PART ONE

Ohio

(1916-1922)

1916

1: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER

[_Cleveland, Ohio_] _Jan. 26, 1916_

My Dear Grandmother: Examination time is _on_ now and I am kept completely occupied in the preparation for them. We had _English_ today and Latin and Geometry are due tomorrow. They are my hoodooes and so I am not a little worried tonight about the outcome. I am invited over to G. Crane’s for supper tonight as Aunt Bess is to be there on about a day’s visit so Dora can go out early. As you already know, Father and Mother are in New York and I am running things alone now. The store was doing surprisingly well today when I was there owing perhaps to the balmy weather (almost summer) which we are having. Alice has been _very sick_ and in response to my gift of some roses she sent me a beautiful note as soon as she was able to sit up. Your letters would augur a fairly favorable winter and good conditions on the island. So you rest as much as you can and enjoy the care-free feelings while you can whir around with the Wilcoxs in the machine. It is fine that you have found a group of such sympathetic thinkers and be sure and carry the _science_[1] as far as you can. I know of few better places to get a foothold in the faith than in the quiet and beauty of the island.

Mother left feeling fine for New York and suppose, tho busy, she is enjoying a splendid time. They will be back Sat. morn.

With the exception of a little sore throat I have felt fine myself lately. I think it is unnecessary to go to Mr. Ely.[2] My writing has suffered neglect lately due to study for examinations, but I will soon resume it with vehemence as I am intensely,--grippingly interested in a new ballad I am writing of six hundred lines. I have resolved to become a _good_ student even if I have to sit up all night to become one. You will undoubtedly wink when you read this state declaration so often made but this time it is in earnest.

2: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER

_Cleveland Ohio_ _Feb. 10, 1916_

My dear Grandmother: --/--/ I am now a Junior (capital) in high school and feel quite elated at having so passed my examinations. The present too, is more encouraging as fine marks have been in the great majority since my promotion. -- -- -- --

I’ll bet you were glad to be rid of that musty, fusty old preacher! Let him scramble the Andersons awhile with his talk. It is strange, in view of the fact that last winter I defended the desirability of northern winters to the expense of much discomfiture from other arguers, that the whole illusion has melted away and I have often this winter thought of the South with longing--yes, even Florida. My blood, I guess, has been thinner or digestion poorer. Some of these days have cut me thru and thru so that I have for the most part of the season been exquisitely uncomfortable, “Once south has spoilt me” as they say.

-- -- -- -- It is surely lonely for me here, eating alone and seldom seeing any one but in the darkness of morning or night. If you were here it would be different, but I am consoled amply by knowing of your comfort and welfare where you now are. I have been working hard lately at my writing but find it doubly hard with the task of conjoining it to my school work. They are so shallow over there at school I am more moved to disdain than anything else. Popularity is not my aim though it were easy to win it by laughing when they do at nothing and always making a general ass of oneself. There are about two out of the twelve hundred I would care to have as friends. --/--/

3: TO HIS FATHER

[_New York City_] _Dec. 31, 1916_

My dear Father: I have just been out for a long ride up Fifth Ave. on an omnibus. It is very cold but clear, and the marble facades of the marvelous mansions shone like crystal in the sun. Carl [Schmitt] has been very good to me, giving hours of time to me, advising, helping me get a room, etc. The room I have now is a bit too small, so after my week is up, I shall seek out another place near here, for I like the neighborhood. The houses are so different here, that it seems most interesting, for a while at least, to live in one.

It is a great shock, but a good tonic, to come down here as I have and view the countless multitudes. It seems sometimes almost as though you had lost yourself, and were trying vainly to find somewhere in this sea of humanity, your lost identity.

Today, and the remainder of the week, I shall devote to serious efforts in my writing. If you will help me to the necessities, I think that within six months I shall be fairly able to stand on my own feet. Work is much easier here where I can concentrate. My full love to you, dear father. Write me often and soon.

1917

4: TO HIS FATHER

_N.Y.C._ _Jan. 5, 1917_

My dear Father: -- -- -- -- It does me a great deal of good to hear from you often, and I hope you will continue to write me as often as you have lately done. While I am not home-sick, I yet am far from comfortable without letters, and often, from you.

Nearly every evening since my advent, has been spent in the companionship of Carl [Schmitt.] Last night we unpacked some furniture of his which had arrived from his home, and afterward talked until twelve, or after, behind our pipes. He has some very splendid ideas about artistic, and psychic balance, analysis, etc. I realize more entirely every day, that I am preparing for a fine life: that I have powers, which, if correctly balanced, will enable me to mount to extraordinary latitudes. There is constantly an inward struggle, but the time to worry is only when there is no inward debate, and consequently there is smooth sliding to the devil. There is only one harmony, that is the equilibrium maintained by two opposite forces, equally strong. When I perceive one emotion growing overpowering to a fact, or statement of reason, then the only manly, worthy, sensible thing to do, is build up the logical side, and attain balance, and in art,--formal expression. I intend this week to begin my studying--Latin, German, and philosophy, right here in my room. They will balance my emotional nature, and lead me to more exact expression. --/--/

5: TO HIS MOTHER

_N.Y.C._ _Jan. 26, 1917_

Dear Mother and Grandma: --/--/ Earl Biggers, the author of _Seven Keys to Baldpate_, was in for some grub, and I was shocked nearly off my feet by the quietness and un-worldliness of his behavior. He is a fine fellow however. I hear only pessimistic lines from Father, and hear from Erwin[3] (via, rather) that he is very unwell. The travel that he is planning, will straighten him out into better shape. We all needed to get away awhile.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Sullivan drop in any day, for his letters intimate such. He will be darn welcome, I can assure you, and promise you also that we shall have some fine times. You heard, I suppose, that I sent him a choice volume of Irish songs autographed by one of the principal literary figures in America today, Padraic Colum. I have invited Colum and his wife to dine with me tomorrow night at Gonfarones, an Italien eating-place, where the table d’hote costs only 60 cents per plate, and where the food is fine. Colum says I should have a volume of verse out in two years without any difficulty, and has offered to write a preface for it also. He has seen, as I said before, all my work,--nearly all, and admires it.

Every day I do my studying, and read a good bit also. The room I have been occupying has been too dark, and I shall change lodgings as soon as is possible. Friends of Carl have asked me out to dinners several times, and I have enjoyed as much of social life as I have ever cared for. When you move here, there is a fine bunch of friends waiting for you. O this is the place to live, at least for nine months of the year. --/--/

6: TO HIS MOTHER

_N.Y.C._ _Feb. 19, 1917_

My dear, dear Mother: --/--/ Last night I took dinner with Harold Thomas and Carl in an Italien restaurant where you have to speak Italien to get anything at all to eat. They cook everything in olive-oil so that one has a good cathartic with his meal besides a splendid gratification of the palate. And this morning, it being Sunday, I took a long ride on an omnibus out into the Bronx and back, and saw all the fashion on Fifth Ave. When you see the display of wealth and beauty here, it will make you crawl. It is the most gorgeous city imaginable, besides being at present the richest and most active place in the world. The swarms of humanity of all classes inspire the most diverse of feelings; envy, hate, admiration and repulsion. But truly it is _the_ place to live. --/--/

I wish above all other things that you could be here this week, for there are several big things that I have been invited to. The initial exhibition of the choicest of Chase’s pictures is to be privately (by invitation) opened tomorrow afternoon from four until six. The greatest painters of the day will attend. Carl having given me his invitation, I am going to take Mr. Colum and perhaps his wife. Then Mr. Colum has given me a ticket to the reading by Vachel Lindsay of his own poems at the Princess Theater. Also, on Thursday, I shall attend the meeting of the Poetry Society of America, which is quite exclusive. By the way, Mr. Colum intends to suggest me for membership. --/--/

7: TO HIS MOTHER

_N.Y.C._ _Feb. 22, 1917_

My dear Mother: Your good letter I have just read, and it cheered me up a good deal. You know, I am working hard and see very few people and even now haven’t had more than a half-hour’s talk with anyone for over a week. My work, though, is coming along finely, and I shall be published both in _Others_ and again in _The Pagan_ this next month. Yesterday was a day of tremendous work. I turned out, in some ways, the finest piece of work yet, besides writing a shorter poem also.

Mother, you do not appreciate how much I love you. I can tell by your letters that there exists a slight undercurrent of doubt, and I do not want it there. If you could know how I long to see you perhaps that might make some difference.

Now everything is in truth going splendidly, only I get terribly lonesome often when I am through working. A man _must_ wag his tongue a little, or he’ll lose his voice. Hurry, so that we can both wag!

8: TO HIS FATHER

_N.Y.C._ _August 8, 1917_

My dear Father: I am very, very sorry that things are going so badly with Mother. I guess there is nothing for her to do but to get back here as soon as is possible and try to re-instate herself in poise and health. I look for her this week. At least I see no reason why she should linger longer. But I have received no word from her and am uncertain as to much of the true state of affairs with her. I only hope you are avoiding any meetings as much as possible, for as I said, it is now too early,--she is not yet established well enough to endure the strain which you know any contact causes. --/--/

I have been diabolically nervous ever since that shock out at the house, but Sunday Carl, Potapovitch and I went out to Long Beach, and lying in the sun did me some good. If you could shake responsibilities like this for a week or so, it would work inestimable good upon you. You cannot worry on such a beautiful beach with the sound of waves in your ears. We all get to thinking that our heads are really our bodies, and most of the time go floating around with only our brain conscious, forgetting that our bodies have requirements also.

I feel so near to you now that I do hope that nothing can ever again break the foundation of sincerity that has been established beneath our relations. Never has anyone been kinder than you were when I was last home. I want you to know that I appreciate it, and also your two fine letters.

9: TO HIS FATHER

[_New York City_] _Sept. 18, ’17_

My dear Father: Your good letter rec’d yesterday. From what Hazel says I presume this will find you back in Cleveland, and busy looking over what has happened while you have been away. I haven’t written more because, as you can readily perceive, I haven’t known your address most of the time, but once again you may expect my regular letters. This one thing though, I am going to ask of you. If, when you write me, you are thinking of Mother in a distasteful way, please conceal it, remaining silent on the subject. And if, in thinking of her, one kind thought should occur (as I know it does) express it. You remember that when I last was home, I said that I “was through.”--That was possible with me for but one hour. My heart is still as responsive to both your loves, and more so, than ever. I have seen more tears than I ever expected in this world, and I have shed them through others’ eyes, to say nothing of my own sorrow. And now, when I hear nothing but forgiveness, tenderness, mercy, and love from one side, how can [I] bear resentment and caustic words coming from the other without great pain? Happiness may some time come to me, I am sure it will. But please, my dear Father, do not make the present too hard,--too painful for one whose fatal weakness is to love two unfortunate people, by writing barbed words. I don’t know how long we three shall dwell in purgatory. We may rise above, or sink below, but either way it may be, the third shall and must follow the others, and I leave myself in your hands. -- -- -- --

10: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _Sept. 28, ’17_

My dear sweet Mother: I have just read your letter and find it hard to express my rage and disgust at what you say concerning C. A. Crane’s conduct. “Forget him,” is all I can say. He is too low for consideration. I am only quietly waiting,--stifling my feelings in the realization that I might as well get as much money as possible out of him. Why be scrupulous in one’s dealings with unscrupulous people, anyway? --/--/

Maxwell Bodenheim called the other evening, complimented my poetry excessively, and has taken several pieces to the editor of _The Seven Arts_, a personal friend of his. Bodenheim is at the top of American poetry today, and he says that after four years of absolute obscurity, he [is] succeeding in getting publication only through the adverse channels of flattery, friendships and “pull.” It is all a strange business. Editors are generally disappointed writers who stifle any genius or originality as soon as it is found. They seldom even trouble to read over the manuscript of a “new man.”

