an experience which you are enjoying, I trust; I know I enjoy it.
What an advantage we have over our children! While they, to their
embarrassment, grow up--voices changing, legs and arms becoming
too obvious, self-consciousness and shallow romanticism seizing
them--we gracefully, comfortably, grow down. Perhaps it is as a
protective measure that I, a private soldier, grow vain--as snails
develop shells--but I confess it is with consummate pleasure that
I contemplate my senility and, may I say, mediævality. I picture
myself at forty, rotund but eminently presentable, moustache and
hair delicately grayed, tailored admirably, with the leisurely power
no young man may have. I picture myself at sixty, with a long white
moustache, a pale gray tweed suit, a very large Panama hat. I can see
my gnarled but beautifully groomed hands as they tremblingly pour out
the glass of dry sherry which belongs to every old man’s breakfast. I
cannot think of myself at seventy or eighty--I grow hysterical with
applause--I am lost in a delirium of massive ebony canes, golden
snuff-boxes, and daily silk hats.
And as for you! My God! what a vision! That dear autumnal hair
silvering--the mouth of my delight exquisitely etched with honourable
lines--each one the record of a year’s love--those eyes richer in
their mystery--but I cannot write of this--for the thought might give
me power to sweep away the years and make me find you, when I come
back from the Wars, becapped and tremulous and leaning on two sticks!
NO! I don’t want you to be old now--I want you to be the innocent
sophisticated young woman you are in the little picture I carry
(traditionally!) over my heart. But I want to watch you grow old--if I
can watch you and at the same time hold you in my arms.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
April 1, 1918.
Dear Aline:
This letter is written to you from a real town--written, in fact, above
ground. You may be surprised to know that recent letters to you were
not written in these conditions. They were written in a dug-out, but
I was not permitted to tell you so at the time. In a dug-out, also,
were written the verses I sent you some two weeks ago--you may remember
their damp-clayey flavour. I slept and worked (the latter sometimes for
twenty hours at a time) in this dug-out for a month, except for one
week when I was out on special work with the Regimental Intelligence
Section. You don’t begrudge me that week, do you? I cannot now describe
it, but it was a week of wonder--of sights and sounds essential, I
think, to my experience. For there are obligations of experience--or
experiences of obligation--to be distinguished from what I might call
experiences of supererogation or experiences of perfection--but what
rubbish this is! Let us rather consider my present great luxury,
and the marvels of which it is composed. In the first place, one
room (not a cot in a crowded barrack, not a coffin-like berth in a
subterranean chamber) but a real room, with windows and a large bed and
a table and chairs and a practical wash stand. The bed I share with
one L---- D----, an amiable gamin, about to be made a Corporal. I am
a Sergeant--with stripes some five days old. (It is the height of my
ambition, for to be commissioned I’d be sent to school for three months
and then, whether or not I succeeded, be assigned to another Regiment.
And I’d rather be a Sergeant in the 69th than lieutenant in any other
outfit.)
To continue--I also eat from a table excellent meals, with a napkin
on my knees. I have soldiered pretty hard for some months now, taking
everything as it came, and I think I’ve honestly earned my stripes.
Now I’m going to have an easier life--not working less hard, but not
seeking hardships. So I am paying seven francs a day for meals, and
six francs a week for my share in a bed-room. And it’s delightfully
refreshing. Also, I yesterday had a hot shower-bath--very much a
novelty!
This morning I received two letters from you, to my great joy. The
pictures of the children are excellent. I am glad to see Deborah’s
hair so long and lovely. Do, by all means, send me pictures of yourself
and Deborah in a leather case, as you promise. I can imagine no
possible gift I’d rather receive. Mail is coming here every day now, so
I look forward to frequent messages from you.
What a cheerless place the States must be these days! Don’t send me
American papers (except the _Times Book Review_) for they depress me,
showing me what a dismal land you live in. This meatless, wheatless
day business is very wearying. It can do no earthly good--it is merely
giving comfort to the enemy, who undoubtedly know all about it. I
wish--aside from the obvious greatest reasons--that you were here in
France--you’d like everything, but especially the gentle, kind, jovial,
deeply pious people. Time enough--to resume--for wheatless days when
the enemy takes your wheat. Until then, carpe diem!--that is, eat
buckwheat cakes with plenty of syrup.
