Los Angeles herald., 1910-01-16
BY w. HERBERT BLAKE.

/ There were doubtless late medievalists
who harked persistently back to the
good old days of Charlemagne. Today
many folk who do not consciously
dwell in the past take a dubious pride
i'm writing for posterity. The tritlins
fact that they can really do neither
seems rarely to dawn upon them.
Percival Pollard, critic of letters and
the drama, whose book "Their Day in
Court" lies before me, would scorn
any and all imputations in the above
paragraph. In a thick volume devoted
to eXpounding the shams and mendacl-
ties of current American literature MS
aim is consistently and nobly to rouse
the reading public to a keen realization
of the shoddy methods of petty putlery
with which their self appointed men
tors have misserved them. American
literature, he thinks. is at the merry
mercy of "petticoats and publishers.
criticism. he opines, is nearing the
sweetly somnolent state of the douo'
and then, with a desperate defiance
Of his own logic he urges his own case
as one instance in which an honest
man has endured the storm. There Is
no syainsaying his exception. Through
out his volume of 450 odd pages Mr..
Pollard RACES like an uncaged lion ana
inveighs against things as they are
with an exhilarating assurance. we
are glad he is alive, and kicking.
The real merits of his struggle, how
ever heroic are another matter. Boiled
down with some difficulty, his outcfy
may thus be subdiVided:
gainst the publishers, for not
discerning that honest criticism Is
worth more than slipshOd, manutac-
tured laudation.
Second-Against the women, for writ
ing nasty novels, and reading them.
CNr. Pollard would disdain the adJec-
tive "nasty." If the thing is artisti-
cally done, he would consider it quite
another matter. He is in no sense the
Puritan. save in his insistence on art
for arts sake-the modern cstheuc
statement of the Puritan idea)
Thrd-Against anybody writing for
the daily press who does not contribute
his honest opinions.
Fourth-Against the public-on gen
eral principles-and particularly for not
knowing any better.
Sifted fine Mr. Pollard's outcry an
comes to this-in the last chapters of
his cyclopean work-that the American
people do not care for art. How many
weary times we hear the same old cry.
Perhaps they don't. What OF 1t
Art" may easily become convenient
handle on which to hang our Whims
and nrefudices If those Whims and
prcjudices do not agree with the pub
lies. then blame the public That ap-
pears to be the idea. 1t will serve for
the moment to pillory publishers,
newspapers, actors, authors and critics
but back of these, the great mass OF
men who care for none of them save
as they serve its mood and. temper:
Z
be unfair to Mr. Pollard. and ] grant
readily enough much of what he says
of the hypOCrisies Of criticism, but it
does seem to me that he is hypnotized
by the domination of one set idea. He
has fought so many good fights for
principles in which the mass of men
believe as truly as he, that he has
come to fancy himself alone in the bat
tie Elijah had much the same no
ton regarding the antagonists of Baal.
Let US take the Clearest case which
Mr.. Pollard makes out, that women
revel I'm the filthy novels of women
novelists. (The same thing might be
said of men, but pass that) Is it Ger
tain that it is the filth. as filth, that
attracts them. Are we so sure that
sheer vileness has such monstrous
power? Is it not rather the appetite
for a kind of art that lures, and the
curiosity to see something shrouded by
a kind of mock glamOr that lends edge
and verVe to the desire? Such novels
sell by the hundreds. That is simply
damnable. but we need not waste our
curses over it. A better plan would
be to make decency alluring, white,
clean, virtue inspiring, art sane and
helpful.
Again and again in his book one feels
Al. limo iy1 hn ct
and yearning toward the future with
q slowly cbbiug hope The amazing
present slips away from him, even as
he reprobates 1t. He may arraign the
public for its gods of ease and sloth
and sensualism, but it would be ludtc-
rously easy to point out TO him his
own gods. Wilde is one. Shaw is
another. His antipathies. too, have
something Of the morbid about them.
He fears literary affectatiOn, and he is
indeed one of the least affected men
who ever wrote a line. Let the affecta-
tions of Sterne or ThaCkeray are so
casual as to be really sincere. The sim
cerity of Mr.. Pollard is frequently so
painful as to verge upon an affectation.
To get the best out of this book you
must forget the authors antipathieS,
as he could not. You must read his
brilliant pages of appreciation of Am
brose Bierce, that talented Californian
whom America is coming, somewhat
belatedly. to rate at a foir value. You
must smile at the unnecessary length
at which he quotes from the pages of
recent salaciOuS novels very tame
when you read them, L assure yOu),
and admire the easy disdain with
which at moments he denudes them of
their pretentions with the scalpel of
satire. You must wonder sometimes
at the rare felicity of bhrase-too sell
dom permitted. perhaps from fear of
"literary affeCtation' as when he re-
marks of a certain actor that his
voice "had already begun to show the
corrOsion of liquor" And you must
always admit and honor the brilliant
honesty of the man, right or wrong.
He has dared to stand, and for that
alone the American public, whom l
think he grotesquely misjudges, should
forgive him for occasionally bending
backward.
1T is just because this great Ameri-
can democracy is trying to do without
criticism says he, that its literature
is in such parlous state, and that this
book is written
May we not add the reluctant con-
verse; 1T is just because American
literature and criticism have tried to
do without democracy, that all the ills
of both arise?
In another place the author cries
with much fortnight honest gusto:
ITO deal with these problems they ask
us to wear kid gloves!" And he an
swers himself: What is needed is
the mailed fist"
Perhaps. And. again, perhaps, there
may also be the need for the open
hand of comradeship between author
and people, that those things which