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HERMIONE AND HER LITTLE GROUP OF SERIOUS THINKERS

BY DON MARQUIS

CONTENTS

PROEM Introducing Some of Hermione's Friends

Sincerity in the Home

Vibrations

Aren't the Russians Wonderful?

How Suffering Purifies One!

Understanding and One's Own Home

Thoughts of Heredity and Things

The Swami Brandranath

Fothergil Finch, the Poet of Revolt

How the Swami Happened to Have Seven Wives

The Romantic Old Days

Hermione's Boswell Explains

Symbols and Dew-Hopping

The Song of the Snore

Ballads of Understanding

Hermione on Fashions and War

Urges and Dogs

Moods and Poppies

Concentration

Soul Mates

Hermione Takes up Literature

The World Is Getting Better

War and Art

A Spiritual Dialogue

Will the Best People Receive the Superman Socially?

The Parasite Woman Must Go!

The House Beautiful

Mamma Is So Mid-Victorian

Voke Easely and His New Art

Hermione on Superficiality

Isis, the Astrologist

The Simple Home Festivals

Citronella and Stegomyia

Hermione's Salon Opens (Verse)

The Perfume Factory

On Being Other-Worldly

Parents, and Their Influence

Fothergil Finch Tell of His Revolt Against Organized Society

The Exotic and the Unemployed

Souls and Toes

Kultur and Things

The Spirit of Christmas

Poor Dear Mamma and Fothergil Finch

Prison Reform and Poise

An Example of Psychic Power

Some Beautiful Thoughts

The Bourgeois Element and Background

Taking Up the Liquor Problem

The Japanese are Wonderful, If You Get What I Mean

She Refuses to Give UP the Cosmos

The Cave Man

The Little Group Gives a Pagan Masque

Sympathy

Blouses, Bulgars, and Buttermilk

Twilight Sleep

Intuition

Stimulating Influences

Politics

Hermione on Psychical Research

Envoy Hermione the Deathless

HERMIONE

PROEM

(Introducing some of Hermione's Friends)

I visited one night, of late,
Thoughts Underworld, the Brainstorm Slum,
The land of Futile Piffledom;
A salon weird where congregate
Freak, Nut and Bug and Psychic Bum.

There, there, they sit and cerebrate:
The fervid Pote who never potes,
Great Artists, Male or She, that Talk
But scorn the Pigment and the chalk,
And Cubist sculptors wild as Goats,
Theosophists and Swamis, too,
Musicians mad as Hatters be—
(E'en puzzled Hatters, two or three!)
Tame anarchists, a dreary crew,
Squib Socialists too damp to sosh,
Fake Hobohemians steeped in suds,
Glib females in Artistic Duds
With Captive Husbands cowed and gauche.

I saw some Soul Mates side by side
Who said their cute young Souls were pink;
I saw a Genius on the Brink
(Or so he said) of suicide.
I saw a Playwright who had tried
But couldn't make the Public think;
I saw a novelist who cried,
Reading his own Stuff, in his drink;
I saw a vapid egg-eyed Gink
Who said eight times: "Art is my bride!"

A queen in sandals slammed the Pans
And screamed a Chinese chant at us,
the while a Hippopotamus
Shook tables, book-shelves and divans
With vast Terpsichorean fuss . . .
Some Oriental kind of muss . . . .

A rat-faced Idiot Boy who slimes
White paper o'er with metric crimes—
He is a kind of Burbling Blear
Who warbles Sex Slush sad to hear
And mocks God in his stolen rhymes
and wears a ruby in one ear—
Murder to me: "My Golden Soul
Drinks Song from out a Crystal Bowl. . . .
Drinks Love and Song . . . my Golden Soul!"
I let him live. There were no bricks.

Or even now that Golden Soul were treading water in the Styx.

A Pallid Skirt — Anemic Wisp,
As bloodless as a stick of chalk —
Got busy with this line of talk:
"The Sinner is Misunderstood!
How can the Spirit enter in,
Be blended with, the Truly Good
Unless through Sympathy with Sin?"

"Phryne," I murmured, sad and low,
"I pass the Buck—I do not know!"

Upon a mantel sat a Bust. . . .
Some Hindu god, pug-faced and squat;
A visage to inspire disgust. . . .
Lord Bilk, the Deity of Rot. . . .
Nay, surely, 'twas the great god Bunk,
For when I wunk at it, it wunk!

I heard . . . I heard it proved that night
That Fire is Cold, and Black is White,
That Junk is Art, and Art is Junk,
That Virtue's wrong, and Vice is right,
That Death is Life, and Life is Death,
That Breath is Rocks, and Rocks are Breath:—

The Cheap and easy paradox
The Food springs, hoping that it shocks. . . .

