to Brandywine valley (between here and Akron) and revisited Bill Sommer.
The old baldpate was asleep on a sofa when I looked through the screen
door and knocked. Arose a great bulk in white undershirt and loose white
duck pants--the black eyes revolving in the pallid or rather,
dusty-white miller face like a sardonic Pierrot’s. The few hours I was
there were spent with him out in the old school-house studio, surrounded
by a flower garden and filled with plentiful new wonders of line and
color. I wish you could have seen several of the oil children’s
portraits that he has been doing! And there is a line drawing of a head
and hand that I am bringing back to New York that you will greatly care
for. While we were both chewing, smoking and listening to the crickets I
finally found out why Sommer has been so remiss about joining in with me
in my several efforts to expose him to fame and “fortune.” He hates to
let his pictures leave him. Against that impasse, I guess, nobody’s
efforts will be of much avail. It’s just as well, of course, if he has
triumphed over certain kinds of hope. I admit that I haven’t, at least
not entirely. I still feel the need of some kind of audience.
By the way--do you know if O’Neill is at present a resident anywhere on
Nantucket? He has promised to write some kind of notice for my book, and
I should like to get in touch with him. He wrote me from Bermuda, but
where he has settled since returning from there I don’t yet know. If he
has been near you I hope that you have got together.
I am enclosing an improved version of “Passage,”--the poem I wrote in
the country this summer. It should replace the version that is in the
mss. you have. To me it is still the most interesting and conjectural
thing I have written--being merely the latest, I suppose. I’m
particularly anxious to know what you think of its form. On sending it
to _The Dial_ I recently got this comment from Miss Moore:
“We could not but be moved, as you must know, by the rich imagination
and the sensibility in your poem, Passage. Its multiform content
accounts I suppose, for what seems to us a lack of simplicity and
cumulative force. We are sorry to return it.”
It seems almost as though Miss Moore might be rather speaking of her own
poems with such terms.... Allen Tate is writing a short essay (he
intends a longer one later) on my work to appear along with four of the
“Voyages” in the next copy of _The Guardian_. You will probably see it.
It does hearten me somewhat that you and a few others have been so
actively interested in what I’m trying to do. Certainly I have never
done anything to personally deserve it, but I think my personal and
economic embarrassments and frustrations have curtailed a good many of
my intentions. --/--/
214: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_New York_ _Sept. 15th, ’25_
Dear Charlotte! dear Richard! --/--/ I am ready to send you one of the
Light masks (from last year’s production of _The Ancient Mariner_).
Jimmie promised me one of them, and I can think of no one better to send
it to than you. I’ll get a box tomorrow, pack it and send it along. You
can have some great fun playing with it in pantomime around the house.
The effect is unearthly--the mask belonged to one of the angels, in
fact, that are described as standing on the deck of the ship as it
reaches the harbor in Coleridge’s poem. --/--/
I am so afraid that the land up there will get away from me before I get
there that I can hardly sleep nights. I find that O’Neill is not in town
and the other person, the publisher, from whom I had planned to possibly
borrow the money is away also. Would it strain your pocketbook at this
time to lend me the amount, so that I can at once clinch the bargain? It
was so good of you to make the offer in the first place that I feel [I]
am possibly taking advantage of your friendship. But if I could just
settle the matter there before it is too late, I could later borrow the
money from O’Neill, or someone else and return you at once the money
borrowed. I will need a little over two hundred dollars as otherwise I
shall not have anything to pay the lawyer’s fees with for looking up the
deed, etc. Would $25.00 extra be too much? You must allow me to pay 6%
interest on the loan--and to send you a regular note for the money. I
would like the time stipulation about 5 years, but I would repay it as
soon as possible before that. I know you trust me, but I also want to
assure you of protection in the matter. --/--/
215: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_Patterson, New York_ _Sunday_
Dear Charlotte and Richard: I think I have found an even better solution
for the “land problem” than the first proposition offered. A friend of
Brown’s, Miss Bina Flynn, has just bought a lovely place within a half
mile from Brown’s place, wonderful old Dutch house in good condition and
built about the time of the American Revolution and with 160 acres of
land around it. She needs money to help pay for it and has offered me 20
acres of the best of her land for $200.00. The piece that I have picked
to buy is on the top slopes of a hill that overlooks the valley and it
contains several open fields and a great deal of forest land. As it is
much more convenient (within better access from the main road), and as
it contains no useless swamps or wasteland as the other property
included, I think I am getting as much of a bargain, if not more. Twenty
acres is plenty to spread out in anyway, and there will be plenty of
room on it for whatever place you would want, too.
Miss Flynn is out here today transacting the purchase of her property
and I expect to settle with her very soon. More and more I become
convinced that this is the only way for me to live, that is, when I can
make arrangements to afford it as a permanent way of living, and I am
sort of planning to come out here next summer and put up a temporary
cabin which will at least do during the warm weather. I shall roll in
the grass with prayers and pleasure when I really get this tract of land
for my very own. And such beautiful country you will not find in many
sections of this vast continent. Enclosed is my note for the $225.00
which I intend to pay _much before_ the stipulated time. I shall, in
fact, probably take a job in New York or on the sea this winter which
will enable me to pay it back before a year is over--at the latest.
Today it is raining, but the ten days before it have been as divine as
anyone could wish for. We have had big fires in the evenings, long
walks, big meals almost entirely of lettuce, carrots, beets, turnips,
squash, etc., just taken from the garden. Sue [Jenkins] seems to be very
contented out here and is busy every moment making jellies, jams,
pickles, etc. The hills are covered with wild grapes, elderberries and
apple orchards. Don’t you think the quince is a beautiful fruit? There
are about a dozen quince trees on Brown’s property--all loaded with
their sort of kid glove golden fruit. Yesterday we had a great time
making six gallons of ale. It must ripen for about five days in a warm
corner of the chimney in a huge crock, and then we can begin to drink
it. Brown also has a complete distilling outfit out in the shed. He
makes wonderful apple jack from cider. But this is a forbidden drink for
me these days!
All my furniture and things arrived in perfect condition. In addition I
have been making tables and cupboards from old loose wood that has been
lying around for years. They really look like antiques, all right! But I
do love the weather stains and silver streaks on the surfaces. Most of
the wood is oak and quite strong.
So you see how the days go.... In addition I am getting back to enough
poise to read a good deal. It’s funny! Here I’ve been for over two
weeks, now, and without a cent of money to my name. But I haven’t felt
uncomfortable by any means. I know I can go back to a job now with a
much better feeling of independence than before. --/--/
216: TO SLATER BROWN
[_Brooklyn_] _Oct. 21st, ’25_
Dear Tories: There have been numerous “celebrations” besides the already
recounted one (by Bina) on the great transaction, and the Punch Palazzo
has had due patronage. The engrossing female [Laura Riding] at most of
these has been “Rideshalk-Godding,” as I have come to call her, and thus
far the earnest ghost of acidosis has been kept well hence. My real
regret, however, is that I just missed getting the pick of jobs of the
S. Am. line, last steamer--said occupation being deck yeoman at 20
minutes work a day, all freedom of ship, mess with officers or any first
class passengers that seemed colloquial, white uniform, brass buttons,
cap, meditation on the sun deck all day long, and seventy-five dollars a
month clear sailing! The chief officer had already approved me, but
before I could get over to the offices for final approbation they had
already sent someone else over to the ship. We must have passed under
the river. However, I noticed that my questionnaire (filled last June)
had won an OK sign in the upper right corner, and I have been told to
come around again on the 26th when the next boat arrives. I’m not
waiting for that, however, as I need instant cash and there is not one
chance in a hundred of a similar vacancy soon. Otherwise I have finished
“The Wine Menagerie” and have sent it off, along with “Passage,” to _The
Criterion_. Since the last (yesterday) _Guardian_ has come out _without_
the “Voyages” I am thinking of trying to become a literary ex-patriot.
It’s just as tiresome as ever. This issue contains a lot of tommy-rot by
Seaver and an “announcement” in the bargain that reads unforgivably:
“Voyages, four remarkable poems by Allen Tate” will appear in the next
issue! --/--/
Am on my way to _The Dial_ to have lunch with K. B[urke] and shall try
to bag a review or briefers from the Rt. Rev. Miss Mountjoy [Moore]. A
momentous morning: Frank is going to try to corner Liveright on my vol.,
also. --/--/
217: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Brooklyn_] _Oct. 26th_
Dear Waldo: Your advice and stimulation are still with me. Your solidity
and conviction seemed never more firm or luminous than during our last
talk.--I was glad to see you looking so well. I wrote this out this
morning, thinking it might go well in the book.[39] No other news yet.
218: TO WILLIAM SOMMER
_Brooklyn, N. Y._ _Oct. 27th, ’25_
Dear Bill: --/--/ I know you’ll be glad to know that there is a good
chance of my first book of poems, _White Buildings_, being published by
next spring. In fact Boni & Liveright (at Waldo Frank’s persuasion) have
practically agreed to bring it out if Eugene O’Neill will consent to
write a short foreword. They have lost so much money on the better kind
of poetry (which simply _doesn’t_ sell these days) that they want to
hook the book up with an illustrious name and catch the public that way
as much as possible. Gene is a good friend of mine and admires my
work--I know that--but whether or not he feels like performing this
favor I haven’t yet heard. Frank thinks he can engineer the matter
anyway--in time, but I don’t know. He would gladly write the foreword
himself if he thought his name would count sufficiently, and at any rate
will write a whole page of praise for it in _The New Republic_ when it
comes out. This and other favorable reviews that I am sure to get from
friends of mine ought to make quite a sensation for the book. I’m a
little up in the air with the uncertainty and excitement of the present
situation. It would be fine for me in so many ways if the thing did go
through!
Have been reading Ernest Hemingway’s _In Our Time_, a new book that is
full of startlingly simple and vivid description. --/--/
219: TO HIS FATHER
[_Brooklyn_] [_November 21, 1925_]
Dear Father: I was very glad to hear from you and it was generous of you
to thus come to my aid.[40] The only pity is that artificial theories
and principles have to come so much between us in what is, after all, a
natural relationship of confidence and affection.
You may not believe it, Father, but in spite of what opinions you may
hear that I have against you (and, not knowing what is told you, I still
refuse to acknowledge them, either way), I still resent the fate that
has seemed to justify them and God knows how much we all are secretly
suffering from the alienations that have been somehow forced upon us. If
we were all suddenly called to a kind of Universal Judgment, I’m sure
that we would see a lot of social defenses and disguises fall from each
other, and we would begin from that instant onward to really know and
love each other.
I feel rather strange these days. The old house sold in Cleveland;
Grandmother ill in Florida; Mother somewhere in Cuba or the Isle of
Pines; and I not hearing from either of them for the past month.
Altogether, it’s enough to make one feel a little foot-loose in the
world. But I’ll have a job soon, and will probably be reassured in the
mail that everything’s all right. At such times, though, I realize how
few we are and what a pity it is that we don’t mean a little more to
each other.
Please let me hear from you when the spirit moves you.
220: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_Brooklyn, NY_ _Dec. 1st ’25_
Dear Charlotte and Richard: --/--/ The facts are hard, but true, I have
not yet succeeded in finding myself a job, and even after trying every
sort of position, like selling books in stores during the Christmas
rush, ship jobs, etc., etc., and I have just been kept going by the
charity of my friends. The nervous strain of it all has about floored
me, and I feel as though the skin of my knees were quite worn off from
bowing to so many people, being sniffed at (to see whether I had
“personality” or not), etc. How I shall love it when, some day, I shall
have a little hut built on my place in the country to live in--and get
out of all this filthy mess!
Even the publication matter of my book of poems has not come through the
way I had expected. O’Neill is writing the Foreword, after all, but he
took so long to notify Liveright (the publisher) about it that I must
now try to place it somewhere else. This may not be so hard, but it
probably means that it will not come out until next autumn, and I had so
hoped to have it printed before that....
So you see how it’s been! I don’t mean to wail, but it is hard to keep
up and going sometimes. --/--/
--/--/ I have an appointment tomorrow with a possible job. I certainly
hope to get it, and begin paying back what you were so kind in lending
me. _The Dial_ bought my “Wine Menagerie” poem--but insisted (Marianne
Moore did it) on changing it around and cutting it up until you would
not even recognize it. She even changed the title to “Again.” What it
all means now I can’t make out, and I would never have consented to such
an outrageous joke if I had not so desperately needed the twenty
dollars.--Just one more reason for getting my book published as soon as
possible!
