Clowns Courage / The Scarlet Fairy Book / journalist John Reed copy (Ten Days that Shook the World)

Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1915. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Good Plus. 12mo - over 6¾ - 7¾" tall. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1915. First Edition. Signed and inscribed, with some tongue-in-cheek it would appear, by author Scarlet on the flyleaf to journalist/social activist John Reed, with whom he was apparently friends. Yes, that's the John Reed of the Warren Beatty film "REDS", and the one known more famously in his own time for his activist history of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, "Ten Days That Shook the World", and his avid participation in Max Eastman's controversial socialist publication, The Masses. Maybe his association with...Patrick Scarlet?...is a clue to what they hey this book is all about. 12mo, red cloth boards with gilt imprinting, 133 pp. Good plus; a fairly serious spine abrasion (see scan) and a variety of soil and wear spots. Firmly bound, however. A completely baffling little book. An enigma wrapped in a ...etc. Ostensibly a series of fairy tales, but it isn't, and that's so by its own tongue-in-check admonitions near the front. "Undergraduate Rubrics in part from the Magazine of the University of ***", and "Being the Scarlet Fairy Book for Wise Children, Sick People and the Half-Grown. A breviary of rising inflections for the Disillusioned, for the Compleat Sinner, a whimsey-missal and a petty psalter for the wee small voice", and "These Grotesques made in the fellowship of them Who put Gargoyles on their Churches inscribed to the companionable Shade of that Ancient who wearied of hearing Aristides called The Just". Okay... that said, "Patrick Scarlet" is clearly, to me, pseudonymic, but he was just as clearly, under some name, someone known to Reed. Unless this is some kind of code book, this is a series of (too much energy today?) iconoclastic and linguistically over-manic "Fairy Tales" by a literature major under the influence - of something. But there IS a smattering of local-scale social satire, and, since most entries involve more-or-less maidenly characters, this could be a) an account of collegiate conquests, b) an account of attempts at same, or c) tips on how to do that. Or not. You tell me. Oddly, the book is widely available as a new (well, 2008) download from a variety of sites, but no one seems to have a clue what it is or who Patrick Scarlet was. He did know John Reed. Since the book was published in Boston, and Reed attended Harvard, perhaps "Scarlet" was a classmate. But the 1915 date is a bit late for that. And the 1916 inscription date implies someone close to Reed at that time. Boardman Robinson ? Eugene O'Neill ? Or even, masquerading as a male friend, perhaps his love, Diane Keat... I mean, Louise Bryant ? Or, just a nobody, to us ? What the heck is this thing ? Does anyone recognize the handwriting of Patrick Scarlet ? Provenance provided to purchaser. L38n