Brain-sick I stumbled to the street
And drooled onto a kindly Cop:
"Since moons have feathers on their feet,
Why is your headgear perched on top?
And if you scorn the Commonplace,
Why wear a Nose upon your Face?
And since Pythagoras is mute
on Sex Hygiene and Cosmic Law,
Is your Blonde Beast as Bland a Brute,
As Blind a Brute, as Bernard Shaw?
No doubt, when drilling through the parks,
With Ibsen's Ghost and Old Doc Marx,
You've often seen two Golden Souls
Drink Suds and Sobs from Crystal Bowls?"

"I ain't," he says, "I ain't, Old Kid,
And I would pinch 'em if I did!"

"Thank God," I said, "for this, at least:
The world, in spots, is well policed!"

SINCERITY IN THE HOME

SINCERITY should be the keynote of a life, don't you think?

Sincerity — beauty — use — these are my watchwords.

I heard such an interesting talk on sincerity the other evening. I belong to a Little Group of Serious Thinkers who are taking up sincerity in all its phases this week.

We discussed Sincerity in the Home.

So many people's homes, you know, do not represent anything personal.

The SINCERE home should be full of purpose and personality — decorations, rugs, ornaments, hangings and all, you know.

The home shows the soul.

So I'm doing over our house from top to bottom, putting personality into it.

I've a room I call the Ancestor's Room.

You know, when one has ancestors, one's ancestral
traditions keep one up to the mark, somehow.
You know what I mean — blood will tell, and all that.
Ancestors help one to be sincere.

So I've finished my Ancestors' Room with all sorts of things to remind me of the dear dead-and-gone people I get my traditions from.

Heirlooms and portraits and things, you know.

Of course, all our own family heirlooms were destroyed in a fire years ago.

So I had to go to the antique shops for the portraits and furniture and chairs and snuff boxes and swords and fire irons and things.

I bought the loveliest old spinet — truly, a fine!

I can sit down to it and image I am my own grandmother's grandmother, you know.

And it's wonderful to sit among those old heir- looms and feel the sense of my ancestors' personalities throbbing and pulsing all about me!

I feel, when I sit at the spinet, that my personality is truly represented by my surroundings at last.

I feel that I have at last achieved sincerity in the midst of my traditions.

And there's a picture of the loveliest old lady . . . old fashioned costume, you know, and all that . . . and the hair dressed in a very peculiar way. . . .

Mamma says its a MADE-UP picture — not really an antique at all — but I can just feel the personality vibrating from it.

I got it at a bargain, too.

I call her — the picture, you know — after an ancestress of mine who came to this country in the old Colonial days.

With William the Conqueror, you know — or maybe it was William Penn. But it couldn't have been William Penn, could it? For she went to New Jersey — Orange, N.J. Was it William of Orange? More than likely . . .

Anyhow, I call the picture after her — Lady Clarissa, I call it. She married a commoner, as so many of the early settlers of this country did.

When I sit at the spinet and look at Lady Clarissa I often wonder what people do without family traditions.

And its such a comfort to know I'm in a room that really represents my personality.

VIBRATIONS

Have you thought much about Vibrations?

We're taking them up this week — a Little Group of Advanced Thinkers I belong to, you know — and they're wonderfully worth while — WONDERFULLY so!

That's what I always ask myself — is a thing
WORTH WHILE? Or isn't it?

Vibrations are the key to everything. Atoms used to be, but Atoms have quite gone out.

The thing that makes the new dances so wonder- fully beneficial, you know, is that they give you Vibrations.

To an untrained mind, of course, Vibrations would be dangerous.

But I always feel that the right sort of mind will get good out of everything, and the wrong sort will get harm.

The most interesting woman talked to us the other night — to our little group, you know — on one- piece bathing suits and the Greek spirit.

Don't you just done on the Greeks?

They have some of the most MODERN ideas — it seems we get a lot of our advanced thought from them, if you get what I mean.

They were so UNRESTRICTED, too. One has only to look at their friezes and vases and things to realize that.

And the one-piece bathing suit, so the woman said, was an unconscious modern effort to get back to the Greek spirit.

She had a husband with her. He does lecture or anything, you know.

But she isn't so very Greek-looking herself, al- though her spirit is so Greek, so she has this Greek- looking husband to wear the sandals and the tunics and the togas and things.

She calls him Achilles.

It's quite proper, you know — Achilles stays be- hind a screen until she wants to illustrate a point, and then he comes out with a lyre or a lute or something, and just stands there and LOOKS Greek. And then he goes back behind the screen and changes into the next garment she needs.

