I have been anxious to show you these magazines (I have two) since I bought them in June, but I was in the throes of the Chinese Autograph Book Mystery at the time, and somehow never got back to them until a couple weeks ago. When I spotted them at the book sale everything I knew about them would have fit into a thimble with room left over -- the cover art was nice, the handmade paper of high quality, I recognized a couple contributors (Bliss Carman and Ralph Adams Cram) and the print run had been severely limited to a mere 500 copies per issue. Even so, had I been Qwilleran, the hero of Lillian Jackson Braun’s “The Cat Who …” series, my luxurious mustache would have been fairly aquiver. As it was, a few welcome prickles danced on the back of my neck.
It’s not that the magazines are wildly valuable -- my book guru, Jim Best, The Bookman of Kent, thought I should list them at around $40-50 apiece which is quite good, though of course not bell-ringing. What makes them worthy of show-and–tell is their place in the larger scope of American periodical history. As you can see, both were published in 1892 in Boston by Elzevir Press, clearly named after the famous Dutch booksellers and printers known for their volumes of exquisite quality. During the late 19th century Boston had become a hub for the chap book movement which resulted in a rash of alternative small literary magazines eager to speak out against the evils of materialism and the loss of beauty and lofty ideals. This example of one of the movement’s many magazines, The Knight Errant Being A Magazine of Appreciation, was the brain-child of a sub-group of “medievalists” inspired by Charles Eliot Norton, then considered the most cultured man in America. Norton held “evenings” to discuss Dante, the pre-Raphaelite poets, the views of Ruskin and the ideals of medievalism.
One of Norton's most ardent devotees was none other than Ralph Adams Cram, the architect who designed the cavernous Gothic Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Upper Manhattan near Harlem. In the premier issue of The Knight Errant, he wrote “The general tendency of society for the last two centuries and more has been away from the spiritual and imaginative and towards the mental, the intellectual, and now at last, the hopelessly material.”
But get this -- Cram and associates charged a staggering $3 a year for four issues of The Knight Errant, a price which did not escape the notice of its critics, of which there were many. Part of the problem was its lack of illustration compared to its competitors, but the fact that its writers couldn’t stay on the same page was a problem too. In one issue Bertram Goodhue, who designed the attractive cover, cautioned against the socialism of William Morris, only to have Walter Crane, who greatly admired Morris, urge readers of a later issue to pay heed to Karl Marx and have faith in labor! But the really sour note was this -- after its debut, the New York Times called The Knight Errant “a novel venture in quarterly reviews, and one with a somewhat amateurish pre-Raphaelite twang.” Ouch! Many of those who created and/or contributed to it, had earlier been involved with the The Mahoghany Tree, a successful homage to the Decadence Movement.
But twang be damned, The Knight Errant is still downright fascinating – and here’s another reason why. Many of the talented and famous poets, writers, artists (and architect) instrumental in its creation, or at least hanging out in its deckled pages, also called themselves “Visionists.” In a private hidey-hole on the third floor of a secluded Boston building that Cram dubbed “disreputably decadent” the male members (though poet Louise Imogen Guiney showed up a time or two) met to commune with the spirits, explore the occult, read poetry into the wee hours, and conduct ceremonies involving wildly colorful costumes. Never mind that every member was either Roman Catholic or High Church Anglican – they would often leave a meeting after communing with the dead and repair to an all night restaurant before trooping off to Sunday Mass!
As for the The Knight Errant, it only lasted a year – four issues with a cumulative print run of 2000 magazines. A failure? Yep. Probably. But it inspired later magazines to hold themselves to a high literary standard. One of these was The Chap Book which Bliss Carman edited during its initial four issues. The Knight Errant is also a piece of both late 19th century Bohemian Boston history and American periodical history that’s scarcely seen, yet contains the names of a dazzling array of talent still revered more than a century later. Check out the second picture and look up the names if you don't recognize them.
Bottom line -- though the prickles on the back of your neck won't do a jitterbug over The Knight Errant, they'll definitely waltz.
(NOTE I: The juiciest info I gleaned about all this came from David Weir’s awesome book Decadent Culture in the United States: Art and Literature Against the American Grain 1890-1926; State University of New York Press, Albany, New York, 2008)
(NOTE II: I am off to Michigan this weekend to see my little boys, so will not be back here until Monday. As Gilda would say, “Talk amongst yourselves.”)
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