James Gibbons Huneker

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B 3 575 842

JAMES GIBBONS

HUNEKER Ву

BENJAMIN DE CASSERES JOSEPH LAWREN, PUBLISHER NEW YORK

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JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER

THE BOOKS OF BENJAMIN DE CASSERES THE SHADOW -EATER

CHAMELEON

JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER MIRRORS OF NEW YORK

IN PREPARATION BLACK SUNS

SOMERSAULTS THE OVERLOAD BROKEN IMAGES FORTY IMMORTALS THE MUSE OF LIES THE EIGHTH HEAVEN

MARS AND THE MAN

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS LITANIES OF NEGATION THE ETERNAL RETURN THE BOOK OF VENGEANCE

SIR GALAHAD

GIBBONS

JAMES

HUNEKER

BY

BENJAMIN

DE

CASSERES

NEW YORK

JOSEPH

LAWREN

PUBLISHER

:

Copyright 1925, by BENJAMIN DE CASSERES

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

JAMES GIBBONS

HUNEKER

594138

FOREWORD

HE first two of these papers were

T

published in the lifetime of James Gibbons Huneker.

I have been puzzled in going over these papers about the past and present tenses. Huneker had such a vital, envelop ing, atmospheric personality that to all who knew him he persists today as a living entity.

It is a psychic mystery. It is hard for me to speak of him in the past tense, so in some cases I have left the present tense stand. I shall always think of " Jim " in the Eternal Present Tense. B. De C.

1

Thanks are extended to the

New York Times, Musical America and The Nation for

permission to reprint these articles.

I ! 1

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1

JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER I.

“ JIM "” The

IETZSCHE

N

Man

or

Schopenhauer ? ”

The place was “ Jack's ”

res

The time was two

taurant.

o'clock one Sunday morning in 1908. The question was uttered by James Huneker as his welcome to me after I had

struggled through the seidel and wine -laden »

tables of the “ white room myself.

to introduce

He was surrounded by Ernest Lawson , “ Billy " Glackens and Frederick James Gregg. He was the Sir Galahad of at least seven empty grails of Pilsener

a brew

to which this most infernally human of

Olympians had pledged in a tidal wave of gulps his life, his fortune and his sacred kidneys.

“Well, which is it ~ Nietzsche or Schop enhauer ? ” he boomed again as he pushed 9

5

ie- into -a chair , his radiantly satyric face bursting with ironic amiability. That was my first meeting with Huneker,

although we had corresponded off and on for years .

I have now forgotten whether I flung out in answer a boost for the unhappy opti mist of the Superman or the happy pessimist of Frankfort. raced

on

It matters little.

Huneker

Spencer,

Lafcadio

Chopin,

Hearn, Laforgue, Wagner, George Luks, Renoir, Abraham Lincoln , Brillat-Savarin ,

Whistler, Culmbacher, Philadelphia, William James' The Thing, the Will-to-D. T.'s, Style,

Roosevelt, Dostoievsky, Philistines, Goya, Paracelsus, Harry Thaw , the Imp of the

Perverse, Cellini, Ireland - all tasselled and starred with anecdotes, witticisms and Rab elaisian vocables.

Ah ! I had certainly met James Huneker - a perfect furnace of ideas and reading, a groundling who lived on Olympus and an Olympian who could throw the dice with

groundlings ; a man who could wear the mask of a fool or of Apollo ; a fumiste, a living paradox, a revolutionary conserva tive, an aristocratic anarchist, a patrician of

the proletariat, a satyr who never missed mass

said over the ivory keys generally. 10

7

In a word, one of the most puzzling, elusive, mystifying, satirical and sentimentally hu man personalities that the maw of Mother Nature ever fetched up. Since that morning I met the author of “ Bedouins," Steeplejack ” and “ Chopin .

many, many times. Always casually, spon taneously, which in a manner always fitted in with the very woof of the man himself, whose whole nature was casual and spon taneous .

I have caught him in the center of a Fifth Avenue traffic jam where he was in a flam

ing discussion with his friend, the cop, on the newest traffic regulations ; planted before a bar (alas ! ) pouring the fascina tions of the Great Beer Routes of Europe in

the ears of Mix -'Em Mike, whose ears were

wide agape ; in the smoking room of the Metropolitan Opera House deep in the lower registers of a perfecto with “ Billy ” Guard ; walking around the country lanes of Flat

bush studying ornithology and rug -beating. Huneker was born in Philadelphia , and after many pilgrimages across the river to Old Walt, with whom he discussed Offen bach, the Cosmos, Stephen Girard and the miracle of the cable cars, emigrated to the Land of Flaubert, whom he saw - in a 11

garret dream maybe — chanting the son -

orities of Chateaubriand to the green um brella of Victor Hugo.

In Paris he brooded upon and hatched in his fiery Venetian consciousness his plan for

the conquest of the Seven Arts, the Nine Muses and the Fourteen Points of Individ ualism. He has had his Sedans and Water

loos ; but at Armageddon he stood then , and

stands now, in death , with the Sons of Light against the Philistines and Pharisees — not to speak of the prohibitionists and the

ethical tumblebugs. His Work

With Huneker, the man and his work

were one. Here was a perfect marriage of vision and execution . His genius was word expression . Music may have been his con

fessional, but writing was one of his basic organic functions. In his passionate delight

in putting forth from his pen the fitting

word, the smashing phrase, the colossal metaphor he paralleled the logomania of Flaubert, Hugo and Swinburne. He writes ; therefore he thinks.

“ He who steals my

ideas steals trash ; but he who filches from

me my style ! _" he has said somewhere. 12

1

In no one that I know is the style more completely the man. His style was his spirit ual autobiography, glowing with his ecstasy, raging with his dislikes, excreting his irony,

baring his intellectual complexes, miraging his literary, musical and artistic obsessions and suggesting his reservations and aver

sions. He might have written ten thousand words on, say, Poe of which nine thousand were quotations from other writers on

Poe, and yet we would have had an absolutely original essay

such the power of the over

tones in this man's pen, such the magic and the perfection of his associative apparatus. Mezzotints in Modern Music "

From

>

( 1899 ) to “ Steeplejack ” his one theme is Genius is his Transcendental. Genius is his Platonic Idea, of which Chopin ,

Genius.

Dostoievsky, Strindberg , Flaubert, Cézanne, Nietzsche and Whitman are the meteoric

incarnations. His fiction is grotesque , bizarre, satanic, Latin to the marrow . A

forbidden and blasphemous beauty lies over his work — the borderland nuances and .

moon -mad hallucinations of Baudelaire ,

Laforgue, Poe and D'Aurevilly . In America he is as exotic as brains.

If Edgar Saltus is the Leconte de Lisle of

American prose, James Huneker is the 13

Flaubert, without the great Frenchman's

“ impersonality ” (whatever that is) and his seriousness. Huneker is not even a “ critic

of any of the arts — except it be music, in which his scholarship is incontestable — if by “critic” is meant the man who picks the >

pros from the cons out of aa masterpiece like a person picking fly epigrams out of black pepper.

His “ values ” are instantaneously arrived at. They come straight from the reactions

of his abnormally sensitized emotional apparatus to artistic stimuli rather than from his brain. He has predestined

opinions, not principles ; prejudices, not

standards.

He brings not a scale, but a

Jacob's Ladder. Subjective and Romantic “ tendencies "

and “ movements ” only interested him in so far as they promulged great individuals. The great individual alone can give any kind of movement - aesthetic or economic validity. There is no truth only great men.

- there are

If Huneker had not already nailed to his mast the defi of Walt Whitman ,, “ Do I con

tradict myself ? Very well, then, I contra dict myself ! ” he might have written over his doorpost the Romantic dogmatism of the 14

Grand Monarch of Anarchy, “ My truth is the Truth ! ” James Huneker's books constitute the

emotional bacchanals of a Dionysus of the

arts in the vineyards of that mystical vamp, Helena.

Our Indebtedness

When I was young ( like Huneker himself, I am always youthful) I used to ask every American I met this inquisitorial question : Have you paid your debt to Walt Whitman ? ” Since those days I have adjusted myself

to the Spirit of the Absurd which is the dominant note in the Cantata of the Atoms,

else I should as solemnly accost every real

poet,

essayist,

fiction

writer,

musical,

dramatic and art critic in the country today with the question : 66

Have you paid your debt to James

Huneker ? ”

I for one have not, for there is no coin in

which I can pay him except it be the spurious coin of likeness, which is caused by the astonishing fact that we had congenitally almost the same reactions to all the stimuli of the inner and outer worlds.

