But there are advertised in the American magazines many books about the
Intelligence Service--get one of them and you’ll find why I like my
job. The work Douglas is doing is not allied to mine. Only I suppose
he’ll have a commission. I won’t work for one, because I don’t want to
leave this outfit. I love you more than ever, and long for the pictures
you promise me. You will be amused by the postcards I enclose.
JOYCE.
Say, the stuff about your not appreciating “Rouge Bouquet” was written
before I got your delightful letter of April 18, admirable critic!
* * * * *
Dear Aline:
I have just received your letters of April 1st and April 5th.
“Moonlight” is noble, like its author. As to being worried about you
because it expresses pain, why, I’d be worried only if you did not
sometimes feel and express pain. Spiritual pain (sometimes physical
pain) is beautiful and wholesome and in our soul we love it, whatever
our lips say. Do you not, in turn, worry because of my foolish letter
to you from the hospital. At that time I was just an office hack--now
I am a soldier, in the most fascinating branch of the service there
is--you’d love it! It is sheer romance, night and day--especially
night! And I am now therefore saner than when I wrote to you from the
hospital. I’ve had only a week of this work--but I’m already a much
nicer person.
“For Sergeant Joyce is three, and Oh,
He knows so much he did not know!”
As to the picture I sent you, why, surely I have a moustache, and not
a “morning pout.” _Mechante._ A long moustache I have (illustration
of moustache) _comme ca_. Also, I have thick hair which stands up
(illustration) _comme ci_. I had my head shaved last November, you
know, and it had a good effect. My letter is thrilling, isn’t it,
with all these martial details? A veritable cross-section of battle,
a flower from No Man’s Land. Well, I am sending some battling
picture-postcards soon which you will find amusing, I think--portraits,
in two striking histrionic poses, of myself. You know now, from my
previous letters, that I am no longer (I thank God!) doing statistics,
so gently, but widely and most firmly, correct the statement that I
have a bullet-proof job. I had one, but succeeded, after two months’
intriguing, in getting rid of it. It wasn’t a shell-proof job--nothing
in a real regiment is. (Such jobs are in the Ordnance or Supply
Departments, back of the lines.) It wasn’t shell-proof, I say, and if
I should be squashed by a shell, wouldn’t you hate to have it said
that I was nobly holding my post in the office, or bravely manning my
typewriter? Now, I’m doing work I love--and work you may be proud of.
None of the drudgery of soldiering, but a double share of glory and
thrills. But it is not so glorious and thrilling as you.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
May 24, 1918.
Dear Aline:
I don’t know just what kind of a mental picture you have of my present
life--to be accurate it would need to be rather kaleidoscopic, for
my activities and the spheres of them vary frequently and greatly.
But this afternoon you (or perhaps not you, but readers of Empey and
Private Peat and the rest of that mob of war writers--thank God, let me
Pharisaicly say, that I am not one of them--would do so) would have
been amazed at the martial picture before you, had you seen me. Just
outside the edge of the forest of firs and spruce in which we fourteen
men live is a lovely meadow. There, among the knee-high buttercups, lay
in the May sunshine all afternoon three warriors--myself being one.
Whiles we smoked and gazed at the lovely valley miles below us--whiles
we took turns in reading aloud from--what do you suppose? The Oxford
Book of English Verse! We read Gray’s Elegy, the first chorus from
Atalanta in Calydon, “They told me, Heraclitus,” that witch poem of
William Bell Scott, “Love in the Valley,” “Lake Isle of Innisfree,”
“Keith of Ravelston,” and half a dozen other poems, all of which
brought you most poignantly and beautifully before me. No, they didn’t
bring you before me--you are always before me and with me and in my
heart and brain--but it’s dangerous to write this--it draws so tight
the cords that bind me to you that they cut painfully into my flesh.
Well, we are to be together sometime, inevitably, and soon in terms of
eternity. For we are absolutely one, incomplete apart, and in Heaven is
completeness. How unhappy must lovers be who have not the gracious gift
of faith!
There is to be an Homeric banquet at our house one day--the day when
I exhibit to my comrades the glory of my life--yourself. You will like
them all--Watson (a gifted artist from Richmond, who is now at work on
a fine drawing which must accompany Rouge Bouquet in _Scribner’s_),
Bob Lee, Titterton (my especial friend), Beck, Mott, Kerrigan,
Levinson--say a prayer for them all, they’re brave men and good, and
splendid company. They are all men of education, and breeding, and
humour, and we have fine times. Dangers shared together and hardships
mutually borne develops in us a sort of friendship I never knew in
civilian life, a friendship clean of jealousy and gossip and envy
and suspicion--a fine hearty roaring mirthful sort of thing, like an
open fire of whole pine-trees in a giant’s castle, or a truly timed
bombardment with eight-inch guns. I don’t know that this last figure
will strike you as being particularly happy, but it would if you’d had
the delight of going to war.