Bodenheim is a first-class critic though, and I am proud to have his admiration and encouragement. As soon as _Others_ begins again this winter, he says I shall have an organ for all of my melodies, as he is one of the editors. Success seems imminent now more than ever. I am very encouraged, practically, at least. --/--/

11: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] [_October 1, 1917_]

My dear Mother: --/--/ O if you knew how much I am learning! The realization of true freedom is slowly coming to me, and with it a sense of poise which is of inestimable value. My life, however it shall continue, shall have expression and form. Believe me when I tell you that I am fearless, that I am determined on a valorous future and something of a realization of life. The smallness of hitherto large things, and the largeness of hitherto small things is dawning. I am beginning to see the hope of standing entirely alone and to fathom Ibsen’s statement that translated is, “The strongest man in the world is he who stands entirely alone.” --/--/

12: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] [_October 3, 1917_]

My own dear Mother: There is not much to tell you except that I am about to begin a novel. The plot is already thick in my head and tonight the first chapter will be written off, at least in rough draft. It is a story whose setting is to be Havana and the Isle of Pines. Walter Wilcox is to be the hero, and the heroine a N. Y. society maiden who is attending the races in Havana. More of this will doubtless bore you, now at least, so enough![4]

Grandma writes that you are succeeding beautifully. As soon as you found some active interests I knew you would improve in outlook and distinguish between a disgusting personality and the world in general.

These delightful autumn days, filled with cool sunshine, make me feel fine. I am alone a good deal of the time and am glad of it. My work will always demand solitude to a great extent in creative effort. Your son is improving every day, so don’t worry one moment about me. -- -- -- --

13: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] [_October 31, 1917_]

Ma chere et charmante mere: Yesterday it poured rain all day, and I remained sheltered, studying French. But November is less evident now, and the sun is out again. I suppose that you are all right although I have had no letter since Sunday. Mrs. Walton[5] went off to the movies this morning, which makes me think again that it would be agreeable for you to enter them when you arrive.[6] After I mail this, I am going up to _The Little Review_ office to have a talk with Margaret Anderson (and perhaps dispose of a poem). --/--/

1918

14: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Cleveland, O._ _Aug. 12, ’18_

Dear William: Your letter freshly “arriven.” Your reference to ambulance service arouses me to protest. You will _not_ be drafted--this year anyway, and I hope you won’t become agitated so much as to rush into any kind of service. A word in the ear: I tried to enlist this morning and was not permitted even to enter the office. The guard at the door said to “look in the paper,” which I did and found that all minors are to be excluded from “volunteering,” and if drafted at all, will be apprenticed in machine shops, etc., during the war period. Anyhow, I think by the way things look at present, ambulance service, after the time necessary for training, transportation, etc., would be a little superfluous. (Some would call me a demon of the Huns for whispering this in your ear) I really believe the war isn’t to last much longer.

Being destined, as you are, for Yale, you won’t be drafted for anything. But you will have to undergo some discipline, as Mother, who visited no less than twelve Eastern colleges in her last expedition, states.

Let me clear myself. Heat and conditions at home (both of which you comprehend, I’m sure) drove me to the deed from which I was frustrated this morning. I take no credit for patriotism nor bravery. Neither was it an attempt to get into a uniform before the war is over for certain effects with the ladies. I am really sorry I couldn’t get in, principally, I suppose, because I had made my mind up, and disposed of so many seductive distractions, such as, (well--) love, poetry, career, etc. Now the damned things come back again, sporting about me with all too much familiarity.

I may go to New York, I may remain here, I may explode, Lord knows. Thank your stars that you have a settled course to follow, and write soon.

15: TO CHARLES C. BUBB

_Cleveland, Ohio_ _November 13, ’18_

Dear Mr. Bubb: I hope I am not guilty of an officious presumption in approaching you with this meagre sheaf of poems. I am merely offering them to your consideration as being perhaps of enough interest for you to publish them at the Church Head Press. As you have published, much to the gratification of the few really interested in poetry, some recent war-poems of Mr. Aldington, I know your critical judgment to be of the highest standard, and while I am certain that you will be the first to detect any flaws and aberrations in these lyrics, I know that you will also be alive to whatever beauty they may contain.

These few poems are “gleanings,” as it were, from my work of the last few years, representing the best that I have done so far.--There is still hope, as I am yet under twenty. They have been published mostly in _The Pagan_, one in _The Little Review_ of December last, and while they are few in number, I thought that they might possibly be equal to the boundaries of a modest pamphlet. “Six Lyrics,” or some such title might be used for the booklet. But anon for such matters....

I am at present engaged on the _Plain Dealer_, and am too much occupied there for much of any personal “business.” So, in lieu of a real call on you at your residence, I am leaving these with Mr. Laukhuff, as he says that you are a frequent visitor to his establishment.

May I again express my hope that I have not infringed upon your generosity, and assure you that I shall welcome any opinion that you might express regarding the poems themselves, or my suggestions.

1919

16: TO HIS MOTHER

_New York_, _Feb. 24_,

Dear Mother: I have just returned from a dinner and evening with Mrs. Spencer. After the dishes were cleared away we sat before the wood-fire and talked Science, and I played the piano while she washed the dishes. She tells me some astounding stories about the numerous demonstrations she has made. Pat [Spencer] is very deep in it too, it seems, and has been twice saved in very dangerous falls from over 500 feet which would otherwise have meant instant death. It is convincing enough testimony that he is the only one living of the ten instructors chosen for the position at the time of his appointment. I am to help Mrs. Spencer move some things from her rooms over to Claire’s [Spencer] apartment next Tuesday afternoon. Mrs. Brooks has evaded all my efforts at a meeting today, but I hope to get to go to church with her tomorrow morning. --/--/

17: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _March 7th, ’19_

Dear Mother: The landlady has committed enough atrocities since writing you last to fill a book, and I have found another room which I expect to move into some time next week. In all truth she is quite insane. Mr. Brooks called me up three times the other day, and each time he asked for me was he told that there was no such person as Mr. Crane living here. Finally one of the roomers came to the rescue and took down his name and number, so that when I got in I was duly informed. Then in other ways she has been unbearable, coming up to my room several times, and vaguely pointing to some unseen object and inquiring, “Is that yours?” At other times she has come up and announced in a hushed voice, “It’s down there.” That would be all one could get out of her as to what was “down there”--letter, caller, or delivery man, and several times it has been nothing at all. --/--/ It has been very funny and very unpleasant, and I regret having to incur the expense of moving again. However, the room I have secured is better than the one I have--on the first floor, front, and much roomier. One of the fellows in the house here, a Harvard man and lieutenant just out of service, has roomed there before and swears to the complete sanity and integrity of the little Irish woman that runs the place. All these little trials have to be accepted in true sportsman-like fashion, in fact one might as well take them that way, or else get out of town.

--/--/ I am not sure, of course, but I feel quite certain that Mrs. Brooks is afflicted with consumption against which she is doubtless putting up a strenuous Scientific fight. I have noticed an incessant little cough that she has had on both my meetings with her since I arrived in town. She is quite thin, too, and without much colour. It must be due to a change of disposition within myself, but I find the Brooks’s much more cordial and agreeable. That I, myself, am largely responsible is borne out by what Mrs. Spencer told me the other day. She said that Mr. Brooks had remarked about the astounding change in my manner and disposition, and said that I was now quite a delightful personality. I should blush to tell this on myself were it not such an interesting testimony to the influence of Science. --/--/

18: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _March 11th, ’19_

Dear Mother: Just a word to let you know that I am busy casting about for a position somewhere. I have several ideas suggested by friends as to where to find jobs as an ad-writer, etc., and am investigating the matter. I may make a call on Mr. Kennedy, the friend of Grandmother’s, if two or three other projects do not turn out well. He runs a trade-journal, you know. Zell [Hart Deming] writes me that she is to be here for two weeks next month, and if I am settled by that time, I am positive that she will be able to get me in somewhere. You have no conception of the difficulties here in finding work of any description just now. Every day a couple of troop-ships dump a few thousand more unemployed men in the town, and there really is danger of a general panic and much poverty as a result unless the government takes a hand to assist in the matter. I know you are not worrying about me. As it happens, I am very fortunately situated in comparison with the rest. I wrote Mr. Ely yesterday, and so that is off my conscience. I would prefer that you discontinued his treatment of me, as I feel quite able to stand on my own feet and demonstrate the truth without assistance from without. I shall probably not move from here for some time. I have decided to make a demonstration over the landlady, and already have noticed an improvement.

19: TO HIS MOTHER

_N.Y.C._ _March 26th ’19_

Dear Mother: --/--/ At the recommendation of Colum, I am going to interview the publishing house of Boni and Liveright tomorrow in the effort to secure a job as proofreader, etc., with them. I have been around to several Sunday Feature Syndicates today but have found nothing there. I hope you aren’t worrying,--for you must realize that one cannot continue looking and looking as I am doing without finding something in time. I have some interesting news for you. I phoned up Alice Calhoun last night and find that she is working in a newly-organized moving-picture production company here.--She is now engaged in her first big picture, and is very busy, she tells me. How about writing a movie-story for her? It looks as though there might be a chance for some of my work to get an attentive reading after all. She can’t see me this week, but we are going to have a visit soon and I imagine it will be interesting. Alice certainly is pretty enough for success in the movies, and young enough (only 18) to develop a good deal of dramatic talent. A telephone conversation is rather a slight thing to offer judgment from, but I was rather impressed with a decided improvement in Alice, both in manner and character. Byron’s [Madden] letter arrived this morning. I think he is certainly a sincere well-wisher of mine. I hope to get into some sort of position in time to write him about it when I do write, because it “makes more to say,” as it were. I’ll write again in time for a Sunday delivery. The days are amazingly beautiful and the nights superb. Last night I took a long walk up Riverside Drive which is just around the corner from my room, and the Hudson was beautiful with the millions of tiny lights on the opposite shore. -- -- -- --

