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THE CIRCUS
AND OTHER ESSAYS
AND FUGITIVE PIECES
JOYCE KILMER
_Uniform with this Volume_
JOYCE KILMER: Poems, Essays
and Letters
_Edited with a Memoir by_
ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
VOLUME ONE:
MEMOIR AND POEMS
VOLUME TWO:
PROSE WORKS
THE CIRCUS
AND OTHER ESSAYS
AND FUGITIVE PIECES
BY
JOYCE KILMER
EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION BY
ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1921,
By George H. Doran Company
Copyright, 1916, by Laurence J. Gomme
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
ALINE KILMER
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Credit is gratefully accorded the _New York Times_, _America_,
_Contemporary Verse_, and _Poetry: A Magazine of Verse_, for permission
to reprint several of the pieces collected in this volume. For the
privilege of reprinting poems quoted by Kilmer in his articles and
lectures, acknowledgment is made to the following publishers: E. P.
Dutton & Company, Dodd, Mead and Company, Charles Scribner's Sons, John
Lane Company, The Macmillan Company, Methuen and Company, Boni and
Liveright, and Burns and Oates. And the permission of George Sterling is
greatly appreciated for the right to reproduce his three sonnets on
Oblivion. The article on Thomas Hardy, prepared as the Introduction to
the Modern Library Edition of "The Mayor of Casterbridge," is reproduced
by special arrangement with Boni and Liveright. The publishers of
"Warner's Library of the World's Best Literature" have courteously
extended permission to reprint here the four essays, originally written
for that work, which conclude this volume.
R. C. H.
_New York, 1921._
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY 13
THE CIRCUS, AND OTHER ESSAYS
THE CIRCUS 45
THE ABOLITION OF POETS 60
NOON-HOUR ADVENTURING 70
SIGNS AND SYMBOLS 83
THE GREAT NICKEL ADVENTURE 88
THE URBAN CHANTICLEER 96
DAILY TRAVELING 105
INCONGRUOUS NEW YORK 110
IN MEMORIAM: JOHN BUNNY 116
THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS 125
FUGITIVE PIECES
THE ASHMAN 137
THE BEAR THAT WALKS LIKE A MAN 146
ABSINTHE AT THE CHESHIRE CHEESE 153
JAPANESE LACQUER 159
SAPPHO REDIVIVA 168
THE POETRY OF GERARD HOPKINS 180
PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 186
TWO LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY:
THE BALLAD 197
THE SONNET 203
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON AND HIS POETRY 222
LIONEL JOHNSON, ERNEST DOWSON, AUBREY BEARDSLEY 237
SWINBURNE AND FRANCIS THOMPSON 253
A NOTE ON THOMAS HARDY 268
MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN 275
FRANCIS THOMPSON 282
JOHN MASEFIELD 288
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 302
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
I
Since last I took up my pen in the service of my friend who on July 30,
1918, laid down his sword in the service of his country, fame, and yet
greater fame, has been busy with his name. Any further eulogy by my hand
would have only the point of being altogether superfluous and the
foolish effect of being very much at the rear of the situation. Further,
the story of Joyce Kilmer, doubtless in very fair measure, is known to
nearly everyone. An account of his career is not to be appreciably
elaborated here.
There are, however, some facts in explanation of the appearance of this
volume at this time which require to be set down. And a number of
circumstances in relation to the material here collected may be told, I
think, to general interest. With these matters I am probably as familiar
as anyone, and so have the great privilege of undertaking to record
them.
The ten highly humorous and altogether charming essays which form the
first part of this volume have led a rather queer life so far--though I
think their existence will be a very happy one from now on. First, they
were not "essays" at the time of their birth. They came into the world
as "articles." So they were spoken of by the young journalist who at
various times and with very little to do about the matter wrote them in
the course of a bewildering variety of other activities. Or, to be still
more frank, he was perhaps more apt to refer to them, when he did refer
to them at all, as "Sunday stories," done as a part of his job with the
_New York Times Sunday Magazine_. What they were called, however, is
neither here nor there. The thing is that they are here.
At the time they were offered for book publication their author, then
about thirty years of age, was well established as the author of "Trees
and Other Poems"--poems which had been appearing for some time in
various publications, collected and issued in book form in 1914. He had
been for several years a conspicuous figure and an invaluable worker in
the Poetry Society of America and the Dickens Fellowship. He was a
member of the Authors Club, and several other organizations. He had
been a lexicographer and an associate magazine editor. He was a "star"
book reviewer, conducted the Poetry Department of _The Literary Digest_,
associated much with literary celebrities, and appeared in _Who's Who_.
The point I am getting at is that he had a good deal of what is called a
"name."
Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do. I suppose that is why the
thought occurred to Joyce to get out a book of prose. So, as the
professional literary term has it, he "pasted up" ten of his
articles--that is, cut them out of the newspaper and stuck them column
width down the middle of sheets of "copy" paper. He typed a title page,
"The Circus and Other Essays," and submitted his manuscript to a
publisher. It was promptly "turned down." Joyce again did up his
manuscript, gummed on some fresh stamps, and again away it went to
another leading publishing house. And--well, and so on. I do not know
precisely how many times this manuscript was submitted for publication;
but I know it was a number, a good number, of times.
