Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_.
Additional notes will be found near the end of this ebook.
JOYCE KILMER
POEMS, ESSAYS
AND LETTERS
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME TWO: PROSE WORKS
[Illustration:
SERGEANT JOYCE KILMER
165TH INFANTRY (69TH NEW YORK),
A. E. F., FRANCE, MAY, 1918
]
JOYCE KILMER
EDITED WITH A MEMOIR
BY ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
VOLUME TWO
PROSE WORKS
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1914, 1917, 1918
By George H. Doran Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS--VOLUME TWO
PAGE
ESSAYS
HOLY IRELAND 11
THE GENTLE ART OF CHRISTMAS GIVING 26
A BOUQUET FOR JENNY 39
THE INEFFICIENT LIBRARY 49
THE POETRY OF HILAIRE BELLOC 62
THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM 78
LETTERS
TO CHARLES WILLIS THOMPSON 101
TO SHAEMAS O’SHEEL 101
TO LOUIS BEVIER, JR. 103
TO SARA TEASDALE FILSINGER 104
TO KATHERINE BRÉGY 105
TO AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR 107
TO HOWARD W. COOK 108
TO THOMAS WALSH 111
TO ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY 114
TO REVEREND EDWARD F. GARESCHÉ, S.J. 116
TO REVEREND JAMES J. DALY, S.J. 119
TO HIS MOTHER 144
TO KENTON KILMER 163
TO DEBORAH KILMER 165
TO HIS WIFE 166
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES
A BALLAD OF NEW SINS 227
WAR SONGS 230
“TRY A TIN TO-DAY:” A SHORT STORY 233
SOME MISCHIEF STILL: A PLAY IN ONE ACT 252
ILLUSTRATIONS
SERGEANT JOYCE KILMER _Frontispiece_
PAGE
JOYCE KILMER, AGE 5 120
JOYCE KILMER’S GRAVE 222
ESSAYS
HOLY IRELAND
We had hiked seventeen miles that stormy December day--the third of a
four days’ journey. The snow was piled high on our packs, our rifles
were crusted with ice, the leather of our hob-nailed boots was frozen
stiff over our lamed feet. The weary lieutenant led us to the door of a
little house in a side street.
“Next twelve men,” he said. A dozen of us dropped out of the ranks and
dragged ourselves over the threshold. We tracked snow and mud over a
spotless stone floor. Before an open fire stood Madame and the three
children--a girl of eight years, a boy of five, a boy of three. They
stared with round frightened eyes at _les soldats Americains_, the
first they had ever seen. We were too tired to stare back. We at once
climbed to the chill attic, our billet, our lodging for the night.
First we lifted the packs from one another’s aching shoulders; then,
without spreading our blankets, we lay down on the bare boards.
For ten minutes there was silence, broken by an occasional groan, an
oath, the striking of a match. Cigarettes glowed like fireflies in a
forest. Then a voice came from the corner.
“Where is Sergeant Reilly?” it said. We lazily searched. There was no
Sergeant Reilly to be found.
“I’ll bet the old bum has gone out after a pint,” said the voice. And
with the curiosity of the American and the enthusiasm of the Irish we
lumbered downstairs in quest of Sergeant Reilly.
He was sitting on a low bench by the fire. His shoes were off and his
bruised feet were in a pail of cold water. He was too good a soldier to
expose them to the heat at once. The little girl was on his lap and the
little boys stood by and envied him. And in a voice that twenty years
of soldiering and oceans of whisky had failed to rob of its Celtic
sweetness, he was softly singing “Ireland isn’t Ireland any more.” We
listened respectfully.
“They cheer the King and then salute him,” said Sergeant Reilly.
“A regular Irishman would shoot him,” and we all joined in the chorus,
“Ireland isn’t Ireland any more.”
“Ooh, la, la!” exclaimed Madame, and she and all the children began to
talk at the top of their voices. What they said Heaven knows, but the
tones were friendly, even admiring.
“Gentlemen,” said Sergeant Reilly from his post of honor, “the lady who
runs this billet is a very nice lady indeed. She says yez can all take
off your shoes and dry your socks by the fire. But take turns and don’t
crowd or I’ll trun yez all upstairs.”
Now Madame, a woman of some forty years, was a true _bourgeoise_, with
all the thrift of her class. And by the terms of her agreement with the
authorities she was required to let the soldiers have for one night the
attic of her house to sleep in--nothing more; no light, no heat. Also,
wood is very expensive in France--for reasons that are engraven in
letters of blood on the pages of history. Nevertheless--
“Assez-vous, s’il vous plait,” said Madame. And she brought nearer to
the fire all the chairs the establishment possessed and some chests and
boxes to be used as seats. And she and the little girl, whose name was
Solange, went out into the snow and came back with heaping armfuls of
small logs. The fire blazed merrily--more merrily than it had blazed
since August, 1914, perhaps. We surrounded it, and soon the air was
thick with steam from our drying socks.
Meanwhile Madame and the Sergeant had generously admitted all eleven
of us into their conversation. A spirited conversation it was, too, in
spite of the fact that she knew no English and the extent of his French
was “du pain,” “du vin,” “cognac” and “bon jour.” Those of us who knew
a little more of the language of the country acted as interpreters for
the others. We learned the names of the children and their ages. We
learned that our hostess was a widow. Her husband had fallen in battle
just one month before our arrival in her home. She showed us with
simple pride and affection and restrained grief his picture. Then she
showed us those of her two brothers--one now fighting at Salonica, the
other a prisoner of war--of her mother and father, of herself dressed
for First Communion.
