SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 1915
VOLUME LXXII.
tale
of the
tape
Sherlock Holmes
VS.
Tarzan of the Apes
Wipe from your mind the
impending pugilistic championship
bout between the American
bruisers Jack Johnson and Jess
Willard, for the best heavyweight
haymakers being thrown currently
are those by fictional heroes
Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan of the
Apes. Bradford E. Wheeler sets up a
fracas which promises to be one for
the pages.
The Story
The Valley of Fear, expected to be
the last of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
Sherlock Holmes mystery novels,
began its serialization this year
within the London-based monthly
Strand Magazine and is expected
to be published by George H. Doran
Co. of New York in the spring of 2015.
Illustrations are to be provided by
the in-demand Mr. Arthur I. Keller.
The Son of Tarzan is rumoured
to be Mr. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s
follow-up to 1914’s The Beasts
of Tarzan, which was serialized
within an American pulp. The New
York-based All-Story Weekly is
negotiating for rights. Critics who
have found Mr. Burroughs’s recent
work to be derivative retain hope
for the author’s return to form.
The Character
Sherlock Holmes, a Londonbased for-hire detective, is a pipesmoking bohemian with a mania
for logical reasoning. Everything
is “elementary” to this pompous
chap.
Tarzan, though feral as a child
and still most comfortable in a
loincloth, is the noblest of savages.
He is the son of a British lord and
lady, and is sometimes known as
Viscount Greystoke.
The Villain
Who else but Professor Moriarty,
thought to be an upstanding citizen
in the eyes of the law, but considered
to be “the controlling brain of the
underworld” by Holmes.
At the conclusion of 1914’s The
Beasts of Tarzan, the ape-man’s
Russian nemesis Nikolas Rokoff is
deceased, but his henchman had
survived. Expect this fellow to be
vengeful.
The Associate
ARTS AND CULTURE
Since 1910, Mr. Eric Brown has
been serving full time as the
curator at the National Gallery of
Canada, where he insists that not
only the Old Masters are worthy
of the public’s attention. We must
turn our gazes also to Canadian
art, and with that goal in mind Mr.
Brown is buying more and more
work created by our fellow citizens
-- almost as soon as the paint is dry.
This past year, he has acquired for
the gallery a striking
landscape featuring
ART
a red maple tree by
VIEW
the Montreal artist
Mr. A. Y. Jackson and
a small moonlit scene of Algonquin
Park by Mr. Tom Thomson of
Toronto. It is an interesting
painting of the moon’s reflections
on a woodland lake under a sky
of dabbled brushstrokes. Some
viewers may wonder at the
truthfulness of the greens and
yellows that Mr. Thomson paints
into that sky, but few could disagree
that his is an arresting approach
to the Canadian landscape. Mr.
Thomson winters in the gentler
climes of Toronto but will return to
the Algonquin wilds come spring
and we can predict that in the
coming year he will produce more
such scenes to capture the eye of
both Mr. Brown and the Canadian
public.
— Katherine Mary Taylor
psychology
Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna
shocked the civilized world a
few years ago by arguing that
the male child harbours an
“unconscious desire” for carnal
relations with his mother. The
doctor, who treats hysterics and
other disordered unfortunates in
his home with a technique known
as psychoanalysis, calls this desire
“the Oedipus complex,” after the
Sophocles tragedy. It all sounds
quite absurd
prurient,
MOTHER and
in a decadent,
DEAREST A u s t r o Hungarian sort
of way. However, polite Englishspeaking society will perhaps be
better placed to judge the doctor’s
merits later this year with the
publication of his Introductory
Lectures
on
Psychoanalysis.
Translated from the Teutonic
tongue, the volume, his publisher
promises, will present Dr. Freud’s
controversial theories on dreams,
anxiety, mental hygiene and other
topics in a manner accessible to
the literate layman. Dr. Freud has
been married, reportedly happily,
since 1886 and is the father of three
children, all healthy.
— Saint-James Adams, D.E.F., R.S.T., J.K.L.
A young lady of our acquaintance
is utterly captivated by the story of
a red-headed orphan from Prince
Edward Island. She will be glad
to know that we may expect to
hear more of the famous Anne of
Green Gables in the coming year.
A correspondent writes that the
author
L.M.
Montgomer y
THE
(Mrs.
Ewan
ROAD TO Macdonald) is
resident
AVONLEA now
in Ontario and,
despite
her
removal from the island home
that inspired her successful novel
and its sequel, she is hard at work
on a third book that she plans
to publish soon. The beloved
Anne was already a grown young
lady teaching school in Anne
of Avonlea; we can only hope
that the plucky islander will be
rewarded with marriage and
motherhood in 1915.