I am disgusted with all I read in the American Magazines about the
Americans in France. It is all so hysterical and all so untrue. It
isn’t jealousy that makes me say this--I have no desire to compete with
newspaper-correspondents--but it annoys me to see the army to which
I belong and the country on and for whose soil we are fighting so
stupidly misrepresented.
I hope you received “Rouge Bouquet”--if you did receive it I know you
liked it. General ---- (I forgot, I mustn’t name generals lower in rank
than Major-Generals) had twelve copies of it made. I sent it to you
two weeks ago--you should be receiving it now. The newspapers by now
have re-revealed its meaning to you, if any explanation was needed. It
was read at an evening entertainment at one of our camps at the front.
Father Duffy read it, and taps was played on the cornet before and
after. I couldn’t get down to hear it--I was further front, at work in
the dug-out that night.
I think most of my war book will be in verse. I prefer to write verse,
and I can say in verse things not permitted to me in prose. You
remember--no, probably you don’t--Coventry Patmore and his confessor.
The confessor objected to the passionate explicitness of some of
Coventry’s devotional poems--they dealt with things esoteric, he said,
and should be set forth in Latin, not in the profane tongue. And
Coventry replied that for most people poetry was an incomprehensible
language, more hidden than Latin--or more hiding.
And speaking of Coventry Patmore, the best way to fry potatoes is to
have deep oil or butter violently boiling in a great pot, to slip the
slices of potatoes into it and stir them persistently, never letting
them touch the pot’s bottom, to lift them out (when they are golden
brown) by means of a small sieve, and to place them on paper so that
the grease may be absorbed.
The best news I’ve had since I reached France is about Kenton’s medal.
I’m going to write to-day and tell him so.
I love you,
JOYCE.
* * * * *
April 19, 1918.
Dear Aline:
My chief occupation at the present time is awaiting a letter from you.
It is several hours since I wrote the first paragraph of this letter.
I have been to supper (I am hitting the mess-line these days, for my
money gave out and I didn’t want to borrow any more) and ridden in a
motor-cycle-side car all over the countryside--through a dozen little
villages, every one full of French and American soldiers, with a
sprinkling of coolie labourers, in quest of a certain village which
holds two companies of a certain outfit with which I had to have a
conference. The village was hard to find (their names all sound alike,
and old French ladies, when interrogated as to direction, always point
in a direction in which there is no road and say something that sounds
like “Honk! honk! Ba! ba!”) and also the night was cold. I have enjoyed
many rides more. Returning to the office (I sleep in the same building)
half frozen and weary, I found that not two truck-loads, but two sacks
of letters had been delivered, and that I had received three letters.
I leaped at the letters--one was an invitation to a Ladies’ Day at the
Columbia University Club, another was from my mother, another from
Fr. Garesché. None from You! You accused me in one of your letters
of writing to you when I was depressed--well, I’m depressed now, all
right! I’ll wait until to-morrow morning to finish this letter, I
guess, or else I’ll give you real cause for complaint. Not that I blame
you, or think you haven’t written often--it’s the mail system’s fault.
Good night!
I hope Kenton has learned to serve Mass by this time. I wrote to him a
long time ago and told him to see Fr. Morris about it, but I fear that
he would be too shy to do this unless some pressure were brought to
bear. If you would ask Fr. Morris to teach him how to serve Mass, and
persuade him to ask Kenton to come to see him about it, so that the
initiative would seem to come from Fr. Morris, I think things would
work out well. I pray for Kenton to have the grace of a vocation to
the priesthood--I hope he may have a Jesuit vocation--and I think it
is good to do all we can toward the fulfillment of this desire--this
is, I think, a supplementary way to “sway the designs of God.” I think
of the children often and can visualise them well in spite of my long
absence from them, that is, all except young Christopher. I am aware of
Kenton’s gravity and of his thoughtful and radiant smile, of Deborah’s
vivacity and exquisite colouring (she is like one of her mother’s
gay thoughts), of Michael’s magnetic rotundity, of his blue eyes, of
his charming habit of toppling over like a toy tumbler of lead and
celluloid. And of Rose I am nearly always conscious, delightfully, when
I am awake and often when I am asleep, and especially when I am in the
church--which is twice every day, to receive Holy Communion immediately
after Reveille and to pray for a few minutes in the evening. We have a
magnificent old church in this town, as near to where I am now as the
church is to our house in Larchmont. And right by the tower-door is a
big statue of St. Nicholas of Bari, in his episcopal robes, and hopping
around his feet are two little bits of babies he saved and brought back
to life after they’d been cut up and pickled. Very nice! You’d like
it! Pray to St. Nicholas for me, and to St. Stephen, St. Brigid, St.