This last picture she showed somewhat shyly, as if doubting that we
would understand it. But when one of us asked in halting French if
Solange, her little daughter, had yet made her First Communion, then
Madame’s face cleared.
“Mais oui!” she exclaimed. “Et vous, ma foi, vous etes Catholiques,
n’est-ce pas?”
At once rosary beads were flourished to prove our right to answer this
question affirmatively. Tattered prayer-books and somewhat dingy
scapulars were brought to light. Madame and the children chattered
their surprise and delight to each other, and every exhibit called for
a new outburst.
“Ah, le bon S. Benoit! Ah, voilà, le Conception Immacule! Ooh la la, le
Sacre Coeur!” (which last exclamation sounded in no wise as irreverent
as it looks in print).
Now other treasures, too, were shown--treasures chiefly photographic.
There were family groups, there were Coney Island snapshots. And Madame
and the children were a gratifyingly appreciative audience. They
admired and sympathized; they exclaimed appropriately at the beauty
of every girl’s face, the tenderness of every pictured mother. We had
become the intimates of Madame. She had admitted us into her family and
we her into ours.
Soldiers--American soldiers of Irish descent--have souls and hearts.
These organs (if the soul may be so termed) had been satisfied. But
our stomachs remained--and that they yearned was evident to us. We had
made our hike on a meal of hardtack and “corned willy.” Mess call would
sound soon. Should we force our wet shoes on again and plod through
the snowy streets to the temporary mess-shack? We knew our supply
wagons had not succeeded in climbing the last hill into town, and that
therefore bread and unsweetened coffee would be our portion. A great
depression settled upon us.
But Sergeant Reilly rose to the occasion.
“Boys,” he said, “this here lady has got a good fire going, and I’ll
bet she can cook. What do you say we get her to fix us up a meal?”
The proposal was received joyously at first. Then someone said:
“But I haven’t got any money.” “Neither have I--not a damn sou!” said
another. And again the spiritual temperature of the room fell.
Again Sergeant Reilly spoke:
“I haven’t got any money to speak of, meself,” he said. “But let’s have
a show-down. I guess we’ve got enough to buy somethin’ to eat.”
It was long after pay-day, and we were not hopeful of the results of
the search. But the wealthy (that is, those who had two francs) made
up for the poor (that is, those who had two sous). And among the coins
on the table I noticed an American dime, an English half-crown and a
Chinese piece with a square hole in the center. In negotiable tender
the money came in all to eight francs.
It takes more money than that to feed twelve hungry soldiers these
days in France. But there was no harm in trying. So an ex-seminarian,
an ex-bookkeeper and an ex-street-car conductor aided Sergeant Reilly
in explaining in French that had both a brogue and a Yankee twang that
we were hungry, that this was all the money we had in the world, and
that we wanted her to cook us something to eat.
Now Madame was what they call in New England a “capable” woman. In a
jiffy she had the money in Solange’s hand and had that admirable child
cloaked and wooden-shod for the street, and fully informed as to what
she was to buy. What Madame and the children had intended to have for
supper I do not know, for there was nothing in the kitchen but the
fire, the stove, the table, some shelves of dishes and an enormous bed.
Nothing in the way of a food cupboard could be seen. And the only other
room of the house was the bare attic.
When Solange came back she carried in a basket bigger than herself
these articles: 1, two loaves of war-bread; 2, five bottles of red
wine; 3, three cheeses; 4, numerous potatoes; 5, a lump of fat; 6, a
bag of coffee. The whole represented, as was afterward demonstrated,
exactly the sum of ten francs, fifty centimes.
Well, we all set to work peeling potatoes. Then, with a veritable
French trench-knife Madame cut the potatoes into long strips. Meanwhile
Solange had put the lump of fat into the big black pot that hung by a
chain over the fire. In the boiling grease the potatoes were placed,
Madame standing by with a big ladle punched full of holes (I regret
that I do not know the technical name for this instrument) and keeping
the potato-strips swimming, zealously frustrating any attempt on their
part to lie lazily at the bottom of the pot.
We forgot all about the hike as we sat at supper that evening. The
only absentees were the two little boys, Michel and Paul. And they
were really absent only from our board--they were in the room, in the
great built-in bed that was later to hold also Madame and Solange.
Their little bodies were covered by the three-foot thick mattress-like
red silk quilt, but their tousled heads protruded and they watched us
unblinkingly all the evening.
But just as we sat down, before Sergeant Reilly began his task of
dishing out the potatoes and starting the bottles on their way, Madame
stopped her chattering and looked at Solange. And Solange stopped
her chattering and looked at Madame. And they both looked rather
searchingly at us. We didn’t know what was the matter, but we felt
rather embarrassed.
Then Madame began to talk, slowly and loudly, as one talks to make
foreigners understand. And the gist of her remarks was that she was
surprised to see that American Catholics did not say grace before
eating like French Catholics.
We sprang to our feet at once. But it was not Sergeant Reilly who saved
the situation. Instead, the ex-seminarian (he is only temporarily an
ex-seminarian, he’ll be preaching missions and giving retreats yet if
a bit of shrapnel doesn’t hasten his journey to Heaven) said, after
we had blessed ourselves: “Benedicite: nos et quae sumus sumpturi
benedicat Deus, Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. Amen.”