Of course, there are lots of men couldn't stand it as well as Achilles. But when you come to that, there are lots of men who don't look so very well in bathing suits, either.

And, of course, our American men don't have the temperament to carry off a thing like that.

Of course, if we all turned Greek it would be quite a shock at first to see everybody come into a dining-room or a drawing-room looking like Achilles does.

Not that temperament makes so much difference as it did a few years ago, you know — temperament and personality are going out and individuality is coming in.

Have you thought much about automatic writing?

It's being taken up again, you know.

Not the vulgar, old-fashioned kind of spiritualism — that was so ordinary, wasn't it?

The new ghosts are different. More — more — well, more REFINED, somehow, you know. Like the new dances as compared with that horrid turkey trot.

One should always ask one's self: "Does this have a refining influence on me; and through me on the world?"

For, after all, there is a duty one owes to society in general.

Have you seen the new sunshades?

AREN'T THE RUSSIANS WONDERFUL?

Aren't the Russians marvelous people!

We're been taking up Diaghileff in a serious way — our little group, you know — and really, he's wonderful!

Who else but Diaghileff could give those lovely
Russians things the proper accent?

And accent — if you know what I mean — accent is everything!

Accent! Accent! What would art be without accent?

Accent is coming in — if you get what I mean — and what they call "punch" is going out. I always thought it was a frightfully vulgar sort of thing, anyhow — punch!

The thing I love about the Russians is their
Orientalism.

You know there's an old saying that if you find a Russian you catch a Tartar . . . or something like that.

I'm sure that is wrong. . . . I get so MIXED on quotations. But I always know where I can find them, if you know what I mean.

But the Russian verve isn't Oriental, is it?

Don't you just dote on verve?

That's what makes Bakst so fascinating, don't you think? — his verve

Though they do say that the Russian operas don't analyze as well as the German or Italian ones — if you get what I mean.

Though for that matter, who analyzes them?

One may not know how to analyze an operate, and yet one may know what one likes!

I suppose there will be a frightful lot of imitations of Russian music and ballet now. Don't you just hate imitators?

One finds it everywhere — imitation! It's the sincerest flattery, they say. But that doesn't excuse it, do you think?

There's a girl — one of my friends, she says she is — who is trying to imitate me. My expressions, you know, and the way I walk and talk, and all that sort of thing.

She gets some of my superficial mannerisms . . . but she can't quite do my things as if they were her own, you know . . . there is where the accent comes in again!

HOW SUFFERING PURIFIES ONE!

Oh, to go through fire and come out purified!
Suffering is wonderful, isn't it? Simply WONDERFUL!

The loveliest man talked to us the other night — to our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know — about social ideals and suffering.

The reason so many attempts to improve things fail, you know, is because the people who try them out haven't suffered personally.

He had the loveliest eyes, this man.

He made me thin. I said to myself, "After all, have I suffered? Have I been purified by fire?"

And I decided that I had — that is spiritually, you know.

The suffering — the spiritual suffering — that I undergo through being misunderstood is something FRIGHTFUL!

Mamma discourages every Cause I take up. So does Papa.

I get no sympathy in my devotion to my ideals.
Only opposition!

And from a child I have had such a high-strung, sensitive nervous organization that opposition of any sort has made me ill.

There are some temperaments like that.

Once when I was quite small and Mamma threatened to spank me, I had convulsions.

And nothing but opposition, opposition, opposition now!

Only we advanced thinkers know what it is to suffer! To go through fire for our ideals!

And what is physical suffering by the side of spiritual suffering?

I so often think of that when I am engaged in sociological work. Only the other night — it was raining and chilly, you know — some of us went down in the auto to one of the missions and looked at the sufferers who were being cared for.

And the thought came to me all of a sudden: "Yes, physical suffering may be relieved — but what is there to relieve spiritual suffering like mine?"

Though, of course, it improves one.

I think it is beginning to show in my eyes.

I looked at them for nearly two hours in the mirror last evening, trying to be quite certain.

And, you know, there's a kind of look in them that's never been there until recently. A kind of a — a ——

Well, it's an INTANGIBLE look, if you get what I mean.

Not exactly the HUNGRY look, more of a YEARNING look!

Thank heaven, though, I can control it — one should always be captain of one's soul, shouldn't one?

I hide it at times. Because one must hide one's suffering from the world, mustn't one?

But at other times I let it show.

And, really, with practice, I think I am going to manage it so that I can turn it off and on — if you get what I mean — almost at will.

Because, you know, in certain costumes that look will be QUITE unbecoming.