221: TO HIS FATHER
_Brooklyn, N. Y._ _Dec. 3rd, ’25_
Dear Father: Your letter was appreciated in many respects and I don’t
want you to think that I wasn’t glad to hear from you. But there were
recriminations in it which assumed a basis for apologies and regrets on
my part which I don’t feel I at all suggested in my last letter and
which I certainly cannot acknowledge now or later. In fact, you always
seem to assume some dire kind of repentance whenever I write you or call
on you, and so far as I know I have nothing in particular to repent. I
simply said I was sorry that you could not see me in a clearer light,
and it seems I shall have to go on lamenting that to some degree for the
rest of my life. If I began to make recriminations on my behalf there
wouldn’t be any use writing at all, for though I have plenty to mention,
I don’t see what good it would be to either one of us to embark on a
correspondence of that sort. My only complaint right now is that you
seem determined to pursue such a course, and I can only say that if you
persist I have no answers to offer. You and I could never restore our
natural relationship of father and son by continually harping on all the
unnatural and painful episodes that life has put between us via not only
ourselves but other people during the last ten years, and if you are not
willing to bury such hatchets and allow me, also, to do so, then I’ll
have to give up.
For the last six weeks I’ve been tramping the streets and being
questioned, smelled and refused in various offices. Most places didn’t
have any work to offer. I’ve stepped even out of my line as advertising
copywriter, down to jobs as low as twenty-five per week, but to no
avail. My shoes are leaky, and my pockets are empty; I have helped to
empty several other pockets, also. In fact I am a little discouraged.
This afternoon I am stooping to do something that I know plenty of
others have done whom I respect, but which I have somehow always edged
away from. I am writing a certain internationally known banker who
recently gave a friend of mine five thousand dollars to study painting
in Paris, and I’m asking him to lend me enough money to spend the winter
in the country where it is cheap to live and where I can produce some
creative work without grinding my brains through six sausage machines a
day beforehand. If he refuses me I shall either ask Eugene O’Neill who
is now writing the Foreword to my book and won’t refuse me for some help
to that end, or I’ll take to the sea for awhile--for I’m certainly tired
of the desolating mechanics of this office business, and it’s only a
matter of time, anyway, until I finish with it for good. I can live for
ten dollars a week in the country and have decent sleep, sound health
and a clear mind. I have already bought ten acres near here in
Connecticut and it’s just a matter of time until I have a cabin on it
and have a garden and chickens. You see I have a plan for my life, after
all. You probably don’t think it’s very ambitious, but I do. As Dr.
Lytle said to me when I was last in Cleveland, “What does it all amount
to if you aren’t happy?” And I never yet have spent a happy day cooped
up in an office having to calculate everything I said to please or
flatter people that I seldom respected.
I wish you would write me something about yourself these days. Let’s not
argue any more.
222: TO OTTO H. KAHN
_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _December 3, 1925_
Dear Mr. Kahn: Yesterday I telephoned Mr. Sharpp, your secretary, to
request an interview with you regarding some temporary assistance which
I felt you might possibly care to render me under the pressure of my
present circumstances. Mr. Sharpp advised that I write you first,
explaining the exigencies of the situation and the application I wished
to make. I shall try to be as definite and as brief as possible.
My first collected poems are about to be published (probably next
spring) with a Foreword by Eugene O’Neill. Although my poems have
appeared from time to time in various magazines such as _The Dial_ and
_The Little Review_, I am not yet well enough known to reap any
substantial benefits from what I have written. I am twenty-six years of
age, and for the last seven years I have been entirely dependent on my
efforts as an advertising copywriter for my living. What real writing I
have done has had to be accomplished after office hours and sometimes at
the risk of losing my position. Last June, as a result of ill health and
nervous exhaustion, I had to resign my position with Sweet’s Catalogue,
regardless of my dependence on my salary there, and live in the country
until my health recovered.
For the past eight weeks I have been back in New York, endeavoring by
every means to secure work again as a copywriter. As I have been
unfortunate in not finding any openings I have recently attempted to get
any other kind of work available, but as I find myself now completely
without funds, my circumstances seem to be rather acute. One of my
friends has suggested that you might be sufficiently interested in the
creation of an indigenous American poetry to possibly assist me at this
time. As I have never before asked for such assistance I run the risk of
writing you quite presumptuously, and I certainly wish to beg your
pardon if my letter seems so.
Besides the poems collected into my forthcoming volume I have partially
written a long poem, the conception of which has been in my mind for
some years. I have had to work at it very intermittently, between night
and morning, and while shorter efforts can be more successfully
completed under such crippling circumstances, a larger conception such
as this poem, _The Bridge_, aiming as it does to enunciate a new
cultural synthesis of values in terms of our America, requires a more
steady application and less interruption than my circumstances have yet
granted me to give to it.
If the suggestion seems worthy and feasible to you I should like to
borrow the sum of a thousand dollars, at any rate of interest within six
percent. With this amount I could live in retirement and cheaply in the
country for at least a year and not only complete this poem, but also
work on a drama which I have in mind. As security I can only offer an
unconditional sum, amounting to five thousand dollars, which by the
terms of my deceased grandparent’s will, I inherit on the death of his
widow. I do not know whether such bequests are open to outside inquiry,
but the proper reference, in case you are interested, is Mr. Stockwell,
Trust Department, Guardian Savings & Trust Co., Cleveland; estate of C.
O. Hart.
As to the estimation my work deserves, I naturally do not feel free to
do more than quote a few statements from critics who have seen my poems
in print and read my mss. I include these on a separate sheet herewith.
Let me say in concluding that I should appreciate an interview with you
at your offices, Mr. Kahn, and that I honestly feel that my artistic
integrity and present circumstances merit the attention of one like
yourself, who is and has been so notably constructive in the
contemporary and future art and letters of America.
_Statements on my writings_--
“It is time that your poetry should appear in a volume. You know
what I think of it. I have done my best these years to spread my
recognition of your genius not alone here but abroad. But it has
been hard, without a volume of your work to go on. WHITE BUILDINGS
will be an event in American poetry--a major event. Not the sort of
event that journalists make paragraphs about, three times a week.
But the sort of event that literary historians make chapters
about--years later. You are a real poet.
“I promise you, that when your volume appears, I shall devote a
long article to your work, in one of our leading literary
magazines.” WALDO FRANK
“The publication of WHITE BUILDINGS is one of the five or six
events of the first order in the history of American poetry. It is
doubtful if any other first volume since Whitman’s, in 1855, has
so definitely exceeded promise and reached distinction on its own
account. Hart Crane’s poetry, even in its beginnings, is one of the
finest achievements of this age. So one must predict the reviewer’s
protest--‘Incomprehensible!’” ALLEN TATE--Reviewer for _Nation_,
_New Republic_, _etc._
“Many thanks for sending me copies of your recent poems. I have
taken them with me on my brief vacation and I have greatly enjoyed
reading them. They have refreshed my conviction that you are
writing the most highly energized and the most picturesquely
emotionalized poetry in ‘These United States.’ ‘Voyages’ is the
finest love suite composed by any living American.” GORHAM B.
MUNSON--Managing editor of _Psychology_, and critic; contributor to
_Dial_, _New Republic_, _Criterion_, _New Age_, _Europe_, _etc._
* * * * *
_Other references_--Eugene O’Neill, Greenwich Village Theatre, or
Ridgefield, Conn.; James Light, Provincetown Theatre; Miss Eleanor
Fitzgerald, Provincetown Theatre; Waldo Frank, 150 East 54th St.,
N.Y.C. Telephone: Plaza 2342; Marianne Moore; Jane Heap; Harrison
Smith; Paul Rosenfeld.
223: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _Dec. 9th, ’25_
My dear Mother: For almost six weeks, now, I have not heard from you or
Grandma. Though Mr. Curtis was thoughtful enough to notify me that you
have been taken ill, the circumstances did not seem to describe a
situation so severe that you could not have taken pen in hand and at
least have written me once yourself during that time--especially, it
seems to me, since you knew by my several letters that I was having a
difficult time and was without funds entirely. I have put off writing
you under these conditions; there was enough reason to so do simply on
the basis of your own indifference, or possible disgust with me. And I
admit that it was a shock for me to realize that you needed me so
little. I have gone through a good many realizations of various sorts
during the last six months and they are not without echoes of certain
things you said to me last summer, trying as I may have been.
I don’t know where you may be at this time, but in case you may for any
reason wish to write to me I am writing to say that I shall be probably
for the next year at the following address: c/o Mrs. Addie Turner,
Patterson, New York, R.F.D. I am unusually well provided for and shall
leave for the country next Saturday. Yesterday afternoon I had the
pleasure of being rewarded in some measure for some of the work I have
been doing. You have probably heard of the banker, Mr. Otto H. Kahn, who
has kept the Metropolitan Opera and various other artistic ventures
endowed for years. After an interview with Mr. Kahn at his home at 1100
Fifth Ave., I was given the sum of two thousand dollars to expend on my
living expenses during the next year, which time is to be spent in
writing the most creative message I have to give, regardless of whether
it is profitable in dollars & cents or not.
Mr. Kahn was keenly interested in what Waldo Frank and Eugene O’Neill
had said about my work, and it makes me very happy indeed to have this
recognition from a man who is not only extremely wealthy and renowned on
that account, but who is also very astute and intelligent. I am very
tired now--with all the strain and effort of the last two months, but I
shall probably pick up as never before when I get into the quiet of the
country and have the first real opportunity of my life to use my talents
unhampered by fear and worry for the morrow.
If you are not too prejudiced about me by this time, you may also be
interested in this turn of affairs.
Let me hear from you sometime soon.
I certainly hope you and Grandmother are feeling better.
224: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
[_Patterson, New York_] _New Year’s Eve ‘26 [25]_
Dear Charlotte & Ricardo: Here I am at this date and sixty-six miles
from a drink. Isn’t it tragic! And there will not be a whistle or a
shout to tell me it is a new year. I shall probably be fast asleep,
unless I get scared and stay up blinking over a book--for it must be a
bad omen to be asleep at the switch of the new twelvemonth. But tomorrow
night I shall make up for it. That is, if certain friends come out from
New York with all their bottles on them.
Life out here so far has been ideal--even if it has been below zero much
of the time. But I came prepared for all kinds of weather and dress
every morning in boots, woolens, and furs. I shall have my picture taken
and you shall see how very impolite I look.
Imagine paying only ten dollars a month for the rent of a whole house (8
rooms)! I share it with Allen Tate and his wife and have a suite all to
myself on the second floor--1 room I do not use at all, a bedroom with a
fine old “sleigh bed” and a study, spacious and light, in which the sun
streams every morning. My pictures and nick-knacks look wonderfully
jolly on the simple kalsomined walls and the books fairly glisten on the
shelves. This room is kept well heated by two oil stoves. Downstairs we
cook and heat with wood-burning stoves which means enough daily exercise
to keep us glowing.
Otherwise all I have to do is wash dishes. Mrs. Tate cooks lunch and
dinner and Allen gets breakfast! This routine plan is the only way for
all of us to get each his work done--I mean our writing. Mrs. Tate is
writing a novel (her second) and Allen is _supposed_ to be writing
reviews, etc. Nothing much _yet_, however, has been done by any of us.
There have been food supplies, appliances and sundries of all sorts to
order--and then came Christmas with flocks of people visiting Brown’s
place (about 1/2 mile away) and drinking and talking day and night.
Allen also has dissipated terribly with a gun he bought (called “_The
White Powder Wonder_”)! and has so far spent most of his time ranging
over the hills shooting at sparrows. He did get a squirrel one day,
however, and we had an exclamatory time over the stew it made. -- -- -- --
There are all kinds of game around here, even deer, and it’s a
temptation to hunt, of course.
Well, the expected results have already been noticed on my family! Long
and ardurous letters from uncles, aunts, etc. (not Zell [Hart Deming],
but she’s in Europe anyway), and a fat check from my father for
Christmas. They all want me to come out and visit again--which I see no
reason for doing at this time. I want to get into my work. My God, it’s
the first time anyone paid me to do it or even encouraged it in any
substantial way! Of course--to them the $2,000 seems like some kind of
shower bath without any connection with any conceivable
responsibilities. You can have responsibilities toward your time clock,
your cow or your maiden aunt, but you can’t mean to say that poems or
pictures demand anything but aimless dreaming! No. I’m not coming until
spring--unless there is serious need of me.
