The New York herald., 1922-03-12


"HERE was once an actor who
found his real pleasure not
In the dramatic profession but
In his work as a landscape painter
He was never SO happy as when
messing in his beloved paints. though
he was not at all bad actor. But
of him the actors said: Hes really
a first rate painter" and the painters
said: AS an actor he ranks at the
head OF his profession"
Mr.. Max Beerbohm has a dua
facility with his pen and his pencil.
yet the gods have so favored him
that when he draws a cartoon no.
body feels moved to ask If the pres
ent company has ever read his
sparkling essays; and when he writes
another of his uncompromising trivi-
alities nobody talks about his draw
ings. This. we submit, is pretty
great favor of his gods, and we sus-
pect that they could not hold over
like that through and beyond quar-
ter century if they were not the
gods Of Victorian times. For these
gods. incredible as the idea may
seem TO the preter-past Victorian
world. are the last set Of gods in ex-
istence who had any secure basis
or bases-to stand on. Those con-
temporaries who have turned away,
with calculated bitterness. from the
Victorian gods would be the last to
pretend that they worship any gods
at all save the invariably eternal
essence of divinity which inspires
their own individuality. They are as
frank about 1t as Martin Luther;
heaven help them they can no other.
They say: Standards are a super
stition: We are free men above pay
ing homage to anything which we
do not know about because we our
selves did not make it; we walk In
the cold light Of negation. We fol-
low our spirits guidance. and you
might as well be content-we are"
The ancient set of things taken for
granted because all intelligent per-
sons recognized their soundness in
cluded the assertion that you cannot
prove a negative. This thesis natu-
rally includes (as the greater in
cludes the less) the reality that you
cannot prove even that a general
negation Of all things is futile. There
fore the saving remnant of the
worlds intelligence is waiting par
tlculariy for something positive. def
inite and capable of transmitting it
self. to issue from the nebula OF dis
sent, contradiction and scornful de-
tachment which fills the atmosphere
of all the arts. at present. The atti-
tude of the twentieth century after
the experiences of it's first twenty
years is perfectly expressed in Max's
cartoon, included in this handsomely
made book of drawings, called ''The
Future Us Beheld by the Twentieth
Century" The Twentieth Century is
represented by n somewhat "hag-
gard and lank young man" fixing
his eyes through emptiness of space
.,pop N larpa iptarrof,ot;or, r,a;nf N
relief against dark curtain of cloud.
Other drawings IN the series show
the Eighteenth Century and the Nine
teenth Century, each i'm a typical
figure, imagining the next century
in the form of itself much amplified.
The Twentieth Century simply stands
and stares. very like q NEUROLOGICAL
parsonage we'll known in that dark
Victorian backward called wilkins
Micawber, whose principle in life was
to wait for something to turn up.
These three figures aptly repre-
sent states OF mind. but Max is just
as good at catching postures of the
body, in individuals. and making
their intellectual characteristics
shine through and illuminate their
characteristic attitudes. His draw
ing of Mr.. Balfour. with his car
toonist's unerring instinct for exag-
gerating physical tendencies. is a
marvellous portrait OF that unper-,
turbed yet always intelligently inter
ested soul. "fn a world compara-
lively at reace. now [remarks Maxi