Madame and Solange, obviously relieved, joined us in the Amen, and we
sat down again to eat.
It was a memorable feast. There was not much conversation--except on
the part of Madame and Solange--but there was plenty of good cheer.
Also there was enough cheese and bread and wine and potatoes for all of
us--half starved as we were when we sat down. Even big Considine, who
drains a can of condensed milk at a gulp and has been known to eat an
apple pie without stopping to take breath, was satisfied. There were
toasts, also, all proposed by Sergeant Reilly--toasts to Madame, and
to the children, and to France, and to the United States, and to the
Old Grey Mare (this last toast having an esoteric significance apparent
only to _illuminati_ of Sergeant Reilly’s circle).
The table cleared and the “agimus tibi gratias” duly said, we sat
before the fire, most of us on the floor. We were warm and happy and
full of good food and good wine. I spied a slip of paper on the floor
by Solange’s foot and unashamedly read it. It was an accounting for the
evening’s expenditures--totaling exactly ten francs and fifty centimes.
Now when soldiers are unhappy--during a long, hard hike, for
instance--they sing to keep up their spirits. And when they are happy,
as on the evening now under consideration, they sing to express their
satisfaction with life. We sang “Sweet Rosie O’Grady.” We shook the
kitchen-bedroom with the echoes of “Take Me Back to New York Town.” We
informed Madame, Solange, Paul, Michel, in fact, the whole village,
that we had never been a wanderer and that we longed for our Indiana
home. We grew sentimental over “Mother Machree.” And Sergeant Reilly
obliged with a reel--in his socks--to an accompaniment of whistling
and hand-clapping.
Now, it was our hostess’s turn to entertain. We intimated as much. She
responded, first by much talk, much consultation with Solange, and
finally by going to one of the shelves that held the pans and taking
down some paper-covered books.
There was more consultation, whispered this time, and much turning of
pages. Then, after some preliminary coughing and humming, the music
began--the woman’s rich alto blending with the child’s shrill but sweet
notes. And what they sang was “Tantum ergo Sacramentum.”
Why she should have thought that an appropriate song to offer this
company of rough soldiers from a distant land I do not know. And why
we found it appropriate it is harder still to say. But it did seem
appropriate to all of us--to Sergeant Reilly, to Jim (who used to drive
a truck), to Larry (who sold cigars), to Frank (who tended a bar on
Fourteenth Street). It seemed, for some reason, eminently fitting. Not
one of us then or later expressed any surprise that this hymn, familiar
to most of us since our mothers first led us to the Parish Church down
the pavements of New York or across the Irish hills, should be sung to
us in this strange land and in these strange circumstances.
Since the gracious Latin of the Church was in order and since the
season was appropriate, one of us suggested “Adeste Fideles” for
the next item on the evening’s program. Madame and Solange and our
ex-seminarian knew all the words and the rest of us came in strong with
“Venite, adoremus Dominum.”
Then, as if to show that piety and mirth may live together, the ladies
obliged with “Au Clair de la Lune” and other simple ballads of old
France. And after taps had sounded in the street outside our door, and
there was yawning, and wrist-watches were being scanned, the evening’s
entertainment ended, by general consent, with patriotic selections.
We sang--as best we could--the _Star Spangled Banner_, Solange and
her mother humming the air and applauding at the conclusion. Then we
attempted _La Marseillaise_. Of course we did not know the words.
Solange came to our rescue with two little pamphlets containing the
song, so we looked over each other’s shoulders and got to work in
earnest. Madame sang with us, and Solange. But during the final stanza
Madame did not sing. She leaned against the great family bedstead and
looked at us. She had taken one of the babies from under the red
comforter and held him to her breast. One of her red and toil-scarred
hands half covered his fat little back. There was a gentle dignity
about that plain, hard-working woman, that soldier’s widow--we all felt
it. And some of us saw the tears in her eyes.
There are mists, faint and beautiful and unchanging, that hang over the
green slopes of some mountains I know. I have seen them on the Irish
hills and I have seen them on the hills of France. I think that they
are made of the tears of good brave women.
Before I went to sleep that night I exchanged a few words with Sergeant
Reilly. We lay side by side on the floor, now piled with straw.
Blankets, shelter-halves, slickers and overcoats insured warm sleep.
Sergeant Reilly’s hard old face was wrapped round with his muffler. The
final cigarette of the day burned lazily in a corner of his mouth.
“That was a pretty good evening, Sarge,” I said. “We sure were in luck
when we struck this billet.”
He grunted affirmatively, then puffed in silence for a few minutes.
Then he deftly spat the cigarette into a strawless portion of the
floor, where it glowed for a few seconds before it went out.
“You said it,” he remarked. “We were in luck is right. What do you
know about that lady, anyway?”
“Why,” I answered, “I thought she treated us pretty white.”
“Joe,” said Sergeant Reilly, “do you realize how much trouble that
woman took to make this bunch of roughnecks comfortable? She didn’t
make a damn cent on that feed, you know. The kid spent all the money we
give her. And she’s out about six francs for firewood, too--I wish to
God I had the money to pay her. I bet she’ll go cold for a week now,
and hungry, too.
“And that ain’t all,” he continued, after a pause broken only by an
occasional snore from our blissful neighbours. “Look at the way she
cooked them pomme de terres and fixed things up for us and let us sit
down there with her like we was her family. And look at the way she and
the little Sallie there sung for us.