That, however, "The Circus" seemed likely not to find any publisher at
all at that time is not a matter for anything like astonishment. Not
when one bears in mind a publishing hobgoblin of the day. The book was
labeled "essays" and therefore damned. And here, perhaps, it may not be
too irrelevant to take a brief glance at the whole history of this
mysterious thing, the light, familiar essay in English. In the Augustan
age of English prose, we remember, appeared the easy, graceful style of
Steele and Addison, so admirably suited to the pleasant narrative form
of essay which they introduced. And in the nineteenth century in
England, when Johnson and Goldsmith were followed by Lamb, Hazlitt, De
Quincey, Leigh Hunt, Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin and all the rest, the
essay certainly appears to have been, so to say, very much the go.
Irving, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes--certainly our
fathers were not afraid of essays. Nevertheless, somewhere about the
opening of our own day an iron-bound tradition became erected in the
publishing business, at least in the United States, that books of essays
would not sell; could not be made to sell even sufficiently to avoid a
considerable loss on the investment of manufacture; in fact, were quite
impossible as a publishing venture. No matter how much a publisher
himself, or his manuscript reader, might enjoy a collection of essays
that chanced to turn up in his shop, his conviction as to its
unmarketability as a book was not altered--not even stirred. A few, a
very few, essayists there were, indeed, who got published. Agnes
Repplier and Samuel McChord Crothers most prominent, perhaps, among
them. But these writers had somehow got established as essayists. They
were found on the lists only of a house with peculiarly "literary"
traditions, which it was business policy to capitalize and perpetuate
for the sake of the firm's "imprint." I have heard scoffers among
publishers ask if "anybody outside of New England" bought the books of
these writers. Maybe their prime function was, in the publishing term,
to "dress the list." The volumes of essays by Dr. Henry van Dyke, I know
from experience as a bookseller, sold in popular measure. And now and
then a volume of collected papers by, say, Meredith Nicholson would bob
up for a short space of time. But such instances as these did not affect
the general situation.
In general, when the manuscript of "The Circus" was "going the rounds"
it was (supposedly) economic madness, at any rate professional heresy,
not to regard books of essays as what the trade terms "plugs," and a
drug on the market. Doubtless, the publishing position in this matter
was evolved from cumulative facts of experience in the past. But a screw
was loose somewhere. The publishing barometer had, it would seem, failed
to note a change in the weather of the public mind.
That "The Circus" would not have made a fairly popular book at the time
it was first submitted for publication, it seems to me, there is a good
deal of reason to believe was a fallacy. Not a couple of years afterward
a collection of random articles in general character not dissimilar to
"The Circus," by another young man of greatly likable nature, but then
practically unknown outside the circle of his personal friends, was in
some idiosyncratic moment accepted, and directly won its way to a very
considerable sale and a very fair degree of fame. About then, too, along
came another book of pasted-up "papers" (about which I happen to know a
good deal), which after having been rejected by nearly every publishing
house in America was taken in a spirit of generous friendliness by a
publisher of much enterprise, began almost at once to sell as well as a
fairly successful novel, has been numerous times reprinted, and in the
way of luck brought its altogether obscure author something of a name.
And just now the light, personal, journalistic-literary essay is having
quite a brisk vogue.
If Joyce stood to-day merely where he stood five years ago "The Circus,"
without doubt, would be snapped up by anybody. More; some publisher's
"scout" very likely would get a "hunch" about the probability of Joyce's
having sufficient material in his scrap-book for such a volume and "go
after" it even before Joyce had submitted it to the house of this
fellow's connection. But, alas! for "ifs" and "might have beens." Fair
fortune did not attend "The Circus."
Failing of placing the book with any large house having an extensive and
organized machinery for carrying it to a wide audience, Joyce welcomed
the opportunity of having the book published by his friend Laurence J.
Gomme. Mr. Gomme had been for several years the proprietor of the Little
Book Shop Around the Corner, at number two East Twenty-ninth Street,
directly across the street from the Protestant Episcopal Church of the
Transfiguration, so altogether charming in its Old World effect,
nestling in a tiny green spot hemmed in by high buildings, and known to
fame and legend as the Little Church Around the Corner. This was a shop
conducted in excellent taste, a sort of salon for pleasant persons of
literary breeding, and its "circulars" were written by no less an
advertising man than Richard Le Gallienne. In addition to selling the
best books of other publishers, Mr. Gomme (at a good deal of risk to
himself) served the cause of good literature by himself issuing now and
then a volume of a nature close to his heart.
In the autumn of 1916 he published, in a very attractive form, the
American edition of Mr. Belloc's poems. The volume was entitled
"Verses," by Hilaire Belloc. The introduction to the book by Kilmer was
reprinted in the two volume set, "Joyce Kilmer: Poems, Essays and
Letters," under the title "The Poetry of Hilaire Belloc." That same fall
Mr. Gomme published "The Circus and Other Essays." He made a charming
little book: a thin volume in size betwixt and between what the book
trade calls a "16mo" volume and a duodecimo; bound in plain tan boards,
with olive cloth back stamped in gold; very neatly printed on soft cream
paper in rather small type. The book had a rather fantastically amusing
and somewhat lurid "jacket," picturing in black and yellow the
professional activities of several clowns.