Right here I had to pause to discuss theology with Watson, Titterton,
Levinson and Jongberg. Jongberg is up here for a brief spell; he is
a Swedish-Irishman, and now he is posing for St. Michael for Watson,
using a bayonet for a sword. Levinson (in full uniform, including belt
and helmet) is being model for the soldiers leaving Rouge Bouquet for
Heaven. He is a quaint little French-Jewish-American, with whom we have
a lot of fun. They all trooped into the room where Titterton and I sit
writing to our respective sweethearts, to ask about the style of St.
Michael’s sword and that of his halo. These questions settled, Watson
became enamoured of the idea of angels saluting, and devised a whole
manual of arms for angels--as “Angels, attention! Wings raised, by
the numbers. 1 up! 2 down! Wings flap! Hey you down there! what’s the
matter with you? Don’t you know enough to keep your hands down when you
flap your wings? Awkward squad for you to-morrow!” Then they went back
to their work.
Well, I don’t know how long the Intelligence Section is to stay in
this lovely summer resort of a place, but it’s certainly fine while it
lasts. And I am very fortunate to have such a crowd as this to work
with. I never was with so congenial a company in civilian life. Fr.
O’Donnell came up to see us yesterday--he is stationed not far away.
Fr. Duffy has an assistant--Fr. Kennedy--a Jesuit, thank God! I have
not met him yet. He is a brother of the publishers of Barclay Street. I
have a new stripe--an inverted chevron of bright gold on the left cuff
for six months service. Let you be proud of that too, please, and let
my children be proud of it. That is all the news except that I love you.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
Dear Aline:
To-day I was made very happy by receiving two nice little ridiculous
letters from you--one of which considered itself to be long. As to Sr.
Mary Leo--if you happen to be writing to her (you will be, for I told
her to ask you for “Rouge Bouquet”) ask her by all means to tell you
how her grandmother taught her geography. It’s an absolutely delightful
story, and she’s a delightful old saint.
You say Tad will go “in a few months.” I’m glad I’m not Tad. There
are many reasons for this, of course, but I mean I am especially glad
I’m not to go in a few months. I’m glad I’m a Sergeant in the 69th, a
volunteer regiment, the bravest and best regiment in the army. I’m glad
I have a golden service chevron on my left arm--that means six months
service in France, and is better than two bars on my shoulder, which
would mean only three months stay at Plattsburg. If I get an honorable
wound that will unfit me for soldiering but not for civilian work, that
civilian work will not be hack-writing. It may be straight reporting,
or editing, or writing (_Evening World_ at $80 a week, for instance)
a weekly essay-column, or dramatic criticism (this last appeals to me
strongly). Also I’ll do less lecturing and more oratory--bombastic,
thundering, literary, Henry Woodfin Grady oratory! It is exciting, and
lecturing isn’t, especially.
Meanwhile I find myself approving your plan of getting literary work,
although doing it makes me feel like a coloured man approving his
wife’s plan of taking in washing. You relieve my mind greatly by
your willingness to keep your name off the book. I thought I would
acknowledge to you the pleasure I got from “A Wind Rose in the Night.”
It is a holy and dear poem.
Please see that Kenton learns to serve Mass, won’t you? Sorry to keep
teasing you about this, but you never write anything about it.
Your poem “To a Sick Child” is beautiful, and “cookies” is the making
of it. I love you.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
May 18, 1918.