Mother, it seems, has been terribly ill in Miami, and did not even go to
the Isle of Pines. As she was scheduled to leave for there on a certain
day and, failing to, did not inform me I went on writing her there and
as I got no word of her from _anywhere_ I finally gave up writing at
all. Finally I got word through Mr. Curtis that he had been called to
Miami to take care of them both--but I still didn’t understand her not
writing me in all that time, and thought she must be angry about
something.
Everything was all mixed up. And I finally had a long letter from her
rejoicing in my good luck and full of the harrowing details of how very
ill she had been with all sorts of complications. Miami turned out to be
more terrible than even I had predicted--and what this folly has cost
those women in pain and in expense God only knows. Both in bed for
weeks. Six doctors, nurses, compartments on trains, etc., etc., Grandma
got back about 2 weeks before Grace was able to leave. The latter joined
her finally and they are living at the Manor--where they should have
been all the time, of course. I’m sure they would love to see you both,
and believe me, there were no complications, as I had thought, between
us.
I’m expecting you both to visit me here next summer. Plenty of room for
you--and you’ll be sure to relax. I bought some wonderful snow shoes
with some of Otto’s money and so I pray for heavy storms. --/--/
PART THREE
West Indies-Europe
(1926-1930)
1926
225: TO MALCOLM COWLEY
[_Patterson_] _Jan 3rd_
Dear Malcolm: The poem[41] has been read with approval--is flatteringly
apocalyptic and has the proper nautical slant.... Seriously, though, it
seems to stand on its own feet as a poem and I appreciate a very great
deal the tonality and direction of it in its more intimate aspects. You
and Peggy [Baird] have been more than good in remembering me--thanks for
the photo, too. --/--/
Are you reviewing _Doc. Transit_ anywhere? Schneider finally sent me out
a copy. It intrigued me more than any such tour de force since Poe,
though it has its obvious weaknesses. Some chapters, however, of great
imagination. I didn’t anticipate half so much from the earlier things
I’ve read by Schneider.
I’m coming in town probably about two weeks from now, and should like to
know what day or days about that period you’ll be there also. You know
what the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of S.
Carolina--! I’m such a rum-scallion that I never even planned to stay
put anywhere very long in the woods. Let me hear from you soon. --/--/
226: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER
_Patterson_ _Jan. 5th ’26_
Dear Grandma: I was sorry to hear from Grace yesterday that you have
been undergoing more pain and illness--and I only hope that this finds
you MUCH improved. I wish I could be near you--and have a long talk. We
certainly will manage that when I come out to Cleveland next spring.
Yesterday I finally got started into my _Bridge_ poem--really the first
full day I have [had] for the work since arriving. And from now on I
hope to have the necessary inspiration to keep steadily at it. One
really has to keep one’s self in such a keyed-up mood for the thing
that no predictions can be made ahead as to whether one is going to have
the wit to work on it steadily or not.
It is fine to get somewhere where I can sleep soundly again. I’m
beginning to feel very much rested. I’m so glad that you both are
located in a place where there is nothing more to do than to care for
your personal comfort. --/--/
227: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson_ _Jan. 7th_
Dear Grace & Grandma: --/--/ There isn’t much news--only the good news
(to me!) that I’ve been at work in almost ecstatic mood for the last two
days on my _Bridge_. I never felt such range and symphonic power
before--and I’m so happy to have this first burst of substantiation
since I had the good luck to be set free to build this structure of my
dreams.
I sent New Year’s greetings to Kahn and in the mail today comes the most
cordial answer--wishing as he puts it, “that you will prove yourself a
master builder in constructing _The Bridge_ of your dreams, thoughts and
emotions.” --/--/
228: TO WALDO FRANK
_Patterson, N. York_ _Jan. 18th ’26_
Dear Waldo: I am not through working on it yet, but I thought you might
care to see this last part of _The Bridge_, oddly enough emergent
first.[42] It is symphonic in including the convergence of all the
strands separately detailed in antecedent sections of the
poem--Columbus, conquests of water, land, etc., Pokahantus, subways,
offices, etc., etc. I dare congratulate myself a little, I think, in
having found some liberation for my condensed metaphorical habit in a
form as symphonic (at least so attempted) as this.
The bridge in becoming a ship, a world, a woman, a tremendous harp (as
it does finally) seems to really have a career. I have attempted to
induce the same feelings of elation, etc.--like being carried forward
and upward simultaneously--both in imagery, rhythm and repetition, that
one experiences in walking across my beloved Brooklyn Bridge. I’m now
busy on the Niña, Santa Maria, Pinta episode--Cathay being an attitude
of spirit, rather than material conquest throughout, of course.
I know I can depend on you to mention the flaws and shortcomings. This
section seems a little transcendental in tendency at present,--but I
think that the pediments of the other sections will show it not to have
been. --/--/
229: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson_ _Jan. 26_
Dear Grace: It _is_ a good thing I got your letter yesterday--or I
_should_ have been sore. I was so tired last night I simply fell into
bed at 10. We had spent most of the day shopping in town and I later
built me some bookshelves which are very simple but extend to the
ceiling--the kind I have always wanted. My study now is a picture to
enjoy. When I was in New York I bought some beautiful and rare Congo
wood carvings--and added to my Sommer paintings and your photograph they
make a marvelous room.
My hands are so stiff from wood-cutting that my writing looks funny. It
is very, very cold today, was yesterday and promises to continue. We all
go about shivering most of the time and I’m sorry to say get too little
freedom for our writing. Certainly the spring warmth will be unusually
welcome to all of us.
--/--/ We do not correspond--except at considerable intervals as I
hesitate to presume much on his [Otto Kahn] attention. There are so many
others whom he is always helping that his time is largely taken up
anyway. What with two personal secretaries and a whole corps of personal
office help--_besides_ his huge financial machine (his interests occupy
a building of about 22 stories) he must be a busy man. He wants to hear
from “time to time” as he puts it--about how my poem is progressing.
But, since writing him New Year’s I shan’t presume again until next
March or so. My second thousand is not payable until along in May. At
which time I shall probably personally talk to him again. Beyond this
money I have no expectations of more assistance, but if my poem when
completed seems good enough to him, it may be, of course, that he will
be further interested. I’m thankful enough for what I already have,
however!
Your news about Grandma is rather heartrending. I do hope she won’t have
to suffer much longer--and if she does that she will be given enough
sedatives to keep the pain dulled, no matter what the consequences. It
would be best if she really gives up more--for the remainder of her
existence--under any conditions--promises her only misery. --/--/
230: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER
_Patterson, New York_ _January 27th_
Dear Grandma: --/--/ I am hoping to hear from Grace tomorrow all about
how you are. Much better, I hope.
We had a brief flurry of snow again today, but not enough yet to permit
me to use my scrumptious snow shoes. I have been reading the _Journal of
Christopher Columbus_ lately--of his first voyage to America, which is
concerned mostly with his cruisings around the West Indies. It has
reminded me many times of the few weeks I spent on the Island to hear
him expatiate on the gorgeous palms, unexpected pines, balmy breezes,
etc., which we associate with Cuba. -- -- -- --
231: TO GASTON LACHAISE
_Patterson, New York_ _Feb. 10th, 26_
Dear Lachaise: Constantly your seagull has floated in my mind--ever
since I saw it, and it will mean much to me to have it. I can’t thank
you enough. I am enclosing an amount which I hope will to some extent
defray the cost of materials, and you must let me know if more is
needed.
I envy you your occupation out here in the extreme cold of the last two
weeks--wiggling a pen or tapping a typewriter is hardly as conducive to
good circulation or warmth while every breath one takes comes out like a
steaming snort from a dragon! At present the snow is so deep that we are
obliged to use snow shoes or skis to get anywhere. Fortunately we are
well supplied with wood and oil and provisions.
When I get to New York--probably not for six weeks or so--I hope to find
you in. If the white bird is done before then you can express it out to
Patterson, or I’ll be glad to carry it back when I come in. -- -- -- --
232: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_Patterson, New York_ _March 2nd_
Dear Charlotte et Ricardo: --/--/ In spite of many inconveniences,
however, I am glad of coming out here. Temperate living, good sleep and
considerable outdoor exercise have had their usual effects. The cold has
kept us hopping, though, and I’ll be glad to greet the first warm days
that come. Then there will be both more time and more comfort for
reading and _The Bridge_. The finale of which is just about
completed--but the antecedent sections will take me at least a year yet.
At times the project seems hopeless, horribly so; and then suddenly
something happens inside one, and the theme and the substance of the
conception seem brilliantly real, more so than ever! At least, _at
worst_, the poem will be a _huge_ failure! If you get what I mean. When
I am a little better satisfied with certain details of the part already
finished I’ll send it on to you, although I really shouldn’t--as
isolated from the rest of the poem it would probably not be interesting.
Mother wrote me that you called on her. She was extremely pleased, and
remarked how beautiful and youthfully radiant my Charlotte was! --/--/
233: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Patterson, N.Y._ _March 5th_
Dear Gorham: The long siege of snow--the mail delivery has been
discontinued for six weeks, and isn’t resumed yet--despite occasional
sportiveness with snow shoes and skis, has been a burden. Especially as
I was swindled on a fifty-gal. drum of kerosene I bought for the stoves
in my study, and have had to risk chapping hands every time I came near
the typewriter to say nothing of tumbling through many a chilly night
with chilblains from cold floors, damp, etc. It really would have been
alright had I had pure kerosene, though. Nothing but the swindler is to
blame.
None-the-less, I’ve read considerably--Aeschylus (especially the
_Oresteia_) was a revelation of my ideal in the dynamics of
metaphor--even through the rather prosy translations[43] one gleans the
essential density of image, impact of substance matter so verbally
quickened and delivered with such soul-shivering economy that one
realizes there is none in the English language to compare him
with.--Then Prescott’s _Ferdinand & Isabella_, _Journal of Columbus_, a
book on Magellan by Hildebrand (this was rather inexcusable), Melville’s
delightful _White Jacket_ as well as a marvelously illustrated book[44]
on whaling and whaling ships, published by the Marine Research Society,
Salem, Mass.... In the midst of my readings of _Science & the Modern
World_, Whitehead,--along comes _Virgin Spain_. I’m about half way
through this at present and feel like telegraphing Waldo my immediate
uncontrolled and unstinted enthusiasm. As prose it certainly is his
climax of excellence--and as a document of the epic one of the most
lively testaments ever written. I had been dwelling with a good deal of
surprise in a pleasant conviction that Lawrence’s _Plumed Serpent_ was a
masterpiece of racial description. It certainly is vividly beautiful,
its landscapes, theatrical vistas, etc.--but Waldo’s work is a world of
true reality--his ritual is not a mere invention. Only my interest in
Maya and Toltec archaeology led me to order Lawrence’s book. It was poor
in this--at least regarding the details I had hoped for, but I was
rather astonished at the calibre of much of the prose.
As Waldo may have mentioned, the finale of _The Bridge_ is written, the
other five or six parts are in feverish embryo. They will require at
least a year more for completion; however bad this work may be, it ought
to be hugely and unforgivably, distinguishedly bad. In a way it’s a test
of materials as much as a test of one’s imagination. _Is_ the last
statement sentimentally made by Eliot,
“This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,--
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
is this acceptable or not as the poetic determinism of our age?! I, of
course, can say no, to myself, and believe it. But in the face of such a
stern conviction of death on the part of the only group of people whose
verbal sophistication is likely to take on interest in a style such as
mine--what can I expect? However, I know my way by now, regardless. I
shall at least continue to grip with the problem without relaxing into
the easy acceptance (in the name of “elegance, nostalgia, wit, splenetic
splendor”) of death which I see most of my friends doing. O the admired
beauty of a casuistical mentality! It is finally content with twelve
hours sleep a day and archaeology.
I am glad that you have switched over to the more profitable and
leisurely programme which you describe. And that you’ve gone back to
writing again with such vim. The social distractions of NY are so
terrific that I hope to never live there again beyond six months at a
period. I’m really just getting around to a working basis, the first
real platform of my life--here. In many ways it proves to be a
revelation of certain potentialities.