I doubt whether there is a man doing any

kind of first rate or quasi- first rate literary, 15

critical or artistic work in America today

who isn't indebted to James Huneker more than he can ever know.

If he has not been

influenced by the work, the style, the Mon taigne-like Que sais - je ? he has been in fluenced by the atmosphere that he has created — the atmosphere of great names pounded into the skulls of These States in season and out for a quarter of a century . Huneker was the American Columbus who discovered Europe for us. He was the robust Santa Maria that made many voyages and

brought back curious loot and radiant gods clanking in the golden chains of his prose ;

and about the authenticity of his captives and his treasures have raged many contro versies even unto Texas. His books are an

education in European culture which got past the customs inspectors on the walls of our Chinese provincialism and percolated into the

darkest fashionable circles

of

Topeka. He translated another world for us, gave

up acp suer in the beginning of the century beyond the reaches of our Mississippi Valley and Salem , Massachusetts, souls.

The names of certain Europeans —- today become household words even among the

Saturday Evening Posters — sounded when 16

3

he first introduced them like new Russian gargoyles, French double entendres and the

twenty -seventh spaghetti.

variety

of

Neopolitan

He was an American with a great mission , and he pursued it with an inflexibility, an isolated hardihood and a fatalistic belief in

his ultimate star that are only found in the psyches of men of the highest caste in the

hierarchy of culture. If there is ever a real culture in this coun try its roots will run in many directions ; but

historians will not dig very far before they run across the Huneker -root, not only be cause of its tremendous vitality and world tentacles but because of its stark individual ism and militant sap .

He is the greatest of patriots who raises the intellectual levels of his country ; and James Huneker is therefore, to me, the greatest of twentieth century Americans. “ Bedouins ” >

Steeplejack " is Huneker's Apologia pro

vita sua and is the greatest book of personal and artistic matter that has ever been done

in America. None of the insipidities of George Moore, the peeping chambermaid of 17

English literature.

But that's another

story .

' Bedouins " is a book of gardens, with the species Mary to the fore. Huneker has done Our Mary à la Turner. It is a prose - portrait in the grand Venetian manner in color and character. We have Garden the Super woman , Garden Intimate, Garden the Inter

preter, Garden as Mélisande, Cleopatra, Thaïs, as Herself. After reading the forty three pages dedicated to this subtle Hoot

Lady I have not the slightest desire to see her evermore ; I prefer to look at her on the tapestries of Huneker's pages. The Garden was an actress ; she has now Is it her final role ? become literature. No ! She is to do Isolde ! And at this

thought Huneker goes into a cataleptic trance, a state of hypostatic eroticism and cosmical frenzy .

Would that James could

have played Tristan to her scarf !

And

George Luks as King Marke.

After swimming out of Garden's Mélis andic hair we meet in the wings Anatole

France, George Luks, Chopin, Botticelli, Poe, Brahms, Mirbeau , Caruso and Debussy.

There is always something new about these men when “ Jim ” touches the electric button

that leads to his switchboard of adjectives, 18

epigrams, verbal nouns and crashing ex clamatories.

The pilgrimage to the home of George Luks is a gem in which we get Huneker the man -of- the- streets at his best.

Luks is as

great in his way in this country as Huneker. Luks is the sort of man that Huneker dotes

. “ Puck, a Caliban, a Falstaff . He is a tornado. He is sentimental. He can sigh on

like a lover and curse like a trooper

.

a

character actor, a low comedian , even song and -dance man, a poet, a profound sympa thizer with human misery, and a human orchestra. The vitality of him !” The famous meeting took place around the

Jumel Mansion, where one may look down on New York and curse it à la de Rastignac. I was at the Polo Grounds, just downstairs, that day — and I did not know ! But it is all embalmed in “ Bedouins.” >

Turn from “ George Luks” to a “Masque of Music ” and you get the whole range of

Huneker. From the subway to the Cliff of the World, from Washington Heights to the heights that never were on sea or land or visioned from an airplane. This is a sublime piece of prose, the ecstatic symphony of a mad melomaniac

who pounds and blows a thousand instru 19

ments at once , uses stones and atoms and

stars and trees for ivories, and ends with

the collapse of the Sphinx as it sinks into the sands in an apotheosis of ironic laughter. The second part of the book contains seven short stories in that exotic vein that is as

peculiar to Huneker as the visions of Lafcadio Hearn are peculiar to Lafcadio Hearn or the diabolism of Barbey D'Aure

villy are peculiar to that eccentric genius. It is Latinity in extremis and de profundis. James Huneker was the end of the nine teenth century in Europe and the beginning of the twentieth in America. II.

THE STEEPLEJACK

N

I

opening the first volume of

's ack ,” , which Hunekered ' Steeplej graphy autobio one isis confront by his portrait. Ecce Hobo ! ” I exclaimed . The hobo of

the Seven Arts, the playboy of culture, the great vaudevillist of life looks at you in a

picture that reveals all the contradictions of a soul whose tragedy is humorous and whose

humor is tragic. It is a diaphanous mask of 20

ironic mischief behind which reigns an iron will, the ego of an Anarch .

The cynicism of the left side of the mouth

hurls the lie at the babylike smile barely traced on the right side of the mouth . But they were both pals behind the mask . The

portrait was of the man and his book , the portrait of a man who defied life and death

and, above all, happiness, which is a living death .

The book itself is a Babel of confession , anecdote and reminiscence. Its note is comic

sincerity. The heart and brain and nerves of the man are strewn helter - skelter over

the pages. It is an arsenal of epigrams, an Odyssey of psychic and physical adventure, a symphony of gossip , a violent purge for sentimentalists.

It is the challenge of a cultured superman

to his generation . And withal a profoundly human book, as it could not be otherwise, for the author was human

all - to - human .

And of self -pity there is not a toxic drop. Why “ Steeplejack " ? Because Huneker was a steeplejack of art and life. His

brother Paul was a real steeplejack in Phila delphia. Little Jim sat on the roof of the cathedral in Logan Square, Philadelphia,

while his brother, like the Master Builder, 21

clambered to the pinnacle of the edifice. Great Vision is the passion of his blood. And because And now when the Great Noon had come

Steeplejack touched the tip of the spire, where instead of a cross he found a vane which swung as the wind listeth. Thereat he

marveled and rejoiced. “ Behold ! ' he cried, thou glowing symbol of the New Man. A weathercock and a mighty twirling. This, then, shall be the sign set in the sky for Im moralists : A cool brain and aa wicked heart.

Nothing is true. All is permitted, for all is necessary.' ” Thus spake Steeplejack . Also

" I am not what I am .”. — Othello .

The “ Apology ” to the book contains the creed of militant individualism .

It is the

challenge of egotism to hypocrisy. It is a re formulation of the Emersonian doctrine of

self- reliance and the “ Song of Myself ” of Walt Whitman, who said naïvely, “ I find no

sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.” 66

"Nothing succeeds like insincerity," says Huneker. And a Russian has said, “ Ego tism is the salt of life."

Let us admit, ” continues Huneker, " that we are all egotists as we are all snobs, ac

cording to Thackeray ; ... a world without 22

egotism would cease to exist ; every grain of sand is self-centered, every monad has its day.”

Conceding then , he says, that the charge is true that he is a “professional egotist,”

why shouldn't he write his memoirs, relate his adventures among mediocrities ?

He

says that he is himself aa mediocrity, a “Jack of the Seven Arts, master of none. " He is,

he says, only a “newspaper man .” The humility of these egotists ! When he

calls himself a “ mediocrity ” I put it down to a passing attack of psychic dyspepsia caused by his inability to digest the worlds

he had conquered and his o’erguzzling of hippocrene. But maybe Huneker was a hypocrite when

he consigned himself to mediocrity. “We are all,” he says, “hypocrites, whether we >

call ourselves idealists or pragmatists."> There are biological and psychological laws

that prevent us from presenting ourselves as we are to the world. The law of life is to

see ourselves as we are not. Happy trick of Maya ! In a word, we are all hypocrites and egotists and snobs. A fine thing for the world if we all agreed to admit it to one another as Huneker does to his audience. 23

But that Utopia of Sincerity is some miles in the clouds as yet.

The autobiography proper extends over a period of fifty years. It begins in Philadel

phia, before horse cars were known, and ends at Atlantic City, where we see Huneker taking his maiden air -flight. It is a loop in

which is netted all the artistic, operatic, lit erary and musical celebrities of two worlds, whose pictures are sprinkled throughout the book . It is a great " movie " of the intellec >

tual progress of the “ moderns.” Huneker had met or corresponded with in that time almost every actor, writer, artist and singer of any note. He says his letters from cele brated men and women would fill volumes. Will we ever see them ?