20: TO HIS MOTHER

_New York City_ _April 2nd, ’19_

My dearest Mother: -- -- -- -- Yes, you do seem to be quite occupied with various engagements, pleasant and painful, as in the case of the dentistry, although I am very glad to hear of your having that duty performed as you have needed work and attention expended on your teeth for a long while back. I think you are holding the wrong and un-Scientific thought concerning me and my attitude toward Science. The fact that I do not talk and write about it continually is no sort of testimony that I am not as much interested as ever in it. You know that I am not and probably never will be one of those who make the matter a complete obsession, reducing every subject and thought and description to the technical language of the textbooks. I have met a number of Scientists who by such proceedure managed not only to bore me and others quite dreadfully, but also to leave one with the impression that they were scared to death about everything and found it necessary to maintain a continual combat against every aspect and manifestation of life in general. Perhaps it may serve as sufficient testimony to the efficacy of right thought, etc., that I am finding far less problems and fears that demand denial. I certainly have not felt quite so well or quite so clear-headed for several years, and that is, or ought to be enough to reassure you and alterate your somewhat morbidly anxious fears for me which have leaked into your last few letters. I again beg you to relax from such fears, etc., which seem to have you in their power enough to prompt you to such seemingly strenuous conflicts of resistance and denials. Your letters seem to be prompted by some fear (I mean certain references in them) that seems to me entirely un-Scientific. Please do not mistake me and become hurt or offended. I only feel that you have not overcome, not quite, what might be called “the fear of fear” which is an ultimate Scientific triumph. --/--/

21: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_New York, New York_ _May 2, 1919_

Dear William: Your letter came this morning, so you can’t deny my promptitude. Dash haberdashery! I hope you have more freedom in writing your next letter,--the note of pain caused by the watchful eye of the floor-walker was too evident. It was like a hurried lunch. I felt your situation and rushed from line to line in trepidation of the next moment. And then you asked such very vital questions that you have set me thinking a good deal. No:--at present I am not a Christian Scientist. I try to make my Mother think so because she seems to depend on that hypocrisy as an additional support for her own faith in it. So,--mum’s the word to her. If it weren’t very evident how very much good it has done her I should not persist in such conduct,--lying to both Lord and Devil is no pleasure,--but as I frankly was very much interested in Christian Science at the time of my exit from home, I have not made any distinct denial of it to her since, and for the aforementioned reasons. However, Bill, I have unbounded faith in its efficacy. Not that a normal optimism will not accomplish the same wonders,--it is a psychological attitude which will prevail over almost anything, but as a religion, there is where I balk. I recommend it to you if you are nervous, etc., though, as a cure, and the best and only one to my knowledge. What it says in regard to mental and nervous ailments is absolutely true. It is only the total denial of the animal and organic world which I cannot swallow.

I don’t quite understand your criticism toward my “attitude of mind,” and sincerely wish you would particularize more in detail. We have had so many good talks that I wish you were here right now to tell me. But when you come to New York next autumn we shall have an opportunity. I am laying many plans for your coming, and you will enjoy meeting some of my friends here, I am sure. My advertising work for _The Little Review_ is coming a little slower than I expected. You have no idea how hard it is to even break into some of these huge and ominous mechanisms, New York offices. It ought to toughen me a little and perhaps that it what I need. It is a very different matter when one approaches with the intent of selling, and selling the appealing article,--space. However, _The Little Review_ has the possibility of affording me over four thousand per year on commissions if I can fill up the allowable space, and perhaps I am not wasting my time after all. --/--/

22: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_New York, New York_ _May 14, 1919_

Dear William: --/--/ At present I am under the spell of the first wave of rose fever! My reading lately has been rather diverse as is evident from any such list as Chaucer, D. H. Lawrence, Cervantes, Henry James, Plato, and Mark Twain.

Oh, by the way, I met Robert Frost’s daughter at a theatre party the other evening, and had the pleasure of taking the very interesting and handsome young lady back to her Columbia dormitory. I am hoping to see more of her at a near date, as she is worth looking at.

23: TO HIS MOTHER

_New York City_ _Decoration Day, ’19_

My dear Mother: I received your letter with check enclosed night-before-last, and hasten to thank you for them. Your letter was filled with the customary complaints about my not writing oftener. Now I admit that the last two weeks have been poorer in letters from me than usual, but you seem never to have realized, Mother, that there is absolutely nothing to fill up the three-or-four-letter-a-week program which I have been trying to conduct,--even were my days filled with tremendous action. A couple of letters a week will contain all the news worth telling, and whether you have appreciated that fact or not, the truth remains.

I see you are displeased at my having changed rooms, but I would like to ask you what you would have done faced with a like situation at the time I was. I felt indeed very fortunate to have located so successful a bargain as the two rooms here on the top floor of 24 West 16th St., for ten dollars per month. It only costs me that because Hal Smith uses one of the rooms as a study separate from his apartment to come to for his writing, and so I have the use of his room as well as my bedroom. When I told Hal and Claire of my predicament, Claire rushed to the cupboard and the result was that a bed was bought for me and temporary bedding loaned. Hal also sent over other furnishings, etc., which has made the place livable and even comfortable for me. I see no reason for returning now to a rooming house, and shall probably remain here for sometime to come. I asked for the rugs because they would be simply an additional comfort, but if it’s too much trouble for you to send them, or against your principles, it’s all right with me to do without them.

What I wrote you about sending money still holds good. I have cashed the checks you sent as there is no use in my being foolish about such matters when I have only fifteen cents in my pocket and a very empty stomach. I do ask you for more, however. I am very much against your sending me money from your personal allowance. It seems to me that it would not be very much trouble to go down and see Sullivan for a half an hour for a few days and get sufficient results from the enactment of a perfectly just and practical contract so that I would not be due to hear within a few years the accusation of having made you economize and scrimp your own pleasures for my assistance during this trying time when I am making every possible effort to get started in something. You know, Mother, I have not yet forgotten your twitting me last summer at my not paying my board expenses when I was at home, and I don’t welcome your generosity quite so much now on the possibility of a recurrence of such words at some future time. I don’t want to fling accusations, etc., at anybody, but I think it’s time you realized that for the last eight years my youth has been a rather bloody battleground for yours and father’s sex life and troubles. With a smoother current around me I would now be well along in some college taking probably some course of study which would enable me upon leaving to light upon, far more readily than otherwise, some decent sort of employment. Do you realize that it’s hard for me to find any work at all better than some manual labor, or literary work, which, as you understand, is not a very paying pursuit? My present job in connection with _The Little Review_ possibly offers me an opportunity for experience in the advertising world, which is a good field for money,--but it’s the hardest thing in the world to get worked up, especially with my complete inexperience in the work. I am looking for something else now every day,--anything that comes along,--with the intention of one way or another, establishing my independence from all outside assistance. In the meantime I am carrying on with this job, and should it give enough promise, will continue in it. I have found out recently what it is to be like a beggar in the streets, and also what good friends one occasionally runs across in this tangle of a world. For some time after your letter I was determined not to write rather than compromise with hypocrisy or hurt your feelings. If this letter has wounded you, then I am ready to beg your pardon in apology with the understanding that I write no more, for I have discovered that the only way to be true to others in the long run, is to be true to one’s self.

24: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_New York, New York_ _June 17, 1919_

My dear William: I’ve just returned from several days in the country with Hal Smith and wife (Claire). They rent a little cottage out in New Jersey that is perfection itself and we go canoeing and play tennis and eat amazingly every time we go out there. I am, unfortunately, badly sunburned today,--rather a sight,--and am remaining in my room rather than shock my friends and enemies by exposing myself. It is fine (though) to get out of this crowded metropolis once in a while, and see the moon and stars and hear the frogs croak. We intend to go out again next Friday and stay until Monday, living in our bathing suits most of the time. From your last letter, you’re in for quite a pleasant summer. I wish I could be in Cleveland when you are there. Hope you’ll go out and see my mother if you get time,--she likes you very much and always asks about you in her letters. We have had some differences of late, but my fundamental feelings toward her are not in the least altered. If I can get enough money together I intend to take a short course in business and advertising out at Columbia this summer,--which might possibly be continued next fall when you will be there. I agree with you that for such as ourselves business life is not to be scorned. The commercial aspect is the most prominent characteristic of America and we all must bow to it sooner or later. I do not think, though, that this of necessity involves our complete surrender of everything else nobler and better in our aspirations. Illusions are falling away from everything I look at lately. At present the world takes on the look of a desert,--a devastation to my eyes, and I am finding it rather hard at best. Still there is something of a satisfaction in the development of one’s consciousness even though it is painful. There is a certain freedom gained,--a lot of things pass out of one’s concern that before mattered a great deal. One feels more freedom and the result is not by any means predominantly negative. To one in my situation N. Y. is a series of exposures intense and rather savage which never would be quite as available in Cleveland, etc. New York handles one roughly but presents also more remedial recess,--more entrancing vistas than any other American location I know of. When you come to Columbia you will not be apt to feel it because any college (less Col. than any other) enforces its own cloistral limitations which are the best things in the world while one is there. It will only be after you have left the place and lived and worked in the city (should you do so) that you will begin to feel what I mentioned. May I venture a personal criticism on your last letter? It’s out of my habit to do so, and if I didn’t care for you so much I wouldn’t. Your remarks “about the ladies” really hurt me with a kind of ragtime vulgarity. It’s hard to say in the limitations of a letter what I mean. You know I am very free from Puritanical preoccupations,--as much as from excessive elegance. What I lament is that gross attitude of the crowd that is really degrading and which is so easily forced upon us before we know it. You are far too sensitive to harbour it long, I know. It is only because I hate to see the slightest tarnish at all in you that I run the risk of offending you. I do hope you won’t resent it. -- -- -- --

25: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _July 10, ’19_

My dear Mother: Your nice letter arrived this morning just a few minutes before the books, and I must thank you much for them and the check enclosed in the letter, which I have certainly sufficient use for as I need a haircut badly and a new set of razor blades besides being much in debt to Hal for this last week’s meals. It has been rather humiliating to have to come to one person for absolutely everything, rent, food, and minute sundries and rather than do it I have several times gone for long periods without food. But Hal and Claire have been wonderfully thoughtful and I haven’t had to ask,--evidences seemed to be enough and better than words. At last now, things seem to have lightened a little. I leave with them tomorrow for Brookhaven, Long Island, where Hal has rented a beautiful establishment for the rest of the summer. I am going along as their guest, although Hal lightened any embarrassment I might have felt at receiving such endless munificence at their hands by suggest[ing] an office for me as handy man about the place,--gardener, chauffeur, etc. --/--/ I can always find work in the machine shop and shipyard but cannot help avoiding them as a last resort, as they would merely suffice to keep breath in the body and get me nowhere in particular. I made no requests for assistance from C. A. [Crane] in regard to the Columbia summer course which began day before yesterday. In answer to his letter which announced his intention and _promise_ to take an advertisement in _The Little Review_, I thanked him and told him that his payment would help me in taking a course in business advertising which I was hoping to take at Columbia this summer. That was all there was said about it. He didn’t mention the matter in his next (and last) letter and has not even paid for the advertisement which he said he would do, as long as I was associated with the magazine, and he has heard nothing to the contrary, I am positive. Of course all my friends think his treatment of me is disgraceful and unaccountable. My own opinion is hardly less reserved, as you know, but I try my best to turn my thoughts to other channels as much as possible. It is only when hunger and humiliation are upon me that suddenly I feel outraged. --/--/

26: TO HIS MOTHER

_Brookhaven_, [_Long Island_] _July 30th, ’19_

My dear Mother: Your letter dated the 8th has just come, and in answer, I of course will not need to repeat the contents of yesterday’s note. At best I think your words are a little unkind and very inconsiderate. I will not attempt again to reckon with your misunderstanding, etc., of the part you and I together, and as individuals, have played in relation to C.A. You either have a very poor memory, or are very confused when you think you have a right to accuse me of either a wrong or a right attitude toward him,--an unfriendly or a friendly one,--after the continually opposite statements and accusations you have made to me for the last four years yourself. At one time you have recommended a course of diplomacy toward a veritable devil, and five minutes later a blow in the face and scorn of any relationship whatever. And now you suggest a wily and conniving attitude toward a character which you claim as fundamentally good. With such inconsistencies in memory I fail to see how you have adequate reasons for “accusing” me of a “wrong” attitude toward him, whatever position I might have taken. It has all been very hard, I know. Probably the truth consists more moderately in the estimate of him as a person of as many good inclinations as bad ones. Your feelings as a woman lover were bound to be dangerous in diverting you from an impersonal justice, and, however much I may have been blinded by my own relationship with him, I cannot deny having been influenced by your sufferings and outcries. There are reasons for acts and prejudices which cannot always be justified at the turn of the moment, but look hard enough, and substantial roots will be found.

