The Quiet Corner
/ counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy library.—C. LAMB. Doctor Angelicus has recently shown a carelessness with his private papers: last week Hereticus came across his private diary, which...
...Sir, to do with the case?'" "My dear young friend," said the Doctor, taking a long puff at his pipe, "I see that you are a modern of the moderns...
...Brother Portentius's aesthetics from the French, German and Czecho-Slovakian are clearly indicated in your composition...
...It was the old Galenus who first noted that the Lady Bug washed her face after the manner of the household cat...
...There is nothing left to the commentator or the aesthician...
...This is poetry of the Alexandrian school, terse, elliptical, actual: little philosophy and didacticism, no mysticism nor that uncertainty of meaning which make so many of our modern poets so eloquent...
...And here in this poor lad of Tullabeg, an echo out of my own past, indicating that westward the course of empire is slowly taking its way...
...My dear young man, return with my compliments to Brother Portentius: tell him I have made an exception to our general rule not to give analyses or explanations of our editorial decisions...
...The youth had presented a letter from Brother Portentius of Portentius College, and had prevailed on the Doctor to listen to one of his shorter poems—contrary to the general practice in the library, that poems are to be submitted to the eyes and not the ears of the editor...
...Your verses are not unlearned...
...There was a grave expression on Doctor Angelicus's face as he bent in earnest conference with a blond-haired youth in one corner of the library...
...T H E LIBRARIAN...
...Doctor Angelicus has recently shown a carelessness with his private papers: last week Hereticus came across his private diary, which from intrinsic evidence may be an indication that our old friend is quietly preparing the autobiography which he intends to leave as an inheritance to his favorite nieces, Angelica and Sibylla...
...I saw again in vision our formal back parlor: the square Mathusek piJno: and my aunts and visitors brushing aside their bustles as they settled down among the Rogers Groups to listen to my first public rendition of Long, Long Ago and other five-finger symphonies...
...Hereticus and Britannicus seized their hats and ran out for their cup of tea, not daring to intrude on the Doctor's unusual gravity...
...The program went on noisily from Tchaikowsky, Godonoff, to Rimsky-KorsakofI, when at the end of the overture to the Coq d'Or, I overheard a heavy sigh that was almost a sob...
...I asked the youth if he were ill...
...My fiancee has grown tired of waiting for me and last week when I wrote her that I was now busy working at my peddling, she replied that she was sure her family would never consent to her marrying a peddler and broke off our engagement.' "In fancy I tobogganed back to my own early years and to the four-quarters on the piano, which my good mother insisted I should take...
...I note nothing of the American or the prairies or the Middle Atlantic states, nor an echo of Poe or Longfellow—" The young poet recoiled in some horror...
...I hope you found other and less vindictive pupils than I proved to be...
...And our poor old music-teacher...
...as well as the respectful observance of social form in the obsequious use of the Sir...
...Hereticus was guilty of copying out the following entry: "The other evening during the Russian concert, I had hardly taken my place in the inexpensive subscription seat I always maintain in the gallery, when a strange emaciated youth, marked conspicuously small town by his white socks and flabby sombrero, took the adjacent seat and plunged his head heavily into his chest...
...There is graphic lifelike quality in your other parenthesis, where she looks at your fingernail, as into a mirror, carrying on the notion of feminine preoccupation, and reflecting credit upon the bright cutex quality which I notice on your unciform digits...
...Say to him that I consider you a great poet and one who under no circumstances should ever again consent to write another line of verse...
...The home note, indicating a certain direction in the insect flight strikes me as timely and edifying, and the personification of the insect's progeny as children bears with it a touch of tenderness that does not leave me altogether unmoved...
...Miss Popper, with her emaciated fingers and trashy rings and her nerve crises over my careless mistakes—and the sharp slaps with which she brought back my attention and a hatred so undying that I can feel it still...
...He replied: 'No, only very unhappy.' "It seems to me I yielded to a communistic instinct and called him—'Brother, what has gone wrong?' " 'You see, sir, I have been in New York for the past two years, studying the piano at the Conservatory...
...That other insects may employ this same toilet procedure is a question that we may as well transmit...
...Not even a blast of Whitman or a sprig or petal of Whittier or Emily Dickinson...
...Then there is the pause, rhymical as well as sensitive, and the vast uncertainty, the fragmentary character as of some classic remnant of a Vatican torse, in "What has that, Sir, to do with the case...
...Poor over-refined spinster...
...The young poet, flushing with the western glow of his early twenties, half-sobbed, halfL'sped the following lines: "Lady Bug, Lady Bug, fly away home (She licks at her fingers and washes her face) Your house is on fire—^your children will burn (She looks in my fingernail, ponders a space) And, 'What has that...
...I have often wondered what became of you...
...My home town, TuUabeg, expects me to make another Marion Talley success— but you know what a hard master the flexible keyboard can be...
Vol. 6 • June 1927 • No. 7