Huneker was a Philadelphian of Hunga rian and Irish extraction .

The Hunekers

have been in this country since 1700, which is the reason why his cosmopolitanism peeled off like dry paint from a cracked wall when President Wilson proclaimed our

nation at war." (And he says, parentheti cally, “Our country first. This is aa fighting planet. Pacifism is a pipe -dream . The Lord

is a man of war. Tolle, lege ! " )

The first seventeen chapters tell us of his childhood and boyhood in Philadelphia, from 24

the time he was born till he became “ Jim the

Penman ." To a person born in Philadelphia , like myself, these chapters will carry to his mental nostrils the mystical incense of scrap ple, pepperpot and Finelli's fried . Names of

actors, round -the -towners, politicians and singers that I thought were buried deep under the quicklime of oblivion come to me, quick and pulsing, out of their tombs at the call of Huneker's knuckles. It is a. series of

tremendously vivid materializations. The first two things he can recall are the fall of Richmond and the scene in Indepen dence Hall when the body of Abraham Lin

coln was carried in , although he knew noth ing of what it was about.

His boyhood life is depicted mercilessly, unsentimentally and humorously. He con fesses he was a physical coward and never fought fair. All the actions and reactions of Le Petit Jim are laid bare with a meat knife, not, as in the case of the Little Pierre of Ana

tole France, with a manicure scissors.

He

was a mother's skirt boy and a cry -baby. His queerness ” he ascribes to the fact that he came into the world two months before the

proper time and that he struggled between life and death for a long time wrapped in

cotton wool in a box above the mantelpiece, 25

the incubator of those days.

(Why didn't

they put you in a seidel, Jim ? ) After he had sat variously at the feet of

Walt Whitman, Mrs. John Drew , Blackstone, Locomotive Baldwin (where he served an ap

prenticeship to be a railroad engineer ! ) , Alec McClure, Joe Gasslein, the brilliant Old Soak ; Dio Lewis, Lydia Thompson, Lily Hinton ( I have seen her from the 10-cent

Olympus at Forepaugh's Theatre) , Ruther ford B. Hayes and Lemon Hill, the wander lust hit the future Janitor of the Temple of the Seven Arts. He set out for Paris with

little in his jeans and Chimera in his head. Bohemia or Bust ! was his motto.

Victor

Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, the Moulin Rouge, Gustave Flaubert, the Hill and the petit verre called.

Paris, “ the book of ivory, gold and irony,"

was the New Jerusalem to the youthful James. He gave all his buried Philadelphia complexes a much -needed airing. (Paris is the suppressed desires of Philadelphia .) At the Café Guerbois he met the astounding

Villiers de l'Isle Adam, “the most artistic liar of his time” and one of the greatest writers of any time. These chapters on Bohemian Paris of

fifty years ago shimmer and glow in the 26

prose of Huneker, as life takes on a new meaning when interpreted in the terms of

his radiant fatality. He writes as he feels, not as he thinks, which is literature as dis tinct from merely good writing. Most books are read as we lie on the When I read broad of our mental backs.

Huneker's books I lie curled up in my atten tion for hours.

Chapter X. tells us how Huneker treated

a King, Milan of Serbia. It is a rip -roaring bit of anecdote in which Huneker was trimmed to a King's taste. A Philadelphian is not a cat he may not look at a King without being skinned alive. Once upon a time Huneker wrote some “ staked ”

thing about George Bernard Shaw .

The

editor wrote a head and called Shaw “ a

peasant lad .” This so stirred the tragic depths of Ibsen's own little Charlie Chaplin that he bombarded Huneker with all kinds

of Irish cusses. It was a famous controversy which almost caused Shaw to take to beef steak . The whole matter is thrashed out in

this book, with Huneker coming off best be cause he grins all the time, while Shaw, apostle, propagandist and all-around socio

logical faker, has only a literary sense of humor.

“ He is, ” however, says Huneker, 27

who met the diabolical Little Eva at Beiruth

in 1896, “as sweet and wholesome as John Burroughs or Edwin Markham . He looks like Everyman .”

These two chapters are a

great shindy. Huneker was

summoned ” to Oyster Bay

in November, 1915, by Theodore Roosevelt. He found the Colonel a scholarly man, fond of the arts. Among the things he showed the author of “ Steeplejack ” was a photo graph of Andrew Carnegie taken in Berlin during the military manoeuvres . Both Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Carnegie were

guests of Kaiser Wilhelm .

On the photo

graph the Kaiser had politely scribbled , >

" That old fool, Andrew Carnegie . ” This was

probably , Huneker guesses , an allusion to the Peace Palace at The Hague.

But this book is such a mine of well-nigh everything human and superhuman, artis tic and personal, that one is simply dazed when he tries to select bits of its tempo and quality.

Comes the “ Coda ” of “ Steeplejack . ” The final paragraph is worth printing in full: “ I can't play cards or billiards. I can't read day and night. I take no interest in the chessboard of politics, and I am not too pious. What shall I do ? Music, always 28

music ! There are certain compositions of

my beloved Chopin to master which eternity itself would not be too long. The last page of the Second Ballade as Anton Rubinstein

played it, in apocalyptic thundertones ! Or the study in double - thirds rippled off by the velvety fingers of De Pachmann ! I once more place the notes on the piano desk.

Courage ! Time is fugacious. How many years have I not played that magic music ? Music the flying vision - music that merges with the tender air ; its image melts in shy

mystic shadows ; the cloud, the cloud, the singing, shining cloud - over the skies and

far away ; the beckoning cloud.” Thus ends the Book of Huneker. III.

“ VARIATIONS . "

LOOK on my friendship — both actual

1

and epistolary — of twenty years with James Huneker as one of my most pre cious and inspiring possessions. It was

he who pronounced for me “ Open Sesame !” before the golden gates of European liter ature and art. I have never been on the Con

tinent of Europe - except mentally. It was James Huneker in the opening years of this 29

century who was both Cook and Baedeker to me .

Then there were his electric, dynamic

men he loved , his carousing, tolerant and vivid personality, his scholarship — often obscured by his incandescent brilliancy style, his ecstatic enthusiasm before the perfect union of heart and head , his aristocratic democracy, his insatiable pur 7

suit of variation , his swift and acute evalua tions of men and their product -- all these came with terrific impact on myself and the rising generation of Americans at a time

when we were crying for a Moses to lead us out of the house of the slavery of pro vincialism .

Although we were both on the same paper

- the old morning Sun

-

at the time he be

came dramatic editor — succeeding, I be lieve, Franklin Fyles

-

we did not meet.

He seldom came to the office. But on the ap

pearance of his first Sunday article

on

D'Annunzio and Duse — the latter at that

time appearing in “ La Citta Morta , ” “ La Gioconda ” and other plays of the great Italian poet at the Metropolitan Opera House - I struck up a correspondence with him. 30

1

V

"Here is the American I have been look

ing for," I said to myself. “ Here is the man who will lay the House of Smug in ruins the American who lays about him with a »

jewelled club . " I think my first letter to him began with “ Ecce Homo ! ”

at which the

brain of Jim Huneker must have smiled with

a grin. His sense of humor was half of his genius.

Then began an intermittent correspon dence of about three years before I ever laid eyes on one of the greatest literary magi cians that this country has yet produced. I first saw him at the old Garden Theatre,

at an opening performance of one of Zang will's plays — the name of which now es capes me. I could not get to him between the acts.

The last time I saw Huneker was about a month before his death . He was coming out

of the Metropolitan Opera House. He looked tired and bored, as indeed he was. We went to a bar, where we drank near beer. His re

marks about prohibition were all that a free born

American's

should

be - although

quite, quite unprintable. All of James Huneker's work from " Mez zotints in Modern Music " to " Variations »" is

a variation on one theme — genius.. 31

Did

ever a man

-

with the exception of Victor

Hugo ever glorify in such prose the one thing that justifies the existence of man on

the planet - genius — as James Huneker's ? Genius was to him the vestibule to the temple of the Mansion in the Skies.

The productions of the great composers, writers, painters, poets and sculptors made for him aa veritable fairyland. And with the magic of words he lifts all his readers bodily into that Never -Never Land.

He knew more than any other man of his

time the esoteric meaning of "And in the beginning was the Word ” – without ex pression there can be no creation . The Word is the creational fiat. There must always be an Annunciation . Music was the Eternal Beauty of Plato made manifest in sound ;

poetry was its epiphany in words ; paint its efflorescence in color. His valuations were instantaneous — immediate reactions of his

exquisite sensibility to eternals. He was the

arch -enemy of the academic, of the platitu dinous, of the sentimental, of lipstick English .

