Life, 1912-12-12 · page 27 of 48
Life — December 12, 1912 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains a literary review of "Mrs. Lancelot" (likely a novel by Maurice Hewlett) alongside two unrelated images and captions. The top photograph shows a horse-drawn cart outside a saloon—a straightforward Old West scene. Below is a cartoon depicting a man digging in a garbage pail while another observes. The joke is a pun: the observer mockingly calls the man a "distinguished swill-paleontologist"—combining "swill" (garbage) with "paleontologist" (scientist who studies ancient life). It's satire on pseudo-intellectual pretension: someone engaged in worthless activity is jokingly elevated with absurd academic credentials. The review criticizes author Hewlett for retreating into romantic convention rather than following his realistic instincts. The critic argues the novel should have embraced either true romance or true realism but instead compromises with a false happy ending—essentially "digging in garbage" rather than producing genuine art.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
BEASTS INSIDE AND OUT the romanticist longs to present it or to see it presented as though it were the whole of life. Now Mr. Hewlett, who is a romanticist by tempera- ment, conviction and habit, seems to have become some- thing of a modern by absorption. For, attracted by the romantic appeal of the situation to the task of picturing the relationships of poor gray little Georgiana to her priggish and self-torturing husband, her innocently dang- ling duke and her quick flaming madman of a poet, he has been led almost inadvertently into a sympathetic but essentially realistic study of the net and tangle of their self-deceptions. And it is only when these lead them to te edge of an abyss where they must, by the unalterable make-up of their so ably demonstrated natures, cither wake up or go smash, that Mr. Hewlett, knowing that to wake up and to go smash are equally foreign to romance as it ought to be, realizes where he is and takes refuge in a make-believe happy ending that is but a tragedy in dis- guise, and that is as devoid of the elan and inspiration of true romance as it is of the passionate love of life-as-it-is that is the spirit of true realism. The real trouble with “Mrs. Lancelot” is that it fails to take the cross-over. And the bewilderment of Mr. Hewlett arises from the fact that after having been euchred out of his convictions he still retains the courage of them. J. B. Kerfoot “Who is he? He seems to spend all his time digging in the garbage pail.” “Why, he's one of the most distinguished swill- paleontologists we have.” comicbooks.com