Michael, St. Christopher, St. Joseph, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Teresa,
and all our other good friends in Heaven, and love me.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
April 21, 1918.
Dear Aline:
I am glad of the auspicious beginning of Eleanor’s romance. I would
so regard it, for I cannot understand the interpretation which makes
marriage the termination instead of the beginning of a splendid
adventure. If there should ever be the perfect novel of love, it
would begin rather than end “And they were married.” Would the phrase
continue: “And lived happily ever after”? I doubt it--but that depends
upon the definition of happiness. I know that you dislike the symbolism
which is the basis of Coventry Patmore’s greatest poems, but I think
you will admit that there is this truth in his idea--the relationship
of man and wife is like that of God and the soul in that it must be
purified and strengthened by suffering. Also--to put it on a lower
plane--Eleanor is enough of a poet to take some enjoyment out of being
the wife of a soldier gone to the wars--or Irish enough, which is the
same thing.
As to the matter of my own blood (you mentioned this in a previous
letter) I did indeed tell a good friend of mine who edits the
book-review page of a Chicago paper that I was “half Irish.” But I have
never been a mathematician. The point I wished to make was that a large
percentage--which I have a perfect right to call half--of my ancestry
was Irish. For proof of this, you have only to refer to the volumes
containing the histories of my mother’s and my father’s families. Of
course I am American, but one cannot be pure American in blood unless
one is an Indian. And I have the good fortune to be able to claim,
largely because of the wise matrimonial selections of my progenitors
on both sides, Irish blood. And don’t let anyone publish a statement
contradictory to this.
Speaking of publishers, please be very careful that there is nothing
in the book you and Margaret wrote to offend, in the slightest
degree. I would go so far as to say that if the spirit of the book
is not obviously and definitely Catholic--readily so recognised by
Catholic readers--it would grieve me to see it published with your
name attached--grieve me deeply. I don’t want anyone to say of you,
“There is nothing about that novel to show she is a Catholic.” I
don’t think Catholic writers should spend their time writing tracts
and Sunday-school books, but I think that the Faith should illuminate
everything they write, grave or gay. The Faith is radiantly apparent in
your last poems. It is in Tom Daly’s clowning as it is in his loftier
moods. Of course anyone would rather write like Francis Thompson than
like Swinburne. But I can honestly say that I’d rather write like John
Ayscough than like William Makepiece Thackeray--infinitely greater
artist though Thackeray be. You see, the Catholic Faith is such a thing
that I’d rather write moderately well about it than magnificently
well about anything else. It is more important, more beautiful, more
necessary than anything else in life. You and I have seen miracles--let
us never cease to celebrate them. You know that this is not the first
fever of a convert’s enthusiasm--it is the permanent conviction of a
man who prayed daily for months for the Faith before that grace was
given him. The Faith has done wonderful things for you, but I think
since I have been in France it has done more for me. It has carried
me through experiences I could not otherwise have endured. I do not
mean that it has kept me from fear--for I have no fear of death or
wounding whatever. I mean that it has helped me to endure great and
continued hardships. These hardships are now past--they belong to
last December--but I cannot forget what made me live through them and
bear myself like a man. Therefore--for this and a multitude of other
reasons, among which let me put that it is my most earnest request--be
zealous in using your exquisite talent in His service of Whom, I am
glad to have said, Apollo was a shadow. If what you write does not
clearly praise the Lord and his Saints and Angels, let it praise such
types of Heaven as we know in our life--God knows they are numerous
enough.
Does this sound like the writing of the least desirable of your
aunts? Forgive me if it does, and heed my request even if it seem
unreasonable--the request, I mean, not to sign your name to the book if
it is not Catholic in spirit. I can honestly offer “Trees” and “Main
Street” to Our Lady, and ask her to present them, as the faithful work
of her poor unskilled craftsman, to her Son. I hope to be able to do
it with everything I write hereafter--and to be able to do this is to
be a good poet.
Speaking of Poetry, I have read with exquisite relish, several
times, the copy of the Bulletin you sent me. And always I stop
reading--prevented from continuing by irresistible mirth. God help us!