Do send me your comments on Crane. And may I be frank--without seeming
to reflect on any personal relationships of the past--in stating my
reactions? Not that I shall desire to exert any changes, but that there
may possibly arise (between ourselves) certain questions of direction,
aims, intentions, which I may feel are erroneously ascribed to me. At
least my agreements or objections may interest you. -- -- -- --
234: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Patterson, New York_ _March 17, ’26_
Dear Gorham: My rummy conversation last Monday offered, I fear, but a
poor explanation of my several theoretical differences of opinion with
you on the function of poetry, its particular province of activity, etc.
Neither was I able to express to you my considerable appreciation of
many accurate distinctions made in your essay which certainly prompt my
gratitudes as well as applause. It would probably be uninteresting as
well as a bit excessive for me to enumerate and dwell on these
felicitations, however gratifying to myself I may feel them to be. Your
essay is roughly divided in two, the second half including our present
disagreement, and inasmuch as I have never really attempted to fulfill
the functions therein attributed to the poet, your theories on that
subject can be discussed from a relatively impersonal angle so far as I
am concerned. Furthermore, it is _one_ aspect of a contemporary problem
which has already enlisted the most detailed and intense speculation
from a number of fields, science, philosophy, etc., as you, of course,
know. I’m not saying that my few hasty notes which follow are conclusive
evidence, but the logic of them (added to the organic convictions
incident to the memorized experience of the creative “act,” let us say)
is not yet sufficiently disproved for me by such arguments, at least, as
you have used in your essay.
Poetry, in so far as the metaphysics of any absolute knowledge extends,
is simply the concrete _evidence_ of the _experience_ of a recognition
(_knowledge_ if you like). It can give you a _ratio_ of fact and
experience, and in this sense it is both perception and thing perceived,
according as it approaches a significant articulation or not. This is
its reality, its fact, _being_. When you attempt to ask more of
poetry,--the fact of man’s relationship to a hypothetical god, be it
Osiris, Zeus or Indra, you will get as variant terms even from the
abstract terminology of philosophy as you will from poetry; whereas
poetry, without attempting to logically enunciate such a problem or its
solution, may well give you the real connective experience, the very
“sign manifest” on which rests the assumption of a godhead.
I’m perfectly aware of my wholesale lack of knowledge. But as Allen
said, what exactly do you mean by “knowledge”? When you ask for exact
factual data (a graphic map of eternity?), ethical morality or moral
classifications, etc., from poetry--you not only limit its goal, you ask
its subordination to science, philosophy. Is it not equally logical to
expect Stravinsky to bring his fiddles into dissent with the gravitation
theories of Sir Isaac Newton? They _are_ in dissent with this scientist,
as a matter of fact, and organically so; for the group mind that
Stravinsky appeals to has already been freed from certain of the
limitations of experience and consciousness that dominated both the time
and the mind of Newton. Science (ergo all exact knowledge and its
instruments of operation) is in perfect antithesis to poetry. (Painting,
architecture, music, as well). It operates from an exactly opposite
polarity, and it may equate with poetry, but when it does so its
statement of such is in an entirely different terminology. I hope you
get this difference between _inimical_ and _antithetical_, intended
here. It is not my interest to discredit science, it has been as
inspired as poetry,--and if you could but recognize it, much more
hypothetically motivated.
What you admire in Plato as “divine sanity” is the architecture of his
logic. Plato doesn’t live today because of the intrinsic “truth” of his
statements: their only living truth today consists in the “fact” of
their harmonious relationship to each other in the context of his
organization of them. This grace partakes of poetry. But Plato was
primarily a philosopher, and you must admit that grace is a secondary
motive in philosophical statement, at least until the hypothetical basis
of an initial “truth” has been accepted--not in the name of beauty, form
or experience, but in the name of rationality. No wonder Plato
considered the banishment of poets;--their reorganizations of chaos on
basis perhaps divergent from his own threatened the logic of _his_
system, itself founded on assumptions that demanded the very defense of
poetic construction which he was fortunately able to provide.
The tragic quandary (or _agon_) of the modern world derives from the
paradoxes that an inadequate system of rationality forces on the living
consciousness. I am not opposing any new synthesis of reasonable laws
which might provide a consistent philosophical and moral program for our
epoch. Neither, on the other hand, am I attempting through poetry to
delineate any such system. If this “knowledge,” as you call it, were so
sufficiently organized as to dominate the limitations of my personal
experience (consciousness) then I would probably find myself
automatically writing under its “classic” power of dictation, and under
that circumstance might be incidentally as philosophically “contained”
as you might wish me to be. That would mean “serenity” to you because
the abstract basis of my work would have been familiarized to you before
you read a word of the poetry. But my poetry, even then,--in so far as
it was truly poetic,--would avoid the employment of abstract tags,
formulations of experience in factual terms, etc.,--it would necessarily
express its concepts in the more direct terms of physical-psychic
experience. If not, it must by so much lose its impact and become simply
categorical.
I think it must be due to some such misapprehensions of my poetic
purpose in writing that leads you to several rather contradictory
judgments which in one sentence are laudatory and in other contexts
which you give them,--put me to blush for mental attitudes implied on my
part. For instance, after having granted me all the praise you do
earlier in your essay for “storming heaven” as it were, how can you
later refer to that same faculty of verbal synchronization as to picture
me as “waiting for another ecstasy”--and then “slumping”--rather as a
baker would refer to a loaf in his oven. Granted your admiration for the
“yeastiness” of some of my effusions, you should (in simple justice to
your reader and your argument) here also afford the physical evidence
(actual quotation or logical proof) of the “slump,” the unleavened
failure. There really are plenty of lines in this respect which could be
used for illustration. What I’m objecting to is contained in my
suspicion that you have allowed too many extra-literary impressions of
me to enter your essay, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. The
same is true of your reference to the “psychological _gaming_”
(Verlaine) which puts the slur of superficiality and vulgarity on the
very aspects of my work which you have previously been at pains to
praise.--And all because you arbitrarily propose a goal for me which I
have no idea of nor interest in following. Either you find my work
poetic or not, but if you propose for it such ends as poetry organically
escapes, it seems to me, as Allen said, that you as a critic of
literature are working into a confusion of categories. Certainly this
charge of alternate “gutter sniping” and “angel kissing” is no longer
anything more than a meretricious substitute for psychological sincerity
in defining the range of an artist’s subject matter and psychic
explorations. Still less should it be brought forward unless there is
enough physical evidence in the artist’s work to warrant curiosity in
this respect on the part of the reader.
Your difficulties are extra, I realize, in writing about me at all. They
are bound to be thus extra because of the (so far as the reader goes)
“impurities” of our previous literary arguments, intimacies of
statement, semi-statements, etc., which are not always reflected in a
man’s work, after all. But your preoccupations on the one hand with a
terminology which I have not attempted and your praise on the other hand
of my actual (physical) representation of the incarnate _evidence_ of
the very knowledge, the very _wisdom_ which you feel me to be only
conjecturally sure of--makes me guilty of really wronging you, perhaps,
but drives me to the platitude that “truth has no name.” Her latest one,
of course, is “relativity.”
Apropos of all this the letter by Nichols in _The New Criterion_ will
interest you when you read it; there are interesting quotations from
Goethe, Santayana, Russell, etc. And I am enclosing a hasty bundle of
notes written at O’Neill’s request for what angles they might suggest to
him in writing a foreword for my book. (This, I hope, may be returned.)
Allen tells me that he has just mailed his note on me--for possible use
in _The New Masses_. I told him to do this, not remembering definitely
what you had told me about it before. It can do no harm anyway. I’m
enclosing copies of the poems which Potamkin had intended using. It
certainly was very kind of you to have suggested these matters to the
_Masses_ editor. Do let me hear from you soon.
PS--Needless to say, the notes for O’Neill contain repetitious matter
for you, and certain accents were especially made against biases and
critical deficiencies which I felt [might] lead to unwarranted
assumptions, misplaced praises, etc., on his part. But the definitions
of the “logic of metaphor,” “dynamics of inferential mention,” etc., I
think are quite exact.[45]
235: TO OTTO H. KAHN
_Patterson, New York_ _March 18, 1926_
Dear Mr. Kahn: You were so kind as to express a desire to know from time
to time how _The Bridge_ was progressing, so I’m flashing in a signal
from the foremast, as it were. Right now I’m supposed to be Don
Cristobal Colon returning from “Cathay,” first voyage. For mid-ocean is
where the poem begins.
It concludes at midnight--at the center of Brooklyn Bridge. Strangely
enough that final section of the poem has been the first to be
completed,--yet there’s a logic to it, after all; it is the mystic
consummation toward which all the other sections of the poem converge.
Their contents are implicit in its summary.
Naturally I am encountering many unexpected formal difficulties in
satisfying my conception, especially as one’s original idea has a way of
enlarging steadily under the spur of daily concentration on minute
details of execution. I don’t wish to express my confidence too
blatantly--but I am certain that, granted I’m able to find the suitable
form for all details as I presently conceive them, _The Bridge_ will be
a dynamic and eloquent document.
As I said, I have thus far completed only the final section,--about one
hundred lines. I am now going straight through from the beginning. There
has been much incidental reading to do, and more study is necessary as I
go on. As I cannot think of my work in terms of time I cannot gauge when
it will be completed, probably by next December, however.
There are so many interlocking elements and symbols at work throughout
_The Bridge_ that it is next to impossible to describe it without
resorting to the actual metaphors of the poem. Roughly, however, it is
based on the conquest of space and knowledge. The theme of “Cathay” (its
riches, etc.) ultimately is transmuted into a symbol of consciousness,
knowledge, spiritual unity. A rather religious motivation, albeit not
Presbyterian. The following notation is a very rough abbreviation of the
subject matter of the several sections:
I Columbus--Conquest of space, chaos
II Pokahantus--The natural body of America-fertility, etc.
III Whitman--The Spiritual body of America
(A dialogue between Whitman and a dying soldier in a
Washington hospital; the infraction of physical death,
disunity, on the concept of immortality)
IV John Brown
(Negro porter on Calgary Express making up berths and
singing to himself (a jazz form for this) of his sweetheart
and the death of John Brown, alternately)
V Subway--The encroachment of machinery on humanity; a kind
of purgatory in relation to the open sky of last section
VI The Bridge--A sweeping dithyramb in which the Bridge becomes
the symbol of consciousness spanning time and space
The first and last sections are composed of blank verse with occasional
rhyme for accentuation. The verbal dynamics used and the spacious
periodicity of the rhythm result in an unusually symphonic form. What
forms I shall use for the other sections will have to be determined when
I come to grips with their respective themes.
I would gladly send you the completed section for present reading, but
unless you especially wish to see it now I should prefer your judgment
on it later when a more synthetic reading will be possible.
I hope that this extended amount of particulars,--evidence, perhaps, of
an excessive enthusiasm on my part, has not been tedious reading. Your
interest and confidence have proved to be so great a spur to me that I
must mention my gratitude again.
236: TO WALDO FRANK
_Mid-channel_ [_Patterson_] _March 20th, ’26_
Dear Waldo: Just a word to say I have finished my first reading of your
_Spain_. It is a book I shall go back to many times. Its magnificence
and integrity are so rare that they constitute an embarrassment to our
times in some ways. “The Port of Columbus” is truly something of a
prelude to my intentions for _The Bridge_--which I seem to have got back
to today after a hideous experience in New York and in spite of a very
bad cold I seem to have caught from overheated city buildings.
I can’t resist sending you the first verse[46] at this early time, along
with the revised version of the finale. Your discipline and your
confidence are so dear to me that in moods like this today (adrift a
music that is almost a burden) I have to be a little uncontained and
remind you of my love. Will send the Kahn article next week when a fresh
copy arrives.... Temporarily--Don Cristobal--
237: TO MALCOLM COWLEY
[_Patterson_] _March 28_
Dear Malcolm: The news of your plans for the summer is good to hear!
We’re all anticipating the first of May--though you _will_ be a little
distant. Five miles walking says Mrs. Turner, coming out of her aunt’s
part with the tea.