A very pleasant bibelot, but, I felt then, not a volume effective in
catching the popular trade. For one thing, it looked very much like it
might be a book of verse. Also, the book was so thin that one would not
be likely to catch sight of it standing among other volumes in a row on
a bookstore shelf.
Mr. Gomme's means as a publisher at that time did not permit him to give
the book any paid advertising; it had no campaign whatever of free
publicity behind it. Nor had the publisher any traveling salesmen to
show the book to dealers over the country. He merely "covered" New York
City himself in the interests of the volumes he issued. Indeed, one
would not be making a hilarious exaggeration in saying that "The Circus"
was semi-"privately printed."
A fair number of copies of the book were sent out for review. And here
is a very interesting thing. The book, as has been said, was decidedly
insignificant in bulk. It was published at a time when the assumption
prevailed that there was no appreciable public for volumes of essays;
and consequently, the inference would be, the publication of such a book
was quite without news value. Further, it was issued at a period when
newsprint paper was appallingly scarce, newspaper space rigorously
conserved, and the war engrossing public attention. There was, too, as
we have seen, nothing about the launching of "The Circus" to tempt any
literary editor or reviewer to believe that the book was of any
consequence whatever. Indeed, half a "stick" of fairly favorable comment
here and there would have been all that anybody could reasonably have
expected in the way of a "press." But, as a matter of fact, all in all
the book got a surprising amount of space in the papers, and was awarded
the dignity of thoughtful appreciation. The _New York Evening Post_
devoted half the front page of its book review section to an article,
which was continued through a column of another page, to "The Circus"
and another book of essays with which it was grouped.
Shortly after the publication of "The Circus" the difficulties of the
business of bookselling and publishing at this time forced Mr. Gomme to
close out his business. And for a period his affairs were very much
involved. His stock in hand was scattered, and before long his recent
publications became exceedingly difficult to obtain. A couple of years
after the date of its imprint, Mr. Belloc, in the course of
correspondence which I had with him mainly relating to other matters,
repeatedly besought me to obtain for him a copy of his "Verses," the
volume containing Kilmer's introduction. Indeed, he was apparently much
put out by the fact that, as he expressed it, he had never even seen a
copy of the American edition of his poems. I had more than a little
difficulty in finding a copy to send to him. This he never received.
With some petulance he laid its loss to the German submarines, which he
declared sank everything that was being sent to him. I found the trail
to another copy of "Verses" still more elusive; and, to tell the truth,
I really don't know whether or not I got another copy off to him. This
story is to show that anyone who has a copy of that book now has a
volume far from readily found.
Copies of the original edition of "The Circus" are somewhat easier to
lay hold of. Doubtless, though, they will soon be scarce, as the
original edition could not have been large. And the book will not be
reprinted in its first form. With all the untoward circumstances of its
publication, however, "The Circus" did seem to find its way to no mean
circle of friends. When the memorial volumes, "Joyce Kilmer: Poems,
Essays and Letters," were published in the autumn of 1918, numerous
inquiries were received by the publishers as to why the essays which
comprised the volume "The Circus" were not included. The explanation is
this: In the continuance of the entanglement of the affairs of Mr.
Gomme's former business no clear title to the rights of this book was at
that time in sight. Since then these matters have all been straightened
out, and, I am happy to be able to say, this excellent friend of Joyce
Kilmer is again in circumstances more auspicious than before, and with
joy to his fine heart, effectively serving the cause of good books.
In direct critical appreciation of these ten essays there is not much
that I care to say. They were written by my friend, and are therefore
holy. That is, of course, to me. They may be charged with being very
youthful. Aye; even so.
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting and for ever young.
Their youthfulness is to me a thing of very poignant, tender beauty. I
see again that radiant boy, trailing clouds of glory come from God who
was his home. His childhood spent in "a town less than a hundred miles
from New York," "now he feels himself actually a New Yorker," "enjoys
the proud novelty of working for wages," and "joyfully, therefore, he
goes forth every noon to explore the territory of his new possession."
The subway was to him "the great nickel adventure"; a ride on the
elevated railroad, "aerial journeying"; his alarm clock, "the urban
chanticleer." Again, as a commuter, I see him on the 5.24, flying across
"leagues" to his cottage in the "primeval forest" of New Jersey. On his
"red velvet chair" he sits, "enjoying with his neighbors tobacco smoke,
rapid travel, and the news of the world." None ever enjoyed these things
more, red velvet chair and all!
The connection which I may boast of having with the writing of some of
these essays illustrates in an amusing way the pleasantly pugnacious
character of Joyce's mind. Joyce held that I was offensively aesthetic in
regarding sign-boards about the countryside as ugly things. "Signs and
Symbols" was his hilarious and scornful rebuke. "The Gentle Art of
Christmas Giving" (a _New York Times_ article reprinted in the
two-volume set) had a similar origin. You remember with what amusing
gusto it begins:
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 the original
manner. He would 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.