He possessed that rarest of gifts among writers —ecstasy. From his pen there came a frenzy - a frenzy of joy in his work that was pagan. He thought and felt dithyram 32

or

bically. He hurled his seed and forgot the

ne

On

harvest — going on to new fields.. To me, Huneker, physically as well as ar

's?

tistically, seemed to leave a trail of unearthly

ble

light behind him. And withal he was the most modest of men

rs ,

a man who always seemed somewhat

de he

ashamed of his greatness. Or did he wear

aly

that mask of clownishness that Nietzsche told every great man to don when he went

nis

among the swineherds and long - ears ? I put it as a question through sheer politeness -

he

for I know what I know .

EX

Huneker loved human nature with the

rd

same passion as Walt Whitman .

I have

be nal

stood for hours with him while he talked to

bartenders, cabbies , policemen , gamblers

ad ;

and porters. He was curious of everything

its

and that God had created . Optimism “ pessimism were to him obsolete words.

re

>

his he

Life was good because it was an adventure.

CU

Huneker. Experience was Grace. In one of

ck

his last letters to me he said happiness was

Good and evil were also mere words to

a snare — no man could be happy and

create. He was Rabelaisian, Heinesque —

me

and as gentle as a woman.

.64

ng

at

In a word, the most extraordinary man with Poe, Whitman , Saltus and Bierce – 33

that America has produced, and in his field their equal. Szukalski, the sculptor, says that criti cism is a bird and a sword . The “ criticism " a bird and a of Huneker was just that sword . He flew while he destroyed . He builded and razed with the same hand.

Francis Wilson put it beautifully in his speech over the corpse of Huneker at the

Town Hall when he spoke of his “ construc tive condemnation ” — referring to Hune ker's work as dramatic critic.

Huneker

despised fake, sham , puff, camouflage, bunk - in fact, he despised and satirized publicly and privately almost everything that makes up the America of today. But no man uttered louder or longer hosannas when an

American did something real in art, letters, the drama or music.

Huneker was not attached to any school, movement or ism.

He was Huneker first,

last and all the time. ““My truth is the truth ," he has uttered , quoting Max Stirner. With the sublime effrontery of Goethe he took what he needed from other men and

tossed it in the alembic of his own sensibility . He was like Remy de Gourmont — not guilty of the vice of mediocre writers of always being sincere. He was Latin - and 34

when he felt like lying beautifully he did so . To him imagination and vision were truth and they are all ye need to know. The most astonishing thing about the work and that which makes

of James Huneker

him unique in America — is that three fourths of his greatest creative work was published in the newspapers. It is a great tribute to the New York Sun, the New York Times and the New York World that they

allowed this great man full and untram melled utterance.

Huneker was always

proud of his newspaper affiliations, and he always insisted that he was just a

news

paper man .” No one could “ swell ” that per fectly balanced head !

“ Variations ” is a splendid introductory volume to the study of the sixteen other volumes of James Huneker. They all reveal

his polyphonic and his polychromatic soul. The book consists of thirty - four essays on as widely varying subjects as George Moore and Roosevelt. Here is Huneker viewed

from a thousand angles. Here is Huneker reproducing himself as he sees himself in a thousand mirrors in a thousand different Hold your breath as you go costumes.

through this book — touring the universe 35

with a man who takes all of life in its ever

lasting fecundity and efflorescence for his theme.

With the lightness of an intellectual Mord

kin he capers, flits and pirouettes from Flau bert to Pennell, from alcohol to Chopin , from old prints to Browning, from socialism (which he despised as the triumph of medi ocrity and vulgarity ) to Faust, from Cosima >

Wagner to “ Potterism ,” from Caruso to Buddha, from Nordau to Jack Haverly. IV.

THE LETTERS

HE psychical root of James Huneker

T

was ecstasy.

His life was a furor.

The Witch of Atlas presided at his birth . In her satanic prankishness

she gave him many roles. She touched him

with the divine madness of Blake, the ob

scene frivolities of Rabelais, the dark vision of Hamlet, the red madness of Bellona, the whimsies of Puck, and the poisoned poignard of Swift.

Just touched him

for the wise

Witch was careful to give him a guide, a Sancho

Panza.

This Sancho Panza was

James Huneker the one-hundred -per -cent safe and sane Yankee. 36

Huneker's ecstasy of style is exotic in America . He was as extraordinary an ap

parition as Poe, Saltus, Bierce, and Cabell.

In the worst of all possible democracies he was an aristocrat. In a country where col

lective stupidity is the national genius, Huneker was

an extreme individualist.

Among a people where artists are ranked with Sodomic idiots, he was the keeper of the

Grail, of which we younger tribe were merely the Sir Galahads. And, paradox of paradoxes, he got a hearing from the very first in his native land ! He was the luckiest

man ever born under the flag with the forty

eight eclipses.

He poured vitality. His speech was iri descent. He was the Will- to - Live incarnate. He always inspired me with the wish to rush

away and put down tremendous things on paper. He never talked like a book . He was

all things to all men. He was a cataract. He was ready for any sort of prank or adventure at the drop of the hat. And the hat dropped often.

Where did this man get the time to absorb all that was in that skull? He carried within

him the culture, ideals, politics and religions of the whole human race up to date. He

must have been given the use of those mirac 37

ulous intercalated days of which Emerson somewhere speaks. In that wonderful book of Rabelais there

is one Gargantua who ate and drank like a

munitions manufacturer in a neutral coun try. The world worked for Huneker as it did for Gargantua. For him it sweated its arts, sciences, and religions. His soul was

a maw . His brain was a mart, a bazaar, a Versailles where the Nine Muses came to carouse .

These letters are of no interest to any one

who does not like the work of Huneker. To

those who loved his work and his personality they are precious. They are veritably sweat

and sap and spit of the man. I can hear his voice in these pages. They begin in 1886 a letter to Alfred Barili, wherein he con -

fesses he is “ Wagner mad ”- and end in 1921 - a letter to Jules Bois, the last words -

of which are ... “horrible Travail that

kills the sacred instinct in us, this abomin able land of the free !

One gets from the letters the picture of a man who was a day laborer.

There was a

Must slug at the top of every page he wrote - written by the great god Necessity . He wrote to live.

Between times there were

always his beloved Chopin and Bach . 38

There is an endless flood of humor, and even auto -irony, in these letters. Humor the unarithmetical grin — was the antitoxin that saved Huneker's brain and nerves -

humor and Pilsener (one Easter morning I tried to out-seidel him, but I had to cry quits

at 10 a. m., when this Viking drinker was still at it) . These are the most fascinating letters, to

me, in existence. What a mixture of the grotesque, the coldly critical, the dithyram

bic, the colloquial, the commercial, the artis tic, the human, the cosmic, the reminiscent ! They sing and soar and weep . They are the daily telegrams to the world of the rarest thing in America - an Indi -

vidual. V.

“ THE DREAM -BARN ” WAS the guest one night in his

I

at Seventy -sixth and Madison avenue, his only guest that “ Dream -Barn

evening.

After supper he said he

would play Chopin for me. He disappeared. Emerged , dressed in his pajamas. Pulled out from under the table a case of iced Pilsner. Loaded up on six or seven bottles, 39

he leaped on the piano stool and played

Chopin and Liszt in his “ nighties.” After ward toward midnight, Wagner and Chianti. I got the impression of an evening with a rare kind of dervish .

The Time-Moth may nibble away for eons

at the flesh jackets of the author of " Steeple jack ," but there he sits in his spiritual pajamas in the final Dream -Barn of space trying to master a page of the Second Ballade !

THE END

40

JAMES GIBBONS

HUN EKER

A Bibliography By

Joseph Lawren

As this is a tentative list for an ultimate definitive bibliography I shall welcome with gratitude additions and corrections.

JOSEPH LAWREN

220 W'est 42nd Street, New York

i

1

BIBLIOGRAPHY HUNEKER BOOKS 1

(1) MEZZOTINTS IN MODERN MUSIC

1899

MEZZOTINTS / IN MODERN Music / Brahms, Tschaikowsky,

Chopin / Richard Strauss, Liszt / and Wagner / By / James Huneker / New York / Charles Scribner's Sons / 1899 / CONTENTS :The Music of the Future, A Modern Music Lord,

Richard Strauss and Nietzsche, The Greater Chopin, A Liszt Etude, The Royal Road to Parnassus, A Note on Richard Wagner. (2) CHOPIN : THE MAN AND HIS MUSIC

1900

CHOPIN / The Man and His Music / By / James Huneker / New York / Charles Scribner's Sons / 1900 /

CONTENTS : - Part 1.

