STUART X—THE GREAT UNKNOWN

An Unofficial Advisor to the Universe in General

Published in Vanity Fair

New York, New York, U.S.A.

August 1916

(page 35)

STUART X

Henry Clifford Stuart, who calls himself Stuart X, was sometime United States Consul-General in Guatemala City, and is now a resident of Washington, D.C. The editors of the United States have been wondering a good deal about this same Stuart X. A hundred or so of them get a letter from him every day; letters dealing with everything under the sun, from the whiskers of Presidential candidates to the love-affairs of Gabriele d’Annunzio. These letters are written in what anyone else would call vers libre, or in a strange nervous prose—in either case amazingly individual.

His point of view may be rudely described as that of an inspired baby. The language in which he clothes his thoughts is partly like that of William Blake and partly like that of Friedrich Nietzche. There is also in him more than a trace of Thomas Carlyle, because of the violence of his expressions, and of his trick of considering the anatomical structure of words while he is in the act of using them. He sometimes gets his derivations all wrong; but what does he care? It all depends—as Humpty-Dumpty pointed out to Alice—on who is to be the Master. Stuart X never leaves the matter in a moment’s doubt; if a word won’t at first behave, he whips it till it does. If he gets annoyed about “law,” he spells it L-AWE, with italics in queer and unexpected places.

All this sort of thing destroys the peace of mind of editors, which is what Stuart X wants to do.

Here is some of his sound philosophy:

THE TRUTH

Do not say—“THIS is the TRUTH”

But—So it seems—to me

—to be

—as I

—now

—see

—the part

—I think I see.

He apparently has no idea that Pyrrho said the same thing about 3,000 years ago, by replying “Perhaps”—the irritating person—to every question.

And here are two paragraphs from a recent letter of his which emphasize the highly original slant of the man’s mind: “The gentlest man I ever knew—killed seven Chinamen—with a shovel.”

“Another gentle and child-like nature—one of the early California miners, whose only weapon was an elongated revolver—ran an entire military company out of a Guatemala town because their Captain had insulted his, the miner’s, WIFE. And he held the town, too, until they sent a regiment from the Capital of Guatemala. But he did not “apologize.” The American Minister had to do that, for him. What a profession!”

Stuart X is publishing a couple of hundred of his letters, poems, and miscellaneous papers, in book form. No book of recent years has been more formless or uninventional in structure. It is merely a personality, in print; a man’s character on paper. “A Prophet in His Own Country,” he has called the book, and, as he has made a careful study of the idiosyncrasies of every man, woman and thing on our planet between the ages of nine and ninety, and has written him, her, or it a series of letters about the psychophysiology of the infrasubtersuper – sinetenus – proetprae-consciousness—with italics—it will not be his fault if he does not sell at least one copy.