After a perfect spasm of sentiment and “inspection” I was released from
the fond embrace of my relatives in Cleveland--only to fare into rather
more than less spasmodic embraces in N.Y.--a one night spree--on my way
back. Since which I have been reading the philosophies of the East until
I actually dream in terms of the Vedanta scriptures. Also am finding
Marco Polo pleasant to incorporate in the subconscious.
I’ve often wondered how you got home that night. After you left I was
roused from my stupor by an amazing scandal at the next table. Benét,
Wylie and some others discussing ---- who, it seems, doesn’t write at
all. Her father does the trick--works off “suppressed desires” that way,
etc., etc. I was very good after that and stormed over to the Albert,
lectured the clerk for not admitting my friends, and went to bed, tout
seul.
The next morning after the next I was discovering that my mother knows
how to mix the best cocktails I ever drank.
Are you going ahead with the Boyd proposal? I think you should--a fine
weapon against further attacks from that gent. again--and not, however,
implying any concession whatever on your part. --/--/
238: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson_ [_March 29, 1926_]
Dearest Grace: Your letter came yesterday. And I was _immensely_ glad to
hear from you. Altogether, the news seemed good, too, and I’m _so_ glad
you and Charles [Curtis] have made a definite decision! By _all_ means
make The Little Church the scene. Then I can be there and we can all
take a bus ride afterward. Of _course_ you’ll be acceptable--who ever
heard of such distinctions being made in any Protestant church against
widows and widowers, grass or otherwise! Then maybe you could make my
humble domicile one of the stops on your celebration.
I, too, think I made my visit at just the proper time. I’ll never forget
how really eloquently Grandma looked, how intelligent and fresh. And
_you_ looked so good to me, too. Remember, that suffering does, if borne
without rancour, it does build something that only grows lovelier with
time--and it is a kind of kingdom among those _initiated_, a kingdom
that has the widest kind of communion. You and I can share our
understanding of things more and more as time goes on. I loved you _so
much_ for many of the things you said when I was with you.
Yes, I hope you never will turn your back on me, as you say. And this is
not to say that there may come occasions for it--but there may, after
all, be times of temporary misunderstandings as there have been before.
I can be awfully proud of _you_, however less occasion I may [have] to
feel similarly about myself. I do some awfully silly things
sometimes--most of which you don’t know about, but which I sometimes
(not always) regret. Don’t let this stir your apprehensions, any,
however. I’m in no particular pickle at present.
We have had another snow and I’m just disgusted. I had counted on a
modified weather on my return and instead it’s been just one snow flurry
after another. Sore throat is some better, but I’m still threatened with
tonsilitis. No chance to start gardens yet. -- -- -- --
239: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Patterson_ _April 5_
Dear Gorham: It seems evident that I somewhat too egoistically argued
what I intended as simply a defense of the position and province of
poetry, as an art form, rather than any claims my work might or might
not have to critical praise. This has been my attitude throughout our
discussion, and though certain contentions are still unresolved, it
doesn’t in the least conflict with what you say in your last letter.
Indeed, I should say that your essay rather over-estimates my
achievements in some particulars. Please don’t think me ungrateful or
disgruntled, anyway.
Rorty was so swift in returning Allen’s NOTE that I have been wondering
if he had actually taken some interest in the “Voyages” I sent you. I
should have sent them direct to him had I known that he was subsequently
to write me a request for something. Sheer inadvertency on my part not
to have mentioned my intentions in sending them to you. Allen gave
Untermeyer and Kreymborg such digs that it’s not surprising that Rorty
summarily returned the mss. I shall be surprised if he fancies my work.
The Cowleys move up here May first. I hope to have a few “animations”
with Malcolm before I, the climate, the solitude, or whatever it is,
drives him into the kind of shell that Brown and Tate seem to have
retired into lately. My mood being pre-eminently N. Labrador these
days--I should like a little good company immensely. A life of perfect
virtue, redundant health, etc., doesn’t seem in any way to encourage the
Muse, after all. I almost feel like coming to town and seeking a job, at
least that would make me part-time useful, meantime there wouldn’t be
the suspense of weeks going by without a written line. I’m afraid I’ve
so systematically objectivized my theme and its details that the
necessary “subjective lymph and sinew” is frozen. Meanwhile I drone
about, reading, eating and sleeping. It’s really quite agonizing. For in
so many ways I know what I WANT to do.... The actual fleshing of a
concept is so complex and difficult, however, as to be quite beyond the
immediate avail of will or intellect. A fusion with other factors not so
easily named is the condition of fulfilment. It is alright to call this
“possession,” if you will, only it should not be insisted that its
operation denies the simultaneous functioning of a strong critical
faculty. It is simply a stronger focus than can be arbitrarily willed
into operation by the ordinarily-employed perceptions. Do you find
anything in my rough notes that’s interesting?
240: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson, New York_ _April 18th_
Dear Grace: It would be a relief to be able to talk with you an hour or
so today. I’m in such an uncertain position in regard to a number of
things that I feel as though it would be a fitting end to settle it with
powder and bullet. The whole benefit of my patronage from Kahn, my year
of leisure, my long fight with the winter, etc., out here is about to be
sacrificed -- -- -- --. I refer to Mrs. Tate, and Allen. But primarily it
has been Mrs. Tate who has influenced matters until they came to a head
the other day, since which time I have had a note from each of them,
respectively -- -- -- --.
I am accused of having victimized their time and their quarters by
intruding without regard to their wishes, etc. This is in part
justified,--justified, I say because the contingency of such a matter
was bound to exist between two families which had agreed on sharing a
common water pump. I had to have access to it as much as they did, and
had to pass through their kitchen occasionally on my way. When Mrs.
Tate--this occurred last week--instead of simply telling me that she
wished I would avoid such passage in the future--when she began putting
bolts on her doors, and all that--I could take the _hint_ without having
to be knocked down by a hammer, and so removed my shaving utensils,
etc., which had been beside the pump, into Mrs. Turner’s kitchen. Why
this should make them mad, I don’t know, and why it should make them mad
because I immediately began avoiding their parts of the house
_completely_ (not being invited to do otherwise) I can’t see, either.
Of course when I encountered them outside, and saw how sulky they
behaved, etc., I began to lose all respect for such behavior--made up my
mind to ignore them as much as decency permitted, although I realized
that with such an atmosphere about the place it would be very difficult
to proceed with any creative work. Matters came to a climax day before
yesterday, shortly after breakfast. I had been talking to Mrs. Turner
around on “our” side of the house about some plans for cleaning up some
rubbish, etc., when suddenly a door opens from the Tates’ kitchen and
Allen shouts out, “If you’ve got a criticism of my work to make, I’d
appreciate it if you would speak to me about it first!” Then the door
savagely banged, and Mrs. Turner and I (who hadn’t mentioned him or
anything that concerned him) were left staring at each other in perfect
amazement. I can’t easily describe how angry I was. I felt myself losing
all control--but I managed to address the Tates without breaking
anything. Mrs. Turner came in with me and corroborated the facts of the
matter, and it turned out that the Tates hadn’t heard actually a thing I
was saying--their imaginations, they evidently felt, were perfectly
justified in building up a perfect tower of Babel out of nothing.
Nothing was touched on at that fiery moment, but the immediate
circumstances of what I had said and what I hadn’t, Tate finally
admitting that he was all wrong. My feelings remained little cooled,
however. The rest of the time since then has been simply hideous. The
next morning (I, not sleeping, had heard the Tates getting out of bed
during the night and pounding out something on the typewriter), I found
a couple of the nastiest notes under my bedroom door that I ever hope to
get from anyone. Mrs. Tate began by saying that they had arrived in the
house first; that they had invited me to share quarters with them in the
first place because I was penniless in New York at that time, and that
as soon as they found out that I had been fortunate in acquiring funds
they immediately had begun to doubt the advisability of inviting me out,
but _of course_ hadn’t felt privileged to say anything about such
matters before this. I’m not quoting _insinuations_ in any of this, I’m
using practically their own words. Then she went on to say that they had
allotted me one room only (this is an absolute lie; they assumed that I
was to have a bedroom and my study besides) and that I had from the
moment of arrival proceeded to spread myself and possessions all over
the house, invading every corner; and so on,--finally ending up with the
assertion that I had been busy ever since I arrived in trying to make
them menial servants of my personal wants! The contents of Mr. Tate’s
letter were about the same, a little more gracefully phrased, that’s
all.
As a matter of fact, I have never, so long as I’ve been here, requested
a single favor from either of them. You know the story about the cooking
arrangements already--how I changed over to Mrs. Turner --/--/. Since
then--even though I derived no benefit from the wood stove that the
Tates use in their kitchen--I’ve been careful to go out and help Allen
cut and saw, etc. And made it a point to mention--that while I couldn’t
constantly keep after him with questions as to when he wanted to saw
and when he didn’t--if he’d let me know about such occasions I’d be glad
to join him whenever possible.
It’s all simply disgusting. I don’t know how much money they owe me
exactly--but I have told them that I was always glad to advance them
funds whenever needed, and while they haven’t been extravagant--they
have nevertheless been momentarily relieved from sudden circumstances by
frequent access to my funds. On top of all this I have practically given
Allen the fare for two trips to New York (on one occasion I was so
anxious for him to have the chance to hear a certain opera that I gave
him ten dollars to get a good seat), I’ve had them in to dinner with
Mrs. Turner and myself frequently, I gave Carolyn my old typewriter to
work on her novel -- -- -- --. She didn’t have one herself and would
otherwise have had to depend on such moments as her husband wasn’t using
his to write at all, while I on the other hand, should certainly have
been able to make a good discount on my new machine by turning in the
old had I not purposely wished to be amiable about the matter. There
have been lots of other amenities which I enjoyed extending. And you
know me not to obviously hold such things over people’s heads. _Doesn’t_
it all look as though, _as Mr. Tate says_, I valued their friendship
only for the purpose of exploiting their services to me.
Mrs. Turner has cried for two days and nights about the matter--she
hates to have me leave so. She says there is another room in the
upstairs which I can use and not be obliged to have anything to do with
the Tates’ part of the house, their rent or their arrangements. I must
say I’m stumped. How can I, on one hand, persist in staying here after
such an insulting statement from the Tates to the effect that I was
originally their guest and that I was invited on the grounds of charity
rather from any other motives? This is one of the hardest matters I have
ever had to decide. For I feel that I owe some sense of economy to Mr.
Kahn, who didn’t give me money to keep moving about -- -- -- --. My money
is very low now. The first thousand is gone--it cost me more than I ever
would have guessed to have just got settled here with all my books and
materials at hand as they are. I wrote Kahn recently that I needed more
money, and he very speedily and kindly replied with a check for five
hundred. At the same time the Rychtariks wrote from Cleveland that they
needed the money they had loaned me for my land--that they required it
for the summer trip to Europe, etc. And so two hundred will have to be
taken out of the Kahn money at once.
It really is tragic. The whole fruit of the first opportunity of my
life to write an extended poem is apparently about to be blighted
-- -- -- --. As I say I don’t at this moment know which way to turn. If I
remain here (spring is just coming on--and the best time for work, so
long waited for, has come!) if I remain here under such unpleasant
relations it is very doubtful whether or not I can overcome the hypnosis
of evil and jealousy in the air enough to get back into my poem, really
just started. But if I move away it means that so much of my slight
funds will be wasted in just the cost of travel, etc., that in less than
a month I’ll be back looking for a job again--and in the middle of the
summer, the most devilish and exhausting time to work in the city. I
don’t feel that I ought to let my indignation and pride affect me so far
as the hasty and ill-founded remarks of the Tates are concerned. I would
sacrifice all that to my work and remain here if I felt enough assurance
of being _able_ to work under such circumstances.
If you feel at all sympathetic to this situation of mine I wish you
_this time_ be generous enough to let me go to the Island and finish my
poem there. At least I should not have to fear being put off the little
land that is still ours in the world. I have ample money to get there
and to live economically for some time. It may reasonably be expected
that Mr. Kahn will come forward with the other five hundred which he
promised within a certain time, meanwhile I can’t ask him for more
before six months without risking the charge of extravagance. I think
that I can re-sell the land I bought to Miss Flynn from whom I purchased
it. Summer in the tropics isn’t of course the paradise of the winter
months, but it is a thousand times better than a hall bedroom in New
York without light or air, to say nothing of the fact that it might cost
me a hundred or so of what I have left just spent in _looking_ for work.
You know how long it is sometimes.