That "particularly annoying tradition," that "evil and absurd
superstition," I had been guilty of voicing a few days before he wrote
this article. He looked at me with withering commiseration.
If, in the days when he was writing the essays of "The Circus," Joyce
had the effect of being ridiculously young, he was also (with affection
I say it) ridiculously wise for his years. I can hear the sturdy sound
of his voice in the phrase (in the essay "The Abolition of Poets"),
"those ridiculous young people who call themselves Imagists and
Vorticists and similar queer names." And what joyous satire here:
And there is Zipp, the What-is-it? most venerable of freaks, whose
browless tufted head and amazing figure have entertained his
visitors since Phineas Taylor Barnum engaged him to ornament his
museum on Ann Street. For all I know, Zipp is a poet--his smile is
lyrical, and in his roving eyes there is a suggestion of vers libre.
Then, with the mellow humor of paternal experience he discusses (in "The
Day After Christmas") that hypothetical person who is three, and who, he
regrets to say, is "somewhat sticky"; who, further, had in all
confidence requested Santa Claus to bring him a large live baboon, but
who had been brought instead a small tin monkey on a stick. Or, again,
babies who at somewhere between six and eight in the morning, "seeing
that their weary parents are leaving them, decide at last that it is
time to go to sleep."
And even then, as throughout his later years, he had that (manly not
sentimental) intuitive sympathy for those by fortune afflicted. In "The
Circus":
The freaks get large salaries (they seem large to poets), and they
are carefully tended, for they are delicate. See, here is a man who
lives although his back is broken. There is a crowd around him; how
interested they are! Would they be as interested in a poet who lived
although his heart was broken? Probably not. But then, there are not
many freaks.
Nor did his perception of sorrow come to him solely by intuition. Far
from it. No, this very valiant and very young man himself had
experienced the fact that an alarm clock "can utter harsh and strident
grief, those know who lie down with Sorrow and must awaken with her."
To me there is something indescribably touching even in Joyce's most
hilarious flights of fancy in these essays. I cannot tell you why this
is so. Perhaps it is because his jocund humor, like all else, sprang
from a heart so woven of the common strands of humanity.
When Adam watched with pleased astonishment an agile monkey leap among
the branches of an Eden tree, and laughed at the foolish face of a
giraffe, he saw a circus. Delightedly now would he sit upon a rickety
chair beneath a canvas roof, smell the romantic aroma of elephant and
trampled grass, and look at wonders.
The most obvious thing, of course, about these essays is their
Chestertonian spirit and manner. In the matter of the manner, Mr.
Chesterton's trick of "reverse English," to employ the billiard player's
term, take this:
It would be the mere prose of our daily life for birds to fly about
close to the tent's roof, and for men and women to ring bells and
sit in rocking chairs. It is the poetry of the circus that men and
women fly about close to the tent's roof, and birds ring bells and
sit in rocking chairs.
Or, for both manner and spirit, this:
By faith the walls of Jericho fell down. By faith the Eight Algerian
Aerial Equilibrists stayed up.
Indeed, the whole fundamental temper of the book--its glorification
(almost deification) of everyday things; its militant persistence in
running counter to dull acceptance of current ideas; its sleight-of-hand
dexterity in bringing a thing to life by standing it on its head--is
Chestertonian. And right there is the point. Anybody, almost, can copy,
or parody, Mr. Chesterton's manner. But Kilmer's Chestertonism was
nothing of a superficial imitation. He was at heart quite Chestertonian
himself. What is still more to the point: He was, so to put it, more
Chestertonian than even Mr. Chesterton. That is, one cannot but feel
that for some considerable time Mr. Chesterton has been more or less
mechanically imitating himself. But Kilmer's rollicking pages have on
them the tender bloom of the natural fruit.
And they reek with the articles of his creed--are punctuated with the
touchstones by which he guided his life. Three words are most often
repeated in these essays. They occur again and again, one or more of
them on nearly every page. These words, you cannot fail to note, are:
faith, mirth, and democracy.
II
The poem, "The Ashman," which opens the second part of this book, was
not included in the collected set of Kilmer's poems, essays and letters
for the reason that it was overlooked at the time those volumes were
being prepared for publication. The poem was supplied for this volume by
Charles Wharton Stork, in whose magazine, "Contemporary Verse," it
originally appeared.