Dear Aline:
I didn’t get your letter expressing enthusiastic approval of “Rouge
Bouquet” until I had received two others just mentioning it. I
certainly am glad the poem “got” you, as it got me. The Regiment--and
soldiers outside the Regiment as high as a Brigadier General--are
wonderfully enthusiastic. The Brigadier General had twenty-four
copies made to send his friends. Of course we are especially moved
by it because the event is so close to us. But to appreciate it you
should have heard taps played and at a soldier’s funeral. P. C. ought
to know the distinction between peacemakers and pacifists. I wonder
he didn’t include St Michael in his catalogue of pacifists. We are
peace-makers, we soldiers of the 69th, we are risking our lives
to bring back peace to the simple, generous, gay, pious people of
France, whom anyone (knowing them as I have come to know them in the
last six months) must pity and admire and love. They are an invaded
people--and invaded people _always are right_. The careful study of
certain ghostly villages (I cannot forget them) has taught me where I
would have stood in the 60’s and that is on the side of the invaded
Southern States. God keep me from ever being ordered to take part in
an invasion of a peaceful land! So long as I am helping drive out the
invader, I know I’m right--and all questions of international politics
are of no importance whatever. Here are nice old ladies, fat babies,
jovial humorous men, and little girls just after making their First
Communions. They’ve been driven out of their pretty sleepy little
villages. They want to get back and mend the shell holes in the roof
and go to school and take their place drinking red wine of an evening
according to their tastes and ages. Well, we men of the 69th are
helping to give these people back their homes--and perhaps to prevent
our homes from one day being taken from us by the same Power--of whom
nothing at all worse need be said than that it is an invader. And St.
Patrick and St. Bridgid and St. Columkill and all the other Saints are
with us--they are no more pacifists than they are Roycrofters! And God
keep us from Washington Square! No Man’s Land is a damn sight healthier
place--I have tried both, and I know what I’m talking about.
And as for you, you young flippertigibbet, you won’t be middle-aged,
you say? Well, we’ll see about that! I’ll probably come back with
one eye, one arm, one leg and a horrible temper, and turn your hair
white in a day. Stop calling any child of ours “Billy.” When you
referred to “Billy” in previous letters I thought you meant some
rather unfortunately named dog or cat. Now I am annoyed to find out
you meant Michael. The habit of so designating him probably started
humorously--please stop it at once.
I have not read “The Tree of Heaven,” to which you refer in a recent
letter. But I have read Carnival--and if when I get back to the States
I find that you really think such books are “fine,” as you say in
your letter, I’ll grab a baby (probably young Michael) and start for
whatever South American Republic or other bellicose land has need of
the services of a ranting, roaring, slashing, dashing young Sergeant,
fresh from the ranks of the quarrelsome Irish, veteran of the Great War.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
May 27, 1918.
Dear Aline:
I enclose three bits of verse by various hands. “A Nun’s Prayer for a
Soldier” is by dear old Sister Mary Leo. The flattering sonnet was sent
to me by Sr. Mary Emerentia, having been copied from a paper published
by the girls of St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana. I destroyed
Sr. Emerentia’s letter before I copied down the author’s name, so I
couldn’t write to thank her, unfortunately. “The Green Estaminet”
I want carefully preserved, for it must go in every anthology made
by you or me or anybody we know. I like it better than any war poem
I’ve read since I became a soldier, and I deeply regret that I didn’t
write it. Many and many a jovial evening I have spent in just such
bistrals as the poet describes. Dear old Madame--she always has that
“strange disease,” and she finds that white bread is good for it--and
in exchange for that white bread (from army kitchens) she gives the
delicious soft-crumbed brittle-crusted war-bread, better than any
bread in the States. “The great round songs begin”--they do, indeed!
“Bing Bang Bingen on the Rhine!” “Down in the Heart of the Gas House
District,” “Sidewalks of New York,” and always “Madelon,” in which the
French soldiers in the corner enthusiastically join. Cecil Chesterton
told me he always judged a country by its drinking-places. Well, here
are the merriest, bravest drinking places in the world. If the States
go dry, I’m going to bundle all you young critters over here to live--a
comfortable, humorous, Catholic country. Honestly, the only drawback to
living in this country is the absence of you and your gang. I’d like a
house on the very mountain top I now inhabit, and I know you’d enjoy
it tremendously. I’m perfectly serious about this, and look forward to
bringing you here.
Write oftener, and longer! I love you.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
June 1, 1918.
Dear Aline:
A terrible thing, this war, what with a pine forest to live in, all
the latest novels to read, and bridge every evening. And now I am
preparing for a short week-end in a certain nice small city, an hour’s
walk through the forest and across the mountains. It is a lovely forest
in which to wander of a June day--so deliberately European--a forest
whose tall evergreen trees and smooth brown floor suggest all the folk
tales I ever heard your dear voice beautify for our children’s delight.