The man : Poland ; - Youthful Ideals,

Paris : - In the Maelstrom, England, Scotland and Pere la Chaise, The Artist ; - Poet and Psychologist, Part II. His Music ; — The Studies ; — Titanic Experiments, Moods in Miniature : - The Preludes; - Impromptus and Valses, Night and its Melancholy Mysteries, The Nocturnes, The Ballades; -Faery Dramas, Classical Currents, The Polonaises ; Heroic Hymns of Battle,, Mazurkas ; - Dances of the Soul, Chopin the Conqueror, Bibliography. (3)

1

MELOMANIACS 1902

MELOMANIACS / By / James Huneker / Marlowe, “Come, let us marche against the powers of heaven, / and set black stream

1

ers in the firmament, / to signify the slaughter of the Gods," / New York / Charles Scribner's Sons / 1902. CONTENTS : -- The Lord's Prayer in B, A Son of Liszt, A Chopin of the Gutter, The Piper of Dreams, An Emotional

!

Acrobat, Isolde's Mother, The Rim of Finer Issues, An Ibsen

Girl, Tannhauser's Choice, The Red-Headed Piano Player, 42

JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER

Brynhild's Immolation, The Quest of the Elusive, An In voluntary Insurgent, Hunding's Wife, The Corridor of Time,

Avatar, The Wegstaffes Give a Musicale, The Iron Virgin, Dusk of the Gods, Siegfried's Death, Intermezzo, A Spinner of Silence, The Disenchanted Symphony, Music the Conqueror. (4) OVERTONES 1904

OVERTONES / A Book of Temperaments / Richard Strauss, Par sifal, Verdi, Balzac, / Flaubert, Nietzsche, and Turgenieff / By / James Huneker / ( Quotation ) Do I Contradict Myself ? / Very well, then , I Contradict myself. /Walt Whitman / With Portrait / New York / Charles Scribner's Sons / 1904.

CONTENTS : - Part I. Richard Strauss, Part II. Parsifal ; A Mystic Melodrama: The Book , The Music, Part III. Nietz sche the Rhapsodist, Part IV. Literary Men Who Loved Music : The Musical Taste of Turgenieff, Balzac as Music

Critic, Alphonse Daudet, George Moore : Evelyn Innes, Sister Teresa , Part V.

Anarchs of Art, Part VI. The Beethoven

of French Prose : Flaubert and His Art, The Two Salambos, Part VII.

Verdi and Boito : Boito's Mefistofele, Part VIII.

The Eternal Feminine, Part IX . After Wagner - What ?, The

Caprice of the Musical Cat, Wagner and the French, Isolde and Tristan .

(5) ICONOCLASTS 1905

ICONOCLASTS / A Book of Dramatists / Ibsen, Strindberg, Bec que, Hauptmann / Sudermann, Hervieu, Gorky, Duse and /

D'Annunzio, Maeterlinck and Bernard Shaw / By / James Huneker / My Truth is the Truth / -Max Stirner / New York Į Charles Scribner's Sons .

CONTENTS: — Henrik Ibsen , August Strindberg, Henry Bec que, Gerhart Hauptmann, Paul Hervieu, The Quintessence of Shaw , Maxim Gorky's Nachtasyl, Hermann Sudermann, Prin cess Mathilde's Play, Duse and D'Annunzio, Villiers De l'Isle Adam, Maurice Maeterlinck . 43

1

1

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(6) VISIONARIES

1905

VISIONARIES / By / James Huneker / J'aime les nuages . . . la .

bas . ../ --Baudelaire / New York / Charles Scribner's Sons / 1905 / CONTENTS : - A Master of Cobwebs, The Eighth Deadly Sin,

The Purse of Aholibah, Rebels of the Moon, The Spiral Road, A Mock Sun, Antichrist, The Eternal Duel, The Enchanted Duel, The Enchanted Yodler, The Third Kingdom, The

Haunted Harpsichord , The Tragic Wall, A Sentimental Re bellion, Hall of the Missing Footsteps, The Cursory Light, An Iron Fan , The Woman Who Loved Chopin , The Tune of Time, Nada, Pan .

(7 ) EGOISTS 1909

EGOISTS / A Book of Supermen / Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flau bert, Anatole France, / Huysmans, Barres, Nietzsche, Blake,

Ibsen, / Stirner, and Ernest Hello / By / James Huneker / With Portrait of Stendhal; Unpublished Letter of Flaubert ; and

original proof page of Madam Bovary,/ New York / Charles Scribner's Sons / 1909. CONTENTS : - Goethe, Sentimental Education ; Henry Beyle Stendhal, The Baudelaire Legend, The Real Flaubert, Anatole France, The Pessimists' Progress ; J. K. Huysmans, The Evo lution of an Egoist; Maurice Barres, Phases of Nietzsche:

The Will to Suffer, Nietzsche's Apostasy, Antichrist,Mystics, Ernest Hello, Mad Naked Blake, Francis Poictevin, The Road to Damascus, From an Ivory Tower, Ibsen, Max Stirner.

(8) PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST 1910

PROMENADES / OF AN / IMPRESSIONIST / By James Huneker / New York / Charles Scribner's Sons / 1910. 44

レ

JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER

41

CONTENTS : - Paul Cezanne, Rops the Ether, Monticelli, Rodin, Eugene Carriere, Degas, Botticelli, Six Spaniards; El Greco ,

Velasquez, Goya, Fortuny, Sorolla, Zuoloaga, Chardin , Black and White ; Piranesi, Meryon, John Martin , Zorn, Brangwyn,

Daumier, Lalanne, Legrand, Guys, Impressionism : Monet, Renoir, Manet, A New Study of Watteau, Gauguin and Tou louse - Lautrec, Literature and Art : Museum

Promenades ,

Pictures at the Hague, Art in Antwerp, The Mesdag Museum, Museums of Brussels, Hals of Haarlem , Bruges the Beautiful, Pictures in Amsterdam, The Moreau Museum, Pictures in Madrid, El Greco at Toledo, Velasquez in the Prado, Coda.

(9) FRANZ LISZT

1911

FRANZ LISZT / By / James Huneker / With Illustrations / New York / Charles Scribner's Sons / 1911 . CONTENTS : - Liszt ; - The Real and Legendary Aspects of His Art and Character, The B-Minor Sonata and Other Piano Pieces, At Rome, Weimar and Budapest, As Composer, Mir

rored by His Contemporaries, In the Footsteps of Liszt, Liszt Pupils as Lisztiana, Modern Pianoforte Virtuosi, Instead of a Preface.

( 10) THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 1913

THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE / A Book of / A Thousand and One

Moments / By James Huneker / New York / Charles Scribner's Sons / 1913 /.

CONTENTS : -- The Magic Lantern , The Later George Moore ; Memoirs of My Dead Life, The Recrudescence of Evelyn , More Memories, A Half- Forgotten Romance : A Tragic

Comedian,TheRealIsolde - Wagner's Autobiography, Certain American Painters : Whistler, Arthur B. Davis ; - A Painter

Visionary, Matisse, Picasso - and others : The Matisse Draw ings, Pablo Picasso, Ten Years Later, Lithographs of Tou louse-Lautrec, New Promenades of an Impressionist; Art in Cologne and Cassel, Art in Frankfort, New York - Cosmopolis,

English Masters in the Collection of John Howard McFadden , 45

BIBLIOGRAPHY

How Widor Played at St. Sulpice. The Celtic Awakening : John M. Synge, A Poet of Vision , The Artist and His Wife,

Browsing Among My Books: Gautier the Journalist, Maeter linck's Macbeth , Pater Reread, A Precursor of Poe , Mme. Daudet's Souvenirs, The DeLenz Beethoven , Ideas and Images, The Eternal Philanderer, The New English Nietzsche, The

Last Days of Verlaine, The Pathos of Distance, In Praise of Fireworks, A Philosophy for Philistines : Jacobean Adventures, The Playboy of Western Philosophy, A Belated Preface to Egoists. ( 11 ) OLD FOGY 1913

OLD FOGY / His Musical Opinions / And Grotesques / With an Introduction / By James Huneker / Theodore Presser Co. /

1712 Chestnut St., Philadelphia / London , Weekes & Co. /. CONTENTS : - Introduction, Old Fogy is Pessimistic, Old Fogy

Goes Abroad, The Wagner Craze,In Mozartland with Old Fogy, Old Fogy Discusses Chopin, More Anent Chopin , Piano Playing Today and Yesterday, Four Famous Virtuosos, The

Influence of Daddy Liszt, Bach - Once -Last -and All the Time, Schumann A Vanishing Star, “ When I played for Liszt," Wagner Opera in New York , A Visit to the Paris Conserva toire, Tone Versus Noise, Tschaikowsky, Musical Biography

Made to Order, Old Fogy Writes a Symphonic Poem , A Col lege for Critics, A Wonder Child .