If I can’t somehow succeed in taking advantage of this one opportunity
given me by Mr. Kahn, I don’t know how I’ll feel about life or any
future efforts to live--and if you can’t see how it is reasonable for me
to request under the circumstances some privileges from my family I
shall be amazed. You’ve already said that you didn’t think I’d like Mrs.
Simpson, etc. Well, do you think _that_ is half so important to me or to
anyone else after all. I’m not able to reason why this issue should hang
on the whimsical temper of an old woman. If I went to the island I
should do my best to preserve the most pleasant relations with Mrs.
Simpson, and I haven’t much doubt but what I should succeed. I ought to
be able to live a few months in the house my grandfather built without
being put off by a hired keeper of the place--especially when I am much
better fitted naturally, by simply being a male, for keeping up the
place than she is.
I’m asking you for this refuge. I’ve always been refused before. If you
deny it now I’m not sure how much farther away I’ll go to accomplish my
purposes. Perhaps to the orient, even if I have just enough to get there
and no more.
I shall go into New York early in the week, perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps
several days later. I’ll let you know where I settle and what plans are
finally adopted. Meanwhile please write me here, as before; Mrs. Turner
will be sure to send my mail to whatever address I have at the time.
I’m sorry to have such melancholy news, especially after such lovely
letters as recently came from you and Grandma, but it can’t be helped.
It all may be very much for the best in the end. I do hope you’ll be
generous enough to give me your sanction on the Island matter--that’s
all I’m requesting. I can always get money enough to get back (from at
least 5 people) and go into an office again. But that isn’t the issue
now. I’m writing a poem that is bound to be a magnificent thing _if_ I
can escape the -- -- -- -- long enough to build it. Won’t you help?
241: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_Patterson, New York_ _April 25th, 1926_
Dear Charlotte and Richard: I hope you won’t think me insincere anywhere
in this letter. A complete picture of my feelings and present
circumstances would be hard to give, simply impossible. I’m relying on
you for more than friendship in asking such considerations. I’m asking
your love. And, of course I realize that I’m in immediate danger of
losing both. But the story has got to be sold somehow for you to
understand why I’m asking what I do. The thing is--in my state of mind
(and after three weeks of such torments) it is hard to know where to
begin. But let me say that the picture is somewhat different than it was
when I was so happy with you in Cleveland. And I must ask you to let me
off for the time being on paying you the full sum I borrowed. I can only
send you a hundred dollars now. I can send the rest within seven months.
Or at least I don’t think you would want me to give up the entire
_Bridge_ and go into an office at once. You see, I’m assuming a great
deal of interest on your part which may not be there. I wanted to state
this request first, before telling you why and wherefore. Otherwise my
story would seem featured too theatrically. --/--/
Well, I got so morbid about the matter that I finally decided to go into
New York for a few days and think as clearly as possible. What to do! I
have finally decided to go to my grandmother’s place on the Isle of
Pines in the West Indies. Getting there will be almost as cheap as
moving my things anywhere else--and living will be very cheap for [me]
there. I must tell you that Mr. Kahn sent me only $500 instead of the
entire second $1,000. It is to be presumed that I’ll get the other half
later on. But I can’t ask for more at present, and you can see that
there is just about enough to keep me there (my transportation also has
to come out of this) until more comes. Out of this I can send you the
hundred I mentioned. Won’t it be just as easy for you to wait just a
little longer for the rest? I never hated to ask a question so much in
my life--but I am simply crushed if I can’t go on a little longer with
my effort on _The Bridge_.
It’s the one opportunity I may ever have, and I feel I owe something to
the faith that Mr. Kahn has put in me. I am not seeking any thrills or
pleasure by going to the West Indies in the middle of the summer--I’m
sure you can understand how it would be much _pleasanter_ for me to go
to the seashore. But _that_ would eat up my little remaining money in
two or three months. I need longer to work on _The Bridge_, and I’m
willing to go into a furnace for awhile if I can only feel sure about
the ground under my feet. On my parents’ property I won’t need to feel
that I’ll be insulted again, or forced away. I can _at least_ be sure of
that. And that means a lot when you are trying to keep your imagination
free and creative. Also, I can live very cheaply there. I may not have
enough money to get back when I want to, but I’m not worrying about
that--or other hardships.
My mother has made a terrible fuss against my going, but is finally
reconciled. I realize it’s hard for her to think of me as so far
away--but I’ll be still farther away, I think, if my _Bridge_ breaks
down entirely. I can’t allow it all to be the victim of malice, envy,
jealousy and petty-mindedness.
I won’t indulge in any more raving and fury now. But I do hope that you
believe me sincere. You very possibly have a right to be angry with me
(certainly I have never done anything half so kind to you) but I’ll
prove to you in the end that I am sincere in my regard for you. I don’t
think I’m a dishonest person.
I am sailing for Havana next Saturday. When I get back to New York on
Wednesday I’ll send you the hundred dollars. Will you write me a word or
so before I go? Send it care of Gorham Munson -- -- -- --.
242: TO ---- AND ----
_Isle of Pines_ [_Cuba_] _May 7_
Dear ---- and ----: It is still one day less than a week since we
sailed, our second on the Island. Frank got Ward Line accommodations,
which cut a day off the sea; and we were rather sorry. Still, passing
Pam Bitch, My ammy and other Coney islands at midnight wasn’t especially
thrilling: that part of the trip was too close shore. But Havana was
more and better than I had imagined. Architecture rather like
Chirico--some Spanish plateresque and physically metaphysically
suggestive. But mostly on the surface, there isn’t other evidence.
F.’s Spanish brought us off all beaten paths. We didn’t visit an
American haunt except the steamship office. The rest was mostly bars,
cafes and theatres--filled with blacks, reds, browns, greys and every
permutation and combinations of southern bloods that you can imagine.
Coronas-Coronas, of course, for 15¢, marvelous sherry, cognac, vermouth
and “Tropical” (the beer that I was talking about). Am. boats seem to be
easy, by the way: we had St. Julian and Sauterne all the way down at
table. Then we went to the Alhambra, a kind of Cuban National Winter
Garden Burlesque. Latin “broadness” was somewhat veiled from me as far
as the dialogue went, but actions went farther than apparently even the
East Side can stand.
Gratings and balconies and narrow streets with plenty of whores nodding.
The day of our departure a great fleet of American destroyers landed.
Streets immediately became torrents of uniforms--one sailor had exactly
the Chinese mustache effect that I aspire to. But no J---- F----: his
boat must have passed to Brooklyn--passed in the night. Taxis anywhere
in town for only 20¢, but that’s about the only cheap feature. Great
black-bushed buxom Jamaican senoritas roared laughter at us, old women
hobbled up offering lottery tickets (I finally got one on a hunch). The
whole town is hypersensual and mad--i.e. has no apparent direction,
destiny, or purpose: Cummings’ paradise. I shall have to go up for a
real spree sometime when cash is plentiful, meanwhile this isle is
enough Eden.
Poor Mrs. Simpson hadn’t expected us for at least three days more--and
F. of course, the extra party, almost bowled her over at first sight.
She had a violent coughing fit, at which I thought the fragile frame of
her would break and during which a parrot screamed from a corner
somewhere, “Damned poor dinner!” She has recovered, and is really
lovable and quite the contrary of all I had expected. I’ve had one
pleasant shock after another. The house is much more spacious than I had
remembered, the island much more beautiful.... The approach from the sea
is like the Azores, F. says. To me, the mountains, strange greens,
native thatched huts, perfume, etc. brought me straight to Melville. The
heat _is_ different from northern summer heat and the parroty phrase
does hold--“it’s always cool in the shade.” It was cool enough for F. to
put a coat on at sundown today, “breezes prevail.” Oleanders and mimosas
in full bloom now make the air almost too heavy with perfume, it’s
another world--and a little like Rimbaud. I’m surprised that I didn’t
carry away more definite impressions from my first visit 11 years ago.
We discovered a beach yesterday, very near our house. We bathed late in
the day and the water was almost too warm. The rest of the time we’ve
wandered over the grove, bought fish, played with a baby owl that
suddenly appeared, drunk punch, picked coconuts (which are a meal by
themselves). You ought to see that owlet (Pythagoras) make away with a
chameleon! No bigger than a fat sparrow, it blinked and swallowed a
lizard whole. I’ve nearly died laughing at the creature. We brought it
to table and it turded in F.’s salad, it sits on your finger and squeaks
like P---- does when she gets tipsy. I’ll probably be taking it to bed
with me, like B----, when I first get tipsy (No I haven’t been tipsy
since I left NY).
I spose Bina [Flynn] has already told you the details of the parental
wedding in NY. Those last three days in town were mad ones for me.
-- -- -- -- sister, gnawed at my hand for quite a while at the dinner with
the Cowleys. I don’t remember what it was all about, but I think we fell
in love with each other. I finally brought the bridal pair [Crane’s
mother & her husband] to lunch with Lachaise and Mme. A good time was
had by all. I insisted on my bringing the famous bird with me. All my
fears about the trunks were wrong, they brought everything in fine
shape, even china unbroken.
I feel like a gastric museum at present, a cross cut of Tahitian stomach
coast--but not in especial distress--at least so far. Uric acid won’t
have a whispering chance in a few days what with all the strange fruits
and vegetables I’m trying. Casavas, guavas, bread fruit, limes,
cumquats, kashew apples, coconuts, wild oranges, bananas, God I can’t
remember any more of the damned names. O yes, mulberries and avacadas
and papayas! And mangos! Maybe I don’t get enough of it yet! Tamarinds
... pomegranates ... grabanas ... O sacre Nom de.... --/--/
243: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Isle of Pines_] _May 14th_
Dear Grace and Grandma: We haven’t had altogether more than 3 hours of
rainfall since arriving. Rather less than usual, Mrs. Simpson says, for
the rainy season. Today the sky is overcast, making it much cooler than
usual, and the rain of last night promises repetition at any moment.
When there is a good wind, like today’s, it sweeps the bugs away
somewhat--but otherwise they are terrific,--especially around Casas
Villa [the Crane house], which so far as I have been able to judge by
contrast with other places is become the buggiest place on the island.
This is mostly due to the thick growth of trees and shrubbery
surrounding the house--which hardly lets a zephyr through and which
harbor and incubate millions of insects. It is, of course, a great
mistake to have planted so many fruit trees so close to the house. They
give practically no shade--and simply stifle every breeze that
approaches.
Yesterday we rented a car from Herrin and I drove Mrs. S. and Waldo over
to the Jones’s Jungle. Mrs. S. had prepared a wonderful picnic lunch
which we finally shared with the Jones’s in their bungalow. Both Waldo
and myself went quite wild about the beauties of the place, the
marvelous work they have accomplished there is equalled, I’m sure, by
nothing else in the West Indies or N. America. Waldo says he remembers
visiting a place in the Azores, owned by a wealthy Portuguese prince,
which was something like it, but I have never seen anything so amazing
before.
The Jones’s are by far the pleasantest and most cultured people I have
met on the island. The tragedy of their life here is pitiable to the
point of tears. After twenty-three years of unremitting toil on their
place, to have it all brought to naught--as it is now, since the treaty
matter, makes them the saddest kind of jests of fate. Jones says that
the Cuban bureaucrats may seize his place at any moment without offering
more than five dollars an acre, and he can have no recourse whatever.
Furthermore, they are both quite penniless, and live entirely on what he
can gather as a taxi-driver and the little fee they charge for visiting
the jungle. But Jones is no worse off than others--in many ways. He is
only too old to ever hope to take hold anywhere else again. --/--/
244: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _May 22nd_
Camerado: In the middle of the terrible little performance we left you
to attend and below the crash of floods on the roof--I was astonished to
hear the whistle of your boat, whooping, I hope, a really final salute:
I had supposed the Cristobal Colon long since departed. After so long a
wait I hope you at least had a private and quiet rest in your stateroom,
or rather, cabin.
Today frequent downpours and your card from Havana. Also a letter from
O’Neill--more mysterious than ever. I’ll quote exactly and all the words
pertaining to the Liveright matter:
“There seems to be a misunderstanding about this Liveright matter
somewhere. He isn’t waiting for any foreword from me _yet_--at least not
according to what he said when I saw him last before I wrote you the
last time. He was waiting for more stuff from you apparently. And he
spoke of having talked about you with Otto Kahn and so forth.
