Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers
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Don Marquis >> Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers
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"Money . . . money . . . curse money! Money
is one of the things I am in revolt against. . . .
Money is death and damnation to the free spirit!"
Papa said he was sorry to hear that; he said one
of his companies needed an ad writer, and he didn't
have any objection to hiring a free spirit with a
punch, but he couldn't consider getting anyone to
write ads that hated money, for there was a salary
attached to the job.
And Fothy said: "You are trying to bribe me!
Capitalism is casting its net over me! You are try-
ing to make me a serf: trying to silence a Free
Voice! But I will resist! I will not be enslaved!
I will not write ads. I will not have a job.
And then Papa said he was glad to hear Fothy's
sentiments. He had been afraid, he said, that Fothy
had matrimonial designs about me. And the
man who married HIS daughter would probably have
to stand for possessing a good deal of wealth, too,
for he had always intended doing something very
handsome for his son-in-law. So if Fothy didn't
want money, he wouldn't want me, for an enormous
amount of it would go to me.
Papa, you know, thinks he can be awfully sar-
castic.
So many Earth Persons pride themselves on their
sarcasm, don't you think?
And Papa is an Earth Person entirely. I've got
his horoscope. He isn't AT ALL spiritual.
But you can image that the whole scene was
FRIGHTFULLY embarrassing to me -- I will NEVER forgive Papa!
And I haven't made up my mind AT ALL about
Fothy. But what I do know is this: once I get my
mind made up, I WILL NOT stand for opposition form
ANY source.
One must be an Individualist, or perish!
HOW THE SWAMI HAPPENED TO HAVE SEVEN WIVES
Isn't it terrible about that elephant at the Zoo
-- Oh, you know! -- it's like Gunga Din, only,
of course, it isn't Gunga Din at all.
Anyhow, he's CHAINED FOR LIFE! I suppose some-
one gave him tobacco for a joke and it made him
cross. I've heard of those cases, haven't you?
An elephant is such a -- such a -- well, NOBLE beast,
isn't he?
It's transmigration of souls makes them that way,
perhaps.
Oh is it a Rajah?
Anyhow, it sits on top of an elephant.
We took up transmigration of souls one time --
our little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know --
and it's wonderful; simply WONDERFUL!
That was when the Swami Brandranath used to
talk to us. The dear Swami! Such eyes -- so pure
and yet so magnetic! -- I have never seen in a human
being.
The eye is the window of the soul, you know.
He's in jail now, the poor, dear Swami. But he
wasn't really a bigamist at all. You see, he had
seven spiritual planes. All of us do, only most of
us don't know it. But he could get from one plane
to another quite easily.
Of course, he couldn't remember what he'd done
on one plane while he was on the next one above
or below it. And that's the way he happened to
have seven wives -- one for each spiritual plane.
Only the Court took a sordid view of it. It seems
there was something about life insurance mixed
up with it, too.
The Occidentals are so apt to miss the spiritual
sweetness of the Oriental, don't you think?
We are -- all but the Leaders of Thought, and a
little group, here and there -- so commonplace.
Don't you LOATHE the commonplace?
Not loathe, really, of course -- because the har-
monious mind does not let itself be disturbed.
The harmonious mind realizes that dirt is only
useful matter in the wrong place, as Tennyson sings
so sweetly somewhere.
Tennyson has quite gone out, of course. He is
so -- so, well, if you get what I mean -- so mid-
Victorian, somehow.
It seems he WAS mid-Victorian all the time, but
it's only recently that it's been found out on him.
Though I always will think of "come Into the
Garden, Maud," as one of the world's sweetest lit-
epics.
I'm very independent that way, in spite of the
critics. After all, criticism comes down to a ques-
tion of individual taste, doesn't it? That is, in the
final analysis.
Independence! That is what this age needs.
Nearly every night before I got to bed I say to myself:
"Have I been independent today? Or have I FAILED?"