( 12 ) NEW COSMOPOLIS 1915

New COSMOPOLIS / A Book of Images / Intimate New York ,

Certain European Cities / Before the War : Vienna, Prague Little / Holland, Belgian Etchings, Madrid, Dublin / Marien bad, Atlantic City and Newport / By / James Gibbons Huneker New York / Charles Scribner's Sons / 1915 . CONTENTS : - Part I. Intimate New York, The Fabulous East Side, The Lungs, The Waterways, The Matrix , The Maw of 46

JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER the Monster, The Night Hath a Thousand Eyes, Brain and Soul and Pocketbook, Coney Island ; By Day, By Night.

Part II. Certain European Cities Before the War : Vienna, Prague, Little Holland : Rotterdam , Through the Canals,

Holland en Fete, Belgian Etchings : Brussels, Little Cities and the Beaches. Madrid, Dear Old Dublin, Fighting Fat at Marienbad. Part III. Sand and Sentiment : Atlantic City, Newport.

( 13 ) IVORY APES AND PEACOCKS 1915

IVORY APES AND PEACOCKS / Joseph Conrad, Walt Whitman, /

Jules Laforgue, Dostoievsky and Tolstoy, / Schoenberg, Wede kind, Moussorgsky, Cezanne, Vermeer, Matisse, VanGogh , Gau guin , / Italian Futurists, Famous Latter- Day Poets / Painters, Composers and Dramatists / By / James Huneker / New York /

Charles Scribner's Sons / 1915 / -

CONTENTS : - The Genius of Joseph Conrad, A Visit to Walt Whitman , The Buffoon of the New Eternities; - Jules La forgue, Dostoievsky and Tolstoy, and the Younger Choir of

Russian Writers, Arnold Schoenberg, Music of Today and Tomorrow , Frank Wedekind, The Magic Vermeer, Richard

Strauss at Stuttgart, Max Liebermann and some Phases of German Art, A Musical Primitive: Modest Moussorgsky, New Plays By Hauptmann, Suderman and Schnitzler , Kubin, Munch and Gauguin ; — Masters of Hallucination, The Cult of the Nuance : Lafcadio Hearn , The Melancholy of Master pieces, The Italian Futurist Painters, The Workshop of Zola, A Study of DeMaupassant, Puvis de Chavannes, Three Dis agreeable Girls. ( 14) THE PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY 1917

THE PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY / OF / NEW YORK / AND ITS / SEVENTY FIFTH ANNIVERSARY / A Retrospect / By / James Gibbons Huneker 1917. Compliments of / The Philharmonic Society of New York / Carnegie Hall, N. Y. 47

BIBLIOGRAPHY

( 15 ) UNICORNS 1917

UNICORNS / By / James Huneker / " I would write on the lintels of the door-post, 'Whim '”, / -Emerson / New York, Charles Scribner's Sons / 1917. CONTENTS : - In Praise of Unicorns, An American Composer ; The Passing of Edward MacDowell, Remy de Gourmont ; His

Ideas, The Colour of His Mind. Artzibashef, A Note on Henry James, George Sand, The Great American Novel, The Case of Paul Cezanne, Brahmsody, The Opinion of J. K. Huysmans, Style and Rhythm in English Prose, The Queerest Yarn in the World, On Kereading Mallock, The Lost Master, The Grand Manner in Pianoforte Playing, James Joyce, Cre

ative Evolution, Four Dimensional Vistas , O. W., A Synthesis of the Seven Arts, The Classic Chopin, Little Mirrors of Sin cerity, The Reformation of George Moore, Pillowland, Cross Currents in Modern French Literature, More About Richard

Wagner, My First Musical Adventure, Violinists, Now and Yesteryear, Riding the Whirlwind, Prayers for the Living. ( 16) THE STEINWAY COLLECTION OF PAINTINGS 1919

THE / STEINWAY COLLECTION / OF PAINTINGS by / American Artists / Together With / Prose Portraits / of the Great Com posers by / James Huneker / Published by / Steinway & Sons / 1919.

CONTENTS : - Chopin , Wagner and Liszt, MacDowell , Beet

hoven, Berlioz, Mozart, Verdi , Mendelssohn, Handel , Ruben stein , Schubert.

( 17) PAINTED VEILS 1920

PAINTED VEils / by / James Huneker / " La Veritie toute nue ! Je vomis mes maitres . " / Steeplejack. / Boni & Liveright / >

Publishers New York . 48

JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER

( 18 ) BEDOUINS

1920

BEDOUINS / Mary Garden / Debussy / Chopin or the Circus Botticelli / Poe, Brahmsody / Anatole France / Mirbeau Caruso on Wheels / Calico Cats / The Artistic Temperament Idols and Ambergris / With the Supreme Sin / Grindstones

/ / / /

A Masque of Music / and / The Vision Malefic / By / James Huneker /With Various Portraits of Mary Garden in / Operatic Costume / New York / Charles Scribner's Sons / 1920.

CONTENTS : -- Part I. Mary Garden, Superwoman , Intimate, The Baby, The Critic — and the Guitar Interpreter, Melisande and Debussy, The Artistic Temperament, The Passing of Octave Mirbeau, Anarchs and Ecstasy, Painted Music, Poe

and His Polish Contemporary, George Luks, Concerning Calico Cats, Chopin or the Circus, Caruso on Wheels, Sing and Grow Voiceless , Anatole France ; The Last Phase, A Masque of Music, Part II.

Idols and Ambergris ; The Supreme Sin,

Brothers-in -law , Grindstones, Venus or Valkyr ?, The Cardinals Fiddle, Renunciation.

The Vision Malefic.

( 19 )

STEEPLEJACK 1920

STEEPLEJACK / By / James Gibbons Huneker / " I find no sweeter

fat than sticks to my own bones" / Walt Whitman, New York / Charles Scribner's Sons .

1920.

CONTENTS : - Preface ; Apology, Vol. 1. Part I. In Old Philadelphia ; I am Born , My Grandfathers, Family Life, My Mother, I go to School, The Players, The Old Town, I Am a Penman, The Gossip of the Day, Magic, A Youthful Machinist,

Law My New Mistress, Musical Philadelphia, My Friends the Jews, The Girls, Music-Madness, Jim the Penman, Part II. Paris Forty Years Ago, I'm Afloat, In Paris at Last, The Maison Bernard, Madam Beefsteak, The Whirl of the Town,

Bohemia's Sea Coast, At Maxim's, I Interview the Pope, On the 49

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Trail of the Earthquake, I Treat a King, Home Again, Eternity

and the Town Pump, Vol. II. Part II. New York ( 1877 1917) , I Capture the City, Musical Journalism , In the Mael strom , The DeReszkes and Paderewski, Nordica and Fremstad, Oscar Hammerstein, Antonin Dvorak , Steinway Hall, A Prima

Donna's Family, Newspaper Experiences, Montsalvat, I Am a Free -Lance, Criticism , With Joseph Conrad, Brandes in New

York, The Colonel, Dramatic Critics, Early Ibsen, Pictures, New York in Fiction, A Vocal Abelard, “ M’lle New York”,

My Dream -Barn, My Zoo, My Best Friend, Autograph Letters, Mid - Victorian Max, G.B.S., His Letters, A Half-Hamlet, Coda. New Editon in one volume, 1922.

( 20 ) VARIATIONS 1921

VARIATIONS ! By / James Huneker / New York / Charles Scribner's Sons 1921.