I returned to Brookhaven last night after a very satisfactory interview with Mr. Rheinthal, of the firm of Rheinthal and Newman, which handles the Parrish prints. I shall begin work there in the order department early in September, until which time I’ll be out here with Hal and Claire. My note of yesterday was expressive enough of the satisfaction I am feeling about the matter without repetition here. Everything is pointing toward very friendly relations with C. A. in the future, which good turn is greatly due to the interest of the New York office. People change in their attitude either from enlightenment of the understanding or change of impulse. In the case of father toward me I think a revival of interest was seconded by a more adequate understanding of my motives, interests, character and position which the office supplied. Also, a certain pride (now that his wealth begins to assume rather large dimensions) in the position of his only son, was equally responsible. --/--/

27: TO GORHAM MUNSON[7]

[_New York City_] [_August 22, 1919_]

Have been back in town for last 2 weeks very busy at my new job. Glad to know you are enjoying yourself. Look me up as soon as you return! Haven’t been over to see _The Modernist_ but suppose it is racing along as usual.

28: TO CHARMION WIEGAND

_N.Y.C._ _Nov. 5th, ’19_

Dear Charmion: Here are the rest of your poems; I think they are all there. _The Modernist_ took one of the Egyptian sonnets, I cannot remember the exact name of it, and hopes you will send more soon.

I leave for Cleveland tomorrow night, and am very anxious to get off. Packing all the truck I have accumulated here has proved a delirious task. Let me thank you and Hermann [Habicht] again for the evening last week and the many other treats of the summer.

Let’s write occasionally and be as metropolitan as possible. You know I’m now out in those great expanses of cornfields so much talked about and sung, and you can’t very well dispense with me even though you do live “in the big city.” I am beginning something in an entirely new vein with the luscious title: “My Grandmother’s Love Letters.” I don’t want to make the dear old lady too sweet or too naughty, and balancing on the fine line between these two qualities is going to be fun. I hope that living close to her in the same house won’t spoil it all.

P.S. Much to my surprise I got yesterday a very friendly letter from Sherwood Anderson thanking me for the _Pagan_ art[ic]le.

29: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Nov. 13, 1919_

My dear Gorham: It begins to look as though my work was to be confined to the hours between midnight and dawn,--that is, in writing. I go to Akron, O., next week to take up a position in my father’s new store there and my own hours are to be from six in the morning until eleven at night. I was down there with him yesterday, and find that he has a wonderful establishment,--better than anything of its kind in New York. It’s too bad to waste it all on Akron, but there seems to be a lot of money there that the rubber tire people have made. The place [is full of] fresh growth. A hell of a place. The streets are full of the debris from old buildings that are being torn down to replace [with] factories, etc. It looks, I imagine, something like the western scenes of some of Bret Harte’s stories. I saw about as many Slavs and Jews on the streets as on Sixth Ave. Indeed the main and show street of the place looks something like Sixth Ave. without the elevated.

The size of my father’s business has surprised me much. Things are whizzing, and I don’t know how many millions he will be worth before he gets through growing. If I work hard enough I suppose I am due to get a goodly share of it, and as I told you, it seems to me the wisest thing to do just now to join him. He is much pleasanter than I expected him to be, and perhaps will get around after awhile to be truly magnanimous.

You evidently were not consulted about the Josephson mss., as I saw one of them returned the day I left N. Y. I haven’t been able to locate a single copy of _The Modernist_ anywhere in Cleveland, and I suggest that Richard Laukhuff, 40 Taylor Arcade, would be a good one to send it to. He handles most of the radical stuff, and _The Pagan_, he tells me, is getting too tame. He also says that _The Little Review_ has suffered neglect since the last Baroness [Freytag-Loringhoven] contribution. The B. is a little strong for Cleveland.

I don’t know when I shall get time or the proper mood to work more on the Grandame poem. Contact with the dear lady, as I told you I feared, has made all progress in it at present impossible.

Rec’d a letter from Sherwood Anderson this morning in which he tells me about early business experiences in Cleveland and Elyria. The latter is about as unpleasant as Akron, so I guess I needn’t despair. My mother and grandmother are going to Cuba this winter and close up the house, so I fear that our visiting plans will have to be postponed a while. I won’t be in Akron long. After that it may be Kansas City, Frisco, or even New York. The business is simply enormous now and growing so that I expect I will have a real job in time. I like to think that I can keep on writing a little, at least, of good quality, until,--someday when I shall start up a magazine that will be an eye-opener. I feel in a Billy Sunday mood this evening, and am very much in haste, so I hope you will not consider this letter as anything other than a scrap-heap of petty news. -- -- -- --

30: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Akron, Ohio_] _Nov. 22nd_

My dear Gorham: --/--/ If business were to continue so slow behind my counter at the drug store as it has thus far, I could get a good deal of reading done. As it _has_ been, _Pavannes & Divisions_, T. S. Eliot, Maupassant and _The L. R._ have been my steady companions. I have to be on the job about 14 hours every day, and when the Christmas rush begins I fancy I will be indeed well tired out at night. However, I don’t expect to remain here very long after that date on account of a probable promotion, when my evenings, at least, will be free. And, after all, that is about all I ask for.

Josephson wrote me a fascinating letter last week enclosing a poem of his own and two translations from Jules Romains. If you two continue to keep me warm, I am not at all pessimistic about my interest waning in les arts. Josephson’s opinions of _The Modernist_ will more than match your own, I think. Fawcett sent me a copy of _The Modernist_, and having time to peruse it, I was quite astonished by the amount of literary rubbish he had managed to get into its confines. There was hardly a gleam of promise through it all. Your three poems were practically the best things in it, and I am not complimenting you thereby. For a time I was sorry for you and for me. I wanted to write a letter withdrawing my contributions. But a certain resignation to fatality dissuaded me from the effort.... -- -- -- -- is a poor ignorant bastard of some kind. His comments on history and government are not even in a class with the _Evening Journal_. The rest of the sheet seems like a confused, indiscriminate jelly-like mass.... But, ah, well-a-day, the time must come when we can do more than groan and hoot.

I have thought for some time that your connection with it resulted mostly in a waste of time. I may send them more stuff simply to have it published and also on account of a kind of dumb-animal affection that I have for Waldo [Fawcett]. How furious he would be to hear this!!

I am liable to break forth in song about any time, but nothing has happened as yet. I wrote a short affair last night that I may hammer into shape. Grandma and her love letters are too steep climbing for hurried moments, so I don’t know when I shall work on that again. As it is, I have a good beginning, and I don’t want any anti-climax effect. If I cannot carry it any further, I may simply add a few finishing lines and leave it simply as a mood touched upon. New theories are filling my head every day.--Have you given the poems of Wallace Stevens in the Oct. _Poetry_ any attention. There is a man whose work makes most of the rest of us quail. His technical subtleties alone provide a great amount of interest. Note the novel rhyme and rhythm effects.

Josephson sends me a list of names for reading that you might be interested in. Marlowe is one of his favorites, John Webster, and Donne; the last is a wonder speaking from my own experience. I’ve got to rush back to work now so this is all. -- -- -- --

31: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Akron_ _Friday_

Dear Gorham: Have been up to Cleveland for over Thanksgiving, and rushed back again at dawn today and spent the day as usual. I enjoyed your letter with its encouragement to Grandma and am sending you a record of her behaviour to date. She would get very fretful and peevish at times, and at other times, hysterical and sentimental, and I have been obliged to handle her in the rather discouraging way that my words attest. However, I think that something has been said, after all, although the poem hasn’t turned out as long as I had expected. Tell me, pray, how you like it.

Have you read _The Young Visitors_ by Daisy Ashford (alias Sir James Barrie) yet? I don’t know when I have been more delighted. Subtle satire par excellence!

I shall try to get hold of your article in _The Smart Set_ and see how you have got up in the world, according to Joe Kling.

I hear a little gossip even here in Akron. There is a bookseller here who is well known far and wide as a character. I had known him years ago in Cleveland, but our acquaintance has recently come to more ripeness here. I just missed dining with Alfred Knopf who came here to see him the other day. Knopf tells him that Mencken is about to publish a book with him of which the title I forget, but the last scene is laid in the Sultan’s bed. The S. having a very large and luxurious one. This bookseller also gave me the enclosed booklet which was written by Mark Twain in one of his ribald moments. You will enjoy it, I know, and it gives me a stronger light on some of Mencken’s enthusiasm for the writer. The grand ejaculatory climacteric speech of Queen Bess is magnificent. You will regard the book as quite a treasure. I don’t know where else on earth it could be procured. --/--

32: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Akron_] _Dec. 13th, ’19_

My dear Gorham: I think you are wrong about _1601_. The bookseller friend who gave me the book you have, informs me that that is just another name for the same piece. So you see it is even more scarce and valuable than you thought. Will you ever forget that sentence of Raleigh’s where he says he was but clearing his nether throat!? I must get another one and send it to Josephson, who, by the way, has just written me about my “Grandmother.” He has some of the same complaints to make of her as yourself, and many others, but he ends up by calling it the best thing I have written, and, what is more flattering, begs to keep the copy I sent him. He says he has had a falling out with Amy Lowell, but a falling in with T. S. Eliot by way of compensation. His letters are charming with a peculiar and very definite flavor to them, and buck me up a good deal. I have lately begun to feel some wear from my surroundings and work, and to make it worse, have embarked on a love affair, (of all places unexpected, here in Akron!), that keeps me broken in pieces most of the time, so that my interest in the arts has sunk to a rather low station. Now that Christmas is coming in with its usual inhuman rush in candy selling, I shall not have a moment for anything but business and sleep. My life is quite barbarous and the only thing to do is recognize the situation and temporarily bow to it.

