In November 1693, Master William of Congreve's comedy, "The Double Dealer," made its debut before an assemblage 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 the form of a monthly magazine, but its appeal once more is 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 a sense of humor; whose opinions of society, economics, and politics are drawn, not from the perusal of dusty books, but rather from the vision of tolerant eyes estimating the devious ways of the world.
"HONESTY is the best policy," said Benjamin Franklin, the prototype of one hundred per cent. Americanism. But when Franklin wrote that he was making a confession, he was telling the truth about the citadels of power, a dangerous practice and one hardly in vogue since Machiavelli babbled in exile four hundred years ago.
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 they do not pass unrecognized. Ever and anon the mask slips for a minute and we glimpse strangely familiar faces, we seem to remember them about the Scaean Gates, on the plains of Troy, "advancing true friends, and beating back alien foes," bartering mercy for gold; in a crowded court-room of Athens, intent on doing to death Socrates for being nobler than they, listening courteously to his plea with stopped ears; in an inner chamber of the Vatican trafficking in assassination and chicane with the Borgias. The play is interminable in its 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, if the grapes of true honesty hang 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 toe. Hamlet called himself "indifferent honest"; nearly all could sing refrain. Certainly there are those whose delight it is to play hop-scotch with the line of demarkation, teasing more timid souls with a "now I'm outside, now I'm inside." And those there are who range outside the margin altogether, the dare-devils of the world, who must draw 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 of the hoax but the man's brobdignagian brass.
But, heigh-ho, you say, what has all this to do with The Double Dealer, this unchanging depravity and this timorousness of human nature? Here is the answer. The Double Dealer is concerned with this human nature, the raw stuff, cleared of the myths of glamor-throwers and Utopia-weavers, casting off the spell of "all the drowsy syrups of the world." 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 even a dim beam's penetration. To myopics we desire to indicate the hills, to visionaries the unwashed dishes; we will figure to you 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.
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 to be read by such intelligent people as they, it was not at all nice; it suggested horrible things like scandal, blackmail, and "radical propaganda." Plainly, they were mistaken. The apparitions they had conjured up do not rattle their bones, in the first issue, 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 these pages, sympathy for presto change reforms, nor for syndicates for the propagation of brotherly love. You will be squandering your patience to look for gladness — Pollyanna style — or the muddled sentimentality born of an increasing purse and an uncreasing cerebrum; it will avail you not at all to search for an unground ax, a moral purpose, a political affiliation.
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 is one of the cities that claims as her own, this strangely cosmopolitan man — stemming from Ireland and Greece, tarrying with us a while before plunging into the Orient never to return. "Night Born," fascinated by whatever was archaic and exotic, by what Nietzsche terms, 'the pathos of distance,' he clung to his chimeras and fancies as the realest things in an evaporating world of vaunted reality. Almost ignored during his sojourn here and scorned by literary clubs and recalcitrant professors, he stands today with Pater and Lamb in the sanctuary of those who love 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 this issue.
There was a time when the fame of New Orleans was based for the 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 those drab cities of soda-fountains and Sunday laws. We refer to the spirit that is now supporting the concerts, the lectures, the art associations, the Bridlegoose Club, Le Petit Theatre, and in the Quarter, the various clubs and coteries whose apparent purpose it is to nourish the traditions of the old ground. To be sure, we are not spellbound with the illusion that such things usually carry; we know well that part of the artistic audiences are but figures in the social world, and a great many of the dilletantes who grace the studio firesides mere tea drinkers of a virulent type; but, let drone and bumble bee hum, so 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 celestial aspirant and strap-hanger. 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," the first part of which appears in this issue: "This is not 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 these sheets will be bundled strange bedfellows — grand names which may be 'writ in water;' unknowns who may be chiselling their mark in adamant. In this selection, we do not pretend to the discrimination of time.
Within our limited 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 within. Consequently we shall tilt no crazy lance for free verse, or vers libre, as its excited champions prefer to term it. We shall print it if it be well written together with the rhymed sonnet, rondeau, ballade, and villanelle.
"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.