Reaching this certain town, I have interesting things to do--to collect
my pay for one thing. To get mail--I hope from you. To go to confession
to Fr. Duffy or Fr. Kennedy, S. J., our new assistant chaplain, or to
some curé with thin hands and long white hair. To drink a bottle of
beer at the Sergeants’ Club--among my brother noncoms, French, Italian
and American, in horizon blue, green and olive drab respectively. To
mail to you this letter and a splendid drawing for “Rouge Bouquet,”
by Emmett Watson, of ours. To dine sumptuously on steak and fried
potatoes and Pinard at a merry bistral on a side-street, where Madame
la patronne will present me with a sprig of lilies of the valley, which
I (imagine a boutonierre with an American uniform!) will present to the
baby of the tailor’s daughter. To attend the movies--two sous! To sleep
between clean sheets in a hotel-bedroom--half a franc! And to-morrow to
be (gold service stripe flashing in the sunlight, trench-stick jauntily
swinging) a part of the many-coloured Sunday afternoon procession along
a certain broad avenue. Then back to my forest-lodge for supper.
I have written a long topical poem about a hike which I’ll send you
soon.
I love you.
JOYCE.
* * * * *
A. E. F., France.
Dear Aline:
So far, I have told about six people about your rejoicing in the
fact that the possession of a kitten justifies you in purchasing a
bird-cage. An absolutely delightful character-revelation--that is, the
revelation of a delightful character. And the most genuine sample of
you I have had since last November.
I am writing this letter in the end of one of our barracks, which
its partition cuts to make an airy office for the Supply Sergeant of
Headquarters Company. You’d like him very much--a very beautiful person
of about my age, a playwright by profession, educated in Paris. At the
other end of the long table sits a bridge party, of which the members
are the Supply Sergeant (Lemist Esler is his name), Howard Young (who
was a Marine before he became a fighting Irisher), Sergeant Kenneth
Russell (a wealthy and charming business man of very literary taste,
who knows most of the living poets we know and revels in the Oxford
Book of English Verse), and Tom O’Kelly, who has the most beautiful
tenor voice you ever heard. He is a professional singer from Dublin,
with very tightly curled close-cropped hair, a reddish brown face,
and the build of a prize-fighter. In the lulls of the game he sings
snatches of “Digging for Gould” and other nice ballads. Admirable
person.
[Illustration:
“HE LIES BURIED, ON THE RIGHT,
BESIDE LIEUTENANT OLIVER AMES,
AT THE EDGE OF A LITTLE COPSE
KNOWN AS THE WOOD OF THE
BURNED BRIDGE, CLOSE TO THE
PURLING OURCQ”
]
I am with the Regiment now--the Intelligence Section is back from its
Post, the beautiful place from which I wrote you many letters. Now
we are in very flat country, the flattest I ever saw. Very violent
flowers, chiefly scarlet poppies and small blue things, cornflowers, I
believe. Gloriously hot, with good swimming nearby, and the best sort
of shower-bath, obtainable by merely sitting under the spout of a pump
while an obliging friend turns the handle.
Your letter of May twenty-sixth came after I had received a June
letter. I am delighted to hear of Kenton’s confirmation and of his
choice of a name--St. Stephen is a gallant gentleman and a true friend
and does wonderful things for me.
I’m not very enthusiastic about that group picture of office-workers in
which I appear--I like myself better as I am now, a soldier instead of
a clerk, visiting the office only occasionally--to work on my history.
And I’m ever so much happier now than when the picture was taken.
Is Kenton serving Mass yet? _Please_ have him do so. And please send
me my Anthology--I believe restrictions no longer keep packages from
soldiers. I love you.
JOYCE.
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES
A BALLAD OF NEW SINS
PRELUDE
I am sick of the riotous roses of rapture,
Of sibilant serpentine lips,
Of the wine cup
And murder
And all that mid-Victorian stuff.
I will sin large purple sins
American
And new.
I
THE SIN OF SOUTH BEND
Clandestinely, by night,
I will board a train
And be borne, palpitant and eager, over the shuddering rails,
Until
In the chaste stillness of Sunday morning
I am hurled into the blushing station of South Bend, Indiana.
Thence I will speed to the Hotel Mortimer
And, leering with hot lips,
Rubbing with tremendous hand my rough jaws
(For this is the shameful signal,
Immemorial, inevitable),
I will ask the way to the barber shop.
The liveried menials will blench,
But one of them, hardened in crime,
Will feverishly seize my proffered gold,
And lead me, on tiptoe,
To the barber-shop’s secret door.
There, in a dim back room,
Screened, impenetrable,
A barber (artfully disguised in a black coat and no chewing gum)
Will (now and then peering nervously out beyond the screen, fearful
of spies and policemen)
Give to me, for twenty-five cents,
The forbidden delight
Of a Sunday morning shave.