CONTENTS : - Various, How Not to be a Genius, The Recan tations of George Moore, Crushed Violets, Baudelaire's Letters to His Mother, The Two Temptations, The Flaubert Anni -

versary, Roosevelt and Brandes, Pennell, Talks About Etching, In Praise of Prints, New Russia for Old, Cezanne, Eeli, Eeli,

Lomo Asovtoni?, Socialism and Mediocrity, Chopin or the

Circus, Art and 'Alcohol, The Tragic Chopin, Phases of the L Greater Chopin, The Twilight of Cosima, Idle Speculations, The Master Builder, Verdi's Otello. Faust and Mephisto, Bohemian Music, The Music of Yesterday, Liszt's Only Piano

Sonata, Dreaming of Liszt, A Brahma of the Keyboard, Con temporary Bran, A Mood Reactionary, Musical “ Potterism ,” My “Child Roland ,” Oscar and Dvorak, Enrico Caruso. ( 21 ) LETTERS

LETTERS OF / JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER / Collected / By / Josephine Huneker / New York / Charles Scribner's Sons / 1922 . Limited edition 1922. Same as the regular edition with addi

tions of portrait of James Gibbons Huneker, One of James Huneker's Rare Illustrated Letters, A Farewell note to Charles

and Mrs. Rosebault, Facsimile of one of James Gibbons Hune 50

JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER

ker's letters which was published in the Evening Sun , An an ticipatory fanciful portrait by George B. Luks done in 1911, Breakfast at Mouquins, Feb. 6 , 1916 , A study by Frueh which was made in the last year of James Gibbons Huneker's life. ( 22 ) INTIMATE LETTERS 1924

INTIMATE LETTERS / OF / JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER / collected and edited by / Josephine Huneker / Boni and Liveright, 1924.

51

BIBLIOGRAPHY CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOOKS

( B1 ) Dramatic Opinions / and Essays by G. Bern / ard Shaw / Con

taining as Well / A Word on the Dramatic / Opinions and Essays

of G. B. Shaw by James Huneker / Volume One / New York ; Brentano's / MCVI ( B2 )

Joseph Conrad / A Pen Portrait by James Huneker, April 20, 1914. Doubleday Page and Co.

( B3 )

The Poems / and Prose Poems of / Charles Baudelaire With an Introductory Preface by / James Huneker / New York / Bren tano's / 1919. ( B4) Huneker, J. G.

The development of piano music from the days of the clavi chord and harpsichord to the present time, represented in six

programs by Ossip Gabrilowitch ; historical and biographical notes by James Huneker.

New York, Boston . . . 1915-16.

52

JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER TRANSLATION

( A1 ) VISIONARI 1906

VISIONARIES / Written by James Huneker / from the English

with the author's consent with a preface by Arthur Breisky / The Modern Library / Publisher Vydavtel F. Adamek in Kral

Vinohradesh , Year V. Vol. III, Year 1906, in the month of November.

" J'aime les nuages

53

/ la bas ” Baudelaire /

BIBLIOGRAPHY

HUNEKER'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS 1900

Chopin : Scribner's Magazine, vol. 27, pages 194-9. February.

Passing of the Piano : Harper's Bazaar, vol. 33 ; pages 91-3; May 12. - Girl Who Plays Chopin : Harper's Bazaar, vol. 33 ; pages 466-8 ; June 23.

- Women and Music : Harper's Bazaar, vol. 33 ; pages 1306-8 ; Sept. 22 . Grand Opera in America : Harper's Bazaar, vol. 33 ; pages 1356-8 ; Sept. 29. >

1903

Master of Cobwebs : Scribner's Magazine, vol. 34, pages 693-9; December. 1904

Richard Strauss : Scribner's Magazine, vol. 35 ; pages 352-7 ; March.

Maeterlinck's Joyzelle : Lamp, vol. 27 ; pages 581-6 ; January. Arthur Symons and His New Book : Lomp, vol. 28 ; pages 374-8 ; June. Gerhart Hauptman : Lamp, vol. 29 ; pages 91-104 ; September. Maeterlinck and the Eternal Woman : Harper's Bazaar, vol. 38 ; pages 656-9 ; July 1905

August Strindberg : Lamp, vol. 29 ; pages 573-82 ; January.

Baudelaire Legend : Scribner's Magazine, vol. 45 ; pages 240-9 ; February 9. Bernard Shaw and Woman : Harper's Bazaar, vol. 39 ; pages 535-8 ; June. Joseph Jefferson : World's Work, vol. 10 ; pages 6317-20 ; June. Feminism in Modern Music : Harper's Bazaar, vol. 39 ; pages 691-4 ; August.

1906

Henrik Ibsen : Scribner's Magazine, vol. 40 ; pages 351-61 ; September. 54

JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER 1907

Anatole France : North American , vol. 184 ; pages 59-72 ; January 4.

Interpreter of Modernity : Current Literature, vol. 42 ; pages 167-8 ; February. Music of To-Morrow : Bookman, vol. 25 ; pages 32-3 ; March.

Master Artists of the Piano : Everybody's, vol. 16 ; pages 552-60 ; April.

Mine Enemy : Bookman, vol. 25 ; pages 501-4 ; July. Magic Lantern : Century Magazine, vol. 74 ; pages 417-21 ; July. Is There an American Type of Feminine Beauty ?: Everybody's, vol. 17 ; pages 238-47 ; August.

Evolution of an Egoist: Atlantic Monthly, vol. 100 ; pages 205-15 ; August. Pessimists Progress : North American , vol. 184; pages 41-54 ; September. Half-Forgotten Romance : Bookman, vol. 26 ; pages 148-54 ; October.

1908

Sentimental Education : Henry Beyle-Stendhal : Scribner's Magazine, vol. 43 ; pages 226-38 ; February.

Confessions of a Virtuoso : Harper's Weekly, vol. 52 ; page 17 ; Sept. 26.

New Isolde : Olive Fremstad : Century, vol. 77 ; pages 143-5 ; November.

1909

Man and His Music : Musician, vol. 40 ; pages 105-6 ; March.

Heroes and Heroines of the Violin : Everybody's Magazine, vol. 20 ; pages 656-67; May.

Individualist-E. C. Marsh : Forum , vol. 41 ; pages 600-5 ; June.

1910

Franz Liszt : Scribner's Magazine, vol. 50 ; pages 487-95; October. 55

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1912

What is the Matter With Our National Academy ?: Harper's Weekly. vol. 56 ; page 8 ; April 6. Real Rodin : Harper's Weekly, vol. 56 ; pages 13-16 ; June 1 . Last of the Viking Poets : Harper's Weekly, vol. 56 ; pages 19-20 ; July 27. 1913

Playboy of Western Philosophy – H . Bergson : Forum , vol. 49 ; pages 257-68 ; March.

Memories: Bookman, vol. 37 ; pages 598-601; August. 1914

McFadden Researches Are Revealing Cause of Disease, Public Ledger, January 18, 1914.

Music of Today and Tomorrow : Century, vol. 88 ; pages 33-37, May. Skulls and Crossbones and Nine Leaved Clover : Forum , vol. 52 ; pages 1-9 ; July

Melancholy of Masterpieces : Scribner's Magazine, vol. 56 ; pages 133-6 ; July.

Genius of Joseph Conrad :

North American , vol. 200 ; pages 270-9 ;

August.

Three Disagreeable Girls : Forum , vol. 52 ; pages 765-75 ; November. 1915

Case of Dr. Nordau : Forum, vol. 54 ; pages 571-87 ; November. ✓ Classic Chopin : Music Quarterly, vol. 1 ; pages 519-25 ; October. - Dostoievsky and Tolstoy : Forum , vol . 54 ; pages 201-16 ; August.

Johannes Brahms as a Song Composer : Musician, vol. 20 ; page 661 ; October .

Jules Laforgue : North American, vol. 202 ; pages 80-91 ; July. Musical Primitive : Forum , vol . 53 ; pages 269-76 ; February . A Study of Studies Old and New, Etude, March . 56

4

JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER Up the Slippery Slopes of Parnassus, Etude, May. Pegassus Flies Across Parnassus, Etude, September. 1916

Cardinal's Fiddle : Harper's Magazine, vol. 132 ; pages 257-9 ; January. Criticism of Our Neglect of a Great American Masterpiece : Current Opinion, vol. 60 ; page 52 ; January . Don Quixote of the Baton : Independent, vol. 85 ; page 196 ; February. Casuals of the Sand and Sea, New York Sun, August 2. Husband of Madame : Scribner's Magazine, vol. 60 ; pages 603-14 ; November.

Russian Ballet : Everybody's, vol. 34 ; page 146a -h ; February. Supreme Sin : Forum , vol. 55 ; pages 297-312 ; March. 1917

Remy de Gourmont : North American, vol. 205; pages 935-42 ; June. 1918

Frank Brangwyn, the Quality of His Work : Touchstone, vol. 3 ; pages 111-16 ; May. 1919

High Lights of the Musical Season : Century, vol. 98 ; pages 349-54 ; July. New Hedonism : Bookman, vol. 50 ; pages 311-15 ; November.