“However, I expect to be back in New York within a month and I will see
him then and get this matter straightened out.”
You will remember my descriptions of the situation up to this point with
sufficient accuracy without further repetitions; I can only say with
regard to it all that Gene has either misinformed me in his previous
letters or else is suffering from a lapse of memory. At any event, I
hope that the conversation with Kahn alluded to, hasn’t twitched
Liveright into the decision to hold up my book until _The Bridge_ shall
be completed. If he doesn’t really want the book of course nobody can
force him to take it,--in which case I hope it won’t be too much trouble
for you to return the mss. to the Boni Bros. There seem no end to the
complications with L. The mysterious “yet” in Gene’s statement (my
underlining) is simply inexplicable.
Mrs. Simpson is having some duplicates made for you of the beach
pictures and wishes to be remembered to you. Attaboy frequently calls
out “Waldo!” Mrs. Durham (whose name I remember always just in time by
thinking of the Bull) has come to stay at least for the week-end. And I
have just written a little unconscious calligramme on the mango tree
which I enclose.[47] --/--/
245: TO ----
[_Isle of Pines_] _May 22nd_
Dear ----: The post-Crane period in Patterson seems to have been full of
excitements. Your letter, with its news about the incomparable J---- was
corroborated in the same mail by no less than a letter from the noble
tar himself. Poor J---- spent no little time and trouble, coming clear
up from Norfolk. Mrs. Turner had been forwarding warnings of the
impending disaster, first a letter from Norfolk on the date of landing,
then a letter on the Potomac boat bound for Washington; I began to feel
as though the wireless would be necessary to save my honor. His people
live at P---- and it was there, after his excursion north, that he
finally got a card I had mailed from Havana explaining things. He’s back
on the job now, but quits June 6th. I commend your control under the
penetrating gazes of Mrs. T. J----’s letter contained a closing greeting
from “me, J----’s sister, M----” written in a very elegant hand, so I
guess I’m well introduced when I come to P----. Anyway, he made good
company and I’m awfully sorry to have missed him.
Yesterday I got tight for the first time, on Bacardi. Cuban Independence
day. Falling in with a flock of goats on my way home (I was trembling at
what Mme. Sampsohn would say) I stubbed my toes and skinned my knee.
Arrived home in a somewhat obvious condition, there was nothing to be
done but have it out with Mme.... Waldo having left Tuesday night, we
had it fair and square. It is now established that I can drink as much
as I damned please. A couple of murdering desperadoes got loose from the
penitentiary here recently--and I think she’s glad to have my company.
But she’s been so damned pleasant and considerate that I haven’t any
reason to think she doesn’t like me on less fearful grounds. I’m rather
jealous of Mrs. T’s old love, the weather, however.
Yes, Marianne [Moore] took the little specialty I wrote for her, and
even proof has been corrected and sent back. This time she didn’t even
suggest running the last line backward. “Again” is in the May issue; I
spose you’ve seen the happy mixture. I enclose an accidental calligramme
committed this morning accidentally on my way to _The Bridge_. I’m
convinced that the Mango tree was the original Eden apple tree, being
the first fruit tree mentioned in history with any accuracy of
denomination. I’ve been having a great time reading _Atlantis in
America_, the last book out on the subject, and full of exciting
suggestions. Putting it back for 40 or 50 thousand years, it’s easy to
believe that a continent existed in mid-Atlantic waters and that the
Antilles and West Indies are but salient peaks of its surface.
Impossible forever to prove, however.
I’m glad that Malcolm [Cowley] has had such luck. It’s likely he’s made
for life--once he enters the Lorimer field; and the articles ought to be
interesting, certainly the material is. Because Poole’s book, _The
Harbour_, was said to have been written while looking from the windows
of 110 Col. Hts., I had the idea that it might contain something--and
have just finished reading it, a thin-chested little affair if there
ever was one! I wonder if McFee’s books are quite so ordinary. -- -- -- --
246: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Isle of Pines_] _June 1, 1926_
Dear Grace: --/--/ Mine own true self has been chewing its cud, mostly,
i.e., trying to imagine itself on the waters with Cristobal Colon and
trying to mend the sails so beautifully slit by the Patterson typhoon.
The Island grows more attractive to me as I get more acclimated and we
have had constant breezes and cool weather ever since Waldo left, just
two weeks ago today. There are many things that need to be done about
the place, but I am attacking them with some deliberation--one has to
respect the ferocity of the sun and the insects not a little. I have
succeeded in eradicating the carcasses of several dead and dying orange
trees in the front yard, putting young royal palms in their places. How
I wish you had thought of planting some of these perfect delights when
the place was being built; they are the one perfect sort of tree to have
round a house, their ornamentation, stateliness and open-airiness can’t
be surpassed.
Mrs. Simpson is going to help me put up some new gate posts of rocks and
cement. The entire fencing directly in front of the house is ready to
collapse and there are so many breaches in the line down by the grove
which we need repair at once (pigs can’t be kept out, but some of the
cattle can be) that something should be done about it as soon as
possible. Of course I’m constantly at a loss to know what attitude to
take about these and other highly necessary repairs,--not knowing what
you really intend doing about the place. Most important of all, of
course, is an entirely new roof for the house. I don’t think you’ll ever
get pin money for the sale of the place until this, at least, is done,
for it’s the first and outstanding fault to be noticed even from the
road.
Moreover, the inside of the house--its whole structure, in fact--will
soon begin to deteriorate so rapidly for the want of dry sheltering that
whatever value the place has now will be sacrificed. If I were you, and
relished the tropics during the winter as much as you do, I’d economize
in some way or other so as to afford a new roof as soon as possible. The
house is really so comfortable and so very well built that it’s a shame
to let it run down. A few shingles and patches here and there won’t meet
the situation at all. The whole roof is rotted, loosely assembled and
full of perforations. And, as I said, it looks it. Patches would only
make it look a little worse.
Mrs. S. and I think that tile roofing, while costing a little more than
the cheap shingles that we put on first, is the proper thing for the
climate, exigencies of grass fires, etc. Asbestos shingling would be
good, but not so permanent--and although I don’t know for certain as
yet, I think it would be about as expensive as tile. Tile would also
look better. Now we are going to ask Mr. Jones, whose honesty and
disinterestedness is unquestionable, to make an estimate on what tile
roofing would cost, also what he would charge for his services in
undertaking the job. As soon as possible I’ll write you about the
figures, or Mrs. S. will. It can do no harm to go this far, anyway. And
as the Island is so infinitely superior to Florida, California or any
other place you might go for the winters--_and so much cheaper a place
to live when you get here_--I think you will agree with me that
investments in repairs on the place here are ultimately cheaper than
hotel rooms at ten to fifteen dollars a day with nothing to keep when
you leave. A new roof, some new screening and a fresh coat of paint are
all this house needs for years to come if someone like Mrs. Simpson or
myself stays here. I don’t forget the water tank, but that isn’t so
crucial; water can, after all, be pumped by hand. Let me know a little
more of your present attitude about the property here, then I can better
judge whether or not you want my reports, advice, etc.
Thursday (June 3rd) I’m sailing on the schooner for Grand Cayman. There
are two days on the water each way, and I may spend a week on the island
if the boat stays that long. I’m looking forward with great glee to my
first real sail--and they tell me that Cayman is lovelier than anything
around. Bread, cheese and cookies are to be packed by Mrs. Simpson and
I’m hoping not to feed the fishes. If I do,--well then I’ll have at
least found out that I’m a good-for-nothing landlubber. The trip will be
worth while from any standpoint.
247: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _June 19th ’26_
Dear Waldo: Late amends for your last three letters, the first of which
I got just as I was taking the schooner for Cayman! the last two
yesterday when I returned. The trip was strenuous, four days instead of
the expected two--each way, on account of head winds and calms. And let
me tell you that to be “as idle as a painted,” etc., under this tropical
sun with thirty-five cackling, puking, farting Negroes (women and
children first) for a whole day or so (the water like a blinding glassy
gridiron) is a novel experience. The first moral of the sea with the
white man is clean decks; it’s the last considered with the Indian
black. Vile water to drink, etc., etc., there’s no use recommending the
facts further. And the much bruited Grand Cayman was some torment, I can
survive to tell you. Flat and steaming under black clouds of mosquitoes,
and not a square inch of screening on the island. I had to keep smudge
fires burning incessantly in my room while I lunged back and forth,
smiting myself all over like one in rigor mortis and smoke gouging salt
penance from my eyes. The insects were enormous; Isle of Pines species
can’t compare in size or number. After nine days and nights of that I
staggered onto the schooner--and here I am--with a sunburn positively
Ethiopian.
I have pleasantly proved to myself, however, that under more sociably
agreeable circumstances there is nothing to compare with a sail boat.
The motion made me anything but sea-sick, with a good wind the rhythm is
incomparable. More gorgeous skies than even you saw, acres of man-sized
leaping porpoises (the “Huzza Porpoises” so aptly named in _Moby Dick_)
that greet you in tandems (much like M. & Mme. Lachaise if you have ever
seen them out walking together) and truly “arch and bend the horizons.”
One enormous shark, a White Fin, lounged alongside for awhile. Had there
been a place to sit or stand a few moments in the shade and fewer basins
and chamber pots under the nose the trips would have been far from
onerous.
In spite of all, I find myself rather toughened and well. The
exasperations and torments of such a siege make one grateful for modest
amenities. Mrs. Simpson yesterday for the first time appeared to me as
the Goddess of Liberty.
I am not writing to O’Neill about _White Buildings_--and do not expect
to write him until I hear directly from him. He is supposed to be back
in NY by this time, and in his last letter he said that he expected to
see Liveright on his return and talk things over. He knows that I have
prepared in mss. all the poems which are to be included in the book and
that all that can now hold it back is the lack of his foreword. It was
hard for me to ask him to write such a thing for my book, and it has
been harder and more embarrassing still for me to have kept trailing him
with letters of urgence.... It’s impossible for me [to] address him
again on the subject. I’m sorry that what-ever-it-was made him feel
constrained to promise the favor initially. It will be just as well for
me to forget publishers for awhile, I think, though I can’t forget how
steadfastly you have persevered in helping me--whatever the results have
amounted to. And don’t think too much about me; my judgments are too
unsettled these days to make me feel that I deserve much attention, much
less the faith that you assure me of. The situation is really unique
with me; it is absurd to say that one is battling indifference; but
neither does one build out of an emptied vision. Mere word-painting and
juggling, however fastidious,--a prospect of this doesn’t excite one
very much. At times it seems demonstrable that Spengler is quite right.
At present--I’m writing nothing--would that I were an efficient factory
of some kind! It was unfortunate in a way to have been helped by our
friend, the banker,--with my nose to the grindstone of the office I
could still fancy that freedom would yield me a more sustained vision;
now I know that much has been lacking all along. This is less personal
than it sounds. I think that the artist more and more licks his own
vomit, mistaking it for the common diet. He amuses himself that way in a
culture without faith and convictions--but he might as well be in elfin
land with a hop pipe in his mouth.... No, _The Bridge_ isn’t very
flamboyant these days.
I’m glad that the Mango poem meant something to you. I’m cooking up a
couple of other short poems to go with it (“Kidd’s Cove,” & “The Tampa
Schooner”) under the common title of “Grand Cayman.” Maybe I can sell
them to Marianne M[oore]. Word was just forwarded from Patterson that
Edgell Rickword, who edits _The Calendar_ (London), has taken three
poems I sent him about eight weeks ago, “At Melville’s Tomb,” “Passage”
and “Praise for an Urn.” _The Calendar_ is a very decent quarterly, and
I’m glad to get the “Melville” in print--not one magazine in America
would take it. You ought to send them something of yours--(1
Featherstone Buildings, London, W.C.1.)
So far no zonite, but gratitude none the less. The only people who can
get records to me securely are the Victor headquarters, I’ll order
direct from them. There’s a duty of about 90% on all records! But I do
wish you would have _The New Republic_ send me the Gide article.... As
much of your work as is printed there and elsewhere. I read _Moby Dick_
between gasps down in Cayman--my third time--and found it more superb
than ever. How much that man makes you love him! --/--/
248: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _June 20th_
Dear Waldo: Recollection of certain statements made in yesterday’s
letter to you prompt me to a little better account of myself--not that I
committed any insincerities (though the letter might seem to solicit
sympathy or encouragement) but that I feel guilty of an injustice to you
in some sort of way. You certainly do not deserve to have such fare set
before you....
