Mademoiselle Miss and other stories by Henry Harland (1893)

This was the volume in which Harland finally showed fully the mettle that I'm guessing gained him the editorship of The Yellow Book. It is a collection of five long stories. The first two are set in Paris exclusively and are quaint elegies of the slightly racy kind about notable young ladies of the demi-monde; an elegant innocent one having departed back to London and left her ripple behind her, and a more selfish but beautiful one of the class of ladies of the streets. This one's cough grows louder and more pronounced until.....the elegy has its point. The third is set in London and is the first exposure of Harland's gift for Wildean wit, where a nonchalant bohemian father is perplexed by the return of the son he gave up at birth, who has been schooled in rigid American ways. The fourth is set again in Paris and then New York and concerns the disappointment inherent in trying to realise a youthful love when ways have long parted. The last is set in a German principality in the midst of a royal succession. The intrigues engulf a traveller and involve a hackneyed resolution. Though these stories read well, they leave relatively little impression. I am waiting for Harland to move me and it hasn't happened yet.

Commonplace Book

'"....in difficult situations intellect is but a sorry shield: virtue alone can suffice to safeguard him who merits safety."'

from Memoirs of a Volunteer (Part I), a piece in Mother of Pearl by Anatole France (translated by Frederic Chapman)

Commonplace Book

'Pity is the widow's mite; it is the incomparable offering of the poor man, who with generosity outstripping that of all the wealthy in this world of ours, gives with the gift of his tears a piece torn from his heart.'

from The Manuscript of a Village Doctor, a piece in Mother of Pearl by Anatole France (translated by Frederic Chapman)

Commonplace Book

'...We heard hourly that someone was running away from someone else, often that everyone was running away from everyone else in all directions. Sometimes Tuan Chi Jui was pursuing Wu Pei Fu in the direction of Tibet with every hope of getting there, as it seemed, and sometimes Wu Pei Fu was spilling Tuan Chi Jui over the coast into the Yellow Sea. We became quite callous about the war. It seemed, to say the least of it, childish for two armies large enough to know better to run about so quickly in such hot weather.'

from Peking-III, a piece in The Little World by Stella Benson

Commonplace Book

'...I think modern art, in England anyway, has fallen under the pernicious influence of Augustus John. The Slade School calls every charming picture "pretty-pretty" and flies to the other extreme, in mistaking the grotesque for the beautiful. The poets are just as bad; for those who have energy and freshness fear to become Sunday-magazinish and write their Wheels and Rolls and other atrocities under the impression that they are out-Henleying Henley, and discovering a new pathless world of vers libre, free from the trammels of such minor accessories of poetry such as rhyme or metre or even musical language.'

from a letter to 'Rosalind', February 20, 1921 in Letters to a Friend by Winifred Holtby

Commonplace Book

'...he had too just a realising sense of the nature of art, to fancy that success in art - success in giving material form to the visions of the imagination - is ever possible; an artist might be defined as one whose mission it is to fail.'

from A Sleeveless Errand (Part I), a piece in Mademoiselle Miss and other stories by Henry Harland

Commonplace Book

'...His mind was unhinged by all the worry that attends those of the abyss. For the abyss is the dark-house of the world - and yet the world knows it not - for it is beyond the sight of men. No light flares in the abyss. No flame burns in the abyss of one's soul. All is dark and gloom. All is silent. Save for the winds which blow, save for the winds that blow them adown the dark roads of life.'

from Drift by James Hanley (Chapter VI)