Among Kilmer's papers I have found a typewritten memorandum which shows
that he contemplated collecting into a volume the fugitive pieces here
reprinted. This is the memorandum:
LITERARY ADVENTURES
(1) Absinthe at The Cheshire Cheese; a consideration of Ernest Dowson
and his times. (America pasted up--_Times_ Book Review to be
obtained)
(2) Japanese Lacquer; an attempt to solve the Lafcadio Hearn riddle
(pasted up)
(3) SAPPHO REDIVIVA (pasted up)
(4) RABINDRANATH TAGORE AND THE NEO-MYSTICS (pasted up)
(5) THE BEAR THAT WALKS LIKE A MAN; Some aspects of the Russian novel
fad (pasted up)
(6) FRANCIS THOMPSON (pasted up)
(7)
I do not know that anything especial need be said concerning these
articles. They are exceedingly lively bits of journalistic literary
criticism, highly entertaining in their exhibition of Kilmer's pet
aversions, which, after all, sprang from his manly common sense. In a
letter written at about the time of these articles Joyce says: "My chief
pleasure in writing is to attempt to expose the absurdity of very modern
writers--materialists, feminists, Zolaists and all the rest of the
foolish crew."
As interesting examples of Kilmerana, several representative lectures
conclude this book. At the time Joyce entered the army his lecturing
activities had become pretty extensive. He makes frequent reference to
his lecture work in his correspondence of the time. In a letter written
in September, 1915, he says, "I can't make a spring tour--because in
February or March we're going to have another baby, I'm glad to say."
Further on in this same communication, to the Reverend James J. Daly, S.
J., he writes: "You see, I don't want to go into lecturing on so
extensive a scale as Dr. Walsh. I have my regular work to attend to, and
I'd rather not take more than three weeks off at a time. And I don't
want to lecture too often. I have not Dr. Walsh's readiness. I prepare
my lectures carefully, writing them out like essays, and memorizing them
so thoroughly that they give, I believe, the impression that they are
spoken ex-tempore." In another letter of about this time he speaks of
his "new profession"--"monologue artist in one night stands." In one
letter he speaks of a lecture, manuscript of which I have been unable to
find, as follows:
The lecture which I especially desire to give at Campion this year
is "The Poet of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Their
Successors." This is, I think, a better lecture than "Swinburne and
Francis Thompson." It is an attempt to show how Patmore (who was a
member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a friend of Rossetti and a
contributor to The Germ) carried the theories of the Pre-Raphaelites
to their logical conclusion, that Rossetti and Christina and Morris
and a lot of that bunch really paved the way for Francis Thompson
and Alice Meynell and Katherine Tynan and other modern Catholic
poets, by writing sympathetically, even if not always
understandingly, on Catholic themes. Incidentally, I trace "The
Hound of Heaven" back through "The Blessed Damozel" to "The Raven."
But if you don't want that lecture I'll lecture on any other subject
you may elect--the lighter lyrics of James J. Daly, for example.
In another letter he writes: "Next year I won't lecture at all; I'll
just recite my poems, which take better than the lectures, anyway. I'm
going on tour with Ellis Parker Butler, the 'Pigs Is Pigs' man, and
we'll have a regular manager."
And again:
I am glad that you are so forgiving as to be willing to have me at
Campion on the twenty-sixth. Unless I am commanded to the contrary,
I will give "The War and the Poets" at the College and "Francis
Thompson" at the Convent. "The War and the Poets" does not get the
goats of hyphenates of any sort--I gave it in Toronto and in Notre
Dame. Also I will read some of my own stuff, new and old, at both of
these lectures unless forcibly prevented.
The two lectures on poetry, "The Ballad" and "The Sonnet," were given at
New York University, and were to have been parts of a book on the art of
versification, which the University, I believe, was to publish. In the
manuscript of these lectures we find such phrases as "this book," and
Joyce referring to himself here as "the author of a textbook." The
lecture "The Ballad" as here printed is incomplete, as the typewritten
copy of the manuscript which came into my hands, and which is the only
copy I know to be in existence, ends thus:
I will call the reader's attention to the work of some of the poets
who, in our time, have been proving the falsity of Sir Arthur
Quiller-Couch's statement that
These lectures on poetry are admirably adapted to their end. They are
addressed to the student, especially "the apprentices of the craft of
verse making." They are devoted altogether to historical and technical
matters. And in the earnestness of his conception of his task here as
the author of a textbook, Joyce has very rigorously excluded anything
which could possibly be fancied as flippant. Just as sternly has he
refrained from allowing to enter his discourse any particle of color of
religious bias. He has not, however, in the slightest permitted his
independence of judgment to be subdued in his interpretation of purely
literary points. So these lectures do not lack for vitality, and exhibit
again, in a less known manner of his writing, his exceptional clarity of
style.
As in his life, so in his writings. Joyce moved in many circles, and
though always quite himself, so did he, too, always fit where he found
himself. An exceedingly active professional writer, he was called upon
to write for various audiences. When he was entrusted with writing the
articles on Madison Cawein, Francis Thompson, John Masefield, and
William Vaughn Moody for "Warner's Library of the World's Best
Literature," and when he was invited to contribute the introductory
essay to Thomas Hardy's novel "The Mayor of Casterbridge" in "The Modern
Library," he was to address a more or less popular audience of general
character, and he did that with ability and distinguished literary tact.