Let all the world, especially all of it that deals in thought, beat its
breast and repeat after me “God help us.” Here are young men battling
in a strange land to win back for the people of that land their
decent homes. Here are French peasants (old men, children and women)
kneeling at mass in a church with a yawning shell hole through the
tower. Among them are American soldiers. And other American soldiers
(God rest their brave young souls) rest in new graves by a fair road I
know. We hear the crash of shells, the tattoo of machine guns, we see
unearthly lights staining the black sky. And--Oh, God help us! Send me
more bulletins! I want to read more about Mr. ---- whose “mystic” (of
course!) poems, seem to ... “to challenge comparison with the works
of Tagore.” I want to read more about ... chaunting to crowds of old
ladies who stink of perfume and cold cream and gasoline, while a young
female shakes her shanks and “gives a visual embodiment of the poet’s
idea.” I want to read about A ... “What a privilege to be at once a
poet and a fairy godmother!” And I want to read about W ... going West
and--just being himself! God forgive me for being a Pharisee, and
keep me from judging others! But I do love to read about these things
and then go across the street and drink a large drink with Joe Brady,
meanwhile singing a coarse ballad entitled “The Old Gray Mare.”
We’re going to be paid to-morrow, I’m glad to say, so I’ll be able to
have a few meals indoors. This roadside picnic stuff is all right in
fair weather, but French weather is not always what it should be. I
hope your allotment is arriving, but I doubt it. I think we’ll collect
it in our old age. I read recently that a Civil War Veteran had just
succeeded in collecting some pay due him in 1862--perhaps we’ll be as
lucky. We’ll buy a carton of cigarettes for Christopher’s youngest son
with the first payment.
Your poem “Experience” has lodgment in my brain and heart and soul.
“She walks the way primroses go.” Simple--isn’t it? that line--to make
it nothing much was required--genius merely. Thank God there’s you in a
world of ----s and ----s. Do you mind being considered the “one just
man”? Figuratively I kiss your hand--it was absurd of me to preach to
you who are my mistress in the art of devotion as in the art of poetry.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
April 27th, 1918.
Dear Aline:
Some mail came to-day and in it was a package containing ten boxes
of tobacco, Merci bien! (when I get back I’ll talk just like ----
or ----.) I received a box of admirable cigars yesterday (they were
originally awarded to Father Daly in payment for a contribution to
_America_, and he kindly directed that they be sent to me).
We are in a new town now (new to us, that is) a little bit of a
place. We have been recently in a rather large town, where I lived
very comfortably. I am comfortable here (especially since yesterday
afternoon, when I had a hot shower bath and had my clothes sterilized)
but not luxurious. But I’m looking forward to a much easier and vastly
more interesting time for the rest of my stay in France. I have asked
to be relieved from my office job, and my request has been granted.
I hope on Monday (this is Saturday night) to become a member of the
Regimental Intelligence Section, and the Adjutant tells me I am to be
transferred as a Sergeant, although I was willing to give up my stripes
for the sake of getting into this work. So henceforth I’ll be peering
at the Germans through field glasses from some observatory instead of
toiling in a dug-out or crowded office. You wouldn’t want me to come
back round-shouldered and near-sighted, would you? Well, that would
be the result of keeping on this statistical job much longer. The
intelligence work is absolutely fascinating--you’ll be glad I took it
up.
You would have liked the gutter-babies in our last town. About a dozen
of them used to come out at meal times and besiege our mess-line.
They brought their dad’s canteens to be filled with coffee, and they
accepted, politely, bread and karo. They were very nice, and fat, as
all French babies are. I don’t know whether the French are so devoted
to my dear patron St. Nicholas of Bari, because they love children,
as he does, or are devoted to children because they love him. Anyway
they have the nicest children there are outside of Larchmont Manor and
Heaven (these words mean nearly the same thing) and they treat them
most enthusiastically. Large crowds of men and women stand for half
an hour in a busy city street watching a young baby learn to walk,
the baby being decorated, for the occasion, with his big sister’s
broad-brimmed hat. And also nearly every church has a statue or window
representation of St. Nicholas of Bari with the three babies he
restored to life. It helps me to feel at home. I hope you and Kenton
pray to him often, he is a very generous saint and has treated me
beautifully.
I had a quaint experience to-night. There is no priest now in this
town, but there is a fine old church, with God in it. Since there is
no priest, I can’t get my daily communion, but I go in occasionally to
say my prayers. Well, to-night there was a very old lady in the church.
She was so crippled with age and rheumatism that she could not kneel,
so she was huddled up on a bench near the rail. And she had a white cap
on, and she carried a tall staff with a crutch top such as witches use.