“I tell you, Joe, it makes me think of old times to hear a woman sing
them Church hymns to me that way. It’s forty years since I heard a hymn
sung in a kitchen, and it was my mother, God rest her, that sang them.
I sort of realize what we’re fighting for now, and I never did before.
It’s for women like that and their kids.
“It gave me a turn to see her a-sitting their singing them hymns. I
remembered when I was a boy in Shangolden. I wonder if there’s many
women like that in France now--telling their beads and singing the old
hymns and treating poor traveling men the way she’s just after treating
us. There used to be lots of women like that in the Old Country. And I
think that’s why it was called ‘Holy Ireland.’”
THE GENTLE ART OF CHRISTMAS GIVING
If a dentist stuck a bit of holly in his cap and went through the
streets on Christmas morning, his buzzing drill over his shoulder and
his forceps in his hand, stopping at the houses of his friends to
give their jaws free treatment, meanwhile trolling out lusty Yuletide
staves--if he were to do this, I say, it would be said of him, among
other things, that he was celebrating Christmas in a highly original
manner. Undoubtedly there would be many other adjectives applied to his
manner of generosity--adjectives applied, for instance, by the children
whom, around their gayly festooned tree, he surprised with his gift of
expert treatment. But the adjective most generally used (not perhaps in
adulation) would be “original.” And the use of this adjective would be
utterly wrong.
The holly bedecked dentist would not be acting in an original manner.
He would not be following the suggestion of his own philanthropic
heart. He would be acting in accordance with tradition, a particularly
annoying tradition, the evil and absurd superstition that a gift should
be representative of the giver rather than of the recipient.
Now, I am aware that there is high literary authority for the dentist’s
Christmas morning expedition. The dentist himself would be the first
to disclaim having originated the idea; if you were to question him he
would tell you, as he deftly adjusted his rubber dam in your mouth,
that the credit belonged to the late Ralph Waldo Emerson.
“Emerson,” the dentist would say as he sharpened the point of his
drill, “said that a gift was meaningless unless it was a genuine
expression of the giver; it would be unfitting, for instance, for a
poet to give his friend a house and lot, and a painter, his friend, a
diamond necklace. The poet should give a poem and the painter should
give a painting. Therefore it naturally follows that a minister should
give a sermon and a school teacher should bestow upon his expectant
pupils an extra page of mathematical problems. This,” the dentist would
say, “is the gift most expressive of my personality.” And the drill
would seek its goal.
Now, there is much to be said in favour of the Emersonian theory of
giving. Certainly it has the advantages of cheapness and convenience.
Many a poet could more easily give his friend a whole ode or a
sequence of sonnets or a bale of vers libre than he could give a box
of cigars, or a cigar. Many a painter could more easily cover his
children’s Christmas tree with his own cubist canvases than with
peppermint canes and toy locomotives and dolls and little trumpets. A
storekeeper or a manufacturer of any sort can more easily select his
gifts from his own stock than he can select them elsewhere. Should
a brewer, for instance, desire to help make Mr. Bryan’s Christmas
happy, it would be a simpler matter for him to put in that gentleman’s
stocking a case of beer than a case of grape juice.
But cheapness and convenience are not the chief reasons for this sort
of giving. A poet who gives a poem when he should give a pair of fur
gauntlets, a painter who gives a painting when he should give a doll,
does so, it often happens, in spite of the fact that he has thousands
of dollars in the bank and lives within a block of a department store,
which he much enjoys visiting. He gives the gifts that he does give
because of his selfishness and conceit. He gives his own wares because
they advertise his talent.
The poet knows that his friend will not say, to inquiring admirers of
his fur gauntlets, “These were given me by Ezra Dusenbury, author of
‘Babylonian Bleatings’ and other Lyrics: Smith, Parker & Co., $1 net.”
The painter knows that the infant he has enriched will not say to her
young companions: “‘Bettina’ was given me by the illustrious Gaspar
Slifestein whose incomprehensiblist canvases are now on exhibition at
the Microscopic Mania Gallery, 249 Fifth Avenue, New York City.” These
gentlemen take a violent interest in their own work, and when they give
presents of that work they are trying to force their friends to share
that interest and to extend it to all the world. They are trying to
force their friends to become their press agents.
Of course there are exceptions to the rule that a giver should not
give his own wares. Any man who deals in wares that are universally
delightful may express himself in his gifts to his heart’s content
and no one will criticise him. So let no brewer or cigar-maker or
money-changer of my acquaintance puzzle his head long in the effort to
discover in the marts of the world something appropriate to my peculiar
tastes. These honest citizens may be as Emersonian in their giving as
they wish.
As I said, there is much to recommend the idea that inspired the
hypothetical dentist on his Yuletide denting; there is much to
recommend the gift-expressing-the-giver theory. It is convenient, it is
cheap, it is satisfying to the giver’s conceit. It is in many respects
excellent. But it does not happen to be suited to Christmas Day. It is
suited to the celebration of Emerson’s birthday, if any one knows the
date of that festival.
You see, unselfishness is supposed to be a characteristic of Christmas
giving. And unselfishness, true unselfishness, was known to the
philosophy of the Transcendentalists as little as it is known to
that of the Nietzscheans. He who gives really in accordance with
the spirit of the feast gives not to express his own personality,
to call attention to his own prowess as a painter or a poet or a
candlestick-maker, but to make his friend happy. If his friend
remembers him when he enjoys the gift, so much the better. But the
essential thing is that he shall enjoy the gift.