I believe in those little spiritual examinations,
don't you?
It helps one to keep in tune with the Infinite, you
know.
The Infinite! How much it comprises! And
how little we really understand it!
We're going to take it up, the Infinite, in a serious
way soon -- our Little Group of Advanced Thank-
ers, you know.
THE ROMANTIC OLD DAYS
It must have been terribly difficult getting around
in the days before automobiles were invented,
or railroads or anything like that.
Though, of course, it was wonderfully romantic,
too.
The old coaching days, particularly, when every-
body blew on horns as they drove from town to
town, and there were highwaymen and cavaliers
with swords and all those people, you know, riding
by the coaches.
Don't you just DOTE on romance? I do!
But, of course, there's no place for it in our hurried
modern life, and I suppose we shouldn't regret it.
But now and then I sigh over it. Like dropping
a tear, you know, in a dear old chest perfumed with
lavander and old roses.
I always say that one can be advanced and in
the van of modern progress, and still drop a tear,
you know.
Do you think that all this study of sex hygiene
means the death of romance?
It's a serious thought, isn't it?
But what I always say is: "Which of these
things will do the most GOOD in the world?"
Especially good to the POOR!
You know how frightfully interested I am in the poor.
I make that my test. I always say to myself:
"Which will do the most good to the great masses?"
I take such a serious interest in the MASSES!
We should think twice before we take romance out
of their lives and replace it with science of any kind.
For, after all, you know, they represent the Future.
We should all think of the Future.
That's what makes the Feminist Movement such
a WONDERFUL thing -- it is moving right straight ahead
toward the Future!
I'm thinking of being a Suffragist again. I was
once, you know, but I resigned.
The sashes and banners are such a frightful shade
of yellow, you know. So I quit.
Beauty, after all, is the chief thing. What, after
all, do all our reforms come to, if the world is not
to be made more beautiful because of them?
And I simply CANNOT wear yellow.
HERMIONE'S BOSWELL EXPLAINS
Believe me, 'tis not with elation
I dwell on Hermione's madness;
The result of my rapt contemplation
Is sadness, a terrible sadness!
I weep when I note how she drivels;
I sigh o'er her fake philanthropies;
I am pained when I see how she frivols,
Like a kitten, with serious topics.
It is grief that her mental condition
Inspires, not laughter or scorning;
If she has any use, 'til her Mission
To stand as a Horrible Warning.
I am moral, essentially moral;
I am grave, and hate everything trashy,
And that is the reason I quarrel
With intellects flighty and flashy.
I yearn for the truth, I am earnest;
I yearn to face facts without blinking,
Of all of my years, quite the yearnest
Is my yearn to be thorough in thinking.
That's why I'm severe with this darling,
Nor pardon nor whitewash nor gloss her, --
The linnet -- the parrot -- the starling!
I weep over her and expose her.
SYMBOLS AND DEW-HOPPING
Last week the Loveliest man lectured to us --
to our Little Group of Serious Thinkers,
you know -- on the Ultimate Symbolism. In
art and life both, you know.
It was simply wonderful -- WONDERFUL!
Art, you know, used to be full of symbolism.
But now, it seems, symbolism has dropped out
of Art, and Nature has taken it up.
Odd, isn't it? But really not surprising when
you come to think about it.
For, you know, Nature is always trying to keep
up with advanced ideas -- evolving and evolving to-
ward the Superman.
And the Superwoman, too.
I think it is the duty of us who are advanced
thinkers to give Nature a worthy idea to evolve
toward, don't you?
To set Nature a mark to come up to, you know.
For what is the use of evolution if it doesn't
evolve forward instead of backward?
And the Best People, I think, should feel a sense
of social responsibility and give evolution a model.
Each should be a Symbol -- that's what I always
ask myself each night now: "Have I been a Symbol
today? Or have I failed to be a symbol?"