Naturally, Joyce became much in demand as a speaker before purely
Catholic audiences. And naturally before Roman Catholic schools,
colleges, universities and societies he loosed the spirit of his own
fervent Catholicism. Perhaps it will occur to some readers of this
volume who may not be Catholics that such lectures as "Lionel Johnson,
Ernest Dawson, Aubrey Beardsley" and "Swinburne and Francis Thompson"
are more in the nature of briefs for the Catholic Faith than they are of
the character of disinterested literary criticism. I do not think it
would have worried Joyce to have been told so. He was in such lectures
talking what was to him far more than literature. In a letter of his
before me, written by hand, he says, "There are in the universe only two
ecstasies. One is receiving Holy Communion." The other, he means, is his
love for his wife. "Poetry," he continues, "is not an ecstasy, but it is
a delight, a shadow and an echo of the two ecstasies. It certainly is a
delight to read and to make."
What, to his mind, was the use of writers, anyway? In the lecture
"Philosophical Tendencies in English Literature" he tells very
definitely his conviction as to this:
So writers may fulfill the purpose for which they were made by
writing--may know God better by writing about Him, increase their
love of Him by expressing it in beautiful words, serve Him in this
world by means of their best talent, and because of this service and
His mercy be happy with Him forever in Heaven.
III
Numerous letters written by Joyce to many of his friends, and kindly
loaned by their owners to the publishers, were received too late for
inclusion in the two-volume set of his poems, essays and letters. These
letters continue in greater detail, and give the emphasis of cumulative
effect, to the portrait of a beautiful and a joyous young manhood
revealed by the letters which were printed. A man has only one life to
live in this world, but (if he is anything like Kilmer) many friends.
And so it is that several groups of letters from his hand are more than
apt to tell, with some variations in expression, very much the same
story. Two stout volumes of collected letters sometimes are compiled as
an appropriate part of the literary remains of a notable life. Anything
approaching such a bulk of preserved correspondence, however, can only
be in order when that life has reflected something like three or four
times the number of working years that were Kilmer's.
Some few points I find in the unpublished letters which may be new to
many of Joyce's readers. In one place he says, referring to the
approaching publication of the volume which was issued as "Trees and
Other Poems," "My Book is to appear next October. It is called 'The
Twelve-forty-five and Other Poems.'" A little later he writes:
I wish you'd suggest a name for my book. In my contract it is called
"Trees and Other Poems" but I don't like that; it's too mild. I
wanted to call it "Delicatessen," since it contains a long poem of
that name, but the publishers think that name too frivolous. Then I
suggested "A Rumbling Wain" (after the third and fourth lines of the
first stanza of Patmore's "Angel in the House") but that's too
obscure. And "The 12.45 and Other Poems" is flat, I think. If you
select a title, you see, you can't roast the title when you review
the book in _America_!
In another place: "I don't like the book's jacket at all. I think it is
effeminate."
As an amusingly frank comment on his own "stuff" there is this:
My article in ---- was somewhat weak-minded. Have poor Christmas
poem in ---- and good Christmas poem ($50.00!!) in ----. And middling
Thanksgiving poem in ----. And trite but amiable poem about English
university at war in ----.
Of Chesterton he has this very quotable line, "He is the plumed knight
of literature with the sword of wit and burnished shield of Faith." All
about, of course, is the Kilmerian humor. He asks his wife to, "Remember
me to your new young infant Christopher." He says to a friend, "I'm
sending you some postcards. The person not Mike in the picture was
Mike's mother." And again:
Will you please tell me at your earliest convenience the name of an
asylum for blind orphans, or something of the sort, which wants
picture-postcards? I have a truckful of them, and there's no room in
the house for them and us, and yet I don't want to throw them away.
Occasionally he speaks of Rose, his little daughter afflicted with
infantile paralysis: "Rose is in good general health and spirits, thank
God. She can use one fore-arm a little. But I cannot talk much about
her, except to Our Lady." Over and over again, he says (ridiculously
enough), that he is much worried about his work, he is "disgustingly
lazy." And always he asked his friends to pray for him. He speaks of
Father Corbet:
He ran the retreat last week. I got my soul scraped pretty clean,
but it soils easily.
Remember me to everyone, and please pray very hard for,
Your affectionate friend.
IV
In the Memoir prefixed to the two-volume set are a couple of errors of
fact. As a matter of record these should be corrected. The Memoir reads:
Kilmer was graduated from Rutgers College in 1904, and received his
A.B. from Columbia in 1906.... As a Sophomore Kilmer became engaged
to Miss Aline Murray.... Upon leaving Columbia he ... returned to
New Jersey and began his career as instructor of Latin at Morristown
High School.... He married and became a householder.
Kilmer never graduated from Rutgers College. He graduated from Rutgers
Preparatory School in 1904. He went to Rutgers College for two years,
finishing his Sophomore year. His Junior and Senior years were at
Columbia University. He graduated from there in 1908. Two weeks after
his graduation he married.
The date of Kilmer's death has not been exactly established. The Memoir
states, "Sergeant Kilmer was killed in action near the Ourcq, July 30,
1918." The date popularly accepted is Sunday, July 28. It was at the
dawn of this day that the 165th made its gallant and irresistible drive
into the five days' battle which followed. The Government telegram to
Joyce's widow gave the date of his death as August 1, as does also his
death certificate. His Citation for valor, however, names the date as
July 30.
