in the background...
...He invited me to supper and appeared at the door clad in a long brown habit...
...Henry Chester Tracy, in his Towards the Open, may help some of our bewildered aspirants in their efforts toward significance, where he lays dovni the actual requirements for this quality: "Ability to discover real meanings and not to be deceived by words...
...I have struck one that has a hard nut in it and you know my horror of the dentist.' " 'Pain...
...John Brown's cravat was richer and louder...
...Britannicus, who was waving a palmetto fan, every gust of which was an implied slur upon the summer climate of Manhattan, interrupted here in a weary voice, saying: "This young Frenchman can hardly be confused with my old schoolmate, Ralph Roughead, an excellent young industrial at Self ridge's about whom we used to lilt: 'An able accountant Ralph Roughead Earns fifteen a week when emploughead...
...I always devote Wednesday evenings to Saint Francis.' "I looked around and beheld long lean plaster casts of the poor Saint of Assisi...
...Struggling through a crowd of wedding guests at the door of a church which is known by the strange title of fashionable, we realized that we were in the company of significant persons...
...The report of the recent demise of Paul Verlaine's son brings curious questions to those not unaware of his sensitive and eccentric character...
...the night was warm but he had the hood pulled down over his fat bald head, and he said funereally as he led me to a most luxurious couch, 'This is my Franciscan night, Angelicus...
...Where the dream stuff is sold They know silence is gold— And a doctor, of course, never telwes.' " "Have I told you of my recent experience at Barnaby Dobbin Snope's studio...
...Henry James's check trousers more geometrical...
...In other parlance, to retire at times from fashionable crushes, to eat luncheons in uncrowded restaurants, to attend plays that are not over-crowded...
...for this means emancipation from fixed ideas, vices, inferior ends: acute sense of the need of leisure, privacy, and space...
...Pray you avoid it'— the weather permitting and the Geneva conference still in sitting...
...Ah, the beautiful mistress of the soul—the penance of our nature that lifts and purifies us—take one of those square chocolates, they hold sugared apricots—and pass the box back.' "The evening proved delightful—I could only thank the Third Order for a novel form of entertainment...
...In the throng we sensed an apparent attempt on the part of almost everybody to look as though they were emancipated from the necessities that ruled the crowd...
...Listen Angelicus, here is another that will appeal to your sense of the mystical: 'In the circle of Ermyntrude Elwes, These things are referred to as spelwes...
...for this means emancipation from mob reactions to symbols and sounds: alert interest in a wide diversity of natural phenomena and the life of things...
...Somebody should prepare a book on the sons and daughters of the greater poets, their history and resistance to the fates and temperaments thrust upon them by their famous parent...
...Doctor Angelicus was clearly in ruminative mood, after a return from a shore-dinner party held on a roof garden during the week-end...
...But his Christmas gift-giving And the high tax on living Keep him down where his bankbook's a voughead.'" "These British limericks are warranted to cause a civil war within our library, my dear Britannicus...
...for this means emancipation from the determinism symbolized by steel, concrete, and brick—the determinism of an industrial state...
...some of our poets, so ardent for their copyrights and the lucre of their hire to Euphrosyne, think of this son of the great symbolist, when they learn that he never even inquired for the royalties on his father's writings and left them unclaimed and untouched in the publishers' cash box...
...Doctor Angelicus spoke in an impressive diplomatic tone...
...THE LIBRARIAN...
...What will...
...stray through the cemeteries now and then...
...Smith's ear-rings were longer than usual...
...The consciousness of their aim to be significant, so sadly belied in their every-day habits of gregarious herdings of pleasure and sport, and defeated in a group where everybody is somebody an4 nobody anybody, reproduces the sad futility of the average social life of our day...
...There is no precedence among smart folk, no regulated rank however artificial, to ease the deadly game of assuming a significance if you have it or not...
...Miss Jones's skirt was more coryphee than ever...
...to read books that are not best-sellers...
...the arms of the Franciscan Order were embroidered over the fireplace, and on the table, around a large box of chocolate creams, into which he frequently dipped his plump white hand, were the books of Sabatier, Evelyn Underbill, Henry Dwight Sedgwick and Harold Goad...
...and converse with simple people who are not too paradoxically clever...
...I love these Franciscan poverties and simplicities,' he said to me in his soft and beautiful voice, as he sank back into his cushions, revealing that he wore a very fine pair of monastic sandals over his flesh-colored silk stockings, 'and as members of our branch of the Third Order'—here he gave his white girdle cord a rather vicious tug,^ 'we hope to draw some of the leading people of our set away from the crowded confusions of modem life...
...to wear hats and clothing that are without the ruling hatbands and coutouriers' marks...
Vol. 6 • July 1927 • No. 11