Down at the beach last week I nearly drowned --
you don't mean to say you haven't heard of it? It
was frightful.
I'd always heard that, when a person sinks, his
whole past life passes before him in review.
But it didn't with me. What I said as I went
down was: "Have I been a Symbol? Or have I
failed?"
And the life guard who got me out -- he was sim-
ply the most gorgeous man! -- Burned bronze, you
know, and with shoulders like a Greek god! -- and
with the most wonderful eyes and white teeth -- he
asked me, the guard did, "What, marm?"
It was fearfully disappointing! Sometimes they
are college men, you know, just life-guarding
through the summer. But would any college man
have said, "What, marm?"
And then he went and saved a blonde creature
in the most scandalous bathing suit I ever saw.
He saved one in the most business-like way, too,
as if he were a waiter, you know, passing from one
table to another.
No wonder the social fabric is crumbling when
quite impossible people like life guards permit them-
selves to become blase' over such matters!
The lower classes are very discouraging anyhow,
don't you think? -- after all we do for them in the
way of philanthropy and sociology and uplifting
them generally, you know!
Of course, I haven't lost my interest in sociology
-- not by any means. I always hold fast the thought
that all the world are brothers.
I'm taking up Dew-hopping next week. It's a
wonderful new nerve cure. Formerly it was quite
the thing to walk barefoot in the dew at dawn.
But at this new place I've discovered they don't
merely walk -- that's going out, quite. They HOP.
Like frogs and toads, you know.
It brings the patients into closer kinship with the
electric currents of the earth, hopping does, the
doctor says. It's WONDERFUL!
He is the loveliest man -- with mystic eyes! -- the
doctor is.
THE SONG OF THE SNORE
Fothergil Finch, Hermione's friend, the
vers libre poet, dodges through life harried
and hunted by one pursuing Fear.
"Some day," he said to me --
(It is Hermione's Boswell who is speaking in this
sketch, in the first person, and not Hermione, the
incomparable.) --
"Some day," Fothergil finch said to me, the
other night, in a tone of intense, bitter conviction,
"some day It will get me! Some day I will over-
take me. The great Beat, Popularity, which pur-
sues me! Some day It will clutch me and tear me
and devour my Soul! Some day I will be a Popu-
lar Writer!"
It is my own impression that Fothergil's fears
are exaggerated; but they are very real to him. He
visualizes his own soul as a fugitive climbing higher
and higher, running faster and faster, to escape
this Beast. Perhaps Fothergil secretly hopes that
the speed of his gong will induce combustion, and
he will leap from the topmost hills of Art, flaming,
directly into the heavens, there to burn and shine
immortality, an authentic star. Well, well, we all
have our little plane, our little vanities!
"Fothergil," I said, cheerily, "Popularity has not
overtaken you yet. Cheer up -- perhaps it never
will."
We were in Fothergil's studio in Greenwich Vil-
age, where I had gone to see how his poem on
Moonlight was getting along. He strode to the
window. Fothergil is not tall, and he is slightly
pigeon-toed -- the fleshly toes of Fothergil symbolize the goes
of his ever-fleecing soul -- but he strides. Fe-
male poets undulate. Erotic male poets saunter.
Tramp poets lurch and swagger. Fothergil, being
a vers libre poet, a Prophet of the Virile, a Little
Brother of the Cosmic Urge, is compelled by what
his verse is to stride vigorously across rooms as if
they were vast desert places, in spite of what
his toes are. He strode magnificently, tri-
umphantly, to the window and flung the shade
up and looked out at the amorphous mist creep-
ing in across the roofs. The crawling fog must
have suggested his great, gray Dread, for presently
he turned away with a shudder and sank upon a
couch and moaned.
'Ah, Heaven! Popularity! The disgrace of it --
the horror of it! Popularity! Ignominy! When it
catches me -- when it happens ----"
He plucked from his pocket a small phial and held
it up toward the light and gazed upon it desperately
and raptly.