At the time the Memoir was written Joyce was buried near where he had
fallen, perhaps ten minutes' walk to the south of the village of
Seringes. Later his body was removed to a cemetery. This cemetery is 608
at Seringes et Nesles, in the Province of Aisne. It is within walking
distance of a little village, Fere en Tardenois. The cemetery is a small
one. It is described as being in a beautiful location, on a little
elevation close by the road. The place is about ninety miles from
Paris.
THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS
THE CIRCUS
I
Restraint is perhaps the most conspicuous literary virtue of the artists
in words who have the pleasant task of describing in programs, in
newspaper advertisements, and on posters the excellences of circuses.
The litterateur who, possessed of an intimate knowledge of the circus,
merely calls it "a new, stupendous, dazzling, magnificent, spectacular,
educational, and awe-inspiring conglomeration of marvels, mysteries,
mirth, and magic," deserves praise for a verbal economy almost Greek.
For he is not verbose and extravagant, he is taciturn and thrifty; he
deliberately uses the mildest instead of the strongest of the adjectives
at his disposal.
Shyly, it seems, but in fact artfully, he uses modest terms--"new," for
example, and "spectacular" and "educational." These are not necessarily
words of praise. An epidemic may be new, an earthquake may be
spectacular, and even a session of school may be educational. Yet the
adjectives proper to these catastrophes are actually applied--in
letters of gold and silver and purple--to the circus!
The laureate of the circus, with an aesthetic shrewdness which places him
at once on a level with Walter Pater (whose description of the "Mona
Lisa," by the by, is an admirable example of Circus press-agent writing)
considers, and rejects as too bewilderingly true, the mightiest of the
adjectives that fit his theme. Discreetly he calls it "new" instead of
"immemorial"; "educational" instead of "religious." He does not, as he
might, call the circus poetic, he does not call it aristocratic, he does
not call it democratic. Yet all these great words are, as he well knows,
his to use. The consciousness of his power makes him gentle.
His abnegation becomes the more startlingly virtuous when it is
considered that he resists the temptation to use that fascinating
device, paradox. For the circus is paradox itself--this reactionary and
futuristic exhibition, full of Roman chariots and motor cycles, of high
romance and grotesque realism, this demonstration of democracy and
aristocracy, equality and subordination, worldliness and religion.
The press agent may, without fear of logical contradiction, call the
circus religious. In the old days, he frequently called it a "moral
exhibition." This was to forestall or answer the attacks of the Puritan
divines of New England, who railed against the great canvas monster
which invaded the sanctity of their villages.
"Moral" was justly used. For surely courage, patience, and industry are
the three qualities most obviously exhibited by the silk-and-spangle
clad men and women who dance on the perilous wire, fly through space on
swiftly swinging bars, and teach a spaniel's tricks to the man-eating
lion.
But the religious value, the formally religious value, of the circus is
even more obvious than its moral value. For the circus, more than any
other secular institution on the face of the earth, exemplifies--it may
be said, flaunts--that virtue which is the very basis of religion, the
virtue of faith.
Now, faith is the acceptance of truth without proof. The man who is told
and believes that something contrary to his experience will happen has
faith. And he who considers the psychology of the audience at a circus,
he who (there are scientists sufficiently egotistic) looks into his own
soul while a troupe of aerial acrobats are before his physical eyes,
will see faith, strong and splendid.
It is not (as some pessimists who never went to a circus would have us
believe) the expectation that the performer will fall and be dashed to
pieces that makes people enjoy a dangerous act. People are like that
only in the novels of D. H. Lawrence and the merry pastoral ballads of
John Masefield. The circus audience gets its pleasure chiefly from its
wholly illogical belief that the performer will not fall and be dashed
to pieces; that is, from the exercise of faith. The audience enjoys its
irrational faith that Mme. Dupin will safely accomplish the irrational
feat of hanging by her teeth from a wire and supporting the weight of
all the gold and pink persons who theoretically constitute her family.
They enjoy the exercise of this faith, and they enjoy its justification.
They really believe, just because a particularly incredible-looking
poster tells them so, that there are in the side-show a man with three
legs, a woman nine feet tall, and a sword swallower. They give up their
money gladly, not to find that the poster was wrong, but because they
have faith that it is right. There are no rationalists at the circus.
The audience has faith, and the performers--where would they be without
it?--in small fragments, red and white on the tanbark floor. "If the
sun and moon should doubt," remarked William Blake, "they'd immediately
go out." If the lady who rides the motor cycle around the interior of
the hollow brass ball, or the gentleman who balances a pool table, two
lighted lamps and a feather on his left ear should doubt, they would go
out just as promptly. The Peerless Equestrienne believes that she will
land on her feet on the cantering white horse's broad rosined back after
that double cart-wheel. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down. By
faith the Eight Algerian Aerial Equilibrists stayed up.