— Katherine Mary Taylor
MORE
INSIDE
The pipes are
calling for
Mr. Henry James,
an American expatriate:
The noted essayist, critic and
literary-realist giant responsible
for The Ambassadors (1903),
The Turn of the Screw (1898)
and The Portrait of a Lady (1881),
has previously grumbled over
America’s reluctance to join
the War, and now, according to
London sources, Mr. James plans
to become a British citizen.
See page 9.
New music from
an American rascal:
A spirited fox-trot called Jelly
Roll Blues is set be published,
and the title does not refer to
what you think it does, madam.
See page 7.
Simple four-stringed
lute set to invade
North America:
Familiar to Hawaiians as the
“ukulele,” an unsophisticated
instrument is poised to bedazzle
the attendees of the PanamaPacific International Exposition
in San Francisco, and our music
expert Cornelius Canning III
is less than chuffed. “I would
sooner don a grass skirt myself
than to have to ever have to hear
that damnable plinking tone
again.”
See page 7.
Please do not read anything into it
when Holmes refers to his partner
in sleuthing as “My dear Watson.”
The relationship is professional.
He is Tarzan. She is Jane, his good
lady wife. Given the speculated
title of the forthcoming story, it is
as good a bet as the Huns losing
the war that the male offspring will
figure prominently in the plot.
— R. Ellis Everett-Green
THE literary
WORLD
The first days of the year often
remind us of the first pages of a
book; we are unsure of what lies
ahead, yet never greater than
this moment is the potential for
excellence. So, in these incipient
days of nineteen-hundred and
fifteen, let us consider this
bountiful crop of new volumes
that will grace bookshoppes in the
coming months.
Mr. W. Somerset Maugham’s
new novel, Of Human Bondage,
concerns a club-footed orphan
named Philip Carey who, after
spells in Germany and France,
returns to London to study
medicine, where he falls in love
with a waitress named Mildred.
This marks Mr. Maugham’s first
novel since The Magicians in 1908,
which, astute readers will recall,
resulted in charges of plagiarism
levelled in the pages of that august
British periodical, Vanity Fair.
A squabble also greeted the
publication of Mr. David Herbert
Lawrence’s last novel, the rather
odious Sons and Lovers. His latest
work, The Rainbow, traces three
generations of a single British
family over the course of several
decades. Let us hope Mr. Lawrence
has mended his ways.
We were rather delighted to learn
that Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer will
publish a new novel entitled The
Good Soldier, although the subject
matter – a British army captain
engages in sexual congress with a
woman who is decidedly not his
wife – is rather risqué. We have
been informed it is the saddest
story one will ever hear.
Not only is he planning on
unveiling two new novels – the
comedic Bealby, and The Research
Magnificent, about a man’s quest
to live a noble life – Mr. H.G. Wells
has penned the introduction to a
new work entitled Boon, though
representatives for Mr. Wells
insist, despite chatter, that he is
not the author. In fact, writes Mr.
Wells in the introduction, “I will
confess that I have not read his
book through, though I have a
kind of first-hand knowledge of its
contents, and that it seems to me
an indiscreet, ill-advised book…”
Looking overseas to the capital of
Bohemia, we have been informed
of a new novella by Mr. Franz
Kafka about a man who wakes
up only to discover that he has
metamorphosed into an insect,
though considering the current
geopolitical climate we cannot
recommend that readers seek out
work written in German.
— Mortimer Medley
LONG LIVE
THE PRINCESS!
A unique and exclusive
preview of what is sure to
be the poem of the year
Coming in June in Poetry Magazine
Word has reached us that Mr.
L. Frank Baum has produced
another of his delightful sequels
to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
His new adventure novel The
Scarecrow of Oz is coming our
way in the New Year, on the heels
of one of Mr. Baum’s related films,
His Majesty, the
Scarecrow
of
RETURN Oz. That cinema
TO OZ
chronicle, which
enjoyed critical
esteem in excess of its financial
success, is said to have cost more
than $23,000, and featured a
cast of 130. The six Oz sequels
published to date have given
us such memorable characters
as Princess Ozma, Tik-Tok, the
Shaggy Man and the Nome King,
whose foiled subterranean attack
on the Princess’s domain in The
Emerald City of Oz, remains one
of our favourite episodes. The plot
for the coming volume is not yet
known, but we predict many more
hours of nursery entertainment
from the Royal Historian of Oz,
whose fans, we hear, include
many adult readers too.