Waldo Frank’s book IS a pessimistic analysis! The worst of it is, he has hit on the truth so many times. I am glad to see such justice done to Sherwood Anderson, but this extreme national consciousness troubles me. I cannot make myself think that these men like Dreiser, Anderson, Frost, etc., could have gone so far creatively had they read this book in their early days. After all, has not their success been achieved more through natural unconsciousness combined with great sensitiveness than with a mind so thoroughly logical or propagandistic (is the word right?) as Frank’s? But Frank has done a wonderful thing to limn the characters of Lincoln and Mark Twain as he has,--the first satisfactory words I have heard about either of them. The book will never be allowed to get dusty on the library shelves unless he has failed to give us the darkest shadows in his book,--and I don’t think he has. I notice that Marsden Hartley is mentioned, but how does it come that “our Caesar” [Zwaska] is omitted!?

This last makes me think of _The Little Review_, and how terrible their last issue, November’s, is. I have sent them my poem, but have heard no answer as yet. If _The Dial_ goes on as you announced in your letter, perhaps they would care to print it. I am thoroughly confident about the thing itself since it has got by the particular, hierarchic Josephson, and I won’t blush to show it to anyone now.

If _The Modernist_ is not already in the mails for me, please do not forget that I am anxious for a copy. I wrote Fawcett a long time ago, but he hasn’t responded. My last letter from Anderson urges me to make him a visit, and I am hoping that sometime next summer such a thing will be possible. He calls the poem beautiful, but says that it is not as much poetry to him as “the flesh and bone” of my letters. He and Josephson are opposite poles. J. classic, hard and glossy,--Anderson, crowd-bound, with a smell of the sod about him, uncouth. Somewhere between them is Hart Crane with a kind of wistful indetermination, still much puzzled.

33: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Akron, Ohio_ _Dec. 27, 1919_

My dear Gorham: --/--/ My stand in the drug store has not proved exactly a success, although my father is good enough to admit that I am not to blame in any way. The principal reason that it will be discontinued is that no one can be found to work there without a quite exorbitant salary, and the location is too poor to afford that. So many things have happened lately with the rush of Christmas, etc., that I am tired out and very much depressed today. This “affair” that I have been having has been the most intense and satisfactory one of my whole life, and I am all broken up at the thought of leaving him. Yes, the last word will jolt you. I have never had devotion returned before like this, nor ever found a soul, mind, and body so worthy of devotion. Probably I never shall again. Perhaps we can meet occasionally in Cleveland, if I am not sent miles away from there, but everything is so damned dubious as far as such conjectures lead. You, of course, will consider my mention of this as unmentionable to anyone else.

Sherwood Anderson is coming to N. Y. this week, he writes, and perhaps it would be possible for you to meet him. Vide _The Little Review_ for information as to his whereabouts. He says that Van Wyck Brooks has given in Doran’s hands for publication a book well named,--_The Ordeal of Mark Twain_, which, I imagine, will follow on something the same line of direction that Waldo Frank suggests in his book. Hackett’s review of the latter is a bit severe, although he touches the weak points in every instance. The work _is_ too rhapsodical, and I noticed frequent lapses in plain grammar, not to mention diction. But the meat is there anyway, and the book is stimulating, even though a bit pathetic. Anderson says he respects the mind of Brooks more. Brooks and Hackett belong, both, to a harder and more formal species. Therefore Hackett’s critique is quite consistent with his characteristics.

I have been reading Masters’ latest, _Starved Rock_, and must mention to you my enthusiasm for “Spring Lake,” the best thing he has written since the _Spoon River_ elegies. “The Dream of Tasso” has a few splendid passages free from rhetoric, and there are others, a few, that satisfy. More and more am I turning toward Pound and Eliot and the minor Elizabethans for values. I have not written anything for a month, but I feel, somehow or other, as though progress were being made. Your estimates of Djuna Barnes and Ida Rauh are interesting and true. I have been instructed recently not to read behind my counter and so, working twelve hours per day, have not had time to do much reading. I want to get at your _New Republic_ reviews, if possible, tomorrow. The booklet, _1601_, is your own to keep. I can get another, I think, any day for the asking. My write-up in the paper was silly enough, but forced upon me, and misquotations as well. However, I took it as an agreeable joke and an anachronism in Akron. But the pater was furious, at the headlines in particular, and I spent a nervous day yesterday with him in explanations, etc. Sic semper. Akron has afforded me one purple evening, however. I got dreadfully drunk on dreadful raisin brew, smoked one of the cigars made especially for the Czar, defunct, of Russia, and puked all over a boarding house. You will believe me an ox when I tell you that I was on the job again next morning, and carried the day through with flying colours. I enclose an opus by Eugene Field,--very exclusive,--which you will copy if you wish, and then return. Do not let Burleson or your father see it, as it is quite strong. I think you will more than smile. --/--/

Yes,--Edgar Saltus _is_ gone. I remember reading him and a rare and wonderfully complete edition of Catullus on the night of the debauch. However,--I hope you will not think that my companion on that occasion was the one I mention early in the letter. This fellow of the raisin brew is another poor soul like myself, in Akron exile from N.Y. A very sophisticated and erudite fellow to whom I was introduced by my bookseller.

1920

34: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Akron_] _Jan. 9th, ’20_

My dear Gorham: What a good job Somerset Maugham does in his _Moon and Sixpence_! Have just finished reading it at a single sitting. Pray take the time to read it if you haven’t already. How far it follows the facts biographical to Gauguin, I am not able to say, but from what little I do know, it touches his case at many angles. Your letter coming this morning calls echoes in my ears of many such moods familiar to me during my times in N. Y. and I know how you feel. The mentioned book, I suggest as a tonic for hardness,--we all need how much more of it!

Complaining of a headache this morning I was excused from my duties for the day, and so have had time for reading, etc. I have not had to serve at the soda fountain as yet, and as a matter of fact, have not had much of anything to do,--my duty seeming to be a kind of marking _time_ until I shall be occupied in the addition to the store,--a restaurant,--or am sent up to Cleveland to fly about in a Dodge car, selling. I have a kind of tacit quarrel with everyone at the store, in spite of smiles, etc., but am becoming accustomed to the atmosphere, and suffer considerably less. Akron has, after all, afforded me more than N. Y. would under present circumstances and time, and, odd as it may seem, I have almost no desire for an immediate return there. Of course, I suppose my “affair” may have a great deal to do with my attitude. And I have also made two very delightful friendships, one,--the fellow I mentioned as my companion in the raisin brew debauch (Candee), and a more recent acquaintance with a filthy old man,--a marvelous photographer [Minns], the only one in this country to hold the Dresden and Munich awards, and who has several times been “written up” in the _International Studio_. Authorities rank him with Coburn and Hoppé of London, and there is no one in New York who compares with him. He used to read _The Little Review_, knows Marsden Hartley,--and lives in a tumble down old house in the center of the city. I expect the pictures of me that he takes to be wonders. He refused to take the “rubber-king,” F. H. Seiberling, for love nor money, simply because he thought his face without interest. He confided in me yesterday that he was an anarchist, and I picture with some pain the contrast in his circumstances here with what acclaim he would achieve in a place like London. He has always been afraid of N.Y.--and wisely,--for probably he would have long since starved there.

I was suddenly surprised last evening (Candee and I have been in the habit of talking until two and three in the morning) to hear him mention the Baroness. It seems he knows her very well. Knew her before she came to the village and Margaret Anderson got hold of her at all, and believe me he had some surprising tales to tell. He goes on for hours telling of exotic friends of his and strange experiences. He know[s] Europe well, English country house parties, and Washington society,--prizefighters, cardinals, poets and sculptors, etc., etc., and the wonderful thing is to find him here in Akron, forced to earn his living as secretary for some wheezing philanthropist.

Your anecdote of New Year’s Eve was interesting,--who knows,--perhaps someday you will fall too. Prenez garde!

35: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland, O._ [_January 15_]

Dear Gorham: Your play presents simple difficulties of criticism as far as particular details. Of course you cannot take it seriously as a work of art after the first page. It is stark propaganda, however much in the right direction it may be. For types like ourselves it should hold no deep interest, as it begins and ends with the universally-obvious understanding between the artist and what is supposed to be his “audience.” The Comstock raps are good, but not well enough,--humorously enough, placed to be sufficiently amusing or effective. Humor is the artist’s only weapon against the proletariat. Mark Twain knew this, and used it effectively enough, take _1601_ for example. Mencken knows it too. And so did Rabelais. I think that _The Liberator_ would be likely to take it, but I cannot imagine it presented on a stage. You have a sense of humor and I cannot see how you allowed some lines of it to pass your pencil. I have marked a few. You’re too damned serious. You victimize your hero. Your aristocrat is much more vital and admirable than the polyphonic God, chosen to symbolize the artist. And anyway,--it’s sentimentality to talk the way he does. The modern artist has got to harden himself, and the walls of an ivory tower are too delicate and brittle a coat of mail for substitute. The keen[est] and most sensitive edges will result from this “hardening” process. If you will pardon a more personal approach, I think that you would do better to think less about aesthetics in the abstract,--in fact, forget all about aesthetics, and apply yourself closely to a conscious observation of the details of existence, plain psychology, etc. If you ARE an artist then, you will create spontaneously. But I pray for both of us,--let us be keen and humorous scientists anyway. And I would rather act my little tragedy without tears, although I would insist upon a tortured countenance and all sleekness pared off the muscles.

My love affair is affording me new treasures all the time. Our holidays are spent together here in Cleveland, and I have discovered new satisfactions at each occasion. The terrible old grind at the factory is much relieved by this. I live from Saturday to Saturday. Gold and purple. Antinoüs at Yale. So the wind blows, and whatever might happen, I am sure of a pool of wonderful memories. Perhaps this is the romance of my life,--it is wonderful to find the realization of one’s dreams in flesh, form, laughter and intelligence,--all in one person. I am not giddy or blind, but steadier and keener than I’ve ever been before. The daily grind prevents me from doing anything productive. Here is something enclosed on which I would like your opinion, as frank and unmerciful as mine has been of your play.[8] -- -- -- --

36: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland, O._ _Jan. 28th, --20_

My dear Gorham: Well, I hope that Kling will be able to sell out for the price of dinner anyway,--but most of all that he sells out, and rids his own arms, as well as the public’s, of that fetid corpse, _The Pagan_. The last issue is the worst ever, and I don’t think there are lower levels to be reached. Joe doesn’t properly belong in an editor’s chair,--hasn’t taste or discrimination, and that’s all there is to it. He can make just as good money a thousand other ways,--most Jews can.

I am enraged at Mencken and Nathan for satisfying the public and insulting their admirers so grossly with that cheap and banal play,--_Heliogabolus_. Any one who has read even Saltus’ _Imperial Purple_ knows that there is not a vestige of historical truth in the setting or dialogue,--and that character, Heliogabolus, the most dissolute minion of decadent Rome, portrayed as I thought our authors were about to do,--so truthfully that a limited edition hastily gathered up would be the only possible method of presentation in America,--that delusion induced me to part with two good dollars. Instead we have a senile Al Jolson, farting the usual bedroom-farce calamities. If you want to read up on Heliogabolus, read some of Dio Cassius, if you can procure the old scribe,--at least this is what my Akron man-of-the-world prescribes. He agrees with me about the book, and writes thus: “I confess I was terribly disappointed. When I think of that slim child of seventeen with his hair powdered with diamond dust and gold, his half oriental eyes all but closed, dressed in the costume of a priest of Baal, offering his hand covered with jewels, to a gladiator who has fallen at his feet with the words,--‘Hail, Lord,’ and answering him,--‘Call me not Lord, for I am thy Lady,’ and then read of the senile, doddering creature with twelve wives as he is pictured by the joint authors, I have to laugh.”

