The man who did most (I am secretly convinced) to deprive American
literature of some really fine stuff was Mr. John Wanamaker. It
was in his store, some years ago, that I bought a kind of cot-bed
or couch, which I put in one corner of my workroom and on which it
is my miserable habit to recline when I might be getting at those
magnificent writings I have planned. Every evening I pile up the
cushions and nestle there with _The Gentle Grafter_ or some detective
story (my favourite relaxation), saying to myself: “Just ten minutes of
loafing”....
But perhaps Messrs. Strawbridge and Clothier (also of Philadelphia) are
equally at fault. When I wake up, on my Wanamaker divan, it is usually
about 2 A. M. Not too late, even then, for a determined spirit to make
incision on its tasks. But I find myself moving towards a very fine
white-enamelled icebox which I bought from Strawbridge and Clothier in
1918. With that happy faculty of self-persuasion I convince myself it
is only to see whether the pan needs emptying or the doors latching.
But by the time I have scalped a blackberry pie and eroded a platter
of cold macaroni au gratin, of course work of any sort is out of the
question.
So do the Philistines of this world league themselves cruelly against
the artist, plotting temptation for his carnal deboshed instincts,
joying to see him succumb. Once the habit of yielding is established,
Wanamaker, Strawbridge and Clothier (dark trio of Norns) have it their
own way. Just as surely as robins will be found on a new-mown lawn,
as certainly as bonfire smoke veers all round the brush pile to find
out the eyes of the suburban leaf burner, so inevitably do the Divan
and the Icebox exert their cruel dominion over us when we ought to be
pursuing our lovely and impossible dreams. Wanamaker and Strawbridge
and Clothier have blueprints of the lines of fissure in our frail
velleity. As William Blake might have said:
Let Flesh once get a lead on Spirit,
It’s hard for Soul to reinherit:
When supper’s laid upon a plate
Mind might as well abdicate.
But one of the things I think about, just before I drop off to sleep
on that couch, is My Anthology. Like every one else, I have always
had an ambition to compile an anthology of my own; several, in fact.
One of them I call in my own mind _The Book of Uncommon Prayer_, and
imagine it as a kind of secular breviary, including many of those
beautiful passages in literature expressing the spirit of supplication.
This book, however, it will take years to collect; it will be entirely
non-sectarian and so truly religious that many people will be annoyed.
People do not care much for books of real beauty. That anthology edited
by Robert Bridges, for instance--_The Spirit of Man_--how many readers
have taken the trouble to hunt it out?
But the _Uncommon Prayer Book_ is not the kind of anthology I have in
mind at the moment. What I need is a book that would boil down the best
of all the books I am fond of and condense it into a little bouillon
cube of wisdom. I have always had in mind the possibility that I might
go travelling, or the house might burn down, or I might have to sell my
library, or something of that sort. I should like to have the meat and
essence of my favourites in permanent form, so that wherever I were I
could write to the publisher and get a fresh copy.
This thought came with renewed emphasis the other day when I was
talking to Vachel Lindsay. He was saying that he had lately been
rereading Swinburne, for the first time in nearly twenty years, and was
grieved to see how the text of the poet had become corrupted in his
memory. He had been misquoting Swinburne for years and years, he said,
and the errors had been growing more and more firmly into his mind.
That led me to think, suppose we had only memory to rely on, how long
would the text of anything we loved remain unblurred? Suppose I were on
a desert island and yearned to solace myself by spouting some of the
sonnets of Shakespeare? How much could I recapture? Honestly, now, and
with no resort to the book on the shelf at my elbow, let me try an old
friend:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
That alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken--
Love is the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Then there’s something about a sickle, but I can’t for the life of me
quite get it. Presently I’ll look it up in the book and see how near I
came.
Before opening the Shakespeare, however, let’s have one more try:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I wail the lack of many a thing I sought
... my dear time’s waste----
And all the rest of that sonnet that I can think of is something about
“death’s dateless night.” A pretty poor showing. Of course, I should do
better on a desert island: there would be the wide expanse of shining
sand to walk upon, and I could throw myself into it with more passion
and fury. The secret of remembering poetry is to get a good barytone
start and obliterate the mind of its current freight of trifles.
The metronomic prosody of the surf would help me, no doubt, and the
placid frondage of the breadfruit trees. But even so, the recension
of Shakespeare’s sonnets that I would write down upon slips of bark
would be a very corrupt and stumbling text. Favourite lines would
be scrambled into the wrong sonnets, and the whole thing would be a
pitiful miscarriage of memory.
The only sagacious conduct of life is to prepare for every possible
emergency. I have taken out life insurance, and fire insurance, and
burglary insurance, and automobile insurance. I have always insured
myself against losing my job by taking care not to work too hard at
it, so I wouldn’t miss it too bitterly if it were suddenly jerked
from under me. But what have I done in the way of Literary Insurance?
Suppose, to-morrow, Adventure should carry me away from these
bookshelves? How pleasant to have a little microcosm of them that I
could take with me! And yet, unless I can shake off the servitude of
those three Philadelphia mandarins, Wanamaker and Strawbridge and
Clothier, I shall never have it.
When I think of the plays that I would have written if it weren’t for
those three rascals.
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