"I am never without this!" he said. "It is my
means of escape. I will not be taken unawares!
I carry it always. At night it is beneath my pillow.
The day it happens -- the moment I feel myself in
the grip of Popularity----"
I caught his hand; in his excitement he was rais-
ing the poison to his lips.
"What I cannot understand, Fothergil," I said,
"is why a Poet of the Virile, a Reincarnation of the
Cave Man -- excuse me, but that is what you are
being this year, is it not ? -- should give way to Fear.
Is it not more in character to meet this Beast and
slay It? Is there not a certain contradiction between
your profession and your practice?"
"More than a contradiction," he said eagerly. "It
is more than contradictory! It is paradoxical!"
I eliminate much that followed. When Fothergil
gets started on the paradox, time passes. He is
never really interested in things until he has dis-
covered the paradoxical quality in them. Some-
times I think that his enthusiasm over himself is
due to the fact that he discovered early in life that
he himself was a paradox -- and sometimes I think
that discovery is the explanation of his enthusiasm
for the paradox.
"What," said Fothergil, "is the most paradoxical
thing in the world? The Human Snore! It seems
Ugly-yet it is Beautiful! It seems a trivial func-
tion of the body -- and yet it is the Key to the
Soul ----"
"The Key to the Soul?"
"Man sleeps," he said, "and his Conscious Mind
is in abeyance. But his Subconscious Mind is still
awake. It functions. It has its opportunity to utter
itself. The Snore is the Voice of the Soul! And
not only the Soul of the individual but of the Soul
of the race. All the experiences of man, in his
ascent from the mire to his present altitude, are
retained in the Subconscious Mind-his fights, his
struggles, his falls, his recoveries. And his dreams
and nightmares are racial memories of these things.
Snores are the language in which he expresses them.
Interpret the Snore, and you have the psychic his-
tory of the ascent of man from Caliban to Shake-
speare!
"And I can interpret it! I have listened to a
million Snores, and learned the language of the
Soul! Night after night, for years, I harked to
the Human Snore -- in summer, hastening from
park bench to beach and back again; in winter,
haunting the missions and lodging houses. Ah,
Heavens! with what devotion, with what passion
of the discoverer, have I not pursued the Human
Snore! I have gone miles to listen to some snore
that was reported to be peculiar; I have denied my
self luxuries, pleasures, and at times even food, in
order to hire reluctant persons to Snore for me!
"And I have written the Epic of the Snore in
vers libre. You shall hear the prelude!"
And this is Fothergil's prelude:
Snore me a song of the soul,
Oh, sleeper, snore!
Whistle me, wheeze me, grunkle and grunt, gurgle
and snort me a Virile stave!
Snore till the Cosmos shakes!
On the wings of a snore I fly backward a billion
years, and grasp the mastodon and I tear him
limb from limb,
And with his thigh hone I heat the dinosaur to
death, for I am Virile!
Snore! Snore! Snore!
Snore, O struggling and troubled and squirming
and suffering and choking and purple-faced
sleeper, snore!
Snore me the sound of the brutal struggle when the
big bull planets bellowed and fought with one
another. in the bloody dawn of time for the
love of little yellow-haired moons,
Snore!
Snore till Chaos raps with his boot on the walls of
Cosmos and kicks to the landlord!
Turn, choke, twist and struggle, sleeper, and snore
me the song of life in the making,
Sneeze me a universe full of star-dust,
Snore me back to the days when I was a Cave Man,
and with my bare hands slew the walrus, for
I am Virile!
Snore the death-rattle of the walrus, O struggling
sleeper, snore!
Snore me ----
But I was compelled to leave. There is a great
deal of it, Fothergil says. If you know Fothergil
you are aware that when he declaims his Virile
verses he becomes excited; he swells physically;
sometimes he looks quite five feet tall in his mo-
ments of expansion; all this is very bad for him.