Your N. Y. notes of the journalese, artists, etc., keeps me awake during these days of trial at the factory. I am packing cases and moving heavy cases of chocolate, barrels of sugar, etc., for my living at present, but even this is better than a station behind the soda counter. My father is just as impossibly tedious and “hard” as ever, and still as insistent on starvation wages. I’ll be glad when my mother returns from the south and the house and my own room are open to me again, and living will be a little less expensive. Then, too,--I am beginning to discover that I enjoy her society,--I have worked over her for three years painfully,--and the result is a woman of more interest than I had dared to hope for. I’m still in love, too, so I have much to be sad about. --/--/

37: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Cleveland, Ohio_ _Feb. 5th, --’20_

Dear William: --/--/ But I have cheering news to tell you. “My Grandmother’s Loveletters” tempted _The Dial_ to part with ten dollars, my first “litry” money,--the seduction was complete,--and you may begin to look for outrageous exposures next month or the next, in that magazine. I cannot write much now, cramped in this rooming house room, but when my mother returns from the tropics next month and I am re-installed in my own room with my little Victrola, I hope to revive my intimacy with la Muse. Just now I am deep in Baudelaire’s _Fleurs du Mal_, and won’t brook anything healthful or cheery about the place.

38: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Cleveland, Ohio_ _Feb. 24, 1920_

My dear William: --/--/ Take a layman’s word of advice and remain in your present surroundings as long as possible and extract the full amount of enjoyment from them while they last. It is not very exciting to arise and essay forth to ten hours dull and exasperating labor every morning at five-thirty and return home at night with a head like a wet muffin afterward. And that is the routine that I am enmeshed in at present, to say nothing of trying to exist on starvation wages. It’s the old bunko stuff about “working from the bottom up” and “earning an honest dollar” in practice, and if there are not some enlivening changes in it soon, I am liable to walk into the office and tell the amused and comfortable and rich and thriving spectator that “the joke’s up.” Catullus uses somewhere in his epigrams about a man that he was “----ed flat,” meaning I suppose a reference to emaciated thighs, etc., but the phrase is none too vivid for me to use at present in reference to my nervous and intellectual state. Add to this, an uncomfortable room, cold, etc., and a routine of hasty and inadequate meals snatched from chance lunch counters and there is further evidence for the state o’ things. --/--/

39: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _March 6th, --’20_

My dear Gorham: Well,--my mother is at length returned and the house open again. At present, however, the domestic vista appears a desolate prospect to me,--a violent contrast to the warm pictures that the former rooming-house room had conjured up as anticipations. I wrote you a while ago that I had gotten ’round to enjoy my mother’s companionship. That illusion, at least for the present, seems to be dispelled. She left here two months ago, a rather (for her) ductile and seductive woman with a certain aura of romance about her. She comes back now, satisfied, shallow, unemotional, insistent on talking food receipts and household details during meals. The weight of this terrible Christian Science satisfaction I feel growing heavier and heavier on my neck. Tonight I am distraught after a two-hour’s effort at camaraderie and amusement with her. “Dutiful son,” “sage parent,”--“that’s nice,”--and a pat on the back and the habitual “goodnight kiss.” I give up evenings to her to hear advice about details in business affairs which she knows nothing about. Mon Dieu!!! And there is Grandmother in a loud background to add to the confusion. Exhausted as one may be from an inhuman day, one must beam out the dinner and evening in proper style or there are exclamations culminating in excruciating tears. However, I mind it most when I am alive, like tonight,--not tired, stupid, mild, as on “week nights.”

Well, anyway, last night was made enjoyable by the spectacle of a good prize-fight. I have been to a number lately as guest of a newspaper man who lived over at the rooming house. Of course many matches are boresome, but provide two sublime machines of human muscle-play in the vivid light of a “ring,”--stark darkness all around with yells from all sides and countless eyes gleaming, centered on the circle,--and I get a real satisfaction and stimulant. I get very heated, and shout loudly, jump from my seat, etc., and get more interested every time I go. Really, you must attend a bout or two in N.Y. where a real knock-out is permitted. Along with liquor, that aristocratic assertion has disappeared here. There is something about the atmosphere of a ring show that I have for long wanted to capture into the snares of a poem. I shall not rest easy until I do, I fear. To describe it to you,--what I mean,--would be to accomplish my purpose. A kind of patent leather gloss, an extreme freshness that has nothing to do with the traditional “dew-on-the-grass” variety conveys something suggestive of my aim. T. S. Eliot does it often,--once merely with the name “Sweeney,” and Sherwood Anderson, though with quite different method in a story of his in _The Smart Set_, some time ago, called “I Want to Know Why,” one of the greatest stories I ever expect to read,--better even than most of the _Winesburg_ chapters. This brings me to your story in _The Plowshare_. What there was of it was well done. But it seems to me that the humor and satire of this kind of theme depends on a continued heaping-up and heaping-up of absurd detail, etc., until a climacteric of either bitterness or farce is reached. For example,--have you read Gogol’s “The Cloak,” ever? I don’t know what Hervey White did to it,--but I would mistrust him of any improvement on it after reading his comments on Frank’s _Our America_. -- -- -- -- I am as anti-Semitic as they make ’em, but Frank’s comments cannot afford to be ignored merely because of race prejudice. White is just an ordinary ass, though, and can easily be disposed of. I don’t understand, though, how you can consent to such “alterations” in your mss.

I’m very glad you sent the poem. It begins well,--dramatically, and maintains itself well until the last two lines. They are an appendix which I’d remove--merely repetition of better phrases in the beginning. Why not divide up the second verse into two equal parts and have three quartet-line verses? Another thing,--the “shoot-the-chutes” image jars,--one wants to laugh,--and one shouldn’t--something else there would be better. Also, why use a French title? I know it’s “done in the best families,” but there seems a touch of servility,--inadequacy about it to me. I’d send it to _The Dial_ if I had it, and be quite proud of it whether taken or not.

Josephson writes me that _The Dial_ is causing a great stir, but that clique favoritism, the old familiar and usual magazine button, is beginning to become evident. J’s letters are charming, and a recent love affair of his, a disappointment, has added seasoning to his observations. I only hope that you, he, and Anderson continue to keep me awake [?] with occasional mail.

I had a long and hypocritical conference with my father today, and succeeded to the extent of a five dollar per week raise in salary,--this makes existence at least possible.

I don’t know, G., whether I’m strong and hardened or not. I know that I am forced to be very flexible to get along at all under present conditions. I contrive to humanize my work to some extent by much camaraderie with the other employees and this is my salvation there. Of course I am utterly alone,--want to be,--and am beginning to rather enjoy the slippery scales-of-the-fish, continual escape, attitude. The few people that I can give myself to are out of physical reach, and so I can only write where I would like to talk, gesture, and dine. The most revolting sensation I experience is the feeling of having placed myself in a position of quiescence or momentary surrender to the contact & possession of the insensitive fingers of my neighbors here. I am learning, just beginning to learn,--the technique of escape, and too often yet, I betray myself by some enthusiasm or other.

My Akron friend has not been able to see me for some five [?] weeks, and I am in need of a balm, spiritual and fleshly. I hope next Sunday something can be arranged. -- -- -- --

40: TO MATTHEW JOSEPHSON

_Cleveland_ _March 15th --’20_

Dear Matty: Your praise of _Parsifal_ reminded me to buy a certain Victrola reproduction,--_The Processional_,--that I have long wanted, and I have found it an incessant pleasure ever since. I read the _Times_ often enough to realize that music is the only extra stimulus that N.Y. has to offer above Cleveland in these dry days. As I’ve said before, I don’t especially long for N.Y. as of yore, except once in awhile when an overwhelming disgust with my work afflicts me and I want to lose myself in the chill vastness of the old place. (I should better have said “find myself,” for I play a business part so much and so painfully, that the effort wears.) The little “iridescent bubbles” of poems that you suggest as fortnightly events simply refuse to come to the surface, and as I get so much of regularity in my daily routine,--time-clock ringing, etc., and rushing,--I won’t even worry about it. I cannot commit the old atrocities,--and I have not time at present for new adventures. At any rate, in the slow silence my taste is not suffering. There are still Rabelais, Villon, Apuleius and Eliot to snatch at occasionally. In my limited surroundings I grow to derive exceptional pleasures from little things such as a small Gauguin I have on the wall, Japanese prints, and Russian records on the Victrola, in fact, the seclusion of my room. My mother is able to offer me only the usual “comforts of home” combined with stolid, bourgeois ultimatums and judgments which I am learning how to accept gracefully. So, if you are bored and spleenful, we have much in common, though you are less impulsive and emotional than myself, and take it, I am sure, more lightly. Your suggestion of a flight to the walks of Chelsea or the Mediterranean tempts me exceedingly. I should like to be rash. I assure you that if I were in your position I should do just such a thing, but I feel too much bound by responsibilities in connection with my Mother’s fate, to more than dream of it. However, I wish we could get together for a while next summer. Perhaps you could make me a visit here. I will be badly in need of your conversation for a tonic by that time, and perhaps you will consider it. I can offer you no woodland retreat or metropolitan carnival,--only a very middle-class house and dull conversation,--but the time we had to ourselves would be very interesting to me, at least.

The last _Dial_ was interesting, mainly on account of a story of Anderson’s and “Mrs. Maecenas.” Burke can write at least very cleverly. I was entertained. The hero, I cannot help remarking, touches resemblance to you in several intellectual instances. Physically,--I never saw you broken out with a rash, or gawky,--but Burke has known you longer.--Is there an understanding between you about it?... My opus comes out in the April issue, and you will remark a couple of salutary changes,--omissions.

It’s late, and those who arise at five must get sleep, so I’ll barbarically acquiesce. My poem, the phallic theme, was a highly concentrated piece of symbolism, image wound within image.[9] You were only too right in your judgment of it. When I get some time I’ll work more on it. What you saw was fresh and unshodden enough.

41: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland, Ohio._ _April 14th, ’20_

My dear Gorham: --/--/ Yes,--the Grandmother poem came out very nicely. You notice, of course, that I cut it in several places, which improved it, I am sure. It is the only thing I’ve done that satisfies me at all now,--whether I can ever equal it in the future remains to be seen. I’ve recently been at work on something that I enclose for your verdict.[10] As usual I am much at sea about its qualities and faults. It is interesting to me,--but do I succeed in making it of interest to others? Please slam and bang your best about it,--pro and con. I have much faith in your critical powers. Much remains to be done on it yet, but enough is done with it at present to detect the main current of it, which is principally all that worries me. My daily routine tends to benumb my faculties so much that at times I feel an infantile awe before any attempt whatever, critical or creative. This piece was simply a mood which rose and spilled over in a slightly cruder form than what you see. It happens to be autobiographic, which makes any personal estimate of it all the more dangerous.