James Russell Lowell represented the Founder of the Feast of Christmas
as saying: “Who gives himself in his gift feeds three; himself, his
suffering neighbour and me.” But in Lowell’s mind when he wrote this
was no idea of justifying the poet who thrusts poems into his friends’
Christmas stocking and tips the elevator man with a villanelle. He
was thinking of sacrificial giving, of giving which necessitates
a sacrifice on the part of the giver rather than on that of the
recipient. And it is no sacrifice for a poet to give his poem or his
book of poems. James Russell Lowell’s distinguished kinswoman, now
living in Boston, knows this. If Miss Amy Lowell really loves you
she will give you for Christmas an automobile or one of her Keats
manuscripts, rather than an autographed copy of “Sword Blades and Poppy
Seeds,” or “Men, Women, and Ghosts.”
Few Bishops resemble Mark Twain. But there once was a Bishop who
resembled Mark Twain in this respect (and in no other)--he is known to
many thousands who do not know his real name. Mark Twain has thousands
of friends who never heard of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. And hundreds of
thousands of children yearly are gladdened by Santa Claus, yet have no
association whatever with the name of Saint Nicholas of Bari.
Yet the amiable Nicholas (who is the patron of sailors, of prisoners,
and of children) is the benefactor of humanity caricatured during
December in every shop window and on every eleemosynary corner. His
mitre has degenerated into a hat trimmed with doubtful fur; his
embroidered cope has become a red jacket. But (except when he rings
a little bell and begs for alms) he has retained his extra-episcopal
function of giving. Saint Nicholas was a master of the art of giving;
and since we have taken him so seriously as to transmogrify him into
Santa Claus, we should profit by his illustrious example and model our
giving upon his.
How and what did Saint Nicholas give? Well, he gave tactfully and
opportunely and appropriately. There was the nobleman of Lucia whose
three daughters were starving to death. Saint Nicholas gave them
marriage portions, throwing purses of gold in at the window at night.
When he was in Myra he gave to the poor people all the wheat that
was in the ships in the harbour, promising the owners that when they
arrived at the port for which they were bound their ships would still
be full of wheat; and so it came about. To a drowned sailor and to
children who had been killed by a cannibal he gave the gift of life.
And to innocent men accused of treason and imprisoned he gave freedom.
His first gift, you see, was money, his second life, his third freedom.
And thus he set an example to all the world. Now, it may not be
convenient for us to celebrate Christmas by throwing money through
the windows of apartments wherein repose dowerless young women. Nor
are life and freedom gifts for our bestowal. But it is at any rate
possible for us to imitate Saint Nicholas’s manner of giving; to give
tactfully, opportunely, and appropriately. There was nothing especially
characteristic of his episcopal functions in the gifts that Saint
Nicholas gave. Nor did he worry about whether or not they reflected his
personality. Let us make Santa Claus resemble Saint Nicholas as closely
as we can.
This business of expressing one’s personality by one’s gifts has been
carried to extraordinary lengths of late years. There are people who
actually select for all their friends and relatives things that they
themselves would like. If they consider themselves to be dainty--as
all women do--they give dainty presents, disregarding the fact that
the recipient may suffer acute physical pain at the mere thought of
daintiness.
They wish their beneficiaries to say on Christmas morning, “How
characteristic of Mrs. Slipslop to give me this exquisite Dresden china
chewing-gum holder,” instead of “How generous and discerning of Mrs.
Slipslop to give me this pair of rubber boots or this jar of tobacco or
this hypodermic syringe!” But what every child and every grown person
wants to receive is a gift suited to his tastes and habits; it is a
matter of indifference whether or not it expresses the personality of
the giver. Perhaps it will in his eyes supply the giver with a new and
charming personality.
You have hitherto regarded Mr. Blinker, the notorious efficiency
engineer, with disfavour. You have regarded him as a prosaic theorist,
a curdled mass of statistics. On Christmas morning you find that he has
presented you, not with an illuminated copy of “Rules for Eliminating
Leisure,” or a set of household ledgers or an alarm clock, but with
a cocktail set or a pool table or an angora kitten or some other
inefficient object.
At once your opinion of Mr. Blinker changes for the better. He assumes
a new and radiant personality. Your Sunday school teacher has always
exhibited to you virtues which you respect but do not enjoy; she has
seemed to you lacking in magnetism. If she gives you for Christmas
a Bible or a tale of juvenile virtue, you will write her a graceful
letter of thanks (at your mother’s dictation), but your affection for
the estimable lady will not be materially increased. But if your Sunday
school teacher gives you a bowie knife or a revolver or a set of the
Deadwood Dick novels! then how suddenly will the nobility of your
Sunday school teacher’s nature be revealed to you!
To elevator men, janitors, domestic servants, newspaper deliverers,
and other necessary evils we always give something appropriate--money.
And money does not express the personalities of most of us. We--that
is, the general public, the common people, the populace, the average
man, the great washed and the rest of us--do our duty in this matter,
following religiously the admirable tradition of the Christmas box. But
our retainers--if they will permit us thus picturesquely to address
them--do not. They serve us during the year, and are duly paid for it,
but they do nothing picturesque and extraordinary at Christmas time to
justify our gifts to them.