She was very pious, and prayed audibly, making pious ejaculations, like
an old Irish lady. For some time she didn’t know anyone else was in the
church. But when she found I was there, she waited until I had said
my beads and then she came over to me (rising with great difficulty
and putting on the heavy wooden shoes that lay beside her). Then she
extended to me her beads. The link between two of them was undone, and
she asked me to mend it. I tried to do so, but my clumsy fingers had
little success. So I gave her my rosary in exchange for hers--which I
can easily mend with a pair of pincers--and she was very grateful. But
I feel that I got the best of the bargain, for there may be a special
sort of a blessing attached to beads worn by the gnarled fingers of one
so near God. I could make a rhyme out of this experience, but it would
seem a profanation. You see some of the possible interpretations of it,
don’t you?
The news about D---- is interesting--well, he is trying to serve his
conscience, and I am trying to serve mine, and that’s all a gentleman
can do. And since we’re both suffering, I believe we’ve both followed
the right course. There are many ways to Heaven, but only one Lamp--as
I once said in some verses.
But as to suffering--don’t be pitying me! It’s you that are doing
the suffering, you with no exhilaration of star-shells and tattoo of
machine-guns, you without the adventure. I feel very selfish, often.
I love you and you are never away from me.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
April 29, 1918.
Dear Aline:
For Heaven’s sake, don’t tell me about how bad tea rooms are! I admit
that I used to scorn them. Now I could live in one, enthusiastically. I
wouldn’t mind at all the closeness, the bad service, the soiled table
linen. Why, Max’s Busy Bee sounds better to me now than Sherry’s used
to sound.
“She walks the way Primroses go” reechoes in my soul. What a delightful
poet you are! Send me some more poems, at once, please.
It’s time I heard from you again. Some mail came to-day, but I got
nothing from you. You should write me long letters often. _By all
means_ take up Fr. Hayes’ lecture offer. You can make your lectures
chiefly readings. Get Dr. Pallen to help you make a circular, and
put on it testimonials from whomever he suggests. Get Bob Holliday’s
advice as to form of circular. You will find valuable suggestions as to
engagements in my correspondence files, wherever they are.
(Here I paused to eat ten cakes purchased at the Y. M. C. A. for a
franc.)
Young ---- is in a nearby town--an amiable child indeed he is. I
saw him twice, and he presented me with a bag of cakes and a box of
cigars. He reminds me very much of Kenton, but is in many respects his
inferior. I’d like to see Kenton and Fr. Daly and Deborah and Michael
and Christopher and Sister Emerentia and some Bass’ Ale and some dry
sherry and a roast of lamb with mint sauce and Blackwood’s Magazine
and the bar in the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago and a straw hat and the
circus. And I really wouldn’t mind seeing you.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
May 15, 1918.
Dear Aline:
Your friends are a bit impertinent, I think. I don’t claim to be a
learned French scholar (although I have talked French every day for six
months). But I do claim to know the name of the place where I lived
in constant danger of death for six weeks, where many of my friends
gave their lives for their country. It is Rouge Bo_u_quet, not Rouge
Bo_s_quet. I’ll be deeply grieved if it appears in print incorrectly.
Also, I wish the grace in “Holy Ireland” to stand as I wrote it. It is
just as Frank Driscoll said it on that unforgettable night--it is the
grace used in Jesuit houses. Please see to this, and don’t let all
the world revise my mss. I rather expected you’d like the poem better,
but perhaps the reason the fellows in the Regiment liked it so much is
because we all felt keenly the event it memorizes.
I’ll write to you more to-morrow. I love you.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
The above is rather stern and brusque, isn’t it? Well I wrote it in
rather stirring times--now only memories. I am resting now, in a
beautiful place--on a high hilltop covered with pine and fir trees. I
never saw any mountain-place in America I thought better to look at or
from. I sleep on a couch made soft with deftly laid young spruce boughs
and eat at a table set under good, kind trees. A great improvement on
living in a dug-out and even (to my mind) an improvement on a room
with a bed in a village. I am not on a furlough, I am working, but
my work is of a light and interesting kind and fills only six out of
twenty-four hours. So I have plenty of time for writing, and have
started a prose-sketch (based on an exciting and colourful experience
of the last month) which I will send you soon. _Everything_ I write, I
think, in prose or verse, should be submitted to Doran first.