NUMBER 20,266.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
By T.S. Eliot
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The brisk competition for
stage spectaculars and visiting
theatrical stars between the
Princess Theatre and the upstart
Royal Alexandra Theatre seems
certain to heat up in the year of
our Lord nineteen-hundred and
fifteen.
It’s difficult to imagine the
R.A.T. coming out on top in this
rivalry, despite the admittedly
enjoyable novelty of the ice-pit
underneath the orchestra that
cools the airs around spectators in
our all-too-brief summer months.
The Princess’s association with
the New York-based Theatrical
Syndicate gives it an advantage
in booking the top talent of
today – indeed, we hear the
great (Toronto-raised) Mr. Henry
Miller will be back on its stage
in the spring in an adaptation of
the epistolary-novel sensation
Daddy-Long-Legs. Grand! How
could these Shubert Brothers that
the R.A.T. has aligned itself with
in America possibly compete with
that?
Barring an act of God or arson,
we expect to see the Princess
ruling long on King Street West
and, as a certain member of the
Theatrical Syndicate is said to
have predicted, that the R.A.T. will
soon be converted into stables for
the horses of the patrons of the
Princess.
— J.K.L.M.N.O.P. Nestruck
IMPLEMENTS
OF THE
NEW WORLD
FROM PANAMA
Our correspondent on the Western
coast of the United States of
America has sent a dispatch with
bated breath on the forthcoming
Panama-Pacific
International
Exposition, a world’s fair to be
hosted from February 20 until
December 4 by the fine city of
San Francisco. Chief among the
enjoyments, we are told, will be
the Tower of Jewels, a resplendent
temporary structure of 435 feet. As
well, a model of that engineering
wonder the Panama Canal will
be sure to excite both men and
youth alike. If you cannot weather
or afford the long trek westward,
do not despair! We are told that a
telephone line is to be connected
to the Fair from New York City,
permitting those marooned on the
Eastern coast to hear the roar of the
great Pacific.
— Archibald S. Houpt
RADIO BOX
In this weary time of war, we are
wary of optimism, it is true, though
there is one development on the
horizon that, in our desire for
distractions within our domicile,
we must admit piques our interest.
For many years, we have listened
with much eagerness as seamen
and amateur enthusiasts have
evangelized on behalf of wireless
communication, and now we have
heard that the radio box, as they
call it, may become more widely
available in 1915. Imagine, if you will,
receiving weather reports in Morse
code in your very own sitting room!
In time, we are told, we may even
hear music played from afar! Some
more eager enthusiasts foresee a
day when the device might enable
citizens to hear directly from the
leaders of this great country, or
even His Majesty, King George V!
Naturally, we are cautious, but the
edifying potential of the medium
seems to us to be great indeed.
— Archibald S. Houpt
Word reaches us from the nation’s
capital that the Hon. Martin Burrell,
Minister of Agriculture, is helping
the Drama League of Ottawa secure
an auditorium at the Victoria
Memorial
Museum
in
drama
which to stage
plays.
Mrs.
in the
capital Madge Macbeth
is at the helm
of this project
to create what the local boosters
are referring to as a “Canadian
National Theatre,” expected to
open by the first frost next autumn.
While Mrs. Macbeth is indeed a
writer of impressive esteem for a
lady, we do wonder how she will
possibly be able to run a theatre
company when her married name
is unspeakable in its stalls. Will she
revert to her maiden name? (That
is a jape -- but, on a serious note,
it is certainly unthinkably vulgar
that Christian names be spoken
in a museum that is a memorial
to H.R.H. Queen Victoria, may her
memory live on eternally.) The
larger dilemma, however, is: Where
would this “Canadian National
Theatre” find dramas to present?
We have no play-wrights and, even
if we did, where would they to find
inspiration for their play-texts -in the barns of an Ontario farm?
Better that the men and women
behind this project soon come to
their British senses and seek out
a hall to present the works of the
Empire’s best bards, such as Mr.
William Shakespeare - or perhaps
even the dramatized cynicisms of
Mr. Bernard Shaw.
— James Kelleher Nestbrook
It takes four things
to make a HIT SONG:
The Words, The Music, The SINGER
And THE PUBLIC
“Cousin, we need to talk”
By Kienan & The Tiny Hands
“THE FRONT STREET CRAWL”
By Fun With Discipline
Joe bland & Co.
(THE HOUSE OF HITS)