Quite out of Harmony. And Inner Beauty only comes through Inner Harmony, doesn't it?

Harmony! Harmony! Oh, to be in accord with the Infinite!

Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself, "have I vibrated in tune with the Infinite today, or have I failed?"

UNDERSTANDING, AND ONE'S OWN HOME

It's TERRIBLE when one can't get understanding in one's own family!

Papa has very little real sympathy for my advanced ideas. And as for Mamma!

Sometimes I think I shall WRITE!

Express myself, my real Ego, in Song.

Not rhymes, of course. If I worked a year I couldn't make two lines rhyme.

But rhyme is going out, anyhow.

Vers Libre is all the rage now.

We took it up not long ago — our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know — and I feel confident it is My Medium of Expression.

It is so untrammeled, isn't it?

And one should be untrammeled, both in Art and
Life, shouldn't one?

Often I ask myself, at the close of day: "Have I been untrammeled today? Or have I FAILED?

If I could put my real Ego — and how wonderful the Ego is, isn't it? — into vers libre, even Papa might understand me.

I have always yearned to be understood!

I have drawn back from matrimony again and again because I thought: "Will he understand me? Will he see my real Ego? Or will he not?"

Only the other evening I was talking to the loveliest man, who has been misunderstood by his wife. It is FRIGHTFUL!

He is a sculptor. A cubist sculptor. But he looks quite respectable — really, some very good people receive him.

And he has the most wonderful eyes — sympathetic, you know, and psychic — but oh! so pure, too!

He dotes on purity. He told me that.

His wife does not understand him. She does not see his real Ego.

He said to me: "I can read you like an open book. You are yearning. You are yearning for real understanding. No one has EVER understood you. Is that not so? Is that not your secret?

Alas! It was. I could not deny it.

I said to him: "But is real understanding EVER attainable?"

He sighed and said: "Alas! The Unattainable!"

I knew why he sighed—there is so much of it — the Unattainable!

"What one attains," I said, "is often so intangible — do you not find it so?"

"Alas!" he said, "the Intangible!"

And I felt, somehow — in a queer psychic way that is elusive, you know — strengthened and sweetened spiritually by our sad little talk.

Our real Egos had been in communion. That's what he said.

He has nine very commonplace children, and his wife is very difficult socially.

She insists on filling some sort of commercial position, although he says her place is in the home.

So they have grown apart. People don't invite her places. Only him.

Oh! to be understood!

THOUGHTS ON HEREDITY AND THINGS

Isn't Heredity wonderful, though!

We've been going into it rather deeply —
My little Group of Serious, you know.

And, really, when you get into it, it's quite complicated.
All about Homozygotes and Heterozygotes, you know.

The Homozygotes are — well, you might call them the aristocrats, you know; thoroughbreds.

And the Heterozygotes are the hybrids.

Only, of course, they don't need to be goats at all.

Not but what they COULD be goats, you know, just as easily as horses or cows or human beings.

But whether goats or humans, don't you think the great lesson of Heredity is that Blood will Tell?

Really the farther I go into Philosophy and Science and such things the more clearly I see what a fund of truth there is in the old simple proverbs!

People used to find out great truths by Instinct, you know; and now they use Research — vaccinate guinea pigs, you know, and all that sort of thing.

Instinct! Isn't Instinct wonderful!

And Intuition, too!

You know, I have the most remarkable intuition at times! Have I ever told you that I'm fright- fully psychic?

Mr. Finch, the poet — you know Fothergil Finch, don't you? — he writes vers libre and poetry both — Mr. Finch said to me the other evening, "You are EXTREMELY psychic!"

"How did you know it?" I asked him.

"Ah!" he said, "how DOES one know these things?"

And how true that is, when you come to think it over! How DOES one know?

He has the great magnetic eyes! I could feel them drawing my thoughts from me as we talked.

"You have a secret," he said.

"Yes," I said. And to myself I added, "Alas!"

"Your secret is," he said, "that there is a difference between you and the other girls."

It was positively uncanny! I'VE felt that for years! But no one else had ever suspected it before.

"Mr. Finch," I said, "I must have TOLD you that — or else it was just a wild guess. You COULDN'T have gotten it psychically. HOW did you know it?"

"One knows these things," he said — a trifle sadly,
I thought. "They come to one — out of the

Silences; one knows not how. It is better not to ask how! It is better not to question! It is better to accept! Do you not feel it so?

Sometimes I think that Fothergil Finch is the only man who has ever understood me.

You see, I am Dual in my personality.

There is the real Ego, and there is the Alter Ego.

And, besides these, I have so many moods which do not come from either one of my Egos! They come from my Subliminal Consciousness!

