As a poet Joe Lincoln excelled as well as in prose. Since his first
successful attempts at writing were in verse and his first book was a
book of poetry it is only fitting that he should also be remembered as
a poet.
The following poem, which was among the many published in newspapers
all over the country, appeared in the Boston Herald on January 31, 1915.
“I remember when a youngster, all the happy hours I spent
When to visit Uncle Hiram in the country oft I went;
And the pleasant recollection still in memory has a charm
Of my boyish romps and rambles round the dear old-fashioned farm.
But at night all boyish fancies from my youthful bosom crept,
For I knew they’d surely put me where the ‘comp’ny’ always slept,
And my spirit sank within me, as upon it fell the gloom
And the vast and lonely grandeur of the best spare room.
Ah, the weary waste of pillow where I laid my lonely head!
Sinking like a shipwrecked sailor, in a patchwork sea of bed,
While the moonlight through the casement cast a grim and ghastly glare
O’er the stiff and stately presence of each dismal hair-cloth chair;
And it touched the mantle’s splendor, where the wax fruit used to be,
And the alabaster image Uncle Josh brought home from sea;
While the breeze that shook the curtains spread a musty, faint perfume
And a subtle scent of camphor through the best spare room.
Round the walls were hung the pictures of the dear ones passed away,
‘Uncle Si and A’nt Lurany,’ taken on their wedding day;
Cousin Ruth, who died at twenty, in the corner had a place
Near the wreath from Eben’s coffin, dipped in wax and in a case;
Ears askew and somewhat cross-eyed, but with fixed and awful frown,
Seeming somehow to be waiting to enjoy the dreadful doom
Of the frightened little sleeper in the best spare room.
Every rustle of the corn-husks in the mattress underneath
Was to me a ghostly whisper muttered through a phantom’s teeth,
And the mice behind the wainscot, as they scampered round about,
Filled my soul with speechless horror when I’d put the candle out.
So I’m deeply sympathetic with some story I have read
Of a victim buried living by his friends who thought him dead;
And I think I know his feelings in the cold and silent tomb,
For I’ve slept at Uncle Hiram’s in the best spare room.”
Sometimes Joe Lincoln would write little verses on the fly-leaves
of his books which he sent to his friends whenever a new volume was
published. One of these verses went:
“Here’s to the good old days of yore,
The days of Old Lang Syne,
When your box stall was down the hall,
Just three doors off from mine.”
That Joe Lincoln loved life and had a wonderful sense of humor is
reflected not only in his poetry but in his books. His ability to see
the funny side and to make his readers chuckle with laughter as they
explored the pages of his works was quite evident. When he described
“Aunt” this or “Uncle” that the reader was often reminded of some
relative in his own family whose characteristics were much the same as
a Lincoln character.
When asked by a reporter in 1920 what his avocation or hobby was
Lincoln replied, “Hum, well, I don’t know. I play a lot of golf and I
am much interested just now in a model of a full-rigged ship which an
old sailor near Boston is building for me. I don’t know who is getting
the most fun out of it, he or I. Went down to see it the other day in a
snow storm, and it’s getting along nicely. It will be fully equipped,
all right, even to the galley-stove; but I don’t know whether I will
have sails put on it or not. They get yellow with age, you know.
“It will have the name of my father’s ship, ‘The Mist’, in which both
my parents sailed all over the world.”
It is easy to imagine the scenes Joe’s parents witnessed before his
birth, of the harbors in which they must have dropped anchor, of
typhoons in the China Sea, and the hurricanes blowing due east from
South America. Think of the storms in the North Atlantic, the cocoanut
palms along African sands and the wild monkeys of Honduras. And then a
return to the austere, tree shorn stretches of Cape Cod. With such a
family background it is little wonder that Lincoln in later years was
so prompted to write of the people he knew in his early life and the
sea which was in his family history and in his own blood.
“I write of village life,” said Lincoln quietly as he was interviewed
by a reporter from the old Boston Transcript in December, 1924. “I
know the characteristics and natures of these people. I began using
a Cape village for my background, and I continue to. After my short
stories became more and more successful, a certain New York publisher
sent for me and suggested that I string along a series of incidents and
make out of them a full length novel. I was reluctant at first. Then I
tried it, but I couldn’t do the work as he planned. I had to write the
whole manuscript over again. Finally the novel appeared in 1904. It was
called ‘Cap’n Eri’.”
“It takes me from six to eight months to do a novel,” Lincoln went on.
“Of course, like all writers, I get fearfully despondent, think the
story is very poor, not worth telling, or even planning. And then after
a time it is finished. The head of a New York publishing house once
told me that it seemed to him as if all novels were written in the same
way. First they were pushed up and up and up.” He gestured effectively.
“Then there came a point where they went gradually down, ending at
about the level at which they started. I think he was right. Other
authors tell me they have exactly the same moods of depression that I
have suffered. One great fear which always comes when you have written
as many novels as I have is the horror of writing yourself out. You
keep on asking yourself, ‘have I anything more to say?’ For an author
must drop his pen before the public begins to drop his books.”
While this interview took place in 1924, Lincoln of course, had no way
of knowing how long he could keep on turning out his books for he had
yet to continue his career for twenty years, turning out a book a year
of which the public never tired.