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An interesting curve of intrepidity could be traced through these four periodicals in the order of their appearance, from Casanova Jr.'s Tales, which were shipped to customers by sly express, to Beau which contained advertising from eminently respectable tradesmen, such as Cluett, Peabody & Co., Inc. (collars, shirts) and Levy Bros. & Adler-Rochester (good suitings). Casanova Jr.'s Tales, edited by one Francis Page, advertised stimulating material by Aubrey Beardsley, Catulle Mendès and Casanova himself ("hitherto obtainable only in editions costing from $50 to $500"). It republished My First Thirty Years by Gertrude Beasley, with assurance that these charming revelations had been admired by H. L. ("Hatrack") Mencken and suppressed both here and abroad. Two Worlds, braving the mails, offered thitherto unpublished work by Boccaccio; some confessions by Poet Arthur Symonds; a new unnamed work by famed and juicy James Joyce, author of Ulysses; a "dark surmise" concerning Philosopher Nietzsche and his sister—-and an unknown story by Lewis ("Alice-in-Wonderland") Carroll.
Two Worlds Monthly was still more "respectable," listing Carl Sandburg, Ernest Hemingway and Arthur Machen among its contributors, but retaining plentiful zest by serializing Mr. Joyce's alleged "Masterpiece of Our Time," Ulysses.
Most respectable of all was "The Man's Magazine," Beau, which interlarded "The Secret of Making Good Coffee" by George Moore, a haberdashery and gifts-for-women page, theatre talk, an excellent London book letter by J. Middleton Murray, a dull Shaw interview, a note on bridge and a note on the return to Manhattan of nag-drawn victorias, all of which somewhat offset a nude story by Paul Morand, a discussion of Broadway females, some "daring" art work and a letter—the original of which is possessed by the U. S. State Department—to a Man with "a violent natural inclination" which no medicine will diminish, and with an aversion to Matrimony, a Man who persists in thinking Commerce with the Sex inevitable—advising him to prefer old Women to young ones in his Amours for seven cogent, ingenious reasons and one technical reason. This letter is signed by Benjamin Franklin.
The able, not unphilosophical editor of Beau and of the two Two World magazines is one Samuel Roth, 'a foreign looking man, in the late thirties with a round, soft, plump face, irregular mouth and a liking for pink-checked neckties, striped flannel shirts.
For Father, Mother
"There are magazines devoted exclusively to the raising of cattle, hogs, dogs, flowers and what not, but until now none on the most important work of the world—the rearing of children. ... In the words of Phillips Brooks, 'The future of the race marches forward on the feet of little children.' "