II
THE WICKEDNESS OF WASHINGTON
What wickedness is more witchingly wonderful
Than the wickedness of Washington,
Where it is heinous to hock
And perilous to pawn?
I will go to Washington
And offer my watch to an usurer.
“Wait here,” he will whisper,
“And give me ten cents!”
Then will a messenger, winged like a swallow,
Carry my watch over meadow and hill
Over the riotous River Potomac
To the Virginian Shore;
He will return with a lavender ticket;
He will return with a five-dollar bill;
He will return (Oh, the logic of law!)
He will return with the watch
And the pawnbroker will lock it away.
III
THE IMMORALITY OF INDIANAPOLIS
I will go to Indianapolis,
And there sin strangely
By crossing the street catty-cornered
Instead of at the crossings,
And I shall be hanged.
WAR SONGS
I--WATER-COLOUR
Pushing my way through the chattering throng of my brown-clad mates to
the rail of the troop-ship, I look at still water, greasy and opaque.
A touch of sunlight makes it splendid with rainbows, a great prismatic
expanse, beautiful, more beautiful than clear water could be. Broken
oars shatter the rainbow, bringing a black, clumsy rowboat close to
our ship’s side. Around the black boat the rainbow settles. The rower
rests his oars and lifts graceful entreating arms. He wears pale blue
overalls. In the stern of his boat is a little girl in a cardinal
cloak. On her head is one of the caps that make the French sailors look
so gay and gentle, a flat, round, blue thing with a red pompom. She
claps her hands when cooks lean through the portholes and throw loaves
of bread to her father.
II--BREAKFAST
I may breakfast in either of two ways. I may, as I pass a steaming
field-kitchen, hold out by its long handle a shining aluminum basin.
John Wilkert will put into it a big ladleful of rice, and Leo Maher
will pour golden syrup over it. Also, before I leave the line I shall
have three long strips of broiled bacon and two thick slices of white
bread, and a canteen cup full of hot, sweet coffee. The breakfast room
is a meadow or the roadside across from the barracks. There is good
company, hungry and mirthful. And over our heads noisy battalions of
crows maneuver, advancing, retreating, hoarsely shouting down to us
news of what awaits us beyond the frozen hills.
Or I may go to the House by the Fountain. Pierre’s “permission” is
over, so he will not come in from the stable to smoke my tobacco and
tell me of life and death in the trenches. _Grandpere_ sits by the
fire, now and then blowing it to flame by forcing his scant old breath
upon it through a long hollow tube, and toasting for me a thick slice
of war-bread. Madame superintends the heating of the big iron pot of
this morning’s milk and the three-legged pot of coffee. Now my bowl--a
little precious sugar in the bottom--is filled with hot milk. Madame
deftly pours black coffee into it, and it becomes richly brown. I break
my toast into it and eat eagerly--more eagerly than does demure little
Francine, who sits opposite me, her school books beside her on the
bench. She has large innocent brown eyes like her father’s. Her hands
are so tiny that I am surprised at her dexterity with the large pewter
spoon. I am afraid that if I stare at her I shall embarrass her and
make her spill _cafe au lait_ on her immaculate pinafore. On the great
stone mantel over the fire are a spent seventy-five millimetre shell
curiously engraved with wreaths of roses, a pink china pig and a brass
crucifix. A bugle sounds by the barracks. I give Madame her half-franc.
I take my belt and rifle. “Bon jour, Monsieur,” says Madame, “A
demain!” Some day instead of “a demain” they will say “au revoir.”
“TRY A TIN TO-DAY”
“And now,” said John Potts, whirling around on the piano-stool and
throwing his lank forelock back with a jerk of his head, “we will
interpret Grace Mallon’s soul!”
“Oh, wait till she comes, John!” boomed the Rev. Morris Gildell. “She
was at the Karl Marx Forum in our parish-house last night, and she said
positively she’d be down here this afternoon.”
“Yes, do wait!” said Mrs. Anna Watkins Wilbur, placing her fat hands,
covered with rings set with semiprecious stones, over those of the
pianist. “Do wait! It will be wonderful for her to hear it!”
The host of the occasion was Edwin Marmaduke, painter. He was at
present engaged in spooning Arabian incense out of a cocoa-tin and
putting it into a large bronze thurible, which hung before a plaster
replica of Rodin’s “Le Baiser.” The incense caught fire, and dense
clouds of fragrant smoke filled the little studio. Then Marmaduke
turned his pale but agreeable face to his guests.