Isn't the Subliminal Consciousness wonderful; simply WONDERFUL?

We're going to take it up in a serious way some evening next week, and thresh it out thoroughly.

But I must run along. I have an engagement with my dressmaker at two o'clock. You know, I've really found one who can make my gowns interpret my inner spirit.

THE SWAMI BRANDRANATH

I HEARD such a lovely lecture the other night on the Cosmos.

A Little Group of Advanced Women that I belong to are specializing this winter on the Cosmos.

We took it up, you know, because the other topics we were studying included it so frequently. And it's wonderful, really WONDERFUL!

Of course, an untrained mind will grapple with it in vain. One's interest must be serious and sincere. One must devote time to it.,

Otherwise one will get more harm than good out of it, you know.

It's like the Russian dances that way.

They are so primal, those dances! And all those primal things are dangerous, don't you think? Unless one has poise!

It's odd, too, that some of the most primal people have the most poise, isn't it?

The Swami Brandranath was like that. I've told you bout the Swami Brandramath, haven't I?

He wore such lovely robes! You can't buy silk like that in this country.

And he had such a PURE look in this eyes. So many of these magnetic people lack that pure look, you know.

He used to give talks to a Little Group of Serious
Thinkers I belong to.

He taught us to go into the Silences — only we never quite learned, for some of the girls would giggle. There are always people like that. The dear Swami! — he was so patient! It was Occidental levity, he said, and we couldn't help it.

That is one of the main differences between the
Orient and the Occident, you know.

How wonderful they are, the Orientals. And just think of India, with all its yogis and bazaars and mahatmas and howdahs and rajahs and things!

He was a Brahmin, the Swami was. A Brahmin and a Burman are the same thing, you know.

It's a caste, like belonging to one of our best families.

The Swami explained about the marks of caste, and so forth, to us.

And then one of the girls asked him if he was tattooed!

The idea!

FOTHERGIL FINCH, THE POET OF REVOLT

Isn't it odd how some of the most radical and advanced and virile of the leaders in the New Art and the New Thought don't look it at all?

There's Fothergil Finch, for instance. Nobody
could be more virile than Fothy is in his Soul.
Fothy's Inner Ego, if you get what I mean, is a
Giant in Revolt all the time.

And yet to look at Fothy you wouldn't think he was a Modern Cave Man. Not that he looks like a weakling, you know. Butwell, if you get what I mean — you'd think Fothy might write about violets instead of thunderbolts.

Dear Papa is ENTIRELY mistaken about him.

Only yesterday dear papa said to me, "Hermione, if you don't keep that damned little vers libre run away from here I'll put him to work, and he'll die of it."

But you couldn't expect Papa to appreciate Fothy.
Papa is SO reactionary and conservative.

And Fothy's life is one long, grim, desperate
struggle against Conventionality, and Social
Injustice, and Smugness, and the Established Order, and
Complacence. He is forever being a martyr to the
New and True in Art and Life.

Last night he read me his latest poem — one of his greatest, he says — in which he tries to tell just what his Real Self is. It goes:

Look at me!
Behold, I am founding a New Movement!
Observe me. . . . I am in Revolt!
I revolt!
Now persecute me, persecute me, damn you,
persecute me, curse you, persecute me!
Philistine,
Bourgeois,
Slave,
Serf,
Capitalist,
Respectabilities that you are,
Persecute me!
Bah!
You ask me, do you, what am I in revolt against?
Against you, fool, dolt, idiot, against you, against
everything!
Against Heavy, Hell and punctuation . . . against
Life, Death, rhyme and rhythm . . .
Persecute me, now, persecute me, curse you,
persecute me!
Slave that you are . . . what do Marriage,
Tooth-brushes, Nail-files, the Decalogue,
Handkerchiefs, Newton's Law of Gravity, Capital,
Barbers, Property, Publishers, Courts, Rhyming
Dictionaries, Clothes, Dollars, mean to Me?

I am a Giant, I am a Titan, I am a Hercules of Liberty, I am Prometheus, I am the Jess Willard of the New Cerebral Pugilism, I am the Mod- ern Cave Man, I am the Comrade of the Cosmic Urge, I have kicked off the Boots of Superstition, and I run wild along the Milky Way without ingrowing toenails, I am I! Curse you, what are You? You are only You! Nothing more! Ha! Bah! . . . persecute me, now persecute me!

Fothy always gets excited and trembles and chokes when he reads his own poetry, and while he was reading it Papa came into the room and disgraced himself by asking if there was any MONEY in that kind of poetry, and Fothy was so agitated that he fairly screamed when he said:

"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 trying
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 sarcastic.

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!