In November 1693, Master William of Congreve's comedy, "The Double Dealer," made its debut before a crowded assembly room of the beaux and belles of Restoration London, the beauty and wit of the court of William III.
January, 1921, The Double Dealer plays again. On this occasion it takes form of a monthly magazine, but it appeals once more to that select audience for whom romance and irony lie not so many leagues apart; whose veneration for art, music, and letters is not so solemn that it cannot be lightened by humor; whose opinions of society, economics, and politics are drawn, not from the perusal of dusty books, but rather from the tolerant vision of estimating the devious ways of the world.
"The Double Dealer": "... I can deceive them both by speaking the truth."
"advancing true friends, and beating back alien foes," bartering mercy for gold; death to Socrates for being nobler than Athens, intent on doing its plea in the inner chamber; the Vatican trafficking in assassination and chicane with the Borgias. The acts; and the persons of the drama are still the band of cut-purses, thimbleriggers, and their following, that men call The World — age old and ageless.
So, Honesty remains only the best policy. However true, honesty hangs forever beyond our baffled reach; most of us, at least, work in the shadow of the vine. There is an elastic line which we indifferently cross. Hamlet called himself "indifferent honest" — a confession that Benjamin Franklin, the proto-type of "one hundred per cent. Americanism," was making when he wrote that he was telling the truth about power. One hardly babbled in the citadels of power — a dangerous practice and not in vogue since Machiavelli. They do not pass the Scaean Gates, nor do they remember them in the plains.
Today these words are slyly changed into the motto, "Honesty is our policy," which screams from every bazaar in the market-place. Each man now marches in the procession of the righteous wearing the monotonous mask of integrity. Yet ever and anon the mask slips for a minute and we glimpse strangely familiar faces — we seem to see glamor-throwers and Utopia-weavers, casting off the hoax — but the man's brobdingnagian brass goes unrecognized.
But, heigh-ho, you say, what has all this to do with The Double Dealer, this unchanging depravity and this ousness of human nature? Here is the answer. The Double Dealer is concerned with the myths of [unclear].
Certainly there are those whose delight is to play hop-scotch with the line of demarcation, teasing more timid souls. "I said it outside, now I'm outside, now I'm inside." And those there are who range outside the margin altogether, the dare-devils of danger with every breath and are necessarily mad when measured by the safety-first yard-stick. What awed us about Ponzi was not the dishonesty — that was nearly a toe-to-toe matter — but the man's brobdingnagian brass.
When The Double Dealer was in the embryo, a handful of people who were impressed by the sincerity of the project expressed a little abhorrence at the name. Coming from such upstanding members of society as we, and topping a sheet read by such intelligent people, they said it was not a nice; it suggested horrible things like scandal, blackmail, and "radical propaganda." Plainly, they were mistaken. The apparitions they had conjured up need not rattle their bones, at least. We did not, however, share their anxiety; we are still The Double Dealer, and with all deference to the kind individuals who helped us forward, utterly out of sympathy with the rule book.
Like any artistic venture, The Double Dealer is the conception of a few men who share the same prejudices as well as the same tolerance. You need not expect to find in it sympathy for presto-change style, nor for syndicates under the spell of brotherly love. We mean to deal double, to show the other side, to throw open the back windows stuck in their sills from disuse, smutted over long since against the mud. You will be squandering your patience to look for gladness — Pollyanna diddled sentimentality born of an increasing purse and an uncreasing cerebrum; to myopics we desire to indicate even the hills; to visionaries the unwashed dishes; we will show the pathos of a fop in an orphan asylum, the absurdity of an unselfish reformer. We expect to be called Radical by Tory and Reactionary by Red. But we remain only ourselves who can "deceive them both by speaking the truth," and, as the honestest soul amongst you, we ask you in the mysteries of your subterranean retorts to drain a beaker of the forbidden juice of the fruit to — THE DOUBLE DEALER.
But inversely, if you can agree with Schopenhauer that when man was made, the Creator did not use both hands; scoff with Voltaire at the idea of this best of all possible worlds; touch hands with Mark Twain in his aphorism as to a sense of humor being man's only adequate weapon; if you are envious of Cabell who can indulge in illusions and then shrug them off; if you nod your head with the old preacher of Ecclesiastes but see no necessity to get excited about it — The Double Dealer is for you — and you are for it.
It is fitting that for the initial number, we should be able to include the name of Lafcadio Hearn. New Orleans claims her own, this strangely cosmopolitan man — they, stemming from Ireland and Greece, tarrying a while before plunging into the Orient never to return. "Night-Born," fascinated by whatever was archaic and exotic, by the pathos of distance, clinging to his chimeras and fancies — things in an evaporating world of vaunted reality. Almost ignored during his literary sojourn here and scorned by clubs and recalcitrant professors, he stands today with Pater and Lamb in the sanctuary of the art of flawless craftsmanship for its own sake. It is with some self-preening that we point to "The Last of the New Orleans Fencing Masters" in these pages, this issue.
There was a time when the fame of New Orleans was based most part on gin-fizzes and brothels. Now that the all-wise legislators have thrown these things on the ash-heap, there is, happily, something else which appears to be placing us apart from the drab Sunday-law cities of the old ground. To the artistic and the social dilettantes who grace the studio firesides, we refer to the snow supporting the concerts, the lectures, the art associations, the Bridle-goose Club, Le Petit Theatre, and in the Quarter, the various clubs and coteries whose apparent purpose is to nourish the traditions of a virulent type. To be sure, we are not spellbound with the illusion that such things usually carry; we know well that part of the audiences are but figures in the social world, and a great many of the dilettantes who grace the studio firesides are mere tea-drinkers; but, let drone and bumble bee hum, that there be within the hive a scantling of honey.
Our plan for the present is to print one short story each month, essays, reviews, sketches, epigrams and sundry observations on the human animal as strap-hanger and celestial aspirant. Such writers as Mr. Benjamin De Casseres, who allows himself to be styled a romantic pessimist, can give you both. He says of his "Psychometric Reporter," which appears in this issue: "This is not the first part of romantic pessimism, but romantic humbug which is better still." Later we hope to show Mr. De Casseres in other moods and let our readers say which they prefer.
In this selection, we do not pretend to the discrimination of judgement; we shall present the best material we can muster. In verse our concern will not be with the skeleton, the form, but the marrow; we shall tilt no crazy lance for free verse, or vers libre, as the excited champions prefer to term it — to the spirit in well-written verse, together with the rhymed sonnet, rondeau, ballade, and villanelle.
Strange bedfellows — grand names which may be "writ in water"; unknowns who may be chiselling their mark in adamant. These sheets will be bundled together — without the pretense of discrimination.
"Public opinion," says Ambrose Bierce, "is likely to be equally uninformed. To hold that wisdom can be got by combining many ignorances, a neighbor who knows no more than himself, and such men would not be assisted in the solution of an algebraic problem by calling in ten million men who know no algebra can count for nothing against that of a competent mathematician."
The attitude of an angel towards a saint must be a curious blend of humility and disgust.
A drunkard is a visionary who cannot for an instant tolerate the world as it is.
If our own knees did not shake so hard we might perceive that the other man's are also beating a tattoo.