As a matter of fact, they are not upholding their part of the
tradition. It is not enough for them to bow, and say, “Thank you,”
while they feverishly count the money. They should revel romantically,
as did their predecessors who established the custom by which they
profit. The elevator boys should sing West Indian carols under our
windows--especially if our apartment is in the twentieth story. The
janitor and his family should enact in the basement a Christmas miracle
play.
It is pleasant to think of the janitor attired as a shepherd or as
a Wise Man, with his children as angels or as sheep, to picture the
Yule log on the janitorial hearth, and to hear in fancy, rising up the
dumbwaiter shaft, the strains of “The Carnal and the Crane,” or of the
excellent carol which begins:
The shepherd upon a hill he sat;
He had on him his tabard and his hat,
His tarbox, his pipe and his flagat;
His name was called Joly Joly Wat,
For he was a gud herdes boy.
Ut hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy!
In some places the newspaper deliverers and the telegraph boys
feebly support this tradition by writing, or causing to be written,
a “carrier’s address” and leaving printed copies of it with their
customers. It would be better, of course, if they were to sing or
to recite these verses, but even the printed address is better than
nothing. It is a pity to see even this slight concession to tradition
disappearing. In bygone days some of the most distinguished of our
poets were glad to write these addresses--the late Richard Watson
Gilder wrote one for the newspaper carriers of Newark.
And then there are the numerous public servants who nowadays receive
from the public no special Christmas benefaction--How gracefully they
might obtain it by infusing into their occupations a little Yuletide
pageantry! As it is, the subway guards celebrate the golden springtime
by donning white raiment. Let them on Christmas day be wreathed with
mingled holly and mistletoe, and let them chant, in lusty chorus:
God rest you, merry gentlemen!
Let nothing you dismay.
Please slip us some coin, you’ve got money to boin,
And this is Christmas day.
Few subterranean voyagers could resist this appeal.
And the street cleaners, how comes it that they are unrewarded of the
public? Their predecessors, the crossing sweepers of London fifty
years ago, exacted tribute from pedestrians not only at Christmas
time, but on every day of the year. Let our street cleaners assume
holiday garb and manner, let them expect Christmas gifts, but give in
turn a Christmas spectacle. Methods of doing this will readily suggest
themselves--an appropriate thing would be for them to procure mediæval
attire at any theatrical costumer’s, and build great bonfires at such
points of vantage as Columbus Circle, Times Square, Madison Square,
and Union Square. Over these bonfires boars’ heads should be roasted
and great bowls of steaming punch should hang. From passersby who
partook of their hospitality the street cleaners, through one of their
number dressed as an almoner, should request a golden remembrance.
These things may yet come to pass. They are not so archaic as seemed in
nineteen-thirteen a worldwide war. And the municipal Christmas trees
are a good beginning.
But to return to our muttons, or, rather, to our geese and plum
puddings, the most important thing for us to remember in the selection
of Christmas presents is their suitability to the person for whom they
are intended. We may like books, but let us not therefore feel obliged
to sustain our literary reputation by giving books to our neighbour
who wants a box of cigars or a jumping-jack. We have the precedent,
furnished by Saint Nicholas, and we have a higher precedent still.
For the first great Christmas gift to humanity was what humanity most
needed, and always needs--a child.
A BOUQUET FOR JENNY
So far as I know, in no other library but mine is to be found a book
illustrated by Jenny Hand. Therefore, more than much vellum and crushed
levant, more than first editions and association copies bearing famous
signatures, do I prize a certain fat volume, a foxed and dog-eared and
battered volume, which was published by Grigg and Elliot (God rest
them!) in Philadelphia at number nine North Fourth Street in 1847. This
is a book of poetry, but it is no slender little pamphlet of a thing,
the shelter of one bardling’s lyrical ejaculations. Five full-grown
poets, two of them men of noble girth, comfortably share this stately
tenement. The book’s solid and imposing name is “The Poetical Works of
Rogers, Campbell, J. Montgomery, Lamb and Kirk White.”
A detailed consideration of this volume might, to the profit of the
reading public, fill all of one issue of any book-review supplement or
literary, so to speak, section printed in America. But for the moment
I would write, not of the excellencies of the volume in general, but
of the distinguishing feature of my copy--its unique virtue, which
gives me the right to pity all other bibliophiles now rejoicing in this
illustrious Grigg and Elliot imprint. I refer to the illustrations by
Jenny Hand.
Messrs. Grigg and Elliot illustrated, to the best of their ability,
every copy of this work. They illustrated it with what they doubtless
termed “elegant steel engravings.” These steel engravings are indeed
“elegant,” also they are “appropriate,” also they are “chaste.” Take
down from its shelf your copy of “The Poetical Works of, etc.,” and you
will find, facing page ninety-four, a representation of “Morning among
the Alps,” painted, the legend tells you, by T. Doughty, and engraved
by George W. Hatch. The sun is rising, much as Mr. Belasco might
direct, and upon a pleasant little pond in the foreground are three of
those famous Alpine early birds known as swan. This picture is designed
to accompany Samuel Rogers’ “The Alps at Daybreak,” lines which I may
recall to your memory by saying that they begin, “The sunbeams streak
the azure skies.” The picture was not intended by the artists to be
Alpine in character, but it is a nice picture, very harmonious with the
text.