So I apologize for my crudity, with the foreknowledge of your
understanding that there are times when it is a torture to write anyone
sincerely--as I must always write to you. My statements may appear in a
less insane light after you have read what has principally spurred
them--the Spengler thesis. This man is certainly fallible in plenty of
ways but much of his evidence is convincing--and is there any good
evidence forthcoming from the world in general that the artist isn’t
completely out of a job? Well, I may not care about such considerations
2 hours from now, but at present and for the last two months I have been
confronted with a ghostliness that is new.
The validity of a work of art is situated in contemporary reality to the
extent that the artist must honestly anticipate the realization of his
vision in “action” (as an actively operating principle of communal works
and faith), and I don’t mean by this that his procedure requires any
bona fide evidences directly and personally signalled, nor even any
physical signs or portents. The darkness is part of his business. It has
always been taken for granted, however, that his intuitions were
salutary and that his vision either sowed or epitomized “experience” (in
the Blakeian sense). Even the rapturous and explosive destructivism of
Rimbaud presupposes this, even his lonely hauteur demands it for any
estimation or appreciation. (The romantic attitude must at least have
the background of an age of faith, whether approved or disproved no
matter).
All this is inconsecutive and indeterminate because I am trying to write
shorthand about an endless subject--and moreover am unresolved as to any
ultimate conviction. I am not fancying I am “enlightening” you about
anything,--nor, if I thought I were merely exposing personal sores,
would I continue to be so monotonous. Emotionally I should like to write
_The Bridge_; intellectually judged the whole theme and project seems
more and more absurd. A fear of personal impotence in this matter
wouldn’t affect me half so much as the convictions that arise from other
sources.... I had what I thought were authentic materials that would
have been a pleasurable-agony of wrestling, eventuating or not in
perfection--at least being worthy of the most supreme efforts I could
muster.
These “materials” were valid to me to the extent that I presumed them to
be (articulate or not) at least organic and active factors in the
experience and perceptions of our common race, time and belief. The very
idea of a bridge, of course, is a form peculiarly dependent on such
spiritual convictions. It is an act of faith besides being a
communication. The symbols of reality necessary to articulate the
span--may not exist where you expected them, however. By which I mean
that however great their subjective significance to me is
concerned--these forms, materials, dynamics are simply non-existent in
the world. I may amuse and delight and flatter myself as much as I
please--but I am only evading a recognition and playing Don Quixote in
an immorally conscious way.
The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present
with its worth and vision that I’m at a loss to explain my delusion that
there exist any real links between that past and a future destiny worthy
of it. The “destiny” is long since completed, perhaps the little last
section of my poem is a hangover echo of it--but it hangs suspended
somewhere in ether like an Absalom by his hair. The bridge as a symbol
today has no significance beyond an economical approach to shorter
hours, quicker lunches, behaviorism and toothpicks. And inasmuch as the
bridge is a symbol of all such poetry as I am interested in writing it
is my present fancy that a year from now I’ll be more contented working
in an office than before. Rimbaud was the last great poet that our
civilization will see--he let off all the great cannon crackers in
Valhalla’s parapets, the sun has set theatrically several times since
while Laforgue, Eliot and others of that kidney have whimpered
fastidiously. _Everybody_ writes poetry now--and “poets” for the first
time are about to receive official social and economic recognition in
America. It’s really all the fashion, but a dead bore to anticipate. If
only America were half as worthy today to be spoken of as Whitman spoke
of it fifty years ago there might be something for me to say--not that
Whitman received or required any tangible proof of his intimations, but
that time has shown how increasingly lonely and ineffectual his
confidence stands.
There always remains the cult of “words,” elegancies, elaborations, to
exhibit with a certain amount of pride to an “inner circle” of literary
initiates. But this is, to me, rivalled by numerous other forms of
social accomplishment which might, if attained, provide as mild and
seductive recognitions. You probably think me completely insane, talking
as obvious hysterics as [a] drunken chorus-girl. Well, perhaps I need a
little more skepticism to put me right on _The Bridge_ again.... I am
certainly in a totally undignified mind and undress--and I hope to
appear more solidly determined soon.
Please don’t think that the O’Neill foreword has precipitated anything,
nor that I [am] burning manuscripts or plotting oriental travels....
Desolately I confess that I _may_ be writing stanzas again tomorrow.
That’s the worst of it. Mrs. S asks to be remembered to you.
--All this does not mean that I have resigned myself to inactivity.... A
bridge will be written in some kind of style and form, at worst it will
be something as good as advertising copy. After which I will have at
least done my best to discharge my debt to Kahn’s kindness.
249: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _July 3rd, ’26_
Dear Waldo: I must thank you immediately for your wireless. The news is
most welcome--and your affectionate haste in notifying me is not without
results in piercing the miasmas of these tropics.
Also comes a letter from Sue [Jenkins]. It seems the news has reached
Patterson via Jimmy Light. I copy Sue’s account of the circumstances
given her by Jimmy, as having been so active an agent in the matter you
probably will be interested. “The way it came about is not without
interest. About a month ago Liveright, Jimmy and others were at Otto
Kahn’s for a week-end. L. had the mss. with him at that time and on the
boat coming back he said he had decided not to publish it--that he
didn’t care for the poems and so far as he could see, nobody understood
them. Then, a little over a week ago, Jimmy and O’Neill were in L.’s
office on business and your mss. was on the table. Jimmy asked him if he
had stuck to his decision and he said ‘Yes.’ Then Jimmy and Gene both
told him they thought he would eventually be ‘proud’ of having published
your first volume, so that even if he himself did not care for the
poems, as a publisher he was failing to take advantage of an
opportunity. So finally L. came around to his old position of saying
that he would publish them if Gene would write a preface. (Previously L.
had said that he did not want to publish the poems at all--preface or no
preface.) Gene protested some, saying that while he liked the poems he
wasn’t at all sure he could tell why he liked them, that he was by no
means a critic of poetry, and that L. was preparing a fine opportunity
for him (O’Neill) to make a fool of himself. But finally it was decided
that the preface would be written, L. phoned immediately to the printer
and dictated the announcement. And I understand that the preface is
already written and in L.’s hands.”
Probably I’ll hear something direct from Liveright within the next week;
nothing so far has reached me. If the book is really scheduled for fall
it will relieve me of numerous embarrassments, especially with the
family, who, I think have already ceased to believe any statements from
me about my work, publications, etc.
Last Sunday I was obliged to go to Havana to consult with a doctor. For
the last two weeks I have been suffering intensely from two abscesses,
one in each ear, added to which apparently alarming symptoms of fever,
and lung trouble had seemed to develop. Of these latter the doctor says
there is no need to worry, but the abscesses have not healed yet, and
are distracting to say the least. I shall be glad sometime to get a good
night’s sleep. Doctor says they were caused by sun-exposure on my boat
trip.
I have been reading _Quixote_ and _Swann’s Way_. My money is practically
exhausted, but I think I can get a hundred by writing to Patterson and
having my property there sold. The final 500 from Kahn can’t be
solicited until August or later--if at all, for I shan’t ask for it
unless I am writing again by that time. Mrs. Simpson has been so kind
and altogether gracious that I couldn’t ask for better care.
When I’m feeling better I hope to write you a decent letter--the last
two have been so haphazard, violent and vulgar. I hope these days of sea
and sunshine and breezes are resting you and improving Tom.[48]
In Havana I bought a _New Yorker_ and read your van Loon
snapshot--marvelling again at your flexibility and dash. Otherwise I was
sipping the glorious limonades most of the time! couldn’t get my mouth
open wide enough to receive much other nourishment! Took long walks
around the harbour and along the Malacon. A lovely city, albeit insipid;
full of white and gold and azure buildings. Even plaster has something
to say.
250: TO ----
_Isle of Pines, Cuba_ [_July?_]
Dear ----: --/--/ I have not been able to write one line since I came
here--the mind is completely befogged by the heat and besides there is a
strange challenge and combat in the air--offered by “Nature” so
monstrously alive in the tropics which drains the psychic energies.--And
my poem was progressing so beautifully until -- -- -- -- took it into her
head to be so destructive! How silly all this sounds! Howsoever--it’s a
cruel jest of Fate--and I doubt if I shall continue to write for another
year. For I’ve lost all faith in my material--“human nature” or what you
will--and any true expression must rest on some faith in something.
It has been so disgusting to note the sudden turns and antics of my
“friends” since I had the one little bit help I ever had toward my work
in the money from Kahn. Everytime I came into N.Y. from the country I’d
hear new monstrosities of fables going about town as to how I was
squandering money on pate de foi gras, etc. And worse whisperings. It’s
all been very tiresome--and I’d rather lose such elite for the old
society of vagabonds and sailors--who don’t enjoy chit-chat.
Two of the latter, by the way, are keeping up a regular flow of letters
and cards to me here. One, F----, came clear up to Patterson to see me
during May--but found me gone, of course.
I was very touched to hear that he had journeyed all the way from
Norfolk--in memory of two evenings in Brooklyn last January. Immortally
choice and funny and pathetic are some of my recollections in such
connection. I treasure them--I always can--against many disillusionments
made bitter by the fact that faith was given and expected--whereas, with
the sailor no faith or such is properly _expected_ and how jolly and
cordial and warm the tonsiling _is_ sometimes, after all. Let my lusts
be my ruin, then, since all else is a fake and mockery. --/--/
251: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Isle of Pines_] _July 8th, 1926_
Dear Grace: Well,--after two months of absolute silence I’m glad to hear
from you--and sorry to know that you are so disturbed and worried as you
are, and sick in bed. --/--/
The trip to Cayman I’m still trying to get over. Everyone (I don’t know
why native Americans here should tell such stories) had been telling me
how charming the little island was. More than that, the sea-sailing to
and fro had interested me. Being in a very dull mood (the intense and
sudden heat here had made me torpid and inactive) I thought the trip
would spur me, stimulate me a little toward continuing my writing on the
_Bridge_ poem, not a line of which I had been able to add since I came
down here.
Instead of a two days trip over, it took four. Headwinds all the way. It
was not until the island was cleared that I realized how many were on
that sixty-foot schooner. Thirty-five! and all of them niggers who
proved to have no idea of ordinary decent cleanliness, and the crowd
made it almost impossible to find a place to stand, lie or sit for ten
minutes at a time--not to mention the fact that there was no shade from
the intense blaze of the sun unless one could brave the stinks and fumes
of a dozen odd sick and wailing nigger females below decks. Most of
these never emerged from their hole there during the entire voyage, but
pots, bowls, basins, fruit peelings and a thousand shrieks and wails
were raised up every hour of the day and night to be emptied on the
deck, my nose and ears being kept busy, I can tell you!
When we at last were in sight of the island we were greeted (even three
miles out) with such droves of savage mosquitoes as I had never imagined
outside of Bon Echo, Canada. And when I was landed I found them to be
far, far worse. There was only one place on the island (no hotel) where
I could be accommodated. A sort of boarding house kept by a woman who
used to cook over at Santa Fe. Whether they were hers or not, I don’t
know, but the house was packed with infants and children who kept up a
constant racket and screaming. All the Negroes on the island were very
pious, and about the time the children would quiet down a whole band of
them in the house next door would raise their voices to God in hymns
that would scrape the varnish off the woodwork. Worst of all, there was
not an inch of screening on the house. I spent literally dollars buying
insect powders and keeping a constant smudge going in my room so that my
eyes were in a constant stream of tears from the smoke and my lungs
nearly burst with suffocation.
Even then, one side of my face and neck were so badly poisoned from the
constant bites that they were quite swollen. The beautiful beaches that
I had heard about on the island I never saw. To walk more than half a
mile from your doorstep was almost to court madness, St. Vitus dance, or
death. The very arm with which you were attempting to beat off the
regiments of insects would become so covered with them (even while in
violent action) that you gave up any hope of relieving yourself of their
company.
You can picture me, then, pacing back and forth in my room, very much in
the mood of old Mrs. Johnson, in our kitchen at 1709 [Cleveland home of
Crane family]--with a hand pressed on the top of my head, whispering to
myself that I would soon be quite insane and relieved of my torments.