New York Voice : Quarterly Journal of Speech Education , vol. 5 ; pages 334-9 ; October. 1920

Lesson of the Master : Bookman, vol . 5 ; pages 364-8 ; May.

Musical Adventures of the Season : Century, vol. 100 ; pages 419-24 ; July. 1921

David Belasco : Theatre Arts Magazine, vol. 5 ; pages 259-67 ; October. 1924

Sheaf of James Huneker's Letters, edited by R. Cortissoz, Scribner's Magazine, vol. 72 ; pages 306-14 ; September. 57

BIBLIOGRAPHY CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NEW YORK TIMES 1913

Special articles on Jan Vermeer Van Delft, January 12. Max Liebermann, January 26 . German Playwrights, February 2. Frank Wedekind, March 2 . Special article on Prague, July 13.

Special article on Vienna, April 13. Special article on Richard Wagner, April 20. Special article on the Art of Kubin, Munch and Gauguin, May 11 . Book Review of the "Pathos of Distance."

Special article on the Season of Drama and Music in Berlin, June 1 . Special article on Berlin, June 22. 1914

Special article on Dublin, January 4. Special article on The Hague Peace Palace and on the Towns and Arts of Holland, March 8.

· On Sight Seeing Yacht Trip Around New York City, August 9. On Coney Island, August 30. On East Side, September 6.

.

0

- On the Subway, September 13.

On New York Restaurants and Cafes of a Quarter of a Century Ago,

.

September 27 .

Special article on The Nocturnal Transfiguration of New York, October 4 . Special article on picturesque London

season , Comments

on

Anatole

France, George B. Shaw, G. K. Chesterton, and Jacob Epstein, June 21 . 1915

Special - Special Special Article

article on rare art of Rafael Joseffy, July 4 . article on Brooklyn, July 11. article on M. Artzibashef, August 29. on Huneker's first ride in an aeroplane, October 24.

On Leschetizky and Liszt, November 28.

.

.

• Memories of the Metropolitan, April 25. Special article on the passing of the Eden Musee, June 20. 1916

.

Special article on G. Luks and His Work , February 6.

.

Special article on William McFee, August 20. Special article on “ Life of George Sand " by Vladimir Karenine, Septem

Special article on Modern Fiction and the Great American Novel, July 16. .

ber 3.

58

1

JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER Special article on Havana in Summer, October 15. Special article on Contemporary French Literature, December 3. 1917

Special article on Famous Pianists, March 11 . 1918 -

Comments on “Pelleas et Melisande" by Debussy, May 5. The D 27.

ning Time of Things ; article on coming musical season , October

Reviews , October 28-29 ; November 1, November 3, 4 to December 29 , (on things musical) 1919

Articles on Philharmonic Society matinee, January 4. Criticisms on Symphony Society Orchestra, January 5. Verdi and His Operas; articles on musical happenings and reviews of same from January 12 to March 29 ~ ( 46 articles) .

.

Chopin or the Circus ? March 30.

• Painted Music, April 6. Musical articles, April 10-13— ( 3 articles) Mary Garden Superwoman , April 13. Musical events and articles, April 15-20 (4 articles) Poe and Chopin, April 20. Leopold Godowsky, April 27. Eili, Eili, Lomo Asovtoni, May 4.

Art and Alcohol, May 11. The New York Voice, May 18.

Anatole France, May 25. Charm , June 1 . The Intimate Turgenev , June 8. Girls At Play, June 15.

The Piano Girl, June 22. The Eternal Girl, June 29.

On Socialism and Mediocrity, July 6. Stendhal (Henry Beyle ) and His Art of Love, July 13. Crushed Violets, July 20. Paint-Palette criticism , July 27. More Musical Fiction, August 1 . Various, August 3.

Music in Fiction, August 10. 59

1

BIBLIOGRAPHY Music Memories : Oscar Hammerstein and Dr. Dvorak, August 24. Eternity and the Town Pump, September 7.

*

Maurice Maeterlinck, August 31 . Recollections of Roosevelt and Brandes, September 14.

Gustave Flaubert, the Beethoven of French Prose, September 21. Baudelaire's Letters to His Mother, September 28 . CONTRIBUTIONS TO MÄLLE NEW YORK Venus Victrix, August 23, 1895. The Dream of a Decadent, 1895.

The Czar and the Chromatic Scale, First Fortnight in October, 1895. Entbebren Sollst du, du Sollst Entbebren (German Title ) First Fortnight in October, 1895.

A Brahmsody, Last Fortnight in October, 1895. Frustrate, Last Fortnight in October, 1895. Nosophilid, a Nordeau Heroine, Last Fortnight in October, 1895. A Brunhilda of the Bowery, First Fortnight in November, 1895. The Shofar Blew at Sunset, Last Fortnight in November, 1895.

1

1

Santuzza's Child, December, 1895.

Ineluctable, First Fortnight in April, 1896 . The Diary of a Degenerate, April, 1896. A Martyr to Art, First Fortnight in November, 1898.

Love's Renascence, First Fortnight in November, 1898. The Mirror of Unfaith, First Fortnight in November, 1898. Prose Master of France, 1898. The Sleep of the Shadow, Last Fortnight in 1898.

The City of Vague Alarms, Last Fortnight in 1898. A Weaver of Souls, Last Fortnight in 1898. Fof, 1899.

1

60

1

JAMES GIBBONS HUNEKER APPRECIATION AND CRITICISM OF HUNEKER

Books

A Book of / Prefaces / by H. L. Mencken / Alfred A. Knopf 1917 / James Huneker, Pages 151-194.

Memoirs of an Editor, Fifty Years of American Journalism by Edward P. Mitchell, Pages 199-364-379.

Prejudices / Third Series / By H. L. Mencken / 1922 Huneker : A Memory, Pages 65-83.

Periodicals 1901

Reviews- CHOPIN : The Man and His Music.

E. Swayne, Music, vol. 18 ; pages 33-41 ; May. Nation, vol. 70 ; pages 383-4 ; May 17. Athiest, vol. page 153 ; February 2. 1904

Reviews - OVERTONES.

Nation, vol. 78 ; pages 315-6 ; April 21 . Independent, vol. 56 ; pages 1030-1 ; May 5. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 93 ; pages 859-60 ; June. Current Literature , vol. 36 ; page 665 ; June. Dial, vol. 36 ; pages 397-8 ; June 16. 1913

Review-PATHOS OF DISTANCE.

F. M. Colby, Harper's Weekly, vol. 57 ; page 17 ; May 10. 1915

Reviews - IVORY APES AND PEACOCKS .

New Republic, vol. 5 ; Sup. 20 ; Novernber. North American, vol. 202 ; pages 769-73 ; November. Spectator, vol. 115 ; pages 879-80 ; December. PORTRAIT - Bookman , vol. 41 ; page 246 ; May. 1918

Adventures of James Huneker as a Literary Steeplejack, Current Opinión, vol. 65 ; pages 392-3, December. 1920

Huneker, by L. R. Morris, Outlook, vol. 126 ; pages 469-76, November. Critics Cadenza : Steeplejack, by J. G. Huneker, L. R. Morris, Outlook, vol . 126 ; pages 469-70 ; November 10. 61

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1921

- Articles in New York Times Portrait, February 10 .

Editorial, February 11. Funeral plans, February 11-13. Funeral Services, February 14.

Special Articles by C. J. Rosebault on His Personality, February 20 .

James Huneker - New Republic, vol. 25 ; pages 357-8 ; February 23. Huneker as a Critic - Review , vol. 4 ; page 186 ; February 23.

James Gibbon Huneker as a Critic - Literary Digest, vol. 68 ; pages 28-29; March 5.

Rare and Gallant Soul - C. B. Sherwood, Arts and Decorations, vol. 14 ; page 359 ; March . Placing Huneker as a Critic - Current Opinion , vol. 70 ; pages 534-6 ; April. Portrait , Etude, vol. 39 ; page 238 ; April.

Playboy of Criticism -L. Gilman, North American , vol. 213 ; pages 556-60 ; April.

Murray Hill's Recollectio nof James Huneker - Bookman, vol. 53 ; page 124-7, April.

James Huneker - Thomas Moult, Living Age, vol. 309 ; pages 246-8 ; May 14.

James Huneker - H . L. Mencken , Century , vol . 102 ; pages 191-7 ; June 1922

James G. Huneker - N . T. Byrne, Scribner's, vol. 51 ; pages 300-3; March. On Living Next to James Huneker-L. S. Porter, Scribner's, vol. 71 ; pages 303-8 ; March .

1924

Huneker on Huneker - American Mercury, vol . 1 ; pages 22-26 ; January.

62

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