Furthermore, the generous Messrs. Grigg and Elliot, being greatly moved
by those lines of the ingenious Kirke White which begin: “Behold the
shepherd boy, who homeward tends, Finish’d his daily labour.--O’er his
path, Deep overhung with herbage, does he stroll With pace irregular;
by fits he runs, Then sudden stops with vacant countenance, And picks
the pungent herb”--being greatly moved, I say, by these lines, they
determined to give them a supplementary embellishment. Therefore they
caused one O. Pelton to engrave on steel a picture first “Drawn by
Cristall” (as who should say “Painted by Raphael”). This shows us
a plump youth, with the vacant countenance celebrated by the poet,
standing upon the side of Vesuvius, carrying over his shoulder a large
spade, and in his left hand a basket of potatoes. In their sensational
journalistic way, Messrs. Grigg and Elliot affixed to this picture the
caption, “The Shepherd Boy,” and forthwith the poem was illustrated.
But while you will take pleasure, if you are a worthy possessor of this
volume, in these altogether admirable engravings, you will look through
your copy in vain for expressions of the genius of Jenny Hand. The
Jenny Hand illustrations are two in number, and they are to be found
only in my copy.
One of the advantages of illustrating a book with steel engravings
is that it necessitates the inclusion of blank pages. When a steel
engraving occupies one side of a page, there may be nothing whatever
printed on the reverse.
There may be nothing printed, I said, on the reverse. But on the
reverse anything in the world may be drawn or written. Therein we see
the origin of the entertaining practice of extra-illustration. To the
eager pencil of Jenny Hand, these virginal white pages, oases among
pages of dry verse, offered irresistible opportunities. And my library
is therefore the richer.
This book never belonged to Jenny Hand, except so far as anything
belongs to one who makes it more beautiful and interesting and useful.
The book belonged to Jenny’s sister, Esther. On the fly-leaf is written
“Mifs E. C. Hand, with regards of C. F. Q.” Obviously E. C. stands for
Esther Conway. Obviously, also, Esther did not herself draw pictures
on the beautiful volume of poesy (with gold scroll work all over the
cover) which the amorous and tasteful Mr. C. F. Q. presented to her.
This delightful work was done by Esther’s younger sister, who in 1847
was aged perhaps thirteen, and should have been and probably was named
Jenny. C. F. Q. stands for Charles Francis Quigley. This is not a
random guess; it is a wholly logical deduction from the portrait of
the gentleman drawn by Jenny, who knew him well.
It was one summer afternoon in 1847 that Jenny first began to improve
“The Poetical Works of Rogers, Campbell, J. Montgomery, Lamb and
Kirke White.” At three o’clock Jenny had been out playing--keeping
the porch and the front gate well in sight, for she knew that not for
nothing had Esther put on her pearl necklace and her blue sash and
spent three-quarters of an hour over her hair. Jenny’s suspicions were
justified and her vigilance rewarded. At four o’clock the front gate
clicked and the gravel walk resounded under a manly tread. Charlie
Quigley, in a high stock, a flowered waistcoat, a long black coat,
tight blue trousers and a tall silk hat, came to call on Esther. And he
brought a gift. Was it a box of candy? If so Jenny would, as a dutiful
sister, help to entertain the company. She would wait--Esther was
unwrapping the present. No, it was not a box of candy--it was a book.
And it was not even a novel, it was a book of poetry, of all things in
the world! How could that Charlie Quigley be so silly?
Well, Jenny lost interest in Charlie and his gift for a while. She
rolled her hoop and played with the puppy while Esther and Charlie
sat on the porch and looked at the foolish book. When Jenny came up
on the porch, toward sunset, they had gone into the parlour. They had
left the book open face downward on a bench, open to Thomas Campbell’s
“Song,” beginning “Oh, how hard it is to find The one just suited to
our mind”--certain lines of which Charlie had roguishly underscored.
Jenny turned the pages of the book, but found therein little
entertainment. At length, however, she came upon “Morning in the Alps,”
with its blank and inviting reverse. Among the jackstones in her pocket
was the stub of a pencil, and soon that pencil was at its predestined
task of depicting the event of the afternoon--for my edification some
threescore years later.
Jenny drew a side view of the broad stone steps, with a little of the
railings and Grecian pillars. She drew the locust tree, and since she
knew that there was a robin’s nest in it, she outlined two little birds
against the skyey background. She drew Esther, grand in her hoopskirts,
necklace, curls and blue sash--no, it wasn’t blue, it was green plaid,
and the fabric was satin, for, as I live, there is a faded corner of
it in this very book, sentimentally cut off and placed there by Esther
herself! Why was Esther so particular about saving a fragment of that
sash? Was this really a momentous afternoon? Was this the sash that
Charlie’s black broadcloth sleeve surrounded when Esther consented to
become Mrs. Quigley? And were they married, and did Charlie’s friends
all make flat jokes about his claiming the hand of Hand?
And were all these things going on while the artistic Jenny was busy
on the porch? Possibly. Probably. But with such conjectures the author
of this serious essay in art criticism has no concern. To return to
the account of the picture--Jenny drew next the renowned Charles
Francis Quigley. But now her pencil was dipped in a mild solution of
venom--imparted to it, I fear, when she thoughtfully placed its point
between her small lips. For those same lips had desired chocolates--and
the chocolates had turned out to be nothing but poesy. Therefore she
sacrificed realism to satire, and made Charlie (really a very nice
fellow, whom she came to like very much in later years) something
of a fop. She made the cut of his coat too extreme, his hair too
curly, his mustache too obviously waxed. She deliberately gave his
eye a sentimental expression; she smiled derisively as she padded his
pictured sleeve.