You may, of course, try this on your son. As he absorbs the strawed
grape juice (degenerate substitute for the pink lemonade of antiquity!),
munches the sibilant popcorn and the peanuts which the elephants
declined, you may pour into his ears this disquisition on the
religiosity of the greatest show on earth. In fact, the best time to
preach to a child is while he is staring, with eyes as round as the
balloons he is soon to acquire, at the splendors of the three rings. For
then there is not the slightest chance of his answering you back, or
hearing you.
They are modern enough for anyone, these wandering players. The gymnasts
are at home on motor cycles, the clowns sport with burlesque
aeroplanes. Yet they are wholesomely reactionary in other respects than
those of having chariot races and such unaging feats of skill and
strength as may have cheered the hearts of Caesar's legionaries. They are
reactionary in that they turn man's newest triumphs into toys. The motor
cycle loses its dignity and is no longer an imposing proof of the truth
of materialistic philosophy when a girl, built, it seems, of Dresden
china, rides it on one wheel over hurdles and through a hoop of flame.
And see! Yorick himself, with his old painted grin and suit of motley,
makes a Bleriot the butt of infinite jest.
The circus is vulgar. Its enemies say so; its friends, with grateful
hearts assent. It is _vulgar_, of the crowd. To no play upon the stage
can this lofty praise be given. For the circus as it is to-day would
thrill and amuse and delight not only the crowd that to-day see it, but
the crowd that might come from the days before the Flood, or from the
days of our great-grandchildren's children. When Adam watched with
pleased astonishment an agile monkey leap among the branches of an Eden
tree, and laughed at the foolish face of a giraffe, he saw a circus.
Delightedly now would he sit upon a rickety chair beneath a canvas
roof, smell the romantic aroma of elephant and trampled grass, and look
at wonders.
So it is that the vulgarity of the appeal of the circus--its democracy,
if you prefer--has no temporal or geographic limits. And the performers
themselves are a democracy--the acrobat who somersaults before death's
eyes, the accomplished horseman, the amazing contortionist, the graceful
juggler--all these are made equal by the ring, and, furthermore, they
must compete for the applause of the throng with roller-skating bears,
trained seals, and chalk-faced clowns. Yet there is aristocracy of the
ring, and the subordination that Dr. Johnson praised. For here struts
the ringmaster, with cracking whip, imperious voice, and marvelous
evening clothes; the pageant with which the great show opened had its
crowned queen; and even every troop of performing beasts has its
four-footed leader.
The stage's glories have been sung by many a poet. But the circus has
had no laureate; it has had to content itself with the passionate prose
of its press agent. The loss is poetry's, not the circus's. For the
circus is itself a poem and a poet--a poem in that it is a lovely and
enduring expression of the soul of man, his mirth, and his romance, and
a poet in that it is a maker, a creator of splendid fancies in the minds
of those who see it.
And there are poets in the circus. They are not, perhaps, the men and
women who make their living by their skill and daring, risking their
lives to entertain the world. These are not poets; they are artists
whose methods are purely objective. No, the subjective artists, the
poets, are to be found in the basement, if the show is at the Garden,
or, if the show be outside New York they are to be found in the little
tents--the side-shows. This is not a mere sneer at the craft of poetry,
a mere statement that poets are freaks. Poets are not freaks. But freaks
are poets.
Rossetti said it. "Of thine own tears," he wrote, "thy song must tears
beget. O singer, magic mirror hast thou none, save thine own manifest
heart." Behold, therefore, the man on whom a crushing misfortune has
come. He puts his grief into fair words, and shows it to the public.
Thereby he gets money and fame. Behold, therefore, a man whom misfortune
touched before his birth, and dwarfed him, made him a ridiculous image
of humanity. He shows his misfortune to the public and gets money and
fame thereby. This man exhibits his lack of faith in a sonnet-sequence;
that man exhibits his lack of bones in a tent. This poet shows a soul
scarred by the cruel whips of injustice; this man a back scarred by the
tattooer's needles.
But the freaks would not like to change places with the poets. The
freaks get large salaries (they seem large to poets), and they are
carefully tended, for they are delicate. See, here is a man who lives
although his back is broken. There is a crowd around him; how interested
they are! Would they be as interested in a poet who lived although his
heart was broken? Probably not. But then, there are not many freaks.
II
When Tom Gradgrind (who had, you remember, robbed the Coketown Bank, and
been saved from punishment by the amiable intervention of Sleary's
Circus) was living out his exile somewhere in South America, he often
longed, Charles Dickens tells us in the engaging tale called "Hard
Times," to be back in England with his sister. But what phase of his
dismal boyhood and wasted later years did he see in his homesick dreams?
What episodes of his life in England did it give him pleasure to relive
in memory?
Dickens does not tell us. But no one who has read "Hard Times" and seen
a circus needs to be told. The repentant exile, toiling under the tropic
sun, had no affectionate recollections of Stone Lodge, his father's
dreary mansion in Coketown, with its metallurgical cabinet, its
conchological cabinet, and its mineralogical cabinet. Nor was it with
anything approaching happiness that he thought of the Coketown Bank, the
scene of some years of dull labor and of one moment of moral
catastrophe.