I like Marianne Moore in a certain way. She is so prosaic that the extremity of her detachment touches, or seems to touch, a kind of inspiration. But she is too much of a precieuse for my adulation. Of this latter class even give me Wallace Stevens, and the fastidious Williams in preference. Is there anything more fastidious in poetry than these lines of his in a recent _Little Review_ ...--? --/--/ [“To a Friend Concerning Several Ladies,” II. 1-7.]

The Bynner poems and translations were fine. Vildrac is the one who set me on the track of the Grandmother mood, and it is odd that our poems should have come out in the same number.

Have not heard from Josephson for some time. His last letter told of splenetic days following his post-graduation from Columbia, and an urge to ramble toward the continent via a stewardship on some vessel. Perhaps, for all I know, he has left our shores. Anderson writes me often from his Alabama bower. He is enthusiastic about the Negroes and their life, and will probably write something, sooner or later, on the subject.

The prospect of Easter spent at home was too much for me, and so I went to visit an Akron friend armed with two bottles of dago red. That didn’t seem to suffice after we got started, and a quart of raisin jack was divided between us with the result that the day proper (after the night before) was spent very quietly, watered and Bromo-Seltzered, with amusing anecdotes occasionally sprouting from towelled head to towelled head. The bath in the unconscious did me good, though, and was much better than the stilted parade and heavy dinner that my home neighborhood offered. Since then I have been beset by two terrible occasions,--a Crane-grandparent--golden-wedding celebration, and a collegiate ball. The terrors of the first were alleviated by some real champagne, but the second was aggravated by auto trouble on the way home with two hysterical, extremely young and innocent females under my care at three in the morning. I am just getting over it.

Well, this is all for tonight. I have no youths to put to bed,--otherwise perhaps my correspondence might suffer. I’m afraid I wouldn’t do in your position at all. But enough! I read in the paper that John Barrymore is going to appear before the movie public in _Dorian Gray_!! Mercy me!! Poor Oscar’s ghost upon the screen!! I wonder what will be done with the part.

42: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _April 26, ’20_

Dear Gorham: Thank you “muchly” for your speedy response to the plea for a critique. I was very anxious for your words, and they proved very valuable. You are right in every particular, except in so far as the understanding of my personal motive of interest in the poem. I realize that it is only my failure in the realization (concretely) which has permitted you this possibility. The poem fails, not because of questions, propagandistic and economic, which you mentioned, but because of that synthetic conviction of form & creation, which it lacks. It is all too complicated an explanation to attempt least wise on paper at this time of the night,--but perhaps you will miraculously be able to penetrate through to my meaning. As it stands, there are only a few fragments scattered thru it to build on,--but I may make something of it in time. However,--if it does evolve into something,--it will be too elusive for you to attach sociological arguments to, at least in the matter of most of the details you have mentioned. At present,--I feel apathetic about it,--but there is, of course, no telling when I will take it up again. The “Garden Abstract” has got hold of me now--and I venture that you would not recognize it. It is carrying me on with all the adventuresome interest that “Grandmother’s Love Letters” did, and I am very hopeful. Later, when I am further advanced with it and surer, I’ll send it to you. Also, I am “working up” the “Aunty Climax” which you will remember,--and a new piece in conventional form about a child hearing his parents quarreling in the next room at midnight,--a rather Blake-ian theme, I fear.

I have gone through a great deal lately,--seen love go down through lust to indifference, etc., and am also, not very well. This, I blame mostly to overwork. In fact the most of last week I spent at home mending an incipient rupture caused by the incessant heavy lifting at the factory. The possibility of such a thing made me furious with resentment against all those concerned in the circumstances of its cause. But I am quieter now that the affair has not been so serious as I at first suspected. I am back at it again today,--but shall in the future take more precautions against strenuosity. Your letter breathed an equanimity which it seems is more [than] in your late surroundings. The change must be doing you good.

43: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _May 25th, ’20_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ Your story in _The Plowshare_ was good and in the right direction, I think. Somewhat in the Chekhov tradition,--but a little too slight to leave many foot-marks. Work up to a few more complications in plot and treatment, and you will give us more of a chance for a grip. But the main point for praise strikes me in the evident fact that you have attained an hygienic attitude (“naturalism,” or what you will, but the only foundation left for serious and interesting modern work). I’m, I fear, a little obscure, but I need a conversation with you to get at the root of the matter.

I am plugging along in a very sodden way, planning as much as I dare on a chance to work a little in the New York office for a few weeks this summer by way of a change. After a recent conversation with my father the move seems rather more probable than before,--so, it may be that I shall see you within six weeks from now of a hot evening. Have been reading Stendhal’s _Chartreuse de Parma_, _Noa Noa_, _Way of All Flesh_, and Landor’s _Conversations_,--a strange mixture. Anderson wrote me very much the same criticism of my “Episode of Hands” poem that you did. I haven’t done anything more with it in spite of frequent attempts. The new version of “Garden Abstract” I enclose for your criticism. _The Dial_ has rejected it, but that doesn’t mean much to me after reading in their last number that vacant lyric of Alter Brody’s.

This “business life” is getting me in a terrible way,--and I am beginning to feel that I must contrive a jolt for myself soon. If it were only myself concerned in the “jolt” I wouldn’t have delaying qualms,--but,--perhaps I am fated to a life of parental absorptions. My interests are as keen as ever, though, and so I suppose I need not worry about myself,--as long as I keep worrying.

44: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland_, _June 8th, ’20_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ I’ve just read your critique in _The Freeman_, and while I have never been to a Provincetown performance, I should certainly want to after this of yours. _The F._ rejected my “Garden Abstract” along with _The N. Rep._ and _The Dial_, and I’m at a loss to understand such things in the light of some of the mediocre effects that are more-or-less the rule in the columns of the first two. Of course the theme was pure pantheistic aestheticism,--and I suppose they would say that it was too detached from life, etc. I’m started on a set of sketches connected with Akron life now, and enclose a sample.[11] Maybe I shall be able to do something in New York in the mornings, the best time for such work, but as you know, plans for that kind of thing can never be made. -- -- -- --

45: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _July 30th, --’20_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ I have been promised the territory around Washington, D.C., Norfolk, Richmond, Va., etc., as a hunting ground for “selling,” beginning about the second week in September when I shall embark for Washington as headquarters. This last named place strikes me as interesting in the extreme,--even better than N.Y. which I know so well anyway. I shall more or less freely govern my own operations, rise and retire at later hours, and have a drawing account at the bank at my own disposal in addition to a good percentage commission on everything I sell. I must admit a happy surprise at my father’s recent appreciation of my efforts here during the last six months. He even made the unhoped-for concession of mentioning that he had chosen this territory for me on account of the better sort of business type that is in Washington and also on account of Washington’s “literary and journalistic associations.” Well, it will be much better than this smug atmosphere around here, and I rather tend to expect a moment or two of revived inspiration. Before closing, I must mention my enthusiasm for our Henry James. I have read recently his _American_, an early novel, and a group of tales in his “middle manner” collected in a book called _The Better Sort_, also I have been at his letters which I bought riskily but wisely, after all. -- -- -- --

46: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _August 18th --’20_

Dear Gorham: I am delighted to hear about your sudden appreciation of D’Annunzio’s novels. In fact, I get a picture of you running with them under your arm, (one arm, I should say,--the other being occupied with other cargo,--) away from the, as usual, glaring M. Schopenhauer who stands in the doorway of your erstwhile quiet ivory tower waving his arms and shaking fists at you. I would rather, and more truthfully, I think,--think of you thusly than as another picture, more common to humanity, that always obtrudes upon me when anyone announces “an engagement”--“The Storm”.... You will remember seeing it in a thousand “art store” windows:--a curly youth partly in a bearskin trotting amiably with a barefooted flaxen lady away from something that evidently hasn’t taken the starch out, as yet, from a rag that they are dragging along above them. It is all “too lovely” and pink. I am sure there is more of a “rouge et noir” cast to your surrender. Well,--betrayal brings memories and wisdom (to the male, anyway), and so I congratulate you on your splash even though I suffer from unaccustomed silence. One word before we close the subject, though:--you must not expect me to read D’Annunzio.

Did I tell you that I have been enjoying the letters of Henry James? Also, Aldous Huxley’s “Limbo,” and the Noh plays of Fenollosa and Pound. Conrad’s _Nigger of the Narcissus_ seems to me all polyphonic prose, plus the usual quality of Conrad characterization, etc. Then I’ve read most of the tales in James’ _Better Sort_ vol. and that is about all I’ve been able to cram into the exhausted evening hours since New York. I’ll chuck in a page of the Akron poem that I struck off the other evening just because I want an opinion on it from you.[12] Hustle back to the ivory tower and put on your specks for a minute, please, and tell me what you think of this uncouth trifle, sir. In view of my attitude toward what Akron so strongly represents, I have been thinking that it might be amusing to call the whole series “Porphyro in Akron.” I don’t much care whether anyone will care for it or not. What I seem to want to do more and more as time goes on, is to preserve a record of a few thoughts and reactions that I’ve had in as accurate colors as possible for at least private satisfaction. --/--/

47: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Washington, D. C._ _Sept. 13th, ’20_

Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- Here I am after a three-days search for a room in an unexceptional maison in a row of other rooming houses. There are charming places in Washington, but it takes time and information to get at them, and as I haven’t either, and had to give the Cleveland office “an address” very quickly, I shall remain here for three weeks yet, anyway. Your last came just before I left home. You ought to thank your stars for such a summer as you have had. I haven’t any idea yet how much I shall like Washington. There is a certain easiness about it, and geographically it is, I should judge, the nearest like Paris of any American city. An endless number of parks and monuments, and all the streets are lined with trees. At least it is more elegant than any other American city and with a very different psychology than N.Y., Cleveland or Akron. This last name reminds me that I sent “Porphyro” to _The Dial_ with some additions and subtractions from the version you read, before leaving home. I dread this tramping around trying to sell Crane’s candy, but this week will see me started in it, and my affection for Washington will largely depend upon how well I get on. At present I feel a terrible vacuity about me and within me and a nostalgia for Cleveland. -- -- -- -- I share your enthusiasm for Cowley’s poem in _The L.R._

48: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Washington_] _Sept. 24th, --’20_

Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- I’ve been running around talking, talking, talking and waiting for the proper persons to arrive at their offices, etc., etc., etc., all week, and have succeeded to the mild extent of inaugurating two new accounts for the firm. Fortunately, people here don’t seem to arrive at their offices until after ten, and so I have the opportunity to sleep more than I did in Cleveland where the requirements commanded my resurrection at five A.M. My Akron friend, Mr. Candee, gave me an introduction to a poet friend of his who has charge of all the official communications, etc., that come into the State Department. He has proved a charming person, and has introduced me to several other interesting people. He is one of the few who is cognizant of what is going on abroad, knows some things weeks in advance of the newspapers and, of course, a great many things that never come out. His opinion of most of Europe, especially the greedy tactics of some of the freshly hatched nationalities, is below cynicism. I have not yet heard from _The Dial_ about “Porphyro,” or at any rate he has [not] been redirected to me. I am beginning to feel that he is my lost soul, and will be a long time in returning. This simply means that I haven’t had a creative impulse for so long that I am even getting not to miss it. I am not in the type of Washington life that offers material or incentive for writing. The diplomatic circles have all kinds of scandals waving around which I generally hear a whisper of from the fringes, but there is really no cafe life here or factory or shop life worth mentioning. Thousands of clerks pour out of government offices at night and eat and go to the movies. The streets are beautiful with many parks, etc., but it is all rather dead. I am really more interested in the soldiers and sailors that one meets than anything else. They have a strange psychology of their own that is new to me. This sounds bad, and perhaps it is so,--but what should one do with the reported example of our new VICE -- -- -- -- scenting the air as it does. From what I’m hearing, about every other person in the government service and diplomatic service are enlarged editions of Lord Douglas. Amusing Household! as Rimbaud would say. I shall look for _The Rainbow_ in Brentano’s here, and hope that it may be interesting. -- -- -- --

49: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Washington_] _Oct. 1 ’20_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ New York seems to be set for a fine musical and dramatic season. I took in _Footloose_ here last week and enjoyed it in spite of many obvious impossibilities of situation, etc. Emily Stevens did well in it--I suppose it would have failed without her. _Stepping Stones_ is here this week and I may go to see it. -- -- -- --

What think you of this Aldous Huxley’s “Leda” poems? They strike me as dry and very clever,--but is real poetry so obviously clever? Modern life and its vacuity seems to me to be responsible for such work. There is only a lime or a lemon to squeeze or a pepper-pot left to shake. All the same I admire his work very much. He comes in the line of Eliot and Sitwell. Eliot’s influence threatens to predominate the new English.

50: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Washington, D.C._ _Oct. 20th,--’20_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ Your letter that arrived this morning had the true rage of the celibate unwilling in it. I sympathize with you.... My nights are uneasy also. But you ought to pity me more than yourself,--my satisfactions are far more remote and dangerous than yours, and my temptations frequent, alas!

I have just been reading your Pollard article, and on bringing it to the attention of my friend Wilbur Underwood here, was delighted to find that U. knew Pollard very well, the latter having been enthusiastic about the two vols. of verse that Underwood brought out in England a long time ago. What pathos there is in these sudden flashes on forgotten people, forgotten achievements and encounters! Here is this man, Underwood, with the beauty and promise of his life all dried and withered by the daily grind he has had to go through year after year in the State Dept. with a meagre salary. A better critic and more interesting person one seldom meets, yet the routine of uninteresting work has probably killed forever his creative predispositions. A very few friends is all that life holds for him. Yes, Pound is right in what he says in his “The Rest,”--“O helpless few in my country, O remnant enslaved!... You who cannot wear yourselves out by persisting to successes.”

U. has a very fine collection of rare translations, etc., from antiquity, and I have just been enjoying to the full his copy of the _Satyricon_ of Petronius (Arbiter), a rare and completely unexpurgated Paris edition, purported to have been translated by Oscar Wilde, although it seems to me too fine a job for what I imagine Wilde’s scholarship to have been. Also, I am enjoying _The Golden Asse_ of Apuleius, and some Saltus vols. that he has.

I went to see Hampden in _The Merchant of Venice_ recently here. The way it was done, setting, costumes, speech, gestures,--everything was sickening. Hampden, in one scene only,--the tantrum with Tubal,--was good, everywhere else his acting was indifferent. I cannot understand how a man of his intelligence,--for I remember his Hamlet as being quite good,--will venture forth with such a cast of burlesque queens, (his Portia!!!) and bitches. The worst examples of antiquated theatricality, and mouthing of words! And the audience was ample and enthusiastic,--a true barometer of the American stage at present. --/--/

I shall be glad to get back to Cleveland for a while, if only to see the copies of Vildrac, Rimbaud, and Laforgue that have arrived from Paris since my leaving. I expect to return to W. later, in Jan. when the “season” here is on. I find agreement from my father that my lack of results here has not been so much a matter of personal inadequacy as the weather and general slowness of business here at this particular time.... I shall certainly be in an ungodly rush, though, all the time I am at the factory, as the holiday season orders will be coming in and things become perfectly maddening there for two months. However, anything will be better than the maddening experience I have been having here of clawing the air day after day without getting any but the most meagre results. --/--/

51: TO GORHAM MUNSON

_Cleveland,_ _Nov. 9th--’20_

Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- Yes, “Jurgen” has been breathing his _native_ Ohio air for two weeks now, and is elbow and knee-deep in shipping and packing at the factory. The Christmas rush has already begun and I’m tired to death tonight after a rush since five this morning. But in spite of all it has been better to get out of the ghostly time I was having in Washington, back into the usual smoky and tawdry thoroughfares. Does one really get so used to such things as, in time, to miss them, if absent? I am sure I should not miss factory whistles in Pisa or Morocco, but I frankly did miss them in Washington. Anyway, they were more enlivening (and the people they claim) than anything or anyone that I saw in W., which seemed to me the most elegantly restricted and bigoted community I ever ventured into. They say it has changed a lot since the war, and prohibition, of course, smothered its last way out.--I almost hope I will not have the opportunity of returning there in Jan., as expected. But you’ve heard most of this before.--

I have written Margaret Anderson to find out the _L.R._ situation. Probably what you have heard is only too true. There is no use expressing familiar resentments about such proceedings, and anyway one grows rather calloused and numb in time. There is that danger with me,--of relaxing into an indifference more comfortable than an interest in the arts nowadays and here, allows. I suppose the Minns pictures, my poems, etc., are smothered,--at least I’ve reconciled myself to it peacefully. I’m sorrier about the Minns pictures than anything else, as it meant a great deal of trouble to bring their reproduction about. Perhaps they’ll print them again, I don’t know yet. My great wonder is that M.C.A. and j.h. keep persisting as they do.

When you get a chance see the new monograph on Jacob Epstein including fifty photos of his works. He seems to be much better than most of Rodin, and I’m enthusiastic almost to the point of silliness. I’m reading _The Possessed_ at your suggestion. Dostoievsky is a stranger to me beyond _Crime and Punishment_ which caught me by the throat. He _does_ give one more life than my mundane world supplies,--and stimulates. He makes you forget yourself (should I better say, lose) in the life of his characters for days at a time. And how few writers can do that! You see this record of my temper at present,--I’m tired, with every evidence of it. -- -- -- --

52: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _11/23/20_

My dear Gorham: Your letter has just come, and I’m sorry to know you are having such an ordeal of “nerves.” Of course, being thrown back violently again on celibacy after your Woodstock freedom would naturally tend to bring about such a result, and it is only a pity that you cannot find anything near you of sufficient temporary interest to relieve your situation. Of course, I realize, that the puritanical taboos of a typical boys’ school are what stands in the way most of all, and then you might possibly resent and refuse sheer sensuality after having experienced what I imagine has been offered you. I don’t believe in the “sublimation” theory at all so far as it applies to my own experience. Beauty has most often appeared to me in moments of penitence and even sometimes, distraction and worry. Lately my continence has brought me nothing in the creative way,--it has tended to create a confidence in me along lines of action,--business, execution, etc. There is not love enough in me at present to do a thing. This sounds romantic and silly,--you understand that I mean and refer to the strongest incentive to the imagination, or, at least, the strongest in my particular case. So I have nothing to offer you for reading and judgment. Mart Anderson writes me that the next _L.R._ will be out the twenty-fifth,--96 pgs., and will contain my poem, etc., and a publication of the J. Joyce trial and proceedings which she says are interesting. It ought to be a rich number with John Quinn and Burleson throwing epithets at each other. I stopped in the middle of _The Possessed_ to read _Poor White_, but am again on the Russian trail. What marvelous psychology!!! A careful reading of “Dosty” ought to prepare one’s mind to handle any human situation comfortably that ever might arise.... You will like the Anderson book. It fascinated me as much as _Winesburg_ and this in spite of a great fear I had of disappointment. There is a woman in it something like jh although too removed to do anything but suggest her. I wish, after you have read it, that we could have a fireside hour over the book. We might agree perhaps on the exquisite work of such scenes as the description of the murderer-saddlemaker sitting by the pond and rocking gently to and fro (the simplicity of A’s great power of suggestion is most mocking to the analyst)--and the scene where the sex awakening girl hears the men in the barn in speaking of her, say,--“the sap is mounting into the tree.” Nature is so strong in all the work of Anderson--and he describes it as one so willingly and happily surrendered to it, that it colors his work with the most surprising grasp of what “innocence” and “holiness” ought to mean. Also, his uncanny intuition into the feelings of women (a number of women have remarked to me about this) is very unusual. I have an absurd prejudice against Frank’s _Dark Mother_ merely on account of what I read of it in a copy of _The Dial_. There it seemed to me too exclamatory, Semitic, and too much in the style of David Pinski, whose stuff I somehow am terribly bored with. So I probably shall never read it, as I probably shall never read more than the three pages of W. D. Howells that I once attempted. Frankly, you see, I admit to a taste for certain affectations and ornamental commissions. I wish I could follow your finger guide to the advice of Brooks in _The Freeman_ about “outside interests” for the fallow seasons between poems. I had read the article and agree with it in many ways. But with me, there are no poems for “doldrums” to lag between, and no time, literally, for poems, to say nothing of energy. The fact is last week I ran gait at the factory at the rate of fourteen hours straight per day of rushed and heavy and confusing labor, and as it will probably continue that way until very near Christmas, I have all I can do to think of getting enough sleep to begin the rush again next day. Of course I am becoming very morose and irritable under this pressure of exertion, not to mention disgust and boredom, and yesterday, my first day of a chance to sit down and think a minute, I found myself in a rather serious state of indigestion and neurotic fever. So it goes. Our age tries hard enough to kill us, but I begin to feel a pleasure in sheer stubbornness, and will possibly turn in time into some sort of a beautiful crank. Pax vobiscum!!!!

53: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Sunday, Dec. 5th,--’20_

Dear Gorham: Your article in _The Plowshare_ was so late as to have arrived only a few days ago,--the “Pascal” came yesterday. In almost every way, I think, the latter work is superior, and to me, more suggestive, but this is probably because we agreed pretty well over most of the contents of “Cafe St. Beuve” last summer in my parlours at the Prince George and so it was familiar material to me. I have never read Pascal and so can’t speak beyond telling you that I like your handling of the theme and it seemed to me that your style was richer than I have noticed before. I am filled with a kind of bleakness of mind and spirit lately, so that even this answer to your appreciated interest in my bland career is somehow an unsatisfactory effort. I should like to be able to see and talk to you,--the mere technical mechanics of writing have become so foreign to me from long neglect, that I feel awkward at best. Again I am very much at sea about everything that personally concerns me. --/--/ I am not sure about remaining in Cleveland much after the first of the year, as there is a possibility of my being sent out on the road again as salesman. On the other hand, it seems to me that it will be about as much as I can endure to remain at my present work in the shipping dept. until Christmas is over without a clean and final break with my father and his company, owing to various humiliations he seems interested in either forcing or countenancing others about the place to force, on me. As soon as my mother is off the