And then she gave her drawing its crowning charm--she put in the
“selbst-portrait.” She drew the little cedar tree that flanked the
porch, and she drew herself kneeling beside it--seeing, but not seen
by, the rapt Esther and Charlie. Far from being ashamed of this act of
sisterly espionage, she gloried in it, and brought all her art to the
task of immortalising it.
So in my book the locust tree is forever in leaf and two little birds
poise always against the summer sky. And always Charlie, hat in hand,
presents to the radiant Esther “The Poetical Works of Rogers, Campbell,
J. Montgomery, Lamb and Kirke White.” And always the little artist,
with long curls hanging over her white frock, laughs at the lovers from
behind her cedar tree.
The light was fading now, but Jenny had found another blank page--that
preceding the section devoted to Kirke White’s verses. Supper wouldn’t
be ready for fifteen minutes, so she started on a picture more
difficult than the simple incident just drawn. She chose for her scene
Riley’s Riding Academy, where she and Esther spent every Wednesday
morning. There was Esther, seated with the sedateness appropriate to
her eighteen years, upon the tamest of nags. And there was Jenny, in
her fetching habit, perilously poised upon her wildly careering steed.
With enthusiastic pencil did Jenny depict her own brave unconcern, and
Esther’s timorousness. How firmly Esther clutches the reins of her
mild beast, how startled is her face as she looks upon her daring and
nonchalant younger sister!
Did the Quigleys and the Hands, I wonder, shed tears over Mr. Southey’s
“Account of the Life of Henry Kirke White”? Did they know Francis
Boott, of Boston, the young American gentleman who placed, Mr. Southey
tells us, a tablet to Henry’s memory in All Saints Church, Cambridge?
Were they moved by James Montgomery’s “Prison Amusements; Written
during nine months confinement in the Castle of York, in the years of
1795 and 1796”? Mr. Montgomery tells us in the prefatory advertisement,
“they were the transcripts of melancholy feelings--the warm effusions
of a bleeding heart.” Did they read “Gertrude of Wyoming,” “Theodric; a
Domestic Tale,” and the “Pleasures of Hope”?
Did they read the memoirs prefaced to the various selections? If so, I
hope they found them as delightful as I do. There is the inexhaustibly
fascinating “Memoirs of Charles Lamb,” in which the anonymous critic
improves the occasion by reproving sternly the Lake Poets, or the
“Lakers,” as he calls them. “The thousand Songs,” he tells us, “of our
writers in verse of past time dwell on all tongues, with the melodies
of Moore. But who learns or repeats the cumbrous verses of Wordsworth,
which require an initiation from their writer to comprehend?” Later
this gentleman has occasion to refer to “Another School of Poetry,”
which “arose in opposition to that of the Lakers.” “Their talents,” he
writes, “are before the world. To this new school belonged the late
poet Shelley, whose lofty powers are unquestionable; Keats, also now
deceased; and Leigh Hunt.” Keats, also now deceased! What porridge fed
the writer of this memoir?
Well, my concern is not with the poor hack who edited this book and
wrote the memoirs. I hope Messrs. Grigg and Elliot paid him well.
And as for Charlie and Esther and Jenny and the robins in the locust
tree--well, Charlie Quigley’s dust and his good sword’s rust, and his
soul is with the saints, I trust. I hope Esther married him. I’m glad
he brought her “The Poetical Works of Rogers, Campbell, J. Montgomery,
Lamb and Kirke White,” even if Jenny was disappointed. For if she’d
made her drawings on the cover of a candy box they would not now be in
my library.
THE INEFFICIENT LIBRARY
There are young gentlemen whose delight it is to tell their married and
established and venerable friends how to form libraries. Generally,
these young gentlemen wear spectacles rimmed with tortoise shell, and
the condensed milk of their alma mater is yet wet upon their lips.
They peer at your laden shelves and say: “It is better to have one
good book than a dozen bad ones. Of any standard work you should have
the definitive edition--not necessarily a rare imprint or something
in fine binding, but the most modern and comprehensive edition. It is
better to have one good anthology than a shelfful of third-rate poets.
Go through your shelves and throw away all the rubbish; buy sets of the
classics, a volume at a time, and in this way you will gradually build
up a useful and really representative library, something appropriate
and coherent.”
When a young gentleman talks to you in this wise, the only thing to
do is to lead him gently away from the bookshelves and make him sit
in a comfortable corner and talk to you about hockey or socialism or
some other of his boyish sports. He knows absolutely nothing about
libraries. Probably he lives in the shadow of Washington Arch, and his
own library--on the bureau--consists of the “Life of General Ulysses S.
Grant,” inscribed “To dearest Teddy, from Aunt Mag., Xmas, 1916,” and a
copy of the New Republic for last August, containing a letter in which
he took exception to an editorial on the relation between pragmatism
and Freud’s second theory of the semi-subconscious. To-morrow he will
sell General Grant to a second-hand book dealer for fifteen cents, and
thereby diminish his library by one half. What right has he to tell you
what books you shall keep and what you shall destroy?
Now, it would not be so bad if this raving about a library was
confined to young persons like him I have mentioned. But the trouble
is, there are people of means and reputation for intelligence who are
actually putting into practice the evil theories he advances, who are
deliberately “building up libraries,” instead of surrounding themselves
with books they like. Against this pernicious heresy it is the duty of
every honest bibliophile to protest.