More than once the declamation of his poem, "My-
self and the Cosmic Urge," has sent him shaking
to the tea urn.
Before I left I was able to calm him somewhat.
But with calm came reflection. And with reflection
came his great, gray Dread again.
When I left,. Fothergil was looking out of the
window and shuddering, as if the Monster Popu-
larity might be hiding behind the neighboring chim-
neys. One hand clasped the phial caressingly.
But somehow I doubt that Fothergil will ever be
compelled to drink the poison.
BALLADE OF UNDERSTANDING
"Does not the World's stupidity
At times make Serious Thinkers fret?"
I asked the fair Hermione;
"Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and
yet .
We feel we owe the World a debt!"
She waved a slim, bejeweled hand,
She brooded on some vague regret. .
"I hope," she sighed, "you'll UNDERSTAND!"
"Is not your high Philosophy
Too subtle for the Mob to get?"
I asked . . . She pondered seriously;
"Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and
yet . . .
She trifled with an amulet
Imported from some Orient land. . . .
"What fish can burst the Cosmic Net? . . .
I HOPE," she sighed, "you'll Understand."
"Art, Science and Psychology,
Causes that rise and shine and set,
Do all these never weary thee?" --
"Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and
yet .
Would Thought and Life have ever met
Unless" . . . She paused. Her lashes fanned
Her eyes, with tears of ardor wet. . . .
"I hope," she sighed, "YOU'LL Understand!"
"Princess, is Bull the One Best Bet?"-
"Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and
yet
She mused, and then; in accents bland,
"I hope," she said, "you'll UNDERSTAND!"
HERMIONE ON FASHIONS AND WAR
ISN'T war frightful, though; simply FRIGHTFUL!
What Sherman said it was, you know.
Though they say there's an economic condi-
tion back of this war, too.
We took up economics not long ago -- Little
Group of Serious Thinkers, you know -- and gave
an entire evening to it.
It's wonderful; simply WONDERFUL!
Without economics, you know, there couldn't be
any Civilization.
That's a thought that should give one pause,
isn't it?
Although, of course, this war may destroy civili-
zation entirely.
If I thought it was likely to do that I would join
in the Peace Demonstration at once -- or have they
had it already ? -- the march for peace, you know!
Anyhow, no matter what the personal sacrifice
might be, I would join in. Not that I care to march
in the dust. And black never did become me. But
I suppose there will be some autos. And, well --
one must sacrifice.
For if Civilization dies out, what will become of
us then?
Will we revert to the Primordial?
Will the Cave Man triumph?
The very idea gives me the creeps!
Because, you know, the Cave Man is all right --
and the Primitive, and all that -- as a protest against
Decadence-and in a LITERARY way -- but if ALL men were Cave Men!
Well, you know, the thought is frightful; simply frightful!
You can have a feeling for just ONE Cave Man,
you know, in the midst of Civilization, when a
MILLION Cave Men would ----
But the idea is too terrible for words!
And in this crisis it is Woman who must save the world.
The loveliest woman -- she's quite advanced,
really, and has the most charming toilettes -- told
our Little Group of Serious Thinkers the other
night that this is the time when Woman must rule
the world.
It is the test of the New Woman.
If ANYTHING is saved from the wreck it will be
because of Her.
She can write letters to the papers, you know,
against war and-and all that sort of thing, you know.
And, of course, if the Germans and Russians and
English do all get together and conquer Paris,
I suppose they won't kill the modistes and designers.
Civilization, you know, is not so easily killed
after all. The Romans were conquered, you know,
but all their styles and philosophies and things were
taken up by the Medes and Persians who conquered
them, and have remained unchanged in those coun-
tries ever since.
But in a time like this, it's comforting to have
a Cause to cling to.
No matter what happens, the advanced thinkers
must cling together and make their Cause count.
And if England should conquer France, and put
a king on the throne there again, no doubt there will
be a great revival of fashion, as there was in the
days of Napoleon I. and the Empress Eugenie.
But if all the advanced thinkers in the world
could only get together in one place and THINK Peace
and Harmony -- sit down in circles, you know, and
send Psychic Vibrations across the ocean -- who can
tell but what the war might not end ?
The triumph of mind over matter, you know.
I'm going to propose the idea to our little group
and pass it on to all the other little groups.
I'd be willing to give up an entire evening to it myself.
URGES AND DOGS
We had quite a discussion the other evening
--our Little Group of Serious Thinkers,
you knowas to whether it was Idealism
or Materialism that had gotten the Germans into
this dreadful war.
Isn't Idealism just simply wonderful!
Fothy Finch said it was neither; he said it was
the Racial Urge.
It's like the Cosmic Urge, you know; except it's
altogether German, Fothy explained.
Every once in a while you hear of a New Urge.
That's one of the things that distinguishes Modern
Thought from the old philosophies, don't you
think?
Although, of course, the Cosmic Urge isn't what
it used to be a year or two ago.
It's become -- er -- well, VULGARIZED, if you know
what I mean. EVERYBODY'S writing and talking
about it now, don't you know.
I think, myself, it's going out soon. And a
leader -- a real pioneer in thought, you know,
would scarcely care to talk about it now without a
smile.
I've just about dropped it myself. It's the same
way with everything exclusive. It soon becomes
common.
Really, I hadn't worn my white summer furs
three weeks before I saw so many imitations that
I just simply HAD to lay them aside.
Don't you think people who take up things
like that, after the real leaders have dropped them,
are frightfully lacking in SUBTLETY?
Oh, Subtlety! Subtlety! WHAT would modern
thought be without Subtlety?
Personally, I just simply HATE the Obvious. It's
so -- so -- well, so easily seen through, if you know
what I mean.
Fothy Finch said to me only the other day, "Has
it ever occurred to you, Hermione, that you are NOT
an Obvious sort of Person?"
It is almost UNCANNY the way Fothergil Finch
can read my thoughts sometimes. We are both so
very psychic.
Mamma said to me last night, "You are seeing a
great deal of Mr. Finch, Hermione. Do you think
it is right to encourage him if you don't intend to
marry him? What ARE your intentions with regard
to Mr. Finch?"
I didn't answer her at all -- poor dear Mamma is
SO old-fashioned!
But I thought to myself ----
Well, would it be so IMPOSSIBLE?
Of course, marriage is a serious thing. One must
look at it from all points of view, if one has a
Social Conscience.
He has a LOVELY way with dogs, Fothy has. They
trust him instinctively -- he is just DEAR with them.
I have some beauties now, you know. They are
getting so they won't let anyone but Fothy bathe them.
MOODS AND POPPIES
We took up the Bhagavad Gita -- our Little
Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know
in quite a thorough way the other
evening.
Isn't the Bhagavad Gita just simply WONDERFUL!
It has nothing at all to do with Bagdad, you
know -- though at first glance it seems quite like
it might, doesn't it?
Of course, they're both Oriental aren't you just
simply WILD about Oriental things? But really,
they QUITE different.
The Bhagavad Gita, you know, is all about Rein-
carnation and Karma, and all those lovely old
things.
When I start my Salon I'm going to have a
Bhagavad Gita Evening -- all in costume, you know.
I find that when I dress in harmony with the
Idea I RADIATE so much more effectively, if you
get what I mean.
Fothergil Finch is the same way.
He writes his best vers libre things in a purple
dressing-gown
There's an amber-colored pane of glass in his
studio skylight, and he has to sit and wait and wait
and wait until the moonlight falls through that pane
onto his paper, and then it only stays long enough
so he can write a few lines, and he can't go on with
the poem until he comes again.
He brought me one last night -- he wrote it to me
yes, really!and he waited and waited for
enough moonlight to do it, and caught a terrible
cold in his head, poor dear Fothy.
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